October 3, 2008

Colleges Call Debate Contests Out of Order

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Postmodern strategies pose challenges to traditional forensics

The world of college debate is an insular one. So when a prominent coach mooned a judge during a tournament in March, officials in the national debate association planned to handle it themselves. Then a video of the incident hit YouTube this summer.

Suddenly, people throughout higher education were wondering: What was happening to one of the oldest forms of academic competition?

Soon after the video appeared,