Escobar,+Jack

Good debate judges have more rules for themselves than they have for the debaters that show up in front of them. This is in part because the good debate judge respects the incredible gap between the amount of work the judge does and the amount of work the competitor does. By definition, the good judge does not do ANY work in preparing for the tournament, save for clearing his mind in the minutes immediately leading up to the start of each round. The young people who actually take up the challenge of competing, by contrast, do a good deal of work beforehand. In the weeks leading up to the tournament, they immerse themselves in the case. They are the ones who assemble volumes of scholarly research on the topic at hand. They are the ones who organize that information into a coherent body of knowledge, and then use that knowledge to draft the first version of whatever it is they intend to say in the round. And, if this is the serious debater, this is the person who then passes sleepless nights worrying over the phrasing of their case--what they want to say and HOW to say it. They know that their argument, if it is to be a winning argument, must be so good that it can convince total strangers of its truth on the very first hearing. All of this requires the exercise of an incredible amount of skill, talent, and effort. For a judge to then add the need for the competitor to guess at a secret, and in all likelihood petty, list of personal preferences is at best stupid and at worst evil. I do not do it, and I know of no competent judge who does.

Thus, I have very little to say to the debaters about counterplans, critiques, or anything else having to do with the //substance// of the argument. But, after many years spent in the company of high school debaters, I think I can speak with limited authority on the //form// that a good argument, in most cases, ought to take. There are certain rules that all good arguments obey, and that great arguments occasionally disregard. These rules cover three general areas: 1) structure, 2) impacts, and 3) style.

__STRUCTURE__

1. SIGNPOST. Tell the judge what you are going to tell him first, second, and third. You know what it is you want to say and what point it is you ultimately want to make. The judge does not. If, at the top of the speech, you do NOT tell us where you are going take us, we will get lost on the way from point A to point B. Your argument will not work, simply because we have failed to hear it. Meticulous, consistent signposting also forces YOU to know where you are taking us during the round. Thus, if you take this Rule as a holy commandment, you will never find yourself in the awkward situation where you have three minutes left on the clock and no idea what the fuck it was you were going to say. Instead, you, the effective debater, will simply pause, remember that you are on Point Two out of three points, and then get back to the substance of your argument.

2. BE BRIEF. Short sentences, plain words. Be DIRECT! Your judge hears the round once. Once ONLY! Worse, he must process the argument //aurally//, through his ears. We judges do not get to read your case. And we are used to learning information by reading it. Humans, in general, learn by reading. We do not do well when we have to learn through our ears. It is an unfortunate condition, but that is the challenge you debaters have signed up to overcome. There is one treatment we know of that shows some promise in fighting this unfortunate condition, and it comes in two steps: 1) put your point into words that a five year old can understand, and 2) repeat those words until they sink into that tiny five year old head, and repeat them //ad nauseam//. If you are brief, you have won half of that battle already.

3. REPEAT. This is the second half of the treatment we just discussed. First half: be brief. Second half: repeat, often. The reason you repeat: a debate round is won or lost depending on whether the judge thinks you are a //credible// source of information. He must believe that what you are telling him is TRUE. If the judge does not trust you, then whether your argument is, in fact, right or wrong simply does not matter. How do you convince the judge that what you are telling him is true? How do you convince him that you are //credible//? Simple. Repeat yourself. There’s a saying: If the judge hears a piece of information once, he has not heard it at all. He was thinking about what he wants for dinner that night, or how long the tournament seems to be dragging on. He has not heard YOU! If he hears a piece of information twice, he has very probably heard it, and he might even believe it. But, if he hears it THREE times, he has damn well heard it, and he needs a pretty good reason NOT to believe it. And, if it is in WRITING, if you have a CARD where an academic has said it, well, no force on heaven or earth can convince him that it is not true. Once a fact is in WRITING, it can only be OUTWEIGHED; it cannot be disproven.

4. HAVE A CARD. As a collorary to the third rule, if there exists a FACT which is ESSENTIAL to your argument, you must, absolutely MUST, support it with EVIDENCE. A study, a scholarly paper, a newspaper article. Otherwise, your opponent is free to simply disagree with it, and if he disagrees with your fact two or three times, the judge may very well agree with HIM and not you. Again, virtuosos of the sport may occasionally get away with violating this rule; but for the most part, applicable to us mortals out there in the trenches arguing a case, if something MUST be true in order for you to WIN, you need proof that it is ACTUALLY TRUE. Enough said.

__IMPACTS__

5. KILL PEOPLE. If there is one glaring difference between the VARSITY debate round, which is often a show of mastery on both sides, and the NOVICE round, where the winner is usually the debater who has //lost the least//, it is that varsity debaters frame the debate in terms of who saves the most lives. Novices tend to quarrel over what //ought// to be true, or what is //probably// right. This is no good. When you say, instead, that the consequence of voting against you is that every man, woman, and child on Earth DIES in a thermonuclear war, then immediately the judge’s ears perk up and he moves to the front of his seat, waiting to hear what it is you have to say next. If you violate this rule, if you give the judge nothing TANGIBLE to back up his decision, then at the end of the round the judge will mentally flip a coin and pick the winner based on that much consideration. You, the effective debater, will not make this mistake. Instead, you will frame all and each of your arguments as a matter of life or death for every creature that walks on this planet. In the process, you will probably accumulate a large collection of heavy, difficult-to-move trophies.

__STYLE__

6. STAND UP. All of the research I am aware of points to one basic, yet surprising truth: BODY LANGUAGE matters in the debate round. The person who wins an argument is not the person who is RIGHT; that idea is fantasy. The debater who wins is the person who has the POWER to say that they are right, and that their opponent is NOT RIGHT. Judges have a frightening tendency to vote for who argues the simplest, for who argues in the most CONVERSATIONAL manner. If you want power in the round, you must argue from the position that //physically// gives you the most power. Why? Because judges, for the most part, do not think in terms of what is probably right, or what //should// be true. We think in terms of what IS and what IS NOT. How do you go from arguing what is //probably// true to what is //actually// true? You argue from power. How do you argue from power? That’s complicated, and entire bodies of learning are focused on precisely how to do that. But, for our purposes here, I will simply say: STAND UP whenever it is your turn to speak. It sends a silent, but powerful, message. Often, that message, if you choose to send it, can make the different between a round that you win and a round that you lose.

I close by saying that it is far beyond my authority, as limited as it is, to say that following these rules will give you a win in every round you compete in. Whether you win most of the rounds you compete in depends on, for the most part, the individual debater’s //talent//. I hate to say it, but the sad fact is, most of us are born without that particular sort of talent. There is no shame in that, if you happen to have been born without it. I think that maybe half a dozen of the debaters I’ve seen over the years have had that sort talent that lets one person win 89 out of 100 rounds they are in. But, should you study these rules, and apply them as often as you can remember, I believe you will never be an //incompetent// debater, and you will be able to take full advantage of the mistakes that your similarly-situated opponents are bound to make. There is no shame in being a not-incompetent debater; far from it. The person who manages to argue a complex case for 90 minutes without //completely humiliating himself// is, as it turns out, a rare beast of the finest sort. When we judges find a competitor who is merely able to avoid //most// of the glaring mistakes a debater can make, we ring bells in the judges’ lounge! We tell our kids to shadow every round you compete in! It is indeed a lofty position to attain, but, a position that any debater can put themselves in with a minimum of time and effort. If you are serious about this sport, you CAN excel at it. Good luck to you as you, hopefully, do so.