College Debate: What is it?

I've spent the last 5 days in Austin, Texas getting five hours of sleep a night, driving a suburban full of college students around the UT campus, rushing between building, eating whatever food place is open when we're done for the day- and loving every second of being at an NDT/CEDA sanctioned college debate tournament. It's hard to believe I've been involved with the debate community for ten years, but I wouldn't change my experiences with the activity for anything else I've done. Four years of high school debate, 4 years as a college level participant, and I'm now in my second year as a coach for Kansas State University.

What I love about debate can not be entirely qualified in a series of words or posts, nor could I tell you what it is that makes us who we are. What I do know, is that college debate IS it's own culture, a community of individuals who come together to discuss a variety of topics each year, more excited each new school year not for our new classes, but so that we can return to the Georgia State or Gonzaga season openers to see all of our friends- and to many, our families. Each season we spend weekend after weekend together, debating, talking, making friends, and having fun.

The year culminates each spring in two major "nationals"- the National Debate Tournament (NDT) and Cross-Examination Debate Association National Tournament (CEDA). These two tournaments have distinct qualities that separate them from each other, much like the division that exists in the name of the activity itself. NDT/CEDA debate, prior to the 1990's merger, were two separate entities of college debate, merged together to preserve the activity at universities across the nation. The NDT is the exclusive national season ending tournament: to go to the NDT you must either receive a first-round bid (the top 16 teams in the nation) qualify out of your district tournament (another 30-40 teams) and finally, if neither of those work, a remaining 16 teams receive a second round bid to the big dance. Winning the NDT is most debaters dream- that many teams never get the chance to even fight for. This is where CEDA nationals comes in: it is no coincidence that CEDA has been dubbed in the community "The People's Tournament" CEDA is open to any team in the nation of any competitive level (there are three: novice, jv, and varsity) and there are usually upwards of 200 teams competing for the 1st place title.

An insular activity, debate wasn't introduced to the outside world until the events of a quarter finals debate and post-round discussion at the 2008 CEDA Nationals was uploaded to YouTube for all the world to see.

Almost immediately, a post popped up on the college debate website forums, www.ndtceda.com, with a forecast of what was to come from sharing the video with those unfamiliar with the activity:




Below is a remaining clip of that debate:



The original full version of both the debate and the post-round discussion was removed by the poster not long after it was posted, but the damage was already done as word spread quickly through media outlets as a result of the YouTube video, that led to Fort Hays University firing Bill Shanahan:



What began as an investigation into a singular event following one debate, exploded into a full fledged attack against college debate, with this statement issued by the President of Fort Hays to the rest of the world:



What followed was outpouring of support for both Shanahan and debate:







But what exactly IS this community that is under attack, who are these debaters, these coaches, these college students and faculty from across the country who come together in this environment that President Hammond believes is not an acceptable college level activity?

It is my hope, that by following the remaining tracks of who we are in debate that exist on the internet, supplemented with my own interviews and video as I attend the remaining tournaments of the 2009-2010 season, that I'll be able to provide an answer to that question, a more representative, and (hopefully) positive image of a community afraid to show their face to the world again for fear that they will be persecuted much like Bill Shanahan was.

As I began to search YouTube for videos about and/or related to college debate, I was saddened by the few videos that remained; worried about what their presidents might think many universities were ordered to remove any rounds they had posted to the web. Videos that had been posted for educational purposes- chances to show interested high school students, or to prepare for an upcoming tournament had to be kept private, debaters were told to say they couldn't be taped at tournaments anymore; tournaments themselves issued statements that they would not allow any videos uploaded to YouTube from their school without written approval from the director.

My search through the videos that remained then began with Bill and Shanara. Interesting is that the video exists in several forms on YouTube, each with different titles, almost all (save the one included above) with mocking titles like: "So This is Higher Education?" and "How Educated Liberals Debate!"

The video even got its own remix in the aftermath:




Two years prior to this event, Fort Hays Coach Bill Shanahan spoke on what the activity means to him, a clip deleted from a debate documentary that was meant to introduce society to college debate, but hardly got any play time compared to the post-round discussion that got a front-page CNN.com article:




But discussing the activity, and seeing post-round chats can only tell you so much. College Sport TV (CSTV) actually followed a small handful of teams at the NDT during the 2006-2008 seasons, documenting what the activity was, and what people do from a competitive sports activity approach:




Everyone has their own opinion though, on what the activity should be about, here a small handful of the remaining videos that I found where people either discussed debate, or used debate to get a point across:










It is unfortunate that much of what was there before is now gone- that as I taped rounds while I judged at Texas that debaters were worried about what their coach would say, if they wanted their names attached to this ethnography of debate. This is only the beginning, but I believe that it's necessary for us to take a closer look at college debate, to show people the dedication, hardwork, personality, and unique life style that a college debater partakes in, for if no other reason than to show universities that we are not a group of hoodlums that "lack decorum and civility." I'd like to leave you then with a blogpost I found at the global debate website, updating the world on what Shanahan is up to after leaving Kansas: