We’re one week away!

Glendale College will most certainly have a student contingent (and probably more than one coach/judge); the only question is how many. We are meeting as a squad twice this week to hash that out. Stay tuned.

Looking forward to a great Clinic and a great season!

Two students (at least) From Glendale:

Janice Tessman (Varsity)
Ristin Drewry (Rookie)

+ at least one very OLD Coach.

What arguments are people planning on running during the practice rounds?

Luckily I am done with debating! My RCC students are novices,
and will likely observe the rounds, not participate.
I have some cards that I can exchange with people, and I am reading
books and scholarly journal articles. I will
have files of unread articles that people can copy on site.
Trading is always preferred.
As of now we have 16 debaters from 12 schools!

In direct response to Nick’s question:

Would anyone dispute that the Affirmative could simply advocate immediate passage of the Oberstar-Mica Bill (ergo, having automatic “solvercy experts”)? In response, and – in addition to T (which a lot of people already seem to think is the most important Negative issue anyway) and other procedurals, the Negative could run…

…straight refutation of harms + inherency + solvency (i.e. political corruption in infrastructure spending)+ standard financing (“trade-offs”) and/or environmental and/or “strengthening capitalism is bad” DA’s?

That kind of practice debate could be run on the first minute of the first day of the Clinic (or the season) – especially if it were viewed for what it should be: a preseason scrimmage, and a first step.

Another Plan that’s already written: Implement the ASCE’s infrastructure reforms. “Five Key Solutions” http://www.asce.org/reportcard
(click on “Solutions”)

Another potential Case/Plan: Fully implement and fund all 9-11 Commission recommendations pertaining to transportation and Homeland (“domestic?”) security.

Debating this topic shouldn’t have to be as hard as rocket science… literally.

Given the nature of the LD round, as distinct from the longer round with the two-on-two format, I’m hoping the plans are relatively simple and have a shred of Inherency. While I get how there are many Govt plans out there that are not yet fully funded, the bottom line is that any plan takes time to implement. I’m sure someone will run the above mentioned plan (the first one), and then get out of all the DAs saying the plan adoption is inevitable; and the second one, the five solutions, seems better (in that it isn’t the Govt plan), but five solutions is a lot to justify in six minutes. I have been considering more narrow actions, though I have not decided on one that is the best for my team. I guess I was looking at the camp as a process of inquiry, and only slightly before the first tournament was I planning on putting together a case/plan to help my debaters.

We’ll call all the debates on Thursday “practice” so they do not count. We have so many students from so many schools, it technically could be a tournament that is an NFA qualifier! But be that as it may, I’m unsure how many students will actually be debating (versus observing), and we also have to have enough judges. It could end up working out that some of the more experienced debaters will have to judge one round, just so everyone gets a chance to debate. We’ll have to see what happens, who shows up, and so on.

This should be a great camp and by the end everyone should have a much better idea as to how to approach the topic.

I agree with Sydne. That’s why it might be wise to simply find out what transportation infrastructure bills are currently before the Congress, research them, and then advocate passage of one or more of them. All of the details will be in the proposed bill(s) which you can easily find online.

No pun intended, but debaters don’t need to reinvent the wheel to write good cases, and nobody should expect a college student to come up with a highly-detailed trasportation infrastructure plan which is built from Square One… or to be able to fully explain it in a 6- or 7-minute speech.

ANOTHER THOUGHT: Is “fully funding” an existing government program (i.e. a program which has been “authorized” but which is lagging in appropriations) really “reform?”

And even if it is “reform,” is it a “substantial reform?” I have an open mind on things like this.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: Much of the “Obama stimulus money” – especially for infrastructure – currently remains unspent simply because there is a lower than expected number of “shovel-ready” projects.
So simply throwing more money in the general direction of trasportatin infrastructure may not actually help anything. When you really get into reading about the condition of this country’s transportation infrastructure, you’ll find that the academic consensus seems to be that it truly sucks… and that a lot of money spent right now is wasted.

