I may be wrong about this, but I thought back in the day the topic meeting was later and there were problems with it being scheduled on top of the myriad of high school camps happening across the nation. So, it seems like we will once again run into that problem if we move it to July. And that is in addition to the problems that Chief identified with the holiday date.
In addition, it seems to me that we have taken the process to a new height of complexification (I don't think that's a word, but you all get what I'm saying). I love the democratic nature of the process. I have participated on just about every level - contributing to topic papers, working on wording papers, going to the meeting, and watching the meeting from afar...and it seems to me that, using my limited knowledge of the group process learned from my undergraduate Small Group Communication textbook, we need to narrow down the participants at some point in order for this to produce the best results. I just think we've gotten to a point where we have "too many cooks in the kitchen" and the product is ending up as a compromised product (compromise is good early on - contribution is good early on - the more ideas the better early on, but at some point, we need to have a decision-making team that is smaller and more able to narrow down the choices we produce in the early process).
I feel like we are a group of people (as a national body) who have many different philosophies on what this activity should entail and many different argumentative likes and dislikes...and I feel like the topic committee meetings have become a battle ground where the goal is to insure that those beliefs take shape in the form of the resolution. This used to take shape in the form of a debate - in the form of a plan text - in the form of an affirmative case or a negative strategy, but now I feel like the goal is to have the resolution make those decisions for us as participants. And I feel like what ends up happening is we take something that many of us are excited about the prospect of debating (immigration, energy, etc.) and we turn it into something that NO ONE is excited about debating (visa policy, grants for coal and oil production, etc.) because when no one is happy, we're all "even". I would like to get back to a place where a majority of people are happy with the resolutions, even if it means that we aren't all "even" - so, maybe some years, I'm unhappy with the topic, but a majority of people are happy. Maybe other years, I'm with the majority but a few other people aren't. That seems like a better prospect to me than years where we have no one who is really happy with the product from the topic meeting.
I could be totally off-base about this - maybe a majority of you out there are totally happy about the resolution choices. If so, I will slink away quietly believing the majority has spoken, as it should be. But, I feel like there has to be SOME disappointment that an "energy policy" topic resulted in the grammatically complex and limited resolutions that are on the ballot.
Again, I want to make clear that this is in NO WAY an insult thrown at the topic committee - their job is a thankless one every year. But, it is a question about the PROCESS in which they are placed and the soundness of the process from a communication, productivity and creative problem-solving standpoint.