Ways to Strategically Use Framework Debate by Raffi Piliero

Introduction

More and more, fewer debaters are choosing to engage in framework debate, instead choosing to use preclusive strategies such as theory, or Kritiks that don’t use framework. I’m not going to claim that one strategy has merit over the other (I quite often do run critical arguments or directly topical arguments that don’t rely on complex analytic philosophy) but that framework often is a strategic tool to have available. This article will examine some important strategic considerations for winning a framework debate!

Strategic importance of framework debate:

There are a few reasons why having a framework debate can be strategic:Reason 1: It can help move the round to a familiar territory if debating an unfamiliar position. If your opponent breaks new and it’s the beginning of a topic, you may not have heard of their plan. For example, if you’re negating vs a plan on this topic that draws advantages from US relations globally coming from a specific form of compulsory national service, and you haven’t prepped T or case turns against this, it might look like you’re stuck. However, it is likely that you’ve heard of their framework (likely a utilitarian or consequentialist framework), and in conjunction with a strong NC a framework-heavy strategy can be deadly.Reason 2: Once you learn it, a framework applies regardless of the topic! The philosophy knowledge and strategies are relevant on any topic, since every topical argument must link to some evaluative mechanism in order to be relevant. Even Role of the Ballot arguments can be handled using framework (more on that later).Next, into some of the important strategic considerations!

Consideration 1: Weigh

As little as debaters weigh on theory and substance, they find ways to weigh even less on framework debates. In any given round, it’s likely you’ll see Debater A extending an actor-specificity argument from their framework that was conceded and Debater B extending an ontology argument from theirs that was conceded. The judge is then left to weigh the arguments using what they think was “more conceded” instead of the debaters doing that work.The solution is to compare arguments directly when making extensions, or in the first speech. Show why your particular justification is the most important in the context of something relevant to the framework debate. Better yet, make direct comparisons as to why it takes out the premises relevant to their framework. For example, don’t extend an argument such as act-omission distinction if you and your opponent are reading slightly different variants of util; you might wish to extend an argument about why life is more important than pleasure. When making extensions, debaters could number these cross applications and apply them to the opponent’s framework. Ideally, a debater should set themselves up for the final speech to have the ability to “collapse” to a single justification since it hopefully outweighsHere’s a helpful example:Debater A reads a utilitarian framework, with justifications that claim 1] Util is most actor specific 2] Pain and pleasure are intrinsically motivating 3] That there’s no act omission distinctionDebater B reads a deontological framework, with justifications that claim 1] The constitutive aims of individuals are the only ones that are motivating, which leads us to care about a practical identity and agency 2] There’s an intent-foresight distinctionAs mentioned above, in most debates, Debater A will extend an argument and Debater B will extend an argument, and leave it to the judge to decide which comes first after the dust settles. However, here’s a way for Debater A to make this more clear, that both compares the internal warrants and sets up weighing.“Extend that Util is more actor specific for ____ reason – actor specificity comes before their arguments about constitutive aims of individuals, since the topic questions what states should do and is a question of political philosophy – it also hijacks the internal link since it proves that constitutively, states should use util”

Consideration 2: Generate offense

One huge misconception is that framework arguments are purely defensive. This isn’t true, however!There are two ways to contest an argument on the framework level; you can contest the premise and you can contest the conclusion. The premise is the assumption that an argument relies on, while the conclusion is what implication stems from that premise.Many debaters make defensive arguments that don’t contest the conclusions of arguments. This is unstrategic because then they can’t extend these arguments in the next speech as offensive reasons to prefer their own framework. However, if you accept the premise of an argument, you can show that its premise justifies your conclusion. For example, if someone reads a framework justification with a standard of “maximizing expected wellbeing” that says util is most actor specific, the negative could say their framework links in better to actor specificity. That way, even if the affirmative doesn’t extend their actor specificity argument, the negative could still extend their responses and claim that they access this justification. Using rhetoric such as “coopt”, “preclude”, or “hijack” indicates to the judge that these are arguments that access their conclusions

Consideration 3: Dealing with Kritikal Frameworks

This is a rarely examined aspect of framework debate, but given the trends in LD debate, it’s more important than ever. Here, an important consideration is not just strategy, but packaging arguments so that they aren’t offensive/construed as such.It’s important not to conceptualize arguments as trivializing or precluding oppression, as that is morally repugnant. Not to mention, it alienates the judge, flees from the position of common sense and provides compelling independent links into their criticism.There are two major ways to engage the framework debate effectively. The first is by making specific arguments as to why your framework accesses their role of the ballot. Although its prominent philosopher is heavily criticized, there are many authors who claim that deontology is effective in combatting racial and gendered oppression because its notion of rights condemns racism (Arnold Farr makes claims of this nature). That way, debaters avoid linking into the criticism by evading, but instead engage on their layer. The second way is to make more macro-level arguments about framework debate that could be articulated in the context of a Role of the Ballot argument. For example, some debaters have evidence that says abstraction and/or ideal theory are helpful in fighting against oppression. This is strategic because it accesses the top level of a framework debate by offering a comparative strategy to help the oppressed, while avoiding exclusion or linking into the criticismFor example, many critical debaters will read generic structural violence frameworks that use authors such as Winter and Leighton. However, they won’t really discuss what it means to “combat structural violence”; they might not even say if it’s deontological or consequentialist. A philosophical approach might seem helpful, as it would ensure that there is a clear methodology to combat oppression.Finally, oftentimes debaters are confused about how Role of the Ballot arguments interact with frameworks. The best approach will depend on the given round. If the Role of the Ballot is something other than evaluating the desirability of the affirmative world, then these framework tips won’t be helpful, since these for the most part assume a “traditional” model of framework. For example, if the negative is reading a reps K of your discourse in round, winning the framework debate isn’t helpful. However, if the Role of the Ballot is something like “Promoting the Best Liberation Strategy for the Oppressed”, there could be framework interaction. You could show that your framework conceptualizes what it means to promote the best liberation strategy. One could think of that ROB as just a standard, with some theoretical warrants for it (presumably, the debater running that ROB would argue that it’s most educational).

Consideration 4: Leave yourself options

Even the best framework debaters might make a mistake, or undercover something. It isn’t strategic to leave all of your eggs in one basket and not generate offense under the opposing framework.This is important because many debaters who don’t want to necessarily have the round come down to a framework debate have started to adopt strategies such as epistemic modesty to make framework less of a factor. While these arguments are possible to defeat, it means that framework must be defended on a theoretical level which requires different skills. Impacting offense to their framework prevents this from being as likelyTo combat this, it’s important to try to link some offense to the opposing framework, regardless of the side. Even if these arguments aren’t very strong and not intended to be a part of the next speech they serve the functions of a) Making the other team explicitly extend their offense, taking time b) Force them to allocate more time than you spent making the arg to prevent a later-speech collapse to just the turns c) Leave you the option of going for the turns as an easy out if the framework debate becomes extremely muddled.Often times, it’ll seem difficult to link offense to the opposing framework. If there aren’t many turns to make that seem like they function independently under their framework, it’s often helpful to cross apply your own offense to interact with it. Usually, frameworks interact in ways that would be conducive to having your offense link to their framework in some capacity, even if it’s about taking out a fundamental premise that the argument relies on. Better, if your opponent didnt contest the contention, you might have full strength of link, which could be articulated as a tie-breaker if there is question as to whether it really links to their framework.

Consideration 5: Find the points of disagreement

This was briefly touched upon earlier, but it’s important to isolate where the frameworks really are different before beginning comparison. This includes obvious similarities like consequentialism vs non-consequentialist theories, but can expand beyond that. For example, if you’re reading a virtue framework you might get to access arguments about why aretaic theories preclude non-aretaic ones (deontic theories). But if your opponent is just reading a different branch of virtue ethics, this wouldn’t make as much sense.Again, here’s an example to illustrate this:Debater A reads utilDebater B reads deontDebater A should focus a lot on the merits of using an ends-based, consequentialist approach, while Debater B should heavily criticize aggregation.Debater A could say something like – “We both agree that freedom matters, even if you grant the fundamental thesis of their framework. However, we should maximize freedom because if all people matter, helping more people be free is the best way to achieve an intrinsic good”.

Consideration 6: Dealing with Theoretically Justified Frameworks

A theoretically justified framework is just what it sounds like – a framework warrant that appeals not to the relative truth of that ethical system, but rather external justifications in terms of fairness or education. A common example of this is when people reading utilitarian frameworks argue that it’s most consistent with ground or topic literature because it’s easy to link offense to consequentialism. While these seem daunting at first, they’re not too difficult to handle.One important thing to recognize is that similar to frivolous theory shells, many judges won’t like cop-outs from substantive arguments, especially if those judges enjoy philosophy and framework debate. If you have a judge like this, your opponent winning that a theoretically justified framework is legitimate is an uphill battle, and you can claim that more normative justifications come firstAnother important way to handle these arguments is just to answer it straight up, since a lot of the warrants fundamentally don’t make sense. All frameworks are impact exclusive, to some extent (e.g., freedom violations will link a lot more to a Kantian framework than to a utilitarian one, and extinction will link more to the latter, but not the former). With some exceptions, such as frameworks like polls or international law, most frameworks give very similar amounts of ground.

Conclusion

There are many different approaches that can be taken to engage on a framework debate, and the best way to get better at it is to just run it more often. Once you start running it, you’ll improve and hopefully have some fun in the process! 

Raffi Piliero debated for Harrison High School for four years, clearing at the TOC twice. He's attended VBI twice and worked there once, and now debates for Georgetown University

Editor Note: The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of Victory Briefs.

Intrinsic Skills and Non-Disclosure: A Reply to Bob by Rahul Gosain

Underlying Bob Overing’s recent three-part disclosure epic is a single, fairness-based argument for the practice. I argue that it fails.

I'll briefly summarize the argument for those without the fortitude to make it all the way through the series. Bob begins in Part 1 with the uncontroversial premise that if something gives a debater an unfair advantage, it's a bad practice. Of course, there are many different kinds of advantages, some fair and some not, which makes the term unfair advantage a loaded one: what distinguishes an unfair advantage from a fair one?

To answer this question, Bob draws on Marshall in claiming that fair advantages test intrinsic debate skills, the skills that one should be expected to master in order to be considered to have succeeded in mastering debate. If beating a practice requires mastering skills that we don't consider intrinsic, then it's unfair. Then, in Part 2, he argues that non-disclosure is such a practice:

What does non-disclosure require opponents to do? Unlike good evidence, it doesn’t require opponents to think of more clever objections. Unlike spreading faster, it doesn’t require opponents to improve their efficiency. Unlike a blistering cross examination, it doesn’t require opponents to keep their cool in a heated debate.

Non-disclosure requires debaters to run around the tournament collecting flows and “intel” from their opponent’s previous opponents and judges. It requires wasting precious time before important rounds by trying to find Team X in a chaotic cafeteria. It requires guessing what the opponent will run based on hearsay and speculation. None of this is an intrinsic debate skill, and all of it gives the non-discloser a huge advantage.

To be thorough, I’ll apply the tests from Section 1 for determining whether non-disclosure tests intrinsic skills. Applying Marshall’s test, we would not say that a debater failed to perfect her debate skills because she’s too timid to ask Judge A what Debater B read in Round 3. Or because she failed to run around the high school looking for those previous opponents. Or because she lacks the connections to easily get flows and cites. Applying my test, we see that no similar debate format encourages effective ‘networking’ as a crucial component of the activity.

I'll focus on the claims Bob makes in this final section.

My objection is simple: Bob's argument begs the question: it smuggles in the premise that debaters have an entitlement to know what their opponents will read. If you don't already believe this, nothing Bob has said will change your mind on disclosure.

The problem is in the framing of Bob's question: he implies that not knowing what your opponent is reading is a disruption of the natural order of things, and that this disruption requires that debaters take some action to return to the established playing field. This stacks the deck in Bob's favor before he discusses intrinsic skills: he's managed to contextualize the question as "what skills are required to overcome this deficiency?" rather than "what skills are required to win under these conditions?"

However, this hidden premise -- that non-disclosure is a deficiency -- is exactly what he needs to prove.

An example should make the problem clear. I can ask "what does not giving your opponents access to your Dropbox require?" The way Bob approaches the question, we would search for a way to compensate and see if that tested an intrinsic skill. Some solutions that come to mind are stealing their passwords or bribing their teammates. These are not intrinsic skills. (Bob helpfully condemns password-stealing in Part 2.) Thus, we would conclude that debaters should freely give out their Dropbox passwords to prevent their opponents from having to go through this inconvenience. The obvious response, however, is left out: that debaters simply are not entitled to know what is in their opponents' Dropbox.

Perhaps debaters simply are not entitled to know what their opponents read in past rounds. Consider a response to Bob's question that takes it in the broader sense: "non-disclosure forces debaters think on their feet and come up with responses in round once they've heard their opponent's position." They don't need to do anything to find out what their opponents are reading because they don't need to know until the round begins. After that, we see how skilled they are.

Like it or hate it, this view is definitely more consistent with what opponents of disclosure claim -- they've argued for years that disclosure de-emphasizes the ability to think on your feet and creatively deploy the prep you have, both important skills[1]. I'd bet that a meaningful portion of the community (including many who are cajoled into disclosure by the threat of theory or by public bullying) hold this view as well. Martin's article is probably the best expression of it to date. We should be skeptical of a skills-based argument for disclosure that's managed to avoid engaging with these issues.

Bob might respond that debaters will try to prep anyway and we should bracket the desirability of disclosure to ensure reciprocity and equal access. Here, Bob's intrinsic skill approach might get in the way. If debaters are, as critics allege, incentivized to make use of research done by others and scripted responses to avoid the hard work of thinking themselves[1], we should not make it easier to engage in those practices. In fact, disclosure might be part of a problem: it allows debaters to win rounds without mastering the most important intrinsic skills. Bob notes that on the intrinsic skill view, whether a practice is fair becomes tied to a normative assessment of what "good debate" is. Generally speaking, we should be considering ways to stop problems and make bad strategies less effective, not more accessible. That would be much the same as seeing that frivolous T shells avoided substantive clash and concluding we needed more ways to avoid substance to balance the scales.

While this post might have revealed some of my leanings, I'm ultimately not certain about the merits of disclosure. However, I'm reasonably sure that Bob's recent approach to the issue is the wrong one. There are serious questions about whether disclosure promotes or inhibits the best version of debate, and he'll have to weigh the importance of different intrinsic skills in order to make a case for disclosure. Perhaps we can look forward to another three parts.

Notes:

[1]: It shouldn't be controversial that this meets Bob's intrinsic skill test:

A) Martin cites multiple examples of it being tested in the real world, along with evidence that it's increasing in value.

B) We would not consider a person who couldn't respond to analytic arguments they hadn't seen before (whether nuanced or ridiculous) to have succeeded in mastering debate: the ability to handle the unexpected gracefully and strategically is essential. Those who can't do so are often derisively labelled "robots," which is more evidence that it's an expectation.

C) Other debate formats test it. Multiple parliamentary debate formats don't even disclose the topic until 15 minutes before the round, let alone the cases, with the adaptive benefits in mind. In fact, in American Parliamentary (APDA), one team picks the topic and the other team finds out when the round begins. Given their international reach, there are certainly many more debaters doing styles like these than LD or Policy: in a referendum on debate practices, disclosure would lose.

[2]: Here I think most defenses of disclosure have missed the mark. The debates that result almost certainly involve arguments with more nuance and greater precision. The question is if that higher argument quality translates into more value to students. I believe it all too often does not, especially for students outside the top tier. I'll sketch out this claim, which I think is an important one for advocates of disclosure to consider, since it urges skepticism of the entire goal of having debates that go "in depth" or "mirror the rigor of the literature."

No matter what, time constraints, strategic requirements (competition, for example) and the inexperience of the students will prevent positions from matching the nuance of academia. This is such a hopeless goal that it's not worth aiming at. Instead, the value of debate is in exposing debaters to many new fields and allowing them to play constructively with these ideas and their interactions. Of course these discussions will be superficial, and of course debaters won't be able to explain the arguments as well as coaches, judges or specific cards. But, we all start somewhere. There's a reason good teachers insist on letting students puzzle over a hard problem and try out different approaches themselves before being provided the answer. It enables a better grasp of the material (as advocates of disclosure hope for) and inculcates a general attitude of experimentation and extension that's useful for students throughout their lives and for any pursuit they consider.

In practice, I'm sure most judges have seen less experienced debaters going through the motions, using debate jargon or phrases from the literature like magic incantations, following the instructions of a coach or more experienced debater. This is not critical thinking and it's not policy education. Whatever it is that disclosure advocates hope for, the reality falls very short of it. Even the best debaters are 18-year-old students who have yet to take a single undergraduate class in whatever it is they're talking about. There's still much to learn. To facilitate that learning, coaches should equip a student with an understanding of a new argument and send them off into the great unknown to test their understanding and refine their arguments against the responses of other debaters. Struggling through some unexpected argument interaction isn't much fun for a judge to watch, but it's critically important for a student.

New Evidence on Gender Disparities in Competitive High School Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Author’s note: This post is based is based on a longer research paper that can be accessed here. Ariel Shin approached the same problem in this recent post. This analysis uses a different methodology and examines some other issues to continue to shed light on performance disparities in competitive debate. Thank you to Chris Palmer for providing Tabroom.com data and to Professor Claudia Goldin, Professor Lawrence Katz, and Priya Shanmugam for helpful comments.

Summary

 I examine results from 89 National Circuit Lincoln Douglas competitions from the 2011-12 to 2015-16 seasons using Tabroom.com data. On average, I find that women are about 4 percentage points less likely than men to win preliminary debate rounds. A win-loss gap of 2.5 to 3 percentage points persists despite controlling for individual and tournament characteristics, suggesting that the results are not solely driven by differences in debate experience or the quality of debate programs. An analysis of the 2016 graduating cohort suggests that part of the gender gap a result of differential attrition: Women who debate at least once as sophomores are 2.5 percentage points less likely than men to debate as juniors. Moreover, the gap appears to be much larger in rounds 1 and 2 of a tournament than in other preliminary rounds, though it is impossible to determine whether this gap is due more to differences in experience or preparation going into the tournament or tournament-specific factors such as judge biases. However, I find no evidence that being assigned a female judge improves female debaters’ performance in specific rounds. 

Introduction

Anecdotal evidence suggests the existence of a serious gender gap in competitive success in the high school debate community [1]. Only one woman finished in the top sixteen in the Lincoln Douglas division at the 2016 Tournament of Champions. While discussions of gender disparities abound (see, e.g., Timmons & Boyer 2013), few have quantitatively examined the determinants of success in Lincoln Douglas debate. Shin (2016) demonstrates a positive association between gender and competitive success in Lincoln Douglas tournaments and distinguishes between male and female performance across different kinds of debate programs. However, further research is needed to determine whether this association is partly driven by confounding variables. Moreover, potential solutions are missing from the existing literature.Although this paper deals with the somewhat narrow topic of gender gaps in one segment of a competitive high school extracurricular activity, it lies at the intersection of several parts of the labor economics literature. First, it relates to previous research on inequality in outcomes in both academic competitions (e.g., Smith 2013) and to research on sex-based hiring (e.g., Goldin and Rouse 2000). Second, the paper ties into research on the economics of education. In particular, previous studies have linked instruction by a same-gender teacher to improved student performance and teachers’ perceptions of students (Dee 2007). Others have found mixed or negative results (Antecol et al 2012). This paper studies the effect of a female judge on female students in a high-stakes academic environment.Competitive debate is also a particularly attractive setting in which to examine gender stereotypes. Many of the factors cited as barriers to female success in the workplace, including criticism of attire, voice, and tone, may exist in debate because of its focus on unavoidably subjective evaluations of communicative and argumentative skills. This paper’s focus on national-level debate tournaments combines education and competition and thus bridges the gap between the two sets of academic literature.There are many possible theoretical explanations for gender-related differences in performance: Judges may be biased against women, male debaters may train more or have better access to coaches, women who experience overt sexism or more latent hostility may choose to leave the activity, etc. Without an empirical analysis, it is impossible to either quantify the gender gap or explore its potential underlying mechanisms. 

Data

 To include a comprehensive sample of competitions, I cross-reference all tournaments on Tabroom.com with a list of National Circuit tournaments that offer bids for the 2015-16 season listed on the Tournament of Champions website. Although many smaller tournaments use other tournament tabulation software, all but one of the tournaments that offer bids to quarterfinalists or round of 16 participants appear in the Tabroom.com data [2]. I attempt to include as many tournaments as is possible given the dataset. My sample contains 89 bid tournaments from the 2011-12 through 2015-16 seasons, a list of which can be found in Appendix C of the full paper.Since Tabroom allows but does not require coaches to indicate the gender of debaters or judges, about 21% of observations for debaters and 50% for judges are initially missing gender labels. I adopt three strategies to assign genders to missing observations. First, I use 1990 Census data containing about 5,500 common baby names. The Census data corresponds to people who were 25 years old in 2015, which is a reasonable approximation for judges (who are often college or graduate students) as well as debaters. In cases where the same name appears in both the male and female Census lists, I assign the more common gender associated with the name. Second, I merge the Tabroom data with a list of common names of South Asian origin I found on Github, a website where programmers and researchers can share code and datasets. Third, I manually assign gender in what I believe are clear-cut cases [3]. After the three procedures, 99% of debaters and 96% of judges have assigned genders. The vast majority of the improvement is due to the official Census data. 

Results

General Summary Statistics

 Table 1 reports summary statistics for men and women separately. There are three key take-aways. First, men comprise about 60% of the competitors and an even higher fraction of total observations. On average men in the database compete in 42 preliminary rounds while women compete in about 35. Second, men win a higher fraction of debates: There is a 3.7 percentage point male-female win gap in preliminary rounds. Finally, the performance gap in elimination rounds is even larger. Men are 12 percentage points more likely to win an elimination round than women. These differences are all statistically significant (see Table 1). Table 1. Summary Statistics: Performance of National Circuit Lincoln Douglas Debaters by Gender Note: Table 1 reports summary statistics for high school Lincoln Douglas debate tournament results on Tabroom.com. The unit of observation is an individual. ^a The total number of identifiable unique competitors (those whose genders are either labeled or can be inferred using Census data) is 4,666. ^b Restricted to National Circuit tournaments with 6 preliminary rounds. ^c Speaker points are generally awarded on a scale of 0-30; in practice, the scale is about 25-30, with 27.5-28 being an average varsity debater. Standard errors in parentheses.Source: Tabroom.com National Circuit Lincoln Douglas Debate competition results for a sample of 89 tournaments spanning the 2011-12 to 2015-16 seasons. See Appendix C for list of tournaments. 

Are Women Leaving the Activity?

 One explanation for differential performance may be that women are less likely to continue debating for all four years of high school. If male debaters are more likely than female debaters to persist in the activity, all else being equal they will accumulate more experience and perform better. Two data points suggest that this is the case. First, the average graduation year for men is about 2 months earlier than than for women. Moreover, 46% of current high school freshmen are female compared to only 33% of those who graduated high school in 2015. However, this statistic could be misleading: If more women have begun competing in Lincoln-Douglas debate over the last few years, we would expect there to be relatively more young female debaters even absent differential attrition.To resolve this issue, I restrict the sample to the cohort of debaters graduating from high school in 2016. I then calculate a “participation gap,” defined as the difference between fraction of male and female debaters who, conditional on having debated as sophomores, also debate as juniors and as seniors. Table 2 shows that women who debated in at least one tournament as sophomores are about 2.5 percentage points less likely than men to debate as juniors. However, the participation gap does not seem to grow from junior to senior year. There is thus some evidence that women are more likely to quit National Circuit Lincoln-Douglas debate than men. Still, the lack of an increase participation gap between junior and senior year cautions against too strong of an interpretation of these results. Moreover, it is impossible to see whether women switch to a different kind of debate or stop debating entirely, so the information is imperfect. Table 2. Debate Participation of 2016 Graduate Cohort Over Time (Conditional on Having Debated as Sophomores)  Note: Table 2 reports the fraction of high school Lincoln Douglas debaters graduating in 2016 who debated as juniors and as seniors, conditional on having debated as sophomores. The unit of observation is an individual. Restricted to first six preliminary rounds at National Circuit tournaments listed in Appendix C. Column 3 contains results from t-tests for difference in means with standard errors in parentheses. I define “debating as sophomores” as students graduating in 2016 who debate in at least one preliminary round from August 1, 2013 through July 31, 2014. “Juniors” is the equivalent but for the August 1, 2014 to July 31, 2015 period. “Seniors” is the equivalent but from August 1, 2015 to present.Source: Tabroom.com National Circuit Lincoln Douglas Debate competition results for a sample of 89 tournaments spanning the 2011-12 to 2015-16 seasons. See Appendix C for list of tournaments. 

A Larger Gap in Preset Rounds?

 Table 3 reports a final set of summary statistics that divides rounds into those that are randomly paired (“preset” rounds 1 and 2) and those that are power-paired (rounds 3 through 6). The male-female win-loss gap is 5.7 percentage points in rounds 1 and 2, twice as large as the gap in rounds 3 through 6. While it is impossible to know whether this represents a meaningful difference without accounting for sources of omitted variable bias, there are at least two possible explanations for this pattern.First, large differences in performance-related characteristics of men and women at tournaments would, other things equal, lead to larger win-loss gaps by gender in rounds 1 and 2 than in later debates. For example, since power-paired rounds match debaters according to skill as determined by their previous performance at the tournament, if women on average have less debate experience than men, they would perform worse in preset rounds and better in power-paired rounds. These performance-related characteristics could encompass male debaters having more experience due to their age, receiving more attention from their school’s coaches, feeling more welcome or comfortable at debate competitions, having access to better research due to larger social networks, etc. These factors could lead men to perform better than women even if judges are unbiased.A second explanation for the pattern observed in the data is judge discrimination. Suppose a female debater loses a preset round due to a judge’s unconscious bias against her. All else equal, in a later power-paired round the female debater’s skill level should exceed that of a male opponent whose record would reflect his skill alone as opposed to some weighted average of skill and harm from past judge discrimination. In other words, past judge discrimination forces women into a lower bracket, which makes it easier for women to win future rounds because their opponents will tend to be worse. Power-pairing may partially reduce the effect of judge biases by pairing female debaters against less skilled opponents in subsequent rounds.Basic summary statistics thus suggest that there is a substantial gender-based performance gap at Lincoln-Douglas tournaments. Of course, absent controlling for confounding variables, these relationships are subject to omitted variable bias. To see whether the gender gap is robust to the inclusion of controls, I proceed by implementing two empirical strategies. Table 3. Performance of National Circuit Lincoln Douglas Debaters by Gender: Preset versus Power-Paired Rounds Note: Table 3 reports sample means of various performance metrics for high school Lincoln Douglas debaters by gender.The unit of observation is a person-round (an individual's win or loss in a debate).  Column 3 contains results from t-tests for difference in means. ^a Rounds 1 and 2 of tournaments are almost always “Randomly Paired” or “Preset,” meaning debaters are paired against each other randomly. Rounds 3 onward are “Power Paired,” meaning debaters are paired against each other on the basis of their previous record and speaker points. For instance, a debater with a 4-0 record generally would only debate someone who also has a 4-0 record. ^b Each observation denotes an individual’s win or loss in a specific debate (not the individual).Source: Tabroom.com National Circuit Lincoln Douglas Debate competition results for a sample of 89 tournaments spanning the 2011-12 to 2015-16 seasons. See Appendix C for list of tournaments.  

