A response from Rich Boltizar
This is Rich Boltizar, Associate Executive Tournament Director of the Stanford Invitational and past two time President of the Stanford Debate Society. I was an APDA parli debater during my time on the team at Stanford, and was a national circuit policy debater in high school. I personally think that parli is a great format and in fact am often a defender of the potential of the format to supporters of other formats of debate, but I think that parli is at a critical venture where the community must decide what the event will ultimately become. I can assure you that I personally want to run the best parli tournament that is possible at Stanford while working within the constraints that we face.
In taking the time to read through this thread, I’ve seen a few themes that I’d like to comment on. I think that discourse on the issues that matter to the parli community can only benefit the activity, and I welcome any constructive feedback or suggestions.
The diversity of opinion on this board reflects what perceptually appears to be a diversity of opinion in the parli community, and those opinions seems to change some and evolve year to year as well. While Bruce runs the parli room for us and is the ultimate arbiter on topics, he is very good about consulting with other coaches from top programs and is open to wording revisions on topics. For instance, Bruce ran the topics by Jon Thorpe and Bryan St Amant this year. We also try to have a mix of topic styles for each round with the thought that debaters will have a lot of impact on their own debates by what they strike.
A few years ago we biased the topics more heavily in the policy topics direction (and had some of Stanford’s top parli debaters draft the topics), but we received a number of complaints from both coaches and students who wanted a broader range and/or thought that our policy heavy bias placed too much emphasis on in depth research making the activity less accessible. Now that we have more of a mix, others are complaining that they want more policy. Taken as a whole, it does seem to us there seems a broad representation of topic types and subjects proposed. However, if the community strongly desires topics of one type or another, we are receptive to that, but high school parli as a community needs to decide what they want. At this point there seems to be much disagreement amongst students and debaters themselves as to the proper balance of topic types.
Most important, a number of people comment on the judges that the Stanford Invitational ‘gives’ to you. We don’t ‘give’ the judges – we manage the judges provided by the schools. Very few people in parli and pofo buy out of their judging commitment and ask us to hire judges, but instead the norm (as we’ve seen the last few years at Stanford) is providing judges, and the vast majority of those are parents. As a community, if you don’t want parent judges, then don’t bring them. As Mr St Amat points out on the selection of topics issue, we ask that you look to yourself. What kind of judges did you provide? Even if you provided experienced judges with personal debating experience, and no one else does, we can’t give you those types of judges back without a lot of the community buying into the idea of providing experienced judges, and bringing judges that meet that higher bar.
On the question of assigning the most experienced judges to key rounds, we agree with that and will review what was done to use the few experienced judges in the pool to greatest effect. If we are lacking in that respect we will address it going forward, but know that we agree that the most experienced judges should be used in the rounds that matter most in terms of whether or not teams clear.
If JV LD and JV policy had more experienced judges than parli, then, that’s because those coaches and schools provided to the tournament more experienced judges than were provided by the parli community. While we have a good 30 to 40 parli members of our team they were running our very large tournament, and no, we cannot deploy most of our tournament staff to judge parli, as they are needed to monitor buildings, field questions, manage logistics, etc.
Stanford has one of the most competitive parli programs in the US, having just placed in the finals of World’s. We have placed at APDA nationals many times, won APDA nationals in 2008, and are regularly in outrounds of most major tournaments. We take parli seriously and try to do it well. But we cannot manufacture a higher caliber of judge than what is provided by the schools who attend, and if the community of attending schools want better and more experienced judging, than they should bring that to cover their entries, and they will have it. We are you facilitators for the tournament, and to some degree our tournament is as strong as the teams attending and the judging that the schools provide. We have welcomed parli school program input into our topics, and while we will review this as well to see if improvement can be made, please know that this year’s topics were provided by coaches of high school parli, and are consistent overall with the types of topics students will encounter at the California state tournament as we follow their general topic area guidelines.
Again, I think that discourse on the issues that matter to the parli community can only benefit the activity, and I welcome any constructive feedback or suggestions.
-Rich
35 Comments to A response from Rich Boltizar
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I’m making this into a separate thread
Gameplan:
1.)Compile a list of everything that APDA does.
2.)Don’t do those things.
3.)Do NPDA things
4.)Kindles? Seriously?
