Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Remember the debate coach who dropped his pants and mooned another coach during an argument? He's history. Fort Hays State University held a press conference and announced that William Shanahan was being fired and the entire debate program suspended indefinitely.
The president continued: "Professor Shanahan's conduct falls below the standard established to protect our university, its faculty, students and alumni. As a representative of FHSU, he had a duty of care that was seriously breached by his behavior.""If the coach of one of our athletic teams became angry and 'mooned' officials, student athletes and fans during a sports event, he or she would no longer be a coach at Fort Hays State University," President Hammond said. "Standards for our debate program are certainly just as high."
The article also confirms the reason for the fight, which was that Fort Hays had struck Shanara Reid-Brinkley as a judge:
The FHSU team had exercised its prerogative under the debate rules to dismiss Reid-Brinkley as a judge of the FHSU-Towson State debate. Both the Towson State debate team and Reid-Brinkley said the decision to remove a black female judge was an act of white hegemony, which is to say an exercise of the power whites enjoy over people of color.
Sorry, but this is bullshit. Debate teams have the right to strike judges from their rounds. All debate teams have that right and all debate teams exercise it. To say that no team coached by a white person can strike a black judge without exercising "white hegemony" is ridiculous. If, as is likely in this case, you're a conventional debate team and you're up against a team that uses a Louisville Project approach, you want to strike those judges who are most favorable to that approach (just like the other team is going to want to strike judges who are most hostile to that approach). Both teams are simply looking for the most advantageous judging panel they can. I doubt under those circumstances they would have hesitated to strike Jon Bruschke, a white advocate of Louisville Project debating, as well.
Comments
Do you think Shanahan would have survived in the days before YouTube?
Posted by: The Science Pundit | August 23, 2008 10:08 AM
below the standard established to protect our university, its faculty, students and alumni.
Thank God they're protected against bare asses. I'll sleep better tonight.
Posted by: JED | August 23, 2008 10:25 AM
I'm glad to hear this. Frankly, I like knowing that a guy who thinks he can win an argument by mooning is no longer a collegiate debate coach.
Posted by: JStein | August 23, 2008 10:44 AM
Hegemony, like paradigm, is one of those words that makes me reflexively dismiss the person who uses it, regardless of the context. People like Reid-Brinkley have destroyed any serious application of the term.
Posted by: Mr. Upright | August 23, 2008 10:55 AM
JED, the standard might be established to protect those parties/institutions from (among other things) ridicule.
Posted by: The Christian Cynic | August 23, 2008 11:00 AM
Maybe if he'd just burned a cross in the other coach's arm he wouldn't have lost his job.
Posted by: Paul Lamb | August 23, 2008 12:17 PM
While I can't defend Shanahan's mooning Reid-Brinkley, it is actually supporters of the Louisville Project like Reid-Brinkley who have done the greatest damage to debate.
Posted by: Bill Poser | August 23, 2008 12:53 PM
"Homer, would you like to present your rebuttal?"
"With pleasure!"
Posted by: Grumpy | August 23, 2008 5:17 PM
I know nothing about "debate" - never heard of the Louisville Project. From Wikipedia I got:
"University of Louisville Debate Society"
"They argue that many elements of policy debate are exclusionary"
"The team uses these points to support their argument that collegiate debate is currently exclusive of minority groups based on race, economics, gender, sexuality and communicative differences."
A real question: Is there really something about debate that discriminates based on race, economics, gender, or sexuality? Is that like the argument that the SAT's are culturally biased?
A sarcastic comment: I find the last one of their list - communicative differences - to be absurd. That is like me arguing that many elements of the track team are exclusive of people like me because we're too slow.
Posted by: Karl | August 23, 2008 6:08 PM
Mooning is not that big of a deal. Now had he mooned them while legibly writing on his ass and avoiding an old style Aussie booting, that would be impressive.
Posted by: I am so wise | August 23, 2008 7:23 PM
Posted by: tincture | August 23, 2008 9:18 PM
If it's any consolation, things just got worse in Tae Kwon Do. A Cuban athlete was just expelled for kicking the referee in the face after the referee disqualified him (apparently correctly, for taking too long for an injury time-out).
Posted by: Bill Poser | August 23, 2008 9:20 PM
As a member of the debate community, I'd like to clarify that Bill Shanahan and his team of Fort Hays are not a "conventional debate team." The justification for striking the judge remains, however, as she had previously stated that the Fort Hays students "suck" at debate. Townson's argument about Fort Hays being racist was in reaction to Fort Hays' argument that they were allied with Townson in attempting to bring diversity to the activity.
Posted by: NY Debater | August 23, 2008 10:56 PM
I will give a a response to Karl's question about the "Louisvile" issue. I am completely against what the Louisville project is about, so take my analysis with a grain of salt. Also, I've never debated a Louisville style team, so I'm likely missing lots of nuance or deeper analysis about their argument.
With that said, the primary argument is that typical debate requires intensive research and study of the various topics that will be debated. This argument is absolutely true. However, the Louisville style teams argue that this fact excludes minorities from participating in debate. This argument is highly debatable, and I pretty much totally disagree with its implications. There is no reason that any high school student with access to a public library or an internet connection cannot successfully participate in debate. At the highest levels, debate generally requires an almost complete committment in terms of time and energy, but that's true of a lot of things. Debate itself is simply not discriminatory.
