Running Pre-Briefed Positions

My long response is rather jaded, my short response is “don’t blame the camp evidence, blame the (lazy) debater.” OK, maybe that was a little jaded, too.

It is your site and I know you will always do what is in the best interest of students.

Now, back to writing 2 papers due in 12 hours… talk about lazy debaters, lol.

If we did more by way of teaching the students how to construct basic arguments, not to mention cut a good piece of evidence, I think we would see more independent research. I’m not convinced the students (largely coming from Parli) know about how to construct a disadvantage, what their options are for refutation, or how easy it is to find their own research.

El Camino did well, but so did many students who jumped on the LD train after December. I think that the success of debaters who were entirely unfamiliar with the topic goes back to my suggestion that the judges need to have more training. Many Parli debaters develop their “eloquence” during the first semester and then go to LD and use the camp evidence in the second semester. They are able to win because the judges are from IE and are evaluating the eloquence over the familiarity with the topic and the stock issues. Also the pool of judges is so large that the camp briefs are new to many of the judges; you only heard t

he cries of frustration from the judges who had been around for the entire year. (And not that you’d believe this, but my cat actually just pressed “send” in the middle of my typing .

1. For what its worth, starting this Summer, (on/about July 5) our website, debatecollege.com, will post NFA-LD cites at least on a monthly basis. I will also be writing an NFA-LD column on at least a monthly basis on that website.

2. Like Danny, this past Spring, I heard a lot of grousing about debaters relying upon “camp evidence” and/or “canned briefs.” (Indeed, I may have been one of the “grousers” to whom he refers, although my concern was with “stale” evidence and “obsolete” arguments, not with briefing per se.)

Let me make my position absolutely clear.

A. “Briefing = good.”

Briefing is the basis of our legal system, and is the cornerstone of “real-world” policymaking (eg. that is why it is standard term of art to say that policymakers and/or consultants are “briefed” and/or “debriefed”).

B. I am 100% in favor of debate camps – in principle (and about 90% in favor in practice, as well). In particular, I wish to go on record as unequivocally praising John Boyer, Lafayette College, and all of the pioneers of NFA-LD “debate camp(s).”

C. I think “debate camps” serve a VERY useful purpose in providing research on the topic (“hereinafter “evidence” and/or “cards”) as well as teaching RESEARCH TECHNIQUES and debate theory.

D. However, debate camps – and the research they generate – should be the BEGINNING of the debate journey – not its end. My concerns:

(1) People (other than the fine debaters from Lafayette College) AT NFA NATIONALS were still reading debate camp briefs – verbatim – with the Lafayette College logo still prominently displayed – and, far too often, they obviously did not understand much of what they were saying.

(2) A substantial portion of the debate camp briefs easily could have – and certainly SHOULD have – been updated and amended to reflect that changing policies from the Bush II Administration to the Obama Administration.

(3) Say what you will about “canned briefs” on the subject matter of the topic – I find them preferable to rote, equally-”canned,” often supercilious (if not just plain trivial and silly) Topicality arguments (i.e. “with”) that were pervasive at PSCFA Spring Champs, CCCFA State, and NFA Nationals – and routinely run against the most middle-of-the-road Affirmative Plans!

D. “Lazy Debaters” is part of the problem – but “laziness” (fatigue? lack of experience?) is – and has been – a problem with policy debaters at the high school and college levels for at least the past 43 years – I know that from personal observation.

E. At Least IMHO…

1. “Lazy Debaters” are enabled by “Lazy” Coaches who don’t assign – and monitor – research assignments to their teams, and who don’t keep current with the academic literature on the topic themselves.

2. MOST IMPORTANTLY, “Lazy Debaters” are enabled by “LAZY” JUDGES
who vote for – and give high speaker points to – debaters who do not move the ball forward with original thought and original arguments, but rather “spew” briefs.

F. I am second to none in my admiration for El Camino (and my ballots attest to that) but Moorpark and my own GCC stayed pretty much up-to-date on Cuba as well. Indeed, at least to the best of my knowledge, no one at GCC ever had access to a Debate Camp brief (but we will next year, I assure you).

In Summary, and in contempo “Debatespeak”:

Deb Cmp = good
Brfs = good
Revision + Innovation + Collaboration + Camp + Briefs = optimal

P.S. I continue to be willing to work with anyone, anywhere, anytime to set up and run an NFALD “clinc on the West Coast – NOT in conflict with Otterbein.

Is anyone interested… or should I just give up?

Michael,

We should plan to run a NFA-LD camp in Riverside or somewhere else, for free, and I’m thinking during the week of Aug. 17 works for me and my schedule. I can get rooms at RCC, not that we would need that many. Contact me directly and we can work on a schedule.
sydnekasle@yahoo.com

“I’m not convinced the students (largely coming from Parli) know about how to construct a disadvantage, what their options are for refutation, or how easy it is to find their own research.”

Sydne–have you watched, judged, or taken interest in a college parli round within, at least, this last season(2008-2009)?

Just curious…

Watched, yes; judged, no; heard about how rounds evolved, yes; taken interest in, no. By constructing, I meant with the use of evidence. By options for refutation, I meant topic-specific arguments that evolve from a knowledge of the topic and not a knowledge of the camp evidence. Researching one topic all year helps a debater to develop a list of possible arguments to make. The list grows longer as the year goes on.

Sydne: Check Your Email.

Db8Me raises an interesting case in point:

At least IMHO, “Constructing a Disadvantage” is a lost art – “lost” in the sense that contemporary debaters (even the best of them) tend to bury DA’s in a pile of prolix, verbose, esoteric debateobabble.

For what it’s worth (and in an abbreviated fashion), here’s my suggested forumla for constructing a DA:

1. TAG the DA the same way you would write a THESIS SENTENCE for a persuasive speech (or essay). (In other words, “Politics” and/or “Extinction” is not a sufficient tag.)

2. Persuasively and logically LINK the DA to the Plan. (That is, EXPLAIN the specific cause-effect relationship[s] between the PLAN and cetain consequences.)

3. Then QUANTIFY – in human terms (death & suffering) – the IMPACT(S) of the DA.

Applying the formula to last year’s topic:

1. TAG (or TITLE): “This Plan Will Cause a Caribbean Armargeddon.”

2. LINK(S) (cause-effect relationship[s]) “Why do I say that? Because…”

A. The Plan will “vastly increase” the financial resources of the Castro Government. (Often the Affirmative actually quantified how much new money would be sent to Cuba.)
B. The Cuban Government – top to bottom – HATES America.
C. Only the lack of financial resources (starting with the fall of the USSR) has prevented the Catrro Government from exporting “Wars Of National Liberation” and/or sending sending combet troops to other countries.(Evidence – both historical and predictive – was/is all over the place.)

3. IMPACT(S):
A. Cuba – bankrolled by American tourist/trade dollars – will create “New Vietnams” throughout the Hemisphere – Nicaragua, El Savador, Grenada, Mexico (both historical examples and predictive evidence also abound.)
B. Other anti-American regimes in Latin America will assist Cuba.
C. The Russians – either out of simple imperialist tendencies, or in retaliation for American intervention in Europe, Geirgia, etc., or both – will seek to exploit this chaos.
D. HUMAN TOLL:
Minimum – war, revolution, chaos in Latin America, plus possible refugee crisis for USA
Maximum – nuke war with Russia

Yeah, I know… Why didn’t more GCC debaters run this kind of disadvantage last year?

Because I (and others) wouldn’t just sit down at the computer and write DA’s for them. We wanted our debaters to learn how to construct DA’s on their own. But none of our debaters went to “camp,” we got started late, we didn’t have a formal class in NFA-LD, and…
maybe I’m just a “lazy coach.”

I don’t intend to repeat my mistakes from last year.

And this is the kind of thing I’d like to teach debaters to do – IF I COULD ONLY FIND A FORUM IN WHICH TO DO IT. I keep volunteering.

I do not agree with the db8 head that people do not know how to make a disad, even if you didn’t know how to make one at the beginning of a tournament you will after you get your ass kicked by them enough. Eventually, debaters figure out why they are losing and learn structure (or get frustrated and blame everyone else). The difference is, lazy debaters take longer while engaged debaters learn quick. I mean seriously, it is not hard to know that something isn’t happening, you make it happen, and when it does happen it is going to be bad, really really bad! These [people] are just to lazy to do the work themselves or they are novices who weren’t taught the proper structure/just don’t use it.

Whoa Michael, yo, you use some big words in there but let me break it down because I don’t know what rounds you were watching, but they sure weren’t mine. Namely, this WAS my favorite opp DA lol. Except my link was a little sweeter, Russia wants to renew ties and get back the old base they had there before. Plan increases relations with Cuba so they have influence over Cuba so they say no to Cuba, causes cold war blah blah blah. The oil shut down made my probability arguments have quite a bit more uniqueness, too. I am sorry that you had to watch bad debates but it happens.

Just as a contrast to db8 saying parli people don’t know whats going on as much. Parli kids are just lazier then policy kids apparently. I did policy in HS so maybe I am the exception… wait, there is El Camino, Pacific, WKY (not all of them do/did policy), and Riverside that all do their own research and keep it going on the competitive level. I am biased but I think these schools are also really dedicated to the event.

Well let’s not pit anyone against anyone else. Both Parli and LD have their merits. I just would love it if the rules and things like the names of the sides were kept straight. LD has Affirmative and Negative, not Government and Opposition. In LD you cannot interrupt an opponent during a speech for a question or anything else. And in LD you do read evidence (quotations) to support your claims. To take it a step further, the claims are created AFTER reading evidence on the topic.

If the new debaters are learning from the camp evidence, they have a warped perception of what constitutes a good card, and sometimes a good source. No offense to the Lafayette people, as debate camp is frequently the place to learn about things and then sift through them later. The point here is that many of the PSCFA LDers just kept reading the same briefs, even when the sources were outdated, when the tags overclaimed the evidence, and so on. I don’t want an evidence card by Wolf Blitzer. He’s a news guy, not an expert on Latin American affairs.

For those who had the pleasure to watch WKY, or Truman, YOP, El Camino, Airforce, etc., they saw the “straight up” approach to LD. Some LDers choose to navigate away from conservative debate, but it is a choice AFTER learning the stock issues, and not in place of.

