Nuclear energy was the topic of debate on Thursday night when Members of the DePauw Debate team faced the National Japanese Debate team in the Watson Forum.
The Japanese debate team was debating for the affirmative side arguing that the use of nuclear energy should be avoided. Instead, alternative forms of energy should be used from windmills and solar panels. The DePauw Debate team's sophomore Mickey Terlep and senior Ronnie Kennedy took the oppositional side advocating for an increase in the use and effectiveness of nuclear power.
"I thought [the debate] went pretty well," said first-year Sam Caravana. "It was interesting to see the different opinions from different cultures in the debate."
Amane Hirota from Hokkaido University and Naoki Takami from Waseda University debated for the Japanese team. Due to the recent nuclear accident in Japan, the debaters took this issue seriously. Their main points being that nuclear energy can hurt mankind, whereas new safer forms of energy cannot.
Many students who attended the debate were impressed by how well the Japanese debate team verbalized their points, especially with a language barrier.
"[It] blows me out of the water that they are responding off the cuff in their second language," said Geoff Klinger, the faculty advisor for the Debate Society. "I am certain they did a better job debating us than we would have done debating them in Japanese."
In order for the Japanese students to come to DePauw, Klinger had to submit a bid to the Center for International Discussion and Debate (CIDD). The program is very selective and many other universities such as University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology apply to have international debaters visit their institution.
"We put in a bid to be a host campus," Klinger said. "Last semester we hoped to host the Great Britain team, but we unfortunately did not get a bid."
The DePauw Debate team hosted Great Britain in years past.
Approximately 20 students attended the debate, either to support the teams or to learn about the debate topic or about the debating process, such as first-year Simone Deighan.
"We have upcoming debates in Public Speaking class, so it was a good way to see how a debate will go and how to prepare for ours," Deighan said.
As a token of their appreciation, the DePauw debaters gave the Japanese debate team each a DePauw t-shirt at the end of the debate.
"I think it went very well," Terlep said. "It is interesting to see their style differences from American style. There was definitely a language barrier, but they laid out a great argument."