WUDC 2012 Adjudication Webseminar 1

From http://dlsuworlds.wordpress.com/

The hardworking DLSU Worlds Adjudication team will be producing webseminars on adjudication in the run up to WUDC in December in Manila.

Here is the very first one — An Introduction to Adjudication. Web seminar 1 comes with slides on an introduction to adjudication and a video of a debate complete with oral adjudication from the co-CA Sam Block. So if you want to hear their thoughts on adjudication issues, pick up some new methods of tracking debates, hear Sam’s oral adjudication and compare your notes with his, take the DLSU Worlds 2012 Webseminar 1. Enjoy!


DLSU Worlds 2012 Webseminar 1 Slides: An Introduction
Practice Debate 1: THB national sporting teams should reflect the diversity of the national population
Oral Adjudication 1
DLSU Adjudication Webseminar 1 Notes

Eliminated debaters making the judge break?

Steve at Progymnasmata has an interesting article based on a mail from Paul Gross of the University of Vermont.  The proposal is to allow eliminated debaters to be considered for the judge break. You can read the full article here but in the meantime here is a comment I have posted to the article:



I can see the benefit on paper of doing this. I was DCA at a tournament where a former world champion was debating with a fresher and just missed the break. They would have been a great addition to the judging pool but we could not use them. However that said you would generally expect that the best debaters would be in the elimination rounds. Therefore if it is a small tournament (say 20 teams) you will find that half of the speakers will have made the break and the speakers you are left with may not add quality to the judging pool.



Tournaments which are large enough to attract a depth of quality teams that means many potentially good judges will miss the debating break are also tournaments that attract a good depth of quality judges. You need to make sure that breaking as a judge does not become a consolation prize for the 3-4 teams just outside the break. If this happens it reduces the incentive for people to come and judge the whole tournament. Why would you slog through 6-7 preliminary rounds as a judge only to be told we don’t want you in the break because debaters who failed to make the break are still regarded as better judges.


Also for many people adjudication is as competitive as debating. Having been CA or DCA at a number of large tournaments I can tell you the couple hours after the break are a rollercoaster of reactions. You will get some judges coming to you and thanking you for giving them a chance. However you will also get many judges who are angry and extremely disappointed at missing the break. Some take it to extremes and if they were judging a bubble final preliminary round you could not be certain that the judge break will not be a factor in their decision. If they have estimated that they are just hanging onto one of the last slots in the judge break would you trust them to eliminate a team that will probably then push them out of the judge break?


The proposal has some merit but I think it should be a potential option rather than a default option. Add the potential to call up an eliminated debater into the judge break to the arsenal of the adjudication team BUT it should be an exceptional event. If it becomes a regular event then I fear it will have an adverse impact.

Message from the Berlin Bid adjudicators

Greetings! We’re both incredibly excited to serving as co-Chief Adjudicators for Berlin WUDC 2013.


Of course, we can’t reveal our favourite motions to you or name our DCA panel before applications have even opened, but we’d like to set out the principles by which we propose to manage the adjudication of the World Championships:

1) We believe that motions should be serious, challenging, and fair.
Perhaps the most important aspect of serving as part of the adjudication team is setting motions that will offer debaters a chance to engage with interesting issues.
To that end, we will:
· ‘Fairness test’ all of our motions, debating them in secret amongst the adjudication team to ensure that there are a wide range of arguments available to both sides.
· Publish full statistics following the tournament regarding the performance of teams from each position on the table.
· Ensure that all of our motions would be accessible to a well-informed global citizen. There should be no requirement to have specialist knowledge in order to have a good debate.

2) We believe in due respect for ESL and EFL debating.
We don’t regard the ESL or EFL breaks as trivialities, but as integral components of the experience that is the World Championships.

To that end, we will:
· Manage the tab to ensure that teams with a strong chance of breaking in any division (including ESL and EFL) receive the highest-quality adjudicators and the best opportunities for thorough and constructive feedback.
· Set aside at least one DCA space for an ESL or EFL candidate.
· Ensure that motions selected for break rounds in all divisions reflect the importance of these public debates and offer the advancing teams the best possible opportunity to display their talents.
· Severely punish teams that ‘throw’ debates. In the past, certain teams have judged themselves out of contention for the open break and have treated their third-day debates flippantly, causing chaos in their rooms and disadvantaging teams who were in contention for other break categories.

3) We believe that top-quality adjudication is indispensable.
Every speaker’s ambitions depend upon having a team of experienced adjudicators to dispense judgment and feedback. Our priority over the coming months will be assembling the best judging pool that money can subsidise.

To that end, we will:
· Set aside the registration fees and defray travel expenses for top adjudicators from around the world.
· Work with our DCAs to build adjudication skills in developing societies.
· Announce, within the next several weeks, a list of top adjudicators who have tentatively agreed to judge at Berlin Worlds 2013.
· As at Koc, manage a full feedback system for chairs on wings, wings on chairs, and teams on chairs, taking the results very seriously when managing judging allocations in the preliminary rounds and the break.

Thanks for taking the time to read through our adjudication policy. If you have any comments or queries, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

We look forward in hope to seeing you in Berlin!

All the Best,

Sharmila and Doug

Guide to Chairing and Adjudicating a Worlds Debate

With Worlds approaching most of the attention will be on the debaters.  However equally important is the quality of adjudication.  The Botswana adjudication team have published an excellent adjudication briefing on http://www.botswanaworlds.com/. With that in mind this is a good time to republish the official guide to Chairing and Adjudicating a Worlds Debate to supplement the briefing by Botwsana.  Anyone travelling to Worlds as a judge (or even as a debater) should read and understand this guide.

Guide to Chairing and Adjudicating a Worlds Debate

by Omar Salahuddin Abdullah, Ian Lising, Steven Johnson and others

1. INTRODUCTION
This booklet is intended as a guide, to assist you in performing effectively in your principle role as an adjudicator in this competition, and to help you fulfil the other important responsibilities that are likely to be asked of you. These include things like: convening and chairing a debate, keeping time, conducting a post-debate adjudicators' discussion, and finally giving feedback and results to debaters. We understand that every experienced adjudicator will have developed an individual method for the way in which he or she runs a debate, records that debate, and gives feedback to teams and individual speakers. We are also aware that the type, quality and duration of experience will vary considerably from one individual adjudicator to another in a tournament of this type.



2. ORAL ADJUDICATION: BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
For the first time, in 1998, adjudicators were asked to give an oral adjudication, or feedback, at the conclusion of each of the first six rounds of debating (preliminaries). It is designed to accomplish a number of objectives; all of these being established by Council in response to the needs of debaters as they have been expressed over the years. The first of these relates, of course, to the development of better debating. It has been a criticism of the World's format in the past that debaters, teams and coaches have almost no access to the kind of constructive criticism that would allow them to hone their skills during the preliminary rounds of the competition. Moreover, teams could only guess at how well they were doing during this stage, based primarily on the kind of company they were debating in as the early rounds progressed.

With the introduction of an oral adjudication, delivered by the Chairperson, at the end of a debate, the debaters will know their finishing position (first to last) and the points (3 to 0) that they will have been awarded for that particular debate. Similarly, the adjudication will indicate how and why the adjudicators have arrived at their decision and precisely what teams and individual speakers did well, and what they did not do so well (constructive criticism). The oral adjudication then provides debaters with exactly the kind of constructive criticism that they need.

The second group of objectives relates to the development and refinement of adjudication at Worlds. Oral adjudication provides an insight into the way that adjudicators observe and adjudicate debates; one that will not only benefit debaters, but also adjudicators. The discussion leading to the decision-making stage gains a new importance as the Chair now has to advance the collective opinions of the panel in order to justify the unanimous or consensus decisions that are made when the feedback is given. This encourages all of the adjudicators on a panel to be particularly considerate and careful in the processes of observation, recording, decision-making, justification and tabulation.


3. COMPETITION ADJUDICATION

3.1 Pre-Competition Workshops
In every major international competition these days, all those registered as adjudicators for the duration of the competition will have to attend a seminar/workshop. It is important that you attend this seminar, even though you have a wealth of experience in World's adjudication. This is because the Chief Adjudicator for the competition will have certain specific things that he/she will want you to focus upon in your adjudication and, as these will differ in perspective from previous competitions that you have attended, you will need to know them too.

Similarly, once you register as an adjudicator, you can expect to adjudicate in all of the preliminary rounds of that competition. If you are adjudicating well, and the feedback that the Chief Adjudicator's Panel is getting on your post-debate discussions is good, then you might be honoured with selection to adjudicate after the break. In this light, once you register as an adjudicator, you should commit yourself to acquitting that responsibility until the Chief Adjudicator indicates that your services are no longer required. This means turning up to every briefing on time and in an appropriate physical and mental state.


3.2 Rules and Regulations
As an adjudicator, you should take some to familiarise yourself with the rules of the competition. Any questions that you think you might want to ask during the seminar should be noted down, no matter how silly you might think them to be. Even if you don't ask them during the seminar proper, you can always approach one of the adjudication panel immediately after the seminar is over.

3.3 Testing and Accreditation
Each of these pre-competition seminars will end in an examination or test. This commonly takes the form of an adjudication of a live exhibition debate, staged there and then, or the observation and assessment of prerecorded videotape of a selected World's style match. At the end of the test-debate, you will be given some time to go through your notes, arrive at a decision (finishing positions) and then give your justification for this in written form. Your familiarity with Worlds’ Rules will also be tested. This will result in your name joining a pool of adjudicators with similar levels of skill, something which will in turn permit the Panel adjudicator in charge of the adjudicators tab to balance the panels (members) in terms of experience and skills.


