Louisville – At it Again?

Louisville debate, Spring 2010.

There they go, protesting again.  But wait, there is something different this time.  Something so, well, un-Louisville like.  Their protest is a balanced criticism of how the debate community needs to bring it’s competitive norms and procedures with an emphasis on the evaluation process, in line with the governing documents of the organizations of policy debate: the Cross Examination Debate Association; the American Debate Association, the National Debate Tournament, and the umbrella for them all, the American Forensics Organizations.  Whew, that’s a mouthful, huh?

This time, the protest is backed by legal force, and the notion that the debate evaluation system, largely produced by a written act, flowing, to direct and guide an oral activity of communication like debate, transforms the competition away from all the wonderful ideas and thoughts embraced in the educationally-based mission statements.

Our students have truth on their side, now it’s about learning how to execute their arguments, and by what I saw today, they are well on their way.  Lead by the senior driven leadership of Rosie Washington, Tiffany McCollum, Jason Walker, and Marian Kennedy, this semester is truly going to blossom.

So we went to the Navy tournament, and I can assure you controversy and chaos are back!  Not many wins, but people were thinking, talking, and engaging because they had to.  Some went to great lengths to keep Louisville in its place. 

One team cleared, Rosie Washington and Jason Walker.  At 4-2 and the 11th seed, they debated Liberty University in the elmination round.  The protest was in full effect with an important and powerful moment of protest when Liberty asked a cross-examination question, and Louisville, and I mean LOUISVILLE, answered with the credo from the “Great Debaters:”

Who is the Judge”.

“The judge is God.”

“Why is He God.”

“Because He decides who wins and loses, not my opponent.”

“Who is my opponent?”

“They are invisible.”

“Why are they invisible?”

“Because they are merely a dissenting voice to the truth I speak.”

The decision was a 3-0 for Liberty, one judge voting on the educational value of cross-examination being lost by Louisville’s decision to not engage Liberty’s cross-examination questions.  The big picture again falls victim to a minor detail, the story of our lives.

In spite of that, Walker and Washington, in addition to Marian Kennedy, Chris Vincent, Tiffany McCollum, Whitney Abernathy, Shelby Pumphrey, Aaron Weathers, Brian Paige, all Tiffany Dillard, came home excited, rejuvenated, and ready for the next sit-in. 

I was so proud of them that I could literally visualize past student movements while watching them: Apartheid, the Freedom Riders, and of course, the Great Debaters.  History will remember these students for their role in the urgency and importance of educational reform. One thing is certain: the stronger and more nuanced our arguement gets, the more the community hunkers down and tries to blatantly use their power and privilege to eliminate the threat.  On the Naval Academy campus, in the hostile environment of the ADA, the waters seethed with disrespect and hostility everywhere.

But this time as they mobilize through their use of the ballot, and open acts of hostility, we will respond with reinforcements…We will not allow our students to be treated this way without consequences and reprecussions…so stay tuned!

And their successes will be tied to the legacy of those who sacrificed before them in debate:  the Great Debaters, Malcolm X, and the UofL Debate Society from 2000 until now.

Below I have added our casebook entry, which explains in detail our argument.  While it’s early, I have every reason to believe there will be articles written, talk in the hallway, and a buzz in the air over the meaning of the call made by these educational revolutionaries.  It will be fun to watch!  Let the hallway discussions begin!

With love,

Another Reflection of an Affirmative Action Debate Coach

Spring 2010, NDT/CEDA/ADA Casebook Entry for all Louisville Debate Teams

Naval Academy

All Louisville Teams/Affirmative and Negative:

• Overview: Every participant is bound to utilize debate community norms and procedures consistent with all of the constitutional and operating documents of the three organizations which govern the Navy tournament: the American Debate Association (ADA); the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA); and the umbrella organization of both, the American Forensics Association (AFA). Because the activity should be built on an assumption of “shared governance” between students as debaters, coaches/graduate assistants as judges and directors as faculty administrators who create the governing documents, the evaluation process for every debate must be tested and proven to be consistent with those governing documents. Accountability through faculty governance is missing in construction of a debate evaluation process currently created solely by students and judges.

 

• Our Criticism: We believe the current evaluation process in every CEDA/ADA/AFA policy debate is not constitutional for three reasons:

1. While possible individual evaluation norms and procedures are identified, discussed and advocated openly, both inside and outside of every debate, the construction of an evaluation process for each debate using these conventions is unspoken, covert, and lacks transparency (which ones are used, how they are prioritized, how they work together, etc).

