Work, Wit, and Wins: Wolfish

Of the four tournaments at which he has competed thus far this season, David Wolfish has won three of them: the Grapevine Classic (at which he dropped not a single ballot), the Greenhill Round Robin (at which he finished with a record 16-1 ballot count), and, most recently, the Glenbrooks (at which he was first seed). As a junior, David won the Barkley Forum at Emory University and Colleyville Heritage; as a sophomore, placed sixth in the country at Nationals.

In this exclusive VBD interview, David sits down to discuss a variety of issues in ranging from the place of policy theory in LD to matters of presentation and argumentation. More importantly, however, he answers the questions that shed a great deal of light on him as a person.

How does one deal with self-inflicted pressure? How does one deal with being part of a legacy? What are good goals? What is good debate? What keeps him going?

JC: Okay, I’m sorry, I’m rewriting my first question.

DW: It’s okay, I’m rewriting my first answer. [laughs]

JC: [laughs] David, I’m not quite sure where to begin. You’re one of the best-known debaters on the national circuit, and debaters who do not travel but follow results from tournaments are often very familiar with your accomplishments. So, for lack of a more creative introduction, I suppose, let’s start at the beginning!

DW: I was conceived in November of 1985. That’s the beginning.

JC: [laughs]

DW: I got into debate for a few reasons. A speech class with Mr. [Aaron] Timmons is mandatory for all seventh graders. I thought the class was fun, and I thought Mr. Timmons and I got along well, so I signed up for the debate class in eighth grade. My comment from eighth grade said that he thought I would “do very well in high school debate,” so I decided to give it a shot.

I also thought that debate was still the same as just arguing and I figured I was decent at that so I should hone my skills.

My brother Eric had also debated and he seemed to enjoy it, so I decided to give it a chance.

And I wanted an excuse to play with scissors. [laughs]

JC: [laughs] Eric was very successful, of course. Were you already familiar with the tradition of success at Greenhill before you joined the team?

DW: I had no clue. I thought Eric was just looking for an excuse to get trophies and travel across America.

JC: When did you learn otherwise? It’s hard not to be struck by all the debate awards at Greenhill when one is on campus.

DW: When I first walked into the Greenhill debate room - middle school speech/debate class was not held there - I was stunned by how many trophies we had. I didn’t understand until the end of my freshman year the difference between the Pflugerville Fling and TOC, though.

JC: Did you start in LD or policy?

DW: I did policy for six months prior to doing LD. I thought it was one of the best choices I made in terms of debate.

JC: How so?

DW: I think having a background in policy is becoming more and more useful given arguments being made against the status quo, “topicality” - I use this in quotation marks because I think what we call Topicality is vastly different than its CX origins - and theory. I also learned how to speak “briskly” when necessary.

JC: So, then, you did policy with the intent of going into LD?

DW: Towards the beginning of the third trimester, I tried both and although I was infatuated with policy, I loved LD even more.

JC: What did you like about LD? Did you feel a pressure to stick with policy?

DW: I actually made a notecard of all the pros and cons of both activities and assigned them certain values. (I’m super cool.)

JC: [laughs hard]

DW: Here were my favorites:

LD - You dont have to carry tubs.
LD - You get to keep your own trophies.
LD - I’ll get more one-on-one attention, as our policy team is about eight times the size of the LD team.
Policy - I learn about politics.
LD - I learn philosophy.

I liked LD because I thought that answering how something ought to be is more important than how things are. I also thought that policy tended to have an over-reliance on the use of evidence. I’ve always thought one of the most important parts of debate is comings up with your own arguments and not just reading off of blocks. I think policy teaches both, but LD stresses it more.

I didn’t feel a pressure to stick with policy. One of the Greenhill coaches at the time, Alex Pritchard, was very supportive of letting me choose.

JC: I think that’s cool. What do you think about using policy evidence in LD rounds? Your team has, of course, one of the best backfiles in the country.

DW: For me, the use of evidence from policy is like the use of Latin in English. 90% of English words come from Latin roots, but only 10% of common words come from Latin roots. I’d say 90% of the quantity of my cards come from policy backfiles, but I use them nowhere close to as much as the books, articles, and law reviews I cut.

I mostly use policy backfiles to block out policy arguments I think other people will make.

JC: You became quite successful in LD quite quickly. Did you feel any pressure, given your brother’s record?

DW: Not really.

JC: People called you “Little Wolfish” for a while. I’ve noticed, of course, that no one seems to be calling you that anymore, and your own brother signed a post on this web site as “David Wolfish’s older brother.” Did it annoy you at the time?

