Judging NFA-LD
At the Pt Loma tournament I judged all four prelims of NFA-LD (there were no outrounds because WKY destroyed the tournament!) and learned a lot about judging the event. Here are a few key points:
- Speed: Competitors will go as fast as judges will let them go. In order to key the event a communication event I felt the need to tell about 1/2 the competitors I thought they were going to quick. What was too quick? Where easily 1/2 the words were not understandable. I especially thought that in the first two speeches that it was important to keep it slow – some of the rebuttals sped up but that’s understandable given the time constraints. I had a copy of the rules in front of me which say judges should ask competitors to slow down. I really feel that if students want to make NFA-LD an event where you speak quickly it’d be better to just compete in CEDA – it already has an infrastructure with tournaments and teams. Let’s keep NFA-LD a communication event to give it some meaning and uniqueness.
- Keep track of prep time. Going from parli to NFA-LD was difficult because C-X was somewhat new. What I did was on the ballot wrote out “4″ under each debater. Then when each student used prep time I counted up on the clock. When they were finished I would then cross out the four and write the remaining time. That seemed to work well. So it would look like:
43:45 Then when each got to 0 they were out of prep time. That seemed to work well to keep track of each student’s prep time. I also found that most students like oral time signals every 30 seconds so they don’t use too much of their time. - Flowing: Flowing was easy as long as the debaters did not go to quickly. Generally, when I judge policy debate, I try to write down the tags and authors. Then I listen to the cards and write down any key words. I think in policy debate it’s up to the other debater to question the validity and veracity of each piece of evidence – to that end I have strict policy not to read cards after the round. I feel that if I were to read the cards I’m doing work for the debaters that they needed to do during the round. I think this is also a symptom of going to quickly in the round reading evidence without explaining the significance or meaning – instead it’s up to me after the round? No thanks!
- Decisions: I found the 2AR rebuttal was a key speech in making my decision. In policy debate I think the AFF has a pretty big advantage because they should know their case and be ready to answer most negative positions. If the 2AR speech handled the negative rebuttal and weighed out the issues I usually found the AFF to win most rounds. However, a mishandled 2AR and the negative clearly had the advantage. Additionally, dropped arguments in the 1AR became a huge issue – I wonder if something needs to be changed about the event to take into account that with only 2 speeches the negative usually banked on dropped arguments in the 1AR to win the round – kinda seemed lame. I don’t know if LD debate could have too many more speeches but I think the negative is at a somewhat disadvantage in the event.
Overall, I felt the event was really educational and fun for both myself and the debaters. I liked how people used quoted evidence to back up their points and the conversational rate of delivery. I think most people would be able to follow the rounds and make an informed decision. I do think some judge training needs to be done at tournaments to ensure judges know their responsibilities under the rules to keep the event communication oriented. If the event simply because 1 person CEDA debate I don’t think it offers the community anything different than CEDA so we should just do that type of debate. From my experience I felt empowered by the rules to make sure competitors kept the conversational rate of delivery specified in the rules.
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