Dear Samuel and Max, Hi :) Since we are all taking the liberty to speak our minds, I would like to join in, if the admin of the page permits. Todays judgement: I wont get into the details of what happened, you were there and you witnessed it yourself, so there be it. But i will say this: There is a lot of training to be done, and yes, even us old school debaters that were speakers do need training to better our adjudication, and therefore your statements about faulty adjudication do hold water in that regard. However, in the spirit of debate, i will say this as your senior in debate, as someone that is respected on the SADC and local circuits that your arrogance and the way in which you are dealing with your alleged misplacement in the debate will not serve you unless you can learn from it, what you are suppose to learn from it. Suppose that we did place you unfairly in the debate, this is how i would have dealt with the situation had Gustav and i been debating: We would have said OK, we think we should have placed here and here, but we need to look at what the judges saw and placed us where they placed us because, even if the judges are shitty, at least we should still have been able to make our point to an extent where we should have placed higher in the debate. Also, is there a problem with out style, the way we organise our material, which speaker delivers which points, and speaking order etc. these are all factors that can assist a team in beating shitty adjudicators and making sure that they get the ranking that they should have gotten, or coming close to where they should have already been. Since Sam for instance spared no swords in calling out the likes of Jozi and the general adj panel, i will say this: Even when i was trying to tell you why we placed you where we places you, i could see that you wanted to hear none of it, your mind was made up and it sounded felt to me like i was speaking to brick wall, and so i started feeling anxious and decided to just stop. I am not one that is new to having a rotten attitude in general, it was my thing. It made me feel relevant and powerful, but it was a really shit way to be, so i stopped it. When i did that, i started to learn and thats how i got to be the kind of debater that i am today. Also,whether the two of you feel robbed or not, i would atleast give Jozi and I our due. We didnt get to be trusted and called to judge and chiar debates cause we just woke up and decided to be debaters yesterday. We have an extensive CV that i dont need to cite, and in the event that we did misjudge you, atleast think how it is that we could have gotten to that conclusion and turn it into something positive for yourselves and your team. If i type anything else, it will be too much Keith and too little truth, so ill stop here. My father said that other day Dont walk away a stupid man from a conversation where you could have learned something. I heed his advice, thanks for the critique.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 00:16:16 +0000