President University Debating Society (also known as PUDS) sends its delegation to Surabaya to compete in National Universities Debating Championship (NUDC) 2019 on July, 14th -19th 2019. This competition is an annual debating competition held by Indonesia’s Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education. Just like last year, PUDS delegated two debaters, M. Rendy Utomo Rachim (IR 2015) & Rey Abraham (IR 2018) and an N-1 adjudicator, I Putu Bagus Dimas Pranata (IR 2018). In the competition participated by 114 universities in Indonesia, team President University was able to be in the top 20 teams, as well as snatch the 26th (M. Rendy Utomo Rachim) and 42nd(Rey Abraham) speaker ranks from 228 debaters. Our N-1 adjudicator, Dimas, was also able to add to the accolades of the team by being the 2nd runner up of the Essay Writing competition. The achievements undoubtedly derive from hard work and endless practices done by the team with the help of other members of PUDS as well as our advisor Mr. Lambok H. Sihombing.
Despite not being able to win the competition, the team is still awarded the right to continue their journey to the biggest debating competition on the planet, World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) 2020 in Thailand. WUDC is a competition which will be partaken by over than 180 universities in the world, including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and other ivy leagues universities as well as around 70 countries, the competition has always been the endgame of all varsity debaters from around the world. This is the reason why President University team is vigorously preparing themselves to compete in this mega-stage of English Debating currently, all in order to be able to properly represent Indonesia alongside other top Indonesian universities such as UI, UGM, and ITB. We really hope that we could bring back to our campus one of the biggest academic achievements a university can get at the end of our journey in Thailand.