By Coach Emma Lo
I get it, highschool is busy. It certainly would be ideal to brief every single affirmative yourself, taking the time to craft targeted, specific arguments. On a regional level, if you have enough time to dedicate, this can be a feasible goal. On the national level, it’s another story. Aside from just making the time to brief, there are five main ways to cope with the time crunch: research rings, sourcebooks, borrowing at the tournament, and going in blind. I’m just going to offer my thoughts on each of these alternatives and how they should be handled. For new debaters, you ought to start thinking about each of these, and for advanced debaters, perhaps reflect on your strategies over the past years and whether that is the way you would like to debate. I think the question of which strategy to use all comes down to the question: what makes a good negative press, and which of the five encourage excellence?
I would argue the last two, borrowing and going in blind, should be the last resort. Borrowing at the tournament does two things. First, it subjects you to the briefing prowess of other people. To be clear, this is not always negative. But it does open the possibility that the arguments within the brief inaccurately represent the issue or just fail to understand the policy at hand. It is always best practice to have your own hand in the brief. Second, unfortunately, people are not always willing to share, so you might end up with no brief in the end after all. This brings us to going in blind. Impromptu negs are by far the worst option to craft a masterful negative press. A few issues: first, debate quality decreases because your own lack of understanding about the case lends itself to surface-level arguments. Second, we are all human. Every debater, at some point in their time, intentionally or unintentionally employs unethical tactics in pursuit of winning. Impromptu negs increase the chance of this happening because negatives may be at a loss of what else to say against a case that seems to have all the evidentiary backing at first glance. In order to even have a chance of winning, they may feel forced to make up arguments or misrepresent affirmative evidence. Advanced debaters, this warning is for you. You may be able to win with rhetorical tactics alone, but without debate integrity, you subvert what debate is supposed to teach you and your opponents.
Research rings, love or hate them, are going to always exist. Briefing for a group of people can be helpful because of the time crunch: you put in one or two briefs and could get upwards of ten or fifteen back, eliminating the hours of time you would have to spend otherwise. I have nothing against the concept of research rings, I think they can be incredibly useful for both your time and for avoiding the worse alternative of impromptu negs. However, there are a few caveats to using research rings. First, if you commit, commit. Occasionally, there can be teams that sneak themselves into the ring, do no work, and get all the briefs they want without putting anything in. Just please don’t be that team. Second, know your other time commitments. It can be true that when you have no time to personally brief everything, sometimes you don’t have time to personally brief anything. If you can’t contribute quality briefs, don’t participate. Third, know who is participating. It is unfortunate, but some people put more effort into their work than others, and some people better represent the truth of policy issues than others. Some people prioritize winning over debating with excellence. Never assume the worst of your fellow debaters, but do know what kind of group you are joining. Fourth, ring briefs are NOT a replacement for your work. Relying on ring briefs without refining and adding to them yourself increases the chance you inaccurately understand the issue. Sifting through ring briefs to find the good arguments refines the brief and also allows you to be able to do a little bit of additional research. The end result of this process is a high-quality brief with a fraction of your time spent on it.
Similar to research rings, sourcebooks give you fully-formed briefs without you needing to personally spend the hours on them. Again, for busy high school students this option is a great way to elevate your arguments above the impromptu neg level. It can be a great starting point for understanding the issue at hand and coming up with the best arguments. They save you time by giving you good argument ideas and cards, which then cuts down on the time needed for personal briefing. However, if you really do not have time to look through and create a personal brief, it can be a better option than relying on other people in certain circumstances (ie. your network is mainly out of region or your network doesn’t produce quality brief or your network also struggles with the case). Yet also similar to research rings, sourcebooks bring some of the same concerns. Quality can be variable from sourcebook to sourcebook. You are still relying on other people to write the brief for you. Because of this, busy debaters may feel like they can merely glance the sourcebook over and ignore the brief until in round.
The bottom line of all of this is that personal briefing is best, but there are ways to partially personally brief cases and still end up with a high-quality brief. Personally, I experienced every single one of the five alternatives to a fully personal brief, and would not have been able to survive the debate season without them. It is simply unrealistic to brief every single case yourself without any form of outside help. But you must go in with your eyes open and your debate goals in mind to produce excellence for God’s glory. Happy debating!