Empirical Strategies

(1) Linear Probability Model

 First, I use a standard linear probability model to determine the association between gender and in-round performance when controlling for a set of control variables. The technical details are in the main paper, but the basic idea is that I want to account for variables that could mask important nuances in data on the gender gap. For example, if a female freshman is debating a male senior, the fact the man has three more years of experience should matter for the round’s outcome, so failing accounting for graduation year would generate a misleading correlation between gender and the likelihood of winning. Moreover, controlling for confounding variables can also hint at potential solutions. If most of the gender gap is due to women on average having less experience than men -- if there are many female freshmen debating male seniors but not the other way around -- that may tell us something different than if there's still a gender gap between debaters of equal seniority.Table 4 shows the results of the linear model. The numbers represent the association between the variable listed in the corresponding row (e.g., JV x Female means being a woman in JV) and the likelihood of winning a debate round. Each column adds additional variables to the previous column. So, in the baseline model, “-0.0379” means being female is associated with being 3.79 percentage points less likely to win a debate round.Two main take-aways:First, after accounting for graduation year, the preliminary round performance gap shrinks from 3.8 to 3.5 percentage points, suggesting that differences in graduation year account for only about 10% of the overall gap.Second, the gap is no longer significant when accounting for school and division (column 3). This may initially suggest that the gap is a result of differences specific to school debate programs or tournament divisions. However, disaggregating performance by round reveals that there is still a 3.08 percentage point gap in rounds 1 and 2. Averaging performance across all preliminary rounds would thus be misleading, since power-pairing masks the gender gap by matching debaters based on their previous performance. That women are 3 percentage points less likely to win preset rounds thus suggests that the gender gap does exist and is substantial.  Table 4. Determinants of Competitive Success in High School Lincoln Douglas Debate (Linear Model): Preset Rounds Note: Table 4 reports the coefficients from an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The unit of observation is a person-round (an individual's win or loss in a debate). The dependent variable is 1 if the debater won the round and 0 if not. Individual controls include school fixed effects and graduation year. Standard errors in parentheses are clustered at the tournament-round level. ^a Six observations are missing school information, so including school as an individual control slightly reduces the sample size.Source: Tabroom.com National Circuit Lincoln Douglas Debate competition results for a sample of 89 tournaments spanning the 2011-12 to 2015-16 seasons. See Appendix C for list of tournaments. 

(2) Individual Fixed-Effects Model

 Goldin & Rouse (2000) study the effect of screens that hide applicants' identities on the success of female musicians who apply to symphony orchestras. By following the same individuals over time and exploiting variation in audition type (with versus without a screen), they can control for fixed individual characteristics such as race or innate musical talent.I use the same approach to examine whether judge gender affects the success of female debaters. Essentially, this can be thought of as following individual debaters across rounds to see whether changes in judge gender affect women's debate performance. Unlike the previous model, the individual fixed-effects model accounts for all characteristics that are fixed over time. These include race, any “innate” debate talent or IQ, and even income under the assumption that family income varies little over a debater's high school career.I find that there is no relationship between judge gender and female success in any of the model’s specifications (Table 5). Female judges do not reduce the gender gap in preset rounds, as shown by the insignificant coefficient on Female x Judge Female x Preset Round.One possible interpretation of this is that judge bias is less important than factors such as previous debate experience in determining female success. On the other hand, if judge biases are a product of how women are generally perceived (e.g., through societal stereotypes), one would not necessarily expect female judges to be unbiased arbiters. In other words, the lack of a statistically significant relationship between being assigned a female judge for a debate and winning the debate is impossible to interpret causally.However, the individual fixed-effects model lends further credence to the idea that the gender gap persists in preset rounds: A woman is 2.58 points less likely to win a preset round (Table 5, Col. 4). The evidence for a preset-round gender gap is thus robust to different empirical specifications. (Note that this model does not generate overall associations between gender and round wins because the debater's gender does not exhibit variation over time.) Table 5. Determinants of Competitive Success in High School Lincoln Douglas Debate (Individual Fixed-Effects Model): Judge Gender & Preset Rounds Note: Table 5 reports the coefficients from a linear regression tracking individuals across tournaments.The unit of observation is a person-round (an individual's win or loss in a debate). The dependent variable is 1 if the debater won the round and 0 if not. Standard errors in parentheses are clustered at the individual level. ^a All columns include individual, tournament, and year fixed effects.Source: Tabroom.com National Circuit Lincoln Douglas Debate competition results for a sample of 89 tournaments spanning the 2011-12 to 2015-16 seasons. See Appendix C for list of tournaments. 

Conclusion

 Summary statistics and two empirical models yield similar conclusions: men are substantially more likely than women to win preliminary debate rounds at National Circuit Lincoln Douglas debate competitions. The basic linear model puts the gap at 4 percentage points while the full linear regression with individual, tournament, and year fixed effects, as well the individual-fixed effects model, suggest a gap of 2.5 to 3 percentage points.Including a control variable for debaters’ graduation year seems to account for some of the gap's narrowing. This is not necessarily a positive sign for those concerned about female success, for it suggests that women tend to be younger (and therefore less experienced) than male debaters. A simple analysis of debaters graduating in 2016 who debated at least once as sophomores confirms that women are over 2 percentage points less likely than men to debate the following season, which could explain the experience-based component of the gender gap.To be clear, these findings are suggestive rather than causal and leave many questions unanswered. For instance, the research does not shed light on whether judge biases are an important factor at debate competitions. The lack of evidence that having more female judges improves female performance suggests that tournament administrators and coaches concerned with female success should not expect to eliminate the gender gap by hiring female judges.Of course, female representation at tournaments may have positive effects on female debaters outside the narrow context of individual wins and losses associated with the judge’s gender. Future research could explore this possibility by tracking female success across different kinds of competitions, perhaps examining whether women benefit from there being a higher fraction of female judges, from peer effects, or from other policies tournaments adopt to reduce the gender gap. Gaining a more nuanced understanding of why men enjoy more competitive success than women would help stakeholders in the community minimize the likelihood that women are denied opportunities and treated unfairly in an activity that is meant to empower everyone instead of leaving some people behind. Full analysis (includes complete footnotes and appendices):   Tartakovsky 2016 - "Gender Disparities in Competitive High School Debate"  Footnotes [1] In this paper, gender refers most closely to gender identity. See footnote 1 of the full paper for a more detailed explanation of the construction of the gender variable.[2] Tabroom.com is now the most popular system for National Circuit LD tournaments, but some tournaments use other different systems such as Joy of Tournaments, so not all competitions appear in the data.[3] These cases include what are likely to be misspellings or abbreviations of debater and judge names by coaches (e.g., “Micahel” becomes “Michael,” “Catheri” becomes “Catherine,” and “Danella” becomes “Daniella”). References“2016 Accepted At Larges.” 2016. Tournament of Champions. University of Kentucky.Antecol, Heather, Ozkan Eren, and Serkan Ozbeklin. March 2012. “The Effect of Teacher

Gender on Student Achievement in Primary School: Evidence from a Randomized

Experiment.” IZA Discussion Paper Issue 6453.

Dee, Thomas S. 2007. “Teachers and the Gender Gaps in Student Achievement.” Journal of

Human Resources 48(3): 529-554.

“Final Places in Lincoln Douglas,” Tournament of Champions, 2016, Tabroom.com.Flowers, Andrew. “The Most Common Unisex Names in America: Is Yours One of Them?”

Five Thirty Eight, 10 Jun. 2015.

Gates, Gary J. and Michael D. Steinberger. 2010. “Same-Sex Unmarried Partner Couples in

the American Community Survey: The Role of Misreporting, Miscoding and

Misallocation.” Williams Institute Working Paper.

Goldin, Claudia and Cecilia Rouse. Sep. 2000. “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of

“Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians.” American Economic Review 90(4): 715-740.

“Past Lincoln-Douglas Debate Topics.” 2016. National Speech and Debate Association.Shin, Ariel. May 2016. “A Statistical Analysis of the Gender Gap.” VBriefly. Victory Briefs

Institute.   

Smith, Jonathan. 2013. “Peers, Pressure, and Performance at the National Spelling Bee,”

Journal of Human Resources 48(2): 265-285.

Timmons, Cindi and Bekah Boyer. Jan. 2014. “Women in Debate: Working Toward a More

Complete Picture.” VBriefly. Victory Briefs Institute.   

United States Census Bureau. Oct. 1995. "Frequently Occurring Names in the U.S. – 1990."

Census.gov.

Philosophy and Oppression by Shrey Desai

Shrey Desai debated for four years at Saratoga High School (CA). Shrey qualified to the California State Tournament, championed Western Championships and SCU (twice), and won speaker awards at the College Prep, Stanford, and Berkeley Invitationals. He would like to thank Chris Theis, Jake Nebel, Sajeev Saluja, and Prachit Bhike for their thoughtful comments and revisions.

Introduction

As some of you may recall, the first article I wrote for Victory Briefs was Fairness vs. Critical Arguments. I discussed the importance of fairness and how it conflicted with and outweighed critical impacts, namely role of the ballot arguments that the affirmative or negative made. Without a doubt, this issue collected a lot of heat and there were controversial discussions surrounding rationale and real-world implications. Upon reading the comments, I noticed that many critical debaters reiterating one thing over and over again; each wanted their peers to engage their arguments substantively, rather than theoretically. For many critical debaters, their arguments are not merely 1AC or 1NC speech, but rather extensions of their identity, beliefs, and most importantly, voice.

Danielle Reyes, the 2016 Harvard Lincoln-Douglas Champion, put it best when she wrote in a Facebook post: “We have to pay close attention to how oppressive structures pervade academic spaces like debate, not just on an active violent level … but also on a passive exclusionary level [such as] reading fairness first against anti-blackness debaters…” Maybe a couple more spikes at the bottom of an affirmative case or hidden fairness outweighs arguments in the voter section of a 1AR theory argument are not the most respectful response to critical arguments on the circuit.

However effective those strategies could have been, I believe the fairness/critical impact debate has been going on for much too long. The more and more I witness and hear about them, these debates are often very frustrating as judges are left to resolve a large amount of buzzwords, competing assertions, and arguments to little to no weighing. Indeed, some judges are outright unconvinced by these debates. Terrence Lonam, a well respected adjudicator from the Lake Highland Preparatory School, recently expressed his discontent in his Lincoln-Douglas judging paradigm: “I think arguments saying T/Theory unilaterally outweigh Ks (or vice-versa) are nonsensical because they essentially saying the way you happen to organize an argument gives it some privileged space to come before other arguments that happen to be organized differently.”

I believe it is time for debaters to approach critical argumentation with a more educational and maybe even theoretically stable methodology – philosophy. Instead of answering role of the ballot arguments with theory, debaters should present counter-role of the ballot arguments through a philosophical lens. Section 1 will discuss the dichotomy between ideal, or philosophical, theory and non-ideal theory. Section 2 will consist of a defense of ideal theory against common criticisms non-ideal theorists have voiced. Finally, Section 3 will present a case study of philosophical role of the ballot arguments in action through an analysis of a popular ethical framework called virtue ethics.

I. Ideal theory and Non-ideal theory

Consider the following passage from Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle:

Let us not fail to notice, however, that there is a difference between arguments from and those to first principles. For Plato, too, was right in raising this question and asking, as he used to do, ‘Are we on the way from or to the first principles?’ There is a difference, as there is in a race-course between the course from the judges to the turning-point and the way back. For, while we must begin with what is evident, things are evident in two ways—some to us, some without qualification.

The first principles that Aristotle speaks of are philosophical principles. By definition, philosophy has first and foremost been a theoretical discipline. Its most popular project is that of ethics, which consists of different principles and theories used to guide action and govern human behavior. Even today, there is a relevant consideration of whether these ethical, or ideal, principles should be the starting point of societal conduct and law. This is the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory.

Wenar (2013) defines ideal theory as consisting of “idealizing assumptions about its subject matter.” Many popular ethical theories, such as Kantianism and contractualism, are derived from ideal subjects, ideal principles, and ideal conditions. For instance, Kantian ethics propose that all actions must be consistent with universal law; this implies that in all situations, one must never lie or never kill someone. These sorts of principles are only possible in an ideal world because they deviate from important practical considerations, such as whether a lie would save lives or whether the CIA should kill a terrorist. Contractualism is even more ideal because it argues that ethical actions are those that nobody would reasonably reject. Again, contractual actions only exist in ideal circumstances where people share the same psychological makeup and have the same interests. This theory would not function in non-ideal circumstances like the status quo. The current resolution is a great example; bipartisan support on a handgun prohibition bill would never happen because Democrats and Republicans are simply ideologically opposed. 

However, non-ideal theory is the opposite of ideal theory. It attempts to focus on the structural conditions that humans are in and how that affects their judgment, such as privilege, economic status, social conditions, etc. Non-ideal theory attempts to reject a comprehensive picture of ethics and takes into consideration questions such as political effectiveness and feasibility. Laurence (2012) clarifies, “Nonideal theory, by contrast, ‘asks how this long-term goal might be achieved, or worked towards...It looks for courses of action that are morally permissible and politically possible as well as likely to be effective.’”

In the context of debate, ideal theories and non-ideal theories are both very popular. Non-utilitarian affirmatives are usually ideal theories. Common frameworks read on the circuit include the veil of ignorance, equal freedom, virtue ethics, property rights, communitarianism, and other ethical theories. In contrast, most roles of the ballot arguments are non-ideal because they focus primarily on status quo conditions. Roles of the ballots such as capitalism, biopolitics, feminism, anti-blackness, and militarism are all examples of non-ideal theories because they are concerned with how people are poorly treated in the status quo, mostly as a result of the impacts stemming from the affirmative or negative advocacy.

As this analysis has proven, ethical frameworks that affirmatives read have more implicit clash (than one would think) with a critical role of the ballot argument, and vice versa. The most important distinction between the two is that of abstraction and idealism. In dealing with oppression, debaters have erred towards non-ideal theories. In responding to kritiks (Ks) in the past, affirmatives have mostly gone for policymaking good arguments or argued that other forms of oppression are the root cause of the impacts the negative discusses. There have been few situations in which non-utilitarian affirmatives have leveraged their ethical and normative frameworks, or ideal theories, against Ks. If a debater could prove that an ideal method to addressing oppression is far more effective than a non-ideal method, then that debater could win the round.

Let us consider the following scenario on the 2016 January/February topic to clarify: The private ownership of handguns ought to be banned in the United States. The AC is an intimate partner violence critical affirmative, which argues that a handgun ban would reduce intimate partner violence and therefore deconstruct patriarchal structures. The bottom of the affirmative case has the following argument: The role of the ballot is to vote for the debater that rejects intimate partner violence. The overarching concern here is oppression, but the method that the affirmative uses in order to address oppression is a focus on domestic structural violence and the material conditions of women, or non-ideal theory. The NC is a property rights case, which argues that a handgun ban would revoke the right to self-defense and is therefore impermissible. The negative agrees that addressing oppression is important, but he or she argues that the method to do so is incorrect. She argues that the counter-role of the ballot is to vote for the debater that better respects individual liberty. With this argument, the negative asserts that the discussion of the NC, or ideal theory, is much more fruitful in addressing oppression rather than non-ideal theory. If the negative can win that her method is super to that of the affirmative, then she will win the round.

II. A Defense of Ideal Theory

So far, the dichotomous relationship between ideal theory and non-ideal theory has been introduced, but the relevant question now is whether ideal theory is actually an effective method to addressing oppression. Intuitively, one would think that focusing on material conditions is far more effective, as oppression is a state that is not theoretical, but instead created from elements in the real world. In addition to this, non-ideal theorists have brought up a variety of criticisms against ideal theory, which I will discuss below.

Criticism #1: Abstracting from social realities cannot account for the dynamic nature of oppression.

Mills (2005) argues: “Almost by definition, it follows from the focus of ideal theory that little or nothing will be said on actual historic oppression and its legacy in the present, or current ongoing oppression, though these may be gestured at in a vague or promissory way (as something to be dealt with later).”

While non-ideal theorists are correct in pointing out that ideal theory is in fact “ideal,” they are incorrect in assuming that an ideal framework cannot be used to discuss oppression. Rawls (2009), one of the main proponents of ideal theory, insists: “The reason for beginning with ideal theory is that it provides, I believe, the only basis for the systematic grasp of these more pressing problems.” As Rawls suggests, the main reason we start from ideal theory is to set in stone principles that can be used to judge real world events. For example, egalitarianism is a philosophical doctrine that maintains all humans are equal in fundamental worth. If we start from the ideal egalitarian assumption that all humans are equal, then we can safely say that classist oppression or sexist oppression are wrong because they put one group of people on a higher pedestal than another group. Ideal theory allows us to picture a world with full equality, and if we see real world events that do not cohere with this picture, oppression can be detected.

Ideal theory is effective because it sets a goal for society. It is true that society will never have complete equality, but if we start from an ideal method, we can effectively measure progress. Consider the following debate scenario on the living wage topic. In response to a capitalism K arguing wages are capitalist, the affirmative turns this argument by saying living wage coalitions are key to stopping the spread of neoliberalism. Both arguments here deal with capitalism and making competing assertions, but it is difficult to adjudicate which side is in fact the most capitalist per se. A non-ideal theory of rejecting capitalism would have a difficult time comparing the two arguments because there is no fundamental and central standard by which one can compare the two arguments. What one needs to do is have an ideal scale: the left side is no capitalism and the right side is full capitalism. Through this spectrum, one can weigh between the “units of capitalism” the affirmative and negative produce. Robeyns (2008) concludes: “What is the goal of ideal theory so defined? Ideal theory functions as a lighthouse: it tells us in which direction we should be moving to reach a (minimally) just society, or a society that is just with respect to a particular domain.”

Criticism #2: Ethics are constantly under debate and there is no “correct” ethical theory.

Non-ideal theorists have commonly insisted that the multitude of ethical theories prevents us from using the “correct” framework in order to address oppression. In addition, there are a lot of ethical theories that conflict with each other; obviously, utilitarianism and deontology cannot reach the same conclusion regarding ethical scenarios.

Even though there are a lot of ethical projects to pick and choose from, many of them begin with similar assumptions about people. There are certain constraints that ethical theories must account for before they become ethical theories. Through his comprehensive analysis of ethics, Gosepath (2007) finds that “[t]he principle of equal dignity and respect is now accepted as a minimum standard throughout mainstream Western culture.” In utilitarian theories, the considerations and interests of one person do not automatically outweigh those of another. In deontological theories, each person is an autonomous agent and cannot infringe on the liberty of another. These normative constraints are the fundamental standards which ideal theory hinges on. Different forms of oppression fall under these guidelines as well; every single oppressive group tends to deny the respect and worth of another group. As Stemplowska (2008) concurs, “All normative theories must contain principles, that is normative statements expressing position(s) on one or more values.” There does not need to be one overarching and comprehensive ethical theory because this is extremely over-demanding and also unnecessary. The backbones ethical theories and doctrines are constructed upon suffice for adjudicating real world events.

In addition, the fact that ethics are constantly under debate can also aid the oppression debate. While it is intuitive that oppression is bad, there is still a gray area that must be discussed. For instance, is it moral to oppress a few people in order to save a large amount of people from oppression? Or, should we always avoid the active oppression of a single person, even if it causes pain and suffering to others? These are tough questions to answer, and the only way to answer them is to debate the philosophical justifications behind them. The former question is a utilitarian concern, which says that the ends justify the means, so as long as oppression is kept to a minimum, an action is permissible. The latter question is a deontological concern, which says that the means are important instead, so out of ethical duty, oppression to any single person should be avoided. Non-ideal theorists would be unable to answer these sorts of questions because these questions require an ethical principle to give it value and meaning. Our world is not black and white, and so our logic should not be either. It is not a question of rejecting oppression, but rather understanding why oppression is bad; the discussion of ethics can greatly benefit an individual’s understanding of societal injustices in the real world.

III. Ideal theory in action: Virtue ethics

One of the three most popular normative theories in mainstream ethics, virtue ethics “emphasize[s] the role of character and virtue in moral philosophy rather than either doing one’s duty or acting in order to bring about good consequences” (Athanassoulis). Unlike its counterparts – consequentialism and deontology – virtue ethics has proven to be a much more flexible and some might argue intuitive framework. Consequentialist principles, or those that weigh the net benefits and harms resulting from an action, are often criticized for reaching repugnant conclusions. Events such as the Holocaust, genocides, and slavery yielded positive consequences for the masses, but the minority voice was shut out and therefore not included in the moral calculus. Intuitively, this seems wrong and therefore consequentialist frameworks, at least from an individual standpoint, do not seem appropriate when dealing with sensitive topics such as oppression. Deontological principles, or those that stem from individual duties and obligations, are even more rigid than consequentialist principles. If not for the moral framework deontology provides, the history the ethical theory itself is rooted in seems to draw blame from various philosophers and historians. Soble (2003) has expressed his concerns regarding the categorical imperative and homosexuality, Bernasconi (2002) discussed the racist premises that philosopher Immanuel Kant rooted his theory upon, Mendus (2000) released an article criticizing deontology for excluding women, and Maslow (1981) has expressed his concerns regarding deontology as a classist and elitist theory. When weighing between possible ideal theories that can be used to address oppression, consequentialism and deontology do not seem like viable options.

What makes virtue ethics an attractive theory to address oppression is its emphasis on character. Moral character is achieved through societal deliberation and character traits such as respect, compassion, and benevolence are cultivated throughout the way. Virtue ethicists argue that a strong moral character is key to eudaimonia, the Greek word for “a good life.” In order to relate virtue ethics to oppression, I will use white supremacists as an example. White supremacists fundamentally believe that their race and culture is superior to those of others, such as African-Americans, Hispanics, or Asians. Through mere intuition, one can safely say that these white supremacists have inculcated a lot of vices; just to name a few, these supremacists lack empathy for the feelings of others and are definitely not humble when weighing between cultural beliefs. They are not leading “the good life,” and they are fundamentally devoid of important virtues and a strong moral character. Tessman (2005) argues that oppressors “exhibit moral vices (such as callousness, greed, self‐centeredness, dishonesty, cowardice, in addition to injustice) or at least the absence of certain specific moral virtues (perhaps compassion, generosity, cooperativeness, openness to appreciating others).” In order to cleanse themselves of their repugnant mindsets and oppressive tendencies, these oppressors must first and foremost rid themselves of these vices. Through the Aristotelian ways of moral education and practice, the oppressors can develop a moral character, ultimately solving for the root cause of their harm towards others.

This phenomenon also has historical precedent. The use of virtues was empirically successful in bringing down oppressors during the Civil Rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an important moral authority for the United States; he encouraged the discipline of nonviolence and tolerance in order to spread racial justice. The methods that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used were morally praiseworthy, and ultimately, successful. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 proved that policymakers in the United States federal government had come to terms with their vices and were cognizant of the racism that had infiltrated the nation. The same white supremacists that had segregated African-Americans were forced to develop a moral conscience and inculcate virtues such as respect and compassion that allowed them to view the African-American people as equals. Moral integrity and the promotion of virtue were not only effective but also essential in stopping real world oppression.

So, how would this function in a debate round? This approach would require the affirmative to set up a virtue ethics framework in the 1AC. Because virtue ethics is a popular and flexible theory, there is usually a lot of topic literature available, so there is no need to worry about contention-level offense. When the negative reads a criticism, or K, of the affirmative case, he or she will most likely set up a role of the ballot with a non-ideal theory to address the instances of oppression discussed in the 1NC. In the 1AR, the affirmative can argue for a counter-role of the ballot. Utilizing the virtue ethics example, a counter-role of the ballot text could read: The role of the ballot is to vote for the debater that best promotes virtue. The offense under this counter-role of the ballot would be the entirety of the affirmative case, and the net benefits to prefer this counter-role of the ballot would be reasons as to why virtue ethics, an ideal theory, is optimal to discuss oppression in academic spaces like debate. Personally, I would refer debaters looking to execute this strategy to the Tessman article; the entirety of her piece centers on why moral conscience and a virtue ethical character is necessary for liberatory movements.

Conclusion

With the expansion of critical argumentation, debaters must ultimately seek nuanced, educational, and also respectful strategies that can address these arguments. While philosophy and ideal theories do have their setbacks and disadvantages, this article has shown why philosophical approaches are an effective and also strategic method to addressing oppression. Ideal theories provide principles that allow individuals to track moral progress and normative reasoning that can provide insight into the “gray” area that many situations and policies fall under. Aside from philosophy, I encourage debaters to move away from excessive tendencies to pull up theory files or pre-written blips when encountering critical arguments. Debate, as a competitive and academic activity, should be as inclusive and educational as possible, and philosophical theory is a great starting point for debaters seeking to expand their knowledge base and skill set. 

References

Reyes, Danielle. Facebook Post. February 15, 2016.

Lonam, Terrence. “Lonam, Terrence.” Judge Philosophies. September 26, 2015.

Wenar, Leif, "John Rawls", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Laurence, Ben. “The Priority of Ideal Theory.” Practical Philosophy Workshop, University of Chicago. 2012.

Mills, Charles W. "“Ideal theory” as ideology." Hypatia 20.3 (2005): 165-183.

Rawls, John. A theory of justice. Harvard university press, 2009.

Robeyns, Ingrid. "Ideal theory in theory and practice." Social Theory and Practice 34.3 (2008): 341-362.

Gosepath, Stefan, "Equality", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Stemplowska, Zofia. "What's ideal about ideal theory?." Social Theory and Practice 34.3 (2008): 319-340.

Athanassoulis, Nafsika. “Virtue Ethics” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Soble, Alan. "Kant and sexual perversion." The Monist 86.1 (2003): 55-89.

Bernasconi, Robert. "Kant as an unfamiliar source of racism." Philosophers on race: Critical essays (2002): 145-66.

Mendus, Susan. "Time and chance: Kantian ethics and feminist philosophy."Feminism and Emotion. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2000. 55-68.

Maslow, William D. "Academic Sociology as a" Classist" Discipline."Humanity and Society 5.3 (1981): 256.

Tessman, Lisa. Burdened virtues: Virtue ethics for liberatory struggles. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Moral Hedging by Noah Simon and Jack Wareham

This article consists of two parts. The first section, written by Noah Simon, is a criticism of Moral Hedging and an endorsement of Moral Confidence. The second section, written by Jack Wareham, is an endorsement of Moral Hedging and a criticism of Moral Confidence. It has been brought to our attention that ‘Epistemic Modesty’ is the incorrect term for this issue. We will use the term ‘Moral Hedging,’ or ‘MH’ for short, which better reflects the fact that we hedge our beliefs against a multitude of normative theories.[1] The authors would like to thank Marshall Thompson, Christian Tarsney, Nina Potischman, and Bob Overing for their input.I: Objections to Moral Hedging by Noah SimonAs a brief explanation of MH, it attempts to compare different moral goods across moral theories. It argues that because we are uncertain about the truth of competing moral theories we should weigh the strengths of the contention offense and frameworks in a given round. If Debater A is decisively winning their contention offense, marginally loses the framework debate to Debater B, and marginally loses the contention debate under Debater B’s framework, MH would say that Debater A should still win. To take a commonly used real-world example, if we are presented with a cup of coffee and we have 0.8 certainty that the coffee will taste good but have a 0.2 certainty that the coffee is poisonous, MH would say that the relatively low risk of great harm justifies not drinking the coffee even though there is a high chance of obtaining marginal pleasure.However, this weighing mechanism is fundamentally infeasible. Let’s say we are 90% sure that deontology is true and 10% certain that utilitarianism is true, and Action X will prevent a million people from dying but, in doing so, would violate people's’ property rights. MH would say that we should endorse Action X, but why would they say this is justified? Because, as it seems, there is such a great utilitarian objection that it overrides the seemingly relatively small deontological objection to the proposition.The move MH tries to make here is flawed. Here, ‘great’ and ‘small’ are normative terms, which appeal to some metric to determine what a great or small harm is: a moral heuristic. This heuristic will ultimately have to be framed in one of the different theories: either “so many lives are saved that it’s a good moral action” or “it is a profound rights violation.” That analysis appeals to only one framework, as there is no greater heuristic or framework that MH justifies with which different frameworks and offense can be evaluated. Therefore, MH collapses into whichever framework is most credible; this model is called ‘Moral Confidence.’ Moral Confidence says that the judge should only evaluate offense under the winning framework and not compare offense between different frameworks.We might be able to say that something like breaking a deathbed promise would be “worse” under deontology than utilitarianism, but we could not successfully make such a complicated comparison as saying that breaking a deathbed promise would be worse under deontology than a migraine would be under utilitarianism. Gracely^[1] furthers:

[U]tility involved in both choices can be computed under each system, and each system obligates the maximization of utility. So it would still seem the two could be compared. But, is the "utility" being maximized by one of them the same as that for the other, and does it have the same meaning? I would answer, no. [...] utility is relatively divorced from the entities experiencing it. [...] utility is treated as though it were an external substance, such as water, to be maximized in quantity by whatever means. [...] The obligation is not to maximize some kind of substance, but to maximally benefit those who live or who will live.

This isn’t to say that utilitarianism is easy to evaluate, but rather goodness constrained by the bounds of one theory is fundamentally more coherent than goodness across theories. Gracely^[2] explains:

[T]he total utilitarian (TU), who includes the happiness of potential lives in the calculation of utility, is not expecting a different actual outcome from the person-regarding utilitarian (PRU), but is interpreting it differently. The two agree about the facts, and about the one hundred happy lives, but disagree about the role that those lives should have in an ethical analysis.

