All right. Let’s get back to business. Enough of this fom
toolery.
Last weekend was the Scarsdale tournament. How was that? you
ask. Fine, I answer.
As originally conceived, Scarsdale would have two divisions
of LD, with the varsity division judging the novice division in alternative single
flights. This was a nice little touch, making the tournament unique, and, I
think, more education-oriented. In the beginning, virtually everyone in varsity
judged and debated. Nowadays, it’s a lot fewer. This may be because the
pressure of LD is different these days. It was always a burden, but an
interesting one. Now it may just be too much, but then again, about half the
debaters doing it this year did break, so it’s hardly impossible. I think a bigger
difference might be that too many people are too worried about the competition
per se rather than any opportunities to train their students. I don’t know if
that’s a difference over time or just a difference over a new cast of coachean
players. Whatever. Maybe it’s just sunspots. In any case, it was a lot easier
to keep track of than in the old days. Simple creating the odd judge pool in
tabroom does the job, although every time I said the word pool everyone jumped
at me. Apparently CP thinks I don’t do pools right. Right, in his definition,
is the way he does it. If that is the case, don’t write a program that allows
people to do it their way, or, as I like to put it, my way, or better still,
the real right way.
Feh. Tabroom worked fine all weekend, so we had to go out of
our way to blame something on Palmer. Or at least I did.
The most telling thing, which I’ve already mentioned, is the
size of the PF field. Numbers talk, as they say. We used to get about 30 VPF or
so when all was said and done, both at Scarsdale and back when this weekend was
Bump. We’re over twice that number now. This is true everywhere. (At Princeton,
PFers are breaking down the proverbial doors.) I noticed a posting on Fb
bemoaning the state of debate at the moment. But that posting was in fact about the
state of LD. In a word, it’s become policy. The evolution has reached its
apotheosis. It’s never going to “get better.” It will be different, but now
that it has become completely a specialist activity, understandable (and
palatable) only to specialists, it just doesn’t matter what its state is. What
is great about forensics, no matter what branch, is its educational
benefit. Forensic events that give the least of that benefit still give that
benefit, but events at the other end of the spectrum, which give the benefit to
more people, with great accessibility, are the real strength of the activity. Is
LD “better” debate than PF? Probably, according to certain criteria. Is it better
according to my criteria? Na’ah. It hasn’t been for a long time. When virtually
every coach I know hates to judge it, it’s gone over the bend. It’s an activity
for young people. That’s fine, as far as it goes. But activities for all people
are better, because they go further.
No, LD won’t die, any more than policy has. But it will eventually
be similarly over in the corners, as people who throw tournaments to make money
(oh, the horror) progressively go more and more to where the money is. Little
divisions of LD will join little divisions of Policy in the buildings furthest away from the center of things. Diehards will die hard,
or more to the point, they won’t die, and they’ll just pretend that they’re hale and hardy.
Fine. No problem.
Game over for everyone else.
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