All of the reports I’ve seen are quite positive about e-TOC. Predictably the interp events were found a bit lacking, but everyone was glad to have them, and the debate events seemed to work fine. I seem to be the only one on the planet who questions the costs. Granted there are expenses, even for a virtual tournament, but not the same as a physical tournament. At the point where this isn’t factored into the running of a tournament, I’m more than a little suspicious. Still, for me this is probably beating a dead horse, something that is generally frowned on in Kentucky, and nobody else seems to care. It is a truth generally acknowledged that the cost of circuit debate is prohibitive, and everyone tsks-tsks about it once in a while, and whole styles of debate have evolved to criticize it (albeit while being a part of it), but I haven’t seen anyone yet stand up and say that because the system is unfair economically in general, I will simply not participate in it. I can understand that, I guess—if you’ve got it, baby, flaunt it—but virtual debating does leave open the opportunity for debate at a high level that isn’t prohibitively expensive. Something tells me no one will be very enthusiastic about the idea, though.
Oh, well. I’ve signed up to audit NDCA’s coaches' conference in May, which promises to be mostly about remote debating. Given that there’s no guarantee that we will be returning to normal even in the 2020-21 school year, and given that I run tournaments practically every weekend, it behooves me to be up on things.
We’ll see what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment