Stupid Judge Syndrome (SJS)

[tourrettic]

here in massachusets, many of our judges seem to be battling bouts of stupid judge syndrome. whats the worst experience you've ever had with a judge in your round?

[theatrix04]

told judge partner is double entered. the judge said they could not longer wait and left.....

judge wrote "you cannot bend down or gesture at all" in dramatic interp

judge wrote "singing is not allowed in verse"

I think there are lots of judges with syndromes, but as a judge I hope that we all become more knowledgable for the rules and sensitive that students, actors, public speakers are people and we should be more constructive and think twice on how to write critiques

[Captainhook]

"please do not do that Shuffle thing with your feet when you change characters"

what . .popping?

[Jordan F]

"please do not do that Shuffle thing with your feet when you change characters"

what . .popping?

Probably shuffling your feet :lol:

[Cinderella]

Alex- was that a on a Blue Key ballot? Because if so I think I might have had that judge...

[Captainhook]

NO, UPENN. But i heard about the judged that docked you, kelly, and noah for transition noises.

[ria]

i had a couple of stupid judges last weekend. my character in duo is all anxious, 'cause she's got a plane to catch and she doesn't want to be there w/her sister, and she's talking about san deigo's seasons (or lack thereof), and "i'm afraid i'll miss my plane" and the judge says "this character has somewhere to go, the airport? is she visiting from out of town?" it annoys me. but my awesome judges greatly outweigh the stupid ones, so it's ok.

[tourrettic]

This wasn't at a tournament, but one time one of the kids on my team was coaching me the day before a tournament and a couple of graduates who had come in to coach us were in the hallway talking (really loud) and they didn't know we were in the room and they came in but they were talking to each other (still REALLY loud) and didn't notice us so they were standing there yelling and i just kept going and Renee (the kid watching me) was trying to get their attention, it was amusing. i don't know how they didn't notice us. anywho, i finished up the piece (they had seen us by then) and Renee was amazed at how focused i was. David felt really bad about interrupting us, and then we all laughed. it was amusing. i guess you had to be there.

i hate when judges use analog clocks. they should totally be illegal. they always lead to confusion.

I've gotten some interesting reactions to my tourrettes. i always tell the judge before i start that i have it cuz i've gotten points off for "pointless gestures and facial expressions". some of them obviously have no idea what i'm talking about. one guy was fascinated by it. he came up to me afterwards and started asking me all these questions about it (he'd already turned in the ballots).

once a kid from another school told me one of their judges at harvard had tourrettes. not vocalized tics, just motor stuff. my natural reaction was to be defensive (this person didn't know i have tourrettes) but then i thought about it for a moment and decided that that could get sort of... interesting. when i come back after graduation to judge, hopefully i won't cause to much commotion in my rounds.

[ria]

i wouldn't have thought that someone with tourettes could successfully do speech. i think that's kind of interesting.

[tourrettic]

apparently my judge found it interesting too... for some reason i never tic when i'm performing. i do a lot of acting as well as speech, and i can be standing off stage waiting for my entrance and i'll be twitching like crazy cuz i'm excited, and then the moment i step on stage it just stops. it's the same with speech. as soon as i open my binder, they just stop. i just tell my judges to be sure i don't get points off for anything i don't notice. luckily i don't do any of the vocal crap during other peoples pieces. and my piece this year is a prose about a seventh grader with tourrette's (it fascinates me. i tend to read about it a lot. probably to much). so it works out.

on the subject of surprising people to succeed in speech, I heard about a girl who was deaf and she signed her piece and did all the acting, and the interpreter had to say it in a monotone so she didn't add anything. i don't know if its true. it may just be a speechie urban ledgend circulating the country.

[iismepeter]

on the subject of surprising people to succeed in speech, I heard about a girl who was deaf and she signed her piece and did all the acting, and the interpreter had to say it in a monotone so she didn't add anything. i don't know if its true. it may just be a speechie urban ledgend circulating the country.OMG! I HIT HER ONCE!!

She didn't have an interpreter. she was in my HI round and she signed her piece while going "mmmghhff aaaauggmmmm gmufhgg!"

hahaha, i think she got the 1!!

[veronica]

Last year i was tripling at a tournament, my improv partner was waitign for me outside our 3 round room for me. We were the only group who had not yet preformed, she explained to the judge i was tripling and i was at my second event and would be there as soon as I had finished. The judged got tired of waiting for me so he left the room and told my partner we were DQed. This whole time i had no clue bc i was still in my Storytelling round. Well my partner finds me eventualy. We go to the tab room and explain our stituation, the tab people have to hunt the judge down. They find him after 30 minutes, by this time he is pissedbeyond belief. SO the tab people just give us 6/6 after all that bc he didn't want to judge us! How unfair!

Any way I make it to finals inST that day, and there comes the same judge that left my 3rd round and DQ-ed us, as one of my judges for Storytelling.

He looked at me, rolled his eyes and laughed.

I ended up getting 4th in Storytelling finals that day.

[theatrix04]

.....you should not speak with any competitors in a room before competition, even if the round has not started. Please learn tournament etiquette...... this was reflected in your rank

comment at a NOVICE beginning of year tournament.....

[Its Alive]

Along the same lines as above:

"When you move your feet like that, it's distracting."

Hear that, folks? POPS IS BAAAAD!

[rubberducky1234]

that happened to me at novice states too- "please do not talk during a performance" and i wasnt even talking i tinhk i said good luck before the person went up between performances but if anytinhg that was it. then i got last in the round

[vertigo_dx]

the pissed-off judge thing happened to me a few weekends ago. I went to the Barton Classic in Ohio, and I doubled in finals.... the prep room moderator refused to let me speak first, even though i was the only one double-entered....he made me go last....i was an hour and a half late to duo....

I heard from my partner later that my judge was so pissed she tried to leave multiple times, but was told she couldn't....she kept complaining about "rude out-of-town speechies".....and we got the 6. she was the only judge in finals, unfortunately, so there wasn't another rank to balance it out.

[ria]

i think it is so annoying when judges leave like that. it happened to several people at our first tournament this year. two of them were our people, too. it was a swing, and one of our poetry people got a one in her first round, but the judge left before she got to her second round. she'd written on the board and everything. so the tournament people, instead of finding the judge like they were supposed to, said they would just double her first round score. but they already had to double the best score, b/c it was a swing, and that would have given her 1 1 1, and they wouldn't break her to finals on a default like that. so they gave her seventh place and prequalified her for state. that was so aggravating, b/c she would almost definetaly have finalled if she'd been judged in round 2. they did the same thing to one of our dec guys, except that he'd gotten a three in his other round, so he wouldn't have broken to finals with the score tripled.
judges are supposed to check if the person is a drop, and if they're not, then the judge is supposed to wait.

hey, veronica, which tournament was that?

[sassafrassz]

My friends had a judge in a final duo round who ACCTUALLY FELL ASLEEP. I wasn't there, but I guess she was on some kinda medication (everyone was talking about it after). I just can't imagine how anyone would think it was a good idea to let her judge if whatever she was taking induced mini-comas!

[iismepeter]

ouch. too bad I've never had any outrageously bad judges..

[veronica]

hey, veronica, which tournament was that?

It was last year at the Graves/Greenwood, that tournament was so odd for most of the members on our team. We had a huge amount of my teammates break into finals (including me!), but since it was rianing and prose was in a middle school across the parking it sucked, and on top of that the rounds were running late. It was a very stress filled day for me, especially since I was the only one of the juniorson my team who had not broke and prequalified yet.

As for the judge falling alseep, that happened to my best friend last year at Regionals. She felt like she preformed horrible, but it turned out she received the 1 in that round.
I had a hard time staying awake at the WKU/Warren East tournament 2 weeks ago. I was on muscle relaxers because I pulled a muscle in my neck... they make me really really sleepy. The funny thing is I broke into finals, I was happy of course butI wanted to just sneek to my bus and take a nap before awards. During Warren East finals of the tournament I was sitting in Garret Hall and kept dozing off on the couch.

[Jesus]

My 2 Pet peeves. When the judge writes all good comments and then gives u the 3 or 4. and when you go up to the front of the room and they, with the stopwatch in hand yell "GO!"

When the judge yells go, in the past iVE always tried to start just as fast as i could and i usually wind up giving a ****ty performance. So when this happened to me in a prelim round at long beach, she said go and i calmly ignored her, looked back and forth and began my piece when i was ready. i still got the one.

[Its Alive]

My favorite comment ever, from this past weekend:

"Not enough evidence to support point.
5th / 5"

Hmm. This would make sense, except for the fact that it was an HI ROUND. The **** did he think he was watching, extemp?!??!?!?

A prime instance of SJS.

[FunkyChicken]

Oh no. I think that this past weekend at George Mason I could own you.

One of the semifinal ballots of my friend Jacob in Poetry was blank. Zip. Zilch. Nada. And he had gotten the 6/6.

I think Jacob wins, perhaps.

[bobtheclown]

One of the semifinal ballots of my friend Jacob in Poetry was blank. Zip. Zilch. Nada. And he had gotten the 6/6.
I think Jacob wins, perhaps.

I had that about a month ago in Extemp. I got 4/6.


I was reading my PFD ballots from the tourney this past weekend and the judge gave one of my opponents an A in crossfire, and then in the comment section he wrote "you need to ASK QUESTIONS in crossfire, SPEAK UP!" I didn't win a single round, and I was TWO below the line in Extemp. :cry:

[veronica]

One of my finals ballots had this, "Delightful and wonderful" I got 4/6

Wow that really helps me.

Oh and this past weekend I tripled. I was the second one in my DI room in the last round. I told the judge I was Tripled entered and that i still had to go to my other 2 events. She said ok and then let 4 other people go ahead before me. Then she looked at her watched looked at me then looked at the board and said "Oh... you are tripled. You better go and do your piece now, since you are tripled." I was late to the rest of my rounds, onejudge asked me what took so long.

[Josiahzacks]

Oh no. I think that this past weekend at George Mason I could own you.

One of the semifinal ballots of my friend Jacob in Poetry was blank. Zip. Zilch. Nada. And he had gotten the 6/6.

I think Jacob wins, perhaps.

I've gotten those.

It's even worse when you get a 5 or 6 and the only comment is: "Good job"

[timjanas]

I once got a declamation ballot that said "You are the speaker."

