So, as obnoxious as this is, my judging philosophy is that I don’t have a judging philosophy. I’ve been out of debate for three years; let this piece of information guide you in two ways:

1)    1) Don’t assume I’m familiar with major arguments on this topic or its literature base … because I’m not.

2)     2) Slow down, be clear, and draw clear lines between your evidence and your arguments. The burden is on you to explain to me the role of the ballot, how I should evaluate impacts, and why I should vote for you. I won’t draw these lines for you, and the easier you make my life the more likely I am to vote for you.

In terms of specific arguments: you do you and what you are most comfortable with. I was on the more critical side of things during my time debating, but I feel strongly that there should be parameters that guide debate and ensure fairness for both teams.

With that being said, at the end of the day I will take the path of least resistance. This means I will pull the trigger on theory if that is the easy way out. I am also more likely to be persuaded by overarching ‘framing’ questions that could possible trump the other team’s offense, if mishandled. Again, make my life as easy as possible by telling me exactly how I should vote and why. Address role of the ballot issues early and control the impact calculus throughout the round if you want my vote.

The single most important thing to me, however, is for you to make this debate enjoyable. This should go without saying, but all too often it becomes a problem. Be nice to your opponents, be nice to your partner, and have fun. Debate is a game; games should be fun to participate in and fun to watch!!

Good luck everyone!! 

Mike Bausch

Director of Speech and Debate, Kent Denver

Please include me in email chains; my email is mikebausch@gmail.com.

Thanks for letting me judge your debate. Do what you do best, and I will do my best to adapt to you all. Here are some tips for debating in a way that I find most persuasive:

1. Flow the debate and make complete arguments. I care about line-by-line debating and organization. An argument must have a claim, evidence, and an impact on the debate for me to vote on it. I must understand your reasoning enough to explain to the other team why I voted on it.

2. Be timely and efficient in the round. Nothing impresses me more than students who are prepared and organized. Please conduct the debate efficiently with little dead time. Don’t steal prep.

3. Focus on argument resolution after the first speeches. Impact calculus, developing specific warrants, identifying what to do with drops, answering “so what” questions, making “even if” statements, and comparing arguments (links, solvency, etc) are all great ways to win arguments, rather than just repeat them.

4. Feature judge instruction in the final rebuttals. The best tip I can give you is to go for less distinct issues as the debate develops and to focus on explaining and comparing your best points to your opponent’s arguments more. Begin your final rebuttal by writing my ballot and explicitly saying what you’re winning and why that should win you the debate.

5. Remember that this is a communication activity. Speak clearly, I do not follow along with the speech document and will say “clear” if I can’t understand you. Use your cross-examination time to persuade the judge and prepare for it like a speech.

6. Talk about your evidence more. I think a lot of teams get away with reading poor evidence. Please make evidence comparison (data, warrants, source, or recency) a significant part of the debate. Evidence that is highlighted in complete and coherent sentences is much more persuasive than evidence that is not.

7. Identify specific evidence that you want me read after the debate. I am more likely to read evidence that is discussed and explained during the debate and will use the debater's explanation to guide my reading. I am unlikely to read evidence that I didn't understand when it was initially presented, or to give much credit to warrants that only become clear to me after examining the evidence.

8. Develop persuasive specific links to your desired argument strategy. I think the affirmative should present an advocacy they can defend as topical, and the negative should clash with ideas that the affirmative has committed to defending. I think that the policy consequences and ethical implications of the resolution are both important to consider when debating about the topic. For all strategies, it starts for me with the credibility of the link.

9. Develop and compare your impacts early and often. Impact analysis and comparison is crucial to persuading me to vote for you. In depth explanation is great and even better if that includes clear comparisons to your opponent’s most significant impacts.

10. I prefer clash heavy instead of clash avoidant debates. I am most impressed by teams that demonstrate command of their arguments, who read arguments with strong specific links to the topic, and who come prepared to debate their opponent’s case. I am less impressed with teams that avoid clash by using multiple conditional advocacies, plan vagueness, generic positions without topic nuance, and reading incomplete arguments that lack clear links or solvency advocates.

*Note: Because evidence comparison is a valuable skill, I think all formats of debate benefit from evidence exchange between students in the debate and would prefer if students practiced this norm.

**Online update: if my camera is off, i am not there**

I think debate is a game with educational benefits. I will listen to anything, but there are obviously some arguments that are more persuasive than others. i think this is most of what you're looking for:

1. arguments - For me to vote on an argument it must have a claim, warrant, and impact. A claim is an assertion of truth or opinion. A warrant is an analytical connection between data/grounds/evidence and your claim. An impact is the implication of that claim for how I should evaluate the debate. debate is competitive and adversarial, not cooperative. My bias is that debate strategies should be evidence-centric and, at a minimum, rooted in an academic discipline. My bias is that I do not want to consider anything prior to the reading of the 1AC when making my decision.

2. more on that last sentence - i am uninterested and incapable of resolving debates based on questions of character based on things that occurred outside of the debate that i am judging. if it is an issue that calls into question the safety of yourself or others in the community, you should bring that issue up directly with the tournament director or relevant authorities because that is not a competition question. if you are having an interpersonal dispute, you should try resolving your conflict outside of a competitive space and may want to seek mediation from trained professionals. there are likely exceptions, but there isnt a way to resolve these things in a debate round.

3. framework - arguments need to be impacted out beyond the word 'fairness' or 'education'. affirmatives do not need to read a plan to win in front of me. however, there should be some connection to the topic. fairness *can be* a terminal impact.

4. critiques - they should have links to the plan or have a coherent story in the context of the advantages. i am less inclined to vote neg for broad criticisms that arent contextualized to the affirmative. a link of omission is not a link. similarly, affirmatives lose debates a lot just because their 2ac is similarly generic and they have no defense of the actual assumptions of the affirmative.

5. counterplans - should likely have solvency advocates but its not a dealbreaker. slow down when explaining tricks in the 2nc.

6. theory - more teams should go for theory more often. negatives should be able to do whatever they want, but affirmatives need to be able to go for theory to keep them honest.

7. topicality - its an evidentiary issue that many people impact poorly. predictable limits, not ground, is the controlling internal link for most T-related impacts. saying 'we lose the [insert argument]' isnt really an impact without an explanation of why that argument is good. good debates make comparative claims between aff/neg opportunities to win relative to fairness.

8. clipping - i sometimes read along with speeches if i think that you are clipping. i will prompt you if i think you are clipping and if i think you are still clipping i will vote against you even if the other team doesnt issue an ethics challenge.

9. 2nr/2ar - there are lots of moving parts in debate. if you disagree with how i approach debate or think about debate differently, you should start your speech with judge instruction that provides an order of operations or helps construct that ballot. teams too often speak in absolute certainties and then presume the other team is winning no degree of offense. that is false and you will win more debates if you can account for that in your speech.

10. keep track of your own time.

unapologetically stolen from brendan bankey's judge philosophy as an addendum because there is no reason to rewrite it:

---"Perm do the counterplan" and "perm do the alt" are claims that are often unaccompanied by warrants. I will not vote for these statements unless the aff explains why they are theoretically legitimate BEFORE the 2AR. I am most likely to vote for these arguments when the aff has 1) a clear model of counterplan/alternative competition AND 2) an explanation for where the

I would prefer that debaters engage arguments instead of finesse their way out of links. This is especially awful when it takes place in clash debates. If you assert your opponent's offense does not apply when it does I will lower your speaker points.

In that vein, it is my bias that if an affirmative team chooses not to say "USFG Should" in the 1AC that they are doing it for competitive reasons. It is, definitionally, self-serving. Self-serving does not mean the aff should lose [or that its bad necessarily], just that they should be more realistic about the function of their 1AC in a competitive activity. If the aff does not say "USFG Should" they are deliberately shifting the point of stasis to other issues that they believe should take priority. It is reciprocal, therefore, for the negative to use any portion of the 1AC as it's jumping off point.

I think that limits, not ground, is the controlling internal link for most T-related impacts. Ground is an expression of the division of affirmative and negative strategies on any given topic. It is rarely an independent impact to T. I hate cross-examination questions about ground. I do not fault teams for being unhelpful to opponents that pose questions in cross-examination using the language of ground. People commonly ask questions about ground to demonstrate to the judge that the aff has not really thought out how their approach to the resolution fosters developed debates. A better, more precise question to ask would be: "What are the win conditions for the negative within your model of competition?"

I did policy debate at UNLV for four years. I'm in my last semester of law school at UNLV. While I read everything except pomo in my career, I ended my career focusing on traditional policy arguments. I am open to all types of arguments. I'm a bit pursuaded by t/fw, but ultimately i think it comes down the debating done in the round.

K's - I think the only thing worth mentioning is that I have a high threshold for the explanation of the alt (how it solves, what it does, etc). I believe that the best k's are the ones that genuinely interact with the aff. Debate is a game of clash. I think the threshold for alt solvency has dropped far too much in the past couple of years.

Negative strategy – I believe in preserving maximum strategic and theoretical flexibility for negative teams. I don’t believe contradictions are a bad thing early in the debate, as long as the negative block and the 2nr is consistent. Edit: I think k perf con often justifies perm do the alt, especially when the framing on the k is a question of epistemology / scholarship


CPs—The text of the CP (and all perms) should be written out, and I hold them to as high a standard as I do the affirmative plan. I do not think that a negative team should be afraid to CP in the 2NC (it is a constructive, aff gets a CX, and the risk of a straight turn in the 1AR should check any abuse). These 2NC counter plans could be used to make external impact turns or uniqueness takeouts go away.

T- I'm going to steal this from Matt Gomez because I agree with him:
IMPACT YOUR STANDARDS. Education, ground, and fairness are internal links. Decision-making, Advocacy, and research skills are impacts.
Affirmative team: Counter standards and tell me what affs they'd eliminate from the topic and why those affs are good.
Negative Team: What affs do they allow, why are they bad, what affs do you allow, why does that resolve their impacts.

DA's - DA's are awesome.

LD -- I really enjoy an in-depth value/vc debate. If you tell me to evaluate the debate a certain way and have offensive reasons for why that's good; i'll do it. I think it's strategic in framing out offense.

I feel like the best type of debaters to these things consistently:
a) Consistently compare evidence—“our evidence on X argument is better than theirs for the following reasons.” These reasons may include, but are not limited to qualifications, recency, history is on our side, more complete/better warrants, etc.
b) Saying things like, “even if you don’t believe that we are winning argument X, we still win the debate, because…”
c) Consistently engage in effective impact comparison
d) Remember that defensive arguments are still important
e) Be deep on offensive arguments. A few well developed arguments in the block are typically better than 7 or 8 shallowly developed arguments.
f) Are unafraid to make logical arguments forcefully, without necessarily using “cards” as evidence.

Green Valley High School '14

University of Nevada Las Vegas; Cornell University '18

I've debated for four years in high school (a brief stint in LD before 3 years in policy) and 2 years in college. I also spent some time as an assistant coach for Green Valley HS. 

Updates  

I've felt my ideological beliefs slightly shift. To summarize this pedagogical transition, I offer the following analogy: If two teams of equal caliber are debating where the affirmative defends a straight-up 1AC against a Kritikal 2NR, I probably see myself voting Affirmative 53-47. Similarly, if two equally skilled teams have a Framework/T debate then I see myself going Negative 53-47. 

Not Much Time? Read this!

Just do you and don’t worry. I will listen to and evaluate whatever you may want to read. I've gone for arguments across the argumentative spectrum on both the affirmative and the negative. I'll be happy to answer any specific questions in person or by email. 

Miscellaneous

If there is an email chain, I would like to be a part of it, my email is Bhatti.DebateJudging@gmail.com 

Debate is first and foremost a communication activity between the speaker and the judge. As your judge changes from round to round I believe it is necessary to adapt your argumentative style to resonate with the judge. A lapse in effective communication can potentially decide the round. That may mean include from slowing down, staying clear, remaining organized, or ensuring your explanations are top notch. 

I generally default to tech over truth. This means that I also evaluate the debate from a very line-by-line perspective. It will be very hard to convince me that I should adopt a different lens for evaluating the debate.

I will strike new arguments from my flow if they are explicitly pointed out and deligitimized.

I’m a fan of unconventional deployment of the spin zone.

No prep for flashing unless, during the round, things become out of hand.

Aggressive argumentation is good; being rude is not.

I’ll kick the CP or the Alt for you only if explicitly told to do so; cover all your bases.

Evidence comparison is paramount to good debates.

I have a low threshold for dismissing your silly argumets (ex. Justice League CP) and a high threshold for voting on them.

No Buenos

Accusations of clipping evidence are serious. If you have clipped, or if you have incorrectly accused someone of clipping, you will receive 0 speaker points and a loss. Don't make me adjudicate this and if you do, make sure you have proof.

Stealing prep-time isn’t cool, the game is fun because you’re supposed to be under a time crunch while competing. Adrenaline is where it’s at.

Specifics! 

Disadvantages

Probably the best part about debate. Topic specific and case specific DA’s make for the best debates, but politics is cool too. Specific and unique link analysis is definitely preferred over your core generics. Impact calculus, turns case, and other framing issue arguments can swing debates dramatically. Make my job easy and compartmentalize areas on the flow well. 

Counterplans

The second best part about debate. There is probably some fine line between reading as many (including planks) as you want and making it impossibly hard for the affirmative but being negative is hard. I guess my general rule would be the more specific your counterplans are in relation to the aff the less I am inclined to care about conditionality. If there is a scenario where a 2AC undercovers a not-so-specific 1NC that may be excessive in terms of number of counterplans, I'm sympathetic to a 1AR's recovery.

Solvency advocates are bueno but even better are counterplans with solvency advocates written by affirmative authors. Net benefits need to be clearly articulated. PIC’s are strategic and inevitable but if they result in the entirety of the 1AC then you’re in some dangerous theoretical waters. Advantage CP's are poppin'.

With regards to competition: Consult and delay CP’s aren’t the most persuasive. Agent and process CP's are slightly more acceptable. With these arguments, the more specific your solvency advocate the better. Be prepared to theoretically defend them well and clearly. 

Case

I love in-depth and heavily researched case debates. Analytical arguments can suffice in taking out whackier advantages. I'm willing to vote on 0% risk of the affirmative if the work is put in - BUT you'll have to put up a conclusive and thoroughly convincing effort. Point out the flaws and inconsistencies in the 1AC's evidence and internal link chains as early as possible. You can't always be specific and I get that, this is where top notch comparison and utilizing the spin zone come in. If you pressure the affirmative significantly on case in the block, I'm not very sympathetic to a 1AR that brushes over the case debate. 

Theory

More than anywhere else in the debate, it is imperative that you slow down during the theory debate. Besides egregious examples of conditionality, most theory arguments hardly ever warrant rejecting the team. I will, however, evaluate warranted analysis that is specific and thorough. That being said, conditionality is generally cool (being negative is hard), but the more conditional positions you read, the less cool it becomes. Shady and tricky theory can be fun and strategic; obviously, do not default to these arguments as your round winners before the debate starts. If you ARE banking on these arguments for whatever reason, it is your best interest to do whatever you can to make sure I flow everything and have a clear picture of what's happening (i.e. slow down, be clear, be concise). 

Topicality

Technical decisions and miscues most heavily impact my decision in T debates. That being said, it is of the highest significance that both sides are clear in their articulation of framing their meta-level impact issues on what is evaluated first (for example, why I should evaluate education over fairness OR why your definitions/interpretations should be the lens through which I frame the round). When going for Topicality, you should make my job easier by having a very structured and highly organized 2NR. 

Framework

Meta-level framing issues that are better fleshed out by a team will probably be the ones deciding the debate. Make sure your impact claims interact with your opponents. Non-state based framework and T arguments are highly strategic. Fairness IS an impact in and of itself (structural and procedural fairness are different). I probably think debate is primarily a game that has added benefits. I can definitely be convinced otherwise but I advise you to be very prepared to respond to the procedural impact level claims that result from debate being viewed as a game. Explanations of why dialogue, agonism, ideas-testing, skill, etc. turn case, prevent solvency, or come first in my decision calclus are absolutely necessary for winning the debate. When going for institution-style framework, be prepared with specific examples and evidence that prove institutions can be used to resolve the impact claims of the affirmative.

Kritiks

A large portion of my career has consisted of Kritikal debate. That being said let me say this:  

Different authors discuss and use similar terminology in different ways. Do not expect me to already know your buzzwords, fundamental critical theory, or other shenanigans. This does NOT mean that you shouldn’t read your argument if you think it will win you the round - it simply means you might need to go the extra mile of giving a more thorough explanation of what your buzzwords mean to ensure everything connects. Just remember I evaluate your argumentation and explanation – not my own prior knowledge of your argument. 

I honestly don't mind 'generic' K's, but the more specific they are the better position you'll be in. I'm fine voting on just the framework portion of the K. Thorough link analysis is your friend. 

Kritikal Affirmatives

I respect the decision of reading an affirmative that doesn’t affirm the topic or defend a plan text. I often read these types of affirmatives and understand their strategic benefit. I do believe that the affirmative should have something to do with the resolution and annual topic. If your affirmative is substantially outside the scope of the topic you have an uphill battle ahead of you. If your affirmative has largely nothing to do with the topic, regardless of the importance of the subject matter, I am not the judge for you.

Speaker Points

I probably give higher speaker points than the average judge. I evaluate strategy and execution first and foremost. This does, however, include clarity, ability to coherently explain your position, and argument structure. 

Your jokes will be evaluated on the following scale:

[+.2] Incorporation of well explained, specific stories that I might know about

[+.1] General references about people I went to school/debated/might associate with

[+.1] Jokes about me

[+.1] Witty remarks that reflect intelligence

[+.1] {Friendly} Quips directed towards your partner or opponents

Additionally, if you happen to mention certain mystery subjects, you will not only net yourself some extra speaker points, but also a coveted, eternal spot on this page with the date and tournament corresponding to the accomplishment.

[+.1] Huskies - November 1, 2014, Round 5, The Meadows Tournament, Elliot Kovnick and Jaden Lessnick

[+.1] ???

[+.1] ???

[+.1] ???

[+.1] ???

*Bonus points cap at a combined maximum of [+.3] and may deviate [-.1] based on your jokes.

Zach Brisson

I debated @ Arizona State 2014-15, 2018-19, did three years of policy and one year of LD @ McClintock HS, 2010-2014.

Fancy myself as rigidly line-by-line. I default to offense/defense unless otherwise told. Will hear all good arguments, would prefer none of the bad ones. Intervention is bad and instruction to read a piece of evidence in place of explaining it shouldn't be part of a speech.

In terms of strategy, I believe depth is preferable to breadth. This applies to both sides. Well-developed, smaller negative strategies are almost invariably better than dumping everything you have in the box into the 1NC. Similarly, affs often benefit by banking on their central offense throughout the debate.

K Affs/FW: ... impact comparison and crystalization often gets lost in aff strategy, so do that. For neg teams running framework, these debates are more easily won on the substance side over theory. ...

Theory: ... will have to go in on a very clear abuse scenario has occurred in round to make this a viable option, ... Critical conditionality is good stuff and I have a slightly lower threshold for condo, in general. Other theory arguments are 99 out of a 100 times a reason to reject the argument.

The rest is pretty run-of-the-mill, please ask for any clarification. Questions to zach.brisson@gmail.com

My Judging philopsophy is simple. I debated for the University of Oklahoma and became the First African-American Top Speaker of the National Debate Tournament in 2014. I understand every style of debate. I debated about Whiteness and could be classified as a performance debater. I vote for teams who explain clearly how thier plan/kritik works. More so the teams I usually vote for win because of their explanation of their impacts and the ways that those impacts are effectected by the other team. I prefer debater to explain thier arguments in full. I will not flow the rest of an argument that is not explained or in other words I will not do the debating for the debater. I like real world debates that talk about realistic impacts and not just Extinction and Nuclear War. I will Vote for T or any other argument if it is explained in a way that I believe is persuasive. All in all any debater can win in front of me they just need to clearly explain thier argument.  

I debate in high school for 2 years and college for I think 4 now. I've been a 2N for a minute now, maybe like forever tbh, so I probably lean neg. I judged hella rounds between 2010 and 2013 but that was before tabroom so you can't see them. I promise though. But yeah idc what you do. Make arguments and win them. In high school I went for delay and elections, overpop bad/your impacts are good and case defense or dng so if that tells you anything. College has been much more policy oriented but I'll still go for the K every now and then.

T/FW/Theory-

T is a thing if you make it one. Theory is a thing if you make it one. Framework is a thing if you make it one. I will say this about theory though, I'm usually down with just rejecting the arg rather than the team. Tell me why I gotta reject the team cuz I won't just assume I should. That's probably more relevant to CP and Perm theory than like Condo or T. 

Ks-

Neg- win the arg, sound good, solve your links, extend an impact

Aff- win the aff, sound better, disprove links, perm, prove no impact, 

CPs- 

Neg- solve the aff. if you don't solve an adv, turn it, have defense on it or tell me why net benefit outweighs. Tell me why solvency defecits don't lead to an impact, why net benefit outweighs or how your impacts turn their ability to solve for the solvency deficit.

Aff- perms, theory, doesn't solve the aff or advs, tell me why your internal links are more important and why the cp can't access them, cp links to politics/net benefit, solvency deficits should have an impact or reason why they matter, your impacts should either turn the net benefit faster than it turns yours and outweigh

DAs-

Neg- win a link, impacts turn case faster than case turns impacts, impacts outweigh, impacts mean case can't solve

Aff- zero risk of the DA is a thing but you gotta prove it, don't double turn yourself, case turns DA faster than DA turns case, impacts outweigh

Case-

Neg- zero risk of solvency is a thing but you gotta prove it, alt causes are cool especially if you have a cp to solve them, answer the internal links, inherency is rarely a reason to vote but if like the plan is up for a vote in congress like next week i might be convinced to vote on it (probably more of a theoretical debate than anything) 

Aff- win case, win your internal links and why they're more important than the alt causes, explain how you solve

K affs-

Neg- their theory is bad/wrong, your K/FW solves impacts, role of the ballot/judge

Aff- your theory good/right, perm is your best friend, role of the ballot/judge, Ks of T or DAs is always cool

Impacts(on either side)-

impact defense is always needed, zero risk of impact a thing but you gotta prove it, explain how solving your impact is able to mitigate the escalation of their impact, your impacts turn theirs first, impact turn debates are fun i'm bad at them but they're always cool to watch explain why your impact comes first and turns the internal links to their external scenarios

Speaker points-

everyone starts at a 27.5 and goes up or down from there. don't try to make me laugh unless its like something hella funny. i'll probably laugh more if you're not trying to be funny 

Evidence-

Evidence comparison is an art form so do it and i'll be impressed. Make your evidence sound good. Sell it to me 

Yeah be nice, have fun. This activity is more about yall than it is about me. Be chill, play music, do whatever helps you win debates and puts you in a good mindset

Jaycee Dal Porto

jad462@nau.edu 
(480) 276- 0597

NFA-LD & NPDA Debater at Northern Arizona University.

Experience

-2 years of Policy at Coronado High School, national and local circuit.

-Currently debating at Northern Arizona University in NFA-LD and NPDA. 

-Judging at miscellaneous HS tournaments in Policy. 

Overview

If there is an e-mail chain, I would like to be a part of it. My email is jad462@nau.edu.

2015-2016 Policy Topic: The United States Federal Government Should Substanitally curtail it's domestic surveillance. 

Views

Prep Time: Flashing is not prep. Prep ends when the flash leaves the computer/speech e-mail has been sent. I expect you to keep track of your own prep, but I will always keep track as well, and I will go by my time. Do not steal prep. I will call you out on this and you will lose speaker points. The amount of prep time is always 8 minutes for me for the high school level, national or local. 

Evidence: I will rarely ever ask for evidence unless there is a disagreement about the specific wording of evidence, or the existence/nonexistence of warrants brought up in the round. If evidence is called for, I will do it at the end of the round and would prefer that it is on a flashdrive, and bonus points if it's the only card in the speech doc so I don't need to search for it.  

Speaker Points: My range is 25.0-30.0, and the lowest I will break down the points by is .5. Anything lower than a 25 indicates that there was offensive/oppressive behavior in the debate round. Higher speaks will be awarded to coherent, kind and enthusiastic debaters who show an intimate knowledge of their case. Lower speaker points will be given to oppressive, offensive behavior, rude behavior, or a lack of knowledge of their case. 

Clarity: I will say "clear" or "slow" during your speech if you are not being coherent enough. I can keep up with rapid spreading, but I will not tolerate spewing. If you continue to be unclear, I will give you one more verbal warning before I stop flowing, at which point you should assume you are losing serious speaks and chances of winning the round. 

Cross-Examination: Tag-team cx is always okay with me. That being said, both teams must be okay with it, and the cx should still be predominantly given/answered by the designated debater. Using your CX for prep will not be tolerated. Taking notes on answers/questions during cx will not be considered prep. 

The Good Stuff

Affirmatives: I am not a firm believer that the affirmative should be punished for not reading a plan text. That being said, the lack of reading a plan text should be executed and justified well. I am very into "non-traditional"/kritikal affirmatives, and they are just about the only thing that I personally read in debate. But I also love a well executed straight-up Policy round. I will vote on either. Long story short: read whatever you want, so long as you know what you're talking about and can execute/justify it well. 

