Last weekend the Speech and Debate team loaded up the faithful ol' R-
MA bus, and with the equally faithful Jennifer at the wheel headed
for the wilds of New Jersey. And until you've been in northern NJ,
you haven't seen wilds. Assistant Coach Lauren Burt and I came in on
our own wheels and a slightly different route. Getting off the PA
Turnpike at Trenton, we were confronted with a huge neon-lit sign
bolted to the side of a railroad bridge that said, "Trenton Makes,
The World Takes." After wondering for a while who thought that would
make a good rah-rah slogan, we decided that the whole city had some
bitterness issues.
Princeton, fortunately, is a tiny island of sanity floating in the
whirling maelstrom of New Jersey. The Czar can always be counted on
to get his team to a comfortable, convenient hotel; the Staybridge
Suites had a killer breakfast bar to boot. The rooms were excellent,
right next to the tennis courts, which some of our kids decided to
use in spite of the fact that it's, like, December, people.
The Princeton campus is lovely, full of old Hogwarts-like buildings
and right across the street from a street of little shops and
eateries all dressed up for Christmas. The light dusting of snow
Saturday made it all Currier-and-Ivesy.
Since The Czar is responsible for running a substantial part of the
Princeton Classic, he set up his headquarters in Whig Hall. Whig Hall
is the home of the Whig-Cleosophilical Society, a debating club that
was in operation in the early days of the Republic, and the building
looks the part: white stone and three story Greek columns in the
front. The inside, well, could use a little work. Our initial
location in the great room on the third floor was supposed to be the
judges' lounge, but that plan changed when a piece of ceiling tile
came close to spearing an innocent judge. At least, she looked
innocent. Startled, too. So we moved the judges to the second floor,
which had apparently been the site of a large party a few days before
and smelled swampy. The first floor, which is partly underground and
stuffed with ancient documents, portraits, busts and display cases,
became the tab room. Thank God for wireless internet. Once we got
settled in, it wasn't so bad. There was even a semi-concealed
elevator in the rear, allowing the Czar to appear in the judges'
lounge for briefings and announcements. The Czar can clear a room,
especially with a handful of ballots.
Assistant Coach Burt had her hands full with a new group of freshman
Lincoln-Douglas debaters. Debate Team Captain Valerie Pratt took
charge of the Public Forum group, her own team with John Cristoph,
and the teams of Caleb Gerber and Maryanne Nell, and Steve Maddock
and Paul Smith. Jackson McGraw headed off for Senate, and our
Extempers Brennan Morris and John Holsinger went to their prep room.
Tab room was a whirl of activity, matching up rounds and sorting out
teams from over sixty schools. I saw schools on the list from Texas,
Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Princeton Classic is
indeed a national level event.
I spent Friday judging six rounds of Public Forum. Sharp kids,
excellent arguments...we were using last month's resolution, so they
had had five weeks to polish their cases. We were double-flighted for
most rounds, meaning that when one team got through another came in
to the room and fired up. As soon as a round ended and my ballot was
completed, I text-messaged the results directly to the tab room. This
is the first event I've judged with that clever innovation, and it
really sped up processing; the awards ceremony took place an hour
earlier than scheduled! Another nice feature was the posting of the
day's results on www.princetonclassic.org at the end of each day, so
people who broke to the next level could prepare.
By Sunday morning, all of our kids had done well, but only Brennan
and John Holsinger were in final rounds. I helped out in the tab
room, learning by observation and running errands. Things were going
smoothly. A little too smoothly, as it turned out...the online
application the Speech people were using for tabulation crashed 90
minutes before the awards ceremony. The Czar and the Speech folks
worked out a plan, someone ran to the student lounge to grab all the
postings off the wall so we could doublecheck, and we started hand-
tabulating Speech. It was still going on while the awards ceremony
was in process, and some of the winners were relayed to people
standing on stage by cell phone. But it got done, even accomodating
some people whose teams needed to leave early. Wow.
This Saturday is the big Northern VA event at Westfield High School,
and then comes a well-deserved Christmas break! We've had a fantastic
fall, with so many great freshmen getting into their various events
and our varsity folks charging on. I have had an absolute blast
working with the team, from critiquing poetry readings to doing the
radio program to finding my way around colleges with a car packed
full of kids in full-blown debate uniforms. It's a little shocking to
realize that you're driving a car full of teenagers and you're the
only one who looks scruffy.
Doug Pratt
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