Regardless, the argument is clear: the comparison MH attempts to make is fundamentally impossible. There is no “external substance” that needs to be maximized since each framework will tell us the one and only thing we need to achieve. Discussing inter-theoretical goods is, as Chesterton says, “like discussing whether Milton was more puritanical than a pig is fat.”^[3]Additionally, MH is inconsistent with the moral theories for which it tries to account. Imagine doctors prescribing medicine to a patient.The patient has 50% confidence in Doctor X, 30% credence in Doctor Y, and 20% credence in Doctor Z. They each prescribe a different medication to you, Medicine A, B, and C, respectively. However, they all warn against mixing the medicines. This is very similar to framework debates. A utilitarian would prescribe the maximization of pleasure and would warn against allowing unnecessary suffering to occur, and a deontologist would prescribe the protection of rights, and would warn against any violation of rights. MH argues we should blend the different theories together--a mixing of the medicines. This is in fact prohibited by both theories, so MH actually runs counter to each proposed ethical theory.^[4] MH appeals to maximizing the chance of a correct moral action, but every moral theory denies that there is the potentiality for maximizing moral action outside of doing actions that the theory itself would prescribe. Every moral theory denies that there is some relevance to maximizing “moral output” outside of doing the actions that it itself would prescribe. To summarize these arguments: if we’re 60% sure util is true and 40% sure deontology is true, we are 0% sure that we should use some combination of multiple ethical theories.Moreover, MH compels actors to place undue credence in faulty theories, compromising our moral calculus. For example, we can be 10% certain that a theory that generates repugnant conclusions is true. If that theory says that some action, e.g. racial equality, is an infinitely bad thing, then we would be obligated under the MH paradigm to treat people racially unequally since any risk of an infinite harm outweighs a finite harm generated under another, more plausible moral theory. Considering Harman’s^[5] example:

Bob’s daughter Sue has been asking him to teach her to drive [...] Bob has a 90% credence that he is morally required to teach Sue to drive. [...] According to the conservative speaker he’s been listening to, women should not drive and no one should teach a woman to drive; in fact that is a grave moral wrong. [...] Bob thinks the conservative speaker is probably wrong; he’s 90% sure of that. But Bob finds the conservative picture being offered somewhat compelling, so that he is 10% sure it is the correct picture. [...] Bob has a 90% credence that failing to teach Sue would be wrong, but not very seriously wrong; he has a 10% credence that teaching her to drive would be deeply morally wrong. [...] Uncertaintism holds that, if the conservative picture holds that teaching a woman to drive is wrong enough, Bob should not teach Sue to drive.

Some might respond by saying that the issue here is not with MH but rather Bob’s particular assignment of values. However, that is exactly the point: MH makes our moral views too flexible. It allows anyone, no matter how little credence we have in her, to lay strong claims to our decision calculus. MH can thus justify everything and nothing, reaching unacceptable and potentially paralyzing conclusions. This gets at a larger objection: contention debate should stay in the contention; normative discussion should remain superior. Attempting to mix the descriptive and the normative is futile and dangerous.Besides being impossible, MH is a useless paradigm for debate. If we’re 40% sure that MH is true, but only 30% sure that this estimation is accurate, and 20% certain that that estimation is confident, how are judges possibly supposed to use it to evaluate rounds? Judges are not calculators; asking them to multiply the infinitely regressive credence values of theories with the different degrees of offense won under those frameworks is simply impractical.Many arguments in favor of MH stem from the fact that there is uncertainty regarding the truth-values of different frameworks. However, this is predominantly irrelevant to the judge’s decision calculus. Even if there is uncertainty in the post-fiat world or in the real world, this is not something for which the judge can account. The judge can only evaluate the arguments made in round; they pick the winning framework based on who did the best debating. They cannot say something like “even though the neg was ahead on the framework debate, I know that moral certainty hasn’t been reached and is unlikely to be reached in a 40-minute debate between two high school students.” No external analysis of morality should matter in the light of actual arguments made on the flow. For example, it is highly uncertain that debaters could come to a clear conclusion regarding the validity of gun control. However, that doesn’t mean that the judges can disregard the entirety of the debate and presume based on their personal opinions.If we’re uncertain about MH, we should just default to whatever we’re most confident about: the most credible theory. MH says we should pursue the course of action most likely to yield the most morally correct action, so the most likely framework would work best. Thus, because MH is both unusable and normatively unjustified, judges ought adopt a Morally Confident paradigm.II: A Defense of Moral Hedging by Jack WarehamAs Moral Hedging has popularized, criticism of the theory has increased. There is a general belief that the principle can have strategic utility but is philosophically bankrupt. This section seeks to provide a debate-specific justification for the use of MH.The argument for MH begins with the uncontroversial premise that moral uncertainty exists in debate rounds. Before we even discuss how (or if) uncertainty should change our moral calculus, it is clear that two debaters with thirteen minutes each will not get even remotely close to settling questions that philosophers have debated for millennia.This lack of clarity is heightened in debate because framework debates are often layered such that correctly evaluating the round as a judge can be near impossible. If both debaters win “my standard is a prerequisite” arguments and there is no weighing done between these claims by either debater, then it is difficult for a judge to make a non-interventionist decision about which framework is better. Most varsity framework rounds contain at least some degree of this complication; debaters will often avoid engaging on the line by line or answering framework overviews by simply extending a meta ethic and asserting “this comes first.”Many judges believe moral hedging requires an unacceptable degree of intervention in determining how much contention level offense is won. I propose the exact opposite: it is much more interventionist to evaluate a muddled framework debate and arbitrarily exclude one side’s offense than to assess the relative strength of link back to each framework. If a round comes down to conceded framework assertions and the debate is muddled due to a lack of weighing, picking one framework over the other will inevitably result in insertion of bias. The only way to pick a framework in such an instance would be to make a subjective judgment that Debater A’s arguments are of higher quality than Debater B’s, or that some other warrant or argument could interact in such a way to resolve the debate.This is an incorrect way to assess the better debater. Given that frameworks exist for the purpose of establishing contentions (debaters do not win for proving util is true), ignoring contentions based on an already uncertain framework decision prioritizes muddled framework evaluation when one debater has demonstrably done the better job on a different layer of the flow. From this conclusion, moral hedging as a paradigm used to evaluate debate rounds seems necessary. If there is uncertainty in the framework debate, the contention debate ought to be used as a tiebreaker to determine who has done the better debating. If the framework debate is already exceptionally clear, conditions of moral uncertainty are not triggered and there is no need to evaluate strength of link. Moral hedging just gives us tool to deal with situations in which the framework debate is not easily evaluated.Noah’s claim that goods under each framework are incomparable (the incommensurability objection) conflates moral hedging in general and moral hedging as a debate paradigm. The role of the judge as an objective adjudicator of offense is to determine how ‘great’ or ‘small’ offense is in the context of arguments made by debaters. Moral hedging does not ask judges to use a moral heuristic to determine how large the degree of offense is; they can just look at their flow. If there is conceded defense on an extinction scenario, then it is a ‘small’ utilitarian reason. If it is entirely conceded, it would seem to be a ‘great’ utilitarian reason. Moral hedging as a debate paradigm requires inter-theoretical value comparison, but whether a piece of contention offense is ‘great’ or ‘small’ is determined without a moral heuristic, and instead by how well debaters have performed. Deciding whether impact A is bigger under utilitarianism than impact B is under deontology is done entirely by counting defense and seeing what percentage of the offense still stands. In this instance, the inter-theoretical evaluation is permissible as it does not cause incommensurability.Next, Noah says that moral hedging is inconsistent with the moral theories it tries to account for. This is problematic as most ethical theories do not tell us what to do under conditions of normative uncertainty. Kantianism says that if you act accordingly to Kantianism, you should prevent rights violations, but it does not tell us what to do if the antecedent is questioned. No ethical theory tells us what we ought to do if we are unsure about what the correct ethical theory is. If you are 51% sure that Kantianism is true, why should you act as if Kantianism is 100% true given that we have strong reasons to support another view of ethics?Noah’s next argument operates neatly within the moral hedging paradigm. If sexism is bad and a certain framework justifies sexism, we have a strong reason to reject the framework that would outweigh its contention level offense. Moral hedging does not force us to accept it, rather it gives us certified grounds to reject it. Noah’s example here is hyperbolic and ridiculous. If a framework holds that racial equality is an infinitely bad thing, the opposing debater should have no trouble explaining why this framework is certainly false. Trouble might arise when the contention level offense is “infinite,” but it seems difficult to imagine a situation in which such a weighing mechanism under a standard could be established. The example given by Harman fails to represent how moral hedging should be applied, as it is irrational that Bob has given as much as 10% weight to the view that women should not be able to drive; he should be assigning a much lower credence to this view. Moreover, moral confidence would also seem to fall prey to the same problems that Noah discusses. Without moral hedging, a debater whose advocacy results in massive systemic oppression should win if they prove a 51% chance of Kantianism being true.Noah’s final argument sums up a common thread of objections people make, which involve general confusion about how to use percentages in a debate round. Judges do not need to be calculators; they just need to look at their flow, which we do all the time in normal debates. If a debater wins that benefits to the economy outweigh benefits of protecting the environment, we must still evaluate the links back into each impact, rather than voting for a risk of offense on economic benefits. Similarly, a debater might win that education outweighs fairness, but if their theory interpretation only minimally benefits education but is severely abusive, there would still be reason to reject the interpretation. Instead of leaving it up to the debaters, judges should adopt moral hedging to evaluate rounds and line up debater’s offense underneath a paradigm that assigns a credence value to each ethical theory and combines that with the action’s value under that theory if it were true. Only then can we determine who really wins the debate.

---

[1] Gracely, Edward J. "On the Noncomparability of Judgments Made by Different Ethical Theories." Metaphilosophy 27.3 (1996): 327-32. Web.

[2] ibid

[3] Chesterton, G. K. "The Suicide of Thought." Orthodoxy. New York: Lohn Lane, 1909.

[4] Thank you to Marshall Thompson for explaining this argument to me.

[5] Harman, Elizabeth. "The Irrelevance of Moral Uncertainty." Oxford Studies in Metaethics (2014): n. pag. Web.

Philosophy for Whom? by Isis Davis-Marks

In debate we revere analytic philosophy in a way that we don’t tend to respect other forms of critical thought. In countless rounds I have seen debaters say that “philosophical education precludes the kritik” but there is never a discussion about what it means to be philosophical, or who counts as a philosopher. Initially this seems like a problem unique to debate rounds, but, in actuality, this is something that permeates philosophical education in schools and the discipline at its core.My first exposure to philosophy was a teacher scribbling the name “Immanuel Kant” on the board in an expo marker. My white and male philosophy teacher went on to explain that Kant was an important critical thinker and a founder of deontological ethics. He said that Kant’s philosophical doctrine was revolutionary and that it advocated for basic human rights such as inviolability and treating people as ends in themselves. In a nutshell, these things wouldn’t seem so bad: it’s most likely good to not stab a person in front of you if you’re annoyed at them for singing Katy Perry a tad bit too loudly. Taken at face value something like deontological ethics would advocate for reducing the marginalization that minorities faced or liberating female bodies. However, the central problem with this view is that it abstracts from the primarily racist and sexist assumptions present in Kant’s writing.You see, Kant was a man who "advises us to use a split bamboo cane instead of a whip, so that the 'negro' will suffer a great deal of pains (because of the 'negro's' thick skin, he would not be racked with sufficient agonies through a whip) but without dying." He placed themes of white supremacy at the core of his writing by labeling “red”, “yellow” and “negro” races as devoid of true talent, and then further justifies his views by describing the supposed qualities of each race which he uses to set up a racial hierarchy. Normally, merely criticizing an author’s work for the particular views that that author had author would be a mere ad hominem attack, but the problem with saying this in response to a critique of Kantian and enlightenment based philosophy is that these views were fundamental to shaping Kantian conceptions of a practical reasoner. Prior to being such a reasoner you have to have the “right” qualities, which, as usual, means the qualities of a straight cis-gendered affluent white male. With that said, the prevalence of Kantian and neo- Kantian ethical theories in Lincoln Douglas debate raises some serious questions: How can we allow such an ethical theory, that advocates for whipping negroes, to guide our action? How can we say that it is illegitimate for a black debater (or otherwise) to stand up and call people out for substantive reasons why this theory is insufficient to guide action for marginalized bodies? But most of all I want to know the answer to the question:Why is Immanuel Kant considered a philosopher with a capital P but not Audre Lourde or bell hooks? Is it because the latter two theorists are black women?I could never wrap my head around the fact that we place so much faith in this white man who very clearly had a need to prop up the hegemonic power structures that existed in his time. I also can never understand how we don’t view the personal as the political in this activity because, at the end of the day, our subconscious and conscious biases influence our actions.Wake up people.Saying you don’t see color isn’t going to prevent Michael Brown and Sandra Bland from being killed. Major psychological studies indicate that many people in the United States have unconscious bias against black bodies, and other marginalized groups. Racism isn’t dead. Homophobia isn’t dead when people stigmatize LGBTQ debaters when they decide to cross dress or talk about their identity in round. In debate we like to think of events such as women being harassed at tournaments, or black debaters being ridiculed for talking about race as isolated incidents, but they’re not. These are all functions of the way that the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy functions in the world that we live in today.We need to break down this idea that philosophy is something that is primarily concerned for the white man. This is a discipline that is 97 percent white, so philosophy, particularly political philosophy, has a tendency to abstract from systems of oppression that have a significant impact on anyone who does not identify with the dominant group. This often leads to philosophers making assumptions about certain bodies and excludes them from even accessing a status of normativity. With that said, it doesn’t make much sense when debaters say that “philosophical education precludes “critical” arguments” because, at times, the fundamental tenets of analytic philosophy are often flawed. When an ethical theory attempts to remove itself from the lived experiences of all bodies, then it becomes impossible for those outside of the dominant group to even attempt to follow said theory. For example, throughout history women have often been labeled as irrational (after all, etymology of “hysterical” means characterized by a uterus and we usually use that word to mean crazy), so it seems strange to talk about concepts such as practical reason without looking at how that affects female bodies. Debaters must interrogate these assumptions when they attempt to justify any philosophical framework.The problem isn’t even that we talk about Kant; the fundamental problem lies in how people, in the LD community and the philosophical community at large, categorize and talk about normative philosophy. What we call philosophy is reduced to an analytic pissing contest without calling anything that has to do with our identity into question. Anything that doesn’t conform to the analytic cannon is called “critical theory” which is somehow labeled as inferior to analytic philosophy. Sure it may be nice to hide behind a veil, but at the end of the day I can’t hide my blackness when I walk into a classroom and I’m the only black person there. When a white female debater is told that she’s "bitchy" for acting in ways that don’t conform to her gender, she cannot hide her identity. When black females or females who are lone wolves are cut off in women in debate discussions it has a tangible impact. What kinds of real world education are we teaching debaters if the only real world is for the white man? There is merit in work that is not part of the traditional analytic cannon. Pick up some bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Frank Wilderson, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre and tell me it’s not philosophy. All of these people look at social structures and say how we ought to cope with them by giving us guides to action, which at its core, is what philosophy should be. References[1] Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi (Prof. Philosophy DePaul University). Post Colonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader. “The Color of Reason.” Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1997. Print.Rachlinski, Jeffrey J.; Johnson, Sheri; Wistrich, Andrew J.; and Guthrie, Chris, "Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?" (2009). Cornell Law Faculty Publications. Paper 786. http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/786[1] bell hooks, Feminism: A Movement to end Sexist Oppression, p238-240,http://www.mcc.osu.edu/posts/documents/sexism-bhooks.pdfbell hooks, Feminism: A Movement to end Sexist Oppression, p238-240,http://www.mcc.osu.edu/posts/documents/sexism-bhooks.pdf[1] Yancy, George and Charles Mills. Lost In Rawlsland. November 16, 2014. Web. 12 September 2015. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/lost-in-rawlsland/?_r=0

A Defense of Reasonability by Noah Simon

A Defense of Reasonability

by Noah Simon

 Under the guise of norm creation, debaters are permitted to set competitive bars for their opponents to meet. This provides the initiator of theory a great advantage. Competing interpretations (CI) means that in order to win against theory, one requires offense on the standards level linking back to an offensive and competitive counter-interp. It is believed that we are setting rules for the round, and thus in order to win the theory debate, one must justify a preferable rule. This seems sensible. However, in lieu of looking to the “best interp” (whatever that means), judges should not vote on theory unless there is unreasonable abuse being perpetrated. This can be formulated through the judge “gut-checking” theory debates. Prior to discussing the advantages of this paradigm, let’s start off by establishing some basic premises about theory debate: Premise A: Theory debate is worse than substantive debate. I’m not sure I know anyone who enjoys theory over substance. What has been so frequently forgotten in a sad, strangely, ironic way is that most of us are here to debate the merits of the resolution (for those of you out there who prefer non-topical approaches to debate, I’m pretty sure you don’t need a lot of convincing that theory debates can be detrimental to the activity). If we are to hold theory debaters to their word in regard to the voter section, then unfair arguments are only harmful to the extent that they inhibit the judge’s ability to evaluate substance, and uneducational arguments are only pernicious in that they hinder an engaging discussion about relevant issues. A debate on the content of resolution seems to be the most productive, as it is the debate for which we have prepared. It allows us to delve into a controversial moral dilemma and attempt to take meaningful strides towards solutions to real-world issues. Theory achieves nothing of this. Instead, it bogs us down with debates about procedurals that lack relevance outside of the round, and do not further our understanding of important topics. Theory does remain an incredibly useful when utilized properly; however, regardless of its value, theory debates ought to be reserved for when they are warranted and not simply desired. Premise B: Theory ought to be treated qualitatively differently than substantive debate. A claim that your opponent should a priori lose regardless of any other issue should only be mounted in patently unfair or uneducational circumstances. Calling someone a cheater should mandate a clear abuse story. Theory debaters demand that the judge ignore the topic and vote off of a norm. In order to justify this shift, substantial justification is absolutely necessary. Rules transcend the game itself, and thus ought to be held to appropriately different standards. They must be clearly distinguished from the simple offense-defense paradigm that most judges (hopefully) use to evaluate substance. Now, based on these principles, a reasonability paradigm with a “gut-check” threshold is the preferable way to evaluate theory debates:  1) Reasonability prevents undeserved and unjustifiable wins. Let’s take an example: Debater A runs theory with CI, and Debater B is responding. Even if Debater B is winning considerable mitigatory defense to the point where the offense on the shell is insignificant, Debater A still wins under CI since there is no offense back to a competitive counter-interp. This is problematic. It allows people to win with such marginal offense that the ballot becomes meaningless. Starting from Premise B, lacking almost any offense on the standards level should not be enough to get a ballot. There needs to be a higher threshold than merely claims of “risk of offense” or the infamous “no abuse doesn’t mean their interp isn’t preferable.” Thus, it would be more desirable to set the bar that much higher to pull the trigger on theory. This way, judges won’t have to roll their eyes and cry somewhere deep inside as they click Debater A’s name on the ballot. And, if Debater A cannot meet this basic threshold, maybe it’s not the judge’s fault for not voting for them, but maybe it’s Debater A’s fault for not wanting to brave the terrifying terrain of actually substance.Moreover, this encourages Debater A to devise ridiculous and unnecessary standards for Debater B to meet. Yet, the burden is still on Debater B to provide offensive reasons why they shouldn’t have to conform to that rule, instead of Debater A having to prove why the rule is a substantially beneficial idea. A gut-check addresses this by allowing Debater B to devote less time and strategic planning to contend with frivolous theory. This prevents a race to the trivial through which interps and violations grow less and less significant, theory becomes easier to win and, simultaneously, substance is proportionally devalued. This is inconsistent with Premise A, the (hopefully intuitive) claim that substance debates are superior to theory debates. 2) When the offense on theory becomes so minimal, there is more abuse being perpetrated by the judge voting down the other debater (or, even the argument, depending on the case). A loss is the greatest punishment mechanism that a judge possesses, so when drop the debater is instigated, we are already accepting that the loss to whatever voter has been read is quite substantial. Thus, reasonability is a useful marker for drop the debater, since the loss of a round disproportionately punishes a merely reasonable amount of abuse.Further, abuse stories can be concocted in any case (see: exclusive interps) such that the cases become so absurd that the theory debate becomes a burdensome and oftentimes pointless debate with which to engage. On a more complex level, debaters justify theory as precluding substance usually by saying that any skew hinders the judge’s ability. However, if the abuse is so forgettable, the judge’s job doesn’t become challenging at all in evaluating substance. In fact, since theory debates are so often incredibly blippy and problematic to evaluate, it might be easier to evaluate substance with insignificant skews than to dig through the jigsaw puzzle of theory debates to piece together a coherent ballot story. Yes, this could justify drop the argument, but, when only drop the debater is read, reasonability must come into play.Moreover, CI inhibts exploration into new ideas. The fear of a potential loss created by an imaginative and fresh position could disincentivize debaters from innovating. Norms accepted by the debate community are constantly in flux, which means that adopting any one as the best and only one prevents change and evolution as topics progress. If we allow some leeway for creative ideas when there is not clear abuse occurring in the round, we will thus encourage the advancement of intellectual analysis, instead of paralysis. Now, let’s address some common justifications for CI over reasonability: 1) Reasonability is arbitrary.The most common claim is that reasonability is arbitrary. The absence of a clear definition of reasonability invites judge intervention. However, some level of judge intervention is preferable to CI; even if there is no definite brightline, reasonability at least allows for the possibility that some things to be put on the correct side of that brightline instead of deeming anything less than perfect to be drop-worthy. A gut check, though still relying on judicial intuitions, would at least be superior to fall back on the draconian CI. This objection also seems to be non-unique: all debates ultimately rely on some level of judge intervention to make decisions. The very theoretical offense itself is up to judges to deliberate, which seems to indicate that one more small burden isn’t going to shatter the debate community. Moreover, a plethora of other potential thresholds can be justified, many with quite intuitively appealing benefits. Some of the more common ones include a threshold of turn ground or structural abuse. Consider crafting ones specific to the shell, since that can make for more compelling weighing analysis. Further, a lot of the common CI rhetoric includes calling out all potential thresholds as arbitrary or unjustified, but if you have warrants, this take-out seems to fall flat. Further, if we look to the real world, we have vague and, yes, perhaps arbitrary, standards. Look no further than the CLS-derided Criminal Justice System, which contains a provision that in order for punishment to be exacted, guilt must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Thus, there are interesting and potentially highly strategic real-world education arguments to be made. 2) Reasonability creates a race to the bottom.This objection claims that reasonability creates a race to the bottom as we justify increasingly abusive norms and push judges’ tolerance for abuse until thresholds begin to justify all abuse. There’s not much merit to this objection. Reasonability doesn’t seem to create a race to the bottom, merely a race to the reasonable. As long as standards remain at reasonable abuse, there’s no more racing, anywhere. Furthermore, these race-to-the-bottom-y brightlines still require justifications, so if there’s something bad with the brightline, it itself can be questioned and refuted without finding the conception of reasonability itself objectionable. And, after further development and advancement of reasonability in debate (since, let’s face it, it is highly rare for someone to go hard for reasonability), community norms will develop and certain brightlines will come to be generally accepted or at the very least tolerated. This prevents a race to the bottom, since these practical brightlines will remain generally fixed in judges’ minds, and less palatable brightlines will be rejected. Weighing arguments could be made here for why a race to the reasonable is better than a race to the trivial, such as the fact that the reasonable allows for us to engage in substantive debates, whereas the banal devalues the entire activity. Moreover, paltry wins on theory constitute greater fairness violations, as people who aren’t culpable for substantial abuse are punished. 3) Reasonability doesn’t require offense. Some claim that since reasonability doesn’t require offense to win, it’s arbitrarily treating theory differently than any other argument. However, this doesn’t take into consideration the punishment factor that’s involved in voting on theory. This is a definitive action that a judge takes in signing the ballot. Therefore, the argument for why reasonability treats theory differently is justified: theory should require substantial offense to trigger a win (see above: the reasons why the burden of proof should be on Debater A, and not Debater B). Moreover, any offensive reason to prefer reasonability can outweigh this, since this is a merely procedural and largely impact-less objection. In conclusion, theory debates distract from the real issues at hand and trivialize an activity about which we care a lot. The community should attempt to set a logical but firm bar to separate reasonable and egregious abuse so that punishment and reward are appropriately allocated. I hope more debaters start refining and putting to use their reasonability arsenals, as I believe this can be a strategic choice for dealing with frivolous shells. More importantly, regardless of strategic value, I really do think that this sets better norms for debate, so I encourage you to explore this option.

The Priority of Resolutional Semantics by Jake Nebel

I apologize for the ridiculous length of this article. If you just want the gist, you could probably stop after section 1. If you prefer to read it as a PDF, you can download the article. I thought about releasing it as a series of shorter posts, but I had already written the whole thing and figured it would be easier to have discussion in one place.      —JakeIn "Specifying 'Just Governments,'" I argued for a generic interpretation of the resolution. On this interpretation, the resolution is not about whether some just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage---which would be an existential reading of the resolution---but rather about whether just governments in general ought to require that employers pay a living wage; specifying particular governments, then, is not sufficient to affirm.I offered two arguments for the generic interpretation. The first argument was semantic: I argued that the sentence, "Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage," expresses a generic proposition, as any competent speaker of English would recognize. The second argument was pragmatic: I argued that only the generic interpretation can explain the irrelevance of the trolly negative observation that there are no just governments; it would be bad for fairness and education if this observation were relevant, and most debaters rightly agree that it is irrelevant, so they must accept the generic interpretation. There is a technical, philosophical distinction between "semantics" and "pragmatics"; that is not how I am using the terms here. I call an argument semantic if it appeals to what the resolution means. I call an argument pragmatic if it appeals to the benefits of interpreting the resolution in some way.I have heard no semantic argument for the existential interpretation, although I have heard a few pragmatic arguments for it. The pragmatic arguments are mostly recycled arguments that people would make regardless of the topic, and I do not find them compelling. But I believe that these pragmatic considerations are irrelevant. As I wrote in my previous article,

The existential interpretation is not even, as I see it, eligible. So its pragmatic benefits are irrelevant. Compare: I think it would be better if the resolution were, “It is not the case that just governments ought to . . . .” But that’s not the resolution, so it’s not even an eligible interpretation in a T debate.

But I offered no arguments for this view about the priority of resolutional semantics. It was just an assumption, and perhaps the most controversial assumption in my article. I would now like to defend this assumption.My view probably seems obvious to some people and incoherent to others. Outsiders to national circuit LD may find it ridiculous that anyone would find it necessary to defend it at such length. But some circuit LDers may think that my view rests on a conceptual confusion about topicality. Argumentation theorists, however, have defended the priority of semantics in the context of CEDA (Murphy 1994), NPDA (Merrell 2015), and NFA LD (Diers 2010) debate. Why should the view be coherent in these contexts but not in high school LD? Or do these authors simply fail to understand what topicality means? I don't think that either hypothesis is very credible.Murphy, Merrell, and Diers argue that pragmatic considerations are circular, unverifiable, self-undermining, subjective, non-unique, and ungrounded in argumentation theory. I agree with some of those arguments, and I shall not rehearse them here.¹ I shall instead focus on the case for the priority of semantics.The article comes in three sections. In section 1, I offer a simple argument for the semantic approach. This approach is grounded in the requirement to debate the resolution. But if this requirement is justified by appeals to fairness and education, then shouldn't we just compare interpretations with respect to those values? I explain why we shouldn't. I also explain how my view is less vulnerable to critiques of topicality than the pragmatic approach. In section 2, I discuss the parametric conception of topicality, which some have thought justifies the pragmatic approach and, more specifically, the use of plans regardless of resolutional semantics. I argue that the parametric conception, when properly clarified, does not justify either implication. In section 3, I consider the objection that pragmatic considerations have semantic impacts because debate is a unique context with its own lexicon. This objection, I believe, requires much further evidence before it can justify the pragmatic approach to resolutional interpretation.Let me make three caveats before defending my view. First, my view is not that pragmatic reasons are completely irrelevant to resolutional interpretation. I think, rather, that they should be lexically inferior to semantic reasons. (Think of the priority of basic liberties over equality in Rawls's conception of justice.) Pragmatic considerations cannot justify interpretations that are ruled out on semantic grounds. If the resolution does not mean X, then it doesn't matter how much better it would be to debate X. But if the resolution might mean either X or Y, then the topicality debate can come down to pragmatic considerations. But note that the debate between "competing interpretations" and "reasonability" is relevant here: if the resolution is truly ambiguous between X and Y, then even if X does better than Y on pragmatic grounds, the affirmative might have the right to select a reasonable but suboptimal interpretation. But this question does not, I think, affect the priority of semantic considerations.Second, my view is not that plans are bad. On the contrary, I think that plans are good, but only when they affirm the resolution. Whether some plan affirms their resolution (i.e., whether it is topical) is a function of the resolution's semantics. To repeat, I have nothing against plans in general, and I believe that specification of some resolutional parameter may be permissible, if not obligatory, on many topics. One of the great things about LD is that our resolutions are diverse not only in their subject matter but also in their structure. This requires debaters to analyze each resolution with a fresh eye and not simply to import concepts and assumptions that may have applied to old resolutions into theoretical norms for each new one. But when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It is easier to continue with the same assumptions, as long as they are sufficiently shared by one's peers on the national circuit, rather than reinventing the theoretical wheel every two months. It is important to resist this temptation and not to ignore the meaning of the resolution, even and especially if you may be more comfortable debating a different resolution.Third, I do not think my view is best captured by the label "Textuality First," under which some circuit LDers often seem to lump all semantic arguments. I think this label came into use around 2007 or so, and it strikes me as uninformative: it's like making "topicality" your standard for topicality. The meaning of the resolution is not just one consideration among others. The extant literature favors an alternative strategy. Murphy, Merrell, and Diers classify various standards as truth-based or accuracy-seeking (e.g., intent, field context, grammar, source credibility, common usage, etc.) and others as non-truth-based or debate-based (e.g., ground and limits). I have instead suggested a distinction between semantic and pragmatic considerations. These minor differences in classification are not important. The important point is that what the resolution means is not just one consideration among others, and that there may be conflicting semantic considerations to be weighed. I suspect that many debaters lump semantic arguments under a single "textuality" standard because they don't know of a more descriptive label to distinguish each of their arguments. Let me emphasize, then, that the label shouldn't matter: one-word names for standards help the judge organize her flow and perhaps improve word economy in rebuttals, but debaters should feel free to make arguments without pigeonholing them.

