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In our second "Faculty Focus" of the year we're taking a closer look at another one of our first year instructors, Michael O'Krent. This spring he will graduate from the Harvard-Westlake School, in Los Angeles, CA. Michael has attended VBI for a total of 15 weeks over the past four summers, making 2014 his fifth year at VBI.
Catherine Tarsney is a senior at the University of Chicago, where she is majoring in Public Policy. She is currently a seasonal associate at 270 Strategies, and has worked as a Neighborhood Team Leader and Fall Fellow for Obama for America. She graduated from St. Louis Park HIgh School in 2010, where she qualified four times to the TOC, won it as a senior, and was the champion of multiple national circuit tournament. She is currently an assistant coach at the Hockaday School in Texas. She attended VBI as a student before her sophomore, junior, and senior years, and has taught at VBI as an instructor every summer since then.
In our second "Faculty Focus" of the year we're taking a closer look at another one of our first year instructors, Michael O'Krent. This spring he will graduate from the Harvard-Westlake School, in Los Angeles, CA. Michael has attended VBI for a total of 15 weeks over the past four summers, making 2014 his fifth year at VBI.
Catherine Tarsney is a senior at the University of Chicago, where she is majoring in Public Policy. She is currently a seasonal associate at 270 Strategies, and has worked as a Neighborhood Team Leader and Fall Fellow for Obama for America. She graduated from St. Louis Park HIgh School in 2010, where she qualified four times to the TOC, won it as a senior, and was the champion of multiple national circuit tournament. She is currently an assistant coach at the Hockaday School in Texas. She attended VBI as a student before her sophomore, junior, and senior years, and has taught at VBI as an instructor every summer since then.
Catherine Tarsney is a senior at the University of Chicago, where she is majoring in Public Policy. She is currently a seasonal associate at 270 Strategies, and has worked as a Neighborhood Team Leader and Fall Fellow for Obama for America. She graduated from St. Louis Park HIgh School in 2010, where she qualified four times to the TOC, won it as a senior, and was the champion of multiple national circuit tournament. She is currently an assistant coach at the Hockaday School in Texas. She attended VBI as a student before her sophomore, junior, and senior years, and has taught at VBI as an instructor every summer since then.
The VBI Philadelphia (June 25 - July 8) Public Forum camp topic will be from the 2022 September/October topic area of environmental infrastructure.
Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its investment in high-speed rail.
The VBI Los Angeles (July 31 - August 13) session will use the official 2022 September/October topic.
Director of Publishing of Lawrence Zhou lays out the case below for why he believes that the HSRs topic is superior to the REMs topic.
The massive YouTube channel RealLifeLore was recently forced to reupload a video about California’s high speed rails (HSRs) because of some (legitimate) criticisms (such as this one from Alan Fisher) about the quality of the original video. I don’t have a strong position on whether Fisher’s criticisms were all correct—what I do have a strong position on is the fact that the criticisms and subsequent reupload suggest that the HSR debate is more complicated than people sometimes think it is, and that suggests that there is legitimate debate to be had on both sides.
For years now, I have been extolling the benefits of HSRs in China and lamenting the sorry state of the US train system (these videos by Wendover Productions on China’s HSRs and why trains suck in the US are a great starting point for understanding the topic). When teaching debate in China, I’d actively pick an HSR over flying most of the time (although that’s partly because China is weird about military control over their airspace, resulting in frequent delays when flying)—the convenience and comfort of HSRs far superseded the quality of flying. Honestly, once I factored in having to get to and from the airport (often located on the outskirts of the city, whereas HSR stations were often centrally located), it was often faster to use an HSR instead of flying.
So, why is it the case that Asian countries like Japan and China and European countries like Spain have so many miles of HSR while the US has just (arguably) a single HSR line in the form of the Amtrak Acela Express line from Boston to DC?
The answers vary: The US lacks expertise in constructing HSRs, the political opposition from corporations and Republicans is strong, the budgetary and federal commitments would be massive, and the US is geographically distinct from other regions of the world that have more connected urban centers whereas the US is far more spread out. There are other concerns too like our strong property rights, our lasting car culture, and an existing rail system that is geared towards commercial freight traffic but not for passenger traffic. These concerns, along with concerns over its enormous upfront cost to build the infrastructure, concerns about their impacts to already disadvantaged families, and doubts about its long-term economic viability, will provide ample ground for the negative.
By comparison, the affirmative has access to many different impacts, from the economic benefits that direct access would provide to some of the sustainability and environmental benefits of investment in mass transit.