DW: I had a lot of people know me as “Eric’s Brother,” “Little Eric” (given by Josh Anderson), and “Baby Eric.” I decided to call myself “Fetus Wolfish” to continue the trend of being called something younger and younger.

DW: JAnderson was the only one who really pissed me off, because I technically was the smaller of the Wolfish brothers. But I definitely wasn’t “Little Eric.”

JAnderson thinks I’ve earned my first name, so we’re chill now.

I was elated at camp after my sophomore year when someone asked Eric if he was my brother.

JC: Perhaps that comes as no surprise. You won Woodward JV Nationals and placed sixth in the country at Nationals your sophomore year. That’s pretty impressive. How did it feel, and how did it impact any long-term goals?

DW: I thought I did have something to prove that year. I didn’t want to be known as “the fast LDer from Greenhill” so I really learned a new style and type of adaptation that has served me well for the last two years.

I’d like to rewind for a second in my “life narrative.”

JC: Absolutely.

DW: I got my first taste of the thrill of winning at the Marcus Marauder Classic. That tournament will always have a place in my heart becuase it was the first thing I won that was debate-related. I debated Leah Roffman from Hockaday in finals, and Sam Duby told me I wasn’t allowed to lose to his ex-girlfriend.

JC: [laughs]

DW: Having my first taste of victory made me resolved not to be happy with just quarters or semis.

JC: You said before you “learned a new style and type of adaptation.” Can you elaborate on that?

DW: Absolutely. I couldn’t go fast, even if I was making good arguments at Nationals and Woodward, because speed is a big factor in your presentation of arguments. I don’t think this paradigm is good or bad, it’s just that you have to change your pace, case writing, and demeanor in order to win.

Will there ever be a Jon Cruz interview of Jon Cruz?

JC: [laughs] If the world is actually interested in that, I am sure I can find someone to conduct it.

DW: “Jon Cruz: The Man Behind the Keyboard.”

JC: “Jon Cruz: The Man Behind the Blinding Pink Shirts.”

I had the opportunity to see you run a rather unconventional case position - involving, um, methane hydrates - on your way to winning Emory your junior year. Do you feel more esoteric positions like that remain true to your earlier description of the best parts of LD?

DW: I’d like to preface my response by saying I ran that case once, at most twice. The case also had a lot of substantive analysis. (Honestly, I never expected anyone to go down the line-by-line off the case, just attack it on a theory level, which is what I was hoping for.)

I think that round in particular had a lot of history going into it. I had debated John McKay, who was having a phenomenal year in the quarterfinals. I had debated him three times earlier in the year. First at Grapevine (3-0 for him), semis at Marx (3-0 for him), and doubles at Glenbrooks (3-0 for me). The first two rounds are the kind of rounds that you’re happy that there are only three judges that can vote against you. I won the round at Glenbrooks by taking a very odd approach to the topic on mitigating international conflicts. My case denied the importance of both means and ends, and focused on intent.

I had engaged John in a theory debate in that round about the importance of the use of ends, and that worked for me then, so I decided to write another case - specifically for John - to attempt to engage him on a theoretical level at Emory.

JC: That’s interesting. Yet people still talk about the case. A lot. Do you think there’s any particular reason for that? Is it just because they are a little off-beat?

DW: I think cases that people haven’t thought of, heard of, or have blocks to tend to garner more attention than they probably deserve.

JC: I think that’s fair, and I think it’s cool for the reader at home who has not seen you debate to be able to get a clearer picture of how exactly it is that you do debate.

You had mentioned earlier that after sophomore year you began to feel you had something to prove. I know at Emory, my own debater [Neil Chheda] not only fell in love with how you debated when he saw you compete, but also was certain you would win the tournament after he watched you. (And, of course, you did.) Did you start to feel pressure going into tournaments?

DW: I only feel pressure when I think that I am under-prepared on a topic. I never feel pressure in rounds or in front of audiences.

JC: Has that happened at all this season? You have been doing phenomenally well, winning three of the four tournaments at which you competed.

DW: I felt a little unprepared going into Glenbrooks. I could have just been paranoid. But I worked through the night before round one and felt a lot more comfortable going into round one.

I had about five negs and I ended up using the same one throughout the tournament.

JC: [chuckle]

DW: I also think I ran two out of the five affs, and to get an understanding of my work ethic, I still felt under-prepared.

JC: How much time do you devote per week to debate?

