Mira Loma takes MLK
View full results for MLK @ James Logan
Ladies and gentlemen,
your 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Invitational champions-
Keizra Mecklai and Benjamin Morris
On a final round 2-1 Decision, the Opposition team of Benjamin Morris & Keizra Mecklai (Mira Loma) defeated the Government team of Jonathan Jeffrey & Jason Fauss (Windsor).
The final round motion was “The ordinary American has no future.” The government team defined the resolution to a debate on whether or not US high school students are prepared for life. The opposition team attempted to turn the government’s arguments and challenge the framework.
Benjamin & Keizra are coached by Michael Lineback & Brooke Bingaman. Jason & Jonathan are coached by Bryan St. Amant.
(L to R): Jonathan Jeffrey, Jason Fauss, Benjamin Morris, Keizra Mecklai
Congratulations are also in order to the top 5 speakers:
1. Albert Wu (Leland)
2. Becky Vastola (Bishop O’Dowd)
3. Kelsey Brewer (Centennial)
4. Vikram Kanth (Lynbrook)
5. Ivy Ziedrich (Windsor)
46 Comments to Mira Loma takes MLK
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Congratulations to both teams! A truly phenomenal and exciting way to end a long, rewarding tournament.
Congrats everyone!!!
A few quick points:
1) Finals was perhaps the funniest round of the whole tournament, if not the whole season.
2) POI hegemony is legitimate.
3) Thank you everyone for a great tournament!
I really thought this was a great tournament. I want to especially congratulate Seideman-Reynes for semis. They were in a really tough bracket. Also a shoutout to our whs soph Ivy Z. 5th speaker! Congrats Ben and Keizra for the win. Stellar Job!!!
Definitely great job to everyone, there were a lot of tough teams here!
But holy crap haha, in round 5 between Mabie/Sukumar and myself/Bora when both teams were 4-0, the speaker points given were 22, 19, 25, and 23….
It’s data like this that makes me question whether MLK’s ballot confuses judges enough that they just add up the individual 1-4 rankings for each category or whether they realize it’s a 21-30 point scale and give points according to that -__-
Oh no. The final round was the “funniest”? I can only imagine. From what I have heard Windsor has some peculiar parliamentary debate theory. Congratulations to both teams nonetheless!
Congrats to everyone!
What was the finals res? What happened in the round to make it “funniest round of the whole tournament, if not the whole season”? Details!
The final resolution was ‘(THBT?) the average American has no future.’ It was awful.
It’s too bad the prop came off as insensitive to the judges, otherwise they’d have won. …I still don’t understand how a team can win a final round with no contentions.
peculiar debate theory or not, windsor broke 5 teams into doubles, 1 into octos, and 1 into finals. im a bit scared of that
Breaks, no breaks, we shall see what the future has to hold, I.E Stanford, State
Thanks guys for the awesome tournament! It was definitely an interesting experience.
So Nielsen was insensitive to the Windsor team, and Windsor was insensitive to Mira Loma, does that mean the world has balance?
Windsor wasn’t insensitive to Mira Loma.
Yeah, Jonathan and Jason weren’t insensitive to us. It was a clean debate, in my opinion.
Oh i must have misunderstood. Their case was insensitive though?
How did the judges think they were insensitive then? Was it their case?
I think it was the point that was made about foreigners “stealing” our spots at colleges. It was slightly xenophobic.
^This final round is sounding more and more interesting haha, can’t wait for the video!
DAMN FOREIGNERS.
jk, that was awk.
<3
Mea culpa…sorry to give the impression I videotaped the entire round. I only captured the first few minutes of each speech for our end-of-year team video, but in retrospect I should have captured the whole round.
If anyone wants me to assemble & post the 10 minutes or so I did capture, let me know. It was a very entertaining round!
I promise that if we are fortunate enough to compete in another final round, I will capture every minute for posterity.
In the meantime, congrats to all competitors on a job well done!
Aw. :/
Could you please post what you did record? Thank you!
Why do other teams define motions so they become events? its completely unfair to the opp team b-cuz the other teams gets to use their pre prepared extemp box. Windsor debates ideas.
Small minds discuss people
Average minds discuss events
Great minds discuss ideas
And only idiots debate debate theory
(which makes me an idiot with Neilson)
~Eleanor Roosevelt
Adam- I thoroughly enjoy what you are saying, but please don’t misquote Eleanor Roosevelt. Hahaha
“only idiots debate debate theory”
There needs to be a mechanism to resolve disputes about the proper structure of the round. Either you let the kids debate it out or you force the judge to intervene. Judges’ opinions on debate structure are virtually impossible to predict, meaning that not allowing the debaters to hear the charges against their definitions and then defend themselves against those charges BEFORE the ballot is signed leads to some very arbitrary ballots. Generations of very intelligent and hard-working debaters and coaches have pondered how to make debates more equitable and educational, and I would thank you not to dismiss them as “idiots.”
A quick response:
Debating in generalities is kind of dumb. I mean, awesome that we have finally (and conclusively) proven that the pen IS mightier than the sword, but it’s more educational (and interesting) to talk about specifics.
It’s also fair because arguments about topicality legitimately check it. Talking about super specific cases such as the Transformers world where there are pens that transform into giant lasers would be an example of where theory is necessary. Otherwise, YES, the pen would be mightier than the sword.
