10 Things I Like and Don’t Like, featuring Apple Valley (Bob Overing)

This weekend was my fifth Apple Valley and first tournament on the new topic. I’m back home at my desk just 2.5 days after leaving — say what you will about the Minnesota cold, they run the fastest octas bid in the country!

This post is my first “10 Things” of the season, and I’m excited to get back to it! Without further ado, here are ten random musings, featuring the Apple Valley tournament!

Click here for the last edition of this series from the 2017 TOC.

#1 Women in Debate

I’ve been saying this for months now, but it deserves repeating: the group of young women atop the circuit this year are amazing. I believe this is the best year (competitively speaking) for women in debate in at least five years. They’re winning everything, and they aren’t slowing down. Apple Valley was no exception.

Of course, LD coaches and students are still predominantly male, and there are issues that winning debate rounds does not solve. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize and celebrate success when we see it.

#2 “Small Schools,” Redux

In the past, I’ve expressed some skepticism about “small schools” arguments, especially as they often arise in debate rounds (plans are bad for small schools, disclosure is bad for small schools, theory is bad for small schools, util is bad for small schools [1]). My skepticism is based on my personal experience: I’ve coached debaters with limited travel budgets and/or few to zero teammates (e.g. Livingston JX, Cambridge OS), and they’ve proven that two or three motivated people can find success on the national circuit, even without a five- or six-figure budget.

That said, Apple Valley is a bear for “small schools.” It may be the toughest tournament for “small schools” all season. For one, it’s a new topic, which magnifies the scouting advantage of having multiple coaches and debaters who can watch rounds, check wiki updates, and utilize their networks. The value of scouting early on a topic is much higher than it is later when the meta is more settled. Second, Apple Valley single-flights all rounds, which means the little scouting that “small schools” can do is pretty limited – debaters have no opportunity to watch each other, and coaches can only scout via the rounds they judge, which is 50% of the normal amount of intel you’d get at a double-flighted tournament. And the rounds you watch are largely out of your control.

Disclosure should be a part of the solution, but single-flighting gives little opportunity to get arguments up online during the day. With an uber-qualified tab staff, rounds were rapid fire, so only the more diligent disclosers got all their arguments up with speed and certainty. Apple Valley should consider mandatory disclosure like Greenhill and Meadows, two tournaments that historically open new topics in LD (though Meadows switched to Sept-Oct a few seasons ago). With this year’s shifts to ordinal prefs (finally), six rounds and a partial triples, perhaps more innovations are in store.

A cursory look at the elims participants is pretty good evidence that small schools had it rough. By my count, 26 of 32 in doubles and 13 of 16 in octas hailed from “big schools” or at least ones with traditionally strong national circuit programs. This isn’t to diminish their accomplishments but to reiterate that debate is “a game of kings,” and we all could do more to help the lone wolves, the independents, and otherwise less affluent squads.

#3 Needless Divisiveness

Most of us go to tournaments to win, to learn something, and to have fun.  None of those goals is promoted by conflict, speaking over someone, or name-calling. I was really saddened to hear about some of that going on this weekend.

A lot of argument content today is very personal and even provocative. But we — debaters and coaches — should not be at each other’s throats over debate rounds. We can disagree about the best way to debate, to teach, to judge, to coach — and we often do! We know how to argue without shutting others down and making a fool of ourselves. Coaches and judges need to lead by example, and I’ve seen far too much animosity in the past two years when it’s simply uncalled for.

For more of my writing on inclusion and drawing battle lines in debate, see here and here.

#4 The Greatest Hits of the 2000s

I had a blast seeing some old faces at Apple Valley. Kamil Merchant, David McNeil, and Liz Scoggin were among the very best coaches and judges when I was debating. It’s always fun to have them in the back of the room again, and I love a good 2006 war story.

#5 Excessively-Detailed Interpretations and Counter-Interpretations + Extensions of Excessively-Detailed Interpretations and Counter-Interpretations

Now we’re gonna get into the weeds a bit. I judged a TON of theory and T debates this weekend a noticed some things I liked and didn’t like (see what I did there).

I think it’s tough to say what level of specification is adequate for a theory interpretation. It likely differs by context. E.g., “plans bad” is not a good interp, since the theory initiator should specify what affs look like without plans, but “PICs bad” might be just fine.

The problem is that in a theory debate over whether there should be more or less specification, more spec almost always wins [2]. But debaters should reconsider erring on the side of more spec when it comes to theory interpretations. The time lost might not be worth the theoretical advantage.

