How to be a good debate citizen

Or, 25 steps to a better you.

1. Don’t ask questions because you’re too lazy to look something up. Especially don’t ask questions that would make someone else have to look it up for you.

2. Show up and stay showed up until you’re no longer needed. Then go away.

3. Be the first one to pick up your ballots.

4. Be the first one to get your ballots back to tab.

5. If you have friends in the tab room, they will have had dinner with you the night before. If they didn’t have dinner with you the night before, you do not have friends in the tab room, and you should go hang out somewhere else.

6. Cover all your judging, and if you’re a big school, bring a couple extra. Be a giver, not a taker. If none of your alums are willing to come back to judge, you’re doing something wrong. If none of your upperclassmen will judge underclassmen, you’re doing something really wrong.

7. Do not use foul language with the students you are judging. You may have been brought up in a manure pile, but some of them do not like to find themselves awash in your vulgarities. Also, "You effed up, dude," is not exactly a constructive criticism.

8. Do not expect anyone to read your paradigm past the sentences that say a) that you are fine with speed and b) that you will vote on theory. The rest is just nonsense.

9. If you are asked to text your decision, you might want to text your decision; it’s so much easier than coming up with an excuse for not texting your decision. And if you don’t know how to text, how can you possibly know how to judge?

10. If you do something really stupid, join the club. Admit it, and move on. Just don’t do it again. And again. And again.

11. Do not imbibe alcoholic beverages if there is a possibility that you will have to judge within the next six hours. You’re not that wonderful to begin with. You intoxicated is even less wonderful.

12. Ear buds should be in your pocket, not in your ears, when you are judging.

13. Double thirties in a round, while acting as proof positive that you do not have a clue how to judge, do not give any real indication of how well the debaters did. Don’t do it.

14. The tab room does not have your missing ballots. The tab room does not have anyone’s missing ballots, including its own. We haven't gotten a complete set of all of our ballots in our packets since that one time back in 1997. Why should you be any different?

15. Since it is never all right for you not to fulfill your judging obligation, don’t bother to ask if you really have to come back tomorrow morning. You do.

16. It’s Mutual Judge Preference, not Most Preferred Judging. If your debater got a 4 judge, so did their opponent. That was the best we could do. It’s called an even playing field. If you want more 1s, rank more people as 1s.

17. If you think there’s a ballot error, act quickly. Depending on the error, the further away we are from its occurrence, the harder it is to fix. The tab room does not think it is perfect; far from it. We’ll take accuracy however we can get it.

18. Smoke when you’re not obligated to do anything else, not instead of being where we can find you when we need you. Better yet, quit smoking. With the cost of cigarettes what it is these days, you could be saving enough money to buy a new iPad. Every week.

19. Don’t complain to the tab room that you’re too tired to judge. We’re too tired to tab, and we were here before you arrived today and we’re going to be here after you’re gone tonight, so if you’ve ever wondered what the expression “falling on deaf ears” is all about, this is it.

20. Don’t complain to tab that you’ve had to judge every round. Your debaters have had to debate every round, haven’t they? You haven’t heard them complaining. Not to mention that we’ve had to tab every round. Besides, what else are you going to do in a high school on a Saturday afternoon? This isn’t Disneyland, you know.

21. Ascertain beyond all doubt who you have with you on the team and judging when you arrive at registration, and even more important, relay that information to the proper authorities. Why else do you think we’re asking you to check over your registration?

22. Pay for the tournament when the tournament requests payment. Nobody wants to have to remember that you were too discombobulated to come up with the check you’ve known you needed for the last two months.

23. Do not ask when the next round is. Every time someone asks this question, it postpones the next round by the length of time it takes to listen to the question, curse inwardly, and then explain that we’re working on it.

24. Do not complain that you never get any ballots. In MJP, it is the students who have determined that they don’t want you to judge, not the tab room. To alleviate this situation, learn to judge better, at which point you can proceed to refraining from complaining that you’ve had to judge every round (see 20, above).

25. Feel free to leave cash gratuities in the little jar next to the computer in the tab room.