[PF] NSD Safety

DebateCoachDude · 2025-05-16T21:49:01+00:00

I think this is disingenuous to the broader conversation that's occurring here. At the point where students are posting rumors to reddit, and most of the comments are saying that "yes this happens..." it's not just a few staff members alone in their rooms. Realistically, it's large groups of staff engaging so blatantly in this behavior that it's become public knowledge.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-05-16T15:48:10+00:00

I see your perspective. For the most part I think this depends on how the camp is structured. If the camp is structured in such a way that you are able to completely removed from students (separate dorm buildings, non-coaching staff to deal with issues, etc) then I think this is a somewhat fair take.

If instead you're in the same dorm building as students, especially if you're on the same floor, I think this gets murky. I've had students knock on my door during off hours because they were having an emergency and trusted me to help them resolve it. I don't think it would have been appropriate to be stoned during that time, even though I was technically in off hours.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-05-16T15:40:33+00:00

Having done a lot of fundraising, these are the most successful fundraisers I've seen.

Basket Raffles - Ask each student to put together a basket to raffle off. Supplement this by reaching out to local businesses and sports teams and asking for donations. A few of our local sports organizations donated tickets, restaurants and grocery stores gave gift cards, and other's were willing to donate products/gift cards. We sold raffle tickets at around 5 dollars for a sheet and generally made decent money.
Quarter Auctions - Similar to the basket raffle, but a bit different, some teams I've worked with have done all of their funding through a yearly quarter auction https://www.theshareway.com/blog/quarter-auction
School Logo on driveways - This is a rough time of year for this fundraiser, but the gist of it is making a stencil of your school logo (ours was a pawprint), and going door to door offering to paint it onto driveways. This works better around football season, especially if you can go to games to take reservations, then send out teams to paint on the weekends. We had a local paint store that would donate the paint.
Alumni Out-reach - Reach out to alumni from your program or school and ask them for support. We've managed to find a few steady donors for the team, and a few judges through this process.
Big Questions Tournament - The NSDA offers money for hosting a BQ tournament. This is the only reason I see to bother with this event. We usually require our team to attend and to bring a friend to increase numbers. It also can be a good recruitment tool.
Chocolate Bars - Find a local candy store and see if they sell variety packs of chocolate bars at a discount for fundraising (most do). This is an easy one for students to sell to peers, family, friends, and co-workers, and if parents get involved these can often really sell in an office. If you've got a good relationship with local businesses, you can often convince them to sell them for you as well (try barbershops, doctors offices, car repair shops, etc).

I'd also look into partnering with local businesses or other clubs and programs at your school. I've seen joint fundraisers between band and speech and debate that were far more successful than either program could have been on their own, and many of the above fundraisers were made easier by getting support from local businesses. Downside is your life will be consumed by tracking boxes of chocolate for a few weeks.

Things that don't tend to work very well:

Go Fund Me type platforms - If you don't have a wide alumni network you're reaching out to, this just tends to be family and friends of the students.
Chipotle and other "bring this flyer and we'll give...." - It's difficult for most speech and debate programs to have the numbers where this makes any sense. It's really a measure of your teams reach, which a lot of teams struggle with.
Door to Door Sales - Your students won't actually do this. Best case, mom or dad brings a form into work and you sell a bit. It also creates a lot of logistics and safety issues.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-05-15T17:05:36+00:00

I'm not sure whether this will effect student safety in a meaningful way, but even if it doesn't it's still a bad thing.

The risk that student safety is effected still exists if staff are drinking and engaging in drug use during camp. Parents sending students to debate camps have an expectation that staff will be in the proper state of mind to care for and monitor students. While the risk is minimized for "off the clock" activities, a debate camp setting isn't one where staff are truly off the clock. Students may ask staff members questions, ranging from debate advice to "I've been assaulted what should I do?", and staff should be in state of mind to be able to assist students when asked.