1 Debating the Resolution

One reason why LDers may be suspicious of my view is because they see topicality as just another theory argument. But unlike other theory arguments, topicality involves two "interpretations." The first is an interpretation, in the ordinary sense of the word, of the resolution or of some part of it. The second is a rule---namely, that the affirmative must defend the resolution.² If we don't distinguish between these two interpretations, then the negative's view is merely that the affirmative must defend whatever proposition they think should be debated, not because it is the proposition expressed by the resolution, but rather because it would be good to debate. This failure to see what is distinctive about topicality leads quickly to the pragmatic approach, by ignoring what the interpretation is supposed to be an interpretation of.By contrast, the topicality rule---i.e., that the affirmative must defend the resolution---justifies the semantic approach. This rule is justified by appeals to fairness and education: it would be unfair to expect the negative to prepare against anything other than the resolution, because that is the only mutually acceptable basis for preparation; the educational benefits that are unique to debate stem from clash focused on a proposition determined beforehand. The inference to the priority of semantic considerations is simple. Consider the following argument:

1. We ought to debate the resolution.
2. The resolution means X.

Therefore,

3. We ought to debate X.

The first premise is just the topicality rule. The second premise is that X is the semantically correct interpretation. Pragmatic considerations for or against X do not, in themselves, support or deny this second premise. They might show that it would be better or worse if the resolution meant X, but sentences do not in general mean what it would be best for them to mean. At best, pragmatic considerations may show that we should debate some proposition other than the resolution. They are (if anything) reasons to change the topic, contrary to the topicality rule. Pragmatic considerations must, therefore, be weighed against the justifications for the topicality rule, not against the semantic considerations: they are objections to the first premise, not the second premise, in the argument above.

1.1 The Topicality Rule vs. Pragmatic Considerations

There is an obvious objection to my argument above. If the topicality rule is justified for reasons that have to do with fairness and education, then shouldn't we just directly appeal to such considerations when determining what proposition we ought to debate? There are at least three ways I see of responding to this objection.One way admits that such pragmatic considerations are relevant---i.e., they are reasons to change the topic---but holds that they are outweighed by the reasons for the topicality rule. It would be better if everyone debated the resolution as worded, whatever it is, than if everyone debated whatever subtle variation on the resolution they favored. Affirmatives would unfairly abuse (and have already abused) the entitlement to choose their own unpredictable adventure, and negatives would respond (and have already responded) with strategies that are designed to avoid clash---including an essentially vigilantist approach to topicality in which debaters enforce their own pet resolutions on an arbitrary, round-by-round basis. Think here of the utilitarian case for internalizing rules against lying, murder, and other intuitively wrong acts. As the great utilitarian Henry Sidgwick argued, wellbeing is maximized not by everyone doing what they think maximizes wellbeing, but rather (in general) by people sticking to the rules of common sense morality. Otherwise, people are more likely to act on mistaken utility calculations and engage in self-serving violations of useful rules, thereby undermining social practices that promote wellbeing in the long run. That is exactly what happens if we reject the topicality rule in favor of direct appeals to pragmatic considerations. Sticking to a rule that applies regardless of the topic, of the debaters' preferred variations on the topic, and of debaters' familiarity with the national circuit's flavor of the week, avoids these problems.A second strategy denies that such pragmatic benefits are relevant. This strategy is more deontological. One version of this strategy appeals to the importance of consent or agreement. Suppose that you give your opponents prior notice that you'll be affirming the September/October 2012 resolution instead of the current one. There is a sense in which your affirmation of that resolution is now predictable: your opponents know, or are in a position to know, what you will be defending. And suppose that the older resolution is conducive to better (i.e., more fair and more educational) debate. Still, it's unfair of you to expect your opponents to follow suit. Why? Because they didn't agree to debate that topic. They registered for a tournament whose invitation specified the current resolution, not the Sept/Oct 2012 resolution or a free-for-all. The "social contract" argument for topicality holds that accepting a tournament invitation constitutes implicit consent to debate the specified topic. This claim might be contested, depending on what constitutes implicit consent. What is less contestable is this: given that some proposition must be debated in each round and that the tournament has specified a resolution, no one can reasonably reject a principle that requires everyone to debate the announced resolution as worded. This appeals to Scanlon's contractualism. Someone who wishes to debate only the announced resolution has a strong claim against changing the topic, and no one has a stronger claim against debating the announced resolution (ignoring, for now, some possible exceptions to be discussed in the next subsection). So it is unfair to expect your opponent to debate anything other than the announced resolution. This unfairness is a constraint on the pursuit of education or other goods: it wrongs and is unjustifiable to your opponent.Another deontological argument might appeal to legitimate authority. The NSDA is the only entity with the legitimate authority to determine the topics. This process begins with a committee: anyone can sit in on the committee's meetings and suggest topics on their website. The process ends with a democratic voting procedure. Some philosophers believe that democratic procedures generate obligations to obey rules. This would yield an obligation to debate the resolution as worded. And some philosophers believe that legitimate authorities can generate reasons that exclude (not merely outweigh) other considerations that would usually be relevant. In general, if your teachers instruct you to do something, then you don't get to weigh up the reasons for or against it; you just have to do it.³ Similarly, although the fact that some proposition would be good to debate would usually be a reason to debate it, or a reason for the NSDA to propose it and for debaters to vote for it, that fact is irrelevant and no longer a reason if that proposition is not the chosen resolution.Here is a third kind of response to the view that we should directly appeal to pragmatic considerations when evaluating topicality. This view justifies debating propositions that are completely irrelevant to the resolution but are much better to debate. Once you say that pragmatic benefits can justify debating a proposition that isn't really what the resolution means, or that the resolution means whatever it would be best for it to mean, there is no principled way of requiring any particular threshold of similarity in order to be an eligible interpretation of the resolution. This means that the pragmatic approach justifies affirmatives that have nothing to do with the resolution. Of course some see no problem with non-topical affirmatives whose impacts outweigh the reasons to debate the resolution. But suppose you want a principled response to such strategies. You have one if you take seriously the idea that the debate should be about the resolution, and the idea that the proposition expressed by the resolution is independent of what proposition would be best to debate. Without a commitment to debating the proposition that the resolution actually means, I don't think there is a principled response to such strategies, as I discuss below.

1.2 Critiques of Topicality

My approach interacts pretty straightforwardly with critiques that see topicality (either in general or on this specific topic) as oppressive. Debaters often respond to critiques of topicality by pointing out the emancipatory or other outweighing benefits of acting like policy-makers (without explaining who is supposed to enjoy these benefits), by distinguishing between different kinds of fairness (without grounding or situating this distinction in the philosophical literature on fairness), and by going hard for theory (without appealing to an actual theory of debate pedagogy). These strategies feed the link: it probably is exclusionary to make up hoops for one's opponents to jump through, in the form of pseudo-rules, -concepts, and -impacts designed to force them to debate on one's favored terms, even if one's intentions are good. And the initial link is, I think, usually pretty credible, because the status quo approach to topicality is based on how one wants one's opponents to debate, not on the meaning of a sentence that is accessible and, in principle, knowable to everyone. It reeks of the advice, given by some debate instructors, to run theory against any ways in which one's current debate round falls short of the round one most wishes to debate.The semantic approach to topicality, by contrast, appeals to an impartial rule requiring students to debate the resolution, whatever it means, regardless of what one wants it or thinks it would be best for it to mean. Some might think that this rule is still objectionably exclusionary. But that claim is much less credible than the link to topicality as many currently run it. Let's briefly consider three possible arguments for the claim.First, some might argue that the notion of "meaning" on which the semantic approach is based is illusory and oppressive. I realize that some authors claim to hold this view, but I don't take it very seriously. If it were illusory, then how could the judge grasp the meaning of the argument? And would it really be oppressive to point out that some extension of an argument isn't what the original argument meant, and is therefore new? There may be a much more credible claim in the vicinity. For example, suppose that the affirmative interprets some word or phrase in the resolution in African American Vernacular English, and the negative objects to this interpretation on semantic grounds because it's "incorrect" English. There is good reason to reject this objection as false and oppressive, because of its assumption that some spoken dialects are objectively wrong, sloppy, or inferior to others. But this kind of scenario is much more specific than the generic objection to the semantic approach.⁴ The fact that many dialects are legitimate does not deny that words in each dialect mean things.Second, some might argue that a requirement to debate the resolution is oppressive because it excludes debaters who want to argue about other things. But that strikes me as no more exclusionary than speech times: sure, you can continue talking after the time runs out, but the judge isn't going to vote on what you say.⁵ Similarly, you can talk about whatever you want, but if it doesn't support or deny the resolution, then the judge shouldn't vote on it.⁶Third, some might argue that this particular topic is harmful to debate, and so we should reject a requirement to debate the resolution in this particular case. This argument, I think, is the most important objection to the topicality rule. This is because it challenges my claim that the topicality rule is justifiable to everyone, and that no one's claim against debating the announced resolution is as strong as one's claim against changing the topic. It also interacts with my claim about the democratic legitimacy of the topic selection process, in ways that raise serious questions about the community and debaters' obligations within it. And it is not crazy to think that some resolutions are harmful to debate. Many thought this about the domestic violence topic. Enough people thought it about a Public Forum topic in 2010---"Resolved: An Islamic cultural center should be built near Ground Zero"---that the NSDA changed the resolution (to "Resolved: High school Public Forum Debate resolutions should not confront sensitive religious issues") and instituted a democratic procedure for topic selection. It is interesting to think about what debaters would have had most reason to do if the NSDA had not changed the topic.I don't think there is a magic-bullet response to critiques of the topic, as opposed to critiques of topicality in general. I think they must be answered on a case-by-case basis, in their own terms. But one advantage of my view is that it provides a better framing for this debate. The question boils down to whether or not the topic is harmful for students to debate, and whether those harms justify breaking, or making an exception to, the topicality rule.⁷ This burden should be fairly difficult (but not impossible) to meet, because of the advantages of a topicality rule that applies regardless of the topic. The arguments for the topicality rule establish, at the very least, a default presumption in favor of debating the topic. The pragmatic approach to topicality, however, asks which proposition would be best to debate.⁸ It is extremely unlikely that the chosen resolution would be best to debate, even if it is not particularly harmful: there are almost certainly more important questions to discuss. This framing of the debate strikes me as silly: no one thinks or ever should think that the chosen resolution is the best possible proposition to debate; nor should that matter---students should, in general, debate the chosen resolution even if (or even though) the topic committee could have put better ones on the list. The semantic approach offers a more sensible threshold for when one should disobey the topicality rule.Some may be curious about two kinds of affirmative positions that are somewhat grounded in the resolution, but in unconventional ways. First, some affirmatives discuss the resolution's topic area but do not affirm the resolution as stated. That is, in my view, not topical: the resolution is a proposition, not a mere topic area. That it is a proposition is what makes the round a debate, rather than a discussion, and is crucial to testing and rewarding the kinds of skills that debate is designed to promote. This is one regrettable feature of the technical term "topicality," because although we may describe the topic of some debate as "the living wage," that is not the resolution. Talking about the topic, even in a positive way, does not suffice for affirming the resolution. Second, some affirmatives read phrases in the resolution in figurative, unconventional ways, and affirm the resolution so interpreted. That may, in my view, be topical: one merely needs evidence that the expressions in the resolution actually have the metaphorical meaning at hand. Such interpretations must be argued and answered on a case-by-case basis. The pragmatic costs (and benefits) of metaphorical interpretation are not enough, on my view, to rule those interpretations out (or in).

2 The Parametric Conception of Topicality

Another reason why some might be resistant to the priority of semantic considerations has to do with a more general view about the role of the resolution. According to the parametric view, topical advocacies are all and only those that fall within the parameter or boundary set by the resolution.⁹ This view is the basis for such metaphors as "division of ground" and "limits." Proponents of this view might reject my premise above that we should debate the resolution. Instead, the affirmative should pick an advocacy that falls within the boundary of the resolution. This boundary must, therefore, be set fairly.It's not clear to me that the parametric approach makes pragmatic considerations relevant to topicality. The obligation to set the boundary fairly lies not with the debaters, but with the topic committee, as explained above. Whereas pragmatic considerations may affect where the framers ought to set the boundary, semantic considerations determine where the already set boundary lies.¹⁰More importantly, the parametric approach, as I have stated it, read about it, and heard it defended, is extremely unclear. It is not clear whether proponents of this view think that the claim that the resolution is or sets a boundary is metaphorical or literal. If it's metaphorical, then what is it a metaphor for? If it's literal, then what is the resolution a boundary on? The resolution is a sentence. And we do not usually take sentences to be boundaries. In what follows, I'll try to clarify the parametric view and see whether it can justify the pragmatic approach to topicality.

2.1 Sets of Worlds

There is an influential approach in the philosophy of language that may shed some light on the parametric view. This approach understands propositions---i.e., the things expressed by sentences, such as the resolution---to be sets of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete way things could be or could have been. Things could have been such that I have red hair, that the bullet missed JFK, that there was no life on earth, etc. You have a possible world when you've specified, for each way things might be, whether things are that way or not. The view that propositions are sets of possible worlds takes, for example, the proposition that the sky is blue to be the set of all possible worlds in which the sky is blue. This proposition is true because the actual world belongs to that set. The proposition that I have red hair is false because the actual world is not a member of the set of possible worlds in which I have red hair. We can think of the resolution as demarcating a region in the space of possible worlds: worlds within this region are, in the relevant sense, topical. Can the affirmative specify a smaller region within this topical region, and argue that the actual world lies within this region? On the conception of propositions as sets of possible worlds, this should be fine: if the actual world belongs to a subset of a set of possible worlds, then it belongs to the larger set as well. But there are three ways in which we must be careful not to be misled by this fact.First, this does not imply that the affirmative may specify a set of just governments, for example, on the current resolution. Consider the set of worlds in which the U.S. and the UK ought to require that employers pay a living wage. Is this set a subset of the set of worlds in which just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage? Only if "just governments" gets an existential reading, so that it means something like "some just governments," and I have explained why this reading is semantically inadequate. The appeal to the resolution as a boundary makes this point no less relevant. The easiest way to see this is if the resolution said "all just governments." (There have been LD and policy resolutions that included universal quantifiers.) Many possible worlds in which the U.S. and the UK ought to require that employers pay a living wage are not elements of the proposition that all just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage. So the right to specify a subset of the resolution does not, independently of the resolution's semantics, justify specification of any part of the resolution. On my view, a topical advocacy text is just one that entails the resolution.¹¹ The parametric approach (as currently understood) is not only consistent with my view; it supports it: if propositions are sets of possible worlds, then a subset of the resolution is just a proposition that entails the resolution. That is just how subsets work, and it is unavoidable if one takes the resolution to be a set of possible worlds.A second way in which we might be misled is by allowing the affirmative to narrow down their set of possible worlds in ways that are not mentioned by the resolution: for example, a world in which just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage and all the kangaroos are free. This is extra-topicality, which can be addressed as follows. If the additional clauses are outside the scope of the "ought," then they have to show that the actual world satisfies those clauses. If the additional clauses are inside the scope of the "ought," then they have to show that the smaller set of worlds is really a subset of the resolution, which depends on the logic of "ought." Many philosophers reject that "S ought to do A and B" entails "X ought to do A" and "X ought to do B" (Jackson and Pargetter 1986), so the set of extra-topical worlds may not be a subset of the set of topical worlds.A third way in which we might be misled is by assuming that if the affirmative may specify a subset of the resolution (understood as a set of possible worlds), then the debate should focus on the smaller subset rather than the resolution---i.e., that the affirmative's chosen set of worlds cannot "grow" after its initial advocacy. This question about the rules for debate is completely independent of the whether the affirmative may specify a subset of the resolution in the first place, which I see as a question of logic and semantics.My tentative conclusion is that understanding the resolution as a parameter that forms a set of possible worlds does not support specification when at odds with resolutional semantics. This is because the set of worlds included in the resolution depends on the meaning of the sentence---i.e., on semantic considerations---and because topical subsets of worlds are simply propositions that entail the resolution.

2.2 Sets of Examples

Perhaps I have misunderstood the parametric approach, by taking the resolution to be a boundary on the wrong sorts of objects. Let's consider a different version of the parametric view. On this view, the resolution is a boundary on a set of examples. More specifically, these examples are agent-action pairs---e.g., the U.S. doing something, the UK doing something, etc., where "something" is a way in which that agent could require employers to pay a living wage. The affirmative may pick an example within that set as their advocacy, and the question of topicality is just which examples belong in the set.There is a problem with this view, however. It presupposes what I earlier called the existential interpretation of the topic. If the resolution said (or meant), "Some just governments ought to . . . ," then it would be clearly permissible, if not obligatory, for the affirmative to specify a particular just government. But if the resolution's "just governments" is instead a generic, then it's unclear why it should be legitimate for the affirmative to specify a particular government. To see why this is suspicious, suppose that the resolution stated, "All just governments ought to . . . ." I hope everyone would agree that one couldn't affirm by specifying a single government or even a few governments, even if those are examples of just governments requiring employers to pay a living wage. This is because universal generalizations are not affirmed by a single witnessing instance. Nor would it be persuasive to suggest that although the resolution is worded as a universal or generic generalization, we should ignore that feature because it is undesirable for debate. The same goes for generic generalizations. So it should be no more legitimate for the affirmative to specify a particular example on a generic resolution than it is on a universal one. At the very least, this is a reason why the version of the parametric approach under consideration cannot be applied to resolutions regardless of their wording: the resolution's semantics comes first.Moreover, debaters who adopt this version of the parametric approach have the burden to show that their specified agent is, indeed, a just government. This follows straightforwardly from the existential interpretation of the resolution, as I explained in my previous article: "Some Xs ought to ϕ" presupposes that there are Xs, and substituting A and B as the instances of Xs presupposes that they are indeed Xs. Affirmatives often respond that the resolution merely means that if some to-be-specified government were just, then it would require that employers pay a living wage. They compare the resolution to a sentence like, "Good students ought to do their homework." But this response is available only if the generic interpretation is correct. That is easy to see because the analogy supporting the argument is obviously generic. More theoretically, as many linguists have noted (Greenberg 2003, 14), generics support counterfactuals in ways that existential and universal generalizations do not. For example, consider these three statements:

Existential: Some good debaters have G2 pens.

Universal: Every good debater in this room has a G2 pen.

Generic: Good debaters are quick on their feet.

The existential generalization does not support the counterfactual that if one were a good debater, then one would have a G2 pen. Assuming that every good debater in the room just happens to own a G2 pen (i.e., that owning a G2 pen is not an entrance requirement to some strange party), the universal generalization does not support the counterfactual that if one were a good debater and in the room, one would have a G2 pen. But the generic generalization does support the counterfactual that if one were a good debater, then one would be quick on one's feet. The general lesson is that the counterfactual reading of the resolution in response to "no just governments" is only available if the generic interpretation is correct; it is not available on the existential interpretation, which is presupposed by (this version of) the parametric approach. Specifying a particular agent and refusing to show that it is a just government, therefore, fails to affirm.¹² The affirmative cannot consistently have her parametricized cake and eat it too. Moreover, everyone realizes that the resolution supports the counterfactual in question, which means that we all know that the generic interpretation is correct, regardless of whether we'd like to admit it. And if the generic interpretation is correct, then it makes no more sense to affirm by specifying a particular example than it would if the resolution were worded as a universal generalization---that is, no sense at all.I have considered two versions of the parametric view. The first, which takes the resolution to be a set of possible worlds, is consistent with my view and does not justify specification when at odds with resolutional semantics. The second, which takes the resolution to be a set of examples, understood as agent-action pairs, presupposes an existential interpretation that must be semantically justified and is inconsistently defended. Perhaps there is a different way of making good on the parametric approach that does not run into these problems. But I am not confident that the view can be made sufficiently clear, precise, and applicable to the diversity of resolutions we encounter in LD to justify the weight that it is often supposed to bear, both in justifying the use of plans and the relevance of pragmatic considerations to topicality.

3 Debate as an Autonomous Context

Some might object to my claim that pragmatic considerations are irrelevant to what the resolution means. On this view, all pragmatic considerations (when suitably impacted) are semantic considerations. The meaning of the resolution is at least partly a function of which interpretations of it are conducive to fair and educational debate. This view might be defended by appealing to unique context of a debate round.Lots of words are ambiguous. They have multiple senses. For example, "bat" is ambiguous between the animal and the thing used to hit baseballs. You can discover this ambiguity by consulting a dictionary. We determine the meaning of a given utterance of "bat" by looking at other features of the context.Some expressions acquire new meanings in technical contexts. This is a common argument for the use of definitions from specialists in an academic field. But Kupferbreg (1987) argues that competitive academic debate is its own context. So the meaning of a term when used in a resolution for competitive debate may diverge from how it used in ordinary contexts and used by specialists in the topic's academic field. Appropriateness for the debate context depends on factors related to fairness and education. So pragmatic considerations may have semantic implications for interpreting debate resolutions.Is Kupferbreg right that debate is its own autonomous context? This is a big question. Some assume that debate should be modeled on external activities in the real world, such as policymaking. Others argue that debate is a game with its own standards of success that need not be modeled on anything else. These views are not very precise, as stated. But we can make them clearer by focusing on the ballot's question, "Who did the better debating?" Some believe that the standards for good debating are standards that we can straightforwardly apply from other contexts. Others believe that standards for good debating emerge from debate itself. I think the answer must be somewhere in the middle. Standards for good debating have to come from somewhere other than competitive academic debate, because debating exists outside of competitive academic debate. The components of good debating, including argumentation, communication, and strategy, have their own standards outside of this bubble. But competitive academic debate combines these components in a way that may result in a somewhat different set of standards. LD is not a simulation of or a training ground for any other specific activity beyond debate, such as law or philosophy. Nor is it an autonomous end-in-itself. Debate is a game, but the game is designed to test and reward certain skills that have purchase outside of the game itself. Analyzing the meaning of a text may be one such skill, and debaters can develop it via a semantic approach to topicality. Changing the topic by appealing to wish lists and hyperboles about ground loss is not such a skill.But even if Kupferbreg is right that debate is its own context, it does not follow that conduciveness to good debate determines what the resolution means. Kupferbreg appeals to the consensus of linguists that words can be ambiguous. That is obvious. But linguists require evidence of ambiguity before they accept that a word is ambiguous. That is why they posit empirical tests of ambiguity (Zwicky and Sadock 1975). Many linguists and philosophers of language are guided by the maxim, "Avoid multiplying senses beyond necessity." A debater appealing to the technical context of debate would need empirical evidence that the expression has a debate-specific, technical meaning. Without this evidence, we should assume that the words in the resolution are used in their ordinary senses (or, in certain obvious cases, in the technical sense of some academic field). Moreover, it is unlikely that NSDA LD topic committee would use words in unconventional ways that could only be understood by application of debate-specific standards---especially standards that are used by a tiny minority of LD debaters, in the grand scheme of things.¹³ I don't want to put too much weight on what the topic committee thinks, because I have no idea what they think, and different members probably think different things about resolutional interpretation. My point is just that the ambiguity hypothesis is, without much further evidence, just a hypothesis, and that it is prima facie unlikely that resolutions are written not in ordinary English but rather in some technical dialect of English which the vast majority of debaters and coaches (i.e., those who primarily compete on local circuits) do not speak.I acknowledge that what may seem to be merely pragmatic considerations can have semantic implications. For example, if some proposition is obviously true or obviously false, or has no normative implications, then that proposition is almost certainly not what the resolution means, given what we know about LD. It is unlikely that anyone would propose or vote for such a resolution with that proposition in mind as its meaning. Similarly, if some interpretation would allow or require the affirmative to specify any pair of local or national governments, or a particular government whose name is not mentioned in the resolution, then you can bet that it is not what the resolution means. But such pragmatic considerations are merely evidence for the underlying semantic considerations, and they assume auxiliary premises about resolutional semantics. There is no magical construction of meanings by completely debate-specific standards.

4 Conclusion

I have argued that resolutional interpretation should be determined primarily by semantic considerations---i.e., considerations that bear on the meaning of the sentence. This is because debaters should debate the resolution, and the resolution's meaning is independent of what debaters want it to mean. This commonsense view is independently plausible and is less vulnerable to critiques of topicality than the pragmatic approach, which blurs the distinction between topicality and theory.The priority of resolutional semantics is not, I have argued, undermined by the conception of the resolution as a parameter or boundary. This conception, when clarified in obvious ways, either supports my view when applied to the topicality of plans or cannot reasonably be applied independently of semantic considerations. Nor is my view undermined by the unique context of debate. For even if debate is a unique context, there is no decisive evidence that resolutions use words in technical ways with debate-specific meanings.

References

Diers, Audra R. 2010. “Drawing the Line in the Sand: Re-Grounding the Theory and Practice of Topicality Debate.” National Forensics Journal 28: 28–66. https://b55eec4b-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/nationalforensicsassociation/research/nfa-journal/vol28no1-2.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7crM2jqgnPnsu5Hr4GTPFDlerO-jKF8sHtx3GFtlkQGga65o3DTmlAQbwLlhGoZAwgEzXEkr37w0l4jAvcLjJsQCsogGsvq2WUWX76N4uZF2fQqaI__FpK036TEReDosbBpgwQNVp5xM1TS5rhdOSEb0smsNq1ZajlpGH3tyxzBdWfaSTJMDnp7YPHBoxv5eO0NUE_jAm8wDbgVDDi_USlt9EyLYdS5RRgrKzg3RIIwhqZkHc9qAOXpA0c3fI-K6NaWbGrQ0xoo_Cx0sd5a1FPyeEZ8GqA%3D%3D&attredirects=0.Greenberg, Yael. 2003. Manifestations of Genericity. New York: Routledge.Hershovitz, Scott. 2008. Exploring Law’s Empire. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546145.001.0001/acprof-9780199546145.Jackson, Frank, and Robert Pargetter. 1986. “Oughts, Options, and Actualism.” The Philosophical Review 95 (2): 233. doi:10.2307/2185591.Kupferbreg, Eric. 1987. “Limits - The Essence of Topicality.” http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/Kupferberg1987LatAmer.htm.Merrell, Brandon. 2015. “Back to Its Roots: Accuracy as a Litmus Test for Topicality Standards.” Accessed February 6. http://www.brandonmerrell.com/papers/Merrell%20-%20Topicality.pdf.Murphy, Thomas. 1994. “The Legitimacy of Non-Truth-Base Standards in Competitive Academic Debate.” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate 15: 1–9.Raz, Joseph. 2009. The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality. Second Edition. Also available as: Paperback.Zwicky, Arnold, and Jerrold Sadock. 1975. “Ambiguity Tests and How to Fail Them.” Syntax and Semantics 4 (1): 1–36.

