If you are unable to come up with a better name for me, then you should just call me Andrew.

I debated for the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I have coached for Kansas State University and the University of Pittsburgh. I am currently a Visiting Lecturer in Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies at Bates College. My undergraduate studies were in Philosophy and Political Science. My graduate work has been in Communication (MA) and Rhetorical Studies (PhD).

I am most familiar with critical and performative approaches to policy debate. I have no problem voting on framework, topicality, etc. in clash debates. I am comparatively less skilled at adjudicating traditional policy debates.

In a bygone era of debate (c. 2013-2017), I wrote a judging paradigm that you can find at the bottom of this page. In retrospect, it appears quaint and mildly amusing. In all likelihood, it is not all that helpful any longer. Below, I have provided an update for your consideration. Oddly, this update is less specific but perhaps more useful for determining whether you would like to have me adjudicate your debates.

Generally speaking, I hold the following presuppositions about debate:

(1) policy debate is a mode of inquiry that uses competition to motivate participants to develop divergent lines of argument in their pursuit of knowledge that is related to a predetermined resolution

(2) the intellectual, social, and civic benefits of policy debate accrue primarily through sustained engagement with dynamic points of clash that emerge from the articulation of conflicting propositions and/or performances

(3) the outcome of any individual debate only reflects the extent to which a judge can justify the claim that the winning team was able to establish the persuasiveness of their arguments relative to those of their opponents; such decisions do not determine whether any particular argument reflects the truth of some matter

(4) the value of a proposition and/or performance is not intrinsic to untested arguments any more than it is tied to the outcome of a particular debate; it, instead, emerges as a consequence of its iterative development and refinement through practices of research, revision, re-articulation, and revaluation

(5) your value as a person and your contributions to this community are not determined or measured by your ratio of win to losses; much less does either of those things have anything to do with the way that a judge casts their ballot

As such, I tend to judge debates with preference for the following:

The affirmative should provide and defend a proposition and/or performance in support of the resolution. I would prefer not to judge debates that have nothing to do with the topic.

The negative should provide and defend compelling reasons to reject the proposition and/or performance advanced by the affirmative. I would prefer not to judge debates where negative strategy does not involve direct engagement with the affirmative.

Competition between affirmative and negative arguments should develop by way of clearly identifiable points of clash. I would prefer not to judge debates where the primary inclination is to avoid or eliminate clash.

Participants in the debate are responsible for identifying the points of clash that they would like me to evaluate. I would prefer not to judge debates where clash is assumed, embedded, implicit, unstated, or otherwise unclear.

The quality of a debate is largely correlated with the ability of its participants to identify and address the most significant points of clash by developing reasonable lines of inference in response. I would prefer not to judge debates where it is unnecessarily burdensome to track the ways that the participants determine and interact with divergent lines of argument.

The use of evidence to substantiate a claim or resolve a point of clash is often the best way to qualify the persuasiveness of arguments relative to those of an opponent; as a bonus, establishing reasons why argument evaluation should be guided by appeals to supplemental experiences, perspectives, expertise, and/or external standards of methodological rigor is pretty neat too. I would prefer not to judge debates where little-to-no value is placed in the use of evidence to substantiate arguments.

While I’m at it, here is some thinly veiled advice in a couple of ineloquently formed conditional statements:

If you would like to have me read the evidence that you have introduced in the debate, the likelihood of that happening increases dramatically if you include me in the email chain (aallsupgmail.com).

If you include me in the email chain with the presumption that I will read the evidence that you introduce in the debate, you should also know that the chances of me reading said evidence decreases dramatically when you include an unreasonable number of cards that end up not being read in your speech.

If you make me stare into the abyss (e.g., a “card doc” including cards that were not referenced by name in the rebuttals), I will entertain the possibility of letting the abyss star back at you (e.g., my blank stare when you ask how I evaluated x piece of evidence; I probably didn’t read it).

If you are worried that you are speaking too fast or that your words are too unclear for me to understand, you’re probably right. If you never question whether you are speaking too fast or whether your words are unclear, you should probably give questioning it a try.

If you consciously and willfully use discriminatory, prejudicial, and/or bigoted language to characterize, substantiate, or advance an argument (including, but not limited to, those pertaining to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, disability, class, income, language, heredity, etc.), you can expect to lose the debate and receive a 0 for speaker points.

If you attempt to leverage the competitive nature of this activity to try to justify some right to express and/or advance arguments that create to a hostile or otherwise discriminatory environment for members of a protected class, you can expect to lose the debate and receive a 0 for speaker points.

If your strategy relies on the expectation that you ought to be evaluated favorably for cruelty, humiliation, threats, or otherwise demeaning remarks that you’ve directed toward other debaters, judges, coaches, directors, etc., you shouldn’t expect me to recount much from the debate because I probably stopped listening and found a better use for my time.

Since nobody asked, here is a long-winded series of remarks on flowing, adjudicating, and RFD’s.

I will do my best to fairly adjudicate debates based on the arguments that were presented in the round. I do so, primarily, by referencing the record of those arguments as they appear on my flows. I have been flowing debates since I started debating in 2004. I’ve been using flows to reconstruct and evaluate debates since I started judging in 2013. I still occasionally miss arguments that my fellow judges happen to catch on their flows. Sometimes arguments which seem unclear on my flows end up appearing completely transparent on those of others. There have been many times where I did not record the same connections between arguments that those presenting them believe themselves to have expressed in the debate. I imagine that it has often been the case I may have decided a debate differently were I given a full transcript and the leisure to evaluate every detail, so as to avoid the possibility of having missed or misinterpreted something. Nevertheless, a flow is not a transcript and even the sometimes-indefinite delay in decision times when Harris is assigned to judge a debate is not sufficient to consider every detail of a given debate.

This is all to say that you should bear in mind that I perceive your arguments by both listening to your speech and recording them in writing; the latter serving as the primary basis upon which I will reconstruct arguments in the debate and determine who has won. You should be constructing and presenting your arguments in a way that is fitted to the various processes that are typically involved in judging this format of debate: listening, writing, reconstructing, and evaluating. For those of us who flow debates, we are listening to a constant stream of new information while simultaneously attempting to efficiently record, in writing, what we can recall from our immediate and longer-term memory of the debate. In that same process, we are trying to manage a number of considerations: how different claims relate to each other, the quality of evidence and the ways it is being applied to the debate, we consider lines of inference as they related to those uses of evidence while also comparing them with those that were presented in other speeches, we look for strategic options and anticipate the consequences of those choices relative to others, and so on. The threshold between listening and writing involves a significant degree of information processing that can easily go awry when claims are unclear, speeches are disorganized, connections between claims are unstated, evidence is missing or unhelpful, etc.

This is all to say that, for me, the best thing a debater can do to maximize the likelihood of success is to observe the following maxim: debate in such a manner that you are directing how I should be navigating the threshold between the information that you have presented orally and the record that I am constructing on my flow in writing. In all the time that I have been judging debates, the teams that have been most successful are those who find ways to make these processes work for them rather than against them. This means resisting the temptation to convince yourself that you will win so long as you simply state “x, y, and z.” In addition, you should consider how to communicate “x, y, and z” in such a way that they not only find expression on the flow but, also, that I know what to do with those claims/arguments and how they affect the other elements of the debate. There is no formula to ensure that, in each instance, you will resolve every contingency that arises at this threshold between listening and writing, but there are basic practices that you can do to help me manage it in potentially favorable ways.

(1) The most important practice is to ensure that your strategic choices (including any conditional sub-strategies; e.g., “if we lose this argument, you can still vote for us because…”) are absolutely clear, preferably from the start of a speech and/or the top of a flow. If your strategic choices only become transparent when I’m being post-rounded, that’s obviously a problem. Thankfully, it is easily fixable.

(2) Next, identifying and defining the key points of disagreement or clash can establish the foundation for my decision-making. I would rather take directions from you when it comes to the key issues that require resolution in order to render a judgment about the debate. This is an extraordinarily underused technique, yet it tends to reap significant results when done well. There should be debate over the issues that I must ultimately resolve, the sequence with which they should be resolved, and how I should go about resolving them.

(3) You should be making use of clear comparisons between arguments throughout the debate. Speeches in a debate should involve, well, debate. If I’m comparing one monologue against another monologue—each of which contains some self-serving and otherwise incommensurable criteria for evaluation—my decision will likely be no more informed than a choice that is based on the flipping of a coin.

(4) Building on this discussion of comparison, you should be developing evaluative criteria to help me determine the way that I should adjudicate those comparisons. Refutation is not just about saying something that is different or opposite than your opponent but give clear standards for how to evaluate divergent perspectives, inferences, items of evidence, etc.

(5) Regarding evidence, I will typically only scrutinize or compare evidence when explicitly directed to do so in accordance with some definitive question about it that needs to be resolved. I won’t use your end-of-round “card doc” to reconstruct the debate. If you would like me to review pieces of evidence from the debate, there needs to be a clear reason for doing so. When I review it, what am I likely to find? Why is it significant? How should I use that information? What does it mean for the debate? Keep in mind, I’m not evaluating the arguments being made in the evidence that you provide. I’m evaluating the arguments that you are advancing, often with the utilization of evidence as support for them.

Alright, some final notes on RFD’s. In the event that you believe that I have incorrectly decided a debate, you’re always welcome register your disagreement in person or in writing. I only ask that you engage those discussions with the understanding that my decision reflects the best justifications that I could surmise within the decision time and based on the information on my flow (and, to a lesser extent, what I can reliably recall from memory). We may not see eye-to-eye on a decision, but helping me see the debate from your perspective may have beneficial effects that extend beyond the specific debate in question. Nevertheless, it’s worth recognizing from the outset that I will not change a decision based on a post-round conversation. I will, however, listen intently to your perspective with the goal of learning from it. If necessary, I will offer additional details about my decision with the hope that I can provide further clarity as to the reasons for my decision. In these conversations, however, my inclination will be to diffuse conflict because I don’t believe that RFD’s and post-round commentary ought to be an extension of the debate (let alone its own separate debate). Instead, I believe that they should be reciprocal, dialogical, and ultimately pedagogical opportunities to reflect on the debate while simultaneously participating in an ongoing and iterative effort to determine the value (or lack thereof) of divergent and conflicting propositions and/or performances as they are shaped over the course of a debating season.

When debaters utilize post-round conversations to help others learn more about their arguments and to help those involved in the debate to understand the ways that they think their arguments ought be evaluated, I often find myself more likely to perceive and consider argumentative subtleties and nuances that I didn’t notice initially when evaluating debates in the future. Generally speaking, I am unlikely to engage as openly or be receptive to post-round commentary that is demeaning or otherwise aimed at diminishing me or anyone else involved in the debate. Such conduct is not necessary to get me to admit to my own ignorance or to compel me to confirm that I may have made a mistake. I am quite willing to do so upon recognizing the error of my ways. If our differences in perspective are impossible to reconcile through constructive dialogue, in the absence of intimidation and bullying behavior, then the best remedy is to strike me in your judging preferences. Ultimately, none among us is immune to charges of ignorance and error; everyone involved debate (myself included) still has much to learn about whatever issues happen to be at stake in a given dispute. If we can’t find ways to resolve those issues without cruelty, humiliation, threats, and the like, then I’m not convinced that we can sincerely champion the virtues of dialogue, deliberation, and debate that supposedly drive our commitment to engage our disagreements in this activity.

That all being said, I realize that wins and losses do often function as a kind of social currency in debate. I also realize that there is no way to completely avoid using them, consciously or unconsciously, as a way to measure our own sense self-worth or to determine whether we are meaningfully contributing anything to this activity. I felt those pressures when I debated, at least. Mixing competition with education and advocacy is often a dangerous proposition. It can be downright destructive to self-esteem and the bonds of community and belonging. The optimistic promises of a platform for creativity, expression, and advocacy meets its limits when evaluation and judgement can have the effect of limiting opportunity and access (whether that involves the ability to participate in elimination rounds, denying enjoyment of the social currency that comes with it, etc.). I can’t claim to know how to resolve these effects and preserve the competitive structure of the activity. The best I can offer is to adjudicate debates transparently and to communicate the reasons for my decisions with honesty and care. My hope is that none of my decisions have the effect of diminishing your sense of self-worth or your value in the debate community. If my RFD has the effect on you, I encourage you to either tell me directly or ask a mutual friend or colleague to relay that sentiment to me. My preference is to, hopefully, find a way to make amends. Barring those (hopefully) exceptionally circumstances where there is a need to have difficult conversations about offensive language, objectionable lines of argument, or unacceptable conduct, my goal is to communicate both wins and losses in ways that demonstrate the respect that you deserve and the consideration that your arguments are owed.

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Below is my expired paradigm

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I. Biographical Information:

I am in the second year of a doctoral program in Communication and Rhetoric at the University of Pittsburgh. I helped coach at Kansas State University for two years while earning an MA. I debated for 5 years at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

II. The Big Picture

Evidence:

First, this is a competitive academic activity and I expect the evidence you introduce into the debate to meet a certain level of intellectual rigor. This does not mean that every piece of evidence needs to be from a peer-reviewed source (although it is often preferable) but it should contain a coherent argument (i.e. claim and warrant). Hint: one line cards rarely (read: never) meet this standard.

Second, quality always trumps quantity. The “strategic” decision to read a bunch of cards that either come from questionable sources or fail to make a coherent argument will never beat one well-warranted card. This shouldn’t be controversial yet somehow debate has conditioned otherwise intelligent people to think otherwise.

Third, question your opponent’s sources. This is a quick way to get favorable speaker points from me. Do your opponent a favor and tell them that their sources are unqualified. Do me a favor and explain why I should disregard certain pieces of evidence because they aren’t academically credible and unfit for this academic community. Bottom line: read unqualified/bad evidence at your own risk.

Paperless Information: Prep time stops when you pull the flash drive/send the email. If you are doing an email chain then you should include me in it (my email is aallsup[at]gmail.com).

Good Speaker Points 101:

1. Make an complete argument (claim, warrant, and impact).
2. Clarity: If I cant hear/understand your argument I will not flow/evaluate it
3. “Extinction” or “Nuclear War” is not a tag. Tags include claims AND warrants
4. Author name extensions are insufficient. Don’t do it. Make an argument and use the evidence to support it
5. Cross-X is a speech and it will factor heavily in speaker point distribution. I reward good questions and responses.
6. Get to the point: focus on the core issues of the debate

III. Argument Specific:

Topicality/Theory:

First, I am not the judge for you to stake the round on arbitrary interpretations. You need to be able to defend that your interpretation presents a useful norm that should be universalized within debate. That being said, I default to competing interpretations but have a decently low thresholds for critiques of topicality/theory when interpretations are wholly arbitrary.

Second, if you want to win a critique of topicality/theory you must prove that the exclusion of the affirmative is worse than the negatives ability to expect a fair, limited, or predictable debate.

Third, I tend to side with the idea that conditionality is a beneficial and educational tool in debate. The affirmative will have to win a decisive and tangible impact in order to get me to vote against conditionality. That being said, there is a point at which conditionality can be abused and that abuse trades off with good scholarship. I’m not the person to read nine conditional advocacies in front of. At a certain point there is an inverse relationship between number of advocacies and good arguments that demeans the purpose of engaging each other in this competitive academic forum.

Fourth, you can read your agent/actor counter plans and I will evaluate them fairly but I certainly will not be happy about it. My belief is that the negative should only be allowed to fiat the agent of the resolution. I don’t think competition based on the “certainty” of the plan is productive or interesting.

Fifth, my default is that most theory is a reason to reject the argument and not the team. If you think you can win a reason to reject the team then go for it. I guess we will find out what happens.

Counterplans: I’m not a fan of conditions/consultation counterplans. I think they should be both textually and functionally competitive. The negative should only be allowed to fiat the agent of the resolution. If you’re affirmative, don’t be afraid to go for theory. However, as mentioned before, I often find theory to be a reason to reject the argument not the team. As a former 2a I am not even in the ballpark when it comes to word pics/floating pics. Reading it as a critique solves your pedagogical net benefit. QED.

Disadvantages: Higher risk almost always beats a higher magnitude. You should always make disad turns the case arguments. You must provide some sort of impact calculation in order to have me interpret your strategy favorably.

Politics:

First, the story has to match. Please don’t make me listen to a scenario that doesn’t have matching parts. If the uniqueness and link evidence don’t assume the same politician/group of politicians then you lose.

Second, explain the implication of core defensive arguments. If Obama has no political capital or if the negative is missing a crucial internal link then you need to explain how that affects everything else they are saying.

Third, surprisingly I find myself enjoying politics debates more and more. Don’t hesitate to go for it when I’m judging. Just be smart about it – put your logical-analytic skills to work and make the debate worth listening to.

Critical Affirmatives and Framework:

First, I don’t think framework is a voting issue. Framework is a means by which I determine how to evaluate the round.

Second, topicality is absolutely essential to winning a framework debate when you’re negative.

Third, you need to prove that your interpretation can offer the possibility for the same education as the affirmative has provided to emerge. The best way to do this is to offer a topical version of the 1ac. Another way to do this is provide other topical examples that produce the same pedagogical effect as the 1ac.

Fourth, you also need to prove some competitive reason why the negative has been disadvantaged by the affirmative. More importantly, you need to prove why this violation of competitive equity impacts or implicates their education impacts.

Critiques:

First, the worst thing you can do is read a critique that you have little-to-no knowledge about or practice debating. Critiques are hard to win. I loved debating them. They’re all I debated. However, my experience has led me to conclude that I should have a high standard for those who wish to read critical arguments. It’s better for you (because you learn more about an absolutely fascinating literature base) and it’s better for me (because I don’t have to listen to bad scholarship).

Second, framework against the negative critique is rarely a winning strategy. Reading a bunch of cards is rarely a good strategy. Find the 2 or 3 crucial issues you need to win and win them with good arguments. For example, instead of telling the negative they need to provide a policy option, why not just win that policymaking is the best way to solve the impact to the critique?

Will update again for Northwestern -with a longer paradigm

I think the game is best when students are comfortable and presenting arguments at a high level. I will try my best to adjudicate the debate in front of me. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. I'm decently versed in anti-blackness literature. So if that is your thing, awesome. I'm excited to hear your particular work. Just know because of my background I have a high threshold for that argument set. If it's not, that's ok but just know I expect arguments to have a certain level of depth to them and won't just vote on arguments that I don't understand.

2. I haven't judge alot on this topic. So different topic phrasings have to be parsed out for me.

3. I'm all about the link and impact game

4. Not a fan of the overly confrontational approach

5. Slow down on analytics

6. I'm very expressive judging debates so pay attention to the non-verbals

7. FW is cool with me - has to be impacted well.

8. DA/CPs are cool if explained well.

9. Will vote on condo - not a fan of conditional planks

Hope this helps.

UPDATE 10/14/22

TL:DR

I have not updated by paradigm in well over a decade but much of what I wrote then continues to be true. I've been coaching/judging various styles and forms of debate for over 12 years. I am most comfortable judging debates in Policy, Lincoln-Douglass, and Public Forum. I flow and listen to all arguments, so please debate in whichever way you are most comfortable and I will attempt to evaluate it to the best of my ability. That being said, if you have a position that is complicated or difficult to follow, the onus is on the debaters to ensure that their arguments are well explained. I will not vote on arguments that I do not understand or are blatantly offensive/discriminatory. Otherwise, try  to have fun!

My email for chains is: carlito2692@gmail.com

Old Paradigm:

I competed in LD at University High School in Newark New Jersey, I was nationally competitive for three years.. I also compete in policy debate for Rutgers University.

Presumption: I typically presume neg unless the affirmative advances arguments for why presumption should flow aff (i.e the negative team introduces a counterplan/kritik alt/etc.

Speed: I don't generally have an issue with speed, however I do have a problem with monotone speed, unclear speed. I will yell clear if I can't understand you, but it will only be maybe once or twice, if you don't become clear by then, my ability to properly evaluate the arguments may possibly become impaired. Also, your speaks probably won't be awesome if I have to keep yelling clear.

-I would like you to significantly slow down when reading tags/card names so I can have a properly structured flow, but while reading the card you are welcome to go at top CLEAR speed(a few caveats to be explained later)

-When making analytical arguments, please be clear, because it's difficult for me to follow analytics when they are weirdly phrased and also being spread.

-I don't like speed for the sake of being fast, I prefer when speed is used as a catalyst for an awesome case or a multilayered rebuttal with really nuanced responses on case.

Evidence: Despite what happened in the round, I may call for the cites for cards read in round, I'll specify which specific cites I would like to see. I do this for two reasons: to ensure that there was no miscutting of evidence, and because I believe in disclosure and am from the school of thought that everybody in the round should have access to all evidence read in the round. I don't appreciate a denial to share citations, if citations are not readily available, I may choose to disregard all evidence with missing citations(especially evidence which was contested in the debate).

Cross Examination: I don't know how much I can stress it...CROSS EX IS BINDING! I don't care if you present arguments for why it shouldn't be binding or why lying in CX is ok, or any arguments with the implication which allows dishonesty in CX, there is NO theory to be ran to change my mind. Nevertheless, I don't flow CX, so its up to the debaters to refresh my memory of any inconsistencies between speeches and CX answers. On the other hand, CX can be the BEST or the WORST part of a debate, depending on how it plays out. A funny yet not disrespectful CX will score big when I'm deciding on how to assign speaks, while a rude and boring CX will negatively influence how I assign speaks. Clarification questions during prep is fine, but I'm not cool with trying to tear down an argument during prep, if it was that important, it should have been in the formal CX, rather than during prep. Don't be afraid to refuse to answer a non-clarification question during your opponents prep time.

Critical/Weird Arguments: I love well explained critical positions. With the caveat that these critical arguments are logically explained and aren't insanely convoluted. I have no issue voting for the argument. But if I can't understand it, I won't vote on it. Also, I am a fan of interesting debate, so if you have a neat performance to run in front of me, I would love to hear it!

Theory: I don't presume to competing interpretations or reasonability. The justification for either one needs to be made in round. I don't like greedy theory debates, which means that I generally view theory as a reason to reject the argument rather than the debater. YES, this means you must provide reasons in or after the implications section of your shell, for why this specific violation is a reason for me to use my ballot against the other debater. I'm not persuaded by generic 12 point blocks for why fairness isn't a voter, I prefer nuanced argumentation for why fairness may not be a voter. RVIs have to be justified but I'm willing to vote on them if the situation presents itself, but its up to you to prove why you defensively beating theory is enough for me to vote for you.

Prestandard: I don't like having preconceived beliefs before judging a round, but this is just one of those things that I need to reinforce. I WILL NOT vote on multiple apriori blips, and winning a single apriori is an uphill battle, a serious commitment to advocacy is necessary(you devote a serious amount of time to the apriori position.)

Speaks: I average about a 27, I doubt I'll go lower than 25(unless you do something which merits lower than a 25) because I personally know how disappointing the 4-2/5-2 screw can be, nevertheless I am more than willing to go up or down, depending on the performance in that particular round. The reason I average around a 27 is not because I generally don't give nice speaks, its because the majority of tournaments, I'll judge only a few rounds that deserve more than a 28. It's not difficult at all to get good speaks from me. I reserve 30's for debaters who successfully execute the following: speak really well, good word economy, good coverage/time allocation, takes risks when it comes to strategy, weighs really well, provides AWESOME evidence comparison, and adapts well to the things happening in the round. I really enjoy seeing new strategies, or risky strategies, I.E. I am a fan of the straight refutation 1N, attempting something risky like this and pulling it off, gives you a higher chance of getting a 30. Another way to get high speaks is to be a smart debater as well as funny without being mean or making any kind of jokes at the expense of your opponent(this will lose you speaks)

Delivery: I need evidence comparison! It makes me really happy when debaters do great evidence comparison. Also, I would appreciate for you to give status updates as the rebuttals progress, as well as giving me implications for each extension. When extending arguments which rely on cards, in order for it to be a fully structured extension it must contain: The claim/tag of the card, author/card name, warrant from the card, and the implications of that extension (what does it do for you in the round).

Miscellaneous: You are more than welcome to sit or stand, I don't mind people reading from laptops or being paperless as long as it doesn't delay the round. Also, I don't care if you are formally dressed, jeans and a tshirt will get you the same speaks that a shirt and a tie will. :) I also believe its impossible for me to divorce my judging from my beliefs, but I'll do my best to attempt to fairly adjudicate the debate.

P.S. I don't like performative contradictions...(just felt like I should throw that out there)

Debated: Norman High School (2005- 2009), University of Oklahoma (2009-2014)
Coached: University of Texas at San Antonio (2014-2015), Caddo Magnet High School (2014-2015), Baylor University (2015-2017), University of Iowa (2017-2022), Assistant Director of James Madison University 2022-2023

Currently: Assistant Director of Debate at Baylor University, Assistant coach at Greenhill High School

email: kristiana.baez@gmail.com

Updates- Feb 2023

Think of my paradigm as a set of suggestions for packaging or a request for extra explanation on certain arguments.

Despite the trend of judges unabashedly declaring themselves bad for certain arguments or predetermining the absolute win condition for arguments, I depart from this and will evaluate the debate in front of me.

*Judge instruction, judge instruction, judge instruction!*

Sometimes when we are deep in a literature base, we auto apply a certain lens to view the debate, but that lens is not automatic for the judge. Don’t assume that I will fill things in for you or presume that I automatically default to a certain impact framing, do that work!

*Argument framing is your friend.*

“If I win this, then this.”

"Even if we lose ontology, here is why we can still win.” This is important for both debating the K and going for the K.

Zoom debate things:

Don’t start until you see my face, I will always have my camera on when you’re speaking!

Clarity over speed, please- listening to debates over zoom is difficult, start out more slowly and then pick up pace, but don’t sacrifice clarify for speed.

Ethics violations-Calling an ethics violation is a flag on the play and the debate stops. Please, please do not call an ethics violation unless you want to stop the debate.

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Top level thoughts: This is your debate, so above all-- do what you do, but do it well!
My debate career was a whileee ago. I primarily read Ks, but I have also done strictly policy debate in my career, so I have been exposed to a wide variety of arguments. I like to think that I am a favorable judge for Ks or FW. I have coached all types of arguments and am happy to judge them.

I judge the debate in front of me and avoid judge intervention as much as possible. In this sense, I am more guided by tech because I don't think you can determine the truth of any debate within the time constraints. HOWEVER, I think you can use the truth to make more persuasive arguments- for example, you can have one really good argument supported by evidence that you're making compelling bc of its truthiness that could be more convincing or compelling than 3 cards that are meh.

FW/T

I judge a good number of T v. K aff debates and am comfortable doing so.

Sometimes these debates are overly scripted and people just blow through their blocks at top speed, so I think it's important to take moments to provide moments of emphasis and major framing arguments. Do not go for everything in the 2NR, there is not enough time to fully develop your argument and answer theirs. Clearly identify what impact you are going for.

Internal link turns by the negative help to mitigate the impact turn arguments. Example- debating about AI is key to create AI that does not re-create racial bias. TVA can help here as well!

The definitions components of these debates are underutilized- for example, if the aff has a counter interp of nuclear forces or disarm, have that debate. Why is their interp bad and exacerbate the limits or ground issues? I feel like this this gives you stronger inroads to your impact arguments and provides defense to the aff's impact turns.

K aff's- It is way less compelling to go for impact turns without going for the aff and how they resolve the impact turns. You cannot just win that framework is bad. It is more strategic for the aff to defend a particular model of debate, not just a K of current debate.

Kritiks:

Updated- It’s important to find balance between theoretical explanations, debate-ification of arguments, and judge instruction. More specifically- if you have a complex theory that you need to win to win the debate, you HAVE to spend time here. Err towards more simple explanation as opposed to overly convoluted.

Think about word efficiency and judge instruction for those theoretical arguments.

Although, I am familiar with some kritiks, I do not pretend to be an expert on all. That being said, I think that case specific links are the best. Generic links are not as compelling especially if you are flagging certain cards for me to call for at the end of the round. It seems that many times debaters don't take the time to really explain what the alternative is like, whether it solves part of the aff, is purely rejection, etc. If for some reason the alternative isn't extended or explained in the 2nr, I won't just apply it as a case turn for you. An impact level debate is also still important even if the K excludes the evaluation of specific impacts. It is really helpful to articulate how the K turns the case as well. On a framing level, do not just assume that I will believe that the truth claims of the affirmative are false, there needs to be in-depth analysis for why I should dismiss parts of the aff preferably with evidence to back it up.
The 2NR should CLEARLY identify if they are going for the alternative. If you are not, you need to be explicit about why you don't need the alt to win the debate. This means clear framework and impact framing arguments + turns case arguments. You need to explain why the links are sufficient turns case arguments for me to vote negative on presumption.

CPs- I really like counterplans especially if they are specific to the aff, which shows that you have done your research. Although PIKs are annoying to deal with if you are aff, I enjoy a witty PIK. However, make it clear that it is a PIK and explain why it solves the aff better or sufficiently. Explain sufficiency framing in the context of the debate you're having, don't just blurt out "view the cp through the lens of sufficiency"--that's not a complete argument.

Generic cps with generic solvency cards aren't really going to do it for me. However, if the evidence is good then I am more likely to believe you when you claim aff solvency. There needs to be a good articulation for why the aff links to the net benefit and good answers to cp solvency deficits, assuming there are any. Permutation debate needs to be hashed out on both sides, with Da/net benefits to the permutations made clear.

DAs- I find it pretty easy to follow DAs. However, if you go for it I am most likely going to be reading ev after the round, so it better be good. If your link cards are generic and outdated and the aff is better in that department, then you need to have a good reason why your evidence is more qualified, etc.

Make the story of the DA AND your scenario clear, DAs are great but some teams tend to go for a terminal impact without explanation of the scenario or the internal link args. Comparative analysis is important so I know how to evaluate the evidence that I am reading. Tell me why the link o/w the link turn etc. Impact analysis is very important, timeframe, probability, magnitude, etc., so I can know why the Da impacts are more important than the affs impacts. A good articulation of why the Da turns each advantage is extremely helpful because the 2ar will most likely be going for those impacts in the 2ar.

Theory- I generally err neg on theory unless there is a really good debate over it. Your generic blocks aren't going to be very compelling. If you articulate why condo causes a double turn, etc. specific to the round is a better way to go with it. I think that arguments such as vague alternatives especially when an alternative morphs during the round are good. However, minor theory concerns such as multiple perms bad aren't as legitimate in my opinion.

Other notes: If you are unclear, I can't flow you and I don't get the evidence as you read it, so clarity over speed is always preferable.
Don't be rude, your points will suffer. There is a difference between being aggressive and being a jerk.
Impact calc please, don't make me call for everyones impacts and force me to evaluate it myself. I don't want to do the work for you.
The last two rebuttals should be writing my ballot, tell me how I vote and why. Don't get too bogged down to give a big picture evaluation.

Accomplish something in your cross-x time and use the answers you get in cx and incorporate them into your speeches. Cx is wasted if you pick apart the DA but don't talk about it in your speech.

If I am judging you, then I want your docs. Please set up an email chain and include me (bentonbajorek@gmail.com) or use speechdrop. AFF should have their 1AC ready to send at the start of the round. I will not keep up with time and I expect debaters to keep each other accountable for speech and prep time. I keep my flows, so any questions can be emailed to me.

COVID Online Debate

Issues with clarity and diction compound when listening to debates with headphones. I'm fine with spreading, but please slow down if you are saying something that isn't in your speech doc-- particularly theory and analytics. If they are in the doc you send me, I'll be good to go. Otherwise, I might miss them. I'm more than happy to vote for things like condo in the 2AR, but I likely won't feel comfortable doing it if I couldn't flow all the nuance because were spreading in the 2AC and didn't include your condo block in the speech doc.

Parli Update

I've grown accustomed to the convenience of speech docs, so please make sure you are slowing down for theory and analytics. You should be intentionally slow for any plantext, counterplan text, or K alt.

Weighing mechanisms/roll of the ballot/framework args are extremely important to me. I want to be told how I should evaluate the round, but I'm not inclined to default to whatever the GOV tells me. OPP can successfully challenge this like any theory argument.

Ask me about my preferences before the round starts if you don't find an answer to your question below.

Background

This is my eighth season judging college policy. I was the head coach at Bishop Seabury Academy from 2019-2021 and a coach at The University of Kansas from 2015-2021. As an undergrad, I competed for four years at Arkansas State University primarily in American Parli on the National Circuit. I also debated in Lincoln-Douglas, IPDA, and Team IPDA.

I'm familiar with the debate things, but I'm not paying as much attention to the content from year-to-year now that I'm no longer a coach. Particularly for early in the season, don't assume I know the specific warrants in your DAs and CPs as they pertain to this topic. 

Overview

I view debate as a medium of persuasion and judge accordingly. All too often, I feel debaters focus more on beating their opponent instead of trying to convince the judge on an advocacy position. I believe this model is narrow-minded and the most effective way to win my ballot is to use a combination of ethos, pathos, and logos.

I greatly appreciate if tag lines, plan and CP texts, K alts, theory blocks, and perms could be slowed down so I can get a chance to write them on my flow. If a debater becomes inarticulate, I will yell CLEAR and cross my arms if the speech continues in that manner. If I cannot hear you, then I cannot understand your arguments. If I cannot understand your arguments, then I cannot vote for you.

I will vote on any argument. I consider myself a tab judge and vote based on what arguments are made, not what arguments are stated. Just because you extend an author does not mean you have extended an argument. I have certain preferences and thresholds for arguments that I will do my best to articulate below, but clearly articulated warrants and analysis will make me vote against my predispositions.

2NRs/2ARs that have clear voters and impact calculus are preferred.

If you want to make a role of the ballot argument, I need you to articulate what that means and specifically state how I should view particular arguments under that lens. If you just assert that my job is to vote under a specific framework but fail to clearly articulate what that means, then I will default to my personal standpoint of voting for the team that did the better job debating.

I do not tolerate poor sportsmanship. Every debater puts too much time, effort, and energy to arrive at a round and be belittled by their opponent(s). I love a competitive round where teams don’t back down and are assertive, but keep a level of decorum and respect. Ad hominem attacks and condescending behavior will not be tolerated and I will significantly lower your speaker points.

Bonus**

References to the Clippers = 0.2 speaker points

References to the NBA in general = 0.1 speaker point

Theory

I view debate as a game with rules that can change from round to round. The rules for debate should foster fairness and/or educational gain. I do not particularly favor one over the other.

Teams should slow down and clearly articulate standards for why I should favor their arguments on framework/T/role of the ballot/condo/etc. I really dislike teams that read directly from their blocks and fail to clash with their opponents’ standards and it makes my job difficult if there is not a direct response to specific arguments. In other words, teams that directly respond to their opponents’ arguments on ground loss will fare better than teams that just assert an argument on ground and make me do the work for them.

I am rarely persuaded by potential abuse arguments. I am strongly persuaded by in-round abuse arguments.

Topicality

Topicality must have an interpretation, violation, standard, and voters. I really enjoy listening to T and I appreciate a good standard debate with specific and competitive reasons why your interpretation is better/superior to your opponent.

Voters are often overlooked but are the most important part of a topicality. NEG needs to stress why I should vote on this issue. Refer back to my theory section for this one. I have never voted on a topicality that did not have some sort of education, fairness, and/or jurisdiction voter.

Reverse voting issues are not persuasive. I view topicality as a test of the affirmative case and NEG has the right to make this argument. Do not waste your time trying to convince me otherwise. However, I will say that trying to bury the AFF by running 10+ topicality arguments that are not relevant to the round will make me think poorly of you and I will happily vote for a time-suck argument.

Disadvantages

Disadvantages need to have a clear uniqueness, link, internal link, and impact scenario. DA’s are arguments that I feel everyone knows how to run, but there are some specific things that I prefer to see.

I want advantage and disadvantage debates to come down to impact calculus. Measure out magnitude, timeframe, probability, etc. If your impact is more meaningful, then tell me why and compare it to other impacts in the round. Pull these arguments out in the 2AR/2NR.

I do not have an opinion on intrinsic perms, but I believe these arguments can be extremely abusive and AFFs choosing to run this will need to lay out some sort of explanation for me to consider it.

Counter Plans

A counterplan must be mutually exclusive with the AFF. If you want to run a plan-plus, consult, push back 3 months CP, etc., then you will need to convince me why your modification of the AFF’s plan is severance, mutually exclusive, and/or has a competitive net benefit.

Kritiks

I ran K’s frequently when I competed and I am very familiar with them. However, when you run a K, do not assume that I know the literature. Do not stick to your cards and be prepared to break down what you are trying to argue with your position. I will not vote for a K if I have no idea what your alt does.

As for specifics, I believe K’s need to win framework or alt solvency for me to vote on them. This goes back to needing to know what the alt does. Understanding how your method is key or has the potential to work in the real world is important for me to vote on it.

I am rarely persuaded by links of omission. AFFs that read 1 card or make a smart analytical argument here are very likely to refute the link.

I prefer specific over generic links. Really prove the AFF team violated the ideas you are critiquing.

Performance in Debate/K AFF’s

I believe that AFFs that do not have a plan are untopical and should lose. I also believe that AFFs that run a plan text, but only garner impacts from their performance are extratopical and should lose.

That being said, I have voted for many K AFFs because they won on Framework and/or T. I do not have to be an auto-strike for you, but a framework block on how I should evaluate your position is necessary for you to win. If you fail to demonstrate and justify a framework for why the round should be seen through your performance then it is difficult for me to understand what my ballot should be doing. This allows me to hold you to a standard and have the other team either challenge you on that idea, or compete against you on it. Don’t be a moving target and state this clearly in your 1AC.

I think K AFFs that talk about the educational benefits of their position or justify the need of their AFF within the debate space to counter hegemonic practices are strong arguments that have potential to convince me to vote for you.

Final note: Any team that uses music in their performance can use it, but it needs to be turned down substantially during speeches and CX. I have trouble focusing with loud music/distractions and this is intended to create access for myself in the debate space and not to silence your performance.

Updated 3-7-24

Congrats on attending Nationals. Being at a university with the resources to send you cross-country to represent them is an immense privilege Thank those responsble including partners, teammates, coaches, parents & especially your opponents. People matter. Celebrate, respect and appreciate them while you can.

(NEW) TLDR: K Affs, FW, DA/CP strats, K strats, Procedurals - Fine. You do you. Condo- Ok w Limits (read CP stuff below) Base points - 28.7 If you care about pts a) look at who got 29.4+ from me to see what I like. b) 2NRs that don't spend time on case do so at their own risk. When I'm online, a) get verbal/visual confirmation before you speak b) slow down 10%. Won't litigate past debates, social media beefs etc on my ballot. PRE-EMPT- Read no further at your own risk.

General Approach: Add me to the chain if you have my email already. Start the rd when your opponent has the doc up once you confirm all parties are ready. I don't follow along with your speech docs. Flowing on paper. Pen time good. Be organized, Be considerate. Be ready. Recuts of opponents' ev need to be read in round not just inserted into the doc to be assessed on my flow. Good debaters work extremely hard so I will make every effort to be very thoughtful and conscientious as your judge. Whatever decision allows me to inject myself the least into the interpretations of issues in the round is the one I will attempt to make. Compare positions, ev and tell a story in your last rebuttal that frames the round the way you wish me to decide it. I’ll vote where you tell me if it's coherent. If you have multiple stories, prioritize them. Don't rely on my post-round reconstruction. If you only spend 10 seconds on a key point in your last rebuttal, don't expect me to spend much more than that evaluating it. Most rounds come down to impact assessment and warrant comparisons. An author’s name is not an argument. Provide warrants for why your ev is better than theirs.

Tech vs. TruthTech over truth is an inflection point not a value system. My voting record reflects a tech leaning apparently but that's more reflective of how truth is framed in the 2AR vs. my role to protect the neg. My ballot really comes down to the skills and execution of the particular debaters.

The Aff: Do what you want in terms of policy, K or performance. Explain advantages to your model over theirs. Tell me how to evaluate your affirmation prior to the 2AR if you are performing. Make sure that the role of the ballot is articulated and extended and not a 2AR surprise. My evaluation will come down to offense on the FWK flow based on impacts identified by the debaters unless it's one of those rare rounds where the neg has a viable, specific strat.

The Neg: Well-developed, evidence-based strategies are awesome and will be rewarded. 90% of affs, both kritikal and policy have lit that goes the other way. Cut cards and forward options along with T/FW. If you want to defend your right to a Deterrence DA link or a certain interp, go for it. Presumption matters and is underutilized.

TOPICALITY/FWK: I’ll vote either way on T/FW if you win the relevant impacts to your model of debate e.g. EXTERNAL (why is it or is it not productive?) or INTERNAL (what does it communicate or provide you with in the debate space of importance?). You're more likely to have faith in the credibility of your definition and implicit approaches to the topic than I am so be prepared to defend them. Not a fan of: violations that morph in the block unprovoked, crummy counter-interps or generic TVAs that disregard this 1AC. T against policy affs is underutilized. Elevate your answers from the crap you read in HS. It's disingenuous for experienced debaters to say K-affs about AB, Set Col. or Trans Life were unpredictable or that FW is the ultimate form of violence in the world.

DISADS Fine obviously. Providing reasons why the DA turns case is always a good idea. CAVEAT - Including this since it's come up 2x this year. If there is an Existence question relating your DA or aff story (e.g. a rumored "secret" weapon system, Aliens are coming, etc), try or die only kicks in if you win the Existence question as a precursor.

CPs Smart CPs with solvency advocates improve your strat. If you regularly read CPs with conditional planks leading to 10 different versions or more than 3 conditional advocacies in a rd, I'm not the right judge for you. New or undisclosed 1ACs lend credence to more condo options. Feel free to take advantage of teams that read & react without studying your CP text carefully. Sympathetic to "1AR gets new answers" vs CPs with no 1NC solvency ev. or process CPs with no relqtion to how the US government works. I welcome solvency deficits if the AFF is correct on function indicts. I don't judge kick without specific instruction.

K: For teams that generate links from messed-up, in-round behaviors or focus on the debate space-all good. If teams defend external claims and impacts, winning anti-blackness is a superstructure or capitalist gov't solutions have failed on-balance is necessary but not sufficient. Quality examples are essential and readily available whether you're discussing micro-political movements, capitalism, racial injustice, colonialism, sabotage, disability and/or militarism. Your arsenal needs solid answers to scalability, empirical solvency, and why gov't action will not inevitably be needed. Include good reasons why the K turns case. 3 page long cards don't equal explanations.

Topic Specifics Spent 4 years working with Rev Vernon Nichols at the UU-UNO when he chaired the NGO Committee on Disarmament learning about prolif, movements and miscalc. As far as the 2023-24 topic, I read lots of topic lit from both traditional and nontraditional sources and have judged too much.

Pet Peeves that lower points: 1-STEALING PREP TIME -It's a nasty habit. You are taking time from my life that I will never get back. 2-POOR TECH PREP- I have sympathy for unexpected tech issues not poor preparation that delays the tournament. If you're debating online: a) Check your tech between rds for charge etc. b) Have a back-up (phone, tablet, etc.) in case of lmid-speech malfunctions c) Get verbal/visual confirmation everyone is back before starting speeches d) don't record people without permission e) slow down 10-20% because it's hard to hear/decipher stuff online 3--OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE in your speeches. Don't have a bright line but if you need to ask, you're probably excessive. 4--SLOPPY SOURCING. You say “Read the Jones 10 ev after the rd!” I read it and it sucks. In the post-round, it becomes “I meant to say Roberts, not Jones,” or “There were 3 pieces of Jones ev I meant the 1AR card.” That's a "you" problem. Effective communication good.

Director of Debate at the University of Texas

brendonbankey@gmail.com - please add me to your email chain

***Nukes Topic - NDT Update***

-Apology not accepted. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

-Don't pref me if you spent your NDT prep taking screenshots of your opponents' wikis or social media instead of cutting cards. The ad-homs have continued unabated all season and its pathetic that the community has created a competitive incentive for character attacks. To the coaches, what purpose are you serving convincing young adults that their path to success should include tactics that would be grounds for civil litigation in any other context? Aren't we all supposed to be educators?

-Students who abuse the subject line of the email chain to insinuate that their opponents are members of hate groups are committing harassment and I will vote against them if it occurs in front of me. Touch grass. No-one competing at this tournament is in the klan. Anyone who devotes themselves to winning the Larmon has forfeited their claim to be holier than thou. Get over yourselves.

***Nukes Topic***

General

I would like to see more evidence spin and storytelling. I think impact interaction matters on this topic. Narrate the trip wires that cause your impact to occur. Timeframe/probability matter a lot more to me than magnitude (it all seems pretty bad). I care whether the disad turns the case or vice versa.

Please engage and indict your opponents' evidence. Evidence quality matters. Several of the major topic authors on this topic were also the major topic authors on the 09-10 topic. I will reward debaters who can articulate the distinct warrants and disagreements between the policy wonks. I think this is especially important for kritik debating. Several topic authors are known quantities and fodder for epistemology links.

I think evidence matters when evaluating topicality and counterplan competition. In addition to reading evidence for interps/violations/textual competition, debaters should explain why their definitions should be preferred. I will defer to the negative on T or counterplan competition until the aff counter-defines the words. If the aff covers the definitions, the neg must also explain why its definitions are better for a year's worth of debates. I think "does this definition produce better debates?" is a more important question than "is this the most precise interpretation?".

K Stuff

-The oldies are goodies. Although the content of the nukes policy v k debate has changed over the past forty years, several of the warrants/justifications/conventional thinking continue to be applied on both sides. I am comfortable using old evidence to establish the thesis for a K as long as the 2N is capable at applying the oldies to give a convincing narrative that makes sense in 2023/4. I think framework/impact comparison becomes more convincing when 2Ns can put the aff's claims in context of the evolution in the academic debates that have occurred over the years. The same is true of 2As that can leverage old evidence that answers the K.

-I struggle with the competition for the abolition/nuclearism alts that include all of the plan. If the 2NR includes an alt that includes all of the plan I see myself voting aff even if the link debating is persuasive. I also think links that argue "the aff described the world problematically" are vulnerable to strategic perm debating. I think Ks are more persuasive that indict fiat and question the pedagogical benefit of reinvesting in gaming the ideal nuclear posture.

-This is the 5th topic in 14 years (Nukes 1, War Powers, Exec Authority, Military Presence, Nukes 2) with a viable version of the NFU aff. Affs should have a take in the 2AC (hopefully several) about why it is pedagogically valuable to debate about the nuclear posture.

-I am unlikely to disregard the nukes K because its unfair unless the block or 2NR drop fairness. I am more likely to disregard the K because the alt doesn't solve and the aff convinces me that the links are not unique to the aff.

-Fiat double bind is not a thing. It's never going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen.

Debating Non-USFG Affs

-Will vote for T-US but will be bored if the aff claims to lead to disarm. No solvency/presumption + disad seems more viable/entertaining. I think the aff can win that T-US = FG is overlimiting and produces a stale topic.

-I think that competing interpretation debates are fun and will reward teams who invest in the interpretation debating. I don't think the aff's interps have to be the most predictable as long as they can describe what limits the counter-interps impose on the topic and why they provide a desirable division of ground.

-Affs should vet their authors to make sure they don't advocate the TVA. I think "your author says the US should actually do it" requires 1AR pen time. I don't think that the TVA is a counterplan but I do think that the TVA raises a necessary/sufficiency standard for whether shifting the point of stasis away from the resolution is required to solve the Ks of T. I think if the neg wins a TVA is compatible with the 1AC author's claims it substantially deflates the aff's "topic design bad" offense versus T/framework. If the aff introduces Acheson evidence in the 1AC I expect the 2AC/1AR to be able to explain the method comparison between US disarm and Acheson's vision of disarm.

Arguments Regarding Community Norms

-I think that teams are entitled to make non-resolutional procedural arguments related to argument style or the content that a ballot should endorse. Teams can present an interpretation and argue why that interpretation should be preferred. If I vote for those strategies my ballot just means that a team did the better arguing for the purpose of that debate.

-Ad-homs are not arguments. I do not flow ad-homs or use them to evaluate debates. I am an employee of the state of Texas and will never cast my ballot to assign positive or negative value to an undergraduate student's character. It is wholly outside of my jurisdiction to judge any individual's conduct outside of the words they say in a debate after the 1AC has started and before the 2AR has ended. If you believe the conduct of a member of the community is so reprehensible that it must come before evaluating arguments that occur in a debate, I strongly encourage you to pursue a resolution with the relevant NDT/CEDA/ADA committee prior to the start of a NDT/CEDA/ADA sanctioned competition. Those decision-making bodies are designed to evaluate complaints in a professional manner that protects the confidentiality of all parties. As a tournament director, I can attest to the usefulness of these decision-making bodies to carefully navigate sensitive issues concerning interpersonal conflicts between members of the community. I do not see any value in offering competitive incentives for tactically deploying reputation-damaging claims as procedurals.

***March 2022***

I am a clash judge set out to pasture. I am generally in a state of judging ennui because debates are often copies of copies of debates I've seen before. With that said, here's some advice:

1) All debate is role playing. You're lying to yourself if you think it's not. Make it entertaining, don't break character, and refrain from lobbing fallacies at your opponent.

2) I generally vote for the team that A) has a clear narrative throughout the debate and B) does the most to complicate their opponent's narrative. Be convincing. "Extinction outweighs" is an incomplete narrative. Talk about internal links more and use them to make more turns the case/da/k arguments.

A) Cross-examination is my favorite part of the debate. Don't waste the opportunity. If you can't defend your narrative in cx don't expect me to let you make up for it in rebuttals.

B) The 2NR and 2AR should collapse the debate to the most important questions. Boo to final rebuttals that race through the speech without communicating to me the ballot you would like me to write in your favor.

3) I hate your 2NR/2AR blocks. I don't want them. Just answer the previous speech instead and identify what the errors are of the previous speech. If you read them anyway don't be obvious. I flow on a laptop and will know/become irritated if you are rereading a block from a previous speech instead of developing arguments in response to opponent's arguments.

4) I like evidence-based arguments. Debate should be academically rigorous. The 2AC and the 2NC should read cards. Well-evidence arguments are important because they connect students' creative ideas to academic communities pursuing similar questions. Connecting arguments to academic literature is also important because no individual has a complete understanding of the world. If your strategy does not rely on evidence I expect you to be excellent at cross-examination.

A) If your style is not evidence-centered, I still expect students to connect important ideas to a clearly identifiable literature base. A failure to connect your arguments to a clear literature base feels to me like an effort to deprive opponents of link ground and implicitly an expectation that the opponent is responsible for refuting the un-published ideas of student debaters. I don't want to decide those debates.

B) I am very much over students referencing the history of cross-examination debate without reference to evidence. The rush for originality dismisses the rich history of academic work documenting the examples often invoked in competition.

C) Caveat: I don't read a ton of evidence to decide debates. The best debaters will deploy the claims/warrants of their evidence convincingly such that I feel like they know what they're talking about. I flow on the computer. If I have to read your cards during the debate to figure out what you're talking about I'm having a bad time.

D) If you introduce and convincingly deploy an evidence-based argument (tangential to the new topic) that I've never seen before I will likely tune in and reward you with higher points.

5) Debates over competing interpretations (definitional argument) is, without question, the most important skill that cross-examination debates provide. Interpretations/counter-interpretations provide instruction to the judge for how to interpret whether the teams have met their burdens. I'm agnostic about the content of your theory arguments but I'm unlikely to vote for them if there is not enough information to explain to your opponent what I am voting for when providing my reasons for decision.

6) There is some recent grumbling from my fellow old-heads about neg conditionality and judge kick getting out of control. I cosign those concerns. If the aff breathes a claim and warrant about judge kick in each speech starting in the 2AC I will disregard it. 2N's are entitled to their hustle but shouldn't expect my sympathy if the 1AR answers judge kick and the 2AR extends it. For the aff to win on conditionality the 1AR has to be airtight covering the 2NC/1NR.

***Old Paradigm***

Square up. Friday night lights. Fight night. Any given Sunday. Start your engines and may the best debater win.

My bias is that debate is competitive and adversarial, not cooperative. My bias is that debate strategies should be evidence-centric and, at a minimum, rooted in an academic discipline. My bias is that I do not want to consider anything prior to the reading of the 1AC when making my decision. My bias is that I will only flow one speaker in each rebuttal unless it is clearly and compellingly established in the constructives why I should flow both speakers in the same speech.

For me to vote on an argument it must have a claim, warrant, and impact. A claim is an assertion of truth or opinion. A warrant is an analytical connection between data/grounds/evidence and your claim. An impact is the implication of that claim for how I should evaluate the debate.

I think about permutations in a very precise way. I do not think it's the only way to think about them but I am unlikely to be persuaded to think otherwise. I think that a plan specifies a desired outcome. There are a set number of means to achieve the desired outcome. I also think that a counterplan or alternative specifies a desired outcome with a set number of means to achieve that outcome. A permutation asserts that it is theoretically possible for there to be a means of action that satisfies both the outcome of the plan and the counterplan or alternative. A permutation could be expressed as where the set numbers of the aff's and the neg's strategies overlap. Permutations are defense. Rarely do they "solve all their offense." It would behoove affs to know what offense they are "no linking" with the perm and what offense the perm does not resolve. This discussion should ideally begin in the 2AC and it must take place in the 1AR.

---"Perm do the counterplan" and "perm do the alt" are claims that are often unaccompanied by warrants. I will not vote for these statements unless the aff explains why they are theoretically legitimate BEFORE the 2AR. I am most likely to vote for these arguments when the aff has 1) a clear model of counterplan/alternative competition that justifies such a perm AND 2) an explanation for where the aff and the cp/alt overlap

I would prefer that debaters engage arguments instead of finesse their way out of links. This is especially awful when it takes place in clash debates. If you assert your opponent's offense does not apply when it does I will lower your speaker points.

In that vein, it is my bias that if an affirmative team chooses not to say "USFG Should" in the 1AC that they are doing it for competitive reasons. It is, definitionally, self-serving. Self-serving does not mean the aff should lose, just that they should be more realistic about the function of their 1AC in a competitive activity. If the aff does not say "USFG Should" they are deliberately shifting the point of stasis to other issues that they believe should take priority. It is reciprocal, therefore, for the negative to use any portion of the 1AC as it's jumping off point.

I think that limits, not ground, is the controlling internal link for most T-related impacts. Ground is an expression of the division of affirmative and negative strategies on any given topic. It is rarely an independent impact to T. I hate cross-examination questions about ground. I do not fault teams for being unhelpful to opponents that pose questions in cross-examination using the language of ground. People commonly ask questions about ground to demonstrate to the judge that the aff has not really thought out how their approach to the resolution fosters developed debates. A better, more precise question to ask would be: "What are the win conditions for the negative within your model of competition?"

***Older Paradigm (Still True)***

I judge debates based on execution. My decisions rarely come down to just 2NR v 2AR. They are strongly influenced by how ideas develop in CX, the block, and the 1AR.

The best rebuttals will isolate a unique impact and explain why their opponent's impact is either less important or impossible to resolve. The most persuasive rebuttals, to me, are those that explain how I should evaluate the debate given the available information. This is especially true in debates about debate where neither side agrees on a normative method for evaluation.

I can't stress how irritated I am by students that make sweeping claims about argument styles that they don't usually engage in. Debate is hard and everyone puts in an incredible amount of work. Oftentimes, people don't get credit for their effort. That stinks. That does not mean, however, that other folks' contributions are less valuable than yours because they approach the game differently.

I think there is an important role for philosophical arguments in debate, with caveats. Ks should disprove solvency. I think creatively interpreting the resolution is interesting. Affirmative teams that decide the resolution doesn't matter in advance of the debate and only impact turn their opponent's positions bore me. I would rather affs be deliberately extra-topical than anti-topical. Link arguments should be consistent with framework arguments. The terms used in speeches and tags should reflect the language of the literature base they are meant to represent. Not all Ks of humanism are the same. Not all Ks are Ks of humanism.

I think there is an important role for policy arguments in debate, with caveats. Vague plan writing does not equal strategic plan writing. Impact evidence is often outdated and/or includes multiple alt-causes. I perceive a degree of self-righteousness from debaters that have extensive experience going for T-USFG but have little experience going for T in other situations. I perceive a higher degree of self-righteousness from debaters who preach the merits of research when going for T-USFG while very obviously reading evidence they copy and pasted from other school's open-source documents.

What you should expect of me:

1) I will evaluate the debate and cast a provisional decision about which team did the better debating based on the content of the speeches and the cross-examinations.

2) I will flow your debate in an excel template and save a copy after the debate for scouting purposes.

How I think about debate:

I. The aff's burden is to prove that the 1AC is A) an example of the res and B) a positive departure from the squo. The neg should disprove the 1AC and can win by establishing that the aff is wrong about either A or B. The neg can also win by offering a counter-proposal that competes with and is net beneficial to the 1AC.

II. In order to accomplish A, the aff should be able to:

1) provide an interpretation of the resolution

2) explain how the 1AC meets their interpretation of the resolution

3) demonstrate that their vision of the resolution is superior to the neg’s

III. In the event that the aff argues they do not have to abide by the terms of the resolution, the aff should be able to:

1) provide sound reasoning for why the agreed upon point of stasis fails to address the agreed upon controversy area

2) explain the roles of the aff and the neg in their vision of debate

3) demonstrate that their vision of debate is superior to the neg’s

IV. The aff cannot win by simply flipping the burden of proof and indicting the neg’s interpretation of the resolution.* The aff must at all times defend a contestable proposition. If III (see above) occurs, the neg's burden is not to disprove the solvency and harms of the 1AC (B). Rather, all the neg should have to disprove is that abandoning A is necessary to solve/talk about B. If the neg can demonstrate that the original stasis point can accommodate the harms area then the aff has not proven that abandoning the res must occur.

*Exceptions to IV: language Ks, conditionality bad

Things I enjoy:

· When debaters express a nuanced knowledge of the resolution/controversy area

· Good jokes

· Bold choices

· Exposing specious arguments in C-X

· Solvency debates

· Links to the plan

· Supporting claims with high-quality research

· Final rebuttals that begin with a brief explanation of the key issues in the debate and why they have won given the arguments presented in earlier speeches

· When debaters prioritize answering the question, “What should debate look like?”

· Creative permutations—a perm says that there is a possible world in which both the 1AC and the counter-proposal can occur simultaneously, or that the counter-proposal is an example of how the aff’s proposition could be implemented—the aff should describe the permutation in both rebuttals and explicitly argue what elements of the neg’s strategy it mitigates/solves. Asserting the hypothetical validity of a perm and being intentionally vague until the 2AR does not an aff ballot make.

Things I don’t enjoy:

· When debaters compensate for dropping an argument by asserting that it is new

· When embedded clash becomes an excuse for not flowing

· When debaters make straw person characterizations of argument styles they do not personally engage in

· Trained incapacity

· “Death good”/ “death not real”

· Basic strats

· Recycled strats

· Recycled blocks

· K 1NC shells that I can find in my inbox from previous seasons

· “Procedural fairness”

· Teams that don’t take advantage if/when their opponent impact turns fairness

· Affs that don’t defend a substantial departure from the squo

· Affs that don’t specify the terms of the 1AC/backtrack on the terms of the 1AC for the purpose of permuting the neg’s counter-proposal

· Bad internal links

· C-X belligerence

· Hyperbolic impacts

· Counter-perms (honestly, it’s been 10 years and I still don’t get it)

· Asserting “perm do the counter-proposal” when it’s shamelessly severance

· When great CX moments don’t make it into the speeches

· Failing to capitalize on 2AC/block choices and settling for coin flip decisions

· “Point me to a line in the card where it says…” OR “I just ctrl F’ed that word in the document and it isn’t there”

natalielbennie@gmail.com--yes e-mail chain, but know I do not follow along with docs during the debate and do not tend to read a ton of evidence afterwards.

Debated at Samford University.

Currently coaching as a graduate student at Wake Forest.

Top level stuff:

• Do what you do best. Please do not try and change your debating to try and win my ballot-- chances are it won't help you out and you'll have less fun. I will listen to any argument and have experience running the gamut of them.
• My default position is as a policymaker and that debate is a game (a very challenging one, often with legitimate real-world applications, but a game nonetheless). That said--if you want me to evaluate the round in any other way, be clear about what my role as a judge is and present a justification for that interpretation, and I will be happy to do so

Specifics:

Framework:

• I am often very compelled by a topical version of the aff.
• Fairness is probably not an impact by itself, *update* but I find myself voting on it more often than I expect to.

Non-traditional affs:

• Go for it
• I don't think non-traditional aff necessarily need to be "topical," but I do think that the resolution ought to play a central role in your decision to run this affirmative.

Disad/Counterplans:

• Go for it
• Specificity is always preferable to generics and will probably be rewarded
• I am willing to no-link a disad
• I am often very compelled by a good overview that includes a thorough turns case analysis.
• Condo is fine and probably good. 3 CP's and a K are probably not. Cheater counterplans are probably cheating-- don't be afraid to take on this debate as the affirmative. I will vote on theory, but if there are other args you're winning, you should go for them instead.

Kritiks:

• Go for it
• Specificity is preferable to generics and will probably be rewarded
• While I may be familiar with your literature base, I will still hold you to a high threshold for explanation. I've seen a lot of k debates devolve into a battle of buzzwords with warranted analysis getting lost in the midst of it (to be fair, this is also true of a lot of policy debates). I will probably reward your ability to explain your own argument.

Tips for speaks:

• Time efficiency— Have the 1ac ready to send before the start time/the 1nc to send asap. Stands should be set up before the round. Inefficient rounds = lower speaks and less decision time, which may either help or hurt you (if that’s a gamble you’re interested in making).
• Assertiveness is not a license for disrespect or hostility.
• say smart things! Be nice!
• Make bold choices— trust your instincts.

Other stuff:

• Be kind. Be conscious of the person you're speaking to and how your tone/language choices/body language could be coming off.
• You are an intelligent and competent human being. Don't be afraid to use your brain and make some common-sense answers to arguments. I think a lot of what we say in debate is silly and could be taken down by a few good attacks, even without cards. Trust yourself to make smart arguments.
• Do not clip cards.
• Have fun! I love this activity and will put in as much effort judging your round as you did preparing for it.

Updated for October 2018.

Put me on the email chain - abdebate1@gmail.com

Note - I only check this email at debate tournaments, so if you are trying to contact me for some other reason, my response will be delayed.

Short version.

I've started to question the utility of these paradigm things. In short, do whatever you want. Read whatever you want to read. All styles of debate can be done well or poorly. My decision in any particular debate does not reflect a judgement on those styles but instead on the aptitude with which they are deployed in the given debate. Content matters less than strategy, unless the content of your argument makes it a bad strategy. I tend to make decisions quickly. This should not indicate to you whether the debate was close or not. Just because I go for or have gone for certain arguments does not mean I will automatically understand your arguments or do work for you. Similarly, it doesn't mean I will automatically discount any particular argument. I like clash. I dislike attempts to avoid clash. Perm do the aff is not an argument.

One thing I have noticed about debate is the proliferation of "cut the card there." When you stop reading before what your evidence indicates what you will read, you or your partner must mark the card in the speech doc and have a copy of those marks ready for anyone who needs them. To quote Andy Montee,
"If you just yell out "Mark the card at bacon!" you have to physically mark the card on your computer. It is not the responsibility of the other team or myself to do so."
Not marking evidence, and relying "cut the card there" to indicate where you stopped reading, is a form of clipping cards, and I will treat it as such. Since this seems to be an acceptable thing in debate at the moment, at the first occurrence of "cut the card there" I will ask for the marks, and if I notice you going through the doc to mark your cards post-speech, I will warn you about basically everything above.

Background info on me: I'm a first year out of college debate. I debated at the college level for 4 years at the University of Southern California. Attended the NDT four times, making it to doubles twice and octas once. I debated at the high school level for 4 years at Notre Dame High School. Qualified to the TOC 3 times. I was both 2A and 2N during my debate career.

Longer version.

Debate is a rhetorical game where debaters use a set of (ostensibly) mutually agreed upon scripts to persuade a judge. Scripts are rhetorical conventions that have been constructed in order for the game to make sense to all involved - impact calculus, uniqueness, etc. are examples of these scripts, convenient ways of describing a world that make the complexity of that world reducible to a (hopefully) less than 2 hour conversation. Debaters who can control how these scripts operate within the debate, either by implicitly agreeing to them and winning their set of contentions, or through the use of competing framing arguments, generally seem to win more debates. For example, many debates occur in which the value of life is never questioned - that is a script implicitly accepted in those debates for the purpose of brevity. This is not to say that I want to judge a bunch of death good debates, though I won't say the opposite either. Regardless, controlling the framing of the debate will serve you well.

I seem to be judging a lot of framework/T-USFG debates. I think quite a few of the commonly held framework predispositions are arbitrary, so I'll just say this: yes, you can read your K aff in front of me. Yes, you can go for framework in front of me. I don't really care, just make it a good debate.

Here are some of my reflections about FW rounds that I have judged.

-I find myself voting affirmative when the negative fails to explain their impact beyond "limits are important for negative ground" or "we won't learn stuff about immigration" or "fairness is important because otherwise debate isn't fair."

-I find myself voting negative when the aff fails to provide a workable vision of what debate would/should look like. T/FW/whatever we call it is a question of models of debate. That the neg could have read a particular strategy against your particular aff is not a defense of your model. In other words, "potential abuse" is important. You need a defense of your model of debate.

-Almost all of the K affs that I saw on the education topic were basically little more than a criticism of education policy. I did not hear a persuasive response to "do it on the neg" in these contexts.

-Topical versions of the aff are not counter-plans. They don't have to be perfect. They should, however, be well researched (though not necessarily evidenced in the debate) and explained. I would prefer 1 good TVA over 5 asserted TVAs.

-Asserting that debate is a game is fair enough, but does not on its own provide a reason to discount any of the aff's impact turns. I do believe fairness is an impact. I don't think it is an impact that automatically trumps all other impacts. As with all other things, impact calculus on the parts of the debaters matters most.

Case Debate
I would prefer to adjudicate a debate in which the negative reads less than or equal to 4 well constructed offcase positions and invests a good deal of time in taking apart the aff instead of a debate in which throwaway offcase positions are used as a timeskew and the case is addressed sparsely and with only impact defense. A diverse 1NC that attacks advantages at every level is helpful regardless of your broader strategy. Most affs are terribly constructed and have awful chains of internal links. Most affs wont solve the things they say they solve. Point it out.

You do not need a card to make a smart case arguments. In fact, the desire for cards to make an argument can often work to limit the vectors of attack you have against the case. Example: you do not need a card to point out a missing internal link, or that the aff's internal link evidence is about X and their impact evidence is about Y.

CPs and DAs
Not much to say here. If you have them, read them. Specificity is your friend. "DA turns case" arguments are invaluable.

Teams have found it difficult to convince me that the reading of any particular counterplan makes being aff impossible and as such is a voting issue.

At the same time, I find myself increasingly annoyed at the "use fiat as a battering ram" approach to counter-plans. Indefinite parole that is immune from deportation or cancellation, has full work authorization, all the benefits of LPR, etc. is just not something that exists in the literature base and is a ridiculous interpretation of what scholars in the field are actually talking about. All that being said, it is up to the debaters to figure this stuff out in the round.

I have voted for conditionality bad only once, in a debate where the 2NR spent about 15 seconds on it.

"Judge kick" is an inevitable element of conditionality. If the status quo is always an option, then a 2NR that includes a counterplan is not always and forever bound to that counterplan. In other words, if the counerplan is described by the negative as conditional, then my default is to also consider the status quo, and not just the counterplan. I can be persuaded otherwise.

Critiques

Sure, why not. I've read them, I've debated against them. Just be specific about what your alternative does. If it is a pic, say that it is and what your pic removes from the aff. If you are debating against a K, defend your aff. Generic K answers like the Boggs card are far less useful than justifying whatever assumption that the neg is critiquing.

Permutations are tricky. All too often, the aff just kinda extends "perm do both" and leaves it there. Explain what parts of the criticism you are permuting, how that interacts with the links, etc.

"No perms in a method debate" is a bad argument. You can wish away the form of "permutation," but you cannot do away with the logic of opportunity cost. If your K doesn't actually link, find a better argument.

As said above, "perm: do the aff" is not a thing.

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of severance permutations or intrinsic permutations. A permutation is legitimate only if it contains the entire aff plan and some to all of the negative counterplan/alternative. At the same time, many alternative texts are not representative of everything that an alternative would do - in my opinion, any evidence included by the negative as descriptive of the alternative is fair game for permutations. Example - many alt texts are written as "The alternative is to vote negative" - but the alt card says that "interrogating tropes of security" is important. A permutation that does the plan and interrogates tropes of security is not intrinsic.

If you have a theory of power, explain it and its implications for the aff. Meta arguments such as these have broad implications for both the link and the alternative.

Speaker Points

Points are always arbitrary and I wont pretend that my personal scale is anything different. Average speakers get in the low to mid 28s. Good speakers get in the high 28s to low 29s. Mid to high 29s, good job. You wont get a 27 unless you consistently do something annoying, like telling your partner "faster!" over and over during their speech.

Other random thoughts.

--Puns translate directly to increased speaker points.

--Please don't call me judge.

--When reading evidence, I will only evaluate warrants that are highlighted.

--I hate word-salad cards.

--Arguments that are "new in the 2" - generally the bar for me is whether the opponent team could have expected this argument based on the content of the previous speech. This excludes new impact turns to a disad in the 2AR, but maintains the capacity for 2As to cross apply, say, an impact defense argument on the case in the 2NR (intervening actors check, for example) to a disad scenario. If an argument is made in the 2AC, conceded by the neg block, not mentioned in the 1AR (and thus not responded to by the 2NR), it would be 'new' for the 2AR to extend and elaborate on the argument. While this may seem arbitrary, and while dropped arguments are, in a provisional sense, true, it is the job of the debaters to jump on strategic mishaps, not me. However, if a completely new argument arises in the 2NR or 2AR, I am willing to strike it from my flow without a debater pointing out that it is, in fact new.

--Speed is good, clarity is better.

--Confidence in your arguments, your partner, and yourself is good, disrespecting your opponents is bad.

--Ethically repugnant arguments will not make me want to vote for you. At the same time, however, if you cannot defeat ostensibly "bad" arguments, then you are a bad advocate and you should lose.

--If a debate does not occur, I will either flip a coin or consult tab.

--Please, "settler colonialism", not "set col". similarly, "afro-pessimism" not "afro-pess" -- yeah, I'm grumpy.

--Just because I go for certain arguments does not mean I will either automatically understand your argument or supplement your lack of analysis with my understanding of the literature.

--Random buzzwords are not arguments. I don't care until you impact a statement.

--There can always be 0 risk of something.

--Ad homs about the other teams authors aren't arguments.

--A claim without a warrant is just that.

--Theory and T debates are not my favorite.

--No insults or general shenanigans.

--Binding and prior consultation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is probably pedagogically relevant.

Yes put me on the email chain: Risha[dot]X[dot]Bhattacharjee[at]gmail[dot]com and I prefer this to pocketbox although you do you. I'd appreciate it if after the last corresponding rebuttal each side puts together a doc of all relevant cards and sends it to me even before I ask but no worries if you forget.

Philosophy last updated December 2016 (goal is to include trends I've noticed in my judging and also new opinions I've noticed myself start developing as I judge a lot, although some of these opinions haven't necessarily played out in my judging yet).

General Things 

TLDR: I don't really care what you do. I am most familiar with "policy" arguments and do research in high school and college more on the "policy"-side of things, but I judge a lot of different types of arguments, so my familiarity with those is growing quickly.

My own background: I debated at Coppell High School in Dallas for 4 years and then the University of Texas for 5 years, and am now coaching at Georgia State University and Wayzata High School. This will be my third year of judging college debate and eighth year judging high school debate. I typically judge a LOT of debate rounds every year. I was a 1A/2N for most of college, and most of my 2NRs were counterplan/politics or framework.  I did debate for UT/in D3, so I had my fair share of “K-debates". I found myself personally going a bit more “left” (with a particular interest in arguments about gender) in my last year of debate, but that was more in terms of opinion and not actually argumentative choices, and I still ended my career going for mostly "policy" arguments. I have generally viewed debate as a game, but can understand why others do not see it that way, and am open to alternate views of the activity. 

Top-level: You should do what you do best, and I'll reciprocate by trying my best to approach the debate with an open mind. I really don't care what kind/type of arguments you choose to make. I find that teams have much more success when their judge adaptation involves accounting for specific things a judge might think about a certain argument, instead of just choosing to make a different argument altogether. Do what you do best. The only caveat is you should not say things like "racism/sexism good". 

I think that racism and sexism (and other forms of exclusion) are problems in the debate community, but am uncertain as to what I think is the best way to combat forms of exclusion. I do think that debaters are required by the nature of the activity to contest arguments that their opponents make, and that there is value in that contestation. That being said, I think certain things are uncontestable - like I said above, impact turning a form of exclusion is not going to fly. I also dislike it when people try to dispute claims about debate as an activity being racist, sexist, ableist, etc. At this point, I honestly think it's violent to say a certain form of exclusion does not exist in debate, esp to people whose identity forces them to face that exclusion on a daily basis. That is different than, for example, contesting the claim that requiring a topical plan furthers those forms of exclusion.

I’ll ask to be included in any email chains, but I will not open the speech docs in most situations until the debate is over, because imo reading along lessens the impact that good communication would otherwise have on my decision. 

I generally don’t think it counts as prep when someone is saving a speech doc to a jump drive, etc. 

Pet peeves: “Always already” and “debate space” - i.e. redundancy. 

Card Clipping: Like I said above, I won’t open speech docs before/during a speech. So it’s impossible for me to follow along as a debater is reading. That’s just something to keep in mind if you want to call out another team for clipping cards. So, make sure there’s video if you want to make an accusation. I do think that card-clipping is absolutely unacceptable, and if an accusation is made, I will immediately stop the debate to resolve the dispute. If an individual is determined to have clipped cards, they will receive zero speaker points and the team will get an automatic loss. If it is determined that card-clipping did not occur, then I will assign speaker points based on what has happened in the debate so far, and assign the loss to the team who made the accusation. Purposefully being unclear just to get through a card faster is not much different from clipping cards. Since I obviously cannot decide intent, if you are unclear/it is hard to tell if you read a certain part of a card, I will err on the side of you did not.

I appreciate it when people tell me at the top of their last rebuttals what an RFD for them would look like.

I will not yell clear if I cannot understand you (I think that's just as interventionist as a judge yelling "smarter" and I do not share the same views as Dallas Perkins on that subject). So don't assume I'll let you know if I can't understand you....although the lack of typing should probably tip you off.

On a somewhat similar note, if I look confused, it is probably tech related or possibly just how my face usually looks. I rarely (knowingly) react physically when unconvinced by an argument. 

Asking a team what cards were or were not read in a speech doc is either cross-x time or prep time, unless their speech doc is egregiously terribad (a standard to be somewhat arbitrarily determined by me).

(Please note that this next thing is really not a big deal, I'm just letting you know in case it helps, but I don't expect any one to adapt in any way to this). -I don't really try to line things up from speech-to-speech while flowing. This is really just how things play out because of the kinds of debate I tend to judge. On that note, in almost any possible situation, no matter what you say, I will almost certainly just flow a speech on a specific argument straight down. Just to be clear, I will obviously still separate off case positions and 1ac pages onto separate pages. But if you're like "I'm going to start with the perm and then this thing and then blah" or whatever else, I'll probably ignore you. You can still say it for the purpose of the other team or your partner or out of spite etc., but just know that I will keep flowing straight down because roadmaps seem to be more like New Year's resolutions than actual truth. 

Links are not case arguments. Neither are random framework args. In a K or framework debate, please please please save us all the trouble and just read the links on the same page as the actual arg. I like case arguments but I like being honest about not having specific case args even more. I recognize that there are ways to interact with the aff that do not involve a case debate in the traditional sense. That's fine. What's less fine and substantially more annoying is arbitrarily splitting the K debate (or FW debate) onto two different flows which inevitably become combined in the last rebuttals and create more work for all us.

It is rarely successful in front of me for your only answer to a fully-developed arg by the other team to be that they don't have a card to back it up. By all means point this out if true, but also please substantively answer what is now a fully developed analytic (i.e. still an argument).

Lastly, please be respectful to your partner and your opponents. I don’t like excessively rude people and my speaker points will reflect that. I do enjoy snark if it's intelligent and furthers an argument and isn't just aimed solely at making fun of your opponent. It annoys me when people speak during their opponents' speeches in a way that is loud and/or makes it difficult to hear the speaker (or seems like it would bother the speaker), and is perhaps the only time I audibly intervene during a round (to shush the offender(s)). 

"Policy" vs "Policy"

General:

-High school: I do a TON of high school topic research (along with already having done a ton because of last year's college topic) so generally speaking I know what's up. In the past I've judged a lot of clash and left-left debates in high school, but this year I've found myself judging quite a bit more of policy debates as well. 

-College: I don't judge many policy debates in college, although this year I've judged a few relatively speaking. I've done a fair bit of research on the topic and almost all of it is more "policy" oriented research. I would like to judge some more "policy" debates but whatevs not my job (or desire) to dictate what people say in front of me, and I certainly do not have anything against debate arguments that do not involve both teams agreeing from the get-go that the discussion should be oriented around the results of USFG-enacted restrictions on ghg emissions. 

Topicality: I love a good T debate. Don’t really care what the topicality argument is. If the interpretation is something "silly," then the aff should be able to beat it without help via me giving the interp less weight. That being said, I often think that good explanations of reasonability are often persuasive. The aff will probably lose if they don’t read a counter-interpretation. I also am generally not convinced by most precedence arguments, or arguments about an aff being read all year means that it’s topical. Frankly, I couldn’t care less what the rest of the community thinks about whether or not an aff is topical. Obviously if a precedence arg is conceded I'll evaluate it, but just know that the aff won't have to do much to beat it.
(High school specific: this topic is obviously terribly huge and also lacking good definitions for neg interps - perhaps a useful thing to note about me is that I think of T "definitions" as another standard for a T interp, albeit a rather important one, but I don't think having a definition exactly backing up your interpretation is as absolutely necessary as many seem to think. Sometimes I think the bigger problem with the more obvious or better (in some ways) interps for 'engagement' is their tendency to run into brightline problems).

Theory: I generally default to reject the argument not the team for most theory arguments other than conditionality bad, and have noticed in my judging that it is difficult to convince me otherwise.

Gut-check, I probably think that conditionality is good, 50-state fiat is bad, and international fiat is bad. But I also almost exclusively went for the states counterplan on the energy topic and the Turkey CP on the democracy assistance topic, so I can definitely be convinced by the other side. Trump probably also makes the states counterplan a more important/necessary discussion on the college topic now. Conditionality bad is probably harder to win in front of me, but I'm sure it's doable. Something that is important for me in counterplan competition debates is the question of literature/solvency advocates. The more evidence the neg has about their counterplan in comparison to the aff, the better off they are for the theory debate. That being said, counterplans that result in the aff are probably not competitive. 

Disads: I went for them a lot (especially politics) and enjoy these debates (topic disads>politics obviously). Comparative impact calculus and turns case arguments are always ideal. 

The risk of a disad can sometimes be so low that it should effectively be rendered zero for the purpose of making decisions. The existence of a counterplan in the debate obviously affects this calculus. 

Counterplans: I like them. I like counterplans that are cut from aff articles. I like smart, specific PICs, depending on competition issues and how much evidence there is in context of the aff. See theory blurb above for more details, but would like to reiterate as said above that counterplans that result in the aff are probably not competitive. 

If the 2NR doesn’t say anything, I will not revert to the status quo.

Case debates: Obviously always appreciated. I think that zero risk of an aff can very much be a thing, and something that neg teams are often too hesistant to go for. Sometimes affs just doesn't make sense and/or are lying about what their evidence says. Don't be afraid to call them out. I'm not a huge fan of giving affs leeway just because certain things irl (like Trump's win) make it harder to solve while being topical. A good example for college folks is I also disliked judges giving affs an extra benefit of the doubt on the democracy assistance topic because the affs were all terribad and clearly didn't do anything (as may be fairly obvious, I was a 2N on this topic lol).

Criticisms versus Any Kinds of Args:

Criticisms: I explained my general proclivities above, but, things that are important for winning kritiks in front of me include: reducing the risk of the aff (how you go about doing this is up to you), having a clear explanation of what the alt is, and contextualizing link arguments in terms of the aff. Against race args especially, people seem to love going for some version of "only a risk we're better than the squo" and so it is useful for me as a judge if the contextualized link arguments include either an opportunity cost argument or a reason why that's a bad burden to have to meet (i.e. maybe presumption should stop flipping aff in these instances for whatever reason).

I think that role of the ballot claims are almost always not a real argument. They’re self-serving, arbitrary, and just a fancy way of saying that a certain impact should come first. The only role of the ballot imo is just to vote for the better debating. 

Performance: Most of my general stuff above also address my thoughts on this. Like I said, you do you. I did go for framework a lot in college, and at the beginning, it was because I really "believed" it. At the end of my career, and now, I see a lot of benefits in having a topic, but I also see a lot of reasons for why the way the topic is constructed and the way that debates occur, can be problematic. But just to be clear – when I debated, I viewed debate as a game. But I respect the fact that this isn’t how everyone approaches debate, and can be convinced that as a judge, I should also not view debate as a game. 

"Policy" Affs vs K's

As much as it saddens me to admit, I think (slash hope) we are all aware that I unfortunately do not have the power to actually enact federal government policy if I sign the ballot aff (as cool as that would be). So generally speaking, in front of me, neg teams should stop pointing this out like it's a big deal and if they do, affs should stop being jetti-mind tricked by it. 

I have never found an argument more silly (this is slight hyperbole but it makes me cranky) than the blanket statement that "discourse (or reps or whatever) doesn't shape reality", both because that just seems patently untrue (at least as a blanket claim) and also incredibly ironic to say in a communication activity of all things. There are much more nuanced ways of making a similar argument, i.e. perhaps keep in mind that on the aff you don't have to win that discourse/reps/whatever NEVER affect policymaking.

On a similar note to the above, I find almost all framework debates useless. Aff framework arguments on a theoretical level (we get to weigh our aff bc fairness or education etc) are meh to me - even if you win these arguments, that doesn't resolve the substantive arguments the neg will (hopefully) be making about why their links shape the way the aff's policy happens, which in turn affects the aff's ability to get to the impact they so dearly want to weigh, etc. Also everytime I hear "moots 8/9 minutes of the 1AC" I think "so what?". Seems like if the neg wins a link and an impact and those things moot your 1AC, then you should have picked a better 8/9 minutes of things to say. Much more useful than a theoretical fw debate is answering those link arguments on a substantive level and explaining why your offense still applies even if you don't get to weigh your impacts. Also I will probably never decide the neg doesn't "get" their K unless its a warranted argument made and somehow fully conceded by the other team in all the speeches or something. Tbh I appreciate it when affs don't ever try to forward the argument that the neg shouldn't get their k.
On a similar note, I think aff's often should get access to more of their offense than they realize even if the neg wins their "framework", and are often tricked into thinking otherwise. 

Judge choice is not an argument. Even when technically conceded by the neg team, there are usually 82930281390 other things said by them in the debate that implicitly answer it, and it's a safe bet that I'll do the "work" (is it even work?) for them.

K's vs K Affs

Dear gawd "method debates" are not a thing. Neg teams say "no perms because it's a method debate!" and all I hear is "maybe if we just arbitrarily call what is clearly still a K alt something different, we can jetti-mind trick Risha into thinking we no longer have to actually answer arguments and can, without any real justification, win that affs don't get perms anymore."  This doesn't mean I am just unconvinced by the arg that certain affs should not get permutations - I certainly think there are persuasive, debateable reasons for why affs that choose not to fall under the bounds of the resolution should not - so it just means that "it's a method debate" is not something I consider to be a justification for the claim that affs don't get perms. 

Framework Debates vs K Affs 

I judge a lot of these, so this is the longest section of my philosophy.

Imo non-fairness impacts are better than fairness impacts against affs that talk about various types of oppression in relation to the debaters' own identities - I think it usually hurts to allow these affs to read their impact turns to fairness and thus focus the debate on what was basically the core aff arg to begin with (and thus also likely their best offense). I do find fairness a much better impact against more high theory-ish affs (or ones that talk about oppression but less in relation to debate/personal identity) than the more social justice-y ones but I don't really have many thoughts on fairness as compared to other impacts against the more high theory-ish affs. 

Sort of related to my last point - I don't get this whole procedural vs structural fairness distinction people keep trying to make. Or rather, I get it, but imo it seems like a distinction without a difference, at least how I've heard it explained. Like sure there are different types of fairness and one maybe slightly more controllable than the other but the terminal impact to both (people quit, fun, other args for why ruining the activity matters) seems to be the same so esp when debating an aff talking about a type of oppression esp in relation to debate, the attempt to make a distinction seems not useful and also kind of the point of the impact turns/inevitability arguments the aff usually makes. 

2ARs for K affs against framework rarely have success in front of me if a counter-interp is not extended. I find that solely going for impact turns often devolves into having to defend basically that all clash is bad, and in an activity that (presumably, until proven otherwise really) seems to depend on clash in some form, that usually ends up a difficult position to defend. (This applies less to affs that are an impact turn to debate good from the get go, by which I mean the more high theory-ish affs that say the whole thing is bad, and not other affs that usually critique specific parts of it.)

