Whispering In the Round

***The following does not apply to whispering to your partner during a two-man-team debate round in which you are competing. I realize there is a separate set of guidelines for that***

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time my friend, Yazmin, who's in my club, broke to Lincoln Douglas quarter-finals.

YAY!!!!

Then she broke to semi-finals.

DOUBLE YAY!!!!

Then, during semis, these annoying guys who weren't in our club started whispering and laughing really loud during the round.
This is sometimes used as a really underhanded dirty way to distract one of the speakers. We don't know if that was their intention or if they were just being rude. Either way, Yazmin was distracted and even stuttered a little bit during her rebuttal. Which was quite unlike her.
She didn't make it to finals. Yazmin, though, is one of those sweet and grateful people who felt honored to make it to semis and just smiled afters breaks and said, "Next time, for sure!"
Now, Yazmin's parents were head of tab that tournie, and there are some pros and cons to that. The pros are you get to know if they're powermatching, randomizing matches, reverse powermatching, going odd-even, or doing the first round/fourth second/fifth third/sixth thing I can't remember the name of and confuses everyone...which is probably why tab does it.
The cons include that after that tournie during the ballot party Yazmin's dad announced WHY she had lost.
It was a 3-2 decision. According to him, he spoke to last judge. They said they noticed how Yazmin got distracted during the rebuttals. This judge says if Yazmin couldn't handle the pressure she didn't deserve to win.

No, just no.

Now, my coach Carys explained that you can whisper and still not lose someone a round. If you're sitting in the back, and you lean over to the person sitting next to you and whisper and quick quip about the round, and not even the people next to you can hear, then you're fine. People do it all the time. I even would encourage discussing the round in-round. But if you're sitting towards the front whispering loudly and laughing obnoxiously to the point where the audience is paying attention to you and not the round, then you're doing it wrong.

In fact, if you're like me and it's physically impossible for you to whisper (I just can't do it, kay?) try texting one another back and forth. Then you can talk all you want. You can even use all caps to illustrate your point. You can lol and rofl 'till the cows come home. Or, if you're old school, pass notes. It's not rude, nobody notices, and if you're talking about the round it's even educational.

But I swear if something like that ever happens to one of my friends again someone's gonna lose their head.