Things are a little odd at the DJ and I may get some time back for other things, i.e., the time I spend at home on DJing might go back to time spent NJing. We’ll see. If it turns out that way, it will probably only be for a short time, but I really want to take a look at some of my manuals, which are probably a bit out of date by now. As they’re intended for novices, the core is probably okay, but to say that LD has changed in the last few years is to say that the sun rose in the east this morning. I think I have some work to do.
We ran our first MHL under the new rules this weekend, to wit, having people take responsibility for their entries online right up to registration, which consisted of them saying they were all present and accounted for. No registration sheets to ignore. The first problem was that you can’t access your registration on tabroom.com on tournament day, so I had to tinker with the dates, but after that, people were able to get in fine. The usual complication of changing a name, requiring a switch to a non-participant, then a drop, then a switch to the real participant, is always a poser; I did a couple of those myself for people. I kept myself online with tabroom, meaning that at registration I could help people out a bit. But mostly people did what they were supposed to do. A few folks had some extra judges that showed up for later rounds, but there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as I knew it, which I did. One school had an extra judge they didn’t know about, but that judge was a hoverer, and we had to put up sandbags outside of tab to keep her from literally standing behind us as we paired. Jeesh. We finally figured out that the problem was not that we weren’t giving her rounds—if you breathe down our necks at any point in this millennium, we will put you in every round we can—but that she was never entered by her school. There are worse offenses when it comes to handling a registration. Anyhow, the new rules went quite well, and will become the way of the future.
What I couldn’t do anything about is the number of rooms we had. I had to set limits, and you’d think that I had sold the students into hard labor in the diamond mines or something. Rule number one: don’t complain that it’s the end of the world if you’ve never volunteered to host yourself. We need solutions, not conspiracy theorists. Jeesh.
One school didn’t get in because they registered for the tournament and a minute later dropped their entry; God knows why, but all this happened a couple of weeks ago. They thought I had done something to eliminate them, which is why I always activate the change log in tabroom, so that when somebody says you did something, you can point out the date and time and name of the person who actually did do it, which more often than not is them, and not at the time and date they claimed. (The usual offense on this is that someone claims shouldn’t be charged fees because they met the deadline. But they didn’t. Tabroom.com doesn’t lie. Much.) Honestly, though, the sad thing with this school was that it was a new program that was obviously tripping over its own feet; if I had had the room, I would have let them in. Alas, we had a lack. What can you do?
Monday, January 30, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Yip Harburg, if you were wondering...
I do like the rhyme of “exploring the Amazon” and “with her pajamas on.” Is there any day that watching Groucho won’t improve?
The Beacon MHL is proving problematic. The simple fact is that there is a limited amount of space, which hardly ever happens at MHLs, and people are reacting as if infinity is guaranteed. I set limits (equal in every division) and sent out a message that people needed to act fast. But there’s still more debaters than there is debating rooms. Some people act as if this is a change of policy, others just sort of moan and groan, but I have to say, I’ve gotten more reaction to this than I’ve ever gotten to my requests for people to volunteer to host an event. Just sayin’.
In any case, I’ve been trying to be fair when giving out the waitlisted slots (made available by not hitting the limit in other divisions). One to you, one to you, one to you, which is the only way that occurred to me as acceptable, because it spreads the lack of wealth. With any luck, someone else will drop a couple of entries tonight and we can accommodate more people, but I’m not counting on it.
On top of that, tomorrow is the first day where registration = get it right by 9:00, have an adult tell me it’s right, we start the tournament. This should be entertaining, but I’m adamant about it. If you’re too dumb to have read the emails about this, you’ll pay the price. I’m not your mother (as my mother used to say, which I have to admit caused a lot of confusion around the house). Clean up your own messes. What will really piss me off is if anyone drops people in the a.m., in slots that others could have picked up.
We’ll see.
The Beacon MHL is proving problematic. The simple fact is that there is a limited amount of space, which hardly ever happens at MHLs, and people are reacting as if infinity is guaranteed. I set limits (equal in every division) and sent out a message that people needed to act fast. But there’s still more debaters than there is debating rooms. Some people act as if this is a change of policy, others just sort of moan and groan, but I have to say, I’ve gotten more reaction to this than I’ve ever gotten to my requests for people to volunteer to host an event. Just sayin’.
In any case, I’ve been trying to be fair when giving out the waitlisted slots (made available by not hitting the limit in other divisions). One to you, one to you, one to you, which is the only way that occurred to me as acceptable, because it spreads the lack of wealth. With any luck, someone else will drop a couple of entries tonight and we can accommodate more people, but I’m not counting on it.
On top of that, tomorrow is the first day where registration = get it right by 9:00, have an adult tell me it’s right, we start the tournament. This should be entertaining, but I’m adamant about it. If you’re too dumb to have read the emails about this, you’ll pay the price. I’m not your mother (as my mother used to say, which I have to admit caused a lot of confusion around the house). Clean up your own messes. What will really piss me off is if anyone drops people in the a.m., in slots that others could have picked up.
We’ll see.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
They are out to get us. Unless we are they, in which case, we are out to get you.
I long for the golden age when people would fall off their seats because of this: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenCulture/~3/tlde5RNB3Q0/michel_foucault_free_lectures.html I think that was two years ago.
Anyhow, I've enjoyed thinking about the number of topics per year immensely, because the more I think about it, the less I know. I'm trying to organize a little discussion on TVFT about it; stay tuned (if, in fact, you were tuned in the first place). The TOC has announced that it will stick to Jan-Feb this year, but I don't know if there's any deep meaning to be read in that. My sense is that, if the $ircuit had its way, there really would be only a couple of topics a year, but I hesitate to suggest that it must be bad because the $ircuit wants it. That's why I want to extend this dicussion. It's a good one. So far most of it's been in the comments here, in case you missed it.
Speaking of TVFT, we did one last night, Bietzless (although he had said he'd be showing up). We discussed NDCA, and it was rather heated. One of the issues we touched upon was openness, and I think that was the most interesting thing we talked about. No matter how you slice it (said moi), people always seem to think there's something going on behind the scenes in the smoke-filled room of the old boys network. They say it about TOC, CFL, NDCA, and NFL, and they say it about such lowly operations as the MHL and our local traveling tabroom. Some folks have been rather upfront in their idea that our region is run behind closed doors and as an exclusive club of some sort, and we're all pulling the levers to have debate go the way we want, but those same people don't have any actual evidence of it. I neither deny it nor admit to it. (You either trust me or you don't.) Since I tend to blab everything that's going on in my mind in this venue about two minutes after it occurs to me, I will cop to not being exactly behind the door in expressing my opinions and my plans and whatever. But it is the nature of things that an organization comes along, it gets established, and sooner or later new people come along and look at the organization and decide that it needs to be shaken up a bit because the leadership is out of touch or whatever. This is not news. In the world of LD, where there are more people than you can shake the proverbial stick at claiming that some thing they've just discovered is "progressive," and where there is no doubt that the activity changes regularly (or at least it has been in a state of flux ever since I've been doing it), the idea that people look at an organization and want to give it a kick in the pantaloons is pretty predictable. Of course, we always want it to be somebody else's pantaloons. However, with the exception of a few debate coaches who are a little over-competitive, and a few people who resemble the nether portions of your average pony and don't have the wit they were born with, I've always found that this is a group of people who are happy to express their opinions and fairly willing to change them. I don't think I'd still be in it, otherwise.
Anyhow, check out the TVFT podcast. It's a good one. (And I don't say that about all of them...)
Anyhow, I've enjoyed thinking about the number of topics per year immensely, because the more I think about it, the less I know. I'm trying to organize a little discussion on TVFT about it; stay tuned (if, in fact, you were tuned in the first place). The TOC has announced that it will stick to Jan-Feb this year, but I don't know if there's any deep meaning to be read in that. My sense is that, if the $ircuit had its way, there really would be only a couple of topics a year, but I hesitate to suggest that it must be bad because the $ircuit wants it. That's why I want to extend this dicussion. It's a good one. So far most of it's been in the comments here, in case you missed it.
Speaking of TVFT, we did one last night, Bietzless (although he had said he'd be showing up). We discussed NDCA, and it was rather heated. One of the issues we touched upon was openness, and I think that was the most interesting thing we talked about. No matter how you slice it (said moi), people always seem to think there's something going on behind the scenes in the smoke-filled room of the old boys network. They say it about TOC, CFL, NDCA, and NFL, and they say it about such lowly operations as the MHL and our local traveling tabroom. Some folks have been rather upfront in their idea that our region is run behind closed doors and as an exclusive club of some sort, and we're all pulling the levers to have debate go the way we want, but those same people don't have any actual evidence of it. I neither deny it nor admit to it. (You either trust me or you don't.) Since I tend to blab everything that's going on in my mind in this venue about two minutes after it occurs to me, I will cop to not being exactly behind the door in expressing my opinions and my plans and whatever. But it is the nature of things that an organization comes along, it gets established, and sooner or later new people come along and look at the organization and decide that it needs to be shaken up a bit because the leadership is out of touch or whatever. This is not news. In the world of LD, where there are more people than you can shake the proverbial stick at claiming that some thing they've just discovered is "progressive," and where there is no doubt that the activity changes regularly (or at least it has been in a state of flux ever since I've been doing it), the idea that people look at an organization and want to give it a kick in the pantaloons is pretty predictable. Of course, we always want it to be somebody else's pantaloons. However, with the exception of a few debate coaches who are a little over-competitive, and a few people who resemble the nether portions of your average pony and don't have the wit they were born with, I've always found that this is a group of people who are happy to express their opinions and fairly willing to change them. I don't think I'd still be in it, otherwise.
Anyhow, check out the TVFT podcast. It's a good one. (And I don't say that about all of them...)
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Topic Cycle Refuted: In Which Menick Caves?
The problem with people like us (and if you’re reading this for any other reason than to remind yourself why you like to be pissed off at me, then you are one of us) is that we like to argue about everything, and as often as not don’t have terrifically grounded opinions, so we’re willing not only to listen to the opposition but to change our minds. I love throwing a few shots across the bow to see who salutes. Sometimes I wish to take no prisoners and go down in flames if necessary. At other times, well, we’ll see where the chips may fall. This is one of those times.
The thing is, I’m in a position of some authority when it comes to choice of resolutions. I’m the person who pushed for the Modest Novice, which has now been institutionalized in our circuit, where we start off novices with the same topic every year from Sept through Nov. The argument for this was primarily to guarantee an inherently good starter topic; additionally, over time, since upperclassmen would themselves have been trained on this topic, we would create a built-in legacy system. The chief objection at the time was that this meant multiple topics at tournaments, and somehow this would be unmanageable, but after the years we’ve been doing it, that has never been a problem. Keep in mind that the flow of LD judges to cover occasional PF rounds has become pretty regular, and on the judging end, complaints that there’s too many topics to follow just don’t come up. That would be like watching the news and complaining that it wasn’t all about Newt Gingrich. This world view has Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum and even Ron Paul. That way, you can complain about all of them.
So when I wrote about the resolutions going every two months, I won’t say that it’s a do or die for me. Honestly, I think my logic (which was not really expressed in the article) was that we have a resolution every two months, so let’s just use it, unless somebody can explain why there’s a better way. Ryan Miller has decided that I’m talking through my hat, and posted his own ideas on the subject.
Here’s the link to Ryan’s article: http://buckinghaminquirer.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-praise-of-fewer-resolutions.html
So, let’s see…
---
In Praise of Fewer Resolutions
Because Jim Menick is wrong on the internet, I feel compelled to respond. Jim seems to think that we should go back to prepping 5-7 resolutions a year in LD, because prepping resolutions has value and it makes bad resolutions go by more quickly. I'll answer on the line by line and then offer a counterplan with net benefits.
Well, really it’s 4 resolutions plus Nats, which is a little less than 7 but could be construed as 5, if you go to NatNats. Anyhow, I'm always right and I never lie, so let's get over this Jim Menick is wrong idea. Jeesh!
1a: If practicing resolutional prep is a good thing, then it can better be achieved by a single tournament of parliamentary/legislative debate or extemp than a whole season of old-school LD or even modern PF, so the status quo solves.
Only true if you somehow think all debate is the same. It shouldn't be. If LD and extemp and PF and parli are interchangeable in form, then we're misconstruing LD and extemp and PF and parli.
1b: There's less of a discontinuity between prepping new arguments on a resolution and prepping a new resolution than Jim thinks. Killing one to save many/vigilantes/civil disobedience/response to domestic abuse all have deeply overlapping ground--often moreso than various cases on the same topic, which are written precisely to avoid common objections and thus need to trace out new approaches. This might even be a turn since there's a time tradeoff between adapting old arguments to new resolutions (with observations and link evidence) and understanding new philosophical approaches (e.g. virtue ethics).
