Thursday, June 28, 2007

Wouldn't you agree that voting Affirmative is the only logical conclusion?

Now that you put it that way, I concede.

If cross examination was this easy, we wouldn't have started the day in the KLO lab with a fantastic lecture by Beena, along with her lovely assistant Jennifer, that covered effective Cross-X strategy. We learned to trap our opponents with yes or no questions, always keep eye contact with the audience, and five maneuvers guaranteed to help you escape the overaggressive debater who is gesturing far to close to your head. After learning the techniques, we played a riveting game of try to trap Beena. Though the drill was only supposed to last for a minute, some of the participants were unwilling to admit defeat. Marshall tricked Beena into at least three different cross examination sessions, and Hailey kept firing questions for four minutes.
After a well deserved break for reading groups and lunch, we went to the library to work on the one thing that every good CXer needs: a case. The assignment from yesterday was for everyone to come to the library with an outline for a case on both sides of the resolution. Under the careful guidance of Beena, Shane, and Jennifer one of those outlines became a full fledged case. Everyone had some great ideas. Sammy and Karl chose to start on the affirmative side and argue that the U.S. government should respect the humanity of workers in other countries as much as it does its own citizens. Eric countered with an argument from John Locke's social contract which states that a government is obligated first and foremost to those that sacrifice their property for the government to exist.
After all the time it took to write the rough draft and get it edited, the lab time before and after dinner was completely used up. Hopefully, everyone will come back tomorrow ready to tackle the other side of the resolution.


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