On November 22nd, 2025, Michael Power – St. Joseph High School hosted twelve schools for a pro/con debate tournament with the resolution: “patriotism causes more benefits than harms.” Our school took 12 participants.
North Park’s Debate Society tirelessly polished their arguments in the weeks leading up to the competition, hoping to find success at this one-off tournament.
Our school brought three judges: Mr. Luchak, Ms. Khan, and one of the debate presidents, Aswati Cheruvalath. When asked about her experience judging, Cheruvalath said, “I judged the novice debaters, so they weren’t that good, but I can see that they could understand the resolution, but just need to practice to get better.” She then commented on the style of the debate, adding, “I’m personally not the biggest fan of cross-examination. I prefer the Canadian Parliament the most (CP).”
Mr. Luchak, the head debate teacher, was also interviewed. When asked about the selection process, he replied, “We had an in-school tournament. Those students who had the highest scores were allowed to attend. Also, debate partner preference was an important part of the decision-making process.” He also discussed how the group did overall: “For most of the students, this was their first debate tournament, so they did quite well overall.” He said, “There were no winners, but a couple of students distinguished themselves by placing 13 out of 44 and 16 out of 40.”
Some debaters were disappointed with the time constraints of the tournament. The tournament was supposed to have three rounds. The first two were prepared debates for the resolution “patriotism produces more benefits than harms,” and the third was an impromptu debate. The first two debates took an hour each to complete, with our debate teams presenting both the opposition and the propositions’ sides very well. Unfortunately, the third round, the impromptu debate, was skipped. A few students at the event said, “They should have held the impromptu debate instead of another round of preparation.” Despite the shift in schedule, our debaters placed very well.
Overall, the students did very well, adapting to the changes in the timeline, debating spectacularly, and representing our school very well. The competition was largely considered a success.
THE NORTH STAR 