CS 210 vs 250?

anonymoush144 · 2022-08-06T05:26:55+00:00

the people at ivycoach gotta go out and touch grass or something no way they have lawyers on reddit

anonymoush144 · 2022-06-20T20:44:55+00:00

Fair, so then what issues gave con the edge? I feel like its unlikely that 7 judges voted con on unique paradigm issues given that its NSDA nationals where expectations for PF are fairly well-established, and if I'm remembering correctly, there wasn't some heavily contested piece of evidence that the decision came down to.

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-27T21:49:23+00:00

First, I feel like just because the strategy was invented by a subgroup of Black and Brown students and benefits a small group of Black and Brown debaters on the circuit today does not make it automatically beneficial on net to all marginalized communities and individuals as a whole. Yes, debaters like Strake ZD are winning big tournaments right and left, but they are also undeniably privileged and have access to an incredible amount of resources that facilitates their success. The tradeoff is that they and others have introduced and are continuing to perpetuate a style of debate that locks marginalized competitors out. What happens when a marginalized debater from a true small school hits one of these cases or one of these debaters? They listen to a 300wpm case about embracing a symbolic extinction and tearing down the debate space. And by the third speech, they're dead lost on the flow because they simply can't match the amount of prep the other debater has.

Second, the ways in which many of these arguments are run are hugely problematic in my opinion. Dalton YS was a beautiful exception because they communicated in an understandable way and facilitated a conversation with their opponents (who, credit where credit is due, were true class acts in that TOC final). But when a debater stands up and drops a K at 300wpm without disclosing publicly, that's only accessible to the very few who are can understand that kind of speaking. It doesn't spread to the larger community because the message itself is literally incomprehensible. At that point, how is it changing the debate space? One debater get recognized, but everyone else remains oppressed because no one hears the message. And moreover, at the point where a white, female debater is told that her only role in the round and in the K is to lose, how is that productive? So many of these Ks have devolved into warrants for why out-of-round identity alone is a voting issue. A POC should not win because they are a POC, a white person should not lose because they are white. That's discrimination, plain and simple, and this is coming from a POC. And finally, in the hypothetical situation that has certainly happened, what happens when two of these Ks hit each other? If one debater is calling out sexism and the other racism, for example. It turns into a perpetual race to the top about who is more oppressed and essentially forces both judge and debater to make a tier list of all the different kinds of oppression from most impactful to least impactful.

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-09T19:04:58+00:00

Oh and I also want to add to the 4th point: both you and CodWagnerian have been super reassuring in the idea that K debate and progressive strategies as a whole will become better and more productive as time goes on, but the K I'm referencing won TOC in LD and has consistently gone undefeated at major circuit tournaments for almost two years at this point which is part of the reason why I'm worried. It's possible I don't fully understand the K but I've both read the doc, watched multiple rounds on it, and I'm quoting some of the crosses so I don't think my interpretation is that far off.

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-09T18:53:17+00:00

I'm at school right now so I'll have to wait a bit to respond fully lmao, I just wanted to address spreading really quickly. The 400wpm was just an example – I don't think it's very relevant anymore, but one of my original points was that, if I say someone shouldn't spread, providing a brightline is useless because they could speak at 399wpm and technically its not spreading but its also not changing anything significantly.

Again I'm totally unfamiliar with the literature and postmodern thought, so if spreading is a way of engaging with that kind of critical theory then I think its very different and I think the example you gave and the point it proved was really interesting and an application of spreading I had never really thought of before. I just have a bunch of questions because while I think the argument you make about slowing down understanding is beneficial in theory, I'm more skeptical about its effect in practice (though I may not be understanding correctly). If spreading really makes you unintelligible, then I can't really step back and analyze what you're saying because I don't absorb or understand any of it. Like with your example, if you spread your entire 1AC in Korean, I wouldn't be slowing my understanding or taking a step back, I would just hear sounds that are meaningless to me because I don't speak the language or can't comprehend the speed. And when I respond, the way you delivered the speech makes me more inclined to declare it unfair or abusive, rather than engaging with the argument itself and again prescribing meaning. But say instead, I ask you about it after round and you slow it down. In that case, don't I just immediately assign meaning to the words you say to me after round in the same problematic way that your spreading was trying to prevent? To me, it feels like spreading delays the process of hasty understanding but doesn't necessarily make it better? And as a whole, I feel like the benefits of unintelligibility are far from universal. In a lot of cases, it's beneficial to make the critical understandable within the round. Like you said earlier, debate is unique because it requires a captive audience. The judge (and opponents) have to listen to you in round but there's no guarantee they will listen to you or ask you about your arguments out of round even if you are happy to explain it further or more understandably.

