The topic certainly helped the Columba College 1 debate team to its ninth and overall win of the Dunedin school debating season.
Jessica Mundy, Clara Ballantyne and Emily Roy took the affirmative on the topic of mandating weekly mindfulness sessions for high school students at the Dunedin Schools’ Debating senior final on Tuesday night.
It was a topic team captain Clara described as "not super exciting" but had the makings of a good argument.
"We felt pretty confident that we had a good case."
"They had a really good team and we weren’t necessarily sure that we had won, but I think we had a slightly better case in the end," Clara said.
Four of the judges agreed, while one went with Trinity.
There was always a little pressure to win as Columba had a history of being good at debating, Clara said.
"It’s very exciting ... it’s [a] nice relief as well," she said.
It was also nice to continue their clean run of wins through the season, having not lost in nine debates.
All three agreed it was nice to be finished for the season.
Emily and Jessica planned to continue debating for the college next year, while Clara was off to study at the University of Otago.
Senior Dunedin Schools’ Debating convener Lara Seaton said the final was a very close and high quality debate.
