From the 10th to the 15th of November, the Year 12 EIC debate team participated in the "Sir Winston Churchill Young Leaders Public Debating Competition," which involved schools and students from Romania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Spain, France and Denmark.
The students went on a "walking tour" on the 11th of November, learning about the polarised political history and heterogeneous culture of Romania. On Wednesday afternoon, students enjoyed an exciting biking trip throughout the city and parks, exploring the People's Palace (the second largest building in the world and the most conspicuous manifestation of Ceau?escu's cultural and human genocide, although now reclaimed and rebranded by the people), learning about the different styles of imperialist and socialist realist architecture through the turmoil of imperial, fascist and communist regimes.
On the 15th of November, two EIC teams participated in the Sir Winston Churchill Young Leaders Public Debating Competition: EIC Blue (Lola, Lingyi, Luz, and Sonia) and EIC Red (Ines, Krish, Eric, and Kaixin). Both teams succeeded in the first two rounds, while they met in the third round.
After lunch, EIC Blue entered the semi-final, under an intense debate scrutinising "carbon tax"; there was a thrilling win for EIC with only a marginal differential than the Cambridge School of Bucharest. The final was EIC (proposition) versus the host school, the International British School of Bucharest (opposition), with the motion "This house would ban gated communities." The EIC team made logical, mature, and sophisticated points regarding the community as the Oxford Dictionary's definition of "a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common," considering social, political, economic, and military perspectives. Meanwhile, the IBSB team centred their main points on the community being collective households. At the end, after a fierce debate, team EIC finished as runners-up in the competition after a contentious arbitration, with the host being the champion.
Despite the loss, EIC is still the winner in many people's hearts and we will keep fighting in future debates.
Lingyi Kong and Mr Hickman
