They are out to get us. Unless we are they, in which case, we are out to get you.

I long for the golden age when people would fall off their seats because of this: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenCulture/~3/tlde5RNB3Q0/michel_foucault_free_lectures.html I think that was two years ago.

Anyhow, I've enjoyed thinking about the number of topics per year immensely, because the more I think about it, the less I know. I'm trying to organize a little discussion on TVFT about it; stay tuned (if, in fact, you were tuned in the first place). The TOC has announced that it will stick to Jan-Feb this year, but I don't know if there's any deep meaning to be read in that. My sense is that, if the $ircuit had its way, there really would be only a couple of topics a year, but I hesitate to suggest that it must be bad because the $ircuit wants it. That's why I want to extend this dicussion. It's a good one. So far most of it's been in the comments here, in case you missed it.

Speaking of TVFT, we did one last night, Bietzless (although he had said he'd be showing up). We discussed NDCA, and it was rather heated. One of the issues we touched upon was openness, and I think that was the most interesting thing we talked about. No matter how you slice it (said moi), people always seem to think there's something going on behind the scenes in the smoke-filled room of the old boys network. They say it about TOC, CFL, NDCA, and NFL, and they say it about such lowly operations as the MHL and our local traveling tabroom. Some folks have been rather upfront in their idea that our region is run behind closed doors and as an exclusive club of some sort, and we're all pulling the levers to have debate go the way we want, but those same people don't have any actual evidence of it. I neither deny it nor admit to it. (You either trust me or you don't.) Since I tend to blab everything that's going on in my mind in this venue about two minutes after it occurs to me, I will cop to not being exactly behind the door in expressing my opinions and my plans and whatever. But it is the nature of things that an organization comes along, it gets established, and sooner or later new people come along and look at the organization and decide that it needs to be shaken up a bit because the leadership is out of touch or whatever. This is not news. In the world of LD, where there are more people than you can shake the proverbial stick at claiming that some thing they've just discovered is "progressive," and where there is no doubt that the activity changes regularly (or at least it has been in a state of flux ever since I've been doing it), the idea that people look at an organization and want to give it a kick in the pantaloons is pretty predictable. Of course, we always want it to be somebody else's pantaloons. However, with the exception of a few debate coaches who are a little over-competitive, and a few people who resemble the nether portions of your average pony and don't have the wit they were born with, I've always found that this is a group of people who are happy to express their opinions and fairly willing to change them. I don't think I'd still be in it, otherwise.

Anyhow, check out the TVFT podcast. It's a good one. (And I don't say that about all of them...)

I am not a thief

I think we ended up with crossed wires last night, so only CP and I recorded the TVFT episode, but record it we did, so there you are. It continues what I was saying yesterday about tournaments and award ceremonies. We’ll probably revisit it with O’C next week. How can you talk about awards and not include Mr. Award himself?

This week is Scarsdale, and surprisingly enough, there are no blizzards, earthquakes or plagues of locusts predicted. This is the one where the varsity judges the novices in alternating single flights, which is something of a challenge in tab, but nothing terrible. It just requires not overworking the people who also have to debate. But it’s a good thing. At Newark last week I put a varsity kid who had been eliminated in to judge some novices, and he said that it was the first time he had ever judged (albeit through no fault of his own). And he’s a senior. I strongly believe that judging is important in rounding out the debater’s experience, if not the debater’s skill. A round is different when you have to adjudicate it. And it is the first step in giving back to the activity. If you’re getting something out of the activity and not giving back, you should try to fix that. If it’s impractical now, come back and judge when you’re in college. You don’t have to do it week after week, but when the traveling debate circus puts its tent up in your area, pop by for a while. They’ll probably even pay you for it!

I’ve been reading the new Autobiography of Mark Twain, which weighs just slightly more than the average Extemper. I ran across this quote last night: “A parenthesis is evidence that the man who uses it does not know how to write English or is too indolent to take the trouble to do it; a parenthesis usually throws the emphasis upon the wrong word…a man who will wantonly use a parenthesis will steal. For these reasons I am unfriendly to the parenthesis.” I point this out because, day after day, pound for pound, there are more parentheses in this blog than there are nauseous parents at a Justin Bieber concert. I maintain that my use of parens is far from wanton, but the VCA will have to be the judge of that. (By the way, I just found out that Justin Bieber is Canadian. Figures.)

(Speaking of which, that “don’t do well if your name is hard to pronounce” bit from yesterday, which met with some disdain, is a line I’ve used about a million times at opening ceremonies, and it always gets a medium snicker. Not that I’m defending it objectively, but you can’t argue with success.)

One high point of Newark was sitting around with TSWAS (there’s an oldie for you: The Superhero Without Any Superpowers, AKA Craig) watching YouTube videos. Raul Esparza singing “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute,” Astaire dancing “Quarter to Three,” the stateroom scene in “A Night at the Opera.” I love sitting around talking about movies with Craig, because he’s one of the few people I know who seriously thinks about movies, which is a subject near and dear to me. Of course, he wants to make movies as a vocation, but he tells me that others who have the same desire don’t necessarily share his love of the medium. Odd. But then again, in my DJ life, I’ve known people who want to get into publishing who aren’t necessarily readers. Hard to imagine, but true. Go figure.

Oh, yeah. As a matter of course and with no discussion, we posted all the Newark ballots online. I recall not too long ago when this was perceived as the end of life on the planet as we know it, and no doubt made everyone involved in the business subject to immediate arrest by the Debate Police. All of our open-tabbishness seems to have made this reaction rather silly. They’re ballots from a debate round. Yes, occasionally someone misspells a word or writes something dumb, but that’s no different from real life. If you want to maintain your self-respect in this situation, just say that the RFD is “the aff was more persuasive.” Your judging cred will be secure for all time. Trust me on that.

Not the DiDeAd, for which the VCA breathes a sigh of relief

The discussion of case disclosure is not completely ended by any means, but I think that it has been dealt with fairly definitively for the time being, if you take the last TVFT into consideration. Much of the discussion has been an education process, at least for me. I absolutely began with an idea that case disclosure was X, and it turns out that case disclosure is actually Y. The reasons for my misconceptions don’t matter, because it seems other people have/had other misconceptions. While the idea is not set in stone at this point, and it is unclear where it will be or how it will affect the activity five years hence, we can make some general statements now. First, it is not onerous. I grabbed some instructions from Bill Batterman that I put into the Feed, if you need them. Provided that you have wireless at the venue, you’re fine. Second, it is not working as a wedge for big schools to trump little schools, but by the same token, it is not working as a shield for little schools against the prodigious abilities of big schools. It just changes things a little. Why? Because: three, it is disclosure of what you’ve done, not what you’re necessarily going to do. It captures for the record the case that is in the so-called public domain after you’ve run it. Which means that, four, it is really more a collection of strategically useful data than a tool of tactical useful data. In the real world, it is not turning debaters into the puppets of their aggressive assistant coaches, making them little preset response machines to preset cases. And to protect ourselves and our students from what we might call the misappropriation or at best the misunderstanding of this data, five, we will in the future lock it down from the outside world. The best thing we can do now is watch the experiment as it continues at Big Jake. It is another potential change in an activity that is constantly changing, another piece of the dialectic. Where it will go, no one knows. It might improve things, it might not, it might not even be much of an issue as time passes. As Jedi Master Bietz advises, one must wait and see.

Of course, over the last few days I’ve been debriefing the VCA on the DiDeAd more than addressing any debate issues, but then again, there haven’t been that many debate issues. Or in my case these days, speech and debate issues, until we get a new speech coach in. As is my wont, I’ve written up some elementary how-to material for my Speecho-Americans that I’m still polishing, but I would like to see them up the ante a bit on their choice of material. Also I’d like to see a little less death and destruction. What a gloomy bunch! Anyhow, I had hoped for inauguration of all of this year’s Plebes last night, but it turned out it was Open House at the Naval Academy, so tonight is the night. Which is not a bad thing actually, because it gives the Sailors another day to recruit after last week’s one-day-in two-days-out shortie. I love inauguration night. Sometimes we get newbies that we reckon by the dozens and sometimes we get two poor schlubs with dazed expressions that are never heard from again. Only time will tell.

Things will heat up next week for the Pups, none of whom read this blog, which means that only CP will be annoyed when I once again whine about their not entering judge names yet. The rest of you don’t have to read that previous sentence, but I guess it’s too late for that now. More importantly to all and sundry is the issue of judge rank assignments at the Pups in the world of MJP. If you haven’t done so already, read the take from Greenhill on the TVFT blog to see what they said they were going to do (which I presume they did). There’s lots of issues there, and we’ll be discussing it next week on the podcast. I think JV, who will be tabbing with me there as usual, will be joining us in the discussion. Needless to say, he brings a great numbers mind to the whole proceedings; he does teach physics after all.

So, wish us luck tonight at the inaugural. I wish you luck with your inaugurals too. May we all have more novices than we know what to do with!

And in a minute, a new DiDeAd posting. You didn’t think you’d get out of it that easily, did you?

Disclosure on the airwaves

I think we sort of buried the whole case disclosure thing last night at TVFT. Yes, disclosure is what you did, not what you're going to do. And yes, we can lock down the data to prevent potential privacy issues with no harm to the system. Check it out, if you're not already a subscriber via iTunes. And yes, we're now back for the duration. Next week we'll talk about MJP, also a la Greenhill. Check out the document on the TVFT blog for details.