This sets the stage for an excellent debate, one that stretches as far back as Lyndon Johnson’s High-Speed Ground Transportation Act in the 1960s. Each side has core arguments: sustainability and economic interconnectedness for the affirmative; spending and displacement for the negative. Additionally, there are plenty of details about the plausibility and feasibility of HSRs in the US (such as whether it should be included in a future infrastructure bill, how large of a role should the federal government play, whether a national or series of regional corridors would make the most sense, and questions about whether future efforts to build HSRs can overcome the history of failures in the US). There are even a myriad of books dedicated solely to the question of HSRs (like this one about the history of HSRs) demonstrating that a wide swath of literature exists over this timely and fascinating topic. There are deep environmental, economic, and social debates to be had about HSR, and with California’s HSR currently in limbo, there is also a real example of this debate playing out as we speak.
While a lot of the debate over HSRs could get into some of the nitty-gritty details that may be somewhat unpleasant to debate, I think that’s ultimately far superior to the alternative of the rare earth minerals topic. A simple question for those in favor of the REM topic: What’s the negative ground?
When Ted Cruz, Joe Biden, John Kelly and Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Heritage Foundation, and virtually everyone else is in agreement that domestic REM production is key to climate progress, economic growth, national security, and reducing our reliance on China for REMs, then I really struggle to see what the negative ground is.
Sure, the negative can talk about the environmental harms of extracting, refining, and processing REMs, but those harms are largely non-unique (and arguably quite offensive to suggest that environmental harm in other countries like in China where it is out of sight is somehow better than it happening here in the US), solutions to REM pollution are emerging, relying on China is worse given that they can cut off clean energy development in the US, investment and research in cleaner and more efficient REM extraction and processing will likely emerge with increased US investment in domestic REM production (such as one method to mine it from industrial waste), and recycling will likely mitigate many of those harms. This is already becoming a focal point for policy with little opposition.
I simply challenge anyone to find a reasonable negative position that opposes increasing REMs domestically. When the best negative arguments focus on the fact that maybe America won’t be able to fully overtake China in the REM space (a defensive argument which can be overcome by focusing on the key role that federal investment and support could play), that suggests that negative ground is slim pickings.
While HSRs might sound decidedly less “sexy” than REMs, that doesn’t imply it’s the worse debate topic. Debate topics don’t just need interesting literature—they need balanced ground. If topics become a monologue, where one side retains a functional monopoly on the quality of academic and popular literature, then why not just do informative speaking to sing the praises of increasing domestic production of REMs? If you want to have a debate, it has to be relatively balanced.
Of course, I could still be proven wrong—if someone wants to show me some good articles for the negative on the REMs topic, I’d be delighted to read them—but my cursory reading of the relevant topic literature strongly implies that there is real debate on both sides over HSRs and very little debate about the value of increasing our domestic extraction and production of REMs.
If what we care about is a topic that is educational for novices, balanced for quality debate, and robust enough to withstand months of debate, then I think only HSRs is a plausible contender. I look forward to hearing the case to the contrary.
Funded by a grant from Open Philanthropy, Victory Briefs is offering full scholarships to VBI 2022 for debaters interested in effective altruism.
Effective altruism is "a social movement and philosophy focused on maximising the good you can do in your career, projects, and other life decisions." It involves evidence-based reasoning to figure out how to do as much good as possible, and using those findings to try to make the world a better place.
We believe that debate cultivates skills that are integral to the mission of effective altruism. The purpose of this scholarship is to help debaters interested in effective altruism to hone those skills, and to promote awareness of and interest in effective altruism within the debate community. The scholarship is open to both PF and LD debaters.
EA Scholars will work under the guidance of their VBI mentor to focus a significant portion of their camp research on issues relevant to effective altruism. These may include particular impact areas such as global poverty, animal welfare, criminal justice reform, political decision-making, and existential risk mitigation, foundational questions about individual and social obligations to do good effectively, global priorities research, evaluating the effectiveness of particular interventions or proposed systemic changes, and many other possibilities.
To apply for the scholarship, please click here. We aim to notify applicants with a decision within three weeks.
We are also excited to announce VBI Online, a virtual session of VBI that will run June 27 - July 10, 2020.
