Interesting comment
From the Sunset Cliffs post an anonymous person writes:
all the preparation is wasted. opp strategy is always Topicality, procedurals, and counterplans. the debate doesn’t start until the 2nd speech.
at least thats what it seems like.
If true, I think this is a very damaging to both the future adoption of the event by schools and the entire rationale for having NFA-LD debate.
As a school considering adding NFA-LD to my program this vision of the activity is not very enticing. It seems to privilege experience of debate “games” over topic specific knowledge. If true, it wouldn’t matter how much research I did on any particular topic but instead how well I know how to answer a generic more-or-less made up for debate position. It also defeats the point of having a single resolution for the entire season if the research one conducts ahead of the tournament is of little use.
As coaches and judges I think we need to evaluate what paths we are encouraging our students to take when competing in NFA-LD. If the comment is true, by rewarding debaters who ignore the case debate we may be ultimately sowing the seeds for reversing the tremendous growth of NFA-LD in Southern California.
While I never like absolutes given that each round is unique and dynamic, I think debaters who make no pretense of debating case (even with analytics) are avoiding the core of the debate and should rarely, if ever, be given the win. Debate can and should be more than just a robotic answering of arguments and the “flow sheet.” If so, why even have a live competition? Just submit your arguments ahead of time and judges will evaluate what briefs should win.
I think we can also have a more-or-less sliding scale as the season develops – sure, at the start of the year students will have little specific neg evidence but by this time in the year negative debaters unprepared with specific case arguments should be penalized.
What are your thoughts and impressions? I’ve gotten much the same impression as the anonymous commenter on the state of NFA-LD and it’s really making me question my continued support for NFA-LD as a tournament event… I can do only so much as a judge – this is a question not about what individual judges or coaches can do but about the culture of the activity and what is rewarded.
I hope we can keep this discussion civil…
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Comments
I think encouraging debaters to be dropped on face because they run a certain argument you don’t like is kinda ridiculous. If that’s the case, then there would be literally two arguments in debate that would be able to be ran, disads and case arguments. K’s are seemed to be controversial in NFA and the rules of NFA limit the amount of CP’s you can run, and apparently T is becoming something that shouldn’t be ran because you risk being called lazy.
If your team keeps losing on topicality, there is a reason. Either 1) you have an incredibly untopical case, therefore it should be changed or 2) your team doesn’t know how to debate T and should be practiced more. I think its more lazy for someone to not work to get better on answering topicality then someone who does run T.
I’m not real sure on how you can say that T is a lazy strat. When someone goes for only T in the 1NR, or uses T as a majority of the speech time, it usually comes down to an extremely technical and strategic debate. I think that GOOD procedural debates are way more interesting and fun as a debater, then an in-depth discussion on case, which will inevitably come to a wash.
In the end, you shouldn’t punish someone based on the arguments they read. If they win the argument then you should probably vote on it. Intervention like what you propose is something that should be rejected on face.
most of the arguments like procedural and topicality/ cp can be easily prepped before a tournament. there still is inherent education gained from engaging in theoretical debates. Case debate still does occur, the breadth of the topic though makes it very hard for schools to generate actual on case arguments. I mean we have cases spanning from cyber security, space shuttles, GPS, to blowing up dams, cat fish, light pollution, and that’s not close to a small portion of them. this isn’t like last year when everything was Cuba and case debate was a must. its a ridiculously large topic, where its very hard for a small school to get some form of specific on case for each case.
a sliding scale is an interesting idea. i think thought its already true that generally if a case was seen at the beginning of the year on case arguments do develop over time. the important thing to realize though is that not ever case you will see at a tournament now was created or broken at the beginning of the year. in effect that scale is reset on a case by case basis. when i first ran my STB/ cyber cases it took about 2-3 tournaments before some one ran cards on case. once i break my new case im sure it will take a bit depending on what tournament im at before some one can engage the case on the case level. also we dont know if the anonymous poster was breaking a new case, if so then there is really not much to complain about. if not then maybe there is a leg to stand on.