Take, for example, topic specification, where debaters say “On the November/December 2017 topic, blah blah blah.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a debate where this prong of the interpretation became relevant (certainly never decisive). I’ve never seen a meta-theory argument requiring topic specification, and I’ve never seen a theory respondent say “sure, plans are bad on this topic, but plans are really good on XYZ other topics, so my counter-interp is better.” Topic specification is so generally irrelevant that I might even think judges should assume it unless otherwise stated.

A more general case where I find excessive specification is in counter-interpretations. If your counter-interpretation defends the violation (or converse of their interpretation), you shouldn’t re-read their interpretation. Say instead “Counter-interp: I defend the violation.” Especially against already lengthy interpretations, repeating your opponent is a massive waste of time and garners a vanishingly small theoretical benefit, if any.

Finally, if you have one of these excessively long interpretations, for the love of Theory, don’t extend it word for word! You’re wasting your time and my time, and I’m definitely not re-flowing that gargantuan mess.

#6 Harder to Affirm or Negate?

As it turns out, it’s harder to affirm. In my robust analysis of my own lived experience, you almost always want to flip neg.[3]

What does that fact entail? Not much. Maybe it’s a presumption argument or lends support to reasonability on T, but it definitely doesn’t mean the aff should get an RVI or that the neg has a proactive burden to “weigh” theory offense against time skew. Even if it were harder to negate, it definitely wouldn’t mean the judge should evaluate theory/T after the 2NR or that 1AR theory is bad. And it absolutely doesn’t mean all theory offense from one side outweighs all theory offense from the other.

So, one side is clearly right in a boring and meaningless debate, and yet these side bias debates have persisted. Did I miss a camp lecture somewhere in which a Steve Jobs-type debate visionary said that the key to debate success is proving that it’s harder to be you?

These debates remind me a lot of the presumption debates we had in many a circuit round during the 2010 and ’11 seasons. My presumption blocks were so thorough, and yet I’m pretty sure I never ‘triggered’ presumption. So why did we do it? And why are teams doing something similar now?

I think for a lot of mid-level teams in the 3-3 to bid round category, it may just be a kneejerk reaction: “Hey, they said X, I have a block to X, so I’ll read my block!” There’s not a ton of strategic thinking going on here.

But for two Apple Valley quarterfinalists like Lake Highland MK and Cambridge AG who debated in front of me in prelims, we’d hope to find a better explanation. I think the calculus for them is that winning side bias is a swiss army knife – you can use it as theory standard weighing, its own theory standard (flexibility), presumption, permissibility, RVIs, reasonability, 1AR theory good/bad, evaluate after the 2NR, err aff/neg, the other side has a weighing burden, etc. etc. Knowing this, you want to (a) keep all those potential benefits for yourself, and (b) prevent your opponent from wielding the swiss army knife against you.

The question is whether it’s worth the opportunity cost. These debates generally take up about :12-15 of the aff, longer if the Adler card is read, and anywhere from :30 to :60 of the 1NC. If you’re the 1AR, you have a tough decision to make, since :30, an eighth of your speech, could be spent developing offense or bolstering a clearer path to the ballot (turns to the NC, a new theory shell or metatheory shell, etc.).

Debaters need to more rigorously assess how much the stated or potential impact of a side bias claim hurts their strategy if conceded. Most affs impact side bias to presumption and maybe reasonability or RVIs. In this case, I generally don’t think it’s worth responding to, since the chance that presumption is relevant in any given debate is close to zero, and objections to RVIs/reasonability likely outweigh side bias anyway. In other words, the inference from the side bias premise to the RVI/reasonability conclusion is weak, so attack the inference, not the premise. The same reasoning applies to potential impacts – if you’re the 1AR, it seems really unlikely that the 2NR will win “1AR theory bad” even if you’ve conceded that it’s harder to negate, so spend your time elsewhere.

In Lake Highland MK vs. Cambridge AG, the 1NC made about eight arguments on side bias, and the 1AR only extended one with weighing. The stated impact was ‘an implicit aff/neg flex standard in any theory debate.’ Is that worth the time-investment? I think not. It’s unlikely that a judge will decide a complex theory debate on the basis of “aff flexibility” unless the rest of that debate is truly too close to call. And in that case, wouldn’t you rather have had more offense and weighing than a mediocre back-up plan? The 2AR seemed to make the same calculation, and it paid off.

#7 Leaving Time on the Clock

I judged eight debates, and at least four debaters sat down with time to spare, sometimes even in the 1AC and 1NC!

There are maybe two acceptable times to sit down early. First if you’re so confident that you’re winning (perhaps because you’re debating a novice or JV-level debater), and it would be almost rude/overkill to continue, then go ahead and stop. Second if your opponent makes a drop or technical error that leads to an easy path to the ballot for you, and there’s no way to hedge (i.e. extend other arguments in case you’re wrong), then go ahead and stop.

