This will be my last weekend for a while without a tournament. I can't say I'm not itching to get back in the harness.
Monticello seems to have settled in with workable numbers in all three divisions. I was worried about policy for a while, but Jonathan is bringing a Newark contingent, which is great to see, and they've improved numbers in both policy and LD. So once again we'll be in business, and I look forward to driving up to the frigid north to commune with the Montwegians.
The Bronxwegians, meanwhile, are deep in the business of acquiring judges. I just entered a bunch of their alums on top of the general population they'd already gotten, and they're now at the position of okay, but we need to push further to the position of really good. A big bid tournament stands or falls on the nature of its pool in LD and Policy, where the field studies and ranks that field to within an inch of its life. At a big tournament, you're pretty likely to do well in getting your prefs most of the time. So the issue is, are they really your prefs? Are there enough people to satisfy everybody, from the folks who consider themselves traditionalist to the folks who consider themselves cutting edge? I have to admit, even though I created these distinctions for tabroom lo those many years ago, and put them into all my tournaments, I have no idea what they really mean nowadays. Is it something as essentialist as addressing the resolution? Of course, essentialism is a philosophic crime in LD, or at least it used to be, so as I say, I keep out of it. I only look at the numbers. What they mean is the debaters' problem.
I was a bit perplexed by the number of schools within walking distance who requested PF judge hires. in fact, the proportion of hire requests for PF is far higher than either LD or Policy. This baffles me. A team concentrating on PF ought to be developing not only debaters but parent judges. Do these schools really have no idea of the genesis or purpose of PF? Is the activity that old that there are newcomers who miss the point completely? And even if that's true, haven't they wondered why there's so many parent judges in the pools of the tournaments they attend? Have they missed that completely, not to mention the fact that parents don't cost the team any money? This does bring one back to the old question of whether PF will be "ruined" by parochialism. As long as there's a constant flow of intelligent, prepared lay adjudicators, PF will only go so far. At the point where the activity's direction is in the hands of college tutors and judges with their own agendas, informed by their own studies and interests, it can go places most folks don't want. It isn't growing the seemingly exponential way it is because no one understands it or because it's limited to a certain audience. But schools that don't get that they have a responsibility to develop not only teams but a support system for those teams, i.e., a system of judges and chaperones and the like, are problems. And there seem to be a lot of them. Oh, well. They won't be getting judges at Rather Large Bronx, because there's only so many to go around, and the first served are the ones from far away who can make a legitimate financial case for needing hires. After that, it's either hamstring everyone by not having enough judges for tab to do its magic, or force these recalcitrant teams to do their fair share. We'll see how it works out.
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