I love case debate and I value the path of least resistance. Engaging the aff + making strategic collapses = higher speaker points.

Assistant Debate Coach @ Georgetown Day School

College Policy & Parliamentary @ Johns Hopkins University 

Public Health & Black Studies @ Johns Hopkins University

I mentor an Asian Identity Debate working group. If this literature interests you and you want to learn more about these strategies in a collaborative environment, reach out! Here is the roster for the working group, along with the rest of my conflicts/affiliations. 

My email is affirmconscientization@gmail.com. I want to be on the email chain. Please format the subject to be indicative of what I'm judging, like: "Tournament Name - Round 1 - GDS OS vs Colleyville CZ"

I'm currently coached by Nyx Moore and Andy Ellis. Joseph Barquin and Michael Koo are two of my mentors who have greatly influenced my debate philosophy. Debnil Sur and Gabriel Koo are judges I deeply respect. I can't say whether or not I judge like any of these people, but I'd like to. 

I have a lot of opinions about debate, but maybe ~20% of them matter. I will always be moved by good debating. This looks like judge instruction, warranted analysis, and comparative weighing. I value communication and clarity -- this has nothing to do with your speed of presentation (though do not go fast if you are incomprehensible), but the quality of your presentation. You need to be giving me a big picture in rebuttals to compare against another. I do care about the line-by-line, but the smaller moving parts of the debate need to add up to something that is illustrated and weighed in rebuttals. I am not one to judge algorithmically, so a conceded argument that is not explained or weighed isn't meaningful to me. A dropped argument isn't inherently winning just because it's dropped, you still need to do work. Your arguments must be implicated and mechanized -- if you leave gaps in your explanation, I will have to fill in my own analysis and you probably will not like the assumptions I will make. I don't like intervening and I will try not to, but in order for that to happen, you need to sufficiently resolve competing claims. 

I flow on paper and by ear. I will not check your documents to supply my flow and if I didn't catch it, I won't go finding it. You need to adapt if I say "clear" or "slow" and if you don't, I'll stop flowing. You should be observant of my facial expressions -- you don't need to stare at me, but I think I give off cues when I'm confused so use that to your advantage. If you see me flowing on my laptop, it's probably because I do not have paper or pens. If you pass me some sheets or 0.5 G2s, I will be very grateful. 

Please treat others with respect. This does not trade off with being assertive or aggressive. I'm cognizant of imbalanced dynamics and I have no interest in fostering a debate space that enables them.

Most rounds I judge come down to a kritikal/no-plan affirmative vs framework. If not that, then a soft-left plan aff vs a kritik. Here is how I would pref me: 

1: Policy Aff vs K, K Aff vs T/FW, K vs K 

2: Policy vs Policy

3: Theory, Topicality, poorly explained postmodernist kritiks

4-Strike: Everything else

LDers: If you have me as a judge, pretend you're in a policy round. If you don't want to do that, pretend I'm a parent who is watching my first debate ever. 

Specific Thoughts 

There needs to be way more engagement with your opponent's evidence. There are links and take-outs sitting in their own cards --  find them and rehighlight their evidence. Rehighlighted evidence must be read out loud, not inserted. Perhaps this is my parli background showing, but I believe that a well-reasoned and responsive analytic trumps uncontextualized evidence. Bad evidence and poorly constructed shells should also be easy to beat with analytics and cross-applications. 

Straight policy debates are great. Uniqueness matters; update your evidence. I want clear explanations of your internal links. You cannot just assert that extinction happens -- if you do not provide me clear steps, I will be easily persuaded by impact defense. Zero risk is a thing. Creative disadvantages/counterplans will be rewarded in speaker points. I'm honestly pretty apathetic about the types of counterplans read, do whatever you want. I read the delay counterplan when I was in high school, it was fun, but it was a pretty silly argument. Silly arguments are easy to beat so run them at your own risk.

