NSD gave us a free day on Saturday, and my friend group and I went out to the shopping center in the college town of Bryn Mawr to look around. I didn’t buy anything, but messing around at the comic stores and toy shops, bouquets and makeup stores, was enough to make me happy. And when Walker texted me asking me to come to his dorm to play Super Smash Bros, I didn’t hesitate in telling him I was busy. Bros before hoes, sisters before misters, and all that.
And I didn’t really want to go anyway. This entire time, I was growing increasingly worried about our age gap and what he really wanted from me. I had a suspicion that I was just a rebound after he showed me pictures of his ex, and even though he said he was waiting until marriage for sex, I just wasn’t sure. I was, and still am, scared of the unknown.
Maybe my decline of his offer tipped him off about my hesitation, because a day or two later, he mentioned another girl. Her name was Monet, she had colorfully dyed hair, and she was perfectly his type. She was also fifteen.
Every time he told me about when he finally talked to her, or when she painted his nails, was a punch to my gut. We were never anything, Walker and I, but God, I thought we were. Rina urged me to not give up, and two days before departure, I invited him to another movie night. Maybe I was still subconsciously scared, or maybe I was just stupid, but I mentioned that I was inviting my friends too, and he said “I’ll think about it,” which essentially meant no.
Monet friendzoned Walker on Snapchat the day of departure. Go figure.
He’s the first guy I’ve ever made a playlist for, and that’s how you know it was serious. Walker and I still talk occasionally, but once I saw him a year and a half after the camp escapades at the University of Houston tournament, I knew it was over. He’d gone to Boston University, and it had done a number on him. Sure, he looked somewhat like a bum before, but when I saw him in mid-January in sandals, a wrinkly T-shirt, cargo shorts, and an unkept beard, I genuinely did a triple-take. Though it sure didn’t feel like it at the time, I definitely dodged a bullet.
After camp, Rina and I’s goal for sophomore year was to qualify for state. In retrospect, that should’ve been our goal in freshman year, but even in sophomore year, we had trouble getting past the lay screws.
At debate tournaments, for the most part, every two teams competing per event per school had to bring a judge. Sometimes, this was a coach, but in PF, this was, most often than not, a parent; after all, the event was supposed to be for the public. But even PF had rigid rules and structures—summary speech must extend, frontline, extend responses, then weigh—that lay judges simply did not know about. Even worse, every person has an inherent bias, and while technical judges (those who are well-versed in the debate world, typically ex-debaters) try to bypass the bias by only evaluating their “flow,” or a structured way of taking notes during a round, lay judges don’t receive that extended training.
Thus the worst part of debate: the subjectivity. In any other sport, academic or otherwise, winners and losers are mostly objective. Sure, referees sometimes prefer one team over another, or essay-graders sometimes read ideas differently, but it’s always whoever scores the most points wins. Whoever’s time was the fastest, whoever gets the highest grade based on a set rubric. But in lay debate, the decision is entirely based on the judge’s vibes. The only thing we as debaters can do is pander to what we believe the judge will want based on their paradigm, or short bio, on Tabroom.
My female friends have been downed because they were “too spicy.” As a woman POC, I’ve had to train myself to speak conversationally, constantly hyperaware of the cadence of my voice, whether I sound as convincing as the deep, masculine debater standing across from me. I’ve been told by judges that they just don’t believe my argument. Political biases and already-skewed beliefs make a round an uphill battle before it’s even started.
And in sophomore year, Rina and I didn’t quite understand what any lay judge was looking for. We debated the way we were taught: our speeches were structured and technical. So when we were downed because our rhetoric wasn’t pretty enough, our narrative wasn’t cohesive enough, or we were just plain unconvincing, we were obviously pissed.
At the Atascocita tournament that year, our quarters round judge was a lay named Joe. He voted off one of our opponents’ responses to our case, and Rina and I spent half an hour “postrounding” him about the difference between offense and defense; that response was a reason to not vote us, not a reason to vote for them; the response was a reason our argument wasn’t true, not a reason their argument was. In retrospect, the poor guy was just doing his best, and being confronted by two teenage girls definitely deterred him from ever participating in the activity again. Joe, I’m sorry I was so mean. I get it now.
But then, I was fifteen and childish, and I remember shutting myself in a dark, empty classroom to punch at the brick walls like a hormonal little boy while Rina cried in our assistant coach’s arms in a hallway. She traded her dignity for tears and comfort, and I traded mine for raw knuckles.
In order to qualify for state in Texas, debaters have to get points at tournaments within the state by reaching a certain elimination round. The number of points is determined by the number of teams and how far in elims you get. After a grueling number of lay rounds, which locals mainly consist of, Rina and I finally qualified to state with 16 points out of the required 10. At the last local of the season in January, we even “qual-blocked”—won against another team, preventing them from getting the points they need to qual—a bunch of novices from Strake Jesuit, the “it school” for debate. Even though their A-team even called us begging to concede to their novices so that they could qual, our coach unfortunately wouldn’t let us (wink wink). But it’s not so evil—I heard Strake has 90 PF members anyway.
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