A sullen but victorious Debate team returned to UP yesterday from the Pan-Asia Debate Championship held in Tokyo, Japan. They were greeted by the cheers and admiration of their fellow iskos and the school faculty, but were unable to find any comfort or pleasure in their friends. According to Debsoc’s chaperone and faculty adviser, Allen De Santos, the entire team has been depressed since they defeated the Ateneo Debate Society (their rivals from across the street) by proving that all human actions are ultimately worthless in the grand scheme of things.

The Motion given was “This House Believes that winning this tournament is important.” The UP delegation served as the opposition.

“The team was forced to argue that winning the PanAsia Tournament was a meaningless win. The Ateneo team started out by saying stuff like being a debater was a great way to pad their resumes, that it unified their school in their accomplishment, and all that flowery bullshit. ”

The Opposition Leader, Karl Abeles, a Public Administration student, decided that the best course of action was to reframe the debate into the frame of an all-encompassing, but ultimately uncaring, cosmos. Allen continues:”The Ateneans wanted to talk about the future, maybe ten, twenty years forward towards what Debate can do to help people build their ideas or reputations. Karl instead gave them the paradigm that fifty years into the future, both Debate teams would ultimately be dissolved under the rule of Bimby Aquino, the Emperor of Manila’s anti-intellectual policies; 100 years into the future, the world would end from Climate Change and all monuments to humanity will be lost; finally, he brought us to the end of time as the Universe eventually goes dark, cold, and lifeless.”

“Karl took that ball and didn’t just dribble it across the court, he stole it, ran off with it, and kept it under his bed for the rest of his life,” Said UPDebSoc trainee and fanboy Justin Arguerras. “When he stepped down the podium, the entire room was silent and I think I spotted one Adj (Adjudicator) texting his family saying that he loved them.”

The Ateneo team gave several firm rebuttals, but they were mostly left unheard from the crowd that was still in shock after coming to realize their own fleeting mortality. Miss Sara Timinenko, an Astrophysics major from the Ateneo, tried to give people back their sense of feeling by invoking the ideas of her own hero, Carl Sagan. That was eventually rendered moot when the next UP debater, Carmen Lee, reminded everyone that Carl Sagan was an atheist and believed that there was no afterlife. She pointed out which members of the audience would be most likely to die first, citing her expertise as a Biology student. She summed up that point by saying that while Carl Sagan used to be famous, his only legacy now is left with academics and nerds.

She elaborated on one of Abeles’ previous points and gave her own argument that love was a lie we just tell ourselves. Explaining how that while she was in a steady, five-year relationship, over time the relationship has began to decay as they went on, and that the only reason why they continued staying with each other was out of some sense of loyalty or compassion, which Abeles had already argued with no contest was nonexistent. “Relationships are made to chase the idea of love, which is based on ideas like loyalty, compassion, and eternity. None of these are real concepts, and so if Love is built upon imaginary concepts, at the end of the day it does not exist!”

Her boyfriend, Mark, then ran from the auditorium, crying softly but audible enough to be heard by everyone.

We’re sure that the Whips had things to say, too, but at this point our interns grew despondent and unwilling to continue on with life.