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re: national tournament qualification


I agree  with Rodger's assessment for the need of a qualification process
for CEDA nationals.  I think that his rationale is right on target.
Furthermore, as he says he has a unique view on the situation having
hosted a national tournement (quite successfully if I might add).  I
still think that some form of process such as the one I outlined in my
initial post could work rather well.  After some discussions with Tim
Nahoney, I believe that perhaps a system involving selecting the largest
X number of tournament and requiring a team to win at least half of 
their prelim rounds at X number of them would be a fair and equitable
process.

Now to answer some of the arguments against a qualification process.
I will preface that I don't remember who exactly made the points and I don't
understand computers well enough to bracket quotes from particular posts
so I will go with what I know.  If I leave anything out, well, I guess
that means I get to write some more.

1.  Hurts tournaments on the same weekend - I don't think this is a 
compelling argument at all.  There are tournament which are traditionally
very large (these would be the ones selected as qualifiers) and others
that are traditionally small.  The large ones generally stay that way so
do small ones.  I am not sure that my designating a tournament a qualifier
would kill the small tournaments since they are generally regional in 
nature.  Also, there is nothing to say that the qualifying tournaments
would always be the same.  Granted some would, but I think that one would
have to look to the previous year to determine the largest X number and 
designate them for the following year.

2.  Hurts small budgeted programs - Again I don't think this argument 
holds much water.  There is nothing to say that the qualifying tournaments
would be held in one region such as the midwest or northwest.  In fact, I
do believe just about every region holds at least one fairly large 
tournament a year (I don't have numbers, but it makes sense).  So there
is nothing to prevent a team from attending qualifiers in there region 
or sufficiently close by.

3.  Tradition - If we were to uphold every "well Intentioned" tradition
slavery would still exist and women wouldn't know how to read or write
let alone attend college.  Enough said.

4.  We should do away with nationals - I think Rodger answers Berube
sufficiently.  Furthermore, I think we might have a better chance of 
being overwhelmed by an ice age then for nationals to be abolished.

5.  Making teams qualify is elitist - So is debate.  NDT and high schools
both ave qualifying procedures (I don't know about neda or parlimentary
or other debate organizations) and they seem to be doing OK.  Also, why
is it elite to make a team win perhaps half of their rounds to attend
a tournament to decide the BEST team in the country?  Furthermore, it is
not like teams will not be given the opportunity to join the "elite" 
by qualifying.  

I also wanted to comment on a posting I read today concerning mutual
preference and how it caters to national circuit or Top 10 teams.  Why?
If we had a system of mutual preference and a "top 10" team hit a
not "top 10" team then the debate would feature a critic of "mutual
preference".  This does not mean that a "national circuit" judge would
be selected.  Also, I think the writer of the post gives "top 10" teams
to much credibility.  They can lose and in fact do lose rounds.  Every
team that made the top 10  and those receiving votes have lost outrounds.
Many of them have even lost outrounds to teams not on that list.  As for 
complaining after losing with a mutually preferred judge, this sound 
like a last ditch attempt to prevent mutual preference.  Not all teams that
lose at nationals get "screwed", in fact, some get beaten rather soundly.
So I am not sure why this makes any sense.

John Johnston
Northwestern State (LA)
nsjoh8775@alpha.nsula.edu
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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