Give the 2AR a break!

[Chad Dagii Henson]

For those who haven't noticed this trend on their own, there's some evidence (http://victorybriefsdaily.com/2010/01/26/side-bias-an-overview/) that THE NEG WINS TOO MUCH! One of the side effects of this side advantage, leaving aside the devestating impact on outround results, is that it likely contributes to the non-transitivity (http://victorybriefsdaily.com/2010/02/03/debate-goodness-transitivity-and-the-toc/) of preliminary round results.

So what are two of the top threads on the theory board? They're people talking about whether 2AR strategies can be legitimately exercised or if they're too unfair! I'm not sure it's possible for an Aff to be abusive anymore. But the major problem is that from the comments, I wonder exactly what you people think the 2AR is supposed to be used for. The 2AR is functionally worthless if all the Aff can do is pull together arguments that have already been made and give them a new organizational structure. While some debaters are able to pull arguments off multiple parts of the flow and organize them coherently to tell a non-obvious story (here's looking at Little Wolfish), the vast majority of debaters aren't any better than their judge at this, and judges will do it for them when it seems obvious enough. Some people (namely Paul Dorasil) have proposed to remedy this by making the 1AR 7 minutes long and not having a 2AR. I don't support this, but it would be much better than giving the Aff those 3 worthless minutes at the end of the round they have now.

In policy debate, the 2NR is considered the hardest speech. This is the case because the 2NR has 5 minutes to advance the arguments they're going to win on and shut down all avenues for the AFF to come back. The AFF has 5 minutes to come back, win the arguments, and weigh. In LD, the NR has 6 minutes to do the same to a 3-minute 2AR, and to make the job easier our community has essentially prohibited new weighing (i.e. judges give little if any weight to it) and going all-in on an argument (apparently, the 2AR can't read evidence either). It's shocking that anyone loses on the Neg in LD! It takes some real incompetence to somehow fail to beat up a bound and gagged opponent.

So what's the solution? I propose that until we can fix the god-awful imbalance of speech times through a structural change, judges should give the 2AR a break. At a minimum, we should evaluate the new weighing done by the 2AR against the weighing that the NR should have preemptively done (and if the NR didn't weigh, give the 2AR carte blanche to select any weighing they want subject to minimum standards for warranted arguments). Beyond that, we should have reduced standards for what constitutes a new "argument." I don't propose that the 2AR can read a new disad to the counterplan, but if the Aff contested a disad link at some point earlier in the debate and wants to read new "no link" evidence, then judges should allow that and evaluate the cards/arguments by both sides comparatively.

I know some people are going to talk about the disadvantage this creates for the negative. I'm sorry, but if 6 minutes isn't enough to shut down a 3-minute speech that can't originate any arguments not present in a 4-minute rebuttal, then maybe the Neg should find a different activity. Policy debaters have done it successfully for decades. And even if you don't buy that, maybe we can start worrying about disadvantaging the Neg after their prelim win percentage drops back below 60%.

[classof2012]

I was wondering about this. If people are so concerned about side bias, why, on most of these discussions of what is fair/unfair, do most responders lean negative?

[Alex Bennett]

Though I don't think affirming is as impossible as you present it to be (on this topic, thus far, I've flipped aff every outround sans one and it didn't screw me), I totally agree that the aff is structurally disabled in LD. Length of speech is a huge issue, but number of speeches also affects the skew against the aff. The way arguments develop can't be 100% predicted in the 1AC and 1NC, and holding debaters to a burden of not dropping a single word of the other side's constructive is a little absurd. Debates shouldn't be won based on who drops an argument first, it should be about substantive clash between arguments. I think adding 2 more speeches, and increasing speech times overall, would remedy this problem. I think that these additional constructives (lets call them "2AC" and "2NC") would allow greater focus in the debate and would probably fix the problems with affirming right now. The constructives would be used to make substantive, carded responses to cases while slowly developing strategy, and the rebuttals would be much more focused on framing the debate, weighing etc. The reason this system is preferable is right now the 1AR has to both condense the debate (since the speech is short and they only have one other speech) as well as make substantive responses to the 1NC. This means 1ARs can go one of three ways; 1, Make substantive responses and save the weighing for the 2AR, which most judges think is new argumentation, 2, Collapse the round before even making substantive responses to the 1NC, which is usually the best strat but isn't nearly as educational, or 3, Try to tread the middle ground, which is extremely difficult, and usually makes the 1AR look jumbled. Having a 2AC and 2NC would allow this substantive debate to occur, saving the rebuttals for framing the round, collapsing issues etc. I think this system makes the most sense and I really hope that such procedural changes occur in the future.

