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Re: Sean's Diatribe
I think Ken Sherwood is absolutely correct. The lay judge has no
business being behind a ballot, at CEDA nationals or any other
tournament. Remember, a person who knows nothing about debate not only
penalizes the "debate elite" but the community as a whole. A critic or
judge is charged with evaluating the argumentation within a very
specialized forum- the debate round- a person who lacks the training to
fulfill those duties does a disservice to all of the debaters, coaches,
and universities which dedicate not only time, but resources to this
activity. I am also a little discouraged by the use of the term "elite"
to isolate a particular group of schools from the rest of the community.
While it is undoubtedly true that some schools have more resources than
others, I don't think that this should be used as an excuse for smaller
schools to simply give up or whine because they lose to teams that they
percieve to be "elite". Teams which work hard and put forth the effort
can and do succeed in CEDA. The recent success of the CSU-Chico team is
a perfect example of this. I also think that all of these concerns could
go a long way towards being handled by a mutual preference judging system...
Jason Jarvis, Emory U.
"Your hands and feet are mangos, you're going to be a genius anyway..."
References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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