Dear Members of the PFD Community:
For the past couple of months, as questions have grown over the nature of Public Forum topics and the use of topic areas to attract support for the mission of the NFL, I have asked my staff to remain relatively silent to allow the community open discourse without the fog of the NFL National Office’s commentary. Viewing the online discussions has been both enlightening and disconcerting.
On the one hand, the discussion of PFD topic selection has shown that Public Forum Debate and the topics and resolutions that are debated are of great concern to our student and coach members. This undoubtedly means that the event is of great importance to our community and the future of forensics. I could not agree more. During my entire tenure as the Executive Director of the NFL, I have watched Public Forum Debate blossom into the most popular high school debate event in the country. The primary reason for this explosion of participation is access. Public Forum Debate has provided access to debate for thousands of teachers and students around the nation. Public Forum Debate is affordable, classroom friendly, and fun.
The NFL’s mission is to “promote high school and middle school speech and debate activities as a means to develop a student’s essential life skills and values. “ Among several other services, a primary vehicle for accomplishing our mission is to provide the competitive framework for the activity through topic selection, rules establishment, regional and national level competition, and educational resourcing. Another key service is to connect those willing to support the activity with the activity itself. Public Forum Debate, by design, creates this link. It lends itself to community volunteer judging, is easily teachable in workshops and coach clinics, and is attractive to supporters who see PFD as a way for youth to discuss key issues of our time in very creative ways.
Over the past few years, the NFL has embraced this ground swell of support and has tried to use it to the advantage of the activity. We have worked directly with several organizations whose missions are complimentary to ours in the area of youth education. We have tried to be meticulous in our vetting of program partners and sponsors to make sure that the event and the NFL mission are never compromised in the desire to gain more public support. Over the past six years, two national PFD review and recommendation committees have met, a PFD wording recommendation committee has been established, and two national leadership conferences have been held. The result of this effort has been sustained growth of the NFL membership, growth of PFD participation, and growth of organizational and financial support.
With this growth in participation has also come heightened scrutiny over the resolutions being debated each month in Public Forum Debate. I believe that it is a fundamental responsibility of the League to accurately inform its members of the process being used. Although this information is available through publications and various League communications, I do not feel that the PFD community has been adequately informed of the reality of topic selection and topic sponsorship. I am concerned that the PFD community has been misled, misinformed, and misguided on this issue through a variety of sources. Therefore, I would like to clarify the processes being used.
To date, PFD topic selection and topic area sponsorship remains a responsibility of the Office of the Executive Director per order of the NFL Board of Directors. In 2006, the Board established the use of a wording advisory committee to assist the Executive Director and his staff in determining the monthly topics. In 2008, the NFL Board established a set of gift giving policies and sponsorship and partner guidelines as further guidance for the Executive Director. It has been this regulatory framework by the Board that has guided the actions of this office. This framework covers all gift giving and sponsorship activities. This past summer, the Board established another committee to review PFD rules and guidelines (including the process of topic selection). That committee did not recommend a change from the status quo, but in all fairness to disclosure, did not spend substantial time on the particular issue of topic selection.
Currently, two primary scenarios exist for the development of a PFD topic under the current procedures. First, there are months in which the topic area is considered “open.” In these months, the PFD advisory committee vets several options for topic areas and comes to consensus on a single topic area for recommendation. At this time, the Executive Director points out any potential concerns for the committee to consider. Then, assuming the topic area has mutual agreement, the committee creates a recommendation for the wording of the topic area in the form of a resolution. This recommendation is sent to the Executive Director seven days in advance of the topic release date to allow for wording adjustments if there are concerns on the part of the Executive Director. After consent from the Office of the Executive Director, the topic is released per the established schedule.
Second, there are months in which the NFL has secured a project partner or sponsor. In these cases, the Executive Director has determined that a particular topic area (not the specific resolution) should be debated in a particular month. There are times that this results in financial and resource support from the partnering entity. However, it is extremely important for the debate community to understand that partners and sponsors DO NOT determine the wording of the resolution. A sponsor or a partner is never allowed to dictate the wording of a resolution or allowed to micromanage the Executive Director’s final wording decisions. In fact, the wording advisory committee (as with “open” months) is given the opportunity to word the resolution within the provided topic area framework to create a recommendation to the Executive Director. For example, in February, March, and April of this year, the wording committee was given the general topic areas of lobbying, racial preference, and labor unions based on a grant proposal generated by my office. These topic areas are timely and educational and fit within the parameters established by the board. The committee was given the freedom to create the final resolution wording in all three topic areas.
