At post-season tournaments, the frequency with which teams break new affirmatives increases exponentially. Unfortunately, this can be a recipe for pre-round misunderstandings and even confrontations—especially when combined with the heightened level of stress that generally accompanies debates at these tournaments. Like baseball, debate is full of unwritten rules—norms that the community generally agrees upon but which are not codified or universally understood. When an individual feels that a peer has violated one of these rules, they are often deeply offended. But what are the unwritten rules regarding disclosure of new affirmatives? And perhaps as importantly, what should they be? This post is an invitation for coaches and debaters to discuss “new aff” norms in advance of this year’s post-season tournaments. Some starting points for the discussion—including hypothetical scenarios—are below the fold.
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This year’s National Debate Tournament will be hosted later this month by the University of California-Berkeley. Seventy-eight teams from forty-four colleges and universities have qualified to be part of the field either through district qualifying tournaments or through the first- and second-round bid process. Considered by most to be the pinnacle of interscholastic policy debate, the NDT brings together the most successful debaters in the country for an extended weekend of intense competition in order to crown the national championship team.
For high school debaters with aspirations of competing in college, qualifying for the NDT is a frequent goal. But is it realistic? The popular perception is that debaters who qualify for the NDT are largely products of strong high school debate programs and expensive summer institutes that are afforded the opportunity to compete regularly at national circuit tournaments. But is that really the case?
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An increasingly popular negative strategy in high school debate over the past two seasons has centered around the multi-plank counterplan. Most often associated with Michigan State University at the college level, the multi-plank counterplan is presented as a single off-case position that includes two or more “planks” in its text. Instead of presenting multiple counterplans as separate off-case positions, in other words, the multi-plank counterplan presents them as a single argument.
Typically composed of multiple policy options aimed at solving all or part of the affirmative case while avoiding a disadvantage that links only to the plan but not the counterplan, the multi-plank counterplan is now commonplace in high-level debates and has become a potent weapon in the negative’s strategic arsenal.
Affirmative teams that fail to adapt and keep up with this negative innovation are putting themselves behind the proverbial eight ball. This article is an attempt to help affirmative debaters effectively respond to the multi-plank counterplan and construct a winning strategy to defeat it.
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While the previous two installments of the “Bad Cards” series highlighted popular but low-quality impact cards, this is not the only way that awful evidence is used in high school debates. In the third edition of the series, the issue is not the credibility of the evidence’s author or the veracity of its content so much as the context in which it was written—a blog about a high school debate topic written by a part-time coach and former debater whose goal was to improve the quality of debates about the legal system, not produce evidence to be cited in contest rounds. Debaters should discontinue their use of this evidence—the “Harrison ‘05/’06” cards—on the grounds of both fairness and education.
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Many of the pieces of evidence that students frequently read in debates are unquestionably terrible. Often, the desire to bolster an impact’s magnitude and raise it to extinction-level leads debaters to rely on evidence with a host of problems including but not limited to:
- evidence used to advance arguments outside its intended context;
- evidence citing unqualified, (functionally) anonymous, or even nefarious authors;
- evidence culled from (typically internet or tabloid) sources that are at best unedited and at worst contemptible;
- evidence advancing hyperbolic arguments supported by vitriolic and/or over-the-top language;
- evidence so old that it no longer makes sense given subsequent events or changes in the topic it discusses; and
- evidence which must be liberally interpreted in order for it to be used to support the desired conclusion.
The “Bad Cards” series is an attempt to highlight some of the most egregious examples of poor-quality evidence that is nonetheless commonplace in high school policy debates. It is not the author’s intention to “scold” or “shame” those who have read these pieces of evidence in the past or who will do so in the future. Instead, it is an attempt to influence the way that evidence is selected for inclusion in debate arguments by arming opposing students with the tools they need to defeat bad cards.
OVERVIEW
A common terminal impact to terrorism advantages and disadvantages, the Corsi ‘5 card is used to support the claim that terrorism is an existential threat to humanity. There are many problems with this so-called “evidence,” but the bottom line is this: it outlines a fictional account of a specific sequence of events dreamed up by a discredited and indeed contemptible author that—even if true—is not relevant in the vast majority of debates in which it is deployed.
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After technical difficulties spoiled the 10th episode of The 3NR Podcast—one that we felt was our best effort to date and which will therefore be remembered forever as a lost masterpiece—we knew we needed to bring our “A” games to satisfy the voracious appetites of our loyal listeners. The result is perhaps the longest podcast in human history, clocking in at two hours, 19 minutes, and 58 seconds and chock full of debate-related content.
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A few questions that arose while I was working on some statistical projects involving this year’s tournament results prompted me to finish something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time: create a spreadsheet listing the history of Tournament of Champions qualifying tournaments by bid level. Thanks to e-Debate and the HS Debate Archive, I was able to find the list of qualifying tournaments for every season since 1997-1998. In the thirteen seasons for which data is available, a total of 76 different tournaments have been designated as a TOC qualifier; a spreadsheet with year-by-year bid levels is available for your viewing pleasure in html format from Google Docs.
