My name is Mark Anderson, and I am a novice parent judge for ACS. This is my first tournament (Tournament 3 of the MMSDL 2023-2024 league).

Preferences:

• Please CLEARLY state a roadmap at the beginning of your speech
• Please use limited jargon, I'm new to this whole thing
• Please state whether you are splitting the neg block or not when the time comes
• Please state whether you are open to cross-ex
• And I shouldn't have to say this, but be kind.

I did high school policy debate all four years in the late 90s and early 2000s and then took a very long break. I'm getting up to speed on the "new" arguments. I've judged a few middle school tournaments this year- mostly varsity or JV and a few novice. I'm pretty well versed on most disads/arguments/topicality etc. and am willing to vote on most things as long as they are argued and explained well.

SPEED: No problems with speed but you must be CLEAR. If I can't understand you, your argument may be missed and go unflowed which means I won't be able to weigh it it come decision time. If I can't understand you during your speech, as a courtesy I will say "clear" a couple of times but if you continue to be unclear, I will stop flowing. I encourage you to slow down for the tag and author but it's fine to speed up in your cards. Try to make distinctions between each arguments with either numbers or a "next". Same with line-by-line.

TOPICALITY/THEORY/K: I think there are better arguments to vote on than topicality but if you have a compelling argument and the aff is clearly in violation, I will vote on it. Same with theory. I'm not super current on the new theory debate or K's but if its run well and is accurate, I will vote on it.

Language is fine, be nice to each other and remember that it's JUST a debate round so while your cards may all say "nuclear war" for everything, I can assure you that the world is not that dramatic :)

Bring passion to the round, I don't care if you use strong language, whatever gets your point across. No filters needed. Crossfire can get as intense as the teams would like, and while I will not weigh cross I want to see points/responses referenced in summary or rebuttaI.

I do not care how you dress.

Time yourself and keep track of prep also.

Weigh for me remember you are doing the work, not me.

Use believable impacts (Not everything in the world ends with nuclear war)

Don't act like I know about the topic.

Talk as fast as you want, I have debated for years and will understand. Speaking fast does not mean you should talk quiet or mumble though...

Cross apply contentions.

Bring up contradictions the opponents have.

Make jokes if you want, the world isn't actually on the line, despite what your impacts say.

At the end of the day have fun and don't take anything too close to heart cause everyone here puts in way to much work to leave and feel unaccomplished.

1. What is your experience level?

I'm a lawyer who argues in court so I'm familiar with the general idea; this is my first debate.

2. Describe your preferences as they relate to debaters’ rate of delivery and use of jargon or
technical language.

I prefer conversational pace, as little jargon as possible and value good argument over speaking quickly just to get as much information in as possible during your allotted time.

4. Do you value argument over style? Style over argument? Argument and style equally?

Argument over style; with the exception that I need to be able to hear and understand the speaker (i.e. keep you voice up and don't talk so fast that I'm missing information).

5. What are the specific criteria you consider when assessing a debate?

Good organization of points; using all of your time; making sure the affirmative side responds to each negative point as the affirmative team has more of a burden; use of signposts to guide the argument and tying up loose ends in rebuttal time at the end.

6. What expectations do you have for debaters’ in-round conduct?

Civility is more important than quality of argument or style, everyone must be treated with respect even though argument can be blunt and the two sides do not agree.

- Josh (he/him)

I'm a former national circuit high school debater from the mid-1990's, but since that time I have not had much in-round debate experience until the 2020-2021 season.

My general approach is to assess the round based solely on the arguments presented by the debaters, with as little intervention by me as possible, and where tech dominates truth. The remainder of this paradigm should be viewed in that light -- that is, it's a heads up on my general perspectives on debate that may or may not be helpful to you, but if we're all doing our jobs well, my perspectives shouldn't really matter and shouldn't enter into the RFD.

The specifics below are really intended to highlight a handful of areas where my own views or capabilities may differ from other judges.

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Flowing / speed / clarity: I flow on paper. Please don't start your speech until you've given a roadmap, and until it's clear that I'm ready.