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1. I would suggest cutting Merrell and maybe Diers for these arguments. They also cite many articles that I haven't mentioned here, on both sides of the issue. My purpose in mentioning these authors is not to appeal to authority or consensus here. I think such appeals have little value in the theory of LD debate.↩
2. Diers proposes a change to the structure of T arguments which may capture the difference between T and other theory arguments. On Diers's model, T has a three-part structure: first, the resolutional interpretation, which includes not only definitions but also the standards and tests for meeting the interpretation; second, the violation, which explains how the affirmative advocacy fails to meet the test described; and third, the reasons why the affirmative must be topical. I don't necessarily endorse this model, but I think it is a good idea to think more creatively about the structure of topicality (and many other) arguments, given the arbitrariness of many structural conventions in LD.↩
3. See Raz (2009).↩
4. Moreover, I'm not sure that this scenario is likely to arise, because although African American Vernacular English has a distinctive phonology and grammatical features, there are few words or phrases that appear in resolutions with completely different referents, as far as I know.↩
5. And the judge would be right to simply vote against you for interrupting your opponent's prep or speech time.↩
6. The persuasiveness of this response may depend on whether topicality is run as a voting issue rather than a way of framing certain arguments as relevant or irrelevant. I have argued elsewhere that T should not, by default, be a voting issue, and that one shouldn't lose for making irrelevant arguments. But this view is independent of what I am arguing here.↩
7. There are, of course, further questions about what should be done if it is harmful. I'm just assuming, for the sake of argument, that if the topic is harmful to debate in ways that are not acknowledged by most debaters and educators in the community, then there may be a good case for disobedience in a debate round (as opposed to, say, expecting students not to debate for the duration of the topic).↩
8. At least, when this approach is combined with competing interpretations.↩
9. Some define the parametric approach as the view that the affirmative's plan "becomes" the resolution. That is not how I use the term here.↩
10. Again, it may be ambiguous or vague where the boundary lies, and here pragmatic considerations may become relevant as tiebreakers, subject to a framework of reasonability or competing interpretations.↩
11. Bob Overing has argued that this view doesn't work for all resolutions. He gives an example from 1993--94 in NDT: "Resolved: That the Commander-in-Chief power of the President of the United States should be substantially curtailed." Bob says that a plan to significantly curtail the President's power to deploy armed forces would not be topical on my view. This is because it could be true that this plan should be implemented but also that every other Commander-in-Chief power should be augmented. In that world, it would not be true that the President's Commander-in-Chief power should be substantially curtailed. There are several ways of accounting for this resolution. One can read "curtailed" as an episodic, dynamic verb that merely requires a single act of curtailment, rather than a state in which the power is curtailed overall. Affirmatives could also advocate curtailing the power in one significant way and not augmenting it in many other significant ways: this would entail the resolution even on a stative reading of "curtailed," but make some permutations of augmentation counterplans count as severance. Moreover, one of the contrasts between the Commander-in-Chief topic and the more recent war powers topic is that the former is ridiculously broad: teams ran cases about topics ranging from the President's medical staff and wartime media coverage to nuclear first-strike policy and particular status-quo court decisions. That my view makes it unclear whether the aff can propose curtailments on just one aspect of the President's Commander-in-Chief power is not a major cost: indeed, it has the virtue of explaining why this resolution from 20 years ago is worse than more recent college policy resolutions. Bob gives no other examples of policy resolutions that are not entailed by clearly permissible plans. And even if there are, my point here is that the parametric approach may not do any better than my own view.↩
12. It merely affirms a proposition supported by the resolution. But the affirmative's burden is to affirm the resolution, not to affirm a different proposition that the resolution supports. The latter burden would be absurdly easy to meet, because every resolution entails infinitely many trivial consequences.↩
13. For an interesting parallel to this claim in the theory of constitutional interpretation, see Christopher Eisgrubuer, "Should Constitutional Judges Be Philosophers?" in Hershovitz (2008).↩

Dropped Arguments Are Not True Arguments by Jacob Nails

Debaters often claim that uncontested arguments should be treated as 100% true for the purposes of the debate round. On more occasions than I can count, I have heard the negative assert that the impact of their disadvantage is now 100% likely to happen because the 1AR “dropped” it (failed to respond). This paradigm for evaluating concessions is rarely justified in round, but it wins ballots largely because it appeals to an axiom many judges already accept.While the notion has intuitive appeal, I believe that paradigmatically treating dropped arguments as certainly true is misguided. Rarely will an analytic or evidenced argument prove its claim with near certainty. What amount of evidence would it take to convince a well-informed person that living wage would collapse the economy for certain? Hopefully far more than a single study or expert prediction. Yet, even a single card on the matter – when uncontested by the opponent – is enough for most judges to treat the claim as guaranteed, even when no rational person would give the argument the same strength outside of a debate context. Judges frequently treat dropped arguments (even very bad ones) as true. This is a mistake.The fact that an argument was dropped should not give it any special status.For those that do grant that dropped arguments are true arguments, it is not immediately clear where to draw the line for which claims in a round can be treated as definitely true. The simplest paradigm would be to treat an argument as given only if there are no responses, i.e. it is totally dropped. This paradigm leads to painfully arbitrary conclusions.Imagine a negative debater whose sole response to an affirmative case was to group it and assert that no AC arguments were warranted. The five words “group the case; no warrant” (or other extremely weak arguments) should hardly play a large role in any round. However, if judges should only suspend disbelief and grant the claims 100% truth if they are uncontested, then the whole case is now significantly weaker. Strictly speaking, none of the arguments has been dropped entirely, so none of the claims is conferred the status of definite truth that comes from being dropped.Arguments don’t start at 100% likelihood.One possible modification which would avoid the above conclusion would be to hold that dropped arguments aren’t true because they are dropped per se but because arguments in general, dropped or otherwise, start out at 100% truth until diminished by the opponent. On this account, if the negative debater only offered an incredibly weak response, then the argument is almost no weaker than if it were dropped and remains at essentially 100%.Granting arguments a presumption of absolute legitimacy until responded to would arbitrarily favor the first person to take a stance on a given claim.Consider a round where one debater forwards a weak argument that economic decline would cause nuclear war, e.g. “countries will get mad and nuke their rivals in anger” (not far less warranted than some impact cards). The other debater rejoins with an even weaker reason why nuclear war will not occur, such as “all WMDs might simultaneously fail to launch from their silos.” This argument only reduces the threat of nuclear by an infinitesimal fraction of a percent, so the claim remains functionally unrefuted and thus roughly 100%.What if the roles were reversed? One debater preemptively gives an extremely weak reason to think nuclear war won’t happen, and the other responds with a relatively weak justification for why it will. “Countries will get mad and nuke their rivals” only offers very minor evidence of one possibility for nuclear war, so it would at most only reduce the starting proposition that nuclear war won’t happen to 97-98% likelihood.The judge cannot grant both of two contradictory claims the presumption of 100% certainty, and, given identical arguments, the judge’s evaluation should not fluctuate between near certainty of the impact and negligible risk depending on which of the two claims is treated as the proposition to be tested. While I view this as a reductio ad absurdum, I have seen some debaters uncritically argue that dropped AC arguments outweigh dropped NC arguments by virtue of being conceded first. I sincerely hope that the debaters in question do not actually hold this viewpoint. Any legitimate paradigm should not determine the weight to empirical evidence based on who talked first.The obvious solution is to directly compare the strength of the warrants. The stronger warrant should have more weight. Neither should start at 100%.This logic should extend to dropped arguments as well. (Carving out an exception for dropped arguments runs afoul of the same arbitrariness problems as before.) When a claim is dropped, the comparison is between the initial warrant for the claim and no warrant to the contrary. Having some evidence for a proposition and none against it is not sufficient to confirm the proposition with certainty. If the affirmative offers one empirical example of a time that economic collapse led to conflict and the negative fails to provide a counter-example, a reasonable person would not conclude that the next economic collapse will definitely cause a war. Why shouldn’t the judge evaluate the round as a reasonable person?The modern “tabula rasa” paradigm perversely favors bad arguments.I suspect that the most common rationale for accepting dropped arguments without scrutiny is judges’ desire to be “tabula rasa” (blank slate), i.e. to avoid bringing biases and preconceptions into their decisions. Giving an argument less than “full weight” for any reason (other than the responses of an opponent) would strike many as blatant judge intervention.The issue with this view is the assumption that the full weight of every argument is 100%. Naively accepting every assertion with the semblance of a warrant to back it is not objectivity; it’s lazy judging. A claim with a number of strong examples supporting it should carry more weight than a claim backed by one weak example. A judging paradigm that treats either one as enough to establish complete certainty does a disservice to debaters making stronger arguments. It flips the incentives, so short arguments with extreme conclusions have more strategic value than developed arguments with reasoned conclusions. A truly objective tabula rasa paradigm would give the latter more sway in the decision, but most disadvantage impacts, theory standards, and philosophical frameworks in LD tend to reflect the former. Current debate norms do not favor objectively better arguments.The problem is particularly stark in the case of statistical arguments. Suppose that one side asserts that economic collapses lead to war and supports the claim by citing a study showing that collapse is linked to military aggression 50% of the time. Suppose further that the other side drops this argument. Surely, the judge should not treat the prospect of war as 100%. To do so would be to go against the very argument being conceded (that the change of the next economic collapse causing war is something on the order of 50%). And if judges shouldn’t evaluate a statistical argument as 100% certain, then why should weaker arguments with more outlandish claims get a pass?The baseline for evaluation should be the warrant, not the claim.One last middle ground position that someone still subscribing to status quo norms of non-intervention might take would be to argue that dropped arguments should be taken at face value. Rather than deciding whether the warrants of a card justify the conclusion the author reaches, judges should accept the conclusion as sound. This view wouldn’t entail outlandish conclusions of 100% certainty because most authors make far more modest predictions.If taken seriously, even this paradigm would substantially diverge from common practice. Take an average four card disadvantage. More than likely, each of those authors hedges their rhetoric with terms like “might” and “could” (often in multiple places per card), which don’t always make it into debaters’ underlining of the evidence. If such “could” claims appear four times in the disadvantage, and each “could” means something like 20-40% risk, then the combined risk of the disadvantage would start at somewhere between 2% and .2%. That’s only after pricing in the uncertainties admitted by the authors, not the opponent’s responses.While that modification alone is already a far cry from the “100% risk” claims that currently beset advantage/disadvantage debates, I don’t believe it goes far enough. Evaluating an argument by the strength of the claim leaves in place the same perverse incentives for debaters to rush to bad arguments with hyperbolic conclusions. If an argument is as strong as the claim it makes, then the most strategic sources are the authors on the fringe of the literature base who make the most sweeping and radical claims. By contrast, the authors who acknowledge counter-arguments and draw restrained conclusions would have less strategic utility.Minimizing bias does not mean treating all arguments as equally legitimate. A fair paradigm should give stronger weight to stronger arguments, so if judges striving to be “tabula rasa” find themselves consistently voting for bad arguments, this should be evidence that the dominant paradigm needs to be recalibrated.In any case, I am skeptical that simply accepting dropped claims on face obviates the need for the judge to do “work” after the round. Authors rarely quantify their predictions precisely, and there is usually room for interpretation whether a journalist saying that a minimum wage hike “might” swing the next election intended to convey a 30% risk or a 3% risk. With analytic claims made by the debaters themselves, the task is even tougher. Each side will of course claim that their arguments prove near certainty in their conclusion, but how much is genuine conviction, and how much is strategic posturing?In my experience, theory debates in particular are plagued by bad analytics which are falsely legitimized by “tabula rasa” judging paradigms. Debaters blitz out one-liners like “education comes first because schools won’t fund debate otherwise,” or “time skew outweighs ground skew because you need time to make arguments” in hopes that the opponent drops them. These are barely coherent thoughts, let alone well-warranted arguments. Even conceded, they should count only slightly (at best) in favor of their respective conclusions.Most judges are reticent, and with good reason, to insert themselves and their opinions into the round, but reluctance to intervene has slid too far in the direction of outright laziness in judging, and many judges have abdicated all responsibility for evaluating arguments. This article leaves open-ended how to weigh argument quality fairly, but it definitely does not mean treating every warrant as 100% proof of its conclusion, and it does not mean taking every dropped claim at face value. Jacob Nails debated for 4 years for Starr’s Mill high school in Georgia, graduating in 2012. As a debater, he won the Saint James School tournament and the Georgia state tournament, cleared at NFL nationals, and qualified to the TOC. As a first year policy debater in college, he won the JV Southeast district championship and cleared at every regular season tournament he attended with GSU. In his first year as a coach, he coached a sophomore to quarterfinals of the TOC.

Waging Half the War

Nope, this isn’t another rant against this season’s topics. Though I admittedly haven’t observed any debates on the January-February iteration, it strikes me as one of the better ones. So you’ll have to forgive this particular missive for its cynical undertones. Important as discussions about living wages—and their alternatives—may be, negative advocacies should adopt a firm critical stance. This is one of those occasions when one shouldn’t hesitate to go “further to the Left.” While wage laws appear to be progressive solutions in today’s political landscape, that says some pretty unfortunate things about that landscape. The resolution’s modest advances toward some modicum of socio-economic equity is more than a gesture to be sure. It would make real differences in real lives, and that’s obviously a good thing from just about any policy-making perspective. Some may even argue that it’s a critical baby step toward more robust socially conscious solutions. Maybe. But the more probable product of this kind of discourse is significantly less appetizing. Piecemeal laws create a comforting illusion of progress. They immunize the status quo from more damning criticism, creating a readymade rebuttal maintaining that something is already being done—that the problems are already being solved. From social safety nets to middle class tax cuts, these are the leftovers that keep the rest of us just satisfied enough. And they come at a moment in history when the gap between the rich and poor is as expansive as ever. No amount of scholarship is going to change that, not without the public exerting its will on a widespread basis. Unfortunately, that public will almost certainly remain complacent so long as lawmakers continue making so-called strides. The systemic dimensions of capital formation will remain unchanged, because bandaid solutions like wage laws are offered as ostensibly dramatic change. A moment of honesty is probably in order. I don’t think capitalism is an entirely bad thing. It’s probably the best option we have. To whatever extent it’s “evil,” it’s the least of those evils that seek to administrate the social space. Criticisms needn’t necessarily indict the entire edifice of capitalism. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t without serious internal problems—problems that might be chalked up to something of an identity crisis. We believe in things like open markets and fair competition, but the reality of modern-day capitalism seems less and less familiar. With ever smaller fractions of the population owning greater shares of global wealth, it’s become harder to tell the difference between the capitalism we knew and love…and its arch nemesis alternative. Wasn’t the point of this whole free-market-thing to diffuse the concentration of power, to prevent a select few from exerting undue influence over the political process? Negative debaters aren’t going to change any of that simply by saying living wage laws are bad. And chances are they’ll have difficulty articulating a truly viable alternative. There’s still something to be said for thinking bigger, however. From this perspective, most affirmative positions are conceptually myopic. Indeed, the very premise that incremental policy changes are capable of addressing what increasingly appears to be a runaway nightmare is shortsighted according to this account. A change in thinking is needed. If capitalism isn’t going anywhere—and it probably isn’t—then we should pursue some measure of radicalization from within. That evolution may be more cultural than legislative, and it’s important we don’t confuse the two—especially when adopting the latter obscures a need for the former. Any law that helps the least of us is a good thing, and there’s no way around that. But nor is there any way around the uncomfortable fact that such would-be panaceas only wage half the war.

Opponent-Adjusted Performance Score: An Alternative to Speaker Points as the First Tiebreaker

Introduction

Speaker points suck - we all know it, and we all complain about it. Its problems are why more and more tournaments have started minimizing their influence by breaking all 4-2’s or 5-2's.In this article, I will propose a way to make the use of speaker points as a tiebreaker better - hopefully significantly better. I call it Opponent-Adjusted Performance Score, and it looks like this:I promise, it's easier than it looks. Please bear with me. :)

The Problem with Speaker Points (If you already know this you can skip to the next section)

1. Inconsistent scalesAnyone who has ever looked at a tournament result packet or read a few judge paradigms realizes that the scales judges use are entirely inconsistent. Some judges regularly assign double 30’s, while others go seasons without assigning a single one. While some judges will not give below a 27 unless something horrific takes place in the round, other judges regularly drop as low as 24 or 25. Because debaters will likely be judged by very different sets of judges, this inconsistency makes speaker points (SP) largely useless as a metric for comparing the quality of debaters in a tournament.Some tournaments have attempted to address this problem by explicitly endorsing certain scales. This strategy has always failed. Judges either fail to effectively implement the change, slide back into old habits, or completely ignore the suggestions.2. Point InflationA related but distinct problem is that average speaker points have been steadily rising over time. Inflation has many potential causes, but I think the most commonly cited is the desire for judges to make debaters happy. If a judge has to make a decision in a close round, has an RFD they are not confident in, or wants to keep a debater’s coach happy, they will give higher than normal points. Some judges also feel compelled to give high points to good debaters even in rounds where they perform poorly because giving a 28 might keep someone otherwise deserving from breaking. These incentives also create upward pressure on the scales of all other judges. As points rise suddenly anything below a 29 can “screw” a debater, causing them not to break, so other judges adjust their scales upward to avoid being the judge that ruined a debater’s tournament.  Point inflation makes SP less useful as a tiebreaker because it compresses the scale (meaning there is less distinguishing debaters of different seeds) and SP have cease to be indicators of a debater’s skill.3. Fails to Account for Strength of Opponent  SP are intended to measure the strength of a debater compared to the rest of the field at a tournament, based on their in-round performance. It does not take into account the strength of a debater's opponents. This is a big problem. A debater who goes 4-2, while only losing to debaters who finish undefeated, is clearly more deserving of breaking than a 4-2 who loses to average debaters. While both have the same number of wins, the losses are not comparable. It seems wrong that the second debater should break, while the first does not.

Potential Solutions

1. Opponent Wins

On the surface it appears that at the very least Opp Wins (OW) account better for the strength of opponents than SP, so perhaps OW are a good candidate to be the new first tiebreaker. However, while OW does account for opponent strength, OW are often completely out of the control of debaters. If a debater happens to be paired against two really good debaters in presets they could be advantaged over another debater, who by no fault of his own, hit easier opponents in presets.2. OW + SPA few tournaments have used OW + SP to break ties - MBA comes to mind, for example. While this does a better job taking into account strength of opponent than SP alone, and a better job taking into account performance than OW, the faults of both still exist.3.  Judge VarianceI think in an ideal world Judge Variance is the best alternative to SP, other than OAPS. For those who do not know, Judge Variance (JV) is a measure of how many more (or less) speaker points a debater receives from a judge, given the average of that judge’s speaker point distribution over the course of a tournament. So, if all of a debater's judges collectively average 28.5 and they receive an average of 29, their JV would be .5. While JV seems like a reasonable solution to the tiebreaker problem in theory, there are still a few problems. For instance,  JV is meaningless without a large sample size. Some judges only judge a few rounds at a tournament and if those rounds are unusually good or bad, JV scores could be completely skewed.Some have suggested creating a a database that would allow us to use all the rounds a judge has judged in a season (or ever?) to calculate JV. Beyond the obvious logistical difficulties of this solution, a database still would not solve judges who judge very infrequently, or first-year-out judges.Even if these difficulties could be overcome, problems remain. First, point inflation creates a major problem for JV. As scales become compressed differences in JV do as well. Second, the biggest problem for JV is that it does not take into account opponent strength at all.So, at least on its own JV is likely not the solution to the SP problem. However, it is possible that if the sample size problem could be overcome JV could be incorporated into OAPS as a way of more effectively solving the problem of inconsistent scales. This could be done by substituting both debater's JV scores in each round for their SP.

Introducing Performance Score

1. ExplanationPerformance Score (PS) is defined as a debater’s speaker points (SP) in a given round minus the speaker points of their opponent (OSP) in that round:For example, if in round 1 Debater A receives a 29 and their opponent, Debater B, receives a 28, then Debater A has a round 1 PS of +1, and Debater B as a PS of -1.PS differs in a number of ways from raw SP. Instead of measuring the skill of a debater in an absolute sense, PS is only a measurement of the difference between two debaters in a given round. Basically, PS is a measure of the “margin of victory” or the “skill gap” demonstrated by debaters in a given round. The difference between PS and SP is the same as the difference between saying the Minnesota Vikings scored 42 points, and saying the Minnesota Vikings beat the Green Bay Packers by 3 touchdowns (21 points).Over the course of a tournament a debater’s PS for each round can be added to find their Total Performance Score (TPS):Below are hypothetical tournament results for a debater.  The results show what TPS would look like in practice:

Round	1	2	3	4	5	6	Total
SP	28.5	29	30	29	29.5	28	174
OSP	27	28.5	29	30	27.5	29	171
PS	1.5	0.5	1	-1	2	-1	3

2. Advantages of PS

• PS limits the impact of inconsistent judge scales. As explained above using SP as a tie-breaker requires us to treat SP from different judges the same, even though we know that the scales used by judges are completely inconsistent. PS  allows us to use SP assigned from different judges while diminishing the impact of inconsistent judge scales. A PS of +1 can be achieved when Debater A receives 30 SP while Debater B receives 29 SP, or when Debater A receives 28 SP and Debater B receives 27 SP. I believe that the difference in SP is more consistent than the absolute SP given by judges. The main exceptions are judges who assign both debaters high speaks in an effort to make everyone happy, which brings me to the second advantage of PS.
•  PS removes the incentive to inflate speaker points. In a world where PS is used as the first tiebreaker instead of SP, the incentives that drive point inflation are much less powerful. The desire to make both debaters happy, or to cover an uncertain/bad decision with good speaks, no longer makes sense. PS is zero-sum, so by assigning one debater higher SP than they deserve, a judge is punishing the better debater. PS would mean that in most cases double 30’s would no longer be a cause of celebration for both debaters, unless of course both debaters end up with very positive TPS numbers. In a case where both debaters are actually very strong, the double 30 could be slightly positive for both.
• Better measures the skill demonstrated in a given round. Absolute speaks do not fully account for a debater’s performance in the round. Often decisions made by one debater, like which positions to run, can affect the performance of the other debater. If debater knows their opponent is bad at framework debate, then choosing a philosophy-heavy position can cause their opponent to debate worse than they otherwise would. Even the persuasive skills of a debater can negatively affect their opponents debating by convincing them they are behind in certain parts of the debate. Thus, point differential is a better way of grading debaters - it takes into account both debaters performance and their mutual influence on each other’s performance.

 3. Remaining IssuesPS largely fails to account for the strength of opponents. Like SP and OW, PS still fails to adequately address differences in the strength of opponents. If Debater A debaters significantly worse debaters in rounds 1 and 2, their PS might be artificially inflated. In fact, it is possible that PS would be more skewed by opponent strength than SP. 

Refining Performance Score: Opponent-Adjusted PS

1. ExplanationOpponent-Adjusted Performance Score attempts to adjust for the strength of opponent by using the average of the Total PS scores of a debater’s opponent:While the above equation might look complicated, the concept breaks down simply: you take a debater’s Round 1 opponent’s TPS, add it to the Round 2 opponent’s TPS … until you add the TPS score of all opponents that a debater hits in prelims of a tournament. Then you divide by the total number of rounds (take the average).This process takes into account a couple things: first, if you sum an opponent’s PS score, you take into account whether, in general, that opponent performs well or poorly. An opponent that performs well might consistently get +1 or +1.5 as a PS score in rounds - the sum of their PS over prelims would thus be a positive number. Similarly, an opponent that performs poorly might get a lower positive number or a negative number as a result of summing their PS’s across prelims. Averaging the aggregates of a debater’s opponent’s PS scores would then say, on average, that debater faced “good” or “bad” opponents and would accordingly adjust the debater’s score.So, if a debater has a TPS of +5 but if the average of their opponents TPS is -5, then that debater has performed exactly as expected and would earn an OAPS of 0. If on the other hand a debater had a TPS of +5 but their opponents have an average TPS of +1, then that debater would receive an OAPS of 6, to account for their above average competition.2. OAPS takes into account strength of opponent without the problems of OW.While OW are hindered by the randomness of presets, and unfairly reward debaters for hitting good opponents regardless of their performance, OAPS avoids both problems. Debaters are only rewarded for performing better than average against a particular debater and only punished for performing below average. If a debater hits a great opponent, who averages a PS of +3, but debates them well enough to earn a PS of -1, they are rewarded for debating better than the average debater against that opponent. On the other hand, if a debater hits that same opponent and receives a PS of -4, they are punished for debating below average relative to that opponent. Unlike OW, they do not receive a bonus because they happened to debate a talented opponent.3. Potential Objections

• "This seems too complicated." -- Eh, not really. While the formula may seem complicated, it is really not more difficult to calculate JV, something tab software already does. While TRPC and Tabroom.com do not currently calculate OAPS, I suspect that it would not take much to add that to the software.
• "That is not what speaker points are for." -- Some might object that PS doesn't make sense because SP are not about relative skill, but rather speaking ability or something else entirely. Sure, that's fair, but it really doesn't make a huge difference. We already primarily use SP to break ties, if we believe that speaking ability is how ties ought to be broken, all of the same reasoning offered above still applies.
• "This doesn't solve for inconsistent judge scales. If one judge has a bigger range than another, doesn't that mess things up?" --  This was sort of addressed above, but it is a big enough point to address again. It is true that nothing can really be done to solve this issue completely. However, OAPS does a few things to address it. First, OAPS creates an incentive for judges to use more of the scale. Some of the same reasons speaks have become inflated could work in favor of OAPS. Judges who use a compressed scale would end up punishing good debaters, over time judges would adapt in order to protect the best debaters, and to avoid making people angry. Second, OAPS should be more consistent between judges than SP. I believe that there is not as much inconsistency in separation judges create between debaters with SP as there is with the absolute SP that are assigned.
• "I don't know how, but it seems like low-point wins would mess everything up, right?" -- Not at all. Under the current system, a low-point win is a signal that even though a debater lost this specific round, the judge believes they are" better" (at whatever set of skills a judge believes is relevant for SP), and if the two debaters are tied at the end of the tournament, the losing debater should be favored. The same would be true if we chose to switch to OAPS.
• "OAPS? That name sucks!" -- I agree. Any suggestions for a better name? If this is going to stick, we need something catchy.

Conclusion

I believe that our current method of determining debater seeding is broken, instead tournaments should use OAPS. SP are too flawed to be the first tiebreaker and OAPS provides an alternative that solves most if not all of the problems presented by SP.I would love to hear thoughts from readers on how to improve OAPS, additional objections, or alternative metrics in the comments section.Chris Theis is the owner and Co-Director of Victory Briefs. He won the 2008 and 2009 TOC and currently coaches at Peninsula High School (CA) and Apple Valley High School (MN). 

The 4-2 Screw by Breann Smith

It is a major tournament, and you have hit fierce competitors, including Round Robin participants. You are 4-2, and have a good chance of breaking. Then, the breaks are posted. You rush up to the list, and scan it eagerly for your name. After checking then double-checking, you look to the speaker point cut off. You realize you have missed breaks. By six-tenths of a speaker point. At major tournaments, most 4-2s are expected to break, but what if a debater’s speaks are not high enough? This happened, for example, to six 4-2s at the Greenhill tournament, where the average 4-2 missed advancing by merely six-tenths of a speaker point.¹  This phenomenon, known as the “4-2 Screw”, affects all tournaments, national and local alike. Many ways of evaluating speaker points exist, and within those evaluations there exist a variety of variables.

How “Pretty” You Speak

Some judges evaluate rounds based on how “pretty” the debater speaks. While this is consistent with what most think when they hear the term “speaker points,” it has a few fundamental flaws. First, it advantages those with speech patterns that are closest to the judge. If the debater speaks like they would, the judge is more likely to think they speak well and thus reward them with higher speaks. Inversely, if they speak in a way that the judge finds peculiar, the odds of higher speaker points do not seem likely. Second, this method of evaluating speaker points is not ideal because some may have an accent the judge finds cacophonous, or English may not be their primary language. In both of these cases, the debater is at a disadvantage because the judge may not think they spoke well and thus give them lower speaks. Both of these points have been confirmed by a study at the University of California,² which found we strongly prefer voices that sound similar to our own and we prefer “breathier” tones as opposed to more “raspy” ones. The third and most important problem with evaluating how “pretty” a debater speaks is it disadvantages those with speech impediments, such as stutters, lisps, etc. This puts the debater in a double bind of sorts. They could either a) tell the judge about the impediment or b) not tell the judge about it. With the first option, the judge could over, or under, compensate with their speaker points, depending on that particular judges evaluative tendencies. With the second option, the debater risks receiving poor speakers points due to something they could not prevent. Each of these options leaves much to be desired.

