Monday, December 03, 2012

Debate: After the Tiggers

What is interesting is that, with the passage of time, while some things remain constant, enough others do not that the whole rigmarole continues to be novel.

I’ve been going to the Tiggers since the 90s. In the beginning, it was as a judge with the team, and of course lately in tab. There was a period in the middle when I didn’t go because of issues with the way the tournament was run. The Tigs really thought they knew all about LD, but they didn’t, and their judging was terrible, and although I liked their schedule of 2 up and 2 off, that wasn’t reason enough to go. Hence the MHL on that weekend got built up. You wouldn’t want me to have a weekend off, would you?

Under CP’s tutelage, the tournament got good, and now I’ve followed his lead on the last two as a guiding spirit, and I enjoy it quite a bit. The constants are the various times the traveling tab room gets together for coffee or dinner or whatever, the trip back and forth and JV handling the hotel, the general expectation of reasonable weather (although last year it was bitter cold, which we kept remarking on this year when it wasn’t). There are some other constants as well, with the usual suspects. Every tournament has its own unique USes, that is, the people that you only see there and maybe one or two other places. Looking out over the crowd at the Tigs from the podium, it’s virtually the same year after year. We could have teleported from 2011, or 2008. Same people. Same foibles. We’ve come to expect them. Some of them are irritating, some of them are endearing. It’s part of what makes the Tiggers the Tiggers.

This year though, while the tournament ran swimmingly, with my slow learning of the new features of tabroom and so forth apparently beginning to bear fruit (I only cursed CP a handful of times, and on his side, likewise I’m sure), it had some rather original moments. Everyone, it seemed, was in fine form when it came to filing complaints. I cannot remember a tournament where more people came to us with issues of one sort of another, issues that had nothing to do with the tournament itself or the Tigs, but just…stuff. Registration had barely opened when the first person came to me to informally gripe about something. I replied that I could only pursue formal gripes. Later the informality fell away and the formal attire was put onto this gripe, and I handled it. That’s the first thing, if you’re of the griping persuasion. If you just want to whine about something, you might as well talk to the wall, because you’re going to get exactly the same response as you will from me. But if you want to formally complain, especially about another team, that’s a big deal, because I will do what has to be done. Sometimes that’s not what you want, but it’s what has been deemed right. And in those situations, it’s not me that deems, it’s the tournament as a whole. If an unusual issue arises beyond the scope of what we’re used to in tab, it will be discussed with the hosts. I am not the autocrat of the debate world, even if occasionally I act that way. Keep in mind that I live in the same debate world as, for instance, JV. How many autocrats can there be in that small universe?

So there were a number of formal complaints over the weekend. And here’s the thing. They were handled well by the people bringing them to us. That’s really important. There was one problem where a round didn’t happen, for reasons that were, after all was said and done, extremely unclear, although each side certainly thought that they were as clear as day. The coaches in this situation came to tab with cool tempers, and we talked to a few people, and we figured out a way to hold a makeup round. Everyone left the room happy. We like that. We do want schools who make the effort to go to a tournament and pay all that money, to have a good tournament. Even when a kid does something royally dumb, they shouldn’t have to suffer too too much for it. Just a little. We do want people to have rounds. Why wouldn’t we? We’ll do what we can to make them happen.

There was an unfortunate incident that I don’t want to discuss in specifics, revolving around student behavior. Here’s the deal on that. I feel very strongly, and I know we’ve discussed this on TVFT and that the rest of us in the traveling tab room feel likewise, that modes of behavior during competition must be kept to the highest standards. Part of the forensics experience is that adolescents are maturing rapidly, and forensics focuses that maturation in a good way, with all the travel and so forth. It doesn’t always take, though. At some point, idiots are idiots. Idiots who cause harm, however, should not be exempt from paying the price of that harm, even if the idiots are teenagers. If a situation perceived as harmful arises at a tournament, any tournament, talk to your coach. Come to me, or have your coach come to me. I will find someone to help. I promise.

On another note entirely, and obviously much less sympathetic, I reamed out three judges who, for reasons that defy my understanding, felt that we should all hang around an extra forty-five minutes on Saturday night while they did whatever it was they were doing that wasn’t texting their results to us in a timely manner. If you were one of those three, find some comfort in that I was an equal opportunity reamer, although by the time I got to the third one I simply told him to consider himself reamed out, as I was tired of reaming by this point. So, another thing to keep in mind. The tab staff leaves the tournament about a half hour after the last ballot is handed in. If the members of that staff have a team with them, likewise the team leaves a half hour after that last ballot. We are the last to get home, and the last to get to sleep. We are waiting, impatiently, for you. You do not want to be one of the people we have to wait for, because we have it within our power to assign you to 0-5 rounds for the rest of your debate career. And we will. Trust me on that.

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