Will these Pups never end?

I will argue this, however, he said, continuing yesterday’s discussion, and responding to something Bietz mentioned in his Yale discussion. Overall we (the debate community) are the biggest paper wasters in the history of paper waste. The average tab room can go through a couple of thousand sheets of paper during a tournament without batting an eye. We rival those out-of-work actors in Times Square attempting to distribute check-it-out handbills (a sentence I feel needed to be written in my personal attempt to preserve the hyphen, which is apparently dying off, according to the latest reports). At the Pups, if I remember correctly, we were copier-less, aside from our multipurpose printers, which is why our distribution of skems was thin on the ground. But to be honest, even at other tournaments I’m administering I’ve been doing my best to minimize this waste. I’ve eliminated results packets from MHLs and Bump, and instead post them online as pdfs. This way, everyone has access to them (although they might have to wait a few minutes), they don’t get lost when people need to check them 6 months from now, and they don’t use up a couple of reams of paper. I post skems at MHLs and Bump instead of printing them, for the same reason. We used to say, Print me a couple of hundred of these, my little runner daemon, and off our little runner daemon would scurry off in the effort to please the ferocious tabulators, sending the paper flying in all directions (except, usually, the judges' lounge). It’s just a waste. It may be slightly less convenient for the judges to have to consult a posting, but to be honest, in my experiences LD judges aren’t what I would refer to as being of the hustle persuasion, and this having to get up and look at a schematic (although, obviously, we do try to distribute sheets to a judges’ lounge) is unlikely to do much worse than working off a few of the doughnut calories they’ve acquired that morning, assuming that there were free doughnuts available in the first place. I’d rather waste doughnuts than paper.

CP made a decent point about splitting squads and the desirability of tournaments that cater to the whole team, with both debate and IEs. But I wonder how much that really applies. Some schools that prefer college tournaments have very large squads, and plenty of money, and go where they want to go, and they simply don’t go to their local high schools. They play fast and loose with their connections to the community, on a fairly unpredictable basis. I guess my point is less concerned with someone going to a college tournament than someone simply not getting with the high school community overall. I am very proud of our MHL admin team, which spreads out to many invitational tabrooms (like Yale and Lex and so forth). We support each other, we help each other, we encourage new programs, we want everyone to get what they need forensics-wise and to have a good time while it’s happening. We even like each other, and enjoy the time spent working together. We can disagree on things and be civilized with each other over those disagreements (and maybe change our minds). We are about as political as a herd of neutered wild moose. Which may be one reason why I stay with the activity, because, let’s face it, it’s not my day job, and I could just as easily play a lot more golf, and finally get a Wii and generally sleep more on the weekends. Anyhow, most schools do support each other, and this is an aberration, not some horrible trend. But it’s a bad aberration (is that a pleonasm?), and it should be noted, because I assure you, it definitely is noticed.

Mention of CP brings up a chief issue of college tournaments, which I’ve mentioned before and which is worth repeating. One of the big problems with colleges is that there is no legacy, and no consistency. This year’s directorate graduates, and next year’s directorate starts at square one again. Adults are in short supply. CP, administering Yale and Columbia, among others, helps overcome this problem. Frankly, he’s the reason I’m tabbing Yale these days, because he got a commitment to limit the size of the field. (He’s also the reason I’m tabbing Columbia, but I think that’s because he couldn’t get his first 8 choices.) The thing is, if there’s an issue this year, he can work toward improving it next year, just as all of us do at our high school tournaments. God knows that Bump is a work in progress, but at least I know where the work needs to happen. CP brings that memory to the northeast college circuit. He deserves recognition for that.

And, speaking of recognition, kudos to Bietz. I’ve now listened to all of installment 2. Aside from a few moments when I was yelling at my iPod over some theory arguments, this is a valuable service being provided to the LD community. I just wish the installments were a little shorter. As far as I know, these things are the only debate events in the country that last longer than one of O’C’s awardathons.