CCAT Debate

At the April 2007 Gourmet meeting Jerry Aiyathurai was topicmaster and decided to have us do a debate. It was both a lot of fun and very educational. It combined all the skills of debating (opening, rebutting, concluding) and preparing a table topic (we split into teams and had to prepare as a group in just a few minutes, including deciding on order.

The Great CCAT Debate

(Table Topics)

Purpose

To practice impromptu speaking, team speaking, and leadership/team building behaviors

The Topic

Resolved: Spring is the best time of year in Hartford. One team will speak in favor of the resolution. The other team will speak against it.

The Rules

• Select a leader, decide your speaking order.
• Brainstorm. Attempt to break the topic into lines of thinking and divide up the work.
  • If you don't get that far, don't sweat it. Wing it. This is tabletopics.
• We will determine which team will speak for the resolution, by a coin toss after the teams have prepared themselves.
• You can make substantive arguments and rebuttal arguments
  • In general early speakers will offer substantive arguments while later speakers will offer rebuttals to the opponent's arguments. However the last speaker frequently has the job of tying together the team's position and may summarize the substantive arguments as well as rebut.
• We may have slightly different timing guidelines from a regular table topics session.
• When we are finished, each team will vote for the best speaker from the opposing team. They will consider the manner, matter and method of speaking:
  • Manner - sincerity, humor, etc
  • Matter - the weight of the arguments presented
  • Method - How well were the ideas organized?
• Each team will vote for the MVP from their team.
• Have fun.

A few comments

Speaking Order

This is always confusing. The PRO side (arguing in favor of the resolution) goes first and last which means that the CON side has two of its members speak one after the other.

• PRO (opening in favor)
• CON (opening opposed)
• PRO (support in favor
• CON (supporting material opposed)
• PRO (Rebuttal)
• CON (Rebuttal)
• CON (AGAIN!) conclusion
• PRO conclusion

• PRO 1
• CON 1
• PRO 2
• CON 2
• PRO 3
• CON 3
• CON 4 (AGAIN!) forth person on CON team
• CON 5(and AGAIN!!)
• PRO 4

Since Con has an extra person there are actually 3 Con speakers in succession. If The extra person had been on the PRO side then it would have strictly alternated; but we picked sides by coin flip (and we did it after we had selected teams AND brain stormed to prepare).