Last changed on
Fri December 2, 2022 at 12:52 PM MDT
Congratulations on making it to my paradigm, this is the first step to a great round!
TL,DR for those who ain't got time for that: I'm experienced in debate as a coach and competitor. I'm not the best with speed and if you wanna go quick give me the speech docs please. Give me some decent framing/weighing beyond surface level. Depth over breadth in general. I am cool with K's and all that jazz. Be ethical.
Do not feel afraid to ask me what something is or what I mean by something. Read the intro, how I vote, and your specific section of debate is my recommendation.
Intro:
I coached mostly PF and LD for 4 years total and I have competed for even longer, placing in college nationals and plenty of tournaments. I have a bachelor's in political science and a minor in philosophy and I listen/read sci-fi and philosophy in my free time (amongst other things). So I am an experienced judge and debater with high academic literacy.
I tend to want to keep a face of impartiality while judging, I try not to go beyond a flat expression when possible. Let me know if you don't prefer this, I can certainly try to be more expressive in what arguments I like versus don't to help y'all out.
How I vote:
Depth over breadth in general.
I try to be as tab ras as possible, when conflicting arguments are similar in strength, especially, since I weigh links heavily. Especially the depth and explanation of the link. Links usually come down to which one is more true in the round, and who gave me the most depth.
I can keep up for the most part on flows but I have trouble at high speed, as I only have one ear so it makes it more difficult to hear at times. I still listen to podcasts and youtube videos between 1.15 and 1.5 speed pretty much always, so I can certainly keep up to a certain point, but clear tags and authors and dates will be necessary and you need to have good pronunciation. So in general, air on the side of flay or fast but not spew speed.
Dropping something in a speech and bringing it up later is pretty much a no-no. If they discuss something in CX I think it's fair game to talk about in your next speech but I don't flow cx so it needs to be on the flow from a speech in order to really count in the round.
Paraphrased and cut evidence needs to be legitimate and not exaggerated. The more you power-tag your evidence the less likely I vote for you. The more you paraphrase the more I rely on your links to be legitimate.
Use of logic, common knowledge, philosophical implications, etc... are all ways to provide evidence to an argument that doesn't necessitate the use of cards. Feel free to use them, I weigh these types of arguments and believe they matter depending on the topic. In general, evidence is preferred in matters of things likely to happen. And the philosophy should have implications to some ethical framing and told why it matters. An example I see students fail at too often that I know could be better is privacy. You need to tell me why privacy matters in this round, not just that it invades privacy but that it causes actual harm to people like distress, corruption, etc....
Road map and organize the flow well in the speech, please. If you plan on following a CP/K/etc... format please let me know how many sheets I need.
Be clear about what your arguments mean for the round, i.e. go back to the framing of the round, whether that be framework of a case or argument. Tell me why it matters for who I sign the ballot for.
Please be ethical. Do not steal prep, get evidence to your opponents in a timely manner, and treat debate as a friendly game. Plastic trophies don't matter after a few years, trust me I have thrown away countless awards from random invitationals at this point. What matters is the work you put in and the memories you get out of debate. Look to 'steelman' your opponents argument, i.e. try to be even better than your opponent at explaining their argument. If they are having trouble framing their argument, help them. This gives you lots of credibility and allows for cleaner wins if you are good enough.
Understand what you are winning and losing on, it's probably not worth going for things you are way behind on unless it's critical to winning the round.
I don't time evidence transfers until they start being laborious. Be respectful of my time and your opponent's time.
Roadmaps can be off time as well and I recommend you use one if you are doing more than telling me aff or neg flow first and the other 2nd (i.e. policy style flowing). Just tell me where you are starting if it's just an aff and neg flow of traditional debate.
I'm open to hearing essentially any argument, including things like speed Ks. The impacts matter a lot to me. Why are the in round impacts worth talking over the education of a traditional round. Why is this an a priori issue or a prerequisite to in round impacts?
Weighing- I've heard a lot of basic impact calculus this year and it's been okay. But you need to do the comparison to why things like your probably impacts matter more than their magnitude impacts. People miss the clash on impact weighing far too often. Usually, you fight over whether the probability vs. magnitude matters more, but if you both run nuclear war you need to argue why your timeframe and/or probability are stronger, or that your severity is stronger. What I mean is, why is nuclear war worse in one area over another (usually because it will cause some other bad impacts like climate change, effect air quality, destroy more crops, etc...).
Tag teaming- In general, I am cool with tag teaming to answer questions or to help your partner by clarifying the language of the question they want to ask. I don't want partners to be ignored and talked over. Each of you need to know what you are talking about, tag teaming only helps the collaborative nature of the debate.
Speaker Points- I tend to give the strongest debaters speaker points but rudeness and influency do make a difference. If the tournament allows, I'm more than willing to give low-point wins because one mistake can cost you a round even if you were the better debater. This is rare but does happen.
--PF--
I will drop you if you just say cost/benefit analysis as your framework without any other context. You need to tell me how to weigh certain costs and benefits over others. Seriously, tell me why things matter.
I'm cool with teams running alts but the other team can perm them. Pro does not need a specific plan but not having some sort of model or idea to what you are doing will hurt you in most rounds unless you show me why your ground is more broad than a basic model. This can have multiple parts to achieve something.
Dropping arguments as the 2nd speaking debater is still dropping arguments, don't give new refutation in the summary as I will not listen by that point and will sign my ballot. Figure out what to go for and what not to, figure out how to win without directly refuting an argument, or just get good in general.
--LD--
If you are using Val/Cri's, only debate over them if it matters for the round, disagreeing over the minutia of which utilitarian framework to use is not fun to sit through or debate it. Clash with the key differences if you need to and don't be afraid to clash if you feel it gives you ground you wouldn't otherwise have.
Cool with CPs and Plans, the same rules apply from policy if you choose to do this especially. Consider reading that section if you are wanting to run a CP or plan.
I will drop you if you just say cost/benefit analysis as your framework without any other context. You need to tell me how to weigh certain costs and benefits over others. Seriously, tell me why things matter.
Please don't put too much fluff and defense in your case, that's what refutation is for. Only define the terms that need defined. And everyone reserves the right to clarify a definition in the next speech after a definition becomes an issue.
--Policy--
Depth over breadth, please.
I'm cool with K's, CPs, etc... and I will flow the different main arguments on separate pieces of paper, just let me know on stuff like theory, framing, etc... where to flow and I will really appreciate it. I tend to take debate as a serious mental game, and respect what it can be even if most of the time it doesn't reach that. So give me reasons to vote for weird arguments that matter because things like K's and Theory matter when it makes a difference in the debate space.
Like I said above, I'm fairly comfortable with speed to a certain point but just be cognizant about your pronunciation and your taglines with the author and date. I keep a good flow and can handle most people's speed but I can't keep up with spewing usually.
Learn how to actually impact calc, look above for some instruction as I discuss it in how I vote.
I tend to not be conditional, if you feel other arguments are better than others, collapse to what you think will win you the round.