I promised before I would write more about this (I’m sure you are all thrilled), and today I got my “thanks for judging state debate” letter and check in the mail, so no time like the present. I started compiling a list of potential issues with accessibility in debate earlier this year and I’m going to try to detail what I see as some of the issues.

IMPORTANT NOTES: This is NOT meant to be accusatory toward any individual or program in particular. I’m going to detail behaviors and actions that I see as detrimental and why I see them as such. Please assume positive intent as you read, and know that I will assume positive intent with your responses (if there are any). These are touchy issues that can be tough to talk about. I may not word this as well as I’d like, but please know that I am trying. I believe in the heart of what debate does for kids and that it is one of the best activities for young people to engage in, if it’s done right. That said, it can be really toxic too, and I want to help change that.

Ok. Caveat over. Here we go.

There seems to be two major areas that fuel access inequality in debate: resource imbalance and social capital differences.

Resource imbalance is easy to point out at first: some teams have more money, have stronger booster clubs, and have more kids who can fundraise. Some schools and districts are more supportive of their forensics programs, while others get by on a shoestring budget. This isn’t to say that a lack of funding always a direct cause; certainly there are teams without strong financial support that do exceedingly well. However, this is usually due to coaches who are loyal to a school and who do not take much if any pay to do the job. It’s tough to change a district’s financial contribution, so this is a tough hurdle for accessibility: some teams can afford to travel, have more coaches, purchase subscriptions from databases or publications, etc., while others have to make tough choices – do we cut kids because we can’t afford to pay for judges? Do we cut a tournament from the schedule because we can’t afford bussing? These are real questions.

More important for accessibility, though, is unequal access to social capital and tacit knowledge. While this is a bigger barrier than simple funding, I think this could be a place where some changes could make a big impact. However, it’s going to take some serious reflection and conversation.

Coaches are the most powerful force here, since they tend to be the people who sustain (or don’t sustain) the programs at the schools. Kids graduate, but coaches remain. We set the tone for our teams and we determine who we hire as judges. We have to take the initiative.

Breaking into the insider knowledge is the biggest barrier to overcome for new members of our community. There is entirely too much that is left unspoken or unwritten. Coaches who have longevity in the community build up knowledge and it becomes a competitive advantage. For example, I had a policy team go to state (I know, weird) a couple years ago only to be yelled at by some judge when they COMPLETELY followed the rules. Apparently there was some unwritten rule that they had transgressed against. I didn’t know it. They didn’t know it. It wasn’t in any of the written rules that they pored over (they got really into it). Later, someone else in the community said “yeah, he’s an asshole.” Referring to the judge. I agreed. But it would have been nice to have known it ahead of time.

Knowing the judges is insider knowledge that takes forever to build up. It’s close to impossible for a new coach to know what to expect from a judge. Some might say “well, we can put up paradigms online!” I suppose, but then you are expecting a new coach to 1) know where to find them; 2) know how to understand what they mean; and 3) read between the lines because let’s face it, those paradigms are NOT written well many times and they aren’t followed. Additionally, at most tournaments, you will have Dan Bordwell as a judge, then the bus driver as a judge, and then Steven Appleget as a judge, and then some parent who’s been judging for two years… It’s not accessible or equitable to have kids and new coaches have to learn how to coach completely different types of debate based on the whims of who you might get as a judge. It’s not fair to expect kids to write numerous cases to adjust to judge paradigm. What’s right is if we had some clear expectations about what the game is and how it should be played, then we used the same basic expectations in our rounds to judge who was the better debater. We should not reward a debater that had the tricky case that they knew a particular judge would like, but that the other kid in the round couldn’t respond to because they don’t have access to the rules of that type of debate. That’s crappy and it ruins debate for a lot of kids, mostly from newer programs or those with less experienced coaches.

The internet has made many of the problems worse. Reddit in particular. The amount of toxic behavior that plays out on the debate forums there is astounding. Other backchannels that established programs have but newer programs don’t have decrease accessibility as well.

The internet provides a lot of good – I mean, here I am using it! – but it does have some bad side effects. If we allow students to use the internet in round, there’s the problem of faster processing and downloading speeds, which is inequitable. Additionally, there are kids during rounds who are communicating with people outside of the rounds. Everyone will say NO, no one does THAT! But yeah, it happens.

I have so much more. I’m so tired. I don’t know if I’m fighting a virus or what. I’m not going to go back over everything to proofread right now either. I got through like four of my bullet points, and I don’t even know if I am accurately communicating my ideas clearly. I’m going to write more about this because it helps me to sort my thoughts.

Who knows, maybe I’ll even write my way into a potential solution some day.