Monday, May 29, 2006
Role of the Topic Committee - Ede Warner and Reply
Dear Topic Committee and NDT/CEDA Community:
Given the lack of public discussion about my last post which offered two ways to view the role of the topic committee, one can only assume that the role of the topic committee is to find the best topics it can, based on two primary factors: 1) the debate theoretical knowledge and experience of the topic committee members; 2) filtering the available research through that debate knowledge and experience. No matter how willing the committee is to consider outside "voices" and perspectives , the reality is that at the end of the day, the topics that will appear on the topic will come down to the votes of those on the committee. And they have made it repeatedly clear, that they will only support topics they are comfortable with as part of their charge. And I can accept that. We vote for qualified topic committee members whose job is to create the best topics they can for the purpose of a general election in which the larger committee picks the best topic from a group of topics deemed acceptable for a year of debate by the topic committee. Those who disagree, if there are many, need to be more vocal and vote in topic members willing to consider alternative ways of topic construction, or live with the choices being made presently.
But I do struggle with the lack of evidence that currently seems to drive present day decision making about topic construction. And I certainly don't believe the following concern is only true of the topic committee, but a majority of NDT/CEDA members as demonstrated by these discussions over possible topics, areas, and ground. While I see everyone fervisherly working on constructing possibilities for this year's topic, I still see a lack of goals and asessment measures in place PRIOR to making those decisions. In the earlier post, the question posed to the committee was simply: is the purpose of the committee to create a ballot of the "best" topics or should the committee create a set of different community choices which represent the areas of topic construction disagreement so that the community can use the voting process to resolve those differences? Is the committee charged with resolving differences like area versus list, or questions of who is the best agent, or is the committee charged with producing a series of topics which represent those differences so the community can vote on it's preference of those differences as it relates to this particular topic? These are very different thought processes. My challenge to the community is that if it wants to produce the best topics it can, it must be willing to think reflexively about the history of topic construction and where present ideas about construction come from, and most importantly, the quality of the evidence that drives many of the commonplace beliefs held by a majority in the community.
One example which creates some of the tenstion I believe is the notion that the term "predictable ground" has evolved to become synomous with the term "absolute certainy." Although I think the evidence is overwhelming that this evolution has occurred, I'll offer some evidence before making any arguments:
EVIDENCE:
Wake's NDT page has a list of topics at http://www.wfu.edu/organizations/NDT/HistoricalLists/topics.html
I'll post the last 60 years for years ending in 6-7:
1946-1947
RESOLVED: "That labor should be given a direct share in the management of industry.
1956-1957
RESOLVED: "That the United States should discontinue direct economic aid to foreign countries."
1966-1967
RESOLVED: "That the United States should substantially reduce its foreign policy commitments
1976-1977
RESOLVED: "That the federal government should significantly strengthen the guarantee of consumer product safety required of manufacturers."
1986-1987
RESOLVED: "That one or more presently existing restrictions on First Amendment freedoms of press and/or speech established in one or more federal court decisions should be curtailed or prohibited."
1996-1997
RESOLVED: "That the United States Federal Government should increase regulations requiring industries to substantially decrease the domestic emission and/or production of environmental pollutants."
And each year since 1997:
1998-1999
RESOLVED: "That the United States Federal Government should amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, through legislation, to create additional protections against racial and/or gender discrimination.
1999-2000
RESOLVED: That the United States Federal Government should adopt a policy of constructive engagement, including the immediate removal of all or nearly all economic sanctions, with the government(s) of one or more of the following nation-states: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea
2000-2001
RESOLVED: That the United States Federal Government should substantially increase its development assistance, including increasing government to government assistance, within the Greater Horn of Africa.
2001-2002
RESOLVED: That the United States Federal Government should substantially increase federal control throughout Indian Country in one or more of the following areas: child welfare, criminal justice, employment, environmental protection, gaming, resource management, taxation.
