SoCal-LD.net Philosophy
Hey everyone!
Commenting on a previous post here Sydne observed that people were probably not sharing case ideas because we will be competing against each other this year. I certainly respect that approach and do not intend the rest of this post as an attack on Sydne or any schools who would rather not disclose their cases or strategies.
However, part of the reason this site was started was to encourage programs and coaches to share ideas in order to make NFA-LD stronger in Southern California. And I think at Cerritos, at least, over the last two years our program has only benefited from sharing ideas, evidence, and strategy. The first year that we tried to do NFA-LD the problem we kept running into was not tough competition – it was a lack of competition! At the first Southern California LD Championships NFA-LD was collapsed because of too few entries. So I started this site with the idea that if more people had evidence and were comfortable debating we could actually debate beyond our squad room. And the numbers have increased – last year at the Southern California LD Championships we had over 20 entries!
It may just be personal preference but I don’t think our debaters should win based on secrecy or ‘springing’ stuff on the other team. When I used to do high school policy debate we were always happy to disclose our affirmative case to the negative team – we wanted to win because we were better debaters not because we had the element of surprise. We had worked hard on our case and were ready to answer arguments. College CEDA/NDT debate has gone great lengths to open up their debate rounds by posting case lists, with evidence citations, before and during tournaments. JP Lacey at Wake Forest runs this wiki site with tons of cases from schools across the country. He explains:
Members of the debate community all want to see debate at its best. As competitors, we want to debate against the best competition. This caselist is part of that effort.
It is definitely a situation where I understand programs that do not want to open up their research. It takes a ton of time to write quality files and sharing that work with the rest of the community for free sometimes seems counterproductive. However, I would urge all programs in the area to share, even just a little. Perhaps your squad has 3 cases – send in/post one of them.
The ultimate goal of the site is to get more schools and debaters competing in NFA-LD. I think sharing ideas helps advance that goal. The more people who compete the better NFA-LD will be in Southern California and across the country.
As we near the 2 year anniversary of this website I want to thank all of the contributors and debaters across the country who were willing to share all of their evidence and hard work with the community – let’s continue that spirit!
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You are right, and I am from the old school before the internet, massive public case lists available after Round I, and full disclosure of Aff. and Neg. strategies before the round begins. I debated and coached in a time where there was no pre-round debate, but then again there was no argument about what happened before the round either. The Kritik was just getting started by UT and you didn’t have to worry about being called a racist just by defending the resolution.
So yes things have changed in many ways, but many argue not for the best. I still coach my students not to disclose before the round. I also coach them not to interview a judge to find out his or her preferences. In the end this is still competitive, and people are likely to hold back some things. Case ideas seem to me the first they will hold back, given that at the beginning of the year all people really know is their case. And the fact is, people in final rounds run new Affirmatives all the time, because they are hoping to catch the Negative off-guard.
Maybe people will provide general input regarding case ideas, and viable plans. I for one see many avenues for topical plans, in that CE is so broad and arguably unconditional. I see the possibility for many to claim huge advantages, but with no internal link. I also see the possibility for many to argue big impact disads that are not-unique or empirically untrue. Lots has changed in Cuba quite recently, and because of the uncertainty of our election and recent their democratization, a case idea of today can be without inherency tomorrow.
As far as getting people interested, I think it will be more this year than you had last year (all speculation), but not as much as you’d like. There are still several schools that only do LD in the Spring, and with all of the other duties that coaches/instructors/full-time faculty members typically have, reading up on Cuba, CE, and US national policy in general is a bit daunting. It is highly possible that people just don’t have case ideas yet, as they may not be working on the topic yet.
Perhaps a good post would address the needs people may have in starting LD and recruiting for LD. I encourage people to reach out to their feeder high schools and find out if any policy debaters are floating around at their college but just haven’t done debate because up until now the focus was Parli. Beyond that, a teacher could use the Cuba topic as the primary topic for their Argument class, but still we’re talking at least two months before you can get newbies up to speed.
I was hoping that El Camino would have LD, but because it is likely not the case I am going up to San Francisco the same weekend. We will be happy to be local at Cal Baptist, but perhaps people are waiting for the Workshop or just until the first week of class is behind us.
We at RCC will be supporting LD the best we can. We will try to be at all of the local tournaments with LD. We are PRIMARILY doing LD now, and Parli is only a ‘reward’ for doing LD. So beyond the general shock to the system and the transition to the focus on LD, I don’t know what else to do. There must be a way to get involved and be perceived as being involved without sharing case ideas and strategies. Any suggestions?