One has to wonder whatever happened to the Legion of Doom. A couple of years ago a lot of people got all het up over the decline and fall of LD—this was in the darkest hours of the pomo and CT influences—and banded together to attempt to cure the ills. Some of those ills were endemic problems that, needless to say, remain, but the Legion of Doom has, if not necessarily evaporated, at least disappeared from view. Despite my own agreement with their main themes of how LD should be operated, I always had to sort of wonder if we weren’t just going through the inevitable progress of the activity through the fashions of the day, given that I had previously seen other deadly fashions that we had managed to survive. My guess is that something new comes along, it takes over like mental weeds for a while, but then it goes away, leaving only a little of its genetic material behind, hopefully making for a better activity overall. (And I’m sorry for the confused metaphor, but you get my drift.) So back in the day pre-Legion, for instance, this decidedly philosophical activity got overwhelmed by practical evidence, and for a while it was a trend, and eventually it just became an improvement in LD overall, where people began backing their claims with, sometimes, meaningful warrants from reputable sources rather than their own imaginings. By the same token, the love affair with incomprehensible cultural studies types like the Old Baudleroo and Derrida has cooled, but the embracing of, say, Foucault remains, and that’s not a terrible thing at all, because MF’s view of things is applicable to a lot of situations, and worth considering. We may never shake the occasional Nietzschean fling, though, I’m afraid. Nietzsche is like this sly seducer who will say anything to anyone in order the make a score, and then the poor seduced (and quickly abandoned) soul has nothing left but a handful of aphorisms on which to base the entire promise of a future life, but that doesn’t keep that steady stream of left-at-the-altars from continuing to try. In a way, good old Freddie has become the Ayn Rand of 21st century LD, that one horrible voice destroying our youth by falsely empowering them. Oh, well. At least Freddie didn’t write any pulp novels (or at least any that I know about). Don’t get me wrong. I love Nietzsche. Where else can you find a writer who, sooner or later, contradicted literally everything he ever wrote? They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
Anyhow, for a while, the LDEP was out there proselytizing a fundamentalist approach to LD as a cure to all its evils (which went far beyond the pomo material), and now you never hear from them anymore. Hell, I think I’m on the board, and if I’m not hearing from them, I guess no one is. That’s not terrible, though. The creation of the rules of LD by the NFL provided the core material from which to work, and from a source much less peccable than the Legion of Doom. I mean, it’s pretty hard to dismiss the warrant of the core organization, as compared to dismissing a bunch of dinosaur sore sports like the Legion. So as I continue to proselytize for commitment to the NFL’s LD rules, I feel a little more secure than when I was speaking in aid of Legion ideas. This is nothing against the Legion, mind you, but maybe the NFL’s updated rules rendered the Legionnaires unnecessary. But we still have a problem. Despite the fact that LD has clear and specific rules, from its governing body, there is a vast population who believe that these rules carry no weight. We’ve already discussed how silly this is, and how you don’t get a comparable flouting of regulation in, say, table tennis (or any other competitive activity of which I am aware), but that doesn’t stop the flouters. The question becomes, how do you stop the flouters, then? If you believe in LD as described by the NFL, what are you supposed to do about it?
I guess that’s going to be my theme for a while. We’ve got rules. What do we do about them? And, I guess, why do we have to do anything about them at all? Chances are, most of what I’m going to be writing will either annoy the hell out of you or make you feel even more self-satisfied than usual, depending on your position on the whole business. But that’s what we do here a CL HQ. We either piss you off or pat you on the back. Occasionally we do both at once, if we’re really clicking on all burners and have a lot of extra arms to work with. By the way, this just happens to be post number 999. Which means two things. If you’re reading this upside down, it’s the Apocalypse, and if you’re reading it right side up, tomorrow will be our 1000th entry. Imagine that. Do you have any idea how much time you’ve wasted reading this blog? Couldn’t you have found anything better to do with your time? What’s wrong with you anyhow, you spalpeen! Jeesh. Get a life.
Showing posts with label Legion of Doom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Legion of Doom. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
In which I didn't screw up, we find competitive cucumbering, the web gets wacky, ModNov approaches, and the Legion and Scarsdale rear their ugly heads
I managed last night not to clearly announce the fact of a postponed meeting to the Sailors, which led to rather predictable confusion and, alas, no meeting. Others might blame themselves for this, a la President Obama, but I will fall back on my usual suspects, and blame either O’C or CP. That usually works wonders, and leaves me all fresh and gingery.
Speaking of ginger, (to wit, the Ginger Man), I’m finishing up a listen to the audiobook of Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear. As I am occasionally wont to point out dramatically strong entertainment, I will point out this one, which is the second in a series concentrating on Jack Spratt, a DCI in the NSD (Nursery Crimes Division). It has some of the worst puns in the history of popular fiction, which is in its favor; how many times does one drive along, listening to a novel, laughing merrily on the way to a DJ? I’ve read Fforde books on paper as well. Very entertaining fellow all around. You can do worse.
I dug up my brief on vigilantes. I was going to start working through it last night, but obviously that didn’t happen, so I’ll do it next Tuesday. If Rippin’ doesn’t post it by then, I’ll post it here. As I was working on it I had an interesting riff with Fred R over the use of Wikipedia, which I offered as a source. Three years ago I had banned use of Widipedia as a source among the Sailors. Now, while I still consider it secondary (as is any encyclopedia) and therefore less valuable that a primary source, I have come to consider it acceptable. This is seconded in The Long Tail, where the exact same evolution from “you gotta be kidding” to “see such-and-such an article” is discussed at length. Amazing how time flies on the old interwebs.
CP has finished knocking together the ModNov site, and I’ve started to attack it. With luck, we can go public and begin carving away at the wording of the topic starting next week. No doubt we’ll incorporate ModNov into the MHLI.
The more I think about it, by the way, the more I blame everything that is wrong with LD, The Life and Times on the concept of judge paradigms. I’ll definitely be focusing on this more in the future, and with luck, offering some practical suggestions for change, some of which, by the way, seem to hearken back to the old Legion of Doom. Plus ca change, as the Frenchies say.
And tomorrow is the onset of Scarsdale, which is worth attending if for no other reason than that it is the annual weekend where JV is his most JVish (as all of us are at our own tournaments, I mean, our most quintessential selves, not our most like JV). Plus the warmish weather is icumen in . What more could you ask for?
Speaking of ginger, (to wit, the Ginger Man), I’m finishing up a listen to the audiobook of Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear. As I am occasionally wont to point out dramatically strong entertainment, I will point out this one, which is the second in a series concentrating on Jack Spratt, a DCI in the NSD (Nursery Crimes Division). It has some of the worst puns in the history of popular fiction, which is in its favor; how many times does one drive along, listening to a novel, laughing merrily on the way to a DJ? I’ve read Fforde books on paper as well. Very entertaining fellow all around. You can do worse.
I dug up my brief on vigilantes. I was going to start working through it last night, but obviously that didn’t happen, so I’ll do it next Tuesday. If Rippin’ doesn’t post it by then, I’ll post it here. As I was working on it I had an interesting riff with Fred R over the use of Wikipedia, which I offered as a source. Three years ago I had banned use of Widipedia as a source among the Sailors. Now, while I still consider it secondary (as is any encyclopedia) and therefore less valuable that a primary source, I have come to consider it acceptable. This is seconded in The Long Tail, where the exact same evolution from “you gotta be kidding” to “see such-and-such an article” is discussed at length. Amazing how time flies on the old interwebs.
CP has finished knocking together the ModNov site, and I’ve started to attack it. With luck, we can go public and begin carving away at the wording of the topic starting next week. No doubt we’ll incorporate ModNov into the MHLI.
The more I think about it, by the way, the more I blame everything that is wrong with LD, The Life and Times on the concept of judge paradigms. I’ll definitely be focusing on this more in the future, and with luck, offering some practical suggestions for change, some of which, by the way, seem to hearken back to the old Legion of Doom. Plus ca change, as the Frenchies say.
And tomorrow is the onset of Scarsdale, which is worth attending if for no other reason than that it is the annual weekend where JV is his most JVish (as all of us are at our own tournaments, I mean, our most quintessential selves, not our most like JV). Plus the warmish weather is icumen in . What more could you ask for?
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Points
I noticed a couple of people bemoaning the sad state of speaker points over at WTF. They’re a bad way to adjudicate who breaks and who doesn’t, the sentiment goes. A couple of other ideas are proposed but, admittedly, none are much better. Short of allowing everyone with a certain record to break, a luxury of space and judge pool size and time that many tournaments simply can’t afford, some cutoff is necessary, and speaker points are the default. We’re sort of stuck with that.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with speaker points. They are an effort to quantify the level of the debating in a round. They exist to denote the difference between really hard and complex debates and not quite as hard or complex debates. Two very good debaters going at one another very well will probably earn high points. Two average debaters going at one another in an average fashion will probably earn middling points. Two inexperienced debaters going at one another in an inexperienced fashion will probably earn low points. That, to a degree, is simple enough; we’ll address that degree shortly. It’s a little trickier when debaters are unequal in skills. I’ve often given high points to a strong debater facing an inexperienced debater when the strong debater treats the lesser debater with exceptional respect. The round might have been a gimme from the getgo, but the experienced debater was gentle and responsive and, in a way, acting as an ad hoc educator to the lesser debater. I’ve also gone and congratulated these stronger debaters after the rounds on their gentility, and pointed it out to their coaches. Similarly, rudeness should be, I feel, reflected in lowered points. In a forensic event, rudeness is the equivalent of a foul in an athletic event, officially punished in those cases by free throws and the like. But absent these exceptions, such as they are, I’ve always felt that the points represented the level at which the debater debated; often one debater is debating at a different level than the other. When the top of a bracket hits the bottom of the bracket early on, there might be a very big discrepancy in skills, and the points should reflect this. Overall, I don’t think anyone would seriously disagree with what I’m saying here, at least in principle. And if speaker points quantify the level of the debating over the span of all of the prelims, it makes sense that those who debated at the highest level would advance over those who debated at a less high level. We can’t advance everyone, so we use this measure to advance those who theoretically did the best debating.
But here’s the problem. This is that “degree” business that I mentioned above. Although speaker points make sense, for the reasons I just cited, we don’t have any sensible approach to them. There are some places where I can and do handle this. At MHLs and CFLs, for instance, I open every tournament with an opening statement to all the judges explaining how they should award points at this particular tournament. Granted, the points are still subjective, but at least they will be subjective on the same scale. This scale is reflected in all my judging documentation. But these are small tournaments with student and parent judges who actually listen to you and attempt to do what you ask of them. Unfortunately, there is no such attempt to normalize points at most invitationals. The old Legion of Doom did make this one of their platform planks, that all tournament directors set a scale of points, but in today’s environment, that is a pipe dream. In fact, it’s contrary to the other more common demand of tournament directors, that all judges submit paradigms. And if we have a hundred judges at a tournament, we have a hundred paradigms. And within each of those paradigms is a unique approach to speaker points.
We have dug a hole for ourselves, and no one seems to want to crawl out of it. We allow each individual judge to determine the content, format, and scope of each individual round. Like theory, hate theory, grade on a 20-30, grade on a 25-30, make me laugh for extra points, flex prep okay, flex prep not allowed, V/C mandatory, V/C optional, etc., etc., etc. The rules of the game are set anew every time a debater walks into a round. In elimination rounds with multiple judges, the best one can hope for is a general consensus of paradigms if one is attempting to pick up based on what judges like rather than what LD is supposed to be.
What LD is supposed to be? You’re sneering at that, aren’t you. LD is whatever we want it to be. Same as baseball. No rules. No governing body. Just bats, balls and bases. Oh, wait a minute. Baseball does have rules. Every umpire doesn’t make up his own rules while hanging out at the plate. Ditto those referees at football games. Hockey games. Any games.
But LD is too smart for that. The NFL makes rules, and everyone subsequently argues about how the rules suck, and aside from NatNats and maybe some district tournaments, the rules are not applied in any meaningful fashion. They are a bone of contention, not of concession.