Well, what's your rush? More to the point, I think the great ethical questions facing humanity may be better understood by applying them to a lot of different things. Much of a muchness in our thinking here, though, I think.
1c: Frequently changing resolutions advantage those who can perfect truly generic ground like kritiks or micropolitics. They don't experience the disadvantage of new resolutions, and those who actually prepare for the new resolutions don't have enough time to write good answers to the generics.
You might have a point here. But there's always been a substratum of debaters who will do anything they can not to debate a topic. This is probably non-unique.
1d: Frequently changing resolutions was an adaptation to a world where absent a summer camp in a university library, finding new angles on an existing resolution was very difficult (note how evidence poor LD cases were in the nineties). The internet solves this.
I'd need to see your evidence on this. My guess is that it was a direct response to the annual nature of the policy rez, and an attempt to keep LD different. And anyhow, if this were true, why did the policy people all have 5 tubs? Merely because the resolution didn't change? Wedro used to bring evidence on everything from Kant to Shinola, for that matter.
2a: Bad resolutions might go by more quickly, but if those resolutions are the chosen ones for States/TOC/NFL/CFL, they have just as much impact.
The impact of these 4 examples are radically different. A state topic is local and affects only some in that state. The impact of TOC is fairly toxic in a variety of ways, and is overwhelming in convincing people that they have to do certain things to debate at the "top" level. This presumes TOC style debate is the top. Whatever, but the influence of the event is overwhelming. The NFL influence is passive aggressive at best in that they create all the topics but not everyone believes in the organization as a standard setter. And the effect of the CFL topic is usually limited to Catholics, who on hearing the resolution for a given year, start to consider once again if they wouldn't be better off if they converted to Lutheranism. Anyhow, if all these groups just went with the NFL topics in the first place, the point is moot.
2b: Resolutional quality isn't endogenous to resolutional quantity. The wording committee only has so much time to work, and proposal quality would also go up if there were fewer proposals needed (see: policy). This turns the argument.
No. The quality of the resolutions is not in question. This is a separate issue altogether. That's why I don't want to conflate the particular Jan-Feb with this discussion. Whether NFL can do a better job of creating resolutions stands whether there's one of a hundred.
2c: More resolutions advantage large squads and those with large budgets. Small squads with poor connections to the alumni coaching network need to attend a circuit tournament before they even know what is going to be run on a resolution, and with the resolution changing every two months that means they need to attend one every month. For resolutions that are basically only run once, such squads get completely blindsided by those who can do a lot of brainstorming and scrimmages.
That seems true to me, but at the same time, what doesn't advantage the large squad over the small? Your point above about generic kritik responses sound to me like the small squad circuit debater's response to this. Anyhow, I'm not advocating running anything once; that was mere reminiscing. Two months is pretty long in debate years.
Counterplan: LD should have two resolutions a year, one released August fifteenth and the other December first. Resolutions should be drawn from a very long list which has five added to it every June by the topic committee. Advantages:
1. The list can grow very long (a hundred?), thus making current prep on the entire list infeasible for even very large teams, and lowering the edge provided by going to a summer camp which luckily picked an important topic (and the resentment from paying a lot of money to a camp which failed to do so). This also means that resolutions will tend to spend a long time on the list before being picked, allowing campaigns against those with poor or offensive wording.
I like the idea of giving people an opportunity to think about things over a long term. We essentially agreed to that on TVFT. We move too fast, and over the summer, no less. Not good.
1b. This basically sets LD up as a logistically constrained version of policy, which has all the advantages of policy debate theory, but without the semi-mandatory camp and evidence burden and requirement for a partner. As I've argued previously, affirmative parametrics will solve for negative win skew. This is analogous to off-season-practice rules for sports, but without the enforcement hassles.
Could be...
2. Gets rid of the most important driver for modest novice (that novices can't be expected to debate a new resolution on their second or third tournament) without triggering the harms of modest novice (small squads and those on the edge of the service area are burdened with prepping yet another resolution).
True enough, but actually the biggest MN driver was avoiding giving novices a random (and crappy) resolution that was not beneficial for novitiate training.
3. Debate quality improves for the Glenbrooks, Blake, Apple Valley, and Princeton just as it has for TOC vs NFL and CFL. The quality of debate has gone up tremendously since the nineties, except for those tournaments which insist on vanity resolutions and random judging. This is not random.
I see no proof of this in-case. Pure assertion. (I love saying that.)
All of that said, I am nonetheless rather intrigued by the idea of two topics, especially given the long brooding process. One of my chief objections to certain topics over the years has been that one or two words in the rez make it unacceptable or hard to debate, and time would heal that wound. In the modern world, we essentially only have 3 topics a year anyhow—Sept-Oct, Nov-Dec, and Jan-TOC. And there is privileging via camps that could be addressed. Of course, how do you do anything about this? Well, perhaps some November tournaments simply run Sept-Oct and do it de facto if not de NFLo. I don't know.
We'll probably end up discussing this on TVFT.
The thing is, I’m in a position of some authority when it comes to choice of resolutions. I’m the person who pushed for the Modest Novice, which has now been institutionalized in our circuit, where we start off novices with the same topic every year from Sept through Nov. The argument for this was primarily to guarantee an inherently good starter topic; additionally, over time, since upperclassmen would themselves have been trained on this topic, we would create a built-in legacy system. The chief objection at the time was that this meant multiple topics at tournaments, and somehow this would be unmanageable, but after the years we’ve been doing it, that has never been a problem. Keep in mind that the flow of LD judges to cover occasional PF rounds has become pretty regular, and on the judging end, complaints that there’s too many topics to follow just don’t come up. That would be like watching the news and complaining that it wasn’t all about Newt Gingrich. This world view has Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum and even Ron Paul. That way, you can complain about all of them.
So when I wrote about the resolutions going every two months, I won’t say that it’s a do or die for me. Honestly, I think my logic (which was not really expressed in the article) was that we have a resolution every two months, so let’s just use it, unless somebody can explain why there’s a better way. Ryan Miller has decided that I’m talking through my hat, and posted his own ideas on the subject.
Here’s the link to Ryan’s article: http://buckinghaminquirer.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-praise-of-fewer-resolutions.html
So, let’s see…
---
In Praise of Fewer Resolutions
Because Jim Menick is wrong on the internet, I feel compelled to respond. Jim seems to think that we should go back to prepping 5-7 resolutions a year in LD, because prepping resolutions has value and it makes bad resolutions go by more quickly. I'll answer on the line by line and then offer a counterplan with net benefits.
Well, really it’s 4 resolutions plus Nats, which is a little less than 7 but could be construed as 5, if you go to NatNats. Anyhow, I'm always right and I never lie, so let's get over this Jim Menick is wrong idea. Jeesh!
1a: If practicing resolutional prep is a good thing, then it can better be achieved by a single tournament of parliamentary/legislative debate or extemp than a whole season of old-school LD or even modern PF, so the status quo solves.
Only true if you somehow think all debate is the same. It shouldn't be. If LD and extemp and PF and parli are interchangeable in form, then we're misconstruing LD and extemp and PF and parli.
1b: There's less of a discontinuity between prepping new arguments on a resolution and prepping a new resolution than Jim thinks. Killing one to save many/vigilantes/civil disobedience/response to domestic abuse all have deeply overlapping ground--often moreso than various cases on the same topic, which are written precisely to avoid common objections and thus need to trace out new approaches. This might even be a turn since there's a time tradeoff between adapting old arguments to new resolutions (with observations and link evidence) and understanding new philosophical approaches (e.g. virtue ethics).
Well, what's your rush? More to the point, I think the great ethical questions facing humanity may be better understood by applying them to a lot of different things. Much of a muchness in our thinking here, though, I think.
1c: Frequently changing resolutions advantage those who can perfect truly generic ground like kritiks or micropolitics. They don't experience the disadvantage of new resolutions, and those who actually prepare for the new resolutions don't have enough time to write good answers to the generics.
You might have a point here. But there's always been a substratum of debaters who will do anything they can not to debate a topic. This is probably non-unique.
1d: Frequently changing resolutions was an adaptation to a world where absent a summer camp in a university library, finding new angles on an existing resolution was very difficult (note how evidence poor LD cases were in the nineties). The internet solves this.
I'd need to see your evidence on this. My guess is that it was a direct response to the annual nature of the policy rez, and an attempt to keep LD different. And anyhow, if this were true, why did the policy people all have 5 tubs? Merely because the resolution didn't change? Wedro used to bring evidence on everything from Kant to Shinola, for that matter.
2a: Bad resolutions might go by more quickly, but if those resolutions are the chosen ones for States/TOC/NFL/CFL, they have just as much impact.
The impact of these 4 examples are radically different. A state topic is local and affects only some in that state. The impact of TOC is fairly toxic in a variety of ways, and is overwhelming in convincing people that they have to do certain things to debate at the "top" level. This presumes TOC style debate is the top. Whatever, but the influence of the event is overwhelming. The NFL influence is passive aggressive at best in that they create all the topics but not everyone believes in the organization as a standard setter. And the effect of the CFL topic is usually limited to Catholics, who on hearing the resolution for a given year, start to consider once again if they wouldn't be better off if they converted to Lutheranism. Anyhow, if all these groups just went with the NFL topics in the first place, the point is moot.
2b: Resolutional quality isn't endogenous to resolutional quantity. The wording committee only has so much time to work, and proposal quality would also go up if there were fewer proposals needed (see: policy). This turns the argument.
No. The quality of the resolutions is not in question. This is a separate issue altogether. That's why I don't want to conflate the particular Jan-Feb with this discussion. Whether NFL can do a better job of creating resolutions stands whether there's one of a hundred.
2c: More resolutions advantage large squads and those with large budgets. Small squads with poor connections to the alumni coaching network need to attend a circuit tournament before they even know what is going to be run on a resolution, and with the resolution changing every two months that means they need to attend one every month. For resolutions that are basically only run once, such squads get completely blindsided by those who can do a lot of brainstorming and scrimmages.
That seems true to me, but at the same time, what doesn't advantage the large squad over the small? Your point above about generic kritik responses sound to me like the small squad circuit debater's response to this. Anyhow, I'm not advocating running anything once; that was mere reminiscing. Two months is pretty long in debate years.
Counterplan: LD should have two resolutions a year, one released August fifteenth and the other December first. Resolutions should be drawn from a very long list which has five added to it every June by the topic committee. Advantages:
1. The list can grow very long (a hundred?), thus making current prep on the entire list infeasible for even very large teams, and lowering the edge provided by going to a summer camp which luckily picked an important topic (and the resentment from paying a lot of money to a camp which failed to do so). This also means that resolutions will tend to spend a long time on the list before being picked, allowing campaigns against those with poor or offensive wording.
I like the idea of giving people an opportunity to think about things over a long term. We essentially agreed to that on TVFT. We move too fast, and over the summer, no less. Not good.
1b. This basically sets LD up as a logistically constrained version of policy, which has all the advantages of policy debate theory, but without the semi-mandatory camp and evidence burden and requirement for a partner. As I've argued previously, affirmative parametrics will solve for negative win skew. This is analogous to off-season-practice rules for sports, but without the enforcement hassles.
Could be...
2. Gets rid of the most important driver for modest novice (that novices can't be expected to debate a new resolution on their second or third tournament) without triggering the harms of modest novice (small squads and those on the edge of the service area are burdened with prepping yet another resolution).
True enough, but actually the biggest MN driver was avoiding giving novices a random (and crappy) resolution that was not beneficial for novitiate training.
3. Debate quality improves for the Glenbrooks, Blake, Apple Valley, and Princeton just as it has for TOC vs NFL and CFL. The quality of debate has gone up tremendously since the nineties, except for those tournaments which insist on vanity resolutions and random judging. This is not random.
I see no proof of this in-case. Pure assertion. (I love saying that.)
All of that said, I am nonetheless rather intrigued by the idea of two topics, especially given the long brooding process. One of my chief objections to certain topics over the years has been that one or two words in the rez make it unacceptable or hard to debate, and time would heal that wound. In the modern world, we essentially only have 3 topics a year anyhow—Sept-Oct, Nov-Dec, and Jan-TOC. And there is privileging via camps that could be addressed. Of course, how do you do anything about this? Well, perhaps some November tournaments simply run Sept-Oct and do it de facto if not de NFLo. I don't know.
We'll probably end up discussing this on TVFT.
