After seeing you guys debate on Friday there are a few areas in which we particularly see room for improvement. There were some good debates on Friday – you guys all have potential to be awesome.

Patrick has undoubtedly reminded you about tonight’s social. Come along, it’ll be a laugh.

Please sign up for SOAS or NAMDA Novice If you are a Novice (someone who has never debated at a schools final, or at university level), NAMDA Novice is the place for you If you are not a Novice, you are ineligible (unsurprisingly perhaps) for NAMDA Novice, so you should come to the SOAS IV this week. Please talk to us if you are interested. You must be a member of the society to go.

Debates aren’t necessarily about ‘having 3 points.’ They are more about a specific issue which needs to be resolved in order to pass/not pass the motion The best thing to do in prep time is not to ‘think of as many points as possible’ ; rather it is to think: ‘what is this debate about?’ - 1 st half ‘what is it going to be about?’ - 2 nd half ‘how is what we say going to win it for our side?’

Sometimes the issue is in a principle behind a motion, e.g. Are people being exploited or do they have a right to choose? Sometimes it is more general: e.g. Will this policy help or hinder gay rights movements? These often need various different reasons to justify one side or another. Sometimes it is not a question, but a balance. E.g. Prop win the debate with a BIG HARM, and Opp on various principles and little harms.

Try to think as much justification on the ‘winning issue’ as you can. Use lots of time on winning it. If e.g. 1 st Prop give 2 reasons why the issue is true and a few meaningless points, and 2 nd Prop give another 4 why the issue is true nd Prop will probably win. Let’s quickly look at last session – ‘THW Make Failure to Render Reasonable Assistance to a Person in Distress a Criminal Offence’

A debate on duties to rescue is inevitably on ‘acts of omission’ – and whether or not they exist. Two scenarios – A man drowns a baby, and A man sees a baby drowning and doesn’t save it. In both scenarios, the outcome is the baby living or dying, and in both scenarios the man has to choose if he intends for the baby to live or die. With this example, Prop can place a Burden on the Opp to prove that failing to rescue someone is somehow morally defensible, rather than equivalent to murder.

Some analogies can be more ‘analogous’ than others Last session, ‘Germans allowing Hitler to take power’ was used as an example to show why it is wrong to stand by and do nothing. (Sorry to the person who made this analogy) – here are a few reasons why it’s a bad analogy – and why in general don’t use him as an analogy. Ever.

Most importantly, overthrowing Hitler would probably not count as ‘reasonable assistance’ It leads to an equally disanalogous counter – clearly the German population shouldn’t be blamed, Hitler should. Hence an ‘omitter’ shouldn’t take blame for allowing a harm to take place which they didn’t cause. It fails to look from an individual’s moral perspective. It ignores the fact that the Germans didn’t have all the information available about the consequences. The argument ‘Because Hitler did something, it’s bad’ may sound rhetorically good, but is often logically inconsistent, and more often offensive. It’s a no-go.

For Prop, the drowning baby has been mentioned For Opp, the principle that you should be obligated to inconvenience yourself slightly to save another implies that a billionaire should be obligated to give millions of pounds to charity each year – and should be punished by law on failure of doing so. Prop can either concede this analogy (and forcibly make billionaires charitable), or find where it’s flawed.

Rebuttal is not for saying that the other side is wrong just because they are wrong. E.g. If a Proposition speaker said that Glasgow was the capital of Scotland, Opposition shouldn’t rebut it unless it is directly relevant (unlikely) to the debate. Rebuttal should be used for engaging with arguments from the other side that you don’t deal with during your substantive material. Spending too much time on quibbles means less time spent winning the debate.

Think about the issue that wins it for your side Use analogies that work. Don’t, under any circumstances, mention the war. (Any Fawlty Towers fans should get this) Rebut concisely, and only what you need to in order to win.