is t/cp/procedural debate prevalent right now, yes. is that a bad thing? eh debatable. its really fun personally to engage that theoretical debate, meta debate is in my mind as fun and interesting as policy.
that being said if you view those as detrimental to the activity its your right to vote accordingly. i think though overall a position against procedural and t and cp is detrimental for the negative and if anything hurt fairness in the activity. Some cases just require those arguments because of a lack of case lit or other wise. cases that you might view as topical and interesting might be relatively new interpretations of the resolution for the year and people wont have those on case arguments you might wish for. is that fair to hold them to a standard that was unknown to a team when they were prepping? i understand the frustration with those debates, judging them can be inferiority i judge high school and find many of them regress to those strats. but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, there is still worth in those positions and with the activity as a whole, might mean you have to give your students some theory articles but its still education.
replace inferiority with infuriating in forth paragraph. apologies 4 spelling and grammar im bad at it.
Want to force people to have case debate with you?
There are a few easy steps to take.
1) Be clearly and intuitively topical. This is extraordinarily difficult on this topic, due to the poor topic-writing. But, there are cases out there that meet this burden. Find them, and run them. And frontline the obvious topicality arguments that people will run against you. If you are unprepared for the T-Transportation Infrastructure argument that is out of the camp file, then don’t complain when you get time-sucked on the argument.
2) Run affirmatives that are intrinsic to your actor. If you look at the cites of my carp aff – you’ll notice that the C card on solvency is a card explaining that the Army Corps of Engineers is the only agent who can do my plan. Cards like these are ‘counterplan armor’ that prevent people from stealing your aff.
3) Claim big stick impacts. Guess what folks – decreased obesity and increased walking space are not impacts that can be weighed with an efficacy against a politics d/a. If you want to have case debate, make sure your case is relevant.
4) Cut politics updates. You should be prepared for generic d/as that people throw at you. The reason that these d/as SHOULD lose is because they are generic enough that any government action will trigger them. But, it’s your responsibility as an affirmative debater to prove that.
And finally, Danny, I respect the request for civility, but it’s very problematic that you would be advocating for that kind of radical intervention. The way to beat arguments you find irritating is not to advocate for rule changes – instead, beat them in the round. That’s the beauty of debate.
Will’s #1 is just right. So many people are still ridiculously untopical, but have convinced themselves that T is only a “whine” about a lack of predictability. it takes literally 3 hours of online reading to learn about competing interpretations and what that means, and to write blocks for your case, but still people lose to T because the violation is too strong.
I just don’t understand why T is the black sheep of the stock issues. I should be able to challenge that as much as I should be able to challenge solvency, etc.
But I think really this is all a biproduct of the offense/defense paradigm. Back when a judge could intervene and decide someone was “winning solvency” with defensive answers, and that was acceptable, then i’m sure on case args were ok. but now we NEED offense, and we NEED big impacts, and most good debaters are writing cases with little room for either.
next, for me and many other debaters, NFA-LD is our secondary event. Parli is our main dedication (or for me and many others, second dedication, next to school), so cutting evidence for -every- case, especially those schools that only do NFA, is a preposterous time commitment.
Finally, i have never understood the dismissiveness regarding analytics in LD. I think being able to argue logically should be rewarded. “you don’t have a card” is a pretty weak argument, unless you’re postdating uniqueness or checking back statistics.
Thanks for all your thoughts everyone and for keeping it mostly civil =)
I’m not sure where I advocated a new rule Will – indeed, in my last paragraph I tried to argue that it’s not what any one coach or judge can do but instead the culture of the activity – what do we reward – what do we encourage? As a coach, how do I direct my students in NFA-LD? Do I say “forget case research – let’s just focus on these generic neg strategies” or do I say “let’s spend some time discussing possible cases (like Nick’s comment), and like Brandon wrote, if you don’t have specific evidence still make case arguments” – that’s not so much a rule but a culture of the activity. As judges do we automatically disregard case debate without cards or do we reward negative debaters who try to use their critical thinking skills to engage a case they have yet to research..
