It takes a while to get back on track after 4 days away. My feeds, for instance, both for debate and the DJ, are woefully unattended, being secondary functions at best. I did prep up last night for tonight’s Sailorfest, however. Last chance to convince the plebes that, for reasons that are apparently hard to understand, actually going out and debating is one of those pesky albeit integral aspects of being a member of the debate team. Also, I had a moment of enlightenment on Bump and realized that, worst-case scenario, I could put tab in a classroom and a bunch of PF rounds in the library. The waiting list has shrunk accordingly. And it’s not as if our library is all that great as far as tab rooms go. No comfy chairs, no internet, nothing special. In fact, putting tab and ballots over by the cafeteria makes a ton of logistical sense. Even if things settle down and the entries start dropping like flies, I may still make the move. And last night I even entered some NFL points; I’m hoping to catch up with O’C and the Scientologists one of these days. Except he knows all the ways to garner points and I only know one: try to remember to enter points now and then. No surprise there, eh?
One issue that I think I can address without too much mental exercise (there’s a couple of issues outstanding) is that of when a ballot is over. That is, at what point is a ballot considered submitted and fixed? There are different aspects to this worth discussing. First of all, we need to establish the premise that the ballot is the judge’s evaluation of the round. Period. Nothing else should play into this. Other things often do, but they shouldn’t. We all know that sometimes judges vote on reputation, or personal bias, or something patently bogus, which is something we, as a community, can’t do very much about. If the topic is capital punishment and I’m against capital punishment and no argument will ever convince me that cp is good in any situation, then I shouldn’t be judging that round. Most of us aren’t like that, at least that baldly, but there are other, more subtle prejudices: a tendency to prefer one kind of debate over another, for instance. But even judges with strong opinions about debate are usually more than open to whatever goes on in the round, and don’t vote on their preference when it obviously lost the round at hand. What I’m saying is, the goal is that the ballot reflect the round, and the round only.
With this idea in mind, it is pretty standard to suggest that, after the round ends, the debaters should not continue debating it. While there are rules about speeches and timings during the round, there are no rules surrounding how much time someone can spend convincing the judge after the last timer has gonged. If the judge is unclear on a point, asking the debaters for clarification is not the solution. Of course, a judge can ask to read evidence. That’s fine by me. On the other hand, I personally am a little against asking for a case; if the debater was so garbled that you couldn’t understand what he or she was saying when he or she said it, unless there’s a physical disability involved, reading the case is counter to the idea of public speaking, an inherent aspect of debate. To me, reading a case is sort of cheating on the judge’s part, and not fair to the debater whose case isn’t read. Unless of course both cases are read, at which point we could all have stayed home in the first place. So, point number one, no more persuading after the round has ended.
Occasionally (and this happened at BBv3.0), a judge will come by and say that they want to change the speaker points after a ballot is entered (sometimes way after a ballot is entered). This is not allowed. (Of course, if they’ve read the results posting and seen an inaccuracy, that’s different, and of course we’ll fix our errors.) The thing is, we have no idea what has transpired since the ballot was delivered, and neither do the debaters. Once you’ve given your ballot to the runner (or ballot table, or tab), it’s over. We could all reflect till the cows come home and honestly and sincerely change our minds a hundred times, so we set a moment beyond which you can’t do that. That moment is when you pass the ballot along into the system.
A third case is when a judge changes his or her mind while contemplating the round. This is not unheard of, and what happens is this. The round ends, and the judge precipitously marks up the ballot. But, while putting together the RFD and studying the flow, the judge realizes that such-and-such was said or whatever, and that the decision is not as originally seen. The ballot is changed accordingly. (This happens a lot with speaker points, less often with actual decisions). In these cases, it is simply the judge sitting there thinking and making a decision. There is no discussion with anyone. Now the thing is, we’ve already established that there’s no discussion after the round, and no changing the ballot after it’s handed in. But the period between the end of the round and the handing in of the ballot is the judge’s time to do whatever the judge wants in figuring the round in the privacy of that judge’s mind. I’ve judged a lot of rounds in my day and some of them were over in the AC and some of them took a lot of time after the round was over to parse, argument by argument, weight by weight. So what we are asking for in tab is that the judge deliver the best decision possible, by honest means. If it takes a while, and requires some paradigm shifting, so be it. (Just don’t hold up the tournament, you yabbo!)
By the way, along these lines, quite a few ballots are filled out incorrectly by a judge, and then corrected by that judge, without any influence whatsoever. We write down the wrong thing, fill out the wrong box, whatever. Would the rule be, if we didn’t accept what I’m saying here about this situation, that if a judge incorrectly fills out a ballot, an honest mistake, we are stuck with the wrong decision because that was the original decision? Na’ah.
So the deal is this: once the round is over, the judge is required to use nothing but the judge noodle to sort it out (although with recourse to evidence, if desired). No further debating may ensue, and it is the judge’s responsibility to prohibit such debating. Then, the judge will think and do whatever it takes until submitting the ballot, at which point it is fixed for all time. These parameters are clear and logical. And they’re the ones we use week after week after week (after week after week—I need a new night job!).
2 comments:
Consider this situation: without debater intervention, a judge comes to a decision and then fills out the ballot. Since this judge is apparently not very efficient, he has not yet handed his ballot to a runner (or there are not currently any runners around). He instead starts to give his oral decision, and he says something incorrect, and a debater corrects him (for instance, claiming to have heard an argument that was not, in fact, made). If that correction causes the judge to change his mind, is that still allowed? Or should the debater not argue at all with the decision?
This is the worst case scenario. Once a judge starts to talk to the debaters, that's as good as handing in the ballot, I think. Your example requires that the debater actually made such and such an argument, and more to the point, that the judge heard it, or ought to have heard it. What if the debater made the argument poorly, and the judge didn't register it as a result? What if the debater's style sucks so much that he's unclear? What if the debater just thinks he made the argument, but didn't? Making the ballot untouchable at this point removes these possibilities, or any other subjective issue. The adjudication is already subjective enough. At this point it becomes he said, she said. I try to train my debaters not to argue with the judges after the round. It's bad form. Just listen; if it's idiotic, suck it up. There's plenty of judges that will dock you speaker points for arguing with them after a round.
By me, often judges make bad decisions. When you're on the receiving end of a bad decision, that's too bad, but the world will not end, and you can strike that judge next time.
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