Disad stories are notorious for slippery slopes and the like. CEDA used to be big on impacts and not care about links. NDT read so many cards that the judges had to read all of them after the debate just to find out what was said – and judge intervention occurred all the time. We can go on and on about the negatives, but I’d rather focus on the positives.

I do not want to pit LD against Parli. I want to point out how they are different and suggest that we conitue our efforts to promote the standards and rules in place for a debate that is policy and evidence-oriented. Good practices in another format could be labeled as bad practices in the LD format. It doesn’t mean those practices are bad in general, or worse than LD practices, just inappropriate for the LD round.

lol wolf blitzer! Did someone actually cite the blitz? I almost want to start running Objectivism and the Love K after hearing that. For sure a world government CP on US electrical grids!

As someone who does both parli and LD I wish that LD would lighten up on some of those rules a bit. However, it is really nice to have a nice clean 2 disad CP debate sometimes, old schoolin it.

I think it is hard to create a sense of ethic with people not understanding why LD is the way it is. When LD is compared to Parli and Policy it is quite limiting. Maybe a brief history of LD being explained to people will make them understand a bit better?

What is LD supposed to be in y’alls opinion?

I second what Danny says about written rules, and the current NFA-LD written rules (which, at least in my experience, are circumvented more than they are honored) are a case in point.

For well or ill (and, on balance, I come down on the side of “well”), high school and college debate are the examples of capitalism incarnate. That which sells is that which the majority of the customers (read: judges) want to buy… Prohibition should have taught us that.

If people – regardless of age, education, and/or experience – want to “save” policy debate from the current NDT/CEDA/[HS]TOC style (or to “reform” or “improve” it) – they need to get off their pedestals, leave their ivory towers, teach debate camps and clinics, and – most importantly – go to tournaments every weekend and JUDGE. Let us lead by participation – not by pontification.

What is LD “supposed to be?”

Well here, bless their hearts, I think the NFA people nailed this one in its “Judging Paradigm.” IMHO, LD should be:
One-person policy debate with an equal emphasis on academic research and persuasive public speaking skills.

(I would add that LD debate can, and should, be open to judging by any person who is eligible to vote in an American election and/or eligible to sit as a juror in an American felony criminal trial. My reasoning: if a person can vote on the content of a State’s Constitution, select the President of the United States, and/or send another human being to Death Row, he/she is at least “eligible” to assume the awesome responsibilities of judging an intercollegiate debate. Mutual Preference Judging has made team policy debate what it is today – incoherent to even the average college professor.)

Finally, I think NFA would be wise to adapt for LD a modified old-fashioned AFA Form-C Team Debate Ballot – the one that had the 30 possible speaker points divided up into six categories.

Good news. I can get four or five classrooms reserved, with A/C, on the RCC campus for the week of August 17, 10-6 PM. I am pretty sure the campus is operational but deserted, so we could stay longer if we wanted to. That being said, I can draft a schedule for a workshop.

I would like a list of anything you want to have included, as well as preferences for number of days. You can post it here or e-mail me at:
sydnekasle@yahoo.com. Please tell me who you really are, and what school you are from as well. Anonymous web chats are freaky.

We have a range of the following dates, so with those dates in mind let me know what you think. Obviously I can’t ask everyone about this, but the few who have been discussing this issue and the Resolution issue (Shantal or someone else) can chime in now. I’ll wait a few days to see what people say (about topics and also range of dates), and then I’ll work on a schedule with any coach or DOD who wants to be a part of the planning. Then we’ll advertise it.

Range of dates: August 17-August August 23.

I will die if I do all of those days, but let me know what you think.

sek

“One-person policy debate with an equal emphasis on academic research and persuasive public speaking skills. ”

Ok, so why does this necessarily exclude criticisms, topical CP’s, and and other nontraditional debate forms again?

I will stop trollin now and get serious. I cannot wait for August now! See you all there.

I don’t know if Mike meant that LD excluded those things, because his team ran a Kritik. We can cover some basic Kritik theory, certainly answers to the Kritik, CPs (the NFA-LD rules do say non-topical CPs only), and as far as “nontraditional” of course it does exist on the LD level, and maybe we can ask someone to come and talk about performance debate, but I do not prefer that style.

If you are interested in what some of the policy coaches say about the nontraditional debate, check out that edebate link I provided (maybe in the other thread about Resolutions) and go to the archives. Many coaches, some who created the “mess”, are frustrated.

The rules of LD do exclude those things under traditional interpretation of LD rules to most of the people that I have talked to about them. I don’t understand why they are excluded which is why I proposed the question. I am sorry for not being quite as direct as I could have been. Let me do a better job.

I will cede that most performance debate seen is a little bit…. messy/useless?
I guess my question is about why no Kritiks and why no Topical CP’s?

These are good questions and should be sent to an official at the NFA. I am not part of the organization and can only presume that it has something to do with an attempt to bring the debate back to something that was predictable and easier to manage. Back in the day, CPs were all non-topical. If you look at older Argumentation books, even recent ones, you see that CPs are supposed to be non-topical because theoretically the AFF advances the Resolution and the NEG does not. Within the span of my debating career and coaching (the first time around), people in the NDT started running Topical counterplans and winning. I don’t know who voted for a Topical CP first, but someone did. Then it became more mainstream and happened often, and subsequently the clear division of ground went away. Even today not all coaches of policy debate agree on whether the CP should be non-Topical, so largely it depends on who is in the back of the room judging. Then of course there are the arguments associated with the notion, and some debaters are more compelling than others when defending the non-T CP. The same goes for the Kritik, which was introduced during my debating career or just after that when I was first coaching. Bill Shanahan was someone who brought Critical Theory into the debate world, coaching at Univ. of TX at the time. It was a big shift to bring critical theory into the debate, quoting Derrida, Habermas, etc., though many argued that a “critique” existed all the time when you read an AFF case, offering obviously a criticism of the status quo for some reason or the other – but of course not all criticisms had to do with marginalization. Then we saw the Ethic, and Deontology, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, etc., Critical Race Theory, Critical Legal Studies, and so on, all as Disadvantages, which led to suggestions of paradigm shifts when evaluating debates, which progressed to only arguing the K, and then a manifestation of that was performance debate (something I’ve only heard about in extremes and avoided as best as I can).

Back in the day CEDA evolved to slow down debate and protect smaller programs by having a topic each semester. It was also fact/value and not policy. But the best CEDA debaters could take the NDT debaters, and I remember being at Districts one year and the top CEDA team from SIU came to our Districts having never done NDT and went 7-1 or 6-2 and went to the NDT. It was almost scandalous. CEDA was just as fast as NDT and pretty soon CEDA adopted their year-long topic (this was the case when I was at Florida State), but had a different topic from NDT, but it was also now a policy topic. Soon after that NDT/CEDA merged to give schools more tournament options, and they now share the topic. You can see the “CEDA” and the “NDT” schools only if the program has remained consistently one or the other, but now you see that schools will compete in both of the Nationals (one after the other) and that CEDA schools do well at NDT and visa verse.

When I was debating at at NDT school, District 10, or 9, developed ADA, which was again an attempt to slow down debate and make it more predictable and take debate back to its roots. Their rules were similar to what we see NFL-LD rules are now, including saying that Topicality was a voting issue and that you had to slow down your delivery. But some interpreted that as if the Neg. breathes T, you have to vote for them. So, it kind of broke down, and the best ADA debaters, namely George Mason at the time, were just as fast as any NDT team and were pre-bids for the NDT. Basically what we all did was debate a certain way at certain tournaments, like Northwestern, Wake, etc., where the judging pool was vast and less conservative, and debated a different way when we were at an ADA tournament or in front of an ADA-ish judge.

For a good “story” on the evolution of debate, check out Austin Freeley and David Steinberg’s Argumentation book, maybe Chapter 2, and you’ll either be fascinated or like one of my less enthusiastic students said, ‘bored to death’. It is a good history, however.

So…my general answer is that someone is trying to reign in the mayhem that is happening on the larger scale, get debate back to its roots so it is easier to coach, judge, and do, and that’s about it. It doesn’t work, as you can see who did well at NFL in LD, and they all don’t talk slowly and they do run Kritiks, and probably someone in NFL-LD has voted for a topical CP.

One thing we could consider as an LD community in this area is to do the CEDA/NDT topic and do LD. I know that Phi Rho Pi offers CEDA LD at their National, but I’m not sure what other national tournaments exist for the LDer doing the CEDA/NDT topic. The topic areas certainly may seem more provocative, plus you get the bonus of being linked into the foremost policy debate authorities, the edebate chatboard, the ADI experience, and so on. You do not have to abide by the NFA-LD rules, but then again, an experienced judge may not abide by the rules, or may “relax” the rules. Bottom line is that in theory nobody can make me vote for T if I do not want to, nor can they tell me what is too fast in terms of delivery. It is subjective, as many rules are.

But like I said, go to the NFA homepage and find out the name of one of the officers, and e-mail the person and ask for an explanation. That’s the best way to find out why.

Re: “pre-briefed” positions:

I think that there’s really not much of a problem here. If you want to actually beat people consistently in LD at a high level, you have to cut more than camp evidence. I remember laughing more than a few times last year when people read evidence against me that I personally cut. If you don’t think I know how to answer it you are quite mistaken.

That being said, some debaters simply don’t have the time/inclination to research LD heavily, but still want to participate. The camp ev serves a valuable purpose. I know at APU this year, Zach Freels, with nothing but camp ev, beat basically the entire UOP team. Good debaters can take bad evidence and make it work.

Re: D/A structure,

Dr. Miller, all due respect, the way you would teach D/A structure has some basic problems, I’ll demonstrate by taking your D/A, structuring it properly, and then explaining the changes.

A. Uniqueness

1. The Cuban Government – top to bottom – HATES America.

2. Only the lack of financial resources (starting with the fall of the USSR) has prevented the Catrro Government from exporting “Wars Of National Liberation” and/or sending sending combet troops to other countries.(Evidence – both historical and predictive – was/is all over the place.)

B. Link

The Plan will “vastly increase” the financial resources of the Castro Government. (Often the Affirmative actually quantified how much new money would be sent to Cuba.)

