Roadmap

Monday, July 11, 2011

Calling TP "Policy"

When I first heard about speech and debate, I thought I might want to join debate. Then I found out that speech was actually a separate component involving interps and decided to join speech and debate. Then I found out that debate looks hard and is a lot of work and decided to join speech and join debate later. And by debate I meant Team Policy. I don't know when I found out there was another kind of debate in Stoa, but it probably took a while. So at first, I referred to Team Policy debate as "debate." Then I discovered the existence of Lincoln-Douglas debate (though I wouldn't realize its wonderfulness for several months) and began to refer to Team Policy as most people do: TP.  As a soon to be TP-er, occasional half-member of the LD Secret Society, and just CHSADK in general, I've noticed an odd trend about TP: some people don't call it that. They simply refer to Team Policy as "Policy." Crazy, right? Or is it...

Here is a list of 5 reasons that I think calling Team Policy "Policy" is a cool idea:

1. It won't get lost in a sea of terminology.
OO? OI? Expos? Extemp? What does it all mean?? Too much confusing terminology is not a good idea. Eventually, it's destined to all be meaningless. Probably. Policy solves that problem.

2. No confusion with toilet paper results.
You know you're a debate nerd when someone suggests you go TP a house and you assume that means "team-policy" a house. And what's sad/funny is that this actually happens.

3. We've already started to form new shortcuts elsewhere.
Some cool HI people call their speeches their "Humorous." What? It's true! We don't quite have Dramatics and we don't quite have Opens, and we certainly don't have Humorouses, but A Humorous in the singular form? Sure.

4. The LDer's do it.
Most, if not all, of the people I've heard call TP "Policy" are LDer's. And the LDer's know where it's at. Trust me, they have a secret society. They know stuff.

5. It just sounds cooler.
Ok, admit it. If you, like me, have not spent the last bajillion weeks of your life researching the United States foreign policy toward Russia, TP is not that fun to watch, because I have no idea what you're talking about. But somehow Policy seems more doable. I'd be pretty willing to watch a Policy round.

So TP? Policy? What's your stance? One thing I like about Policy is that you can't just call LD "Douglas" or "Lincoln." It's either LD or the whole mouthful. And it isn't like we can call it "Values" or something, so as to contrast Policy. But unlike LD, with Policy, TP gets two nicknames! Win.

You're homeschooled, so the fact that referring to a kind of debate a specific way might sound cooler to you is laughably nerdy. And awesome.

1 comment:

  1. I just call it TP, but that's because I'm just a wanna-be non-debater hanging around with all of you cool and smart people, so . . . yeah. Don't think that because I call it TP, it's TP instead of Policy. Also, TP is shorter. =)

    Hannah

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