1) Have an APDA alum sponsor a debate tournament
2) ????
3) Profit
I wouldn’t complain about the kindles, if you’re paying the tournament fee anyway, might as well appreciate the fact they’re offering anything at all to so many events
Well put, Rich. Stanford did seem to be unfairly attacked for the topics and judges.
I think that the crossroads Parliamentary debate find itself on was rather foreseeable, at least in High School debate, because the nature of debate is competitive. Parliamentary has a lot of room to argue what’s “fair” and what’s not, leading some factions to propose a complete shift to their “fair” interpretation of how Parli should be ran.
All styles of Parliamentary, fact, policy, value, etc, can be fairly and educationally balanced. You can even throw some Batman in there, even though it may stretch your brain a little.
This is easier said than done, obviously, and I think these very real problems will better be addressed when the Parli community can move beyond pointing fingers and do what the Parliament hypothetically does best: get things done.
I personally believe that policy debates provide for the best kinds of debate. I do believe that value debates have tremendous potential to become great, but the problem is that none of the LD philosophy seems to diffuse into parli, while a lot of policy jargon does diffuse into the event.
Too many value rounds are fraught with, to be honest, BS, like “ethics” for the value.
“All styles of Parliamentary, fact, policy, value, etc, can be fairly and educationally balanced. You can even throw some Batman in there, even though it may stretch your brain a little.”
1.)Lulz, trichotomy
2.)For reasons that have been discussed and certainly aren’t “OMFG I’M TOTALLY UNWILLING TO HAVE MY BRAIN STRETCHED” you actually can’t throw batman in there.
http://f.images.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/14615709.jpg
Play me out keyboard cat.
Are teams really using ‘ethics’ as a value? Please tell me this isn’t so.
Btdubbs. Stanford judging is actually the worst. The phrase “my judge didn’t even speak English” is usually racist bullshit. Last year it was reality. Twice.
The judge’s room is a clusterfuck. Every. Damn. Year. BAWWWW SCHOOLS BRING BAD JUDGES AND OUR DEBATERS ARE WORKING SOOOOOO HARD. No. Make parli a priority and organize what you have to work with. At the very least, because you clearly realize the parent judges come in awful, give a modicum of instruction on what their job is. ADD VALUE.
Other tournaments suck but nowhere near as badly. Step your game up Stanford.
The complaints against value and fact debates as being inferior to policy debates are absolutely offensive to Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum.
The real issue, at least in my opinion, is less about inferiority of types of resolutions and more about a lack of familiarity with value debate in particular. I think that as a community, instead of complaining about value debates it would be much better to place a greater emphasis on trying to understand how value debate works and incorporating it into our event.
I always brag to my friends who do other events that with parli, we get the best of all worlds: policy (CX), value (LD), and fact (PF). The reality, though, seems to be that us parli kids are mostly just extemporaneous policy debaters with a bit of public forum thrown into the mix.
Stanford was a great tournament, minus the lack of sleep.
If we are going to continue to do value and fact debates, can we please come to a consensus on what’s an appropriate (and very generic) framework for fact rounds?
I don’t know what the doubles & octas resolutions were (someone should post those), but of the 39 resolutions that were posted, 4 were pop culture, and 13 look like they were intended to be value resolutions. Here are the value resolutions:
TH values the quality of life over the length of life.
An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
TH prefers truth over belief.
TH values pragmatism over humanism.
Humor is the most important human trait.
How you play the game ought to be more important than winning the game.
TH prefers the past over the future.
Dramatic failure is more useful than mild success.
TH prefers being beautiful over being clever.
Love is foolish.
Keep it simple.
Greed is good.
Philosophical resolutions are great. None of the above resolutions qualify as philosophical. None of them would ever have a shot at becoming an LD topic. None of them have grounding in the works of any serious philosopher. Of course, philosophers discuss things like greed or love, but they don’t frame their questions in the way these resolutions are framed. Philosophy requires very precise phrasing; the above resolutions do almost nothing to define gov/opp ground.
Do value topics right, or don’t do them at all. Vague resolutions do not promote creativity, they are just an invitation to run the same pet case in every round. If you want that, then just get rid of topics altogether and do it APDA style.
This is almost complete! I’m sorry to say I lost my sems flows.
