My relationship with debate has evolved into a difficult one. call it the sunk cost fallacy, call it a toxic relationship (as I often do), but the activity has an unfortunate chokehold on me. After every round unfairly lost, after every round so close that it’s decided on a whim, I cry. It’s become some sort of sick tradition: after a tournament, now, I always cry.
And judge screws always happen to us in the elim before the bid. At Emory, in our gold bid round, it was a one tech and two lay panel. One lay upped us, one lay downed us—typical of our lay technique at the time. However, we’d fully expected the tech judge to vote us up, especially when he started the RFD congratulating the other team for winning and saying that he’d squirreled, meaning he’d been the only judge to vote for the losing team. This was expected, and even after his RFD, when he didn’t clarify his decision beyond the “I squirreled,” simply saying that our opponents had functionally conceded our case, both teams fully believed that he had voted for us. So we were confused when the next judge disclosed that he’d voted for us, too; because then, we should’ve won.
The other team was the one to ask the tech judge for clarification after this, in which he said that he had misspoke and actually voted for our opponents. Absolutely insane, considering his RFD made everyone in the room think he’d voted for us. Afterwards, our friends, who were sitting behind the judges to spectate, told us the tech judge had been watching Five Nights at Freddy’s YouTube shorts the entire time. The decision was made before the round even started, apparently.
This is called hacking. Rina and I chalked it up to the fact that we’d won against a team he coached earlier that tournament, and he’d spent two hours trying to prep out our K to no avail. It was heartbreaking and frustrating. There was literally nothing we could’ve done to win his ballot. I cried.
Debate is pretty well-known for creating arrogant bastards. Near the end of our junior years, Rina and I started a podcast, “f*ck the framing.,” that gained quite a bit of traction with high-ranking debaters since we were friends with a lot of great debaters on the circuit. In it, we called out problematic behaviors and shared stories of experienced bigotry in the community, and we often invited guest speakers on with us.
But when we called out the opponents who called migrants “terrorists” and “looming threats,” attempting to lighten up the dark subject by pointing out the irony behind how they’d been the ones to cry after the round, criticism grew to an all-time high. Beyond the fact that our guests that episode had straight-up lied about their experiences in debate, we received backlash for speaking out about the experience; someone we’d considered our friend told us that “what happens in-round should stay in-round.” We took the episode down because our guests were horrible, but we included the story in another episode. After all, these stories deserve to be shared and talked about in order to address a need for a solution. Debate doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the things we say and the type of discourse we spread in a round have very real impacts on our very real lives. I know being called a terrorist had an impact on mine.
This sort of man-eat-man attitude is all too common in the community. I was never going to finish my John story, but I suppose it’s a prerequisite to this next part, so here it is in a nutshell: Rina has a fling with John during camp. Afterwards, they grow apart, but John and I stay close. The next summer, John and I have a situationship. He tells me he’s not ready for a relationship. The end.
The December after Rina and John’s fling, two rumors, one about Rina and one about me, surfaced on the national circuit. During this time, John was dating a girl named Eva, rank number one and extremely well-known. At the Princeton tournament, her friend Sofia secretly took pictures of Rina, John, and I, which she sent to Eva, who posted it on her private Instagram after John and she broke up. She said John was cheating on her with Rina (not true) or me (definitely not true). The rumor was mostly focused around Rina—according to John, it was a 7-3 split for her.
The rumor that circulated about me specifically said that I’d broken up with my girlfriend to date this guy named Andrew. Again, not true. I did break up with her, but Andrew and I were never anything more than friends.
But that’s not the important part; what’s important is that the national debate circuit outed me. Sofia knew that I liked girls, and I didn’t even know who she was. No one except the five closest people to me knew that I liked girls, but now the entire national debate circuit—not exactly the safest, most welcoming community—did. I was scared, and frustrated, and confused. I knew someone who almost got kicked off their team for reading a queer K, and although the Dulles team was accepting, debaters are not.
So it’s safe to say that I hate debate. I grow nauseous every time I think about attending another tournament, about seeing those horribly familiar faces, yet I’m still here writing this essay. I’ll still go prep after I’m finished. Maybe it’s addiction, or maybe it’s the fact that debate has been the only activity to intellectually satisfy me, but I just can’t stay away from it, can’t put it down. It’s poison that I keep drinking because it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted even though it burns me alive.
I was once keen on continuing debate in college, but now, I’m not so sure. I’ve been in the activity for nearly half my life—do I really want to add four more years to the grueling seven that I’d spent forming then breaking relationships, sacrificing sleep for a few more cut cards, doing homework on planes? Can I even take the pressure anymore? I feel bent out of shape, and my wayward body is still crawling toward the steel pipe. It’s exhausting, and it hurts, and I’m not sure why I do it.
If you’re looking for a satisfying conclusion to all this, I’m sorry to disappoint. I have one more semester of high school, which means two more months of the regular season. After all this time, I only have one silver bid from last January under my belt. Maybe it’s time to sit down, take apart the table tote, close the laptop. Or maybe it’s time for another speech, and another, and another—I don’t know. I know so much, from economics to foreign relations to philosophy, but this I don’t know.
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