The Parliamentary Pro[cedure]

During a Congressional Debate session, the people leading a Congress chamber are the one and only POs, or the presiding officers. These POs are elected before the round and are the people that help these debates run smoothly by choosing speakers, picking questioners, managing recency, accepting motions, and so much more. Essentially, they run the entire Congress session and are the make or break on whether or not a Congress session succeeds. However, even though these Presiding Officers are crucial to a Congress chamber, they never give any speeches or speak on any of the topics on the docket. This is, of course, understandable since they are supposed to be unbiased while running these chambers. If you end up becoming the PO for a room, nine times out of ten, you can ask someone before the round begins if they’ll sponsor your bill and speak on it using your speech.

The biggest problem about being a PO during these tournaments: not getting proper recognition. These POs help make sure that these chambers do not erupt into complete chaos, and recognize people to speak, establish dockets, time speeches, and count votes correctly and fairly for the chamber. But, when you attend a lower level tournament, such as one on a local circuit, your judges, which are usually parents, do not understand how to judge and grade a PO. They simply believe that since they never spoke on a topic, they do not get the same amount of points as everyone else in the room, which is completely fair and true. They have not spoken on anything, given points, or answered questions, so why give them the same amount of points as someone who has spoken on each bill once or twice, at least?

This is the basic way of thinking of it, and there is nothing wrong with thinking of it this way. However, more efforts should be made in the debate community to recognize the Presiding Officers at debates. Nick Ostheimer said in a discussion that at his local debate tournaments, POs are recognized before awards are given out, and they are even given their own gavels. At other tournaments, such as the ones attended by staff writer Kenny Patel, they give you medals with a sheet of paper taped to the back that says “PO.” Or, if you’re like me, at local tournaments, they just give the PO a name shoutout, if they even decide to do that before the awards ceremony. These Presiding Officers give up their time and their ability to speak on topics so that a round can take place, meanwhile most judges see them as fake competitors or people that shouldn’t be ranked at all.

And, of course, you do get those judges that do know who a PO is and what a PO is supposed to do. Although, with all judges, there are not any set guidelines on what they expect from a PO. There are paradigms on Tabroom, of course, but even then, at local tournaments, those paradigms may not exist or there may not be time to review them before the round begins. When you get an experienced judge, they know what to look for in a PO, but they may look for different things. Some judges want you to make seating charts for the speakers in the room, others may want you to do your recency speaking sheet on paper, or maybe they’re just looking and watching to see if you timed a speaker properly. It truly depends on what judge you get, but most of the time it’s a hit-or-miss on what they want from you, or if they even know what they’re looking for.

Now, at larger tournaments, such as NSDA Nationals or Harvard, there’s a better chance of these judges ranking you well. These judges, although possibly parents, have experience from local tournaments and probably larger tournaments, meaning they have a better background of what should be expected from these POs during a Congress session. Because they know what is expected of a PO and what should be expected of a PO, they will usually rank them in the top five or top ten in the room, considering that they did help lead the round. Now, I’m not saying that they should be ranked first; again, they’re the only competitor in the room that is not engaging in any part of the debate itself, so it wouldn’t make sense to rank them as the highest. But, remember that they’re giving up their speaking time to help make sure the round can happen.

So, why all of this fuss for this article? Nick said it best in the EIF staff chat: “it feels good to drive home having something to show for your hard work, even if you didn’t place.” A lot of times at smaller tournaments these POs will not place, and that’s okay, but they also don’t get recognized. So, maybe we should take more time out of our lives to recognize the recognizers, as I like to say, and acknowledge the Presiding Officers that do their job well so that we can all be happy and satisfied with a smooth-sailing Congressional Debate session. Some of these POs do this because they know it’s necessary, and always volunteer to be voted so that nobody has to sacrifice a speech. I know I do whenever I do Congress at a local tournament, and sometimes it hurts because we do want to speak.

And if you think that being a PO sounds interesting, don’t let this article stop you! This is simply addressing an issue with what Presiding Officers can face at smaller tournaments, but once you get used to it after using the Equality in Forensics Presiding Officer Cheat Sheet, you’ll be ready for anything that comes your way! The POs of the world don’t want much; all we ask is to be acknowledged for what we do. To be respected instead of being known as the ones that don’t speak at a tournament. It’s all that we ask for, and it’s not that we even ask for much.

So, next time you see a Presiding Officer, either before or after the round, thank them. Sometimes we don’t want the trophy or the medal; we just want some recognition after recognizing everyone else during the round to speak. Maybe help encourage your local tournaments to start giving out something to POs to acknowledge their hard work and effort, and try to make sure that POs everywhere are remembered instead of forgotten.