Deep in the heart of MJP

Conflicting commitments conspired to kibosh last night’s TVFT recording. We will begin instead next Monday, the good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise. I can’t say I was terribly disappointed. I had just spent two hours working with the Speechonauts (which seems like the best thing I can come up with as a name for the Speecho-American Sailors), and I was sort of drained. They certainly are a radically different business from debaters. I’m going to be sad when I pass them along to a new coach; I’ll probably keep my hand in a little just because it’s fun, especially at the level of piece-selection and preparation. Dare I suggest I know a little about reading and writing and especially cutting, given the good old day job?

I was, naturally, intrigued by the notes accompanying the MJP opening at Greenhill. Two issues are addressed that we’ve discussed a lot in our own MJP use, both literally in tab and here at CL. First off, there is the question of pairing when a natural fit (1-1) is unavailable. That is, it would seem that among the goals of MJP, giving everyone their most preferred judge comes in as a pretty high priority. At the same time, by its very nature, giving everyone equality (judges rated equally by both parties) is also a high priority. But there may be reasonable spiritual differences, where some people hold that they’d rather be on the wrong end of a 1-2 pairing than in a mutual 3-3 or 4-4. How tab handles things when no high 1-1 or 2-2 is available becomes problematic. Greenhill is leaving it to the masses, allowing coaches to state a preference for either the equal match or the higher ranked but unequal match (although I’m not sure if they said what they’d do if the coaches for the two sides were not in agreement). My feeling on this is a little mixed, but given a large judging pool, that is, if I’m not hemmed in my restraints of sheer numbers, I sort of tend to think that the equal numbers are what should be done from the tab perspective. I mean, it’s called “mutual” for a reason. But as I say, there might be reasonable spiritual differences on this.

The second thing that struck me was that the random rounds started preffing at 3-3s rather than 1-1s. At least that’s the way I think they have it set up. I like this a lot, as it helps solve the PJ Conundrum we’ve discussed off and on, which is the lack of use of lesser ranked judges (short of total strikeouts). It also forces debaters to win some rounds in front of judges they may not like as much as their 1s, which has always been one of the main complaints about MJP from those totally against it. While I think the underlying logic of MJP at national events far outweighs the concerns of those who want to keep LD available to less committed audiences, I still like the idea that a good debater can pick up almost any ballot.

I’ll be doing MJP at the Pups and Jake. I’ve asked the Powers that Be to think about what Greenhill is doing, in aid of informing what we’re doing. I’ll keep you posted one way or that other. Obviously, at first blush, I’m against the first idea and in favor of the second. We’ll let the Ps that B speak for themselves.

We've have said more farewells than Cher, the Who and the Eagles combined

However, I like Claire's analysis of the LD-as-policy material, which she put out as separate comments, which I'll connect here.

Now that I've gotten a shout-out, I feel the need to clarify the argument I didn't quite make in my last comment. I agree that the nichification of LD is a concern, but I'm going to set that aside at first, since that's not what I was whining about.

The claim "LD is turning into policy" is substantiated in various ways, among them references to "speed, various forms of argumentation, disclosure, etc." I personally don't care about speed, or theory (except when it's rhetorical nonsense), at least not philosophically. I am concerned about the effects disclosure has on the nature of the activity in terms of what skills are learned, and specifically what skills are necessary to win a round. You said, referencing the use of evidence in rounds:

"you reach a point where the only way anyone can evaluate what you’ve said is to read the case when no one is speaking (which is why some policy rounds take forever, because they’re decided by judges after the round is over, when they finally get a chance to find out what everyone was arguing). There is a direct result of all of this, which is the creation of a cadre of judges who are capable of handling it."

Another result is that winning a round becomes more and more about advance preparation, and less and less about the ability to understand, dissect, respond to, and construct value-based arguments on the fly. I'm about to overgeneralize wildly about an activity I know very little about. The fact that policy rounds are often decided after the round by reading cases that were picked, blocked, prepped, and carded in advance (and that the skill of the round, I suppose, is in selecting and expressing the pieces of your prep work that are useful) obviates much of what I loved about LD rounds (…10 years ago). The round isn't won *in the round*, it's won after the round, which means it's really won in the library ahead of time.

Of course, advance prep and evidence are integral in LD, and I concede that the arguments made on either side in any given LD round don't vary much on a given topic. But there's a difference between adapting responses you commonly make to an opponent's particular argumentative setup, even if you're familiar with it, and spitting out blocks by rote because you knew exactly what was coming. My primary claim is that I think there's a line somewhere between Policy and LD where the nature of the skills needed to win changes with the amount of advance preparation needed in order to be competitive. *waves hands to emphasize somewhat fuzzy and difficult-substantiate conclusion*

Disclosure specifically encourages massive advance preparation. I will elide the argumentative details supporting this claim because it's obvious. I'm sure such a round is interesting and valuable for many people; I think it would bore me to tears. I loved the challenge of understanding and dissecting an argument on the fly.

(On a similar note, using evidence to support statements of fact is Good. I'm not all like "OMG EVIDENCE LIKE POLICY??!!!" I just don't want the increasing use of evidence to change the nature of an LD resolution, argument, or round, which are, fundamentally, supposed to be questions of value, to be a little cliche about it.)

That was my main argument. Since I was never one to leave well enough alone:

In my view, such a shift exacerbates structural unfairness in the activity. Yes, some schools will always have more money, more coaches, more access to resources and evidence and research, etc etc. But since disclosure makes winning be more and more exclusively about advance prep, it's more exclusively about who has the bigger tubs, which means the kids without the tubs are even more disadvantaged than before. Policy had the K to deal with this exact problem - if you didn't have a huge program to help you prep, you just *couldn't win,* so you had to do something *completely different*. I like to pretend that the solitary kid from a small program can still win an LD round against someone from Apple Valley, but this gets harder and harder if the opposition can literally practice the 1AR at higher and higher speeds (and thus higher and higher argument density) ahead of time, thanks to disclosure and a coaching staff with the time to block out. I sort of think this is what Palmer was saying in the long-ass blog post he wrote on the subject, or at least that was the take-away message I got, or at least I think it was, since it's been ages since he wrote it.

I (Menick) will add that I've always valued policy because of its research and use of evidence, which are among its main benefits to students. The benefits of LD, as CLG says, tend to be somewhere else.

And now I, too, will be somewhere else. Follow the idiocy on Twitter, #DiDeAd.

Disclosure final summary (or at least I'll bet the VCA hopes it's final)

I’ll say this. We are definitely in an era of multiple LD universes. Not merely the multiplicity of newbies and veterans, but the multiplicity of interpretations of what, exactly, the activity actually is, much less what it ought to be. True, like everything else, it has been changing since the day it was born, so this is nothing new. It wasn’t all that long ago that the Legion of Doom was predicting the end of life on the planet as we know it, thanks entirely to the existence of debate camps and their facilitators, who made Lucifer look like SpongeBob Squarepants. Not long ago we argued about MJP. Now we’re discussing disclosure. Who knows what it will be tomorrow? But one thing becomes clear. There are different perceptions of different events, and different people doing different things, and it is good to remind ourselves of this once in a while.

What different events, different people, different things? Well, first of all, we need to remember that the national circuit, or as I always refer to it for essentialist reasons, the $ircuit, is a small part of the activity. Most LDers do not participate in many tournaments with TOC bids, while tournaments with TOC bids are attended by many of the same students who travel freely around the country to attend them, especially as the bid gets more generous. The bid-getters at octos tournaments tend to be about the same 24 people in a given year, mixed around a bit, over and over. The field at Greenhill = the field at Bronx = the field at Glenbrooks, etc., with some seasoning to taste. It costs money to habituate the national circuit, so the teams that go are well funded one way or the other. And that funding is probably dependent on results. If the Millard Fillmore HS LD team wants to travel around the country to all the octos tournaments, they’d better do damned well at those tournaments, or the funding will go to the Millard Fillmore HS tiddly-winks team. So the Millards hire some aggressive young assistant coaches, etc., etc. It doesn’t matter if the money is official or not. If the money is coming from the parents’ pockets, the parents will stop paying if they believe that it’s for nothing, that little Janie or Johnny is as likely to do well at these tournaments as, well, SpongeBob Squarepants. What has happened as a result of breathing this mix of results-based, high-priced, travel-intensive (when do some of these kids ever go to school?) atmosphere, the octos tournaments, and some of the quarters, have become a unique universe. The stakes are high. People are heavily invested in succeeding. And the nature of the players is such that certain things can be expected: the participation of large, solidly talented squads, very small coach-to-team ratio, high coach participation, prioritization of competitive success over general forensics benefits (although those benefits are still there). Considerations like MJP, as we’ve discussed, makes a lot of sense in this universe. Disclosure may or may not make sense, but I would venture that we are only talking about it in this particular universe, at least now; unless some absolute benefits are proven that are applicable to all the other universes of debate, which certainly was not true of MJP, I can’t see it become the norm no matter what. Hell, as AT says, it’s not even the norm at the octos tournaments in policy, where in fact it is the norm in the activity at much lower levels. Go figure.

I would venture a guess that there are about 150 to 200 at most people living in this $ircuit universe, if for no other reason than that most high schools can’t afford it, in this or any economy. How many high school activities require traveling around the country every couple of weeks, and missing almost as much school as you attend? So it’s a small universe to begin with, and one I don’t think is replicated anywhere else in high school curricula.