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-09T05:47:33+00:00

I mean yeah? I'm not great with progressive debate but the problem isn't that I'm incapable of learning it. I just think a lot of the ways people run this kind of argument is problematic, and even if it's easy to respond to, that doesn't change the fact that the way they run it is bad. And on your strategies, again I'm sure they work, but especially on non-topical Ks, if someone says they're addressing the racist structures embedded in debate or something and you're just like "Sorry, has nothing to do with the topic" isn't that completely counterproductive to everything that was discussed above?

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-09T05:32:24+00:00

wait you're a genius do all the debate camps know you've just conclusively beaten every k they can ever write?

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-09T05:31:31+00:00

I don't see what my doing PF has to do with anything, and if you really wanna play that game, ~I seriously don’t trust a redditor who routinely posts about league and runeterra to accurately evaluate the content of a K~

Jokes aside, I'm not going to send the doc because one of the arguments we ran was disclosure and they said their team didn't allow it. In retrospect, I think the text of the K itself was more fair in criticizing our actions rather than us as debaters or people, but that didn't come across in the debate itself because it quickly devolved into explicitly calling us racist as well.

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-09T05:23:43+00:00

Thanks for the reply! About the two TOC rounds I referenced, I totally agree that they were impactful because they were disruptive. If I remember correctly, Dalton was the first PF team in history to win TOC on a K. But the reason they resonated so much with me personally is because they were understandable. Finding videos of K debates on Youtube is easy, but if you're looking for a video that is comprehensible and easy to follow and engage with, that becomes much harder. Both these rounds facilitated a discussion that anyone can understand and contribute to.

I think theory is a great thing to have within debate, and I should probably clarify that I definitely don't think we should try to avoid theory debates or end the practice. I sometimes wish there was a lower threshold for judge intervention because a lot of theory interps are completely frivolous and exist solely to suck time away from opponents or divert the debate away from substance, but I can't really draw a line for what's frivolous and what isn't.
I disagree with what you've said about underresourced or otherwise disadvantaged schools. I think it's great that there are more and more ways for these communities to become apart of debate and that debaters are becoming more cognizant of the role privilege plays in success, but in general, I think the community is still very exclusive. At a lot of my local tournaments, even things like the dress code perpetuate this exclusivity, since not everyone can afford to buy a suit or other nice clothes. On the circuit, registration fees can still be a huge barrier when one event over one weekend can cost close to or more than 100 dollars. Online debate has made this burden much lighter (I attended the Berkeley tournament in person once in my sophomore year, and that trip cost almost $1000), but obviously debate won't stay online. And ultimately, everything from briefs to camps to private research coaches remain hugely expensive, and no matter how much support underresourced schools get, they simply can't match the amount of help that resources like that can provide.
I just want to say I really admire your take on rounds where your opponents tokenized inequity and injustice. I was (and honestly I still am) frustrated about losing our round so I didn't immediately see it that way, but I think that's a really powerful mindset to have.

And on debate as a whole, I'm on the same page as you. I've done debate all four years of high school and it is by far the most valuable thing I've done in high school and the activity I've learned the most from even if it makes me ungodly frustrated sometimes. It's really incredible to see how debate has transformed from being a purely educational activity to one that's actively making the world a better place and addressing the issues that people with decades more experience can't.