Strategic Decisions

The second type of evaluative mechanism for evaluating speaker points, strategic decisions, seems even more arbitrarily decided than how well one speaks. First, it encourages judges to come up with their own strategies of how they would win the round. This is harmful because they may not pay full attention to the arguments presented in the round because they are thinking of their own strategy, and it rewards debaters for thinking like the judge does. Second, judges may not see the strategy the debater was going for. While thinking of their own strategy, judges might not see, or even completely dismiss, the strategies actually present in round. This is unique to speaker points because judges have empirically voted off arguments they do not like, and the same could go for strategies. With speaker points, there are more variables in it’s determination and thus less likely the resulting points would be very high.

Out Round Odds

Odds of being in out rounds are a third method of deciding speaker points. This has two main problems, the first of which is the competition level of the particular round. If it is a competitive round, and the opponent is a nationally ranked debater, a good local debater might not show their best. This particular round may not show their true chances of being in out rounds and thus reflect in their speaker points, affecting their chances of breaking. The second main problem is the debaters odds of being in out rounds are often determined by those speaker points. If according to this scale a judge views a 28 as “good and should clear” but the speaker point cutoff is around 29, the debater that “should clear” may miss clearing based off those speaks.

Entertainment

Yet another way to evaluate speaker points is how entertaining the debater is in round. Unless the judge puts exactly what they find funny on their paradigm, debaters will not know how to “be humorous” according to what the judge likes. This is not Humorous Interp, and debaters often make arguments that when paired with humor would be inappropriate. For example, if an affirmative ran a Revenge Porn AC on this topic it would be kind of hard to crack a joke somewhere in there without being plain offensive. Further, if a debater is not funny according to the judge they either will not get good speaks or the judge will decide their speaks in some other arbitrary manner. Another problem with this method is how does one separate out the categories of “humor?” Would a 28 be, “You were kind of funny, but I didn’t laugh,” but then what about a 29, or a 30?  This seems to be an arbitrary and ineffective measure of who should break at a tournament.

Point Fairies & Tenths-of-a-Point

We all know and love those judges that give out 30s, but is that really a measure of who should break? According to this paradigm, you can be a decent or mediocre debater and still get high speaks. While this is encouraging to the debater who receives the 30, it creates an unbalance within the tournament pool. If a debater goes 4-2, hits good competition, and struggled for 28s and 28.5s does not break over a debater who was under the same conditions but received a 30, the pool has effectively been skewed despite similar debating skill. Another point system that skews the breaks (although somewhat less juristically) is utilizing tenths of a point. With the inflation before mentioned, some judges have started using half or even tenths of points to differentiate debaters. While the intention behind this was good, it creates only more arbitrary distinctions. Is there really a difference between a 28.9 and a 29? Odds are no, but judges insist on doing this to offset inflation. This only created frustration when, for example, a debater misses breaking at the Greenhill tournament by .3 speaks. This clearly shows how important arbitrary tenths of a speaker point really are in the grand scheme of breaks.

The Alternative

Times may seem bleak for 4-2s everywhere, but do not fret, there is an alternative! Instead of the traditional “Record-Speaks-Opponent Wins-Opponent Speaks” format, tournaments should utilize opponent wins BEFORE speaker points. If power matching and breaks were determined by opponent wins, the quality of rounds would increase. Say for example two TOC level debaters hit in one round, and two novice debaters also hit round one. Due to Mutual Preference Judging, the national circuit debaters would most likely pref a judge that does not hand out speaker points, because they are constantly judging that level of competition. On the flip side, the novice debaters at that same tournament may get new judges or point fairies. The result would be one TOC level loser and one novice winner, seemingly undifferentiated according to speaker points. By using opponent wins, the TOC level debater would be rewarded with higher chances of breaking for hitting good competition while the novice level debater would be less likely to break due to the quality of their competition. Using opponent wins would also increase the quality of rounds by weeding out the “easy draws.” This is due to the matching based off of opponent wins pairing debaters who hit similar level competition, thus increasing the quality of the round.Once written down, this alternative does not seem all that crazy. In fact, when asked “How should breaks and power matching be determined,” 72.4% of those involved in debate were in favor of opponent wins, while only 27.6% were in favor of continuing to use speaker points.² Compared to arbitrarily decided speaker points, using opponent wins before speaker points seems to be a very supported and viable option for determining breaks and power matching.

Notes And Methodology

1. For each competitor, it was calculated how many points they were from breaking. Those points were then averaged to get the final result of .6, meaning that the average 4-2 missed breaking by six-tenths of a speaker point.
2. McGuire, Grant. [Professor at the University of California Department of Linguistics http://people.ucsc.edu/~gmcguir1/] "Why Some Voices Sound More Attractive." Phys.Org. American Institute of Physics, 5 Nov. 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. <http://phys.org/news/2010-11-voices.html>.
3. The question “How should breaks and power matching be determined” was presented to five different debate-centered Facebook groups over a time span of one week [October 22, 2014-October 29, 2014]: (i), NSDA Student Leadership Committee, (ii) High School Policy, (iii) Debate Girls 2016, (iv) YAAS Lab, (v) Finktank. Anyone who was in multiple groups only got one vote. If that same person voted one way in one group, and another way in a different group, their vote(s) were voided.

NSDA SLC:Total Members- 173Number Of Respondents- 54Opponent Wins- 47Speaker Points- 7High School Policy:Total Members- 2,059Number Of Respondents-95Opponent Wins- 61Speaker Points- 34Debate Girls 2016:Total Members- 82Number Of Respondents- 15Opponent Wins- 8Speaker Points- 7YAAS Lab:Total Members- 21Number Of Respondents- 9Opponent Wins- 8Speaker Points- 1Finktank:Total Members- 16Number Of Respondents- 8Opponent Wins- 7Speaker Points- 1Total: 171Number For Opponent Wins: 131Number For Speaker Points: 50Percentage for Opponent Wins: 72.4%Percentage for Speaker Points: 27.6%

The Reverse Voting Issue in LD Debate by Paras Kumar

Paras received 5 bids his senior year, including winning Harker, top speaker and finalist at Stanford, quarterfinalist at Bronx, semi-finalist at Voices RR, and octofinalist at the 2011 TOC. Paras was the only student in octos of TOC his senior year who competed independently and without a formal coach. Since graduating from Rancho Bernardo, Paras has drilled extensively at varying points over the last few years with Regan Grishaber (5^th speaker + semifinalist 2012 TOC), Jacob Pritt (top speaker + octofinalist 2012 TOC), Pranav Reddy (top speaker + champion 2014 Glenbrooks), Chris Kymn (finalist 2014 TOC), and many other successful debaters. Paras is currently taking a gap year between his junior and senior year at UC Berkeley, where he is getting a B.S. in Environmental Science. You can reach him by email at pkumar15 AT berkeley DOT edu. 

Introduction

I just went to my first debate tournament in 20 months and am saddened by how esoteric, prevalent, and irresolvable theory debate has become. It’s like y'all are afraid of engaging each other on the actual topic. Here is my formal reasoning for considering theory and T as reverse voting issues (RVI) when they are originally read as reasons to reject the debater in the context of Lincoln-Douglas debate. I argue that the debater who called the other debater a cheater should lose the round if it turns out their opponent did not in fact cheat. The RVI forces argumentative responsibility, combats time skew, and creates reciprocal access to theoretical arguments. This ultimately decreases theory debates and encourages clash on the topic, something there was a disturbing dearth of at CPS.This article is structured in 3 parts: (1) answering common objections to the RVI, (2) my general observations and advice from years of coaching and competing on this debate and (3) why RVI’s are stupid and illustrate the need to seriously reconsider expanding LD rounds.For the sake of simplicity, my thoughts are written from the perspective of being an affirmative, but RVI’s are equally necessary to protect the 2NR in a world where the 1AR is the first speech in the debate to introduce theory as a reason to reject the debater. Feel free to bracket and change “aff” to “neg” and vice versa. A lot of my weighing arguments are specific to 1AR time skew, but they are equally (if not more) relevant to 2N time skew if the original theory shell was introduced in the 1AR. All my weighing arguments are supercharged in this scenario due to lack of a 3N to deal with 2AR responses to the counterinterp.

Part 1

A big assumption my arguments make is that we should try to debate the topic and minimize theory debate. Ross Brown wrote some fantastic comments on nsdupdate a few years ago about the benefits of theory debate (article title is “Avoiding Frivolous Theory"). I won’t engage in the theory good/bad debate here—it’s simply too much for the scope of this article. The one thing worth quickly noting is that the “impact turn, theory is good” response to my article begs the question of uniqueness. We still get the benefits of arguing theory in a world with RVI’s, especially since one of the biggest benefit of RVI’s is encouraging debaters to change the voter of theory from reject the debater to reject arg. So theory debates are still going to be prevalent, but those debates will no longer be so one-sided. OBJECTION 1: RVI’S CAUSE A “CHILLING EFFECT” AND DETER NEG FROM READING THEORY AGAINST ABUSIVE POSITIONS, THEREBY FURTHER PERPETUATING ABUSE1) Turn—if aff position is abusive, RVI’s do nothing to aid the 1AR. An aff with 2 aprioris will lose the interp/counterinterp debate on aprioris good/bad every single time. Winning the RVI doesn’t win the aff the debate because aff still has to go win offense to the counter-interp and show that the original affirmative position was indeed fair. This means only bad theory arguments are “chilled”, which is good because it forces negs to think twice before reading stupid bi-directional interps. This is a big internal link into topic education and clash. When the 1N is deterred from turning to theory every round, we actually listen to debates about the topic.2) Non-unique—a world without RVI’s lets theory be a no-risk preclusive layer, so negs are incentivized to always read theory to vertically layer the debate, e.g. Nate Socolof his junior year. Worst-case scenario for the 2N is kicking the theory debate and going for substance, which is a fantastic worst case because it renders all 1ar time spent on the preclusive layer irrelevant. Best-case scenario for 2N is they win on theory and the round is over, regardless of how substance plays out.OBJECTION 2: RVIS DESTROY SUBSTANTIVE DEBATE BECAUSE THE ENTIRE ROUND COLLAPSES TO RVI1) Turn—irony is that neg introduced theory in the first place. If neg were so concerned with having a substantive debate, it wouldn’t have read theory. Usual response here is: “but reading theory was crucial because the AC was unfair.” And here’s the key point: if the neg is right, the RVI is irrelevant! Unfair affs lose the debate on theory. So neg is in a double-bind: either it legitimately read theory and the RVI doesn’t matter, or it read theory as a strategic time suck in which case having a RVI is good because it forces neg to have more argumentative responsibility before she calls her opponent a cheater. This ultimately leads to more long-term substantive education because negs are encouraged to clash directly with the 1AC instead of introducing preclusive layers.2) Link defense—even if the above turn isn’t true, the quality of substantive debate that happens post introduction of theory is not good. Without the RVI, the 1AR either over or under invests on theory, which the 2N then either collapses into or out of. If the 1AR spent 3 minutes on substance and 1 minute on theory, the 2N will spend the majority of its time on theory. If the 1AR spent 1 minute on substance and 3 minutes on theory, the 2N will spend the majority of its time on substance. Substantive education is only valuable when arguments are developed and both debaters are clashing on key points made in the debate, which almost never happens post-introduction of theory.OBJECTION 3: RVI’S AREN’T LOGICAL—AFF HAS PRIMA FACIE BURDEN TO BE FAIR, SHOULDN’T BE REWARDED FOR BEING FAIR1) No link—RVI’s don’t say vote aff because the aff is fair, they say vote aff to punish neg for needlessly calling aff a cheater. RVI’s are constructed using the principles of logic. Claiming they are not logical just begs the question.2) No impact—need some reason why logic is a voter. These arguments (if presented, which is rare) terminate in fairness or education claims. We can just weigh the harms of being illogical (if the first two no-links are wrong) versus 1AR time skew.OBJECTION 4: THEORY IS NOT A “NIB”. ALERNATE RECOURSE EXISTS—YOU CAN JUST READ NEW THEORY IN THE 1AR AND WEIGH1) Link defense—this is a true argument that’s great in the abstract, but far less practical in application. Consider 3 hypotheticals:(A) If the 1N strategy was NC + theory + AC framework+ turns to AC, the 1AR’s “new” theory shell would have to argue: (i) reading an NC is unfair or (ii) turning the aff is unfair or (iii) the particular NC read was unfair because it lacked turn ground (or wasn’t predictable etc.)(B) If the 1N strategy was theory + turns to AC, the 1AR’s “new” theory shell would have to argue: (iv) turning the AC is unfair or (v) neg must read an NC/CP/PIC.(C) If the 1N strategy was reading permissibility negates + theory + permissibility triggers + NC + aff framework answers + turns to aff, the 1AR’s “new” theory shell would have to argue: (vi) permissibility bad or (vii) some combination of arguments mentioned above.(i) or (ii) or (iv) or (v) are shells the 1AR can read, but the sheer stupidity of those arguments should indicate how bad the quality of this recourse can sometimes be. Reading shells like “your neg leaves no turn ground” or “neither side should read a NIB” or “you shouldn’t read both theory and substantive framework justifications” or “neither side should get access to permissibility” are far more persuasive, but the key point is that the aff may not functionally have access to them if the 1N was smart and didn’t do anything proactively unfair.2) RVI’s meet—reading an RVI is a new theory shell. The interpretation is that negs must have argumentative responsibility. Calling someone a cheater and claiming they should lose as a result is a serious claim that needs to have consequences.3) Turn—this argument directly contradicts the argument that RVI’s ruin substantive debate by encouraging the 1AR to collapse to theory. If topical education is important, this recourse moves us further away from it because the only recourse the aff has in the 1AR is to read MORE theory, creating a race to the bottom to see who can read more shells. This race to the bottom is highly incentivized in LD due to the 1AR’s desire to avoid having to win 2 layers to access the ballot (i.e. substance + theory). Tom vs. Akhil (semis of 2014 CPS) was one of the most well done, intricate and technical theory debates I’ve ever seen. The affirmative opted to use this form of recourse and the result was a debate that mentioned the topic rarely if at all post the 1NR.You might argue, but RVI’s put the 2AR in the position of winning 2 layers as well! True—but 2 points:a) Refer to all the arguments in objection 9 andb) My proposal would make theory an auto-RVI, so really it’s just one layer4) Turn—current structure of LD makes this recourse problematic:A) Lack of 3NR and 3AR means that inevitably the judge has problems resolving the new 1AR shells. The neg only gets to address the new shell once (i.e. in the 2N), which means the judge is forced to do comparative analysis for the neg after the 2AR, which sucks because that results in judge intervention. Assuming an RVI solves since both debaters get at least 2 speeches on the interp/counterinterp debate (if we are discussing a round in which theory was introduced in the 1N, not 1AR), which is crucial since the second speech is where impact and link comparison becomes most relevant. The necessity of speaking twice on the game winning issue seems obvious to me.  Imagine a debate 3 speeches long—that would make no sense since whoever spoke second would get the short end of the stick. They would have to simultaneously respond to the entire 1^st speech AND predict how the next speech will interact with the current one.B) Length of speech times means the depth in which each individual shell is analyzed is compromised. When the debate is limited to one shell (which the RVI does), the validity of the rule proposed by the negative is analyzed in depth. When the debate centers around 2+ mutually exclusive rules, the debate over the validity of each individual rule is fragmented due to both short speech times and strategic decisions. This kills progress over theory norms. An in-depth exploration of one interp/counterinterp at a time better allows all parties in the room to see who is on the right or wrong side of that particular debate.OBJECTION 5: RVI’S ARE UNFAIR TO NEG BECAUSE IT ALLOWS THE AFF TO READ AN ABUSIVE AFF AND PREP FOR THE THEORY DEBATE FOR MONTHS1) No link—if the aff position is abusive, 2N should be able to deconstruct and prove abuse regardless of how well frontlined the 1AR is. Good theory debaters are going to win the skep triggers bad debate in the 2N every single time. Get good at pointing out the missing links in blippy 1AR shit storms—this objection is essentially “but please have sympathy for me, I suck.”2) Non-unique—neg had equal opportunity to front-line the 2N. No reason aff should lose because it had frontlines and prepared for a debate.3) No link—neg should read a more nuanced interp that avoids generic 1AR frontlines. This actually fosters and encourages deeper exploration into theoretical issues.4) Tech differences shouldn’t be presumed. We should assume that the aff is equally good at theory and is equally technically efficient as neg. Obviously the aff will abuse RVI’s if they are debating an inferior neg theory debater. This is a concern that Bob Overing has pointed out on nsdupdate, and it is valid. I sympathize with this concern but ultimately feel our paradigms should be decided from the perspective that both debaters are equally good—it seems obvious that good debaters will abuse the rules to beat bad debaters. Welcome to the wonderful world of competitive activities—bad debaters have the onus to get better, our paradigms shouldn’t accommodate for them.5) Alt solvency—judges need to have a higher threshold for accepting blippy responses. Blippy arguments usually lack impacts or warrants, and giving 2AR leeway to explain more in depth the arguments that were presented briefly in the 1AR is a privilege judges should stop giving. This requires judges to have more humility and openly admit in RFD’s that they didn’t understand or flow the argument first time around because it was so damn blippy.6) Weighing—abuse generated by not granting aff RVI’s outweighs. Lots of arguments here. For the sake of my sanity and time, which is already being compromised, I’ll just include one that comes to mind immediately: probability. We can never verify pre-round abuse claims, unlike the in round impact on 1AR and 2AR rebuttal time. Verifiability key because theory punishes debaters for violating rules, but that presumes we know they violated in the first place. Also very good arguments on magnitude, e.g. abuse from frontlines reversible with better prep by the neg for the 2N but 1AR time skew has no in-round recourse.OBJECTION 6: WHEN AFF READS RVI AND COLLAPSES TO THEORY, THIS IS UNFAIR TO THE NEGATIVE BECAUSE THE 2N DOESN’T GET TO ACCESS ALL THE TIME IT SPENT ON SUBSTANCE FROM THE 1N1) Turn—neg should only call aff a cheater and ask the judge to vote down the aff if she’s ready for the entire debate to collapse to this issue. Theory is a serious claim, and it should be treated seriously. This is equivalent to saying 1AR collapse to NC framework is unfair because all the time in the 1N spent turning the AC and beating the aff framework is lost. The time/strat skew is the negs fault. RVI’s force negs to have more argumentative responsibility, which is currently missing in the status quo.2) Weighing—1AR time skew worse on duration without RVI’s. Aff time skew happens in 2 speeches while neg time skew happens only to the first negative speech. Theory moots the value of the AC and no RVI’s allow 2N to cherry pick out of the best arguments made by the 1AR by collapsing out of either substance or theory. By the time the time skew stops happening, the 2N gets 6 minutes to compensate, while the aff only gets 3. Compare this to a world with RVI’s where the 2N still gets all 6 minutes on the deciding issue in the debate (i.e. theory), AND access to at least a portion of the 1N (usually at least 1 minute, if not longer). This means worst case scenario the time skew caused by this objection evens the playing field, since aff and neg now spend equal time talking about the winning issue in the debate, i.e. ~7 minutes.OBJECTION 7: RVI’S GIVE AFF TOO MUCH POWER BY ALLOWING AFF TO DEVIATE FROM AN ALREADY RECIPROCAL ARRANGEMENT. RVI GIVES THE AFF TWO POTENTIAL THEORY OUTS—1AR CAN CHOOSE THEORY OR THE RVI, BUT THE NEG DOESN’T NECESSARILY GET THAT CHOICE (IF THE RVI IS RUN, THERE’S NOTHING FOR THE 2NR TO RVI). THIS IS NON-RECIPROCAL BECAUSE NOW AFF CAN WIN THEORY DEBATE VIA EITHER OFFENSE OR DEFENSE1) Weighing—the violation of reciprocity in the world without RVI’s has a much larger impact on the direction of the debate than the violation of reciprocity caused by affs reading RVI’s. Aff still has to beat the interp originally read by the neg to access the RVI, so the affs violation of reciprocity just lets the aff meet a burden that is necessary for the aff but not the neg. Losing the RVI debate puts the 2N in the position of winning their original shell. This leads to no time skew whatsoever for the 2N because she can go all in on the issue she originally introduced, giving her a 2:1 second advantage since the 2AR is 3 minutes (360 sec /180 sec =2 sec / 1 sec).On the flip side, not having theory as an RVI bifurcates the 1AR. Since theory comes before all other arguments, aff has to beat theory AND win the case debate, while neg only has to win the theory debate OR the case debate in the 2N, meaning they can choose which layer of the round they want to collapse into in the next speech while aff has to go for both in the 1AR. This is the definition of non-reciprocal strategies: aff has to win both layers in the 1AR while neg gets to cherry pick and go for the layer the 1AR did worse on.This also skews time tradeoffs because no matter how the aff handles the 1ar, the 2N can make half of it not matter. This gives neg the full value of its 2N, while large chunks of aff rebuttals are potentially functionally useless if the 2N collapses to one layer. And, if the 2N goes for both layers, it gives the 2AR a 2:1 burden. The 2AR has to beat theory and then win case to win the ballot. In 3 minutes.2) No link—giving the aff a unique way to beat theory that neg doesn’t get to have access too is solved by the fact that the neg always gets to react to affirming and chooses whether to introduce theory, so it doesn’t need RVI’s. Also not true because neg does get RVI’s if the 1N doesn’t read theory.3) No impact—giving the 2N an RVI is functionally useless in a world where the aff doesn’t read theory claiming that the neg cheated and should thus lose. The negative is complaining about losing access to a strategy it would never use.OBJECTION 8: NO 3NR TO RESOLVE NEW 2AR RESPONSES ON RVI1) Non-unique—all forms of recourse against theory that aren’t the RVI run into the same problem. By this logic, any new issues introduced by the 1AR fundamentally skew the round due to lack of 3NR. This argument illustrates why LD rounds are currently too short.2) Weighing—violation of reciprocity is worse than potential judge intervention. Judge intervention is to some degree inevitable, since no 3N means some level of comparative analysis has to be done by the judge in all good debates. But, the 1AR being put in a NIB isn’t inevitable since the RVI provides aff equal access on theory. Also, judge intervention is bad because it allows the judge to vote off of arguments not articulated by one side of the debate, but the 1AR time skew has a far greater size of link into advantaging one side because it structurally precludes one side from making arguments in the debate that have equal access to the ballot.OBJECTION 9: RVI + THEORY IS HARDER TO WIN THAN SUBSTANCE + THEORY 1) Turn—this argument is altruistic because the neg is telling aff that the aff will have a harder time winning the debate in a world where theory is an RVI. Altruistic theory is bad because it destroys the purpose of theory as a check on abuse. If the neg can win by telling the aff what is most fair for the aff, neg will always stand up and read a shell in the 1N claiming that the 1AC could have set itself up to win better had it read <INSERT MORE STRATEGIC AFF HERE> instead.2) Non-unique—either way the 2AR has to win 2 layers to the debate, meaning structurally the burden for the aff is the same in both scenarios.3) Only possibility of establishing uniqueness is by winning some benefit exists when affs go for substance instead of the RVI. Most common argument here is RVI’s cause aff to lose access to all substantive arguments read in the 1AC, meaning the aff only functionally has 7 minutes of speech time (4 min 1AR + 3 min 2AR = 7). This presumes aff can win substance, which is an assumption that can’t be generalized and is something that is a contextual judgment dependent on the quality of the 1AC and responses to it during the 1N. Winning the RVI is at worst just as easy as winning substance because RVI’s are a true argument in the context of LD.5) Turn—this argument is contradictory with all arguments saying RVI’s make it harder for negatives to win the debate (e.g. objections 6-10). It cannot be the case that RVI’s make the round harder for both the aff and neg. By definition, if the round is harder for the aff with an RVI, it is easier for the neg.

Part 2

The biggest deterrent to reading RVI’s is dealing with the dump. Almost all negs have a pre-written list of reasons prepared why theory shouldn’t be an RVI. The above list of objections is a decently thorough compilation of arguments (although many more arguments exist that this article couldn’t cover for the sake of space). Here’s some advice for how to deal with them:ONE: GROUP RESPONSESI structured the objections to aid you in seeing the types of responses people make on RVI’s, In general, there are 5 categories of argumentation:(i) RVI’s set bad norms (objections 1-3)(ii) RVI’s are unnecessary (objections 3-4)(iii) RVI’s are unfair to the debater who originally ran theory (objections 5-8)(iv) RVI’s are unfair to the debater reading the RVI (objection 9)(v) Internal link defense against time skew and reciprocity (not included in this article)Dealing with responses in terms of categories of argumentation is a much faster way to weigh than going line-by-line on all of them. The approaches here are endless. 2 examples are:A) You can group category (i) of responses and argue that norm setting isn’t the purpose of theory. Norm setting is empirically denied as people read contradictory theory arguments all the time. Many people read RVI or no RVI depending on which side of the theory debate they're on. So double bind- either a) norms don't exist and are just a disingenuous tool used by debaters, or b) norms can exist but are too weak to be followed. This is supercharged by the fact that nobody is likely to care about one individual round, or even hear about it in the first place. There are thousands of rounds on any given topic, so at best the impact is mooted.B) You can group category (iii) and argue that 1AR time skew outweighs, even if they win a link into one of the particular arguments. This argument is going to be less effective than doing weighing against each individual objection, but it can still get the job done. Adam Tomasi vs. Pranav Reddy (Greenhill videos) is a really good example of a debate that utilized weighing in the 1AR on the RVI debate.TWO: POINT OUT INCONSISTENCIES IN THE DUMP—THEY WILL BE THEREMany people argue that RVI’s kill substantive debate and that the solution to giving reciprocal access on theory should be to encourage affs to read more theory. See a problem there?Many people also argue that RVI’s make the round way too difficult for the negative while also making the debate harder for the affirmative, i.e. combining category (iii) and (iv). It can’t be the case that RVI’s makes the debate harder for both sides—something’s got to give.Other contradictions exist, but I don’t want to give you all the answers. Think deeply about the internal consistency of all the arguments against the RVI, and you will start to notice contradictions.THREE: PRACTICEBest-case scenario for the debater arguing for an RVI is that the 2AR or 1AR sucks. Worst-case scenario is that it is impossible. Being able to make one good response to each argument in the dump is a skill that isn’t perfected overnight. Several tips:a) Find someone to do drills with who is comfortable on this debate (e.g. me :P)b) Watch videos and give the 1AR until you have it down perfect (2 good videos that come to mind immediately are Pranav vs. Tomasi at Greenhill and Law Magnet DD vs. Evanston JS at Valley)c) Have frontlines written so you can just worry about the interp/counterinterp debated) Adapt to your judge. There were judges my senior year who just weren’t persuaded by the RVI. It is NOT worth your time to read the RVI in front of these judgesFOUR: UTILIZE COMPETING INTERPSIf you read your RVI shell as an interp in the 1AR or the 1AC, the neg is forced to respond with a counterinterp. This forces neg to codify its anti-RVI arguments in a coherent and offensive way, letting you ignore large portions of the 1N or 2N dump. This makes weighing easier for the aff and also lets the aff better point out which arguments are defensive on the RVI debate and have no impact (such as the RVI’s are not logical argument).FIVE: WEIGHThe beauty of weighing is it allows you to concede some arguments on the flow and still win the debate. If the interp/counterinterp debate takes longer than expected, win a link into some benefit for the RVI, and then weigh that benefit against the disads. It’s ok to concede there are disads to a world where theory is treated as an RVI. That doesn’t lose you the debate if you are smart.

Part 3

I am personally really persuaded by objection 3 and 4 in Part 1. I agree with the anti-RVI crowd that we shouldn’t reward the aff for being fair, and that alternative recourse exists. But, I think those arguments are correct in a vacuum, or in an event where the rounds are significantly longer, e.g. policy debate.The irony about my position is that I really think it's a plan B. Plan A should be to make the debate round longer. Every minute we increase the debate round by is another minute in which the aff can explain why the theory argument is stupid AND STILL WIN SUBSTANCE! We should seriously have an honest and critical dialogue with people in the LD community from a policy background (such as Scott Phillips, Greg Achten, Tim Case, Mike Bietz, among others). I think these people can offer real insights on the impact of increasing the number of speeches and length of speeches on theory debates. It's not like theory debate in policy debate is substantively different from theory in LD. Theory is theory is theory. They still discuss ground, literature, fairness, education, etc., but they just do it in a significantly different manner than LD does. Theory is currently a less utilized strategy in policy debate than it is in LD, and I personally feel a big part of that is because the strategic benefit from reading bad arguments is really low when the opposition has numerous opportunities to expose the flaws in said bad argumentation.