If you're an experienced high school debater, please know that my ear for speed is not quite what it used to be. I would suggest going a little bit slower everywhere except the body of cards. (That said, I do pay attention to what is read in the body of cards, and only consider a card to be evidenced to the extent that it is actually read in the round.) You certainly don't need to be at normal-person conversational speed, but taking 20-30% of your speed off would probably be helpful to you.

Please include some sort of unambiguous verbal indicator at the end of a card and before the following tag. A very brief pause is a start. A simple and clear "Next" is better. While it may be old-school, and very slightly inefficient, I'm still partial to some sort of number or letter in early constructives, particularly because numbers and letters allow for easier signposting in the line-by-line in later speeches. (Though, I also tend to hate 1-a-b-c, 2-a-b-c, etc., unless the sub-structure is highly related to itself, e.g., CP theory.)

There's an extent to which line-by-line seems to be a lost art, as does flowing. To an extent, I'll try to do the work for you and see if a given argument has in fact been dropped, but the best way to ensure that my flow has you covering everything is to signpost everything, and respond / extend in the order of the original line-by-line, i.e., the 1NC on-case and the 2AC off-case.

Please include me on the email chain -- I'll provide my email address before the round. In middle school and high school novice, my standard policy is to *not* follow along in the file, and I won't read cards unless I need to do so at the end of the round in order to assess some question of evidence. At the high school JV and Varsity levels, I'm more willing to follow along in the speech doc in order to do my part to adapt to you. But, I still expect clarity, signposting, and modulating speed on tags and cites.

Also, particularly at the high school JV / Varsity levels, I would strongly advise against reeling off multiple blippy analytics in the course of several seconds. If you do so, then if you're lucky, I will get one out of every four arguments on my flow, and it may not be the one you want the most. If there's a round-winning argument that you need me to understand, best to explain it thoroughly rather than assume I will understand the argument based on just a handful of words. This is all the more true if your delivery relies excessively on debate jargon or short-hand, some of which I can guarantee I'm not yet familiar with. (As an example, in a recent round, it took me a minute to infer that "a-spec", which I hadn't previously heard of, was just short-hand for "agent specification", with which I'm fairly familiar.) Please trust that I'm doing my level best, and that I'll be able to follow you when you're explaining things reasonably well.

In the end, if it's not on my flow, I can't assess it as part of the round, even if it's in your doc.

Kritiks: I have no principled opposition to voting on kritiks. This includes kritiks on the Aff. I do think Aff has the burden of proof to win definitively that they do not or should not need to have a topical plan. That is a burden that I have seen overcome, though the more of these rounds I see, the tougher this sell becomes for me. Regardless, in the end this is a question that I'll resolve based on the flow.

I'm arguably not clever enough to understand many kritiks -- I dropped the philosophy major because I couldn't hack it, and became a physics/math major instead -- so persuading me to vote on the basis of a kritik may require a fair bit more explanation than you would typically offer. I will take no shame in telling you that I straight up didn't understand your argument and couldn't vote on it as a result. This most likely occurs if you overly rely on philosophical jargon. If anything, my lack of experience relative to other judges in this particular debate subspace probably provides a natural check on teams reading arguments that they don't understand themselves. I'll posit that if you can't explain your argument in reasonably simple terms, then you probably don't understand it, and shouldn't win on it.

I'll say as well that I've judged a number of K teams that seem to rely heavily on blocks that have been prepared fully in advance, or maybe very slightly tweaked from what's been prepared in advance, with little attempt to actually engage with the other side. First, I find these speeches pretty tough to flow, since they're often extremely dense in content with little attempt to engage with their audience. Second, I happen to think this over-reliance on advance-prepared speeches is rather horrible for the educational value of the activity. It pretty severely undermines the "K debates are better for education" argument, and it also acts as a fairly real-time demonstration of the "link" on "K debates are bad for clash". I'm likely to be highly sympathetic to an opposing side that has any reasonable degree of superior technical execution when K teams engage in this practice.

