SISU and Fudan debate team argued on cross-gender friendships

tudents from Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) and Fudan University (FUDAN) argued about the possiblity of cross-gender friendships in a friendly debate competition held recently at SISU. The competition was to attract freshmen students to join the SISU debate team.

Members from FUDAN argued that “close friendships with different genders are impossible” while their competitors from SISU thought the opposite.

FUDAN’s team members thought there was no pure friendship between opposite sex, because if a person of the opposite sex wanted to become a bosom friend with you, he (she) may want to become your lover but he didn’t want to tell you, so he found an excuse called “bosom opposite-sex friend”. He hoped that gradually you would fall in love with him, so he could become your lover.

However, members from SISU said not all bosom opposite-sex friends would become lovers and they gave some examples like friendship between Zhao Benshan and Song Dandan ( China’s famous actor and actress). They said many people of the opposite sex had a pure motivation “just want to make friends with you”. And once you became bosom friends, this relationship could last for a long time, you would not become lovers.

Except SISU’s audience, the debate competition also invited judges and audience from other universities. It was a friendly debate competition so there was no winner. The competition attracted so many audience that lots of audience had to sit on the ground. A freshman said she had never seen such an amazing competition and she signed up for the debate team immediately.

Every year, FUDAN and SISU’s debate team would invite each other to have several debate competitions.