At the point where there is one judge paradigm that all judges must adhere to as best they can, we will have relatively predictable judging. And speaker points, being a part of that universal, non-relativistic paradigm, will be a great way to determine who goes on to elimination rounds. At the point where there are as many judge paradigms as there are judges, speaker points—and breaking—will be, to a great extent, a crap shoot. The difference between the 4-2s who break and the 4-2s who don’t break will be imponderable. And at the point where a debater or coach supports random paradigms, they deserve to be randomly and imponderably excluded from elimination rounds.
All those people who say that the activity ought to be in some hyperkinetic state of flux, rapidly changing because of “progressive” styles of debating and judging, deserve to be in the bottom of those 4-2s. That LD should change over time is probably true. That the time span for this change should be from round to round is probably not true. That change should come from people who happen to want change for whatever reasons, good or ill, rather than the community as a whole with meaningful leadership, is definitely not true. If the people who want change are right, as Mill and any number of others have clearly demonstrated, subjecting their ideas to the tests of truth and the dialectic will eventually get them accepted. But as long as we’re all mavericks (are we still allowed to use that word in polite conversation?), we’re just in a state of random confusion.
Those of the VCA in the community who represent the meaningful leadership: Do some leading! If you run a tournament, publish a standard for speaker points. If you have influence over the NFL, use it. Or, be influenced by it. Adjust your debate to the rules, such as they are, rather than to your personal preferences. Change is fine, and there’s plenty of good, wise ways of achieving it; use the wise ways, and that change will stick. If you adhere to your own cockamamie paradigm because you’re right and the world is wrong and the devil take the hindmost, then I sincerely hope that you reap the just results of such actions.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with speaker points. They are an effort to quantify the level of the debating in a round. They exist to denote the difference between really hard and complex debates and not quite as hard or complex debates. Two very good debaters going at one another very well will probably earn high points. Two average debaters going at one another in an average fashion will probably earn middling points. Two inexperienced debaters going at one another in an inexperienced fashion will probably earn low points. That, to a degree, is simple enough; we’ll address that degree shortly. It’s a little trickier when debaters are unequal in skills. I’ve often given high points to a strong debater facing an inexperienced debater when the strong debater treats the lesser debater with exceptional respect. The round might have been a gimme from the getgo, but the experienced debater was gentle and responsive and, in a way, acting as an ad hoc educator to the lesser debater. I’ve also gone and congratulated these stronger debaters after the rounds on their gentility, and pointed it out to their coaches. Similarly, rudeness should be, I feel, reflected in lowered points. In a forensic event, rudeness is the equivalent of a foul in an athletic event, officially punished in those cases by free throws and the like. But absent these exceptions, such as they are, I’ve always felt that the points represented the level at which the debater debated; often one debater is debating at a different level than the other. When the top of a bracket hits the bottom of the bracket early on, there might be a very big discrepancy in skills, and the points should reflect this. Overall, I don’t think anyone would seriously disagree with what I’m saying here, at least in principle. And if speaker points quantify the level of the debating over the span of all of the prelims, it makes sense that those who debated at the highest level would advance over those who debated at a less high level. We can’t advance everyone, so we use this measure to advance those who theoretically did the best debating.
But here’s the problem. This is that “degree” business that I mentioned above. Although speaker points make sense, for the reasons I just cited, we don’t have any sensible approach to them. There are some places where I can and do handle this. At MHLs and CFLs, for instance, I open every tournament with an opening statement to all the judges explaining how they should award points at this particular tournament. Granted, the points are still subjective, but at least they will be subjective on the same scale. This scale is reflected in all my judging documentation. But these are small tournaments with student and parent judges who actually listen to you and attempt to do what you ask of them. Unfortunately, there is no such attempt to normalize points at most invitationals. The old Legion of Doom did make this one of their platform planks, that all tournament directors set a scale of points, but in today’s environment, that is a pipe dream. In fact, it’s contrary to the other more common demand of tournament directors, that all judges submit paradigms. And if we have a hundred judges at a tournament, we have a hundred paradigms. And within each of those paradigms is a unique approach to speaker points.
We have dug a hole for ourselves, and no one seems to want to crawl out of it. We allow each individual judge to determine the content, format, and scope of each individual round. Like theory, hate theory, grade on a 20-30, grade on a 25-30, make me laugh for extra points, flex prep okay, flex prep not allowed, V/C mandatory, V/C optional, etc., etc., etc. The rules of the game are set anew every time a debater walks into a round. In elimination rounds with multiple judges, the best one can hope for is a general consensus of paradigms if one is attempting to pick up based on what judges like rather than what LD is supposed to be.
What LD is supposed to be? You’re sneering at that, aren’t you. LD is whatever we want it to be. Same as baseball. No rules. No governing body. Just bats, balls and bases. Oh, wait a minute. Baseball does have rules. Every umpire doesn’t make up his own rules while hanging out at the plate. Ditto those referees at football games. Hockey games. Any games.
But LD is too smart for that. The NFL makes rules, and everyone subsequently argues about how the rules suck, and aside from NatNats and maybe some district tournaments, the rules are not applied in any meaningful fashion. They are a bone of contention, not of concession.
At the point where there is one judge paradigm that all judges must adhere to as best they can, we will have relatively predictable judging. And speaker points, being a part of that universal, non-relativistic paradigm, will be a great way to determine who goes on to elimination rounds. At the point where there are as many judge paradigms as there are judges, speaker points—and breaking—will be, to a great extent, a crap shoot. The difference between the 4-2s who break and the 4-2s who don’t break will be imponderable. And at the point where a debater or coach supports random paradigms, they deserve to be randomly and imponderably excluded from elimination rounds.
All those people who say that the activity ought to be in some hyperkinetic state of flux, rapidly changing because of “progressive” styles of debating and judging, deserve to be in the bottom of those 4-2s. That LD should change over time is probably true. That the time span for this change should be from round to round is probably not true. That change should come from people who happen to want change for whatever reasons, good or ill, rather than the community as a whole with meaningful leadership, is definitely not true. If the people who want change are right, as Mill and any number of others have clearly demonstrated, subjecting their ideas to the tests of truth and the dialectic will eventually get them accepted. But as long as we’re all mavericks (are we still allowed to use that word in polite conversation?), we’re just in a state of random confusion.
Those of the VCA in the community who represent the meaningful leadership: Do some leading! If you run a tournament, publish a standard for speaker points. If you have influence over the NFL, use it. Or, be influenced by it. Adjust your debate to the rules, such as they are, rather than to your personal preferences. Change is fine, and there’s plenty of good, wise ways of achieving it; use the wise ways, and that change will stick. If you adhere to your own cockamamie paradigm because you’re right and the world is wrong and the devil take the hindmost, then I sincerely hope that you reap the just results of such actions.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
We seem to be awash in organizations these days. The NFL tells me to go forth and bring in the sheep, and the website alone will be worth the ninety-nine bucks. The website, of course, is free, and while it has the usability of sushi chef on a hog farm, there may be some good stuff on it. I’m reserving judgment; the one LD crib sheet that I grabbed made me want to sign up for WTF. (I’m speaking confidentially now, of course. I’m a district chair. Hell, I’m one of the district chairs especially chosen at random to be featured in next month’s Rostrum. Feel free to start lining up now at your local magazine kiosk.) They have online chats, three or four a night, which aren’t my cup of baloney, although I did try to read one after the fact concerning the Goy of T District Tournament software. Debate coaches need better screen names, for one thing, if they really want to drive some chat traffic. And then there’s some mentor program, which looks good on paper but I think I’m supposed to be lining up half a dozen lieutenants to hold the hands of the flood of newbie coaches that are knocking on my door, or would be knocking on my door if I had a better screen name. (“menick” is just, so, predictable. Anything else would be like a tattoo, clever for a moment but something I may not want to still be associated with twenty years from now.) My point here is that Forensics Central, which is what NFL should be, is working on it but not there yet. Seriously, I applaud what they’re doing in that direction. Their studies of the activities and updated guidelines and ballots and the like are exactly what they should be doing, and they’re doing it better than we could have hoped. So, overall, I’d give them an A for effort, and I’ll continue giving them ninety-nine bucks.
Then there’s the Legion of Doom, which seems to be playing out a most operatic death scene lasting the length of the show. Their goal being to keep LD on the straight and narrow was pretty much co-opted by NFL, which has the authority to back it up, at least at NFL events. Other than that, they want tournaments to disallow hitting below the belt and have gotten some response, but places like Emory continue to offer MJP, and as far as I can tell no one in favor of MJP has ever changed their mind, or vice versa, and there you are. Some people are perfectly capable of separating debate as a competitive event from debate as an academic event with value on both sides, thank you very much, while others see the competition as merely a necessary evil. In any case, every now and then there’s a note from one of the Doomsters telling us they’re quitting or something. Got another one just yesterday. Mostly the lack of action/discussion month after month is indication enough of the group’s viability. (Again, this is confidential, being that I’m on the board of the thing.)
Meanwhile NDCA is making all sorts of noises about increasing its membership. They have a listserver to which I subscribe, and they’re trying to come up with a plan. Apparently they too have a website and give all sorts of stuff away, but to be honest, I’ve never looked at it. (At least this time I have no official connection to the thing; hell, I’m not even a member.) They may want to block access to it, though, or maybe even give more of it away, or have reviews of Dario Argento films if one believes Antonucci. Whatever. I can see why you might pay $25 to go to their tournament, but I’m not a font of dues-paying ability. But then again, I don’t recall anyone seriously attempting to solicit my membership. So, bottom line, I have no idea what the purpose of this organization might be.
And, of course, I admit that I visit WTF pretty much every day. One-stop source for news, anyhow, and bizarre new incarnations of Cruziana (I gather his next project is his being photographed as Great Personages of History with essays on how Bronx Science changed their lives). Every day. Ten to one, most other people involved in LD are there every day or two, including coaches. Can’t follow the game without a score card, eh?
What’s wrong with this picture? I mean, why are there multiple groups doing, theoretically, the same thing? Does somebody want to draw the Venn diagram here? Is there some reason why NFL isn’t the go-to place for coaches? Is there some reason why NFL isn’t the website I go to every day (and, good grief, they tell me I should, but they don’t provide daily content)? Do I need a vast circle of debate resources as compared to one good central debate resource?
Here’s the plan, which no one will follow.
1. NFL subsumes the NCDA. Deal with it. I’m a debate coach. NFL is supposed to be the organization for debate coaches. I only need one such organization.
2. The Legion goes away. This may be an unnecessary recommendation, but anyone who has sat through the end of Rigoletto knows that death scenes ain’t over till they’re over.
3. NFL publishes WTF, which goes back to the briefs business. NFL expands WTF to cover all aspects of forensics, or maybe has branches for separate buckets, one for speech, one for debate. NFL also collects all other authoritative debate blogs and publishes them (at least RSS) through their auspices.
4. Somebody hires a decent web designer and then allows me final cut so that, just once, a site will be user-friendly on all levels.
5. And, while we’re at it, we fix Goy of T so that it uploads to e-TRPC correctly, we stop accepting registration changes after the deadline except for drops, for which you pay double, we start to train the parent coaches we dump on tournaments (starting with ESL and moving up from there), and, finally, while we’re at it, we all agree to debate the %$#&* resolution.
Oh, and I’d also like world peace, free wireless, and an order of fries with that.
Then there’s the Legion of Doom, which seems to be playing out a most operatic death scene lasting the length of the show. Their goal being to keep LD on the straight and narrow was pretty much co-opted by NFL, which has the authority to back it up, at least at NFL events. Other than that, they want tournaments to disallow hitting below the belt and have gotten some response, but places like Emory continue to offer MJP, and as far as I can tell no one in favor of MJP has ever changed their mind, or vice versa, and there you are. Some people are perfectly capable of separating debate as a competitive event from debate as an academic event with value on both sides, thank you very much, while others see the competition as merely a necessary evil. In any case, every now and then there’s a note from one of the Doomsters telling us they’re quitting or something. Got another one just yesterday. Mostly the lack of action/discussion month after month is indication enough of the group’s viability. (Again, this is confidential, being that I’m on the board of the thing.)