Each debate begins with our opponent putting the content of their “arguments” in a casebook entry and a judging philosophy that discusses different possible debate conventions/strategies that can possibly be used in the evaluation of those arguments. However, it is impossible to test and critique the evaluation process created because 1) it develops organically through the application by a judge of some combination of several specific conventions during the debate; and 2) is not revealed to debaters until AFTER the debate.

In most cases, a judge uses a flow to separate the debate strategies/tactics/arguments, than relies on her or his training and experience to prioritize and assess the arguments and strategies, creating an individual evaluation process for that debate. However, this process is highly subjective, lacks transparency, and predictability since neither a team’s casebook entry nor judging philosophy explicate the entire process. This prevents any meaningful predictability as well as any level of fairness to allow our constitutionally protected challenge of the entire process. It is impossible to test whether the evaluation process is consistent with the organizational documents and principles that govern this debate. And when a flow is not used, the evaluation process is even more subjective, and that includes Louisville judges.

1. Debaters and judges don’t consistently practice or enforce all of the individual organizational rules, especially the ADA standing rules.
2. Specifically at this tournament, the American Debate Association does not demonstrate how their standing rules uphold, support, and are consistent with other ADA documents like the mission statement in the constitution, as well as the governing documents of the Cross Examination Debate Association and American Forensics Association.

• Our Speeches:

Our speeches in this debate provide ethos, pathos, and logos for our criticism above, demonstrating why our past attempts this season to offer an alternative evaluation process have consistently failed.  We will challenge whether the contemporary evaluation process allows students, judges, and faculty governance to engage in the shared responsibility for the constructing a constitutional evaluation process. We protest that the existing process is incapable of protecting our constitutional rights as granted in the organizational documents (ADA/CEDA/AFA) that govern this debate. We choose to stand in unity with the entire University of Louisville Malcolm X Debate Society embracing our mission to “increase effective decision making for a multicultural democracy.

• Our Demands:

1. That each team and judge must make a written commitment to follow organizational governing written documents. Doing so creates clear expectations of a constitutional evaluation process in every debate round at this tournament.
2. That the evaluation process created from existing conventions, norms and procedures is made transparent through inclusion in each team’s casebook and every judge’s philosophy. This is necessary to create both predictability and accountability.
3. That each participant of this tournament is held accountable for a reasonable assessment method of those written evaluation processes.  In the CEDA Constitution, Article XV, the Statement of Ethical Principles, Section 2 on Educator Practices, part D. says that a written ballot must be provided for every debate.  Since most tournaments no longer give out ballots, we have given you a ballot and ask that you complete it and return it to us before we leave this room.

These demands are not optional considerations for debaters and judges.  The ignored community reality is that academic debate is a system of shared governance between faculty directors and administrators, graduate assistants as coaches, and students as debaters.  The written documents that govern this tournament cannot be undermined, assumed, or usurped by the created evaluation process used in any debate.  Moreover, we believe that the casebook and judging philosophy create a contractual relationship between members that serve to create accountability and responsibility in the shared governance process.

The casebook and judging philosophies are the customs used to facilitate preparation, and as such the entire evaluation process should be clearly communicated in these documents. Courts will likely recognize these types of customs as a large part of the contractual relationship for debate as a higher education systems of shared governance. Hence, we demand that the evaluation process is explicated in casebook entries and judging philosophies to ensure predictability, fairness, and accountability.

Steven Poskanzer’s 2002 Higher Education Law: The Faculty, concludes that “courts have become increasingly willing to recognize and enforce contractual relationships within the academy itself: between the institution and its faculty and between the institution and potential, current, and former students.” (p20)  Kaplan and Lee’s 1995 3^rd edition of The Law of Higher Education says that the scope and terms of the contract come from a variety of places. “The written contract may range from a notice of appointment…to a lengthy collective bargaining agreement…Or it may not be called a contract at all, but a faculty handbook or an institutional policy manual. (p150)” Poskanzer points out that “The significance of written institutional rules or policies- and, in their absence, unwritten institutional custom and practice- in defining the legal rights and duties of members of the academic community cannot be overestimated.”

Meet the Team – Rosie Washington

I am black and I am beautiful

From my seeds all civilization was born

I am the breath of fresh air that flows

Through the lungs of people everywhere

So begins a speech delivered by one of the most powerful public speakers to ever compete with the University of Louisville Malcolm X Debate Team—Rosie Washington.  A senior Political Science major, Rosie infuses every speech she gives with her politics and personal identity.

Rosie discovered debate while attending Lincoln College Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, MO.  Her training as a traditional debater was furthered in high school debate camps.  It was there that  she received instruction and experience in an educational game that demanded she set aside her identity in favor of impacts, evidence, and other elements of argumentation incomprehensible to those outside the community.

