Maybe I'm missing something, but I’m starting to believe that the fatal flaw of disclosure is enough to prove that the process, as it exists, absolutely works in favor of big programs and to the detriment of small programs.
Stick with me on this.
I have two—count ’em, 2—varsity LD debaters. That’s the whole shooting match. The entire varsity squad. Not two at a tournament, but two in total. There is no bench strength, as they say. And, as the VCA knows, I do not provide cases, positions, blocks, evidence, etc.
My guess is that Bronx Science, Greenhill and Harvard-Westlake have, say, a minimum of 10 varsity LD debaters each comprising their squads (I’m being parsimonious in my estimate) and at least 2 coaches each providing to some extent positions, blocks and evidence, if not whole cases.
Go back and read http://coachean.blogspot.com/2010/08/case-disclosure-part-8.html, which remains unanswered. The point there was that, despite all the claims of the benefits of disclosure, under the present rules of engagement it is a simple matter that a debater can attend a tournament that requires disclosure and never once disclose what he or she is going to run for the entire tournament.
I would suggest that all the so-called benefits of disclosure are negated by the rules of engagement, insofar as disclosure doesn’t necessarily happen, or at most it only happens that the small programs disclose by mathematical default while the big programs do not.
Let’s look at the realities. My 2 guys go to Bronx, with disclosure mandated. They have, between them, the ability to create, we will say for argument’s sake, 3 good new cases each on each side. (The numbers don’t matter here, as they will scale regardless of their accuracy.) They can, therefore, scrape together 6 cases for the tournament.
Greenhill and H-W, also attending the tournament, even if we assume similar capabilities (which isn’t true, because of coaching differences), can also create 3 good new cases each for each side, numbering a total of 60 cases.
The discrepancy here is obvious. If a team is not required to actually run a disclosed case, if a team can in good conscience pull out a totally new case for each round, then the bigger school’s advantage is manifest. All the disclosure in the world is pointless because they’ve only disclosed what they’ve run, not what they’re going to run in a given round. For that matter, even if they did run what they’ve disclosed, they can have disclosed 60 cases, whereas my guys will have disclosed 6, and at the tournament, with their full contingent of entries (not the 10 but, say, 5) plus position-providing coaches, their advantage after my guy’s cases are disclosed is overwhelming. They have the personnel to use the disclosure; my guys will be swamped. Worse, as often as not, my guys will be prepping against a case that isn’t going to be run!
So, first, no one is really disclosing. Second, big teams even if they do disclose, can be disclosing so much as to render the disclosure counterproductive.
I mentioned Bronx, Greenhill and H-W because the former two mandate disclosure at their tournaments, and the coach of the latter has been one of its strongest proponents. But all the benefits they have claimed seem strangely chimerical to me, other than the wiki providing a body of research, a different issue altogether. All the arguments I’ve seen on the benefits of disclosure are only gained when disclosure is real. So I would ask this of these large programs in favor of disclosure. Are they willing to disclose exactly what cases they will be running at a tournament prior to the tournament? All of them, if more than one? And are they clearly willing to note which they’ll be running when, if needs be? In other words, are they really willing to disclose, in advance, so that if one of my 2 guys hits them, my guys can benefit from disclosure, that my guys can read the cases in advance and get a little prep? Are they willing to reevaluate the rules of engagement so that we really have disclosure, and not just some hurdles that are disclosure in name only that may ultimately benefit only large teams?
If they are not willing to actually disclose, then they must explain to the community what the benefits of disclosure are, when there is, in fact, no disclosure.
2 comments:
So, be careful what you wish for. While disclosure rules of Bronx (and I guess the others) only require disclosure of what you have run, Bietz' article "The Case for Public Case Disclosure", Rostrum, May 2010 seems to read in favor of disclosing all in advance.
Advance disclosure will certainly eliminate the constructive speech prep-out. But as noted the small team inherits a new problem even more daunting, the task of "prep-up". Your two varsity LD sailors will now be facing prep for 60 H-W cases, a load of 30 each to share. While the H-W team’s prep load for Hud is about one case per person, sharing the prep. And note, whether the large teams choose to do this or not is not important -- the possibility they can, or might, will compel the competitive small team to work that much harder.
If disclosure is intended to help the small competitive team, then, as the coach of a small competitive team I’ll say stop helping us! This is not the help we need.
Apologies for the naivety and if this has been discussed before, but how about reinstating a tournament culture that declares the prep-out unethical? The debate community, prominent coaches and tournament organizers, can declare that the prep-out is unfair, and specifically sharing of flows for the purpose of gaining a competitive advantage (as opposed to educational) is unfair. This would need to be top-down, from coaches to their students, implementing a step-change in the customary activity at tournaments.
In industry we often use the 80-20 rule. You can't fix everything, but if you take care of the big things you've made a significant improvement. This would apply here -- there is no way to stop the informal disclosure that happens by word of mouth when students talk between rounds. But if you eliminate the sharing of detailed flows and curb the expectation that getting a prep-out advantage is OK, you'll go a long way to minimizing the disadvantage facing the little guy today.
Maybe I'm not understanding your math, but 6 cases per side means that worst case scenario (with your two debaters on opposite sides in round 7) you'd only have to disclose 8 of your 12 cases in prelims. Depending on whether one or both of them break, and depending on how flips work out, your remaining 4 should be able to run all-new cases at least through octas, possibly though finals. Seems pretty equitable to me, at least by the standard you set in your post.
I'll leave aside my quibbles about the diminishing strategic returns for new cases, but think of it this way: pre-disclosure, BigTeamsVille had to write 10 (or whatever) cases in order to be able to run a new case every round, and post-disclosure they have to write 60. Isn't that a comparative advantage to Hen Hud?
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