Feature

Star Campus-Drishty School of Debate Convocation 2009 Logic for Light

Masudur Rahman

ANOTHER milestone reached. Drishty Chittagong wears a new feather on its crown.

The convocation dinner of “Star Campus-Drishty School of Debate: batch 05” was held on February 23rd, 2009, at Pitstop, Lalkhan Bazar in Chittagong. The chief guest of the ceremony was Abul Momen, advisor, The Daily Star. Principal of Fulki Shila Momen, Cambridge Inter-Varsity Adjudicator Prashanata B Barua, Drishty Advisor Safia Gazi Rahman, Drishty President Masud Bakul, Vice-President Kashshaful Haque Shehjad, and General Secretary Saif Chowdhury were also the guests at the event. Drishty Chittagong has been working tirelessly in the debating arena of Chittagong since it started its journey in 1992. Besides the annual Bengali and English inter-school, inter-club and inter-varsity debate competitions, Drishty has been organizing debate workshops at regular intervals. Drishty realizes that the young debaters must be cared and nourished if some really good debaters are to be expected in the future. With this view, Drishty initiated a School of Debate few years back to nurture young and smart minds. As a continuation of this endeavor, Drishty came up with the 5th batch of this course, which, unlike the previous batches, was exclusively booked for English Medium students only.

The course had 50 participants from 10 top English medium schools in the port city. The training and grooming session concluded on 20th of this month with a league debate tournament where the participants formed teams and took part. The course instructors were Prashanta B Barua, Mabroor Wassey, Rezwan Chowdhury, Reazul Hasan, Raihan Rumman, Ipshit Tarafdar, Tahsin, Manik Mahboob, Afsana Rahman, Masudur Rahman, Abdus Samad Himel, Tanvir Hafiz, Morshed Hassib Hasan, Rishad Sharif, Hredoy and Mohammed Yearid, renowned debaters from both Dhaka and Chittagong. Some of the School of Debate participants took part in television debate in January of this year, and some others qualified up to the semi-final round this month in the debate competition organized by North South University, Dhaka. At the end of the course, twenty-eight of the participants were given certificates on having successfully completed the course on the 22nd of this month. Four of them also received Excellence awards. Himel Chowdhury (Cider International School), Intifar Sadiq Chowdhury (Chittagong Grammar School), Karishma Fatiha (Cantonment English School) and Shams Jabber (William Carey Academy) won the excellence awards. Zeu Biswas, Eshan Newaz, Jannatun Nayeem Mukta, Fairooj Maisha Ahnaf, Tasnim Siddiqua, Nanziba Basnin, Labiba Zahin, H M Adnan Zami, Ahmed Alvee, Md Imran Shahriar, Israt Tarannum Iram, Chowdhury Junayed Hasnayeen, Sartaz Zahir, Fahimul Alam, Sadman Hoque, Sanan Ahmed Chowdhury, David Kim, Rashik Farhan Rashid, Gazi Sareem Bakhtyar Alam, Kazi Shams Ahmed, Sidra Enayet Ahmed, Samiha Sahel, Md. Takhat Mansoor and Md. Mahmudur Rahman were the other twenty-four to have successfully completed the course. On the convocation evening, participants took part in an Asian Parliamentary debate and in a public speaking event. Then a grand dinner was held with all the guests, participants and their guardians.

The course coordinator was Adnan Mannan, and the acting coordinator was Masudur Rahman.

(Writer is a debater and member, Drishty Chittagong.)