For Rosie, debate was forever changed when she accepted a scholarship from the University of Louisville Malcolm X Debate Team.  Rather than pretend to be an empty vessel without opinions or experiences, she was expected to discover her identity and use it to establish her credibility to advocate for others.  Then she learned about systems of oppression that sought to erase her, and how the debate community perpetuated those systems by privileging aloof detachment over individual identity.

Sadly, Rosie learned that the debate community wasn’t interested in her identity; they only cared for arguments that were disconnected from human cost.  In response to the pain she felt at being rendered powerless by privilege and invisible as an individual, she wrote an open letter to the community, excerpted below:

Dear Debate,

Dehumanization through a supposedly educational activity is far from expected or natural; it is, in fact, antithetical to what education is about.  As I reveled in the ability to share me with you, you in turn despised the responsibility it created for you. You’ve looked into my eyes with tears in your own and told me that it was my words that made you realize that you were an oppressor and…still concluded that I have to give the win to “them’ in order to protect the future of my debate program.

Despite these hurts, Rosie found that the old axiom is true—there is no gain without pain.  Competing with the UofL squad and challenging the privilege embedded in the debate community was hard, but the rewards were great.  Rosie arrived at UofL blind to the realities of life that shaped her destiny, but Dr. Ede Warner’s program opened her eyes.  Through her college debate experiences, Rosie found her purpose, that of reshaping public school curricula for African American students.  Although it was painful, debate at UofL has been an enriching experience that has enhanced her life in ways that would not have been possible with another squad at another school.  And isn’t that something worth fighting for?

Reflections of an Affirmative Action Debate Coach

A change is coming! In the Spring 2010, the University of Louisville Malcolm X Debate Society will be rolling out an approach that has undergone an overhaul.  Some miscalculations on my part at Director meant a slow start to our season, but a group of students and staff have come together in “da lab”—Davidson Hall 101’s squad room—to correct those miscalculations.  The result is an approach that we feel very good about. 

Of course, the trick with altering approaches is always to not throw out the good with the bad, and I think we’ve succeeded.  In what is now my 17th season, the reality is the debate strategies I coach have never fallen very far from my personal and non-debate professional career.  What that generally means is that my identity has a relationship with how we debate.  That defining characteristic of our debate program won’t change this spring.

What will change is our method.  Taking a page out of the Motriyo Isles book of how to view and enact social change, we will rely on an understanding of the policies, rules, rights, and procedures that govern who we are as a Debate organization, as well as individual members of a higher education-sponsored activity. 

The major change centers around our own personal structure and organization in defining our approach to academic competitions this spring.  Our students will engage in a new form of debate protest activism that challenges their right to exist as a minority in the member organizations of the American Debate Association (ADA); the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA); the National Debate Tournament (NDT); and the umbrella governing organization, the American Forensics Association (AFA).  Each organization affords protection to a debate program that embraces and defends its right to debate differently than others.

We will use this site as a place to document that success, with much more structure than we have had in the past.  Every two weeks, beginning this Wednesday, I will offer my Director notes in the form of this blog site, which will be entitled “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Debate Coach.”  In weeks that I’m not posting, we will highlight a member of the team, either debater or staff, or someone that is part of the legacy of the Malcolm X Debate Society.

We will use this site to keep information on our schedule, our results, and any other important issues.  A discussion board will be actively maintained as our participation creates questions to ponder, issues to discuss, and connections between current debaters, alumni, and friends of the program.

We hope you will join our ride this semester as our students use their agency to fight for what they believe, and against the experiences they dealt with in the fall.

Round 2 – The Grand Ole’ Opry

As the squad left today for Vanderbilt, I sit in Louisville with optimism that we are moving in the right direction.  The debaters worked in the squad room this morning for several hours, focused and commited to getting organized for the debates which begin this evening.

Our preparation for this tournament ended before we left Vegas.  That is the punishment for trying to be different I guess .  So much of what we have done for year’s has been on the “fly” that we usually need to gather the data from each tournament, and make some collective and curricular decisions about our next move.

In this case, we had to decide first, whether minor or major changes were in order.

After the second day of the tournament, as we discussed major changes given our competitive records, both Tiffany and I viewed the clearing of the novice team (Shelby Pumphrey and Aaron Weathers) as a sign that we were straying too far from the work done so far.  As a collective, we all watched their elim debate and got a sense of where they were at.

The next day we worked on curriculum while still in Vegas, figuring out where we were winning and losing debates and consideration of our curriculum relative to the execution of the debaters.  We agreed that the curriculum was the probem and that generally, the debaters had executed the curriculum quite well.  So we began to assess the strategy.

