On December 19, 2021, a team of three students from Fulbright University Vietnam became the champion of the HLU Debate Tournament 2021 organized by Hanoi Law University. After competing in exciting yet mind-bending debates, the FUV Kardashian team comprising Ho Hoang Khoi Nguyen (Class of 2024), Le Minh Tu (Class of 2024), and Pham Thanh Chi (Class of 2025) surpassed 29 teams from various universities across the country to win the first prize of the debate tournament.
The debates were intense right from the preliminary round. Thirty teams had been randomly matched and gone through 4 qualifying rounds before the Top 8 teams were chosen to compete in the quarterfinals. The two knock-out rounds of the quarterfinals and semi-finals were heated as the debate topics became increasingly complex. Each team also honed their skills and accumulated a lot more experience as they moved forward to the following rounds.
The topic of the final debate was “We believe that post-war and conflicting countries should abandon the Medina standard in the prosecution of war criminals.” As it was an interesting and equally challenging topic, both teams presented many strong arguments, heating up the already-intense atmosphere of the final round. Eventually, with a convincing performance, the FUV Kardashian stepped up to be the winner of the competition. Since the team had made such a strong impression on the judges and the audience from the very first debate, it was an achievement they totally deserved.
“Even though we did not have high expectations of achievements, we felt a bit stressful since the legal topics were relatively academic,” said Ho Hoang Khoi Nguyen, a member of the FUV Kardashian. “After each debate, we discussed online to reassess our performance to learn from our mistakes and encourage one another to do better in the following round. For me, the opportunity to acquire new knowledge, to work as a team and to learn from my friends was way more important than the result of the competition.”
Organized by the Legal Skills Club of the Hanoi Law University, the HLU Debate Tournament 2021 provides university students with a chance to practice critical thinking and reasoning skills and also helps bring laws closer to the young generation by enabling them to voice their opinions on the current hottest legal issues.
👉 Read more about the competition HERE.
