1975-1976 U-M: Debate

Posted on February 28, 2021 by Mike

Finally made it to NDT! Continue reading →

The U-M team in 1975-1976 was, of course, a little different from the previous year’s. Don Goldman and I still comprised the coaching staff. The team lost two debaters. Mike Kelly had graduated, and Tim Beyer had decided not to debate after his freshman year. So, Wayne Miller debated with Mitch Chyette all year, and Don Huprich debated with Stewart Mandel. Two freshmen joined the team, Dean Relkin and Bob “Basketball” Jones.¹ Bob knew Don Huprich; I am not sure how Dean found out about the team.

The financial situation was even worse than in the previous year. The travel budget remained the same, but Paul Caghan was no longer around. Even if he had been, I doubt that I would again have requested a stipend for his girlfriend. Also, I had high hopes that in March Wayne and Mitch would qualify for the National Debate Tournament in Boston. We would need to find financing for that somewhere.

Prisons use lots of land. Have you ever been to Leavenworth?

The debate topic for the year was “Resolved: That the federal government should adopt a comprehensive program to control land use in the United States.” Wayne and Mitch ran an affirmative case about the Army Corps of Engineers. Don and Stewart’s case was about coal pollution and solar heating/cooling. I liked the latter a lot more than the former.

In 1974-75 I had worked with Tim and Stewart Mandel primarily on strategy and the construction of individual arguments because their presentation skills had already been pretty well honed in high school. In 1975, on the other hand, I needed to devote more time with Bob and Dean to fundamentals.

Dean Relkin’s word rate per minute was without a doubt the lowest of anyone that I ever heard in an intercollegiate debate. There was never any doubt that Bob had to be the second affirmative. Almost everyone in college typed up the first affirmative constructive speech, which was then delivered word-for-word. Generally, the only exceptions were to add a joke or two that might be appreciated by the judge. The speech would ordinarily be delivered at a conversational pace—considerably slower than the other seven speeches.

The first affirmative speech that was designed for Dean could be read aloud by any of the other guys in seven or eight minutes. So, their affirmative case contained, by necessity, fewer arguments than anyone else’s. This was not necessarily a significant disadvantage. Sometimes debaters present more arguments than they can defend.

This is Tom Rollins. I could not find a photo of Dean Relkin.

Dean had a skill that considerably helped offset his shortcoming in the speed department. He had exceptionally good word economy—the ability to state an argument in the most compact manner. In fact, the only debater whom I have ever heard with better word economy was the legendary Tom Rollins² of Georgetown, who won the top speaker award at NDT in 1975 and then again in 1978. He was runner-up in 1976.

To address the speed problem in the other three speeches we decided that it would be best for Dean to give the first affirmative rebuttal and both second negative speeches. Most speakers giving the 1AR, a five-minute speech that follows fifteen minutes of arguments from the negative, spoke at a very rapid rate. Dean could not match them, but his phrasing was so good that he almost always was able to answer all of the 2NC arguments and also do a pretty good job of dealing with the most important points in the 1NR.

The second negative posed a different set of problems. Most of Dean’s constructive speech could be written out ahead of time, and he was fully capable of coming up with new arguments. The problem was that the 1AR might present so many answers that Dean could not get through them all in his rebuttal. So, he needed to learn how to select one or two of his best arguments against the affirmative plan and strive to win the important points supporting those points. He also needed Bob to select an argument or two that he (i.e., Bob) had presented in 1NC and defended in 1NR for Dean to “pull through” in his rebuttal. They had to practice this quite a bit, but eventually they got it down.

Bob also had a problem that was difficult to deal with. I noticed in practice debates that he would sometimes skip an argument. In a debate this is tantamount to conceding it. Doing this even once could easily turn a victory into a defeat.

All debaters took² careful notes when the opponents were speaking on a “flow sheet” with several columns. In one column were the opponents’ arguments. In the next column were written the planned responses in shorthand. That column served as the outline for the speech.

I decided to ask Bob Jones to participate in a mini-debate. Someone would read a first affirmative speech. Bob would take notes and prepare a first negative constructive for me to listen to. Ordinarily I would also take notes on my flow sheet, but in this case I just watched Bob while the other participant read the case.

After about a minute or two I called a halt to the exercise. I noticed that Bob was holding his pen between his middle two fingers. His thumb was barely involved at all. This might be a good grip for a bear, but there are many better ways for a creatures with opposable thumbs to write. Bob’s approach forced him to lift his hand after every few characters to see what he wrote, which, considering that none of his fingertips were in contact with the pen, could be just about anything. Try it yourself!

I was flabbergasted. Aside from hiring a first-grade teacher to come to the Frieze Building to teach him how to write, I could think of no practical advice for him. I occasionally awoke in the middle of the night fretting over this problem.

I did have one unexpected visitor in the Frieze Building that year, my cousin John Cernech, Terry’s older brother. He may have called before he arrived. If not, I do not know how he found the debate office.

He told me that he was a dean at Quincy College (Quincy University since 1993) in Illinois. It was a Catholic school of a little over one thousand students. I had no idea what being a dean entailed—Animal House was not released until 1978—and did not press him about it. That he was administering a college surprised me a little. He was two or three years ahead of me in high school, and academics was not his specialty.

John is the man on the left in this photo taken in 2012. He has a PhD and was a VP at Creighton University at the time.

He might have told me about Terry. Somehow I learned that he was managing a pizza restaurant.

He was very cordial as he asked me about what I had been up to. I told him about my classes and the debate team. I may have told him about living in Plymouth and Sue; I don’t remember. It probably would have been courteous to invite him to lunch or dinner, but I didn’t. I naturally assumed that he had come to spy on me for someone in my family. I may have been mistaken.

As a present Sue had a replica made for me of the original shirt. The only thing missing is the C. I still wear this to bridge tournaments.

I think that this was the year that the blue Michigan Debate tee shirts appeared on the circuit. The guys still dressed nicely for the preliminary rounds, but they broke out the tee shirts for elimination rounds. “Michigan Debate” was imprinted on the front in maize; the debater’s name was on the back.

They got one made for me, too. The front of mine had a “C” to denote my status on the team. The back said “Prof. Wavada”. This was in honor of the mythical Professor Wavada (wuh VAH duh) who was often announced as a judge for elimination rounds. Of course I was not a professor. I had never even taught a class in anything anywhere.

The guys were not receptive to my idea for much snazzier uniforms. I envisioned the debaters wearing maize (the color, not the plant) shirts with blue ties arrayed with maize wolverines; these ties were on sale in Ann Arbor. Over these shirts we would wear blue blazers with the school seal emblazoned on the breast pocket. The debater could add his own name on the back in maize letters. The trousers would be a tasteful maize and blue plaid. The footwear would include maize socks and white bucks with a bold block M in blue on the toe of each shoe.

I remember changing into my tee shirt whenever I was chosen to judge an elimination round. During the very first time that I wore it the room became uncomfortably chilly. I shivered so much that it became difficult too take good notes. Nevertheless, I never covered up the school colors with a jacket.

Don Goldman escorted Bob and Dean to several nearby tournaments. I remember taking the pair to two. The first was a varsity tournament at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The guys did a terrific job. They actually qualified for the elimination rounds. I was really proud of them.

I had learned from Dr. Colburn that Juddi and Jimmie Trent were both professors in the speech department at Miami. I looked them up. I was disappointed that I did not get to talk with Jimmie, but I did spend a little time catching up with Juddi. She did not seem to have changed much. I certainly had, at least in appearance. I wonder what she thought of the bearded cowboy with glasses that I had become.

