“The Spread,” Speed, and Activist Judges (Part 1)

The rules condemning speed isn’t really an issue for the overwhelming majority of so cal debaters, save like 6 people. I however, happen to be one of them. It would appear that in an event where there is an evidentiary standard and claims must have actual carded warrants, speed wouldn’t be nearly as big of an issue as we (So Cal) are making it out to be. Both my judges and opponents can call my cards. Heck, most good debaters are willing to give their opponents their cards right after having read them. All you really need to get down are tag lines for the argument and maybe a cite. It’s not like Parli where you have to hear every argument because if you miss it, it’s gone.

In a round at Phi Rho Pi this past year, I started my 1NC at a quick pace, yet very far from unintelligible. I was almost instantaneously interrupted with a ‘clear’, not from my opponent but from one of the judges. Irrespective of the fact that you could understand everything I was saying, shouldn’t an experienced, seasoned, debate coach be able to get my cites down, especially when an 18 year old who has been doing debate for all of 2 years can? As a result of being afraid to be dropped for speed (which one judge had threatened pre-round), I didn’t get to my 2nd disad and only ran one disad and some case turns/solvency args. I say this to prompt the following question: are judges just too lazy to flow quicker speeches? In my opinion, the judges flow should be just as tight as both of the debaters, if not even better. 2 mid-sized disads and some case arguments shouldn’t be considered ‘excessive’ at a National tournament. It’s not like I went 6 off. Heck, I didn’t even run a procedural. This is the type of frustration that debaters such as myself experience more often than we should. Perhaps these judges aren’t flowing efficiently and are trying to literally write my cards down word-for-word? All you need is the tagline for the card and the basic argument it’s making. Here’s an example of what I mean:

Economy is recovering but significant risks to recovery still remain.
Henry J. Pulizzi at WSJ on 10/13/09 (“Summers Outlines Risks to Recover”)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125535786715480387.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_markets

ST. LOUIS — White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said Monday that there were signs the U.S. economy was returning to normal, but he warned that “major slack” remained and that weak demand would continue to crimp output. “[L]ack of demand will be the major constraint on output and employment in the American economy for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Summers told the annual meeting of the National Association of Business Economics here. “The combination of low capacity utilization and substantial leveraging of household balance sheets raises questions about the sustainability of demand growth going forward.

As I’m reading this card, all that needs to go down on your flow is:

WSJ 10/2009 Econ recovering, but lack of demand makes it risky

I legitimately don’t see why a judge can’t write that down in all of 10 seconds, which is probably half the time it’ll take me to read the card. This sort of transcriptive shortening will allow debaters to make more arguments, thus more solvency cards, more advantages, etc. This increases the overall education within the round. In closing, no one on the So Cal circuit (unless a phantom spread debater pops up outta nowhere this year) is too fast for judges to get down basic tags/cites. Just my thoughts. Yours?

@David: If all I have to do is read your cards after the round, and your opponent only needs to read the cards after you are done reading them, why all this public speaking in the first place? Wouldn’t we all be better off “submitting on the briefs” as sometimes done in law and forgo “oral argument?” Put a page/word limit on your briefs, submit to the judge, and stop wasting everyone’s time with “speeches” that no one has to listen to because we can just read evidence afterwards?

All of this judges/debaters are lazy, speed is against the rules, and lets just send briefs is superfluous.

This really comes down to why does the rule exist and what actually happens if someone brakes the rule and isn’t punished?

David – yes debaters and judges alike are lazy. That is why you go for the path of least resistance. Adapt.

Danny – they do that already. Check out the HS forums. The difference is that it is much harder to send in 2nd line arguments via online or else I am sure they would.
Glendale already did a virtual tournament for IEs so I am sure debate can, too.

In the end NFA wanted LD to be a speaking event not a debating event. Debaters didn’t want that because it isn’t as fun to them. So we infested their debate format with actual debaters instead of interpers and platform speakers. It is no longer their world, it is ours – for better or worse.

