The organizational phase of the IPDA lasted from the Patriot Games meeting in November 1996 until the start of the 1997-98 season the following September.
Not much happened during the remainder of the fall after the UT-Tyler meeting. First there was Thanksgiving, then the end of the semester and final examinations, and this was followed by the grading of papers and tests and the Christmas Holidays. The only actual work I did, or that I know of, was making arrangements for the Inaugural tournament which was to be held at St. Mary's on February 15-16, 1997. It was surprising that we got any entries at all considering that we were asking folks to take money away from their regular budgeted travel to attend a tournament which was meaningless from a competitive perspective. But Kansas City Kansas Community College came down as did UT-Tyler. Lisa Coppoletta had bought 6 tickets to bring a contingent from UNCC, but a threatened American Airlines strike caused her to cancel her plans. Still our numbers were large. At one point we expected an entry of 67 and ended up with an actual field of 45. But it was still a very credible forensics event. And more importantly, from an educational perspective, it was the most pedagogically sound and entertaining tournament I had ever attended. It was the first "Public Debate Only" tournament ever held and it launched the new association.
Now it was time to get busy. As I wrote elsewhere "I don't think anyone, most especially me, gave this venture more than a 25% chance of succeeding. We didn't have funding, we didn't have a Constitution, we didn't have a schedule of host tournaments, we didn't even have a clear idea of what we needed to do first. But we had a goal and we had fun."9 I also didn't have a great deal of incentive to pour too much effort into this project. But little by little, as the spring semester progressed, I became somewhat more optimistic about our chances.
I had pledged that the new association's expenses for the first two seasons would be underwritten by the St. Mary's Forensics Program. At the time, it didn't look like these expenses were going to be very high. The workload seemed much more problematic. There were a number of documents which had to be produced (event descriptions, judging instruction sheets, an official IPDA ballot, membership information forms, etc.). And yet, much of this material was already in draft form based on the materials used at the Diamondback Classic. The most vital project was to line up enough tournaments which were willing to host this new event that we would have a credible first season. And there was the question of tournament administration if we could find willing hosts. I assumed (rightly as it turned out) that most of the schools who were willing to include us would only do so if we provided all of the supporting materials and ran the tabbing of the event.
So toward the end of spring of 1997, St. Mary's held a small intramural tournament in large part to check out our 'traveling tabroom' materials and procedures. I packed everything from ballots to postings in a single medium size brief case and ran the on-campus tournament, including the topic draw, by myself and with just those materials. Almost surprisingly it ran very smoothly. With a few minor adjustments, our traveling tabroom was ready to go.10
By the end of the spring semester, I had lined up the following tournament schedule. And this wasn't the schedule we actually ended up with, but it was a good approximation of the size of our first season:
| Approximate Date: | Tournament: | Director: |
| Late September | University of Mary-Hardin Baylor | Joey Taberlet |
| Early October | Sam Houston | Debbie Hatton |
| Mid October | Texas A&I | Eric Ramos |
| Late October | Diamondback Classic | Alan Cirlin |
| Early November | San Jacinto South | Phil Fisher |
| Early December | Patriot Games | Jack Rogers |
| Late January | Red River Classic, LA | Jorji Jarzabek |
| Early February | Panola | Freddy Mason |
| Mid February | H.M. Greene Debates | Wayne Kraemer |
| Late February | Spring Rattler | Alan Cirlin |
| Early March | Kansas City, KS | Don Black |
| End of Season | Championship Tournament | Alan Cirlin |
We started out expecting a season of 12 tournaments and ended up with 12 actual tournaments. As each new tournament was lined up, I added it to the chalkboard in the Forensics Team Meeting Room. And as that list grew, so did my confidence.
On June 22 the first issue of what would become the IPDA Newsletter came out. It was more or less an Executive Secretary's message to the membership at first, but quickly became a periodical which (theoretically) comes out on or about the 15th of every month during the season.