Round 1A
1. The USFG would repeal the payroll tax cut.
2. TH would reform the presidential candidate selection process.
3. The USFG should boost domestic manufacturing.
Round 1B
1. The USFG should loosen the restrictions on women in combat roles.
2. The USFG should reform presidential elections.
3. TH would freeze federal employee pay raises.
Round 2A
1. TH prefers Steven Colbert over Jon Stewart.
2. TH values the quality of life over the length of life.
3. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
Round 2B
1. Th prefers truth over belief.
2. TH values pragmatism over humanism.
3. President Obama has done more harm than good.
Round 3A
1. The United States overemphasizes individual rights.
2. Honor is the most important human trait.
3. Jason Bourne would defeat James Bond.
Round 3B
1. Darth Vader had the right idea.
2. Politics is too negative.
3. Batman would defeat Spiderman
Round 4A
1. How you play the game ought to be more important than winning the game.
2. TH prefers the past over the future.
3. TH prefers Rick Santorum over Mitt Romney.
Round 4B
1. Dramatic failure is more useful than mild success.
2. TH prefers being beautiful over being clever.
3. TH prefers the Republican Party over the Democratic Party.
Round 5A
1. The Palestinians should have their own state.
2. The current U.S. foreclosure deal in incomplete.
3. Love is foolish.
Round 5B
1. The U.S. should intervene in the Sudan.
2. The “Occupy Movement” has failed.
3. Keep it simple.
Doubles:
1. The USFG should subsidize the study of science, math, and engineering.
2. The USFG should levy a tax on junk mail.
3. The USFG should end sanctions on Cuba.
Octas:
1. Greed is good.
2. Labor unions no longer benefit the American worker.
3. China is ripe for a revolution.
Quarters:
1. The USFG should forgive all student loans.
2. The USFG should reform immigration policy.
3. The USFG should significantly reduce funding to energy innovation programs.
Sems:
1. TH values defense over offense.
2. TH prefers being happy over being healthy.
3. TH prefers to die on its feet rather than to live on its knees.
Finals:
1. US efforts in Iraq were beneficial.
2. Austerity programs thwart economic recovery.
3. Capitalism rejects morality.
@ Gilbert:
Would you mind posting a brief overview of the flow for the final round?
I am extremely curious to the framework and arguments that constituted “Capitalism rejects morality.”
Anyone who has tried to read my parli flows knows that they are literally incomprehensible. I’m the worst flower ever. Like I actually just have the word “Capitalism!!!!” with a box around it as a contention tag, which is not particularly helpful. I suppose it meant something to me during the round … I could probably give a reasonably accurate summary of Keizra&Jeff’s 1AC based on memory, but I feel like either of them would be better able to summarize it than me!
Rich, as much as I respect your accomplishments as a policy debater, I think the fact that you use your claims for APDA success as a way to brag about your tourney is indicative of a lot of problems of HS debate.
First off, HS parli is not oriented around an APDA style, and if anything, combines the worst of NPDA and APDA. Having resolutions and non-student judges works in a format where resolutions are reasonably predictable, based around policy or philosophy education (and no, “past is better than future” is not philosophy by any means, it’s nonsense). It simply doesn’t function when resolutions are utterly unpredictable for the negative and provide no clear way to assess or weigh them. The idea the “there are three kinds of debate” is one that emerged seemingly out of the ether and makes little sense. Policy debates include propositions of fact, and value. They simply ask us to TAKE AN ACTION so we can measure said facts/values etc in a real world, impact oriented context. Policy does not even have to imply government action. But debate that happens outside of a plan based context is just extremely difficult to assess or weigh.
For what it’s worth, APDA debate is, from my experience, largely plan oriented. The plans may be wackier, but you still generally assess a course of action and its impacts. Furthermore, there are built in checks and balances in APDA that don’t exist in HS debate. The community norm of opp choice debate means each side has to be relatively balanced, the fact that students judge means that people judging you are relatively aware of how the debate is supposed to function, and the strong reputation effects of APDA check back any judge wankery. If you mess up judging, you’re gonna be pretty lonely at the party. None of these things exist in HS debate, so “wacky” resolutions end up being grossly unfair and completely uneducational.
