Question #11-- What experience do you have to make you qualified to be in charge of a National Organization that fulfills both academic and competitive needs of its members? I believe I may be the only candidate to serve a full term as regional rep. I am currently in my fifth term. I have served on half a dozen committees and have attended every CEDA summer meeting except one since 1994. I know what CEDA is, I understand it’s history and it is because of this context that I want to serve. In addition to my service to CEDA, I am in the perfect position to lead this organization. I have tremendous administrative support from my university and they have promised even more if I am elected. As a tenure track member of our faculty I have access to numerous other faculty members who I can consult about issues important to the organization, a legal department that is willing to provide me with free advice and our Office of Sponsored Programs that is eager to find new sources of funding for the organization. Additionally, I have presented repeatedly in the CEDA division at NCA. I have done this because I believe it is important to support the organization and present the organization as an academic one. Universities are not likely to continue to support debate unless we can demonstrate that our organization is not just a service organization, but that we are an academic one as well. As a director of debate, I am asked to complete many of the same duties as the vice president of our organization is asked to. I have to make monthly reports to our faculty, manage difficult and conflicting personalities, manage a budget and negotiate hotel and car rental contracts. I can bring this experience to my role as vice president. Dave Steinberg once gave me backhanded compliment that I consider one of the nicest things that anyone has ever said about me. Dave said, “Mike can be a pain in the ass, but he is that way no matter who you are.” I pride myself on the fact that I try to get to know a diverse group of people in our community. I know directors and coaches from coast to coast and I try to learn the names of all of the debaters I come in contact with whether they are top level varsity debaters or brand new novices. The reason I feel that everyone has value in the debate community relates directly to my experience. I have coached at programs where we have had some of the top debaters in the country, programs where we have only had one or two team and programs with dozens of novices. These experienced have helped shaped who I am and how I would lead. Everyone’s experience is important and I can not pretend to understand where each individual is coming from, but I will do my best (whether I am elected or not) to make sure that debate can be the experience that each individual would like it to be. Question #12-- 4 of the 5 years that you serve CEDA, 2 as a VP and 2 as a Past President, you have to work well with others who are the actual President. Whichever one of you wins will have to work well as a unit with Gordon Stables and Sue Peterson (the 2 who will assume the Presidency before you). What do you bring to the table to ensure a smooth and complementary leadership role? I have worked with Sue and Gordon (as well as Darren and Joe who will be our immediate past presidents for a long time. Sue and I were competitors against each other and have worked together in the CEDA leadership for quite a while. Gordon and I have worked together very closely at the University of Georgia where we were both graduate students. Part of the reason I am running is because I am enthusiastic about the types of changes that both Gordon and Sue have discussed as CEDA moves forward. I also have worked with our treasurer, ML Sandoz, and our executive secretary, Jeff Jarman, for a long time. I am interested in serving this organization because I appreciate the work that these individuals have put into the organization. I know that some people have complained that useful or that the executive council is some sort of secret cabal that makes decisions out of the view of the public. This is an insult to the people who give of themselves to serve this organization. I know that this statement might cost me some votes, but if you think that the individuals who serve CEDA have anything but the best interest of the organization at heart then I’m probably not the person you want to vote for anyway. Question #13-- Do you feel CEDA should abandon its current leadership structure and move towards another structure? If so, what should the new structure look like? Maybe. I voted for the change to two year terms that was proposed a few years ago. I think that there is too much learning on the job in our current structure. There are a few ways to solve this problem. The first would be to move to longer term than are currently served. I understand that there were many who felt that we would have a hard time recruiting future vice presidents if this was the case and that may be the case. A better solution (and the one that I would favor) would be the establishment of permanent committees that would take some of the load off of the vice presidents and president. The establishment of the national tournament committee is a good start. We need more committees that can help to create institutional memory. Too often we rely on ML or Kelly to remember how we did things in the past. This is an unfair burden on them and guarantees that each president has to learn on the job. Permanent committees with multi-year appointments would make for a much better solution. That being said – I do not think the current structure is broken. We should not abandon this structure which has worked for years unless we are sure that the new structure is one that will function more fluidly. Question #14-- Recently CEDA has discussed moving from Regions to self-selecting Conferences. Do you favor the conference format and if not, why? I voted for the conference proposal each time. I saw it as a way to revitalize regional debate by allowing schools to self-associate. I also saw it as a way to encourage new schools to participate. I saw it as a way that existing programs could draw natural alliance with new programs. If Big Ten schools like Iowa, Northwestern, MSU, Michigan, etc have programs then CEDA, along with the regional reps could approach other Big Ten schools about joining their conference. Also, some regions are just not working. There are some regions that have only four or five schools in them. These are not currently viable regions. We need some alternative that would more accurately reflect our current travel patterns. I am not sure if conferences is the only viable solutions, but it was certainly the best one that I had heard in a while. Question #15-- Do you favor a continued use of edebate for ceda business and discussion, or should the organization move towards a list serv that is controlled by the organization? I think we are in a tough spot as an organization when it comes to edebate. I do not think that it should be the primary means of communication for the organization. Attaching CEDA’s name to the URL creates more problems than it is