I've found that people are often bad at explaining why debate is good and useful against high theory affs, esp the ones that explicitly say debate (the whole thing and not just like certain specific aspects) is bad/useless. I spend a great deal of my time doing things related to this activity, and I'd like to think it's not completely a waste, so it shouldn't be hard to convince me that debate has some value, yet I have found myself voting for the argument that it does not in the past. Negs need to make sure they tell me what that value(s) of debate is/could be, etc. when pushed by the aff. Or even just pointing out that while isolating certain values of debate is difficult, the fact that we all clearly spend some time doing the activity means something, etc. 

Truth testing has not been an argument with much success in front of me. By truth testing, I mean what people generally seem to say in front of me, which is some version of: if the aff is unpredictable and the neg wins they could not (or should not) have prepared for it, then since it could not be tested I should assume everything the aff says about the aff is false. Generally speaking when a team spends minutes of each speech explaining an aff and the explanation makes sense to me, I'm not just going to decide that the neg perhaps not having answers means all the plausible/convincing things the aff said are wholesale not true. To me this argument is really no different than saying new affs should also be presumed untrue if the neg isn't ready for one and thus the aff couldn't be tested, and that I think is generally considered to be a not-great arg by most people. I find truth-testing more persuasive when the impact is some version of the argument that it's key to searching for the best method to resist things, like the aff's impact(s). 

In a similar vein to my last point, a counter-interp for affs in these debates should be clearly explained - this means telling me what it is supposed to solve vs not, so this includes making sure it's clear why it doesn't link to your own offense. On a basic level, counter-interp explanations should include a description of the role of the neg in debates and (in most situations) also how you still allow for clash. Neg teams should point out when affs fail to do so, or do so unconvincingly (i.e. explain why the counter-interp doesn't actually solve any of your impacts and/or why it links to their offense). 

It makes zero sense to me when neg teams try to have squirrely interps to try and get out of aff offense when those interps involve basically saying the aff is beholden to meeting certain parts of the resolution but not others (seems to be kind of arbitrary and unpredictable and a great justification for the aff choosing to pick a different part of the resolution to not meet).

Affs should clearly explain the internal link between the neg's intepretation and their impact turns. Notice I said interpretation, and not just explain why *framework* causes the impact turns, i.e. be specific to the neg's interpretation instead of making generalizing claims about framework debates.

There have been many times the aff almost completely concedes the neg's topical version of the aff and it doesn't help the neg in any way. This is not to say that I hate topical versions of the aff lol, and PLEASE affs do not take this to mean you can just not answer them bc I'm sure that now that this is my philosophy, I will vote on a conceded tva the very next time I judge framework, but negs should try to understand the point of the aff a little more. Basically, if your tva and explanation of it against all affs that discuss race issues is the exact same, then it's probably not a great tva, at least for me.

I rarely find it convincing when neg teams try to go for the Lundberg card as a reason for why the aff's interp causes extinction or why the neg's interp solves it, due to having never heard a plausible causal internal link chain between a framework interp and extinction. I'm honestly pretty convinced that I will never hear one. This is like my version of all the philosophies that say something along the lines of "stop saying framework is genocide". Which btw is true but not something I've found necessary to include in my philosophy although I guess I kind of have now. 

Updated – 2019
General:

Yes I want to be on the email chain --> bosch.e2010@gmail.com

I FLOW ON PAPER. I judge debates much more effectively / think harder about the debate / give better comments when I flow on paper. This is the only thing that I wish debaters would more effectively adapt to – give me a little pen time when you transition from card to card / arg to arg and please consider that I have to flip sheets between arguments.

I believe judges should adapt to the debaters, not the other way around. I will do my absolute best to objectively and fairly judge your debate, regardless of the arguments you choose to read. I would much prefer that you read the arguments you’re interested in / are better at debating than attempting to adapt to what you interpret as my preferences based upon what I have written here.

I find myself to be a much more “technical” judge than I once thought, and by that I mean I tend to pay a lot of attention to the way arguments evolve as the debate progresses. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the 2NR / 2AR spin game, but that those “spins” need to be traceable to previous speeches. In addition, I have and will vote on technical concessions SO LONG AS there is an IMPACT to that concession – debaters concede irrelevant arguments all the time, as it turns out.

I evaluate debates in segments – I think each flow has compartmentalized “mini-debates” that take place within them that I evaluate piece by piece (for example, on a critique, the “link debate” “perm debate” “alt debate”etc etc, on a disad the “uniqueness debate” “link debate” “impact debate” “impact turn debate” etc etc etc). If you label these segments clearly and follow these segments throughout the debate, I will be a great judge for you and your speaker points will reflect your organization / flow tech.

WITH THAT SAID!! I do enjoy non-traditional flow and speaking styles, so do not be afraid to pref me if you debate with a different style – I judge these debates a lot and have no problem following / figuring out what needs to be evaluated.

I’m a very expressive judge. You will know if I am feeling your argument if you pay attention to my non-verbal communication. I believe debate is a communication activity and you, as debaters, should know how I’m vibing with your arguments throughout the debate.

Note about speed: Speed is fine, but please make your card / argument transitions clear with vocal inflection. If I miss an argument, 97% of the time it’s because I didn’t hear you say “and” and I thought you were still reading evidence. Your speaker points will reflect it if you SLOW DOWN on tags and don’t just read them like another piece of evidence. IMHO, debate is still a persuasive activity, and being persuasive gets you bonus points. I will always be fan of a slower, persuasive rebuttal.

I don’t think you will have an issue reading almost any argument in front of me, but since folks seem to just read philosophies to find out how people feel about K debate and framework, I guess I’ll say some stuff.

Affirmatives: I think affirmatives should, AT THE VERY LEAST, be in the direction of the topic (but being topical is so much better). I think the best K affs have a resolutional component and have literature that is inherent to the topic. I can and have been persuaded otherwise, this is just my baseline.

Affirmatives should have a solvency method - I don't particularly care if that's an instrumental affirmation of US(fg) action or not (see FW discussion below), but you've gotta have a method that you have solvency for - I really don't like affs that state a lot of problems and argue that the revelation of those problems somehow does anything - that's not negatable. This is along the same lines of "advocacy" statements that don't take an "action" (I use the word action very carefully - I think a lot of things are actions). Statements are quite difficult to negate.

Framework/Topicality:

I think topicality debates need to be SLOWER than other arguments - you want me to write down more, you need to give me more time to flow. In general, I DESPISE T debates that are read entirely off blocks and read at the speed of cards. I don't think this is helpful, I don't think this creates depth, I don't think this is good for education, and I'm probably flowing like 2 words / argument tbh.

I am significantly more persuaded by topicality arguments (ie: the affirmative needs to defend international space cooperation bc that’s key to limits) than framework arguments (ie: debate is a game, the affirmative needs to defend instrumental USFG action bc them’s the rules and and it's unfair and they are cheater cheater pants).

I think negative limits arguments have the capacity to be quite persuasive if teams go for the correct internal links based upon the aff / 2ac strategy. One of the biggest mistakes I see (primarily) 2Ns make is going for the wrong limits scenario. Just like any argument, some links are stronger than others, and you don't need every link to win in the 2NR, so pick the best ones that you think tell the most compelling limits story based upon the particular affirmative. Don't forget to contextualize limits arguments to the COUNTER-INTERPRETATION not (only) the aff itself.

Topical versions of the affirmative are important, but you have to actually explain WHY they are topical versions of the aff (ie how they meet your interpretation, even better if they also meet the counter interp) and how they address the affirmative team’s offense. Ev for TVAs is preferred. I don't think you need to have a TVA to win the debate.

Things that are not persuasive to me:

decision-making
“People quit”
“Small schools XYZ”

I’ll default to competing interpretations unless you tell me otherwise. Reasonability – how do I decide what is reasonable and by what metric do I use?

Critiques:

To make a link argument, YOU HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THE AFF. The aff has to have DONE SOMETHING that you have linked to an argument. I don’t think links of omission are links. If the 2NR is explicitly going for a link of omission, you’re going to have a hard time.

I don’t think criticisms always need an alternative (critique IS a VERB, after all). Make sure you explain how the "alternative" interacts with affirmative solvency / how they are different / how the alt accesses the aff (beyond just a generic root cause explanation).

I'm a sucker for K tricks - affs: don't get bamboozled.

Aff fw v ks: Often is an argument made in the 2AC that is just repeated over and over and not advanced in any meaningful way. If you think framework is important for how I evaluate the K debate, you need to do better than that.

“Role of the ballot”:

I have significant problems with ROBs. I think "role of the ballot" is an empty and meaningless phrase. The "role of the ballot" is to let tabroom know who won and lost the debate. I don't think my ballot does anything for activism / changing the structures of debate / anything at all. I tend to think most ROB claims boil down to "ROB: Vote for me" which is silly af.

Now, this is different than telling me how to evaluate the debate, how I should filter impacts, how I should prioritize arguments, or in general, how I should make my decision. You can and must do that to win the debate.

Perm stuff:
Permutations are tests of competition, and that is all. That means if you read severance / intrinsicness - those are reasons to reject the perm, not the team (unless the negative team gives me a compelling reason for why the team should be rejected, tbh, haven't heard one yet.).

There is a lot of discussion about why competition standards for advocacies / methods should change when a K aff is read – eh, I’m unconvinced this is true. My default position is that your method should compete, which means, it has to withstand the permutation test. I could, perhaps, be persuaded that the affirmative shouldn't get a perm if the negative is willing to commit the time and energy to explaining why competition standards should change, how they should change, what debate looks like with those competition standards, how it applies in that particular debate, etc. Sound like a lot? Yeah, it kinda is... just beat the permutation with disads and solid link explanations.

You can be certain that I absolutely will not reject a perm on an assertion of "no perms in critical debates" or "no plan, no perm."

Case debate:
is highly under-appreciated. Oftentimes 2ACs just assume the neg doesn’t know anything about the aff and entirely mishandle case arguments. Punish. Them.
I have and will vote on case turns if they outweigh the aff or if the aff has such diminished solvency that they outweigh the aff.

Theory: most theory debates are garbage. Prove me wrong. If there is one conditional K or CP, don’t waste your time. If the alt isn’t actually vague, make a different argument.

Assistant Speech & Debate Coach at NSU University School

Last Update: November 2023---Thoughts on "Disclosure" and "Evidence Ethics" in PF added.
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1---Big Picture

Please put me on the e-mail chain.

Policy--- uschoolpolicy@gmail.com AND jacob.daniel.bosley@gmail.com

Public Forum--- uschoolpf@gmail.com AND jacob.daniel.bosley@gmail.com

I actively coach and research policy and public forum debate. I enjoy technical, organized debates. I don’t think I have particularly controversial views, but have tried to be thorough where it matters for prefs/pre-round prep.

Policy vs. K---An argument is an argument, assuming it’s complete, warranted, and applicable.

Tech vs. Truth---Tech obviously informs truth, but if I have to decide between intuitive and well-explained arguments vs. terrible evidence, I’ll choose the former. There are few things I won’t vote on, but “death good” is among them.

Offense vs. Defense---This is a helpful paradigm for assessing relative risk, but risk can be reduced to zero.

2---General Practices

Speed---Go for it, but at the higher end you should scale back slightly. I flow on a computer without much shorthand.

Evidence---I read it during debates. When referenced in CX, I’ll likely go to it. Quality is in the back of my mind, consciously or not.

Re-Highlighting---If small, I don’t think you need to re-read in speech. Don’t expect me to read a giant card to figure out if you’re right.

Digital Debate---Make sure everyone is present with confirmation before starting. Be reasonable about tech issues, as I will track tech time. If there are major issues, I’ll default to tournament procedures.

Decorum---Sass, snark, or shade are fine within reason. I’m not a good judge for hostile approaches, e.g. interrupting speeches.

“New” Arguments---The more late-breaking, the more open I am to responses. “Late-breaking” is relative to me catching the initial argument. Happy to strike 1AR/2NR arguments rightly flagged as “too new.”

Alternative Practices---I’m here to flow and judge a debate, awarding a single win. If you’re trying to do something different, I’m not the judge for you.

3---T vs. Plans

“Competing Interpretations”---This makes more intuitive sense to me than “reasonability,” but that's often because the latter isn't explained as a frame. Affs are still better off prioritizing offense.

"Fiscal Redistribution" Specifics---I was not at camp this summer, and at this point in the season still do not have strong views on most of the debated T issues like “FR = tax and transfer” or “FJ = no subsets.” From grad school studying health policy, "Social Security can be turned into single-payer health insurance" seems a bit absurd, but I’ll let evidence dictate decisions.

4---T vs. K Affs

Frustrations---These debates are often two ships passing in the night due to reliance on pre-written blocks. Please make judges lives easier by:

A---Have a robust defense of your model of debate, including roles for teams/judge, examples of how debates play out, net-benefits, etc.

B---Pick and choose your offense and compare it with what the other team has actually said.

"Affirmation"---At a bare minimum, affirmatives should have some relationship to the topic and “affirm” a clear advocacy. I am not sympathetic to purely negative arguments/diagnoses of power relations.

"Debate is a Game" vs. "Subject Formation"----Debate is a complicated space that's competitive, academic, and personal space. Arguments that assume it’s only one seem a bit shallow. Offense can be made assuming all three.

Terminal Impacts---“Fairness” or “clash” can be terminal impacts, though often teams don’t seem to explain why.

"Truth Testing"---I am less persuaded by these arguments because all argumentation seems to rely on some outside/unstated assumptions. I can certainly be persuaded that the structure of debate warps content and that could be a reason for skepticism.

"TVAs"---The 2NR needs to explain what offense they think the TVA resolves instead of expecting me to figure it out.

"T = [X Violent Practice]"---Feel free to impact turn the resulting curriculum, models, debates, etc. of an interpretation of debate, but its difficult to convince me reading an argument about the topic of discussion is analogical to policing/"stop and frisk"/"drone strikes"/other material violence.

5---Kritiks

Framework---I don't get middle grounds by default. I will resolve this debate one way or the other based on what is said, and then determine what remaining arguments count as offense.

Uniqueness---The alt needs to resolve each link, or have some larger reason that’s not relevant, e.g. framework. Affs are often in a better spot pressing poorly explained alternatives/links.

Competition---I presume affs can test mutual exclusivity of alts, whether against a “plan” or “advocacy.” Feel free to argue different standards of competition. The less the aff outlines a clear method, the more I’m persuaded by “no plan, no perm.”

Perm Texts---They are great. This can be difficult when alts are amorphous, but 1AR/2AR explanation needs to rise above “do both.”

6---Counterplans

Judge Kicking---If you want me to explicitly consider multiple worlds post-2NR, e.g. both CP vs. aff and/or status quo vs. aff, make an explicit argument. Saying the words “the status quo is always an option” in CX is not enough for me.

Theory vs. Literature---Topic literature helps dictate what you can persuade me is reasonable. If your only basis for competition is a definition of “resolved”/“should” and a random law review, good luck. If you have evidence contextual to a topic area and a clear explanation of functional differences in implementation, I’m far easier to persuade.

Solvency Advocates---CPs should have solvency advocates of “comparable quality” to the 1AC. If your Advantage CP plank cites 1AC evidence, go for it. If you’re making something up, provide a card. If you’re trying to make card-less “Con Con” a thing, I’m a hard sell.

Intrinsicness---Both the aff/neg need to get better at debating intrinsic/“other issues” perms. I'm an easier sell than others that these obviate many of the sillier CPs.

7---Disadvantages

Framing---It's everything: impact calculus, link driving uniqueness or vice-versa, the works. Smart arguments and coherent narratives trump a slew of evidence.

Internal Links > Impacts---I find most "DA Turns the Case" / "Case Turns the DA" debates don't spend enough time on causation or timing.

Politics Theory---Most 2AC theory blips against Politics DAs aren’t complete arguments, e.g. “fiat solves the link” or "a logical policymaker could do both." Still, intrinsicness arguments against DAs are underutilized.

8---Theory

Conditionality---It’s difficult to convince me some conditionality isn’t necessary for the neg to be viable. Things can certainly change based on substantive contradictions or quantity. Negs should be clear under what conditions, if any, they can kick individual CP planks.

Other Theory Issues---It’s difficult to persuade me that most theoretical objections to CPs or perms are reasons to reject the team.

“Tricks”/“Spikes”---Please no.

9---Public Forum Specifics

I am not a "lay"/"flay" judge.

A few views of mine may be idiosyncrasies:

Paraphrasing---I’m convinced this is a harmful practice that hides evidence from scrutiny. Evidence should be presented in full context with compete citations in real time. That means:

A---Author, Date, Title, URL

B---Complete paragraphs for excerpts

C---Underlining and/or highlighting indicating what is referenced.

D---Sending evidence you intend to read to opponents before the speech is delivered.

Purely paraphrased evidence compared to a team reading cut cards will be treated as baseless opinions.

Line-by-Line

A---You need to answer arguments in a coherent order based on when/where they were introduced.

B---You need to extend complete arguments, with warrants, in later speeches. If not in summary, it’s too late to bring back from the dead in final focus.

If neither side seems to be doing the needed work, expect me to intervene.

Disclosure---I generally think disclosure is beneficial for the activity, which is why our program open sources. However, I am not as dogmatic about disclosure when judging. It is difficult to convince me "disclosure in its entirety is bad," but the recent trend seems to be shifting interpretations that are increasingly difficult to meet.

Absent egregious lack of disclosure/mis-disclosure, I am not the best judge for increasingly demanding interpretations if opponents have made a good faith effort to disclose. For example, if a team forgot to disclose cites/round report for a single round, but is otherwise actively disclosing, it is difficult to convince me that a single mistake is a punishable offense.

While I don't want to prescribe what I think standard disclosure should be and would rather folks debate the specifics, I am an easier sell than others on some things:

A---The quality of debates is better when students know what arguments have been read in the past. This seems more important than claims that lack of disclosure encourages "thinking on your feet."

B---Debaters should provide tags/citations of previously read contentions. A doc with a giant wall of text and no coherent tags or labels is not meaningful disclosure.

C---Round reports don't seem nearly as important as other forms of disclosure.

Evidence Ethics---Evidence issues are getting egregious in PF. However, I also do not like some of the trends for how these debates are handled.

A---NSDA Rules---If an evidence challenge is invoked, I will stop the debate, inform the team issuing the challenge that the entire debate will hinge on the result of evaluating that challenge, and then consult both the NSDA rules and any tournament specific procedures to adjudicate the challenge. Questions of evidence ethics cannot be just "theory" or "off-case" arguments.

B---"Spirit" of Rules vs. Cheap Shots---I admittedly have idiosyncracies on specific issues, but if they come up will do my best to enforce the exact wording of NSDA rules.

i---"Straw" arguments where the cut section clearly does not represent the rest of the article, ellipses out of major sections, bracketing that changes the meaning of an article (including adding context/references the author didn't intend), and fabrication are easy to convince me are round-enders.

ii----A single broken URL, a card that was copy and pasted from a backfile incorrectly so the last sentence accidentally cut off a couple words, and other minor infractions do not seem worth ending a round over, but it's up for debate.

iii---Not being able to produce the original full text of a card quickly seems like a reason to reject a piece of evidence given NSDA wordings, though I worry this discourages the cutting of books which are harder to provide access to quickly during debates.

Associate Director of Debate @ KU

Last Updated: Pre-GSU 2016

Quick pre-round notes:

I would prefer speech docs while I judge. Please email them to bricker312@gmail.com.

The affirmative should read and defend a topical example of the resolution and the negative should negate the affirmative's example.

I reward teams that demonstrate a robust knowledge of the topic and literature concerning the topic.

More info:

1. The word "interpretation" matters more to me than some. You must counterdefine words, or you will likely lose. You must meet your theory interpretation, or you will likely lose.
2. The words "voting issue" matter more to me than some. I am not searching for cheap shots, nor do I especially enjoy theory debates. However, I feel that I would be intervening if I applied "reject the argument not the team" to arguments that debaters did not explicitly apply the impact takeout to. That said, proliferation of empty voting issues will not only hurt your speaker points, but can be grouped and pretty easily disposed of by opponents.
3. "Turns the case" matters more to me than some. Is it offense? Does the link to the advantage/fiat outweigh or prevent turning the case? Does it mean the aff doesn't solve? Questions that should be answered by the 1ar.

I believe that debaters work hard, and I will work hard for them. The more debaters can show they have worked hard: good case debates, specific strategies, etc. the more likely it is I will reward debaters with speaker points and higher effort. In the same vain, debaters who make clear that they don’t work outside of debates won’t receive high speaker points.

Argument issues:

Topicality – It is a voting issue and not a reverse voting issue. I have not yet been persuaded by arguments in favor of reasonability; however, the reason for this usually lies with the fact that affirmatives fail to question the conventional wisdom that limits are good.

Kritiks – It will be difficult to convince me that I should completely disregard my conceptions of rationality, pragmatism and my aversion to unnecessary death. As a general rule, I think of Kritiks like a counterplan with net-benefits. The more aff specific the better.

Counterplans – I am up in the air about textual vs. functional competition – they both have their time and place, and are probably not universal rules. The cross-ex answer “for your DAs but not your counterplans” has always made negative sense to me. I understand that there are MANDATES of the plan and EFFECTS of the plan; I find this distinction more understandable than the usual c-x answer.

Rundown of general thoughts about counterplans:

Conditionality – it's feeling like a little bit much at the moment
PICs – Good, especially if they PIC out of a part of the plan
Consult/Condition – Up in the air and context specific. Solvency advocates, aff stances, etc. can change my feelings.
Delay – Aff leaning, but might be more competitive based on the structure of the affirmative, or a cross-ex answer. For example, if the affirmative has an advantage that takes the position the advantage can only be solved if it happens before "X" date, then the counterplan to do it after that date seems competitive.
Word PICs – Aff leaning
Alternate non-USFG actors – Aff leaning


Demeanor issues:

Be respectful of your opponent, partner and judge. All types of discrimination are prohibited. Don’t clip cards, don’t cut cards out of context, etc. Don't misclose.

Finally, our community relies on host tournaments with classroom space - don't steal, defame or destroy it.

Any questions, ask.

paradigm writing is confusing bc it ultimately will not tell u much abt how i evaluate debates.

i flow and pay attention to concessions (unless told not to by debaters AND offered an alternative system of evaluation). i wouldn't call myself a flow-centric judge but the flow is important for my decisions bc coverage and the interaction of arguments dictate who gets what offense. my decisions are almost always premised on an offense/defense paradigm (tho this can become complicated in models of debate where people don't 'solve' per se).

i don't believe that judges get rid of all our preconceived assumptions (or any of them tbh) prior to entering the debate but that doesn't mean i'll refuse to listen to ur argument if it's different from how i feel abt debate or the world.

framing and argument comparison is more important than (is also the same thing as) impact calculus-- ur blocks will not tell u much abt how arguments interact but u in the round can take note of their interaction. argument interaction is crucial for both aff and neg. how much of the aff does the alt solve, and vice versa? what disads to the aff/alt are u going for and how do they interact w the offense the aff/alt is winning? if u win ur theory of power, what does that mean for the debate abt aff/alt solvency? etc...

i like good cx. it doesn't happen often, but debates can be won and lost in cx. what does happen often is that arguments can be dismissed or proven in a good cx. strategize. if redirecting or diverting the question is ur style, do it, but please do it well.

ONLINE DEBATING— clarity and slowing down are critical to deal with internet lag. ur judges no longer have the same cues bc of the limitations of the screen. plz account for this when debating in front of me. be willing to sacrifice a little speed so that i actually know wtf u are saying.

Adrienne F. Brovero, University of Kentucky

Closing in on 30 years coaching
adri.debate@gmail.com

Please label your email chain subject line with Team names, tourney, round.

Your prep time does not end until you have hit send on the email.

❗Updated 3-27-24 - I am REAL serious about the highlighting thing below - many cards are literally unreadable as highlighted and if I find myself struggling to read your evidence, I will cease to do so.

❗This is a communication activity.❗

Clarity - Cannot emphasize enough how important clarity is, whether online or in-person.

Highlighting - Highlighting has become a disgrace. Highlighting should not result in anti-grammatical shards of arguments. Highlighting should not result in misrepresentation of the author's intent/ideas. Quite frankly, some highlighting is so bad, you would have been better served not reading the evidence. When highlighting, please put yourself in the judge's shoes for a moment and ask yourself if you would feel comfortable deciding a debate based on how you've highlighted that card. If the answer is no, reconsider your highlighting.

SERIOUSLY - LINE-BY-LINE. NUMBER.

If you like to say "I will do the link debate here" - I am probably not the best judge for you. I would prefer you clash with link arguments in each instance they happen, as opposed to all in one place. Same is true for every other component of an argument.

• Qualifications - read them. Debate them.
• Line-by-line involves directly referencing the other team's argument ("Off 2AC #3 - Winners Win, group"), then answering it. "Embedded" clash fails if you bury the clash part so deep I can't find the arg you are answering.
• Overviews - overrated. Kinda hate them. Think they are a poor substitute for debating the arguments where they belong on the line-by-line.

Things that are prep time:

• Any time after the official start time that is not a constructive (9 mins), CX (3 mins), rebuttal (6 mins), or a brief roadmap. Everything else is prep time.
• Putting your speech doc together - including saving doc, setting up email chain, attaching it to the email, etc.
• Asking for cards outside of CX time. ("Oh can you send the card before CX?" - that is either CX or prep time - there is not un-clocked time).
• Setting up your podium/stand.
• Putting your flows in order.
• Finding pens, flows, timers.

Debate like this: http://vimeo.com/5464508

MACRO-ISSUES
Communication: I like it. I appreciate teams that recognize communication failures and try to correct them. If I am not flowing, it usually means communication is breaking down. If I am confused or have missed an argument, I will frequently look up and give you a confused look – you should read this as an indication that the argument, at minimum, needs to be repeated, and may need to be re-explained. I am more than willing to discount a team’s arguments if I didn’t understand or get their arguments on my flow.

Speaker points: Points are influenced by a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: Communication skills, speaking clarity, road-mapping, obnoxiousness, disrespectfulness, theft of prep time, quality of and sufficient participation in 2 cross-examinations and 2 speeches, the quality of the debate, the clarity of your arguments, the sophistication of your strategy, and your execution. I have grown uncomfortable with the amount of profanity used during debates – do not expect high points if you use profanity.

Paperless/Prep Time: Most tournaments have a strict decision time clock, and your un-clocked time cuts into decision time. Most of you would generally prefer the judges has the optimal amount of time to decide. Please be efficient. Prep runs until the email is sent. I will be understanding of tech fails, but not as much negligence or incompetence. Dealing with your laptop’s issues, finding your flows, looking for evidence, figuring out how to operate a timer, setting up stands, etc. – i.e. preparation – all come out of prep time.

Flowing:
• I flow.
• Unless both teams instruct me otherwise, I will flow both teams.
• I evaluate the debate based primarily on what I have flowed.
• I frequently flow CX. I carefully check the 2AR for new arguments, and will not hold the 2NR accountable for unpredictable explanations or cross applications.
• I try to get down some form of tag/cite/text for each card. This doesn’t mean I always do. I make more effort to get the arg than I do the cite or date, so do not expect me to always know what you’re talking about when you solely refer to your “Henry 19” evidence.
• I reward those who make flowing easier by reading in a flowable fashion (road-mapping & signposting, direct refutation/clash, clarity, reasonable pace, emphasis of key words, reading for meaning, no distractions like tapping on the tubs, etc.). If you are fond of saying things like "Now the link debate" or "Group the perm debate" during the constructives, and you do not very transparently embed the clash that follows, do not expect me to follow your arguments or connect dots for you. Nor should you expect spectacular points.

Evidence:
• I appreciate efforts to evaluate and compare claims and evidence in the debate.
• I pay attention to quals and prefer they are actually read in the debate. I am extremely dismayed by the decline in quality of evidence (thank you, Internets) and the lack of teams’ capitalization on questionable sources.
• I don’t like to read evidence if I don’t feel the argument it makes has been communicated to me (e.g. the card was mumbled in the 2AC, or only extended by cite, or accompanied by a warrantless explanation, etc.).
• I also don’t like reading the un-highlighted portions of evidence unless they are specifically challenged by the opposing team.
• I should not have to read the un-highlighted parts to understand your argument – the highlighted portion should be a complete argument and a coherent thought. If you only read a claim, you only have a claim – you don’t get credit for portions of the evidence you don’t reference or read. If you only read a non-grammatical fragment, you are running the risk of me deciding I can’t coherently interpret that as an arg.
• I don’t like anonymous pronouns or referents in evidence like “she says” without an identification of who “she” is – identify “she” in your speech or “she” won’t get much weight in my decision.
• If you hand me evidence to read, please make clear which portions were actually read.

Decision calculus: Procedural determinations usually precede substantive determinations. First, I evaluate fairness questions to determine if actions by either team fundamentally alter the playing field in favor of the aff or neg. Then, I evaluate substantive questions. Typically, the aff must prove their plan is net beneficial over the status quo and/or a counterplan in order to win.

MICRO-ISSUES
Topicality & plan-related issues:
• The aff needs to have a written plan text.
• It should be topical.
• T is a voter. Criticisms of T are RVIs in sheep’s clothing.
• Anti-topical actions are neg ground.
• Have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation of how nontraditional advocacies or demands are meaningfully different from plans, other than they are usually either vague and/or non-topical.
• On a related note, I don’t get why calling one’s advocacy a performance or demand renders a team immune from being held responsible for the consequences of their advocacy.
• In relation to plans and permutations, I value specificity over vagueness – specificity is necessary for meaningful debate about policies. However, please do not consider this an invitation to run dumb spec arguments as voting issues – absent a glaring evasiveness/lack of specificity, these are typically more strategic as solvency args.

Critiques/Performance:

Adjudicating critique or performance debates is not my strong suit. Most of these debates take place at a level of abstraction beyond my comprehension. If you have a habit of referring to your arguments by the author’s name (e.g. “Next off – Lacan”), I am not a very good judge for you. I don’t read very much in the advanced political philosophy or performance studies areas. This means, most of the time, I don’t know what the terms used in these debates mean. I am much more the applied politics type, and tend to think pragmatically. This means if you want to go for a critical or performance argument in front of me, you need to explain your arguments in lay-speak, relying less on jargon and author names, and more on warrants, analogies, empirical examples, and specifics in relation to the policy you are critiquing/performing for/against – i.e. persuade me. It also helps to slow it down a notch. Ask yourself how quickly you could flow advanced nuclear physics – not so easy if you aren’t terribly familiar with the field, eh? Well, that’s me in relation to these arguments. Flowing them at a rapid rate hinders my ability to process the arguments. Additionally, make an effort to explain your evidence as I am not nearly as familiar with this literature as you are. Lastly, specifically explain the link and impact in relation to the specific aff you are debating or the status quo policy you are criticizing. Statements like "the critique turns the case” don't help me. As Russ Hubbard put it, in the context of defending his demining aff many years ago, “How does our plan result in more landmines in the ground? Why does the K turn the case?” I need to know why the critique means the plan’s solvency goes awry – in words that link the critique to the actions of the plan. For example: Which part of the harms does the critique indict, with what impact on those harms claims? What would the plan end up doing if the critique turns its solvency? In addition, I find it difficult to resolve philosophical questions and/or make definitive determinations about a team’s motives or intentions in the course of a couple of hours.

I strongly urge you to re-read my thoughts above on “Communication” before debating these arguments in front of me.

Counterplans:

I generally lean negative on CP theory: topical, plan-inclusive, exclusion, conditional, international fiat, agent, etc. Aff teams should take more advantage of situations where the counterplan run is abusive at multiple levels – if the negative has to fend off multiple reasons the CP is abusive, their theory blocks may start to contradict. Both counterplan and permutation texts should be written out. “Do both” is typically meaningless to me – specify how. The status quo could remain a logical option, but growing convinced this should be debated. [NOTE THAT IS A FALL '18 CHANGE - DEBATE IT OUT] Additionally, another shout-out for communication - many theory debates are shallow and blippy - don't be that team. I like theory, but those type of debates give theory a bad name.

Other:

I like DAs. I’m willing to vote on stock issue arguments like inherency or “zero risk of solvency”.

Shae Bunas
Debated @ Oklahoma for 4 years.

Currently an Assistant Coach @ UCO.

Big Picture

In general, I don't have much of a preference for what people read in front of me. Despite having debated critiques throughout college I enjoy CP/DA/T debates and hope teams will be willing to read those arguments if they are more prepared to do so. Whatever strategy you choose, the more specific the strategy the better.

Specific arguments

Topicality: Generic T arguments don't get very far in front of me unless they are based in the literature and the negative can prove that the loss of core (generic) ground outweighs the affs education claims (e.g., why is the politics da/other generic da more important than the aff's particular education). If the aff doesn't read any offense they will very likely lose the debate.

Framework: Absent a T component it's not a reason to reject the aff. I have yet to hear a good reason why policy education is the only predictable education.

Disads: 'DA turns the case' is pretty important. I could be persuaded of 'no risk of the da' but it's unlikely. 

CPs: Well-researched PICs are enjoyable and I encourage you to read them. I tend to lean negative on theory but aff on questions of competition. Textual/functional competition is up for debate.

Critiques: In my experience, alternatives are under-debated. The aff needs offense against the alt and the neg needs a specific explanation of how the alt solves the case. Impact framing is important: don't stop at 'utilitarianism is key' or 'ethics first'. Tell me why you should still win even if you lose the impact framing debate (e.g., 'even if the neg wins that ethics comes first you will still vote aff because....'). Absent specific link analysis the permutation is pretty compelling. When deciding between reading the K you always go for and are comfortable with versus reading the K's you know that I read you should default to the K's that you are comfortable with. Don't read a huge-ass overview in the block, put it on the line-by-line.

Theory: Reading blippy blocks is a non-starter as are cheap shots. Just like every other issue in debate it needs to be well-developed before I will consider it. Conditionality is probably ok as long as the neg isn't reading contradictory positions.

Evidence: I prefer a handful of quality cards that are debated well over a stack of shitty cards that are read as fast as possible. As such, I'm persuaded by smart analytical arguments that point out the contrived nature of the case advantage/da/cp/k/whatever. You won't convince me that a card cut from a blog should be rejected if it has a warrant in it. I evaluate arguments, not qualifications with T debates being the exception to the rule: literature-based definitions hold more water than the definition given by merriam-webster or some other dictionary.

Paperless: Clock stops when the jumping team pulls the flash drive out of their computer.

Jeff Buntin
Northwestern University/Montgomery Bell Academy

Feelings----------------------------------------X--Dead inside

Policy---X------------------------------------------K

Tech-----------------------------X-----------------Truth

Read no cards-----------------------------X------Read all the cards

Conditionality good--X----------------------------Conditionality bad

States CP good-----------------------X-----------States CP bad

Politics DA is a thing-------------------------X----Politics DA not a thing

Always VTL-------x--------------------------------Sometimes NVTL

UQ matters most----------------------X----------Link matters most

Fairness is an impact-X------------------------------Fairness is not an impact

Tonneson votes aff-----------------------------X-Tonneson clearly neg

Try or die--------------x---------------------------What's the opposite of try or die

Not our Baudrillard-------------------------------X Yes your Baudrillard

Clarity-X--------------------------------------------Srsly who doesn't like clarity

Limits--------------------X--------------------------Aff ground

Presumption---------------------------------X-----Never votes on presumption

Resting grumpy face---X--------------------------Grumpy face is your fault

Longer ev--------X---------------------------------More ev

"Insert this rehighlighting"----------------------X-I only read what you read

2017 speaker points---------------------X--------2007 speaker points

CX about impacts----------------------------X----CX about links and solvency

Dallas-style expressive----------X---------------D. Heidt-style stoic

Referencing this philosophy in your speech--------------------X-plz don't

Fiat double bind-----------------------------------------X--literally any other arg

AT: --X------------------------------------------------------ A2:

AFF (acronym)-------------------------------------------X Aff (truncated word)

"It's inev, we make it effective"------------------------X---"It'S iNeV, wE mAkE iT eFfEcTiVe"

Bodies without organs---------------X---------------Organs without bodies

Redistribution affs must tax----------------------X--------Not required to tax

New affs bad-----------------------------------------X-Old affs bad

Aff on process competition--X-------------------------Neg on process competition

CPs that require the 'butterfly effect' card------------X- Real arguments

'Judge kick'----------------------------------X---Absolutely no 'judge kick'

Nukes topic--X-----------------------------------------Any other topic ever

Please put me on the email chain tbuttge1@binghamton.edu

I am a coach at Binghamton, where I debated for four years. I qualified to the NDT a few times, and have now been coaching Bing for three years.

My primary debate interests are disability studies, semiocap, various post modernism(Foucault, Delueze, etc), but I'm pretty familiar with most K literature currently in circulation.

I mostly judge K v K debates, but vote for framework a decent amount when its presented to me(I'll talk about why in a bit)

K v K

Aff's being able to articulate solvency/framing for the ballot is important to me. I'm not great for affs that are simply theories of power that explain why the status quo is bad. Being able to explain the aff's relationship to debate and why your pedagogy is good goes a long way in beating back presumption.

Neg teams need to focus on constructing the alt in a way that is as distinct from the aff as possible, and honestly with me in the back you can get away with simply a reject alt or something more like framework style argument instead of articulating aff solvency. My point here is to say, don't let the perm be an easy way out.

also please call out floating pics, it feels bad voting neg when the aff team doesn't realize how unfair the winning argument was.

Clash Debates

A big thing I have noticed when I judge these debates is that because each team will inevitably have offense, which team has better defense in the form of the TVA or the Counter Interpretation is often a deciding factor for me. Aff teams need to make sure they don't brush off the TVA in particular as I think it can mitigate a lot of the aff's offense when done right.

Am fine if the aff wants to just impact turn the neg's offense as well, just make sure you are dedicating a lot of time to this and not taking the fact that I will likely agree with you personally for granted.

Fairness is not too persuasive to me as an impact but I will vote for it if you win the argument. I think skills, education, dogma etc are better impacts though and you'll probably have better success with those.

When policy teams are aff, both sides should prioritize winning the framework argument as to whether or not the aff gets to weigh the plan. Also in these debates, the neg needs to focus on impact calc and explaining what solvency means in context of my ballot. Otherwise you risk losing to the try or die framing of the affirmative.

Associate Director of Debate @ Greenhill

Still helping KU in my free time

Please add me to the email chain: a.rae.chase@gmail.com

I love debate and I will do my absolute best to make a decision that makes sense and give a helpful RFD.

Topicality

Competing interpretations are easier to evaluate than reasonability. You need to explain to me how we determine what is reasonable if you are going for reasonability.

Having said that if your intep is so obscure that there isn't a logical CI to it, perhaps it is not a good interpretation.

T debates this year (water topic) have gotten too impact heavy for their own good. I've judged a number of rounds with long overviews about how hard it is to be negative that never get to explaining what affirmatives would be topical under their interp or why the aff interp links to a limits DA and that's hard for me because I think much more about the latter when I think about topicality.

T-USFG/FW

Affirmatives should be about the topic. I will be fairly sympathetic to topicality arguments if I do not know what the aff means re: the topic after the 1AC.

I think teams are meming a bit on both sides of this debate. Phrases like "third and fourth level testing" and "rev v rev debates are better" are kind of meaningless absent robust explanation. Fairness is an impact that I will vote on. Like any other impact, it needs to be explained and compared to the other team's impact. I have also voted on arguments about ethics, education, and pedagogy. I will try my best to decide who wins an impact and which impact matters more based on the debate that happens.

I do not think the neg has to win a TVA to win topicality; it can be helpful if it happens to make a lot of sense but a forced TVA is generally a waste of time.

If the aff is going for an impact turn about debate, it would be helpful to have a CI that solves that impact.

DA’s

I would love to see you go for a disad and case in the 2NR. I do not find it persuasive when an affirmative team's only answer to a DA is impact framing. Impact framing can be important but it is one of a number of arguments that should be made.

I am aware the DA's aren't all great lately. I don't think that's a reason to give up on them. It just means you need a CP or really good case arguments.

K's

I really enjoy an old-fashioned k vs the aff debate. I think there are lots of interesting nuances available for the neg and the aff in this type of debate. Here are some specific thoughts that might be helpful when constructing your strategy:

1. Links of omission are not links. Links of “commission” will take a lot of explaining.

2. Debating the case matters unless there is a compelling framework argument for why I should not evaluate the case.

3. If you are reading a critique that pulls from a variety of literature bases, make sure I understand how they all tie to together. I am persuaded by aff arguments about how it's very difficult to answer the foundation of multiple bodies of critical literature because they often have different ontological, epistemological, psychoanalytic, etc assumptions. Also, how does one alt solve all of that??

4. Aff v. K: I have noticed affirmative teams saying "it's bad to die twice" on k's and I have no idea what that means. Aff framework arguments tend to be a statement that is said in the 2AC and repeated in the 1AR and 2AR - if you want fw to influence how I vote, you need to do more than this. Explain how it implicates how I assess the link and/or alternative solvency.

5. When ontology is relevant - I feel like these debates have devolved into lists of things (both sides do this) and that's tough because what if the things on the list don't resonate?

CP's

Generic counterplans are necessary and good. I think specific counterplans are even better. Counterplans that read evidence from the 1AC or an aff author - excellent! I don't have patience for overly convoluted counterplans supported by barely highlighted ev.

I do not subscribe to (often camp-driven) groupthink about which cp's "definitely solve" which aff's. I strongly disagree with this approach to debate and will think through the arguments on both sides of the debate because that is what debate is about.

Solvency deficits are a thing and will be accounted for and weighed along with the risk of a DA, the size of the DA impact, the size of the solvency deficit, and other relevant factors. If you are fiating through solvency deficits you should come prepared with a theoretical justification for that.

Other notes!

Some people think it is auto-true that politics disads and certain cp's are terrible for debate. I don't agree with that. I think there are benefits/drawbacks to most arguments. This matters for framework debates. A plan-less aff saying "their model results in politics DA's which is obviously the worst" will not persuade absent a warrant for that claim.

Love a good case debate. It's super under-utilized. I think it's really impressive when a 2N knows more about the aff evidence than the aff does.

Please don't be nasty to each other; don't be surprised if I interrupt you if you are.

I don't flow the 1AC and 1NC because I am reading your evidence. I have to do this because if I don't I won't get to read the evidence before decision time in a close debate.

If the debate is happening later than 9PM you might consider slowing down and avoiding especially complicated arguments.

If you make a frivolous or convoluted ethics challenge in a debate that I judge I will ask you to move on and be annoyed for the rest of the round. Legitimate ethics challenges exist and should/will be taken seriously but ethics challenges are not something we should play fast and loose with.

For debating online:

-If you think clarity could even possibly be an issue, slow down a ton. More than ever clarity and quality are more important than quantity.

-If my camera is off, I am not there, I am not flowing your speech, I probably can't even hear you. If you give the 1AR and I'm not there, there is not a whole lot I can do for you.

The paradigm is split up into things you might want to know before the tournament when doing prefs, and things you might want to know before a round.

Email address for chains and debate-related contact is rcdebate2@gmail.com

For Prefs:

1) Accommodations - I have difficulties with processing auditory information and verbalizing my decisions. I would appreciate some level of accommodation, primarily that y'all go clearer and slower, especially on tags, and signposting/labeling of arguments in the rebuttal speeches. Clear signals of when you are moving on from an argument are also welcome - I flow on my laptop, and often end up flowing upwards of 2/3rds of what you say verbatim pretty much straight down with some attempts at matching up arguments on the flow, but I need some help/signalling from debaters as per when one argument ends and another begins. Please email me at the address above regarding questions about decisions not asked during RFDs or further lines of clarification.

2) Framework - I am not often persuaded by framework/T-USFG negative arguments, so I'm not a safe bet in those rounds. When I do judge those rounds, I am more persuaded by arguments focusing on potential material educational benefits of debate than fairness (fairness is not an impact, as I do not understand why debate is an intrinsic good), but it's still a pretty uphill battle.

3) Experience - did LD in high school, four years of policy in college, and this is my fifth year of coaching and judging as a graduate student assistant. I largely read critical arguments and have judged mostly k-on-k debates and clash rounds, with a few policy rounds thrown in. I was a 2A, and the critical affirmatives I wrote were largely high theory shenanigans related to race, war, and imperialism.

4) Orientation to judging - I consider judging to be a job - I'm in the pool because it's related to obligations tied to my employment. I respect debaters time, effort, and scholarship and try to give feedback that will help refine argumentation and scholarship. Further, I don't have any strong identification as an educator, a blank slate, or a rational policy/decision-maker. This means that, especially in critical rounds, I would appreciate some instruction regarding how I should be viewing/judging the arguments in the debate, but otherwise I'll just default to what's in the next bullet point. I enjoy learning while judging, so new ways to see things or just some fun facts are always appreciated speaker points-wise.

5) How I judge - I see my role in debate as the person that has to be persuaded to press either the affirmative or negative button on tabroom based on what happens in the round. The affirmative should probably make a claim to doing something good, and the negative should say that whatever the aff did is either a) bad or b) doesn't do anything good. I start my decisions with framework/framing arguments - who's told me what the function of the debate should be and how to judge who has done that function better. I then evaluate either a) what's up with the aff in the 2AR based on what can be mobilized from the 1AR - how is it being extended, does it still do stuff, etc. and/or b) what core issue(s) of the debate the 2NR has identified/hinges on.

I often have some idea of b) going in to the 2AR, which entails I generally have some sense of what the aff would need to address to win (i.e. prove their advocacy is still good and 'solves' in some way), which leads to some quick decisions on my part - if my decision takes a while, either I'm trying to figure out how to word my decision properly and/or I'm very confused about what's happening/missed something. I care a lot about good warranting in the last speeches for arguments you're going for, and of course clear judge instruction and weighing. I'm not the most technical judge, but I do care that important arguments are answered although I would like the function of whatever dropped argument is being extended to be explained. You're better off going for a few well explained arguments rather than trying to cover everything.

For this next part, these are largely preferences/tendencies in how I view things based off of my experience with judging, and are subject to change/what happens in rounds.

Before a round:

1) Evidence quality vs analytic argumentation - I like good evidence, and I do not mind when debaters apply evidence in creative contexts, but evidence that you read is not by itself an argument. I often read evidence while it's being read in a speech, in cross-x, or during prep time because of my difficulties with processing auditory information. I don't think you need a card for everything, and also value good extrapolation of warrants, analysis and comparison of authors and citations, and applications of evidence.

I appreciate historical and contemporary examples (and metaphors/analogies), especially when it comes from your evidence, but I also need those examples to be well explained - an example is not in and of itself a warrant, but they're pretty essential for me to understand your argument and find what you're saying persuasive. Examples help concretize your warrants and make your argument something I can understand better - it's okay to kind of treat me like somebody who doesn't easily understand what people are saying, especially when they say it very quickly. Jargon's fine but we might not agree on the meaning of stuff so explain what you actually mean when you can.

2) Presumption - it's real, and if I don't think the 2AR sufficiently defends that the aff is good in some way the chance I end up voting negative at least a bit - also, it's not often that presumption is the best 2NR, it should be paired with some offense. I probably am amenable to presumption arguments because I think case debate is important. You don't have to put stuff directly on case flow, but aff's get away with so many things they shouldn't especially when it comes to how well their internal links are supported by the evidence, and it pains me to watch 2Ns miss some of that stuff.

I start my decisions (in my head) with the question of presumption/what the aff does, so keep that in mind. I tend to let negative alternatives get away with murder (although please don't call random alt related arguments a floating PIC it's really confusing for me) it despite having been a 2A, so watch out for that and point out when they don't haven't extended warrants. I can be persuaded that presumption flips affirmative, but that might just be because I don't entirely understand that phrase.

3) Framework (not T-USFG but for policy aff v k or k v k rounds) - I don't care as much about fairness, but I do think that both policy and critical teams should be forwarding arguments about how debate and arguments works and how I should be judging them. Debate theory arguments supported by actual theoretical arguments (be they critical or not) are valuable. For policy affs, I think of framework as a question of you telling me why talking about a plan might actually lead to the impact being addressed. For the negative, you can do some real damage here - tell me why the aff can't resolve what it's talking about, and what you're doing differently. I'm cool with whatever epistemology/ontology/affect/performance/ethics stuff you want to talk about.

I do think that people can make good arguments for how and why debate 'does things,' because it's a weird community full of some weird repetitions, but it's a question of how you explain that (and if you think debate doesn't 'do anything' you really gotta tell me what that means). Questions of 'spill over' and 'the ballot' are often red herrings for more substantive analysis of how the relationship between debaters, debates, policy debate as a format/medium of speech, the debate community, academic institutions, and 'the real world' works, so less debate jargon and more explanation helps.

4) Links and Perms - I really appreciate a good link argument with a quotation from the affirmative, an example, and an impact. You don't need a card for your links, as good analysis applied to specific parts of the aff will do the trick, but cards can help a ton. I appreciate depth of a link rather than several link arguments.

I don't often care for most 'no perms' debate theory arguments (like method v method means no perms bc advocacy can shift kind of arguments), and in those cases I would be more persuaded by no perms arguments grounded in theories of performance and speech (taken broadly) applied to debate. I'd prefer that the neg wins a substantive link as a DA or some degree of mutual exclusivity/trade-off. It helps me understand the difference between the aff and the neg better when DAs to the perm that are not just link arguments are applied to how the aff has explained the permutation. "Do both" is rarely enough in the 2AC, and by the 1AR I would like to know how the perm works more in depth - framework arguments about debate help here.

5) Overviews - I prefer short overviews that give me a primer on what to expect for the rest of the 9 minutes on the line-by-line + identification/flagging of important arguments (like links, tricks, and turns case stuff), but if you gotta do the long overview go for it, they are fine but a bit difficult to flow - it would be appreciated if you made the lines between the different chunks of argument you're making more clear if that's the case. It's easier for me to flow when debaters slow and then speed up; otherwise I fail to catch certain key warrants. It's also fine if you don't care too much about the flow and do whatever.

6) Theory - both policy and critical arguments rely on theoretical premises, and I'd appreciate when folks are ready to make them explicit. Theory should be a building block in a broader argument, so the arguments you make don't have to use evidence from authors that are 100% theoretically consistent with each other, but you should still be somewhat prepared to defend the political implications, associations, and (mis)uses of the theoretical dispositions your evidence is tied to. Big contradictions between authors and lit bases, however, do matter. I'm sympathetic to arguments about how theory functions in academia/academic community for better or for worse, but it's not necessarily only tied to that context.

Winning big theory thesis claims does not always mean that you win the debate (unless such claims go uncontested, and even then I need a brief explanation for why that matters). Theory is significant as a way of explaining how stuff works and how to engage in stuff, but an advocacy can be good (and a link valid) even if you 'lose' parts of the theory debate. I see theory and praxis as intertwined but sometimes it's worth making the distinction to explain warrants, so focusing on highlighting both (or explaining how they might be one and the same) helps me out when I am making my decisions.

Ultimately, I have come to conclusion that debate is a game but this game also has real life effects on the people who choose to participate in it. Therefore,BE NICE, HAVE FUN, and DO YOU!!!

I have found in my time debating that there are a few things that debaters are looking for when they read judging philosophies (including myself) so I’ll get straight to the point:

K's:I’m fine with them and have run them for quite some time in my career. However, this does not mean run a K in front of me for the fun of it - rather it means that I expect you to be able to explain your link story and the way the alternative functions. I find that most teams just make the assumption that the Aff doesn’t get a perm because "it’s a methodology debate". That’s not an argument, give me warrants as to why this is true if this is the argument you are going to for. K Aff's are fine often times debaters lose sight of the strategic benefits of the Aff, So a simple advice I can give isDONT FORGET YOUR AFF!!

DA's:In general I like strong impact analysis and good link story. Make logical argument and be able to weigh the impact story against the Aff.

CP’s: I am open all types of CP’s you just have to prove the competitiveness of said CP and make sure it has a net benefit.

FW: Again….Debate is a game but this game has real life implications on those who choose to engage in it. I think FW can be strategic against some Aff’s but don’t use it as a reason to not engage the Aff. Win your interpretation and weigh your impacts. Aff’s: don’t blow off FW answer it and engage it or tell me why you are not engaging in it.

Theory: Not a big fan of it, but make sure you slow down as to ensure I get all the arguments you are making. But do you!

Cross X: I think this is the best part of debate and LOVE it. Don’t waste those 3 min, they serve a great purpose. I am ALWAYS paying attention to CX and may even flow it.

***Please remember that I am not as familiar with the high school topic so don’t assume I know all the jargon ***

Last but not least,watch me!(take hints from the visual cues that I am sending)

DON’T SPREAD. If you do, I WILL stop listening. You could talk as fast as Ben Shaprio but anything faster will annoy me.

I HATE PERMS. P E R I O D

Do what you do best and I will make a decision afterwards

————-

How RyanMalone makes decisions

I hope Whitehead is right, that even dimwits can make good decisions if they follow an appropriate procedure. It’s only fair then for me to give a general sense of how I make decisions, with as few platitudes as possible, though most of them still apply.

1. After the 2ar I review 2nr and 2ar arguments and their comportment with the block and 1ar. Unless there are arguments about how I should or should not flow, I appreciate when debaters are attentive to line-by-line, but I understand that strategy sometimes calls one to deviate from it. When that occurs, I am less likely to line up arguments in the same way as you may want me to.

2. While doing that I clarify shorthand and mark out errata and things that aren’t arguments. There is a difference between arguments and nascent things that purport to be arguments. We don’t need to talk about Toulmin; an argument is really anything that could inform a decision. This may seem arbitrary or kind of like question-begging, but I don’t think it’s capricious. I don’t do this because I have some ultra-strenuous “not buying it” threshold for what constitutes an argument. My concern is that there is a temptation to embellish not-quite-arguments, especially those that, if they had been full arguments, would be compelling, strategic, or make for an easy decision. Assessing, at the outset, what all on the flow are reasonably arguments is a way to ward off that temptation.

3. I then look to arguments the 2nr and 2ar say are the most important and other arguments that appear central to the debate or that may supplant opposing lines of reasoning. The last part may seem to imply a premium on the meta, but rarely are debates leveraged on Archimedean points.

4. If necessary, I read evidence. I don’t follow along in speech docs or look at speeches in more than a cursory way prior to the end of the debate, with perhaps the exception of interpretations and counterplan texts. I will read a piece of evidence if there is contestation about its quality, applicability, or illocution, if I am asked to compare two pieces of evidence or a piece of evidence and a countervailing explanation, or if some argument is dense and, despite good explanation, I’m just not following. My concern is that the more evidence a judge reads without specific reason, the more they reward good evidence read sloppily over clear, persuasive argumentation and are at risk of reconstructing the debate along those lines.

5. I hash out the above (it’s hard to adumbrate this process in a way that’s not super vague) and I get something resembling a decision. I run through a few even-if scenarios: what, if any, central arguments the losing team could have won, but still lose the debate, and what arguments the winning team would have had to lose or the losing team would have had to win for the losing team to win the debate. Finally, I review the flow again to make sure my decision is firmly based in the 2nr and 2ar and that there is nothing I’ve missed.

Note on Framework

Framework debates are better when both teams have some defense, in addition to offense.

Even if fairness is intrinsically value, by which I mean fairness is valuable regardless of relation, I’m unsure how valuable procedural fairness is, in and of itself. Because of that fairness arguments make more sense to me as internal links rather than impacts.

Similarly, impact turns to fairness are more persuasive when they are about the purported use of fairness as an impartial rule. Phrased differently, in explaining the way structural fairness informs procedural fairness as a difference in fairness-in-rule and fairness-in-practice, it may be worth thinking about fairness as the practice of appealing to rules.

Topical versions are under-utilized.

Things that do not concern how I usually make decisions

Some of the above is assiduously believed, but weakly held, however, the following points are immutable: I will comply with any tournament rules regarding speech and decision times, speaker points, etc. Any request not to be recorded or videotaped should be honored. If proven, clipping, cross-reading, or deceitfully manufacturing or altering evidence will result in a loss and zero speaker points. Unlike wit, sass, and tasteful self-effacement, bald-faced meanness will negatively affect speaker points.

My rfds are brief, which I’m working on. This reason for this is twofold. First, most of what I write down concerns how I make my decision, not how I intend to give it. Second, I don’t presume to act, even temporarily, as something like an arguments coach, nor as someone who can adroitly explain or find fault in an opposing team’s arguments. The last thing I want to do is say something that would lead you astray. At this point in my time judging I’m really just trying to be a good heuristic machine—anything more is just gravy. Obviously, to the degree to which I have insight I will give suggestions, clarifications, or share in your befuddlement.

Please feel free to email me if you have questions or concerns.

David Cram Helwich
University of Minnesota
28 years judging, 20-ish rounds each year

Quick version: Do what you do best and I will try to check my dispositions at the door.

Topic Thoughts: We picked the wrong one (too narrow, needed at least sole purpose). Aff innovation is going to require NFU-subsets affs, but I have yet to see a good argument for a reasonable limit to such an interpretation. "Disarming" creates an unanticipated loophole. Process counterplans that are not directly related to nuclear policymaking seem superfluous given the strength of the negative side of the topic literature.

Online Debate: It is "not great," better than I feared. I have judged quite a few online debates over the past 3 years. Debaters will benefit by slowing down a bit if that enhances their clarity, avoiding cross-talk, and actively embracing norms that minimize the amount of "null time" in debates--watch for speechdocs and download them right away, pay attention to the next speaker as they give the order, be efficient in getting your speechdoc attached and sent, etc.

Evidence: I believe that engaged research is one of the strongest benefits of policy debate, and that judging practices should incentivize such research. I am a bad judge for you if your evidence quality is marginal—sources, recency, and warrants/data offered. I reward teams who debate their opponent’s evidence, including source qualifications.

Delivery: I will provide prompts (if not on a panel) if I am having trouble flowing. I will not evaluate arguments that I could not originally flow.

Topicality: I vote on well-developed procedurals. I rarely vote on T cheap shots. T is not genocide—however, “exclusion” and similar impacts can be good reasons to prefer one interpretation over another. Debaters that focus interpretation debating on caselists (content and size), division of ground, and the types of literature we read, analyzed through fairness/education lenses, are more likely to get my ballot. I tend to have a high threshold for what counts as a “definition”—intent to define is important, whereas proximity-count “definitions” seem more valuable in setting the parameters of potential caselists than in grounding an interpretation of the topic.

Critical Arguments: I have read quite a bit of critical theory, and will not dismiss your argument just because it does not conform to ‘traditional’ notions of debate. However, you should not assume that I am necessarily familiar with your particular literature base. I value debating that applies theory to the ‘artifact’ of the 1AC (or 1NC, or topic, etc). The more specific and insightful the application of said theory, the more likely I am to vote for you. Explaining what it means to vote for you (role of the ballot) is vitally important, for both “policy” and “K” teams. Absent contrary guidance, I view ‘framework’ debates in the same frame as T—caselist size/content, division of ground, research focus.

Disadvantages/Risk: I typically assess the ‘intrinsic probability’ of the plan triggering a particular DA (or advantage) before assessing uniqueness questions. This means that link work is very important—uniqueness obviously implicates probability, but “risk of uniqueness” generally means “we have no link.” Impact assessments beyond shallow assertions (“ours is faster because I just said so”) are an easy pathway to my ballot, especially if you have strong evidentiary support

Theory: I will not evaluate theoretical objections that do not rise to the level of an argument (claim, data, warrant). Good theory debating focuses on how the operationalization of competing interpretations impacts what we debate/research and side balance. Thought experiments (what would debate look like if the neg could read an unlimited number of contradictory, conditional counterplans?) are valuable in drawing such comparisons. I tend to find “arg not team” to be persuasive in most cases. This means you need a good reason why “loss” is an appropriate remedy for a theory violation—I am persuadable on this question, but it takes more than an assertion. If it is a close call in your mind about whether to go for “substance” or “theory,” you are probably better off going for “substance.”

Counterplans: The gold standard for counterplan legitimacy is specific solvency evidence. Obviously, the necessary degree of specificity is a matter of interpretation, but, like good art, you know it when you see it. I am more suspicious of multi-conditionality, and international fiat than most judges. I am probably more open to condition counterplans than many critics. PICs/PECs that focus debate on substantive parts of the aff seem important to me. Functional competition seems to make more sense than does textual competition. That being said, I coach my teams to run many counterplans that I do not think are legitimate, and vote for such arguments all the time. The status quo seems to be a legitimate voting option unless I am instructed otherwise. My assumption is that I am trying to determine the "best policy option," which can include the status quo unless directed otherwise.

Argument Resolution: Rebuttalists that simply extend a bunch of cards/claims and hope that I decide things in their favor do poorly in front of me. I reward debaters that resolve arguments, meaning they provide reasons why their warrants, data, analysis, sources etc. are stronger (more persuasive) than those of their opponents on critical pressure points. I defer to uncontested argument and impact comparisons. I read evidence on questions that are contested, if I want the cite, or if I think your argument is interesting.

Decorum: I believe that exclusionary practices (including speech acts) are unacceptable. I am unlikely to vote against you for being offensive, but I will not hesitate to decrease your points if you behave in an inappropriate manner (intentionally engaging in hostile, classist, racist, sexist, heterosexist, ableist etc. acts, for example). I recognize that this activity is very intense, but please try to understand that everyone present feels the same pressures and “play nice.”

Use an email chain--establish one before the round, and please include me on it (cramhelwich@gmail.com) . Prep time ends once the speechdoc is saved and sent. Most tournaments have policies on how to deal with "tech time"--please know what those policies are. I do not have a strong opinion on the acceptability of mid-speech prep for other purposes.

If you have specific questions, please ask me before the round.

Explain it so a 12 y/o could understand and you should be fine. The 12 y/o is as intelligent as you are, maybe even smarter, probably less prone to the self-sabotage of needing to be the smartest person in the room that embarrasses most debaters away from asking the stupidest, most rigorous questions (of themselves and others). There's just a knowledge gap. Would the words you choose equip an audience to effectively explain the concepts you need understood to others? You're not being evaluated as a student—even though close study is indispensable. It doesn't matter that you get it. You're being evaluated as a teacher whose job it is to teach other teachers. Good luck!

I debated five years at the University of Minnesota, graduated in 2015. I have always been a 2N.

Pre-round synopsis: Bad for Ks, conditionality is good, enjoys impact turns, dislikes aff vagueness, good for reasonable/less than extinction impacts, zero risk and presumption are things, better than average for the aff on theory vs questionable CPs, better than average for the neg on T (limits are good). On the 2023 topic I've only judged one tournament pre-NDT, so be aware.

Post-2022 NDT notes:

1. I never really went for process CPs as a debater, so I have much less well developed thoughts on competition than people who have debated recently (2021/2022 seemed to have a lot more of those).

2. After a doubles debate I judged + watching finals, I thought I should mention that 1) I enjoy impact turn debates a lot 2) If the 1AC says they solve something then tries to do take backs I'm not very likely to be sympathetic and 3) warming good was my favorite impact turn as a debater and holds a particular place in my heart, though I recognize the evidence has gotten worse since 2014.

**Extended Thoughts**

Kritiks:

Topshelf: I find it very difficult to vote on something which is not an effect of the implementation of the plan. I have no idea how to compare things like ontology to the aff saving people. It is possible to convince me otherwise, but the amount of work you will have to do will be so high that nineteen out of twenty times you would be better off doing something else. I won't hold it against you if you like Ks, and am not going to feel like my time was wasted or you are destroying debate or anything - I am just genuinely very confused about how kritiks answer the aff. I recognize I am way outside of the community norm on this - something just doesn't click for me with kritiks and I want to make sure that no one is caught off guard.

Aff arguments I like:

- Theory: the neg only gets the status quo or fiat from a resolutional actor

- Perm double bind

- New arguments are OK because the neg changed their argument/explained the alt/stopped being vague in the block/2NR

T-USFG note: For whatever reason, I’m mildly friendlier to no plan affs vs framework than I am for kritiks on the neg.

Conditionality:

It isn't impossible to get me to vote on, but one of two things need to happen:

1) the aff explains why something actually bad happened ("they read 6 counterplans" is an FYI, not an arg). For example - Harvard CM counterplaned out of straight turns to disads Wake MT could have read in doubles at Northwestern in 2018. That seems to hurt the aff’s ability to debate. It might be fine! But there's an argument there.

2) the aff goes into depth on why either the neg's model puts an undue burden on the aff, with many specific examples and hypotheticals, or why the neg's model produces a bad educational experience (i.e. depth on CPs > depth on the aff because topic-wide education > plan focused education). Both sides should talk about what the world of debate looks like under your interpretations. Being specific is really important.

The neg args I like the most are testing the aff, reasonability, and skews inevitable/not unique to their interp.

Judge kick I can go either way on, tell me what to do.

Theory:

Impact calc is good. Cheap shots are bad. Reject the argument not the team for everything but conditionality. Severance perms will never be a reason to reject the team.

States, international fiat, and agent/process/consult/condition CPs are probably not necessary.

All of these predispositions can be modified if the literature supports a debate over a specific counterplan.

My ideal form of debate is aff reads a plan neg gets the squo and CPs with a resolutional agent.

Topicality:

I’m friendlier to limits and lit/precision than the average judge.

Disads:

Winning a higher risk of your disad is better than turning the case. I generally care more about links than uniqueness.

Vagueness:

is a real argument. I haven’t been in a situation where it has been the 2nr, but if what the aff does meaningfully affects neg strategy I will vote for it.

**Archive: Old/High School Stuff - can ignore, saved for historical reasons**

Conditionality is good: It isn’t impossible for me to vote on it but probably won’t happen. Judge kick I’m unsure about, so tell me what to do.

Extinction/high magnitude impacts: Most are silly (obvi) and I’m very open to voting on “less than extinction but really bad outweighs 1% risk of extinction). I’m less enamored with try or die than a lot of other judges. If you’re really into doing the high probability/low magnitude stuff you should look at the “K affs with a plan” section below.

Flowing: I flow on paper. I will miss things. Be sure to slow down on important things, and consider slowing down in general.

Wipeout: is not a good argument. However, it is a better argument than most K’s because at least it says the aff is bad and can’t be permed. Aliens wipeout is better than Schopenhauer wipeout.

Presumption: If there’s a counterplan/alt it goes aff and if there isn’t it goes neg but I can be persuaded otherwise. I also am willing to vote on zero risk of the aff/da if you set that framing up and are really beating them on their case/disad.

Offensive stuff: Don't be mean. But, being able to explain why things like imperialism are bad is something debaters should be able to do. There isn't any reason for you to use gendered/ableist/racist language so you should avoid it.

K’s: explain why the aff is bad. Saying “method first” without explaining why that matters is not sufficient. I am very receptive to the neg doesn’t get to fiat different actors than the aff. My problems with Ks are more with the form than with the content, so if you can make your k arguments into reasons why the aff is bad I am much more likely to vote for you.

K’s vs K affs: Read more into my section on K’s than my section on K affs without a plan. I tend to vote aff on the perm/alt does nothing in those debates, but that also might be because people haven’t been explaining links well. Despite going for Marx a lot in college I think that most identity arguments today are set up well to answer it and haven’t voted for it too much recently. Class is likely the most important thing, but other things matter too.

K v K debates: I won't know what your authors say - I'll be asking myself a) is the neg different/not perm-able by the aff and b) which is a better idea. It would likely help if you explained your stuff more than you thought you needed to, and going away from theory and towards examples would be better.

K affs without a plan: T is the path of least resistance. I think we choose topics for a reason and switching sides/some predictability is good. I don't know why reading plans requires teams to "roleplay" the USFG and also think that most of the arguments for why being forced to defend the federal government is bad are silly. The problem is how we do risk calc. If you don’t read a plan and are in front of me, the 3 scenarios where I vote aff tend to be either a. your version of debate gets more people from under-represented groups into debate and debate matters more to them than to others b. the neg team says something silly like if you win the state is bad you win and you technically win that arg, or c. there is a severe skill differential. If you are going for T against a not the topic aff, I am much more likely to be persuaded by limits/skills/stasis point than roleplaying the state makes us awesome policymakers.

K affs with a plan: I am not good for high theory k affs. I am good for affs with reasonable impacts who say they do something and say the neg’s arguments are silly. The best way to win is to take out the probability of their disads- you don’t have to read complexity/predictions cards, but make args why their stuff isn’t true/leaves stuff out. Nate Cohn’s risk calc stuff makes a lot of sense to me (http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php/topic,5416.0.html) so take a look at that if you want.

**Archive: 2019 (Prez power) topic thoughts**

- T: I heard a couple of blocks on T subsets at Wake. I found them somewhat persuasive. The topic seems big.

- ESR theory: it is probably OK but I think I could be convinced to vote aff. I am concerned with the size of the topic, but prefer to limit via T than via counterplans.

- I haven't heard a very persuasive answer to "perm do both shields the link to politics" on ESR.

Update 4/1/2023

*If you are scanning this philosophy as a nonmember of the community, seeking out quotes to help your political "culture war" cause you are not an honest broker here and largely looking for clickbait. I find your endeavors an unfortunate result of a rage machine that consumes a great deal of quality programs without ever helping them thrive or grow. Re-evaluate your life and think about how you can help high schools and middle schools around this country develop speech and debate programs, core liberal art educational, to improve the quality of argumentation, that otherwise is lacking. In the end, as an outsider looking in, you are missing a great deal of nuance in these philosophies and how they operate in the communities (multiple not just one) around the US and the world.

If you have landed here as a representative of Fox News or an ally or affiliate, I would like to see the receipts of the bias that has and continues to perforate your organization from Roger Ailes to Tucker Carlson and more. Here is my question, when you learned about the Joe McCarthy era of conspiracy theory, along with the hysteria and demonization of potential Americans who are communist (or sympathizers) and "pinko" (gay or sexual "deviants"), is your gripe with McCarthy that he had a secret list without evidence, or do you recognize that a core problem with McCarthy is his anti-democratic fear that there actually ARE communists, gay, trans, bisexual, Americans?

My next question is when and where you think it is acceptable for a person with strong beliefs to exist in democratic spaces. Bias is inevitable and part of this debate game. Organizations attempt to manage types of bias and coaches and debaters learn how to adapt to certain bias while attempting to avoid problematic bias. What do you think? Would right leaning presidential candidates vote for an argument that affirms trans athletes in sports? Should a trans judge leave their identity entirely at the door and embody a leading republican presidential candidate who is against medical care for trans persons? Both answers are no. The issue you seek to lambast for viewership clickbate is much deeper and more complicated than a 3 minute video clip can cover. Thank for reading.

REAL PHILOSOPHY
Background: Indiana University Director of Debate as of 2010. Background is primarily as a policy debater and policy debate coach.

Email Chain: Bdelo77@gmail.com

The road to high speaker points and the ballot

I reward debaters who have a strong knowledge of the topic. Those debaters who can articulate intricacies and relationships amongst topic specific literature will meet what I believe are the educational benefits of having a topic in the first place.

Using evidence to assist you with the argument you are trying to make is more important than stringing evidence together in hopes that they accumulate into an argument. “I have a card judge, it is real good” “pull my 15 uniqueness cards judge” are not arguments. Ex: Obama will win the election – a) swing voters, Rasmussen poll indicates momentum after the DNC b) Washington post “Romney has lost the election” the base is gone… etc. are good extensions of evidence.

Less jargon more eloquence. I get bored with repeated catch phrases. I understand the need for efficiency, but debaters who recognize the need for innovation by individuals in the activity will receive more points.

Speed: I expect I can digest at least 70% of your speech. The other 30% should be general human attention span issues on my part. I firmly believe debate is a communication event, I am saddened that this has been undervalued as debaters prepare for tournaments. If I agree with X debater that Y debater’s speech on an argument was incoherent, I am more and more willing to just ignore the argument. Computer screens and Bayesian calculus aside, there is a human in this body that makes human decisions.

Should affs be topical?

Affs should have a relationship to the topic that is cogent. If there is no relationship to the topic, I have a high standard for affirmatives to prove that the topic provides no “ground” for a debater to adapt and exist under its umbrella. Negatives, this does not mean you don’t have a similar burden to prove that the topic is worth debating. However personally I think you will have a much smaller hill to climb… I find it disturbing that debaters do not go further than a quick “topical version of your aff solves” then insert X switch side good card… Explain why the topical version is good for debate and provides argument diversity and flexibility.

Policy debate is good: When I prep our files for tournaments I tend to stay in the policy-oriented literature. This does not mean that I am unwilling to cut our K file or K answers, I just have limited time and job related motivation to dive into this literature.

K Debate: Can be done well, can be done poorly. I do not exclude the arguments from the round but nebulous arguments can be overplayed and abused.

(Updated 3-2-2022) Conditionality:

1) Judge Kick? No. You made your choice on what to go for now stick with it. 2NRs RARELY have the time to complete one avenue for the ballot let alone two conditional worlds...

I tend to believe that one conditional substantive test of the plan advocacy is good (agent CP, process CP, or ?) and I am open to the idea of the need for a second advantage CP (need to deal with add-ons and bad advantages) or K within limits. I'm not a fan of contradicting conditional advocacies in how they implicate 2AC offense and potential.

Beyond 1-2 conditional arguments, I am torn by the examples of proliferating counterplans and critiques that show up in the 1NC and then disappear in the negative block. There is a substantive tradeoff in the depth and quality of arguments and thus a demotivation incentive for the iterative testing and research in the status quo world of 3+ conditional advocacies. The neg's, "write better advantages" argument has value, however with 2AC time pressure it means that 1ACs are becoming Frankenstein's monster to deal with the time tradeoff.

Plans: I think the community should toy with the idea of a grand bargain where affirmatives will specify more in their plan text and negs give up some of their PIC ground. The aff interp of "we only have to specify the resolution" has pushed us in the direction where plans are largely meaningless and aff conditionality is built into core 2AC frontlines. The thing is, our community has lost many of its fora for discussing theory and establishing new norms around issues like this. Debaters need to help be the change we need and we need more in-depth theory discussions outside of the rounds. Who is the Rorger Solt going to be of the 2020's?

Reading evidence:
I find myself more willing to judge the evidence as it was debated in the round (speeches and cx), and less willing to scan through piles of cards to create a coherent understanding of the round. If a debate is being had about the quality of X card, how I SHOULD read the evidence, etc. I will read it.

Sometimes I just have an interest in the evidence and I read it for self-educational and post-round discussion reasons.

Judging:

I will work extremely hard to evaluate the debate as the debaters have asked me to judge it.

Denison, Maddie

I debated for 11 years including 4 at the collegiate level at the University of Pittsburgh.

I debated both full policy and full K so I'm flexible.

However, I have been completely removed from debate for about two years, have not been judging or coaching. I am not familiar with the current topic literature.

Director of Debate & Forensics at the University of Southern California

Past Debate Experience:

- Coached at the University of Northern Iowa

- Coached at the Milwaukee High School of the Arts

- Debated at the University of Iowa

- Throwback to debating at Celebration High School in Celebration, FL

Here are my initial thoughts on common questions:

Email chain: Yes, please add me to the email chain. My email is: kirankdhillon@gmail.com or kkdhillo@usc.edu.

Speed: Is fine so long as you are clear. Clarity is the most important thing.

Cross-X: Open is fine.

Decorum: Be kind and respectful to one another.

Fairness: Don’t cheat. My three pet-peeves are when folks steal prep, don’t mark their cards, and clip cards. My advice is don’t steal prep and mark your cards on whatever you are reading from, may it be paper or your laptop.

Argument issues: Topicality – I’ll vote on it and against it. It is the obligation of the debaters to tell me why topicality matters, why their interpretation is best for debate, and what cases their interpretation allows for and does not allow for.

Disads – Sure, read them.

Counterplans – Fine too.

Kritiks – Explain your link story. Now, I don’t mean a generic link story but explaining, in detail, how the aff’s discourse and framing are bad. In addition, if you claim to have an alternative tell me what it does and how it functions. It is not enough to say, “Reject the aff and vote for the revolution.”

Overall, tell me how I should evaluate the arguments in the round. After all, debate is an activity based on persuasion.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Other than that, have fun debating!

I feel that a new tabbing website calls for a new judge philosophy.  That, and my other one was about to start kindergarten, so...  

Some things have changed, some things have stayed the same.  Looking back on my old philosophy, I could tell that it was the scribbles of youth and over-exuberance.  There were many foundations that I would have liked to shake with that little document, but it is a rare occurance that anything written changes anything acted.  And such a poorly written little document at that! 

Some things you should know about me: I'm a philosophy guy.  I've done all of my formal academic training in philosophy and the history of philosophy, and debate plus a few classes on the side are all I have in communications studies training.  I tend to think that fact-value and fact-theory distinctions are bogus in practice but conceptually useful.  So, for example, against an "ontology comes first" argument, I would much rather hear a defense of your ontology rather than an argument about why ontological questioning should subside in the face of mass death.  Despite all this, I am a believer in the incommensurability of theories (paradigms?), so make your comparisons relevant--I'm a big sucker for elegance on this front.

I'm not big on offense-defense, especially on debate theory arguments.  Thus I'm not particularly happy when someone banks a debate on "any risk of a _____" impact calculi.  I'll vote on we-meets, too.  Even worse than this quirk in the way I evaluate the logos of your claims is the fact that I'll let the ethos and pathos of your speeches play into my decision.  I will let myself be "persuaded" by arguments, and though this sounds unfair, I think it is better that I am up-front about it rather than in denial.  As much as anyone tries to exclude them, these factors play a role in every decision.

I no longer default to flowing you in paragraphs in Word.  I used to do this because I thought that it would help me see through the way that the line-by-line obfuscates larger narratives and commitments in the debate round.  Not a lot of people do the line by line effectively anymore, and I feel that this obscures larger issues in a debate round in a more fundamental way (bad line by line outweighs dangers of line by line-centrism).  So now I'm out to help you figure out how to make the line by line work for you.

I will time your prep until the flash drive is out of your computer.

I will not disclose my decision until you update your wiki.

Without getting into too many specifics, I think that this pretty much covers what might make me different from the majority image of a policy debate critic.  I would much rather discuss concerns or questions you have about the way I'll evaluate debates with you in person, so please feel free to approach me or email me questions.

izak

9/17/2012

New Pet Peeve (10/14/2012)

2ac says various things about the alternative throughout their speech.  In the block, you say "Now onto the Alternative debate" and just say a bunch of stuff about the alternative.  "Embedding" clash is not an excuse to forego comparison between arguments, and not going to the line by line is not license to not talk about your opponent's arguments.  If this is your style of debate, you'd better make sure you are EXTENDING arguments (i.e., comparing them, arguing for them, deploying and employing them) as opposed to REPEATING the constructive that happened before you spoke.

If you do this in front of me, I'm going to set a very high bar for your speaker points.  If you do not actually embed clash, you will not receive more than 27 points from me.

Not all of you are ready to "do" embedded clash.  In fact, you've got to be pretty good at making discriminations about the line by line before you can decide on what does and does not count as a responsible or responive argument--in a way, it's a prerequisite to doing competent embedded clash.

Point Inflation Adjustment (11/8/2013)

After reading a lot about speaker points this year, I realize that I am way behind the times regarding point inflation.  When I was a debater, "competent and winning" was a fast way to get a 27.5, which wasn't bad (wasn't great, but wasn't bad either).  If I were "competent and losing", I usually got a 27 or a 27.5.  Speaker points describing incompetence lived around 27 and below.

My scale to date has pegged "competent and winning" at a 28.  This, of course, is just a baseline--I've definitely given points higher than a 28 to all four debaters in a round.  But, as long as you aren't vomiting on yourself during your speeches and are making good enough strategic decisions to win the debate, I'll give you a 28.  

It seems like I need to bump my points about half a point overall considering 5-3 teams are averaging about a 28.5.  I'm going to try and give "competent and winning" a 28.5 starting at Wake, if only to prevent teams from preffing me in all of my educational glory from being unfairly penalized by my miserly nature.

Point Inflation Update (11/12/2013)

Two edits: (1) For Wake, I'll use their speaker point scale.  It already seems pretty close to my inflation adjustment.  (2) After Wake, I'm going to try and give "competent and winning" a 28.3.  Seems to capture what teams that are winning just over half of their debates are averaging in 2013.  Also, I used to have to work hard for my 28.5's and am besieged on all sides by a burning and childish need to feel better than all of you.

I have been involved with debate for a min now. All debates are performances . I believe education should be what debates are about . I read the topic paper every year( or when it stop being Throw backs). Topical education is something i consider but can be impact turned. Topicality is a method of the objective game. I will vote on conversations of community norms like predictability good , switch side , or even static notions of politics. Framework is how we frame our work. Method debates I welcome. We are intellectuals so we should be responsible for such i.e you can be voted down if the debaters or their positions/in round performance are racist, sexist, classist, or ableist . If not voted down,I still reserve the discretion to give the debater(s) responsible a 3.5 in speaker points . Do what you do and do it well.

He/him

These are most of the predispositions I have about arguments that I can think of, these are not ironclad as my views on debate are constantly in flux. However, without being instructed otherwise, the below points will likely influence how I evaluate the debate.

Top Level:

-Please add me to the email chain, fifelski@umich.edu and please make the subject something that is easy to search like "NDT 4 - Michigan DM v UCO HS."

-I prefer to flow on paper, but if you would like me to flow on my computer so I can share the flow after the debate, just ask.

-I read along with speech docs and prefer clear, relatively slow, and organized debates. I am still trying to hone flowing in online debate.

-I cannot emphasize enough how important card quality and recency should be in debates, but it requires debaters to frame arguments about that importance.

-If you break a new aff and you don't want to share the docs, I will chalk it up to academic cowardice and presume that the aff is largely a pile of crap.

-Evidence can be inserted if the lines were read in CX, but otherwise this act is insufficient. I will only look at graphs and charts if they are analyzed in the debate.

-I generally think war good arguments are akin to genocide good. I also think dedev is absolute nonsense.

-The past year of my life has been filled with the death of loved ones, please don't remind me of it while I'm judging a debate. I categorically refuse to evaluate any argument that could have the thesis statement of death good or that life is not worth living.

-Affs should be willing to answer cross-x questions about what they'll defend.

Topic thoughts:

-I'm not a fan of this topic, but I don't think "aff ground" arguments make much sense in terms of the topicality debates from fringe affs. The topic is not "adjust nuke policy" so even if "disarming" was a poorly choice word, it doesn't mean you can just get rid of a handful of bombs. Anything else makes the triad portion of the topic irrelevant. It sucks, but the negative should not be punished because the community came to consensus on a topic. Want to fix it? Engage in the thankless work that is crafting the topic.

-Russia is 100% a revisionist power, at war in Europe, and is evil. My thoughts on China are more complex, but I do believe they would take Taiwan if given the chance.

How to sway me:

-More narrativization is better than less

-Ev quality - I think higher quality and recent ev is a necessity. Make arguments about the qualifications of authors, how to evaluate evidence, and describe what events have happened to complicate the reading of their evidence from 2012.

-The 2nr/2ar should spend the first 15-20 seconds explaining how I should vote with judge instruction. If you laid a trap, now is the time to tell me, because I’m probably not going to vote on something that wasn’t flagged as an argument.

-I can flow with the best of them, but I enjoy slower debates so much more.

-More case debate. The 2ac is often too dismissive of case args and the neg often under-utilizes them.

-If reading cards after the debate is required for me to have comprehension of your argument, I’m probably not your judge. I tend to vote on warranted arguments that I have flowed and read cards to evaluate particular warrants that have been called into question. That said, I intend on reading along with speech docs this year.

-I think internal links are the most important parts of an argument; I am more likely to vote for “Asian instability means international coop on warming is impossible” than “nuclear war kills billions” OR “our patriarchy better explains x,y,z” instead of “capitalism causes war.”

-I like when particular arguments are labeled eg) “the youth-voter link” or “the epistemology DA.”

-If you're breaking a new aff/cp, it's probably in your best interest to slow down when making highly nuanced args.

Things I don’t like:

-Generally I think word PICs are bad. Some language obviously needs to be challenged, but if your 1nc strategy involves cntl-f [insert ableist term], I am not the judge for you.

-Overusing offensive language, yelling, being loud during the other team’s speech/prep, and getting into my personal space or the personal space of others will result in fewer speaker points.

-If you think a permutation requires the affirmative to do something they haven’t, you and I have different interpretations of competition theory.

-Old evidence/ blocks that have been circulating in camp files for a decade.

Critical Affs:

-I am probably a better judge for the K than most would suspect. While the sample size is small, I think I vote for critical args around 50% of the time they're the center of the debate.

-A debate has to occur and happen within the speech order/times of the invite; the arguments are made are up to the debaters and I generally enjoy a broad range of arguments, particularly on a topic as dull as this one.

-Too often I think critical affs describe a problem, but don’t explain what voting aff means in the context of that impact.

-Is there a role of the ballot?

-Often I find the “topical version” of the aff argument to be semi-persuasive by the negative, so explain to me the unique benefit of your aff in the form that it is and why switching-sides does not solve that.