So maybe there’s thousands of other LDers in the country. Sure, they know about TOC and would love to qualify, but their chances are slim because their opportunities to attend bid tournaments are few. So it goes. So are these debaters lesser debaters, or are they debating some different way? The answers are, not intrinsically, and not necessarily. But they are debating in a different universe, and breathing a different atmosphere. It is a universe comprising mostly local participants, including local judges. They are not debating in front of someone who just taught theory at VBI, in other words. There’s probably less speed involved. There may not be as much time and effort spent by the debaters (missing all that school and doing all that debate work, intensive training with virtually private coaches), so their sword will have a less sharp edge, even if there’s no intelligence difference between our local debater and our TOC debater. You don’t have to be a TOC debater to be smart; there’s a whole other bunch of factors involved.

Even in my region in the northeast, which has plenty of debaters, and a number of TOC types, there’s a vast difference from one contest to the next. Mostly we have events judged heavily by the alums of the host school, with fields comprising sophomores up to seniors, where everybody pretty much started debating one another back as noobs, and their common shared values are as much SpongeBob Squarepants as the PICs in the nuclear neg. We also have the NYC Invitational, which while in our region is far from regional and is wall-to-wall $ircuiteers. And we have maybe a dozen or so MHL/CFL events for the new debaters who couldn’t find a banana at a United Fruit convention. [You know I’m writing a serious article when I provide my own metaphors!]

The thing we need to remember is what we’re talking about for whom, and what we’re asking of whom, and what we’re bringing to the different universes. For our newbies, we brought the Modest Novice, to train them better, with a beautifully clean and philosophical civil disobedience topic. For our regional invitationals, we provide community rankings that are meaningful in their region. For $ircuit folk, we render unto them the things that are $ircuitous. All of these are different, and they all co-exist fine, for the most part. The goal of high school forensics—all of it—is the education of students in certain ways of thinking and speaking and writing and researching and communicating. Most of the time, we are very much working to achieve that goal.

There is something else that we need to remember, however. If you are going to move from one of these universes to another, you are going to have to live off the atmosphere of that universe. You are going to have to play by the rules of the polity. If you go to octos tournaments, well, suck it up, Sailors, or whoever, because they are going to be filled with big, powerful teams with war rooms pumping out evidence like Sarah Palin pumping out incoherent gobbledygook on her Twitter account. You may be a small team. That is tough. You’re in a big team world. Adapt. Adjust. Deal with it. Find your way to succeed despite it. Whatever. It is that world. It is what it is. Don’t like it? Don’t go.

The same holds true at the regional tournaments. Oh, you just went to Greenhill, Bronx, Apple Valley and Glenbrooks, and now you’re here at the SpongeBob Squarepants Invitational in the town of Resume Speed somewhere in upstate New York a couple of miles north of Montreal? Well, don’t whine in your $ircuitous way about the crappy local judging and how everyone here is a rube from the burbs and why am I wasting my time here anyhow, I belong at bid tournaments, I’m too good for this! Yeah, right. I’ve got two words for you: Bronx Science. Cruz has set a standard for his team of participation at all events, up and down the line, that could be the standard for everyone. Your team is too good to attend such-and-such a tournament? Screw you! If you were all that good, you’d be making it a better tournament, but your belief in your own goodness pretty much guarantees that, well, good you ain’t.

We need to honor all of us. We don’t need to agree with, love or act like all of us, but we have a big pool of players, and I don’t know anyone on my side of it that isn’t trying to do their best for the education of as many students as possible. So they’re hard-edged competitors? Well, they’re in hard-edged competitive situations. They don’t understand the latest hot-college-coach-generated arguments? Well, their school just laid off ten percent of their teachers, and this isn’t exactly a high income neighborhood we’re talking about. I’ve always personally believed, and I’ve pointed this out here, that I am proudest of what I have done for my least talented students. If a student is a natural debater, I’m mostly a travel agent. But for students with a little curiosity and a need to develop some thinking/reading/speaking/researching/writing skills, I have something to offer that is the reason I do this in the first place.

I have loved this discussion of disclosure, which, as I say, is a $ircuit issue. I’ve learned a lot, and expect to learn more in the forge of the Bronx experiment. But it is an isolated issue, and it doesn’t directly relate to most of my debate year. Indirectly, however, it may have some effects. I’m curious too to learn what those effects might be. What is the point of this posting? Well, just to remind people of the parochial nature of what we’ve been saying, for one thing, and to remind people that, as I said above, the rules of the house are the rules of the house, and if you don’t like them, don’t visit the house. If you don’t like what the $ircuit is up to, don’t bother with it. Plenty of people thrive in LD without giving two peeps to the $ircuit and $ircuit tournaments, and it doesn’t bother them in the least. Nor should it. On the other hand, I love discussion! I love hearing people’s opinions expressed intelligently, and I thank everyone who has done so here over the last couple of weeks. This has been some of the most fun I have had on the blog in a while.

But for now, well, I’m going to Disney World.

I can't even follow me anymore

Ryan R says:

Maybe I'm not understanding your math, but 6 cases per side means that worst case scenario (with your two debaters on opposite sides in round 7) you'd only have to disclose 8 of your 12 cases in prelims. Depending on whether one or both of them break, and depending on how flips work out, your remaining 4 should be able to run all-new cases at least through octas, possibly though finals. Seems pretty equitable to me, at least by the standard you set in your post.

I'll leave aside my quibbles about the diminishing strategic returns for new cases, but think of it this way: pre-disclosure, BigTeamsVille had to write 10 (or whatever) cases in order to be able to run a new case every round, and post-disclosure they have to write 60. Isn't that a comparative advantage to Hen Hud?

But if we're disclosing, then the math doesn't matter. If we're not disclosing, or we're disclosing everything, my 2 people have to absorb 60 cases and their 10 people and multiple coaches have to absorb 6. In the fifteen minutes before the round. Where perhaps none of those cases will be run. It's the 6 cases per person, multiplied by the number of people. Advantage BigTeamsVille.

But I'm more interested in the whole Alice in Wonderland situation of disclosure meaning you never have to disclose.

Case disclosure - A challenge

Maybe I'm missing something, but I’m starting to believe that the fatal flaw of disclosure is enough to prove that the process, as it exists, absolutely works in favor of big programs and to the detriment of small programs.

Stick with me on this.

I have two—count ’em, 2—varsity LD debaters. That’s the whole shooting match. The entire varsity squad. Not two at a tournament, but two in total. There is no bench strength, as they say. And, as the VCA knows, I do not provide cases, positions, blocks, evidence, etc.

My guess is that Bronx Science, Greenhill and Harvard-Westlake have, say, a minimum of 10 varsity LD debaters each comprising their squads (I’m being parsimonious in my estimate) and at least 2 coaches each providing to some extent positions, blocks and evidence, if not whole cases.

Go back and read http://coachean.blogspot.com/2010/08/case-disclosure-part-8.html, which remains unanswered. The point there was that, despite all the claims of the benefits of disclosure, under the present rules of engagement it is a simple matter that a debater can attend a tournament that requires disclosure and never once disclose what he or she is going to run for the entire tournament.

I would suggest that all the so-called benefits of disclosure are negated by the rules of engagement, insofar as disclosure doesn’t necessarily happen, or at most it only happens that the small programs disclose by mathematical default while the big programs do not.

Let’s look at the realities. My 2 guys go to Bronx, with disclosure mandated. They have, between them, the ability to create, we will say for argument’s sake, 3 good new cases each on each side. (The numbers don’t matter here, as they will scale regardless of their accuracy.) They can, therefore, scrape together 6 cases for the tournament.

Greenhill and H-W, also attending the tournament, even if we assume similar capabilities (which isn’t true, because of coaching differences), can also create 3 good new cases each for each side, numbering a total of 60 cases.

The discrepancy here is obvious. If a team is not required to actually run a disclosed case, if a team can in good conscience pull out a totally new case for each round, then the bigger school’s advantage is manifest. All the disclosure in the world is pointless because they’ve only disclosed what they’ve run, not what they’re going to run in a given round. For that matter, even if they did run what they’ve disclosed, they can have disclosed 60 cases, whereas my guys will have disclosed 6, and at the tournament, with their full contingent of entries (not the 10 but, say, 5) plus position-providing coaches, their advantage after my guy’s cases are disclosed is overwhelming. They have the personnel to use the disclosure; my guys will be swamped. Worse, as often as not, my guys will be prepping against a case that isn’t going to be run!

So, first, no one is really disclosing. Second, big teams even if they do disclose, can be disclosing so much as to render the disclosure counterproductive.

I mentioned Bronx, Greenhill and H-W because the former two mandate disclosure at their tournaments, and the coach of the latter has been one of its strongest proponents. But all the benefits they have claimed seem strangely chimerical to me, other than the wiki providing a body of research, a different issue altogether. All the arguments I’ve seen on the benefits of disclosure are only gained when disclosure is real. So I would ask this of these large programs in favor of disclosure. Are they willing to disclose exactly what cases they will be running at a tournament prior to the tournament? All of them, if more than one? And are they clearly willing to note which they’ll be running when, if needs be? In other words, are they really willing to disclose, in advance, so that if one of my 2 guys hits them, my guys can benefit from disclosure, that my guys can read the cases in advance and get a little prep? Are they willing to reevaluate the rules of engagement so that we really have disclosure, and not just some hurdles that are disclosure in name only that may ultimately benefit only large teams?

If they are not willing to actually disclose, then they must explain to the community what the benefits of disclosure are, when there is, in fact, no disclosure.

Some more from AT

Professor Timmons has recently posted some direct answers in a couple of comments, but this long one should go in the main body. (That is the problem of the discussion in this format, but on the other hand, I get to moderate it the way I like it, so at least there's one person getting some satisfaction out of it...)

