Resolved: In United States public K-12 schools, the probable cause standard ought to apply to searches of students.

Ok, sure. Here's an elaborate answer:

First, you have to understand that you're opponent (the Pro Side), will never have direct evidence of a decrease in racism. He might say Zero Tolerance polices are decreased, but this is NOT unique to the Pro world. In almost all situations, the opposing team will just present evidence of how racist searches are now, and use some anecdotal evidence of somebody saying that Probable Cause is more objective, and evidence based, and as such would be less racist.

So how do we respond? In order to better present this to a judge (especially a lay judge), you should make it clear that there is no evidence of Probable Cause being implemented in schools currently (remember, it is impossible to bring up this evidence because no school uses probable cause right now). As such, the best way to judge whether Probable Cause will decrease racism is to look at where Probable Cause is being implemented today.

Probable Cause, currently, is being implemented by Law Enforcement Officers int he Criminal Justice System. And we see that there is CLEARLY racism going on. It should be very easy to find statistics for this. Search for how racially biased searches are with the police. Trust me, you'll find tons of evidence indicating racism with how police currently search people, and they use Probable Cause as their standard.

So, we can conclude that the only place where Probable Cause is being implemented, which is by police officers, is not less racist. It's actually VERY racist!

As such, you should conclude by saying something along the lines of:

"At the point at which my opponents cannot quantify any racial decrease besides the anecdotal evidence of more objectivity, but we CAN quantify the HIGH levels of racism that continues to exist under the Probable Cause Standard, our opponent's have no solvency. They can NOT prove to you that racism is actually going to decrease. And from our evidence, we see that it might actually worsen."

Again, it's up to your discretion what you want to end with. I just think the above quote gives a generally good guideline.

Please don't share my response with anyone else on Reddit! Only your partner and your team members please!

Hope I helped =)

/r/Debate Thread Parent