4. RUNNING THE DEBATE

4.1 Getting There
Adjudicators should get into the habit of carrying around what might be recognised as 'the tools of the trade', or an adjudicator's kit, if you prefer. At the very least, this must consist of a pad of paper and a writing implement. A watch is fairly essential. You should have a digital watch if no stopwatch is available to you, just so that you can time speeches for yourself.

You will be part of a briefing that precedes each and every round. This is your opportunity to ask the Chief Adjudicator and members of his/her panel for any further clarification of the rules, their application and for help in solving any problems that you are having in your adjudication of your rounds. This also an opportunity to address your particular concerns to that same panel. Similarly, listen to any announcements regarding adjudication processes that are made during these briefings.

At some time during the briefing, the match-ups will be either displayed on a screen (via OHP transparency or 'Power Point' slides), or photocopies of the draw will be handed out. These lists will tell you which room you will be adjudicating in, who will be on the panel with you and which one of you will be chairing the panel. You will also know which teams you will be adjudicating and the respective positions that they will be debating in.

The other things that you should consider, as the list of matches is revealed;

Whether there is a potential conflict of interests created because you have been scheduled to adjudicate your own university, or people with whom you have relationships that are likely to bias your judgement.

Whether you have adjudicated one or more of the teams in the forthcoming round more than twice in succession.

Whether there are other things that make the potential adjudication of that match difficult for you, and therefore likely to affect your adjudication of the round.

Raise these concerns with either the Chief Adjudicator, or one of his/her panel of deputies, as soon as you recognise them.

At the appointed time, the motion will be released to both debaters and adjudicators. You should write this down as well, checking tomake sure that you have the exact wording, as it is given. Debates should commence fifteen minutes after the motion has been announced (Worlds’ Rulebook 3:1.3), so you should arrive at the venue of your match at least two or three minutes before that.

When the time has come for the debate to start, the Chair of the panel of adjudicators should start things off by calling teams into the room and saying something like, "I call this house to order". The Chair may then make some opening remarks.

The panel member responsible for timing speeches starts his or her watch as soon as the speaker starts speaking (not as soon as he or she stands up, clears the throat or shuffles some papers).


4.2 Being There
From that point onwards, the debate progresses with speakers being thanked for speaking by the Chair (functioning as nominal Speaker of the House) as they conclude their speeches, and subsequent speakers being introduced by title, position or name, or combinations of these, as their turn comes to speak.

The panel member responsible for keeping time should try to give clearly audible signals (Worlds’ Rulebook 4:1.6). A sharp slap or knock on a flat surface (such as a table or a book-rest) with the flat of the hand will normally suffice. If a speaker begins to run overtime, it is not necessary to knock continuously, or otherwise signal that the prescribed optimum time is being exceeded. Good time management should be the responsibility of individual speakers and their teams, not the timekeeper. In this regard, it might be a good idea for the Chair of the panel to remind speakers during the opening commentary that it is acceptable for speakers to receive time signals from their teammates.

Other than these invitations, thanks and time-signals, the adjudicators do not interfere in the debate, being involved in taking notes which detail the process and progress of the debate and observing those aspects detailed in the Worlds’ Rulebook 8-12: 3.1-4.4. The only time at which an interjection may become necessary from the Chair of the panel is in the event that teams or individuals are becoming unacceptably and inappropriately obtrusive during the speeches of other members. This will be times at which the members not holding the floor have begun to indulge in behaviour that amounts to things like heckling, barracking and the advancement of otherwise malicious interruptions in the speech of the member holding the floor.

It should be noted that these terms are subjective, and that the competition attracts many different styles of debating which are acceptable and appropriate in such a forum (Worlds’ Rulebook 11: 4.4.2). However, when adjudicators on a panel begin to feel that the manner of members is becoming inappropriate in such cases, then the issuance of a verbal warning to that effect, directed towards the individual, team or bench that is behaving in such a way, allows those thus warned to amend such behaviour before adjudicators begin to penalise them for the perceived breach of debating decorum. At this point, the Chair may call for “order” to be restored to the round. In this way, a clear signal is sent to those verging on the offensive and they have the option to curtail that behaviour before it begins to affect their own team's manner marks.

Remember that what is, or is not, acceptable to you in this context is largely a matter of common sense, but it is better to send a clear signal to debaters in danger of overstepping these bounds before it starts affecting their marks/grades for the debate and allow them the benefit of the doubt up to that point.

If you are concerned that someone has overstepped these bounds, whether subjective or not, discuss this matter with the others on your panel at the conclusion of the debate before you reach a hard and fast conclusion.

4.3 Note-taking and making
The note-taking/making process is an important one. Not only should such notes provide you with a fairly complete description of the debate after it has been concluded, it should also present you with concrete reasons why you have reached your own particular conclusions as to how individual speakers and each of the four teams has performed. You should try to record, for example, the degree to which individuals we keeping in touch with the dynamics of the debate through things like POIs and intersections. You should also be able to indicate, within a particular speech, whether POls have been accepted, when, what they consisted of and how the speaker holding the floor at the time responded to them.

You should also be able to track the logic and flow of an argument or idea through your own notation and determine whether statements have been left largely unsupported (asserted) (Worlds’ Rulebook 8: 3.3), whether speeches have a reasonable balance and are consistent (Worlds’ Rulebook 8: 3.3.3-3.3.4) and whether speakers have misrepresented things said earlier in the debate, among other things.

An individual adjudicator’s approach to note taking is likely to be markedly different from person to person. The main thing is that you develop a means of accurately charting what has happened in the debate.


4.4 The Observation Process
The observation process is also important. You should be watching how readily a speaker's manner develops a rapport with the audience (if any - or your panel, if not), how she or he stands, gesticulates and is expressive during the delivery of their speech. Similarly, you should watch for things such as how members not holding the floor continue to communicate with each other during the course of the debate and maintain contact with it through the POI and more general interaction (appropriate reactions to statements being made; laughter, etc.).


4.5 Conclusion of the Round
When the last speaker has concluded his/her remarks and retaken his/her seat, it is customary for the Speaker, or Chair of Adjudicators (in the event that he/she is taking the role of the Speaker of the House) to give the debaters "permission to cross the floor". This is so that teams can shake hands and congratulate each other on a successful debate.

It is pertinent at this point to tell members that they can withdraw while a decision is made by adjudicators, in which case they must all withdraw until asked to return to the room.




5. THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

5.1 The Integrity of Opinions, Decisions and Processes
Either way, the discussion that is then held between adjudication panel members is confidential, and its course and specifics should not be made known to individual debaters. This confidentiality is essential if adjudicators are to maintain a degree of professionalism, and neither to undermine, nor be undermined by, their fellow adjudicators.

Consensus decisions are exactly that. Different adjudicators see debates in different ways. That's exactly why we have panels of adjudicators. However, we should avoid making individual perceptions about a particular debate, or a particular adjudicator, common knowledge. This in no way restricts the kind of advice that you may be asked for by a particular speaker or team: it merely asks of you that you are considerate of your colleagues in advancing your own comments and suggestions.


5.2 Arriving at a Decision
At the end of the debate, your panel begins the process of discussion and decision-making. While the following is not presented as either a schedule or a checklist for this process, it is clear that these major components will each have to feature somewhere in the process of your deliberations.


5.3 Time to Reflect
The first thing that should happen, after the debaters, audience and television crew (it happens!) have left the room, is that the panelists should take a few minutes to review their notes before any form of discussion begins. During this 'quiet time' individual panelists should highlight items, arguments, comments and so on, that they consider to be critical in terms of the debate, its outcomes and their respective decisions.

Don’t let any of your preconceptions or individual knowledge on the motion affect the outcome of the round. It is absolutely unacceptable for a judge to say, “If I were in the round, this is what I would have said. And since they failed to bring that up, they should be penalised for it.” Your decision should not be based on what wasn’t or what should have been what said, but ONLY on what was said by the debaters during the round.

Don't let any of your preconceptions about the degree of difficulty imposed bv the wording of the motion on teams (on either side) create notions of sympathy which then bias your grading in their favour (or against them).

Do consider each team (and speaker) as having a specific range of roles that they must fulfill in the debate. Teams and speakers have responsibilities and roles which are often markedly different, but nonetheless vital to the successful progress of a debate.

Don't lose sight of the balance in an individual speech. There should be a natural and appropriate portion of time devoted to definitions, rebuttal arguments, the development of arguments in support of a case, summaries, and responses to questions and challenges. A speaker who spends six minutes haranguing the opposition and only starts on his or her portion of the split as the second single knock of the gavel sounds is not delivering a very balanced speech! Keep an eye on the watch as speakers move through transitions from one phase of a speech to another. Not all speakers will 'signpost' these transitions, but you must endeavour to recognise them anyway.

Do continually test arguments for their logical development, relevance to the case being presented (or argued against) and the validity of any support (examples, models, statistics, etc.) that is delivered in respect of these arguments.

Don't ignore cries of misrepresentation, squirreling, self-serving definitions, slides and so on. Check these claims against your notes before you judge them to have been validly or invalidly made.

Do enjoy the debate, but don't communicate anything specific to the debaters as you observe it and take notes. This is sometimes as innocent as an inadvertent nod of the head at the moment that a speaker advances the weakest argument in the history of parliamentary debating, but the apparently duplicitous nod suddenly makes it appear to be potentially the best one, and suddenly the whole complexion of the debate changes. The key here is to be sufficiently conscious of your own body language and reactions to keep them consistent with the kind of normal reaction that a speaker is trying to evoke (laughter, seriousness, etc.).

Don't get too caught up with technicalities, minor infringements of the rules as you interpret them, or pet likes and dislikes. You should be viewing the debate from the macro-level as much as from the level of its sophistication, its intricacies and technical complexity. An adjudicator who penalises a speaker for '...gesticulating with their left hand too much', or wearing a blouse that clashes with their handbag, is definitely missing the point somewhere.

