So I spent the weekend up in Poughkeepsie at the Vassar Round Robin, which is, of course, for yeasty debaters. Or at least that’s how I always think of them. O’C calls them rising debaters. Same thing.
It’s a nice campus, and it was nice weather (except the building we were in yesterday was freezing), but God knows where all the students were. I mean, with that late summer thing going on, a Sunday afternoon on campus ought to be a collective last gasp, but when I took a walk around the place, it was deserted. Maybe they were all watching rounds.
I was in this as a judge, and judge I did. As always, since I judge infrequently, I’m a little behind on speed, but that was only an issue in one round, where the debaters, asking for preferences and being told speed would be an issue, ignored me completely. Very odd. I mean, no one ever lost the ballot of someone capable of great speed by slowing down, but no one ever won the ballot of someone not capable of great speed by speeding up. I can see if it’s a panel of 3, and you figure you’re going for the 2, but in a panel of 2? Oh, well. You make your own choices, and you take the consequences. As for me, there were only two split decisions over the weekend, one where there was no way to decide anything, as both judges agreed, so a split decision made sense, and one where we just didn’t agree, which happens plenty of times. Almost all the debaters I saw were quality, although, as younger students, lacking a little final polish. At some point the round is about picking up the ballot, which is done on one or two voting issues. Tying those voters to your weighing/criterion? Better still. More of that kind of thing would be in order. Still, these people will all be dynamite by the end of the season. They’re close now.
One thing that seemed clear was that the Sept-Oct topic floats in this vacuum that is hard to escape. That is, it is such a narrow topic that it’s hard to relate it to much of anything aside from itself, which is limiting for the LD mind. True values like justice and morality and the like don’t necessarily apply, and the value of education, while logical, isn’t really a value. The goal of education is acquisition of knowledge, regardless of how you do that acquiring, and the goal of knowledge is truth, a basic philosophical nugget, but one is hardly going to value truth in the round (I hope). So, people were forced to come up with something else. Democracy is popular, and probably the default going forward, but there were a few other reasonable constructs, including economics. At least $ allows you something to weigh on, but it’s hard to imagine both cases linking back to it, so, well, there you are. I stick by my original prediction that the topic is okay, but that rounds will start sounding all alike before long. I do imagine that affs will be forced into some sort of advocacy if they really want to win, because without something specific, they’re just saying no, which is, as members of the VCA know, the weakest sort of refutation. And with this topic, aff is forced to refute, if you will, in the 1AC; the “not” wording, which normally forces dueling advocacies and limits critiques, acts more like a straightjacket with this topic. Oh, well. I always say that when rounds start sounding all alike, it’s the best debaters that win because the cases are just the starting point. There’s no surprises, just skill. In other words, have at it, ladies and gentlemen.
JV and Kaz and O’C and I kept remarking that the coming weekend is the last one we will have before we kick into high gear. All of us plan on one variation or another of relaxing and having fun. Not that we don’t have fun at tournaments, but relaxing? Not really. I did get JV hooked up to broadcast via @DebateTab, so he too can send annoying messages at the Pubs and elsewhere. Plenty of Pupists have signed up, and presumably most will by tournament time. I hope I can come up with enough tweets to warrant all of this. If not, maybe I’ll just retweet @aplusk. At least that way they won’t accuse me of not trying.
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