Polytechnic School '14

Harvard College '18

Last Updated: February 2017

I believe judges should adjudicate debates based on the arguments presented, and I strive to judge in such a way that my preferences and predispositions make the minimum possible impact on my decision. No judge is a genuine tabula rasa, but I'm not interested in telling you what arguments to make or how to make them. Do what you do best and I'll adjudicate the debate as fairly and neutrally as I can.

As a debater, I primarily approach debate from a critical perspective. This does NOT mean that I will likely vote for the K, or even that I want to adjudicate K debates. It only means that I am well-versed in both sides of that literature, and am likely to render an intelligent decision in debates where a K is introduced. I enjoy well-researched and well-executed debating of all varieties, and as a judge I vote for both framework and critique arguments with regularity.

I'm a big fan of quality evidence. I typically let debaters decide what cards to show me after the debate, but I'll only look at evidence on key points of controversy and only when I need to do so in order to sufficiently evaluate the debate.

I will consult with tournament administrators about any instances of cheating and punish ethics violations with a loss and the minimum speaker points allowed by the tournament. Please just don't do it.

If you have any questions, please email me - paulmbanks at gmail.

I did policy debate at Harvard for several years, ending in 2016. I study the history of science. I don't know much about this year's high school topic. I have debated on both sides of the 'topicality/framework' debate in college and I went for a diverse set of arguments on the negative. 

I have few strong predispositions; all of them can be changed with an argument. The only non-negotiable is that I'll protect the 2NR. I read very few cards when deciding most debates and they rarely figure prominently in my decision. I think a lot about the debate as it is progressing.  I always take several minutes after I decide to think about my decision and try to argue with myself against it, using every argument in the likely-losing team's final rebuttal.  

Impacting arguments is the most important thing to do. I don't like having to fill in the blanks and sort out what it means for me to, say, adopt some particular perspective when judging a debate. If I should be a policymaker, what should I prioritize? Often teams assume that winning one argument (such as "the judge should be a policymaker") implies another thing (such as "the judge should only care about geopolitical consequences").  That explains how I think about "dropped arguments" and "concessions" as well.  I'm very good for teams that understand which claims the other team is winning and construct a coherent ballot assuming those claims are somewhat true.

I will not follow along with speech documents. I care about evidence and expertise, but only insofar as it's in your speeches.

Hello, friend.

Here is my email for the email chain:

Williamc0402@gmail.com

Here is my short biography for you to know who I am:
Hi, my name is William. I finished a PhD in German at NYU. My focus was on literature, critical theory, and to some extent black studies.
As for debate experience, I used to debate for CUNY debate in college for 4 years, reading critical arguments in the Northeast. I won a handful of regional tournaments and broke at CEDA. I also coach for Brooklyn Technical High School (sometimes we sign up at Brooklyn Independent). I have been coaching there for 8 years and have had my debaters make it far in national tournaments as well as qualify for the TOC a bunch. Because I work with Brooklyn Tech (a UDL school), I am also connected to the NYCUDL.

Here is the start of my paradigm:
As everyone else says, rule of thumb: DO WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT
Whether your go-to strat is to throw stuff at the wall and hope it sticks, a straight up disad/cp, or a one-off K; I will be more than happy to judge your round…
given that you:

1) Have a claim, warrant, and impact to every argument. It isn’t an argument absent these three elements, and I will have some trouble adjudicating what you’ve said.
2) Properly explain your positions—don’t make an assumption that I know you the abbreviations you use, the specific DA scenario you're going for (perhaps fill me in on the internal link chains), or the K jargon you're using. Help me out!
3) Have comparative analysis of evidence, arguments, and preformative styles between your own positions compared to those of the other team.

4) Frame things— tell me how I should prioritize impacts otherwise I will default to util (see section at the bottom)
5) Be Persuasive, it will go a long way to making me to sign my ballot your way if you can make the round enjoyable, touching, funny, etc – it will also help your speaks.
6) Write the ballot for me in your 2nr/2ar, tell me how you win. Take risks, and don’t go for everything. Prioritize your best offense and tell me why that offense is critical to evaluating the round—force me to evaluate the debate through a prism that has you winning

Also, some other things:

1) I will default to competing interpretations and util unless an alternative mechanisms of evaluating the round are introduced

2) I will default to rejecting the argument not the team unless you tell me otherwise

3) I will avoid looking at evidence unless there is a dispute over evidence in a round or a debater spins it as part of being persuasive
4) I am an open minded judge, and respect all “realms” of debate though my own experience debating and coaching revolves around mostly K debate.

With this update, I hope to better match my theory of judging to my habits in practice.