Counterplans: There are very few counterplans that I will not vote on. That does not mean that a 20-second, 7 plank, catch-all counterplan is going to be recieved well. However, well constructed counterplans that clash well with the affirmative and foster a clashing debate will result in a happy judge and high speaker points. 

Disadvantages: Case specific disads are my favorite. Direct clash in a debate round is the utmost important thing to me, and I believe that specific disads are the way to cultivate that. Super general disads like spending and politics can be a bit dry if there is no updated and specific links/impacts. 

Kritiks: Long story short-I will vote on any kritik. However, I believe that kritiks in debate are meant for legitimately criticizing the debate space/plan/method/etc.. I do not believe in reading kritiks in an attempt to confuse your opppnent and round up ballots. If you are going to read any kritik, I will only vote on it if it is explained well. Regardless of my prior knowledge of the literature, argument, etc. I will not vote on it without a clear explanation of it. If you cannot explain it, you should not be reading it. I love originality and creativity in this area of debate. Performance k's are my absolute favorite, because I believe that performance k's contain actual belief in the argument. If you do decide to run a kritik, you will need to explain your buzzwords and jargon. Many different authors publish similar terms with different meanings. This means that I will not be familiar with your buzzwords, critical theories, etc. and you will need to explain them. In arguing against a kritik, I will not vote on the "k's are cheating and thus we should win" argument. That argument may have worked 15 years ago, but not today. However, winning on T/Framework against a kritikal team is not impossible or even relatively hard with me. Articulate your reasoning well and you should be fine. 

Theory: There are some cases where actual abuse has occired in a debate round, and theory is the best way to address it. That being said, "no neg fiat" and "dispo bad" will have zero weight in front of me. Theory should be used to address abuse, in round or potential, and I will vote on it. 

Topicality: I believe in running T as an actual defense against abuse, and not as a time suck. Running a T violation, DA and CP will not go over well with me. If you run that and then try to make a ground loss argument, I will probably laugh out loud. However, I acknowledge that t-hacks are probably at this tournament, and I will not vote you down solely for running T. If that is the route you decide to take, for the love of all that is holy, IMPACT YOUR STANDARDS. I don't want to go into coach mode here, but your T violation should be treated as a disad, and your standards are your impacts. Treat them as such. Don't just tell me that you lose education from their aff. Tell me why that's bad, otherwise I will not care. Sound good? Cool.

Basic Ground Rules

• Do not ever be oppressive/offensive. This will not be tolerated. 
• Do not be rude. I enjoy a snarky/aggressive/sarcastic round, but I will not tolerate unwarranted rudeness. 
• I do not think that going completely balls to the walls against a blatantly novice team is okay. I think that the round should be made into a learning experience for them, not a reason to quit debating. Be good role models. 
• Lying/card clipping/etc. will not be tolerated.
• HAVE FUN. 

Feel free to ask me any specific questions that you may have! I will almost always disclose after the round, but will 100% always give critiques at the end. If you have any questions that you don't think of until after the round, or the tournament is, like always, running behind and you don't have time for the questions, feel free to e-mail me at the email above, or text me at the number above. Don't call me, that's weird and I won't answer. 

Michael Eisenstadt, Ph.D.

Director of Forensics, California State University Long Beach

13th Year Judging College Debate | 18th Year Judging High School Debate

2014 CEDA Pacific Region Critic of the Year | 2018 "Top Critic Award" at the Las Vegas Classic (UNLV) | 2019 CEDA Pacific Region Critic of the Year

For questions of any kind, please e-mail me at: michael.eisenstadt@csulb.edu

Tournaments Judged This Season (2022-2023):

Updated 9-17-19

***I would like to be on the e-mail chain (m.stadt89@gmail.com, not my Tabroom e-mail).***

I will not necessarily read along with your speeches, but I would like to have evidence in the case that particular cards are disputed in cross-x and/or to make reading them after the debate concludes quicker.

This judge philosophy is just that, a philosophy. I think I have become more ambivalent to what your argument is over the years and more concerned with how you argue it. My job is to evaluate the arguments made in a debate, your job is to tell me why and how I should vote for them. Therefore, I think the following information is more helpful for you than me telling you what arguments I "like." This is your debate and not mine. Every day is #GAMEDAY and I will work hard when judging your debate, the same way I appreciated those who worked hard to judge my own.

An important meta-theoretical note: I believe in a 'healthy diet' of persuasion. I perceive there to be a serious problem with communication in competitive debate. Debates are won by important communicative moments (see below). Whether they are fast, slow, passionate, or hilarious, they must happen. I believe Will Repko has called these "Moments of Connection." Reading into your computer screen with no emphasis or clarity would make having such a moment extraordinarily difficult.

Debate is a communicative activity. This means that to win an argument a) I have to understand it and b) I have to hear it clearly enough to know it was there. At the end of the round, if we have a disagreement about something, usually a failure to achieve those requirements will be my explanation. Reading directly into your computer during your speeches and/or making no attempt at eye contact drastically heightens the risk of a miscommunication.

I am deeply concerned about the trend of evidence quality in debate. Teams seem to frequently read evidence that either fails to make a warranted claim OR that is highlighted down into oblivion. I think that a team who reads fewer, better (read: warranted) cards and sets the bar high for their opponents has a much better chance of winning their nexus/framing arguments.

Debate is what you make it. For some, debate is a game of verbal chess that is designed to teach them about institutional policy-making. For others, it is a place to develop community and advocacy skills for the problems and issues they face on an everyday basis whether at school, within debate, or elsewhere. I believe that one of the best things about this activity is that it can accomplish so many different things for so many individuals and it serves a variety of purposes. I think either or any of these approaches teach us the transferable skills debate can offer. No matter the arguments presented in a debate, I will always recognize this and will always support you for what you do. Over the years I have found myself voting fairly evenly for and against "framework" arguments because I will evaluate the arguments made in the debate itself. My ballot will never be an endorsement of one form of debate over another, it will very simply represent who I thought did the better debating.

Framework. In 1984, Dr. David Zarefsky famously argued, "the person who can set the terms of the debate has the power to win it." Generally, the 2NR that goes for "Topicality + Case D to Aff Impact Turns" is more likely to win in front of me than the 2NR who only goes for "State Good/Inevitable," though that is typically suitable defense on the case when the affirmative criticizes governmental action. The negative wins in front of me going for this 2NR strategy most often when it includes some combination of the following 3 arguments:

1. An interpretation supported by definitional evidence (that is ideally contextual to the topic). I am uncertain why negative interpretations like "direction of the topic" circumvents affirmative offense. These softer interpretations typically hurt the negative's ability to win the limits DA without much payoff. I have found that negative teams have a more uphill battle in front of me when the only term in the resolution they have defined is "United States Federal Government."

2. A Topical Version of the Aff and/or Switch Side Debate argument - I think of "framework" as the intersection between Topicality and argument(s) about how I prioritize impacts, which impacts should be prioritized, and what the best strategy for dealing with those impacts is. So, having a "counterplan" that plays defense to and/or solves portions of the case (and/or the impact turns) can be a good way to beat the affirmative. I find myself voting affirmative in debates where the 2NR did not address the affirmative's substantive offense (so, you did not respond to internal links to impact turns, address impact priority arguments, etc.). I also think this sets the negative up to make arguments about potential neg ground as well as a switch-side debate argument.

3. An impact - I have voted on procedural and structural fairness, topic education, and argument advocacy/testing impacts. Ideally, the 2NR will be careful to identify why these impacts access/outweigh the affirmative's offense and/or solve it. I think that debate is generally more valuable for "argument testing" than "truth testing," since the vast majority of arguments made in a debate rely on assumptions that "the plan/aff happens" or "the alternative/framework resolves a link."

Conversely, the affirmative should point out and capitalize on the absence of these arguments.

Presumption: This is a legal term that I think folks are often confused about. Presumption means that the affirmative has not met their burden of proof (sufficient evidence for change) and that I should err negative and be skeptical of change. Although a 2NR should try to avoid finding themselves with no offense, I am increasingly compelled by arguments that an affirmative who has not chosen to defend a(n) change/outcome (note: this does not mean a plan) has not met their burden of proof. For instance, an affirmative that says "the State is always bad" but does not offer some alternative to it has not overcome the presumption that shifting away from "the State" would be inherently risky. Of course, a framework argument about what it means to vote affirmative, or whether the role of the debate is to advocate for/against change factors into how I think about these issues.

Flowing: is a dying art. Regardless of whether I am instructed to or not, I will record all of the arguments on a flow. You should flow too. Reading along with speech docs does not constitute flowing. I am frustrated by teams who spend an entire cross-x asking which cards were read and requesting a speech doc with fewer cards. In the days of paper debate (I am a dinosaur to the teens of 2020), you would not have such a luxury. There are clearly instances where this is not uncalled for, but the majority of cases appear to be flowing issues, and not "card dumps" from an opposing team.

Permutations: I am almost never persuaded by the argument that the affirmative does not get a permutation in a "method debate." Permutations are mathematical combinations and all methods are permutations of theories and methods that preceded it. I could [rather easily] be persuaded that if the affirmative has no stable advocacy or plan, then they should not get a permutation. That is a different case and has a different warrant (affirmative conditionality). "Perm do the aff" is not an argument, it is not a permutation and says nothing about how a counterplan or alternative competes with the aff. I have also found that teams seem to have difficulty in defending the theoretical legitimacy of permutations. Although I would have an astronomically high threshold for voting on an argument like "severance permutations are a voting issue," such arguments could be persuasive reasons to reject a permutation.

Risk: I find that I am mostly on the "1% risk" side of things when a team has [good] evidence to support a claim. However, I can also be easily persuaded there is a "0% risk" if a team has made too much of a logical leap between their evidence and their claim, especially if the opposing team has also indicted their opponent's evidence and compared it to their own. This is especially true of "Link->Internal Link" questions for advantages and disadvantages.

Tech and Truth: If all arguments were equal in a debate, I would err on the side of truth. However, that is rarely (and should not be) the case. When there is not a clear attempt by both teams to engage in line-by-line refutation, one team tends to miss important framing arguments their opponents are making that undercut the "impact" of their truth claims. This understanding is distinct from "they dropped an arg, judge, so it must be true," since that is not a warranted extension of an argument nor is it a comparison that tells me why the "dropped argument" (how do we know it was dropped if we aren't debating line-by-line and making these comparisons? Could an argument somewhere else or on an entirely different sheet answer it?) should affect the way I evaluate other portions of the debate.

Other important notes:

A) I will vote for the team who I found to do the better debating. This means if your framing argument is "your ballot is political because _______" and I vote for you, my ballot is NOT necessarily an endorsement of that politics. Rather, it means you won your impact prioritization and did the better debating, nothing more, nothing less.

B) I do not want to preside over accusations about what has or has not happened outside of the debate I am judging. In these situations, I will always defer to the arguments presented in a debate first and try to resolve the debate in that fashion, since I am often not witness to the events that are brought up about what may or may not have happened prior to a debate.

C) I am ambivalent about argument selection and theory and am willing to vote against my own convictions. E.G. I think the Delay CP is 100% cheating and unfair but I will not credit a 2AR on that position that does not defeat the negative's arguments about why the CP is good/legitimate or I think conditionality is generally good but would still vote that it is bad if the negative is unable to defend their 1NC strategy.

D) I am unwilling to "judge kick" a CP extended by the 2NR unless they have explicitly told me why I should. The affirmative should, of course, contest the claim that I can always revert to the status quo in the event that a counterplan is insufficient/unnecessary.

Kyle Eriksen

Green Valley High School (NV) 2006-2010.

UNLV 2010-2014. 1x NDT Qualifier.

I haven't been actively involved in coaching debate since the 2016-2017 season. I don’t believe much has changed, but something to keep in mind.

I have zero investment in terms of what debate should look like. I used to almost exclusively judge clash debates. With that said, it’s been a decade since I’ve done genuine topic research/politics DA etc. I think the foundational elements of what wins a debate hold true no matter the argument. Something else to keep in mind.

Speaking very broadly: the aff has to win that they are better than the squo or competing alternatives, and the neg needs unique link arguments to the aff to win the position.

If you are reading something exceptionally dense, please do the work to explain your position and clearly identify unique links to the aff. If you are aff, please explain why what’s happening is happening.

I like: impact turns, bold strategies, disad and case debates, crafty counter plans, technical topic and case specific K debates.

I’m cool with: debates about debate, “non-traditional” approaches, theory debates, backfile checks.

I don’t like (but will vote on): framework without direct refutation to the K aff, conditionality bad, SPEC args, convoluted topicality debates.

I’m not keeping time. You got this. Not interested in email chain or reading evidence unless there is a factual dispute.

Treat people like they are people and respect the tournament host and its facilities. Automatic loss for flagrant disrespect. This isn’t Twitter. Clean up after the debate.

I’ll leave you with this: I’ve always believed debate is merely a game we play to refine skills we will take with us to the outside world. Nothing more, nothing less. Enjoy your time in this activity!

Experience

I have been a policy debater for 3 years at Arizona State University. I am currently the head debate coach at BASIS Chandler. In college I have generally ran more non-traditional affs such as Lovecraft.

Overview

I am a very flow oriented judge. I give equal preference to policy style debate as well as Kritical debate. As long as there is plenty of clash and no signs of legitimate abuse I am fine with a Kritical aff. I won't vote for you just because you have large quantity arguments, however well developed and well analyzed arguments generally hold more weight with me. I am comfortable with high speed debate, but please be clear.

FW/T

I have a high threshold level to win a Framework debate. Be sure not to just be repetitive but also expand and further analyze FW arguments in rebuttal. As long as you can show clear abuse, which I usually am very critical of, then I will be sympathetic in a FW debate. However, as a K debater I generally believe the more breadth of information the better in debate, so I am sympathetic to K affs that increase in-round education.

I have a high standard for winning a T debate, not only must you not be topical but must win args for why non-T args are abusive, which is difficult. I will weigh args for why topic education is good for debate.

CASE

Pretty straight forward, make sure there is plenty of case offense for the Neg and sufficient Aff responses. Aff needs to spend sufficient amount of time on case args in every speech as well as short overviews on case, don't just extend args but expand.

CP/DAs

Ensure there are relevant and specific links to the aff as I hold link args to high standards. Ensure plenty of impact comparison. Net benefits to CP must be substantially better then aff. I am ok with all types of CPs, just make sure you defend the style of CP you want to run. Perm debate is very important, but there must be adequate explanation of the function of the perm in order to win the perm debate, simply saying perm is not sufficient.

K

I am comfortable with a wide range of kritical debate. Again, specific links are necessary, weak links or links of omission aren't very compelling args. Again, explain the function of the perm and why/how the aff is allowed to perm the K. Explain the alt world and the methodology you use to get there. I am comfortable with ontological debate, but args must be well developed and explained for me to understand. I am comfortable with weighing all Kritical impacts, so good impact comparison is a must.

Clipping

I don't usually ask for cards so I need you to let me know if clipping occurs in round. Debate will stop immediately to assess clipping, and if there is substantial evidence, those caught clipping will automatically loose the debate and you will be reported to tournament staff.

julianvgagnon@gmail.com please add me to email chains

from planet debate-

this is difficult for me b/c i'm not sure i have A judging philosophy but I do have many different ideas about and for debate...some inconsistent. that being said i don't want what i think about debate to totally dictate what debaters decide to do in rounds.

topicality- generally don't like it. I find no abuse args to be really persuasive. Since I like critical arguments so much I think you can usually find ground in any debate. i don't like the competing interpretations framework very much. i find the "that limits out any aff" arg to be persuasive. but i will vote on that framework and topicality if left unchallenged. in a good topicality debate on competeing interp vs an ok no abuse arg i'll USUALLY vote aff.

cp- like em. with a critical nb even better. i think i'm a fair judge for these debates. aff theory args generally not persuasive unless unchallenged. very similar to topicality in this regards.

das- great. a lot of people are now struggling with the we control the uniqueness = a risk vs. we got d/risk of turn. i don't think the aff has to have offense to win a da but i do find in a lot of debates that with only defense it hurts the aff a bunch. especially when the neg has a cp. but i tend to weight the da first in terms of probability and then magnitude.

critical args- love em. these are the debates i find the most interesting. i'm willing to listen to virtually any way the neg wants to present them. method. alternative. text no text. don't care. case turn. obviously it's the neg's burden to provide some way to evaluate their "framework" but in terms of theory i think they are all pretty much legit. args are args and it's the other teams responsibility to answer them.

others- i like to see people be nice to each other in debate rounds. some people may say i intervene sometimes. it's true but let me provide context. if you go for you mis-spelled (jk) a word in your plan and you should lose and your winning the arg but the other team says this is stupid...we'll i'm persuaded. you just wasted a bunch of peoples time. another thing. DON'T RUN MALTHUS IN FRONT OF ME- DOESN'T MATTER IF IT RIGHTS OR NOT. i won't flow it. i think that while debate is a game we still have a responsibility to "speak truth to power". discourse is very important. definately co-constitutes with reality. this may be why i'm starting/have been hating the politics debate for the last year and a half. but hey, like i said before, i'm full of inconsistancies b/c sometimes you just don't have another arg in the box to go for. i'm sympathetic to this. especially in high school debate. i still research it for the hs topic and coach my kids to go for it.


from debateresults...

Debate is a game- i have a lot of ideas about how the game should be played but in the absence of teams making those arguments i won't default to them. i think debate should make the rules of the game and provide a framework for how i should evaulte the debate. i'm not a big fan of some arguments...like malthus in particular...but also theory arguments in general. these debates generally happen faster then my mind and pen can handle. ive judged a lot although i haven't much this year on the china topic. some people may think i have a bias towards critical arguments, and while this is true to some degree (i generally find them more intersting than other debates), it also means i have higher standards when it comes to these debates. yeah imagine that, me with high standards.

Mike Girouard

Years involved in debate: 20+ (policy 20+years, PF 7yrs, LD 7yrs)

Coached at Baylor, Kansas State, U of Rochester, The New School, Augustana College, The Asian Debate League and several High Schools - Debated at Univ of North Texas

I hate people who try to pigeon-hole judges into fitting a particular mold or label them as hacks that only vote for certain args or certain types of arguments. That being said I would say that I feel as though I can judge and evaluate any kind of debate that you want to have. I have some feeling about args and I will discuss those more in detail below, but it’s important to keep in mind that when you debate in front of me you should be comfortable in yourself and your arg and you should be fine. Have the debate that you want to have, because in the end that will make it more enjoyable and educational for everyone involved.

One last caveat, as this year has progressed and with the transition to paperless debate I find myself calling for less and less evidence after the round. I feel as though you should be doing the debating in the round. If it is a question of what the card says or doesn’t say I will probably call for the evidence, but don’t expect me to piece together your argument by reading all of your evidence after the round. I feel as though this does a disservice to a team that is at least attempting to do the argumentation on the line-by-line.

Prep Time – my default is that prep time should stop when the other team is flashing their evid. That being said if there is blatant disregard for this or abusing of this I will revert to prep-time not ending till after the speech has been flashed and given to the opponents. Before this does occur I will say something in the round.

CP’s – I love a good PIC. I think it should be the burden of the Aff to defend every aspect of the plan and should have some defense of including it in the plan. I really don’t like to vote on theory, but I will if that is what you want the debate to be about. As far as perms go, use them as you like. Just justify your theory and your fine. If you are going for a CP in front of me keep a few things in mind: it must have a net benefit and some sort of DA to the perm, it doesn’t necessarily have to solve for all of the Aff, but you need to have something to answer the portions that you don’t solve for, you can have a critical net benefit if you like, just explain how it functions in relationship to the Aff and the advocacy of the CP.

DA’s – Not really a whole lot to say here. I like U cards to have some sort of a warrant. Debate the warrants in the round and don’t make me have to evaluate 15+ U cards to help settle that debate. I would prefer fewer cards with more warrants to help settle this problem. Make sure you are giving me some sort of impact calc in the last few speeches and weighing all the potential outcomes of the impacts (i.e. – even, if statements). If the aff reads a K of your impacts you have to justify them or you will probably lose that argument. I prefer scenarios with fewer and more warranted internal links as to avoid the proliferation of outlandish impact scenarios. Make sure there is a solid link and you are weighing everything in the last few speeches and you should be fine.

The K – I am open to most K’s. I don’t believe that Realism/Framework is the end all answer to the K. Try engaging in the arguments that are being run and you have a better chance of picking up the ballot in front of me. Arguments that question your representations or epistemological starting point are best answered by providing an offensive justification for your reps or your starting point. Just make sure you are explaining how you want me to evaluate your K in relationship to the Aff. What are the impacts, what are the implications, do you have an alt, and what is the link. Make sure all of these things are in the debate and you will be fine. I do find that most people don’t answer one fundamental question in these types of rounds: What is the role of the critic? Just answer or at least recognize that these questions exist and you should be alright.

Topicality – My default is that this debate should be about competing interpretations. You should attempt to answer the question: which interpretation is better for both this debate round and the community as a whole. This being said, if you don’t want me to evaluate it based on competing interpretations just make the arg and justify it with warranted args and you should be fine. If you are going for T in front of me you probably need to spend a little bit of time on it in the 2NR. I’m not saying that you have to go for T and nothing else, but I think it’s an arg that requires a little bit of time for you to adequately go for it. Things I look for in a T debate: Clear distinction between interpretations, warranted reasons for why your interp is better as well as why the other interp is bad, and the impact these have on not only the round but the community at large.

Theory – Not a big theory hack, but will vote on it from time to time, especially in instances of clear articulated in round abuse. Just make sure you are giving warranted reasons why your theory is legit, the specific abuse that has occurred and the impact of them being allowed to do what they did. That being said, theory should be more than just a whine, engage their args and make sure that you are at least answering their args. If you expect for me to vote on theory you should devote some time to it in the last couple of speeches.

Performance – I’m fine with different styles of debate. There are instances where you can ask me to not flow or be so “flogo-centric” and assuming there is a warranted reason why this is legit I will be alright. A few things to keep in mind if you do chose to do this in front of me: why is your method better than what exists now? why should it be preferred and what are the larger implications on the debate community? Just make sure you are attempting to at least perceptually engage the other teams args and you will be fine.

I am a coach at Nevada Union, C.K. McClatchy and West Campus high schools. My general philosophy is run whatever you want, do it as fast as you want, just be clear. I will vote on just about anything except racist, sexist, homophobic etc arguments. I see my job as a judge as evaluating the evidence in the round and deciding the debate based on what is said without my intervention to the greatest degree possible.

That said, I do have a few notions about how I evaluate arguments:

Topicality -- I vote on it. I do not have any "threshold" for topicality -- either the aff is topical or it is not. That said, for me in evaluating topicality, the key is the interpretation. The first level of analysis is whether the aff meets the neg interpretation. If the aff meets the neg interpretation, then the aff is topical. I have judged far too many debates where the negative argues that their interpretation is better for education, ground etc, but does not address why the aff meets the negative interpretation and then is angry when I vote affirmative. For me if the aff meets the neg interpretation that is the end of the topicality debate.

If the aff does not meet, then I need to decide which interpretation is better. The arguments about standards should relate 1) which standards are more important to evaluate and 2) why either the negative or affirmative interpretation is better in terms of those standards (for example, not just why ground is a better standard but why the affirmative or negative interpretation is better for ground). Based on that, I can evaluate which standards to use, and which interpretation is better in terms of those standards. I admit the fact that I am a lawyer who has done several cases about statutory interpretation influences me here. I see the resolution as a statement that can have many meanings, and the goal of a topicality debate is to determine what meaning is best and whether the affirmative meets that meaning.

That said, I will reject topicality on generic affirmative arguments such as no ground loss if they are not answered. However, I see reasonability as a way of evaluating the interpretation (aff says their interpretation is reasonable, so I should defer to that) as opposed to a general statement without grounding in an interpretation (aff is reasonably to--pical so don't vote on T).

I will listen to critiques of the notion of topicality and I will evaluate those with no particular bias either way.

Theory -- Its fine but please slow down if you are giving several rapid fire theory arguments that are not much more than tags. My default is the impact to a theory argument is to reject the argument and not the team. If you want me to put the round on it, I will but I need more than "voter" when the argument is presented. I need clearly articulated reasons why the other team should lose because of the argument.

Disadvantages and counterplans are fine. Although people may not believe it, I am just as happy judging a good counterplan and disad debate as I am judging a K debate. I have no particular views about either of those types of arguments. I note however that I think defensive arguments can win positions. If the aff wins there is no link to the disad, I will not vote on it. If the neg wins a risk of a link, that risk needs to be evaluated against the risk of any impacts the aff wins. Case debates are good too.

Ks: I like them and I think they can be good arguments. I like specific links and am less pursuaded by very generic links such as "the state is always X." Unless told otherwise, I see alternatives to K's as possible other worlds that avoid the criticism and not as worlds that the negative is advocating. With that in mind, I see K's differently than counterplans or disads, and I do not think trying to argue Kritiks as counterplans (floating PIC arguments for example) works very well, and I find critical debates that devolve into counterplan or disad jargon to be confusing and difficult to judge, and they miss the point of how the argument is a philosophical challenge to the affirmative in some way. Framework arguments on Ks are fine too, although I do not generally find persuasive debate theory arguments that Kritiks are bad (although I will vote on those if they are dropped). However, higher level debates about whether policy analysis or critical analysis is a better way to approach the world are fine and I will evaluate those arguments.