Meanwhile NDCA is making all sorts of noises about increasing its membership. They have a listserver to which I subscribe, and they’re trying to come up with a plan. Apparently they too have a website and give all sorts of stuff away, but to be honest, I’ve never looked at it. (At least this time I have no official connection to the thing; hell, I’m not even a member.) They may want to block access to it, though, or maybe even give more of it away, or have reviews of Dario Argento films if one believes Antonucci. Whatever. I can see why you might pay $25 to go to their tournament, but I’m not a font of dues-paying ability. But then again, I don’t recall anyone seriously attempting to solicit my membership. So, bottom line, I have no idea what the purpose of this organization might be.
And, of course, I admit that I visit WTF pretty much every day. One-stop source for news, anyhow, and bizarre new incarnations of Cruziana (I gather his next project is his being photographed as Great Personages of History with essays on how Bronx Science changed their lives). Every day. Ten to one, most other people involved in LD are there every day or two, including coaches. Can’t follow the game without a score card, eh?
What’s wrong with this picture? I mean, why are there multiple groups doing, theoretically, the same thing? Does somebody want to draw the Venn diagram here? Is there some reason why NFL isn’t the go-to place for coaches? Is there some reason why NFL isn’t the website I go to every day (and, good grief, they tell me I should, but they don’t provide daily content)? Do I need a vast circle of debate resources as compared to one good central debate resource?
Here’s the plan, which no one will follow.
1. NFL subsumes the NCDA. Deal with it. I’m a debate coach. NFL is supposed to be the organization for debate coaches. I only need one such organization.
2. The Legion goes away. This may be an unnecessary recommendation, but anyone who has sat through the end of Rigoletto knows that death scenes ain’t over till they’re over.
3. NFL publishes WTF, which goes back to the briefs business. NFL expands WTF to cover all aspects of forensics, or maybe has branches for separate buckets, one for speech, one for debate. NFL also collects all other authoritative debate blogs and publishes them (at least RSS) through their auspices.
4. Somebody hires a decent web designer and then allows me final cut so that, just once, a site will be user-friendly on all levels.
5. And, while we’re at it, we fix Goy of T so that it uploads to e-TRPC correctly, we stop accepting registration changes after the deadline except for drops, for which you pay double, we start to train the parent coaches we dump on tournaments (starting with ESL and moving up from there), and, finally, while we’re at it, we all agree to debate the %$#&* resolution.
Oh, and I’d also like world peace, free wireless, and an order of fries with that.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The "The" Chronicles; I've got a million more Goldwynisms, if you want 'em
Great moments in forensics history: O’C was not happy with his listing on the MHL home page. He even added a comment here. Instead of saying Jon Cruz of Bronx High School of Scientology, it should say Jon Cruz of the Bronx High School of Scientology. Initially I felt that changing it to the Jon Cruz of Bronx High School of Scientology would be enough, or maybe Jon the Cruz of the Bronx High School of the Scientology, and then there was the always popular Jon Cruz of the the. But ultimately I acquiesced, since only he would appreciate an alternate sentiment, while anyone looking at the home page from a neutral corner would think the whole operation is bordering on insanity. Not that it isn’t, but we shouldn’t present that front and center.
I do feel sort of un-newsy. Not that much is happening. The list of people planning to go to Kansas includes me out (to paraphrase Sam Goldwyn), which means that, simply put, my year is over. I need to get my head back into the Legion of Doom game, after having promised Smilin’ J I’d do some work and not having even thought about it, and no doubt he wants it by NatNats. O’C wants to register for Bump, but at this point I’m still only meditating about it. The website says, metaphorically, Gone Fishin’ and metaphorically gone fishin’ I will be, till about August, although I did tell him that if he wants to simply start paying nuisance fees I’d be happy to accept them. Few of the Sailors are even thinking about Yale, which may mean that the few who do go get a fairly free ride, since we have last year’s Bump candy money going into the pot. I’ve heard one or two disturbing things about some local programs going forward, and I need to track them down, but I won’t discuss them here until they’re verified. I’m not exactly in the business of publishing rumors. Unless they’re about OC, and especially juicy.
Give me, say, five more hours in the day, and I’d be in hog heaven.
I do feel sort of un-newsy. Not that much is happening. The list of people planning to go to Kansas includes me out (to paraphrase Sam Goldwyn), which means that, simply put, my year is over. I need to get my head back into the Legion of Doom game, after having promised Smilin’ J I’d do some work and not having even thought about it, and no doubt he wants it by NatNats. O’C wants to register for Bump, but at this point I’m still only meditating about it. The website says, metaphorically, Gone Fishin’ and metaphorically gone fishin’ I will be, till about August, although I did tell him that if he wants to simply start paying nuisance fees I’d be happy to accept them. Few of the Sailors are even thinking about Yale, which may mean that the few who do go get a fairly free ride, since we have last year’s Bump candy money going into the pot. I’ve heard one or two disturbing things about some local programs going forward, and I need to track them down, but I won’t discuss them here until they’re verified. I’m not exactly in the business of publishing rumors. Unless they’re about OC, and especially juicy.
Give me, say, five more hours in the day, and I’d be in hog heaven.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Moratorium; politics; Princess O'C; Socrates; cat baggage
The Sailors are off this week. No doubt they’re all either at Disney World or Vegas, or maybe they’re in Washington testifying in front of one subcommittee or another. Whatever.
The Legionnaires seem to have crawled back under their rocks. Eric B just sent out a last call to vote, but I don’t think I’m going to. The only person I would support is me, except I know me too well to trust me. I’d just annoy everyone and be a pain in the ass, and I can do that without portfolio. I probably shouldn’t have let them put my name up in the first place. I’ve gone from poster boy to shill in one season. What a transformation.
I haven’t heard from O’C lately. I think he’s in fear and trembling over Fists’ no-show status, but that wasn’t O’C’s fault. Then again, maybe he’s plotting his own trip to WDW in May. I have this vision of seeing him on line completing his world-famous collection of princess autographs, boldly pushing six-year-old girls out of his way while waving at me as I run over to rescue my family from inadvertently venturing into It’s A Small World. Then again, I also have visions of religious figures in every bowl of fettucine alfredo that I eat, so you can’t count on me there either.
My goal this week is to get organized. Among other things I need to finalize my own accounting of the Red Light tournament, I need to get back on track with Nostrum, and I need to start doing my summer reading so that I continue to know one thing more than the Sailors do. Teaching, as all students suspect, really is just reading a chapter ahead in the textbook, or acting like you know all the answers when you haven’t the foggiest. This goes back to Socrates who, you will recall, never answered any questions, but just asked questions himself. This was because he didn’t know anything. So if you asked him, Hey, Soc, what’s the secret of the universe, he would answer your question with a question. This was considered clever by the ancient Greeks. Today this is simply considered annoying.
If anything interesting happens, you’ll be the first to know, but mostly I’m expecting that this will be a week of peace and quiet, with maybe a lengthy random bloviation about halfway through when the spirit suddenly moves me. We need some low-pressure weeks like that. Following which, the final few meetings of the Sailors, and then off to Disney World myself (widget count is -38 days). Pip and Tik pronounced teek are already packed; I don’t have the heart to tell them they’re not coming…
The Legionnaires seem to have crawled back under their rocks. Eric B just sent out a last call to vote, but I don’t think I’m going to. The only person I would support is me, except I know me too well to trust me. I’d just annoy everyone and be a pain in the ass, and I can do that without portfolio. I probably shouldn’t have let them put my name up in the first place. I’ve gone from poster boy to shill in one season. What a transformation.
I haven’t heard from O’C lately. I think he’s in fear and trembling over Fists’ no-show status, but that wasn’t O’C’s fault. Then again, maybe he’s plotting his own trip to WDW in May. I have this vision of seeing him on line completing his world-famous collection of princess autographs, boldly pushing six-year-old girls out of his way while waving at me as I run over to rescue my family from inadvertently venturing into It’s A Small World. Then again, I also have visions of religious figures in every bowl of fettucine alfredo that I eat, so you can’t count on me there either.
My goal this week is to get organized. Among other things I need to finalize my own accounting of the Red Light tournament, I need to get back on track with Nostrum, and I need to start doing my summer reading so that I continue to know one thing more than the Sailors do. Teaching, as all students suspect, really is just reading a chapter ahead in the textbook, or acting like you know all the answers when you haven’t the foggiest. This goes back to Socrates who, you will recall, never answered any questions, but just asked questions himself. This was because he didn’t know anything. So if you asked him, Hey, Soc, what’s the secret of the universe, he would answer your question with a question. This was considered clever by the ancient Greeks. Today this is simply considered annoying.
If anything interesting happens, you’ll be the first to know, but mostly I’m expecting that this will be a week of peace and quiet, with maybe a lengthy random bloviation about halfway through when the spirit suddenly moves me. We need some low-pressure weeks like that. Following which, the final few meetings of the Sailors, and then off to Disney World myself (widget count is -38 days). Pip and Tik pronounced teek are already packed; I don’t have the heart to tell them they’re not coming…
Friday, March 30, 2007
TOC & the Legion of Doom
There’s an interesting discussion happening on the Legion of Doom listserver. Everybody is all het up about TOCs, which does seem to concentrate the Legionnaire mind. It’s worth talking about.
The TOC, as it stands today, is—to paraphrase Aaron T, who I think is still a member of the TOC advisory board—the central culmination of the year for a certain circuit of debaters. It is not the national event, but simply the national event for this group. That is true, although I disagree with Aaron that NatNats is in fact the national event, if for no other reason than that New York’s leading debaters are handicapped in their ability to participate because of Regents exams. But that is neither here nor there. That TOCs caters to a specific community is the first premise to be accepted.
I gather that there have been various approaches over the years to the issue of how admittance of entrants to TOC should be handled. As there is no main administrating body with a dedicated functioning bureaucracy (like the centrally organized NFL, or the regionally oriented CFL), the use of organizationally defined qualifiers isn’t really feasible. So instead, TOC draws on the skein of existing tournaments to provide its qualifiers. The question is, how to evaluate these existing tournaments to insure that the debaters they send forth are, indeed, “qualified.” And that is a tricky question. There seem to be no specific criteria for making the evaluation. Once upon a time the number of entrants plus the number of states represented was apparently the key, but that is no longer true because it didn’t work all that well. Now the criteria are fluid, determined by a small but geographically diverse group of advisors, comprising professional coaches of a uniform high level of prestige and experience (although some are old-timers, and some are young-timers, which is as it should be), and ultimately adjudicated by the TOC Tournament Director. All the advisors are players in the game of TOC debate, fielding competitors on the TOC circuit. Even if you might think this or that individual on the committee is a stinker, you have to admire the rest. So there is no reason to impugn this group on the basis of their skills or intentions. As far as I know, no one really ever does, except in the vaguest sense of TOC as a whole being up to no good.
While there is much griping from various quarters that the TOC bids are not fair, mostly those gripes claim that this or that geographical area is underrepresented, and that is certainly an issue that the advisers always discuss (I know, because I have been one of them). They do indeed attempt to provide an evenly tucked-in blanket over the country’s LDers, but they simply can’t pluck some tournament out of thin air and say that its debaters are bid-worthy simply because they’re in the right location. The tournament itself has to exist, which is not always the case as large geographic areas simply don’t have events, and it has to be predictably capable of producing bid-worthy qualifiers. This latter is something of a Catch-22, unfortunately, because bid people only want to go to bid tournaments but tournaments can’t become bid tournaments unless bid people go to them. (One of the side issues being discussed by the Legion was this problem of bid tournaments having the right odor and non-bid tournaments being unworthy of a debater’s time, even when that debater’s chance of ever earning a bid anywhere is virtually nil. We’ll discuss that later.)
