This is the second in a series of articles about the history of plans in policy debate. The first article explained the early history of plans, covering the 1910s to the 1960s. This article discusses the era beginning in the late 1960s and ending in the mid-1980s.

Policy debate changed dramatically in the late 1960s and 1970s. Kass Kovalcheck, the Director of Forensics at Vanderbilt University, summarized these seismic changes in a “debate in the 1970s” retrospective published in 1979:  

Affirmative plans have played a role in policy debate since its inception, but that role has been perennially controversial. Freeley and Steinberg’s textbook defines “plan” as “the affirmative’s method of solving the problem claimed in the justification as needs or harm. It must produce the advantages claimed by the affirmative.” While this seems straightforward, disputes about plans and their function have roiled debaters and judges for more than a century. As debate’s broader argumentation norms have changed, so too have disputes about plans.

In this series, I will attempt to summarize the historical development of plans in policy debate. My goal is to provide additional context for contemporary disputes in order to improve debaters’ and judges’ understandings of these deeply-rooted disagreements. This will hopefully improve the quality of future debates over these ongoing (and likely never-ending) disagreements. Part one covers the early history of policy debate — from the beginning of the twentieth century through the 1960s.