No duh.

At GMU this weekend, in oratory finals, they had someone to welcome you to each final round by doing a little mock oratory for about 3 minutes. This girl was pretty funny and you could tell it was a joke piece- just GMU's way of having a little fun. When she was done, everyone was laughing and clapping, when one of the judges says, in a very serious tone... "Which speaker number is she? I don't think I have her ballots."

My teammate, Isaac Maddow-Zimet broke in duo and oratory. For oratory semis his name was printed as "Isaac Madson-Zimet"

we thought that was pretty funny. he actually wrote his name like that in semis. When he broke to finals, he was "Isaac Madison-Zimet"

Surprisingly, he was correctly listed in duo semis and finals. Oy vey.

[Ryan]

At Nova Titan this last weekend (the tournament of the bad judges), I got a ballot that had nothing on it besides "Great Job!" and 4/6. If it was such a great job, why the 4?

[Nocturne]

At a Local tournament this weekend, I got all 1's, one 2, and a 5. The person who gave me the 5 said "great piece, great emotion, best in round"

I felt like killing people.

[KErnst]

Last year my buddies in Duo got a critique that said,
"easily that best in round thus far" - they were the last speakers and they got 4/6, and got sixth at state, dumbass judges.

[veronica]

thats all Bullshi!t... I hate ballots like that. It is my pet peeve.

[iismepeter]

my friend once got "you should win this tournament!" 6/6

edit:

oh and at the first cfl tournament of the year, I ended up winning OI with the ranks of 1,6,1 1,1,2. The judge gave this guy with a lisp better then me. :( I looked over at him while getting my award and he didn't seem surprised. **** stupid judges :(

[tourrettic]

on the topic of "great job, you were the best: 6/6"

i've gotten the before. i think some judges think that the best rank is the highest number. they need to tell people at the opening judges meeting that THE BEST RANK IS NUMBER 1!!

or they could just all be idiots.

[Nocturne]

Yeah. Maybe they confuse the rankings with what performer you are. 6th speaker, 6th place? hmm....

[nick]

I actually had a judge come and find me after the round and said that this was the best performance he had ever seen in his 30 years of coaching. Yeah I didn't get the 1. I was like what the heck?!

[veronica]

WTF?? That is really bizzare....

[veronica]

ok... this past weekend I competed in Improv Duo with one of my good friends...for fun. (which means we suck but we needed an event to just go crazy!)

Well we got our ballots back on the bus and my friend tells me we got a one in our first round, I was so happy. Then as she continued to read our comments on the ballot I noticed stuff that we didn't even do in our scene were on our ballots. Then on the bottom of our ballot read: " I LOVED YOU GIRLS! THE MOST BELIEVABLE AND HILARIOUS! Espically the girl with the red hair"

Well I don't have red hair niether does my partner. But one of the girls in that round did. So we had thier ballot but my mine and my partners number were on the ballot. We thought this was funny because we sucked *** and they probably have our ballot! Judges it must suck to be those girls though.

[ria]

oh wow, not cool.

there's this one judge who has judged my duo partner and me a bunch of times. she never really seemed to like us much. then we had her in a round recently, and we did terribly!!!! and she gave us the one.

[veronica]

Its because beautiful people are always the winners

[ria]

aww....shucks, folks, i'm speechless... :oops: i'm not all that pretty....rachel's the beauty in this duo team.

[veronica]

Well you both are always winners in my book. Of Course you know that I have a protective shield so that everyone isn't blinded my my radiant beauty. Sorry you guys just couldn't handle all of me at once.

[ria]

i'm sure we'd all just die from....well, something....if we were exposed to your intensely amazing beauty, veronica.

[bobtheclown]

A few months ago I had a policy judge in PFD. He had never judged a round of PFD before (and he was actually in the room on time). Our opponents had never debated before. They each spoke for about 1:30 in their constructive speeches, and the second speaker didn't do any rebuttals. I know my partner and I are no where near the best, but we did a much better job than they did. When we walked past our judge later in the tourney, we talked for a few minutes and told him that we had lost 2nd round (there were only 3 prelims), and he said that even though our opponents had horrible speaking styles, no organization, didn't rebut any of our main points, and were virtually silent during crossfire, he gave them the win simply because their totally unsubstantiated and un-backed points were better than ours.

AAARGH!

They decided to run a fourth round because this was the one tourney in AZ that actually was run correctly. We lost all four rounds. The newbie pair on our team which my partner and I spent most of the time we should have spent writing cases helping them won one round. Sigh.

**EDIT** Oh, I did walk out of the tourney with 45 points, so it wasn't a total loss.

[ria]

...do me a favor. could you explain policy? our school doesn't do debate, so most of what you just said makes no sense to me.

*heyhey! this is post number 1234 for me! ha! 1-2-3-4!
yeah, i'm easily amused...*

[bobtheclown]

...do me a favor. could you explain policy? our school doesn't do debate, so most of what you just said makes no sense to me.

1) It was PFD. I only said the judge was a policy judge b/c he had never judged PFD before. In PFD all 4 constructive speeches are a max of 4 minutes, then 2 min summary from two people, then 1 min final focus from the other two, with 3 min crossfires (2-way cross examination) after each 2 speech cycle.

2) Most of what I say makes no sense to me either.

[ria]

ah, well, as long as i'm not the only one confused! :wink:

[ria]

maybe he'd seen someone else do it. but even if that was the case, that's not the way you're supposed to judge. there are different cuttings for nearly every piece in existence.

[AfRiCaNHI]

...do me a favor. could you explain policy? our school doesn't do debate, so most of what you just said makes no sense to me.

?! Oh, my. I knew there were schools that weren't prominent in debate but I didn't think there were schools that just didn't have debate all together........... I should have figured that. But yeah, we have three policy teams and on my next post, one of them will explain what the **** it is.

My judge complaints are pretty much the same.

"You were amazing!!" :D 7/7 :(
"This tournament is yours!!!!!" 4/7
"The reason I gave you the rank is." ??? Well, is it a secret or are you going to tell me?
"Your piece selection is great." (next portion) "I didn't really like your piece."

[AfRiCaNHI]

One UPenn judge in my first round almost gave me an aneurysm. Don't try and think on this.

The people I remeber were in that round besides me were Kelly Balkhe (Trinity Prep) and Will Loeffel (Iona Prep). I don't remeber the rest. Well, we got this judge who came in and sat down in the corner of the room-- the front corner of the room. So everyone had to perform their pieces at a slant, a slant in which it was hard for the other competetors to see your face. She asked us for our pieces, and we told her they were on the board. After filling out our portion of the ballot, she asked us for her affiliation. :shock: Oh my ****!! How the **** are we supposed to know? OMG! When we told her we didn't know her affiliation, she continued and we started. First Kelly went, then will and two others. At the end of my performance, as we were leaving, she asked us what are ratings were. "Um," I said, "I'm pretty sure you're supposed to fill that out."
"Oh, ok," was her response.
For those of you who don't know, UPenn is an Ivy League school. How did this ditz get in? Well, later she explained to us that a lot of her family had attended UPenn, from like her great grandfather. All the people in the room looked around at each other and had this look that said, "Oh, well, that explains it all." If that wasn't enough, she gave me a 4/6, my worst rank of the tournament. Well, no ****, she definately MADE UP A CHARACTER ON MY BALLOT!!!!!!!!

Oh, well. That's all for now.

[AfRiCaNHI]

...do me a favor. could you explain policy? our school doesn't do debate, so most of what you just said makes no sense to me.

Policy's a two person event that is centered around policy solutions to problems associated with the resolution. For instance, this year's resolution is centered around UN Peacekeeping Operations. The affirmative's job, in most cases, is to present a policy outlining problems in a specific scenario or area (such as the genocide in the Congo) and to present a plan (hence the name policy) to solve them. The negative's job is to prove that the plan is bad in a number of ways, such as disproving the plan's solvency, by saying that the plan causes things worse than the original problems it aims to solve (this is a disadvantage) or by proving that other policy options are better (as with a counterplan). There are other arguments that can be made, but these are the main ones, other than Topicality, which is an argument that the negative can make claiming that the affirmative doesn't fall under the scope of the resolution, which is bad for debate, yada yada..

Hope I helped.

[ria]

oooohh...i see. yeah, we don't do debate, our coach refuses to do both. and i can hardly blame him. i don't see how some schools do it. of course, some schools have a separate coach for debate, but yeah, bethlehem doesn't do that.

a couple of posts back, when you said "piece selection was great...i didn't really like your piece." i might be able to perhaps explain that. i don't know if this was the case, but it is possible to be able to identify a good piece, and yet still not really like it much. numerous times i've seen people perform who had a really good piece, but i personally didn't like it. if this was the case, however, the judge should have explained that.
i did have one judge, (i'm not sure if i've said this before, sorry if i have), who gave me a one, but on the ballot she said that she didn't really like my piece. however, she was judging on my talent and ability as a competitor, not the piece. i was so happy with that ballot, i think i might frame it someday. that woman, whoever she is, became my new best friend when i read that.

[sassafrassz]

This weekend, my partner and I had a judge give us the 3 (out of 4..) and said that we "shouldn't pantomime so much". Um.. what are we supposed to do? Just stand there? We can't use props.. so its either pantomime or nothing. Whatever. We won with straight 1's in finals, so the judge can just take that and shove it up his.. whatever.

[Coachly Jeanie]

oooohh...i see. yeah, we don't do debate, our coach refuses to do both. and i can hardly blame him. i don't see how some schools do it. of course, some schools have a separate coach for debate, but yeah, bethlehem doesn't do that.

I don't think our head coach could take on speech and debate alone.. okay, he could, but he'd go crazy.. that's why he hired our dream team of assistant coaches! :D Okay, so I'm a little biased.

Our setup: 2 speech coaches, 1 extemp coach, 1 LD coach, 1 CX (policy) coach.. but since most of us have dabbled in other areas of forensics, we occasionally get bounced around to actually judge other things other than our 'perscribed' events.. I can't tell you how much I love to judge LD.. :roll:

I think part of hiring more coaches also depends on a school's budget.. then again, Truman's forensics budget is crapola..[/i]

[Rams6]

I had a judge say that my open-toed shoes were "off-putting and distracting"... And to make it worse, it was in broadcasting where you sit down, and the judge isn't even supposed to look at you. I reflect back and I guess she might not have said my shoes were distracting had I not been turning the pages with my feet. :?

