By Anthony Trufanov This is a public service announcement about advantage CP texts.   At the outset – I may use a text you wrote or read as an example. That’s not meant as a call-out. This behavior is somehow ubiquitous, and my only record of the behavior is a set of screenshots I’ve saved without teams attached.   With that out of the way: Wyoming reads an AFF about reforming the citizen suits provision of the Endangered Species Act to allow standing animals. NEG says why would you do that when you can simply ‘expand and improve the citizen suits provision.’ Wyoming has a spillov ..read more

I do remember how to write. The end of the year and participating in the NDT has led to a critical mass of thoughts that the internet has to hear. Note while I am obligated to say what I am saying (see title), you are not obligated to click or read beyond this point. Kick rocks if you got beef with the opinions below.   1. Hybrid Tournaments   They are not the future. They are bad. In person tournaments are good. Online tournaments are fine. Hybrid tournaments are stupid. Hybrid scheduling (a season long schedule that mixes in person and online) is good. Debate inertia is a hell of a ..read more

  My first realistic job plan was when I was 17 and it was to become a professional poker player. Then my brother intervened and told me to go to college and do debate.   Then I was going to be a math teacher and high school debate coach, but the math proved too hard and cutting cards too fun. I did some fact finding if you could be a full time debate coach and avoid homelessness. It turns out the answer was yes, so we were in.   I would give my personal debate results a C+. That really masks how bad I was and how little I knew. I graduated and worked at Liberty. My clearest fir ..read more

Posted this to the debatedocs group. Hoping for more and better participation going forward! ​Hi all, The basic bargain of this group was that if you were willing to proactively send your email threads to this group you got the benefit of all the other members doing the same. In theory, this would reduce/eliminate the need to bounce from room to room (or Zoom to Zoom) to ask to get on email chains.  A few issues: 1. Free riders - mainly coaches who are in the group but require nothing of their teams. 2. Side bias - people do it when they are aff and create a chain, but do it much les ..read more

By: The Writers of the Climate Area Paper   We appreciate the hard work of every topic writer, and all the effort each paper put in. This post is a defense of the climate topic from the recent guest post’s arguments, which we find to be ill-founded.   The core premise of the earlier post assumes the climate paper was written and endorsed by coaches looking for a quick paycheck. This paper was the only paper written by an overwhelming number of current policy debaters. The conversation includes the opinions of current students and the hard work of debaters from dozens of different pro ..read more

By Anonymous  ​ As we near the time to choose a college topic again this year, I humbly approach readers of the blog with an earnest plea: don’t pick the climate topic. Off the bat, I want to make clear that I’m mostly talking to coaches and older folks, not the actual debaters per se, as most of these discussions unfortunately are dominated by the former and don’t include too much inclusion of the latter’s perspective. I’m also mostly talking about policy debates as opposed to K debates. Anyways, here we go… First and most significantly, picking the climate topic will encourage laziness ..read more

Apologies friends, the TOC is a hell of a drug. We have 8 submissions from people who like fun. We are going to do this rank choiced voting style. Let's see who wins clout and glory! 1ac_-_japan_neutrality.docx File Size: 97 kb File Type: docx Download File 1ac_-_counterinsurgency.docx File Size: 78 kb File Type: docx Download File 1ac_-_baltics.docx File Size: 76 kb File Type: docx Download File 1ac_-_nsa.docx File Size: 324 kb File Type: docx Download File 1ac_-_canada_1.docx File Size: 107 kb File Type: docx Download File 1ac_-_cana ..read more

By Anthony Trufanov ​In 1991, T.A. McKinney, an accomplished Kentucky Wildcat of an earlier generation, wrote an essay for the Wake Forest Debater’s Research Guide entitled “Rehabilitating Intrinsicness,” which laid out the case for holding disadvantages to a higher standard of causality[1]. The essay has aged like fine wine; while debate has shifted in many meaningful respects, McKinney’s paper remains well-argued and relevant to this day. Nevertheless, the article largely failed in its goal of popularizing intrinsicness. The state of affairs McKinney described in his introduction—of “widesp ..read more

The NDT is over. Many seasons have come to an end. Everyone can take a breath. You made it to the end. An honest to goodness season occurred over zoom. There are no asterisks here. People found a way to work hard when some were never in the same room as their coaches or teammates all season. Really incredible. There will be more earnest posts in the future, particularly about the future of debate, but for now here is what caught my eye.   1. IanM If you were an oddsmaker and you wanted to improve your chances of your team winning, debaters like IanM are top 5 draft picks.   College n ..read more

This post occurred to me around the time water resources was announced as next year’s high school topic, but I had not sat down to write it until now. There are two areas I wanted to speak to. One concerns discourse on whether a topic is good or bad as it is happening. The other concerns what is said when people get in a mood to speculate on what makes a topic good. I don’t have a treatise on these subjects, just some things that need to be said.   1. Researching CJR is Good  If you are actively involved in this topic and you are not a fan of it, I am not sure we can really relate to ..read more