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Case lists, legality and more: A second try

I must admit three things as I take a second swipe at the issues of case lists and privacy as it addresses Chris Palmer’s concerns.

First – Chris Palmer is a gifted writer and super bright. Reading anything he writes makes that readily apparent. Bringing Chris and Jim Menick into the discussion about the merits (or lack thereof) of case lists in debate offers an important perspective. While they might disagree with your arguments, they do so in a manner that embodies respect and intelligence that certainly raises the bar in the typical discussion on this issue. Thank you for bringing your collective voices into this conversation.

Second – My initial response which focused on the legality of case lists was a response not just to Chris, but others who that made this argument as well. I will address the potential risks inherent in case lists from a perspective on long term impact to the student and programs based on the content of the material submitted.

Third – Chris Palmer is an IT person who also does debate. He speaks from a position of knowledge that most debate coaches (myself included) can’t. In fairness, his argument about the long-term impact of case lists has a ton of merit. It is an issue we should discuss. We, as a community, should work to educate our kids about what they place on the Internet.

I am convinced that despite some inherent risks, disclosure and case list are on balance better than a culture of secrecy. The bottom line is this: if what the students we coach run arguments are SO offensive that a future employer, or the voting public, might inquire about it OR that will justify a school board cutting a program, perhaps (independent of case lists) we need to be discussing what our kids are arguing. I would love to hear (even via backchannel) schools that had political support that were canceled because of an argument a student ran. I would guess that even if an example or two were provided, I could counter with more of where funding was increased due to proving the “across the curriculum “ benefits of arguments that are being made.

Chris argues it is “not about can, but ought.” I think is about both. Others have argued directly that since disclosure “violates privacy” and that case are “educational records,” the argument of whether a tournament director CAN require students to disclose were an issue if a claim of a constitutional, or violation of states’ rights was an issue. In our litigious society, we as educators must engage in due diligence to make sure our actions are BOTH in line with the law AND if they are educationally sound. I have heard no real response to the legal perspective I outline. (In fact, all seem to agree that no claims of a right to privacy have merit.)

Again, while we do need to look at what our students place online, in reading part of Chris’s post the undertone is that things are being said of such a radical nature in high school debate rounds that justify comparison to a world of being an Islamic sympathizer (my words) or a Communist. A resurgence of McCarthyism, perhaps…?

It has been argued that information “has caused collateral damage” and that “some have had to deal with the issue before.” I am not sure of those situations or their frequency. I can say, based on personal experience, that many of my former students and colleagues have had positive questions asked about their debate experience AND about arguments/positions based on being Googled. Those conversations have all been positive. The impact is not being ignored to the potentiality of information being used, either tomorrow, or in the next decade, based on a case list. Rather, three quick thoughts come to mind. First, I haven’t seen in happen in fifteen years of case lists in policy debate. Perhaps with new technology and increased frequency it could happen but I am just saying.,, Second, Facebook posts or lddebate.org/VBD posts of old have MORE of a risk than the posting of a case outline. Third, the “impact” is outweighed by the benefits of a case list in my opinion.

I know this about contemporary Lincoln-Douglas debate. I can point to three National Championships whose results were impacted by bad/doctored/out of context evidence. I am sure many major invitational tournaments results as well. Other abuses seem to exist as well in an attempt to win. Many reasons exist as to why. But we all know it’s true. Case lists are just one effort to confront these abuses.

I would hate to have us “hunker down” in even more of a culture of secrecy due to an “inherent risk of change means stick with the status quo argument.”

President Obama, and President Bush for that matter, were elected after admitting using illegal drugs but a high school debater has his future ruined for arguing is “capitalism is bad” in a switch side debate tournament? This makes little sense to me.

Chris has a very compelling argument. I would suggest that the impact is huge but the link is small. Also uniqueness (Facebook, other social networking sites, blogging and the like) overwhelms the link.

Education is what we need regarding what and how we submit information online, not secrecy.

Respectfully submitted.

Aaron

Some important responses from A Timmons, pulled from the comments

First, on the rationale behind the initial privacy of cases:

Jim Menick makes an excellent point regarding “why not post it all if disclosure is good even if the argument hasn’t been run”. This is an interesting query and makes sense. Actually, I have little problem with this idea if the premise was to be followed by all. My concern is that it wouldn’t. For close to a decade we have discussed an “open source” paradigm in policy debate. That movement has gained no traction. The true reason why the current model exists is based on the idea that there is a balance between education and competition. Without question the core of what we do should be grounded in education. That said, debate at invitational events is about wins and losses (accomplished using a backdrop of those wins being achieved in an ethical manner). Teams (large or small) if they have an argument or case based on the work they do or the strategic nature of a case/argument/responses to an opponent’s case, should be able to be used one time to reward work and creativity. Unless the resources we use are static (everyone reads the same evidence set) I do think the “post it all” model would privilege well resourced teams. If we have concerns about “lone wolfs” ability to compete letting them roll in to an event with a creative idea is one way to equalize the playing field in that debate. This does NOT mean that just because a debater is from a under resourced team they should be able to avoid peer review in a competitive zero sum activity. To use a sports analogy (albeit not a perfect one), if the University of Northern Iowa or Butler shows up at the “big dance/NCAA tournament” and are playing a Kansas or a Duke, the players and coaches should NOT be able to say, “you can’t scout our games because we are smaller schools and you have more coaches, resources and McDonald’s All Americans than we do”. I finish with a quick trivia question that is obvious. Who won those games???

Hard work should be rewarded. If we aren’t going to have a static evidence set. the current model seems to best balance education and competition.

Second, on the contagion via octos bid:

Many have argued that octo - final bid tournament are unique in the way they “spur others to action”/model what those events do. While it pains people to hear it, I will appeal to what has happened in policy debate unique to case lists in the last 10 years or so to show that this phenomena has not been the case. For the last 8 to 10 years we have had a policy case list at the Greenhill tournament. St. Marks has had a similar list for about the same period of time. During this time frame, Berkeley, Emory, The Glenbrooks, Harvard, MBA nor last year Blake (which was a first time octos bid event) were all octos qualifiers in policy debate. None required submission to a case list as an expectation of entry. My point is that historically, conjecture about other events “getting on the bus” because another event does it seems to be empirically denied. Providing why the Lincoln Douglas octos bid events would do so is less than clear to me. It might be argued that certain personalities make a change more likely. Again I say, “Empirically denied”. Melissa Wade, Dallas Perkins and Sherry Hall, Tara Tate, Ted Belch and Billy Tate all have influence on the policy community. They didn’t require a case list (primarily because most contribute that attend these events anyway). It seems like those making the modeling arguments need some proof that Apple Valley, VBT and the other octos events will model Greenhill and Bronx.

My thought is that they will not for myriad reasons. Those arguing the precedent of modeling should (perhaps ought is more appropriate) have a higher “burden of proof” to prove their case given the history in that “other activity”.

Both of which answers are direct and, especially in the latter case, a bit of a relief. One of the big things that's missing for me is the experience with disclosure, which is too bad because it's been around quite a while. As we LDers learn what Policians already know, we may end up a lot happier than when our imaginations run wild. Which again is why I thoroughly endorse Cruz doing this at Bronx, with an eye on his postgame survey. Texas, for me, is far away. (Hell, Texas for half the people in Texas is far away.) But the Bronx is right down the road, and I'll be there all weekend, not to mention I see O'C every time I turn around anyhow. My truest hope is that we are indeed benefiting small teams, both for the theory of it and because I run one, and not making anything worse. Aaron's experience helps me accept that this is true.

Case disclosure Part 9 - Conclusion?

An interesting link from Christian Chessman (who, VCA members might remember, was so helpful in figuring out the Modest Novice topic) on open review: http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=997072

For those who missed it, CP continues his discussion of privacy here: http://www.azuen.net/2010/08/09/caselists-and-privacy/ Of course, what he’s saying does limit much (most?) of the appeal of disclosure to me. Since I seem to be arriving at a position that, truth to tell, disclosure at tournaments is more apparent than real, the idea of a knowledge database is all that is left. The points CP makes (supported by Deal) can, I guess, be fixed by a closed management of the list, but that does sound pretty unlikely.

Someone answered my query, and pointed out that in policy negs are also posted. Whatever. I would have imagined that neg strategy would have depended on the aff rather that standing alone, unless it’s some cockamamie K or something. Which reminds me, I do agree with I-forget-who who ranted a tad on the idea that someone would run an anti-disclosure theory argument. Jeesh. If you want to argue against disclosure, do it here. At the point where you’ve agreed to enter the tournament requiring disclosure, you have forfeited the right to win a case by arguing against it, rather than arguing the resolution. Not that I judge much, but if I get dragged in, and that’s what you’re running, well, at least if you talk pretty you might get decent speaks…

I think I’m sort of coming to the end of my string on this whole discussion. At this point I think we can mostly only rake over the coals without getting any further. But there are some big unanswered questions.
* Is the public wiki inherently problematic? I’m thinking here about what CP discusses, plus the issue that was raised the wiki might create a style of debate that is undesirable, which we haven’t gone into much because it’s hard to say, but it is a possibility.
* Does disclosure solve the problem it claims to solve? Since the rules of engagement are elastic enough that for all practical purposes a team can break a couple of new cases over the length of a tournament and avoid the wiki almost altogether, meaning that the big teams with their networks at that tournament maintain their advantage, have we really gotten anything out of this?
We can answer the second question by monitoring the practice. And we’ll be doing that at Bronx. We can only answer the first question by further serious discussion, perhaps face-to-face. I wonder if a forum can be established for this at one of the popular events over the season? We'll certainly be discussing it on TVFT when we start up again this year. And if folks do post more here, I'll make sure to feature it and, if it makes sense, comment on it.

