Author Archive
The “Invasion” Case
Yes, CBU ran (and may still run) what is essentially a “make Cuba the 51st state case”. We seemed to get some nasty (albeit good-natured nasty) comments about the case at the last few tournaments, so I thought I would post it, and defend our choice as a team. First, I don’t think the case [...]
Supplies!
I recognize this is a rather odd topic to bring up, but we’ve never discussed it on this page. What kinds of supplies do L/D debaters need to bring to tournaments? I’ll share a couple of ideas, and then members of the community can flesh this out. For files – My debaters use a small [...]
A new year and a new topic
Reasons why I’m excited about the new year: 1) My school got a travel budget increase, so we’re going to travel a bit more and see some more midwestern L/D. (Okay, these aren’t necessarily reasons why YOU would be excited, this is my list.) 2) The Cuba topic is a fascinating one with lots of [...]
How much to write out for the round?
An interesting question has come up around camp CalBap this week. How much do we want to write on our debate briefs? How much outside of the evidence, cites and tag lines? There are two schools of thought on this. One says that you should put in lots of transitional statements like, “My next argument [...]
Great ideas for “passive” research
Perhaps your courseload prevents you from scanning 9 different websites daily for new items about the Greater Horn of Africa. Why not allow the power of RSS to do the work for you? Here are two tips: 1) Use Google News Alerts. Go to Google’s News Alerts Page. Put in the search term “Greater Horn [...]
Teleology of Debate
I join Danny in wishing all of our readers and contributors on this page a happy and healthy new year. During this time of resolutions, it seems fitting to take a step back and reflect on the activity of debate. What is the desired end, the purpose of debate? In philosophical terms, this is its [...]
Tutorial – Writing Briefs in MS Word 2002
Here is a Tutorial for Writing Debate Briefs in MS Word 2002. Obviously, if you use a different version of MS Word, or if you’re really super cool and use something like OpenOffice Writer, then the steps will be almost the same, but the buttons may have some different names. For example, in Writer you [...]
Kritik Theory
I wanted to explain what I believe about Kritiks, and hopefully start a discussion that will lead to some understanding about this realm of debate theory. Why now? This last weekend at the California Double-Up some of my students (the ones who don’t also do CEDA) ran into their first kritiks. So, what is a [...]
Topic Area Background
The LD Camp went very well, with 16 students from 4 schools in attendance. Not bad for the first year of anything that doesn’t give away trophies. Anyway, among the highlights was a discussion of delivery by Prof. Bill Sparks of Cerritos College, who (among other things) explained the difference between strategies that allow you [...]
Procedurals
Let me say first that I’m really enjoying the different points of view offered on this site. In anticipation of our SoCal-LD.net LD camp coming up in a week or so, I wanted to post some examples of procedural arguments you can use in the round. These are not groundbreaking, and they’re in .doc format [...]
Tips on Writing an Affirmative – Part 2
I would like to follow up John Boyer’s great post with one that approaches the same problem from a different point of view. From a competitor’s standpoint, how do you find affirmatives that will win? Here are some ideas: 1) Pick the moral high ground – Don’t be afraid to write affirmatives that will cost [...]
NFA L/D at NCCFI and next year’s camp?
Southern California hosted the National Christian College Forensics Invitational on Mar. 2nd-4th, and So. Cal did very well in competition. Open went to Quarters, and while CBU had two in quarters, Pt. Loma (San Diego area) defeated Bethel (Minnesota) in both sems for a closeout. Novice went straight to finals where Kansas Wesleyan defeated Pt. [...]