I also drove Bob and Dean to Novice Nationals at Northwestern. Three things stand out in my memory from that tournament. At the beginning of the event David Zarefsky was master of ceremonies at an assembly. He started by directing our attention to the “continental breakfast, which you all know is a euphemism for coffee and donuts.” A few people laughed.

He then presented the tournament’s staff. One of the Northwestern coaches was female, and she was very hot. I don’t remember her name. When Zarefsky introduced her he mentioned that “she had served in every conceivable position.” I guffawed, but no one else had even the slightest reaction. It was a little embarrassing.

A unique feature of the Novice Nationals was the way that the schedule for the preliminary rounds was determined. All eight rounds were set before the tournament began. They divided the country into four geographical sections. Each team met two teams from each section. I really liked this format.

Northwestern drew the line through Ypsi.

At the assembly one of Northwestern’s many coaches announced that the staff was having a contest. I don’t remember what the prize was, but they challenged the attendees to deduce the determinants of the sections. I spent a little time on this and submitted my list of teams in each section. At the final assembly they announced that there had only been one entry in the contest. They awarded me the prize and announced that I had only made one mistake. I think that I had Central Michigan and the University of Detroit in the wrong groups. The dividing line between the eastern group and the east-central group went through Ypsilanti MI.

After seven rounds Bob and Dean still had a chance to qualify for the elimination rounds. Unfortunately in the last round they faced a very good team from the University of Kentucky. Bob and Dean were on the negative. I had judged UK’s case several times, and we had plenty of time to prepare for this round.

I suggested to the guys that they should use the Emory switch in this round. That is, Dean would give his plan attacks in the first negative. Bob would analyze the advantages claimed by the affirmative in the second negative. In addition, Bob might be able to answer part of the second affirmative’s refutation of Dean’s disadvantages. Dean would have the entire five-minute 1NR to resuscitate his plan attacks. Bob would give the 2NR and pick the best arguments to sell. He had never done this speech before, but he had a lot of experience with this speech, and the mindset is similar.

The guys agreed to try it. Kentucky still won the debate, but both Bob and Dean thought that the switch gave them an enormous tactical advantage. They both thought that they would have been embarrassed if they had used their standard approach.

One of the Kentucky debaters later talked with me about the switch. She complained that the Michigan team only did that because they knew that they could not win with the usual strategy. This was, of course, true. She did not claim that the switch was illegal or unethical. She did not even argue that it was inappropriate for a novice tournament. When I asked her if Bob and Dean should have just rolled over and conceded, she just walked away.

It just occurred to me that this might have been Bob and Dean’s final debate. I wonder.

The first tournament for the four varsity debaters was again at Western Illinois. Wayne, Mitch, Don, and Stewart piled in Greenie and I drove them to Macomb. I don’t remember the details of this trip, but Wayne Miller has assured me that he and Mitch made it to the final round.

On Saturday at this tournament I must have had a round off from judging. I remember walking by myself over to Hanson Field where I watched part of a varsity football game through the chainlink fence. I don’t remember whom the Leathernecks played that day or what the score was. It wasn’t Michigan Stadium, but it was real football, and I enjoyed it.

The highlight of this tournament for Wayne Miller was not the trophy that he fondled through most of the grueling return trip. It was learning the saga of Herm the Sperm, which I related somewhere in the middle of the Land of Lincoln.

Herm was an extremely industrious sperm. He started every morning with his Daily Dozen, a set of exercises design to maximize his strength, stamina, and—above all—speed. The afternoons he spent in the pool working on his strokes. His goal was to be not just the best sperm, but the best in every stroke—butterfly, backstroke, and freestyle.
Herm had nothing but contempt for the other sperm. “Go ahead,” he told them. “Just sit there lounging around smoking cigarettes. One day, when the lights flash and the alarms sound, you’ll regret it. That’s when it will be every sperm for himself, and you just know that the first one to reach and penetrate the egg will be none other than yours truly, Herm the Sperm.”
A few of the sperm tried to emulate his devotion and energy, but they soon gave up. Herm had set the bar too high.

Then one day the lights did flash and the alarms did blare. Sure enough, Herm sped past the tens of millions of his brethren. They knew they could never pass him, but they still pressed forward. That is just what they were designed to do.
Then, to their amazement they saw Herm attempting the hopeless task of swimming against the stream. “Get back!” he cried at the top of his lungs. “Get back! It’s a blow job!”

My recollection of the rest of the tournament schedule is very spotty. Wayne and Mitch usually qualified for the elimination rounds, but they did not win any tournaments. Some of the specific recollections that I have don’t concern debating or coaching.

I remember standing with Mitch at the back of the auditorium at Emory University in Atlanta. The debate director was a formidable woman with a powerful voice, Melissa Maxcy⁴. Mitch could not help himself. He turned to me and whispered, “Thunder Woman!”

The Georgetown tournament was memorable for a couple of reasons. Stewart asked me to point out some of the more famous debaters. Our guys had on suits or at least sports jackets. One pair that Stewart was interested in was Ringer and Mooney, the guys from Catholic University whose affirmative case legalized marijuana. I said, “See that guy over there playing the air guitar and the tall skinny guy in the flannel shirt and the worn-out jeans. They are Ringer and Mooney.”

Bill Davey stopped in at the tournament to work the room laying on his inestimable charm. At the time he was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. He already knew Wayne and Mitch. I introduced him to Don and Stewart.

All the guys on the U-M team were much more comfortable debating affirmative. I told them about how successful Bill and I had been on the negative with the Emory switch. Wayne was not interested, but Mitch was rather eager to try it. As much as anything, I think that he just wanted to start his 1NC with “Flip your flows; here come the P.O.’s.”⁵

The most popular case that year called for the termination of nuclear power plants. Wayne found an article in which the author stated that leaving the uranium in the ground would cost thousands of lives because of the radiation from some element, radium I think. He thought that this evidence absolutely destroyed the “nukes” cases.

I was always skeptical about claims that appear in only one article. I pointed out to Wayne that the article did not specify over how many years these deaths would occur. It turned out that the half-life of radium was over sixteen hundred years!

Mitch and Wayne were at one point were experiencing difficulties with their Army Corps case when Mitch was asked in the first cross-x period, “How much is a human life worth?” No matter what Mitch responded, the negative had a clear path to a worrisome plan attack. I suggested that Mitch respond with a question:”Do you mean under the plan?” When they answered yes, he would then say that it would be “exactly the same as under the current system.” This seemed to work.

I could be wrong, but I think that only three of us went on the “Eastern swing” trip to Boston. I got angry at Mitch when he reported that he could not find a critical piece of evidence in a recently concluded round. I flung my legal pad across Harvard Yard in disgust.

My philosophy was, “If you can’t find it, you ain’t got it.” I did not think that anyone whom I coached spent enough time keeping his/her evidence orderly. One of my major frustrations in coaching was that I could never convince any debaters to implement my policy of numbering every divider section and putting that number on every card in that section.

I did a fair amount of research on prisons. I was convinced that a really strong case could be made for prison reform. Don and Stewart added it to their solar power case for a while, but they usually emphasized the solar case in rebuttals.

Debaters in those days wrote their names on the blackboard. Wayne and Mitch liked to goof around a little if they thought that the judge would appreciate it. They would sometimes call themselves “Mitch Egan” and “Wolva Reenes”. For Carl Flaningam of Butler they called themselves the Schidt Brothers, Sacco and Peesa.

