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Tertiary Level Schools Up For Debate
Fri, February 12, 2016
The Social Security debate series travelled to Saint John's Juniour College today. The regional debate competition is going all across the country - and today it featured the UWI Open Campus students against the SJC Sixth Formers. They debated the subject of whether "birthright citizenship" in the US should be abandoned. Social Security's Communications Officer told us more:...

Gayle Ozaeta, Communications Officer, SSB
"The debate is a part of our social and cooperate responsibility and this debate came about as a result of engaging our communities which is a part of our transformation plan and we thought of using this sector of society who are young and we want to cultivate brighter minds and make an informed Belize."

Martha Mejia, Speakers
"The debate topic was about birthright citizenship. The topic was be it resolve that birthright citizenship be abolished in the United States of America. So you could either agree or disagree with that. They don't tell us what topic you get to choose. You find out in the mornings. So we got the negative stands - that it should not be abolished. We researched a lot and just yesterday we were in the chapel, we were rebutting the rebuttals - we try to find every single hole in every single argument. It was a lot of work. But I love my team and I believe we worked hard. It's very important, because it gives awareness to everyone and before probably people dent think about things like these, but they do affect society and they do affect Belize. They do affect other countries and to actually participate in a debate to find out different stances that someone can take on a topic - it's great."

Michael Zuniga, UWI Open Campus
"We made it clear that civil rights of course was where the abolishment of slavery occurred and this is what lead to the 14th amendment which claimed that a naturalized or a person born in the United States of America can become a US citizen. What happen is that our point was that we will not look at it in retrospective. Which means of course that we would like for the law to evolve such as the society evolves. The UWI team definitely looks forward to winning a debate. We will win and this is our team and this is a practice. We did not come up successful on this one, but losing is a part of winning."

SJC Juniour college is the defending national champion.

Next week on the 17th of February the debate series travels to Sacred Heart college where the University of Belize will debate John Paul the second Juniour college.

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