Finally, as a note, as much as a I sympathize with the judging issue, I don’t see any reason why Stanford can’t hire a contingent of parli debaters for elims alone. SCU did it for reasonable rates, and we’re a much less prestigious tourney than Stanford. (Plus y’all charge three times as much as we do.) Hire SCU, Davis, Berkeley debaters and you should be fine. If you can afford Kindle fires, you can afford decent judges for parli.
Some miscellaneous notes on the bottom. APDA judges are NOT qualified to judge HS parli. No offense, again, but HS parli, at least as it is now, is built around a resolution oriented model and coached largely along the lines of NPDA parli. “Good” judging is based on knowledge of theory, counterplans, and argument structure. None of this exists in APDA. I think it’s a sign of how disconnected y’all are from HS parli that you tout your APDA accomplishments as evidence of understanding; your own debate camp is taught every single year by NPDA debaters. And yet every single year you tend to punish debaters who debate the way your camp teaches. It’s somewhat absurd.
Bottom line, here are my recommendations.
1. Don’t do “pop culture” resolutions. There is no good way to assess or evaluate them. If you must, present them in a policy mode. “Luke Skywalker should have joined the Dark Side.” They may be fun things to discuss, but they are awful when translated into a debate format. Let’s break this down with a hypothetical round and see why these go badly.
“Jason Bourne vs James Bond”
1. What exactly is my predictable neg ground? That they interpret it as a metaphor? A metaphor for what? Let’s say they take it literally. How do I predict that aff’s criterion?
2. Topic Lit. Do I go off of the Bourne novels, or the movies? For Bond, which bond do I refer to? Craig or Brosnan or Connery?
3. How do I assess? Net benefits? “Preponderance of evidence”? How do I weigh? How much I like Bond’s accent? And don’t tell me “the debaters should decide.” That’s a lazy cop out. Give me an example of a good criterion, and how it would be fair and reasonably predictable. Or educational.
2. Either:
A) Hire NPDA judges for elims. You have the money. You charge more for the tourney than SCU does, and are roughly are same size. No excuses.
B) Turn the tourney into APDA format.
3. Get rid of fact/value resolutions. Cross apply the previous arguments about why fact/value is bad and uneducational. (Value works very well in LD purely because students can do research and cut cards; sophisticated philosophy debates are just difficult to have on the fly. And if you want to have them, fine, but adopt LD style topics, not bullshit like “beautiful over clever.” I guarantee you if that was ever the national LD topic the NFL would spontaneously erupt.) Ultimately, policy is just the fairest way to evaluate. (The consequentialism versus deontology argument, for example, is something that ought to and CAN happen at the top of a policy debate. It’s called the K debate. You ought to know about it…)
To address the concerns of that who responded to my original post I will clarify certain points.
It seems first off that my original point must have struck a chord for all those responses to flood in. I hope it acts as a talking point for where to take the event. I love being described as “radical” but I will take it because perhaps radical is what we all need. And it seems many in the parli community from competitors to experienced judges and coaches seem to be on board with what I am saying.
If you haven’t not read my first post I suggest you do so and I humbly ask that you also read the entirety of this post
Of Course Parliamentary debate is and can be amazing. I was simply pointing out its flaws to make it even better and keep the heart.
To address the concerns of Mr. Ballmer,
Yes, of course actual good teams go far in parli. What I was saying is that too often many of these high caliber teams don’t make it and the bad quality of teams does. I loved your response to my point that bad resolutions lead to bad debates. Yes they do happen in different types of debates and that is why indeed it should be written with a better topic writer. You only prove my point good sir. And furthermore at the very least there is at least time in policy, LD, and Pofo to prepare in advance for what would be considered “bad resolutions” in those types of debate. And the resolution you pointed out, “High School Debaters should not debate about sensitive religious issues” seems like it could be an excellent debate about the values of privacy vs. seeking truth and the dilemma of a Faustian bargain. And in those debates you have the additional bonus of not having to deal with the problems of Topicality, tricot, and other technicalities that do albeit appear in those events but nowhere near as often as in parliamentary debate. And yes I have experience in each type of debate.
