PC wins over substance; all girl black debate team wins by NOT debating the given topic

This is slightly off-topic, but I think relevant. I am a 35 year old adult university student in Melbourne, Australia and tomorrow morning, I have an appointment to speak with a student counsellor. This will be the first in a few steps which will hopefully put me on a path to change my undergraduate bachelor degree - I'm currently majoring in different social sciences.

This is only my second year, I'm mid-way through the first semester and since late last year I have been having that burning, gut instinct that something isn't right. I began wondering why - for the first time in my life - I was experiencing white guilt (Having been born and raised in New Zealand and naturalized Australian at 23 I simply had never been exposed to the concept of white guilt, or even what much of the rest of the world might traditionally deem as racism).

My Mum asked me what the matter was over my visit at Christmas, as she could see signs which I didn't realise were so externally obvious. The best I could tell her was that I was so stressed out, because feeling like a rich, white, paedophile. Many child abuse incidents have come to light in NZ recently and thus, my relationship with my own Nephew and Nieces was forced to change - if only to protect myself. This never-the-less gutted me and broke my heart.

I explained to Mum that if i was forced to stay in a degree course simply because I was now obligated to pay for it, that I would use every ounce of my strength once graduated to advocate for men's rights. She was curious, but I think she understood where I was going and I explain to her exactly this: Universities are not for learning, they are for indoctrinating. Mum, it is a daily, constant battle to filter out the militant degradation of men by the mostly female faculty - but sometimes even by the males. Heaven forbid one should be male and white, because you're expected by default to despise your own ancestry and heritage.

These people have no idea of my heritage or whether I belong to a particular minority - they make huge assumptions and have replace lectures with powerpoint presented instructions on how to address yours' and others' rich, white male shortcomings.

I wanted to work in a role where I could advocate for everyone. I wanted to put aside any prejudice I had previously entertained and be of assistance to all who came to me for it. I wanted to be taught how to do this - because that is what universities are for, right?

Wrong, not anymore.

If anyone's bothered to make it this far, I hope you don't come away from reading and think that I'm just another rich, white, privileged male with a chip on his shoulder - please consider the case may be the complete opposite. I only wanted to give a personal ( as personal as possible without...you know) account of my own experiences within the education system here and that I believe our youth are not being taught, but brainwashed.

a reply to: gusdynamite

Yeah the campus social justice warriors are batpoo insane and hate everything that is white, male or straight. Don't let 'em get you down but don't become a men's right activist, they're almost just as bad. You said you wanted

a reply to: Domo1

The funny thing is, I'm only one and a half of those three things. So far, university staff have taken me only at face value and I suppose on the days it's not a reason to want to walk out - it's at least a good reason to push on and do the right thing.

I just wanted to say that I don't mean I want to be a men's activist, just to advocate for men who are experiencing divorce or child custody issues and such as they seem to currently be absolutely abandoned by the system.

a reply to: FortAnthem

I mean I could see the side-track if it was based on a counterplan approach. I was in debate all through high school, and we got hit with counterplans a time or two that took us intentionally off the state decided topic (one year we debated prison overcrowding for example). Teams who did that would try it hoping to win by throwing the other team off the scent. Usually, the other team was only prepared with briefs to counter topical arguments, so if you hit them with a counter plan that took them away from the argument, they sometimes got flustered and had no idea how to proceed, ceding you the debate.

But this ... This doesn't even resemble the orderly debates I remember.

a reply to: gusdynamite

Well I'm all for that. Just don't become one of the jaded woman hating weirdos I usually associate with the men's rights movement. There are some very important issues facing men today that seem to be straight up ignored by almost everyone. Custody disputes along with other things that we shouldn't really get into here as it's fairly off topic.

Can I make a suggestion? Start a thread. I would say just copy-paste your initial post in this thread and come up with a title. It's an interesting perspective you have and I'm sure a number of people would be interested in your experience going back to school being a little older than the average college student.

Is that seriously what they're calling "debate" nowadays? That actually pained me to watch, both the OP's and the Berkley/Harvard one. If you need to talk that fast to get all your points and words in, you're using too many words. What ever happened to using clear, concise, thought out and to the point arguments to debate your position? Now it seems little more than spewing out a massive verbal train wreck of barely comprehensible ideas and doing it fast enough so no one would have a hope of understanding or rebutting your argument.

I think one of the greatest unacknowledged tragedies of the 21st Century is going to be the death of the critical thinker.. and that really scares me.

originally posted by: Domo1
P.S. Wrabbit don't you ever let me catch you saying irregardless again! It's regardless! BLAHRGH!

Domo irregardless of what you think, irregardless will soon be a perfectly cromulent word, thanks in part to the level of thought going on in the debate in the OP.

a reply to: benrl

Stop it! I accept cromulent, but not irregardless.

What is this crap? This is how people debate this days, even Ivy League students? Forget racial stuff, this is just ridiculous period.

a reply to: FortAnthem

Beat poetry mixed with debate... interesting.

It's a bummer that it had to be explored like this, winning in a "traditional" debate where it would undoubtedly stir controversy. I totally understand why it would upset some old-school debate fans and they would be justified in their upset dispositions, for sure.

But the concept is neat even if out of place.

a reply to: Domo1

P.S. Wrabbit don't you ever let me catch you saying irregardless again! It's regardless! BLAHRGH!

Just a note for trivia, but "irregardless" is a word. It is thought to source back to 1912 for first use and comes from a combination of the words irrespective and regardless.

Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that “there is no such word.” There is such a word, however.

Source

Now you can confidently use that pesky i and r to make them really scratch their heads when you sit down for the next exciting game of Scrabble.

