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Re: topic length & release date

1.  Better depth of research opportunity.  Sure others may out research 
us, but I have really enjoyed the chance to pursue this topic to a deeper 
level.  A lot of my love for debate is tied up in my love of research and 
gaining new knowledge, and having the year-long topic is a net plus for this.

2.  Chance to teach a well-researched topic to a new group of novices.  I 
get most of my best debaters from a short unit of debate taught in my 
freshman-level hybrid communication course.  Having experienced debaters 
(on this topic) from last semester who are willing to help my new novices 
is a big advantage.

3.  Didn't have to kill myself over Christmas break getting ready to 
teach a new group a totally new topic.

4.  We are bringing two seniors to CEDA nats this year--with our limited 
travel budget for second semester, we wouldn't have enough on-topic 
experience to avoid total humiliation.  Because we know enough to at 
least not be embarrassed, we are going to get a chance to experience some 
great competition that we probably wouldn't have considered.

I certainly had my doubts about this year-long topic and voted for tech 
mostly out of a desire to treat other programs fairly, but I have been 
very happy with the change and would like to see it taken all the way to 
a once per year topic with an early enough release date to expedite the 
debate camps.

Gary Rees
Central Methodist College 
Fayette, MO 65248 816-248-3392 x311
References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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