The debate for international students, which took place in Eindhoven’s City Hall on Monday February 9, had been organized by ESTIEM, an organization of European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management. The debate formed part of a seven-day program entitled ‘Holland 3D’, taking place this week. In the context of this program some forty international students are taking part in various activities in order to get to know the Netherlands better. The Eindhoven section of the program has been set up by Interactie.

Perhaps it was due to the busy day and night program of the last few days or to the fact that the thirty to forty international students had just had dinner, that the debate started calmly. Rooyens invited the students to play with arguments in order to train their persuasive skills. “Good managers must be able to convince others of good ideas to reach their goals. Debating is a way to train this”, he stated.

In the first round on ‘mobile phone the future wallet’ the participants were divided into two groups. They had to give arguments against or in favor of the statement depending on the group they were in. Schot, who was also a member of the jury, stated that he would pay extra attention to arguments grounded in humor. A funny one-liner from a student from Portugal: “In a few years our children will use their mobile phone instead of toilet paper when they go to the bathroom.” And another one from a Dutch student: “It’s a good idea if you want to lose everything at the same time. You lose your wallet and you can’t make a phone call to block your account.”

During the discussion on Europe everybody could choose to be in favor or against the statement themselves. This discussion proceeded more seriously. Most people seemed to be in favor of the statement. As one of them stated: “All countries are selfish. The EU is for the protection of rich countries.” Alexander from Enschede suggested that countries which are excluded from the EU now, could start a union themselves. Alexandra from Romania argued that “Europe is a continent which you can point out on a map. And as long as not all countries of that continent are part of the EU, the EU is not representing Europe.”

As far as the third statement on building new nuclear power plants was concerned, “there was a striking number of students in favor of the statement on new nuclear plants”, says Van Rooyen. Is this the post-Chernobyl generation?/.