This Term
Excuse my lateness with the newsletter (you will appreciate why as you read on!), a big thank you to everyone that took part in our debate on the detainment of Santa Clause which provided a much-needed volume of laughter at the end of term. Its been a fantastic first term for KDS and I would like to thank everyone who has helped make the society a success.
KDS Elections
I can conifrm the unsurprising results of our uncontested election and unveil our new committee:
President: Tom Barker
Vice-President: Vish
Secretary: Ben Bowles
PR Officer: John Moreland
Debate Convenor: Ollie Blackley
Treasurer: Matt Burgess
Congratulations to all of you and I look forward to working with you next term. Unfortunately nobody ran for ‘Social Secretary’ but we will discuss what to do about filling this role when we meet for the first time next term, if you are interested in this role please get in touch.
I’d also like to use this opportunity to thank Harriet Hall (who did a splendid job of running the elections) for her work this term as a member of our provisional committee, I will miss harassing her for room bookings!
KDS Success
I’d also like to use this post to draw attention to some of the success our members have had in debating over the past couple of weeks.
Vish and Harriet competed in the ESU Mace national finals and did reasonably well in their first (and our first) outing in University-level debating. Ben and Harriet then went to the Kings College IV the week after (following our fiercely-competed trials) and also did the society no harm in establishing ourselves on the national circuit, a summary of their positions can be found on our website.
On Thursday KDS members dominated the top positions in the Critical Lawyer’s Group’s hillarious Argukental event. The format was based on the popular tv show ‘Argumental’ where we were given seconds of preparation time to then argue both sides of a point, some of the more serious ones involved Ben having to argue whether or not Anne Widdacombe was a MILF and John arguing about the merits of cross-breeding to create zedonks.
Finally Mark Wild and myself have just finished an intense weekend of mooting (the legal version of debating but less entertaining!). We opened the weekend with the first round of the ESU National Mooting Competition where we advocated a case on contract law in front of a ‘judge’ (a solicitor from a Dover law firm) with 20 minute-speaker times against the University of Sussex. We won both the moot and all the points of law and progress to the next round where we will be mooting against either Portsmouth or Brighton.
Having barely recovered from the adrenaline rush, we then took part in the Kent Crown Prosecution Service Mooting Tournament on the Sunday where we made it to the semi-finals, finishing a narrow 3rd.
Any law students taking part in the University’s mooting calendar this academic year are encouraged to get involved with KDS as it will provide you essential practice in the skills you will need to do well.
Beauty Pageants Debate
Anybody at our Beauty Pageants debate may have been a bit perplexed by the plethora of technology being used. The reason why can be found on the link below, students from Medway did a tremendous job of recording, editing and publishing the debate and we are very grateful for their support. http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/01b6348511
Next Term
Finally, stay tuned for more exciting events taking place next term which will be revealed in due course. I wish you all a fantastic holiday and look forward to seeing you in January.
All the best
