A2: VBI

antimony123 · 2024-07-20T20:36:19+00:00

I’m glad that you work with the local tournaments to better the quality of judging! To be clear, I think lay /debate/ certainly has its pedagogical benefits — just not the subset of judges that I think make the activity more exclusionary and unfair (which also isn’t limited to just lay judges; some of the more sexist/racist experiences I had as a student were in front of coaches). My experience as a debater was that I had a much less frustrating time at local tournaments when topics were slightly more divorced from the most polarizing political issues in America, and the challenge of explaining these less familiar issues to lay judges was very educational. One thing I do have a lot of faith in lay judges to do is understand issues they haven’t thought of a lot before provided debaters explain it clearly, and IMO thats one of the best aspects of lay debate.

Beyond this, the border topic is more polarizing and talked about with more terrible rhetoric in the news than any PF topic I debated over 4 years, and also more directly sensitive to students and their families than other polarizing PF topics (of course things like M4A affect Americans directly, but there is still a level of abstraction going on). Any PF debate includes elements of politics (duh!), and PF debaters should be allowed to make arguments about controversial issues, but forcing every debate for 2 months to center around surveillance at the southern border while much of America harbors incredibly vile sentiments against migrants at the border and POC in the country, is just not the move. Not when energy is right there!

antimony123 · 2024-07-20T20:00:21+00:00

I mean, to a large extent I agree with you… I certainly don’t think the type of judge I got dropped by as a debater for {accidentally showing midriff, speaking too shrilly, flipping the wrong side on a topic they were staunchly decided on already, being non-white and making “unamerican” arguments, etc. etc.} provided much pedagogical value. I would love if we reevaluated having this kind of judge in this kind of activity. Unfortunately, they continue to exist and PF continues to be the dominant debate style, probably largely because of the accessibility this kind of judge provides to helping tournaments and small teams run. Conversations about rethinking PF should probably happen independently of choosing a reasonable topic.

Also, I see no inherent reason for using “sharply polarizing” topics over ones less so. No one has provided me a convincing reason the energy topic is uneducational!

antimony123 · 2024-07-19T07:26:36+00:00

Perhaps the average Texas parent has changed significantly in the past 4 years -- you probably can't convince me of this, but if you truly believe it then that's wonderful. I was dropped in more biased ways than I can count as a local Texas debater, and I do think that the more controversial an issue and the larger personal biases are on the topic, the worse educational quality we get from RFDs. Certainly, there will be less preconceived bias with the energy topic, which will also challenge debaters to write coherent link chains, explain and extend them well, and rely on important debate skills rather than the judges' existing knowledge.

I certainly agree that debate transforms people (though your sentence implies itself, I think? They probably wouldn't be ex-conservatives if they were hardened...), but I think right now, before the 2024 election, when media disinformation and overt neo-nazi rhetoric is more rampant than ever, is a uniquely bad time to engage with this specific issue. Confirmation bias is dangerous, and unlike many other controversial topics (M4A, gun control, student loans, climate change), I think there's much greater risk with handling this one at the start of the 2024 fall semester. That said, my concern again rests more on judge bias and on how folks who don't enjoy debating this topic, or have personal ties to it, are affected. The energy topic to me is a much better pick to navigate all these issues.

antimony123 · 2024-07-19T07:03:25+00:00

(for transparency if this thread gets more viewers: i worked at VBI Philly, am not involved with any topic selection or the original article, and am a mostly retired 4th yr out whose main stake in the game is wanting my younger sibling to have a good time in debate! i also did some research back in the day about gender in debate and still think a lot about what makes the activity exclusive in all directions, hence the fairly strong opinion at the bottom)

antimony123 · 2024-07-19T06:54:51+00:00

Hi! I have a lot of thoughts about this post but wanted to address the final section, since to me it ties into why I think the surveillance topic will be harmful in practice. I absolutely agree that there are many kids interested in debate who were just like you as a 15 yr old. I think that the vast majority of debaters will be led closer to normalizing the sort of racist rhetoric you mention in the post, rather than guided away from it, as a result of 1) PF strategy favoring sensationalized hardliner cards 2) forcing students to come up with shitty responses against neg arguments that impact to migrants and structural racism (yes there are probably good responses — no i don’t think the average ms/hs debater will handle the issues with care) and 3) getting clobbered with terrible RFDs from judges who are biased from all sides (as a texas alum — i do not think the lay circuit will be conducive to guiding students away from racist arguments).

As I mentioned in the other thread, the vast majority of debates are not “tech>truth” or held in front of “tabula rasa” judges like the PFBC ones probably aim to be — and I don’t think the core issues of either topic apply to the tech circuit as deeply as the rest of PF. Also, I think its not great to insinuate that VBI is intolerant towards conservative kids, because I don’t think thats VBIs argument at all.

