Assumption Worlds Round 3: This House would not allow local governments to pay for the relocation of the homeless.

Chair: Tom Robertson (Sydney)

Panel: Fareez Bin Zahr (Malaysia), Jeff Fox (Duke)

WHAT WAS IN MY HEAD

I know I’ve raised the issue of racist adjudication regarding the Worlds, but I never said that all Caucasians were bigoted and biased against non-native speakers of the English Language. That being said, I think there’s no doubt that Tom Robertson was the best adjudicator we had all throughout the  competition. He really listened intently and the points that he raised after the oral adjudication were very much relevant and on the mark. Thank you Tom Robertson.

THE DEBATE

The definition set by the team from Khon Kaen University - an institution in Thailand — was very weird. They chose to specifically set the debate in… tada! Bangkok! They even named the particular bus stations where  the homeless people of Bangkok choose to sleep every night. They further argued that the homeless people who slept in these areas shouldn’t be given houses for relocation of the government. WHY?

Well, because they have homes in the provinces. Oh well. After that convoluted and self-destructing line of arguments, it was clear that we were not going to get zero for round three. Instead of challenging the definition, we just said that the setup would still work in any  city regardless of what country it was set in. It was going to be a debate on the extent of the government’s responsibility as far as helping out its citizens was concerned.

As Opening Opposition, we chose to go with the intrinsic role of the government to look after its citizens and how social  mobility would be better realized  in a government-funded relocation (as we  would realize later, our series of premises didn’t quite sum up to that conclusion). Aside from  the fundamental role of government, we also delved into how helping those who have less in life reduces the chances of them being belligerent and potentially harmful threats to society and how it improves the overall appearance of a city - in turn improving its standing with investors and the business sector.

Closing Government abandoned their  Opening team by choosing to stick with the isolated cases of relocation in Southern California (suspiciously close to the La Verne campus). They also contended that homelessness is illegal in some cities and homeless people should get no help from the government whatsoever.

Closing Opposition had the sophistication that we (Opening Opposition) lacked. They presented studies on  how cities like Vancouver and Toronto - both Canadian cities — have successfully made  the model work. Come to think of it, much of their initial premises still depended on the foundations that we laid out as opening, but it was close win. And in the end, a slightly greater edge in sophistication, breadth and depth won over  originality.

 THE  FATE OF THE OPPONENTS

Queens A finished the competition with 17 points and 1376 speaker points. This was good enough to net them 67th place.

La Verne A collected 13 points and 1383 speaker points for a ranking of 195th.

KKU A ended up with 10 points and 1170 speaker points - 337th in the competition.

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