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A recent trend in contemporary academic debate (especially at the college level) is the
proliferation Of "Punishment" arguments.1 Instead of trying to in rounds on superior
analysis of policy issues, some teams have sought victory by claiming the undesirable
debate practices of their opponents as voting issues. As commonly understood,
punishment arguments isolate various practices of one's opponent--i.e. conditional
plans/counterplans, incomprehensible delivery, arguments that topicality isn't a
voting issue, etc--as so counter to the goals of debate that the judge should "punish"
them with a loss. "Run this and you'll pay," the logic of this strategy goes.

Some coaches and debaters see this trend toward punishment arguments as healthy,
believing that the only way to stop unfair and uneducational debate practices is to
make abuses of debate a voting issue. Teams who pervert our conception of good
debate should pay for it with a loss; simply dropping abusive arguments from the
round lacks any deterrent or moral force. Others reject the entire concept of
punishment, believing that it makes in practice for childish debates plagued by ad
Holmium argument and devoid of substance. The punishment cure can be worse than
the disease when punishment becomes a regular issue in a team's strategic arsenal,
assuming a role similar to topicality. Because it offers attractive strategic benefits to
debaters, the Punishment concept has seen increasing prominence in many debates.
The controversy among those of us in the activity has grown with punishment's
increasing use. This article attempts to define the punishment concept through an
analysis of the factors causing its development, examine the types of issues subject to
and the reasons for punishment arguments, and explore some of the broader
implications of the widespread use of these arguments. It is hoped that this rather
vaguely defined and misunderstood genre of argument can be placed in the context of
other, broader, trends in debate judging in order to aid our understanding and
ultimate evaluation of the concept.

I: The Punishment Concept's Development

A) The "old" punishment

The term "punishment paradigm" was coined in 1981 at a Utah argumentation

conference by Northwestern University's director of Forensics, G. Thomas Goodnight,
to describe the judging of his college debate coach, Bill English. Goodnight claimed
that English had no judging paradigm, he simply saw as his role the punishment of
debaters who made arguments he didn't like. And we all have had experiences with
punishment oriented judges. They have their own standards for what constitutes
legitimate arguments and theoretical practices, which they apply despite anything that
actually occurs in any particular round. If a particular approach violate, their
standards, they automatically vote against the team advocating it. Erik Walker holds
this view with respect to incomprehensible deliver:

I will automatically vote against any ream who delivers any speech, or a
significant portion thereof, incomprehensibly, for whatever reason ... It is a
voting issue whether articulated by the opposing team or not.2

While Walker holds a punishment view only with respect to incoherence, it was
common in the past for this approach to extend to virtually all aspects of debate
judging. We all have been dismayed to receive back a ballot where a judge voted
against us based on lack of significance or repugnance of a disadvantage when these
issues were not raised or not extended by our opponents. During the late 60s and early
70s it was even possible for some judges to vote against teams running "squirrel" cases
on topicality when the negative never challenged it.

B) The Excesses produced by tabula rasa

In recent years most judges have become tabula rasa. Tabula rasa perspective requires
the critic to attempt/s/ to be a "blank slate" and impose no standards on the round
based on his/her beliefs about what makes for good debate. The debaters, this
perspective claims, should develop the standards to evaluate the significance and
importance of arguments. In practice this view does impose minimal burdens on
debaters to make arguments--an absurd claim without any reasons wouldn't have any
weight even if dropped by the other team. But assuming the teams make reasoned
arguments, Walter Ulrich explains that he "attempts to judge all debates tabula rasa;
with all arguments theoretical or otherwise being debatable." Melissa Wade notes that
her judging perspective is tabula rasa. I am not on any crusades so I will evaluate the
round based on whatever 'paradigm/model' I am instructed to use. 4

This "open-minded" judging style has meant the death of the punishment paradigm
described by Goodnight. Judges will only reject a position if it is defeated in the round.
If topicality is argued as not a voting issue with 20 reasons and the negative drops
those reasons, topicality isn't considered a voting issue. When disgruntled coaches
complain that debate isn't real world and trains a group of "motor-mouth" sophists,
they should look to tabula rasa as the culprit. When judges are willing to tolerate any
argument at any speed, the incentive clearly is to speak fast and develop weird
innovative arguments. Counterwarrents, hypothesis testing, and other theoretical
"advances" have gained acceptance in rounds acceptance in rounds because tabula rasa
have prevented judges from screening out Positions that were counter-intuitive.

