10 Things I Like, TOC18 Edition (Bob Overing)

The circuit season is officially over! Brian Zhou from Greenhill and Rex Evans from Santa Monica put together historic runs. In my ten years in LD, we haven’t seen a junior win TOC, nor a sophomore in finals, and I doubt we will again any time soon.

I had a blast coaching Alan George from Klein Oak and juniors Andrew Garber and Martino Boni Beadle from Cambridge Rindge & Latin School. I got to judge a number of awesome debates, some of which will be up on our YouTube pretty soon! Special congrats to Premier alums for their performances: Varun Paranjpe (doubles), Kevin Li, Alan George, and qualifying but not attending were alums Patrick Aimone, Camille Caldera, Chris Wang, and Frances Zhuang. Many of our alums were non-seniors, and we expect big things from them in upcoming seasons!

Click here for last year’s TOC results and musings. Click here for the last edition of 10 Things, featuring Harvard 2018.

As is my tradition, I will ditch my normal “10 Things I Like and Don’t Like” because I only have good things to say today (with the exception of #9, a sneaky dislike). Without further ado, here are ten random musings, featuring last weekend’s Tournament of Champions!

#1 Records Broken, Records Remain

I don’t know for sure, and I’m not sure there’s a way to find out since old packets don’t show school year, but there’s a good chance this was the first time a sophomore reached finals of TOC. We’ve had sophomores in quarters in recent years (Lavanya Singh in 2016, Adam Tomasi in 2013, Carlton Bone in 2012), but no sophomores in semis or finals. If there were some objective cutoff for “the modern LD era,” this would definitely be the first sophomore appearance in finals in it.

This year also may have broken a record for non-seniors in elims or late elims at TOC. Four of eight quarterfinals were non-seniors! Contrast that, for example, with 2014 TOC where only one of eight was a non-senior.

Harvard-Westlake is again showing other deep programs how it’s done. 30+ TOC bids on one team is incredible, and I wonder how that stacks up against the great Scarsdale and Walt Whitman teams of eras past. I believe they tie Walt Whitman in 2010 for most debaters at TOC with 10 entries, and if any team ever beat that, it was long ago. To give you a better sense of this achievement, it typically takes somewhere in the low-to-mid 20s for a team to earn the title of deepest TOC squad in a given year. Last year, Harvard-Westlake had 26 bids and the year before that 22. Wow.

It may also be a record year for Southern California as a region, which had 6 of the 16 octas participants, a whopping 38%! Special shout-outs are owed to Danielle Dosch (Immaculate Heart), Indu Pandey (Harvard-Westlake), and Whit Jackson (Brentwood), who comprise three of the top five on our final season standings. To my knowledge, Danielle and Whit broke their school records for best TOC finishes too. I wish I got to see more of them this season, but it’s tough when I’m living in Connecticut. California, and Southern California specifically, remains the best region for LD debate!

Last season, I wrote that Lake Highland AA could push for top 3 or top 5 of the past decade in terms of career bids, and John Scoggin wrote this season that Immaculate Heart DD could break the single-season bid record, but those records remain intact (St. Louis Park CT and Mercer Island SA respectively). It’s incredibly costly for a family and taxing for a debater to hit those levels, so I don’t anticipate seeing these records fall anytime soon, but given the talent in this year’s junior class, someone might make a push.

Finally, I don’t know if it’s a record, but the number of successful minority debaters at TOC this year is super encouraging for LD, which still lags behind policy in terms of diversity of competitors and judges. While TOC elim results may look bleak for gender diversity and parity, overall this season was a huge step up from previous seasons. We all could do more to encourage female/nonmale debaters, coaches and judges and create opportunities for them throughout the community.

#2 Being Wrong, Flexibility

In March I wrote a post about the centrality of strategic flexibility and predicted “the champ at TOC will win multiple debates on stock structural violence/oppression arguments, at least one debate going for a kritik aff or a kritik in the 2NR, and at least one debate going for 1AR theory or 1NC topicality/theory.”