One has to wonder if a strict numerical evaluation of tournaments would be meaningful. Having committee members who were participants at all the tournaments is meaningful, if the participants honestly report the nature of the events. For instance, I could have 120 people at a tournament, but 60 of them could be from 3 schools; is that the same as Hendrick’s Hudson’s 120 people, where we set a 6-person cap per school? I don’t think so, but if you’re not intimate with a tournament’s details, how can you tell the difference?
So I, for one, while not necessarily always agreeing with the final spread of bids the TOC declares, feel that the process of deciding these bids is about as good as it can be, and I can’t imagine any process that would make them different in any meaningful way. The declaration of some TOC criteria (the need for 5 or 6 prelim rounds, the need for a certain number of elim rounds, any judging requirements), on the other hand, should be clearly posted. If there is some mechanical reason why a bid is not being given to a school, at least if the school has a list of all these reasons it can address the problems, if it is inclined to do so. As for those geographic areas that feel slighted, simply tell TOC what tournaments you feel should be getting the recognition; you’d be doing the committee a favor. And frankly, the problem is that these tournaments mostly don’t exist. But in your griping, be realistic. To claim that Harvard is a northeast tournament is to claim that Glenbrooks is an Illinois tournament or Emory is a Georgia tournament. Look at everything but the octos tournaments if you really want to understand the business at hand.
So, issue one that the Legion was kicking around, that the TOC needs clear criteria of its bid system, is true to some extent. At least give the general outline of what a tournament needs to do. Give a general outline of the procedure for a tournament that wants to be considered for bids. Make this process transparent. This won’t change the process so much as allow people to understand it. That would be a good thing.
Second, and the issue that started this Legionnaire thread, was the question of TOC judging. Aaron sent a message urging everyone at TOC to judge instead of sitting around doing whatever it is they do when they’re not judging, which brought plenty of moans about lack of use of judges, preference for digressive judges, etc. I posted to this issue. I gather that there is now a one judge per debater requirement. If that is true, then the average judge will judge 1.5 prelim rounds; the math is simple. The pool would have to shrink dramatically before you’d get anywhere near judging roughly half the rounds. This is pure arithmetic, and no bias on anyone’s part. I simply can’t imagine the gentlemen who are usually in tab cooking the assignments. Why would they? They’ve got judges to burn. Aside from perhaps seeing that judges who haven’t been assigned yet get a round here and there, which is hardly cooking the assignments, they are on tabroom easy street, and have no rationale from venturing off it. The problem is the vast number of judges. No amount of strikes will solve a 1 to 1 situation. 1 to 1 means you are spending a lot of time sitting on the old dufferoo, my friend.
Of course, if you’ve paid all that money to get to Kentucky, especially if you’ve got multiple entries, you’re going to feel wasted. It would seem to me that a 1 to 2 ratio is more than enough. It would average 3 rounds per person. Not bad.
Bringing up judging at TOC, however, brings up other issues. Or at least bringing up judging at TOC acts as a red cape waved at all the Legion bulls: Too many strikes (I agree), too many young judges ruining LD for the ages (probably not true). As for the strikes, pulling the few stinkers who always drop you because they don’t like your looks is a good thing, but 5 strikes is quite enough. Anything more, and it’s Mutual Judge Preference in everything but name. I’ve always maintained that random judging, if a judge understands how an LD round works, is what keeps the activity honest; nothing revolutionary there. As for young judges ruining LD, as Ryan H (who isn’t all that young anymore [smile]) pointed out, all young people are not ruinous by default (although I would point out that by the same token all old people are not hiding out in tab, and honestly, if one does tab well and enjoys it, well, that’s hardly a mortal crime). Lots of Legionnaires do simply blame everything on the young, though, and if the truth be told, it is college students who should move along from their high school lives who are a serious contributing cause of much that is wrong with LD, but all young people are not these people. All of us ought to understand our syllogisms better than that. Some young people are problematic. Ryan is (almost) young. Ryan may or may not be problematic. Assume nothing! Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be surprised if, on the Legion of Progressive Debate listserver, the young ‘uns are similarly complaining that they don’t judge enough rounds. My guess is that the math works about the same for them, although with the scales tipped slightly due to strikes. If I’m wrong, then it’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Balancing assignments in tab, i.e., using everyone as equally as possible, is a simple solution to that.
I am with those who want to ban first-year-outs, simply because they may have psychological ponies still in the race and not because they are digressively evil by nature. I have taken a strong position against MJP in the past and continue to hold that position. And strikes should be no more than 5. And as I say, tab should neutrally balance the judging across the pool, which should be smaller than one to one. That’s where I stand on that.
Probably the most interesting stuff that keeps coming up with the Legion is the stuff that is the least quantifiable, and that is the effect of TOC on LD in general. To some extent, TOC is an easy target because there is a good representation of digressive debaters in the pack, for whatever reason. The event is glorified on WTF (although lately, just about every event is glorified on WTF, so TOC gets a lot more lost in the pack than it used to). And no matter how you slice it, a lot of coaches continue to send their kids to tournaments that qual for TOC with the expressed purpose of getting those quals, and to treat TOC as an end-all be-all for competition. Debaters do likewise, often merely reflecting trends rather than setting them. Bro J pointed out a classic problem of getting kids to non-qualifying tournaments, even at a school where no one goes to TOC because of exam conflicts! The TOC qual is some sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, which is fine, but once again, if we remember our basic syllogistic logic, just because a tournament doesn’t earn quals doesn’t make it bad. I do admit I’ve internalized this with the Sailors to some degree. The team is large enough to split around. We have bid tournaments and non-bid tournaments, and there’s a right tournament and a wrong tournament for everyone, and part of my job is placing people at the right places for the right reasons. I will ban anyone making blanket statements that such-and-such a tournament is not good. Not good if you already have 5 bids? Maybe, but it’s just right for sophomores. Conversely, Glenbrooks isn’t any good for my novices. It’s a matter of fit, not fashion. One Legionnaire applauded Emory (of all places) for its stance as a tournament on its own and not merely a qualifier for some other tournament (i.e., TOC). Soddy used to say the same thing, and it was true then and it’s true now, regardless of what tournament we’re talking about. Apparently there was a short period when people stopped their tournaments once the bid round had transpired. I don’t think this was common practice, and I don’t think it marks any trend. I used to stop Bump all the time, not for TOC purposes but because it was too late at night: says I, Shoo! Go home! Stop this nonsense! I don’t believe that debate after the first 14 hours in a day amounts to much, and in fact, I feel it could be harmful. In any case, around here, tournaments last until they’re over, and that is as it should be. And they should run as their own entities, and not satellites of the TOC.
Still, the Legion continues to see the TOC as the arbiter, whether directly or indirectly, of LD, either in the tournaments it selects as qualifiers or in the messages it sends abroad when digressive debaters thrive or digressive young judges are seen to determine policy. From my own experience I’m beginning to wonder if, in fact, the whole digressive issue might not be settling down a bit, including at TOC, but that’s just me. The key thing is, will the Legion just bloviate among themselves as they always do, or come to some sort of consensus and make a definitive statement to the TOC? The latter is the only thing that will matter, and there are substantive areas they can address that would have at least some effect on TOC’s cynosure position in the activity.
But I’ll tell you something. The redirection of WTF parenthetically mentioned above is perhaps just as powerful. At the point where TOC really is just the final for one particular circuit, and not the center of the universe, then things are very much as they should be. It is not so much up to the TOC but up to the rest of us to decide how the universe is structured and what TOC’s place in it is. TOC is fun, and I like going. And if I have no qualifiers in a given year? All tournaments are fun, and I like going to all of them. Spread this attitude around, and the world will be a better place.
The TOC, as it stands today, is—to paraphrase Aaron T, who I think is still a member of the TOC advisory board—the central culmination of the year for a certain circuit of debaters. It is not the national event, but simply the national event for this group. That is true, although I disagree with Aaron that NatNats is in fact the national event, if for no other reason than that New York’s leading debaters are handicapped in their ability to participate because of Regents exams. But that is neither here nor there. That TOCs caters to a specific community is the first premise to be accepted.
I gather that there have been various approaches over the years to the issue of how admittance of entrants to TOC should be handled. As there is no main administrating body with a dedicated functioning bureaucracy (like the centrally organized NFL, or the regionally oriented CFL), the use of organizationally defined qualifiers isn’t really feasible. So instead, TOC draws on the skein of existing tournaments to provide its qualifiers. The question is, how to evaluate these existing tournaments to insure that the debaters they send forth are, indeed, “qualified.” And that is a tricky question. There seem to be no specific criteria for making the evaluation. Once upon a time the number of entrants plus the number of states represented was apparently the key, but that is no longer true because it didn’t work all that well. Now the criteria are fluid, determined by a small but geographically diverse group of advisors, comprising professional coaches of a uniform high level of prestige and experience (although some are old-timers, and some are young-timers, which is as it should be), and ultimately adjudicated by the TOC Tournament Director. All the advisors are players in the game of TOC debate, fielding competitors on the TOC circuit. Even if you might think this or that individual on the committee is a stinker, you have to admire the rest. So there is no reason to impugn this group on the basis of their skills or intentions. As far as I know, no one really ever does, except in the vaguest sense of TOC as a whole being up to no good.
While there is much griping from various quarters that the TOC bids are not fair, mostly those gripes claim that this or that geographical area is underrepresented, and that is certainly an issue that the advisers always discuss (I know, because I have been one of them). They do indeed attempt to provide an evenly tucked-in blanket over the country’s LDers, but they simply can’t pluck some tournament out of thin air and say that its debaters are bid-worthy simply because they’re in the right location. The tournament itself has to exist, which is not always the case as large geographic areas simply don’t have events, and it has to be predictably capable of producing bid-worthy qualifiers. This latter is something of a Catch-22, unfortunately, because bid people only want to go to bid tournaments but tournaments can’t become bid tournaments unless bid people go to them. (One of the side issues being discussed by the Legion was this problem of bid tournaments having the right odor and non-bid tournaments being unworthy of a debater’s time, even when that debater’s chance of ever earning a bid anywhere is virtually nil. We’ll discuss that later.)
One has to wonder if a strict numerical evaluation of tournaments would be meaningful. Having committee members who were participants at all the tournaments is meaningful, if the participants honestly report the nature of the events. For instance, I could have 120 people at a tournament, but 60 of them could be from 3 schools; is that the same as Hendrick’s Hudson’s 120 people, where we set a 6-person cap per school? I don’t think so, but if you’re not intimate with a tournament’s details, how can you tell the difference?
So I, for one, while not necessarily always agreeing with the final spread of bids the TOC declares, feel that the process of deciding these bids is about as good as it can be, and I can’t imagine any process that would make them different in any meaningful way. The declaration of some TOC criteria (the need for 5 or 6 prelim rounds, the need for a certain number of elim rounds, any judging requirements), on the other hand, should be clearly posted. If there is some mechanical reason why a bid is not being given to a school, at least if the school has a list of all these reasons it can address the problems, if it is inclined to do so. As for those geographic areas that feel slighted, simply tell TOC what tournaments you feel should be getting the recognition; you’d be doing the committee a favor. And frankly, the problem is that these tournaments mostly don’t exist. But in your griping, be realistic. To claim that Harvard is a northeast tournament is to claim that Glenbrooks is an Illinois tournament or Emory is a Georgia tournament. Look at everything but the octos tournaments if you really want to understand the business at hand.
So, issue one that the Legion was kicking around, that the TOC needs clear criteria of its bid system, is true to some extent. At least give the general outline of what a tournament needs to do. Give a general outline of the procedure for a tournament that wants to be considered for bids. Make this process transparent. This won’t change the process so much as allow people to understand it. That would be a good thing.