While the death of punishment and the rise of tabula rasa judging may be healthy,
there are excesses reduced b-y the current approach to judging debates. Teams who
are more articulate at high speeds of delivery can "win" counter-intuitive arguments
that would seem absurd in any other setting. Erik Walker admits this problem when
he says he "abhor/s/ world government, socialism, referendums, anarchy, rights
Malthus, Karcuse, symbolism, and the like, but, inevitably, they are poorly answered,
hence I vote on them."3 Cathy Hennen bluntly says "I may not philosophically agree
with the theoretical position, but if it is clearly defined and defended, I will vote on it."
It often seems that the most successful teams, both in high school and college, make
the stupidest arguments at the highest speeds.

C) The "new" punishment

The excesses produced by tabula rasa have led to the development of the new
punishment paradigm--one introduced into the round by the debaters. The harmful
by-product of tabula rasa--mindless debate--can be dealt with by making matters of
style and theory voting issues. If judges won't intervene to punish teams for mindless
debate, debaters can establish the need to vote against these practices in the round.
Similarly, topicality was not argued for a long time because judges unilaterally voted
against cases that were outside the bounds of the topic. It was only with the rise of
tabula rasa that it was necessary to make topicality challenges.

Walter Ulrich, who has written widely in favor of tabula rasa judging 7 sees
punishment as the answer to its excesses:

. . . the debate community should view matters of style as being debatable,

as well as matters of theory... by permitting teams faced with undesirable
strategies to argue against these strategies we may help to stop abuses of the
activity.

Cy Smith agrees:
 I do see a certain attraction in the idea of voting against teams' theoretical
positions which are proven (in the round) to be fundamentally injurious to
the nature of the debate activity, in order to deter or "chill" future teams
from advancing the same positions.

Punishment, it is argued here, has returned to debate. We have gone full-circ-re from
judge imposed punishment to debater initiated punishment. And to reflect the
replacement of the old punishment with the new punishment, unless otherwise
indicated, this article will use punishment in the second sense of the word.

II. Punishment in Practice

The goal here is to teach the practical use of punishment arguments. These positions
not only redress the competitive disadvantages for a team who is confronted with
abusive practices, there is also an opportunity to take advantage of the other team's
recklessness. Many rounds can be won by exploiting the opening created by the
reckless debate practices of the other team. This writer can recall many rounds in
which victory was gained through use of punishment arguments where a focus on the
substantive position would have failed. Teams who "cut" their good arguments with
trash theory positions or mask them through incoherent delivery will lose rounds on
punishment that amore traditional approach to strategy would have allowed them to
win. The team who has a killer counterplan to a case can end up losing the round
because they choose to "cut" their position with 3 other "timewaster" counterplans. So,
it is clear, study and practice of punishment argument is a successful strategy in itself.

A) The Form of punishment arguments

Any punishment position can be articulated in a 3 step process. First, identify the issue
in question and link it to the other team. If your opponent runs 3 counterplans make
sure you make it clear in your cross-ex of him/her that that is what s/he is indeed
doing to prevent his/her backing out of the strategy later. Then, tell the judge that
your opponent has run conditional counterplans--referring back to both the
constructive and cross-ex. Second, explain why the practice in question is illegitimate.
In the case of conditional counterplans, there are many fairness and educational
reasons why they destroy debate. Be sure to explain the reasons for your position--tag
line approaches will fail to be persuasive. Third, explain why the use of the practice in
question should be a voting issue. This gives impact to the argument.
A punishment position can be easily briefed in the following form:

Conditionality of counterplans is a voting Issue

A) The negative has run conditional counterplans-is clear both from the constructive
speech and the cross-ex.

