A Debate Club has just started working at the Faculty of Law for Commerce and Judiciary of the University Business Academy in Novi Sad. Teaching Assistant Ms. Snežana Plavšić has been appointed President of the Debate Club.

The starting of the Debate Club at the Faculty of Law in Novi Sad is an important step in the fulfillment of the mission of the Faculty, i.e. work towards the improvement of academic programs and professional training and preparation of students through extra-curricular activities. Although the laws and regulations, books about law and other sources of knowledge are available to everyone, we can still distinguish between good, better and the best among jurists, of which the most prominent are judges and lawyers. Therefore, public speaking skills, argumentation, persuasion and the ability to cope with different situations and problems are crucial. Precisely these skills are practiced and perfected through debate. That is why the Faculty of Law in Novi Sad has made it possible for its students to learn from the best. During the spring semester, an important part of the debate club will be weekly workshops focusing on various topics and held by world champions in the debate - Teodora Rešetar and Miloš Marjanović. Participants in these workshops will receive a certificate and will get a chance to demonstrate their knowledge in a competition which will be organized in May this year.

On Friday, 24 February 2017, the two world champions in university debate, Teodora Rešetar, a student of the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade and Miloš Marjanović, a student of the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, introduced the debate rules and manner of speech in debate to our students of the Faculty of Law for Commerce and Judiciary. They shared their experience from the finals of the debate competition held in the Netherlands, where they competed against students from Germany, China and Indonesia. To show our students what a real debate sounds like, they staged a debate on the topic "This institution intends to cut on all research that aims to discover self-aware artificial intelligence", in which their competitors were Marta Vasić and Aleksandra Mihajlović from the team of the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade. The present students chose the winners of the debate.

Nurturing debate as an educational method undoubtedly enables students to acquire valuable competencies, but also provides an opportunity for them to develop critical thinking and communication skills (including public performance skills) and generally contributes to the development of freedom of speech and a creation of a more open and tolerant society.