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History of the Society

The UHDS was founded by a trio of outspoken girls in late 2001. Julia Ojanen (now a student at the College of Europe, Brygge, Belgium) visited a debating tournament in Oxford in the fall of 2001, where the flaming speeches of the participants made her realise what was missing from the UH campus. Amidst all the clubs and groups what was missing was a challenging and provocative debating society. As the story goes, if something is missing, we go and get it, and already in the early 2002 the UHDS started its fortnightly debates under the umbrella of the Student Union of the University of Helsinki.

For two years now the Debating Society has been organising debates, workshops and tournaments for new and old debaters from all the campuses in the capital area. The teams from the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Technology have taken part in our events sometimes sweeping the victory from under our feet with their excellent skills of persuasion (beware of sales people and managers who graduate from there) , but all of the schools continue to work together in the debating society to improve our speaking abilities, be it for an academic debate at the University, for a panel in a political discussion, for a Boston Consulting Group Masters or a moot competition.

During these two years we have organised a number of workshops led by both our experienced debaters and trainers from abroad (Erasmus Debating Society, Rotterdam, Holland). The topics of the workshops ranged from exercises aimed at helping to get rid of the fear of speaking in public to structuring your speech effectively to thinking quickly on your feet. These are skills that no one has so far regretted possessing. Our debaters have also competed successfully in the Baltic Debating Tournaments in the spring and summer 2003. In the Helsinki tournament of November 2003, in which 12 teams from Finland, Estonia and Latvia took part, the UHDS carried away both the Best Speaker and the Best Team Awards. There are definitely more tournaments and prizes to come.

Our honourable adjudicators and hosts have included lecturers from the University of Helsinki (Andrew Newby, Riikka Kuusisto, Roderick McConchie, Juhana Aunesluoma), professors (Andrew Chesterman, Richard Stites) and two ambassadors (His Majesty's Ambassador of Great Britain and His Excellency the Ambassador of Ireland) and the MP Arto Satonen.

Achievements of Our Members

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