Bietz continued: here come da judges

Mr. Bietz does not go far enough in his point on judge training.

8. Judge training
There should be three minimal explanations made to all judges before tournaments:
First, judges should be reminded that they ought to leave their preconceived notions about the resolution at the door and that their decision should be based on what is said in the round.
Second, judges should be told that flowing is a requirement. Just like we expect referees in high schools sports to have some minimal training and certification, judges in debate should try to fit their process of adjudication into a way that is at least somewhat predictable for debaters.
Third, with only some exceptions, judges at the varsity level should be expected to disclose their decisions. In my mind this is also related to the openness issues. It is unfair that some students know decisions and their records and some debaters do not.

I don’t disagree, but I think the problems go deeper than that. At the core of this issue is that so many teams simply do not “train” their judges at all. They come to the tournament with some baffled but mildly game adult in order to gain admittance to the event, and they consider that the end of it. Not only do the parents not know enough about LD to judge, they don’t know about schematics or obligations or, well, anything. They just know their kid asked them to help out, and so they tagged along. At which point, their wonderful children abandon them to the wolves. And, in my experience, the teams who bring these poor befuddled parents are the first to whine themselves when their own judges are less than sterling. Ah, human nature!

First of all, tournaments need to demand that schools bring at the very least judges they have trained. I realize that this concept of “demanding” is pretty unenforceable, but it’s worth a shot. Tournaments can also provide judging guides along with their invites. (There are plenty online, including what we’ve created for the MHL, which is what I direct people to in my Bump invitation.) I will admit that I have occasionally dumped judges from the pool both unofficially (they’re totally inept, which is usually obvious from their ballots, so I turn them off except maybe for a down-four round) and officially (at this year’s CFL Grands, after the opening judge assembly one judge asked me a question, stating that this was his first time judging. Sorry, Charlie, but the rules are that this had to be your third time judging. No quarter, in that case. It wasn’t that I was too weak of spirit to dump a kid from that team, but I didn’t do it because, to be honest, in the heat of the moment I didn’t think about it. Too bad.)

What can we do to enforce this, to make sure not that all the judges are already experienced, which is an idiotic expectation and, frankly, one that even if it were feasible would not particularly benefit the activity, at least in my opinion? I don’t really know. But this is something that, as collected coaches discussing the issue, we might be able to come up with some accepted practice. It’s worth a try.

As for Bietz’s three points, of course to number one, which should be part of the training. Number two would force a few of LD’s bigger holes-of-the-nether-regions (we all know a few of them) to actually pay attention during a round rather than trusting to their superior intellects, in addition to cueing the new judges into the standard practice. Go for it. Number three I agree with as well, but given that the norm a few years ago was not to disclose, this does probably need to be made clear off the top, especially at tournaments where a lot of old-timers are brought in. No disagreement then, as I said above.

And I look forward to working with others to solve the problem of the relatively rogue teams with crappy untrained judges that seem to pop up at every tournament.