The Paper Debate

Robbie Brown:

Before each tournament, Sam Crichton, a senior on the Wake Forest debate team, meticulously stocks a half-dozen Rubbermaid tubs with computer printouts. Each sheet of paper -- perhaps 5,000 total -- summarizes the argument in, say, a presidential speech or op-ed piece. These "cards" have been sorted into manila files, grouped into brown accordion folders, stacked into the tubs and labeled by argument type: affirmatives, disadvantages, counterplans, critiques, case arguments/negatives, backfiles.

There are 50 tubs for the entire Wake Forest team -- a traveling library of debate research. With the aid of all those pages of argumentation, debaters can summon up well-reasoned, highly specific points about nuclear disarmament, this year's topic for college policy debaters. What if an affirmative team contends that nuclear armament has hurt Africa? What if a negative team cites Heidegger to bolster its response?

"There's a strange comfort in reading off a sheet of paper," Mr. Crichton says. "Having all of this paper may seem like a form of chaos, but to me it actually seems more organized."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 18, 2010 2:44 AM
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