5.4 Panel Decisions
Panel Decisions are final

Panels have to place the four teams in the debate round, as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. 1st ranked team has won the round, and the 4th ranked team has finished last in the debate round.

No two teams can be placed in the same rank

The total team scores must reflect the rankings of the team, and no two teams should have the same total team scores.

A Consensus decision is when all members of the panel agree on the rank of a team.

A complete consensus decision is when every single team rank has been decided through a series of consensus decisions amongst the panel members. The panel therefore had complete unanimity over all the team ranking decisions.

A majority decision is when a majority of the panel members agree on the rank of a team.

A complete majority decision is when every single team rank has been decided only by majority decisions.

A partial Consensus-Majority decision is when the panel is in consensus over some rank/s and made majority decisions over the other rank/s.

There can be either a complete consensus decision, a complete majority decision or a partial Consensus-Majority decision.

A panel should discuss all pertinent issues of the debate adequately, and deal with all concerns of panel members.

Chairs have the discretion to end discussions on particular issues or on the whole debate, if they find the discussion to cease being constructive or not progress.



5.5 Panel Members
Members should contribute constructively and the chair of the panel is obliged to promote fair exchange of ideas on the debate, amongst panel members.

Panel members should provide their brief read of the debate, focusing on their main concerns and observations before the panel tries to reach a decision

Panels are encouraged to arrive at a consensus, however the final decision to cast a vote is the privy of individual panel members. Panel members should vote according to their conscience, and not according to expediency.

A panel member can shift positions on an issue or the whole debate during/after the discussion process, because the discussion has convinced them it is appropriate to shift position. Panel members are warned not to shift positions purely because of the experience, reputation and intimidation of any panel members or panel chair.



5.6 Chair of panel
Assumes the role of facilitator, mediator and leader of panel.

Have NOT failed to fulfill their roles if there is no complete consensus decision or if they find themselves in the minority of a majority decision.

Should encourage panel members to offer their opinion or observations of the debate.

Have to respect the views of all members of the panel.

Should organise the thread of discussion, in order to cover all concerns of panel members as much as possible.

Use discretion when ending a discussion on a particular issue or the debate as a whole, and resort to a vote.



5.7 Agreeing on grades for speakers and teams
Panelists should then move on to confer on grades for teams and speakers. You should reach agreement on these things if you can, because it makes the work of the tabulation crew that much less complicated, and they can look forward to living longer and more productive lives. While the rules allow for a degree of flexibility within the grade bandwidths that you have already decided upon, you've managed to achieve consensus thus far, so why not push your luck a little further!

One way to approach this is to try and agree on the standard of the debate as a whole. As the power-matching software starts to spread things out nice and evenly after about round three, you should find this progressively easier to do as the competition goes on, because there should be an increasing level of similarity in the strengths and skills of teams debating in each match. Remember that you still have a little flexibility within a particular grade (or band) in terms of the marks that can be awarded to an individual speaker, so you can still use this range to reflect your own opinions. However, remember also that the marks of the two speakers, when added together, must still equate with the overall grade that has been agree for the team.


5.8 Filling in adjudication sheets
At this point, the panelists can begin to fill in their adjudication sheets, with perhaps one last communal cheek through what has been agreed and what the final decision is, just to make absolutely sure. It may also be a good idea at this stage for the Chair to ask for any points that the panelists would like incorporated into the oral adjudication of the debate.

Decide on finishing positions.

Fill in the Speed Ballot form [Chair].

Check that the Speed Ballot has been filled in correctly [Panelists].

Summon a 'runner'.

Send the Speed Ballot off to the Tab Room.

Decide team grades.

Contribute and summarise points to be included in the feedback.

Call teams back into the room.

Commence the oral adjudication.

Fill in the adjudication sheets, completing all mark and grade boxes and appending comments where relevant or required.

Give all the completed forms to a runner before you leave the room, floor or area.

Once members have settled again, the Chair will then begin the oral adjudication


6. EVALUATING COMPETING LINES OF ARGUMENT
While the broad categories of “matter” and “manner” serve as touchstones for evaluation, they focus mainly on assessing the qualities of an individual’s performance in the round. Manner is concerned with the style and structure of a speaker’s presentation—delivery, organization, and language use—while matter is concerned with the content and analysis of an individual’s presentation—that a speaker’s arguments are relevant, logical and consistent with his or her team’s or side’s positions.

While useful, these categories do not provide the adjudicator guidance on how to weigh competing lines of argument. Though the adjudication of a Worlds round does not require that the adjudicators declare a winning “side” in the debate, the debaters involved will almost unfailingly be concerned with whether the Government or Opposition prevailed on the question. Moreover, successful adjudication of a round in the Worlds style—that is, the ranking of teams from best to worst—must be concerned with the comparison of each team’s positions relative to the other teams’ positions.

Adjudicators, both when adjudicating the debate and when articulating the panel’s decision to the debaters in the oral adjudication, should pay particular attention to three elements of the argument: the issue over which the debate is contested; the standard by which the arguments on either side of the issue may be assessed; and the appraisal of each team’s arguments relative to that standard.


6.1 Identifying the Issue
All debates may be characterized as a clash of arguments over an issue—some statement that serves as the ideological dividing line between Government and Opposition argumentative ground. Identifying the issue in a debate is the first step toward successfully adjudicating the competing arguments in the round.

Ideally, the issue is made clear early in the debate, either by the motion or by the Government. The majority of Worlds-style debates will have as their central issue the motion as announced. This is particularly true when the motion is exceptionally clear: “This house believes that making Yassar Arafat a partner in peace was a mistake” or “This house would make company directors criminally liable for the wrongs of their companies” are examples of motions that define clear ground for the Government and Opposition and, therefore, serve as the primary issue in the debate.

Other motions are less useful as issue statements. Motions that allow the Government room to interpret the topic and define the focus of the debate are less likely to function as issue statements. A motion such as “This house believes that religious leaders should listen to public opinion” may be supported by a general case in which a Government offers arguments that clergy should be responsive to their followers or it may motivate a Government to run a specific case that is derived from the motion. When presented with the motion above, for example, the Government could choose to run a case that argues the Catholic church should be more proactive in acknowledging and addressing issues of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests. When the Government chooses to define a case that is more specific than the motion offered, the central issue in the round typically is the thesis of the case offered by the Government, not the motion itself.

While the issue statement will usually be explicit in the round, there will be cases in which neither side makes apparent the central issue in the round. In this case, the adjudicator must articulate an issue as a starting point for his or her adjudication. When doing so, an adjudicator should phrase an issue statement that is clear and balanced. To be clear, an issue statement should define ground for both the Government and Opposition team in a way that makes obvious their responsibilities. A balanced issue statement will avoid expressing the controversy in a way that might be weighted toward one side or the other.


6.2 Determining the Appropriate Standard for Evaluation
In all decisions, the adjudicator will utilize some criterion or criteria to make his or her assessment of the arguments advanced by the debaters. For example, when adjudicating a debate on the motion “This House believes the International Monetary Fund has done more to harm than help the global condition,” an adjudicator must be able to determine how to evaluate relatively the instances of the IMF “harming” and “helping” the global condition as argued by the debaters. Should impact to local economies be prioritized over facilitating the transition to a global economy? Should concern for effects on the environment and workers’ rights be subjugated to the long-term benefits of capitalism? How should the deterioration of state sovereignty be weighed against the benefits of global trading opportunities?

The issue statement for the debate will usually contain some term or phrase that will serve as the standard for evaluating the competing arguments of each side. This term or phrase typically expresses some evaluation of the subject under consideration. Consider the previously mentioned motion: “This house believes that making Yassar Arafat a partner in peace was a mistake.” In this example, the term that proposes an evaluation of Arafat’s performance is “mistake.” In other words, to evaluate the competing arguments in the round, the adjudicator will employ as his or her standard whether the examples of Arafat’s performance offered by each side constitute a “mistake.” For this term to function as a standard, the adjudicator must know what constitutes a “mistake.” For the IMF motion, the adjudicator must understand what is meant by “the global condition” before he or she may determine which side has best substantiated the impact of the IMF on the global condition. Thus, the nature and definition of the “global condition” becomes the standard for evaluating the competing arguments.

In an ideal situation, the debaters would make clear the standard to be used to weigh competing arguments in the round. The definition of the pertinent term or phrase would be made clear by the Government side and their all arguments would be made relevant to that definition. Similarly, the Opposition would recognize the Government’s definition and orient their arguments toward that standard as well. For example, if “mistake” in the Arafat motion was defined as “anything that has served to impede the progress toward peace,” both the Government and Opposition would align their arguments for Arafat’s influence with an eye toward proving that his presence has affected—either positively or negatively—the progress toward peace.

More typically, however, both sides in a round will have competing standards for evaluating their arguments. With the IMF motion, the Government may defend the escalating Gross Domestic Product of IMF beneficiaries while the Opposition may argue that the austerity measures imposed by the IMF cause significant damage to social programs. Without a clear standard advanced by either side, the adjudicator is left to decide how to evaluate these competing positions. In cases where the respective sides in the debate have failed to “agree” on a particular standard, the adjudicator must determine the standard for evaluating the competing arguments.

When determining a standard, the adjudicator should acknowledge the Government’s responsibility to define the terms of the motion. Assuming that the Government has defined the terms, particularly the term or phrase that will serve as the standard for the competing arguments, some presumption should be given their definition regardless of whether the Opposition chooses to orient their arguments toward that standard. The criteria of clarity and balance applied to the issue statement are also relevant to the definitions offered by the Government: any definition of a standard should increase the clarity of the debate and should not exclude the potential for Opposition argument.