2002-2003 RESOLVED: that the United States Federal Government should ratify or accede to, and implement, one or more of the following:
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;
The Kyoto Protocol;
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court;
The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty;
The Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions, if not ratified by the United States.
2003-2004 Resolved: that the United States Federal Government should enact one or more of the following:
Withdrawal of its World Trade Organization complaint against the European Unions restrictions on genetically modified foods;
A substantial increase in its government-to-government economic and/or conflict prevention assistance to Turkey and/or Greece;
Full withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization;
Removal of its barriers to and encouragement of substantial European Union and/or North Atlantic Treaty Organization participation in
peacekeeping in Iraq and reconstruction in Iraq;
Removal of its tactical nuclear weapons from Europe;
Harmonization of its intellectual property law with the European Union in the area of human DNA sequences;
Rescission of all or nearly all agriculture subsidy increases in the 2002 Farm Bill.
2004-2005
Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should establish an energy policy requiring a substantial reduction in the the consumption in the total non-governmental consumption of fossil fuels in the United States.
2005-2006
The United States Federal government should substantially increase deplomatic and economic pressure on the People's Republic of China in one or more of the following areas: trade, human rights, weapons nonproliferation, Taiwan.
And of course, the last Supreme Court topic:
1991-1992
RESOLVED: "That one or more United States Supreme Court decisions recognizing a federal Constitutional right to privacy should be overruled."
MY ARGUMENTS:
1) The original goal of topic construction was to define an area for debate, sometimes defining a particular mechanism, and from that area came the negative's predictable ground. There historically was always some measure of uncertainty which allowed students "the right to define" the topic in some aspect. The number of possible cases has varied from literally thousands on some topics to a handful on others. However, some aspects of affirmative flexibility have been kept in place until very recently.
2) There has been a growing shift in the destruction of affirmative flexibility in topic construction. In the beginning, the affirmative has had flexibility in the mechanism, like how labor should be given a share of management (46-7) or how the USFG should influence foreign policy (56-7). 96-7 is the first time in our list that the affirmative is required to amend a particular piece of legislation, a serious departure from allowing the affirmative room to figure out how they would achieve the terms outlined in the topic. But there, the affirmative is allowed to pick the area within Title Seven that they want to amend. In 97-98, while the affirmative is required to lift sanction to five countries, use of the term "constructive engagement" allowed the affirmative flexibility in creating the case. By 2002, the affirmative flexibility is all but destroyed as both the area (5 treaties) and the mechanism (ratify, accede to and implement) drastically reduced flexibility.
3) The number of cases perceived topical by the community on the 91-2 courts topic, changed over the course of the year, as a result of research and an evolution of argument strategies.
4) In recent year's, topic construction seems quite concerned with eliminating affirmative flexibility and increasing absolute certainty of predictable ground as opposed to a reasonable estimate of predictable ground. Certainly, Treaties and Europe were moves in that direction. And while energy and China did not list the cases that could be run, the requirement of both mechanism (the how) and the area (the what), drastically reduce affirmative flexibility in case construction in an effort to create absolute certainty and not reasonable predictability.
5) The number of cases run on any given topic is generally substantially lower than the number of possible cases that could be run, although that number varies I'm sure from year to year.
IMPLICATIONS FOR TOPIC CONSTRUCTION:
1) Is the goal of absolute certainty desirable? Is there any educational value to affirmative flexibility? Does absolute certainty necessarily tradeoff with predictable ground?
2) Is there a community consensus on the number of possible cases that one tries to create in outlining a topic? 5, 10, 100, 1000? Should there be different numbers on the ballot or should all topics create about the same certain number of cases? Does the goal of negative ground as a reasonable estimate no longer exist?
3) Are there any measures of how to balance concerns about "predictable ground" with "affirmative flexbility"? Have any formulas or criteria been developed to test topics in this area?
