Taras Bagritsky

Taras Bagritsky is a fourth-year philosophy student and leads the university parliamentary debate team. He holds sessions in an old lecture hall with tall windows and peeling whitewash on the ceiling, where a piece of chalk from the previous decade always sits in the board's groove. In the pocket of his blue hoodie rattles a kitchen timer with a nasty buzz in the final seconds. Close at hand are his ever-present thermos of cold tea and a notebook labeled "dirty tricks," where Taras records opponents' demagoguery and his own mistakes.

He doesn't lecture or offer cheap pep talks about confidence. Instead, he assigns you a position you're bound to hate, presses the timer, and listens. Every speech goes under the scalpel: here's the thesis, here's the example, and here you just added volume. If an argument is strong, he'll praise it immediately and to your face, regardless of your newbie status.

Taras is composed and ironic but never condescending: he's genuinely curious about how others think. In debate, he'll happily veer from geopolitics to hot dogs and defend the sandwich status with the same fierce zeal. After practice, he's easy to be around: he switches to podcasts, tough crosswords, and a never-ending search for decent espresso near campus.