Viewing entries tagged
Judging Paradigms
Congratulations to San Mateo's Yesh Rao and Mission San Jose's Shrey Raju for co-championing the 2022 Lexington Winter Invitational. In semifinals, Yesh defeated King's Chan Park on a 2-1 (Eberhart*, Li, Ying) and Shrey defeated Sharon's Rowan Gray on a 3-0 (Bhandarkar, Brown, He). Additional congratulations to Shrey for being top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Adam Torson posted a number of articles discussing different aspects of judging paradigms with the purpose of coming up with some norms in LD judging. For those who may have missed, here is a round-up of all of them:Withholding Advice... Is it appropriate for a judge to withhold advice in post-round critiques so that weaknesses in a debater’s case position or strategy can later be exploited by the judge’s own students ...
Ballot Writing... Should judges write comments and/or a reason for decision on the ballot? ...
Miscut Evidence... What should judges do when debaters use miscut evidence? ...
Must Arguments be on the Flow... Should judges require that an argument be noted on the flow in order to vote on it?...
2AR Theory... How should judges evaluate new theory in the 2AR?...
CLEAR!... A. Should judges yell “clear” when debaters are speaking unclearly?
B. If so, under what circumstances is it appropriate to yell clear?...
Paradigms... A. Should a judge’s declared paradigm be subject to in-round argumentation?...
This week I would like to discuss the following question:A. Is it appropriate for a judge to withhold advice in post-round critiques so that weaknesses in a debater’s case position or strategy can later be exploited by the judge’s own students?
There are a variety of reasons for us to be uncomfortable with the fact that so much judging is done by people who are simultaneously coaching for the competitors of the students they judge. The consensus, which I think is correct, is that most judges do not purposely make decisions for competitive or political reasons, as this would be unfair and inconsistent with the educational mission of the activity. The concerns are far outweighed by the fact that coaches tend to be the best judges (although this is not always the case), because they spend substantial time thinking about and working on the activity and the topic.
We would all agree that a judge should not pick a winner or assign speaker points based on a motivation to advantage his own students. What about post-round advice? I again presume that giving purposely erroneous advice to secure a competitive advantage would be improper. But what about simply withholding certain comments, e.g. about the weaknesses of a debater’s case position or strategic choices? This question becomes particularly acute in out-rounds, where coaches are very likely to judge debaters who their students are likely to face very soon in a relatively important round.
On the one hand, debate is a competitive activity. It seems unreasonable to ask a coach to disadvantage his own students, particularly when the debater has a coach of his own who should presumptively have the primary responsibility for making him better. Moreover, it seems unfair that a particular team should be disadvantaged just because their coach was randomly selected to judge a challenging opponent. If the norm is to require coaches to give the best advice they possibly can, there is a danger that coaches will remove themselves from the judging pool (more than they already do) to avoid this disadvantage. This problem is particularly pressing where a coach judges a position for which her team has already prepared a strategy; saying “Your case is really susceptible to a counterplan saying X,” can be pretty darn close to saying “when we hit you next round we will be running a counterplan saying X.” Given that oral comments are generally considered optional anyway, isn’t it okay for a judge to leave out commentary that would compromise her team competitively?
On the other hand, students also have relatively little control over what judges they get. It seems unfair that by random chance a student should not get candid and thorough advice just because she is judged by the coach of an opponent. Moreover, it seems like withholding valid advice lets competition trump the underlying educational purpose of the activity. Why not simply refuse to give any oral or written commentary? Coaches often have difficulty finding opportunities to observe their students in actual rounds, and so we are dependent on other people giving good feedback to help our students improve. At camp we disregard the competitive ethic and spend endless hours trying to improve the quality of our competition. The community seems the better for it. But is it okay to selectively disregard this principle?
So, is it okay for judges to withhold a meaningful post-round critique to secure a competitive advantage?
This week I would like to discuss the following question:A. Should judges write comments and/or a reason for decision on the ballot?
Back in the day writing detailed comments and a reason for decision was part and parcel to judging. Today there are many tournaments where almost nobody writes much on the ballot (other than to indicate speaker points and a winner). I would speculate that this is primarily due to the fact that oral critiques are common, and I imagine that ballot writing is still more thorough in places where oral critiques are not common.
This reluctance to write on the ballot may be a good thing. Most judges are able to deliver oral comments in a shorter time than it would take to write them, which in turn may move tournaments along more quickly. Moreover, a fixation on ballots is often problematic. They rarely explain all that they could, and when kids are confused or have questions they have little recourse. The information on a ballot is also difficult to decipher in a number of ways. Judges’ handwriting is notoriously bad, and often a sense of the context of the round is lost shortly after it’s over. Two days later nobody knows what “Conceded third answer to the second contention takes out AC offense, DA is undercovered,” really means in substantive terms, even if we do get a rough sense of the judge’s reasoning. Finally, insofar as ballot writing trades off with oral critique (if for no other reason than that ballot writing is time consuming), many judges feel they are able to offer less substantive advice. Debaters are likely to get a lot more out of oral critiques where they can ask questions, and where judges can see confusion or frustration and tailor their comments appropriately.
On the other hand, ballot writing may be important. While most coaches encourage students to take notes during an oral critique, it is rare that those notes are actually utilized by either coaches or students. With ballots coaches have an opportunity to read what judges have to say unmediated by debaters’ explanations, which are not always accurate. Also, we all know that some judges offer advice that as coaches we wouldn’t want our debaters to follow, or at least to take with a grain of salt. Putting that advice on the ballot makes it easier for a coach to frame the information being transmitted to students. Moreover, RFDs have to be more concrete and systematic when they are written on a ballot. Thinking through an RFD can be surprisingly difficult, particularly for young judges. I definitely believe that having to write down hundreds of RFDs in my early days as a coach and judge made me better at both.
So, should judges write comments and a reason for decision on the ballot?