DW: Twenty hours on a non-tournament week, about thirty to forty for a big tournament. Probably closer to thirty. I put a lot of effort into researching.

JC: That’s pretty intense.

DW: In the words of Hirsh [Jain], Will [Leiter], and Daniel [Sheehan], “ur hella intense f00.”

JC: [laughs]

DW: My nickname at camp was “The Machine.” Liz Scoggin got mad at me for cutting cards while she was telling a story after lab.

JC: [laughs]

Earlier, you mentioned that you felt you had something to prove, but never specified what it was you had to prove. Were you satisfied with your performance last season?

DW: I had three goals last year. First, to qualify for TOC. Second, to win a TOC tournament. Third, to break at TOC.

I surpassed my first two goals by getting five bids and winning Colleyville Heritage and Emory, but I was very disappointed with my results at TOC.

JC: You won one of the most prestigious tournaments in the country, and moreover, you won it as a junior. Surely that made up for any disappointment over not achieving goal #3.

DW: Nope. I set my standards very high for myself, especially in terms of debate.

JC: After TOC, then, were you simply upset, or even more determined?

DW: More determined.

This season, after my two losses at St. Mark’s, I told Mr. Timmons that I would just have to win Glenbrooks to redeem myself (in my own eyes, not his). I rarely dwell on past losses.

I wanted another shot at Hirsh and A.J. - both of whom I respect a lot as people and debaters - so I was very mentally prepared when I debated them both at Glenbrooks.

JC: You mentioned theory debates earlier. Are you a fan? If so, what do you like about that form of debate?

DW: I love theory debates, but I could never specify a certain type, because there is a myriad of facets to how ground, arguments, etc. should be divided. I think “being a fan of theory” is just about liking to make arguments that don’t necessarily address the topic, and instead focus on how debates should function.

I had a debate at Glenbrooks about the switching of advocacies in cross-ex, something I never thought would have happened prior to the round.

What occurred in the round was 100% unintentional and the person I debated is very nice and honorable, but I did have a huge problem with the way she presented her arguments in CX. A quick synopsis of what happened is I asked a question twice - because I was surprised at her answer - and then used the next two minutes of CX to exploit that concession and use it against other areas of the negative case. In the fleeting seconds of CX, she said that her advocacy wasn’t what she had originally said it was. With six seconds left, she said that we all could just ignore the argument, I didn’t have to answer it. The 1AR began with a 75 second overview of the importance of CX to clarify, force timely concessions, display your knowledge of the topic, give a direct comparison between both debaters, etc.

I then explained why this precluded me from answering the line-by-line very well, and thus a procedural “a priori” (whatever that means) to evaluate this theory argument. Thus, I could lose 99% of args on the flow and the judges could still vote aff.

Her responses were that, 1) I was using it as a time suck and 2) the judge should drop me for using a cheap shot.

The 2AR was three minutes of theory. I never addressed any other arguments on the flow. I think this was the correct strategic decision becuase I surely wasn’t using it as a time suck; I spent a lot of time in the 1AR and all of the 2AR addressing the argument, so definitionally, if any time was “sucked” it was mine.

JC: [chuckle]

DW: I argued that theory isn’t a cheap shot, that this argument conceded my framework of evaluating procedural issues first, and that switching her advocacy was the only shady tactic used in the round (unintentional or not).

Unfortuantely, although I won the round, I placed the judge in a very awkward position of having to ultimately be a judge of character.

JC: You are very familiar with policy theory and jargon given your background, your coach’s long experience in policy, and your team’s dominance in the event. Does it bother you when people misuse appropriated jargon and theory? People seem to feel that a lot, or at least a considerable amount, of the ported theory and jargon has been misapplied.

DW: I don’t like it when people use “topicality” instead of “conditionality.” I even think conditionality shouldn’t be used, as it refers to the status of a counterplan; I prefer the word “situationality.” Most of the time, they are saying that your case doesn’t apply to the whole resolution, only certain situations, not that it is not germane.

I also think of T as being composed of interpretation, violation, standards, and voters, not a ten-second blip at the top of a 1AC.

JC: [laughs]

DW: I’ve been trying to integrate some policy jargon adapted to LD. Mr. Timmons has invented the “VIC” or value-inclusive counterplan.

JC: What’s that? (I suppose I ask because you include the term “counterplan,” which tends to be one of the words to which some people most object seeing in LD.)

DW: It functions the same in LD as it does in policy. It captures the advantages (typically issues of morality) in the 1AC, achieves them in a better manner (gets more of the advantages) and achieves them in a way that is mutually exclusive of the 1AC (the 1AC and the VIC cant be done together).

