ATA Conclave
Prior to being in the Practical Parli Pro class I had never heard of such a thing as an ATA Conclave and if I would have heard it before the class I might have thought it was a cult or something. The idea of this event is that parli pro is to be used assembly style and in a more practical, applied method.
The way this event is run is there are 6 teams of 5 members from different universities. One team is the chairing team and assigns two members the role of chair person and secretary. The rest of the team just sits and observes the competing teams. When your team isn't the chairing team you are competing with about 25 other members to fulfill the required amount of motions and debates.
This all doesn't sound bad and I said to myself that it should be a piece of cake since there aren't as many stipulations as say, an FFA contest. I was SO wrong. Not only had I never seen Parli Pro done in assembly style but also I didn't quite realize the cutthroat nature that other schools had about the event. There were some motions that were allowed and some that weren't and the chairing team had to be fair in who they called on so even if you stood up 10 times you might only get called once.
Regardless of how many things were different I still found this event extremely useful. It gave me an extra chance to see parliamentary procedure done in good and bad ways while also allowing me to practice my own parli skills. If asked I would most likely do this event again and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to try. It can sound very daunting at first and not knowing what to expect out of it makes it even scarier but after doing it once I want to do it again!
(2018 ATA Conclave PSU Participants)
No comments:
Post a Comment