I currently work at Taipei American School coaching debate and public speaking. I have previously coached the Spanish National Team for WSDC, and have been heavily involved with training of the National Team for HK, and Mexico before Spain. My favorite style of debate is British Parliamentary, but I will be sure to check that bias when judging other styles of debate.

When judging PF or LD I expect that you will follow the NSDA rules when it comes to evidence. Please do not willfully misrepresent the evidence. When judging any round I find procedural tricks, K, and theory fairly unconvincing. If you are deciding not to debate the motion you had better have an exceptionally good reasons to do so. A poorly articulated argument or assertion will not win you any favors. If you are hoping that one dropped argument is going to win you my ballot, you will likely be disappointed. Depth of arguments, impacts, and comparatives will get you much further. Weigh your arguments against those of your opponents and tell me how I should judge the debate. If reasonable, this will likely bode well for you.

I am by no means an expert on judging PF or LD. I am apt at following speeches that are quick, but please do not spread like this is a policy debate. I prefer well articulated arguments than sprinting through a speech in order to put as many arguments of the table as you can. You can send your disclosure to me at cookm@tas.tw

Follow tournament best practices. For online tournaments, turn your camera on!

Clear refutations are key to winning the debate. Speed-talking and arrogance are frowned upon. Debates should be consistent from construction to final focus, ideally while supporting a clear framework. Use sign-posts throughout to avoid dropped contentions. Solid evidence should clearly link contentions to impacts. Be civil.

I am willing to be convinced by either side. I take notes but I am definitely a lay judge. Speak to me and be respectful to each other. Please speak at a normal speed and do not mumble. I am a little hard of hearing so I would prefer that speak clearly and project your voice. Good luck!

Have fun in your round and be confident in yourself. Respect your team mate and the other team throughout the round including during cross. You can be firm and aggressive, but it should be respectful. Speed is not an issue as long as you speak clearly. Articulate the impact and showcase how you understand the arguments you are making, be consistent, and indicate why your impacts outweigh.

Rounds are meant to be fun and you should go for any argument you feel comfortable defending, that being said it is your job to tell me the link at every level. Don't assume that I'll make the link, show me your work and tell me how you access your impacts. Be kind to your opponents, you can be assertive and strong in cross, but it doesn't mean you have to be rude. Jargon is ok but you better understand what you are saying and how it applies to a case, don't just say weighing or scope if you can't show me what those things actually mean. I can be fairly expressive in rounds, don't read into my non-verbal reactions!

Background

I competed for Taipei American School in Congress and am a current sophomore at UC Berkeley.

I made it to the outrounds at several national circuit tournaments like Blake, Stanford and UK, and have also competed in Round Robins. 2x NSDA Taiwan Congress Champion.

Email: patrickclin@berkeley.edu

Paradigm

Adopted from my coaches (Chase Williams and Luke Tillitski)

You can ask me specific questions if you have them...but my paradigm is pretty simple - answer these three questions in the round - and answer them better than your opponent, and you're going to win my ballot:

1. Where am I voting?

2. How can I vote for you there?

3. Why am I voting there and not somewhere else?

I'm not going to do work for you. Don't try to go for everything. Make sure you weigh. Both sides are going to be winning some sort of argument - you're going to need to tell me why what you're winning is more important and enough to win my ballot.

Congress Specific:

Don’t try to “adapt” to me as a judge because I see value in all styles of Congress. The best part about Congress is that there are a myriad of ways to be successful in the event. I can appreciate all speaking and argumentation styles - just give the best speech in the round. I do not care if you speak early, mid-round, or late.

You have to give the speech that is appropriate for when you are speaking in order to get me to rank you. By this, I mean that if you give a constructive speech when you should be crystallizing or give an authorship that doesn't sufficiently explain the legislation and the main impetus for the legislation's creation, then I will not rank you. Adaptation is the name of the game in Congress.

Name-dropping a bunch of people and half-way refuting their claim is not nearly as impressive to me as picking the most strategic argument and thoroughly refuting it (i.e. show why the warrant is untrue instead of just saying "X said this bill decreases jobs. Well, here's a statistic that says it increases jobs!)

Presentation vs. argumentation balance: Congress is a debate event. This means that I will prefer competitors with the best arguments. Speaking/rhetoric is a tie-breaker between students with arguments of equal quality. Obviously, if your presentation is so poor that it detracts from your argumentation then I cannot credit you for that argumentation.

