Janine Anne Mamuad (L) and Janine Nicole Orcena (R), the Accountancy Department’s representatives for the Extemporaneous Dialogue Championships. Photo by Camaela Mijares.

Debaters from the School of Education (SOE) and speakers from the Accountancy Department reigned in this year’s Ignatian Debate and Extemporaneous Dialogue Championships held at the Roxas Grounds at 1 p.m. today.

The event, spearheaded by the Ateneo Debate Varsity, was divided into 4 sessions, namely, eliminations, quarter finals, semi-finals, and the championships.

For the Ignatian Debate, representatives from every participating department were composed of 2 groups with 3 members each. Earlier this afternoon, the SoE Team B debaters faced the Accountancy Team A representatives in the championship with the motion, “This house believes that the Military should be allowed to use propaganda in schools.”

The debaters were adjudicated by Trisha Dulanas, Edzrafel Samama, Ria Lumapas, Rico Blando, and Chief Adjudicator Emiko Escovilla. In the end, SoE Team B, composed of Reil Benedict Obinque, Jim Ersan Ferraren, and Joshua Tanola, were crowned as winners.

“[I am] very overwhelmed. [I] didn’t expect that we will win the competition,”said Ferraren, 1st year student, when asked how he felt after winning.

The extemporaneous championship, on the other hand, had 4 sets of duos who qualified for the finals. Teams from the Business and Management Division, Social Sciences Cluster, Accountancy Department, and the School of Engineering and Architecture qualified for the said round. They were judged by Kimberly Fabular, Vanessa Kate Madrazo, and Gilson Po.

The representatives of the Accountancy Department – Janine Anne Mamuad and Janine Nicole Orcena – bagged first place.

They were given the motion, “This house believes that schools should stop teaching Filipino literary works to give way for the contemporary modern literature.”

“Ang main point namin ay both old Filipino literature works and modern literature can coexist together, and then there’s no need to scrap or to stop teaching the conventional or the old literature,” Mamuad said. “At the very end of the day, those Filipino literary works are our identity as a people, as Filipino people. It is part of our history as well,” Orcena added.