Eng Major, VMDC's 9th Best Speaker

By Beauty C. Serino & Amie Rose M. Lacaya

CASS exhibited its proud spirit once more! An overwhelming feat was brought to CASS by Calvin Penaco for being hailed as the 9th best speaker during the 5th Visayas- Mindanao Debate Championship (VMDC) hosted by Brent College, Zamboanga City last July 23-25, 2011.

Penaco, a fourth year AB English student is a member of the MSU-IIT Debate Varsity (MIDV). In that competition MIDV was divided into two teams, namely, team A and team B. Penaco belonged to team B together with his partner, Gil Dulon, a third year BS Chemical Engineering. The top 16 teams that are determined from the elimination rounds will be qualified for the quarter finals. MIDV team B ranked 3rd while MIDV team A ranked 11th out of the top 16 teams.

In the quarter finals there is another round of debate for the top 16teams. There are four teams in a round. Teams are then ranked from 1st to 4th but only the 1st and 2nd placers will be qualified for the second finals. Team A and Team B of MIDV competed with each other in this round. Team B ranked 1st and Team A ranked 3rd, thus Team A failed to proceed to the second finals. Team B, which is the Team of Penaco and Dulon, was able to join the second finals but did not manage to qualify for the finals round. Despite this, Penaco was still given the privilege to participate in the master's round. This is a round which is for entertainment purposes only and is conducted before the final round starts. In the master's round, the motion of the house is to jail heart breakers. 

The basis for the declaration of the Top Ten Best Speakers of the competition is their performance during the elimination rounds which took two days. The motions are not exclusively from issues regarding Mindanao and Visayas but also encompass issues regarding international communities like US, China, Taiwan.

“It was surprising for me, because I wasn't feeling confident at that time. We did not really practice thoroughly,” he said.

Penaco stated that the factors that contributed much to his victory are their learning from coaches. Recently they are introduced to a new type of debate which is commonly used in debate competitions. They are oriented by Ateneo de Manila University debaters. In the past years MIDV is using a type of debate which is incompatible thus they do not get the high ranks. Penaco's piece of advice for aspiring debaters is “the key to success is practice. Debaters don't succeed by having the talent alone- this can be enhanced or improved by practice. If you have the necessary information, you must be able to analyze and defend certain stands. In terms of being able to be the 9th Best Speaker, one should just be able to improve on your ability on analyzing certain issues, also, fluency of the English language is a very important factor.”

The Department of English's faculty and one of MIDV's coach and adviser, Ms. Fatimah Joy Almarez, was also declared as the Top 3 best adjudicator of the tournament. Penaco described her to be very knowledgeable of the styles of other adjudicators. She also served as one of the panel of judges for the final round of VMDC.

Thirty-six teams from different schools, colleges and universities participated and competed in the debate competition. The Visayas-Mindanao Debate Championship is a no constitutional debate. Anybody can participate and he/she is not necessarily enrolled in an institution.

MIDV is regularly preparing for upcoming debates.