[ria]

...turning the pages with your feet? i would think that would be more distracting than the shoes themselves...

i actually didn't have a single stupid judge at lafayette yesterday. every single one was good. even the one who gave my partner and i the four. we went 1, 1, 1, 1, 4 for the tournament. all my solo and story judges were really good, too, although i don't know how my story finals scores added together to give me third place...but oh well. life is good!

[veronica]

Well this past weekend i was doing my DI piece and totally blanked out on it.... I just forgot everything together in the midst of preforming it. I stood there for what seemed like forever. So i gave up and told the judged i blanked and coudln't remember my piece. He told me "Quiters never get anywhere." and made me stand up there until i preformed... well i tried it again and again i blanked. We went through this about 3 times. By the third time i was in tears because i was so totally embarrassed and felt like i would be traped preforming FOREVER! He finally let me go after i convinced him that i was wasting his and everyone in there's time....

He did have a point but i did embarrass myself...

[ria]

wow, veronica, that's not cool. when i did d.i. my sophomore year, i blanked every round for the first couple of tournaments. but i new it was all up in my head and i stood there (embarrassed, yes, but i stood) until i remembered it. i'm just too stubborn not to do the whole piece.

[SniffyGuy]

my favorite ballot that i've gotten was in duo at harvard last year.
Anyone that saw the piece probably remembers that for one of the characters, my hand would act as the character's wig, and we'd do cute little bits with it - like combing it, etc...

Anyway, we got a judge that said "I like the organ on the head bit" and gave us the 1.

...'nuff said

[Nocturne]

oh i think i might have beaten all of you with stupid judges.


under the "negative/needs of improvement" part of the ballot

"Nocturne? Your title has nothing to do with your piece...perhaps the darkness of the series of events?"

[SniffyGuy]

wait i remembered another one a friend got. It was for an HI.

"You need more dark humor and Fonzie characters"

That's right, if you're peace needs some work, when in doubt, just add a character that acts like/possibly is named Fonzie. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

[SniffyGuy]

wow... i definitely meant "piece" not "peace"

:oops:

[iismepeter]

and your instead of you're :lol:

I still can't get over the "you rock! you're gonna win!" 6/6 you people get :lol:

[AfRiCaNHI]

Wow, Jeff, your eye is right there. I feel a little violated......

anyway, there's this judge who I have every right to belive doesn't actually give sane ranks. I think he just grabs ballots and picks numbers out of a hat. I mean, in a horrible round, he ranked kevin Bushek last. Bush ended up getting like 3rd in the tournament. He put on the HIer's ballots ".........you were good, but when you changed characters, you needed to have more eye contact with me." I almost died. And then, this year, he did the same thing to me. Oh, my, there should be a test to see if judges can actually judge.......there's nothing we can do as competetors but our best.

[Christamae]

I hate it when I walk in a room and the judge says:

"I don't really know what I am doing. Could you explain the rules?"
It's happened more then once. I usually try to give them the run down.

I've also had a blank ballot and best in round-6 (the worst part was I got a 3 and 2 from the other judges and would have medaled)

I use an electric wheelchair full-time and I hate it when I can't get into the room. It's really stressful. Like at State, they said it was accessible, but then I got there and the elevator didn't work so we had to trade rooms with someone else. I felt soooo bad-I was thinking 'great first impression'

I did all my forensics in Sapulpa, OK. I moved to CA my senior year with no forensics. I am really looking forward to starting UOP's forensics.

Christamae

[Rams6]

One of my friends was in prose. Of course you can't move from the waist down, and you have to hold a manuscript in one hand, the right hand for him. The judge commented that he had "predominant left side movement" WOW! Newsflash! *insert eye roll here*

[SniffyGuy]

Just got back from a tournament yesterday. In HI, the final round wasn't that amazing - a lot of the best HIs in the tournament got screwed out of breaking. Luckily I made it, but one judge gave me a five saying...

"You need to follow interp rules more, instead of just creating a comedy routine."

If anyone can interpret what the **** this means, please tell me. According to this judge I was breaking the rules of interp by DOING HI???

Then another judge somehow ended up with a time that was a minute more than everyone else's and gave me a 3.

This isn't to mention that scott samuels (who won yale) somehow got fourth.

[Aelfric5578]

Last year my poetry was very hard to understand. I even had to do a lot of research to understand it myself. You can read it here (http://www.northvegr.org/lore/poetic/001_01.php) if you don't believe me. So I was pretty forgiving with the judges. But one crtiique still bothers me.

My Intro: "Manifold are the Norse gods, Thorr the mighty god of thunder, Mimir the wisest god, Loki the trickster and Heimdall mighty ward of the gods. But of all the gods, Odin is the greatest. his thirst for knowledge is legendary. In his unending quest, he has summoned the Volva, an ancient prophetess. This is her prophecy. Heed well these answers Odin. Quench thy thirst."


Your Intro lacks certain key information. Who is the speaker? Who is he or she speaking to and why?
More recently, I went to CFLs with an oratory about the evolution of the English Language. A judge in either in semis or quarters told me that my topic was untimely. Apparently, we stopped speaking English years ago. I must have missed something.

Finally, one of my teammates was kept out of Semis in declamation because the judge decided, "You were clearly the best speaker in the round, but your speech is so cheesy. I don't see much potential in it...4(or 5, I don't remember)"[/i]

[KrispyKreme]

I have some good ones...

I'm from East Tennessee, so just about every here has an accent. It may not be a "hick" or "redneck" accent... but we do have an accent. So, every time we would go north for a tournament... whether it be Glenbrooks, Harvard, or wherever... my good friend Nick would ALWAYS get the comment:

"The southern accent doesn't really work in your oratory."

Also at Wake Forest, one of the competitors from my team had a performance time in one round of 16 minutes... her normal time is around 8 minutes. Anybody wanna do the math? I'm willing to bet everything I own that the stupid judge just forgot to reset the stopwatch.

By the way... my name is Drew Horner and if I EVER give you an absolutely stupid comment, I give you my permission to slap me. Make sure you let me know that I gave you a stupid comment though. Random comments don't count... I often get these random thoughts in my head and I'll just write them down on the ballot... even though they have absolutely nothing to do with the piece itself. Helps me pay attention and stay awake. 'Course it could just be the ADD kicking in.

-D

[GlobalLlama]

Extemp ballot.

He keep my attention good.

My lord.

[GlobalLlama]

Oh wait, I got to post this one for my girlfriend. At Emory in a prelim her junior year, her oratory ballot stated..."you have an annoying voice." I don't care if your Fran Drescher that's just not necessary.

[IrishEyes3505]

On the subject of accents and voices, in one of my storytelling rounds last year, a judge wrote, "Why does you narrator have a southern accent? Your piece is an African folk tale, why don't you talk African?" Yes, "TALK African." Geesh...The critique that irked me the most was one from a DI round, "Your hair is so lustrous and lovely, I had to dock some points because it's radiance was distracting." Am I supposed to forget personal hygiene on tournament days and just not wash my hair?
But to all the great judges out there-Thank you thank you thank you!

[Jose.Magana]

"The movement you do when starting each of your new points is distracting."

Happened to a fellow teammate in a persuasion round. I think I got the 1 from that judge... *whistles*

[jdcongresscapt]

Frank the Tank (Aelfric5578) got this one in a Storytelling round earlier:

"...the best I've seen today. 2"

[Aelfric5578]

...And I went last in the round.

We got some great comments from those judges...

"Running Metaphors make Jesus happy" in Congress
"Don't look at the binder so much" in OI
"Yay Thomas Friedman!" I quote him in my OO

[jdcongresscapt]

OI--"Don't use white pages. They're distracting."

[bigfish5]

This really isn't about a judge, but more about the people in charge of tabulating ranks.

So our school has two HDA teams, one of which I'm in. The finals postings go up and it has my partner and I's code number, but the other duo team's names. So our coach goes and asks which team made it to finals, and they tell her that they look at the names and not the code numbers. So my partner and I didn't go to final rounds while the other two did. They ended up getting 6 out of 7. After awards while we're walking out we get our critiques back to find out that in regular rounds the team that went to finals got ranked 5, 3, 6, while my partner and I were ranked 1, 2, 3. Needless to say, they screwed up and we were supposed to be in final rounds instead of the other two. We were pissed.

[Aelfric5578]

I was a bit disaoppointed with some of the judging in oratory prelims at CFLs. I know it's very rarely the judges fault when we don't do as well as we hope, but have a look a these choice comments:

(Background: My speech is on the importance of learning foreign languages)

Is it worth mentioning that multiple translators were fired for being gay? [What? According to whom, and why is that relevant? So to answer your question, NO!]
I don't agree with your point 100% but you make some good points (aren't classes in consumerism, parenting...also important?) [Yes, I suppose they are, but what does that have to do with language?]
What about the rise in Internet language, terms like, LOL, BRB, O RLY. These are expanding and should be looked at as well. [I didn't know that Acronym was officially considered a foreign language]
Your The World is Flat reference seemed to contradict what you were saying. [How is a book about globalization against learning foreign languages?]

[elkube]

I had the most disgusting judge EVER this past week.

Firstly, he did that really irritating thing where he looked behind me and above me, but not at me. I could totally tell he wasn't even trying to pay attention.

Secondly, he bit his fingernails so loudly I could hear the cracking over my speech. Nice.

And then he started icing the back of his neck and face with his Dr. Pepper. Yeah, it was Texas, but have some dignity, man.

Then he'd stretch and sigh and readjust his legs. He did this to EVERYONE. It made me so angry.

[nirorivers6]

once a judge gave me last because my arms went outside the hula-hoop. Thank you soccer mom, for preventing me from breaking into finals, and ultimatly destroying our teams chance to become a dynasty at the state's as a championship team.

[Dern]

I was a bit disaoppointed with some of the judging in oratory prelims at CFLs. I know it's very rarely the judges fault when we don't do as well as we hope, but have a look a these choice comments:

(Background: My speech is on the importance of learning foreign languages)

Is it worth mentioning that multiple translators were fired for being gay? [What? According to whom, and why is that relevant? So to answer your question, NO!]
I don't agree with your point 100% but you make some good points (aren't classes in consumerism, parenting...also important?) [Yes, I suppose they are, but what does that have to do with language?]
What about the rise in Internet language, terms like, LOL, BRB, O RLY. These are expanding and should be looked at as well. [I didn't know that Acronym was officially considered a foreign language]
Your The World is Flat reference seemed to contradict what you were saying. [How is a book about globalization against learning foreign languages?]

