Day Ten - Ithaca College debate

We continued our theme for the weekend of (watching) sport by attending Scott’s (the coach of the Ithaca College Forensics Team) son’s football (soccer) game. Football at the younger level is organised by the local government and is a great way of getting kids involved in sport at an early age. Afterwards we went to a great Mexican restaurant with Scott’s family and began to psyche ourselves up for the debate in the evening.

Britain v Ithaca College: Thbt Tony Blair is a war criminal

This was a fun debate to take part which was mainly due to the cross examination element imported from policy debating which really enhanced the quality of debate. The affirmative, Ithaca College outlined why they believed That Blair was guilty of the crime of aggression was the war was not an authorised conflict. Furthermore they argued that Blair knew that war crimes would be committed during the course of the war so he bore responsibility for what happened during the war. We ran that earlier resolutions along with 1441 provided the war with some legality but in general the spirit of the laws of war crimes had not been broken and that there was no malign intent on behalf of Blair. There was a good, diverse crowd in the audience and some of the ponts made during the floor debate were really good. There was no announced winner as this was mainly a show debate to attract new members but it was a thoroughly enjoyable debate and we were lucky enough to be treated one of my favourite deserts – a banana split. (Lizzie Bauer, Jo Box, Alex Just, Samir Deger Sen and Lewis Turner will get the reference)

The realisation soon hit us that we would be leaving the students here at Ithaca College. They hosts here were incredible we felt sad that we would have to leave in the morning.