Stoa Team Policy 2021-22 Resolution Voting Guide
The new resolutions have arrived, and voting starts on April 15. Let’s look at our options.
Resolved: The USFG should substantially reform the use of Artificial Intelligence technology.
The Good
This is a perfect topic area: timely, relevant, urgent, but unlikely to invoke strong judge bias. There are a wide range of exciting case ideas, from privacy encroachments to the rising threat of drone soldiers. Best of all, it invites debaters to tackle one of the defining issues of their generation: the automation of labor. Researching this topic is very educational. It helps prepare students for the issues that will desperately need their leadership when they become adults.
The resolution is broad, but (if we ignore the clumsy wording for now) it should be just focused enough. In the early tournaments, it will hit the sweet spot: affirmatives can always come up with new cases, but negatives are rewarded for good research.
The Bad
These take a few sentences to explain, but aren’t huge flaws.
Nothing good can come of using an abbreviation in a TP resolution. In exchange for a tiny amount of time saved, the resolution is less accessible to novices and community judges and vulnerable to topicality arguments no one wants to see. USFG could mean United States federal government, or US Fish & Game, or Financial Group, or Fidelity Guarantee, or Ripley’s Unbelievable Stories for Guys. Ambiguity in a resolution should be calculated to create interesting interpretation debates. This just feels lazy.
So does the capitalization of “artificial intelligence,” which is grammatically incorrect.
Saying that the federal government should reform the use of technology is clumsy. Standard wording says that the laws or policies should be changed, rather than the thing they effect directly. Wording it this way means that the government can do anything, in any topic area, with any scope, as long as it has the effect of reforming the use of AI. In other words, “effects Topicality” is baked right into the resolution. Affirmatives will exploit this later in the year, creating an environment that is frustrating to research for and shifts away from the most interesting parts of the topic.
What it Should have Said
“The United States federal government should substantially change its policy regarding artificial intelligence.”
Verdict: 4/5. Sloppy wording isn’t enough to derail a topic this good.
Resolved: Election law should be substantially reformed in the United States.
The Good
In a vacuum, this is a good resolution. It has a good scope; it’s relevant and educational and interesting .. and irredeemably broken.
The Bad
Let’s start, as debaters do, with a quick definition.
Competitive viability: the degree to which excellence is rewarded with success.
If debating well usually results in winning rounds and high speaker points, the environment is viable. If your success is determined more by factors that are out of your control, or you are forced to choose between winning and debating well, the environment is not viable.
This is a critical consideration for people who write rules and resolutions. It’s why you’re not asked to debate abortion, gay marriage, gun control, or climate change. It’s not that those issues don’t matter. It’s that they don’t belong in a high school team policy debate round.
We’ll refer to this resolution for years to come as an example of competitive non-viability. Here’s why.
68% of Republicans believe that Donald Trump won the last election.
It is impossible to overstate the significance of this to debaters in a league that is explicitly Christian and overwhelmingly conservative. You will be asked to debate in front of two kinds of judges:
Judges who strongly believe that the US election system is rigged and that traditionally qualified evidence sources cannot be trusted.
Judges who don’t believe that.
This is a nightmare for competitors. You can’t reasonably be asked to move the needle on this issue; the judge is already hyper-polarized. No one will even be able to agree on what the facts are, let alone what kind of evidence is helpful. This is far too heavy a burden to put on 26 minutes of speeches by teenagers.
“Enough time will have passed to allow some of the emotions to cool, but the events will still be fresh enough in everyone’s memory to carry relevance and significance.” - Stoa
We respectfully but strongly disagree. The capitol riot happened only 3 months ago! Your judges can’t even be expected to agree on basic things like:
Whether the people involved were Trump loyalists or an Antifa false flag operation
Whether or not it was an insurrection
Whether the event was good or bad
If you’ve gotten this far and you’re getting upset, that’s exactly our point. This resolution is so emotionally charged that we can’t even review it without setting off landmines.
These resolution reviews have a long history of bluntness because we respect the process, we respect the league voters, and a lot is at stake in picking the right one. Our “Bad” sections can get pretty harsh. But we hold back a score of 1 for truly unacceptable resolutions.
Final verdict: 1/5. This topic area is broken so badly that we will not be able to recommend TP to our students if it wins.
“Election law has never been offered as a topic to vote on, because in previous years the debate committee felt the topic would be perceived as boring by Stoa members.” - Stoa
Oh, the irony. With better timing, this would have been a 4-star resolution.
Resolved: Tort law should be substantially reformed in the United States.
Another definition!
Tort: A civil lawsuit that is about anything other than a contract.
The Good
Specifying an agent is almost always the right move with a team policy resolution. This resolution is a rare exception. “Tort law in the United States” means that we are talking about the US court system. But you can reform it with any tools and methods you want. You might find creative ways to invoke local or private entities that are excluded from traditional federal government resolutions. In short: this resolution is creatively and competitively worded.
The topic has a lot going for it. It checks most of our boxes: viable, relevant, educational, interesting. It is just broad enough.
Best of all, it has tremendous depth. Creative affirmatives can dive down to the darkest reaches of tort law in search of new cases. No matter how deep you go, there will always be more to discover.
The Bad
Many people (excluding Ace Peak coaches, obviously) find this topic tedious. There are plenty of ways to work around this; good debaters will master them all. But no one wants to have a debate in which they must battle to hold the judge’s attention.
The topic learning curve is steep, too. Large chunks of all constructive speeches will be devoted to background instruction. In front of parent judges, debaters will take calculated risks and cut some of their exposition to save time. They’ll depend on the judge using their memory of previous rounds to understand what’s happening. This is not the kind of strategic decision that a good resolution sets up.
Verdict: 4/5. This is probably a love/hate resolution for many people. Personal preference aside, it’s simply fine.
Final verdict: 1 or 3.
1 is technically slightly better, but not so much that you’re doing any harm voting for 3. Choose based on which topic is most interesting to you.
The LD guide is coming soon.