Second, and the issue that started this Legionnaire thread, was the question of TOC judging. Aaron sent a message urging everyone at TOC to judge instead of sitting around doing whatever it is they do when they’re not judging, which brought plenty of moans about lack of use of judges, preference for digressive judges, etc. I posted to this issue. I gather that there is now a one judge per debater requirement. If that is true, then the average judge will judge 1.5 prelim rounds; the math is simple. The pool would have to shrink dramatically before you’d get anywhere near judging roughly half the rounds. This is pure arithmetic, and no bias on anyone’s part. I simply can’t imagine the gentlemen who are usually in tab cooking the assignments. Why would they? They’ve got judges to burn. Aside from perhaps seeing that judges who haven’t been assigned yet get a round here and there, which is hardly cooking the assignments, they are on tabroom easy street, and have no rationale from venturing off it. The problem is the vast number of judges. No amount of strikes will solve a 1 to 1 situation. 1 to 1 means you are spending a lot of time sitting on the old dufferoo, my friend.
Of course, if you’ve paid all that money to get to Kentucky, especially if you’ve got multiple entries, you’re going to feel wasted. It would seem to me that a 1 to 2 ratio is more than enough. It would average 3 rounds per person. Not bad.
Bringing up judging at TOC, however, brings up other issues. Or at least bringing up judging at TOC acts as a red cape waved at all the Legion bulls: Too many strikes (I agree), too many young judges ruining LD for the ages (probably not true). As for the strikes, pulling the few stinkers who always drop you because they don’t like your looks is a good thing, but 5 strikes is quite enough. Anything more, and it’s Mutual Judge Preference in everything but name. I’ve always maintained that random judging, if a judge understands how an LD round works, is what keeps the activity honest; nothing revolutionary there. As for young judges ruining LD, as Ryan H (who isn’t all that young anymore [smile]) pointed out, all young people are not ruinous by default (although I would point out that by the same token all old people are not hiding out in tab, and honestly, if one does tab well and enjoys it, well, that’s hardly a mortal crime). Lots of Legionnaires do simply blame everything on the young, though, and if the truth be told, it is college students who should move along from their high school lives who are a serious contributing cause of much that is wrong with LD, but all young people are not these people. All of us ought to understand our syllogisms better than that. Some young people are problematic. Ryan is (almost) young. Ryan may or may not be problematic. Assume nothing! Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be surprised if, on the Legion of Progressive Debate listserver, the young ‘uns are similarly complaining that they don’t judge enough rounds. My guess is that the math works about the same for them, although with the scales tipped slightly due to strikes. If I’m wrong, then it’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Balancing assignments in tab, i.e., using everyone as equally as possible, is a simple solution to that.
I am with those who want to ban first-year-outs, simply because they may have psychological ponies still in the race and not because they are digressively evil by nature. I have taken a strong position against MJP in the past and continue to hold that position. And strikes should be no more than 5. And as I say, tab should neutrally balance the judging across the pool, which should be smaller than one to one. That’s where I stand on that.
Probably the most interesting stuff that keeps coming up with the Legion is the stuff that is the least quantifiable, and that is the effect of TOC on LD in general. To some extent, TOC is an easy target because there is a good representation of digressive debaters in the pack, for whatever reason. The event is glorified on WTF (although lately, just about every event is glorified on WTF, so TOC gets a lot more lost in the pack than it used to). And no matter how you slice it, a lot of coaches continue to send their kids to tournaments that qual for TOC with the expressed purpose of getting those quals, and to treat TOC as an end-all be-all for competition. Debaters do likewise, often merely reflecting trends rather than setting them. Bro J pointed out a classic problem of getting kids to non-qualifying tournaments, even at a school where no one goes to TOC because of exam conflicts! The TOC qual is some sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, which is fine, but once again, if we remember our basic syllogistic logic, just because a tournament doesn’t earn quals doesn’t make it bad. I do admit I’ve internalized this with the Sailors to some degree. The team is large enough to split around. We have bid tournaments and non-bid tournaments, and there’s a right tournament and a wrong tournament for everyone, and part of my job is placing people at the right places for the right reasons. I will ban anyone making blanket statements that such-and-such a tournament is not good. Not good if you already have 5 bids? Maybe, but it’s just right for sophomores. Conversely, Glenbrooks isn’t any good for my novices. It’s a matter of fit, not fashion. One Legionnaire applauded Emory (of all places) for its stance as a tournament on its own and not merely a qualifier for some other tournament (i.e., TOC). Soddy used to say the same thing, and it was true then and it’s true now, regardless of what tournament we’re talking about. Apparently there was a short period when people stopped their tournaments once the bid round had transpired. I don’t think this was common practice, and I don’t think it marks any trend. I used to stop Bump all the time, not for TOC purposes but because it was too late at night: says I, Shoo! Go home! Stop this nonsense! I don’t believe that debate after the first 14 hours in a day amounts to much, and in fact, I feel it could be harmful. In any case, around here, tournaments last until they’re over, and that is as it should be. And they should run as their own entities, and not satellites of the TOC.
Still, the Legion continues to see the TOC as the arbiter, whether directly or indirectly, of LD, either in the tournaments it selects as qualifiers or in the messages it sends abroad when digressive debaters thrive or digressive young judges are seen to determine policy. From my own experience I’m beginning to wonder if, in fact, the whole digressive issue might not be settling down a bit, including at TOC, but that’s just me. The key thing is, will the Legion just bloviate among themselves as they always do, or come to some sort of consensus and make a definitive statement to the TOC? The latter is the only thing that will matter, and there are substantive areas they can address that would have at least some effect on TOC’s cynosure position in the activity.
But I’ll tell you something. The redirection of WTF parenthetically mentioned above is perhaps just as powerful. At the point where TOC really is just the final for one particular circuit, and not the center of the universe, then things are very much as they should be. It is not so much up to the TOC but up to the rest of us to decide how the universe is structured and what TOC’s place in it is. TOC is fun, and I like going. And if I have no qualifiers in a given year? All tournaments are fun, and I like going to all of them. Spread this attitude around, and the world will be a better place.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
And George Bush blames everything on Dick Cheney...
Another one bites the dust. Another District tournament, that is.
I’m pretty sure I’ve gone through all this before. Districts is a tournament that requires enormous attention to detail, in that there are enough NFL rules and regulations to choke the proverbial horse. Even having the Wunn and Only around didn’t mean we always knew what to do when. Old Scott was poring over the little red manual just as much as the rest of us. He was helpful at times though, when we had to throw out a fairly standard question, or certify the results, or just get through the thing. He even judged a round or two (so did I, for that matter—where was Fists when we needed him?), so it was nice having him around. And he came with a plan to help us rise from our Red Light District status. We’ll have to see if it works; it depends on a lot of factors all coming together just right. We’ll see, but I’m sanguine about it. It looks good.
Of course, the worst thing about Districts is all the paperwork. You start filling stuff out the Monday before and continue for the next 40 days and 40 nights. Quelle dragerooni, as the Frenchies say. But yesterday I popped over to the local post office with boxes and envelopes a’plenty, and shipped everything off to Rippin’ Ripon. Mostly my work here is done, except for a small event up at Monticello to certify one of their policy teams. They were the only policy school entered; with 4 teams, they can qual one, but first all the teams need to debate one round, followed by coach’s decisions. And three neutral judges. We can do that pretty efficiently, and I’m on the case.
Last night I introduced the Sailors to a new name called [insert clever name of game here, because I couldn’t come up with one]. It’s a simple take on trivia, a move toward a more involving approach than Debate Jeopardy. Everyone answers questions in 6 categories, but they can screw people and earn immunities. I’ll simplify it a bit next time, but one thing I’ll say about Sailors, past and present, is that they like a good trivia game. So do I. Next week we’ll get back to (men)ickstitute, but it was nice to have a night off to sort of tie off the season. After all, I have no more tournaments to go to. Noah is shepherding Robbie to Houston, and Mrs. 1-F is handing the States chores, which leaves me washing off the old golf clubs and heading out for another season of inane summer masochism.
Speaking of masochism, this is the time of year when everyone starts hitting on poor old TOC. The Legion believes that if it gets enough judges into the pool, it will stem the sinking tide of debate as we know it, which is marginally true at best. When you do the math, you realize that the size of the TOC judging pool is only slightly smaller than the population of Moose Butt, Montana. A judge is lucky to get 2 rounds in, given the 1 to 1 ratio across a pool of 70 debaters. Some folks like to think the tabbers are sitting there manipulating things, but I highly doubt it. They’ve got 70 or so of the best judges in the country according to any standard, and no real reason to futz around with assignments. What do they care if it’s a Digressive college student or a Legionnaire? They don’t even tend to have horses of their own in the race. No, the real problem is with the TOC itself, an institution which, as I have said, I would not invent if it didn’t exist. Its worst sin is its effect on LD as a cynosure for all the $ircuit practices we hold near and dear, but one cannot overlook its inherent greed. I mean, it costs an arm and a leg, even if you don’t go: there’s always dozens of at-large bids whose fees cover, let me see, the free services of the LD Advisory committee and, oh, yeah, about $30 of mailing fees. And if you get an at-large, is that fee applied to your registration? Chuckle, chuckle. Fortunately, the TOC is run for the benefit of the high school debate community as a whole (absent its cynosure role mentioned above), giving back scholarships and grants— No, wait. That’s not them. They are, in fact, simply one of the colleges we high school people like to outsource our tournaments to. Whatever money they take in, after expenses, goes to their college team. And we treat this event much as the Pope treats Easter.
Personally, I blame everything wrong with TOC on George Bush. Works for everything else, doesn’t it?
I’m pretty sure I’ve gone through all this before. Districts is a tournament that requires enormous attention to detail, in that there are enough NFL rules and regulations to choke the proverbial horse. Even having the Wunn and Only around didn’t mean we always knew what to do when. Old Scott was poring over the little red manual just as much as the rest of us. He was helpful at times though, when we had to throw out a fairly standard question, or certify the results, or just get through the thing. He even judged a round or two (so did I, for that matter—where was Fists when we needed him?), so it was nice having him around. And he came with a plan to help us rise from our Red Light District status. We’ll have to see if it works; it depends on a lot of factors all coming together just right. We’ll see, but I’m sanguine about it. It looks good.
Of course, the worst thing about Districts is all the paperwork. You start filling stuff out the Monday before and continue for the next 40 days and 40 nights. Quelle dragerooni, as the Frenchies say. But yesterday I popped over to the local post office with boxes and envelopes a’plenty, and shipped everything off to Rippin’ Ripon. Mostly my work here is done, except for a small event up at Monticello to certify one of their policy teams. They were the only policy school entered; with 4 teams, they can qual one, but first all the teams need to debate one round, followed by coach’s decisions. And three neutral judges. We can do that pretty efficiently, and I’m on the case.
Last night I introduced the Sailors to a new name called [insert clever name of game here, because I couldn’t come up with one]. It’s a simple take on trivia, a move toward a more involving approach than Debate Jeopardy. Everyone answers questions in 6 categories, but they can screw people and earn immunities. I’ll simplify it a bit next time, but one thing I’ll say about Sailors, past and present, is that they like a good trivia game. So do I. Next week we’ll get back to (men)ickstitute, but it was nice to have a night off to sort of tie off the season. After all, I have no more tournaments to go to. Noah is shepherding Robbie to Houston, and Mrs. 1-F is handing the States chores, which leaves me washing off the old golf clubs and heading out for another season of inane summer masochism.
Speaking of masochism, this is the time of year when everyone starts hitting on poor old TOC. The Legion believes that if it gets enough judges into the pool, it will stem the sinking tide of debate as we know it, which is marginally true at best. When you do the math, you realize that the size of the TOC judging pool is only slightly smaller than the population of Moose Butt, Montana. A judge is lucky to get 2 rounds in, given the 1 to 1 ratio across a pool of 70 debaters. Some folks like to think the tabbers are sitting there manipulating things, but I highly doubt it. They’ve got 70 or so of the best judges in the country according to any standard, and no real reason to futz around with assignments. What do they care if it’s a Digressive college student or a Legionnaire? They don’t even tend to have horses of their own in the race. No, the real problem is with the TOC itself, an institution which, as I have said, I would not invent if it didn’t exist. Its worst sin is its effect on LD as a cynosure for all the $ircuit practices we hold near and dear, but one cannot overlook its inherent greed. I mean, it costs an arm and a leg, even if you don’t go: there’s always dozens of at-large bids whose fees cover, let me see, the free services of the LD Advisory committee and, oh, yeah, about $30 of mailing fees. And if you get an at-large, is that fee applied to your registration? Chuckle, chuckle. Fortunately, the TOC is run for the benefit of the high school debate community as a whole (absent its cynosure role mentioned above), giving back scholarships and grants— No, wait. That’s not them. They are, in fact, simply one of the colleges we high school people like to outsource our tournaments to. Whatever money they take in, after expenses, goes to their college team. And we treat this event much as the Pope treats Easter.
