Methinks, from a comment he posted, that Termite feels that I was aspersing him personally when I suggested we would knock any ideas about Sept-Oct out of his head when he returns to the Ship of Hud from the Dinghy of Camp. In fact, this was a reference to the traditional uselessness of institute cases in the real world of tournament debates. There’s a number of reasons for this (and I’m not casting aspersions at OMG here for a change, but at institutes in general). First of all, most of the topic analysis at institutes is done by people who were not born before Reagan left the White House, so they don’t bring a wealth of experience to their analysis. This is not to say that the analysis of old fogies is better always than the analysis of young Turks, but the old fogies do tend to have a broader perspective by virtue of the arithmetically larger amount of accrued experience from their advanced years, and that broader perspective can prove valuable in analyzing a resolution. Secondly, topic analyses at institutes can be kneejerk. That is, they must needs be arrived at quickly, and the first ideas that come to mind may not be the best ones. In the normal process of analyzing a topic, for a number of weeks from the moment one hears it, followed by research, followed by deciding on a competitive approach or two, a lot can happen in one’s brain in one’s understanding of that topic. The longer you think about it, the more you see. The likelihood that your original thoughts are equal to your final thoughts is slim; by the same token, I would suggest that the Jan-Feb cases run the first week of January bear little resemblance to the Jan-Feb cases run by the same people at TOCs. And third, the institute approaches, including the research, are fairly public domain by the time the tournaments begin. Everybody knows what those cases are, they’ve been argued from here to Tuesday, and they’ve lost any appeal they might have in the area of freshness. Sometimes this may not matter, on a more standard sort of resolution, but if certain ideas have been carefully studied and analyzed for a while, it does tend to give your opponents a leg up when you go about presenting those exact ideas. Not that I’m supporting stealth debating, of course, but a little mystery does provide for a little romantic allure, eh?
Does this undermine the value of institutes? Not really. I think that debaters serious about the activity pretty much benefit overall from the institute experience. This is merely one aspect of that experience that I have seen borne out annually since my personal Day One. In other words, I am passing along my broader perspective by virtue of the arithmetically larger amount of accrued experience I have from my advanced years.
It’s not easy being almost the oldest person in debate (there are one or two more doddering even than I, if you can believe it). Oh, the burdens.
In any case, I’m happy to see that Termite, despite being deep in the process of institute indoctrination (I think he’s at the part where he’s learning never to go all-in with a pair of 3s on the first hand), manages to find time to do his reserve work in the VCA.
I’ve sent off the rooming list to the New Haven hotel. The game is afoot, in other words. I’ve been thinking about doing a podcast about it, i.e., about the whole inside-the-tabroom thing. I don’t know if anyone would be interested, including myself, but a sort of audio diary of the event, as it happens (plus leading up to it) might be of some amusement. I’ll think about it. I had hoped to do part 4 of Caveman over the last weekend, but my malaise took down my voice, so I couldn’t even do that. Aaaarrghhh! Still, I do hope to have all of Caveman recorded by the beginning of the school year. Considering its length, it will take a whole school year for anyone to listen to it. Be brave, VCA!
1 comment:
I generally agree with what you are saying, but it seems that some of the harms of the institute that you speak of actually are benefits of the institute in two ways.
The first benefit is that the VBIer, who already had 1 week of experience with the topic is familiar with the resolution. Regardless of how good the topic analysis is, the VBIer still spends a week debating the topic, and is extremely familiar with the resolution. This gives him the advantage, because he knows the resolution better than his opponent.
The second benefit is that the VBIer, who spent time going through case positions is in fact more progressed with his case and is running un-stock positions, with a lot of thought behind them, while everyone else is still stuck in the first week, as you put it. The VBIer would not be running any old case positions because he had already progressed past that point.
At least that’s how I see it
-Termite
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