Frequently, however, the Government will fail to define the pertinent term or phrase and the adjudicator will be required to extract a standard for evaluation from the arguments made by both sides in the debate. In the IMF example, the arguments that a beneficiary country’s GDP has improved following IMF intervention and that austerity measures have had a detrimental impact on the social welfare of a country may both be true. The adjudicator must then decide how to compare the competing arguments. Ideally, the debaters will give cues on how to do so in their own argumentation. In this instance, the arguments relevant in the round are focused on the effect of IMF involvement on the beneficiary country. While this may not evaluate the consequences of IMF actions on “the global condition” as most would understand the “global condition” (i.e.: as more broad reaching than the effect of the IMF on a single country) it is what the debaters have opted to focus on. To penalize either side for failing to make the arguments the adjudicator believes would be most appropriate is not sound adjudication.

In such a case, directed by the arguments the debaters have made, the adjudicator may extract a standard of “impact to the beneficiary country.” He or she would then evaluate competing arguments about the benefits or harms of IMF involvement from the perspective of how those outcomes may affect a beneficiary country.


6.3 Appraising the Arguments
Once a standard has been determined, the adjudicator must compare the arguments made in the round to that standard. At this point, the adjudicator should appraise each argument for its relevance to the standard. That relevance may be measured in two ways.

Initially, relevance may be measured from a quantitative perspective. The adjudicator may appraise a side’s arguments for the impact the totality of those arguments has on the standard. More positions relevant to the standard, using a strict quantitative perspective, mean that a particular side should prevailed. If the Government offers five examples of how Arafat’s presence has diminished the prospects for peace to the Opposition’s two examples of how Arafat has improved the prospects for peace, the Government would likely prevail. This perspective, however, has limited utility on its own.

Arguments must also be appraised from a qualitative perspective in which the adjudicator assesses the significance of each argument’s impact to the standard. Some examples or arguments will be more relevant the standard than others. Building off the previous example, the adjudicator may believe that the two arguments offered by the Opposition are more relevant to the standard—perhaps those two examples of how Arafat benefited the peace process were very detailed and specific whereas the Government’s five examples of Arafat’s detractions from the peace process were vague and ill developed. In this case, the Opposition would likely prevail.

Thus, a Worlds round might have a team present seven arguments, but have the opposing team address all of them sufficiently with just one. The most important point here is that the adjudicator account for each major line of argument advanced by the Government and Opposition and assess the merit of each of those arguments relative to the standard.


6.4 Conclusion
This approach to adjudication of the round is most useful for clearly articulating a basis for decision in a verbal adjudication. Verbal adjudications may be structured around these three concepts quite simply.

The Chair of a panel may open an oral adjudication by identifying the issue that divided the Government and Opposition ground in the debate; this may be as simple as saying “The central issue in the round was whether involving Arafat in the peace process was a mistake.” From there, the Chair would articulate the panel’s consensus as to the standard employed for evaluating the competing lines of argument: “The Panel understood that whether Arafat’s involvement would be considered a mistake depended upon whether he had contributed to or detracted from the peace process.” Finally, the Chair would sort through the major lines of argument advanced by each side to offer an appraisal of those each of those arguments relative to this standard.

An oral adjudication structured around these concepts will provide the debaters with the certainty that each of their respective arguments was weighed in the adjudicators’ consideration. That certainty will, in turn, demonstrate that the adjudicators were discharging their duties responsibly.



7. THE ORAL ADJUDICATION
As with things like note taking, individual adjudicators will each have their own way of giving an oral adjudication.

7.1 Announcing Positions
There is a division of opinion over whether it is best to announce results first and then give the feedback, or whether to give the feedback first and then announce the result. Our advice would be to adopt the former method, because it is questionable how much benefit teams and speakers can get if they are anxiously waiting for the result and you are, unconsciously perhaps, trying to give nothing away.


7.2 Opening Remarks
You may like to preface your remarks with a few comments on the quality and standard of the debate (coming from your discussions on an overall debate grade?). You may also indicate whether there was a unanimous agreement, or whether the panel encountered some resolvable disagreements in the course of its discussion (thereby indicating that the match might well have been very close in some respects).


7.3 The Framework and Content of your Feedback
As with the set-up for a debater's speech, an adjudicator's feedback should have 'matter' and 'manner'. You should also 'structure' your own intended feedback.

Give the finishing order, from team placing first in the debate (and therefore &winning' it), to that placing last.


7.4 The Overview
Then, proceed with the overview of the debate that your panel has assembled during your discussions, but keep it brief. Focus on the definition, the parameters and demands that this set up, the cases and major arguments that followed this, the challenges that these represented and the way that these challenges were met.

You should be able to trace the major issue(s) or themes that ran through the debate through this overview, as well as focusing on the ways in which various teams dealt with these.


7.5 Relative merits of teams, roles, cases, argumentation, etc.
It would then be a good idea to explain exactly why the debate has been awarded to a particular team, and consider the positions of the other teams relative to this. The reasons why teams have finished in the particular order that you have determined should then follow, with the relevant explanations offered as you go. You should conclude this phase by summarising what you have said, but by means of reference to the key arguments and issues that you outlined in your opening commentary. Comments about eye contact, off-key humming and torn jeans are probably not appropriate at this point.


7.6 Concluding
Your adjudication feedback might then move towards a conclusion with any specific comments on the roles, performance and style of individual speakers being offered. However, this should only be necessary in the event that an individual's speech has affected the debate, or a team's role, in a particularly critical way. Please try to keep your remarks in these cases constructively critical, perhaps softening what might be construed as negative criticism by picking out some positive aspects as well and mentioning them.



8. CONCLUSION

The main thing is that you enjoy the experience of adjudicating at Worlds and profit from this in the context of your own development as an adjudicator, and perhaps even as a debater. It comes down to one thing: common sense. If you continually apply that particular quality to the process of running, observing, discussing and assessing the debates that you will see, it will not only be you that gains. The debaters, the organisers and the competition that is Worlds Universities Debating will profit too.





The Adjudication Check-list

The phases of a debate adjudication : Observing the debate (which includes chairing and time-keeping if necessary), Discussion of the debate ( a session led by the chair of the panel) and giving the oral adjudication ( announce decision, provide reasons for decision and offer advice to debaters). The final phase is excluded for the final three preliminary rounds and the final series.


Observing the debate
Chairing the debate also includes the responsibility of keeping order in the debate, inviting speakers to speak and cautioning against inappropriate behaviour when warranted.

Discussing the debate
Matter and Manner contribution of each team should be discussed (along with Points of Information- as in the quality of the questions and the responses to them, which possesses both manner and matter elements)

All members of the panel are obliged to provide their read of the debate, and listen to the various views of the other members of the panel.

Chairs of panel should drive the discussion and attempt to move it forward. Use their discretion to end dead discussions and allow all panel members equal access to the discussion.

Oral Adjudication
Presented by the chair of the panel, or a member of the majority, if the chair is dissenting.

Announce the rankings before explaining the verdict (encouraged), if not the explanation would ambiguous and not constructive.

Explain to the debaters, why the panel/majority decided the team ranking in that order, so debaters can understand how the adjudicators distinguished the teams in terms of contribution and delivery.

Provide constructive advice (drawn collectively from the panel) for the debaters.

The Adjudication Hall of Fame: Room of forgotten skills by Omar

A guest post by former Worlds Council Chair Omar Salahuddin.  This article was originally posted on his Facebook account and Omar has given permission for it to be reproduced here.

The Adjudication Hall of Fame: Room of Forgotten Skills

A short while ago, probably still labouring under the naïve idea that something might happen to redress the iniquitous state that debate adjudication is in - and a recovery in aspects other than mere Matter-related ones might occur (Some hopes. I have more chance of experiencing spontaneous human combustion while exercising in the pool) (and we don’t even have a pool…), I penned a note in an effort at catharsis, still seething at some of the unremarkable adjudication that Dengkil Institute for the Terminally Insane’s debate squad had experienced during the MDO.

The effort was not in vain. I have managed to moderate ‘seething’ to ‘relatively unsettled’ and my psychiatric nurse has been able to reduce my medication, at least to the point where I am able to take other solid food now.

There was a surprising amount of feedback, actually. Some of it appended to the note on my Facebook page, some of it received via e-mail and even some that appeared on my phone: very terse comments in the case of the latter. What was surprising was that almost all those respondents that have amassed a reasonable length of adjudication experience seemed to agree with me; and I am not that familiar with finding others in agreement with the things that I say. Which prompted me to ask myself the question: ‘If everyone agrees, then how ever did debate adjudication get into the mess that it’s in right now?’

Fortunately, I would have been even more surprised if one of my other internalised doppelgangers had answered the question (Besides, my multiple personalities were far too busy playing ‘Hide the sausage’ beneath a temporal lobe and giggling a lot), but it got me thinking again – and I came up with another question: ‘If asked, what would I detail as being the things that the current flock of adjudicators no longer seem to take into account in their blinkered approach to assessing debating?’ After all, if one is critical, you should be able to put your mouth where the money is and mean it from the heart of your bottom – or something like that.
It wasn’t too hard to tell you the truth. I just thought of all the stuff that nobody seems to comment on anymore and started from there, then I started to seethe again, so here goes ‘cathartic effort #2’.
In no particular order (which probably means that there is a definitive order to what follows, it’s just that the trauma that has caused these deep-seated scars to form has been somewhat mollified by drugs, to say nothing of the medical applications of large quantities of alcohol – and besides which, I wrote them down as they occurred in my befuddled little mind and then couldn’t be bothered to cut and paste them into a different order. Suck it up!).