Some trivia, with answers below the fold:
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Before the addition of the Blake Holiday Classic this season, what was the last tournament other than Greenhill, St. Mark’s, Glenbrooks, MBA, Emory, Harvard, and Berkeley to be classified as an octafinals bid?
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In addition to the seven octafinals bid tournaments from question #1 (Greenhill, St. Mark’s, Glenbrooks, MBA, Emory, Harvard, and Berkeley), how many tournaments have been TOC qualifiers for all thirteen years? Can you name them?
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During the last 13 years, how many states have hosted at least one TOC qualifying tournament?
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In 1997-1998 and 1998-1999, what university hosted two separate TOC qualifying tournaments?
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What is the largest number of tournaments that have lost their bid status from one year to the next? In what year did it occur?
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What is the largest number of tournaments have been added to the list of qualifiers from one year to the next? In what year did it occur?
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The Blake Holiday Classic has steadily progressed from a finals bid (from 1997 through 2000) to a semifinals bid (from 2001 through 2004) to a quarterfinals bid (from 2005 through 2008) to an octafinals bid (beginning this season). What team won the Holiday Classic in its last season as a finals bid? As a semifinals bid? As a quarterfinals bid?
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For the 2000-2001 season, the National Debate Coaches’ Association Championship was a final round qualifying tournament for the TOC. Where was it held and who received the two qualifying legs?
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While a debater at Palmetto High School in Miami, the 3NR’s Roy Levkovitz qualified for the 2001 Tournament of Champions. At what tournaments did he receive a bid?
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What current coach served as an assistant to TOC Director J.W. Patterson in 1997-1998 and designed the first official TOC website?
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In order to complete the “Baker+” calculations, I need results from the following tournaments (including prelims and elims unless otherwise noted):
- Houston-Memorial (TX)
Kansas City Community College (KS)- Auburn (WA)
La Costa Canyon (CA) – just need packet, not elimsLong Beach (CA)Omaha-Westside (NE)- Samford University (AL)
- Vestavia Hills (AL)
If you have any of these results, please email them to me (bill@the3nr.com).
Ever wonder who has been the best speaker in the country over the course of the season? While the National Debate Coaches’ Association Baker Award recognizes the year long excellence of teams, no such award exists to recognize the excellence of individual debaters. The following is an attempt to fill that gap with a statistical analysis of the speaker points and speaker awards earned by the nation’s top policy debaters during the 2009-2010 season.
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After the conclusion of the Tournament of Champions in May, The 3NR will be selecting one high school policy debate team to receive the first annual Spirit of Disclosure Award. Voted on by the writers of The 3NR, this award will recognize the team that best represents the spirit of disclosure throughout the season.
The Spirit of Disclosure Award will be based entirely upon public disclosure of argument outlines and evidence citations on The National Debate Coaches’ Association Wiki. Selection criteria include:
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Completeness of information: does the team’s wiki page have full outlines of affirmative and negative arguments? Does it include complete outlines with full citations and first-and-last words for all evidence? Does it include outlines of each case the team has read on the affirmative as well as major 2AC arguments (add-ons, answers to generic positions, etc.)? Does it include outlines of generic negative positions as well as specific negative strategies against particular cases? The quality and quantity of a team’s disclosure will be the most important criterion that the voters consider.
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Organization of information: is the team’s wiki page organized so that information can be accessed effectively? While more disclosure is always better than less disclosure, a poorly-organized wiki page can make navigating information about a team’s arguments difficult if not impossible. Proper use of “Contents” headers and sub-headers, bold/underline formatting, and spacing are all important aspects of a well-organized wiki page.
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Consistency of disclosure: does the team consistently disclose their (new) arguments in a timely fashion? In addition to completeness and organization, it is important that information be shared in time for other teams to utilize it in their preparation. Teams that wait until right before their next tournament to disclose the arguments they read at their last tournament do not uphold the spirit of disclosure that this award seeks to recognize.
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Responsiveness to requests: does the team respond to requests for outlines and citations in a reasonable timeframe? Do promises to “post it on the wiki when we get home” never seem to be fulfilled (at least not without several follow-up emails)? While the voters may not have direct experience with every team, we will do our best to survey the community and gauge the reputations of the teams we are considering for the award.
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Post-season disclosure practices: does the team post information about new arguments it has read at the NDCA Championship and the TOC in a timely fashion? Is the outline of the new affirmative they broke in round two still MIA after round seven? Equally important, does the team “hoard” information about other teams’ arguments to gain a competitive advantage or do they post outlines and citations they have collected on the wiki?
A list of finalists for the award will be posted on the site in the weeks following the TOC. The winner will receive a trophy/plaque and public recognition on The 3NR. Teams do not need to be nominated in order to be considered but suggestions for teams that we should consider are welcome (either in the comments or via email). Special thanks to Arnav Kejriwal of The Greenhill School for suggesting this idea several months ago. Good luck and go update your wiki pages!
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