Our conclusions: we were winning our definintions of policy and advocacy, but we were allowing teams to reconceptualize our best argument, the differences between constituents and advocates.  The role of the advocate, aka, the debater is to defend policies created by constituents and the game of debate now encourages policy creation by debaters instead of constituents.

With that small adjustment made to our sixteen lessons, we had students refine the speeches/arguments/files from Vegas in preparation for Vanderbilt.

I heard a first affirmative this morning that was amazing.  Marian Kennedy starts with a discussion of our squad purpose, effective decision making for a multicultural democracy, and the role of policy debate in the Civil Rights Movement.  She then advocates for the policy created by the Nuclear Weapons Coordinating Committee Policy Network, discussing their coalition building process to get a diverse group of activists working together on similar reductions of United States nuclear weapons.

The tournament begins tonight at 6pm with rounds 1 and 2.  We will keep the group posted on how things are going.

A Prayer is Answered

That's Shelby, lower right, making it to elims at her first tournament!

Last night, when we had three teams that all had won only one of four debates, my prayer was simple: Lord, please let at least one team make it to the elimination rounds.  We need to keep the motivation and excitement going that we have started the season with.

“God, if you let us have just one team in the elimination rounds, I will work diligently to fix the minor issues that are creating losses instead of wins. Thanks Mom. Amen.”

When we knew that we wouldn’t have a team with more than 3 wins out of seven debates, I assumed that none of our teams would make it to elim’s.  But when Cal-State Fullerton director Jon Bruschke’s new fancy text messaging system, coach Rosie Washington received an email. It said that our novice team of Pumphrey and Weathers would be competing.

My prayer had been answered.

Coach Rosie made it clear that this is "HER" team.

The motivation circle we had after the announcement was extremely powerful.  Tiffany Dillard-Knox said we hadn’t had one like it since the last day of our summer camp back in2005.  Dr. Ludeanna Thomas dropped a powerful of poem of civil rights and danced, while tears, hugs, and words of appreciation moved around the circle.

Sacrifices were acknowledged, while shouts of trash-talking and celebration were constant.

We won the flip and chose affirmative.  Aaron’s first affirmative was powerful.  While we did lose the debate battle, we most certainly won the morale war.  Whoever said there isn’t such a thing as a moral victory, never had to struggle for anything.  It was probably their privilege talking.

Today, the students get a chance to enjoy Vegas, while the staff will prepare the curriculum for the next two weeks, so that we can be ready with visible improvements for the next tournament at Vanderbilt in less than two weeks.

Our goal for Vanderbilt, it’s simple.  Visible improvement over our performance at Vegas.  That’s a balanced, nuanced search for our team’s truth this season.

Vegas, Day One: Execution, Energy and Evaluation

I watched two debates yesterday, both when we were negative.  I was fascinated by the execution of our students: they were powerful, they were smart, they outdebated their opponents in any world, forum, or format that would not be the NDT/CEDA community.

Where the decisions in those debates wrong?  Not at all, in fact they were quite reasonable and sound.  The decisions would have been predictable had we engaged in more contemporary forms of policy debate more of the time.  But I don’t and consequently I have a much harder time predicting those outcomes, especially when we are trying new things.

But isn’t that the point of training students in persuasion and advocacy?  We created our argument strategy, executed it, and got excellent feedback.  Now the ball is back in our court.

Sometimes my students don’t get me.  I don’t need to watch a hundred debates to get a sense of whether the strategy and our execution is correct.  If you really pay attention and you have a vision of where we are trying to go, it only takes 2 or 3 to establish a pattern.

What we, the staff, normally do on tournaments now is work real hard in preparing a curriculum for the day before the tournament so that we efficiently use the time to create the same moment: debaters give speeches, do cross-examinations, and the staff gives feedback to allow some refinement before the tournament begins.

Then we go “live.”  It only takes a debate or two to get some initial thoughts about how judges are engaging what we do.  Just as important as watching full debates is the value of talking to other judges to hear there thoughts.  The final piece of data collection is talking with our students to see how they feel about the arguments, their execution, and the feedback they are getting from judges.

Then I disappear to the “lab.”  I feel a responsibility to act fast to use my agency to create a solution as soon as possible, because I lead the ship and the students are engaging in revolutionary practices because of me, so I have the responsibility of using my skills to generate possible solutions as soon as possible.  I don’t want them to lose their confidence or energy in what they are doing, or in the staff that leads them into battle.

If the strategy is close, Debo and I make small adjustments through dialogic exchange. If we are far, then we sit and begin developing the curriculum for the return to Louisville.  We recognize that some changes are too big or systemic to make on site, so we manage the crisis that weekend will bring and we go home to regroup.