There are smaller questions as well that are food for thought. Given the nature of wikis and wifi, have we created a big tournament phenomenon for no better reason than that only big tournaments can do it (if they even can)? And should big tournaments be making trend-setting decisions with no accountability (aside from the theoretical lack of entries at future tournaments, and something tells me that Greenhill and Bronx are not exactly empty this year)? Should we be making decisions about LD based on decisions about Policy (hearkening back to some points Sophie made that I never elaborated upon but are worth noting, that the two are not the same and disclosure does not have the same effect, not to mention the other aspects of LD as pseudo-Policy)?

At the bottom, I like the idea of disclosure if disclosure is real. I don’t like sneak attacks, especially since they’re usually linked with sneaky cases. I like the publicizing of the body of the content of a resolution for the entire community, and see this as a valuable resource, but acknowledging the reservations noted by CP. But I wonder if we’re really doing anything more than adding a new level of tournament maintenance to our lives without a lot of real benefit.

We’ll begin to see soon enough.

Case disclosure Part 8

Let me first get one thing straight, just in my own head (and not relevant to the post that follows). In policy, I’m assuming people only disclose their affs, being that the neg strategy is directly dependent on the aff, whereas in LD, people disclose affs and negs. If I’m wrong on this, I hope someone will correct me.

Meanwhile…

In my last full post, I brought up some questions that I think need to be answered.* Since Matt thought I was thinking backwards, let’s start backwards and look at his response: “The reason one should have to disclose their case after it is run is because breaking a case puts it in the public domain. A wiki just makes it accessible to all even if not every team has the resources to be present when that case is broken. The whole point of disclosure is make what is already technically ‘public information’ more accessible to those for whom information is harder to come by. Also, as far as I am concerned, until a case is broken, it is just not finished. Both in my coaching and debate experiences I have been in situations where cases were edited up until the start of a round. Having to disclose positions before they are even run makes little sense to me in light of this.”

First of all, I’m aware that people are going by the premise that once a case is run it is in the public domain, and the wiki theoretically makes the public truly public. That doesn’t answer the point I was making, that for all practical purposes, a debater can run cases at a tournament that are never in the wiki, which exists for the direct purpose of people seeing what that person is running. Here’s the logic: I go to the tournament with a new case. It isn’t on the wiki. I run it. In round 2 I debate the other side, and run that. I now get a short break and I post the first case, but the schematics are up and no one has a chance to do anything with what I posted, and then prior to round 4 I do likewise with my other case, with the same results, and so far I have gone through 4 rounds and no one has had my cases disclosed to them. If I’m really a conniver I could pull out new cases for rounds 5 and 6, but that’s extreme. However, I will pull out new cases for elims, and pull the same business again, keeping my cases from public display till the last minute. This is not some bizarre scenario, because already people bring a couple of cases to a tournament, or else rewrite their cases between rounds to update them as a result of experience in prior rounds or new evidence gained. My point here is that the actual disclosure of what one is running can be quite minimal even without a lot of finagling, and virtually zero if one is a real finagler (and believe me, there are plenty of finaglers out there, big teams and small).

Let me repeat this: “I mean, simply enough, if disclosure is so all-fired good, why don’t I have to do it? For all the debaters going to Greenhill, under these rules of engagement, there can be an absolutely empty wiki. Not one single person has to disclose a case [in advance]. Not one single person will have run a case, and even if I’m missing something and they did run a case somewhere, they can post that case and not run it. All the rules of engagement are about publicizing cases that you have run. None of them are about publicizing cases that you are going to run. If you ask me, that is a fatal flaw. It makes little sense to me, and it opens the door to shenanigans not unlike the chicanery of the person running surprise nonsense. If disclosure is good because it allows everyone to prep, because it creates a body of information about resolutions, because it levels the playing field at tournaments, at the point where disclosure happens only AFTER THE FACT, it is useless. And worse, it allows for abuses.”

To clarify, it is not the distinction between public and private that doesn’t make sense to me, it is the rules of engagement distinguishing between the two, given how much lip service is given to the value of the latter in all the pro-disclosure discussion.

This was my main question: “Why is it okay not to disclose if you haven’t run a case yet, but then you have to disclose it after you’ve run it?” What was the warrant that it was good to run a case no one knew about? I understand how the warrant “expires” by the case entering the p.d., but it would seem that everything about the rules of disclosure engagement value privacy until a case is run. So we have one set of rules for privacy, and another set of rules for the public domain, and we can easily twist those rules if we are so inclined to maintain quite a bit of secrecy. Matt’s argument that he may not be finished with his cases until he goes into a round may be true, but I’m guessing that he went to the Harvard tournament with, oh, a general idea of what he’d be running… And even if not, one can set rules that the cases have to be posted by Thursday for Friday’s tournament, and that one has to run disclosed cases. God knows tournament directors set rules for a million other things.

So that’s my question. At the point where we’re only mandating disclosure after the fact, there’s an inherent contradiction, that a case is valuable as a private entity at some points, but that as soon as possible, we want to discount that value. Which is it?

And what also remains unanswered from that post are the questions about whether this is only a big tournament practice, being that live wifi is far from the rule at most high schools. No one has addressed whether disclosure is so good that it ought to be ubiquitous (as compared to our analysis of judge selection, which we did see different systems working best in different contexts).

I think Max’s responses to the original post are in line with my thinking. I do want to emphasize that my goal here is to get the answers, not to indict the system in any way. It is what it is, and I don’t know whether it should or shouldn’t be changed, having never gone through it. And I remain a believer that the experiment at Bronx is a good way to study it. But I will suggest that, if what I’m saying here is the way it is, people who are adamantly against disclosure should start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel because, no matter how you slice it, it ain’t much disclosure at all…

* Tom Deal looks at some of what I wrote in my post, and Matt Dunay's reply in the comments to http://coachean.blogspot.com/2010/08/list-legality-and-couple-of-other.html He makes some good and different points than I do.

List legality and a couple of other addenda

The post from Aaron on any legal issues, and the responses, are worth reading in detail, if you're thinking about the legality business. (This was never one of mine, to be honest; in fact, I was the one wanting the wiki to go on in perpetuity, if it were to go on at all.)

One point that can be easily resolved is discussed in the responses, namely that this whole business is a big-school push, over the bodies of the madly protesting poor little schools. In the postgame survey, all Cruz has to do is ask each school, overall, two questions: are they a big school or a small school, and do they feel that this system helped or hurt them. It certainly is curious that, if this whole thing were in aid of helping small schools, small school students seem curiously opposed, at least the ones that have posted, while no one from a big school has been anything but enthusiastic. I will point out, again, that as a coach of a small team, I remain agnostic, and appreciate the opportunity to study it at the Bronx. My agnosticism does not stop me from questioning it, however, and I think that, when this discussion plays down, we'll all have a good sense of what to look at in the postgame.

Fun stuff.

I'll answer Dunay's reply to my last post in a day or two. If anyone else wants to give it a shot (either he missed my point or I didn't make it particularly well), have at it.

Another side issue that arises is the right of tournament directors to do whatever they want with their tournaments. This is absolutely true, but must be considered in the Spiderman context: with great power comes great responsibility. A very small number of people run octo-bid tournaments, which exercise an very big sway over the activity. So does TOC. How these tournaments are run has a great influence on the activity, up and down the line. While their directors are perfectly within their rights to do whatever they please, the effects are felt far beyond their own tournaments. Relying on some Hegelian claim of synthesis and claiming the corrective that people won't attend something as important to many debaters as an octos tournament over principle is fairly unlikely. They'll suck it up. This failure to boycott the tournament arises because of a CBA deciding that accepting the unloved aspect of the tournament is outweighed by the chance to get a bid, or breathe that air, despite the unloved aspect. At the point where enough octos people are promoting the unloved aspect, it becomes common law, but please don't make the mistake that it has also become loved.

Timmons on privacy

Once again, I'm putting a response from one of the main proponents of disclosure in the main body of the blog. As always, feel free to comment.

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To all that have written so far I am impressed with the tone, the
reflective thoughts, and the care all are taking in addressing the
issue of disclosure/case lists in Lincoln - Douglas debate. The
discussion is needed, and this blog has produced some of the best
discussion on this issue. Thank you!

I will address one issue in this post. My response will center on the
issue of the privacy concerns/violations that could potentially be
raised as a result of a mandatory case list at an invitational debate
tournament. In full disclosure (pun clearly intended), I don't have a
law degree (or to quote Jay Z, "I ain't passed the bar but I know a
little bit"), but I do have a few thoughts on this issue. My thoughts
are based on my personal understanding of the "reasonable expectation
of privacy" as it relates to invitational debate tournaments based on
my research before deciding to implement a case list last year at the
Greenhill Fall Classic, in addition to consulting with people who DO
have a legal degree and background in the area of constitutional law,
educational law and privacy law (and the inherent intersections of
those areas).

Simply put, the privacy argument has no merit as it relates to
mandatory case lists at invitational tournaments from a legal
perspective (in my humble opinion).