4) During topic construction, does a large number of possible cases eliminate a topic from consideration? If a topic has potentially 1000 cases, but only 10 are "good" affirmatives, does that topic get treated the same as a topic with 10 total affirmatives, with only 5 of those being "good"? Will the committee be able to "test" topics in 2 ½ days? If so, how?
5) Is there a point where the goal of predictable ground begins to tradeoff with other important competitive and educational goals, like creativity and strategy? How does that goal get balanced?
6) Where is the evidence that the debating of the last decade is substantially better than the debating of the forty years prior to that, given the current method of the topic committee is relatively new in historical context? How willing is the committee in defering to that history in the production of some of its topics, in an effort to offer the community some topics where predictable ground is a reasonable estimate as opposed to an absolute certainty?
I write this because I fear than many of the justifications for what the committee considers "best" these days is subjective to me and flies in the face of a lot of history. I won't make arguments that the way we write topics has lead to the downfall of debate, because that is overly, overly simplistic. But I will say, that as we get further entrenched in a debate belief that attempts to create absolute certainty as the standard for a good topic, I would hope that the community is willing to stay introspective and test that premise against our own historical evidence to the contrary. I think that the goal of the committee has evolved as topics have evolved, from a role of producing a series of topics which offer some reasonable estimates at predictable ground to a charge of producing with absolute certainty what the negative ground will look like. I think this is an unmanageable goal for 2 ½ days or even a month, and may be part of the growing difficulty in creating topics. But I wish the committee luck over the next week in overcoming these hurdles. I hope my questions and thoughts are productive ones.
Thanks for reading,
Ede
Given the lack of public discussion about my last post which offered two ways to view the role of the topic committee, one can only assume that the role of the topic committee is to find the best topics it can, based on two primary factors: 1) the debate theoretical knowledge and experience of the topic committee members; 2) filtering the available research through that debate knowledge and experience. No matter how willing the committee is to consider outside "voices" and perspectives , the reality is that at the end of the day, the topics that will appear on the topic will come down to the votes of those on the committee. And they have made it repeatedly clear, that they will only support topics they are comfortable with as part of their charge. And I can accept that. We vote for qualified topic committee members whose job is to create the best topics they can for the purpose of a general election in which the larger committee picks the best topic from a group of topics deemed acceptable for a year of debate by the topic committee. Those who disagree, if there are many, need to be more vocal and vote in topic members willing to consider alternative ways of topic construction, or live with the choices being made presently.
But I do struggle with the lack of evidence that currently seems to drive present day decision making about topic construction. And I certainly don't believe the following concern is only true of the topic committee, but a majority of NDT/CEDA members as demonstrated by these discussions over possible topics, areas, and ground. While I see everyone fervisherly working on constructing possibilities for this year's topic, I still see a lack of goals and asessment measures in place PRIOR to making those decisions. In the earlier post, the question posed to the committee was simply: is the purpose of the committee to create a ballot of the "best" topics or should the committee create a set of different community choices which represent the areas of topic construction disagreement so that the community can use the voting process to resolve those differences? Is the committee charged with resolving differences like area versus list, or questions of who is the best agent, or is the committee charged with producing a series of topics which represent those differences so the community can vote on it's preference of those differences as it relates to this particular topic? These are very different thought processes. My challenge to the community is that if it wants to produce the best topics it can, it must be willing to think reflexively about the history of topic construction and where present ideas about construction come from, and most importantly, the quality of the evidence that drives many of the commonplace beliefs held by a majority in the community.
One example which creates some of the tenstion I believe is the notion that the term "predictable ground" has evolved to become synomous with the term "absolute certainy." Although I think the evidence is overwhelming that this evolution has occurred, I'll offer some evidence before making any arguments:
EVIDENCE:
Wake's NDT page has a list of topics at http://www.wfu.edu/organizations/NDT/HistoricalLists/topics.html
I'll post the last 60 years for years ending in 6-7:
1946-1947
RESOLVED: "That labor should be given a direct share in the management of industry.
1956-1957
RESOLVED: "That the United States should discontinue direct economic aid to foreign countries."
