The New York Sophist

Things are ramping up toward the white party tonight and the grand final round of WUDC 2010. Great tournament and great people.

Been thinking a bit about the final closed rounds. Closed adjudication is something we rarely, if ever do in the Northeast BP region of the United States. I have usually been against it, only supporting it as a cultural norm from IONA, or the global BP community tradition.

Closed adjudication seems to be a terrible overvaluing of the competitive elements of debate over the pedagogical. Its function seems to be to keep debaters puzzled and hanging on to hope while their chances to learn something from their judges quickly bleed away as the time at the tournaament diminishes into socials and other important things.

This is my standard view of closed adjudication, but here at Koc Worlds I have been presented with some of the reasons for it, and I find them convincing.

First, closed adjudication ensures that teams don’t give up and leave. Here we are in a great, exotic locale, why bother debating on if there’s no chance to clear? Many teams would simply withdraw from the tab and be running around the city. Seems a bit far fetched to me, but I think that there would be some teams who might just decide to hang out at the bar once it was statistically impossible for them to break. The tournament certainly cannot provide enough swing teams to cover all of these possibilities.

An additional concern is that some teams might be bitter about their non-breaking status and deliberately ruin the debates that they are in. This of course destroys the chances of the teams left in the rooms to break and hurts their ability to enjoy the challenge of the round.

Finally, there is the element of surprise, where they want to make sure that the teams are very excited and thrilled to know that they broke. The emotional tension and excitement should be high on break night and everyone should be screaming and jumping around.

These are the most convincing arguments I’ve heard for it, and I agree partially. I think that these reasons are important, however, they are all in the service of “sportifying” debate instead of keeping debate on the educational and critical keel that is important long term.

I know that many people don’t particularly care to get feedback from closed rounds. It’s hard when the chairs have little to no memory of the round by the time the break is released, and additionally when the moment of decision is hours old. This is of course if you can find the people judging you at the party and talk to them coherently due to the noise or other things.

These rounds are closed because they are important: They are the rounds that can decide the break and are some of the closest rounds held at any tournament. This is also a reason they should be open: They are close adjudications, and the teams involved could learn a lot from the feedback they could get about their performance in a tight room.

I don’t think closed adjudication is going away anytime soon but here are a couple of fixes that should be implimented so the educational elements are not trumped by these competitive elements.

First idea: chairs should have to provide written decisions that then could be emailed and kept by the tab. These decisions then could be downloaded on demand or emailed to the teams involved in the round. Not suggesting this as a DCA job, but more of a chair job perhaps. The decision and comments should be written out with the chairs present.

Second idea: With the cheapness of digital video, the decision should be filmed and recorded immediately after the round by a runner or some other tournament official. These can then be saved and accessed via internet after the break. This preserves the immediacy and freshness of the comments and allows teams to relax a bit and not have to chase down the judges before they forget or leave the tournament.

Final Idea: A room set aside that is quiet and comfortable for those judges and debaters who want to discuss the closed rooms during the party. I doubt many would use it, but the option would be available for those who wanted to get feedback right after the break.

I think these are nice ways of preserving closed adjudication for its minor benefits of creating excitement and its major benefit of preserving interest for teams that would actively or passively ruin the debating experience for teams that still care about doing their best. The current system sits too far over on the side of sport and not enough on the side of learning.

Day two is over and a lot of people are getting ready to go to the party at a local nightclub. I’m going to take the night off to do some relaxing.

Now halfway through the tournament – things are moving smoothly and from my point of view, very fast! As you can see, this is quite a beautiful place, but most of my time is spent inside the hotel thinking abou debates, arguments, and of course, teaching, styles of teaching, and how much teaching is involved in judging competitive debates.

The motions at the tournament are all very interesting, and I think they require careful attention to every term in order to win from the opening proposition. But then I wonder when that’s not the case.

The best thing about today was how many styles of giving decisions and leading discussions in adjudication that I took part in. My thoughts now are that good chairs must balance two distinct tasks that are on a continuum:
1. evaluating competitively vs. teaching (for debaters)
2. normalizing vs. training (for wings)

So depending on what a chair thinks is important, they will lean toward one of these poles on each metric.

It’s a rough idea, but something worth working out later. For now I am going to relax a bit and try to get some sleep!

Getting ready for day two of competition here in Antalya, Turkey at the Koc Worlds. Day one was great – I felt the rounds I saw were much better quality than the rounds in Cork last year – compared laterally of course.

I have a few good ideas for posts coming out of the great conversations and encounters I’ve been having over the past couple of days. One of the most interesting moments was finally getting my hands on a copy of the Monash Debate Review, a publication I have been interested in for a few months now. It looks good, and the editorial staff seems to really be interested in pursuing academic study of debate.

The motions so far have been pretty interesting. I think if anything, they are good for teaching how to approach motions on the first half of the debate. That’s what I’ll be using them for anyway.

Round 1: This House would ban labor unions.
Round 2: This House believes that developing nations should pay the full tuition of female university students.
Round 3: This House would financially incentivize both inter-faith and inter-ethnic marriages.

Now the tab is out for round four, so it’s time to start the day! More to come.

I had some pretty good video already, even though we just arrived in Turkey. The wireless here though is limited to the hotel lobby, and everyone seems to want to use it at the same time – so video uploading is pretty much out of the question. Instead, I guess I will have to rely on my puny words to describe what is happening. I have a few good photos, and should be able to upload one or two of those as time goes by.

Today is mostly orientation and meeting up with old friends as well as making some new ones. I’m just relaxing for most of the day. There is a mandatory briefing this afternoon.

The highlight of the trip so far was our flight from JFK to Instanbul, which three hours into it had to return to JFK to repair the lavatories. I guess flying for 8 hours without a functioning bathroom is beyond acceptablity. Anyway, we left at 5pm, returned at 8:30 and then were off into the air again at midnight. 25 hours later here I am in Antalya, Turkey!