the birth of melodrama in southern utah

[UWG Debate Team]

just to clarify. no post that i have written proposed westga as a model.
i may be egotistical, but i'm not stupid. there's only one chester, not
enought to go around.
        it was joel rollins who extolled the westga way. and i don't think
he meant it as a model either. it's not even possible to infer that i said
anything like "other schools should just do it like we do."


On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Michael Bear Bryant wrote:

> I sent Vic Tabak a backchannel note.
>
> Vic, I hope you study your lawbooks with just a little more concentration
> than you put into following this thread.
>
> I do not hate all people in NDT. I find it somehow shocking that a top-notch
> law student can't comprehend what's being said. I recently managed to attend
> an NDT Committee meeting without killing a single person.
>
> Synopsis: Hester challenges those regions where NDT debate is dying to look
> and model the wonderful success of the West Ga. program that he personally
> brought back from it's death throes in 1985-1995. Having been the W Ga coach
> from 1986-87 (with four NDT qualifications, a fairly high 1st round, and a
> team debating on the second day of elims) I took offense to his
> characterization of my coaching at W Ga as the "dark period." I don't even
> hate Hester, but I openly wonder what it is about NDT success that makes some
> people into monsters. I know I used to be a lot like Mike. After my first
> four years of coaching NDT, I had cleared four teams at NDT and coached three
> first rounds and I was probably a bigger asshole than Mike ever dreamed of
> being. My point was that his "humility" and the model of W Ga is ABSOLUTELY
> irrelevant to the problems most troubled programs face. They don't have
> millionaire dept chairs or university presidents who also coached NDT
> winners. Holding W Ga as a model of salvation to endangered programs is like
> Marie Antoinette telling the peasants to try devil's food cake.
>
> Now, Vic, I NEVER EVER said all NDT people are evil. If that's best you can
> interpret, well I just don't know what to say. If it helps your troubled
> sensitivities, most CEDA folks feel I hate them, too. It seems that many
> folks in debate lack the capacity to distinguish critique of a bureaucracy
> from critique of those that seem to find their identity in that bureaucracy.
>
> Again, does NDT turn us into humans or monsters? Does it even teach them to
> comprehend what they read?
>
> Bear,
> an NDTer since 1975.
>