Friday, January 20, 2012
The Topic Cycle
I’ve made my feelings known about Jan-Feb on TVFT, and to some extent here. I’m agin’ it. I measure the possibility of harm against the magnitude of the harm, and I find the math unacceptable. My job is to educate students about various ethical subjects against the backdrop of competitive debate; I am ill equipped to engage myself in handling the problems they may be encountering in their personal lives, and I certainly do not want, inadvertently or otherwise, to make any of those problems worse.
I’m less certain about how to handle it, though. We had this topic in the past and it flew right over my head, and the heads of most other forensicians. What has changed? Probably nothing, except that this time we saw the light (or dark) and that time we didn’t. So it goes. Because it got by us the first time doesn’t warrant using it the second time. As we agreed on TVFT, there is no blame for anyone here, from the committee to the community. (We distinguished this one from the hideous ill-informed Muslim center PF topic, which as a political wedge issue was beneath contempt as a subject for intelligent discussion, and worse, a direct harm to the Muslims in our community, who would have no choice but to defend a position claiming that their right of free speech ought to be abridged for no other reason than their religion. That one was dead on arrival. And the NFL should have known better.)
The solutions to handling the resolution have ranged, but one thing that has come up is the idea of not continuing to debate it past the theoretical normal end of its cycle. In other words, at the very least, let it go away on its expiration date. That is a proposal before the NDCA now for their national tournament, and one that I will put before the NYSDCA for our state event. But that raises another question, and while I have been separating that other question from the content discussion of this particular topic, I still think it’s worth thinking about. To wit, why the hell do we stop changing topics after the turn of the new year? I mean, I know the answer, but it’s a dumb one, and we should rethink this question, regardless of the content of any given topic, at the macro level.
Back when I started in this activity (during the Buchanan administration, if I remember correctly), we had a Sept-Oct topic, a Big Bronx topic, a Nov-Dec, a Jan-Feb, a Mar-Apr, a NY State Finals, a CFL Finals and an NFL Finals topic. I would regularly be prepping 6 topics, in other words, and occasionally 7 or 8. If there was something wrong with a topic, you waited a minute and there was the next one, and you moved along. All of which raises the question, was it a good thing to have this many topics? I think yes. Or at least I think it was mostly yes. The more parochial a topic would get, i.e., the smaller the group selecting it, the less likely it was really all that good, but by that standard the NFL topics, at least, were usually quite acceptable, and we had all voted on them straight up, and there you were.
If you followed the NFL exclusively, you debated probably 4 different topics over the space of a year, about two months per. You got as far as you could go in two months, and then you moved along. In policy, on the other hand, one topic lasts all year. One can qualitatively compare the nature of the two beasts by comparing the quantitative depth achievable over the different life spans. A policy topic has to be deep, and it has to have a year’s worth of analysis in it. Every day new research will bring up new stuff, and over the space of a year cases will come and go as the world changes and cases hit the public awareness and new blocks are developed, et cetera, et cetera. The same holds true in LD, but only for a couple of months. Then it starts all over again. (And keep in mind that some of the logic informing PF’s one-month span is precisely to restart the process every few weeks, to prevent the deep sea research diving and twisty-turny-theory arcs of a longer span.)
I like the change of topics. I like that students will get a new subject to dig into every couple of months. I can see the value of one topic dug into all year, but if that’s what you want to do, take up policy. The problem is, for reasons I do not know, but which I expect were predicated on the policy bias of the TOC folks at the time—which meant that here was a group of people raised on a year of a given topic who looked at LD and said, wouldn’t it be great if we just used the Jan-Feb topic, to get all the benefits of depth we know will ensue?—TOC instituted using Jan-Feb in May. Which is fine and dandy, but now, everybody does it. You can’t run a tournament in March or April and use anything but the Jan-Feb topic (aside, of course, from District tournaments and the odd CFL qualifier).
Does this make sense? Well, if we’re looking at every tournament in the universe after Jan 1 as prep for the TOC, it would, except I have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of people who do LD after Jan 1 of a given year aren’t going to TOC. Another issue is that people believe that students don’t want to write cases on a new topic after March 1, so we say okay, and let them keep going with what they have, even in novice divisions. Of course novices don’t need experience writing cases on new resolutions; however could anyone have ever believed that? (This paragraph, by the way, is dripping with sarcasm. If you didn't realize that, you need to readjust your sarcasometer.)
What I think we need to do is look at the question on its own merits. Should we switch topics ever two months? If it makes sense in November and January, why doesn’t it make sense in March? Because TOC does it? If, as my mother used to say, TOC jumps off a bridge, are you going to do it too? Because it’s work? Are we saying that our poor little students shouldn’t have to write cases? That sort of presumes that all those TOC people write a case on Jan 1 and then stop, and, uh, that’s not true.
Changing topics regularly is good educationally. Not changing topics offers no educational benefit over changing topics (aside, perhaps, of allowing students to concentrate on class work rather than debate). We should seriously reevaluate what we’re doing with late season tournaments.
I’m less certain about how to handle it, though. We had this topic in the past and it flew right over my head, and the heads of most other forensicians. What has changed? Probably nothing, except that this time we saw the light (or dark) and that time we didn’t. So it goes. Because it got by us the first time doesn’t warrant using it the second time. As we agreed on TVFT, there is no blame for anyone here, from the committee to the community. (We distinguished this one from the hideous ill-informed Muslim center PF topic, which as a political wedge issue was beneath contempt as a subject for intelligent discussion, and worse, a direct harm to the Muslims in our community, who would have no choice but to defend a position claiming that their right of free speech ought to be abridged for no other reason than their religion. That one was dead on arrival. And the NFL should have known better.)
The solutions to handling the resolution have ranged, but one thing that has come up is the idea of not continuing to debate it past the theoretical normal end of its cycle. In other words, at the very least, let it go away on its expiration date. That is a proposal before the NDCA now for their national tournament, and one that I will put before the NYSDCA for our state event. But that raises another question, and while I have been separating that other question from the content discussion of this particular topic, I still think it’s worth thinking about. To wit, why the hell do we stop changing topics after the turn of the new year? I mean, I know the answer, but it’s a dumb one, and we should rethink this question, regardless of the content of any given topic, at the macro level.
Back when I started in this activity (during the Buchanan administration, if I remember correctly), we had a Sept-Oct topic, a Big Bronx topic, a Nov-Dec, a Jan-Feb, a Mar-Apr, a NY State Finals, a CFL Finals and an NFL Finals topic. I would regularly be prepping 6 topics, in other words, and occasionally 7 or 8. If there was something wrong with a topic, you waited a minute and there was the next one, and you moved along. All of which raises the question, was it a good thing to have this many topics? I think yes. Or at least I think it was mostly yes. The more parochial a topic would get, i.e., the smaller the group selecting it, the less likely it was really all that good, but by that standard the NFL topics, at least, were usually quite acceptable, and we had all voted on them straight up, and there you were.
If you followed the NFL exclusively, you debated probably 4 different topics over the space of a year, about two months per. You got as far as you could go in two months, and then you moved along. In policy, on the other hand, one topic lasts all year. One can qualitatively compare the nature of the two beasts by comparing the quantitative depth achievable over the different life spans. A policy topic has to be deep, and it has to have a year’s worth of analysis in it. Every day new research will bring up new stuff, and over the space of a year cases will come and go as the world changes and cases hit the public awareness and new blocks are developed, et cetera, et cetera. The same holds true in LD, but only for a couple of months. Then it starts all over again. (And keep in mind that some of the logic informing PF’s one-month span is precisely to restart the process every few weeks, to prevent the deep sea research diving and twisty-turny-theory arcs of a longer span.)
I like the change of topics. I like that students will get a new subject to dig into every couple of months. I can see the value of one topic dug into all year, but if that’s what you want to do, take up policy. The problem is, for reasons I do not know, but which I expect were predicated on the policy bias of the TOC folks at the time—which meant that here was a group of people raised on a year of a given topic who looked at LD and said, wouldn’t it be great if we just used the Jan-Feb topic, to get all the benefits of depth we know will ensue?—TOC instituted using Jan-Feb in May. Which is fine and dandy, but now, everybody does it. You can’t run a tournament in March or April and use anything but the Jan-Feb topic (aside, of course, from District tournaments and the odd CFL qualifier).
Does this make sense? Well, if we’re looking at every tournament in the universe after Jan 1 as prep for the TOC, it would, except I have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of people who do LD after Jan 1 of a given year aren’t going to TOC. Another issue is that people believe that students don’t want to write cases on a new topic after March 1, so we say okay, and let them keep going with what they have, even in novice divisions. Of course novices don’t need experience writing cases on new resolutions; however could anyone have ever believed that? (This paragraph, by the way, is dripping with sarcasm. If you didn't realize that, you need to readjust your sarcasometer.)
What I think we need to do is look at the question on its own merits. Should we switch topics ever two months? If it makes sense in November and January, why doesn’t it make sense in March? Because TOC does it? If, as my mother used to say, TOC jumps off a bridge, are you going to do it too? Because it’s work? Are we saying that our poor little students shouldn’t have to write cases? That sort of presumes that all those TOC people write a case on Jan 1 and then stop, and, uh, that’s not true.
Changing topics regularly is good educationally. Not changing topics offers no educational benefit over changing topics (aside, perhaps, of allowing students to concentrate on class work rather than debate). We should seriously reevaluate what we’re doing with late season tournaments.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
A Note to the Connoisseurs of Exquisite Differentiation
Ah, you aesthete, you. Your palate is so refined, I can only envy you. Whereas the average schlub on the street is lucky to know the difference between a link turn and a link sausage, you on the other hand can differentiate between a 26.2 and a 26.3 on the speaker scale using tenths of a point.
Do you extend your pinky when you are writing your ballot?
Okay, I may be wrong about this, but members of the VCA, knowing my track record of (admitted) wrongness, realize that I’m only saying that in case the Mayans were right and 2012 is the end of the world and I’m going to want to sing “Kumbaya” with people on the other side of the question as the earth falls into the sea and I won’t want this hanging over our heads in those last few moments. The thing is, I’ve seen too many studies that absolutely disprove that people could possibly rank speeches on a scale of 1 to 100. Or 1 to 50. 1 to 20 is out of reach. 1 to 10? Good luck.
Here’s the deal. The average person, given choices, is able to discriminate about 7 of them. There’s variation of course, but not much. If you give people too many choices, they balk. In marketing, either they don’t buy your product, or they default to the simplest option. Any wonder why vanilla is the top selling flavor at Baskin Robbins? Even been in a restaurant and someone looks at the menu and says, “There’s too many choices”? Ever felt that way yourself? Marketers use choice to set up a paradigm that their product offerings are diverse and full and rich, not because they expect to sell all those products. It’s the cost of doing business. But you don’t want to be overwhelming, so you provide defaults. Whole Foods has 17 kinds of tomatillos; most people just buy the basic cherry tomatoes.
Even if you don’t buy that (a phrase that, when uttered in debate, makes me want to throw a desk at the speaker), in LD we have a solid, time-honored history of inability to create a decent speaker point scale. Because we have no objective criteria on which to make the measurement, it becomes entirely subjective. This is why I like the breakdown of win the tournament / definitely break / might break / shouldn’t break / needs work. Those are fairly definitive gestalts of a performance that can be roughly agreed to. When I’m talking to PF parent judges before a tournament, I tell them to use a grading scale like they learned in school, A, B, C, D, F. Add maybe a tiny gradation, and there’s your 7. People can handle that.
But a hundred point scale? It’s hard enough to separate a 29 from a 28, but you want to tell me you can differentiate a 28.1, a 28.2, a 28.3, a 28.4, a 28.5, a 28.6, a 28.7, a 28.8 and a 29.9 as well? Not to mention 29.1, 27.9, 29.2, 27.8, etc., etc., etc.
On top of this, the norm is not to assign the same amount of points. No ties. But there can still be low point wins? My mind doesn’t boggle, it literally falls out of its resting spot and onto the floor, where the cat chases it around until it gets lost under the closet door.
Get real, people. You may like to stick out your pinky and explain in excruciating detail why you can tell the difference between a male and a female fly at 200 yards in the dark while blindfolded (you, not the fly), but I know better. Tenths of a point? You can barely handle showing up within half an hour of the posted round start time, and as often as not you have so little idea what happened in the round that you have to read the cases. And that, indeed, is a 28.8?
Jeesh.
Do you extend your pinky when you are writing your ballot?
Okay, I may be wrong about this, but members of the VCA, knowing my track record of (admitted) wrongness, realize that I’m only saying that in case the Mayans were right and 2012 is the end of the world and I’m going to want to sing “Kumbaya” with people on the other side of the question as the earth falls into the sea and I won’t want this hanging over our heads in those last few moments. The thing is, I’ve seen too many studies that absolutely disprove that people could possibly rank speeches on a scale of 1 to 100. Or 1 to 50. 1 to 20 is out of reach. 1 to 10? Good luck.
