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Flowing Evidence - Has the Emperor No Clothes?

1. Lack of effort. It only takes a moment to flow the tag, then what does
the judge do? Wait patiently, flipping pen no doubt, for the next tag line?
That time should be devoted to flowing the evidence, getting as much as you
can.

2. I do not feel it is interventionist for me to know that the card doesn't
match the tag. I wait for an argument about it, but when it comes I go for
it. Unless I flow the cards, I don't know whether the claim of tag-card not
matching are true .... Then I have to call for them because they are
unknown to me. When the debaters ask me to compare the evidence, I can do
so without having to reconstruct the debate if I have flowed the cards.

3. Using short term memory? Good luck. Yours must be better than mine. If
you can remember card content in an entire round without flowing them, you
must be the remarkable one.

4. Flowing the evidence makes a real difference after the round. If I need
to see crucial cards I ask for them by citation, and then check them out.
Often debaters try to get me to look at cards which I am not asking for. I
imagine that judges who call for cards in a more general way ("Show me all
the link cards on this disad") get a lot of irrelevant stuff, and perhaps
even evidence not read in the debate.

5. I do not ask for cards read incomprehensibly. If I can't flow it, I
don't look at it. This means the debate has to match my flowing speed or
else I say "slower" or "clearer." My system does not reward
incomprehensible card reading, while the "tag only" folks may be rewarding
it and encouraging it. I like a fast debate, but to think that we are doing
a good job when we just flow the tags and let the cards go by in a
hyper-mechanical hum we are fooling ourselves.

6. Everybody says that evidence and research are so important to our
activity. Then why isn't it important enough to flow? I don't understand
this.

7. The implications seem to be:
        a. If you can't flow the cards, tell them to slow down a little.
        b. If you can flow the cards and don't, stop being so lazy.
        c. Please, do not pretend that you can flow something when you
can't. Do your best, but be honest with the debaters. They will appreciate
it, actually, because you will make a better decision. They deserve your
honesty.
        d. If you think the evidence isn't that important, tell the
debaters that and don't have them wasting so muich time going through an
empty symbolic act of showing they have a card. This turns evidence as
process (support for an argument) into evidence as commodity (there is a
card), which I think is unwise as a critical technique to teach young
people.

Nothing in a debate should count if it takes place too fast for the judge
to comprehend and hopefully flow as an idea. Unless we apply this to
evidence we are walking around bragging about ourselves being clothed in
evidence finery when we are, in reality, naked.

The only control on incomprehensible delivery in debate is the judge who is
courageous enough to call it what it is. You don't need to punish them or
anything, just don't vote on incomprehensible arguments or unintelligible
cards, and give them feedback about it when it is happening. In a timed
competitive game speed will be used as a strategic ploy, and comprehension
by the judge is the only check. When we credit incomprehensible speech of
any kind we are abdicating our real responsibility as a judge.

When I first came to CEDA I angered many, many people by writing in my
judging philosophy for nationals that "the vast majority of CEDA judges are
lazy and unskilled." I have since changed this to "many." But, the problem
remains. The skill is getting better, but the effort judges put into each
and every round needs to increase.

I take judging very seriously. This may be one reason why I don't judge as
much as I used to. After 23 years, that is my form of laziness. However,
once the round starts old habits are hard to break and I MUST flow it as I
feel compelled to by my obligation to the debaters. If others find
themselves overextended, I might also advise judging fewer rounds, but
never taking it easy by just flowing the tags.

ON ANOTHER NOTE:

Steve Hunt has said that a lot of our evidence is "electronic crap." Well,
crap is crap, and old-time debate which relied a lot on Time, Newsweek,
USNews, and a few other mainstream news pubs was also full of crap.

The thing we need to spawn more evidence comparison is qualifications read
with the evidence. This would help quite a bit.

I do not understand why the aff doesn't read quals in 1AC and then make fun
of all Neg evidence which has no quals, saying "Whenever there is a
conflict of evidence, you will pick ours over theirs because you know its
quals." Based on the way most squads cite their evidence, they wouldn't be
able to tell you the quals.

This seems like a pretty good strategy to me. I wish my debaters would use it.


Alfred C. Snider AKA Tuna
Edwin W. Lawrence Professor of Forensics, University of Vermont
Mail: Box 54225, UVM, Burlington, VT 05405-4225
Phone: 802-656-0097, Fax: 802-656-4275
DEBATE CENTRAL:
http://beluga.uvm.edu/debatecentral/dc.html
gopher://beluga.uvm.edu
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Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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