B) Conditionality is illegitimate--explain the numerous grounds for this claim: fairness,

education, etc.

C) Impact--Voting Issue--explain the reasons why punishment is required. We'll

examine those reasons in the next section of this article.

B) Justifications for Punishment

Let us look at some reasons for the claim made under the C subpoint above. Why vote
against a team when they lose a theory argument instead of just dropping-out the
argument? In the case of incomprehensible delivery, why not just vote on the portions
of the speech which can be understood? In short, it is necessary to overcome the belief
on the part of many judges that bad arguments don't warrant punishment-just the loss
of those arguments. Goodnight expresses the view that "merely because a debater is
ineloquent in one part of a speech does not mean that the speech as an entity should
be disregarded."10

There are at least 4 reasons that can be isolated for voting on punishment positions
irrespective of what occurs in the rest of the round. First, most central to the entire
notion of punishment is the deterrent view. Just as we punish criminals to deter crime,
we should punish debaters who injure the debate process. A ballot that says "I think
you may have won that second DA--but I voted against you based on the illegitimacy
of the conditional counterplans you ran" sends a strong message to the teams involved
and other participants in the activity that there are high costs of abusive strategies.

There does seem to be merit to the negative reinforcement approach to debate. The
arguments and styles that are successful are copied; those that aren't are shunned.
While the decision in one round can't by itself fundamentally change debate, a general
trend can be initiated and/or reinforced by a decision. The experience of this author
has been that, at least in college debate, the threat of punishment now hangs over
teams using strategies and styles that are generally regarded as illegitimate.
Deterrence seems especially applicable to the debate setting because the participants
have control over their practices. We all practice judge analysis, trying to adapt to the
inevitable likes and dislikes of even the most tabula rasa critic. The feedback a
punishment decision provides is direct: everyone is given notice that the winning team
will and can win rounds in the face of abusive debating and that the judge involved
will vote against such practices. It only takes a few instances of punishment for the
entire debate community to start incorporating the risk of punishment in their pre-
round planning.

A second reason for punishment sees the judge as an educator. Teams damaging the
goals of the debate activity should lose because the judge has a duty to improve the
debate form--independent of the duty he has to render a decision on the issues
surrounding the plan. The medium in debate is the message: to abuse the medium is
to destroy the message. A teacher, for example, would not accept a paper with good
ideas that are presented in an unscholarly fashion-in disorganized, ungrammatical
style replete with spelling errors and devoid of organization. While it stretches the
analogy to suggest that judges should be solely concerned with skills, it is reasonable
for the judge to punish teams violating the criteria presented in the round to
determine the better job of debating.

When a judge votes for one team in a debate his ballot has no effect on the course of
events being debated. Nobody will get employed this year because an affirmative
wins a round. The only effect a decision has is an educational one--it rewards one
team and penalizes another team. To ignore arguments over the technique of the debate
is to confuse the role a judge plays within the policymaking paradigm with the more
fundamental role the judge serves as educator. It seems entirely plausible for a critic to
refuse to decide based on evalu-Ation of policy because issues of technique are
introduced into the round. There is no reason that a debate must intrinsically be
decided based on who advocates the best policy.

A third reason that can be introduced in support of punishment is fairness. If it is

shown that a given style or theory hurts the debate activity, the abusing team has hurt
the educational experience of the abused team. One team invests hundreds of dollars,
hundreds of hours, and gives up other educational opportunities only to confront a
meaningless experience--we all have had the feeling after some particularly useless
debates that maybe we'd be better off not debating. Quite simply, the social contract
we all make to try to engage in genuine intellectual discourse is breached by those
who employ disruptive tactics in order to win. A ballot on the illegitimacy of such
disruptive abuses seems the least that can be expected.

