13. For the Affirmative
That afternoon he went to the senior school buildings, which first years were not normally allowed to go to, feeling a sense of accomplishment that was so rare to him in this revised 1987. It felt new and refreshing, as he had never set foot in this building until now, prohibited as a kid, and having been removed from the school by his parents when they relocated back to Melbourne in what was originally 1990. He thought for a second in his stream of consciousness if that was going to happen again this time around. At least the good coffee would be more prevalent soon.
He entered the meeting room where the senior debate team met. Six boys, all much larger that Michael at the time, sat casually around the room, speaking louder and with more confidence than was merited, and fell silent when Michael entered.
He looked around the room. For a moment, they all looked back.
The silence gripped them all, until a broad shouldered kid with a Rugby player’s build and a crew cut you could set your watch to, chimed in with analysis.
‘What do you want?’ he demanded.
‘Is this meeting room 4?’ Michael asked.
‘Yeah, but why are you here?’
‘I’m the new recruit. Mr Sutton sent me.’
‘You’re not allowed on Senior grounds. Piss off.’
Michael smiled.
‘Lovely. Good to be here, too.’
The burly lad approached Michael. He really didn’t have the build or traditional look of a school debater.
‘I don’t know what you think this is, but this is the Senior debate team. You want to make an argument, go join the juniors.’
‘Yeah!’ exclaimed a random voice of dissent in the room.
‘Patrick!’
The welcome figure of Mr Sutton appeared behind Michael, chastising his would-be adversary.
‘Mr Sutton, we were just telling this kid to get off senior school grounds, can you help out?’
Sutton brushed past him with an explicit ‘No.’
Michael followed him into the room. The assembled seniors were momentarily struck dumb. Sutton placed his books on the desk at the front of the room and looked at the school of mullets.
‘Michael, as you have noted, is a junior student. A first year, to be precise. But he has a grasp of not only language, but persuasion and argument that I think would lend a very strong hand to the debate squad.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. Until, that was, the whole narrative became pieced together for Patrick.
‘Oh, hang on. This is the kid from the paper!’
He redirected his line of inquiry directly down at Michael.
‘You’re the one who got kicked out for cheating and then went and bad mouthed the school in the Herald!’
‘I never cheated on anything, mate,’ Michael retorted, again forgetting his place in the pecking order, and emphasising ‘mate’ with more vinegar than he’d usually apply.
‘It’s true,’ Sutton interjected. ‘Remember we had that discussion on the presumption of innocence? Patrick, you’re looking to study law, it’s fairly fundamental you get an early grip on something as fundamental as the rule of law.’
A single-second grin rose and fell on Michael’s face; the grin that says, ‘He’s right, and you know it.’ Internally, he was enjoying the scene – spoiled debate kids getting worked up about things not going their way. This Patrick kid was doing what he could to be intimidating, but a 17 year old in a private school is about as intimidating as a piece of wet toast.
‘Either way,’ Patrick began, a pinkish hue rising from his sweaty collar, ‘Where’s his school spirit? Who goes and rats out the school to a paper? Where’s his loyalty?’
Sutton nodded and turned to the blackboard.
‘A good point, one we should think about. Patrick. I put it to you that exercising school spirit, or school pride, should be mandatory among the Wellings student body. Michael, you can formulate an argument against this idea. Everyone should make five points for or against, whichever side you feel most passionate about, then we’ll swap sides.’
Caught in the crossfire of a well-honed sense of alumnus pride and an equally powerful need to please his coach, Patrick hesitated, thought to argue the point, the quickly resumed his seat with two of his cohorts surrounding him. They began to brainwash ideas and formulate the strongest argument they could.
Michael casually took a seat as other, more nebbish and reserved students gingerly inched towards him. Mr Sutton came over to his desk with a handful of loose leaf writing papers and a biro, handed them to Michael and silently winked at him.
Michael looked at the paper, saw his would-be adversary on the other side of the room, and began to write.
After 30 minutes of shouted whispers and frustrated paper shuffling at the other side of the room, the debate team was called to order. Michael had been writing a few concise points amid very few interjections or comments from his allotted cohorts, who seemed to either not have any ideas of their own, or were just interested in witnessing this travelling carnival freak show; the academic wonder of a first year willing and able to take on students upwards of five years’ his senior.
Upon asking that both teams put their pens down, Mr Sutton invited Patrick to speak first, the sole speaker for the affirmative.
With a semi-nervous edge, Patrick stood, and tucked in his shirt tails.