Conclusion

The RVI is the 2nd best solution. Best solution is to increase speech times. But should we continue to have a 5 speech event, there's no question the RVI is necessary. Theory without the RVI makes affirming unnecessarily hard, especially when you debate someone who has mastered the strategy of NC, T/Theory, 5-8 developed framework responses, and 3-4 developed turns on the aff. What are you going to do in that 1ar? Beat theory and turn the NC? Beat theory, beat framework dump, and the turns? That 1AR sucks a lot more than it would normally because they ran theory! If we create a norm making theory an RVI, it'll force debaters who are good at theory to at least reconsider their decision to run theory because now the 1ar collapse to theory is sufficient for these debaters to lose! Again, this does not make it so that affs will become abusive. If it's abusive, win the interp! Why is that so hard to do? It's abusive!

5 Arguments Debaters Love But That Really Make No Sense by Anne-Marie Hwang and Noah Simon

There is a wide range in the quality of arguments in debate. There are well researched meta-ethics, there are sophisticated critical positions, and then...and then there are these:

1. Politics DA’s: A Series of Unlikely Events

Here’s a pretty typical disadvantage link chain: Truth seeking means less attorney client privilege → corporations get angry → corporations don’t support Obama →  means Obama loses political capital →  Obama can’t pass immigration reform → US econ collapse →  global econ collapse. Wait, what’s missing? Oh, stick in Mead 98 (global econ collapse means extinction) and you’re done!That’s a real case from last year’s November/December topic. And yes, for those of you keeping track at home, there has been a global economic collapse since Mead’s precognitive miracle in 1998 and we’re still here.Brink answers aside, people who run politics DAs need to understand how bills pass to successfully defend them. Ever heard of a docket? Ever heard of Log Cabin Republicans, a subset of the Republican party that advocates for equal rights for the LGBTQ community? Ever heard that the “Green Lantern” image of the president is problematic and flawed?In addition, the links are not intrinsic to the aff policy, since they rely on a domino effect of impossible-to-predict consequences that have little to do with the aff. There is a case to be made that the aff only defends consequences and links that are easily foreseeable or intended. After all, why should we be held responsible for the implications of Mitt Romney’s binders full of women? Most of these impact scenarios are triggered by crazy politicians doing crazy things, which has no strong basis in the affirmative post-fiat world.Politics DAs tend to bastardize our Congressional procedures by ignoring subtle policymaking nuances. For example, the DA won’t happen unless the aff plan is even on the docket, because the plan requires a vote to pass (which brings up the question of fiat, but that’s a discussion to be had later). And think of House of Cards (or Scandal, for those who like their politics with a heaping side of soap): there are backdoor dealings--people owe each other favors, people want to side with the winners, etc.--so politics DAs don’t seem plausible, since they are based on generalized statements and predictable trends. Politics DAs try to make an objective statement about people’s subjective preferences -- something that is usually bound to fail (cue polls). They boil down a complicated and nuanced system with countless moving parts and unknown variables into “this person likes this so this will happen.” It takes the kindergartener's view of an impossibly dense and confusing process which makes predictions impossible at worst and silly at best. How likely is that House Republicans will slash FDA regulations? How likely is it that [insert law here] will cause Obama to lose all of his political capital? How can we quantify political capital? Does he have political capital now? Does he take out a loan of 15 political capital moneys every time tries to pass a bill? Who runs the political capital bank? The extinction scenarios and link chains are so highly specific that, even though they are generally absurd, the strategy is to hope that the opponents won’t have carded answers. Strength of link determines strength of impact, so anyone who reads one of these should take a step back and realize that the true value of PTX disads is quite low. These extinction scenarios often rely on such an intricate and multi-actor link chain that they are like taking shots in the dark without a target.

2. Bostrom: Intellectual Uncertainty

Besides the fact that I don’t know who doesn’t have a 10-point take-out of this card, Bostrom’s philosophical crown jewel is flawed for other reasons. His argument says that since we don’t know what matters, we should preserve our ability to seek moral truth. However, this presupposes a consequentialist obligation we have to achieve moral certainty. This can’t be leveraged to justify its own framework without first contextualizing what obligations we normatively have or else it will be circular logic.Moreover, debaters conflate post and pre-fiat, since debaters like to say that extinction, a post-fiat impact, precludes the judges’ ability to evaluate the framework debate, a pre-fiat concern. Further, this assumes consequentialism is true, since as long as your opponent is winning some deontic framework, consequentialism doesn’t preclude but rather violates it. So, even if there is uncertainty on the framework debate, if there is greater certainty of a deontic violation, there is a weighing debate to be had between the two impacts.In addition to the logical holes in the card, this card is usually run in conjunction with utilitarianism, even though util seems to contradict the premises of Bostrom’s argument. For example, extinction could easily minimize long-term pain by ending all suffering, or there could be some impact that produces so much happiness (e.g. a renewal of The Newsroom) that it outweighs any pain caused by extinction. It seems that there are a few missing links from maximizing pleasure to minimizing existential risk (e.g., that extinction is the worst pain, or that death is bad, or that negative util and positive util are synonymous). Before copy-pasting this to the bottom of an extinction scenario, we recommend that you double check the logical consistency that this card might or might not possess with your framework.

3. “Meta-Theory”: So Meta It Hurts

“Meta-theory always comes first” seems to be something that someone made up one day and everyone took to be true. Meta-theory is running theory on theory, such as the good ol’ “all interps must be positively worded,” and there’s no reason why this automatically precludes. It does come first in some scenarios, but usually, meta-theory is about practice. Just because there’s a reason why a theory shell was flawed doesn’t mean there’s no violation, so we still have to weigh abuse stories. If a negatively worded “neg must not run a counterplan” shell is conceded, that shows that the rule the shell is justifying is great; to say that the positively worded shell is a prior question seems nonsensical. Even if the meta-theoretical shell is won, we can imagine the original interp being shifted to accommodate the meta-theory interp while still retaining the first violation, so we are able to compare violations.Just because it has a fancy label, that doesn’t mean that it comes first, since theory is meant to check abuse, so saying “meta-theory always comes first” is self-defeating. At the end of the day, all abuse is linked back to the same voter, so if there are 10 units of abuse coming off of the violation of the first shell but only 2 units of abuse coming off of the violation of the meta-theory shell, it seems that common sense weighing analysis would dictate what matters more, and not a race to the highest layer.

4. “All NC Interps Are Counter-Interps to Implicit AC Interps”: Yeah, right

Someone tell me this is a joke. This is the same as saying that all answers to the AC are counter-interps and hence require RVIs. Every argument in the AC can be twisted into an interpretation, since the AC is an interpretation of the topic. Even if you think that not everything in the AC is an “implicit AC interp,” there are still issues with this idea. First, don’t RVIs necessitate someone reading “drop the debater” in order to generate the “reverse” voting issue? This would mean that AC interps about what affirmatives can run suddenly become drop the debater issues for the negative even though it is impossible for them to meet an interp about what the AC should do, since neg interps would necessitate some violation on the affirmative front. And what happens to topicality? When the neg wins a T shell, that shows that the AC isn’t topical, so the aff offense is null. Why should the impact of the neg winning a T shell be a neg RVI when it’s not a voting issue for the aff to be topical and hence no “reverse” voting issue for the neg?The biggest issue is that this spike is methodologically false. Interps are meant to exclude practices (even if positively worded, at the end of the day, they say that the aff/neg cannot do what they did) while counterinterps are meant to include practices. This is often overlooked in debate, which can make the interp-level debate quite muddled. So, since the “implicit AC interp” which the neg shell is indicting is meant to include action (e.g. the neg says that the aff can’t spec, meant to exclude action, which is the “counter-interp” to the aff “interp” that the aff may spec, a permission on action). It makes less sense to determine the function of norm-setting based on which interp came first, and we should probably instead look to the function of the rule.

5. “The Neg Needs to Quantify Unfairness” since it’s sooooo hard to affirm!!1!1!

Since when has fairness been quantifiable? Since when have statistics and whining about structural skews been enough to prove unfairness? Even if someone reads statistics about neg win bias, that’s not quantifying fairness--just win rates. The skew could be due to other factors, such as people’s strategies in round, how much they have prepped, etc. By claiming that both sides have to quantify unfairness puts an impossible burden on both debaters, making the argument irresolvable.In addition, just because someone doesn’t quantify fairness and weigh it against some inherent skew doesn’t mean theory is a wash -- if someone wins that you have been abusive, then there seems to be sufficient skews on both sides, so theory violations can be leveraged against the aff skew without quantifying it. In conclusion, just because the tags of some of these arguments might sound fancy, that’s not necessarily a reason to read them without thinking it through beforehand.

Jake Nebel on Specifying "Just Governments"

Call me old fashioned, but I think debates over the next few months should be about whether or not just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage. Some debates will inevitably focus on whether particular countries should have particular kinds of living wage laws. I don't think that such debates are, in themselves, better or worse than debates that focus on abstract questions about justice and the living wage. More generally, I don't really care for clash-of-civilizations debates between policymakers and philosophers: I think it's a mistake to privilege, without much empirical evidence, either abstract philosophical debate or concrete public policy debate as more fair or educational than the other. Some approaches are more germane to certain resolutions than they are to others. Most resolutions call for elements of both, but the balance depends on precise aspects of wording.I think the best way of motivating this view is by example. So I'm going to look at the wording of the living wage resolution with an eye to what kinds of things, if any, the affirmative may legitimately specify. I believe that the affirmative may not specify a particular government or set of governments, but may perhaps specify a particular way of requiring employers to pay a living wage. In this post, I'll focus on "just governments."My primary aim is not really to argue against agent specification on this topic. It is, rather, to motivate a general approach to questions about specification and topicality that takes the precise wording of the resolution as central. The approach is to figure out what the resolution means, not what you want it to mean. Another aim is to expose the reader to certain distinctions and techniques that may be helpful beyond this particular case.

Bare Plurals

I believe that debaters shouldn't specify a government on the living wage topic. The standard argument for this is simple: "just governments" is a plural noun phrase, so it refers to more than one just government. Most debaters will stop there. But there is much more to say. (Some seem not to care about the plural construction. I plan to address this view in a later article about the parametric conception of topicality.)Some noun phrases include articles like "the," demonstratives like "these," possessives like "my," or quantifiers like "some" or "all." These words are called determiners. Bare plurals, including "just governments," lack determiners. There's no article, demonstrative, possessive, or quantifier in front of the noun to tell you how many or which governments are being discussed.We use bare plurals for two main purposes. Consider some examples:

1. Debaters are here.
2. Debaters are smart.

In (1), "debaters" seems equivalent to "some debaters." It is true just in case there is more than one debater around. If I enter a restaurant and utter (1), I speak truly if there are a couple of debaters at a table. This is an existential use of the bare plural, because it just says that there exist things of the relevant class (debaters) that meet the relevant description (being here). In (2), though, "debaters" seems to refer to debaters in general. This use of the bare plural is generic. Some say that generics refer to kinds of things, rather than particular members of their kinds, or that they refer to typical cases. There is a large literature on understanding generics. Here my aim is not to figure out the truth conditions for the generic reading of the resolution; I shall simply work with our pre-theoretical grip on the contrast between sentences like (1) and (2).This distinction bears importantly on the resolution. If "just governments" is a generic bare plural, then the debate is about whether just governments in general ought to require that employers pay a living wage. If it is an existential bare plural, then the debate is about whether some just governments---i.e., more than one---ought to require that employers pay a living wage. Only the second interpretation allows one to affirm by specifying a few governments.

First Argument

To my ear, the generic reading is correct. I think the best evidence for this is simply the undistorted judgments of ordinary speakers. No competent speaker of English would, without distorting influence or additional evidence of generalizability, endorse an inference from a plan involving two just governments to the resolution. Suppose Sally, an American citizen, believes that the U.S. and Canada should require employers to pay a living wage, but that no other government (just or unjust, actual or possible) should. She would not represent her view by asserting, "Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage." She would deny this claim and hold that the U.S. and Canada are exceptions.One might object that Sally would endorse this assertion if she believed that the U.S. and Canada are the only just governments. Maybe she would, but that is explained by the generic reading, because she would then be making a generalization about (what she believes to be) just governments. And the onus would be on the affirmative, when specifying particular governments, to add such a premise. Moreover, many linguists would add that Sally could not regard it is as mere accident that these governments are just and that they ought to require employers to pay a living wage: the resolution requires there to be some explanatory connection between the justness of governments and the living wage requirement (see Carlson 2005).This is good evidence because ordinary speakers have an implicit (but not infallible) mastery over the language in which the resolution is stated. The resolution is stated in English, not in some special debate-specific dialect of English. Facts of usage constrain interpretation. The existential interpretation is not even, as I see it, eligible. So its pragmatic benefits are irrelevant. Compare: I think it would be better if the resolution were, "It is not the case that just governments ought to ..." But that's not the resolution, so it's not even an eligible interpretation in a T debate. (Here I assume a controversial view about whether pragmatic benefits can justify a semantically inadequate interpretation of the resolution. I cannot defend this view here, but I welcome questions and objections in the comments to be addressed in a later article.)Some speakers might balk at the generic reading of the resolution. How, they might think, could anyone assent to such a sweeping claim about what just governments ought to do? It seems to depend heavily on the details of each country. I can easily get into this frame of mind. But, equipped with this frame of mind, it's not as if I would assent to, "Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage," and expect my audience to pick up on the existential reading. I would instead either deny the resolution or suspend judgment about it. This means that the anti-generalization view is not evidence of an eligible existential interpretation; rather, it's a reason not to affirm the resolution. One more argument for affirmatives to answer! Consider an analogy. Suppose I say, "Dogs are ugly." You might think it's silly to say of dogs in general that they are ugly: how could one support such a generalization about the aesthetics of dogs? So you'll reject my statement. You won't reinterpret it to mean that some dogs are ugly and agree with it.I'm sure that many readers will be skeptical of directly appealing to how we ordinarily speak and think. Let me mention a more theoretical explanation of why the resolution is generic. Carlson (1977) suggests that the reading of bare plurals depends on the predicate of the sentence. He distinguishes between highly temporary stage-level predicates like "being here" or "being available," and more intrinsic individual-level predicates like "having four legs" or "being altruistic." He calls the former stage-level because they express properties of temporary stages of things: for example, sitting is a property of the present stage of Jake. One might argue that "ought to require" is an individual-level predicate: if just governments have an obligation to require that employers pay a living wage, that is not just a fleeting property of temporary government-stages. I mention this argument just as an illustration of how one might support the intuition with a theory, but I do not endorse the argument.We can turn next to a less direct argument for the generic reading of "just governments." But this argument may carry more weight in a T debate.

Second Argument

One of the most trolly observations to make in a debate on this topic is that just governments do not exist. It strikes me as plausible that no actually existing government is just. But most debaters will rightly trust their linguistic intuitions (in this case, but not in others!) and assume that this point is irrelevant to the resolution. The question is: why is it irrelevant?If "just governments" gets an existential reading, then the point should be relevant. If there are no just governments, then it is not the case that there are some just governments that ought to require employers to pay a living wage. So the resolution is not true. Reading "just governments" as a generic bare plural, then, is key to avoiding the trolly observation as a knockdown negative argument (or a knockdown presumption trigger, if presupposition failure makes the resolution neither true nor false).One might object that not even the generic reading can avoid the problem. After all, if there are no just governments, then how could it be true that just governments in general ought to do anything? Some linguists have held that generics never presuppose the existence of the kind of thing in question. But others, such as von Fintel (1996) and Greenberg (2003), have endorsed a more modest point, which is still enough for my purposes. This point starts with the fact that the resolution states a rule---namely, that just governments require employers to pay a living wage. Consider the rule,

3. Trespassers ought to be prosecuted.

We can affirm this rule even if there are no trespassers. But consider next,

4. Some trespassers ought to be prosecuted.

This statement is not true if there are never any trespassers. The lesson is that normative generics do not presuppose the existence of members of the relevant kind. Since the resolution is a normative statement, it does not presuppose that there actually are any just governments.Note that my argument here is very different from the just-as-trolly response that many make against the trolly observation. This response is that if there are no just governments, then the resolution is vacuously true. This is defended on the grounds that "just governments" refers to all just governments, and that this universal generalization is vacuously true if there are no just governments. My argument differs from this trolly response because I claim that "just governments" is generic, rather than universal: generics, unlike universals, allow exceptions. The trolly response also rests on more controversial assumptions than my response: the word "all" in English, in many cases, presupposes the existence of the things in question. And although there is no existence presupposition when the universal generalization states a rule---e.g., that all trespassers be prosecuted---the absence of trespassers does not make the rule vacuously true: it would not imply, for example, that all trespassers should be shot. More generally, we can't assume that the English "all" is governed by the same rules as the universal quantifier in an ideal logical language.

Conclusion

There are many other arguments one might make for or against the generic interpretation. Note that these arguments do not apply to all bare plurals, so one cannot assume that "employers" is generic for the same reasons. (I think it is generic, though, for what it's worth.) Nor do they give any reason to think that the affirmative may not specify a way of requiring employers to pay a living wage.What do you think?

References

Carlson, Greg N. 1977. “A Unified Analysis of the English Bare Plural.” Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (3): 413–57. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00353456.———. 2005. “Generics, Habituals, and Iteratives.” In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 2. Elsevier.Greenberg, Yael. 2003. Manifestations of Genericity. New York: Routledge.von Fintel, Kai. 1996. “Specific Generics.” Talk Given at Rutgers Colloquium. http://web.mit.edu/fintel/fintel-1996-specific-generics.pdf.

Should T be a Voting Issue? by Jake Nebel

Jake Nebel studies Philosophy at Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship. As a coach, his students have won the TOC, NDCA, Glenbrooks, Bronx, Emory, TFA State, and the Harvard Round Robin. As a debater, he won six octos-bid championships and was top speaker at the TOC and ten other major tournaments. He co-directs the Victory Briefs Institute.Earlier this year, I argued that theory should not, in general, be a voting issue. I also believe that topicality (T) should not, in general, be a voting issue in LD.¹This view may seem crazy. Let me explain why it’s not.

T in Policy

We first need to understand how T works when the aff runs a plan. Consider the current college policy resolution:

Resolved: The United States should legalize all or nearly all of one or more of the following in the United States: marihuana, online gambling, physician-assisted suicide, prostitution, the sale of human organs.

This resolution is a disjunction: it says that the U.S. should legalize marijuana OR online gambling OR physician-assistant suicide OR prostitution OR the sale of human organs. A disjunction is true just in case one of its disjuncts is true. It is false if all of its disjuncts are false.Arguing that the resolution above is false is a tough task. Fortunately, no one expects the neg to do that. Instead, the aff presents a plan, which is an unconditional advocacy. One topical plan might be that the U.S. legalize all online gambling. Another might be that the U.S. legalize nearly all prostitution and physician-assisted suicide.When the aff proposes its plan, the focus of the debate shifts to the plan. If, based on the evidence presented in the debate, the plan is a good idea, then the aff wins. If not, then the neg wins. But notice that the resolution might be true even if the plan is a bad idea: there might be other plans that are good ideas, and the resolution is true if one of its disjuncts is true.What if the aff proposes a plan that does not, in fact, constitute the U.S.’s legalization of all or nearly all of one of those things above? What if the aff, for example, defends the legalization of euthanasia, not knowing that euthanasia is distinct from physician-assisted suicide?If the negative’s burden were to show that the resolution is false, then that might not be game over for the aff. The aff might reply, “Sure, our plan did not show that the resolution was true, because it does not support the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. But you still need to argue that the U.S. shouldn’t legalize any of the things listed above. There is no offense either in favor of or against the resolution.”The neg’s burden, however, is merely to show that the plan is a bad idea, not to show that the resolution is false, which would require showing that all topical plans are bad ideas. But if the plan is not topical, then why should the neg have to show that the plan is a bad idea? It is not fair to expect the neg to argue against just anything. Nor is it fair to allow the aff to start the debate over, by presenting a plan that does affirm the resolution. So the aff should lose.The crucial idea here is that given a topical plan (i.e., a plan whose being a good idea entails the resolution), the focus of the debate shifts away from the resolution and onto the plan. If the focus of the debate were the resolution, rather than the plan, it would be much less clear that the aff should lose for presenting a plan that is not topical. If the focus of the debate were the resolution, then the aff could, in principle, present 62 conditional plans—i.e., different combinations of “all” or “nearly all” of one or more of the five eligible things to be legalized. (My math might be off here, but you get the point.) If just one of them is a good idea, even if all the others are bad ideas, then the resolution would be true. That’s a silly way to debate the resolution above.(I’ve oversimplified policy debate theory here in a few ways. For one thing, not all policy resolutions are disjunctions. But all policy resolutions can logically be affirmed by plans, via other aspects of their wording. Another issue is this: some argue that the debate should be about the aff’s advocacy even if that advocacy’s being a good idea does not entail the resolution. This might be because the threshold for being topical is weaker, or because topicality is just one consideration among others.)I have suggested that T’s status as a voting issue in policy follows from the focus on the aff’s plan, and that this is justified by the way policy resolutions are worded. Some might object that “plans good/bad” is completely independent of the topic. On this view, we first determine whether the debate should be about the “whole resolution” or some part of it, and then we figure out whether some plan really is a part of the resolution. But that is a mistake, because different resolutions have different logical forms. The part-whole dichotomy is not a helpful way of understanding the relation between plans and resolutions. The only uniform test for whether a plan is topical is whether its being a good idea entails the resolution.If you think I’m making this up, just consider the statement of the policy-making paradigm due to Licthman, Rohrer, and Corsi:

The responsibility of affirmative debaters can be quickly and simply stated: they must convince an impartial critic to support or affirm the debate resolution. For propositions of policy, affirmative teams are required to formulate proposals whose affirmation logically entails affirmation of the resolution.²

This view provides a clear test of topicality for plans. It also has great explanatory power: it provides a clear test for illegitimate extra-topicality and effects-topicality, although I won’t get into that here. But what if the aff doesn’t present a plan on the grounds that the resolution is a general principle?

T in LD

Now let’s turn to LD. Consider the current LD resolution:

Resolution: The “right to be forgotten” from Internet searches ought to be a civil right.

This resolution is not a disjunction. Competent speakers of English would not infer that the right to be forgotten (RTBF) ought to be a civil right merely from the fact that some segment of some population ought to have the RTBF. Such examples might provide some evidence for the resolution, but they certainly don’t entail it. And showing that the resolution is false would not require the neg to show that every possible way of making the RTBF a civil right for any possible segment of any population is a bad (or merely permissible) idea.There is, I think, some wisdom to the old-fashioned view that LD resolutions are general principles. The reason why plans are not kosher in traditional LD theory is that they do not affirm the resolution, except by much interpretive violence. I think some plans do affirm on some LD topics, but those are exceptions to the rule.Suppose the aff doesn’t provide a plan. She just makes arguments for why the RTBF ought to be a civil right. What happens if some of these arguments do not entail the resolution, because she has misunderstood what the RTBF or being a civil right requires? So much the worse for the aff: those arguments become insufficient to affirm. But that doesn’t imply that the resolution is false: the aff might have independent arguments that do entail the resolution, and the arguments that don’t entail the resolution might still be some evidence for it. Nor is it unfair to the neg for the aff to make arguments that don’t entail the resolution. So it is not clear why the aff should lose.You might say that the aff should lose because her unconditional advocacy does not entail the resolution. Even though the aff doesn’t have a plan, she advocates something: namely, that the RTBF be a civil right, under some conception of “RTBF” and “civil right.” And if this advocacy’s affirmation does not entail the resolution, then the aff should lose just as if she had run a plan.But this argument assumes that the aff’s advocacy is not just that the RTBF to be a civil right, but is rather something more specific. We should not assume that the aff is committed to anything more than just the resolution. Everything else she says—including her framework, contentions, and definitions—are just means to arguing that the RTBF ought to be a civil right. By default, those instruments are conditional. It is not helpful, in this context, to distinguish between the aff’s advocacy and the resolution itself.You might be thinking that I haven’t focused on the real issue. Failure to be topical is not just making arguments that don’t entail the resolution. Then what is it?You might say that the aff isn’t topical just in case their interpretation of the resolution is illegitimate, in some sense of “illegitimate.” But why should this matter, unless it shows that the aff’s arguments don’t support the resolution as it is legitimately interpreted? Mere disagreement about definitions is not a sufficient violation for T.You might say that a bad definition should be a voting issue because of the way it affects neg ground. For example, defining “ought” in terms of desirability may preclude the neg from arguing that making the RTBF a civil right is merely permissible: it might be permissible yet still desirable. And the neg might argue that they should get to win by showing that it’s merely permissible for the RTBF to be a civil right. Hasn’t the aff unfairly limited the neg’s ground?I don’t think so. If the neg is right that permissibility negates, then now the neg should argue that it’s merely permissible for the RTBF to be a civil right. This is a crucial difference between the implications of T depending on whether the aff has run a plan. When the aff runs a plan, the neg’s burden is to argue that the plan is a bad idea. If the plan is not topical because its being a good idea does not entail the resolution as best interpreted, then the neg doesn’t have to argue against the resolution as best interpreted, because the neg’s burden is not to argue against the resolution at all. But if the aff doesn’t (and doesn’t have to) run a plan, then it’s not as if the debate would need to start over for the neg to meet her burden after winning T. She is closer, not further, from meeting her burden.You might say that the unfairness lies in the time tradeoff: the neg had to waste her time reading T just to get access to arguments that she should’ve had access to anyway. This claim, however, is not unique to T: it can apply to any other theory issue. But its truth requires conditions that are rarely proven in debate rounds—e.g., that the neg had to spend as much time as they did. And, I think, it justifies an RVI: if the aff should lose for illegitimately “forcing” the neg to waste time reading T, then the neg should lose for illegitimately “forcing” the aff to waste time responding to it. As I suggested in my article on drop-the-argument vs. drop-the-debater theory, an RVI should be the price of drop-the-debater theory. The same goes for T—except when the aff runs a plan, because then there is a different and more natural reason why the aff should lose, because the plan is an unconditional advocacy.

Conclusion: Two Notions of T

I have argued that T should be a voting issue when and because the aff’s burden is to propose a plan whose being a good idea entails the resolution. When that is not the aff’s burden—i.e., because the resolution is a general principle—it is much less clear what it means to fail to be topical and why that should be a voting issue. Perhaps it would be better if we distinguished between the two notions: we might reserve “topicality” for claim that the plan’s affirmation does not logically entail the resolution and “resolutionality” for the claim that the resolution doesn’t mean what the aff thinks it means. The difference is that only in the former case has the aff presented an unconditional advocacy that isn’t fair game. Resolutionality merely affects the relevance of arguments to the aff’s and neg’s burdens with respect to the resolution.My view implies that plans are not as strategic in LD as you might have thought. First, they are rarely going to be topical on LD resolutions. There might be some other coherent sense of topicality, but that remains to be seen. Second, only by running a plan should you be committed to facing T as a no-risk issue.I have made many controversial claims here. Some of them are assumptions that I have simply taken for granted without argument. I’m happy to explain, in the comments, why I think they are true.