-Framework: Explain the topical version of the aff; use your framework impacts to turn/answer the impacts of the 1ac; if you win framework you win the debate because…

Kritiks:

-Links should be contextualized to the aff; saying the aff is capitalist because they use the state is not enough. I'm beginning to think that K's, when read against policy affs, should link to the plan and not just the advantages, I'm not as sold on this as I am my belief on floating pic/ks (95 percent of the time I think floating PIC/Ks aren't arguments worthy of being made, let alone voted on)

-Alternative- what is the framework for evaluating the debate? What does voting for the alternative signify? What should I think of the aff’s truth statements?

-I’m not a fan of high theory Ks, but statistically vote for them a decent percentage of the time.

-When reading the K against K affs, the link should problematize the aff's methodology.

Answering the K:

-Make smart permutation arguments that have explained the net benefits and deal with the negatives disads to the perm.

-You should have a framework for the debate and find ways to dismiss the negative’s alternative.

Disads:

-Overviews that explain the story of the disad are helpful.

-Focus on internal links.

Counterplans:

-I am not a member of the cult of process. Just because you have a random definition of a word from a court in Iowa doesn't mean I think that the counterplan has value. I can be swayed if there are actual cards about the topic and the aff, but otherwise these cps are, as the kids say, mid.

-Your CP should have a solvency advocate that is as descriptive of your mechanism as the affirmative’s solvency advocate is.

Theory/Rules:

-Conditionality is cheating a lot like the Roth test: at some point it’s cheating, otherwise neg flex is good.

-Affs should explain why the negative should lose because of theory, otherwise I’ll just reject the arg.

-I'll likely be unsympathetic to args related to ADA rules, sans things that should actually be rules like clipping.

-I’m generally okay with kicking the CP/Alt for the neg if I’m told to.

*Updates for NDT 2022

Who are you affiliated with?

I coach for Harvard. I attended UMKC.

Email for chain?

davonscope@gmail.com & harvard.debate@gmail.com

Do I care what you do?

I do not personally care about what you do stylistically.

Should I pref you?/How do you vote in clash debates? (Because that's honestly the section of paradigms people care about these days)

Whatever the debaters at hand find important in regards to framing, I will decide the debate through that lens. If the debaters happen to disagree on what lens I should prefer (because that never happens), then I will compare the pros and cons of both lenses and make a decision on which is preferable and thus filter the debate through that lens. In helping me make that decision in a way that benefits you, levy significant offense against the opposing team's lens, while supplementing your own with some defense and net-benefits. I'll give you a hint; education is the impact/net-benefit/tie-breaker. For me, It will rarely be fairness, ground, truth-testing, etc. I have and will likely always see those as internal-links to a much larger discussion about education. Which begs the question, "how do I view debate?" Debate is clearly a game. But this game grounds itself in a degree of realism that finds its value tethered to its capacity for us to maneuver within the world the game is set to reflect. Basically, debate is a game, life is a game, and we play this debate game because we think it can inform how we go about playing the life game. So yeah, sounds like education to me.

*Other things

I flow. I won't be convinced not to. How I flow is up for debate.

Line-by-line is important but I find myself pondering the big issues often. Comprehensive overviews/argument framing with embedded clash can honestly do a lot for me. But the key word is comprehensive. In many rounds, debaters lose me when they prioritize checking off arguments on the flow and not paying particular attention to what arguments matter to a decision.

I value evidence comparison deeply. On important questions that have not been adequately resolved by debaters, I will read the evidence, including the un-underlined components to come to a greater understanding/receive necessary context for the writers intent. This has often shaded my evaluation of arguments made in relation to evidence read, moreso negatively for the reader. To insure this doesn't negatively affect you, be sure to flesh out that card...give me the context, give your interpretation of its impact on the topic at hand, and put it in conversation with the other team's evidence beyond the simple "they said, we said" formula. Display an understanding of why your evidence says what it says, its qualities, etc, and I will be more inclined to accept your description of things. I want to evaluate your arguments, not read cards at the end of the round to fill-in what your arguments are. This also means in my mind the less cards read, the better this is achieved.

I realize my points have been categorically low, and will attempt to rectify this by sitting closer to the perceived average. That said, points I give are based on my evaluation of things only. Points are the few things I have control over in a round, and reserve the right to assign them as I see fit.

Ask a question if you desire an answer not covered by the above statements.

Background

4 years of policy debate in high school at Little Rock Central

5 years of policy debate in college at Missouri State University

1 year coaching policy debate at the University of Michigan.

Currently, I am a first-year graduate teaching assistant in Wake Forest's communication department.

last updated: 1/16/14

Philosophy

I have very few preferences for how you go about making the argument that you would like to make in the debate. I truly do love the process of argumentation itself more than the ins and outs of any particular argument. Although there are some obvious ones I may be more familiar with I think the general principle that Link + Impact = Argument is true and that your argument will work better if it is tied to a broader strategy you plan to deploy against the argument you are facing.  That being said, there can be a level

In my time as a debater, I could pretty squarely be considered in the ‘traditional policy’ camp. I read (and often went for) topicality and framework arguments against teams that did not defend governmental action on the aff.  I still find many of the arguments surrounding these positions to be very persuasive, but my voting record does illustrate my openness to alternative styles of argumentation as well.

In my short time as a judge in college policy debate, I have continued to find myself in new ‘judging dilemmas’ that I had never previously considered.  A lot of the fault lines that come up in rfds have rested on a few issues that I will mention before getting into some of the other aspects of my judging philosophy

Basically, I have a small set of data to work with but I do think that there are two notable patterns in many of the decisions I have given so far.  These areas of argument encompass a lot of the difficulty I have when resolving debates during rfd time and will help you understand where I am coming from when evaluating some arguments.  Not all encompassing, for sure, but absolutely things to keep in mind.

1.     1.  Clarity of interpretation

This is a pretty blanket category, but I think it helps articulate a major frustration I have when.  Whether it is a topicality/framework interpretation or an analytical argument about how a judge should evaluate or weigh certain impact claims, I often find myself wishing one team would provide a more vivid description their interpretations of how certain arguments should function within debate rounds.

In framework debates, the clarity of your ‘interpretation’ of what debate and/or the ballot is/does is just as important as making sure I understand your counterplan text.  If the other team controls this interpretation via a lack of clarification of adequate elaboration then the other team essentially controls what your counterplan does.  If they control my understanding of what your counterplan does, they will make it link to their DAs and win.  Control what your evidence means to me and how I should read it in light of broader link/impact claims.

This is as true for topicality as it is for any attempt at a theoretical discussion of a how people/groups/nations/states act in a particular context in relation to a topic disad or sociological criticism.  Debates often hinge on these questions and when they are poorly fleshed out, many other issues that have time invested in them become far less relevant and much more of the debate’s deciding factors will be up to my interpretation of the interaction of arguments and not yours which is a dangerous place to be in a verbal argument about very complex complex and interwoven concepts 

2.      2. Articulation of comparative significance –

This is related to the first, but I find myself in a lot of debates where I give the following rfd:  “ultimately, I had a lot of reasons to vote against the other team, but not a lot of reasons I should be voting for you”

Whether it’s a 2ar without enough impact calculus or a 2nr who doesn’t do justice to the alternative/cp solvency evidence they are extending, many of my decisions seem like they fall in this category.  Debaters from both teams do a moderate to excellent job of executing their core argument but fail to rhetorically distinguish and compare their core arguments from the other team’s position.

I try reward debaters not only engaging with the argument they are debating on their own terms (our ‘x’ evidence answers this by saying ‘y’) but also engaging with the language used by their opponents and the evidence they read to make comparative claims.  Controlling my interpretation of a piece of evidence from the other team will usually get you further than perfectly explaining your own.

As a judge, I view my role to be an educator, not a competitor.  I have argument preferences and professional academic interests that certainly expose me to different literature bases in both debate and non-debate research, but I try to maintain as open of a mind as possible to arguments outside my comfort zone.  It is unavoidable that certain vernaculars (critical and policy alike) that I am too unfamiliar with to make the judgment calls that are required when one of the above two things are done poorly.

Odds and Ends

I will likely be flowing on my laptop – I do this for a few reasons.  First, I type faster than I write so I genuinely believe that my flow is more accurate and more importantly, readable.  Secondly, I do it because I do not like to have my head down looking at my flow during your speech for extended period of times.  I like to watch speeches because I think that aesthetics of giving a speech are important.  Timely gestures to emphasize main points are just as relevant as the white foam you've developed on your mouth 4 minutes into your speech and I like to be able to get a more full picture of your speaking style.  At times, this tendency can cause you to think I am awkardly staring at you too much - please do not read too much into this because I am honestly trying to soak up the full force of the way you make your argument in additions to technical, content related questions.

There is a decent chance that I request speech documents prior to speeches using electronic evidence. I am still experimenting a bit with this, so its application will not be entirely consistent but I think it is useful for two main reasons.  First, it helps deter and catch card clipping – which I will discuss in more detail below.  Secondly, it drastically reduces the amount of decision time dedicated to transferring evidence at the end of a debate. I do not ever intend, however, to have a debater feel like the choice to call for speech docs was in any way motivated by the debaters as individuals or the perceived reputation of a squad in general.  I am honestly a young judge trying to find my norm, so please bear with me on this issue.

I very much value my decision time after debates are over.  If there are flashing issues between teams or extended bathroom breaks before speeches, I will become frustrated if the time delay starts approaching the 10-15 minute range.  More judging time = better decisions = better debaters.

Conditionality – fwiw, I have not had many decisions that come down to this argument but I will say that the gulf between the 1ar and the 2ar explanation of their position is usually the pivot point in the debates I have had come down to this issue.

Card clipping – I take this matter pretty seriously and will not hesitate to assign a loss and zero speaker points for verified violations.  I am very hesitant about unilaterally halting a debate where neither team has brought the issue up, although I have never faced an egregious case that I have had such a visceral reaction (or any reaction so far, really) that would make me do that.  But, if someone does make a challenge, an audio/video recording is essential.

Do not speak into your laptop – lower whatever you are speaking from in order to make eye contact and let me see your mouth move.  For some reason, this has become a massive pet peeve of mine.  In the past, I have prompted speakers to change where their podiums are situated, but I don’t think that should be my prerogative during a debate so please be mindful of what you look like to me when you are speaking. 

Speaker Points – I have consistently given between a range of 27.5 and 29.  I have given very few 29+ but quite a lot of 28.2-28.6’s.  Here is a rough rubric based on my perception of what I have given out so far.

Below 27.5 – major mishaps likely occurred, these can be things like offensive language or disrespectful behavior but certainly glaring strategic miscues and/or speech delivery issues that substantially affected the content of my decision will put you in this camp as well. 

27.5-27.9 – Excessively mediocre.  Speech delivery issues were likely a component, but these scores I find myself giving more to people that seem are far too underprepared with the evidence and arguments they are deploying.  Debaters who normally receive these speaks from me have received a lot of advice about reaching beyond buzzwords and taglines as well as evolving their arguments more generally as the debate progresses.

28-28.4 – This category, for me, has encompassed many of the teams that are on the ‘bubble’ and some of the lower-middle teams that exhibit a fairly coherent grasp of their argument strategically, there is normally some delivery issue associated with the lower end of this spectrum.

28.5-28.7 – This is about what you should expect if I find you to have a solid speaking style and a strong grasp of the arguments you are forwarding.  There is usually a point in these debates where this debater does something notably awesome rhetorically or strategically but that lacks a sustained follow-through the rest of the debate.  There are flashes of brilliance, but consistency is a key distinction between this category and the next one.

28.8-29.2 – If you get these speaks, you are likely a debater who excelled in not only their grasp of their own arguments but demonstrated a consistent ability throughout the debate of making smart strategic and rhetorical decisions.  You were likely incredibly clear as a speaker and are debating at a very high level in terms of balancing word choice, time management, and quality evidence choice in addition to sustained comparative evaluation of key arguments in the debate. 

29.3+ - Not going to lie, the likelihood you receive this or higher is exceedingly low.  It takes not only what was mentioned in the above category but also requires a level of sophisticated argumentation that makes me feel like you were a top 5 speaker in that debate and/or that I could reasonably see you in quarters or better based on that performance. 

For all of these categories of speaker points:  landing solid jokes, being colloquial and respectful of your opponents, and the perception that you are truly enjoying yourself all have the potential to place a light, but impactful finger on the scale when I am assigning these points along this rubric.

If you every have any questions about any of this philosophy or a specific question about a debate I judged/watched (even if you did not participate), feel free to shoot me an email:  folejm13 AT wfu DOT edu

Debated Policy at Indiana University: 2014-2018

Mostly judge for NYC UDL now.

**Often times UDL rounds don't save on tabroom so all the rounds I've judged the past few years won't show up under judging history below the paradigm.**

Top Level

ngallina42@gmail.com

I flow on paper, including CX, and will do my best to try as hard judging as the debaters are debating. I like to follow the speech doc on my laptop simultaneously.

Please be nice and polite if possible.

Debate is a game until it is not, treat it as such.

Claims in debate will be taken at face value until contested by the other team.

Topicality:

I absolutely love T debates. My entire debate career I was attracted to affs that were right on the border of being T. With that in mind, I view T in an offense defense paradigm. If the 2AC on T was all defense the neg should pounce on that. Given proper framing it can be extremely difficult for an aff to win T with no offense. That's not to say there isn't a chance because reasonability is an extremely powerful piece of defense.

If you are looking for extra speaks on T debates go through and comment on the quality and source of each others evidence. Both teams will make distinctions about definitions and ev but those distinctions don't matter unless they are impacted out with why those distinctions matters.

I.E. If neg says US = 50 states and aff says US = 50 states but territories I want someone to tell me whether or not excluding Puerto Rito etc affs matters.

Framework:

I prefer that affirmatives have some relationship to the topic. This does not have to be an endorsement of any sort but a response I believe is important. I will reward affirmatives and negatives that display a depth of knowledge of the topic area.

Please take pains to explain to me what your version of debate looks like both in-round, doing research, and for the rest of the season. One thing that I think affirmatives leave to the wayside is "what is the role of the negative in your model of debate"? If you can't confidently and succinctly answer this question you will be in trouble.

Fairness is an impact if debate is a game. If you can win that debate is not a game it becomes an i/l.

Ks

Affirmative contextualized explanation is paramount. Pull out lines from the 1AC 2AC evidence to illustrated links. Please tell me why either A the link to the K turns the aff and/or why the links to the k trigger your impact AND you can 'solve' it with the alt.

Author names are not an argument.

Perms are OP but can be dealt with pretty soundly by a 2N that clearly demonstrates how the links function as case turns.

Affs please push on alt solvency to push back against the ability for the alt to solve the links as well as morph in the block. If you aren't asking about the alt in the 1NC CX you are probably doing something wrong.

CP

Research was my favorite part about debate. If you can show that you CP/PIC exists in the lit (this includes aff ev) are more than likely not good to go. This of course depends on what happens in the debate and how it is argued.

Solvency deficits should be tied to specific advantages/scenarios. Please tell me a CP that solves two of your i/ls but not the third is not sufficient to solve the advantage.

I default to sufficiency framing.

I will never judge kick a CP. If the CP links to the DA and you go for it in the 2NR you will lose.

DA

Framing is the most important part of the flow. How should I view the relationship between UQ and Link? How do the impacts interact? Who better controls impact escalation?

If you are turning the DA or the aff please be clear at what part of the chain you are turning. Turns that operate at the link level will do better than turns that operate at the impact level only.

For Px, blippy fiat solves the link etc is not an arg unless explained more. If explained more, fair game.

Theory

Give me contextualized examples of your theory points. Prewritten theory blocks devoid of connection to the round will not get you far. I will do my best flowing your subpoints on theory but please slow down and give me time to write it down.

Condo probably never outweighs T because T is a question about whether or not the debate should have happened and Condo is a discussion about what happened in round.

Limited Condo is good.

Good luck and don't forget to have fun!

Richard A. Garner | Director of Speech & Debate | University of Houston | ragarner@uh.edu

Framework: Neg: topical version is very helpful; aff: probably okay if you defend the government doing a topical thing. One should be able to defend their model of debate. I put this issue first because it’s probably what you really care about. Everything else is alphabetical.

Case debate: Turning the case is my favorite thing to judge. Uniqueness is good here, but not always necessary with comparative evidence.

CPs/Competition/Theory: Comparisons win theory debates, along with impacts. I’m not sure that states or international CPs compete, but no one has ever put this to the test in front of me so it’s hard to say. No strong feelings about consultation or conditioning either way. K affs probably shift competition questions that rely on FIAT. Won't kick the CP unless you tell me to. Non-arbitrary interpretations are ideal.

Critiques: I understand these and am fine with them (understatement). From both the aff and neg, I enjoy narrative coherence, specific application, and alternative debates. New things under the sun are wonderful to see, but so too the old, artisanal ways upon occasion.

Disadvantages: I tend to think risk probability is never 100% absent drops, and that each internal link reduces certainty. Can have zero risk (though if the CP solves 100% of the case … probably need offense). Don’t tend to think that impacts automatically/100% turn case, or vice versa; instead, comparisons are evaluating risk probability bubbles/multiple competing worlds.

Judge Space: Judges are human beings, not argument processing machines; enjoyable debates matter. Evidence comparison is the highest art. Debaters’ flowing/line-by-line is generally terrible; embedded clash is nice, but at its root it depends on an organized approach to the flow. Drops: before the burden of rejoinder attains, there must be a full argument (claim/warrant/implication). I am displeased by a) subpoints with no b) subpoints, and by "Is anyone not ready?" because it is a linguistic abomination (see: bit.ly/yea-nay). I read a lot of cards, but, paradoxically, only in proportion to the quality of evidence comparison. Highlighting: needs to make grammatical sense; don’t use debate-abbreviation highlighting (ok: United States; not: neoliberalism). If I cannot understand the highlighting, I will not read the rest of the card for context.

Logistics: Add me to the email chain. I don’t read speech docs during the debate.

*Principles: Without getting too philosophical, I try to evaluate the round via the concepts the debaters in the round deploy (immanent construction) and I try to check my personal beliefs at the door (impersonality). These principles structure all other positions herein.

Speaker Points: I approximate community norms, and adjust each year appropriately.

Topicality: I evaluate it first. I enjoy T debates, and lean more towards ‘better interpretation for debate’ than ‘we have the most evidence’.

Brief Debate CV:

South Garland (competitor): 1995-1999

NYU (competitor): 1999-2003

Emory: 2003-2004

NYU/Columbia: 2004-2005

Harvard: 2006-2015

Houston: 2013-present

*

Random Poem (updated 3/30/23):

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.

downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I’ve been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph

the rhythm the rhythm—and your memory in my head three years after—And read Adonais’ last triumphant stanzas aloud—wept, realizing how we suffer—

And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember, prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of Answers—and my own imagination of a withered leaf—at dawn—

Dreaming back thru life, Your time—and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse,

the final moment—the flower burning in the Day—and what comes after,

looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city

a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed—

like a poem in the dark—escaped back to Oblivion—

No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream, trapped in its disappearance,

sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worshipping each other,

worshipping the God included in it all—longing or inevitability?—while it lasts, a Vision—anything more?

*

Previously

Dunya Mikhail, "The End of the World," The Iraqi Nights (3/30/23)

Sakutaro Hagiwara, "A Useless Book" (8/1/19)

Catullus, 101 (1/4/18)

e.e. cummings, "O sweet spontaneous" (1/4/18)

&c

Yes email chain: lincolngarrett49@gmail.com

https://www.debatemusings.org/home/site-purpose-judging-debates

AFF on T

NEG on conditionality, but even I have my limit (more than 3, no evidence for a bunch of them, combining them later in the debate, amending and adding 2NC cps). NEGs are less good at defending their egregiousness in my recent experience.

I will kick the CP if I think it is worse than the status quo. A neg team doesn't have to say "judge kick" and the AFF isn't going to convince me I shouldn't do this.

I reject the argument and not the team for most every other theoretical objection to a CP.

Will vote on K's. Will care about if the plan is a good idea even if the AFF can't physially make it happen.

Don't have to read a plan, but merely saying the res is bad and dropping stuff will lead to L's.

I am not in the market to award AFF vagueness or poor explanations of cases until the 2AR

Evidence quality outweighs evidence quantity.

Dr. Matt Gerber
Former DoD at Baylor, 2003-2022
Associate Professor of Communication
Baylor University

I am currently a "recovering" debate coach, and I have spent most of the last two years writing academic articles about rhetoric and disability. I haven't done any research on the current CEDA-NDT topic. That said, my doctoral dissertation was about missile defense and non-proliferation policy, and I feel pretty confident on a nukes topic given my decades in debate. But be warned, I currently have 0 rounds on this topic, so extra explanation of highly topic-specific kinda stuff would be appreciated.

In General: There are many ways to make arguments. I will listen to most anything you think is an argument, as long as you are making arguments. Another way to think about this: I was "born and raised" in D3 (Southeast Oklahoma, Baylor, Kansas, then back to Baylor). I have heard and seen it all, so you do you, do your thing, don't over-adapt to me. I will vote for the team that does the better debating.

Strategy: Have one. I reward debaters and debate teams who are opportunistic, and who exploit the mistakes made by the other team. The best debate teams are usually not the ones who overwhelm with speed or a mountain of cards; rather, the best debate teams are the ones who avoid making the big mistakes, and who have the ability to capitalize on the mistakes made by their opposition. I like debate teams that are decisive, and not afraid to go “all-in” if their opponents drop the ball.

Theory: Be clear (in general), but especially in a theory debate. Slow down a little, because even the greatest flows in debate history can’t write down blippy theory jargon at 200mph. Even if it was flow-able, is that really good debate? I think not. That all being said, I tend to give the neg some leeway on conditionality, etc. as long as choices are made by the 2NR.

A Few Specifics: Critical arguments and approaches to debate are fine, and appreciated. I prefer specifics over generics, as with most arguments. I also like crafty CP/DA strategies, and I like well-researched case debates. I think debating the case is a lost art. I reward debaters who make nuanced and sophisticated case arguments, and who actually go for them in the 2NR once in awhile. Topicality is an under-valued strategic choice. Framework can also be a valuable method to win a debate, but I think the implications/import of enforcing it are open to debate.

If you have questions just ask mattgerber2011@gmail.com

Affiliation: University of Houston

I’ve been judging since 2011. As of January 2nd, 2022 I am the third most prolific college policy judge in the era of Tabroom. Ahead of me are Jackie Poapst and Armands Revelins, behind me are Kurt Fifelski and Becca Steiner. Take this how you will.

Yes, I want to be on the E-mail chain. Send docs to: robglassdebate [at] the google mail service . I don’t read the docs during the round except in unusual circumstances or when I think someone is clipping cards.

The short version of my philosophy, or “My Coach preffed this Rando, what do I need to know five minutes before the round starts?”:

1. Debate should be a welcoming and open space to all who would try to participate. If you are a debater with accessibility (or other) concerns please feel free to reach out to me ahead of the round and I will work with you to make the space as hospitable as possible.

2. Have a fundamental respect for the other team and the activity. Insulting either or both, or making a debater feel uncomfortable, is not acceptable.

3. Debate is for the debaters. My job, in total, is to watch what you do and act according to how y’all want me. So do you and I’ll follow along.

4. Respond to the other team. If you ignore the other team or try to set the bounds so that their thoughts and ideas can have no access to debate I will be very leery of endorsing you. Find an argument, be a better debater.

5. Offense over Defense. I tend to prefer substantive impacts. That said I will explicitly state here that I am more and more comfortable voting on terminal defense, especially complete solvency takeouts. If I am reasonably convinced your aff does nothing I'm not voting for it.

6. With full credit to Justin Green: When the debate is over I'm going to applaud. I love debate and I love debaters and I plan on enjoying the round.

Nukes thoughts:

The amount of time, reading, discussion, and even writing I have dedicated to American and International nuclear strategy is hard to overstate. Please treat this topic with respect.

The standard argumentative thoughts list:

Debate is for the debaters - Everything below is up for debate, and I will adapt to what the debaters want me to do in the round.

Aff relationship to the topic - I think affirmatives should have a positive relationship to the topic. The topic remains a center point of debate, and I am disinclined to think it should be completely disregarded.

"USFG" framework: Is an argument I will vote on, but I am not inclined to think it is a model that best suits all debates, and I think overly rigid visions of debate are both ahistorical and unstrategic. I tend to think these arguments are better deployed as methodological case turns. TVAs are very helpful.

Counter-plan theory: Condo is like alcohol, alright if used in moderation but excess necessitates appropriate timing. Consultation is usually suspect in my book, alternative international actors more so, alternative USFG actors much less so. Beyond that, flesh out your vision of debate. My only particularly strong feeling about this is judge kick, which is explained at the bottom of this paradigm.

Disads: I have historically been loathe to ascribe 0% risk of a link, and tended to fall very hard into the cult of offense. I am self-consciously trying to check back more against this inclination. Impact comparison is a must.

PTX DAs: For years I beat my chest about my disdain for them, but I have softened since. I still don't like them, and think intrinsicness theory and basic questions of inherency loom large over their legitimacy as argumentation, but I also recognize the role they play in debate rounds and will shelve my personal beliefs on them when making my decision. That said, I do not think "we lose politics DAs" is a compelling ground argument on framework or T.

Critiques: I find myself yearning for more methodological explanation of alternatives these days. In a related thought, I also think Neg teams have been too shy about kicking alts and going for the "link" and "impact" (if that DA based terminology ought be applied one-to-one to the K) as independent reasons to reject the Affirmative advocacy. One of the most common ways that other judges and I dissent in round is that I tend to give more credit to perm solvency in a messy perm debate.

Case debate: Please. They are some of my favorite debates to watch, and I particularly enjoy when two teams go really deep on a nerdish question of either policy analysis or critical theory. If you're going down a particularly deep esoteric rabbit hole it is useful to slow down and explain the nuance to me, especially when using chains of acronyms that I may or may not have been exposed to.

Policy T: I spend a fair chunk of my free time thinking about T and the limits of the topic. I used to be very concerned with notions of lost ground, my views now are almost the opposite. Statistical analysis of round results leads me to believe that good negative teams will usually find someway to win on substance, and I think overly dramatic concerns about lost ground somewhat fly in the face of the cut-throat ethos of Policy Debate re: research, namely that innovative teams should be competitively rewarded. While framework debates are very much about visions of the debate world if both teams accept that debate rounds should be mediated through a relationship to policy action the more important questions for me is how well does debate actually embody and then educate students (and judges) about the real world questions of policy. Put differently, my impulse is that Framework debates should be inward facing whereas T debates should be outward facing. All of that should be taken with the gigantic caveat that is "you do you," whatever my beliefs I will still evaluate warranted ground arguments and Affirmative teams cannot simply point at this paradigm to get out of answering them.

Judge Kick: Judge kick is an abomination and forces 2ARs to debate multiple worlds based on their interpretation of how the judge will understand the 2NR and then intervene in the debate. It produces a dearth of depth, and makes all of the '70s-'80s hand-wringing about Condo come true. My compromise with judge kick is this: If the 2NR advocates for judge kick the 2A at the start of 2AR prep is allowed to call for a flip. I will then flip a coin. If it comes up heads the advocacy is kicked, if it comes up tails it isn't. I will announce the result of the flip and then 2AR prep will commence. If the 2A does this I will not vote on any theoretical issues regarding judge kick. If the 2A does not call for a flip I will listen and evaluate theory arguments about judge kick as is appropriate.

Online Debate Thoughts:

1. Please slow down a little. I will have high quality headsets, but microphone compression, online compression, and then decompression on my end will almost certainly effect just how much I hear of your speeches. I do not open speech docs and will not flow off of them which means I need to be able to understand what you’re saying, so please slow down. Not much, ~80% of top speed will probably be enough. If a team tries to outspread a team that has slowed down per this paradigm I will penalize the team that tried for said advantage.

1A. If you're going too fast and/or I cannot understand you due to microphone quality I will shout 'clear'. If after multiple calls of clear you do nothing I will simply stop flowing. If you try to adapt I will do the best I can to work with you to make sure I get every argument you're trying to make.

2. I come from the era of debate when we debated paper but flowed on computers, which means when I’m judging I will have the majority of my screen dominated by an excel sheet. If you need me to see a performance please flag it for me and I’ll rearrange my screen to account for your performance.

3. This is an echo of point 1, but it's touchy and I think bears repeating. The series of audio compressions (and decompressions) that online debate imposes on us has the consequence of distorting the high and low ends of human speech. This means that clarity will be lost for people with particularly high and low pitches when they spread. There is, realistically speaking, no way around this until we're all back in rooms with each other. I will work as hard as I can to infer and fill in the gaps to make it so that loss is minimized as much as possible, but there is a limit to what I can do. If you think this could affect you please make sure you are slowing down like I asked in point 1 or try to adapt in another way.

4. E-mail chains, please. Not only does this mean we don't have to delay by futzing around with other forms of technology but it also gives us a way to contact participants if (when) connections splutter out.

5. The Fluffy Tax. If during prep or time between speeches a non-human animal should make an appearance on your webcam and I see it, time will stop, they will be introduced to the debaters and myself, and we shall marvel at their existence and cuteness together. In the world of online debate we must find and make the joy that we can. Number of times the fluffy tax has been imposed: 3.

6. Be kind. This year is unbelievably tiring, and it is so easy to both get frustrated with opponents and lose an empathetic connection towards our peers when our only point of contact is a Brady Bunch screen of faces. All I ask is that you make a conscious effort to be kind to others in the activity. We are part of an odd, cloistered, community and in it all we have is our shared love of the activity. Love is an active process, we must choose to make it happen. Try to make it happen a little when you are in front of me.

Yes, I'd like to be on the email chain: thomas.gliniecki at gmail.com . Yes, I'll still make you compile a doc at the end of the round anyway.

Update: December 2021

I admire everyone's tenacity in sticking around through online debate.

I currently coach at Glenbrook South. Getting back into high school debate after years in college has been quite an experience. Here are some reflections based on this topic and things I've noticed through the first semester:

1. When my camera is off, you should assume that I am not there or am having technical difficulties. If I need to turn it off while I am still there, I will make a note of it verbally or in the chat.
2. More teams seem to be reading and going for Ks in front of me. I've noticed a trend that some of these teams "fiat" their alts, e.g. they say their alt is to have a communist revolution overthrowing the US government, and somehow that's strategically equivalent to imagining a policy passing through the USFG. I don't think it is- so "utopian fiat" concerns apply- but I also think that this makes you lose to just perm: do both 99.9% of the time since your links would have to somehow demonstrate that the plan/aff subverted a theoretical revolutionary vanguard powerful enough to off the entire US governing structure.
3. A lot of teams refer to T arguments by the author name on the definition. Maybe this is a function of having not worked at a camp this summer, but this convention never made sense to me and was at odds with how I was taught, which is to label each T argument by the word/phrase being defined (e.g. "T- protection" or "T- water resources"). I don't instinctively remember what author makes what T argument, so using the author name convention is more likely to confuse me than help me conceptualize what your thing is.
4. This topic is very broad, and there don't seem to be cards that meet what I consider to be the "gold standard" of T definitions for operative phrases (such as "protection of water resources"). In the best T debates, both teams would have definitions that are close to such a precise standard, but are vulnerable to criticism to some degree. I anticipate in close T debates, I would lean neg more than a lot of other judges since my response to such situations would be to break ties through an assessment of the quality of each definition for debate, rather than just assuming "if all definitions are on the same plane, I can never exclude the aff."

Update: NDT 2021

I hate arguments that are entirely reliant on some combination of a vocabulary barrier and/or exploiting judge non-interventionism. There are some things that are so ridiculously obvious your opponents shouldn't have to waste their time saying them. If your strategy is premised on your opponents either not knowing at all what you even said or not having the time to make a simple factual observation, I think you will discover that non-interventionism has assumptions that underlie its value as a judging practice, and that working against those assumptions is not a good idea for you strategically.
If you're here to say weird troll-y stuff, cool. I'm glad you found an activity you enjoy. I will ask two things: 1. Ask yourself whether subjecting your competitors to that is ethical, 2. please don't involve me in it. Either change around what you do just this once or strike me before the tournament begins.


Older, "core" philosophy

I'm still not voting on "politics isn't intrinsic." I get it if you throw it out there out of force of habit, especially if I'm on a panel- but I will be happier if you don't. Negs, remember you don't need to waste your time answering it, though again, I'll get it if you do.

Specifics-

K/T in "non-traditional" debates- I think debate is at its best when there is a negotiated point of stasis that each side could predict, and when there is a legitimate opportunity for the negative to have a meaningful role in a contested debate. I generally think that if the aff did not defend a topical plan, that they've denied the negative a meaningful role, and have denied the necessary precondition for in-depth engagement.
Neg Ks against "policy" affs tend to propose that I consider one idea external to or somewhere within the 1AC to the exclusion of all else; I tend to think I shouldn't do that. A "K" with very well-articulated ties to the topic, the plan action, and the advantages might be persuasive to me, however, you will need to identify how your alt competes with the _plan_, how your links apply to the _plan_, and consider tying your alt to an alternative policy option. If that sounds too much like a “counterplan” and thus offends your sensibilities, we’re probably not on the same page.
The K has a very bad record in front of me, despite some valiant efforts. If you must do this, try to couch your argument as "mutually exclusive counterplan that solves inevitable extinction- try or die." The more it seems like a disad-counterplan strategy, the more likely I am to be receptive to your argument.

T in "policy" debates- While it's somewhat hard to forecast at the very beginning of a topic, I have historically been very good for the neg when they have high-quality evidence in support of a more restrictive interpretation of the topic. In these debates, I tend to have a lot of skepticism toward aff defense against limits explosion- for example, "functional limits" just seem like an invitation to a deluge of one-and-done affs with bad (but unpredictable and thus "good" for two hours) tricks vs. whatever generic is supposed to stop the aff from existing, and the lack of solvency advocate has never stopped anyone. This topic in particular strikes me as quite tough for the neg, so I may lack sympathy for some aff offensive args as well (e.g. overlimiting).

CP competition- CPs that are just rewritings of the plan or compete on something that doesn't appear in the plan will have problems. This also applies if your CP competes on a word that could be interpreted multiple ways; you will need to decisively win that it should be interpreted a certain way to win a competition arg.

Matt Gomez

Graduate Assistant @ UNLV

Assistant Coach @ Rowland Hall St Marks

Please include me in the email chains: mattgomez22@gmail.com

Top Level:

Hot take: The s is silent in debris.

I'll be honest. I really really really hate judging psychoanalysis. I would prefer not to judge these arguments. That being said, I'll still just evaluate the line-by-line....but just my preference

---Write the ballot in the 2NR/2AR

---The most reasonable argument usually wins in an equally debated round

---Risk is a sliding scale and arguments should be couched probabilistically since most of this isn't objective

---I prefer engagement over tricks. This applies in clash debates, k v k rounds, or policy throw downs. Speaker points will be higher in debates where you engage.

---Not interested in constant shifting explanations and dodging in cross-ex. Confident and direct answers show that you understand the weakness of your argument and are prepared to defend it.

---I generally lean neg on theory

---Affs can be vague in their plan but it makes circumvention and Say No harder to answer

---I will not give up my ballot to someone else. I will not evaluate arguments about actions taken when I was not in the room or from previous rounds. I will not vote for arguments about debaters as people. I will always evaluate the debate based on the arguments made during the round and which team did the better debating. Teams asking me not to flow or wanting to play video games, or any other thing that is not debate are advised to strike me. If it is unclear what "is not debate" means, strike me.

---Speech times are set. So is cross-ex and prep.

T vs Plans

Generally: Interps and definitions really matter. You need to counter-define words. Probably default to competing interps but I'm ok for reasonability combined with functional limits and indicts of neg evidence. But generally, aff's should be worried in front of me if they don't think their plan is T and negs shouldn't be afraid of going for T if they have good evidence. This is a big topic and I will have little sympathy for teams trying to make it even bigger.

Counterplans

An ESR counterplan that has the executive branch establish a policy is a core negative position that challenges the necessity of statutory and/or judicial restrictions on executive authority. An ESR CP that fiats Trump is intelligent or decides to resign or some other thing that is not necessarily an opportunity cost to statutory/judicial restrictions on executive authority are more questionable (though I lean neg on theory)

States is competitive (replace with ESR for college topic). Consult is most likely not. I'm not stoked about counterplans that do all of the aff but am a fan of smart PIC strategies. Textual vs Functional competition...both are probably good and each has its time and place... I still do not fully understand competition. If the aff has real solvency deficits they can make, I'm likely to not vote on theory.

I will kick counterplans for the neg IF the 2NR invokes the option. It is unlikely that I will care about new 2AR args for why thats difficult to answer if the 1AR didn't extend conditionality.

DAs

For God's sake please read impact defense

A DA is comprised of UQ, Link, Internal Link, and Impact arguments. I am not pleased with the recent trend that UQ is an argument for the block...

I'm willing to allow the 1AR to read cards based on 2AC analytics that actually have warrants.

---ok: No impact to proliferation---every empirical example like North Korea, India, and Pakistan disprove.

---not ok: No impact to prolif---empirics

Its arbitrary, but one is clearly a more complete argument than the other. Not saying I won't let the 1AR read a card in the 2nd instance, but you are much more likely to lose if the negative says that wasnt a complete arg in the 2AC and 1AR doesn't get to complete it.

Turns case arguments matter a lot to me. Make them and answer them. I can vote aff on a good risk of an advantage combined with a solid impact defense and internal link defense push. But I can also check out on turns case even if there is a large risk of the aff.

Policy Aff vs K

Totally open to it. These were my favorite debates as a 2A and offer some great opportunity for a smaller but more in-depth debate.

Affirmative teams should make sure to pre-empt the blocks attempt to not let them weigh the aff. Make impact framing arguments. And either no link or impact turn links. But the best focus is usually on the alternative. Most important, don't back down. Defend that things that matter actually do matter. Don't be the person who loses on "death good" or can't even answer the question "what is death." Think about why incremental progress matters, have a defense of it, and beat the ontology arguments. I find the most successful affirmative strategy is one that goes through the checklist of things every 2A needs to do against a K but also genuinely tries to understand the K and logically dismantles it/proves that is not the way the world works.

Negative teams are advised to generate links to the plan action. You can functionally disregard aff framework arguments if you do this because it proves the plan is a bad idea. If your strategy is to win links to discourse, epistemology, other "ologies" or things that are not the plan, the 2NC is advised to invest a substantial amount of time on framework. A well-devised framework argument, diverse links, impact framing arguments, and a decent alternative make for an extremely difficult 1AR. Combined with case defense and it becomes even harder. If you are feeling ambitious and can do both in the 2NC and have a DA in the 1NR, even better for neg flex.

---I generally find ways to think myself into believing structural/identity Ks do prove the aff is a bad idea if the negative wins their theory of power and am unlikely to vote on "plan action or gtfo" FW. The power of that arg is I have to weigh implications of the link vs implications of the plan, NOT that I throw out the K entirely.

I don't understand the trend of 1NR's "taking the perm" when the 2NC does the link debate. They are functionally the same and it doesn't take that much longer to put it in the 2NC and place some lower arguments into the 1NR to avoid messing up my flow.

The fiat double-bind is fundamentally unpersuasive. I do not enjoy K's that argue death isn't real/ is good.

K vs K

I've debated post-modernism and materialism. I read a lot. I watch a lot of different styles of debate. That being said, I very rarely participated in these debates. It will be important to identify points of disagreement and offense. For the aff, its important to identify actual link turns. Saying "the plan is anti-capitalist" is not a link turn or an answer to the link. Plenty of movements that didn't like capitalism ended up operating in a way that was beneficial to it.

Please say the alternative doesn't solve. And say the alternative does solve.

Please say root cause. And answer root cause.

Pick and choose links and consolidate as the round goes on.

Permutations need to explain why they solve the links and the negative needs to apply links to the permutation as well as the plan.

K vs T

I entirely believe debate is a game. I will vote otherwise if the argument presented as to why it is not a game or should be evaluated as something else is won by the affirmative, and that is because I believe it is a game... This can be an uphill battle if the affirmative does not present an alternate model for debate that has a well-conceived role for both the affirmative and negative and is able to weigh the benefits of that model against the negative's. It is easy to say what you are against, harder to say what you are for.

I do not have a preference for fairness or education (also called advocacy skills, mechanism education, etc.), but i do think the negative can persuasively argue that fairness is an impact in and of itself. Affirmative's must win that their educational benefits outweigh the negative's or that the cost of unfairness is worth the positive benefits of their model of debate.

I do not believe T is a weapon to exclude. I think it is an argument like any other and a core negative check against untopical affs (the states counterplan of clash debates). I believe that negative's who are overly rude, dismissive, or offensive in how they deploy T can lose to exclusion offense. Conduct yourself accordingly.

Topical version of the aff and Switch Side Debate are counterplans meant to prove the affirmative could access a large swathe of their literature base/education offense under the "traditional" model of debate. The negative should try to solve as much of the case as possible or prove that the TVA debates are better than the aff as is. The affirmative should argue that those debates are not educational, bad for their education, etc.

As always, these debates will become hyperbolic. That's fine. But when I vote on the silly hyperbole one team makes against the silly hyperbole the other team makes, that is just because it is what I was given to work with.

I debated for Samford University and am currently a graduate assistant coach at the University of Georgia.  

Be clear.

The quick checklist:

1) I consider myself a “policy judge” who privileges the importance of the link over the impact

2) I love good theory debates and am willing and ready to vote against what most call “negative flexibility”

3) Debate is a game (truth is important, but tech first) and my ballot will only determine who wins the debate, not which political stance or movement I am aligned with.

My “biases” are not harsh rules for debate. You are certainly best off doing what you usually do in front of me – I will work hard to understand your arguments, flow, and evaluate the round with as little intervention as possible. 

T: Reasonability. In order to prove the aff/neg is being unreasonable – talk about what the world of debate would look like if I endorse their interpretation. Caselists and in depth impact calculus will go a long way here. 

Theory: I am more than ready to curtail the community norm of unlimited negative flexibility. I do not think a team has to win the debate has become “impossible” in order to win an abuse claim. Topic education is paramount.

CPs: I love counterplans that test the intrinsicness of the plan to the advantages of the aff. PICs are great. Word PICs are not. I am more than ready to reject the following CPs : consult, agent Cps, international fiat, process CPs, CPs that compete off the certainty or immediacy of the plan. 

Ks: What can I say? Grad school changes a person. After years of judging, coaching, and familiarizing myself with critical arguments, I feel like I am in place to better adjudicate these debates. Still, specific links to the aff are crucial. Generic criticisms, like generic policy strategies, are boring to watch and will get you bad speaker points (and a loss).

Performance: While my experience is in policy debates, I am more than willing to listen and evaluate arguments here just as I do in those policy debates. I generally think the role of the ballot is decide who won or lost a debate (did the best debating, made the best arguments), so asking me to use my ballot to send a signal or align with a particular movement will need a strong defense. 

DAs: I will vote on zero risk of the link – you don’t need offense to beat the DA to zero. Talk about how your impact interacts with the opponent’s.  

Speaker Points: I will reward debaters for specific strategies, (good) jokes, and not stealing prep. 

Speaker point scale:

27-27.5: Did some good things, but needs a lot of improvement. Typically includes a lot of technical drops. Will not clear at a national tournament, will probably go 2-6 or worse if you debate like this every round.

27:5-28: Answered all the important arguments, but didn't do evidence comparison, sufficient impact calculus, or give me a clear way to vote for you. Will likely go 3-5. 

28-28.5: Did a lot of things right, but didn't wow me.  4-4 debating. 

28.5-29:Excelled in the cross-ex, has a positive ethos throughout the round, did evidence comparison, impact calculus, and made smart arguments and connections. You should be 5-3 or better.

29-29.5: Outstanding debating all around. You belong in the elims. No missing on points for you!

29.5-30: Rare. Reserved for the best speeches i've seen all year. 

Misc: Be aggressive. Have fun. Learn something. 

Paperless: I’m lenient. Don’t take advantage of it. 

i deleted lots of old stuff because it was too long, email is below if you want clarification about anything. make your best arguments, compare them with your opponent's arguments, have fun. i debated at homewood - floosmoor and kentucky, so i'm mostly familiar with disad and case versus a big aff or tricky counterplans.

1. email chain please: donaldgrasse93@gmail.com

2. data matters - arguments are not just claims, there needs to be evidence (not necessarily cards) that supports the idea. examples are generally a good start, and they are best when they are applied in context of the debate.

3. i flow cross-x and make most of my decisions based on what was said in the debate. i don't follow along with the speech docs because i think it distracts me from what you are saying in place of what the cards are about. if you want me to look at particular cards, or if you think there is a disconnect between what your opponent is arguing and what their highlighted evidence says, make me aware of that in the speeches/cross-x. i reward good evidence, but first and foremost i want to reward good communication of facts in evidence into a comparative argument.

Justin Green - Head Coach - Wake Forest University

wfudbt@gmail.com

I plan to clap when the round is done; your effort is appreciated!

Argument Defaults

Preference - The good ones about the topic. Most of my research is on the policy side, but lucky to interact with great debaters and coaches across a wide spectrum of approaches for many years.

Topicality - Yes offense first; defense is essential. Impact turning or going just with reasonability without a quality counter-interp rarely wins.

Policy Aff v the K - Specificity is crucial for both sides. It's rare that I don't consider both the effects of the plan and the scholastic/rhetorical choices including the interactions between the two. Aff's should be prepared to defend the claims made in the 1ac. Winning the world is ordered by an oppressive structure is not enough.

CP Theory - Legitimacy of process CP's increases with more specific advocates. Some conditionality most likely OK - go beyond 2 or 3 or 2nc CP out of impact turns to do the opposite of the 1nc impact; less likely to be ok.

Case Debates - Where have all my heroes gone?

Effective Techniques:

- Articulate when reading! There has been an increasing trend in debates I watch where syllables are consistently muddled or skipped. I'll yell clearer. If I yell it twice know that you are in the danger zone.

- Cross Ex Matters! and it has a time limit – I listen, flow, and those who reference answers from the CX are likely to get higher points. When the timer goes off, it's judge prep even if the two teams decide to continue the CX during prep time. If the two side agree on something when a judge is not there "ex. neg agreed they could kick planks or part of the alt"...please fill me in.

- Smart Analytics exposing flaws can go a long way. Internal link chains and neg K alt solvency are two of many places where this can potentially be effective.

- Quality of Evidence+Quality of Explanation+Quality of comparison=weight of argument

- 2 Tips for last rebuttals beyond impact calculation - Give your partners credit explicitly. Acknowledge where the other side might be correct, but why that is not enough.

Just in case it happens, some strong defaults....

- No shenanigans policy - I expect a 2v2 debate. No three person teams, no one person taking all the speech time, please don't ask for something besides a debate to determine a winner, etc. Two people speaking in the same speech, ok if part of a pre-scripted performance early in the debate. In subsequent speeches, only one person's words count.

- If you ask for a 30. Your speaker points will likely have a 3 in it; 3 will most likely not be the first number. If both you and your partner are asking for a 30, you are playing a dangerous game given the previous sentence.

- Hard to imagine myself voting on elements not related directly to an argument made in the debate (coin flips, previous debates, what their coach did, how someone interacted outside the debate, initials at the end of the card, month of the year). Verified blatant false disclosure of more than a card or two and could be a voting issue.

- Evidence ethics. Yes, follow AFA, ADA and CEDA guidelines. And also, not really trying to vote on: whether the citation includes date accessed, initials of the card cutter (or who cut the card), if there were accidental exclusions of the text that had no material effect.

ENJOY!

If it matters to you, I used to make critical and performance based arguments. I have coached all types. I generally like all arguments, especially ones that come with claims, warrants, impacts, and are supported by evidence.

Do you (literally, WHATEVER you do). Be great. Say smart things. Give solid speeches and perform effectively in CX. Win and go as hard as it takes (but you dont have to be exessively rude or mean to do this part). Enjoy yourself. Give me examples and material applications to better understand your position. Hear me out when the decision is in. I saw what I saw. Dassit.

Add me to the email chain- lgreenymt@gmail.com

My "high" speaker points typically cap out around 28.9 (in open debate). If you earn that, you have delivered a solid and confident constructive, asked and answered questions persuasively, and effectively narrowed the debate to the most compelling reasons you are winning the debate in the rebuttals. If you get higher than that, you did all of those things AND THEN SOME. What many coaches would call, "the intangibles".

Speaking of speaker points, debate is too fast and not enough emphasis is put on speaking persuasively. This is true of all styles of debate. I flow on paper and you should heavily consider that when you debate in front of me. I am a quick and solid flow and pride myself in capturing the most nuanced arguments, but some of what I judge is unintelligible to me and its getting worse. Card voice vs tag voice is important, you cannot read analytics at the same rate you are reading the text of the card and be persuasive to me, and not sending analytics means I need that much more pen time. Fix it. It will help us all. Higher speaker points are easier to give.

Thank you, in advance, for allowing me to observe and participate in your debate.

TG

email: mitchellhagney@gmail.com

I think debate has lots of epistemological value, though I have voted that it is bad and should be destroyed more than once. I competed at the TOC and NDT, but eventually stopped debating to work in sustainable farming. Today, my day job is as the head farmer for the San Antonio Food Bank, operate a hydroponic farm and coworking kitchen space called LocalSprout (www.localsprout.com), and push local policy change to advance a sustainable and equitable food system through the Food Policy Council of San Antonio (www.fpcsa.org). I made these choices as a direct result of a decision-making style that I got from debate.

Evidence quality is important to me. +.1 speaker points if you mention a methods section in your or their articles.

For critical affs, teams that admit to being outside of the resolution need to describe what content and arguments debates would feature if their interpretation were adopted wholesale. It's best if that sounds like a version of debate where both sides stand a chance and is pedagogically valuable. There need to be strong answers to a topical version and reasons why awarding the ballot in a certain direction is good.

I miss the diversity of structural Ks debate used to feature. For those critiques, I like to know what the alternative looks like or why the details aren't important.

For counterplan theory, in each round there is an amount of conditional negative advocacies that is beyond the reasonable amount of testing the aff, which then degrades the quality of the discussion. Use your judgement on what that limit is. I don't like permanent/recurring inaction or attitudinal fiat. Solvency advocates are the best response to accused CP illegitimacy. If it was impossible to find a solvency advocate for a widely discussed aff, that's usually a bad sign. Multi-actor, international, and delay counterplans rarely seem to challenge the aff or the topic. They often put judges in a strange place between choosing between things no human has the authority over.

For politics DAs, I have a higher threshhold for the link debate than the community at large. I find fiat solves the link arguments persuasive if the aff requires that congresspeople change their mind. If it's normal means that the president expends capital to persuade them, I need reasons why that's normal means or why we should interpret the world that way. Delay, direct horsetrading, or focus links are different from usual political capital arguments and are often times more intrinsic to the aff.

Defense matters - No internal link, uniqueness overwhelms the link, empirically denied, impact inevitable - these arguments are some of the most persuasive to me and I am more likely to think you are smart if you say them.

I am likely to dismiss 2AR arguments entirely if I think they are new.

I usually make decisions based on comparative impact assessment. Relative to other judges, it seems like I pay more attention to impact uniqueness, which are often influenced by arguments like those that have been kicked earlier in the debate and turns case arguments. This is as true for critical debates as it is for policy ones.

Benjamin Hagwood, Director at Vancouver Debate Academy

About me - former college policy debater, flow-centric, like all arguments but the politics DA (Elections gets a pass)

Debate is a game that can be played in a multitude of ways. It is the responsibility of the students to determine the parameters of the games and to call "foul" if they think someone has done something abusive. I will judge the round as it happens. Here are a few things about me that you might find useful when preparing for a round:

1. Flowing - I do my best to have as accurate a flow as possible while trying to capture but the context and citation of your arguments. Dropping arguments could be detrimental if your opponents extend and weight those arguments properly.
2. Observer not a Participant - I won't do work for you or insert myself into your debate. You will win OR lose based on the arguments in the round not my person opinion.
3. Style over Speed - swag is subjective - bring yours.
4. Petty but not Disrespectful - don't be unnecessarily rude to your opponent - but I must admit being petty is strategic.
5. Challenges - if you challenge someone and lose the challenge you lose the debate (this could also apply on theory debates depending on the debate - but not RVI's)

Universal Speaker Point Adjustments: all students are evaluated on their level. A 29 in novice is not the same as a 29 in open. 28 is my base for completing all your speeches and using all your speech time.

1. Wear a bowtie (+.5 point)
2. Be entertaining (tell jokes...if I laugh...you get points...if I don't you won't be punished) (+.5 point)
3. Be rude (-.5 point)
4. Don't use all your time (-.5 point)
5. Steal prep (-.5 point)

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me and ask. Students may request my flow and written feedback at the end of the debate if they want. I will only share it with the students in the round unless they consent to the flow being shared with other opponents.

Sherry Hall, Harvard, Judging Philosophy, East Region
Judged multiple College rounds this year.

Please add me to the doc chain: hallsherry2@gmail.com

I view my role as a debate judge as a "critic of argument." This means that I think the closest analogy to what I do when I judge rounds, is to act as an educator grading a class presentation. But Collegiate debate is not just an educational activity, it is also a competitive activity. Therefore, the judge has the additional role of acting as a "referee" or official who keeps time, and resolves disputes over the "rules". In resolving debates that focus on the "rules" - is topicality a voting issue, are PICs legitimate, must the negative provide an alternative - I tend to evaluate those questions based on the impact that they have on education and competitive equity.

I consider clash against the opponent’s ideas as one of the most important standards by which to evaluate whether or not a particular argument or practice is “good” or “bad” for debate. I do think that for the activity to continue to progress, creativity in arguments and debating styles is a good thing that should be encouraged. I also think that teams which are employing innovations, such as a “performance is all that matters” strategy, will do better with me if the debaters can isolate what standards I should use to evaluate rounds in this new way, and/or what ground is left to the other team. A strategy or performance that leaves nothing for the other team to respond to undermines the goal of competitive equity.

I have a few theoretical preferences, though none is so strong that I cannot be convinced to set it aside despite the arguments in the round. I will list some of these preferences, but the debaters should keep in mind, that these issues still need to be argued, and the side that plays into my preferences, still needs to articulate the reasons why a particular argument should be accepted or rejected.
1. I strongly believe that if asked, the affirmative must specify who does the plan. The fact that the topic does not lock the affirmative into a particular actor, means that the affirmative gets to choose. The whole purpose of having a debate where the negative can clash meaningfully with the affirmative case is lost, if the affirmative can say what their plan does after they have heard the negative strategy.
2. Almost all negative teams these days reflexively declare that the counterplan is conditional. I have seen many rounds this year where that unthinking choice has cost the neg the round. If you have a legitimate reason for your arguments to be conditional and you are prepared to defend it, go for it, but I think it is a bad idea to say that your arguments are conditional when they don’t need to be – you just open yourself up to more ways to lose. My preference is against conditionality. For the same reason that I think the affirmative has to say what their plan does for the negative to meaningfully clash with that plan, the affirmative needs to know what their plan and case is being compared to, in order to effectively clash with the negative’s arguments. It is not enough that the negative will pick one strategy by the end of the round, because too much time has been wasted on arguments that are irrelevant. More importantly, the presence of a counterplan in the round changes how the affirmative answers disadvantages and case arguments. If the negative can drop the counterplan later in the round, the affirmative cannot go back and re-give the 2AC. I think that the debate is better if both sides clearly stake out their ground and their positions from the beginning and the rest of the debate focuses on which is better.

3. I have a mixed voting record in "race" and "identity" debates. I am open to the arguments that they deserve a place in debate. However, I am not familiar with a lot of the literature, and I can therefore feel a little lost understanding some of the vernacular. It is better to explain arguments rather than to rely on terms that I am unfamiliar with. I prefer arguments that have some nexus to the topic or the other team's arguments for the reasons I outlined above when discussing my feelings on clash.

In addition to the theoretical preferences, I do have some views regarding decorum in the round.
1. As I mentioned above, I view myself as an educator and consider the debate round to be a “learning environment”. I believe that both basic civil rights law, as articulated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and subsequent state laws, as well as basic ethics requires that debaters and judges conduct themselves in rounds in a manner that protects the rights of all participants to an environment free of racial/sexual hostility or harassment. I am inclined to disallow language and performances that would be considered harassment in a regular class-room setting. I have no problem with discussions that include sexual issues, but if the incorporation of pornography, sexual simulation, sexual threats against the other team, nudity, etc., creates a hostile environment for the other participants in the round, then it should not be presented. If you think your debate performance potentially crosses the line and could constitute sexual and/or racial harassment, your safest bet is to warn the other team before the round and ask if they have any objections. I consider a request from the opposing team or me to not use explicit language/material/performance to be a signal of their/my discomfort and deserving of your respect. I view the intentional decision to create a hostile environment without respecting the feelings of the opposing team to be an unethical practice that will be treated the same way as other ethical violations such as fabricating evidence – loss and zero speaker points.
2. I detest rudeness, especially in cross-examination, or in comments directed at one’s opponents.

Assistant Director of Speech and Debate at Presentation High School and Public Admin phd student. I debated policy, traditional ld and pfd in high school (4 years) and in college at KU (5 years). Since 2015 I've been assistant coaching debate at KU. Before and during that time I've also been coaching high school (policy primarily) at local and nationally competitive programs.

Familiar with wide variety of critical literature and philosophy and public policy and political theory. Coached a swath of debaters centering critical argumentation and policy research. Judge a reasonable amount of debates in college/hs and usually worked at some camp/begun research on both topics in the summer. That said please don't assume I know your specific thing. Explain acronyms, nuance and important distinctions for your AFF and NEG arguments.

The flow matters. Tech and Truth matter. I obvi will read cards but your spin is way more important.

I think that affs should be topical. What "TOPICAL" means is determined by the debate. I think it's important for people to innovate and find new and creative ways to interpret the topic. I think that the topic is an important stasis that aff's should engage. I default to competing interpretations - meaning that you are better off reading some kind of counter interpretation (of terms, debate, whatever) than not.

I think Aff's should advocate doing something - like a plan or advocacy text is nice but not necessary - but I am of the mind that affirmative's should depart from the status quo.

Framework is fine. Please impact out your links though and please don't leave me to wade through the offense both teams are winning in that world.

I will vote on theory. I think severance is prolly bad. I typically think conditionality is good for the negative. K's are not cheating (hope noone says that anymore). PICS are good but also maybe not all kinds of PICS so that could be a thing.

I think competition is good. Plan plus debate sucks. I default that comparing two things of which is better depends on an opportunity cost. I am open to teams forwarding an alternative model of competition.

Disads are dope. Link spin can often be more important than the link cards. But
you need a link. I feel like that's agreed upon but you know I'm gone say it anyway.

Just a Kansas girl who loves a good case debate. but seriously, offensive and defensive case args can go a long way with me and generally boosters other parts of the off case strategy.

When extending the K please apply the links to the aff. State links are basic but for some reason really poorly answered a lot of the time so I mean I get it. Links to the mechanism and advantages are spicier. I think that if you're reading a K with an alternative that it should be clear what that alternative does or does not do, solves or turns by the end of the block. I'm sympathetic to predictable 1ar cross applications in a world of a poorly explained alternatives. External offense is nice, please have some.

I acknowledge debate is a public event. I also acknowledge the concerns and material implications of some folks in some spaces as well. I will not be enforcing any recording standards or policing teams to debate "x" way. I want debaters at in all divisions, of all argument proclivities to debate to their best ability, forward their best strategy and answers and do what you do.

Card clipping and cheating is not okay so please don't do it.
NEW YEAR NEW POINT SYSTEM (college) - 28.6-28.9 good, 28.9-29.4 really good, 29.4+ bestest.

This trend of paraphrasing cards in PFD as if you read the whole card = not okay and educationally suspect imo.

Middle/High Schoolers: You smart. You loyal. I appreciate you. And I appreciate you being reasonable to one another in the debate.

I wanna be on the chain: jyleesahampton@gmail.com

2022 Update- I am not longer actively coaching debate. Please do not assume that I know a lot about the topic, have any idea what some other school's aff is, or have strong feelings about what obscure topic wordings mean. 

Allison.c.harper@gmail.com. - Put me on the chain please. I will not follow along with the doc or read cards I don't think are necessary to make a decision but spelling my first name is annoying and this was buried near the bottom of my philosophy.

Here are a few ways that I think my judging either differs from others or has changed with online debate:

1) I flow and do not open your speech documents during your speeches. That means you need to try to present arguments in a way that is flowable.  Make sure tags are clear. Answer arguments in an order I can follow (such as the order in which they are presented). Add structure and signpost.  Avoid reading giant analytical paragraphs without breaking things up. Avoid jumping around the flow arbitrarily or reading blocks in places where they dont belong.  Doing these things make sure that I not only have a record of what you said, but helps me understand how you think what you are saying applies/responds to your opponents arguments.  When you don't do these things, you increase the odds that I misunderstand what you think you have answered.

2) Make comparisons.  I read less evidence during and after debates than other judges. I start my decisions by looking at my flows, deciding what the key questions are, resolving things that I can, and only then look at evidence.  Make comparisons between your warrants, quality of evidence. Draw out the interactions for me rather than forcing me to do these things for you. I see that as intervention, but the way that many debaters give rebuttals these days sometimes makes it impossible to decide without that intervention. I would much rather let you do the comparing.

3) I am not in the cult of big impacts/try or die. You need to solve for something. Your counterplan needs a net benefit. I can be convinced to vote for low risk, but presumption and zero risk exist. Not everything needs a card. Smart analytics can knock down the risk of some pretty silly arguments.  If the other team does have evidence of sufficient quality, however, a card to the contrary would go a long way.

4) I don’t think I am a bad judge for the k if you debate the k technically, especially on the neg. I am not great for any argument if you are overly relying on an overview to get things done, are speaking in paragraphs without considering flowability, or are addressing components of the debate in ways that ignore the line by line. I am better for specific links and alts that I would be able to explain back to the other team what they do based on the explanation you offered in the round.  I think 90% of the time spent on “framework” when the neg reads a k is a waste of time by both sides. The neg gets links to what the aff said and did. The aff gets to weigh the implementation of the plan. Unless another way of thinking about this is presented and dropped, this is how I end up evaluating the debate anyway. I am less of a fan of critical affirmatives that are not topical, do not relate to the topic in a significant way, etc. In K aff vs framework debates, the aff is helped if I can understand what reasonable ways the negative could anticipate an aff like yours and reasonably respond to it.

5) I would rather you make link arguments to kritiks about assumptions that the other team has made during this debate rather than ask me to evaluate something that happened other debates or outside of debates. Other debates had judges who rendered their own decisions. If there are serious concerns about a debater's out of round behavior, please take that to their coaches or tournament administrators. 

6) Process debates are boring. They might be necessary on some recent topics, but they are so boring on topics where there are great disads. They would be better with some evidence that suggest this process ought to exist/be used, even better if there are cards about the topic or aff. For example, I am far more into con-con about a constitutional/legal question than con-con to withdraw from NATO. But really, wouldn’t it be cool if we picked debate topics that were actual controversies? Wouldn’t it be cool if topics that had some controversy were limited in a way that makes some sense?

7) When you steal prep time, you are stealing my decision time. Please don’t. If you are making changes to your speech doc (deleting analytics, rearranging blocks, combining multiple docs into one, etc) you should have a prep timer running. Sending a doc is fine outside of prep but should be done efficiently, especially if you are debating at the varsity/open level. Refusing to start CX until you have a marked copy is also a big waste of my time unless you are planning to ask questions that are affected by these markings. I have yet to see that happen, so let's get on with it.

8) In online debate, you MUST make an effort to be clearer. NSDA campus makes you sound like a robot eating rocks. What was passable on classrooms.cloud doesn’t cut it on campus. I should be able to understand the body of your evidence, distinguish tags from cards, etc. I do not open speech documents when you are speaking. I need to be able to hear and understand you.

9) It is much harder to pay attention to online debates. This isn’t your fault. It is a feature of the format. I have found cross-ex in particular difficult to follow and keep in focus. People talking at once is really rough online, and I appreciate attempts to limit this by keeping answers reasonable in length and not cutting off reasonable answers. I will do my best in every debate to give you every bit of attention I have, but it would help me if you would forefront cross-ex questions that might matter to your strategy. Asking the other team what they read is cross-ex time.

Old Philosophy- I don't disagree with this:

I think I am a relatively middle of the road judge on most issues. I would rather hear you debate whatever sort of strategy you do well than have you conform to my argumentative preferences. I might have more fun listening to a case/da debate, but if you best strat or skillset is something else, go for it. I might not like an argument, but I will and have voted for arguments I hate if it wins the debate. I do have a pretty strong preference for technical, line by line style debate.

I am open to listening to kritiks by either side, but I am more familiar with policy arguments, so some additional explanation would be helpful, especially on the impact and alternative level. High theory K stuff is the area where I am least well read. I generally think it is better for debate if the aff has a topical plan that is implemented, but I am open to hearing both sides. To be successful at framework debates in front of me, it is helpful to do more than articulate that your movement/project/affirmation is good, but also provide reasons why it is good to be included in debate in the format you choose. I tend to find T version of the aff a pretty persuasive argument when it is able to solve a significant portion of aff offense.

I don’t have solid preferences on most counterplan theory issues, other than that I am not crazy about consultation or conditions cps generally. Most other cp issues are questions of degree not kind (1 conditional cp and a k doesn’t seem so bad, more than that is questionable, 42 is too many, etc) and all up for debate. The above comment about doing what you do well applies here. If theory is your thing and you do it well, ok. If cp cheating with both hands is your style and you can get away with it, swell.

I have no objection to voting on “untrue” arguments, like some of the more out there impact turns. To win on dropped arguments, you still need to do enough work that I could make a coherent decision based on your explanation of the argument. Dropped = true, but you need a claim, warrant, and impact. Such arguments also need to be identifiable in order for dropped = true to apply.

It’s rarely the case that a team wins every argument in the debate, so including relevant and responsive impact assessment is super important. I’d much rather debaters resolve questions like who has presumption in the case of counterplans or what happens to counterplans that might be rendered irrelevant by 2ar choices than leaving those questions to me.

I try my best to avoid reading evidence after a debate and think debaters should take this into account. I tend to only call for evidence if a) there is a debate about what a card says and/or b) it is impossible to resolve an issue without reading the evidence myself. I prefer to let the debaters debate the quality of evidence rather than calling for a bunch of evidence and applying my own interpretations after the fact. I think that is a form of intervening. I also think it is important that you draw out the warrants in your evidence rather than relying on me to piece things together at the end of the debate. As a result, you would be better served explaining, applying, and comparing fewer really important arguments than blipping through a bunch of tag line/author name extensions. I can certainly flow you and I will be paying attention to your speeches, but if the debate comes down to a comparison between arguments articulated in these manners, I tend to reward explanation and analysis. Also, the phrase "insert re-highlighting" is meaningless to someone who isn't reading the docs in real time. Telling me what you think the evidence says is a better use of your time

I like smart, organized debates. I pay a ton of attention and think I flow very well. I tend to be frustrated by debaters who jump around or lack structure. If your debate is headed this direction (through your own doing or that of the other team), often the team that cleans things up usually benefits. This also applies to non-traditional debating styles. If you don’t want to flow, that’s ok, but it is not an excuse to lack any discernible organization. Even if you are doing the embedded clash thing, your arguments shouldn't seem like a pre-scripted set of responses with little to no attempt to engage the specific arguments made by the other team or put them in some sort of order that makes it easier for me to flow and determine if indeed arguments were made, extended dropped, etc.

Please be nice to each other. While debate is a competitive activity, it is not an excuse to be a jerkface. If you are "stealing prep" I am likely to be very cross with you and dock your speaker points. If you are taking unreasonably long amounts of time to jump/email your docs or acquire someone else's docs, I am also not going to be super happy with you. I realize this can sound cranky, but I have been subjected to too many rounds where this has been happening recently.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Thoughts on Pf and LD:

Since I occasionally judge these, I thought I should add a section. I have either coached or competed in both events. I still have a strong preference for flow-centric debate in both activities.

-You may speak as quickly or slowly as you would like. Don't make yourself debate faster than you are able to do well just because I can keep up

-You can run whatever arguments you are able to justify (see policy debate section if you have more specific questions)

-Too many debates in these events spend far too much time debating framing questions that are essentially irrelevant to judge decisions. Those frames mean little if you cant win a link. If you and your opponent are trying to access the same impact, this is a sign that you should be debating link strength not impact strength. Your speech time is short. Don't waste it.

-Make useful argument comparisons. It is not helpful if you have a study and your opponent has a study that says the opposite and that is the end of the argument. It is not helpful if everyone's authors are "hacks." With complicated topics, try to understand how your authors arrived at their conclusions and use that to your advantage.

-Stop stealing prep. Seriously. Stop. It is not cute. Asking to see a source is not an opportunity for your partners to keep prepping. If a speech timer or a prep timer isn't going, you should not be writing on your flows or doing anything else that looks like prepping. I see this in a disturbing number of PF rounds. Stop

-Give a useful road map or none at all. Do not add a bunch of commentary. A road map should tell a judge what order to put pieces of flow paper into and nothing more. Save your arguments for your speech time.

-Paraphrasing is bad. Read quotations. Send out ev in carded form ahead of time. If you are a varsity, national circuit level competitor, you should have figure out efficient ways to manage allowing the other team to review your evidence.

Harris, Scott (University of Kansas)

judgeharris59@gmail.com

Please add me to the email chain.

I am a critic of arguments and an educator not a policy maker. I view my role as deciding who did the better job of debating and won the arguments based on what was said in the debate. I have voted for and against just about every kind of argument imaginable. I will read evidence (including non highlighted portions).

I expect debaters to be comprehensible and I have no qualms about telling you if I can’t
understand you. I try my best to resolve a debate based on what the debaters have said in
their speeches. I try not to impose my own perspective on a debate although there is no such thing as a tabula rosa judge and some level of judge intervention is often inevitable to resolve arguments in a debate. Any argument, assumption, or theory is potentially in play. The purpose of my ballot is to say who I think won the debate not to express my personal opinion on an issue. You make arguments and I decide to the best of my ability who won the arguments based on what you said in the debate. I prefer to follow along with your speech docs to double check clarity, to make sure you are reading all of your ev, and to enhance my ability to understand your arguments.

My speaker points tend to reward smart creative arguments and strategies, smart choices in the debate, high quality evidence, the use of humor, the use of pathos, and making the debate an enjoyable experience. My points rarely go below 28 but you need to really impress me to get me into the 29-30 range. I am rarely impressed.

Absent arguments in the debate that convince me otherwise I have some default assumptions you should be aware of:

The aff should be topical and topicality is a voting issue. What it means to be topical is open for debate and for anyone who wants to build their strategy on framework you should know that I often vote aff in framework debates.

The affirmative must win a comparative advantage or an offensive reason to vote affirmative.

Presumption is negative absent a warranted reason for it to shift.

The affirmative does not need a net benefit to a permutation. The negative must win that a counterplan or critique alternative alone is better than the plan or a combination of the plan and counterplan/alternative.

Permutations are a test of competition and not an advocacy.

Teams are culpable for the ethical implications of their advocacy. This means that framework arguments on K's that say "only consequences matter" have an uphill climb with me. Means and ends are both relevant in my default assessment on critical arguments.

James H. Herndon - FORMER Director of Debate - Barkley Forum @ Emory University

[prefer to be called Herndon - pronouns are he/him/his. Email is jamesherndon3]

2020 update:

I left the game because I wanted to spend more time with my family. Wow, did I get that #ThanksCovid My relationship with debate was not conducive to being the father, husband, and member of my community I wanted to be. But, virtual judging is easy enough. So, why not.

What else is different - I don’t do debate research anymore, I do a lot of economic/financial research now, I do a lot of tech/zoom/Webex presentations.

In my experience I find it easier to listen/follow along when I can see people’s faces (that’s not possible for everyone, so it’s not a judgement thing) but if it can be when speaking it may aid my comprehension.

————————

everything from Jan 2019
If I am judging you and you are freaking out about it, believe there is no way I would ever vote for you, or are just generally making assumptions about my world view, then I ask you to keep in mind that the following list are things I think I think. I have been wrong more often than I have been right. I will do my best to evaluate the debate neutrally. I view myself as an adjudicator first, and do my best to neutrally evaluate the arguments as defended in front of me. I will vote for anything

Though, like all educators I have biases, those follow.

These statements are things I believe to be true about my judging. They aren't rules. But, it is better to disclose:

1. Debate is a game. I view all theory arguments through this lens.
2. If I don’t understand it at the end of the round then I am not going to vote on it.
3. The Aff should have to defend a plan or advocacy statement that they can defend is topical.
4. Topic related critical literature should be debated.
5. I will deduct speaker points for rudeness.
6. I will reward good cross-x with speaker points.
7.. I tend to evaluate the strength of the link in tandem with uniqueness – neither exists in a vacuum.
8. Counterplans always switch presumption to the aff.
9. I will NOT kick counterplans for the negative. The 2nr is allowed to present me with a reason to vote for them, that is where the debating ended. If the neg says to kick the cp and the aff doesn’t answer it I will kick it. Absent that, I am not kicking arguments for one team. This applies to all speeches.
10. Dropped doesn’t mean you win. Dropped means that the other team has conceded that the premise of that argument is true. Your job is to explain the significance of that premise for the rest of the debate. This applys to everything.
11. literature shapes the topic. and what you get to do with it.
14. Telling me how to interpret your evidence versus their evidence is what speaker points are made of.
15. There is value to life.

16. I am not qualified to evaluate people in the round for or about things that happen outside of the round. Intentions are important & I give people the benefit of the doubt too often for my own good.

17. I feel like fiating the states + federal government might be a step too far. I haven't heard a great debate on this, but since this is for my biases, thought I'd include it. That being said, state fiat is probably okay if there are solvency cards for what you are doing.

18. limited condo is good. the neg's job is to disprove the aff or win a competitive policy option. That being said, if the aff can prove that conditionality was used in a way that undermined the value or competitive fairness of the debate, it is a voting issue.

19. topicality is under-utilized against policy teams and over-utilized vs K teams.

20. future fiat illegit.

Good luck.

Currently a coach and PhD student at The University of Kansas.

Add me to the chain plz and thank you DerekHilligoss@gmail.com

for college add rockchalkdebate@gmail.com as well

TL;DR do what you do and do it well. Don't let my preferences sway you away from doing what you want.

The biggest thing for me is that I value good impact framing/calc. If you aren't explaining why your impacts matter more then your opponents you are leaving it up for me or the other team to decide.

Framework: Go for whatever version of framework you like but I tend to think it should interact with the aff at some level. If you give the 2NC/2NR and make no reference to the aff you will find it harder to win my ballot.

Planless affs: The one note I wanna make outside of FW notes is that you have to be able to answer the "what do you do" question no matter how silly it may seem. If I don't know what the aff does after the 1AC/CX that's gonna put you in a rough spot. I don't think this means you have to do anything but you should have a good justification for why you don't have to.

Theory: condo (probably) to a certain extent is good and counterplans should (probably) have solvency advocates. I have no strong opinions just tell me how to feel.
*new strong opinion* going for condo is not a remedy for being a bad 2A---

Topicality: limits for the sake of limits probably bad?

Counterplans: cool? Do it

Disads: The only thing I wanna note here is highlight your cards better. I don't wanna have to read 30 crappy cards to get the story of the disad and it makes it easier for the aff to win with a few solid cards.

Kritiks: Specific links go a long way. This doesn't mean it has to be exactly about the plan but your application will do better than a generic "law bad" card. Applying your theory to the aff's advantages in a way that takes out solvency will make your lives so much easier.

For the aff FW I think a well developed FW argument about legal/pragmatic engagement will do more for you than fairness/limits impacts.

Random things:

If you are unclear I'll yell clear twice before I stop flowing. I'll make it apparent I'm not flowing to let you know you need to adjust still.

If you clip you will lose.

"reinsert card here"- nope :) read it- this is a communication activity not a robot activity.

David B. Hingstman, University of Iowa, 28 years coaching

HOW I EVALUATE DEBATES: 

I am UNLIKELY to do the following things that other judges sometimes do to decide close rounds, with the exception of particularly egregious situations: (A) completely accept or ignore one side's story on judge role, links, link turns, uniqueness, and risk assessment; (B) discount one side's story on these issues on the grounds that I didn't understand it sufficiently; (C) assume that each side wins "some" link or "some" link turn to their arguments in spite of very strong uniqueness or argument thesis challenges and then weigh the personal importance of a priori considerations or the size of the impacts for empirical arguments or the in a rough fashion; (D) apply strict standards of "newness" to discount arguments in rebuttal speeches other than 2AR; or (E) vote on an argument with an underdeveloped warrant (“one line cheap shot”) because the other team may have undercovered it, especially if an argument elsewhere in the debate takes it into account.

I am LIKELY to resolve close debates by using two steps: (I) devising an overarching story on major issues or on subsidiary parts of major issues that gives some credence to both sides' final positions on that issue but shows why one side's position ultimately becomes more relevant to drawing a particular conclusion on that issue; (II) if necessary, checking the relationship between particular claims and the evidential and argumentative support for those claims when that relationship is contested. You can increase your chance of winning my ballot if you make a special effort to: (a) understand the other side's arguments [ALL OF THEM]; (b) use labels that explain your arguments or give one sentence of explanation between label and card; (c) figure out what both sides agree on for any issue or argument you want to extend and use that agreement to coopt the other side's position; (d) assess issues in the last rebuttal under the worst-case assumption that I will give the other side's position on each issue some consideration and be willing to concede those arguments that are not critical to a favorable assessment for you; and (e) explain why an argument made in 1NR, 1AR, or 2NR is illegitimately new and then answer the argument anyway. If you do not provide me with explanations on subissues that subsume and reconcile the opposing arguments, I will look for that explanation by thinking about the arguments or by looking at the evidence.

TOPICALITY: I treat it like other issues in the debate, by synthesizing the competing stories. I am a little less likely than the average judge who vote negative on topicality to vote on debatability problems alone. I prefer topicality standards that focus on grammatical or jurisdictional arguments. I think affirmatives can do themselves a favor by having a counterinterpretation of the terms at issue or a critique of topicality. To me, this is offense, and offense is good.

COUNTERPLANS AND KRITIKS: I try to avoid voting on predispositions about the legitimacy of counterplan strategies (agents, PICs, international fiat, conditionality, etc.) and critique strategies (performance, epistemological objections, actional alternatives, forum arguments, etc.). Be sure to make the arguments about why I should abandon the default decision-making paradigm below if it is necessary to make your strategies work (that is, what is my revised role as a judge under your worldview). In the last four years, I have voted quite often for well-developed critiques and critical affirmatives.

DECISION-MAKING PARADIGM: The default paradigm is traditional policy-making, unless you ask for and ultimately better defend theoretical justification for some other paradigm in the debate. I am familiar and comfortable with functioning in different paradigms, however, including critical paradigms. Both teams can increase their chances of winning debates considerably by emphasizing “offense” in their responses whenever possible.

NEW ARGUMENTS: I am not as strict as some judges about possibly “new” arguments in the 1AR or 2NR, given that the other side has a chance to respond. 2AR is a different story. I am unlikely to accept a 2AR concession or cross-application not forecasted in the 1AR unless there is NO reasonably conceivable response the negative could have made to undercut the shift. The same standard applies to new arguments in 2AR.

STYLE AND CROSS-EX: I penalize stylistic excesses and rudeness in speaker points, not in the decision. Evidence misuse penalties vary according to the seriousness of the distortion. The significance of cross-x answers should be developed in the speeches, although I listen to and flow cross-ex to check for possible concessions.

Email: khirn10@gmail.com --- of course I want to be on the chain

Program Manager and Debate Coach, University of Michigan

Head Debate Coach, University of Chicago Lab Schools

Previously a coach at Whitney Young High School (2010-20), Caddo Magnet (2020-21), Walter Payton (2018, 2021-23)

Last updated: April, 2024 (new FR thoughts in the Topicality section, random updates throughout)

Philosophy: I attempt to judge rounds with the minimum amount of intervention required to answer the question, "Who has done the better debating?", using whatever rubrics for evaluating that question that debaters set up.

I work in debate full-time. I attend a billion tournaments and judge a ton of debates, lead a seven week lab every summer, talk about debate virtually every day, and research fairly extensively. As a result, I'm familiar with the policy and critical literature bases on both the college nuclear forces topic and the HS fiscal redistribution topic. For fiscal redistribution, I gave the topic lecture for the Michigan debate camp and I wrote both the Topicality and Job Guarantee Aff/Neg files for their starter pack

I’ve coached my teams to deploy a diverse array of argument types and styles. Currently, I coach teams that primarily read policy arguments. But I was also the primary argument coach for Michigan KM from 2014-16. I’ve coached many successful teams in both high school and college that primarily read arguments influenced by "high theory", postmodernist thought, and/or critical race literature. I'm always excited to see debaters deploy new or innovative strategies across the argumentative spectrum.

Impact turns have a special place in my heart. There are few venues in academia or life where you will be as encouraged to challenge conventional wisdom as you are in policy debate, so please take this rare opportunity to persuasively defend the most counter-intuitive positions conceivable. I enjoy judging debaters with a sense of humor, and I hope to reward teams who make their debates fun and exciting (through engaging personalities and argument selection).

My philosophy is very long. I make no apology for it. In fact, I wish most philosophies were longer and more substantive, and I still believe mine to be insufficiently comprehensive. Frequently, judges espouse a series of predictable platitudes, but I have no idea why they believe whatever it is they've said (which can frequently leave me confused, frustrated, and little closer to understanding how debaters could better persuade them). I attempt to counter this practice with detailed disclosure of the various predispositions, biases, and judgment canons that may be outcome-determinative for how I decide your debate. Maybe you don't want to know all of those, but nobody's making you read this paradigm. Having the option to know as many of those as possible for any given judge seems preferable to having only the options of surprise and speculation.

What follows is a series of thoughts that mediate my process for making decisions, both in general and in specific contexts likely to emerge in debates. I've tried to be as honest as possible, and I frequently update my philosophy to reflect perceived trends in my judging. That being said, self-disclosure is inevitably incomplete or misleading; if you're curious about whether or not I'd be good for you, feel free to look at my voting record or email me a specific question (reach me via email, although you may want to try in person because I'm not the greatest with quick responses).

0) Online debate

Online debate is a depressing travesty, although it's plainly much better than the alternative of no debate at all. I miss tournaments intensely and can't wait until this era is over and we can attend tournaments in-person once again. Do your best not to remind us constantly of what we're missing: please keep your camera on throughout the whole debate unless you have a pressing and genuine technical reason not to. I don't have meaningful preferences beyond that. Feel free to record me---IMO all debates should be public and free to record by all parties, especially in college.

1) Tech v. Truth

I attempt to be an extremely "technical" judge, although I am not sure that everyone means what everyone else means when they describe debating or judging as "technical." Here's what I mean by that: outside of card text, I attempt to flow every argument that every speaker expresses in a speech. Even in extremely quick debates, I generally achieve this goal or come close to it. In some cases, like when very fast debaters debate at max speed in a final rebuttal, it may be virtually impossible for me to to organize all of the words said by the rebuttalist into the argumentative structure they were intending. But overall I feel very confident in my flow: I will take Casey Harrigan up on his flowing gauntlet/challenge any day (he might be able to take me if we were both restricted to paper, but on our computers, it's a wrap).

In addition, being "technical" means that I line up arguments on my flow, and expect debaters to, in general, organize their speeches by answering the other team's arguments in the order they were presented. All other things being equal, I will prioritize an argument presented such that it maximizes clear and direct engagement with its counter-argument over an argument that floats in space unmoored to an adversarial argument structure.

I do have one caveat that pertains to what I'll term "standalone" voting issues. I'm not likely to decide an entire debate based on standalone issues explained or extended in five seconds or less. For example, If you have a standard on conditionality that asserts "also, men with curly unkempt hair are underrepresented in debate, vote neg to incentivize our participation," and the 1ar drops it, you're not going to win the debate on that argument (although you will win my sympathies, fellow comb dissident). I'm willing to vote on basically anything that's well-developed, but if your strategy relies on tricking the other team into dropping random nonsense unrelated to the rest of the debate entirely, I'm not really about that. This caveat only pertains to standalone arguments that are dropped once: if you've dropped a standalone voting issue presented as such in two speeches, you've lost all my sympathies to your claim to a ballot.

In most debates, so many arguments are made that obvious cross-applications ensure precious few allegedly "dropped" arguments really are accurately described as such. Dropped arguments most frequently win debates in the form of little subpoints making granular distinctions on important arguments that both final rebuttals exert time and energy trying to win. Further murkiness emerges when one realizes that all thresholds for what constitutes a "warrant" (and subsequently an "argument") are somewhat arbitrary and interventionist. Hence the mantra: Dropped arguments are true, but they're only as true as the dropped argument. "Argument" means claim, warrant, and implication. "Severance is a voting issue" lacks a warrant. "Severance is a voting issue - neg ground" also arguably lacks a warrant, since it hasn't been explained how or why severance destroys negative ground or why neg ground is worth caring about.