In the case of a partnership or sponsorship arrangement, the Executive Director has determined, in his opinion, that the topic area being used fits the parameters of the Board guidelines and will benefit the NFL mission and the event. In no cases has the integrity of the event or the NFL been compromised by these relationships. I can assure the PFD community, that the NFL does not “sell” resolutions. It makes sponsorship agreements and partnerships (within Board parameters) in which topic areas often play a role in a much larger picture. For example, a set of sponsored topic areas may result in the nation’s largest free online video portal of educational materials in forensics. A partnership on a topic area may result in several thousands of dollars in scholarships or extended service learning opportunities in New York, DC, or abroad. A partnership grant may allow for students from several foreign nations to engage our members in life changing debate experiences. A sponsorship or partnership may result in coverage of our activity in major media outlets. In the past decade, sponsored events, topics, and partnership programs have involved all forms of debate and speech and have generated countless resources, over 1.5 million dollars in scholarships, and over 3 million dollars in additional financial resources that have been used to benefit secondary speech and debate.
The debate on whether or not topic areas should be used as an asset in the acquisition of resources for the NFL and the activity is a good and healthy debate. People have argued that topic areas should be chosen first then used as potential assets in support acquisition to allow for a more democratic process. In the past, this idea has been dismissed because it would require knowledge of topic areas several months in advance and would drastically limit the support pool at times. Some have argued that topics should never be repeated. This is a reasonable argument, but the underlying questions of when a topic is current again and when resolutions overlap in topic areas will always be disputable. It is a discussion that should happen and, if deemed appropriate, should elicit positive policy change by the NFL board.
However, I ask the community not to confuse the use of topic areas in partnerships with dissatisfaction over the wording of resolutions. I feel strongly that all topic areas presented this year have certainly met the current topic parameters for PFD that were designed and approved by a national committee of PFD coaches. They have been timely and all are debatable issues. If the wording of resolutions has created problems, then that is a subject unrelated to partners and sponsors, unless one feels that there is no feasible way to write a resolution on a particular topic area. I do not believe this to be the case. The issue of proper resolution wording is common in all forms of debate and extremely challenging for any team of writers. For this reason, the NFL is committed to continually revisiting the wording process to ensure the most debatable and educational resolutions.
Thank you for reading. I hope this post can help further the intellectual discourse on the issue and answer some lingering questions. Although it will not be feasible for me to participate in on going “blog dialogue”, the opinions of the PFD community do matter, and I and my staff will continue to review posts, emails, and shared concerns and will convey your thoughts with the NFL Board of Directors as they establish policies moving forward.
Sincerely,
J. Scott Wunn
Executive Director
National Forensic League
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Perhaps, then, the problem lies in a disconnect between what the committee and Office of the Executive Director think is debatable and relevant and what we, the debaters, think is debatable and relevant. From what I can tell, the April topic has very scant topic literature and isn’t part of any current discourse, in addition to being far too similar to last year’s topic for the same month. It is because of dissatisfaction with this topic that my partner and I are foregoing the TOC our senior year, an undesirable outcome which could be prevented by avoiding topics like this one.
Thank you for the thoughtful letter Mr. Wunn. Is is possible for students to see a breakdown of the NFL budget? We would like to see how the money is being spent since this only happens to PF topics and not LD/Polcy.
I am pleased that Mr. Wunn continues to find the controversy surrounding Public Forum topic selection important enough to comment on. I remain in significant disagreement with the characterization of several elements of recent events surrounding PF topic selection and with the substance of the NFL’s policies. I’ve written a little more over at http://www.PeeleForBoard.com and encourage you to take a look.
I would add that the topic instructions given to the Wording “advisory” Committee for April was to prepare a topic PUBLIC labor unions. It’s certainly a product of the NFL office’s grant writing that we’re revisiting labor unions just one year after addressing the topic area through EFCA.
Mr. Wunn,
While I understand the position of the NFL, and your executive office, I worry about the implications that such sponsorships have caused. As Mr. Zoffer pointed out, the April 2010 topic is very similar to the April 2009 topic, but has even less literature available. While I understand that unions, lobbying and racial preference may always be hot topic political issues of concern, I feel as though the sponsors are out of touch with the debaters and coaches within the community. While these sponsors may not be involved in the writing or specific wording of resolutions, by limiting resolutions to their selected topic area, the wording committee is restricted in their ability to create the best topics for PFD. The repetitiveness of topic areas, and as a result, resolutions themselves, is frustrating, and in my opinion, damages one of the best contributions that PFD brings to the NFL community. While these sponsorships may bring needed resources to the NFL community, I feel as though sacrificing the strength of PFD in order to obtain these resources is the worst decision for our community.
