Feature

Star Campus Drishty School of Debate: Convocation 2010
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 06” was held this January 24 at a restaurant in Chittagong. The session started at 4 in the afternoon, where the chief guest of the ceremony was Jashim Uddin Chowdhury, managing editor for The Daily Purbokone. He expressed his best wishes to all the young debaters present, and said, “we should not debate to foster enmity, but we have to do it for our own development.” Also present as special guests were Drishty Advisor and Principal of Sunshine Grammar School Safia Gazi Rahman, Senior teacher of Green Vale School Shuvra Biswas. Drishty President Masud Bakul, Vice-President Mili Chowdhury and Joint Secretary Adnan Mannan.

Drishty Chittagong has been working 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 given nourished if some real good debaters are to be expected in the future. With this view, Drishty initiated a School of Debate a few years back to entertain the rapidly growing appetite of the young and smart minds. As a continuation to this endeavor, Drishty came up with the 6th batch of this course, which, as like as the 5th one, was booked for English Medium students only.

The course was launched on October 24, 2009, with 50 participants from 10 top English medium schools in the port city. The training and grooming session concluded on 24 of January, 2010 with a few friendly debates where the participants formed teams and took part. The course instructors were Adnan Mannan, Sinha Ibne Humayun, Raihan Rumman, Afsana Rahman, Masudur Rahman, Tanvir Hafiz, Mohammed Yearid, Tafhim-ur Rashid, Arif Khan and Jewel Chowdhury, renowned debaters from both Dhaka and Chittagong. Some of the school of debate participants took part in television debate in January of this year.

At the end of the course, 23 of the participants were certified on having successfully completed the course on the 22nd of this month. Five of them also received awards in recognition to their excellence, whose names include Rumman Amin, Omar Sadab Chowdhury (Presidency International School), Zareen Tasnim Enam (Mastermind International School), Umme Humaira and Adiba Arif (Cantonment English School).

On the convocation evening, participants took part in an Asian Parliamentary debate and in a united nations model debate. Up next, the successfully completing participants were awarded.

The course coordinator was Drishty Joint Secretary Adnan Mannan, and the acting coordinator were Drishty Joint Secretary of Media and Communication Masudur Rahman and Drishty Joint Secretary of Debate Affairs Reza Chowdhury.

(Writer is a debater and Joint Secretary of Media & Communication, Drishty Chittagong.)