<p>Hahaaa… PF… weell. I think it does require less work than either LD or Policy, but, it’s definitely still a legit debate event. Put it on your app by all means.</p>
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<p>LIES! My additional info box was a list of my debate awards, organized into National (TOC bid, NFLS, etc), State, and Regional awards. ^^ Ahem. And I got in. And I think debate was a huge part of that.</p>
<p>YAY POLICY!!! SPREADING ROCKS :D</p>
<p>MissRoark-I apologize. In my district, the majority of policy debators and simply speed readers and allow for little to no analysis. I should not have generalized. If policy elsewhere is alot like the final round at Nationals then I suppose it would be a very interesting and strong event. It just sucks in my area</p>
<p>Haha, thanks! it’s understandable that you’d think of policy that way, though. there are a lot of people who miss the point of the communicative nature of the activity… but i guess i get defensive about policy since i devote so much of my time and energy to it. gotta keep reminding myself that debate is good…</p>
<p>NFL Nationals is definitely noot a fair representation of either LD or Policy. the judges at nats tend to be more conservative, less given to new arguments (kritiks, theory, etc) and probably wont understand indepth analysis as well as, say, judges at national level tournaments like Berkeley/Meadows/Stanford/etc.</p>
<p>If you want to see accurate/good policy, go watch videos taped from the TOC :)</p>
<p>fuzzyfirebunny’s comment is an example of everything that’s wrong with national circuit debate, and the reason why rocket’s criticism is often legitimate. saying that judges at Nationals don’t “understand in-depth analysis” just because they’re not as well-versed in technical debate terms betrays an egregious over-reliance on debate buzzwords. debate is an objective game of persuasion: if you “win the flow” but lose the round, you were doing something wrong. good debaters should be able to persuade NDT champions as well as parents.</p>
<p>Somebody mentioned correlation between MBAs and HYP acceptance. This makes me happy, although I’ll probably end up 16/16, lol.</p>
<p>I’ve done all three events, and I’d say out-of-rounds PF requires the most work, policy is a close second, and LD requires the least. Of course, policy requires a huge up front time investment at the beginning of the year, but the workload tapers off after that. PF has become much more evidence-based and competitive in the last few years as people flood into the activity, and the topic changes every month; it’s like starting from scratch every 30 days. LD requires much less research and evidence, and the topic lasts for two months. There is certainly a longer ramp up period to learn all the jargon, abstruse argument theory, and spreading techniques of policy and, to a lesser extent LD, relative to PF. From what I can tell it’s that ramp up period – coupled with the fact that, at least until you’ve drunk the kool-aid, the gamesmanship and uncommunicativeness of policy just seem somewhat silly – that’s driving people away from policy (and may well ultimately kill it) and over to PF.</p>
<p>sorry, you’re wrong. if you want to be a national-level policy debater, the amount of work you have to do is exponentially greater than the amount of work you do in any other event. the workload doesn’t “taper off” if you want to do well–you keep researching. it’s an academic, evidence arms race to win the TOC. i don’t know what level of policy you did, but it can’t have been national.</p>
<p>I’m not saying successful policy debaters don’t work hard; they clearly do. In fact, anyone who truly succeeds at a national level in any one of these events puts a ton of time and devotion into it. But kids at my school who have advanced to late out rounds at several circuit tournaments work incredibly hard during the summer (4-6 week camps, etc), and then work much more modestly during the year. Ditto for kids in my District who have advanced to rounds 10-15 at NFL nats over the last few years. All of them are quite smart (and many of them tend to come up w/ some fairly obscure arguments that are barely topical, but carry an element of surprise), so I’m sure that helps. Just my opinion.</p>
<p>I won’t get into the “work” argument-my vote would go to extemp anyways!</p>
<p>fuzzy-that is exactly what I hate about policy. Kritiks and all that are not communicative, they are just confusing. I think the judges at nationals picked kids who were brilliant orators and great debators.