Non-traditional affs: I am open to them but will also evaluate arguments that they are illegitimate. I think this is a debate to have (although I prefer juding substantive debates in these types of rounds). I tend to think that affs should say the topic is true in some way (not necessarily a plan of action) but I have and will vote otherwise depending on how it is debated. I do remain flow-centric in these debates unless there are arguments otherwise in the debate.

Matt Gomez

Graduate Assistant @ UNLV

Assistant Coach @ Rowland Hall St Marks

Please include me in the email chains: mattgomez22@gmail.com

Top Level:

Hot take: The s is silent in debris.

I'll be honest. I really really really hate judging psychoanalysis. I would prefer not to judge these arguments. That being said, I'll still just evaluate the line-by-line....but just my preference

---Write the ballot in the 2NR/2AR

---The most reasonable argument usually wins in an equally debated round

---Risk is a sliding scale and arguments should be couched probabilistically since most of this isn't objective

---I prefer engagement over tricks. This applies in clash debates, k v k rounds, or policy throw downs. Speaker points will be higher in debates where you engage.

---Not interested in constant shifting explanations and dodging in cross-ex. Confident and direct answers show that you understand the weakness of your argument and are prepared to defend it.

---I generally lean neg on theory

---Affs can be vague in their plan but it makes circumvention and Say No harder to answer

---I will not give up my ballot to someone else. I will not evaluate arguments about actions taken when I was not in the room or from previous rounds. I will not vote for arguments about debaters as people. I will always evaluate the debate based on the arguments made during the round and which team did the better debating. Teams asking me not to flow or wanting to play video games, or any other thing that is not debate are advised to strike me. If it is unclear what "is not debate" means, strike me.

---Speech times are set. So is cross-ex and prep.

T vs Plans

Generally: Interps and definitions really matter. You need to counter-define words. Probably default to competing interps but I'm ok for reasonability combined with functional limits and indicts of neg evidence. But generally, aff's should be worried in front of me if they don't think their plan is T and negs shouldn't be afraid of going for T if they have good evidence. This is a big topic and I will have little sympathy for teams trying to make it even bigger.

Counterplans

An ESR counterplan that has the executive branch establish a policy is a core negative position that challenges the necessity of statutory and/or judicial restrictions on executive authority. An ESR CP that fiats Trump is intelligent or decides to resign or some other thing that is not necessarily an opportunity cost to statutory/judicial restrictions on executive authority are more questionable (though I lean neg on theory)

States is competitive (replace with ESR for college topic). Consult is most likely not. I'm not stoked about counterplans that do all of the aff but am a fan of smart PIC strategies. Textual vs Functional competition...both are probably good and each has its time and place... I still do not fully understand competition. If the aff has real solvency deficits they can make, I'm likely to not vote on theory.

I will kick counterplans for the neg IF the 2NR invokes the option. It is unlikely that I will care about new 2AR args for why thats difficult to answer if the 1AR didn't extend conditionality.

DAs

For God's sake please read impact defense

A DA is comprised of UQ, Link, Internal Link, and Impact arguments. I am not pleased with the recent trend that UQ is an argument for the block...

I'm willing to allow the 1AR to read cards based on 2AC analytics that actually have warrants.

---ok: No impact to proliferation---every empirical example like North Korea, India, and Pakistan disprove.

---not ok: No impact to prolif---empirics

Its arbitrary, but one is clearly a more complete argument than the other. Not saying I won't let the 1AR read a card in the 2nd instance, but you are much more likely to lose if the negative says that wasnt a complete arg in the 2AC and 1AR doesn't get to complete it.

Turns case arguments matter a lot to me. Make them and answer them. I can vote aff on a good risk of an advantage combined with a solid impact defense and internal link defense push. But I can also check out on turns case even if there is a large risk of the aff.

Policy Aff vs K

Totally open to it. These were my favorite debates as a 2A and offer some great opportunity for a smaller but more in-depth debate.

Affirmative teams should make sure to pre-empt the blocks attempt to not let them weigh the aff. Make impact framing arguments. And either no link or impact turn links. But the best focus is usually on the alternative. Most important, don't back down. Defend that things that matter actually do matter. Don't be the person who loses on "death good" or can't even answer the question "what is death." Think about why incremental progress matters, have a defense of it, and beat the ontology arguments. I find the most successful affirmative strategy is one that goes through the checklist of things every 2A needs to do against a K but also genuinely tries to understand the K and logically dismantles it/proves that is not the way the world works.

Negative teams are advised to generate links to the plan action. You can functionally disregard aff framework arguments if you do this because it proves the plan is a bad idea. If your strategy is to win links to discourse, epistemology, other "ologies" or things that are not the plan, the 2NC is advised to invest a substantial amount of time on framework. A well-devised framework argument, diverse links, impact framing arguments, and a decent alternative make for an extremely difficult 1AR. Combined with case defense and it becomes even harder. If you are feeling ambitious and can do both in the 2NC and have a DA in the 1NR, even better for neg flex.

---I generally find ways to think myself into believing structural/identity Ks do prove the aff is a bad idea if the negative wins their theory of power and am unlikely to vote on "plan action or gtfo" FW. The power of that arg is I have to weigh implications of the link vs implications of the plan, NOT that I throw out the K entirely.

I don't understand the trend of 1NR's "taking the perm" when the 2NC does the link debate. They are functionally the same and it doesn't take that much longer to put it in the 2NC and place some lower arguments into the 1NR to avoid messing up my flow.

The fiat double-bind is fundamentally unpersuasive. I do not enjoy K's that argue death isn't real/ is good.

K vs K

I've debated post-modernism and materialism. I read a lot. I watch a lot of different styles of debate. That being said, I very rarely participated in these debates. It will be important to identify points of disagreement and offense. For the aff, its important to identify actual link turns. Saying "the plan is anti-capitalist" is not a link turn or an answer to the link. Plenty of movements that didn't like capitalism ended up operating in a way that was beneficial to it.

Please say the alternative doesn't solve. And say the alternative does solve.

Please say root cause. And answer root cause.

Pick and choose links and consolidate as the round goes on.

Permutations need to explain why they solve the links and the negative needs to apply links to the permutation as well as the plan.

K vs T

I entirely believe debate is a game. I will vote otherwise if the argument presented as to why it is not a game or should be evaluated as something else is won by the affirmative, and that is because I believe it is a game... This can be an uphill battle if the affirmative does not present an alternate model for debate that has a well-conceived role for both the affirmative and negative and is able to weigh the benefits of that model against the negative's. It is easy to say what you are against, harder to say what you are for.

I do not have a preference for fairness or education (also called advocacy skills, mechanism education, etc.), but i do think the negative can persuasively argue that fairness is an impact in and of itself. Affirmative's must win that their educational benefits outweigh the negative's or that the cost of unfairness is worth the positive benefits of their model of debate.

I do not believe T is a weapon to exclude. I think it is an argument like any other and a core negative check against untopical affs (the states counterplan of clash debates). I believe that negative's who are overly rude, dismissive, or offensive in how they deploy T can lose to exclusion offense. Conduct yourself accordingly.

Topical version of the aff and Switch Side Debate are counterplans meant to prove the affirmative could access a large swathe of their literature base/education offense under the "traditional" model of debate. The negative should try to solve as much of the case as possible or prove that the TVA debates are better than the aff as is. The affirmative should argue that those debates are not educational, bad for their education, etc.

As always, these debates will become hyperbolic. That's fine. But when I vote on the silly hyperbole one team makes against the silly hyperbole the other team makes, that is just because it is what I was given to work with.

TLDR VERSION

I've been around a long time. I've seen a lot of conventional wisdom come and go. I don't always agree with the consensus of the moment. Be fast, be clear, read a K and/or a counterplan.

Remote Debates:

I flow on paper and actually make an effort to watch you and listen to the words you are saying. It's hard to give speaker points to a glowing dot, so turn on your camera when speaking if possible. I will not follow the speech doc as you are talking, so be clear.

Want to be on the email chain? - Yes, but know that I won't look at the docs until the debate is over.

Please send docs to: samhaleyhill@gmail.com

Speed? - Yes

Open CX? - Sure, but if you aren't involved somewhat, your speaker points suffer.

When does prep time stop? - When you cease to alter your speech doc and to talk about the debate with your partner.

Judge Disclosure - Unless the tournament has some terrible counter-educational policy preventing it (looking at you, NCFL).

Can I read (X argument)? Yes, if it's not offensive.

T? - Reasonability (whew - really feels good to be honest there)

Will you vote on disclosure theory? - No. Disclosure is a good community norm which I support, but I do not think ballots can or should enforce this norm. The exception would be if you can prove that someone straight up lied to you.

Tech over truth? - Yes, but I think people often take this way too far.

FULL VERSION

Biography

Years Judging: 16
Years Debated: 4

I debated for four years in high school for Nevada Union (1998-2002) during which time I made two TOC appearances. I did not debate for Berkeley during my time there, but I was an assistant coach for the College Preparatory School from 2002-2006. After that, I was off the circuit for a few years because I moved to Hong Kong for a year and then went to graduate school. 2010-2011 was my first year back. I worked for New Trier for a year after that and at Nevada Union from 2011-2012. After that I went back to CPS for three more years. I then spent four years running the program at St. Francis. I now work with the Washington Urban Debate League. I have judged a lot for a long time.

Tech Over Truth - This is not dogma

I think that the phrase "tech over truth" is just as vacuous as its inverse, "truth over tech." I honestly have no idea what either of these slogans is trying to say, but I do know that people who repeat either of them incessantly tend to make decisions that I don't get.

"Tech" is just as subjective as "truth" because whether someone's embedded clash has answered something, whether an argument has a warrant, whether someone has explained something enough to have extended it, etc. are all judgement calls at some level anyhow.

I think that dropped arguments are conceded. I think that I should refrain from dismissing arguments that I don't agree with. I think that arguments which I think are bad should still win the debate if the debater advancing them has argued better than the opponent. I guess that's tech over truth?

At the same time, I am the kind of judge who thinks that one compelling, well-developed argument can be more important than three specious, underdeveloped ones. I don't think that the concession of a less significant argument necessarily outweighs a more significant argument that is won despite contestation. Is that truth over tech? Is this whole tech vs. truth binary kind of pointless?

My bumper sticker slogan would be something like: "Analysis over blips."

Speaker Points - No, you can't have a 30.

It used to go without saying that I award speaker points solely based on how well I feel the debaters performed in each round. These days, it seems that I need to say that I will continue to do this regardless of what anyone else does and regardless of what debaters tell me to do during the debate.

I think that there's a performative/communicative aspect to this activity. Speak persuasively and your points will improve.

Try to be nice.

Judge Disclosure - I do it.

I'll disclose my decision and talk about the round with you in depth afterwards. I remember getting a lot out of post-round discussions when I was a debater, and I hope I can pass something along. If your analytics are in your speech docs for my later reference, I'll even give you my flows.

Speed - Go ahead, but be clear

I can flow any rate of delivery.

Lately, someone out there has been telling high school debaters to slow down and emphasize tags. Stop it, whoever you are. This advice implies that I don't care about the text of the card. In fact, I care about how you tagged the card far, far less than I care about what the text of the card actually says. When you slow down for the tag, but slosh unintelligibly through the card, you are implying that I can't understand high speed and that the actual card text is a mere formality. If this is so, you may as well just paraphrase the card like a PF debater.

Believe it or not, I actually can understand your card at high speeds if you read it clearly. I'm actually flowing what the card says. Often as not, I won't flow your (often misleading) tag at all.

I'll yell "clear" at you if you're not being clear. I'll do this twice before putting my pen down and pointedly glaring at you.

Line By Line - Please and Thank You

I'll look at evidence, sure, but I will be grumpy if you make me sort out a huge rat's nest of implied and unexplained clash for you. I am a believer in directly responsive line-by-line debate. I think that explaining warrants is good, but comparing warrants is better.

Framework - Can't we all just get along?

I am one of the last folks out there who won't take a side. I vote neg on framework sometimes; I vote aff on framework sometimes. I think framework debates are kind of fundamental to the activity. I'm up for any kind of argument. I love a good K debate, but I'm equally pleased to adjudicate a game of competing policy options. Run what you love. In my heart, I probably don't care if there's a plan text, but I'll vote for theory arguments demanding one if the better debating is done on that side. Please don't read offensive/amoral arguments.

Conditionality - Yeah, sure, whatever

I think one or two conditional CP's and a K is just fine. You can win a debate on conditionality being more permissive than that or being bad altogether. I won't intervene.

T - I am different from the folks at Michigan

I think that winning complete or nearly complete defense on T is sufficient for the aff even in a world of competing interpretations. If the aff meets, they meet. I'm unlikely to give this RFD: "Even though you're winning a we meet, the neg interpretation is better, so any risk that you don't meet etc etc." Ever since someone told me back in 1999 that T should be evaluated like a DA, I have not agreed. It's a procedural issue, not a predictive claim about the consequences of implementing a policy. As such, I evaluate T procedurally. Whether or not the aff meets is a binary question, not a linear risk.

I think sometimes people think that "competing interpretations" means "the smallest interpretation should win." To me, smallest is not necessarily best. Sure, limits are a big deal, but there is such a thing as over-limiting. There are also other concerns that aren't limits per se, like education, ground, and predictability.

I can be persuaded otherwise in a debate, but I think we should evaluate T through the lens of reasonability.

Open Cross Ex - Yeah

Just make sure that you're involved somewhat or I'll hammer your speaks.

Disclosure theory

Stop it. People choose to disclose as a courtesy. It is not and should not be a requirement. I tell all my teams to disclose. I think you should disclose. If you choose not to, so be it.

If you make a disclosure theory argument, I will ignore you until you move on to something else. I will never vote on a disclosure theory argument, even if it is not answered.

I always find it sadly hilarious when big, brand-name programs tell me that disclosure is good for small schools. It most definitely is not. The more pre-round prep becomes possible, the more that coaching resources can be leveraged to influence debates. That's why the most well-resourced programs tend to be the most aggressive about disclosure theory.

New Affs

New affs are fine. I will not consider arguments which object to them, even if the aff team never answers such arguments.

Assistant Director of Speech and Debate at Presentation High School and Public Admin phd student. I debated policy, traditional ld and pfd in high school (4 years) and in college at KU (5 years). Since 2015 I've been assistant coaching debate at KU. Before and during that time I've also been coaching high school (policy primarily) at local and nationally competitive programs.

Familiar with wide variety of critical literature and philosophy and public policy and political theory. Coached a swath of debaters centering critical argumentation and policy research. Judge a reasonable amount of debates in college/hs and usually worked at some camp/begun research on both topics in the summer. That said please don't assume I know your specific thing. Explain acronyms, nuance and important distinctions for your AFF and NEG arguments.

The flow matters. Tech and Truth matter. I obvi will read cards but your spin is way more important.

I think that affs should be topical. What "TOPICAL" means is determined by the debate. I think it's important for people to innovate and find new and creative ways to interpret the topic. I think that the topic is an important stasis that aff's should engage. I default to competing interpretations - meaning that you are better off reading some kind of counter interpretation (of terms, debate, whatever) than not.

I think Aff's should advocate doing something - like a plan or advocacy text is nice but not necessary - but I am of the mind that affirmative's should depart from the status quo.

Framework is fine. Please impact out your links though and please don't leave me to wade through the offense both teams are winning in that world.

I will vote on theory. I think severance is prolly bad. I typically think conditionality is good for the negative. K's are not cheating (hope noone says that anymore). PICS are good but also maybe not all kinds of PICS so that could be a thing.

I think competition is good. Plan plus debate sucks. I default that comparing two things of which is better depends on an opportunity cost. I am open to teams forwarding an alternative model of competition.

Disads are dope. Link spin can often be more important than the link cards. But
you need a link. I feel like that's agreed upon but you know I'm gone say it anyway.

Just a Kansas girl who loves a good case debate. but seriously, offensive and defensive case args can go a long way with me and generally boosters other parts of the off case strategy.

When extending the K please apply the links to the aff. State links are basic but for some reason really poorly answered a lot of the time so I mean I get it. Links to the mechanism and advantages are spicier. I think that if you're reading a K with an alternative that it should be clear what that alternative does or does not do, solves or turns by the end of the block. I'm sympathetic to predictable 1ar cross applications in a world of a poorly explained alternatives. External offense is nice, please have some.

I acknowledge debate is a public event. I also acknowledge the concerns and material implications of some folks in some spaces as well. I will not be enforcing any recording standards or policing teams to debate "x" way. I want debaters at in all divisions, of all argument proclivities to debate to their best ability, forward their best strategy and answers and do what you do.

Card clipping and cheating is not okay so please don't do it.
NEW YEAR NEW POINT SYSTEM (college) - 28.6-28.9 good, 28.9-29.4 really good, 29.4+ bestest.

This trend of paraphrasing cards in PFD as if you read the whole card = not okay and educationally suspect imo.

Middle/High Schoolers: You smart. You loyal. I appreciate you. And I appreciate you being reasonable to one another in the debate.

I wanna be on the chain: jyleesahampton@gmail.com

Brock Hanson

Precious Assistant coach, Rowland Hall St. Marks — five years

Debating Experience

High school - Three years, Nationally

Policy Debate

Role as judge in debate — I attempt to enter debates with as little preconcieved notion about my role as possible. I am open to being told how to evaluate rounds, be it an educator, policymaker, etc. Absent any instruction throughout the round, I will most likely default to a role as a policymaker.

Purpose of philosophy — I see this philosophy as a tool to be used by debaters to help modify or fine-tune specific parts of their strategies in round. I don’t think that this philosophy should be a major reason to change a 1AC/1NC, but more used to understand how to make the round as pleasant as possible.

Evaluative practices and views on debate round logistics

Prep time — Prep ends when the flash drive leaves the computer/when the speech-email has been sent. I expect debaters to keep track of their own prep time, but I will usually keep prep as well to help settle disagreements

Evidence — I would like to be included in any email chain used for the round using the email address below. I will read un-underlined portions of evidence for context, but am very apprehensive to let them influence my decision, unless their importance is identified in round.

Speaker point range — 27.0 - 30. Speaker points below a 27 indicate behavior that negatively affected the round to the point of being offensive/oppressive.

How to increase speaker points — Coherence, enthusiasm, kindness, and the ability to display an intimate knowledge of your arguments/evidence. Cross-ex is an easy way to earn speaker points in front of me - I enjoy enthusiastic and detailed cross-ex and see it as a way to show familiarity with arguments.

How to lose speaker points — Being excessively hostile, aggressive, overpowering, or disengaged.

Clarity — I will say ‘Clear’ mid-speech if I’m unable to understand you. I will warn you twice before I begin subtracting speaker points and stop flowing - I will attempt to make it obvious that I’ve stopped flowing in a non-verbal manner (setting down my pen, etc.) but will not verbally warn you.

Argumentative predispositions and preferences

Affirmatives - I don’t think affirmatives should be inherently punished for not reading a plan text, as long as they justify why they do it. I am probably more interested in ‘non-traditional’ affirmatives than a big-stick Heg aff.

Counter-Plans — Speeding through a 20-second, catch-all, 7 plank, agent counter-plan text will not be received well in front of me. However, super-specific counter-plans (say, cut from 1AC solvency evidence) are a good way to encourage debates that result in high speaker points.

Disadvantages — Specific, well articulated DA debate is very appealing to me, but super-generics like spending are a bit boring absent an aff to justify them as the primary strategy.

Framework — Engagement > Exclusion. The topic can be a stasis point for discussion, but individuals may relate to it in very different ways. (See Role as judge in debate)

Kritiks — Easily my 'comfort-zone' for debates, both for the affirmative and negative. Creativity in this area is very appealing to me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that whoever reads the best poetry automatically wins. Be smart and articulate about your arguments, and make it seem like you care about what you're talking about. The 'K’s are cheating and so they should lose' -esque arguments aren’t especially compelling, but if you can intelligently explain why the hippy-anarchists sitting across from you should go back to their coffee shops and beat-poetry, I'll vote on it. Performance as a method of supporting arguments is welcomed and enjoyable insofar as it is grounded in arguments.

Theory — I think specific, contextualized Theory arguments are much more persuasive than generic, broad-sweeping theory claims. Spending 5 minutes on Theory in a rebuttal does not grant you an instant ballot, inversely,15 seconds of blippy violations it at the end of the debate makes it difficult to pull the trigger absent blatant concessions. I’m more comfortable and better versed in regards to theory arguments than with topicality. I am very persuaded by arguments against performative contradiction. I understand the strategic utility of having multiple lines of offence in a 1NC, but would prefer to evaluate 1NC’s holistically as a constant thought.

Topicality — Topicality is perhaps where I’m least experienced from an argument standpoint, and thus don’t particularly enjoy topicality debates, I do, however understand its utility against blatantly abusive affirmative. In-round abuse is more persuasive than potential abuse.

Feel free to ask before round or email me if you have any questions

Brock Hanson

Debate.brock.s.hanson@gmail.com

http://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com/Hendricks%2C+Jordan

John Hines
DOD at Head Royce
20+ Years Judging/Coaching

UPDATE--1/2/24

Commencing old man ranting at clouds:

So, it appears my addendum from 6 years ago was just marking the beginning of the end of line-by-line debate.

After returning from a four-year hiatus, I discovered last year that flowing and line-by-line debating are essentially a thing of the past that current debaters don't even really realize they aren't actually doing.

I blame the judges who started flowing directly from the speech docs and decided they no longer needed to hold debaters accountable for what actually came out of their mouths.

So, we now have a community of JUDGES who never actually learned how to flow or debate line by line, either.

This creates a fundamental problem for me. I have no idea how to evaluate debates when everyone else in the room is just reading and responding to the speech docs without knowing whether the judge who actually listens and flows is getting things down on the flow where they belong.

I honestly have no idea how judges today decide debates fairly and objectively based on what was actually said in the debate.

So, I'll summarize everything else below very simply here:

If you don't flow, I probably won't vote for you.

If you don't debate line-by-line, I probably won't vote for you.

If you don't care whether I'm trying to flow the words coming out of your mouth, I probably won't vote for you.

If neither you nor your opponent flows or debates line by line, I will be forced to vote for somebody, but I will have ZERO TOLERANCE for someone who didn't flow or debate off the flow, post-rounding me for why I didn't vote theway they wanted me to vote.

Addendum--10/15/17

Line-by-line debate is actually a thing. It's a skill not a referendum on you as a person or what I think about your arguments. It's a method of clash that allows judges to decide rounds with minimum intervention on their part. If your approach to debating line-by-line includes extensive overviews, "cloud clash," and requests for me to pull out new sheets of paper I am probably not a very good judge for you. I will do my best to evaluate the round in front of me, but if you chose to abandon the line by line please know that you have asked me to insert my subjective views of debate into the round and you are not likely to be happy with the outcome.


Standard philosophy begins here:
Rather than list off a series of personal beliefs about arguments, an explanation of how I decide debates seems more productive. Three keys to debating well in front of me:

1. Make Arguments. I tend to decide debates within 20 minutes of the end of the round. I will call for VERY few cards after the debate as I prefer to make my decision based upon what you argued in the last rebuttals rather than what I think about the quality of your cards. I will not re-read every card read in the debate. I will not read portions of evidence not read in the round by debaters. I will not read cards handed to me that were not extended in the last two rebuttals. I will resolve arguments consisting of disputes over interpretation of warrants in evidence by reading those cards. I will make sure arguments extended in the last two rebuttals can be traced back across the flow to the point they originated. I will make sure cards handed to me were extended properly during the debate before reading them. I will keep a careful flow of the debate and will do my best to vote based upon warranted arguments extended throughout the debate. Your job is to speak clearly and coherently and to dispute the warrants within your opponents’ arguments with analysis and evidence.

2. Make Choices. Most debates come down to a couple of key issues which need to be resolved by me; awareness of these nexus issues and the ability to clarify how they should be resolved is the key to your success. Does the perm on the CP avoid the links to the net-benefits? Does the solvency deficit to the counter-plan outweigh the net-benefits? Who controls the question of uniqueness (both at the link and impact level)? Can the alternative to the criticism function simultaneously with the plan? I prefer to intervene as little as humanly possible. Your ability to accurately frame the nexus issues of the debate for me will reduce the need for me to resolve these questions for you and make me a much happier judge.

3. Don’t be a Jerk. As Ed Lee of Emory says in his most recent Judge Philosophy--"Respect is non-negotiable for me". I work VERY HARD as a judge. I flow on paper, I generally keep my computer closed the entire debate and I try to pay very close attention to everything you say. I spend time constructing my post-round discussion to be clear, concise, and educational. I do not take kindly to debaters or coaches who wish to interrupt and argue with me before I've reached the conclusion of my RFD. I promise to give you plenty of time to ask productive follow-up questions. Lately, I've become even more concerned with in-round comity. Rudeness and snide remarks during cross-ex, insulting the intelligence and goodwill of the other team, and other derisive and insulting behavior towards opponents will not be tolerated. To once again quote Ed - "If you are engaging your opponent in a way that you would not if you were in front of one of your professors [teachers] or the president of your university [principal/head of school] then you should not do it in front of me." I love seeing passionate engagement with argument, but quickly become physically uncomfortable when passion turns into hostility. If you are confused as to where this line resides watch my non-verbals...it will be very obvious.

