In which YOU get to decide

 

Hey, kids! Now you can play our game at home, starting with that old favorite: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Early in the day I had eyes on a student judge who I could tell was, to be gentle about it, ill-prepared for her inaugural adventures at the back of the room. Sure enough, she didn’t acknowledge her ballot for round one—the most important thing I tell people they have to do when I conduct an opening judge meeting, which some people actually hear and pay attention to—but I had just seen her in the tab room and then heading up toward the debate room, so I knew things were at least going to happen, if not exactly according to Hoyle. Since it was a tight tournament, she got another ballot for round 2. Lo and B, she didn’t acknowledge that ballot either. And this time she didn’t show up. Before long one of the teams she should have been judging, and their coach, came into tab to set things aright. I got the message and told the team to go back up to the room and wait for me to find a solution. Then I went out into the hall where I know there was an available judge lounging about, and sent him up to the room to take over. And then, back in tab I slotted him in and removed the prodigal missing judge. 

Keep in mind that some time had passed. Up went the substitute judge to the third floor, and shortly thereafter down came the substitute judge from the third floor. Not only had the prodigal missing first judge finally showed up, despite no longer being listed as the judge, but the other team—not the ones who were in tab with me and their coach—was asserting that the first team needed to forfeit because they had showed up late for the round. (One never did find out where the other team was through all of this before now.) The prodigal judge, happy, I guess, to be relieved of duty, accepted this and sent the teams on their way. What, the substitute judge asked, happens now? We were more than a half hour away from start time, and both teams had dispersed into the ether, thinking that the round was a forfeit. 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Well, here’s what I did. First, I swallowed my inclination to find and throttle the delinquent judge—I simply removed her from the pool for the rest of the day—and then subsequently I swallowed my inclination to find and throttle the other team that had unacceptably asserted that a forfeit was demanded. For the record, we tell the judges that only tab can declare a forfeit. But a team declaring one? Jeesh. For one reason or another by now it was too late to simply hold the round, even if I could find the missing teams in the labyrinth that is Bronx Science. 

There was no question that the first team was not late for the round, because they were in tab telling me about their missing judge, who I then replaced, so you might say they had a really good excuse for their so-called tardiness, if you wish to call it that. But on the other hand, say what you will, the other team was right in that the first team had been AWOL way after forfeit time. 

What I did was a double bye. If the coach of the other team had been at the tournament, we would have had a congenial little discussion (I don’t mean that sarcastically) to enlighten his students about rules and protocols, as they had veered parlously close to unacceptable arrogance in the situation. But, sadly, that team was in the hands of mere chaperones. If I had not been literally alone in the tab room at the time, maybe something else would have been decided. But it just happened that I was all on my lonesome for that particular piece of time, and perhaps running 8 divisions by oneself with all sorts of judge balancing does stifle one’s creativity a bit. 

What would you have done?