For three days, from March 26-28, The TKU Debate Club held a debate at the Chinese Palace-style Classrooms, Tamsui Campus. The debate, a round-robin style competition consisting of six teams and 18 participants, was based on a thought-provoking blog article written by Harvard graduate Joey Chung, which advocates the need for “reasonable truancy”. In the article “You Have a Responsibility to Skip Class” (written in Chinese), Chung argues that, just like in any business transaction, students – who are often required to fork out substantial tuition fees – should skip class if the service they are paying for – namely, academic instruction – is not up to standard.

The debate topic selected was “attendance should not factor into the assessment of student grades.” In the end, the affirmative team, consisting of Tsai Cheng-hsun (first year, Graduate Institute of European Studies), Wang Ya-fen (second year, Department of Statistics), and Chiang Hsing-ting (first year, Department of Statistics), claimed first place.

Chiang Hsing-ting explained: “attending each class is a student’s responsibility and a way of honing one’s time management skills. Although my personal views differ to our stance in the debate, as long as you gather enough information and do plenty of preparation, maintaining your argument during the debate is not all that difficult”.