Engagement:

Engagement has become largely a matter of dynamic analysis, in that adjudicators seem to feel that they are present in the debate primarily to legislate on the extent to which the material a team develops has a definitive, quantifiable relationship to a similar volume of material being developed by the other side. This is both strange and inexcusable: strange, because debates should not be just about the presentation of loosely assembled, woefully prioritised and often poorly inter-related information and an assumed sense of ‘balance’ between these two - and inexcusable because it ignores all the other (and potentially more critical) aspects of engagement.



a) Humour, wit, cynicism and sarcasm:

As I have said before (and I guess the sheer number of ‘mention’s is now beginning to resemble a dirge; one of the less jaunty kinds, if there are, indeed, any jaunty dirges), the adjudicator that can properly evaluate the importance of manner-related aspects in a debate is as rare these days as a flight of Leicestershire Great Whites. Well, at least in Asia, it is.

Elsewhere, adjudicators often go into debates expecting to be entertained; expecting to indulge in the odd cackle, the occasional guffaw, the simpering chuckle, but we don’t. We go into debates expecting, indeed demanding to be bored into utter insensibility, perhaps, because the state of insensibility is more conducive to the proper and meticulous assessment of purely objective material. Or perhaps because no one has ever taught us to account for anything more than the 40 or 50% of marks that are awarded for matter.

Look, it boils down to this: if the wit and humour of a speaker assists in the effective presentation of material (arguments) and is appropriate to the debate (issue(s) under discussion, then that is probably good manner and should be recognised in the award of marks in the relevant category and deserve proper consideration and commentary during the feedback process. On the other hand, if the jokes interfere with, rather than accentuate the points being made, or the wit or sarcasm seems inappropriate to the ideas being developed (you feel like throwing up, rather than laughing), then it might, in fact, be reflected in a reduction in the marks awarded for manner – and it would give you something else, other than, “You said… He said… They said…” statements to deliver in your oral feedback at the end.



b) Rapport, persuasion, sincerity:

…However, it goes much further than the evaluation of witticism and how far the red needle swings up the scale on your internalised clap-o-meter. Engagement is also about the extent to which a speaker can develop a rapport with the audience he or she is speaking too. Now, I know you are already thinking that most of the ‘audiences’ you have ever debated in front of amounted to no more than an odd number of (odd) (sorry, couldn’t resist that) adjudicators (probably only one most of the time), maybe an admiring parent or two and some random bloke who happened to walk in halfway through the first speech and was too intimidated by the Chair’s hostile stares to try and leave before things had obviously ended. By the way, the ‘random guy’ probably came to fix the air-conditioning, which has been making a grinding noise like the grist mills of Valhalla since you entered the room.

However, this is one of the baseline concepts that you, as a debater, have to factor in. Remember, you are trying to convince the adjudicator(s) that your arguments are better, by what might only be a small margin, than those being advocated by your opponents. You are not, on the other hand, required to convince the ‘honourable members’ on the other side. This also means that, as an adjudicator, you are there to be persuaded. How this persuasion is effected forms the heart of good, well-mannered debating.

Some seek to sound sincere, acclaiming their own ideas in tones and rhetorical forms that would probably get a sinner like me past the Pearly Gates. Some employ a depth of emotional engagement with their material and approach that is custom-made to tweak the empathies of those in attendance, and yet others seek merely to entertain, believing (possibly correctly) that someone who’s life has been made even slightly easier to live for the past 7 minutes is more likely to believe the things that you say than they are to believe what the puritanical chump on the other side has been muttering in a monotone for the longest while.

The paramount objective in delivering a speech must be to persuade. If a speaker fails to deliver ideas that are, in some way, designed to get someone else to change their behaviour, then I think that there is a problem with that speech. If I, as an adjudicator, have yet to be convinced of either set of assertions at the end of an hour, then I’ve just sat though a below-average debate that had little or no appeal to my sensibilities, particularly my sense of humour.

Life is serious enough without 6 or 8 prophets of doom trying to make my day infinitely worse. Give me someone who makes an effort to engage with me, not just the other side’s arguments. After all, I am critical to the debate simply because the speakers are trying to persuade me – or at least, they should be trying to do so.



c) Ability to Entertain:

The first time that my BP partner and I got together over a lobotomy bench and decided to debate together in an open competition, I agreed only on the basis that I would do it as long as it was fun. Indeed, the necessity for debaters to enjoy their debating is something I’ve always stressed during my training sessions and workshops. However, for many debaters that I see compete, debating is anything but fun, having taken on all the seriousness of a Nuremburg trial with fewer laughs. This is discomfiting to me, not least because it renders debates boring and repetitive.

It is also fair to say that debating in the two main phases of a competition: preliminary rounds and final rounds, makes different demands on a debater’s skills and understanding of the arcane art. In the preliminary rounds, one’s audience is as I have already described it – at least, for the most part. As preliminaries progress, the camp followers hear stories of teams that are doing well and gravitate into those rooms in the later stages for the experience of seeing teams and speakers that are persuasive, entertaining and (dare I say it) fun to watch.

Even so, new demands come onto teams when they move into the knock-out rounds: They are adjudicated by panels instead of singletons; these panels often comprise luminaries amongst the debating fraternity, alumni members with their own particular trail of history, myth and legend; and for the first time, these teams meet audiences.

If a debater continues to deliver his or her admirable depth of material in a boring monotone at such times, there appears to be no penalty for having failed to capitalize on the fact that there is now an “audience”; a group of people that are expecting not only to be informed, but also to be persuaded, confided in and drawn into the ambit of the speech-maker’s aura by means of emotional appeals, stridency, rhetorical devices and their like. To me, that is reflective of a lack of ability on the part of the adjudicators to recognise the markedly different demands being made on those speaking and to fly in ignorance of the main purposes of Parliamentary debate.

But no! We reward those who speak like automatons on the basis that they say stuff, not develop and personalise ideas in an effort to convince another or develop belief in them. Debate isn’t about proving something anymore; it isn’t about the display of wisdom and an ability to connect; it’s about vomiting up as much material as you can get into a seven minute speech and counting entirely on the objective judgement of those who will assess your efforts.



Dynamics:

Individual (speech) dynamics:
Adjudicators have stopped looking for any real kind of balance in a speech. What I mean by balance is a reasonably equal weightage between rebuttal argumentation and constructive argumentation. Debaters that get to their sixth minute, hear the single time signal and then say, “…and now to my first substantive argument are rarely penalised for what seems to me to have been to have been a poorly structured effort at best – and reflective of really bad time management at worst.

Time management? Shmime management. Adjudicators don’t care – and they really should. When a debater is still rambling on at 7:30, I’d be contemplating docking a mark for bad time management, because the speaker is clearly unable to tailor-make their ideas to fit the pattern that they’ve probably had ‘split’ for them and split themselves in their opening remarks. Debates have been won and lost on this kind of dynamic call. Well, apparently not anymore.



Team (case) dynamics:
The trend towards stuffing a speech with, well… stuff (Let’s refer to this as “Speech stuffing”, shall we?) has led to another decline in the abilities of adjudicators: the recognition of appropriate prioritisation. Basically, what happens is that a ‘Speech-stuffer’ throws everything known about the topic into a speech, having determined with the other constructive speaker what stuff he/she knows better. The material ‘spoils’ are thus divided on an ‘I know about – you know about,’ basis, and not on the basis of what is more or less important.

Then, the material is developed (rather than expressed) at breakneck pace and lacks any real kind of emphasis or structural justification (as in, “This idea is important at this point because… and it relates to ideas already/yet to be developed in these ways…”).

With everything having the same outward appearance and value, the adjudicator is expected to give everything equal merit, rather than determine (for himself/herself [God forbid that adjudicators should ‘think’ for themselves]) whether the order works properly, or does not.

Back in the day, this kind of call might well have been useful in determining whether a case on one side or the other had been deliberately ‘hung’; had ‘slid’ from one speech to another, or whether the goal posts had been deliberately ‘shifted’ – perhaps in an effort to respond dynamically to a particularly forceful attack from the opposition. These days, adjudicators who know what a hung case is, let alone feel themselves capable of recognising one, are few and far between.


Debate (holistic) dynamics:
Speakers these days often… no, make that VERY often; deliver material as if their lives depended on the number of words they can average per nano-second. This has a number of effects that should (in my opinion) impact upon manner-related considerations. Firstly, the sheer speed of delivery robs the speech of its natural emphasis: the ‘highs and lows’ that give certain ideas a significance that others might necessarily lack. Secondly, it makes it very hard for adjudicators to take comprehensive notes – so many don’t really bother to try and keep up and just content themselves with jotting down the key words – so, again, ideas and arguments develop a ‘sameness’ of meaning and import, not a hierarchy of significance. Thirdly, Speech-stuffers frequently have to resort to the use of hackneyed rhetorical linking devices – perhaps because their rapidly un-stuffing, fact-retching brains can’t cope with the parallel requirement to organise material properly.

As an adjudicator, I think I should be critical of a speaker who says, “Mr. Speaker, sir,” 19 times in his first minute and a half (the current record). I feel I should also penalise someone who uses the link “At the end of the day,” as some kind of punctuation marker. It is not uncommon these days to have so many days come to an end during a single speech that I feel as if my life has been unnaturally shortened as a result. I also remember one debater (a pretty good one, at that) who would trap himself sometimes into over-using the device “i.e.” rather than mixing in the odd, “for example,” or “for instance” to keep it interesting. Ironically, it was probably his success that spawned a whole legion of debaters in his alma mater also over-using ‘i.e.’ In fact, to the extent that it has become an integral feature of their debating style – but that is not to say that it is a good thing – far from it. After all, even the debater in question used to agree that he would overdo the i.e.s from time to time.