Finally, on the question of "What kinds of arguments do you prefer" I'll answer by agreeing with Jarrod Atchison on the importance of FLEXIBILITY as a debater. To quote his ballot from a recent NDT final round "Debater flex is the past, present, and the future":

Jarrod ATCHISON, Director of Debate and Assistant Professor of Speech and Drama at Trinity University (Incoming DOF at Wake Forrest), 2008
[Judge Ballot from the Final Round of the 2008 National Debate Tournament, Available Online at http://groups.wfu.edu/NDT/Results/JudgesBallots2008final.htm, Accessed 03-16-2010]

7. Debater Flex is the wave of the future: I would have loved to have been a part of the Dartmouth coaching staff and squad when they were brainstorming a negative strategy for this debate. Although they had an extremely limited amount of time, they had two fantastic debaters in Josh and Kade that could execute a wide range of arguments leaving no option unavailable. In this debate, they had two case specific counterplans, a well developed kritik, two topicality arguments, etc…This debate reminded me that debaters who self identify as “policy” or “kritik” are missing out on a wide range of ways to win. Forget the labels, just think of everything as an argument. Some arguments require more understanding than others, but they are just arguments. If you want to be able to take on a new high tech aff with less than 45 minutes of prep before the final round of the NDT, the last thing that you want to tell your coach/partner is “I can’t argue __.” Debater flex is the past, present, and the future and I hope that students will see Josh and Kade’s 1NC as an example of how important it is to be versatile.

If you are time-pressed, reading the bold will give you a general idea of my judging philosophy, and reading the unbolded text around what is bolded should give you the full picture. **For Alta** Please scroll below to the Policy section and find the post-Meadows update.

Conflicts: Juan Diego CHS, El Cerrito, The Davidson Academy of Nevada, Cal Berkeley, Southwestern College

I debated for four years in high school for Juan Diego in Utah (2008-2012) - two years in LD and two in Policy, and for a year and a half in college Policy for Cal Berkeley (2012, 2014). In my time in HS I qualified for the TOC, advanced to late outrounds at various majors, attended the greenhill round robin, and earned top speaker at the Cal tournament. As a college debater I took second at the Cal college tournament and was a quarterfinalist at the UK freshman breakout.

I'm currently a high school Policy Debate coach for The Davidson Academy of Reno, Nevada, and a college Policy Debate coach for Southwestern College. I also do work online teaching speech and debate to students in China with Global Academic Commons.

I have a background studying a fair amount of different strands of academic literature that debaters would probably label as "K arguments" so interdisciplinary epistemological criticisms make me smile. Don't take this to mean your speeches can be intensely jargon heavy and inaccessible - debate is a communicative activity not an academic conference where participants present research papers. ** Extra speaker points if you are so well versed in whatever theory you are arguing that it comes across in your speeches and cross-x answers, and you seek to inform rather than obfuscate with your responses (this means for you security/threat construction/cap/[insert other structural logic] folks, start coming up with examples of failed foreign policies whose justifications rely on whatever logic you are critiquing - know some history). **

Some thoughts POST-BERKELEY 2019: I am tired of seeing students no-show to tournaments just because they can't clear. If you are already out of the tournament (0-3 or worse) when I am judging you, I will be increasingly generous with speaker points the further down the bracket you all are (barring hateful speech or lack of effort of course). I think you deserve recognition for showing up in spite of not being able to clear, which is an act of respect for both the tournaments you attend, as well as your opponents.

Long story short:

Debate is debate - my position as a judge isn't to tell debaters what arguments they can and can't make, but to decide, given the arguments presented to me by the debaters in-round, who has done the better debating. This means I look to write reasons for decision that have the least amount of intervention on my part to interpret arguments as possible so be sure to warrant and impact your extensions.

If there is some blatantly obvious gut-check, round over concession (i.e. negative block never answers conditionality bad and they actually read an advocacy that is conditional, someone concedes a T shell - like imagine you're debating a novice or someone fresh out of JV and they drop something absolutely crucial) please err toward using less of your speech time. I watched an elim-level varsity team at Stanford crush a pretty new JV team and there was actually no reason for the aff team to use anything beyond a minute of prep throughout the debate - nearly every flow was conceded. Yet the 2AR took the remaining 9:45 of prep the aff team had left..... I will reward your speaker points if you choose not to use all of your prep or speech time in instances like this.

A note on in-round language Ks like ableism, "you guys", etc.: I think apologizing can be a legitimate answer to a lot of these arguments but it needs to not be coupled with an immediate defense of the language used. If you choose to make a meaningful apology it should probably be done conversationally, not at full speed, because it should pose a material consequence on your speech if you don't think it should cost you the ballot. Otherwise, debate it. Sometimes engaging with problematic discourse is good - look at movements to reclaim the word queer by LGBTQ communities, or the history of the N word's modification and use by black Americans. All I'm asking is that you pick a lane and stick with it.

Short story long:

While I may have some proclivities about how arguments should be read, which I will try to be as earnest about as possible below, I as much as possible judge based solely off of what arguments have been made by the debaters themselves. I think it is possible to have a debate in-round about whether that's all I should base my decision on - if you want to make an epistemology argument justify it and be responsive.

I will flow the debate line-by-line unless arguments are made for me to do otherwise, or a request made before a more performative speech. This means if I'm listening to a performance aff and haven't been told not to flow line-by-line, I will write down what I think are the implied arguments of different parts of your speech.

Good debaters make arguments, great debaters explain why those arguments matter. This means a massive spread of arguments isn't always the best way to go. Consolidate your arguments as the debate moves on and try your best to "write my ballot for me" with your overviews of arguments in the debate. The less explanation there is on a given issue in a round, the more it feels like I'm forced to intervene in order to make my decision.

Don't ask me to disclose speaker points.

An aside on post-rounding: Don't. Barring a hard-line tournament policy preventing me from doing so, I will withhold submitting the ballot until after I've announced my decision and given a brief RFD. Beyond the bad optics of unsporting conduct, I am diagnosed with general anxiety disorder as well as PTSD and will, in this instance, use speaker points as a deterrent to debaters or coaches aggravating my mental health condition. Feel free to ask questions, just act like you're speaking to another human being and not berating a computer with a software glitch. The next debater that doesn't heed this warning will get a 25. The next coach who doesn't heed this warning will cause their students in the debate round to receive a maximum of 25 speaker points, possibly less depending on how much of the round the coach actually watched. I won't tell you this is happening either, you can figure it out on your cume sheet. I will simply pack up my things and then leave, offering to provide the other team feedback in a safer area. Take your attitude to Peewee Football where it belongs.

If you've gotten this far into reading my philosophy I want to reward your attempts to understand and adapt to your critics. Tell me that my cat Moe is the most adorable cat this side of the galaxy and I'll give you .4 extra speaker points the first time I judge you.

Policy

Folks, when I debated I read big-stick policy affs with heg and econ impacts, soft-left critical affs, personal narratives, bizarre postmodern kritiks, process cps w/ politics, word PICs, functional PICs, and probably some other nonsense too. I have a tremendous amount of respect for debaters who can be flexible, particularly as the activity has seemed to become more polarized. Read whatever arguments you want to read. Just be clear and impact them back to the debate.

Ok, there is one thing - terrorism impacts. Not only are most of these authors anti-Arab and/or Islamophobic racists, or just xenophobes period, but I just personally have always found these arguments comically bad. You can read these still if you really want and truly have nothing else, or you think you have a persuasive scenario, but if I have to actually vote for it as an impact scenario it's probably going to be a low point win. In seven years of judging I've not once voted on a terrorism impact in any debate event, but I have had to dock speaker points for the hateful garbage that comes out of some people's mouths while defending them.

Yeah, and framework. If you are aff answering a K, I'm probably going to be unpersuaded by the argument that Ks are cheating. I do think it is reasonable for the aff to argue that they get to weigh their 1AC (expect negative push back with sequencing arguments of course). If you are neg vs. a K aff there's definitely a spectrum of what 1ACs framework is a more persuasive argument to me on. Affs should probably still have to relate to the topic - what "relating to the topic" means is something up for debate if the question is raised. 1ACs should have some sort of advocacy statement, whether it needs to be a USfg backed plan or something broader is up for debate... Beyond those two qualifiers, everything is fair game.

**ONE OTHER THING (POST-MEADOWS 2019):**

I'm becoming increasingly irritated by the butchered articulations of Afropessimism positions (mainly) by white debaters. I'm going to start tanking the speaker points of debaters who read arguments like Afropessimism or settler colonialism alongside ideologically inconsistent negative strategies. Defenses of conditionality do not absolve debaters of the inconsistencies between the worldviews that they forward within debate rounds. I voted down a fairly talented team at Meadows who never grappled with how their reading of a contradicting no root cause argument on-case was spun as proof that the negative's endorsement of Wilderson's ideology was only as a fungible means to an end of winning debate rounds, turning alt solvency. If a central component of your argument is that black bodies are rendered fungible for the benefit of others within civil society what the hell does it say that you'd read this argument alongside framework (which I've seen done repeatedly) or alongside case arguments which assert the logic of otherization lacks a root cause? If you are debating a team who makes a sweeping ontological or epistemic critique like one of these alongside milquetoast policy positions or other contradictory arguments please call it out. Not only will you likely have a very easy decision in your favor but I will reward your speaker points heavily. A CAVEAT: I think these arguments are less strong when applied to critiques like the Security K which don't call for an entire rewriting of the foundations of society and can be spun as a test of the affirmative's worldview for political decisionmaking. Basically, if your criticism would call for a fundamental restructuring of human relations or total opposition to engagement through any status quo mechanism, be it institutional or interpersonal, you ought to commit to your worldview because to do otherwise likely reifies your arguments about the way movements aren't addressed within status quo politics and are footnoted, ignored, or perverted for the benefit of the ruling class.

"T isn't genocide" is both a strawman and incomplete argument. When I hear those words in a debate round my mental image is of the speaker plugging their ears and screaming "LA LA LA LA." Further, a critique of T is not an RVI, and your generic "T is not an RVI" block is more than likely to be insufficient to answer an actual criticism of topicality. If debate is a game does that change the scope or context of any silencing/exclusion that may occur? Do games function without limits? Maybe think about these questions when formulating your response.

I want to be a part of the email chain for the round, ask me for my email before the debate.

Do not remove card taglines or plan/counterplan texts from your speech documents.

I do not open speech documents during the debate. My flow will be based entirely off of what I can understand being said/argued by both teams during their speech time (no 30 second grace period, my pen/typing stops when the timer goes off).

I may look at a few cards after the round is over, especially if the evidence in question is heavily contested or cited by one or both teams. In general, the more cards I need to personally read to decide the debate, the more I feel like I'm being forced to intervene.

Don't steal prep time holy hell people. Time used to delete analytics from your speech document is prep time. If an attempt to send the file out within 10 seconds of the words "stop prep" being said is not clearly made, the speaking team's prep time restarts. Take your hands off of your keyboards during dead time before speeches, unless you are pulling up the current speech document. Anything else is prep. Obviously I can't track the milliseconds of your prep time, so I'll dock your speaker points instead if it becomes a consistent issue.

If you speed through your theory blocks, T argument, or an important overview like a card I'm gonna absorb less of it. I'll still be able to write down your arguments, but (particularly for theory, T, and FW debates) I might miss a quick analytic, organize it differently from what you intended, or just think about it less. I'm gonna emphasize this further - your judges do not hear every word you say, stop taking for granted that you have your blocks prewritten in front of you and SLOW DOWN (especially if you're the type of debater to take your analytic blocks out of your speech doc - be willing to accept the negative externalities that result).

"Judge kick" with advocacies: The negative is obligated to tell me if I should view the status quo as a secondary option going into the 2NR/2AR. Any interpretation of this issue, absent debaters explicitly clarifying it themselves in-round, requires an amount of judge intervention to resolve. In those instances, I conclude that the path of least intervention is to assume that the negative is solely defending the world they've explicitly presented to me in the final speech.

LD

Don't waste time over-explaining your value if the debate isn't going to come down to it. Often times the value-criterion is where the real debate for how I should evaluate arguments in the round occurs.

The "number of contentions won" (actual phrase uttered by a debater I judged) is irrelevant in my decision calculus. I need to know why the arguments won matter underneath one, or both, frameworks presented in the round.

Don't run shoddy theory arguments, run ones you have a legitimate chance of winning. I think the time skew for the 1AR in LD has always been particularly egregious, and too many debaters rely on extraneous theory violations tripping up the 1AR to win their rounds. I don't want to vote for these arguments. I will if you convincingly win them, but your speaker points will likely not be that high.

"Plans aren't allowed in LD debate" is not a complete argument. It is an interpretation for a theoretical violation which I expect debaters to justify with arguments for why that's a better world of LD debate.

Also, criterion shouldn't essentially be a plan or idea on how to attain your value. I'm not sure when this idea became common among more local debaters, but your criterion is supposed to be an evaluative lens for me to judge the arguments presented to me in the round and their impact.

Matthew Jallits

Debated 3 years @ Puyallup High School (08-11),

Debated 4 years @ University of Nevada Las Vegas (11-15)

Coached 2 years @ University of Nevada Las Vegas (15-17).

CEDA 2019 Update:

CEDA will be the first full college tournament I will have judged at this year, meaning I will have minimal knowledge about the topic.

I'm down for any form of argumentation as long as there's a reason to vote for it. Direct refutation of arguments is best over implied argumentation. This means I prefer technical, flow-centric line by line debate. I don't think every argument needs a card, but it certainly helps.

Other things:

-I flow on paper

-I don't have my laptop open and will not read any cards until after the debate (if the warrants of a card are in question). I want to be focused on what is being said in the speeches.

-I don't want to preside over accusations about what has or hasn't happened outside of the round I'm currently judging.

-If there's an email chain, I'll be on it: mmjallits[at]gmail[dot]com

Director of Debate at The University of Michigan

General Judging Paradigm- I think debate is an educational game. Someone once told me
that there are three types of judges: big truth, middle truth, and little truth judges. I would
definitely fall into the latter category. I don’t think a two hour debate round is a search for
the truth, but rather a time period for debaters to persuade judges with the help of
evidence and analytical arguments. I have many personal biases and preferences, but I try
to compartmentalize them and allow the debate to be decided by the debaters. I abhor
judge intervention, but do realize it becomes inevitable when debaters fail to adequately
resolve the debate. I am a very technical and flow-oriented judge. I will not evaluate
arguments that were in the 2AR and 2AC, but not the 1AR. This is also true for
arguments that were in the 2NR and 1NC, but not in the negative block.

Counterplans/Theory- I would consider myself liberal on theory, especially regarding
plan-inclusive counterplans. Usually, the negative block will make ten arguments
theoretically defending their counterplan and the 1AR will only answer eight of them- the
2NR will extend the two arguments that were dropped, etc. and that’s usually good
enough for me. I have often voted on conditionality because the Aff. was technically
superior. If you’re Aff. and going for theory, make sure to answer each and every
negative argument. I am troubled by the recent emergence of theory and procedural
debates focusing on offense and defense. I don’t necessarily think the negative has to win
an offensive reason why their counterplan is theoretically legitimate- they just have to
win that their counterplan is legitimate. For the Aff., I believe that permutations must
include all of the plan and all or part of the counterplan. I think the do the counterplan
permutation is silly and don’t think it’s justified because the negative is conditional, etc. I
do realize this permutation wins rounds because it’s short and Neg. teams sometimes fail
to answer it. On the issue of presumption, a counterplan must provide a reason to reject
the Aff. Finally, I think it’s illegitimate when the Aff. refuses to commit to their agent for
the explicit purpose of ducking counterplans, especially when they read solvency
evidence that advocates a particular agent. This strategy relies on defending the theory of
textual competition, which I think is a bad way of determining whether counterplans
compete.

Topicality- When I debated, I commonly ran Affirmatives that were on the fringe of what
was considered topical. This was probably the reason I was not a great topicality judge
for the negative my first few years of judging college debate. Beginning this year, I have
noticed myself voting negative on topicality with greater frequency. In the abstract, I
would prefer a more limited topic as opposed to one where hundreds of cases could be
considered topical. That being said, I think topicality often seems like a strategy of
desperation for the negative, so if it’s not, make sure the violation is well developed in
the negative block. I resolve topicality debates in a very technical manner. Often it
seems like the best Affirmative answers are not made until the 2AR, which is probably
too late for me to consider them.

Kritiks- If I got to choose my ideal debate to judge, it would probably involve a politics
or other disadvantage and a case or counterplan debate. But, I do realize that debaters get
to run whatever arguments they want and strategy plays a large role in argument
selection. I have probably voted for a kritik about a half of dozen times this year. I never
ran kritiks when I debated and I do not read any philosophy in my free time. Kritik
rhetoric often involves long words, so please reduce your rate of speed slightly so I can
understand what you are saying. Kritiks as net-benefits to counterplans or alternatives
that have little or no solvency deficit are especially difficult for Affirmatives to handle.
Evidence Reading- I read a lot of evidence, unless I think the debate was so clear that it’s
not necessary. I won’t look at the un-underlined parts of cards- only what was read into
the round. I am pretty liberal about evidence and arguments in the 1AR. If a one card
argument in the 1NC gets extended and ten more pieces of evidence are read by the
negative block, the 1AR obviously gets to read cards. I think the quality of evidence is
important and feel that evidence that can only be found on the web is usually not credible
because it is not permanent nor subject to peer review. I wish there would be more time
spent in debates on the competing quality of evidence.

Cheap Shots/Voting Issues- These are usually bad arguments, but receive attention
because they are commonly dropped. For me to vote on these arguments, they must be
clearly articulated and have a competent warrant behind them. Just because the phrase
voting issue was made in the 1AR, not answered by the 2NR, and extended by the 2AR
doesn’t make it so. There has to be an articulated link/reason it’s a voting issue for it to
be considered.

Pet Peeves- Inefficiency, being asked to flow overviews on separate pieces of paper, 2NRs that go for too much, etc.

Seasonal voting record:

Please add me on your email chains: jjkim96@gmail.com

THINGS TO KNOW WHILE FILLING OUT PREF SHEETS:

My background in debate:
2011-2014: Policy @ Lexington High School (Lexington, MA)
2015-2016: Policy @ UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
2015-2020: Policy/LD/PF Coach @ The Harker School (San Jose, CA)
2020-Present: Not coaching, currently in grad school for Security Studies @ Georgetown University

I had the privilege of being debating under, debating with, and helping coach top-tier talents at top-tier teams that got to see much of the national circuit. I've been out of debate for a bit but I'm still deep in the security and policy literature.

My affinity for arguments, in order:
Disclaimer: the difference between 1 and 5 is far narrower than the difference between 5 and 6.

1) Policy/LARP (DAs, CPs, Impact turns, etc.)
2) IR Ks (Security, Fem IR), Marxist Ks (Cap, Neolib, Materialism, etc.)
3) Identity-based args (Pessimism, SetCol)
4) Postmodern Ks (Baudrillard, Bataille, Psychoanalysis, etc. - Deleuze is a 6)
5) T/Theory (notable exception: T vs Non-topical affs, which is a 2)

---[I'll happily judge and vote for everything above this line - everything below, I have a harder time following along]---

6) Modernist Ks (Nietzsche, Heidegger)
7) Phil
8) Frivolous theory/tricks

Reasons to pref me high:
- Your evidence is high-quality
- You are confident in your ability to extend and expand on your high-quality evidence
- You have multiple strategies for a given round (and you can go for any of them)
- You have one strategy that you know you are incredibly good at AND can explain it to someone who's not as familiar with it

Reasons to pref me low:
- You rely on a number of other factors that have little to do with the quality of your evidence and arguments (spreading out debaters, intimidating/shaming opponents, betting on opponents to drop something) to win the round
- You are significantly more knowledgeable in your literature than I am AND you feel that the judge should do a lot of work for you if the opponent drops some foundational theory about your lit base (do you read source lit for Ks? If so, you may be here)

THINGS TO KNOW FOR THE PEOPLE I AM JUDGING

This section is deliberately short.
If you'd like to know my background knowledge regarding and/or willingness to vote for any argument without tipping your hand to your opponent or have any concerns about the round re: safety/comfort, please send me an email or ask to speak to me privately before the round. I'll happily answer any questions you have to the best of my abilities. Seriously, email me; It’s a zero-risk option for you.

Here are some questions I’ve been asked before:
"My opponent has a history of clipping; how do you go about verifying and punishing it?"
”What were your favorite args to go for in high school/college?”
"Do you vote for RVIs on T?"
"How familiar are you with semiocapitalism?"
"What are your thoughts re: fairness as an independent impact to Framework?"
"My opponent has a history of making me uncomfortable in round. Could you keep that in mind as this debate occurs?

Other thoughts:
- I don't assume the worst of debaters when it comes to slips in language. That said, the bar is a lot lower if you misgender/misprofile people.
- Presumption is a non-starter in front of me. The likelihood of one side having zero risk of offense is low, but the likelihood of both sides having zero risk is impossible. Win your offense.
- Accusations of cheating (e.g. clipping, evidence ethics) are not theory violations. The round ends immediately and I decide on the spot.

Background: I debated for 4 years at C.K McChlatchy high school on the national circuit. I am currently attending the University of Nevada Las Vegas. 

How I frame debate: I think that debate is a game of execution. I vote for the team who better executes and interacts with the other team's arguments. I am open to most arguments, be they traditional policy arguments or weirder critical arguments, as long as they are presented in a way that makes sense and can be applied to what the other team is saying. For more specific opinions, I have listed them below. 

High school topic - I've done almost no research on this topic, so the excessive use of acronyms or references to "cores on the topic" should be explained at least a little in the debate. 

Speed - I'm fine with you going fast, just not being unclear. Your speaker points will suffer or be rewarded accordingly. I go by the 3 strikes rule. If I have to say clear more than 3 times, I will put down my pen and stop flowing until you fix the issue. 

Kritik - I am pretty familiar with the more common args like Cap, Security, and Anthro as I ran them pretty frequently in high school as a 2n. I am much less familiar
with Nietzsche and Heidegger esque arguments and therefore require a bit more explanation. If you are going for the Kritik in front of me, you need to remember two things. First, don't substitute K jargon for actual analysis and spin. Second, the alt. The alt is almost always the weakest part of the Kritik, and therefore requires the most explanation. I will reward aff teams that call people out on this and reward neg teams even more for effectively defending it. I think that it is also worth noting that I am a sucker for social justice type arguments, especially when they are specific to an aff or specific to the topic. Also, I am much more familiar with "identity" type args than other forms to critical literature. 

CP- I'm all for cheating but I definitely think that some CPs are dumber than others. If you are going for a Consult, Conditions, Amendments, Lopez, Delay, or Veto Cheto CPs, be careful. I think that these kind of CP are silly from both a competitive and a theoretical standpoint and that aff teams need to exploit that. That being said, I love me an aff specific PIC. It tells me that you (probably) did research on the other team's aff and you should be rewarded because of it. If you are aff going against a CP, I rarely think that theory specific to a CP is a reason to reject the team, however, I definitely think it means that I give you some more weight to the permutation or solvency deficits.

DA - How could you hate DAs? While I am all for a case and DA debate, I think that these debates can fall prey to two issues. First, I think that these debates become more of a card reading contest than an actual debate. To remedy this, I think that the negative needs to do both evidence comparison and try to answer an aff arg with analytics, spin, and a card, instead of substituting the first two with more cards. Second, I don't think that all DAs were born equal, and I do buy card-less "gut check" arguments. I think it is worth mentioning that I do believe there is a such thing as a 0% risk of a DA, or at least there is a percentage that is so abysmally small that it is not worth considering.

T - Love love love T. I think it is a very strategic, but also under used argument in debate. Run it. I default to competing interps. Aff your evidence better be good on this. 

Framework - I felt that this justified it's own section given the growing prevalence in high school debate. I definitely think this is a viable strategy and have no problem with you reading it. That being said, I tend to think that the "You need to read plan" version of framework just doesn't work for me as these debates just tend to be two sides of the community butting heads. I would recommend adapting your strategy accordingly. 

K Affs - I am totally fine with them and there isn't anything too weird for me outside of telling the other team to kill/harm themselves. A lot of my opinions on K affs apply to the Kritik section of this paradigm, so to get an idea as to the K's I'm familiar with, read those. 

Misc stuff worth noting -
1. I do not call for cards unless it falls into one of both of the following issues. First, to settle an ethical issue within the evidence. Second, to settle a factual claim, like the economy has recovered by 5%. The phrase "this card is really good" or "this card does the debating for us" is not an argument. Debate is a game of execution, not reading cards. My standard for both of these things is very high and I will very rarely ask to see a piece of evidence.

2. I tend to be very expressive in round. This includes me nodding or giving you faces that range from "What the hell are you doing?" to "Oh yeah I guess you are right about that." 

Pet Peeves 
This is a list of miscellaneous stuff that debaters do that infuriate me to no end. 
-The underview. Either end your speech or do something, literally anything, other than this. If you have to pause and think about weather what you are about to do is an underview, it probably is. 
-Tech issues. Yall are old enough to understand how to put a flash drive in a computer. Make this as efficient as you reasonably can. 
-Gotcha moments that aren't gotcha moments. If I had a dollar for every time someone said "the debate is over" when it wasn't, I wouldn't need the money I get from judging. 
-Rudeness. You aren't nearly as good as you think you are, and there is no excuse to ever disrespect your opponent. 

-A speech that is just cards. If you just read cards in your speech without any analytics, comparison, or any level of analysis, the only think you have demonstrated to me is that you are literate and have the ability to say words that are put in front of you. 