Hey I think I saw you in oratory at Harvard... do you actually speak different languages in your speech? Just checking.

[Aelfric5578]

Yes, most likely that was me. The version I delivered at Harvard had at least five phrases in foreign languages. Did you do Oratory? What was your speech?

[Morri]

I once got a score of 19 from a judge and was ranked number 8 in a room that only had 6 people in it

[Chewie]

Morri, you might want to just tell everyone what rank you received. Scores vary from tournament to tournament and are really just dependant on the ballot. A 25 at one tourney may be the same as 100 at another.

[Morri]

I dont quite remember it was either excellent or good...it's different from debate to speech but I think it was good

[tgjdlc]

Hmm, had a teammate once who was in her third prelim round at one of the locals... there were only 5 people in this particular IE room. It was DI. The judge wrote: you were so beautiful, this piece almost had me to tears, but I don't like your voice.

So when it asked him to circle a number (which went 1-5, if there were more people than that, you can give the 5's ties) he crossed out 5, and wrote a 7 and circled it. ...I laughed hard...it was funny to me.

My senior year, first tournament, 5 people from my school (we were the DI school of our area) made it to finals. I had straight ones going in, as did two of my teammates, and did the best I had done all tournament. We had three judges. I went 1-2-7 ...YEAH! I got the 3rd. I looked at the ballot right after the tournament, cause my coach was pissed and told me to read it, and it said, 'you should not be acting like a gay man, it's an abomination to what God stands for'...yeah! that is all.

[KrispyKreme]

I went 1-2-7 ...YEAH! I got the 3rd. I looked at the ballot right after the tournament, cause my coach was pissed and told me to read it, and it said, 'you should not be acting like a gay man, it's an abomination to what God stands for'...yeah! that is all.

ridiculous.

[Chewie]

I went 1-2-7 ...YEAH! I got the 3rd. I looked at the ballot right after the tournament, cause my coach was pissed and told me to read it, and it said, 'you should not be acting like a gay man, it's an abomination to what God stands for'...yeah! that is all.

ridiculous.

This is why I should judge every finals round of every tournament. Because I know exactly what God stands for.

...it's the appreciation of camel-humps actually. I thought it was odd, too, but hey, I'm not God.

[KrispyKreme]

I went 1-2-7 ...YEAH! I got the 3rd. I looked at the ballot right after the tournament, cause my coach was pissed and told me to read it, and it said, 'you should not be acting like a gay man, it's an abomination to what God stands for'...yeah! that is all.

ridiculous.

This is why I should judge every finals round of every tournament. Because I know exactly what God stands for.

...it's the appreciation of camel-humps actually. I thought it was odd, too, but hey, I'm not God.

sometimes I wonder...

[tgjdlc]

meh, it's going to be one of those ballots that I will never forget. haha. I mean, I knew I lived in uber conservative city (considered one of the most conservative in US) but ****! whateva, it was an 'interesting' memory

[CaptainBee]

Grrr. I nearly won TWO of three rounds of debate this last tournament. Let's examine why SJS is the reason I lost. First, to set up the situation:

"Resolved: A just government should provide healthcare to its citizens."

I was aff. The debate had moved to the point where I said that although the government should provide every citizen health care, this was not mutually exclusive with private healthcare, and that we could maintain both at once, to provide the best possible protection for all citizens.

The Judge's Comment (there was only one):
"Aff- in your last speech I thought you were going to say that because it is already implemented (the different) that our government is not just which follows the resolution which would have been awesome. But you did not make that connection."

Maybe the NEG could have done that, but I really don't see how that makes sense for me to have done. And even if she'd have tried it, wouldn't she have had to find a way to prove that the government as it is isn't just because of this application?

Please, if this judge did not suffer from a severe case of SJS, help me understand WTF she was saying?

[DomPody]

Ah, just found this thread. My worst noted case of SJS would have to be last year's PA states, when, in semis, my judge wrote:

"Excellent speech! You were by far the best speaker in the room."

And then she gave me a 6.

[baileyboo106]

Ah, just found this thread. My worst noted case of SJS would have to be last year's PA states, when, in semis, my judge wrote:

"Excellent speech! You were by far the best speaker in the room."

And then she gave me a 6.

that would for sure be a case of SJS. she probably thought the higher-the better. like points.

[CaptainBee]

Coached should be required to administer a standardized test to judges, to prove that they understand the system and the event.

[Chewie]

Coached should be required to administer a standardized test to judges, to prove that they understand the system and the event.

That'd be nice, but if they did that, we'd lose 80% of our judges.

I remember having a "best rank = highest number" judge, too. I went 1,7 in prelims. My coach protested to get me in (break was 8, and I had higher speaking points than other people ranked ahead of me in the "7" round) and I didn't make it out of sems anyway. At that same tourney, a duo that had gotten 1st at every tourney that year barely made finals and ended up fourth. That whole tourney was ridiculously messed up.

[DomPody]

Coached should be required to administer a standardized test to judges, to prove that they understand the system and the event.I'd agree, but, like Chewie said, then we'd be left with no judges.

I do, however, think the judges meeting should always include a mentioning of the points system, regardless of what level the tournament is on, and if you don't go to the judges meeting your school should be fined. It just seems to me that would prevent a lot of these errors.

[justine]

I have two SJS stories.

1) This didn't happen to me, but I thought it was absolutely hilarious. My coach works in the tab room at most major tournaments and all our league tournaments so she gets to see all the ballots that come in. One time a ballot came in from a round of 6 people, and here were the ranks:

7, 6.5, 6.5, 6, 5.5, 5 (she thought 7 was the best)

Apparently the judge thought that you were supposed to give a grade to the competitors out of 7, and that you could a) give half points and b) give two competitors the same ranks. This was the judges first tournament.

2) This story personally pains me. It happened to me last weekend at Villiger and every time I think about it I get really frustrated. My poetry for my OI is a free-verse poem, and while the language is too flowery and metaphorical to be prose, there is only one couplet in the whole piece. In both my prose rounds that day I had college judges, but in that one poetry round I had a mom judge. Here were my comments:

I don't hear any rhyme or meter in you piece, did you read your prose instead of your poetry?

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!! Now, if you thought a competitor had screwed up like that, what would you do? Ask the competitor personally? (I had the actual book my poetry comes from in my bag with me in the room) Go to the tabroom and try to figure it out there? Well, my judge did neither. She gave me the 6. Just like that. Oh, but it gets better, because at the bottom of the ballot she wrote that besides that I was the best one in the round. Gee thanks, I appreciate that.

Oh, and so my total ranks for prelims were : 1, 1, 6
Breaks were 6 so I didn't break.

[devileyes]

My judge story ends in finals at a local tournament. I gave my extemp speech, used I think 7 pieces of evidence, stumbled VERY little, and answered my question to the best of my ability. My final ranks in the round ended up being: 1/50 1/50 6/34. Ok... ... ...I have had judges who didn't llike the way I talked before, but that's crazy. The ballots I recieved at the end of the tournament ended up confirming a large case of SJS. Sadly the ballot reported that I had used "too much evidence," the time of my speech written on his ballot was different than both of the other judges, and finally that I should win the round...

Needless to say I was dumbstruck. And it was not as if he got confused either, it clearly explained the fact that he should give a 1 for best and 6 for worst, I heard another judge in the round explain it to him before the round. I still don't quite know what to make of it.

[Cinderella]

Justine- I'm so sorry to hear about that. Are you still doing Girl? If so, (and even if not so,lol) I got that comment all the time as well. Sometimes you have to DRAAAAG out the poetic elements - trust me, I wanna punch judges in the head for not getting it ALL THE TIME, I still do all my poetry as prosetry, I still have a lot to work on myself, but sometimes you just have to dumb yourself down in a couple of places to bang thing into judges' heads. PM me if you wanna talk about it

[Aelfric5578]

1)In both my prose rounds that day I had college judges, but in that one poetry round I had a mom judge. Here were my comments:

I don't hear any rhyme or meter in you piece, did you read your prose instead of your poetry?
...
She gave me the 6. Just like that. Oh, but it gets better, because at the bottom of the ballot she wrote that besides that I was the best one in the round. Gee thanks, I appreciate that.

Oh, and so my total ranks for prelims were : 1, 1, 6
Breaks were 6 so I didn't break.

I know how you feel. The same thing happened to me at Harvard. Actually I think I complained about it a few posts earlier in this thread. Now that I'm a judge, I try to be so careful. I never want to be a vigilante judge.

[lriecke]

I'm a judge in Nebraska, and the state high school activities association actually has an online test that you must pass to be listed at a "certified" judge. You have to attend one of several training sessions where they go over the rules and then take an online test.You don't HAVE to be certified to judge local tourney's, but you do for districts and state. If schools are looking for judges they just go to the list.

It's great because if as a coach you only use judges that are certified, then you know that they have the basics of the rules down, and have the rule book. Does that guarantee that they are not stupid? Well, no, but it is at least a move in the right direction.

I also just got emailed from the state that we can "shadow" judges at a couple of the one-act plays (if we want to judge those) so we can see how they do it. Our state has the one-act judges give face to face critiques after each performance to cast/crew/director. I was more nervous giving those at a one-act tourney I recently judged than the actors probably were when they performed. It's one thing to write comments, but to have to face the performers, (especially when they really didn't do too well), well, that sucks!

How would you all like that for speech tournies?

[Chewie]

That'd be wonderful, but I don't see how that could be practical for local tournies with over 100 rooms per round.

[nirorivers6]

thad'd be so cool if we could get oral critiques... or maybe if you just broke finals you could have oral critiques...i would love that.

[Aelfric5578]

thad'd be so cool if we could get oral critiques... or maybe if you just broke finals you could have oral critiques...i would love that.

You don't think that would be kind of awkward though? For both the competitors and the judges. On the one hand, I'm sure your coaches probably coach you with oral critiques, but you've also probably built up some kind of a relationship with them. I've occasionally seen some very negative comments from judges, and I think that having the judge say those comments to my face would make me feel very awkward. (Definitely if this wasn't only in finals, getting a single bad comment in your first round could shatter your confidence and throw you off for the rest of the tournament.)