Competitive equity Is also restored by voting on punishment. Abusive tactics are

employed to gain strategic advantage: conditional counterplans , for example, imply a
geometric increase in the burdens placed upon the affirmative. Incoherent delivery is
particularly unfair because a debater can never be sure if the bits and pieces of a
speech he understood were the same bits and pieces the judge understood. The way to
restore competitive equity is to vote against teams guilty of disrupting the natural
competitive opportunity that existed in the absence of abusive tactics. To merely drop-
out bad debate practices is to encourage their use--teams will run multiple
counterplans, counterwarrants and the like and hope to draw lots of attacks on them
to waste the maximum time possible, allowing victory on the other issues. It seems
particularly unjust for a team to have to answer multiple counterplans,
counterwarrants, and the like and to end up losing on topicality. Only by voting to
punish teams employing tactics that are shown to be injurious to debate--in terms of
education and fairness--can competitive equity be maintained.

The final reason that will be isolated here to vote for punishment arguments in the
notion of responsibility. It seems fundamental to the idea of advocacy that participants
have a commitment to their arguments. With this commitment comes responsibility--if
arguments are lost the round is lost. Robin Rowland articulates this view of debate:

In real science or policy analysis there is no costless dropping of arguments.

An advocate who is forced to admit an error suffers a substantial loss of
ethos. He has been proven wrong. In the real world strategic exigencies force
advocates to carefully consider their positions. Debate should teach students
that they,loo must be responsible for what they say.

With substantive policy argument within a normal judging perspective, responsibility

is achieved by introduction of lost positions into the decision making calculus--if a DA
is lost it cuts against case side advantages, if inherency is lost the negative wins
automatically.

With bad debate practices, responsibility is a hollow notion if they don't have an
absolute impact in the round. To allow a negative, for example, to run counterwarrants
and then drop them when they are indicted is to vitiate the notion of responsibility.
The only way to attach costs to practices we determine are illegitimate is to punish
teams that use them.

These four justifications work within the tabula rasa judging approach. The winner in a
debate need not be decided according to any criteria a judge brings into a round--the
criteria are suggested by the participants in the debate. Deterrence, education, fairness,
and responsibility can be established as goals that should replace policymaking where
appropriate. As debaters employ punishment arguments we all may be better served
by the improvements that result: improvements in debate practices and in the
participants' ability to discuss the reasons why debate is more than a clash on policy.

c) Reverse Voting Issues

One fear that has been expressed regarding punishment is the possibility that it will
get out of hand-debaters will urge that everything in rounds be subject to punishment.
If this tactic becomes overused we may create more problems than we eliminate:
rounds full of childish attacks on every aspect of debate practice would be intolerable
to judge or listen to. The punishment concept, it seems, has a built in check on overuse
and misuse--the reverse voting issue. If a punishment argument is made and lost, then
the team initiating the argument should be punished. It makes sense that once the
round is moved onto the theory plane, it ought to stay there and be resolved at that
level. To indict one theory is to support another; if the indicted theory is defended then
the superiority of that theory over its competitor is a voting issue. It seems fair that
when a team is put in extreme peril--they can lose solely on the punishment argument
made against them-their opponent should be put in the same peril.

The reverse voting issue serves to discourage abuse Of the punishment approach.
Teams advancing stupid punishment arguments should themselves by punished.
Teams making punishment arguments should be held responsible for those
arguments--if they lose them they should pay.

It is this author's belief that the criticisms that have been lodged against punishment
ignore the built-in check provided by the reverse-voting issue. For example, one
common attack is that punishment "chills" new theory--teams will be afraid to
innovate for fear of being punished. Actually, punishment only "chills" bad theory.
New theory--if it truly is an educational advance--would be defensible and could
alone be a reason to vote for the team introducing it through the reverse voting issue
concept. In fact, since there would be a need to rigorously support any new theory
against punishment arguments, new theory would be more carefully articulated and
defended.

III. The alternative to Punishment--A greater Evil

The alternative to punishment is repudiation of the tabula rasa judging perspective.

