O’Neil Simpson looked the part of a world champion and well he might. Eyes alight and with a confident smile creeping seemingly unbidden to suffuse his countenance, the Cave Hill star debater sat down after his historic win of the coveted first prize in the World Public Speaking Competition at the 2006 World’s Universities and Colleges Debating Championships held between December 27, 2005 and January 4, 2006 in Ireland, to recount his elation at the experience.
“I felt quite elated, I was absolutely ecstatic,” he said, recalling the moment when it was announced that he had won. “I did feel that there was one other individual who provided a very serious challenge in the finals, so when I heard the announcement, I thought, “good one, O’Neil; well done! It was a tough competition.”
It began with a series of gruelling opening rounds of public speaking debates between the best debaters from 324 teams from over 100 of the world’s premier institutions of higher learning. After days of intense competition, Simpson along with team mate Wismar Gibson from the UWI Cave Hill team secured semi-final slots – the only pair from any university to achieve this. Simpson, who later made it to the finals, then defeated competitors from the likes of U.S Ivy league institutions Harvard and Yale, and the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to emerge the ultimate winner from among this rarefied gathering.
“Apart from novelty, which cynically enough, I believe may actually have been a factor; I think there was genuine unexpectedness about the competence of West Indian competitors, which provided something of an ‘underdog’ scenario which I was able to exploit ,” he said. “It was amusing to have heard people prior to the finals, speak about how they were looking forward to hearing the ‘Caribbean speaker’, by the time it became obvious that we were there to actually compete seriously.”
Simpson, a final year Law student who hails from Jamaica and who held the position of International Affairs Committee Chairperson (I.A.C.C.) on the Guild of Students 2005-2006, noted that the Have Hill’s performance would doubtlessly bolster the University’s international profile and its academic legacy for the future.
“I think that such performance does much to position the institution in the minds of the members of the international academic community, and provides incentives for individuals to take the UWI seriously as a centre for substantial academic undertaking,” he said. “There has often been a somewhat condescending appraisal for our performance in terms of ‘flair, style and manner’ which I have always contended are the easiest ways of keeping our regional teams out of the challenging positions. However, I think that the Public Speaking event has provided the most concrete evidence that there is validity in the competence of West Indian academics which can be matched against the best in the world, there is now a more bolstered legacy with which we will be able to challenge what has arguably become a status quo of ‘whose who’ in the competition; which I think augers well for UWI’s status among tertiary academia across the world.”
“Having been able to prove that we have what it takes to make the grade at these events, I can only hope the foresight shown in sending us to this event will not be withdrawn in the future,” Simpson said. “I have often been concerned that areas of a non–academic nature are able to get far more support than areas of academic engagement. I trust that the debating society will gain more support and that there will be greater willingness to support the ventures of the students who are employed in meaningful co-curricular development.”
(Taken from CHILL, News Issue 3, April – June 2006. A publication of the Public Information and Marketing Office, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.)
