Don't Record This; Interrogating Anti-Blackness in Intercollegiate Policy Debate through Rhetorical Criticism (original) (raw)

The concept of surveillance in debate has never been more of a topic of discussion within the community than now. With the recent global pandemic shifting most university-sponsored activities online, Intercollegiate Policy Debate became yet another inhabitant of the newly constructed platforms meant to assist programs in maintaining their competitive and academic rigor. While the presence of recording devices within debate has always existed, the question of transparency, consent, and dissemination regarding recordings within debate has expanded itself within the realm of online debate. Before COVID-19, it was relatively difficult for an individual to capture any usable recordings of an in-person debate without their camera or microphone signaling to unsuspecting debaters that they are being actively recorded. This is because, few tournaments had official rules regarding recording debate rounds, nor would any sharing of evidence used in rounds be considered recording as it does not capture the audio and/or video of the debaters themselves. However, with COVID-19 shifting debate into a world in which the presence of cameras and microphones are necessary for the debate to occur, the ability to determine when and by whom a given round is being recorded has disappeared. While many debaters assume tournaments have their best interests at heart, the authority now possessed by those who run the platforms during the tournament raises deeper questions regarding the ability to hold an individual or institution culpable for any ‘leaks’ that might occur. This is integral to the continuation of the activity because the presence of surveillance has allotted for individuals to disseminate recordings in malicious manners, resulting in threats on a nation-wide scale. Thus, it is important to interrogate the programs and directors running these tournaments and the policies enacted from their position of power. More specifically, as recordings are leaked for the purposes of targeting black and brown debaters, we, as a community, must hold tournament hosts accountable for the policies they produce regarding recording debaters without the need for consent. To operationalize this demand, I examine the discourse and actions of Michael Moreno, famed conservative debater who recorded and subsequently leaked video of non-White debaters, as exigence in the creation of the University of Kentucky’s policy regarding recording their annual JW Patterson Invitational. In doing so, I utilize Bitzer’s theory of the rhetorical situation to isolate the particular inabilities for said policy to respond to the pervasiveness of antiblack utilizations of recordings from debate rounds.