I recently had an interesting conversation with Steve from Pacific in which he told me that he thought debaters should actually adapt to IE judges.
Now, this, of course, threw me through a loop. I mean, after all, it is the debaters' activity. Jargon exists within the activity for a reason. Debaters should be able to run the arguments that they think will win them the round ... and, in a perfect world, winning the round means winning the ballot, as well. Hell, I wrote about why speed is good for debate! Of course I loathed adaptation.
I was never the type of debater who adapted very well to the judge. It's not that I was bad at explaining things to judges who were unfamiliar with debate; it's that I didn't feel it was my responsibility and that they were the ones bastardizing my activity.
NFA this year was a perfect embodiment of this sentiment for almost the entire debate community. During round six, which was many debaters' break round (every single member of my team included because all of them were 3-2 going into round six), five seemingly legitimate judges were on stand-by, without ballot ... while many IE/hired judges had ballots. IN BREAK ROUNDS. There was a huge upset in the community surrounding many of the decisions made in out-rounds.
I guess the reason I'm writing this is that I've never really thought about how I feel about adapting to the judge. On the one hand, I understand that part of being a good debater is not just being able to run the positions that you know you can win, but being able to persuade someone that you should, in fact, win. If debate was about running your favorite positions all the time, it would be reduced down to generic disadvantages, topicality, counterplans or critiques every round and there would be little in-depth case debate. On the other hand, though, debate is not suited to the lay man and debaters should be able to have control over their own activity.
Perhaps the most interesting spin on the argument that one should adapt to the judge came from people from Pacific. Their coach was talking about how the judge is never wrong. It is their ballot and if you did not do everything you could to capture that ballot, then you did not do your job as a debater. He was very straight-forward about it, and the ironic thing is that people from Pacific are generally thought of as faster debaters. The other thing is that Steve said that debaters disrespecting IE judges is indicative of a greater amount of disrespect that debaters have for IEs, in general. He said that neither event is more important than the other and we should, as a result, have mutual respect for one another and one another's events. I liked thinking of it this way.
I don't know if I've reached a conclusion, but I intend to reach a conclusion on this very subject one day. Today is not that day, but I do anticipate many more debate blogs to come.
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Just to clarify, my argument was not so much that debaters should not do what they normally do in rounds, just that they should not assume that just because a judge is "lay" or "decent" or "high flow" that your strategy employed should differ greatly. Sure, extinction is not very compelling for a "lay" critic, but then again, it is not very persuasive for a "heavy flow" critic either, unless the links and internal links are conceded. Indeed, I would estimate that a majority of heavy flow critics would not evaluate extinction if there was sufficient defense on the link level. I guess I was just discouraged by the number of debates I saw this year where the flow arguments such as "HE CONCEDES THE UNIQUENESS MEANING THAT MY TURN IS THE ONLY ARGUMENT YOU CAN EVALUATE WITH REGARDS TO WHO ACCESS THE IMPACT DEBATE!" were substituted for actually evaluating the arguments in each area and then explaining how those arguments should then be given precedent. Yes the flow is important, but is only useful with debate, and this activity should facilitate explanations of how arguments interact, not what the flow says we should vote on.
ReplyDeleteAs for speed, my problem is that debaters look down on people who cannot listen to 85 words a minute. However, if they were really the debater and communicator they thought they were, they could debate at any speed and have the same success. Because indeed, the breadth of arguments does not guarantee that the arguments are any better. Indeed, it appears that debaters who are upset that they cannot go fast seem either to insecure to trust their arguments and are only looking to win based on the flow, essentially turning away from argumentation instead of taking it head on.
The reason I believe all this, is of course because of my own interactions in the event. People who claim NFA critics are stupid or categorically cannot make the proper decision seem to lack warrants for their claim because I ran critical turn to terrorism and topical counterplans on the Cuba topic as well as Disband AFRICOM on the Aff and Neg for increasing aid to the greater horn of Africa topic and went 5-1 both years, in a forum I hardly knew or understood. Yes bad decisions are made, and yes these critics do not understand our forum completely, but shouldn't that mean it is the debaters responsibility to help them understand, rather than ostracize themselves and ourselves? I think so. And if anybody wants a good philosophical discussion for how this is true, one should read interpretations and introductions to Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Inquisitor-Chapters-Brothers-Karamazov/dp/0872201937/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271899039&sr=8-1