1966-1967
RESOLVED: "That the United States should substantially reduce its foreign policy commitments
1976-1977
RESOLVED: "That the federal government should significantly strengthen the guarantee of consumer product safety required of manufacturers."
1986-1987
RESOLVED: "That one or more presently existing restrictions on First Amendment freedoms of press and/or speech established in one or more federal court decisions should be curtailed or prohibited."
1996-1997
RESOLVED: "That the United States Federal Government should increase regulations requiring industries to substantially decrease the domestic emission and/or production of environmental pollutants."
And each year since 1997:
1998-1999
RESOLVED: "That the United States Federal Government should amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, through legislation, to create additional protections against racial and/or gender discrimination.
1999-2000
RESOLVED: That the United States Federal Government should adopt a policy of constructive engagement, including the immediate removal of all or nearly all economic sanctions, with the government(s) of one or more of the following nation-states: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea
2000-2001
RESOLVED: That the United States Federal Government should substantially increase its development assistance, including increasing government to government assistance, within the Greater Horn of Africa.
2001-2002
RESOLVED: That the United States Federal Government should substantially increase federal control throughout Indian Country in one or more of the following areas: child welfare, criminal justice, employment, environmental protection, gaming, resource management, taxation.
2002-2003 RESOLVED: that the United States Federal Government should ratify or accede to, and implement, one or more of the following:
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;
The Kyoto Protocol;
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court;
The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty;
The Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions, if not ratified by the United States.
2003-2004 Resolved: that the United States Federal Government should enact one or more of the following:
Withdrawal of its World Trade Organization complaint against the European Unions restrictions on genetically modified foods;
A substantial increase in its government-to-government economic and/or conflict prevention assistance to Turkey and/or Greece;
Full withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization;
Removal of its barriers to and encouragement of substantial European Union and/or North Atlantic Treaty Organization participation in
peacekeeping in Iraq and reconstruction in Iraq;
Removal of its tactical nuclear weapons from Europe;
Harmonization of its intellectual property law with the European Union in the area of human DNA sequences;
Rescission of all or nearly all agriculture subsidy increases in the 2002 Farm Bill.
2004-2005
Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should establish an energy policy requiring a substantial reduction in the the consumption in the total non-governmental consumption of fossil fuels in the United States.
2005-2006
The United States Federal government should substantially increase deplomatic and economic pressure on the People's Republic of China in one or more of the following areas: trade, human rights, weapons nonproliferation, Taiwan.
And of course, the last Supreme Court topic:
1991-1992
RESOLVED: "That one or more United States Supreme Court decisions recognizing a federal Constitutional right to privacy should be overruled."
MY ARGUMENTS:
1) The original goal of topic construction was to define an area for debate, sometimes defining a particular mechanism, and from that area came the negative's predictable ground. There historically was always some measure of uncertainty which allowed students "the right to define" the topic in some aspect. The number of possible cases has varied from literally thousands on some topics to a handful on others. However, some aspects of affirmative flexibility have been kept in place until very recently.
2) There has been a growing shift in the destruction of affirmative flexibility in topic construction. In the beginning, the affirmative has had flexibility in the mechanism, like how labor should be given a share of management (46-7) or how the USFG should influence foreign policy (56-7). 96-7 is the first time in our list that the affirmative is required to amend a particular piece of legislation, a serious departure from allowing the affirmative room to figure out how they would achieve the terms outlined in the topic. But there, the affirmative is allowed to pick the area within Title Seven that they want to amend. In 97-98, while the affirmative is required to lift sanction to five countries, use of the term "constructive engagement" allowed the affirmative flexibility in creating the case. By 2002, the affirmative flexibility is all but destroyed as both the area (5 treaties) and the mechanism (ratify, accede to and implement) drastically reduced flexibility.
3) The number of cases perceived topical by the community on the 91-2 courts topic, changed over the course of the year, as a result of research and an evolution of argument strategies.
