Universitas Pelita Harapan ranked higher than the eventual novice champion of the 2013 Indonesian Varsities English Debate but failed to break into the knockouts of that category due to errors in the tab room. Members of the adjudication core have apologized for this mistake, which is impossible to correct a week after the competition. Read the letter here.
In the written apology, the A-core said novice officers and tabmasters gave UPH different codes. This discrepancy failed to receive notice from the chief adjudicator and her deputies because the tab room was "hectic" before breaking announcement and they "had no time to double and triple-check" the novice break list, which had no sign of the UPH team. This mess-up only became known after the tournament, leaving no room for correction. The IVED 2013 A-core consisted of Kirana Kania (ITB), Boby Andika (UI), Cindy Fransisca (Atma Jaya) and Edward Sutanto (Undip) who all have ample tournament experience. They considered the miss as a "tragedy".
UPH debaters used the code PHASED, the name of their club, in IVED 2013 and registered themselves as novice. They should have broken third in the novice category, higher than the two teams that debated in the final -- eventual winner Binus University B and runner-up Institut Teknologi Bandung A who broke fourth and third respectively. UPH has never broken in any IVED category before and would have set a school milestone had the tabulation gone properly. Indeed, nobody could predict where UPH would have ended if they had the opportunity to break. Still, any tournament break list should be accurate and deserves double-checking, regardless of circumstance, especially in a prestigious one like IVED.
Accuracy of break teams is always necessary and should be prioritized first over any circumstances because that is the crystallization of teams performance during the preliminaries rounds. I like the model that UADC and ABP have, where after break night party, Council must ratified the break list first. Does if there is a cheating, misconduct, or anything that can make one team or one adjudicator become not eligible to break into elimination series. This system will also prevent this kind of tragedy to happen again in the feature because, situation call or if just there is a wrong input of VP (trust me, this is POSSIBLE to happen) in the feature, we can mitigate the damage before elimination series happen.
ReplyDeleteHow it will happen?
Teams Tabulation should be release directly after preliminaries rounds over either being displayed or distribute a hard copy of teams tabulation to all participants directly after break announcement or before elimination series start.
Within this method IF a misconduct happen, teams can appeals directly to the A Team and ask for clarification also revision when it is necessary.
If I'm not mistaken this appeals process (in UADC) happen in council meeting directly before elimination series, but as not all of us love to attend council meeting, revision can be done without council IF it is only a revision that will create non-substantial-change(s) (i.e. PHASED case, because you will only change the order of teams rank but not changes VP or veto one team eligibility to break in either categories (Main or Novice). I personally believe Council consent is necessary when we talk about substantial changes.
I truly believe this is the best method we can use to prevent such a tragedy to happen again in the feature.