As I mentioned, the top two debaters from Catholic University, Ringer and Mooney, ran an affirmative case that legalized marijuana. It was exceptionally difficult to attack. Their plan included a federal board to oversee the plan; they would sometimes even specify that the judge for the round would be a member of the board. However, all of the advantages came from legalizing cannabis, not regulating it. I suggested that we run a counterplan that was basically their plan without the board. We used it when we faced them, but we never defeated them.

I was conscientious about turning in my expense reports promptly after tournaments, but I don’t think that I earned any Brownie points with the department’s administration.

My most embarrassing moment in the seven years that I spent at U-M came during the high school debate tournament. It fell to me to announce the results at the final assembly. I made a serious error in scoring the speaker points, and, needless to say, no one checked my work. Some of the people to whom I awarded trophies did not deserve them. I had to purchase duplicate trophies for the real winners and send to all the schools that attended letters that acknowledged and apologized for the mistake.

Don Goldman and I went out for a drink after we found this out. It was the only time in my entire life that I really felt compelled to drown my sorrows.

In each octafinal pairing the sum of the seeds should be 17. If favored teams win, the sum of their seeds should be 9, 5, and 3 in subsequent round.

At some point I noticed that the tournament brackets that Dr. Colburn had provided in an appendix to his book on debate were wrong. At first he denied it, but in the end he admitted that I was right. I guess that no one checked his work either.

For the district tournament Wayne and Mitch decided to use Don Huprich’s case on solar heating and cooling. I am not sure whether this was my idea or theirs, but I definitely supported it. Don helped them a lot to prepare.

Augustana and Northwestern again received first round bids to the National Debate Tournament, and again no other team from District 5 received one.

Wayne and Mitch went 6-2 at districts and qualified comfortably. So, we finally got to go to the NDT, which was sponsored by Boston College, but held at a hotel in downtown Boston.

I don’t remember who paid for the trip. We definitely took Greenie across Canada again. Wayne and Mitch finished in the middle of the pack.

The weather was good, and the ladies of the evening were out in the Combat Zone.

I have only two strong memories. One was from the evening on which we accidentally wandered into Boston’s Combat Zone, which was only a few blocks from the hotel. This was a completely new experience for a Catholic lad from Kansas.

I also recall the evening that we spent exchanging evidence and ideas in the room of one of the debaters from, I think, Eastern Illinois. They had no idea what to say against Catholic’s marijuana case. We told them about our counterplan. They were intrigued enough to write it down. Mitch pontificated the opening sentence for them: “Once upon a time, when men were men and giants roamed the earth …”

Once again the only teams from District 5 that made it to the elimination rounds were the two pairs that received first-round bids, Northwestern and Augustana. The tournament was won by Robin Rowland⁷ and Frank Cross⁸ from KU, the two guys for whom I voted in the first elimination round that I ever judged at the tournament in Kentucky in 1974.

The drive back was long but by no means onerous.

Later we learned that the team’s budget had been cut drastically for 1975-76. For most purposes the program had been eliminated. Dr. Colburn’s title was still Director of Forensics, but the budget was not sufficient to attract anyone who was serious about debate. I still had a class or two to take, but I would not be the coach of that team. Don Goldman had finished his masters. I don’t know what he did next.

1. “Basketball Jones featuring Tyrone Shoelaces” was a popular song released in 1973 by Cheech and Chong. They somehow convinced an unbelievable assortment of people to help them. The song’s Wikipedia page is here.

Bob Jones contacted me in 2018 or 2019 about finding a bridge club in southeast Connecticut. He is a Diamond Life Master, a very high rank. In 2021 he lives in Marietta he lives in Marietta, GA.

2. Tom Rollins has had a fascinating career. You can read about some of it on his LinkedIn page. Among other things he founded The Teaching Company. I purchased several of its courses. I enjoyed listening to them on my Walkman while jogging.

3. In the twenty-first century laptops have replaced paper in nearly every area of debate, including note-taking.

4. In 2021 Melissa (Maxcy) Wade is the Executive Director Emeritus of the Barkley Forum at Emory University. To read about her career click on her picture on this webpage.

5. P.O. is short for plan objection. This includes disadvantages and arguments that the plan will not accomplish what the affirmative team claims.

6. Carl Flaningam practices law in Skokie, IL. His LinkedIn page is here.

7. Robin Rowland has taken to wearing bow ties at KU. His Wikipedia page is here.

8. Frank Cross died in 2019. His obituary is here.

1974-1975 U-M: Debate

Posted on February 26, 2021 by Mike

First year of coaching. Continue reading →

The topic in intercollegiate debate remained the same all year. The one for 1974-75 was “Resolved: That the powers of the Presidency should be significantly curtailed.” At nearly all major tournaments teams debated an equal number of rounds on both sides of the question in the preliminary rounds. A primer on the mechanics of college debate tournaments can be read here.

This topic, by the way, was very similar to the one that was debated when I was a junior in college: “Resolved: That executive control of United States foreign policy should be significantly curtailed. I felt that I was slightly ahead of the game.

The first tournament on the docket was at Western Illinois University in Macomb, IL. In preparation for the tournament I scheduled a couple of practice debates. The guys were much better than I anticipated. They certainly were better than the four people who participated in the exhibition debate at the beginning of freshman year. I could not imagine how Wayne Miller and Dan Gaunt compiled a record of 0-8 at districts in the previous spring. They only won four ballots out of twenty-four!

Aside from helping get the debaters ready, I needed to do a good bit of administrative work to prepare for this tournament and all the others:

The host university should have mailed an invitation with a registration form to the team. If we did not have one, I needed to contact them somehow to request one. I don’t think that I ever actually did this. Long distance calls were costly in those days.
In that first year I asked the guys about the quality of the tournaments. A lot could have changed in the four years since I had debated. For example, I did not remember ever hearing of Western Illinois’s debate team, much less its tournament.
I needed to project out how much it would cost to attend. I had to pay for tournament entry fees, gasoline, tolls, housing, and the per diem for food. Credit cards were a new thing in 1974; I did not obtain one until more than a decade later. So, I always asked for a little more than I planned to spend and brought some of my own money, too. I had to plan out the whole year to make sure that enough money was left over for the district tournament. If we qualified for the National Debate Tournament, we would beg, borrow, or steal what we needed.
Here is a list of factors determining the cost of each tournament:
- Who will accompany the debaters? Usually I did, but Don Goldman had to judge at a certain number of tournaments in order to be allowed to judge at districts. Occasionally we got someone else. No one accompanied the guys on the trip to California.
- How were we getting to the tournament? We never rented a car, but we might need to reimburse wear and tear.
- How many teams were we sending? There must be enough room in the vehicle to hold them.
- Where were we staying and what was the cost?
If I decided that we were going, I filled out the registration form and mailed it in.
A few days before we left I submitted a request to the department’s secretary. Dr. Colburn probably had to sign these.
The day before we left I picked up the money for the tournament in cash.

We were expected to get receipts for all expenses. Sometimes that was not feasible. For example, snack machines at gas stations and hotels do not give receipts.

So, I bought a book of receipts. They were the familiar kind that a waitress at a diner might use. If I was missing a receipt, I would write one up myself or ask one of the debaters to forge one. We spent so pitifully little money that I figured that no one could conceivably complain, and, in fact, no one did.