As for your point about having fun debates about Lord of the Rings it doesn’t really prove much. Many in the community, including Mr. Fauss and Mr. Artem himself seem to advocate the elimination of pop culture resolutions. Just as you said yourself I did indeed have fun debating about Batman, but there was an even greater injustice. Once you deal with the fictional realm argumentation can be good (if lucky) but it is based on a lack of reasonability and a reality principle. Should someone really not get the chance to break at Stanford or go to states because they didn’t see Lord of the Rings or know anything about Spiderman? Not to mention when you mix reality (the Middle East) and fiction (LOTR) you lose total access to the distinction between fact and fiction which means all of the arguments made even though logical have no warrants or links because fact no longer exists. There also isn’t a clear criterion other than a race to see how many examples you can list. Sure at league and other minor tournaments and at practices at your school I am proud of you for having fun because that is what joining debate is all about, but this leads to heartbreak and tragedy when the silliness reaches the highest levels of competition. The whole point of debate is to learn something. Perhaps I might be thrown a bone in learning about Sauron but real understanding and the betterment of me and other debaters come from analyzing deep values of dignity, economic progress, etc, and how plans play out in the world. That is where the roots of parli come from – British Parliament which I doubt ever debated about Jason Bourne. The round I had against Leland for clarification was a policy parli round about the Sudan and the most fulfilling debates that anyone can have are about tangible values and policies and their effects in the real world – these are the debates that make mankind better.
Let it be known though that I respect you Mr. Ballmer immensely and you may be surprised to find out that I know you a lot better than you think.
To address what was discussed by Mr. Rich Boltizar,
It seems like all of this parliamentary debate controversy in both the context of the Stanford Invitational and the high school debate form itself boils down to 2 things – judges and resolutions
Let’s talk about the first. I think everyone in the community can agree that experienced judges should be used for all of the out rounds. Mr. Boltizar mentioned a shortage that should be addressed and fixed as soon as possible. Also note that as Mr. Corley stated, experienced judges were not being used in the prelim rounds. I was very disappointed by this as much as many others in the community. When experienced judges like Mr. Corley and Mr. Kouyoumdjian have to literally steal ballots to judge it is clear there is a serious problem and unfortunately this is a problem that occurs too frequently and at too many places and yet it is a problem that can easily be avoided. And is it really impossible to get qualified judges when many smaller tournaments can? To be fair Mr. Boltizar does bring up a valid point that we are the ones bringing bad judges. This is partially true. That is why there should be some sort of reasonable entry cap to avoid this issue. There is a cap you say – well then why was it such a problem. Schools should be forced to bring qualified judges like in LD and Policy. What, is parli just a money making event at Stanford? We need more respect. Mr. Corley and others in the community have suggested a solution known as mutually preferred judging. Though this “mpj” is bound to have its flaws it should at least be tried and tested given the many complaints about bad judging EVERY YEAR. If a school brings an actual experienced judge they deserve the respect of receiving one as well.
Let’s then talk about the resolutions. Now I haven’t seen the resolutions of this tournament over a half decade ago but it is reported by Mr. Boltizar that they were policy based. My guess is that this is close to the inception of real high school parli. Things have certainly changed. I advocate for policy and value debates. I think fact resolutions make for poor debates and I will explain why in the next paragraph or so. Policy and value debates automatically have facts in them. It’s always a great debate when you can get into heated discussions about the morality of capitalism or increasing the capital gains tax but debating whether or not the Republican Party is better than the Republican Party leads to bad debate.
Let me explain why fact resolutions like “TH prefers the Republican Party over the Democratic party” are bad. First off there are subject to the most amount of bias. Yes ,yes there is bias in every round but none can really compare to the bias in fact debates like this. Fact debates then become a race to the bottom to list as many examples as possible. Facts in themselves are important and should be utilized in value and policy rounds but do not deserve a round to themselves. There are also facts debates about the future like I mentioned in my original post about “China is ripe for revolution.” Fact debates about what will happen in the future are unwise because no one can predict the future and it also becomes a race to the bottom. Now you can say why don’t you change the interpretation of the resolution. Mind you I did when I was debating this resolution but then again you run into topicality and tricot claims by the negation. For more on this tricot read my original post. Plus if the only way to make an educational round is to alter the resolution to become a value or policy that begs the questions why didn’t you make it explicit to begin with? Why bother giving a crappy resolution and hope the aff not only interprets it in a fair way but doesn’t run into a neg team that calls out tricot or topicality (which they will). Avoid the confusion and just make it a non-pop culture value or policy to begin with.