Many judges have grown tired of abusive debate practices and closed off their minds
to innovations. They have developed a "philosophy" of judging which approves of
some practices and disapproves of others. This closed-minded dogmatism marks a
return to the pre-tabula rasa days. Ironically, punishment doesn't go away--it just
reappears as judge imposed punishment.

It seems undeniable that tabula rasa judging invites the disruption of the debate
process. Whatever one's goal is in debating, there are certain styles and theories that
are simply disruptive to a meaningful fulfillment of that goal. Especially at the college
level, debate is shrinking. Some coaches blame this on the rapid rate of delivery that
has become common, some blame it on the over-emphasis on evidence, and others
have taken refuge in any number of alternative explanations. The only way that
debate can change and improve is through the exposure of the excesses of tabula rasa
in actual rounds.

The retreat from tabula rasa is the wrong response to the ills of debate. It assumes that
debaters are incapable of rationally discussing the goals of debate and advocating
positions which serve to deter practices subverting those goals. It places the judge in a
privileged position--he has found the "correct" way to debate and will reject other
approaches. The arrogance of this approach stuns this author: it repudiates the very
assumptions of the activity. Tabula rasa has been so attractive because it is grounded in
a belief in our ability to rationally discuss theory--as we do policy.

In truth, there is no consensus in the debate community as to the "goal" of debate.

Some participants stress the public speaking aspect. Some stress the research skills that
are gained. Others are interested in developing creativity. And others see development
of a knowledge of argumentation theory as important.12 Given the wide range of
values promoted by debates-which often are in conflict--and the degree to which
different individuals seek different rewards from the activity, it seems selfish for a
judge to develop a set of rigid ideas about what makes for a good debate.

Debate has attracted students precisely because there is an opportunity to be creative--

to make arguments that are innovative and in some cases counterintuitive. Punishment
arguments serve to ensure a rigorous test of these innovations. Tabula rasa unchecked
can be dangerous. Punishment positions reintroduce elements of deterrence,
education, fairness: and responsibility into debate to combat the excesses of the "blank-
slate" approach. A thorough understanding of the roots of punishment and the
justifications that exist for it reveal the objections to the concept to be ephemeral. And,
even if there are drawbacks to a punishment model they are insignificant compared to
the evils of the current "backlash" against tabula rasa that is occurring. That backlash
threatens to return us to the days of closed-minded judging.In conclusion, it is hoped
that debaters will see the whole issue of punishment in the larger context outlined
here. Making style and theory a voting issue is a powerful tool to defeat opponents
who disrupt the activity with ill-conceived, unfair tactics. Accordingly, making
punishment a purely strategic tool leaves a debater vulnerable to a taste of his own
medicine-reverse punishment. Use punishment arguments wisely. . . .

NOTES

1. This claim is based on the author's observation of college and high school debate
over the past several years and an examination of the 1984 National Debate
Tournament judge philosophy book.

2. Erik Walker, 1984 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet.

3. Walter Ulrich, 1983 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet.

4. Melissa Wade, 1984 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet.

5. Erik Walker, 1984 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet.

6. Cathy Hennen, 1984 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet.

7. Walter Ulrich, "The Influence of the Judge on the Debate Round," in Arguments in
Transition: Proceedings of the Third Summer Conference on Argumentation, edited by David
Zarefsky, Malcolm Sillars, and Jack Rhodes, 1983, pp. 938-950.

8. Ulrich, p.941.

9. Cy Smith, 1982 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet.

10. G. Thomas Goodnight, In Defense of Our Nation: A Basic Overview of the Problems
Involved in US Defense Policy (Skokie, Illinois: National Textbook Company, 1982), p.
55.

11. Robert Rowland, "Debate Paradigms: A Critical Evaluation," in Dimensions of

Argument: Proceedings of the Second Summer Conference on Argumentation, edited by
George Aiegel Mueller and Jack Rhodes, 19&1, P. 22.

12. David Zarefsky, "The Perils of Assessing Paradigms," Journal of the American
Forensic Association, 18 (winterl982), p. 141 - 144.