I have to get home fairly quickly, but I wanted to send out my initial reaction before this fell through the cracks at the end of the term.

I share many of Steve's fundamental values about debating.  I struggled for years to prevent another format of debating from deteriorating to a point beyond recognition, and I do worry about this happening to BP as well.  Indeed, I just wrote an article against theorizing about BP that I hope will help prevent this.  Steve is right that it is very important that we take steps to ensure that BP debate remains a format where the debates are accessible to a general audience of intelligent people with no background in debate.  And, he is right in his implicit assumption that as the WUDC tournament goes, so will go the smaller BP tournaments around the world.

I am less sure about the negative impacts of the new registration system that Steve sees.  I can see one mechanism that might cause these harms, and that is the potential concentration of the judging pool from certain institutions, but I'm not convinced (either way) that this will happen or that it will be detrimental in the way Steve imagines.  (I'm on the fence.)  I do think that the teams will be more diverse, and that could be good.  In fairness, I have generally (not always) found judging panels at the WUDC to be willing to go out of their way to find good arguments in non-standard styles.  But (as Buzz mentioned), perhaps I've been co-opted by the system.

The biggest problem that I see in contemporary BP is an increased acceptance of speed in speaking.  No one is talking as fast as they can, but measured and truly powerful speaking styles are rare.  This is the hard part for me about finding debates that I want to show to my colleagues in academia.

I'm not at all convinced that we have the best system of registration for the WUDC, so we should keep working to improve it.  This should include looking at foundational critiques like Steve's.  On the other hand, there may be other things beyond the registration system that need to change.

I hope to have more constructive things to say later, when I have more time.  I am glad that we are talking about this though.  Thanks, Steve.

Best,
Eric

******************************************
Eric Barnes
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Philosophy Department
Public Policy Program
Debate Coach
(315) 781-3182
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

On Apr 30, 2013, at 1:41 PM, Michael Baer wrote:

Dear U.S. Debating Community,

I want to keep my comments brief (though upon re-reading this post, I'm not sure I did), as I'm confident that Steve's email was meant to start a broader discussion, and not to get into a back-and-forth with the organizers of this year's WUDC.  I hope that discussion goes forward, and I'm glad Steve has started it.  As I said when I first emailed out this year's WUDC registration policy, we by no means think we've arrived at a perfect solution to the problem of Worlds registration (and, more fundamentally, what WUDC should be as a tournament). Discourse about these issues is critical to ensuring future competitions do it better than we have.

That being said, I think it will help this discussion if I provide some insight into what (I believe) Council was thinking, and to what the organizers of Chennai Worlds were thinking when we made the decisions we did.

The first thing to emphasize is that the attitude in Council when this policy was voted on was that they were doing more to emphasize the "World" in "World Universities Debating Championship" than any prior registration system had.  Up until now, many institutions have been shut out of the competition (and as demand grows, we expect that many more will), solely because they weren't quick enough on the morning of registration.  There was a sense that this was particularly unfair to countries or communities with slower internet speeds, or where it has not yet been ingrained that you have to have one team member set 4 alarm clocks to jump on the computer at exactly the right time.  The decision to guarantee every institution that wants one a team at Worlds was designed to be, and I genuinely believe is, the biggest step towards increasing access to and diversity at the WUDC in recent memory.

Perhaps that attitude is too tokenistic - i.e. to say that "well, every school gets one team" is not really valuing diversity.  We'll see if this year's registration numbers bear this out, but my hunch is that well more than half of the teams at Chennai will be from institutions that could only send one team.  In other words, I don't think there is a good way to genuinely value diversity more than we have without taking away diversity (by excluding institutions) through some other mechanism.

This brings me to my second point.  I don't think Steve's post is meant to inspire a back-and-forth about what the "best" registration policy is.  I take it to be a broader critique of the WUDC system and what we value in debate.  But I will say that, given the extent to which Worlds has become oversubscribed, it is difficult to think about any one registration without comparing it to alternatives.  And from our view, all of the alternatives were subpar.  I've already discussed the "Fastest Finger" system that was used before.  I suppose one other alternative is a lottery where, after the first team, all institutions have an equal chance at sending additional teams.  And finally, I'm sure there are other ways of allocating teams on the basis of additional information (regional diversity, previous WUDC attendance, etc).

