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Monte and the Magic Sorry there man. I am at home in Fl. and it costs me a long distanceGPA's revisited

>this talk of restrictions
>from the upper levels of the heirarchy sucks

I agree, since different goals apply to different institutions.  I did
state our school's policy is one which I initially opposed (ask Scott
Jensen), but one which has worked well for us.  I would rather us as a CEDA
community not move toward further regulations--but if there has to be a
regulation I would go with ours, or something more lenient and inclusive.

It was further written:

>There aren't time limits on an undergrad last I
>checked.

This is something with which I also agree.  Once CEDA begins to set minimum
numbers of hours to be taken while debating, it can kiss its community
college and commuter university members--including UM-St.
Louis--goodbye--not because we would WANT to leave, but because it would
inherently exclude most of our working students, virtually all
nontraditional students, and virtually all students who come from
economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

As well, I noted from my alumni magazine that 1,560 graduated at the Fall
Commencement--AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA.  It just exemplifies how
the trend toward more students taking other than the traditional four years
is not restricted to commuter colleges anymore.  So your programs are
affected by this too!

I also agree with the right of a student to transfer whenever, wherever.
Who wouldn't?  More about that later . . .

I believe that the student's "being considered a student in good standing"
is a sufficient standard and that CEDA should leave it at that.  If some
schools consider students "in good standing" -- and there are some -- to be
only full-time students, then fine.  If others consider students taking one
hour to be in good standing (which is in our case--I specifically asked our
registrar), then fine.  I don't like the AFA minimum of more than one hour,
but can live with it.  However, excluding all but fulltime students is
asinine and elitist.

And there is the other side of the coin--suppose a student takes advanced
placement and advanced credit thoughout high school, takes six or nine
hours each summer session, and thus only needs to take six or nine hours
each semester--or heaven forbid graduates in 3 years?  Or suppose they
leave themselves with three hours per semester each during their senior
year?  Should they be penalized for being OVERLY conscientious?

Right now, our restrictions on students holding baccalaureate degrees would
stop them after three such conscientious years.  Any further restrictions
would exacerbate this problem.

Hence, the rules we have forbidding students to compete after early
graduation really s*** too!

One post makes some excellent points concerning student freedom.  Others
make excellent points concerning excellence in education.  Yet others make
excellent points about the utilization of resources in a program wasted if
a student transfers.

I believe that somewhere between these positions, there may be compromises
that optimize all of these goals.  I'm very open to feedback, and I'm only
on p. 1 of today's digest.  But here is where I stand now:

1.  I do part company with the position one stated that a coach should not
be involved a student's academic choices.  The involvement is there--even
if the coaches' choice is laissez-faire involvement--as soon as a student
enters the office to ask about joining the team, to the extent that debate
is an intense academic activity.  I believe that this involvement should
be, however, of a caring fashion and not a punative fashion.  I agree that
debate--as well as pentathlon participation in individual events where
students really throw themselves into improving as many as eight or nine
performances every week--can teach more than several other classes
combined.  In fact, although as Tom Huebner will be the first to note, I'm
by no means the "king of forensics" [excuse inside joke], three evaluations
have been consistent in my BASIC debate class where students attend only
ONE novice tournament--"I learned more in this class than my other four
classes combined."  -   "This course is the most academically challenging
I've ever taken"  --  "I did more work in this class than in all my others
combined."  I know this applies to the umpteenth power to fulltime
competitive forensics.

Yet as much as I hated it when even my parents told me this, first-time
employers, law schools, grad schools, and professional schools will look at
two things in their gatekeeping capacity--the cumulative GPA and the
entrance exam score, with one typically being the multiplier of the other.
This may not be the perfect system, but that's the way it is.  Debate
certainly can help improve performance in both of these areas--Glenn
Strickland's post of his enormously successful and widely-travelled squad's
enormous cumulative GPA attests to that, as well as many before and after
stories from ours and many other programs. In our case, the grades improved
only after enforcing the GPA policy.  Therefore, I believe that we as
individual coaches should promote BOTH debate AND good academic performance
as those that go hand in hand, not as an either/or choice.  One helps the
other.

A debater with a 2.7 average--above all proposed minimums--simply is not
going to compete with a non-debater with a 3.8 average when it comes to
getting the top job or admissions into the top graduate programs.  Debate
may make the difference on a transcript between two 2.7 students "on the
bubble" of acceptance somewhere.  But where debate should make a big
difference is in helping a student develop the skills necessary to attain a
higher average in the first place.  To the extent that debate IS more
challenging than most other areas of academics, it SHOULD and DOES help
substantially in this regard as long as it is balanced effectively.

I would note as a sidebar that the AMOUNT OF TIME it took to achieve a
certain GPA rarely figures in to the equation--so why concern ourselves
with it as an organization?

Therefore, I see monitoring grades and academic counseling in a caring
fashion as a necessary ingredient for a caring and academically responsible
forensics and debate program.  I also see the necessity to give
consideration to so-called late-bloomers and to structure the monitoring
program so that it reward improvement rather than merely punishing failure.

