By Mr Nick Ewbank, Director of Oratory

After the biggest and longest semester of debating at Radford College in the past 12 years, some glory has been achieved.

Radford 1, made up of Emma Siwei Huang, Ankith Atluri, Jackson Thew, Ben Wang and Keren Zhang, defeated the Canberra Grammar School team in the semi-final – a unanimous panel decision of three adjudicators – and progressed to the final.

The grand final was on the topic of whether students should be banned from attending protests. Radford's team won a unanimous (5 adjudicator) panel decision against the Canberra Grammar School team that had knocked Radford 2 out in the semi-final.)

I think Roshan Kewalram (class of 2022) was, quite rightly, a very proud coach.

Emma Siwei Huang was named the Speaker of the Final (another unanimous panel decision), and in terms of the overall competition, Emma ranked as 2^nd best speaker, and Ben Wang and Jackson Thew were ranked equal in the 6^th position.

In the Junior (7/8) Competition, Radford 5 (Alice Adams, Ishi Gopu, Cecilia Parmeter and Sanvi Yellamarthy) as well as the Intermediate (9/10), Radford 2 (Methmal Gunaratne, Manoj Gutta, Kavin Panagoda, Sivakaruni Sivacharan and Alex Wang) bowed out at the semi-final stage that also took place last week.

Thank you to Ms Megan Reed and Mrs Maddie Keogh for their work as coaches, and to Mr Jack Davis, Miss Emily Condron, Roshan Kewalram and Terry Yang (class of 2023) for their coaching.