Wednesday 30 July 2025
On 25 June, the last Wednesday of Term 2, the senior House debate teams of Middlemore and Averill met in the lecture theatre to decide who would be crowned House champions.
Middlemore stood to affirm the motion ‘This House believes that democracy is doomed in this age of social media.’ The audience packed in to watch a highly competitive debate. Middlemore urged us to accept that the money focused algorithms and subsequent echo chambers of social media which aim to control our consumption, also inevitably steal our autonomy as voters.
Averill countered with the many examples of similar manipulation, though perhaps on a less global scale, which democracy has overcome in the past and thus argued that to say democracy is ‘doomed’ is too extreme. After much debate of their own, the three judges awarded a very narrow victory to Middlemore.
Congratulations to Amelie Moore (Year 13, Middlemore), Phoebe Driscoll (Year 13, Middlemore) and Emily Lawry (Year 13, Middlremore) as winners and to Shackleton Scollay (Year 13, Averill), Ben Stuart (Year 13, Averill) and Charlie Wadham (Year 13, Averill) as close runners up.