I have found myself nearly obsessed with specific, substantive engagement between the two teams — and increasingly frustrated when one team sidesteps opportunities for well-evidenced clash between arguments in favor of generic, all-purpose positions or supposed trump cards that set aside the majority of the debate. The team at fault — given its responsibility to respond — is often the negative, and on some topics I vote aff at a dizzying clip.

Ironically, many of the arguments that promise a simpler route to victory — theory, T — pay lip service to “specific, substantive clash” and ask me to disqualify the other team for avoiding it. Yet when you go for theory or T, you have ​canceled this opportunity for an interesting substantive debate​ and are asking me to validate your decision. That carries a burden of proof unlike debating the merits. As Justice Jackson might put it, this is when my authority to intervene against you is at its maximum.

Of course, many of the best strategies answer the ultimate question in your favor even while conceding great quantities of your opponents’ arguments. Elegant debating — specific, substantive engagement at the level of what matters — will be rewarded. For instance, a counterplan that solves the aff advantages (relieving you of the responsibility to disprove them), if it competes with the specifics of what the aff is advocating, is an ideal example of substantive engagement.

Unsurprisingly, questions of ​link and ​competition​ interest me greatly. This is our vocabulary for measuring clash. Before determining what’s most important, I determine what’s relevant.

A final note: You will do far better on theory arguments if they inform my decision rather than making it for me. Maybe that means “rejecting the argument.” Maybe that means getting a ruling from me along the way: I am happy to pause the CX for a 30-second intervention on agent specification or conditionality, and we can use the remaining 90 minutes for an entertaining and educational debate.

KRHAMRICK@GMAIL.COM

I've been judging debates for a long time. I prefer listening to debates wherein each team presents and executes a well-researched strategy for winning. The ideological flavor of your arguments matters less to me than how you establish clash with your opponents’ arguments. I am open to most anything, understanding that sometimes “you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do” to win the debate.

At the end of the debate, I vote for the team that defends the superior course of action. My ballot constitutes an endorsement of one course relative to another. To win the debate, the affirmative must prove their course is preferable when compared to the status quo or negative alternatives. That being said, I interpret broadly exactly what constitutes a plan/course of action. An alternative is proven a superior course of action when it is net beneficial compared to the entirety of the plan combined with part or parts of the alternative. Simply solving better than the affirmative is not enough: the alternative must force choice. Likewise, claiming a larger advantage than the affirmative is not enough to prove the alternative competitive. A legitimate permutation is defined as the entirety of the "plan" combined with parts or parts of the alternative. Mere avoidance of potential or "unknown" disadvantages, or a link of omission, is insufficient: the negative must read win a link and impact in order to evaluate the relative merits of the plan and the alternative. The 2AC saying something akin to "Perm - do the plan and all noncompetitive parts of the counterplan/alternative" is merely a template for generating permutation ideas, rather than a permutation in and of itself. It's your job to resolve the link, not mine.

I believe there is an inherent value to the topic/resolution, as the topic serves as the jumping off point for the year's discussion. The words of the topic should be examined as a whole. Ultimately, fairness and ground issues determine how strict an interpretation of the topic that I am willing to endorse. The most limiting interpretation of a topic rarely is the best interpretation of a topic for the purposes of our game. The topic is what it is: merely because the negative wishes the topic to be smaller (or the affirmative wishes it bigger, or worded a different way) does not mean that it should be so. An affirmative has to be at its most topical the first time it is run.

I don’t care about any of your SPEC arguments. The affirmative must use the agent specified in the topic wording; subsets are okay. Neither you nor your partner is the United States federal government. The affirmative is stuck with defending the resolutional statement, however I tend to give the affirmative significant leeway as to how they choose to define/defend it. The affirmative is unlikely to persuade me criticisms of advocacy of USFG action should be dismissed as irrelevant to an evaluation of policy efficacy. I believe that switch-side debating is good.

All theory arguments should be contextualized in terms of the topic and the resultant array of affirmative and negative strategies. Reciprocity is a big deal for me, i.e., more negative flex allows for more aff room to maneuver and vice versa). Conditional, topical, and plan inclusive alternatives are presumptively legitimate. A negative strategy reliant on a process counterplan, consultation counterplan, or a vague alternative produces an environment in which in which I am willing to allow greater maneuverability in terms of what I view as legitimate permutations for the affirmative. I’ve long been skeptical of the efficacy of fifty state uniform fiat. Not acting, i.e., the status quo, always remains an option.

Debate itself is up for interrogation within the confines of the round.