4) In recent year's, topic construction seems quite concerned with eliminating affirmative flexibility and increasing absolute certainty of predictable ground as opposed to a reasonable estimate of predictable ground. Certainly, Treaties and Europe were moves in that direction. And while energy and China did not list the cases that could be run, the requirement of both mechanism (the how) and the area (the what), drastically reduce affirmative flexibility in case construction in an effort to create absolute certainty and not reasonable predictability.
5) The number of cases run on any given topic is generally substantially lower than the number of possible cases that could be run, although that number varies I'm sure from year to year.
IMPLICATIONS FOR TOPIC CONSTRUCTION:
1) Is the goal of absolute certainty desirable? Is there any educational value to affirmative flexibility? Does absolute certainty necessarily tradeoff with predictable ground?
2) Is there a community consensus on the number of possible cases that one tries to create in outlining a topic? 5, 10, 100, 1000? Should there be different numbers on the ballot or should all topics create about the same certain number of cases? Does the goal of negative ground as a reasonable estimate no longer exist?
3) Are there any measures of how to balance concerns about "predictable ground" with "affirmative flexbility"? Have any formulas or criteria been developed to test topics in this area?
4) During topic construction, does a large number of possible cases eliminate a topic from consideration? If a topic has potentially 1000 cases, but only 10 are "good" affirmatives, does that topic get treated the same as a topic with 10 total affirmatives, with only 5 of those being "good"? Will the committee be able to "test" topics in 2 ½ days? If so, how?
5) Is there a point where the goal of predictable ground begins to tradeoff with other important competitive and educational goals, like creativity and strategy? How does that goal get balanced?
6) Where is the evidence that the debating of the last decade is substantially better than the debating of the forty years prior to that, given the current method of the topic committee is relatively new in historical context? How willing is the committee in defering to that history in the production of some of its topics, in an effort to offer the community some topics where predictable ground is a reasonable estimate as opposed to an absolute certainty?
I write this because I fear than many of the justifications for what the committee considers "best" these days is subjective to me and flies in the face of a lot of history. I won't make arguments that the way we write topics has lead to the downfall of debate, because that is overly, overly simplistic. But I will say, that as we get further entrenched in a debate belief that attempts to create absolute certainty as the standard for a good topic, I would hope that the community is willing to stay introspective and test that premise against our own historical evidence to the contrary. I think that the goal of the committee has evolved as topics have evolved, from a role of producing a series of topics which offer some reasonable estimates at predictable ground to a charge of producing with absolute certainty what the negative ground will look like. I think this is an unmanageable goal for 2 ½ days or even a month, and may be part of the growing difficulty in creating topics. But I wish the committee luck over the next week in overcoming these hurdles. I hope my questions and thoughts are productive ones.
Thanks for reading,
Ede
posted by Steve Mancuso at 5/29/2006 12:37:00 PM
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Comments:
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There are some pretty clear explanations for the historical arc you demonstrate with topics over the years. I suppose this is the "evidence" you are seeking:
Factor 1. Older topics had overwhelming affirmative side bias. On topics like Middle East and Privacy all you had to do was win the coin flip and you won. I don't like my sporting events settled by coin flips and I don't like my debate tournaments decided that way. On those topics it was common for affirmatives to win well over 90% of elimination rounds.
This lead to the notion, starting in the mid- to late-90's, of building in some negative ground to the resolutions.
The first instance I remember of that was in 96-97 writing "increase regulations requiring" into the Pollution resolution. I also think the committee thought they were doing that by adding "through legislation" in the T7 topic.
On Sanctions it was thought the resolution itself was sort of negatively biased, but still the resolution explicitly required the elimination of economic sanctions. That was entirely to create negative ground. On Africa, it was thought that "increasing government to government assistance" would assure negatives counterplan and critique ground.
Factor 2 - A strongly positive experience with Sanctions and Treaties. These topics both generated excellent, easy-to-find affirmatives and well-developed negative strategies. The result was that starting with the first tournament of the year there was incredibly in-depth sophisticated argument development and clash.