More research will always check back against faster teams. Doing research is good, right? Letting people go fast doesn’t kill someone and unless you didn’t prepare your debaters ahead of time for it they will not quit because of speed. If they do, in my experience, they are quitting for a different reason and are just using that as a scapegoat. Sure, there may be one or two that slip through, but in the end there has to be a Utilitarian decision made. Of course, if I was in the minority I would probably be asking for a more deontological decision making process…

I also have had trouble in Socal with different judges having different thresholds for how fast is too fast. Some judges think my normal rate of talking is too fast while others might think my speed is slow. Also if we are preparing carded positions it becomes near impossible to make disads or even cases because it may be a 3 minute position in front of one judge and a 5 minute one in front of another. So the clash is limited because I only get one disad out instead of two.

Matt: Adaptation bypasses the more important issue, i.e. the quality of the event. Sure, I could adapt and just read less cards and thus have less clash, like you said. But my goal both as a debater and committee member, is to elevate the overall quality of LD debate in So Cal. Thus, adaptation might not be the best route to that end. However, I could easily be wrong.

Danny: Idk, I like going to tournaments, socializing with fellow debaters, the whole nine yards. I, and I think most other LD debaters, would like to continue the public speaking aspect of debate. It seems just a bit extreme to suggest such a radical change as opposed to the much more modest one I proposed, i.e. judges reforming the way they flow as to allow more cards to be read. Also, judges rarely, if ever, have to call for cards. My point was just that it is an option. In the round previously referenced, cards were called at the end of the round after-all.

as inevitable as judge intervention is so it is that you will have to slow down or lose a ballot. Simple as that

Do you complain about going slow for a judge who has a writing impairment and have to adapt? Sure, you could go fast and make your judge “work” for it…

You make it seem like everyone goes fast and deals with it anyways, so why does it matter that one judge in so-cal (I have not seen any judges except for one ask people to abide by the speed rule) asks you to go slow?

WHY IS THIS AN ISSUE????

At NFA you go fast, at the LDOC you go fast, at PRP I spread in every round I was in.

We have the same debate every year with different people about speed and it never changes. Adapt to the judge and you don’t have to worry about it. Or, do you assume only good judges let you go fast?

@Mac Andrews: I’d hardly say clash is limited because 1 disad is run instead of 2. Clash, as I define it, means engaging the arguments presented by the other side in the debate. It could be argued that the MORE positions you run the LESS clash in a debate since it becomes more difficult for both debaters to actually engage each other’s arguments. Instead, we get blipped responses or grouped responses.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, it would also better engage critical thinking skills for a debater to make a choice WHICH of the two disadvantages would be more strategic to run against opponent X, in front of judge Y, against case Z. Just running the stock disadvantages (or say, if you’re really fast, every disadvantage in your box) hardly encourages debaters to think on the fly.

This is not rocket science regarding how fast you can or can not go in front of a particular judge. In ANY public speaking situation we’d always “teach” our students to adapt to the particular audience you are speaking to in that situation. The NFA-LD rules ARE very clear on what a judge is supposed to do when THEY think the debater is going too fast – warn the debater once to slow down. If the debater heeds the warning and slows down then there is no issue. If the debater ignores the warning to slow down they lose. Of course there is no one standard but speakers should be able to recognize when audience members (or judge) is getting frustrated because the speed is excessive. What a horrible wasted opportunity for debaters to lose the valuable skill of learning to pace their speech for a particular audience.

I think a good test of “what is too fast” if you are having a conversation before the round about the weather. That is the speed the debate should roughly clock in at. Again, as Miller argues in this post and in others, the concept of spreading is much more important than speed itself. A shotgun approach of every argument in the sun is clearly not in the framework of the NFA-LD rules. And arguably the reason is because the rules committee thought clash is best served not by spread/speed but by adherence to the most basic public speaking principles taught in any introductory public speaking class.

I’ll chip in from Ohio.

I have two rules for speed.

1) The first threshold for speed is the judge’s.
2) The second threshold for speed is the opponent’s.

People complain that there’s no brightline to what is “too fast” – well, they’re wrong, because there is a brightline. It’s the point at which one or more participants in the debate are excluded from the round because they can’t comprehend or flow the other participants. It ceases to be an educational debate if meaningful clash is impossible or if clash cannot be evaluated.

