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Nationals

I am pleased and disturbed by some of the proposals for nationals. While I
think the "lose 4 and you're out" rule is pretty neat, I am concerned about the
logistics of it. If it means that nationals is going to become even more of an
endurance tournament that could span as much as six days, I am concerned. I
was and still am disturbed by the randomness of the first two out rounds in
regards to judging and often times pairings. Nationals is infinitely diverse 
and often frustrating for exactly that reason, but if anything that diversity
forces adaptation. The lose 4 idea will not reduce the randomness of judging,
but only makes prelims more important. Some teams would have gained additional 
out rounds last year if this rule had been in place (Matt and I included) but
no team would have received less out rounds. (Since nothing less than a 5-3
breaks anyway, the 4th loss would be an out round.) The result is bound to be
a much longer tournament. Can that be worked out? Is it feasible? Can the
school and hotel accomodate that? If so, I think it may be worth a shot at
least once.
I am very worried about qualifying for nationals however. There seems to be 
a contradiction in hosting a national tournament and then telling people they
cannot come. If you make 15 tournaments the qualifying ones, you will have 
at least two detrimental effects. First, you will kill programs that cannot
afford to attend those tournaments. Programs that attend nationals now will
stop attending because they cannot afford to travel to those 15 tournaments. 
This also means that CEDA Nats will receive less money in entry fees. Smaller
programs will be pushed out of CEDA and towards NEDA. The second effect I would predict is that any tournaments currently scheduled on the same weekend as the
15 chosen would be killed. This seems to unfairly advantage the chosen 15 over
any other program. 
Qualifying for nationals is just another way of trying to enforce an elitism in
this activity. We do not need it. If the choice is between a lose 4 system
with a qualifying prerequisite or the current system I would choose the current
system. Nationals is a crap shoot. There are usually at least ten teams at the
tournament that are just as likely to win it as anyone else. It is less 
competitive in prelims than most tournaments (at least the first few) and has
a more diverse pool of debaters and critics. It is the biggest and most
unpredictable tournament I know of. I think it should stay both big and 
unpredictable. The lose 4 provides some padding for those of us who don't like
being knocked out of out rounds early. Sudden death out rounds can do some real
damage to who winds up where in the out rounds (I can think of at least three
teams that I personally feel last year could have gone and should have gone a
lot further) but qualifying people for nationals will not repair that. A wildly
unpredicatble pool of judges and debaters forces us to be able to adapt to
different scenarios and environments when we debate. If inbreeding and a narrow
educational focus are the goals of our activity, elitism is a fine fine way
to formulate policy. If, however, we want to make this (somewhat) egalitarian
in access and (as much as possible) an activity open to anyone and everyone
who wants to put themselves in it, an educational experience that provides 
(I hope) diverse ideas in both depth and breadth, I cannot see the ideology
of "qual for nats" being conducive to those goals.
I better go before they find out I put down the oceans ev...

-/-Pat Gehrke
-/-Cal State Chico
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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