I’ve toyed with them and ran a pseudo-VIC in finals of Glenbrooks arguing to repeal all treaties with other nations and refer them to the popular vote of the American people. The net benefit was having the will of the majority in support for the bill and it was mutually exclusive because of the word “has” in the resolution. It was not-permutable - that is, can’t do both - because of the change in tense: has the moral obligation to will have the moral obligation.

I’m not claiming it’s the best argument in the world, but I had been wanting to run it.

JC: That sounds pretty cool. It obviously went over well!

DW: It became an issue, but definitely not the most important issue in finals.

JC: As a very successful debater, if you could point to one thing you think is improving in debate, and one thing you think could stand improvement, what would they be?

DW: I think the quality of evidence is getting better. It’s nice to hear cards with links and warrants in them.

I think one thing that can stand improvement is the elimination of the “blip spread.” There’s no doubt that I make a lot of arguments when I’m neg, but I would never consider myself as anyone close to a “blip spreader.”

One should go quickly because they have a lot of intelligent things to say, not because their blocks have numbers 1-7.

JC: Agreed!

For those at home who are less familiar with different kinds of spreads, how would you distinguish them? Many read “spread” and automatically think of something bad.

DW: I think there are three types.

First, the slow spread. A typically short negative case is followed by two or three points off every issue in their case, all delivered at a moderate pace giving substantive analysis.

Second, the quick spread. A two minute to three minute, fifteen second case followed by a “brisk” pace against the 1AC and two to four points off of every argument in their case with substantive analysis.

Third, the blip spread. A very short NC followed by a waste of ink.

A decent 1AR will group and ultimately make the blip spreader appear awful.

I’m sure not all spreads fall into these categories, but I think they do a decent job of explaining three poplar variations.

JC: Do you feel you fit into the first or second category, or do you not have a main style in rounds?

DW: I think I waiver between the two based on the type of judges I have.

Neil Conrad, my assistant coach, contributes: “what about the butter spread?!”

JC: [laughs]

David, you are really privileged to be a student one of the most historically successful teams in the country, with one of the most successful coaches in recent memory at the helm. Some are anxious that they can never achieve the highest levels of success without being on an already-established team, or having a top-level coach.

Do you consider the support of your team and coach as major reasons for your success?

DW: They have been the single largest contributing factor to any success I have had or will have in debate. I am very grateful to attend a school with such wonderful support for the debate program.

Specifically, I’d like to talk about my head coach, Mr. Aaron Timmons, my teammate Tisha Vaidya, my assistant coach Neil Conrad, and my former teammate Samuel Leon Duby.

Mr. Timmons is a fabulous debate coach. I could not imagine anyone more successful, insightful, and helpful - I like to stick with the -ful parallelism - to be my debate coach. He has helped me through disappointing losses and has been there to watch my successes. He has literally taught me how to be a critical thinker. Any research on my own would be useless if he hadn’t shown me how to use LexisNexis, Google, etc. Any success I have achieved is due to his dedication to encouraging me to push myself.

Tisha Vaidya. She always has gum. Tisha is my “dumb arguments” checker. Sometimes I get too caught up in making weird arguments and I just need someone to say, “That’s dumb.” We have always worked well together and I know she will continue rocking the circuit.

Neil Conrad is the newest addition to our team. Neil immediately proved himself to be intelligent, responsible, and resourceful. He is everything I could have hoped for in an assistant coach.

Duby. I learned a few lessons from Sam. First, how to navigate through the UTD library, which is constantly under construction. Second, how to control an audience. Third, how to use humor in-round. (I’d like to think I do it slightly more tastefully, though.) Also, to be careful of who you piss off in the debate community.

JC: I think it is awesome to hear someone successful acknowledge those who have helped (and continue to help) along the way to victory. Have you been proud of your contributions thus far to the Greenhill legacy?

DW: I have been very happy with my contributions. Even if I win nothing else this year, I’m still glad that I could have won 2 octas bid tournaments - Emory and Glenbrooks - that AT had won in policy but not in LD. Past LDers have won a lot of tournaments, so I’m very happy to win tournaments that no one else on my team ever has.

JC: I think we’ve covered quite a bit of ground in this short interview, and there is a lot of advice that could be culled from the stories you’ve told and reflections you’ve made. Is there something beyond the drive to do well that keeps you going?

DW: Debate is fun for me. I’ve said this before and I think it is very true: debate is too expensive, too time consuming, and too stressful to do if you don’t really love it.

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