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Triples and doubles judging.



Lets see, 

Yuri is mad that Klemz and a number of other prominent national teams 
always drop early at CEDA nationals. For what its worth, I was member of 
a team that lost in doubles my senior year. Believe me when I say that 
with a different panel things might have been different. However, unlike 
Yuri I am not quite so bitter about the situation.  Everyone at CEDA 
nationals knows that making it through the first day of out rounds is the 
most difficult thing to do, and that year was particularly pernicious as 
Hopper and Thompson dropped in doubles as well.

                                                                         
 What can the community do about this?                                                                        
I think that there are two solutions: (1) Mutual preference 
judging. This one is a no brainer. There are no compelling arguments 
against it (IMHO). It has been discussed ad nauseum but nonetheless I 
feel the need to plug it again. (2) Despite what Yuri says, I think that 
debaters do need to learn how to adapt. Even if we did institute mutual 
preference judging, there is absolutely no way that teams are going to 
avoid what Yuri calls the "BAD" or "Random" judge. With three judges on 
each panel and a tournament that breaks to triple octo's for goodnes 
sakes, how on earth does anyone propose to weed out judges that are not 
on top of the flow? Honestly, it is not possible.

Ultimately, the NDT and CEDA Nats are different events precisely because 
of the way they are structured. The beauty of CEDA Nats is that it is in 
every sense a national tournament, open to all. In essence it is an 
exercise in pluralism. While I think that mutual preference judging would 
make that exercise more equitable for all participants, it will not 
change the fact that the team who manages to win (btw, congrats to 
Northwestern) will be forced to slow down, adapt, and explain their 
arguments persuasively. The team that does this the best will win the 
tournament.

Jason Jarvis
Wake Forest
References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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