Author: Dan Bagwell, Samford University & Mountain Brook High School coach Editor’s note: this article is part of a special feature on debate norms in PF. Dan Bagwell, octo-finalist at the 2011 National Debate Tournament, argues against paraphrasing below. To read the counterpoint by University of Wyoming debater Josh Mitchell, click here. Branching out beyond policy debate has been a surprisingly fun endeavor for me in recent years, both as a coach and a judge. I’ve enjoyed learning the quirks of other events like Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas, although my main focus has been on the former. PF can be a lot of fun, and I’ve been lucky to judge plenty of outstanding debates at both national and local tournaments. That said, norms regarding evidence etiquette (or the lack thereof) have spawned some bewildering practices that are far too common and, to put it kindly … less than educational. There are two especially irksome standouts: paraphrased evidence and failure to share speech docs. Both degrade the quality of PF debate, often in mutually reinforcing ways. I’ve made a point to ask debaters and coaches why evidence norms haven’t caught on, but my questions are usually met with shrugs or half-hearted reasons why that’s just the nature of the beast. These should be relatively easy problems to solve, which is why below the fold I’ll make the case for why PF should take a step forward on both fronts. Paraphrasing is the devil
I’m unsure how paraphrasing evidence became a thing, but it’s apparently a widely-accepted part of PF. I’ve seen variants of this (or “footnoting” to some) – debaters will write their own summaries and mention a source, or they’ll read short quotes while inferring the rest, or they’ll read select lines with the fully-highlighted card on standby. I have yet to judge a theory debate on the matter, even when debaters have failed to produce the original article. It boggles my mind - the arguments practically write themselves. No matter the form, paraphrasing is aggressively bad for debate for several reasons. 1) Mischaracterizing evidence. I’ll let you in on a secret: debaters tend to be biased toward the arguments they want to win. If they think they can successfully spin an argument, they will. Paraphrasing asks us to trust debaters to truthfully recap their evidence. We shouldn’t. Without clear standards for teams to read directly from the source, there’s no meaningful way to distinguish when the source material ends and the spin begins. Paraphrasing hides evidence behind a wall of debater-speak and almost entirely eliminates accountability for qualified evidence. It’s as academically valuable as my uncle saying, “I read about the Bitcoins in the paper yesterday!” Sure, debaters can ask to see the original source during prep time or Crossfire – which isn’t a remotely sufficient check. PF debaters are afforded precious little prep in the first place, and using it all to spot-check evidence directly trades off with preparing a better speech (which is often why Final Focus seems more panicked and haphazard). Relegating card oversight to prep only punishes debaters who focus on evidence comparison, which is absent in far too many debates. It penalizes effort. 2) It incentivizes lazier debate and bad research skills. Paraphrasing allows competitors to claim credit for sources they didn’t read or formally introduce into the record. That might fly for a book report, but it shouldn’t for a competitive activity in which facts matter. What incentive do debaters have to cut quality cards when there’s a good chance they won’t be asked to showcase them? Why should they read further than article headlines or summaries if the text itself isn’t a core focus? Verifying the integrity of arguments should be a central part of how debaters approach their research, and putting the evidence front-and-center is the best way to guarantee it. 3) If you give a mouse a cookie … There’s no meaningful brightline between debaters paraphrasing one paragraph or 20 of them. Why wouldn’t I footnote a 50-page law review, or a 100-page study on climate change? Why not over-highlight the paraphrased evidence to drain as much of my opponents’ prep as possible? Why not sandbag all the warrants in my evidence and spring new warrants out of it as the debate progresses? Paraphrasing makes debate a race to footnote the most articles and punishes teams that read the most warranted evidence. Requiring direct citations forces debaters to be more strategic in selecting a more focused (and more well-developed) set of arguments, as opposed to a machine-gun spray of footnotes for the judge and opponents to sift through later. Put away your frontlines These are the main defenses of paraphrasing that I’ve heard from debaters, followed by reasons why none are persuasive. Paraphrasing lets me read more arguments!
Other debaters are paraphrasing, and they’ll have an advantage over us!
Judges won’t vote on paraphrasing theory!
Lay judges won’t understand the cards!
PF is about focusing on the debaters’ arguments, not just evidence!
Speech doc debacles: hurry up and wait Stop me if you’ve seen this exchange during prep. Debater 1: “Can we see that piece of evidence?’ Debater 2: “Sure, let me pull it up.” *3-minute search* Debater 1: “…wait, can we see the actual article?” Debater 2: “Oh, uh…let me connect to the Internet.” *5-minutes on the strugglebus. Debater 1 skims for two seconds. Ends prep. Rinse, repeat.* The main culprit? Very few PF debaters share their speech docs. It’s like teams are allergic to sharing evidence. Requests to see cards during prep time are excruciating. They make rounds drag on for much longer than necessary with constant – and I mean constant – interruptions to start and stop prep. It’s not only a logistical headache; it reflects poorly on debaters and can often have a tangible impact on speaker points (and the judge’s patience). It’s one of the common complaints I’ve heard from both seasoned and inexperienced judges who just want the round to proceed without awkward, prolonged silences while teams conjure evidence that should be readily available. From a strategic standpoint, debaters shouldn’t have to wait until their prep is running to see their opponents’ evidence for the first time. Prep is best used when debaters can gather their thoughts and prepare their talking points – not when they’re playing catch-up on what their opponents’ evidence really says. From a judge’s standpoint, it makes prep time much harder to verify. “Stealing prep” is clearly not a universally-recognized aspect of PF, but I’ve never seen so many debaters argue with judges about how much prep time they should have left. Removing the constant timer pump-fakes would clean a lot of this up. The solution is easy: debaters should share their speech docs. Start an email chain or use a jump drive to share the docs before the speech begins. Debaters can read along (but not ahead) to make sure they’re clear on what the arguments are – which would also cut down on some of the worst Crossfire clarification questions (“Can you explain your second contention?” should never be a question). Cases aren’t some secret document to guard like they’re your Social Security number; they’re the focal point of the debate. Speech docs want to be free. There’s already a baffling lack of disclosure and wiki usage in PF (which deserves its own post), so why add another layer of opacity? Progress, plz None of this is to say that PF is awful or that it should be transformed into policy debate (it shouldn’t). It’s a valuable activity that can make a huge difference for students’ research and public speaking skills, which is all the more reason to pinpoint where it should improve. There are clearly exceptions to all of PF’s oddities. Many teams are great about debating the right way, and some circuits may be more diligent than what I’ve seen. It’s also possible that I’m overlooking some nuanced defense of the activity’s more frustrating wrinkles ... but I doubt it. Incremental progress starts with coaches and debaters being willing to commit to the best practices - even small changes could drastically improve competition, make PF rounds more efficient overall, and help debaters get the most out of the activity. And if none of this convinced you … here’s a pic of my dog. Olive implores you to reconsider.
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