Small School Disclosure: A Response to Stephen Scopa (Kenan Anderson)

Small School Disclosure: A Response to Stephen Scopa

Recently Stephen Scopa authored a blog article about what strategies should be used to combat resource disparities in debate. The rise of pay-to-play models of debate is an important and concerning issue, and I praise Stephen for helping bring it into the conversation. Most of the advice he gives in the article is incredibly solid and the same advice I would give to a student who felt like debate was stacked against them. However, one of the pieces of advice he gives in this article, that small school debaters should not disclose or disclose in misleading ways, is extremely problematic.

First, there is an impossible bright-line question of who is a “small school” or “low-income” debater. Stephen is very explicit in his argument that only small school and low-income debaters should avoid disclosing and should  view the asymmetric benefits of disclosure they would receive as “a sort of compensation for their resource disparity.” However, in order for this model of disclosure to function there needs to be a clear bright-line of who is a small-school debater who should be allowed to not disclose, and who is not. Consider some of the following examples. My senior year I debated for Apple Valley High School in Minnesota. My team hosts an octo-finals bid tournament, has had multiple national championships, and has a long history of competitive circuit success. Yet, my senior year I was the only student who traveled nationally and attempted to qualify to the TOC, and I only had a single part-time coach. Under a “number of students” bright-line or “number of coaches” model, I would’ve likely qualified as a small school, yet I think it is clear that I had numerous other advantages.

Or consider a student who is the first and only student from their school to do LD debate and has little to no financial support from their administration but joins a high profile and dominant prep squad. Is that person’s lack of institutional support from their school the defining factor or their membership in an expensive prep squad? Would it change if their membership in the prep squad was paid via a scholarship rather than out of pocket?

I could list a dozen more permutations and examples, where one metric would deem a debater to be ‘small-school’ or underprivileged and another, would not. If non-disclosure is meant to be a one-sided mechanism that redistributes advantages from the privileged to the underprivileged, having a robust, clear understanding of who falls into those groups is essential. Without it, scrupulous debaters on either side will not disclose under the pretense of being a small school and will create a race to the bottom around what disadvantages their schools have.

Second, strengthening any norm of non-disclosure actively hurts small school debaters. In a world with substantially less disclosure, large and well-established programs lose very little. Their increased number of debaters, judges, and connections would mean they still have a good grasp of the metagame and know what most, if not all, schools were reading. Unknown information can be tracked down quite easily if you have the requisite debater-power. Meanwhile, small school or lone-wolf debaters would have limited intel based on their own rounds.

The notion that just a few small school debaters wouldn’t disclose and the vast majority of debaters still would is fanciful. If this response were accepted as a legitimate exemption to disclosure (theory, or even tournament rules), large numbers of debaters would claim to be “small.” They could run disclosure theory against large schools without disclosing themselves! Further, two small schools often debate each other. What then? Do both schools still refuse to disclose? Does the less small school disclose? There is no obvious answer here, and the myriad benefits of disclosure would be lost.

Third, an increase in small school non-disclosure opens the door in practice for big schools to follow suit. For better or for worse, the prevalence of disclosure has been driven by the popularity of disclosure theory and its many advocates in- and out-of-round. For Stephen Scopa’s ideal world of small school non-disclosure and big school disclosure to work, big schools will still need an incentive to comply with disclosure norms against small schools. That would require small schools who don’t disclose winning disclosure theory against big schools. ‘I don’t have to disclose but you do’ seems much harder to win than even ‘I don’t have to disclose.’ Small schools would need a nuanced interpretation that outlines specific groups that must disclose, which runs into severe problems of finding the bright-line, verifying the number of coaches or school funding, and the perverse incentives discussed above.

Fourth is strategic considerations. In his article, Stephen claims that it is more efficient to prep out disclosure theory than it is to prep out a myriad of different positions, and thus debaters should not disclose and spend a lot of time preparing the disclosure theory debate. For small school debaters, this is probably bad advice. Many believe–myself included–that theory advantages big school and well-connected debaters, ones who can afford to attend camps and have excellent coaches. Small school debaters are less likely to have extensive theory backfiles or coaches/camp opportunities where they can learn the intricacies of theory. Big schools have been reading and refining disclosure theory arguments since at least the 2010-2011 season. Theory may be more balanced between a big school and a lone wolf debater who has significant resources, but then we’ve lost much of what makes asymmetric disclosure allegedly attractive. Second, non-disclosure doesn’t alleviate the need to prep other positions. Rarely, if ever, is the 1NC against a new/undisclosed aff 7 minutes of disclosure theory. This means that if anything, non-disclosure increases a small school’s prep burden.

Aside from the benefits of disclosure for small schools, I should touch on Stephen’s defense of “false disclosure” or disclosing an aff that you have absolutely no intention of reading. This is purely unethical and constitutes lying and deception.  When you put a case on the wiki, you are saying “I have read this” unless explicitly stated otherwise. Sometimes debaters will disclose ‘potential’ plans or ‘potential’ theory interpretations, but if you have no intention of reading it, there is no potential, and your disclosure is fraudulent.

While some schools engage in disclosure tricks like silly/inaccurate naming of cases, omitting analytics, etc., Stephen’s tactic is a new level of blatant deception. While it’s unclear whether the article supports lying if asked “what’s the aff?” before round, the notion that small schools should be allowed to be deceptive just exacerbates the issues above about the bright-line or debates between two small schools. The more unfair we allow small schools to be, the greater the perverse incentives and weight we put on finding an objective metric, which seems nearly impossible. Lying is bad. Just don’t do it.

Overall, disclosure is good for small schools. Any other redistributive alternative is unenforceable and harms small schools in most scenarios. Small schools and other disadvantaged debaters and teams face unique challenges in debate, and we as a community should do what we can to help them. Pushing them not to disclose, however, only hurts the quality and equity of debate for everyone, including small schools. If you want a more thorough and deep dive in the arguments about small school disclosure, check out Lawrence Zhou’s article on this site from 2016.