Depok, June 14th 2023. Two Universitas Indonesia (UI) students, Justin Gabriel Wibisono and Hezron Kowardi, won the title of Overall Best Speaker and 2nd Best Speaker at the 2023 National University Debating Championship (NUDC) held at the Auditorium of the Untirta Sindangsari Campus, Serang Regency. The activity, which took place on June 6th-11th 2023, was attended by 112 teams from various tertiary institutions in 16 regions of the Higher Education Service Institutes (LLDIKTI). Thanks to their amazing performance during the preliminary rounds, the two of them also won the Roderick Sibarani Award. This title was given for the success of both collecting VPs (Victory Points), which was 25 of 27 winning points, and the highest Speaker Score.
NUDC is a national-scale inter-university English debate competition participated by more than 500 educational institutions throughout Indonesia. All of these teams will take part in the regional selection and the top ranked team will have the opportunity to enter the National NUDC. This competition is held annually by the National Achievement Center and the Indonesian Talent Development Center using a parliamentary debate format. This activity not only requires students to be able to express ideas in English, but also to be able to master global knowledge, analyze, make judgments, and convince the public.
There are two competition categories that are competed in this event, namely the open category and the novice category. The open category is a competition category that all participants compete in, while the novice category is intended for novice speakers, namely debaters who have never advanced to the elimination round in a national or international level competition.
Justin, winner of Overall Best Speaker, revealed his preparation for participating in the competition. “What I do, among other things, is read news on developments in the world and watch and explore the contents of international debate videos available on Youtube. Usually, I can spend five to six hours a day understanding how international-level debaters argue and study them,” said Justin, who is a student at the Faculty of Law (FH) UI.
He also made intensive preparations with trainers and coaches of the UI English Debating Society (EDS), namely Revaldi Nathanael Wirabuana, Gabriel Charlotte Wajong, Agnes Patricia, Rizky Ananda, and Raynathan Christopher.
The overall best speaker award is Justin’s second victory after he previously won it at NUDC 2022. Apart from the preparations previously described, Justin conveyed that major expertise is needed to read the course of a debate.
“In my opinion, what is very important is the skill to adapt and to say the right things at the right time. Debates can be very dynamic competitions, so knowing how to influence debates for your own benefit is the foundation for having good individual performance,” said Justin.
Meanwhile, Hezron, who also won 2nd Best Speaker, has carried out the preparation process individually by watching debate videos from national and international debaters to practice how to argue, reading speech content verbatim to practice his pronunciation, and reading news to master the motions that are matter-centric .
“Being the 2nd Best Speaker at NUDC 2023 does not only come from my skills as an individual, but also my and Justin’s expertise in fixing motions and taking various necessary steps in winning a debate round, such as framing, layering arguments, and making clear set-ups to secure victory in each of these rounds,” said Hezron who is a student at the Faculty of Psychology (FPsi) UI.
From this victory that has been achieved, Justin and Hezron hoped that this championship could motivate the UI delegation in the following year to perform better in order to win the title and continue to make UI proud. For this success, both of them are preparing for the 2024 World University Debating Championship (WUDC) which will be held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, at the end of this year.
In addition, the title of Roderick Sibarani Award that Justin and Hezron managed to bring home is expected to continue to carry and reflect the spirit and commitment of Roderick Sibarani in expanding and contributing not only to the parliamentary debate circles, but to society at large. “We are proud and happy because the trophy for Roderick Sibarani, a senior at UI who we all really respect, is back in the hands of Roderick Sibarani’s home institution,” said Justin.