C. Internal Link

1. Cuba – bankrolled by American tourist/trade dollars – will create “New Vietnams” throughout the Hemisphere – Nicaragua, El Savador, Grenada, Mexico (both historical examples and predictive evidence also abound.)

2. Other anti-American regimes in Latin America will assist Cuba.

3. The Russians – either out of simple imperialist tendencies, or in retaliation for American intervention in Europe, Geirgia, etc., or both – will seek to exploit this chaos.

D. Impacts

1. war, revolution, chaos in Latin America, plus possible refugee crisis for USA
2. nuke war with Russia

The first thing you will notice is that your 2nd and 3rd link arguments are now explicitly labeled as uniqueness. Uniqueness arguments are descriptions of the status quo – link arguments are descriptions of how the plan changes the status quo.

The uniqueness of this d/a is actually pretty strong, as articulated, because the world is an awesome, and yet fragile place. Awesome, in that Cuba will not be invading anyone in the status quo. Fragile, in that if the Cuban government gets some money, it will do so. (To strengthen this argument, you might want to read evidence about how the Cuban government is broke, or that their economy is in serious trouble.)

However, if you teach these arguments as link arguments, then what happens is that debaters often neglect the importance of uniqueness arguments. This is a mistake that I see constantly when I hit community college debaters (even the best ones.) Either they will make uniqueness arguments “going the wrong way” (describing the status quo as a horrible place – in the world of this disad, making arguments about why Cuba is invading countries in the status quo, or how the cuban government is getting money in the status quo) or simply neglecting them entirely.

The second thing that I’ve done is that I’ve taken your impact arguments and renamed them as internal link arguments (because that’s what they are.) Again, one of the basic mistakes that newer debaters make is that they confuse internal links and impacts. An impact is a tangible effect on human life – an internal link is how you get from the link to the impact.

The thing is that the content of the D/A that you provided contains all the essential arguments – it has uniqueness as well as terminalized impacts. It’s a good D/A, content-wise. But if you teach your debaters to structure their D/As in this way, don’t be surprised to read ballots that say things like “d/a contained no uniqueness arguments in the shell, and the 1AR capitalized” or “d/a contained no terminalized impacts to weigh against the case.” That’s because debaters will copy your formula, and not necessarily your content.

Also, I think that having a thesis for the D/A becomes unnecessary once the D/A is structured properly. Just tag it as Caribbean Collapse, and then the rest of it logically flows – here’s the status quo, here’s what your plan does, here’s what that leads to, here are the bodies.

I think you are making an assumption Will, that people need to give a uniqueness story. Why would they need that?

That’s a good point. There are linear Disads that basically say that there is a problem and it is worsened by the Aff. action. That is different from a story saying we are on the brink of something and the Aff. action pushes us over the threshold. So you do need uniqueness for the brink DA, but you do not need uniqueness for the linear DA.

Without going into too much detail on this, someone could be confusing a non-unique argument with an alternative causality argument or an empirically untrue argument.

If you are an AFF you can argue that there is no link, on multiple levels. You can argue that we are not on the brink, that the AFF does not push us over the brink, that other things can push us over the brink, or that empirically something happened that was very similar to the AFF plan action and it did not push us over the brink. All are different AFF attacks on the brink/threshold DA.

But for the linear DA, the AFF can argue that other things also contribute to the worsening of the problem, that the AFF doesn’t uniquely contribute (meaning DA is inevitable and happens with or without the plan), or the AFF is not qualitatively or quantitatively significant enough to worsen the problem to the point of no return…and then we of course get into the slippery slope arguments that can be made…impact unlikely, etc.

Of course any argument would be more compelling when supported with evidence!

I am not going to debate the Cuba topic in this forum, without evidence, altho I would love to debate it IN PERSON – any time, anywhere, with anyone, before any audience, and especially with evidence.

So as to the DA which I offered only as a shell, let me summarize my position by way of analogy: there are, at present, a lot of poisonous reptiles in many cities which, under the SQ, are “harmless” – even beneficial in a scientific sense. But they are harmless because they are regulated and isolated (one might even say “embargoed”).

One need not question why these reptiles are poisonous, or if they would be continue to poisonous in the future, or if there is some “tipping point” as to their toxicity to understand the threat they represent. One need only know that if we give them food and water, and them turn them loose in our cities, we would have what some folks might consider a disadvantageous situation.

And please don’t reduce my method of teaching/coaching to the two-dimensional. Some DA’s (as is true of some Advantages and other arguments) require a lot of substructure and analysis of contingencies (i.e., “China would nuke the USA if it lifted the Embargo”); others do not. This infinite range of possibilities makes debate as much fun as it is – or should be.

Who is Will Chamberlain? Can we try to focus on the thread, which has to do with running pre-briefed positions?

I like the discussion about the topic and about the debate forum and the rules and such, but this seems to be off topic and maybe a bit hostile.

I know who Mike Miller is, but Will Chamberlain sounds like a really tall pseudonym. Who is it?

Separate Aside to Nerdy (but I hope of interest to all students I coach and those poor unfortunates I may judge):

I did not state in my definition of “what LD should be” that ANY ARGUMENT is excluded (in legalese, I reject the concept of the prior restraint). Nor did I mean to imply that anything should be excluded.

Nerdy, you seem to assume that I am a rigid devotee of something you call “traditional LD debate theory,” an assumption which, for a variety or reasons, I would respectfully dispute.

In fact, I think “traditional LD debate theory” is something of a misnomer, because said theory is very much in a state of flux. That is one of the reasons why this event is so exciting at this time.

Please note that, by referencing the coequal standards of “academic research” AND “persuasive public speaking skills,” I left the door open to consideration of any kind argument a debater can present, so long as it is “proved” by rhetorical and forensic skills. If a debater wishes to argue a K (without or without faux-mooning), I am eager to listen; and – as for CP’s (topical, non-topical, condition, hypothetical) – I am open to persuasion.

NFA, not I, published and posted a paradigm for judging LD; they then “clarified” that paradigm on the first day of Nationals.

In a year of listening about, reading about, coaching, and judging NFA-LD, I have also been trying to learn. And there are two things I have learned for certain: (A) NFA has neither the intention nor the means to enforce its “judging paradigm”; and (b) I do NOT know everything there is to know about debate (although I do have a modicum of faith in a number of basic principles I have learned my 43 years of debate experience).

Aside to Sydne:

Thanks for coming to my defense but… Peace! As they say in Salt Lake City, Utes must be served.

Will Chamberlain is an outstanding debater (and, based upon my limited contact with him at Pt. Loma) a very nice person who, I believe, is a graduating Senior at the University of the Pacific.

I am grateful for his participation; moreover, having read his comments carefully, I think our disagreement – if any – has more to do with nomenclature than substance. And the differences in nomenclature may be inherently generational.

Perhaps Will might be willing to serve on some kind of a panel on LD Theory at the Riverside CC Clinic this August. The more Tigers who come South this August, the better the clinic will be.

Well I can only hope that Will Chamberlain will trek it from the lovely town of Stockton in order to be in the lovelier town of Riverside. We can most likely figure out accommodations for him. Maybe Marlin will send others, if he is so inclined. I’d ask him, he’s a stand-up guy.

How far back do we consider pre-briefed positions? Since there has been a significant change towards the rules and people’s perspective of what they are I think it is important to figure out if it is the kind of pre-briefed positions we are worried about.

Let’s pretend Dr. Miller was in the back of the room with Will and I in the front (mad props this year at NFA Will) and I ran a Borders K on the Cuba topic. I will admit it, I have 3 copies of different Borers K’s and I will never use it… I hope. There are 1,000 copies of it laying around and it is basic/easy as hell to run.

Should I necessarily have to go and rewrite a new one? I’ve read them a couple times but not really gone back and read primary sources. Do I deserve to go to pre-briefed hell? lol

Mike and I have talked about this. He can have his own answer, but my two cents is that we got frustrated that debaters (largely from Parli) just jumped into LD without having any original research. They used the Lafayette briefs exactly as they were handed them, not even cutting them up and re-organizing them and sifting through old or bad cards. They took camp evidence as their evidence, and read the same briefs over and over and over and OVER. As educators we want a few things: students/coaches do their own work as a squad in incorporate camp evidence, student/coaches adjust throughout the year, students/coaches develop new positions, etc. Most positions should be pre-briefed, or briefed, prior to the round. Some do stay the same, and yes we all use backfiles. BUT, over and OVER and OVER again, the same briefs, used by all of the competitors, it is just like a bunch of practice debates at the end of the Lafayette camp, nothing more interesting than that. And this was happening on the JV and V level, because so many of the students were Parli debaters, good ones, but had to go into a higher division for LD because of the year they were in school. It was shameful. We all “get” that it is about competing and winning, but learning has to occur (and that has been mentioned in this thread). So, and it is hard to do this if you are still a competitor, but you’ve got to try to look at the situation from the perspective of a coach/teacher. We’ve been doing this for years (Mike a bit longer …. ha…ha…), dedicated to teaching and learning, and we just want to see some of that, and effort, and then yeah, use some backfiles and camp evidence, but use something else too. Let’s see progress from tournament to tournament, that’s all he’s saying, I think. At least that’s my feeling about it.

It might help if someone would let me know what the “Borders K” is, and how it relates(ed) to a Cuba case (i.e., eliminate the entire travel ban).

I don’t have time for a more thorough response now, but I will say this:
I would have been inclined to listen to ANY kind of argument – spontaneous, work-in-progress, briefed, canned or freeze-dried – instead of all of the frivolous topicality arguments used against stock cases/plans!

I always like seeing what people respond to this when I ask it, What is a frivolous T and what is a necessary T?

The first test is the “gut check” – is this topicality on-face something that constitutes a voting issue? When you have stuff like “increase requires preexistence” or “substantial means 3%” chances are that it’s just a timesuck designed to waste time.

Typically a valid topicality is resolution-specific – that is, it deals with the words in the resolution that change from year to year. For example, on the high school topic, topicality on what is “alternative energy” (and whether it includes or excludes nuclear energy) and what are “incentives” (and whether incentives includes regulations like cap and trade) are generally considered debates that can be fleshed out very much in-depth in the 2NR.

