Re: selfishness and small schools

[Alan Dove <ad52@columbia.edu>]

Hey, folks:

Rees makes an excellent point (a few of them, actually).  The topic area
is not, in and of itself, going to help or hinder the "small" programs.
Columbia expects to get about $1300 next year - that's our whole budget
for the entire year, unless we scare up some administrative support.  Yep,
we're small.  Our vote went like this:

1) Treaties
2) Civil Rights
3) Southeast Asia
4) Domestic Terrorism
5) Space

To fill out the ballot, I solicited responses from my debaters, scored
their picks and mine, and ranked the topics by number of points.  Civil
Rights and Treaties were actually tied, but I was the only one who gave CR
a first-place vote, so I went with my students' pick (Treaties) instead.
Southeast Asia was extremely close behind them.  Nobody justified their
rankings by "that's too much to research."  Civil Rights could be an
absolutely immense topic, as could Treaties, depending on the wordings,
and Southeast Asia could be limited considerably if people decide to do
so.

Of course, for the amount of case coverage that actually occurs in rounds,
it's hard to imagine the research burdens changing much simply because
there are more possible cases out there.

          --Alan

__________________
Alan Dove
N3IMU
ad52@columbia.edu
http://128.59.173.136/Poliolab/Alan/Dove.html

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References:

• Re: selfishness and small schools
• From: Gary Rees <grees01@mail.coin.missouri.edu>

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