We’re excited to announce that Victory Briefs Squads has opened applications for our Public Forum Squad for the 2019–2020 debate season. Squads gives debaters an opportunity to work with top coaches and collaborate as a team with other students from all over the country. Squad membership provides weekly Squad practices, frequent private coaching sessions, access to a curated shared Dropbox, guest seminars with championship level instructors and former debaters, many practice round opportunities, and case feedback.We are proud of our first year of Squads and the strong feedback participants offered. We frequently solicit feedback from our students to ensure the best possible experience and on our final student evaluation 100% of respondents indicated that they were glad they chose Victory Briefs Squads over other private coaching resources. Here’s what a member had to say about Victory Briefs Squads:
“Working with the coaches was really great. They were beyond helpful in both increasing my technical skill... and expanding my content knowledge… Overall, squads has really helped my improve my skills throughout they year and there’s no way I would have had any of the success I’ve achieved without the help”—David Edwards, Charlotte Catholic High School
Our primary PF coaches this season will include Krithika Shamanna and Bradley Tidwell. Students will also have the opportunity to attend guest seminars led by Anthony Berryhill, Matt Salah, Ellie Singer, Nick Smith, Chris Theis, and more TBA!The application will be on a rolling admissions basis, but spots are extremely limited, so we encourage you to apply quickly for the best chance at admission. You can apply to join the PF Squad here, or learn more at the VB Squads website. There are still a small number spots available in our LD Squad and you can find more info here.If you have any questions about Victory Briefs Squads, please email squads@victorybriefs.com.
The topic that will be used in Public Forum debate at VBI 2018 has been finalized for all locations.
The topics that will be used in Lincoln-Douglas debate at VBI 2018 have been finalized for all locations.
Last week, Victory Briefs released as part of its Curriculum Corner series a video interview with VBI staff Devane Murphy where he told us about his teaching methods, practices, and philosophy. Today, we're continuing the series with a video interview with the VBI Director of Lincoln-Douglas Debate Marshall Thompson. Marshall is a former Walt Whitman debater, current philosophy graduate student, and all around debate nerd. He led top and novice lab at VBI last year and he'll be reprising his role as a top lab instructor again this year. Learn more about Marshall and his unique insights in teaching debate. Topics covered include: Marshall's (lack of) hobbies outside of debate, his work as a philosophy graduate student, his perspective into how debate instruction could be improved, discussing how to approach coaching different styles of debate, and his unbridled love for teaching novices.Watch the interview here!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uAf9nr6iAM
VBI is excited to announce the recipients of the inaugural Community Equity Scholarship!The Community Equity Scholarship is a recognition of students who have been dedicated and continue to dedicate their time and effort to promoting inclusion and diversity on their debate teams, their local circuits, and/or the national circuit. We believe it’s important to recognize the work done outside of debate rounds that is often behind the scenes.Recipients will receive $1000 of financial aid that they can apply to any of our camp sessions. This award money can be combined with other needs-based financial aid because it is a separate amount of money being offered.These applicants demonstrated a strong commitment to promoting inclusion and diversity both inside and outside of debate rounds. We are excited to tell you about these incredibly qualified and deserving recipients from a field of incredible applicants.
Class of 2019, The Quarry Lane SchoolSai loves to sing in my free time -- whether in the shower, in the car, or recording myself onto garageband -- and they have played the flute for about 9 years which I pursue both as a form self-expression and a rigorous academic study. Their vision of a truly equitable debate community would have to be one where every student, coach, judge, administrator, etc. is comfortable being themselves and has a support group they can fall back on when they're in need -- this would mean instituting things like trigger/content warnings, teaching students and having them practice debating without misgendering, being open to various styles of debate (debating their merit in a safe, productive, and accessible manner), etc. -- especially at camps.
Class of 2020, Success AcademyShe is a stepper and an African print enthusiast! A truly equitable debate community to her is a space where there is a large representation of black judges, space where black people can speak their truth without their arguments being exploited or rejected by non-black debaters. #SuccessAcademyBC
Class of 2020, Success AcademyShe dances and loves to listen to K.Dot and J.Cole whenever she can to center or hype herself up. A truly equitable debate community to Lala would be better representation of black bodies, more specifically black debaters, coaches, judges, and their arguments. She believes debaters need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable in order to learn about the other side of the story. She sends a big thank you to Nicole, Sekou, Meagan, Aida, Bintou, and Taj! #SuccessAcademyLD
Class of 2020, Flintridge Sacred Heart AcademyJocelle does Olympic Style Archery, and she is hoping to make the US team in the future. Since she grew up in the US, her Filipino accent is not perfect, but she speaks and understands both English and Tagalog (Filipino). As she attempts to envision a truly diverse and equitable debate community, she sees a group of talented individuals of all ethnicities, gender identities, religions, income level, and backgrounds working together to achieve greatness in this activity that we all enjoy. We would cheer each other on, supporting and helping each other, even if we are on opposing sides. Debate is what binds and unites us, and we must learn from each other. The debate community, as great as it is, has a lot of work ahead of itself. If we continue on the path we are going, I am sure that this community I envision will become a reality.
