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.

The Big Picture – Making Ethical Behaviors Strategic

"How Important are Ethics in Today's Society?"

Back when I debated, people occassionally made “ethics” challenges, usually revolving around the context or falsification of a piece of evidence.  Technology and the ability to access evidence has made the evidence verification issue a non-starter.  Evidence gets discussed on listservs, students can find articles in seconds, and caselists keep everyone involved on what and where the evidence is. 

Constructing an Ethical Policy Debate System for a Multicultural Democracy

During our fall retreat, the week before school, we delivered a series of lectures to our students discussing the justification for, the components of, and the necessary preparation required to embark on a very different debate journey than the last eight years.  The powerpoint presentation from the retreat entitled (Introducing an Ethical Policy Debate System for a Multicultural Democracy) emphasizes the following issues: how to win an ethcial policy debate, what the format should look like, the evaluation of these debates, and what constitutes unethical behavior within such a debate system.  We will get to these issues momentarily.  But let’s start in a different place: the definition of a debate “impact” and how interscolastic debate trains participants to caclulate “impacts” in the current evaluation process.  To understand the need for the new system, one must recognize why the old system prevents quality debate over a policy controversy.  Contrary to perception and stereotype, it’s not inherently speed or style: those are but symptoms of a larger problem as the core issue manifests itself around those phenomena. 

The Case for a Counter-System?

Consideration of an Ethical Policy Debate System for a Multicultural Democracy

Any objective reading of contemporary interscholastic policy tournament debate history must acknowledge that the creation and development of the current tournament norms and conventions occurred in an extremely homogenous environment.  The evolution from audience to tournament debating, the subtle turn away from interracial debates, and the growth of the NDT as a debate organization are all part of the foundation for today’s contemporary debate theory and practice.  Accepting this premise, one can consider the following hypothesis, that an effective policy debate system for a multicultural society needs to be developed in a multicultural environment.