I don’t mind if you have an untraditional speech structure as long as it is easy to follow.

POs: I see the value in presiding, as I know it is necessary for the event to function. Thus, if the PO does a solid job, then I am likely to rank them.

Email: tynews2001@gmail.com

I participated in four years of policy debate in high school and I debated four years at Western Kentucky University.

I am open to anything and I try to be as tab as possible. Just use warrants in your argumentation, even if it is theory. If an argument has absolutely no warrant and is just a claim, there is a chance I still won't vote on it even if it is 100% conceded. That is to say, if you just say conditionality is bad because of fairness and education, that is a series of claims without warrants, and thus is unpersuasive even if the other team doesn't address it. However, if a poorly warranted claim goes conceded, then I will not necessarily adjudicate the strength of the warrant as it is the other team's obligation to defeat this warrant, and as such I will take the warrant as true unless it is unintelligible or utterly absurd. I will default as a policymaker if you don't put me in a competing paradigm.

When adjudicating competing claims, it is my hope that debaters will engage in evidence comparison. However, if two contradictory claims are made, and no one weighs the strength of the internal warrants of the evidence, then I will likely call for the evidence to adjudicate which claim is more strongly warranted (assuming the argument may be part of my reason for decision). Same goes with topicality. I am 50/50 in voting for topicality, and I default competing interpretations.

If you are running critical/performance arguments, please be familiar with the argument and able to intellectually defend it. My personal preference when I debate is usually policy-oriented discussions and my personal bias is that switch-side policy debate is good, but I don't let this inform my decision in the round. At the same time, I think that non-traditional forms of debate are an important component of the community and have an important message to broadcast, and as such, I have voted for performance affs in the past.

The following is a preference and not a requirement. It is common for me to judge teams running non-traditional forms of arguments and personally be unfamiliar with the literature base. Thus, it is probably in your interest to ask if I'm familiar with a non-traditional argument prior to the round unless you plan to explain it extensively in the round. An argument is inherently less persuasive when the messenger also does not fully understand it, and the debate is probably less educational for everyone involved as a result. In general, I think you should be familiar with any argument you read before you deploy it in-round, but I've found this is more frequently an issue when high school debaters deploy the critical literature base. If I don't think you are familiar with your argument, I won't hold it against you in my RFD (although it will inform my speaker points), but it will probably influence whether you are able to effectively deploy the argument on the flow, where I will vote.

Finally, you should tell me explicitly how the RFD should be written if you win so I can understand your vision of the round. If you do not have ballot directing language, I will use my own judgment to write the RFD, so it is in your interest to write the RFD for me.

Experience: 3 years PF for Bard High School Early College Manhattan, majority local, some national. I debated APDA and BP at Wellesley College and the London School of Economics for 4 years. I coached APDA at Wellesley College and middle school policy as a volunteer for the Washington Urban Debate League each for one year. During the 2023-2024 school year, I'm working full-time as a PF coach in Taiwan on theFulbright Debate Coach/Trainer award.

You can contact me and add me to the email chain using this email: maya.rubin56@gmail.com.

If you want a more complete paradigm that goes into far more technical specifics, this is a good one that pretty much reflects my judging philosophy (expansion here).

Some things about my general approach to PF debate (non-specific):

The vast majority of my coaching experience has been with novices. Most of that experience has also been with people who are structurally excluded from many debate spaces including and especially circuit/bid tournaments. What this should tell you about me as a judge is that I believe that debate -- especially PF debate -- should be a fundamentally accessible and public-facing activity. Organization is important; evidence integrity is important; making arguments that are comprehensible to laypeople is important, even in front of a more flow-y judge. I do not think that you should condescend to laypeople or assume that because someone isn't well-versed in the intricacies of debate theory they will be unable to follow complicated arguments: if you are not explaining the argument in a way laypeople can follow, you're probably not making it very well. Additionally, I am very sensitive -- as I hope most judges are -- to the exploitation of inequities or resource imbalances by teams. In other words, do not run theory arguments on novices because you know they won't understand theory; don't use language on an ESL team that you can reasonably predict will be inaccessible to them; always be respectful of your opponents, no matter where they come from or their skill level. Always win, lose, and compete with grace and compassion.

