What I love more than anything about debate is that it is not exactly a breeding ground for inertia. In the almost 20 years that I’ve been involved in the activity, i.e., LD specifically, the beast has changed over and over again. Some of the changes have had people wringing their hands decrying the end of life on the planet as we know it, and some have been roundly applauded by one and all. Many of those changes went on to change again. I was, as the VCA well knows, mightily annoyed when so-called postmodernism was dragooned into the discourse, primarily because most of what was being touted as philosophy and presented as ethical standards were something else entirely. I mean, I love a lot of modern criticism, don’t get me wrong—I do read Baudrillard for the pure enjoyment of it—but no amount of pleasure taken from ideas makes those ideas relevant to literally anything to which I might wish to apply them. That is, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and this was not good for a variety of reasons. At the time I was wringing my hands, decrying the end of life on the planet as we knew it. And, of course, it all passed. Not that idiocy has left the building—far from it—but at least that particular brand of idiocy has been eliminated, or more to the point, pared down to the good stuff.
Many of the changes have been more on the engineering side, you might say, in the way we run tournaments. In my early days, life broke down into the closed inner sanctum of the tabroom and everyone else. The software printed schematics in such a way that if you were paying attention, you could deduce everyone’s record from them, which was the only way you’d find out anyone’s record because there were no disclosure and, as I say, tab was closed. College tournaments were a nightmare of inexperience combined with greed. Manual tabbing on cards was terribly error-prone, but the bugs in the software almost insured a crash at some point, with at least one hour per tournament elapsing with absolutely nothing happening except in the tab room, where people were no doubt wishing they had brought their long swords because seppuku was so much more preferable to sorting out what went wrong when. Debateziti was, indeed, one word.
Today, things are a lot different, and I think mostly better, and I like to think that I was involved in many of the improvements, even the ones I did not originally champion. If I’m in a tab room, the information is open, the process is open, we work fast and we try to get in as many rounds for as many people as possible. Yes, I will bark at you if you do something dumb beyond the norm, especially but not limited to when you ought to know better, but only at the stress moments, when we’re trying to get that next round out as quickly as possible. That’s where tournaments often fail, at the cusp of the rounds, where directors don’t have their teams up to speed on ballot collection or distribution, which means tab has to step in and bully people along or else watch the whole enterprise start to sink. We have one goal in tab: to go home. Everything we do is in aid of going home, as early as possible. When we’re doing our job well, you will also albeit indirectly get a good tournament out of it at your end. The Traveling Tab that exists around here these days does that job well, and has a great time doing it. We hope everyone else is having a great time on the other end. And I publish our processes ad nauseum here to keep things clear and open. No, you can’t all watch over my shoulder all the time literally, but you can do it figuratively.
So why am I saying all this? Well, yesterday I talked about MJP, which does have its lingering controversy. What I tried to explain was that MJP is just one tool in the box, and that used correctly, it’s a good one. In the space of one year we have in this region gone from experimenting with it to finding its place. You’ll only see it a few times, in the big national draw tournaments where it makes sense. It will make those tournaments better for the attendees at all levels. Everyone gains to some degree and no one is harmed. That is a good thing.
And now O’C is going to give case disclosure a whirl at Big Jake. For those of you who follow The View from Tab, you know that we discussed this at length following its implementation at Greenhill last year. I don’t quite remember where I came down on it, but O’C recalls that I was relatively favorable. Perhaps, but to be honest, I absolutely have no real idea how I feel about it because I’ve never been involved in it. I’ll tell you one thing, though: it’s a huge step. You don’t require case disclosure in LD at your tournament, I mean, literally mandate it, without expecting some serious results, good or bad. Since, as I say, I have no experience with the beast, I can’t off the top predict which it will be, good or bad, but I will spend some time next week analyzing it. And more importantly, I’ll spend time evaluating it after we’ve done it, with a little experience in my pocket to make my thoughts more meaningful.
But I will say this. When I read O’C’s notes in his invitation on why he was doing this, I was impressed. He believes it’s a good idea, of course, or he wouldn’t be trying it, and he’s making all the entrants do it, otherwise it wouldn’t be meaningful, but he’s clearly doing it as an experiment, “so we can have an honest discussion based on recorded feedback after the tournament.” Given that disclosure is, for LD, both new and controversial, I can’t imagine a better way to address it than to give it a shot and see what happens at a national tournament where it makes sense to do it, and where we’re doing it with the express purpose of learning from it and acting upon what we learn. I mean, for all I know, I am going to detest the whole thing, find that it has harmed my debaters’ chances at the tournament, that it is the end of life on the planet as we know it—but at least I will know this, and not just whip it up out of the chimeras of my personal biases.
I’m looking forward to giving it a shot. I’m looking forward to learning from it. I can’t wait for the ensuing dialogue. I applaud Cruz not for trying it, but for trying it the way he’s trying it, doing what he thinks is best not just for his tournament but for the activity as a whole. He admits that he may be wrong, but that this is the only way to find out. That’s pretty gutsy, and puts a lot on the line. More power to him.
And O’C has paid me absolutely nothing to say all of this. (Hell, I don’t even like the guy. Uh, pay no attention to that Disney trip. Doesn’t exist. Not happening. Never heard of it.)
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