Twas the Wednesday before CatNats, and all through the
social media, all the Nats Cats were packing their bags and their cases and
saying Californie is the place they oughta be… Sigh. I’ve often said that I’m
especially fond of CatNats, even though on some levels it’s a bit of a Cloud
Cuckoo Land. But then again, that’s part of its charm. Enjoy Sacramento, my Nats Cats. I’m going to be at a barbecue in New Jersey. Same church, different pew.
Today or tomorrow I’m going to post a draft of a document
for judges at tournaments. This is something the NDCA board has been
discussing for a while: what are the obligations, and requirements, of a judge?
There are certain behavior issues, but realistically, that is not a terrible
problem. If a debater commits an illegal action in a round, the judge must
respond in an appropriate fashion. Sure. But it’s not as if every round is
filled to the brim with felonious activity. At least I hope not. More important
is the idea that the judge is, first and foremost, an educator, and should act
accordingly. Secondly, the judge is the (often brevet) adult in the room, and
should act accordingly as far as that is concerned as well. The point of the
exercise will be to create a document that can be distributed before a
tournament, outlining what is expected of judges. Possibly the most important
thing, in a quantitative sense, is that judges start rounds on time and end
them efficiently with reasonably terse critiques. The usual, if not inevitable,
reason for tournaments to go off schedule is that rounds are not starting and
ending when they’re supposed to, based entirely on what is going on in the
debate room. I can blast assignments with a note that a round is supposed to
start in 20 minutes or whatever, but it’s up to the judges and the debaters to
be there and start those rounds in 20 minutes. By the time the tab room learns
that a round hasn’t started on time and, if necessary, fixed the problem, the
clock has already been ticking for a while. Don’t credit me with on-time or
off-time performance. That’s all in the hands of participants at the
tournament.
I guess I’ll post this on the NDCA Facebook page, as it has
members up the wazoo and it’s easy to follow threads, if any. I mean, it’s not
as if I’m going to post anything terribly controversial. The only real problem
is the distinction between safety and discomfort, that is, when something
happens in a round that is especially heated or problematic. The examples that
have been discussed are so specific that they really can’t serve very well as
prescriptive, but maybe I’m wrong about that. Honestly, the problematic
situations all seemed to go beyond the immediate area of the debate room,
needing to be handled by the tournament staff, with all the coaches involved
participating in the conversation. But, I hope, at least we can alert judges to
the need to be thoughtful about such situations.
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