That might sound interventionist, but consider: we would clearly assess the statement "Severance is a voting issue -- purple sideways" as a claim lacking a warrant. So why does "severence is a voting issue - neg ground" constitute a warranted claim? Some people would say that the former is valid but not sound while the latter is neither valid nor sound, but both fail a formal test of validity. In my assessment, any distinction is somewhat interventionist. In the interest of minimizing intervention, here is what that means for your debating: If the 1ar drops a blippy theory argument and the 2nr explains it further, the 2nr is likely making new arguments... which then justifies 2ar answers to those arguments. In general, justify why you get to say what you're saying, and you'll probably be in good shape. By the 2nr or 2ar, I would much rather that you acknowledge previously dropped arguments and suggest reasonable workaround solutions than continue to pretend they don't exist or lie about previous answers.

Arguments aren't presumptively offensive or too stupid to require an answer. Genocide good, OSPEC, rocks are people, etc. are all terribly stupid, but if you can't explain why they're wrong, you don't deserve to win. If an argument is really stupid or really bad, don't complain about how wrong they are. After all, if the argument's as bad as you say it is, it should be easy. And if you can't deconstruct a stupid argument, either 1) the argument may not be as stupid as you say it is, or 2) it may be worthwhile for you to develop a more efficient and effective way of responding to that argument.

If both sides seem to assume that an impact is desirable/undesirable, and frame their rebuttals exclusively toward avoiding/causing that impact, I will work under that assumption. If a team read a 1AC saying that they had several ways their plan caused extinction, and the 1NC responded with solvency defense and alternative ways the plan prevented extincton, I would vote neg if I thought the plan was more likely to avoid extinction than cause it.

I'll read and evaluate Team A's rehighlightings of evidence "inserted" into the debate if Team B doesn't object to it, but when debated evenly this practice seems indefensible. An important part of debate is choosing how to use your valuable speech time, which entails selecting which pieces of your opponent's ev most clearly bolster your position(s).

2) General Philosophical Disposition

It is somewhat easy to persuade me that life is good, suffering is bad, and we should care about the consequences of our political strategies and advocacies. I would prefer that arguments to the contrary be grounded in specific articulations of alternative models of decision-making, not generalities, rhetoric, or metaphor. It's hard to convince me that extinction = nbd, and arguments like "the hypothetical consequences of your advocacy matter, and they would likely produce more suffering than our advocacy" are far more persuasive than "take a leap of faith" or "roll the dice" or "burn it down", because I can at least know what I'd be aligning myself with and why.

Important clarification: pragmatism is not synonymous with policymaking. On the contrary, one may argue that there is a more pragmatic way to frame judge decision-making in debates than traditional policymaking paradigms. Perhaps assessing debates about the outcome of hypothetical policies is useless, or worse, dangerous. Regardless of how you debate or what you debate about, you should be willing and able to mount a strong defense of why you're doing those things (which perhaps requires some thought about the overall purpose of this activity).

The brilliance and joy of policy debate is most found in its intellectual freedom. What makes it so unlike other venues in academia is that, in theory, debaters are free to argue for unpopular, overlooked, or scorned positions and ill-considered points of view. Conversely, they will be required to defend EVERY component of your argument, even ones that would be taken for granted in most other settings. Just so there's no confusion here: all arguments are on the table for me. Any line drawn on argumentative content is obviously arbitrary and is likely unpredictable, especially for judges whose philosophies aren't as long as mine! But more importantly, drawing that line does profound disservice to debaters by instructing them not to bother thinking about how to defend a position. If you can't defend the desirability of avoiding your advantage's extinction impact against a wipeout or "death good" position, why are you trying to persuade me to vote for a policy to save the human race? Groupthink and collective prejudices against creative ideas or disruptive thoughts are an ubiquitous feature of human societies, but that makes it all the more important to encourage free speech and free thought in one of the few institutions where overcoming those biases is possible.

3) Topicality and Specification

Overall, I'm a decent judge for the neg, provided that they have solid evidence supporting their interpretation.

Limits are probably desirable in the abstract, but if your interpretation is composed of contrived stupidity, it will be hard to convince me that affs should have predicted it. Conversely, affs that are debating solid topicality evidence without well-researched evidence of their own are gonna have a bad time. Naturally, of these issues are up for debate, but I think it's relatively easy to win that research/literature guides preparation, and the chips frequently fall into place for the team accessing that argument.

Competing interpretations is potentially less subjective and arbitrary than a reasonability standard, although reasonability isn't as meaningless as many believe. Reasonability seems to be modeled after the "reasonable doubt" burden required to prove guilt in a criminal case (as opposed to the "preponderence of evidence" standard used in civil cases, which seems similar to competing interps as a model). Reasonability basically is the same as saying "to win the debate, the neg needs to win an 80% risk of their DA instead of a 50% risk." The percentages are arbitrary, but what makes determining that a disad's risk is higher or lower than the risk of an aff advantage (i.e. the model used to decide the majority of debates) any less arbitrary or subjective? It's all ballpark estimation determined by how persuaded judges were by competing presentations of analysis and evidence. With reasonability-style arguments, aff teams can certainly win that they don't need to meet the best of all possible interpretations of the topic, and instead that they should win if their plan meets an interpretation capable of providing a sufficient baseline of neg ground/research parity/quality debate. Describing what threshold of desirability their interpretation should meet, and then describing why that threshold is a better model for deciding topicality debates, is typically necessary to make this argument persuasive.

Answering "plan text in a vacuum" requires presenting an alternative standard by which to interpret the meaning and scope of the words in the plan. Such seems so self-evident that it seems banal to include it in a paradigm, but I have seen many debates this year in which teams did not grasp this fact. If the neg doesn't establish some method for determining what the plan means, voting against "the plan text in a vacuum defines the words in the plan" is indistinguishable from voting for "the eighty-third unhighlighted word in the fifth 1ac preempt defines the words in the plan." I do think setting some limiting standard is potentially quite defensible, especially in debates where large swaths of the 1ac would be completely irrelevent if the aff's plan were to meet the neg's interp. For example: if an aff with a court advantage and a USFG agent says their plan meets "enact = Congress only", the neg could say "interpret the words USFG in the plan to include the Courts when context dictates it---even if 'USFG' doesn't always mean "Courts," you should assume it does for debates in which one or more contentions/advantages are both impertinent and insoluable absent a plan that advocates judicial action." But you will likely need to be both explicit and reasonable about the standard you use if you are to successfully counter charges of infinite regress/arbitrariness.

For Fiscal Redistribution:

I'm probably more open to subsets than most judges if the weight of predictable evidence supports it. The neg is maybe slightly favored in a perfect debate, but I think there is better aff evidence to be read. I generally think the topic is extremely overlimited. Both the JG and BI are poorly supported by the literature, and there are not a panoply of viable SS affs.

Social Security and programs created by the Social Security Act are not same thing. The best evidence I've seen clearly excludes welfare and health programs, although expanding SS enables affs to morph the program into almost anything topically (good luck with a "SS-key" warrant vs the PIC, though). SSI is debateable, though admittedly not an extreme limits explosion.

Topicality arguments excluding plans with court actors are weaker than each of the above arguments. Still tenable.

Topicality arguments excluding cutting programs to fund plans are reasonable edge cases. I can see the evidence or balance of debating going either way on this question.

Evenly debated, "T-Must Include Taxes" is unwinnable for the negative. Perhaps you will convince me otherwise, but keep in mind I did quite a bit of research on this subject before camps even started,so if you think you have a credible case then you're likely in need of new evidence. I really dislike being dogmatic on something like this. I began the summer trying todevelop a case for why affs must tax, but I ran into a basic logical problem and have not seen evidence that establishes the bare minimum of a topicality interpretation. Consider the definition of "net worth." Let's assume that all the definitions of net worth state it means "(financial assets like savings, real estate, and investments) - (debts and liabilities)." "T-FR must include tax" is the logical equivalent of "well, because net worth means assets AND liabilities, cashing a giant check doesn't increase your net worth because you don't ALSO decrease your debts owed elsewhere." For this to be a topicality argument, you'd need to find a card that says "Individual policy interventions aren't fiscal redistribution if they merely adjust spending without tax policy." Such a card likely doesn't exist, because it's self-evidently nonsense.

Of course, I'll certainly evaluate arguments on this subject as fairly as possible, and if you technically out-execute the opposing team, I'll vote against them remorselessly. But you should know my opinion regardless.

4) Risk Assessment

In front of me, teams would be well-served to explain their impact scenarios less in terms of brinks, and more in terms of probabilistic truth claims. When pressed with robust case defense, "Our aff is the only potential solution to a US-China war that's coming in a few months, which is the only scenario for a nuclear war that causes extinction" is far less winnable than "our aff meaningfully improves the East Asian security environment through building trust between the two great military powers in the region, which statistically decreases the propensity for inevitable miscalculations or standoffs to escalate to armed conflict." It may not be as fun, but that framing can allow you to generate persuasive solvency deficits that aren't grounded in empty rhetoric and cliche, or to persuasively defeat typical alt cause arguments, etc. Given that you decrease the initial "risk" (i.e. probability times magnitude) of your impact with this framing, this approach obviously requires winning substantial defense against whatever DA the neg goes for, but when most DA's have outlandishly silly brink arguments themselves, this shouldn't be too taxing.

There are times where investing lots of time in impact calculus is worthwhile (for example, if winning your impact means that none of the aff's impact claims reach extinction, or that any of the actors in the aff's miscalc/brinkmanship scenarios will be deterred from escalating a crisis to nuclear use). Most of the time, however, teams waste precious minutes of their final rebuttal on mediocre impact calculus. The cult of "turns case" has much to do with this. It's worth remembering that accessing an extinction impact is far more important than whether or not your extinction impact happens three months faster than theirs (particularly when both sides' warrant for their timeframe claim is baseless conjecture and ad hoc assertion), and that, in most cases, you need to win the substance of your DA/advantage to win that it turns the case.

Incidentally, phrasing arguments more moderately and conditionally is helpful for every argument genre: "all predictions fail" is not persuasive; "some specific type of prediction relying on their model of IR forecasting has little to no practical utility" can be. The only person who's VTL is killed when I hear someone say "there is no value to life in the world of the plan" is mine.

At least for me, try-or-die is extremely intuitive based on argument selection (i.e. if the neg spots the aff that "extinction is inevitable if the judge votes neg, even if it's questionable whether or not the aff solves it", rationalizing an aff ballot becomes rather alluring and shockingly persuasive). You should combat this innate intuition by ensuring that you either have impact defense of some sort (anything from DA solves the case to a counterplan/alt solves the case argument to status quo checks resolve the terminal impact to actual impact defense can work) or by investing time in arguing against try-or-die decision-making.

5) Counterplans

Counterplan theory/competition debating is a lost art. Affirmatives let negative teams get away with murder. Investing time in theory is daunting... it requires answering lots of blippy arguments with substance and depth and speaking clearly, and probably more slowly than you're used to. But, if you invest time, effort, and thought in a well-grounded theoretical objection, I'll be a receptive critic.

The best theory interpretations are clear, elegant, and minimally arbitrary. Here are some examples of args that I would not anticipate many contemporary 2N's defeating:

--counterplans should be policies. Perhaps executive orders, perhaps guidence memos, perhaps lower court decisions, perhaps Congressional resolutions. But this would exclude such travesties as "The Executive Branch should always take international law into account when making their decisions. Such is closer to a counterplan that says "The Executive Branch should make good decisions forever" than it is to a useful policy recommendation. It's relatively easy for CPs to be written in a way that meets this design constraint, but that makes it all the easier to dispose of the CPs that don't.

--counterplans should not be able to fiat both the federal government and additional actors outside of the federal government. It's utopian enough to fiat that Courts, the President, and Congress all act in concert in perpetuity on a given subject. It's absurd to fiat additional actors as well.

There are other theoretical objections that I might take more seriously than other judges, although I recognize them as arguments on which reasonable minds may disagree. For example, I am somewhat partial to the argument that solvency advocates for counterplans should have a level of specificity that matches the aff. I feel like that standard would reward aff specificity and incentivize debates that reflect the literature base, while punishing affs that are contrived nonsense by making them debate contrived process nonsense. This certainly seems debateable, and in truth if I had to pick a side, I'd certainly go neg, but it seems like a relatively workable debate relative to alternatives.

Competition debates are a particularly lost art. Generally, I prefer competition debates to theoretical ones, although I think both are basically normative questions (i.e. the whole point of either is to design an ideal, minimally arbitrary model to produce the debates we most desire). I'm not a great judge for counterplans that compete off of certainty or immediacy based on "should"/"resolved" definitions. I'm somewhat easily persuaded that these interpretations lower the bar for how difficult it is to win a negative ballot to an undesirable degree. That being said, affs lose these debates all the time by failing to counter-define words or dropping stupid tricks, so make sure you invest the time you need in these debates to win them.

"CPs should be textually and functionally competitive" seems to me like a logical and defensible standard. Some don't realize that if CPs must be both functionally and textually competitive, permutations may be either. I like the "textual/functional" model of competition BECAUSE it incentives creative counterplan and permutation construction, and because it requires careful text-writing.

That being said, "functional-only" is a very defensible model as well, and I think the arguments to prefer it over functional/textual hinge on the implication of the word being defined. If you say that "should is immediate" or "resolved is certain," you've introduced a model of competition that makes "delay a couple weeks" or "consult anyone re: plan" competitive. If your CP competes in a way that introduces fewer CPs (e.g. "job guarantees are admininstered by the states", or "NFUs mean no-first-use under any circumstance/possibility"), I think the neg's odds of winning are fairly likely.

Offense-defense is intuitive to me, and so teams should always be advised to have offense even if their defense is very strong. If the aff says that the counterplan links to the net benefit but doesn't advance a solvency deficit or disadvantage to the CP, and the neg argues that the counterplan at least links less, I am not very likely to vote affirmative absent strong affirmative framing on this question (often the judge is left to their own devices on this question, or only given instruction in the 2AR, which is admittedly better than never but still often too late). At the end of the day I must reconcile these opposing claims, and if it's closely contested and at least somewhat logical, it's very difficult to win 100% of an argument. Even if I think the aff is generally correct, in a world where I have literally any iota of doubt surrounding the aff position or am even remotely persuaded by the the negative's position, why would I remotely risk triggering the net benefit for the aff instead of just opting for the guaranteed safe choice of the counterplan?

Offense, in this context, can come in multiple flavors: you can argue that the affirmative or perm is less likely to link to the net benefit than the counterplan, for example. You can also argue that the risk of a net benefit below a certain threshold is indistinguishable from statistical noise, and that the judge should reject to affirm a difference between the two options because it would encourage undesirable research practices and general decision-making. Perhaps you can advance an analytic solvency deficit somewhat supported by one logical conjecture, and if you are generally winning the argument, have the risk of the impact to that outweigh the unique risk of aff triggering the DA relative to the counterplan. But absent any offensive argument of any sort, the aff is facing an uphill battle. I have voted on "CP links to politics before" but generally that only happens if there is a severe flaw in negative execution (i.e. the neg drops it), a significant skill discrepancy between teams, or a truly ill-conceived counterplan.

I'm a somewhat easy sell on conditionality good (at least 1 CP / 1 K is defensible), but I've probably voted aff slightly more frequently than not in conditionality debates. That's partly because of selection bias (affs go for it when they're winning it), but mainly because neg teams have gotten very sloppy in their defenses of conditionality, particularly in the 2NR. That being said, I've been growing more and more amenable to "conditionality bad" arguments over time.

However, large advantage counterplans with multiple planks, all of which can be kicked, are fairly difficult to defend. Negative teams can fiat as many policies as it takes to solve whatever problems the aff has sought to tackle. It is unreasonable to the point of stupidity to expect the aff to contrive solvency deficits: the plan would literally have to be the only idea in the history of thought capable of solving a given problem. Every additional proposal introduced in the 1nc (in order to increase the chance of solving) can only be discouraged through the potential cost of a disad being read against it. In the old days, this is why counterplan files were hundreds of pages long and had answers to a wide variety of disads. But if you can kick the plank, what incentive does the aff have to even bother researching if the CP is a good idea? If they read a 2AC add-on, the neg gets as many no-risk 2NC counterplans to add to the fray as well (of course, they can also add unrelated 2nc counterplans for fun and profit). If you think you can defend the merit of that strategy vs. a "1 condo cp / 1 condo k" interp, your creative acumen may be too advanced for interscholastic debate; consider more challenging puzzles in emerging fields, as they urgently need your input.

I don't think I'm "biased" against infinite conditionality; if you think you have the answers and technical acuity to defend infinite conditionality against the above argumentation, I'd happily vote for you.

I don't default to the status quo unless you explicitly flag it at some point during the debate (the cross-x or the 2nc is sufficient if the aff never contests it). I don't know why affs ask this question every cross-x and then never make a theory argument about it. It only hurts you, because it lets the neg get away with something they otherwise wouldn't have.

All that said, I don't have terribly strong convictions about any of these issues, and any theoretical predisposition is easily overcame by outdebating another team on the subject at hand.

6) Politics

Most theoretical objections to (and much sanctimonious indignation toward) the politics disadvantage have never made sense to me. Fiat is a convention about what it should be appropriate to assume for the sake of discussion, but there's no "logical" or "true" interpretation of what fiat descriptively means. It would be ludicrously unrealistic for basically any 1ac plan to pass immediately, with no prior discussion, in the contemporary political world. Any form of argument in which we imagine the consequences of passage is a fictive constraint on process argumentation. As a result, any normative justification for including the political process within the contours of permissible argument is a rational justification for a model of fiat that involves the politics DA (and a DA to a model of fiat that doesn't). Political salience is the reason most good ideas don't become policy, and it seems illogical for the negative to be robbed of this ground. The politics DA, then, represents the most pressing political cost caused by doing the plan in the contemporary political environment, which seems like a very reasonable for affs to have to defend against.

Obviously many politics DAs are contrived nonsense (especially during political periods during which there is no clear, top-level presidential priority). However, the reason that these DAs are bad isn't because they're theoretically illegitimate, and politics theory's blippiness and general underdevelopment further aggravate me (see the tech vs truth section).

Finally, re: intrinsicness, I don't understand why the judge should be the USFG. I typically assume the judge is just me, deciding which policy/proposal is the most desirable. I don't have control over the federal government, and no single entity does or ever will (barring that rights malthus transition). Maybe I'm missing something. If you think I am, feel free to try and be the first to show me the light...

7) Framework/Non-Traditional Affs

Despite some of the arguments I've read and coached, I'm sympathetic to the framework argument and fairness concerns. I don't think that topicality arguments are presumptively violent, and I think it's generally rather reasonable (and often strategic) to question the aff's relationship to the resolution. Although framework is probably always the best option, I would generally also enjoy seeing a well-executed substantive strategy if one's available. This is simply because I have literally judged hundreds of framework debates and it has gotten mildly repetitive, to say the least (just scroll down if you think that I'm being remotely hyperbolic). But please don't sacrifice your likelihood of winning the debate.

My voting record on framework is relatively even. In nearly every debate, I voted for the team I assessed as demonstrating superior technical debating in the final rebuttals.

I typically think winning unique offense, in the rare scenario where a team invests substantial time in poking defensive holes in the other team's standards, is difficult for both sides in a framework debate. I think affs should think more about their answers to "switch side solves your offense" and "sufficient neg engagement key to meaningfully test the aff", while neg's should generally work harder to prepare persuasive and consistent impact explanations. The argument that "debate doesn't shape subjectivity" takes out clash/education offense, for example, is a reasonable and even threatening one.

I'm typically more persuaded by affirmative teams that answer framework by saying that the skills/methods inculcated by the 1ac produce more effective/ethical interactions with institutions than by teams that argue "all institutions are bad."

Fairness is an impact, though like any impact its magnitude and meaning is subject to debate. Like any abstract value, it can be difficult explain beyond a certain point, and it can't be proven or disproven via observation or testing. In other words, it's sometimes hard to answer the question "why is fairness good?" for the same reason it's hard to answer the question "why is justice good?" Nonetheless, it's pretty easy to persuade me that I should care about fairness in a debate context, given that everyone relies on essential fairness expectations in order to participate in the activity, such as expecting that I flow and give their arguments a fair hearing rather than voting against them because I don't like their choice in clothing.

But as soon as neg teams start introducing additional standards to their framework argument that raise education concerns, they have said that the choice of framework has both fairness and education implications, and if it could change our educational experience, could the choice of framework change our social or intellectual experience in debate in other ways as well? Maybe not (I certainly think it's easy to win that an individual round's decision certainly couldn't be expected to) but if you said your FW is key to education it's easy to see how those kinds of questions come into play and now can potentially militate against fairness concerns.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to question the desirability of the activity: we should all ideally be self-reflexive and be able to articulate why it is we participate in the activities on which we choose to dedicate our time. Nearly everybody in the world does utterly indefensible things from time to time, and many people (billions of them, probably) make completely indefensible decisions all the time. The reason why these arguments can be unpersuasive is typically because saying that debate is bad may just link to the team saying "debate bad" because they're, you know... debating, and no credible solvency mechanism for altering the activity has been presented.

So, I am a good judge for the fairness approach. It's not without its risk: a small risk of a large-magnitude impact to the ballot (e.g. solving an instance of racism in this round) could easily outweigh. But strong defense to the ballot can make it difficult for affs to overcome.

Still, it's nice to hear a defense of debate if you choose to go that route as well. I do like FWs that emphasize the benefits of the particular fairness norms established by a topicality interpretation ("models" debates). These can be enjoyable to watch, and some debaters are very good at this approach. In the aggregate, however, this route tends to be more difficult than the 'fairness' strategy.

If you're looking for an external impact, there are two impacts to framework that I have consistently found more persuasive than others, and they're related to why I value the debate activity. First, "switch-side debate good" (forcing people to defend things they don't believe is the only vehicle for truly shattering dogmatic ideological predispositions and fostering a skeptical worldview capable of ensuring that its participants, over time, develop more ethical and effective ideas than they otherwise would). Second, "agonism" (making debaters defend stuff that the other side is prepared to attack rewards debaters for pursuing clash; running from engagement by lecturing the neg and judge on a random topic of your choosing is a cowardly flight from battle; instead, the affirmative team with a strong will to power should actively strive to beat the best, most well-prepared negative teams from the biggest schools on their terms, which in turn provides the ultimate triumph; the life-affirming worldview facilitated by this disposition is ultimately necessary for personal fulfillment, and also provides a more effective strategy with which to confront the inevitable hardships of life).

Many aff "impact turns" to topicality are often rendered incoherent when met with gentle pushback. It's difficult to say "predictability bad" if you have a model of debate that makes debate more predictable from the perspective of the affirmative team. Exclusion and judgment are inevitable structural components of any debate activity that I can conceive of: any DA excludes affs that link to it and don't have an advantage that outweighs it. The act of reading that DA can be understood as judging the debaters who proposed that aff as too dull to think of a better idea. Both teams are bound to say the other is wrong and only one can win. Many aff teams may protest that their impact turns are much more sophisticated than this, and are more specific to some element of the topicality/FW structure that wouldn't apply to other types of debate arguments. Whatever explanation you have for why that above sentence true should be emphasized throughout the debate if you want your impact turns or DA's to T to be persuasive. In other words, set up your explanation of impact turns/disads to T in a way that makes clear why they are specific to something about T and wouldn't apply to basic structural requirements of debate from the outset of the debate.

I'm a fairly good judge for the capitalism kritik against K affs. Among my most prized possessions are signed copies of Jodi Dean books that I received as a gift from my debaters. Capitalism is persuasive for two reasons, both of which can be defeated, and both of which can be applied to other kritiks. First, having solutions (even ones that seem impractical or radical) entails position-taking, with clear political objectives and blueprints, and I often find myself more persuaded by a presentation of macro-political problems when coupled with corresponding presentation of macro-political solutions. Communism, or another alternative to capitalism, frequently ends up being the only solution of that type in the room. Second, analytic salience: The materialist and class interest theories often relatively more explanatory power for oppression than any other individual factor because they entail a robust and logically consistent analysis of the incentives behind various actors committing various actions over time. I'm certainly not unwinnable for the aff in these debates, particularly if they strongly press the alt's feasibility and explain what they are able to solve in the context of the neg's turns case arguments, and I obviously will try my hardest to avoid letting any predisposition overwhelm my assessment of the debating.

8) Kritiks (vs policy affs)

I'm okay for 'old-school' kritik's (security/cap/etc), but I'm also okay for the aff. When I vote for kritiks, most of my RFD's look like one of the following:

1) The neg has won that the implementation of the plan is undesirable relative to the status quo;

2) The neg has explicitly argued (and won) that the framework of the debate should be something other than "weigh the plan vs squo/alt" and won within that framework.

If you don't do either of those things while going for a kritik, I am likely to be persuaded by traditional aff presses (case outweighs, try-or-die, perm double-bind, alt fails etc). Further, despite sympathies for and familiarity with much poststructural thought, I'm nevertheless quite easily persuaded to use utilitarian cost-benefit analysis to make difficult decisions, and I have usually found alternative methods of making decisions lacking and counter-intuitive by comparison.

Kritik alternatives typically make no sense. They often have no way to meaningfully compete with the plan, frequently because of a scale problem. Either they are comparing what one person/a small group should do to what the government should do, or what massive and sweeping international movements should do vs what a government should do. Both comparisons seem like futile exercises for reasons I hope are glaringly obvious.

There are theory arguments that affs could introduce against alternatives that exploit common design flaws in critical arguments. "Vague alts" is not really one of them (ironically because the argument itself is too vague). Some examples: "Alternatives should have texts; otherwise the alternative could shift into an unpredictable series of actions throughout the debate we can't develop reasonable responses against." "Alternatives should have actors; otherwise there is no difference between this and fiating 'everyone should be really nice to each other'." Permutations are easy to justify: the plan would have to be the best idea in the history of thought if all the neg had to do was think of something better.

Most kritik frameworks presented to respond to plan focus are not really even frameworks, but a series of vague assertions that the 2N is hoping that the judge will interpret in a way that's favorable for them (because they certainly don't know exactly what they're arguing for). Many judges continually interpret these confusing framework debates by settling on some middle-ground compromise that neither team actually presented. I prefer to choose between options that debaters actually present.

My ideal critical arguments would negate the aff. For example, against a heg aff, I could be persuaded by security K alts that advocate for a strategy of unilateral miltary withdrawal. Perhaps the permutation severs rhetoric and argumentation in the 1ac that, while not in the plan text, is both central enough to their advocacy and important enough (from a pedagogical perspective) that we should have the opportunity to focus the debate around the geopolitical position taken by the 1ac. The only implication to to a "framework" argument like this would be that, assuming the neg wins a link to something beyond the plan text, the judge should reject, on severence grounds, permutations against alts that actually make radical proposals. In the old days, this was called philosophical competition. How else could we have genuine debates about how to change society or grand strategy? There are good aff defenses of the plan focus model from a fairness and education perspective with which to respond to this, but this very much seems like a debate worth having.

All this might sound pretty harsh for neg's, but affs should be warned that I think I'm more willing than most judges to abandon policymaking paradigms based on technical debating. If the negative successfully presents and defends an alternative model of decisionmaking, I will decide the debate from within it. The ballot is clay; mold it for me and I'll do whatever you win I should.

9) Kritiks (vs K affs)

Anything goes!

Seriously, I don't have strong presuppositions about what "new debate" is supposed to look like. For the most part, I'm happy to see any strategy that's well researched or well thought-out. Try something new! Even if it doesn't work out, it may lead to something that can radically innovate debate.

Most permutation/framework debates are really asking the question: "Is the part of the aff that the neg disagreed with important enough to decide an entire debate about?" (this is true in CP competition debates too, for what it's worth). Much of the substantive debating elsewhere subsequently determines the outcome of these sub-debates far more than debaters seem to assume.

Role of the ballot/judge claims are obviously somewhat self-serving, but in debates in which they're well-explained (or repeatedly dropped), they can be useful guidelines for crafting a reasonable decision (especially when the ballot theorizes a reasonable way for both teams to win if they successfully defend core thesis positions).

Yes, I am one of those people who reads critical theory for fun, although I also read about domestic politics, theoretical and applied IR, and economics for fun. Yes, I am a huge nerd, but who's the nerd that that just read the end of a far-too-long judge philosophy in preparation for a debate tournament? Thought so.

10) Procedural Norms

Evidence ethics, card clipping, and other cheating accusations supercede the debate at hand and ask for judge intervention to protect debaters from egregious violations of shared norms. Those challenges are win/loss, yes/no referendums that end the debate. If you levy an accusation, the round will be determined based on whether or not I find in your favor. If I can't establish a violation of sufficient magnitude was more likely than not, I will immediately vote against the accusing team. If left to my own discretion, I would tend not to find the following acts egregious enough to merit a loss on cheating grounds: mis-typing the date for a card, omitting a sentence that doesn't drastically undermine the card accidentally. The following acts clearly meet the bar for cheating: clipping/cross-reading multiple cards, fabricating evidence. Everything in between is hard to predict out of context. I would err on the side of caution, and not ending the round.

'Ad hominem' attacks, ethical appeals to out-of-round behavior, and the like: I differ from some judges in that, being committed to minimal intervention, I will technically assess these. I find it almost trivially obvious that introducing these creates a perverse incentive to stockpile bad-faith accusations and turns debate into a toxic sludgefest, and would caution that these are likely not a particularly strategic approach in front of me.

11) Addendum: Random Thoughts from Random Topics

In the spirit of Bill Batterman, I thought to myself: How could I make this philosophy even longer and less useable than it already was? So instead of deleting topic-relevent material from previous years that no longer really fit into the above sections, I decided to archive all of that at the bottom of the paradigm if I still agreed with what I said. Bad takes were thrown into the memory hole.

Topicality on NATO emerging tech: Security cooperation almost certainly involves the DOD. Even if new forms of security cooperation could theoretically exclude the DOD, there's not a lot of definitional support and minimal normative justification for that interpretation. Most of the important definition debates resolve substantive issues about what DA and impact turn links are granted and what counterplans are competitive rather than creating useful T definitions. Creative use of 'substantially = in the main' or 'increase = pre-existing' could elevate completely unworkable definitions into ones that are viable at the fringes.

Topicality on Legal Personhood: Conferring rights and/or duties doesn't presumptively confer legal personhood. Don't get me wrong: with evidence and normative definition debating, it very well may, but it doesn't seem like something to be taken for granted. There is a case for "US = federal only" but it's very weak. Overall this is a very weak topic for T args.

Topicality on water: There aren't very many good limiting devices on this topic. Obviously the states CP is an excellent functional limit; "protection requires regulation" is useful as well, at least insofar as it establishes competition for counterplans that avoid regulations (e.g. incentives). Beyond that, the neg is in a rough spot.

I am more open to "US water resources include oceans" than most judges; see the compiled evidence set I released in the Michigan camp file MPAs Aff 2 (should be available via openevidence). After you read that and the sum total of all neg cards released/read thus far, the reasoning for why I believe this should be self-evident. Ironically, I don't think there are very many good oceans affs (this isn't a development topic, it's a protection topic). This further hinders the neg from persuasively going for the this T argument, but if you want to really exploit this belief, you'll find writing a strategic aff is tougher than you may imagine.

Topicality on antitrust: Was adding 'core' to this topic a mistake? I can see either side of this playing out at Northwestern: while affs that haven't thought about the variants of the 'core' or 'antitrust' pics are setting themselves up for failure, I think the aff has such an expansive range of options that they should be fine. There aren't a ton of generic T threats on this topic. There are some iterations of subsets that seem viable, if not truly threatening, and there there is a meaningful debate on whether or not the aff can fiat court action. The latter is an important question that both evidence and normative desirability will play a role in determining. Beyond that, I don't think there's much of a limit on this topic.

ESR debates on the executive powers topic: I think the best theory arguments against ESR are probably just solvency advocate arguments. Seems like a tough sell to tell the neg there’s no executive CP at all. I've heard varied definitions of “object fiat” over the years: fiating an actor that's a direct object/recipient of the plan/resolution; fiating an enduring negative action (i.e. The President should not use designated trade authority, The US should not retaliate to terrorist attacks with nukes etc); fiating an actor whose behavior is affected by a 1ac internal link chain. But none of these definitions seem particularly clear nor any of these objections particularly persuasive.

States CP on the education and health insurance topics: States-and-politics debates are not the most meaningful reflection of the topic literature, especially given that the nature of 50 state fiat distorts the arguments of most state action advocates, and they can be stale (although honestly anything that isn't a K debate will not feel stale to me these days). But I'm sympathetic to the neg on these questions, especially if they have good solvency evidence. There are a slew of policy analysts that have recommended as-uniform-as-possible state action in the wake of federal dysfunction. With a Trump administration and a Republican Congress, is the prospect of uniform state action on an education or healthcare policy really that much more unrealistic than a massive liberal policy? There are literally dozens of uniform policies that have been independently adopted by all or nearly all states. I'm open to counter-arguments, but they should all be as contextualized to the specific evidence and counter-interpretation presented by the negative as they would be in a topicality debate (the same goes for the neg in terms of answering aff theory pushes). It's hard to defend a states CP without meaningful evidentiary support against general aff predictability pushes, but if the evidence is there, it doesn't seem to unreasonable to require affs to debate it. Additionally, there does seem to be a persuasive case for the limiting condition that a "federal-key warrant" places on affirmatives.

Topicality on executive power: This topic is so strangely worded and verbose that it is difficult to win almost any topicality argument against strong affirmative answers, as powerful as the limits case may be. ESR makes being aff hard enough that I’m not sure how necessary the negative needs assistance in limiting down the scope of viable affs, but I suppose we shall see as the year moves forward. I’m certainly open to voting on topicality violations that are supported by quality evidence. “Restrictions in the area of” = all of that area (despite the fact that two of the areas have “all or nearly all” in their wordings, which would seem to imply the other three are NOT “all or nearly all”) does not seem to meet that standard.

Topicality on immigration: This is one of the best topics for neg teams trying to go for topicality in a long time... maybe since alternative energy in 2008-9. “Legal immigration” clearly means LPR – affs will have a tough time winning otherwise against competent negative teams. I can’t get over my feeling that the “Passel and Fix” / “Murphy 91” “humanitarian” violations that exclude refugee, asylums, etc, are somewhat arbitrary, but the evidence is extremely good for the negative (probably slightly better than it is for the affirmative, but it’s close), and the limits case for excluding these affs is extremely persuasive. Affs debating this argument in front of me should make their case that legal immigration includes asylum, refugees, etc by reading similarly high-quality evidence that says as much.

Topicality on arms sales: T - subs is persuasive if your argument is that "substantially" has to mean something, and the most reasonable assessment of what it should mean is the lowest contextual bound that either team can discover and use as a bulwark for guiding their preparation. If the aff can't produce a reasonably well-sourced card that says substantially = X amount of arms sales that their plan can feasibly meet, I think neg teams can win that it's more arbitrary to assume that substantially is in the topic for literally no reason than it is to assume the lowest plausible reading of what substantially could mean (especially given that every definition of substantially as a higher quantity would lead one to agree that substantially is at least as large as that lowest reading). If the aff can, however, produce this card, it will take a 2N's most stalwart defense of any one particular interpretation to push back against the most basic and intuitive accusations of arbitrariness/goalpost-shifting.

T - reduce seems conceptually fraught in almost every iteration. Every Saudi aff conditions its cessation of arms sales on the continued existence of Saudi Arabia. If the Saudi military was so inept that the Houthis suddenly not only won the war against Saleh but actually captured Saudi Arabia and annexed it as part of a new Houthi Empire, the plan would not prevent the US from selling all sorts of exciting PGMs to Saudi Arabia's new Houthi overlords. Other than hard capping the overall quantity of arms sales and saying every aff that doesn't do that isn't topical, (which incidentally is not in any plausible reading a clearly forwarded interpretation of the topic in that poorly-written Pearson chapter), it's not clear to me what the distinction is between affs that condition and affs that don't are for the purposes of T - Reduce

Topicality on CJR: T - enact is persuasive. The ev is close, but in an evenly debated and closely contested round where both sides read all of the evidence I've seen this year, I'd be worried if I were aff. The debateability case is strong for the neg, given how unlimited the topic is, but there's a case to be made that courts affs aren't so bad and that ESR/politics is a strong enough generic to counter both agents.

Other T arguments are, generally speaking, uphill battles. Unless a plan text is extremely poorly written, most "T-Criminal" arguments are likely solvency takeouts, though depending on advantage construction they may be extremely strong and relevant solvency takeouts. Most (well, all) subsets arguments, regardless of which word they define, have no real answer to "we make some new rule apply throughout the entire area, e.g. all police are prohibitied from enforcing XYZ criminal law." Admittedly, there are better and worse variations for all of these violations. For example, Title 18 is a decent way to set up "T - criminal justice excludes civil / decrim" types of interpretations, despite the fact it's surprisingly easy for affs to win they meet it. And of course, aff teams often screw these up answering bad and mediocre T args in ways that make them completely viable. But none of these would be my preferred strategy, unless of course you're deploying new cards or improved arguments at the TOC. If that's the case, nicely done! If you think your evidence is objectively better than the aff cards, and that you can win the plan clearly violates a cogent interpretation, topicality is always a reasonable option in front of me.

Topicality on space cooperation: Topicality is making a big comeback in college policy debates this year. Kiinda overdue. But also kinda surprising because the T evidence isn't that high quality relative to its outsized presence in 2NRs, but hey, we all make choices.

STM T debates have been underwhelming in my assessment. T - No ADR... well at least is a valid argument consisting of a clear interp and a clear violation. It goes downhill from there. It's by no means unwinnable, but not a great bet in an evenly matched ebate. But you can't even say that for most of the other STM interps I've seen so far. Interps that are like "STM are these 9 things" are not only silly, they frequently have no clear way of clearly excluding their hypothesized limits explosion... or the plan. And I get it - STM affs are the worst (and we're only at the tip of the iceberg for zany STM aff prolif). Because STM proposals are confusing, different advocates use the terms in wildly different ways, the proposals are all in the direction of uniqueness and are difficult to distinguish from similar policy structures presently in place, and the area lacks comprehensive neg ground outside of "screw those satellites, let em crash," STM affs producing annoying debates (which is why so many teams read STM). But find better and clearer T interps if you want to turn those complaints about topical affs into topicality arguments that exclude those affs. And I encourage you to do so quickly, as I will be the first to shamelessly steal them for my teams.

Ironically, the area of the topic that produces what seem to me the best debates (in terms of varied, high-quality, and evenly-matched argumentation) probably has the single highest-quality T angle for the neg to deploy against it. And that T angle just so happens to exclude nearly every arms control aff actually being ran. In my assessment, both the interp that "arms control = quantitative limit" and the interp that "arms control = militaries just like chilling with each other, hanging out, doing some casual TCBMs" are plausible readings of the resolution. The best aff predictability argument is clearly that arms control definitions established before the space age have some obvious difficulties remaining relevant in space. But it seems plausible that that's a reason the resolution should have been written differently, not that it should be read in an alternate way. That being said, the limits case seems weaker than usual for the neg (though not terrible) and in terms of defending an interp likely to result in high-quality debates, the aff has a better set of ground arguments at their disposal than usual.

Trump-era politics DAs: Most political capital DAs are self-evidently nonsense in the Trump era. We no longer have a president that expends or exerts political capital as described by any of the canonical sources that theorized that term. Affs should be better at laundry listing thumpers and examples that empirically prove Trump's ability to shamelessly lie about whatever the aff does or why he supports the aff and have a conservative media environment that tirelessly promotes that lie as the new truth, but it's not hard to argue this point well. Sometimes, when there's an agenda (even if that agenda is just impeachment), focus links can be persuasive. I actually like the internal agency politics DA's more than others do, because they do seem to better analyze the present political situation. Our political agenda at the national level does seem driven at least as much by personality-driven palace intrigue as anything else; if we're going to assess the political consequences of our proposed policies, that seems as good a proxy for what's likely to happen as anything else.

About Me:

I have debated for three years at Georgia State and did a mixture of debate in high school. Now I’m a graduate coach at Wake Forest

I want to be on the email chain; use gsupanther84@gmail.com

General:

Slow down when reading your tag and author, or I won't be able to catch it.

If GSU debate has taught me anything, it's to be extremely open minded to a variety of arguments. If you want to run death good, afropessimism, deterrence das, no period plan flaw, K affs, traditional affs, feminist killjoy etc, go for it. Just be sure to explain why you should win with this argument. ROB will be who debated the best unless I'm given another ROB with reason to perfer it. I'm against judge fill in but will vote down oppressive/offensive language/arguments especially if the other team points it out.

Aff

Do whatever you're best at, stay topical (or be ready to explain why topicality doesn't matter), be organized, and extend your case and why it outweighs throughout. I tend to err aff on framework if they have and defend a plan text, but you have to lock in if you decide to do that, otherwise I'll be persuaded to neg's abuse claims.

Ks

I love a good k with a clear link and impact. Your alts have to be clearly explained. I'll buy links of omission but the neg has to defend why the aff can't simply perm. Negs really have to take time in the block to explain why the aff can't perm and why it's net better to do the alt alone. Affs have to explain why they can perm and why the perm is net better than aff alone or why the alt can't solve the case. Don't drop theory args, or I will have to vote the other way.

DAs

I’m good with das but there has to be work done on how it links to the aff, or I will agree with the aff on no link args. If you have a solid Nonunique arg and extend it and I will vote on that. Solid impact calc will seal the deal for me, but if the aff successfully turns the DA or explains why the case outweighs the DA, I will vote on that as well. Long story short the more clash on the DA the better.

CPs

Love a creative CP, but it needs to solve/have a net benefit (DA or a K) along with stealing aff ground; otherwise I will agree with aff's perm and theory args. Aff needs to clearly explain why CP can't solve case, beat the net benefit, and articulate why the perm is best. Don't drop theory or you lose my ballot.

T

I will vote neg on a T arg if you convince me the violation is clear, the aff's counter interpretation is unreasonable, and the impact is big. I will vote aff if they convince me that their aff is reasonable, counter interpretation is better or equal to the negs, and a benefit to their definition, but aff can chuck topicality and still win if they articulate why being topical doesn't matter or is worse for debate. If the aff locks in and says they're T however, they cannot shift or it's an auto win for the neg.

FW

I lean aff in most cases unless the neg provides me with a clear violation, story, and impact. 2acs have to clearly explain why the aff is fair and/or better. Tech is important when arguing FW but explanation is key when you arguing framework. Truth always better than tech.

CX

cross ex is binding, answer the questions honestly, don't ask why the aff should win during 1ac cross ex or generic questions like that.

Judge Philosophy – Will Mosley-Jensen

Edited 9-19-12

***Short***

1.            Win an impact. (If you can’t do that, join the band)

2.            Compare that to the impact you think they win.

3.            Compare evidence in steps 1 & 2.

4.            If you are fast repeat steps 1-3. If not focus your efforts on steps 1-2 with a sprinkling of step 3.

5.            Have Fun! Clarity, Humor, and Civility all help your speaker points.

6.            Specificity > Generality

***Long***

General Comments

When making a decision there are three factors that precede other considerations first, the status of direct counter-arguments, has an argument been dropped; second, the quality of evidence supporting an argument, is the evidence superior, average or inconclusive; and third, the correspondence of an argument to reality (or the relative “truth” of an argument).

It is important to note that none of these factors is fixed prior to any given debate, but rather that the debate itself determines them. I should also hope that it is clear that my ordering of these factors represents merely my fallback position if there is no re-ordering argued for in a debate. Some of the factors, such as evidence quality could, and should, be a part of the ways that debaters compare their arguments and establish the relative priority of their argument. If this is not done in a debate, then I will evaluate the debate utilizing the order that I have established.

Specificity is important in all debates. If you say that your disadvantage “turns the case” because Romney will destroy hegemony, then it is probably important to compare this warrant to the affirmative warrant for why they solve for US credibility abroad. The best debates are a comparison of warrants; the worst debates a battle of claims, with most debates falling somewhere in the middle.

Specifics

Topicality debates-

Against Non-traditional (not topical and proud of it) teams

I find that I have a very strong bias that affirmatives should be topical. Most of the reasons that teams advance for why they do not need to fulfill this most central of affirmative burdens pre-suppose several problematic propositions. First, that there is some value that is external to the debate community that can be gained from not affirming the topic. Second, that participation in debate trades-off with other types of activism, rather than occupying a supplementary role. Third, that the value of debate is not intrinsically tied to the identification of a common topic of discussion. Finally and most heinously, that debate is sustainable without the minimum of fairness that is provided by having a shared topic. These assumptions seem to me to be easily answered by a team that is properly prepared.

Against traditional (ostensibly topical) teams

A well-executed topicality argument is one of the most enjoyable debates to judge or watch in my opinion. If it is thoroughly researched and considered by the negative, topicality can represent a strategic tool in a wide variety of debates.

That said, I think that the negative needs to clearly articulate the method of evaluating topicality, and avoid statements in other parts of the debate that question the assumption of the competing interpretations framework. It is not unusual to hear a negative argue that “hard debate is good debate” on conditionality and then extend a topicality argument that is based on some trivial loss of ground.  Affirmative teams should capitalize on such inconsistencies when arguing that their interpretation does not make debate impossible but improves it by creating strategic bottlenecks for the negative.

 Framework debates-

I find that these debates usually come down to what the role of the critic should be. Namely, should the role of the critic be that of an impartial observer that evaluates the relative advantages and disadvantages of government action versus the status quo or a competitive policy option or should the role of the critic be something else? I can be persuaded that this role includes things not traditionally associated with the assumption that I am an impartial observer, but it helps if you provide some specific articulation of the benefits of deviating from the accepted norm. I enjoy policy debates and am sympathetic to a well-argued defense of the educational and fairness benefits of this approach. I will say that most of the time if the affirmative defends a topical plan that is usually enough to facilitate a productive debate, and in that case it is generally wise to question the solvency of the affirmative. In other words, if the affirmative team has read a topical plan text and the crux of your negative framework argument is “they are not policy enough,” I am likely to vote affirmative.

Criticisms

I am pretty firmly rooted in a Western metaphysics of presence and the value of enlightenment rationality. I am also of the mind that adjudicating debates requires assumptions of rationality and so if you want me to adopt a different framework of evaluation it will require some pretty solid reasons on your part. That is not to say I do not enjoy critical debates, there are some fine criticisms that are firmly grounded in modernity. If you are going for a criticism in front of me, it is likely that I have at least a passing familiarity with the foundational literature of your argument (I got my B.A. in philosophy and my M.A in rhetoric) but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go out of your way to explain the specific application to the affirmative. Similarly if you are reading a critical affirmative you should be careful to explain the reasons that your affirmative renders parts, or all, of the negative’s strategy irrelevant. For example if you are arguing that epistemological considerations precede policy considerations you should explain the nature of that relationship.

 Counterplans

In most circumstances when negatives read counterplans that are questionably competitive/legitimate (process, consult, conditioning) I find that aff teams are unwilling to engage in a protracted procedural debate and so become competitive/legitimate by default. Usually going for a permutation is a time intensive process, but can be rewarding if you spend the time to work through the competition theory that purportedly supports the negative’s counterplan. Advancing theory on a counterplan should always include controlling not only the specifics of the theory debate, but also the meta-questions. For example, a robust defense of competing interpretations is generally necessary for the affirmative to win that multiple conditional counterplans are a voting issue. Most affirmative teams tend to simply spot the negative that it is not a question of competing interpretations but rather a question of whether the counterplan makes debate impossible for the affirmative (which almost no counterplans, save fiating the object of the resolution, do).

Speaker Points

Although debate is a competitive activity that doesn’t mean that people can’t be civil with each other. Your comportment during a round can easily affect your speaker points as much as the quality of your arguments. Debate is a fun, rewarding activity and the people that I regard with the most respect are not only great debaters but great people as well.

Power

BY Audre Lorde

The difference between poetry and rhetoric

is being ready to kill

yourself

instead of your children.

I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds

and a dead child dragging his shattered black

face off the edge of my sleep

blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders

is the only liquid for miles

and my stomach

churns at the imagined taste while

my mouth splits into dry lips

without loyalty or reason

thirsting for the wetness of his blood

as it sinks into the whiteness

of the desert where I am lost

without imagery or magic

trying to make power out of hatred and destruction

trying to heal my dying son with kisses

only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.

A policeman who shot down a ten year old in Queens

stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood

and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and

there are tapes to prove it. At his trial

this policeman said in his own defense

“I didn't notice the size nor nothing else

only the color”. And

there are tapes to prove that, too.

Today that 37 year old white man

with 13 years of police forcing

was set free

by eleven white men who said they were satisfied

justice had been done

and one Black Woman who said

“They convinced me” meaning

they had dragged her 4'10'' black Woman's frame

over the hot coals

of four centuries of white male approval

until she let go

the first real power she ever had

and lined her own womb with cement

to make a graveyard for our children.

I have not been able to touch the destruction

within me.

But unless I learn to use

the difference between poetry and rhetoric

my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold

or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire

and one day I will take my teenaged plug

and connect it to the nearest socket

raping an 85 year old white woman

who is somebody's mother

and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed

a greek chorus will be singing in 3/4 time

“Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.”

laurenlucillejohnson@gmail.com

Director of Debate at Weber State University - presently

Assistant Coach at Western Washington University. 2020-2022

Graduate Assistant Coach at the University of Wyoming 2018-2020

I debated for Gonzaga University 2014-2018

Do what you do best and feel most comfortable and confident forwarding in the debate- I judge a myriad of styles and types of arguments in debates- while my paradigm gives you a sense of how I view decision-making calculus- I first and foremost view my role as a judge as an ethical educator.

Kritiks- I enjoy critical debates. Feel free to run them on both sides. I am well versed in feminist/queer, postmodern, and gender theory, although I am also familiar with other critical literature bases. The link debate is the most important part of a critique for me. Really good impact analysis does not matter if there is no link to the 1AC. I also think that performative links are valid arguments and can be used as reasons for why the permutation does not solve. I generally think the aff should get perms although can be persuaded otherwise in an instance where the aff is not about the resolution or in pure methods debates.

Role of the Ballot - I think the role of the ballot is to vote for who wins their arguments and does the better debating. If you have an argument otherwise, I will be more persuaded/default to a functionality/interpretation of how my vote works if both teams get a chance of receiving that vote. I do not find a "Role of the Ballot" claim that is to "vote for us" to be persuasive. I think it's dishonest and transparently one-sided to interpret the role of a ballot through one team's participation.

Aff framework versus the K- Your interpretation should probably say you should get to weigh your impacts vs. the K. I prefer debates about the substance of the arguments over debates that end up being exclusively about aff framework, if your framework argument ends up mooting the substance of both the aff and the K (aff solvency and alt solvency) then it becomes a messy debate that I will not enjoy adjudicating.

Performative/Non-Traditional Debates - I think the aff should be about something pertaining to the topic and recommend something be done that is different than the status quo (does NOT have to be a plan or involve the United States Federal Government). If the aff chooses to not do this, they'll have to win why the topical version of the aff can't solve for the performance/discussion that the aff began and win an impact turn to framework. In terms of impact analysis. You should be able to explain what reasonable neg ground exists versus your aff that is within the realm of topic-related research. That said, I'll still vote for an aff that is not about the topic if they win their impact turns to framework/accessibility questions.

Framework versus Performative/Non-Traditional Affs- I think that the negative either has to win that there is a ‘topical’ version of the aff that can solve for the substance and performance/discussion of the affirmative, or that their interpretation of debate can allow for better access to the solvency mechanism/ address the impacts of the affirmative. I say ‘topical’ because I am generally unpersuaded that the aff must defend the “hypothetical enactment of the plan by the USFG”, I think that the negative has to prove that the affirmative either justify an interpretation of the topic that makes it impossible to be prepared to debate this particular aff, or that the affirmative is not grounded in a methodology that changes something in the status quo or the lives/experiences of the debaters in the round. I think that the best deliberative model of debate is one in which the affirmative presents a strategy that can generate effective deliberation on a topic because it is something that is contestable and allows for a debate to occur regarding the desirability and effectiveness of two competing strategies/methods to address the affirmatives impacts/concerns.

Topicality- If the debate becomes a large T debate, please slow down so I can get the nuances and particularities of the arguments and debate. I flow on paper so keep that in mind. Limits and predictability are not impacts they are internal links. Discussing how limits and predictability impact debate/ research/ neg prep and what that means in terms of education etc. (This also goes for framework)

Theory- Generally, I think reasonable conditionality (example: 1 Kritik and 1 CP) is a good thing but conditionality bad arguments can be used strategically. I generally err neg on theory arguments that are not conditionality, but I am open to persuasion by either side of the debate.

Counterplans- I generally will vote on a counterplan if you win that you solve the aff, which means you don’t particularly need to win a big risk of your offense to win.

Disads- You need a good disad turns case argument or a case take out to be a round winning strategy. Most of the time I will filter my decision for case versus the disad debates through impact calculus.

I feel the need to fix this huge communication issue in the debate community it will start with my judging philosophy. If you are a debater who say any of the following "Obama is president solves for racism" or "we are moving towards less racism cause of Obama or LBS" and the opposing team reading a racism arg/advantage or colorblindness I will instantly vote you down with 25 points for the debater who said it.

Jumping: Novice please don't but if you must which you all will you have 20 seconds after you call for prep to be stop till I consider it stealing prep and instead of restarting prep I will just measure it by the ticker timer in my head (which you do not want). I suggest that you carry a debate jump drive, viewing computer or the cloud system. For Open debaters I get even more angry with the lack of competence you guys have with being responsible when it comes to jumping files and card. I have a soft warmness for debaters who are mostly paper and may involve me smiling like a boy with a crush don't be alarmed it is just me remembering my old days.

Speaking: I believe that clarity comes before all other ideals of what we often fantasize a good speaker to be, a debater has to be clear so that I spend more time analyzing and processing what is said then trying to comprehend what the hell is being said. This helps in the rebuttals when there is more cross applying of arguments instead of me sitting there trying to ponder what argument reference is being made. Speed is something I can adjust to not my general forte yet if you are clear I can primarily make easier adjustments (look I sound like a damn metronome). I tend to give hints towards the wrongs and rights in the round so I won’t be put off if you stare at me every now and then. Debates should be a game of wit and word that upholds morals of dignity and respect do not be rude and or abrasive please respect me, the other team, your partner and of course yourself

The Flow: My hand writing is atrocious just incredibly horrible for others at least I generally flow tags, authors and major warrants in the world of traditional debate. Outside of that with all the other formats poetry, performance, rap, theatricals and so forth I just try to grasp the majority of the speech incorporating the main idea

The K: yeah I so love the K being from a UDL background and having running the K for a majority of my debate career, yet don't let that be the reason you run the K I believe that a great K debate consist of a in-depth link explanation as well as control of the clash. There should be Impact calculus that does more then tell me what the impact is but a justification for how it functionally shapes the round which draws me to have a complete understanding of the Alt versus the plan and there must be some idea of a solvency mechanism so that the k is just simply not a linear disad forcing me to rethink or reform in the status quo (K= reshape the Squo)

The T debate: First I find it extremely hard to remember in my entire debate career where I cast a ballot for topicality alone yet it is possible to get a T ballot you must have a clear abuse story I will not evaluate T if there is not a clear abuse story. Voters are my best friend and will become a prior if well explained and impacted, yet I do believe education and fairness have extreme value just want to know why.

The D/A: Well I actually find myself voting more on the Disad then the K I just think that the disad debate offers more tools for the neg then the K yet it is the debater who optimize these tools that gain my ballot, link debates should contain at least a specific link as well as a an established Brink generic links are not good enough to win a D/A ballot and any good aff team will destroy a a generic link unless there is some support through a link wall. Impact debates must be more than just nuke war kills all you have to place comparative value to the status quo now and after plan passage. Yet a disad is an easier win with the advantages of solvency deficits and the option of competitive counter plans.

The Counter Plan: Competition is key if there is no proof that the end result is not uniquely different from the aff plan it is less likely to capture my ballot. So C/P solvency and competition is where my voter lies on the C/P flow this involves establishing and controlling the clash on the net benefit. PIC's usually rely on proving that the theoretical value of competition is worth my jurisdiction.

Theory: cross apply T only thing with a theory debate that is different is you must be able to show in where the violation actually happens yet I find theory to be easy outs to traditional clash.

Framework: this is where my jurisdiction truly falls and it is the teams’ job to not only introduce the functioning framework but to uphold and defend that their framework is worth singing my ballot towards. I have no set idea of a framework coming into the round your job is to sell me to one and by any means my job is not to look at what framework sounds good but which is presented in a manner that avoids judges intervention (really just the team that prevents me from doing the bulk of the work if any).

In general: I love a good old debate round with tons of clash and where there is an understanding and display of your own intellect I find it hard to judge a round where there is just a display of how well a team can read and make reference to evidence, usually I hope that ends or is done less coming out of the 1AR. I'm a man who finds pleasure in the arts and execution of organic intellect and can better give my decision and opinion based mainly on how one relates back to competitive debate, if debate for you is a card game then it forces me to have to make decision based off my comprehension of the evidence and trust me that is never a good thing, yet a round where the discussion is what guides my ballot I can vote on who upholds the best discursive actions.

I do want to be on the email chains: harvard.debate[at]gmail.com and kviveth [at] gmail.com

Evidence/Debating:

Dropped arguments and spin can be true/good to an extent. I tend to look more holistically at the argument even if it was "dropped".

CX ends after three minutes. You can take more prep time to ask questions, but it won't be "on the record"

"Framework" -

I think some of the most meaningful things I've learned from my decade doing policy debate have come from debating, researching, and preparing arguments that are "not about the topic".

That being said, debate is a competitive activity and the resolution is the only non-arbitrary starting point from which to begin research and preparation. If there were no equal prospect of victory and people were just showing up every weekend to talk about different things, there'd be some engagement, but the incentive to test other people's ideas with a level of rigor and tenacity that we value debate for just wouldn't exist.

The fact that there are a myriad of issues that may or may not be more important than the chosen resolution is certainly an important question we should be asking of ourselves and of the topic selection process, but the topic has already been chosen - that's when limits become important.

In general, I'm much better for aff teams that impact turn topicality / framework than teams that try to engage deeply with counter-interpretations.

Counterplans -

The plan is the focus of the debate and perms don't have to be topical.

If you have evidence that compares your CP to the plan, it's probably legitimate

I have a hard time seeing the neg winning on CPs that compete solely off of certainty and immediacy.

The "always a risk of the CP linking less than the plan" is silly.

You don't need solvency advocates especially for smart and intuitive advantage CPs and 2NC CPs out of addons.

I will kick CPs for the neg if the CP is conditional until told not to by the aff.

Critiques -

Framework is either the most important part of a critique debate or totally irrelevant. It's really helpful to me to elaborate on the what the consequence of either team winning their framework argument is.

In recent years, aff teams have radically underutilized the permutation and alt solvency arguments in favor of impact turns. If that's your strategy I'm all for it! However, given that the worst part of almost every critique is the alternative and lack of actual links this could be a good path for teams to take.

Theory -

Most theory arguments are reasons to reject the argument, not the team.

Conditionality - Neg teams are garbage at defending conditionality and the aff should capitalize.

Literature usually guides theory questions for CP legitimacy - if you have evidence that compares the CP to the plan it's probably legitimate.

Updated pre-woodward 2024

Yes email chain-- willkatzemailchain@gmail.com

I am currently a coach at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart. I debated in high school at Washburn Rural and in college at the University of Kansas.

I have a large amount of topic knowledge for the hs fiscal redistribution topic. I am actively involved in research and have judged at a lot of tournaments.

As a judge, these are the things that I care about (in order of importance):

1. That you treat all participants in the debate with respect and that your speeches are something that I, a high school teacher, could enthusiastically show my administration

2. That you flow the debate and use that flow to make and respond to arguments. I find that debaters are almost universally better at flowing if they try to flow and line arguments up on paper, not their computer.

3. That you are advancing logical, well-evidenced, warranted claims that demonstrate topic knowledge and research. I am not a good judge for you if your arguments are generally 1 sentence assertions, uncarded, or wholly irrelevant to the topic.

4. That you make good, bold strategic choices. I will give absurdly high speaker points to students that take good risks to collapse the debate to a small number of arguments that create favorable win conditions for them.

5. That you make comparisons between your arguments/evidence and your opponents. If your final rebuttals consist of more comparisons than summary and description, I am a great judge for you.

Note that "subject" isn't really on this list outside of it being relevant to the topic. I don't care if you read a soft left aff, go for topic-relevant critiques, read 90 plank advantage counterplans, or go for politics.

Everything below offers clarification on how this set of arguments plays out in practice

_________________________________________________

I love debate. I really, really like seeing students demonstrate that they are having fun, working hard, thinking about debate, researching the topic, and engaging in debates that reflect the topic's literature base. In many ways, debate is better now than it has ever been.

I will not evaluate arguments about an individual's character or behavior that occurred outside of the debate. If I am told about or personally observe behavior that I would consider in need of an intervention, I am going to approach the tournament administration about it rather than use my ballot as a punishment/reward system. If your speech explains how you are discriminated against, oppressed, bullied, or otherwise unsafe in debate, I am going to talk to the tournament administration instead of letting that be a matter of debate. Ad hom attacks against the other team are a sua sponte reverse voting issue. If you launch one against the other team, I will vote against you (whether your opponents tell me to or not). If your debate strategy relies on ad hom attacks against your opponents, I am not the judge for you. If your opponent is so horrendous of a person that you must levy ad hom attacks, please direct your complaints to the tabroom

Debaters should flow and use that flow to make arguments in a line-by-line fashion that responds directly to what the other team said. Debaters should not just read into a speech document for the entire speech.

Have fun! I more often vote for and give higher points to teams that have fun and are nice. If you are mean or look like you are here against your will, voting for you will be a challenge.

I am trying to adjust to modern speaker points. I still find it hard to believe that if you got a 29 in every debate, you would not have been particularly close to a top 25 speaker at Greenhill or St. Marks. That is the reality we live in, but it is a difficult pill to swallow.

Here are my biases.

-I prefer debates about the topic. That means aff with a plan and negative strategies that use arguments germane to the topic to say the plan is bad. That also means that I do not prefer super generic impact turns like spark/wipeout or arguments like "x author is bad so they should lose for introducing that author"

- I prefer specificity over vagueness. That's true with plans, cp's, da links, alternatives, etc. With me as a judge, vagueness is not as strategic as specificity.

-I care about cards. I want you to read good cards and a lot of cards. Good is more important than a lot, but if you end the debate and your card doc is 4 cards long, something has gone wrong.

- Plans have texts and functions. Unless the debating is very lopsided, I will probably not view the plan's text "in a vacuum" because I will also care about the action that the plan does. If that changes in every speech or multiple times a speech, I will be grumpy (see my point about vagueness)

-Bring theory back! Not in an annoying way where you always go for conditionality when you're losing. But in a way that punishes negative teams for relying on strategies that aren't germane to the aff.

-I feel reasonably strongly that "Social Security" refers to Old Age, Survivor, and Disability Insurance and I think that affirmative teams that read an ssi/medicare/tanf/etc aff probably need to treat topicality as a very threatening 2nr choice. I haven't really seen debates over any other t argument yet.

-I think if evenly debated, I would agree with an aff team that said "cp's must have published solvency advocates." While others interpret this standard as necessarily arbitrary (what is a solvency advocate? Why can't the debaters be solvency advocates?), it seems like it would create a massive increase in the quality of debates for a relatively low amount of arbitrariness.

A note on kritiks

I often find myself frustrated in kritik debates, not because of some ideological objection, but because there is not a lot of internal consistency with most kritik debates that I judge.

In a typical kritik extension follows this format: 1. Framework- evaluate aff as object of research. 2. Link- plan doesn't do enough and/or reps k link. 3. Impact- extinction. 4. Alt- maybe movements, maybe just framework.

This does not make sense to me. The links do not prove the aff is a bad object of research, and the impacts do not stem from having a bad object of research. Alternatively (pun intended), the links and impacts are not offense because they are not unique or causal (they don't say "plan causes extinction", they say aff takes part in something that already exists and will cause extinction). And the alt is almost always useless or loses to the perm.

So if you do want to go for a kritik in front of me, it would help to extend a coherent, well thought out position where every component works together. Below are 2 examples:

1. Framework- treat the aff as an object of research. 2. Link- aff's research is flawed and capitalist (bought out by think tanks, buys into a flawed ideology of competition, etc). 3. Impact- capitalism is unethical because it relies on exploitation, and research that relies on capitalist methodologies furthers that exploitation. 4. Alt- insert better form of research

1. Link- increasing pharma patents in the US causes more exploitation of countries in the global south 2. Impact- exploitation of global south is unethical, linearly causes structural violence, and turns case because gutting public health infrastructure means more disease spread. 3. Alt- policy approach to public health that is opposed to patents. 4. framing/framework- k of extinction focus

Both of these examples are beatable by the aff, but at least give me as a judge a coherent "here is why the aff is bad" decision.

I am the Director of Debate at Georgetown University ('21-present), before which I was the Assistant DOD (2017-21). I am also an Assistant Coach for Westminster. Before that, I debated for 4 years at Georgetown. In high school, I debated only regionally, for a tiny high school in West Texas.

Please include me on the email chain: bwk9@georgetown.edu

***Update: November 2022***

My prior paradigm was 5+ years out of date. The following are patterns in my judging that you should be aware of when debating in front of me.

All of the items below, EXCEPT for the "D-Rules (not subject to debate)" section, are simply DEFAULTS in the absence of debaters making an argument that I should evaluate these things differently. I would prefer that the DEBATERS tell me how to evaluate things and why, in which case these priors should rarely , if ever, come into play.

D-Rules (NOT subject to debate)

1. Please include me on the email chain.

2. In high school debates, all of the participants are minors, and I will not hesitate to intervene in a debate if anything legally or ethically dubious is occurring. This includes any bullying, displays of sexism or racism, etc. Relatedly, there are arguments which are appropriate for the college context but that I will not--and, legally, cannot!--countenance in a HS debate (one example: the reading of uncensored explicit evidence a la Preciado).

3. Consider me dead inside with respect to any preferences regarding argumentative substance. However, I have very little tolerance for either arguments or ways of engaging that make any participant feel unsafe, and will intervene if necessary.

4. Allegations of an ethics violation will immediately end the debate. No take-backs. I will then inform the tabroom and follow the tournament's prescribed procedures, or in the lack of such procedures will unilaterally determine whether it rises to the threshold of an ethics VI. If so, the accuser will win; if not, the accuser will lose. If allowed for by the tournament rules, I will make a subjective determination regarding whether the violation (or accusation, if the accuser loses) was engaged in knowingly and/or in competitive bad faith, and if so will assign the lowest allowable speaker points. To help guide this determination: egregious or persistent clipping is a D-Rule. So is evidence falsification. Poor evidence "hygiene," e.g. ending in the middle of a paragraph, is a D-rule, but is unlikely to warrant the additional "poor speaks" sanction if it does not change the meaning of the card, whereas if it cuts out a strawperson it is likely to warrant the "poor speaks" sanction. Minor good-faith mistakes in evidence citation are very unlikely to rise to the threshold of a D-rule if it is left up to my discretion by tab and/or the tournament rules.

Things to Know About Debating In Front of Me

1. Instead of focusing only on extending and answering arguments, it would behoove debaters to begin their final rebuttals by clarifying what the comparative RFD for the Aff/Neg should be, identifying the key questions to be resolved in the debate, and then going through the process of resolving them. You can think of this as providing me a roadmap for how I should approach adjudicating the debate once it ends. Absent this, I will come up with my own roadmap, but it is substantially less likely to work out in your favor and also I will be grumpy about it.

2. I have found that the way that arguments are characterized early in the debate often bears heavily on how I interpret and resolve disputes over them in the final rebuttals. This has accounted for numerous panel splits in debates I've judged the past couple years. If, for example, an argument is articulated in one way in the CXes (all of which I flow), I will tend to treat that articulation as binding; or, if a plan or counterplan is characterized in a given way in the 2NC and the 1AR does not push back on that characterization, I will adopt that understanding of the plan or counterplan and hold the line against 2ARattempts to rearticulate it.

3. Evidence: I value quality of argument and evidence. A smart, well-warranted analytic is far more valuable than a bad card. Research is at the core of what makes policy debate unique and valuable relative to e.g. Public Forum, Parli, etc. However, evidence matters only insofar as it provides reasons to believe you about your arguments (e.g. qualifications, warrants, etc.); it never constitutes an argument itself.

4. I will not read your speech doc, a practice which I've observed account for other panel splits in recent years. I will spot check specific pieces of evidence if they are contested in CX or in speeches. I will read cards I am directed to after the debate, but it is up to you to have leveraged them effectively in your speech--and, how good a card needs to be to get the job done on a given issue is inversely proportional to how well you debate it. If debaters want their evidentiary advantage to matter--as it should--they should do more evidence comparison, including as it relates to source quality, etc. The sole exception to this: if evidence is selectively underlined to an argument not even contemplated by the original, I reserve the right to unilaterally discount it (think here of the difference between underlining a movie script or selectively underlining words in unrelated sentences to concoct an argument never made in the source, vs. cutting a cards as a strawperson - the latter I will very unhappily accept if the other team does not contest it, albeit at the cost of speaker points, whereas the former I will probably not accept, if I notice it, even if the other team does NOT call it out).

5. Conceded arguments are true arguments. However, 1.) A complete "argument" consists of a claim, a warrant, and an impact--assertions are not arguments, and thus are not "true" even if dropped. 2.) Receiving the full weight of an argument does not matter in-and-of itself--you must still unpack why that dropped argument impacts the rest of the debate, and if that explanation was not there initially then the implication component of that can still constitute a new argument to which responses are allowed.

6. CX filibustering: Some amount of it is part of the game, but if this is taken to a silly extreme, then I will not hesitate to pull a Dallas Perkins and tell you to "ANSWER the QUESTION" so as to enable a meaningful debate to occur

Argument Defaults

1. Absent arguments to the contrary, CX and 2AC clarifications of plan mandates constitute binding amendments to the plan text, making them presumptively legitimate sources of counterplan competition. (Merely saying that something is "normal means," however, does not make it a mandate, and thus is presumptively not a legitimate source of CP competition.)

2. My defaults are that conditionality is a.) an all-or-nothing thing and b.) is good. However, I have become increasingly open to contestation of either premise.

3. Plan vagueness is out of control, especially in high school, and I will gladly vote Neg on that, either as a voting issue in-itself or smart circumvention arguments or DA links about the way in which the vague plan would be most likely interpreted and applied.

4. Counterplan vagueness is also out of control. If your CP text boils down to, e.g., "do innovation" rather than outlining a mechanism for how to bolster innovation, and the Affirmative points out that that is meaningless, I will agree with the Aff.

5. Kritiks: By default I assume that the K is not a DA plus a CP and that therefore the debate is a referendum on whatever the Link/Alt is critiquing, e.g. the Aff's reps, epistemology, political paradigm, etc. I can be convinced of plan focus/FW-no Ks, particularly if it is grounded in arguments about the resolutional burden of proof and the Negative's reciprocal burden of rejoinder, though meeting in the middle is often the path of less resistance. I am also willing to adopt very Neg-friendly frameworks, e.g. 'you link you lose,' but with the proper Aff responses I will find them ultimately unpersuasive. Absent Aff FW arguments that render them applicable ('pragmatism good,' for instance, or arguments about reciprocity of burdens), I do not intuitively understand why arguments like 'movements fail,' 'transition wars,' 'alt not feasible / no one is persuaded,' etc. would be relevant considerations--but with them, I do.

Argument Defaults - K Affs

5. K Affs: I prefer that the Affirmative be "topical" slash affirm the resolution. I am pretty good for topical K Affs, insofar as I think that there is substantial room for play regarding what topical AFFIRMATION means/entails, and that the wording of the resolution does not necessarily prescribe that topical "affirmation" take the form of defending the narrow causal desirability of implementing a specific topical policy proposal.

However, if your approach when reading a K Aff is to impact turn topicality, the part I struggle with is how debate can be workable once we have left the resolution behind. To deal with this, please speak DIRECTLY to that question in some manner in the 2AR -- whether by explicitly saying that it's better for debate not to be workable, explaining why it will not become unworkable, clearly defending some alternative limiting principle for what the Affirmative win condition is in place of the resolution, or something else -- AND have that be clearly traceable to arguments you set up in the 2AC and 1AR.

6. Framework v. K Affs: I do find there to be a meaningful difference between "topicality," i.e. the Affirmative must affirm the resolution and did not, and "framework," i.e. the Affirmative did not debate or affirm in the specific manner the Neg would have liked for them to. It would behoove the Neg to leverage those differences in response to Aff offense that presumes the latter or blurs the line.

I find "fairness" unpersuasive as a terminal impact. However, this is primarily a function of Negatives explaining it poorly, because I am extremely compelled by the argument that an axiomatic precondition for debate to operate is that the Affirmative must meet their burden of proof arising from the resolution, and that until they do so there is no logical basis for the Negative having any burden of rejoinder. All of which is to say: definitely feel free to go for fairness, BUT please take care to explain why it logically precedes everything else, AND to explicitly no-link the Aff's various lines of offense, rather than just making assertions about "procedural fairness."

Alternatively: feel free to say whatever "substantive" FW offense you'd like--I do find link turns to K Affs to often be truer than the K Affs themselves--BUT please do not just assert words like "clash" or "second and third level testing" without explication of what exactly you mean, why it is unique to your model of debate/foreclosed by the Aff's, and what the impact is; AND be aware that in so doing, you run the risk of making Aff impact turns LINK which otherwise would not.

I generally do not care about "T version," except insofar as it is explained in terms of what SPECIFIC lines of Affirmative offense are solved by the being able to read the Aff topically. (For example: "we need to go to X section of the library" is probably solved by T version, and arguably solved BETTER insofar as that model preserves a stronger ability and competitive incentive to dig into that issue than does the Aff's model). I DO think that that if a given Aff is COMPATIBLE with topical affirmation, that makes it easy to moot all of their offense while retaining a clear net benefit by saying that they should've have simply read the same Aff TOPICALLY (in essence, the same function that "T version" plays in a T debate vs. a policy Aff). In contrast, K Affs which are INcompatible with topical affirmation is generally better dealt with in front of me by "do it on the Neg" rather than a TVA.

Correspondingly: I tend to think that the best K Affs are centered not on K's of the resolution or topical Affs, but of BEING TOPICAL slash a model of topical debate--in which case the Neg will need to win that their model of debate is better, and a T version will only be useful in very specific, isolated instances for specific reasons.

I am a graduate student of Communication at Pitt, currently coaching Towson, debated at Dartmouth

Paradigm writing is the worst.  It's also a farce. 

I see debate as a performance, and I vote for the better performance.  That performance can include any number of kinds of arguments.  A performance has stakes for an audience both immediate and abstracted elsewhere.  That performance should involve the endorsement (or no) of a certain politic.

I tend to evaluate debates based on comparative advantage, unless told to evaluate competing methodologies, or unless (in the context of performance debate usually) the debaters seem to think we all agreed that they are debating "competing methodologies."

Debate how you can, the best you can. 

Swag is good.  Complexity. Concretization.  Examples. Comparison. 

I don't tend to call for evidence, since it often overdetermines how I then piece together the debate.

I'm probably understanding your kritik, but it means I also probably have a higher threshold for what you must articulate.

For the time being, I will not be using my AA speaker point policy.

Sean Kennedy - Debated at: University of Kansas

Director of Debate at USC

In general I would prefer to judge based upon the perspective presented by the debaters in the debate. Framing issues are very important to me, and I think debaters should make it clear what they believe those issues are through tone, organization, or explicit labeling (ie "this is a framing issue for the debate" or some similar phrase). Embedded clash is fine, but I think that concept carries some limitations - there is only so far that I am willing to stretch my reading of a (negative/affirmative) argument on X page/part of the flow, that does not reference Y (affirmative/negative) argument on another page/part of the flow. Some of my more difficult decisions have revolved around this point, so to avoid any ambiguity debaters should be explicit about how they want arguments to be read within the debate, especially if they intend a particular argument to be direct refutation to a specific opponent argument.

Beyond that I will try to keep as open a mind about arguments as possible - I have enjoyed initiating and responding to a diverse set of arguments during my time as a debater, and I have had both good and bad experiences everywhere across the spectrum, so I think as a judge I am unlikely to decide debates based on my personal feelings about content/style of argument than the quality of execution and in-round performance.

As a caveat to that - I do think that the affirmative has an obligation to respond to the resolution, though I think whether that means/requires a plan, no plan, resolution as a metaphor, etc is up for debate. However, I am generally, although certainly not always, persuaded by arguments that the affirmative should have a plan.

I am also willing to believe that there is zero risk or close enough to zero risk of link/impact arguments to vote on defense, should the debate appear to resolve the issue that strongly.

Whether or not I kick a counterplan/alt for the 2nr (what some people call "judge conditionality" or "judge kick") depends on what happens in the debate. I will always favor an explicit argument made by either team on that score over some presumption on my part. I have similar feelings about presumption when there is a counterplan/alt. The reason for this is that although there may be logical reasons for kicking advocacies or evaluating presumption in a certain light, I think that debate as a pedagogical activity is best when it forces debaters to make their choices explicit, rather than forcing the judge to read into a choice that was NOT made or requiring that both teams and the judge have an unspoken agreement about what the logical terms for the debate were (this is probably more obvious and necessary in some cases, ie not being able to answer your own arguments, than I think it is in the case of advocacies).

Please be kind to your competitors and treat their arguments with respect - you don't know where they come from or what their arguments mean to them, and I think this community can only work if we value basic decency towards others as much as much as we do argumentative prowess. In that vein, jokes are good, but I'm certainly much less amused by personal attacks and derision than I am by dry humor or cheekiness.

I do want to be on the email chain: rkezios@gmail.com

tl;dr version: Currently a GA at Baylor. I debated mostly policy argument for 4 years in high school at Notre Dame under Christina Phillips, and 5 years in college at UNLV under Jacob Thompson reading only critical arguments. My view of debate is heavily influenced by Tyler Snelling and Darrian Carroll. I have dabbled in most areas of critical literature, but tended to lean towards the postmodern. I also enjoy good framework debates, but if you have me in a policy v policy round you have done your prefs incorrectly. I was a 2N my entire career.

Long version:

I'm here to see good debates. I can't imagine ever giving a 30 to someone who followed my paradigm to the letter, and as such didn't change my view in some way. With that being said, these are the positions I find myself generally inserting myself most as a judge:

Framework in general - I think both sides are always cheating. I think debate is and has always been a game of who cheats best. If you are on either side of a K aff v framework debate do not assume I am your friend. To be clear I do draw the line of rhetorical cheating at the point at which you actively impede your opponent ability to debate that rise to the level of ethics challenges, such as but not limited to clipping.

Framework impacts. I think both fairness and education are things that can be articulated as impacts, but neither are in and of themselves. I tend to assume fairness is an internal link to education because I am more likely to buy education as an inherent impact. On the same note I think if the affirmative impact turns these questions it makes most of the flow irrelevant for me, and would expect a strategy to put substantial depth here.

Permutation debates. I don't know what a permutation is anymore when a K aff is involved, and I haven't for a long time. At this point I consider its existence in the 2ac a placeholder for a real argument that will come forth in the 1ar. Because of this I grant an amazing amount of leeway to the 2nr in answering it. I hate that this creates late breaking debates, so developing standards for competition and explicit definitions of the permutation early in the debate is more likely to earn you higher speaker points and make me more likely to hold the line on the later speeches.

I try to make sure I can draw lines between 2ar and 1ar arguments before submitting each decision.

I've probably both left out and unintentionally lied about things so definitely look at my actual judging record.

New - NDT 24. Welcome to Atlanta!

The only things you really need to know:
1. If you berate, threaten, verbally or physically attack your opponents, I will end the debate and you'll recieve a loss along with the lowest points tabroom will allow me to asign.
2. Don't endorse self-harm.
3. Arguments admissable for adjudication include everything said from when the 1AC timer starts until the 2AR timer ends. Anything else is irrelevant.

Other than that, do what you do best. Technical debating is more likely to result in you winning than anything else.

I am a coach at Emory, Liberal Arts and Science Academy and The Harker School. Other conflicts: Texas, Westwood, St Vincent de Paul, Bakersfield High School

Email Chain: yes, cardstealing@gmail.com

You will receive a speaker point bump if you give your final rebuttal without the use of a laptop. I will give higher points to speeches with errors/pauses/inconsistencies etc. where the speaker debates off their flows than speeches that sound crystal clear and perfect but are delivered without the speaker looking up from their computer screen. If you flow off your laptop I will use my best judgement to assess the extent to which you're delivering arguments in such a way that demonstrates you have flowed the debate.

Ultimately, do what you do best. Giving speeches you're comfortable with is almost certainly a better path to victory than attempting to adapt to any of this stuff below. Debate is extremely hard and requires immense amounts of works. I will try to give you the same level of effort that I know you've put in.

Debate is an activity about persuasion and communication. If I can't understand your argument because what you are saying because you are unclear, haven't explained it, or developed it into a full argument-claim, warrant, impact, it likely won't factor in my decision.

The winner will nearly always be the team able to identify the central question of the debate first and most clearly trace how the development of their argument means they're ahead on that central question.

Virtually nothing you can possibly say or do will offend me [with the new above caveat] if you can't beat a terrible argument you probably deserve to lose.

Framework- Fairness is both an internal link and an impact. Debate is a game but its also so much more. Go for T/answer T the way that makes most sense to you, I'll do my best to evaluate the debate technically.

Counter-plans-

-spamming permutations, particular ones that are intrinsic, without a text and with no explanation isn't a complete argument. [insert perm text fine, insert counter plan text is not fine].

-pretty neg on "if it competes, its legitimate." Aff can win these debates by explaining why theory and competition should be separated and then going for just one in the 2ar. the more muddled you make this, the better it usually is for the neg.

-non-resolutional theory is rarely if ever a reason to reject the team. Generally don't think its a reason to reject the argument either.

-I'm becoming increasingly poor for conditionality bad as a reason to reject the team. This doesn't mean you shouldn't say in the 2ac why its bad but I've yet to see a speech where the 2AR convinced me the debate has been made irredeemably unfair or un-educational due to the status of counter plans. I think its possible I'd be more convinced by the argument that winning condo is bad means that the neg is stuck with all their counter plans and therefore responsible for answering any aff offense to those positions. This can be difficult to execute/annoying to do, but do with that what you will.

Kritiks

-affs usually lose these by forgetting about the case, negs usually lose these when they don't contextualize links to the 1ac. If you're reading a policy aff that clearly links, I'll be pretty confused if you don't go impact turns/case outweighs.

-link specificity is important - I don't think this is necessarily an evidence thing, but an explanation thing - lines from 1AC, examples, specific scenarios are all things that will go a long way

-these are almost always just framework debates these days but debaters often forget to explain the implications winning their interpretation has on the scope of competition. framework is an attempt to assign roles for proof/rejoinder and while many of you implicitly make arguments about this, the more clear you can be about those roles, the better.

-i'm less likely to think "extinction outweighs, 1% risk" is as good as you think it is, most of the time the team reading the K gives up on this because they for some reason think this argument is unbeatable, so it ends up mattering in more rfds than it should

LD -

I have been judging LD for a year now. The policy section all applies here.

Tech over truth but, there's a limit - likely quite bad for tricks - arguments need a claim, warrant and impact to be complete. Dropped arguments are important if you explain how they implicate my decision. Dropped arguments are much less important when you fail to explain the impact/relevance of said argument.

RVIs - no, never, literally don't. 27 ceiling. Scenario: 1ar is 4 minutes of an RVI, nr drops the rvi, I will vote negative within seconds of the timer ending.

Policy/K - both great - see above for details.

Phil - haven't judged much of this yet, this seems interesting and fine, but again, arguments need a claim, warrant and impact to be complete arguments.

Arguments communicated and understood by the judge per minute>>>>words mumbled nearly incomprehensibly per minute.

Unlikely you'll convince me the aff doesn't get to read a plan for topicality reasons. K framework is a separate from this and open to debate, see policy section for details.

PF -

If you read cards they must be sent out via email chain with me attached or through file share prior to the speech. If you reference a piece of evidence that you haven't sent out prior to your speech, fine, but I won't count it as being evidence. You should never take time outside of your prep time to exchange evidence - it should already have been done.

"Paraphrasing" as a substitute for quotation or reading evidence is a bad norm. I won't vote on it as an ethics violation, but I will cap your speaker points at a 27.5.

I realize some of you have started going fast now, if everyone is doing that, fine. However, adapting to the norms of your opponents circuit - i.e. if they're debating slowly and traditionally and you do so as well, will be rewarded with much higher points then if you spread somebody out of the room, which will be awarded with very low points even if you win.

Judge Philosophy

Conflicts: UGA, Emory University, and North Broward

Email: Brianklarmandebate@gmail.com - Yes, put me on the thread. No, I won't open all of the docs during the round and will likely ask for a doc of cards I find relevant at the end.

2024 Updates:

I am not a fully time debate coach. I am working with the UGA & North Broward debate teams part time.

I am someone who believes tech > truth. However, I do not look at cards during debates, so if your arguments are not clear by explanation/flowable tags/very clearly read card text, they are not "tech" that is on my flow. My favorite debates involve strategy (think: creative "cross applications," argument that are "good because the other teams can't read their best answers," etc). I enjoy a good theory debate (conditionality, solvency advocate, perms, politics theory arguments, etc.) and I would prefer that debates have some depth by the end of the negative block.

