[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
[Date Index]
[Thread Index]
[Author Index]
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page
Bad judges, getting screwed, and Yuri Kostun.
Initially, I would like to congratulate *ALL* of the debaters who did a
kick-ass job at CEDA nationals (i.e. the folks who broke). For everyone's
information, there were many teams who I think are pretty damn good who
did not break at nationals in the first place. Granted, I think it sucks
to lose your last round ever in triple or di-octs, but I will get to that
in just a second. But, I just wanted to get the congratulations out of
the way.
Second of all...this is where it gets sticky. When I was in high school,
my perception of college debate (Parli, CEDA, and NDT) was that there is
NEVER such a thing as a bad judge. Well, I was wrong. When I came to
college, yeah, the judges overall were just better. Of course, I came
from a really shitty circuit in which most of the judges couldn't even
flow at all, much more, a fast Policy (or L/D) round. My point is that
Mutually preferred judging is good, period. Yeah, like anything in the
world, it has its advantages and disads, but I think that the impact to
the advantages outweighs any disadvantage. Think about it this way, if
both teams are getting a panel whom they feel comfortable with (insert the
"mutually" part), the quality of the rounds increase greatly. As far as I
go, at Parliamentary nationals, we had 10 strikes. And, my partner and I
struck all of the judges who have robbed us in the past. We only had ONE
bad decision (i.e. if we would have had a flow judge, we would have won).
And, it showed...our performance was great. We won our triple-octs and
di-octs rounds convincingly. In fact, in di-octs, we were the lower seed
(5-3) who beat a team with a SENIOR on it with a 7-1 record.
Unfortunately, we were advanced over by our other team, but that is a
different story. My point, I think that those rounds were good because we
were comfortable with who was adjudicating. And, if we had MPJ, I think
things would have been even better. CEDA should do the same thing.
As far as getting screwed goes...it's happened to everyone. My last high
school round was a robbing. And, I was not and am still not happy about
losing then. Oh well...what can I do now? Nothing for myself, but for
others. For God's sake, Elizabeth Repko lost in an early out-round; and,
she is like (from what I hear) one of the best CEDA debaters EVER! And,
the person she was debating with then was in the final round this year? I
think that means that if we had some MUTUALLY preferred judging, things
would be all the more better. If that good MSU team is so good, or even
if Klemz and West are so good, they would have done even better with
judges who they BOTH preferred. At the very least, if MSU won again, we
wouldn't hear Yuri Kostun bitch (and possibly even justifiably so) about
how shitty judging can or cannot be.
That leads me to Yuri Kostun. I don't know Yuri Kostun, and I don't claim
to know what he stands for in all instances of debate or whatever. But,
he is right about something: debate is about discourse. Discourse
*REQUIRES* disagreement, civil and even maybe a tad inappropriate kinds of
disagreement. So, he thinks that Lisa Heller (who I also don't know) made
a shitty decision. So what? I think that if Lisa Heller is so good
(which many people say she is) perhaps it would just be better if she was
judging and listening to debate(r)s that BOTH **PREFER** her in the back
of the room. At the very least, what she will do is make a decision that
she thinks is the best, and the debaters will have to live with how they
decided to allocate their preferences.
If this is Yuri Kostun's last year, at least he is going out with a bang.
Michelin Massey.
Young (Parliamentary) debater who doesn't know where he'll be going to
school next year, but as for now, the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Not that any of you care or anything.
References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page