That being said, “THIS TOPIC IS AFF SKEWED”!!!!!!!!!
I didn’t loose an Aff this year (all the affs are posted on the wiki): I ran Space 3 rounds, Natives about 10 times (the aff lost 2 times this year but not with me running it), and I even ran De-Dev and won 2 rounds with it. My downfall was the Neg in the out round I lost, Tariq had a legit aff. Also, I was to lazy to run anything but Kap at Spring Champs… apparently judges don’t like kap in So-cal, but are not willing to vote on Socialism Specification (lawl @ soc spec).
This reflects the problem of judges voting for the K in LD. I think I lost all the rounds I ran kap because the judge either didn’t like k’s (even though they said they were ok with any argument), thought that USFG action isn’t capitalistic, or that I dropped the ‘golden argument’ they agree with and would have voted on even if I had killed it. The K is the last bastion of hope for a Neg with an Aff skewed topic, but Negs don’t get that (at least in so-cal)! Though, I found out that because I ran the K b4 the T that the T doesn’t matter; which is an amazing RFD when the aff was actually not topical (the reason I went 2-2 at spring champs)!

On Aff Biased topics, what am I supposed to do? Run 8 Ts and 3 specs because no one discloses/posts? This strat has a name, it is called “LAME” discussions I have had this past year point to “Neg is the place to be” because of this strategy. I will repeat, that is LAME. I would still vote for it as a judge (because the flow is golden and intervention is bad blah blah blah), but probably knock some speaker points and drone for 4 minutes of the RFD about how much I think that strat is LAME. If neg teams can only win because of procedurals on a topic there must be abuse somewhere, which means the topic is either A) Skewed – which forces judges to equalize by voting for the procedural, or B) the topic writing sucks. I believe that both of these were true for this year and fear the worst for next year.

In the end, procedurals are LAME and Aff skewed/poorly written topics are also LAME, but to a lesser extent then procedurals. Like any good LD debater, and fan of Brian Boitano, I have a plan. Write better topics! Because that’s what Brian Boitano’d do!

i’d pay attention to those sunset cliffs outrounds. that, along with gorlok, was easily the most competitive tournament of the year. and i bet if you got a hold of the gorlok splits, you’d find that the neg was equally dominant.

in highly competitive rounds, the neg is the place to be.

further, the speeches that require the largest amount of critical thinking are those LOC’s that put out 7 offcase , because guess what – you don’t get the luxury of putting 30 args on a position when there are seven of them. you are forced to, as sparks SHOULD like, choose the 5-7 best args you can on a position then move on, and then do that 6 more times in 8 minutes.

fast debates foster critical thinking. that’s why faster debaters usually have no trouble adapting to a slower debate, because they are used to thinking critically at a much higher rate of speed. indeed, it often feels like child’s play.

i prefer fast debate not because it gives me a strategic advantage, not because i get to put out 30 arguments on T. i prefer it because it is harder, more substantive, and more interesting.

I have a very high threshold for good arguments – trust me, I hate blippyness as much as you do. All of my arguments have claims and warrants. All of them are probably strategic. On T shells, instead of having five short standards, I’ll have three well-developed standards. I always signpost and hate those who don’t. Just because I am spreading doesn’t mean I’m automatically not being critical. It just means I’m just increasing both the aggregate quantity and nuanced quality of my argumentation. The tradeoff that you perceive between quantity and quality doesn’t necessarily have to exist.

This award system was a great idea and I look forward to hearing from Nick, and others, on their suggestions to the system.

I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out where the first post was, but now that I have you said teams would receive awards in the mail. As an LDer I have begun to notice the differences in award ceremonies between LD and Parli. I have been trying to figure out why LD doesn’t get speaker awards at most tournaments. If we have to sit through them for Parli why can’t we spend an extra 5 minutes to do them for LD?

Tremendous job by Biola to claim the top ranking, by the way. To maintain that high of a winning percentage with such a large sample size is astonishing. Hopefully we’ll see more debaters move up to open next year to add some spice to the competition.

Finally, I’ve spent a little bit of time thinking about the awards system and I’ve come up with three potential improvements for next year. (Pre-empt: they don’t relate to the aforementioned novice/JV/senior split). Once this year’s awards are handed out using the current system, I think that discussion can begin in earnest. I recall someone recommended a committee to formalize changes to the award – I would be happy to be a student representative if there is interest in that.

Good luck to everyone this weekend!

- Nick