Rethinking Impacting

“Here is the impact…” 

Regardless whether it is within congressional debate, public forum debate, Lincoln Douglas debate, or even World Schools debate – far too often, we as debaters become accustomed to treating people and stories like little more than statistics and numbers. 

It is a wildly easy trap to fall into in the first place.  Logically, it makes sense. Bigger numbers often seem to be much more useful in round then smaller numbers. But there’s a bigger issue within this ideal; when you do this, you ignore the plight of the people you’re supposedly representing, reducing them to little more than rhetorical devices to be used within a speech that you likely will not even think about two hours from giving it, let alone two weeks.

We tend to  forget the faces of the people behind the  subjects and topics we discuss. This type of discourse is meant to model how policymakers ought to care about their constituents and citizens, and how to be a globally minded individual.  But it has only served to make us insensitive. We have become cold and uninterested in the same topics and  people we were meant to represent. In pursuing our own success, we forgot who it is for.  We’ve gotten lost in our plans to be advocates, and only chased our dreams of trophies versus our dreams of being (and acting as) actual and genuine advocates.

When writing an argument, especially in debate, we have become far too used to trying  to find the biggest statistic, the most shocking fact, the most gripping narrative – less  and less to actually represent them, more so concerned with winning the debate by creating more appeal and outweighing our opponents. Like I said, it’s always easier to outweigh when your numbers are bigger than theirs. The search no longer becomes to find actual stories and people who are genuinely affected by the proposed legislation, and instead becomes a search for bigger numbers. 

But even when we find these numbers that we’re so desperately searching for, the problems almost never end there. The issue is, not only do we  often lack the nuance in explaining these numbers and stories, but we lose the human,  personable aspect of them – arguably, their most important value. By then, passionate  argumentation begins to objectify and weaponize suffering and human experiences for nothing more than our own gain.  

Take for example, Student Congress – an event meant to mirror the ideal world of lawmakers representing their constituents. But more and more, every single time I hear the words “my constituents” in a debate round, those words become emptier and hold less value. Words originally meant to explain who we, as a congress, are intended to represent, become nothing more than a required buzzword to get judges to pick you up for your powerful rhetorical analysis.   

How many times have you either seen someone or have done it yourself, where in a speech you gave bigger statistics to hit harder, describe situations with more emotion  to appeal to the judge, perhaps even exaggerate a story to do nothing more than get yourself to rank a little bit higher?  

I know I have.  And it's likely that you have as well.

But in doing so, we have forgotten the essence of what this activity is meant to do. We  have forgotten the people we are meant to represent and have ended up commodifying human suffering and the pain within their lives for our own gain.

Just stop for a moment and think how many times you’ve heard of a harrowing narrative as an attention getter, a story boiled down to nothing more than an impact. Recollect as a debater you saw yelled a huge number across the room, for nothing more than brownie points within an advocacy. Just to have the biggest number within the round.

Think back to every impact that you’ve heard – and if it actually properly  represented or even advocated for the people it mentioned. The next time someone refers to “marginalized” or “low income Americans” in their speech, are they actually  advocating or purely trying to get brownie points from the scorers, commodifying their  actual need for our advocacy? 

The next time you prepare for a tournament or research for a topic, feel free to find the  biggest number. Try to get the biggest impact. But please frame and tell it in a way  where your arguments properly represent them, and advocate for change – not merely  for the purposes of getting to the next round. 

The next time you talk about your constituents, my fellow congressional debaters, I  genuinely want you to mean it. As we deliberate in our rounds, never forget who we are fighting for.  

A relatively common saying within the congress community is that behind every number, is a face. Every fact, a person. In every debate, a life in the balance. It’s time that we, as a community of congressional debaters, take our own rhetoric as more than face value, and follow our own words.