After hearing Matthew’s story, I looked deeper into the problem and found that some judges actually state outright they will punish debaters for comments or actions they’ve made outside the debate arena.

Zachary Reshovsky is one of these judges. His paradigm tells students, “I will consider indictments of an opponent on the basis that they have done [or] said something racist, gendered, [or] -phobic in their personal behavior. The indictment, however, needs to be clearly documented (e.g. a screen shotted Facebook post, an accusation with references to multiple witnesses who can corroborate the incident) and the offending violation/action needs to fall into the category of commonly understood violations of norms of basic decency surrounding race/gender. . . ”

He continues by stating that “microaggressions will be considered” even if “they are more difficult to prove/document.”

What defines a microaggression? The answer is broad.

[Here’s the operative definition of ‘microaggression’: It’s whatever a member of an aggrieved class says it is. It’s a meaningless standard. The use of arbitrary and capricious complaints like ‘microaggressions’ are silencing techniques, which are made all the more ironic in the context of debate tournaments. Nor is that the only irony Fishback notices. “The irony of the NSDA’s obsession with “safety” is that it actually fuels an atmosphere of fear among students,” he writes, and that is INTENTIONAL. The enforcers of the Left want to intimidate people out of the public square, and institutions like the NSDA are acquiescing when they should be objecting. — Ed]