But the rest of the audience shouldn’t dictate speed or argument choice. I had a prelim round at Fall Champs with an audience of 8 or 9 CC students watching and I proceeded to run a one-off Heidegger K at a fairly brisk pace. Not double-breath spreading, but definitely not conversational, either. There were lots of confused faces out there. Is it kind of douchy? Sure. And I probably should have done them the service of warning them beforehand so they could go next door. But my goal is to win rounds and I refuse to let non-participants alter my strategy.

All that said, if the judge(s) and debaters alike are fine with speed, then by all means, they should go for it. Faster debates are more educational debates. You get either 1) more breadth with the same amount of depth, or 2) more depth with the same amount of breadth. If neither occurs, you need more practice.

Danny, you’re right, clash becomes harder in a world where there is enhanced breadth or depth on the flow. But why is that a bad thing? Debate *ought* to be hard. When you raise the bar for engaging in clash, you force debaters to become smarter and better. This is empirically proven by every form of debate where spreading is prevalent, ever. Why do you think high school NFL Nationals in policy and LD are always – literally, always – won by national circuit schools who spread?

Obviously, debaters should adapt to the judge. Calls for judges to “flow faster” are insipid for the same reason that the judging paradigm spelled out in the rules is insipid. Telling someone else how they have to evaluate arguments, both content-wise and stylistically, is intellectually bankrupt. Like I tell high school debaters, if you’re unclear and don’t slow down, or if your K makes no sense whatsoever, I shall delight in making your post-round experience an unsatisfactory one.

And finally, if you don’t have two distinct copies of all your arguments – one for fast debates and another for slow debates – you’re doing it wrong.

@Nick makes great points and his last advice is probably the capstone of this discussion – have versions of your files for faster and slower debates.

However, I disagree that clash becomes “harder” with more speed. My point was that it’s NOT clash and it’s not the ideal clash that would bring about the host of other benefits I mention. Choosing between two equally compelling disadvantages to present only one based on the rules of speed/spread is a valuable experience and lesson debaters would lose out on.

My wife just had a very similar experience in her law practice – her brief was limited to 50 pages and she wanted to put in another argument. But that would require her to take out something already in. Rather than spreading/speeding which would loosely translate to making the text smaller/extending the margins (both not realistic but go with me) she had to, as an attorney, decide what gave her brief the best chance of success.

In speed/spread debate that’s not needed.

@David:

I certainly was not proposing the “turn in the briefs” as an alternative for NFA-LD. My point was that under the scenario you painted to justify going faster than anyone understands the public speaking element of debate is superfluous.

I make it a practice never to read cards after the round and teach all judges in NFA-LD not to follow that practice. If I didn’t understand your evidence while you were reading it then it’s as if your evidence was never read.

And no, I see no reason to do your work for you and read your evidence after the round. You are the one who is supposed to be debating and introducing evidence to support your points.

When I listen to debate rounds I do want to hear the internal logic of each card and understand the warrants. While it may translate to only a few words on the flow sheet I still need to process the card to understand your case. If, at the end of the debate, I look down at my flow and only see those few words and have no idea what they mean, you’re probably not going to win in front of me. But, if looking at those few words I can recall the evidence, the context, and the logic, I’m much more likely to be persuaded.

“In the end NFA wanted LD to be a speaking event not a debating event. Debaters didn’t want that because it isn’t as fun to them. So we infested their debate format with actual debaters instead of interpers and platform speakers. It is no longer their world, it is ours – for better or worse”.

True words Matt, true words. The more this age-old speed debate unfolds, the more I am convinced that the two camps of thought are at a fundamental level, irreconcilable. Reason being, debate functions as different things for different people. For me, fast paced, theoretical, technical, critical debate is what I find to be fun. I don’t debate (at least primarily) for public speaking skills as I feel that’s what Speech classes are for. Debate is something much different than a crash course in public speaking. Furthermore, I find the ability to analyze and prioritize many arguments to be very useful. Not to say that a slower more persuasive round can’t be fun, just that faster paced rounds give me much more of that adrenaline rush which I’m sure we’re all familiar with.

