She Speaks to Former NSDA Champ

If you’ve ever entered a congress round at a national, or even local, tournament, you are sure to hear a cluster of students complaining about judges. Usual criticisms center around how dumb the “mommies” are or other derisions towards judges who predominantly watch and coach speech are equally as common. While both of these beliefs are harmful in their own right, in that they give students an excuse to disqualify judges based on their subjective criterion for a “good” judge, the real issue comes into how students try to overcome these “challenges”. They usually fail, tending to condescend or dumb down arguments because they question the faculties of the adults in the back of the room, but some succeed, usually through the rhetorical devices and one-liners that have come to populate most national rounds. In many ways, I think we may do a disservice by having such a vitriolic hate for outsiders but only qualifying the in group by them just having worn a suit and calling themselves representatives for a couple of weekends.

Generally, congress judges who are former competitors, myself included, have tried to push this idea of “humanization”, the idea that our arguments will become real policy and thus impact real people. Now, while it is probably a good thing to consider our arguments in this way, the way we go about doing this as competitors, and the way judges reward its usage, leaves much to be desired. In my short time as a judge I have written on many ballots, in both prelims and break rounds, a similar critique: do not throw around minority or marginalized groups as buzzwords or bonus points to make your arguments seem unique. This argumentative issue usually arises when a bill lacks depth, in that the arguments are either caused by the same cause or lead to the same outcome, and students seek to take an easy way out; they make the same argument, warrant it in the same way, and then just find a random group they felt would gain sympathy to use as an addendum at the end of their argument to get higher ranks. This isn’t to say talking about and advocating for marginalized groups isn’t good, I believe it produces good discourse, but I do find an issue when students give basically the same “stock” argument and just blurt out some rhetoric about “that poor single mother” or something of the like because they didn’t want to prep. However, it would be both unreasonable and narcissistic to blame students for this; ultimately, it is we, as judges and members of the speech and debate community, who are at fault for rewarding this. If judges do not take the time to consider if these arguments actually contribute to the depth of the debate and simply reward the flowery prose that pulls at the heartstrings, we are only perpetuating a cycle in which students don’t research as much and try to climb ranks through the exploitation of actual suffering for wood and plastic.

I understand why students may want to do this, we all want more trophies and want to do it with the least resistance, but if we as the judging community stop rewarding it and students start recognizing it, I do think we can both add to the intellectual rigor of our event and seek to remove this ethical quandary from competitions at large.