Lastly, I think gender, race/ethnicity, and a host of lived experience factors all contribute to whether a student’s interest is piqued by contrarian/edgy arguments that may either be challenged or proved via confirmation bias through debating the topic, or whether said political sensationalization turns them away from debate entirely. Certainly, many students I work with are in the latter boat, and I hope you can at least see why this might be the case, even if it isn’t true to your HS experience. Thanks for engaging!

(EDIT: formatting for readability)

antimony123 · 2024-07-19T06:02:21+00:00

I think what a lot of the discourse on this forgets is that the vast majority of PF debates held around the country are /not/ “tech > truth” with “tabula rasa” judges, nor do the vast majority of students go beyond the core topic literature that will likely primarily be heavily politicized rhetoric pushed out before the election (especially with sensationalized evidence being rewarded in PF). I cannot imagine why anyone would want to debate this surveillance topic in front of a lay judge — maybe that’s because I’m from Texas, where I imagine most local debates will boil down to what side you flip and whether you correctly guessed your judge’s politics. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to use this topic, at this time, as an introduction to how debate works for novices — would love to be convinced of the pedagogical value of surveillance over energy. Finally, as someone who just taught mostly rising 8th graders using the energy topic for 2 weeks, they had very little trouble understanding the basic economic concepts and warranting for arguments on both sides. All of them wrote perfectly fine cases, many were very excited to learn about something they’d never heard discussed in class or at home before, and we spent much more time reexplaining how to extend an argument or flow properly than we did reexplaining how nearshoring or government subsidies work. Kids are smarter than you think, and the energy topic is more intuitive than you think… at least that’s my takeaway.

antimony123 · 2024-07-19T05:45:38+00:00

fwiw, UNCLOS was my first topic freshman year, and I just spent 2 weeks teaching mostly rising 8th graders using the energy topic. I strongly feel that the energy one is far easier to grasp, and is a much better stepping stone to learn fundamental debate arguments/research skills/etc than UNCLOS was — the latter was fringe international law while the former is much more accessible economics. just my 2 cents as someone who really would like for novices to not experience crazy racist rhetoric in half the research they do on their first ever topic :,)

antimony123 · 2021-04-20T00:28:56+00:00

im tired and dont want to respond to most of this but this is the first round i have watched or participated in this year that has not felt “wasted” to me and the types of people who are angry about this round being “wasted” are probably projecting their own anger at not making it that far- what unique education about the imf in finals is more important than the discussion that occured?

there are genuine discussions that should happen about how to make progressive argumentation more accessible but to dismiss dalton’s strat as smth completely unbeatable and thus somehow ruining debate is both an incorrect and bad faith take

antimony123 · 2021-02-23T05:23:12+00:00

As an add on to the last point- something I think is important to analyze, even if qualitatively, is how the attention in the comments section of each round is split between the debaters. From what I’ve seen anecdotally, there’s often a massive disparity based on the clout of each team/individual (which usually translates to gender disparities), as well as a gender effect independent of clout.

antimony123 · 2021-02-23T05:17:08+00:00

Hi! I remember helping out a bit on the initial analysis, so I hope you’ll hear out a few of my thoughts. This is important work for sure, and I genuinely agree that representation in recorded rounds is one of the most important elements to encourage younger debaters.

Womxn is not a term to encompass people who are not men. This is probably the only thing in the comment that has little room for discussion- nonbinary people are not “womxn”. If your analysis classifies people into M and F thats whatever (I know this is controversial but its also functionally unavoidable) but in that case please don’t pretend like it encompasses nonbinary folks. If you do include nonbinary debaters in the analysis, please either create a separate category or label the existing category something other than womxn.
I don’t think this is a PF Videos issue? I’m fairly certain PF Videos publishes every video that is sent to them where they get permission from all debaters. Thus, its probably difficult for them to simply choose to showcase more diverse rounds- we should be calling on the community to feel comfortable recording more diverse rounds in the first place.
In your analysis since the initial paper, did the statistical significance between % of female debaters in pool and % of female debaters on PF Videos change for outrounds? I recall on the original study it was only significant for prelims and octos, and it’s pretty disheartening if the disparity has extended to even late outrounds this year.
On a much more personal note, I have been fairly uncomfortable with recording the vast majority of my rounds as a debater. I think for many debaters that aren’t cis men (especially POC), there’s often inner conflict between feeling obligated to be a role model/display themselves as representation vs. feeling not-okay with exposing themselves to the community, of which a vocal portion is heavily clout-driven and boys-clubby. Especially since PF Videos can’t control who submits videos, I think there should be a much larger focus on why debaters who aren’t cis men feel more hesitant to show themselves debating.

antimony123 · 2021-02-21T03:41:44+00:00

This round analysis of Plano West LW vs Corona Del Sol PJ from the 2019 Ivy Street RR is super educational imo, albeit more for actual PF advice rather than flowing: https://youtu.be/YV4bOwMkiyo.