The drive to Western Illinois was a long one, longer than Google shows here. The speed limit in 1974 was 55 miles per hour on all Interstates, and I could not afford even one ticket. I religiously followed the speed limit, and even if I hadn’t, Greenie’s 68 horses pushing a maximum load would struggle to reach 60.

When I looked at the invitation from Western Illinois I discovered that Dale Hample¹, whom I knew from my debating days, was now the debate coach at WIU. He represented “that school down south”. We debated several times. The only one that I clearly remembered was the one at districts.

I decided to bring two teams in Greenie to Western Illinois. My recollection is that the area behind the backseat was loaded from floor to ceiling with debate materials, and everyone had a briefcase or something equally awkward on his lap. Three large males were crammed in the pack seat. I calculate that we must have spent over the entire trip in those uncomfortable conditions. I drove all the way with the seat pulled so far forward that my knees nearly touched the steering column. No one complained.

For much of my information about the debate team’s adventures I have relied on the recollections of Wayne Miller. Any mistakes are definitely his fault.

At Western Illinois Wayne debated with Dan Gaunt, and Mitch Chyette debated with Mike Kelly. Wayne and Dan ran a case that provided Congress access to all information in the executive branch in order to prevent presidents from engaging in misadventures like Vietnam. They qualified for the elimination rounds and made it to the quarterfinals. Mitch and Mike finished in the middle of the pack.

A king and queen would be needed to call parliament. I was thinking Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor. They were born in England.

The very first debate that I judged was one of the worst that I ever heard. Illinois College’s affirmative case proposed to replace the entire executive and legislative branches with a “parliamentary system”. This may or may not have been a good idea, but the affirmative debaters presented no proof of any substantial improvement. The negative from Morehead State could not think of any very good arguments against it either. I ended up voting for Morehead, but I gave by far the lowest speaker points of any judge in the entire tournament—10, 8, 8, and 6 on a thirty-point scale.

I was not chosen to judge any elimination rounds, probably because my assessment of those teams seemed, at best, squirrelly. In the next six years of judging I never again gave anything close to those points. I probably overreacted. All four debaters were bad, but there was no sense in rubbing their noses in it.

The judges’ ballots were carbonless forms. The tournament kept the top white copy and distributed to the teams the pink and yellow copies. On the way back to Ann Arbor we had plenty of time to go over the comments of the judges in each round. We then filed the ballots alphabetically by the last name of the judge in an accordion file that we brought to all tournaments. Whenever we were assigned a judge with whom we were not familiar, we would check the file to see if he had judged any of our teams. It was very important to try to understand how different judges react to various types of arguments or presentations.

I drove Dan and Wayne down to Lexington for our second tournament at the University of Kentucky. This tournament attracted top teams from all over the country. The Wolverines did very well. They were 7-1 in the preliminary rounds and made it to the quarterfinals.

The Kentucky tournament was memorable for me because I judged my first elimination round. It featured the future national champions, Robin Rowland and Frank Cross from Kansas University against the University of Wyoming. The other judges on the panel were extremely distinguished—David Zarefsky² from Northwestern, Jim Unger³ from Georgetown, Harold Lawson⁴ from Ohio State, and Bill Southworth⁵ from Redlands. I was a nobody.

My ballot was the last one turned in. I went over all the arguments very carefully. All five of us voted for KU. While driving home I realized that if I had voted for the Cowboys, I might have been “sat out” by the most celebrated panel of all time. If so, that might have been the last elimination round that I was ever allowed to judge. Word spreads quickly if you cast too many questionable ballots.

John Lawson’s debate career at Michigan exactly coincided with the period that I had been in the Army and then employed at the Hartford Life. He knew Bill Davey, Mike Hartmann, and Bill Black, and he had probably heard stories about me. I am not sure what he was doing in 1974-75. His LinkedIn page says that he got a teaching certificate at U-M in 1975. Maybe he was working on that.

In any case John agreed to accompany the guys to the most important tournament of the fall semester at Georgetown. I don’t remember the results, but their drive back was memorable. They were caught in a snowstorm and were trapped in the Allegheny tunnel, which is well over a mile long, for some time. Not a good situation for a claustrophobic.

At some point early in the year Paul Caghan, who was debating with Don Huprich, asked me to come to his apartment to work with him on his affirmative case. I think that it proposed to eliminate the CIA. I almost never turned down a request for assistance.

Paul’s apartment was located a mile or two north of the main campus. Most U-M undergraduates who lived off-campus—and a large number of students did—sought reasonably priced accommodations in old houses that were within walking distance of campus. I was therefore surprised to find Paul living in a really nice, modern, and spacious apartment in a regular apartment building.

Paul and I were creating “blocks” for his case. We listed arguments that opponents might be likely to use and prepared “canned” responses to them. This process frees up more time for other things in the debates themselves. Everyone did it, even in my day.

Paul and I made quite a bit of progress for an hour or so. We were seated at the kitchen table, on which were spread Paul’s debate materials.Then the doorbell rang. Paul got up to answer it. I stayed in my chair.

A large Black guy was at the door. Paul greeted him and, ignoring me, escorted him back to the bedroom. They were in there for fifteen or twenty minutes with the door closed. Then they walked together to the front door, and the big guy left. This was not my first rodeo; I had a pretty good notion of what had transpired, but I held my tongue.

Paul came to see me in the debate office to discuss the debate program’s funding a few times. The first subject was the stipend that had been available for decades to one female debater at U-M every year. Paul said that in the previous year he had arranged with Dr. Colburn for her to be awarded the money, which she then had returned to the team to help pay expenses. He said that she would do it again in 1974-75. I just had to give her name to Dr. Colburn. I did so, and the debate budget was instantly boosted by 40 percent.

Paul also had devised a plan for funding the entire program outside of the speech department. He had his eye on two sources—the university’s summer debate institute for high school students and the high school debate tournament held at U-M. I knew nothing about either one. If they existed when I debated, I heard nothing of them. Both of these activities were run by an obscure administrative department far from the speech department in the Frieze Building.

Paul showed me materials that he had created to promote the institute and the tournament nationwide and thereby to increase their revenue-generating capacity markedly. He asked me for help in putting the case before the administration.

I knew nothing about dealing with the bureaucracy of a huge university. I did know that it would be easy to step on someone’s toes, and the person with sore toes would be likely to fight back. Before one attempted anything like this, it was crucial to understand the politics. I came back to Michigan to coach debate. The last thing that I wanted to do was to become involved in a political war. As they say in the military, “That’s above my pay grade.” So, I declined to help Paul with this project⁶, and I did not hear about it again. A few years later I did come to understand the politics, and I was very glad that I had avoided a confrontation.

I remember taking one trip with Paul. Wayne Miller’s brother lent us his car to drive to the tournament at Emory University in Atlanta. I drove most of the way, but after sunset I became sleepy. Paul volunteered to drive. Several times I excoriated him for driving too fast, but he persisted. He just had a lead foot. Somewhere in Tennessee we ran over a deer. The deer was lying on the highway, presumably dead. We all saw it in the headlights, but at the speed that Paul was driving he was unable to avoid it.

The gas gauge immediately showed empty. We stopped to check whether the fuel tank had been ruptured. Fortunately, the tank was intact, but the gauge no longer worked. I later had to pay Wayne’s brother to replace it.

I have no recollection of Paul attending any tournaments after Emory.

