Awhile back, I posted a few snarky comments about a professor who’d mooned his debate team’s opponents. Now, the Chronicle of Higher Education has a story about how debates around the country are descending into idiocy, much of it premeditated:

Competitive debate has traditionally served as a laboratory for the democratic process and an important training ground for future policy makers. But in recent years, a growing number of teams have played the game out of traditional bounds. They have turned events into commentaries on debate itself, in performances that bear little resemblance to the debating traditions that had a place on campuses for more than a hundred years. But the freewheeling aspect is what makes debate so exciting and challenging for students, according to many debate coaches, who say teams should be prepared to respond to any argument.

The section of the story called “Clashing Strategies” is too long to post here in its entirety, but you absolutely have to read it — it describes a scene where one debater speaks as fast as she possibly can for nine minutes (though, to her credit, she actually makes arguments about agricultural tariffs), and then her opponent “read[s] from her own diary” and “accuse[s] her opponents of furthering ‘white supremacy.’”

Here’s another fun paragraph:

As a pioneer of the strategy of turning debate rounds into questions about the very framework of debate, Mr. Shanahan says he helped bring in philosophy and the disciplines of critical legal studies and critical race studies to an environment that had been dominated by policy wonks.

Look, if you want to challenge the “very framework of debate,” great, but a debate is not the place for doing so. That’s like disagreeing with a football rule, and instead of taking your concern to the NFL, just playing by your own rule. It doesn’t work that way, and the refs should call a penalty.