You will submit a 500-word essay reviewing the essential arguments of the debate and reflecting on your impressions of how the debate went. You should provide information about specific moments from the debate to support your impressions. This assignment must be written in third-person, omniscient narrator, academic voice. All standard writing conventions apply including using: correct tenses (present when talking about philosophies, past when speaking about people and events from the past); proper grammar; and clear and concise writing in a way that objectively reports the debates. Debate Reviews are due by midnight seven days after the debate.

If you give the assignment a legitimate effort and submit it on time, you will get five (5) out of (10) points.

If you follow all writing conventions including grammar, sentence structure, and avoid any issues that negatively affect readability, you will receive three (2) points.

If you maintain use of the third-person, academic, omniscient narrator voice, you will receive the last two (3) points.

For every twenty-five (25) words short of the required 500, one (1) point will be deducted from your total score. Each day the assignment is late will also result in a one (1) point deduction.

Debate Review #1

The first class debate for THL 325 took place on January 19th, 2017. The debate topic was chosen by the instructor, and one team took the side of arguing that Coke is best. Their opponent argued that Diet Coke was superior to Coke. The debate opened with the Diet Coke team claiming that their product was better than the other team's because it contained "no empty calories." After that opening claim and the health-related retort returned by the Coke team, it was difficult to distinguish any real debate structure giving order to the proceedings.

Because of the format of the debate divided each round into three phases, the two teams of three students each either found themselves with too much time or too little time remaining in each phase. The awkward silences between phases gave the debate an edgy kind of feel with members of both teams showing signs of stress and anxiety.

Perhaps some of the edginess of the debate is owed to the fact that the team arguing for Coke was disrespectful and loud when they addressed their opponents. The format of the debate dictates that there are specific sections of time in which each team either states its points, or when it refutes the opposition's assertions. When a team fails to observe the debate rule of being silent until its turn to speak, that violating team is penalized by essentially forfeiting the round to the opponent. Civil behavior is also an expectation in debates, but the Coke team frequently changed the focus of the debate to one specific opponent. Although it is fair to make personal attacks against one's opponents in debates, personal attacks are usually a sign that teams are running out of valid, topical points to support their views. In the instance of the class's first debate, however, being impolite and aggressive seemed to effectively shut down the other team. As disheartening as it was for the class to see the Diet Coke team be badgered and bullied into submission, the one-sided nature of the debate demonstrated that debates are about more than content and logic: they're also about charisma, quick wit, and assertiveness.

Because each student in the course will participate in a debate if he or she was not one of the six in the first one, the first debate was a good lesson in how to prepare emotionally and intellectually for a specific kind of conflict. It is difficult to imagine that any one of the six debating students had any personal stakes in the debate, but the tone and intensity of the first debate suggests that debating other topics that challenge or at least involve personally-held values could become even more hostile.