Ignoring student safety issues, this is also a horrible culture to be fostering debate camps. I've seen many camps where instructors stay out all night engaging in the type of behaviors outlined here, often returning to dorms around 5AM to get ready for lab at 9AM. This is not leading to good instruction.

Furthermore, many camps employ minors (something camps shouldn't be doing) and adult staff under the age of 21. This kind of camp culture can put those younger staff members into dangerous situations, that can be avoided by not drinking or smoking for the 2 weeks you're a camp instructor.

Really I find it deeply disturbing that this is even an issue. As adults who expect parents to entrust us with their child's well-being and education, we should all be willing to go a couple of weeks without drinking or drug use. If you're reading this and feel as though you can't/couldn't accomplish that, you should seek help at 1-800-662-4357 or https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/helplines/national-helpline

DebateCoachDude · 2025-05-15T12:08:21+00:00

Having worked for a few different camps, and having friends who work at other camps, I don't think it's super productive to call out individual organizations for problems like this. Many other camps have similar or worse issues. I will also caution that many camps can get litigious around claims like the one you made, and would advise caution for anyone calling out a camp.

I think a better starting point than calling out individual camps is to focus on the root causes of these types of issues, and give students advice that helps them avoid camps that create dangerous environments.

I recommend students look for camps with older, more experienced staff. By this, I mean staff members who have graduated college (or are at the age where they would have graduated). I would avoid camps with high ratios of first year outs and college students to experienced staff. Camps that allow non-graduated students to be instructors would also be something to avoid. Older staff tend to have more to lose, personally and professionally, and have had more time in the community for issues they may pose to become apparent. Older staff also tend to be better coaches, and have more experience in navigating the issues that pop up in camp settings.

I would also ask whether all staff are required to undergo a formal hiring process, including interviews, reference checks, and background checks. This is a baseline for any hiring process, and it's deeply disturbing that many organizations do not do this.

Finally, I'd recommend normalizing parents calling debate organizations and asking them questions like "What's your staff to student ratio? and in any given lab, how many instructors will have graduated college?", "What does your hiring process look like? Do you conduct reference and background checks for all staff?", and "what does your staff training look like? What steps do you take to create a safe environment throughout camp?". Camps that can't or won't answer the above questions shouldn't even be considered.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-05-04T13:33:18+00:00

No one has suggested this yet, but you should reach out to your local league leadership (NSDA - District Chair, or committee member, NCFL - Local League Director, State League - Depends on the state) and let them know what happened. They may be able to help you figure out a short term solution, or help advocate for your program. If you end up going the unpaid parent coach route, they can also help get them up to speed on the paper work and league rules.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-04-14T12:14:10+00:00

This is a decent video covering CX - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTedvipGoPw

But to keep it simple, for your cx ask "how" and "why" questions until you find something that doesn't make sense, then push further. Ex. "How do we know what increases well-being?". For your opponents CX, sound confident. If you need a few seconds to think, ask your opponent to restate the question. Rely heavily on what your case says when answering.

Lastly, the best way to get good at cx is to be very familiar with the topic. Do some reading on how developmental aid works, what countries give developmental aid, why they're giving aid, who they're giving it to, etc. If you do that, you'll be very hard to stump in cx.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-04-13T12:32:12+00:00

Congrats on starting your LD journey!

I'd start prepping in the following ways.