Speaker Points - I evaluate speaker points according to the following criteria.
30 - You made me laugh, cry, and reconsider my standing in life. You showed up with 37 pieces of flair. And a terrific smile. You did very specific analysis, gave me a clear picture of what happened in the round, why you won, and executed your strategy flawlessly.
29 - You impressed me with your ability to execute your arguments, make specific spin to theirs, and showed me that you are well versed in what you are going for.
28 - You were an above average speaker. Good for the most part, but clearly suffered from some issues in the round.
27 - Meh. You were an average speaker with an incoherent strategy.
26 - You are an okay debater for the most part, but something went critically wrong in the round for me to give you this.
25-20 - You really need to fix something. You are an okay debater, but you either insulted me, the other team, or someone else in a way that was truly offensive and executed your strategy so poorly that I didn't even think you were making an argument. Me giving you something this low is meant to send a very clear message: Whatever you did, don't ever do it again.
Anything below 20 - What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in the room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you with this amount of speaker points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

I debated high school policy debate in the Mid 1990's and collegiate parliamentary at community college before transferring to UC . I am currently a speech and debate teacher at Quarry Lane school, Dublin CA . I am focused on Public forum debate. Before that I was the coach of Skyline High school in Oakland, CA and focused on Policy debate (primarily varsity performance) . Before then I coached at El Cerrito High School in Northern CA and coached all events, flex policy as well as lay adapted teams. I have coached teams to TOC, NSDA, and CA state championship. I love the community I coach in. It is the daily conversations, discussions, and socializing that keep us all going. Debate changed my life, it wasn't the only thing that made who I am but it's important and I am grateful to be able to share that gift with students on a daily basis.

Public Forum paradigm.

I am new to coaching public forum but am able to adapt from a historical policy background of 20 years. Speed is fine. But I always emphasis clarity. Technical debate is good. I will flow. Debaters should collapse to key winning arguments in beginning in the rebuttals. New arguments in summary and final focus are discouraged unless responding to an abusive argument by an opponent. I am comfortable with flex, both straightforward policy or Kritiks both post-modern to performance. I'm fairly tabula rasa in the sense that you are responsible for upholding the framework for the debate. Theory is fun and I enjoy a well reasoned theory debate with impacted standards.

In regards to evidence analysis I am looking for you to read warrants and good data and extend it and use it throughout the debate. Offense is key. Think strategically and you will be rewarded. Most of all have fun. Decorum is essential.

put me on the email chain: mikekurtenbach@gmail.com

coach @ Brophy College Prep.

experience: 10+ years

tldr: i have minimal predispositions - all of the following are my preferences, but good debating will always change my mind. i arbitrate debates purely based off the flow - i don’t read evidence unless 1) i was told to in reference to an argument or 2) the debate is incredibly close and evidence quality is the tiebreaker.

topicality: it’s okay. i think limits are the controlling standard. reasonability is probably a non-starter unless it’s dropped.

framework/k affs: let me start off by saying i would prefer if the affirmative defends something contestable. affirmative teams should not rely on “thesis-level claims” and should engage the line by line, mostly consisting of defense and impact turns. as long as the negative wins that debate in and of itself is good (which shouldn’t be hard), fairness is a legitimate impact. i think decision-making is silly. negative teams shouldn’t be afraid to go for presumption. same goes for performance affs. i don’t think a poem necessarily solves unless tied to tangible advocacy; convince me otherwise. *on the education topic, i’m especially persuaded by the tva*

kritik: it’s okay, but i’d prefer a more technical line-by-line execution by the neg over three minute long overviews that are repeated on every single argument. that being said, i think the ideal 2nc for most k’s should focus less on reading new evidence and more on contextualized analysis to the substance of 1ac. i think most k debates are lost due to lack of explanation or contextualization of the link or alternative. blippy extensions won’t do it for me, unless you can explain your advocacy in tangible terms. i will probably default to letting the aff weigh its impacts, unless you convince me otherwise. affirmatives, this is probably where you should invest the most time. losing 2ar’s either miss offense embedded on the link debate, lose the framework, or let them get away with absurd broad generalizations (or drop a pik). winning 2ar’s buckle down on case outweighs, mutual exclusivity, or well-analyzed impact turns.

da: love them. politics is my favorite argument. case-specific da’s are the best. aff don’t drop turns case. in the absence of a counterplan, impact calc/framing is incredibly important for my ballot and should be introduced earlier rather than later. in the presence of a counterplan, negs should weigh the da to the risk of a solvency deficit. specific internal links always beat general framing pre-empts.

cp: also love ‘em. pics are my second favorite argument. condo is probably good to an extent. decide what that extent is for me. i enjoy watching a well-executed process counterplan so long as you know how to defend it theoretically. unless told otherwise, i default to judge-kick.

case: please bring this back - it’s a lost art. highly encourage re-hilightings of their evidence, specific advantage frontlines, etc. i love impact turn debates. if an aff can’t defend why economic decline is bad, why should it win?

cross ex: i appreciate when you can answer every question straight-up in cross ex, instead of dodging them. cross-ex is a great time to build ethos. i think one of the greatest mistakes i see debaters make round after round is not carrying concessions in cross-ex into their speeches. cross-ex is binding.

CSU LONG BEACH JACK HOWE 2022 UPDATE: I haven't judged circuit debate since 2017 so I'm out of practice. If you have me in the back of the room, please go slower - ESPECIALLY ON ANALYTICS. I won't be able to understand you if you fully spread your pre-written analytic blocks, so please slow down. I'm the head director for Bellarmine's program so I spend most of my time these days coaching speech and slow debate. 

FOR STATE & NATIONALS: If I am judging you in debate at the CHSSA State tournament or NSDA Nationals, please do not treat me as a purely circuit judge, especially if I'm on a panel with other judges who are clearly not circuit-oriented. I believe that those tournaments are excellent forums for a type of debate that prioritizes judge adaptation and a slower, more lay style of debate. So, do not feel you have to go fast to try to cater to me. At these tournaments, I'll hold you to much higher standards in terms of the evidence quality, the specificity of the link, and the logical coherence of your positions. I will love you if you successfully criticize contrived internal link scenarios, the squirelly/shady arguments, and blippy line-by-line analysis in your CXs and speeches.

How to get high speaker points and win my ballot:

My greatest frustrations with the vast majority of debate rounds are two-fold: 1) a lack of comparative engagement with the other team's arguments and 2) a lack of well-impacted analysis of why your arguments are reasons I should vote for you. Speech docs seem to exacerbate both of these problems, as teams rely on reading pre-written blocks. More and more, I feel a sense of impending existential dread as I realize that nothing meaningful in the debate round is going to happen until the 2NR and 2AR and that everything else is a game of seeing which issues get undercovered. Let me break down my two biggest frustrations:

1) comparative analysis - I understand that you have beautifully constructed blocks to certain arguments but often times, those blocks are not directly responsive to the other team's argument, and so I'm left with back-and-forth disputes with no clear framework of how to resolve them. The quickest way to get good speaker points with me is to listen critically to the warrants of the other team's arguments and give comparative analysis that explains why your warrants are superior.

2) impacting important arguments - Though debaters implicitly understand the importance of impact calc, they often think about it incorrectly. Meaningful impact calc isn't exclusively about magnitude, timeframe, and probability. That's rarely how rounds are resolved. That type of impact calc presupposes that you're ahead on the other parts of the flow. The best impact calc explains why the arguments that you're ahead on in the round are reasons to vote for you and why those arguments are more important than the other teams arguments. Often times, teams get frustrated that a dropped argument didn't warrant an immediate vote for their team. If a dropped argument is not adequately impacted and framed, and the other team has more compelling offense, then most rational judges will still not vote for you. I see this most often in framework debates against identity politics affirmatives. The framework debaters are often confused how they lost the round, despite being "ahead" on some line-by-line issues. However, in those debates, the identity politics team is often far ahead in terms of impacts and framing why those impacts outweigh any of the line-by-line framework arguments. So, to put it simply, explain why your arguments matter.

Finally, please go slower on theory than you would with other judges - I debated in high school and coach policy debate now, but I also direct a program that coaches students in speech (IE) and lay debate, so I don't watch 20+ fast rounds a year, like many judges on the circuit.

My experience: I debated in high school for Bellarmine College Prep (San Jose, CA) from 2007-2011 and went to Michigan 7-week during that time but did not debate in college -- so I was out of the circuit for a couple of years when identity politics K and planless affs became popular. Now, I'm a coach at Bellarmine. I don't judge much on the circuit now that I direct Bellarmine's S&D program. I would recommend going a bit slower, especially on theory arguments, if you want to make sure that I'm able to flow everything. That also means that you should explain your warrants and arguments more than you might for other judges.

Policy
The more case-specific you are, the better. Far too many teams do not engage with case in a substantive way. Also, don't be afraid to make analytics – smart, true analytics hold a lot of sway with me, and it’s very strategic to have them in the 1NC and 2AC. If I see that you’re actually engaging the debate and critically thinking instead of just reading blocks and ignoring what the other team said I will be much more willing to give you higher speaks. That said:

Topicality – you must do a good job of explaining your interpretation and why it’s good for debate (or why allowing the aff to be included in the topic is bad for the topic), as well as the terminal impacts to your claims about predictability and fairness and education, etc. I generally err towards interpretations that are the best for the literature base of a topic -- for substantive, deep debates at the core of the resolution -- rather than arbitrary lines which found their entire argument on generic disad link distinctions. Good topicality debates should be grounded in excellent evidence (T- subs. w/o material qualifications is a good example of a violation that does not fulfill this criteria).

DA – I love strategies that are either CP/DA or even DA/case. As a 1N/2A, I took the DA a lot in the 1NR and loved doing 2ARs against the DA. Generic DAs are okay, but I’m going to like you a lot more if you’re reading a tight case-specific DA that has good, specific links and internal links.

CP – don't be abusive or shady, otherwise I'll have sympathy for the aff on theory args.

Case – I LOVE case and I think it’s totally viable to win a debate with a simple strategy like case-DA. Case is what these sorts of debate SHOULD be about. Don’t let the 2A get away with the entirety of case and you have to defend on a CP to win! Make them defend the plan. I could even be persuaded to vote on presumption.

K debates
I'm down with Ks. I'm familiar with much of the K lit - but take time to explain the core thesis of the K in the neg block (or 2ac) and especially the link story. Contrived and jargon-filled tags that lack substance but just try to sound smart / catch the other team off guard is a huge pet peeve of mine. For the aff, definitely poke fun of the link, as well as the alt - if the K cannot explain an articulate non-generic formulation of these parts of the debate, it'll be hard for me to vote for the kritik. I'm fairly knowledgeable with regards to the K literature base, particularly Foucault, Nietzsche, Bataille, Marx, critical IR, but that means I hold kritiks to a high standard of explanation. If you are reading some variation on Lacan, for instance, you'd better understand exactly what kind of argument you're making. There are many points in fast debate rounds when I feel an impending sense of existential dread but one of the more egregious examples of such moments occurs when teams completely and utterly bastardize a brilliant philosopher with a kritik and have no idea what that author's argument actually is.

Also, please do not read framework at the same pace that you would read a card. Especially when you are talking about the role of the ballot, slow down a little.

Identity debates
I'm open to debates on identity politics. Again, I didn't debate when these types of arguments were gaining currency so I don't have as much familiarity but I'm open-minded about them. I do believe they force debaters to grapple with ideas that are ultimately good for the community to confront. The most important thing for FW debaters in these situations is to not just focus on the line-by-line. In these sorts of debates, the identity politics teams typically win through in-depth overviews that impact turn essentially everything on the line-by-line. You HAVE to respond to their top-level impact claims - it's hard to pull the trigger in this type of round on dropped argument on the line-by-line if you haven't been addressing the framing of the debate itself.

If you have more specific questions, please ask me before the round.

Gabe Lewis

Assistant Director of Debate at Georgetown University

gl642@georgetown.edu

_____________________________

NDT Update - February 2024

I am still not a topic expert so don't assume I know everything about the weapons systems you're droning on about.

I really do not enjoy process counterplan debates, especially on this topic. Say the aff is a bad idea! Say that it is not topical! But do not tell me that we should have a constitutional convention to eliminate nuclear subs! I mean you can tell me that but I'm going to be grumpy about it.

If your 2AC to T is more focused on grammar/semantics/fringe definitions than explaining why your version of the topic is better... just don't do it. Tell me why your version of the topic is better!

Stylistic Things - Please number your arguments and slow down between pages. Please do not put nine consecutive permutations at the top of the CP flow in the 2AC. Every time you refuse to label an off-case position, I die a little inside. You can "insert the rehighlighting" as much as your heart desires but I refuse to acknowledge it unless you've read the rehighlighting given the communicative activity of it all.

Top Level Debate Thoughts:

Explanation: I am a bit of a dinosaur (or maybe I'm just right) when it comes to expectations about explanation. I want to know exactly what internal links you solve & how you solve them for each impact. I want to know this in every speech. If after the debate I do not understand how the aff resolves the internal links, I am not going to vote on your impact outweighing.

Delivery and Evidence: Debaters should SLOW DOWN especially when reading blocks. I understand that there is an incentive to be the fastest speaker in the room but this negatively impacts you when I cannot understand what you are saying let alone to flow your arguments. Debate is a communicative activity first and foremost. That means I am uninterested in reading a lot of evidence after the debate.

Decision Making: Think about what argument you will win the debate on and then spend your time appropriately developing that argument in the final rebuttals. I understand it can be frustrating if a judge doesn't vote on the argument you think is capital T true but if you spend a few seconds on it four minutes into your last speech, you're probably doomed because judges have countless other arguments to think through and evaluate. You should put your best arguments at the top of the speech and you should also do judge instruction.

Argument Specific Thoughts

Kritiks: I did not read them in college and am not familiar with the various literature bases. Going for a K against a policy aff will be an uphill battle for you. I am, at my core, a pragmatist and it will be difficult to convince me that the alternative (or doing nothing) is preferable to the affirmative without a significant amount of case defense.

K Affs: I think affirmative teams should affirm the resolution and I am sympathetic to negative topicality/framework arguments. I am not convinced by "in the direction of the topic" We Meet/Counter-interpretations because I find them very self-serving, vague, and arbitrary.

T v Policy Affs: I evaluate these as debates about comparative models of the topic. What does the topic look like under two different interpretations? Is that good or bad for debate? Does it limit out all affs on the topic? Does it explode the limits of the topic? Does it obfuscate all negative ground? These are considerations you should grapple with when answering and extending Topicality/defending your model. I am more likely to side with a solid version of the topic as explained by the debaters than I am to side with a better evidenced explanation of the topic that provides no clear brightlines or guardrails.

Politics: I thoroughly enjoy politics debates - even if it's midterms or elections. I think internal links can be generally contrived so I would encourage aff teams to point out the various uniqueness issues these DA's tend to present. I am not a fan of politics theory arguments (Vote No, Intrinsicness, Fiat Solves the Link) because I think they are generally warrantless arguments that negative teams hope the aff will miss. Without a warrant, a dropped claim does not matter as I do not believe it to be a completed argument.

CP: I think CP theory is a reason to reject the argument, not the team. I HATE when teams read multiplank CP's and do not explain the utility of the planks in the solvency debate. Why are you reading ten planks if you explain the CP like it is a single plank? I generally believe that CPs link to the net benefits. If your explanation of a plank in the 2NC is rereading it without explanation and context, I'm not the judge for you. Not great on counterplan competition questions and have little experience debating competition or judging these debates.

Conditionality: Fine - more than three is pushing it.

reeceaguilar7@gmail.com

If you can't beat the argument, you generally deserve to lose.

(I'll never insert the reading of an argument I happen to know into the debate for you. This practice always irritated me when certain people did or encouraged this. I'm not supposed to make arguments, you are.)

Very tech over truth. However, the less intuitive an argument is, the more you have to do to explain why it matters and why you win.

Generally I'm fine with anything, but I place a strong emphasis on clarity and explanation. If an argument is dropped or mishandled, explain what it is and how it effects the outcome of the round. The more doors you close in final rebuttals, the better your chances are of winning my ballot.

Order in Which To Pref Me:

1. Planless Aff v Topicality
2. K v K
3. Plan v K
4. Policy v Policy (Despite having experience in this, I don't believe I do enough traditional research to be the best judge)

Final Notes:

1. I'm more inclined to vote on theory arguments than the average judge. This just means I think I'm less biased against these arguments than others. If someone won most of the substance but lost on condo or dropped vague alts I would not hesitate to drop the debater(s).
2. Clarity > Speed
3. Impact Comparison and Solvency Mechanisms matter
4. I'm super attentive to the flow, and I strive to minimize judge intervention.
5. I've voted on arguments I don't believe in plenty of times.
6. I have zero issues voting on suspect impact turn arguments if they are won.
7. Clarity is more Important than Speed
8. In Clash of civs debates, it helps to say what debate looks like in relation to an interpretation of the topic.
9. In Clash of civs debates, impact turning t requires either an explanation of what my ballot or what counter model of debate can do.
10. In clash of civs debates, neg loses when there is a poor articulation of an impact or effort to neutralize aff offense. Aff loses when there is poor explanation of an alternative model of debate or how the ballot changes what we do.
11. In K v K debates, presumption is under utilized --- the less you link the less you probably solve. The neg needs to explain clear distinctions between the aff's tactic and/or theorizations and what the alt does or does not do.
12. In K v K debates, I welcome debates on other procedurals like aff condo bad, vagueness, and various spec arguments that are designed to at least limit what the aff does and secure link to neg positions.
13. In K v Policy aff debates, the neg needs to nullify the aff's offense. Use an alt solvency, framework, root cause, or impact framing argument depending on what your skillset is.
14. In K v Policy aff debates, the aff needs to win that talking about the aff or that the hypothetical implementation of the aff does something important that we can't have if I vote neg.
15. In K v Policy aff debates, the aff can win a permutation, though it is probably dependent on the design of the argument. Pay close attention to the link arguments and anything else that creates or forces competition.
16. In K v Policy aff debates, I find teams are racing towards the middle and are fearful of impact turning link arguments (state good, heg good, cap good, managerialism good). If you are good at this I say debate at your skillset.
17. I will not initially judge kick, but if you make a good argument for why I should I probably will do so.
18. No need for too much hostility and confrontation.
19. I would rather not judge debates about things that didn't happen in the debate.

Background: I have coached at USC, Damien, Loyola, and now I do K research for MSU. It's worth mentioning that unlike most people who say they are flex, I actually was. I was part of an NDT Elims team that only went for Ks (UNLV AK) and an NDT Elims team that was primarily about policy arguments (UNLV AW). If I'm in the back, you have a wide range of options.

~*~Short Version~*~

Room rules: no stabbing, no fire, and no leaving without cause during a speech. Besides that, I don't just have no preferences, but actually prefer that you do whatever makes the most comfortable. Sit, stand, lie down while speaking. Tag-team in cross.Please time yourself.

Please give roadmaps, just don't say "brief offtime roadmap." Use all of your time, but if you don't, don't say you'll "yield the rest of your time." I'm a very evidence-focused (note, nothaving evidence, but demonstrating understanding of evidence - this entails referring back to your citations in speeches besides the first one you read them) judge who is also a big fan of unusual and philosophical positions. I default to condo good, reasonability, no RVIs, perms are aff ground, AFC bad, tag-teaming and flex-prep ok. Share evidence via speechdrop.

Contact me at zane@zanepmiller.com

~*~Long Version~*~

For lay debaters, the short version should be sufficient. I am a very flow- and evidence-focused judge, and I guarantee I can follow any pace of speech you're interested in (so long as the arguments themselves are cogent). For policy and technical/progressive debaters, read on.

I debated for 4 years at Centennial High School in Idaho, graduated in 2015. I qualified to the NSDA tournament 3 times and had been in multiple bid rounds (six my senior year). Won the Whitman tournament my senior year. I debated policy locally my senior year and did 2 and 1/2 years of policy at UNLV, and have been judging and/or coaching since (currently at Bishop Kelly High School in Idaho). I primarily read critical arguments late in my career and semantic, linguistic, ontological and epistemological positions remain my favorite, though I'm perfectly comfortable with down and dirty policymaking debates.

I have default opinions about procedural questions, but I hate using them. If the barest suggestion of a warrant for an alternative position is presented, I'll go with it (though I might not be happy about it, if the quality of said warrant is low). My defaults are listed in the short version; in general, I'm sympathetic to claims that a team should be allowed to do something as opposed to not. Many teams get surprised by the extent to which this is true, because I allow, and even enjoy, arguments many other judges might consider underhanded or even "abusive"; for example, the much-maligned 'tricks' archetype of LD AC was a favorite of mine in my senior year of high school, and I believe it remains under-developed and under-explored by other competitors.

If you want bad speaks, here are some easy ways to get it: be rude, especially in questioning periods (rude in this case meaning cutting speakers off unnecessarily - do control your CX, but there's a difference between 'controlling your CX' and 'asserting dominance' - making snide comments, talking down to your opponents), power-tagging or otherwise being misleading with evidence (distinct from actual evidence rule violations - I just really hate lazy cards), or making actively bigoted/micro-aggressive comments (this can easily spill over into my vote - don't say things that make me want to have a talk with your coach).

If you want good speaks from me, there are three ways to get it: sarcasm that remains in good humor (i.e., sassy comments that aren't belittling or unnecessarily rude), really deep understanding of your argument, and creative case-writing. Generally, the style I reward with speaker points is confident and humorous, with a preference for arguments that require deep understanding to execute well.

Please add me to the email chain: mwmunday@gmail.com

Affiliations and History

Director of Debate at Westminster. Debated in college between 2008 and 2012. Actively coaching high school debate since 2008.

Debate Views

I am not the kind of judge who will read every card at the end of the debate. Claims that are highly contested, evidence that is flagged, and other important considerations will of course get my attention. Debaters should do the debating. Quality evidence is still important though. If the opposing team's cards are garbage, it is your responsibility to let that be known. Before reading my preferences about certain arguments, keep in mind that it is in your best interest to do what you do best. My thoughts on arguments are general predispositions and not necessarily absolute.

T – Topicality is important. The affirmative should have a relationship to the topic. How one goes about defending the topic is somewhat open to interpretation. However, my predisposition still leans towards the thought that engaging the topic is a good and productive end. I find myself in Framework debates being persuaded by the team that best articulates why their limit on the topic allows for a season's worth of debate with competitively equitable outcomes for both the aff and the neg.

Disads/Case Debate – While offense is necessary, defense is frequently undervalued. I am willing to assign 0% risk to something if a sufficient defensive argument is made.

Counterplans – Conditionality is generally fine. Functional competition seems more relevant than textual competition. If the affirmative is asked about the specific agent of their plan, they should answer the question. I increasingly think the affirmative allows the negative to get away with questionable uses of negative fiat. Actual solvency advocates and counterplan mechanisms that pass the rational policy option assumption matter to me.

Kritiks – I teach history and economics and I studied public policy and political economy during my doctoral education. This background inherently influences my filter for evaluating K debates. Nonetheless, I do think these are strategic arguments. I evaluate framework in these debates as a sequencing question regarding my resolution of impact claims. Effective permutation debating by the aff is an undervalued strategy.

Theory – A quality theory argument should have a developed warrant/impact. “Reject the argument, not the team” resolves most theory arguments except for conditionality. Clarity benefits both teams when engaging in the substance of theory debates.

Speaker Points

(Scale - Adjective - Description)

29.6-30 - The Best - Everything you could ask for as a judge and more. (Top 5 speaker award)

29-29.5 - Very, Very good - Did everything you could expect as a judge very, very well. (Top 10 speaker award)

28.6-28.9 - Very Good - Did very well as a whole, couple moments of brilliance, but not brilliant throughout.

28.3-28.5 - Good - Better than average. Did most things well. Couple moments of brilliance combined with errors.

28-28.2 - OK - Basic skills, abilities, and expectations met. But, some errors along the way. Very little to separate themselves from others. Clearly prepared, just not clearly ahead of others.

Below 28 - OK, but major errors - Tried hard, but lack some basic skills or didn’t pay close enough attention.

I'm pretty simple and will keep this brief. I probably won't cover your specific arguments, so ask me your question in-round or beforehand by email/Facebook.

Updated for Alta 2017 (LD)

I tend to be more at home with progressive debate, but you do you. I'll follow along. Be kind to your opponents. I won't time you, mostly out of consideration for the fact that I have never once not failed at signaling time.

My paradigm when judging LD and judging policy are very similar, and I do not believe there are significant differences in how the two events should be judged.

Because it's always asked, I am comfortable with your Ks, on either side. Be familiar with your literature, though.

Unless you say otherwise, I will default to competing interpretations. I am not a fan of hypothetical harms.

I debated policy and LD at Lynbrook for 4 years and also some NPDA parli at UCLA. The best thing in debate for me was to have a critic with an open mind and the ability to listen to anything. I'll try to be this critic and always make my rfd based on how you tell me to frame the round provided.

T
I'm a huge fan of good T debates but please signpost well and slow down from your top speed.

Theory
Have an interpretation and articulate voters early in the round. The more time you spend on theory in the constructives, the more comfortable I'll be pulling the trigger.

CP/DA
I often went for agent cp/ptx as the 2N and believe that counterplan+disad strategy is one of the best answers to most policy affs. If you're reading politics, make sure to win the uniqueness debate and have solid evidence.

