I noted a few weeks ago that I had some “remainders” left to share from my research about plans in policy debate. One was the 1999 Rostrum article by Kenneth Grodd that bemoaned the decline of plan writing. Another is a 1991 conference paper by John Morello that made many of the same arguments; it is the subject of this post.

Morello’s paper is a contemporaneous reaction to the changes in plan writing that I documented in my series (especially part four, about the rise of topical and plan-inclusive counterplans). Seeing the dramatic reduction in plan size and specificity that took place in the 1980s, Morello argued that this was important proof that NDT-style policy debate had abandoned its vital function as a training ground for civic argumentation. “When advocates are excused from the duty to defend the practicality of the proposals they advance,” he argued, “they are learning an argumentative lesson which has little applicability beyond the competitive world.”

This is the sixth and final article in a series about the history of plans in policy debate. The first article explained the early history of plans, covering the 1910s to the 1960s. The second article discussed the era beginning in the late 1960s and ending in the mid-1980s. The third article covered one of the significant developments in the late-1970s and 1980s: extra-topicality. The fourth article documented the other major development of the 1980s and early 1990s: the topical, plan-inclusive counterplan, which shaped debate through the 2000s. The fifth article discussed the rise of “normal means” PICs and process counterplans during the 2000s and 2010s and documented the plan writing adjustments made in response to them. This article covers the current era of debate, including a discussion of planicality and the emergent “hypothesis planning” approach to plan writing and counterplan competition.

In his 1979 summary of the hypothesis testing paradigm, David Zarefsky wrote the following about plans:

1. The wording of the proposition receives increased importance; the specifics of the plan to implement the resolution are of less importance. For the terms of this paradigm, nothing is being adopted, so the mechanics of the plan are of relatively trivial significance. The function of a plan is to illustrate the principles embodied in the proposition, thereby focusing the argument upon those principles. But all debate about the plan itself is conditional, or hypothetical, in nature. Consequently, it may not always be necessary to present a plan—the principles of the proposition may be self-evident. If a plan is presented, it need not have the specificity of a piece of legislation, since it is not being submitted for adoption. Should some difficulty be discovered in one of the plan’s peripheral features, the plan could be amended, so long as the amended version still embodied the principles implicit in the proposition.

By contrast, the wording of the proposition is of central importance, since the proposition is the hypothesis being put to the test. Any different statement of a proposition assumes the character of an alternate hypothesis. In order for proposition x to withstand the challenge that alternate hypothesis y could account equally well for the phenomena being discussed, a specific defense must be made for proposition x—not just for “a change” or even for a direction in which change should proceed. Hence the genre of “justification” arguments is of special significance. For example, the proposition that the federal government should establish, finance, and administer programs to control air and water pollution fails if reason cannot be given for each of the three indicated actions, for action by the federal government, and for controls over both air and water pollution. To do less might call for an alternate proposition, but not the specific one at hand (Zarefsky 1972). Or, as Trapp summarizes, the key question for the judge is, “Does the affirmative case provide sufficient reason to affirm or justify all of the terms of the resolution?” (Trapp 1976).

In 2021, no high school or college national circuit policy debate judge would self-identify as a “hypo-tester:” no contemporary judge knowingly adopts the hypothesis testing paradigm when evaluating debates, and very few are probably even aware of its existence. But while hypothesis testing as a paradigm has completely fallen out of favor, hypothesis testing’s influence on 2010s and early 2020s debate is remarkable — and almost universally unnoticed.