October 22, 2014
Midterms: How You Can Adapt to Trends in Congressional Debate
By Bailey Rung
With the constant fluidity present in Congressional Debate, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment. The cogs turn in our heads, the pens move furiously, and we get in the proverbial ‘zone.’ During this melee, it’s very easy to forget about the truly important people in the room: The Judges. We often spend so much of our in-round and out-of-round time preparing material and politicking, that we forget that what judges look for is ever-expanding and ever-changing. It’s easy to get a ballot back, see that we got dropped, and blame it on a bad judge. In reality, it’s because we didn’t do enough to adapt to the round or the judges. Congressional Debate is by far the most change-prone event in Forensics, and that’s why it’s important that the issue of personal adaptation and revision be discussed as the season gets underway.
What does a “Changing Congress” Mean?
As a competitor in high school for only four years, it’s difficult to be cognizant of just how much our event can become more or less open to different speaking styles, evidence standards, procedures, and norms. But it does happen.
Perhaps the clearest example of change can be outlined by an observation made by my good friend and Colleague, Martin Page. Marty remarked to me sometime after Nationals this year that during his time in debate, ranks were preeminently determined by evidence quality and impact analysis. I responded by noting that by far and away, my time in the event was marked by the ability of one to master the political and rhetorical levels of competition. And while we sat back on our rocking chairs and talked about the good ole’ days of President Truman and the invention of sliced bread, there are a few things that can be taken from that. First, that distinction no doubt effects our perceptions of Congressional Debate differently, and Marty and I’s coaching and judging styles follow suit. Second, while that change is no doubt one that took years to manifest and is strikingly general, the same micro-political shifts happen over the course of one season.
New alumni take positions as judges and coaches. Current events change the quality and content of evidence. Competitors of various regions alter their schedules. The result is that the standards and desires of judges on delivery, evidence, politicking, and questioning change. The norms of docketing, refutation, voting and decorum change do as well. Change can be dumbed down to simply mean what people like and what people do, and how that evolves.
Why is it important that I adapt?
Debate is a place in which every competitor, judge, and coach is meant to grow. Growth comes through success. Success comes from being competitive. Being competitive comes from adapting. That little bit of Confucian wisdom is, in a nutshell, the reason why we ought to do our best to keep up with change in Congressional Debate. We can’t expect to excel if we compete the way we always have. Nothing in the event ever stays the same. Giving the same speeches, politicking the same ways, and performing the same themes does nothing for the education of the event, and leaves all parties involved frustrated.
We need to give judges compelling reasons to vote for us, we need to demonstrate that we are indeed worthy competitors. Congressional Debate is an event that awards dynamism, and that can be both horizontal and vertical. Adaptation is key. By expanding our horizons in research, practice, and competition we unlock the keys to our success as students and as competitors. The personal improvement of focus, motivation, and courage will win us trophies and bring us places in life we couldn’t have even imagine.
How do I spot changes?
It’s very easy to stumble across a delivery style, or evidence type that works and run with it. It’s more difficult to do the inverse, get dropped for it, and have no idea why. While we will get to how to adapt in a second, the way to start spotting change is to examine feedback.
This starts with looking at ballots. Find out what certain judges liked and what they didn’t. See how that plays into what other judges are saying on our ballots and others. Trends will emerge that will make us ask; are our intro styles outdated? Are our questioning strategies unique enough? Are we impacting to the liking of the judges? Do they like the way we dressed? Are we too polite or too rude? Just see what is acceptable. This will give us a fairly good idea of how to play to the judges.
The next step is to talk. Talk with other competitors about what made them do well, or what made them do poorly. See if they are doing something you are not. Start figuring out what is desirable in terms of polticking. It’s as simple as determining what is trending in terms of interaction pay-off. We can also talk to our judges after the tournament to get an oral criticism. This is a much easier way to determine their paradigm and find ways to adjust your performance than reading a ballot. Talk to your teammates and coaches and find out what they observed in rounds that you weren’t in. Why did judges vote a certain way? Did somebody do something new? Did it pay off or not? Figure out what is competitive. This will give us better insight as to what it means to be a “Congressperson.”
The final way is to watch rounds. Especially if you’ve been eliminated. Congressional Debate looks drastically different as a critic than it does as a competitor. Simply observing how a round plays out that we aren’t in can give massive insight to the bigger pictures and trends, especially when ranks are released. Debate is education, and education is observation. Take notes, analyze, and criticize. Correlate that to competitive outcomes. This is a good litmus test to the mood of the event and the community.
While this all may seem fairly nebulous, it’s often forgotten and overlooked. There certainly is no magic bullet in life, let alone debate, but being able to step back and follow through on a competition is about as close as you will come to finding it.
How do I adapt?
Nothing is more aggravating that waiting. Whether a tournament went well, or it went poorly, we want to know what needs to happen for the next one. Assuming that we’ve taken the proper reflective steps outlined above, it just becomes a matter of actualizing it.
Once you’ve figured out what is successful, start doing it! If you notice that judges are more attuned to people who stick steadfastly to the Congressperson persona, give some practice speeches from the past tournament in that style. Become comfortable as possible being a Congressperson. If you notice a lack of crystallization speeches that could get you ranks, go over your flows and prep one out. If judges think you’re coming off as too assertive, give the speeches with a calmer tone and with content that reflects that. If the community become more evidentiary based, spend more time reading, cutting, and blocking.
Sometimes we’ll notice trends that simply require us to stop or start something in-round. If judges are dropping late sessions POs, maybe don’t PO then. If people are running out of speeches later in the day, make sure you have material ready to go for the next. If judges don’t like the amount of motions being made, step in and be the person to correct that.
Those are just a few examples, and are totally hypothetical. The moral of the story is basically not to be lazy. Correcting performance issues is quite literally a matter of doing, and doing something well is a matter of being comfortable doing it. Think of Congressional Debate in the long term. Try new things at tournaments, and use those experiences for the next one. Whatever your end goal is, use the pedagogical process as a means to get there.
What’s left?
Get out there and compete. Take risks. The moral of the story is that Congressional Debate is ALWAYS changing. Never stick to the same thing, keep pushing yourself harder. What judges like and what competitors do is shifting by the minute. We only get so much time to compete, we might as well make the best of it. Whether that means being the National Champion, or just writing better English papers, no one in life ever did well by hoping things stayed the same. It’s fairly established at this point that adaptation is good, and change is always happening. The only real barrier is yourself. Motivating yourself to push out of a static competitive style can be hard, but doing it is as simple as recognizing the change, and practicing to meet the evolving standards and norms. My mentor Ross Eichele once posited that the worst thing to do if you hit a brick wall was to try to punch through, especially if you can just step around it.