Also, I know when I judge, writing ballots and justifying my decision are the hardest parts of judging. Since I only graduated last year, I find myself judging people I used to compete against, and that is incredibly awkward. When I write something on their ballot, I feel as though I'm saying it to their face because we've spoken before, and they know me.

[Meho]

i agree, i'm very against oral critiques.

It's really hard to give negative criticism in front of people you don't know. Especially if you competed the year before and they did better than you.

That'd be awkward just a little bit.


...a lot of people also take a long time to come up with a decision, so an "on-the-spot" oral critique might not allow them to come up with an adequate decision.

[Steve Perry]

I do an oratory that attacks smoking laws, and there have been a few judges that you can tell were avid nonsmokers. Luckily it's written in a way that agrees smoking is unhealthy.

I was in the final round of OO at a tournament a few weeks ago, and it had an unusually large crowd. She told a crowd of about 40 that it was a rule that everyone needed to have a seat, so only 8 could come in. She turned away all the kids from my school (keep in mind that 3 of the 6 were from my school), but let on extra girl that was on her team into the room. After the round was over, I saw the last few seconds of the HI final through a window, and there were about 50 people sitting on the floor. Same thing in all the other rounds. Luckily I still took 1st, regardless of the 3 she gave me.

My friend Matt had an Extemp judge that told him after he was done that he didn't get the 1. This judge is widely unpopular.

UPDATE:

This weekend during awards, the person reading them read the final results wrong, and based them off of only one of the 5 judges results (I went 3-1-2-1-1 in finals, guess which judge she read off from). So I really took a decisive first place, second place cumulative score was 16, mine was 8. Now my coach has to call the other coaches so we can fix things, three other people were placed wrong as well.

[kalsjockgal]

I had a judge once who flipped a coin to determine whether I got 2nd or 3rd place in ODec. I lost the coin toss...

[Humor's Hand]

The worst girl at the entire qualifier for Nats made it yesterday. I went 1-2-2 in prelims. She was 2-1-3. I got 2-4-7 in finals. The guy who gave me the seven? Gave her first. They were sitting together at the awards banquet and I'm fairly sure they're acquainted.

So yes, we tied for 4th if you looked over the numbers. But because of the way they broke the tie, it was the only mode in which she could've won. I had her in my first round as well. In my first round I got the 1 and beat her. In finals, two of the judges placed me above her.

One ***** just decided, and this is all it said negative on the ballot "you worked very hard on this piece and it had very distinct characters and lots of technicals flourishes that showed it was well polished but it did not transform the audience". Apparently that was enough t give me a seven and restrain me from nationals.

She was 5-1-6 in finals. That means 2 judges thought she didn't deserve to go.

So yes, one man CAN kill the dream.

[Topo]

The worst girl at the entire qualifier for Nats made it yesterday. I went 1-2-2 in prelims. She was 2-1-3. I got 2-4-7 in finals. The guy who gave me the seven? Gave her first. They were sitting together at the awards banquet and I'm fairly sure they're acquainted.

So yes, we tied for 4th if you looked over the numbers. But because of the way they broke the tie, it was the only mode in which she could've won. I had her in my first round as well. In my first round I got the 1 and beat her. In finals, two of the judges placed me above her.

One ***** just decided, and this is all it said negative on the ballot "you worked very hard on this piece and it had very distinct characters and lots of technicals flourishes that showed it was well polished but it did not transform the audience". Apparently that was enough t give me a seven and restrain me from nationals.

She was 5-1-6 in finals. That means 2 judges thought she didn't deserve to go.

So yes, one man CAN kill the dream.
Very similar thing happened to me at nat quals last year in duo....things were going very well and our coach told us before finals that if we just keep doing how are were doing we would be going to nats. Our finals round performance was amazing, we had a good portion of the audience in tears for laughing so hard....we ended up going 1,2,7 in the final round. Took 3rd place and the alternate spot....and the WORST thing is that the judge that gave us a 7 originally gave us a 6 on her ballot, which would've sent us to nats, but they crossed it out and wrote a 7.....it's just more of a reason for us to bring the house down this year

[Humor's Hand]

I, due to my own school's extreme cheapness, do not have so much as the opportunity to attend NFL nationals. Our school is deathly afraid of covering major expenses to send outstanding speakers to two finals. And yet wrestling always gets a free ride...

Anyways, is there anyone who has a direct link to CFL rules? I was never clear on tie-breaking as I've never needed to be but I want to see in writing that they went by the book. Because in debate, if two teams tie, they either run-off or if they have previously beaten each other that decides it. I beat this girl against 3 out of 4 judges. She really shouldn't get the slot and I want to see if I have a leg to stand on in protest.

[justine]

Anyways, is there anyone who has a direct link to CFL rules? I was never clear on tie-breaking as I've never needed to be but I want to see in writing that they went by the book. Because in debate, if two teams tie, they either run-off or if they have previously beaten each other that decides it. I beat this girl against 3 out of 4 judges. She really shouldn't get the slot and I want to see if I have a leg to stand on in protest.

CFLs doesn't have a qualifying rules, they leave that up to the league you're in. They only have rules for the actual national tournament. This is why there are so many different types of CFL qualifying tournaments. You'll have to ask your league for their rules, but chances are, since they wrote them, they were following them.

[macaholic17]

At my NFL Districts, ranks were very much all over the place. But OO Ranks have to take the cake.

I went 3 1 1 1 1 in all of my prelims rounds, becoming the top seed going into finals. In finals, i went 4 5 6 and wound up with the 5. Same sort of thing happened to another guy: he was 2nd going into finals and came out 6th.

apparently the top 3 people going into finals wound up with the bottom 3 ranks and vice-versa. ¿que? :|

So i missed out my last shot at nats thanks to an awesome wacky panel. Thanks judges!

[nirorivers6]

i'll throw in a story too i guess.

In a semis round I went 3,3,3,3,5. I found it interesting that although 4 out of 5 judges thought I should go onto finals, and they couldn't agree on who the top two were, I didn't make it. Not really bitter at all, just found it curious.

[rkrboi]

Here's my rant!
In the quarters in LD debate, I felt pretty confident that I had one the round.
BUT...
One judge votes me down, pretty sure because he didn't like the neg side of the resolution, the other votes me up, because she felt that I was the better speaker, and finally...

The third judge turns in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ballot from a round that he judged that occurred yesterday, which the neg (me) loses.

So for some reason, my opponent got advanced, and got to go to regionals. Since that was the last tournament, I didn't get to go.

However, I did get credit for both a win and a loss that round, and I qualified two other events to regionals that tournament, so I guess I'm gana let it slide.

[Schadillac]

- In Finals at one of the largest regional meets that my school attends, my duo partner and I went 3, 4, 5. We took 5th. Talk about trippy.

- At the Nat Quals tournament, we made it to about quarters when we got a 3, 3, 6. That one six prevented us from making the next round. Just to give you an idea, in the previous round, where we had 4 of the 6 teams that were in quarters, we went 1, 1, 4. How do you go from two 1s to two 3s when 2/3 of the teams are the same? Gay - especially cuz that tournament meant something.

- The infamous ballot that everyone seems to get. Good - great - well done - yes - great - tough round - 4! Ugh. Gotta hate those - if you're gonna give me a 4, at least tell me why!!!

[Solid Bob]

at my district nat qual meet we did up downs like everyone else i think and cum score thing to see who wins overall. well in all the rounds before finals i went 1-1-1-2-1. I had no downs and lowest cum going into finals, I was set right?
WRONG!
i got straight 6's in finals from all 3 judges. i took 6th.

[Interpret]

This is from earlier in the year- understand I did HI my whole career, and this season other than Wake and Nationals, where I'll be in Duo.
ANYWAY- last year I was very successful, winning our Nat District and finalling at State- and this year I had been doing just fine.
SO- we had a tournament at Sylvania, which is a very large one, about 80 competitors in each category. In prelims I went 1,2,1,1,1, the 2 coming from a bad performance, so I was doing well.
In semis I hit Steve Grisez, a very good performer, so I figured if I didn't get 1st, I'd get 2nd and be ok with it.
I ended up going 2,2,6. A judge from a school that I apparently made angry by knocking out one of their competitors at State the year before. Their comments?
"Very good, but hey, not every year is your year"
What. The. Crap?
Ended up 7th, and top 6 made finals.
Similar thing at State. My soph year I was 7th, last year I got 4th- and 2 through 4 was a 2 rank difference. So this year I stumbled through prelims and made quarters. I hadn't performed my best because I had pracitced Duo for our Nat Qual the previous 3 weeks. ANYWAY- I finally get more into the groove of things and I hit Rachel Von Ahn, Nat finalist and 2x State Champ (now), and another competitor who finaled at CFLs, Ron Aulet. I'd beaten both through the year, so I felt ok.
2,3,6. First time I didn't break out of a quarter round ever.
Reason? They "didn't like the pacing"
...Sean... I hate your judges...

[toolenduso]

One of my team mates had a judge who scored her low because of the way she was dressed...that was basically all the ballot was, talking about how she didn't like what she was wearing. Our team's kind of turned it into an ongoing grudge because she never likes our team's performances...

And I'm sure this one's happened to a lot of kids, but my freshmen year I was in PFD and the round we did the best in we lost because the judge didn't agree with our side of the argument. We would have broken had it not been for that.

[OO Storyteller]

Now this is my kind o' topic. Alright, at this CA state qualifying tourn, a prelim judge wrote on the OO ballot that I clearly was the best speaker in the round, and stood out the most. She gave me a 5. No negative comments, all positive. How do you explain that??! How??!!!

[Aelfric5578]

Now this is my kind o' topic. Alright, at this CA state qualifying tourn, a prelim judge wrote on the OO ballot that I clearly was the best speaker in the round, and stood out the most. She gave me a 5. No negative comments, all positive. How do you explain that??! How??!!!

Judge who didn't have the rules explained to her? Yours is much more upsetting and frustrating, but I still think it hilarious when I got that best-I've-seen-all-day comment and then got the two (the guy who got the 1 went before me).

