“Resolved: That the constitutional right of freedom of religion has wrongly evolved into freedom from religion.” Okay. We can now move away slowly from the crime scene. Bietz suggested in a private communiqué (no communiqué with me is private for long!) that he’s had enough of Pffft on TFVT. The Cats must have heard him loud and clear, and responded with a resolution guaranteed to shut all of us up forthwith. If you don’t recall, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And I love a resolution of dubious fact modified by a judgment of “wrongly.” While the line of history from the Constitution through to the latest declarations on the subject from SCOTUS is an interesting narrative, one must in this instance contend with a (possibly) false premise leading to a moral judgment? And argued, potentially, in front of panels who have already accepted the premise and drawn a deeply held religious conclusion from it? Either you argue that it hasn’t happened or it isn’t wrong? I’m with Bietz. (By the way, a word to the wise: Flip pro. Oh, wait. It’s CatNats. No flip. Okay, a different word to the wise: Skip your con rounds, unless your opponents are raving lunatics.)
We return you now to our regular scheduled broadcast.
There were some interesting sidelights to the Lakeland tournament last weekend. First of all, O’C chezzed up with us again, as he does here and at Byram. To get him in the mood for the DDA (that’s Disney Debate Adventure), I dug out a bottle of WDW shampoo and a little Mickey Mouse soap I had stolen from my hotel room last time I was there and put them into his bathroom. He loved them. He also stole them, no doubt for the O’C loo back in the city. This didn’t bother me that much, but he also stole the towels, the pens, the alarm clock and the Knight Rider lunchbox. Jeesh.
In preparation for the MHL side of the tournament, we had asked member schools to nominate literally all their novices for recognition with what we were calling the Modest Novice awards. We thought it would be fun to have some jokey awards that acknowledged everyone’s hard work through the year, and also aided in team building and community building, which as I said yesterday, are big with me. Most programs rose to the occasion with fantastic results. It’s one thing to have your own private humorous awards, but when they’re public, it forces a level of creativity that will make the joke work with others. For the most part, they did. We asked that upperclassmen be the ones to come up with the categories, unique for each kid or, occasionally, pair of kids. I’m pretty sure this will be a standard feature of the MHL grand event in years to come. There were things like “Most Likely to Call His Judge a White Supremacist” and, for a policy team with one very big guy and one very little guy, “The Cutest Couple.” I got a real kick out of this.
Of course, there were numerous other awards as well, what with O’C and Stefan both sorting them out and whatnot. They are the godfathers of a new group, the New York State Debate Coaches Association, in aid of getting coaches working together to promote regional debate, so they had recognition awards for that plus the tournament per se, plus the Modest Novice awards, plus the People’s Champion Award (for the challenge round), plus one remaining award I have in my possession and will announce shortly. With O’C, in other words, you’re never at a loss for awards. Come to think of it, I had some old trophies in my house, and when he took the soap and the shampoo, he also stole them!
Then again, for reasons that totally elude me, I now have in my possession, and in the chez, the traveling trophy for LD for Lakeland. Why me, I wonder. Oh, well.
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