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Re: Will CEDA Vote to Continue Debating Mexico? Why or Why not?

	1) will increase our expertise on the issue of Mexico. The longer
that we have to debate this topic, the more information that we will
gather on our neighbors to the South and the more ideas we will have to
explore. 

	now, before someone jumps out with the "increased expertise on more 
areas" response, let me say that two semsters on one topic will clearly 
yield more expertise than one semester on one topic.  Additionally, when 
the new topic area is released, people will stop researching the old 
topic, decreasing expertise, which brings me to:

	2) will allow us to maintain a continuous focus on the current
topic.  In the next few months, when the new topic area is released
(unless we stay with Mexico), many people will stop researching Mexico
altogether, instead, they will begin researching the new area.  While this
will improve their debating on the new topic, if they stop researching the
current topic they will no longer be exploring and discussing the issue of
Mexico during that topic's reign.  If this happens, people may no longer
think of the Mexico topic as an important one and will begin to prepare
for the Spring Nationals and scrap the entire first semester. 

	I know that there are some people who are saying, "well, why not 
research both, then?"  Well, there is a finite amount that debaters can 
research.  Contrary to popular belief, we are not research machines.  We 
do have lives outside of debate.  Maybe it is just me, but if I were to 
double my research time, brief output, and the other items associated 
with doubling a reasearch load, my brain would melt.  I would be reduced 
to a babbling mound of JELL-O.  In short, I think the doubled research 
load would lead to more stress, more burn-outs, and less fun, bringing me 
to...

	3) Mexico is a fun topic.  Sure, some teams (like mine) haven't
been winning every single round, but we're having a lot of fun doing it. 
How can you not have fun talking about tequila, pretty birds, sewage
waste, and all the other fun things in Mexico.  The only people who aren't
having fun talking about Mexico are the people who are trying to not have
any fun.  Maybe it's just me, but Mexico has more fun stuff coming out of
it than military reform does.  Finally... 

	4) Mexico is a topic that might actually be useful in our lives. 
We are also dealing with a topic that could (oh my goodness) actually have
an effect on our lives.  Not too many of us are going to change the
world's oceans (like last semester) or (with the exception of USMA and
USAFA) be directly changing the military's role in the next decade (one of
the more popular topic choices on the ballot).  However, since Mexico is
so close to our country, we can clearly see harms in the SQ, ways to solve
them, and why doing so would be good or bad... god forbid, we might
actually talk about something that is happening in the real world and
might actually be changed (unlike floating space colonies in the ocean :). 

That's 4 reason to keep Mexico, there's probably several more out there 
that I haven't thought of as well as several reasons to reject it out of 
hand.

Feel free to respond and tear my argumants to shreds, that's what they're 
there for.

Have fun,

BENJAMIN R. BATES
UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND
BATESBENJ@URVAX.URICH.EDU
For a good time, go to:
http://www.urich.edu/~msl8c/debate.htm
Follow-Ups: References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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