As we were able to discover the guidelines to the LD judges on speaker points at the upcoming NYC Invitational, we have also discovered an early version of the overall instructions to the PF judges that will be printed on the ballots. Whether these instructions will be final remains to be seen.
TOPIC: It is better for professional sports teams to play in stadiums than on the streets, but if we hear about just one more pro athlete behaving badly we should stop professional sports altogether and go back to reading Thoreau, which is almost as exciting as, say, the World Series or the Superbowl, provided you have a really low threshold for defining the concept of exciting.
• Judges should decide the round as it is debated, not based on their personal beliefs. In other words, the debaters are not here to change your mind, but to convince you as if you had no mind at all, which I assure you is what they will believe if you don't vote for them.
• Written ballots are important to the coaches to understand what happened in the round. This could require the judge to actually pay attention during the round, and we apologize in advance if this is an inconvenience.
• We understand that this may be the first time some of you have been exposed to spoken English, so when it comes time to write your ballot, don’t get carried away. “The Pro Teem Was Moor Serpuasive” is about as much as you need to say, especially if you think the Con won.
• We are hoping to have total adoption of electronic ballots. To enable this process, you can use either a computer, a tablet or a smart phone to access our wireless. If this last sentence was a total mystery to you, tab will be happy to provide you with paper ballots completely filled out, including the winners and losers and the RFD, “The Pro Teem Was Moor Serpuasive.”
• Debaters should advocate or reject the resolution in manner clear to a non-specialist citizen judge. That’s you. Clash of ideas is essential to debate. Clash of fists, on the other hand, is taking things a little too far. If fisticuffs do break out during a round you are adjudicating, the prudent course for you to take is to let them duke it out. Each debater should be assigned speaker points in the opposite order of hitting the canvas.
• Debaters should display logic and reasoning, advocate a position, use evidence, and communicate clear ideas using professional decorum. Like that’s gonna happen…
• Neither the pro nor con should offer a plan or counterplan, defined as a formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation. Rather, they should offer reasoning to support a position of advocacy. Debaters may offer generalized, practical solutions. The funny thing is, despite the fact that all this doesn’t make much sense and there’s virtually no way to address most resolutions without evaluating implementation, we stick by it. Worse, half the time debaters in the round who are offering a plan or counterplan immediately cry foul when the opponents offer a plan or counterplan and demand an immediate victory for their side. Judges who can work their way through this conundrum are to be congratulated.
• Crossfire should be dedicated to questions and answers rather than reading evidence. Evidence may be referenced. There are probably other things we could say about crossfire, like for instance it may or may not be important, it may or may not be counted into your decision calculus, and it may or may not be clear who is asking whom what, but those are beside the point. The important thing for the judge is to somehow survive the Grande Crossfire, where all four debaters are talking at once and no one is making any sense. Meanwhile, you can thank your lucky stars that we are not using Venti Crossfire, where the judge also has to participate. If you have noise-cancelling headphones, Grande Crossfire is the time to use them.
• No new arguments may be introduced in the Final Focus; however, debaters may include new evidence to support prior arguments. The reason for this is, of course, that you can’t start something new to which your opponents will not be able to reply. However, once the round is over and the decision is announced, the losing debaters are encouraged to take on an attitude of high dudgeon and explain to the judge how idiotic this decision is and to attempt to convince the judge to change the decision. Judges are encouraged to entertain such suggestions, and run into the tab room and explain how they didn’t know what they were doing until these helpful debaters explained it more clearly. That way the tab room will have a good laugh while surreptitiously marking you as a C judge for the next round.
• Debaters must supply evidence on request to the judge or their opponents. Evidence is, surprisingly, not the sentence in their case where they said that 34% of all dentists recommend Viagra to their patients who chew gum. Evidence is a copy of the original article in Dental-Marital Arts Magazine where the dentists themselves said that 34% of all dentists recommend Viagra to their patients who chew gum. Don’t be fooled by substitutes.
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