Initially, the first question is, does a student have a reasonable
expectation of privacy if they agree to attend a debate tournament
that requires them to disclose materials once that material is used in
a debate? I steadfastly believe the answer is a resounding no. Two
things are important. First, the student would have to prove that
cases are "educational records" based on the statutory definition of
the phrase AND that maintenance of those records is a violation of
either a constitutional violation of privacy and/or a violation of a
states legitimate expectation of privacy AND the potential impact to
disclosure justifies a rejection of the case list requirement by a
host of an invitational event on constitutional grounds. I think that
burden is impossible to meet. For most schools, the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) indicates that schools "may release
records (this even grants that cases are education records which is
quite the assumption) without consent, to school officials with
legitimate educational interests, specified officials for audit or
evaluation for purposes or organizations conducting certain studies
for or on behalf of the school". Based on the educational defenses of
case lists, they seem to meet the criteria out lined in statutory law.
Secondly, the idea that cases are required to be disclosed AFTER they
are read in public by the student seems to cut against "expectations
of privacy." The ideas have already been aired in public, and BY
CHOICE (as a result of attending that event, and agreeing to the
stipulations of the host), no right to privacy in the area of case
lists could be claimed. The idea that anyone can watch debates make
them public it seems. I will point out that if the individuals that
DO feel (and that interpretation is upheld by a legal challenge) that
the sharing of "educational records" in the context of disclosing
cases, are violations of privacy, we are in a world of hurt as a
community. Oral critiques, decisions being announced in the room with
an audience (a winner and a loser being announced after the students
engaged in academic competitions where their work is evaluated in
public, clearly violate this standard). So would results on any web
page (or printed packets for that matter). Tournaments also currently
ask for phone numbers, addresses and, if a tournament accepts personal
checks, checks with account numbers. Given new laws on identity theft
they would all seem to be much more a privacy concern that case lists.
These seem more closely worthy of evaluation/critique than kids who
agree to attend an event (which is invitational in nature).

Tournaments where case lists are required are not mandatory for any
debater to attend. Chris Palmer argues that "And as long as some kids
out there are graded in debate classes, we can't say with confidence
that they have a choice about attending any given tournament." My
retort is that as long as tournament hosts explain the expectation in
advance, parents can discuss with their child's coaches their
philosophy/concerns and reasonable accommodation could be made for
that student to attend other events. Chris also argues that "Besides,
giving them the choice to attend doesn't excuse putting a burden on
those attending if the burden proves harmful; especially if the
practice proliferates at bid tournaments". Proving harm seems to put
some burden on those defending (or questioning) potential privacy
violations that case lists are, in fact, violations of any "reasonable
expectation of privacy". Before spending more time on that portion of
the argument, perhaps more analysis or reference to HOW case lists
violate privacy would be in order. If a school/tournament host claims
that case lists serve "legitimate educational interests", which is
easy to defend for obvious reasons, the student has no leg to stand
on.

Let's just stay those who feel that case lists are a violation of
privacy are correct and the initial argumentative burden has been met.
The question at that point is does the student (and as a result the
parent by allowing then to attend the tournament in question), waive
any "right to privacy" (either implicitly or explicitly), as a
condition to participate in an invitational tournament. I think the
answer is a definitive yes. Just like we agree to searches at airports
as a condition of flying or walking through a metal detector for a
debate tournament in a "tough" neighborhood, agreeing to attend a
tournament with a case list waives any so called expectation of
privacy one might have.

The bottom line is that no one has a RIGHT to attend any tournament.
Any host gets to set reasonable expectations for their guests.

Again, I am not an attorney but a lifetime debate coach dedicated to
serving both my personal students, and the broader community. I would
respectfully submit that those that feel that case lists are a
violation of privacy need more of a warrant on the "why" to that
claim. Maybe it just "feels wrong" because it is new in the Lincoln -
Douglas community. As with weighing any competing claims, the impact
to "feeling wrong" is outweighed by the benefits to case lists from my
survey of their impact based on over 15 years of them operating in the
policy world. Many see that analogy as not relevant. I see it as
important to serve as a reference point to learn from as case lists
are tested in Lincoln - Douglas.

I have chosen NOT to address the side issue of if case lists create
obstacles for students once they leave the debate world in a lengthy
manner other than saying this, if President Obama can admit to taking
illicit drugs as a youth and still win the election, a high school kid
arguing "capitalism bad" will be ok in twenty years! As a final tongue
in cheek parting shot, perhaps kids watching what they put on their
Face book pages and /or vbd posts of old might be more of a concern to
them down the road than the "cap bad k". My experience is that many of
my former debaters have been googled by employers and asked about
their debate career. It led to great discussions, even about silly/out
there arguments they ran during their time in debate. In all cases I
have heard about, those conversations were all positive.

Case lists are no panacea for all that ails Lincoln - Douglas debate.
To say they should be rejected on "privacy grounds" doesn't seem like
the right voter to extend in the final rebuttal based on all
information I am able to surmise.

Again, thanks to all for a great civil dialogue on the issue. I look
forward to reading more.

Aaron Timmons

Case disclosure Part 7

A couple of takes from the Big Bronx invitation:

1. The community norm that has developed (and seems to be working) in Team Debate (Policy Debate) is that no one should have to disclose a position that they haven’t run yet. We feel this norm is applicable to Lincoln-Douglas Debate as well. We are not asking you to disclose information BEFORE you run it. Specifically, if this is your first event of the year you do not have to disclose your positions until you run them. For example, if you run a case round one, only then does it become public information.

And…

The community norm in policy is to put things online within a round or so of it being run. If you run a new position in elimination rounds, you should post it immediately after the decision. Bronx Science will provide a wireless connection and for those with laptops, and so submission directly to the wiki should be easy.

Okay, if I were running a rebuttal here, I would start thinking about the purposes of disclosure, as they’ve been presented by those in favor of the process. They’re educational, they’re leveling, they’re good for everyone. As for me, I’ve always looked askance at people who run wacky cases, who get wins out of shock and awe rather than debating. I’ve seen it many times, when someone runs a totally ridiculous, unexpected and, for that matter, unpredictable position, and wins because their opponent was at a loss for a meaningful response. We can indict the opponent for not finding the magic bullet in the vast amount of available prep time (approximately two minutes), but I tend to indict the person who ran the case entirely because the person thought they would win by the element of surprise combined with the case’s extremism/nuttiness. That’s not debate; that’s chicanery. If one is able to secure a position that is unanswerable because the position is so crazy that no one could have conceivably prepared for it, it isn’t much of a win. Members of the VCA have heard me rail about this before.

One can run normal positions, however, and still like the idea of “secrecy” for a perfectly good reason, as Paras explains. “I strongly feel that it hurts me more than it helps because I don't have the ‘secrecy’ of my positions anymore… I think part of the beauty of debate is having to respond to a case you don’t know much about beforehand. Yah, it might make rounds less substantive and not as great as rounds in a world with disclosure, but I believe that’s because debaters are still learning how to think. What’s the educational benefit of making responses that your coaches helped think out for you? School isn’t conducive to learning how to think on your feet, and in that aspect debate ought to be unique. That’s why, quite frankly, a lot of debaters suck at responding to cases they don’t have blocks to. I know that I’ve grown tremendously in this regard, but am still not a great critical thinker. But I know that because I had to think critically about rounds and feel like crap for not being able to come up with good answers, I got better at thinking. In those few minutes I grew a lot as a thinker. That wouldn’t have happened if Cameron had written out responses for me, which he could have easily done.”

This is a good argument in favor of not disclosing. I think that for the argument to prevail, a lot of people have to be responding by rote, and I don’t know if that’s true or not. I would ask this of the policy folk. I mean, has policy become less educational because it no longer requires as much thinking on one’s feet? I really don’t know. This points to the core of what debate ought to be about as an educational activity. I don’t know how we can answer it.

But there’s no question that disclosure does not point in that direction. Disclosure has certain goals, as I said. So why in the name of all that is holy are the rules of engagement set up so that, at the very least, one can go to a tournament and, to begin with, not disclose? That is, all the discussion of this, both here and when we chatted about it on TVFT, assumed that a case did not have to be disclosed until it was made public by being run in a round.

What?

I mean, simply enough, if disclosure is so all-fired good, why don’t I have to do it? For all the debaters going to Greenhill, under these rules of engagement, there can be an absolutely empty wiki. Not one single person has to disclose a case. Not one single person will have run a case, and even if I’m missing something and they did run a case somewhere, they can post that case and not run it. All the rules of engagement are about publicizing cases that you have run. None of them are about publicizing cases that you are going to run.

If you ask me, that is a fatal flaw. It makes little sense to me, and it opens the door to shenanigans not unlike the chicanery of the person running surprise nonsense. If disclosure is good because it allows everyone to prep, because it creates a body of information about resolutions, because it levels the playing field at tournaments, at the point where disclosure happens only AFTER THE FACT, it is useless. And worse, it allows for abuses.

Some comments pulled from earlier: “Apparently some debaters post fake cases on the wiki to distract from the ones they will be running.” “Big schools have the resources to write so many positions that they break new cases every round. What is the likelihood that a lone wolf debater can write enough cases to combat the case disclosure?” “They disclosed EVERYTHING-- including cases run in practice rounds at camp.” Cruz says: “Also, at most tournaments, in my experience, most large teams do NOT run lots and lots of cases. Instead, they spend time putting a lot of work and research into a few (even two) solid positions.” Perhaps. But at the point where any one person does this, big school or small school notwithstanding, it is a gaming of the system that the system is in no way capable of stopping.

But I think it’s deeper than that. Either disclosure is good all the time, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then why is it good some of the time? Why is it okay not to disclose if you haven’t run a case yet, but then you have to disclose it after you’ve run it? The idea that it is now “public” isn’t a warrant, it’s just an observation, and not a particularly persuasive one, since it’s only public to the people who heard it, which may just be your judge and your opponent. I can see the link here to size—if your opponent or judge represents a big school, it is indeed “public,” at least to them—but again, that’s pretty weak.