The other camp tends to view debate as an activity where we should prioritize persuasion, public speaking skills, and cater more to the audiences that we debate in front of. For example, this school of thought would not enjoy hearing a 1NC read off a Baudrillard Hyper-reality K because they feel it to be taking away focus from the topic, and alienating an audience who probably knows nothing about Postmodernism, let alone Baudrillard.

In closing, I think that every generation of debate(rs) brings about a new Zeitgeist. Debate belongs to the debaters of that day. Coaches, judges, past competitors, etc. all have stock in the event as well, but at the end of the day I think debaters should be free to use the activity for their own ends, whatever those may be. Even if they would be deemed “anti-educational” by board members, committees, etc. Debate has no intrinsic value, we ascribe values to it. As they say “every dog has it’s day” and in so far as judges/coaches relentlessly shove their views of debate down our throats, via the ballot as well as Judging Paradigms/Rules, we will never truly be able to seize the activity and extract what we may from it. The role of a critic is not to superimpose their views of what “good debate” is but instead to judge each round based on its own merits and whatever the debaters within the round have told them “good debate” looks like. It all goes back to that simple, yet under-appreciated phrase: Tabula Rasa.

Calls for judges to “flow faster” are insipid for the same reason that the judging paradigm spelled out in the rules is insipid. Telling someone else how they have to evaluate arguments, both content-wise and stylistically, is intellectually bankrupt.

Not sure if that was in response to my argument above about how judges can write down arguments easier, but I never implied that they needed to flow any faster. Just that perhaps the reason they can’t flow anything faster than a conversational rate is that they aren’t synthesizing their short-hand. Considering the time and effort we put into debate, I think it’s the least judges could do for us. But then again, I think judges should cater to debaters equally as much as debaters should cater to judges. I understand that this view is probably fairly unpopular.

No Miller, no one is going to defend the rules of NFA-LD.
When you title your post about speed and focus on speed in the rules people are going to think that is your thesis…

I know about some of the people in charge of NFA. I also know, for the most part, that most schools who go to NFA don’t care enough to change the rules. The rules won’t get changed. Either we create a pocket of resistance or let it go. To many people are happy with the pocket of resistance.

Go to the LDOC. I want to send a couple people this year if I think they are up to snuff.

I believe I have many times throughout this thread and others defended the NFA-LD rules… What Miller suggests would likely be just as confusing since it would change from a 1-2 page printed document to 20 =)

I see it much like the U.S. constitution – it sets up goals but for the most part lets us figure it out. What’s the “freedom of speech” – last I checked that’s not defined in the U.S. constitution either – same with “cruel and unusual punishment.” Instead, it says here are some over arching rules for society but what each means is up for debate.

This entire debate and discussion is healthy for NFA-LD. I want NPDA to adopt something similar not because I see it as a panacea to speed/spread but because it forces us to have this conversation over and over and over again =) There is at least a toehold if nothing else in NFA-LD to have this discussion each year if not each tournament – that’s a good thing. And it’s good to have it each year so we don’t turn into monkeys attacking each other for trying to get a banana =)

David – you wrote
“Considering the time and effort we put into debate, I think it’s the least judges could do for us. But then again, I think judges should cater to debaters equally as much as debaters should cater to judges.”

At the very least this is myopic and without question reveals a complete lack of awareness of how tournaments are actually administered (I’ve run a couple of them). In order for you to be able to engage in this activity, which you clearly enjoy, there must be a judge in the round. Unfortunately, then number of judges that would satisfy the criteria you put forth, which in the abstract are reasonable, are limited. Based on that limited availability there are two choices:
1. restrict the number of debaters who can engage in the activity based on the number of judges who meet your standards.
2. Be grateful that there are those judges who do not consider themselves experts, or who have a different view of what is acceptable than you, that are willing to judge the rounds thereby enabling you to continue debating.

Over the years many debaters have advanced the argument that the activity is for us so we should set the rules (let the inmates run the asylum). However, coaches must keep the activity rooted in solid pedagogy or they are unable to justified continued participation in the activity to administrators, among others. The inability to do this has led to the death of many programs, further restricting opportunities for those who love the activity.

