DEBATE TOURNAMENT- Tie Breaker Results

[USF Sam]

The results for the tie-breaker rounds are in.

We only had 6 voters, but both races had a clear winner.

The winners move on join Retro and Zirc in the semi-finals.

 

[USF Sam]

RED vs HK
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Hi There,

HK vs RedRyder
In this debate my vote goes to RedRyder. While I do not agree with her position, I feel she argued her beliefs well. She gave good, well thought out reasons for her argument.

I'm going to give this round to HK for three different reasons.

1) I felt as though Red was arguing both sides of the issue. She started off saying that it was not okay for schools to give out condoms, but later implied that it would be okay with parental permission.

2) Red's argument that giving condoms out to kids impinged on her rights as a parent to educate her children. This was a strawman argument, because handing out condoms doesn't affect her ability to speak with her children about the issue. The two are not mutually exclusive.

3) Most importantly, HK argued that while giving condoms out might not be beneficial to or have any effect on some kids; the fact that it was available to others may prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies. That argument tipped the scales completely in her favor, and is primarily what got my vote.

I have to go with HK. At the end of the debate, I couldn't see a reason to not give contraception at school.

The crux of this debate seemed to hinge on one point in my view: Red's position was based on and solely defended by her "feelings" about the subject at hand. She personally believes that by distributing birth control, a school is taking a decision away from parents.

HK's point seemed more rooted in factual analysis. Stats do show that more and more school-aged kids are becoming sexually active. And having an option available to them that could prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy would seem to fall within a school's mandate of protecting it's students. Hk's view on this topic was one of practicality and common good as opposed to a moral conviction of what is right or wrong.

Point to HK.

Great debate. I hadn't really developed much of an opinion before this.

I have to give this to HK by a long way. Red's assertion that parent's know their children better than schools as a reason against it is actually completely irrelevant. Parents will project their own worldview onto the child whereas the school will just provide the best solution to the given problem. A parents world view is seriously out of date, whereas a school has to keep up and change as the world around teenagers does. Not to mention the fact that kids do not want to talk this kind of thing over with their parents.

HK won this one with sound reasoning, and a great closing statement:

I don't see any pro to banning schools from giving out condoms - your main argument seems to be that kids will get std's and fall pregnant even when contraception is available, therefore there's no point even trying to begin with. Whereas i prefer to think that although it might not make a difference to every single teen out there, if it means even a minority using protection when they otherwise wouldn't have bothered, i'm for it.

Red v. HK: I felt that HK better argued for one side of the debate and..well..I agree with her.

WINNER: HK
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[USF Sam]

ED vs BUTTERFLY
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Ed v. Butterfly: Ed presented his argument well and I felt that I could better agree with his point.

Hi Sam,

I'd like to vote for Butterfly. I felt her reasoning made more sense than Ed's did, and although he kept attacking her position that abortion was relevant, I think that whether abortion is ending a life or not is subjective and mainly down to opinion, so the analogy should have stood.

My vote is for Ed. He was right about the faulty logic of the drink driving and abortion points, and the possibility that euthanasia may be abused by any person wanting to end their own suffering. His argument seemed to go somewhere but Butterfly's tended to revolve around the same points and same analogies and being circular.
I don't doubt that euthanasia has probably been done so hospitals can have a bed back, and have seen instances of this before in the media.

Not even close. Butterfly asserted her position clearly and cleanly. Ed could only attempt to debunk them using a very-much-disputed personal belief (that life does not occur before birth) and refused to adapt his argument even when it was pointed out that his rebuttals didn't accurately address the original claim. (That we allow life/death decisions for others but not for the individual) Furthermore, I felt Ed attempted to produce reasoning that stretched my limits of plausability. (Allowing euthanasia will slow down medical progress?) I just simply did not believe any of the points he was trying to make, and felt he was almost resorting to a level of aggression out of frustration when he couldn't get his opponent to bend.

Point to Butterfly.

I had to reread each one's views a few times to grasp each one's meaning.

Butterfly did make a valid argument regarding being able to end a life (whether abortion or animal) and not being able to take one's own life.

Ed's view on abortion and when a life is a life came into play as he tried to void Butterfly's argument. Didn't work for me. He also went into the animal isn't a human and doesn't make the choice regardless..... Didn't work for me.

My vote is for Butterfly on this one.

Butterfly. Ed had me seeing his way until his second post. Butterfly made some excellent points, too. Like the simple 'my body, my choice'.

Winner: Butterfly​