Competitiveness
...coming soon...
Already Established in APDA
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.
Can't Maintain A Presence in NPDA
...coming soon...
Prestige Of Competition
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.)
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