I don’t know for sure, and Greenhill BZ can clarify, but I suspect I was very wrong. His wiki shows a predilection for stock oppression/structural violence/policy debates and kritik debates, but very little theory and T. I’d be very surprised if theory made it into his 2ARs at TOC, and somewhat surprised if a 2NR won on T, given his wiki.

But being wrong is great! We can learn so much from analyzing the argument choices at TOC and predict what we might see next season and beyond. Zooming out from the champion, my flexibility prediction seemed fairly accurate, but results are mixed. On the one hand, Brentwood WJ, Santa Monica RE, and St. Andrew’s Episcopal IB reached semis, finals, and quarters respectively, and they were some of the most versatile debaters in the country. On the other hand, Success AB, Success TR, and University RH were in quarters and semis, and their strategies (from what I can tell from the bits of rounds I caught and from their wikis) were much more K-heavy. Debaters who don’t specialize quite as much, like Brentwood RY, Harvard-Westlake IP, and Immaculate Heart DD, reached octas.

These results suggest to me that flexibility is not inevitable in the current metagame but is still extremely valuable. At a major invitational or championship tournament like TOC, you can perform exceedingly well with a narrower set of strategies, which is a shift from what we saw at the last two TOCs. But the difference between today and the specialization we saw 3+ years ago is that today, it seems you really can only specialize in K debate. None of the debaters in octas were heavy framework debaters, which is a big change from even last season, where heavy framework debaters like Nina Potischman from Hunter and Oliver Sussman from Cambridge reached late elims. Few of the debaters in octas were heavy util/policy debaters (everyone had some Ks on their neg wiki and I suspect read Ks against topical affs at some point this topic, which is a good litmus test). Few were heavy T/theory debaters.

This shift could be due to changes in debater interests, demographics, judging, and/or strategies. Whatever the cause, it’s worth taking note. This summer at Premier, these themes will heavily focus in our strategy lectures and curriculum changes from top to bottom. The lack of framework depth in particular should be taken advantage of. We have always prioritized argument flexibility, but given the paucity of pure theory/framework/util strategies in TOC elims, flex will be even more of an emphasis moving forward.

While I didn’t predict who would win TOC, I did pick four “favorites” and note that the pool of contenders was deeper than ever. My favorites list was also proven wrong, but my assessment that the pool was super deep this year was proven right. That’s TOC for you!

#3 Theory Affecting Practice

I don’t write blog posts to have them carded in debate rounds; I do often write them because I think they can help positively shape arguments and strategies and correct misunderstandings. Some of my writing, like the posts on theory advocates (h/t Chris Palmer) and multishells, were destined to flop, but others have been more influential.

I can’t say for sure that our writing on this site has directly influenced any one argument or round, but some of the ideas we’ve trumpeted over the years are reaching peak clarity in high level rounds. One of these is the structural/substantive abuse distinction, which John Scoggin initially taught me when I was a sophomore in high school, and now we have done a lot of work to expound on this site. The distinction is often used as a reasonability brightline, and in two TOC elims, Santa Monica RE and St. Andrew’s Episcopal IB demonstrated precise understanding and use of the distinction (though RE didn’t use the terminology). Another example is the ethical/evaluative modesty argument (here, here, here, here, and here), which appeared in finals (though not extended) and apparently won a quarters debate (perhaps among other things). It hasn’t had this kind of success since 2014. How cool.

#4 New Affs at TOC

I wrote about this last year in the context of our TOC elims strategy, but it was in the context of one debater and our preparation leading up to TOC. Now I will stake out a more general claim: new affs at TOC are the way to go, especially in elims, and debaters who read the same aff from December will perish! The cost to writing a new aff in LD, where you only have to defend it for another seven minutes of speech time and even then, can jettison it in favor of theory or a new kritik, are extremely low. Given a certain metagame state, you can accurately predict what the 1NCs will be. The new aff Santa Monica RE read at TOC was a great example of this: Against a new, narrow plan about police on the plea bargaining topic, you can bet the neg will say either T-abolish or some form of race K (generally afropessimism), or both. Because common disads and counterplans could be avoided, the 2NR would likely be the K (especially when he ran it a second time in finals, given the opponent and panel). That makes pre-round prep pretty easy and gives the aff the ability to control the debate (to some extent).