A second component of the Louisville argument is that typical debate is pretty much just a game involving discussion of national and international politics, economics, and human society that is too far remote from the daily lives of the debaters. This argument is also debatable. The Louisville project seeks to take this idea to fairly extreme conclusions, which is that people should only debate from their own personal experiences, and cite sources with which they are deeply familiar with. (A typical debate round in which a team advances this argument will feature that team playing excerpts of popular music (generally hip-hop) that they find illuminating). I personally think that arguing from personal experience can help make debates more interesting, so I'm not against this, per se. However, I don't think that arguing from experience is incompatible with the traditional "rules" of debate. The Louisville argument disagrees with me, and thus, they will argue from experience to the exclusion of arguing about the required topic. Really, arguing about the required topic (at least at the start of a debate round), is the only substantive "rule" of debate. Thus, the Louisville argument is pretty much completely antithetical to standard debate. To analogize the Louisville project to something more familiar, it would be like the NY Giants showing up to the last Super Bowl asking the referee to change the rules because they thought tackling was too violent.
Posted by: Alan | August 23, 2008 11:11 PM
"With that said, the primary argument is that typical debate requires intensive research and study of the various topics that will be debated. This argument is absolutely true. However, the Louisville style teams argue that this fact excludes minorities from participating in debate. This argument is highly debatable, and I pretty much totally disagree with its implications."
What, you mean minorities *are* smart enough to participate in normal policy debate? Gasp! I thought they were lost without hip hop.
Posted by: PA debater | August 24, 2008 12:06 AM
With that said, the primary argument is that typical debate requires intensive research and study of the various topics that will be debated. This argument is absolutely true. However, the Louisville style teams argue that this fact excludes minorities from participating in debate.
That is not their argument at all, and to think you could reduce an argument that college debaters have won a national championship, and numerous other intensely competitive rounds, with to something so simplistic/non-compelling is laughable. This is not a good forum to discuss the details of what the arguments actually are, especially without any context, but setting up false straw-arguments and then knocking them down is not productive.
Posted by: NAD | August 24, 2008 12:34 AM
Complaining about someone who took the time to try to explain something without offering anything, even a link, in response is very non productive.
Or was that an example of the Louisville style in action?
Posted by: j a higginbotham | August 24, 2008 12:44 AM
i am so wise: award: 1 internet! Good reference.
tincture: award: 5 internets! Excellent followup!
Posted by: jba | August 24, 2008 1:59 AM
j a higginbotham - you are right, that is a fair criticism of my post, my goal was not to try to explain or defend the Louisville project. I don't have any desire to get into an internet argument about the project's content. The prior poster had written a long post that made it seem as if he/she was speaking from a position of authority about the content of the project/what had happened in the FHSU debate round. I know this controversy has been fodder for a lot of jokes and send-ups, and I don't want to get in the way of that. My only intent was to point out that a great many people who spend their weekends being judges at college debate tournaments had found the arguments compelling, and I wanted to try and reduce the number of people making jokes about "minorities can't do research" when that really isn't their argument. I apologize if the tone was more combative than I meant.
Posted by: NAD | August 24, 2008 3:40 AM
Even if you agree that Shanahan was justified in his decision to strike the other judge, I think that his actions definitely warranted his being fired and I am curious if anyone has additional information as to disciplinary action against Reid. She was also out of line and in need of her college to make that clear to her. Although I am 100% in agreement that Shanahan deserved to be fired, if Reid gets off without reprecussions for her behavior, I worry about what kind of message will be sent to the debating community.
Posted by: Anna | August 24, 2008 10:53 AM
That is not their argument at all, and to think you could reduce an argument that college debaters have won a national championship, and numerous other intensely competitive rounds, with to something so simplistic/non-compelling is laughable.
I apologize if I completely got that part wrong. I do think, at least at the high school level, that Louisville teams make that argument. They talk about the lack of resources available to students in poor schools. They also talk about the need for many poorer students to get jobs, which would take away from the time they have to prepare for debate competitions. It's possible that the better teams focus on the second argument I discussed. I know that the Towson team which won the round that led to the Shanahan incident focused on how standard debate supports a "white aesthetic" which is exclusive of a minority or black aesthetic. Don't ask me to explain or support this argument. But if you want to see their rounds, many of them are up on youtube/google video. Just search for Towson CL.
Posted by: Alan | August 24, 2008 3:08 PM
Ok, with all that explanation of what the Louisville Project is or isn't, I have this question: In amy organized contest don't the teams agree to the rules before they agree to meet? Having an argument at the debate site about whether to use LP rules or "standard" rules sounds quite stupid. That's at the level of playground football, where the rules are made up as you go along. It's also the equivalent of the US Olympic basketball team showing up and objecting to the bigger lane under the basket. It would seem that especially for a contest based on intelligence rather than phyical prowess, the contestants would be smart enough to have settled on the rules ahead of time. Bizarre!
Posted by: Karl | August 24, 2008 9:37 PM
I am unfamiliar with traditional as well as Louisville debate. Here's a link to an example of the latter. http://comm.louisville.edu/~debate/videos.htm
From what I can find out about traditional debate techniques
http://www.debate-central.org/file_download/22
I'm not that impressed by traditional speed talking.
But the videos at the first are hard to believe.
Posted by: j a higginbotham | August 25, 2008 6:43 PM