Correction to Eastern Debate Newsletter

[jmd9@cornell.edu (Jamey Dumas)]

Tuna Snider just posted the lastest issue of the Eastern Debate newsletter
to the list with an "article" I wrote for him some time ago.  Unfortunately
when I sent the article to Tuna a significant part of the text at the end
of the article was lost -- making the article a wee bit confusing.  If you
are interested in the article, please subsitute the following which starts
with the "NOTE:" paragraph and continues to the end.

--Jamey


=====Corrected Ending to Eastern Article======


NOTE:  there is no reason why the 2NC cannot add new information to a
shell, such as a new link or impact.  The only implication of this, is that
the 1AR can make new responses to the new information (although the 1AR
should still not be able to make new arguments to the parts of the position
that were introduced in the 1NC).  The 1NR, on the other hand, should not
add new information, as this would be "new arguments in rebuttals."

The 1N will normally introduce shells at the beginning of the 1NC, and
should make sure to clearly label them as offcase arguments so that
everyone in the round knows to flow them separately.  (When flowing a shell
more space than usual should be left between each point as shells tend to
mushroom in size faster than other positions.)  The 1N could also put out
shells at the end of the 1NC, or even "hide them" on case if applicable. 
This means that both debaters should be familiar with the offcase shells so
that both can answer questions about them, and if need be develop them
during the negative block.

The 2AC should respond to a shell much like the 1AR responded to offcases
in the traditional approach.  This means that the 2AC should make several,
often brief arguments which can be further developed later.  The
affirmative should make sure to answer the shell at several levels, as the
negative has significantly greater time to respond to the affirmative
answers.  Often the affirmative will have to spend more time on shells than
the negative spent putting them out to balance the negative's time
advantage in the negative block.

Both the 2NC and the 1NR can pick up (develop) shells, although the 1NR can
not add new information to a shell.  When the 2N picks up a shell they
often will need to take prep time to make sure that they have adequate
answers to all affirmative responses.  When picking up a shell each of the
affirmative's answers should be individually, and completely answered --
often this will mean make several answers, some with evidence, to each
affirmative response.

The hardest part of picking up a shell is making sure that it remains a
coherent argument to the judge.  With a shell the negative is responding to
different affirmative attacks, and not simply presenting a new clearly
thought out, and pre-prepared position.  Thus, there is a risk that the
negative will not make the "whole picture" of the offcase position clear to
the judge.  Negatives need to learn how to "tell a story" as they pick up a
shell.  This means giving a short synapses of the position before and after
answering the affirmative's responses, and trying to make those answers fit
clearly into, and develop the big picture.


Why Novices Should Shell

The final advice I would like to advocate is that novices be taught to
shell.  Many may not agree with me, as this makes debate somewhat more
difficult for novices.  But, I think that novices are capable of doing
this.  Many novices already successfully learn to attack case in the 1NC,
and I do not think that it is putting much of a burden on novice 2N's for
them to learn how to pick up a shell.  

In any event, I would strongly advocate not teaching novices to use the
Emory switch as develops the wrong skills for other strategies, making a
transition later on much more difficult.  If novices do not shell, I would
encourage them to use the traditional approach as it makes for a relatively
easy switch to shelling.


Conclusion

All in all, I think that shelling is a far superior negative strategy.  If
the arguments I advance above are not sufficient to convince you, then
perhaps the following observations will: to my knowledge only one debate
team who broke at nationals last year did not shell;  all of the teams who
advanced past triple's at nationals shelled;  and, most of the teams who
regularly advance in our region shell.  I think that encouraging debaters
in our region to switch negative strategies to shelling can only make our
region stronger in the future, and will improve the quality of both case
and offcase debate in our region now.

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