Re: Re power and dominance

["Leah (Tex) Castella" <castella@lclark.edu>]

How is it arbitray to say to a team that you don't want to be yelled out 
and would like to be able to complete your sentence?  It seems that you 
are entending censorship awfully far to say that the need for common 
courtesy is arbitrary.    In my eyes, this discussion isn't really about 
teams who may or may not argue offensive arguments, or teams who ask 
polite questions to a judge about issues in the round, it is about teams 
who lose there temper time and time again and yell at critics because 
they think that they have somehow been wronged.  It is easy to say to a 
judge that they can just get up and leave, but it is not as easy to do 
that when you are sitting in a chair trying to explain your decision 
because you feel that you have a responsiblity as a critic to justify the 
way you voted and the competitors start to attack you AND even if you can 
leave that doesn't do anything to signal to the competitors that there 
behavior is inappropriate.  At best, it is a reactive way to deal with 
the situation whereas if you inform debaters that you will dock 
there points or you will take some other action if they are rude then 
that may check there behavior.    > 

> believe, is that judges experience a sense of vulnerability, despite the
> authority of their position in a debate or the debate community. (Of course,
> this is a false vulnerability). Judges feel vulnerable and use any available
> tool to lash out at students, an obvious source of their inadequacy and
> frustration. 

I don't think this is it at all.  I feel comfortable in saying that most 
of the critics that I know don't "lash out at students as an obvious 
sources of their inadequacy" in fact I don't think that most judges are 
inadequate/incompetent to make a good decision in the majority of debate 
rounds.  This assertion once again begs the question of what I hope the 
point of this disccusion is.  How can we as a community act in a 
proactive fashion to dissuade competitors and coaches from using 
power/ dominance as either a strategy to intimidate judges or as 
a reaction to a decision that they disagree with.  Wanting to 
deal with this doesn't mean that judges feel inadequate, that 
they are unable to make good decisions, that they are petty and 
want to exert power over the debators or that they are somehow 
responsible for causing debators to act in an overly aggressive 
fashion.    I won't speak for all critics, but for the most part 
I don't think that any of these things are true for the majority 
of the critics in the community.
           
Leah Castella
Lewis and Clark College

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References:

• Re power and dominance
• From: JKM1993@aol.com

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