Lantugi makes waves in debate society

By Jezrelle Joy Rasonabe

Flourishing for about thirteen years now, UP Lantugi has excelled both in competing against premiere schools and in educating aspiring arguers.

“We want to finally break in the nationals,” says Rarry Abatol, this year’s Lantugi Prime Minister.

Thirteen years ago, when Lantugi was just formed, it was an organization simply meeting to argue on a particular topic. Joining competitions and debates were not yet part of their priorities.

According to Abatol, it was in 2006, during the term of Samantha Tornilla’s leadership that Lantugi went beyond the gates of the university and started to compete regionally.

By 2007, Lantugi took the initiative of creating the Visayas-Mindanao Debate Competition (VMDC), which provided an avenue for aspiring Visayan debaters to show what they’ve got.

“By then, Visayas was way behind in terms of debating while Mindanao was at its peak,” said Abatol.

From a mere organization with only a few members to start with, Lantugi shifted, becoming one of the pioneering organizations that has brought pride to the Visayas in the field of debate.

The year 2008 was another big year for Lantugi when Yedah Ylanan suggested they take another step up the debate ladder, and advocated to nurture the culture of debate in the region seven. This is when the first Speak Up was created.

Speak Up is an inter-high school debate tournament participated mostly by private and a few public high schools.

It was last year that Lantugi took a bolder step and became partners of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI), which sponsored Speak UP 4, making it possible for many public high schools to be able to participate.

This year, the organization landed another opportunity to inspire and motivate young speakers through the formation of the Visayas High School Debate Competition (VHDC).

VHDC aims to prepare Visayas high schools for the Philippine Schools Debate Competition―a national level debate competition.

Lantugi is now the three-time Visayas Universities Debate Champion, currently the defending champion; the two-time National Debate Championship quarter finalist, making UP Cebu one of the top twenty debate institutions in the Philippines along with UP Diliman, Ateneo de Manila, and De La Salle University.

Making it to the top twenty, Lantugi was invited to join the Philippine Collegiate Peace Debate (PCPD), which discussed two main areas: peace and national security. PCPD is sponsored by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and De La Salle University. 

“In the nature of debate, a group or organization is judged based on the individual performance or achievements of its members,” explained Rarry. Which is why, according to Abatol, each of their member is has a role to play on their current accomplishments.

He noted one of the members, Leslie Torres. She is the current best speaker of Visayas and the top adjudicator in the recent PCPD.

In terms of honor, Lantugi has given a whole lot to UP Cebu. Yet they still strive for more achievements and aims to finally beak in the nationals.

So far, only six people from the Visayas were able to break in the national level. Three of those are from UP Cebu.

“We want to increase that number. We want to spread the debate culture. It’s still so backward; it still needs cultivation,” said Abatol.