I also think TOC and most of the other “circuit” tournaments are a joke. It’s just a who has the money to attend. My team never does circuit, yet always has kids break very far into NFL Nationals.</p>
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<p>well, i’m sorry you feel that way, but I personally think that kritiks and other progressive arguments, when run well, add a lot more education to the debate round. Sure, they might be a little untopical, but there are a TON of kritiks that link directly into 1AC rhetoric; ie, are very applicable to the round. and I think learning about Foucault/Nietzsche/Shapiro through the research and actual debate rounds is really valuable and fun. there is NO other class I could have taken in high school that would have given me the indepth knowledge that kritiks and researching new arguments have.</p>
<p>I think there needs to be a distinction between the TOC and Nats: whether you like it or not, the TOC has much more prestige with schools who are actually recruiting for college level debate (which, for the most party, consists of policy). Nats is a great and fun tournament, but the judging pool is often pretty bad- you get everything from bus drivers to parents to people off the street. and that’s not to say it doesnt happen at TOC bid tournaments, but, it happens a lot less.</p>
<p>I agree wholeheartedly that debate is, unfortunately, an elitist activity and is skewed towards those schools who have the money to travel, hire good coaches, etc etc. But I know there’s a lot of effort being made to change that -for example, open case disclosure for policy teams (and, in the case of the Texas Greenhill tournament, LD) that’s availalbe on wikispaces to ALL teams; open evidence sharing, etc etc. And when you get right down to it, every competitive activity requires money- soccer/football/sports/etc also require you to have money to travel. But there is fundraising that can be done, and for the most part, I think that attending TOC bid tournaments is an amazing experience, even if you don’t break/bid.</p>
<p>^^I also disagree with TOC being more prestigious for recruiting. A good friend of mine(extemper) is at Western Kentucky and never attended a single TOC or circuit tourny</p>
<p>Okay, I am a Policy debater, and I can see this turning into an ugly thread, so I’m going to try to avoid that. Haha, avoiding conflict in a thread full of debaters. What an oxymoron. :)</p>
<p>PF, Policy, and LD all have their merits. I see no reason to demean debaters of any kind. In fact, shouldn’t we be praising each other on our dedication to our debate and congratulating each other on the relative success that we’ve each had. People will try to claim that there are divisons between debaters, which there are on the surface level, but we all share something inherent within us: We all dedicate countless hours and weekends to Speech and Debate. That fact should link us together. I can already imagine your responses to this. One of which is to call me naive, which I might be. But truly, we’re attacking fellow debaters and detracting from the complexities of each debate. There are different styles of debate for different people for a reason. One isn’t better than another.</p>
<p>If you want to learn to speak to a lay crowd, you do PF.
If you want to learn logic and current events, you do Policy.
If you want to learn philosophy and abstract concepts, you do LD.</p>
<p>All of those are worthwhile.</p>
<p>“Nats is a great and fun tournament, but the judging pool is often pretty bad- you get everything from bus drivers to parents to people off the street. and that’s not to say it doesnt happen at TOC bid tournaments, but, it happens a lot less.”</p>
<p>please refer to my previous post.</p>
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<p>what? That policy requires work? um… yes… I agree with that…</p>
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<p>Sorry, perhaps I should have clarified. I was talking about recruiting as far as policy debate goes, which is the most widely done event in college debate. If you want to be recruited for a good policy team (USC, Berkeley, Harvard, Wake Forest, etc etc) you have to have been nationally renowned as a high school debater. I imagine your friend who was recruited for extemp is great at extemp, but I imagine she doesn’t debate policy on the college circuit.</p>
<p>post number 65, I should have clarified. In any case, your description of any judging pool as “pretty bad” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of debate as a communicative activity.</p>
<p>Wow, I thought this thread had died after like a few hours, whoops. I haven’t been in the Yale forum for weeks so I had no idea. </p>
<p>Anyway, I am going to stay in Public for minor tournaments, and do LD at nat quals and state.</p>
<p>fuzzyfirebunny: you sound like my coach 
TOC is definitely a higher caliber than NFL Nationals, I completely agree. I was quite disappointed in NFL Nations. Unfortunately, do to the underfunding and location of my debate team, TOC is generally out of the question. There are TOC rounds at Whitman, but they’re (of course) SUPER hard to do well in. I’ve decided to devote more of my time to debate, because it’s easy to do well in Oregon if you try and work hard at it, and it’s not only super rewarding in life but on an app too. </p>
<p>Have a lovely time at Yale, fuzzyfirebunny. I am so envious Maybe in two years…</p>
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<p>Debate as a communicative activity takes on many forms. On the one hand, there is the communication that any person (a lay judge off the street) could understand; that would be along the lines of PF and traditional style LD. On the other hand, however, you have faster LD and policy- events which the typical person would NOT understand, since I doubt the average person can comprehend 300 words per minute speech. That doesn’t make the second type of debate inferior; rather, I see it as MORE educational because it requires more work, more speed practice, etc etc. Just my personal opinion.</p>
<p>@ WannaBYalie: thanks! I feel you, Whitman is a tough qual- finals bid, right? You guys should try and get down to some Cali tournaments- Stanford and Berkeley are good ones, especially since you only have to go 4-2 at Berks to break this year. Though they ARE breaking to triple partials, ugh, and based on speaker points. Oh well.</p>
<p>fuzzyfirebunny-I guess we ought to just agree to disagree. I will never see speed reading as remotely educational or communicative. Debate is about persuading your audience, is it not? You will never do that if they don’t know what on earth you are saying.</p>
<p>A local coach from my district judged final round of policy about 6 or 7 years ago. She refused to flow once people started speed talking and also refused to render a decision on the round. They had to MAKE her. She eventually gave a decision, but felt that the round had no real debate value.</p>