On Bullying (Bob Overing)
Bullying. You know it when you see it.
I am writing this post because I believe we ought not leave a high school student to advocate for himself against powerful, adult coaches online. It is incumbent on the community to call out wrongs and then to search for ways to better ourselves.
Bullying. You know it when you see it.
We don’t need a community code of conduct, a treatise on how coaches should interact with students, or a legal framework on harassment to know when something is just plain wrong. We don’t need statistics on bullying and its effects on the teenage psyche or a complex theory of oppression or toxicity. We don’t need to draw careful lines between acceptable and unacceptable forms of coaches’ intimidation tactics. There should be no pre-round bullying, no in-round bullying, no post-round bullying, no cyber-bullying, and no manipulation of tab staff in any way, shape, or form.
Enough is enough. Some behaviors are simply indefensible. I am shocked and saddened that there are adult coaches who want to win high school LD debate rounds so badly that they will cause students to cry, raise their voices, refuse to leave a round at the request of the debater, and then smear a debater online in posts with clearly racial undertones. Add that to this list of inexcusable behaviors from the past five years: requesting the tabroom change mutually preferred judges after the pairing is released, delaying a round until a judge change is made, refusing to disclose the sides after winning the flip before an elim debate, yelling at coaches in the hallways of tournaments, charging critics of these behaviors with racism, and protesting fairly decided rounds so that the tab staff change losses to double wins or double losses. I’m sure there’s more.
You can coach debate without these underhanded tactics. You are allowed to fight for your students if judges are biased or decisions were entered incorrectly. You are allowed to ask for pre-round disclosure and flipping for sides. You are allowed to suggest there will be a theory debate absent sufficient disclosure. You are allowed to sit in the back of the room, absent a student objection.
What you should not do is make an end run around the students’ debating through bullying tactics, accusing mutually-preferred judges of bias, and protesting fair decisions in tabroom. In short, let the students do the debating.
It’s lamentable that these things even need to be said, but the level of intimidation, political gamesmanship, and dare I say cheating, of certain coaches has gone too far. It simply must stop, and I cannot sit on my hands, stay silent, and wait until it inevitably happens again.
3 Comments
Have you tried reaching out to the coach in question? I’m a former LDer who is decently removed from the current national LD circuit and the post you’re referring to and this both came up on my fb feed, and unless the original post is just completely full of lies, this seems like a bit of a misrepresentation. Having not only been judged by the coach you’re speaking to in college policy, but also having judged their high school policy students (and voting against them) and having my students judged by them at both the high school and college levels, none of the “intimidation tactics” that you’re citing have ever happened. I’m sure the coach you’re talking about would be open to a backchannel or something of the sort.
Also “you know it when you see it” is possibly the most dangerous way of phrasing an identification of a legitimate grievance (especially coming from an LD coach). It’s more than a little sus when put in a racial context as well. I’m sure your intentions are good and this post comes out of affection for your students, but this doesn’t seem very well thought out and seems like it could also set a bad precedent for how non-black students evaluate their inter-personal relationships in debate with black peers and coaches. At least personally, I’ve noticed that non-black people in debate have a bit of a tendency to move towards speaking to “bullying” much more quickly when talking about black debaters and coaches in round and out of round arguments. Again, this is not accusatory, but it is concerning to say the least. There is at least justified room for reflexivity.
But I’m not really all that involved in this, so feel free to ignore all of this. I only felt compelled to reply because nobody else had, and I have no stake in this.
The coach in question published something on his FB feed that was, yes, “completely full of lies”. Furthermore, his post makes it seem as if I’m some non-Black affluent suburban kid who has a problem with Black authority figures, but that is 1) false and 2) ironic. I’m a Black student who goes to a public school (which is more than you can say about anyone from the school in question) that doesn’t support my circuit debate endeavors all that much. I pay for all of my tournaments out of pocket, and I worked and saved up my money to be able to afford most of my competitions this year. I have a Black coach, and I advocate for my school district to change hiring practices so there are more teachers at my school who look like me. I have gone into my counselor’s office to specifically request that I be given the one Black teacher my school has, and on top of that, I usually have problems with White authority figures, not Black ones. The “original post” as you refer to it would have you think that I am just another non-Black students criminalizing a Black coach but that is not what happened. I don’t understand why you felt “compelled to reply” given that you were not involved in the situation, apparently knew nothing about who I am as a debater (labeling me non-Black), and seemingly have not read my post in HS LD and the subsequent response from the coach in question and one of his co-coaches. I, personally, really appreciated Bob’s article; more than anything it let me know that my experience with the school in question wasn’t just going to be accepted as business as usual.