Here’s the deal. The average person, given choices, is able to discriminate about 7 of them. There’s variation of course, but not much. If you give people too many choices, they balk. In marketing, either they don’t buy your product, or they default to the simplest option. Any wonder why vanilla is the top selling flavor at Baskin Robbins? Even been in a restaurant and someone looks at the menu and says, “There’s too many choices”? Ever felt that way yourself? Marketers use choice to set up a paradigm that their product offerings are diverse and full and rich, not because they expect to sell all those products. It’s the cost of doing business. But you don’t want to be overwhelming, so you provide defaults. Whole Foods has 17 kinds of tomatillos; most people just buy the basic cherry tomatoes.
Even if you don’t buy that (a phrase that, when uttered in debate, makes me want to throw a desk at the speaker), in LD we have a solid, time-honored history of inability to create a decent speaker point scale. Because we have no objective criteria on which to make the measurement, it becomes entirely subjective. This is why I like the breakdown of win the tournament / definitely break / might break / shouldn’t break / needs work. Those are fairly definitive gestalts of a performance that can be roughly agreed to. When I’m talking to PF parent judges before a tournament, I tell them to use a grading scale like they learned in school, A, B, C, D, F. Add maybe a tiny gradation, and there’s your 7. People can handle that.
But a hundred point scale? It’s hard enough to separate a 29 from a 28, but you want to tell me you can differentiate a 28.1, a 28.2, a 28.3, a 28.4, a 28.5, a 28.6, a 28.7, a 28.8 and a 29.9 as well? Not to mention 29.1, 27.9, 29.2, 27.8, etc., etc., etc.
On top of this, the norm is not to assign the same amount of points. No ties. But there can still be low point wins? My mind doesn’t boggle, it literally falls out of its resting spot and onto the floor, where the cat chases it around until it gets lost under the closet door.
Get real, people. You may like to stick out your pinky and explain in excruciating detail why you can tell the difference between a male and a female fly at 200 yards in the dark while blindfolded (you, not the fly), but I know better. Tenths of a point? You can barely handle showing up within half an hour of the posted round start time, and as often as not you have so little idea what happened in the round that you have to read the cases. And that, indeed, is a 28.8?
Jeesh.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Lexwegian Adventure
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, good old TRPC throws you screwball.
This last weekend was Bigle X. Normally I do novice LD, but to tell you the truth, that’s sort of a snoozer, and I managed to get myself seconded to PF instead. I was working with Sarah Donnelly, who is not terribly familiar with TRPC. In the beginning she read and I input, and then we switched things around so that she’d get a feel for things, especially setting up break rounds.
Life was going swimmingly until round 5. We entered the results, printed up the check sheet and paired round 6, and prepared to goof off during the subsequent double flight. But then our checker handed us a mistake. And then another. And another. For all practical purposes, while the winners and losers were all correct, and the points for each side we totaled correctly, each individual’s points had been switched. For every single team. (Fortunately, since the totals and wins were accurate, the 6th round pairing was unaffected.)
Well, sez I, I guess that can happen, although I’ve never seen it before. We had printed the “other” PF ballots, not the Harvard ballot, so the names were often switched, so maybe that was it. (And I'm pretty sure I was the culprit here, not my poor apprentice.) We entered them again, carefully, correctly. We printed up another check sheet. It was no different from the first sheet. Then we just started entering and checking ourselves. If you entered results, no matter what, they didn't take.
Could the choice of ballots have affected the results? I can’t imagine how, because ballots are an output function that shouldn’t have bearing on input, but maybe that’s it. At this point CP joined the fray and we looked for the data file with round 5 results, and lo and behold, it didn’t exist. Oh joy. Oh rapture. The good news was, we could go into the contestant cards—each and every one of them—and make the corrections, and this time, they took.
I would suggest that Sarah got her baptism by fire. So did I, for that matter. Needless to say, we doublechecked the round 6 ballots thoroughly, but these were fine, and everything went back to normal in the elims.
As I say, every now and then TRPC has a surprise for you, even in a version you’ve used many times. Tim Averill, who was chivvying up the parents in the judges' lounge for us, likes to update to new versions like an Apple fanboy chasing iPhones, but I prefer to stick with one that works unless there’s some wonderful feature we’re missing and have to have. I don’t believe that tenths of a point is that feature, but that’s a subject for another day.
In other Lexington news, there were no exciting events worth reporting. One judge fell asleep in a round and was reported to us, but we knew this judge well and explained to the teams involved that they were no more likely to get a good decision if the judge were awake, and that they shouldn’t worry about it. Otherwise, everyone showed up, we made nice panels in elims especially in the bid round, and there wasn’t a blizzard, an ice storm or a plague of locusts. What more could you ask of a tournament?
This last weekend was Bigle X. Normally I do novice LD, but to tell you the truth, that’s sort of a snoozer, and I managed to get myself seconded to PF instead. I was working with Sarah Donnelly, who is not terribly familiar with TRPC. In the beginning she read and I input, and then we switched things around so that she’d get a feel for things, especially setting up break rounds.
Life was going swimmingly until round 5. We entered the results, printed up the check sheet and paired round 6, and prepared to goof off during the subsequent double flight. But then our checker handed us a mistake. And then another. And another. For all practical purposes, while the winners and losers were all correct, and the points for each side we totaled correctly, each individual’s points had been switched. For every single team. (Fortunately, since the totals and wins were accurate, the 6th round pairing was unaffected.)
Well, sez I, I guess that can happen, although I’ve never seen it before. We had printed the “other” PF ballots, not the Harvard ballot, so the names were often switched, so maybe that was it. (And I'm pretty sure I was the culprit here, not my poor apprentice.) We entered them again, carefully, correctly. We printed up another check sheet. It was no different from the first sheet. Then we just started entering and checking ourselves. If you entered results, no matter what, they didn't take.
Could the choice of ballots have affected the results? I can’t imagine how, because ballots are an output function that shouldn’t have bearing on input, but maybe that’s it. At this point CP joined the fray and we looked for the data file with round 5 results, and lo and behold, it didn’t exist. Oh joy. Oh rapture. The good news was, we could go into the contestant cards—each and every one of them—and make the corrections, and this time, they took.
I would suggest that Sarah got her baptism by fire. So did I, for that matter. Needless to say, we doublechecked the round 6 ballots thoroughly, but these were fine, and everything went back to normal in the elims.
As I say, every now and then TRPC has a surprise for you, even in a version you’ve used many times. Tim Averill, who was chivvying up the parents in the judges' lounge for us, likes to update to new versions like an Apple fanboy chasing iPhones, but I prefer to stick with one that works unless there’s some wonderful feature we’re missing and have to have. I don’t believe that tenths of a point is that feature, but that’s a subject for another day.
In other Lexington news, there were no exciting events worth reporting. One judge fell asleep in a round and was reported to us, but we knew this judge well and explained to the teams involved that they were no more likely to get a good decision if the judge were awake, and that they shouldn’t worry about it. Otherwise, everyone showed up, we made nice panels in elims especially in the bid round, and there wasn’t a blizzard, an ice storm or a plague of locusts. What more could you ask of a tournament?
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
By the way, translation: "I'll be right back" = He wanders off for at least 10 minutes
I think I’m turning into an ogre. It used to be that when people annoyed me with idiotic nonsense, I simply ignored them. Now my instinctive reaction is to engage them. This serves no purpose. People whose ignorance expresses itself in hostility are hardly going to become enlightened and gentle upon encountering the brilliance and clarity of my ripostes. In fact, it just encourages them to develop their ignorance in that forge of their hostility, while I just get progressively more hostile myself. Not good. The solution is for me to remember to ignore things that need to be ignored, and let it go at that. I can’t fix them, so why bother? Sometimes it’s hard, though.
Yes, I am working behind the scenes on a tournament, the Gem of Harlem, and people are driving me crazy. I remain amazed at how self-insufficient people can be, and how coaches who have been attending tournaments since the Garfield administration (the President, not the cat) can be so obtuse on the subject of tournament attendance. Oh well. This is the last one of the year like that. College tournaments do tend to attract way too many people, a lot of whom seem to confuse it with a cruise on the Norwegian Princess Line. No, we don’t serve herring in bed. We get them out of bed and then we serve them.
Jeesh.
Last weekend was a small local event that went swimmingly enough. The most interesting thing was putting together a 12-team PF event. After 3 rounds 2 teams from the same school were undefeated, so we byed them in round 4, the first time in a while we’ve byed a team at the top, much less two. But they had already beaten everyone in the 2-1s, or were also from the same school. A double pull-up hardly seemed fair, as it was more than likely to result in a predictable defeat. Fairer rounds were to be found elsewhere, and that’s what we did. But then came the interesting part for tab geeks. After round 4 we had the 2 undefeateds, then 2 3-1s who had already met. One of the 3-1s could have debated an undefeated, but the same school situation literally guaranteed the other 3-1 an elim slot because there was nothing for it but double pull-ups. This didn't seem right. Plus we had a bunch of 2-2s. At first blush we wanted to shut it out and declare it over and go straight to elims because it was so neat, and since every possible fifth round contest was a pull-up. At this point we had to push O’C aside as he had a horse in the race, and Kaz and I sorted it out. With a little snip here and a little tuck there, we managed to get everyone to debate a new singly pulled-up opponent, with the exception of the top 2, who remained byed, and the bottom two, who had debated before and were hence locked on the other side (which makes some sense in the flip-crazy world of PF). I mean, people did come to debate, not to sit around (except for the poor saps who were too good for the room). Interestingly enough, in the fifth round, a 2-2 did rise up to supplant one of the 3-1s, and as a result we had two natural semi rounds that worked beautifully. This is the kind of thing that makes tabbing fun. Most of the time you just click the button and it happens. Here, we shuffled the cards a dozen times. And the result was most pleasing (except, presumably, for the 3-1 team that was pushed out of the running, but that’s hardly a new story in any contest).
On this week to Bigle X with a marvelously full contingent: 1 PF team and 1 novice LDer. We’re going to need a bigger bus!
Yes, I am working behind the scenes on a tournament, the Gem of Harlem, and people are driving me crazy. I remain amazed at how self-insufficient people can be, and how coaches who have been attending tournaments since the Garfield administration (the President, not the cat) can be so obtuse on the subject of tournament attendance. Oh well. This is the last one of the year like that. College tournaments do tend to attract way too many people, a lot of whom seem to confuse it with a cruise on the Norwegian Princess Line. No, we don’t serve herring in bed. We get them out of bed and then we serve them.
Jeesh.
Last weekend was a small local event that went swimmingly enough. The most interesting thing was putting together a 12-team PF event. After 3 rounds 2 teams from the same school were undefeated, so we byed them in round 4, the first time in a while we’ve byed a team at the top, much less two. But they had already beaten everyone in the 2-1s, or were also from the same school. A double pull-up hardly seemed fair, as it was more than likely to result in a predictable defeat. Fairer rounds were to be found elsewhere, and that’s what we did. But then came the interesting part for tab geeks. After round 4 we had the 2 undefeateds, then 2 3-1s who had already met. One of the 3-1s could have debated an undefeated, but the same school situation literally guaranteed the other 3-1 an elim slot because there was nothing for it but double pull-ups. This didn't seem right. Plus we had a bunch of 2-2s. At first blush we wanted to shut it out and declare it over and go straight to elims because it was so neat, and since every possible fifth round contest was a pull-up. At this point we had to push O’C aside as he had a horse in the race, and Kaz and I sorted it out. With a little snip here and a little tuck there, we managed to get everyone to debate a new singly pulled-up opponent, with the exception of the top 2, who remained byed, and the bottom two, who had debated before and were hence locked on the other side (which makes some sense in the flip-crazy world of PF). I mean, people did come to debate, not to sit around (except for the poor saps who were too good for the room). Interestingly enough, in the fifth round, a 2-2 did rise up to supplant one of the 3-1s, and as a result we had two natural semi rounds that worked beautifully. This is the kind of thing that makes tabbing fun. Most of the time you just click the button and it happens. Here, we shuffled the cards a dozen times. And the result was most pleasing (except, presumably, for the 3-1 team that was pushed out of the running, but that’s hardly a new story in any contest).
On this week to Bigle X with a marvelously full contingent: 1 PF team and 1 novice LDer. We’re going to need a bigger bus!
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Your chance to be a Guest Star!!!
