Background / Top-Level stuff

tl;dr My pronouns are he/him. Do whatever you want. I’ll probably be down with it. More information found below. For people who want some experience, here’s the lowdown for me: four years HS LD for Gig Harbor. I was in a lot of bid rounds my senior year but I never won any. I was pretty successful on my local circuit. I was assistant coach at Gig Harbor for a year. We qualled a debater to the TOC. I spent three years competing in NPTE/NPDA Parli for Western Washington University debating on the national circuit where I was pretty successful. I also spent a year doing NDT/CEDA policy where I qualified to the NDT during my first (and only) year.

The Big Picture

Do whatever you want. I know pretty much every judge who wants to be preffed high says that, but that’s probably because every judge thinks they’re super chill and down for anything, and I'm not any different. I can’t tell you with absolute certainty if I’ll vote on your arguments when you read them because I think the idea of a syncretic judging philosophy that’s internally coherent is nonsensical. We all have biases or understandings of the way that certain arguments work, so instead of trying to tell you something like “I’m a flex judge” or “I’m a policy judge” or “I’m a clash of civs judge” or another equally meaningless turn of phrase, I’ll just tell you about how I think debate is/should work and you can decide whether or not you want me in the back of the room based on how much that conforms to your expectations/beliefs about the activity, or your strategic preferences. To clarify; almost everything in my philosophy is subject to change based on the stuff that you do/say in your rounds (i might think that presumption flips neg, but if you can explain to me why it flips aff i'll still vote on it), but I’ve found as a competitor that confronting arbitrary biases or argumentative tendencies in a judge philosophy tend to be helpful in navigating in-round conduct, so here’s the quick hits. Most of these won’t matter because these are defaults that can easily change every round based on the arguments that you tell me matter.

- I'm not paradigmatically opposed to speed, but I think online debate should usually a bit slower than IRL policy, so you might want to start at like 75% of your max speed and work your way up to like 85% to give me time to adjust. Slowing down for tags / repeating texts and interps is also good, especially if you're not flashing or emailing.

- Condo is good

- Competing interps is the best way to evaluate theory

- Kritiks are great, but I strongly prefer durable, aff-specific links ("you use the state" or "you are the usfg" are not super compelling to me)

- Theory for strategic purposes is fine. I don’t need to see proven abuse.

- I like it when the aff is topical, but it doesn't have to be for me to vote aff

- Perm is a test of competition, not an advocacy

- PICs probably aren’t cheating

- Spec is usually bad for debate (but that's never stopped me from reading it, so it shouldn't stop you either)

That’s not to say you can’t read arguments contrary to my beliefs but just know that it’ll be more of an uphill battle than it might be for other stuff. If you make arguments, I’ll vote on them as best I can. There are a few things that I paradigmatically believe in.

- Transphobia/ableism/racism/misogny is bad. Don’t do any of those or I’ll drop you.

- 2AR/2NR theory is a silly silly argument, and I will not evaluate it unless given a VERY compelling reason to (usually it has to do with one of the above things).

- I won’t dock you speaks for clarity but I will yell clear if you’re being unclear.

- Don’t use speed as a tool to exclude your opponents; we've all been the novice who gets six off read against them. If they ask you to slow down a little bit, please accommodate or your speaks will probably tank.

Other than that, go nuts.

Topic Debate / Policy stuff

I was never much of a policy-type debater in high school. Since I did LD, I would mostly defend whole res and read a big framework and like two cards that functioned as framework links to the topic. I’ve defended specific plan texts a lot more in my last two years of parli competition which have turned me into a big fan of more technical policy-oriented debate. The biggest place I think I depart from most judges is insofar as I have a pretty high threshold for try-or-die as a legitimate argument in the face of terminal defense absent winning some framing questions for why your impacts come first. In those sorts of situations, I’m willing to vote negative on presumption (but only if the argument is made). Since I haven’t really prepped any teams this last year, I’m not super up-to-date on the topic lit in high school policy or whatever the current LD topic is, so my threshold for link and uniqueness explanation is probably a little bit higher than the judges you see at every other tournament, but I’ll try to evaluate things fairly.

As far as negative strategy goes, I think counterplans are very strategically underutilized tool. I don’t necessarily think you need to be textually competitive or unconditional or whatever norms exist right now, and am very amenable to CP solves case + net benefit / disad strategy. I don’t get to see these arguments very often in NPDA/NPTE since there’s a very noticeable skew towards the K at the highest level in those circuits, so a good deployment of these sorts of arguments will probably net you high speaks because I like to see novel things.

The K

The K was my go-to negative strategy in high school, but I would mostly read stuff like Nietzsche, Derrida, or Heidegger, not stuff that’s super popular nowadays. As far as stuff I’ve been doing more recently in NPDA/NPTE, and later in NDT/CEDA, it’s mostly Fanon, Agamben, Marx, Black Marx, Semiocap, and D&G. I only have some passing familiarity with things like Baudrillard and Wilderson, but that shouldn’t stop you from reading those arguments in front of me if you want to. Just know that with the K more than with something like a topical policy aff you run the risk of me just being confused and voting on bad arguments your opponents make which misrepresent your position. Don’t assume that I know your authors or whatever -ologies you’re using to justify the framework of the K.

