debate coach is passionate

"We're sure that there's probably some facts and information that's just not available. I mean, you see a lot on the video, but we need to make sure everything is revealed before we take any action," said Fort Hays provost Larry Gould.

that link didnt work for me :-(

Dude, debaters roll hard and get crazy. Tip of the iceberg.

lol this ^^^^. I was on the debate team in HS and college. Oh, we were the envy of the university.

yeah this is pretty minor stuff for debate kids - they're all aspiring attorneys & politicans & social activist philosopher types

So tearing your pants off is customary? WHO KNEW

Well, I didn't know, for one, and I (sadly) debated for 8 years.

(Actually, what's sad is how obsessed I was, at the time, with winning debate tournaments in HS and college).

I am still waiting for these alleged "stories" that will make Hippie Debate Prof pantsing himself at that poor black woman seem like the tip of the debatecrazy iceberg.

I had a friend in HS who was big into debate and he spent all his time reading Marx and Nietzsche. He once sent a mass email to our economics class w/a long refutation of that day's lecture.

... And then he mooned a judge?

I think perhaps I have different standards of lolcrazy from others.

Remember, there are alternatives to the economic theory you're taught. You just have to be willing to use guerilla tactics to subvert Doc's domination over the classroom and discover them.

(lol dan I hadn't actually read the article until after my first post)

I was kinda kidding, obviously, but there's definitely a level where it's not entirely surprising. I never did any college debate, but I saw a lot of it when I was in high school, and it's ... you know, people get as much into it as any other kind of competition, but it's done in smallish rooms in front of not that many people, so there's no sense of public importance to keep people from just going off.

Also you send debate people traveling and put them up in hotels and they are like band-camp crazy.

^^ meaning "saw a lot of college debate when I was in high school"

it's done in smallish rooms in front of not that many people, so there's no sense of public importance to keep people from just going off.

Depends. People debate in small rooms, obv., but -- in the "playoffs" of a given tournament, especially as teams drop out of the brackets as you get closer to a final, championship round -- the audiences often got much bigger (could be dozens of people; in some (rarer) cases, it could be hundreds of people).

But really, the "crazy" behavior I remember was pretty tame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDzHU_uFCzQ

Yeah, Dan, I'm mentally contrasting that with team sports, basically, where "hundreds of people" can be normal even for less-important matches in less-popular sports.

I haven't really thought about college debate in years. This morning, I stumbled on a video about a recent NDT championship tournament:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT8t4liEHwU&feature=PlayList&p=88444F1154027857&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=4

Twenty years later, things haven't changed at all.

why do they all speak so quickly??? fuckin annoying!

Debaters learned that, if they spoke faster and were economical with language, they could make more arguments and gain a tactical advantage. Soon, most top-tier debaters began speaking that way. It was no longer a tactical advantage, but de rigueur in the community.

It can be annoying. It also can sharpen argumentative skills. It also made debate more of a specialized activity. FWIW, what you see in the video above is exactly what I did in college (and HS) debate. It's been a loooooonnnngggg time since I was in debate, tho.

huh...i did debate in middle school lol, but have been otherwise totally unfamiliar with it. always assumed your arguments were much more along the lines of opening/closing lawyerly remarks, not 'putting up numbers' like the micromachine man

Yeah, debate delivery is nothing like lawyer delivery.

hoo man these fuckin guys

lol Yeah, 20 years later -- with more perspective -- I see yr point.

in most of the regions/levels I ever saw much debate, I think it was generally considered lame to do that mile-a-minute gulping-for-air thing -- lots of people still would, and might cover more technical ground than otherwise, but the idea seemed to be that it just made you hard to understand and less rhetorically persuasive and bothered judges. (I kinda assume that at almost any level, being fast/fluid/efficient but speaking at an intelligible human pace is ultimately to your advantage.)

That's fucking retarded. Why does every human endeavor have to eventually crawl up its own ass?

I'm way too far removed from the activity to make an enthusiastic defense of the fast-delivery form debate style. But I see the value in it. From what I remember, "persuasive" debate often is about delivery, smoothness and style (over substance). Moreover, the fast delivery does help sharpen argumentative skills, and it forces competitors you to think under pressure (admittedly, fast-debate isn't the only way to develop those skills, but I thought it was a pretty good way).

But yes, the fast-delivery can sound stupid and self-absorbed.

"form of college debate," I meant.

would be interesting to counter w/a super slow debate style

*opponents head explodes*

"Slowcore" debate.

I like it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/does-traditional-college-debate-reinforce-white-privilege/360746/

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. His partner Campbell, who won the top speaker award at the National Debate Tournament two weeks later, had been unfairly targeted by the police at the debate venue just days before, and cited this personal trauma as evidence for his case against the government’s treatment of poor African-Americans.

This year wasn't the first time this had happened. In the 2013 championship, two men from Emporia State University, Ryan Walsh and Elijah Smith, employed a similar style and became the first African-Americans to win two national debate tournaments. Many of their arguments, based on personal memoir and rap music, completely ignored the stated resolution, and instead asserted that the framework of collegiate debate has historically privileged straight, white, middle-class students.

…

To counter this trend, Hardy and his allies want to create a “policy only” space in which traditional standards for debate will be enforced. However, this is nearly impossible to do within the two major debate associations, CEDA and the National Debate Tournament (NDT), as they are governed by participants and have few conduct enforcement mechanisms. For instance, while CEDA and NDT’s institutional anti-harassment policy would normally prohibit the term “nigga” as it was used at the recent Indiana University tournament finals, none of the judges penalized the competitors that used it. In fact, those debaters took home prizes.

14 schools expressed interest in sending debaters to Hardy’s proposed alternative tournament, scheduled to occur last month. But after word got out that a group of mostly white teams from elite universities were trying to form their own league, Hardy and his supporters were widely attacked on Facebook and other online forums. Ultimately the competition didn’t happen, purportedly because of logistical issues with the hotel venue. Nonetheless, Hardy wrote in an email that a “toxic climate” has precluded even “strong supporters of ‘policy debate’ from “publicly attaching their name to anything that might get them called racist or worse.”

…

According to Joe Leeson Schatz, one of the unstated reasons for trying to set up policy-only debates is that once-dominant debate teams from colleges like Harvard and Northwestern are no longer winning the national competitions. “It is now much easier for smaller programs to be successful,” he said. “You don’t have to be from a high budget program; all you need to win is just a couple of smart students.” Schatz believes that the changes in college debate are widening the playing field and attracting more students from all backgrounds.

does-traditional-college-debate-reinforce-white-privilege

it's debatable