But I genuinely think, and I suspect this is where Steve and I disagree, that taking into account some factor of competitive success is an appropriate way to break ties.  I think the nature of tournaments - where we ranks teams and individuals in each round, decide who makes elimination rounds, and come together to announce a champion - implicitly suggests that there is value in agreeing on who has done "better" in a particular debate.  I actually feel that, in the briefings we've seen over the past four years, the emphasis has shifted more strongly towards a standard of debate that does not assume one style is "better."  I think that's a good thing, and it's certainly a trend we intend to continue.

But if we take seriously the responsibility of deciding fairly who is and is not going to win a particular round, or a particular competition, then I think what we are implicitly saying is that the quality of the debate is something we value.  It is not the most important thing; it is not a universal thing; but it is important.  And if it's something we value, then considering it on the margins does not seem inappropriate.

Unfortunately, Worlds is at the point where choosing to let one team in directly excludes another team from the competition.  There needs to be a principle upon which we base that choice.  We have two principles.  First: every institution that wants to participate should get to participate.  Second, to break the remaining ties, adding to the quality of the competition is a factor.

Thank you again to Steve for starting this discussion.

Best,
Michael



On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Stephen Llano <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:

Colleagues and Friends,

I have been sitting on writing this for a long time, but today my feeling of disappointment has driven me to ask a few questions to those of you on this list.

Since the posting about the changes to WUDC registration were shared here, there have only been two responses, and neither of them more than just technical questions about the nature of the registration system changes.

Where is the critical discussion about what these changes mean for our students?

From my vantage point, as someone who has gone from thrilled with WUDC to someone who no longer wants to be a participant in it, these changes make me want to be an active opponent to WUDC.

When I first became involved in WUDC in 2007 I thought its greatest strength was in the diversity of views as to what a good argument could be. I thought it to be an amazing experience for my students and myself to encounter such a variety of different styles and approaches to rhetoric, argumentation, and persuasion. My recent reticence in future participation was not because of quality, but more because of safety and financial concerns.

Now it appears that WUDC wants to throw away quality in favor of a faux-quality: A positive feedback loop of people who speak the "right way" perpetuating a very particular kind of speech being rewarded with more participants who also speak in that "right way."

This feedback loop will be accentuated by the fact that judges will also be increased from those institutions that demonstrate they can speak in the appropriate code to reach elimination rounds. WUDC council has made it very clear that they are not interested in a broad range of ways of speaking and arguing, but a very narrow band view of this. Their annual tournament will serve as the gatekeeper for who gets to participate in this competition.

It amazes me that on an email list that includes those who saw the decline of NDT and NPDA from broad based organizations to those that try to eliminate diversity of discourse in the same way, people have remained silent.  Not even one word of critical questioning or examination has been posted about these changes.  Questions need to be discussed, such as: What is the difference between this change and mutually preferred judging in NDT/CEDA? Why should WUDC have a system of participation that reminds us more of the NPTE than our own USU nationals?

But the American debate educators have remained silent.  The wisdom of so many years of participation in different formats and the eventual abandoning of those formats in favor of BP and WUDC have not inspired any of you to write one single line of questioning in response to Michael's emails. This is the root of my disappointment.

Years ago, I asked the question to many British debaters: What is the value of having a professional coach or debate director? What is the value added of such a figure? Most debaters in the world don't have one, and they do quite well competitively. Most did not have a response, and weren't sure.  I thought it was a very pressing question. The only response I could think of that made any sense was the injection of the pedagogical dimension to debating. If there is something Americans can bring to the party, it would be that key element - to help people recognize that every move they make in the debate universe is a pedagogical one. There are serious implications to every adjudication and every comment that is ignored or rewarded in every debate. We are constantly teaching, and reinforcing, lessons provided by and through language. This hopefully has some spillover effect into their daily lives when they encounter other people. The result would (hopefully) be kindness, patience, understanding - all concepts brought about by a healthy sense of uncertainty of the self. Debate provides this uncertainty all too often, which is the source of it's value for Universities.

