In which we flip

To flip or not to flip, that is the question. Or is it?

It seems that the one thing that almost everyone agrees on is that the flip in PF doesn’t work. Too often we’ve seen one-sided topics, and once in a while teams that are lucky enough to flip that side every time, who make it to elims (and maybe through them) never having to debate the other side. CFL has already kiboshed it, and it’s probably just a matter of time before the NSDA does as well. Au revoir, eh? On the other hand, and I’m sure this is a minority opinion, but I’d still like to flip for which side goes first. Over the years there has been a (false) idea of presumption for the neg in LD, based on the (real) idea of presumption for the neg in policy. More to the point, there’s a belief in LD (unfortunate) that the neg has an inherent advantage due to structure. It would be nice to eliminate a possible structural advantage in PF. Won’t happen, though, I’m sure.

The other thing I’d like to see full-time is a two-month span for PF topics. One month just isn’t enough. Too often teams will pass on a topic because they would only debate it once, and they feel that that’s too much work for too little results. I can especially sympathize with this with younger debaters who don’t have the experience to create structures that they can work with over multiple resolutions (cf. extemp). Also topics mature over time. The first weekend of any topic tends to have a lot of malarkey that goes away by the next weekend, or at least that’s the way it used to be. And topics continue to mature during their lifespan. But if the next weekend is another topic entirely, that won’t happen. We get caught in the early malarkey stages more often than not, especially for those teams debating the rez only one time.

Apparently there was a lot of discussion of all of this at the NSDA meeting this summer. I look forward to seeing what was actually decided.