Depok-Three Universitas Indonesia (UI) students, Mohamad Rasyid Alkautsar, a Vocational Education Program student, and Vio Nanda Ardiansyah and Nabila Zahra Harmon, both from the Faculty of Cultural Sciences (FIB) UI, managed to win first place in the political debate competition held by the Universitas Negeri Semarang (UNNES). They succeeded in eliminating the team from the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) Surabaya and eliminating other participants from 36 campuses in Indonesia.
The Director of the UI Vocational Education Program, Padang Wicaksono, S.E., Ph.D, expressed his appreciation for the achievements achieved by Rasyid and his team. According to him, every student at UI is always given the best learning, both soft skills and hard skills. Padang said, “The ability to think critically and creatively is the main weapon in political debate competitions. Apart from that, the power of public speaking and decision making are also abilities that every student must have. So, students can continue to train themselves and apply the various insights and competencies they have to contribute to society through various competitions and other positive activities.”
Rasyid stated that debate competitions have the stigma of being participated in by certain majors. He proved that vocational students can also debates, especially political debates. “We are very grateful for this victory and want to continue to bring UI’s big name to various debate competitions and other competitions,” said Rasyid when announcement the winners on June 4, 2024.
(Photo: Final atmosphere of political debate attended by Universitas Indonesia students)
In the final round, the UI student team debated a motion regarding the council which agreed that the position of village head with a term of nine years would bring closer the practice of corruption, collusion and nepotism and weak democratization. The system that Rasyid and his team presented at the debate had a structure that they called a Nazi-style Blitzkrieg. This system is carried out by arranging a mechanism to attack the opponent repeatedly through speaker 1 to speaker 3 which makes the enemy overwhelmed.
Thanks to their strong strategy, they managed to reach the pinnacle of victory in the debate competition. Rasyid, who is a Creative Business student, UI Vocational, said that debating ability is a skill that is really needed to help in negotiating, pitching, leading, organizing, public speaking, being critical, and making wise decisions when running a business or in the professional world when graduating.
“I hope that many other UI Vocational students will have the courage to show off their abilities in various national and international competitions so that the experience we have can be applied when we enter the industrial world later,” said Rasyid.