I tend to provide a lot of feedback while judging, verbal and otherwise. If you are not clear, I will not attempt to reconstruct what you said. I tend to privilege the cards identified in the last two rebuttals as establishing the critical nexus points of the debate and will read further for clarification and understanding when I feel it necessary. Reading qualifications for your evidence will be rewarded with more speaker points. Reading longer, more warranted evidence will be rewarded with significantly more consideration in the decision process. Clipping cards is cheating and cardclippers should lose.

I value clash and line-by-line debating. Rarely do I find the massive global last rebuttal overview appealing. Having your opponent's speech document doesn't alleviate the need for you to pay attention to what's actually been said in the debate. Flow and, for god's sake, learn how to efficiently save/jump/email/share your speech document. I generally don't follow the speech doc in real time.

"New affs bad" is dumb; don't waste your time or mine. When debating a new aff, the negative gets maximum flexibility.

I believe that both basic civil rights law as well as basic ethics requires that debaters and judges conduct themselves in rounds in a manner that protects the rights of all participants to an environment free of racial/sexual hostility or harassment.

Sam Heller

he/him/his or they/them/their

I haven't been heavily involved in debate since 2016, so don't expect me to up to date on trends in the activity or on this year's topic.

Be clear - I flow from your speech, not your speech doc.

I'm not a fan of ridiculous and contrived internal link chains. I think that the way debate as an activity values high-impact, low-probability risks over lower-impact, high-probability risks is fundamentally flawed and bad for the activity. You don't need a nuclear war/extinction impact for me to care about what you're saying. That being said, this doesn't mean if you make a nuke war claim I'm going to ignore everything else you say. It just means my default impact framing is not going to be "any risk of extinction outweighs everything else" like it is for most judges.

Debate is about arguments, not cards. You can make a good argument without reading a card, and you cannot use reading a card as a substitute for articulating an argument. Also, a card that simply states a claim without providing a warrant is useless.

If I don't know what the aff does after the 1AC, then the neg has a lot of leniency in their ground. You don't get to wait until the 2AC/1AR/2AR to explain the aff.

Framework/Topicality - K affs and T/Framework were the fastest-changing parts of debate when I left the activity, so I assume I'm behind the times a bit on these debates. That being said, I don't think I judge them fundamentally different than other args in debate. The neg needs to answer case, and the aff can't only extend case - they also need DAs to the neg's interpretation.

Reading cards after the round - I do it, but primarily only to verify the claims made in the debate when there's a disagreement between the two teams (i.e. aff: "our card says x", neg: "no it actually says y"). I will not give you credit for arguments in a card that are not articulated during the round.

I have a soft spot for arguments older than I am (inherency, T-Vagueness, voting net on presumption) - I know these args died for a reason but if you find a way to make them I'd be excited!

GDS 12, Harvard 16

Overriding principle is, whatever arguments you make, I'll do my best to evaluate the round objectively. Also, try to have fun. It's why we debate, and if it's not, it should be.

The rest of this is just attempting to outline my default thoughts (which with few exceptions are all malleable). Hopefully it's helpful!

General Thoughts (that apply to most arguments)

Dropped arguments are true, but need to have a link and impact to matter. In addition, the way I think about drops is that an argument is new if my understanding changed substantially since it was last articulated. If your strategy is reading a 3 line politics thumper in the 2AC with the tag "thumper", I'm probably going to give the neg reasonable leeway.


I tend to think evidence is important and research is one of the more valuable aspects of debate. This is true for both "critical" and "policy" arguments. All else equal, I think that theory interpretations that incentivize good research are preferable to ones that don't.


That being said, I always hated it when judges would substitute reading evidence for paying attention and flowing debates - evidence is just an effective way to substantiate and support arguments you're already making (and impacting). I'm pretty unlikely to call for every card and piece together a messy debate after the fact. Weaving together all the research you've done into a cohesive narrative for why I should vote for you is difficult, but awesome if you do it well.

Theory

Didn't really go for theory much until the very end, but genuinely enjoy thinking about it. Some thoughts on how it often goes down:

-tend to prefer logical / predictable interpretations over arbitrary / useful ones.

-my default is that the neg either gets no conditionality or infinite conditionality. have yet to hear a logical explanation for any number in between.

-don't think you get much from reading evidence that your counterplan is awesome and educational. a counterplan can be awesome and educational, but still not be competitive.

-on the other hand, evidence can be very helpful in establishing counterplan competition, but primarily by defining words in the plan to generate an opportunity cost. I do not think the aff automatically gets to define the words in the plan just because they're aff. mostly defer to the best evidence, or the best logical interpretation of the plan, whichever side presents it.

-topicality debates are great and I wish they happened more often. but note, I've only been to one tournament this year, so if you're going for T at the NDT (2018), be aware that I might not automatically know what all the acronyms or references to other teams' affs are, and take the 10-15 seconds to explain them.

