A Eulogy

After by far the greatest streak of debate victory and success in known Wilson history--17 consecutive wins coupled with winning 3 very competitive tournaments in a row--Wilson AK, the name that struck fear into the hearts of every opponent, is no more. In the district tournament, we became the victims of the arbitrariness of debate. We narrowly were eliminated from the tournament after losing two rounds. In one of them, it was completely and totally clear that we smashed our opponents. The other was closer, but I genuinely believe that we won.

I spoke with the judge afterward, and could not disagree more with her basis for judging. Essentially, she thinks that you can debate whether a policy "should" be enacted without considering the feasibility of its implementation. In her eyes, feasibility extends to any factor or consequence that would make the implementation undesirable. The only remaining ground on which the opposition can then argue is by simply trying to prove everything the proposition says to be false. Generally speaking, this is an extremely bad tactic, if not impossible. Under her judging paradigm, if the resolution reads, "Policy X should be enacted," and the proposition defines "Policy X" in such a way, for example, that would require vast and very indefinite quantities of money, then the opposition cannot use costs (even if they are infinite!) as an argument. Her stance was that ideas are "good" or "bad" entirely independently of their consequences that would render implementation impossible or totally destructive and counterproductive. By logical extension, her paradigm would probably consider a government gift of $1 million to each American as a "good" idea. It would also consider communism to be another fantastic idea. It is, after all, a utopia. The fact that it always ends up a wretched failure because it is inherently impossible to achieve, is entirely immaterial in her analysis. Utter absurdity.

Another problem could have been that Jonathan and I have an extraordinarily aggressive and hyperactive style, especially on opposition, that may have possibly offended some judges. We ask questions of our opponents mercilessly, attacking their ideas, burning their time, and disrupting their flow. Our opposition strategy essentially amounts to putting forth a countercase and using time to force the proposition to spend most of their time on our case, leaving their own case undeveloped. Granted, we tend to be disarmingly polite before the rounds, but the style is definitely very confrontational. We aren't the greatest speakers, but when it comes to logic and finding "inherent flaws" (my favorite catchphrase), we make up for it. But alas, it failed today. We debated at a level at or above our recent performances, and our opponents weren't much better than the long-run average. Beyond that, it just comes down to a lot of randomness and judges (i.e. a lot more randomness). We were not in fate's favor.

But, not to denigrate the performance of everyone else... They did fantastically! Abraham and his newbie partner are district champions in Cross Examination! Colin Corbett took 3rd and Carolyn 2nd in LD! As far as public goes, Kim and Kibe made up for our misfortune, taking 2nd.

But debate is over for me. For good. It's a little sad.

I hear Chicago has a good debate team, though...