Two of the rounds were legitimate losses. Somehow the 3 page text of the actual bill didn't make it into my backpack, so we allowed an easily avoidable vagueness point to plague that round. The other round we lost to a team running abolish civil-asset-forfeiture. Stupid non-topical case. We ran about 4 or 5 different topical strategies against it and 1 disadvantage which wasn't even finished. That round was a pain for us, but I agree with the judge's decision. However, the third round we lost was due to a topical counter-plan, and I would vehemently disagree with the judge's vote on that. She claimed that she didn't oppose topical CP's, but her decision showed otherwise, as I think we adequately defended our position that the negative team must refute the affirmative plan and not the resolution. She had also judged the affirmative team in the past, and seemed fairly comfortable chatting with them before the round began, so there was a little bias involved. Anyway, the superior solvency of our counter-plan to abolish the corporate tax rather than reduce it was never really contested, and we should have won on that issue alone. 100% solvency was one of our voters. The judge decided that "topical CP = bad" as a voter outweighed better solvency on a net benefits scale. Lame. I can't believe we failed to break because we ran a topical CP. There is no justice in the debate world. : \
Heh. I sounded like such a nerd when I wrote that 2.5 years ago. And to think that pre-college, homeschool debate is supposed to improve our English. There's a fanciful idea...
Two of the rounds were legitimate losses. Somehow the 3 page text of the actual bill didn't make it into my backpack, so we allowed an easily avoidable vagueness point to plague that round. The other round we lost to a team running abolish civil-asset-forfeiture. Stupid non-topical case. We ran about 4 or 5 different topical strategies against it and 1 disadvantage which wasn't even finished. That round was a pain for us, but I agree with the judge's decision. However, the third round we lost was due to a topical counter-plan, and I would vehemently disagree with the judge's vote on that. She claimed that she didn't oppose topical CP's, but her decision showed otherwise, as I think we adequately defended our position that the negative team must refute the affirmative plan and not the resolution. She had also judged the affirmative team in the past, and seemed fairly comfortable chatting with them before the round began, so there was a little bias involved. Anyway, the superior solvency of our counter-plan to abolish the corporate tax rather than reduce it was never really contested, and we should have won on that issue alone. 100% solvency was one of our voters. The judge decided that "topical CP = bad" as a voter outweighed better solvency on a net benefits scale. Lame. I can't believe we failed to break because we ran a topical CP. There is no justice in the debate world. : \
ReplyDeleteHeh. I sounded like such a nerd when I wrote that 2.5 years ago. And to think that pre-college, homeschool debate is supposed to improve our English. There's a fanciful idea...
DeleteLIFE isn't fair Josephus
ReplyDelete