To Conclude
And finally, I LOVE PARLI. Some act as though I want to completely change parliamentary debate. No I don’t. I was pointing out flaws so that it can become better. And when I see bad judging and bad resolutions and bad argumentation occurring everywhere from local tournaments to state and national championships themselves is it so wrong to want to change it? To fix it? When the best of the best do not even get to go to states or break at a high stakes invitational. Sure, nothing is perfect. But we should strive to make it as best as possible which is not occurring right now.
Mr. Corley, Mr. Artem Raskin, Mr. Fauss, Mr. Park as well as others bring up valid points. And I hope that my original post acts as a template for us to start making parli amazing as much as we can. Not to completely change it, but to fix the broken door (or in Mr. Ballmer’s case the broken windshield which stops us from seeing clearly) so that we can step into progress and hope.
LET’S ROCK! LET’S FIX THE PROBLEMS! AND LET’S MAKE EVERY PARLI ROUND AS BEST AS POSSIBLE!!!
As this has been a fruitful discussion & I believe there may be many ways to take a great event and make it even better, I am hoping to take away some action items that will help make “every parli round as best as possible”.
Since resolutions of value & fact are inherent to this event (at least for now in Calif/CHSSA competition), I am specifically looking for input on how to write value motions that this community feels are worthy of high school parliamentary debate.
Artem said “Do value topics right, or don’t do them at all.” So now that we’ve had plenty of input on how not to write value topics, can anyone offer specific examples of the “right” way to do these in high school parliamentary debate?
This is not a trick question. As Mr. Boltizar said, I personally reviewed almost all of these motions and particularly in the case of the value motions thought they were just fine as written.
Maybe I was wrong & maybe we can do better in the future. Or maybe not.
But either way, I think all of us who try to contribute to this community by writing topics & preparing our teams to debate would greatly appreciate your constructive suggestions in addition to your well-reasoned criticisms.
Thank you in advance for any specific “good” value motions you wish to share.
Impact #1: CHSSA has done away with metaphors. You’ll see almost exclusively policy topics at CHSSA state. For the one’s that are not policy, you’ll see value-oriented topics. However, you will NOT see any Darth Vader at State. I can guarantee that.
Impact #2: SNFI teaches almost completely policy resolutions and this year’s tournament did not reflect that.
Impact #3: Palos Verdes bought out of their commitment this year. I was going to have one of my former students judge, but he wasn’t available the whole tournament. If I don’t have qualified judges, I either judge myself or buy out of the commitment.
Impact #4: There are huge inconsistencies when it comes to topics. Take this year’s UOP compared to this year’s Stanford Invitational. There’s absolutely no comparison. Debaters go in with absolutely no idea what to expect which I think is unfortunate.
Were UOP’s resolutions good or bad?
I think that the best template for good value resolutions is the NFL’s choice of LD resolutions. Here’s an archive of them: http://www.wdca.org/about/history/53-past-lincoln-douglas-resolutions
I feel as though there is some confusion in the parli community as to what a ‘value debate’ actually is. To the best of my understanding, “Th prefers truth over belief” “TH values pragmatism over humanism,” and “TH prefers the past over the future” are fact resolutions, not value (as some have claimed in this discussion). The value framework revolves around the value and value criterion in determining if an motion is preferred- both of which are completely useless in the previously mentioned resolutions (you can’t use a value criterion to evaluate values). On the other hand, resolutions like “The Palestinians should have their own state” have the potential to be value rounds, but end up being policy ones because teams like to run plans. A good value resolution, that could not be construed for something else, would be “The Palestinians ought to have their own state.” Ought implies a moral obligation, teams would argue their own value/criterion, and we’d have something interesting. First off, you get real world education because the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is discussed. Also, one team could argue the value of liberty and the value criterion of self determination. The other team could argue societal welfare as the value and net benefits as the value criterion. You now also get the framework debate, which makes value resolutions and LD unique.