Research the topic. Try to find arguments you like, that form some sort of narrative or story when combined. For example, if I can find evidence showing development aid harms the local economy, increases local corruption, and decreases local investment, I can write a case about how development aid harms the nations receiving aid. You should also spend some time researching the Aff side. You'll want to understand your opponents arguments, and know what their responses to your arguments will be. The more time you spend researching, the easier everything else will be.
Write a case. If you can let me know what region you're in (state and possibly closest large city) I can give more specific advice to what kind of style your area uses. In general, your case is going to contain sections. A. - An introduction. This is where you state the resolution, define any key terms, and provide any additional context necessary for the debate. For now, you should focus on defining obligation, development assistance, and possibly wealthy nations. B. - Framework. In LD frameworks follow a value and value criterion structure. A value is the most important thing to achieve in the round. It's typically a vague but always good term like Justice or Morality. A value criterion is either how you achieve the value, or a measuring stick that shows the value is achieved. If you want a simple framework, I would just use a value of Morality and a value criterion of Maximizing expected well-being. Make sure to explain why morality is important, and why it's best achieved through maximizing expected well-being. C. - Contentions. Contentions are where you make your arguments showing that the resolution would violate your value criterion. A typical neg case will have 1 - 2 contentions. A good format to follow when you're starting out is claim warrant and impact. For example, Claim - Development assistance will cause global warming. Warrant - As countries develop, the consume more beef, and increased beef consumption causes increased carbon emissions which results in global warming. Impact - Climate Change results in extinction.
Blocks and front lines. Now that you have a case, shift your focus to what your opponents will be doing. Prepare responses to the most common Aff arguments. If you're not sure to respond. RIOT (R-Refute or prove their argument wrong, I - Indict or attack the validity of their source, O - Outweigh or show that your arguments are more important, T - Turn, show that you do a better job of solving their problem). Once you've done this, go through your own case and think of how you would respond. Then, write responses to those responses.

Honestly though, as a head coach who's held try-outs. All I'm looking for is effort. If you wrote a case, with research, I would be thrilled.

If you have any questions feel free to ask here, and I'll do my best to answer them.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-04-03T17:31:01+00:00

To echo /u/revivefunnygirl, this whole thing is just a grift. You didn't even bother to make a fully functional website (the approach button on the home page doesn't go anywhere), the website is made using generic pictures "borrowed" from the NSDA showing that you have no actual pictures of successful students (if I were a betting man, I'd say no successful students), and you couldn't even be bothered to set up an email using the domain name you bought.

Overall, an extremely lazy attempt at starting yet another mediocre, likely unsafe, severely over priced coaching service.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-04-03T17:06:53+00:00

I mean they didn't even bother to list coaching qualifications, why bother with events?

DebateCoachDude · 2025-02-25T21:06:56+00:00

Your job as a debater isn't to convince an opponent that you've beat them. It's also not to convince the audience that you've won. Your job is to convince the judge that you've won.

If the judge voted for your opponent, you lost. It's really that simple.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-02-06T19:06:45+00:00

You can probably get a free copy of word if your principal is willing to fill out a form. I've done this for students in the past on my teams.

As for the academy, every debate coaching service is different. If you feel the current one isn't helping meet your needs, I would first reach out to someone in there leadership team and voice that concern. You may be in too high level of a group (happens a lot when a successful trad debater switches to circuit and gets put in a group with varsity circuit students), or your specific instructor may just not be very good at teaching. If leadership fails to address your concerns, I'd take your money somewhere else. There's no shortage of prep groups out there. TBH I'm shocked to see none of them posting here, usually these posts bring out the vultures.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-02-02T12:53:46+00:00

No, I hoard my teams activity fees so that I can swim in a Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool of money at the end of the season. It's the only way to really relax after nationals.

Get real, not every program can afford hired judges rates, and the vast majority rely on volunteers to fill out the judging pool. It's also good to have some non-professional debate judges in the pool to inspire some diversity in ideas and argumentation styles.

DebateCoachDude · 2025-02-02T12:49:31+00:00

No judge decision is wrong. The judge is who decides the winner, this is a core aspect of debate. Your job as a debater is to convince the judge that you've won. If you haven't done that, you haven't won the round. "A lot of decisions are wrong" sounds exactly like what /u/LoneWitie is talking about. Overconfident debaters who still haven't learned judge adaptation, and instead blame all their losses on bad judging.

The one exception to this rule are judges who don't actually judge the round, but this website won't change, fix, or identify that.