Time constraints (have to go home and cook dinner for the family) prevent me from posting more, but perhaps I will post more later…

^ Well Said

Quote from User Nick
I have two rules for speed.

1) The first threshold for speed is the judge’s.
2) The second threshold for speed is the opponent’s.

And finally, if you don’t have two distinct copies of all your arguments – one for fast debates and another for slow debates – you’re doing it wrong

End Quote

this is probably the only important thing a debater or even a coach should take a way from this thread. the game isn’t just about the pieces, its also about the board.
If you cant understand the concept of the board then im confused how you think speeding/spreed is going to let you win against “Good” debaters. if you cant beat a slow debater without speed then how are you going to beat a “good” debater that can speed? SPEED ≠ Intelligence, ability to craft arguments, win the flow etc. Speed for many people is a crutch in this format save for competitive tournaments, you learned something in HS or from some other format and you are unhappy you can’t use it every round either go back or play ball. If you are really are concerned with winning then you should already being doing what nick suggested on the top of this post.

we can argue about fast/slow edu/clash all you want. it hasn’t been resolved for decades, it wont be resolved on this board, so imo maybe a discussion about adaptation might be better and more fruitful instead of wishing judges could flow better etc.

On the original topic, the rules are poorly written this is not new. probably should be updated to a degree. But we dont have a big enough policy field to warrant a complete removal of the speed stuff though, half the beauty of the NFA rules is i can hand that to a lay judge and they have some idea of what the round will be. NFA-LD is small in most of the country. its growing, but until the pool of judges is inundated with policy oriented debaters / coaches its not going to change. Think about it, does changing the rules matter if the judge in the back of the round is still a lay judge? Its already well known that the rules usually dont matter if you have a tradition “flow” judge in the round. All that will happen once you change the rules is calls for MPJ will get louder! And heellllll if that’s going to happen in the community in the next 20 years with the way things progress here. Since MPJ only works with developed pools…hummm seems like we have a problem. If you really want your rounds to have policy judges TRAIN THEM/ find alumni. im pretty sure policy judges just don’t sprout from the ground.

also a note. YOU CANT GO FAST EVERY ROUND AT NFA TOURNAMENT. the pool is filled with mostly ie judges, i had 3 prelim rounds with ie judges this last year. and i was lucky with the 3 flow judges i got. 3 members on my team had 6 lays for prelims. its not a holy grail. LDOC probably is if your judging by judge pools. Maybe Webster, with all the parli people its usually a very good pool.

a final note. I love fast debate i did 4 years of HS, and loved going fast in parli at NPDA and at those LD tournaments that i was able to during college. even though i honestly wasn’t very fast. It doesn’t mean slow debate is the scum of the earth etc. its just like tea vs coffee. people like one or the other usually i like both. either way you still get caffeine

Rolland: Not to long ago, I had a conversation with my partner and she brought up exactly the same point you did. The lack of qualified judges is where the adaptation I’m speaking about comes in. I’ve had many former debater now Speech Comm Grad students judge me in the past, and while they may truly love the activity, the fact is that they aren’t up to snuff on the current trends in debate. The problem is that they’re so long removed from the community, that they aren’t aware of certain theory arguments and case structure. Couple this with the fact that it’s difficult getting a thorough judging philosophy/background out of them. They usually just give a cliche “I’m open to anything, just justify it”, which is usually factually untrue. A perfect warrant here is the fact that at the So Cal LD tournament last year, a judge voted for Robert Maxwell on his Counter-plan. The problem was, a Counter-plan was never ran in the round….. I think these judges, of which there are more than one would think, owe it to the debaters and the event, should at least make an effort to update their debate knowledge-base to make the experience of both the debaters and critics a much more enjoyable one. One solution to this however, was provided by John Price (who I don’t yet know, unfortunately).

John Price: ” If you really want your rounds to have policy judges TRAIN THEM/ find alumni. im pretty sure policy judges just don’t sprout from the ground.”

