In New Jersey: The Best and the Glibbest

By KURT ANDERSEN

David Kidd is dressed in a shirt that David Kidd is dressed in a shirt that may once have been tucked in. His grimy university necktie ends a palm's width above his beltless pants. The trousers are a baggy rumple. This is a collegiate champion, a star?

Kidd is, in fact, the man to beat at this year's Princeton off-topic debate tournament; a month before, he won the sport's most prestigious championship in Toronto. For his fourth-round match, Kidd must disprove the proposition: "If you have to ask, you'll never know."

He stands, grinning lopsidedly, the whiff of mischief strong. Straightaway, he needles his too earnest competitor from Rhode Island College (who had, after all, just called Kidd an "obnoxious fool"). "Yes, I saw last night," Kidd says, "the hideous goings-on between my honorable opponent and the lady he mentioned in his opening arguments. Is it any wonder that he would have us accept an argument that leads only to suicidal hopelessness?" The R.I.C. man, still jaunty, hums a bar of Feelings. The judge shouts, "You're losing it, Kidd!" Catcalls are tossed out promiscuously ("Lies! Lies!"), and as Kidd's peroration snaps to a finish in the snug Princeton classroom, hands bang approvingly on desks. Standard procedure in an important college debate tournament? A gathering of the best and the glibbest from 20 colleges?

This is off-topic debate. Conventional scholastic debating in the U S. has been on-topic, an achingly serious match that is less an extracurricular pastime than a kind of secular self-mortification. On-topic debaters all over the country argue a single consequential issue for a year. Off-topic debaters, who suddenly outnumber the on-topic traditionalists on most Northeast campuses, flit from one ephemeral subject to another every hour or so, allowing themselves only ten minutes to muster each case. Success at on-topic demands fetishistic research, note cards by the hundred gross and the rhetorical felicity of an armored truck. Off-topic debate, by contrast, is meant to be a cross between Groucho Marx and Daniel Webster. It rewards insult, parry and bluster. The judges' instructions for the Princeton tournament, for instance, emphasize that "witty (and only witty) heckling is encouraged."

The term off-topic may have been coined by a condescending purist, but now the apostate sect, like up-and-coming Fauvists, revels in the name. Bill Smith, a natty, placid Harvard freshman and Kidd's teammate, suggests a continuing enmity between the offs and the ons. "Off-topic debaters," he explains, "tend to despise on-topic, because most of us were on-topic in high school. I was, for a year and a half. It's very, very intense." Burned out at 18, they seek refuge in the unruly rumble of off-topic. "Sometimes," says Sanford Cohen, an off-topic Columbia junior, "it's pure theater."

Swirling histrionics arise from the most sober-sounding topics, like the one argued in the fifth round: "Armed neutrality is ineffectual at best." Off-the-cuff military analyses? No, Swarthmore's Grant Oliphant and Chris DeMoulin want to argue pop psychology. Speaking first, Oliphant launches an elaborate attack on stoicism, celibacy, alienation and the jut-jawed manner of one of his tournament hosts. Oliphant's rhetorical ripostes ("Will we sentence ourselves to joyless purgatory?") and practiced voice glow with persuasive charm.

But he does not give a particular hoot about the subject. The object is to dazzle with language. "The art of speaking well is being lost," says Oliphant sincerely. "We are preserving that art." To Bob Gilbert, of Princeton, authentic passion is a tactical blunder. "All my worst rounds," he says, "come when I really believe what I'm saying. You get emotional, irrational." "You need arrogance," adds Kidd, a visiting New Zealander known for his sly bluntness. "You've got to be cocky to throw all this b.s. around." One veteran of the circuit admits that the verbal showboating can engender a vague mistrust of fellow debaters offstage, at parties and in dorm rooms.

The debates tend to sound like audi tions for a road company of 7776. Arguments are nearly always flotsam-packed and comically eclectic, skittering from Burger King to Rousseau, from Bruce Springsteen to the Sudetenland. Says Gilbert: "You can't really prepare, so everything becomes important: something your mother once said, a tidbit from sociology class."

The 52 teams have been winnowed to four for the semifinals, and Oliphant derides his Yale opponents' argument that drug abuse proves society's failure to adapt to change. "We are still waiting for their clear evidence of social breakdown," he says, "and all we get is 'drugs.' " "I wish we would get drugs," chirps an audience member. There is laughter and desk bashing. Yale's Brian Peterson tries anecdote. "I can't adapt to Reagan," he says, "I can't adapt to the fact that my federal scholarship money is gone and..."

"Welfare parasite!" comes the cry from somewhere, and again laughter splatters the debate. The gibes are mostly among friends. "What I truly value about the circuit," says Smith, "is meeting the different people." A quarter of the competitors are women (although only one will finish near the top here). Are there romantic gambols? "What?" asks an incredulous Peter Shearer of Princeton. "You think I just do this for the logic?"

The Princeton debate panel president decided against wearing "either a toga or a tux to the finals." This last round is in grave Nassau Hall, where, the hosts claim, Princeton Students James Madison and Aaron Burr held forth, off-topic, 211 years ago. The Princetonians want the debaters to heed the chamber's cavernous propriety. "To waste this room on worn-out double-entendres would be sacrilege," says Bob West, '81, back for the tournament. Indeed, the puncturing blasphemies are scarce during the final round. (Only one wispy student, speaking from the floor and pointing to the room's portraits, gets excessive. "Look at George II--he's a fruitcake.")

Oliphant and DeMoulin win, decisively, over Kidd and Smith. "Awesome!' cries DeMoulin afterward, his trophy in hand. "I am psyched." JJ. Gertler, a formidable Amherst also-ran, is chatting "Don't you want to be in politics, J.J.?" friend asks. "Oh, my gracious, I hope not," he says. "We hope not too," chimes a passing victor, and Gertler, only momentarily speechless, manages a game smile.

--By Kurt Andersen

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