I strongly believe in narrowing the debate in the summary speeches. I really want you to determine where you are winning the debate and explain that firmly to me. In short: I want you to go for something. I really like big impacts, but its's important to me that you flush out your impacts with strong internal links. Don't just tell me A leads to C without giving me the process of how you got there. Also don't assume i know every minute detail in your case. Explain and extend and make sure that you EMPHASIZE what you really want me to hear. Slow down and be clear. Give me voters (in summary and final focus). 

Speed is fine as long as you are clear. I work very hard to flow the debate in as much detail as possible. However, if I can't understand you I can't flow you. 

2018 NPDA National Champion

I can judge pretty much anything. Just be clear and have fun.

For additional speaker points, consult the below recipe.

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***Before you strike me, ask your DoF how many times I beat the teams they coached. Now, rethink your strike and pref me higher.***

Ingredients:

• 1⁄2 cup butter
• 2 tablespoons cream cheese
• 1 pint heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• salt
• black pepper
• 2⁄3 cup grated parmesan cheese (preferably fresh)
• 1 lb fettuccine, prepared as directed

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, melt butter.
2. When butter is melted, add cream cheese.
3. When the cream cheese is softened, add heavy cream.
4. Season with garlic powder, salt, and pepper.
5. Simmer for 15-20 minutes over low heat, stirring constantly.
6. Remove from heat and stir in parmesan.
7. Serve over hot fettuccine noodles.

I've been debating since I was in high school and am familiar with most forms of debate. Specifically, I've competed in PF and NPDA. With that being said, I'm open to literally any style of debate. I really like critical theory and alternative interpretations of the resolution, but I'm good with traditional too. The most I really ask of you all as debaters, is to make your cases clear to me. Other than that, have fun, be safe, and don't be mean.

Typically when I judge (usually PF), I look for:

-How students argue evidence in a proper and effective manner.

-The evidence must be coherent and viable for the situation and deliver evidence in a distinguishable manner.

-Delivery of the evidence must fit the argument properly for the side argued.

-Philosophy argued must be known to the student and not used simply for popular reason or preference.

-Crossfire and cross-analysis of the opponent need to uphold your position and impact your reasoning to further the cause.

-Respect among students no matter what side is argued. When asked a question, give your opponent proper time to argue/defend themselves.

Be clear. 

LH

I've been the Speech & Debate Coach at Starr's Mill H.S since 2018. My team only competes in Public Forum and Speech events, so that is where I have the most experience coaching and subsequently judging.

PF:

1. Make good, consistent arguments with clearly stated and explained evidence and you won't have a problem winning the round.
2. For high speaker points, I look for good sportsmanship, confidence, politeness, clear rhetoric, consistent signposting, and timeliness.
3. Do not spread. Do not ask if I or your competitors want your case as a workaround.
4. Signpost as much as possible (i.e. please reference the argument you are responding to as you go down the flow).
5. I am not a judge for off-the-wall stuff (topicality, kritiks, etc.).
6. Actually summarize in your summaries! No new arguments in final focus. Create the narrative and convince me to vote for you.
7. I do not flow cross, but I have decided rounds on crucial admissions and will take notes "on the side" as need be.

LD:

1. I am a lay judge. I only judge PF or Speech so if I get placed in a LD round, it's usually a one-off.
2. Do not spread. Do not ask if I or your competitors want your case as a workaround.
3. I'm not receptive to most counterplans and prefer standard LD cases.
4. Value/Value Criterion will absolutely weigh in my decision.

Jeffrey Miller

Current Coach -- Marist School (2011-present)
Lab Leader -- National Debate Forum (2015-present), Emory University (2016), Dartmouth College (2014-2015), University of Georgia (2012-2015)
Former Coach -- Fayette County (2006-2011), Wheeler (2008-2009)
Former Debater -- Fayette County (2002-2006)

jmill126@gmail.com and maristpublicforum@gmail.com for email chains, please (no google doc sharing and no locked google docs)

Last Updated -- 2/12/2012 for the 2022 Postseason (no major updates, just being more specific on items)

I am a high school teacher who believes in the power that speech and debate provides students. There is not another activity that provides the benefits that this activity does. I am involved in topic wording with the NSDA and argument development and strategy discussion with Marist, so you can expect I am coming into the room as an informed participant about the topic. As your judge, it is my job to give you the best experience possible in that round. I will work as hard in giving you that experience as I expect you are working to win the debate. I think online debate is amazing and would not be bothered if we never returned to in-person competitions again. For online debate to work, everyone should have their cameras on and be cordial with other understanding that there can be technical issues in a round.