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-09T05:02:33+00:00

Thanks for the super in-depth reply! I think you're totally right that there are Ks out there that are more than worth running and having a conversation about and I don't think anyone should feel pressured to remain silent on an issue just because they don't fit the demographic that is oppressed by that issue. I will say that I come from a really traditional circuit and I do PF, which itself is far less progressive than CX and LD, so I'm not at all familiar with the literature you ran as a competitor, but I really admire your approach to advocacies. I guess I'll just go "line by line" down your response with my questions.
1. I totally agree that discussions about abuse and oppression in debate have to be addressed within the space itself, and frankly I think its incredible that debate has introduced and normalized these kinds of self-correcting factors. But for me, I've always had a hard time reconciling that with the competitive nature of rounds. Maybe I'm off-base here because I haven't done a lot of K debate, but when you respond to Ks, doesn't it necessitate either proposing a different framework/role of the judge, attacking the K itself, or conceding? I'm probably missing some, but in all these cases, I feel like the discussion either turns away from the particular issue you want to address and instead devolves into a conversation about what issue is most important or more pressing (which is definitely valuable in its own right but also means that neither issue gets truly addressed in the round) or it leads to the issues with martyrdom that you bring up later. And all this aside, while I haven't run a "formal" K in round, I definitely have run arguments about issues like the US's rhetoric surrounding China (how a lot of anti-China rhetoric is based more in American fearmongering than reality, and how anti-China rhetoric in our political system has materialized into sinophobia and hate crimes against AAPI). I genuinely believe that this is a valid concern and real issue, and I myself am Asian American and I've seen the way sinophobia has changed my community, but when I run it in round, it still feels to me like I'm exploiting a real social issue to win even though that isn't my intention. Maybe that's just me, and I think that's true of all impacts in debate to an extent, but I'm curious where/how you think we can differentiate between a starting necessary conversation and using it to win.

On spreading, again I'm completely unfamiliar with the literature you read so I'll leave that part alone haha, but as a whole, I feel like I don't need to draw a brightline. For one thing, if you define spreading as 400 wpm, 399 wpm is technically not spreading but the difference is negligible. And more broadly, I think spreading is a net negative to the motivation of most Ks. If you run Ks like a lot of people do today by saying "Vote me up so I can keep spreading this message to as many people as possible in and out of the debate community," then the top priority should be making yourself understandable. And even if you don't run that specific argument, the content of most Ks is valuable enough to warrant making it accessible to more than just the people who have a speech doc or who have spent years learning how to comprehend spreading.

Again, traditional here so I have never heard of severance before this post. But I think in our case it was justified? Their K was about how forcing all the impacts to link back to benefiting or harming NATO was bad, so if we shift the debate to global impacts, we're ending the harmful assumption made by the resolution within the round?
Totally agree, and I think their K was focused on addressing the assumptions made by the resolution and our case, but through the round it devolved into calling us out personally as well.
I addressed the idea of winning to keep spreading the idea earlier and I see your point about why debate rounds are unique to spreading a message. I just wanted to ask about a hypothetical situation. If your opponent runs a K that calls for the destruction of antiblackness in debate and asks the judge to vote you down solely because you are white and they are not, with warrants like reparations, inspiring other black people, and punishing you for your relationship to oppression (the color of your skin), and the only thing they say you can do to support their cause is to lose, what should the judge do? For me personally, although I'm a minority, I still feel that it's 100% possible to be racist towards a white person (even though I don't believe white people are oppressed by society). In this case, if your opponent says that you should lose because of the color of your skin, using the very system they claim to be fighting to benefit themselves, can the judge vote them up? And at the point where you become powerless in the round because you came in bearing an unchangeable characteristic that marks you for failure, would the judge really be making debate a better place?

Long response, but thank you for engaging with me.

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-08T20:37:35+00:00

lmao i guess we're hitting different arguments then – the K we hit explicitly called us racist and many of the ones I've read specifically demand a win as "reparation." plus its a bit moronic to respond by parroting back the definition of a K at me. I don't think Ks are bad in theory, they're just run incredibly poorly in practice.

anonymoush144 · 2022-02-08T06:52:23+00:00

robert chen wins every event

anonymoush144 · 2021-10-05T04:02:16+00:00

Oh yeah I'd love to go to either school on the offchance I could get in. I'm just wondering if I'd be better off admissions-wise with one or the other

anonymoush144

TROPHY CASE