Extra team advancing brings about headaches for League, regional sites
Bobby Hawthorne
Academics Director
The concept seemed simple enough. The best second place team in each region would be allowed to advance beyond district. But somehow, our simple proposal went Byzantine.
Caller: "Well, we were told at district that second place teams are advanc-ing."
Me: "Only if your team compiles the best second place score in your region."
Caller: "What the heck does that mean?"
Me: "Let me get back with you on that."
Frankly, with all the unplanned and unanticipated twists and unintended consequences that followed the two weeks of district competition, I caught myself creating policy on the fly.
Caller: "We had a tie for first place calculator applications team. Is the third place team eligible for the wild card?"
Me: "No."
Caller: "Our team is the wild card but we can’t attend region. Should we contact the second place wild card team?"
Me: "No."
Caller: "Are you sure you want to extend the wild card past its ‘pilot’ status?"
Me: "No."
It’s likely that this spring’s turbulence is the normal consequence of expanding the pilot statewide, and that the wild card next week will launch and land flawlessly. We’ll monitor it closely. It strained the sensibility and patience of many at a time of year of neither was in great abundance.
Fit to be tied...
On a related topic: the situation with ties -- individual and team -- is out of control. One district advanced six students in the individual competition to region. Two students placed first and second respectively. The other four tied for third. As a result, regions are being swamped with qualifiers.
Philosophically, we want more increased district and post-district representation. Next year, we’ll allow all four members of the winning team to advance. But regions are being strained to the limits. This summer, I will propose to the Legislative Council’s Academic Com-mittee that tiebreakers be implemented in all applicable contests. If ties exist after the tiebreaker round, then all involved in the tie may advance. But it has become a great burden for some regions to secure 10 or 12 class-rooms that seat 50-plus students.
Of course, any proposal would have to go through the normal channels: academic committee to the Legisla-tive Council to the Texas Education Commissioner, and the earliest a change might be made is August, 2004. I’ll keep you posted.
TAKS account
You might have heard: TAKS tests are scheduled during the week of the 2003 Academic State Meet. Specifically:
Grade 11 Math -- April 29.
Grade 10 Math -- April 30
Grade 9 Math and Grades 10 & 11 Social Studies -- May 1
Grades 10 & 11 Science -- May 2
We alerted the powers that be about this months ago and were told that schools would be free to opt out of those dates to avoid conflicts, as they had in the past. However, a TEA official told me, "test dates may not be changed to accommodate extracurricular activities." For now, we’re sitting tight and hoping the matter will be resolved to our satisfaction.
Hard choices
I remember well the old days when the UIL was roundly criticized as heartless, arbitrary and worse. Those were the days of stringent transfer rules and summer camp regulations, when academic students were forbidden to enroll in a concurrent college English course for fear that they might gain an advantage over other ready writing contestants.
Today, the League is more teddy bear than traffic cop. The most severe restriction is the state’s no-pass, no-play law, which the UIL interprets and enforces though it isn’t a League rule. Most of the really hard calls come on the day of the meet, when we’re forced to strictly follow the C&CR and contest plans, regardless what our hearts beg us to do.
For example, a teacher asked recently if her ready writer who broke her hand the week before district, might dictate her essay to an impartial second person. We refused. Given that essays are graded not only on content but on grammar, spelling and even penmanship, we believed that allowing her to dictate her essay constituted an unfair advantage over the other competitors. We granted approval for the student to use a laptop computer instead. I have no idea whether the young lady accepted our offer or not.
Last spring, we grappled with an even more heart-breaking case. The day before the regional meet, the father of two contestants was killed in an automobile accident. Of course, the students missed the meet, and I was, days before the State Meet, implored to allow the students to advance to the State Meet, though they hadn’t competed at region.
"Surely, these students have suffered enough," they reasoned.