I was also thinking that it might be smart to have the trichotomy removed from the CHSSA bylaws. Because each of the three formats has its own format/mechanism for the round to be evaluated, the trichotomy often lead to confusion for newer debaters and judges. Value rounds specifically, need to be understood properly by judges. Very rarely, does a judge enter a round with an understanding that a value is a lens for a all points, and that all arguments that don’t link to the winning value are irrelevant. This results in either 1) a huge portion of the debate is spent explaining how values work, 2) the judge improperly evaluates the round, 3) teams choose to ignore the value framework because they know its consequences. As for fact debate, it has its own problems which have already been discussed in this conversation. I personally, don’t have an issue with policy rounds. While I’m not advocating for policy rounds only, I’d like to point out that debating obviously inferior resolutions for the sake of debating the 3 types is damaging parli. In addition, I don’t understand why a team can’t have a value and a plan. If both are tools for the judges, the use of the two simultaneously should not be taboo because of the trichotomy.
I believe that if CHSSA does not elimenate the trichotomy, it is obligated to clearly explain what each type of debate is to the debate community in order to clear confusion (i.e. “In a fact debate, the affirmative must show that the motion is, on balance, true. In a policy debate, the affirmative is to put forward a plan that would not happen in the status quo and justify its implementation. In a value round, teams are to decide if a motion is to be taken by determining if it helps to uphold a value; which value should be upheld should also be debated), and to provide judges with clear instructions through both the regional leagues and the state tournament. I just think that it’s pointless for the aff to spend a minute of its rebuttal justifying why fact debates are on balance, simply because judges weren’t told earlier. The same can be said for value rounds, or explaining why stock issues are needed for a plan.
UOP’s were pretty good. The only problem that arose was the time wasted arguing if the round was policy or value.
Here they are: http://www.pointofinformation.org/results/norcal/university-of-the-pacific/jon-schamber-university-of-the-pacific-2011-2012-2/
Wow, those are great resolutions.
That’s what I call a fun tournament.
Sometimes, I wish the tournament would just specify whether a particular resolution would imply a policy, value, or fact round.
It saves a lot of time and prevents the useless “trichotomy” debate that is really a bullshit framework debate and hurts the judge’s head.
Value debate ideally breaks down like this:
Resolution (example): Abortion is morally permissible.
Aff value: Reduction of suffering
Neg value: Preservation of human life
Aff contentions: Abortions reduce suffering for the mother, fetuses cannot feel pain.
Neg contentions: Life begins at conception.
The big part of the debate focuses on the values, because in most cases (save for some crazy turns/drops), winning the value framework wins you the round.
^ That’s a good example because the resolution is on a real world issue, yet it implies that a value is necessary to evaluate it. (of course, abortion would never be a CHSSA res)
Ben: I’d hope that parliers could be a bit more creative and link to their opponents framework. Also, more research into philosophy by debaters (which I, personally, am too lazy to seriously do) is necessary for quality framework debates. I’d think that it would be best for resolutions to stick to util vs deont values because they can be easily grasped.
“Impact #3: Palos Verdes bought out of their commitment this year. I was going to have one of my former students judge, but he wasn’t available the whole tournament. If I don’t have qualified judges, I either judge myself or buy out of the commitment.”
I’d like to preface this by saying I like flow judges. However, I think that pressuring teams to buy out of their judging commitment is harmful to debate. Attending a tournament is already extremely expensive, and increasing the cost by adding a judging fee would only make it worse. In addition, parli shouldn’t turn into circuit policy/LD and be esoteric in nature. With high costs and the prevalent use of jargon (which would happen with only flow judges), parli would become an activity only for those who can afford more expensive tournaments/fancy debate camps/high quality coaches, ruining the diversity and reputation of the activity. A better solution is to simply make sure judges can speak English (non-English speaking judges is unacceptable and easily avoidable), and then explain to judges that they should tell the competitors their judging philosophy. Lay judges are too often told “Don’t spread” or “I don’t have one” is a sufficient paradigm. If a tournament could explain the necessity of a paradigm as simple as “I’m a parent judge. I will try to take notes. I have a background in ___. I don’t like debates over definitions,” the parli community would be greatly benefited. If a debater is given enough information to adapt, you can’t blame the judge. We need to eliminate what I believe to be the only legitimate problem with lay judges- their inability to let debaters adapt correctly.
Jeff,
Parli is already biased toward rich schools. Cali Cup is only open to people who can attend invitationals.
