No really, it matters that we can’t understand you

“But judges think….”

 

Nearly every time I reach an impasse with students where they don’t want to do what I’m telling them to do but they can’t come up with a reason why but they don’t want to give in cause #loldebate they fall back on the “but judges think” argument. “Yes maybe 25 2NC counterplans that each have a dozen planks seems illegit, but judges don’t think condo is a vi so ha ha i win”. Good one.

 

Here is the thing though, no students ever seem to care that judges want them to be understandable. And not just some judges… like all of them. And they tell you this… a lot. And that was when debate was in person. Here is a rough fact:

 

It’s very hard to understand online debate, and most of you aren’t taking this seriously.

 

Generally when I write something like “slow down” I get that 90% of you will ignore it, 5% will consider it before ignoring it, and maybe 5% will act on it. It’s not a coincidence that only a small percentage of people at each tournament get a speaker award. Most of the time when pressed students will unleash a slew of rationalizations like

-I shout because 3 years ago the winner of the Glenbrooks JV LD division shouted!

-I speed up on cards because the discord said it was cool

-I know judges don’t care about clarity because one time this judge I’ve never seen again since told me so

 

And the sad truth is, you aren’t wrong. Lot’s of judges don’t care/pay attention/will do the work for you to figure out what your cards said after the round. Sure, its not everyone, but the writing is on the wall- a large majority of judges just don’t care and you can exploit this for competitive success.

 

Will this continue in online debate? Almost certainly. Does that mean it doesn’t matter if you put any effort into being clear etc? Is it all a useless enterprise?

 

No, I don’t think it does, and from talking to judges I think online debate could be a very interesting watershed moment that turns the tides of this clash of the titans of mixed metaphors. What do I mean by this?

 

1.Many tournaments will be larger- no travel constraints mean more people can attend. Some tournaments will have caps, but I highly doubt any will be smaller

2.People want tournaments to be shorter -including missing less school. This means schedules will be compressed

3. As a result of 1 and 2 speaker points will be MORE important than ever, not less. This is because there will be more teams with winning records not clearing, and the thing that decides if you clear is speaker points

 

 

So as a result of those 3 things, unless you can guarantee you are going undefeated in all the prelims than getting as many speaker points as possible is going to be very important. But it doesn’t stop there

 

4. Judges – will be  judging more debates than ever before. Some people will judge every weekend because they don’t have to travel, some people will be judging week nights as well. The more debates they see the less likely it is they will be impressed by “average” and the more you will have to differentiate yourself from the rabble to leave a mark.

 

5. Judges are judging at home- with all the attendant distractions. You are going to need to make arguments stick out in their minds/be memorable or they aren’t going to reference them in their RFDs. Being understandable is a gateway to all forms of persuasion.

 

I could write a bajillion more words on the need to be clear, but if you don’t get it it’s probably not going to help. If you think, when the other team has to spend their entire cx trying to figure out what arguments you did/didn’t make, that you have achieved victory than all I can say is godspeed. If , on the other hand, you are willing to consider that there may be a problem then we need to move on to concrete steps that will help improve your clarity. For the rest of this post lets just talk about one: structure.

 

Structure is organizing your speech so that similar arguments are grouped together, and then labeling them. So instead of having an elections 2AC that looks like this

 

trump will win

plan hurts trump

trump will win

plan hurts trump

trump will win

 

etc. You have a structured list/outline of your arguments

 

1. Trump will win
   A. Polls
   B. Some other thing
2. The plan hurts trump…

 

This really shouldn’t be controversial, its what you learn to do in every single academic class you have ever taken or will ever take. And yet here we are. I’m not going to line by line the nonsense reasons people give for not having structure like “omg it takes 1/100th of a second to say a number”- these “arguments” are all terrible and not the reason you don’t use structure.

 

Here is the reason: you think the cool kids don’t do it, and you want to be cool, and you think using numbers will make you not cool.

 

That may sound ridiculous… and it is. But its YOUR thought, not mine. I know this from arguing with literally hundreds of students over the course of decades. Every single other thing you say is nonsense. Once you realize this… start numbering. If you are the 1A, your advantages/contentions should be structured. Same for 1NC disad shells and case frontlines, same for 2AC blocks to offcase…

 

They should have numbers or letters, you should use your voice to emphasize this structure (i.e. pause briefly or say the number louder/put emphasis on it), and it should be done at a pace that can be understood. This isn’t hard, and if it is hard for you than you should be PRACTICING IT the same way you would do speed drills. Actually not the same way, a different more important way because this is more important.

 

If you don’t structure your speeches, if you don’t try and make them as understandable as possible to the judge than you didn’t “do the better debating” and you don’t deserve to win. I would love it if judges reading this decided to act on it and give students clearing speaker points only if they structured but we all know that isn’t going to happen. No one is going to penalize you for doing bad. BUT THEY WILL REWARD YOU FOR DOING BETTER. Almost always when I talk to students they say the following two things

-my goal is to be better/do better than I did last year

-my other goal is to change nothing and keep doing what I’ve been doing

 

Ok so maybe 2 is more unsaid, but you get the idea. Unless you are currently TS at every tournament than you have room for improvement. If you haven’t been clearing or getting any speaker awards than you have A LOT of said room. If you want to start moving up you do it by DIFFERENTIATING yourself from the rabble, not by doing what they do just slighting worse(or even better).

 

And this was born out at camp. When I spoke to other lab leaders about great debaters no one was saying “OMG they broke this new argument/explanation I had never seen before”, they were saying things like “they are a good speaker”. Because online is so impersonal, even judges who are usually cold LBL monsters want you to actually sound good. Ignore it at your peril.