Diary of a moose hunt

At some point during the Sarah Palin Invitational this weekend, Jimi Mo came by to talk about this and that, especially the lack of communion between speech and debate in the northeast. In Texas, apparently, it is not unusual to mix and match extemp and debate in the same tournament, with the same people. To be honest, I bemoan the lack of communion of speech and debate in the region too, and have often opined about it here (at least I think I have often opined about it here; if not, I should have). While we were talking he brought up the coaches’ double-check in Texas, when coaches have a short period of time to challenge the ballots before break rounds continue. Kaz and I were sort of dumbfounded by it.

Interesting, especially in light of the snafu Saturday.

Obviously we’re not talking about blending speech/debate events at bid tournaments. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you’re processing 129 entrants through 6 prelim round followed by a break to doubles (both of which make sense to me), you’re not going to fit in any speech rounds, either physically or mentally, unless you have three full days and enough masochists to sink the proverbial forensic battleship. So where, then, would you do it? I don’t know. Subject for further thought, I would say. We’ll get back to that in the future.

But, more importantly, there was the snafu.

Members of the VCA know that I have discussed tabbing often in the past; I even have a tabbing label on many posts. The perfect tab situation is two people working together, plus a complete double-check to catch errors after the fact. I’ve screwed stuff up in the past, and make no claims for perfection. 128 speaker points * 6 rounds + 64 decisions * 6 rounds is a lot of data entry. Two ballots in there went in backwards because of missed low point wins. In the past my errors have also been low point wins. I would suggest that everyone’s errors everywhere are low point wins, for the most part, for obvious reasons. The software challenges you when you do enter a low point win, but not when you don’t. They get missed. It’s always going to happen.

So what you need, as I’ve said in the past, is a backup system. You run off a check-round sheet and someone laboriously checks every single ballot: this too is a two-person situation. That was, as you know, one of the things we made happen at the Pups this year for the first time. Sadly, at the Sarah Palin Invitational, the backer uppers didn’t catch the errors. (And, if you weren’t there, the SP references refer to some joker in tab who felt the need to challenge over and over again the sanity of our great GOP presidential candidate in his unfortunate choice of running mate from the great state of Russiaview, but the less said about that the better. My greatest fear: Palin for reelection in 2012...)

Things go wrong. Or, euphemistically, stuff happens. (This is a family blog.)

Since I’m in just about every tab room in the universe, I can at least improve my own error prevention. The real issue is the need to reinforce the importance of that checking of the ballots after the fact. Even with the built-in software double-check, the physical checking before sorting needs to be of prime importance, yet we usually give this job to less than our most experienced people. That’s okay, but I need to provide more personal oversight. I mean, I can’t stop making mistakes, but I can police the mistake-finding mechanism better. And I will. I have learned from this experience this weekend. I am responsible, but I plan to learn from my mistake.

What about the Texas system? I don’t know. One of the big problems at the SPI was people disappearing after prelims. At least one simply and emphatically refused to honor her judging commitment. Others weren’t far behind. Anyone who could disappear, did. We might as well have had the Texas system, given how many people grabbed their packets one way or that other. Are we willing, as a community, to extend the length of all our tournaments by another hour or so? Are we willing to open the door to the bozos who want nothing more than to exit through it? Between the bozos who blow off the first couple of rounds thinking that someone else will magically cover for them, and the bozos who can’t get to a round on time if they’re life depended on it, and the bozos who have dinner plans that simply cannot include something as insignificant as a debate tournament, well, you’ve got a lot of bozos. Those are some pretty big shoes to fill. (I just love that joke.) Anyhow, I think we might at least discuss it and learn more. I’ve got nothing intrinsically against it, and if someone is indeed getting it to work, that’s good. For that matter, a purely open tab also ought to work exactly the same way. O’C does that at Big Bronx. I’m personally against open tab only because of the number of debaters who I feel might not give it their all if they know they are out of contention. I could be wrong about that. Certainly there are reasonable people holding an opposite view.

In any case, as I was bringing down the ballots for doubles Saturday I was waylaid by a debater who said we had tabbed him wrong. I dropped off the ballots and brought him back up to tab to check, and lo and beholdrooni, he was right. The Montwegians immediately stopped the tournament as we refigured the elims. The was exactly the right thing to do. It’s a tough call for a tournament director, and it has to be a real heartbreaker to have broken and then find that you’ve not broken, but it’s not fair to the couple of people who really did break to keep them out, and fair unfortunately trumps nice in this situation. Curiously enough, Jimi Mo also had a ballot error, after discussing exactly that subject with us earlier.

In his good comment at VBD, O’C writes: “Some have complained of conspiracies or fairness.” Good grief! Again, I’ve made my tabbing approach clear in the past. All judges are done by the system, not by me. If we have to change a judge, which is only done to improve a judge in a bubble round (only to put in an A over a C, that is, where the decision matters), we always take the top person that the software offers. Ditto in breaks, where we fill the panels with the most even balance possible, at the dealing of the names by the software, not by us. If we tried to pack the deck in our favor, we’d never get home. Does the person who was mis-tabbed get some benefit by being in an easier pull in prelims? Not really. As O’C said, there were so many pull-ups that it hardly made a difference. Anyhow, if I am conspiring with anyone, could they at least raise their hand so I’ll know who I’m supposed to be splitting the loot with. And fairness? I refer you to your own discussions of justice, and mine. I’ve always said that justice is an ideal we ought to attempt to achieve, an "ought" just like morality. I’m trying, folks. I may not get perfect fairness/justice 24/7, and perfect fairness/justice does not equal paradise (cf. Rawls), but I don’t really believe that anyone seriously thinks any of us are engaged in some sort of malfeasance. At a high school debate tournament? If so, come by and chat for a while. There is nothing for anyone to hide in any tabroom I run, or that of any of the northeast’s traveling tabroom and chowder society. We’ve got other goals, and I’d be happy to share them with you in person. Make your judgment from the facts. So the only question is, is it fair that the people who should have broken ultimately did break? The answer is yes.

One last thing: the "dream schedule." If we had been able to start an hour earlier than we did, we might have squeezed in that A flight on Friday night. Thanks to an accident on the Thruway, plus a few other of the usual hitches, an early start was not to be. And maybe there was a little overoptimism in the halls of Montwegia, It would have been nice, but… Starting early on Saturday got us into the same mode as the Bump schedule. Nothing unusual, in other words.

All in all, the Kaiser seemed to be a success. 129 entrants included, sure, a few young ‘uns out of their depth, but they got some good experience out of it. And everyone else got some solid competition, with lots of A judges being worked to death (sorry about that) and despite a possibly avoidable glitch (which lasted all of half an hour and sadly disappointed a couple of kids who have my personal apology) a very pleasantly run event. Kudos to the Monti team for working hard and doing their best to provide a good experience to their guests for the weekend.

P.S. Menick takes full responsibility for all the Palin jokes at the tournament. Those who found them partisan now understand the power that is held by he who runs the printing press. On the other hand, Weaver was the artist of the weekend, but most of his work, like the example shown here, was between him, tab, and the debaters in that particular round, who probably think the lot of us are totally out of our minds. Those debaters are, in fact, correct.