There are certainly no easy answers.
was just looking at some results from loma
of the 14 outrounds that occurred in open, only 3 wins were aff
to be fair, the aff/neg split in round 4 was 9/10, so i don’t know if this indicates anything (i am not very good at statistics)
i infer from this that a) negs winning is not really a problem, even lacking published cites, and b) affs need to learn to throw down on generics 
AND, separately, if it’s encouraged that affs research thoroughly for their 1ACs, including answers and frontline stuff, and we call that the crux of the education to be had in this event, why then is researching for 12 hours on a killer politics disad/counterplan strategy considered “lazy”? a project for aff, a project for neg, let’s see who outdebates whom
Danny,
“As judges do we automatically disregard case debate without cards or do we reward negative debaters who try to use their critical thinking skills to engage a case they have yet to research..”
Neither. If case analytics are conceded, give them weight. If the analytics are answered by the evidence, prefer the evidence. But in the end, your framework of judging should not be “who should I reward?” and instead should be “who won.” The former carries with it an immense amount of unnecessary baggage.
When coaching your kids, you should be coaching them to both have solid generic neg strats as well as case neg where required, and further, you should be coaching your kids to have affirmatives that REQUIRE specific case neg to beat. If you look at the affirmatives that the big schools run – Snake River Dams, Blank Check, Mexican Trucking, Space Shuttles, Indian Roads, and even my own Bagram and Asian Carp aff, you’ll notice that none of them can be easily captured by a states counterplan, or outweighed by a mediocre politics d/a. There’s a reason for that.
“you’ll notice that none of them can be easily captured by a states counterplan, or outweighed by a mediocre politics d/a. There’s a reason for that.”
yeah they’re not topical
people who are voting for potential abuse are sucking the marrow out of life…
other then that – run T every round, run A spec every round, and run Chewbacca spec while your at it. I enjoy procedural debate and think that as long as you are running it for a reason (like you can justify a trade off with the procedural) then you deserve to defend your links. If there are no justifications I wouldn’t blame a judge for docking speaks, but giving a loss to “teach a lesson” or whatever is bogus.
Besides, the real debating doesn’t begin until NFA and those who have been there (or have told me about it) know it is true, NFA is a different beast. This year will be wicked so I wish you all the best in that venture, but don’t take away my T debate.
1) I would posit that this is the inevitable result of a lack of disclosure of cases and citations. There is little, if any, incentive to do specific research on a topic that is so broad such that without a definitive place to begin and focus one’s research, one may as well be shooting at targets in the dark.
Let’s take Point Loma. I had specific case and procedural strategies for most of the cases that were on the wiki. When I say procedural strategy I mean that I have a very nuanced violation and it’s not just a timesuck. To reward my many hours of effort, I hit debaters who chose not disclose their cases on the wiki (one was Robear Maxwell from ElCo, who was running the Passenger Bill of Rights Act of 2007, the other was a University of Oregon debater running a plan to overturn a ban on constructing new roads in national parks). As a result, my negative strategy consisted of my choice generic criticism for the first round and a procedural strat for the third round. I dropped both rounds on decisions I consider questionable at best.
I can also virtually guarantee that the people who complain about a lack of case debates are the same people who aren’t disclosing their cites.
2) On the other hand, I disclose ALL my cites and still didn’t encounter case-specific strategies last weekend. Instead I dealt with kritiks and procedurals. I won both my aff rounds because I was ready for said kritiks and procedurals; T-Transportation Infrastructure, coercion and Heidegger are not exactly at the cutting edge of thinking. Some people will choose to be lazy. That’s fine. A good debater will find ways to beat them regardless.
3) Despite my sentiments above, debate is a game; as such the best debater in the round should always win regardless of strategy. There is no such thing as a monolithic “core” of any debate round. In a case debate, the advantages of the case are at issue, in a K debate the crux of the debate is representations and in a procedural debate the issue at stake is the theoretical legitimacy. Penalizing debaters for running positions the judge arbitrarily deems to be “lazy” is intervention of the worst kind. Please don’t do it.