As well, when you are dealing as in the case with commuter and community
colleges with a large population of first generation college students, you
are dealing with those who while very intelligent, willing, and able to
learn,  DO need more guidance initially in figuring out the academic and
financial maze facing them.  If a parent has never been to college, they
simply don't necessarily know how to direct their students to things as
basic as a financial aid booklet or catalog--as incredible as it seems, in
my advising I have encountered students who come to me their junior or
senior years without ever having been introduced to the college catalog.
All too often these students are at the mercy of 9 to 5 advising and
administrative assistants from offices that are understaffed and don't have
the time to care.

When you add debate to the mix it becomes even more necessary for a coach
to initially help out in these areas--not in a negatively parental way of
telling the student what to take or what career to pursue, but leading them
to the resources and teaching them how to become independent and ultimately
discover FOR THEMSELVES the good educational and career choices that are
there for them. I don't want to waste the entire space of Digest 920 by
listing all of the counseling means, but three come to mind:  1) there does
have to be a stress on GPA--lets face it, folks, a 2.2 cum at most of our
schools means "KFC baby" whether a student has debated or not. We do not
serve our students if we do not stress this.  Only as a last resort should
students be held out of competing, but that should be a possibility in
extreme cases (eg, less than 2.0, or less than 2.5 and not making any
progress).  2) listening to what the STUDENT wants is key--many of those
who don't know the catalogs are victims of hubristic counselors who chose
classes for them.  Finally, 3) advising the student in ways that debate can
help in other courses, and being willing to allow a student to skip a
tournament now and then due to heavy course loads, advice to take summer
courses so as to have a lighter load during debate seasons, advocating that
the University give liberal credit for being on the debate team, etc.

Students should be able to make choices, but we as coaches need to help
students make choices on the basis of reason, judgment, and experience.

2.  In terms of national regulations, the status quo is fine--enough
restrictions exist already.

3.  We need to say "eight semesters of eligibility defined as three meets
per semester" as long as a student is in good standing, PERIOD.  It's not
perfect, since some could always pull the old "two tournaments per
semester" trick, but who's going to want to long do that.  That way, a
student can continue a fourth year if they have earned a baccalaureate
degree in three.  As well, barring the two tournament trick [which I doubt
is that common anyway], students are through after their standard
eligibility--if they want to go six years and delay fulltime status until
after their eligibility is up, then so be it.

4.  If I were to advocate a change, it might be to the notion that
transfers don't count for CEDA points.  This was initially a noble idea
that I supported way back when.  It was designed to help "less fortunate"
programs, but it just hasn't made any difference, except to punish schools
who offer a good opportunity to students who see the need to transfer for
whatever reason. As well, each situation is different, and when enforced,
the one year sit-out has merely extended adolescence since when coupled
with our policy against grad students, it encourages students who desire to
debate their four years to take five or more years to complete
undergraduate college. The costs simply outweigh the benefits of this rule,
so away with it!


THAT BEING STATED--I still believe that it is incumbent on caring coaches
to help students considering any transfer decision.  Some students of
course make changes that help them in every way--luckily that has been the
case at UM-St. Louis with all transfers in (we have had four of them, all
but one who came in after sitting out a year, and than one in ie) as well
as transfers out (we have had three leave, for programs better suited in
some major way [didn't ask them to do ie, located out of town, had a better
academic program in some area, etc.]).

Of course, I know of others who simply don't consider the ramifications of
lost credit, etc., and end up taking as many as a year or two longer to
graduate--read, get ahead with their lives--because they transfer just for
debate purposes. Clearly, regulations from above don't affect whether
students transfer, so away with them--but working with coaches can save a
lot of gnashing of teeth at later points.

BEFORE we self-regulated at UMSL (around 84-86, during my younger, salad
days), we succeeded in the debateroom, but were "just average" in terms of
graduation and in one instance had a person from another program of some
skill offer to transfer in because I was more "reasonable" [read, lenient,
careless] than the prior coach.  Yet in the community, the program was the
"Rodney Dangerfield"  --  others having a generally negative image, bad
taste, and no respect, and on campus so little respect that after two years
we worked with a budget barely above what I started with.

After the GPA requirement, record participation, school records broken in
every award category, many extreme success stories 5-10 years after
debating, higher grades, more respect, and an administration and student
government willing to fund travel at four times the levels ten years ago,
plus an honors college willing to assist with scholarships.  I would never
impose this on all colleges--I am, however, testifying to the increased
respect we seem to have now as evidenced by many events.  It's far from
perfect, but my point is that the caring involvement has helped in this one
instance.

In sum, I feel that programs should self-regulate, and should be free to
set GPA standards and scholarship standards at any level they desire above
"being in good standing," and take a cooperative and caring stance toward
both their students and those in other programs in areas such as transfer
decisions.  Those programs who do, I feel, ultimately earn the respect of
their colleagues, their administration, and above all, the students they
strive to serve.

Enough for now.


Tom Preston
DOF, UM-St. Louis
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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