College - Assume I know things about the topic, but have not cut cards on it in the past year. I have had conversations with debaters/coaches and am very familiar with nuclear strategy. My knowledge of the college topic extends to knowing: assurance, deterrence, IR Ks, military process CPs*, and anything that would have been read on the past college exec power/military presence/alliance topics. I have written many iterations of both ICBMs and NFU affs & negs.

*If you are going for a T argument or process CP, keep in mind that I could not tell you the wording of the resolution off of the top of my head, so any arguments related to grammatical construction of the resolution might require you explaining with another sentence or going a bit slower. I am under the impression that the topic is pretty small and the negative ground is pretty good, so make sure to impact your limits (or "functional limits")/ground arguments

High School - I have had very little interaction with the current topic. I cut a number of cards on UBI in the past, but I know very little about the other parts of the topic. I did not teach at a debate camp. I have judged a handful of rounds and they were almost all on capitalism or race Ks. I am under the impression that the "core" negative arguments are some combination of States, Politics, "Redistribution" PICs, and Ks about the economy; I assume that the "core" affirmative arguments are all related to the economy and inequality.

2021 Post-NDT Updates:

(1) "X Outweighs Y" - If the 2NR/2AR does not start with some version of this (or include this elsewhere), I will almost certainly vote the other way. I don't super care how you say it, but if you are unwilling to say that the impact you will win is more important than the impact the other team will win, things aren't going well.

(2) T & Theory - I seem to like them more than everyone else I judge with. Go for conditionality bad! I don't necessarily think it is true but never seem to hear 2NC or 2NR blocks that have great offense or impact calc. After judging on a slew of panels, I realize that I am more likely to be into technical theory & T arguments then others. I also tend to expect complete arguments in the 1NC/2AC/2NC (theory needs warrants, T needs the necessary defense and offense).

(3) Tech > Truth - I feel like I have said this a number of times, but I realized that I think this more than others (or at least more than people that I judge with). A "bad" disad has high risk until/unless answers are made. This also has made me amenable to voting on some not great disads vs. planless affs just on the basis of 2ACs lacking necessary defense.

(4) T vs. Planless affs - I have found that I tend to vote affirmative when something is conceded or answered completely incorrectly. I tend to vote negative when the negative goes for a limits/fairness impact and responds to every argument on the line by line. I tend to find myself confused about the relevance of all arguments that the content of the resolution is either good or bad. I feel like I find my voting record to be like 50/50, but I haven't done the math.

(5) Decision making process - I tend to read less cards then others who I judge with. Not because I am against reading cards, but because I only read evidence to resolve questions in a debate. If you want me to read cards (which you likely do), make them relevant.

(6) Points - At the NDT, my points were about .1-.2 below everyone else on every panel. I plan on upping my points by .1-.2. That said, I don't give great points.

2020-2021 Updates - Online Judging: Judging online is difficult - a few implications:

(1) Ask if I am in the room / paying attention before you start speaking. Non-negotiable. "Brian, are you ready?" or "Klarman, are you here?" or anything that requires me to respond. I will give you a thumbs up or say yes (or I am not in the room and you shouldn't start).

(2) Clarity matters more - I don't usually follow along in the doc and I am unlikely to read cards from both teams if one team is significantly clearer. On a related note, organization and numbering can help a lot with clarity because it tells me what arguments to expect.

(3) Technology skills matter - Emails should be sent out on time. If you are taking "no prep" for the 2AC, 1NR, etc. I assume that means the doc is sent and we are ready to go. I get that tech issues happen, but unnecessary tech time hurts decision time and makes concentration harder.

(4) Interesting arguments help keep attention and boosts points - I am really trying to flow and get everything down. I flow CX. I line up arguments. I am more aggressive than most about the flow. That being said, staring at the computer for the 3rd or 4th round of the day is very difficult. I will do my best. I find flowing very important because it lets the debaters do the debating instead of me deciding what I like. That said, online it is taking me a little more energy to focus. I've found when I hear arguments that I either haven't judged before, things I haven't blocked out, or even a new explanation, I tend to think the debate is more interesting which helps points & engagement. I really do love debate, so if you are excited, I will be too. On the other side, if this is the 9th time i am hearing the same school read the same block (and this could be Politics, T, Fairness bad, Deterrence or a K) with no emphasis at the same tournament, its hard to focus.

(5) Internet issues - they happen, I get it. They might happen to you, they might happen to me. I've heard best practice is to have some backup of yourself speaking in case this occurs. If the tournament has rules, follow those. Otherwise I will likely just ask tab what to do if this happens. I'm open to other ideas of how to deal with it. Please please please have one (or all) debaters look to make sure the judge hasn't gotten booted from the room.

2020-2021 Updates - Other:

(1) Points - I think my points average around 28.5. I usually don't go under 28 unless something has gone wrong. If you get a 29.3 or 29.4 that is very good. I'm willing to go above that, but mostly when I hear something and am like "wow, that was memorable. I am going to try to tell people who I coach/teach in lab/judge to do things like this in the future."

(2) I often decide debates by (1) determining what I need to decide (2) looking through my flow for if it is resolved and then (3) reading cards if necessary. I'm unlikely to read a card (for the decision) to figure out something that the debaters never made clear. That said, I am happy to talk about some card or look through your evidence to give advice after the debate if you want - I tend to think debate is collaborative and we should all make each other better.

(3) I miss theory debates - this is the thing I have thought the most about, this is how I debated, and I just think its fun. I don't like "pointless" theory, but if you can convince me that something is the debate in the literature and predictable - from process CPs to T arguments to even spec arguments - I'm happy to hear it. That said, if you make your theory argument intentionally blippy ("ASPEC, they didnt, its a voter") I won't care.

I also left my old paradigm up here, but I think it mostly says: I did more "DA/CP/T" stuff than "K" stuff, I am familiar with "K" literature about race/gender/biopower/cultural studies, I like specific strategies, good case debating always impresses me, and I am very particular about the flow.

Old Stuff:

Preferences: I don't really care about what argument you make. I tend to think bad arguments will lose. The debate things I think about the most are counterplans and topicality arguments. That being said, I cut everything and coach everything. I feel like I mostly judge K debates where no one agrees about anything at this point. In those, I generally am familiar with that set of arguments (I am completing my MA in cultural studies, focusing on questions of race & gender) but not how to fit them into a debate. I tend to be very comfortable with how DAs, CPs, T arguments, and case fit into debate, but I tend to do weird research so I might not know what all the technical stuff of the CP is. That also means that the purpose of a K argument (or answer to the purpose) might require more explanation than the purpose of another argument. The things I think you actually need to know about me are below. I tried to lay out what I do in most debates while they are happening and afterwords and be as honest as possible.

Flowing: I will try to flow every argument in the debate. I expect that debaters will be doing the same thing. I could not possibly care less what the speech doc says or if you are "skipping a card" in the doc (that being said, I would like to be on the chain because I like glancing at cards after debates & trying to learn more about the topic/have informed discussions after the debates; also if you are doing some super annoying thing in the doc just to mess with the other team, I will likely be upset at you when I realize that in the post round/give points). When I flow speeches that set up argument structure (1nc on case, 2ac on off case), I will attempt to number the speech and will give higher speaker points to 1ns and 2as who set up that structure themselves (as well as be able to better understand their arguments; the 1nc that makes 4 analytics in a row without numbering is basically unflowable which means when the 2ac drops something I won't care). In subsequent speeches, I will go by the order of those numbers and will attempt to find what you are answering before I flow what you say. This means that if the 2nc starts on 2ac 4, I will mostly likely miss the first few arguments trying to figure out where to flow it (unless they say "2ac 4 - X - here's our answer" which would just be easily flowable but I might be confused about why the 2nc started on 2ac 4). If the 2nc starts on 2ac 1, I will not have an issue flowing. If the negative block (or 1ar) decides that the order is irrelevant, I am likely to be very grumpy; it is hard to vote on technical concessions or other things if the flow gets ruined and it makes it hard to tell a 1ar "you dropped X" when the block does not answer 2ac arguments. In addition to initial numbering, I will be able to better understand later speeches if you give me some idea (probably by number or argument) where the thing you are extending is on my flow. If you would like to only extend an impact turn or thumper or some no internal link argument in the 1ar that is 2ac 9 on my flow but don't tell me that you are starting at 2ac 9, it is going to take me a minute to find it on my flow. If, however, the 1ar goes to a flow and says "2ac 9 - they dropped X - here's what it is and why it matters" I will be able to immediately find it on my flow (it is easier to find numbers than exact arguments on a flow).

CX: I love CX. It is maybe my favorite "speech." I often try to flow it or take some notes at the least. That means you should pick words carefully in CX. I will especially try to write down anything about the advocacy and frameworks for evaluating debates (meaning metrics for thinking about things, which is not always how debate uses the word). CX can be fun even when teams get heated, but when CX is just people yelling at people and it is clear that people are more upset than enjoying things, I tend to lose interest. I like when people answering questions are honest, explain things, etc. I sometimes have the docs open and if we are having a fight about some card, I will look at it. I am not yet entirely comfortable with this, but if I miss the answer to a question, I may re-ask for the answer after the timer (I will do this with things like status or clarification, I don't think I will with other things yet but I might). I am also not comfortable interrupting CX to say things, but if someone is intentionally saying something that isn't true to answer clarification questions or refusing to answer clarification questions I may do so. If I make any definitive judgement about these things, I will try to update my philosophy again.

Look at me: I do not have a good poker face. I'd recommend looking for expression or other gestures. When I cannot flow people, I tend to look very confused. Same when an argument is bad. When I think an argument has already been explained and/or you are saying things that aren't arguments, I tend to sit there with my pen on my paper waiting for you to say something that needs to be flowed.

How I make a decision: At the end of the debate, I try to figure out what arguments are going to decide the debate (there tend to be 1-3), parse those out, and figure out what happens from there. It is generally better if debaters tell me what those things will be either on the line by line or in an overview (this is the only reason I could really imagine having an overview unless it is to explain some super complicated thing). I tend to think the best speeches are the ones that both identify these key points, explain why they win and then what happens if they win those key things. If there is no discussion of key points (either implicit or explicit), it is highly possible that I will try to find a few points that are key and then explain my decision from there (I determined this argument was probably the most important, here's how I evaluated it, here's why it deals with lots of other stuff). Any decision like that just makes me grumpy, especially because it always ends with the judge CX forever about why I decided this way and my answer tends to be "I didn't know how else to decide"

Speaker points: I'm going to be honest, I don't know if I understand this entire speaker point thing. I think my points might be a bit low. I don't plan on just raising them; if you need higher points I get that I might not be the judge for you. At the moment, I don't think that raising points just to raise them is a great idea because it eliminates a lot of range and variation in points that I think signal improvement for debaters and help communicate about the debate. I might revisit this later on if people want. I don't really know what an "average" speech looks like. If I had to try and articulate some made-up scale, it would probably look something like this: if the speech you gave was the best it could have been and/or basically won you the debate, its in the 29.3+ space. If the speech kept things going and helped a bit but not as much as it could, its in the 28.7+ range. If the speech was fine but didn't have much value value, I tend to think its in the 28.2+ range. If the speech wasn't good and didn't help much, it in the 27.5+ area. If the speech is bad, we are in the like 27 or even 26.8+ range. I don't think I've given many points lower than 27 and if I did, something must have gone very wrong. I tend to find most speeches between that 28-29 range. I think I average in the low 28s but I don't really know or care. Only a few speeches have just crushed the debate for me. I tend to have a lot of issue judging debates when I feel that all the speeches were about 28.2s or something and I have to give people different points. I think my default is to make the thing I think the top end or top middle (so if it was 28.2, maybe i'd give 28.3-28 to everyone). That being said, I think I am more willing to use high range in points based on speeches. I am also happy to add points for well used CX, good numbering, clarity of cards and highlighting (like if I can understand all the warrants in the evidence while you are reading), partners who work well together and make each other look good (I think basically every bold move in debate could be characterized by the 2nr/2ar as a big mistake or a big efficiency gain; if you can convince me that the 1ar under-covering the DA was to trick them to go for it, I will likely think the 1ar choice was smart and hence deserves better points, same with other speeches), etc. If people have a better way of doing speaker points, I am happy to talk about it.

Do not: Clip cards, lie, use something out of context, or do anything else unethical. These will result in loss of speaker points or loss of rounds.

Last update: 2/11/2020

TOP-LEVEL:

-TLDR: do what you do best, and if you do it well, I’ll try my best to be fair, receptive, and interested

-Add me to the email chain: gordon.kochman@gmail.com

-I try not to read evidence if I can help it, which means I won’t open your speech docs until the end of the round, and I’ll only do so if needed. I won't follow you in the speech doc, so if you're gonna blaze through your theory block, you might want to reconsider.

-I try to keep a straight face during speeches. If I'm being expressive, then something horrible/funny/important/etc. just happened.

-Please be kind to each other

-My last name is pronounced “coach-man,” but you can refer to me as Gordon. Whatever you do, PLEASE do not call me "judge."

ABOUT ME:

-My debate experience: I debated for four years at New Trier High School (2009-2013) and for two years at Whitman College (2013-2015) while the team existed during my tenure. I’m a former 2N/1A. I’ve been involved in coaching and judging since I graduated high school. I'm a lawyer in my day job.

-Affiliations: New Trier High School, Whitman College, University of Wisconsin, Homestead High School

-Co-founder of the Never Spark Society with Tim Freehan

-I mostly debated policy arguments and soft-left K arguments. I fully understand how these arguments are bad and boring in their own way, so simply because I debated these arguments in the past does not mean that I think they’re the best, most interesting, or correct arguments. I’m open enough to recognize there are multiple ways of debating and engaging with the resolution, both from my time as a debater and later as a judge and coach.

-Disclaimer: What is included in this paradigm is meant to help you decide where to put me on your pref sheets, strike from your strike card, or adjust your strategy before the round. Most of this paradigm includes my predispositions and (unless otherwise noted) NOT my closely-held beliefs that are firm and unshakable.

NON-NEGOTIABLES:

-Please be kind to each other and don’t be racist, sexist, ableist, or any other variation of rude/intentionally horrible.

-To the extent required, this is a communicative activity that encompasses speech. As a result, I will only flow what you say in your speech (open CX is fine). Unless provided a performative reason, I am not a fan of multiple people participating in a speech or playing a video/audio clip.

-Debate is a game, and I’ve had the pleasure to enjoy it as a game. However, I understand that debate is more than that for some people (it’s how they afford their education, it’s their job, it’s their community, etc.). I try to comport myself such that everyone can have the experience in this activity that is enjoyable. Simply because I have enjoyed debate in one way does not mean that other debaters need to conform to my experience.

-There are obvious formalities in a round that exist no matter what. These include: one team must win, speaker points must be awarded, etc.

GENERAL DEBATE PREDISPOSITIONS:

-Tech over truth in the abstract and to a point. Generally, the more “true” your claim is, the less tech you need to win it (and vice-versa). The same goes for how big of a claim you’re making. The bigger the claim, the more work that’s needed. It’s gonna take more than a one-liner to win a claim that a mindset shift occurs post-economic collapse. Arguments are claims with warrants. One-line conclusory statements aren’t gonna cut it if you don’t provide a warrant.

-Things I likely won’t vote for: I would recommend that you use your common sense here. If your argument is overtly and/or intentionally racist/sexist/homophobic/etc., then you might want to reconsider. Not only do I not want to be in those rounds, but I don’t think the team you’re opposing wants those arguments in the round, either. As a co-founder of the Never Spark Society, this might tip you off to some types of arguments I don't enjoy...

PREDISPOSITIONS REGARDING SPECIFIC AREAS OF DEBATE:

-My thoughts regarding "non-topical" affs are probably what most people want to know up-front. I never read these affs when I debated and would spend a large amount of time planning how to debate these affs, but as a judge, I don’t really harbor any animus towards these affs. I don’t think that my thoughts here should be dispositive one way or another in these rounds. If you win your argument and explain why that means you win the round, then you should win. Despite my following thoughts on topicality versus policy affs, I'm SIGNIFICANTLY less persuaded by procedural arguments on framework than by method-based arguments on framework. In other words, I'm less likely to vote on "fairness" than an argument about how we should engage with the state or try to produce change.

-Topicality (versus policy affs) is about competing interpretations of the topic. This also means that potential abuse is a sufficient reason to vote neg on T. I would extend T into the block in a majority of my rounds and think I have a relatively lower threshold for voting on T against policy affs than most judges.

-I tend to lean neg on most theory and default to rejecting the argument unless provided a reason to reject the team. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a winnable argument, and there are certainly theory arguments that are stronger than others (conditionality is significantly more viable than no neg fiat, for instance). Regardless, this shouldn’t deter you from using these arguments on the aff. As a former 2N I do have a proclivity to protect the 2NR, so be absolutely certain that your 2AR will be an extrapolation of 1AR arguments if this is your ultimate strategy.

-Most CPs are fine, with a few exceptions. Consult CPs, for instance, are probably bad. I'm fine with CPs that have internal net-benefits to generate competition. I can be persuaded by perm do the CP args on the aff.

-Is the politics DA a thing? Eh, probably not (RIP). Will I vote for it anyway? Absolutely.

-Regarding Ks, I would read soft-left Ks with a general policy strategy and go for them on occasion. I’m by no means an expert in any specific K literature. I’m not very familiar with a ton of high-theory or postmodern arguments, so your burden to explain them is relevant. The more “out there” K you plan to read, the more explanation you’ll need. I should be familiar with your argument at a basic level regardless of what you read, but it is unlikely that I understand the nuances of your specific argument unless you can explain them to me. If you’re curious if you should read your K this round or how much work you should put into your explanation/overview, I would recommend reading it with more explanation rather than less. If you can adequately explain why you should win as a result of the K, then you should win.

-I’m a huge proponent of impact turns, which unfortunately aren’t as utilized as I’d like. However, I’m not a fan of some impact turns like spark (lol), wipeout, etc.

Young Kwon

Harvard

Email for speech docs:

y.kwon93@gmail.com

harvard.debate@gmail.com

Update (NDT 2023): I streamlined my paradigm because technical execution in-round trumps my ideological leanings and thoughts about debate most of the time. Feel free to ask me if you've got specific questions though!

Pet peeves

Re-inserting highlighting---I prefer that you argue why the evidence concludes your way first and then read the card

Word salad---I will not read the rest of the evidence to figure out the context if I don't understand what the highlighting is supposed to say.

Talking loudly during other team's speech---Maybe it's an unfortunate byproduct of online debate, but it really interferes with my ability to flow.

Abbreviating cross-examination as "cross"---Please stop. It's called "cross-ex."

Failing to start debates on time---Set up the email chain and send the 1AC before the official start time.

Topicality

This topic is hard for the aff - Reasonability + functional limits are very persuasive.

People should debate internal links a bit more - why is your limit more precise, debatable, or predictable?

Counterplans

“CP must be textually and functionally competitive” – I really don’t know what this means.

Default for presumption is that it flips aff when the neg introduces an advocacy.

Status quo is a logical option when the aff concedes the thesis of conditionality.

Kritik/Framework

Analysis carries more weight than just cards.

Resolving big-picture, meta-level arguments matters more than winning line-by-line.

I am less familiar with the literature, so you need to connect the dots. For instance, how does your theory of power implicate framework?

Questions and email chains can be directed to: beau.a.larsen [@] gmail.com. My pronouns are they / them / theirs.

I'm the DOF at Macalester College.

If you would like to talk about Macalester, USC, or Wake Forest feel free to send me an email! Also - feel free to email me about anything else, I do my best to respond to high school and college debaters wanting feedback, advice or guidance.

Debated on the MN circuit, six bids to the TOC. Debated for the University of Southern California from 2014-2018, two first round bids to the NDT, Top Speaker of the 2018 CEDA Tournament, 2018 Baby Jo Debater of the Year.

Happy to listen, flow and adjudicate any and all arguments.

I rely heavily on the flow and vote on arguments that are clear and warranted that I can articulate back to debaters at the end of the round.

I am not a fan of tag team cross ex - if you think its absolutely necessary to intervene go for it, otherwise let your partner explain your arguments/ask questions. Especially on Zoom - i can't flow CX if everyone talking at each other.

I like rebuttals that lay out the debate and synthesize and compare impacts and offense.

I flow cross ex and find that CX moments often situate my ballot.

Doing my best to learn zoom debate and I appreciate every debater willing to debate in this circumstances - however i do miss substantially more arguments over zoom. SLOWING DOWN 10% ESPECIALLY AT THE BEGINNING OF SPEECHES will help you in front of me - I prefer in depth and comparative argumentation over an array of argumentative fragments.

Teja Leburu, Assistant Coach at Northwestern, Email: tejaleburu@gmail.com, College People: debatedocs@googlegroups.com

I don't have a ton of involvement in debate anymore. I will not have a great understanding of community norms around t/competition on the topic, nor experience on many of the substantive issues. Considering this, it will probably help you to overexplain rather than under.

With regards to clash debates, based on the previous rounds I have judged, my record indicates I am not great for non-topical affirmatives and critical arguments. I will attempt to evaluate the debate as fair as possible, but it seems as though I diverge for two reasons with other judges when dealing with non-topical affs, 1) I find that the affirmative offense is not intrinsic to debate about the topic, nor does it outweigh the neg offense 2) I think that aff debating assumes I’ll account for a lot of implicit case interaction with framework, which I have a hard time doing. With regards to the K, I think the two issues lead me to diverge in decisions from other judges, 1) I tend to agree with the affirmative arguments about plan focus and think the negative doesn’t spend enough time responding to the classic “fairness and clash” arguments 2) I think there has to be some response to case either via explicit alt solves arguments or case defense. Absent that, I seem to give a lot of “Aff outweighs the K” decisions.

In more traditional debates, here are the more controversial opinions I have:

1. I will evaluate rehighlighted/inserted cards, within reason. I get that “within reason” can be an ambiguous line; a general rule of thumb is if it’s text that’s included from the other team's speech doc, that is fine. If it’s from a different section of the article or another article, read it.

2. I think some 1NCs make close to zero complete arguments, e.g introductions of “just text” CPs without a card, an explanation of how it solves, or what DAs it avoids. If the 1NC is without these things, the 2NC cannot assert the aff has dropped a complete argument and I will be lenient to allow “new” 1AR arguments. I think a good test is if the neg finds themselves asserting the aff has dropped an argument and then proceeding to read more cards about that exact issue; then I’ll think the aff should be permitted to respond to the new evidence read and that will often allow “new” 1AR arguments.

3. There are few theoretical arguments (aside from condo) that I could entertain as resulting in rejecting the team. I think I’ll have a hard time being convinced otherwise.

4. I think translated cards or cards from author correspondence are fine and should be encouraged. When the debater or a coach are the ones doing the translating, I can be more convinced that it’s not the best idea.

5. Condo is starting to approach the point where I am questioning whether “infinite condo” is, in fact, good for debate. If the neg finds themselves exceeding 5 or 6 options, depending on the situation and debating, I could find myself persuaded to vote on it. It’s still a high bar, but not as impossible as it used to be with me.

6. I seem to not like “process” oriented strategies as much as other judges. The more germane to the topic and the more it competes off of topic specific resolutional phrasing other than merely “immediacy” or “certainty”, the more likely I’ll be to think it’s both legitimate and competitive. In addition, I think merely reading definitions without advancing a reason to prefer those definitions on competition is risky endeavour.

7. It seems I'm more willing than the average judge to entertain CPs that are often competitive (states, con-con, etc) as theoretically illegitimate, and reasons to reject the *argument*

Do you. Do what you do and do it well. I've been apart of the debate community for 6 years and come to the conclusion that all debates are a series of competing dramatic performances that I could be perusauded on anyday, any performance. With that being said, if rap, poetry or storytelling is not your thing.. Dont do it just because your in front of me. I value clash and big picture focus, however #LineByLineMatters. 

"Power is the ability to define phenomena, and make it act in a desired manner. " - Huey P. Newton

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened... or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the f*ck on.”  â€• Tupac Shakur

Modern problems require modern solutions.

P.S. I have never and will never evaluate a judge kick argument as if it were valid. If you make a 2NR decision, you've made it. You can't unmake soup. I'm not going to intervene into the debate to fix your 2NR mistakes.

Boring biographical information: Debated at UMKC & ESU (RIP to each) 2002-2005 & 2008-2010. Assistant director at Emporia State 2012-2014, director of debate at Emporia state 2016-2023, current director at Johnson County Community College.

Clarity note:

It has become extremely apparent to me as my hearing loss has worsened that I benefit immensely from slower debates both in-person and online. However, this is especially true of online debates. I have discovered that I have a very hard time following extremely fast debates online. I'm not looking for conversational speed, but I do need a good 15-20% reduction in rate of delivery. If you can't or don't want to slow down, I would really prefer you don't pref me. I cannot stress enough how important for me it is for you to slow down.

I have tinnitus and hearing loss and both have gotten worse over the past few years. What this means for you is that I have a hard time getting tags and transitions when everything is the same volume and tone, so please try to make those portions of the debate clear. I also have an extremely hard time hearing the speech when people talk over it. If you're worried about this stuff, please just slow down and you'll be fine.

Here's the stuff I'm guessing you want to know about the most:

1. Please add me to the chain: dontputmeontheemailchain@gmail.com

2. I follow along with speech docs to help me make faster decisions. If you think clipping has occurred, bring it up because I'm not watching for that.

3. Yes, I will vote on framework. Yes, I will vote on impact turns to framework. Along these lines, Affs can have plans or not.

4. I love CP/DA debates. I'm generally open to most CPs too, except for conditions CPs. I really hate conditions CPs. I vote on them, but it's usually because no one knows what artificial competition is anymore. But, yes, please CPs. Veto cheato, con-con, national ref, consult, unilat, etc. But beware of...

5. Read more theory. Go for theory more. No one expects it. You win because of theory and sometimes you even win on theory.

6. Impact turns > Link turns

7. I think there's such thing as "no risk of a link."

8. I try really hard to vote on what happens in the debate, and not on what I know or think I know. I am generally very expressive, so you can often tell if I understand a thing or not. Along these lines, though, I often need help in the form of you explaining to me how to read a piece of evidence or what an argument means for other arguments in the debate.

9. All that said, please just do what you're good at and we'll all be fine.

Note about points: Unless I tell you in the post-round that you did something worth getting bad points for, my points aren't actually an attempt to punish you or send a message or anything like that. Historically I've given high points and I want to make sure I keep up with the community because points are arbitrary and silly so I don't want anyone to miss because I'm just out of touch or whatever.

Georgetown '17

Stuyvesant '13

You should debate what you're best at. To me, the game of debate is more important than any particular argument. I think it's most important that debaters try to write the ballot in their final rebuttal and leave as few issues unresolved as possible. 

While I am doing work for Georgetown this year, I'm probably somewhat less familiar with the topic than you are, so please try to be clear and explain specific terms/acronyms. 

Be respectful of your opponent, partner, and judge. 

Counterplans

I'm aff leaning on most competition questions - if you have doubts about whether your counterplan is competitive, make sure you are very confident in answering the perm. Conditionality is probably good and I'm generally OK with states. Theory debates on those questions are winnable, but should not be your first resort. 

Disasdvantages

"Turns case" and "turns disad" arguments are usually under-explained, however, I'll reward thoughtful versions of these arguments even if analytical. 

Topicality 

Try to provide a clear picture of what debates will look like under the various interpretations in the debate. Negative teams will be best served by reading evidence that clearly substantiates their desired limit. Successful affirmative teams will have well thought out arguments about the intrinsic benefits of including their affirmative in the topic. 

Kritiks 

Specificity is a must, if not in evidence, then in application. I won't hesitate to vote on more generic or tricky arguments if they're dropped, but the bar is higher when the affirmative has a cogent answer. Affirmative teams should be ready with a good defense of they say and do in the debate. Negative teams will benefit greatly with even a few well thought out case arguments. 

Performance/Plan-less/Other Labels

As above, do what you are best at and I will give the attention and thought I would any other argument. That being said, if you want to completely dispense with the plan-focused vision of the topic, you need a very compelling reason for doing so. In topicality/framework debates clear links and clash at the impact level is most important. Simply saying the negative is denied disadvantages or the affirmative is denied ground is not sufficient. 

I don't have a public judge philosophy because this website is not secure. Nothing has otherwise changed, I will try to be as fair as possible and I am open to persuasion on most things. Email me if you have questions.

Open to all styles of policy debate. 20+ Years coaching college policy, 20+ years teaching policy at high school camps. Detailed philosophy removed due to lack of site security. email to lundeensb at gmail with any questions

College nuclear weapons topic - I have not been actively coaching/researching this season so keep that in mind in assuming my depth of topic knowledge or "where the community is" on any issue.

Email: flynnmakuch@gmail.com

***you know what is absolutely CX or your prep time? asking the other teams which cards they read or didn't read. you are responsible for flowing and don't get free time to compensate for your inability to do so. a "marked doc" does not mean a new doc where the other team removes all the cards they didnt read

a few virtual/hybrid debate things:

-audio is less intelligible than in person -- make sure you're really clearly enunciating -- i'll yell clear 2-3 times and my facial expressions will be obvious if i can't flow you and then frankly the L is on you pal

(tbh i think most people would benefit from going a bit slower even in person. don't sacrifice judge understanding at the altar of reading that last card)

-MAKE SURE you get a thumbs up or a yes that I'm ready before you start

-prep stops when you've attached the document to the email it shouldn't take you more than 5 seconds from after you've said stop prep to have pressing send on the email

My pronouns are they/them and my last name is pronounced "MACK-oo."

I have judged close to a million rounds

debate history: -HS GBN (2x TOC elims, RRs) - College Texas (2x NDT elims, RRs) -Colleges coached: WSU, UCO, Emory, NU -HSs coached: bronx science, edgemont, GBS, westwood, damien -taught/directed at many camps every summer over the last 12 years -currently assistant coach for NU and used to work full time at the Chicago Debate League + judge/direct lots of tournaments

TOP LEVEL:

Even though I read as arguments and studied critical literature about race, gender, colonialism, and sexuality in college, my HS background was exclusively "policy," and I continue to do research and coach in both areas.

In the post round, if you'd like to seek advice or challenge components of my thinking or note your disagreement or be grumpy or try to get my ballot in the future or try to understand my decision, I would love to discuss my decision with you! If you are into post-rounding as some weird ego thing where you need to demonstrate that you couldn't possibly have lost a debate by berating the judge, then you should not pref me.

I take a while/my time to decide debates, so time-wasting during a debate is truly to your detriment.

After the 2XR, please send me a judge doc with the (marked version) of ONLY the cards you extended.

Things I am really interested in:

--lots of evidence comparison!! this very often shifts my decisions and honestly y'all have become not that good at doing this consistently. a great 2XR will explicitly indict every piece of evidence the other team has read on the position they are extending

--nuanced impact/il comparison

--framing arguments and judge instruction!!!!!!!

--even if arguments -- recognizing where you might be losing

--beginning the 2XR with what you want the RFD to be very explicitly

--in depth explanations -- more warrants! i feel QUITE confident just jettisoning arguments that weren't explained

--strategic concessions + cross applications

--thoughtful and consistent analytics

--attentive line by line

--(hate to have to say this) 2NRs that take advantage of 1AR dropped arguments. It will hurt your speaker points a little if there's a clear path to victory that you ignore entirely

Things I am not interested in:

--cruelty

--inserting long rehighlightings

--long overviews - LINE BY LINE is where those overview arguments fit my friends. i promise you can find a spot if u look

--being rude to your partner

--scholarship/behavior that is morally reprehensible

--"if you vote X you'll have to look me in the eye and explain..., etc." type of inefficient judge strong-arming

--multiple paragraph tags

--mumble spreading on the text of cards

--things that happened outside of the round

--highlighting into sentence fragments

When cx time is over, both teams need to stop talking unless someone wants to take prep.

Make sure you time yourselves, because I WILL forget at some point

Pointing out that something was conceded is not the same as extending that argument. Author names or claims without warrants are not arguments. I think I have a higher standard than most for this. A conceded assertion is still not an argument. Yes ofc, your burden of explanation is substantially reduced, but there's gotta be something.

Framework:

Things I am interested in:

--saying anything new or unique if possible - tbh i judge mostly fw debates and i promise you i have already heard your blocks many times and i am bored

--the solvency mechanism of the aff, whatever solvency means in the context of the affirmative

--clash impacts in the context of skills gained from debate

--whether the aff is contestable

--a good ol' topical version of the aff that addresses impact turns

--impact framing arguments

--line by line refutation

--well developed impact turns to the neg's interpretation/TVA that don't apply to a counter interpretation

--counter interpretations that address some of the neg's clash/limits arguments

--slowing down when reading consecutive paragraphs of text you have typed for 2nr/2ar

Things I am less interested in:

--affs that are descriptive but not prescriptive -- it's easy to say something is bad, even in a very theoretically dense, educational, interesting way. the more difficult question is determining the best method (not picky about what this is) for addressing or approaching the problem described

--fairness as an impact in and of itself -- it's an internal link to an impact (in my default view, though I end up voting for it pretty frequently bc not well contested)

--long, pre-written "overviews" where you address none of the line by line (both sides are very bad about doing this)

(As an aside, if the aff says they'll defend they link to DA(s), I would always strongly prefer the neg take them up on a substantive debate. That's not to say the neg shouldn't go for framework if that's their heart's desire, only that I find a substantive debate more interesting.)

Counterplans:

Whatever re: the whole thing. I truly have no strong feelings/beliefs about conditionality either way, other than it'll be tough to win 1 is bad. But, I decide that like I decide all things: based on the arguments actually presented in the theory debate.

Exception to that -- perms are just no link arguments to the opportunity cost of the CP, so I will never vote that dropped perm theory arguments are a reason to reject the team.

DAs:

See plea for evidence and impact comparison above. When I get a stack of cards at the end of the debate, it's going to be annoying for both of us that I now just have to render judgment on each of them with no guidance.

Please make more smart, warranted analytics about why the DA is nonsense. A lot of DAs don't pass the test of being a complete argument if the full text of the cards are read and you just take a second to actually think about it.

I expect a high degree of technical proficiency in these debates.

Ks:

Can we please being doing more line by line?

Neg needs SPECIFICITY in your explanation of the aff. Highly specific cards to the aff are not necessary, though helpful, to make specific links, alt solves, turns case, root cause arguments etc. Reference/quote the aff's 1ac ev. Use historical examples. Make logical arguments.

What is the impact to the link in the context of turning/implicating the aff? If you can't answer this question I don't think the link is all that useful unless it's a top level thesis claim. The more contextual your explanation of every facet of the k is to the aff, the more likely you will win that part of the debate and the higher your speaker points will be.

Against policy affs, you will likely win a link, so focus your attentions on defeating the impact turns/case outweighs arguments from the jump. Opposite for k affs -- less focus on impact, instead focus on in depth contextual explanations of the link and how it turns the aff, the alt solves aff impact better, DAs to the perm that aren't just links to the aff, etc.

I almost always find the framework debate to be a huge waste of everyone's time. Both sides get to weigh their stuff -- there are NO debate theory arguments I find persuasive responding to that. Please just spend this time clashing over the substance of the K/aff (things like epistemology/discourse first are substantive arguments btw). This is my most biased opinion, in that it's the only place I consider intervening -- I will almost always err towards allowing both teams to access their substance, even if one team isn't doing very well on the fw debate. If I'm the only judge, feel free to spend VERY little time here.

Finally, almost every argument in the overview should/could be on the line by line.

When aff vs. the K, know thyself. Before the tournament you should know what you want the 2AR to be against Ks. Hint: it's probably not the perm if you're not reading a k aff

T:

Debates about reasonability are usually so shallow as to be meaningless.

Let me save you time:

You: "What did you think about [x argument/author name]"???!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Me: "I didn't think about it that much because you didn't tell me to/you didn't speak about it enough or in a way that made it relevant to my decision making process."

However:

I do try to be thorough. Debaters have worked hard to get here, so it's my obligation to work hard to assess the debate.

**************

This is the best cx I've ever seen and a very important video to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2rgzsO-AMM

**standard operating procedure: 1) yes, if you are using an e-mail chain for speech docs, I would like to be on it: mikaela.malsin@gmail.com. The degree to which I look at them varies wildly depending on the round; I will often check a couple of cards for my own comprehension (because y'all need to slow down) during prep or sometimes during a heated cross-ex, but equally often I don't look at them at all. 2) After the debate, please compile all evidence that *you believe* to be relevant to the decision and e-mail them to me. I will sort through to decide which ones I need to read. A card is relevant if it was read and extended on an issue that was debated in the final rebuttals.

updated pre-Shirley, 2013 

Background: I debated for four years at Emory, completed my M.A. in Communication and coached at Wake Forest, and am now in my 2nd year of the Ph.D. program at Georgia.

global thoughts: I take judging very seriously and try very hard to evaluate only the arguments in a given debate, in isolation from my own beliefs. I'm not sure that I'm always successful. I'm not sure that the reverse is true either.  In the limited number of "clash" debates that I've judged, my decisions have been based on the arguments and not on predispositions based on my training, how I debated, or how my teams debate. 

speaker points: I will use the following scale, which (while obviously arbitrary to some degree)  I think is pretty consistent with how I've assigned points in the past and what I believe to represent the role of speaker points in debate. I have never assigned points based on whether I think a team "should clear" or "deserves a speaker award" because I don't judge the rest of the field in order to make that determination, I judge this particular debate. EDIT: I think the scale published for the Shirley is very close to what I was thinking here.

Below 27.5: The speaker has demonstrated a lack of  basic communication. 

27.5-27.9: The speaker demonstrates basic debate competency and argumentation skills. Some areas need substantial improvement.

28.0-28.4: The speaker demonstrates basic argumentation skills and a good grasp on the issues of importance in the debate. Usually shows 1-2 moments of strong strategic insight or macro-level debate vision, but not consistently. 

28.5-28.9: Very solid argumentative skills, grasps the important issues in the debate, demonstrates consistent strategic insight.

29-29.5: Remarkable argumentative skills, understands and synthesizes the key issues in the debate, outstanding use of cross-ex and/or humor.

29.6-29.9: The speaker stands out as exceptionally skilled in all of the above areas.

30: Perfection.

Critical arguments: My familiarity is greater than it used to be but by no means exhaustive.  I think  that the "checklist" probably matters on both sides.

Topicality: I believe in "competing interpretations" with the caveat that I think if the aff can win sufficient defense and a fair vision of the topic (whether or not it is couched in an explicit C/I of every word), they can still win. In other words: the neg should win not only a big link, but also a big impact. 

CP’s: Yes. The status quo is always a logical option, which means the CP can still go away after the round. (Edit: I am willing to stick the negative with the CP if the aff articulates, and the neg fails to overcome, a reason why.) Presumption is toward less change from the status quo. 

DA’s: Big fan. At the moment, I probably find myself slightly more in the “link first” camp, but uniqueness is certainly still important. There CAN be zero risk of an argument, but it is rare. More often, the risk is reduced to something negligible that fails to outweigh the other team's offense (edit: this last sentence probably belongs in the all-time "most obvious statements" Judge Philosophy Hall of Fame). 

Theory: RANT is the default. Probably neg-leaning on most issues, but I do think that we as a community may be letting the situation get a little out of control in terms of the numbers and certain types of CP’s. I think literature should guide what we find to be legitimate to the extent that that is both possible and beneficial. 

Good for speaker points: Strategic use of cross-examination, evidence of hard work, jokes about Kirk Gibson (edit: these must be funny) 

Bad for speaker points: Rudeness, lack of clarity, egregious facial hair.

Affiliation: College- Wake Forest '17, '19 High School- New Trier '13

Please add me to your email chains: jmichaelmanchester [@] gmail.com

This used to be a super long explanation of how I felt about debate, but given how little utility that has for many of you before a debate, here's the short version:

"I never was the smartest debater and I never will be, which means please do not make assumptions about argument understanding. Something could honestly just be over my head, this having happened multiple times in my debate career as a debater."- Lee Quinn hit the nail on the head. Don't assume that I'll know the in's and out's of your argument to the degree that you do. Regardless of argument type, explanation that contains an argument, claim, and warrant is essential.

Top shelf things for everyone:
Clarity- To quote the definition Jarrod Atchison has already beaten into my head: "Speed is the number ideas effectively communicated to the judge that the other team is held accountable to respond to." Slowing down on analytics and differentiating the tag from the rest of the card is a must.

Speaks- make fun of Duke and you'll be in a good place.

People on the right:
Do what you do well. Regardless of what you end up going for make sure you've got the "story" of your argument on lock. How does the aff's change from the squo cause the impact to the DA to be triggered? What affs are included under your interpretation of the topic? These narratives can be easily established in the overview of your DA/CP/T violation and go a long way in making sure I understand your argument as well as you want me to.


I tend to lean aff on most theory issues, though on most questions it isn't too far in the aff's direction (the exception to this is conditionality, I'm definitely in the you get one conditional option camp- that being said most people are bad at going for conditionality so that hasn't translated to any aff ballots on condo in front of me).


People on the left:
Do what you do well. I'll forefront that I'm not nearly as deep in the literature to the left as I am with the right but that doesn't mean I won't be interested in your arguments.

I think you probably should have some relation to the topic, whether that requires defending a normative action be taken by the state or simply discussing the implications of certain aspects of the topic is up for debate. If you're debating FW the question of reformism necessary v. unnecessary is super important.

If you're going for a K win framework and be good to go- though you should know I'll be inclined to let the aff weigh the 1AC if they put up a decent fight on FW.

Read links with clear impacts- just reading a wall of cards that says "the aff does the thing we are k-ing" without explaining how the interacts with the larger questions the alt/impact are getting at isn't super useful.

Samuel Maurer
Part time coach @ Head-Royce

Yes I want to be on the speech doc. samuel.maurer@gmail.com

TOC 2024 update

I haven't judged a debate in a year so you're going to have to fill me in on topic nuance if you want me to vote on it. Since I also haven't been flowing for awhile, focusing on transmission of the important stuff is probably a very valuable use of your time.

ALSO...I clarify below that CXing and getting CXed are speeches to me. If you waive your CX to prep, the floor for speaker points falls well below a 27, just as if you had 'opted-out' of a rebuttal. Not being able to come-up with any useful attempts at CX questions screams "I don't understand strategy" to me so I don't have reservations about wrecking points. You've been warned.

old stuff

A note on speech docs: I read them during the debate to enhance my knowledge of your arguments. I do not read them to fill-in the blank for a speech that is incomprehensible. I judge the debate speeches, I don't referee emails. So assuming that the written existence of an argument in the document is a sufficient means of introducing it into the debate is dangerous in front of me. If that key comparison was buried in the middle of a wall of text you read like a bored robot, I'm not going to evaluate it. Conversely, if you are deliberately unpacking evidence that I can re-read to verify your interpretations and arguments, your doc can help add depth to your argument. I read the doc as a speech supplement, not a substitute.

I’ll talk about some more specific proclivities that may be useful for your strike-sheet since, if you are reading this, you’re probably filling it out.

Speaker points/CX: I believe that debaters give 4 “speeches” in a debate: C, R, CX, and Being CXed. My speaker points are based on all 4. If you don’t answer/ask a CX question, your speaker points will suffer dramatically. If you’re an jerk or don’t answer simple questions or are simply obstructionist, speaker points suffer. Don’t neglect CX. I will diligently flow cross-examination but if you take prep to ask questions, I consider it to not be part of the debate. Don't be offended if I leave while you go into overtime.

Know when its better to slow down

-- if I’ve never judged you before, give me time at the beginning of a constructive to get used to your voice.

-- complex/tricky CP texts – please slow down during these. I’m not going to look at the speech doc and CX won’t always clear it up. Clearly emphasize the differences (supreme court, different language pic, etc.)

-- Judge instruction helps me -- big picture moments in rebuttals -- "if we win this, we win the debate", etc. Crucial moments of impacts/evidence comparison.

Evidence: Quality over Quantity – I know this is almost a cliché in judging philosophies but I don’t just mean lots of bad cards are worse than 1 good card. That is obvious. I also mean that you should consider focusing on fewer cards in front of me than you might otherwise.

-- Indexing – judging debates where last rebuttals (more often 2NR’s) mention every name of every card and say how it interacts with an argument concept (“McCoy means we turn the link”, “Smith is the impact to that”) is very frustrating for me. I thrive on the big picture. I don’t view your evidence as that or even an argument unto itself – I view your evidence as a tool. You have to explain how it works and why.

-- highlighting – I find myself increasingly choosing to ignore or assign very little weight to evidence because scant highlighting leaves a lot to the imagination. In front of me, it might be wise to select a few important cards in the debate that you would read a longer version of (crucial internal link card for elections, link to the PIC’s net benefits, alt cards, etc.).

-- I read evidence after debates to confirm its function in your speeches, not so that it can “make an argument” to me in some disembodied fashion 15 minutes after the round ends.

I prefer narrower, deeper debates: Not going to lie, when debates get horizontally big and stay that way through rebuttals, I’m less comfortable making a decision. I think this has to do with how I read evidence (above) in that often times debates that stay horizontally big require the judge to do a lot of inference into conclusions made in cards they read as opposed to speeches they evaluate. I’m okay with debates on several sheets of paper but just make sure you are identifying what you think are the strategic bottlenecks of the debate and how you are winning them. “they can’t win X if we win Y because the following impact comparison wasn’t answered…”

Links/UQ: I think debaters too often think of link direction in purely binary terms. In addition to winning links, debaters need to explicitly create mechanisms for evaluating link direction. don’t just put “this thing key” cards in my hands and expect me to ref an ev fight. Tell me why this internal controls the other or vice versa.

Framework: I’ve voted for either side of this debate plenty of times. If it’s a choice between an engaging strategy against a critical aff and T, the former is a preferable strategy in front of me. I will vote on impact turns to topicality even if the negative doesn’t go for it (provided, of course, the affirmative makes a valid argument for why I should). I find myself often frustrated in debates that lack concrete nouns and instead choose arguments/strategies where abstractions are posited in relationship to one another, concretizing through examples helps a lot. I think 'fairness' is an internal link that, when well-developed with method for debate that is academically engaging and balanced, can have a large impact on my decision. By itself, a fair game is just stable, could be good or bad. I think negs running framework are best when talking about dynamics of the debate, not just complaining about how much/many affs there are. I'm not one who believes in the "procedural fairness or education" dilemma, good framework execution involves both I think. TVA's and SSD's are defense/counterplan type arguments that I think both sides are wise to not just address but frame in my decision.

Theory: Seems dead. Seemingly fewer and fewer affirmatives even make a meaningful press on theoretical objections to the CP. I still appreciate theory on the aff and not just as an “independent voter” but rather a good way to strategically dictate the landscape of the debate. This by no means implies that I’m a hack for any affirmative theory argument. But it does mean aff’s that hear a 3 cp’s in the 1NC and don’t make more than a 10 second conditionality block and don’t mention that there were 3 counterplans are giving up on some production. I think it goes without saying that very blippy theory debates are terrible. Slowing down and being more thematic and explanatory is almost always a better approach the theory execution in front of me. In the end, I'm pretty old school and think theory needs to make a comeback (mostly so aff's can not give their cases away to disposable 15-plank hydras every debate) but it seems perfunctory in execution anymore.
Finally, please make sure to mark evidence as you read it.

For starters, I should admit a bit of my recent self. After experiencing my left arm go numb this last June, I was diagnosed with DDD – degenerative disc disease. I was involved in a horrendous debate van accident in the mid 90s and another bad car crash last year. In short, it hurts me to flow. I can’t really take anything for it at tournaments because it makes me too foggy to judge and coach. As such, I don’t really feel like I’m as good at flowing as I used to be. I try to correct for it by revisiting my flows during prep time.

I give speaker points on the basis of what happens in debates, not on the basis of who should clear. I don’t give speaker points because of the existence of a plan or a policy. I do not give speaker points on the basis of whether or not I agree with your arguments. I do change my speaker points for tournaments and within divisions. If it’s a JV debate, I try to give points on the basis of the division. I have very rarely looked at the other points that other judges give except when the ballots come in for my own debaters. I guess I’m behind the times.

Evan McCarty

I. Introduction

I debated for Northwestern and graduated in 2016. I now work in strategy and biz ops at a legal technology company. I have not researched the [insert name of current topic] topic at all.

II. Top Level

The best debaters are hard-working, strategic, passionate about the activity, and gracious to others in the community.

Tech > truth, but it's often easier to win the tech if your argument is true.

III. Predispositions

I’ll vote on nearly any warranted argument. That being said, here are some predispositions that guide my thinking. All of these can be overcome with a warranted argument to the contrary:

1. Pragmatism > Idealism.

2. Debate should be about evaluating courses of action against their opportunity costs. If the AFF proves that the NEG's counterplan, kritik, or disadvantage is not a germane opportunity cost to the plan, I'm inclined to disregard the NEG's position.

3. Clash is good. Positions that promote clash are good for debate. Positions that avoid clash are bad for debate.

4. The AFF should defend topical action. The judge should vote AFF if a given topical action is preferable to the status quo or a competitive (opportunity-cost) action.

5. Presumption is toward less change from the status quo.

IV. Constraints

Some of my views are not subject to change. These include:

1. A dropped argument (claim + warrant) is presumptively true for the rest of the debate. However, I have a relatively high threshold for what constitutes an argument in the first place. For example, the phrase “conditionality is a voter – time and strat skew, argumentative irresponsibility – dispo solves” is not an argument, because it does not contain an actual warrant (and is not, for that matter, a complete sentence).

2. No take-backs – if you make an argument and the other team does not contest it, then you don't get to retract it.

3. Intentionally intimidating the opposing team, judge, or audience through threats of physical or emotional violence --> loss.

4. Respect for your opponents, the activity, and the community is important.

V. Kritiks

My voting record for critical arguments is better than one may have expected given the arguments I ran while debating. That being said, I would still generally consider myself "good" for framework against non-traditional affirmatives and "good" for the aff against most criticisms.

The efficacy of the affirmative's advocacy/negative's alternative is incredibly important. The more sweeping your impact claim, the more important it is that you have a clear proposal to solve it. Critical arguments that invest time explaining the efficacy of their proposal have a very good record in front of me.

I am a much better judge for affirmatives that are in the "direction" of the topic than those that simply mention the topic in passing (or worse, don't mention it at all).

I am a better judge for identity-based arguments than for anything postmodern/high theory.

Kritiks do best in front of me if they cause me to think implementation of the plan would be a bad idea.

VI. Other

1. Zero-risk is totally a thing.

2. High quality evidence > smart analytics > low quality evidence.

Debated @ UNT 2009-2014

Coach @ St Marks since 2017

Coach @ UTDallas since 2018

If you have questions, feel free to email me at mccullough.hunter@gmail.com

For me, the idea that the judge should remain impartial is very important. I've had long discussions about the general acceptability/desirability of specific debate arguments and practices (as has everybody, I'm sure), but I've found that those rarely influence my decisions. I've probably voted for teams without plans in framework debates more often than I've voted neg, and I've voted for the worst arguments I can imagine, even in close debates, if I thought framing arguments were won. While nobody can claim to be completely unbiased, I try very hard to let good debating speak for itself. That being said, I do have some general predispositions, which are listed below.

T-Theory

-I tend to err aff on T and neg on most theory arguments. By that, I mean that I think that the neg should win a good standard on T in order to win that the aff should lose, and I also believe that theory is usually a reason to reject the argument and not the team.

- Conditional advocacies are good, but making contradictory truth claims is different. However, I generally think these claims are less damaging to the aff than the "they made us debate against ourselves" claim would make it seem. The best 2ACs will find ways of exploiting bad 1NC strategy, which will undoubtedly yield better speaker points than a theory debate, even if the aff wins.

- I kind of feel like "reasonability" and "competing interpretations" have become meaningless terms that, while everybody knows how they conceptualize it, there are wildly different understandings. In my mind, the negative should have to prove that the affirmative interpretation is bad, not simply that the negative has a superior interpretation. I also don't think that's a very high standard for the negative to be held to, as many interpretations (especially on this space topic) will be hot fiery garbage.

- My view of debates outside of/critical of the resolution is also complicated. While my philosophy has always been very pro-plan reading in the past, I've found that aff teams are often better at explaining their impact turns than the neg is at winning an impact that makes sense. That being said, I think that it's hard for the aff to win these debates if the neg can either win that there is a topical version of the affirmative that minimizes the risk of the aff's impact turns, or a compelling reason why the aff is better read as a kritik on the negative. Obviously there are arguments that are solved by neither, and those are likely the best 2AC impact turns to read in front of me.

- "The aff was unpredictable so we couldn't prepare for it so you should assume it's false" isn't a good argument for framework and I don't think I've ever voted for it.

CPs

- I'm certainly a better judge for CP/DA debates than K v K debates. I particularly like strategic PICs and good 1NC strategies with a lot of options. I'd be willing to vote on consult/conditions, but I find permutation arguments about immediacy/plan-plus persuasive.

- I think the neg gets away with terrible CP solvency all the time. Affs should do a better job establishing what counts as a solvency card, or at least a solvency warrant. This is more difficult, however, when your aff's solvency evidence is really bad. - Absent a debate about what I should do, I will kick a counterplan for the neg and evaluate the aff v. the squo if the CP is bad/not competitive

- I don't think the 2NC needs to explain why severence/intrinsicness are bad, just win a link. They're bad.

- I don't think perms are ever a reason to reject the aff.

- I don't think illegitimate CPs are a reason to vote aff.

Disads

- Run them. Win them. There's not a whole lot to say.

- I'd probably vote on some sort of "fiat solves" argument on politics, but only if it was explained well.

- Teams that invest time in good, comparative impact calculus will be rewarded with more speaker points, and likely, will win the debate. "Disad/Case outweighs" isn't a warrant. Talk about your impacts, but also make sure you talk about your opponents impacts. "Economic collapse is real bad" isn't as persuasive as "economic collapse is faster and controls uniqueness for the aff's heg advantage".

Ks

- My general line has always been that "I get the K but am not well read in every literature". I've started to realize that that statement is A) true for just about everybody and B) entirely useless. It turns out that I've read, coached, and voted for Ks too often for me to say that. What I will say, however, is that I certainly focus my research and personal reading more on the policy side, but will generally make it pretty obvious if I have no idea what you're saying.

- Make sure you're doing link analysis to the plan. I find "their ev is about the status quo" arguments pretty persuasive with a permutation.

- Don't think that just because your impacts "occur on a different level" means you don't need to do impact calculus. A good way to get traction here is case defense. Most advantages are pretty silly and false, point that out with specific arguments about their internal links. It will always make the 2NR easier if you win that the aff is lying/wrong.

- I think the alt is the weakest part of the K, so make sure to answer solvency arguments and perms very well.

- If you're aff, and read a policy aff, don't mistake this as a sign that I'm just going to vote for you because I read mostly policy arguments. If you lose on the K, I'll vote neg. Remember, I already said I think your advantage is a lie. Prove me wrong.

Case

-Don't ignore it. Conceding an advantage on the neg is no different than conceding a disad on the aff. You should go to case in the 1NC, even if you just play defense. It will make the rest of the debate so much easier.

- If you plan to extend a K in the 2NR and use that to answer the case, be sure you're winning either a compelling epistemology argument or some sort of different ethical calculus. General indicts will lose to specific explanations of the aff absent either good 2NR analysis or extensions of case defense.

- 2As... I've become increasingly annoyed with 2ACs that pay lip service to the case without responding to specific arguments or extending evidence/warrants. Just reexplaining the advantage and moving on isn't sufficient to answer multiple levels of neg argumentation.

Paperless debate

I don't think you need to take prep time to flash your speech to your opponent, but it's also pretty obvious when you're stealing prep, so don't do it. If you want to use viewing computers, that's fine, but only having one is unacceptable. The neg needs to be able to split up your evidence for the block. It's especially bad if you want to view their speeches on your viewing computer too. Seriously, people need access to your evidence.

Clipping

I've decided enough debates on clipping in the last couple of years that I think it's worth putting a notice in my philosophy. If a tournament has reliable internet, I will insist on an email chain and will want to be on that email chain. I will, at times, follow along with the speech document and, as a result, am likely to catch clipping if it occurs. I'm a pretty non-confrontational person, so I'm unlikely to say anything about a missed short word at some point, but if I am confident that clipping has occurred, I will absolutely stop the debate and decide on it. I'll always give debaters the benefit of the doubt, and provide an opportunity to say where a card was marked, but I'm pretty confident of my ability to distinguish forgetting to say "mark the card" and clipping. I know that there is some difference of opinion on who's responsibility it is to bring about a clipping challenge, but I strongly feel that, if I know for certain that debaters are not reading all of their evidence, I have not only the ability but an obligation to call it out.

Other notes

- Really generic backfile arguments (Ashtar, wipeout, etc) won't lose you the round, but don't expect great speaks. I just think those arguments are really terrible, (I can't describe how much I hate wipeout debates) and bad for debate.

- Impact turn debates are awesome, but can get very messy. If you make the debate impossible to flow, I will not like you. Don't just read cards in the block, make comparisons about evidence quality and uniqueness claims. Impact turn debates are almost always won by the team that controls uniqueness and framing arguments, and that's a debate that should start in the 2AC.

Finally, here is a short list of general biases.

• The status quo should always be an option in the 2NR (Which doesn't necessarily mean that the neg get's infinite flex. If they read 3 contradictory positions, I can be persuaded that it was bad despite my predisposition towards conditionality. It does mean that I will, absent arguments against it, judge kick a counterplan and evaluate the case v the squo if the aff wins the cp is bad/not competitive)
• Warming is real and science is good (same argument, really)
• The aff gets to defend the implementation of the plan as offense against the K, and the neg gets to read the K
• Timeframe and probability are more important than magnitude 
• Predictable limits are key to both fairness and education
• Consult counterplans aren't competitive. Conditions is arguable.
• Rider DA links are not intrinsic
• Utilitarianism is a good way to evaluate impacts
• The aff should defend a topical plan
• Death and extinction are bad
• Uncooperative federalism is one of the worst counterplans I've ever seen

Experience:

• University of Wyoming policy debater & coach
• UC Berkeley policy coach
• Judging CARD for 3+ years (critic of the year in 2022)

CARD is not policy debate by design. I want to be moved and persuaded by your arguments, which you can't do if you are reading or speaking fast and using a bunch of technical jargon. Keep this activity accessible.

Read any style of arguments you want (kritical, policy, lived experience), but relate them to the topic. If you want to read an untopical affirmative then get ready to impact-turn and tell me why your arguments are important for this specific activity.

The 2NR and 2AR are for telling me exactly why you won the debate. A dropped argument is a true argument, but you need to tell me why that argument being true is important for your overall case (i.e. compare the quality of your arguments). Debate isn't just about winning individual arguments on the flow, but telling the judge a compelling story. An important part of telling the story is through impact calculus/comparison.

Flowing: I still prefer to flow CARD like a traditional policy round. I flow each argument on a separate page and I want to be able to line up the arguments to quickly compare them when rendering my decision. So, try to stay organized and answer the arguments in the order they were made.

Bottom line: Arguments need evidence and warrants. Keep it cute, don't post-round me.

Happy to answer any questions before the round begins.

Debate Coach - University of Michigan

Debate Coach - New Trier High School

Michigan State University '13

Brookfield Central High School '09

I would like to be on the email chain - my email address is valeriemcintosh1@gmail.com.

A few top level things:

• If you engage in offensive acts (think racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), you will lose automatically and will be awarded whatever the minimum speaker points offered at that particular tournament is. This also includes forwarding the argument that death is good because suffering exists. I will not vote on it.
• If you make it so that the tags in your document maps are not navigable by taking the "tag" format off of them, I will actively dock your speaker points.
• Quality of argument means a lot to me. I am willing to hold my nose and vote for bad arguments if they're better debated but my threshold for answering those bad arguments is pretty low.
• I'm a very expressive judge. Look up at me every once in a while, you will probably be able to tell how I feel about your arguments.
• I don't think that arguments about things that have happened outside of a debate or in previous debates are at all relevant to my decision and I will not evaluate them. I can only be sure of what has happened in this particular debate and anything else is non-falsifiable.

Pet peeves

• The 1AC not being sent out by the time the debate is supposed to start
• Asking if I am ready or saying you'll start if there are no objections, etc. in in-person debates - we're all in the same room, you can tell if we're ready!
• Email-sending related failures
• Dead time
• Stealing prep
• Answering arguments in an order other than the one presented by the other team
• Asserting things are dropped when they aren't
• Asking the other team to send you a marked doc when they marked 1-3 cards
• Disappearing after the round

Online debate: My camera will always be on during the debate unless I have stepped away from my computer during prep or while deciding so you should always assume that if my camera is off, I am not there. I added this note because I've had people start speeches without me there.

Ethics: If you make an ethics challenge in a debate in front of me, you must stake the debate on it. If you make that challenge and are incorrect or cannot prove your claim, you will lose and be granted zero speaker points. If you are proven to have committed an ethics violation, you will lose and be granted zero speaker points.
*NOTE - if you use sexually explicit language or engage in sexually explicit performances in high school debates, you should strike me. If you think that what you're saying in the debate would not be acceptable to an administrator at a school to hear was said by a high school student to an adult, you should strike me.

Organization: I would strongly prefer that if you're reading a DA that isn't just a case turn that it go on its own page - its super annoying because people end up extending/answering arguments on flows in different orders. Ditto to reading advantage CPs on case - put it on its own sheet, please!

Cross-x: Questions like "what cards did you read?" are cross-x questions. If you don't start the timer before you start asking those questions, I will take whatever time I estimate you took to ask questions before the timer was started out of your prep. If the 1NC responds that "every DA is a NB to every CP" when asked about net benefits in the 1NC even if it makes no sense, I think the 1AR gets a lot of leeway to explain a 2AC "links to the net benefit argument" on any CP as it relates to the DAs.

Translated evidence: I am extremely skeptical of evidence translated by a debater or coach with a vested interest in that evidence being used in a debate. Lots of words or phrases have multiple meanings or potential translations and debaters/coaches have an incentive to choose the ones that make the most debate-friendly argument even if that's a stretch of what is in the original text. It is also completely impossible to verify if words or text was left out, if it is a strawperson, if it is cut out of context, etc. I won't immediately reject it on my own but I would say that I am very amenable to arguments that I should.

Inserting evidence or rehighlightings into the debate: I won't evaluate it unless you actually read the parts that you are inserting into the debate. If it's like a chart or a map or something like that, that's fine, I don't expect you to literally read that, but if you're rehighlighting some of the other team's evidence, you need to actually read the rehighlighting. This can also be accomplished by reading those lines in cross-x and then referencing them in a speech or just making analytics about their card(s) in your speech and then providing a rehighlighting to explain it.

Topicality: I enjoy judging topicality debates when they are in-depth and nuanced. Limits are an an important question but not the only important question - your limit should be tied to a particular piece of neg ground or a particular type of aff that would be excluded. I often find myself to be more aff leaning than neg leaning in T debates because I am often persuaded by the argument that negative interpretations are arbitrary or not based in predictable literature.

5 second ASPEC shells/the like that are not a complete argument are mostly nonstarters for me. If I reasonably think the other team could have missed the argument because I didn't think it was a clear argument, I think they probably get new answers. If you drop it twice, that's on you.

Counterplans: I would say that I generally lean aff on a lot of questions of competition, especially in the cases of CPs that compete on the certainty of the plan, normal means cps, and agent cps, but obviously am more than willing to vote for them if they are debated better by the negative.

I think that CPs should have to be policy actions. I think this is most fair and reciprocal with what the affirmative does. I think that fiating indefinite personal decisions or actions/non-actions by policymakers that are not enshrined in policy is an unfair abuse of fiat that I do not think the negative should get access to. The CP that has the US declare it will not go to war with China would be theoretically legitimate but the CP to have the president personally decide not to go to war with China would not be. Similarly CPs that fiat a concept or endgoal rather than a policy would also fall under this.

It is the burden of the neg to prove the CP solves rather than the burden of the aff to prove it doesn't. Unless the neg makes an attempt to explain how/why the CP solves (by reading ev, by referencing 1AC ev, by explaining how the CP solves analytically), my assumption is that it doesn’t and it isn’t the aff’s burden to prove it doesn’t. The burden for the neg isn’t that high but I think neg teams are getting away with egregious lack of CP explanation and judges too often put the burden on the aff to prove the CP doesn’t solve rather than the neg to prove it does.

Disads: Uniqueness is a thing that matters for every level of the DA. I am not very sympathetic to politics theory arguments (except in the case of things like rider disads, which I might ban from debate if I got the choice to ban one argument and think are certainly illegitimate misinterpretations of fiat) and am unlikely to ever vote on them unless they're dropped and even then would be hard pressed. I'm incredibly knowledgeable about politics and enjoy it a lot when debated well but really dislike seeing it debated poorly.

Theory: Conditionality is often good. It can be not. Conditionality is the ONLY argument I think is a reason to reject the team, every other argument I think is a reason to reject the argument alone. Tell me what my role is on the theory debate - am I determining in-round abuse or am I setting a precedent for the community?

Kritiks: I've gotten simultaneously more versed in critical literature and much worse for the kritik as a judge over the last few years. Take from that what you will.

Your K should ideally be a reason why the aff is bad, not just why the status quo is bad. If not, you're better off with it primarily being a framework argument.

Yes the aff gets a perm, no it doesn't need a net benefit.

Affs without a plan: I generally go into debates believing that the aff should defend a hypothetical policy enacted by the United States federal government. I think debate is a research game and I struggle with the idea that the ballot can do anything to remedy the impacts that many of these affs describe.

I certainly don't consider myself immovable on that question and my decision will be governed by what happens in any given debate; that being said, I don't like when judges pretend to be fully open to any argument in order to hide their true thoughts and feelings about them and so I would prefer to be honest that these are my predispositions about debate, which, while not determinate of how I judge debates, certainly informs and affects it.

I would describe myself as a good judge for T-USFG against affs that do not read a plan. I find impacts about debatability, clash, iterative testing and fairness to be very persuasive. I think fairness is an impact in and of itself. I am not very persuaded by impacts about skills/the ability for debate to change the world if we read plans - I think these are not very strategic and easily impact turned by the aff.

I generally am pretty sympathetic to negative presumption arguments because I often think the aff has not forwarded an explanation for what the aff does to resolve the impacts they've described.

I don't think debate is roleplaying.

I am uncomfortable making decisions in debates where people have posited that their survival hinges on my ballot.

Misc procedural things:

1. He/him/his; "DML">"Dustin">>>"judge">>>>>>>>>>"Mr. Meyers-Levy"

2. Debated at Edina HS in Minnesota from 2008-2012, at the University of Michigan from 2012-2017, and currently coach at Michigan and Glenbrook North

3. Please add me to the email chain: dustml[at]umich[dot]edu. College debaters only: please also add debatedocs[at]umich[dot]edu (note that this is not the same as the community debatedocs listerv).

4. Nothing here set in stone debate is up to the debaters go for what you want to blah blah blah an argument is a claim and a warrant don't clip cards

5. Speaks usually range from 28.5-29.5. Below 28.5 and there are some notable deficiencies, above 29.5 you're going above and beyond to wow me. I don't really try to compare different debaters across different rounds to give points; I assign them based on a round-by-round basis. I wish I could give ties more often and will do so if the tournament allows. If you ask me for a 30 you'll probably get a 27.

6. If you're breaking something new, you'll send it out before your speech, not after the speech ends or as it's read or whatever. If you don't want to comply with that, your points are capped at 27. If you're so worried that giving the neg team 9 extra minutes to look at your new aff will tip the odds against you, it's probably not good enough to win anyway.

7. You will time your own speeches and prep time. I will be so grumpy if I have to keep track of time for you.

8. Each person gives one constructive and one rebuttal. The first person who speaks is the only person I flow (I can make an exception for performances in 1ACs/1NCs). I don’t flow prompting until and unless the assigned speaker says the words that their partner is prompting. Absolutely no audience participation. If you need some part of this clarified, I’m probably not the judge for you.

9. I am a mandatory reporter and an employee of both a public university and a public high school. I am not interested in judging debates that may make either of those facts relevant.

10. If you would enthusiastically describe your strategy as "memes" or "trolling," you should strike me.

11. Online debates: If my camera's off, I'm not listening. Get active confirmation before you start speaking, don't ask "is anyone not ready" or say "stop me if you're not ready," especially if you aren't actually listening to/looking at the other participants before you check. If you start speaking and I'm not ready or there, expect abysmal speaker points.

TOC notes:

I cannot express just how bad I am at economics. It is my kryptonite. I am an extremely unreliable judge for any debate that involves treating anything more complicated than the supply-and-demand graph as a given. What's a bond? No idea. Keynes? Never heard of him. Gini coefficient? Sounds like a bad coffee shop. I will be lost in any debate that is more complicated than your freshman year econ class (I'm talking pre-AP) without a lot of explanation. Conversely, it will be much easier to impress me by walking me through your arguments and breaking them down as simply as you possibly can, telling me what it means when your evidence references basically any economic concept, etc. More explanation can only help. This also means you can probably convince me of just about anything if you make it simple enough and line it up with what your evidence says.

Good judge for:

• Process counterplans that are topic-specific, especially versus new affs.
• Presumption arguments against affs without a plan. I prefer depth over breadth--I'm more likely to vote for one well-developed presumption argument that sets up a clear burden for the aff than I am three or four "vote neg on presumption" one-liners scattered across the flow without a warrant.
• K affs that explicitly redefine what being "topical" means, especially when paired with reasonability arguments about what I should choose to understand as a "reasonable" affirmation of the topic. I think affs should be topical, but I'm open to arguments about why being "topical" doesn'tneed to be based in definitions.
• Ks with developed alternatives that you're willing to defend the details of. I'm an easier sell on Ks that let the aff weigh the plan and give the neg some leeway on what they get to defend with regards to the alt than "you link you lose"-adjacent framework pushes.

Not a fantastic judge for:

• Complicated econ DAs. I'm very sorry. While you were studying the markets, I studied the blade (by which I mean Deleuze).
• 1ACs/1NCs that are largely opaque or obfuscatory, especially when the team in question is unwilling to clarify in cross-x. If you aren't willing to answer basic clarification questions about your argument from an opponent who isn't following, strike me.
• Neg framework blocks that don't change based on the aff. I think framework is best deployed as an internal link turn to the aff's method and appreciate when neg teams use the aff's language/phrasing to explain that. When that's not happening, I think it's a lot easier for the aff to characterize the neg's arguments as exclusive.
• Arguments about anything other than the things that both teams say during the span of the round that I'm judging. If you can connect some external thing to an argument that your opponent is making, that's fair game. If you want to win (or your opponents to lose) based purely on that external thing in a vacuum, you may want to focus on the other judges on the panel.
• Fiat Ks.

Top-level:

When making my decisions, I seek to answer four questions:

1. At what scale should I evaluate impacts, or how do I determine which impact outweighs the others?

2. What is necessary to address those impacts?

3. At what point have those impacts been sufficiently addressed?

4. How certain am I about either side’s answers to the previous three questions?

I don’t expect debaters to answer these questions explicitly or in order, but I do find myself voting for debaters who use that phrasing and these concepts (necessity, sufficiency, certainty, etc) as part of their judge instruction a disproportionate amount. I try to start every RFD with a sentence-ish-long summary of my decision (e.g. "I voted affirmative because I am certain that their impacts are likely without the plan and unlikely with it, which outweighs an uncertain risk of the impacts to the DA even if I am certain about the link"); you may benefit from setting up a sentence or two along those lines for me.

Intervention on my part is inevitable, but I’d like to minimize it if possible and equalize it if not. The way I try to do so is by making an effort to quote or paraphrase the 1AR, 2NR, and 2AR in my RFD as much as possible. This means I find myself often voting for teams who a) minimize the amount of debate jargon they use, b) explicitly instruct me what I need in order to be certain that an argument is true, and c) don’t repeat themselves or reread parts of earlier speeches. (The notable exception to c) is quoting your evidence—I appreciate teams who tell me what to look for in their cards, as I’d rather not read evidence if I don’t have to.) I would rather default to new 2AR contextualization of arguments than reject new 2AR explanation and figure out how to evaluate/compare arguments on my own, especially if the 2AR contextualization lines up with how I understand the debate otherwise.

I flow on my computer and I flow straight down. I appreciate debaters who debate in a way that makes that easy to do (clean line-by-line, numbering/subpointing, etc). I’ll make as much room as you want me to for an overview, but I won’t flow it on a separate sheet unless you say pretty please. If it’s not obvious to me at that point why it’s on a separate sheet, you’ll probably lose points.

Consider going a little bit slower. I prefer voting on arguments that I am certain about, and it is much easier to be certain about an argument when I know that I have written down everything that you’ve said.

Presumption always initially goes negative because the affirmative always has the burden of proof. If the affirmative has met their burden of proof against the status quo, and the negative has not met their burden of rejoinder, I vote affirmative.

I am "truth over tech." I will not vote for something if I cannot explain why it is a reason that one side or the other has done the better debating, even if it is technically conceded by the other team. Obviously, this is not to say that technical concessions do not matter--they're probably the most important part of my decisionmaking process! However, not all technical concessions matter, and the reasons that some technical concessions matter might not be apparent to me. A dropped argument is true, but non-dropped arguments can also be true, and I need you to contextualize how to evaluate and compare those truths.

I appreciate well-thought-out perms with a brief summary of its function/net beneficiality in the 2AC. I get frustrated by teams who shotgun the same four perms on every page, especially when those perms are essentially the same argument (e.g. “perm do both” and “perm do the plan and non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt”) or when the perm is obviously nonsensical (e.g. “perm do the counterplan” against an advantage counterplan that doesn’t try to fiat the aff or against a uniqueness counterplan that bans the plan).

I appreciate when teams read rehighlightings and not insert them, unless you’re rehighlighting a couple words. You will lose speaker points for inserting a bunch of rehighlightings, and I’ll happily ignore them if instructed to by the other team.

I prefer to judge engagement over avoidance. I would rather you beat your opponent at their best than trick them into dropping something. If your plan for victory involves hiding ASPEC in a T shell, or deleting your conditionality block from the 2AC in hopes that they miss it, or using a bunch of buzzwords that you think the other team won't understand but I will, I will not be happy.

I generally assume good faith on the part of debaters and I'm very reticent to ignore the rest of the debate/arguments being made (especially when not explicitly and extensively instructed to) in order to punish a team for what's often an honest mistake. I am much more willing to vote on these arguments as links/examples of links. Obviously, there are exceptions to this for egregious and/or intentionally problematic behavior, but if your strategy revolves around asking me to vote against a team based on unhighlighted/un-underlined parts of cards, or "gotcha" moments in cross-x, you may want to change your strategy for me.

K affs:

1. Debate is indisputably a game to some degree or another, and it can be other things besides that. It indisputably influences debaters' thought processes and subjectivities to some extent; it is also indisputably not the only influence on those things. I like when teams split the difference and account for debate’s inevitably competitive features rather than asserting it is only one thing or another.

2. I think I am better for K affs than I have been in the past. I am not worse for framework, but I am worse for the amount of work that people seem to do when preparing to go for framework. I am getting really bored by neg teams who recycle blocks without updating them in the context of the round and don’t make an effort to talk about the aff. I think the neg needs to say more than just “the aff’s method is better with a well-prepared opponent” or “non-competitive venues solve the aff’s offense” to meaningfully mitigate the aff's offense. If you are going for framework in front of me, you may want to replace those kinds of quotes in your blocks with specific explanations that reference what the aff says in speeches and cards.

3. I prefer clash impacts to fairness impacts. I vote negative often when aff teams lack explanation for why someone should say "no" to the aff. I find that fairness strategies suffer when the aff pushes on the ballot’s ability to “solve” them; I would rather use my ballot to encourage the aff to argue differently rather than to punish them retroactively. I think fairness-centric framework strategies are vulnerable to aff teams impact turning the neg’s interpretation (conversely, I think counter-interpretation strategies are weak against fairness impacts).

4. I don't think I've ever voted on "if the 1AC couldn't be tested you should presume everything they've said is false"/"don't weigh the aff because we couldn't answer it," and I don't think I ever will.

5. I think non-framework strategies live and die at the level of competition and solvency. When aff teams invest time in unpacking permutations and solvency deficits, and the neg doesn’t advance a theory of competition beyond “no perms in a method debate” (whatever that means), I usually vote aff. When the aff undercovers the perm and/or the alt, I have a high threshold for new explanation and usually think that the 2NR should be the non-framework strategy.

6. I do not care whether or not fiat has a resolutional basis.

Ks on the neg/being aff vs the K:

I am getting really bored by "stat check" affs that respond to every K by brute-forcing a heg or econ impact and reading the same "extinction outweighs, util, consequentialism, nuke war hurts marginalized people too" blocks/cards every debate. That's not to say that these affs are non-viable in front of me, but it is to say that I've often seen teams reading these big-stick affs in ways that seem designed to avoid engaging the substance of the K. If this is your strategy, you should talk about the alternative more, and have a defense of fiat that is not just theoretical.

I care most about link uniqueness and alt solvency. When I vote aff, it's because a) the aff gets access to their impacts, b) those impacts outweigh/turn the K, c) the K links are largely non-unique, and/or d) the neg doesn't have a well-developed alt push. Neg teams that push back on these issues--by a) having well-developed and unique links and impacts with substantive impact calculus in the block and 2NR, including unique turns case args (not just that the plan doesn't solve, but that it actually makes the aff's own impacts more likely), b) having a vision for what the world of the alt looks like that's defensible and ostensibly solves their impacts even if the aff wins a risk of theirs (case defense that's congruent with the K helps), and/or c) has a heavy push on framework that tells me what the alt does/doesn't need to solve--have a higher chance of getting my ballot. Some more specific notes:

1. Upfront, I'm not a huge fan of "post-/non-/more-than/humanism"-style Ks. I find myself more persuaded by most defenses/critical rehabilitations of humanism than I do by critiques of humanism that attempt to reject the category altogether. You can try your best to change my mind, but it may be an uphill battle; this applies far more to high theory/postmodern Ks of humanism (which, full disclosure, I would really rather not hear) than it does to structuralist/identity-based Ks of humanism, though I find myself more persuaded by "new humanist" style arguments a la Fanon, Wynter, etc than full-on rejections of humanism.

2. There's a new trend of Ks about debt, debt imperialism, etc. I may not be the best judge for these arguments, simply because of my difficulty with understanding economics on its own terms, let alone in the context of a K. It's not for lack of trying to understand or familiarize myself, I just have tremendous difficulty understanding even basic economic concepts at a fundamental level, and this is seriously amplified when those concepts are being analyzed by relatively complex critical theory. This isn't to say these arguments are unwinnable in front of me (I've voted for them this year and in past years), but you may want to consider something else and/or investing a really large amount of time in explaining the fundamentals of your arguments to me.

3. I also don't really get all these new Ks about quantum physics in IR and stuff. Again, it's me, not you. I was an English major; every time I try to read these articles I get a headache. I'm interested, I promise, and if you can explain it to me I'll be very appreciative! But for transparency's sake, I think it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to both explain the argument to me in a way that I can comprehend AND invest the time necessary to win the debate in your 36 collective minutes of speaking time.

4. I'm quite interested in emerging genres of critical legal theory. I think I would be a good judge for Ks that defend concrete changes to jurisprudence and are willing to debate out the implications of that.

5. I think that others should not suffer, that biological death is bad, and that meaning-making and contingent agreement on contextual truths are possible, inevitable, and desirable. If your K disagrees with any of these fundamental premises, I am a bad judge for it.

6. I don't get Ks of linear time. I get Ks of whitewashing, progress narratives, etc. I get the argument that historical events influence the present, and that events in the present can reshape our understanding of the past. I get that some causes have complex effects that aren't immediately recognizable to us and may not be recognizable on any human scale. I just don't get how any of those things are mutually exclusive with, and indeed how they don't also rely on, some understanding of linear time/causality. I think this is because I have a very particular understanding of what "linear time" means/refers to, which is to say that it's hard for me to disassociate that phrase with the basic concept of cause/effect and the progression of time in a measurable, linear fashion. This isn't as firm of a belief as #5; I can certainly imagine one of these args clicking with me eventually. This is just to say that the burden of explanation is much higher and you would likely be better served going for more plan-specific link arguments or maybe just using different terminology/including a brief explanation as to why you're not disagreeing with the basic premise that causes have effects, even if those effects aren't immediately apparent. If you are disagreeing with that premise, you should probably strike me, as it will require far longer than two hours for me to comprehend your argument, let alone agree with it.

7. "Philosophical competition" is not a winning interpretation in front of me. I don't know what it means and no one has ever explained it to me in a coherent and non-arbitrary way.

8. There's a difference between utilitarianism and consequentialism. I'm open to critiques of the former; I have an extremely high burden for critiques of the latter. I'm not sure I can think of a K of consequentialism that I've judged that didn't seem to link to itself to some degree or another.

Policy debates:

1. 95% of my work in college is K-focused, and the other 5% is mostly spot updates. I have done very little policy-focused research in the preseason.

For high school, I led a lab this summer, but didn't retain a ton of topic info and have done exclusively K-focused work since the camp ended. I probably know less than you do about economics.

2. “Link controls uniqueness”/“uniqueness controls the link” arguments will get you far with me. I often find myself wishing that one side or the other had made that argument, because my RFDs often include some variant of it regardless.

3. Apparently T against policy affs is no longer in style. Fortunately, I have a terrible sense of style. In general, I think I'm better for the neg for T than (I guess) a lot of judges; reading through some judge philosophies I find a lot of people who say they don't like judging T or don't think T debates are good, and I strongly disagree with that claim. I'm a 2N at heart, so when it comes down to brass tacks I really don't care about many T impacts/standards except for neg ground (though I can obviously be persuaded otherwise). I care far more about the debates that an interpretation facilitates than I do about the interpretation's source in the abstract--do explanation as to why source quality/predictability influences the quality of debates under the relevant interpretation.

4. I think judge kick makes intuitive sense, but I won't do it unless I'm told to. That said, I also think I have a lower threshold for what constitutes the neg "telling me to" than most. There are some phrases that signify to me that I can default to the status quo by my own choosing; these include, but aren't necessarily limited to, "the status quo is always a logical policy option" and/or "counter-interp: the neg gets X conditional options and the status quo."

5. I enjoy counterplans that compete on resolutional terms quite a bit; I'd rather judge those than counterplans that compete on "should," "substantial," etc.

6. Here are some aff theory arguments that I could be persuaded on pretty easily given a substantive time investment:

--Counterplans should have a solvency advocate ideally matching the specificity of the aff's, but at least with a normative claim about what should happen.

--Multi-actor fiat bad--you can fiat different parts of the USFG do things, and international fiat is defensible, but fiating the federal government and the states, or the US and other countries, is a no-no. (Fiating all fifty states is debatably acceptable, but fiating some permutation of states seems iffy to me.)

--No negative fiat, but not the meme--counterplans should take a positive action, and shouldn't fiat a negative action. It's the distinction between "the USFG should not start a war against Russia" and "the USFG should ban initiation of war against Russia."

--Test case fiat? Having osmosed a rudimentary bit of constitutional law via friends and family in law school, it seems like debate's conception of how the Supreme Court works is... suspect. Not really sure what the implications of that are for the aff or the neg, but I'm pretty sure that most court CPs/mechanisms would get actual lawyers disbarred.

--“…large advantage counterplans with multiple planks, all of which can be kicked, are fairly difficult to defend. Negative teams can fiat as many policies as it takes to solve whatever problems the aff has sought to tackle. It is unreasonable to the point of stupidity to expect the aff to contrive solvency deficits: the plan would literally have to be the only idea in the history of thought capable of solving a given problem. Every additional proposal introduced in the 1nc (in order to increase the chance of solving) can only be discouraged through the potential cost of a disad being read against it. In the old days, this is why counterplan files were hundreds of pages long and had answers to a wide variety of disads. But if you can kick the plank, what incentive does the aff have to even bother researching if the CP is a good idea? If they read a 2AC add-on, the neg gets as many no-risk 2NC counterplans to add to the fray as well (of course, they can also add unrelated 2nc counterplans for fun and profit). If you think you can defend the merit of that strategy vs. a "1 condo cp / 1 condo k" interp, your creative acumen may be too advanced for interscholastic debate; consider more challenging puzzles in emerging fields, as they urgently need your input.” -Kevin "Kevin 'Paul Blart Mall Cop' James" James Hirn

Debated for UWG ’15 – ’17; Coaching: Notre Dame – ’19 – Present; Baylor – ’17 – ’19

email: joshuamichael59@gmail.com

Online Annoyance

"Can I get a marked doc?" / "Can you list the cards you didn't read?" when one card was marked or just because some cards were skipped on case. Flow or take CX time for it.

Policy

I prefer K v K rounds, but I generally wind up in FW rounds.

K aff’s – 1) Generally have a high threshold for 1ar/2ar consistency. 2) Stop trying to solve stuff you could reasonably never affect. Often, teams want the entirety of X structure’s violence weighed yet resolve only a minimal portion of that violence. 3) v K’s, you are rarely always already a criticism of that same thing. Your articulation of the perm/link defense needs to demonstrate true interaction between literature bases. 4) Stop running from stuff. If you didn’t read the line/word in question, okay. But indicts of the author should be answered with more than “not our Baudrillard.”