I believe what Miller is saying is that the teams in our area were running the same plans all year long. They were clearly within the realm of being Topical. You can always run T, and there were enough cards I finally found that made the definition of CE disputable. The problem we saw in our area was that T was the only position run. You can run a T shell and see what happens, but then get some case evidence. My god, the topic was not that large, but barely any teams ever got evidence on the embargo, on the travel ban, and so on. Moreover, the cases and the DAs remained the same, but barely anyone got any of their own evidence…so the people in the debate community (in general) were quoting the two recent books specifically about Cuba-US relations, there were no economy updates, no specific cards about Cuban health care, the bird flu, invasion of Cuba, and so on.

I do not think that we should take everything that is said here on this chat board as so literally and narrowly defined, because we are all busy and do not have time to go into lots of details. But basically, as a judge I got sick of hearing the same CE-T argument, the same Russia scenario, then only we seemed to have evidence saying Russia’s army is screwed, the same Venezuela DA, and we were the only ones who seemed to read cards saying specifically that LA countries would like/hate this or that plan….what Mike is saying is that we had no evolution of arguments during the season, in part because the Parli students would come over the tinker in LD to get ready for Phi Rho Pi, and didn’t know anything about the topic, or the students just didn’t learn how to do research and update files.

So run your generic T, but know that if you are running it in front of a Parli/IE judge you are not getting the same level of evaluation of that argument, and you can throw around the phrase “bright line” all you want, but give me a break, lifting the trade embargo (unless there’s something funky in the plan) is CE…or can reasonably be seen as CE, and can reasonably be predicted as a plan that you will here, so get some case evidence and make yourself look like a debater…..

Truly I think that because Parli topics change every round, the typical Parli debater is not trained to investigate evidence during the course of a year, on a particular policy topic. It isn’t laziness (though some times it is), but it is lack of knowledge provided the student in Parli has had no prior training in some evidence-based policy debate.

Bottom line is that our debaters aren’t getting the full benefit of a full-year policy topic if they do not learn how to do research and apply research to refutation options. They may win a debate, but they didn’t learn anything. And as I pointed out before, Mike and I (and others) are looking at it from a coach/teacher point of view, not just a win/loss point of view.

I think one of the things to take away from what you said Sydne is that almost no one is doing research at all. This means that everyone is using the same evidence, almost. To me, this means that there is no pressure on teams to do any research. All it takes is 2 teams that do research to kick everyone else’s ass and maybe, I do say maybe, some teams will start doing some research, but that requires the coach to get involved to a point.

I know that my CC coach didn’t do anything except tell me where the print center was at school and her password to get it printed. I had over 5k pages that year by the last tournament so she probably knew that I was ok. The rest of my team, never read any of the evidence that was printed for them. One of them didn’t read their 1ac until they were in the 1ac and couldn’t finish it because he didn’t know how long it took.

I won because I did all the research and knew every case and had done all the research and broke at nationals. They didn’t read any of their shit… they went 1-5 at best. After losing enough people will start to do work, but someone has to get them to do it. Losing works just as well as a coach, I think. So… I intend to help some people learn

“All it takes is 2 teams that do research to kick everyone else’s ass and maybe, I do say maybe, some teams will start doing some research, but that requires the coach to get involved to a point.”

I second this. No offense intended to anyone here who happens to be guilty of the crime, but it’s going to be a very, very difficult round for anyone attempting to leverage outdated evidence from a summer camp against the comprehensive update file I cut the week before the tournament. Either teams will adapt and start cutting updates, or they will find it nearly impossible to advance to elimination rounds when up against those squads that *are* doing the work and are producing new and innovative arguments.

Quite true, both of you…EXCEPT that the pool of judges for NFA-LD is diverse and there are many who do not typically evaluate an evidence-based debate activity. They may or may not have knowledge of the various tests applied to evidence: recency, bias, external consistency, and so on….and so yes let’s keep the momentum going and make an issue out of it during the rounds…and eventually there MIGHT be some pressure to do work. As long as those who do not research still win, there will not be motivation to do the research. But if debaters start pressing the issue more in rounds, and judges start applying tests of evidence when asked to do so, then the tide MAY turn and you all will be rewarded because you’ve done the work and updated your files along the way.

“I think you are making an assumption Will, that people need to give a uniqueness story. Why would they need that?”

You need a uniqueness story in order to win impacts that outweigh the case impacts, and to protect your disadvantage from link turns.

I’ll demonstrate by way of example.

In double-octs at NPDA, Sarah and I faced Chris Maciel and Justin Harris from Moorpark, excellent debaters both. Sarah and I were affirmative and ran a case that had the South African government place a trade embargo on Zimbabwe. Chris and Justin ran the following D/A (transcribed from recollection, so may be inaccurate):

South Africa Collapse

A. Uniqueness
1. The South African government is falling apart now, it is going to collapse by 2013.
2. South Africa has some of the highest murder rates and crime rates of any country.
3. Its economy is also extremely weak.

B. Link
Plan denies South Africa the funds it would have had from Zimbabwean trade.

C. Internal Link
Given the already shoddy state of finances in South Africa, this will lead to the government’s collapse.

D. Impacts
Collapse bad – disease/death/etc.

The problem with this D/A, if it isn’t obvious, is that the uniqueness is “going the wrong way.” If in the status quo, the South African government is going to collapse, then the impacts of the D/A are inevitable, and thus not a reason to reject the plan. Justin, smartly, tried to claim some impacts based on the accelerated timeframe, but the impact he could accrue was greatly reduced, and thus the D/A couldn’t really outweigh the case impacts.

Additionally, this made them vulnerable to link turns. On the link level, I made arguments about how blockading Zimbabwe would unify the ANC around Zuma and thus lead to them governing more effectively and stopping the collapse, among others.

Now the inevitability arguments really come back to haunt the negative. Because if everyone agrees that the government is going to collapse in the status quo, then the plan only has a risk of making things better. Thus, even if you think the warrants for their link argument are stronger than the warrants for my link turn, you would prefer the link turn, because the link turn is the only argument that can actually change the status quo, or, to use debate jargon, “the uniqueness controls the direction of the link.”

This problem still occurs if the negative were to completely forgo uniqueness arguments, because what would happen then is that I’d get up in my MG/1AR, make the “south african government will collapse in the sq” arguments, and then make the same link turns. Because the negative has no arguments about why the government is stable in the SQ, they are way behind on the D/A.

And the thing is, it’s really easy to turn a linear d/a into a unique d/a. Even if the status quo is really bad, you just need to make arguments about how it is IMPROVING. You usually do this by citing some bill that someone is trying to passed or just passed. It’s better than just giving up the uniqueness debate.

“Will Chamberlain is an outstanding debater (and, based upon my limited contact with him at Pt. Loma) a very nice person who, I believe, is a graduating Senior at the University of the Pacific.”

Actually, I’m finishing my junior year. I’ll be around

“I am grateful for his participation; moreover, having read his comments carefully, I think our disagreement – if any – has more to do with nomenclature than substance. And the differences in nomenclature may be inherently generational.”

Bingo. However, I’d still urge you to use the uniqueness/link/internal link/impact model when you teach D/As to your kids. It really, really does help them avoid the basic mistakes I talked about, and really, no matter how simple your d/a is, it does need those four parts, just like topicality needs an interp, a violation, standards and voters.

Re: this whole “pre-briefed evidence” debate:

Clearly there are some coaches in this thread. Get your kids to start cutting cards. Cut affirmatives, and cut neg against all the camp affirmatives when they come out. If no one else in socal is cutting ev, they should dominate every tournament they go to. The problem solves itself. At Pacific, we cut a ton of stuff prior to NFA, not to “increase our education,” but so we could actually beat teams that were doing the same.

“Well I can only hope that Will Chamberlain will trek it from the lovely town of Stockton in order to be in the lovelier town of Riverside. We can most likely figure out accommodations for him. Maybe Marlin will send others, if he is so inclined. I’d ask him, he’s a stand-up guy.”

The dates might be tricky – we might be doing mini-camp at pacific before then – but if I’m free I’ll drive down.

Honestly, I said you don’t need uniqueness as a joke because from my parli training you need to have it. However, after thinking back – not really Will.

Uniqueness is a Pre-empt and nothing more. You can make your arguments about collapse inevitable in your speech but if the Uniqueness is there. If the Uniqueness is true why do we really need to state it, besides to waste another 30 seconds? Why would you run a DA that isn’t unique, I think I missed that day in class?

Sure, the other guy can challenge your Uniqueness story but why should I skew myself out of those 30 seconds? In your world, I have no time advantage necessarily… In my world I am 30 seconds ahead of you on another argument that I can extend in say 10 that I can weigh against your turn. LD is already time skewed enough why make it any easier for the other guy?

As I love to say, it’s debatable and we will find out in round.

“Sure, the other guy can challenge your Uniqueness story but why should I skew myself out of those 30 seconds? In your world, I have no time advantage necessarily… In my world I am 30 seconds ahead of you on another argument that I can extend in say 10 that I can weigh against your turn. LD is already time skewed enough why make it any easier for the other guy?”

What other argument? Uniqueness arguments are the arguments that you would leverage against the turn.

As the neg, you get two chances to speak, and reading evidence in the rebuttal is frowned upon, PLUS the 2AR gets golden responses. Plus, you aren’t time skewed as the negative in LD – the affirmative is. And the uniqueness is probably the single most important argument on the D/A, if you are claiming any sort of extinction impact. You don’t know how many rounds I’ve won by going “Oops, they concede the uniqueness on the d/a, that means their link turns are irrelevant, impact of d/a is extinction, any risk outweighs the case, vote neg.”

I’d love to see all the evidence that supports that wacky South Africa story. I’d especially like to see the evidence that says that the SA economy entirely depends upon the money they earn from trade with Zimbabwe, or even better, I’d love to see the card that predicts the total collapse of a government in more than three years…yes…I guess we see it coming but nobody does anything about it….hmmm….and of course that any trade embargo would have a chilling effect on trade…because of course we have that embargo with Cuba but we don’t trade with them….um……and if the SA gov. is so screwed up, why would it lead to disease and death if it collapsed? As opposed to the disease and death now, or just more, or…?