We also attended a tournament at Bradley University in Peoria, IL, at some point in the autumn. I don’t remember anything about it. Don Goldman may have escorted the debaters.

The two novices, Tim Beyer and Stewart Mandel definitely attended at least a couple of tournaments in the fall, but I am not sure which ones.

Over the Christmas break four of the guys—Wayne, Dan, Mitch, and Mike—flew to California to debate in tournaments at UCLA and Redlands. I paid the entry fees out of the budget, but they paid their own expenses, including travel and lodging. It was probably a great experience for them, but the results were strictly mediocre.

Since Dan Gaunt decided against debating in the second semester, Wayne needed a new partner. Wayne had always been a first negative, and so had Mike Kelly. So, the adjustment would be easier for Mitch, who had debated second negative all year. Mitch was probably also at least a little better than Mike. I paired Mike with Don Huprich for the second semester.

The first tournaments in January were in Boston. Boston College, MIT, and Harvard held nearly consecutive tournaments. I originally intended for us to attend all three, but I had accidentally “mailed” the registration form for MIT into a trash can on State Street in Ann Arbor.

We attended both BC and Harvard in 1975 and 1976. One year both Sue and I drove with two debaters each. The other year I drove by myself with Wayne and Mitch. My recollection, which may be wrong, is that the two-car year was 1975. Here is what happened.

We planned to drive both Greenie and Sue’s Dodge Colt across Ontario and reenter the United States north of Buffalo. We knew that the border security at the Detroit-Windsor end would be trivial. Thousands of people worked in one city and lived in the other. The biggest TV station in the Detroit area was CKLW in Windsor. Its signal could easily be picked up in Plymouth.

However, by the time that we reached the border between Ontario and New York we had been driving for a long time, we were tired, and we probably looked it. Sue and I were driving small cars with a great deal of luggage—six suitcases plus a large number of briefcases and large steel file boxes that each contained hundreds of 4″x6″ cards on which were written quotes to be used as evidence in debates. Don and Mike were passengers in Sue’s car. Both of them had short hair, and Sue was dressed respectably. On the other hand, Wayne and I both had rather long hair. Mitch had very curly hair that resembled Harpo Marx’s. All three of us wore blue jeans, and I sported a beard. I also wore a cowboy hat, coat, and boots suitable for riding the range.

The border agents swooped down on Greenie. They made us remove everything from the car. They wanted to know what we were trying to bring into the U.S. I explained that we were debaters going to Boston from the University of Michigan and that we were carrying a lot of debate materials—cards and paper. They made us open everything, and they spent the better part of an hour examining our gear.They found nothing. Then they let us all go.

They ignored Sue’s car. I later learned that Don had brought some marijuana in his suitcase. He had been sweating bullets during the border check. I made it clear to him that he was never to bring dope on debate trips again. I cannot even imagine how much trouble he would have been in then, and I would have been in the soup when we returned.

I think that we stayed in an apartment in Boston during the BC tournament. This was arranged by a guy named Bill Topping. I am not positive, but I think that Sue stayed at her parents’ house in Enfield, CT, while the preliminary rounds were going on. She came back to Boston for the elimination rounds. I know that she sat next to me for a debate that included Larry Summers from MIT, who later became the President of Harvard and then Secretary of the Treasury. He won that round, but he did not win the tournament. Neither did either of our teams.

In between the two tournaments we stayed overnight in the Hartford area. Sue and I stayed with Jim and Ann Cochran. I remember that we tried to play bridge in the evening. Sue and I were partners. She knew a little about the game, but she had a strange aversion to drawing trump. On two hands in a row she was declaring a makeable contract. After the first hand we all patiently explained that if you were playing in a suit contract, and you needed more than one or two tricks in a side suit, you first needed to lead out trumps until the opponents had none.

On the next hand—the next hand!—she faced a similar situation and neglected to draw trump. I banged my fist down on the table so hard that the table broke. I may have imbibed a beer or two.

It was great to see some of my friends again. Jim and Ann may not have been as enthusiastic.

The guys did not stay with us at the Cochrans. I think that they stayed in Enfield with Sue’s relatives.

Wayne and Mitch finished in the middle of the pack at Harvard, too. On the second evening Mike and Don decided to try a pizza place that was not on the tournament’s list of recommended restaurants. They both got sick and had to forfeit a round or two. They were much better by the time that we were ready to leave.

Huprich disposed of his marijuana. I did not ask him how. The trip back was blessedly uneventful.

Northwestern sponsored the biggest tournament in the district. I remember that it was very cold at this tournament every year that I attended. I met Wayne’s friend Howard Kirschbaum, who went to school there. He remarked that he planned to get his degree in three years. This astounded me. Why would anyone want to cut short what was undoubtedly the most enjoyable period of one’s life? College life was ideal; the real world not so much.

Wayne and Mitch qualified at the tournament, but they lost in the first elimination round to an extremely good team from Redlands.

Don Goldman took Tim and Stewart to a lower-level varsity tournament at the University of Detroit. The guys had an unbelievably good tournament. They made it all the way to the final round!

The last varsity tournament before districts was at Butler University in Indianapolis. This was an important tournament for us because we did not attend a lot of the tournaments in the district. Some of the judges from other schools in the district may not have seen much of us. Wayne and Mitch qualified again, but they were eliminated soon enough that they were able to watch Howard Kirschbaum, a little the worse for wear, lose in the semifinals. I must have been judging the other semifinal round, but I don’t remember it.

The high school tournament sponsored by U-M was held at some point in the second semester. Don Goldman designed the schedule, which had been advertised as protecting teams from facing other teams in their district. Don had received an outdated list of the districts, and that is what he used. A few of the coaches were upset because we scheduled their teams to meet teams from their districts.

My job was to make sure that there were judges every round. Dr. Colburn ran the assembly at which the awards were handed out.

I took Tim and Stewart to Novice Nationals, which was also held at Northwestern. We stayed at (I think) a Holiday Inn in Evanston, quite close to the university. During the night someone broke into the room shared by the three of us. I woke up to see in the dim light someone rummaging through the pockets of a pair of pants that belonged to one of the guys. I yelled at the intruder. He immediately ran away. I called the desk. They sent a security guard to our room. We determined that we had not lost anything. I always slept with my wallet under my pillow.

We later learned that the thief had been apprehended. Ours was the last room. He had already burgled several room using a passkey obtained from a maid.

I have a vague recollection that Tim and Stewart qualified at Novice Nationals, but, if so, they did not get very far in the elimination rounds.

During the entire season I had religiously kept careful records of our expenses. I had collected receipts to justify every expense. However, I had only turned in receipts to the department’s secretary for one or two tournaments. Before districts I had to get caught up. It’s not as if I had been lazy or dishonest. I just spent almost every waking moment trying to help prepare the debaters. I did as much research as anyone.

I presented all of the receipts and expense forms to the department head’s secretary. I do not remember her name. Evidently she was shocked and angered that she had to spend so much time processing these forms. The next day her boss, Edgar Willis⁷, summoned me to his office.

It was not a pleasant meeting. He began by telling me that I had upset his secretary by dumping all of my travel reports at once. I apologized, and I mentioned that no one had made me aware of any schedule or deadline for submitting them. During the debate season I had had very little time for paperwork. Now that it was almost over I had a little time.

He then asked me about the scholarship to the female debater, Paul Caghan’s girlfriend. He wanted to know why she did not go to any tournaments. I told him that she had said that she did not want to attend any. This was completely true.

