Debate: Regarding "The Six Truths Judges Will Never Admit"

One interesting thing about the world today is that if someone writes something about debate, there is not only an audience, but there is resonance. Take this article from Victory Briefs: The Six Truths Judges Will Never Admit. It is smart and true, and it makes me want to add on to it.

1. They can’t actually take your speed

My favorite example of this is when very experienced policy judges have gone into LD rounds and come out with their heads pounding. They went in with an expectation of something a little less than supersonic, but the debaters, seeing the policy label, figured that the gloves were off. A swell time was not had by all.

As Arijanto and Wynn point out, by the time the judge yells "Clear," stuff has already been missed. It behooves the debaters to actually keep an eye on the judges. You can tell if they're following you or not. If they're not, most likely speed is the culprit, in which case, if you don't slow down, you deserve the crappy speaker points.

My favorite complaint, and one that is remarkably common, is the opposite of this one. That is, judges go into the round, the debaters ask if they can handle speed, the judges say no, and then the SST takes off. If you don't care, why do you ask? Debaters do drills for speed. How about a drill for less speed?

2. They haven’t been judging in a while

This is so true, to wit, that debaters assume that the judges know stuff the judges don't necessarily know. The article says you'll use acronyms and shortcuts on citations and the like, but I would go even further and say that some debaters will presume an argument is a given. Everyone under the sun has argued X so many times in exactly the same way that everyone under the sun accepts the argumentation so that's your starting point, but the judge who has never been under the sun and never actually heard that argument is at a total loss. Know thy judge.

Of course, this leads me to something else, where arguments are not made but alluded to. You don't explain why X is wrong; you cite evidence, "Joe Blow 3" and that is enough. That's enough? That's not debate. That's sorting a database. Debates require arguments. Please.

3. They have an idea of who they’re voting for before the end of the round

I'm not quite sure what the point of this is, really, because it's way more unlikely that you wouldn't know. There are more obvious rounds than close ones, and rounds seldom play out to the end, although maintaining the win does require certain ritual steps (much like you have to take classes in your senior year of high school after you're already accepted to college). I think the point might have been that judges know before the start of the round, but I wonder about that. The real problem, strategically, is that debaters know before the start of the round. The number one reason for losses against a debater you think is stronger than you is your belief that the debater is stronger than you. There's always a new dog rising. Why shouldn't it be you?

I would point out that while many debaters develop steadily through their careers, many peak as juniors, for a variety of reasons. Giants fall. Each round stands alone. Always.

4. They have their own opinions

I don't think it's so much that judges lean to the truth of one side or the other, but that they buy the arguments more of one side or another, especially if these are arguments that they've developed themselves. This is really bad judging, of course, and is rife when upperclassmen judge underclassmen: the upperclassmen are pretty limited in their knowledge of possible arguments, and respond best to arguments similar to their own. They are way unlikely to accept arguments that are counter to their own; they've bought into them too much. Unfortunately this is true of some others as well, an inability to sever one's marriage to one's own arguments for an hour or so.

Anyhow, the advice the writers provide is good, but I think this may be the least relevant among strong judges.

5. Their paradigms are outdated and obtuse.

The whole paradigm system is ridiculous. Yes, you can provide some general analysis of your understanding of debate, but most paradigms are patently false. The ones that aren't false are too specific for relevance. The number of judges who actually judge according to what their paradigm says is probably a lot smaller than the ones whose paradigms are predictive. And as the writers say, most paradigms are old, which adds to the problem.

This is, of course, why I'm moving away from paradigms in MJP situations, not so much to eliminate them, but to provide a better barometer off the top.

6. They aren’t in the right mind

The underlying truth of judging, especially in later rounds, is that the judges get progressively more tired and more bored by the same thing over and over again (which is why we try to keep judges from judging the same people more than once, but that's usually close to impossible). Debaters who don't make it easy for the judges are, by default, making it hard. Why would you do that?

Here's a simple fact. In six rounds of debate, debaters debate six times. In six rounds of debate, judges judge up to twelve times because of flighting. Depending on the tournament, some judges are lucky to get one round off in prelims and none in elims, especially if they're highly preffed and/or the pool is small. Judges are way more tired than debaters because judges must draw on reserves of strength unalloyed with the adrenalin that drives debaters.