LaToya Green has 14 years of experience in competitive policy debate. Ms. Green experienced significant success in the five years she competed at Emporia State University, most notably earning ESU’s first individual speaker award in 50 years at the National Debate Tournament (NDT) in 2011 and being awarded the prestigious Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) “Debater of the Year” award in 2012, her final season. After competing, Ms. Green turned to coaching by accepting a graduate assistantship at Wake Forest University. The assistant coaching experience earned at WFU provided Ms. Green the opportunity to return to her alma mater, ESU, in 2014 as Director of Debate, before transitioning into the same role at Cal State Fullerton in Fall 2015. Ms. Green, who is the youngest director of debate in the country, has experienced competitive success in all divisions of the activity. During her short tenure as a director, she has been recognized as CEDA Mid-America Critic of the Year (2015), Coach of the Year (Weber State- 2015), and as the 2017 recipient of the Galentine Award, which recognizes exceptional women in coaching.
Heath Martin is the new Director of Speech and Debate at Presentation High School in San Jose, CA. A past president of the Texas Forensic Association, Heath is a National Speech and Debate Association Two Diamond coach who has led students to deep outrounds in just about every event offered in high school forensics. From semis of Duo Interpretation at the NCFL Grand National tournament to top 15 finishes in LD and PF at NSDA Nationals, from a Texas State Champion in Impromptu Speaking to a Debate School of Excellence Award, his students have achieved success at the highest levels. Heath hails from Louisiana where he was an All State Speech and Debate team member in both Prose/Poetry Interpretation and LD debate in high school. He went on to compete in both individual events and policy debate in college which is why the teams he has coached have always maintained a broad focus across all genres of forensic events. In his spare time, Heath has been a Diversity Awareness and Anti Bias education program facilitator for the Anti Defamation League for the past twelve years.
SunHee Simon is a LD curriculum Director at Victory Briefs. SunHee has participated in debate since the 7th grade and has been a championship debater in both Lincoln Douglas and Policy Debate. In 2015, she was one of only two people to qualify to the Tournament of Champions in CX and LD. Her freshman year at Stanford University--where she now attends--she earned the semifinal title at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) national tournament. Now, she focus on private coaching and coaching Science Park High School. She has helped her students get to late elims and finals of national tournaments like the Glenbrooks, NDCA, Berkeley, Emory, and the TOC.
Last year, Victory Briefs released as part of its Curriculum Corner series, an article entitled Insights in Instruction, where we asked several VBI instructors about how they approached teaching at camp. Today, we're continuing the series with a video interview with VBI staffer Devane Murphy. Devane is a former Rutgers-Newark debater where he won the 2017 CEDA National Championship and the 2017 NDT. He also was the top Speaker of the 2017 NDT. He led several top labs at VBI last year and he'll be reprising his role as a top lab instructor again this year. Learn more about Devane and his teaching methods, practices, and philosophy in this enlightening video interview.Watch the interview here!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkPxln76aWQ&feature=youtu.be
This week VBI PF Curriculum Director Devon Weis got the opportunity to sit down and ask some questions to VBI staff members Maya Waterland and Krithika Shamanna, both of which will be working with us at VBI this summer.See more of of our stellar 2018 VBI PF staff here.
Maya: So I’d say Krithika’s best skill is that she has really great topic knowledge, it just becomes really evident in crossfire and also just being able to easily relay information in speeches, so there’s not a lot of “reading off the laptop.” For example, you just have the information so committed to heart that you end up super knowledgeable throughout the round and you can smash your opponents.Krithika: I think Maya’s best skill as a coach is probably her patience. I think she’s just a really great coach because she’s the right amount of supportive and she’ll tell you when an argument you’re running is pretty dumb. She’s really supportive and an amazing coach.
Maya: I’d want to talk to Bernini, he’s a famous baroque artist. I’m in an art history class, and we finished studying the renaissance and baroque art and he was just really revolutionary in starting the era of baroque art by making sculptures more dramatic and making art more dynamic. He was just so instrumental in changing the course of art, renaissance art was really different from baroque art so he ushered in a new era of sculpture and he also worked on the St. Peter’s Basilica.Krithika: Mine would be the yodeling kid from Ellen. I would like to learn how to yodel.