Some debaters are the exception to the rule, and in recent years, we’ve seen more teams stick with their main aff through TOC. They make adjustments and refine their blocks but by and large stay the course. Brentwood WJ stuck to his guns with the crash aff even in TOC quarters, and he won. On the one hand, it makes sense if you really think the substantive debate is unwinnable for the neg against your old aff. For some affs, like Harvard-Westlake’s IPV plan in 2016, that was definitely true. On the other hand, you’re giving negs several months to produce huge case dumps and creative off case strategies. If given the choice, why would you do that!? The question of whether to break new is a pretty fun debate. Weigh in below or on Facebook: What would you do in a big TOC elim debate? Does it depend on the opponent and panel, and if so, how?

As an aside, new affs can be really fun to judge. They creatively focus on explored areas of the literature and are often written in response to common neg strategies on a topic, which makes for great interactions. I love new affs!

I wrote a new plan for TOC, but in the rush to get it finished in time for the tournament, I overlooked some much-needed polish. One of my students, Martino, roasted me for an error in the plan text: “I can’t read this. I’m too principled to read a plan with a flaw in it.” Oops.

#5 Filming Rounds

A huge thank you and shout out to all the debaters who let me film their rounds last weekend. They really have no obligation to say yes, and I could see some debaters and teams being skittish about the competition getting an even closer look at their strategies, but these debaters appreciate the communal value in having rounds online. I often receive messages and have debaters approach me at tournaments to say how much they’ve learned from our YouTube channel. It’s one of the primary ways for younger debaters to learn and break into circuit debate (for free!), so we need to keep it up. If anyone has rounds they’d like us to post and reach a wider audience, from TOC or otherwise, please contact me!

#6 Voting Aff

I voted aff in 4 out of 9 debates for a 44% average, above my shockingly low aff win rate on the season. I suspect a combination of more generic affirmatives and greater allowances (by debaters) of neg up-layering (Ks that moot most of the aff constructive) are the primary causes of my recent neg skew. If anything, I would’ve expected to vote neg less in recent years as theory and NCs have declined, but Ks have supplanted them, and they don’t play nice with your aff. TOC is a small sample, but maybe neg teams didn’t innovate as much, and affs were able to tailor their 1AR blocks and strategies with greater precision. In any event, I like seeing greater parity and hope it continues to the detriment of inane theory spikes.

On the whole, negs underperformed in TOC elims, winning just 14 of 31 rounds for a 45.2% win rate. Without full round reports, we can’t be sure, but my guess is that LDers are still figuring out how to deal with non-topical and questionably-topical affs. We saw many of these in TOC elims. In preliminary rounds, negs won 145 of 261 debates for a 55.6% win rate; across prelims and elims, negs won 159 of 292 for a 54.5% win rate. This is fairly consistent with our data from Berkeley and Harvard this year, where negs performed better in prelims and worse in elims.

#7 More Substantive CX

This one might seem a little obscure, but one of the things I’ve noticed as LD has drifted toward more policy and kritik styles is that CX has improved dramatically. Top debaters, and in particular I’d like to shout out St. Andrew’s Episcopal IB here, are focusing CX on evidence and solvency in ways that would blow former LDers out of the water. We used to hear CXs that comprised of 3:00 of “what will you defend / won’t you defend,” “are you going to trigger presumption, permissibility, or some other a priori,” “do you violate XYZ theory/topicality interpretation,” and “sure, you can make that argument, and I’ll respond to it.” It was a total snoozefest, and it’s unsurprising that LD judges routinely check out during CX because of it.

I really hope CX skills continue to improve, and that CX is used to motivate in-speech argumentation. If you can’t explain what the alternative does in CX, then you don’t get to say it solves case in the 2NR. If you can’t explain specific link analysis from the aff, then a big argumentative overview in the 2NR with pre-written links shouldn’t count for much. If your explanation for aff solvency is just to reference your evidence over and over, then the neg gets more leeway in case answers. This might seem novel or interventionist to more traditional and tabula rasa LD folks, but it’s really about holding the line on rules for CX. If debaters can be dodgy or otherwise avoid answering questions, then there’s no point to doing CX in the first place. We need to make it count in assessing arguments.