Then he accused me of prejudice against women because I only recruited male debaters. I was happy that the interrogation turned in that direction. I explained very sincerely that recruiting was not part of my job. I insisted that I had never talked to anyone, whether a current U-M student or a high school debater who was coming to U-M, about joining the debate team.

He then complained about the way that the debaters talked. He said that several faculty members had overheard practice rounds in which the people were speaking at a rate that was almost incomprehensible. This was true. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to listen to debaters. I explained that debate was a timed event. If a speaker did not have time to answer an argument, the other side would by default win that argument. Thus, a primary focus was to make sure that every important argument received attention. Speed was one factor, but so were economy of language and the ability to assess the impact of arguments in order to devote time on important ones. We worked on all of these things.

Finally Dr. Willis wanted to know why we needed to travel to Boston and Atlanta and California for tournaments. He said that he was sure that schools in Michigan and Ohio held tournaments that we could attend. I replied that we did attend some of those, but the level of competition at most of the closest tournaments was too low for our varsity debaters. Fortunately, I had a great example to support this argument. Two freshmen, Tim and Stewart, had recently finished second at the U-D tournament. After that he let me go back to work, chastened but unbowed.

As usual there were twenty-four teams at the district qualifying tournament for NDT. Two teams, Northwestern and Augustana College, had received first-round bids.⁸ The second teams from those two schools competed at districts. I thought that Wayne and Mitch had a pretty good chance of qualifying, but I figured that they would need some luck. They debated pretty well. Their 5-3 record was good enough to qualify. However, one other 5-3 team, Wayne’s friends from Western Illinois, had more ballots, and they received the final bid.

I wanted to apply for a second-round bid. After all, Wayne and Mitch were the next team in line to qualify, and they had a pretty good record overall. I tried to get Dr. Colburn to sign the application, but he would not do it. He said that the department would not authorize it. I asked him why not. At first he said that there was no money available. When I said that we would find money somewhere, he said that the department would still not approve it.

I did not know what to say. I felt crushed and betrayed. On the other hand, only Mike Kelly would be graduating. We really could wait until next year.

1. Dale Hample is now at the University of Maryland. He even has a Wikipedia page.

2. In 2021 David Zarefsky is still at Northwestern University.

3. Jim Unger coached at Georgetown and then at American University. He died in 2008. His Wikipedia page is here.

4. Harold Lawson died in either 1999 or 2000. At the time he was the debate coach at Central Missouri State University.

5. In 2021 Bill Southworth is still at Redlands.

The debate team’s headquarters is now in the storied Michigan Union.

6. Decades later Michigan became a national power in debate. The program was established outside of any academic department. The funding for the team comes primarily from the two sources that Paul identified. In the 2020-21 school year the team received two first round at-large bids to the NDT. According to the coach, Aaron Kall, the third team also probably would have received a bid, but the rules limited each school to two.

7. Professor Willis died in 2014 at the age of 100. His obituary can be read here.

8. Northwestern and Augustana both made the elimination rounds at NDT. None of the district qualifiers did. Both teams lost in the Octafinals. Baylor emerged as the Champion.

1967-1969 Part 2: U-M Debate

Posted on September 29, 2020 by Mike

Debate in the middle years. Continue reading →

A primer explaining the format and other details of intercollegiate debate can be found here.

Fall 1967: When I returned to school after the summer of 1967, I discovered some very important changes in the debate program at U-M. Dr. Colburn was still the Director of Forensics, and Jeff Sampson was still coaching. Juddi (pronounced “Judy”) Tappan, a high school coach from Belleville, had been added to the staff. My recollection is that in her last year at Belleville two girls from her team had won the state championship.

Juddi’s assignment at U-M that year was to coach the novices. She had a very good crop. I think that both of those girls from Belleville came to U-M. One might have participated in debate for a short while, but by the time that the tournament season started, neither was involved. The four principal players were Bill Davey, an exceptionally smart guy¹ from Albion, MI, Ann Stueve from Kentucky, Jim Fellows, whom I never got to know very well, and Alexa Canady from Lansing. All four of them were almost certainly better debaters than I was when I first set foot in the Frieze Building a year earlier. They all definitely had more experience than I did.

I think that there was one other coach, but he spent little time with any debaters and none with me.

For me the debate season began bizarrely. Jeff Sampson escorted me and either Bob Hirshon or Lee Hess to Expo ’67 in Montreal to debate against two guys from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh about abortion. The whole debate only lasted for a little over thirty minutes and was attended by the coach/escorts of both teams and three ladies who had years earlier passed the age for which family planning is much of an issue. The guys from Duquesne had done quite a bit of research and presented a lot of serious arguments. We mostly told jokes.

Surely this was an appropriate metaphor for the age: four young guys debating about the circumstances in which women should be allowed to have abortions. Moreover, two of us were not even taking it seriously.

I don’t remember that we took an airplane to Montreal, but neither do I recall a long car trip with a border crossing. I retain a rather vivid memory of a rude cab driver who pretended that he did not understand English. If we had a car, why would we take a cab? Maybe parking was an issue.

This trip was undeniably a waste of time and money; perhaps some other organization paid for it. The plus side was that we did have time to wander around the Expo for a day or so. My strongest memory of the fair itself is eating a reindeer sandwich at one of the Scandinavian pavilions. It tasted a little funny, but it was not awful.

I also remember that we attended a performance of Laterna Magika, a multi-media theater troop from Prague, which at the time was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Jeff chided me for trying to figure out what message was being conveyed.

Years later my wife Sue told me that she was also in Montreal during that period, had heard about the debate in which we participated, and almost went to it. This was five years before I even met her. So, this was almost a great story.

I considered the national debate resolution for that year, “that the federal government should guarantee a minimum annual cash income to all citizens”, uninspired. I cannot remember much about the individual arguments. Of course, debaters argued whether the states were “closer to the people” or whether in-kind payments were better than cash, but I cannot imagine that there would be enough meat there for a year’s worth of debates.

I think that I had three partners during the year:

I remember debating with Larry Rogers, a junior, at the tournament at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle (UICC). I remember that he performed brilliantly in one debate, but overall we did not do well together, and I did not enjoy the experience at all. I also remember that one morning he took what he called “a Polish shower” with Right Guard before he dressed for the debates that day. By the way, all the male debaters wore suits Larry quit the team before the end of the year.
I am sure that I debated in at least one tournament with Lee Hess, another junior, who was my partner during the whirlwind spring 1967 season. I have a vague recollection that we debated together at Ohio State, but details have escaped from my memory. Lee had a motorcycle. I think that he might have had an accident with it that semester.
My third partner was Gary Black, a senior. I think that we did well together at one tournament, but I don’t remember the details. The main thing that sticks out in my mind is that I did “outsides” on the affirmative, which meant that I delivered the first affirmative constructive and the second affirmative rebuttal. Usually, this is only done when one debater is much better than the other, but my speaker ratings were generally equal to or better than Gary’s. He designed the affirmative case; I could not have defended it with much enthusiasm.

I might have debated with Bob Hirshon at one unmemorable tournament.

Spring 1988: Just before finals for the fall semester Jeff took me, Lee, and Gary aside, and had us write down on a sheet of paper the name of the other member of the trio that we would prefer to debate with. They both chose me. Although I chose Lee, Jeff decided to pair me with Gary for the important tournaments in the second semester (January-March 1968).

Here is what I remember of that time.

