Every semester, the AUN Honor Society hosts an intellectual discourse that allows its members to interact with the rest of the students.
“Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child: Is this Domestic Violence?” was the debate topic of one such event by the Society on February 27, 2020.
The audience applauded and cheered, indicating that the arguments resonated with it. The very intellectual debate had two teams comprising three students each.
Asherekene Onyekwere was the first speaker in the group supporting the motion. He argued that to spare the rod can place a child in a confused state. He said every child who grows up in Africa faces such a dilemma. Sparing the rod reinforces bad behavior because fear is imposed on the child in the process.
The opposing team argued that making the child understand what s/he has done wrong is critical in correcting and molding the child. The lead speaker of the team, Abubakar Sadiq Salahu, opined that without a child being told, s/he does not know what is right from what is wrong. Hence, to spare the rod is not domestic violence, but a way of instilling discipline. “There is a huge difference between physical discipline and domestic violence”.
A first-year Politics & International Studies major, Mohammed Liman, and first-year Management & Entrepreneurship major, Chukuka Augustine Chukuka, were in the supporting team; a third-year Communications & Multimedia Design major, Sanga Pepsitemi, and second-year English & Literature major, Victoria Ifeolu, were the other members of the opposing team.
One of the moderators, Abuoma Offia, said the group members “did exceptionally well in expanding the topic”.
A final-year Economics major, Tomeno Ezaga, noted that besides being entertaining, the session was also intellectually stimulating, adding that the HS should organize it more often and make it of a longer duration.
President of the Society, Todimu Sola-Idowu, described the debate as a way to have students come together and share different perspectives on a particular issue.
“I didn’t expect it to be as interesting as it turned out. I love that everybody got involved in the conversation and you can hear their different perspectives.”
And there are a lot of other events on the way including one, especially for faculty members, a Spelling Bee where they give out scholarships to schoolchildren in the community, an induction, as well as a banquet for graduating seniors.
The turnout at the debate was not only impressive but inspiring, observed a fourth-year Law student and Vice President of the Society, Odinaka Okemini.
Reported by Omorogbe Omorogiuwa