Page from the Past 1 - Inter-Varsity Debates '86

This is a Page from the Past ; In 1986, I was the 1st speaker
in the (then) Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI) Debating team which
reached the finals of the Inter-Varsity Debates.Along the way we beat,
the National Institute of Education (NIE) team (quarter-finals) and
the National University of Singapore (NUS) Team 1 in the semis.
We took on the NUS Team 2 in the Finals (televised on TCS Channel 12)
in front of 200 supporters in the studio and the camera crew.

We won everything EXCEPT the overall team title ;
Best Speaker of Series : Jaspal Singh, Best Speaker of Evening : Philip Lim.
It was a feat in those days as the NTI then was not yet a full fledged
university and had only the Engineering faculty (our degrees were conferred by NUS) and NTI was only 4 years old then.

The NUS teams had law undergraduates in their teams and eloquent speakers from a cohort of over 14,000.We on the other hand had less than 2,000 undergraduates and only from the Engineering faculty.I am glad I had a small hand in putting NTI then "on the map" of Singapore's education landscape.

Our team : Me (1st),Richard Pereria (2nd),Philip Lim (4th),Sukhdeep(Res)and Jaspal Singh(3rd).