Deep in the heart of MJP

Conflicting commitments conspired to kibosh last night’s TVFT recording. We will begin instead next Monday, the good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise. I can’t say I was terribly disappointed. I had just spent two hours working with the Speechonauts (which seems like the best thing I can come up with as a name for the Speecho-American Sailors), and I was sort of drained. They certainly are a radically different business from debaters. I’m going to be sad when I pass them along to a new coach; I’ll probably keep my hand in a little just because it’s fun, especially at the level of piece-selection and preparation. Dare I suggest I know a little about reading and writing and especially cutting, given the good old day job?

I was, naturally, intrigued by the notes accompanying the MJP opening at Greenhill. Two issues are addressed that we’ve discussed a lot in our own MJP use, both literally in tab and here at CL. First off, there is the question of pairing when a natural fit (1-1) is unavailable. That is, it would seem that among the goals of MJP, giving everyone their most preferred judge comes in as a pretty high priority. At the same time, by its very nature, giving everyone equality (judges rated equally by both parties) is also a high priority. But there may be reasonable spiritual differences, where some people hold that they’d rather be on the wrong end of a 1-2 pairing than in a mutual 3-3 or 4-4. How tab handles things when no high 1-1 or 2-2 is available becomes problematic. Greenhill is leaving it to the masses, allowing coaches to state a preference for either the equal match or the higher ranked but unequal match (although I’m not sure if they said what they’d do if the coaches for the two sides were not in agreement). My feeling on this is a little mixed, but given a large judging pool, that is, if I’m not hemmed in my restraints of sheer numbers, I sort of tend to think that the equal numbers are what should be done from the tab perspective. I mean, it’s called “mutual” for a reason. But as I say, there might be reasonable spiritual differences on this.

The second thing that struck me was that the random rounds started preffing at 3-3s rather than 1-1s. At least that’s the way I think they have it set up. I like this a lot, as it helps solve the PJ Conundrum we’ve discussed off and on, which is the lack of use of lesser ranked judges (short of total strikeouts). It also forces debaters to win some rounds in front of judges they may not like as much as their 1s, which has always been one of the main complaints about MJP from those totally against it. While I think the underlying logic of MJP at national events far outweighs the concerns of those who want to keep LD available to less committed audiences, I still like the idea that a good debater can pick up almost any ballot.

I’ll be doing MJP at the Pups and Jake. I’ve asked the Powers that Be to think about what Greenhill is doing, in aid of informing what we’re doing. I’ll keep you posted one way or that other. Obviously, at first blush, I’m against the first idea and in favor of the second. We’ll let the Ps that B speak for themselves.