-slow down! I genuinely want to flow everything, but if you're reading a theory block like a card, I'm going to process it like the text of a card...


Disads

Trying to mathematically calculate risk in debate seems futile, but you can win that something is so improbable that its magnitude is irrelevant. Practically, this means I don't think you need "terminal impact defense" to beat a disad (or to win a disad against an aff with an "extinction" impact). Most impact defense is internal link defense anyway. Probably not surprisingly, I've always been a bit puzzled by the staying power of "big stick" extinction/nuclear war impacts.

I can't remember the last time I've voted for a politics disad. Most iterations I've seen recently don't rise to the threshold of "this makes sense" (and that's before the 2AC even starts).

Kritiks

Don't have particularly strong feelings one way or the other. In general, I think learning about the stuff should be inevitable, even if you never go for the k in your life (you still have to answer it, and good luck if you have no idea what you're talking about).

I find fairness impacts much more compelling than education impacts when the neg is going for framework. It's pretty easy for me to understand why the aff not reading a plan makes it significantly harder for the neg to win, but it's much harder for me to understand why traditional policy education is inherently more valuable than the literature associated with most k's.

Random other stuff

As a general rule, I will not vote on assertions that the other team should lose because of something that happened outside the current round (i.e. the time between the start of the 1AC and end of the 2AR). I have zero interest in adjudicating ongoing interpersonal disputes between debaters/coaches/teams. If this is your strat, don't pref me.


Paperless: Unless everything is taking an exceptionally long time, I usually don't care. I understand that computers sometimes fail and mistakes happen. If your computer crashes in the middle of your speech/prep, just say so and you can stop the timer while you fix it.

Leo (Sung) Kim
Harvard ‘17
Katy Taylor ‘13
hmu at leosjk07@gmail.com if u got questions thanks

i am not the leo kim who will be at the berkeley tournament

prefer email chains; flashing doesn't count as prep unless it's egregious

NOT to be confused with the Leo Kim from California (plz email the right Leo Kim)

updated for the harvard tournament
if it helps - check out my wikis
https://opencaselist15.paperlessdebate.com/Harvard/Kim-Borbon+Aff
https://opencaselist15.paperlessdebate.com/Harvard/Kim-Borbon+Neg

Short Version

Hi. I debated at Katy Taylor and debated at Harvard for 3 years. I coached Katy Taylor Albert and Zaki (RIP sorry about osama aff), and also coached Katy Taylor's Spencer/Subbu and Patrick/Mohamed. I believe the best judges will listen to and adjudicate as impartially as possible any argument and style of debate. You should do whatever you are best at.

I don't think you should pref me based on any perceived ideological bias. My preference is for good arguments and interesting debates.

That being said, I try to leave out any biases or predispositions I may have and be a fair and attentive judge. YOU DO YOU.

I am very reluctant to vote on arguments made in the text of cards but not in the debate. If you think you have better evidence you should explain why.

A new argument is one that could not have been predictably deduced from my understanding of its previous form.

Also - I will vote on an argument only if I can explain it to the other team. This is an arbitrary standard, but it’s the best one I could come up with and it encourages you to communicate more so I’m ok with it.

Clarity over Speed – you can be the fastest debater in the world but it doesn’t matter if you are unclear and nobody can understand you. Speed is not how fast you can spout the words but how fast you can communicate the words. Emphasis and ethos = more speaker points. Also slow down in the T debate and theory debate.

Arguments – Arguments are arguments regardless of what form they take so do whatever you like to do and what you are best at. Don’t assume that I am familiar with the specific details of your disadvantage or that I am familiar with whatever critical literature you read. I just want a fun, well-flushed debate where everything is explained well and why it matters to me in the debate round. 

Ethics- don’t cheat, don’t lie, don’t be rude, don’t say messed up things, don't clip obviously. There is a line between sassy/funny and being an ignorant asshole. 

If you have any questions, definitely feel free to ask before the round!

Be smart. Be funny. Relax. This will help your speaks. Have fun!

+0.5 speaks to the team that uses less than one min of prep and wins


Specifics

I understand that my short version isn't very helpful for people looking for very specific stuff, so I'll write stuff out.

Clarity over Speed – you can be the fastest debater in the world but it doesn’t matter if you are unclear and nobody can understand you. Speed is not how fast you can spout the words but how fast you can communicate the words. Emphasis and ethos = more speaker points. Also slow down in the T debate and theory debate.

CX – a lot of debates can be won in cross-x and a good cross-x can be very devastating and very positive for speaker points (or negative if you seem like you have no idea what you are talking about). Win links to your stuff in cross-x, win no-links to their stuff in cross-x, etc. I will listen to cross-x.