La la la I can't hear you! It's a double negative with the prefix ir and the suffix less. Just because some ridiculous person from before times decided to mix irrespective and regardless doesn't make it OK!

Irregardless. Pffft. Dictionaries need to keep out the riffraff.

Also, nonstandard word meaning it's not a REAL word, just one commonly used.

I work with mostly black women, and I showed them the "debate", and they all agreed it's a travesty that was allowed to happen.

a reply to: Domo1

I hope you know I'm being a smart ass.

It's a word, but I think we can safely assume trying to defend it's use in a real academic paper would send my instructors (even my math instructor, I'd bet) into fits of ranting and raving, if not asking me to test Sir Issac Newton's theory by exiting a rectangular opening used for light and filled with sliding glass...from some height. (grin)

Still...It seems fitting when we're discussion a war powers debate not only shifting to racial/social issues with nothing much to do with foreign deployment and extended use of troops, but actually winning the thing with it. Crazy world!

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

I hope you know I'm being a smart ass.

I know that you ARE a smart ass. It's one of your best qualities! I like how you subtly steered us back on topic there at the end.

Some background on me, I debated collegiate debate for five years and then coached it for about four more. I was decent, I qualified for the National Debate Tournament which only 72 teams make a year. I was slightly unusual in that I went to a rural state school (almost none of which have teams let alone have any success) and had no high school experience, which almost all people at the high levels of collegiate debate had for at east four years in high school.

First off, allow me to say in almost all forms policy debate is an abomination. You are taught to "spread" the other team, or speak like an auctioneer to get as much info in as possible. This makes it so the laymen will have zero idea what you are saying, but those in the community have trained themselves to understand it (supposedly the best debaters can speak and understand over 500 words a minute).

You are also taught to take arguments to their extreme. For example say we are debating the health care law and I am against it. Instead of just saying it will hurt the US financially, I would read a piece of evidence from an extreme source that would say it will collapse the us economy, and the read another piece of evidence that would say that would lead to nuclear war. I kid you not when I say almost every round ends in arguing in about 10 nuke war scenarios.

This was the way debate had been for years, and in my opinion it was a farce. But that isn't even the worst of it. For over a decade now (and getting worse as time goes on) Performance debate has became popular. This basically amount to refusing to debate the topic and instead talking about your personal life and why that means you should win, as the OP is showing. Actually, the round in the op is rather tame.

Here are some rounds I had.

I walk in and am told to acknowledge my privilege as a white man and forfeit the round to advance people of color.

I am told all men are evil and deserve to die and so I should lose for being a man.

I don't have any coaches of color so I should lose.

I speak like a white person of privilege so I should lose.

A team simulated gay sex and claimed because I didn't understand how that had to do with the topic we were supposed to debate about I was a bigot and I should lose.

And so on. These are not exaggerations. And the debate community is so liberal that to defend yourself as a white or man or defender of capitalism etc. is not only an almost automatic loss, it will get you outcast from the community.

My only defense was to claim I am NOT REALLY a white man. I have to get the to clarify what that means, and when they define it as power, I have to argue that I too am underprivledged and I shouldn't be punished.

Whats worse is that this is in some ways the apex of academia, the supposed brightest we have to offer, with literally millions of dollars in scholarships and payments toward coaches and other things going on. And there almost ZERO tolerance for any non liberal ideology.

And the community knows it is a joke. I believe it was the 2008 CEDA nationals finals where a ridiculous racially charged debate led to a coach "mooning" the audience.

www.cbsnews.com...

Ever since then (and largely before) it was known that the debate community should do everything possible to not be filmed or allow the outside world (particularly the administrators from schools that were financing this nonsense) to know what was going on.

The debate community is an example of people that are so arrogant and insular that they are a joke to any outsider, but the still have an air of superiority over everyone else. I learned a lot of positive things in this activity, and made many friends, but overall as a group I have more have nothing but the utmost contempt for them. Many of them are the future leaders of this world, and they feel victimized and entitled and superior to you in every way. They are a metaphor our entire political system.

I figure that in about 10 years I won’t have a job because I won’t be able to communicate. You see, I can’t speak Ebonics; I won’t be able to say the N word because I’m not black, so I won’t be able to put an Ebonics sentence together. I can’t even rap; I’ll probably need an interpreter to get food stamps, oh wait that could pose a problem, I’m white.
Maybe I can move to England where they speak English! Oh no, that’s not right. England is being overrun by non-English speaking Middle Eastern and Indian immigrants.
By the way, I’m not a racist. If you want to call me one, that’s fine, it seems like that’s the word of the day anyway. I just think that it’s ridiculous that the few can impose their will on the many.

sorry, but wth was that?!

that is what passes as debate these days?

can you imagine the brains that came up with that crap?

to address the actual content of the debate, wtf?

i have no idea. both teams should be disqualified.

it shouldn't even be done in that format.

I couldn't listen past the 3:30 mark.
It was making me sick.
I've heard more sensible diatribe from drunks on the subway.
I have no idea what the colleges are trying to prove here.
They can go ahead and diversify themselves to irrelevance - and will very fast at this rate.

What a complete load of crap.
Amazing.
The double standards in our society are absolutely mind-blowing.

gigalddpaiienavaiebaklsienbkaisne n niahenklavijknasn!!KNowwhatImeaNZyO?


Academia has their heads so far up their butts they're kissing their diaphragm.

a reply to: FortAnthem

You're looking at an inter city school debate and expecting an intelligent engagement? That is an unlikely as watching nat geo and expecting some tribesman to look at the camera and solve some astrophysics equation.