[Solid Bob]

my last normal tourney of the year my duo partner and i were waiting for our judge near our room. So this older man shows up and everyone walks inside and sets up, well he chooses the teachers desk instead of the desks that would be in front of us.
Looks like this (Top View) :

------------
TEACHER l Us performing (facing forward)
DESK - l l l l l l l
JUDGE l V V V V V V
------------

DESK DEsk Desk Desk Desk


(hope that was a good visual.)
Well later that round a XE team walks in and asks if he wants them to perform facing him. And got really confused. He though someone told him that when u judge duo u cant make eye contact with the performers. it was really funny. He was just a parent so i felt kinda bad for him.

[rkrboi]

Nice, lol.

[hookem168]

hahahaha that's one of the best I've ever heard. wow.

My story's not nearly as cool, but I took two consecutive (1,2,5s) in quarters at nats. Coincidentally, there was exactly one mommy judge in each room......hmmmm

[oHIo]

hahahaha that's one of the best I've ever heard. wow.

My story's not nearly as cool, but I took two consecutive (1,2,5s) in quarters at nats. Coincidentally, there was exactly one mommy judge in each room......hmmmm

I know the feeling. 6,1 in my first prelim at nats.

[Relavance]

One Of my critiques ended with:


"Im Going to KIlLL you because you almost made me cry"

....yea
:eek:
i didnt know what to say when I saw that.

[thebellmuffin]

About...I think a month ago? at the Cy-Ridge tournament, I was in DI semi's, and I needed one point to qualify for state. My judges seemed very friendly, but a little loud and intimidating. (One judge kept saying how he'd seen the pieces in the round done before). So, I performed, and after watching the round, felt as if I had gotten the one or the two. Come to find out, I didn't advance because I received a three because my judge hated my intro. He said my intro had to have a quote or reference, then a summary of the piece, and then state the problem. Otherwise, everything else was amazing. Just "Work on that intro!"

So, I missed out on my last state point, and participating in one of the hardest/most amazing DI rounds ever. I'm still bitter.

[Superextempman]

During one of my teamates oratorys
Lose the britsh accent (it's actually australian) because it cut's in and out. it's annoying. after she told the judges four times she was from australia.
But the judge still gave her a first.
dumb!
One judge wrote on my ballot for an FX round.
You quoted to much evidence.
Like I was supposed to have less?
and the all -time best was on a ballot for a DI round
Excellent interpertation I was close to crying
you did the charcter well, I loved the piece
Excellent Job
One of the best Drama's I have seen in a long time
4/4
What the F***!:afraid:

[RachelJayx3]

I once had a Judge, write my notes for my piece on the WRONG ballet! When that person came up, he was uterly confused. He also wrote "Drama is not about emotion it is about Reality". I think he was stoned or something. Lol :argh:

[psettles24]

ouch. too bad I've never had any outrageously bad judges..

It's a bad thing that you've never had any bad judges? Thank goodness that hasn't happened to me. I seriously think I would cry if it did.

[Superextempman]

It's a bad thing that you've never had any bad judges? Thank goodness that hasn't happened to me. I seriously think I would cry if it did.

I don' think youv'e been competing very long or you have some heavy duty luck. There are some that lurk in the judges lounges of every tournament

[knuckley]

So, this didn't happen to me, but my friend Ian got this critique back from a drama round, and all it said was:

"Very creepy Ian."

That was all that it said. Not sure of the rank, though.

[Interp<3]

So this didn't actually happen to me, but I saw it happening while I was waiting for my room (which happened to be the room this was occuring in) at a local my freshman year.

All the performers went, and at the end of it all, the judge got up, and proceeded to give the room of performers a lesson in popping and forensics. Mind you, the tournament was already running way late. I had to sit back and watch while this woman gave about a 10-15 minute lecture on popping and the art of OI.

[MFL speech]

This year in play reading finals I had a fairly easy final round. I didn't have my best performance but I still thought I had a chance at first. At awards I got 3rd and I'm not going to lie, I was a little surprised. When I got my ballots one judge gave me a 6/7 and said "There was something about this peice I just didn't like, but I can't quite put my finger on it." and THAT'S ALL. I wasn't too bummed though, 3rd is still good.

BUT, I broke into finals at states and I walk into my final round and that stupid judge is sitting in the back! I went 3,3,6 in that final. Guess who gave me the 6? >.< ughh :argh:

[margolicious]

this didn't happen to me, but to a friend.

she got all positive comments on the piece, but the judge gave her a 4. at the bottom of the ballot, the judge says, "your belt was too distracting."

[lottie.rae]

okay. how about this.

there is this girl on another team who can't stand me,
yet i have no clue why. she won't even refer to me by my name.
so, i had her mom one di round, and on my ballot all it had was,
"i have heard of you. 6/6"
mind you, i got 1's in all my other rounds.
then, luckily for me, i had her AGAIN in duet for DISTRICTS.
she ended up dropping me and my partner "politically"
just because "her daughter doesn't like me"
(or atleast that is what she told her daughters team, and they told me)
in the end, we ended up getting 2nd in districts, thanks to her.
ugh, judges with grudges kill me. get a life.

[cameronman]

once in a DI round i got the critique "NICE TIE!"
Hahaha. i got the 1.
i happened to be sporting a flourescent pink tie.

[MFL speech]

Okay so this happend to a duo from my school. In their prelims they got two HORRIBLE judges. The first commenting on how they should try to match better giving them 4th. And the second one asking why they didn't look at eachother. Judges are stupiddd.

In the last tournament before states my partner and I had our last chance to qualify. We had good 1st and 2nd rounds, but our 3rd judge was in another world. He didnt even watch our peice and he commented on things that didnt even happen in the peice. It was purely humorous and he commented on our dramatic acting abilities and prevented us from breaking. DUMB Judge. But my partner double qualified in other events and I triple qualified so we werent dissapointed.

[Superextempman]

this didn't happen to me, but to a friend.

she got all positive comments on the piece, but the judge gave her a 4. at the bottom of the ballot, the judge says, "your belt was too distracting."

that s*** happens all the time. One of my old teamates got marked down in a HI round for having too shiny of nail polish
WTF!

[psettles24]

I don' think youv'e been competing very long or you have some heavy duty luck. There are some that lurk in the judges lounges of every tournament

Well this is only going to be my second year, and I have had some not-amazingly great judges. But I haven't really had any that ruined my day yet. But I agree they lurk at every tournament!

[kaylisig]

Two years ago, I was in DI finals at sectionals and as this girl was performing her piece, I noticed one of the judges closing her eyes and making faces. So in the middle of the girl's piece, the judge quickly opens her purse and throws up!!! I was two seats behind the judge too! Then the judge stopped the girl who was performing and ran out of the room. Needless to say, we had to restart the round.

[MFL speech]

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww wwwwwwwwwwwww w!

[Ruby]

In my first year competing, my prose judge was eating enchiladas and reading a magazine during my piece. She then gave me 7th out of a 6 person room because she "didn't like my piece."

This year, my poetry judge fell asleep during each performance, and gave me 4th. Her only comment was "Good hand gestures!"

Again this year, my HI judge gave me sixth and wrote on my ballot "Your piece is stupid."

[CManning]

This year, at Wake OO semis, I was 1 rank from finals. That ballot that kept me from there was a 5 that said "Great".................................................. .thats it.

Last year, at Harvard, in prelims, this almost kept me from breaking. In my AGD last year i said boobies and the ballot said quote, "I would prefer breasts to boobies, especially in an oratory." Yeah.

Also, at a local tournament last year, I had a round in which I was speaking and someone walked in. Not only that, when they walked in their phone rang. After that, they ANSWERED it. The juge than proceeded to get up, during my speech, and talk to the man at full volume, to tell him to leave. Yeah...................that sucked..................I did get the 1 that round so that was good. I guess it was cuz I kept going amidst the chaos of that round.

[remiss]

I think it's stupid when they say nothing but "Great" and then leave it as is. And then you end up getting like a 5. That's sooooo helpful.

[allgiants20]

Piece goes about 9:05 and the most prominent judge comment is "You still have a minute and a half left with the grace period. YOU NEED TO USE IT." That wasn't capitalized by me for affect, that's actually how it was written.

[Hero1King]

One judge of mine, named Sunflower, told me I should move around a bit in my Verse round. Last time I checked, Verse is a pretty stationary event lol

[jayman]

Piece goes about 9:05 and the most prominent judge comment is "You still have a minute and a half left with the grace period. YOU NEED TO USE IT." That wasn't capitalized by me for affect, that's actually how it was written.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to agree with that. A lot can happen in a minute and a half. If I'm judging that, I feel almost cheated that more of the story was not made available to me. Establishing a relationship with the audience is so crucial-therefore every second really does count (In my opinion)

[CManning]

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to agree with that. A lot can happen in a minute and a half. If I'm judging that, I feel almost cheated that more of the story was not made available to me. Establishing a relationship with the audience is so crucial-therefore every second really does count (In my opinion)

I disagree with that. You can do plenty in 9:05. In my experience, the ideal time is around 9:30. This gives you plenty of time to get your point across as well as leave room for laughter. Which, in final rounds, can be the difference between the one and two. And also, if you go into the grace period, there are uber conservative judges who won't give it to you and rank you down. Both of my Oratories so far have been around 9:30 and I have not gotten one comment saying that it needs to be longer. I don't like having to rush myself to stay in time near the end of my speeches. The end is usually the most important part, and you don't want to have to blow over it like it's nothing. It completely diminishes the previous nine minutes you've been speaking for.

[DavidSSabb94]

'taking too liberalistic a view' That was actually how it was phrased when I made a speach on a bill removing barriers that exist to homosexuals in the military. I realize I live in North Carolina now and my 'pinko' views on issues may not be appreciated by all, but seriously, you're supposed to be judging the quality of my speech, not weather or not it would make Rush Limbaugh happy.

One problem I have is totally conflicting ballots, I seriously had a 3 and 6 on the same speech, how does that even happen?

[MCH]

One problem I have is totally conflicting ballots, I seriously had a 3 and 6 on the same speech, how does that even happen?

Yeah. For my prose, I've gotten straight 1's and 2's, and an occasional 3, and at the last tournament I was given a 5 by a judge who didn't give me ANY constructive criticism. Guess who didn't break? Yeah. 1 1 5. Cool beans.