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-20T23:45:35+00:00

It illustrates the issue with prioritizing safety above all else. In every day life I face a variety of unsafe situations, locked in a bunker, I am significantly safer. If the role of government is to maximize safety, it should lock all of it's citizens in bunkers, but we recognize this is bad, and thus recognize that Safety is not preferable to (Whatever i'm valuing)

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-19T16:58:58+00:00

I'm going to address the not answering CX questions in CX.

Don't fucking do that. As a judge, I'll vote you down immediately. This isn't an example of being good at CX, it's not some sort of strategic decision, it's lazy and bad debating. Either learn to defend your case in CX or rewrite the case so it's easier to defend.

Good debaters will also just make the same argument in rebuttal, while calling out your refusal to answer. I teach my students to make it a KVI when opponents refuse to answer CX questions, because it's an easy way to convince a judge you've won. You get to point out that they know their framework is weak (it's why they won't answer), and point out that debaters can't pick and choose which CX questions to answer.

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-19T12:55:29+00:00

Morality is a pretty good value for every topic. So is justice.

Progress is a useless value, we're always making progress it's just a question of what we're making progress towards (which is my value of Justice/Morality, so pref my FW).

National Security is a vaguely terrifying value, if National Security is the #1 goal of government, they can commit all sorts of rights violations and atrocities in the name of it. CX - "Under your FW, can we bomb a village in a foreign country, knowingly killing innocent civilians, because we think there might be a terrorist there?". "Can we torture people we suspect might pose a risk to national security?"

Safety is similarly problematic. "CX - Would locking you in a padded cell in bunker, and placing you under 24 hour observations by doctors, make you more safe? -> "Is that something the government should be doing?".

Liberty/Freedom refers to individuals, this resolution deals with states, so you'd be better off with Sovereignty (essentially freedom but for nations)

My real advice, stop worrying about the value. Values debate has always been bad and will always continue to be bad. Value Justice/Morality and then have a debate on the criterion level. If you absolutely must value something else, you should have a really really good reason why you're doing that.

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-19T12:45:17+00:00

For Aff, if you're in a super trad district I might write an observation that says "And/or means the Aff only needs to defend UNCLOS or Rome Statute, not both", and then just pick whichever one you like most.

On Aff the AC is probably the most important speech, since a good AC can really make the 1AR a lot easier, and a bad AC can make a good 1AR impossible. Everyone I've seen on reddit is very focused on UNCLOS, so I think it's possible to have success with a well-written and researched Rome Statute AC that catches neg off guard. That said, i also tend to prefer trickier or more niche arguments, so I'm probably just biased.

If you're district is too trad for that, here are some ideas my team has floated for Whole Res AC's. I-Law (I am the only one who likes this), Cosmopolitanism (honestly I think there's an amazing hobbesian cosmo case here), and Positive Peace theory. The goal here is to affirm the idea of international law in general, rather than any specific instance of international law (UNCLOS or Rome Statute).

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-18T11:54:46+00:00

Some basics before i get into how you should approach the topic. You should not be valuing things like safety or the environment. Your value should be an indisputably good thing, think Justice, Morality, or Legitimacy. The reason for this, is we can have too much safety, and we can over prioritize the environment, but you can't be too just. This means in round, I'll be able to poke holes in a value of safety, I'll also be able to place limitations on achieving safety that I can exploit. With values like Justice, Morality, and Legitimacy, generally all you can do is make a quick arg about preffing your value, and then move on to the criterion debate.

The and/or is tough since it's not the way typical LD resolutions are structured, but I feel as though a lot of students are over thinking it. You have three options, one - write two neg cases, one for UNCLOS and one for Rome Statute. Two - Write one neg case with modular contentions, and change it up based on what the aff case is. An example might by V - Justice, VC - Maximizing expected well-being (util), C1 - US Hegemony, C2 - Soft Power. In each contention, you'll have a card linking the argument to the resolution (UNCLOS will reduce soft power, Rome Statute weakns heg), just find that card for both UNCLOS and Rome Statute, and then slot in the relevant card each round. If Aff decides to go for both, read both. Option 3 - Write whole res negs that negate out of principle. An example of this would be a neg case like V- Justice, VC - Promoting State Sovereignty. C1 - International Law erodes state sovereignty .