K’s – 1) rarely win without substantial case debate. 2) ROJ arguments are generally underutilized. 3) I’m generally persuaded by aff answers that demonstrate certain people shouldn’t read certain lit bases, if warranted by that literature. 4) I have a higher threshold for generic “debate is bad, vote neg.” If debate is bad, how do you change those aspects of debate? 5) 2nr needs to make consistent choices re: FW + Link/Alt combinations. Find myself voting aff frequently, because the 2nr goes for two different strats/too much.

Special Note for Settler Colonialism: I simultaneously love these rounds and experience a lot of frustration when judging this argument. Often, debaters haven’t actually read the full text from which they are cutting cards and lack most of the historical knowledge to responsibly go for this argument. List of annoyances: there are 6 settler moves to innocence – you should know the differences/specifics rather than just reading pages 1-3 of Decol not a Metaphor; la paperson’s A Third University is Possible does not say “State reform good”; Reading “give back land” as an alt and then not defending against the impact turn is just lazy. Additionally, claiming “we don’t have to specify how this happens,” is only a viable answer for Indigenous debaters (the literature makes this fairly clear); Making a land acknowledgement in the first 5 seconds of the speech and then never mentioning it again is essentially worthless; Ethic of Incommensurability is not an alt, it’s an ideological frame for future alternative work (fight me JKS).

FW

General: 1) Fairness is either an impact or an internal link 2) the TVA doesn’t have to solve the entirety of the aff. 3) Your Interp + our aff is just bad.

Aff v FW: 1) can win with just impact turns, though the threshold is higher than when winning a CI with viable NB’s. 2) More persuaded by defenses of education/advocacy skills/movement building. 3) Less random DA’s that are basically the same, and more internal links to fully developed DA’s. Most of the time your DA’s to the TVA are the same offense you’ve already read elsewhere.

Reading FW: 1) Respect teams that demonstrate why state engagement is better in terms of movement building. 2) “If we can’t test the aff, presume it’s false” – no 3) Have to answer case at some point (more than the 10 seconds after the timer has already gone off) 4) You almost never have time to fully develop the sabotage tva (UGA RS deserves more respect than that). 5) Impact turns to the CI are generally underutilized. You’ll almost always win the internal link to limits, so spending all your time here is a waste. 6) Should defend the TVA in 1nc cx if asked. You don’t have a right to hide it until the block.

Theory - 1) I generally lean neg on questions of Conditionality/Random CP theory. 2) No one ever explains why dispo solves their interp. 3) Won’t judge kick unless instructed to.

T – 1) I’m not your best judge. 2) Seems like no matter how much debating is done over CI v Reasonability, I still have to evaluate most of the offense based on CI’s.

DA/CP – 1) Prefer smart indicts of evidence as opposed to walls of cards (especially on ptx/agenda da's). Neg teams get away with murder re: "dropped ev" that says very little/creatively highlighted. 2) I'm probably more lenient with aff responses (solvency deficits/aff solves impact/intrinsic perm) to Process Cp's/Internal NB's that don't have solvency ev/any relation to aff.

Case - I miss in depth case debates. Re-highlightings don't have to be read. The worse your re-highlighting the lower the threshold for aff to ignore it.

LD

All of my thoughts on policy apply, except for theory. More than 2 condo (or CP’s with different plank combinations) is probably abusive, but I can be convinced otherwise on a technical level.

Not voting on an RVI. I don’t care if it’s dropped.

Most LD theory is terrible Ex: Have to spec a ROB or I don’t know what I can read in the 1nc --- dumb argument.

Phil or Tricks (sp?) debating – I’m not your judge.

The Short:

I have a PhD in Philosophy. I was 3rd speaker and a semifinalist at the NDT (in 2012?). I read: Baudrillard, Bataille, Deleuze and Guattari, Nietzsche. I didn't read: topical plans. I will vote on T, though I don't think fairness is an especially compelling impact. I defer to an offense/defense paradigm unless told to do otherwise.

Speaker points start at 27.5. 28.2-28.4 marks an average speaker.

Don't adapt. Be bold.

Mollison.JamesA@gmail.com for the chain. (Sigh.)

Butin scale is:

Helpful-----------------------x----Lazy

The Medium:

Judge adaptation, by my lights, is better saved for “smaller” or “more technical” aspects of debates, as opposed to being something that should inform your overarching strategy. Besides, it pains me to watch a poorly executed version of an argument that I agree with, whereas a poorly executed version of an argument that I disagree with strikes me as a matter of indifference. So, your best bet is probably to argue whatever you like to argue if I’m your judge.

I incline, as much as I can, against intervening in debates that I judge – though I oscillate as to whether I take this to express some vague pretension to intellectual integrity or mere laziness. This isn’t to say I don’t intervene. (For example, I have yet to develop a criterion for new arguments that amounts to anything more than thinking “I saw it coming, so you should have too.”) Nevertheless, it is to say that I try not to intervene more than I must to make a decision. If your argument is valid or strong, I’m willing to vote for it. (Soundness and cogency are far too high a bar for most arguments to pass, and I can’t make claims about the soundness or cogency of your arguments without portending to know things about the world, which gets us all in hot water.) So, again: read what you’d like.

If no one in the debate tells me how to judge it, as is the case more often than not, I default to some sort of opportunity-cost calculation thingy, maybe with some offense-defense jargon thrown in so that I sound like I know what I’m talking about. To be clear, I consider such methods inadequate to the task of doing justice to the messy value oriented questions that debates typically devolve into. Nevertheless, I resort to such crude methods because I think it’s fair to presume that most policy debaters take some such paradigm for granted – and it’s not my place to ruin your fun. (For my part, when I read the room, I often think something like: “Are these calculators trying to make heads or tails of ethical questions? Fascinating.”) If someone in the debate tells me I shouldn’t do the cost-benefit-analysis thingy, great. But you’ve been warned about what I’ll do if left to my own devices. Chalk it up to the aforementioned inability to distinguish intellectual integrity from laziness.

In descending order of preference, I suspect that these are the kinds of rounds you want me to judge for you:

1. “Clash” of “Civilizations” Debates

2. Critique v. Critique Debates

3. Policy v. Policy Debates

Here’s some explanation for this ranking.

1. “Clash” of “Civilizations” Debates – On the one hand, I didn’t read plans, topical or otherwise. I was what some call “a critique debater.” On the other hand, my familiarity with the standard policy-debate replies to critical arguments is developed enough that I don’t hesitate to vote for policy teams against critical arguments. Indeed, I often find myself voting on arguments that, in my bones, I believe are false. To cite a sadly common example, I don’t think fairness is an impact; if a game is shown to be unethical, bellyaching about equal due within the game seems to me to be beside the point. Similarly, the argument that “clash is unique to debate, so it must be its purpose” is worse than Aristotle’s argument from function, which I bet you don’t believe either. Yet, I vote on fairness and clash as impacts regularly. “Topical versions of the affirmative” and “switch side debate solves” arguments are counterplans in disguise – and I expect critique debaters worth their salt to be wise to such tricks by now.

2. Critique v. Critique Debates – I list these debates second because they tend to be messy, with teams struggling to generate clear competition claims. The struggle is often bad enough that judge intervention is required at a more fundamental level of the debate than usual. So, if you have me in these debates, try to hold my hand when it comes to explaining how the arguments in the debate ought to be compared. Otherwise, I’ll intervene in an unexpected place based on what I consider to the philosophical ground-floor of the debate – and to wit, I’ll blame you for my doing so. Another reason I put these second is that there are many different kinds of critique arguments and you likely don’t want me to judge all of them. I mostly read Baudrillard, Bataille, and other bastard children of Nietzsche born in France. As a result of these research interests, which I still champion, I dislike critical strategies that shrilly moralize or rely heavily on some taken-for-granted notion of identity. Don’t worry, though. Should you choose to moralize your opponents and should they choose to grovel apologetically, I’ll vote for you – quickly, too.

3. Policy v. Policy Debates – I like to think I can judge debates about counterplans, disadvantages, and case. Nevertheless, and regardless of what year it is, I probably haven’t done any research on the topic. There are too many things that I want to read for me to whittle away my eyesight reading about process counterplans. Technical terms from topic literature, acronyms, tricky procedural distinctions – you will have to explain these things to me patiently. Otherwise, I approach these debates like a toddler in a knife store. Let me be explicit: I enjoy a case beatdown as much as the next judge, but you may need to catch me up to speed before I know what, exactly, is going on.

Many of the debates that I judge are what I call “a double loss.” A double loss occurs when neither team has effectively precluded the possibility of me voting for their opponents (without intervening for them, that is). If I judge you and the debate is a double loss, I will likely tell you as much. This isn’t intended to hurt your feelings. But it is intended to remind you: you left enough doors open that you’re letting me decide the debate haphazardly. My RFD is bad, you say? You should have written a better one for me.

After a debate is over, I tend to ask myself: (i) “what is the central question of this debate?” and (ii) “which team requires me to do less work in order to write a ballot for their side?”

If the debaters themselves have not told me the answer to the first of these questions, and in keeping with my feeble attempt to fall back on some ill-defined policy-debate-norm that I assume policy debaters take for granted, then I answer the first question with something like: “the central question of the debate is how effectively avoid bad stuff, like a big boom-boom with horror-show theatrics.” Don’t like that? Nor do I. But if you don’t tell me not to do the cost-benefit analysis calculation-thingy, that’s what I’ll fall back on. You’ve been warned twice now.

Unfortunately, debaters often require that I do a great deal of work to rationalize voting for them. I’m frequently left doing impact comparisons, having to think through the priority among arguments, asking what arguments undercut others… These are all signs that I’m judging “a double loss.” Woof. So, like I say, I ask myself (ii) “which team requires me to do less work in order to vote for them?” I then incline toward thinking whatever team that is has likely won the debate. Just to be sure, though, I go back through my notes and see whether there are adequate answers to all of the bits and pieces the other team may whine about in an attempt to convince me, after the fact, that they won the debate. If the answers are adequate, I vote for the team who lost less, that is, for the team who requires that I do less work for them. If the answers aren’t adequate, then I ask myself why it took so much effort to discover this team’s winning argument... and, very likely, still vote for the other team because they didn't need me to do so much work for them.

I’ve made at least three wrong decisions when judging debates. If I do this to you, I will let you know once I realize as much.

The Long:

Good on you for reading more than the bare minimum.

My name is James. I was a critique debater who called everything an impact turn.

Don’t lose the forest for the trees.

Try to enjoy - well, everything you do, but also - your debates.

Here's my old judging paradigm, which is now a simulacra of sorts.

I don't have much time...

I agree with Calum Matheson's debate paradigm, for now, with a certain degree of deviation which needn't really concern anyone. It reads:

Calum Matheson--Harvard

Do as thou will shall be the whole of the law. All styles of debate can be done well or done poorly. Very little offends me. If you can’t beat the argument that genocide is good or that rocks are people, or that rock genocide is good even though they’re people, then you are a bad advocate of your cause and you should lose. If it’s so wrong and you’re so right, then it should be easy for you to win. Is that really too high a bar? If so, then I have a 26.5 here for you. Do you like it? I made it myself. Just for you.

Debates are almost always decided in part by preconceived ideas which we presume to be shared. The same holds true for debate-theoretical issues. Due to time pressure, size, or whatever, many debates leave some element that a judge must decide for themselves, like “What is the standard for a new argument?” or “What does it mean for something to be conceded?” As a result, I have rewritten this to focus on those factors. All of these are defaults. Contrary arguments by a team in a debate always override them. I would like to intervene as little as possible, but am unwilling to pretend that anyone's objective.

1. An argument contains at least a claim and a reason. It constitutes intervention for a judge to ignore a dropped argument on the basis of its soundness, rather than its validity. If you don't know what that means, you should look it up--it might be helpful more generally.

2. One makes an argument, and then reads evidence to support it. The evidence is not the argument. Many judges read too much evidence, which invites them to intervene. In thebest case, reading fifty cards and taking forever to make a decision means you’re reading too much into cards, forgetting the debate, and thus taking the debate away from the competitors. You should use your evidence carefully and sparingly with me. I’d rather you read a few high-quality cards than a big pile of crap. The quality of arguments matters, not the quantity of evidence.

3. “Any risk” is inane. Below some level of probability, signal should be overwhelmed by noise, or perhaps the opposite effect might occur. Pretending that one can calculate risk precisely is stupid. Are you really sure that the risk of a disad is fifteen percent? Are you sure it’s not, say, twenty? Or maybe ten? Or, God forbid, twenty-five? If you are able to calculate risk with such precision, please quit debate and join the DIA. Your country needs you, citizen. If not, recognize that risks can be roughly calculated in a relative way, but that the application of mathematical models to debate is a (sometimes) useful heuristic, not an independently viable tool for evaluation.

4. Uniqueness cannot determine the direction of a link. This is not an opinion, just a statement of fact. Some outcome is more or less likely to happen in the future, but because it’s a prediction, the probability is almost never 100%. The link is a net assessment of how the plan changes this—it’s a yes/no, up/down thing. So if one team wins the direction of the link, they should win the argument (although winning the sign of the change doesn’t mean that its magnitude is necessarily enough to result in a particular outcome).
Here’s an example: the Aff has three advantages. The Neg has a counterplan that definitely solves two of them, and definitely does not solve the third. The Neg only has inherency arguments on that advantage, which is the only net benefit to the counterplan. Does the Neg win? No. They have no offense so the counterplan can’t possibly be better than the Aff alone. This situation is identical to the case when a counterplan solves all of the case, the Neg wins uniqueness to the net benefit, but the Aff wins (non-unique) link turns.

5. An argument that is conceded is “true” for the purpose of the debate and joins the set of other usually unspoken presuppositions, like “things can cause things,” “death is bad,” “the Obama mentioned in the cards is the president of the United States,” and so forth. This means that if something is conceded by the negative bloc (for example) and then becomes relevant again as a reaction to the 2nr, the Aff’s extension of it is not new.

6. My criteria for “new” applications of an argument: if I could see it coming when the team made the argument originally then their use of it later on is not new. I know this isn’t a perfect standard, but I can’t think of a better one. If a claim or reason is not made until the rebuttals then that component of the argument is new, but not necessarily the whole argument. It’s not enough to say “this is new.” You must say that that’s bad for some reason.

7. Offense/defense isn’t always appropriate for theory arguments. The team that makes the argument has the burden to show that it’s okay to do that, but they don’t need to prove that something is particularly good—just okay. Theory arguments should be rooted in something fundamental. There are hypothetical benefits of debate, then practices that further them, then specific arguments that are examples of those practices. These principles rarely result in a counterinterpretation that isn’t an arbitrary, self-serving turd shat gracelessly into a shallow theory debate.

8. The idea that the Aff determines the meaning of words in the plan is wrong. If so, then nothing would stop them from saying “by Iraq we meant Iran,” “decrease means make more,” or whatever. Topicality arguments would be impossible. Competition and disad links even worse. Cleverly written Affs could have some ambiguity in their advantages so that words in the plan could be suddenly and arbitrarily redefined in ways that still allow the plan to have advantages. The meaning of the plan wouldn’t be predictable. Here’s the plan you hand the Negative before the debate: “The USFG should set fire to children. Survivors will be eaten by cobras.” The Neg spends half an hour prepping (some “cobras aren’t big enough to eat kids” cards, maybe a PIC out of children who agree to join the Marine Corps, a "Russia likes cobras/hates children" card, etc) and then the debate starts and the 1AC is about why the war in Iraq is immoral and we should ban depleted uranium shells. Seems to me that a better interpretation is that both sides should debate over the meaning of the words in the plan text—which the Aff should be ahead on since they chose the words.

9. Unless the Negative makes an argument to the contrary, going for a counterplan in the 2NR means that the only relevant comparison is the counterplan versus the plan. If the plan is better than the counterplan, the Aff does not need to be compared to the status quo. It is “logical” for the judge to compare the plan to the status quo if the counterplan is a bad idea, but it’s similarly logical for the judge to vote for only part of the plan, or the plan plus some undiscussed-but-implied alternative, delay the plan for a couple of months, or to unilaterally decide that a disad isn’t intrinsic. Saying “status quo is always an option” doesn’t resolve this—an option for who? The 2NR or the judge? If you want the status quo to be considered along with the counterplan, you should say so clearly.

10. Debates should be about opportunity cost. Disadvantages should be intrinsic to the plan. Many people seem not to understand what this means. If the impact to a disad is that the same actor doing the plan would then do something bad, this disad is not intrinsic—i.e., nothing about the plan means that the disadvantage necessarily results. Example: the plan has the US Congress withdraw US troops from Iraq. The Neg says “Congress would then choose not to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment and that would hurt US-Russian relations.” This disadvantage is not intrinsic, because the same actor—Congress—could do the plan and still repeal Jackson-Vanik. A legitimate Aff response is “Congress could do the plan and still repeal Jackson-Vanik.” Here’s where some people seem to get stuck: the Aff argument “we could do the plan and Congress could give Alaska back to Russia” is not a legitimate argument. Intrinsicness arguments are like permutations of the status quo—they test to see if the Aff could do the plan and still maintain the decision that the negative says the plan trades off with (Jackson-Vanik). They can’t introduce new options to solve the same impact because that tests the necessary magnitude of the cost, not whether or not two courses of action are actually exclusive of one another. The “plan plus return Alaska” argument tests competition with a hypothetical world where we’re giving back Alaska, which is not the world that the Negative defends. There are many, many ways around this intrinsicness requirement for the Negative, and I have very rarely voted Aff on this argument.

11. In critical debates, the role of the judge is very important (“critique” is not spelled with a “k” in English, and we didn’t fight the Boche on and off for thirty years just to revert to their barbarian customs). If the alternative uses an agent other than that proposed by the Aff, it is necessary to make this clear and justify the change. I don’t think the default position for the judge is as a government policy maker—without further instruction, I will suppose that the judge should just select the best option regardless of the agent, but this presents a number of serious problems that are worthy of attention by both teams, as whoever wins the “role of the judge” generally wins the debate.

12. All debates are impact debates. If team one wins that (impact x risk) of their arguments is larger than (impact x risk) of team two's arguments, team one wins. Although the standards for evaluating impacts is different in different debates (e.g., "liberty outweighs life," "moral action outweighs consequences"), this is true in theory debates, policy debates, and critical debates because the "impact" is just the reason to care about whatever you said. Impact calculus is thus very, very important, probably more important than any other aspect of a debate. Oddly enough, I think this is also the least-developed part of most debates. Bear in mind how conceded arguments influence impact uniqueness--in many debates, someone kicks a disad with a nuclear war impact by conceding that it's not unique and doesn't link. This means that the judge is making a decision about two opposing contingent worlds, both of which contain a nuclear war, usually in the next few years. Shouldn't timeframe matter more then since we'll all be fighting Super Mutants and learning to make our own bullets in a couple of years? In a related note, it's strange to me how little people exploit the impacts that they do win since the scale of impacts people discuss would clearly effect one another not just at the internal link level (e.g. "econ collapse hurts heg") but at the level of terminal impacts vs. internal links (a nuclear war might cause pandemics, or collapse the economy, or whatever--at the very least, we'd probably quit enforcing the plan once the time came to discuss the finer points of radioactive cannibalism).

13. Nearly always, what Aff teams call "not unique" arguments are actually brinks. Because most disads are cartoonishly stupid, they are also unique, because the magnitude of change that they're talking about is extreme. Example: "the plan spends money; hurts the economy; econ collapse = nuke war." If the Aff says "economy low now," that's probably good for the Neg, because their impact ev is talking about a situation where the economy has completely collapsed, so the Aff claim arguably adds plausibility to their argument. Link uniqueness is different of course.

14. Debate is ultimately about communicating your ideas to a judge to persuade them to vote for you. If I cannot understand you, I will not be persuaded to vote for you. It is the burden of debaters to communicate clearly. I will not say “clear.” I will just ignore you without remorse, since the most basic goal of a debater is to be understood by the judge. This doesn't apply if it's not your fault, e.g., you're too far away and I can't hear you.

15. A few notes on language: Speaker points are entirely subjective. They reflect how much I like a set of speeches as a performance; feel free to fight with me about them but be aware that I have never cared. If you have an accent, speak a dialect, or whatever, I would not penalize you. That said, if you think that the first syllables of "tyrant" and "tyranny" are pronounced the same way, I wish you ill. Similarly, the aff does not "cause the Holocaust," unless this is an unusually bizarre counterfactual debate. "Knight Ridder" is a news agency; "Night Rider" was an 80's television series. "G.A.O." is an acronym, not a name. "Genocide" is a noun. The adjectival form is "genocidal." "Genocide" is not a verb. "Critique," as previously mentioned, is spelled with a "C," and as a rule, unnecessary use of German never made an argument sound less insidious. "Spec" is an annoying abbreviation; "tix" is one whose users should be condemned to a short life of hard labor in a Siberian uranium mine.

Again, all of these are defaults, and I ignore them when teams I judge make contrary arguments. Please do feel free to contact me with questions about how I judge or ideas for change. I will update this periodically.

I flow everything straight down on paper.

I actually think framework is a good argument, but in the way that I think it pushes K args to defend some of the fundamental aspects of their arguments - reform, legal solutions, the state, progress, liberalism, traditional forms of politics, etc. I think these are the important aspects of framework. Procedural fairness is an impact and not one that I love, but it's a means to an end. You still have to win some kind of terminal impact to framework, otherwise we're just playing a technical game of checkers. Give me a reason to care.

Affs get perms. You need a link to your K anyway. That should make it so the perm is unable to solve the impacts of your criticism. But they still get to make the perm argument so that that aspect of the debate is tested. I get it, it's a method debate. But I super want you to have a link that says why their method sucks.

Example: direct revolutionary praxis vs strategic, opaque resistance. There are a ton of flavors of these methods, but at their roots they are competitive and produce good debates.

"Performance" - All debate is a performance. This categorical distinction is arbitrary and I don't like it. Of course you can read a story to support your argument. People do that.

Evidence – I'm going to read cards. I like them. I think cards should be good and well warranted, and I hate calling for cards only to find a good argument was backed up with some lackluster ev.

Matthew Moore

Judge Philosophy- Update Oct 23

I am no longer actively coaching debate so if I am judging you it was because someone really needed a judge. I was involved in college policy debate for over 20 years. I was the Director of Debate at the University of Central Oklahoma until May 2022.

Do the style of debate that suits you best and you are best at. Traditional/non-traditional/K/performance/whatever, do your best. Make arguments, impact them, explain to me as a judge why your arguments should win.

The only argument I will not be open minded to on the high school level is disclosure theory. If you run it in front of me, even as a throw away, you are risking losing my ballot and a lot of speaker points. It is ok to make they did not disclose anything as part of a larger theory argument, but if you think that the other team failing to disclose to the level of your liking is a reason you should win the round, then you are doing debate wrong. Seriously, just stop.

Important questions:

Will you vote on framework? Yes

Will you vote for an aff that is not topical against framework? Yes

I am about 50/50 in these debates because I leave it up to the debaters. The aff usually wins these debates when they have substantive impact turns to the framework impacts. The neg usually wins when a topical version can access most of the aff’s offense. For affs: T version of the aff does not solve is not very persuasive to me when the solvency argument is functionally it does not solve as well as the aff.

Neg goes for a K versus a policy aff:

At the ’16 Texas tournament, negs going for K’s versus policy affs were 3-0 in front of me. Why? The aff only said weigh the aff, it is true, and then had no substantive answer to the K beyond the aff impacts. You should have offense to the alt that is not just the aff.

Theory:

After hearing multiple rounds where the 2AR goes for conditionality bad and not voting on it once, it is highly probable that affs will not win on condo bad in front of me. Not impossible, just highly improbable. This is especially true is the argument is less than five seconds in the 2AC, 30 seconds in the 1AR, and then six minutes in the 2AR. If you think the neg is cheating, tailor specific theory arguments to the situation (i.e. this conditional pic is uniquely bad). That will be more persuasive to me and garner you better points than "Condo is bad, strategy skew and time skew voter for fairness." I will not vote on perm theory. The aff shouldn’t lose for making a perm no matter how bad it is. The more a counterplan/alt cheats, the more lenient I am to theory arguments against it. Cheating is a relative term here, but affs that can demonstrate the cheating in concrete terms will win my sympathy. You should make the arguments.

Misc:

·The aff can win there is no link to the DA if they win their link turns. Uniqueness does not make the link magically only go in one direction.

·Paperless sharing of speech documents is not an excuse for being unclear. Presentation matters for points.

·For K Debaters- saying the aff results in violent interventions like NATO missions in Libya is not an impact. At best you have an intervention internal link to something else, not a terminal impact.

· Speaker Points - I tend to adjust my scale at the tournament using the points I have given in previous rounds as a guide for future debates. Be professional and respectful to each other. Shut up during the other team’s speeches. I will be pretty honest with you after rounds about what I thought was rude/not professional and what was good. These things really do impact your points.

Don’t read to much into subtle nonverbal cues from me. I have had multiple rounds where I ask a team why didn’t you go for X and they will respond with you looked like you did not like the argument. Judging can be a miserable and uncomfortable experience, usually that look of disgust on my face is the result of a weekend of bad food, lack of sleep, and being stuck in an uncomfortable chair for hours at a time hunched over. I will do my best to make any nonverbal communication that may matter obvious. If I am grimacing because I do not like your argument, that is up to the other team to call out.

Eric Morris, DoF - Missouri State – 29th Year Judging

++++ NDT Version ++++ (Updated 10-22-2019)

(NFALD version: https://forensicstournament.net/MissouriMule/18/judgephil)

Add me to the email - my Gmail is ermocito

I flow CX because it is binding. I stopped recording rounds but would appreciate a recording if clipping was accused.

Be nice to others, whether or not they deserve it.

I prefer line by line debate. People who extend a DA by by grouping the links, impacts, UQ sometimes miss arguments and get lower points. Use opponent's words to signpost.

Assuming aff defends a plan:

Strong presumption T is a voting issue. Aff should win you meet neg's interp or a better one. Neg should say your arguments make the aff interp unreasonable. Topic wording or lit base might or might not justify extra or effects T, particularly with a detailed plan advocate.

High threshold for anything except T/condo as voting issues*. More willing than some to reject the CP, K alts, or even DA links on theory. Theory is better when narrowly tailored to what happened in a specific debate. I have voted every possible way on condo/dispo, but 3x Condo feels reasonable. Under dispo, would conceding "no link" make more sense than conceding "perm do both" to prove a CP did not compete?

Zero link, zero internal link, and zero solvency are possible. Zero impact is rare.

Large-scale terminal impacts are presumed comparable in magnitude unless you prove otherwise. Lower scale impacts also matter, particularly as net benefits.

Evidence is important, but not always essential to initiate an argument. Respect high-quality opponent evidence when making strategic decisions.

If the plan/CP is vague, the opponent gets more input into interpreting it. CX answers, topic definitions, and the literature base helps interpret vague plans, advocacy statements, etc. If you advocate something different from your cards, clarity up front is recommended.

I am open to explicit interps of normal means (who votes for and against plan and how it goes down), even if they differ from community norms, provided they give both teams a chance to win.

Kritiks are similar to DA/CP strategies but if the aff drops some of the "greatest hits" they are in bad shape. Affs should consider what offense they have inside the neg's framework interp in case neg wins their interp. K impacts, aff or neg, can outweigh or tiebreak.

Assuming aff doesn't defend a plan:

Many planless debates incentivize exploring important literature bases, but afer decades, we should be farther along creating a paradigm that can account for most debates. Eager to hear your contributions to that! Here is a good example of detailed counter-interps (models of debate). http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php/topic,2345.0.html

Impact turns are presumed relevant to kritikal args. "Not my pomo" is weak until I hear a warranted distinction. I prefer the negative to attempt direct engagement (even if they end up going for T). It can be easier to win the ballot this way if the aff overcovers T. Affs which dodge case specific offense are particularly vulnerable on T (or other theory arguments).

Topicality is always a decent option for the neg. I would be open to having the negative go for either resolution good (topicality) or resolution bad (we negate it). Topicality arguments not framed in USFG/framework may avoid some aff offense.

In framework rounds, the aff usually wins offense but impact comparison should account for mitigators like TVA's and creative counter-interps. An explicit counter-interp (or model of debate) which greatly mitigates the limits DA is recommended - see example below. Accounting for topic words is helpful. TVA's are like CP's because they mitigate whether topics are really precluded by the T interp.

If I were asked to design a format to facilitate K/performance debate, I would be surprised. After that wore off, I would propose a season-long list of concepts with deep literature bases and expect the aff to tie most into an explicit 1AC thesis. Such an approach could be done outside of CEDA if publicized.

This was too short?

* Some ethical issues, like fabrication, are voting issues, regardless of line by line.

FOR COLLEGE TOURNAMENTS: ukydebate@gmail.com

FOR HS TOURNAMENTS:devanemdebate@gmail.com

My name is Devane (Da-Von) Murphy, and I'm the Associate Director of Debate at the University of Kentucky. My conflicts are Newark Science, Coppell High School, University High School, Rutgers-Newark, Dartmouth College, and the University of Kentucky. I debated 4 years of policy in high school and for some time in college, however, I've coached Lincoln-Douglas as well as Public Forum debaters so I should be good on all fronts. I ran all types of arguments in my career, from Politics to Deleuze and back, and my largest piece of advice to you with me in the back of the room is to run what you are comfortable with. Also, I stole this from Elijah Smith's philosophy

"If you are a policy team, please take into account that most of the "K" judges started by learning the rules of policy debate and competing traditionally. I respect your right to decide what debate means to you, but debate also means something to me and every other judge. Thinking about the form of your argument as something I may not be receptive to is much different from me saying that I don't appreciate the hard work you have done to produce the content"

***Emory LD Edit***

I'm a policy debater in training but I'm not completely oblivious to the different terms and strategies used in LD. That being said, I hate some of the things that are supposed to be "acceptable" in the activity. First, I HATE frivolous Theory debates. I will vote for it if I absolutely have to but I have VERY HIGH threshold and I will not be kind to your speaker points. Second, if your thing is to do whatever a "skeptrigger" is or something along that vein, please STRIKE me. It'd be a waste of your time as I have nothing to offer you educationally. Another argument that I probably will have a hard time evaluating is constitutivism/truth testing. Please compare impacts and tell me why I should vote for you. Other than that, everything else here is applicable. Have fun and if you make me laugh, I'll boost your speaks.

DA's: I like these kinds of debates. My largest criticism is that if you are going to read a DA in front of me, please give some form of impact calculus that helps me to evaluate which argument should be prioritized with my ballot. And I'm not just saying calculus to mean timeframe, probability or magnitude but rather to ask for a comparison between the impacts offered in the round. (just a precursor but this is necessary for all arguments not just DA's)

CP's: I like CP's however for the abusive ones (and yes I'm referring to Consult, Condition, Multi-Plank, Sunset, etc.) Theoretical objections persuade me. I'm not saying don't run these in front of me however if someone runs theory please don't just gloss over it because it will be a reason to reject the argument and if its in the 2NR the team.

K's: I like the K too however that does not mean that I am completely familiar with the lit that you are reading as arguments. The easiest way to persuade me is to have contextualized links to the aff as well as not blazing through the intricate details of your stuff. Not to say I can't flow speed (college debate is kinda fast) I would rather not flow a bunch of high theory which would mean that I won't know what you're talking about. You really don't want me to not know what you're talking about. SERIOUSLY. I will lower your speaker points without hesitation

Framework: I'm usually debating on the K side of this, but I will vote on either side. If the negative is winning and impacting their decision-making impact over the impacts of the aff then I would vote negative. On the flip side, if the aff wins that the interpretation is a targeted method of skewing certain conversations and wins offense to the conversation, I would vote aff. This being said I go by my flow. Also, I'm honestly not too persuaded by fairness as an impact, but the decision-making parts of the argument intrigue me.

K-Affs/Performance: I'm 100% with these. However, they have to be done the right way. I don't wanna hear poetry spread at me at high speeds nor do I want to hear convoluted high theory without much explanation. That being said, I love to watch these kinds of debates and have been a part of a bunch of them.

Theory: I'll vote on it if you're impacting your standards. If you're spreading blocks, probably won't vote for it.

Andrew Myers a.k.a. "Big" or "Big Mead"

Current Assistant Director of Debate for Gonzaga University and Former Assistant Head Coach at Mead HS.

BA- Phil/Poli-Sci GU '12, MA- Phil SUNY Buffalo '14

4 Years Debating for Mead HS, 3 Years for Gonzaga. 5 Years Assistant Coach Mead HS, 5 Years ADOD at GU.

Email: andrewrossmyers@gmail.com

Final NDT Update – Minnesota NDT 19 (3-19-19)

To paraphrase Ryan Wash, this 'stuff' here is like a novel – it’s long and a lot to read. Fair, so I stole the “philosophy for the Twitter generation” idea from Adam Symonds for those that don't want to read it all:

TLDR: I have voted for and against Framework, Antiblackness, ESR + Flex, Nuclear Deterrence, Storytelling, and the State. Boo untopical policy Affs and abusive ESR CPs. Hater's Guide: Strict about highlighting, thinks Logic is real, votes for caring about people, Education > Fairness, thinks Debate isn’t just a game, hates agenda politics disads, votes for identity arguments.

My Decision Making Process:

My Vote means I think Team A wins and Team B loses. The final rebuttals most likely to win my ballot are clear on why my vote should declare their Team the winner, but the final rebuttal isn’t the only thing I will consider.

The Process of deciding which Team wins

1. General Impression – What is my first intuition about which team won the debate and why?

2. Check the Record – Did I miss something? Did I undervalue an Argument? Is there a critical concession?

3. Casting a Vote –

A. What are the “voting” issues?

B. Which, if any, arguments were decisively won or lost?

C. How do those arguments relate to the voting issues raised?

4. Determination and Decision – How will I explain the decision? Why Do I accept one of Team A’s or Team B’s voting issues over the other, i.e. Why not vote the opposite way?

This, quite simply, is how I make a decision. For why I make my decision, the rest of my judging philosophy is committed to continued debates where the voting issues are familiar. Debate is more exciting when the ground is unfamiliar, but that doesn’t mean classic debates are not interesting. Note that what constitutes a “classic” debate has more to do with intensity than ideology.

I cannot express anymore so clearly than this: Debate should not be a violent exercise, but it should be competitive, performative, and reasoned activity.

Arguments I will not likely ever vote for

Either,

A. Make debate a violent activity

Or,

B. Refuse Competition, Performance, or Reasoning.

(See below: Ethos, Pathos, Logos)

Examples of Arguments I will likely not like voting for:

1. No K’s ever judge, philosophy is too hard! If making sure when we act we do the right thing is hard for you, I have no sympathy.

2. Debate is Bad because it’s competitive! If your argument is right that winning is bad, why should you win? Clearly debate can take the competitive spirit too far and into the realm of toxicity (see: Either, A.). That violence forgets that part of playing a game is that you play with others.

3. The Circular Logic of Intrinsicness – There is a difference between what I think is intrinsic to the activity, a.k.a. what is to be done while judging, and the assertion of something being intrinsically good. The remnants of theory debates recirculating invoke too fondly paramount truths that are evidently not so self-evident.

4. The Argument as You experienced it/know it – My role here is to consider how we experience you making that argument in relation to others.

Finally, Debating about a Topic is language gaming. There are various language games we play, but we do so competitively at the intersection of thought and performance.

The 2018-2019 CEDA-NDT Topic headache:

I’ll evaluate the debate in front of me. I don’t think this resolution makes sense, and worse, is the bad kind of language game. I miss resolutions that were a statement, not a matrix.

If y’all are intent on having an ESR/Flex debate, that’s fine. Aff’s should be able to answer those core generics, some CPs are more abusive than others. I just don’t find that debate interesting.

I don’t get why Framework teams read not-topical Affs and not-topical TVAs, but especially on this topic (where the floodgates are clearly open). Aim Higher! K teams should not be afraid to read T in front of me against policy Affs. Policy Negs should be ready to defend the topic if your Framework argument is that the topic is good.

No Exec Authority to First Use Nuclear Strike =/= No First Use

Affs should specify the restriction(s)

I don’t think the Act of students debating simultaneously does anything about Trump in the moment. I do think I have seen debating by students on this topic that could effectuate change out of the round. I don’t know if this means anything in regards to presidential power.

I’m really not cool with War Criminals or Fascists.

NDT 16 Judge Philosophy Update 3-25-16

This will by my second year judging and coaching at the NDT for Gonzaga, and I feel compelled to comment on my continually developing disposition(s) as a judge.

I’ve had 52 rounds on this topic, varying in all styles.

I implore you to read what I’ve written here. I take this part of my job seriously and want to demonstrate how my thinking (philosophy) changes and stays the same.

If you don’t read it, ask Michigan KM how that went.

I prefer my role as a judge to be a primarily nonverbal communicative partner – including me in the round, making eye contact (when appropriate), reacting to how I am understanding you, is not merely a narcissistic request: it’s a recognition of a preference for active learning and teaching, for all of us.

I have previously written here that I prefer to be an educator, but frankly that won’t be the case for certain content or experiences. I can, however, offer some academic advice on the structure of your arguments, rhetoric and speaking style. Thus, being an educator is a preference based on comfort, but my comfort isn’t my preference with exception to the following uncomfortable (enough to vote you down) scenarios:

• Making jokes about rape, or responding to issues of sexual violence with jokes. It’s not funny to me. You know who you are.
• Sex, Gender, Orientation, Race or Ability discrimination
• Being willfully ignorant about Race. Racial naiveté isn’t always a reason to lose a round, but being unwilling to admit fault, mistake or responsibility for certain behaviors is not, at the very least, a persuasive way to get my ballot.

As a quick aside on education, the question of what a university should be for often causes me consternation. After all, for someone who valued education as an excuse not to go home, my growing pessimism in the academy (whether from the expected bitterness of graduate school or from the contemporary conversations of the occupy and black lives matter generation) makes me receptive to some cynical positions. I’ve seen some pretty indefensible things condoned in the University. That said…I still believe this activity can be good for students and as such my responsibility is primarily to them. The second I don’t believe that, I won’t be here. Without students we coaches don’t have a job. See Below: Commitment to Educational Debate.

And so I return to my reason for posting: I felt compelled because of my position to comment on some topics pervading the debate community right now:

- If I’m on a panel and someone wants to replace me, I won’t be offended as long as I can cover the rounds I am obliged to so my students can debate.

- If there is a recording, I don’t really want to be on it… So I understand the concern with being recorded against your will. I know states differ on their local laws and the NDT Committee has put forth polices on it. If both teams have to be on video, then I will also have to be on video for the space to be fair(er). I think there are interesting privacy arguments in support of extending protections against being recorded in debates, but I also think accountability is important. In the end I just want to judge the debate.

- I think speech times have to be rigid. I am fine with flex prep, and am honestly lax about prep in general, but at some point fairness and timeliness is a concern.

- I once judged a debate where a Bifo team hit a Buddhist team and they deconstructed the round, reconstructed it, and gave final speeches after dialogue. It was different but not uncomfortable, on time, mutually agreed upon, and productive.

- The only things I will say about civility concerns: a) Before the debate starts I don’t expect much other than if I’m asked I’ll answer questions. b) When the timer starts for the 1AC it’s all performance – that’s a necessary space to express some seriously challenging thoughts c)When the timer stops I prefer some quiet to make a decision, but I often will go smoke or put my headphones in anyway d) At no point should you physically harass anyone. Consent for me applies equally well to unwanted intentional physical touching e) Other issues are probably not my fight and I don’t poke around in them unless beckoned to – either by the ballot or as a community member and academic employee.

As a child Hip Hop made me read books,

And Hip Hop made me wanna be a crook

And Hip Hop gave me the way and something to say

And all I took in return is a second look

- Slug, Party for the Fight to Write

An Admission of Hubris –

“I probably have read the primary sources your authors are talking about.”

Turns out I don’t know much about many contemporary primary source debate authors, even if many of them I do (Given my previous disclosures of my education, expected authors would include stuff like Foucault and Fanon, but exclude stuff like Berlant and Bifo). Either way, you could plausibly predict what I’ve read merely given the MA and BAs in Political Science and Philosophy from a Jesuit Liberal Arts School. Ah how the tables have turned!

To Finish, another nod to Z-Lowe..

Ten Things I Like and Dislike

1. Terrible highlighting -

Honestly a lot of the “evidence” students are reading into the round has become unrecognizable by academic standards of clarity and integrity. Examples of things that irk me: sentence fragments, highlighting parts of a word as a word (i.e., deforestation becomes “defo,” proliferation becomes “prolif,” nuclear weapons becomes "nucs" ). A good way to understand my expectation: highlight your evidence as if you were quoting your sources in an academic paper. Anything else is the privileging debate norms over educational standards of scholarship.

2. Reading a Pile ‘O’ Cards -

In almost every entry here I bring this up. I still will read a bunch of evidence after the round given certain circumstances, but it’s my least favorite thing to do. Given the complexity of debate and the relative short times to make decisions, I don’t want to spend my time adjucating reading evidence I should have heard as part of your “speech.” Making a decision after re-reading read evidence in a debate distances judges from the performance of the speech and increases the likelihood of interpretive hubris. I don’t think either of those things are desirable characteristics of a decision. My novel idea for debate would be for judges to hear evidence read, the first time its read. I also think this is possibly a reason why I often find affective modes of communication persuasive – what they lack in depth they make up in clarity. I don’t think debate is a research competition.

A minor quip on the subject of speech documents: sending a speech doc for your opponents and judges that is 100 pages is both annoying and unrealistic. It makes it hard for everyone and borders on obfuscation. For my philosophy on obfuscation, See: Baudrillard.

3. Affs That Do Things –

I was more often a 2A than a 2N throughout my career. I loved the challenge of changing the status quo. Debate is one of the few spaces you can advocate things we would otherwise be shutdown for: ideas being politically unlikely, socially difficult or subject to academic inertia. If you aff decides to do nothing, I am very likely to buy presumption/pessimism arguments in response. If your aff does something, I am more likely to filter the debate through that proposed change. On a somewhat related note, my proclivity for opacity arguments is almost always as a neg strategy. I do think there are instances in which an opacity Aff makes sense, but given my biases here, it may be best to explain opacity as somehow a strategy to change the SQ, instead of merely retreat from it.

4. Violence, Nebulas… not Stirred

Too many debates I’ve seen have debaters using violence as an ultimate impact, without explaining intricacies or giving frameworks for understanding what violence means. How am I supposed to adjudicate different claims of violence against each other? Or what about violence against some tangible traditional impact (War, Environment, Disease)? Ethics can’t function if everything is axiologically leveled to “violence,” and thus questions of what I should vote for is very likely to be arbitrary in the minds of participants, even if inevitable given the level of analysis in the debate.

5. Demarcating Points of Contestation

Similar to my respect for taking on the challenge of the SQ, I reward debaters who clearly demarcate points of contestation in the round and focus on those matters of debate. Too often debaters run away from arguments rather than engage them. In the college policy debate community this can be discouraging, because we are supposedly a model for deliberation and dialogue. Those latter realities only exist if you’re willing to admit where the debate is, admit that you may not necessarily be right, but debate out the issues.

6. Lost Art of the Case Debate

I am by no means a stock issues judge, but I do think that every argument, every aff should be responsible for these questions. A lot of the time case debate devolves into alt causes and impact defense. While those are good arguments to have, especially in the 2nr, not debating the case is almost always an important forgone opportunity. This is particularly true for K affs – put up a fit and you will be in a much better position than simply ignoring the case. Because of my expectations of an affirmative, I can be persuaded to not vote for an aff based on solvency alone.

7. Joshua Greene on Deontology and Util –

I feel it’s important to disclose this bias, and I have to a few teams. Here’s the thing, when you spend a year on a masters thesis and one of the opponents of your thesis becomes a large focus of effort, time and intellectual investment…it’s nearly impossible to remove that bias. Joshua Greene’s arguments in favor of a moral realist/essentialist account of utilitarianism and deontology invariably raises my blood pressure and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Read a different defense of utilitarianism in front of me – I’m not persuaded FMRI’s prove how people think morally.

8. Flex Time –

I think there is enough to be gained in cross-examination, the most lively and engaging part of debate, that using prep time to ask and answer questions has almost no downside for me. That said, I think the other team has the right to not consent to questions of content (instead of clarification questions: theory, technical or flow) after the normal 3-minute cx period has expired.

9. Conflating Topicality and Framework –

The more persuasive arguments for me center on the content/object of the resolution (military presence) rather than on implementation/actor questions. For one, I think a resolution without “federal government” makes traditional Topicality arguments that turn into framework arguments very duplicitous. Framework should be the debate about what that Aff and Neg should have to do to meet a good interpretation of debate. If an aff makes an ethical statement that US Military Presence is bad, you have the grounds to say its good. You don’t need USFG action to do that. An Aff that doesn’t engage in the question of military presence, or some interpretation of that, isn’t being topical and I can find it a reason to vote Neg. I have voted on different conflations of Framework and T, but I increasingly find it important to delineate the two.

10. Being Big

I am still working on my pronoun usage and am myself unclear about my thoughts on many issues of identity, but I do think my persona in debate, while always authentic, is somewhat reserved. I am not particularly motivated to be extroverted in an activity that often reminds me how stuck up academics can be, and how they think that just because of my appearance they can crack jokes I find distasteful. As a result, I want to be known by who I am when I’m in the debate community. Calling me Andrew is a sign you haven’t given me the courtesy of reading this. Big is always the best way to refer to me.

2015-16 (Military Presence) Preseason Update:

I still endorse my philosophy as written below. Just a few quick updates as we begin this year:

- I am probably not the best judge for Baudrillard debates. Sue me. (Or Forget Baudrillard)

- I still like watching CPs and DAs, much to the dismay and/or shock of my fellow judges and coaches.

- I have a fairly low threshold for what is reasonably topical, but I prefer a reasonability argument on T to make an interpretation of the topic and give me a claim as to why the Aff (and other Affs) could engage the topic under that interpretation.

- Teams that escape jargonism, fashionable witticisms, and oversimplified argument explanation will do well in front of me. I like creative and unique debaters (which can be accomplished in any style - it's usually a matter of dedication, effort and presentation).

- Please explain Acronyms early in the year. Not everyone is going to get what your particular subdivision affirmative is on first hearing it.

- If you didn't read my judging philosophy before round, expect no pity for ignoring my preferences and/or committing offenses I find particularly blameworthy.

- If you can't debate technically, debate thuroughly. I am just flowing in excel columns anyway.

- Random but non-negligble pet peeve: students who start lists and never finish them (e.g., Debater says "There are Three Impacts to the K" then explains only two impacts).

- I value Cross-Examination like a speech. You can win and lose a round in one of those 3 min segments.

- Finally, I proscribe to this ridiculous notion that Debate is a Communicative Activity where Debaters try and Persuade me to Vote for them. See below for what persuades me and what doesn't.

2015 NDT Update:

I decided to post an update to my judging philosophy for the upcoming NDT (2015). Hopefully this is with enough time (a couple of weeks) for everyone to review it.

By far the most important thing: While I've judged 40-45 rounds on this topic, I have done so primary here out west. I don't think that disqualifies any of the debates I've watched - there were some terrific debates I had the privilege to judge this year. Still, full disclosure: I am more familiar with some teams than others, in the sense I've judged them debate before. Then again, with mutual pref judging, this seems like an inevitable outcome - you will always have seen certain parts of the debate community, hardly ever the whole field.

I decided to update what I've written so far for my judging philosophy primarily because I know the preceding to be compelling case for further disclosure of how I adjudicate debates. I stand by much of what I've already written. To expand, I decided to give a "Top Ten Things I Like and Don't like" (primarily an influence of reading Zach Lowe/Simmons Inc... also playing liberally with "Like" and "Don't Like," substitute "find persuasive" and "don't find persuasive" if you wish) in debate rounds.

Top Ten Things I Don't Like (In no particular Order):

1. Clipping

My First round back in debate came down to a clipping call out. Where I come from this is a "no-brainer" ethics question, but I do feel strongly that some rules in debate are necessary. One of those is you must read what you submit as evidence in speeches, particularly when in the form of cards. You will lose if you clip in front of me, but I need video/audio evidence and speech docs to determine this. Please, for everyone involved, do a better job of digitally "marking" your cards - don't leave things to chance.

Because I view clipping this way, it's important to note that while I'm not willing to vote for a team that clipped evidence, not all infractions are alike. I will not always simultaneously reduce speaker points to zero, or some other tanking number, and vote a team down. I believe mistakes can be made, but I also believe people can be malevolent.

Just don't do it, slow down and you'll probably sound better anyway.

2. Automization

I mean this somewhat sarcastically, but nothing about you reading into a computer screen is persuasive to me. I will always believe in the value of files, evidence and research, but those are neither absolute ideals nor the only means to win a debate round. Arguments, for instance, are not something I'm willing to vote on because it was written somewhere - explanation of evidence is key. I feel the prevalence of paperless debating is a evil necessity, primarily because debaters lose something of their ability to speak otherwise. Look up at me occasionally?

3. Avoidance

Call this my inverse justification for Clash being a thing I like. Debaters who avoid issues in debate/debate rounds are usually being: (1)selfish, (2)cowardly, (3)strategic or (4) unknowing/naive/unwilling. Only two of those states become problematic for a debate round, for two produce clash and argumentation, and the other two make the debate messy and needlessly complicated. Don't avoid a point of contestation with me, but also don't feel like I have a preferred set of points from which all arguments should begin.

4. Reading Evidence After the Round

I still dislike this practice, and I wrote about it previously below. However, I should make something clear: I really, really dislike debates where reading a pile of cards is the way to come to a decision. This, I understand, can be the natural outcomes of both good and bad debates. However, I want to stand by my statement:

"I will check evidence for accuracy/truth in representation if another team claims it doesn't support its intended use (i.e. your card that says the sky is purple actually claims the sky is blue). If an argument wasn't clear to me, and you were supposed to win a round on it, you probably should have made it clearer than a mumbled 15 seconds."

I have read multiple pieces of evidence in the post-round this year. I will admit that evil necessity paperless debate has this charm, and having the evidence in an email chain seems like not only good academics, but also a modicum of professionalism. I can't say I haven't been more compelled to read because I can get entire speech docs. This is a particularly helpful part of adjudicating that I won't ignore. However, if I can't get what you want me to get out of evidence in the post round (particularly if it's under-highlighted, which happens too frequently and is frankly discouraging) you will likely have dissuaded me more than had I not, and that matters for close NDT Debates.

The easy way to avoid all of this is to read evidence clearly, and draw the necessary warrants out of it. I think it's lazy to collapse an evidenced argument into a Authors last name (excluding titling a flow). Yes, technically there could be a "line" there, but is a bad practice of rhetoric and I find it unpersuasive. I also am always willing to check on factuality rather than persuasion. If you provide reasons why the other team's evidence is misread/doesn't support their argument, I value that style of argumentation equally as much as I dislike having to interpret evidence for/against speeches. I do not have a problem reading evidence, especially at the NDT, on the basis of these arguments. Ultimately, I am not going to read every piece of evidence submitted for review like that was all you did in the debate round - submitting evidence for review. I have other portions of the debate to think about.

5. Victim Blaming

I have no desire to vote for any argument that implies this ethos. This is both an ethos and a logos question. For example, Psychoanalysis K's can run dangerously close to blaming rape victims. I am not cool with that frame of mind and will flush your expensive euro-trash with a L.

6. Rude Partners

This is the sneaky dark-horse for my ideal in debate: the best debate occurs when partners work together, not individually.

Crazy right? Those who chose 2 person CX debate at some point chose to work with others. I reward debaters who embrace that aspect more than the sound of their own voice. A smart team is almost always two individuals working hard for each other, rather than two smart debaters working for themselves.

Don't be destructive to each other. Agonistic partnerships can be very successful, but they can also hurt your chances at winning. By far the best indictment of your argument, in any round, comes from your partner. Don't belittle, unnecessarily interrupt, or look upset/uninterested during your partner's speech. I ultimately give my ballot to a team, not an individual.

There is also a way to be kind/authentic in criticizing the arguments of your opponents (if you need a primer, see Dennett's "How to compose a successful critical commentary" in Intuition Pumps. I am by no means a fan of Dennett, but that process is one every debater should think about). Make sure, as much as one can, to do this as a team.

7. Tagless Taglines

A bit of 4 and 2 in this one, but I am also old school in how evidence is tagged. I am fine with short tags for evidence that requires no explanation. "Extinction," however, is neither a claim nor statement of fact. In fact, many cards read and tagged in such a manner frequently have little to make me believe the argument is even that strong. On the opposite end of the spectrum are K teams who read 3-4 paragraphs and don't introduce the evidence, or make it clear what part of their argument is supported by some fragment of analysis. Taglines in K debates I have a higher threshold on, but those issues irk me as much as badly tagged evidence that is then read unclearly anyway. Make claims, support them with evidence (or as I told many of my students in the past: evidence is a tool, not an argument).

8. Speaker Point Inflation

Mostly because I couldn't avoid it and my judging philosophy no longer represents my scale well. For the NDT:

26 and Below - You were punishably rude.

26.5. Incomplete, your speech ended with large gaps, whole flows dropped, no persuasiveness

27. Poor, you made a crucial error, were completely disorganized or had gaps in your speeches

27.5 Below Average, you provided no momentum for the ballot

28 - Average, you proved you should be here

28.5 - Above Average, you have the power to win some more ballots here

29.0 - Excellent, you should break at the NDT.

29.5 - Elite, you will be debating on Monday.

30 - Asymptotic, per my experience, these are so infrequent you can't predict them happening.

9. Debaters who don't Check Themselves

It's important to know when you're crossing a line from competitive to exclusionary, confident to obtuse. It's also important to act in a manner that produces a meaningful debate experience (whatever that may be). If that becomes impossible because you're not willing to discuss things like privilege, it seems you've failed at a basic test of self-skepticism that makes arguing possible. When debaters know they can lose on things like "Your evidence doesn't say Econ declines" and don't agree with decisions made through that framing, that to me is on par with refusing to answer the claim that "Your experience should be recognized as privileged in this analysis" and losing because they weren't open to how experience can be interepreted. We can't have debates if we don't purport to have some level of skepticism, arguing would cease to function educationally. That said, these are questions that implicate arguments, and almost completely arguments, rather than individual debaters.

10. Coaches that Degrade, not Support, their Students

I can deal with coaches making fun of each other, but how you treat the students in debate tells me more about you than how you treat the your fellow coaches. I am very intolerant of this in all forms - the students are paying to do this, not us. Treating any student in a defamatory or rude manner, that's a major turn off and I would prefer we don't speak.

Top Ten Things I Like (In no particular Order):

1. Analytic Arguments

I don't know if this a function of my experience with speech and debate growing up, but debaters who can't make arguments without evidence almost certainly are at a disadvantage in front of me. I will not simply dismiss a logical argument because you have a piece of evidence that argues, rather than proves/demonstrates, the opposite. Analytic arguments quality check the cohesiveness of the debate, bring issues to light in the block often foregone, and demonstrate a level of understanding and willingness to argue. Analytic arguments in debate almost always function on an a-posteriori basis and rarely a-prior unless that "K-Word" comes back into play. You should be able to argue, for instance, about connections between evidence, without needing another piece of evidence. This demonstrates a higher level of skill in debate that I reward. I do this not only selfishly as a lover of argumentative analysis, but also as someone who knows this skill can be, and often is, rewarded by graduate school, job opportunities and other sectors of life.

2. Proof by Example(s)

Though I like analytic arguments, and find a-priori claims persuasive, most often the fruitful discussions in debate occur when teams give concrete examples to explain, (sometimes seemingly) abstract concepts, connections or arguments. This process of concretion demonstrates to me a level of sophistication and understanding, and also a tangible hook to hang my hat on during post-round decisions. Obviously metaphors, poems, scripted-performances, etc. could all be examples of proof by example, not just history. Consider my preference here to be a testing question:

Basic Argument Necessities:

1. Do you have a Claim?

2. How is that Claim supported?

3. Proof by example: how does your argument operrationalize in different parts of the debate? How might it explain other questions in the debate?

4. Impact in/for the Round

3. Confidence/Willingness to Make Mistakes

I believe the qualities we associate with great debaters usually include fearlessness, confidence, complete attention, etc. These can manifest in different ways, and those ways in different people. The confidence that impresses me is the willingness to try, and be willing to fail to win a debate round. I think sometimes debaters are too worried about losing to focus on winning. As long as that focus doesn't result in other harmful mannerisms, attitudes and actions, I reward debaters for trying to win the round with with a cool confidence.

4. Round Awareness

Somewhat piggybacking of of 3, Debaters who are aware of details during a debate round can always make more strategic persuasive connections. There is a difference, for instance, in debating in the out rounds of the NDT and the Prelims. The way you construct your speech should be wary of that. The composition(s) of the people in the round is not ignorable, the audience included. There is also an awareness of how arguments function, when to stop belaboring, and when to reword and reclarify those arguments. These skills develop with time, but they should be easier to excersise with me because I am a fairly expressive judge. I am no Dallas, alas, but I do nod my head, smile, frown, laugh...you know, those things that make most of us feel human. I find this to be the most honest practice. Mostly, however, I am just very bad at Poker...so I will not try to be a stone-faced judge.

Debaters should also be aware of time. I don't reward teams with more than completing a sentence when the timer ends. I don't reward desperate shadow extensions in the last few seconds. I do reward speeches that end on or before time, or speeches that properly allocate time. I do reward good use of prep and CX time. Speaking time is the most valuable aspect of debate you can somewhat control, and everyone has the same access to the same time. Utilizing time well is a very good indicator of in round awareness.

5. Commitment to Educational Debate

This is an academic community (it includes mostly people employed and/or enrolled in the academy) that should primarily be focused on the Students. As such, students who understand where the pedagogical value of their arguments lie have a greater chance of winning in front of me. This is partly a question of logos (what have you learned, how did you learn it, what are we to learn?) and commitment your fellow students. Granted: not all students are alike, nor do they have the same experience. These two facts should be treated as advantageous: because you all are not alike and share different experiences, a commitment to learning together is probably the best possible praxis for debate. How does the debate round, per your framework or role of the ballot, promote learning? If learning is not all that important to you, that's fine. But understand I value this part of debate more than fairness or love of the game. I refuse to believe that debate doesn't help students - if that's your explicit goal I will likely be dissuaded. If you don't think debate is important, don't be in debate.

6. Humor

Judging very stressful debates can build up a lot of pressure. Humor is a great release valve. That being said, it's not in everyone's repertoire. Do what makes you comfortable, self-depreciation is almost always humbling but also potentially lighthearted.

7. Clash

Debate can be frustrating when neither team argues about the other teams arguments. The worst debates to judge, for me, have been ones where the Aff only talks about aff evidence, the Neg about the neg evidence. I think this is primarily a function of three practices:

A. Horizontal proliferation of arguments. I am persuaded by claims about 4-5 conditional options as weighing heavily against in depth clash from the 2AC. Part of me believes that this is inevitable in a competitive activity, part of me believes that it is also a defensible tactic. That said, if a team is "pushing pieces" but not arguing well, I do value theoretical objections on the basis of what positons move away from clash and what positions move toward it.

B. Fear of Impact Turning arguments. Too many times arguments become needlessly unwound without a point of disagreement. Your solvency/framework/kritik cards may poke many a whole, but the best evidence takes a stance in the opposite direction. Do I believe all impact turns are the same, ethically speaking? No: see Victim Blaming, above. That being said, in front of me, you can "Impact Turn" a methodology as much as you can a value claim. Why teams don't do this more often is strategically puzzling. They said Science was Bad? Maybe there are arguments that Science can be Good, or Useful? "Impact Turn" strategies make an obvious point of contestation that makes creative clash possible. However, Impact turning is merely a sufficient but not necessary means achieve that clash.

C. Debaters hate being wrong. Probably for good reason - most have been trained not to argue wrong things. Still, without trying out different arguments that produce a response from your opponent, debate kind of becomes oratory research reports, rather than engaging discussion.

8. ROTB's that Both Teams can Access

I do not find a "Role of the Ballot" claim that is to "vote for us" to be persuasive. I think its dishonest and transparently one sided to interpret the role of a ballot through one team's participation. Strictly speaking I think the role of my ballot is always to vote for the team that did the best debating, but if you have an argument otherwise, I would be more persuaded by a functionality/interpretation of how my vote works if both teams get a chance of receiving that vote. Otherwise its a meaningless piece of debate jargon substituting comfortable rhetoric for good impact framing.

9. Balance of Pathos, Ethos, Logos

Old-School Comm in this sense. Good public speaking requires a balancing all three. Excelling in one or more is ideal, but an above average accounting for each aspect is more valuable than any one on its own.

Examples:

You could be completely correct on a knowledge question, but did not impact that access to truth, nor argue for it with any passion. That is less persuasive than someone who may have lost a few questions of truth, but can still access impacts and passionately argue for them.

You could be full of passion, emotion and making an ethical case without an explanation of how your argument functions or why it should be believed (reasoning, logos).

Put another way:

If you are right on a question, that means you can win that part of the debate (Logos). You do not win for being right in places.

If you are passionate on a question, that means you can string together good arguments persuasively. Without arguments, you won't be persuasive, just passionate.

If you win an ethics question, that means you can frame the debate and win it. You could be right that violence is bad, but not provide a means to resolve it, analyze it or persuade me that its a reason to vote for you.

10. Round Framing in Final Rebuttals

Almost universally, this is what separates elite from above average debaters. Many of the Coachs and People Who Teach Labs I've talked to aree this is one of, if not the most important skill thats difficult to polish. The difficulty of the 1AR/2NR/2AR notwithstanding, the best speeches, and thus the easiest to vote for, frame how to make a decision regarding particular arguments and strategies as a whole. Not doing this puts it in my hands, which is not a bad thing per say, but it's always more strategic to tie together your arguments and show how they win the round. Old-school Voting Issues are important to me. What is most important, what could you do without? Even/if statements in the last rebuttals are supremely helpful.

Fall 2014 Judging Philosophy**

First, I should mention: I left College Debate before my senior year at Gonzaga. This did not play well with many in the community, after all I was abandoning an activity I had previously spent so much time on.

After graduating from Gonzaga, I enrolled SUNY at Buffalo's PhD in Philosophy program. I recently received my Masters and left UB to pursue other things in life.

I mention these things only to say, if I appear bitter, I really am not. But I do believe there are more important things than debate, and all of what I have been reading - on various media and social media platforms - about debate rings true about academia as a whole.

All of that said, I still think debate is an important activity, especially for students. As a judge, I have always preferred to act as an educator. This can include simply listening and giving the reflections of an average citizen - any debate is still ultimately a two-way street of communication for me. Thus, the primary importance of debate, for me, is that it is a speech activity emphasizing persuasion skills. I have no stylistic preferences, but I have been out of the game for about 3 years so I might be a bit rusty with speed, and might need some expanding of abbreviations, jargon and/or acronyms. Clarity and rhythm are crucial either way, and I'll announce "clear" several times before giving up flowing. Frankly, speed reading ultimately trades off with clarity, and I'd rather hear your argument than guess. Because I know I'm rusty I figured I should be clear with that warning - I'm not going to flow theory real well at 400wpm, let alone cards.

The other ultimate difference between myself and my peers: I detest reading a pile of evidence after a round. With few exceptions, most debates come down to a decision about a few issues. If this were quarters at the NDT, I would definitely join this practice insofar as my due diligence for the activity is concerned. If you think a piece of evidence is important, remember that I heard you read it once, and you have multiple opportunities to explain why the evidence is crucial. The obvious caveat to all of this is that I will check evidence for accuracy/truth in representation if another team claims it doesn't support its intended use (i.e. your card that says the sky is purple actually claims the sky is blue). If an argument wasn't clear to me, and you were supposed to win a round on it, you probably should have made it clearer than a mumbled 15 seconds.

I suppose in many ways my academic traits mirror that of my debate tastes. I tend to be a generalist - arguments of many shapes and varieties can peak my interest. In terms of my degree, my AOS is in metaphysics, and my AOCs are in Ethics, Ancient Philosophy and Continental/Social Philosophy. That being said, I spent the last few years being too weird for both the analytic and continental schools of philosophy - I find Baudrillard and Dennett equally intolerable. I probably have read the primary sources your authors are talking about. Just because you think repeating "Dasein" or some other term over and over is going to get a win, the reality of things often disagrees. Be clear and concise and don't rely on jargon to win your criticisms, make them apparent with evidence comparisons and concise link work. I love a good kritik debate, but despise a bad one. I debated all kinds of arguments in my career, and found many of those debates enjoyable for different reasons. I am comfortable with most anything, but don't tolerate any physical or mental abuse, discrimination or hate. Those are the easiest paths to make my ballot simple.

I'll accept any framework if it's argued for well. Performance, Identity etc. are all important elements in thinking about arguments. As I said, I like debate rounds that are aware of the activity as a communicative one. When I make expressions during your speeches, they usually are done intentionally. It's nice to be talked to as more than a transcriber.

If you have questions about typical jargon stuff, ask before the round. Frankly you should be able to convince me of something regardless of my biases - though I admit that my worst bias is openness to arguments. So I'm probably not going to reject a team for reading a K. Sorry.

Other housecleaning: I'm always a fan of being included in the debate if I'm judging, thus if you are paperless and are emailing, include me (andrewrossmyers [at] gmail [dot] com). I'll time prep as finished when the email is sent or flash drive is ejected. My main mentors, though I have had many, were Steve Pointer and Izak Dunn.

Speaker Points - My speaker points for an "average" debater is a 27.5. If I ever give someone a 30, it's probably going to be the last time I do.

Rewarded:

Crafty-ness and Tactics

Persuasion and Interpersonal Speaking

Clarity, Calmness, Confidence

Effective and Engaging CX's

Humor

Awareness

Punished:

Unintelligibility/Marble Mouths

Disorganization

Unbearable/boring CX's

Tunnel Vision

Defeatism

Why you gott be so rude? Don't you know they're humans too? Actually, being a little bit rude is what makes the activity fun, but there's a difference between joking/confidence/pressure and being distracting/harmful/obtuse. Please respect the thin line.

** Weber Update: I will vote teams down for clipping. This includes skipping words. I will only do so with video evidence in combination with the speech doc. I don't think this is always malicious, so my reduced speaker points will vary with the severity of the offense. (For instance, if you skip entire lines, I will give you a zero).

Nic D Murphy

The N in Rutgers MN

2017 Crowns United!

navenicole5@gmail.com

First, Energy is essential to me. Everyone must be respectful of the speaker and the participants in the round.

Background-I debated for the St.Louis Urban debate league in high school in college. After that, I debated for Rutgers University Newark. I'm the first Black Woman to win the NDT and Unite the Crowns. I debated primarily in the D3, which means I know the actual structure of argumentation.

Traditional Policy Debate Proper
Speed-Do you, I'm here to support all styles and genres!

T- This is probably one of my favorite arguments in debate, the idea that I can be so petty to review a word or process makes me so happy! The pettier, the better!

DA's-Literally the first negative argument i learned in debate I love Enviorments and Climate change impacts anything with EV and mobility is also interesting to me. Politics obviously should be unique and have solid impacts!

CP's-I believe in condo also the states arent terrible...

K's,K Affs- I love learning new things! Teach me something i DON'T KNOW! I would love to hear the latest authors and see some creativity I find myself bored by some of the K debate thats been happening and think the style is declining and policy is just as entertaining at this point but thats just my take... Who am I ?

K Aff's VS Framework
Beat the procedural and win your impacts, I believe framework is one of the easiest arguments a K Aff can answer but also one of the hardest if your aff doesnt actually do anthing. Make it make sense

LD,PF,Big Questions

I know what's going on and the rules/format of your styles of debate; I have coached students in these formats as well. Remember, you are not in a policy debate. Do not adapt to me... Follow the norms of your event.

I've been the Director of Debate at the US Naval Academy since 2005. I debated at Catholic University in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Put me on the doc thread: danielle.verney@gmail.com. Please use the wiki as much as possible!

Four things I hate--this number has gone up:

1. WASTING TIME IN DEBATES--what is prep time? This isn't an existential question. Prep time is anything you do to prepare for a debate. That means when it's start time for the debate, everyone should be READY TO START--restrooms visited, water gathered, stand assembled, doc thread started, timer in hand, snacks ready for your judge (jk). Any of these things that need to happen during a debate are technically prep time and thus should probably happen either during your prep or the other team's prep. The 2:15 decision deadline is an unequivocal good because it makes me 100% more likely to get a reasonable amount of sleep at night which makes me a better judge/coach/administrator/human, but y'all need to get better at managing your time to make it work.

2. Elusiveness (especially in Cross-Ex but during speeches too): “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer. Taking your questioner on a goose-chase for the answer to a simple question is not. Pretending you don't know how the plan works or what it does or that there are a whole bunch of ways it MIGHT happen is not persuasive to me, it just makes it look like you don't know what's going on. Answer the counterplan; tell me it's cheating--I'm one of the like 5 judges in the community who believe you.

3. Debaters who get mad that I didn’t read their one piece of really sweet evidence. If you want me to understand the warrants of the evidence and how they compare to the warrants of the other team’s evidence, maybe you should talk about them in one of your speeches. Read less bad cards and talk about the good ones more--tell me how your one good card is better than their 12 bad ones.

4. Rudeness. Don’t be rude to your partner, don’t be rude to the other team, and DEFINITELY don’t be rude to me. Excessive cursing is frowned upon (louder for the people in the back). Conversely, if you are nice, you will probably be rewarded with points. Entertain me. I enjoy pop culture references, random yelling of "D7", humorous cross-x exchanges, and just about any kind of joke. I spend a LOT of time judging debates, please make it enjoyable, or at least not uncomfortable.

Performance/Ks of Debate:

I’m going to be painfully honest here and say that I don’t like performance debate or critiques of current debate practices. I’m also going to state the obvious and say that I really like policy debate. Why? Well, I guess it’s the same reason that some people root for the Yankees over the Red Sox—I’m evil. Actually, it’s because I think there are a lot of specific educational benefits to traditional policy debate that you can’t get anywhere else. There might be a lot of educational benefits to performances, but I think that you can get those benefits from doing other activities too, which isn’t necessarily true of policy-style debate. If this makes you want to strike me, I heartily encourage you to do so.

HOWEVER--the opposing team would need to advance those arguments to win the debate. Do I think status quo debate is good? Yes. Will I vote on "debate is good" without that argument having been made? No. If the opposing team concedes the framework debate or doesn't advance "status quo debate good" as their framework arg, I'm not going to vote on it, obviously; the debate would proceed as agreed to by both teams. I have judged these debates before and have voted on the arguments in the round.

Kritiks:

Whatevs, if it’s your thing, you can do it in front of me. I’m pretty smart, which means I attempt to avoid reading post-modern philosophy as much as possible, and the only languages I currently speak with any level of fluency are English and Pig Latin. This means you should probably SLOW DOWN and find a convenient time to define any words that are Greek/German/made up by an aging beatnik. The problem I have with most Ks is that they have totally sweet, awesome impacts but there’s little link to the aff (or no harder link to the aff than to the status quo), so maybe that’s something that both the aff and neg should work on in the round. I really prefer Kritiks with alternatives, and I prefer the alternative not be “reject the plan”.

Counterplans:

I think lots of counterplans (consult, international actor, conditions, etc) are probably cheating. As a director of a small school, I don't have a huge problem with cheating if you can defend it and do it well. I wouldn't make this the "A strat" for me if you've got other options, but I appreciate that there sometimes aren't any and I promise not to throw things or set the ballot on fire if you've gotta roll with it.

Not to sound like a grumpy old person (though I am) but I think conditionality run amok is hurting debate. I'm probably okay with 1 CP, 1 K, and the status quo as an option until the 2nr (test the rez from a variety of standpoints, etc). Any more than that and you're pushing my buttons. I'm about as likely to "judge kick" a CP for you as I am to kick a winning field goal for the Steelers (not gonna happen).

Disads:
There’s nothing better than a good disad. What do I mean by a good disad? Well, it should have a pretty clear, and ideally pretty specific, link to the affirmative. It should also (and here’s the part lots of debaters forget about) have some form of internal link that goes from the link to the impact. Aff—if the neg doesn’t have one of those things, you might want to point it out to me.

If your disad makes my internal BS-ometer go off I'm gonna tank your points.


Topicality/Other Procedurals:
I don’t evaluate T like it’s a disad, which I think is the current fashionable thing to say, because unlike lots of people, I don’t think your aff advantages can outweigh T in the way that the aff could outweigh a disad. So I don’t focus as much on the “best” interpretation—if the aff interp is good but not as good as the neg’s, the aff will probably win in front of me. This means I think the neg really needs to focus on the ground and limits debate—here is where you can persuade me that something is really bad.

I think topics are becoming more broad and vague, and understand negative frustration at attempting to engage in a debate about the plan's mechanism or what the plan actually does (often the very best parts of a debate in my opinion). I feel like I can be fairly easily persuaded to vote against a team that just uses resolutional language without a description of what that means in a piece of solvency evidence or a cross-examination clarification. I think neg teams will need to win significant ground loss claims to be successful in front of me (can't just roll with agent cps key) but I think I am more easily persuaded on these arguments than I have been in the past.

none.

Joe Patrice

USMA

Paperless Policy:I'm at joepatrice@gmail.com. Or I can do the situational dropbox thing. Whatever. Regale me with your evidence. I don't read it during the round, I just want it all for post-round evaluation and caselist obligations. I still flow based on what you SAY so don't cut corners on clarity just because I have your speech docs in my inbox.

Flowing: Seriously, I’m not reading your evidence during your speech. Why doesn’t anyone ever trust me on this? Did I do something in a past life that makes debaters pathologically incapable of believing me? Anyway, if you’re not articulating your distinct arguments, you’re taking your chances that I’m not getting what you’re trying to put out there. I consider debate to be a contest between teams to communicate to me what should be on my flow and where, so orient your argumentation accordingly.

Everything Else: I characterize myself as a critic of argument, which is the pretentiousway of saying that I listen to everything, but that, all else equal, certain things are more compelling than others.

NOTE: Do not necessarily interpret any of my preferences as bans on any kind of arguments, or even guides to how to select down. It's a threshold of believability issue.

Policy Debates: Compare your impacts, weigh them, and tell me a story of the world of voting Aff vs. voting Neg. I’ll choose the one that’s comparatively advantageous.

I prefer fewer positions withlonger evidence, clearer scenarios, and more analysis of impact probability ratherthan harping on the massive scale of the impacts. If I hear that a slight increase in spending collapses the world economy triggering a nuclear war, you may as well tell me aliens are invading. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote on it, but I’ll die a little inside and there’s frighteningly little of my soul left to kill – I’m a lawyer.

I’m not particularly excited about the world of flinging 4 CPs at the Aff and just playing the coverage game. It’s just not the makings of a compelling debate, you know? Pick a lane! And it doesn’t seem especially cool on a topic featuring legal scholars proposing almost infinite specific counter-proposals to research. I’ve got no preferences on CP/Perm theory arguments other than it bugs me that people don't feel compelled to explain the abuse story like they would on T. I do not think the blip "the Perm is severance" is enough to get the job done and if I’m going to vote on it, I’d really prefer if, before the round is over, I can comfortably explain why it severs and preferably a reason why that is uniquely disadvantageous. But given that caveat, I'm more than willing to vote on these args because people all too often don't answer them well enough, probably because they don't know how to flow anymore. NOTICE A TREND!

In other words, if you're going the policy route, you’ll make me so happy teeing off with specific arguments tied to the real academic/policy debate over the subject.

And if you’re reading this harsh criticism of policy debate with a smug look on your face, slow your roll there Kdebater...

Kritik Debates: Kritiks challenge the advocacy of the other team in salient ways that could be lost in a pure utilitarian analysis. Issues of exclusion and oppression ingrained in the heart of a policy proposal or the representations of the other team can be called out with kritiks ranging from simple “-ism” args to a postmodern cavalcade.

It is NOT an excuse to say random pomo garbage that sounds cool but doesn’t bear upon what’s happening in the round. Esoteric ramblings from some dead French or German thinker can – and often do – have as little to do with the debate round as the hypothetical global nuclear wars that have killed us a million times over in this activity. Look, I actually KNOW what most of that garbage means, but that's not a reason for you to not make sense. Make the K relevant to the specific policy/issue discussion we’re having and I’ll be very happy.

Again, I vote on this stuff, but see above about killing me inside.

When it comes to K/Performance Affs, I’m pretty open to however you justify the Aff (metaphorically, as activism, as some kind of parable), so long as deep down you’re advocating that all things equal, “giving rights or duties to the things listed in the topic would be good.” Faint in the direction of the topic and you’re in good shape.

With that caveat, if you outright refuse to "affirm" anything in the "topic," that's all well and good, just be a really good T/Framework debater. I'll vote for a compelling justification — I’ve recently been told that according to Tabroom, I’m almost exactly .500 in K v. Framework debates over the last few years. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds right. Frankly, I'd rather hear "we can't be Aff because the resolution is broken and we'll win the T/Framework debate" than some squirrely "we're not topical, but kind of topical, but really not" thing.

But who am I to judge! Oh right... I'm the judge. Kinda my job.

An honest pet peeve (that I can be talked out of, round-by-round) is that I don't think “performance” means acting out the argument in-round. For example, Dadaism is an argument, not a reason to answer every question with “Fishbulbs!" You job is to sell me that people answering questions with “Fishbulbs” would be good – if you’re doing it in-round you’ve skipped the foundational part.

Topicality: I feel like I've told enough people in enough rounds about this that I'm comfortable putting it here: if you're running this Scalia evidence as a definition of "vest" despite the fact that it is EXPLICITLY not about rights and duties and solely about Article II power or if you're running the "rights are 15 things" from a definition about how the Indian legal system makes distinctions between constitutional rights and statutory legal rights, you're engaged in an act of such intellectual dishonesty that I think I'm willing to vote on that alone if the other team mentions it.

Every time you steal prep time will also kill me a little more inside. But you’re going to do it anyway.

     By far the most important thing you need to understand in order to successfully debate for me is that I am not going to follow along with your speech document in order to try to understand what you are saying.  If you cannot deliver your arguments and read your evidence in a fashion that is comprehensible, I am not a good judge for you.  I read a very limited amount of evidence after debates, always and only to decide arguments where the two sides have advanced detailed disagreements about what the evidence in question actually says.  I only hold teams responsible for answering arguments after I have understood them:  calling 1AR answers to a kritik new will not avail if I only understood the basics of your argument after the block.  I am not saying this is an oratory contest, but it is oral advocacy.

     When I do read evidence, I am increasingly suspicious of cards that consist of a few words highlighted here and there over several pages of text.  If you can't find a single sentence from you author that states the thesis of your argument, you may have difficulty selling it to me. 

     My "paradigm:"  I try to judge as if I were at a town meeting or other public forum where the audience would listen to a discussion and then each person would vote their opinion.  I deviate from the real world as little as possible, mostly to exclude my own predispositions and decide based on what is said by the contestants.  If weighty matters are at stake, I would hope that I would not be persuaded to vote for bad ideas because the advocates of better ideas had committed some argumentative indiscretion.  (This is a fancy way of saying that I am a tough sell for "discourse kritiks"--you'll do much better to attack your opponents' thinking than their language.)  I generally do not accept arguments that urge me to "punish" a team for advancing an ill-considered position in the debate.

    I do believe that both sides should stick to one policy system to defend.  This requires that they eschew "conditional" advocacy, whether that is vague plans or multiple counterplans.  I see both of these strategies as needlessly diluting the advocacy in what is already a short time to discuss even one policy comparison.  I see the attempt to discuss multiple comparisons in a single debate as far more motivated by nefarious strategy than any sort of truth seeking.

     My voting record on kritikal arguments is far better than my reputation suggests.  Solid, topic-specific attacks on the logic and worldview of the opposition, with specific links and impacts I can understand, frequently succeed om winning my ballot.

Scott Phillips- for email chains please use iblamebricker@gmail in policy, and ldemailchain@gmail.com for LD
Coach@ Harvard Westlake/Dartmouth

My general philosophy is tech/line by line focused- I try to intervene as little as possible in terms of rejecting arguments/interpreting evidence. As long as an argument has a claim/warrant I can explain to your opponent in the RFD I will vote for it. If only one side tries to resolve an issue I will defer to that argument even if it seems illogical/wrong to me- i.e. if you drop "warming outweighs-timeframe" and have no competing impact calc its GG even though that arg is terrible. 90% of the time I'm being postrounded it is because a debater wanted me to intervene in some way on their behalf either because that's the trend/what some people do or because they personally thought an argument was bad.

I am a good judge for you if/A bad judge for you if not

1. You cut good cards and highlight them to make complete arguments in at least B- 7th grade English, which is approximately my level. Read uniqueness. If your disad is non unique, not putting a uniqueness card in the 1NC is not cute, its a waste of time. If your best answers to an IR K are Ravenhall 09 and Reiter 15 you are not meeting this criteria, ditto answering pessimism with "implicit bias is malleable".
2. You debate evidence quality/qualifications and read evidence from academic sources rather than twitter/forum posts. If you are responding to a zany argument not discussed in academia, blog/forum away. If that is not the case I implore you to ask why these sources are the only ones you can find.
3. You listen to what the other team is saying and give a speech that demonstrates that you did by answering all of their arguments correctly and in the order in which they were presented . Do not read a collection of non responsive blocks in random order. And then in follow up speeches you compare/resolve those arguments rather than repeating yourself.
4. You make smart analytics against arguments with obvious weaknesses. Most 1NC disads and 1AC advantages in current debate are incoherent/missing several pieces. You do not have to respond to an incomplete argument, point out it is incomplete and move on. Once completed you get new answers to any part of it.
5. You rely on knowing what you are talking about more than posturing/grandstanding.
6. You understand your arguments/can explain things. In CX and speeches you should be able to explain words/concepts from your evidence correctly, and be able to apply them. If your link card says "the aff is not disarm" thats not a link, thats an observation
7. You can cover/don't drop things. Grouping things is fine. Making a philosophical argument for why line by line debate is bad, and instead making your argument in the form of big picture conceptual analysis is fine. Randomly saying things in the wrong place, dropping 1/2 of what the other team said and then expecting me to figure out how to apply what you said there is not. I will not make "reject argument not team" for you.

I operate on a "3 strikes" rule: each side gets up to 3 nonsense arguments- a CP that is just a text, a bad disad or advantage, an unexplained perm etc. After that your points and credibility plummet precipitously. If I'm reading your card doc I will stop reading your evidence after 3 cards highlighted into nothing. If you include 3 "rehighlightings" of the other teams evidence that are obviously wrong I will ignore all your evidence/default to the other sides.

If debated by two teams of equal skill/preparation, the following arguments are IMO unwinnable but I vote for them more often than not because the above suggestions are ignored.

-please let us weigh our case or we said the word extinction so Ks don't matter

-the framework is: object of research, you link you lose, debate shapes subjectivity, ethics first without explaining what ethics are/mean

-War good, pollution good, renewables bad- it doesn't matter if these are in right wing heritage impact turn form or academic K form

-the neg needs more than 1cp and 1K for debate to be fair. Arguments like "hard debate is good debate... so make it hard for them" are so bad you should be able to figure it out/not say them

-PICS that do/result in the whole plan are legitimate. The negative can actually win without these, especially on a topic where there are 3 affs.

-counterplans that ban the plan as their only form of competition are legitimate, especially on a topic with only...

About me:

Director of Debate at George Mason University.

Please add me to chain: japoapst@gmail.com

11/26/2023 Speaker Point Update:

I will be utilizing the Regnier speaker point scale

5+ Random Things that Annoy me:

1. Hostility - I am too old, too cranky, and too tired to hear undergraduate students treating opponents, partners, or me like trash. I literally can't handle the levels of aggression some rounds have anymore. Please just stop. Be community minded. You are debating another person with feelings, remember that. Opponents are friends on the intellectual journey you are having in debate, not enemy combatants. Give people the benefit of the doubt and try to practice grace in rounds.

2. Debaters who act like they don't care in debates. If being a troll or giving some performance of apathy about debate is your shtick I am absolutely not the judge for you. Debate is a privilege that many individuals do not have the ability to participate in due to lack of collegiate access or financial well being, and I think we should treat the opportunity we have to be in this activity with respect.

3. Multiple cards in the body of the email.

4. Yelling over each other in cx - everyone will lose speaks.

5. Interrupting your partner in cx - I am seriously close to saying I want closed cx, I am so annoyed at how egregious this is becoming. I will deduct speaks from both partners.

6. Extending Cross ex past 3 minutes. I will actively stop listening in protest/leave the room. Anything past the 3 minutes should be for clarification purposes only.

7. Wipeout, Baudrillard, Malthus, Con Con CPs, Strike 'x' country CPs, trivializing the holocaust, reading re-prints of books from 1995 but citing it as the reprint date, fiating mindset shifts.

Topicality:

The nukes topic is great for the negative and I do not think I will be persuaded on sub-sets arguments against NFU. This topic is too small give the aff a break.

If cross ex actually checked for specification questions (i.e. "who is the actor" - and they tell you "Congress") - that is the only argument the 2ac needs to make against a 1NC spec argument.