[psettles24]

I haven't had many cases of stupid judge syndrome in the past, but I saw 2 of them within the past 3 weeks. First, at sectionals (I'm an extemper) and I asked how time signals would be given and one of my judges said "Time signals aren't allowed." My thought is "Funny, because I've gotten them every other round and we get them at state, district, nationals...." but I didn't say anything and my speech was within time. Second, at state, I was given a 1,2,6 in semifinals.

[JjulianSr]

I hope all those who post on here show their comments to their coaches. And I pray that those coaches know what to do to correct your personal issues. As a coach I'm constantly dealing with students who think as you all do. For 20 years I've dealt with this. Here's my top ten pieces of advice for those struggling with judges. This will be tough for some of you to hear, but take it for what it is worth:

10) Judges make mistakes. Get over it. Not all judges make mistakes every time. If you think so, then consider that this is a true logical fallacy.
9) You make mistakes. Probably more often than your judge does, but certainly at least as often. So stop assuming every performance you give is exceptional and worthy of a National Championship. Get over yourself.
8) Judges are (usually) volunteers. They're not getting paid. They've sacrificed large portions of their lives to ensure you have an activity to do. Respect that. Start by stopping calling judges "stupid". Especially when we're standing nearby.
7) Many judges are under time pressure to finish the ballots to keep the tournament on time. I suppose you would also complain if things ran late because your judge was writing a thesis paper on your 7 minute extemp speech.
6) Different judges don't always see your speech the same as another judge. That's why we have multiple judges per prelim session (3 rounds, 3 judges).
5) You don't always perform your speech the same. That's why we have multiple rounds.
4) You won't win every round, but if you win enough of them, you should advance more often than not. If you're not advancing every tournament because of 1-1-5's, then maybe your issue is with consistency... not with your judges. If it only happens once, count your blessings.
3) For every 5 a judge gives you that you didn't deserve, you've probably also gotten a 1 you didn't deserve. Ponder that nugget for a while.
2) Some judges may have seen your speech multiple times in a year - and as such they don't want to re-write all the same comments... especially when you haven't improved anything... and thus maybe the "Good.... 5" pairings on a ballot.

and my #1 piece of advice for those angry with their judging quality:

1) Forensics trains you for life. In life, there will be people who disagree with you. In life, you will not agree with their decisions... to fire you... to lay you off... to pass you over for promotion... to not elect you... if you think getting a 5 in a round is a tragedy, then pull you head out of the clouds and push the reset button on your attitude. Cause you have a long way to go in life. You may hate your boss, but your would never call him/her stupid to his/her face. Stop making that mistake now when it doesn't matter and you won't carry that harmful, destructive attitude into life where it will matter.

And one final thought: There are 5-7 of you in the round. Do you think the judge can give everyone a 1? Maybe, just maybe, there are people better than you are... even a good performance may finish last, if all the comparatives are equally good.

Respectfully,

Mr J.
20 years veteran coach,
State Champion in his own right
and, according to some,
a true decorum Nazi.

[remiss]

I hope all those who post on here show their comments to their coaches. And I pray that those coaches know what to do to correct your personal issues. As a coach I'm constantly dealing with students who think as you all do. For 20 years I've dealt with this. Here's my top ten pieces of advice for those struggling with judges. This will be tough for some of you to hear, but take it for what it is worth:



You definitely have some validity in your claim - it can be immature for us to lash out at judges who may not have thought highly of us. But where I believe your faults lie are in your argument that judges are more innocent than they seem and have their hearts set on what they do. FALSE. I don't think you've read all of these posts, unless I'm mistaken, and you probably only caught onto words such as "stupid," "retard," or other degrading terms that I, too, find insulting and immature. And you CANNOT say that just because they're volunteering means they should be pardoned for mistakes. Schools should prepare their judges so they don't make mistakes in judging. At a local tournament, I was given a 1 5 1 and couldn't break to finals. You know why I got a 5? I don't know either and I probably never will. You think the rest of the kids in my round were "fierce competitors"? None of them had ever beaten me in a round before and guess who broke to States and not them? Me. You say they're writing a thesis on our ballots... most of us are upset about this "stupid judge syndrome" BECAUSE WE GET NO CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. We're not just upset for getting a low rank; we all get bad ranks and as long as the judge clearly expresses WHY we got the rank we earned and HOW we could possibily fix it, I have no problem! In fact, I'll take that low rank proudly and use it to improve myself, because like you said, I'm not a national champion. So yes. It is immature and wrong to attack judges who give us a bad grade with reason. But it is absolutely intolerable to accept judges who are carelessly trained, FALL ASLEEP DURING YOUR ROUND, show up over thirty minutes late to your round, make sexual advances and inappropriate remarks through ballot comments, etc. I could go on forever, honestly. You say forensics is supposed to build us? Yes. It is. Forensics is mind-blowingly awesome and a wonderful experience for all of us. These kinds of judges ruin it. BUT. Their incapability to put passion into what they do and exercise proper judgment will be better for us in the long run. We learn not to be as stupid as them. Case in point.

[DavidSSabb94]

To give my response, I've never argued against a score, normally they are right, but if there's a huge descrepency with no comments to explain it something is probably wrong. Something is wrong with a judge who thinks someone with a broken ankle should have more motion. And since I'm in Congress, they haven't heard my speech before, so if they're going to leave a comment, they could at least make it somewhat constructive. I understand people will disagree with me in life, I don't debate that point. But I would perfer the people in my adult life as well as the judges who I speak in front of now tell me WHY they disagree with me, and in the case of a Speech event, keep political bias out of it as well.

The above posters comment about judges who arrive 30 minutes late and sleep reminds me of a related disorder unique to Congress, Dumb Parli Disease (DPD).

[allgiants20]

Well this seems like a strange tangent for what's supposed to be a lighthearted outlet for kids to talk about misadventures in judging. I've lost track already in not to many points, but a very sarcastic thank you to whoever derailed this. Let's someone say something stupid funny to get us back on track.

[DavidSSabb94]

Well this seems like a strange tangent for what's supposed to be a lighthearted outlet for kids to talk about misadventures in judging. I've lost track already in not to many points, but a very sarcastic thank you to whoever derailed this. Let's someone say something stupid funny to get us back on track.

I'll ablige.

"youd look better up their with your blazer button"

This was from a district level judge. A 4 on that speech with no other criticisms. The odd part was earlier in that session the ballot I got gave a bulleted list of what I did right and what I could've done better from that same judge. I think she was getting tired.

[JjulianSr]

Well this seems like a strange tangent for what's supposed to be a lighthearted outlet for kids to talk about misadventures in judging. I've lost track already in not to many points, but a very sarcastic thank you to whoever derailed this. Let's someone say something stupid funny to get us back on track.

Yeah, heaven forbid an adult might try to answer for the judges in a judge-bashing thread. Or that a coach might try to do a bit of... I dunno... coaching? My bad.

Back to your silliness people.

[remiss]

Hey. How about you try and address my argument instead of picking up something else?

[allgiants20]

This thread isn't for bashing. There are some odd things that we as a community like to laugh together about. And this thread also isn't for arguing, so let's not anyone address anything. Let's be civil about all of this, there shouldn't be any malicious intentions on either side. In fact, there shouldn't even be sides to begin with. Let's just get back to the matter at hand.

[cameronman]

I hope all those who post on here show their comments to their coaches. And I pray that those coaches know what to do to correct your personal issues. As a coach I'm constantly dealing with students who think as you all do. For 20 years I've dealt with this. Here's my top ten pieces of advice for those struggling with judges. This will be tough for some of you to hear, but take it for what it is worth:

10) Judges make mistakes. Get over it. Not all judges make mistakes every time. If you think so, then consider that this is a true logical fallacy.
9) You make mistakes. Probably more often than your judge does, but certainly at least as often. So stop assuming every performance you give is exceptional and worthy of a National Championship. Get over yourself.
8) Judges are (usually) volunteers. They're not getting paid. They've sacrificed large portions of their lives to ensure you have an activity to do. Respect that. Start by stopping calling judges "stupid". Especially when we're standing nearby.
7) Many judges are under time pressure to finish the ballots to keep the tournament on time. I suppose you would also complain if things ran late because your judge was writing a thesis paper on your 7 minute extemp speech.
6) Different judges don't always see your speech the same as another judge. That's why we have multiple judges per prelim session (3 rounds, 3 judges).
5) You don't always perform your speech the same. That's why we have multiple rounds.
4) You won't win every round, but if you win enough of them, you should advance more often than not. If you're not advancing every tournament because of 1-1-5's, then maybe your issue is with consistency... not with your judges. If it only happens once, count your blessings.
3) For every 5 a judge gives you that you didn't deserve, you've probably also gotten a 1 you didn't deserve. Ponder that nugget for a while.
2) Some judges may have seen your speech multiple times in a year - and as such they don't want to re-write all the same comments... especially when you haven't improved anything... and thus maybe the "Good.... 5" pairings on a ballot.

and my #1 piece of advice for those angry with their judging quality:

1) Forensics trains you for life. In life, there will be people who disagree with you. In life, you will not agree with their decisions... to fire you... to lay you off... to pass you over for promotion... to not elect you... if you think getting a 5 in a round is a tragedy, then pull you head out of the clouds and push the reset button on your attitude. Cause you have a long way to go in life. You may hate your boss, but your would never call him/her stupid to his/her face. Stop making that mistake now when it doesn't matter and you won't carry that harmful, destructive attitude into life where it will matter.

And one final thought: There are 5-7 of you in the round. Do you think the judge can give everyone a 1? Maybe, just maybe, there are people better than you are... even a good performance may finish last, if all the comparatives are equally good.

Respectfully,

Mr J.
20 years veteran coach,
State Champion in his own right
and, according to some,
a true decorum Nazi.

i reserve the right to call any judge who is blatantly stupid// i.e. they text. that is a stupid judge.

[JjulianSr]

i reserve the right to call any judge who is blatantly stupid// i.e. they text. that is a stupid judge.

How is texting during your speech making that person "blatantly stupid"? It makes them disrespectful. But not stupid. By your definition, over half the students I see in rounds are "stupid" because they act disrespectfully. I prefer to call them, immature.

[allgiants20]

Please take this to private messages or something if you want to keep this going. Maybe I'm just being excessively gullible (and in fact I know I am), but I keep hoping for a quote about funny judging mishaps every time I click on this thread. It's really just annoying.

[JjulianSr]

I'll ablige.