Poorly utilised or over-used linking devices are definitely a manner-issue; so why don’t adjudicators take them into account anymore? Is it perhaps because the general lack of any real adjudicator training programme or accreditation process allows a situation to develop in which novice adjudicators, in gaining most of their early experience watching teams from their own debate society train, begin to believe that everything they see their own speakers do is acceptable – and from that point onwards take that as the benchmark against which everything else is measured?

All this taken into account, the thing that one should perhaps take away from this is that debate dynamics are often tied very strongly to manner-related considerations; which suggests that, to ignore them is to adjudicate debaters in a blatantly unfair and biased fashion.



Ad Hominem Attacks:
Debaters can basically get away with anything these days. If you want to insult a team or an individual; his nation or his rhetorical skills, just dress the epithet in the thin disguise of a humorous comment and a couple of items of superior vocabulary and you’ll probably get laughs, rather than a mark deduction and a comment from the chair at the end.

A debater can portray the approach that a previous speaker has taken as, “The most offensively fascist doctrine of a clearly gender-confused individual, but I suppose we must forgive him, seeing as he’s from S*ng**p*r*,” and even the adjudicators will laugh. Well, maybe they should, perhaps if the debate is happening in an exhibition match or a master’s round, but they should also be deducting something for manner too, as it clearly bad manners (as my Gran’ used to say) and offends several of the inevitable prescriptions in the rulebooks that are supposed to legislate against persona l attacks mounted on the basis of sexism, racism, ageism and all the other ‘isms’ to boot.

Given the kind of thing that was reported as happening during the Master’s Final at Koc Worlds, how far does someone have to be offensive and how much can they indulge in personal attacks before the adjudicator is, in duty bound, to start penalising the speaker in the manner category? Well, you try finding someone who has ever done more than mention, during feedback, “Oh, and perhaps you’d better watch the personal insults in the remaining rounds too, just to be on the safe side.”

The ‘safe side’ of what, we might ask?

Points of Information (POIs):
The rules and guidelines that I have been involved in writing, at one time or another, all suggested (rather than explicitly ‘ruled’) that, in parliamentary debate styles at least (All-Asians, WUDC, etc), a speaker should endeavour to take and respond to an average of 2 POIs during the course of a 7 minute speech. The POI is important to parliamentary debating because it is the most spontaneous and dynamic of the ‘tools’ that both speakers and non-speakers have access to. Important POIs can completely derail a speech, or even a case; just as bad ones can (and should) be reflected in the appropriate considerations of marks awarded for manner or matter at the proper time.

However, no one takes two POIs anymore – at least, my experience of watching the more significant of Final’s rounds in recent years seems to confirm this. I watched a recording of the WUDC Grand Final in Cork, recently, and only the DPM had the temerity to take two POIs. Everyone else took only one and denied every other attempt to pose a question in response to the ideas being developed at the time.

Moreover, it has become common practice for some team members to offer points only very rarely – and sometimes not at all. When I make a comment on this as an adjudicator at the end of the debate, they just shrug it off as if to indicate that they don’t think that a failure to offer POIs is particularly important. After all, they have to get all that ‘stuff’ they want to incorporate in their remarks written down before they have to speak – and haven’t they already agreed that NASNO (Noisy, arrogant, speaker number one) is going to do all of that POI business anyway? (“Hey, he practices being obnoxious just for that! Hours in front of the mirror in his bed-sit; wasted otherwise.”).

If you’re going to insist that parliamentary debate continues to make all the demands of speakers that it has, thus far, then I think that adjudicators should start penalising debaters that avoid the need to be responsive during a speech and recognising (perhaps through taking proper notes) when a team member is ducking their responsibility to stay in touch with unfolding events and argumentation through the offer of POIs.


Close, Clear and Thrashing margins:
For those familiar with the three-on-three format of Australasian and All-Asian debating, there are three categories that are usually delineated within the maximum mark differential that can separate teams at the end of a debate. As a reminder: if the maximum permissible mark spread is 12 points (a round dozen so that the tabulation software is not too hard pressed to cope with all those horrible digits), a ‘close’ debate should feature a score differential of between .5 and 4.5 points; a ‘clear’ debate should feature a score differential of between 5 and 8.5 points, and a complete toasting should feature a score differential of between 9 and 12 points.

For the mathematically challenged amongst you; particularly those not profiting from a convenient case of polydactylysm, don’t worry about all the halves: everybody seems to have forgotten about those pretty quickly in the mid-nineties (understandably, being the 90.5s!).

At the time when adjudicators; specifically chairs (singles and panels), were required to give oral feedback on the debate in announcing the result, it became easier for many to use the ‘close, clear, thrashing’ categories as a general indicator of the standard of the debate, without actually telling debaters their marks (as this was still something that adjudicators were not supposed to announce). However, it rapidly became clear that adjudicators were using the term ‘close’ to describe the gaps between teams in debates where the actual marks described a debate that was anything but close. In other words, it was easier to justify a decision that had gone against a particular team if the chair could somehow excuse the result on the basis that it was “very close” and even intimate that the speaker scores on both sides had been, in any case, very high.

These days, this trend has become a full-blown addiction amongst adjudicators, for whom every debate – even those in randomly matched first rounds - seems to be a close one and any departure from a mark range confined to a maximum of 3 almost unthinkable.

To me, an adjudicator has to be capable of using the full mark range – and must base the marks that are used on a more subjective and ‘impression-based’ concept of the overall success of teams as this perception develops during the debate. I suspect that it does not happen this way. In fact, I suspect that adjudicators decide who has won and lost, apply the ‘close’ margin paradigm to limit the gap between the teams to an easily justifiable differential, and then avoid any realistic responsibility for fairly and accountably feeding back on the actual debate that occurred.

Then, you might get a range of total team scores over the top 16 teams at the break that covers more than .5 and a similar extension of the gap between the top 10 best speakers that more appropriately reflects real speaking skills.



Sophistication:
It may sound a little like I’m encouraging exactly the kind of thing that I really don’t like to hear an adjudicator does: negative marking. If it does, then I’m expressing myself really badly, because the kind of adjudicator that waits for you to make a mistake (at which point the little red bulb over the ‘No’ indicator in the back of the adjudicator’s brain starts to flicker as the delight of being able to subtract yet another mark from the notional average for the competition kicks in…) is a bad adjudicator (and probably a chronic bed-wetter too).

What I am trying to do is to give those people who want to take adjudication seriously an insight into what I consider are some of the things you should be doing and should be rewarding. Take, for example, debaters who say really clever stuff in really clever ways.

In my career as a debate judge, I’ve had the luck to listen to and observe some of the world’s finest speakers. The skills that set these people apart from their peers do not include the ability to cram enormous amounts of matter into a well-orchestrated 7 minute speech, nor, indeed, develop as many case studies and pertinent examples as the fertile mind can possibly conceive. What sets these people apart is their ability to say things in ways that are so sophisticated that you often don’t actually realise that you’re being persuaded by them until it’s already happened. ‘Too late, baby, gotcha!’

Maybe because the word ‘sophistication’ isn’t used in the rules and regulations that pertain, adjudicators don’t seem to feel the need to reward someone who says smart things in really convincing ways. Or then again, maybe adjudicators aren’t taught the difference between a sophisticated argument and a crude, raw hotchpotch of trawled-up data, so the cleverness floats right over their heads and goes largely unevaluated.

This, then, is the age of the “Pseudo, Existentialistic, Quasi-debate”: one that takes place in a vacuum free of logical development, free of passion and essentially free of any real requirement to apply the rules, regulations and requirements that used to be what adjudication was about. I pine for the old days – so call me ‘old fashioned’ and you’ll be right.


Solutions:

1) Change the descriptors:
It’s going to sound radical, but I think the various councils, committees and constitutional guardians should get rid of the “Average, reasonable person” tag that has pinned adjudication into a corner since its first usage in AIDA handbooks and Australasian rules. Why? Well, I (probably alone) believe that it is an outmoded way of characterising the true role of the adjudicator, and should no longer be applicable. Besides, reading that kind of description, anyone begins to think that they can adjudicate debates; forget training and accreditation programmes; forget the fact that the individual never seems to be able to make it into a credible team; as long as he or she thinks that they are (a) average, (b) reasonable, and (c) a person, they can adjudicate. Wrong!

For a start, the best adjudicators are not ‘average’ by any stretch of the imagination. They must have an expert knowledge of the rules; they must be exceptionally well read – and therefore probably possess a level of education in the top ten percentile in their peer group; they must have incredibly well-developed listening skills, which renders them capable of recording the progression of a debate by taking extensive notes and simultaneously maintain an evolving concept of the developing arguments through a sophisticated level of contrastive analysis. Moreover, superior analytical skills must be tempered with a parallel consciousness of the subjective elements of the debate. These skills, and the list I provide is anything but exhaustive, can never be possessed by ‘average’ people.

I find myself strangely in agreement with the idea that adjudicators should be ‘reasonable’, but the term has more than one meaning in an adjudication context. To begin with, it is reasonable to expect that your adjudicator will not “…enter the debate” in terms of bias, superior knowledge, cultural background, patterns of belief, or on the basis of a particular ‘ism’.

However, it should also be admitted by many of those that have any kind of depth of experience that their biases, cultural backgrounds and individually held beliefs are difficult to consciously overcome. For example, the views of those living and studying in what might be loosely termed ‘liberal democracies’ on things like homosexuality and child labour will differ markedly in the ways that they are evaluated – as much as they will be differently expressed. I would contend that it is harder for an Australian adjudicator to give a debate to an Asian team that takes a hard line against something like homosexuality than it is to overcome the inherent biases and adjudicate purely on the basis of what is argued and which of these arguments is better expressed, more credible, more persuasive and sincere. This kind of approach is clearly unfair and unreasonable.

