I REALLY love policy debate
This is my twenty sixth year as an active member of the policy debate community. After debating in both high school and college I immediately jumped into coaching high school policy debate. I have been an argument coach, full time debate instructor, program director, and argument coach again for Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami, FL for the past seventeen years.
I become more convinced every year that the switch side nature of policy debate represents one of the most valuable tools to inoculate young people against dogmatism. I also believe the skills developed in policy debate – formulating positions using in depth research that privileges consensus, expertise, and data and the testing of those positions via multiple iterations—enhance students’ ability to think critically.
I am particularly fond of policy debate as the competitive aspect incentivizes students to keep abreast of current events and use that information to formulate opinions regarding how various levels of government should respond to societal needs.
Equipping students with the skills to meaningfully engage political institutions has been incredibly valuable for me. Many of my debate students have been Latina/Latinx. Witnessing them develop an expert ability to navigate institutions, that were by design obfuscated to ensure their exclusion, continues to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I am constantly grateful for that privilege.
Delivery and speaker points
I am deeply concerned by the ongoing trend toward clash avoidance. This practice makes debate seem more trivial each year and continues to denigrate our efforts in the eyes of the academics we depend on for funding and support.
Affirmatives continue to lean into vague plan writing and vague explanations of what they will defend. This makes for late breaking and poorly developed debates. I understand why students engage in these practices (the competitive incentive I lauded above) I wish instructors and coaches understood how much more meaningful their contributions would be if they empowered students to embrace clash over gimmicks.
I will be less persuaded by your delivery if you choose to engage in clash avoidance. Actions such as deleting analytics, refusal to specify plans, cps, and K alts, allowing your wiki to atrophy, and proliferating stale competition style and Intrinsicness arguments will result in my awarding fewer speaker points.
Remember your friends’ hot takes and even your young coaches/lab leaders’ hot takes are just that – they are likely not the debates most of your critics want to adjudicate.
If you are not flowing during the debate, it will be difficult to persuade me that you were the most skilled debater in the room.
Be “on deck.” By that I mean be warmed up and ready for your turn at bat. Have your table tote set up, the email thread ready, you pens/paper/timer out, your laptop charged, go to the restroom before the round, fill up your water bottle, etc. I don’t say all this to sound like a mean teacher – in fact I think it would be incredibly ableist to really harp on these things or refuse to let students use the facilities mid-round – but being ready helps the round proceed on time and keeps you in the zone which helps your ability to project a confident winning persona. It also demonstrates a consideration for me, your opponents, your coaches and teammates and the tournament staffs’ time.
Be kind and generous to everyone.
Argument predispositions
You can likely deduce most of this from the discussion of clash avoidance and why I value debate above.
I would prefer to see a debate wherein the affirmative defends the USFG should increase security cooperation with the NATO over AI, Biotech, and/or cybersecurity.
I would like to see the negative rejoin with hypothetical disadvantages to enacting the plan as well as introducing competing proposals for resolving the harms outlined by the affirmative.
One of the more depressing impacts to enrolling in graduate school has been the constant reminder that in truth impact d is >>> than impact ev. A few years ago, I was increasingly frustrated by teams only extending a DA and impact defense vs. the case – I thought this was responsible for a trend of fewer and fewer affirmatives with intrinsic advantages. I made a big push for spending at least 50% of the time on each case flow vs the internal link of the advantage. My opinion on this point is changing. Getting good at impact defense is tremendously valuable – you are likely examining peer reviewed highly qualified publications and their debunking of well…less than qualified publications.
I find Climate to be one of the most strategic and persuasive impacts in debate (life really). That said, most mechanisms to resolve climate presented in debates are woefully inadequate.
I am not averse to any genre of argument. Every genre has highs and lows. For example, not all kritiks are generic or have cheating alternatives, not all process counterplans are unrelated to the topic, and not all politics disadvantages are missing fundamental components but sometimes they are and you should work to avoid those deficiencies.
Like minds
The folks with whom I see debate similarly:
Maggie Berthiaume
Dr. Brett Bricker
Anna Dimitrijevic
David Heidt
Fran Swanson