We recorded a TVFT last night (sans Palmer), and it's been a long time. One thing we agreed on (we do occasionally agree on things) is that we'd like more people to join us in dialogue about...whatever. In this episode we talk about the warring civilizations of LD, the conservative folks versus the circuit folks. The problem is that rather than work together to create an LD environment that works for all, we tend to entrench at the coachean level, which doesn't really help anybody. A solid discussion leads to a dialect movement towards truth: we can create a synthesis based, first, on commonality. But only if we talk.
If you're interested in being on the podcast, let one of us know via email. All you need is a Skype account and the little microphone headset that came with your smartphone (unless you want to get all Larry King about it and rent a radio studio for the occasion). It's so simple even a child can do it. For that matter, it's so simple even me and Bietz and Cruz and Palmer can do it!
Go for it.
If you're interested in being on the podcast, let one of us know via email. All you need is a Skype account and the little microphone headset that came with your smartphone (unless you want to get all Larry King about it and rent a radio studio for the occasion). It's so simple even a child can do it. For that matter, it's so simple even me and Bietz and Cruz and Palmer can do it!
Go for it.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Bad juju
I just got off the phone with the Crowne Plaza people. In addition to having extra Es lying around, which they dispose of willy-nilly, we discovered that I was totally unknown to them. This despite the fact that I had reserved 6 rooms in December for UPenn.
Well, stranger things have happened. I recalled distinctly that the woman I made the reservations with seemed a little… lo-res. And I had never received my email confirmations. What? Me worry? I figured it would sort out.
After we established that I had no reservations for the weekend of the tournament, I made new ones. 5 of them, instead of 6, which is why I was calling in the first place. This was doing fine until I tried to put one in for Panivore Junior. He, as it turned out, in his spalpeen way, already had a reservation. Except he had changed his first name to Nola (“like the city,” as the guy on the phone with the southern accent put it—very Dr. John of him). And lived on Fernwood Street. And his reservation had been made by someone named Jim Manic.
I remember making the reservation, but I hardly seemed manic at the time. In fact, I recall me being my usual mellow self, if you want to know the truth.
Anyhow, when all is sand and dunes, Dr. John and I spent about a half hour sorting this out as his creaky computer (he apparently was using a Commodore 64) kept stumbling around one piece of misinformation after another. But sort it out we did. I now have either 11 or 6 rooms for the Liberty Bell Classic. Sometime in February. Under the name of Sanders.
It’s things like this that keep it real.
Well, stranger things have happened. I recalled distinctly that the woman I made the reservations with seemed a little… lo-res. And I had never received my email confirmations. What? Me worry? I figured it would sort out.
After we established that I had no reservations for the weekend of the tournament, I made new ones. 5 of them, instead of 6, which is why I was calling in the first place. This was doing fine until I tried to put one in for Panivore Junior. He, as it turned out, in his spalpeen way, already had a reservation. Except he had changed his first name to Nola (“like the city,” as the guy on the phone with the southern accent put it—very Dr. John of him). And lived on Fernwood Street. And his reservation had been made by someone named Jim Manic.
I remember making the reservation, but I hardly seemed manic at the time. In fact, I recall me being my usual mellow self, if you want to know the truth.
Anyhow, when all is sand and dunes, Dr. John and I spent about a half hour sorting this out as his creaky computer (he apparently was using a Commodore 64) kept stumbling around one piece of misinformation after another. But sort it out we did. I now have either 11 or 6 rooms for the Liberty Bell Classic. Sometime in February. Under the name of Sanders.
It’s things like this that keep it real.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Happy End of the Universe!
It was a peaceful, quiet holiday, vis-Ã -vis forensics. Vis-Ã -vis everything else, for that matter. That’s not a bad thing, once in a while.
We did try to get a TVFT going, but we are becoming progressively more incapable of turning up at the same time as the eons progress. We’re going to try to get back to the Wednesday routine, and I think we’ll put something out even if it’s just me and O’C making Disneyland plans. Of course, we have more important stuff to talk about, to wit, the Jan-Feb resolution. Plenty of people have been talking about this elsewhere, but I have not been one of them. In a way, with such a limited commitment to LD at this point, I feel a little less than involved in the situation. But I have my opinions, and I would like to exercise them a bit with others. CP is strongly planted agin’ it, and I think Bietz was likewise. I want that conversation.
In the world of upcoming, this week is Byram Hills. It’s small and local, so should be simple enough. Then there’s Bigle X, which is always fun, although this time I’m only staying for the main event: no RR for me this year. They’ll have to provide their own beans for the trivia event (if any). On the other hand, it’ll be the first time in decades I’ve had that Sunday and Monday to myself. That will be a treat.
And then there’s the Gem of Harlem. The real problem there has been securing rooms. Without rooms you can’t accept entries, and there’s a lot of people hanging on, waiting to hear. I cleared off all the far-aways who needed plane tix, and have started on the locals mostly by when they entered. I should have a better idea of rooms by the end of this week. Then we can get serious, and even, just maybe, create a schedule.
Then again, this being the year the Mayans are proven right, we could go off into oblivion at any moment. I probably shouldn’t plan too far ahead. Aside from the Disneyland trip, that is. Me and O’C, together again. Set your Twitter feed on stun.
We did try to get a TVFT going, but we are becoming progressively more incapable of turning up at the same time as the eons progress. We’re going to try to get back to the Wednesday routine, and I think we’ll put something out even if it’s just me and O’C making Disneyland plans. Of course, we have more important stuff to talk about, to wit, the Jan-Feb resolution. Plenty of people have been talking about this elsewhere, but I have not been one of them. In a way, with such a limited commitment to LD at this point, I feel a little less than involved in the situation. But I have my opinions, and I would like to exercise them a bit with others. CP is strongly planted agin’ it, and I think Bietz was likewise. I want that conversation.
In the world of upcoming, this week is Byram Hills. It’s small and local, so should be simple enough. Then there’s Bigle X, which is always fun, although this time I’m only staying for the main event: no RR for me this year. They’ll have to provide their own beans for the trivia event (if any). On the other hand, it’ll be the first time in decades I’ve had that Sunday and Monday to myself. That will be a treat.
And then there’s the Gem of Harlem. The real problem there has been securing rooms. Without rooms you can’t accept entries, and there’s a lot of people hanging on, waiting to hear. I cleared off all the far-aways who needed plane tix, and have started on the locals mostly by when they entered. I should have a better idea of rooms by the end of this week. Then we can get serious, and even, just maybe, create a schedule.
Then again, this being the year the Mayans are proven right, we could go off into oblivion at any moment. I probably shouldn’t plan too far ahead. Aside from the Disneyland trip, that is. Me and O’C, together again. Set your Twitter feed on stun.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Full of beans
It must be Christmas: the Sailors and I had a bout of Bean Trivia last night.
It was a rough session. First of all, O’C was unavailable for Ask Cruz. As a substitute, we had a lifeline which was “Call anybody you know and have them Google the answer.” That worked about as well as asking Cruz, since it seemed as if about half the questions were Disney-oriented. But I think I need better Sailors. They thought that “The Legacy” was one of the original hotels on the WDW property. I mean, they were close, except for the fact that there is not now nor has there ever been a hotel called “The Legacy” on the WDW property. This is made stranger because Rafi-Q says he stayed there last time he went. Little Em’ly claimed that she couldn’t answer those questions because she’d never been there. Come to think of it, every question she was asked, that was her answer: “I’ve never been there.” If you ask me, she needs to go somewhere.
We never had any answers to match last year’s Muppet classic, Hermit the Crab. But the event, as always, was rollicking and fun. There’s always the one person who answers the questions regardless of who’s being asked because, lordy lordy, they actually know the answer to this one. This is from a team who decided Fats Waller had to be a jazz musician because all jazz musicians have one-word nicknames, and that he must have played the tuba because he was fat. So, their deductive powers were marginally successful. They thought Lightnin’ Hopkins played the saxophone. They thought that TV’s talking horse was Dr. Ed, which at least gives him a day job. They came relatively close to identifying the main ingredient in haggis—they knew it came from inside the sheep—but went a little overboard claiming that cabbage was a subsidiary ingredient; on the other hand, they’d never heard of saltimbocca. Needless to say, be wary if any of them invites you over for dinner.
We went through my entire batch of questions, which means that next time out, all new categories. I may steer clear of Disney questions for a while, since these people have trouble deciding if Bambi is the character whose foot fit into the glass slipper. I would have thought that kids knew Disney pretty well, but I would have thought wrong. They also don’t know Muppets or classic movies. I think I do a fine impersonation of Anthony Perkins carrying his mother to the fruit cellar. They thought otherwise. They also thought that the character who says the line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” was named Frank.
You don’t want to know what they thought the main ingredient was in spotted dick. Remind me never to ask that question again.
It was a rough session. First of all, O’C was unavailable for Ask Cruz. As a substitute, we had a lifeline which was “Call anybody you know and have them Google the answer.” That worked about as well as asking Cruz, since it seemed as if about half the questions were Disney-oriented. But I think I need better Sailors. They thought that “The Legacy” was one of the original hotels on the WDW property. I mean, they were close, except for the fact that there is not now nor has there ever been a hotel called “The Legacy” on the WDW property. This is made stranger because Rafi-Q says he stayed there last time he went. Little Em’ly claimed that she couldn’t answer those questions because she’d never been there. Come to think of it, every question she was asked, that was her answer: “I’ve never been there.” If you ask me, she needs to go somewhere.
We never had any answers to match last year’s Muppet classic, Hermit the Crab. But the event, as always, was rollicking and fun. There’s always the one person who answers the questions regardless of who’s being asked because, lordy lordy, they actually know the answer to this one. This is from a team who decided Fats Waller had to be a jazz musician because all jazz musicians have one-word nicknames, and that he must have played the tuba because he was fat. So, their deductive powers were marginally successful. They thought Lightnin’ Hopkins played the saxophone. They thought that TV’s talking horse was Dr. Ed, which at least gives him a day job. They came relatively close to identifying the main ingredient in haggis—they knew it came from inside the sheep—but went a little overboard claiming that cabbage was a subsidiary ingredient; on the other hand, they’d never heard of saltimbocca. Needless to say, be wary if any of them invites you over for dinner.
We went through my entire batch of questions, which means that next time out, all new categories. I may steer clear of Disney questions for a while, since these people have trouble deciding if Bambi is the character whose foot fit into the glass slipper. I would have thought that kids knew Disney pretty well, but I would have thought wrong. They also don’t know Muppets or classic movies. I think I do a fine impersonation of Anthony Perkins carrying his mother to the fruit cellar. They thought otherwise. They also thought that the character who says the line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” was named Frank.
You don’t want to know what they thought the main ingredient was in spotted dick. Remind me never to ask that question again.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Them's the rules
I cleaned this up a little and took out some whining, but it's what I sent to the MHL membership this morning.
---
1. No partial judges allowed. If a judge cannot make all 4 rounds in the day, please find another judge. The only way all debaters can debate all the rounds is if all the judges judge them. This is a mathematical fact of life.
Note: Schools that provide an amazing overage of trained/experienced judges, that may wish to allow some of them to relieve one another, are not the issue here, and such generosity of judge pool on their part remains encouraged and will continue to be supported.
2. No children in the tab room. If a kid has a problem, they tell the coach, and the coach comes to tab. If the coach isn't at the tournament, there is a responsible adult in lieu. Kids go to their coaches with problems, not to tab. Tab staff will make every effort at the beginning of the tournament to get all the rounds started and to sort out any loose ends, however. This is not a rule to isolate tab from the tournament, but simply an attempt at keeping the communication of problems at the appropriate level.
3. Most importantly, all registration is entirely electronic. Coaches have until 9 on the morning of the day to correct their entries in tab room. (This might mean that teams might have to find web access at the last minute, but there is no question that, if there is no wireless, nonetheless someone on every team has brought either a smartphone or iPad with 3G). Registration closes at 9, tab takes down the data and prints up the schematics. End of story.
It works like this: registration officially closes at 9:00 p.m. the previous Thursdays. No additions are allowed after this point, period. (The chief reasons for this are that we need to assign and sort out rooms and organize the amount of food necessary). All students and judges must be entered on the Thursday deadline. However, we understand that kids get sick, and things come up. So, you have until 9:00 on the morning of the tournament to sort it out. If you are coming from some distance on a bus, you can make your changes en route. If you are meeting at the school at a city event, plan on doing so well in advance of the 9:00 deadline. Students "on their way (maybe)" do not count as entries, and a team's inability to arrive in plenty of time for coaches to take attendance will not be considered an excuse. The idea that round one is the taking of attendance penalizes the students who are there on time and wish to debate and learn. A bye due to a no-show is not a debate. At some point before 9:00, a coach or adult (college students are NOT considered adults for this purpose unless they are employees of the school they are representing, i.e., official assistant coaches) will come to the registration desk and report that their registration is final. At 9:00, any schools that haven't come to the desk will be assumed absent, and their entry will be erased from the tournament. If in fact some of these missing folk are around, they can be added for round two with forfeits for round one. This will penalize the students of the school not registered rather than the students at the schools that did register. Schools en route by bus can text by 9:00 that their entry is set; it is not unreasonable to assume that they could miss the deadline by a few minutes because of traffic, but since they've had all that time on the bus they've had ample opportunity to set things aright on tabroom.com.