However, there is a second and potentially more important aspect to the ‘reasonable’ descriptor that can be even more contentious: the need for an adjudicator to use “reason” as a means of developing the contrastive analysis that I mentioned above.

The trend towards matter-heavy, manner-free debating was largely the result of two things: the difficulty that some debaters had with the more subjective manner-based components or skills, and the superficial supplementation of this lack of skills with even more material development, comparative analysis and evidence. This precipitated the era of “serious debating” that (again, in my own [and probably lonely] opinion) ensued, with the result that Asian debating has substantially lost ground on debate and rhetorical styles that have been long established in places like ‘The Isles of Ionia’, the continental North Americas and Oceania, where wit, humour and the ability to engage with an audience have been developed to very high levels. You don’t have to believe these claims – just check the numbers of Asian teams and Asian adjudicators breaking at truly international debate competitions over the last half a dozen years and compare these with the five years previous to that.

Notice I mention both adjudicators and debaters in that last sentence. The cliché ‘What goes around come around’ springs to mind. Again, it stands to reason that, if Asian debating has become serious to the point at which speeches and speakers have become dry and dusty caricatures of their political counterparts and no one can entertain anymore, then none of the adjudicators these teams bring with them are likely to be able to appreciate manner-related elements when they bump into them in a well-lit amphitheatre. Therefore, quid pro quo, fewer Asian adjudicators break because host organisations and the CA/DCA panels they put together lack confidence in the ability of our judges to adjudicate in a balanced and appropriate fashion.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the power of reason. To me, the expectation in a ‘serious’ debater that their adjudication panel is some kind of three-leafed blank sheet that they are at liberty to write upon in any fashion they choose is patently false, but this is where the “throw-in-everything-I-ever-read-on-the-subject-and-call-it-analysis” approach has led us. After all, when pre-competition adjudication briefings in the past came to the issues pertaining to the ‘average, reasonable person,’ it was always expected that one would be able to use one’s own knowledge and understanding of the world when determining the particular structure, weight and importance of an idea.

For instance, if a debater mistakenly refers to New York as being the capital of the United States of America, the adjudicator should be free to recognise that this is not, in fact, true. However, the adjudicator in such an instance would also be expected to judge whether the slip was fundamental to the ideas being developed at the time and therefore injurious to the speech or the case as a whole. After all, a more classic example of “negative marking” could not occur if an adjudicator were to give the debate to the other team on the basis of this one error. A somewhat simplistic example, I know, but you should recognise the dangers inherent in disallowing an adjudicator from employing their own ability to think.

And now to the last of the terms: ‘person’. Personally, I am utterly convinced that one of the chairs in a recent debate was actually from the same planet in the Betelgeuse system that Ford Prefect hails from, but I’ll grant you the fact that most of them should probably be humanoid, at the very least. The only comment that I will add here, as something of a qualifier, is this: Persons are persons (pretty obvious so far), not automatons (ah-ha). Adjudicators must not leave their humanity behind them in the briefing room when they drop their individual bags of bias, belief mechanisms and personal preferences under a chair. Feedback must also be based on the three principles that form the basis for debate evaluation and assessment; to whit, matter, manner and method. I am sorry to say that so-called ‘serious debating’ has had a negative impact here too.

2) Separate pre-competition briefings:
I don’t mean to keep harping back to the ‘days of old, when knights were bold, and judges knew their business’ but in many ways, I can’t help it. When a situation has deteriorated, at least in one’s own eyes, then a backward glance at how things used to get done before they went bad can often lead your thoughts into pathways with further currency.

Pre-competition briefings for debaters and adjudicators used to be held separately of each other. I think they should be separated again. Why? Well, for one, the kind of porridge that gets served up in joint briefings is repetitive and designed to avoid upsetting anyone by actually taking a firm stance on issues like… well… manner issues, for instance! Moreover, several of the ones that I’ve attended lately seem to have become an excuse for all of the Chief Adjudicator’s friends, relatives and object de l’amour to share in the presentation, spicing their chunk of input with inappropriate commentary, war stories and witticisms designed to titillate the senses of the other members of the panel, whilst being completely incomprehensible to anyone else in attendance.

The vast majority of debaters taking part in a national or international level competition already know exactly why they are there and what they are there to do. All they want to hear is how the tab is going to work, what specific approaches or perspectives adjudicators are going to be taking to particular issues (like manner?), how the break will be decided and how substantial the ‘free bar’ tabs are going to be during the socials. That’s it.

On the other hand, many of the adjudicators (and I mean MANY) are far less experienced than their debating counterparts and desperate to know how they should approach judging. They want to hear from someone with a bit of experience and understanding what they should do, given the vast range of situations that can occur in a debate.

Alright, so you want to give the assembled throng some kind of test. You might even want to insist that the row of hoary old bastards that have been adjudicating since the walls of Jericho came down take the test too; after all, they might have learned something in all that time and – God forbid - have begun to think for themselves. “Pooh, pooh,” you say, can’t have all of that. Alrighty then… So, you gather some of your old mates together again; perhaps the ones that got rejected as DCAs, and have them shake off the intellectual rust-flakes and stage a mock debate.

What gets interesting after this has happened is as follows: If the debate has actually been a good one, then the adjudication core will often disagree amongst themselves. However, they must present a united front and therefore reach a decision by consensus: something that is entirely denied adjudicators in every format other than BP. Then, they divide test the papers between themselves and “mark” them. Again, they do this individually and only compare results at the stage when the itinerant flock of test-takers need to be separated into categories.

We even have “interviews” being conducted these days. The hoary old bastards love this feature, I can tell you. Nothing quite like the embarrassment that some of these DCAs suffer when confronted with someone who has adjudicated most of the Major Prophets and was there when Socrates screwed up that helot thing in the Senate.

The point is, you don’t need the debaters in the same room for this exercise. Moreover, why stage a ‘test debate’ when there must be literally hundreds of perfectly useful samples on CD, VCD, various websites and blogs? After all, you have a bit more control over the ‘quality’ of the debate you are going to show to your adjudicators and might actually be able to discuss some of the more pertinent things that occur before you run it, taking your cue from the Chief Adjudicator.

Look, when all is said and done (or, “At the end of yet another dismal day…”), there isn’t too much that is fair in a system that professes a need to test everybody (including the hoary old bastards) and then excludes anyone who agrees to be involved in the test debate. And when it comes to mutually preferred adjudication, what about asking the adjudicators which teams they’d prefer to watch? I think that you’d find that a lot of your adjudication pool members might exclude a good many teams purely on the basis that the last time they saw them debate, the only other sound in the room: apart from the monotonous whining noise of the speakers, the resounding snores of the random guy in the back row and the faulty air-conditioning, was the sound of adjudicator brain cells screaming as they fell into the darkness at the back of once-active minds.

Post testing, assessment and evaluation process, I’m always interested in what happens to the largest groups which, sad to say these days, are inevitably at the bottom of the pile. Look, we all know why we get so many falling into the D/E and Trainee categories: if they were any good, they’d be in a team; and because teams need an accompanying quota of adjudicators, they get a ticket to ride. What happened to adjudicator training? I know that some varsity debate societies take the matter of training adjudicators seriously, but they are also rare. The next time you get a dribbling idiot, a construction worker off the nearest building site and someone who managed to answer the multiple choice question, “How many sides are there in a debate?” on your panel, blame yourself, not the CA. Which brings me to the next item…
3) Adjudicator Accreditation:
Reinstate the one accreditation procedure that was ever any good: The AIDA adjudicator accreditation system, and kick the asses of those on the World’s Council who continue to do absolutely nothing to design one that works at that level. I mean, Jellied Vogon Pustules; if you can identify the basic elements of a particular format and design a marking system to reward speakers who are able to do these things particularly well or badly, then why the bloody hell can’t you design an accreditation programme to facilitate adjudicators in both working their way through the necessary learning processes and perfecting the craft of adjudication.

I’ll tell you why; if you did manage to design a BP adjudicator programme (and I have every reason to believe that you could, because some of us have already designed a working syllabus) you’d probably upset people when they took it and failed it, particularly if their natural skin colour was a variation on ‘sickly pink’ – and we can’t have that now, can we!

Of course, one might be tempted to say that if someone who had taken a test failed it, then that was probably because they weren’t any zarking good at it and probably shouldn’t be adjudicating debates in any case, but I am prepared to accept that this might be something of a cynical view.

One might also be tempted to say that, as each and every international debating competition worthy of the moniker starts with some kind of adjudication test anyway, why can’t those who debate; supposedly intelligent people engaged in looking for truth and solutions, somehow rationalise what already takes place as a matter of course? Ah, wait a minute; I’d forgotten the instinctive urge in all of us to reinvent the wheel whenever we feel that something needs to move a little faster than it will on logs. I beg your pardon. Silly me.

4) Mutually Preferred Adjudication:
Dump it. It profits no one, least of all the adjudication panel, is ethically and morally difficult to defend – and is inherently unfair to the adjudicators themselves. “And that’s all I have to say about that,” (Forest Gump).

Another Ending:
OK, I’ve started feeling a bit better again, having got that off my palpitating chest, so I’m going to stop there (“…for the time being!” a voice sounded ominously in the background).

What has gone before is not intended to be a complete list of all the ills facing debate adjudication at the present time – and doubtless there will be many people that are perfectly content with the zarking status quo that they are all so happy to vomit up in opposition scenarios when they’re actually clueless about any other possible way to go. All I wanted to do was to point to some of the things I think are being lost and in danger of being abandoned to the Room of Forgotten Skills, that’s all.

