Shedding some light on the Fort Hays incident
Weeks have passed since this news was first announced to the debate community and the global community. Recent articles have displayed Fort Hays State University taking action on the situation by firing coach Bill Shanahan and suspending the program indefinitely. However, I’d like to share an article I found on an NDT/CEDA post by common Georgia judge and West Georgia coach, Joe Koehle. The following article was featured in the AJC on August 16 (just two days after the original article). You can read an except below the cut.
[AJC writes]
The infamous YouTube video is like a fan fight at a baseball game, debaters say; it’s an occasional row that gets a lot of attention, but doesn’t represent the entire sport. It’s also proof that even hyper-educated, savvy people with a talent for debate can get caught up in emotion.
“The best arguments they could make were one person using an expletive, the other showing their butt,” Hester says. “This was an argument in the schoolyard sense.”
The public reaction unsettles the relatively small community of debate competitors and alumni; they know each other, and call the feuding professors by their first names, Bill and Shanara. Within the community, the behavior seems juvenile, but there’s no talk of forcing the professors out of their jobs.
“It says something unfortunate about our culture. People love to overreact, and then it’s 10 minutes later,” says Kevin Rabinowitz, a former University of Georgia debater and a 2006-07 winner of one of its highest honors, the Copeland Award. “People get their kicks, then it’s on to the next story.”
Melissa Wade, the director of forensics at Emory, says the video and the reaction to it offers a chance for self-reflection.
“You watch them grow and make mistakes and be overly invested in an argument and realize it’s short-sighted,” she said. “It’s more than competition. There is a passion there that is profound.”
Passion that, sometimes, bubbles over.
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