No doubt, they had. But I denied the request. Students must compete when and where other students compete, and they must advance in accordance to the requirements stated in the C&CR. To allow otherwise would invite chaos. An auto accident this time. A college scholarship interview the next. Traffic snarls. The prom. A bad hair morning. Holding the line may seem heartless, arbitrary, or worse, but it’s essential in conducting a comprehensive and coherent program.
Murray bows out
Of all the people with whom I’ve worked during my almost quarter of a century at the League, only two have been genuinely larger than life: Bailey Marshall and Lynn Murray. Lynn is drama education in Texas, the Chairman Mao of scholastic theatre, and I mean that fondly. Mr. Murray has cultivated a personality cult like none other I’ve encountered here. The void he leaves is unimaginable, incalculable. I feel great sympathy for his successor, who will spend a year or so hearing how he or she is despoiling everything Mr. Murray built and stood for. I received an e-mail last year from a young director, who compared Lynn Murray moving among the throng of teachers and directors attending the TETA conven-tion to Moses parting the Red Sea. I don’t think he meant to be hyperbolic.
Lynn joined the League in 1966-67 as acting one-act play director while then director Roy Brown attended graduate school at SMU. He wrote his first Leaguer column in October, 1966, and has been re-writing it since. I think it dealt with the three-judge panel. In September, 1970, Brown entered private business, and Lynn returned to the League as full-time director with his wife, Pat, and his four young children -- Robin, Byron, Amy and Loren. He had a crew cut and wore black turtle-shell glasses like Buddy Holly. He didn’t have a goatee.
Under his guidance, the League’s one-act play pro-gram has grown into the largest of its type in the world. Texas’ secondary school theatre program is universally recognized as the best in the U.S., thanks in large part because of the UIL one-act play program in general, and Mr. Murray’s brutal supervision in particular. If you’ve never witnessed Lynn lining up the one-act play directors for a photograph during the awards ceremony at the State Meet, you’ve missed an exhibition of power conquering ego. If Lynn says, "Stand here and flap your arms like a chicken," they stand there and flap their arms.
They do this not so much that they fear Lynn, but because they respect him. Lynn is uncompromising in his defense of excellence. Under Lynn’s guidance, almost 100 percent of the schools participate in one act play. When he joined the League in 1970, barely two thirds of the schools participated.
He’s mellowed quite a bit since I met him 25 years ago. Though his office in the League’s old headquarters on Wichita was 30 feet down the hall from mine, I could hear him barking directions to his secretary and the kids working in the drama loan library or setting straight some director who sought to alter a play without the publisher’s permission. The combination of his physi-cal stature and his booming voice could intimidate a longshoreman.
Certainly, Lynn and I knocked heads a few time, and more than once he left my office or I his with steam hissing. Lynn is a traditionalist. He writes his Leaguer column by hand. He prefers paper and phone calls. I prefer pixels. He dislikes the UIL point schedule, and he’d just as soon we still conduct nine student activities conferences each fall.
But despite our contrasting styles, personalities and proclivities, working with Lynn has been a hoot. For all his sound and fury, he’s one of the kindest, most consid-erate, most compassionate men I’ve known. If I were stuck in the middle of West Texas at 4 in the morning with nothing but a quarter and a dime, I’d call Lynn. No matter what the situation, you can count on Lynn to help.
He’s helped me in countless ways, professional and personal, served as the elder statesman and adviser for all of us in the academic department, and takes into retirement with him as much knowledge about the League -- its history, culture and traditions, the genesis of its rules and procedures, and the personalities who shaped it -- as anyone alive.
He has devoted his professional life to educational theatre through his work for the League and the Texas Educational Theatre Association. He has enriched the lives of untold thousands of students and teachers across the state, and he’s been for all of us -- especially those who travel with him each fall to the student activities conferences -- a great friend, colleague and mentor. Dr. Brooks’ seminar will not be the same without him.
So again, Mr. Murray: Thank you. God’s Speed. Good Show.