Krithika: So, I think the biggest thing I got from debate is that it really helps you find what you’re passionate about. Really early on through debate I found out that I was really passionate about women’s rights. We talk about it in debate a lot through different arguments and things like that, but debate taught me not to only talk about it in round but other places as well. I think it’s really helped me become an activist in the real world outside the debate community. It gave me the confidence to be able to work with people like Wendy Davis, and reach out to local politicians in Austin to take an idea that I have and turn it into a tangible change. Without that, I don’t think I would have been able to reach out to people and talk to them without the public speaking skills that debate gave me. I also think the ability to problem solve was a big part of what debate gave me. I found something that I viewed was a problem in my community and I had to come up with different solutions to it, and I think those analytical thinking skills are a big part of it.Maya: I feel like debate is really important for a lot of research and analysis skills that can really make a difference in college. For example, writing your case, you need it to flow and logically progress from one idea to the next, and have anyone understand it, which really helps with general writing skills. I think it’s also really valuable for providing background information for a lot of different issues since the topic changes every month in PF. I feel like grappling with policy through debate equips students with the information they need to talk about a bunch of different issues, especially at a young age, which removes some of the barrier between young people and politicians. Another really important thing that debate taught me is how to understand both sides of an issue. You literally are forced to debate both sides, so you have to get things from both perspectives which I definitely think is helpful for empathizing with people.
Maya: Okay, let me look through my folders.Krithika: So I wouldn’t have said this at the time, but I think the capital gains topic from february. I think overall, it was probably the topic I learned the most about real life and about taxes and knowledge that I’ll actually be using everyday in the future. I think more than any other topic, I walked in with no prior knowledge, so I learned the most from that topic.Maya: The two topics I think were the most important are the popular vote topic and then the searches topic--the reasonable suspicion and probable cause stuff. Those are the two things that related most closely to what we were encountering in daily life. The probable cause one is obviously so applicable to high school students and the distinction between the two search standards is something I never knew existed. The popular vote one was also really important because it was right after Hillary lost.
Maya: My favorite tournament was probably Emory. The thing is, we never really did that well, we never broke.
Maya: It was just the campus was really nice, the weather was always cool, and the competition was so good that every round was good. All the outrounds were great to watch.Krithika: Harvard was my favorite tournament. It was my favorite because the campus is really nice. I also think it had great judges and the quality of the debaters there was so amazing. Like Maya said at Emory, every single round was very challenging and I learned something every single round.Maya: I also want to add the TOC for the same reason. Actually what am I saying, TOC is my favorite tournament. Every round there is just so good and you feel really challenged, and the judges are good so every round is your ideal round just repeated.
Krithika: I’d say the Texas circuit is both the most lay and the most flow circuit at the same time.Maya: (furious head nodding) I totally agree.
Krithika: At the same tournament you can debate the most lay round ever, but the round after you can hit a team that is running like 5 disads and a kritik at the same time.Maya: That’s so true, you have schools that are running theory and others that are speaking as quickly as possible. There are also schools that are not experienced with those debates and are way more traditional, but I think a lot of it has to do with the differences in coaching.
Krithika: You do you, but I’m not about that life. I don’t know, I would never do it, and I don’t particularly like it, but if theory is your thing, go ahead, I will have my a2: theory file prepared.Maya: I’m kinda traditional in this way, I guess. I understand why someone would run theory, but I don’t think the average team, or even the excellent team in PF needs theory to win rounds. I just don’t think the event was founded on people running such arguments.
Krithika: My favorite argument is from the September/October topic where I ran an overview with like 3 reasons why war is inevitable. That’s my favorite argument. I think the reason why I liked it so much is because the evidence I used for that is probably the best evidence I’ve ever cut in my debate career. It was really hard to respond to because the evidence was so strong.Maya: I have two favorites. The first one is from the Israel topic where we ran this argument about the API, which stands for the Arab Peace Initiative. The argument was basically that Arab nations and Israel are working together because they recognize that ISIS and Iran are huge threats and so it would make them both unite under one cause and make concessions for a 2-state solution. The other one was on the IoT topic and we said the IoT was bad because it would cause automation and it’s really bad because it’ll ruin the economy and exacerbate classism.
Maya: I think the synthesis of skills is the hardest part. Debate crosses so many different areas. For example, you have to be good at research, because if not, you won’t ever say anything noteworthy in round. You also have to have good interpersonal communication skills, because when you’re friends with people in debate it makes it so much more fun and enjoyable, plus it’s easier to get intel throughout the tournament. Not to mention it’s essential for navigating partnerships. Also you have to be able to digest information really quickly, organize yourself, it’s just a lot of stuff all at once.Krithika: So, everyone has bad tournaments or bad rounds, and sometimes it’s very hard to justify wasting another weekend, or wasting a lot of money to keep going to tournaments after you had a bad one. So I think that’s the hardest part about debate is just to keep going after you’ve had a setback.