Personally, I blame everything wrong with TOC on George Bush. Works for everything else, doesn’t it?
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The Legion of Doom Redux
As you know, I generally refer to our age as the post-dialectic, but I’m coming to like the idea I’ve been nursing of referring to our times instead as post-contemporary, or poco for short. After you’ve run out of modern ideas, and then postmodern ideas, you are ready for post-contemporary ideas. If you’re reading this blog, you are poco to the core.
I have in the past talked about personal issues, most recently what I think of as a generational disappointment with sf that informs much baby boomer angst. Subsequent generations had Star Wars and Star Trek untarnished by William Shatner, but we had The Thing with Two Heads. It just wasn’t fair.
Still, even given their surfeit of quality sf entertainment, the poco generation does lack imagination. Or at least they are treated as if they lack imagination. Today, if you buy a Mr. Potato Head (or, as it is known in France, Monsieur Le Tete aux Pommes de Terre), you get a plastic potato in which to insert the features and appendages. The mouth goes into the mouth hole. The eyes go into the eye holes. The ears go into the ear holes. The only conceivable imaginative play open to the proud possessor of Mr. P. H. is to put the nose into one of the ear holes, assuming that this is even possible. Other than that, I guess you treat Mr. P. H. (or as the French would have it, M. L. T. A. P. D. T.) like a grotesque Barbie doll (and there’s a pleonasm if there ever was one), putting it to bed at night and taking it for a walk and whatever else one does with dolls. Doesn’t sound like much fun to me.
In my day, the pre-poco era, it was different. The point of Mr. P.H. was that you would get yourself the various features and appendages (including the now taboo pipe so that himself could read the evening papers while enjoying a bit of Borkum Riff and maybe a martini or something) and then stick them into an actual potato. Kids were tough back then. And creative. Give a baby boomer a couple of ears and a nose and a spud, and before you could say Walter Winchell, you had yourself an anthropomorphic tater. No wonder the world is that way it is today.
But I have to explain further. There’s a personal story here. You see, Mr. Potato Head was sold with, not a plastic potato, but a chunk of Styrofoam sort of shaped like a potato. And when young Jim sat down to enjoy a few solid hours of Potato Head entertainment, he was told by his mother that he could not have a real potato to play with. Stick with the Styrofoam, I was told. You think potatoes grow on trees?
Thus I learned that potatoes did not grow on trees. I was young at the time.
So I played with Mr. Styrofoam Head, but it wasn’t the same. I had this vision of other kids in the neighborhood, the lucky kids, the ones whose parents loved them, playing with real potatoes. Their rooms were filled to overflowing with handsome Idaho spuds overlooking their every fun-filled moment. They tossed the Styrofoam directly into the trash and headed for the produce bin for the real deal. And when the potato gave up the ghost, as it must if it has been poked and prodded with ears and legs and pipes and hats for too long, they simply mashed up and ate the old one and got their mothers to give them a shiny new one. Or at least as shiny and new a potato as a potato could get. I, on the other hand, watched my Styrofoam slowly degenerate. This stuff can take only so much abuse. Eventually my sturdy faux-Idaho was reduced to a new potato, then a fingerling, and finally a mere skin of its former self. And then all the features and appendages went back into the box, Styrofoamless, never to touch real spud, and never to rise from again from an inchoate jumble of plastic parts.
If I had a therapist, much, obviously, would be made of this.
And what does this have to do with the Legion of Doom, you might ask? Well, think of this as an extemp piece. Every extemp piece, as we explained last night to LPW, begins with an anecdote. Then you go on to the meat. But first you take a couple of steps to the right: the extemp two-step.
One. Two.
So they’re having some sort of Legion election, and I was nominated, and my first instinct was to shrug it off, but then I figured, VBD, so I’m running for whatever it is I was nominated for (and I’m not being cute; I’m really not sure). I scratched out a quick platform (“More Potato Heads, Fewer Meatheads”) and there you are.
Vote for me, because I’m always right and I never lie.
And I’m sure Mr. Potato Head would do so, if he only could, in his sad and lonely little box…
I have in the past talked about personal issues, most recently what I think of as a generational disappointment with sf that informs much baby boomer angst. Subsequent generations had Star Wars and Star Trek untarnished by William Shatner, but we had The Thing with Two Heads. It just wasn’t fair.
Still, even given their surfeit of quality sf entertainment, the poco generation does lack imagination. Or at least they are treated as if they lack imagination. Today, if you buy a Mr. Potato Head (or, as it is known in France, Monsieur Le Tete aux Pommes de Terre), you get a plastic potato in which to insert the features and appendages. The mouth goes into the mouth hole. The eyes go into the eye holes. The ears go into the ear holes. The only conceivable imaginative play open to the proud possessor of Mr. P. H. is to put the nose into one of the ear holes, assuming that this is even possible. Other than that, I guess you treat Mr. P. H. (or as the French would have it, M. L. T. A. P. D. T.) like a grotesque Barbie doll (and there’s a pleonasm if there ever was one), putting it to bed at night and taking it for a walk and whatever else one does with dolls. Doesn’t sound like much fun to me.
In my day, the pre-poco era, it was different. The point of Mr. P.H. was that you would get yourself the various features and appendages (including the now taboo pipe so that himself could read the evening papers while enjoying a bit of Borkum Riff and maybe a martini or something) and then stick them into an actual potato. Kids were tough back then. And creative. Give a baby boomer a couple of ears and a nose and a spud, and before you could say Walter Winchell, you had yourself an anthropomorphic tater. No wonder the world is that way it is today.
But I have to explain further. There’s a personal story here. You see, Mr. Potato Head was sold with, not a plastic potato, but a chunk of Styrofoam sort of shaped like a potato. And when young Jim sat down to enjoy a few solid hours of Potato Head entertainment, he was told by his mother that he could not have a real potato to play with. Stick with the Styrofoam, I was told. You think potatoes grow on trees?
Thus I learned that potatoes did not grow on trees. I was young at the time.
So I played with Mr. Styrofoam Head, but it wasn’t the same. I had this vision of other kids in the neighborhood, the lucky kids, the ones whose parents loved them, playing with real potatoes. Their rooms were filled to overflowing with handsome Idaho spuds overlooking their every fun-filled moment. They tossed the Styrofoam directly into the trash and headed for the produce bin for the real deal. And when the potato gave up the ghost, as it must if it has been poked and prodded with ears and legs and pipes and hats for too long, they simply mashed up and ate the old one and got their mothers to give them a shiny new one. Or at least as shiny and new a potato as a potato could get. I, on the other hand, watched my Styrofoam slowly degenerate. This stuff can take only so much abuse. Eventually my sturdy faux-Idaho was reduced to a new potato, then a fingerling, and finally a mere skin of its former self. And then all the features and appendages went back into the box, Styrofoamless, never to touch real spud, and never to rise from again from an inchoate jumble of plastic parts.
If I had a therapist, much, obviously, would be made of this.
And what does this have to do with the Legion of Doom, you might ask? Well, think of this as an extemp piece. Every extemp piece, as we explained last night to LPW, begins with an anecdote. Then you go on to the meat. But first you take a couple of steps to the right: the extemp two-step.
One. Two.
So they’re having some sort of Legion election, and I was nominated, and my first instinct was to shrug it off, but then I figured, VBD, so I’m running for whatever it is I was nominated for (and I’m not being cute; I’m really not sure). I scratched out a quick platform (“More Potato Heads, Fewer Meatheads”) and there you are.
Vote for me, because I’m always right and I never lie.
And I’m sure Mr. Potato Head would do so, if he only could, in his sad and lonely little box…
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Meanwhile, back at the night job
So, says you, whatever happened to debate?
Let’s see. The Legion of Doom is holding some sort of election, apparently to add to their august leadership committee. I understand they want to do for Declamation what they’ve done for LD; I’m with them on this, 1000%.
Last night we began (men)ickstitute with the most stalwart of the Plebes, talking about case-writing. I always find writing an interesting subject. It’s very easy to say that you need to include this, that or the other in your writing, but to get to the point of actually having any of this, or that, or even the other, is a difficult thing. Some of us see a blank piece of paper not as a challenge but as an endangered species. Others can stare forever at the empty page, or in this day and age the empty screen, and have no idea what to put on it. My advice in case writing is easy, and all neatly contained on the pdf on the Sailors’ website. My point is that once you have a thesis for your side, and you write that thesis down, most likely you have at least one and more likely two tags for contentions already staring you in the face. It’s all downhill from there. Next up we’ll talk about various strategies and tactics.
Saturday is the CFL Grands tournament. I have no idea why it’s called that. A grand tournament (“Gee, that would be grand”) would be understandable, if Salingeresque. Maybe it’s a mistaken plural for grand tournament, where whoever came up with it knew the plural of attorney general and thought that it was the same sort of thing. Whatever. I’ll be tabbing PF and LD, partnering with O’C in what I have declared will be an all-Disney tabroom. The MegaPod is all warmed up. There’s almost 30 LDers (hoo-rah!), an easy number even with 3 judges per debate. There’s only 17 Pffffters, on the other hand, which is a bit more work. Oh, well; with “Minnie’s Yoohoo” on the box, O’C and I should make short work of it. If we’re out of there by seven o’clock, I’ll be ecstatic. That would be 4 long, tough sets of pairings. I’m thinking busing the Sailors over to Chinatown for dinner after the event. We may have to fight a bit of the St. Patrick’s Day crowd, but it would be worth it. We’ll see how it works out.
Let’s see. The Legion of Doom is holding some sort of election, apparently to add to their august leadership committee. I understand they want to do for Declamation what they’ve done for LD; I’m with them on this, 1000%.
Last night we began (men)ickstitute with the most stalwart of the Plebes, talking about case-writing. I always find writing an interesting subject. It’s very easy to say that you need to include this, that or the other in your writing, but to get to the point of actually having any of this, or that, or even the other, is a difficult thing. Some of us see a blank piece of paper not as a challenge but as an endangered species. Others can stare forever at the empty page, or in this day and age the empty screen, and have no idea what to put on it. My advice in case writing is easy, and all neatly contained on the pdf on the Sailors’ website. My point is that once you have a thesis for your side, and you write that thesis down, most likely you have at least one and more likely two tags for contentions already staring you in the face. It’s all downhill from there. Next up we’ll talk about various strategies and tactics.
Saturday is the CFL Grands tournament. I have no idea why it’s called that. A grand tournament (“Gee, that would be grand”) would be understandable, if Salingeresque. Maybe it’s a mistaken plural for grand tournament, where whoever came up with it knew the plural of attorney general and thought that it was the same sort of thing. Whatever. I’ll be tabbing PF and LD, partnering with O’C in what I have declared will be an all-Disney tabroom. The MegaPod is all warmed up. There’s almost 30 LDers (hoo-rah!), an easy number even with 3 judges per debate. There’s only 17 Pffffters, on the other hand, which is a bit more work. Oh, well; with “Minnie’s Yoohoo” on the box, O’C and I should make short work of it. If we’re out of there by seven o’clock, I’ll be ecstatic. That would be 4 long, tough sets of pairings. I’m thinking busing the Sailors over to Chinatown for dinner after the event. We may have to fight a bit of the St. Patrick’s Day crowd, but it would be worth it. We’ll see how it works out.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Independence, Part Two
So in a world where people are paying attention to such things, no tournament director in his or her right mind will accept unchaperoned entries, for the simple reason that by doing so responsibility for those entries defaults to the tournament director, and the hassles that might arise can be anything from a suddenly sick child who needs to be sent home, somehow, to a seriously sick child who needs to be sent to the hospital, representing a continuum of situations most TDs do not wish to spend time adjudicating during their tournaments. There are enough problems as it is. Why take on these problems as well? Add to that the admittedly minor possibility that an unaffiliated entry could be attending your tournament in direct violation of school regulations, and you have an untenable position. (One could argue that because some TDs do accept such entries, others should as well. But that is a bad argument. The handful of tournaments I know of that do not pay attention to who’s showing up and what happens to them are demonstrating bad judgment, not setting a precedent of good behavior for others. The fact that some people do a thing, no matter who those people are, is no warrant for others doing it. If that were the case, we could have all easily refuted our mothers when they asked, if all our friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would we do so too.)