Since I’ve been out of the circuit for a minute, I’m not super up-to-date on the most popular trends in terms of arguments read, so slow down a bit when you read tags and try to maintain clarity when you’re reading super dense evidence about whatever undergirding philosophy your authors are talking about

As far as structural stuff goes, I think that a lot of debaters get by on really lazy link scenarios – I don’t love seeing stuff like “you use the state” on a biopolitics kritik and am usually willing to look other places on the flow if I can do so without intervening. On the same note, links of omission suck and you all can do better than that. Talk about why the aff is bad. Most affs are going to do or say something bad. It’s not that much to ask.

As far as the permutation goes, I default to the perm being a test of competition, and absent some specific framing argumentation, I don’t think that there is sticky offense that can be generated on the perm since it isn’t an advocacy.

On the K v K debate – I tend to believe in my heart of hearts that non-topical affs shouldn't get access to a perm. I think that you get a perm to hedge against counterplans that solve the aff plus other stuff that are not competitive on their own – things like Plan Plus or Alt Actor CPs. You’re constrained to the topic, and absent a permutation, the negative would always win by saying “Do the aff plus give everyone a puppy with a net benefit of cuteness”. If you elect to reject the topic, it doesn’t make sense to me to also give you access to a permutation since you could have read the negative strategy on the affirmative without the constraints of the topic. This is not to say I’ll drop you if you go for the perm in a K v K, or that I think you should not read a perm in a KvK debate (you should! the perm is a good argument!), but I’ll be sympathetic to arguments that say you don’t get access to one, and that's a bias that you should be aware of if you're going to be explicitly non-topical.

On a similar note, I’ve found that teams often do a poor job of explaining or generating competition between K affs and K alts and want to especially stress what I mentioned above about making clear and specific link scenarios between your alt and the affirmative in the K v K debate. Try not to make it messy.

Theory and Procedurals

Everybody’s favorite. I default to no RVIs, drop the debater, competing interps, and fairness and education mattering. I'can't recall ever hearing a super compelling argument for why fairness should be a terminal impact instead of just a side-constraint on education, but won't ignore you if you say fairness is the only terminal impact. These defaults usually don’t matter because debaters tend to make arguments that would either confirm or override these defaults. I also err heavily towards using the interp that I have flowed when deciding the round unless a text of the interp has been flashed/emailed/passed to me by the team who read it which has also been made available to the other team. If I wasn’t able to flow your interp, and your specific wording matters, then your opponent probably couldn’t either, and were at a competitive disadvantage as a result. Not much more to say here.

If you have any questions, feel free to fire away. You can message me on facebook or just ask me before the round starts. I'm an open book.

My name is Kaelyn and I did LD for 3 years in high school and have been judging and coaching for past 7 years. 

I will look at the round based first by the framework (value and criterion) that is set by the affirmative. The affirmative should be using this value and criterion as a way to prove that the resolution is true and support this with evidence. The negative must then either provide a counter framework to prove why the resolution is not true, or prove why the resolution is not true under the affirmative's framework. If the affirmative cannot prove the resolution to be true or the negative provides more persuasive evidence against the resolution then I will negate. I am open to other ways to weigh the round if both debaters agree on this during the round.

Other aspects to keep in mind:

I am basically going to be deciding who wins the round by looking at the key framework in the round (whichever is established as the most supported framework in the round) and looking at my flow to see which side has the most arguments on the flow that support that framework. 

I am in general looking to see the big picture at the end of the debate, I do not want to decide the round based on details of definitions or small semantics. I prefer have bigger impacts linked back to the framework. 

Delivery: I am fine with speed but like tags and important information to be read slower. I will say clear if I can't understand the speed. 

I do understand progressive debate arguments like topicality, theory, DAs, Ks.

I am open to vote for them if I feel it is warranted within the round. I do not like to see progressive arguments for no reason or to just be confusing. If it is going to be run I want it to be well explained and it is your job to tell me how this is going to function in the round and why I should vote for it. Similar to avoiding nitpicky issues, I expect to see a justification for theory to be run.

Overall, I am looking for clarity, politeness, and a debater to show me exactly how they win the round.

Judging paradigm up at https://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com/Kelly%2C+Chalen 

Currently judging mostly Student Congress and Public Forum because the numbers work better for our team. However, I still love LD, so I still pick up a ballot when tournaments need coverage. 

https://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com/McCormick%2C+Amy

I pretty much just follow my heart...

But... I`m sure both sides have some very compelling reasons for why I should decide in their favor. However, the most important factors are the WORDING of the resolution and the INTENTION of the resolution. The WORDING of the resolution is static and doesn`t leave much room for strategic interpretation. The INTENTION of the resolution can be freely explored by either side to their advantage. The only reasons that will be weighed for the decision will be those that are consistent with the WORDING of the resolution and it's INTENTION (... whatever that is.)