And even if people don’t seriously game the system, I think we can reasonably expect that a case might be new at a new tournament, so the posted case won’t be run. And plenty of people break a new case in elims for whatever reasons, and they are perfectly able to do this, according to the disclosure rules of engagement. The debaters who are against disclosure, at the very least, can easily elude a lot of oversight by doing those two things. Not to mention that the whole idea of a case becoming public and people having to post ASAP sounds pretty dicey to me. Wireless goes down, and disclosure is over. If disclosure is good, no one has yet made any argument that it’s only good at big tournaments at schools that all have wireless internet. All the arguments so far have indicated nothing that wouldn’t make disclosure good at small, local tournaments. There’s plenty of schools I go to I can’t even get my phone to work, much less connect to the internet.

You see where I’m going with this. First, we have set up a system that is inherently contradictive. Second, that system allows a small amount of gaming that is not at all unethical (running a new case this tournament from last tournament, that is), meaning that in the presets and your first elim round, you get to break a new case. Now maybe you can distil it down to the whole prep-out issue, that when this happens, no one has prepped out, but where is all of Bietz’s evidentiary ethical considerations then? Or my fears about silly surprise cases? Third, unless we have reliable wireless and force kids to access it immediately after a round, the system fails. Fourth, even if none of this is right and all of it can be disputed successfully, we can only have disclosure at tournaments that have all the electronic tools available to everyone, and yet there’s no reason why all the harms of non-disclosure are not applicable to small tournaments (and, perhaps, might be more applicable).

Telling us that policy has solved this by accepting it does not answer it. Frankly, it would seem to have the same harms for them, although perhaps mitigated by the nature of the activity (an issue that still needs to be discussed).

I’m not being obstreperous here, I’m being curious. Maybe I’m missing something really obvious. And I can see that the harms I’m talking about are removed from the harms of non-disclosure vis-à-vis big and small schools. But there’s an intrinsic logical flaw in the whole thing that eludes me, and in the worst case scenario, has students prepping for cases that are not run. That is, this is the posted case, but oh, look, I’ve got a new case, so sorry, Charlie. This strikes me as an absolutely bad thing. I’d like to know why it isn’t.

Of course, if people were to agree with me, simply mandating that people post the cases they are going to run would solve it.

Cruz responds to much

No question that spreading out replies here isn't the same as a thread on a bulletin board, but, well, this is what it is. I've collected all of Cruz's answers to questions that came before.

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Sorry about the delay in getting back to everyone. The conversation stopped on my end (and on the end of many of the folks posting) because things got very busy here at VBI.

So, to start with Chris...

Regarding the "privacy implications" of a student posting her work:

1. Case lists have been around for some time in Policy Debate, a community in which, like Lincoln-Douglas Debate, there are many attorneys who are active coaches. There have been no legal challenges regarding case lists.

2. While I hope an attorney will weigh in later, I believe the reason there hasn't been a legal challenge is because students aren't compelled to compete at tournaments with case lists, so there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when they volunteer to attend a tournament or provide information via case list.

Regarding tournament policy at octas bid tournaments:

I guess "danger" is a loaded term; I admitted in the letter that I think case lists are a good thing, though I do want to get feedback because I know I can be wrong about things.

But that aside, I think it makes the most sense to run a case list at a tournament where you have a large national draw and a true range of types of programs competing. The networks of power that I worry about are probably less in force at more regional tournaments because of the size of the pool and number of entries from each school in the pool. (I could be wrong about that, though.) I also think it's important to get a representative cross-section of coaching styles and approaches to debate, and I know I have that at my tournament.

Regarding national governance: that's probably correct, but, as you suggested, isn't the necessarily fault of anyone on either side of the case list debate. It's a good discussion to have, but perhaps one to have elsewhere. (LDDebate.org thread? :o))

"What impact, if any, will this experiment have on debaters who aren't connected to the tournament?"

LA Coach, thank you for your question. Two replies come to mind:

1. Assuming "LA" means Louisiana, I am not sure that it's true that you won't be debating folks who compete at the New York City Invitational. We have several schools from Louisiana and Alabama registered to compete. (On the other hand, we are one of the last tournaments on the topic, so perhaps you won't face them at any tournaments after mine.)

2. Case lists give teams a general idea of what arguments are out there on a topic, which helps in preparation both for casing (many great cases are inspired by arguments heard in rounds, and so case lists publicize arguments beyond the rounds in which folks were able to compete or judge) and for blocking. I think this is helpful both for preparation on the topic itself, particularly when teams don't have the resources to compete very often, but also for preparation on future topics that are similar.


To reply to PJ:

I think my reply to Chris's question about privacy implications covers your concerns, though I would love to hear some insight from some of the many trained lawyers or lawyers-in-training who coach debate in the community (Kevin Roberts, Wayne Tang, Victor Jih, Adam Torson, Josh Anderson, Anjan Choudhury, and so on and so forth).

Regarding the promotion of "bad JV Policy Debate" in LD -- something I agree would be bad, because bad debate is bad -- I think I'm a little unclear on what you're saying.

The narrowing judging pool has nothing to do with case lists; it has everything to do with folks, including many who publicly oppose case lists, debating in a manner that only appeals to certain kinds of judges while foregoing skills that would allow them to communicate to broader audiences. I think more tournaments would do well to hire a variety of types of hired judges (that is, judges with varied paradigms) and encourage more experienced head coaches to judge to combat this problem.

It does seem to me that if debaters are preparing well-researched answers to case positions, they are working hard, so I'm not sure how that means that the hardest workers would not rise to the top. (Would the smartest debaters rise to the top? I'd like to think so, but since the beginning of debate, I suspect, the smartest debaters are not always the winningest.)

What specifically about case lists do you think would promote this type of bad debate that both of us, I suspect, want to avoid?

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Sorry for the delay in getting back to earlier questions. I think I've now replied to basically everything posted, but if I've missed something, please let me know.

I visit this blog more than once a day, and have loved reading the thoughts of Menick from the days in which they were still posted an AOL page, but I am wondering if multiple comments spread out over multiple blog posts may make for an unwieldy conversation. (Not that I am trying to force traffic over to LDDebate.org. ;o))

In all seriousness, thank you for guiding and encouraging this conversation. I believe it is a truly important one for our community. As importantly, and perhaps even importantly, I think it's highlighting several other conversations our community really needs to be having. I hope that all of these conversations can happen in the civil manner on display in the comment threads here on Coachean Life.

Case disclosure Part 5

(While questions remain unanswered from the last post, I want to move on while the subject is still hot.)

When I look at the responses to disclosure, I get an overall sense that there are two different issues at play. First, there is disclosure along the lines of, we publish cases in advance for everyone to see, which is argued pro and con. Second, there is discussion of situations where, for lack of a better word, folks are gaming the system. In other words, a classic case of uses and abuses. If abuses are both inevitable and seriously damaging, they are a reason to negate. We’ll get to them later. For the moment, let’s just imagine that, as I say, everyone publishes their cases in advance of the tournament for everyone to see, and discuss that world pre-tournament.

Here’s what Bietz says in his Rostrum article: “Big teams already get many, many more flows than the smaller teams just because they have more debaters, more judges, and more coaches. Open disclosure gives everyone access to the same information. Additionally, it helps the ‘little guy’ even more because for many of these debaters, the option of going to a lot of tournaments isn’t available. Open case disclosure gives them the ability to see what other teams are running prior to showing up to the tournament. Thus, there is an added benefit of equalizing not only information at a tournament, but also equalizing (to some degree) the playing field for people who do not have the resources to travel as much.” Cruz puts it like this: “Requiring that all competitors participate in a case list helps eliminate the unequal power concentrated with programs that have plenty of resources, employ multiple coaches, or that are members of an ‘inner circle’ and that thus are able to more easily acquire information about other arguments being made by other programs.”

In other words, the status quo is that big teams have a lot of information, first, because of their size, and second, because of their regular attendance. They have a lot of people and go a lot of places and manage to acquire a proportional amount of information. Disclosure would open the door to that information to other people as well, no matter how many rounds they see and no matter how many tournaments they attend, or, if one looks at it from a different angle, who they know. All of this is absolutely true, but it does miss one key point that we need to examine: there are ten of them and one of me. Ten people can do an awful lot more than one person when it comes to prepping, blocking, etc. As Sophie says, “Big schools have the resources to prep out every possible position they will hit, but small schools don't. For these reasons, I think it's absolutely detrimental to a debater from a small school.”

Sophie also questions the premise that the big guys already have your case anyhow. “Even if large schools near me have my cases, large schools across the country most likely do not. And hearing through a chain of friends across the country isn't going to produce an effective prep out that is going to screw me over, so I really just don't think it's true that ‘disclosure happens anyway’…Even if big schools near me, like Bronx, will have my cases, Greenhill and Harvard Westlake and Whitman and Strake don't have them yet.”

