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Kevin Kuswa
May 6 at 3:12 PM
Ken Strange was a major force (of Yoda levels) in the debate community for a long time and I was lucky to work for him for a few years in the 90s. Unfortunately, it looks like I will have to miss the gathering in June to celebrate his life so I want to share a story or two here. It’s hard to choose—there are so many great stories about his many stellar teams, about rounds he’s judged, about tournaments we attended, about the Dartmouth debate institute, or just about hanging around Hanover. The one I’d like to relate includes a little lesson about teaching that might be interesting to many of you, even if you did not know Ken.
It was the mid-90s and I was an excited young coach working for a great Dartmouth program with lots of motivated and talented debaters. In preparation for the Kentucky tournament that year, we all pitched in and tried to produce a viable case file against most of the big teams. My assignment was Michigan’s Afghanistan aff and I was asked to work with a few of the first-years to broaden our research base and give them a sense of what a decent case file should look like. Ken was optimistic about what we would produce, giving some key pointers on how to dismantle the aff and what the overall file should include. He was always really good at cutting to the core of an affirmative and isolating its weaknesses and what evidence was needed to really take a dent out of it.
We moved forward and the file started to take shape—all the bells and whistles: links to our big off-case DAs, a couple of advantage CPs that avoided the links to politics and a China influence DA (that Ken wrote—it was awesome), recent and nuanced case answers, including unique offense (Hekmatyar backlash, Paki border crossing, tribal moderation, etc.). It was a pretty sick file, well-organized, evidence highlighted, extensions written, copies made, and I even remember Steven Sklaver chipping in with some solid uniqueness cards for the case turns and Bill Russell found links to our BJP DA. So we head to Kentucky and, lo and behold, the round 5 pairings come out—posted on a wall at the time—and one of Dartmouth’s younger teams is debating one of the top teams from Michigan...and we were negative!
The round takes place, I forget who was judging, but the Dartmouth team ends up winning on a risk of the China DA and very little left on case. It was a huge win and we were all very excited. At the end of the day, Ken gathers all of us together before dinner and we’re going over the results from the day to allocate assignments for the elims. Ken tells the team how proud he is of everyone and how we still have work to do for the morning. Then, in a moment I will never forget, he stops for a second until he has everyone’s attention. In his deep voice he says, “You all, we had a really big win in round 5 against Michigan and I think we need to give props to the folks who put together our Afghanistan file, especially...,” (at this point I’m thinking he’s going to thank me for the work on the file and how useful it was, but, instead, he continued), “...especially young Jonathan for all his great work!”
Everyone started clapping for Jonathan and I was somewhat surprised. The young debater Ken was praising had been in the research group, but he hadn’t really turned anything in and was not a big part of the effort that went into the file...what was going on here? I thought about it a little more and it began to dawn on me—the coaches and experienced debaters did not really need recognition for their work on the file, but the young debater who received Ken’s praise really did. The more I thought about it the more it not only made sense to me, it became a microcosm of Ken Strange’s pedagogy: encouragement is currency and a team must use its currency wisely. Sometimes the best recipient of accolades is not necessarily the person who put in the most effort. Sometimes a little nod to someone learning the ropes can go a long way. What a lesson to learn! Recognition and encouragement can happen in many ways, making the craft of coaching about extending support to those at the bottom of the totem pole, not just a race to cut more cards. It was a profound moment and the lesson about the role of teaching was not lost on me.
A few weeks later the team was preparing for a regional tournament prior to Wake (probably West Point or Liberty) and we were getting together some new case files. The DUF was in Robinson Hall at the time and we would usually gather around the copy machine in order to make copies of the new assignments before leaving town. I was standing at the machine, double checking some of the files and stuffing manila folders with the fresh copies of our new material. As I was about to leave the office after most of the teams had collected their files and headed off to pack, I heard a voice from the hallway, “Wait, Coach, don’t turn off the machine yet, I have my file!” It was Jonathan. He had been given some of the new environmental cases to work on and handed me a thick folder of evidence. It could have used a bit more organization, but overall was really impressive—new research, recent cards, lots of case defense, and even some links to a few of our generics. Exactly what you would want—and he had done it all on his own. Would he have put that file together without Ken’s encouragement from Kentucky? Maybe—but maybe not. The point was that he felt connected to the team and wanted to put together a good file—he was invested. That’s something I always felt Ken was so good at—encouraging people to give 100%, to care what they were doing, to work together for a common objective. I owe Ken a lot for that message among many other things. RIP my friend.
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