Exactly….

Slow things down, and you get de-preferred.

Was the person who wrote this at that meeting? I want it noted for the record that not only did I indicate that language changes were required, but I wrote some revised language and we debated it!

I’m not sure why eliminating the rule affects the oral communication aspect of the activity. The judge controls the speed and clarity of the debate with their pre-round philosophy and preference disclosures as well as their in-round actions. If the debaters don’t adapt, they can’t expect the judge to reconstruct the debate after the round. There isn’t sufficient time. Also, while I know this is an oral communication activity, it is also a research, writing, strategic planning/decision making, thinking and argumentation activity. If we only look at the oral communication aspect and/or weigh that more heavily than the rest…or even on par with the rest, we are losing the parts that are unique to debate.

Now, I do see value in enforcing rules/norms against judge intervention. If a judge is reading evidence and extracting arguments not extended in the debate, we have a problem, but precluding judges from reading evidence isn’t the solution. If a judge doesn’t read evidence and they weren’t listening clearly at the time because someone coughed or they were thinking about the last argument or they were busy scarfing down a doughnut, we should try to make sure we empower them to look at the evidence to validate the claims of the debater. It’s a disservice to the debater to make them rely on a judge guessing right.

Going back to the oral communication point one last time, I’m sure many of you coaches have your own personal benefits garnered from debate. I got the job I currently have in no small part due to my debate skills, but my speaking skills are not even close to #1 on the list of skills my employer benefits from. My employer cares most about research, writing, strategic planning/decision making, thinking and argumentation. I’m in the business of solving problems not giving speeches. Solving problems involves a lot more than oral communication and I have debate to thank for the skill sets needed to solve problems. My point is that we shouldn’t use “debate is an oral communication activity” as an argument against things like finding good evidence and preparing good arguments. If a debater wins a round because they cut a good card and the judge bothered to read it, they still deserve to be rewarded.

Judges have been reading evidence after debates since the 1980s. If a given judge does not want to read cards, so be it… there are many such judges even on the national circuit who are nonetheless highly preferred. But the link between judges reading cards after debates and lower-quality debating is not at all clear to me; the quality of evidence read in debates is at an all-time high and it seems entirely reasonable to attribute at least some of this to the expectation of judge review… this has been the observation of countless alums who have come back to the activity after debating in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s.

There is no reason to believe that enforcing a prohibition on judges reading evidence will result in slower debates. As Leon/Gail argue, it seems just as likely that debaters will go *faster* in hopes of getting a lower-quality argument past their opponents without it being subjected to scrutiny. If the problem to be remedied is that debaters speak too fast, the solution is for judges to force them to speak more slowly, not for judges to stop reviewing evidence after debates.

I review evidence after most debates; sometimes it is to verify claims made in the debate, sometimes it is to get a visual picture of the debate (I am a visual learner, so having a piece of paper in my hand to review when considering an argument is helpful), sometimes it is to resolve competing claims about an issue, and sometimes it is to note ways that debaters could have more effectively used their evidence in the debate (so that they may improve in the future). The only tournament at which I do *not* review evidence is NCFL Nationals (because that organization prohibits it), and I feel like I am a substantially worse judge at that tournament than I am at others.

The review of evidence by judges after a debate is an individual choice. Many judges make terrible decisions despite never reading any cards; the “read cards = bad judge” argument is silly. There is no reason for the WDCA to enforce a “no judicial review of evidence” rule; if a judge doesn’t want to read cards, no one is forcing them to. If a judge makes bad decisions because they’ve reviewed evidence, chances are good that they would have made bad decisions anyway.

~Bill