John Leo has posted a commentary on the Chronicle story Robert mentioned.

This trend shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the increasing politicization of college campuses these days. Just as few administrations have the guts to say “No” to demands by student and faculty radicals if they are swaddled in the right kind of grievance language, apparently few debate judges (most of whom are faculty members) have the guts to give a lop-sided loss to teams that don’t debate the topic. Perhaps judges who demand that the debaters address the topic and rule against those who don’t are not invited to judge any more.

Note also how ordinary rules of logic get tossed out. Robert already described the match between the fast talker and the student who read from her diary and ranted about racism, but he didn’t note that the judge gave the loss to the fast talker’s team — it didn’t convince the judge that the rant on racism was irrelevant. The burden of proof ought to go the other way.