A Call for Rules (Bob Overing)

Introduction

We debate and coach with the assumption that judges and tournaments should be tabula rasa – let the debaters debate – and that principle is incredibly strong. It extends further in LD debate than any other debate format, to my knowledge, in allowing participants the freedom to argue what they will.[1] But the Wild West approach has its limits. Without stable norms, judges are left to their own devices to define the parameters of the debates they see. Some judges will paradigmatically exclude whole swaths of arguments, and some will let just about anything go. This decentralization might be okay for issues like ‘extinction good’ or how to treat various theory arguments, but it fails when judges need to intervene to prevent cheating, bullying, and harassment.

Take card clipping for instance, which is universally accepted as a candidate for judge intervention. We can quibble about the bright-line for clipping and when/how judges should intervene, but everyone agrees[2] that at some point, the anti-clipping norm must be judicially enforced either by stopping the round or intervening against the clipper. Otherwise, a better or merely cleverer debater could always clip when convenient (say the negative dropped a ‘no 2NR theory spike’; would that mean the 1AR has free reign to clip?). Everyone agrees, yet clipping is often left entirely to judge discretion.

A spectrum of remedies is available to deal with cheating, bullying, and harassment. The status quo largely leaves these issues to judges, but tournaments can take a more controlling approach and specify rules, violations, penalties, and enforcement mechanisms. Some tournaments do this for clipping already. For example, Harvard-Westlake this year had an extremely robust clipping provision, including:

• Definition: “when a debater represents they have read out loud words in their speech that that they in fact did not read in the speech.”
• Penalties: “a loss for the team and zero speaker points for the debater who ‘clipped.’ […for] a false accusation of clipping the penalty is a loss and zero speaker points.”
• No excuses: “Technical malfunction isn’t an excuse for clipping…penalties should be imposed even if the judge doesn’t think there was ill intent.”
• Demarcation of roles: “The enforcement is left primarily to the discretion of the judge(s) and cannot be appealed to the tabroom or the tournament director in 99% of circumstances.”
• Suggested procedural guidelines (paraphrased and summarized): “1. The judge should immediately pause the debate. 2. Read the definition of clipping. 3. Inform of penalties. 4. Allow accusing team to continue or cease the accusation. 5. Allow accuser to present evidence. 6. Review evidence. 7. Use as a teaching moment. 8. Explain in ballot. 9. Alert the tab room. 10. Refrain from private conversations. 11. Judge maintains ultimate discretion over enforcement and penalties.”

Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum are Greenhill and Harvard-Westlake’s mandatory disclosure provisions, which are long on definitions and value statements, but short on penalties, roles, and enforcement. Similarly, the 2016 Loyola Invitational appointed an official ombudsperson to adjudicate complaints of rule violations without any definition of potential violations or penalties. Not helpful.

More in line with HW’s clipping rule, I believe that tournaments should issue more and clearer procedures for dealing with cheating, bullying, and harassment, including applicable standards, penalties, and mandatory enforcement provisions for judges, tab staff, and tournament directors. These procedures must be publicized in advance, and their implementation should be public and transparent during tournaments.

In this post, I outline the advantages of a more top-down, controlling approach. In a future post, I will forward some substantive recommendations for what some of these rules might look like.

Advantage 1: Clarify Rules and “Ethics Challenges”

Outside of clipping, status quo norms are woefully underdefined. Take for example a notorious round at TOC 2014, where a debater carded an author for a proposition the author ultimately rejects (perhaps representing the carded argument to be the author’s view). Four years later, I’m not sure we’re any better off in handling this type of corner case than we were then. Is a theory debate the only or best recourse against alleged mis-cutting? Should the judge stop the debate? Should the judge intervene after the debate? Should the aggrieved team protest to tab? Should tab staff intervene? If so, what should the result be?

I’ve heard the term “ethics challenge” thrown around, and an “ethics challenge” is supposed to trigger stoppage of the round and a do-or-die decision for the judge (loss and low speaks for the loser). But what is an ethics challenge? I can think of at least four ways judges might think about “ethics challenges” now, and each has significant limitations:

• Perhaps “ethics challenge” is defined by policy debate norms, which we should import wholesale. LD clipping norms likely came from policy[3], but beyond clipping, it’s unclear to me what the policy norms are for other cases. I looked at some tournament invitations and judge paradigms, and I failed to find robust procedures for dealing with many types of evidence misuse, cheating, bullying and harassment.
• Perhaps “ethics challenge” means any time a debater invokes the magic words “you cheated.” This seems wrong because many theory and topicality debates use cheating rhetoric, such as “you cheated,” “you were abusive,” “your counterplan is cheaty,” etc. Many stock fairness impacts include lines about cheating. These can’t be ethics challenges, so a rhetorical definition is unworkable.
• Perhaps “ethics challenge” means any time an ethical concern is raised. This also seems too strong, since it would mean any procedural (“you ought to have done X”) is an ethics challenge, especially those impacting to fairness, itself an ethical concept.[4] “Ethics challenge” could mean a deeper moral issue such as misrepresentation or lying, but not all misrepresentations carry the weight of clipping and should not be lumped in with true cheating, bullying, and harassment. For instance, accidentally citing a card as 2011 when the article was accepted for publication in 2011 but published in 2012 should not stop debate. Additionally, this would probably mean many kritik links (e.g. those that allege the affirmative’s speech act was racist) rise to the level of ethics challenges, which can’t be the case.
• Perhaps “ethics challenge” is defined by violation of tournament rules, but right now, tournament rules are far too vague. Clipping is certainly an “ethics challenge,” but many LD tournaments don’t even mention clipping in their invitations and procedures. Tournament rules might also be over-inclusive as a definition of “ethics challenge.” Some tournaments state they adopt NSDA guidelines, which could affect the legitimacy of plans or require values in LD. At one time, the NSDA rules included a laptop ban in LD debate.[5] Further, invitations generally specify the resolution, but debaters who read topicality against non-topical affirmatives are not raising an “ethics challenge,” even if they cite tournament rules. Triggers, penalties, and enforcement mechanisms are nonexistent.