Jack suggested a summer mini-organizational/development conference to prepare for next season. We set the meeting for San Antonio during the Summer of 1997. By the time that meeting was held, most of the basic organizational work for the 1997-98 season was completed. Things would change significantly, but we didn't know that at the time. Jack had invited everyone and their dog to attend. But Jack and I were the only ones who actually did. And this it turned out was probably a good thing. We were able to work quickly and resolve issues between us without having to go through lengthy discussion or committees.
Jack and his lovely wife, Cathrine, came down to San Antonio for a weekend and stayed at the Menger Hotel in a Suite overlooking the Alamo. We spent one long afternoon hammering out the details of our new association. The biggest item on our agenda concerned the Constitution and governance structure which this new association would require. I had come prepared with a very rough outline of issues which was based on a close analysis of the content of the CEDA Constitution. Item by item we worked out a draft version for the IPDA Constitution.
During this meeting Jack and I agreed on certain basic goals and principles. To wit:
1. The Public Debate Association should have the goal of promoting a form of debate where education would come first. We wanted an debate activity where students of all ability levels could compete with comfort, and where competitors could develop rhetorical skills that would effectively translate into real world speaking contexts.
2. We were committed to using real world, lay judges as the fundamental audience for our tournaments. We felt that having relatively untrained students, faculty, and community members judging would force the competitors to adopt effective oratorical strategies. Our hope was that this would avoid the logos-feedback problem which had been the heart of the lemming-like drive toward the excesses of NDT and CEDA. Experience suggested that the heavy use of student-judges, as much as anything, had kept the student-run British-Parliamentary debate associations free from the evolutionary drive toward logic, abusiveness, and speed.
3. We wanted to promote a new simplified debate ballot which would provide a balance among the rhetorical elements of ethos, pathos, logos, and perspective. Since the association was going to rely on a continually refreshed set of novice judges, we felt this was important. I had tested the new ballot along with a simple two page handout to accompany and provide minimal judging instructions at the two spring St. Mary's tournaments. They worked well and seemed to provide a reasonable balance between lay judges and decisions which were relatively consistent with debate theory.
4. We wanted to promote open eligibility. Unlike most traditional forms of debate which were limited to undergraduate university students (or the British Parliamentary forms which were also open to graduate students), this event was to be open to all. This opened the door not only for graduate students, coaches, and community members to debate, but also for high school and middle school students as well. It was hoped this would minimize the amount of NDT/CEDA bias in the judging pool. It was also hoped this would permit coaches who entered the competition to keep in touch with what their students were experiencing, let them serve as role models of excellence in debate styles, and provide the opportunity to become a coach-mentor (as many of my fellow graduate assistant coaches and I had been).
5. We supported keeping the fees for the Public Debate Association as low as possible. We made this a stated objective in our new Constitution. We didn't want this event to become a cash cow for tournament directors and felt that reasonable fees would be more consistent with the pedagogical goals of the association.
6. We were committed to keeping the 'Multiple-Choice Topic Selection Process.' By using the five topic system we hoped to gain several distinct advantages. We expected to avoid the problem of massive evidence stockpiling to which the NDT/CEDA format is prone. We also hoped our students would gain an increased appreciation of the relationship between the resolution and the nature of the debate which follows by thinking strategically about and having to select among various topic alternatives. It made topic selection itself an important component of the game in the same way that presidential debate formats and topics are negotiated between the major candidates. And just as candidates try to influence the debate format to their advantage, we expected debaters would learn to better understand and appreciate their own unique debating skills, strengths, and weaknesses through this process of topic selection.