The primary problem here is that the April topic is simply not timely. There is a lack of literature, a lack of information, and a lack of public interest in this topic. Regardless of if the topics are skewed by sponsorships or not (which is a highly questionable practice), Public Forum was created to address current events and things of interest and concern to the public. I am deeply disturbed by this topic, along with the March topic that seems more like a castrated LD resolution than anything else. If Public Forum is to continue to develop and progress topic selection must allow for educational debates that actually contribute to relevant discourse. Due to the fact that this topic is not relevant and will not allow for good, important debates to occur my partner and I are abstaining from tournaments that use this topic, namely the TOC and NDCA Championships.
Hopefully the dissatisfaction with this topic thoughout the Public Forum community can begin to change the ways in which topics are selected for future months.
“Second, there are months in which the NFL has secured a project partner or sponsor. In these cases, the Executive Director has determined that a particular topic area (not the specific resolution) should be debated in a particular month. There are times that this results in financial and resource support from the partnering entity.”
Essentially, what you have now admitted to, is that you are not selling the specific wording of a resolution to be debated, but you are, in a way, selling the area that NEEDS to be incorporated into the resolution which determines what is to be debated. Ultimately, in my view, this is the same as “selling” the topic. If you say the resolution needs to encompass “racial preferences,” and the phrase in the resolution is “affirmative action,” the difference is negligible. This eliminates the opportunity to even consider BETTER resolutions, or more importantly, “topic areas,” because a specific area has already been determined, in many cases, based off of a particular sponsor on any given month. This leads to the antithesis of what PFD was, in my view, supposed to be about. Is our event not supposed to be centered around debating topics which are “ripped from the headlines?” I’m terribly sorry, but I have not heard of much debate and controversy in recent months about “Lobbyists,” “Racial Preferences,” and “unions,” to use the examples you gave. These topics have been chosen in lieu of more recent and relevant topics.
Then we have this horrible resolution that is being forced on us for arguably the most important tournament of the year, the TOC. 1) The “topic area” was the same “topic area,” for the same month and tournament last year. 2) The very fact that this was not an “open month” resolution, left those who make the recommendations of the wording with the burden to try to make this topic somewhat different from last years unions topic. This probably led to the horrible. The topic is far to narrow and the literature, as has already been mentioned, is lacking. So shifting the blame is pointless at the point where this all would have been avoided had there not been a forced “topic area.”
Mr. Wunn,
Even if you do not allow sponsors to buy the wording, the area chosen sometimes doesn’t lead to a debatable resolution.
More importantly, this goes back to the individuals picking these resolutions. It is becoming increasingly obvious that many of the coaches that write these atrocities don’t bother to actually cut cards on these resolutions. The evidence matters.
While this is not a topic I would have chosen, I have to disagree with those who are claiming that it is not a relevant or timely topic. Given the current state of the economy, and the fiscal problems being faced by governments (especially on the state and local levels); the question of whether the power of public employee unions makes it difficult, if not impossible, for states to take adequate measures to deal with the challenges they face is one which many people are asking. This topic also fits squarely into the larger current controversy over government spending and deficits, as many have claimed that the power of these unions makes it virtually impossible to reign in government spending because any serious attempt to restrict the amount spent by states on health care and other benefits for their employees will be resisted successfully by these unions.
Specifically in the area of education there is quite a bit going on in terms of conflicts between teachers unions and many highly successful charter school programs which require their teachers to work extra days and hours, yet cannot afford to pay for such time according to the standards set out by the unions’ collective bargaining agreements . Above and beyond that, recent speeches by President Obama concerning education make clear that many of his ideas may very well go against the policies favored by teachers’ unions and that a showdown over many of these unions’ priorities such as teacher tenure may be on the horizon. A simple google search will reveal that there is no shortage of discussion over the question of whether teachers’ unions are standing in the way of meaningful educational reform.
As for the literature on this issue being scant, I can only say that I had no problem finding a lot of current articles discussing topics germane to this debate. I can’t speak to the amount of academic research or studies on the issue as I haven’t spent any really time looking that in depth for it, but there are certainly a lot of people talking about these issues in the current public discourse from what I can tell. My bigger concern would be that most of the discussion currently going on is being driven by conservatives who seem to be using the current climate as an opportunity to make an issue out of this question, while there does not seem to be much impetus by the opposing side to mount a similar campaign. I think that could mean there will be far more evidence in favor of the CON available. I also personally find it a little strange that we are going to wind up debating the issue of compensation for public employees and its greater impact, when we have yet to have a PF topic concerning the bank bailouts and executive compensation which to me seems a lot more interesting and compelling, while raising many of the same questions concerning the use of public funds.
While I certainly understand the fact that people don’t particuarly like this topic, I think the claim that it is somehow not consistent with the norms of what a Public Forum topic should be are not very credible in my mind. The view that we shouldn’t be repeating topic areas has a lot of credibility, but the question of public labor unions does have unique relevance given current events, and while I might be concerned about the amount of evidence available if this were a policy topic, I think there is more than ample resources available to have a meaningful public debate over this issue.