Obviously this would have implications in terms of how tournaments are run, case writing, etc. but I think that this structural change could catalyze those other necessary changes.

[Chad Dagii Henson]

The problem with structural changes is that unlike non-structural changes, they must be imposed top-down. Non-structural changes can be imposed bottom-up. Think of the way LD has evolved. Without a single substantial change in the NFL guidelines, ballot instructions, etc., LD has become faster, K-friendly, and theory-oriented. Judge disclosure and oral critiques are the norm where they used to not be. Flex prep is much more acceptable now, but was unheard of when I graduated. Similarly, our speaker point scale has evolved without any change to what is written on most ballots or what the NFL considers the norm. In short, virtually every change in LD over the past 20 years has been driven by students, coaches, and judges rather than by league officials and tournament directors, who responded to these changes (if at all) belatedly and insufficiently.

We need to fix the disadvantage suffered by the AFF ourselves rather than hoping that some formal rule change will occur. We could do like we did with flex prep and allow affirmative debaters to adjust their speaking times if they wish, but that solution requires the cooperation of all people involved in the round, and may not be a viable option for outrounds. Giving the 2AR a little more leeway to make arguments currently considered "new," but that are arguably fair extensions of previous arguments or analysis of previously-made impacts, seems like the easiest way to go.

[scott.robinson]

Such structural changes have to be consistent with the incentive structures in place, though. One of the reasons the event has come to focus so much on drops is that it is much easier for a college student to justify a decision based on a drop rather than on a judgment call in a clash between two positions. In a world where these judges wait week-to-week to see if they are hired and only get rounds if they meet MP, there is a strong incentive to void in ways that are easy to justify. The rumors spread fast among students. Rumors spread especially fast if they take the form of "judge X voted despite aff despite a clear drop of Y - he/she does not flow well / is stupid /is biased."

[MattKawahara]

suggestion for making it easier to affirm: rethink your requirements for extensions. in policy, there is a severely lower burden for extending arguments. the way I interpret it based on some limited experience (so i may not be totally correct), is that you basically have to explain arguments (full claim/warrant/impact) when it becomes a relevant issue of contention in the debate (i.e. if the neg goes for T in the 2NR the 2AR only has to prove their case is topical or beat T in some other way), or when it is necessary to clarify the judges understanding of the warrant/impact of your argument. it seems like the time crunch of the 1AR/2AR could be significantly lessened if people adopted more lenient extension requirements. obviously LD would be different because the NR doesn't typically collapse into a single offcase position. more arguments need to be explained in LD, and to some extent i think there is value in adopting stricter standards for extensions. however i think its pretty obvious that the current requirements result in needless repetitions of arguments (think of how often you see people blazing through their typed pre-flow extensions. i don't usually experience more clarity about the argument after such extensions.) i don't have an exact science for determining what arguments need to be extended but i think its pretty clear that formal extensions ("extend x which says y") are unnecessary when arguments are dropped, or when the warrant and function of the argument has already been made clear (i.e. when someone uses the substance of a card itself to answer 4 defensive answers made against it in the NC). although the precise norms that I envision for extensions are difficult to describe, i think that they are clear enough in round. at worst, they can't be much less clear than the extension requirements present today. some judges would vote down a debater who won the line by line of a theory argument but forgot to extend the voter and some judges would vote for theory if it is won even if the voter isn't explicitly extended. regardless, i can see no reason why someone who, for example, has just spent time answering a large "fairness is not a voter" dump should have to run through the motions of a formal voter extension. if they are being at all responsive to the dump, in most instances, i should have a pretty clear picture of why they think fairness is a voter.