It might be worth you knowing that K's were not really a thing yet back when I was debating. Or rather, they were just in their infancy (particularly in high school), rarely run, and/or they were uniformly terrible arguments that I don't think are run much anymore (e.g., Normativity, Objectivism, Foucault, Heidegger). Teams argued the theoretical legitimacy of the Kritik, and whether or not they should be evaluated as part of the ballot, but these arguments weren't unified under a notion of "Framework". Alt's definitely weren't a thing, nor were Kritiks on the Aff at the high school level.

Disads: I've quickly grown wary of Neg's claiming that their disad "turns case". There's a crucial difference between a disad "turning case" (i.e., your disad somehow results in the Aff no longer accessing their own impact, and in fact, causing their own impact) and "outweighing case" (i.e., your disad simply has a shorter timeframe, higher probability, or greater magnitude than the case). I've become increasingly convinced that Neg's are simply asserting -- unwarranted both in fact and in claim -- that their disad "turns case" in the hopes of duping the judge into essentially making the disad a litmus test for the ballot. If your disad legitimately turns the case, then that's awesome -- make the argument. However I think bona fide claims of "turning case" occur far less often than Neg's want us to believe. In the end, this is not much more than a pet peeve, but a pet peeve nonetheless.

CP's: Counterplans need a solvency claim/warrant, but not necessarily a solvency advocate, per se. That is, if the CP's solvency is a logical extension of the Aff's solvency mechanism, no solvency evidence should be required.

Theory / Ethics / General Behavior: I tend to be more sympathetic to teams launching legitimate, well-reasoned, and thoroughly-explained theory arguments than it seems many more modern judges may be, up to and including "reject the team, not the argument".

When it comes to ethics and general in-round behavior, it seems that many paradigms contain a whole host of info on what judges think debate “should” be, how debaters “should” act, and/or the judge’s perceived level of fairness of certain tactics.

My own paradigm used to contain similar info, but I’ve since removed it. Why? Because I think including such info creates a moral hazard of sorts. Debaters that are predisposed to behave in certain ways or deploy certain tactics will simply not do those things in front of judges that call them out in their paradigms, and then go right back to engaging in those behaviors or deploying those tactics in front of judges that don’t. To the extent that judges view themselves at least in part as guardrails on acceptable behavior and/or tactics, it seems to me that a better approach to rooting out negativity might be to put the onus on debaters to be considerate, ethical, and reasonable in deployment of their strategies and tactics – and then, if they aren’t, to mete out appropriate consequences. I do not feel obligated to state ex-ante that “X behavior is an auto-loss” if reasonable judges would conclude similarly and respond accordingly.

Don't worry: I'm not looking to be arbitrary and unreasonable in exercising judicial discretion, nor am I looking to insert my own opinions when teams engage in behavior that's debatably unfair, but goes uncontested by the other side. Just be thoughtful. It’s great to play hard. But if your tactics are questionably fair or bad for debate, be prepared to defend them, or reconsider their use. If the other side is deploying tactics that are questionably fair or bad for debate, make the argument, up to and including “reject the team”. I will evaluate such arguments and their implications based on the flow.

******

With all of that said, I consider myself to be in the midst of getting back up to speed in the modern norms and conventions of our activity, particularly at the high school Varsity level. I'm more than willing to be convinced that I should rethink any and all of the above, whether as part of an in-round debate or out-of-round conversation.

Hello,

My name is Mollie (she/her/hers). I did a lot of policy debate in high school, a little PF and a little LD. I now do American Parliamentary debate in college. I'm open to any arguments as long as they are fully explained and warranted. I can follow high theory/K/philosophy stuff pretty well. I am not a fan of theory, if it is explained well I will vote on it, but I am least familiar with this type of argument and feel the least comfortable voting for it.

Please be respectful to your partner and the other team and me. I hope you have fun! :)

Skinner North '23, Walter Payton '27.

I did MS varsity cx for one yr. Sorry if that raises red flags. I was a semifinalist at state + if it helps, I think I only ever lost 2 rounds.