But the curious thing is, the essay in Rostrum misses all the obvious issues I’ve talked about, which are real and preemptive. The writers instead attack the Legion of Doom on the question of liability, and claim that the legion’s position, being specious, is therefore discriminatory. And you know something? On these they may be right.
First, liability. Liability for what? Challenged by whom? I mean, I’m certainly willing to accept that if something were to happen to an unchaperoned child at my tournament, someone might hold me legally accountable, but that is an extreme possibility. What would be the basis of the liability, aside from proximity? And realistically, would that ever really come to pass? Has it ever? The argument in the article here is reasonable. The writers go on to say that this claim of liability in the Legion’s policy statement (which has the legal weight of a tuna melt) is in fact an attempt to discriminate against independent entries.
Yeah. They're right.
The goal of the Legion is to mold, or limit, or contain—however you want to refer to it—LD according to certain standards which are claimed as educational. But the Legion very much believes that one of the gravest threats to those standards is students without coaches, who are therefore unrestricted by, not merely adult supervision at a tournament, but adult supervision in forming their approach to debate. Another perceived threat is the college student judge/coach with a so-called progressive agenda, pressuring debaters to adapt to their agendas of speed, source literature and digressive theories of debate structure. While these unaffiliated debaters are not always linked with these digressive judges, they often are, for the simple reason that when you have no coach, you hire whom you can. Of course, the Legion also takes TDs to task for hiring these digressive judges, but the connection remains. If you’re accepting a debater or team without an adult but with a judge, the likelihood is you’re accepting a digressive judge (I like that term) into your judging pool.
So as it turns out, the good reason for barring the unchaperoned/unaffiliated—all of my examples of the sick debater—is bypassed by the Legion in favor of an obscurant policy claiming liability issues. And, probably, there are liability issues at stake, but the real issue is keeping out bad influences. So, all right, this is not really discriminatory, but it is weighted. Is it wrong?
You’d have to make your own decision on that. I’ve spoken to the issue of the digressive judges in the past, at great length, and while I don’t ban them, I don’t seek them out (and they know who I am, and when they or their wards have the opportunity to strike me, they do, so we’re even there). And do I love the unaffiliated/independent/unchaperoned children out there? Let’s see. I think the term I use is National $ircuit, given that these independents all seem to turn up quite far away from home despite the Rostrum article's claims that they have no funds. If you say so... The idea put forth in the article regarding behavior or unchaperoned independents being modified by the community at large, by the way, is simply silly: it's non-unique (all behavior in groups is group-modified to some extent) and it's no guarantee of correct behavior (unless the group we're talking about is akin to Nazi Storm Troopers).
Still, there is the issue of what is a student to do if there is no debate in their area? Shouldn’t they be able to find it elsewhere? Aren't they entitled to Lincoln-Douglas by virtue of birth? OF COURSE THEY ARE!!! IT’S PLANK #328 OF THE UN DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS!!!
(That, in case you missed it, was irony. In caps.)
I mean, jeesh, I love debate (obviously) and value it highly enough to devote, shall we say, some spare time to it, but there are probably other ways of learning things in high school. I support finding funding for debate where it doesn’t exist: not funding for the handful of top debaters to travel seven states away to bid tournaments, but funding for schools to augment the salaries of their underpaid teachers to create and coach in local events, to urge them to seek help from the NFL, all that sort of thing. Aside from getting to TOCs (if that is a real benefit of debate, and that is arguable), all the benefits of debate would pretty much be available if it were no more than bi-weekly scrimmages between the theoretical East Side HS and the West Side HS for a couple of hours after school. There are people out there, productive members of society—doctors, lawyers, truant officers, circus acrobats, CEOs—none of whom debated in high school. They have survived. There is no right to debate. There is no right to specific extracurricular activities. We are privileged to have debate, or to have the wherewithal to seek it out. We love it. And we should be thankful for it. Demand it as our due? No. It just doesn’t work like that.
Anyhow, I’m surprised the NFL would print an article that is so counter to their own rules. Have you ever tried to send a kid to NatNats without their coach along? Look that one up some time. If there’s any real hypocrisy here, it’s on the part of NFL, not the independents or the Legion, whose points of view are at least single-minded. Unless NatNats is going to start letting people in without 38 separate letters notarized by every household saint within an 80-mile radius of the local school board, they shouldn’t even pretend to support such a position.
No wonder I run a Red Light District.
But the curious thing is, the essay in Rostrum misses all the obvious issues I’ve talked about, which are real and preemptive. The writers instead attack the Legion of Doom on the question of liability, and claim that the legion’s position, being specious, is therefore discriminatory. And you know something? On these they may be right.
First, liability. Liability for what? Challenged by whom? I mean, I’m certainly willing to accept that if something were to happen to an unchaperoned child at my tournament, someone might hold me legally accountable, but that is an extreme possibility. What would be the basis of the liability, aside from proximity? And realistically, would that ever really come to pass? Has it ever? The argument in the article here is reasonable. The writers go on to say that this claim of liability in the Legion’s policy statement (which has the legal weight of a tuna melt) is in fact an attempt to discriminate against independent entries.
Yeah. They're right.
The goal of the Legion is to mold, or limit, or contain—however you want to refer to it—LD according to certain standards which are claimed as educational. But the Legion very much believes that one of the gravest threats to those standards is students without coaches, who are therefore unrestricted by, not merely adult supervision at a tournament, but adult supervision in forming their approach to debate. Another perceived threat is the college student judge/coach with a so-called progressive agenda, pressuring debaters to adapt to their agendas of speed, source literature and digressive theories of debate structure. While these unaffiliated debaters are not always linked with these digressive judges, they often are, for the simple reason that when you have no coach, you hire whom you can. Of course, the Legion also takes TDs to task for hiring these digressive judges, but the connection remains. If you’re accepting a debater or team without an adult but with a judge, the likelihood is you’re accepting a digressive judge (I like that term) into your judging pool.
So as it turns out, the good reason for barring the unchaperoned/unaffiliated—all of my examples of the sick debater—is bypassed by the Legion in favor of an obscurant policy claiming liability issues. And, probably, there are liability issues at stake, but the real issue is keeping out bad influences. So, all right, this is not really discriminatory, but it is weighted. Is it wrong?
You’d have to make your own decision on that. I’ve spoken to the issue of the digressive judges in the past, at great length, and while I don’t ban them, I don’t seek them out (and they know who I am, and when they or their wards have the opportunity to strike me, they do, so we’re even there). And do I love the unaffiliated/independent/unchaperoned children out there? Let’s see. I think the term I use is National $ircuit, given that these independents all seem to turn up quite far away from home despite the Rostrum article's claims that they have no funds. If you say so... The idea put forth in the article regarding behavior or unchaperoned independents being modified by the community at large, by the way, is simply silly: it's non-unique (all behavior in groups is group-modified to some extent) and it's no guarantee of correct behavior (unless the group we're talking about is akin to Nazi Storm Troopers).
Still, there is the issue of what is a student to do if there is no debate in their area? Shouldn’t they be able to find it elsewhere? Aren't they entitled to Lincoln-Douglas by virtue of birth? OF COURSE THEY ARE!!! IT’S PLANK #328 OF THE UN DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS!!!
(That, in case you missed it, was irony. In caps.)
I mean, jeesh, I love debate (obviously) and value it highly enough to devote, shall we say, some spare time to it, but there are probably other ways of learning things in high school. I support finding funding for debate where it doesn’t exist: not funding for the handful of top debaters to travel seven states away to bid tournaments, but funding for schools to augment the salaries of their underpaid teachers to create and coach in local events, to urge them to seek help from the NFL, all that sort of thing. Aside from getting to TOCs (if that is a real benefit of debate, and that is arguable), all the benefits of debate would pretty much be available if it were no more than bi-weekly scrimmages between the theoretical East Side HS and the West Side HS for a couple of hours after school. There are people out there, productive members of society—doctors, lawyers, truant officers, circus acrobats, CEOs—none of whom debated in high school. They have survived. There is no right to debate. There is no right to specific extracurricular activities. We are privileged to have debate, or to have the wherewithal to seek it out. We love it. And we should be thankful for it. Demand it as our due? No. It just doesn’t work like that.
Anyhow, I’m surprised the NFL would print an article that is so counter to their own rules. Have you ever tried to send a kid to NatNats without their coach along? Look that one up some time. If there’s any real hypocrisy here, it’s on the part of NFL, not the independents or the Legion, whose points of view are at least single-minded. Unless NatNats is going to start letting people in without 38 separate letters notarized by every household saint within an 80-mile radius of the local school board, they shouldn’t even pretend to support such a position.
No wonder I run a Red Light District.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Independence, Part One
I’m still reading that old Rostrum. In addition to Smilin’ J’s pack of lies, there’s an article on independent entry in tournaments. Very amusing issue, I think.
The hoo-ha begins with the Legion of Doom’s platform plank advising that tournaments accept no independent or unchaperoned entries, warranted essentially by liability issues. The Rostrum article contends that these liability issues are chimerical, and that the banning of independent unchaperoned entries is discriminatory.
My oh my oh my… Fortunately for the VCA, there’s a backstory to all of this. Aren’t you glad you’re one of us?
Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). I annually run one invitational as tournament director, plus half a dozen or so Mid-Hudson League one-day tournaments. These all ban independent, unchaperoned entries. Additionally I am an officer in the NYCFL, which holds virtually weekly tournaments, and which likewise bans the unchaperoned.
Why? Good question. I will offer reasons only from personal experience. Twice I have participated at tournaments where students were removed from the premises on gurneys, headed for the local hospital, because of serious medical ailments. On too many occasions to count I have participated at tournaments where students have, for one reason or another, found themselves in the appropriate rest room (if we’ve been lucky) vomiting, bleeding, or generally having a rough go of it, again for medical reasons. And I’m going to share something with you. When I am running a tournament, I tend to be a little, shall we say, busy. Distracted, you might suggest. And I know from experience that there can be a medical emergency at any time, totally unforeseen, requiring instant action. When I am supervising my own team, I take on that responsibility for them myself. That’s part of the deal. But when I am running a tournament, I need to have someone else carry that responsibility for all the other teams that are in attendance. I can’t take on that responsibility. I’m too busy. I’ve got other things to do. But if there is no responsible adult on hand with a team, then it would become my responsibility.
What part of no way, Jose, don’t you understand? Do you think there is any argument under the sun that will convince me to take on the responsibility for unchaperoned minors when I have other responsibilities that I must concentrate on? I mean, in the middle of a tournament I should stop whatever I'm doing to find out why little Johnny Independent is having at the porcelain in the boy’s room? I don’t think so. But if there were no adult there with little Johnny, I would have no choice. Mandated adult supervision is, therefore, a no-brainer.
But why does an adult have to be 21? Wonderful question. And I'm not going to bother to answer it. We all have blocks about measuring maturity with birth certificates on both sides of the question, but at the point where society makes that determination on the far side of 21, so do I. If I don't know you, using the normative age of maturity as a gauge that you are mature in a situation that may call for maturity is a pretty straightforward decision on my part. I won't even bother to offer evidence that college students may, as a group, not be mature. Maybe where you come from they do all spend their free time in prayer and meditation. That would be nice.
