Lewis and SBA Compete For First Place in Final Interregnum Debate

After a fiery series of debates, the houses of Anthony, Bonhoeffer, Churchill, and Lewis rose as the final four competitors in the 2011 Interregnum debates; only Lewis and SBA went on to the last round. As the final and most heavily weighted competition of Interregnum, the final debate attracted enough students and faculty to fill the City Room and four overflow classrooms, where the debates were live-streamed online.

The debate topic was the legalization of universal health care, with Lewis in the position of government and SBA in the position of opposition. Both Lewis and SBA were pleased with their performances in the final round.

Greg DuBois (’13) contends that he and his debate partner, Josiah Peterson (’13), did well.

“As we were prepping, all that was going through my head was ‘how are we going to defend socialism in front of a conservative school?’” DuBois said. “But once we came up with our model, it was not difficult to come up with valid points.”

Although confident of making it to the semifinals, DuBois and Peterson admitted that they were up against tough competition.

“We kept a very consistent teamline, but SBA also had a fairly consistent teamline,” DuBois said.

“I did like their analysis about the government taking over choices, which should be mainly made individually without the government’s hand in those choices.”

According to Hannah Herman (’13), SBA was not surprised to be up against Lewis in the final debate. However, she and partner Kristin Rudolph (’11) said they were pleasantly surprised to have made it to the final round.

“Although we were confident of making it to semifinals, along with Lewis, Bonhoeffer, and Churchill, we never predicted that SBA would make it to finals,” Herman said, laughing.

Regardless of the outcome, Josiah Peterson said to give credit where credit is due.

“It’s a great credit to the Society that the final four debaters were involved with debate at King’s,” contended Peterson. “I blame any victory today on the King’s Debate Society.”

Later Thursday evening, Lewis was declared the victor of this final round.