it seems like this would help the aff more than the neg. for instance, take your typical NC spread in LD. the strategic function is to create as many technical layers to the debate as possible in order to create hoops through which the aff has to jump in a short time frame (many spreads are also substantively persuasive but this is certainly one function of a spread). the neg might save some amount of time through more lenient requirements, but since the NC strategy was to make a lot of shorter arguments to capitalize on the time skew, a smaller fraction of time is saved. you still have to refer to the terminal impact of the argument even if its dropped, which requires some level of explanation. on the other hand, both the 1ar and the 2ar would benefit greatly from lower extension requirements. the aff would be able to more effectively use the 6 minutes of the 1AC in the rebuttals. in the status quo, there is a strategic disincentive to use 1AC arguments in the rebuttals to respond to neg arguments because they require the formality of "extend X which says Y" and then an explanation of how its responsive. i can actually remember being discouraged from cross-applying a very long and substantive card from my AC that was dropped and very responsive to an NC argument instead of a making a shorter analytic because i knew i wouldn't have time in my speech to extend it "fully". with looser requirements, the aff can actually capitalize on a lot of the 6mn 1AC that is rendered useless by the lack of time to formally extend arguments in rebuttals. it helps the 2ar because you can spend almost all of your time simply responding to the arguments that the NR went for without the needless formality of extending arguments when they are no longer relevant areas of contest in the debate. if the neg only goes for defense on the aff standard and the neg case in the NR than the aff should only have to win the AC framework to win the round. he/she shouldn't have to uselessly say "extend x card it says y" when the neg isn't even contesting the argument. moreover, lenient requirements disincentivize cheap NR strategies like extending NC arguments through ink to create more time sucks for the 2ar (people do this a lot), because the aff can quickly point out their dropped answers without having to use much speech time.

[classof2012]

Not to mention, the Aff has 2 rebuttals to te Neg's 1, meaning everything must be extended twice to be evaluated at the end, versus the negative's one-time extensions.

While I think extending the warrant is sometimes important, such as when you're using the extension to address another argument, sometimes it's just silly, like having to re-read the text of dropped arguments. More importantly, I think judges should stop requiring extensions for things that go without saying. If I spend 1 minute of the 2AR answering the standards and counter-interp on theory, obviously I'm pursuing theory as a voter, so why do I need to extend the interp, violation, and voting issue? It doesn't contribute anything substantive to the debate. A similar problem I've seen was, after I'd spent about half of the 1AR on the criterion (util v. deont) the NR's response was "He didn't extend his value/criterion so you prefer mine. Mine are..."

[Alex Bennett]

I agree on the aff extension stuff. Judges should just flow across any conceded arguments. Another problem is that judges seem to think the debaters have the obligation to respond to every argument in their opponent's constructive in the first rebuttal. This is why a second constructive is beneficial; debaters would be able to react to the strategies developed by their opponents in their second constructive and not have the substantive engagement of such be counted as a "new argument". Essentially, debates are being won by people ambushing their opponents with their true strats in the rebuttals, leaving the opponent unable to react without it being "new". I think lowering the threshold for extensions alleviates the problems, but this is purely a structural problem, and only structural change can fix this.

@ Chad Henson

I agree that we the community can have huge impacts through non-structural changes alone. However, this problem can only be truly solved by a structural change. I think if certain tournaments start altering speech formats to test these changes, then more people would be willing to see these changes happen. I know nothing about how such changes could get enacted, but I think we need to start advocating such changes if they are ever going to be actualized.

[Ontology]

This is especially made worse by a 1NC blipstorm....which is thankfully fading away

[J.Rajagopal]

@Ontology: its making a bit of a comeback out here...