4. All reported changes after 9 are $25 each, payable at the making of the change. All unreported changes (e.g. teams that are registered that don't show up, missing judges) are $50. In the MHL, no teams will be allowed to participate in future events unless the fines are paid; they will be contributed to the Grameen org. In the CFL they will go toward the Fr Rippon scholarship.
---
Some comments (that I didn't send, but I share with the VCA):
Coaches who complain that they can't meet the 9 a.m. deadline need to be asked why. Since I'm closing registration at 9 anyhow, why can't they have their team organized by then? In fact, it actually allows them to conveniently and efficiently handle last minute changes. What it doesn't allow is for them to not be there, or to be in a situation where they might as well not be there. It does not allow them to foist the responsibility for a whole team on one assistant college coach who has no idea what's going on in the other divisions. It also forces them to have their kids and judges there in a timely manner. As I say, the ramifications of their not giving accurate registrations is that the good debate citizens, other kids from other teams who have shown up on time and ready to go, suffer. This is not acceptable, and there is nothing in what I am suggesting that is onerous (except the fines for their inefficiency, which need to be onerous).
I will point out that we try to run 4 rounds at CFLs and MHLs to give the kids a better tournament experience, and more experience. Additionally, most of these events have judge training conducted by the tab staff; if the tab staff is still taking attendance through round 3, this valuable training cannot take place.
---
1. No partial judges allowed. If a judge cannot make all 4 rounds in the day, please find another judge. The only way all debaters can debate all the rounds is if all the judges judge them. This is a mathematical fact of life.
Note: Schools that provide an amazing overage of trained/experienced judges, that may wish to allow some of them to relieve one another, are not the issue here, and such generosity of judge pool on their part remains encouraged and will continue to be supported.
2. No children in the tab room. If a kid has a problem, they tell the coach, and the coach comes to tab. If the coach isn't at the tournament, there is a responsible adult in lieu. Kids go to their coaches with problems, not to tab. Tab staff will make every effort at the beginning of the tournament to get all the rounds started and to sort out any loose ends, however. This is not a rule to isolate tab from the tournament, but simply an attempt at keeping the communication of problems at the appropriate level.
3. Most importantly, all registration is entirely electronic. Coaches have until 9 on the morning of the day to correct their entries in tab room. (This might mean that teams might have to find web access at the last minute, but there is no question that, if there is no wireless, nonetheless someone on every team has brought either a smartphone or iPad with 3G). Registration closes at 9, tab takes down the data and prints up the schematics. End of story.
It works like this: registration officially closes at 9:00 p.m. the previous Thursdays. No additions are allowed after this point, period. (The chief reasons for this are that we need to assign and sort out rooms and organize the amount of food necessary). All students and judges must be entered on the Thursday deadline. However, we understand that kids get sick, and things come up. So, you have until 9:00 on the morning of the tournament to sort it out. If you are coming from some distance on a bus, you can make your changes en route. If you are meeting at the school at a city event, plan on doing so well in advance of the 9:00 deadline. Students "on their way (maybe)" do not count as entries, and a team's inability to arrive in plenty of time for coaches to take attendance will not be considered an excuse. The idea that round one is the taking of attendance penalizes the students who are there on time and wish to debate and learn. A bye due to a no-show is not a debate. At some point before 9:00, a coach or adult (college students are NOT considered adults for this purpose unless they are employees of the school they are representing, i.e., official assistant coaches) will come to the registration desk and report that their registration is final. At 9:00, any schools that haven't come to the desk will be assumed absent, and their entry will be erased from the tournament. If in fact some of these missing folk are around, they can be added for round two with forfeits for round one. This will penalize the students of the school not registered rather than the students at the schools that did register. Schools en route by bus can text by 9:00 that their entry is set; it is not unreasonable to assume that they could miss the deadline by a few minutes because of traffic, but since they've had all that time on the bus they've had ample opportunity to set things aright on tabroom.com.
4. All reported changes after 9 are $25 each, payable at the making of the change. All unreported changes (e.g. teams that are registered that don't show up, missing judges) are $50. In the MHL, no teams will be allowed to participate in future events unless the fines are paid; they will be contributed to the Grameen org. In the CFL they will go toward the Fr Rippon scholarship.
---
Some comments (that I didn't send, but I share with the VCA):
Coaches who complain that they can't meet the 9 a.m. deadline need to be asked why. Since I'm closing registration at 9 anyhow, why can't they have their team organized by then? In fact, it actually allows them to conveniently and efficiently handle last minute changes. What it doesn't allow is for them to not be there, or to be in a situation where they might as well not be there. It does not allow them to foist the responsibility for a whole team on one assistant college coach who has no idea what's going on in the other divisions. It also forces them to have their kids and judges there in a timely manner. As I say, the ramifications of their not giving accurate registrations is that the good debate citizens, other kids from other teams who have shown up on time and ready to go, suffer. This is not acceptable, and there is nothing in what I am suggesting that is onerous (except the fines for their inefficiency, which need to be onerous).
I will point out that we try to run 4 rounds at CFLs and MHLs to give the kids a better tournament experience, and more experience. Additionally, most of these events have judge training conducted by the tab staff; if the tab staff is still taking attendance through round 3, this valuable training cannot take place.
Monday, December 19, 2011
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore
Normally I am the soul of tolerance. I pride myself on my ability to fight off whatever the community tries to throw at me, like a Jedi waving my lightsaber here and there and everywhere, parrying the blasts from the warring clones or whatever is blasting at me and never batting an eye. But this last Saturday, I was O Kenobi sliced up by D Vader, and I doubt if I’ll come back stronger than ever.
No, wait a minute. It was O Kenobi who never really came back stronger than ever. He took his money and went home and counted it and aside from a couple of quick cameos, he never had to do anything else for Lucas other than cash his checks. I, on the other hand, bereft of residual checks, will indeed come back stronger than ever. You can lightsaber me into little pieces, but those little pieces will never die. So there.
The CFL event was a bloody mess, for a simple reason. Too many teams had too few people in charge. We have all sorts of rules about adults registering and the like, not only here but everywhere else, but in the crush of the event, we just want to get registration over with. And besides, we tend to believe people when they tell us their teams or judges are here. We should know better by now.
What happened was that, because the information we were given was bogus, the tournament was bogus. There were people who got byes in every round, not because they deserved them for some bizarre reason, but because they kept getting paired against yet another non-existent team. Some teams came and went. Judges seemed to think that this was a part-time gig, little realizing that when debaters wish to debate all the rounds, someone actually has to judge them. Startling, eh? By the end of the day I had reamed out every coach who had crossed me during the day. They know who they are.
But I rise from those little lightsabered pieces. I have new rules. I’m thinking to myself, why do we have everyone register electronically, then turn it off so that they have to do it manually? Why not just keep it electronic until the point where I’m going to download the data. Rather than them give me 50 changes (all of which, btw, are theoretically not acceptable, but I don’t want to screw the kids just because the coaches are disorganized), let them make 50 changes in tabroom. No wireless? Use a smartphone. It’s not a big deal. Then at 9:00, after a perfunctory check-in of the coaches at the table, I download the data and do it. That has to be better than screwing around trying to be accommodating to disorganized teams whose disorganization always inevitably penalizes the poor kids from the teams who were organized.
I’m circulating these new rules now, and will publish them here once everyone has signed off on them. If you run tournaments and you pull out your hair over last minute changes, and worse, changes after the last minute, perhaps help is on the way. Then again, perhaps not, but the $25 fine per, payable immediately or you're disinvited from the league might have some effect. It’s worked at Bump. This year I banked a paltry $120 into Grameen, down about a third from last year. People don’t like paying fines, and they don’t like it when I demand the published fine now, in person, put the money in the box. They find that, when push comes to shove, it’s better to get their information right.
I was admittedly as pissed off as I get this last weekend. I really have had enough. Get your act together, people. I’m not going to do your job for you, and I’m not going to let you get away with not doing it yourself. It’s just not that hard.
Jeesh.
No, wait a minute. It was O Kenobi who never really came back stronger than ever. He took his money and went home and counted it and aside from a couple of quick cameos, he never had to do anything else for Lucas other than cash his checks. I, on the other hand, bereft of residual checks, will indeed come back stronger than ever. You can lightsaber me into little pieces, but those little pieces will never die. So there.
The CFL event was a bloody mess, for a simple reason. Too many teams had too few people in charge. We have all sorts of rules about adults registering and the like, not only here but everywhere else, but in the crush of the event, we just want to get registration over with. And besides, we tend to believe people when they tell us their teams or judges are here. We should know better by now.
What happened was that, because the information we were given was bogus, the tournament was bogus. There were people who got byes in every round, not because they deserved them for some bizarre reason, but because they kept getting paired against yet another non-existent team. Some teams came and went. Judges seemed to think that this was a part-time gig, little realizing that when debaters wish to debate all the rounds, someone actually has to judge them. Startling, eh? By the end of the day I had reamed out every coach who had crossed me during the day. They know who they are.
But I rise from those little lightsabered pieces. I have new rules. I’m thinking to myself, why do we have everyone register electronically, then turn it off so that they have to do it manually? Why not just keep it electronic until the point where I’m going to download the data. Rather than them give me 50 changes (all of which, btw, are theoretically not acceptable, but I don’t want to screw the kids just because the coaches are disorganized), let them make 50 changes in tabroom. No wireless? Use a smartphone. It’s not a big deal. Then at 9:00, after a perfunctory check-in of the coaches at the table, I download the data and do it. That has to be better than screwing around trying to be accommodating to disorganized teams whose disorganization always inevitably penalizes the poor kids from the teams who were organized.
I’m circulating these new rules now, and will publish them here once everyone has signed off on them. If you run tournaments and you pull out your hair over last minute changes, and worse, changes after the last minute, perhaps help is on the way. Then again, perhaps not, but the $25 fine per, payable immediately or you're disinvited from the league might have some effect. It’s worked at Bump. This year I banked a paltry $120 into Grameen, down about a third from last year. People don’t like paying fines, and they don’t like it when I demand the published fine now, in person, put the money in the box. They find that, when push comes to shove, it’s better to get their information right.
I was admittedly as pissed off as I get this last weekend. I really have had enough. Get your act together, people. I’m not going to do your job for you, and I’m not going to let you get away with not doing it yourself. It’s just not that hard.
Jeesh.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
And the prize for the biggest...
I just noticed on Amazon that you can buy a Justin Bieber karaoke album. I presume that this means you get a Justin Bieber album without Justin Bieber singing on it. How can this not be a good thing?
Someone responded to my post about hanging around for the whole tournament with the suggestion that there should be more sweepstakes awards. These are not my cup of tea. For the most part, sweepstakes are contests among the big schools with mega entries, vying for the bragging rights of being the biggest school with the mega-est entries. These awards bounce around between the same few schools again and again, and while I’m sure they’re all as happy as clamlarks about them, they’re pretty unengaging to the hoi and the polloi from all the other schools. O’C has tried to counter this with sweeps for big and for small schools, but that really doesn’t solve the problem. Wherever you set the distinction for size, it stands to reason that whoever has the most entries has an edge, and why should there be a reward for having a lot of entries? My understanding is that sweeps are very popular with Speecho-Americans and their breeders, or at the very least traditional amongst them. If you like that sort of thing, fine, but given that most of the early sneak-outs are not from the big programs, and most of the people in the running for these are big programs, even if I was in favor, it wouldn’t solve the problem.
I should point out that some tournaments do not traffic in award ceremonies, and I have nothing against that. These tournaments tend to want to run toward efficiency and minimal pomp(osity), and if that is what they want to do, it is their tournament and I’m happy to go with the flow. But if a tournament builds in awards as a part of the event, so be it. And I remain unconvinced by the idea that people have a long way to travel, hence they want to leave early, because I have yet to see anyone who has a long way to travel leave early when they’re still in the tournament. (Well, aside from my daughter, that is, who used to say enough is enough and, in or out, she would lead the charge to the nearest restaurant and to hell with the tournament. She hasn’t changed much since then.)
