Final Debate Tournament of the Semester

Round 5 Resolution

 Last weekend I had the opportunity to debate at Seattle University’s Seattle IV tournament as a member of the T.O.H. Karl Speech and Debate team (PLU’s debate team). Our team participates in British Parliamentary debate which is popular in the United States, Canada, and most of Europe. In this form, teams of two students are randomly assigned a position in the debate as Open Government, Opening Opposition, Closing Government, or Closing Opposition. If the team is on the government side, they will argue in proposition of the argument, meaning they agree with the resolution. Additionally, the opposition argues against the resolution.

              All teams are given the resolution 15 minutes before the debate will begin. The debaters cannot access any preparation materials except informational briefs that are printed before the round begins. At the end of the 15 minutes, the debate begins in front of three judges that decide 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th place in the debate between the Open Government, Opening Opposition, Closing Government, or Closing Opposition teams.

One resolution that was given at the Seattle IV was “This House regrets the narrative at United States citizens must ‘support the troops’”. My partner and I were on Opening Opposition for this round and were expected to argue that US citizens should be obligated to ‘support the troops’.

Award for 2nd place in the Novice Finals

Debate is exciting because the resolution can be torn apart and put back together to help your team win. Important words that need to be defined in this resolution are ‘must’, ‘support’ and ‘regrets’. If a citizen ‘must’ do something, what does that look like? Is the ‘support’ monetary? Or just emotional support? And does ‘regretting’ something mean wiping away the history that comes with ‘support for the troops’?

All of these questions were answered and debated within the round. The winning team is expected to be the partnership that best defined these questions, had the most interesting and powerful arguments, and accurately defended the other team’s arguments.

While my partner and I didn’t win this round, we ended up in the Finals Round of the Novice section. Novice means that a team is in their first year of debating in collegiate debate. In that final round we got 2^nd place arguing that ‘the European Union was not a failed experiment’.

Receiving 2^nd place was a great end to the Fall semester and energized me for a Spring of more debate!


~Brooke

Post Thanksgiving and Finals Week

Hi again,

So the past couple weeks went by as a blur as Thanksgiving and preparation for finals took precedence in my life. For Thanksgiving, myself and a group of international students went to Vancouver, BC in Canada. Harald, my co-worker and good friend was with us as well! Shunying, an ex-worker here at the International Admissions Office (2014) also came up and joined us! 

From L to R: Joakim, Harald, Me, Shunying & Alex!

Vancouver is a really beautiful city. We spent 4 days and 3 nights there and had lots of fun. It has a large Asian population and this can be credited to the University of British Columbia, which attracts many international students who mainly come from Asia. We spent half a day at UBC and actually interacted with some international students there. We met this club on campus that was run by Chinese students, and they focused on video production and photography. Alex had a chance to interview with them about Taiwan! 

Alex conducting his interview about Taiwan.

We also spent another day in downtown Vancouver, and we rented bikes and cycled around Stanley Park. That was amazing as the weather was perfect that day and we just enjoyed the scenery that Vancouver had to offer! 

Fast forward to dead week and finals week, I'm doing pretty well. I had a fitness test and ruck march (6 miles with 35lbs) for ROTC that counted towards my GPA last week and that was fun. 

I also took my ROTC (MSIII Class) final exam last Tuesday and finished my Financial Accounting final today. What's left is a Computer Science final on Wednesday and a paper due for a Conflict class on Wednesday as well. 

My parents will be flying in on Friday, and we will be road-tripping to Idaho, Montana and Spokane, places which we've never visited before! 

Have a great week and good luck on your finals to all students out there! 

Joel Goh

~Thanksgiving in Oregon~

Hellu~ 

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break ‘cause I did! This year, I was invited to my roomie’s house in Oregon City (her name is Michelle) and we went to IKEA in Portland to shop for our new apartment eyyy 

Anyhow, this post is going to have a bunch of food pictures that we had during Thanksgiving break. I didn’t take any picture so...

Here they are:

Smoked Turkey  - Yes, it actually looks that good,
and tastes amazing too  

Yams with marshmallow and pecans! It didn't look exactly
like this picture but I made it so of course it tastes
good  - People like it, I swear

We also made cranberry sauce  I didn’t know that cranberry pops
while boiling 

Green Bean Casserole - Michelle made this, it was so good 

Stuffing~ Still Michelle, still good Yummy

Okay, there are more but I can’t remember…

I miss those dishes so much  After eating them now the food on campus is so insipid…

We had a bunch of cool stuff for the apartment too but can’t take pictures cause they’re still wrapped up. No touching until move-in day - by Michelle's dad 

Alright, now back to study for final week that is coming soon  You can do this, good luckkkk 

Cloud ☁~