Evidence….would make the round much less confusing. These stories are just made up bits…like all of a sudden people are becoming foreign policy analysis without even a four-year degree. Shameful, if you ask me. I’d rather cut cards.

I love my card cuttin as much as anyone else believe you me.

But Will, really:
[quote]As the neg, you get two chances to speak, and reading evidence in the rebuttal is frowned upon, PLUS the 2AR gets golden responses. Plus, you aren’t time skewed as the negative in LD – the affirmative is. And the uniqueness is probably the single most important argument on the D/A, if you are claiming any sort of extinction impact. You don’t know how many rounds I’ve won by going “Oops, they concede the uniqueness on the d/a, that means their link turns are irrelevant, impact of d/a is extinction, any risk outweighs the case, vote neg.”[/quote]

If you think that Uniqueness is the most import argument on the D/A I think you forgot why we have links, extinction or not. We are all going to die no matter what so every DA is nonunique then and all Opps should lose.

Your right, I don’t know how many rounds you won by saing they concede the uniqueness, I wish it was none but we both know that is not true. So, your example assumes that the gov is stupid enough not to put a nonunique on your disad.

Let’s pretend you were debating someone good. They run 2 disads and a CP, standard shit right? They don’t throw a uniqueness story down… In my interpretation, the Opp’s 7 minute speech is an 8 minute speech compared to one that gives a uniqueness story… if you have the extra time why not use it efficiently? Why should I have to pre-empt your nonU answers again???

I never said the neg was time skewed but like I said why make it easier for the other guy? Lets go back to your Red Sword argument, why do I need to say that the cuban gov hates America and it is poor? I’ll let you make your arguments and we will see where it goes depending on your responses in round but I still do not see a reason why I need to spend 30 seconds for each disad for a uniqueness story you are going to cede or try and argue it back and I do not know which?

[quote] What other argument? Uniqueness arguments are the arguments that you would leverage against the turn. [/quote]

Remember I was 20 seconds up on the time debate from not saying a uniqueness story and I extended something else? Well, add that 20 seconds to the 30 you used to argue back the nonunique so I have a time advantage of you still. If you have an advantage why not use it to the full capacity? Aff always gets the last line on everything so why complain about it on uniqueness stories? Golden Responses my a$$, if that was true aff would always win and opp would always lose.

Sydne:

I was merely using the d/a as an example of a d/a with the uniqueness going the wrong way. The D/A certainly has other issues.

nerdy db8r:

“If you think that Uniqueness is the most import argument on the D/A I think you forgot why we have links, extinction or not. We are all going to die no matter what so every DA is nonunique then and all Opps should lose.”

1) D/A still outweighs on timeframe
2) You aren’t making any sort of comparison between uniqueness and link arguments, you are just saying link arguments matter. You’re right, link arguments are important. But uniqueness arguments are more important, as they determine which side can even access the link debate.

“Your right, I don’t know how many rounds you won by saing they concede the uniqueness, I wish it was none but we both know that is not true. So, your example assumes that the gov is stupid enough not to put a nonunique on your disad.”

Or make the wrong uniqueness arguments, etc, etc.

“Let’s pretend you were debating someone good. They run 2 disads and a CP, standard shit right? They don’t throw a uniqueness story down… In my interpretation, the Opp’s 7 minute speech is an 8 minute speech compared to one that gives a uniqueness story… if you have the extra time why not use it efficiently? Why should I have to pre-empt your nonU answers again???”

God you don’t know how ecstatic I would be if someone good did this. It would be game over. If I lock down the uniqueness debate in the 1AR/MG, every D/A you ran would be so solidly turned that you would be locked out of the NR/MO. Even if you decided to somehow spend 4 minutes crawling back on the uniqueness debate (answering my arguments and making your own) my 2AR/PMR would get second lines and responses, and you don’t get a chance to say anything back. I wouldn’t need to answer the C/P at all – if I’ve turned the D/As, they are now advantages to the plan that the C/P doesn’t capture, which means it’s a super easy affirmative ballot, AND i’ve gotten back whatever time skew you thought you would garner by forgetting to make uniqueness arguments.

Plus, the opp generally wants to be able to collapse. When every D/A is staring you back in the face as offense, you can’t collapse, meaning that I’m going to have a slew of extensions I get to make in the 2AR.

Plus, it’s not lost time that you spend on uniqueness in the shell – because whatever time you spend making those arguments in the shell is time that the MG/1AR has to spend answering those arguments if they want to get access to link turns.

“I never said the neg was time skewed but like I said why make it easier for the other guy? Lets go back to your Red Sword argument, why do I need to say that the cuban gov hates America and it is poor? I’ll let you make your arguments and we will see where it goes depending on your responses in round but I still do not see a reason why I need to spend 30 seconds for each disad for a uniqueness story you are going to cede or try and argue it back and I do not know which?”

I think the second lines analysis above answers this. If you don’t make your uniqueness arguments, then you will find yourself extremely far behind going into your second speech, you will only get the chance to make one line of argumentation, and I get golden answers in the 2AR.

“Remember I was 20 seconds up on the time debate from not saying a uniqueness story and I extended something else? Well, add that 20 seconds to the 30 you used to argue back the nonunique so I have a time advantage of you still. If you have an advantage why not use it to the full capacity?”

You didn’t respond to my point. You could get 2 minutes extra on the time debate as far as I’m concerned – if you don’t have uniqueness arguments to leverage against my link turn you are screwed. Suddenly every argument you are making on the link level is defensive and I’m always winning a risk of the impacts.

“Aff always gets the last line on everything so why complain about it on uniqueness stories? Golden Responses my a$$, if that was true aff would always win and opp would always lose.”

Um, no. Think harder. (Hint: you can’t give a golden answer to an extended argument)

“1) D/A …… But uniqueness arguments are more important, as they determine which side can even access the link debate.”

Die now versus die later? It still relies on the link to get your timeframe arguments… You never explained why the uniqueness is more important either. Link > Uniqueness. If you don’t have a link I don’t care how unique your DA is if it doesn’t link it doesn’t matter. If you have a DA that may/may not have uniqueness but you link I get the impact for sure because I can still say it could happen. If you have a totally unique DA that has no link it doesn’t matter, I win… I just cannot believe that Uniqueness is more important then a Link. I also doubt we will ever agree on it, so let’s move on. Also, 4 minutes trying to win uniqueness? Really? Ouch, but I guess if I spent those 4 minutes on uniqueness that would probably give me more offense then the 3 minutes you spend in the 2ar. Also, if I spent that much time in the 1nr on uniqueness you must have spent a ton of time on it in the 1ar so I am still up somewhere else in the debate.

“Or make the wrong uniqueness arguments, etc, etc.”

Stop assuming your opponent will always be an idiot, they may be but it is a bad idea.

“God you don’t know how ecstatic I would be if someone good did this…..AND I’ve gotten back whatever time skew you thought you would garner by forgetting to make uniqueness arguments.”
“Hahaha! Anything you can do I can turn!”

So far it is a lot of assumptions and ships crossing in the dark.… If you lock down the uniqueness debate in the 1ar then it wouldn’t mater if I gave a uniqueness in the 1nc anyways…. so…. non-unique? lol. I do not see a reason why I should give a uniqueness story yet… just that you are a good debater and you will turn whatever argument I make. Also, what kind of debater runs a non-unique DA that you will be able to crush as easily as you are making it seem… if it was that easy to win the uniqueness argument then you would be able to beat the debater anyways, with or without uniqueness. I can still run my responses to your non-uniques and run my own uniqueness story in the 1nr. I do not believe that Dr. Miller nor myself are saying uniqueness has no place in the debate, just not in the Shell. You still haven’t addressed the idea that a debater may not go for the non-unique.

“Plus, the opp generally wants to be able to collapse. ……those arguments in the shell is time that the MG/1AR has to spend answering those arguments if they want to get access to link turns. “

Opp will still collapse, if you turned the uniqueness in the 1st place there is no reason I could kick that DA anyways… again, non-unique. It is saved time because it is something that I don’t have to do until the aff makes a big deal of it… like give definitions on the aff unless you question it. I can assume it is unique until you say it isn’t. The 1ar is going to have to spend the time in the non-unique and link turn area which means I still get that 1 minute back to my side… that’s time enough for a T or whatever, so like I said I am ahead on the time game somewhere else. If I get a free minute that means I am going to use it somewhere to generate offense, don’t think it is going to just sit there Debate doesn’t happen on one sheet, usually.

“I think the second lines analysis above answers this. …..and I get golden answers in the 2AR.”

Your right, I only get 1 chance to make my uniqueness arguments if I don’t throw them down in the 1nc. I would only get 1 chance to respond if I did throw them down in the 1nc, too. Have fun answering the whole debate in 3 minutes when I just got 6 minutes to go after whatever I want especially when I am already ahead out of the 1nc. It is doable, yes, but it still works in my advantage. You’re also acting like your non-unique will be overwhelming and something that will scare children worse then another 4 years of high school. See golden response below, too.

“You didn’t respond to my point. ….. Suddenly every argument you are making on the link level is defensive and I’m always winning a risk of the impacts.”

You assume that I don’t answer your uniqueness and throw out my own extra args in the 1nr. I don’t care if it is looked down to read cards in the 1nr, in a debate where I have to answer the 1ar who probably should read cards that is a B$ concept that is intellectually bankrupt. I’ll throw those arguments down and make you respond in the 2ar.

“Um, no. Think harder. (Hint: you can’t give a golden answer to an extended argument)”

So, let me get this right… your gunna kick me arse across the flow in your 1ar, but you’re worried about those extended arguments? I thought you already turned everything in the 1ar? What do I have to extend anymore? You turned the uniqueness so you are going to get last responses to the uniqueness, but now I extended (x) argument in the 1nr that you don’t get arguments to in the 2ar??? Lucy, you have some ‘splaining to do! Aff always gets the last word and if that was so powerful it would be, “Don’t fear the Golden Response” instead of “Don’t fear the Reaper.”

It’s all about how you use your time and if I am going to get a time skew in my favor already I am really going to exploit it as best I can.

The ten-ton T-Rex (who eats 800-lb, gorillas for snacks) of tournament debating – whatever the forum – is time limits.