Maya: I feel like my favorite thing is the community. The quality of staff is really good and everyone is really easy to reach out to and talk to, even from PF to LD. Last year, there were some kids from my lab at LA2 that wanted to learn about theory. I was like, I can’t really help you with that but I know someone who can, so they went and talked to one of our LD instructors during Socrates hour. Also, things like Omegathon make it really lighthearted. So even though debate is super competitive and cutthroat sometimes, Omegathon brings everyone together and reminds everyone that there’s fun in debate. Also, all the campuses that VBI is held at are super pretty and have good food. (Shoutouts to the boba in the UCLA dining hall)Krithika: Oh my gosh this is so hard, I love everything about VBI! VBI taught me everything about debate and I would not have stayed in debate without VBI. Also the people are just--you just will not find a camp with a staff that is more woke than the staff at VBI.
Maya: ?Krithika: ?
Krithika: Shoutouts to my mom, my other amazing coach Humza, my team of course, and THAAD and Boujee.Maya: Shoutouts to Jami Tanner, Lauren Lamar, Talla Khelghati, and Jackie Prokopeas for being not only amazing debaters, but hilarious people, such a good, supportive group of girls in debate.If you want to work with Maya and Krithika and the rest of our awesome PF staff this summer, register for VBI here!
This week VBI PF Curriculum Director Devon Weis got the opportunity to sit down and ask some questions to the legendary women of Presentation VM: Laurenn Vives and Megan Munce, both of which will be working with us at VBI this summer.See more of of our stellar 2018 VBI PF staff here.
Megan: I think it would have to be this argument we ran for january this year about how Catalonia is the only liberal hub left in Spain, and if they seceded, politics would crowd out welfare and we ran a bunch of poverty impacts. I just like weighing poverty because it’s a pretty self-evident impact and a super important issue to talk about.Laurenn: I like that one too, but I think my favorite one to argue was the domestic violence argument we ran on the gun control topic in November. I felt like it was really easy to run because it was just so true. I like sticking to stock stuff, so yeah, that was probably my favorite one.
Laurenn: My favorite topic and also the best topic I ever debated, in my humble opinion, is the probable cause topic because it was so simple. There was like trust on one side and SROs on the other side, and those were pretty much the only two arguments. It was so easy and simple that I felt like the person who was the better debater would always win in rounds that simple. I love it and I miss it, and when I’m debating things like immigration and visas and gun control, those are all scary, I just wanna go back to probable cause.Megan: I actually really like East Asian relations so my favorite topic was the anti-missile systems one from september/october this year. I just liked how many different actors there were getting involved, and also because there would always be updates popping up on the news so it was easy to prep.
Laurenn: So I think I know which one Megan is going to say, so I’m going to say a different one. My favorite is the NCFL grand nationals round with Miami Beach and Stuyvesant. That was the first round I ever watched, and it was funny, and they collapsed so well, and I showed it to all my novices last year as their first debate round because I just loved it. It’s such an iconic round.Megan: Wait Lauren which round did you think I was going to say?Laurenn: Ardrey Kell vs. Mission, am I right?Megan: Yeah! Haha. I like it primarily because of when Max says “Keshav say something,” it reminds me of this time Laurenn and I were in a round at camp. Laurenn was second speaking and she just did not lift her head up for the entirety of grand cross and it got to the point where I was like, “Laurenn, say something!” Also, I thought it was really interesting because Ardrey Kell has a very traditional PF style and obviously Mission KW is known for being a very very tech team, so I thought it was cool to see those two styles clash. I think it was the epitome of the “tech vs. truth” debate.
Laurenn: Ready? 1...2...3...Both: SummaryLaurenn: We switch off, so sometimes Megan’s first speaker and sometimes I am. Let me tell you, prepping before summary is the most stressful thing in the world--especially if you’re first summary--because you wanna extend all the good cards but you also need enough time to explain the warrants of each card, and also start to weigh a little, and extend the overview, and it’s just so much to get done. As for final focus, I just write down Megan’s summary word for word and throw some weighing in there. So I think final focus is literally just summary with more impacts and warranting, which makes it easier.
Laurenn: I think grand cross no, but the first two crossfires yes, because it’s an opportunity to poke holes in stuff. But Megan is better at crossfire so I’ll let her talk.Megan: I actually like grand crossfire specifically for the reason if you don’t say something in summary and you kinda say it in grand cross then the judge is like “Well, maybe it was in summary and I missed it,” but i also think that having cross after summary when you know exactly what they’re going for is a great opportunity to ask more weighing questions, versus just logistical questions.