Arguments - Arguments are arguments regardless of what form they take so do whatever you like to do and what you are best at. Don’t assume that I am familiar with the specific details of your disadvantage or that I am familiar with whatever critical literature you read. I just want a fun, well-flushed debate where everything is explained well and why it matters to me in the debate round. I was as comfortable taking the deterrence DA in the 1NR as I was taking the Metaphysics of Presence K - so don't pref me based on what you think is an ideological bias.

Kritiks and the like - Ks are cool. I did a lot of K stuff in high school, and still do a lot of K stuff in college. My academic interest (beyond statistics and stuff) are in security studies and IR. Things I don't like when judging K debates: buzzwords thrown around without unpacking them or explaining their significance, not engaging with the aff, assuming I know the lit, trying too hard to be BoSu or Mich KM but executing poorly, lack of alternative explanation in the 2NR, no external impact. Things I do like when judging K debates: specific analysis, sass, showing off your knowledge, K tricks, smart CX strategies to set up the K, cool explanations in the 2NR of how the K solves the case, good impact calculus.

K Affs - Also cool. I don't believe that there is a necessity for a plan text but I do wish the affirmative is in the direction of the topic, or at least about the topic. That said, if you can robustly defend your method/the important of your advocacy, sure go for it.

Framework: Framework debates, to me, are basically a debate over competing visions of debate and methods. Impact calculus please. "Destroys fairness" isn't an impact - why does fairness matter? What's the impact to fairness or why is switch-side debate good? what makes the neg's model of debate better than the aff's model of debate? why is the aff's model of debate good? Framework debates are fun to judge if they're done well! Yay!

Disadvantages - I like timely/specific DA's. I like politics. I like DA's. I don't know what else to say here. Good specific analysis of turns case and impact calculus = higher speaker points. Also I am not afraid to vote on no risk of the disad. Oh, btw, not a big fan of rider DAs but whatever I'll vote for it if you win it.

Counterplans- I think plan plus counterplans are solved by perm do both. I like really tricky PICs. I usually err neg on theory questions such as PICs bad, bad, etc, but they can definitely be won in front of me. However, I don’t want the 2AR to be PICs bad. Just engage with the substance yo. Also, if your CP has like 10 planks and you say you can kick planks, I'm more likely to be aff-leaning on theory args that I usually lean neg on (like condo). #DontBringConsultJapanBack

T/Theory: [copied and pasted from my roommate Madhu Vijay's philosphy aka MadDog Madhu] The team that wins the tech will win my ballot, regardless of the underlying argument's quality. (Of course, it's harder to make a compelling, technically sound case for something like no neg fiat.) Impact calculus is absolutely vital and underutilized. My substantive preferences aren't very relevant -- I will say that in general, the closer a CP is to the plan and the less specific differentiating evidence the neg has, the less likely I will be to believe it's competitive/legitimate. That is a very loose preference, and tech >>>>>>>> vague predispositions here. I tend to default to competing interpretations because reasonability is often debated vaguely/poorly by aff teams; if you can do otherwise, do so. As every judge says, theory/T are like DA's; you should debate them as such, and I will judge them as such. A caveat is that if you do things like not meeting your own interpretation, you'll probably lose. tbh i don't like judging theory debates because it's often done poorly

Also, I generally default to competing interps but can be persuaded otherwise (This is just the position i start out with in the debate - if you can win a disad to this preference then I will view the debate through a lens of reasonability and the same the other way). Topicality is generally a voting issue. T doesn’t cause genocide, but certain impact turns to T can be persuasive.

Case – woefully underused part of the debate. These arguments can be so strategic and when used creatively, they can be one of the most important parts of the debate. I’m not talking only defense claims like ECONOMIC COLLAPSE =/= EXTINCTION, but also impact turns and straight turns to their scenarios. Those are coolio. A well-done and well-engaged case debate = more speaker points. Smart cross-applications on either side = more speaker points.

Some self-perceived theory bias:
Aff-leaning on: Consults/Conditions, A-Spec (lol)
Neg-leaning on: Conditionality (to a certain extent), PICs bad (unless it's super abusive), Dispo

Ethics- don’t cheat, don’t lie, don’t be rude, don’t say messed up things. There is a line between sassy/funny and being an ignorant asshole. I’m fine with cursing in round if done correctly/appropriately/moderately.

If you have any questions, definitely feel free to ask before the round!