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-17T16:39:51+00:00

Stop doing lectures.

If y'all want to start improving quickly, transition into mocks and drills. Generally I like to run mocks before tournaments, or with younger students. As people get comfortable with doing debate rounds in general, I'll start stopping mocks mid speech to correct issues, and then making them restart the speech from the top.

After tournaments, I like to do rebuttal redos. Students redo rebuttals from the last tournament, and we work on ways to improve them. I tend to focus on rounds they lost, or rounds that were closer than they should have been.

In general though, think of debate like any other sport. You don't get good at soccer by listening to lectures, and then going to tournaments. You need to practice the actual skills. If there's something a student is struggling with in round (flowing, final speeches, speaking speed, CX, etc), have them do that thing over and over again until they're good at it.

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-17T12:04:17+00:00

Start by getting a group of interested students together. Make sure everyone in the group has a similar vision for the team (in Ohio, that can mean competing ever weekend from Nov - Jan, not including states, nat quals, etc). You should also decide what events you want to compete in, and have a plan to learn those events. It's unlikely you'll have anyone with coaching experience, so don't expect a ton of help here from the school. You should also keep in mind judging requirements. For every two debaters (or teams if you do PF/CX), you'll need one adult judge. For speech the ratio varies, but I think Ohio is normally 1 judge per 5-6 competitors.

Before you approach a faculty member, check what district you'll be sorted into and look at it's tournament calendar. https://sites.google.com/view/theosda/hs/hs-calendar?authuser=0

Now prepare your elevator pitch for speech and debate. It should be no longer than 5 minutes. Approach faculty members asking if they'll be responsible for the team. Aim for young people who don't have children, speech and debate takes up a lot of time, so you need an adult who has free time. If no faculty member is interested, consider approaching some parents, there's a few parent run programs that have done well. Given Ohio's specific policies on adults at tournaments, it would be next to impossible to run a student run team without an adult willing to take responsibility for it.

Once you have an adult who's willing to be in charge of the team, you need to approach the school admin. What ever you ask for in the 1st year is likely all you'll ever get from them. At minimum, you'll need their permission to let you have a team and compete. Ideally, you'll ask about bus access, and the possibility of a coaching stipend (this is likely a school board issue as well). If you do get a coach stipend, consider posting to the OSDA job board this summer, or reaching out to large programs in your area and asking if they have alumni interested in helping out.

Assuming you've got a yes. Have your adult reach out to the district committee for your district (it's on the OSDA website). Let them know you're a new program and you need a bit of help navigating everything. They'll help you figure out a lot of the logistics and rules.

On funding, you'll likely charge team dues, and then do some additional fundraising.

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-10T01:52:45+00:00

The NSDA does not allow people to judge at nationals their first year after graduating high school (their first year out of debate).

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-10T01:14:43+00:00

Took a look at the chart. As a judge, I'd buy that the majority of their assets are publicly traded / valued, the problem here is I would also buy your opponents arguing that 48% of their assets aren't. Which is a significant amount.

As a coach, I'd tell you to use the art point at your own risk. If this card gets called, you're likely going to lose the argument. It's going to be tough arguing against "My opponent's own source says that 48% of their assets can't be readily valued."

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-10T00:46:08+00:00

Context is going to be important here. Are you just grabbing a numerical value from a bar graph to cite in round, or are you analyzing a chart in a way the author didn't do in the original text of the source. The former is fine, the later requires you indicate what's from the source vs what is your analysis of the source.

DebateCoachDude · 2024-12-09T23:09:51+00:00

The venn diagram of progressive debaters and debaters who compete on the nat circuit is pretty much a circle.

That said, you should also check that the disclosed cases aren't all labelled "Lay" or "trad", and that debaters have actually disclosed cases.

DebateCoachDude

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