Point of Information

Benjamin Morris says:

Fauss Jeffrey def. Musa Wilkie in R4.

Rohit Unni says:

Topics so far as per my recollection
1a THB reducing the influence of public labor unions is essential to balancing the state’s budget deficit (?)
1b smth about THB raising taxes is necessary for balancing budget
2 THB health care is a human right
3 THB the US should support democratic movements in the middle east
4 Jerry Brown as governor is what California needs (?)

Rohit Unni says:

Unbelievably horrid round in quarters >_> That quarters round….
As confirmed by Gary/Jeff spectating, they had
Topicality
Effects Topicality
Extra Topicality
No Standard
Admitting their case was a truism
Admitting that they locked us into only promoting torture, with a truism arg against torture
ALL disads dropped throughout MG and PMR
No way to say this without sounding really bitter, but come on >_>

Sarah McGuinn says:

Yeah, just saying, but when the judges brought the ballots back, the 2 non-squirrels were like “yeah, they got them in a position where they couldn’t debate, that was great.”

If I hadn’t lost my voice, I would have had to try really hard not to say something. <333 lay judges, amirite?

Congrats to the teams who advanced!

Jeff Leibenhaut says:

Supposedly La Costa Canyon won… congratz to all teams that advanced. Gary and Stacey did a great job, undefeated until the final round.

State Tournament was crap says:

I cannot believe the overwhelming ineptitude of the judges. This tournament was absolutely abysmal.

Guest says:

Gary I feel sorry for you cuz you got screwed.

I don’t know how the state tournament expects to have any legitimacy when they kick qualified parli judges like Thorpe and Kate drew off the panel. I think all debaters would rather be judged by someone who previously judged them and is actually a parli judge than an LD or pufo judge.

NK says:

I think it really sucks when the judges that really understand debate (the coaches) vote for you, but the community member and parent don’t because of their bias and lack of understanding on how to judge a debate…

Armand Domalewski says:

Let me preface this by saying I have nothing against the finalists of this tourney nor do I wish to detract from their victory: I wasn’t there, so I cannot judge who deserved to win or not. I do know I watched Stacy and Gary debate at CaliCup, and was deeply impressed.

That being said, let me mention some bits of judging brilliance I was told of at the tourney:

1. A judge wrote arguments on his RFD explaining why the res was accurate, and voted aff based on those arguments. He even said the aff made the wrong arguments, and that the neg won, but since the res was right, he voted aff.

2. A judge voted against a team because they had “too much evidence” and were “abusive.” Not only is this NOT a rule, it was NOT an argument made in the round, and actively punishes students for working hard to research topics beforehand and educate themselves. The best part is that the facts in the round weren’t very specific; the aff basically said that israel had NEVER BEEN INVOLVED IN A WAR IN THE MIDEAST, and the neg’s “abusive evidence” was the fact that yes, they had not.

That being said, I understand the value of a lay audience in parli debate, at least in high school. It’s supposed to appeal to the common man. But the fact that we routinely throw people into rounds who DO NOT KNOW WHAT WINNING A DEBATE MEANS, who vote based on the res, who vote on arbitrary reasons not involved in the nature of the event…it’s disgusting and shocking.

Yeah, people may say “So what, state is illegit,” but the problem is that the fact that it seen by outside institutions as a legitimate determinant of the best of the event. I have students who have excelled in prior tourneys and got taken out by random crap at the state tourney, and were utterly crushed. We know it’s not legitimate, but unfortunately, state is state—it has prestige both outside and inside the community.

By doing nothing and not acting, we are not only keeping the quality of debate down, as we take out the incentives to actually know how to argue properly, but actively hurting the pedagogical purposes of the activity. If we have judges who don’t understand topicality and let teams run abusive definitions, we promote abusive definitions and ruin the appeal of the event. If we have judges who vote on their own opinion, we reduce to debate for unpopular positions and learn things beyond our own perspectives. This isn’t just your regular tired old bitching about lay judges, and I don’t want to hear the regular old tired response of “common man is good” and have someone throw the bogeyman of policy debate at me; this is a real problem that threatens the real educational potential of this event.

My suggestion is simple: judge training. Tournaments are so focused on pushing ballots quickly that they often pull random people, hand them a sheet with the rules, and say “judge.” Debate has rules and norms that are key to the game; if a judge doesn’t understand that you have to vote based on the arguments in the round, not the res, how is he or she going to be able to fairly adjudicate a round? I understand that this is a logistical hurdle, but this is one we can no longer ignore. We are sacrificing the education of our kids and the strength of an event we love for the sake of time and a myth of common man competency. Even a 15 minute class on the nature of parliamentary debate, issued at the morning of the tourney, would GO A LONG WAY. And for god’s sake, for elim rounds, especially deep elims, HIRE JUDGES. Debate careers should not be ended on the decision of someone who literally DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE PURPOSE OF THE EVENT, NOR CARES ABOUT IT.

Ahem. Sorry about the caps, but I don’t know how to do italics in this format…

Rohit Unni says:

Or at least, I would think that by finals, they would have enough free judges to have a larger panel to balance out any weird stuff, especially at the point where it seems like Kate and Mr. Thorpe were available

Counts says:

I was in attendance of the final round and I think the round was clearly won by GB. I also think we should all be clear that the complaining about judging is not intended to take away from the La Costa team because they were both beautiful speakers and made good point, and based on their performance at State they are deserving champs. The real point is that it’s just sad that any team has to win state on a disputed final round.

SADKFGGADS says:

Does policy receive these BS judges too?

Armand Domalewski says:

btw gary, stacey gave me her info so I could hook her up with some stanford folk. i have since lost it, so if she’s still interested, let her know she can email me at adomalewski@scu.edu

Gary says:

BTW are the final round ballots going to be scanned or released to the teams? I’d like to read them

NK says:

And anyone know what happened to the ballots of the first round for Parli?

Terry Abad says:

To address Armand’s comment, policy debaters at the state tournament have the same complaints about judging as parli debaters. There are no paid judges at the state tournament in any event. Given that my school (Lowell HS in San Francisco) will be hosting the 2012 state tournament and one of our major tasks is recruiting a slew of community judges, we will see what we can do to help educate these folks at least a little bit. And perhaps we can pre-assign some quality judges for the elim rounds.

Sarah McGuinn says:

I worked judges…lets just say that the state tournament’s system is a cluster-you-know-what. I can’t even get into it without getting angry all over again. Basically, even though we had the capability of assigning judges via joy, we were still required to assign “community” and college judges via paper cards. That means that local schools were overwhelmingly used in rounds, as they had a bunch of teachers and parents as their community judges. It also means that you will ALWAYS have 2 lay people in your round basically without exception. And the information was not inputted in the computer in a very useful way, as far as I could tell. There wasn’t a way for me to see how much experience judges in the computer had while in the screen where I could assign them, not to mention all the pool issues we had and the fact that the computers can’t talk to the paper cards we used….buhhh.

Due to being sick, I was moved to the ballot table for the rest of the tournament after Friday. Probably because someone complained about me being “too forceful”. Basically, I told people I had no idea when stuff would happen because I DIDNT KNOW. NO ONE KNEW ANYTHING. I have never been in a situation like that, where I am supposed to be the official person and am given literally 0 information.

Anyway, I am writing a very very long e-mail to the state committee about a whole HOST of things that bugged me about this tournament, and believe me, debate was only a tiny portion of that. :/