Both Lee and Bob quit debating before the semester began.
Gary and I had a practice debate against Bill and Ann in which we performed badly. Juddi remarked that it was a classic case of the novices showing up the varsity. I was too arrogant to get upset by this.
Gary and I made the elimination rounds at a few tournaments, but we did not have any exceptionally good performances.
We went 2-6 at Northwestern, which was an improvement over what I had done as a freshman.
Gary and I flew unaccompanied to a tournament at Loyola of Baltimore. The field was weak. I think that we qualified for the elim rounds, but then we lost. I lost my overcoat on this trip. Another passenger evidently took mine from the overhead rack by mistake when the plane stopped in Pittsburgh.

Throughout the year ballots from several judges remarked that I should tone it down. I would start out at a reasonable volume, but after a while I got excited and started shouting. I worked on this.
Jeff did not work with Gary and me as much as he had helped Lee and me the previous year.
At the District 5 qualifying tournament for the NDT Gary and I were 4-4 with twelve ballots out of twenty-four, exactly average and exactly the same as Lee and I did the previous year.
Both freshman teams did quite well throughout the year. I don’t remember the details.

I think that this is a recent picture of Gary Black.

Jim Fellows decided that he did not want to debate any more.

My roommate in Allen Rumsey House, Charlie Delos, remarked that if he looked like Gary, he would kill himself.

The summer of 1968 was definitely unique. Assassinations led to destructive and bloody riots. The suburbs of KC, where I was, were not affected, but Detroit, one of the centers of the protest, is less than an hour from Ann Arbor. The police also rioted outside of the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago. Then Nixon disclosed the existence of his secret plan to end the War in Vietnam.

I had my first real job in the actuarial department of the insurance company that my dad worked for. My summer adventures are described here.

Fall 1968: Jeff Sampson moved on. Juddi made all the decisions about partnerships. She also did whatever coaching was done.

The team had one very talented freshman, Mike Hartmann. He had a pretty good partner, Dean Mellor.

After the election the "executive" was this guy. — After the election the “executive” was this guy.

The resolution was “that executive control of United States foreign policy should be significantly curtailed.”

I was paired with Alexa. We ran a case that banned deployment of troops to fight without a congressional declaration of war. I was first negative and second affirmative. Bill and Ann were the other varsity team.

Here is what I remember of the first semester.

I enjoyed debating with Alexa. I had never had a female partner before. She was a talented debater and a good partner, but the thing that really impressed me was that she carried her own evidence boxes.
A small percentage of varsity debaters were female. Black debaters were very rare. Alexa was the only Black female debater whom I ever saw at a varsity tournament in my four years as an undergraduate debater. This could not have been easy for her.

In one round we faced a good team that presented a a plan to use American food to feed starving people around the world. I had heard of this and done a little research, but I had never discussed it with Alexa. I decided to argue topicality and to present a counterplan that included all aspects of the affirmative plan, but no reduction in executive control. Alexa did not know what to argue in the second negative, but she soldiered on and did not complain, even when we ended up losing the round.
Our best tournament was Ohio State. We made it to the semifinals, which qualified us for the Tournament of Champions. We might have been the first U-M team ever to accomplish this.
For some reason Juddi drove us to Oshkosh, WI, to a second-rate six-round tournament at the state university there. In the first round we debated a really obnoxious team from Ripon College on our affirmative. The second round was allegedly power-matched, but we were scheduled to meet the same team on the same side! I immediately complained to the staff. I was told that we should just switch sides. I really did not want to debate that team again, but we had no choice. The teams that we faced after that were a little better, but I was depressed after the last round. Then they announced the results. I was astounded when they announced that Alexa was the second-place speaker. I never had lower points than she did, and, sure enough, I won the award for top speaker, which, as I recall was a hearty handclasp. Alexa and I had won all six debates and qualified for the quarterfinals, where we were quickly eliminated on a 2-1 decision that no one in the audience could believe.
Juddi smoked. She expected one of the males to light her cigarettes for her.
We stopped for gas once when Juddi was driving her own car. She purchased $.50 worth of regular.
Juddi wore a LOT of makeup. Alexa, who roomed with her on trips, said that it was frightening to see her when she first got out of bed. One of the other grad students said that Juddi always looked like a million dollars, but you had to suspect that at least half of it was counterfeit.
Before final exams both Ann and Alexa quit the team. So, Bill and I were the only varsity debaters left.

We could not take the shortcut through Ontario because of the stop in Oberlin.

Spring 1969: The first tournaments that Bill and I attended together were at Harvard and Dartmouth in January. Juddi made the arrangements. We drove to Oberlin College in Ohio to pick up their team, Roger Conner² and Mark Arnold, and their coach, Dan Rohrer. We then proceeded to Buffalo to pick up a team from Canisius College. I never heard of teams car-pooling to debate tournaments, and this was uncomfortable, at least for me. Mark Arnold disliked me intensely. Also, the Oberlin and Canisius teams had much better records than we did.

We definitely attended the tournament at Northwestern. I think that we were 4-4, which continued my trend of improvement over the previous year with three different partners.

The only other tournament that semester that I clearly recall was the very long drive to Minneapolis to attend a tournament at St. Thomas College, now known as St. Thomas University. I think that this was the first time that Jimmie Trent, a famous debate coach and a professor in the speech department at Wayne State, accompanied us. We attended a peculiar set of tournaments for the next year and a half. It was not until considerably later that I began to suspect that Juddi tried to schedule tournaments that she was reasonably certain that she and Jimmie would not run into anyone from Wayne State.

Jimmie definitely was very knowledgeable about debate, and he was also great fun to be with on tournaments. He specialized in my favorite kind of humor, the shaggy dog story, which was ideal for a long drive. His presence almost counterbalanced having to deal with Juddi. At some point they got married, but, as far as I could tell, that did not change the political implications of a Wayne State speech professor helping U-M debaters.

The tournament at St. Tom’s was at best second-rate. It did not even supply standard ballots for the judges. They had to fill in these yellow cards that rated speakers on a twenty-point scale instead of the thirty point version. There was also very little space for the judge to express the reasoning, if any, behind the decision.

When we were on the St. Tom's campus, all this was covered with several feet of snow. — When we were on the St. Tom’s campus, all this was covered with several feet of snow.

The three feet of snow on the ground made traipsing between buildings carrying our evidence a real pain and led everyone to question the motivation for the trip.

Bill and I went 7-1 in the prelims. That made us the top seed in the elimination rounds, which, as I recall, began with quarterfinals. Almost all tournaments used seeded brackets for the elimination rounds, but not this one. Instead, for some reason, they drew the pairings at random. In the quarterfinals we ended up debating against a team from Augustana College in Illinois that we had already defeated on our negative. We were “locked in” on the affirmative because tournaments generally guarantee that no team will debate another team twice on the same side.

This was the worst possible draw for us. I had a much better record on the negative throughout my career, especially with Bill. It was a tough round. I will always think that I won this round with a joke. I started my last affirmative rebuttal with this remark: “I have been wondering why Mr. ______ (the second negative) wore galoshes to the debate. Now that I see all the snow that they tried to bury the plan under, I understand. Let’s start digging.”

Everybody in the audience laughed. We won the room and two of the three judges.

In the semifinals we faced the team that gave us our only loss in the prelims. However, this time we were locked in on the negative and won easily.

In the finals we faced two guys from Iowa whom I had debated several times over the years. We were locked in on the affirmative. As it turned out, in the elimination rounds we faced the second, third, and fourth seeds, in that order. All were teams that we had already debated.