Some specific things about my preferences and paradigm:

• Go as fast as you want, but be clear. I can keep up with pretty much any speed. That said, make sure your speed is accessible to your opponents. Do not spread on people who you think won't understand it.
• I am fine with theory arguments, but as with the above, only run these on people who will be able to understand and debate them in a productive way. Regarding theory, because most of my experience is with novices and because I did not frequently debate on the national circuit when I was in high school, I am not familiar with the cutting edge of PF theory. That said, my lack of recent and specific experience should not imply that I am incapable of judging theory: I am very familiar with theory arguments in Parliamentary debate formats and I am someone who has spent enough time in debate (and enough time studying academic philosophy) that I feel comfortable evaluating technical and theory arguments even when I haven't heard them before. Finally, as is the case with any argument in PF, even theory arguments should be presented and explained in a way that is comprehensible to laypeople. TLDR: I will not drop you for theory and you should assume I can understand and evaluate it, but run it only when it is appropriate and fair to do so.
• I will flow everything you say. However, I have a more "lay" approach to debating for all the reasons discussed above. Assume I won't miss things and don't rely on pure presentation to win, but make sure your arguments are clear, accessible, and explained.
• Do all the normal good-debater things: warrant, signpost, weigh, be clear about referring to arguments and cards. Evidence integrity is important, so make sure you're not clipping cards or fabricating stuff or citing outdated/disproven stuff.
• No new responses past 2nd rebuttal/1st summary. Defense isn't sticky, offense is.
• I will evaluate the round based on the magnitude of impacts and the strength of each team's link to them. E.g., what is the biggest impact in the round? Who best accesses it?
• I try, as much as one can, to be tabula rasa. Framework arguments are fine; in their absence I default to util. Consider my paradigm to be "how I judge in absence of a clear directive of how to judge otherwise." If you tell me why I should view the round differently, I will view it that way.
• Obligatory "don't be racist, sexist, and any other -ist" note. If you do, I'll tank your speaks and probably drop you.

Hi debaters. Please note the following

- assume I don’t know the subject

- respect opponents, judges, and your teammate

- show me you understand the subject well and convince me of your position (pro or con)

- speak clearly, pls do not speak too fast.

- work as a team

1. What is your debate background?

- Debated in in-school debate competitions (middle school)

- 2004 IASAS Original Oratory contestant for Taipei American School

- HSNU English Debate Coach 2015-2018

- CKHS English Debate Coach 2017

- Taoyuan Wuling Senior High School English Debate Coach 2018-2020

- Yan-Ping Senior High School English Debate Coach 2020-2021, 2024

- Taiwan High School English Debate Regionals/Nationals Judge 2018-current

- Co-founder of Education Legion education team

2. How do you judge?

I am deliberate on the overall presentation of debaters. My basis for evaluating evidence strength is the OCEBM (Oxford Classification of Evidence-Based Medicine). In other words, expert opinions and case reports do not sway me unless there is a specific and necessary reason to mentioning such kind of evidence, or is coupled with other stronger pieces of evidence. Failure to do so would make me more critical about the presented evidence that the debater(s) strives to put into use to tie into their assertions or claims.

Link your logic together and do not scatter like a shotgun shooting its pellets from long-distance. It is your responsibility to engage not only with your audience but also the judge(s). A messy beginning and unclear crossfires/cross-examinations make it hard to delineate or see what is going on from one or both sides, which means every part of the debate counts.

Do not bring up new arguments during the summary/final focus (PF) or rebuttals (CX). New evidence is allowed, but at this point it would be kind of late to do it.

3. Please explain other specifics of your judging style.

Even though I have no problem keeping up, I am not a fan of spreading. The purpose of debate is communication, not word blasting. If you abuse your education advantages that give you better language mastery and/or preparation time, to pummel less privileged teams, it will impact negatively on your speaker points and the outcome if it interferes with the debate.

Sportsmanship and basic mutual respect must be adhered.

Kritik should be used only when necessary.

Counterplans are fun as long as they are clear.

legal background

Participated in debate in middle school.

Judge on overall presentation

uses cross-fire / cross examination to determine mastery of topic/subject

clarity of argument at final speeches is paramount

(i am a lay judge, less spreading)

Debates should have a clear and consistent framework from construction to final focus. Refrain from speed talking, as your contentions and refutations should be clear and coherent. Strong and relevant evidence should clearly link contentions to impact. Creative thinking is a bonus. Take a deep breath and have fun!