Moreover, Parli is biased toward Norcal schools. The only Socal tournaments POI counts (that I know of) are Jack Howe and Claremont. I’m not counting Cal Lutheran because it was the same weekend as Claremont. Norcal has MLK, Stanford, Windsor, BOD, UOP, the list goes on and on. I expect 90% of the Cali Cup to be Norcal this year. Socal schools can’t afford to travel up there every weekend for tournaments.
Re: Coach St. Amant
A good value resolution tests a specific ethical principle. A specific ethical principle is one that would have real world implications and that can applied in a non-ambiguous way. The current LD topic – “It is morally permissible for victims to use deadly force as a deliberate response to repeated domestic violence” – is a great example of that. It is not a policy resolution, as it does not have a specific actor and does not mention specific circumstances. At the same time, it makes it very clear what the Aff ground is and what the Neg ground is. It produces a predictable Aff advocacy that the Neg can prepare against. It has real world applications. Once we determine whether the resolution is true or false, it can serve as a clear guide for action when applied in specific circumstances.
A resolution like “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” has none of these virtues. It is so vague it is almost impossible to debate straight up. Sometimes you need prevention and sometimes you need cure. You can’t make that into a general moral principle. You can just have a laundry list of examples in which prevention was good and another laundry list of examples in which cure was good. Laundry lists debates are painful to sit through, discourage argument comparison, and are virtually impossible to resolve on the flow.
And how can debaters prove that prevention is more than 16 times better than cure? They can’t. Which means that this becomes a metaphorical resolution. There is not reason why value resolutions need to be metaphorical. Philosophy is just as precise as a field as political science – some may even say philosophy is more precise. This means that value resolutions can be just as precise as policy resolutions.
Metaphorical resolutions are antithetical to good debate. They fail to reward teams who do research, they steal 20 minutes of prep time from the Opp, and they encourage Gov to run the same canned case in every round.
A good way to test whether something is a good resolution is to check if there is any topic literature. Show me a philosophy professor writing a dissertation on the topic of “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” and I will show you a dude who ain’t getting tenure.
@ Marty De: If you can’t attend invitationals then how would you be able to attend Cal Cup? It’s not that Parli itself is biased to norcal, it’s just that the majority of the large tournaments happen to be located near the bay area–you can’t blame a tournament for its location.
Marty De: I don’t believe a school’s success is measured by Cal Cup participation. On that note, though, the at large bid process gives schools that can’t afford to attend as many tournaments the opportunity to qualify.
I don’t believe that claiming the correlation between wealth and success is non unique is a sufficient justification to raise the cost of attending tournaments.
Having some background in coaching college NPDA, my high school coaching orientation clearly favors that style-so my bias is clear. I think that parli tournaments should debate issues that are in the news. I also think that the high school community needs to stop “calling abuse” every time the gov decides to do something other than the obvious-particularly on broad topics. If you can’t argue the case area in an event that requires no evidence, that is a bad sign. The NPDA community in college (which is the largest parli organization) has leaned pretty heavily towards policy over the last few years. If high school forensics wants to get its people ready for college, they might want to adapt to that more. If you are looking at high school forensics as an end rather than a means, don’t worry about it. Meaning, if you are just building resume material, you are at least get public speaking experience. But college will hold your high school experience against your eligibility. You will have to go open or junior in college because you competed in high school. Best advice would be to learn parli well if you intend to compete in college. If you do NPDA you will be expected to know current events-the model is coach prep with access to wireless-so the topics are pretty micro. You run into value topics from time to time, but the approach is not as technical as high school ld (an event which has filled the high school policy void in its own way). Look, what I tell my high school kids is its all good for experience. High school forensics (like college forensics) is a mean to an end. Stanford revealed some holes in what my squad doesn’t practice. I would encourage them to look beyond the APDA stuff-much of the country is not engaging in that format in college, but thank them for having parli as part of their tournament and their summer camp. High school parli has no choice but to grow. There is no value ld in college, no public forum. There is team policy CEDA/NDT, but it is small relative to npda. There is also a growing policy ld format. So parli is the future. Hopefully the NFL gets its head out of the past and makes parli a national event eventually.
My two cents
Crossman-PVPHS, ECC.