The Victoria University Debating Society have successfully defended their Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championship title in South Korea this month, with Vic 1 (Seb Templeton, Richard D’Ath and Udayan Mukherjee) beating the National University of Singapore in the final. Vic 1 entered the final as favourites having already defeated the first-ranked Monash team in the semi-finals.
Mukherjee also won the Jock Fanslow Cup for the best speaker of the final, and was winner of the tournament for a second consecutive year, a remarkable achievement. Templeton was named the third best speaker of the preliminary rounds, while D’Ath and Mukherjee both narrowly missed out on top 10 spots.
Vic 2 and Vic 3 also performed commendably, with Vic 2 (Asher Emanuel, Paul Smith and Holly Jenkins) making the knock-out rounds before losing to Monash, and Vic 3 (Liv Hall, Alex Sinclair and Cameron Price) placing 30th out of 114 teams. Daniel Wilson also ably represented Victoria as an adjudicator, judging the ESL Final.
Over the past five years, Victoria Debating Society has reached the grand final four times, a record unmatched by any other University.