The 3NR

Contention One: Inherency

In the status quo, the vast majority of high school policy debate judges (at least those at “national circuit” tournaments) do not provide written comments on their ballots. A very small subset of judges—approximately ten percent based on an unscientific assessment of the publicly-posted ballots from the St. Mark’s and Blake tournaments—provide any written content at all. Of that subset, an even smaller group of judges provides “substantial” written commentary (defined as more than a short, one or two sentence reason for decision). Some tournaments have responded to this norm by eliminating ballots entirely—The Glenbrooks, for example, only provides small judge cards that are not copied or scanned for the competitors.

Thus The Plan:

High school policy debate judges should provide written comments on their ballots. This commentary should supplement—not replace—post-round oral disclosure and discussion of the debate.

Contention Two: The Advantage

The plan is superior to the status quo for all three relevant constituencies: debaters, coaches, and judges.

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Consider the following hypothetical:

1AC: Increase food stamps, solves hunger.

1NC: Politics (plan is unpopular and prevents a climate bill from passing—that causes runaway warming), Military Recruitment DA (reducing poverty weakens the recruiting base, tanking hegemony), Case Defense.

2AC: Straight Turns Politics (climate bill will not pass in the status quo, plan is crucial to passage), Answers Military Recruitment DA, Answers Case Defense.

2NC: New Counterplan: Pass Climate Bill. Extends Military Recruitment DA.

1NR: Extends Case Defense / Military Recruitment DA Outweighs The Case.

Three questions:

1. Is the 2NC counterplan—to pass the Climate Bill—legitimate? If yes, why? If not, why not?

2. Is it legitimate for the 1AR to impact turn the Climate Bill (by arguing that the Climate Bill is bad)? If yes, why? If not, why not?

3. If the 1AR impact turns the Climate Bill, is it legitimate for the 2NR to:

   • extend the 2AC’s “non-unique” and “link turn” arguments (proving that the plan would uniquely cause the Climate Bill to pass)? If yes, why? If not, why not?

   • extend the 1NC impact (Climate Bill solves warming) and weigh it against the 1AR’s impact turn? If yes, why? If not, why not? And is it legitimate for the 2NR to read more evidence to support this argument?

Paul Strait of the University of Southern California recently authored an interesting post on the CEDA forum about the time it takes judges to make their decisions. As discussed in a previous column, this is a hot topic in the college community because the average length of decisions at that level is forcing tournaments to consider reductions in the number of preliminary rounds offered in order to prevent marathon tournament schedules. Paul’s contention is that we need to foreground consideration of judging methodologies in order to determine what contributes to lengthy decisions and what effect this has on the quality of decisions.

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In the quarterfinals of this past weekend’s New Trier Season Opener, a negative team extended two counterplans with contradictory net-benefits in the 2NR and justified doing so because the affirmative “conceded the thesis of conditionality.” Having already discussed this hypothetical with several debaters and judges, it is clear that it is both interesting and confounding. Read the blow-by-blow below the fold and chime in with your thoughts.

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I was looking at the St. Marks invitation on JOT and noticed that in honor of Ross Smith (RIP Ross) that the St. Marks tournament would be moving to the 100 speaker point system for its tournament in 2 weeks.    In a podcast and probably in some other diatribes I’ve been known to go on I’ve discussed some of my concerns with the 100 speaker point system.

Let me make this clear I am strongly in support of a more expansive speaker point scale. I think there are differences between 28s, and 28.5s and the current system does not allow a judge to differentiate between the quality of those speeches. My fear with this scale is that in a 6 round tournament (which is the norm in hs) this system has the potential to “mess up” who clears and speaker awards in general.    I feel like the community does need to do a couple of things to make this work (not just for this tournament but to transition away from the 30 point scale in general).

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1. It serves no limiting function- the exact same cases are topical- its only the scope of them (how many people they effect) that changes. It seems (based on my limited knowledge) that this would require most cases to effect less people than the authors discussing them intended. Forcing the affirmative to change the scope of their cases so that they no longer reflect the real world discussion should not be done absent a compelling fairness concern for the negative.

2. No Neg ground loss- no disad hinges on affecting only 100% of poverty line vs 135%- if anything the opposite is true- the broader the scope of the plan the more likely there will be a unique link to negative topic generic disads like spending/tradeoff etc. Critiques of poverty do not hinge on strict definitions or the plan affecting only 100% exactly.

