It's important on this point to note that "let the people decide" is not as strong a warrant for including something on the ballot as it may initially seem. There are two reasons for this.
First, it's not a warrant that uniquely justifies any one item being included, but rather is a warrant for including any/every item that is mentioned. For example, during our weekend deliberations, there were at least a dozen different wordings that were mentioned - "united states federal government" vs "united states" vs "united states government" is just one of the many, many variations in wordings that exemplify this. Given how the voting works, why not have a little (a), (b), and (c) version of every resolution so that the different agent phrasings are each represented, so the community can then choose? In theory, the topic ballot could be similar to the judge pref sheet at nationals, with each voting member ordinally ranking 200 resolution wording options, some only slightly different than others. Once you have accepted "let the voters decide" as a justification for putting anything on the ballot, it's not clear how anything could be left off the ballot. The counter to such an approach is that while the ranking system we employ may theoretically allow for an infinite number of choices to be ranked, IRL the time to think through and research about what each option would functionally end up looking like is very finite - the more options there are, the less we can learn and make an informed judgment about any particular option. Thus, we don't find the "let them vote" as persuasive as it may seem at first read.
Second, i specifically asked about this part of the process prior to the Topic Area Ballot voting. Last year, there had been some pushback at the fact that not every submitted topic paper was placed on the topic area ballot. i asked for community feedback on what role the TC should play - are we a filter, making selections? should there be no filter role, and instead our job simply being to transfer whatever is submitted to the ballot? The response was near universal that we should engage in filtering, making judgments that include some items and exclude others. i engaged the community in dialogue on this question for this very reason - so that there wouldn't be any post-hoc complaints that the TC was playing gatekeeper. Once the response was clear that the TC being a gatekeeper was desired, that same logic was applied in the second phase, the Resolution Ballot. Thus, we made choices about what went on the ballot and what got kept off. Although this was our modus operandi for the 2017 topic process, we are not required to employ the same logic next year and if there is strong opinion that the TC should operate differently, we will.
These are generic reasons for why the TC wasn't persuaded by that reasoning. As for specific reasons why the TC ultimately didn't include Straussian options on the ballot, some TC members (not all) didn't feel there was enough time to fully 'vet' the idea, others were persuaded by the Facechat posts arguing that these options don't avoid T/Framework debates sufficiently to the degree claimed (i.e., no solvency for the cited harms), and others were simply suspicious that the most vocal advocates for options proposed as being an olive branch/life preserver for K teams were folks whose history is not one very friendly to K Affs.
As noted in my last post, i do think David Strauss should be commended for his attempt to address the issue (i.e., i'm not one who discounted his proposal due to suspicions that he was offering a trojan horse resolution wording), and strongly believe that all of us should be using the next 10 months to continue the discussion so that perhaps we can come up with ideas for how to maximize the best debates over the subjects that are most important to the best education our activity can deliver.
Hester,
Thanks for the reply. So there were people on the TC avidly against it being made an option for the community to vet/discuss for a month and vote upon, as opposed to just being opposed to the proposal?
I think that distinction matters, a lot -- and I can see reasons that might have been the case (there are things I would feel that way about myself), but if either you/someone else who was there during that process or better yet the people themselves could speak to what the warrants were for choice bad, I would appreciate it.
1. it confuses me, bc for many of the reasons Strauss has explained it's tough for me to fathom how the squo can be net-better, and so i'd like to understand; 2. more importantly, getting that reasoning out there seems like the only real way to find a proposal agreeable enough to the key players that we avoid a repeat of this next year.
Thanks for the reply. So there were people on the TC avidly against it being made an option for the community to vet/discuss for a month and vote upon, as opposed to just being opposed to the proposal?
I think that distinction matters, a lot -- and I can see reasons that might have been the case (there are things I would feel that way about myself), but if either you/someone else who was there during that process or better yet the people themselves could speak to what the warrants were for choice bad, I would appreciate it.
1. it confuses me, bc for many of the reasons Strauss has explained it's tough for me to fathom how the squo can be net-better, and so i'd like to understand; 2. more importantly, getting that reasoning out there seems like the only real way to find a proposal agreeable enough to the key players that we avoid a repeat of this next year.