If you do care about what happened, I’ve given my account of the events below with names omitted.
I went to flip at the like set flip time; they asked what the aff would be I said new. They started to get pissed. [X] starts asking me questions like “is it new to you or new to the topic or…?” and then he calls [X] into the room. I’m like “we don’t think its relevant”. They start to get really mad and [X] starts to yell at me. Then I’m like “look are we gonna flip or not, because I can go back to prep idc either way”. [X] goes off then and is like “I’m not going to talk with you anymore; where is the adult with you” and he’s demanding to talk to them. So [X] goes off on [X] and [X] about their lack of respect for me or whatever then [X] interrupts and is like “we’ll flip later but give us some time to talk”. So, we go away (this is the time [X] and I write the [X] bad shell). Then they summon us back to flip five minutes later than the flip time. Fast forward… the round starts. There is a lot of people in the room; all of [X] kids plus [X] and my [X] and [X] and all of [X]. On top of that there are just a whole bunch of spectators. I’m affirming and I read the shell at the bottom of the 1ac. In CX [X] is like will you stake the round on this claim and I’m like yes. In the 1nc she reads like out of round stuff/calling us cheaters bad but a critical version and some other stuff. But she has the nerve to say I was like silencing Black coaches or something similar. In CX of the 1nc I’m like asking about the coaches thing… “Did [X] not silence me and demand to speak with an adult?” She’s like this is going to turn into he said/she said very quick. I’m like not if you tell the truth so answer the question. She says “if you’re going to keep asking this we can stop the round” I’m like just answer the question with a yes or a no. She lied and said no. We’re both calling for the round to stop at this time. The judges go to tab. [x] gets [X] then they both go to tab. When they come back the judges are like okay here’s what we are going to do. Y’all are just going to finish the round on substance none of this other stuff, because we don’t like this situation. I’m like okay on the condition that [X] coaching staff/students aren’t in the room because one of their coaches makes me feel unsafe. [X] kicks everyone out. From any school. At that point, [X] is like we need some time to discuss. They come back and are like I want to redo the 1nc because I lost a lot of time reading these args. I’m like sure whatever. but then [X] is like and I’m not leaving this room. And the judges are like yo what. There is a student who feels unsafe and that takes precedent. [X] is like if there is a round happening then I will not leave. Then [X] comes into the room and starts complaining and is like I want this to be evaluated as an ethics challenge, “they cant prove it so we win” type deal. I was like we can prove it, but so far it been a one-sided conversation and you haven’t given [X] the chance to speak. The judges are like sure lets “call testimonies” or whatever but then [X] is like nah we don’t want to hear from people on his side because it will be biased. They just wont budge. The judges kick the coaches out and just talk to us for about five minutes. Then they kick us out and talk for about another 15 min then they call us back in. They “voted” for me in three different ways 1) they thought it was messed up that [X] wouldn’t leave the room even though I expressed feeling unsafe, we were more flexible in finding a resolution method but [X] was like “our way or the highway”, and even if they got their “ethics challenge” I was on the right side of it.
Thanks for the clarification, it is much appreciated. I jumped the gun in commenting, the situation sounds much more complicated than initially presented in either the coach’s post or bob’s. I do not think I referred to you at all in my post, but I apologize if anything I wrote seemed disparaging to you as the debater in the room. To be honest, I ‘felt compelled’ partially because I was reacting from previous experiences of online discussions of things that peripherally have to do with race in LD I’ve seen that went south that used similar rhetoric, but that was also a while back. Sorry for interjecting where not necessary.