I made good headway on Vigilantism last night. It’s an interesting enough subject, and it strikes me as quite debatable, once you get past the initial negative connotations of the concept. But the aff will get to set the stage, and provided that this is dealt with adequately, good things could happen.
Yesterday I sent out an MHL announcement. I did some last minute cleaning up of the website and let ‘er rip. The big change this year will be the 4 rounds rather than 3, meaning that you won’t automatically get torpedoed by one bad judge, or one bad round. Also, with three rounds, whenever there was a glitch in the early morning round that Eric of Michele refers to as attendance-taking, the abused parties got byes, and sometimes there were a lot of these, and one bye out of three rounds is a real monkey wrench. No more. If you’re not registered by 9, you’re out. If you show up later, you’ve got a round-one forfeit. Everyone else debates. That should work.
As you may or may not know, there’s been another turnover at Lexington. Maggie has gone south (literally) and CP has introduced the new coach via email. I’ll meet her at Yale, no doubt. Yale has a certain Everybody-Goes-to-Rick’s feeling, kicking off the new year for many of us who don’t do Texas, and there’s a general reunion atmosphere and the weather’s usually nice and the warm glow of a new season’s promise hasn’t turned into will it never end already. JV and I are in tab, sharing with Kaz at least on Friday as she manipulates the Policians. Fun stuff.
I’ve also committed this year to working with CP at Princeton. I highly value CP’s work attempting to normalize the northeast’s tournaments, which he’s done by, among other things, imposing certain rules of order behind the scenes with the tournament directors, generously allowing us to use his tabroom.com software for free, and developing a pool of tab talent for the tournaments to draw from. He’s transformed Yale and Columbia in fantastic ways, and I think he’s also the person who introduced Miss America runners-up to the judge pool, so for that alone, he gets my vote. Anyhow, there will be changes with the Tigers this year. They will run a pure novice LD division rather than JV, which I always like because it keeps the competition for newbies at an even level while allowing second-year students some real competition in the varsity division. I mean, where’s the beauty of beating someone who doesn’t have any experience? Additionally, I have insisted on an improvement in the judge pool, and have banned non-LD Tiger Parli folks from judging. I remember too often sitting listening to some Cub parliamentarian “training” the LD judges before the tournament, sessions at which I’ve never heard so much nonsense in my life. And decisions I witnessed in rounds were often simply not acceptable. If you have aspirations of being a strong national tournament, you need a pool of judges who are experienced in LD. They don’t necessarily need to be $ircuit judges—far from it—but when they walk into a round they need to impart an sense between the two debaters they are adjudicating that, yes, they will get a good, fair opinion, and they can debate at their best. That’s what good judging is all about. And one would expect, if the name Princeton is the one over the proverbial door, that they would try to do things right. (Princeton also used to have the best homemade ice cream shop on the circuit, which I will report on in due course. The VCA knows the things that I find really important.)
Speaking of novices, I’m pretty sure Ridge will make the similar switch from JV this year, at least in LD. I do hold strong reservations about Manchester, though, with their novice division. Running Nov-Dec at what, for MHLers at least, is their second tournament, is something that I just can’t see happening. This so takes me back to the Modest Novice proposal. My feeling is that I may get some good Pffft representation at the Home of the Albino Bagel (or, as O’C and I have begun calling it on seeing their gavel, the Kingdom of the Crystal Penis), I doubt if I’ll be bringing along any novices. They can stay in Sailorville and prep themselves for the following week’s MHL. Or better yet, start lining up that Bump housing. Bump is, after all, coming any day now.
Oy. Bump is coming.
Oy.
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