Inconceivable

If you can explain to me why no amount of browbeating can get my team to send me their cases, I'd love to hear it. I'm now in the guerilla mode, for what it's worth. 2 novices out of 5 think, apparently, that showing me their cases will lead to ruin. Jeesh. If I haven't ruined them by now, than I've failed miserably. They're worse than you, you spalpeen! At least you're sneaky, dashing around dark corners in the night, leaving only a wisp of smoke to mark your passing; they're hiding in broad daylight right on the other end of our listserver. Go figure.

And interest in S&S seems pretty thin on the ground. If I don't hear some more pleas shortly, I'm going to can it, in two senses of the word. That is, put it off and record it later. The microphone is in the mail, and last night I fired up GarageBand, stared at it blankly, hit a few piano keys and shut it down. Then I downloading Audition, which seems to be the open source program of choice for voice recording. I also finished BizMan draft one, so I'll have something to practice with. Oh joy. Oh rapture. Menick on your iPod. If Orwell had foreseen that, he would have just rolled into a ball and given up.

Meanwhile, I've finally studied the Tournament Policies for LDEP. I can quibble here and there, but mostly I'm on the bus with them. See for yourself:

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LDEP Recommended Tournament Policies

The Lincoln-Douglas Education Project believes that competitive debate tournaments are ultimately a means to student education. Therefore, administrating a tournament is a serious educational responsibility. While recognizing that tournament directors may legitimately interpret this responsibility in different ways and that each tournament has its own unique character, we believe the following practices by tournament administrators are conducive to educationally constructive competition. Even if you reject some of the suggestions below, you can preserve and enhance the educational value of your tournament by bringing your best professional judgment to bear on this subject. Our overarching message is that tournament directors should think carefully about the educational goals of their tournament and should implement policies that will achieve those goals.

1. Publicize your policies in your invitation, tournament packet and opening assembly. Explanation helps coaches, judges and students know what they should expect, and makes it more likely that all parties will work together on a common educational project. Advance notice also helps coaches make informed decisions about which tournaments suit their own objectives. Authoritatively announcing judging policies (e.g., take the ballot instructions seriously) at the opening assembly indicates that you are serious about your policies, which will promote greater consistency and ultimately more fairness and educational value.

2. Announce the resolution to be debated and make clear to coaches, judges and students that students are expected to debate that resolution. Students have a right to know what topic they will be debating and what is required to win (i.e., what burdens they have). Because there is no presumption in LD, each side must defend a truth-claim about the resolution; specifically, the negative must do more than criticize the affirmative case. The affirmative is responsible to show that the resolution is more likely true than false, and the negative, to show that it is more likely false than true. The LDEP supports this burden scheme because it forces students to explore the arguments on both sides of an issue. Of course, if you wish for your tournament to observe a different burden scheme, you should make that clear, too.

3. Do not admit unaffiliated entries, and require that each student be accompanied by an adult (over 21) chaperone. Even if liability were not a major concern, unsupervised students are literally unaccountable to coaches, administrations, or other adult authority figures. When concerns arise about a student’s practices or her influence on other competitors, it is essential that judges and coaches be able to discuss the situation with a responsible, educationally committed adult.

4. Encourage educated adults, especially coaches, to fulfill judging obligations, and assign adult critics whenever possible, especially in elimination rounds. Because they control competitive incentives, judges are the most powerful teachers in debate. Tournament directors ultimately decide who wields this power. Students need to be held accountable to ordinary norms of clear thinking and speaking, and adult critics are more likely, on average, to reinforce these norms than are recent high school graduates. Educated community members will strengthen a judging pool if properly oriented. Some tournaments will find it necessary to include former debaters in their pools, but the LDEP believes younger critics need mentoring and should not dominate a pool or panel.

5. Do not allow judge ranks or preferences. These practices foster narrow and exclusive styles and shield students from meaningful criticism. Instead, encourage debaters to present themselves in a manner that is accessible to a wide range of audiences.

6. Implement and publicize procedures to block conflicts of interest. Many relationships to students besides those of coach, relative, or teammate may compromise a judge’s impartiality. To ensure the fairest competition for all students without even the appearance of impropriety, all judges should be required to recuse themselves from judging any students to whom they have potentially biasing relationships. The LDEP lists such relationships in our “Conflicts of Interest” document, which could be a basis for your policy.

7. If you allow judge strikes, then allow only a limited number, and ask that coaches (not students) fill out any strike forms. Limited strikes may be appropriate to eliminate truly exceptional conflicts not screened by a formal conflicts-of-interest policy. But strike decisions should be overseen by adult educators and should not be used as a way to shield students from meaningful criticism.

8. Distribute judging guidelines (the LDEP’s or your own). Make your expectations about educationally constructive judging practices explicit. This need not involve micromanaging judges or restricting the content of resolutional arguments; see the LDEP’s “Judging Recommendations” for a model.

9. Encourage judges to develop, discuss and publish judging paradigms. To help students learn to adapt to the wide range of audiences they may encounter, encourage judges to discuss their expectations with debaters before rounds, and encourage regular judges to post written paradigms online.

10. Make the purpose, range and interpretation of points clear to all students and judges. The LDEP ballot (which comes either with or without point guidelines) offers one reasonable interpretation of points, but each tournament should ensure that whatever interpretation it endorses is clearly communicated and consistently implemented. Whatever scale you adopt, strongly discourage point inflation, which compromises the informational (and hence educational) value of this important tool.

11. Prohibit judges from reading cases, and opponents from reading each other’s cases, before the round is decided. To maintain LD’s identity as a spoken contest, it is essential that we require students to present their oral arguments with sufficient clarity to persuade their judges. Allowing written arguments to sway decisions turns debate into an essay contest. Selective review of disputed evidence (not whole cases) may be necessary, and is permissible.

12. Implement a procedure to allow judges to call for slower speaking. Allowing this kind of active judge intervention in the round is a bold step, but something is needed because different judges can handle (or simply prefer) different speeds, and this can’t always be accurately conveyed before the debate starts. Here is a sample speed policy: Before the round starts, judges should tell debaters if they want a moderate speaking speed. During the round, a judge may call out “Speed!” if a debater is talking too fast. The debater should slow down, without penalty. A second “Speed!” can be called if the debater is still speaking too quickly, still without penalty. After a third call of “Speed!” the debater should receive points no higher than the midpoint of the tournament’s de facto range. Further failure to slow down can and should result in lower points or a loss. Of course, if the judge doesn’t mind speed, this policy doesn’t prevent it – however, learning to speak effectively at a moderate pace is most likely to benefit students in their lives.

13. Plan a realistic schedule with adequate time for meals and rest. Debate is more fun and more academically enriching for everyone involved when it does not require the sacrifice of health. Build in a buffer in case things don’t run as smoothly as you would hope.

14. Implement procedures to promote research integrity. Make sure that all students, judges, and coaches know the requirements for ethical evidence use and how they should handle cases of suspected dishonesty. Intentional fabrication or misrepresentation of evidence warrants the harshest penalties, up to expulsion from the tournament. The LDEP has published guidelines on research ethics that can help define standards in this area.