PLEASE ADD ME TO THE CHAIN (vliang2@cps.edu). ((Email chain = just send your speech documents to me through email. People usually cut analytics (non-carded arguments) out. That probably means don't send anything after the 1ar.))

Notes:

he/him. This should go without saying, but please don't purposefully misgender me! I'll nuke your speaker points.

Signpost. May be the deciding factor. Seriously. I don't care if it's 1 2 3 or next, next, next...just signpost. "They say...we say..." is fine. Separate your arguments and tell me what you're responding to. Fun Fact: I hate guesswork! Don't make me go "this card could respond to this card...but it's also applicable to..." no. Just no. When you don't signpost, you force me to guess and rely on my biases. Hanging me 50 feet from the roof of an underground spring while asking me to prove Riemann's hypothesis would probably be easier.

AND, NOTE: respond to each other's arguments. Have clash. Do not just repeat your argument in the last speech (unless the other team didn't respond- that's called extending) because then I legit have no idea what to evaluate you on.

Time your speeches. I'm not joking. Time your opponents, time your prep, time their prep...while I will try to time y'all, I have time blindness- so unless you want your opponent to have 50 instead of 5 min of prep, start timing.

Tech > Truth. Do I think organic fruits actually cure cancer? Nah. But if you drop it, and they extend it (properly, and explain to me why it wins) then I'll vote on it. I'm probably a little less skewed than most judges though.

On that note, you'll win so many more rounds if you make my job as easy as possible. Crystalize. Tell me by...at least the 1AR what issues I should prioritize, how this argument shapes the round, and how the argument impacts the world. Why are you winning?

On that note, aff--- case first, then off. Same for neg, it's typically off first, than case.

In the 2NR/2AR/whatever, do your impact calculus at the top of the speech. Not the bottom. Go back to magnitude/probability/timeframe if you want. Sucker for more advanced stuff though like scope/severity/disjunction vs conjunction/etc. Go for one thing. Do not waste your time trying to cover everything. Pick and encompass/outweigh/etc.

Also, I'd like to think that I can tell when you read something that's prewritten and when you read stuff that's your own. I'm here to tell you that I love analysis. Do analysis! Especially the 2AC--- for extensions, don't tell me "extend this" and then read a semi-related card...put in the work and tell me why this card is relevant in the debate. I know how limited prep time is in MS, so I won't care if you make stuff off the fly. Assuming that you don't go off the rails and start linking to aliens or something. If you at least try, I'll probably give you like +0.1 speaker points if you do that, obviously more if it's actually good.

Spreading...is....okay. I think it's usually unnecessary for MS, and if you're spreading I would obviously prefer an email chain. If you've competed in the HS circuit, it might be best to reduce speed by like 20% just in case. Signpost and slow down on analytics. Oh my god, do not spread through analytics.

edit: I also consider tags as analytics. Do not spread through the tag and then slow down on the card. You essentially force me to create a tag for your card in the middle of the round. This leads to messy and confused debates.

SECOND EDIT: DO NOT BE SEXIST, RACIST, ETC. I usually won't outright stop the round, but it'll reflect in your speaks.

Oh, and ask me questions about the rfd. It's helpful for you, and it's helpful for me.

Case v DAs/Case Turns:

Do this. I love this. That being said, do it if you're confident. Don't overadapt.

DAs:

Uh, they're okay. Don't really have anything for or against them. I think the link chain for most MS DAs is unstable and wobbly, but I ran them a lot. It's fine. Just overexplain how it works, how x causes y, and how z is bad...etc etc.

T:

Look, I've been there. I've been the person reading a shell so garbage it takes itself out. But I will almost always lean Aff on this one. Sorry. T is inherently an argument about the division of ground--- the division of ground in core leagues is usually fine. Like, 90% of the time it's just being used as a time skew for the negative bc of the procedural.

edit: supposedly T is actually about accuracy--- probably best summed up as "framer's intent." fine, I'll vote on that. PROVIDED you criticize the ground interp correctly + don't drop everything in the constructives, god.