Be smart. Be funny. Relax. This will help your speaks. Have fun!

errr... if it matters, people who have really influenced me in my debate career at harvard so far (in no particular order): patrick kennedy, lundberg, mathew petersen, bradley bolman, yung michael suo  

Please put me on the chain: debate@sarahlim.com, interlakescouting@googlegroups.com (high school), debatedocs@googlegroups.com (college)

Interlake '14, Northwestern '18, affiliated with both as of 2023–24. Fairly minimal HS involvement, actively researching/coaching the college nukes topic. she/her

• I am something of a curmudgeon (”old man yells at cloud”), more truth > tech, and extremely persuaded by argumentative rigor. I really do not want to vote for stupid arguments. I want us all to elevate the standard of this activity.
• Please slow down from your top speed, especially on topicality/theory/CP texts, and especially if you're debating online. I flow on paper by listening to the speech, not by following along in the doc. I will "clear" your analytics to a reasonable extent, but I will not vote on theory I cannot flow, and I will not backfill my flow by reading your doc to compensate for your lack of clarity.
• Presumption goes to the status quo, then the aff.
• The 2NR's job is to decide what to go for. I will judge kick the counterplan/fiated counteradvocacy if and only if the 2NR instructs me to do so, and the 2AR drops this argument. Just saying some variation of “the 2NR’s job is to decide what to go for” is usually enough.
• I detest intimidation, rudeness, or snark regardless of your argument content.
• I will not use my ballot to adjudicate non-falsifiable events that occurred outside the round. For in-round behavioral accusations that are debated out (rather than stopping the round), I reserve the right to evaluate these arguments using something other than offense-defense.

Administrative

• Please time your own speeches and prep.
• If you give your final rebuttal without a computer I will award +0.3 speaker points.
• I can’t believe this has to be said: please explicitly kick offcase positions you are not extending in the block/2NR. If you do not do this, the aff can leverage this on conditionality, or at the very least as a reason the world of the 2NR is incoherent.
• I attempt to line up arguments on my flow, rather than simply flowing straight down. Ideally these orderings will coincide, but oftentimes they do not, e.g. if you jump around, skip arguments, only flow off the doc, or otherwise mess up the numbering. When misalignments occur, I waste time trying to figure out where to flow you, and miss more of your arguments. Therefore, number/skip around at your own peril.
  • Given the precarity of numbering schemes, I find it much easier to flow debaters who label the arguments they are answering, either explicitly ("2AC 4 is 'alt fails'") or via embedded clash ("1NC 4: yes China war")
• Rehighlightings must be read out loud. I will not evaluate anything “inserted” into the debate unless it is talked about in the speech.

Affirmatives

• Claiming durable fiat is a prerogative, but not an obligation, of the affirmative.
• I believe the aff gets to make permutations by default, regardless of framework or the nature of the 1AC advocacy. I am open to debates about what kinds of permutations are theoretically legitimate depending on the context, e.g. intrinsicness tests, competing methods, etc.
• Permutations are tests of competition, not advocacies; as a result, they are not offense and do not require net benefits. All permutation texts must be read (they cannot simply be inserted in the doc).

Disadvantages and internal NBs

• I believe that DAs and internal net benefits should be opportunity costs to the plan, and that this produces the fairest and most educational form of debate. Pet peeve: It’s not an “intrinsic perm”, it’s an “intrinsicness perm”, because it tests whether the neg’s offense is intrinsic to the plan. It also makes no sense to say “intrinsicness is a voting issue”, if you wanted to defend the negative should get non-intrinsic offense, the voting issue would be ”intrinsicness perms are illegitimate.”
• Most agenda politics 1NCs are incomplete arguments, and more affirmative teams should leverage the holes. “Plan popular” is link defense, not offense. “Winners win” can be offense. However, it is also a label that gets slapped onto a litany of different internal links. Some (e.g. Singer 9) require the plan be unpopular to count as a win. Others (e.g. Hirsch 13, Waldman 20) don’t really care about the direction of the link. I genuinely can’t tell what Kane 21 wants.

Counterplans

• I am extremely persuaded by analytic common-sense solvency deficits to absurd advantage CPs.
• For counterplans that compete only on "should = immediate and certain" (offsets, sunsets, recommendations, or your exciting new strategy that somehow still reads Summers 94 in the 2NC), assuming competent execution by both teams, the affirmative should almost always win my ballot. I find myself voting for these CPs due to aff execution errors, not because I find them in any way compelling.
• Textual competition is an utterly inane argument because that is not how words work in mainstream American English. Easy litmus test: if the plan says “do X” and the 2NR goes for DA/case, you are functionally going for “CP: don’t do X” which obviously represents an opportunity cost but would not be textually competitive. There are always better arguments for why a CP is illegitimate. The one exception is that this is sometimes a valid negative interpretation: for example, I can think of some topic-specific word PICs of terms of art that would be textually but not functionally competitive, with valid reasons why I should prefer certain language in the context of the aff's policymaking.
• Solvency deficits must be impacted and quantified. Corollary: you don’t need to tell me to use “sufficiency framing,” which is a three-steps-of-telephone mangling of the observation that CPs are tests of the plan’s necessity. This is like going to a DA and saying “evaluate this page using impact framing: if the negative impact outweighs the affirmative’s offense, vote negative.”

