High School Policy Debate and The Nature of Reality

Policy debate is the only high school activity I can think of where every characteristic is completely insane.

It is also the only one where you have to wear business professional attire.

Here is a bare minimum description of high school policy debate: two teams enter, one team leaves.

JK both teams leave.

But first they spend 45 minutes to an hour arguing about a topic decided at the beginning of the year by a national committee.

This topic can be anything from the amount of funding we should give Americorps, to whether or not gay people should be in the military.

One team argues for this “resolution” and the other argues against it, over the course of 4 8 minute rounds.

At the end, the judge, either a mid twenties former debater consumed by their glory days, or someone’s well-meaning but overwhelmed mom ranks each debater from 1 to 4.

Whichever team gets the fewest points wins.

Policy Debate is different even from other insane forms of high school debate. Policy debate is characterized by esoteric abbreviations, arguments that basically require a LSAT logic puzzle rubric to solve, and “flow,” eight pieces of paper (at least in 2007) where you track…