Impact turns are fun. Spark, de-development, and wipeout are all fine by me. But, not everything needs to be impact turned. No one needs to be reading "white supremacy is good." I won't vote for advocacies that promote suicide/self-harm or genocide. I think stuff in this vein is pretty distinct from arguments that question a survivalist ethic, which I would hear out. Use your best judgment -- I value debate as a platform for thought experiments, but the wellbeing and safety of people in the round is a priority. As a judge, I reserve the right to stop the round. I've never had to and this is not something I want to do, don't make me do it. 

If you read topicality, don't neglect the definitions debate. I default to competing interpretations. I think RVIs on T are silly, but that just means it should be easy to beat. If you don't, I guess I'll reward the aff for being topical. Theory can be fun. Same thing, I default to competing interpretations. I'm really indifferent on theory shells. Read whatever you want, but I do think conditionality is good. Maybe not unconditionally though. 

I will vote for the kritik on the aff or neg, provided you explain your position. I'm growing very frustrated with the reliance on jargon and buzzwords, which are not sufficient substitutes for explanations of your evidence or thesis. It indicates to me that you probably don't know what you're talking about and are just speeding through rehearsed blocks that you may or may not have written. I don't think the kritik needs to be reduced to be "simple", because it's a complex argument that frequently relies on complex theory, but it does need to be comprehensible. Your thesis and general argument really needs to be implicated -- it's not helpful to go on about ontology or your thesis without telling me what that means in the context of my ballot. If your kritik has a performance, it needs to be interacted with past the initial constructive. Otherwise, it seems like it was there for the sake of it and you're just wasting time. I do come into these rounds thinking that non-plan affs get a perm, I'm voting for the team that does the better debating, and aff gets to weigh the plan against the kritik. You can debate it out and convince me otherwise. 

I love framework. I have a mild preference for skills or education impacts over procedural fairness as a principle, it's actually a nice little internal link to education, but w/e. I'm not picky about this. I'm persuaded by topical versions of the affirmative and case lists that don't rely on acronyms I may not know. Like other positions, framework is an argument that tells a story, it's just a story about models of debate. 

I care about the topic and I come in expecting to judge a round about it. How you engage the topic is up to you. If you want to stray away from the topic, go ahead and do so, but I'll be more sympathetic to framework the farther you move. 

All advocacies need to be explained. I won't vote for an alt/plan/method/perm if I don't know how it functions or what it resolved. This means "perm do both" as a one-liner is not sufficient for my ballot, even if it's conceded. This means you cannot just tagline extend your solvency advocate. I want examples, historical context, and clear explanations of what happens in your world and how your impacts are resolved. Vague advocacies/perms are my pet peeve and if you give me some buzzwords with no mechanism until the rebuttal speeches, I will happily pull the trigger on theory. 

Public Forum Debate

One contention cases where y'all actually engage the content and have nuance >>> 3 contention cases and 3 add-ons in rebuttal where y'all card dump with no contextualization or warranting. 

Stop cheating and start following norms that every competitive format follows. Do not paraphrase in front of me and if you read evidence, it better be a cut card. A cut card includes full, unrevised paragraphs (no skipping paragraphs in between two highlighted sections, no mixing and matching paragraphs, none of that nonsense) from the original source with highlighting to reflect what portions are read out loud. The citation must have a link, author names and credentials, and date published. If you do not have cards for your evidence, I will consider what you said to be an asserted claim at best. If you have miscut cards or misrepresent your evidence, I will drop you with the lowest possible speaks. If both teams happen to be cheaters, I'll flip a coin to decide a winner. I have done this before, I will do it again. 

If your opponent paraphrases, just make it a voter and extend through all speeches and you win. Easy.

Send speech documents and save everyone an extra hour of waiting for y'all to find cards. Prior to starting your speech, you send out all the evidence you intend to read. If both teams opt out of this and go for some inefficient nonsense, like calling for evidence and making everyone wait for it to be found and sent over, every debater is capped with speaker points of 25 (I do not care how good you are) and your "evidence exchange" comes out of prep and tech time. 

Read whatever you want, just do it well. My bar for good debating has not shifted just because it's public forum. 

I like good debating. In my experience, this is brought out when debaters are reading strategies they're genuinely curious or care about. Don't take anything I have to say too seriously (but don't limit test my boundaries on safety or evidence ethics), and don't over-adapt. You know what you do best.