Conflict abuse

This, I’m afraid, is a very big problem.

I’ve talked about this before. Conflicts are used to prevent debaters from being judged by people where there might be a bias, real or perceived, in their favor. The most basic conflict is being judged by someone from one’s own school. We extend this over time, so that one can never judge anyone from one’s own school, even if you graduated 50 years ago, although we occasionally ignore this bias when, well, the person graduated 50 years ago. There is no expectation that a person from your school will always pick you up. That is not the point. In truth, often a person in that position might bend over backwards not to pick you up, in an attempt to deliver the most ethical decision possible. But the perception of bias would remain. A Hen Hud judge is judging a Hen Hud kid. That just doesn’t sit well. Hence we say a conflict exists.

A while ago we came to a series of extensions on what exactly comprises conflicts, discussed and agreed to among various coaches, and I put that into this document: http://www.debatecoaches.org/s/conflicts_teams.pdf. I’ve since distributed this document numerous times for numerous tournaments. It’s also posted as part of the Tournament Director’s Toolkit on the NDCA website. It’s a good comprehensive guide to what is meant by a conflict.

But here we get into the problem. Conflicts are preventions of bias in favor of debaters. There is no limit to the number of conflicts you can have at a tournament. It’s not a numerical business if 5 or 50 judges are biassed in your favor. The thing is, there have been instances where people have been using conflicts as strikes, despite knowing that this is not the intention of noting conflicts. They have conflicted judges not because of bias in their favor but because of bias against them. They are using conflicts to surreptitiously gain more strikes. When we originally discovered this, it was not malicious on the part of the conflicters, but simply a misunderstanding of confliction. That’s what led to us publishing clear criteria of what comprises a conflict. Most tournaments have strikes and/or preferences, which means that there is already in place a system for minimizing the likelihood of your being judged by someone you think is biassed against you. Conflicts are when someone is biassed in favor of you. The distinction is clear, and at this point, no one can claim otherwise.

That apparently hasn’t stopped people from using conflicts to get more strikes. I have seen instances where debaters have conflicted judges with whom they have absolutely no connection whatsoever except that they do not like that judge. And since tabroom allows you to privately put in permanent conflicts that travel from tournament to tournament, you can put in those bogus conflicts once and strike as many unfavorable judges as you want for the rest of your debating career, even at tournaments that don’t offer any strikes at all!

This is wrong and patently unethical. I have requested that some failsafes be put into tabroom so that we can evaluate conflicts at tournaments. Regardless of whether those failsafes come to pass, at tournaments I run I will be warning people in advance that I will be evaluating their conflicts, and that serious penalties will ensue. I am in favor of disqualifying any team (as in a whole school) where students have bogus conflicts, as coaches are theoretically condoning this activity, but individual tournaments I work with may simply wish to ban the students claiming these conflicts. That’s up to them. But I’m only some tournaments. All tournament directors need to know that this is happening, and to take steps to address it. I recommend that tournaments publish a clear statement of what a conflict is (as in my document above) and a clear statement of the penalty for any debater abusing the system.

I am saddened by the idea that the shenanigans like this never seem to end.