NOVICE NOTE: I think it is ridiculous when novices read no plan affs - do whatever you want in other divisions, but these kids are just learning how to debate, so providing some structure and predictability is something I think is necessary. I err heavily on framework in those debates for the negative in the first semester.

Theory:

Besides conditionality, theory is a reason to reject the argument and not the team. Anything else is an unwinnable position for me. I genuinely do not know how I lean in condo debates. Some rounds I feel like the amount of conditional positions we are encouraging in debates is ridiculous, others I wish there were more. Open to being convinced in either direction.

Counterplans:

Are awesome. The trickier, the better. I’m okay with most of them, but believe that the action of the CP must be clearly explained at least in the 2NC. I don’t vote on something if I don’t know what my ballot would be advocating. I shouldn’t have to pull the CP text at the end of the round to determine what it does. I err to process/agent/consult cp’s being unfair for the aff (if you can defend theory though, this doesn’t mean don’t read them). Also, I think that perm do the cp on CPs that result in the plan can be rather persuasive, and a more robust textual/functional cp debate is probably necessary on the negative's part.

**Delay and consultation cp’s are illegit unless you have a specific solvency advocate for them. Agenda DA Uniqueness cp’s are too – I’m sorry that the political climate means you can’t read your politics strat on the negative, but that doesn’t mean you should be able to screw the aff’s strategy like that. Have other options.

Important CP Judge Kick Note: I always judge kick if the negative would win the debate on the net benefit alone. However, I will not judge kick to vote on presumption. Going for a CP forfeits the negative's right to presumption.

Disadvantages:

Wonderful. Disadvantages versus case debates are probably my favorite debates (pretty much every 2NR my partner and I had). I love politics disads, however, I can be very persuaded by no backlash/spillover answers on the internal link – in so many situations the internal link just makes NO sense. I think there is such a thing as 100% no link and love thumper strategies. Like elections DA's - not a huge fan of impact scenarios relying on a certain party/candidate doing something once they get in office. Think shorter term impact scenarios are necessary.

Kritiks:

2023 update: For the past several years my work with Mason Debate has primarily focused on research and coaching of our varsity policy teams and novices. I am not keeping up with the K lit as I was a few years ago. Please keep this in mind. Everything below is from a few years ago.

I wrote my thesis on queer rage and my research now focuses on a Derridian/Althusserian analysis of Supreme Court rhetoric - but that does not mean I will automatically get whatever random critical theory you are using. Due to who I coach and what I research for academics, I am most familiar with identity theories, biopower, Marxism, any other cultural studies scholarship, Baudrillard, Derrida, and Deleuze. If your K isn't one of those - hold my hand. I think the most persuasive kritik debaters are those who read less cards and make more analysis. The best way to debate a kritik in front of me is to read slower and shorter tags in the 1NC and to shorten the overviews. I find most overviews too long and complicated. Most of that work should be done on the line-by-line/tied into the case debate. Also, debating a kritik like you would a disad with an alternative is pretty effective in front of me. Keep it structured. Unless your kritik concerns form/content - be organized.

Note for policy v K regarding the "weigh the affirmative or nah" framework question - basically no matter how much debating occurs on this question, unless the affirmative or negative completely drops the oppositions' arguments, I find myself normally deciding that the affirmative gets to weigh their aff but is responsible for defending their rhetoric/epistemology. I think that is a happy middle ground.

Critical Affirmatives:

Nukes note: I think the affirmative should *at least* defend that the US' reliance on nuclear weapons for military policy is bad. Some type of critique in the direction of the resolution. Inserting the word "nuclear" or "weapons" into your aff is not enough of a topic relevant claim imo. In general, I believe affirmatives should defend some universalized praxis/method and that deferral is not a debatable strategy.

Overall Framework update: Procedural fairness IS an impact, but I prefer clash key to education. I find it difficult to vote for impacts that preserve the game when the affirmative is going for an impact turn of how that game operates.

Generic Case Update: I find myself voting neg on presumption often when this is a large portion of the 2nr strategy. I recommend affirmatives take this into account to ensure they are explaining the mechanism of the aff.

I find judging non-black teams reading afro-pessimism affirmatives against black debaters an uncomfortable debate to decide, and my threshold for a ballot commodification style argument low.

Individual survival strategies are not predictable or necessarily debatable in my opinion (i.e. "This 1AC is good for the affirmative team, but not necessarily a method that is generalizable). I enjoy critical methods debates that attempt to develop a praxis for a certain theory that can be broadly operationalized. For example, if you are debating "fem rage" - you should have to defend writ large adoption of that process to give the negative something to debate. It is pretty difficult for a negative to engage in a debate over what is "good for you" without sounding incredibly paternalistic.

Overall Sound:

I am partially deaf in my left ear. It makes it difficult to decipher multiple sounds happening at the same time (i.e. people talking at the same time/music being played loudly in the background when you are speaking). I would recommend reducing the sound level of background music to make sure I can still hear you. Also means you just have to be a smidge louder. I'll let you know if sound level is an issue in the debate, so unless I say something don't let it worry you.

Flowing:

I love flowing. I do my best to transcribe verbatim what you say in your speech so I can quote portions in my RFD. I do NOT flow straight down, I match arguments. I most definitely WILL be grumpy if speeches are disorganized/don't follow order of prior speeches. If you ask me not to flow, the amount I pay attention in the debate probably goes down to 20% and I will have mild anxiety during the round.

Your Decorum:

Debate should be fun - don't be jerks or rhetorically violent. This includes anything from ad homs like calling your opponent stupid to super aggressive behavior to your opponents or partner. Speaker points are a thing, and I love using them to punish jerks.

My Decorum:

I am extremely expressive during round and you should use this to your advantage. I nod my head when I agree and I get a weird/confused/annoyed face when I disagree.

<3 Jackie

Kat Queirolo Judging Philosophy

Years in college debate: 5

Years in high school debate: 3

This is my first year out. I'll be updating this periodically as I work through my preferences, so consider this document a work in progress

I did policy debate at the University of Puget Sound. In school, I studied political theory and queer studies with a few encounters with philosophy.

I view debate as a competitive, educational and persuasive activity. More important than what I think is what you do.

I’m truly fine voting for any argument you want to make provided it is clearly articulated, performatively compelling, and robustly extended into the final rebuttals.

I enjoy a wide range of arguments. When I competed I most enjoyed debates about liberation, how can we make ourselves free in a world composed of systems of violence that impact us in the room, what freedom means, what debate can mean for freedom and how transformative politics can move us personally-politically to make the world otherwise. I am most persuaded by robust explanations of how you envision the world to be, how we ought to organize our political actions in order to accomplish the work of liberation. I like detailed explanation of link stories and alternatives, though I don't hold alternatives to a higher standard than I would a plan or a counterplan. Most important is that your alternative, counterplan, plan or advocacy solve the harms you isolate and tell me are important.

To the extent that this is possible, I will try to keep my personal inclinations out of the debate. In the event that debaters fail to articulate standards of evaluation, I will default to my own interpretation.

Offense is important. Have reasons why you win the debate. Have reasons why they lose the debate. Tell me why you win--frame my ballot for me. How do I evaluate arguments in the context of other arguments, or in the context of framing questions. How do you want me to view your arguments--through the frame of a theme, through the line-by-line, some other system. I'm fine organizing my flowing around "non-traditional" frames of interpretation if you give me "alternative" standards to consider.

If someone wants to win on presumption, it needs to be explained as an argument.

Why is your model a good model of debate, what are the roles of the aff/neg. What is the role of the judge. What is the purpose of debate as an activity. Convince me of the urgency of supporting your model of debate. I don't think that what we do in debate is separate from the rest of the world; I am most convinced of framework arguments, either traditional or "non-traditional," that connect what we do in this activity to real things that are happening in the world; that said, if you win the argument that debate is just a game and that what we do here has no bearing elsewhere, then I will vote in favor of your interpretation. That said, I do think that framework is often an excuse to refuse to debate questions that are urgent in their own right; accordingly, I appreciate when your interpretation includes room for the substance of the other team's arguments to be discussed. A topical version of the affirmative supported by robust analysis of how this accomodates the other team's own urgent questions is therefore the best way to convince me that your model of debate is urgent, fair, and educational.

Please be clear on your model of competition and why what the other team did was bad, eg. have good links and robust impact comparison. Please explain to me how the alternative/what you did resolves the links to the affirmative. Permutations need to be explained operationally eg. how does the perm work and how is that different from the alt/counterplan and are best if coupled with a model of competition. I can be convinced that the permutation is just a test of competition or that it is an advocacy in its own right worth affirming. Once an alternative is introduced into the debate it is an invitation to further expand on the possibilities of advocacies introduced, ie the permutation is an opportunity to expand on the possibilities of political organizing or theoretical elaboration. I appreciate specific link analysis to permutations eg. why is the permutation something that your advocacy resolves better.

Framing debates: You should always control how the debate is framed. What arguments do you think are the most important. Why should I evaluate the debate through your perspective as opposed to the other team's. If the debate is about methods, what are the methods. How do I evaluate competition in a methods debate. What is the implication of their method, your method. Please tell me what your role is in a methods debate, their role, my role.

Lately, I've been encountering a lot of teams articulating competition and link storiess according to theories of power. I'm not sure if this is new or became more popular during my time out of the activity, but I hadn't encountered these arguments as frequently as I am now seeing them that I am judging. This is something I am still working out, but if you imagine that this framing of competition matters more than other frames, please tell me your theory of power and explain it to highlight the shortcomings of the other team's arguments and why your theory of power resolves the links, disads, or impacts you isolate. I am intrigued by the avenues opened up by these lines of argument. What alternatives does your theory of power elaborate, what modes of organizing does it make possible. How does your theory of power relate to what is happening in the debate round itself - are there opportunities for link analysis according to what previously might have been called a performative link. If your primary link story is your theory of power, please do not just assert a claim that power works in x way and that the other team thinks about power in y way. I will be more convinced by a theory of power that isolates specific shortcomings in the other team's advocacy that isolates links and impacts than I will be of a theory of power that works more as a solvency deficit and a link of omission.

I always like to hear new arguments. I am pretty theoretically unflappable. I will more likely than not understand the words you are saying. More important than using the right words is making those words mean something.

More generally, evidence is a starting point: take the research you have done and transform it into a complete argument.

Above all, find some way to enjoy the debate! I know that is not always possible. We come to this activity for different reasons. We should live out those reasons.

I would like to be included in the email chains (hope.lana22@gmail.com). Feel free to email me with any questions post round as well.

I am a graduate student at Indiana University studying environmental management. I debated at Samford Univerisity during my undergrad.

Aff:

I am ok with critical affs but prefer that they are germane to the resolution. Frame my ballot as why I should prefer critical impacts over policy impacts or framework impacts that the neg is making.

Policy affs: If you’re not topical make sure you’re really good at debating topicality.

Neg:

Das:

Totally down with DAs just make sure you explain your link. Impact calculus is your best friend.

CP:

I prefer CPs that are functionally competitive with the affirmative. I think theory should always be a response but I’m unlikely to vote on it unless it’s been dropped or you’re going all in on it. I will not kick the CP for you unless you tell me to.

Ks:

Again, fine with them just explain them well. Explain what your alt does and why I should prefer your impacts over policy impacts. Don't assume that I know/have read all the lit on your K, I probably haven't. Therefore, make sure you're explaining the warrants of the args well. I need good articulation of what the alternative actually does either within the debate or spillover claims and why is mutually exclusive with the aff.

T:

Make sure you’re engaging in the actual line by line and not just reading blocks. I need competitive arguments between the t interpretation and the affs counter interpretation. Listing what affs their interpretation excludes/allows and what ground is lost in round is good.

FW:

Make sure you’re doing good impact work and why I should prefer that in the realm of the debate space.

General:

1. Don’t be rude.

2. I’m fine with speed just make sure you’re clear. If I can’t understand you I can’t flow.

3. Respect people’s preferred pronouns.

4. I don't have time to sit through and read ever card you tell me is awesome. If a card is important to a round I'll read it after but clear articulation of the warrants of the card are important and how it functions as an argument in the debate.

Tripp Rebrovick

Director of Debate, Harvard University.

BA, Harvard; PhD, Johns Hopkins

Please put harvard.debate(at)gmail.com on the email chain, but see note 1 below.

Updated January 2021:

The first thing to know about me as a judge is that I take overviews in the final rebuttals very seriously. The team that correctly identifies the critical arguments for each side will generally win, even if they have problems elsewhere on the flow or if I have other reservations about the argument. In other words, most of the time, the team that gets my ballot has done a better job of (a) identifying the most important arguments in the debate and (b) persuading me that in evaluating those particular arguments I should believe them. Similarly, I've found that in most of my decisions I end up telling the losing team that they have failed to persuade me of the truth of their most important argument. Occasionally this failure of understanding is due to a lack of clarity on the part of the speaker(s), but more often it is due to a lack of detailed explanation proving a particularly significant argument to be correct.

As a judge, I am usually skeptical of anything you say until you convince me it is correct, but if you do persuade me, I will do the work of thinking through and applying your argument as you direct me. It is usually easy to tell if I am persuaded by what you are saying. If I’m writing and/or nodding, you’ve probably succeeded. If I’m not writing, if I’m giving you a skeptical look, or if I interrupt you to ask a question or pose an argument I think you should answer, it means I’m not yet convinced.

In close debates, in which there are no egregious errors, I tend to vote for the team that articulates a better strategic understanding of the arguments and the round than for the team that gets lucky because of a small technical issue. My propensity to resolve arguments in your favor increases as you communicate to me that you understand the importance of some arguments relative to others. I am usually hesitant to vote against a team for something they said unless it is willful or malicious.

A few other tidbits:

1. I will not read the speech doc during your speech. The burden is on you to be comprehensible. Part of me is still horrified by this norm of judges following along.

2. If what you have highlighted in a card doesn’t amount to a complete sentence, I will most likely disregard it. Put differently, a word has to be part of a sentence in order to count.

3. CX, just like a speech, ends when the timer goes off. You can’t use prep time to keep asking questions or to keep talking. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to alt use time.

4. Please number your arguments. Seriously. Do it. Especially in the 1NC on case and in the 2AC off case.

5. Pet Peeve Alert. You have not turned the case just because you read an impact to your DA or K that is the same as the advantage impact. For example, saying a war with china causes poverty does not mean the DA turns a poverty advantage. It simply means the DA also has a poverty impact. In order to the turn the case, the DA must implicate the solvency mechanism of the affirmative, not simply get to the same terminal impact.

6. [Since this situation is becoming more common...] If the affirmative wins that conditionality is bad, my default will be to reject conditionality and make any/all counterplans unconditional. Pretending that the counterplan(s) were never introduced is illogical (they stay conditional) and solves nothing (the affirmative can't extend turns to the net benefit).

In college, my debate style was left of center, but I was trained at Emory which means as much as I lean toward critiques and performance debates as my personal preference, I am equally as qualified to judge straight up policy debates. In debates where the policy framework meets the critical framework I vote for the team with the better argument even if I find the opposing teams position more interesting or entertaining, I can reward that with speaker points.
I don’t have any preconceived ideas about debate theory, so I tend to vote directly on the flow. If you win the theory argument and it has implications that you explain, I’m more than willing to vote there.
I am open to and willing to engage alternative stylistic practices and choices for debates.
I hate reading evidence after a debate because it means that the debaters have been sloppy and inefficient in explaining and defending their arguments. Thus, I only read cards if you have not done your job. That being said, if there is evidence you would like to be a part of my consideration because if I need to read evidence, I will only call for what has been directly referenced by you.
Important things to know about debating in front of me. I like smart asses, in general, but I think too many people cross the line in debate. So be forceful and aggressive, but watch the rudeness factor with the other team. I can be very supportive and will offer suggestions both for improving debate skills, but also in improving arguments, and pointing to interesting directions for more evidence.

Updated - Pre-NU - 09.12.23.

On balance, J Philosophies should prob cut to the chase - but I'm gonna violate my own rule this time:

We exist in an era where being unfiltered gets glorified.. where the smartest person in the room is also encouraged to be the loudest.

Every now and again, someone arrives in our small pond - and they have all the characteristics of a great judge. They are quietly brilliant. They are thoughtful. They hold the community's respect for the simplest reason of all: they are undeniably good at what they do. It doesn't need to be broadcasted - it finds itself on display in each oral critique.

I won't be the guy that pretended to know Brian McBride on a deeply personal level. Our interactions were often limited to those panels that finish their task at 2am.

... but I know enough to say this with confidence. I learned a great deal by letting that guy go first in the post-round. He rarely called attention to himself. I am hopeful that our community finds ways to honor his contribution - even if he would've bashfully declined such praise.

I had a great deal of respect for who he was in this community.

Customary biz:

Yes - speech Doc.

Repko.Debate@gmail.com

Side note - I often miss non-speech doc correspondence sent to that address bc I only use it for judging.

** New - Topic Specific - Nuclear weapons, 2023-4

With all the asterisks that often accompany this, I'll say I'm not going to deeply break-down my thoughts on hyper-generics and the kind of K's that tend to get run on every Res. I do have thoughts on these matters - but I am much more apt to be placed in a Policy-Policy round... this is bc clash/K teams have (correctly) concluded that there are many judges in the pool where their win% would be higher.

I have sneaking suspicions that Topicality will arise more in Policy-Policy rds - what follows is designed to be helpful:

- As a general proposition, I am more Aff than most on T - but I do think the Framer's worded things in a manner that gives the Neg something to argue here. Enough will come down to execution that some of what follows could be overread.

- I do not enter into the T Debate presumptively assuming Negs are structurally hosed on *this* Res. This ain't the water or CJR Res - there's at least room to argue that this Res= atypically good for Negs. I often judge on panels where the lone conception of "ground" is Neg. Absolute kudos to the Neg if they can pull of that framing - you should (as ever) run with the premises your opponents concede. But - in an evenly matched debate - I do think there's space for the Aff to push back on the some of the classic Neg ground claims.

- While I can certainly imagine hypotheticals where one side's interp is noticeably imprecise (i.e. old school "substantial" defs about a Court case involving a kitchen measurement), I tend to think most prepared teams read a reasonably precise interp. Once the opponent's interp has exited the theater of the absurd, I am open to threads that argue that we should consider defaulting to other RTP various interps. Better put - if you're trying to win that an inch of precision >>> a mile of balanced ground/limits, I would recommend you have technical execution on your side.. bc I am going to need to read the opponent's interp and chuckle at how non-applicable it is. If your lead on precision is NOT an inch - I am very good for your side.

Deterrence and Assurance are a thing. If/when the Neg blends them together, they create Aff openings where "thumping one" can "thump both".

Revisionism has become the Policy equiv of ontology. The 2N uses the fact that "Russia has revisionist tendencies" to lower the threshold for the link, the impact, the "turns case" thread, etc.... OK - I suppose it's somewhat helpful to the cause - but let's not overdo this. No one would pretend that reading a card that "X nation is revisionist" is - by its lonesome - a link to the NFU Aff... The best K research takes the ontology claim and contextualizes it to the Aff in question. The best disad research takes the revisionism premise and applies it to the NFU Aff. I find no dissonance here - it feels logical (to me) to demand scholarly contextualization from both revisionism claims and ontology claims. And - to be candid - I suspect I have a higher bar for Neg contextualization than most.

*Older stuff starts here - I'd only read through it if you needed more than the basics

I'm somewhat correctly stereotyped as a "good judge to break a new aff in front of". And, certain broad strokes will not change between now and Monday:

- I am bad for some Neg generics that get run in these spots (process CP, many K's)

- I will do enough "reading" in the post-round to at least try and comprehend a novel Aff or Neg arg - and, as these things go, that can open room for a prepared new Aff to win on various appeals to specificity

- I get that Neg's adore the Cap K... but the way this is getting deployed in the modern era is just so far from what I feel is a complete reason to Negate. I could break down my creative Cap K 2.0 blueprint ..or go on some rant - but, unless your Cap K has some very unique twists, I'd say that I am the second worst judge in the pool for your Cap K (behind Katsulas). This is meant to be helpfully honest as you make pref decisions;

- I am one of the better judges in the pool for "the impact turn doesn't link". Let me unpack - as this might read as illogical. Just bc the Aff said "heg" doesn't mean that *the way* the Aff enhances Heg auto-links to your backfile... similarly, just bc the Neg read an impact module that loosely referenced "ag" or "econ" doesn't mean the camp backfile is simply greenlit. Often times the OG impact is about "preventing a future decline in Heg"... or helping a sector of the econ that may solely be a piece in the dedev puzzle. I'll obviously "play ball" if both teams opt to ignore this int link minutiae. But I do sometimes find myself on the bottom of a 4-1 bc I strongly consider analytic threads appealing to whether the impact turns applied in the first place. This is not intended to full-on dissuade. Teams seeking to impact turn should invest some time connecting the "top-level" dots between the opponent's impact claim and their impact turn. Impact turn strat can also wind-up defending a squo that's very messy (transitions, other Aff impacts). Think about more than the narrow impact turn itself - and the broader system being defended.

- I differ from many judges on "disad turns case". I was recently asked to recount an NDT elim I judged a few years back. In it, Aff slams on Adv... Neg slams on Disad... Aff is bad on "disad turns case"... neg is silent on "Aff solves case"... 8 out of 10 judge vote neg here: after all, Neg turns Aff. I regularly vote Aff on "aff solvency claim is every bit as dropped as the neg's claim to turn solvency". There are some exceptions where I would vote Neg - suppose the neg's "turns case" arg is couched as comparative to the 1AC solvency... OR maybe the neg claim simply makes more sense than the OG Aff solvency.. etc... but I tend to not punish the Aff for lacking large re-explanations of (dropped) swaths of their case. Negs would do well to make comparisons that bake-in the particulars of the Aff.

- there is a risk of overcorrection to all of this. I have voted on "PIKs bad" at the NDT - and it was the correct 2AR choice.. I voted on a "meh" human innovation disad earlier this season bc the Neg tailored it so well to the opponent's solvency claims. There have been other decisions that might surprise a third party coach - unless they watched the debate itself. I do understand that debate is a game. All of this advice assumes situations where both sides have the time to evenly execute on a position - but sometimes that hasn't taken place. Capitalize accordingly.

--- Everything below this is older stuff... all of it still applies - but may be more than you need ------

TLDR - general

More apt to be placed in Policy v. Policy rounds. A great deal of the research that I do is on critical/culture theory. And, a lot of outcomes are possible in a world of imbalanced coverage/attention to detail.

That said, I have a poor track record for planless Affs. I have enough "argumentation teacher" in me to give a range of oral critiques. But, I do think K of this Res/Topicality struggles vs. standard (policy) boilerplate responses.

If your pref decisions hinge on post-round academic convos, I will be an engaged critic. But if a big component of your pref decisions are about the grizzled bottom line of winning (which is 1000% understandable, IMO), I think much of the pool has a better track record on behalf of the K.

Seems like there's two sets of Policy judges on this particular Res:

Camp 1.0 - summer pleasure reading was about Bostrom, gray goo bloggers, and meta-physical q's posed by British scholars.

Camp 2.0 - not that.

I'm more in camp 2.0. I have cut policy cards on the topic. I am not dismissive existential risk. I think the Sci Fi impacts are fine - strategic even....

And, I am (quite fairly) accused of letting your ev do some work for you. But there's a wave of oral critique out there that's akin to: "the sub-text of the Aff entropy claim rests on Toby Ord's The Precipice - which is hardly viable without a deeper defense of hypercomputation".

... huh ?..

I can get there - but you'll need to at least start me down that journey.

TLDR - process CP, compete on "should"

Anything is poss in the land of wildly disparate in-rd execution/coverage - but I am quite Aff here

Where are you good for the neg ?

Disad, CP of non-process flavor... the 1AC itself = often pretty silly.

'Rona

For me, I am judging INP for the first time in a minute - mostly bc it would not be great if I brought COVID back to my household.

I am appreciative of the efforts the tournament and the participants are making to reduce the risk of COVID. I mean that quite genuinely

... this simple statement could be over-read or cause students to overreact when I am judging. I understand that sure-fire solutions are rare... and I do not need to 2A to debate outdoors or something. Just a friendly - not judgmental - reminder that I will be on the cautious side of this one.

--wrote this pre '21 NDT - I'll leave it up a bit longer, but it has little to do w. arg preferences ----

This strikes me as an audience where one can make a bold claim... and be granted an opportunity to back it up.

Here goes:

One of the strongest people I know is only 3 yrs old.

... I've watched her figure it out.

When the six yr old points and stares.

When the family switches lanes in swim class.

When they ask why her mask is the kind that ties in the back.

...and I've watched in amazement. Somehow, she channels her exasperation into thoughtfulness. Somehow, these aftermaths are productive.

A few years ago, I heard rumor that a student was thinking of foregoing her final NDT - ending her career after her Junior season. This student had challenged MSU Debate ...in the best ways possible. Judging policy rds as I do, I knew this debater. I decided to drop her a note. I thanked her for the hard work she'd put in.... for the indirect ways in which she'd made our program grow. One never knows what to expect once the send key is hit. I do think she was a little surprised to receive it. But I came to learn it made a small difference... that it landed with the right timing.

Later that season, I wrote a similar note - this time to a non-traditional debater. The same premises held. This student pushed our program and drove us to be more prepared. I extended an overdue "thanks". I imagine they were more than a little surprised to receive it. Judging policy rds as I do, I had even less of an idea how it may land. I was glad to learn it landed well.

The days leading up to the NDT are an especially good time to keep one's head down.

...But when the dust settles... when the inevitable frustrations grow distant... consider crafting a simple note. Consider sending it to a judge... a rival... a teammate.

Above all, consider sending to someone that may not expect it.

In doing so some will accuse you of being weak. Why extend energy to your rivals ?.. Why breathe life into the foe ?

But - in doing so - you will be anything but weak.

You will exit a challenging season... perched atop a most-challenging 12 months... and you will have done something genuine.. something unexpectedly thoughtful.

And - in doing so - you will show strength.

Strength similar to the strongest girl I know.

A girl who is Earless... and Fearless.

A girl named Robin Jane Repko.

#E&F

Thanks - and best of luck to each of you this weekend.

NDT 2021

---------old stuff here-------------------------

True non-starters:

A - Teams that joke-y or playful about death or trauma - esp as part of some high-theory attempt to illustrate a point. I was early to this train - but I think a lot of people in the community are ready to close this chapter.

B - Consult Cplan in almost any variety - it's quasi comeback is surprising.

Topicality:

I'm overwhelmingly Aff on "contrived" interps bad. In general, I think I am more Aff than most on T in policy rounds. If it helps, I did not happen to judge the elim between UGA AR + KU HM on the Exec Authority. Here - by all accounts - the neg did a dazzling job on a T thread that amounted to "you gotta be a big Aff".

I cannot know - but I suspect I would have been an above-average judge for UGA in that spot. It has nothing to do with the debaters - all four were/are magnificent. It's more that I find T interps of that ilk tend to break-down under strict scrutiny.

I don't mention this example out of nowhere. I am writing in 2021 bc I suspect it could be instructive for this yrs college topic. I would not be shocked if I voted Neg on T - hard work has dividends. By this is a game of inches - and this is me being transparent about an inch.

Just be honest, please:

In an evenly matched-debate where all the best args are on the table (two important caveats), rate yourself on the following items relative to the field of possible policy judges:

A - CPlan competition theory.... Aff (esp vs. "resolved", "should", etc).

B - Kritik - even the flex variety - Aff by a considerable margin.

C - Truth or tech.... truth by a decent amount..

D - Are you lying - lots of judges just lie in these philosophies ?..

Not really... I'm pretty ardent - but I will say that anything is possible in the land of wildly-disparate in-round execution. I did vote on PICs bad (dropped) last season.

-------------- old philosophies start here -------------

I wrote this a few years ago - it still holds:

Often, the K struggles on the alt... and can be a little over-reliant on the checklist for someone (like me) that's a bit of a truth-seeker and post-round ev reader.

To give a concrete example:

Suppose a (policy) Aff said "a Small Modular Rector will *solve* for a nuclear accident". Further suppose that the Neg did not engage this claim in any way.

Then suppose the Neg said "interrogate our relationship to neolib -- as it may *solve* neolib". Suppose the Aff was comparably inattentive to that alt.

I would start the post-round evaluating competing solvency claims. Both teams 100% won their original statement -- but the word *"solves"* in both sentences does not get at questions of magnitude/likelihood. "Solve" was not posited as a 100% affair in either the ev, the tag, or under any standard of logic.

So, yes, both teams "solve", but the degree to which an SMR could prevent an accident is miles ahead of the degree that individual interrogation might solve neolib. I acknowledge that not everyone judges these args in this manner -- in part because they fear being labelled "interventionist". I happen to feel it "intervenes" to impose magnitude onto either team's claim (as stated).

I can imagine a future time where the K more assertively attempts to have Alts that inform policy praxis or generates non-institutional collectives... And if you think your arg is novel in that regard, then I might be a better judge for you... But, the odds are that you've learned to run the K based on the prevalent community norms that have developed over the previous 15 years... Over that time, your predecessors did an exceptionally mediocre job of helping the K inform praxis and be PART (not all) of negating an Affirmative.

-------------------------------------------

Rando:

- I rarely think "literature" alone makes a cplan competitive. I consider the two as wholly unrelated and I struggle to grasp this line of thinking. Some are aghast if the two options that are compared by a think tank article are somehow not auto-competitive. This borders on laughable - as there's lit that defends plan-plus cplans....Sometimes I have judged literature that demonstrated that the perm severs - that might be germane.

- I think "judge kick" needs to be flagged early and often - not merely implicitly as part of a conditionality answer in cx - for it to be a presumptively strong arg for the Neg. I consider "conditionality" to be a question of whether multiple strategies can/should be carried through the middle of the debate - and *not* whether the Neg should ultimately be afforded multiple choices at the end of the debate. I will assume that you went for the one damn strategy that you did extend in the 2NR unless you play your "multiple options" card earlier in the debate.

If you have specific questions about how I'd evaluate an item, feel free to ask. I'll strive to respond with candor.

Best,

Will

Updated Pre-Emory 1/9/2020

Email chain please: croark@trinity.edu

Professor and Assistant Director of Debate at Trinity University, Coach at St. Mark's School of Texas

I view my role as judge to be an argument critic and educator above everything else. As part of that, you should be mindful that a healthy attitude towards competition and the pursuit of kindness and respect are important.

Biases are inevitable but I have been in the activity for +10 years and heard, voted, and coached on virtually every argument. I genuinely do as much as possible to suspend my preconceived beliefs and default to explanation/comparison.

Quality > quantity – 1NC’s with a high volume of bad arguments will have a hard ceiling on speaker points & I will generously allow new 1AR arguments.

Speed is the number of winnable arguments you can communicate to your judge. I will usually say “clear” twice before I stop flowing your speech. If you can't flow or comprehend your partner that's a problem. If you don't sign-post I am likely to give-up on flowing your speech.

I try to flow CX so please make reference. CX is about LISTENING and responding – let your opponent finish their answer/question, acknowledge it, and then move to the next point. Be polite if you have to interrupt.

Everyone should give two speeches. I’ll only flow the assigned person during speeches.

Framework --- I’ve voted on all kinds of different impact arguments. Debate has wide-ranging value to folks and I think you should be willing to defend why it’s important to you in any given situation. Defense can be very compelling: Neg teams should win an overarching theory of how their model absorbs/turns the 1ac’s offense with explanations of switch-side or TVA examples that interface well with the aff. The TVA should be a proof of concept, not a CP. Aff teams should win a counter-interp/alternative model of what debate looks like OR terminal offense to the neg’s model of debate. Above everything, you should think strategically and react instead of just reading some dusty, generic blocks.

I’ve finally been forced to make one of these, my hesitancy in making one is I paid way too much attention to these when I was a debater and they rarely actually predict how someone evaluates debates, your intuition about how someone feels is often more accurate than their self representation.

Believe it or not, I’m open to judging a variety of debates, not just ones that involve the kritik.

Anyways, add me to the email chain: theqnr@gmail.com

I believe that the debate should be guided by the debaters, not the judge. I believe this implicates the way that I judge debates, I am very persuaded by anyone who frames the debate and explains how I should be evaluating the debate, so I would opt in for more judge direction than you might for another judge. Embedded clash is fine, but I think there are limits to this before we get to judge intervention, and I have to feel comfortable feeling like these arguments existed prior to my evaluation.

Speed: make sure I’m flowing at the rate you’re speaking, I will be clear with facial cues if I am not.

Topicality, I feel competing interpretations are easier to evaluate. Do not spread too quickly through the 2ac, it’s important I catch these arguments.

Clash debates, apparently as punishment for my career because I didn’t get enough of these for myself I’ve been summoned to judge all of them. Just kidding, I’m happy to be here and genuinely do not mind a good clash debate. With that being said, I’m very familiar with both sides of the arguments and I feel the issue in a lot of these debates is that people operate from extremely ideological standpoints that I don’t find persuasive.

I think I’m less persuaded by the “we solve your stuff better than you by making you better advocates stuff” and more interested in what your model of debate does outside of solve the affirmatives impacts.

I think that affirmatives should be grounded in the topic. I like when debates are early breaking. Both in terms of how your affirmative interacts with framework and more broadly whatever your critique of topicality is make it clear earlier than later.

Fairness is an impact. With that being said, many iterations of this argument do not make it to the point that it can be voted for as an impact.

Not that persuaded by the idea of rev v rev debates, and similarly am not that persuaded by third and fourth level testing.

I do not think that the neg has to win a TVA to win topicality, it can be helpful but often times find it leaves too much open for the affirmative and is not your responsibility to provide a way to solve the affirmative.

K’s

I’m familiar.

Links are important, you should have some.

Debating the case matters, I could be persuaded that debating the case does not matter but that would require a significant investment in framework.

If you are reading a K that’s a hodge podge of K’s make sure you’re making an argument that’s consistent, I am very open to the argument that incompatibility of kritiks means _____ for the debate.

aff v K: win framework arguments. Don’t just repeat your framework shell from the 2ac, that won’t go very far for me.

DA’s - I would love to see you go for a disad and case in the 2NR.

CP’s do your thing, I will say I don’t prefer overly complicated counterplans with terribly under highlighted evidence.

Some people are convinced that it’s completely true politics discs and certain CPs are terrible for debate, I am not in complete solidarity with that.

Love a good case debate

I don’t believe in a politics of respectability, I’m not going to ask you to be respectful to your opponents but what I will ask of you is to engage each other in good faith, what that means is genuinely try to engage with each others arguments and don’t make characters of them with strong ideological claims.

Put me on your email chain (all of them, even if I'm not judging. I just want to be included): dar298@cornell.edu

Update (2023/2024)
Less involved in debate than previous years and I judge even less. I probably will be confused about certain acronyms and shorthand others might get.

Please do what you do. I will try my best to meet you where you are, and on the grounds you start from. I am, however, not a blank slate.

The longer version of this paradigm was written when I was an over-eager debate coach, and is way too long. Here's the short of it:

- All arguments are Ks and performances and about identity-- yes, even the Japan prolif DA (especially!). Just make good ones.
- I am equally good for T/FW and against it. I believe that FW as traditionally conceived is bad on a truth level, but I think some things implicit to all FW debates (what we talk about and where we devote our energies) are so important that they often contest the core of the aff and thus overshadow this error.
- Being able to critically contest ideas and sort out moral quandaries without prepared research isn't just useful, it's an essential skill that we should actively cultivate in debate. Effective research is also an essential skill and highly prepared debates are extremely fun and informative.
- Please respect your opponents enough to speak with and in their terminology, language and concepts, even if you haven't read their literature. The best answer to most K affs is to simply think on the fly and contest their understanding of the world/problem and their solution.
- I will never vote for anthro good. I will happily vote for criticisms of how animal subjectivity/rights are traditionally conceived. I just will never accept that I am more important than a cow or a chicken.
- I am extremely sympathetic to critiques of non-black people reading afropessimism.
- Be nice. Sometimes being nice to yourself means no longer being nice to your opponents and I respect that. But don't be needlessly cruel.

I would like to repost something from one of my favorite judges when I was a debater, Will Baker. This part of his paradigm resonated deeply with me:

Cherish this moment. Being at a university with the resources to send you across the country to represent them in intellectual combat forwarding whatever arguments you wish against some of the most talented debaters in the world backed by an incredible braintrust of coaches, in front of a critic that you preferred is an immense privilege and a societal rarity. In a world that thrives on hot takes over listening and polarizarion over pragmatism, debaters need to understand your power, hone your craft, and value others. We lose brilliant, debate minds too often. Others globally perish in silence, pain, disasters and darkness. Thank your parents/guardians, your administrators, your coaches, but most of all your OPPONENTS. None of us would be here without others to debate so respect them whether your perfect strat features a Politics DA & a CP or impassioned narratives set to Janelle's dulcet tones.

Update (2022)
Less involved with debate than before, so please keep that in mind. That said, my research does involve animal personhood and I did contribute to the animals K neg section of the topic paper, so I am familiar with the RoN/animal topic.

I am less familiar with the AI topic than the personhood topic, but I am willing to listen and learn.

I've become more dissatisfied with the presumption that debate arguments follow the narrow exceptions to make them justified unless "beaten" (e.g. First Strike an enemy of the US because it could be justified under consequentialist grounds if certain things are met--counterforcing works, war coming now etc., which is supposed to lessen the vileness of that thought experiment). I have trouble distinguishing the universally agreed areas outside these limits (spark, death good, homophobia good, etc.) from things currently accepted that I see as similarly pedagogically harmful (first strike US enemy, US heg good, warming not real). Do whatever you may with that info.

Overview/Long of it

Started as a novice in college and I love novice debate! Don't talk badly of it in my presence.

Started policy debate running xo and politics every round, devolved into reading one off Ks most rounds (mostly anthro and disability [as 2n/1a], sometimes various strains of afropessimism [not as 2n])

Do NOT assume that because I read critical arguments you are better suited to read critical stuff in front of me- do what you do. I love policy research and did a lot of it for various squads over the years so please don't be afraid to go for it in front of me.

I enjoy critical affs, especially if it's something that you have put thought into/challenges how I think of the world. It's some of the best and most educational part of debate.

This does not mean I am opposed to voting on FW or T arguments- it's a large amount of what I debated against so I am well aware of when a team does it well. I think a lot of affs mishandle T/FW and it can be a very strategic choice for the negative - especially when T/FW implicates the aff's knowledge production/method.

I am very line by line and flow centric- I don't think this is at all opposed to "big picture debate" or in-depth argumentation but that's just my style that will be represented in my judging- i dislike implicit "overview" clash that doesn't flag what your argument does or how it functions in relation to their argument.

I would rather not read every card referenced in the debate after it ends- debate is a game about communication and spin can beat evidence if you do it well enough- I don't vote on whether or not your or your coach cut a good card, I vote on the way you articulate the importance and weight of an argument the card makes (or comes close to making).

Skip here if you don't care to read above/Specific arguments:

Case: Debate it more- most cases don't make sense and can be dismantled with analytic arguments/a small amount of cards.

DA: I probably have a higher threshold for internal link explanation to impacts than other people - especially advantage extensions in the speeches like the 1AR- too often the 1ar runs through a scenario without an internal link and it pops back up in the 2ar again magically.

FW: FW is a K, defend your alternative view of the world/debate and the relative disads to the counterinterp/aff and how you capture/mitigate/outweigh/turn their offense. No feeling one way or another, either side can win- debate it.

T: Do your thing, but I'm probably extremely unfamiliar with norms of T/shorthand, etc.

K: Familiar with most lit bases in debate, in particular animal studies, afropessimism, disability etc. Don't assume my familiarity with the K- explain the arguments in depth and their importance as if I had no idea what you were talking about.

CPs: Impact out your solvency deficits or else it's hard for me to compare relative deficits/advantages in solvency

Other things:

Reading afropessimism is all the rage for non-black people in debate but if you are not black I will be very sympathetic to arguments about that from the otherside- - years of seeing in this debate has made me very uncomfortable with this. (Christina Sharpe and Selamawit Terrefe in Rhizomes- "The only people who can be and embrace it are particularly these white, male, young academics who are so excited. They're excited by it. And it's an invigorating theory because it's a purely intellectual enterprise for them. This is something we have to experience and re-experience viscerally when we read Frank and Jared's work. It's a traumatic experience. But it's not a trauma that is being imposed by us— by the theory or by those of us who write and critically engage with the work. It's a trauma that we're reliving because we're never outside of this trauma. So I think Black people's responses, Black academics' responses in particular...it's not a foreclosure the way white or non-Black academics would respond. If it's a negative response it's foreclosing on their own...ethical relationship—")

The one exception to this is I can think of is if you have a partner that is black and wants to read that argument, but I am willing to hear args for and against that. (This does not mean don't discuss race/colonialism/your relation to that if you are white but be critically aware of how you are situated in relation to identity and the dangers involved.)

Please respect people's pronoun choices.

I will never vote for anthro good. If you decide to argue that in front of me, that is your issue.

That twitter account is not me, it's some impersonator.

I am an Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of Debate at Missouri State University. I have 8 years of experience as a competitor: 4 years of experience in high school policy debate (@ Oak Park River Forest High School, in Oak Park, Illinois), and 4 years of experience in college policy debate (@ Trinity University, in San Antonio, Texas). After graduating, I’ve coached college teams for the past 7 years including 4 years @ the University of Georgia, and 3 years @ Trinity University.

The Judging Process:

I see myself as a technical* judge with an important caveat that I prefer debates, and my decisions, to be simple and explainable. What do I mean by this? The short version is that I put a lot of value on explicit refutation and clash. If one side advances an argument and the other team does not answer it, the other team will be forced to deal with the consequences of not answering it. The argument that is won (either through clash or the absence of it) will be given its full weight as introduced and explained by the team that has won it. But if I cannot explain the argument either to myself, or the losing team, or if I think you have done a poor job of explaining it then its relative weight or consequence may vary. I have said in the past that I am “tech over truth,” but also think that good tech needs to look true from afar. I stand by this.

Because I see myself as a technical judge, I will do my best to rid myself of my preconceived biases and presumptions about what is true, just, and moral and attempt to evaluate the debate based on the substance of what it is said. This is, of course, impossible. I often like to “put on hats” and pretend to be a coach of the teams I am judging, asking questions of myself like, “Ooooh, that was a good argument, I wonder what would be a persuasive/intelligent/challenging response to it?”, and if debaters make those arguments (or surprise me with arguments I had not yet considered) I find myself siding with them in the exchange over their opponents. The end result is that while I begin judging by aiming to rid myself of my biases I often judge the round in a kind of back-and-forth involving a certain amount of baton tossing that—if the debate would go on forever—would inevitably end up with me voting on and making decisions reflective of those biases I aimed to disabuse myself of previously. Thankfully, for you, debate rounds are limited—and that provides you the opportunity to win my favor provided your opponents don’t “one up you” with regard to whatever my biases are.

I will look at evidence if instructed, or if I need to use it to clarify something in the debate (usually this isn’t a good thing as it signifies you didn’t do the debating that your evidence was there to support). If possible, however, I try to make my decisions based on what was said in the debate rather than what was referenced.

I often write RFDs for both teams in the process of judging, and I spend most of my decision time pondering which RFD seems more defensible. I have yet to judge a round where I couldn’t see myself voting the other way. This means that even if you won my ballot you should know I spent quite a bit of time rationalizing to myself why you should lose it. I sometimes write an RFD, deliver it, and have some remorse about it (shout out to Wake Semis, Harvard vs Kentucky). In the end, I’d like us both to be happy about my decision so do your best to crush your opponent and remove any shadow of a doubt I might have about it.

What I Expect of You, The Debater: At the level of substance, I want you to read and advance whatever arguments you like. I will do my best to judge them in the manner so described above.

At the level of form, I want you to:

1) Speak when it is your turn to speak. Prompting is fine, but I will not flow your partner speaking during your speech. It is a team activity and we must live and die as a team.

2) Be kind and respectful to your opponents. I love trash talking, and I love a competitive debate. If you do too, however, make sure your opponents and you agree about the tone/intensity of the debate! You should approach your opponents as friends engaged in a spirited discussion, rather than bad apples/bad actors who need to be vanquished. Some of your friends are probably ok with reciprocal name-calling, others might not be. If you choose to engage in behavior that is “on the line,” make sure that your opponents are ok with that. The more personal the debate comes, the more replete with character attacks, name calling, or otherwise vicious and callous behavior, the more frustrated I will be.

Thoughts on Counterplans:

I often approach counterplans centered around the question of opportunity cost because, outside of debate, that is where I see the “real world relevance” for counterplans. As a consequence, I often feel that counterplans must present themselves as an opportunity cost for the actor to whom the initial plan was offered.

Let’s consider a real-life example. You and your friend Jolean have purchased tickets for a concert a few months in advance. You are both excited to go. Unfortunately, Jolean has failed their math test and now their parental figures have decided to punish them by not letting them go to the concert. Jolean proposes to you: “I’m going to go anyway, I’m going to sneak out of the house!” there are a number of advantages and disadvantages to this proposal, but there are, also, a number of counterplans available should you both wish to pursue something other than sneaking out.

Some of them might be PICs in terms of how Jolean has specified their policy proposal (e.g. Don’t sneak out of the house, tell your parents that it’s a study night instead and we can leave from my house), others might be more optimistic trying to solve the root cause of the problem (e.g. Don’t sneak out, try and convince your parents to let you go; OR don’t sneak out, work with your teacher and try to make up the grade for the test), and others still might cut losses and try to solve the advantage area in another way (e.g. Well, let’s go to another concert for a different band the following month instead). All of these counterplans are attempting to solve the aff’s harms, and whether or not they are competitive depends on them avoiding certain disadvantages to Jolean’s initial proposal. There is a debate to be had on this question (as well as the solvency of the counterplans), but I have no theoretical objections about the nature of the counterplan.

There are, however, another set of proposals you can pitch to Jolean. Perhaps, instead of sneaking out, the band should simply reschedule their concert date to be a month later. Or, instead of sneaking out, Jolean’s parents should rescind their punishment and drive the both of you to the concert. Or, maybe, Jolean’s teacher should drop the test and send an email to all the students clarifying that the test was written incorrectly, and all grades were wrong. All these proposals do seem to solve the problem! One way of decrying these proposals is to say they are “utopian”, but the real root of the problem is that they are outside the purview of the actors engaged in the initial policy discussion. If you told your friend Jolean that instead of sneaking out, that any of the above proposals should take place they would look at you confused and say, “Ok but I’m not them?” In policy debate we often see a number of counterplans that are theoretically illegitimate for these reasons.

Aside from this rant about actors, I have few problems with negative counterplans. The only final caveat I will make is that there is often a very ironic disconnect when the negative explains how important their CP is for education, all the while to establish competition they then force the aff to be (using self-serving definitions of words in the resolution) the most blunt-forced, un-nuanced kind of policy proposal. Education for me, and not for thee, I suppose.

Thoughts on Advantages and Disadvantages:

The link to most politics DAs rests upon a number of contradictory assumptions about fiat. Supposedly, the plan happens immediately (the negative says this so they can claim that it interrupts the agenda), and yet apparently the debate on the plan is a multi-week fight involving a significant expenditure of political capital and good will? Ok. Another one: plan is passed through normal means of sorts—but they completely reshuffle the agenda in the process? Ok. The only time I’ve ever seen these make sense is at the cusp of a new administration who are bright-and-bushy-eyed with a number of policies as their priority (then, I believe, the case can be made persuasively that the plan sucks all the air out of the room). Aside from these time-sensitive politics DA, most versions of this DA are absurd. Last quibble: the quality of evidence in this debate is generally D+.

Claims about UQ determines the direction of…. Or Link determines the direction of….. rarely ever makes sense to me. In fact, they seem to show the hand teams who make them revealing they have strong arguments/evidence in column A and weak arguments/evidence in column B.

Terminal defense is possible, but most defense is far from terminal. Even the most sympathetic read of most arguments only offer a small amount of mitigation rather than outright mitigation. I think the best case defense is the type that says, ‘X is fine now’ or ‘X is being taken care of now’. These arguments are UQ and I/L defense all wrapped up into one.

If evidence is introduced in a debate that is contradictory to what the tag claims it to be, I think it is sufficient to talk to your judge about what the evidence says rather than re-highlighting the Frankenstein monster to make it accurately depict what it actually says. I am probably going to look at the card after the debate either way, so you’ll save some time if you just debate what was said/the un-underlined portions of the card rather than introducing it into the debate.

Thoughts on Kritiks:

I have more than a passing familiarity with most critical literatures. In addition to my own academic interests (I hold a PhD in Rhetorical Studies and have a MA in the same content area), I greatly enjoy reading philosophy in both the continental and analytic tradition in my own free time.

That being said, I often have a bone to pick with theory and its uses/abuses in policy debate. I believe you can and should lean on theory and concepts that are a step-beyond mainstream political discourse, but you also must translate and explain that theory and those concepts so that they can become a short-hand aid for you. With this means is that jargon filled speeches assuming I speak a common-critical language with you is likely going to be a road-to-nowhere. Not because I don’t understand what you are saying (although I might not), but because I need to be sure you understand what you are saying and can explain it to me in its most persuasive form.

As long as the debate is about the hypothetical enactment of the plan vs. a competitive policy option, I think that most kritiks are very hard to win absent some brutal drops by the affirmative (root cause, serial policy failure, floating PICs, etc.). On the flip side, if the negative wins their frameworks most affs become reduced to basically nothing. This is quite a conundrum that a number of judges and teams solve through some nonsensical statement like, “They get their K we get our aff.” What exactly is either side getting? These ‘permutations’ between mutually exclusive frameworks end up being a shitty deal for one of the parties involved (e.g. Ok you get to weigh your aff but we get mindset shift and you can’t perm or make alt solvency arguments). My only advice to both teams is to recognize the olive branch as the trojan horse that it is—otherwise, someone is going to get their feelings hurt.

Final thought: the perm is a defacto loser 9/10 for precisely this disconnect between frameworks. Since debate prioritizes offense over defense, for the perm to ever be a viable offense you will already need a significant amount of compelling offense against the kritik and I usually find that if you are at that point the offense is enough to win you the round anyway.

Thoughts on Topicality/Framework

Fairness is, of course, an impact. Anyone that enters into a game agrees to be bound by rules. If a player departs from those rules, they will obtain some competitive advantage at the expense of another. Preserving that competitive balance is often essential to extracting any of the other myriad benefits one may gain from playing a game.

That being said, it is important to be honest and acknowledge that very rarely (VERY RARELY, I cannot stress enough) do claims about fairness actually come into play in a debate round. This is because appeals to fairness truly only emerge when a player violates rules, not norms. When players introduced dunking into basketball a number of players cried afoul but such complaints rang hollow. Unless rules are modified to ban a practice, appeals to norms alone are not persuasive because your own "meta" strategy in a game can change as your opponent did.

One of the best parts about debate (I believe) is that the activity is so light on rules and so heavy on norms. Its what makes the game so dynamic. In few other games do you get to imagine and defend what sorts of norms players ought to be bound by. In my own debate career, while I would find myself often reading Framework against kritikal affs, I never did so with malice. In fact, when I look back on my debate career these were some of the most meaningful, challenging, and thought provoking rounds I had. While I certainly find arguments like topicality or framework persuasive, in truth I have no sympathy for folks that wish to codify something like topicality or framework into a governing rule for the activity. I always found these approaches to be a noxious combination of hubris and cowardice. If your model of debate is so good, surely it can/should win in the marketplace of ideas? And if those ideas are so indefensible before judges, why run to an enclave and protect bad arguments with institutional support?

While fairness is overused by the negative often in these debates, I think the constitutive features of the debate game are substantially underutilized. Most critical affs do not have a defense of the debate game as such, or a theory of how the gamified elements of debate (win/loss, speaker points, etc.) match up/interface with their kritiks. Another way to put this is to ask: what does your aff gain/lose being placed in a competitive arena, where opponents must disprove it to win the favor of judges? Most K affs are a defense of a good idea, not a defense of a model of debate that puts that good idea in front of opponents and asks them to prove why its a bad idea. This is a huge problem that negative teams do not focus on.

I think if K affs counter-defined words in the resolution on T and defended the educational/ethical benefits of that model of debate most neg teams (given the way they currently debate framework) would be in a really, really, really, rough spot.

brubaie at gmail -- Please add to email chains, thank you

Updated March 2022 for championship season -- congratulations yall!

1. Just do what you do and do it well.I like every "style" of debate and have been lucky to debate, coach, or judge most over these past two decades. Thank you for being stewards of a beautiful game at a pivotal moment in debate history.

2. Above all. The 2NR/2AR should clearly describe what the most important issue(s) in the debate are, why they're the most important issues, and how voting your way best addresses them. Choose, compare, and dig in on a few A+ arguments over a greater volume of A- arguments.

3. Framework. I judge quite a few framework debates and like them. I don't have a strong "lean," but I do notice some slight trends;

-- For the neg, I often find that leaning on fairness/some procedural impact is best. It's the thing the neg's interp most often clearly solves relative to a counter-interp. I think the TVA + aff doesn't solve combo is an effective strategy. I often find that lots of direct pushback vs. case (even without evidence) is necessary and effective. If you don't win some significant defense to the aff it can complicate most paths to victory.

-- For the aff, it helps to clarify a role for each side and to negate/impact turn the neg's interp from there. If you don't have a description of why debating the aff is good and/or how the other team can engage then it can complicate most paths to victory. I am more moved by "here's what the neg could do" than counter-interpreting "resolved."

4. Evidence quality. It's very important, but the key to activating it in my RFD is rebuttal framing. The way evidence is utilized and framed in the final rebuttals is usually the most important variable in how I assess it. The easiest way to hypothesize which evidence I read is a simple if/then: if I hear a clip/quote/even an author name referenced directly in the last speech then I'll 100% read it. Beyond that I'll read for comprehension but that is less likely to drive the outcome of my RFD than direct framing by debaters.

5. Counterplans/theory. Not the worst judge for a funky counterplan. Most common 2AC theory objections seem like competition concerns remedied by kicking the counterplan. I'm not terrible for conditionality bad, but that's almost always because of tech concerns like a flippant block that doesn't answer the 2AC than truth concerns like any real aversion to conditionality (I generally think it's good).

6. Topicality. I haven't really judged a big T throwdown this year. If you prefer someone with no set preferences I'm great, but if you want someone to adhere to consensus I'm afraid I'm unsure what consensus is and will need more explanation than most. Despite my unfamiliarity with many interps, T has generally been an efficient/low-risk/high reward block option in past rounds I've judged.

7. Critiques. The more a K identifies specific parts of the 1AC/2AC that it disagrees with, the better. The aff should attempt to identify which parts of the aff are offense, why only the aff solves them, and why they outweigh. I generally think the aff gets to weigh the aff and most neg framework arguments just seem like impact calculus.

8. National championships!! Congrats again yall :) March 2022 will mark my first tournament judging in person since February 2020. I am thrilled to see you all again and to celebrate all you've done for debate. I know it's the national championship and it's tough to relax, but try as hard as you can to just have fun and enjoy it. Debate goes by way too fast and is very easy to take for granted. Sending all who read this the best of luck and hope you can lift each other up and give each other some really fun, challenging debates to end the season.

Philosophy Updated 9-5-17

Nick Ryan – Liberty Debate – 10th year coaching/Judging

Please label your email chains “Tournament – Rd “#” – AFF Team vs Neg Team” – or something close to that effect. I hate “No subject,” “Test,” “AFF.” I would like to be included “nryan2wc@gmail.com”

Too often Philosophy’s are long and give you a bunch of irrelevant information. I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet.

1. I spend most of my time working with our “Policy teams,” I have a limited amount of working with our “K/Non traditional” debaters, but the bulk of my academic research base is with the “traditional” “policy teams;” don’t expect me to know the nuances of your specific argument, debate it and explain it.

2. Despite this I vote for the K a fair amount of time, particularly when the argument is contextualized in the context of the AFF and when teams aren’t reliant on me to unpack the meaning of “big words.” Don’t rely on me to find your “embedded clash” for you.

3. “Perm Do Both” is not a real argument, neg teams let AFFs get away with it way too often and it shifts in the 1AR. Perms and Advocacy/CP texts should be written out.

4. If neither team clarifies in the debate, then I default to the status quo is always an option.

5. These are things that can and probably will influence your speaker points: clarity, explanations, disrespectfulness to the other team, or your partner, stealing prep time, your use of your speech time (including cx), etc.

6. Prep time includes everything from the time the timer beeps at the end of the lasts speech/CX until the doc is sent out.

7. I think Poems/Lyrics/Narratives that you are reading written by someone else is evidence and should be in the speech document.

ADA Novice Packet Tournaments:

Evidence you use should be from the packet. If you read cards that weren’t in the packet more than once it’s hard to believe it was a “honest mistake.”

If you have any questions about things that are not listed here please ask, I would rather you be sure about my feelings, then deterred from running something because you are afraid I did not like it.

The most important thing to me is that you are clear and intentional about laying out the big picture. It will help a lot for you to very explicitly say 1) what you're winning and 2) how that interacts with the other team's important arguments in a way that adds up to a ballot. I think the essential skill that the best debaters have is the ability to do this eloquently, concisely, and with the right strategic instincts. Even if you do this in a clunky and inefficient way that's still much better than not doing it at all.

The second most important thing to know is that I am not a good flow, and will miss a lot of what you're saying if you don't accommodate this. I'll try to make it clear if I'm struggling to keep up.

Finally, I've gone for and voted for lots of different arguments, and I'm happy to vote on anything as long as you keep the above in mind. For what it's worth I went for mostly DAs at the end of my career but enjoyed reading and thinking about critiques as well.

Competed: University of Minnesota
Coach (Present): Emporia State University; College Prep
Coached (Past): Augsburg College; Highland Park Senior High (MN)

PUBLIC FORUM

Although my primary background is in policy, I am familiar with the procedures of public forum and spent a season of my high school career competing in the format. Below are my answers to the suggested PF philosophy questions provided by the TOC.

Please share your opinions or beliefs about how the following play into a debate round: Speed of Delivery: Speed is fine so long as clarify doesn't suffer.

Format of Summary Speeches (line by line? big picture?):Both effective line by line and big picture storytelling are important to my ballot.

Role of the Final Focus: Providing a rubric/judge instruction for my ballot

Topicality: Generally these debates are done poorly, it's important to have a comparative metric for evaluating interpretations and a robust discussion of the various impacts to the violation. I do not view topicality in a purely "jurisdictional" way - offense/defense is important.

Plans: Not needed but not automatically disallowed.

Kritiks: Sure although just like any argument, it must be explained, applied, and impacted thoroughly.

Flowing/note-taking: I will flow the entirety of the debate.

Do you value argument over style? Style over argument? Argument and style equally? Quality and depth of argument is the primary thing I will evaluate, but style is not unimportant by any means.

If a team plans to win the debate on an argument, in your opinion does that argument have to be extended in the rebuttal or summary speeches? Yes.

POLICY

"I view my role in the debate not as arbiter of truth, but critic of argument, as such I attempt to divorce myself from relative "truth" values of arguments." - Chris Loghry

I like to see debaters deploying arguments that motivate and interest them.

I don’t call for many cards. This does not mean evidence quality does not matter, or that I don’t call cards often. What it does mean is: the debaters make the arguments, not the cards. I will not view them as placeholders for warranted explanation. Not every argument requires a card to answer.

Framing matters: provide me a macro-level filter through which to view the micro-components of the debate. The debates I find myself most frustrated with are the ones in which the 2NR and the 2AR have respectively delivered me 2NC #2 and 2AC #2 and left me to sort through the pieces. Rebuttalists that present a clear story while closing the right doors will be rewarded.

The more explicit you are with me in terms of my ballot, the better. This mostly goes for presumption and judge conditionality, but also for competing Frameworks/Role of the Ballots. If debaters are not explicit, there becomes no objective standard for me to use as a reference for when and where I infer these arguments.

Have a plan for Cross-X.

Things I like to see in cross-x: Asking precise, critical questions. Giving succinct, impactful answers. Writing down all concessions for utilization in the next speech.

Things I hate to see in cross-x: Ad-homs. Open-ended softballs. Questions that blatantly indicate a lack of flowing. Refusal to answer reasonable questions. Repetition of questions to avoid giving answers. Poorly-timed invocations of false ethos. 4-person shouting matches.

If you are reading critical literature, whether on the Affirmative or Negative, please explain and utilize your method. Make the links turn the case. Have a robust explanation of the alternative. Strive for internal, philosophical consistency. Your authors have particular theories of subjectivity, violence, etc., and I want to thear them; just remember that they all can and SHOULD be ACTIVELY applied broadly to frame many portions of the technical debate.

A speech doc is not a flow substitute.

Debate matters just as much to your opponents as it does to you, even if for different reasons. Be mindful of this and respect your competitors.

2023 Nukes Rewrite

He/Him

Jsmith55@binghamton.edu

Please add me to the chain, I do not usually read along during speeches but I like to able to check things during cx/prep and it makes post-round evidence collection easier. I prefer when teams send analytics (especially for online debates) because I think normalizing the practice makes debate more accessible for people who might struggle to process policy debate speed without forcing people to ask for that accommodation.

Debated at Binghamton for 2.5 years (college novice), coached at Baylor for two, and am now in my 5th year as a coach/gta for the University of Kansas.

Random logistical note:My verbatim does not do well with images, by default I can not see most images when I open a word document. If you're argument has a visual component to it that it is important for me to see remind me so I make sure to open the document in a way that lets me see the image. (I try to do this by default but I do forget sometimes so the reminder is helpful)

I love debate and promise to put my full effort into the rounds I judge.

This philosophy is very long because I would rather over explain and give more insight into how I think of my judging then less. Ultimately, you should do what you do best, everything below is a preference but I do try my hardest to adapt to the debate in front of me.

Broad Debate Thoughts

I think I'm generally in line with most of the community in the sense that I think specific debate is better than generic debate, clarity is really important but undervalued, and most rebuttal speeches could use more comparative impact calculus.

In terms of areas where I might differ a little/require stylistic adaptation, the most important is that I tend to really value/give significant weight to spin and the explanation of arguments. Part of my goal as a judge is to base a decision as much as I can on the words of the debaters in the 2NR/2AR. That means that I'm looking to the story or narrative you are creating and reading your arguments through that lens as opposed to looking at what your cards say. A lot of my decisions in close debates come down to the question of who was more explicit in constructing a story that not only framed why they won arguments substantively but also how they won the debate at a meta level. Story telling in debate is everything for me and I try to reward teams who do that work as opposed to teams hoping that I will construct a ballot or narrative for them.

Functionally, my focus on explanation and spin means that I am not a great judge for 2nr 2ar's that attempt to identify everything each team conceded and ask me to construct a ballot from those concessions. I am better for teams who explicitly identify the ballot they want me to write and then frame the remainder of the speech by explaining how various arguments support that particular ballot. As a side note, generally, I'm of the opinion that the word conceded (or their equivalents) should be used minimally in 2nr/2ars because it ends up serving as a placeholder for comparison and the narrative construction I am discussing. The over use also makes it harder to emphasize the actual important drops that teams may have made as they get lost within the 20 things you claim they never answered.

I tend give a lot of leeway in terms of how teams apply and expand on evidence which means that I think I'm certainly a better judge for the team that reads a couple of good cards and focuses on spin and narrative with those cards that I am for the team that reads a lot of cards but never really tells me what I should do with them. I am also better for teams that are explicit in applying their arguments to different parts of the flow, than I am for teams that hope I will pick the embedded clash out of an overview. If one team is doing the work to explain a piece of evidence and its implication while the other team is implicitly answering the argument in an overview I tend to side with the team doing the more explicit analysis.

None of this is to say that I do not care about evidence quality, especially if you make arguments as to why evidence quality matters in your particular debate but that I think I am more willing then a lot of judges to give credence to analytics and explanation because in my mind that leads to less intervention

This preference means that clarity is really important, I can keep up with fast debate, but the more explanation I get/words I understand the better it will be for you, so try to find a balance. I'm also not the most technical flow, even though I tend to be very tech over truth in how I evaluate rounds, so be aware of giving me time and being clear with transitions and packaging especially.

I have a substantial neg bias in my voting record, I think that this true for several reasons, some of which come down to chance/variance and some meta things about how clash debates play out. However, I do think I tend to be better for the negative because in a lot of debates, I usually find myself feeling like the neg block overwhelms the 1ar and that I am reluctant to give the 2ar much room to spin out of those concessions. I am much better for affirmative teams that are willing to go for less arguments (1/2) and explain how the rest of the debate is implicated by those arguments. However, I often feel like 2ars think they need to match every 2nr argument which makes it difficult to produce a narrative or story for my ballot.

Framework v K affs

My record in these debates has increasingly shifted towards the neg. That is less of an ideological question and more a question of how the meta of these debates has changed. I often think negative teams do a better job (it is also easier for them) of controlling a lot of framing and uniqueness issues that I find important. Affs often struggle against arguments like "debate is a game so that means fairness is the most important impact" or the "affs offense is non-unique because it is a criticism of the content of the resolution but the ci can't solve it" or "debate does not shape subjectivity at all".

At a truth level, I believe that K-affs are good for debate and lead to some of the most important/relevant discussions in our community but I do find myself feeling like K teams might be a bit behind in terms of dealing with those framing arguments.

affs

You need an argument about the purpose of debate and the question of "what we are doing here". Ideally that argument needs to be based in your 1ac and you need to leverage it against the neg claims that debate is just a game or that subject formation does not happen in these spaces. I'm very persuaded by the argument that if the activity is unethical then who cares if it is fair, but I think affs often struggle to have an explanation that actually implicates the activity/form of debate.

I wish aff teams would be more willing to challenge neg teams on questions of debates relation to subject formations. I often think, neg teams get away with an almost nihilistic depiction of debate as absolutely valueless. Aff teams should argue that even if individual rounds do not shape subjectivity, the type of activity we create and norms of research do have an impact on how we think and move throughout the world. I also frequently find myself thinking that the argument current "debate does not shape subjectivity"should be an aff argument not an neg argument because it seems like that is something k affs would say is the problem. Maybe we should attempt to construct a model of debate that does try to shape how we think and educate rather than focusing on being a pure competitive game with no regard for the types of people we produce.

I also wish affs would more push back against the internal link that just because debate is a game it means we should fully maximize fairness, (or even what it means to maximize fairness) There are a lot of great games that do not require fairness in the way debate discusses it. Games are also often more about education and learning then competitive equity but generally we've defaulted to the idea that debate is a game and the thing that matters for games is that they are fair.

I'm a good judge for arguments that draw on the utility of kvk debate and the conversations that are had there. I think fw teams often pretend those debates don't exist or devalue those arguments in ways that could generate significant offense for the affirmative but affs sometimes fail to take advantage of those arguments.

I think overall I'm better competitively for more impact turn styles of answering framework because those have been increasingly the meta and I'm more used to them. However, I do really enjoy teams that articulate alternative relationships to the resolution that are more nuanced then 'res bad/unethical" and discuss in-depth alternative models of debate .

Neg-

When I vote aff, it is frequently because the aff won the case page, which made structural claims as to how debate, contestation language, etc operate and those claims shape how I view the framework page. Thus, for me, you must engage the case, either by isolating fw from it, or with various case defense arguments.

Good fw debating is good case debating, if you are not talking about the aff, on both pages, (ie how fw relates to the affs impacts and structural claims) you are losing the debate. I think the question of how specific the fw is to the aff is what differentiates great fw debaters from good fw debaters.

That is also true for explaining impacts like fairness/clash, If you are able to describe to me how their aff/interpretation specifically makes it impossible to be neg/ruins models of debate and provide examples in round it will always go further than general rants about the necessity of limits. I can go either way on the question of fairness being an impact and it most often comes down to which team is controlling spin on what debate is/what is the goal of our activity. The more the narrative of "debate is a game, fairness matters for games, therefore fairness matters here" is clear to me, the more I am likely to think of fairness as an impact.

I understand the strategic utility of more procedural based arguments and impacts. However, I will say I enjoy fw debates where the neg defends the possibility of what plan based debate can do or why it is educationally valuable, far more then the current trend of making neg claims as small as possible. However, in the end do what you have to do.

Policy aff v K

The fw debate is incredibly important for me.

I do not like the trend of kind of deciding that the fw debate is a wash and constructing some weird compromise outside of what the interpretations/views of the debate actually were.

I think fw interps/arguments should be as explicit as possible in terms of instructing judges as to what you think the implication of winning your frame work is. I often think teams are very unclear on this question and leave it to judges to fill in blanks. I think that is particularly true for aff fw interps that often stop at "weigh the plan" with very little explanation of what that means or how the K prevents weighing the aff/the plan. Similarly you have to tell me how the neg moots the 1ac and not just assert that it occurs.

Neg teams need to recognize that winning framework is not game over, but a way of shaping how the rest of the debate plays out. As such your links and even alternative should be contextualized to the framework interpretation you are going for/winning. If your framework is about research practices, then your links better explicitly explain why the aff research practices are bad. If your framework is about competing political imaginaries your criticism of the aff should use that language.

A lot of my neg decisions start with some variation of "I thought the neg was winning a structuring (often theory of power) claim that shaped how I came down on a lot of the close issues in the debate. A lot of my aff decisions start with I thought the aff won that they should get to weigh the plan and that the aff outweighed links that were relatively non-unique.

Kvk debates

Generally, the team that is able to package their arguments into a clearer narrative/story wins the debate. That goes beyond just being right about the content of the arguments but focusing on explaining how that content converts into a ballot

I'm not great for aff teams that just try to permute everything because I tend to think more structural Ks will always find a link. You are better of challenging the neg's view of the world and defending how your aff approaches politics.

I'm pretty willing to listen to arguments about what competition should look like in kvk debates, i.e. how much of the aff should one have to disagree with to earn a ballot is often a relevant question in a lot of these debates since both teams often agree on a lot of premises. That means I'm also better than a lot of judges for arguments about whether the aff should get a perm.

In terms of K familiarity, I'm very familiar with the ableism literature used in debate. I'm also very comfortable with the cap arguments generally read in debate, though I often think teams deploy them pretty poorly, especially against K teams. I have a working knowledge of the more structural ks in debate though I'm not particularly well-read. I do not feel very confident in my knowledge of the more "high theory" arguments deployed in debate. Those require more explanation and examples with an emphasis on explaining the applicable elements of those criticisms.

Policy v Policy

I don't judge too many of these debates, and I still probably judge more than I should. The biggest thing to think about is my discussion of explanation at the top. In policy v policy debates there is a tendency to forgo that storytelling element of debate in the name of efficiency because it is assumed that judges will somewhat fill in those gaps. That ends up being difficult for me because my lack of experience with these debates makes it hard to fill in the gaps and I just generally don't like doing so. That means the team that focuses more on explicitly instructing me as to how I should understand the debate at the meta-level will do better.

That is especially true for counter plan competition debates and topicality debates because I have virtually no experience in either and can struggle to process what is going on as I attempt to keep up with the block spewing. The more work you can do to make me understand, even if you feel like you are overexplaining the better you will do.

Random side notes

I think I'm a decent judge for arguments that challenge the form of debate (think spades, coloring etc) as long as you are being explicit in explaining why you are doing what you are doing, you have an actual argumentative backing for what you are doing and you are trying to win the round.

I don't really know where I fall on most theory issues because I judge them so rarely, I would say that I'm fairly agnostic on conditionality in general, but I do think there is an increasing prevalence of a style of run and gun argumentation that I really dislike. In my mind, the style of reading like 8 bad arguments, going for the least covered one in the block (or just kicking all of them in the 1nr and talking about t for 9 minutes against k teams) creates shallow antieducational debates. I don't think that practice is intrinsically tied to conditional argumentation but that it does seem to go hand in hand and I could probably be convinced condo is bad because it promotes this model. Read this as you are better off constructing 1ncs with arguments you will actually go for/discuss and not trying to just outspread the aff with random nonsense.

I have an absurdly awful poker face while judging debates. You will see me react to things. I will say that if push comes to shove you should always prioritize your view of an argument/the round over what you perceive my reaction to be, because I might be reacting to something totally different then what you think. Furthermore, I vote for arguments that I dislike all the time and vote against arguments I do like as well, so my reaction might not be tied at all to the competitive element of the debate.

If you are some one who finds facial expressions/reactions distracting and unhelpful feel free to let me know and I will do my best to limit them

There are very few arguments that I will refuse to consider on face, but please do remember if you are the type of team that enjoys the wipeout, spark or death good, genres of argumentation, that debate is ultimately a persuasive activity and the burden of work you will have to do to win/be persuasive for those arguments will likely be higher than normal.

* Minor note before Blake

I've done essentially no research on the 2023-2024 high school topic. While I've debated or coached on topics relevant to this area, I might not recognize very specific acronyms and am generally unaware of how people have approached questions related to the limits/broad meaning of this topic for T debates.

*Briefly updated before 2022 season

Debaters should have the ability to argue about what the terms of the debate are and how that relates to my decision. I prefer judging debates where the competitors are invested in their arguments, whatever those might be.

It is very rare in the debates I’ve judged that one team loses every argument on the flow. Consequently, it often seems going for a few less arguments improves the quality of the debating for both sides. Most debates tend to be decided in terms of how well either team characterizes each other’s options and framing what matters. At the top of your final rebuttal, please clearly prioritize how I should evaluate the debate. I love when debaters give me a roadmap of what's going to happen and then make it happen.

E-debate/Paperless:

Prep time only goes until you’re done prepping your speech, which means email time doesn't count against you. Please always include me on your email chain. Sometimes in cross-x when people are asking questions about evidence, I like to be able to look at the cards as well.

I'm pretty sympathetic that the transition to online debate is hard for many people and not the same as doing it in person. I'll try to do my best to make sure the rounds go smoothly.

I am better at flowing if I can maintain eye-contact with the person speaking. If you need to have your camera off for connection issues / personal reasons, I totally understand.

Speaker Points:

I spend most of my time at the end of the debate trying to decide who won and what I would have needed from the other team to win the debate or general commentary about the debate. While I’m filling out the ballot, I spend a few seconds trying to decide speaker points. I don’t have a static starting point for assigning or categorizing speakers, but try to decide how well the speakers used / responded during cross-x, whether a decision made by one of the speakers uniquely helped improve/hurt the teams chances of winning and how well the speakers brought together the debate in their final rebuttals.

I take notes during cross-x and enjoy when debaters get strategic concessions that are used in their speeches.

Argument related comments:

- Counterplans generally require a solvency advocate. This can be aff evidence or neg evidence.

- Critiques may not need to have an alternative to be competitive with the aff, but I will not judge kick an alt (or counterplan) for you unless the framing in the 2NR justifies that option.

- I often find it insufficient to read a hodgepodge of cards or arguments that “critique the squo” and call it an affirmative. Good affs have compelling methods, approaches to the space, or defenses of the resolution.

- In all debates but especially K aff verse K debates, links need impacts / clear internal links. The negative can win a link and still lose the debate if it’s unclear why that link “matters”.

- Competing methodologies is too often left as a buzz phrase that does not establish why the aff should not have a permutation. Similarly, asserting there is a permutation that is advantageous, does not explain why I should allow the aff to access that option. In either case, having a bit of depth goes a long way to win whether the aff should or should not have a perm.

In-round Accessibility

Part of my responsibility as the judge is to make the debate accessible. If there is something I can do to help with that – please let me know. If you don’t feel like disclosing then you’re welcome to email me (address above).

Pet Peeves:

1- Clipping cards is punishable with a loss and 0 speaker points. I do not feel that I need a debater to initiate a clipping challenge, as an educator I feel I have a responsibility to monitor against cheating.

2- I value very highly the safety for ALL competitors to engage in this activity, so please be considerate of others. Making arguments with sexist, racist, ableist, and other exclusionary language can be especially harmful for people in the activity.

3- Please make sure you ask your opponents what pronouns they use. Misgendering is a serious issue.

4- Stealing prep time

5- Reading conditional arguments that clearly and unquestionably contradict

6- Repeating that an argument was conceded- especially if it clearly was not

7- Asking cross-x questions that go nowhere in developing the strategy or understanding of the debate.

8- Don’t be disrespectful to the people who host tournaments.

Brief Bio

I studied philosophy and sociology as an undergraduate, communication at UNLV for an MA, and now communication at U-Iowa for a PhD.

3 years of debate at Millard South High School

4 years of debate at Concordia College – Moorhead

2 years coaching at University of Nevada- Las Vegas

5 years as a graduate assistant coach at the University of Iowa and 2nd year as the Debate Coach at Iowa

1. You have to have truth

Updated November 2022

Dan Stanfield

2 Years at Los Rios Community College

1 Year at CSU Fullerton

1 Year at UNLV

2 Years Coaching at UWG

2 years @ Baylor

Iowa 2019 - 2020

IC 2022

Coached for CKM on TI topic

Coached for Juan Diego on Surveillance

Coach for SLC West Education

Coached for CKM Immigration - CJR

Coached for Nevada Union Immigration - CJR

Add me to your email chain stanfield.dan@gmail.com

Michigan 2023 Update:

Pronouns: they/them

Please don't over adjust your content to me, I am a lover of debate in all its forms. Make the arguments you want to make and I'll evaluate the debate.

I have had very few rounds on this topic so if there is any topic specific jargon err toward a higher degree of explanation.

October 2022 Update:

Taylor Swift lyrics cleverly incorporated will result in a speaker point boost. Jokes in poor taste will result in a speaker point drop. Buyer beware.

"I am a firm believer that debate is for debaters. I had my time to make others listen to whatever (and I do mean absolutely whatever) I wanted to say, and its my turn to listen to and evaluate your arguments, whatever they may be. While I'm sure I have my limitations make me adapt to you instead of the other way around" -- Lindsay VanLuvanee

I will attempt to limit the amount my predispositions will influence how I evaluate a debate round. Don't feel as if you need to change your strategy to debate in front of me, do what you do best, because the alternative is usually subpar debate. The final two rebuttals should write my ballot for me, teams that accurately break the round down and are reasonable about what they are and are not winning will usually be rewarded with increased speaker points.I enjoy a high level of specificity and nuance broad sweeping claims will get you nowhere. I place importance on how pieces of evidence get debated, as opposed to simply constructing debates based on the pieces of evidence that have been introduced. While I also place a premium on quality evidence (which, I would like to be able to hear during your speech), I believe that a smart analytic argument has the potential to gain equal traction to a solid piece of evidence. Quality always trumps quantity.

I find cross ex to be the most important part of debate its one of the few times I feel I get to connect with the individual debaters, while I don't flow it I pay very close attention to it, and what happens here will inform how I see large portions of the round.

Theory:
Theory needs to be well executed. Debates in which theory blocks do the arguing almost always favor the neg.

I don’t like cheap shots.(This does not mean I won't vote on them, I'll just be cranky about it) I like arguments to be well developed. Most cheap shots are not reasons to reject the team and significant time would need to be spent in order to convince me otherwise. However, it is your burden to point out how irrelevant many theory arguments that are advanced in debates are, as a concession may force my hand.

Nearly all theory questions I end up siding in favor of the negative, I think conditionality is fine, any potentially abusive CP is checked by quality of evidence. 50 States Fiat is one arg where an affirmative could convince me this is a reason to reject the team it is likely to still be an uphill battle.

Judge Kick: I think this deserves its own section, when the 2nr goes for a CP I believe the debate is solely a question of plan versus the CP. While a 2nr can instruct me to to kick the cp for them if the 2r wins offense against the counterplan an affirmative can respond that I shouldn't kick the counterplan for the negative and I am likely to side with the affirmative. If the 2nr contains a counterplan I have a very strong predisposition that if the affirmative wins substantive solvency deficits to the counterplan or other offense against it that outweighs the net benefit than I should be voting aff. And that I then shouldn't decide to then evaluate the status quo (i..e the net-benefit) vs. the plan.


T:
Separate from the framework section, I really enjoy evidentiary T debates that aren't clash of civ debates. I find these are some of the most nuanced debates about what the resolution means which is always compelling to me. I evaluate topicality like a DA offense v defense. For affirmatives here do not place all your eggs in the basket of reasonability, I think only reasonability is only a question of the interpretation and not the aff or plan itself. Any other interpretation of reasonability I don't think constitutes an actual argument.

FW

First contrary to popular belief I do not hack for framework, however this year I have noticed myself voting for framework more often than I don't vote for framework. For me there are a few ways the framework debates break down in terms of impact, primarily between procedural and education based impacts. By procedural I mean those impact arguments that result from things such as limits, or grounds internal links to impacts like clash, fairness, debatability. The second form of framework are those arguments about decision making skills, topic education, deliberative democracy.

If you are negative reading framework I cannot stress how much I would rather see the version of framework that couches its arguments in terms of the procedural side, ie. limits , ground, etc. I believe this is the most strategic form of the argument. I believe debate is a game and impacts that make the game unable to be played by one side or the other constitute a reason to vote negative. Explanations of the impact that have been compelling to me is that I strongly believe there should be a negative path to victory, a negative that couches their impacts like this will have greatly increased my likelihood to vote for framework. For affirmatives debating this style of framework if you win a counter interpretation that provides a limit on the topic and can explain why that limit on the topic mitigates some portion of the negative offense regards to limits or debateability, then that is the best route for getting me to vote affirmative. I will also say YOU NEED OFFENSE, playing the middle ground will not get my ballot I need impact turns big disads to their interpretation of the topic with well explained impacts. If affirmative I do not need 5-10 barely explained disads to FWI need 1-4 well explained and warranted DA's to the negative interpretation.

Conversely it is much harder to win my ballot exclusively going for arguments about topic education, decision making skills, or deliberative democracy. I believe any affirmative that is even close to knowing what they are doing will be able to easily impact turn these arguments. This isn't to say you shouldn't read these arguments at all they can be excellent external impacts to your interpretation, but instead you should use these arguments as a supplement to the more game-playing/ procedural versions of the argument.

For negatives who have framework as their go to strat THE CASE STILL MATTERS , the reason for this is the case determines the weight I give to affirmative impact turns / disadvantages to framework. If the affirmative solves 100% of their aff then I gave 100% of the weight of their impact turns to framework, conversely if the aff solves maybe 1% of their aff then the strength of the disadvantages or impact turns will be drastically reduced.

Topical version of the aff: You don't have to have one to win but it can help. They also don't have to solve the entire aff instead they are a test to show that the content of the aff is not precluded by the resolutional prompt. For affirmatives the topical version of the aff doesn't solve our aff not very persuasive to me. However, an argument that the topical version of the aff is not in fact topical under the negative's interpretation of the topic is persuasive. Similarly an argument that the topical version of the aff in fact does not allow for the content of the aff to exist. Form based arguments from affirmatives are also compelling to me in response to topical versions of the aff, how the content may exist but the form of it would not be, can be an extremely persuasive argument against both the topical version, as well as also acting as offense against the negatives interpretation.

Beyond counter interpretations it can be incredibly helpful for an affirmative to have a counter model of what debate looks like, which can act as a filter for a variety of the negatives arguments as well as acting as a type of uniqueness for your own impact turns to a negatives interpretation of the topic.

Something I've told to a few debaters this year may help further contextualize what I've said here -- "If both affirmative and neg execute absolutely perfectly I probably lean slightly negative" -- however it should be noted that I have never seen this perfect execution take place.

The K:
I will do my best to limit my predispositions from giving explanation or advancing arguments for the other team. Specificity and spin are important for both sides of the debate. I don’t like generic explanations of meta theory with no tie to the affirmative. Similarly, I don’t like generic responses to critical theory outside of the context of the aff. Generic evidence does not force generic explanation.

Disability k's -- Due to how I spent my last two years in debate , this is obviously a body of literature that I am extremely familiar with however if you are not familiar with it trying to pick it up just because I am in the back of the room is a terrible decision, and one you will almost certainly regret. Secondarily I thought I should include my thoughts on the various ableist language arguments. Essentially most of the time I believe these arguments in and of themselves don't constitute a great argument unless its an especially violent piece of language this doesn't mean what you say doesn't matter what it does mean is that the negative needs to explain to me why the language warrants a negative ballot and not just punitive measures like maybe lower speaker points or not evaluating certain pieces of evidence. I'm happy to explain this further if there are questions.

Recent years I have found I have a tendency to enjoy arguments described as "high-theory" IF THEY ARE EXECUTED WELL. I have coached teams to read all variety or arguments from the cap k to baudrillard, so if the death K is your jam then you should go for it. A lot of my current academic work revolves around disability and psychoanalysis so take that as you will.

If you ask anyone at Baylor they will tell you (and are correct) in that I really enjoy hearing arguments about psychoanalysis I find this to be an incredibly interesting area of argumentation and always enjoy when the affirmative or negative has to do with these questions of psychoanalysis.

CPs/Das:
I love a good, well-researched, specific strategy. The more generic your strategy becomes, the greater the chance of me assigning an extremely low risk to these arguments. Sometimes there is simply no link. Absolute defense does exist.

The last thing I will say is that debates that I have fun in will be rewarded by higher speaker points. I have fun when I see well thought out and deployed strategy.. Make me laugh and you will be rewarded. Be nice.

Also, I adore good puns (well maybe bad ones even more) make some clever puns in your speeches and you will be rewarded with speaker points.

