The slate of proposed amendments cover a wide range of items. Several are largely clerical in nature (such as clarifying the timeline for reviewing and approving potential hosts, allowing the voter roll to be released from all CEDA ballots). These items may seem minor but each has been proposed to make our organization function better. The enrollment verification item, for example, allows us to reduce the differences between end of the year academic verifications. If you have questions about any of these items, I encourage you to raise them. I don't see many of these items as controversial. 

There are also two items with substantive importance that have generated a healthy difference of opinion. A couple have already been discussed on the various lists. Allow me to take a minute to explain the rationale for each. It may not influence your vote, but I hope it can make your deliberation more informed.

Adding a means of adding events or divisions to CEDA Nationals

This past year we witnessed a success with the first trial of a novice breakout division at CEDA Nationals. The event drew a healthy number of teams from across the country and the vast majority of feedback I received from coaches was positive. They enjoyed the judging, the experience and the opportunity for their students. 

The process of adding this event, or any event or division, is a problem. There is no clear provision to add events or divisions short of a full constitutional amendment for each event or division. In other words, to add an event it would take the lengthy process and permanently add a division or event to the tournament. In practice, it would likely take a year plus to add an event, which may be even before the host is determined and the room situation is confirmed. These are items that have to be considered at the time when the host is selected and when the invitation is drafted.

I believe it is our interest as a community to encourage experimentation and innovation in debate practice and I would like to provide a democratic and functional means of encouraging these efforts. The proposal requires that the president gain approval of the democratically elected EC to approve any such division or event for that national tournament. It would need to be approved as part of the invitation for that tournament. Every member of the EC is elected and responsible to some constituency. This is a fair process to allow our national tournament to innovate in accordance with the will of our community. I was very pleased with the novice breakout and I want to nurture the innovation that our members practice all year.  Our national tournament should be a leading site of tournament competition and this is a means to make that tournament more responsive to evolving forms of competition.

4th Year Graduate Eligibility - 

There has been a great deal of confusion and rancor on this subject. Let me first clarify that this amendment only seeks to add a means for students who have started competing to continue competing through their 4th year if they have begun a graduate program at their institution.

It is already current practice that students are allowed to compete for up 5 years. The recent discussion has highlighted that there are diverse opinions on this subject. This measure does not offer a means of addressing that dispute. I would encourage each side to reflect on the competing issues (i.e., the challenges of completing a degree in 4 years at many schools alongside the concern about incentivizing students to stay in school longer) and try to begin getting us as a community toward some common ideas.

What this measure does do, however, is make it possible for students who are making progress toward their degree to have an incentive to graduate early. The NCAA currently allows a student to finish their BA or BS and then start work on an MA if they have eligibility remaining. This rule would match that NCAA effort with one important restriction. It is not designed to allow a student to graduate and debate in their 5th year. This is only a provision for students who would earn a BA or BA in less than four and then want to continue to start working on an MA or PhD at their current institution. This incentivizes students to compete and make academic progress in four years. This is a system that our athletes can use, but not our debaters.

To frame it clearly today a 5th year student earning their BA can debate, but a student who earns the degree in 3 1/2 years cannot attend the NDT or CEDA in their 4th year. Regardless of your views on 5th year eligibility, it is not good policy or equitable to create disincentives for students to make academic progress. Again, a student cannot debate as a grad student in year 5. 

I hope these items help clarify some of the rationales for these measures. Please leave your comments or email me at stables@usc.edu if you have questions.

Gordon Stables

CEDA 1st VP & Chair - CEDA Topic Selection Committee

Director of Debate & Forensics University of Southern California

Warning: Post may contain (attempts at) humor.

Ok so when Justin objected to the “New Events” amendment I sat and thought about it a while. Justin is a great coach, has really successful teams, and was a good debater himself back in the day. So I was conflicted. Then Tuna and Andy agreed with him and I was convinced I was in fact correct. This 3-0 decision also reminded me of why I am often in favor or MPJ. But I digress...

