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Re: Mutual preference

I sent this message to Gordon Mitchell at Mt. Hood CC and thought some
of you might have comments.


----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I made similar comments on the CEDA-L but wanted to respond personally, also.
I think that mutual pref helps debaters from small schools more than it helps
debaters from big schools. If you debated 60 rounds (approx. 10 tournaments)
over the course of the year and all of them were in the same region, you
probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 different judges. A big
school probably attends at least 20 tournaments. If we assume a big school
has at least 3 teams, attends tournaments in different regions, and shares
information it is possible that a team you debate at nationals has fairly
decent information regarding at least 200 judges. I think that is a low
estimate. A "big school team" probably has debated in front of at least
60-70 different judges. Since under the current system of regional constraints
a substantial attempt is made to ensure that you aren't judged by a critic
from your region the likelihood of you debating in front of a judge you have
debated for before is fairly small. "Big schools" tend to attend tournaments
everywhere so the likelihood of them debating in front of a judge they have
seen previously is much higher.
If we lift the regional constraints and use a mutual preference system the
chances of you and the "big school team" getting a critic you BOTH have
knowledge of is increased. The big school team will know about the judge
anyway the question is will you?
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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