Comment by huac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by huac | Hacker News Reader

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Huge surprise that this article ignores the most important movement in policy debate (and LD) over the last 20-30 years: a shift from policy to critical debate, which is focused less on abstract notions of 'nuke war' and more on critically discussing and analyzing social issues.

Another poster posted (as a dog-whistle) a link to Towson JR, the first team of black women to win the national debate championship. Policy debate is an incredibly privileged activity at the upper levels - costs of traveling to tournaments on both coasts, hiring coaches, subscribing to Lexis Nexis, etc, limits competition to only the most affluent. The author of this article went to a "pr-Ivy" with a $70 million endowment. That's some privilege to complain about - he even humblebrags about it: "From winter to spring, in settings as grand as a Harvard lecture hall and as cramped as a boiler room in a Salt Lake City public school, [...]". Flying to Alta (so sorry their campus isn't as nice as yours) isn't cheap or something everyone can do!

Also, since everybody rants about spreading - many critical teams do not spread, or are at least under 300 words per minute. There is a growing recognition and acceptance of the privilege it takes to spend an hour each night doing speaking drills.

This is a much better article about the state of debate: https://www.salon.com/2014/05/13/%E2%80%9Ci_was_hurt%E2%80%9...

Here's a somewhat less biased (IMO) take on the same thing:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/tradit...

I'm genuinely curious what people think about this:

"On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities.

In the final round, Ruffin and Johnson squared off against Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, two highly accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis. Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “nigga authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “Fuck the time!” he yelled."

Whilst an interesting topic they where not speaking to the motion so should have lost.

Luckily, part of the value of the activity is being able to question this premise. E.g. where "well what they're saying is not in the box we've been thinking in!" is not treated prima facie as a reason why it can't win. (At least not, as here, without any reasoning articulated.)

yes questioning but not introducing a different topic or a spoiling amendment are there no standard standing orders for these debates.

> Policy debate is an incredibly privileged activity at the upper levels - costs of traveling to tournaments on both coasts, hiring coaches, subscribing to Lexis Nexis, etc, limits competition to only the most affluent.

LOL nah.

Have you ever heard of the Urban Debate League? This is a debate league that is entirely comprised of debate programs from inner city schools. Any school can create a debate program and join the UDL, and they will give you money to become a traveling team if you do well enough. Many schools sent their students to stupid expensive debate camps, too.

While our school was part of the NFL, my family was relatively broke compared to the families that you describe. They still did their damnest to keep me in debate. Very few of my team members were “privileged.”

There were plenty of scholarships that gave us the ability to attend debate camps at significant discounts, and many took advantage of them. There were plenty of kids who were able to pay outright, but it certainly wasn’t exclusive.

Not only is UDL huge, but the University of West Georgia was killing it on the debate circuit 10 years ago and they are a small, shitty university in Carrollton, GA with just enough money to fly their team where they needed.

At the high school level I get the 'elite' argument (from the TOC perspective - unless you're in NY, IL, GA, CA, or TX, you probably only have 1 TOC qualifying tournament within driving distance) but, as you stated, you don't HAVE to play that game - let the rich private schools fly their kids across the country every weekend while the poorer schools just go to local tournaments in their hand-me-down school bus driven by the coach.

Yes, I know the UDL, and I'm a big fan. My high school team had absolutely no institutional support either (I called in "sick" to attend the Berkeley tournament), so I know how hard it is to compete with well-funded schools from the North Shore.

More generally, I think there is a turn away from this insane privilege in policy debate, and the rise and acceptance of UDL's are an example of that, as is K debate. The author of the article doesn't see the privilege or the turn away.

>many critical teams do not spread

>under 300 words per minute

That still falls far short of allaying the concern in my opinion. I hope people rant about spreading and continue to do so for as long as necessary until it's changed. At least take the practice where this behavior constitutes "winning" and categorize it as something other than debate.

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