That being said, if you actually spend time on T...if you devote the 1nr/2nr to it and really go for it...maybe. Argue against my paradigm and explain why T isn't abusive in this case. For the Aff, you'll need to win that you are predictable and are within reason of the topic + link to core generics. For the Neg, you'll have to win that the Aff has completely exploded research burdens/is so specific that it kills edu.

CPs:

One thing: net benefit (which is what we would gain from doing the CP instead of the plan). You need that. You really need that. I'll probably vote aff on that one if not. Oh, and I really like DACPs- that's when you pair a DA with a CP together so the DA can act as the net benefit.

Agent CPs are fine. No real debate there. Do a little more work for Advantage CPs. Process CPs are borderline abusive and I totally support them.

PICs...I've only ever really interacted with abusive ones, but if it's solid and it doesn't pick out of something small, sure, fine. Prove that what you're picking out of is significant.

Judge kick-- I'll do this automatically for novices, but for JV+, the neg needs to tell me that they want me to consider the status quo, ESPECIALLY if you crystalize on the CP.

Condo:

Why are you kicking stuff? It's MS! What are you going to kick? From memory, there was like 5 off, max. I mean...I guess if you run every off you can think of and contradict yourself 10 times over...if you manage to not contradict yourself into the 4th dimension, sure. Neg lean. I think the core case negs (last year, at least) really, really suck and so you really do need to rely on your offcase to generate good offense. I'm willing to hear out the Aff though.

I think of DAs as dispo--- I don't care if you kick DAs, but stop kicking them once the aff has already turned them. "Conditional DAs" don't exist.

Ks: [MS, STOP HERE]

EDIT: When in K debates, I will always default to the flow. This K section is also not applicable to you if you're just running a basic framework argument.

I'm almost 90% sure I'll never have to judge a K round, but just in case: running a K and expecting me to automatically give you the ballot is probably not the way to go. Obviously I'm open to voting on it, but lean towards overexplaining. Please explain like your life depends on it. Go through the warrants & the links and explain the story.

K v K debates are nightmarishly difficult for me to parse. Overexplaining probably would be your saving grace. I cannot stress how much you do not want me in a K v K debate.

K affs:

If you've run a K aff and I'm judging you...you're brave? I'll obviously try my best.

I think that K affs present some pretty decent arguments, but I also think FW/T-USFG wins half the time. If you can impact turn FW, win TVA, SSD, and role of the ballot, you'll probably get my vote. Unfortunately, I am probably prone to more nitpicky and weird decisions here, so take the risk if you can handle the risk.

Have fun! Debate's supposed to be fun. Again, feel free to ask about the stuff in my paradigm.

My Paradigm is extremely simple.

Firstly, I need to be able to understand the things that you say. The best debater isn't ALWAYS the fastest.

Secondly, I want to see strong clash and line-by-line refutation. The better you are at listening and flowing, the better you'll do at speaking. Especially for rebuttals.

As a middle school debate coach and judge, I rarely vote on Topicality in a case file league, but I'm willing to if its played properly.

For MS Policy

• Slow down for tags
• Chatting in round with your partner should be quiet and relatively non-disruptive. I don't want to hear your entire conversation.
• Time management -I will keep a timer for you, but it's important you time yourself. If I feel like you're not on top of that I may stack that against your ballot.
• Be respectful - This is easy. Don't be mean, debate is supposed to be a fun activity. Respect your opponent regardless of how much experience they have.

Katharine Morley -- she/they

Put me on the email chain: katharine.morley.debate@gmail.com

Please feel free to email me with questions.

Northside 2020-2024

send out the email chain at round time even if I am not there

Novices: flow, follow tournament rules, and ask questions post-round

• in your 2nr/2ar write the ballot (explain why you win)
• do line-by-line (aka respond to the other team's arguments)
• put offense first

If you make me laugh +0.5 speaks

UC Lab '27

he/him

james.yu816@gmail.com