K
Ask me about specific K lit before the round but I've read most of the popular authors used in debate. Please warrant your arguments and focus on articulating how the alternative functions in relation to the affirmative. The K should interact with the case at a substantive level by turning some of the internal links. Also, most K debates come down to the perm so win and use the framework debate to your advantage.

Donny Peters

20 years coaching. I have coached at Damien High School, Cal State Fullerton, Illinois State University, Ball State University, Wayne State University and West Virginia University. Most of my experience is in policy but I have also coached successful LD and PF teams.

After reading over paradigms for my entire adult life, I am not sure how helpful they really are. They seem to be mostly a chance to rant, a coping mechanism, a way to get debaters not to pref them and some who generally try but usually fail to explain how they judge debates. Regardless, my preferences are below, but feel free to ask me before the round if you have any questions.

Short paradigm. I am familiar with most arguments in debate. I am willing to listen to your argument. If it an argument that challenges the parameters and scope of debate, I am open to the argument. Just be sure to justify it. Other than that, try to be friendly and don't cheat.

Policy

For Water Protection: I am no longer coaching policy full time so I haven't done the type of topic research that I have in the past. I have worked on a few files and have judges a few debates but I do not have the kind of topic knowledge something engaged in coaching typically does.

For CJR: New Trier is my first official tournament judging this season, but I have done a ton of work on the topic, judged practice debates etc.

Evidence: This is an evidence based activity. I put great effort to listening, reading and understanding your evidence. If you have poor evidence, under highlight or misrepresent your evidence (intentional or unintentional) it makes it difficult for me to evaluate your arguments. Those who have solid evidence, are able to explain their evidence in a persuasive matter tend to get higher speaker points, win more rounds etc.

Overall: Debate how you like (with some constraints below). I will work hard to make the best decision I am capable of. Make debates clear for me, put significant effort in the final 2 rebuttals on the arguments you want me to evaluate and give me an approach to how I should evaluate the round.

Nontraditional Affs : I tend to enjoy reading the literature base for most nontraditional affirmatives. I'm not completely sold on the pedagogical value of these arguments at the high school level. I do believe that aff should have a stable stasis point in the direction of the resolution. The more persuasive affs tend to have a personal relationship with the arguments in the round and have an ability to apply their method and theory to personal experience.

Framework: I do appreciate the necessity of this argument. I am more persuaded by topical version arguments than the aff has no place in the debate. If there is no TVA then the aff need to win a strong justification for why their aff is necessary for the debate community. The affirmative cannot simply say that the TVA doesn't solve. Rather there can be no debate to be had with the TVA. Fairness in the abstract is an impact but not a persuasive one. The neg need to win specific reasons how the aff is unfair and and how that impacts the competitiveness and pedagogical value of debate. Agonism, decision making and education may be persuasive impacts if correctly done.

Counter plans: I attempt to be as impartial as I can concerning counterplan theory. I don’t exclude any CP’s on face. I do understand the necessity for affirmatives to go for theory on abusive counterplans or strategically when they do not have any other offense. Don’t hesitate to go for consult cp’s bad, process cps bad, condo, etc. For theory, in particular conditionality, the aff should provide an interpretation that protects the aff without over limiting the neg.

DA's : who doesn't love a good DA? I do not automatically give the neg a risk of the DA. Not really sure there is much else to say.

Kritiks- Although I enjoy a good K debate, good K debates at the high school level are hard to come by. Make sure you know your argument and have specific applications to the affirmative. My academic interests involve studying Foucault Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze, , etc. So I am rather familiar with the literature. Just because I know the literature does not mean I am going to interpret your argument for you.

Overall, The key to get my ballot is to make sure its clear in the 2NR/2AR the arguments you want me to vote for and impact them out. That may seem simple, but many teams leave it up to the judge to determine how to prioritize and evaluate arguments.

For LD

Loyola: I have done significant research on the topic and I have judged a number of rounds for camps.

Debate how your choose. I have judged plenty of LD debates over the years and I am familiar with contemporary practices. I am open to the version of debate you choose to engage, but you should justify it, especially if your opponent provides a competing view of debate. For argument specifics please read the Policy info. anything else, I am happy to answer before your debate.

Scott Phillips- for email chains please use iblamebricker@gmail in policy, and ldemailchain@gmail.com for LD
Coach@ Harvard Westlake/Dartmouth

My general philosophy is tech/line by line focused- I try to intervene as little as possible in terms of rejecting arguments/interpreting evidence. As long as an argument has a claim/warrant I can explain to your opponent in the RFD I will vote for it. If only one side tries to resolve an issue I will defer to that argument even if it seems illogical/wrong to me- i.e. if you drop "warming outweighs-timeframe" and have no competing impact calc its GG even though that arg is terrible. 90% of the time I'm being postrounded it is because a debater wanted me to intervene in some way on their behalf either because that's the trend/what some people do or because they personally thought an argument was bad.

I am a good judge for you if/A bad judge for you if not

1. You cut good cards and highlight them to make complete arguments in at least B- 7th grade English, which is approximately my level. Read uniqueness. If your disad is non unique, not putting a uniqueness card in the 1NC is not cute, its a waste of time. If your best answers to an IR K are Ravenhall 09 and Reiter 15 you are not meeting this criteria, ditto answering pessimism with "implicit bias is malleable".
2. You debate evidence quality/qualifications and read evidence from academic sources rather than twitter/forum posts. If you are responding to a zany argument not discussed in academia, blog/forum away. If that is not the case I implore you to ask why these sources are the only ones you can find.
3. You listen to what the other team is saying and give a speech that demonstrates that you did by answering all of their arguments correctly and in the order in which they were presented . Do not read a collection of non responsive blocks in random order. And then in follow up speeches you compare/resolve those arguments rather than repeating yourself.
4. You make smart analytics against arguments with obvious weaknesses. Most 1NC disads and 1AC advantages in current debate are incoherent/missing several pieces. You do not have to respond to an incomplete argument, point out it is incomplete and move on. Once completed you get new answers to any part of it.
5. You rely on knowing what you are talking about more than posturing/grandstanding.
6. You understand your arguments/can explain things. In CX and speeches you should be able to explain words/concepts from your evidence correctly, and be able to apply them. If your link card says "the aff is not disarm" thats not a link, thats an observation
7. You can cover/don't drop things. Grouping things is fine. Making a philosophical argument for why line by line debate is bad, and instead making your argument in the form of big picture conceptual analysis is fine. Randomly saying things in the wrong place, dropping 1/2 of what the other team said and then expecting me to figure out how to apply what you said there is not. I will not make "reject argument not team" for you.

I operate on a "3 strikes" rule: each side gets up to 3 nonsense arguments- a CP that is just a text, a bad disad or advantage, an unexplained perm etc. After that your points and credibility plummet precipitously. If I'm reading your card doc I will stop reading your evidence after 3 cards highlighted into nothing. If you include 3 "rehighlightings" of the other teams evidence that are obviously wrong I will ignore all your evidence/default to the other sides.

If debated by two teams of equal skill/preparation, the following arguments are IMO unwinnable but I vote for them more often than not because the above suggestions are ignored.

-please let us weigh our case or we said the word extinction so Ks don't matter

-the framework is: object of research, you link you lose, debate shapes subjectivity, ethics first without explaining what ethics are/mean

-War good, pollution good, renewables bad- it doesn't matter if these are in right wing heritage impact turn form or academic K form

-the neg needs more than 1cp and 1K for debate to be fair. Arguments like "hard debate is good debate... so make it hard for them" are so bad you should be able to figure it out/not say them

-PICS that do/result in the whole plan are legitimate. The negative can actually win without these, especially on a topic where there are 3 affs.

-counterplans that ban the plan as their only form of competition are legitimate, especially on a topic with only...

Hey I’m Jazmine.

(Updates for clash debates will be loaded by 1.20.23, the below is still relevant)

Yes I want to be on the email chain: futurgrad@gmail.com

Had a long paradigm from 3 years ago most of it word vomit so I’ll keep it simple.

I know I’ll be in clash debates. Most will think I lean on one side of the "fight" which is probably true but anyone who claims neutrality is lying to ur face. So I’ll say that I have predispositions HOWEVER, I DO NOT AUTO vote on the K or vote against fwk since as a coach I develop arguments on both sides. Don’t believe me? Well check the wikis;). MY Rule of thumb is if your logic is circular and self referential with no application to what is happening in the debate or how these competing theories (Debate as a game, state good, etc. are theories so you’re not out of this comment) structure how I should be evaluating top level framing and the ballot then yea I’m not your judge [FOR BOTH SIDES]. Point out the tautology and implicate it with some defense to solvency or have it lower the threshold for how much you have to win your competing interpretation (or interpretation) and let’s debate it out.

K on K, I’m smart and pick up on levels of comprehension BUT make it make sense. The buzzword olympics was cool but I want to see where the LINKS or POINTS of difference where ever you are drawing them from so I know what does voting AFF mean or What does voting NEG mean.

like I said simple. I appreciate the linguistic hustle and am into the game, but play the damn game instead of stopping at intrinsic statements of "Debate is a game and that presumption is valid because that’s just the way it has to be because MY DA’s! :/" or "This theory of the world is true and since I entered it into the chat I win..." IMPLICATE THE PRESUMPTIONS with solvency thresholds, framing thresholds PLEASE!

THanks for coming over.

Experience: I debated for 4 years at Notre Dame in CA (2011-2015); University of San Francisco (BA in Psychology); JD from UC Davis School of Law (2022). Previously taught 4 classic week labs at University of Michigan Debate Camp.

Update for 2024 TOC: Currently am an attorney and I judge here and there. I judged a few rounds at Long Beach this year, but have not judged rounds since then.

tldr: I'll judge anything but I like policy debates more. Just make warranted arguments and tell me how I should vote and why.

Newest thoughts:

- steal prep and I'm docking points

- don't make your opponent send you a marked doc for just 1-2 marked cards - that is something you should be tracking - I notice this is something teams do and then they just use the time to keep prepping their next speeches

General Notes:

1. I am definitely very, very flow oriented. I flow on paper and care a lot about structure. That being said, to have a full argument you need to make a claim, warrant, and impact. If those things aren't there, I'd rather not do the work for you and reward the team that did.

2. Other than that, you do you. I'm down to listen to anything you want to talk about if you can defend it well.

3. I'm super easy to read. If I'm making faces, it's probably because I am confused or can't understand what you're saying. If I'm nodding, that is generally a good thing.

4. Be good people. There's nothing I hate more than people being unnecessarily rude.

5. There is always a risk of something, but a low risk is almost no risk in my mind when compared to something with a high risk.

6. I'll always prioritize good explanation of things over bad cards. If you don't explain things well and I have to read your evidence and your evidence sucks, you're in a tough spot. That being said, I would rather not call for cards, but if you think that there is a card that I simply need to read, then say so in your speech.

7. Tasteful jokes/puns are always accepted. They can be about anything/anyone (ie Jacob Goldschlag) as long as its funny :)

Topicality: I love topicality debates because they're techy and force debaters to really explain what they are talking about in terms of impacts. That being said, 2nr's/2ar's really need to focus on the impact debate and explain to me why education is an impact or why I should prefer a limited topic over an unlimited one. Reasonability is debatable. I was a 2n in high school and I lean towards a more limited topic, but I'm very easily persuaded otherwise.

K Aff's: I am very convinced by most framework arguments on the negative side. I think that K aff's need to be closer to the resolution than not and I do not think that many of them are. However, this does not mean that I will not vote for a K aff; I just have had trouble understanding the proliferation of Baudrillard and Bataille affs, so if you are aff, you will definitely need to be doing a higher level of experience. I think Cap K's versus these aff's can be very persuasive, but I also think Framework makes a lot of sense if the aff isn't topical. That being said, do you and make smart args. I'm not the most literate in a lot of high-theory literature, so if you want to play that game in front of me, do it BUT explain your theories and I'll catch on quick.Framework: I think that "traditional" framework debates fall prey to a big exclusion DA from the aff. I think we should be able to talk about K affs and that they should be included in the topic - HOWEVER I believe that K aff's do need to prove that they are topical in some way. I lean more towards the neg in framework debates because I do think that many K aff's have little to do with the topic, but there have been so many times when K aff's actually engage the topic in a great way. That being said, on the aff be closer to the resolution and on the neg, explain how your interpretation and model of debate interacts with the aff. Most teams forget that the aff will always try to weigh their impacts against framework, which sucks because it is hard to resolve real world impacts versus theoretical arguments about fairness and education.

Theory: I will most likely lean neg on most theory questions unless a CP is simply very, very abusive, but even those can be defended sometimes :)

Disads: I love disads, specifically the politics DA. Prioritize impact work! Despite my love for DA's, most of them are dumb and you can easily convince me that they are dumb even using analytics and indicting the neg's evidence. However, I still love DA's and wish I got to go for them more in high school. Good politics debates make me happy.

Counterplans: Everything is debatable in terms of theory, so do you. If a CP is very abusive, hopefully the aff says so. If the aff concedes planks of your CP, you should make sure you say that. I think all CP's need a solvency advocate, otherwise it will be hard for the neg to win solvency and potentially theory.

Kritiks: I really like the K when the link debate is specific and I can articulate a SPECIFIC link and reasons why the aff is bad. Fair warning - I am not the most literate in high-theory arguments. This doesn't mean I won't listen to your Baudrillard K's, but it means that I have a very high threshold for SPECIFIC links and also simple explaination of the argument since I will most likely be confused until you explain yourself. The neolib k was my baby in high school and I think it answers everything. Security was Notre Dame's main thing when I was there so go for that too. Teams need to explain what I need to prioritize first, whether that is epistemology, reps, framework, or whatever, just make sure you say so! I don't like overviews and I am a big believe in putting your link and impact work where it makes sense on the line by line because it will always make sense somewhere.

Hi.

This is Tim Pollard.

Brief note for LD Debaters (2024):

Yearly small note addition before I judge my one-ish tournament of the season, content of last year's note is all you really need to know (but my hearing has improved dramatically).

JanFeb 2024 is a topic that concerns several rapidly-developing global crisis. Evidence that describes the behavior of states a decade ago is probably really questionable. Evidence the describes the relations between countries in the region more than 6 months ago is probably pretty questionable. You should ask your opponent these questions.

** I am going to be very willing to accept reasonable analysis made by a debater about current states of affairs over outdated evidence. **

Brief note for LD Debaters (2023):

Every year I stray further from meaningful investment in debate. All the things below are probably still true, but I have spent even less time involved in the activity than previously. Be gentle. I can hopefully still flow your speed but my sound discrimination is completely shot so make sure you are exceptionally clear at whatever speed you debate.

To summarize the decade of rambling that follows, the process to get me to vote for you is:

a. explain what you are defending.

b. explain why that is different from the other side.

c. explain why that means you win.

I will probably laugh if you structure every argument with each of these three points but based on a lot of the debates I've judged in the past few years it would probably also result in the easiest ballot of my life voting for you.

Brief note for LD Debaters (2022):

Short notes to actually reflect the sort of debates I seem to be judging.

The space topic is complex and kindof unclear about what actually constitutes topical ground. Please make it extremely clear what constitutes "appropriation" and what your position says about it. I will be heavily rewarding debaters who leverage this fact in the speaker points department and think it will greatly improve your strategic position.

util mirrors reward nuance and in-depth analysis. You should be able to identify what the current direction of the status quo is (uniqueness) what the affirmative does to affect that condition (link) and what the implication is for people (impact). Your speech should reflect this structure and the more explicitly you develop what each portion of the argument ("the economy is collapsing now so there's no risk to the disadvantage", "chinese emissions mean US action can't change the status quo") the more directed I will be towards voting for you.

the easiest way to increase your speaker points beyond that on the negative is to not waste speech time reading a nonsense framework that is just "act utilitarianism" when your opponent has already done so. If your framework offers an actual strategic advantage, go ahead but if your 2nc is going to be a body count against the aff's bodycount please don't spend 20s of the 1n telling me why "justice subsumes morality" (please never say that in any debate).

Note for LD debaters (2020):

Below you will find a paradigm that reflects what I've been doing in debate for the last 5 years - infrequently judging policy debates. All the points translate pretty directly back to how I feel about LD. Though I should add that I do have a reasonable amount of familiarity with "LD-style" arguments, so don't worry that I won't like your Kant Aff. I would love to hear your Kant aff.

However, policy debate HAS spoiled me by not having to deal with some of the ... idiosyncrasies of LD debate. Three aimless rant sections identified with bold if you don't have time to read the corpus and need to check what's relevant to you.

First, I think Theory debates in LD generally sit somewhere between asinine and making the activity of debate actively worse. If yr ideal 1ar involves metatheory, I am likely not your judge. I also really don't want to judge any theory debate that would make "Reading util against a Kant aff and then going to case" an impermissible negative strategy (AFC / ACC sort of things). Arguments like theory-justified frameworks are pretty close to that as well, seems like cowards moves. That said THERE ARE DEFINITELY TIMES WHERE YOU CAN AND SHOULD READ THEORY AND THAT'S OK. TOPICALITY is a different class of argument from theory and you should read it.

Second, at an in-person debate event, i would be unable to flow yr a-through-f enumerated warp-speed-delivered 5-word-each wall of spikes. I can't imagine this gets better over Zoom, so enunciate. Slow down a little, or i'm liable to miss the third reason why moral skepticism affirms and I will not vote on it when it shows up in the rebuttal. This is also true in the theory debate. If yr strat is to make your opponent miss something in the cloud of chaff, I'm likely to miss it as well and won't feel bad about not voting on it.

Third, some of the notes on K debates below likely operate slightly differently in LD than in policy debate (or maybe they don't.. i have no idea what the metagame looks like these days). Short version: Yes I will vote for your critical argument. It is absolutely crucial that you explain how it functions and under what understanding of the world and debate I should vote for it if that differs from "the resolution is true/false". I've probably forgotten most of the buzzwords so walk me through it.

Please feel free to ask me questions before the round if you want something made more clear or it's not in the doc - I don't spend a lot of time in-depth thinking about debate anymore so I'm sure it's imperfect. timapollard is my google email handle if you have q's. (Actually does this tournament even have prefs? You might just be stuck with me and I hope to provide better service than the average rando. Good luck.)

Top-level (Following material assumed policy debate but still applies generally):

The first thing I evaluate in debates are questions of uniqueness or differentiation. You will win if you prove why whatever you did in your speech is distinct and preferable from your opponents.

I usually think of debate as a game (in the strategic and competitive sense). That doesn’t mean that it lacks extrinsic value or is bound to specific sets of norms or forms of strategy. But does mean that things like speech time limits and my ability to sign a ballot deciding a winner are non-optional. Prep ends when you email the doc or otherwise transmit your speech to the opponent.

The ability for me to understand the structure of your argument is a prerequisite for me to evaluate it, so debaters have a positive burden to explain the function and operation of their argument. I am willing to vote on presumption if either I cannot describe to myself what an argument does or can be persuaded by either side wrt it's non-function.

Judging the round is based on the comparative quality of argument as presented. The most important thing is that your chosen form of argumentation displays knowledge of the issues and is compellingly defended. The more you sound well-researched and engaged in the issues, the better points I'm likely to give you.

I evaluate performance in CrossX compatibly to a speech.

I flow on paper and might ask you for some. I still want the doc, but pay attention because I don't want to (and probably won't) dredge up yr args from some speech doc if I couldn't catch them in the speech. I'm usually pretty good at saying if I can't flow you.

Assorted Specifics:

This is the first tournament I have judged on the arms sales topic. Assume my knowledge of the topic is imperfect - as mentioned, yr burden to make me get yr arg.

Plan is implemented and matters debates

I don't subscribe to the offence/defense paradigm and believe in the ability of sufficiently complete defense/lack-of-link to take out an impact.

Going for the permutation against a criticism in your big silly impacts aff generally just sounds weird and you are actually going for "case outweighs" anyway. Seriously just talk about how sweet your aff is. The permutation is a fundamentally defensive argument.

Go for T against policy affs more. Folks are getting away with WAY too much.

KvK debates

First, generating external impacts and/or differentiating your impact claim is critical. Often these debates get gummed up in both teams winning that they solve and the other team causes some amount of violence/oppression - with me left to muck through and pick an internal link story, tending to have people end up unhappy.

Second, explain how yr perm works in the context of the debate round - what does it mean for me to endorse/reject a permutation? The argument that affs don't get permutations in these situations (method v method debate) threatens to make sense but also has to work through my presumption that the negative must prove something the aff does/assumes/engages with is bad. Generally you should not expect to win just for having another good idea.

Clash debates

I am extremely unlikely to be persuaded by args that reduce to FW: Ks are bad. Stop whining and defend yr aff.

I generally think affirmatives should take an affirmative position wrt the topic area (this doesn't mean you need a plan or to defend the politics DA or whatever).

Debates where I vote for critical affirmatives against T usually hinge on the aff either successfully defending what distinguishes the affirmative from a negative arg against topical affs, or winning impact turns. You will benefit from putting a lot of defensive pressure on the neg's impacts - which tend to be poorly developed.

Both sides - don't fall into the trap of forgetting the 1AC. At the end of the day the 1AC happened and its ability to solve is likely strongly determinant of a lot of the rest of the debate.

T debaters: Stop going for the truth-testing 'assume all their args are false because we can't research them' stuff.

PARADIGM FOR CHAD RIGSBY

I'm the current Saint George's Debate Coach and a former Assistant Debate Coach at Gonzaga University.  I've been judging on and off for 20 years.  

I believe that debate is a combination of strategic game and storytelling.  I consider the flow the game board and I pay attention to drops, but I expect that debaters will have a coherent story to explain their victory at the end of the round.  Although I am comfortable with most sorts of arguments, I would say that I'm primarily interested in strategic decisionmaking and in an explanation of why a team should win.

I don't have many set preferences about arguments.  I'm fine with critical/methodological arguments, though I do look closely at the Role of the Ballot in these situations; too often, these arguments devolve into discussion of methodologies that don't seem to really compete.  I am willing to listen to most theory arguments and don't have particularly strong preconceptions about them, though I do look for theoretical consistency.

I understand that debate often requires people to speak fast.  I'm fine with that.  I will tell you if you're not clear enough.

Good Luck & Have Fun!

2016 updated

Tech outweighs truth, great spin/technical debating can beat higher quality ev when you have only decent/kinda bad cards, I'm more flow oriented when judging, these are my defaults, you can change them by making arguments about it though.

DAs - pointing out logical holes and good analytics get really far with me and can completely take out a DA. Zero risk is possible. Don't drop "DA turns and/or solves the case". I'm more willing to listen to intrinsincness arguments than most people, I like them, but there are good neg answers too.

CPs - CPs that do the aff are illegit, but if you can defend them read them. Theory is always an option against bad CPs. I really like theory debates, but impact calc is incredibly important here. You really need to slow down so I can write down what you said though, I can be persuaded that abusive counterplans extended in the block are voting issues even if the neg doesn't go for it in the 2NR, but the 1AR has to spend a lot of time on why this is true. The neg can obviously beat this if dealt with, and it would take actual work for me to vote on it, not a 1-second blip. That being said, if you can defend these CPs theoretically, you should go for them.

K's - Aff's get to weigh implementation of the Plan. I am not a good judge for the K.

T/Theory - Give examples of what affs would be justified by the aff's interp. Impact comparison between standards is crucial. I'm open to either reasonability or competing interpretations. Theory is always an option in front of me, if you can't beat dumb things like T-substantial, you should lose. The text of your interpretation matters to me.

K-affs - You must read a Plan.

1.  My opinions on 'the K'

Aff: This is policy debate, and I prefer policy arguments. Please read a plan that is relevant to the topic. It's fine to be critical of the topic (and of patriarchy, capitalism, racism..ect), go ahead and include critiques in your plan or permutation of the plan, however verbally condemning the topic and throwing it to the wind is not grounds for a 'W' if I am your judge.

Neg: go ahead and read a Critical argument. Strategically it makes sense, you are making the 2A do more work, and hopefully what your saying actually applies to the Aff. Please don't ONLY read critical arguments, if you have so much to complain about, then you better propose some kind of counter plan that embodies your alternative interpretation. 

Ultimately: I'm going to vote based on who makes the best arguments, and covers all their bases (i.e. don't completely drop an argument or forget to respond). The above statements are brief guidelines for what kind of arguments I'd like to see in the round.

2. Cross Examination: use CX strategically, be respectful to your opponent, and humor (tastefully applied) is appreciated. Bickering is not ok, don't do it.

3. Spreading: Speak clearly, if you are bad at spreading (i.e. gasping for air, sputtering and mumbling), don't do it. It would behoove you to try, and a more tactful choice at that point would be to make Critical argument against the use of spreading in debate. 

My background:
If you feel this is relevant to how you frame your case in the round, I encourage you to find me on Linked In.

Please include me on the email chain: jdutdebate@gmail.com

Do what you do best. I’m comfortable with all arguments. Practice what you preach and debate how you would teach. Strive to make it the best debate possible. I reward self-awareness, clash, good research, humor, and bold decisions. I will not tolerate language or behaviors that create a hostile environment. Please include trigger warnings for sexual violence. Feel free to ask me any questions you have before the round.

Specific things:

Speed - I'm comfortable with speed but please recognize that if you're reading typed blocks that are not in the speech doc at the same speed you are reading cards, there's a chance I will miss something because I can't flow every word you're saying as fast as you can say them. Slow down just a bit for what you want me to write down or include your blocks in the doc. I will say "clear" if you are not clear.