Kritiks

• I have a higher bar for the quality and execution of critical arguments. I am a very good judge for well-researched, novel/innovative Ks debated technically without much reliance on blocks. Otherwise zzzZZZZ
• Please be cognizant of your subject position as it relates to your arguments, and debate with the corresponding self-awareness.
• K vs. K rounds should maximize clash; these can be some of the most interesting positions to write.
• I think critical education is valuable and teams are unlikely to convince me otherwise. That being said, to quote Patrick Kennedy's philosophy, "I am interested in learning some things, but I am not interested in deciphering incoherent nonsense. I am not a nihilist, and I think 'things' are generally better than 'not things.' Ontology critiques are very interesting, for example, when articulated effectively. If you want to read the script of Dude, Where's My Car and claim it was an ontological critique, I don't think you want me to judge you. I guess you could win, but I think I hate you."

Topicality

• “Plantext in a vacuum” is incredibly silly because it implies I should reinterpret the words in the plan differently across different parts of the debate, which makes absolutely no sense as either a procedural locus or model of standard American English communication.
• For procedural impacts, I find clash and education more persuasive than fairness by default.
• I am unlikely to reject a team solely for being extra-topical.
• I evaluate “we meet” as a yes/no question. However, there are straightforward W/Ms and oblique W/Ms. Affirmatives depending on the latter would be advised to extend other offense in the 1AR. (Litmus test: suppose you were reading the negative’s interpretation as your own counter-interpretation. If the 2AC would include an additional line for “we meet our C/I” because it’s not blatantly obvious, then it’s an oblique W/M.)

Theory

• Please answer theory on the correct flows. These flow(s) should be present in the roadmap even if you are only answering theory and/or kicking (see above). Example: If the 2AC reads conditionality bad on the States CP and you answer it halfway through your K 2NC, whose roadmap did not include the states CP, that is not the correct flow.
• "C/I: we get what we did" is so annoying. I guess I'll vote for it, but like, why not just say conditionality is good??

Miscellany

• I think that teams often view conditionality as a blank check to make contradictory arguments, as long as they occur on different flows. I do not have substantive theoretical objections to this (assuming the neg is winning conditionality good, of course). However, debate is partly a persuasive activity, and when I hear a negative block consisting of diametrically opposed positions, I find it undermines the persuasiveness of the speech on both sides of the issue and becomes susceptible to 1AR strategic exploitation.

Director of Policy Debate @ Stanford University; Director of Debate @ Edgemont Jr./Sr. High School

(High School Constraints - Edgemont)

(College Constraints - Kentucky)

Email Chain: brian.manuel@uky.edu

2020-2021 Update: Christmas Edition

Misunderstanding Tech over Truth: Those three words hurt my soul because they've become to only symbolize that a dropped argument is a true argument in most circles; however, it should symbolize that well-done technical debate overcomes the truthful nature of any argument. I want to see you technically execute an argument you've spent time learning and understanding and I'm willing to listen to any argument that shows me this was done. This is significantly different from "I will listen to anything."

Research->Knowledge->Execution: That's the order! I love when students do a lot of column A to make column C easy.

Clarity Trumps: Speed is irrelevant to me. I've been doing debate for a quarter-century and I've judged people at various speeds. The most important part of the debate is clearly communicating ideas to an audience. I speak very fast, so I realize it's inevitable; however, if you're not understood then nothing you do matters. Remember, what you think you said is not always what the other person hears you say.

Policy Debate: What happened to strategies? The trend is to read 3-4 counterplans in the 1nc, rather than debating the case. Fewer off-case positions, with more time invested in debating the case, is usually a more successful strategy to create pressure on 2a's helping you win more ballots.

2020-2021 PF Update: December 21, 2020

I want to see the best version of you debating! As you can tell my opinions on PF have changed dramatically in the past six seasons; however, I still enjoy judging debates when you're trying your best!!

Theory: I'm totally uninterested in PF theory. It's underdeveloped, not well explained, and has no foundational basis in the activity.

Evidence: If the tournament doesn't adhere to a specific set of evidence rules, I will default to NSDA evidence rules. Paraphrasing is allowed unless otherwise prohibited, but must follow the rules.