Of course, my thoughts on people who leave early is merely opinion and open to disagreement. My thoughts on people who blow off their judging obligation is something else altogether. These people are the scum of the debate earth. As I run more and more tournaments I begin to know more and more of them by first name. It isn’t many, but it’s enough, and it’s always the same ones. I haven’t forgotten a scurrying judge yet. That will be the sign that I’m getting Old-Timer’s Disease, when I forget that you left me hanging without a judge. But of course, scurrying judges don’t read this blog. Then again, as I start excluding them from tournaments, they will start having the time to do so. Maybe they’ll put two and two together. But I doubt it.
Someone responded to my post about hanging around for the whole tournament with the suggestion that there should be more sweepstakes awards. These are not my cup of tea. For the most part, sweepstakes are contests among the big schools with mega entries, vying for the bragging rights of being the biggest school with the mega-est entries. These awards bounce around between the same few schools again and again, and while I’m sure they’re all as happy as clamlarks about them, they’re pretty unengaging to the hoi and the polloi from all the other schools. O’C has tried to counter this with sweeps for big and for small schools, but that really doesn’t solve the problem. Wherever you set the distinction for size, it stands to reason that whoever has the most entries has an edge, and why should there be a reward for having a lot of entries? My understanding is that sweeps are very popular with Speecho-Americans and their breeders, or at the very least traditional amongst them. If you like that sort of thing, fine, but given that most of the early sneak-outs are not from the big programs, and most of the people in the running for these are big programs, even if I was in favor, it wouldn’t solve the problem.
I should point out that some tournaments do not traffic in award ceremonies, and I have nothing against that. These tournaments tend to want to run toward efficiency and minimal pomp(osity), and if that is what they want to do, it is their tournament and I’m happy to go with the flow. But if a tournament builds in awards as a part of the event, so be it. And I remain unconvinced by the idea that people have a long way to travel, hence they want to leave early, because I have yet to see anyone who has a long way to travel leave early when they’re still in the tournament. (Well, aside from my daughter, that is, who used to say enough is enough and, in or out, she would lead the charge to the nearest restaurant and to hell with the tournament. She hasn’t changed much since then.)
Of course, my thoughts on people who leave early is merely opinion and open to disagreement. My thoughts on people who blow off their judging obligation is something else altogether. These people are the scum of the debate earth. As I run more and more tournaments I begin to know more and more of them by first name. It isn’t many, but it’s enough, and it’s always the same ones. I haven’t forgotten a scurrying judge yet. That will be the sign that I’m getting Old-Timer’s Disease, when I forget that you left me hanging without a judge. But of course, scurrying judges don’t read this blog. Then again, as I start excluding them from tournaments, they will start having the time to do so. Maybe they’ll put two and two together. But I doubt it.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Breaking wood
If you graduated from school about three hundred years ago, you still get this thing toward the end of August when you start thinking about buying new composition books and wondering what the new year will be like. I get something similar around Bump weekend, except now it’s Ridge weekend, and they’re welcome to it. I’ve been over for a month now, and there is no greater satisfaction than having this year’s tournament already in the history books.
Ridge was normal, as far as the tournament went. MJP really does work fine for smaller events. (Come to think of it, the very first time we tested it was a Ridge 2 years ago.) We did learn this time out that you have to isolate the MJP event, i.e., don’t load up two divisions of LD when one of them is MJP because TRPC will just look at you funny and wave its finger at you. Also, it pays to blank out the A+s that automatically come in when no ranking was done, to distinguish them from real A+s. Other than that, it’s becoming rote.
The Sailors went full-bore into PF with an astounding record that would make weaker teams pale, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and this was a learning experience. So, what was learned? We’ll find out tomorrow night at the meeting, but for one thing, don’t dress in your furry mules and look as if you’re one bowl of popcorn short of a Twilight home video marathon. There may be more, but that may be the most crucial.
On the coaching side, we learned never to go to that horrible place on Friday night again, because they’re so loud that the only way we could communicate was by texting. We ended up in CP’s room watching people break wood with their heads, which is about the only thing that happened that I can mention in polite company or, for that matter, impolite company. Some things you just can’t blog.
Ridge was normal, as far as the tournament went. MJP really does work fine for smaller events. (Come to think of it, the very first time we tested it was a Ridge 2 years ago.) We did learn this time out that you have to isolate the MJP event, i.e., don’t load up two divisions of LD when one of them is MJP because TRPC will just look at you funny and wave its finger at you. Also, it pays to blank out the A+s that automatically come in when no ranking was done, to distinguish them from real A+s. Other than that, it’s becoming rote.
The Sailors went full-bore into PF with an astounding record that would make weaker teams pale, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and this was a learning experience. So, what was learned? We’ll find out tomorrow night at the meeting, but for one thing, don’t dress in your furry mules and look as if you’re one bowl of popcorn short of a Twilight home video marathon. There may be more, but that may be the most crucial.
On the coaching side, we learned never to go to that horrible place on Friday night again, because they’re so loud that the only way we could communicate was by texting. We ended up in CP’s room watching people break wood with their heads, which is about the only thing that happened that I can mention in polite company or, for that matter, impolite company. Some things you just can’t blog.
Thursday, December 08, 2011
The Tiggers
Princeton has come and gone. Some thoughts.
First of all, we made a conscious decision upfront that we would feature the PF division. It had the biggest TOC bid, and at colleges these days, it’s a big draw. This was absolutely the right decision, I think. We opened 160 slots, and never really had much of a falloff. The field was well-balanced, and geographically diverse, with a lot of Florida folk adding a little sunlight to the proceedings. Dario was handed the data and sent forth, and managed to run everything on time in the expected transparent fashion, and we realized once again that Florida’s gain was our loss, but he loves it down there so what can you do? One thing about transplanted northerners: they know better than to show up in New Jersey in December in short pants. This may be how you can separate the nuts from the coconuts, so to speak.
The second big decision was, rather than trimming the fields, running the LD divisions back to back. I think this went well too. We had to move into PF rooms on Saturday night and got slightly hung up, but not for more than 10 minutes in one or two cases, so that wasn’t a problem, and the word on the street was that having a couple of hours off between rounds makes the day a joy. I remember when Pton used to do that, and I was judging, and that’s exactly how I felt. Throwing in some nice weather (albeit not enough for short pants) didn’t hurt. Even if we can get the HS back next year for PF, I think I’d still stagger the LDs. It just makes for a nice weekend.
Inside LD tab, there were a few things I would change. I thought there would be more interplay between the divisions, so I put everything on one machine, but that proved to be unnecessary, and a bit of a burden in the crunch times. Also, watching O’C balance the tournament on two computers because one is at death’s door and the other must be kept clear from the evil influence of Windows, was like watching a drunk tightrope walker crossing Niagara in a hurricane. Also also, I forgot my new little speaker system, meaning there was a noticeable lack of hula music during the weekend, although Abdul did manfully try to fill in the gap with some of his more obscure material; problem is, computer speakers just don’t do the job, even when you turn them up to 11.
MJP went well, although we discovered that you have to doublecheck that all the prefs do travel from tabroom to trpc. Most do, some don’t. Go figure. We also offered strikes in PF, as it turns out to resounding disinterest. A couple of schools took advantage, but not many. One school that I know about objected. Dario’s conclusion was that they’re okay because those who wanted them, had them, and those who didn’t have them weren’t harmed. We had thought long and hard about this before the tournament, and I’d say that the results are that the jury is still out. I’m not going to do it again for a while, although I did strongly recommend that they do it atthe PF snake pit TOC. We’ll see.
Anyhow, overall Princeton has, I think, kicked itself into the top ranks of college tournaments. The students running it are committed, and they’ve got a good system that keeps them in it over the years to oversee that it’s working well. They did a great job, and rule number one of any college tournament is that the host must be totally committed. They were, and the results were clear.
First of all, we made a conscious decision upfront that we would feature the PF division. It had the biggest TOC bid, and at colleges these days, it’s a big draw. This was absolutely the right decision, I think. We opened 160 slots, and never really had much of a falloff. The field was well-balanced, and geographically diverse, with a lot of Florida folk adding a little sunlight to the proceedings. Dario was handed the data and sent forth, and managed to run everything on time in the expected transparent fashion, and we realized once again that Florida’s gain was our loss, but he loves it down there so what can you do? One thing about transplanted northerners: they know better than to show up in New Jersey in December in short pants. This may be how you can separate the nuts from the coconuts, so to speak.
The second big decision was, rather than trimming the fields, running the LD divisions back to back. I think this went well too. We had to move into PF rooms on Saturday night and got slightly hung up, but not for more than 10 minutes in one or two cases, so that wasn’t a problem, and the word on the street was that having a couple of hours off between rounds makes the day a joy. I remember when Pton used to do that, and I was judging, and that’s exactly how I felt. Throwing in some nice weather (albeit not enough for short pants) didn’t hurt. Even if we can get the HS back next year for PF, I think I’d still stagger the LDs. It just makes for a nice weekend.
Inside LD tab, there were a few things I would change. I thought there would be more interplay between the divisions, so I put everything on one machine, but that proved to be unnecessary, and a bit of a burden in the crunch times. Also, watching O’C balance the tournament on two computers because one is at death’s door and the other must be kept clear from the evil influence of Windows, was like watching a drunk tightrope walker crossing Niagara in a hurricane. Also also, I forgot my new little speaker system, meaning there was a noticeable lack of hula music during the weekend, although Abdul did manfully try to fill in the gap with some of his more obscure material; problem is, computer speakers just don’t do the job, even when you turn them up to 11.
MJP went well, although we discovered that you have to doublecheck that all the prefs do travel from tabroom to trpc. Most do, some don’t. Go figure. We also offered strikes in PF, as it turns out to resounding disinterest. A couple of schools took advantage, but not many. One school that I know about objected. Dario’s conclusion was that they’re okay because those who wanted them, had them, and those who didn’t have them weren’t harmed. We had thought long and hard about this before the tournament, and I’d say that the results are that the jury is still out. I’m not going to do it again for a while, although I did strongly recommend that they do it at
Anyhow, overall Princeton has, I think, kicked itself into the top ranks of college tournaments. The students running it are committed, and they’ve got a good system that keeps them in it over the years to oversee that it’s working well. They did a great job, and rule number one of any college tournament is that the host must be totally committed. They were, and the results were clear.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Hello I Must Be Going
In my gracious way, I admit that there is a great temptation to leave a tournament one is not in to get home early. But let’s face it: that’s only true if you’re not in it. Your original plans included being in it, so it’s not as if you haven’t accounted for staying for the whole thing. So ducking out and heading home is not the original plan, it’s the contingency plan, and as I said, I’m mostly against it. At a big tournament, and in the light of a long trip, I can understand it, of course, and make exceptions. I still believe that attending break rounds should be a mandatory part of any team’s participation in a tournament, but leaving a touch early, and even before awards, does make sense if you have to drive forever, and it’s the difference between getting home at 10 o’clock at night or 2 in the morning.
But in my experience, the worst offenders for leaving a tournament, including CP’s own Lexington tournaments, are not the world travelers. It is not the schools who have a long distance home, for whom exceptions might be made. It is more often than not a school with virtually no commute whatsoever. I get this at Bump, too. Neighborhood schools are the first to disappear. They are also usually the first to get dropped out of the tournament. If they hung around a bit, they might learn something. And if they stayed for a ceremony, they might become a part of the community rather than just forensic remoras.
A commenter suggested having supplementary events, which I guess does pass the time, but I would prefer the time to pass observing others in the main events, for their own benefit in aid of improving their competitiveness. Also, as one winds down a tournament, one focuses on the big issues of breaking and pairing and whatnot with what’s left; finding time (and room, and staff) to organize a supplementary event would be difficult at most tournaments. I’m not necessarily against it, but it wouldn’t be my first choice.
But in my experience, the worst offenders for leaving a tournament, including CP’s own Lexington tournaments, are not the world travelers. It is not the schools who have a long distance home, for whom exceptions might be made. It is more often than not a school with virtually no commute whatsoever. I get this at Bump, too. Neighborhood schools are the first to disappear. They are also usually the first to get dropped out of the tournament. If they hung around a bit, they might learn something. And if they stayed for a ceremony, they might become a part of the community rather than just forensic remoras.
A commenter suggested having supplementary events, which I guess does pass the time, but I would prefer the time to pass observing others in the main events, for their own benefit in aid of improving their competitiveness. Also, as one winds down a tournament, one focuses on the big issues of breaking and pairing and whatnot with what’s left; finding time (and room, and staff) to organize a supplementary event would be difficult at most tournaments. I’m not necessarily against it, but it wouldn’t be my first choice.