Topicality- I enjoy good topicality debates. To me good topicality debates are going to compare impacts and discuss what interp of the topic is going to be better for the debate community and the goals that are pursued by debaters.The goals and purpose of debate is of course debatable and can help establish which impacts are more important than others so make sure you're doing that work for me.

Counterplans- I enjoy creative counterplans best but even your standard ones will be persuasive to me if there is a solid solvency advocate and net-benny.

Theory - In-round abuse will always be far more persuasive to me than merely potential abuse and tricksy interps. I expect more than just reading blocks.

K- I really enjoy a good critical debate. Please establish how your kritik interacts with the affirmative and/or the topic and what that means for evaluating the round in some sort of framework. Authors and buzzwords alone will not get you very far even if I am familiar with the literature. I expect contextual link work with a fully articulated impact and alternative. If your K does not have an alternative, I will weigh it as a DA (that's probably non-unique).

Performance - All debate is a performance and relies on effective communication. If you are communicating to me a warranted argument, I do not care how you are presenting it.

Mike Shackelford
Head Coach of Rowland Hall. I debated in college and have been a lab leader at CNDI, Michigan, and other camps. I've judged about 20 rounds the first semester.

Do what you do best. I’m comfortable with all arguments. Practice what you preach and debate how you would teach. Strive to make it the best debate possible.

Key Preferences & Beliefs
Debate is a game.
Literature determines fairness.
It’s better to engage than exclude.
Critique is a verb.
Defense is undervalued.

Judging Style
I flow on my computer. If you want a copy of my flow, just ask.
I think CX is very important.
I reward self-awareness, clash, good research, humor, and bold decisions.
Add me to the email chain: mikeshackelford(at)rowlandhall(dot)org

Feel free to ask.

Want something more specific? More absurd?

Debate in front of me as if this was your 9 judge panel:

Andre Washington, Ian Beier, Shunta Jordan, Maggie Berthiaume, Daryl Burch, Yao Yao Chen, Nicholas Miller, Christina Philips, jon sharp

If both teams agree, I will adopt the philosophy and personally impersonate any of my former students:

Ben Amiel, Andrew Arsht, David Bernstein, Madeline Brague, Julia Goldman, Emily Gordon, Adrian Gushin, Layla Hijjawi, Elliot Kovnick, Will Matheson, Ben McGraw, Corinne Sugino, Caitlin Walrath, Sydney Young (these are the former debaters with paradigms... you can also throw it back to any of my old school students).

LD Paradigm

Most of what is above will apply here below in terms of my expectations and preferences. I spend most of my time at tournaments judging policy debate rounds, however I do teach LD and judge practice debates in class. I try to keep on top of the arguments and developments in LD and likely am familiar with your arguments to some extent.

Theory: I'm unlikely to vote here. Most theory debates aren't impacted well and often put out on the silliest of points and used as a way to avoid substantive discussion of the topic. It has a time and a place. That time and place is the rare instance where your opponent has done something that makes it literally impossible for you to win. I would strongly prefer you go for substance over theory. Speaker points will reflect this preference.

Speed: Clarity > Speed. That should be a no-brainer. That being said, I'm sure I can flow you at whatever speed you feel is appropriate to convey your arguments.

Disclosure: I think it's uniformly good for large and small schools. I think it makes debate better. If you feel you have done a particularly good job disclosing arguments (for example, full case citations, tags, parameters, changes) and you point that out during the round I will likely give you an extra half of a point if I agree.

Coach at Alpharetta High School 2006-Present
Coach at Chattahoochee High School 1999-2005
Did not debate in High School or College.

E-mail: asmiley27@gmail.com

General thoughts- I expect debaters to recognize debate as a civil, enjoyable, and educational activity. Anything that debaters do to take away from this in the round could be penalized with lower speaker points. I tend to prefer debates that more accurately take into account the types of considerations that would play into real policymakers' decision making. On all arguments, I prefer more specifics and less generics in terms of argument choice and link arguments.

The resolution has an educational purpose. I prefer debates that take this into account and find ways to interact with the topic in a reasonable way. Everything in this philosophy represents my observations and preferences, but I can be convinced otherwise in the round and will judge the arguments made in the round. I will vote on most arguments, but I am going to be very unlikely to vote on arguments that I consider morally repugnant (spark, wipeout, malthus, cancer good, etc). You should avoid these arguments in front of me.

Identity arguments- I do not generally judge these rounds and was traditionally less open to them. However, the methods and messages of these rounds can provide important skills for questioning norms in society and helping all of us improve in how we interact with society and promote justice. For that reason, I am going to work hard to be far more open to these arguments and their educational benefits. There are two caveats to this that I want you to be aware of. First, I am not prima facie rejecting framework arguments. I will still be willing to vote on framework if I think the other side is winning that their model of debate is overall better. Second, I have not read the amount of literature on this topic that most of you have and I have not traditionally judged these rounds. This means that you should not assume that I know all of the terms of art used in this literature or the acronyms. Please understand that you will need to assist in my in-round education.

K- I have not traditionally been a big fan of kritiks. This does not mean that I will not vote for kritiks, and I have become much more receptive to them over the years. However, this does mean a couple of things for the debaters. First, I do not judge as many critical rounds as other judges. This means that I am less likely to be familiar with the literature, and the debaters need to do a little more work explaining the argument. Second, I may have a little higher threshold on certain arguments. I tend to think that teams do not do a good enough job of explaining how their alternatives solve their kritiks or answering the perms. Generally, I leave too many rounds feeling like neither team had a real discussion or understanding of how the alternative functions in the round or in the real world. I also tend towards a policy framework and allowing the aff to weigh their advantages against the K. However, I will look to the flow to determine these questions. Finally, I do feel that my post-round advice is less useful and educational in K rounds in comparison to other rounds.

T- I generally enjoy good T debates. Be sure to really impact your standards on the T debate. Also, do not confuse most limiting with fair limits. Finally, be sure to explain which standards you think I as the judge should default to and impact your standards.

Theory-I am willing to pull the trigger on theory arguments as a reason to reject the argument. However, outside of conditionality, I rarely vote on theory as a reason to reject the team. If you are going for a theory arg as a reason to reject the team, make sure that you are impacting the argument with reasons that I should reject the team. Too many debaters argue to reject the team without any impact beyond the argument being unfair. Instead, you need to win that it either changed the round in an unacceptable way or allowing it changes all future rounds/research in some unacceptable way. I will also tend to look at theory as a question of competing interpretations. I feel that too many teams only argue why their interpretation is good and fail to argue why the other team’s interpretation is bad. Also, be sure to impact your arguments. I tend towards thinking that topic specific education is often the most important impact in a theory debate. I am unlikely to do that work for you. Given my preference for topic specific education, I do have some bias against generic counterplans such as states and international actor counterplans that I do not think would be considered as options by real policymakers. Finally, I do think that the use of multiple, contradictory neg advocacies has gotten out of hand in a way that makes the round less educational. I generally believe that the neg should be able to run 1 conditional CP and 1 conditional K. I will also treat the CP and the K as operating on different levels in terms of competition. Beyond that, I think that extra conditional and contradictory advocacies put too much of a burden on the aff and limit a more educational discussion on the merits of the arguments.

Disads- I generally tend towards evaluating uniqueness as the most important part of the disad debate. If there are a number of links and link turns read on a disad debate, I will generally default towards the team that is controlling uniqueness unless instructed by the debaters why I should look to the link level first. I also tend towards an offense defense paradigm when considering disads as net benefits to counterplans. I think that the politics disad is a very educational part of debate that has traditionally been my favorite argument to both coach and judge. I will have a very high threshold for voting on politics theory. Finally, teams should make sure that they give impact analysis that accounts for the strong possibility that the risk of the disad has been mitigated and tells me how to evaluate that mitigation in the context of the impacts in round.

Counterplans-I enjoy a good counterplan debate. However, I tend to give the aff a little more leeway against artificially competitive counterplans, such as consult counterplans. I also feel that a number of aff teams need to do more work on impacting their solvency deficits against counterplans. While I think that many popular counterplans (especially states) are uniquely bad for debate, I have not seen teams willing to invest the time into theory to help defeat these counterplans.

Reading cards after the round- I prefer to read as few cards post round as possible. I think that it is up to the debaters to give clear analysis of why to prefer one card over another and to bring up the key warrants in their speeches.

In high school I debated for two years at Stern Math and Science School. In college I debated for three years at California State University, Fullerton. 

My Evaluation

I find debate is an educational activity. What that looks like is up to the competitors, I will try and insert myself as best I can. My role as a judge is to be an educator and mediate between competing interests.

Judging 

I may have not heard of your Kritik/Affirmative/Disadvantage/Counterplan/ etc. Don’t be offended. Don’t assume. In general it is best to err on the safe side and explain the plan function, the thesis of the disadvantage, and how counterplans avoid net benefits. 

Framing debates- An easy way to ensure higher speaks and tell me how and what to evaluate in 2nr/2ar is to have an ethos moment. An ethos moment tells me how to filter/view the debate.  

Explanations over cards. I usually award my ballot to debaters who create a story and have good analysis of their arguments. Like a lot of judges, smart arguments can beat carded evidence. 

I perhaps am considered a "K hack". This by no means suggests I do not/prefer not to judge policy rounds. I find that there are good things from the policy side as well as the critical side. 

Things I like to see in a round

Courtesy. Be nice to your partner and opponents.

Be prepared to defend everything you say, do, or justify.

Time your own prep and your opponents.

Prep ends when flash is handed to opponents, otherwise I will deduct speaker points at my discretion.

Ethics

Cheaters! You will lose. No clipping. No power tagging. No plagiarizing. No exceptions.

*The opposing team must prove without a doubt that such instances occurred. Video recordings resolve this for me. Punishment for stopping a debate and failing to prove dishonesty will result in an automatic loss or some consequence at the discretion of tournament officials. 

Argument prefs

Counterplans- Read the plan text slowly, also extending the plan mechanism in later speeches is not a bad idea. Explain how the counterplan solves the net benefit.

Kritiks- Good plan and advantage links are very appreciated, as is alternative explanations. Avoid lengthy overviews as much as possible. Because of the complexity of Kritik debates, I suggest you read the Miscellaenous section and the Framing section of my philosophy. 

Disadvantages- Explain the story. I want to know very specifically what the affirmative does to uniquely trigger the link. The neg fares better chance at winning a disadvantage in front of me if I am clear on what the aff is or does.

Topicality- Slow down. I want to hear the interpretation and standards. Explicit extension of the interpretation(s) is most crucial here. 

*On issues of Kritik affirmatives, I do evaluate impact turns to arguments such as Topicality.

Theory- Mostly a nonstarter. I do not like this trend of two second voting issue theories. I consider theory to be a legitimate argument to ensure fairness, and when applied in situations that merit theory I can vote on it. Ridiculous or excessive theories will result in lower speaker points. That being said, I will vote for conceded theory arguments.

Permutation- Make it clear in 2ac when they are made. Also please explicitly extend the perm you go for in later speeches. I don't like guessing which perm you go for.

Independent Voters- I do not like the idea of evaluating issues independent of arguments that you go for. If you really want me to vote on one specific argument, I expect the whole 2nr/2ar to be just that. 

Miscellaneous

I've noticed that when evaluating kritik debates, a clear articulation of links/link turns has been lacking:

1) I am not usually persuaded by links of ommission/deliberate exclusions of ....

2) Links that indict knowledge/logic and/or representations must show exactly how those representations manifest into something bad. (Historical analysis helps do this). 

Ask me any questions before the round starts. 

Experience

Current Affiliation = Notre Dame HS (Sherman Oaks, CA)
Debates Judged on this topic: about 40 Rounds (UMich Debate Institute)
Prior Experience: Debated policy in HS at Notre Dame HS in Sherman Oaks, CA (1992-1995); Debated NDT/CEDA in college at USC (1995-1999); Assistant debate coach at Cal State Northridge 2003-2005; Assistant debate coach at Glenbrook South HS Spring of 2005; Director of Debate at Glenbrook North HS 2005-2009; Director of Debate at Notre Dame HS Fall of 2009-Present.

General Note

My defaults go into effect when left to my own devices. I will go against most of these defaults if a team technically persuades me to do so in any given debate.

Paperless Rules

If you start taking excessive time to flash your document, I will start instituting that "Prep time ends when the speaker's flash drive is removed from her/his computer."

Major Notes

Topic familiarity

I am familiar with the topic (4 weeks of teaching at Michigan at Classic and involved in argument coaching at Notre Dame).

Delivery

Delivery rate should be governed by your clarity; WARRANTS in the evidence should be clear, not just the tagline.
Clarity is significantly assisted by organization - I flow as technically as possible and try to follow the 1NC structure on-case and 2AC structure off-case through the 1AR. 2NR and the 2AR should have some leeway to restructure the debate in important places to highlight their offense. However, line-by-line should be followed where re-structuring is not necessary.

Ideal 2AR Structure

Offense placed at the top (tell me how I should be framing the debate in the context of what you are winning), then move through the debate in a logical order.

2NR's Make Choices

Good 2NR strategies may be one of the following: (1) Functionally and/or textually competitive counterplan with an internal or external net benefit, (2) K with a good turns case/root cause arguments that are specific to each advantage, (3) Disadvantage with turns case arguments and any necessary case defense, (4) Topicality (make sure to cover any theory arguments that are offense for aff). My least favorite debates to resolve are large impact turn debates, not because I hate impact turns, but because I think that students lose sight of how to resolve and weigh the multiple impact scenarios that get interjected into the debate. Resolving these debates starts with a big picture impact comparison.

Evidence Quality/References

Reference evidence by warrant first and then add "That's [Author]." Warrant and author references are especially important on cards that you want me to read at the end of the debate. Also, evidence should reflect the arguments that you are making in the debate. I understand that resolving a debate requires spin, but that spin should be based in the facts presented in your evidence.

I have been getting copies of speech documents for many debates lately so I can read cards during prep time, etc. However, note that I will pay attention to what is said in the debate as much as possible - I would much rather resolve the debate on what the debaters say, not based on my assessment of the evidence.

Offense-Defense

Safer to go for offense, and then make an "even if" statement explaining offense as a 100% defensive takeout. I will vote on well-resolved defense against CP, DA's and case. This is especially true against process CP's (e.g., going for a well-resolved permutation doesn't require you to prove a net benefit to the permutation since these CP's are very difficult to get a solvency deficit to) and DA's with contrived internal link scenarios. Winning 100% defense does require clear evidence comparison to resolve.

Topicality

I like a well-developed topicality debate. This should include cards to resolve important distinctions. Topical version of the aff and reasonable case lists are persuasive. Reasonability is persuasive when the affirmative has a TRUE "we meet" argument; it seems unnecessary to require the affirmative to have a counter-interpretation when they clearly meet the negative interpretation. Also, discussing standards with impacts as DA's to the counter-interpretation is very useful - definition is the uniqueness, violation is the link, standard is an internal link and education or fairness is the impact.

Counterplans

Word PIC's, process, consult, and condition CP's are all ok. I have voted on theory against these CP's in the past because the teams that argued they were illegit were more technically saavy and made good education arguments about the nature of these CP's. The argument that they destroy topic-specific education is persuasive if you can prove why that is true. Separately, the starting point for answers to the permutation are the distinction(s) between the CP and plan. The starting point for answers to a solvency deficit are the similarities between the warrants of the aff advantage internal links and the CP solvency cards. Counterplans do not have to be both functionally and textually competitive, but it is better if you can make an argument as to why it is both.

Disadvantages

All parts of the DA are important, meaning neither uniqueness nor links are more important than each other (unless otherwise effectively argued). I will vote on conceded or very well-resolved defense against a DA.

Kritiks

Good K debate should have applied links to the affirmative's or negative's language, assumptions, or methodology. This should include specific references to an opponent's cards. The 2NC/1NR should make sure to address all affirmative impacts through defense and/or turns. I think that making 1-2 carded externally impacted K's in the 2NC/1NR is the business of a good 2NC/1NR on the K. Make sure to capitalize on any of these external impacts in the 2NR if they are dropped in the 1AR. A team can go for the case turn arguments absent the alternative. Affirmative protection against a team going for case turns absent the alternative is to make inevitability (non-unique) claims.

Aff Framework

Framework is applied in many ways now and the aff should think through why they are reading parts of their framework before reading it in the 2AC, i.e., is it an independent theoretical voting issue to reject the Alternative or the team based on fairness or education? or is it a defensive indite of focusing on language, representations, methodology, etc.?. Framework impacts should be framed explicitly in the 1AR and 2AR. I am partial to believing that representations and language inform the outcome of policymaking unless given well-warranted cards to respond to those claims (this assumes that negative is reading good cards to say rep's or language inform policymaking).

Neg Framework

Neg framework is particularly persuasive against an affirmative that has an advocacy statement they don't stick to or an aff that doesn't follow the resolution at all. It is difficult for 2N's to have a coherent strategy against these affirmatives and so I am sympathetic to a framework argument that includes a topicality argument and warranted reasons to reject the team for fairness or education. If a K aff has a topical plan, then I think that framework only makes sense as a defensive indite their methodology; however, I think that putting these cards on-case is more effective than putting them on a framework page. Framework is a somewhat necessary tool given the proliferation of affirmatives that are tangentially related to the topic or not topical at all. I can be persuaded that non-topical affs should not get permutations - a couple primary reasons: (1) reciprocity - if aff doesn't have to be topical, then CP's/K's shouldn't need to be competitive and (2) Lack of predictability makes competition impossible and neg needs to be able to test the methodology of the aff.

Theory

I prefer substance, but I do understand the need for theory given I am open to voting on Word PIC's, consult, and condition CP's. If going for theory make sure to impact arguments in an organized manner. There are only two voting issues/impacts: fairness and education. All other arguments are merely internal links to these impacts - please explain how and why you control the best internal links to either of these impacts. If necessary, also explain why fairness outweighs education or vice-versa. If there are a host of defensive arguments that neutralize the fairness or education lost, please highlight these as side constraints on the the violation, then move to your offense.

Classic Battle Defaults

These are attempts to resolve places where I felt like I had to make random decisions in the past and had wished I put something in my judge philosophy to give debaters a fair warning. So here is my fair warning on my defaults and what it takes to overcome those defaults:
(1) Theory v. Topcality - Topcality comes before theory unless the 1AR makes arguments explaining why theory is first and the 2NR doesn't adequately respond and then the 2AR extends and elaborates on why theory is first sufficiently enough to win those arguments.
(2) Do I evaluate the aff v. the squo when the 2NR went for a CP? - No unless EXPLICITLY framed as a possibility in the 2NR. If the 2NR decides to extend the CP as an advocacy (in other words, they are not just extending some part of the CP as a case takeout, etc.), then I evaluate the aff versus the CP. What does this mean? If the aff wins a permutation, then the CP is rejected and the negative loses. I will not use the perm debate as a gateway argument to evaluating the aff vs. the DA. If the 2NR is going for two separate advocacies, then the two separate framings should be EXPLICIT, e.g., possible 2NR framing, "If we win the CP, then you weigh the risk of the net benefit versus the risk of the solvency deficit and, if they win the permutation, you should then just reject the CP and weigh the risk of the DA separately versus the affirmative" (this scenario assumes that the negative declared the CP conditional).
(3) Are Floating PIK's legitimate? No unless the 1AR drops it. If the 1AR drops it, then it is open season on the affirmative. The 2NC/1NR must make the floating PIC explicit with one of the following phrases to give the 1AR a fair chance: "Alternative does not reject the plan," "Plan action doesn't necessitate . Also, 2NC/1NR must distinguish their floating PIK from the permutation; otherwise, affirmatives you should use any floating PIK analysis as a outright concession that the "permutation do both" or "permutation plan plus non-mutually exclusive parts" is TRUE.
(4) Will I vote on theory cheap shots? Yes, but I feel guilty voting for them. HOWEVER, I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR A REVERSE VOTING ISSUE EVEN IF IT WAS DROPPED.

Who is a Good Debater

Anna Dimitrijevic, Alex Pappas, Pablo Gannon, Stephanie Spies, Kathy Bowen, Edmund Zagorin, Matt Fisher, Dan Shalmon, Scott Phillips, Tristan Morales, Michael Klinger, Greta Stahl, George Kouros. There are many others - but this is a good list.

Respect

Your Opponents, Your Teammates, Your Coaches, Your Activity.

Extra Notes CP/Perm/Alt Texts

The texts of permutations, counterplans, and alternatives should be clear. I always go back and check the texts of these items if there is a question of a solvency deficit or competition. However, I do feel it is the burden of the opposing team to bring up such an argument for me to vote on it - i.e., unless it is a completely random round, the opposing team needs to make the argument that the text of the CP means there is a significant solvency deficit with the case, or the affirmative is overstating/misconstruing the solvency of a permutation because the text only dictates X, not Y, etc. I will decide that the aff does not get permutations in a debate where the affirmative is not topical.

Technical Focus

I try to follow the flow the best I can - I do double check if 2AR is making arguments that are tied to the 1AR arguments. I think that 2AR's get significant leeway to weigh and frame their impacts once the 2NR has chosen what to go for; however, this does not mean totally new arguments to case arguments, etc. that were presented before the 2NR.

Resolve Arguments

Frame claim in comparison to other team's response, extend important warrants, cite author for evidence, impact argument to ballot - all of these parts are necessary to resolve an argument fully. Since debate is a game of time management, this means going for fewer arguments with more thorough analysis is better than extending myriad of arguments with little analysis.

Disrespect Bad

Complete disrespect toward anyone who is nice; no one ever has enough “credibility” in this community to justify such actions. If there is a disrespectful dynamic in a debate, I ALWAYS applaud (give higher speaker points to) the first person to step down and realize they are being a jerk. Such growth and self-awareness should rewarded.

Fear to Engage Bad

Win or lose, you are ultimately competing to have the best debate possible. Act like it and do not be afraid to engage in the tough debates. You obviously should make strategic choices, but do not runaway from in-depth arguments because you think another team will be better than you on that argument. Work harder and beat them on the argument on which she/he is supposedly an expert. Taking chances to win debates good.

Fun Stuff

And, as Lord Dark Helmet says, “evil will always triumph over good because good is dumb.”

Banecat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ywjpbThDpE

Hi,

Competed in lay policy/pf. Qualified to TOC in pf senior year. If you use jargon, please explain it. Please do not spread.

Recommended practice for calling for evidence: Ask to see evidence before your next speech/after crossfire or partner can hand over evidence during crossfire.

If it takes longer than a minute, I will assess prep time to the team calling for the evidence.

Likes: Narrative in final focus, clear speaking style, back and forth during crossfires, weighing/crystallization of important arguments in summary/final focus

Dislikes: Blippy one line responses, evidence presented without analysis, misconstruing evidence, shaking hands with debaters (only because I don't want to get sick)

Updated 8/22/2019

She/her

I am a former coach and debater from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I am currently a Masters student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

3rd year judging college debate

6th year judging high school debate

N/A rounds on the college topic judged so far

8 rounds judged on the high school topic so far

Please include me on the email chain - Email:Taylor3@unlv.nevada.edu

*strongly prefer email over pocketbox(or speech drop)

TLDR Version:
I am willing to evaluate any arguments that you make, as long as you explain and execute it well. There is no need to change your arguments to something you think I like or will vote on, just give me the best debate you can, using your best arguments, and you will be fine. I try very hard to keep my personal opinions out of my decision as much as possible. I am more of a tech > truth judge, because I think technical debate is good debate. If you aren't doing line by line debate, or keeping things organized in some other manner, my flows probably look a mess which isn't good for anyone, so please keep things clean.

Long Version:
I will attempt to be as neutral as possible and evaluate the arguments presented in the debate independent of my own opinions.

I think it is important to EXTEND WARRANTS inside your evidence. You should explain the importance/relevance/ implications of the evidence as well. Tagline extended claims without warrants are not complete arguments.

Smart analytical arguments beat terrible cards all day, every day. Please don't just card dump if you never plan to explain any of those arguments or worse yet, if you aren't sure what to say. I would prefer you take the time to logically think through the other teams arguments than just read a bunch of cards that don't make arguments.

Judge Instructions/Directions: This is super important, especially in the last rebuttals, tell me why I should vote for you in response to the other teams arguments about why I should vote for them. Tell me how I should begin evaluating the round by comparing your arguments to the other team's.

Theory: Slow down on theoretical arguments, or I won't be able to flow them. They should not be read at the same speed as a card. I am fine to adjudicate theory args but you need to be specific, tell me how many conditional advocacies is too many and what specific abuse that causes.

Affirmatives with a plan: If I don't understand what the aff does at the end of the round or how it accesses its impacts, I won't vote for it. Make sure you are contextualizing your arguments to the specific round and not just reading generic blocks.

Critical Affirmatives- I am open to critical affirmatives that either defend a relationship to the topic or make offense reasons as to why they don't have to. Be careful about trying to be tricky, it may confuse the other team (idk why you want that) but it could easily backfire and leave me lost as well.