What does a good debate look like?

In my opinion, a good debate features two well-researched teams who clash around a central thesis of the topic. Teams can demonstrate this through a variety of ways in a debate such as the use of evidence, smart questioning in cross examination and strategical thinking through the use of casing and rebuttals. In good debates, each speech answers the one that precedes it (with the second constructive being the exception in public forum). Good debates are fun for all those involved including the judge(s).

The best debates are typically smaller in nature as they can resolve key parts of the debate. The proliferation of large constructives have hindered many second halves as they decrease the amount of time students can interact with specific parts of arguments and even worse leaving judges to sort things out themselves and increasing intervention.

What role does theory play in good debates?

I've always said I prefer substance over theory. That being said, I do know theory has its place in debate rounds and I do have strong opinions on many violations. I will do my best to evaluate theory as pragmatically as possible by weighing the offense under each interpretation. For a crash course in my beliefs of theory - disclosure is good, open source is an unnecessary standard for high school public forum teams until a minimum standard of disclosure is established, paraphrasing is bad, round reports is frivolous, content warnings for graphic representations is required, content warnings over non-graphic representations is debatable.

All of this being said, I don't view myself as an autostrike for teams that don't disclose or paraphrase. However, I've judged enough this year to tell you if you are one of those teams and happen to debate someone with thoughts similar to mine, you should be prepared with answers.

How do "progressive" arguments work in good debates?

Like I said above, arguments work best when they are in the context of the critical thesis of the topic. Thus, if you are reading the same cards in your framing contention from the Septober topic that have zero connections to the current topic, I think you are starting a up-hill battle for yourselves. I have not been entirely persuaded with the "pre-fiat" implications I have seen this year - if those pre-fiat implications were contextualized with topic literature, that would be different.

My major gripe with progressive debates this year has been a lack of clash. Saying "structural violence comes first" doesn't automatically mean it does or that you win. These are debatable arguments, please debate them. I am also finding that sometimes the lack of clash isn't a problem of unprepared debaters, but rather there isn't enough time to resolve major issues in the literature. At a minimum, your evidence that is making progressive type claims in the debate should never be paraphrased and should be well warranted. I have found myself struggling to flow framing contentions that include four completely different arguments that should take 1.5 minutes to read that PF debaters are reading in 20-30 seconds (Read: your crisis politics cards should be more than one line).

How should evidence exchange work?

Evidence exchange in public forum is broken. At the beginning of COVID, I found myself thinking cases sent after the speech in order to protect flowing. However, my view on this has shifted. A lot of debates I found myself judging last season had evidence delays after case. At this point, constructives should be sent immediately prior to speeches. (If you paraphrase, you should send your narrative version with the cut cards in order). At this stage in the game, I don't think rebuttal evidence should be emailed before but I imagine that view will shift with time as well. When you send evidence to the email chain, I prefer a cut card with a proper citation and highlighting to indicate what was read. Cards with no formatting or just links are as a good as analytics.

For what its worth, whenever I return to in-person tournaments, I do expect email chains to continue.

What effects speaker points?

I am trying to increase my baseline for points as I've found I'm typically below average. Instead of starting at a 28, I will try to start at a 28.5 for debaters and move accordingly. Argument selection, strategy choices and smart crossfires are the best way to earn more points with me. You're probably not going to get a 30 but have a good debate with smart strategy choices, and you should get a 29+.

This only applies to tournaments that use a 0.1 metric -- tournaments that are using half points are bad.

I debated at Columbus High (GA) and competed on the PF national circuit for two-ish years with some success.

General: I was a very technical debater for public forum and believe that when done well, technical debates are the most interesting to watch/judge. While I appreciate good line by line debating, I understand that not all schools have the resources to teach line by line debating so please do not force yourself to be technical or “flow” because I am judging. A good voter based summary/final focus can be just as effective as line by line if you’re clear and make smart analysis.