This is just my opinion, but I like evidenced clash. I like in-depth arguments where both teams are well prepped. That's just my bias.
The result of this factor, and the apparent consensus support for these types of debates, has been the search for resolutions with many good affirmative, but still strong negative strategies built in. You know sitting through last year's meeting that those were the main criteria for our resolutions.
These factors tend to drive the "absolute certainty" that you observe. We make sure there is affirmative and negative ground - otherwise we get Privacy (no neg) or Indian Country (no aff). Our committee and community see both of those as errors in topic construction.
But there is a third factor leading to the drive for "absolute certainty". That's the existence of edebate, and the massive amount of public second-guessing, complaining, criticizing, and demanding impossible missions of the topic committee.
I couldn't tell you - then or now - who wrote the Privacy topic.
It's pretty normal human nature for the people on the committee to want minimize all of that. The result is a drive to "get it right" at the meeting which means demanding more certainty. Don't get me wrong, overall, I think the transparency of the topic writing process is a good thing, and feedback has been extremely valuable over the years. Nonetheless, imagine if we wrote a topic where we didn't investigate specifically what the affirmatives would say (Indians) or how the negatives could win
(Privacy) we would be blamed - long and loud - on edebate.
Bottom line - what we are attempting to do with lists of Supreme Court cases is to find very strong affirmatives - supported broadly in the literature - for overruling the Court. Further, we are looking for cases that access productive areas of public policy (abortion, affirmative action, school desegregation, religious freedom, domestic violence...). All the while the negative will be able to focus on prepping those 7-10 cases for weeks before the first tournament and will show up to UNI or GA State with something specific to say.
Steve
Factor 1. Older topics had overwhelming affirmative side bias. On topics like Middle East and Privacy all you had to do was win the coin flip and you won. I don't like my sporting events settled by coin flips and I don't like my debate tournaments decided that way. On those topics it was common for affirmatives to win well over 90% of elimination rounds.
This lead to the notion, starting in the mid- to late-90's, of building in some negative ground to the resolutions.
The first instance I remember of that was in 96-97 writing "increase regulations requiring" into the Pollution resolution. I also think the committee thought they were doing that by adding "through legislation" in the T7 topic.
On Sanctions it was thought the resolution itself was sort of negatively biased, but still the resolution explicitly required the elimination of economic sanctions. That was entirely to create negative ground. On Africa, it was thought that "increasing government to government assistance" would assure negatives counterplan and critique ground.
Factor 2 - A strongly positive experience with Sanctions and Treaties. These topics both generated excellent, easy-to-find affirmatives and well-developed negative strategies. The result was that starting with the first tournament of the year there was incredibly in-depth sophisticated argument development and clash.
This is just my opinion, but I like evidenced clash. I like in-depth arguments where both teams are well prepped. That's just my bias.
The result of this factor, and the apparent consensus support for these types of debates, has been the search for resolutions with many good affirmative, but still strong negative strategies built in. You know sitting through last year's meeting that those were the main criteria for our resolutions.
These factors tend to drive the "absolute certainty" that you observe. We make sure there is affirmative and negative ground - otherwise we get Privacy (no neg) or Indian Country (no aff). Our committee and community see both of those as errors in topic construction.
But there is a third factor leading to the drive for "absolute certainty". That's the existence of edebate, and the massive amount of public second-guessing, complaining, criticizing, and demanding impossible missions of the topic committee.
I couldn't tell you - then or now - who wrote the Privacy topic.
It's pretty normal human nature for the people on the committee to want minimize all of that. The result is a drive to "get it right" at the meeting which means demanding more certainty. Don't get me wrong, overall, I think the transparency of the topic writing process is a good thing, and feedback has been extremely valuable over the years. Nonetheless, imagine if we wrote a topic where we didn't investigate specifically what the affirmatives would say (Indians) or how the negatives could win
(Privacy) we would be blamed - long and loud - on edebate.
