Challenging ideas

On Thursday, St. Clare's hosted Cherwell School in a friendly debate. The motion, “This house believes that animals have no rights,” was ingeniously proposed by Juan Manuel Correa Caicedo who devised a cunningly narrow definition and used his customary grasp of deductive logic to set out the parameters of the debate. Mariana Baguenier, with assured and persuasive eloquence, built on Juan's points showing how our control of animals' lives defined their roles as non-sentient beings. In the second half of the debate, Haakon Fougner returned to first principles asking where rights originated and questioning the practical implications of allowing creatures whom we consumed to be said to have rights. The final speaker was Casper Herlofsen who summarised the whole debate with passionate partiality. The evening was very effectively chaired by Rufus Lunn and fierce discussion continued even after the judges had retired to their deliberations.

The quality of debate was excellent and all was conducted with good humour and politeness. The judges had a difficult job but were finally swayed by a masterly summing up by the final Cherwell speaker, a certain Dan Hameiri, who narrowly won it for the visiting team.

December