Mind you, you do realise that, by reading this, you’ll now have subconsciously absorbed a checklist of things that you and your teammates will carry into your next debate; one that will fuel the fires of indignation when your pimply-faced nerrick of an adjudicator focuses entirely on matter-related issues in his feedback (female adjudicators can be neither pimply, nor nerricks – just cannot compute). Time for another seminar, Dr C? Time to try and right the wrongs once more?

Omes, Seremban, April 2010.

Adjudicator Briefings at KOC Worlds

Alfred "Tuna" Snider has posted some videos of the adjudicator briefing at Koc Worlds.

You can find them here.

Koc WUDC 2010 Adjudication Briefing: Test

Dear all,

We are now nine days away from Worlds. The Adjudication Team has prepared an online briefing that we would like you all to read before you arrive in Turkey. There are important issues about debating that we hope to clarify before we come together for our actual briefing on the 28th December 2009. The document has been attached to this mail but for those that are scared of attachments, we have pasted it below this mail. It will go on our website shortly.

As an adjudication team, we also have one other thing to add for judges only:

Judges, the Adjudication Test is now online. You can find it at: http://www.kocworlds2010.com/adj.php . Please read the file attached or written out below before you take the test as we have asked questions about some of the information we provide in our online briefing. With clashes, try not to go overboard - you should include the institution at which you study/studied and the name of individuals who you cannot judge. We will not ask you why you have clashed them and what you write will be confidential. Having said that, do try to limit the number of people you cannot judge.

We are sorry about the delay with the test. This is entirely my (Can's) fault. I had trouble getting the file from Mini DV onto DVD and then to AVI and then to DixX. Because it is my fault, I have extended the deadline to the 22nd December 2009. If you can fill in your tests earlier, I would be ecstatic as we will be reading them as they arrive. I'd rather have a couple of days to concentrate on practicing the tab closer to the tournament.

We're looking forward to seeing you soon,

Can
Chief Adjudicator of Worlds 2010

(Colm's note: There is a very good guide to accompany this.  I plan to post it but want to confirm with the adjudication team that they are happy for me to do so as it is their work).

Australs Accreditation test

From the asiandebating.org

Asiandebating.org have published an accreditation test created by Monash Australs and AIDA that will be used for the upcoming Monash Australs and is proposed to be adopted by council as the official AIDA accreditation test.

The main purpose of the test is to help with the ranking of judges at the upcoming Monash Austral-Asian Debating Championships. However it may also be interesting for those not going to the championships who wish to know more about the format at this championships.

Click here to access the test.

AIDA Accreditation

Part of what this year's Australian Intervarsity Debating Association (AIDA) Executive undertook to do as part of their responsibilities this year was to examine the AIDA Adjudication Accreditation System and put together some recommendations for its future.

As a part of that process, we are looking for comments from any interested parties, and in particular anyone who falls into the following categories:

- Anyone is currently using AIDA Accreditation
- Anyone who would be interested in future accreditation
- Anyone who would be interested in being involved in a future accreditation process (as an organiser, marker etc)
- Anyone who would like to comment generally on the need for AIDA Accreditation and possible reforms.

Please send any comments, suggestions or expressions of interest to AIDAPresident@gmail.com
Tom GoleAIDA President 2007-2008.

Comment on the judge break

I have noticed on a couple of sites that there are judges at Worlds complaining about a preference for "white" judges in the break. Now I'm not in Thailand. I don't know which judges feel hard done by (they seem to be reluctant to go on the record). But I do dislike the bad habit among lazy debaters to play the race card when things don't go their way. I think it is unfair in the extreme to someone to trot out allegations of racism. That’s the sort of allegation that sticks even if not true. Therefore I'm going to outline some observations about the process for the judge break from my years at worlds.

The judge break is the hardest decision for the adjudication team. It is often said that no debater ever believes she/he gave a bad speech. Well it can also be said that no judge ever thinks she/he gave a bad decision.

There is no points system for judges. No such thing as a win, second third etc. Instead the adjudication team have to go by subjective feedback from other judges and from the teams. The adjudication team should read every test, experience and feedback form. I know we did that when I was a DCA and I assume this happened in Thailand. Judge ranks are adjusted across the 9 rounds based on the feedback.

If a judge's feedback stands out (for good or bad) then the adjudication team might follow up with another judge on the panel or might talk directly with a team to get clarification. They can also have the judge "watched" by a member of the adjudication team or by a trusted judge.

You will, of course, have a list of trusted judges who will break because they have years of experience and a proven ability. You don't think too long about breaking Ian Lising or Derek Lande (unless the break is made up of 16 La Verne Teams and 16 Cork teams).

However after all that it is still a very subjective thing. Most of the discussion will be about the last 10 places. For the 10 happy judges there will be 20 unhappy. At my first couple of worlds I was one of those 20 unhappy judges. Having broken as a judge a number of times since and having been a DCA I can now look back and realise that the decision not to break me was probably the correct one as I didn't have the level of experience of other judges. Nothing wrong with the decision then (though I might be a bit miffed if it happened now but I’d seek clarification and quietly disappear with my tail between my legs rather than bitch and moan on the web).

However there are some judges who you simply cannot break because of their feedback. In a couple of cases at Stellenbosch we had very serious allegations made against judges. One of the judges who we did not break and was then one of the most vocal critics on break night had a number of complaints against them which had been confirmed by other teams and judges. We could not break that judge. The rules of natural justice say you should allow the judge a chance to respond to the allegations and perhaps even address their accusers. However when you are in the middle of worlds you simply do not have the time to hold this sort of full investigation. If you get feedback from a number of rooms that the judge’s behaviour is out of order then you just dump them and move on to the next issue.

Some qualified judges may be left out of the break for completely valid reasons and it isn's always that they were dumped. There is a rule at Worlds that you have to judge a minimum number of preliminary rounds. If you don't judge those then you can't break. People asked me why I didn't break at Dublin worlds. Well I had to work during the knock out rounds so I wasn’t going to be there but I only judged 3 preliminary debates so even if I turned up at break night Paul couldn't have added me to the list (assuming he would have wanted to). I believe there is a similar potential issue next year at Cork but I won't name the person in question in case it was resolved (hopefully I won't be in the position as I plan to be there for the 9 rounds and then throw myself on the mercy of Derek's good graces along with all the other judges)

Also, to be honest, some experienced judges may be left out because they just piss off the adjudication team. The adjudication team is having a very tough week and adding to their misery is the fastest way to get binned on day three when fatigue boosts vindictiveness among the DCAs. We had one judge in that position. She was a chair judge but not a high ranked one so didn't see a lot of good debates. Every round she complained to us about the quality of debates she was seeing. We hated to see her coming up the steps to us but still had her as a chair and in the break. Finally in round nine she went back to her room without handing in the ballot. We had to send someone from the tab room to the accommodation to get the sheet. That delayed the whole process and resulted in us getting to the break night at 11:30 AFTER all the food was gone. That was the final straw and we dumped her from the break slotting in another judge from her country. She then went to worlds council and lodged a complaint against us over the "racist" decision not to break her.

There are also political considerations. Do you break the best judges or do you balance regional considerations. Personally I think you break the best judges. At WUPID recently we didn’t even consider where the judges came from. We broke on their ranking, experience and feedback. We had a smaller pool of judges to pull from so I don’t think too many regions/countries were disappointed. At Worlds it is a very large pool and if you break the best judges then some regions who sent their best people as speakers and only sent first years as judges will lose out.

Also there are political issues within countries. There are some countries where the politics of debating is cut throat. I once was asked by one guy I didn't know to be videoed with him, and say hi to all the people in his home country. I was later told that that was used as my “endorsement” of him in some internal political battle for supremacy in his national debating association. Insane!

This political aspect means that you can have the head of a national association as a judge at worlds and he/she is seen as the big fish from their area. But based on experience and feedback they are no where near the break (national championships often get a higher rating locally than at worlds). They are in their position of power based on ego and political ability and that does not translate automatically into judging ability. However in order to protect their national position they have to claim that the decision not to break them was based on racism rather than the fact that they are a crap judge. There is nothing more dangerous to an adjudication team than a bad judge with a big ego and a local fan base.

And finally to say that the adjudication team is only human and sometimes they do get it wrong. At Stellenbosch we had one judge that none of us knew anything about and we had him as a panellist. His country rep (who we all knew and respected) came to us and said that he was a good judge and we should look at him again. We pulled his file and found that he had listed very little experience and his adjudication test was not good (both in result and more importantly in reasoning). But based on the advise from his rep we bumped him up to second panellist and had him watched by a trusted experienced chair. The feedback from that was that he was a sound judge but not spectacular and not really up to the break standard. That was it and we forgot about him. The following year I was watching the video of the final and there he was on the final adjudication panel. For the life of me I can't remember his name but he had really impressed the adjudication team that came after us and went all the way to the final. That can happen. It happened in Stellenbosch with one judge who I knew but didn't think he would break. I did not judge with him until the final but the rest of the adjudication team had and they insisted on putting him through at each stage from break through to the final where he contributed well and deserved his place. If it was down just to me he wouldn't have broken but the others insisted and it turned out they were right and I was wrong.

OK that’s a long and rambling post. I don’t know who the judges were that lost out at Thailand. However I wanted to explain why, in my experience, the accusations of racism and a preference for “white” judges may be unfair to the adjudication team.

Update: Just in case anyone misinterprets the article and thinks I'm talking about Tuna at globaldebate as one of the complaining judges. I'm not. He didn't break but it's clear in his article that he accepts that he didn't break and is only reporting what others said. I judged with him a few times at WUPID (including the final) and hold him in very high regard (hence the reason why I want to make sure I have not inadvertently caused him any offence) . I would have no problem judging with him on a panel in the break rounds of Worlds. I have seen the issue raised on a few blogs and sites and just thought I would put in my view.