Forensics: From the comments, more on MJP

This is from the comments to the last MJP post:

What about the real world aspect of debate? In life we don't get to choose our interviewer when looking for a job. We can't pick the favorable admission committee to get into the college of our choice. Why do it in debate? Also I think it's worth noting that speech does not get to pick judges either - and there are plenty of different styles across the ie world.

I like the idea of a hybrid- let every judge identify themselves as new traditional or circuit. Then give everyone an appropriate number of strikes. I think you would have quite a different activity. A much better one I think.....

The real world aspects of debate? In the real world, I very much do choose what jobs to interview for, and decide what colleges to apply for. If I have chosen wisely, one would imagine that I understand very well what the interviewers are looking for, I understand the nature of the place I'm interviewing to get into, and I am the sort of person they would look on favorably. I choose a job possibility because I like what they're doing; I choose a college because I know what kind of college it is and what that college is like. I could be wrong, of course, but I will prepare accordingly, with the belief that I know what the interviewer is looking for because I know what the interview is for in the first place. The better I know what the institution is for which I am interviewing, the better I will adapt. And I will certainly choose to apply to institutions compatible to me and my talents.

Anyhow, MJP is not about picking a sympathetic judge, which I have to admit was originally my reaction back when I first encountered it. There are two debaters, and they have mutually ranked that judge at the same level. That level can be from 1 to 4. The point is that the choice is mutual, not that it is favorable.

But stay with me here.

The thing is, speaking of the real world, there are plenty of tournaments that don't offer MJP. Probably most of them, if the truth were known. Events with MJP tend to be of the same stripe, working the universe of TOC bids and highly competitive programs and debaters. This is not to suggest that all highly competitive debaters are on a TOC trail, but for those for whom TOC is a possibility, then yes, they are. Why else are they doing all that work, preparing themselves to beat the circuit debaters? MJP is something you see at some, not all, tournaments.

In the real world, there is no question that debaters break down broadly into circuit and traditional. At a tournament with some level of TOC bid, there is going to be a contingent of circuit debaters, and a contingent of circuit judges. And if you are a traditional debater, up against a circuit debater and a circuit judge, all things being equal, you are going to lose. (And you may not even know why, given the speed, complexity and often blippiness of some circuit agruments.) I would like to be able to say that the opposite is true, that a trad debater will beat a circuit debater in front of a trad judge, all things being equal, but I have seen a marked tendency among judges who don't really understand what is going on to pick up the circuit debater based on the appearance of that debater having been better in the round. The judge doesn't want to look dumb, in other words.

So yes, there are times when MJP will put debaters of similar style in front of a judge inclined to favor that style. But if the two debaters are of dissimilar styles, they won't have mutual judges highly ranked. So they're going to get someone way down on their list. Both their lists. They will have to adjust to a newcomer, more likely than not, or someone neither of them knows well. Advantage? Beats me.

Keep in mind this, though, if we're in the real world. MJP will not be going away any time soon. Tournaments are a business, with sellers and customers. As a Tournament Director you design the tournament you want, to appeal to the customers you want to attract. Most people running a TOC tournament feel that MJP will bring in the circuit folks, so they use it. TOC and NDCA both use MJP, and from that example other tournaments flow. And here's the rub, that I was addressing in my original note: At tournaments where there is MJP, mostly only the circuit teams rank. As a result, that tournament becomes biased to the circuit. My core argument is that if everyone ranked, we would change that bias, and until everyone ranks, people like Anonymous here, who obviously is against MJP, is handing rounds to the people who like MJP. Total commitment to MJP would, in other words, minimize the harms (if any).

As for the rest of Anonymous's comment, sure, strikes eliminate a handful of judges, but what is the appropriate number of strikes? It's certainly not all the judges of a certain persuasion. And does anonymous really want tab to assign a random judge to the round at which a team will be eliminated from competition? I understand the arguments that answer yes, but given the number of judges I see who are completely untrained and thrown into tournaments as warm bodies at best by programs who are notorious for this practice, I think those arguments fail. How about other forensics activities? Well, go run your edgy same-sex piece in front of someone wearing a wimple. Yeah, sure, you get what you get in IEs, but I'd like a show of hands from IEers who are happy with preset biases among their judges, over which the speakers get no veto power. But more importantly, I'm not aware of a schism in speech like the one at present in LD, where numerous programs (including my own) have actually stopped doing it because of resistance to the direction the activity is taking.

Anyhow, the hybrid tournament Anonymous likes is certainly out there. In our region, there's probably enough of them to mostly fill up a debater's dance card, including one, Newark, with a TOC bid. No one forces anyone to go to any particular tournament. Programs can pick and choose as they may. If tournaments that run like this get very popular, people like me who run tournaments as fund-raisers will take notice. That's back to the tournament-as-a-business model. But even if we don't change, there's something for everybody. But don't argue the real world, please. In the real world we do make choices that are favorable to our ends all the time. And in the real world, MJP is what's going to determine how a lot of LD (and Policy) tournaments are run for the foreseeable future. In the real world, if we don't want circuit styles to virtually eliminate traditional styles because it's the circuit styles that are winning not because they're better but because their practitioners are better at working the system, then trad people must learn to do likewise. I do not know what the outcome will be (and honestly, anyone who knows me knows I prefer traditional LD), but at least we'll fight the good fight.
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