I’m not listed as the contact for any of the tournaments I’m
working this fall. Which means that others will be dealing with the steady
stream of silliness that always flows one’s way. Except, of course, once I let
people off the waitlists. That always stirs things a bit, and at that point,
they’ll know where I live.
Here’s some predictable stuff. I’ll send a message saying
that I do not know when other slots will be open. I will immediately get half a
dozen emails asking when other slots will be open. I think tabroom.com needs to
add a feature that drops anyone’s entry if they ask a question so dumb that you
don’t think they should be allowed around children for any extended period of
time, like the length of a debate tournament. Better yet are the threats. You
didn’t take my entries off the list because: A) there’s 3270 of them and your
ridiculous limit is 4 which I refuse to accept; B) my coach is unavailable but
I know that he/she really really really wants me to debate at your tournament;
or C) granted, we registered under a phony name for a bogus school, but we’ve
already bought plane tickets so you have to let us in. Therefore, the message continues, I will: A)
consult with my vast army of personal lawyers, which I know will scare the bejesus out
of you just thinking about it; B) I’ll never come to your tournament again no
matter how much you beg and plead with me; or C) I’ll tell everyone that you’re
a poopyhead and no one else will ever come to your tournament again either, not never, not
no how.
I have a form letter for all of these.
It is pretty easy to detect bogus entries on tabroom, by the
way. But I won’t list the details here, because if you’re the spalpeen I think you are
you’ll use that information to make my life more difficult, and though I’ll win
in the end, it will take longer to get there, and I don’t need the bother. I
know there are some people who think I care about this on a personal level, but
I assure you I don’t. I have occasionally been taken aback when I’ve been
accused of evil motivations, but thinking that high school debate tournaments
ought to be limited to high school debate teams strikes me as less than
Machiavellian, much less inherently Satanic.
I wonder if athletic departments go through the same hoo-ha.
“My school doesn’t have a football team but I demand that you let me play your
school this homecoming weekend. If you don’t do it, you will be undervaluing
the importance of athletics as a part of education, and you’re also a
racist/sexist/speciesist/ageist/ableist/ecdysiast pig.” Well, maybe not an
ecdysiast. I remember one kid who claimed that the tournament director who
wouldn’t let his bogus entry in was a “repellent slime.” The kid was pretending
to be an adult coach in the email exchange, and this sort of gave away the
game. Needless to say, we nicknamed him Repellent Slime for the rest of his
debate career, which as far as I know consisted entirely of signing up for, and
not getting into, any debate tournaments.
The number of people behind the scenes at debate tournaments
is very small, and we all know each other. Especially if we need to put out a
Repellent Slime alert.
So the tournament directors I'm working with, meanwhile, are contacting
schools as we speak, to verify questionable entries. Is your entry among them? Don’t
blame me for the tournaments’ posted rules about official entries. Find some
other repellent slime to complain about. I only work here.
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