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
On the duality of the Ivy League tournament
My phone rings in the tab room. I answer it. “Hello?”
“Hi. I’m lost.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So what exactly do you think I can do for you?”
Part two.
The phone rings again. Same number. “Hello?”
“Hi. I’m in East Pyne. Where’s room 8?”
“That depends on where you are.”
“I’m in East Pyne.”
Part three.
The phone rings again. Same number.
I ignore it.
At a tournament like Princeton, in the debate divisions at least, there are actually two tournaments going on. One of these tournaments is populated by the usual suspects in the field and in the judging pool. The debaters go to their rounds and debate, and judges pick up their ballots and go to their rounds and adjudicate, and it’s just like every other tournament they go to. It could be Lexington or Bump or Jake or Glenbrooks or whatever. Everyone knows their role, and everyone performs according to the script. Things run pretty close to schedule, and a swell time is had by all.
And then there’s the other tournament, populated by debaters and judges who have crawled out from under their local forensic rocks who have never seen the sun before and don’t understand the concepts of light and heat. It is as if they have never attended a tournament before in their life, and that may not be far from the truth. I have known of schools with a debate team—they think—that only goes to one tournament a year, inevitably an Ivy Leaguer. That is the depth of their tournament commitment. These are the ones who can’t read a schedule (although to my understanding, debate tournaments aren’t the only things in the universe with a schedule, but I could be wrong about that). They can’t read a map. They don’t show up at general assemblies to hear announcements, and then when they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, which was clearly outlined in the announcements at the general assembly they didn’t attend, they complain to you that you’re not giving them the information they need. They are the first in line for the free food, if any, even if you’ve hidden the serving time in the footnotes of the schedule and hidden the location in the footnotes of the map, and only let it be known that there was any food by announcing it at the general assembly: some things they are good at. They can’t believe that you expect them to judge almost every round! The horror! (My comment to them when they make this complaint is that they don’t have to judge every round, but tell us which rounds you don’t want to judge so that we can also let your debaters have that round off too. They look at me strangely for a while until they figure out what I’m saying, and then they wander off.) They think that “I got here late” is an acceptable excuse for missing a round. (I didn’t get here late. I got up early and allowed plenty of time. You didn’t. This is my problem?)
That seems to be the thing about college tournaments, from an operational standpoint. The usual suspects go about their business admirably, and you spend the rest of your time explaining what a debate tournament is to the unusual suspects. Sometimes it’s sort of fun, because not all the unusual suspects are weasels (nor are all the usual suspects furry little kittens). But by the same token, if we’re trying to pair the next round with MJP, your standing there with a dumb question is, shall we say, ill-timed. Your coming into the tabroom at all is ill-conceived. For that matter, anyone’s coming into the tabroom is ill-conceived. Yes, the tabroom is quiet. We like it that way. It’s also ours. But there’s always tab leeches. The thing is, yes, you’re here to quietly grade papers, but then your phone rings and your team has vomited in the boys’ room or somesuch, and the rest of us are just trying to work on getting the tournament run. What is it about the sterling personalities of the tab staff that attracts people who want to hang out with them? It’s certainly not because we’re the cool kids (except maybe Abdul). I’ve met us. We raise boring to new heights. We think Sporcle is important. We generate more paper than the IRS. There has to be other places to hang out. There has to be cooler kids than us somewhere.
Anyhow, if you’re wondering, the Tiggers was a great tournament from my perspective. Phenomenally large PF field, solid LD and speech fields, great operational team amongst the Tigs—they couldn’t do much better. And I enjoyed watching the two simultaneous tournaments transpire around me. I don’t suggest that anything could change the duality. I just find it interesting. It is the curse of the college tournament.
“Hi. I’m lost.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So what exactly do you think I can do for you?”
Part two.
The phone rings again. Same number. “Hello?”
“Hi. I’m in East Pyne. Where’s room 8?”
“That depends on where you are.”
“I’m in East Pyne.”
Part three.
The phone rings again. Same number.
I ignore it.
At a tournament like Princeton, in the debate divisions at least, there are actually two tournaments going on. One of these tournaments is populated by the usual suspects in the field and in the judging pool. The debaters go to their rounds and debate, and judges pick up their ballots and go to their rounds and adjudicate, and it’s just like every other tournament they go to. It could be Lexington or Bump or Jake or Glenbrooks or whatever. Everyone knows their role, and everyone performs according to the script. Things run pretty close to schedule, and a swell time is had by all.
And then there’s the other tournament, populated by debaters and judges who have crawled out from under their local forensic rocks who have never seen the sun before and don’t understand the concepts of light and heat. It is as if they have never attended a tournament before in their life, and that may not be far from the truth. I have known of schools with a debate team—they think—that only goes to one tournament a year, inevitably an Ivy Leaguer. That is the depth of their tournament commitment. These are the ones who can’t read a schedule (although to my understanding, debate tournaments aren’t the only things in the universe with a schedule, but I could be wrong about that). They can’t read a map. They don’t show up at general assemblies to hear announcements, and then when they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, which was clearly outlined in the announcements at the general assembly they didn’t attend, they complain to you that you’re not giving them the information they need. They are the first in line for the free food, if any, even if you’ve hidden the serving time in the footnotes of the schedule and hidden the location in the footnotes of the map, and only let it be known that there was any food by announcing it at the general assembly: some things they are good at. They can’t believe that you expect them to judge almost every round! The horror! (My comment to them when they make this complaint is that they don’t have to judge every round, but tell us which rounds you don’t want to judge so that we can also let your debaters have that round off too. They look at me strangely for a while until they figure out what I’m saying, and then they wander off.) They think that “I got here late” is an acceptable excuse for missing a round. (I didn’t get here late. I got up early and allowed plenty of time. You didn’t. This is my problem?)
That seems to be the thing about college tournaments, from an operational standpoint. The usual suspects go about their business admirably, and you spend the rest of your time explaining what a debate tournament is to the unusual suspects. Sometimes it’s sort of fun, because not all the unusual suspects are weasels (nor are all the usual suspects furry little kittens). But by the same token, if we’re trying to pair the next round with MJP, your standing there with a dumb question is, shall we say, ill-timed. Your coming into the tabroom at all is ill-conceived. For that matter, anyone’s coming into the tabroom is ill-conceived. Yes, the tabroom is quiet. We like it that way. It’s also ours. But there’s always tab leeches. The thing is, yes, you’re here to quietly grade papers, but then your phone rings and your team has vomited in the boys’ room or somesuch, and the rest of us are just trying to work on getting the tournament run. What is it about the sterling personalities of the tab staff that attracts people who want to hang out with them? It’s certainly not because we’re the cool kids (except maybe Abdul). I’ve met us. We raise boring to new heights. We think Sporcle is important. We generate more paper than the IRS. There has to be other places to hang out. There has to be cooler kids than us somewhere.
Anyhow, if you’re wondering, the Tiggers was a great tournament from my perspective. Phenomenally large PF field, solid LD and speech fields, great operational team amongst the Tigs—they couldn’t do much better. And I enjoyed watching the two simultaneous tournaments transpire around me. I don’t suggest that anything could change the duality. I just find it interesting. It is the curse of the college tournament.
Monday, December 05, 2011
Whatever happened to class?
If we are in this tournament, we’re in it to the bitter end, because that’s the kind of competitors we are. On the other hand, if we’re out of it, we’re out of there like a shot, because, well, that’s the kind of competitors we are.
I love the message that sends: We only compete to compete. There is nothing else about a debate tournament of value. And if we’re not competing, screw it. We’re taking our judges and going home.
As someone who values least the competitive aspect of debate compared to all the other aspects, this really annoys me. And I’m not even talking about people honoring their obligation to judge, which is an obvious ethical commitment which, if you don’t honor it, is a violation of the rules on your part. There’s not much to discuss there. At a big tournament like Princeton, at least in LD there was a satisfyingly small number of people who blew off their obligations, but there still was a number of people. This is not worth a lot of discussion here, because it’s too obvious. Going to a tournament implies a commitment to the rules of the tournament on your part; what else do we need to say?
“Why do we have to stay and judge if our kids aren’t competing?”
“Would you stay if your kids were competing?”
“Of course.”
“And who would judge them if everyone was like you and left before fulfilling their obligation?”
Duh.
But let’s look at the team that does fulfill its obligation and then immediately leaves. (Usually, this is after griping about the obligation, by the way, but what else do you expect from these people?) As I said above, they are sending the message to their team that the only thing that matters at a tournament is winning. As soon as you lose, go home. This means that you don’t watch break rounds, which is one of the great aspects of not advancing into them. If you love debate, you want to watch the good people just for entertainment. If you actually value competition, you’ll want to learn from them. And if you value education, you’ll want not only the learning of how better competitors compete, but seeing what they’re running. Maybe you’ll pick up some great evidence or some great approach you hadn’t thought of. Teams that don’t break learn to break by watching teams that do break. Did you ever notice that the teams that don’t break pretty much always don’t break, and the teams that do break pretty much always do break?
Also, the nature of break rounds is not the same as prelims. Any student who wants or expects to break, needs to learn how to handle that difference. Watching others handle it (or not) is how you learn.
So there is an obvious benefit to the teams that observe break rounds. They will learn something they can never learn in the comfort of their own debate room back home. That alone is sufficient reason to stay on at a tournament, for one’s own benefit.
But there is another reason, and in fact it is more related to competition per se. It is the idea of good sportsmanship. Good sportsmanship means that you honor your competitors, whether you win or lose. This means going to the award ceremony not just to cheer the people from your team who won, but the people from other teams who beat you. So and so did the best DI or was the top LDer or was the PF top speaker: good sportsmanship demands that you, who were none of those things, honor those who were. The respect of one’s peers is one of the highest rewards for work well done, and that is what award ceremonies—and staying for them—is all about. My favorite schmucks? The ones whose activity is announced, and then, carrying their trophies, they march out of the auditorium passing in front of the podium while the remainder of the categories are announced. They couldn’t wait another ten minutes?
Does no one have manners any more?
Whatever happened to class?
I love the message that sends: We only compete to compete. There is nothing else about a debate tournament of value. And if we’re not competing, screw it. We’re taking our judges and going home.
As someone who values least the competitive aspect of debate compared to all the other aspects, this really annoys me. And I’m not even talking about people honoring their obligation to judge, which is an obvious ethical commitment which, if you don’t honor it, is a violation of the rules on your part. There’s not much to discuss there. At a big tournament like Princeton, at least in LD there was a satisfyingly small number of people who blew off their obligations, but there still was a number of people. This is not worth a lot of discussion here, because it’s too obvious. Going to a tournament implies a commitment to the rules of the tournament on your part; what else do we need to say?
“Why do we have to stay and judge if our kids aren’t competing?”
“Would you stay if your kids were competing?”
“Of course.”
“And who would judge them if everyone was like you and left before fulfilling their obligation?”
Duh.
But let’s look at the team that does fulfill its obligation and then immediately leaves. (Usually, this is after griping about the obligation, by the way, but what else do you expect from these people?) As I said above, they are sending the message to their team that the only thing that matters at a tournament is winning. As soon as you lose, go home. This means that you don’t watch break rounds, which is one of the great aspects of not advancing into them. If you love debate, you want to watch the good people just for entertainment. If you actually value competition, you’ll want to learn from them. And if you value education, you’ll want not only the learning of how better competitors compete, but seeing what they’re running. Maybe you’ll pick up some great evidence or some great approach you hadn’t thought of. Teams that don’t break learn to break by watching teams that do break. Did you ever notice that the teams that don’t break pretty much always don’t break, and the teams that do break pretty much always do break?
Also, the nature of break rounds is not the same as prelims. Any student who wants or expects to break, needs to learn how to handle that difference. Watching others handle it (or not) is how you learn.
So there is an obvious benefit to the teams that observe break rounds. They will learn something they can never learn in the comfort of their own debate room back home. That alone is sufficient reason to stay on at a tournament, for one’s own benefit.
But there is another reason, and in fact it is more related to competition per se. It is the idea of good sportsmanship. Good sportsmanship means that you honor your competitors, whether you win or lose. This means going to the award ceremony not just to cheer the people from your team who won, but the people from other teams who beat you. So and so did the best DI or was the top LDer or was the PF top speaker: good sportsmanship demands that you, who were none of those things, honor those who were. The respect of one’s peers is one of the highest rewards for work well done, and that is what award ceremonies—and staying for them—is all about. My favorite schmucks? The ones whose activity is announced, and then, carrying their trophies, they march out of the auditorium passing in front of the podium while the remainder of the categories are announced. They couldn’t wait another ten minutes?
Does no one have manners any more?
Whatever happened to class?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)