Speed: I was on the faster end of national circuit debate, but it has been a while since I have actually debated. If you're comfortable going fast, do it but do not sacrifice clarity. Don't spread either, but I can understand relatively quick speeds. Speed is in no way a requirement. In general, the faster you speak, the less I will be able to flow. However, I do consider myself to have a pretty good speed threshold. If you want to know how fast I can handle, you can request in round that I say “clear” if you begin going to fast for me. Also, I will say “clear” if I cannot understand you twice, the third time I will just stop flowing. *If you are going fast to a point where flowing becomes difficult your opponent reserves full rights to ask for a speech doc to prevent them from missing arguments*

Rebuttal: I don’t need frontlining in either rebuttal but it could be strategic - I leave that decision to you. I want to see case cross applications, at least some generated offense, and terminalized defense. Overviews are not required but can be useful - be strategic here. I will listen to extended disads in rebuttal, but the threshold for responding to these goes down (especially if you read one as the second speaking team). Also, evidence comparison goes a long way here. Reasons to prefer evidence will make my job and yours a lot easier.

Summary: You don’t have to weigh for me here, but doing so will really help for multiple reasons (i.e. making sure I know weighing is occurring, better speaker points, etc.). Extensions need warrants, and all offense is required to be in summary. I believe in sticky defense for first summary. Being a first speaker, my biggest pet peeve is extending through ink — you need to frontline any offense you go for or I defer to their defense and don't evaluate the offense (turns become defense if not extended as offense and weighed and frontlined). If both teams extend through ink, my decision will be less standardized and you don’t want that. Second speaking teams need to extend defense in second summary for me to evaluate it better in final focus. I try to number responses if rebuttals are clear - if that makes front lining easier, feel free to use the number of the responses. I need an impact extension at the very least for me to consider it in final focus.

Final Focus: You MUST weigh here for me to vote for you. If neither team weighs, I again defer to a less standardized decision process that you want to avoid. If one team gives bad weighing, I prefer that over no weighing. The better your analysis, the more likely I am to vote for you. However, weighing an impact without a link doesn’t work for me - you need to win the link to the impact to weigh it. I need extensions in summary; I think final focuses are summaries with less front lining and more weighing.

Theory: I think most theory arguments are just reasons to drop the argument, not the debater so unless you give reasons to drop the debater, I won’t. I am also not well acquainted with most theory arguments, but I understand the general mechanisms and know at least basic jargon. Make sure I can understand the argument if you want me to vote for it. That said, I am not in any way biased against theory if run well and understandably.

Topicality: This is very important to me. I don’t want to vote for not topical arguments. That said, saying an argument is not topical is not enough - give me reasons why.

K: I am not super good at Ks in the traditional policy and LD sense. If your argument is understandable and well-defended, I have no problem voting for them. Just make them have impacts and good strategies.

Arguments: I am a fan of unique/fun arguments and love to see them. Have a good time in your debates, I'll listen to any argument that is not offensive (i.e. racist, homophobic, or sexist). So if you decide to say cannibalism will prevent human extinction, I will listen.

Evidence: I do not want to be an interventionist judge. That means I will not call for evidence and use it to make a decision, unless a team tells me to. If there is general disagreement on evidence, but I am not told explicitly to read it, I will either defer it to the team that better defends their interp of the evidence or not evaluate it (if neither team defends their interp well). I might ask to see it after making a decision just to give both teams a better understanding of how one judge perceives the evidence, and I might call evidence after making a decision that I don’t believe is true. BUT, if no one calls out a team on evidence, I will not drop the other team for it. If a team calls out another for blatantly lying or misrepresenting evidence (i.e. not reading a “not” in an important line), I will look at the evidence after round. The team that is wrong about the evidence (accusers or defendants) will immediately be dropped and given 25s for speaker points.

Speaker Points:

30- You were perfect

29.5+- Great strategy, fantastic strategic decisions, great weighing

29+- Good Strategy, probably made some good responses, solid weighing

28.5+- Decent Strategy, making good arguments, okay weighing

28.0- Some strategy, arguments were made, no weighing

27.0- Lack of Strategy, conceded some parts of case, no weighing

26.0- no strategic decisions, conceded major parts of case, no weighing

Under 25 is reserved for doing something offensive, being mean, unethical evidence, or not using full speech times.

I'm and old and slow "dad judge".  Talk too fast and I'll miss much of what you said.  Slow and clear wins the day.  Two points that I can hear and comprehend will do you more good than six points that all came out so fast I could't follow any of them.  You've been warned.