Idk. I was in a highschool debate club a bit over a decade ago, and I was very good at the public forum event. Like, regularly in the top 32 for both the NFL and CFL national tournaments good. There were other people at the top of that ladder with me that made very effective use of the “pound the table” strategy, and how well it worked often boiled down to judge variance. People act that way in debates because it absolutely works on some viewers
Funding goblins from elitist high society university decide that money is still more important than academic integrity. What a surprising development that nobody could have predicted