The APOGEE English Press recently interviewed Anshika Gupta, the APOGEE Coordinator of DebSoc, to gain insight into the club and its work during APOGEE 2023.

DebSoc is organising the BITS Pilani Parliamentary Debate, which will take place as a post-APOGEE event on the 8th and 9th of April. The format is of the British Parliamentary debate, which has a total of four teams, two on each side of the motion. The debate is divided into two parts—the Opening Half (consisting of opening government and opening opposition) and the Closing Half (consisting of closing government and closing opposition). The teams are given no choice in motion, a single motion is released. The closing teams have to elaborate upon the case presented by the opening half, back them up with their own arguments, and distinguish the case without opposing their opening team. DebSoc expects participation of approximately 100–120 teams and the event will be held online via Discord or Zoom. The event is at a larger scale as compared to the previous year’s event.

DebSoc has an active workforce of about 50 people. The work of the 2021 batch is primarily supervisory as they have the experience while the 2022 batch will do most of the groundwork. Their pre-fest work involves contacting other people in the debating circuit to get core adjudicators for the debate and contacting other colleges to get participation.

Speaking about the challenges they could face during this event, Anshika stated that while conducting an online event, communication with the participants could be an issue so they will have contacts of everyone participating and can call them if they don’t reply over text. Her experience as a coordinator has been tremendous and she has faced no problems from other departments. In the end, Anishka mentioned that BITSians would be able to follow the Finals of the Parliamentary Debate which would be streamed on DebSoc’s YouTube channel with the consent of the finalist teams.