This is a continuation of my dialogue with Bro John. His message was written with some personal asides that need not be repeated, so I'll just give my responses. It should be clear enough.
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[There is a chestnut that goes around that, somehow, States rewards bad debaters.]
One clarification. I strongly disbelieve that bad
debaters win States; I never meant to give that
impression. To the contrary, one must be very good to
do well at States. I agree with you there. There's
noting "illegitimate" about this win. Anyone in the
know looking at the winner lists over the last few
years would agree.
I do feel, however, that plenty of other good people
aren't on those lists. One inarguable reason is that
they don't come in the first place. Fixing that may be
beyond anything immediate we can do. But taking some
preliminary steps might help in the long run.
[BJ suggested that, if we used upperclassmen, they would somehow be second-tier, because all the good ones would be in the competition.]
So what to do about judging? Well, I disagree that we
would be bringing in a lesser caliber person if we
brought in upperclassmen; why aren't they competing
themselves if they're so good, you asked. There are
plenty of high quality upperclassmen who don't compete
themselves at the tournament, for lots of reasons. I
know that I've always got a bunch. Some of them just
have senioritis and haven't felt like preparing for
yet another tournament so late in their career. What I
see here by using them as judges would be a stepping
process: we create a better pool of judges for the
underclassmen, which allows us to (somehow) improve
the pool of the varsity. NFL awards kids points for
judging because there's a good reason for them to sit
at the back of the room.
[He mentioned some of the notorious incidents that give student judging a bad name.]
Honestly, I find that plenty
of kid judges are, in fact, stinkers, but at least
they're experienced stinkers. And at MHL we now have
strict rules to prevent what we can call those rap
incidents: any judge found guilty of same must provide
us with the names of the teams that he or she wishes
to forfeit out of the tournament. That is, if you
cover 2 policy or 4 LD kids, and we have to pull you
from the judging pool because of inappropriate
behaviour, you need to take the teams you're covering
with you. I announce this rule at the beginning of
every meeting, and suggest that judges planning on
screwing up should discuss it with their coaches now
to select the names of the forfeiting teams so that
there's no confusion later on. And they know we'll
enforce it. And incidents have disappeared. (For that
matter, we also have a rule that, if your cell phone
rings, and you're debating, it's an automatic forfeit.
That opens a few eyes when I announce it!).
But that brings us to the bigger issue, which is the
judges of the varsity. So let's assume that we've
allowed underclass judging (and again, I can't imagine
the body of LD coaches disagreeing with this, given
that it is already the norm), then what do we do about
the adults. Well, first of all, there's now fewer of
them. Now coaches won't have to rely on less than
trained individuals, or at least will rely on fewer of
them. That's a start.
I'm a firm believer in lay judges, but I also believe
they need to know what they're watching. You make good
points about blaming judges for losses, but that's not
what I'm talking about. The real problem is judges who
are totally clueless (and I blame the coaches and the
kids for that). If you watch a tennis game for the
first time, and don't know that each player gets two
attempts to get the ball served over the net, you'll
judge the match quite differently than if you do
possess that information. Now to begin with, we have
to rely on the coaches (or kids) to vouch for and
train their parents, but what if they don't, or can't?
Well, we can do two things. First, we provide a NYSFL
How-to-Judge-LD brochure. Post it on the website, and
give it out at registration. (There's no reason not to
provide how-to's on other stuff, too; I love the CFL
speech how-to guide.) Second, we train at the
tournament. We provide a half hour presentation for
all varsity judges before the tournament. That way
even if they haven't read what we've given them, we
still get to talk to them. This may be a little
ungainly, but the results would be to everyone's
benefit. It's not much, but it's something.
[I had suggested hiring judges, but BJ wisely pointed out that in my LDEP diatribe I was striking out against college judges. He also claimed it would be a major undertaking, and everyone was already up to the old eyeballs.]
