In which we look at professional (and to a minor extent debater) conduct

A lot of what the NDCA board does is management of its tournament, or management of the organization in general. The organization seems to be thriving, which is a good thing. I like the idea of a national group dedicated to helping coaches (the open evidence project alone is worth the price of admission for the policians). I like being a part of that group. I had considered perhaps packing it in before my term ends, but over the tournament weekend I realized how much I was bringing from this group back to my own work with various tournaments, and decided to stick it out.

What we didn’t have this year was something we had last year, which was an open forum on the latest tough issues. We were talking about that at one of the board meetings, and wishing we had done it again this year, and agreed to do it again next year. The thing is, while all of us talk among ourselves about this and that, I don’t really know of any open discussion among coaches in general about these important issues. What important issues? Well, for instance, what is and isn’t acceptable as content in a high school debate round. Needless to say, free speech is not an unalienable right in high schools. I think that the debate community, hinging its activity on a dialectic exchange of ideas, is by and large more willing than some to work with problematic content, but even so, there are probably some objective limits. The difficulty is establishing what those objective limits are. The opportunity to talk about this, to find out what other people are thinking and doing, is important, and I think unique to NDCA.

The board is also looking at establishing a rule of conduct for coaches and judges. This is, I think, a simpler matter that is easily within their purview. What would be considered non-professional behavior in what is a secondary school academic activity? The professionals, i.e., the judges and coaches, are indeed acting in the role of professional educator, even though some may not actually have that role outside of the tournament. Once they accept that role within the tournament environment, however, they cannot, for instance, cuss out a debater after a round during an oral critique, any more than a math teacher could do that at a teacher-student conference. The same set of standards ought to apply. That's definitely the sort of thing I can bring into the invitations from other tournaments once NDCA hashes it out.

I expect there to be a lot of heated discussion on the subject of content. There are some who want to make a list of things you can't say/do; there are some who think anything goes. It being high school, undoubtedly anything does not go, but where are the lines drawn? And are they drawn on a personal basis, with each judge having his or her own guidelines published in a paradigm? We'll see. Before long the conversation will commence on one or more of the NDCA venues. Be on the lookout for it.