[Sly Fox]

From the Pittsburgh fishwrap ...

Has college debate lost its civil tongue?
Incident involving Pitt team sets off a national discussion

Sunday, October 05, 2008
By Cristina Rouvalis and Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

CLARION, Pa. -- The campus bell tower chimes seven times on a Friday evening, marking an hour when many college students are sliding into the weekend.

But inside a locked classroom at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, things are heating up. Ross Garrett, a pencil-thin competitor in glasses and a necktie, rocks back and forth while unleashing a torrent of words so furiously that his face reddens and he periodically gasps for air.

His argument, accelerating to 300 words a minute, is not the rant of some lunatic you'd avoid if you met on the street. In fact, he and a busload of his teammates from Liberty University have traveled more than eight hours from Lynchburg, Va., lugging plastic tubs of arcane policy papers on farm subsidies, hoping to outtalk their counterparts from 10 other schools.

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[Baldspot]

That question is reverberating in the debate community after an August YouTube video captured a profanity-packed shouting match between William Shanahan, Fort Hays (Kan.) State University's debate coach, and Shanara Reid-Brinkley, his counterpart at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Shanahan dropped his pants to expose his underwear, interrupting a post-debate round at the Cross Examination Debate Association's national tournament in Wichita, Kan., a "mooning" that led to his firing days later. Dr. Reid-Brinkley kept her job, but won't be coaching in debate tournaments this year.

So this fall, as a new collegiate debate season gets underway, a community that loves a good argument is arguing over the very nature of debate. Officials at CEDA are drafting a code of conduct, even as camps within the debate community ponder whether the episode reflects a decline in civility.

I'm hoping they rule out the term "s_ck."

[PAmedic]

congrats to Stephanie Dillard and Ross Garrett.