Because it’s very difficult for judges to ascertain a bright-line for “ethics challenges,” we have a decentralized system where two judges might decide the same debate very differently based on their paradigms. This is confusing and unpredictable, and it leaves unresolved questions about dealing with issues like fabricated cards, mis-tagging or power-tagging cards, text removed from cards, citing authors for propositions they ultimately reject, excessive use of brackets, etc., not to mention bullying and harassment.

#4, tournament rules, is the best option to cleanly dispel uncertainty. But in the status quo, tournament rules stop short. To fill the void, tournaments should clearly promulgate rules that address common issues and procedures for their resolution.

Advantage 2: Enforcement

It is highly likely that cheating, bullying, and harassment are underenforced. Clear tournament rules and procedures could go a long way to reaching optimal deterrence and punishment for these behaviors. Again, take clipping as an example. Without active judges watching speech docs or widespread recording of rounds, instances of clipping go undetected. And because of the do-or-die norm, debaters are less likely to allege clipping, given uncertain norms, since it could result in a loss and low speaks for the accuser too. Tournaments could easily remedy this by requiring all entrants consent to audio recording and encouraging debaters to audio record their rounds.

The way most tournaments operate now, debaters have to guess how the judge will handle a challenge. They bear the brunt of enforcement costs and risk losing a round over an accusation. It’s awkward and scary to call something out, which likely means debaters tolerate more than they should. Clear rules are the clear fix.

If debaters are bold, they might run theory, which also leads to underenforcement. LD’s tabula rasa default allows accused debaters to appeal to reasonability, drop the argument, fairness not a voter, metatheory, ‘my kritik takes out theory,’ and other tools to defeat evidentiary challenges. Often the correct remedy will look like reasonability or drop the argument (or judge discretion), but given the pedagogical significance of these issues, it would be better for tournaments to define proper remedies advance.

Advantage 3: Transparency in Coach/Administrator Involvement

I’ve argued that status quo uncertainty leads to underenforcement, but it may also cause overenforcement in some cases. When we encourage judge intervention and involve coaches, tab staff, or tournament directors, we take the debate out of the debaters’ hands. When we do this, we need to be very careful. We need to be very sure that we’re doing right by the students.

In the grey areas, politics and power dynamics can come into play. Coaches and administrators have incentives that don’t always align with what’s best for the students involved. Defining in advance when and how judges/administrators will intervene is a step toward transparency and away from coaches duking it out behind closed doors in tab. This is especially important for “lone wolf” independent debaters who might not have the best lobbyists on their side.

Conclusion

Status quo treatment of cheating, bullying, and harassment is murky, sparks conflict, and wrongs debaters (both accused and accusers). Tournaments should put their preferences in writing, specify penalties and procedures, and clearly demarcate roles for enforcing them. Some issues are best enforced by tournament intervention, some by judge discretion, and some by theory debates. Let’s talk about which issues go where, and how far tournaments can go.

I’m excited to hear suggestions for what these rules could look like and discuss the possibilities.

End Notes

[0] Thank you to John Scoggin, Michael Overing, Tom Placido, and Ideen Saiedian for feedback on parts of this post.

[1] Lest a reader think today’s post is draconian and anti-tab, let me say that what makes LD great is its argumentative and procedural diversity. It’s perhaps the most tab and sports the most diverse strategies of all intercollegiate debate formats. Only in LD could ‘extinction good’ or one-off epistemic skepticism be argued so effectively at the highest levels that several years of competition required teams research and prepare specifically for those arguments. Only in LD could the same topic be contorted to allow hyper-specific plans that no one could predict or no plans at all. Only in LD could debaters invent new procedural arguments out of thin air. (There are dozens of articles on counterplan conditionality, but where did ‘a prioris bad’ come from? LD has invented successful theory arguments for at least a decade: NIBs bad, AFC, parameters, ‘epistemic modesty,’ brackets bad, peacemaker ROB spec, metatheory, etc. Even tired policy concepts like hypothesis testing, presumption and specification theory have gained new life in the hands of LD debaters.) Wilderson vs. Kant, metatheory vs. meta-metatheory, the Indonesia abortion plan vs. Indonesia agenda politics… This is why we love LD.

[2] A Judge Philosophies wiki search for “clipping” returns 756 results, almost all of which state a harsh anti-clipping stance.

[3] My understanding from participating in college policy debate and coaching high school policy is that a clipping accusation from a team in a policy debate where there is recorded proof would almost always result in stopping the debate. Sometimes a clipping accusation from a judge would stop the debate too. If there is no recording, the round would likely continue unless the judge thought it so obvious that no recording is needed to prove the clipping violation. If clipping is suspected, but no recording exists and the violation is not obvious, a policy debate would likely continue (maybe judges would grant the allegedly clipped evidence less or zero weight).

[4] Or consider that my students often read a Ripstein card about the immorality of free riding to justify disclosure theory. Is that an ethics challenge? I think not.

[5] There is an old epic defense of NFL (now NSDA) rules from coach and tabulator Jim Menick you can find here. I concur with his defense of rules, just not these rules. They include no plans, no counterplans, no presumption, general principle debate, mandated clash, perhaps a value/criterion requirement, rules for CX, a requirement for delivery accessible to a non-specialist audience… etc. Needless to say, the dinosaurs on his blog banner are a fitting mascot.