In which we discuss internet use at tournaments

The question arose about what the computer use policy would be at Rather Large Bronx. It’s an interesting question.

In the real world, and more specifically, the world in which today’s high school debaters will be tomorrow’s working citizens, digital access is a given. Not only is facility at manipulating online information expected, but in many ways the level of that facility will determine career success. As educators, we should be preparing students for this reality.

Another reality we must accept is the nature of computing in today’s world. Before generally available connectivity to the internet, the data to which you had access was the data on your various disk drives, evolving from floppies to harddrives and flashdrives and tiny SD cards. Aside from your physical backups, however, nowadays it’s all in the cloud. Chromebooks, which are ubiquitous, cheap, very popular as education devices and more than enough for most people, usually have no meaningful built-in storage. Plenty of laptops and tablets are likewise pared down to minimal interior storage in favor of accessing cloud data (and creating lighter, more portable devices). And finally, schools are finally all coming online. With rare exceptions, there is wireless available at all tournaments, and while it is occasionally spotty, it does work, and over time it will only get better.

It becomes a given, therefore, that a lot of debaters will have their evidence stored in the cloud. It becomes a given also that a lot of debaters might be running devices without any ports at all (like my MacBook or my iPad). So the idea of limiting internet access is questionable out of the gate. If there is no way to realistically expect students to have their evidence in a round other than via the cloud, we don’t really have a choice but to allow access to that evidence. The only viable alternative is to mandate physical evidence and thus bring back the evidence tub. And that’s not going to happen.

The point that was raised in our discussions was, what about cheating? First of all, I would state categorically that any definition of what constitutes cheating would define the sort of thing that the incredibly vast majority of teams would find abhorrent. I’m wary of a worldview that suspects that teams are in general champing at the bit to break the rules, regardless of whether it’s via computer use or falsified evidence or, well anything. They aren’t. My glasses are not so rose-colored that I believe people aren’t capable of wrongdoing, but I think (and hope) it is rare.

With debate computer use, the two big suspicious areas are communication with persons outside of the round, and access to general information. As far as the first is concerned, this is a clear violation of any ethical approach to debate. Teams can’t ask someone outside of themselves for help. You may have a coaching staff of a hundred people, but they send you into the round on your own. The coach doesn’t send plays into the quarterback’s earphone during the huddle. So I think we can clearly prohibit out-of-the-room communication. Then again, I have to wonder what good that sort of communication would do. Something comes up in a round on, say, Rawls’s difference principle, which you’ve never heard of. So you text your coach to explain the difference principle and refute the attached argument during your two minutes of prep time? The same applies to access to information. Let’s say your opponent brings up Derrida, whom you’ve never heard of. You’re going to look him up on the interwebs in two minutes and come away not only with an understanding but a rebuttal? The only person who could ever do that was Mrs. Derrida, and even she had to wonder at times what the guy was talking about.

So I come down on the side of not bothering to get carried away with banning of this, that or the other regarding computer use. On the one hand, the train has left the station, and on the other hand, where it might verge on actual unethical exchanges, it’s probably totally worthless. But it doesn’t hurt for a tournament to post a policy, just to have it covered. That policy should be something about disallowing communications with persons outside of the round, and leave it at that, which is what we will do at the Bronx. As things play out, the only ones who will ever bring a rules violation against a team is the other team. Given that the complaining teams comprise excitable adolescents, let’s not make easy for them to cause a ruckus over nothing.