Future? What Future?

Public Forum has been subject to heavy criticism due to its “devolvement” into Policy-Lite, where people read arguments meant for a 13 minute block condensed all the way down into a 2 minute final focus. On the other side of the coin, it’s often portrayed as the ultimate “Lay” format, advertised to unsuspecting parents as a speaking event based entirely on persuasion. 

But which one should it be? This question is (obviously) largely complicated, with Policy and LD both developing their own distinct (stereotypical) identities over the years, with CX having devout K and Policy teams, a ridiculous number of OFFs, and very long speeches. LD is stereotypically seen as tricks heavy, with a focus on aff and neg burdens, complicated Phil, and pure policy debate slowly dying out. But what is PF? From personal experience, it’s almost always seen as a format not to be taken seriously, being incomparable to the other more “prestigious” formats and hilariously easy. 

The perception as a “joke” of a format carries into how people see increasing trends of people introducing arguments into PF, seeing it as a mockery when those arguments in their original formats are taken as completely normal and acceptable. 

Posts like the one below frequently echo this sentiment, stating things like “it[‘]s fucking crazy that people are winning tournaments now because your opps don’t understand the literature of a random french philosopher from the 1500s.” https://www.reddit.com/r/Debate/comments/1iavjdp/public_forum_is_absolutely_cooked/. They see these teams as abusing these arguments for free wins, and their argumentation lacking any technical skill or persuasiveness, rather using “cheap shots” to get the ballot. But competitive incentives or simply the enjoyment and fascination of reading unique, new, or interesting arguments will always exist, so it may seem like an inevitability.

The truth is however, there are already things (or rather people) that check back against overwhelming technical argumentation: the judges who can’t or aren’t willing to judge overwhelming technical argumentation. Each judge’s unique perspectives on debate illustrated in paradigms forces debaters to adapt and spread out and become better at the kind of debate different judges want to see happen. Conflicting views on what Public Forum ought to be is exactly what perfects it, creating its identity as an activity where nothing is static, and every debater must be fluid in how they debate in order to win the most amount of rounds. This isn’t to say that other formats don’t have to adapt to judges, but adaptation is what defines PF, the same way that things that “define” LD still exist within other formats, just not maximized to the extent they are in LD. 

The best way to avoid the insular bubble of an activity that may develop over time that occurs for a variety of reasons, such as ex-debater judges being largely “tech” debaters, community trends, etc. is to keep a major key difference between PF and CX and LD, being that it PF (almost!) always gets strikes, and CX and LD get access to prefs. PF gets to remove the judges that they may have a bad experience with, or strongly dislike their paradigm, while CX and LD get something more, getting to instead choose who they really want as well as being able to strike a certain part of the pool.

Rather than tailoring judging to individual preference , Strikes ensure that you do not always get who you want. Strikes make it so that you’re truly going to get a random mix of the pool that’s left, often composed of people from all kinds of relations to debate. That forces debaters to be prepared for the lay-est mom who woke up an hour or two before, the tech-est debate coach that cuts all their school’s prep, or the flay-est ex-debater that only has some familiarity with the format. This shift creates in-depth speaking and advocacy skills that allows debaters to adapt to their audience rather than only really exploring and becoming an expert at one kind of debate, as well as keeping the format competitive with incentives to get better at everything, like cutting lay, flay, and tech cases and tailoring the case’s word count, vocabulary, and nuances to the judge prior to debating. 

While we may all dislike losing to the metaphorical “random french philosopher from the 1500’s”, maybe we can find some solace in that, with some other judging that favored “me” instead of “them”, you would’ve won. Maybe you’ll hit them in outrounds later with a different panel and beat them. Who knows, maybe you’ll go home and write some new fire blocks and learn something new while doing it, and remember, education is a voter because it’s the only portable skill we get from debate.