#8 TOC Committee Guidance

This one might be controversial, but I actually like the TOC stepping in to regulate things like coin flips and conflict rules more proactively. In the past, some of these guidelines have been vague and their enforcement uncertain, but more and more, we’re getting concrete rules and procedures from the Committee. The conflict policy at this year’s TOC might seem extreme or even draconian (I had at least 20 conflicts, primarily from coaching two schools), but at least the community had more of an opportunity to voice concerns and hear the Committee’s rationale. I hope the TOC moves more toward transparency. We don’t like late-breaking rules changes, and we don’t like rules changes where it seems like the community hasn’t gotten any say in the matter. The TOC is of tremendous importance to us, so I’d like to see more notice and opportunity for comment on rules moving forward.

It would be great to see some statistics on mutuality and other pref data, especially in elims, and whether those numbers differed substantially from last year’s TOC as a result of new policies. If the conflict policy remains in its present form or something like it, the case for ordinals becomes increasingly strong as a way to improve judge placement. I and many others would love to see this change.

#9 The End of this Topic

Admittedly, I judged less on this topic than usual, but three tournaments’ worth was more than enough for me. We have had three years of criminal justice topics, which would be fine except when the metagame favors (a) whole resolution affs at the expense of plans and (b) structural violence/oppression frameworks at the expense of moral philosophy. Under these conditions, every aff is the same. And almost every kritik-y neg strategy to beat them is the same.

About 50% of the affs at Blake and CPS were stock, mostly ‘crash’ affs, and another 10%+ were plans. That didn’t really change much by TOC. I understand why, and I’ve written about the metagame at length on this site, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t produce stale, repetitive debates. You could write an aff today by cutting whatever Henry Giroux or Michelle Alexander has said on the topic and appending the same structural violence framework you read on every other topic. You’d be ready to go and probably reading the same aff as several of the top teams. It’s not at all bad strategy, but when it’s 50 or 60% of strategies, that either means the topic needs to change or there’s room to innovate and consistently beat these affs. We just need to figure out how.

For comparison, on the 2013 January-February topic about rehabilitation vs. retribution in the criminal justice system, we saw affs about democracy, biopower/Foucault, emotivism, Habermas, Rawls, legal philosophy, virtue ethics, Aristotelian naturalism, Pettit civic republicanism, race, plans about drugs or restorative justice, the ‘aims’ aff, and straight up util debate. To the extent that many of those exist today, they’re quite fringe and can be dealt with via the Curry ‘ideal theory bad’ K, a structural violence framework, or T. Realistically, how many unique affirmatives did neg debaters need to prep going into this year’s TOC? The current situation is lamentable from judging and educating perspectives.

Some of the decline in aff diversity is mitigated by neg diversity, and negs are more creative than ever in LD. While well-positioned, the stock aff is open to attack from all angles (lack of framework, not going far left enough, and lack of solvency/impacts). I hope more debaters can develop their neg argument interests into viable affs moving forward.

#10 Seniors in Peak Form

The TOC is bittersweet because everyone is debating on all cylinders, but it’s the last chance we’ll get to see many of these top debaters. Especially for seniors, many of whom debated for four years or more, they’ve just now reached their peak, yet this is the end. TOC is a celebration and a goodbye for a lot of folks who won’t debate in college and won’t stick around in the high school LD community.

Three of these seniors I got to see this weekend were Abhi Datti from American Heritage, Muhammad Khattak from Lake Highland, and Whit Jackson from Brentwood. I’ve watched them debate since they could hardly put together a coherent 1NC strategy, and now they’re giving perfect 2NR overviews, explaining complex kritik arguments with crystalline clarity, and misdirecting opponents into poor time allocation like chess grandmasters. I wish we could see more of these debaters, and I hope if given the chance, they’ll continue to debate in college. To me, they exemplify one of great beauties of TOC, and that’s why we keep coming back!

Corrections: A previous version of this post said Carlton Bone reached quarterfinals as a sophomore in 2014, not 2012, and implied that the 1AC in finals was new that round when it was merely new at TOC.