Spread (updated)
Watch Berkeley debater Tejinder Singh spread, cross-ex and kibbutz with his partner on a hidden microphone at the finals of the ‘04 college National Debate Tournament:
When his teammates won the semi-final debate at Kentucky, Singh felt especially moved, because the argument against their opponents’ use of labels such as “terrorist” really resonated. “One of the reasons my family emigrated from India [in 1982] was that the government used this rhetoric of ‘terrorist’ to describe all people of my religion… When the Indian government started to portray all Sikhs as terrorists, certain groups of Sikhs became extremely militant, because they perceived that the government was out to get them. So [that label] became a self-fulfilling prophecy…
“I’m a six-foot-tall guy with a beard, and a turban on my head. So about 70 percent of the time, [when traveling to tournaments], I’ll wind up with some sort of security hassle on my hands…” [Link]
An audience member asked what advice they had for high school students in debate. “Stop now,” said Cal debater Tejinder Singh, drawing the biggest laugh of the night. [Link]
You can watch this entire documentary on the college tournament here:
Six of the twentieth century’s U.S. presidents were former debaters, including John F. Kennedy… Numerous senators and Supreme Court judges count themselves as former debaters… [Link]
Singh and partner Dan Shalmon, the #1 team going in, dropped the final round to Greta Stahl and Dave Stross from Michigan State. I see Singh went with the Matrix look. Debate teams are the original Judeo-Hindoo alliance.
For nearly twenty years, Berkeley debate survived on the meager subsistence generated by the annual Cal Invitational Tournament for high-school debaters. Then, about four years ago, a small group of ex-debaters took it upon themselves to revive the ailing team… Alumni donations were just enough to enable the team to hire a coach–former University of Kentucky debate coach Dave Arnett, who joined Berkeley in 1998…
Dan Shalmon, the top debater from the best high school debating program, was intrigued by the reports. He had been offered a scholarship to Northwestern from his native Chicago, but he was excited by the idea of coming to Berkeley and joining its burgeoning team. “I thought it would make a good change of pace to start out as the underdog, and really see if I could do it without the big name behind me…”
“He was born and raised to debate…” [Link]
Previous desis in the finals include Anjan Sahni (’98 Emory runner-up) who now prosecutes child molesters with the NYC district attorney, and Ahilan Arulanantham (’92 Georgetown winner, ‘93 runner-up) who’s at the ACLU fighting Dubya on exporting torture.
Singh and Naveen Ramachandrappa from the University of Georgia won first and second for best individual speaker in ‘04.
Update: Oh, this is hilarious. At 38 minutes into the longer film, the Louisville, Kentucky team of two black women run a ‘debate is racist’ paradigm, asking the judges to vote for them solely because they’re not white males.
Unfortunately, they’re debating a Jew and a Sikh. Shalmon drops the spread and talks passionately about the oppression his ancestors experienced as Jews in Eastern Europe. Don’t run more-oppressed-than-thou against a team from Berkeley 
At 13 minutes, Louisville A plays a rap track in a round and raps their speech. When his team loses, the Louisville coach goes nuclear:
Y’all are my friends, but y’all know this is bullshit!
on Monday, November 20th, 2006, 10:09 pm in Sports, TV › 
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“Debate teams are the original Judeo-Hindu alliance.”
Isn’t Tejinder Singh a Sikh?
Using it figuratively here. The original Indian-Americans in the early 1900s were Sikhs, but mislabeled Hindoos by xenophobes.
Yeah I thought that’s what you may have meant. It’s much clearer in the post now.
haha - never thought I’d read about him on your blog.
As Tom Hanks character says in Big, I don’t get it.
What’s with the autioneer style reading?
NotsoFOB
Limited time, massive number of arguments, fast and specialized judges. It’s tabula rasa style debate, an alpha geek throwdown.
Can the judges actually keep track of everything said? Do they have list of words that are checking?
How can you score somebody who reads off what is basically, a laundry list of statements really fast?
On a separate note, I guess that’s what happened to Aaron Brown.
That should read:
Do they have a list of words that they are checking?
Everyone in the round keeps a fast graphical flowchart of arguments on legal pads stretching pages and pages. In high speed spread you’re concentrated mainly on getting the arguments down and judging the quality of the cards (quotes). You sum it all up at the end of the round when you have the flow complete and can see what was dropped, what was pulled through to the end and which args you buy.
Debate comes with a standard judging structure but in tabula rasa debate you can modify it– it’s an intellect game where you can try to alter the rules on the fly.
Went through your exhaustive coaching list…whole new set of questions…
I’ll look up the answers as a good researcher!
Wow! That was worth a watch….I liked every bit of it.
Interesting documentary. Fascinating insight into a “sport” that I didn’t know existed (in this form). However, it felt a bit like watching my first football game after coming to America — it looked interesting but I didn’t know what the heck was going on. Other than the Louisville/Cal debate, the documentary doesn’t really explain who is making what argument and why a particular team is the stronger one. After one debate the Harvard guy says something along the lines that it will be a miracle if they win (they lost) so it seems like it is not entirely subjective.
Another thing — I would think that oratory should be part of debate, but here it seems like spewing out the maximum number of facts in a fixed amount of time is the only objective. I coudn’t even read the subtitles faster than one guy was talking!
Yeah, that was annoying. They gloss over the substance of the debate because they figure it’s too technical and will lose viewers, and instead they focus on the competitive drama. Hopefully very little of the decision is subjective, as long as you have good judges. It usually comes down to the flow, the map of the arguments– were critical issues dropped. If that’s fairly even, then you start getting into evidence quality, do I buy this argument, did the team try to change the judging paradigm, who was a better speaker, who clashed better, who did better cross-ex and so on.
Oratory is important with lay judges like mom ‘n pop judges at the local high school level, and in Lincoln-Douglas debate (single person debate for slicksters– like campaign speeches). Here they’re not spewing just facts but rather structured arguments with supporting ev. You can see the shape of the whole debate on your flow. There are hard time limits for each speech. As long as the judges can keep up, you’re fine, and it makes for a much richer, more analytically interesting round. It isn’t all that accessible the first time you see it because it’s highly specialized, but it’s loads of fun.
I thought the Louisville coach yelling at the judges was the highlight :)
That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. What complete piffle. It’s a swaying-back-and-forth autistic scatman joke.
That’s what they said about improv jazz :) All the real action’s taking place on the flows (argument flowcharts). It’s a war map, like Age of Empires. Without seeing it all you get is the competitive drama, in the longer film.
Fascinating to see this! As a former policy debater who debated in high school and college for a while (Dartmouth) I finally have something I can show my friends to explain this strange world I was in for such a significant portion of my life.
The fast speaking is a bit strange but it is all highly technical and structured. The speed is just the efficient way of delivering arguments. Smart debaters can group sections of arguments and intelligently answer even if they are not the fastest, but definitely economy of argument rules.
It certainly is a game and one that is highly competitive. All of the rules and intricacies aren’t really going to make sense unless you have lived in it. Almost all of the debaters at the top teams would have spent a high level of intensity training and debating for 4 years in high school, spending each of their summers from 4-7 weeks researching and training, and then going to tournaments almost every weekend. Many of the top debate schools like Dartmouth, Northwestern, Kentucky, etc use the summer debate camps as prospective ways to recruit students and attract them to the campus etc. Most debaters end up going onto law school or similar professions. Many end up marrying each other, though the ratio of male to female is highly skewed once you get to the top college level (like 9 guys to 1 girl).