Justin argues no new events without a popular vote. We apparently wont agree on that one but I am curious where the line is drawn? Democracy as Justin describes it rarely exists, in life or in CEDA or the NDT. Direct votes rarely ever occur on major decisions—its why we have reps. We have elected reps who are elected through democratic means. The amendment does not give the President authority to do this on his own. I demonstrated it would require approval of almost 20% of our membership (the EC includes almost 20 people). Where is the outcry when other decisions are not made by popular vote? Me thinks it might be politically more salient to cry foul when its small potatoes and hope things swing the right way when big decisions are made. But maybe its just a feeling I get. Like when someone drops “must define all words” or runs a bad K for 9 minutes in the 1NC. Bottom line, we have reps we elect. Hold them accountable on this as you would anything else hopefully.

Will this lead to tyranny? I almost wet myself laughing. Seriously. Then the phone rang and it was 1983 asking we please give back their Federalism Disad Impact. As for a tyranny of ideas and the “mission” of CEDA I think Justin is a bit off here too. A large part of CEDA's mission is increasing novice debate and participation—Justin opposed the novice breakout rounds at CEDA. Why didnt that fly in the face of our mission? As for promoting Cross Examination Debate, there are other forms of debate like public debate events that promote cross examination debate.

Justin points out the platform questions did not ask which events the candidates might add. I would respond by saying there is no conspiracy here. Repeat, no conspiracy here. Gordon, Sue, Mike. None of them to my knowledge have secret plans to add events. None of them do any of the events I mentioned except some public debate events. But I would trust that no one (especially 17 people—the EC) would approve of something in such a flawed manner as to not run a great CEDA. Again there was no asnwer to the number of past Presidents who changed things significantly and how those changes had no negative effect on the outcome of the tournament nor diminished the championships we crowned.

Hating to add to the semantics charge, but novice breakout rounds were not a new “division”. I think that is where a lot of this is stemming from. But again maybe just a bad feeling.

As to the belief that this amendment would destroy democracy is either uninformed (see above—multiple decisions a year without popular vote) or conspiratorial. And as far as conspiracies go this is one of the weakest Ive ever seen advanced here. Tuna, you know about conspiracies right? Am I right or am I right? : )

Finally I will try and address privilige. Not everyone has K-State's resources. Budgets around 6 digits, multiple coaches, grad students, the ability to travel virtually anywhere, and an endless group of debaters. When you have that luxury and focus on one thing, I understand your desire to protect that one thing. But what about programs without that ability? What about programs who have gone on to other forms of Forensics? Many of them made choices and arent coming back. But what if? What if CEDA ran alongside another form of debate and a few colleges came and were able to do both? Or some came and liked what we were doing and crossed over? Or some who do primarily Parli, who have kids that want to try Policy, came and had kids do both? What is bad about that? Seriously? Listen I belong to multiple forensic organizations and I know some folks who would like to exist on the fringes, or participate now and then, but budgets force choices. A former CEDA President speaking here made the choice this year to do a different form of debate and not send teams to CEDA. Thats too bad. Maybe CEDA has lost its purpose for him. Maybe it has for others. Maybe it will for more in the future. Then that one thing conspiracy theorists try so hard to protect wont be big enough to justify to your administrators. Then your budgets begin to shift. I have a list of 200 schools who have made that shift—dont think it cant happen.

My point is that if we were more experimental, if we opened up debate to more people, then maybe CEDA would begin to grow again. What other options are there? So yes we participate in Cross Examination Debate and I hope we continue to do so in healthy numbers—but shutting off the opportunities to bring others in is in my opinion foolish.

This amendment does not empower the President to be tyrannical. It requires the EC approval—your EC. The elected reps you know. It also would not destroy democracy. We have virtually no popular vote democracy now. And it would expedite the process to expose CEDA to potential new programs. An integral part of our mission.

chief

Two reasons to vote no:

CEDA was established to promote Cross Examination Debate.  I for one appreciate that.  The inclusion of LD, Parli, worlds - (if they are "Cross Ex Debate" because they involve questions and answers this is a very liberal interp of Cross Ex Debate) - takes away from the time and energy necessary to host a truly wonderful experience of what we traditionally know as Cross Ex Debate.

If we are successful, then we are taking away from other organizations nationals.  So we decide to host LD, then all of a sudden the NFALD community is split between two nationals, I am not sure why this is good for them or us.  Perhaps the following year they would host a Policy Nationals in Miami, Florida.  If you think ADA, NDT, CEDA is bad now, wait till we add a fourth or fifth.

Counterplan: Work with another organization.  If the problem is a split between Policy and Parli or Policy and LD and squads which have both need to make a forced financial decision, then CEDA should simply work along with NFA-LD (i.e) to identify a host who can accomodate both.  No event would need to be added, this would address all of the problems identified by Chief, but avoid the ones listed above.  This requires no constitutional amendment.  And the CEDA EC has its hands full running cx debate, why would they want more on their plate.

Pre-empts:

If the goal is to crown a CEDA Novice National Champion, then why was that amendment not proposed?

If there is another specific event that should be added because it is educationally worthwhile, what is that event? why is it not proposed as an amendment?  The adding of the event can only be a financial/administrative reasons - if it were along educational merits, it would be proposed right now.

If our goal is to expand to have CEDA and NFA-LD or Worlds Parli be hosted in the same place.  CEDA Adminstration would not need to add an event, they would just need to find a host who is willing to accomodate all organizations.

Distinction between event and division....Yes, there might be a version of Public Debate that could be considered cross-examination debate.  However, in your previous post you mentioned including LD, Worlds, Parli, etc.  Had this amendment said, CEDA can offer a new division of cross ex debate, arguments against would be much more difficult to make.  Novice break-out was added because Chief did have that Constitutional Authority.

Responses:

Yes there are schools with multiple forms of debate.  CP above addresses this.  Here's the issue.  Why would it be good for us to decide to host Parli in November at our CEDA Nationals tournament?  Aside from being highly unlikely due to logistical contstraints (lack of classrooms and hotel space being the biggest one), this seems to create huge administrative burdens at a tournament that is highly likely to produce failure.  Tuna pointed out that Parli(in addition to multiple I.E. nationals) won't likely come.  We just open the door for a poor decision. 

Why referendum and not representation?  I covered this in a post to Gordon.  Below are the responses:

1. They are not truly representative - Yes they are voted on, but not every region has the same number of schools.  It is closer to the Senate than the House of Reps.

2. Fundamental Decisions about the future of the organization should be decided on by the people, not the EC. As a former rep - It's hard to balance being an EC member.  At any given time there could be as many as five or six issues before the EC.   My hats are off to those that are.  Some of the members spend a great deal of time deliberating, others do not.  Sure some adminstrative decisions should be made through the EC, but not ones that fundamentally change the mission of the tournament.

3. Democracy is often representative, but when it can truly be a referendum without significant harm, why not pursue it.

The Ad Hom debate:

Dude, if tyranny made you wet your pants, maybe you should see a doctor.

It would be an interesting experiment to see if a panel of Ellis, Green and Snider were of a higher MPJ than Chief.  Especially if the MPJ revolved around resolving a CEDA Constitutional and Adminsitrative Debates and the growth/development of CEDA was compared between the Snider administration and the Elliot administration.  Not sure which way it would go.

Not sure why our budget is relevant to this discussion, but since Chief asked.  His facts are wrong about the KSU Budget.  I wrote a couple of paragraphs mud-slinging back at KCK calling them privileged too and defending KSU and then decided to delete them and chalk his comments up to lack of accurate information.  Both KSU and KCK debaters read this and this discussion is good for neither of our squads.  I am not interested in the oppression olympics.  Anyone who feels KSU's budget is relevant to their vote, should back-channel me.

Justin