Why else don't I accept unaffiliated entries at my tournaments? The article further claims that these entries are the result of finances, or bureaucracy, or policy, and not indicative of a lack of support for the traveling students. This is true. Most of the time. It does not, however, cover situations where students in probationary/disciplinary situations have lied to their schools, to their parents, and to the tournaments they are attending, in order to attend those tournaments. How many of these incidents would I have to itemize to make my case?
And while I don't consider this a voting issue, the article actually pleads that forcing a parent to accompany a child may put that parent in the unfortunate position of having to judge rounds! Oh, the abomination. The horror. I am appalled at the thought.
One thing I do agree with is that I see no reason why students can't travel under the aegis of other schools. I have transported students from other schools, and other coaches have transported my students. Full chaperone responsibilities have been taken in these situations, which have been approved in advance by the tournaments to which they've gone. And I do allow students to come to my tournaments chaperoned by adults other than their parents or their own (perhaps non-existent) coaches. I am willing to deal. Still, in the cases where I might have questions of legitimacy of a team, I have asked for confirmation from the school. On the other hand, in cases where I know the individual chaperone who may be under 21, and it is someone who has proven their maturity to me in the past, I waive that qualification. I have even allowed students who have come with a parent to hire a judge, when they've claimed that their parent was unable to judge (because of language). I'm not an ogre. Or at least I'm not an ogre on this issue, when I have no reason to be.
But come on. Would any adult seriously accept the responsibility for unchaperoned children at a tournament? Or accept the possibility that a student might be attending against a school's specific wishes for that student or its general policies? These are not negotiable or arguable in any way, shape or form. Argue that tournament directors work with legitimate independent entries to enable participation? Any day of the week. Argue that tournament directors should put themselves in a position that could undermine their careers? Not on my watch.
But there is another side to this particular coin. I know you want me to flip the old nickel and tell you.
Next time.
The hoo-ha begins with the Legion of Doom’s platform plank advising that tournaments accept no independent or unchaperoned entries, warranted essentially by liability issues. The Rostrum article contends that these liability issues are chimerical, and that the banning of independent unchaperoned entries is discriminatory.
My oh my oh my… Fortunately for the VCA, there’s a backstory to all of this. Aren’t you glad you’re one of us?
Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). I annually run one invitational as tournament director, plus half a dozen or so Mid-Hudson League one-day tournaments. These all ban independent, unchaperoned entries. Additionally I am an officer in the NYCFL, which holds virtually weekly tournaments, and which likewise bans the unchaperoned.
Why? Good question. I will offer reasons only from personal experience. Twice I have participated at tournaments where students were removed from the premises on gurneys, headed for the local hospital, because of serious medical ailments. On too many occasions to count I have participated at tournaments where students have, for one reason or another, found themselves in the appropriate rest room (if we’ve been lucky) vomiting, bleeding, or generally having a rough go of it, again for medical reasons. And I’m going to share something with you. When I am running a tournament, I tend to be a little, shall we say, busy. Distracted, you might suggest. And I know from experience that there can be a medical emergency at any time, totally unforeseen, requiring instant action. When I am supervising my own team, I take on that responsibility for them myself. That’s part of the deal. But when I am running a tournament, I need to have someone else carry that responsibility for all the other teams that are in attendance. I can’t take on that responsibility. I’m too busy. I’ve got other things to do. But if there is no responsible adult on hand with a team, then it would become my responsibility.
What part of no way, Jose, don’t you understand? Do you think there is any argument under the sun that will convince me to take on the responsibility for unchaperoned minors when I have other responsibilities that I must concentrate on? I mean, in the middle of a tournament I should stop whatever I'm doing to find out why little Johnny Independent is having at the porcelain in the boy’s room? I don’t think so. But if there were no adult there with little Johnny, I would have no choice. Mandated adult supervision is, therefore, a no-brainer.
But why does an adult have to be 21? Wonderful question. And I'm not going to bother to answer it. We all have blocks about measuring maturity with birth certificates on both sides of the question, but at the point where society makes that determination on the far side of 21, so do I. If I don't know you, using the normative age of maturity as a gauge that you are mature in a situation that may call for maturity is a pretty straightforward decision on my part. I won't even bother to offer evidence that college students may, as a group, not be mature. Maybe where you come from they do all spend their free time in prayer and meditation. That would be nice.
Why else don't I accept unaffiliated entries at my tournaments? The article further claims that these entries are the result of finances, or bureaucracy, or policy, and not indicative of a lack of support for the traveling students. This is true. Most of the time. It does not, however, cover situations where students in probationary/disciplinary situations have lied to their schools, to their parents, and to the tournaments they are attending, in order to attend those tournaments. How many of these incidents would I have to itemize to make my case?
And while I don't consider this a voting issue, the article actually pleads that forcing a parent to accompany a child may put that parent in the unfortunate position of having to judge rounds! Oh, the abomination. The horror. I am appalled at the thought.
One thing I do agree with is that I see no reason why students can't travel under the aegis of other schools. I have transported students from other schools, and other coaches have transported my students. Full chaperone responsibilities have been taken in these situations, which have been approved in advance by the tournaments to which they've gone. And I do allow students to come to my tournaments chaperoned by adults other than their parents or their own (perhaps non-existent) coaches. I am willing to deal. Still, in the cases where I might have questions of legitimacy of a team, I have asked for confirmation from the school. On the other hand, in cases where I know the individual chaperone who may be under 21, and it is someone who has proven their maturity to me in the past, I waive that qualification. I have even allowed students who have come with a parent to hire a judge, when they've claimed that their parent was unable to judge (because of language). I'm not an ogre. Or at least I'm not an ogre on this issue, when I have no reason to be.
But come on. Would any adult seriously accept the responsibility for unchaperoned children at a tournament? Or accept the possibility that a student might be attending against a school's specific wishes for that student or its general policies? These are not negotiable or arguable in any way, shape or form. Argue that tournament directors work with legitimate independent entries to enable participation? Any day of the week. Argue that tournament directors should put themselves in a position that could undermine their careers? Not on my watch.
But there is another side to this particular coin. I know you want me to flip the old nickel and tell you.
Next time.
Monday, February 26, 2007
OMFG (Gone Wild)
Well, it’s illuminating.
The comments thread following the Smilin’ J follow-up post on VBD has shed much light on some issues surrounding LD, almost all of it inadvertent. I didn’t read the thread that closely, but I didn’t have to. You don’t have to either. And what have we learned from these comments?
First of all, VBD is, theoretically, a website for and about high school students. But high school students are sadly lacking in this thread, with one or two exceptions. Mostly it is the young people, primarily college students, who ought to be doing something else with their free time who are posting. Even if they are dedicated coaches planning to enter secondary school education when they graduate, they simply need to have something better to occupy their brains than monopolizing a thread on a high school website on which they spin endless screeds explaining their understanding of this or that philosophy. Go to a movie. Read a good book. Please. It is bordering on the pathetic to see the level of commitment by these college students to posting in this forum. There aren’t that many of them, but they are omnipresent. These people are not setting a good example of, shall we say, the intellectual college life. Nor are they in fact living what I would term an intellectual college life. There is no rounding to their education. They appear to be locked into a high school existence from which they cannot escape, and an inherently sophomoric approach to that existence that may be cementing the inescapability.
Secondly, the level of demonization of Smilin’ J is remarkable, considering that his influence on the activity is small and, agree with him or not, is entirely motivated by good intentions. What did he ever do to these people to rouse them so much, when most of what he says has been said many times by others? I suspect, and there is some evidence for this, that he dropped these people when they themselves were debating, or he dropped their present-day students, and they still hold a grudge. But even in cases where that is not true, the level of discourse is embarrassing. Debate in an educational context ought to be inherently respectful with differing points of view presented clearly, without calls to personality. Name-calling and sour grapes and broad attacks simply do not, as noted in my first complaint above, set a good example. And these people are presenting themselves as debate coaches? I don’t want to be in the same room with them, and I pity the students who are forced into adjudications from such self-impressed, poorly mannered people, whose only claim to superiority, which they never stop making, seems to be their vast knowledge of the philosophy they have gleaned from their Pomo 202 course last semester.
All of this underlines one of the chief problems many of us have been pointing out with LD today, which is the corrosive nature of the college judges slash assistant coaches on the activity. They have brought to it materials inappropriate to the educational age group, claiming that these materials are progressive when in fact they are simply beyond the understanding of anyone who is not first versed in the basics of elementary philosophy, and—hello?—most 14-year-olds haven’t had that much time in their short intellectual careers yet to reach that point. And they have so much time on their hands that they are ubiquitous, spouting all this material at the drop of a hat in forums that, frankly, are not theirs to control. Let the high school kids have VBD. Guide them occasionally if you feel a need to do so, and certainly explain yourself, but let them learn something from the Smilin’ Js of the world. If you must post, do so respectfully, no matter how you personally perceive your adversary. Be no more rude than you would expect a debater in a round to behave. Please.
Overall, it’s a sad commentary. And not unusual. My experience is that most public forums are, sooner or later, hijacked by the loudest people with the most time on their hands, to the exclusion of other, usually more more valuable opinions. So it is with VBD. Too bad.
The comments thread following the Smilin’ J follow-up post on VBD has shed much light on some issues surrounding LD, almost all of it inadvertent. I didn’t read the thread that closely, but I didn’t have to. You don’t have to either. And what have we learned from these comments?
First of all, VBD is, theoretically, a website for and about high school students. But high school students are sadly lacking in this thread, with one or two exceptions. Mostly it is the young people, primarily college students, who ought to be doing something else with their free time who are posting. Even if they are dedicated coaches planning to enter secondary school education when they graduate, they simply need to have something better to occupy their brains than monopolizing a thread on a high school website on which they spin endless screeds explaining their understanding of this or that philosophy. Go to a movie. Read a good book. Please. It is bordering on the pathetic to see the level of commitment by these college students to posting in this forum. There aren’t that many of them, but they are omnipresent. These people are not setting a good example of, shall we say, the intellectual college life. Nor are they in fact living what I would term an intellectual college life. There is no rounding to their education. They appear to be locked into a high school existence from which they cannot escape, and an inherently sophomoric approach to that existence that may be cementing the inescapability.
Secondly, the level of demonization of Smilin’ J is remarkable, considering that his influence on the activity is small and, agree with him or not, is entirely motivated by good intentions. What did he ever do to these people to rouse them so much, when most of what he says has been said many times by others? I suspect, and there is some evidence for this, that he dropped these people when they themselves were debating, or he dropped their present-day students, and they still hold a grudge. But even in cases where that is not true, the level of discourse is embarrassing. Debate in an educational context ought to be inherently respectful with differing points of view presented clearly, without calls to personality. Name-calling and sour grapes and broad attacks simply do not, as noted in my first complaint above, set a good example. And these people are presenting themselves as debate coaches? I don’t want to be in the same room with them, and I pity the students who are forced into adjudications from such self-impressed, poorly mannered people, whose only claim to superiority, which they never stop making, seems to be their vast knowledge of the philosophy they have gleaned from their Pomo 202 course last semester.
All of this underlines one of the chief problems many of us have been pointing out with LD today, which is the corrosive nature of the college judges slash assistant coaches on the activity. They have brought to it materials inappropriate to the educational age group, claiming that these materials are progressive when in fact they are simply beyond the understanding of anyone who is not first versed in the basics of elementary philosophy, and—hello?—most 14-year-olds haven’t had that much time in their short intellectual careers yet to reach that point. And they have so much time on their hands that they are ubiquitous, spouting all this material at the drop of a hat in forums that, frankly, are not theirs to control. Let the high school kids have VBD. Guide them occasionally if you feel a need to do so, and certainly explain yourself, but let them learn something from the Smilin’ Js of the world. If you must post, do so respectfully, no matter how you personally perceive your adversary. Be no more rude than you would expect a debater in a round to behave. Please.
Overall, it’s a sad commentary. And not unusual. My experience is that most public forums are, sooner or later, hijacked by the loudest people with the most time on their hands, to the exclusion of other, usually more more valuable opinions. So it is with VBD. Too bad.
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