I really love the NFL, and have respect for Mr. Wunn, but I had to stop reading when I saw this:
“For example, in February, March, and April of this year, the wording committee was given the general topic areas of lobbying, racial preference, and labor unions based on a grant proposal generated by my office.”
[then soon after]
“I can assure the PFD community, that the NFL does not “sell” resolutions.”
I am sorry, but I don’t see how the actions outlined above are not tantamount to selling resolutions.
Debaters don’t care the exact wording of the resolution so much as they do the topic area. Whether the March resolution says “is just” “is justified” or “Justifiably, affirmative action ….” doesn’t matter – we’re debating Affirmative Action.
The topic /area/ is fundamentally the crux of the resolution, and my understanding of what you just said is that these areas are for sale.
At the very least, the wording committee should have a veto (in the case of unanimity or some other check against that being abused) to provide a little more quality assurance.
I don’t have too much of a problem with the NFL deciding topic “areas” months in advance, so long as the topic areas are reasonably large and flexible. The three topic areas that were assigned this past year I think were fine examples of broad areas that sponsorship can select.
That being said, I would suggest that in the future, if the sponsoring of topic “areas” becomes a common form of fundraising, it seems reasonable to try to space out the months that are in effect “locked” into an area. If it’s decided over the summer that September, October, November, and December are all going to be about X, Y, Z, and Q, it seems wrong that no topics can be in reference to September events until 4 months later. It seems to make much more sense to me for that, if assigning areas for multiple months, you keep them spaced out (September, November, February, etc.). Just a thought.
That all being said, I think that the NFL has made a really, really silly mistake. Pre-designating a topic “area” to the same month as a very similar, categorical, topic from last year just doesn’t make sense at all. It would be one thing if we had two topics in two years about or “trade” or “human rights” or something relatively broad, but the area of labor unions seems pretty narrow. In order to come up with a topic that fit into “Labor Unions” but wasn’t a clear repeat of last years topic (considering the EFCA topic pretty much covered 98% of interesting information about labor unions), the selection process was skewed towards a pretty random area. There’s a reason that people have backlashed to this topic so much – it’s just so random and evidence doesn’t exist as is needed for our rounds. To emphasize this point, consider a different topic example. Does it seem reasonable to pre-designate that the NFL Tournament topic in June will be about “Nuclear Energy” or “Trade Embargos”? Probably not.
I just don’t see why topic selection isn’t more public. What’s the harm in drafting 2-3 resolutions (be them similar or different), posting them on the NFL website a week before the 1st of the month, have coaches from teams submit a vote, or have it be an open vote, or whatever is chosen, and then given those results (Read: taken into consideration), have the committee/director/whoever make a final decision? It at least allows for more discussion before a seemingly “final and conclusive” choice is made.
Mr. Wunn, in 1995, the NFL accepted sponsorship money in return for developing an LD topic for LD. The topic created was ” Resolved: individuals with disabilities ought to be afforded the same athletic competition opportunities as able-bodied athletes.” Memebers of the LD wording committee were incensed, as were coaches at large. Then Executive Secretary Copeland promised this would never happen again.
Correction to above post: the 1995 topic was developed for the Special Olympics. I believe some sponsorship money was involved.
I’d like to know more about how the sponsorship partners are vetted and picked. It seems to me that it is very dangerous to allow sponsors to dictate topic areas. There is power in deciding what thousands of students are dedicating hours thinking and researching about. Sponsors could use this to create dialog about their issue that could pay off in the future…
For example, would PETA be able to sponsor an Animal Rights topic?
Donald Rumsfeld once said:
“I used to think one of the most powerful individuals in America was the person who could select the annual high school debate topic. Think of the power — to set the agenda, and determine what millions of high school
students will study, read about, think about, talk about with friends, discuss with their teachers, and debate with their parents and siblings over dinner”
I couldn’t disagree more with those who are taking the position that the April topic is not timely. On a federal level, the TSA went without a director for all of 2009 because of the nominee’s stated support to extend union organizing rights to that agency and Jim DeMint’s hold on his vote. Only the underwear bomber brought the issue to a head and Erroll Southers withdrew from consideration because of it. On a state level, California, and other states facing budget short falls, have been questioning whether public sector unionization has contributed to their dire budget situations. There is a more remote question about private/public sector work efficiency which unions often directly oppose, as well as a slight repeat of December’s merit pay issue because of the union opposition to it.
Unions two April’s in a row is a bit more disappointing as it fixes the character of certain tournaments and relegates some areas to seasons where schools may not be competing (a fall debate season state never sees unions, lobbying, etc).
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