9 issues continued: Openness

We’ll get back to how to communicate. The issue isn’t going anywhere.

Meanwhile, Bietz Wars, Episode 3: Revenge of the Rostrum Article. In this point, Mr. B discusses Openness. Let’s just quote him verbatim (for those who haven’t committed the archives of Rostrum to memory).

3. Openness
As LD is becoming more complex, it is important that we create a culture of openness. Two issues:
First, I am shocked how many debaters ask observers to leave the room (or in some instances a hallway) to “protect” their positions from being heard. The community norm ought to be that once a case is read, it is no longer private. Flow-sharing and scouting happens at tournaments. The problem in the status quo is that it is done covertly and amongst friends. This leads to a lot of hurt feelings, awkward situations, the exclusion of non “in” debaters or teams, and charges of unethical behavior.
Second, more discussion online needs to be less about the rules of debate and more about what happens in debate rounds. To some degree VBD ought to take some responsibility for the lack of substantive debate-topic discussions. However, whenever there is an attempt for people to discuss arguments, people seem to guard their own positions too much.

That really is two issues. Maybe three or four. All related though.

First of all, I’m not inclined to spend much time arguing in favor of openness, as it is on face more educational than lack of openness. And better debates arise from preparation rather than shock tactics. The only reasonable position against it is the potential advantage to large squads who can get a lot more information than smaller squads in those situations where it matters. I do tend to feel that prelim rounds should be closed to competitors per se, i.e., if you’re debating in flight b, you shouldn’t be scouting someone in flight a, but I don’t think Bietz is talking about that. Anyhow, I certainly agree with MB here; posting brackets (which we began doing at TNC) does help: it definitely levels the field, because the precise information of who’s hitting whom (if they stay alive) focuses the mind, if information on what’s being run is desired. I think it is up to tournaments to post clear rules on whether rounds should be open or closed, rather than leaving it to debaters or coaches (some of whom may indeed prefer shock tactics to debate strategies). And that, of course, rounds should be open.

Of course, there is an exception to this, with younger, novice debaters who get nervous when the room is packed. This is a tough one. On the one hand, they’ve got to learn to play to the audience if they’re good enough to be breaking, but at the same time, they are young and inexperienced. This is an individual coach/kid issue, but we might allow that, say, novice rounds are closed. I don’t like that, though. Kids need to work through it. But we do need to acknowledge that it is an issue with some students, and that coaches need to work with those students on that issue.

The second half of MB’s issue is, I think, a call for all of us to talk more about topic/case content. This is tough for me from one specific perspective: I think people (i.e., the Sailors in this specific instance) are solicitous of protecting their ideas as they’re germinating, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be perceived as taking something from my team and publishing it to the world without approval of the person who came up with it. But then again, this is hardly likely, given that I tend to be interested in topics early on, before anyone has come up with even a glimmer of a case position, and I’m usually on the next topic by the time anyone has come up with anything interesting on this one.

But the point is, we as coaches do not discuss topics much. I write every day, but probably devote a mere dozen or so entries a year to literally analyzing a resolution. My personal reason for this is that I do not want my fallibility to become some poor schlub’s losing case. I mean, what the hell do I know? The idea that people will presume my authority, mistaking my curiosity for knowledge, has a chilling effect. But I could get over that if I were in a forum for such a discussion with other coaches. I enjoyed MB’s attempt at handling this issue in a podcast; that’s not a bad forum for it, actually. And there are other things (e.g., theory) that would certainly benefit from active discussion.

Realistically, then, this issue can be resolved along with the first issue of coachean communication. Not only should we be discussing issues affecting the community, we should be discussing the day-to-day business of the community, i.e., content. The discussion should be open, which would especially help new coaches. That it would also help students, but at the same time perhaps stymie them with too much information, is also a given. As we develop our new coachean communication service, therefore, we now have another function that must be served.