This excuse says that we have to attend tournaments where Ivy League schools attend because those are the only schools that the benefactors will recognize and be impressed that we compete against. This is a very narrow-minded viewpoint that assumes that benefactors know very little about other schools, or show the same disdain for non-Ivy league schools that the officers show.

The truth is that NPDA has many, many impressive schools that compete. In the national tournament alone there are schools like Notre Dame, UCLA, U of Miami, U of Oregon and Berkeley. This is but a small fraction of the schools that compete in NPDA (and incidentally refuse to "waste their resources on APDA". There are over 200 teams that attend the national tournament...doing well in that tournament is impressive as well to the benefactors.

The only reason that makes sense why the officers feel that it is better to tout competing against Ivy League schools instead of winning against many other quality schools is that they fear they can not win in NPDA. In there mind it is better to lose to the Ivy League than to lose to the rest of the country...as they would.

The simple fact is that we have plenty of money available to go to many tournaments in both APDA and NPDA. The problem is the running philosophy that the officers should be able to go to many international tournaments each year. These include spending an estimated 25% of the team's budget for one tournament and even more of the budget on other international tournaments. Travel budgets are historically merely a spoils system for officers and their friends.

There are many large and quality tournaments in NPDA that are relatively cheap. This is including the fact that the teams would stay in hotels INSTEAD of on dorm room floors.

...coming soon...

...coming soon...

The very honest fact is that our presence in APDA as being an important factor in our performance shows the how grandiose the problem of subjectivity is in APDA. As previous team presidents have mentioned, we must maintain a regular presence to maintain competitiveness. This is because the number of previous tournaments attended weighs heavily in a team's performance. Teams are judged on two criteria that should never be a consideration in a legitimate competition: (1) popularity and (2) attendance history.

The exact opposite is true in NPDA. There are so many tournaments that are available that presence is not only impossible to maintain but also impossible to judge upon.

...coming soon...

This is an excuse that comes up very frequently recently. The premise is not only elitist but false. This excuse is based on the idea that the only quality debate schools are Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale. If the Ivy League does not attend, the officers believe, then there is no true quality. [Note: the true fallacy in this excuse comes from the list of Ivy League alumni that the officers ridicule as being to "stupid" to even play a game of rock, paper, scissors.] This line of thinking ignores that head to head these bastions of debate quality are unable to compete in objectively judged tournaments against the true leaders in debate (e.g. Claremont, Northern Arizona).

The actuality of this excuse is that the only reason the Ivy League schools are considered to be of higher quality is because their school's reputation precedes them (APDA judges do not put a premium on present performance, but on present prestige.)