In which we ruminate on the nature of the PF adjudicator

(I’ve put in a note about deleting/dropping entries over on Adventures in Tabroom, for you baseball insiders. We inadvertently got screwed at Penn and spent a lot of time cleaning up, and I don’t want that to happen to you.)

I have gone on record as believing that it is lay judging that will keep PF from going the way of its older siblings, that is, so parochial and self-absorbed that only those who live in the parish either understand it or even want to. The problem with that belief is, unfortunately, that lay judging requires lay judges. The blessing is, at the same time, a curse.

Let’s look at the facts. A PF round takes exactly 37 minutes on the clock, in theory. However, in practice, a PF round—a single flight—takes between an hour and an hour and a half of real time. At Penn, for example, round three was posted and ballots distributed at 1:25. The posted start time of the round was 1:45. The last ballot got to the tabroom at 4:30, meaning that the round took two hours and forty-five minutes. There were no egregious issues of distance or ballot distribution/collection. It was what it was, and every other round proceeded roughly the same way, until the very end of the tournament, when all that were left were dedicated debaters and hired judges with e-ballots, at which point rounds zipped by, posted times almost exactly an hour apart.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that the average flight of PF has between an extra half hour to forty-five minutes of off-the-charts time attached to it. That off-the-charts time is, by and large, the price we pay for lay judging. Some spalpeen at the tournament was sitting there as I was distributing paper ballots, suggesting that there was a problem from a process-flow point of view. Well yes, Einstein, I wanted to reply; if all these luddites did e-ballots, for example, something none of us have every thought of, that might help.

Jeesh.

As members of the VCA know, I have reservations about e-ballots at some venues. They work fine with a “professional” pool of judges when that pool is held hostage to geography. If you’re at Bronx Science, for instance, you’re stuck there. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Judges do not wander off because there’s nowhere to wander off to. Plus all the rounds are in one building, and there’s a thousand runners, so managing the starting and ending of rounds is no big deal. At Columbia, we used e-ballots for VLD, where all the rounds were in one building, and while theoretically the pool could have wandered off, they didn’t, because they were doing their job (and it was cold and snowy and we were feeding them). It depends on where you are, and the nature of the pool.

E-ballots with PF judges is another thing altogether. It’s not a question of them acting responsibly and knowing it's 2015, it’s a question of them being totally lost and seeing e-ballots as just another part of the torture program. Regulars who have judged before, ex-competitors or coaches or parents who have been down the pike a couple of times already, are not the problem. It’s the raw newcomers, the ones for whom e-ballots are the least of it. They are parents, new to judging, and the bottom line is that they are afraid of doing the wrong thing. That’s why I like to give a comfort talk starting out, concentrating on how they’re perfect for the job and since when aren’t they smarter than a high school kid? But it’s tough. There’s the general mechanics of a round, totally new to them, and then there’s the topic, which in some cases is filled with information about a subject on which they are only marginally informed. They haven’t read up the various sources before they got here, or if they did, they did it on a level totally different than most students. They don’t know how to fill out a paper ballot, much less an electronic ballot. So I don’t hold it against them that they’re e-ballot illiterate, although a couple do take it to extremes. I had one woman who didn’t know her email address, then she didn’t know her password, and then she didn’t know her name. I’m serious. She was also a close talker who seemed to be oblivious to the fact that I was not her thrall, committed to the death to take care of her to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Any wonder why 37 minutes in her company would expand to an hour and a half?

The thing is, I believe in parent judging, as I said above, to keep PF honest. I think this requires certain adjustments on the part of the debaters, needless to say, and it also requires certain adjustments on the part of tournament managers. PF pools need special attention. They absolutely need my sort of speech on their inherent value, and they need instructions on filling out ballots. They need paper ballots, unless they request otherwise. Forcing e-ballots on them is a mug’s game, and will get you nowhere. They need shepherding: put as many resources as you can on getting them their ballots, getting them to their rounds, getting them to start rounds, getting them to finish rounds, getting the ballots out of their hands and into tab. Behind their backs, make all the fun you want of their naivete, but never forget that without them, PF will devolve to the adjudication and tutelage almost entirely of college students who will do their best to mangle the educational value of the activity until it reflects their own personal goals and desires, regardless of whether those goals and desires are in the best interest of maintaining a mainstream debate activity for the vast majority of high school students, an activity with easy buy-in and easy upkeep.

So the moral of the story? Treat your PF pool with kid gloves. They deserve it, and you will be thankful that you did.