As for hires, you have hoisted me on my own petard
with that one, because we could be bringing in the
people I'm warning us against! But would we? What if
the hiring was through the participating schools? That
is, while I might be less than interested in [name any
10 you want] the stinkers that think Baudrillard isn't
a fruitcake, what of
Chaminade/Regis/Stuyvesant/Hunter/HenHud/Monticello/Scarsdale/Albany
alums? Restrict the pool to NYS former debaters. Hire
through the coaches. That is, I go to Joe Vaughan and
ask him to bring extra judges (or something along
these lines, I'm thinking out loud here) and NYSFL
pays for them. They are, in that case, products of the
system, chosen by reliable coaches (and I only listed
the schools with big programs, but it should include
any school in the league). You would visibly raise the
level of judging by bringing in experienced former
varsity debaters who, for the most part, would have no
particular axes to grind (or who I wouldn't want to
grind with my axe!). Make it invisible to the coaches
being asked to bring the extras, or provide them with
some tangible benefit, and you remove some of the onus
of acquiring these judges in the first place. But
whatever is done, I think the presence of such judges
would be highly regarded by all.
As for rating judges, I'm constantly torn on this one.
Usually I rate them myself when I tab, because I know
everyone, but that just allows me my personal bias.
Any tabroom rating is personal bias. At Bump I was
going to try ratings from the schools providing the
judges, but never got to implement it because I
cancelled the tournament. So maybe you go with what I
think was an LDEP suggestion, namely, all-random
judging. If your pool is better trained and includes
those alumni above, a student ought to be able to pick
up any given ballot. But allow a small number of
strikes. I honestly have nothing against strikes, and
from my tabroom perspective I've seen them used a lot
lately. Inevitably a handful of judges, the ones who
are notoriously pig-headed, are the ones who get
struck. Bad news travels fast. It happened at
Lexington, Bump and Bronx. A bazillion judges, but
only about 8 or 9 people struck to death. From the
debaters' point of view, it does allow them to remove
someone who has dropped them for the last four years;
when I was regularly judging there were people I
couldn't pick up ever, and I hated myself for it, and
they hated me for it more. I can understand why they
might like to block me; it would be an act of
self-preservation in the competition, rather than an
attempt to move LD further off the cliff.
This whole move to change the judging is predicated on
the assumption that it would improve the tournament
and make it more attractive to competitors. As you
say, word gets out, and the buzz against States is
persistent. And there is a real problem underlying the
buzz (which is, I agree, out of proportion to the
problem). Ignoring the buzz doesn't make it go away,
and probably exacerbates the problem. We have an
opportunity to provide an exemplar LD tournament, or
not. Why wouldn't we do the former?
[He talked about why we have the generous regionals tournaments.]
As for the whole regionals thing vs top competition, I
can't make a strong argument either way because I
don't feel strongly either way. My hope would be that
if you attracted the strongest competitors in the
state, that would be good; there is nothing about the
regionals process that discourages them that I know
of. Regionals would allow less strong debaters enter a
big state tournament they might not otherwise attend,
and that's not a bad thing. But the better the
tournament is perceived to be, the better it is, in
their minds, to attend.
My guess is that taking even a small number of steps
in aid of what I've been suggesting would be perceived
as a big move on the part of NYSFL. I certainly
perceived the organization as monolithic and
uninterested in the community it serves: you've
already put paid to that (and I've made sure that, as
much as I can, everyone knows it, just as I told
people I had issues in the first place—you've been
greatly responsive and helpful). I don't know of
anyone who doesn't want a great state finals. We don't
have a great state finals now. There are improvements
that can be made. If we demonstrate a desire to make
them, we immediately improve the entire operation.
Obviously the one thing I think would trump all is the
underclassmen judging; some of the other suggestions
might help too.
[If you're really clever you'll notice I never volunteered to do any work. I'd be happy to do so, but I do not want this to look as if I am in any way interested in running things in the league. My complaints are being made because I believe they will get a hearing, not because I believe we need new people running things. There's nothing wrong with the work these folks do, and they do plenty of it. I just want them to do it differently.]
[And it may be that I really am starting to believe that LD just might be going over the cliff, and that now is the time to do something about it, that has me fingering so many pies all of a sudden. But then again, empty bloviating is a bit pointless. I'll get a new LDEP thing up shortly, plus the great novice proposal, which I just began outlining. I've got to get all this stuff moving before golf season! It was 50 degrees today. Goodbye, TOC, hello Fore.]
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