I can tell you now, we are minor changes away from a winning strategy.  Based on debater comfort about what they are doing, combined with thoughts from judges, we are in a good place.  There are a few issues;

1) Figuring out who should judge us:  We are looking for a change in convention so ultimately everyone should judge us.  However, the reality is that all judges aren’t the same and our needs have evolved.  We think we have a strategy that balances the ideological divide so that isn’t how we will select our judges, as we have done in the past.  And the decisionn of the last 3 years to not prefer judges, while a great goal, isn’t valuable if we aren’t winning, which is necessary to change the norms and procedures.  So we need judges that 1) are intelligent and can understand the complexity of what our students are doing; 2) are moderate, meaning that they aren’t extreme voices in the current interscholastic ideological divide over what debate should look like; and 3) have courage to challenge conventions in the face of the broader feelings, perceptions, and stereotypes about who we are and what we are doing.

So we will again pref judges starting at the next tournament, but our goals and needs are radically different now.  Ultimately, we want to change the contemporary motivations behind preference through changes in the norms and procedures of the game.

2) Figuring out how to make judge’s comfortable voting for us.  We criticize an existing norm, just like any other procedural debate like topicality or plan vagueness.  However, the solution we offer would change the game, in particular the evaluation process.  At  least three judges balked in ways we’ve heard before: what would the world look like if I accept this?  The problem with social movements is that no matter how we feel about shouldering the responsibility not only for bringing an accurate criticism to the community, we also must come up with a solution that judge’s can get behind.

3) Affirming and supporting our debaters.  They are doing everything we’ve asked and more.  And anything that’s not quite right is a problem with our teaching and coaching, not their execution.  We as staff must have compassion for that and an understanding that we must use our agency to fix execution problems.  Debo has taught me that lession.

So here is the fix for today:

1) We have a set of judging guidelines but those don’t speak to the real problems: how the evaluation process is driving by an imbalanced search for logos or content at the exclusion of the role that pathos and ethos should play in the evaluation process;

2)  For example, the use of the flow still haunts us.  Not because it’s bad, but because the way it’s used in NDT/CEDA ignores the impact that use has for ethical advocacy and persuasion.  The existing norm to separate ideas into compartments runs counter to our goal of using persuasion to better see the big picture during the advocacy stage of the decision making process.

3) Our vision of policy debate towards effective decision making separates the current conventions into three parts: policy creation; policy advocacy; and policy evaluation.  Currently, contemporary debate engages in an imbalanced amount of policy creation during the advocacy process.  In other words in the real world, we test ideas, take vigorous notes, create conditional thoughts, during the first stage, policy creation.  But in debate, that creation process has become the advocacy process.  That’s a problem.

4) So the goals of taking our persuasive policy speeches and categorizing them into separate distinct components, allows debaters to test ideas ethically as separate and distinct arguments, but leaves debaters and judges to put them back together again in what we would describe as an imbalanced use of advocate and decision maker privilege.  Why?  Because the real world doesn’t reassemble arguments in that way during the advocacy process.  MLK didn’t have a roadmap for “I have a Dream.”  No one flowed Kennedy’s policy persuasion.  And President Obama creates his speech using very different conventions than what he does during presentations.  College debate has lost all semblance of that balance.

5) So when our debaters engage in persuasion that integrates ideas into a coherent advocacy, opponents and judges then tear it apart.  The flow doesn’t value the use of personal experiences to build connections and relationship in a speech, and in fact, when decisions are made that don’t value these things, debaters lose the motivation to use them.  Ironically, judges love these things when we do them, but are the reason debaters stop.  Last year, Rosie Washington was unwilling to sing in debates because she felt the evaluation process dehumanized her actions.  I can’t blame her.

6) So we need judges to think differently about the purpose of flowing during the advocacy process and what can create comfort for them.  This morning I will suggest some questions that our debaters can use to start the judge on her or his own dialogic process of critical examination.

• If the primary role of you as a decision maker is that you are an educator and this is a classroom, do you consider the value of sharing knowledge about policies in ways that create stronger relationships and are you willing to evaluate that in this debate?
• Is the best advocate who most ethically represents the constituent, the one most knowledgeable about the content of the constituent’s opponents, or the one who learns a process that will best defend and protect the needs and interests of the constituents?
• Do you as a decision maker have the power to change the material conditions of any constituent in this debate, or do you only have the power to teach advocacy?
• Does your definition of advocacy, include values of consistency and credible defense?

Vegas, Hard Rocks, and Preparing for a Revolution

Each day that we compete this season, I will try to write something, talking about how that day went.  I will try to use this as my “research,” an exercise in what I believe is educational reform unveiling before my very eyes.  In addition, I will try to keep more timely and current information on the Facebook group.  Hopefully, God has taught me enough about the technology that I can use it for a productive societal purpose, keeping the past of Louisville Debate connected to the present, so we can together share a brighter future.  Now that’s motivation!