In NFA-LD, unlike NDT/CEDA, the Negative gets only one constructive speech – 7 minutes in length – to attack the alleged harms, to attack inherency, to attack solvency, AND (optional under “the rules”) argue topicality and /or present DA’s. (In addition, a good Negative might want to run a K* or a CP.)

Add to that the “evidence citation rules” espoused by NFA-LD which even I, a genuine fossilized debateosaur, think are unnecessarily burdensome.

Now that’s a lot of ground to cover, and, if one wishes to preserve NFA-LD as “a communication event” (whatever the hell that means) one has little time for excess verbiage.

At least IMHO, contemporary debateobabble is replete with excess verbiage and confusing technical jargon. (Topicality is the worst, but standard DA’s come in a close second.)

So with all due respect to Will, I’m going to continue to teach the PITHY, SCARY TAG+LINK+IMPACT (all supported by credible evidence of course) formula for arguing both advantages and disdadvantages. Dr. Sydne has called this “linear.” I call it common sense; and it is a method of composing arguments that has served me well – in the courtroom, and writing for political candidates, as well as in debate.

As to Will’s approach? “Perm!” (Debate is an art as well as a science.)

*You heard it here first… the America’s most-despised Debateosaur is working on a “killer K” that applies to all five transportation topics. Whether it will fly or not is anybody’s guess, but you’ve gotta give me an “E” for “effort” (or is it “extinct”)?

~cough~ biopower ~cough~
lol

Not even close, my dear Nerdy… As far as I’m concerned, “biopower” can Foucault itself.

lol
good times

tuche

I cannot wait to see this in round!

Quite entertaining as I skimmed. I don’t really have time to chime in on all of this. I have classes to teach and such. But let’s just say that all parts of a DA are important. We have to link a Cost argument to a Plan. If the Plan doesn’t cause it to happen, it goes away. It also goes away, or can go away, if it is a threshold-oriented story and the Plan doesn’t uniquely cause the DA to go over the brink, also if the internal link doesn’t make sense, also if the DA is empirically untrue because something similar to the Plan happened before and the DA didn’t happen, and then also there’s the likelihood of the Impact scenario, etc. You can assess the significance of the impact, in relation to what the Plan achieves, if it achieves anything, and then also there’s arguments that are not intrinsic, and also there’s the time frame of the DA versus what damage is being done in the Status Quo, and so on. I don’t know if one argument is better than another. As an AFF you only need one good argument to make the DA go away, which is really what you want to do, or capture it with a link or impact turn. As far as a DA goes, like I mentioned, it depends upon the judge…and the debate community…in CEDA one year Berkely said, “We don’t need a link because our impacts are so good,” which doesn’t make much sense, but they still won. The judges voted for it. It all will come down to the judge.

The mistake many debaters make is that they debate for themselves, not for the judge’s paradigm. If I were in this round I’d look for the nearest open window and hope we were several flights up (no offense)…so I’d just say that it is great that you all are hashing this out now and if we are all together for the workshop we can focus on the topic and then the arguements will emerge from our research.

sek

Danny: While you’re cutting and pasting, could you factor out the issue of topicality, too? As I recall, someone asked, “What is frivolous T as opposed to necessary T?” or words to that effect. That is, at least IMHO, a very important question which merits thoughtful discussion.

Thanks…

In an attempt to un-derail (hehe transit pun ftl) this thread, I would like to suggest another alternative to the next year as far as camp evidence goes. It would be sweet if we had an effective case list. I know the wiki started up last year and there has been enough discussion on the plausible effectiveness of it.

On the other hand, if we had a ceda/ndt style case list I would be down for it. I have no problem sending my 1ac with cites to a case list a week before a tournament/with registration for LD. If you don’t send in the 1ac you don’t get to use that case, auto DQ for the round you do, etc. If you don’t send in any 1ac hope you go opp every round. I think this would be cool.

A mandatory case list wouldn’t put to much of a burden on the hosting school either. If you don’t give a case list by x day you don’t get to compete and if it is past the drop date you get a bit of a fine for it. I don’t know to much about running a college tournament, I helped with a few HS tourney but I imagine it isn’t that much different. Overall, it may be a viable solution.

BTW, I do not believe that out-rounds should necessarily count in this equation. That subject is up for debate some other time, lets focus on that after you get done making fun of the idea of a tournament case list.

I know debaters thrive on the element of surprise but that is antithetical to the education standard of debate, if you are good you are good. Also, if you cannot win with a case you know you are going to run because your opponent knows your going to run with less then a weeks worth of warning go back to HS Congress or get better. lrn 2 rsrch nub. If you need help with that I will help you if you come meet with me one nerdy db8r to another!

This would increase case clash for those who wish to see it and also increase research done on the topic. Not to mention, these topic areas are really really really broad so it would be nice to see something besides suicide T each time there is a new aff. Wow, talk about killing the predictability standard lol. For a truly “non-topical” aff (whatever that is) you don’t have to worry about losing the predictability standard because there are 100 other standards you can win with.

The rest of this was how this won’t hurt small schools, which it won’t, and I don’t feel like dealing with that argument right now so here…

I think this will help detour schools running camp cases because they get access to ideas and sites to make their own cases from which increases education from doing research. If you go 4 and out you get to see 2 other affs and if they run the same case type you don’t learn as much as if there was a tournament case list. It works in policy it can work in LD. This will help a lot at the beginning of the year to set a high standard for debate as far as the research burden and hopefully quality of debate.

Absolutely do NOT require disclosure of cites. It needs to be voluntary. Number one, if I’m breaking a new and innovative affirmative, I’ve won the right to keep that a secret up until the first round in which I break it. Debate is first and foremost a game and we should reward teams who play by the rules and work harder than everyone else. Number two, the good teams will disclose their citations anyway because they know they can win based on their argumentative abilities and not necessarily the element of surprise (the exception being my first point). Voluntary disclosure of cites is very prevalent on the high school circuit due to the ultimate police force in the matter – peer pressure.

I know that I’ve certainly disclosed my affirmatives: http://debatecoaches.org/wiki/index.php?title=CK_McClatchy_(CA)_-_Kelsey_Long_%26_Nick_Matthews.

The team that won the high school Tournament of Champions in fact has a wiki page that is far, far beyond just their 1AC: http://debatecoaches.org/wiki/index.php?title=Westminster_Schools_(GA)_-_Rajesh_Jegadeesh_%26_Anshu_Sathian

The good teams will disclose their cites voluntarily, if you create the right peer mindset.

So people wont want to break new affs because they are not new since there is pre-tournament disclosure? However, after the 1st round they break it it’s no longer got that new toner smell so they shouldn’t run it anymore either.

Yeah, I agree it’s fun to surprise people with an aff. That’s all well and good. However, like you said, the good teams will still win. I plan on having at least 5 cases for next year for the 1st tournament I go to. Good luck trying to figure out what’s what before the tournament.

As far as the new aff surprise, I am not totally heartless. That’s why I think that out rounds are open season. Still, not a good time for that discussion I feel.

Here is the issue, there is no pressure in LD because all the LD’rs (except for Western Ky now) do parli. We thrive on secrecy. Ask someone from a CC what their 1ac is after a tournament and they will turn as white in the face as if you had said their mom died.

Your argument seems to be that people will disclose anyways. My argument is they won’t. In the end disclosure is better then no disclosure I think we both agree. The only way to get it is to go with mandated disclosure. The only disadvantage is new aff surprise goes away.

I will make a concession. Go to post tournament disclosure. You have to turn in your aff with sites before the tournament but everyone gets access to it after the tournament. The list will go into the tournament packet attached to the LD ballots. If you don’t compete in LD one tournament you shouldn’t get access to the list for that tournament. How does that sound? We get all the benefits of disclosure minus one tournament.

That’s actually a decent idea that I would go along with. The only question is whether an aff you bring to the tournament but never end up reading would go in the packet (i.e. if you bring an aff for outrounds but don’t advance that far).

If you submit an aff it goes in the pile. There are only usually 4 prelim rounds with 2 elims so you only need 1-2 affs really. Sometimes there are more but not a lot of the so-cal tourney support LD that much.

Since at least the two of us have agreed on the idea of a case list I think now is the time to have the debate over outround surprises.

I think outrounds should be open season. The reason for this is 2 fold:
1) if you are in outrounds you will get to see the aff
2) if not, you can watch the round and get access to the sites etc

Also, the peer pressure argument will check back OR citing, either others can/will post the 1ac or the debater will do it.

I support the idea of no disclosure. Any debate team can amass their own case list and keep a record of the sites. As the year goes on you will have a more comprehensive case list. You will also be able to discern the teams that change their briefs from the ones that never do. Debaters should have to function in a world with surprises, to get them to think critically in the moment. Debate teams should thrive when they hire qualified coaches who can coach in between rounds and help the student grow during the tournament. And debaters should have an advantage should they choose to only do LD at a tournament and work during the Parli rounds.

I do not allow my students to disclose their AFF or NEG before a round. I also do not allow them to ask the other team. There’s too much that can go wrong between that discussion and the actual debate. Like…students can change their minds about positions, but then be accused of misleading the other team. And students can “fib” about positions, only to leave the other team hanging.

If debaters want sites, they can ask the individual debater or go scout by listening to a round.

Because they general PSCFA LD population all had the same briefs and the same cites and there was virtually no clash, I see this general feeding of arguments and cites and such to only make a debater even lazier. Now the debater wouldn’t have to scout or even listen to the 1AC speech. We would remove the need to network, investigate, scout, and probably mostly to listen.

No disclosure, every debater for him/herself.

To preface, I came from a rather small CC to a 4 year. I did not have the best coaching in the world at my CC and I had limited support. This is why I believe things as I do, from my experiences. I just want to talk about that 1st but now I have 2 remarks:

1
“Debate teams should thrive when they hire qualified coaches who can coach in between rounds and help the student grow during the tournament. And debaters should have an advantage should they choose to only do LD at a tournament and work during the Parli rounds.”

