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a final word on small schools

an interesting debate and clearly a controversial one. i think my 
position has been interpreted to mean everything from "small schools have 
bad libraries" and "small schools don't work hard" to "small schools 
can't beat big teams."  i wasn't trying to say any of these things.  i 
was trying to say that big programs can cut more cards than small 
programs because they have more people, and that's all.
   as far as i can tell there were three primary criticisms of my 
argument.  the first was that generic strategies are no good 
anyway--small schools shouldn't rely on them to win because they'll 
lose.  the second was that if small programs just work hard enough and 
read fast enough they can keep up with the advantage larger programs 
have.  the third is that regardless of the topic, large programs will 
have this advantage and thus topic selection is irrelevant to competetive 
success.
    i agree that generic strategies are more difficult to win than 
specific case debates.  i am not comparing a generic strategy to a 
specific debate and saying the generic strategy is better.  i am 
comparing a generic strategy to no cards at all.  if there are 80 cases 
on the topic and you have five people doing all the research, you won't 
cover them.  thus, my argument is, you should find a generic strategy--a 
counterplan or a critique--which applies to more than one case so you 
won't be naked.  terry johnson from northwestern answers my argument by 
saying generic strategies never beat good affs.  i beg to differ.  at 
utah we ran primarily generic strategies and enjoyed remarkable success 
with them.  i agree that affs will try to make their strategy counterplan 
proof regardless of the topic.  on some topics they will have more 
success than others.  on the security assistance topic affs had a lot of 
success at defeating counterplans.  last year people lost A LOT to states 
and other generic strategies all year.  this was because the solvency 
evidence to counterplans was excellent and the states could coopt most 
federal solvency.  this will be true under CR and not on SEA.  i also 
dispute the argument that generic strategies never win on face value.  
even a decreased risk of solvency on the generic counterplan when weighed 
against some risk of a net benefit, like a disad, will more often than 
not seal it up for the neg.  this was my experience last year, which was 
fed by my perception of the rounds that i watched.  you can also grow to 
know your generic strategy almost as well as you know your aff, which 
heightens your winnability on that argument.  i agree that if you have a 
specific strategy to a case, it will be an educational move to debate 
case straight up.  but i don't think that generic strategies should be 
rejected outright.
    the second argument--and the most troublesome for me--is that is 
small schools just work hard enough and talk fast enough they can keep 
up.  i think this is not only unlikely, it is numerically impossible.  
let's say you have five people on your team doing research, and that 
there are eighty cases on the topic.  if, optimistically, each person 
covered one case a week, you would cover all the cases on the topic by 
january, by which time everyone would have pulled a new case at the swing 
which you now had to research.  (by the way, you have now done no 
research on your aff, which begins to lose.)  these numbers grow more 
bleak as the number of active researchers on your team decreases.  last 
year at utah only 3 people cut cards with any consistency.  if we had had 
to debate straight up every negative round, we would have been out of 
luck.  ken delaughter, is, i believe, the primary person making this 
argument.  i don't doubt the work ethic of your team.  i have nothing but 
nice things to say about your school.  but the math really doesn't work 
out.  we, also, had cards on every case.   but we couldn't have gone 
straight up on every case.  i think it's okay to admit that schools with 
fewer people will have less cards than schools with lots of people.  
    i want to illustrate this point in a way that is somewhat delicate to 
handle.  i think it's sad that small programs more often than not have 
lower expectations of their possibilities than larger programs.  i think 
it's wonderful that Ken reached octos at nationals and that his teams 
reached quarters.  but northwestern won ceda nationals, and wake won the 
NDT.  these are two of the large research schools i am talking about.  i 
don't want to paint either of these schools as badguys--i think that it 
is a credit to their organization that their teams are so successful and 
i sincerely like many debaters and coaches from both of these places.  
i'm just saying that small programs can't keep up, so we lower our 
expectations, and this is too bad.
    the final point:  the asymmetry will always exist.  yes, it will.  
but i think topic selection matters.  apparently one smaller program had 
no trouble with the security assistance topic.  i won't dispute their 
experience.  anecdotal evidence is difficult to dispute.  but i think 
that negative rounds in general and that negative rounds for smaller 
schoold specifically were harder to win because of the lack of 
counterplan ground.  utah certainly had a lot of trouble.  i don't think 
we won a negative round the entire second half of the year.  this is not 
to say, "poor us, we were really good debaters and got screwed" because 
a lot of this was lack of research strategy and an inability to 
effectively execute strategy in rounds.  but some topics are good 
negative topics and some aren't.  security assistance was a great topic 
to be aff (emory was aff all the way through elims at the NDT and won it 
[another aside: this is not to dispute emory's win, kate and david were 
fantastic debaters]) and last year was not a bad year to be neg, at least 
in part because of counterplan ground.  i think the point is that if the 
topic forces you to go straight up against every case, a small school 
will have more trouble doing this than a large school.  this means that 
in any given negative round, the law of averages says the large school is 
more likely to have a winnable straight up strategy.  this advantage is 
somewhat offsett by a counterplan strategy which allows smaller programs 
to double up on cases.  that is my point.  it is supported by the math.
    this is not a whine.  i'm not afraid of the library, i love to 
research, i work hard, and i don't think that all large programs should 
be exterminated.  i am just urging smaller programs to think about the 
strategic implications FOR THEM of a topic which limited generic negative 
ground.

laura
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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