3. Not predictable- the majority of existing federal programs do not meet this strict interpretation- Stefan does an excellent job demonstrating this so I will not rehash but I think this is the most crucial point. The strength of the negatives argument relies on the idea that their definition comes from the government and is therefore imbued with a higher level of predictability/credibility. That the gov itself does not strictly follow it directly refutes this claim. More importantly a distinction must be drawn between the predictability provided by a definition and the predictability of the definition itself. In this case the negatives definition is itself highly predictable, however the affirmative cases it would allow are not very predictable given that there are few examples that meet and that for the majority of cases in order to meet they would have to radically alter the plan from that advocated by their authors.

4. On this topic affirmative ground must outweigh negative ground- there is a serious shortage of quality affirmatives, the aff must be given leeway to find viable cases. While on other topics it may have been a good idea to help the neg out by throwing some more T vicotires their way to balance the scales this is definately not one of them.  If the debate truly comes down to “our definition is from the government- most predictable/precise” vs “our definition sets a much broader limit- but is the only hope for a viable affiramtive case” then the aff should win every debate.

I was first introduced to this hypothetical scenario at NFL Nationals by Will Thibeau of Glenbrook South. Originally proposed by Layne Kirshon of the Kinkaid School (although probably not for the first time), it provides an interesting litmus test for an individual’s judging philosophy.

The Hypothetical:

The affirmative reads a topical plan and argues that its adoption will trigger nuclear conflict. The 1AC isolates several internal links but does not articulate a terminal impact — their only contention is that the plan will trigger nuclear conflict. The 1NC “link turns” the case for eight minutes, answering the affirmative’s internal links and advancing several internal links of their own contending that the adoption of the plan will prevent nuclear conflict. The rest of the debate is narrowly focused on this nexus question: does the plan cause or prevent nuclear conflict? At the conclusion of the debate, the judge determines (based on the arguments advanced by both teams) that the plan’s adoption will in fact cause nuclear conflict (and thereby sides with the affirmative). Should s/he vote affirmative or negative?

Post your answer in the comments along with the reasoning that brought you to it. Many people have already spent hours discussing and debating this hypothetical, so it seems like a perfect way to kick-off the return of The 3NR after a much-needed vacation. Ready set go.

Several readers provided thoughtful commentary about my recent essay about evidence analysis, “Nudging Evidence Analysis In The Right Direction: The Case For Reading Author Qualifications Aloud In High School Policy Debate.” This post is an attempt to further develop the arguments advanced in the initial article while addressing the concerns of critics.

1. Normalizing the verbal citation of author qualifications will “nudge” the debate process in the direction of the development of new “metrics of scholarly authority.”

Much of the feedback regarding the article has centered around the competitive outcome of this change in the norm about evidence citation: how will debates about qualifications be resolved?, what qualifications will be preferred?, etc. This largely misses the point: the function of this change in norm is to emphasize the importance of these discussions and encourage debaters and judges to address them explicitly.

Nick Bubb highlighted many of the issues in a thoughtful comment:

[M]any people perceive authors’ opinions to be a politically motivated response to a given issue, rather than an independent evaluation of the truth. … For example, do we minimize Howard Dean’s opinion on health care reform because he’s a democrat and advocates for health care reform? Or do we prefer his analysis because he knows the policy? Or minimize his opinion because he stands to gain politically from the enactment of health care reform? Or do we prefer his opinion because he’s a doctor? What about his opinion on the political implications of health care policy? There are fair arguments to be made on all of these questions, but the structure for interpreting who is qualified to speak to the truth of a given issue is difficult. Certainly some individuals are more qualified than others, but how can we answer that question? If you are to believe some aspects of a hermeneutical process, authors’ qualifications are really their biases and we as the listener have biases for/against their experiences. We can be jaded and dismiss them or we can listen to their reasoning. But which action corresponds with finding the truth? The answer can’t be as simple as to listen to everything, because that degrades back into the problems you’re attempting to address: the prevalence of questionable evidence quality.

There’s also something odd about needing qualifications to speak to an issue. You don’t need a degree from Harvard to talk about poverty. A narrative from a poor person may be equally as powerful. I suppose the “qualifications” can change depending on the context, but then what do qualifications mean?

[A]s a judge, I wouldn’t know how to handle comparative claims. Do I prefer evidence from an economics professor about poverty policy or is it more important to listen to the people that the policy affects?

This is exactly my point: these issues are difficult, but they are also important. In a world where students are exposed to ever-expanding volumes of information, learning to intelligently separate the good from the bad is essential to informed citizenship.

