-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 11:45 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [CEDA-L] Stop the hypocrisy NOW! Don't include race!
Gordon, Please re-post the following to CEDA-L because I am not a member of this list-serve: Ede is calling me out on a listserve that I do not currently subscribe to, but I want my position know given that he is using my name on a coaches website. Point-blank, I CANNOT be the basis of Ede's and Louisville's complaints about policy debate for the past five years. Why? Because I have not been an active coach of a policy program for the past five years. I have only been recently coaching. I resent being the only person identified as part of some conception of "racism in debate." If you are going to name names Ede, I suggest you name people that actually are in control of the activity. But, I don't think you will because your desire to maintain friendships overwhelms your so-called revolution. Yeah, that's right, I said it--it ain't a revolution until you piss off the people you grew up with. Hanging with you friends at a tournament that stands for everything you supposedly oppose while ignoring a tournament that was just an hour away smacks to me of a form of deletentism, rather than true activism. Ironically, the same week I am being accused of some form of racism by Ede, I was too busy judging Ede's teams at Appalachian State's tournament to read; or respond. Where was Ede? Was he supporting regional debate tournaments? No, he and his "top teams" [elitism]were buying into the NDT-myth and engaging in the same NDT death march that every other wannabe "first round bid" team went through this weekend. All I got to say on this is issue of being insensitive to his complaints is that Ede's teams can speak to whether I gave them a fair judgment in the round I judged and whether or not I spent at least forty or more minutes explaining to them how to make their criticism of current debate practices more effective. We had a great discussion on why the current state of policy debate sucks and what needs to be done to solve the problem. Where were you, Ede, to be involved in THAT discussion? Where were YOU when I was wanting to talk about how to REALLY break this system down? So, Ede, I don't know how I have been sucked into being some poster-boy for racism in debate--especially when I am simply a small school coach, making a point to go to traditonal regional tournaments, and actively recruiting minorities and underrepresented groups into his program. If you would have been at the local tournament, you would have seen the results--the "put my money where my mouth is results"--of my efforts to recruit women and minorities. But, oh, I forgot, you were too busy playing poker with dem good ol' boyz at Wake. If pointing out hypocrisy is a crime, then I guess I am guilty and I will take my lumps. But I think that Ede personally attending Wake, complaining that the system is racist and unfair, etc., smacks of the ultimate form of hypocrisy. Ede, you say "...Elliot, where he repeatedly makes a claim that all Louisville does is cry foul on race in debates." Well, based on my personal experience, I agree with that statement. I won't back away from that assessment. I found it quite ironic that I judged a round in which there was an African-American male, one white female, and TWO African-American females debating, only to have Ede's team make the same EXACT arguments in the round as if they were debating two redneck guys from Ku Klux Klan University. Am I the only person who see a problem with a team of minority students pointing the finger at another group of minority students and making the same claims they would make against two white males from prvileged backgrounds? It was quite a twilight-zone moment then watching a speaker spread in the 2NC in order to extend his partner's "speed is bad" kritik. I wonder whether this is a true form of revolutionary rhetoric, or just a one trick pony strategy that has lost its shine. Is the Louisville project a real revolutionary movement anymore, or has it been reduced to merely another strategy to win a few rounds, on par with a team reading the same Focault or Derrida critique, every round, on the affirmative and the negative, for five years straight? Why not cut some cards on the topic and then bust out the "racism in debate " kritiks when they actually apply? Ede, if you are going to call me out on such a personal level, why not publicly call out the Directors of programs that you think are the true causes of the issues you raise. It CANNOT BE ME, because I have not been around for the past five years as a coach. I was not, and have never been a member of the CEDA Executive Committee. I was not, and will never be, and member of the AFA NDT Board. I damn sure am not on this CEDA TOPIC COmmitte that is geared to meet the needs of the top twenty varsity NDT teams--at the exculsion of other college students who never had access to high school debate, or have to work in order to stay in school! So maybe you should sling some mud their way. Or am I just a convienent scapegoat because I am not part of your old-school, elitist, NDT clich? I would have loved to have talked to you personally, Ede, about the state of policy debate, but you were too busy sleeping with the enemy and giving into the same racist system that you so often criticize. I support your ideas more than most, but I think you unfairly single me out simply because I am willing to engage you an a painfully open discussion of your ideas and tactics toward changing college policy debate in America. Why not call out those who silently control the system that you claim to want to change. You know who they are better than I do. Please share. Scott Elliott _______________________________________________ CEDA-L mailing list [email protected] http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/ceda-l