This assumes schools have qualified coaches to coach LD. This also assumes that there are enough coaches to spread amongst a school that has parli, ld, and ie events for about 12 people. I can name a few schools where this is an issue for. My coach never heard my 1ac once the first year I competed in LD, the whole year.
Also, making debaters choose between parli and LD is kinda fubar. I think that fostering competition is a direction I am for. I don’t like that there is a wall between ceda and parli. Honestly, I wish I could do all 3 events, I would have to get a whole lot faster but I wish I could. There isn’t a budget at most schools to do all 3 and sometimes to do 2 of these.
I just don’t like the assumption that there is sufficient support for all debaters I guess. Maybe for the majority here in socal there is but not in other areas and I think there is still a gap in some of the socal schools.

2
I do not think that we are talking about the same kind of disclosure. We don’t hand over the 1ac to the other team right before the round and then run a different 1ac in round. The 1ac is posted for everyone to see. I also envisioned a form of enforcement for it which I described above.

That being said, lets assume post tournament disclosure since I have Nick’s backing on that. There is no uniqueness to your argument. Cases will get out period. Those who have bigger teams will have access to more 1ac’s which mean they get more access to other people’s arguments. This means that big schools dominate little schools.
Elco has “10″ Ld’rs while Long beach (since they don’t do LD) has “1″ debater. Elco will hear 20 affs in 1 tournament minimum while LB will hear 2…. benefits of a big school that not ever school has access to and pushes out small schools… collapse debate, etc. In the end, if we let everyone have access to it we all benefit.

Mandatory post tournament disclosure checks this back. Also, it increases research burdens, which is good for edu. This means that since other people have your 1ac you need to have answers or come up with a new one. You already said that people will hear the cases eventually so why not give them out earlier to let people do research and learn.

I think people will still go network, investigate, scout, and listen in outrounds. For me, I want your 1st and 2nd line responses. Also, debate is a game, games are fun, I make friends with people I have fun with, therefore I will still network and find new friends because it is fun. I know this is a personal experience and some people play to win but even they make friends and network with people they find to be worthy adversaries.

In the end, I never had experience with case lists until this year. I thought they worked well in HS and college for policy programs so there has to be some kind of incentive to do it and I think it would be good to extend that here. If I am wrong on that level I would just like to know why. What is the worst that could happen if we tried it for a tournament or two?

I think you have very good points, but then there’s the practicality of it all. To get to the first point, I agree that it stinks that your coach didn’t listen to your 1AC. When schools hire bad coaches they don’t win. It is the same in sports, college and professional. I am a marketable hire because of my debate experience. It has to mean something that I debated and coached and had a degree of success. I was hired to direct debate for one school, not all the schools, because of my experience. I am evaluated in part based on our competitive success. I am also evaluated based on the number of students I serve. If I do not achieve competitive success because there is disclosure, it hurts me and my record and my value as a coach. And if my debaters don’t win, they will probably get frustrated and quit. So, it stinks that some debaters have bad coaches; but then as with any cycle of any sports team you would see the team fail and then the manager would hire a good coach and then they would win. Baseball teams, for example, flounder with some coaches but thrive with others. Torre turned around the Dodgers, and Torre gets the money and recognition that he does because of his ability to coach better than other coaches. He doesn’t help the other teams, he coaches his own team and that’s that.

As far as a case list after the tournament, that is fantastic but I don’t think you can make anything mandatory. You can of course encourage and share and network and perhaps develop a reputation of being a good samaritan, but mandatory is another story. Also, I don’t always know what my debaters run, and can’t track them down afterwards all the time, and if they are new they may not even remember all the evidence they read.

You’ve really got to do it the old fashioned way. Keep your flows, talk to your teammates after the tournament, make a case list, network with other students from other teams who are making their own case lists, and then share and keep sharing.

I can’t think of a teacher/coach who would volunteer to take the helm on this, and on teacher could enforce it. Unless it is in the NFA/LD rules, which it never will be, it cannot be mandatory. Heck, not even those rules are entirely enforceable.

And yes, the sad fact is that lots of times the big schools dominate, but not always. The small schools can succeed, with good coaches. Small schools aren’t likely to get Sweeps, but they can get the Small Schools Sweeps. If schools want to support debate and want successful programs, they will hire qualified coaches and more of them. If not, then go to another school, sad to say, but many debaters transfer schools to be a part of a particular team or have a certain coach. And while the big schools generally dominate, it isn’t always a guarantee. We won several awards this year and we were tiny and brand new coaches in the area with all new students. And sometimes big isn’t better, just look at my poor Yankees this year. So, just be the exception, but accept the reality.

As far as the worst, I don’t think it can get much worse. But as we go over the reasons why we shouldn’t distribute all of the briefs, I think we also consider why we shouldn’t distribute case lists. Not everything should be handed to everybody. Competition should be more about survival of the fittest. It could be “fitness” measured by talent, money, size of team, caliber of coaches, etc., but it is something. Accumulating case lists and developing strategies are two parts of being a good debater. So you will succeed because you are doing this, but you cannot make it mandatory unless you appeal to the higher authority of NFA.

And we could try to do the CEDA topic in LD this year, but that would have to be mutually agreed upon among the debate coaches and prior to August 1. Phi Rho Pi offers CEDA-LD, and it would then be easier for two LD’ers, even from different schools, to enter a CEDA tournament. Most invitationals take hybrid teams no problem, and it is up to the tournament director if the team is allowed to break. But you’d have to rally this and I am not sure to whom we should appeal.

Sydne:

I’ll make my thoughts clear: I believe that as participants in debate, we each have an ethical imperative to advocate first and foremost actions which promote the strength and cohesion of the activity as a whole. That includes coaches, judges, and debaters alike.

The health of the activity itself *must* take consideration above the competitive victories that your team achieves, and *must* come before any impressive additions to your resume.

Saying that “if I do not achieve competitive success because there is disclosure, it hurts me and my record and my value as a coach” basically amounts to an assertion that you would prefer to garner as many wins as possible for your own team at the expense of the health of the activity itself. Is such an attitude a sustainable one for the activity? I doubt it.

Debate is not an institution whose success is to be monopolized and consolidated into the hands of as few programs as possible. It’s about ensuring that all debaters are able to consistently perform to their level of ability with as few barriers to competitive equity as possible. Obviously there are inherent barriers such as coaching and resources that cannot be rectified, but that is not an excuse to impede the development and success of smaller equitable gains otherwise.

Disclosure has been proven over and over on the high school and NDT/CEDA circuits to be nothing but beneficial for debate programs, large and small alike. It is especially beneficial for those teams without the connections, coaches, and resources necessary to compile large informational networks on what other teams run. And guess what, it’s as simple as having your debaters email their taglines and cites the day before or even day of the tournament, or post them to a wiki. That takes five minutes, max, and I know because I’ve done it numerous times myself this year.

Just because “we can do it the old fashioned way” is not a valid reason to avoid open disclosure. It is certainly not an excuse to avoid disclosure altogether. Doing so: 1) harms the educational value inherent in doing better and more specific research; 2) decreases the quality of negative strategies – which ultimately brings down the quality of the debate – given the difference between before-tournament prep (via full cite disclosure) versus in-round prep (via plan text), and; 3) distorts the well of fairness which makes the activity as a whole more accessible to more people.

Your support for “non-voluntary disclosure” is on-face absolutely laughable given the tone of your post. The reason why other caselists, especially wikis, have been successful in the past is because coaches recognize the unique benefits of them and encourage their students to participate. You’ve already indicated that you will not disclose cites in order to (supposedly) increase your chances of competitive success. This attitude would no doubt proliferate and other coaches would think no differently – “if they aren’t doing it, why should we?”. Any sort of voluntary disclosure project will fail epically without the support of coaches which means your stated symbolic support is functionally irrelevant because you decline to participate yourself.

By the way, the sports analogy is fallacious, at best. Professional baseball is a business. Top managers are paid top dollar because success equates to more profits brought it. Poor performing managers are fired because losses equates to fewer profits brought in. Collegiate debate is nothing like this. You won’t hear of any universities clamoring to fund debate because there’s thousands of dollars in alumni contributions to be had, like in college football. Without an incentive that would distinguish a good program from a mediocre program, nothing will change. If I were somehow to become dissatisfied with the support that UCLA gives me, it’s not like I can just “go” to another school like I’m some sort of free agent. Why the hell would I walk away from a world-class education so I could win some more debate rounds? I wouldn’t dream of doing that, ever.

I could go on ranting but that’s probably enough for one day.

- Nick

my enforcement mechanism is you send in the 1ac before the tournament. If you don’t you can’t run it. The judge writes the 1ac info at the top and submits it on/with the ballot. The tournament checks it against the case list. If it is not on the case list they forfeit the round.

It is the same system as time forfeitures.

I thought we had a really productive conversation on the other forum about on case refutation and without cites we decrease on case refutation. This year these topic areas are really really really vague. It is not laziness, it is just that you can never research every 1ac and if we want to get as much done as we can to ensure competitive debate we should roll with this.

I don’t wana run K’s in LD because it is against the rules for the most part but if I see a 1ac I have never heard of I will go suicide T or K or plan flaw to quote KC.

Also, the ceda comment was just that people in the different forms of debate sometimes harbor grudges against each other because they do a different form of debate. I don’t want to have the ceda topic for LD because it would reduce the amount of research done by LD’rs. If we think they’re lazy now just wait to see what happens then lol.

Nick,

It may not be pleasant to consider the realities of academia, but coming from someone on the other side of the fence (a teacher and coach), it is important for students to at least try to understand that life isn’t always as we want it to be. It is a reality that when someone is hired as a debate coach in a tenure-track position the person is told he/she must win. Regardless of how you may feel about debate, or believe debate should be, the reality is that when an institution commits to hiring one (or in RCC’s case two) tenure-track instructors to direct a Forensics program, they look at it much like a business. What may be foreign to you still as a student is the fact that when an insitution wants to put money into any activity, there must be some inherent advantage as they see it. Sure debate is educational for anyone who does it, but those responsible for justifying how the budget is dispersed is interested in something more tangible – awards. Specifically, I was told to win big at Phi Rho Pi. But every institution has expectations.