"youd look better up their with your blazer button"

This was from a district level judge. A 4 on that speech with no other criticisms. The odd part was earlier in that session the ballot I got gave a bulleted list of what I did right and what I could've done better from that same judge. I think she was getting tired.

Indeed. Likely very tired. Or already heard you before and didn't want to write all of it again in the same tournament.

[cameronman]

Please take this to private messages or something if you want to keep this going. Maybe I'm just being excessively gullible (and in fact I know I am), but I keep hoping for a quote about funny judging mishaps every time I click on this thread. It's really just annoying.

ok good. i got this from a judge at sectionals. he came up to me during lunch break and said "I hate you."
i got the 1 tho :)

[allgiants20]

I gotta say that did make me laugh. Thank you.

[JjulianSr]

Please take this to private messages or something if you want to keep this going. Maybe I'm just being excessively gullible (and in fact I know I am), but I keep hoping for a quote about funny judging mishaps every time I click on this thread. It's really just annoying.

allgiants, You're not a moderator. I happen to find your chipping in annoying, but I have no right to tell you to stop. I can ask you to stop. But you don't have to. Neither does anyone else. Unless a moderator tells us otherwise.

This thread started with, "whats the worst experience you've ever had with a judge in your round?" The thread is on topic. This judge is defending the bashing that is happening (regardless of whether you think it is or not). Sorry if that offends you, but it isn't a hijack. If a mod tells me to take it offline, I will. Otherwise, I will continue the discussion on this discussion board.

[JjulianSr]

allgiants, You're not a moderator. I happen to find your chipping in annoying, but I have no right to tell you to stop. I can ask you to stop. But you don't have to. Neither does anyone else. Unless a moderator tells us otherwise.

This thread started with, "whats the worst experience you've ever had with a judge in your round?" The thread is on topic. This judge is defending the bashing that is happening (regardless of whether you think it is or not). Sorry if that offends you, but it isn't a hijack. If a mod tells me to take it offline, I will. Otherwise, I will continue the discussion on this discussion board.

I will, however, start sharing my worst student experiences in a round, if you would like? Would that be better? :P *olive branch offered*

[allgiants20]

I've personally seen in the past, threads that go off target into conflicts are more effectively resolved by forum participants themselves. I'm only trying to do what I feel is right, but you have as much of a right to be irritated by me as I have to be irritated by you.

Having said that, I think it would be entertaining to hear about some bad student experiences. You may find this surprising, but students are annoyed by rude kids too.

[JjulianSr]

Very well, I offer the following tale as a balm to soothe our mutual irritation:

So, last month at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU - Tacoma, WA) I was in a room of Open (top level) Duo. Why tournaments put Duo Interp rounds in conference rooms in the library I'll never know... anyway, I walk in and the students all take their seats. All the chairs are taken. I pause, wait about 30 secs or so... nobody moves. I finally ask where I should sit. Two girls split apart but remain in their chairs, pat the table, and suggest I pull up a chair. Right. I end up booting out a participant from his chair and set up.

We start, and these two girls start commenting about how much they love this one piece as the two guys step up to deliver it. We have to wait through their commentary. As it turns out, the piece is lousy. I mean bad. No meaningful movement. Too soft to hear. Poor characterization. Jokes fell flat. Barely novice caliber. The two girls are laughing and commenting aloud, "Oooh. I love this part! This is really funny." all during the speech. And at the end, "That was awesome!" High fiving the pair of boys as they sit down.

This goes on speech after speech after speech. And the other kids start joining in - like we need a running commentary about each performance as its happening. And real bad opinions - one team made physical contact and the other team starts an argument after their speech about whether that was legal or not. I finally have to stop the round and warn everyone to keep their comments to themselves and respect the other performers. After talking back to me about how they were just trying to have fun, the girls get up and give a pathetic performance. Note: never try to do synchronized voices unless you actually ARE in sync. This was followed by a team who read from script.

In the end, I have one team that did a decent job, but read their script. The rest either made intentional physical contact, direct interaction facing each other, were rude by talking through the round, or were rude to me in the round. So... how do you vote in that round? Who gets the 1 and likely the shot at finals in a huge tournament? Made me wish I had slept through it all. :)

To quote remiss, "I could go on forever with these stories, really."

[allgiants20]

Wow, that's about seven levels above the rudest round I've ever heard of. I sincerely hope that this is the exception rather than the rule for you.

[remiss]

oh my god... you do realize what's going on. you're an older, mature forensics coach who is lecturing and criticizing teens who are fractions of your age. REALLY? we're clearly not worth your time so why do you persist on posting on this thread that's meant for fun and nothing else...?

[ummmmmm12]

remiss, the arguing is over. now back to the stories about rounds/ballots.

in response to the last one that sounds like a horrible round. if they all broke the rules what happens, cuz i know normally u cant give them the 1... but it was all of them... so does one of them get the 1 or were u forced to rank the best person 2?

[allgiants20]

That's a really good question... I didn't even think of that... I mean wouldn't you have to? Cause you also can't give two teams the same rank... my head hurts...

[JjulianSr]

That's a really good question... I didn't even think of that... I mean wouldn't you have to? Cause you also can't give two teams the same rank... my head hurts...

Indeed, it is a dilemma. No, allgiants, it isn't a common thing. It was, admittedly my worst round this year. Not my worst ever, but pretty darned close. I did ask for permission to give all 5's. The tournament director denied my request. I ended up giving the guys reading from script a 1 because I knew they wouldn't advance unless other judges were disobeying the rules. The top speaker points I gave was 12. (scale of 7-20 here in WA). I figured between nuking speaks and reversing the order in round I would absolutely keep the rude folks from advancing. The other thing I did was talk personally with all the coaches about what happened - and I wrote detailed comments after the round (denying taking a debate ballot because I needed to write volumes and violating the 10 minute rule they put on judges here).

To their credit, one team in the room wrote me an apology letter. Of course, they were the one's from my district and knew they would see me again. ;)

[JjulianSr]

Here's another one: I show up to a final round of Novice Impromptu. The campus we're on is huge, and I'm just not in the best shape in the world. I'm the lead judge on a three judge panel. As we're getting ready to start, a student walks in claiming to be added to the ballot. This would make 9 speakers in the final, which is highly irregular (8 was a lot already). On top of that, I only have 8 topic lists in my stack. So, I stand up and ask the student to go to tab (about a 300 yard walk in the wind and rain) and get me an official from tab to confirm his entry and tell me what to do about topics.

HE REFUSES.

Befuddled, I turn to the room and ask the 30 or so people assembled (mostly kids) to go and do what I asked. Nobody moved. I asked again. One volunteer was our first speaker - I wanted to start the round so I couldn't send him. I asked a third time. Nobody offers. So... I have to walk across campus in the rain, in the dark, in the cold wind to tab and confirm it, then walk back. The round is now very late - which I'm going to catch heck for when the tournament awards run late because we're late - and I'm in a vile mood. I still found it in my heart to give him a 1 since he was the best in the round. But still, it took a lot for me not to dump him to a 4 or 5 on principle.

See - judges don't have the market cornered on stupid behavior (note, I'm not calling anyone stupid... just their actions).

[JjulianSr]

Look... thank you all for letting me vent a bit, coach a bit, and play a bit on your "fun thread". I'll leave you to your "entertaining yet non-intentionally-bashing judge-bashing" discussion. Just remember, your judges do give you a lot of time. And contrary to remiss's claim... you are all worth my time. I wouldn't give it otherwise.

Most judges have lives... complex, pain-filled, hard lives. And we still come out weekend after weekend for no pay in order to make sure you have a contest. We aren't always perfect, but we are dedicated.

Try to remember all that when you think we've been stupid, okay?

Have a good night,

Mr J

[cameronman]

so i performed "looking a lot like christmas" last year, which is a piece about a gay man, and i just have to say.... I CONSIDER ANY JUDGE WHO WRITES OVER FOUR TIMES ON ONE CRITIQUE "TERRIBLE PIECE" "BAD SUBJECT" "DISGUSTING".... IS STUPID IN MY BOOK. they cleary are putting there personal preferance into thought... especially seeing as how i went 1 1 7 that round.... ugh.

[CLT787]

so i performed "looking a lot like christmas" last year, which is a piece about a gay man, and i just have to say.... I CONSIDER ANY JUDGE WHO WRITES OVER FOUR TIMES ON ONE CRITIQUE "TERRIBLE PIECE" "BAD SUBJECT" "DISGUSTING".... IS STUPID IN MY BOOK. they cleary are putting there personal preferance into thought... especially seeing as how i went 1 1 7 that round.... ugh.

You got that right! My OO is about the school system, and how it retards imagination. A few months ago on the way back from a tourney we got our ballots back. That judge liked how I sopke, but hated my topic: 5th

[K.J.]

so i performed "looking a lot like christmas" last year, which is a piece about a gay man, and i just have to say.... I CONSIDER ANY JUDGE WHO WRITES OVER FOUR TIMES ON ONE CRITIQUE "TERRIBLE PIECE" "BAD SUBJECT" "DISGUSTING".... IS STUPID IN MY BOOK. they cleary are putting there personal preferance into thought... especially seeing as how i went 1 1 7 that round.... ugh.

I had something incredibly similar in my state tournament's finals round of Declamation, my piece was Dennis Sheppard's Court Statement, (I'm going to assume most will know it because it is fairly overdone, although I'm pretty certain I was the first person from my district to ever use the speech) now I have one judge in this round that is absolutely terrible, now I didn't notice this judge for anybody else's speech, and one of my fellow competitors in the round actually came up to me afterwards to tell me how ridiculous she thought the judge's attitude was during my speech, this judge did everything but watch the speech, she put her head down on the desk she was sitting at, I thought she was gonna go to sleep or something, she was texting... it really was just completely unbelievable, and for a final round too... and I am still not entirely certain if this was the same judge or not (this is what makes my story incredibly similar), but one of my ballots from that round had a six and said "Homosexuality is an inappropriate topic for high school debate, not appropriate", that was the only comment on my ballot

[rawrCooper]

I did the piece "Telephone Man" as my DI freshman year. Now the piece uses the N-word A LOT, but I cut it down to about 1 or 2 times. Well, my judge was so offended she gave me last, didn't sign her name on the ballot, and she went to the tournament director demanding a written apology to her, the audience members, and the school. Luckily, my coach got me out of that mess. That was my first time doing DI ever.