This looks like an important point to me. Let’s say that we know that Sophie is a good debater. We know she’s going to the Bronx. With disclosure, we find out what she is running and set our defenses. Without disclosure, we generally prep on the topic and hope to be prepared for whatever Sophie is running. On the other side of it, Sophie must singlehandedly (almost) prep out on the other 50 people she’s worried about. This does not seem to benefit Sophie. If the benefit is that they were going to crush her with sheer numbers anyhow, but now she’ll have a marginal opportunity to load her slingshot if she has time to prep out on all 50, that doesn’t work. On the other hand, one can say that, at the event, the schematic is posted and Sophie can look it up on the Wiki and plan accordingly, and that is true. But by the same token, so can her opponent, who, if one of the 50, has had ample opportunity not only to get an idea of her cases but prepped out on the evidence. So as I see it, the advantage still goes to the bigger schools, and the providing of cases in advance makes that a greater advantage. The mathematical advantage of size looks suspiciously improved when multiplied by time (i.e., disclosure in advance). As Kanisha says, “Even though I do have a coach who is awesome and dedicated, we just do not have the time nor do we have the resources to use a case list effectively.”

I don’t think we can really dispute the advantage of bigness, period, and that disclosure does not seem to mitigate that advantage because while, even if viewed positively, showing that it does provide access to information to small schools, it also provides the same information to big schools that have deeper resources to take advantage of it. Big is big. Maybe, just maybe, disclosure makes bigness an even stronger advantage. I have to agree that big schools arguing that this is not the case is not terribly convincing...

But…

The worry in the material above is based on the idea that teams will spend incredible amounts of time prepping out on the material in the database. But is this realistic? I mean, they could prep out on it, but will they? I would suggest that the answer is, not much.

Here’s the deal. Make the assumption that everyone puts in the case they’re going to run at the Bronx. (We’ll get back to variations on that later.) Now, I’m going to that tournament in LD. So are 160 or so of my nearest and dearest friends. No one is going to prep out on all 160 of them. As I said above, maybe I’m concerned with 50 of them. So let’s look at their cases. Wait a minute! Look here! Both Joe Blow and Lefty Larue are arguing the Colbert evidence! Hey, so is McGee (“Bub”) MacPherson. So are half the other people I’m interested in.

This is the reality. In the great wide world of this (or any) particular tournament, the vast majority of the people are going to be living in roughly the same case world. The big schools knew this already, from their experience down in Texas; the little school in upstate Vermont only going to Bronx now knows it too. Level. And yes, the big school has the resources to do more, but they’ve always had the resources to do more, and they always will. If the big school seriously wants to prep out on every case in the Wiki, maybe they can. But they’re ultimately prepping out on the same thing over and over, so they’re really not. That advantage is more perceived than real.

In other words, the benefit of bigness does not go away. It never will. But in the realistic world of going to a tournament and wanting to be well prepared, the small entry now gets more than he or she had before. It is an improvement. What I’m saying is that the content of the wiki probably adds incrementally to the large program, but exponentially to the small program. The information in there is going to be, in a word, repetitious, at least for the most part. It will be information that might be new and quite useful, in the aggregate, to the smaller program, whereas it will be old news to the bigger program. Yes, the bigger program has a great advantage if it takes up analysis in the particular, but, at least in preparation for a tournament, they’re really not going to do that. As for going after a particular person, sure, if you’re at a certain level, you might expect to meet a certain handful of people at a tournament. The little program now gets preparation it may not have had before. The big program also gets preparation, but it may have had it already. Yes, the big program can do more with it. But they were always going to do more anyhow. Their benefit is not as increased as is the smaller school’s benefit.

So, there does seem to be an advantage here to the small program that doesn’t exist without the wiki. There also seem to be advantages of scale that really don’t change much. Keep in mind that all of the above is prior to a tournament, and based on cases being disclosed that are run at the tournament. We do need to look at other things as well.

Case disclosure Part 6

We’ve looked at the case list as something where cases to be run are placed online, and where people can access and do whatever they want to do with those cases. We’ve concluded (all right, I’ve concluded) that this material provides advantages to all, and while the bigger programs conceivably could do more with it, the smaller programs previously never had it at all, which may be the better advantage. Everybody gains, but no one really loses. The big programs always had their size advantage, and maintain it, but the little programs now have access to everything that will be run at a tournament (theoretically), and that is a good gain for them.

Again, I’m working from the assumption that cases are in there, and those are the cases run. We’ll stick with that assumption for the moment.

The issue of what happens at tournaments is different from what happens in the preparation for tournaments, and we need to look at that next. Says Bietz: “One of the most frustrating things for me to watch is one debater being prepped out by a group of coaches or other debaters because they happened to know someone or are friendly with someone who either previously watched, judged, or debated against them, while the other debater just sits there and waits, not having any idea what their opponent is arguing. I don’t find the prepout to be intrinsically frustrating. In fact, I have no qualms with coaches who help their debaters prepare for rounds. I even have less of a problem with teammates who help each other. My concern is for the debater who isn’t as connected, or doesn’t have as many teammates.”

I think this is an honest appraisal of the situation. I see it regularly enough. I have regularly seen my debaters prepped out by other teams. It can be frustrating when one doesn’t have the resources to do likewise, but I don’t think that, if they were suddenly given similar resources, my team would say, Oh, I’m not prepping out because I’m against it in principle. They’re against being outnumbered. Of course, the prep out of the small by the big requires that the big have the small’s case in the first place. The odds are, they do, whereas the odds are that the small don’t have the big debater’s case. Sheer numbers, here. The bottom line, size notwithstanding: If I did have the case, I’d prep out on it as best I can, with whatever resources I have at hand.

Well, disclosure means I do have the case. Yes, none of the advantages of size are mitigated on the big side of things, but on the other side of things, the smaller team is better prepared. Of course, there is a possibility that the bigger team would not have had the case and now does, and therefore the advantage of size is multiplied by the availability of the previously unavailable case, but that’s really not what usually happens. Let’s face it. Look at an theoretical tournament. There’s a hundred kids in the field, and the big team has 6 teammates and 6 prelims. That’s hitting 36 different people, and judging another 12 (with some duplication in both areas, of course), although this is balanced by the leveling effects of the brackets, so by the end of prelims, the good debaters on the team of 6 are pretty likely to know what everyone who breaks is running. The 2 debaters on the small team, on the other hand, with a tournament hired judge, have a maximum of 12 flows. I fail to see how having cases doesn’t advantage the smaller debater, faced with these numbers. The balance to be weighed is, having their cases with the knowledge that the bigger team is guaranteed to have your cases and act on them, versus not having their cases against the mathematical likelihood that the bigger team has your cases and is acting on them. The balance easily swings toward the former as preferable.

Paras makes this point: “Teams usually acquire flows from the debaters that flowed the round, but most debaters have very incomplete flows, whereas disclosing would provide the perfect flow. That means the quality of the prepout in a non-disclosure world is worse.”

True, to some extent. The prep is only as good as the flow. But I think we’re overlooking two things. First, the nature of the posted case is, in fact, not much more than a flow of tags, going by the example Cruz posted for Big Bronx. There’s the argument tag followed by the cite. We know what you’re running overall, not every single nuance. And second, but playing off that, there is the actual debating in the round. Debate is not an exercise in essay writing, where we pick the best case. Debate is about the arguing, the choosing of arguments, the weighing, etc.

Let’s look at what Shane said: “Disclosure increases education -- if people know what you are running then you have to make good arguments. Good arguments withstand the light of disclosure. Secrecy breeds can breed bad arguments and trick arguments. My stance: find a good argument and get better than anyone else in the country; that is the way to success in debate.” I think this is an awfully important point, one that Cruz makes in a different way in his responses. As I said above, debate is not about my case versus your case. Our cases are simply the starting point. Debate is about the arguing of those cases.

One of my original points in favor of the database of cases was to provide a pool of all the arguments that are being run. People are talking about, for instance, cerebellum development in juvie justice. Okay, so I know I need to have good arguments pro and con on that subject. I am going to spend my time between tournaments studying that (and whatever else), learning about it, developing sharp arguments. So when it comes up in a round, I’m ready for it. Knowing that my opponent in the next round will be arguing it allows me to pull my evidence in advance, which is helpful to me and means I can spend round time plotting and thinking, not digging in my briefcase. (I would imagine that one of the great advantages of plan disclosure in policy, if not the single and absolutely sole reason for doing it, is to eliminate tub diving.)

A lot of the arguments against disclosure paint certain debaters as automatons regurgitating if not literally parroting positions created by their coaches. Okay, I’ll grant that that happens, to some extent. But are we saying that the really good debaters are automatons parroting positions created by their coaches? Are we saying that well wrought arguments can’t beat memorized positions? Sure, the powerhouse school varsity automaton can crush my JVer in the random prelim, and maybe once in a while do very, very well at a tournament. But most debaters are not that robotic animal, and don’t want to be that robotic animal, and would mostly resist being that robotic animal at all costs. Where is the pride in knowing that you were so prepped out by the expensive coaches your team uses that you never had to think? The people I have known who have been strong debaters have never been that person, even when those debaters have represented big programs. And even if the world is filled with all these automatons, I see no evidence that they win more than non-automatons. Plus it’s simply counterintuitive that people who draw on knowledge understood will fall to people who draw on memorized blocks. I don’t buy that disclosure will increase the number of debate robots, and that those robots will have increased success. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

What I’ve been continually putting off is the consideration of anything other than posting your case in advance and running that case. That is, the simple use of the case list as one would theoretically imagine it ought to be used. Or, as I said early on, the use of the case list. But what about the abuses, all those situations in the debaters’ responses that were about how people were, at best, gaming the system, and at worst, using it as a tool to trick their opponents. We need to look at that, because, as I said, if the abuses are intrinsic and bad enough, they could kibosh the whole thing. And while we’re at it, we’ll talk about the one fatal flaw I see in all the thinking in favor of disclosure which, if fixed, could make all the difference.