In which we discuss the Universal Right to Debate

There is, apparently, a perception by some of a universal Right to Debate at the high school level. This RTD is warranted thus: Debate is a very good thing, therefore all students are entitled to it. As far as I know, but I may be wrong about this, there are no other such rights in the high school community. In the normal course of events, students take advantage of whatever program a school has to offer, and only what a school has to offer. There is no perceived right to football, or fencing, or annual musical theater performances, or chess, or any other extracurricular activity that might be a good thing. Schools are not obligated to offer a complete menu of activities beyond basic education (which, in many cases, is hard enough). If a school does not have a particular program, no matter how good that program might have been if it existed, the fact that it doesn’t exist would seem to preclude participating in it.

Not so with debate. The RTD overrides all other concerns.

Needless to say, I wouldn’t do what I do if I didn’t believe in the benefits of forensics. Twenty years in, weekend after weekend, on my own dime, ought to demonstrate that. (Remember, I already have a day job.) The benefits of forensics are not in question here. What is in question is access to those benefits.

There are those who give time and money to working and developing programs. The Soros Group has, for instance. Certainly the NSDA is built around developing and maintaining programs in schools. Plenty of local organizations do likewise. Meanwhile, we have a broad network of camps for training debaters, after school or during summer breaks. We also have people who sell materials to debaters to enhance their performance, including the NSDA, which is not free and which offers expensive packages beyond basic membership. There is nothing wrong with this. Plenty of non-profits take money in to support their projects, and for-profit in general is also perfectly acceptable. Offer something that people want and sell it for a price they are willing to pay? Sure. Cap Good. No problem.

A lot of people love debate and its benefits. A lot of people have built careers around it. So far, so good.

Over the years, a broad network of competition has developed around the country. One way or another, this competition is open to various kinds of participation. NSDA and CFL (and MHL and NDCA and NYSDCA and NYSFL and presumably plenty of others) impose limits on who can be a member and therefore compete. None of these is entirely open to everyone. And I’ll throw in general invitationals here as well. For the most part, all of these competitions are open only to their members. In the case of some of them, membership is determined by various rules and some sort of dues payment. High school invitationals have a more common law sense of membership, a presumption that the participants are high school students; a corollary to this is that they represent the high schools they attend, and that they are not simply random students who happen to be attending high schools. Any high school debate tournament, with perhaps hundreds of students attending, needs to proceed on generally accepted criteria. That those hundreds of students are attending with the knowledge of—and as far as the tournament is concerned, recourse to—their official administrations has always been a given. The reason for this is because of the unfortunate possibility of something going wrong. It can be accidents, illness, whatever. I have seen serious instances of both over the years. Official entries from schools are equipped (as well as anyone can be equipped) to handle these situations. Adults are in place, medical forms are viable, etc. Additionally, tournaments can only run effectively when the participants understand the obligations of attending tournaments, knowing who has to be where, and when. The fiascos resulting from being a bad guest can equal the fiascos of being a bad host.

Until recently this has all been a given, an unspoken expectation. Today, however, we have RTD debaters who feel they are inherently entitled to debate.

There are two general universes of RTD debater. The first is the maverick, the lone wolf student from a school that doesn’t offer debate. Sometimes the school knows about this maverick, and supports the student’s endeavors. Sometimes not. The mavericks might arrive at a tournament alone, or with a college student who is not legally an adult, or with a parent who is acting merely as chaperone but who is often tossed into a judging pool with no understanding of the activity whatsoever (and, often, with little understanding of the English language). The only acceptable maverick, I would say, is the one traveling with the endorsement of the student’s school, in the company of an empowered adult. This adult can judge, or not, but only if the judge is up to the task (and as a former parent judge myself, I’m pretty liberal about this, and as a tab director, I’m usually happy to enable it by putting parent judges into PF rather than VLD). Unfortunately, the acceptable maverick is being outnumbered by those pulling shenanigans. False school names. False student names. The aforementioned English-as-a-non-existing-language parent in the VLD pool (getting no rounds, of course, and then asking me what to do about lodging for the night at 10 o’clock and I’m heading out to my own warm blanket). Nevertheless, the interwebs are bustling with pleas to let mavericks debate, regardless of (and sometimes in spite of) their shenanigans. After all, debate is good, and there is a universal RTD! Yes, it is, and no, there isn’t. If your school doesn’t offer a debate program, that is not the problem of the schools that do, nor the tournaments you wish to attend. If as much time and energy were spent within the school working with the administration to start teams, to provide debate—the good thing—to as many people as possible for the longest term possible, as is spent flying lone wolves from one circuit tournament to another, we’d have wall-to-wall novices every weekend.

The other general universe of the RTD debater is the club member. Until recently I think most folks have been accepting of club debaters, mostly because they hadn’t given them much thought. The club premise is simple: you pay them money, and they train you to debate. Straightforward enough on face. But because debate is a good thing, and there is a universal RTD, the clubs feel that they should be able to debate against high schools, representing the clubs. Which has led, in (my) recent memory to a series of shenanigans and mendacity and irresponsibility that has left no club untainted. Not paying registration fees? Oh, that must be some sort of miscommunication. Fines for not meeting obligations? Oh, you never send me that email (all five times). Club debaters from schools that actually have teams ending up facing each other in rounds, and going to tab to ask for new assignments? Or club debaters pretending to be representing a school only one of them attends? No adult responsible for the club at the tournament? Oh, I don’t know anything about that, even though I’m the only grownup here. One judge covering entries from multiple (most likely unofficial) schools and weaseling out of judge fees? You mean that’s unacceptable? How can that be? We’re wonderful people who really want as many people as possible to debate.

No, you’re not. You’re in the business of selling a service, and not doing a particularly good job of delivering that service, otherwise most tournaments I work at wouldn’t have banned you, for cause, from returning. The trail is clear. The reason clubs are being pushed out is not because we won’t “give them a chance” (as one article I saw put it), but because we have given them many chances and they’ve repeatedly screwed us over. Telling me that you’re really wonderful and things will be different this time isn’t going to hack it. The lack of responsibility on the other end seals it. If we have a problem with a school (and we have had such problems), we go to the administration of that school, which takes responsibility for it. If we have a problem with a club, we go to the administration of that club, and they disavow any knowledge of any wrongdoing, and tell us how wonderful they are and how much good they’re doing for debate, then they accuse us of discrimination, or being anti-education, or whatever else occurs to them to distract from their own shortcomings.

The clubs, as profit generators, can easily solve their problem by going to the schools of their clients and working toward official entry as those schools. As for the lone wolves, they can stop thinking about their own attendance at TOC and start thinking about how they can bring the benefits of debate—which they claim is a universal right—to others. You think these efforts won’t be rewarded? You think wrong. But you think ignoring making these efforts won’t be noticed? You think really wrong. Those of us who have given their souls to debate want nothing more than everyone possible debating, not because there’s a universal right to debate, but because there’s a universal value derived from debating. But the non-school community, clubs and independents, have brought down the wrath of the school community on themselves, making a hard thing—running tournaments—into something even harder, turning registration into an adversarial process, and making people like me get progressively more angry.

C’est tout.