7. We were committed to keeping the 'Extemporaneous Preparation Process:' We felt that the 30 minutes of preparation time used in the Public Debate format created an extemporaneous speaking context. And just as extemporaneous speakers have sufficient time to consult their research files, so Public Debaters would have sufficient time to do the same. In fact, the exact same files might be used by both sets of speakers. In this sense, Public Debaters would have a greater incentive to do the research necessary to create elaborate extemporaneous files. Yet by the same token, since the rules of Public Debate preclude reading evidence in rounds, a premium would be created, just as for extemporaneous speakers, to develop a genuine familiarity and understanding of the issues involved in their research materials. Since they wouldn't be able to just read, as is so common in NDT and CEDA, this would hopefully gain the benefit of both worlds; there would be a serious connection to real world issues and research (at least on some of the topic choices) and a freedom from the stylistic abuses of reading massive numbers of evidentiary sound-bites ripped out of context. (NPDA, by contrast, only allows 15 minutes of preparation time and requires coordination between two debaters. This effectively precludes reference to any but the most rudimentary of research materials.)
8. We were especially committed to the 'Public Debate Format:' The modified 5-2-7-2-3-4-3 L-D format had been developed over time and was proven to work. The tinkering with format during the various Diamondback Classic Tournaments had shown that small format changes could provoke major changes in the look and feel of the event. In this sense Public Debate worked well, but was very fragile. The nomenclature of the event would be the standard 'Affirmative v. Negative' as opposed to the Parliamentary 'Government v. Opposition.' Cross-Examination would remain a part of this format while interrupting and heckling were discouraged or eliminated. We felt all of this would promote a public speaking event which was more sedate and serious than the typical British Parliamentary format. Even when humorous topics are being debated, we didn't want the audience situation to be as rowdy as in a similar Parliamentary-style debate. There was obviously a trade-off here. But just as Public Debate gains rhetorical speaking quality at the expense of the kind of intensive research referencing possible in an NDT/CEDA-style debate, we hoped it would gain a real world orientation and empirical grounding advantage over the more free style Parliamentary-styles of debate. And, of course, we hoped the firm "no reading of evidence" and extemporaneous preparation rules would contribute to achieving the desired effects.
9. But perhaps the most important innovation - something I felt was of critical importance and which Jack was initially very skeptical about - was the self-perpetuating governance structure. I had envisioned a 3-person directorate of officers who would serve as an absolute bastian against unwanted changes. If the Public Debate Association ever became large enough to attract disgruntled CEDA/NDT philosophy coaches, I didn't want them to ever have enough influence to modify or eliminate any of the basic goals and principles listed above which we held as fundamental to the mission of the organization. Jack started out more worried about the basic democratic feel of the organization, but as time went on, I eventually won him over to my way of thinking on this issue.
During the end of the summer of 1997, I made final preparations for our first season. This included the ordering of 5,000 high-quality copies of the new debate ballot. I thought this would probably be enough to last the new organization for it's first 4-5 years. As it turned out, they barely got us through our first.
Which brings up the interesting question of expectations. I had initially questioned whether we'd be able to organize a debate association with a credible first season at all. By August of 1997 it was clear that we would be able to do at least this much. But would the association be successful? Would anyone come to our tournaments or enter Public Debate? As an historical curiosity, here are the criteria for success which I set for our first three years. I.e., by the end of the 1999-2000 season, I expected the following goals to be achieved. If we didn't get this far, I would consider the project a waste of further time and effort and abandon it.
1. We had to have a solid schedule which included at least 5 tournaments per semester. With an end-of-the-season Championship tournament, I expected a minimal annual schedule of 11 events.
2. I expected at least 25 program members 15 of which were actually competing at PDA tournaments.
3. I expected the association to be financially self-supporting. And most important to me,
4. I expected the philosophic and educational goals of the association to remain intact.
It was soon evident that the association was growing much more quickly than I had any right to expect. All of the numeric three-year goals were achieved by the end of the first season, and by the end of the second season they had all been exceeded by a wide margin.11 [Next]
Mission Statement & Introduction I - The Origins of IPDA II - The Organizational Period III - The First Season [1997-98] IV - The Second Season [1998-99] V - The Future of IPDA VI - Endnotes