The flight was relatively uneventful.  I do want to say that our staff is amazing.  Mary Mudd, the program assistant is amazing.  Each of the staff members traveling had packets: travel information, tournament stuff, and directions.  She always does, but we don’t always appreciate her for it.

The weather was nice.  The flight was long, four hours.  I sat next to one of the new graduate assistants, Brian Paige.  While we didn’t talk much, we did share some great sports conversations.  He played baseball through High School, so we shared “not making the all-stars stories” as well as other good discussions about different sports.

The UNLV campus is right near the airport.  After a quick shuttle ride, we got 12 passengers and a driver into a van built for many less (had to tip the driver for that one!), we walked across the street to the Hardrock for a meal.  Overpriced, but good, the conversations were all over the place.

I sat next to Dr. Deana Thomas, the faculty member accompanying us on the trip. She was flash and glize all the way, stepping on the plane with her 3 hat creation, as fierce as she wanted to be.  At least ten people complimented her on the hats.  She was on sabbatical and willing to travel, so here we were, using the opportunity that was created out of circumstance to learn about what we each do.

She did a little debate in school and a whole lot of individual events before becoming an outstanding Director of the African American Theatre program.  We talked a lot about the similarities and differences of our programs.  We talked about the challenges facing the programs and how we each attempted to hurdle them.

It was incredibly informative.  A new coalition had been built.  But we weren’t done.

Before we left the table, I discussed a preparation plan for the rest of the day.  One student said her speeches were done, so she thought she was “ready.”  Perhaps others felt the same, but they didn’t speak up.

Inside my head, I chucked.  “Ready? We haven’t even begun to prepare for this season.” So far, we had only built the materials for the house.  The construction had yet to begin.

It was time to “get ready” for tomorrow.  This year’s curriculum is very different: it wasn’t built for this tournament, but rather, it was built for the season.  We are unlike the other 50 teams at the tournament in so many different ways. We didn’t have one practice debate prior to our arrival, nor did our students didn’t create one “file.”

What did they have then in preparation for Las Vegas?  They read fifteen lessons on a variety of topics.  At the end of each lesson, they did a study activities assignment, which usually involved writing one or more short persuasive speeches.  Most of the speeches were 3 minutes, but as we moved closer to this tournament, we had them put together the longer requisite 9 and 6 minute speeches out of the smaller ones.

We refined the strategy along the way, figuring out both content and form issues.  As a staff, Tiffany “Debo” Dillard-Knox, Rosie Washington, and myself, would talk through the debate strategy, and create the assignments with the broader strategy in mind, but without necessary giving it all out in a big chunk, choosing instead to create more manageable educational moments through the lessons.

The form of the speeches came through presentation during squad meetings.  Much like a poetry circle, our squad meetings begin with everyone presenting their speech and opening themselves up for the squad to engage.  Mostly, because the assignments were usually done right, clapping, vocal affirmation, and praise were the outcomes.  Once in a while, constructive criticism was needed.

Either way, the consistency of the performance of the group was strong in preparing powerful speeches that had the content assigned.  Now the question was could we take that six weeks of preparation and figure out how to create successful debate outcomes:  competively and educationally.

Back at the hotel, the work session began.  The five coaches sitting across a long coach in my hotel room and on the floor: Rosie, Brian, Dr. Thomas, Debo (Dillard-Knox), and Doc.

The first team to present in front of the firing squad: Marian Kennedy and Chris Vincent.

Dr. Thomas, using the moment to “get to know” our students, would ask questions.  But when she started teaching, it was amazing.  She focused on form and persuasive ability.  She focused on all the little things that slowly assimilate a debate team that wants to be persuasive, but gets caught up in a broader community of debate that cares little about true persuasion.  She focused on all the big things that we don’t really teach in education about persuasion.

“Why you standing against that wall when you speak?”  “Do you and that computer have a relationship? Your eye contact was there and you ignored me?  “I was with you at the beginning, then you lost me, then you got me back, then you lost me again!”  “I don’t believe in stumbling.  If you were in my program, that would be a long night of practice to fix it.”  That was just a small sample of Thomas’ approach to stylistic presentation.

She talked specifically about what parts of the content were persuasive and why.  So it would be unfair to say that she ignored content.  But it would be fair to say that her stylistic suggestions forced us all to reconsider how radical and revolutionary our challenge to the debate community really is when the excellent content doesn’t match up with a less than stellar presentation of the idea.

Brian, as the newbie on the staff, didn’t contribute a lot, but did offer a few relevant suggestions about the topic content.  Concerns about accuracy of information was his area of interest, concerns that were important to ethos.