Change in 2014

excessive / intentional use of racial slurs, jokes in bad tase, misgendering, ableist slurs will result in much lower speaker points. Note: an ableist slur is the R word , or derogatorily referring to someone as a cripple. It is not saying the word stand in your plan text/advocacy statement.

FRED STERNHAGEN Concordia College; 36 years coaching; Spring 2018

For e-mail chains: Fred.Sternhagen@gmail.com

This First Section is the Quick Overview

Things I’ll Try to Do

1. I have no approved list of positions. My commitment is to listen to the debate that the debaters produce.

2. I try to preference decisions made in the last rebuttals. I think developing critical thinking is a (perhaps the) biggest benefit of the activity. Making choices is very important to critical thinking. So, I will try to hold you responsible for the choices you make in the last two rebuttals. If you don't talk about it in the 2NR or the 2NR, I'm going to try to not think about it. To me, this seems to emphasize and reward critical thinking by the debaters.

3. I will try to privilege decision calculus developed by the debaters. Even if I think the way you compare and weigh issues is pretty silly, I’ll try to use that decision calculus if the other team doesn’t present an alternative. If you don't do that comparative work (and few debaters do) I'll need to do the decision calculus work. You might not like the way I do it--but someone needs to do those comparisons.

Personal Proclivities

1. People tell me I’m quite easy to read non-verbally. I certainly try to be. I try to give you a lot of response. So, if you pay attention, that should help you.

2. I can get irritated by people who seem to presume that they are so much smarter than their partner that they need to do all the cross ex answers. Now, I'd really prefer a complete and/or accurate cross ex answer to an answer that will mess up the debate. So, if you need to answer to accomplish that, please do so. However, please think carefully about whether you are presuming your partner is not competent enough to give the answer. Do you really want to say that?

GENERAL ADVICE: 1) I don’t want to read a lot of evidence after the round. While I do have concerns about preserving orality, my bigger concern is that judges often construct arguments that the debaters did not. If I have to read a bunch of stuff to figure out what you are saying—that’s a problem for you. 3) I will not read speech documents during the round. This is a consequence of my concern for judges constructing arguments (what we used to call "judge intervention") 4) Portions of many speeches are unintelligible to me. Frankly, I think that is true for many people and that a lot of people fake understanding. I think the major reason debaters swap their speeches back and forth is that without that—you wouldn’t know what is going on. Maybe not, maybe it is only me. In any case, you would be well served when debating in front of me to be much more concerned about being understandable. 5) I like clear claims. I REALLY like clear claims. If your tags are over nine words long, you should not presume that I can flow that. I’ll pick 6 to 9ish words as a rendition of your claim. It is very much in your self-interest to influence what I perceive to be your claim. 6) Clear precise signposting is likely to be very helpful to you. I like arguments to line up. 7) Following transitions between arguments can be difficult for me. My higher pitch hearing is not very good. Grunting “next” might not let me know you have moved to another argument. 8) I think most contemporary debaters are simply horrid at refutation. Repeating what was said earlier is not an extension. Reading more evidence is not refutation. Tell me HOW you win an argument.

CRITIAL ARGUMENTS: 1) The philosophical issues seem important to me. 2) Still, a lot of critique positions strike me as just silly or, even more likely, some kind of incoherent philo-psycho-babble. I think you would be well served to think about what separates a critique from other kinds of arguments. Just reading some cards that mention a philosophical concept does not mean that the position functions as a different kind of argument. 3) My desire for the educational functioning of the activity still controls the situation and IF you were able to convince me that critique positions are particularly bad for our game, I'd want to get rid of them. However, you need to remember that I don't start with the assumptions that critiques are bad. You need to explain and illustrate why that would be so. More specifically, appeals that seem to merely call for a rejection of weird stuff are not likely to be persuasive with me. There’s still a lot of 1969 under my thinning hair….. 4) While the Concordia debaters have been far “left” of center for some time—that was never my plan. It just kind of happened. I’ve never told debaters what positions they may or may not work on. I’ve just sort of been taken along for the ride. 5) Mutual preference judging means I’ve heard way more critical than traditional debates for some time. You should remember that if you are running traditional positions. I’ll probably enjoy hearing them—but I’ll be less practiced with them than a lot of judges. Be careful about assuming I’ll fill in gaps for you.

THEORY ARGUMENTS AND OTHER PROCEDURALS: I’ve never been opposed to these arguments. However, I don’t vote for them much. I think there are two reasons. First, usually there is not much in the way of support/grounds for the claims. When debaters don’t have a card to read—they often don’t know how to support a claim. Secondly, there is usually a need to do more impact comparison. An affirmative decreases ground. Okay, what is the result of that? What bad happens? Is the result enough to outweigh what the affirmative claims as the advantage to their approach?

The rest of this is stuff I’ve distributed for many years. I still think reading it would be helpful—but there isn’t much new from this point on. Some of it is repetative with parts reworked above. The parts are meant to be consistent.

OVERVIEW: My views about what needs to be emphasized in contemporary academic debate have remained stable for several years. The first is PRECISION OF ARGUMENT. It seems to me that debate should train students to more precisely advance and identify claims. It is hard for me to regard sloppily worded claims on the nature of, “case analysis disproves that” as representative of good argumentation. Second is lack of COMPLETENESS. I think speed per se, the words per minute uttered, is rarely an important problem. Rather, utterances become so truncated that they cross below the threshold of what constitutes an argument or delivery makes it very hard for listeners to process--to attend to and remember--the arguments. Third is lack of COHERENCE in the reasons debaters advance. We've heard a lot about the need to “tell a story.” Much research converges on the conclusion that people process information within structures; that for information to be meaningful, it must be connected to other information. My firm belief is that debaters need to spend MUCH more time and effort considering how separate arguments in a debate fit together into a coherent whole. Particularly important is comparison of arguments and evaluation of their relative importance. Winning an argument isn't that hard. Ability to show why the arguments you've won are important to the whole round is the mark of a truly good debater. Instead, debaters usually treat all arguments as equally important. There is little attempt to discuss underlying assumptions or overarching issues. While overviews at the beginning of a rebuttal are better than NO attempt to provide comparisons I often find them of little use because they are left divorced from the "line-by-line." In my view, really effective debating would INTEGRATE comparisons with the specific refutation. That is, the debaters would win the particular arguments and then explain the importance of those positions rather than separating out the "importance" step into a separate overview. Also, I suspect that overviews are often used to advance new arguments so be sure you clearly connect overview arguments to somewhere else on the flow

GENERAL IMPLICATIONS; FRAMEWORK FOR DECISION MAKING In an effort to promote precision, completeness and coherence in argument, I have adopted what can be termed a ”non-interventionist” stance, holding that debaters should be given credit for only the arguments they ACTUALLY PRESENT. I attempt to place an obligation upon debaters for not merely presenting ``positions,'' but to create MEANING. To promote decision making by the debaters, I take the role of an “educational gamesperson'”. The “educational” reflects my desire for the outcome of the process. The “games” term reflects my view that the educational end result is best served by allowing argument about any issue. I promise to listen (to the best of my ability) to anything. Since education is my desired end result of the game, educational implication is one fruitful area from which to develop justifications for theoretic practices. It is certainly not the only area from which to develop such justifications. I purposely avoid terming myself “tabula rasa'' since it is hard for me to believe a blank slate possible or even desirable. What does a blank slate tell the tab room if no one develops any decision rules? The predispositions which I knowingly bring into a room fall into these general categories

ARGUMENT PRECONCEPTIONS: Remember that my definition of an argument is ”cognitive” and focuses on meaning. That means I'm actively trying not to intervene and finish titles, explanations, applications,... What you say out loud is the argument made. Even if I could make the argument more effective by altering the claim, it will not be rewritten for you. You should also make your own applications of arguments. If an argument on disad 1 applies to disad 3, you need to tell my why. Even if the link is ``clearly'' the same. You need to tell me that. However, intervention will happen after 2AR. I will make a real effort to catch new arguments in 2AR. A lot new happens in 2AR and it is automatically thrown out. While a smart disco can strike me as a thing of true beauty, it is risky to grant things out in 2AR since that may be perceived as new. Comparisons of positions are pretty safe. In another effort to minimize intervention, I try to call for evidence only if it was missed through my error or if there is a dispute about the nature of the evidence.

COUNTERPLANS: 1) I think a lot of debaters don’t really “get” competition. You need to address the question, “what forces a choice between the two systems.” 2) I am not terribly interested in questions about things like what it means to “advocate a perm.” Focus on the competition question.

TOPICALITY PRECONCEPTIONS; At the start of the round topicality is an absolute voting issue, extratopicality means no accruing advantages. Again, all this can be fruitfully argued.

PERSONAL PREDISPOSITIONS; Don't be obnoxious to anyone. This would never be consciously applied to a decision but it sure will be applied to your points! Playing with the format of the activity should be argued only as a last resort. This view of game playing does not thrill me. It would take a lot of educational benefit to outweigh the impact upon the poor tournament director. When in doubt - ASK!!

A Couple of General Things About My Orientation to Debate

1. I’m a lot less interested in what you debate about than how. You debate. An example. It is true that I often find the subject matter of politics disads, big federalism positions, etc. to be rather boring. However, that does not mean you would be better off not running such positions. This semester I judged a round where the neg did a big, very predictable Bush credibility disad. But I really enjoyed that debate because they did it so well! They were technically clean, had good evidence, were direct in their refutation. The way they debated was much more important to me than what they talked about.

2. Most debaters don’t have a good sense of their own limits in regard to fast delivery. Consequently, they regularly exceed what they can handle. I’m very convinced of that.

a. That does not mean I would like debate to be slower. I know where to find extemp speeches if I wanted to listen to them. It does mean that most debaters would be more effective in front of me if they would be clearer/slower.

b. Articulation is rarely the important variable. Seems to me the problem usually has to do with people moving out of English into some kind of truncated debate-speak that doesn’t make much sense.

I like parts of both David Kilpatrick's and Ryan Malone's paradigm, so a lot of this is taken from the two of them.

I will also add this note from Kevin Clarke as the TL;DR: "Do what you do best and I will make a decision afterwards"

Things to Know

1. I believe debate is fundamentally about persuasion and communication. If I can't understand the argument that you are making (whether it's because you're unclear or the argument doesn't make sense), it likely won't factor into my decision. There are pretty much no arguments that I think are off limits. If you think an argument is egregious, rude, or absurd, you should be able to beat it.

2. Framework: I liked going for framework and I liked debating against framework a lot in college. Some trends I've noticed:

- A lot of aff's seem to not pick a side as to whether or not they're going to impact turn the resolution or go for a middle ground. Picking one is crucial to developing a coherent strategy against framework.

- A lot of neg's seem to not do terminal impact calculus in the 2NR. This is absolutely imperative to you winning the debate, because the aff is never going to forget to do it in the 2AR.

- It seems like a lot of teams just end up saying "procedural fairness is an impact" or "procedural fairness isn't an impact" and just hope that the judge is on their side at the end of the debate. I don't believe either one of these things to be fundamentally true. Debate the value of procedural fairness and the value of clash instead of just hoping I'll dogmatically agree with you.

- Sound topical versions are important. For the aff, it's important to debate the merits of topical versions that have some chance of solving some of the aff's impacts. For the neg, it's important to explain which of the aff's impacts the topical version specifically solves for.

3. Theory: much like framework, I think teams can win just about anything if well-warranted and impacted. That being said, it shouldn't be too hard for you to beat a counterplan that competes based off the certainty or the immediacy of the plan.

I won't kick the counterplan or the alternative unless told to do so by the negative.

4. Zero Risk: It seems more realistic to talk about the negligibility of a risk either in and of itself or vis a vis another impact, instead of totally-nullified-zero-% risk. Defense-heavy responses would seem to benefit from arguments about how risk should be assessed and problems with the other team’s assessment.

How I Make Decisions

1. What arguments have either been identified as or appear to be the most important arguments in the debate and what is comparative impact to those arguments is?

2. Are both teams winning the arguments they claim they are? This involves evaluating whether or not a team has identified clear links/internal links to their impact and whether or not the opposing team has played sufficient defense against those arguments.

It also can involve evaluating whether or not the arguments in the 2NR/2AR resemble those from the block/1AR. Unless there are arguments about how I should or should not flow, I appreciate when debaters are attentive to line-by-line, but I understand that strategy sometimes calls one to deviate from it. That being said, for arguments that appear to be new in the final rebuttals, I'm much more inclined to evaluate those arguments when a line is drawn to previous arguments.

If necessary, this step can also involve evaluating evidence, although it's pretty rare for me to do so to avoid reconstructing the debate.

3. After evaluating all of these things I get to a general decision and then try to do some even-if scenarios. I run through a few even-if scenarios: what, if any, central arguments the losing team could have won, but still lose the debate, and what arguments the winning team would have had to lose or the losing team would have had to win for the losing team to win the debate.

4. I decide any independent voting issues and theoretical objections to determine if winning any of those issues would help the losing team win the debate.

5. I deliver a reason/list of reasons that compelled me to vote the way I did. I'll then explain how I arrived at that conclusion as well as some of the issues that gave me pause. I try and do this fairly quickly to give you as much time as possible to vet my decision.

Email: stransky.alex@gmail.com

Updated 1/28/2024

Quick Q&A:

1. Yes, include me on the doc chain – mrgrtstrong685@gmail.com

2. No, I am not ok with you just putting the card in the text of the email. Even if it’s just one card

3. Idk if the aff has to read a plan. I went for framework and read a plan, so I'm definitely more versed in that side of the debate, but I'm frequently in support of identity-based challenges to framework. I went for framework because it was the best thing I knew how to go for, not because it was objectively the best

4. No, you should not try to read Baudrillard or other post-modern theories against me. (Yes. Against me.) This is not a challenge. It's not a threat, it's a warning, be careful with me. I am admitting insurmountable bias.

5. Yes, you should (please) slow down while debating if you are online. There are glitches in streaming and it’s hard enough to understand you. For a while, I tried following along with the docs when I missed something, but we all know that just leads to more errors. This is your warning: if you are not clear enough to flow I will not try to flow it. I will give two warnings to be clear (and one after your speech in case you didn’t hear me). If you choose to keep doing you, don’t expect to win or for me to know what you said. On the flip side, if you are actively slowing down to make the debate comprehensible, you will be rewarded with a speaker point bump.

6. JESUS CHRIST PLEASE stop trying to debate how you think I want you to. It's never a good look to over-adapt. The only exception is if you want to go for Baudrillard and somehow ended up with me as a judge. Then please over-adapt. I cannot stress enough the importance of adaptation if you are trying to tell me post-modern theory or that death is cool.

7. I don't like to read cards as a default because decision time is 20 minutes assuming there were no delays in the round. If a card is called into question or my BS meter is going off, I will read the card. Absent that, I'm mostly about the flow and ethos. Tell me what warrants in your card you want me to know about. Point out the parts in the other team's evidence that are bad for them. That makes my judging job easier, causes me to read the card, AND gives you a sick speaker point boost.

WARNINGS:

1. I am chronically ill. If you pref me, there is a chance I have a flare up while judging you. This means I will finish the debate with my camera off but am still there. I just want some privacy while sick/you really don't want to see my face if I turn my camera off. If we are in person this may mean a slight delay in the debate. One time and one time only I have gotten so sick in a debate that a bye was given to both teams. So pref me if you want the chance of a free win!
2. I am a blunt judge. When I say that I mean I am autistic and frequently do not know how to convey or perceive tone in the way that other do. If you post-round me, I wont call you out of your name, but I will be very clear about your skills (or lack thereof) in the debate.
3. I also might cry...I'm clinically hypersensitive from CPTSD. Sometimes people assume I have a tone and "match" or "reraise" what they think I'm doing. If I cry and you weren't being a total jerk, don't over-apologize and make the RFD about me, lets just plan on a written RFD in that case.
4. I appreciate trigger warnings about sexual abuse. I will not vote on trigger warning voters because it's impossible to know everyone's trigger and ultimately we are responsible for our own triggers. All debaters who wish to avoid triggers should inform opponents before the round, not center the debate on it. I'd rather use "tech time" for the triggered debater to try to get back to their usual emotional state and try to finish the round if desired.
5. If the behavior of one of the teams crosses the line into what I deem to be inappropriate or highly objectionable behavior I will stop the debate and award a loss to the offending team. Examples of this behavior include but are not limited to sexual harassment/abuse, abusive behavior or threats of violence or instances of overt racism, sexism or oppression based on identity generally.

• This does not include self-expression. I would prefer not to see an erotic performance from high schoolers as an adult, but I am able to do so without sexualizing said debaters. There are limits to this, as you are minors and this is a school activity. Please do not make me have to stop the round because you exposed yourself to the other team, or something similar. If you are in college I still feel like you are a student, but I will honor that you have the right to express yourself without sexualizing you. Please no "flashing" without consent - that is sexual harassment/assault.
• This also does not include a Black debater using the N-word, unless used intentionally to put down another Black debater to the point of distress in the other Black debater.
• When in doubt, don’t make it your goal to traumatize the other team and we will all be fine.
• If you ask a team to say a slur in CX I will interrupt the debate to change course, though I will not auto-vote against you. I don’t think we should encourage people to say slurs to try to prove a point. Find another way, or don’t pref me.

The longer version:

Speaker points:

I've been told you need to average a 29.2 to clear nowadays. Because of that:

-a learning speech will be 28.4-28.7,

-an average speech will be 28.8-29.1,

-a clearing level speech will be 29.2-29.5,

-a top ten speaker will be 29.6-29.9.

I'm not giving 30s. Ya gotta be perfect to get a 30, and Hannah Montana taught me that nobody's perfect.

If you get below a 28.4 you probably severely annoyed me.

If you get below a 28, you were probably a problem in the debate, ethically.

I have yet to give a low point win, to my memory. I generally think winning is a part of speaking well. If you cause your team to lose the debate, you’re likely to get lower points.

Speaker-point factors:

- Did you debate well?

- Were you clear?

- Did you maintain my attention?

- Did you make me laugh, critically think, or gasp?

- Did your arguments or behavior in the debate make me cringe?

- Were you going way to hard in a debate against less experienced debaters and made them feel bad for no reason?

K STUFF:

Planless Clash debates:

-I’ve rarely judged a planless debate where the neg has not gone for framework. In instances where I have, the neg was policy style impact turning a concept of the aff, not going for a K based on a different theory of the world.

-I generally went for framework against planless affirmatives when I debated, and therefore am a bit deeper on the neg side of things. That being said, I also have a standard for what the neg needs to do to make a complete argument.

-I don’t think topicality, or adhering to a resolution, is analogous to rape, slavery, or other atrocities. That doesn't mean arguments about misogynoir, pornotroping, or other arguments of that nature don't work with me. I understand the logic of something being problematic. It's just the oversimplification of theory into false comparisons I take issue with.

-I don’t think that not being topical will cause everyone to quit, lose all ability to navigate existential crises, or other tedious internal link chains. That being said, I love an external impact to framework that defends the politics of government action.

-I would really prefer if people had reasonable arguments on topicality for why or why they don’t need to read a plan, rather than explaining to me their existential impact to voting aff or neg. In the same way that I'm not persuaded the neg will quit or extinction will happen if you don't read a plan, I also don't think extinction will happen if you lose to topicality. Focus instead on the real debate impacts at hand. Though, as said above, I love a good defense of your politics, and if that has a silly extinction impact that's fine.

-I find myself persuaded that the case can not outweigh topicality. Arguments from the case can be used to impact turn topicality, but that is distinct from “case outweighs limits” in my mind. T is a gateway issue. If the neg goes for T, that's what the debate is about. This is why I think many planless 1ACs are best when they have a built-in angle against framework.

-indicts to procedural fairness impacts are persuasive to me.

-modern concrete examples of incrementalism failing or working help a lot

-aff teams need to explain how their counter interpretation solves the neg impacts as well as their impact turns.

-neg teams need to turn the aff impacts and have external offense of their own. Teams frequently do one or the other

Neg K v plans:

-Generally, the alt won’t solve when the aff does a serious push, but the aff will let the neg get away with murder on alt solvency.

-Generally, the alt doing the plan is a reason to reject the alt/team absent a framework debate, which is fine.

-Generally, contradictions justify severance

-Always, the neg is allowed to read Ks

-I'm getting more and more persuaded the neg needs a big push on framework to beat the perm. If the alt is fiated and not mutually exclusive with the plan, there is almost no way to convince me that the perm won't solve. This is not true on topics where the alt impact turns the resolution. You truly can't do both sometimes.

-Framework debates are won by engaging the theory aspect and is pragmatism/action desirable, not just one. Typically the neg spends a bunch of time winning the aff is an unethical method, while the aff is talking about fairness and limits.

-please slow down on framework blocks!

K v K debate:

I tend to find myself thinking of things in terms of causality, so if that’s not your jam you gotta tell me not to think in that way. I have *technically* judged a K v K debate, but I'm pretty sure it was a cap debate that was more impact turn-y than theory of power-y.

I'm interested in seeing debates like this despite my lack of experience.

K stuff in general:

-My degree is in math. While y’all were reading a lot of background lit, I was doing abstract algebra. You might have to break it down a bit. I'm reading a bit more of the stuff y'all debate from in grad school, but it's still safe to eli5. My masters work is mostly on pop culture, hip-hop, and Black Feminist literature. If you want to debate about Megan Thee Stallion, I should be your ordinal one because it is the topic of my thesis.

-I am more persuaded by identity or constructivism than post-modernism. I am the opposite of persuaded by post-modernism.

-I DO NOT recommend reading Baudrillard, Bataille, etc. You might think "but I'm the one that will change her mind;" you aren't. I will be annoyed for having to judge the debate tbh. You have free will to read it if you want, but I have free will to tank your points with ZERO remorse. If this third warning doesn't do it for you, you are responsible for your speaker points. If I was swapped in to judge your debate last minute, I won't tank your speaks. I only clarify because this happened to a team once.

POLICY STUFF:

CPs:

-Tell me if I can (or can’t!) kick it for you. I may or may not remember to if you don’t. I may or may not feel like you are allowed to if you don’t.

-Reading definitions of should means the perm or theory is in tough shape. It's not unwinnable, but I was a 2A… Tricky process counterplans that argue to result in the aff by means of solvency, but are *actually* competitive (more than just should and resolved definitions), game on. If that means you have to define some topic words in an interesting way, I'm fine with that. Also, despite being a classic 2A, I find myself holding the aff to a higher standard sometimes. Maybe it's because I went to MSU, but a lot of times I find myself thinking "this CP obviously doesn't solve. why doesn't the aff just say that or try to cut a card about it???"

-Make the intrinsic perm great again!

-Links to the net benefit is usually a sliding scale. But sometimes links have a certain threshold where it doesn’t matter which links less. Please consider this nuance when debating.

Theory:

-TBH – y’all blaze through theory blocks with no clarity and then get confused when I have no standards written down. These debates are bad. Be more clear. Speak at a flowable pace. Maybe make your own arguments. Idk.

-It is debatable whether an argument is a reason to reject the argument or team.

-2ACs that spend 15-plus seconds on the theory shell will see a lot more mileage and viability for the 2AR. One-sentence blips with no warrants and flow checks will be treated as such.

-impact comparison and turns case are lost arts in theory debates.

DAs:

-Yes, there can be zero DA. No, it’s not as common as you think.

-answer turns case!!!

PF/LD:

I have coached LD and PF for years, but it is hard for me to separate my years of policy debate experience from the way I judge all debates. I was trained for 8 years as a policy debater and continue to coach that format. I have participated in both LD and PF debates a few times in high school, so I’m not a full outsider

LD

I’m not a trickster and I refuse to learn how Kant relates to the topic. Similarly, theory arguments like “abbreviating USFG is too vague” or “You misspelled enforcement and that’s a VI” are silly to me. Plan flaws are better when the aff results in something meaningfully different from what they intend to, not something that an editor would fix. I’m not voting/evaluating until the final speech ends. Period.

Dense phil debates are very hard for me to adjudicate having very little background in them. I default to utilitarianism and am most comfortable judging those debates. Any framework that involves skep triggers is very unlikely to find favor with me.

PF:

Do not pref me if you paraphrase evidence.

Do not pref me if you do not have a copy of your evidence/relevant part of the article AND full-text article for your opponent upon request.

Please stop with the post-speech evidence swap, make an email chain before the debate, and send your evidence ahead of time. If your case includes analytics you don’t want to send, that’s fine, though I think it’s kinda weaksauce to not disclose your arguments. If the argument is good, it should withstand an answer from the opponent.

Second, there is far too much untimed evidence exchange happening in debates. I will want all teams to set up an email chain to exchange cases in their entirety to forego the lost time of asking for specific pieces of evidence. You can add me to the email chain as well and that way after the debate I will not need to ask for evidence. This is not negotiable if I'm your judge - you should not fear your opponents having your evidence. Under no circumstances will there be an untimed exchange of evidence during the debate. Any exchange of evidence that is not part of the email chain will come out of the prep time of the team asking for the evidence. The only exception to this is if one team chooses not to participate in the email thread and the other team does then all time used for evidence exchanges will be taken from the prep time of the team who does NOT email their cases.

symonds77@gmail.com

I'm judging more often and tabbing less these days, so I thought it was fair to have a little substance here. Anyway, this is how I judge:

(1) I have the speech doc open and I'm following along as you're reading cards

(2) I'm only ever listening to the speaker(s), I think it's really important not to be messing around with electronic media while judging.

(3) I'm constantly judging argument quality throughout the debate, so when the 2AR ends, 90% of the time I'm fairly certain who I am going to vote for. What time I spend looking over my flow and the evidence is used to think through the most likely questions from the losing team, to see if there's something that I might have missed.

(4) My general decision making process starts with impact calculus and impact comparison. If one side is decisively ahead here, this often controls my vote. 2NR and 2AR work here is vital.

(5) To decide key points of controversy in the debate, I identify each one from the final rebuttals, list them in the AFF or NEG column, then find the arguments from the responding team and line them up. Once I think the lists are complete, I choose which side persuaded me on each one.

(6) While I work hard to keep my (long list of) debate opinions out of debate in deference to the specific ways debaters make their arguments, I think it's only fair to list some of my abstract debate leanings so that you have more context/information:

--Everyone reading an aff related to the topic IS ideal for fairness, education, and research-based reasons, but simply listing off these buzzwords is not going to persuade me. And "related to the topic" is really case by case.
--On framework, education is more important than procedural claims - I regularly vote aff against framework bc the neg is overly fixated on "procedural fairness outweighs"
--Topical Versions of the Aff and Switch-Side debate arguments function like CPs that access AFF education and preserve fairness
--States CP is illegit bc it eliminates the literature-based debate over FG vs States
--CPs ought to be textually and functionally competitive
--Alts succeed by being deliberately vague and shifting later in the debate - especially "reject the aff" alts
--"Realism good" indicts virtually all affs on the Space Cooperation topic
--Both truth and techne matter

Updated - 1/4/24

Background: I debated in high school at Minneapolis South and in college at the University of Minnesota '17. I've coached policy debate for 10 years, and am currently the Head Coach of Minneapolis South high school.

If you have any questions about my paradigm/rfd/comments, feel free to email me at: tauringtraxler@gmail.com & also use this to put me on email chains, please and thank you.

I will enforce the tournament rules (speech times/prep/winner and loser, etc.), but the content of the round as well as how I evaluate the content is up to the debaters. Judge instruction is important -- my role is to decide who did the better debating, what determines that is up to you.

I'm comfortable with anything you want to do in debate as long as you're respectful of others. I give a lot of nonverbal feedback.

Taylor, W. James “JT”

Kansas State University, ADOD
# of years coaching/judging: 27+
jtedebate@gmail.com

*I was also mostly absent from CEDA/NDT last year (or two) so don't assume I am familiar all the different K arguments (newer) or the depth of your lit base.

*I am so over this nukes topic. I am bored with the same NFU advantages and the newer ones with sketchy or no internal links. If you haven't received your topic education by this point you have failed in other ways.

*I probably care very little about what you have to say in the context of my role. Whatever it is---probably an important issue. However, I slip into "I don't care" mode when this oh so important discourse is said at me instead of to me. Are you trying to convince me? Am I just a note taker? If the latter, then don't get mad when I don't care. Are you giving me a reason to care?

*Take the national tournaments seriously. You might be here to have fun, but a lot of other people have worked very hard all year to succeed at these tournaments.

Other tips:

-I am not a robot. Just because you said it does not make it meaningful. Spitting out a string of theory claims without warrants or application is a good example.

-STOP BEING PETTY: You might think your arguments are the center of the universe, but c'mon. There is a really good chance I just don't care about your rando K or think it is generally irrelevant to the world outside of debates. Too many debaters overstate the importance of their claims, fake being deeply offended for purposes of hyping up a link argument, think their type of education is the only acceptable form, deny/ignore the validity of debates about scholarship, or assume that debate is separate from the "real world". Advocating a policy is not the same as role playing as the gov't. If you are role playing you are doing it wrong.

-Don't forget about T vs. Policy Affs.

-DEPTH OVER BREADTH.

-ENGAGE THE 1AC: I think teams should always engage the 1AC. Even if you are a one-off K team or you mostly take a more performative approach, there is no reason you can’t address the issues, logic, and general claims of the 1AC (denying their logic is not "playing their game"). Even if you don’t have evidence, you should still make smart arguments. Just reading links on case is not engaging the case. Be smart and make logical arguments against the Aff. that fit within your conceptual framework. I think being educated on the issues of the topic is the true "education" we get out of "topic education". In the end, there should be a detailed engagement/application in the link debate. CONTEXTUALIZE your links to the specificity of the Aff.

-Role of the Ballot/judge – The vast majority of these claims are self-referential and add nothing to debate: “Whoever best does what we said.” Just like policy framework claims, these function with the same intent to exclude. However, some truly act not as a veiled framework but as instructional in terms of judging, the meaning of the ballot and the function of my decision. I do not think the ballot inherently means anything beyond a recording of data. Humans infuse meaning to things like the ballot. Be VERY clear as to what you mean by these

-Perm Sloppiness - I think a lot of block debates get sloppy/lazy on the perm. I think the Aff. should have to explain how the perm resolves the links. I also think the Neg. should have to explain why the perm does not resolve those links (don't just say so). Just saying: "All the perms link" is lazy and not an argument. On the flip side, why does the perm solve?

-Method Debates: You need to actually do your method, not just prove it WOULD/COULD be a good idea. Historical Materialism comes to mind...Very few teams actually advance that alternate version of history. If you want a method debate, you actually have to perform the method or it is like I'm grading a paper---boring.

hello! i started as a novice at gmu where i debated for 5 years. i then went and coached at binghamton for 2 years and then back to mason for 3.

my email is mthomasgmu@gmail.com

for hybrid, I tend to keep my camera on during speeches. If my camera is off please assume I am not there and do not begin. I’m probably not far from my computer but if it’s been a while shoot me an email. '

Do whatever you do best. i was a flex 2n and read both k affs and policy affs, so i am down for just about anything

I am pro-Palestine. It is already worrying enough how little care debaters take when debating about current events when people’s lives, families, and liberation are on the line, but for one where an ethnic cleansing is currently being funded by our tax dollars, I have very little patience for this topic coming up in policy debates in an unethical way. Tread carefully

FW - this is a huge chunk of the db8s i have judged/debated during my now decade long tenure in debate, so i have heard just about it all. i find clash impacts more persuasive than fairness. topic education das are generally not a winner in front of me - the process of debate does not translate well to the real world so i dont believe you when you say debating w/e topic is going to make you a more persuasive advocate or a better congress person. most of us are far too busy between school, debate, work, etc for this to leave the space so lets not pretend like it will. take advantage of the other teams screw ups - if their counter interp is nonsense, take advantage of that. meanwhile, make sure your tva is relevant and can actually engage with the content of the aff. please also always answer the aff - presumption and turns case args are your friends! side note, if the aff gives you disads or impact turns, i far prefer that debate and will be very grumpy if you chose to go for fw instead.

for answering fw - please defend some sort of action that solves some sort of impact. it obvi doesnt have to be capital T Topical, tho preferably it is in the direction or spirit of the revolution. i have voted for affs with no relevance to the topic, but i have a much lower threshold for fw in that world.

t - again i know little to nothing about the topic but i love a good t debate. ive voted on my fair share of bad t args before (shout out to t subs) because aff teams never seem to provide a meaningful limit with their c/i. i need it explained to me exactly what the case list is under either interp, and what ground was lost. i obvi dont really know the aff/neg ground on this topic but i like to think i can follow along.

Counterplans - not the biggest fan of cheaty cps. condo is good up until a point (probably max 3, preferably 2). dont like perf con or condo planks. not a fan of states but i guess y'all dont really have a choice this year.

case debate - big big fan of good impact turn debates. presumption is also a useful argument.

K - it would be cool if your link would be about the aff - i have judged too many clashless debates where the neg just goes on some adjacent historical tangent but never brings it back to the aff. i like alts but they are not necessary - win the framework debate and you're golden. idk why theres a trend to go for a cap k and then spend a ton of time on framework when it is functionally an impact turn debate??

some odds and ends -

im typically a big picture thinker, so meta level questions and framing args are critical to instructing my ballot, especially in debates involving a k. im very interested in what the ballots relationship is to voting for whichever side, particularly in issues involving things within and outside my social location. i dont really like being perceived as a judge, but what does my ballot as a white queer woman mean? (aka i find the ballot k persuasive more often than not)

if im in a straight up policy debate, i dont get these too terribly often, so id recommend not making it too big - id prefer depth over breadth.

ive found im a pretty expressive judge, and if i am confused or cant understand you my face will make that clear.

Have fun, be clear, be clever.

*Updated November 2023*

CONTACT INFORMATION

Email: thurt11@gmail.com

LD NOTE

I've been in debate for fifteen years as a competitor, judge, and coach. In that time, I've almost exclusively done policy debate (I think I've judged <10 LD rounds ever). That's to say, judging LD at the Glenbrooks will be a bit different for me.

I don't think you'll need to dramatically adjust how you debate. In fact, I'd prefer to judge you in your best style/approach/form. Relatedly, I don't think I'm particularly ideological, and I'm like not a bus driver or parent who has been dropped into the judge pool. That said, be aware of my still-developing topic knowledge, norms of LD, and theory. I will do my best to resolve the debate before me. That said, folks should know that I'll likely have many idiosyncracies of someone who has basically always been in policy debate.

PF NOTE

Much of what is said about LD is true here too. Some thoughts on evidence that I stole from Greg Achten:

First, I strongly oppose the practice of paraphrasing evidence. If I am your judge I would strongly suggest reading only direct quotations in your speeches. My above stated opposition to the insertion of brackets is also relevant here. Words should never be inserted into or deleted from evidence.

Second, there is far too much untimed evidence exchange happening in debates. I will want all teams to set up an email chain to exchange cases in their entirety to forego the lost time of asking for specific pieces of evidence. You can add me to the email chain as well and that way after the debate I will not need to ask for evidence. This is not negotiable if I'm your judge - you should not fear your opponents having your evidence. Under no circumstances will there be untimed exchange of evidence during the debate. Any exchange of evidence that is not part of the email chain will come out of the prep time of the team asking for the evidence. The only exception to this is if one team chooses not to participate in the email thread and the other team does then all time used for evidence exchanges will be taken from the prep time of the team who does NOT email their cases.

PERSONAL BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION

I debated for four years at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Go Packers/Brewers/Bucks! In college, I debated for four years at Michigan State University, earning three first-round bids and a semifinals appearance at the NDT.

Currently, I work on the non-debate side of Michigan State, doing education data analysis, program evaluation, and professional development. On the side, I coach for Georgetown University. I still love debate, but it is no longer my day job. Given that, I'm not a content expert on this topic like some of your other judges might be.

More generally, any given debate can get in-depth quickly, so you should be careful with acronyms/intricacies if you think that your strategy is really innovative or requires a deep understanding of your specific mechanism. Teams sometimes get so deep in the weeds researching their business that they forget to provide a basic explanation for the argument's context/history/background. Instead, they jump into the most advanced part of the topic. If something is creative, that's an issue because it's likely the judge's first time hearing it.

Everyone says it and almost no one means it, but I think that you should debate what you care about/what interests you/what you're good at doing. In other words, put me in the "big-tent" camp. All of the stuff below is too long and shouldn't impact your debating (maybe besides the meta issues section). It really is just my thoughts (vs. a standard), and is only included to offer insight into how I see debate.

META ISSUES/ABBREVIATED PHILOSOPHY/STRIKE CARD ESSENTIAL

1. Assuming equal debating (HUGE assumption), I'm *really* bad for the K on the neg/as planless aff. I find myself constantly struggling with questions in decision-time like: Does the neg ACTUALLY have a link to the plan's MECHANISM or even their SPECIFIC representations? What is the alternative? How does that advocacy change the extremely sweeping and entrenched problems identified in the 1NC/2NC impact evidence? If it's so effective, why doesn't it overcome the links to the plan? If the alt is just about scholarship/ethics/some -ology, how does that compare to material suffering outlined by the 1AC? This year, some of these biases are accentuated by the "disarm" and negative state action planks of the topic. On the affirmative, I think there are many creative ways to critically defend the idea of ending nuclear weapons (especially by the "United States" rather than the "United States federal government"). On the negative, I have hitherto been unimpressed with the Ks of "disarm" (like the ACTUAL "We end the nukes and dismantle them because they risk horrific US first use/nukes are bad" disarm) I've seen.

In the end, when I vote negative for Ks or affirmative for planless affs, it's generally because the losing team dropped a techy ballot like ethics first, serial policy failure, or "we're a PIK." Do you, don't overadapt, and feel confident that I approach every debate with the intention of deciding the question of "who did the better debating?" REGARDLESS of the subject of the debate. Relatedly, know that I'm excited to have the chance to evaluate your arguments (even if it's really late and I'd rather not be judging at all in the abstract) basically no matter what you say. Instead, I would take my above biases as things to keep an eye out for from your opponents/come up with novel responses to/overcover/etc.

2. College debate made me more oriented to tech than truth. In my experience as a debater and judge, ignorance of tech resulted in a callous dismissal of arguments as “bad” and increased judge intervention to determine what is “correct” instead of what was debated in the round and executed more effectively. That said, truth is a huge bonus, and being on the right side makes your task of being technically proficient easier because you can let logic/evidence speak a little for you.

3. I care about evidence quality - to an extent. Debate is a communicative activity, and I'm not going to re-read broad swaths of evidence to ensure that your opponents read a card on all their claims. To be clear, I do think that part of my role in judging is comparing evidence *when it's contested and through the lens with which it was challenged.* Put concretely, if your 2NR says "all their evidence is trash and doesn't say anything" or is silent on evidence comparison, I'm not gonna be doing you any favors and looking at the speech doc. I'm certainly not going to be reading un-underlined text in 1AC/1NC cards without explicit direction of what I'm looking for. Instead, if you're like "Their no prolif cards are all before Kishida and only talk about means vs. motive," I'm happy to read a pile of cards, looking to assess their quality on those two grounds. If that sounds time-consuming for your final rebuttals, it is. You should create time by condensing the debate down to the core issues/places of evidentiary disagreement.

4. Every round could use more calculus and comparisons. The most obvious example of this thesis is with impact calc, but I think there is a laundry list of other examples like considering relative risk, quality of evidence, and author qualifications. As a format, any of these comparisons should have a reason why your argument is preferable, a reason why that frame is important, and a reason why your opponent’s argument is poor/viewed through a poor lens. In the context of impact calc, this framework means saying that your impact outweighs on timeframe, that timeframe is important, and that while your opponent’s impact might have a large magnitude, I should ignore that frame of decision-making. Engaging your opponents’ arguments on a deeper level and resolving debates is the easiest way to get good points. Beyond that, making a decision is functionally comparing each team’s stance/evidence quality/technical ability on a few nexus questions, so if you’re doing this work for me you will probably like my decision a lot more.

5. I hold debaters to a high standard for making an argument. Any claim should be supported with a warrant, evidence, and impact on my decision. Use early speeches to get ahead on important questions. For instance, I won’t dismiss something like “Perm do Both,” but I think the argument would be bolstered by a reason why the perm is preferable in the 2AC (i.e. how it interacts with the net benefits) instead of saving those arguments for the 1AR/2AR. By the way, you should consider this point my way out in post-rounds where you're like "but I said X...It was right here!" For me, if something is important enough to win/lose a debate, you should spend a significant amount of time there, connect, and make sure your claim is *completely* and *thoughtfully* warranted.

6. All debates have technical mistakes, but not all technical mistakes are equal or irreversible. Given those assumptions, the best rebuttals recognize flaws and make “even if” statements/explain why losing an argument does not mean they lose the debate. I think debaters fold too often on mistakes. Just because you dropped a theory argument doesn’t mean you cannot cross-apply an argument from another theory argument, politics, or T to win.

7. I'm a bad judge for yes/no arguments like "presumption," "links to the net benefit absolutely," or "zero risk of X." I think the best debaters work in the grey areas.

8. Things people don't do enough:

a) Start with the title for their 1NC off case positions (i.e. first off states)

b) Give links labels (i.e. our "docket crowdout link" or "our bipart link")

c) Explain what their plan actually does - For instance (in college), what nuclear forces do you disarm? Who does it? What is the mechanism? I've decided that if the aff is vague to an egregious extent, I'll be super easy on the negative with DA links and CP competition. Aff vagueness is also a link to circumvention and explains why fiat doesn't solve definitional non-compliance. I will say, I'd rather lacking aff clarity (e.g. when aff's include resolutional language in their plan and say "plan text in a vacuum") be resolved by PICs/topic DAs than by T. I don't think that the negative gets to fully define the plan or have some weird positional competition vision for T even if I think 2As frequently dance around what they do. Punish affs for ambiguity and lazy plan writing for the purposes of T on substance!

d) Call out new arguments - I don't have sympathy if you *wish* you said no impact in the 2AC. There are times that I wish it existed, but there isn't and can't be a 3AC. I will say that for mostly pragmatic reasons, I'm not to the point of reviewing every new 1AR argument. I'll protect the 2NR for the 2AR, but you have to do the work before that.

9. Random (likely to change) topic thoughts:

a) Both sides are likely to get to some risk of Russia and/or China nuke war. The best 2Ns/2As will dehomogenize these impacts based on scenarios for escalation and their internal links.

b) Be careful your UQ CP doesn't overwhelm the link to your DA. Sometimes the neg goes a bit too far. I do love a good UQ CP though!

c) This is a rare topic where I'm less interested in process stuff! Who would've thought?

d) Debated equally, I'm 60/40 that we should include NFU subsets and "disarm" actions that fall short of "elimination/abolition." I get the evidence is good. I'd just abstractly rather have these arguments as affs than PICs/would prefer a bit more than the smallest topic since single payer.

GENERIC DISPOSITIONS

Planless affirmatives – The affirmative would ideally have a plan that defends action by the United States (least important). The affirmative should have a direct tie to the topic. In the context of the college resolution, this means you would have a defense of decreasing nukes/their role (pretty important). The affirmative MUST defend the implementation of said "plan" - whatever it is (MOST important). While I will NOT immediately vote negative on T or “Framework” as a procedural issue, if you don’t defend instrumental implementation of a topical plan *rooted in the resolutional question*, you will be in a tough spot. I’m especially good for T/Framework if the affirmative dodges case turns and debates over the question if nukes are good or bad. In particular, I am persuaded by arguments about why these affirmatives are unpredictable, under-limit the topic, and create a bad heuristic for problem-solving. Short version is that you can do you and there is always a chance I’ll vote for you, but I’m probably not an ordinal one for teams that don’t want to engage the resolutional question.

I do want to say that at tournaments with relaxed prefs, I will do my absolute best to keep an open mind about these assumptions. That shouldn't be read as "Thur says he's open to our planless aff - let's move him up to push down 'policy' people." It should be read as if I come up at one of these tournaments, you might as well do what you're most comfortable with/what you've practiced the most instead of over-adapting.

Critiques—Honestly, just read the first point in the "meta issues" section. I understand neolib/deterrence/security pretty well because they were a big part of my major. If you want to push against my confusion on the K (as a concept), you need to have specific links to the plan’s actions, authors, or representations. Again, trying to be honest, if you're itching to say Baudrillard, Bataille, Deleuze, death good, etc., I'm not your guy. On framework, the affirmative will almost surely be able to weigh their 1AC (unless they totally airball), and I'm pretty hesitant to place reps/scholarship/epistemology before material reality. One other thing - substitute out buzzwords and tags for explanation. Merely saying "libidinal economy" or "structural antagonism" without some evidence and explanation isn't a win condition.

In terms of being affirmative against these arguments, I think that too often teams lose sight of the easy ballots and/or tricks. The 1AR and 2AR need to “un-checklist” those arguments. In terms of disproving the critique, I think I’m pretty good for alternative fails/case outweighs or the permutation with a defense of pragmatism or reformism. Of those 2 - I'm best for "your alt does nothing...we have an aff..."

Case- I’m a huge fan. With that, I think that it’s very helpful for the neg (obviously?). I believe that no matter what argument you plan to go for, (excluding T/theory) case should be in some part of the 2nr. In the context of the critique, you can use case arguments to prove that the threats of the 1AC are flawed or constructed, that there are alternative causes to the affirmative that only the alternative solves, or that the impacts of the affirmative are miniscule and the K outweighs. For CPs, even if you lose a solvency deficit, you can still win because the net benefit outweighs the defended affirmative. Going for case defense to the advantage that you think the CP solves the least forces me to drop you twice as I have to decide the CP doesn’t solve AND that the case impact outweighs your net-benefit. That seems like a pretty good spot to be in.

CP- My favorite ones are specific to the 1AC with case turns as net benefits. Aside from that, I think that I am more inclined than most to vote aff on the perm when there is a trivial/mitigated net benefit vs. a smallish solvency deficit, but in the end I would hope you would tell me what to value first. I had a big section written up on theory, and I decided it's too round-dependent to list out. I still think that more than 2 conditional positions is SUPER risky, functional > textual competition, competition is dictated by mandates and not outcomes (i.e. CPs that are designed to spur follow-on are very strategic), judge kick is good, consult/condition/delay/threaten generally suck, and interpretations matter A LOT.

Topicality- People have started flagging violations based on things not in the plan (solvency lines, advocate considerations, aff tags, 2ac arguments, etc.). This is a bad way to understand T debates. The affirmative defines the plan, positional competition is bad, plan text in a vacuum makes sense, and the way to beat teams that include resolutional language in the plan is on PICs not T.

I default to reasonability, but I can be convinced that Competing Interpretations is a decent model. The negative does not need actual abuse, but they do need to win why their potential abuse is likely as opposed to just theoretical. That is, I'll be less persuaded by a 25-item case list than a really good explanation of a few devastating new affirmatives they allow. If I were to pick only one standard to go for, it would be predictable limits. They shape all pre-round research that guides in-round clash and ensure that debates are dialogues instead of monologues. Finally, as a framing point, I generally think bigger topics = better.

SPEAKER POINTS

They're totally broken...

I'll try to follow the below scale based on where points have been somewhat recently.

29.4 to 29.7 – Speaker Award - 1 to 10

29.2 to 29.3 – Speaker Award - 11 to 25

28.9 to 29.1 – Should break/Have a chance

28.4 to 28.8 – Outside chance at breaking to .500

28 to 28.3 – Not breaking, sub-.500

27 to 27.9 – Keep working

Below 26 – Something said/done warranting a post-round conversation with coaches

T—I prefer limits over ground arguments. Rather than right to particular ground I would like interpretations argued in terms of the predictability of the research burden/definition. Case lists are important. I consider T an argument that doesn't specify the relationship between the debaters and the resolutional actor (i.e. how the debate is evaluated and what the role of the judge for evaluating the debate is still in question).  To me, framework is a category of arguments that establish a limit that restricts not just the resolution but the role for the judge.  I find most framework arguments unnecessarily restrictive in their interpretation about how we impact/assess a debate whereas a T interpretation can maintain significant freedom for different ways of couching an affirmative while providing predictable limits. For this reason kritiks of T are difficult for me to accept, while criticisms of framework have frequently been successful. 

DAs- I’m unlikely to assess uniqueness/link in absolute terms.  It tends to be easier to get me to consider direction/quality of link & internal link over uniqueness.   Evidence qualifications are important. I probably give analytic and defensive arguments more weight than many judges. 

CPs--I've rarely voted against CPs for theory reasons. This probably has more to do with what affs are willing to do/commit time to more than it demonstrates any real appeal of certainty-based competition arguments. 

K pickiness—I am more open to aff inclusion and textless alternatives than most. I am frustrated by debates where the alternative “vote negative” squares off against permute “do all the parts of the alternative that don’t compete with the plan.” Those are both just abstract descriptions of what any alternative or permutation entails. In depth debate on these issues might be helped by being less tied to a text and more to not being obnoxious in the c/x in describing an alternative. Pay attention to language/phrasing—pull quotes from evidence and speechs instead of debating author names (Yes, pot-kettle, but still). I prefer Ks that aren’t debated like disads—too much big impact/impact turn and not enough about the aff/alt from either side in most debates I judged. Neg link arguments should include reference to 1AC evidence/tags. Historical examples help a lot for either side.
 
Theory—I tend to dislike theory debates focused on narrow comparison of interpretations.  For the most part, people would be better off discussing the logical implications of a practice rather than a potentially arbitrary implementation of that practice (i.e. conditionality rather than "neg gets 1 CP and 1K").   I am biased in favor of conditionality, though not that strongly.  To me, "status quo is always a logical option" or other logic-oriented defenses of conditionality require a judge to evaluate the plan versus the status quo even if the negative goes for their CP.  I say this for clarifying purposes -- this has very rarely changed the outcome of a debate that I have judged.  I often judge debates that do not presume conventional plan-focused models for debate yet still contain theory arguments that presume a plan-focused terminology and its resulting constraints.  I point this out only to suggest that I think debaters should devote some time to thinking about the consequences of strucutral changes in the form of debate that they advocate for the smaller theoretical practices that occur within those debates. 

Evidence comparison. In most debates I’ve judged if I hear about the other side’s evidence it’s only in the 2NR/2AR or it’s about how the opponent’s evidence is “terrible.” Granted, many people read terrible evidence, nevertheless, sophisticated evidence comparison should begin early in the debate. I intensely dislike random unqualified internet evidence.

I prefer cross-ex strategies premised on listening to an opponent's answer and using it in a subsequent speech, not posturing/arguing as though c/x were another speech.

I'm a bit of grump, especially when it comes to my consistent facial expressions in debates.  It's not often that is about you,  the debaters.  I often talk a great deal after debates. 

I desperately wish I were funny so I will probably appreciate your humor even if I rarely laugh out-loud. My sense of humor is definitively geeky. My speaker point scale is lower than our current average.  I've tried to get more in line with current norms so as not to punish people for speaker point inflation.  That said, for high points (28.5+) I still need to be impressed. 

I rarely judge. I do actively coach.

Debate is a game and an educational activity. It ought to be fair, but there are other considerations as well.

CX - great place to earn speaker points. Its the time that you get to interact with the other team. Make it count.

I like quality evidence that is explained well much more than 30 cards with shallow explanation.

Theory: I tend to lean neg on theory, but can be persuaded. Most theory arguments are presumed to be a voiding of the argument about which the theory argument is run. Usually only conditionality/dispo are voters. I am not a fan of stupid theory/cheap shots. Perm do the alt is not an argument - it is a reason to vote for the alt.
I don't understand the trend to have arbitrary interpretations on theory, like conditionality. 2>3, 4>5, those seem really stupid. I can't imagine how that could solve any tangible impact. If conditionality is good, it is good.

Topicality: It should have an impact, and it should be coherent and well-explained. The interpretation should not be arbitrary. Ink does not a winning T argument make...

Impact calculus: I am not a big fan of the counterplan plus "any risk." Win a net benefit. There is "any risk" of just about everythiing. Sure, I use offense/defense, just like everyone (i suspect), but I believe that there exists a point when there is either a zero risk or a risk that is indistinguishable from randomness. In a similar vein, I tend to think that probability of the impact is weighted highly vs magnitude. Don't just read an extinction card and expect the round to be over. Not all extinctions are the same...

Lots of judges say they will listen to about everything. One time someone said they got a 3nr, then they actually stood up and gave one, and then the aff stood up and gave a 3ar. I was on a panel. I signed my ballot after the 2ar...so I won't listen to everything. (by the way, the two other judges waited until after the 3ar...be careful, its a jungle out there.)

Framework: Better on the neg than the aff.

Flowing: I try to do it.

Current Director of Debate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, previously coached at Wake Forest (2 years), University of Central Florida (2 years)

(They/Them Pronouns)

I believe debate is for the debaters. Do your thing, and do it well.

I try to leave as many of my argumentative preferences at the door as possible, but I generally believe a few things:

1. Debate is both a game and a site of activism, and the best conversations about aff and neg ground take both those functions into account.

2. Debaters who tell a story and make strategic decisions about where to apply nuance are more persuasive than those who delve into intricacy but don't frame it as part of a cohesive narrative of the round.

3. Quality > Quantity (of arguments, neg positions, etc)

4. Process > Product

Some things I love

- Mechanistic analysis- how do things happen in your scenario?

- Cards that are highlighted to include full sentences and warrants.

- Innovation.

- Getting strategically aggro in CX.

- Caring about your opponents. Just don't be the worst pls.

Yes, include me on the email chain: CVVitolo at gmail

Jon Voss

Northside College Prep

I coached high school policy debate full-time for 12 years, National Service through Legal Immigration. I've been around debate, first as a debater and then as a coach, since 02. I sat out Legal Immigration and Arms Sales, but I judged and researched some for the Criminal Justice Reform, the Water Resources, and NATO topics. Debate is not my full-time job – I work in higher education as a program/product manager – so I don't cut a ton of cards, I'm not really up on what teams are reading, I don't know what topicality norms were established over the summer, etc. I can still flow just as well as I used to, which is to say "deficiently."

Yes email chain: jvoss1223 AT gmail DOT com. I don't read along during the debate, I just like it so that I can ensure nobody's clipping cards and also so that I can begin my decision-making process immediately after the debate ends. This is important for how you debate -- using the speech doc instead of your flow as a guide is to your detriment.

-- fiscal redistribution topic - I heard a few debates on it before the season started but (as of the early season tournaments) you should consider my topic knowledge extremely limited, especially as it relates to topicality norms and complex explanations of fringe economic theories. I do have a basic understanding of the academic concepts that undergird the topic, however, and I will be somewhat involved in argument production this year.

-- Almost every debate I've seen so far this year has collapsed into a very-hard-to-resolve "growth good"/"degrowth good" debate. These have been late-breaking and I spent the bulk of my decision time wading through ev that didn't get me any closer to an answer I found satisfactory. In each instance, I was unhappy with amount of intervention and lack of depth involved in my decision. In that regard:

*if there's a winning final rebuttal that does not require you to wade into these waters, give that speech instead. I am willing (and maybe even eager) to grab onto something external and use that as a cudgel to decide that the growth debate was difficult to resolve and vote on <other thing>. I think I would be receptive, too, to arguments about how I should react in a debate that you think might be difficult to resolve, but this is just a hunch.

*you would almost certainly be better-served debating evidence that's already been read instead of reading more cards. This is especially true if the 1ac/1nc/both included a bunch of evidence on this issue...your fourth, "yes mindset shift" card is unlikely to win you the debate (or even the specific argument in question) but debating the issue in greater detail than the other team might.

*debated equally, I'm meaningfully better for the standard defenses of growth, especially as it relates to successfully achieving the changes that would be necessary to create a sustainable model of degrowth.

-- a note on plan texts: say what you mean, mean what you say, and have an advocate that supports it. If the AFF's plan is resolutional word salad, will be unapologetically rooting for NEG exploitation in the way of cplan competition, DA links, and/or presumption-style takeouts. I guess the flip side of this is that I have never heard a persuasive explanation of a way to evaluate topicality arguments outside of the words in the plan text, so as long as the AFF goes for some sort of "we meet" argument, I'm basically unwilling to vote NEG. "The plan text says most or all of the resolution (and another word or three) but their solvency evidence describes something very different," is an extremely persuasive negative line of argument, but I think it's a solvency argument.

-- Rehighlighting - you've gotta read itand explain what you believe to be the implication of whatever portion of their evidence you read. I'm somewhat sympathetic to allowing insertion as a check against (aggressively) declining evidence quality in debate, but debate is first and foremost a communicative activity.

-- I don't need nor want a card doc at the end of the debate. I have everything in my inbox already. I know what cards you did/didn't read because I was flowing. I'm honestly a little skeptical of debaters providing judges a lens through which to evaluate different controversies after the 2AR has ended. And to be frank, most of these debates aren't so close that judgement calls on ev are necessary to determine who won.

-- In favor of fewer, better-developed 1NC arguments. I don't have a specific number that I think is best: I've seen 1NC's that include three totally unwinnable offcase arguments and 1NC's that include six or seven viable ones. But generally I think the law of diminishing marginal returns applies. Burden of proof is a precondition of the requirement that the affirmative answer the argument, and less ev/fewer highlighted words in the name of more offcase positions seems to make it less likely that the neg will fulfill the aforementioned burden of proof.

-- Highlighting, or lack thereof, has completely jumped the shark. Read more words.

-- Clarity, or lack thereof, has been bad for awhile, but online debate really exacerbates the problem. I won't use the speech doc to bail you out. Just speak more slowly. You will debate better. I will understand your argument better. Judges who understand your argument with more clarity than your opponent's argument are likely to side with you.

-- I am generally bad for broad-strokes “framing” arguments that ask the judge to presume that the risk of <> is especially low. Indicts of mini-max risk assessment make sense in the abstract, but it is the affirmative’s responsibility to apply these broad theories to whatever objections the negative has advanced. “The aff said each link exponentially reduces the probability of the DA, and the DA has links, so you lose” is a weak ballot and one that I am unexcited to write.

-- I am generally better for a narrow solution that tackles an instance of oppression than an undefined/murky solution that aims to move the needle further than the pragmatic alternative. Some of this new stuff about philosophical competition and associated negative framework arguments that block the AFF from leveraging the 1ac as offense is wild.

-- I am often way less interested in "impact defense" than "link defense." This is equally true of my thoughts toward negative disadvantages and affirmative advantages. For example, if the aff wins with certainty that they stop a US-China war, I'm highly unlikely to vote neg and place my faith in our ability to the big red telephone at the White House to dampen the conflict. Similarly, if the neg wins that your plan absolutely crashes the economy by disrupting the market or causing some agenda item to fail, I will mostly be unconcerned that there are some other historical explanations for great power wars than "resource scarcity." The higher up the link "chain" you can indict your opponent's argument, the better.

-- Sort of a related point, but I thought it might be good to separate this out. I have found myself mentally exhausted at the end of almost every Zoom debate I've judged. There is something about flicking your eyes across three screens while transcribing an entire debate that's occurring in my headphones that is so much more draining than what debate looked like back in the day. I think this impacts how I judge. I certainly don't have any inclination to spend the decision time reading a bunch of evidence if I can avoid it. I don't think that's laziness (but maybe...) -- I'm just tired of staring at a screen. Anything the 2NR / 2AR can do to help craft a simple path to victory that allows me to minimize the number of "decision tree" questions I need to resolve is highly recommended.

-- Don't clip cards. If you're accusing a team of it, you need to be able to present me with a quality recording to review. Burden of proof lies with the accusing team, "beyond a reasonable doubt" is my standard for conviction. If you advance any sort of ethics challenge, the debate ends and is decided on the grounds of that ethics challenge alone.

-- Yes judge kick unless one team explicitly makes an argument that convinces me to conceive differently of presumption. Speaking of, presumption is "least amount of change" no matter what. This could mean that presumption *still* lies with the neg even if the aff wins the status quo is no longer something the judge can endorse (but only if the CP is less change than the plan).

-- Fairly liberal with the appropriate scope of negative fiat as it relates to counterplans. Fairly aff-leaning regarding counterplan competition, at least in theory -- but evidence matters more than general pleas to protect affirmative competitive equity. I could be convinced otherwise, but my default has always been that the neg advocate must be as good as whatever the aff is working with. This could mean that an “advocate-less” counterplan that presses an internal link is fair game if the aff is unable to prove that they…uh…have an internal link.

-- T-USFG: Debate is no longer my full-time job, so I think I have a little less skin in the game on this issue. I also suspect the Trump presidency and the associated exposure of explicit racism within the United States may have made me a better judge for affirmatives that do not instrumentally defend the topic/federal government action. I'm not sure how much better, though, and I'm probably at best a risky bet for affirmatives hoping to beat a solid 2NR on T-USFG. If you do have me in this type of debate:

**Won't vote on any sort of argument that amounts to, "debate is bad, so we will concede their argument that we destroy debate/make people quit/exclude X population of student, that's good."

**Affirmatives would be well served to prioritize the link between defending a particular state action and broader observations about the flaws of the state.

**Procedural fairness is most important. The ballot can rectify fairness violations much more effectively than it can change anything else, and I am interested in endorsing a vision of debate that is procedurally fair. This is both the single strongest internal link to every other thing debate can do for a studeny and a standalone impact. I am worse for the “portable skills” impacts about information processing, decision-making, etc.

Updated 1/7/23 for clipping/ethics challenge policy (at bottom)

4 years in Kansas in high school, 4 years at Baylor University, now a grad student and coach at KU and Barstow.

Add me to the email chain please: aewalberg@gmail.com and rockchalkdebate@gmail.com (college only)

Top Level

Do what you do best, I will do my best to be unbiased when evaluating arguments. I tend to take a long time making decisions regardless of the round, so don't read into it.

Judge instruction/telling me how to write my ballot is really important, points will be higher and you'll be more likely to win if you put the pieces together in the 2NR/2AR, are honest about the parts of the debate you're winning and losing, actually make decisions about what to go for, etc.

As I continue to judge, I find myself prioritizing tech over truth more and more, exception being when arguments/debates are violent, unsafe, etc. This means that you might think an argument is totally nonsensical, nonresponsive, etc. and I might agree, but you have to make those arguments in a speech in order for me to consider them when making my decision. If you want me to evaluate the debate through a lens other than tech, you should say that and explain what that means/why that mode of evaluation is better.

I think you should probably have to read re-highlighted ev, not just insert it. Open to persuasion but debates where both teams are inserting re-highlightings without analysis or explanation are negative persuasive to me.

I am generally open to whatever arguments you want to run, the substantive exception is wipeout. More critical arguments about death are fine, but I am not particularly interested in listening to or voting on suffering outweighs any potential for pleasure/we are primed to be afraid afraid of death but should die anyway.

I will read along with you in the doc while you are reading cards but I will not read along with the analytics you send, that's not a substitute for clarity or slowing down to give pen time. I also don't generally re-read a ton of evidence at the end of the debate unless told to, your analysis/explanation in round is much more important to me. If I'm in a position at the end of the debate where I have to put things together myself by sorting through a lot of evidence that received very little explanation, neither of us will probably be particularly happy with the decision.

Pet peeves: talking over each other in CX excessively---I cannot hear or understand anyone when this happens especially online, asking what cards were/weren't read in a speech if it's not prep time or cx, not having the email chain ready or sent when round start time hits, stealing prep (if it's not speech, cx, or prep time you shouldn't be typing/talking), calling me by my first name when we don't know each other. They're small things and old grumpy judge complaints, but they'll give you a sizable speaker point boost.

Online Debate

Slow down, be clearer. Make sure you can hear judges/other people in the round so you don't miss people telling you to pause or repeat an order.

Theory

I will vote on it if you win it, but that probably means you need more than one sentence on it in the 2AC. Slow down on these debates. I lean condo being the only reason to reject the team.

T

Slow down some. Impact it out in the 2NR. Don't forget to explain what winning competing interps or reasonability actually means for you.

DAs and CPs

I don't do a lot of topic research, so it'll be helpful for both of us if you do a little more explanation on topic specific things like link stories/solvency mechanisms/etc.

Good analytics can definitely beat a crappy DA. Winning terminal defense/zero percent risk is possible.

Ks

Explain why winning framework matters for you and how you still win the debate even if you lose framework.

You don't necessarily need a material alt to win if you go for framework.

2ACs should explicitly answer each of the link arguments even if it's just by explaining that it's a link to the status quo, a block that can impact out a dropped link argument well is likely to get my ballot as long as they are somewhat ahead on the framework or impact framing debate.

K Affs

Good. I do think it is possible to vote neg on presumption, so specific analysis about aff solvency or method is important. I find myself voting overwhelmingly aff in debates where the negative concedes the aff in the 2NR, so I strongly recommend extending your best 1 or 2 case arguments regardless of what else you're going for.

Framework

Neg: Best neg args are usually about models but can be persuaded it's about this round. Explain why fairness, clash, etc. is an impact and how your model accesses the aff's impacts. A well-developed TVA is great. These debates are pretty hard to win in front of me if you fully concede case.

Aff: Explain what debate looks like under your counter interp or counter model of debate or explain why you don't need a counter model. I am not a huge fan of the 2AC strategy of saying as many disads to framework as possible without explaining or warranting any of them out, two well-developed disads are more powerful than seven one-line ones.

Debate Ethics

If I cannot follow along in the evidence as you're reading it due to clarity issues or I can see you're skipping words as I'm following along, I will clear you once. If you continue skipping words or clipping and the other team does not call it out, I will let the debate continue and give feedback for educational purposes but will drop the team clipping. If you're clipping and the other team does call it out and issues an ethics challenge or otherwise ends the debate, I will end the debate, drop the team clipping, and give feedback based on the debate thus far.

If there is an ethics challenge issued and the debate is stopped, the team who is correct (about the clipping, miscut evidence, citation problem, etc.) wins the debate. Arguments about evidence ethics can be made absent an ethics challenge and without stopping the debate; for example, when connected to a citational politics argument. However, if one team says to stop the round because something is an ethics challenge, the round will stop and the team who is correct about the issue will win.

Arguments that are racist, transphobic or queerphobic, sexist, or that otherwise make the debate violent or unsafe will result in contacting your adults/coaches and a response proportional to/appropriate given what is said.

Patrick Waldinger 

Assistant Director of Debate at the University of Miami

Assistant Debate Coach at the Pine Crest School 

10+ years judging 

Yes, please put me on the speech doc: dinger AT gmail

Updated 9.2.14

Here are the two things you care about when you are looking to do the prefs so I’ll get right to them:

1. Conditionality: I think rampant conditionality is destroying the educational aspects of debate slowly but surely. You should not run more than one conditional argument in front of me.

Reading a K without an alternative and claiming it is a “gateway” issue doesn’t count. First, it likely contradicts with your CP, which is a reason that conditionality is both not educational and unfair. Second, there are no arbitrary “gateway” issues – there are the stock issues but methodology, for example, is not one of them the last time I read Steinberg’s book.

I also think there is a big difference between saying the CP is “conditional” versus “the status quo is always an option for the judge”. Conditional implies you can kick it at any time, however, if you choose not to kick it in the 2NR then that was your choice. You are stuck with that world. If the “status quo is always an option” for me, then the negative is saying that I, as the judge, have the option to kick the CP for them. You may think this is a mere semantic difference. That’s fine – but I DON’T. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

The notion that I (or any judge) can just kick the CP for the negative team seems absurd in the vein of extreme judge intervention. Can I make permutation arguments for the aff too? That being said, if the affirmative lets the negative have their cake and eat it too, then I’ll kick CPs left and right. However, it seems extremely silly to let the negative argue that the judge has the ability to kick the CP. In addition, if the negative never explicitly states that I can kick the CP in the 2NR then don’t be surprised when I do not kick it post-round (3NR?).

Finally, I want to note the sad irony when I read judge philosophies of some young coaches. Phrases similar to “conditionality is probably getting out of hand”, while true, show the sad state of affairs where the same people who benefited from the terrible practice of rampant conditionality are the same ones who realize how bad it is when they are on the other side.

2. Kritiks: In many respects going for a kritik is an uphill battle with me as the judge. I don’t read the literature and I’m not well versed in it. I view myself as a policymaker and thus I am interested in pragmatics. That being said, I think it is silly to dismiss entirely philosophical underpinnings of any policy.

Sometimes I really enjoy topic specific kritiks, for example, on the immigration topic I found the idea about whether or not the US should have any limits on migration a fascinating debate. However, kritiks that are not specific to the topic I will view with much more skepticism. In particular, kritiks that have no relation to pragmatic policymaking will have slim chance when I am judging (think Baudrillard).

If you are going for a K, you need to explain why the PLAN is bad. It’s good that you talk about the impact of your kritik but you need to explain why the plan’s assumptions justify that impact. Framing the debate is important and the frame that I am evaluating is surrounding the plan.

I am not a fan of kritiks that are based off of advantages rather than the plan, however, if you run them please don’t contradict yourself. If you say rhetoric is important and then use that same bad rhetoric, it will almost be impossible for you to win. If the 1AC is a speech act then the 1NC is one too.

I believe that the affirmative should defend a plan that is an example of the current high school or CEDA debate resolution. I believe that the affirmative should defend the consequences of their plan as if the United States or United States federal government were to actually enact your proposal.

The remainder:

“Truth over tech”? I mull this over a lot. This issue is probably the area that most judges grapple with, even if they seem confident on which side they take. I err of the side of "truth over tech" but that being said, debate is a game and how you perform matter for the outcome. While it is obviously true that in debate an argument that goes unanswered is considered “true”, that doesn’t mean there doesn’t have to be a logical reason behind the argument to begin with. That being said, I will be sensitive to new 2AR arguments as I think the argument, if logical, should have been in the debate earlier.

Topicality: Topicality is always a voting issue and never a reverse voting issue. I default to reasonability on topicality. It makes no sense to me that I should vote for the best interpretation, when the affirmative’s burden is only to be good. The affirmative would never lose if the negative said there is better solvency evidence the affirmative should have read. That being said, I understand that what “good’ means differs for people but that’s also true for what “better” is: both are subjective. I will vote on competing interpretations if the negative wins that is the best way to frame the debate (usually because the affirmative doesn’t defend reasonability).

The affirmative side has huge presumption on topicality if they can produce contextual evidence to prove their plan is topical. Specific examples of what cases would be/won’t be allowed under an interpretation are important.

People think “topical version of the aff” is the be all end all of topicality, however, it begs the question: is the aff topical? If the aff is topical then just saying “topical version of the aff” means nothing – you have presented A topical version of the aff in which the affirmative plan is also one.

Basically I look at the debate from the perspective of a policy debate coach from a medium sized school: is this something my team should be prepared to debate?

As a side note – often times the shell for topicality is read so quickly that it is very unclear exactly what your interpretation of the topic is. Given that, there are many times going into the block (and sometimes afterwards) that I don’t understand what argument you are making as to why the affirmative is not topical. It will be hard for me to embrace your argument if I don’t know what it is.

Counterplans: It is a lot easier to win that your counterplan is theoretically legitimate if you have a piece of evidence that is specific to the plan. And I mean SPECIFIC to the plan, not “NATO likes to talk about energy stuff” or the “50 states did this thing about energy one time”. Counterplans that include all of the plan are the most theoretically dubious. If your counterplan competes based on fiat, such as certainty or timeframe, that is also theoretically dubious. Agent counterplans and PICS (yes, I believe they are distinct) are in a grey area.  The bottom line: the counterplan should not be treated as some throw away argument – if you are going to read one then you should defend it.

Theory: I already talked a lot about it above but I wanted to mention that the only theoretical arguments that I believe are “voting issues” are conditionality and topicality. The rest are just reasons to reject the argument and/or allow the other side to advocate similar shenanigans. This is true even if the other side drops the argument in a speech.

Other stuff you may care about if you are still reading:

Aspec: If you don’t ask then cross-examination then I’ll assume that it wasn’t critical to your strategy. I understand “pre-round prep” and all but I’m not sure that’s enough of a reason to vote the affirmative down. If the affirmative fails to specify in cross-examination then you may have an argument. I'm not a huge fan of Agent CPs so if this is your reasong to vote against the aff, then you're probably barking up the wrong tree. 

**Addendum to ASPEC for "United States"**: I do think it is important for the aff to specify in cross-ex what "United States" means on the college topic. The nature of disads and solvency arguments (and potentially topicality) depend on what the aff means by "United States". I understand these are similiar arguments made by teams reading ASPEC on USFG but I feel that "United States" is so unique and can mean so many different things that a negative team should be able to know what the affirmative is advocating for. 

Evidence: I put a large emphasis on evidence quality. I read a lot of evidence at the end of the debate. I believe that you have to have evidence that actually says what you claim it says. Not just hint at it. Not just imply it. Not just infer it. You should just read good evidence. Also, you should default to reading more of the evidence in a debate. Not more evidence. More OF THE evidence. Don't give me a fortune cookie and expect me to give the full credit for the card's warrants. Bad, one sentence evidence is a symptom of rampant conditionality and antithetical to good policy making. 

Paperless: I only ask that you don’t take too much time and have integrity with the process, e.g., don’t steal prep, don’t give the other team egregious amounts of evidence you don’t intend to read, maintain your computers and jump drives so they are easy to use and don’t have viruses, etc.

Integrity: Read good arguments, make honest arguments, be nice and don’t cheat. Win because you are better and not because you resort to cheap tricks.

Civility: Be nice. Debate is supposed to be fun. You should be someone that people enjoy debating with and against – win or lose. Bad language is not necessary to convey an argument.

Do not attempt to appease me. I do not want you to debate to me but rather persuade me to believe you. Stay true to your argument set and do what got you here. That being said, who cares what I personally believe, this is your activity. Below is my process for making a decision in a debate:

Who should I be when evaluating the debate?

What is the main question/issue of the debate?

Who best answered/addressed that question/issue? Note: The characteristics of best should be determined by you not me.

Are there reasons why an approach is dangerous or insufficient that overwhelms its positive potential.

Speaker Points: I give points based on how clear, efficient and engaging you are. What happened to debaters being able to be serious, funny, personable and entertaining simultaneously? You will be rewarded for quality speaking even if you do not win the debate.

Team email: jagzdebate@gmail.com (preferred for speech docs in round)

Personal email: rwash@g.emporia.edu

Hays Watson, former head debate coach @ University of Georgia. whwatson@gmail.com. I split my time between political consulting and caretaking for a dying parent. Haven't judged a debate since 2020.

Online debate 411 - Please slow down, speak up, have patience, and make sure that everything (sound/camera/wifi/tech) is on and working properly. I will do my best to judge as I normally do and make the best decision possible while providing helpful feedback.

My primary goal is to evaluate the arguments made in the debate. That being said, I remain a teacher at heart and I'll also offer suggestions for how you can improve. That's why I still write full ballots and send them via email to the teams that I judge.

Here are many of my preferences, simply-stated:

Clarity trumps speed...the best debaters are able to achieve both.

Evidence matters...but not much more than logical, analytical arguments. Many positions (case advantages, politics, etc.) can best be defeated with smart, analytical responses. Use your brain.

Efficiency and explanation both matter - but doing one while sacrificing the other produces bad debate. Explanation seems to lose out quite a bit these days...there is such thing as being "too efficient."

Process questions determine substantive questions. The "who" of action does, in fact, determine the effectiveness of "what" action is being taken.

I prefer that Affirmatives advocate topical action. Specific plans of action are preferable over vague/generic policy suggestions. Yes, that means I still appreciate spec-based args.

I tend to find more persuasive logical/plausible scenarios ("truth") than technical/strategic ones ("tech"). A dropped DA is a dropped DA, but a card saying the economy will collapse tomorrow doesn't make it so.

I reward arguments grounded in the topic literature over arguments based upon non-germane net benefits or advantages. In other words, I'd prefer that you read the deterrence DA and an advantage CP over a made-up counterplan with an artificial internal net-benefit or a crappy politics DA.

Links/internal links are more important (and more interesting) than uniqueness questions. Most debate impacts are silly - not everything causes extinction. Yes, advantages/harms can be linked turned. Yes, impacts can be turned as well.

I'm increasingly frustrated by the relative absence of debates about important theoretical questions. Topicality no longer is seen as a strategic Negative tool. Affirmatives consistently refuse to challenge the theoretical legitimacy of various negative positions (conditionality, politics DAs, kritiks, etc.). Why?

Impact defense alone is an insufficient way to answer an argument. I'm confused as to how case attacks based solely around impact defense have become the "norm." The best argumentative strategies involve mixture of offensive and defensive responses. "No impact" doesn't cut it.

Effective cross-examination is still the most underutilized tool in debate. Poor, un-strategic cross-ex questions (and responses) make me sad.

I can spell 'K' despite my reputation. It's impossible not to acknowledge (albeit begrudgingly) that a well explained and case-specific kritik supported by high-quality evidence is an important strategic tool. Play to your strengths - even its gooey and critical.

I flow. I still flow on paper. It's hard to flow stuff - blippy T args, theory, embedded clash on the case, etc. Keep that in mind, especially if you are debating online.

Cal debate 13-17, coached for Cal 18-22, currently coaching Houston.

I'm online for Georgetown but expect to judge in person at Texas and the NDT. Online, please slow down a bit and record your speeches in case there are connection issues.

Debate is for debaters; I'll vote for no-plan Affs, Ks, and even conditionality bad. Of course, arguments that attack opponents as people, wipeout*, spark, and "new Affs bad" will never be considered.

Default is judge kick. This can be reversed but requires ink before the 2AR.

I take judge instruction very seriously.

I have a very high bar for ethics challenges and will presume good faith error by the accused.

*Saying another value matters more than extinction is perfectly fine.

Background: Debated 2006-2010 at Michigan State University, Assistant Coach at Gonzaga 2010-2011, Coach at MSU 2011-present

carly.wunderlich@gmail.com

---Updates Based on Getting Old---

1. What happened to 1NC DA shells that were complete arguments? Card 1 – Dems will win now – health care is a thing that matters. Card 2 – Dem win stops impeachment. Card 3 – Trump causes nuclear war. Um, no. You don’t have an argument here. The aff gets a wreck of leeway to answer stuff in the 1AR because this isn’t even starting to establish a causal link chain in the 1NC.

3. What happened to 1NC solvency cards for CPs? If your 2NC starts “they dropped the announcements plank in the 2AC it’s GAME OVER” but you haven’t read solvency for that plank that’s a no as well.

They all have huge strategic benefits, I get it – you can just spread them out and then piece it together once the aff drops everything. It’s gross to watch, your speaker points will reflect it and I won't forget who's fault it is that the debate is a wreck to try to decide because the debating didn't start until the block. This is also all true of ludicrous aff moves in the same vein

---Old Philosophy + Minor Revisions---

Things I like about debate

1. Working hard/preparation--- I think quality research should be a guiding factor when making decisions. Specific strategies rewarded, poo-nuggets punished

2. Critical thinking--- nothing gets you thinking you your feet like debate. I like interesting pivots and fast-moving debates

3. Argument testing---looking at both sides of an issue to parse out the most compelling arguments on both sides without confirmation bias – more important than ever, in my opinion

Topicality

As an old 2A I think reasonability works out well for the aff in a lot of spots. I'm very close to living in a post-T world if I'm being honest. The link to the limits DA should be well explained and evidenced (either by analysis or with actual evidence). Need clear case lists with explanation why you do/don’t include a specific case. T-substantial/significant is no for me.

CPs

I find myself leaning neg on a lot of CP theory questions (agent, pics, states) as reasons to reject the team. I do not think that CPs that compete on the certainty of plan (consult, condition) are competitive but that this is a reason the aff should get permutation and not a reason to reject the CP in most instances. I also do not think that distinct is competitive and I think the neg should compete off a mandate of the plan.

Conditionality- for the last decade my philosophy has read “this is an area where I've started to move farther into the aff camp. My predisposition is that the neg should get one conditional counterplan. I've not heard many good reasons that the neg should get multiple counterplans. It think that 1 is a logical limit and that to say that 2 or more is OK becomes a slippery slope. I think we all need to do a better job of protecting the aff in this department.” Unfortunately, I have failed the aff and voted neg in a LOT of spots. I still wish in my heart that we could limit the number of CPs read in a debate but unfortunately my voting record has not reflected that.

Unless the neg explicitly says it I will not "reject the CP and default to the status quo because it's always a logical option."

DAs

I think there are many logical inconsistencies with DAs that often go unremarked on by the aff in favor of impact defense. I think the aff would generally do better on engaging at the link/internal link level of dubious DAs. Picking one argument to deal a death blow to the DA works better than death by a thousand cuts.

Ks

Topic specific Ks that turn and/or solve the aff are better. Links to the plan action are best. Affs get far on “K doesn’t remedy “x” advantage and that outweighs” if the neg is not good and explicit about it. Almost all frameworks are a race to the middle. Neg gets to question assumptions of the aff, aff gets to weigh advantages- that’s a warning to the aff and the neg.

The Aff

I feel that there are lots of instances where crummy affs get away with it because the neg only focuses on impact calc. I think this is another instance, like DAs, where focusing on solvency/internal link args can pay bigger dividends than impact calc.

Speaker points

Things I like in speeches

1. Connections on central questions- slowing down and effectively communicating about guiding issues

2. Technical proficiency- answering clearly all necessary arguments

3. Clarity- I’m doing my best to be mindful of this but I honestly sometimes just forget- I’ll call clear once if you’re incomprehensible but at a certain point it will affect whether or not I vote on arguments

4. Strategic cross-exs- I’d prefer not to spend another 12 mins listening to “where does your card say that?”

Things that will result in reduced speaker points

1. Cross-reading, clipping- if there is an ethics challenge made I will stop the debate and evaluate it. If the person in question is found to be doing it they will lose the debate and receive zero speaker points.

2. Tech fails- please be prompt and quick with tech things. In a world of decision times this is increasingly getting to me.

3. Creating an environment that is hostile or unsafe for me or the other team – It's important for productive conversations and it's not healthy for all of us to leave tournaments hating each other.

4. Talking over everyone in c-x – I get it, you think you’re cool but I’m pretty bored with watching people get themselves all worked up and then just yell over the other team

My Speaker Point Scale (unless otherwise published by the tournament)

29.6 -30: You should receive a Top 10 speaker award

29.3 – 29.5: In this debate, you were an quarters level debater

28.8 – 29.2: In this debate, you were a 5-3, octos or double octos debater

28.4 – 28.7: In this debate, you were a 4-4 debater on the verge or bubble of clearing

28 – 28.3: You are improving but not quite there on big picture issues

27.5 – 28: You need some improvement on technical items as well as big picture things

As a debater: 4 years HS debate in Missouri, 4 years NDT-CEDA debate at the University of Georgia

Since then: coached at the University of Southern California (NDT-CEDA), coached at the University of Wyoming (NDT-CEDA), worked full-time at the Chicago UDL, coached (and taught math) at Solorio HS in the Chicago UDL

Now: Math teacher and debate coach at Von Steuben in the Chicago UDL, lab leader at the Michigan Classic Camp over the summer

HS Email Chains, please use: vayonter@cps.edu

College Email Chains: victoriayonter@gmail.com

General Thoughts:

1. Clarity > speed: Clarity helps everyone. Please slow down for online debate. You should not speak as fast as you did in person. Much like video is transmitted through frames rather than continuous like in real life, sound is transmitted through tiny segments. These segments are not engineered for spreading.

2. Neg positions: I find myself voting more often on the "top part" of any neg position. Explain how the plan causes the DA, how the CP solves the case (and how it works!), and how the K links to the aff and how the world of the alt functions. Similarly, I prefer CPs with solvency advocates (and without a single card they are probably unpredictable). I love when the K or DA turns the case and solves X impact. If you don't explain the link to the case and how you get to the impact, it doesn't matter if you're winning impact calculus.

3. K affs: Despite my tendency to read plans as a debater, if you win the warrants of why it needs to be part of debate/debate topic, then I'll vote on it. As a coach and judge, I read far more critical literature now than I did as a debater. My extensive voting history is on here. Do with that what you will.

4. Warrants: Don't highlight to a point where your card has no warrants. Extend warrants, not just tags. If you keep referring to a specific piece of evidence or say "read this card," I will hold you to what it says, good or bad. Hopefully it makes the claims you tell me it does.

Random Notes:

1. Don't be rude in cross-x. If your opponent is not answering your questions well in cross-x either they are trying to be obnoxious or you are not asking good questions. Too often, it's the latter.

2. Questions about what your opponent read belong in cross-x or prep time. You should be flowing.

3. While we are waiting for speech docs to appear in our inboxes, I will often fill this time with random conversation for 3 reasons:

i. To prevent prep stealing,

ii. To get a baseline of everyone's speaking voice to appropriately assign speaker points and to appropriately yell "clear" (if you have a speech impediment, accent, or other reason for a lack of clarity to my ears, understanding your baseline helps me give fair speaker points),

iii. To make debate rounds less hostile.

High School LD Specific:

Values: I competed in a very traditional form of LD in high school (as well as nearly every speech and debate event that existed back then). I view values and value criterions similarly to framing arguments in policy debate. If you win how I should evaluate the debate and that you do the best job of winning under that interpretation, then I'll happily vote for you.

Ballot Writing: LD speeches are short, but doing a little bit of "ballot writing" (what you want me to say in my reason for decision) would go a long way.

Public Forum Specific:

I strongly believe that Public Forum should be a public forum. This is not the format for spreading or policy debate jargon. My policy background as a judge does not negate the purpose of public forum.