Megan: So I was trying to think of a really deep one to make people think I’m super educated, but I honestly think if anyone ever gave me the opportunity, it would probably be someone from the Roanoke Colony. For those that don’t know, it’s this colony that was started even before Plymouth and all these settler came over. Their ship goes back to get some supplies and then they return and everyone’s gone. There’s absolutely no sign of the settlers being there anymore. I learned about this in like 5th grade and I remember being mind blown over it. Everytime someone asks who you would talk to I try to think of the smart person answer, but secretly, it would always be someone from Roanoke just to figure out what happened.Laurenn: But wait, that is the smart person answer. Mine would be like Cardi B or something. Just because I wanna know how they became rich, and awesome, and confident, and such amazing role models, especially as women of color in the United States. People think they’re dumb and not that interesting but I hate that, I idolize Rihanna, Cardi B, Beyonce and Nicki Minaj so much for so many reasons.
Laurenn: Good. Yes.
Laurenn: Umm, Megan and I once wrote out a theory shell because we were afraid this team was going to spread against us, and we didn’t want to deal with that. They ended up not spreading against us which was fine, but we wrote out this whole thing, we called our policy coach, we shared all our policy kids on the document and grinded out a shell. I’m totally all for theory.Megan: I remember the only reason they didn’t spread that round is because we were dropping mad hints before round. We were asking the judges “would you vote off theory in PF,” and the judges were like, “yeah if there’s legitimate abuse like speed or something” and the other team looked over at us, and we just gave them this look back like, “yeah, we have theory.”
Laurenn: Me and Megan would definitely disclose if everyone else disclosed, because I think it’s good for PF, but if me and Megan did it right now, people would totally take advantage of that and just prep us out, and we wouldn’t have a strategic advantage. But I do feel like some of the debaters out there popularizing the disclosure movement are on to something.Megan: If it became a norm to specifically check back against things like paraphrasing I think that would be positive, but as it stands right now, the only way I would support disclosure is if it started with a movement of really big schools disclosing, but right now small schools are disadvantaged. I guess we’re kind of a big school but if we started disclosing and made our sophomores start disclosing, it would directly disadvantage them without giving them the benefits of other big schools disclosing, so I think it has to be a movement specifically started by big schools, but I definitely think that with power tagging and paraphrasing and everything that’s going on right now, disclosing--especially evidence tags--would be good.
Megan: I think there needs to be a redefining of what evidence ethics are because before it used to just be like, “don’t miscut your cards, don’t fill them with brackets etc.” and I definitely agree with that, but I think some things that are considered bad, like paraphrasing, are necessary to summarize an entire economic study, so in those cases paraphrases are good. But in some cases when teams are even reading direct cards, they’ll be from weird sources or just illegitimate. There was this one piece of evidence on the septober topic by this guy that just said, “I think the probability of war is 40%” with no methodology or empirical analysis. Technically this wasn’t “bad evidence ethics” because it wasn’t miscut, but I think there needs to be a bigger push for using better evidence in general.Laurenn: I think I agree with most of that, but I think on the national circuit as a whole, I feel like evidence ethics have gotten a little bit better, just out of fear of theory being read against them. Theory has become more popular I guess. I also feel like there’s been a lot of discussions on reddit too about evidence ethics which I feel like scares people into cutting and reading the right types of cards. So I think that because PF is evolving really fast, I feel like evidence ethics are becoming more important because they’re more important in policy and LD, which PF is moving towards. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I think that evidence ethics are getting a little bit better. I think personally my evidence ethics have stayed the same except now we paraphrase a little bit more, but our coach is really strict about these things. We always thought that if you read the card, you read it verbatim, you’re not allowed to do anything else, it’s illegal.
Laurenn: Well I know my favorite of all time is Lorde, I know it’s kinda basic, but Lorde just satisfies all my deep thoughts. Whenever I want to listen to something that’s interesting and thought provoking, and maybe sometimes a little bit emo, I go to Lorde. I don’t ever get sick of any of her songs. But, I feel like in general though, I listen to more hip-hop stuff, so it’s kind of an anomaly.Megan: The person I consistently come back to is Jon Bellion. I’ve been listening to him since sophomore year and he’s been coming out with some good stuff. The other person I really like right now is Quinn XCII.
Laurenn: Game of ThronesMegan: I was gonna say Gossip Girl but it’s probably also Game of ThronesLaurenn: Gossip Girl ewwMegan: Actually, if I’m being honest, my favorite TV show is The West Wing because I love politics and getting to know more than they do when they bring up debate topics.
Laurenn: Well I’ve actually never been, but it’s Glenbrooks, we all know it’s Glenbrooks. From what me and Megan have been to, it was ASU because the pool was crazy, everyone showed up. It was also the first tournament on the January topic, so you know how that goes. Berkeley was our hardest tournament last year and I feel like most west coast kids would probably say Berkeley.Megan: Yeah, I agree.