The narrow band reward-those-who-are-rewarded-already registration system is pedagogically bankrupt if we are really still interested in this whole "reasonable person" judging philosophy, which I already question as a principle for a lot of reasons based on a lot of my own judging experiences. WUDC seems to now feel very comfortable totally abandoning this principle in favor of one where those who have proved expertise in persuading the imaginary reasonable person now get more opportunities to do the same, in front of those who also believe they know what the imaginary reasonable person wants. We are talking to one another imagining that we are appealing and representing a broader based intellectual community.

We are teaching ourselves and one another how to appeal in a vanguard discourse to those who love this vanguard discourse, not "reasonable people." It seems a shame that I have to struggle to find a WUDC video on the internet that I can show to public speaking students or beginning debate students that they can even begin to understand. Our speeches are becoming appeals to a particular elite, and this decision from WUDC further refines who can be in that elite. As discourse training for and by elites, we are far away from encouraging an attitude among participants that would be much other than cynical disgust for the rhetorical and argumentative strategies of those outside the elite; a worldview that encourages seeing the discourse of the non-elite as automatically flawed, bad, and not worthy of engagement. Debate teaches us to be good arguers - the best, right?  Actually, debate like this just teaches us to be good debaters, full stop.

It really depends on how you say it: Instead of WORLD Universities Debating Championship, the emphasis now seems to be on World Universities Debating CHAMPIONSHIP. Another question arises: How can someone be world champion in debating for reasonable people when the participants are hand selected based on their institution's success at previous competitions? Where is the door for those who are new, who are reasonable, and want to argue and judge?

When I first started participating in the WUDC universe, I was assured this style of debating would not fall into the pits of the previous US formats. I was assured by many of you reading this that "the world will check" the US inclination to become highly technical, highly cloistered, and highly specific in style. Nobody who has said that to me has responded with any critical questions to this decision.  This would amaze me if it weren't so disappointing.  Who is going to check the world when they make decisions like this one?  Here we go again. This is the first step into creating another inaccessible and limited debating format.

Where are the debate educators now? Or have you given up the project of showing students how hard it is to reach the mind of another in favor of earning more trophies and accolades? Perhaps you feel like the decision is fine because your teams will not be impacted by the registration procedure. The temptation is pretty strong to say, "We can win under this rubric." But nobody has asked the question, "Who loses?"

This doesn't effect me, as I said before. I'm out of the WUDC game, but not out of BP and debate and the wonderful powers they provide in teaching people amazing things. WUDC wants to limit themselves to an elite.  We here in the US have seen what this does to debate participation. But not to worry.  Just because there is a yacht club it doesn't mean that boating is going away.  WUDC doesn't realize that competitors to their monopoly will quickly arise with the rise of Chinese debating and North American debating as more American schools join the BP ranks.  Alternatives to WUDC will arise, including what I'm doing - taking my students to other tournaments.

Who should a world champion appeal to? Others in the elite club? Society in general? University communities? Reasonable people? their peers and colleagues? Scholars of argumentation?

Or perhaps the idea of world champion is best left as a ruse to get people talking to one another and thinking about how difficult that talking - and understanding that talking - is for human beings.

Your friend and colleague,
Steve
--
_____
Stephen Llano, Ph.D.
Director of Debate and Assistant Professor, Department of Rhetoric, Communication & Theater
St. John’s University
Queens, NY
718-990-5606<tel:718-990-5606>(voice) 718-990-2435<tel:718-990-2435> (fax)
callto://stevellano -- Skype Me!

"Knit the brows, and a strategem comes to mind." - Lo Kuan-chung, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

"Poetry is a rival government always in opposition to its cruder replicas." - William Carlos Williams