So on the 26th of April 2016, Saturday, I have represented UNIMAS to join the medical debate, namely the UKM Intervarsity Medical Ethics Debate 2016. It was organised by the KTDI Debate Club, UKM in PPUKM Cheras from 8 in the morning to 9 evening. 

First of all, I want to thank the committees of the KTDI Debate Club and the committees of MEDebate that did a great job in executing the competition, with minimal delay, efficient arrangement and the friendly and helpful runners. Felt really welcome to UKM.

However, I myself as an amateur in debate felt that this tournament had its flaws, and had lead me to doubt the quality of the competition itself. I would exactly agree with the term 'prestigious' event, as I felt that there are a whole lot room for improvement.

These are my feedback, and are merely my opinions toward the debate competition. You might agree or disagree, but I feel that certain matters had to be addressed. 

Firstly, I felt that the committee of MEDebate should have control the quality of the adjudicators, as we have found that certain adjudicators were not actually competent enough to adjudicate, and gave very poor feedback. It sounds silly but it felt like some of the adjudicators were actually bias in their judgement, and were unjust. I think that committee of MEDebate should not only arrange for adjudicators from other universities, but also allocate each debate a senior, experienced adjudicator. 

The reasons I said that inexperienced adjudicators do not judge well was because that in our case, there had been a parallel debate. As government, we define the motion, and it was the opposition team to engage with us, debating with us. However, in the last preliminary round, the opposition team came out with their arguments which are totally out of the topic.

This was how it went.

THB in disclosing STD status to patient's partner(s).

Clearly, the principle of this motion was about to disclose or not. It was an argument about Doctor-Patient Confidentiality versus Protection of the Public Health. However, the opposition came out with their very own principle saying that this motion was about reducing the STD patients. We tried to pull back the arguments to the core of this motion, but the opposition was very stubborn in creating their very own motion, making their own debate, and setting their own paradigm. Which is funny because they were not debating with us, but debating with themselves. I might not have much experience in adjudicating debates, but I do know that if a team is consistently out of the topic, it should be the duty of the adjudicators to rectify this problem and set back the track. Even if the adjudicators did not, I cannot see how a team with a wrong principles in hand can actually win, no matter how strong their points were, they were clearly not debating about the given motion. It is as if you change the motion to suit your points, and not coming up with points to suit the motion. 

I am really sorry to say but I found that the entire debate was a joke. More to that it was idiotic that the team that was so out of topic could actually win, and when we the government was trying so hard to bring them back to the real principle of the debate, lost. 

Another issue is the marking of the speakers. I have confidence that I was a much better speaker (although not as good as the pros), but I cannot accept that I actually got lower marks than the speaker who were stopping intermittently, forgot what she was supposed to speak, and got all confused and mumbled. 

From today's debate, I could see that debaters with a loud voice but empty points were actually awarded the top speakers. I thought that was very high-school-ish whereby you emphasise on the art of speaking, rather than the points you speak. So as an amateur, am I supposed to learn from these debaters that speak pointless but with such passion and loud voice, as if we were deaf. Foolish empty loud voices do not make a sound man to nod his head, but only cause headache (and it was really annoying).

Secondly, the requirements of this MEDebate clearly stated that only allied health sciences students were allowed to participate. I mean, it IS A MEDICAL ETHICS DEBATE, so why do we see that there were A-levels participants and law student? I thought we were only going to see allied health science participants like dentistry students, pharmacy students, nursing and medic students. And the most funny thing about MEDebate 2016 finalist was that the two team of debaters consisted of law, medical and A-level participants. How convenient was that that the committee actually allowed this to happen when we tried so hard to gather only medical and health science debaters. If I have known this to happen, we could just called our economics and art student debaters to participate. In that issue, I think that the committee should really do a post-mortem and apologise, otherwise, it would mean that the committee was incompetent in executing rules what they actually set, and were bias to certain participants. Rules are rules, otherwise, what is the point of competing? 

I do must admit that I had enjoyed certain debates, when the adjudicator was fair and gave really good feedbacks, and when both teams engaged in the core of the motion and debated around it. That is the kind of debate that I signed up for, and not some crappy third-class debate that do not give fair judgement to those who uphold the correct principles of debate. 

In all, I appreciate the experience. Though it was unpleasant, I do wish to come back next year. Hopefully, there would be changes and improvement to avoid these kinds of issues. MEDebate could have been so much enjoyable, but the poor quality control of the adjudicators and the rules that were not followed made this debate experience to me utterly disappointed. I know UKM can do better.

UNIMAS did not fly all the way just to experience third class debate competitions.