AUDC Day 3
The competition is starting now and its getting hotter and more competitive as well. AUDC has reached its third day of tournament and second day of preliminary round, meaning that there are 4 preliminary rounds done and still 3 more preliminary rounds to go to the finals. There are 60 teams competing in the tournament from 7 countries in Asia, mostly come from ASEAN region but there are also teams and adjudicator coming from Bangladesh and Kazakhstan. Malaysia and Filipina are the country sending the most delegates as well as Indonesia. Amongst all 60 participants, teams from Nan Yang Technological University (NTU) and Atheneo De Manila University (ADMU) excells in the first and second rank with teams from International Islamic University (IIU) Malaysia comes third.
What happens to Indonesian team, especially ITB in the tournament? Well with language bariers and lacking of experience in joinig international tournaments, Indonesia seem to need more luck. Average Indonesian team has only 1 Victory points out of 3 prelims, but with small knowledge of matter and some shallow cases we only stuck in the big 30 out of 60 teams. Most of Indonesian debaters are young college student with ony one or two year of debating experiments and they got easily knocked out psychologically by foreign debaters who has more years of experiments even before they start to debate. One of ITB team debate against ADMU first round this morning and they got very tense only by knowing that they are competing against last year AUDCs champion. "It's a very good experience, though, debating with last years champion. We can learn their strategies and how they build their case effectively in a debate", said Nita, a debater from Atma Jaya University Jakarta.
Local participants elligible for EFL league this year only come from Indonesian University because universities in Japan, China and Korea that usually accompany Indonesia in the league prefers to go to ALL Asian Debating Championship held in Korea. This makes perfect sense because Korea is much closer from Japan and China rather than Indonesia. This gives ITB team more oportunity to break to EFL final rounds because amongst other Indonesian team, ITB is the team with most international tournament experience. But we also can not forget the teams from Bina Nusantara University who is also a regular participant of the tournament, University of Indonesia that has a lot of experience in attending Worlds Debating Championship almost every year, and Atma Jaya University that often wins many local tournaments. But then again, as an ITB student i do hope that we willwin this competition even if it is only in the EFL league.
There are so many interesting stories from three days of the tournament so far. One of the Filipino participants begs the commitee to buy her a patch that can massage (we understand it as KOYO) because his back is very achy after a long day bringing a backpack full with laptop and matter papers. another debater from IIU Malaysia told us that debate has a credit point (SKS) in their college. So if you are debating, you will get two extra credit (2SKS) for the Semester. Off course, all the expense of going abroad to follow such competition is on the College's money. The good thing is, IIU has tens and hundreds of debaters in their debating union and is a respectable team in international tournaments such as Worlds, All Asian, and off course AUDC. This situation is so different compared to what happen in Indonesia. Indonesian team debate with their own expense, and small support from their campus, yet they are representing their campus in tournament. i do hope that we can all learn from the competition. Not only how to be a better debater in the future and how to make friends with other people from another country, but also how to make debating life and community in Indonesia grow bigger and stronger so that one day, we will be one of the respectable teams in all International tournament. Bravo Indonesian Debaters!!!
(Ardestya Verta Abdurrachman)
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