worth. Conducting business on a listserv that allows anonymous posting of whatever slanderous material someone wants to post is not the proper way to conduct business for a professional organization. I know some of you think it is no big deal, but as some who had an anonymous post of me mentioned during a job interview this is a serious concern that we need to address. Additionally, as I understand it Phil does not have much interest in continuing the listserv. He is still willing to do it for now, but it should not be the responsibility of a single individual not associated with the organization to run our professional listserv. We need to start to move towards a more formal means of communication that is run by our national organization. I am not calling for the shuttas an organization we should distance ourselves from it as a formal means of communication. Obviously, CEDA cannot and should not shut down a privately run listserv, but we should find ways to distance ourselves from it professionally. Question #16-- Do you favor the current amendment before the membership on professionalism and ethics? I voted for the amendment. I am not sure that it is the best that we can possibly do and I am sure it will be amended several times in the first few years if passed, but we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This policy is without question better than the ad hoc policy that currently exists. My university attorney was shocked when I talked with her this summer that as an organization we had not policy that could deal with unprofessional conduct. Whether we like it or not what we do is often examined under a microscope by administrators looking to cut budgets and we cannot pretend like we can do whatever we want to each other with no consequences. We need to have some way to deal with members of our community who refuse to treat each other in a respectful manner. It is simple to say that the current amendment is flawed, but the truth is that the former policy was more flawed as it included an ethics clause with no official process for enforcement. So if anyone says that this amendment is flawed ask yourself is it better than a process where the accused has no due process. Question #17-- How should CEDA respond and under what time table should CEDA respond in the face of publicity or press that puts the organization in a bad light? Who should be consulted? I answered this question in part in response to Neil Berch on edebate. Reflecting upon it I think in many ways this is the wrong question. By the time we are painted in a bad light it is often too late. We need to be proactive. The reason I don’t worry about the future of the debate team at JMU is because it is unlikely that a single negative incident would outweigh all of the goodwill that we have on campus. We need to do this for our national organization. We only talk about CEDA to the national media now when we are defending ourselves. We need to have a presence in the media that demonstrates what is good about what we will do. I already have a commitment from our Associate Vice President of Communication and Marketing, in conjunction with other CEDA leaders, to assist in the development of a communication strategy that can work to spread all of the great things that we do. This way when negative light is shed upon us we are already on the offensive. I realize that we certainly cannot predict all of the negative publicity and when it arrives we should be ready. This is one of the permanent committees I discussed above that I would like to see formed. Kathyrn has done a great job with PR, but it is a job that is too much for one person. We need a committee made of individual both in the debate community and alumni who are willing to help out. This committee should be charged with both responding to criticism and proactively pushing the positive image of CEDA. Question #18-- Should CEDA have the ability to sanction its own members for behavior unbecoming a professional, such as verbal, physical, or sexual harassment? Whether CEDA sanctions the offender or not, should CEDA report complaints to the home institution of the offender and if so, how should that report be made and by whom? I think that CEDA should be able to sanction its members if the professional conduct amendment passes. We cannot allow members to harass other members and take no action. It places our organization at too much risk. Currently, our constitution allows for sanctioning with no provision for how that sanction is determined. The new conduct policy formalizes that policy and makes it more transparent than the current ad hoc policy. The problem I have with the current process and the reason that suspensions or contacting the host ithat there is no due process. Currently, we can sanction anyone we want without contacting them and allowing them to defend themselves. If the amendment does not pass then I would only vote to send a letter to the accused offender informing them that there were complaints against them. If they refused to respond or respond in an unfavorable manner then I would vote for further action. Ideally, I would like to see CEDA deal with infractions internally and not contact the host institution. When we contact the host we immediately put programs at risk. So if it is a close call I think dealing with things internally might work better. However, we can certainly all image offense so serious that we would contact host institutions or law enforcement. I think it is the job of the president of the organization to report any allegations that are serious enough to rise to level of contacting the host institution. The president is the face of our organization and should be the one to deal with university officials. Question #19-- Finally, why do you want to be President of the organization? Why would anyone want to be? It is a thankless job and everyone has different demands that you cannot easily meet. That being said I am willing and excited to serve because of everything that CEDA has given to me. I am a CEDA person. I was a CEDA debater before the merger. I attended the summer conference as an undergraduate. I have only missed a single CEDA Nats in 17 years. I hold those who have served before me in high regard and I would be humbled and honored to serve in the same office. Too many people in our community bemoan the death of debate, but I don’t think we are in as much trouble as many people do. I think the fundamentals of the debate community are strong, but we can only survive if we continue to expand debate opportunities for new programs and new debaters, as well as existing programs and existing debaters. I love debate and I love CEDA. Each year I attend the CEDA national tournament because it reminds me what is great about this activity. Of there are any of you who have lost faith in our community I will do everything in my power to make our organization more responsive to your needs and concerns so that you too will feel the same pride that I do in serving our organization. _______________________________________________ CEDA-L mailing list [email protected] http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/ceda-l