It isn’t about adding accomplishments to my C.V., as I have enough to land a decent job. It is really about holding on to that job during the first four years (tenure review). If I do not perform as others would like me to perform, I lose my job and then nobody benefits from any coaching I might be able to do. I am unable to impart any education if I am not renewed and not granted tenure. I am evaluated every year for four years based upon my ability to meet the aims set out in the job description. My job description says I must achieve competitive success. Because there is no mechanism to go around and interview every student I might work with, and find out exactly how they benefitted from debate, and then somehow measure the quality of their experiences and compare them to the money that is allocated for the acitivity (and I mean all monies…salary…release time…budget…support staff…etc.), people look at awards. That may be unpleaasant, but it is the way it goes.

Another dimension that you may not be aware of is that many debate and speech positions are not tenure-track, they are renewable each year. The person is renewed if he/she does what the higher-ups expect, which may or may not be in line with personal motives and a devotion to education. One of the reasons why the positions are usually not tenure track is because people in the activity spend so much of their time coaching and such that they do not have time to publish and meet the ususal requirements to achieve tenure (on the four year level). But on the two year level a full-timer must be hired as tenure-track, if they are truly full-time and not temporary one-year. Yes many of the coaches are part-timers, but I am a full-time tenure-track. I have four years to demonstrate that I am committed to the activity and can win for RCC. I have to demonstrate that during my tenure review, because once I am tenured I am safe from being fired and so my winning record can be as wonderful or as crappy as I want it to be, but they still can’t get rid of me. Sure you can disclose and win, but it doesn’t always work that way. I do not know enough about this region, nor do I feel safe enough, to just start disclosing everything. Cerritos did full disclosure of their case at the beginning of the year, and the team fizzled out toward the end. I am not sure if there is a direct cause-effect relationship, but we all know that they had a travel ban case and never showed up to a tournament without negative on that case.

And let’s be real, funding increases as awards come in. That’s just the way it works, even in academia. And yes it does come from the Alums, believe it or not. And in my case some of the Alums are in high power District positions and can do other things to “reward” a successful coach, like offer release time or increase the budget or provide more support staff. And they don’t do that if you aren’t winning awards. You may not like it, but it truly is the way programs get budget increases (or many times even sustain an existing budget). That is why you see your coach diligently write press releases right after a successful tournament, and why you see that he/she might focus on other aspects when you compete but do not win an award. Forensics programs need positive press, and most people outside of Forensics (the ones giving out the money and other resources) look at awards.

Perhaps debate (in the larger picture of academia) should not be monopolized, but it is. There are large programs around here, two year programs, that have a monopoloy because the coaches/directors have worked very hard to win and to build their budget so they can serve more students. Even the successful programs (El Camino) take pictures of awards and such to appeal for more money. The most successful programs across the board (regardless of the type of debate or speech) have built their programs because of competitive success (see Northwestern) – or in rarer cases a huge grant or endowment by someone who used to do forensics and wants to fund it regardless of the competitive success (see Lliberty). But then with the more money they were able to build a program, recruit, offer scholarships to good debaters to build a better team, and then they won more awards.

My point about voluntary disclosure is simply that you cannot enforce it unless it is in the rules. You know a certain number of debaters and a certain number of coaches based upon your debating career (maybe 7 or 8 years at the most). I know many coaches and directors of many programs and have learned about this process over the course of 23 years at the four-year and now the two-year level. Debate coaches are people, usually quite educated, many are tenured, and nobody actually tells them what to do. Quite easily a mandatory disclosure could be seen as an infringement on our academic freedom. You may not see that, but that’s okay.

And you may not switch schools because UCLA doesn’t offer debate, but many students do. Students choose where to go because of debate (that part is obvious even if it doesn’t apply to you), and debaters switch schools when they disagree with their coaches (see Louisville -> Towson), or their coaches get fired (see Ft. Hayes), or their program loses funding, or the coach retired, the department decides to go in a different direction and cancel the program (see Syracuse).

I could go on and on, but mainly I’d just like to point out that nothing I said was laughable or unethical or unconscientious. You may be a debater and may love the activity, but I have devoted my career to debate for just about as long as you have been alive (or a bit longer). I did not say that I liked everything about my position, just that mandatory disclosure was not realistic. I am working with brand new people all the time, not people who competed in high school and then now are at a four-year. I have debaters who can barely put two dimes together, who work and take care of their families and all sorts of things that you cannot imagine, and it is all I can do to convince them to go to a tournament on a Saturday and then miss working and making money. If I now tell them to go on Wiki (when they don’t even all have the internet at their home) and post cites (which can get overwhelming and complicated for a Rookie), they will not want to be a part of my team. It will take up too much of their time. And if I facilitate the sharing of information for the sake of education, and in the process everyone has access to all of our briefs and such, I do put myself at a disadvantage when it comes to competition and the element of surprise. If I do not bring home awards then I am evaluated as being a poor debate coach, and then I do not get renewed and then the process starts all over again with another new coach. And also I’d point out that after working for 72 hours straight over the weekend and coming back home and filing all of the paperwork to get the budget straight, and then catching up on all of my other work (lecture preparation, grading, advising, committee work, etc.), I would not have the time to put all of that together. I already work about 2,000 hours more per academic year than a typical Speech instructor making the same amount of money but just teaching two classes as opposed to directing a program. And I still have to find time to do my laundry.

So….try not to make all of my posts into a front-line that warrants a line-by-line attack. I will stop posting here if I think this is an outlet to have debates during the off-season. You do not know me, but I am certainly your elder, and when I post I am providing information (both about my views and about how it really is in the college world and in academia in general). When you have as much experience as I do with the tenure review process, budget requests, etc., then we can have this discussion again. You’ll be about 40 and I’ll be in my 60s.

First, I apologize if my post came off as a personal attack. I didn’t intend for it to resemble anything other than an (admittedly) lively discussion. This was never a line-by-line debate but I did feel the need to respond to your original post in a detailed manner.

And yes, it’s true that you are several decades my senior. At the tender young age of 17 years and 11 months I’m not even old enough to legally vote yet. And it is true that you are infinitely more qualified to talk about the intricacies of the coaching world. But that does not mean that my arguments about the merits of disclosure are automatically voided.

The sense I’m getting is that you fear disclosure will harm your competitive success. This has been empirically proven false multiple times. The reason for this is simple – universal acceptance. When nearly everyone is willing to contribute to open disclosure, everyone has access to everyone elses’ cites. At that point, the only determination of who gains and who loses is how much work each team is willing to do with that information. Will schools with better coaches benefit? Yes. Because they will have more complete information. Will smaller programs benefit? Yes. Because they will know what more teams are running and be able to craft appropriate strategies against them. Sure, it’ll be a lot more work for the small programs but it is only fair to at least give them the option. I’ve already mentioned the other benefits that generally enhance the overall debate experience (better rounds, education, research, etc.) and there are a great many coaches I know of who will back up my sentiments on that.

The truly great debaters who consistently reach elimination rounds are going to distinguish themselves even if they do disclose. Every single high school that attended the Tournament of Champions – the best HS debaters in the entire country – has a dedicated wiki page where their full aff (and often neg) citations are available. Disclosing demonstrates that you are capable of consistently winning because you are a better debater, not because you rely on the negative forming a flawed last-minute strategy.

I’ll emphasize that the only barrier to voluntary disclosure is a lack of participation. As long as there exists a mindset like yours among coaches (and debaters for that matter) that disclosure will somehow damage competitiveness then the status quo will never change. The only way to avoid this is that either coaches need to actively encourage their students to disclose cites (thereby creating the peer pressure necessary to make voluntary disclosure work) or that we move to mandatory post-tournament disclosure. I favor the first option. But I have no qualms with the second if the first option fails should it come to that extreme.

I am sorry if you feel that forcible disclosure is an infringement on your academic freedom but I do not know of anyone in the academia professions who would say that limited knowledge concentrated in the hands of a few individual programs is academic freedom, either. Debate is a forum to share ideas and if we are keeping those ideas secret then it is not an open forum at all, simply a place where we throw pieces of paper at each other without actually maximizing the benefits we should be deriving from it.

You have a great attitude about the whole thing and I sincerely wish you luck in the effort to get everyone on board with disclosure. The main differences between the group of TOC programs and the group of PSCFA programs are:
many of the coaches have no policy debate background, the programs are more centered on IE and Parli, the students doing LD come from that background as well, and people are way too busy with other things to keep this up. There may be oodles of benefits to this idea, yet I do not find it practical in the PSCFA world, nor do I find it to be something that will be a priority to the majority of coaches in the are. LD is new to PSCFA and is still growing. LD is not the focus when building a program, coaching, winning, and so on. As much as you would like everyone to agree to it (and you may get that), you will not get everyone to do it. And, it will not be enforceable, except you can try to lay on a guilt trip or something along those lines. Without clear rules from NFA, there will be a range of standards and practices.

Your best best is to write up a proposal and have it discussed at the PSCFA coaches seminar in August. It will have to be discussed, voted on, etc. Anything created on the grassroots level will not be enforceable, nor will the people in charge of tabbing LD (and that varies from tournament to tournament) put the time or effort into the follow-up.

I do not know how I feel about the whole thing at this moment, because I have not ever been forced to disclose anything. I am suggesting the likely problems you will encounter, and the range of reactions which might occur. Personally, I know it will take up a lot of time and it will be another layer of work to lay on to my students, who already do not have the time. I will be able to provide them with a lot of information, but they will not know how to use it because they are too new and not from a TOC high school. As far as competitive success, I have no idea. I have coached some students this year and they have won some awards, but actually achieving competitive success in LD debate, on a predictable level, will require more judge education…which is another thread we’ve discussed here from time to time.

Apology accepted.

Well, back to predictability then. I am hoping that LCDC has a big packet of info and I will post it everywhere I can. The only way we are going to get any kind of predictability for neg is to have more of these cases being run.

I won’t be running camp cases so I will be able to win Gov since no one will have neg for my cases the whole year because people don’t do research, apparently (besides Nick and UoP).

Neg will be hard to win against people who do their own research. I think that LCDC will set the standard again this year so I do not know what to do now. While we don’t want to rely on the camp ev it may be the best thing for us (negs) since the topic is soooooo broad! A blessing and a curse. For that reason, I am hoping for a lot of lazy db8rs.

A pox on [all our] houses!