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1. This view is not original to me. Walter Alan Ulrich, after whom the LD TOC Top Speaker trophy is named, argued that T should not be a voting issue in value debate. See “The nature of the topic in value debate,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate 5 (1984): 1-6. A number of instructors and former students at VBI, including Jacob Nails, Christian Tarsney, and Marshall Thompson, have expressed sympathy for this view over the years.↩
2. Lichtman, Allan J. (Professor at American University, 1993 Scholar/Professor of the Year) Rohrer, Daniel M. (was Director of Forensics at Boston College until death in 1982) & Corsi, Jerome (Harvard PhD). 1979, “Policy Systems Analysis in Debate,” Advanced Debate: Readings in Theory, Practice, and Teaching.↩

The Right to Forget a Topic & Other Adventures In Debate Pedagogy by Stephen Babb

What if you just don’t feel like debating the LD topic selected for a given two-month period—or, as may be the case this season, for several two-month periods?Let’s say you discover you’ll be debating a topic about a first-world problem like the “right not to be Googled.” And let’s say you feel compelled to discuss more pressing matters, or at least first-world problems that involve more egregious violations of privacy.Those instincts clearly aren’t unprecedented.Functionally, debaters avoid topics all the time. Motivated by strategic considerations or a simple research disadvantage, debaters re-center argumentation along axes of theory, generic criticism, philosophical abstraction and other tangents. They regularly make thinly-veiled attempts to avoid any meaningful position on the topic at hand.They just aren’t very explicit about it. They rarely own up to their implicit assault on topicality, instead hoping the sheer weightiness of their claims (e.g. that some kind of oppression is very bad) overrides conventional constraints—and perhaps making vaguely plausible assertions that their advocacies actually fall within those constraints.As a judge, I’ve never been very sympathetic to these attempts. Beyond the many reasons fair debates require mutual and prior knowledge of a common topic, I’ve always believed students learn more when forced to directly engage topics. They’re less likely to recycle arguments. They critically research a concrete field. They better understand what it means to make policy or decisions within that field. Fundamentally, this is what debate should be.Usually.Bad topics may change that equation, and it may be because of the very same educational objectives we associate with topicality itself. Paradoxically, the importance of topical debate sometimes demands we at least consider departing from the topic we’ve been assigned. Whether that official topic is a waste of time or itself a symptom of suspect underlying assumptions, the are probably instances in which we’re better off talking about something else.And we should be completely honest about that.If we’re here to learn things, why let a bad topic stop us?It’s a position premised on the first-order role of education in the debate space. Ditching topics certainly creates some problems for competitive equity, but there are ways to solve those problems.Making the most of this activity demands we at least try.

Primacy Of Education

The virtues of education are typically advanced in order to either defend (or challenge) the use of a particular kind of argument—e.g. a plan—or as reasons to constrain argumentation as per limits imposed by the topic itself. More often than not, debaters present educational interests alongside considerations of fairness—both described as “voting issues” in one’s average theory debate. Attempts to reconcile or prioritize their respective importance are generally awkward and superficial.Some have adopted a rather dismissive approach toward the role of education in debate, while others regularly invoke its ostensibly powerful implications. At the end of the day, there shouldn’t be much doubt about whether education matters in debate. Despite the litany of clumsy arguments made on its behalf, one or two true arguments should suffice on this point.Our discussions are shaped by rules and topics alike to be inherently pedagogical endeavors. We are assigned resolutions that are (hopefully) attempts to analyze current events or investigate salient philosophical questions. We don’t—for example—debate pop culture and entertainment issues, which would otherwise be sufficient for a purely “competitive” activity. The opportunity to learn about important things is etched in this activity’s DNA.Much has been made about the educational institutions that “fund” and organize debate. While those arguments often fail to justify the normative relevance of debate’s origins and prerequisite support, there’s undoubtedly something to be said for the fact that students generally experience debate as a class or extra-curricular activity. You don’t sign up for it at the YMCA, and it’s yet to yield a professional, money-making counterpart (for competitors, anyway). Nor does it offer physical benefits you’d associate with sports.Accordingly, I think it’s fair to posit that a social contract exists between students and their schools. Schools would neither permit nor accommodate debate were it not for all the good things it does (or can do, anyway). In turn, students are responsible for treating this activity like the learning opportunity it is. That’s the grand bargain.When broaching the Aristotelian matter of debate’s ultimate purpose (or telos), the importance of education seems unavoidable for all but the most nihilistic outcasts. At the very least, we inhabit a community for which educational benefits are hardly incidental. We view research as both instrumentally valuable (from a strategic standpoint) and intrinsically important (as an educational tool). And we use things like classes, practices and debate camps as vehicles for instruction that is both practical and—to some students’ chagrin—purely intended to enlighten. In short, while education isn’t the only reason for the debate season, it’s much harder to maintain that it doesn’t matter at all.Unfortunately, reaching agreement about the abstract importance of education isn’t very helpful.Especially when both sides of a theory debate make claim to some kind of educational advantage. There may well be countervailing educational interests at stake, and there also may be important differences about how we conceive of education itself.

Pedagogical Best Practices and The Organic Alternative

To whatever extent there are legitimate reasons to deviate from an official topic, those reasons are rooted in a particular set of pedagogical beliefs. I think there are a few core principles that would sometimes support the rejection of a topic:

• Students better internalize ideas and information when they’re relevant to that students’ lived experiences or interests. While it isn’t possible to cater to everyone’s peculiarities all of the time,  our topics should make at least some attempt to engage a demographic of educated young adults. And that probably precludes topics about the intersection of historical preservation and property rights.
• Our discourse should promote portable skills among students. That would naturally encourage topics that explore potentially relevant policy and decision-making. Overly abstract topics—e.g. whether inaction in the face of injustice makes someone morally culpable—aren’t especially conducive to practical skill formation. Absent some real-world application, they aren’t of much philosophical or critical use either.
• Dialogue is more productive when all parties are fully invested in it. It stimulates research interest and a willingness to actually adopt firm advocacies. Given our expectation that debaters spend significant time investigating things like organ donation, we shouldn’t be surprised by the proliferation of theory debates and other departures.

So in a perfect world, I think debaters should coordinate with one another before tournaments (informally or otherwise) and agree upon alternative topics. Some (perhaps most) debaters won’t agree to such an arrangement—especially at first—but I suspect many would enjoy the far more democratized and organic distribution of discursive power. It would almost certainly take some time before our community culture adapted to the notion of explicitly “non-topical” debates, but there’s no compelling reason those attitudes should persist. At the end of the day, we should find ways to accommodate conversations debaters mutually prefer.Empirically, they’ve found ways to have those conversations either way.Even if debaters eschew attempts to strike agreement on a different topic (instead preferring to advance a non-topical position against an unsuspecting opponent), they could still premise their position on the pedagogical merits of talking about something else. Critical arguments often hold that conventional rules (i.e. rules implied by the demands of competitive equity) are themselves constructions designed to perpetuate a systemically flawed or inequitable status quo. If we’re already willing to ignore a topic for the sake of micro-political intervention, why aren’t we willing to champion conversations that are simply more educational? In both instances, the fundamental gesture is this: Discourse matters, and it involves trade-offs.Let’s make the most of it.I can imagine a number of practical barriers to what amounts to a radical decentralization of topic selection, but I also suspect there are viable solutions. If we’re serious about milking this activity’s educational virtues for all their worth, perhaps it’s time to explore some of those solutions.

Protecting All of the Children in the Auditorium – Part 2 - by Jonathan Alston, Anthony Berryhill, and Aaron Timmons

Editor's note: You can find and sign the "Pledge for Online Civility" HERE. To see who has signed the pledge you check this previous post. 

Preface

 We believe that online discussions regarding differences in debate practices are good for the community. We welcome robust and vigorous disagreement. We have purposely avoided naming specific people in order to keep our essays focused on the larger community-wide issues. In contrast to our specific approach, many online discussion boards have allowed people - without accurate information or fact checking — to attack specific children and coaches. The research presented in our original article outlines the psychology behind those responses. Respectful academic disagreement is a norm we believe our debate community must immediately adopt. Some may assert that our original article targets particular individuals and schools despite the careful way we worded and edited our Part 1 essay. However, such a claim ignores recent history. Our essays are in response to a history of public harassment that has continued in various forms online, and manifested in the public protest at the Tournament of Champions (TOC 2014), whose discourse continued into the beginning of this debate season. The online posters and in-person protestors, through online public humiliation and their actions during Round 7, have forced our involvement in a discussion that has directly and individually implicated our students and us. The distinction between this discourse and ours is that we never forced anyone to be a part of our discussion. After the person in one of our narratives from Part I won the Bronx High School of Science tournament, she was talked about horribly online and inappropriately forced into being part of an online discussion that should have never taken place. We called out no one for in-round behavior or decisions or anything that is a regular part of our competition. The public protest before Round 7 was a very public act intended to initiate a very public discussion. Vocalizing why we believe that the protest was pedagogically irresponsible and, in our opinion (as well as others who have confided in us), potentially racist, isn’t an act of online bullying. Rather, it is criticizing the actual discussion of which we were forced to be a part. Despite the very nature of their discussion, we have been careful to not mention names in our essay and to have private conversations with our public critics. We sought to understand before we responded, and we kept our most pointed and tough critiques private. During many of these offline discussions we have found that the most intense disagreements softened. Although we may never see eye to eye with our critics, the vitriol and hyperbolic language decreased. Many have sincerely concluded that some of their initial online behavior was inaccurate, in-artful, and required action from deleting their posts to publishing partial or complete retractions of earlier statements. This is why we believe that that the most heated conflicts we have in our community should be handled in private and offline. We believe heated offline dialogue is an approach far better suited to an educational environment whose first priority is to protect all the children in the auditorium. 

Extending the framework: The disease of cyberbullying within Lincoln-Douglas Debate

 We have received a range of responses to our article that reminds us of a song from the movie and hit stage play, Dreamgirls. The assumptions behind many comments seem to be grounded in the notions of:

“What about what I need…What about what's best for me…What about how I feel? What about me, what about me?”

Our response is in the same song…

“It's more than you, it is more than me…No matter what we are, we are a family…This dream is for all of us, this one can be real, and you can't stop us now because of how you feel…” (Ellipsis added)

 In Part I, we described the cyberbullying in the Lincoln Douglas debate community. We further showed how this bullying extended into the “real world” during the hostile protest at the TOC 2014 which created an environment that compromised the safety of students competing in the tournament. While some may disagree with our characterization of the protest, the many offline discussions we had established that the protest had negative – albeit unintended – side effects that endangered and threatened children. While we have received tremendous support for the article, some took issue with the points we raised and demanded clarification. We would like to follow up accordingly. But first, we would like to highlight three overarching considerations. First, this is not a game. The problems that we identify happened to real people—children, in fact, who whatever their faults, did not deserve to be publicly harassed and bullied online. Despite our differences, we all share the experience of being touched by debate. It matters to each of us passionately and we want debate to improve the lives of our students like it improved our own. But for some students—real students who cared about debate more than anything else in their lives-- debate became a place of vilification instead of a home. Some debaters and coaches became a mob of people who told these students they were nothing but objects deserving hate and scorn whose identities, scholarship, performances and overall presence were not welcome. This sadness often starts online. As we explained in Part I, the internet has a de-individuation effect that brings out the worst in people, turning many people into cyberbullies. Danielle Citron in, The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy and Reputation explains that:

Social science research on group behavior suggests that the Internet will intensify the destructiveness of gender and race – based harassment. It identifies several factors exacerbating the dangerousness of groups. Groups with homogenous views tend to become more extreme when they deliberate. Their members gain confidence in their preconceived ideas as discussions tend to feature many arguments supporting them and few tilting the other way. Hearing agreement from others bolsters group members’ confidence, entrenching and radicalizing their views (Citron).

 Second, heated public protest — specifically in a speech and debate event — is destructive. The actions of the protesters in Round 7 of the TOC 2014 threatened and endangered children in our collective auditorium. With a deep and sincere respect for the internal struggles of one of our public critics, that is “a circle that can’t be squared.” Third – There is no morally neutral stance for debate educators or organizations regarding the issue of protecting the emotional and physical safety of all students in the speech and debate arena. Citron defines what neutrality justifies:

Cyber mobs also see victims as digital images that can be eviscerated without regret. Moreover, site operators who refuse to dismantle destructive posts, reinforce, and effectively encourage, negative behavior. Their refusal can stem from a libertarian “You Own your Own Words” philosophy or irresponsibility bred from the belief that they enjoy broad statutory immunity from liability for the postings of others. In turn, negative posts that remain online constitute calls to action that generate others in a snowball effect. In cyberspace, the accelerants of dangerous group behavior are pervasive, deepening the problem of today’s abusive cyber mobs.

 Our essay was a direct challenge to the recent practice of using public forums to voice concerns about specific students, coaches or programs. We will now highlight what we believe have been the most common concerns of Part I. Concern 1: Previous Public Online Forums and the TOC Round 7 Protest Fought Against Injustice in the Debate Community. Why Aren’t You Concerned About Our Children? Our Response: The flaw is that you are only concerned with your children. Check your differential empathy. Other children should not be collateral damage. There are other ways to seek redress that do not create a hostile environment for children. In Part I we argued (through the examples we cited) that the willingness to support alleged victims of injustices in debate has not extended to students from marginalized backgrounds even when these students/coaches should have been – in principle – given strong and unwavering support. As additional evidence, consider the following questions regarding the LD debate community and racism:While there have been online protests against sexism and classism, why haven’t there been similar online protests and petitions against racism?Why hasn’t the community taken an unequivocal stance against the day-to-day, tournament-to-tournament and camp institute racial attacks and micro insults that students of color consistently have to endure?Why has it been OK for coaches to train their students to defend the non-existence of racism, or that racism doesn’t impact to the standard, or that racism doesn’t link into the meta-ethic? Again, we ask those who believe in political movements within debate: Where have been the public denouncements of these abominations that occur in our collective auditoriums? Given this context, we contend that the debate community must honestly evaluate its true feelings regarding which people are viewed as worthy of public support and attention. Let us reconsider some of the recent public incidents in LD debate. If any of the authors in this essay were to attempt a sit-out against racism at the TOC, or appeal to tournament tabulation committee regarding injustices we feel have victimized our students, would the community also come to our aid? Put more directly, if the authors of this essay were to make a formal administrative protest (defined as a written protest given to the tab room describing the incident and the alleged violation) in round two of a tournament, have it denied, and then approach the tab room again after the final preliminary round had been paired and released for reconsideration, wouldn't the community stage a sit-out against us for “abusing our power?” These are not merely rhetorical questions. When we have gone to the TOC committee or tournament tabulation rooms to correct injustices that we feel have inappropriately hurt our students, our actions have never been interpreted as a political act or a justified way of “defending our students.” Instead, we (and our students) have been condemned as deserving public floggings through Facebook posts, anonymous online petitions, threatening e-mails, etc. The inconsistency is not surprising to us. What we are asking the reader to do is engage in a reflective moment to critique “activists’” choice to only include in their politics those who are already in their actual, or metaphorical camps. To be clear, we have been very careful not to give a definitive explanation for the basis of the differential empathy we have seen in the Lincoln-Douglas community. However, anyone who interprets our essay as a simplistic “everyone is racist” rant is being intellectually dishonest and is encouraged to reread our essays carefully. But even if we were to assume that people in the debate community used public protest to protect all students in the auditorium, they ought to adopt a different approach. Some have defended the use of public forums on the basis that public protest in general is a good method and has been effective when traditional methods of promoting change have failed (i.e. with references to the Civil Rights Movement). However, even under the most optimistic examples, rhetorical and actual violence have often ensued in response. In addition, our argument is specific to the unique environment of high school debate and the duty of care we have as educators to those students who seek debate as a safe space. Given that recent public protests and flame wars have created environments that have caused many judges/coaches to fear retaliation and given that some students have felt that their physical safety has been at risk at tournaments taking place in the midst of such public opposition, we hold that the obligation to act responsibly requires that coaches and students adopt a different method. It is important to note that since we published our original essay some concerned readers have reached out to us privately. We have also proactively initiated dialogue. We welcome robust and vigorous disagreement, but believe that such disagreement must be expressed in an appropriate time, place and manner. For this reason, we have purposely avoided naming specific individuals in order to focus on the larger community-wide issues. We have focused on understanding the opposition before we responded, and have kept our toughest critiques of specific individuals private—to be fair to them and to preserve their dignity. We have privately engaged those who most publicly disagreed with us. In contrast to our careful approach, many online discussion boards have allowed people – who have not done their due diligence through fact checking - to attack and force the exile of specific children and coaches based on inaccurate and false information. Subsequently, the authors of this essay and our students have been individually implicated on a consistent basis even when it has been inappropriate and irrelevant to do so. The debate is about whether this model of public protest is acceptable for speech and debate tournaments sanctioned by high schools. We argue that high school LD is the wrong forum. While we support the right of individuals to voice concerns about perceived wrongs, more acceptable and safer options exist which ought to be adopted, such as private adult conversations. We understand that for many younger coaches - many of whom are not professionally trained teachers - posting explicit, personal debate controversies online may be more comfortable, but this behavior is absolutely irresponsible. Private conversations may be “awkward” for young assistant coaches to initiate towards professional teachers, but our duty of care, our obligation to students, vastly outweighs this awkwardness. Concern 2: “It’s not my problem/I have nothing to do with it.” “I had nothing to do with any negative parts of the protest, so I am not responsible.” Our Response: We all must be responsible for the unintended consequences of our public action. Anything else is moral cowardice. People who have chosen to initiate public protests and online flame wars have moral and pedagogical culpability for the indirect (even if unintended) consequences of their actions. Some have argued that the examples of physical harassment, (possible) racial harassment and psychological trauma from the TOC protests have “nothing to do with them” and that if these incidents did occur (noting that all accounts have been verified by students and adults), they have no responsibility. This stance makes no logical or ethical sense. When we as coaches have publicly taken our own political stances, we have been consistently held responsible for the intended AND unintended consequences of our speech. That is why we have held that these public protests and public fights against specific coaches and students are bad. There are too many unintended consequences. There is no neutral ground. Educators who refuse to comment or “get involved” do not escape condemnation as their silence and acquiescence directly empowers those who bully. Just as “I have nothing to do with it” is never an acceptable excuse for a teacher who witnesses an incident of bullying in a high school, it is not acceptable for debate coaches to say it either. The messages that we received from colleagues about the protest and DURING the protest speak volumes. While we appreciated those messages, and the myriad emails, Facebook messages and calls, the adage of, “it is easy to be an advocate, when it is easy to be an advocate” has never been more true. Fear of retaliation, the risk of social disapproval, and competitive success has too often superseded coaches’ responsibility to do what is right. We repeat from our initial article:

“If a teacher witnessed someone terrorizing a child in another classroom, he would be morally and legally obligated to act. If he tried to excuse his silence by saying that he is only responsible for those in his own classroom, he would appropriately lose his job and face legal sanction. We are ethically, and legally, responsible to take care of all the students in our collective auditorium.”

Some people have responded that we should instead be focused solely on the “model citizens” who have expressed their views responsibly in the public arena. Let’s assume for a moment that’s true. It does not absolve online/in-person protesters from their choice to galvanize individuals who they know (or should reasonably foresee) will use and have used the opportunity to attack students of color, women, quare individuals, etc. From Example 1 in the initial article (emphasis added):

“Despite the fact that I was being told I wasn’t deserving and despite the fact I was sent inappropriate messages about my participation from judges in the TOC pool, coaches on other teams, summer camp instructors and competitors’ weeks before the TOC, no one cared.”

If protesters do not want to be grouped in the same category as those who physically, racially, sexually, harassed innocent students of previous public protests/flame wars, they ought to avoid methods which risk such actions. Many educators have behaved responsibly online and in-person (i.e. at the TOC 2014 protests). Some disallowed their own students from participating as a precondition for staying in debate. However, many adult educators participated in or tolerated the most despicable acts that have publicly harmed students (especially students of color) over the past three years. We cannot blame students for their actions when there are adults around who ought to know better. “It wasn’t me” is never an acceptable response for an educator who witnesses or participates in the inappropriate online and in-person practices we describe. Concern 3: I can’t be held responsible for actions I don’t believe happened and/or did not personally witness. Our Response: These actions occurred. Take responsibility. We feel responses such as [this] “is the veriest nonsense (emphasis added)… Chilling as the story is, it didn't happen,” or “They are liars!” are not only common when students of color (and other marginalized backgrounds) voice concerns about being victimized by public protests/flame wars but are also the embodiment of what’s wrong with this community. It is unacceptable in any community or educational environment that an acceptable default response to an accusation of abuse or bullying be to assume on face that the alleged victim is a liar. There have been too many recent nationally publicized incidents of student suicide, domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment for an educator to be so cavalier. To default to denial is a demonstration of a complete abdication of the duty of an educator to care about all students in the auditorium. To be fair, one author who doubted that a student was directly targeted recanted. He spoke to people offline who were involved and then publicly pulled back from his original response and expressed a thoughtfulness that was truly appreciated. However his well intentioned (and sincerely appreciated), apology does not address the heart of the issue, which is the community’s default instinct to deny. We believe that this instinct comes from naïve optimism concerning the behavior of those who act out publicly. Debaters assume that all people who protest publicly and their followers behave in a targeted and careful manner. Unfortunately, recent history suggests otherwise. The concepts we highlighted in Part 1—groupthink, belief in an inherent morality, stereotyping of out groups, the desire to be self-appointed mind guards, de-individualization and diffusion of responsibility—all took place at the TOC 2014 public protest and other online conflicts over the past three years. In other words, group solidarity during public conflicts has often mutated into mob mentality. Many commentators have said, “yes, we agree with a safe space for students BUT”… There should be no “BUT.” Maintaining a safe environment for students should be our primary concern, as no student invests their time in LD debate to be treated as collateral damage. As a point of preemption, some may assert that exposure to literature which discusses issues of difference makes debate hostile because it makes some students or coaches uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable may be a part of addressing issues that are challenging. There is a clear distinction between being uncomfortable and being unsafe (fearing for ones physical safety). Bogdan again, (emphasis added):

In a situation where emotions are triggered, physiological responses take place and blood recedes from thinking part of the brain, rushes to reptilian brain, triggering fight or flight and rendering new information useless and impossible. Your reaction to run away or strike back has its uses in situations of danger, but it also means we take this instinct into situations where it can increase our challenges, where there are better ways to respond. We fail to distinguish between situations that endanger us and those that make us uncomfortable and this stops our learning, understanding and growing and takes all of us away from the opportunity to create something new and better (Emphasis added).

As educators we should be teaching our students how to handle uncomfortable situations and difficult literature properly. On the other hand, we should not have to spend our time teaching students how to cope with online harassment and threats to their physical safety. Concern 4: “Come on, the authors GO OFF on people who vote against their kids!” Our Response: Improper comparison that does not excuse online or in-person bullying of minors. Best to talk personally with the coaches with whom you disagree. Some have argued that as coaches we have had post round discussions with judges that have made some feel uncomfortable. There may be a reason to have a discussion about post-round decorum and community norms, but that isn’t a reason to say that online bullying is acceptable, or "blowing up" during Round 7 at the TOC is okay. Further, we do believe that some bodies will seem more hostile than others. We find that for us, asking pointed questions is seen as hostile, where other bodies get far more leeway. In line with the essay, we would suggest that if anyone has a problem with a coach or how a coach behaves, talk to that coach. In one case someone criticized one of the authors online in relation to the essay, and — after a conversation with the author — deleted his negative comments. Sometimes perceptions can be wrong. But that really is a topic for a different discussion. We do not think that it is intellectually honest to dismiss the online and in-person bullying of minors because some have a problem with the adults delivering the message. Concern 5: “What about the oppression of women and GLBTQ debaters? Why do you only focus on race?” Our response: Our analysis and examples have already included all types of difference; reread Part 1. Some have asserted that we have only addressed issues of racial difference at the exclusion of disability, gender and sexual orientation. In our initial essay we were very clear that the examples we cited and the students affected served “canaries in the mine” which applied to ALL students in the auditorium. In addition, we have personally seen many situations in circuit LD where students are targeted for their “multiple identities” (i.e. example 2) and then subsequently bullied, ostracized and terrorized. We are livid when we hear of students ridiculed because of their mental or physical disabilities. We are disgusted when we have witnessed women in the community being sexually harassed due to earlier “public protests” and flame wars. We are horrified by the names that quare/queer individuals are constantly called at camps and tournaments. These experiences motivate our strong public stance against treating these coaches and students as expendable. Readers should avoid playing the “Oppression Olympics” when reading our article. We make no apologies for being explicitly anti-racist. But an anti-racist position works in conjunction with efforts to oppose victimization of other marginalized populations. 

A time for moving forward

 We recognize that to some in the community, it is uncomfortable and threatening to them to be told that behaving in the following ways will not be tolerated: calling well educated black coaches “thugs,” referring to students of color’s arguments as “nigger frameworks” or continuing to reference some LD students (and others) as “affirmative action babies.” Again, we ask those who believe in political movements within debate: Where are the public denouncements of these abominations that occur in our collective auditoriums? No educator who has a duty of care toward students could reasonably engage in public “sit outs” or start flame wars while deliberately ignoring the suffering of the innocents who they recklessly endanger in the process. We also contend that it is not our obligation to remain silent when we have had to take care of and rebuild children who have felt the brunt of such “activism” and the direct attacks of mobs created. Re-asserting “it wasn’t a mob!” does nothing to mitigate the actions which continue to harm innocent students. We refer back to Richard Sodikow’s example. Would he ever endorse a protest in the debate auditorium over tab results/decisions, knowing that a student of color, a woman, a disabled person, a queer/quare individual or other child would feel that their world was ending and that they were hated by everyone? No. He would insist on handling such matters in a separate, private environment because the welfare of students outweighs short-term conflicts over debate tournament results that few will care about in a couple of years. We would all be well served to follow the example of NSDA Hall of Fame and Legendary Bronx High School of Science coach, Richard Sodikow. Or, suppose we don’t follow his example:Imagine that it is April 2015 at the TOC. A group of 40 to 50 people (students and coaches) initiate a “sit out” protest against what they feel is an unjust, egregious, totally unfair decision that took away a debater’s win. The tab room tries to explain the rationale for the decision. Several coaches “grill” the tab room director, peppering him/her with questions, even to the point of raising their voice to a point that could be perceived as yelling. Some of this yelling has been recorded and distributed on an online video site. During the protests, a person (or persons) yells “There he is!!!” toward the white student who benefited from the ruling.And, in this “sit out”, all of the participants are Black.Will this also be perceived by the community as a just protest?Will the level of intensity, volume and aggressiveness in the exchanges with the tournament director and tab room be interpreted the same way as the TOC 2014 protest? If you are being truly honest with yourself, you already know the answers to these questions. Nicholas Kristof helps to add some clarity to our position when he illustrates:

“The truth is that injustice is easy not to notice when it affects people different from ourselves; that helps explain the obliviousness of our own generation to inequity today. We need to wake up.”

Seemingly Uncontroversial Solutions

 The good thing to note and emphasize about the responses to our original essay is that our suggested solutions did not seem controversial. In addition to an online petition, we suggested four specific things that coaches, online debate institutions, and National Championship tournaments must do to make the auditorium safer for all students:Stop supporting online institutions and summer institutes that promote and encourage destructive online behavior. If online bullying occurs on a website, the national high school debate community must not support that site. If the bully-encouraging site is associated with a summer institute, the national high school debate community must not support that institute.Demand that online discussion boards disallow negative comments about students, coaches, and programs. This is the source of online bullying. From our original essay: “Offending online debate websites must immediately institute and enforce policies that will not allow their sites to poison the debate space including, but not limited to, specifically disallowing negative comments about students, judges, and coaches on their sites. Allowing these comments at best teaches bad sportsmanship. At worst, allowing those comments is a deliberate attempt to intimidate, harass, and bully students and judges.”Educators must loudly condemn the racist sexist attitudes that are often the basis of these attacks.Require an Online Code of Conduct for Tournament participation:The National Speech and Debate Association, The National Debate Coaches Association, and the National Tournament of Champions Should Develop an Online Code of Conduct and Require Adherence as a Prerequisite for Participation. In other words, coaches, judges, and students who bully online or support online bullying by publishing the harassing text should be excluded from participation in the National Championship tournaments. Since our original essay the leadership of the National Speech and Debate Association, The National Debate Coaches Association and the Tournaments have agreed to endorse our pledge. Let us look again at our suggested solutions as we continue to move forward. Our community must no longer tolerate online bullying. Jonathan Alston – Director of Debate at Science Park High SchoolAnthony Berryhill – Ph.D. Candidate in Political Theory at Yale UniversityAaron Timmons – Director of Debate at Greenhill School 

Sources:

Bogdan, Racles, Hating the Herd, Our Unknown Enemy: Mob Mentality, October 14, 2012.  http://bqsuvt.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/our-unknown-enemy-mob-mentality/Brown, Roger, Social Psychology: The Second Edition (New York: Free Press, 1986Citron (Danielle Keats). The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation, Civil Rights in Our Information Age, Edited by – Saul Levmore and Martha C. Nussbaum ¸ 2010Janis, Irving L.  (Scholar in Residence at UC Berkeley). Victims of Groupthink. New York: Houghton Mifflin. (1972) http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htmKristoff, Nicholas, When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 3, New York Times, October 11, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-when-whites-just-dont-get-it-part-3.html