In which we hire out judges

Way too many people request hired judges at a tournament. And I have yet to run a tournament that could fulfill all those requests. On the other hand, I have been at tournaments that pretend they can fulfill all those requests, and then we run out of judges about halfway through elims. So the first rule of judge requests is that you only sell judges you have. The corollary to that rule is that you keep a few for the house. That is, you don’t sell all the judges you have; you keep a few spares around for emergencies. I go into detail on this in the toolkit.

If you want to hire judges, I think you need to fulfill a few basic qualifications. First of all, you need to bring as many judges of your own as you can. The assumption that there is an infinite number of judges you can buy is a false one. It’s also rather lah-di-dah. The schools that want to buy all their judges are often schools that have a lot of money and don’t have a lot of school support. No coach, no involved parents, nothing but wallets. But as Brother John always quotes Soddy, money can’t judge rounds. And honestly, I don’t know why teams can’t bring judges. If a school does a lot of LD and all those kids have private college helpers, why aren’t they at the tournament? If a school does PF, an activity designed for lay judges, where are the lay judges? Then again, I’ve often talked about alums. Where’s a team’s alums? If they’re not occasionally giving back, why not?

Schools bringing their own judges increases diversity by default. It can be any kind of diversity—geographic, economic, racial, whatever—but it will be diversity. Tournaments hiring judges hire locals or their own alums. There’s nothing wrong with that—what alternative do they have?—but the best situation is a broad scope in the judge pool. Good debating requires convincing the greatest and most diverse number of people.

I’m in the process now of doling out the judges at Rather Large Bronx. If you don’t bring any judges, you don’t get any judges. The Bronx folks think that’s rather cold, but the people who don’t bring any judges are parasites, plain and simple. I am very sympathetic to a school that gets on a plane to go to a tournament. Provided they do due diligence on their end, providing a core of judging, they’ll get hires. You’re a private school a block away doing nothing but PF and wanting to hire a full contingent, well, put your wallet in the back of the room and let’s see if it presses the START button. You’re a maverick with just enough credibility to get in the door? Have your credibility judge a few rounds. You’re a good debate citizen? I’ll do everything I can for you.