Bottom line - what we are attempting to do with lists of Supreme Court cases is to find very strong affirmatives - supported broadly in the literature - for overruling the Court. Further, we are looking for cases that access productive areas of public policy (abortion, affirmative action, school desegregation, religious freedom, domestic violence...). All the while the negative will be able to focus on prepping those 7-10 cases for weeks before the first tournament and will show up to UNI or GA State with something specific to say.
Steve
1) This explanation needs to be public and coming from you. I know that I'm a pest right now for you, but I believe this is a necessary step to reduce the overall friction and criticism that occurs each year. The community lacks enough of a communal sense of direction, which creates some of the problems you identify in factor 3, edebate only amplifies it. You and I have experienced the same history yet we have very different notions of what direction is called for based on that history, although I'll concede and even accept, that many more in the community agree with your perspective.
2) While I agree with the majority of what you say, the one thing I'm convinced of is that you can't do this (create topics with "absolute certainty" for more than 1 or 2 topics at most in the time frame you have to work with. Perhaps that is all that should be attempted if this is the model. I know the model and have engaged it, but I've also watched at least four committees put a bunch of time into one or two topics but tend to under-assess others that end up on the ballot or are taken off at the last minute, producing more friction. If the direction of the community is to continue to find "absolute certainty", that changes the need for more than 1 or 2 topics on the ballot. Why in the world would we put 8 topics on a ballot when we know that only 1 or 2 serious topics can be developed in the time frame allotted? The committee needs to rethink it's overall goals relative to the realistic amount of work it can do in 2 ½ days. If that is 2 topics instead of 5, then defending that choice makes a lot more sense than continuing business as usual. If this is defended on the front end, you'll likely have a lot less complaints on the back end. And even if you choose not to publicly defend it, this needs to be the start of your meeting, an honest discussion about realistic expectations for the time you have to prepare.
3) The difference between the evidenced clash bias that you'd prefer and the world I prefer is one of timing. Your desire for specific clash at UNI or Ga State is not a necessity or expectation for me. The world of bigger topics means that teams stake out their ground before the season through their research, the early tournaments become announcements of that ground and testing of ideas, and the clash develops as students invest in the directions the topic goes. Some teams will invest in an area and run the case all year, while others will search for their aff's because they are unhappy with them, and others will make minor adjustments or case shifts. The negative starts behind, but begins to catch up.
The whole reason for season long debate over a topic, was an assumption that the in-depth clash you desire would occur over the season. The overall argumentation process (stealing George's title), is about inquiry and advocacy. The beginning of the season should be about inquiry. Judd Kimball use to argue that the season didn't start until after the first weekend, that's when the research effort became focused as people staked out their ground. If generic arguments are run the first weekend, as people assess where the topic is, so be it. The good in-depth clash still comes soon enough. But the entire community has the opportunity to engage in discovery about the topic, not just the topic committee in June. I will say that enforcing your bias by only producing topics where clash is a certainty at UNI/Ga State/Gonzaga seems a bit beyond the purview of the committee, and more a decision to be made by the entire community.
The only argument left is concerns for "new cases" at the end of the year. But, if an affirmative is bad or a team lacks talent, a good negative can still win on generic arguments. If a team comes up with a great surprise affirmative at the end of the year, why shouldn't they be rewarded since the community didn't find it earlier? And even if this is a large concern, the best solution certainty can't be to eliminate the beauty of the "inquiry" phase of the season, which for many is part of the excitement of season long policy debate.
4) It should not go without notice that the backlash to the loss of affirmative flexibility has not served the community well either, and defeats the purpose if teams are successful at ignoring the topic altogther. I'll think that more flexibility will reduce this problem.