Laurenn: Hmmm, I’m very into listening to music and singing if that counts as a hobby. I’m a really big music and art person, like I suck at painting but I draw on everything. I also love fashion even though I’m broke.Megan: I don’t wanna say it.Laurenn: Yes Megan, say it.Megan: Okay, so I really love knitting. It’s a grandma thing, my grandma did teach me how to knit, but it’s really relaxing because it’s the same motion over and over again so I’ll do it while I’m watching TV, or especially if I’m stressed out from debate or homework. It’s just really relaxing to watch it get longer, because you’re directly seeing your progress. Plus, I’m moving to Chicago next year so I definitely need a lot of scarves and hats and stuff, so knitting is also really utilitarian for me.
Laurenn: No.Megan: I feel like if there’s a card, an end-all be-all terminal defense card, I wouldn’t require it to be in summary, but I feel like it would be unstrategic to not include it. If I heard “this card takes out their entire case” and I had that in my mind going into the other team’s summary, it would really persuade me. I definitely don’t think you have to because of the time constraints of PF, but I think it would be really unstrategic to not put your end-all be-all card in summary.
Laurenn: ?Megan: ?
Laurenn: Shoutouts to Talla and Manush because I love them and they’re my best friends, and I miss them and they taught me how to debate. Shoutouts to Allen too because he just does so much, he mods the reddit, he uploads all these videos.Megan: Ryan Jiang, I think he’s gonna kill the circuit next year, people can quote me on this, and also Ahana Sen. I think Quarry Lane AS gets a lot of flak on the reddit, and I feel like Ahana is one of the best first speakers I’ve ever seen but most people only ever talk about Allen. So I feel like she deserves credit for what she does.If you want to work with Laurenn and Megan this summer, register for VBI here!
Welcome to our first installment of this year’s Curriculum Corner series. I realize we are already a good way into the semester, however, I’ve had a pretty busy last few months. The plan is from here on out, though is to update the Curriculum Corner approximately once per week.In this first post, I am pleased to be able to reveal a new project that the Victory Briefs Team has started working on, and which we will be working on throughout this year to finish by the start of next fall.That project is Victory Briefs Classroom.We have been planning this project since early in the summer, and we are pleased to finally be able to go public with a short demo to give an idea of what the final product should look like.
Classroom is intended to be a comprehensive novice Lincoln-Douglas debate curriculum that can be used by schools to start debate teams.The Classroom Curriculum is designed to be sufficiently clear and comprehensive so that a teacher or volunteer would be able to effectively teach novice debate without any prior forensic experience. We accomplish this goal by using techniques of blended learning to enable at-home content delivery to complement in-class activities and lessons.The curriculum is split between teacher facing resources (which include lesson plans and teaching materials) and student facing resources (which include online videos, quizzes and additional resources) both ordered to integrate into comprehensive units.Click here for a fuller explanation of the curriculum structure.
All of us reading an article on Vbriefly strongly believe in the value of debate. And we also all believe that it is important to make debate accessible to people who face obstacles to participation. And while there are a lot of awesome and free resources available online to help debaters learn about debate, there still seems to be a large resource lacuna.Much of the online content that debate camps put up, from recorded lectures to online strategy posts, are primarily useful as a tool to supplement an individual’s debate education. However, these resources would not be particularly helpful in starting a team nor in teaching novice debate to someone who lacks any prior forensic exposure.Thus, we wanted to try and use Victory Brief’s resources to create a team focused novice debate curriculum. Creating a debate team is, perhaps, the best way to create long-term access to debate, and the goal of Classroom is to make starting debate teams significantly easier.
We want to make this resource as helpful as we can possibly can. To that end, we would love your feedback or advice! Please do reach out either on our online feedback form, the comments of this article, or in an email to classroom@victorybriefs.com.
In the final round of VBI LA Session II's PF tournament, Southlake Carroll BM (Con) defeated Plano West HH (Pro) on a 3-2 decision. The resolution is "Resolved: In US K-12 public schools, the probable cause standard ought to apply to searches of students."[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To35pEKNVu8[/embed]
We are pleased to announce that students will be debating the September/October topics in both Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum debate for the duration of VBI LA Session II (as opposed to just the second week of camp). This change has been made possible by the National Speech & Debate Association, which is releasing the September/October topic early this year. The topic is scheduled to be announced on August 8, the first full day of camp. This change will allow us to explore the new topic in even greater depth at VBI.
Registration for LA Session II will remain open through July 31. Click here to sign up.
The Victory Briefs Institute camp topics will be as follows:
Students are encouraged but not required to research the camp topic beforehand.