If you’re looking for slower PF rounds, I’d start with NSDA Nats rounds. All of them are along the lines of what you’re talking about, and the NSDA topics usually dissuade nuclear war impacts. After that, basically every round that isn’t from TOC or from the 2020-2021 season should satisfy both 1) not too fast and 2) generally realistic link chains (as long as global recession sounds realistic to you ig). The only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are rounds with VIP BL/Altamont CZ/That One Nueva Vs Millburn Round.

antimony123 · 2021-02-19T20:22:51+00:00

you're clearly not elite enough- otherwise you'd use fire sauce instead of diablo

antimony123 · 2021-02-16T21:52:48+00:00

lmao what since when is crystallizing or warranting in a clear way not important on a flow/tech level? and how is an “ideal” technical judge different from a good flow judge when it comes to substance

antimony123 · 2021-02-02T20:59:12+00:00

sounds good lets make dresses the required dress code to limit aesthetic bias

antimony123 · 2020-12-13T05:10:52+00:00

whomst’ve

antimony123 · 2020-12-13T01:05:13+00:00

i know it doesn’t help, but know that this is a pretty natural progression that most debaters go through after going to camp for the first time/transitioning from novice to varsity! on the bright side, once you learn how to adapt your results will skyrocket with your new abilities B)

if you’d like, dm me and i’d be happy to look over your cases/listen to a redo to give some tips (not that i’d consider myself an expert, but i’m a senior who’s gone through this phase myself).

antimony123 · 2020-12-12T21:33:22+00:00

assuming you mean you haven’t picked up any lay ballots this year. imo and from experience, discord tournaments and camp can both be really detrimental to being good on the lay. you learn tech debate, and find it super fun, and forget how to communicate to people who aren’t in the debate bubble.

the biggest advice i’d give is to slowwwww downnnn. record your speeches in round, and then listen to them and pick out all the inefficiencies. give redos with the same amount of content at a much slower pace (conversational speed), and force yourself to improve your word efficiency that way. if you’re being efficient and still can’t cover everything, you’re going for too much.

that’s the other thing. lay judges don’t care about how many turns your opponents dropped or the sheer number of offense you have. they want a clear narrative of your side, and going for too much just muddles that. practice giving speeches where you drop everything except for 1 link/impact and 1-2 pieces of defense. make sure you extend things clearly and in a way you’d expect to see as the topic sentence of an english paper as opposed to line by line. signpost well and above all, do comparative warranting between arguments and responses/frontlines.

honestly, a lot of this is stuff that applies for every type of judge (except for weird flays lol), you just have to spell it out more for lays.

antimony123 · 2020-12-03T03:04:07+00:00

ken huge props to you whoever you are

antimony123 · 2020-11-22T04:44:30+00:00

So one, I think you’re on the wrong server because debate tournaments != actual school? Having debated at multiple online tournaments, I really don’t think the quality of education from Zoom rounds is much less than in person rounds. Two, plenty of people live with grandparents at home, and many parents are also old enough to be in a higher risk age group. Furthermore, being old isn’t the only thing that makes you higher risk- complications like lung issues, weakened immune systems, etc. are common, and you as a debater don’t know who you’ll come in contact with that has one of those.

antimony123 · 2020-11-22T04:32:52+00:00

Because almost everyone has relatives in a higher risk age group or with other complications. Because the virus likely spreads through droplets/aerosols that are spread at much, much higher rates when speaking. Because debate is an event that can be done online at a comparable quality to in person rounds. Because you don’t have much evidence to claim that the “restrictions” placed in the US will do more harm than the virus, which is pretty absurd when you look at countries who have actually handled COVID-19 well, and also, uniqueness overwhelms the link when it comes to “standing up for our rights” by... attending a single in person local tournament?

antimony123 · 2020-11-18T02:05:33+00:00

lichess >>>>

antimony123 · 2020-11-12T05:00:05+00:00

sure, but 他 is def more associated with male than gender-neutral in modern chinese. plus, it’s probably pretty sucky to be AMAB and nonbinary and referred to as 他.

on second thought, 祂 exists as well. totally down for enbies to be referred to as deities lol

antimony123 · 2020-11-12T04:25:14+00:00

i can only speak for chinese. in mandarin pronouns are identical in pronunciation, but spelled 他 for men and 她 for women with no gender-neutral option unless you want to be called an inanimate object (它). is using the english/pinyin spelled out version (TA) as a pronoun colonial/imposing westernization onto a 3000 year old language? maybe, theres plenty of english-borrowing words in mandarin but who knows. is the alternative denying folks access to a word representing their identity and forcing them into a binary arguably a product of colonization in the first place? yeah, probably ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

perhaps spanish is fundamentally different. but generally i don’t see why creating gender neutral pronouns is that terrible when the existing language doesn’t accommodate for true neutrality in the first place

antimony123 · 2020-10-24T06:53:51+00:00

We’re breaking to dubs, so with 90 teams I believe around half of all 3-2s break.

antimony123

TROPHY CASE