University of Helsinki Debating Society hasn’t been particularly active in debating competitions this past year. However, we are trying to revive that and the first step has been taken – we went to SSE Riga IV this December. The results have been quite pleasing: one of our teams (Ami Ganguli and Tianyan Liu) made it to the semi-finals. Ami was ranked 7th speaker and the rest of our debaters were ranked in top 20 out of 80+ participants. Note, that this was the first competition ever for Tianyan and he’s started debating only this autumn. We are oh-so-very proud!

Our second team (Anna Bessonova and Julia Toivanen) missed the break by just a couple of speaker points (i.e. 8 teams went through to semi-finals and Anna and Julia were the 9th team). The tab and motions of the tournament can be found here http://www.sserigads.com/tabbie/standing.php. (Our team names were Helsinki Finska and Helsinki Svenska)

You can also find photos from the tournament here http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=photos&gid=320493885640 or in the photo gallery of this page.

We hope to continue going to international tournaments and encourage you to join us! Ask any of us if you want to learn more.