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”

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.