Rose's "Debate Activism": Answers?

Ernie Rose recently published this post on his blog (available here), as noted on the Circuit Debater Blog.

Rose's proposals certainly seem like necessary strategies to help change the community. Furthermore, he encourages new participants to join and bring ideas to the table.

Given the cost of travel, tournaments, and so on, do you think that it is possible to truly change the debate community to facilitate increased participation? If so, what else should we be doing to make an effort to find new minds and prevent debate from continuing on the path toward exclusion?

I guess I have a hard time believing that there is any clear, easy solution to the issues debate faces, particularly with the challenges that economic inequality poses.

It is cool and everything that so many people are willing to get on board with creating inexpensive or free camps or letting debaters sit in on classes, but it seems like these options may not end up helping the kids who really need it. For instance, Texas debaters probably don't need a debate camp as desperately as kids in Oklahoma or Nebraska because Texas has such a strong debate presence.

That said, I think posting topic analysis outlines, old files, etc. is pretty helpful to anyone to would want to access it. It seems almost as if the internet may be the best solution available because basically all interested debaters would have access to the information.

Just some thoughts. Great idea though.

I think a huge barrier to participation from new schools or small teams is the restriction on independent entries. Sure, there may be some liability issue. I have difficulty believing that it would be impossible for tournaments to overcome this problem.

Let's face it. It is damn near impossible for a student with a small team or no team at all to get a teacher to want to spend a weekend somewhere else in the country judging debate rounds. I understand that many schools are fortunate to have hardworking, dedicated forensics coaches, but for almost every other school, forensics simply isn't a priority.

By lifting the ban on independent entries, I think tournaments could make it substantially easier for students to leave the local circuit occasionally and find the best competition elsewhere.