‘Mr Adjudicator, fellow students. I am and have been a student at Wellings for the past 10 years. I wish that I had been a student here since I was in kindergarten, but as we know, the school no longer operates those lower primary levels. My father attended Wellings in the late 1950s; my grandfather was here in the 1930s. I have reaped the endless rewards from the fine education such a hallowed school as this, and look forward to a time in the future, God willing, when I can send my own sons to this place as well. The very idea that I am in a place that is less than excellent, less than exemplary, less than the gold standard of education in the state of New South Wales is foreign to me. We have the finest facilities, the best teachers, and a reputation throughout the collective private schools of the state of being a first rate establishment of academic and sporting achievement. We should consider ourselves lucky to be here in any capacity. So it is with great sadness that I saw what my learned opponent had said about our beloved Wellings in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald recently. I don’t think I was alone in feeling shocked and appalled that a student here would be so careless as to speak of the school in such negative terms, after a fine, long serving teacher such as Mr Gunn should do nothing more than act with what was his right and his responsibility. We have an excellent school, and it’s up to us, the students, to keep the fires of passion burning that have served us so well, that have cheered us on to victory on the football and cricket fields, and in the halls of academia, science and the arts for more than 100 years. It should, therefore, be mandatory for all students of Wellings to display school spirit and school pride. If they can’t do that, then they deserve to be suspended or worse, even if they are smart for their age. Thank you.’
Chuffed at his swift, passionate and comparatively articulate response, Patrick sat back down, and received any number of encouraging pats on the back from his compadres.
‘Snotty little prat,’ Michael thought to himself, all but aloud. That last bit was aimed squarely at Michael’s chest.
Hmph.
Mr Sutton smiled, and turned his attention to Michael.
‘Your turn, Michael. Feel free to make a counter argument.’
Michael stood, imbued with a confidence he’d not felt so attuned in many years. Here he was, a burgeoning prince among children.
‘Thank you, sir. My opponent is right, this is a fine school. A very fine one, and we all should feel privileged to be here, for each and every one of is just that: privileged. Obscenely so. But pride and spirit, noble in intention and execution as they are, cannot possibly be ideals to be enforced, or in any way be rendered mandatory. It is at that point, and a very slippery point, may I add, that the school has begun to police and govern our thoughts and emotions. You cannot, among any number of objections that I may have to such concepts, legislate against the way people think. But that’s not the main point I want to make here. Patrick, if I may call you by your first name, mentioned how we attend an excellent school. And I agree. It is excellent with many admirable and appealing qualities build into its history, structure and traditions. Excellence. One of many fine traditions and principles at the very core of its existence. Another one of the school’s key moral precepts is the pursuit of social justice. As someone who had been denied natural justice, someone who had been accused of something without any real right of reply, or without any concrete evidence offered, it was my right, if not my moral imperative to take the course of action I took. We can never assume that these halls, as hallowed as they may be, over generations impressed upon the very DNA of families such as Patrick’s, are without flaw. Even the most robust and august of institutions is not run in a vacuum – the decisions and exercising of its policies and rules are done by men, human men, who have human flaws and are prone to errors. To suffer by silence when we could protest makes cowards out of men. Wilcox said that. I refused on that occasion to suffer by silence; I took steps to remedy a wrong that was done to me, and did what I thought was best not only for myself, but in taking such a stand I was doing what was best for all Wellings students, now and in the future, who would otherwise be subject to the summary executions of misguided, if well-intentioned members of the faculty. My action was, in this regard, not one of someone who lacked school spirit or pride, but someone possessed almost entirely of this very idea; that what was the best for me was the best for the school itself. So I do not believe that such notions should be mandatory among the student body – how on earth are such rules meant to be enforced? But in running the risk of losing this very debate by not sticking to the topic, I must refer to my particular case. I acted out of a place of truth, and was inspired by my brave forebears enshrined on the many memorials around the campus. Those men who fought for ideals and principles, who fought and died for King and country. To accuse me of acting contrary to the best interests of the school is an accusation without foundation or merit in the first place. No, Mr Adjudicator, school pride and spirit should most certainly not be mandatory. Not that I would be guilty of lacking either to begin with.’
There was sweet electricity in the air as Michael took his seat. Members of both sides of the room began to slow clap, which built. Michael was embarrassed for them, but then momentarily thought that perhaps in 1987, the slow clap was not yet clichéd. Patrick got up from his chair and approached Michael; gone was the swagger and arrogance of the man in charge, his place of authority threatened by the juvenile interloper. He extended his hand, and Michael shook it.
Mr Sutton, practically beaming from the front of the room, knew he had created something significant.
‘Well, Patrick. We have ourselves a consensus don’t we?’