WE ARE THE CHAMPION: Members of SMK St Joseph Team A pose with the challenge trophy.
KUCHING: SMK St Joseph emerged champion in the Kuching’s Law Olympiad 2013 Competition organised by Help University for the second time in a row.
This year, the school’s Team A comprising Form 5 students beat 29 other teams from 13 other schools throughout Kuching to retain their title.
Team A members namely Chiew Shun Hong (team leader), Wong Dao Jie, Samuel Law Chuing Yih, Jeraid John and Kingsley Tiaw Yuan Kai received RM1,500 cash prize, a challenge trophy, individual medals and certificates.
Organised in collaboration with Market Management Services (MMS) Sdn Bhd, a company that provides higher education consultancy, the competition was held at SMK St Joseph’s William Tan Auditorium, from 9am to 1pm yesterday.
The competition was opened to Form 4, 5 and 6 students.
SMK Batu Lintang Team A won first runner-up and received RM750 cash prize, individual medals and certificates.
The second runner-up was SM Lodge Team A which received RM300 cash prize, individual medals and certificates.
In the fourth and fifth positions were SMK Kuching High Team A and SMK St Mary Team A respectively.
The sixth place was shared by SMK Sungai Maong Team A and Lodge International School Team A.
The other participating schools were SMK St Teresa, SMK St Thomas, SMK Green Road, SMK Sungei Tapang, SMK Pending, Chung Hua Middle School No.4 and Chung Hua Middle School No.1.
Teams were made up of five students accompanied by their teacher.
The competition comprised four games where students were judged purely on logic, common sense and reasonableness and not knowledge of the law.
With Esprit de Corps as the central theme of the competition, Help University hoped that it will promote camaraderie among the participants.
The prime objective is to encourage analytical and critical thinking skills and develop an interest in the study of law or its related disciplines.
The games were designed to be fun yet educational, with real transferrable skills imparted whereby the students, be it win or lose, take home more than just a trophy or some enjoyable time, but skills relevant and beneficial to their holistic educational experience.
In the main game called ‘Visitors from Outer Space’, teams were given handouts containing a list of rights where they were required to select five rights in order of importance to surrender to the aliens.
After discussions among team members, each team presented their arguments and reasons for surrendering each right before a panel of judges.
In the second game ‘Whodunnit?’, teams played police detective to identify the culprit by studying various pieces of evidence in three cases.
The other two games were Trivia Quiz to test students’ general knowledge and ‘What’s Your Verdict?’ in which students guess the possible verdict the judge would have arrived at in two case trials.
Meanwhile, the first Law Olympiad competition was held in 2000 in Kuala Lumpur which was well received with 24 teams participating.
The second contest was held in 2001 with an even larger number of participants.
Even since then, the contest has been organised outside KL in the major cities of Penang, Ipoh, Johor Baharu and Kota Kinabalu.
In 2010, the contest was taken across the shores of Malaysia to Colombo, Sri Lanka, which also received overwhelming response from students in both private and government schools from Colombo and Jaffa.