Negative critical arguments: I am willing to vote on any argument as long as it is well explained and has specific links to the aff. Your Kritik should have an alt and impact that is explained by the negative, I am highly unlikely to vote negative if you do not extend the alt. I am not familiar with all critical arguments, but I have had experience with a wide variety; capitalism, ableism, queerness, and anti-blackness are the arguments I am most familiar with. My last year as a debater I primarily read Warren on the negative, so I am most familiar with afro pessimism arguments when it comes to my understanding of anti-blackness. Good alt explanation can resolve any lack of knowledge I have. I am not a fan of post modernist critiques so it is a slightly higher threshold for explanation. The affirmative should always permutate critical arguments, and explain how the permutation functions, as well as how it resolves any residual links to the kritik.

Other negative arguments
CPs— I am fine with counterplans, but prefer they have some sort of solvency advocate as well as a net benefit. The text of the CP (and all perms) should be written out, and distributed to the other team. Affirmative permutations need to be explained, if you go for it, I need to know why I should prefer the perm to the CP and how it gets out of any DA links.

Disadvantages- I really like a DA vs. Case debate, but you need to have a link to the aff. Make sure to explain how the aff links to the disad and then how it triggers the impact(have a clear link story).

Topicality- I feel that it is a very strategic argument to be made in debate. Needs to be well articulated with both sides submitting competing interpretations. T arguments should be extremely structured and organized to make it easier for me to see why this is a voting issue. If you don't have a TVA and a list of specific abuses caused by the affirmatives interpretation, you will have a hard time winning T in front of me.

Speaker Points- You should be clear and able to explain your arguments well. I enjoy jokes and clever analogies that are relevant to the round and arguments being made. I adjust my points based off the level of debate I am judging, so a 28.5 in Novice is not equal to a 28.5 in Open.

Few other things-

1. Do not steal prep!!!! I do not take time for sending out the document, but when the team that took prep calls time, everyone else should pause until the speech is handed over and begins.
2. Only one person should be speaking per speech, unless it is a performative necessity or an accessibility issue in which case that should be made clear during the debate.
3. Flow! If you are not flowing I notice and it probably reflects in the quality of your speeches, in particular the line by line debate.
4. My face is pretty expressive, if I look confused or annoyed (during a speech or CX) I probably am and you should be reflexive about that.
5. Debate should be fun; it is a game so be nice and courteous to everyone involved.

If you would like something explained further, please feel free to ask me questions before the round or send me an email. If you have any questions about debating in college or about debate in general, feel free to contact me, I am more than happy to help in any way that I can.

For PF: Speaks capped at 27.5 if you don't read cut cards (with tags) and send speech docs via email chain prior to your speech of cards to be read (in constructives, rebuttal, summary, or any speech where you have a new card to read). I'm done with paraphrasing and pf rounds taking almost as long as my policy rounds to complete. Speaks will start at 28.5 for teams that do read cut cards and do send speech docs via email chain prior to speech. In elims, since I can't give points, it will be a overall tiebreaker.

For Policy: Speaks capped at 28 if I don't understand each and every word you say while spreading (including cards read). I will not follow along on the speech doc, I will not read cards after the debate (unless contested or required to render a decision), and, thus, I will not reconstruct the debate for you but will just go off my flow. I can handle speed, but I need clarity not a speechdoc to understand warrants. Speaks will start at 28.5 for teams that are completely flowable. I'd say about 85% of debaters have been able to meet this paradigm.

I'd also mostly focus on the style section and bold parts of other sections.

---

2018 update: College policy debaters should look to who I judged at my last college judging spree (69th National Debate Tournament in Iowa) to get a feeling of who will and will not pref me. I also like Buntin's new judge philosophy (agree roughly 90%).

It's Fall 2015. I judge all types of debate, from policy-v-policy to non-policy-v-non-policy. I think what separates me as a judge is style, not substance.

I debated for Texas for 5 years (2003-2008), 4 years in Texas during high school (1999-2003). I was twice a top 20 speaker at the NDT. I've coached on and off for highschool and college teams during that time and since. I've ran or coached an extremely wide diversity of arguments. Some favorite memories include "china is evil and that outweighs the security k", to "human extinction is good", to "predictions must specify strong data", to "let's consult the chinese, china is awesome", to "housing discrimination based on race causes school segregation based on race", to "factory farms are biopolitical murder", to “free trade good performance”, to "let's reg. neg. the plan to make businesses confident", to “CO2 fertilization, SO2 Screw, or Ice Age DAs”, to "let the Makah whale", etc. Basically, I've been around.

After it was pointed out that I don't do a great job delineating debatable versus non-debatable preferences, I've decided to style-code bold all parts of my philosophy that are not up for debate. Everything else is merely a preference, and can be debated.

Style/Big Picture:

• I strongly prefer to let the debaters do the debating, and I'll reward depth (the "author+claim + warrant + data+impact" model) over breadth (the "author+claim + impact" model) any day.

• When evaluating probabilistic predictions, I start from the assumption everyone begins at 0%, and you persuade me to increase that number (w/ claims + warrants + data). Rarely do teams get me past 5%. A conceeded claim (or even claim + another claim disguised as the warrant) will not start at 100%, but remains at 0%.

• Combining those first two essential stylistic criteria means, in practice, many times I discount entirely even conceded, well impacted claims because the debaters failed to provide a warrant and/or data to support their claim. It's analogous to failing a basic "laugh" test. I may not be perfect at this rubric yet, but I still think it's better than the alternative (e.g. rebuttals filled with 20+ uses of the word “conceded” and a stack of 60 cards).

• I'll try to minimize the amount of evidence I read to only evidence that is either (A) up for dispute/interpretation between the teams or (B) required to render a decision (due to lack of clash amongst the debaters). In short: don't let the evidence do the debating for you.

• Humor is also well rewarded, and it is hard (but not impossible) to offend me.

• I'd also strongly prefer if teams would slow down 15-20% so that I can hear and understand every word you say (including cards read). While I won't explicitly punish you if you don't, it does go a mile to have me already understand the evidence while you're debating so I don't have to sort through it at the end (especially since I likely won't call for that card anyway).

• Defense can win a debate (there is such as thing as a 100% no link), but offense helps more times than not.

• I'm a big believer in open disclosure practices, and would vote on reasoned arguments about poor disclosure practices. In the perfect world, everything would be open-source (including highlighting and analytics, including 2NR/2AR blocks), and all teams would ultimately share one evidence set. You could cut new evidence, but once read, everyone would have it. We're nowhere near that world. Some performance teams think a few half-citations work when it makes up at best 45 seconds of a 9 minute speech. Some policy teams think offering cards without highlighting for only the first constructive works. I don't think either model works, and would be happy to vote to encourage more open disclosure practices. It's hard to be angry that the other side doesn't engage you when, pre-round, you didn't offer them anything to engage.

• You (or your partner) must physically mark cards if you do not finish them. Orally saying "mark here" (and expecting your opponents or the judge to do it for you) doesn't count. After your speech (and before cross-ex), you should resend a marked copy to the other team. If pointed out by the other team, failure to do means you must mark prior to cross-ex. I will count it as prep time times two to deter sloppy debate.

• By default, I will not “follow along” and read evidence during a debate. I find that it incentivizes unclear and shallow debates. However, I realize that some people are better visual than auditory learners and I would classify myself as strongly visual. If both teams would prefer and communicate to me that preference before the round, I will “follow along” and read evidence during the debate speeches, cross-exs, and maybe even prep.

Topicality:

• I like competing interpretations, the more evidence the better, and clearly delineated and impacted/weighed standards on topicality.

• Abuse makes it all the better, but is not required (doesn't unpredictability inherently abuse?).

• Treat it like a disad, and go from there. In my opinion, topicality is a dying art, so I'll be sure to reward debaters that show talent.

• For the aff – think offense/defense and weigh the standards you're winning against what you're losing rather than say "at least we're reasonable". You'll sound way better.

Framework:

• The exception to the above is the "framework debate". I find it to be an uphill battle for the neg in these debates (usually because that's the only thing the aff has blocked out for 5 minutes, and they debate it 3 out of 4 aff rounds).

• If you want to win framework in front of me, spent time delineating your interpretation of debate in a way that doesn't make it seem arbitrary. For example "they're not policy debate" begs the question what exactly policy debate is. I'm not Justice Steward, and this isn't pornography. I don't know when I've seen it. I'm old school in that I conceptualize framework along “predictability”; "topic education", “policymaking education”, and “aff education” (topical version, switch sides, etc) lines.

• “We're in the direction of the topic” or “we discuss the topic rather than a topical discussion” is a pretty laughable counter-interpretation.

• For the aff, "we agree with the neg's interp of framework but still get to weigh our case" borders on incomprehensible if the framework is the least bit not arbitrary.

Case Debate

• Depth in explanation over breadth in coverage. One well explained warrant will do more damage to the 1AR than 5 cards that say the same claim.

• Well-developed impact calculus must begin no later than the 1AR for the Aff and Negative Block for the Neg.

• I enjoy large indepth case debates. I was 2A who wrote my own community unique affs usually with only 1 advantage and no external add-ons. These type of debates, if properly researched and executed, can be quite fun for all parties.

Disads

• Intrinsic perms are silly. Normal means arguments are less so.

• From an offense/defense paradigm, conceded uniqueness can control the direction of the link. Conceded links can control the direction of uniqueness. The in round application of "why" is important.

• A story / spin is usually more important (and harder for the 1AR to deal with) than 5 cards that say the same thing.

Counterplan Competition:

• I generally prefer functionally competitive counterplans with solvency advocates delineating the counterplan versus the plan (or close) (as opposed to the counterplan versus the topic), but a good case for textual competition can be made with a language K netbenefit.

• Conditionality (1 CP, SQ, and 1 K) is a fact of life, and anything less is the negative feeling sorry for you (or themselves). However, I do not like 2NR conditionality (i.e., “judge kick”) ever. Make a decision.

• Perms and theory always remain a test of competition (and not a voter) until proven otherwise by the negative by argument (see above), a near impossible standard for arguments that don't interfere substantially with other parts of the debate (e.g. conditionality).

• Perm "do the aff" is not a perm. Debatable perms are "do both" and "do cp/alt"(and "do aff and part of the CP" for multi-plank CPs). Others are usually intrinsic.

Critiques:

• I think of the critique as a (usually linear) disad and the alt as a cp.

• Be sure to clearly impact your critique in the context of what it means/does to the aff case (does the alt solve it, does the critique turn it, make harms inevitable, does it disprove their solvency). Latch on to an external impact (be it "ethics", or biopower causes super-viruses), and weigh it against case.

• Use your alternative to either "fiat uniqueness" or create a rubric by which I don't evaluate uniqueness, and to solve case in other ways.

• I will say upfront the two types of critique routes I find least persuasive are simplistic versions of "economics", "science", and "militarism" bad (mostly because I have an econ degree and am part of an extensive military family). While good critiques exist out there of both, most of what debaters use are not that, so plan accordingly.

• For the aff, figure out how to solve your case absent fiat (education about aff good?), and weigh it against the alternative, which you should reduce to as close as the status quo as possible. Make uniqueness indicts to control the direction of link, and question the timeframe/inevitability/plausability of their impacts.

• Perms generally check clearly uncompetitive alternative jive, but don't work too well against "vote neg". A good link turn generally does way more than “perm solves the link”.

• Aff Framework doesn't ever make the critique disappear, it just changes how I evaluate/weigh the alternative.

• Role of the Ballot - I vote for the team that did the better debating. What is "better" is based on my stylistic criteria. End of story. Don't let "Role of the Ballot" be used as an excuse to avoid impact calculus.

Performance (the other critique):

• Empirically, I do judge these debate and end up about 50-50 on them. I neither bandwagon around nor discount the validity of arguments critical of the pedagogy of debate. I'll let you make the case or defense (preferably with data). The team that usually wins my ballot is the team that made an effort to intelligently clash with the other team (whether it's aff or neg) and meet my stylistic criteria. To me, it's just another form of debate.

• However, I do have some trouble in some of these debates in that I feel most of what is said is usually non-falsifiable, a little too personal for comfort, and devolves 2 out of 3 times into a chest-beating contest with competition limited to some archaic version of "plan-plan". I do recognize that this isn't always the case, but if you find yourselves banking on "the counterplan/critique doesn't solve" because "you did it first", or "it's not genuine", or "their skin is white"; you're already on the path to a loss.

• If you are debating performance teams, the two main takeaways are that you'll probably lose framework unless you win topical version, and I hate judging "X" identity outweighs "Y" identity debates. I suggest, empirically, a critique of their identity politics coupled with some specific case cards is more likely to get my ballot than a strategy based around "Framework" and the "Rev". Not saying it's the only way, just offering some empirical observations of how I vote.

I debated for UNLV and Damien High School, debating at the National Debate Tournament, Tournament of Champions, and NFLs, as well as coaching teams and judging at each.

I participated in policy debate only, but, I have judged a LD and Parli.

I view debate as a very fun game that I used to play and enjoy watching.

Do what you do best. I will vote for you if I think you win.

Please be nice to your opponents.

As far as preconceived notions of debate go, here are a few of mine:

(1) I think the topic should be debated.

(2) I enjoy case debates and plan specific counterplans.

(3) Few things the neg does are voting issues.

(4) I enjoy T debates because a word's meaning is important.

(5) The neg has to win a unique reason the aff is bad to win the debate.

(6) I am a lawyer, so naturally I think think that law and the state can be used for good.

(7) I usually don't have speech docs open during the debate so your clarity is important to me.

Questions? Ask me before the round.

Update for Loyola 2020

Honestly, not much has changed since this last LD update in 2018 except that I now teach at Success Academy in NYC.

Update for Voices / LD Oct 2018:

I coach Policy debate at the Polytechnic School in Pasadena, CA. It has been a while since I have judged LD. I tend to do it once a or twice a year.

You do you: I've been involved in judging debate for over 10 years, so please just do whatever you would like to do with the round. I am familiar with the literature base of most postmodern K authors, but I have not recently studied classical /enlightenment philosophers.

It's okay to read Disads: I'm very happy to judge a debate involving a plan, DAs and counter-plans with no Ks involved as well. Just because I coach at a school that runs the K a lot doesn't mean that's the only type of argument I like / respect / am interested in.

Framework: I am open to "traditional" and "non-traditional" frameworks. Whether your want the round to be whole res, plan focused, or performative is fine with me. If there's a plan, I default to being a policymaker unless told otherwise.

Theory: I get it - you don't have a 2AC so sometimes it's all or nothing. I don't like resolving these debates. You won't like me resolving these debates. If you must go for theory, please make sure you are creating the right interpretation/violation. I find many LD debaters correctly identify that cheating has occurred, but are unable to identify in what way. I tend to lean education over fairness if they're not weighed by the debaters.

LD Things I don't Understand: If the Aff doesn't read a plan, and the Neg reads a CP, you may not be satisfied with how my decision comes out - I don't have a default understanding of this situation which I hear is possible in LD.

Other thoughts: Condo is probably a bad thing in LD.

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Update for Jack Howe / Policy Sep 2018: (Sep 20, 2018 at 9:28 PM)

Update Pending

Please use the link below to access my paradigm. RIP Wikispaces.

http://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com/Vepa%2C+Teja

In my ideal debate world, the affirmative would read a topical plan and defend the implementation of that plan.  The negative would read disadvantages, counterplans, and case turns/defense.  Topical research is probably my most favorite part of debate, so I would assume that I would have a tendency to reward teams that I see as participating in the same way I view the game.

I get that my ideal debate world isn't everyone's ideal debate world.  I also vote for teams that prefer to run Topicality, Kritiks, or other arguments as their "go to" strategies.  Good critical debaters explain specific links to the affirmative case and spend some time discussing how their argument relates to the impacts that are being claimed by the affirmative team. I also think it helps a lot to have specific analogies or empirical examples to prove how your argument is true/has been true throughout history.

I expect that paperless teams will be professional and efficient about flashing evidence to the other team. It annoys me when teams flash large amounts of evidence they don't intend to read or couldn't possibly read in a speech to the other team and expect them to wade through it.  It should go without saying that I expect that you won't "steal" prep time in the process of flashing, or any other time really.  It also annoys me when teams don't flow just because they are "viewing" the evidence in real time.    

I expect that teams will post their cites to the wiki as soon as the debate is over, and ideally before I give my decision and otherwise participate in information sharing efforts.  

I like to have a copy of speeches flashed to me as well so I can follow along with what everyone else sees in the debate and because I think it makes the decision making process go faster.

The best way to get high speaker points from me is to be clear, be polite, participate fully in your cross-examinations and use them to your advantage to point out flaws in your opponents’ arguments, try hard, and use appropriate humor. 

Ask me questions if this doesnt cover what you need to know or you can't find the answer from someone else that I have judged/coached.  Obviously there will be tons of other things I think about debates that I haven't posted here.  Have fun.

Assume I want to be added to your email chain: andre.d.washington@gmail.com

Andre Washington
Rowland Hall St. Marks
Assistant Coach

IMPORTANT CHANGES: After 5 years of judging a wide range of debate styles, I think I've come to the conclusion that I just can't connect with or enjoy the current iteration of HS high theory debate. Being able to act as an educator is an important reason for why I judge, and I don't think I can offer that in your Baudrilliard debates anymore.

This will be my sixth year with the program at Rowland Hall, and 10th year of debate overall.

I love debate and want students to love it as well.

Do what you want, and do it well. ---

Kritiks: Despite the revision above, you absolutely should still be reading the K in front of me. I am fine with the K. I like the K as it functions in a greater neg strategy (ie, I'd rather judge a 5 off round that includes a K than a 1 off K round). However, I went 1-off fem K in highschool for many rounds, so I am genuinely pretty accepting on this issue. Given that I don't spend a great deal of my time working through K literature, I think it's important that you explain these to me, but that's basically what a good K debater should expect to do anyway.

Disads: I cut politics every week. I love both sides of the politics debate and can benefit you as a judge on how to execute these debates well.

Counterplans: Counterplans of all shapes and sizes are a critical place to form a strategy and I enjoy these debates. Theory is to be argued and I can't think of any predisposition.

Topicality: I think that debaters who can execute "technical" args well are enjoyable enough to watch and judge, and I think I can probably benefit as a judge to any technical debater. I think that any violation, on face, has validity and there are no affs that are so "obviously" topical that they cannot be beaten on T.

Kritikal affs: I am not ideologically opposed to K affs at all and even enjoy these debates, although I primarily work on and with policy affs so I would say explanation is still key.

Framework: I find that good framework debaters know how to make the flow accessible to the judge. I think that there are a number of compelling claims and debates to be had on framework, and they can be just as strongly argued as anything else (including your kritik or kritikal aff).

Experience:
Four years of high-school debate
Four years of coaching/judging

Competed and coached at the university level
Seinor at the University of Arizona.


You can refer to me as 'Todd' In round. I think my philosophy is pretty standard.

Spreading : √
Tag Team CX: √
Kritikal Affs: √
Flashing Counts as preps: No, but prep stops once the flash-drive leaves the computer.

I attempt to be a Tabula Rasa Judge. This has profound impacts on my judging styles and decisions.

1. I will not interject my opinion into the round unless one of the teams asks me too.
2. You will have to explain your kritik very well (In every speech).
3. Do not assume I believe anything is good or bad.
4. I am susceptible to non-traditional style arguments.
   
   

Here is a cool quote stolen from wikipedia
" From the Latin phrase that translates to clean slate, tabula rasa judges claim to begin the debate with no assumptions on what is proper to vote on. Tab judges expect teams to show why arguments should be voted on, instead of assuming a certain paradigm. While a generalization is unfair, most tab judges will be comfortable with fast speeches, along with counter-plans, disadvantages, and kritiks. However, it is best to ask a tab judge on his or her preference in regard to specific types of arguments."

Obviously an important but for whatever reason under utilized part of policy debate. Your 1AC can and should be used to answer case arguments, counter plans and dis-ads additionally good teams are able to use it to answer Kritiks and even topicality.

Besides that, critical arguments in the affirmative are fine.

I'm always looking for and expecting personification in one's 1AC. A 1AC should not sound like a camp or a group of people cut it. One can accomplish this by having a very distinct word choice/ phrasing or by including small jokes or other things in the text.

Topicality was never really important to me as a high school debater but since I have started judging I have come to love and respect the argument. Topicality should be an important and thought out process in round. It should not be "hey we are losing on everything else lets try to cheese in a T-Ballot". If you truly believe the other team is untopical then read a longer 1NC shell in order to gain more momentum in the debate. I also think evidence in the topicality debate is often under-utilized.

It should go without saying that if you are going to go for topicality you should dedicate your entire last speech to the subject at hand. I kinda believe that you should attempt to run the argument that you plan on being 'abused out of' because in round abuse is much more of a voting issue than potential abuse ever will be.

Kritiks

One issue that arises far too often is the fact that kritik debaters tend to be lazier than policy debaters. For whatever reason critiques are far too often left unexplained and left to assumption. Another thing that is annoying to hear is generic kritiks that get brought up every other year without any new research or new spin towards the topic. I feel like these types of critiques are easily beaten by certain policy frameworks.

I try to stay ahead on most critique literature, that being said there are a ton of philosophers that somehow get books published. Honestly if you are reading a new critique that I have not heard before I would be really excited.

"My author is more qualified than your author" is probably not a 'good' kritik argument.

If you are running a critical or 'special' type of affirmative you should probably make a big deal of your framework. This is an example of a BAD Debate.

1AC: KAFF W FRAMEWORK
1NC: POLICY NEG
2AC: POLICY ANSWERS
BLOCK: POLICY NEG
1AR: POLICY AFF
2NR: POLICY NEG
2AR: POLICY AFF + JUST KIDDING, OUR FRAMEWORK MEANS WE WIN.

Framework needs to be in every speech regardless of whether or the other team addresses it.

Very experienced judge and coach for Saint Francis high school. I will consider pretty much any arguments that are not blatantly sexist, racist or crudely discriminatory (blatant is the key word here, much of this stuff is debatable and I will try not to punish you for my general feelings about your arguments).

It is important to me that debaters be respectful and polite to each other, this puts the spotlight on the arguments themselves and I am not a fan of extra drama.

I try hard to be fair and the following things help me do that:

- I rarely call cards. I like to focus the debate on the analysis given by the debaters (of course I will usually give more weight to analysis that is taken from qualified sources). I do not like to decide debates on random parts of a card that neither debater really focused on. I will call cards if I forget what they said, if there is a conflict about what they say and I can not remember, or if I am personally interested in the card.

- I try to judge on the flow in the sense that I evaluate the debate on the arguments presented, explained and extended into the rebuttals. I will occasionally do the work to weigh impacts or decide framing if the debaters are not doing that for me.

- I will not yell "clear", so mumble and slur at your own risk (I don't yell clear because I don't want a team to find that sweet spot where I can understand them but their opponents can not). I will also not evaluate arguments that I can not hear. I do not read speech documents during the debate rounds, sometimes I will look at them after the round (see calling cards stuff above).

Argument preferences:

I am cool with critiques on the aff and neg.

I am cool with framework (I like the debaters to work this out and I am pretty neutral on this question).

I like clarity (both in speech and arguments). I am not impressed by things that are "too complex" for me to understand but I will do my best to try to make sense of it. I am confident enough to not pretend I know your position and I will not fill in the blanks for you.

I am cool with policy arguments.

I have a wide breadth of knowledge but little depth on certain positions, don't assume I know your literature.

Speaks:

I give high speaks for clarity, efficiency, a pace that I can flow, respectfulness and occasionally speaking style.

I feel like the speaker point range I give is pretty close to average (I am not a reliable source of high speaks for everyone, but I will reward excellent debate with high speaks).

Contact info

mail all speech documents to: headofthewood@gmail.com

anything else (if you want me to read the e-mail or respond): thomaswoodhead@sfhs.com

College Prep, Oakland, California

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Coach at Success Academy Queens 1 Middle School

Full Judging Record: https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?judge_person_id=12179

In General... Read anything you want to read as long as it isn't racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic - you catch my drift. Junior year, I defended no plan coloniality affs on the Latin America topic and only went for one off kritiks on the neg. Senior year, I read an oil aff on the Oceans topic and went for politics disads. Given this, I am seriously welcome to all argument types as long as you argue for them well. Be nice, there is no blurred line between being disrespectful and a good debater. Also, I'd rather not call for cards at the end of a debate, explanation of your arguments during the round matter the most.

• Speed: I am fine with all ranges of speed as long as you are clear.
• Case: I like good case debate. Being able to tear apart the aff's 1AC is a great route for a win. Detailed case debate also shows you are well-prepared which is always a plus.
• DAs: I really like it when good impact debates happen on disads. Explain smart turns and impact filters. I am also a fan of smart defensive arguments.
• CPs: No one likes super generic counterplans but I get it. More specific the better but even if it isn't just be prepared to give good spin or else I won't be very compelled to vote for the counterplan.
• Ks: I am familiar with most of the kritiks read in high school debate. Thorough explanations are extremely important. I will not understand the point you are trying to make if you just throw a bunch of philosophical jargon at me.
• Topicality: T is cool just don't read T as a time suck. I think a well thought out T argument can be very dangerous for an aff.
• Framework: I am not predisposed to voting a certain way on framework as I have been a debater on both sides of the argument. I think an aff that is winning its value within the debate space is in good shape. On the other hand, a neg who is winning the limits debate is in good shape.
• Theory: I don't really see myself voting on theory unless it is flat out dropped or it is conditionality. Conditionality is probably not something that I will vote for if the neg reads only 1 conditional position. However, I think theory is underutilized in terms of using it to try to get a team to kick an argument.