Rosie, Debo, and myself tried to bring specific criticisms, usually related to both form and content, as they related to where the strategy needed to go.  One of the first big picture issues we saw was the need to take what had been individual speech assignments, and integrate into a “team debate” strategy.  So students were sent to transform solo acts, into integrated team concepts.  A second issue was a part of the debate where students read things written by Debo and I.  The lack of balance between their speech writing and trying to ressecitate ours was obvious and painful.

And finally, there was a discussion of the importance of “practicing the speeches.”  Just as we have found in classes, or in the real world, speech giving has become imbalanced in terms of content and not enough work on style, gutting the persuasive value of the content.  People don’t realize how easy it is to lose interest in the content if the presentation is wrong.  Dr. Thomas even mentioned the importance of hand gestures, scratching an itchy nose, and how one stands.

These are all issues that are not a serious part of the educational system in a meaningful way, whether evaluation of policy debates, or whether a public speaking class.  The rubrics are out of balance in favor of content, of logos.  I used to think it was the debate community uniquely, but as I watch classically trained students, I repeatedly find that they lack a true understanding of persuasion: the importance of “balancing” pathos, ethos, and logos to create a moment to influence another human being.

We don’t teach that balance, nor that integration.  We tend to separate style from content in our evaluation process, especially when I taught public speaking.  The grading sheet separated them, which is fine to understand how to work on a particular act, but then the importance of that act relative to the “big picture” has to be taught as well.

But we taught it last night.  After some discussions of cross examination and a relatively quick discussion about the negative, we all realized that Rome wasn’t going to get built in a day.  So after working with all three teams, assessing “where they were at” and sending each team off to ensure the affirmative constructive speeches got the attention they needed, we called it a night.

Many of the debaters however, after bemoaning to each other that going to 631 had been harsh, they conceded to each other, even if not to the staff that they weren’t as ready as they thought.  Some of that was on the staff because we hadn’t given them the entire curriculum as a purposeful choice in the preparation process.

Why?  Because the curriculum is being developed through a dialogic process.  Students give speeches, teachers assess the performance, both in terms of style and content.  We then use our experiences as coaches to assess the strategic value of the speeches, then offer refinements, reforms, and changes as we collectively deemed necessary to move forward.

So the debaters worked with an understanding of what had changed on Friday night.  Perhaps now knowing that we are not prepared in terms of outcomes, and throughout this season we will never be.  But we are prepared in terms of a process that will increase the individual, team, and squad strength of our outputs, and that is all that really matters.

At least for now…

A New Day

An Open Letter to the Alumni, Ancestors, and Agents of the 2009 University of Louisville Debate Society,

If you have received this note, I consider you part of the history, the ancestry, and the legacy of the University of Louisville Debate Society. I wanted to take a moment to thank you, to update you, and to make a request of you.

Our story is called by outsiders in the NDT/CEDA debate community the “Louisville Project.” However, within “us,” our name changes as frequent as a new NAS release.  The University of Louisville Debate Society, Debate What!, M.P.O.W.E.R., and most recently, the Malcolm X Debate Society, are just a few of the informal and formal names used to describe “us.” You are an ancestor of the 2009 version, and I wanted to apprise you that contrary to popular belief, “rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated!”

For in spite of the hurdles, mistakes, and challenges, the new and improved edition of Louisville Debate brings together all of the collective strength of the past, an improved decision making process to minimize the weaknesses, and a level of preparedness that guarantees a celebration of our past successes but with an eye towards overcoming the challenges that it simultaneously brought.

We have six debaters actively preparing for their first competition of the season at the University of Nevada @ Las Vegas on October 3-5, 2009.

The topic is that we should substantially reduce nuclear weapons. Our students will advocate the policy interests of the Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network on the affirmative, and the National Nuclear Security Administration on the negative.

But our students will do much more than that in their debates, as they will challenge the contemporary academic debate competition, arguing that existing norms and procedures act as an imbalanced, skewed competition and thus destroy debate’s ability to reflect and engage real world issues.

But this time, we will fix the competitive flaw to restore the educational balance.

We expect to have unprecedented levels of success: which I define as an engaged educational experience, a real exercise in social justice movements. If this equation is accurate and balanced, it should produce large amounts of consistent and competitive success.

It is the first time that the detailed curriculum truly matches up student and staff interest and equal participation in our approach. Everyone is very excited. The students will be using their own powerful persuasive speeches written from a student-driven curriculum, with a little bit of Debo and Doc to balance the theoretical perspectives. It is the closest we’ve been to the unfulfilled promise of Freire and hooks. The goal of true educational liberatory reform has been the goal which has consistently escaped us until now.