I'll say it again, at a minimum, this discussion needs to be public and a defense of "absolute certainty with a reduction of the number of topics worked on" is needed to produce better outcomes. 1 or 2 topics max. Of course, I'll argue that the ability to consistently produce a single good topic using the standard of "absolute certainty" in six weeks is hit or miss, which might also explain why there has been so much inconsistently in the production of good topics over the last decade. Part of your historical comparison should keep that in mind. Broad means that both affs and negs can find something to work with. The more narrow, the more risk of missing the mark altogether and any mistake on the front end, dooms the season on the back end. Not true of broad topics.
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2) While I agree with the majority of what you say, the one thing I'm convinced of is that you can't do this (create topics with "absolute certainty" for more than 1 or 2 topics at most in the time frame you have to work with. Perhaps that is all that should be attempted if this is the model. I know the model and have engaged it, but I've also watched at least four committees put a bunch of time into one or two topics but tend to under-assess others that end up on the ballot or are taken off at the last minute, producing more friction. If the direction of the community is to continue to find "absolute certainty", that changes the need for more than 1 or 2 topics on the ballot. Why in the world would we put 8 topics on a ballot when we know that only 1 or 2 serious topics can be developed in the time frame allotted? The committee needs to rethink it's overall goals relative to the realistic amount of work it can do in 2 ½ days. If that is 2 topics instead of 5, then defending that choice makes a lot more sense than continuing business as usual. If this is defended on the front end, you'll likely have a lot less complaints on the back end. And even if you choose not to publicly defend it, this needs to be the start of your meeting, an honest discussion about realistic expectations for the time you have to prepare.
3) The difference between the evidenced clash bias that you'd prefer and the world I prefer is one of timing. Your desire for specific clash at UNI or Ga State is not a necessity or expectation for me. The world of bigger topics means that teams stake out their ground before the season through their research, the early tournaments become announcements of that ground and testing of ideas, and the clash develops as students invest in the directions the topic goes. Some teams will invest in an area and run the case all year, while others will search for their aff's because they are unhappy with them, and others will make minor adjustments or case shifts. The negative starts behind, but begins to catch up.
The whole reason for season long debate over a topic, was an assumption that the in-depth clash you desire would occur over the season. The overall argumentation process (stealing George's title), is about inquiry and advocacy. The beginning of the season should be about inquiry. Judd Kimball use to argue that the season didn't start until after the first weekend, that's when the research effort became focused as people staked out their ground. If generic arguments are run the first weekend, as people assess where the topic is, so be it. The good in-depth clash still comes soon enough. But the entire community has the opportunity to engage in discovery about the topic, not just the topic committee in June. I will say that enforcing your bias by only producing topics where clash is a certainty at UNI/Ga State/Gonzaga seems a bit beyond the purview of the committee, and more a decision to be made by the entire community.
The only argument left is concerns for "new cases" at the end of the year. But, if an affirmative is bad or a team lacks talent, a good negative can still win on generic arguments. If a team comes up with a great surprise affirmative at the end of the year, why shouldn't they be rewarded since the community didn't find it earlier? And even if this is a large concern, the best solution certainty can't be to eliminate the beauty of the "inquiry" phase of the season, which for many is part of the excitement of season long policy debate.
4) It should not go without notice that the backlash to the loss of affirmative flexibility has not served the community well either, and defeats the purpose if teams are successful at ignoring the topic altogther. I'll think that more flexibility will reduce this problem.
I'll say it again, at a minimum, this discussion needs to be public and a defense of "absolute certainty with a reduction of the number of topics worked on" is needed to produce better outcomes. 1 or 2 topics max. Of course, I'll argue that the ability to consistently produce a single good topic using the standard of "absolute certainty" in six weeks is hit or miss, which might also explain why there has been so much inconsistently in the production of good topics over the last decade. Part of your historical comparison should keep that in mind. Broad means that both affs and negs can find something to work with. The more narrow, the more risk of missing the mark altogether and any mistake on the front end, dooms the season on the back end. Not true of broad topics.
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: 12:50 PM, May 29, 2006
: 12:50 PM, May 29, 2006<< Home
