Literary Symposium Desk organizes Student-Faculty Debate 2013

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Literary Symposium Desk (IIMA) organizes Student-Faculty Debate 2013

CoolAvenues Newswire | August 22,2013 02:34 pm IST

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The Literary Symposium Desk of IIM Ahmedabad organized the second edition of the Student-Faculty Debate on Monday, August 19th 2013,that saw two selected students (shortlisted after an exhaustive preliminary eliminations)go up against Prof. Ajay Pandey and Prof Ankur Sarin in a battle of logic, wit and composure.

The event, which received a tremendous response from the IIM A community, was attended by faculty, staff and students across all years and programmes. This unique event has attained a special place in the student activities calendar of the institute.

The topic of the debate was chosen to be “Placements should be the end goal of a management student”. The faculty team comprising of Professor Ajay Pandey and Professor Ankur Sarin debated against the motion while the student team comprising of Sarthak Phadke and Prashant Sarkar debated for the motion. The arguments were logically constructed and the frameworks adopted by both sides seemed to be infallibly strong. It would indeed have been a very difficult debate to judge. Fortunately, it was an exhibition debate and the real enjoyment was in listening to and appreciating the views put forth by both sets of speakers.

The students put forth the view that placements form an accurate gauge or metric to assess a candidate’s capability and therefore serve as a strong incentive to management students to perform to the best of their ability. The professors argued that placements are the end, but the more important concern is the means to the end. In that sense, placements do not serve so much as an incentive as much as a terminal goal - students lose sight of other, more important things when trying to achieve that end.

The students effectively postulated that since IIM A has done so much for us, we should be giving back to society and a way to do that is through placements- so why should it not be an end goal worth pursuing? The professor’s response was simply that placements are a reflection not of how you value yourself but of how others value you and the former is more important than the latter.

Lasting for about an hour, the event managed to captivate the participants and audience alike with its engaging format and rich content. The Literary Symposium Desk hopes to continue conducting such and other events in the coming year, providing a platform for the students to exhibit their creative talent.

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