> Policy debate is an incredibly privileged activity at the upper levels - costs of traveling to tournaments on both coasts, hiring coaches, subscribing to Lexis Nexis, etc, limits competition to only the most affluent.
LOL nah.
Have you ever heard of the Urban Debate League? This is a debate league that is entirely comprised of debate programs from inner city schools. Any school can create a debate program and join the UDL, and they will give you money to become a traveling team if you do well enough. Many schools sent their students to stupid expensive debate camps, too.
While our school was part of the NFL, my family was relatively broke compared to the families that you describe. They still did their damnest to keep me in debate. Very few of my team members were “privileged.”
There were plenty of scholarships that gave us the ability to attend debate camps at significant discounts, and many took advantage of them. There were plenty of kids who were able to pay outright, but it certainly wasn’t exclusive.
Not only is UDL huge, but the University of West Georgia was killing it on the debate circuit 10 years ago and they are a small, shitty university in Carrollton, GA with just enough money to fly their team where they needed.
At the high school level I get the 'elite' argument (from the TOC perspective - unless you're in NY, IL, GA, CA, or TX, you probably only have 1 TOC qualifying tournament within driving distance) but, as you stated, you don't HAVE to play that game - let the rich private schools fly their kids across the country every weekend while the poorer schools just go to local tournaments in their hand-me-down school bus driven by the coach.
Yes, I know the UDL, and I'm a big fan. My high school team had absolutely no institutional support either (I called in "sick" to attend the Berkeley tournament), so I know how hard it is to compete with well-funded schools from the North Shore.
More generally, I think there is a turn away from this insane privilege in policy debate, and the rise and acceptance of UDL's are an example of that, as is K debate. The author of the article doesn't see the privilege or the turn away.
LOL nah.
Have you ever heard of the Urban Debate League? This is a debate league that is entirely comprised of debate programs from inner city schools. Any school can create a debate program and join the UDL, and they will give you money to become a traveling team if you do well enough. Many schools sent their students to stupid expensive debate camps, too.
While our school was part of the NFL, my family was relatively broke compared to the families that you describe. They still did their damnest to keep me in debate. Very few of my team members were “privileged.”
There were plenty of scholarships that gave us the ability to attend debate camps at significant discounts, and many took advantage of them. There were plenty of kids who were able to pay outright, but it certainly wasn’t exclusive.