General Lee - and hating it

General Robert E. Lee was a prominent general during the American civil war. He, like many others during his generation, was forced to choose between the country that he loved - and was trained to protect and the beliefs of his family. Either way, he was considered a traitor.

My speech and debate coaches have been having some tension - and communication problems (yes, ironic). This has spilled into their general meetings - one person will say something and the other tries to explain it better. Students that work exclusively with one coach badmouth the other to some extent. But never has it reached the heights that it reached today.

Because we started a new quarter, our team had new people enrolled in our course, so today was supposed to be a very laid-back explanation of what speech and debate is and what we do. However, this was not to be the case.

Due to the large amounts of people who decided to join the class(es) for credits, our debate instructor decided to get a separate room- without telling anyone beforehand. This includes the other director who was as flabbergasted as the rest of the people there. When 12 of the expected 60+ students arrived, she still sailed out, commanding all who were in her class to follow along.

As someone who does both - and was planning on officially registering in the other class- I was quite confused. Why was she walking out of the meeting? What was going on?

After talking to the other coach and fixing up my appointments with him, I walked over to the room that my debate coach had claimed. She informed us that she would be meeting in this room from now on and if we wanted to get our A, we would need to show up each week in that room.

WTF.

After all the new people had left, she told the rest of the debaters that she left because it was too noisy and too inefficient in the other room for her to work sufficiently. She also said that she had suspicions that the other coach was trying to steal her students and that he wanted to kick her out because his best friend also applied for the job and failed to get it. She claimed that she does all the work and that she's in official trouble because of all the extra work that she's doing.

Now, I think that the majority of the stuff she's talking about is horse shit, that she's just sick and stressed (tenure review tends to do that to people), and there is a basic failure to communicate that has blowup out of proportion. But whether or not any of this stuff is true, she shouldn't be disclosing any of these suspicions to her students. That's unprofessional. Am I wrong for feeling awkward and confused? I really wish that this hadn't happened. Because I work with both coaches, I'm caught in the middle. I feel like I have to choose one side or the other - and like the general, I'm afraid there is no easy alternative.