In which the students judge

Scarsdale has the interesting wrinkle of some of the varsity attendees judging the novices in their off rounds. This is pretty easy to manage on the back end. First of all, everything is single-flighted. You create a pool of non-debating judges, and assign them first, then go to a pool of debating judges and assign them next, making sure as much as possible that they share the burden. In LD last weekend it was almost a perfect 50%, that is, each varsity debater/judge covered every other round, so they did get time off. When we went to elims in varsity, we started double-flighting the novices, who don’t have elims, sticking with the non-debating pool. (Back when Hen Hud was on this weekend with a novice division, we eventually came to the conclusion that since it was so early in their careers, it was better to give everyone in the novice division as many rounds as possible. Plus, in reality, novices breaking is kind of weird. Novice year is a time for learning the ropes and debating as much as possible. Setting up a fairly false premise of good debaters versus bad develops the wrong culture. After all, while there are always a couple of kids who are great as novices who remain great during their full careers, as a rule meteoric-rising novices tend to crash and burn and disappear, while slower starters get the hang of things and start firing on all burners toward the end of their second year. It’s a pretty standard pattern. Anyhow, the point is the most rounds for the most people, and I’m all in favor of it.)

The point is that judging is a good thing for debaters to do. Period. As debaters they can a specific view of rounds that is quite different from the view from the back of the room. Learning to grok rounds on a wholistic level can very much aid in one’s development as a debater. For instance, there are plenty of debaters who pay no attention to the judge at all; they zip along with never a glance at the person writing the ballot to appraise how what they’re saying is going over. When you’re the person doing the appraising, you realize that, as you’re sitting there paying no attention as some kid flogs a dead horse, that if they only saw the bored look in your eyes they would move on to something more germane. Maybe. In any case, it’s a good learning experience, and I wish more coaches felt that way. I know some teams that make it a rule that you have to do some judging somewhere along the line. I know others that think their debaters should be on ice when they’re not in a round, apparently to preserve their competitive edge. Bull-oney, if you know what I mean. Not only is that ill-advised competitively, but it’s also ill-advised educationally. But then again, how many debate coaches are not necessarily in it for the educational aspect? Too many, I think you’ll agree.