The University of Indonesia team, represented by three students from various study programs at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, UI, namely Eduardus Erlangga (Actuarial Science 2017), Brenda Mutiara (Mathematics 2017), and Elvina Vania (Statistics 2017), won the 1st place in the Indonesian Language Debate Competition in the 2019 UPI FIP PGSD National Debate Competition.
The competition, which carried the theme "Quo vadis agent of change and agent of conversation for millennial students," was held by the Indonesian University of Education (UPI) from November 29 to December 1, 2019 at UPI, Bandung, West Java.
Eduardus, as the team leader, explained the stages of the competition that he and his team had to face.
As a first step, the three were required to write an essay. In the essay, titled "Students as Agents of Environmental Change," Eduard and his team outlined a creative and objective idea based on a predetermined theme, grounded in logical arguments and supported by data from reliable sources.
"So, for this essay, we have to outline an argument with an issue that fits the theme. It has to be creative and objective as well," said Eduard.
He also explained the idea in the essay, namely about the role of students as agents of positive change in all fields, including education, social, economic, cultural, and so on, to support the government's program to create superior human resources.
In addition, Eduard continued, his team emphasized that students must position themselves as Agents of Conversation, meaning that students must be able to liaise with the aspirations of the wider community to the government through studies as recommendations for public policy products made by the government, so that these public policies are able to resolve problems that exist in society.
In this essay stage, the team competes with 30 other teams to win the position of the 8 best teams and have the right to advance to the next stage, namely the preliminary round.
In the preliminary round, the three of them managed to defeat the Padjadjaran University (UNPAD) team. Their victory over UNPAD brought the UI team to the semifinals to face the Gadjah Mada University (UGM) team.
The UI team's victory after defeating the UGM team in the semifinals brought them to face the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) in the final. UI emerged as the champion, defeating IPB in the deciding round.
Brenda, one of the team members, revealed that their preparation for the preliminary round was actually quite short, as required in the competition that each team debate 1 topic according to the motion (debate theme) in each match, using formal, good, polite and clear Indonesian.
Brenda said that they only had time to prepare the motion they received from the committee on Monday (25/11), on Wednesday (27/11), which means they were only able to prepare the motion within 2 days before entering the preliminary round which was held on Friday (29/11).
"We received the motions for the preliminary round on Monday, there were six motions. The preliminary round was on Friday, and we only started preparing for it Wednesday night, and even then... No "Done." Brenda said.
Despite this, the UI team remained optimistic and enthusiastic. All three expressed pride and disbelief at winning the debate competition.
Another team member, Vania, hopes that her and her team's achievements will increase the enthusiasm and engagement of fellow students in participating in debate competitions. She noted that currently, student enthusiasm for debate competitions remains relatively low.
"I really hope that other fellow students will also actively participate in debate competitions, because I think enthusiasm and interest in debate competitions in Indonesia are still rare," said Vania.
