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Against "change"


Many of the voices on the L represent some of the most experienced 
coaches and debaters.  We should remind ourselves though that the 
continued vitality of our activity depends on getting 
'never-debated-before' novices into the van in the Fall.  We should 
consider this in topic framing as well.

In my experience, promising some predictable ground is a major factor in 
getting the uncertain novice to take the big step.  Nothing is prized 
more than the certainty in being affirmative.  Nothing is feared more 
than the uncertainty of being negative.  As a coach I think I need to 
have some reasonable answer to the question, "what will we say on the 
negative."  I like being able to say, "well, at least 80% of the time you 
are going to be able to say X."  And I like it when 'X' isn't a critique 
or a T.

This is an argument in favor of preserving directionality in the topic 
and against including the word "change."  The environment topic, for all 
its uncertainty, allowed us to council novices that a position linking to 
'regulation bad' was at least assertable for just about any negative 
ground.  This is a concession that does not impair advanced debaters in 
any way since they are all hopefully going beyond this generic link 
step.  Eventually, we want debaters to embrace flexibility, but they will 
never get a chance to do that if they don't get in the van that first 
time.  And if they don't have a reasonable prediction of what they will 
say half of the time, then they may not get in.

"Change bad" simply isn't generic ground, and the critique or the generic 
T probably isn't the best way to introduce the activity.  There has been 
much talk of limiting the gramatical subject of the resolution, but I 
think this is less important than limiting the action term of the resoltuion.

E.g., 

      'increase security assistance' or 'decrease security assistance'
    
      not 'change'

-Ken Broda-Bahm
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Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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