In which we wring our hands over bogus entries

The freebooters may be getting out of hand.

I do not feel a terribly great need to defend the idea that attendance at high school debate tournaments ought to be confined to official entries from actual high schools. This is about as radical as suggesting that attendance at high school tennis tournaments ought to be confined to official entries from actual high schools. Clubs like to claim that they’re doing all this great stuff for debate, and maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but that’s not the point. Independent debaters like to claim that they are the stuff that dreams are made of, TOC-quality talent that the tournament needs to make it legit, but again, that’s not the point. Every event I attend is a high school event, with all the various sanctions and expectations in place, backed by and answerable to school administrations, for the benefit of the students in those schools. That’s the way that it is, and it doesn’t strike me as some horribly restrictive system that needs to be changed. Like many folks in the activity, I would like to see more debate in more places, but to me that means more debate in more schools, with recognition within those schools of the educational benefits of the activity. It does not mean more debate in unregulated and/or maverick situations outside of the basic educational context.

As I say, I feel no great need to defend this. Most people I know, from the administration of various national organizations to tournament directors to tab staff feel the same way, so this is hardly heretical. (And as for the latter, the tab staffs, given our experience with non-school entities, independent or otherwise, we have more than merely orthodoxy informing our opinions on this subject.)

I offer all this prelude to the fact that, regardless of the policies of most tournaments which restrict entry to official registrants from bona fide schools, we are now seeing what I would call a boomlet in bogus entries. People pretend to be their coach and sign up, even when their coach has specifically determined that their school will not be attending the tournament. People register under false names marginally similar to their own (in case they acquire a bid and want to claim it later). People simply register as their school slash independent, with no one at their school in fact endorsing their entry even as independents. People don’t even bother pretending to be a coach, but simply register as if they’re the school, creating a completely bogus account under the school name.

We’ve been weeding our way through these at the Pups, but they’re not alone in having this problem. I’m curious to what the warrant is for such deception/mendacity: since you’re not allowed at this tournament for one reason or another, it’s okay for you to lie your way in? This is the lesson of morality and ethics that we are teaching students today?

Jeesh.