I completely agree with this, and am willing to work towards this goal. I would hope that less experienced judges would be willing to take the time to learn. Especially since there are a growing number of debaters (in both LD and Parli) who are growing tired of debating in front of lay critics. Not saying debating in front of lay critics isn’t fun or rewarding, it’s just not my cup of tea. And considering the fact that I’m not alone in this thought, I feel obligated to take actions in order to maximize the enjoyability for said debaters. Remember folks, debate means different things to different people, and people engage in the activity for numerous reasons. Another great thing you mentioned is MPJ. Something I hope to see in So Cal in the coming years. It’s a long-shot, but it can be done.

Michael: First off, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. I can’t imagine why anyone would take such a comment personally, but I apologize nonetheless. I never said that judges should adapt to the PERSONAL preferences of debaters. My suggestion was merely that judges should take measures to maximize their judging capacity, and likewise, debaters should take measures to maximize their capacity as debaters. Thus, we meet each other in the middle in order to create the ideal debate environment. My suggestion of keeping a more succinct and efficient flow is a good example of something that judges might want to consider as a measure to make them better judges. So in short, the adaptation is more of just further qualification, which I think can only be a good thing.

Please Michael, for the love of god, turn off the damn caps lock.

That was actually much more pleasurable on the eyes to read. Keep doing it that way.

Somehow… and it’s taken about 40 years to reach the current state of affairs … we “debaters” find ourselves in a situation in which a person who is “qualified” to be the deciding vote to put another human being to DEATH and/or a person who is “qualified” to be the deciding vote on what is or is not in the state Constitution, is “totally unqualified” to undertake the awesome responsibilities of judging a high school and/or college debate!

I wouldn’t go so far as to call them “totally unqualified”, but I would maintain that said people are not ideal critics. Firstly, and this may come from my lack of faith in the intellect of my fellow Americans, I do not think that many of the people you’re speaking of are qualified to do EITHER. These people only serve on juries because they HAVE TO, and only vote because they CAN. Coercion and choice do not indicate qualification. For me at least, qualified indicated that there must be certain qualifications met. And if being a citizen is the ONLY “qualification” for voting and being on a jury, I don’t find that too compelling of a qualification, if it can even be called one. Secondly though, debate is simple a horse of a different color when compared with “reality”. Now we can argue back and forth over whether or not that is a good or bad thing, but in all reality, debate is more intricate, technical, and involved than we give it credit for. Most coaches don’t just throw students into novice tournaments absent any argumentative training in the nuances of Parliamentary debate. I would hope that most coaches take some time to teach the strategic moves and roles of each speaker in the debate round, and explain how certain arguments function (T, Spec, Burdens Press, Vagueness, etc.) These strategic moves and roles that I speak of are the details that critics should have at least cursory knowledge of, imo. While they may be “qualified” to cast a vote about someone living or dying, the fact of the matter is, they lack basic knowledge on debate theory and practice. Hence, they are more apt to just vote for whichever side they FELT was better. This oftentimes devolves merely into “who talked prettier”. And in that sense, debate ceases to be debate and becomes an IE, and we all know there are plenty enough IE’s as it is. This issue mostly plagues high school debate, but I’ve seen a fair share of it in college as well.

Oh, and in response to the section of the LD rules referenced, I think “not all judges will have traditional debate experience” is a problem, not a justification.

* Correction: age is also another qualification for voting and jury duty, doesn’t change much.

*simply, not simple

we may all be reaching the limits of what can be hashed out on an internet message thread =) good discussion all around!

Shouldn’t you all be cutting cards to match the 3000 Glendale already has =P

David

You said:

“Another great thing you mentioned is MPJ. Something I hope to see in So Cal in the coming years. It’s a long-shot, but it can be done. ”

It is clear you missed my point about MPJ. It is HUGELY destructive. If you talk to coaches who were around before MPJ, they will tell you it has ruined CEDA. Two of the biggest issues are as follows:
Not only does it hyperbolize the worst aspects of the activity, it marginalizes the voice/ideas of anyone who might disagree with some of the “latest theory”. This is unfortunate, because much of the time that theory is intellectually bankrupt and would benefit from a balance in thoughts about its acceptability.