At this point in the year we had a pretty strong non-intervention case, but we also had a food case that we had pulled out (successfully) a few times that year. The northern plains was a very conservative part of the debate world, and so we decided to stick with the non-intervention case.

Just before the debate started, they introduced the five judges. Two were debate coaches with whom both teams knew pretty well. Three of them were local luminaries. Of course, we did not get to interview them, and so we had no way of know how familiar they were with debates at this level.

Debate coaches have a lot of practice at following arguments. The best tactics for dealing with inexperienced judges are not at all as clear as they are for dealing with debate coaches. The thought occurred to me that we should perhaps run the food case. Any yokel can relate to starving millions. However, it was only a flickering thought; we went with our original plan.

The trip back to Ann Arbor seemed longer.

We won both debate coaches, but lost the three civilians. I will always think that if we had used the food case, we would have won the outsiders and maybe lost the coaches. I had plenty of time to think about this on the long drive home. Winning this (or any) tournament would have been a feather in our cap. Finishing second in such a sorry gathering made us just an “also ran”.

Bill and I went 4-4 at the district qualifier in March. We only won eleven ballots. So, I appeared to be regressing a little.

During the summer I worked in a the actuarial department of Kansas City Life, not my dad’s employer. Two other guys, Todd and Tom worked there. One day someone asked if they had gone to lunch, and I was able to use a line I had been saving for weeks: “Tom and Todd wait for no man.”

Man also landed on the moon.

Fall 1969: I learned that two strong additions had been made to the debate staff, Roger Conner1, who had an exemplary record debating at Oberlin, and Cheryn Heinen, a very good debater from another strong debate school, Butler. Roger and Cheryn could probably have been a big help, but they were seldom allowed to go to big tournaments, and neither planned a career as a debate coach. Because the program had very few debaters, we hardly ever had practice rounds, and when we did, Juddi ran them.

Since Bill and I were the only debaters on the team with experience at the varsity level, I had assumed that we would be paired up from day 1. Partner-switching is uncommon at most schools.

I was therefore unpleasantly surprised and disgruntled to find myself paired with Dean Mellor at the beginning of the year. Bill and Mike must have also been debating together.

Cheryn did not work with us much. Still, the most memorable event of the semester occurred when she was driving us in a car from the university’s motor pool westbound on I-94. There were three other debaters in the car. One was certainly Bill. The other two must have been Dean and Mike.

The car was proceeding at the speed limit when all of a sudden the front hood came unlatched and was flung backwards by air pressure into the windshield. It also made a dent of at least six inches in the roof of the passenger compartment, but it remained attached to the hinges. The glass on the windshield shattered, but it stayed together. This video is what it felt like from the inside. However, we were going much faster, and both the windshield and hood were obviously beyond repair.

Cheryn screamed in terror, but she quickly regained composure. We were very fortunate to be quite close to an exit. Bill and I rolled down windows and gave Cheryn driving instructions to get the car onto the exit ramp and then into a service station.

Cheryn called the university and reported the problem. The people at the motor pool insisted that one of us had opened the hood for some reason and failed to latch it. We all insisted that no such event had occurred. After a few hours someone brought us a different car to use, and we continued on to the tournament without further incident.

The resolution for 1969-70 was that the federal government should grant annually a specific percentage of its income tax revenue to the state governments. I think that we ran the same case all year. It called for granting 50 percent of the income tax revenue to the states through existing grant-in-aid programs. We claimed that Congress would never finance the programs to that extent because of the power of the Military-Industrial Complex.

I do not remember details from too many tournament. I remember attending the Ohio State with Dean. We had been doing pretty well for the first seven rounds. In the eighth round, however, Dean got all flustered in the 1AR, and totally made a mess of things. His speech was so bad that there was no chance of winning after that. It was too bad, because we would have qualified for the elimination rounds if we had won.

I am not sure where we were, but at one tournament Juddi arranged for us to eat supper with the debaters from Emory University in Atlanta. She liked their southern charm. At dinner she ordered a steak well done. The waiter brought it. Juddi cut it and sent it back for more cooking. She judged that the substitute was sufficiently dead. She smothered it in red sauce. Before she could take a bite one of the Emory debaters asked her very politely why she didn’t just order a piece of bread and cover it with ketchup.

By the middle of November Juddi had changed the pairings so that I was again with Bill. On Thursday November 22 we drove to Chicago for a tournament at UICC. It was a fairly important tournament for us, but it meant that we would miss the last game of the football season.

Students at U-M were allotted one reduced-price season ticket on the south and west sides of Michigan stadium. I had a superb ticket on the 50-yard line. How I managed to get such a good seat is described here. On this occasion I gave my seat away to someone. I don’t remember who received it.

We missed the best game in the storied history of Michigan football. Ohio State was rated #1 in both polls. Michigan was 7-2. OSU had never been behind at any point in any of their previous games. Nevertheless, Michigan prevailed 24-12 that Saturday and won a ticket to the Rose Bowl for the only time in my undergraduate career.

Meanwhile, Bill and I had our worst tournament ever. For me the worst aspect was our loss to my old friend and high school debate partner, John Williams, who represented UMKC. I was more depressed about this than about any previous result. Still, I only had one semester left, and I resolved to make the most of it.

Where are my U-M debate partners in 2020?

On Twitter I follow Bill Black, who is rather famous for finding fraudulent activity in corporate and political America. He currently teaches law and economics at UMKC. His Wikipedia page is here.

I have not been in touch with Gary Black. I was quite surprised to find this web page on the Internet. I am not positive that this is the Gary Black that I knew, but the age and colleges match. I wonder what Charlie Delos would think of Gary’s new career.

Alexa Canady is a famous neurosurgeon who is now retired and living in Pensacola, FL. I emailed her because I noticed that she was a member of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). She responded to the email, but we have not had any further correspondence. Her Wikipedia page is here.

I have seen Bill Davey twice since I graduated in 1970. When I came to Ann Arbor after being discharged from the army, he let me crash in his apartment for a week or so. I also saw him at a debate tournament at Georgetown in the mid-seventies. He was then clerking for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. Later Bill was a big player in the development of the World Trade Organization. He is now retired from his teaching position at the University of Illinois. His biographical information is here.

Mike Hartmann is an attorney at the international law firm, Miller-Canfield. He was the CEO from 2007 to 2013. His bio page is here. I have been in touch with him by email.

Lee Hess is the Chairman of Cairngorm Capital and lives in Columbus, OH. I have communicated with him by email a few times. His bio page at his company is here.

Bob Hirshon is a professor at the U-M Law School.

I have not been in touch with Dean Mellor. Apparently he is doing something in sales in the L.A. area. His LinkedIn profile is here.

I have not been in touch with Larry Rogers.

1. Bill was a Presidential Scholar in his senior year of high school (1967), which indicates that he had one of the two highest scores in the state of Michigan on the National Merit exams.

2. I asked Roger why Mark Arnold hated me. He told me that I was right about that, but he did not know why. Roger was an interesting guy. He sold bibles in his youth. He tried to teach us to yodel, which he insisted was the best way to prepare for debates. He spent thirty years as lobbyist, mostly on immigration issues. I almost went to see him when he was leading a seminar in Hartford. In 2020 he is an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt.

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Tag Archives: Augustana (IL) College

1975-1976 U-M: Debate

1974-1975 U-M: Debate

1967-1969 Part 2: U-M Debate