I do not pretend to know the answers to the questions that Nick has posed. I can offer no mechanism for cleanly separating the intellectual wheat from the chaff. But the current model we have adopted in debate is certainly subject to criticism: “if it’s published, it’s evidence” has absolved us of our responsibility to take these issues of scholarly credibility seriously and of teaching students to intelligently navigate through the maze of information at their fingertips.

Effectively determining whom to believe—and more importantly, why to believe them—is arguably the most essential life skill that debate can teach. Perhaps better than any other activity, debate can effectively train students to think critically—to question others’ arguments and to evaluate their claims with skepticism. Working through the complicated business of analyzing sources and comparing qualifications is part and parcel of this facet of debate pedagogy.

The current norm—evidence should be verbally cited only by author’s last name and date of publication—hamstrings our ability to emphasize this aspect of critical thinking and in fact actively undermines it by framing the issue of qualification as separate from instead of intrinsic to the evidence itself.

As I argued in the article, this effect occurs at two levels:

1. Excluding qualifications from verbal presentation implicitly de-values their importance when considering the quality of a piece of evidence. If the author(s)’ qualifications are not important enough to read aloud, after all, how important can they really be? …

2. Requiring students to locate the qualifications of a given piece of evidence “privately”—during speech or prep time—prevents the judge from considering qualifications as part of their initial understanding of the evidence as it is being presented.

Shifting the norm to require verbal citation of author qualifications uniquely addresses these concerns.

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The State of Evidence Evaluation In Debate

The recent discussions of evidence quality in high school policy debate have highlighted the need for debaters, coaches, and judges to revisit the prevailing assumptions about the proper role of cited material in our activity. While a drastic shift in the community’s approach to the evaluation of evidence remains exceedingly unlikely, there is an emerging consensus among debate educators that improving this facet of our pedagogy is both possible and necessary.

What is the problem? In short, the explosion of content enabled by new media has shattered traditional constraints on what constitutes “published” scholarship. While debaters in past decades were limited in their research to published books, journals/magazines, and newspapers, the debaters of today have access to a nearly limitless stream of information—all at their fingertips, and searchable in ways never before thought possible. As Gordon Mitchell describes in “Debate and authority 3.0,” the resulting information abundance has created a need for new ways of separating the good from the bad.

Publication, previously a one-to-many transaction, has become a many-to-many enterprise unfolding across a complex latticework of internetworked digital nodes. Now weblogs, e-books, online journals, and print-on-demand book production and delivery systems make it possible for a whole new population of prospective authors to publish material in what Michael Jensen (2008), National Academy of Sciences Director of Strategic Web Communications, calls an “era of content democracy and abundance.”

In content abundance, the key challenge for readers and referees has less to do with finding scarce information, and more to do with sorting wheat from the proverbial chaff (the ever-burgeoning surplus of digital material available online). The pressing nature of this information-overload challenge has spurred invention of what Jensen (2007) calls “new metrics of scholarly authority” – essentially, new ways of measuring the credibility and gravitas of knowledge producers in a digital world of content abundance.

Policy debate’s “metrics of scholarly authority” have developed slowly—changes in dominant assumptions about what constitutes “good evidence” have occurred over decades based on the organic back-and-forth of the contest round. At the high school level, the influence of summer debate institutes and the trickle-down from intercollegiate competition have played a major part in this evolution. While regional differences remain, the vast majority of those that participate in policy debate on the “national circuit” hold remarkably similar views about what makes a piece of evidence “good”. Indeed, the dominant conception of “good evidence” has become so normalized that it is often framed as self-evident: good evidence “speaks for itself”.

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The National Catholic Forensic League held its annual Grand National Tournament this past weekend in Albany, New York. Featuring a mix of national circuit powerhouses and local teams from circuits across the nation, Catholic Nationals is one of the most unique tournaments on the high school policy debate calendar. Hosted every Memorial Day Weekend, it challenges debaters to survive ten rounds in two days while adapting to the full spectrum of judging styles and experiences.

While many programs have decided not to attend the Grand Nationals in recent years, it remains a difficult test of adaptation and an invaluable preparation opportunity for squads hoping to go deep at NFL Nationals in June. Albany marked my seventh trip to CFL in the past eleven years. In what follows, I will offer five lessons any team can learn from my experience at this year’s tournament. Whether you will be competing in Birmingham in a few weeks or not, the CFL Tournament can provide some invaluable insights into our activity that any debater should appreciate.

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