If neither of these situations describes your round, then you need to speak through the timer. Make additional weighing arguments. Give a crystal-clear summary of the round. Tell me why your author quals are awesome. Find something!

#8 Are Theory Standards Voters Now?

I wonder if we have reached >50% adoption of the view that a theory standard – e.g. kritik education or philosophy education – is a voting issue in of itself. Leave aside the ‘drop the debater/argument’ debate; when I say “voting issue” here, I just mean “relevant theoretical impact.”

Consider the following scenario:

1NC: “Plans are bad because they’re hard to predict. That’s unfair, and fairness is a voter…”

1AR: “Plans are good for policymaking education. And they’re fair.”

2NR: “Hah! You didn’t read an education voter, so your policymaking standard has no impact.”

2AR: “My policymaking education standard said it’s good to learn about policymaking, so it had an embedded voter. The fact that I didn’t say the five magic words ‘it’s why schools fund debate’ or ‘it impacts out-of-round’ is irrelevant. Plus, you could’ve argued that a judge shouldn’t be concerned with education, but you didn’t, so you haven’t disproven the assumption in my standard.”

I’m inclined to agree with the 2AR, but I’m not totally convinced yet. Are you?

One issue is whether the standards themselves contain evidence for ‘education matters’ or ‘education is a voter.’ This is tough to say in a vacuum, so let’s think about the harder case, where there is definitely no impact/voter statement. For example, the 1AR says “plans are like specific policy proposals in a legislature; they mimic a real-world policy process, which is a detailed, concrete and useful form of education.” There’s no explicit voter statement, so what should judges do?

Some judges will say they presume fairness and education are important as a paradigmatic issue. I think the paradigmatic case is stronger for fairness, but with more Ks these days, judges seem more amenable to incomplete education arguments: ROB justifications frequently appeal to a type of education without saying ‘education is important for XYZ reasons.’ If we assume education is good in other contexts, we should probably also do it for theory.

Generally, this problem concerns enthymemes, roughly “arguments that omit premises.” I discussed enthymemes in depth last year, and I argued that judges do not and should not assume all missing premises are true or all missing premises are false. Instead, judges use their background, experience, and perspective to determine which premises can be assumed and which must be argued.

I think there’s a growing contingent – perhaps the more kritik/policy-inclined – that takes fairness/education for granted. I have always been on board for fairness, but find myself moving toward assuming education as well, in part because that’s how these debates play out.

Now, to be clear, this is not to say that ‘education/fairness not a voter’ is off-limits. All it means to “assume” fairness and education are voters is that (i) they need not be justified in the initial speech and (ii) can be justified in anew in response to objections. On this view, “Hah! You didn’t read an education voter” is out, and “Education was assumed, but here’s a new warrant anyway” is in.

#9 Topic? What Topic?

All eight debates I judged at Apple Valley had T or theory in the final rebuttals. I like theory, but can’t we at least try to debate the topic? Or pretend to debate the topic? Your I-Law aff with 5:30 of framework and spikes and one card about development assistance isn’t fooling anyone. Neither is your Wilderson and T strategy. At a certain point, I was convinced no one at Apple Valley actually knew what the topic was.

Look, I know the topic stinks. It seems like it could be a policy topic, but it’s not. It’s vague. It has a million potential actors. Some affs are about Venezuelan debt and others are about Bangladeshi water desalination. I think the topic committee may have conspired to try to make policy-style debates look bad, taunting us with resolutions that semantically allow plans but pose daunting research burdens.

Despite all that, I’d like to judge at least one round about the topic. Is that so much to ask? I’d even take a Kant NC at this point.

#10 Premier Debate is on Snapchat!

Add PremierDebate on Snapchat, and we’ll hopefully start providing some funny updates and whatnot during tournaments. I’m kind of a Snapchat noob, so maybe we’ll need to hire some kind of Snapchat specialist to get it going. Anyway, if you’re at the Glenbrooks coming up, I hope we’ll add some levity with some Premier snaps.

Asides

[1] I heard that one this weekend!

[2] The main downsides to more spec — predictability and time skew — are generally outweighed by the advantages in reducing vagueness and shiftiness.

[3] Some exceptions could be: you’re a non-topical debater in front of a judge/panel that loves non-topical affs, you have a great new aff to break, you’re a theory debater who has better 1AR theory options against their neg strategies than against their aff, you’re debating a really narrow topic where the 1NCs are so predictable that the affs can preempt the heck out of them and brute force the stock substance debate, or you have nothing to say against their aff.

Kudos to anyone who can name three TOC elim debates in the past decade where the winner of the coin toss decided to go aff!