An old sidewinder revisited

Rule number 1: Don’t go poking around under rocks and bushes unless you’re prepared for what you might find there. For instance, it’s very pleasant to take a nature walk in the foothills near Stanford, although on your jaunt you will pass prodigious signage warning that there are rattlesnakes under the bushes, and suggesting that you do not rile them up. To be perfectly honest, I do not find these signs to be an encouragement for walking anywhere within two miles of any bush in the place, much less riling up the local fauna. As a matter of fact, I find these signs encouraging of getting back into the car, very carefully, and heading out to the coast posthaste. There are no rattlesnakes in the Pacific Ocean, as far as I am aware.

Those with good memories might recall my letter to the New York State Forensic League last year, whining about this and that in my usual fashion. Aside from being cited as having a bad attitude (you can take the boy out of fifth grade but you can’t take fifth grade out of the boy) my impression upon the assorted States nabobs seems to have been, charitably put, less than minimal. In fact, I seem to have been the catalyst for codifying pretty much everything I was complaining about. The rule of thumb that, If Menick likes it, it can’t be right, seems to have taken root. In the latest example of this: I had suggested that the system of state qualifications, being entirely predicated on the speech placement model, needed revision. In the present model, it is not impossible for a student to break at every tournament he or she attends and still not qualify for States! Apparently I should have kept my trap shut.

The going rate of qualification—apparently an incorrect one—has been to extrapolate placement from the drop, if necessary. That is, everybody who doesn’t advance from octos is in 9th place, from doubles is in 17th place, from quarters is in 5th place, etc. The way the official numbers work under this approach, if 148 people attend a tournament, everyone in doubles would get a qual. No one dropping in doubles gets a qual if it’s less than 148 people. Which is already pretty severe. But, the way it’s supposed to work, apparently, is based on seed, which means that, with 148 debaters, as few as 1 of the persons dropping in doubles could conceivably get a qual. (Have I lost you yet?)

Here’s how NYSFL puts it:

We have had some questions about the awarding of half-qualifications to debaters in tournaments with elimination rounds. While the following procedure has always been in effect, we felt that there is a need to explain it again.

Let's look at an example to show how the half-quals are awarded.

We have a tournament with 9 half-quals. The tournament breaks to double octofinals . Obviously, everyone who goes on to quarter finals receives a half-qual. The question is, who among the non-advancing octofinalists [gets] the 9th half-qual.

Take the debaters who did not advance and rank them according to their ORIGINAL seed. The highest seed among the non-advancing octofinalists receives the half-qual. So, if the non-advancing octofinalists had the following seeds:

7, 8, 10, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 32, the 7th seed gets the half-qual.

In the past, we have had coaches ask if all the non-advancing octofinalists were in an unbreakable tie and if all 8 should be awarded the 9th half-qual. This is not the case.

Maybe it’s just me, but I see the odd problem here. First of all, varsity LD at States is the smallest of the 3 LD divisions, and is the only one that would presumably be almost totally fed by this system. By smallest division, my recollection is numbers somewhere around 45 in 2006, and this in one of the most populous LD states in the country. (We’ll not include any other issues which may mitigate against varsity participation in the tournament in the present discussion, since the State organization does not recognize any other mitigating issues.)

It would seem to me that any tournament legitimately breaking to doubles is asking of the breakers that they be of high quality. And 147 is, well, a really high number, especially to break and get no credit for it at the state level. By not rethinking its qualifications procedure, States manages to exclude what looks like a pretty good bunch of debaters. If you attend a half dozen tournaments this season, and win one but drop early at 5 others, you can’t go to States (absent their regional qualifier system). Given the small number of debaters in the field selected by this system, i.e. the varsity, wouldn’t it make sense to change the system? Given the generous nature of the regional qualifier system, it’s certainly not inherent in the States organization that they are, simply, parsimonious. But they do seem to be blind to the realities of LD aside from the small, one-day, MHL/CFL/MDL type tournaments that are geared to younger debaters, and to some extent have a more intramural feel to them than the true cauldron of invitationals. It’s easy enough to revise the system directly along the line of breaks. Break twice, any tournament, and you’re fully qualified. What’s wrong with that?

I’ve said this before. The people who run the state organization are perfectly nice. But they are not running an organization that truly represents the interests of at least the debate side of the universe. And this, I’m afraid, is just one more example of it.

And, no doubt, I’ll get another D- for attitude for having written this.