Also, criticizing people for having an unfair advantage by preparing in advance? That’s Awk. You put the work in, you get the results out. True for Parli as it is in any other facet of life.
Does anybody notice that I called myself an idiot? its supposed to be that because OF the judges unpredictability. And just saying, It’s no using specific examples, but rather focusing everything down in the debate to one event.
Ex. THBT more could have been done.
Def: UN could have done more concerning Darfur.
Sorry if I offended anybody with the very first comment.
to be honest adam, how on earth can you debate something when it is left so broad?
You debate the idea using examples of individual circumstances. Sometimes just defining the motion as a circumstance works, sometimes it doesn’t. A lot of the time, it really just is too narrow.
@Adam and Ivy: I have to say that I believe parametrization is necessary in a resolution such as THBT more could have been done. Otherwise, the debate becomes about whichever team can provide more examples and there isn’t really a weighing mechanism. The round comes down to something like “more could have been done in a, b, and c situations, but not in x, y, and z situations” and there’s often little clash, ruining the point of debate.
There’s obviously going to be prepskew on metaphoricals, which is one reason I don’t like them, and I think the only way to check that back is to give neg presumption on topicality.
@Ben: I concur that people ought to be allowed to use specific cases they researched beforehand. I am concerned about the effectiveness of T as a check because most parents find it counter-intuitive to vote of an abuse story, but I feel that’s mostly balanced out because aff must defend their parametrics, which are also often counter-intuitive to lay judges.
I think it might just be a Windsor thing. To each their own?
Definitely. That’s the beauty of theory; there’s no right or wrong.
“Does anybody notice that I called myself an idiot?”
haha my bad
Alice is absolutely right (except for neg presumption on metaphoricals… how does that work?)
Discussing ideas is called philosophy. When applied to competitive debate, it’s called a kritik. Philosophy is not an invitation to be vague. I have a hard time thinking of any contemporary philosopher whose project is literally to prove that “more could have been done.”
A resolution must be framed in such a way that, in the end of the round, it is either categorically affirmed or categorically negated. This means that a resolution must be contextualized through a plantext (for policy resolutions) or a thesis (for fact/value resolutions). Any other setup promotes example wars with zero clash. If I’m a judge, and Gov gives me examples of how the resolution is sometimes true, and Opp gives me examples of how it’s sometimes false, I have no idea how to vote.
You just described a factual motion. They’re generally judged upon weight of circumstances, yes?
I’m not sure what you mean by “weight of circumstances”
Even in factual motions, you can still set standards and lay framework (and probably should).
The quarters topic was “THBT Sarah Palin is more provocateur than politician”. Gov had to provide a criterion to view the round (we used “a more significant impact on American people”), otherwise all the examples in the round were just qualitative, vague, and unlinked to anything. Providing framework allowed for the debate to be clearer for the judges to see who won and who lost.
Weight of circumstance is a Windsor thing. And the resolution Adam was referring to in which “THBT more could have been done” was the debate Stacey and I defined. It wasn’t the UN could have done more about Darfur. It was speaking about Sudan and our warrants were for the Abyei region….
So please listen to all the posts supporting a well constructed affirmative case and stop trying to bring vague “who can name more examples that fit the resolution” debates into parli rounds.
If that was how we did things, we could just tally the examples of each team at the end of prep and decide who advances from there.
I don’t particularly like weight of circumstance, but to write it off as “who can name more examples” is close-minded. The point is to argue that your examples outweigh the opponents examples, not that you have more. If I have one example that completely destroys your ten examples, I win. It is similar to arguing contentions, but the argument is based on the example rather than the argument using the example as proof of the contention. It is not my favorite, but you can’t argue that it has no place in parliamentary debate.
I think it’s much better to make an inductive conclusion and then use the examples as empirical evidence. Just my two cents.
I agree with Ben. I understand what weight of circumstance is, I was alluding to what most weight of circumstance debates turn into. Which is an example war.
What standard do you use to weigh examples?
I.e. if a generic resolution is typically true, but false in one important case, how is the debate resolved?
I agree with Ben and Gary. I find that the “weight of circumstance” tends to allow for more judge intervention, as a judge can have a preconceived opinion of pivotal/important times in history. When the round is parametricized to a defined thesis, there is both clash and the ability to weigh arguments. Moreover, there is more opportunity for abuse when forming a burden on the weight of circumstances paradigm.
i have to agree with gary, artem, and ben. wight of circumstances is a nice theory, but its almost as subjective as you can get. at what point can one “fact” out weigh many? regardless, i find it far more analytical and interesting to narrow a debate into a specific area. when that happens, teams can try to refute one anothers links and impacts instead of just spreading to cram in examples. sure, you may say you CAN debate that way, but that sounds about as interesting to me as reading an encylopedia.
so much bickering.
When are State Quals for the rest of the leagues?
They’ve already occurred.
YFL was on March 5th.
SVFL was on March 11/12 (I think).
OCSL was on March 11/12.
Most leagues are in their National Quals season by now. State Quals are long over. We just can’t find results because:
a) These leagues don’t post results online.
b) We (POI) don’t have a strong presence in these leagues (ie. no Editors/active members).