Tiffany Dillard-Knox, Rosie Washington, and I have come together on an educational curriculum that we are using in the classroom as well as the debate preparation, that we call the “persuasive framework.” It is a method which introduces the content in a way that allows students to search for motivation, method, and agency regarding a topic before true study of that topic begins. It invites the student to find their educational power as it relates to the topic or subject before diving fully into the area of study.

The results so far have been amazing! Students are teaching my Introduction to Pan African Studies course connecting their own powerful personal experiences to the content of the course. And the debaters have found their persuasive agency, creating a consistent level of both strategic and powerful speeches that are used in a modular fashion based on how opponents choose to engage.

This year’s team:

• National travel competitors are: Tiffany McCollum, Marian Kennedy, Chris Vincent, Aaron Weathers, Shelby Pumphrey, Whitney Abernathy, and Jason Walker. Also traveling will be graduate assistant, Brian Paige, and assistant, Rosie Washington. They are led into battle by program coordinator, Tiffany Yvonne “Debo” Dillard-Knox, and her program assistant, Mary C. Mudd.
• Their bios are on the website located at http://uofldebate.com/ under “Meet the Team.”
• We also have 8 walk-ons who are preparing to begin competition in the spring.
• The teams for Vegas are: Abernathy/McCollum; Kennedy/Vincent; and Pumphrey/Weathers.

On behalf of this year’s debaters, educators, and agents of social change, I would like to thank their history, their ancestry, and their legacy, i.e. you, personally for the sacrifices that each of you made to create the rewards and benefits in the for of the curriculum that has prepared them. Each of you made differing degrees of personal, competitive, academic, emotional, and overall sacrifices that assisted in the creation of this moment.

I wanted you to know that I personally and directly appreciate those sacrifices and acknowledge their role in what is about to be revolutionary educational reform in the spirit of what motivated many of us to fight, cry, yell, scream, shout, defer, challenge, and engage for a purpose. We are almost there, and you were the first ones I wanted to know, even before the world knows what has been accomplished.

The second purpose of this message is to give you an update of what’s happening this season.

The tournaments for the fall are:

• University of Nevada @ Las-Vegas, Las Vegas Nevada. We will leave Friday afternoon or evening, October 2 and return either late Monday, October 5 or early on Tuesday, October 6.
• Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tn. We will leave Friday early afternoon on Oct 16 and return late on Sunday evening, October 18.
• Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  We will leave Friday early afternoon on Nov 19 and return on late Monday, Nov 22.

In case you didn’t know, my dear friend, Ross Smith, the debate coach at Wake Forest, died suddenly this summer. They are planning a series of memorial events which will include several debate community activities. He is part of our legacy too, whether each of you know that or not.

Finally, my request.

I hope that each of you find the time to reconnect with this year’s team. Squad meetings are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8am-10am. As part of my legal troubles, I will not be traveling with the team this season unless accompanied by a faculty member.

So consider traveling, coming to a squad meeting, mentoring a current member of the squad, or just checking in once in a while.

We will start a Facebook group by tomorrow to keep interested folks updated on how the squad is progressing as the tournament action unfolds.  I’ll send a note when it’s set up.

So thanks, you’ve been updated, and my request has been made. My purpose is done and I hope this note finds you and yours well. I am not a friend of many past UofL debaters so if you know someone, share the link.

Best,

“Doc”

The Great Debater Forum, part 1

I accepted an invitation to speak at the “Great Debater” Forum in Kansas City on Saturday, September 13, 2008. That Friday morning I left Louisville as Hurricane Ike prepared it’s wrath for the Texas coast and parts due North and East.  My Southwest jet landed in a literal thunderstorm in St. Louis, took off only to land 50 minutes later in a heavy rain in Kansas City.  And “Ike” hadn’t reached the mainland yet.

It rained from the time I was in Kansas City until I left.  My connection on the way back at Midway in Chi-town found more rain.  Literally, it rained from 10 minutes after I was airborne in Louisville until I was about 50 miles outside what is called the Ohio Valley on the way back the next day.  Two days of rain followed me across the Mid-west.  Because my Faith been was stronger, I understood, and saw the connections of my past:

The Squad Room

So we had our first practice debates using the new system.  The affirmative debated as the Louisville team while the negative team represented a non-Louisville approach, since all our debates in the beginning will be against teams likely not prepared or interested in our system.  After the initial reactions of, “there goes Doc again on a crazy tangent” as the students fought to catch up with my vision, we finally began to arrive together in the same place.  I knew that if we get a chance to make a serious commitment to the new approach, I would have to persuade our juniors and seniors that the system works.  If they came on board, the younger students, in deference to their elders, would sign on as well.