Bump debriefing, part two: Judge acquisition

The other thing about judges, aside from having them do their job, is having them in the first place. Early on in my debate career, I noticed that the Newark tournament always ended with a final round judged entirely by Newark alumni, which they seemed to reckon by the dozens. The alums came—and gave—back, and Newark seemed to have the monopoly on it. Everyone else had a couple of alums, of course, but nothing like this. I was impressed.

I tend to think that I have a good relationship with the Sailors, and I was very appreciative this year of the number who came back to work the tournament for me. Absent Kate, who turns up to stay in the family will, we went back as far as Noah and Wedro (and might even have had Jared if he knew the difference between November and December), up to pretty much the whole shooting match of ’07 grads. There are no more reliable judges than the ones who were your own debaters. They come because they got something out of debate themselves, and understand that your tournament is an important part of it. I’m far from a tradition hound like O’C, but there is no question that a tournament simply continuing at a school year in and year out is a tradition in and of itself, and all the aspects of being a part of that tournament, from starting out as a runner to ultimately running the tables, is a high point of the academic experience. It’s fun. You know what it meant for you, and you know what it will mean for others, and you want it to continue even after you’re gone, so you come back and give it a little nudge to keep it moving. I’m not much of a fan of former high school debaters who still want to be high school debaters when they’re in college, reliving the experience through actual high school debaters rather than living the college experience that is more appropriate to them, but I am a firm believer in giving back reasonably to the activity that was your most important for four years. When I see the Sailors, Ret’d, doing this, it does my heart proud. Add to this that these judges, this tribe of Sailors, Ret’d, is as predictable a judge pool as you’re going to find, because they were all raised on orthodoxy. Every single one of them will expect you to argue the resolution and achieve your value through your criterion, and every game you play that doesn’t do that will work against you. You can read the new guidelines for LD from the NFL, or you can get a can opener and pull apart the brains of the Sailors, Ret’d, and see exactly the same thing. Of course, there’s variations, and a card-carrier like Wedro thinks differently from a philosopher like Kate, but they’re watching the same round and, ultimately, judging it the same way, with the same expectations of the debaters. No one should be shocked that both semis rounds, entirely adjudicated by Sailors, Ret’d, were 5-0s. And the thing is, if for some reason this style of judging doesn’t appeal to you, nevertheless, the paradigm is clear as a bell. You know going in what they want. If you don’t give it to them, there should be no surprise that they don’t pick you up. (And I’ll have more to say on this at a later date, because some interesting ideas on digressive debate were discussed at the alumni dinner.)

So I have the good fortune of a great group of alums to come back and help me out. I have also, at times, drawn on the debate community at large to hire extra judges. This year, with only a couple of exceptions, I didn’t need to bring in extras, but usually I do put out a call and hope for a good draw, and usually it happens. And herein is an important point. A tournament is as good as its judges. That is, I could draw the best debaters in the universe, but at the point where I don’t have judges who are up to a certain standard, the debaters and their coaches won’t be happy, and the tournament will lose esteem. I am perfectly fine with local tournaments with lots of inexperienced (albeit trained) judges, but at some point, especially if you have expectations of gaining or maintaining TOC bids, you do want to guarantee a base level of judging that meets the standard you are setting. A tournament director must reach out to get the best judges possible, if TOC bids are that standard. It is one thing to lose a round because your judge’s paradigm and your debating were not a match (but that’s your problem, bub, and not your judge’s), and another thing altogether to lose a round, even maybe a bid round, because the skill set of the adjudicators simply weren’t up to the task of figuring out a normal debate round.

There are a variety of reasons why I no longer offer policy at Bump, and one of them is this very aspect of acquiring good judges. Having no real link to the policy world, I could never reasonably draw in the extra judges necessary to make a tournament work reliably year after year. And by the way, the word extra is important. A good tournament needs more than enough judges, not just enough judges. I’ll talk about that more when we get to the tabroom discussion. But my point is, I could barely make policy happen, much less make it happen well, at least as far as judges were concerned. What I did was dump the burden on the attending teams, with heavy judging obligations, but I always went into the policy events with fear and trembling. One year we had exactly one judge for the final round: it was that bad.

So the moral of the story is, one of the chief jobs of a tournament director before a tournament starts is the acquisition of good judges (keeping, of course, within budget). If you’re lucky, you can start with your own alums. Absent that, keep up your community connections. Make your tournament one that judges will want to come to (think hospitality, as mentioned yesterday). Make the whole thing fun, rather than some solemn, mind-numbing, grueling marathon.

If all else fails, give out a Jon Cruz award.