You will also find there are at least four different kinds of “domestic transportation infrastructure.”

A. Existing/needed physical infrastructure (subdivided into construction and maintanence)
B. Planning/information infrastructure
C. Financial infrastructure
D. Vehicular infrastructure (modes of transportation)

Fully funding is not reform, let alone substantial reform. I think that there has to be more then just funding. There has to be something that the funding does that is different from the SQO.

A couple of examples;
1) The DOT is underfunded therefore we will give more money to the DOT – not cool
2) Giving money to the DOT to expand the system of freeways between (A) and (B) – cool

As a side question, I thought the first tournament of the year, for whatever, had to happen after a certain day in September… So it wouldn’t matter if we called it a tournament or a Round Robbin or a practice cluster-muck.

Advocating bills in congress asks for politics arguments. Running bills that are not in congress or are from brain-trusts is a little better.

I think that this will be the year of the PIC. There are a lot of reasons for this but I really see the PIC as being a mad awesome opp strat. Everyone that is gov against one hates it and you may look like scum for it, but it is debate so we are going to do it anyways. The 5 step plan could fall to the PIC rather easily. Narrow may be the best way to go. That doesn’t mean that a narrow case cannot still be a big stick.

Nick, I’ma throw this out there for you because I assume you will join in with reciprocity. I am rocking Indigenous People this year.

Danny, I know I said I would write a paper last year and had to back out but this year I will be begging to write a paper on my 1AC.

I’ll return the favor – I’m running an affirmative to enhance the minimum security requirements of cargo containers that are processed in domestic seaports. I only have the 1AC done but it’s fairly potent for my first attempt at an NFA-LD case.

Native American cases are always a good way to go. I’m not really a type of person who cuts Churchill style affs but it’s still a good option no matter what the resolution is because the usual DA/CP tricks fail miserably. I will be packing at least one generic kritik on the neg, though, and anyone who isn’t prepared for it will have their asses handed to them.

I’ll see you folks in Riverside tomorrow – I’m waking up at 5:00am to catch my flight so please excuse my grogginess ahead of time.

I am a fan of churchill to a point but I don’t run affs that way either. It really is a straight up 1ac for me. On the Africa topic I tried to build canals from lack Victoria throughout the GHoA. People did not take kindly to that aff…

I have the ATs for a lot of generic K’s and I am rocking a couple generic K’s myself. I am really upset about the lack of opp ground this time around. Last year there was a lot of sexy opp ground compared to this year. I will be honest, I am not partial to the SQO so I like to run plans that change the world in some way and I like to try and do it on the opp, too.

I won’t be at the camp until Tuesday, I have to help set up class rooms for the local continuation school until about 1. So, on tuesday I will be seeing you all at the camp. I am really looking forward in seeing what we can pool together as a camp.

We will be able to digitally record the lectures you are missing, so don’t worry about that. This camp presents a great opportunity to get a jumpstart, but undoubtedly the real work happens afterwards. This networking is going to be great for you all as debaters. UCLA and CSULA are obviously not too far away from eachother, and you will be going to many of the same tournaments. Sometimes we find our best allies in our most worthy competitors. I’m happy to be able to help bring you all together for a meeting of the minds.

Well, that was fun. Going 1-3 in the practice rounds (albeit with generous speaker points) was a bit unexpected but I guess it goes to show I still need some work transitioning away from the traditional team debate structure. But with experience will come the ballots, I suppose.

Any chance those practice round videos might find their way onto this site? I’d like to see me spewing some K-lingo.

While I am not sure why you’d like to relive that, I do have all of the videos on my camera. I don’t want to make them public, but if you want your video then send me a private e-mail and I will send you my mailing address. You can send me a flash and I will mail it to you. I do not yet know how to compress the file for e-mail. And I do think the ballots will come with experience. On thing to consider is when to use the K and which K and whether said K is applicable in a certain situation. It was a great start to the year!