I will no longer ask for cases or cards before the debate. I do expect that if a piece of evidence or a card doc is requested that it can be produced in a timely manner. To expedite this process, I will allow the other team to prep during the transfer time for a card doc to be sent to the other team unless it's specifically prohibited by the tournament.

Wiki: I don't look at it. My personal preference is that teams would disclose if the other team asks but I am not policing these conversations. I personally believe that understanding the arguments you are debating (if they've been read before) produces better debate; however, am uninterested in listening to a debate about disclosure being good or bad unless something unethical was done during the disclosure process.

2017-2018 PF TOC Update: April 23rd, 2018

As you can see I used to have a very strong leaning towards how evidence needs to be presented during a debate. I've backtracked pretty substantially on this point. Therefore, I won't ask for your case ahead of time. However, I do still prefer evidence that is directly quoted and cited according to the rules of the tournament we are at. I do not like paraphrasing and will only accept paraphrasing as a logical argument to be made in the round and will not credit you for reading a qualified author.

I know a lot about debate, arguments, and the topics you are debating. I have an extremely competitive set of students that are constantly talking about the topic, I tutor students around the world in PF, and I generally like to be educated on the things that students will debate in front of me.

Beyond what I've said above, I'll give you an additional piece of advice: If you would strike Stefan Bauschard or Amisha Mehta then you'd probably want to strike me. I tend to fall somewhere in between where they are at in their philosophies.

Last but not least, I don't intend to steal your cards...we have more than we can use...however if it means you'll throw me up on a Reddit post that can get over 100+ responses then maybe I'll have to start doing it!

**Disregard the section about asking me to conflict you if you feel uncomfortable debating in front of me since I've judged minimally and don't have any experience judging any of the teams in the field more than once therefore, it doesn't apply to you**

2016-2017 Season Update: September 11, 2016

HS Public Forum Update: This is my first year really becoming involved in Public Forum Debate. I have a lot of strong opinions as far as the activity goes. However, my strongest opinion centers on the way that evidence is used, miscited, paraphrased, and taken out of context during debates. Therefore, I will start by requiring that each student give me a copy of their Pro/Con case prior to their speech and also provide me a copy of all qualified sources they'll cite throughout the debate prior to their introduction. I will proactively fact-check all of your citations and quotations, as I feel it is needed. Furthermore, I'd strongly prefer that evidence be directly quoted from the original text or not presented at all. I feel that those are the only two presentable forms of argumentation in debate. I will not accept paraphrased evidence. If it is presented in a debate I will not give it any weight at all. Instead, I will always defer to the team who presented evidence directly quoted from the original citation. I also believe that a debater who references no evidence at all, but rather just makes up arguments based on the knowledge they've gained from reading, is more acceptable than paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing to me is a shortcut for those debaters who are too lazy to directly quote a piece of text because they feel it is either too long or too cumbersome to include in their case. To me, this is laziness and will not be rewarded.

Beyond that, the debate is open for the debaters to interpret. I'd like if debaters focused on internal links, weighing impacts, and instructing me on how to write my ballot during the summary and final focus. Too many debaters allow the judge to make up their mind and intervene with their own personal inclinations without giving them any guidance on how to evaluate competing issues. Work Hard and I'll reward you. Be Lazy and it won't work out for you.

NDT/CEDA Update: I'm getting older and I'm spending increasingly more hours on debate (directing, coaching, and tabulating at the HS and College level) than I used to. I really love the activity of debate, and the argumentative creativity being developed, but I'm slowly starting to grow hatred toward many of the attitudes people are adopting toward one another, which in turn results in me hating the activity a little more each day. I believe the foundational element of this activity is mutual respect amongst competitors and judges. Without this foundational element, the activity is doomed for the future.

As a result, I don't want to be a part of a debate unless the four debaters in the room really want me to be there and feel I will benefit them by judging their debate. I feel debate should be an inclusive environment and each student in the debate should feel comfortable debating in front of the judge assigned to them.

I also don’t want people to think this has to do with any single set of arguments being run. I really enjoy academic debates centered on discussions of the topic and/or resolution. However, I don’t prefer disregarding or disrespectful attitudes toward one another. This includes judges toward students, students toward judges, students toward observers, observers toward students, and most importantly students toward students.

As I grow older my tolerance for listening to disparaging, disregarding, and disrespectful comments from the participants has completely eroded. I'm not going to tolerate it anymore. I got way better things to do with my time than listen to someone talk down to me when I've not done the same to them. I treat everyone with respect and I demand the same in return. I think sometimes debaters, in the heat of competition, forget that even if a judge knows less about their lived/personal experience or hasn’t read as much of their literature as they have; the judges, for the most part, understand how argumentation operates and how debates are evaluated. Too many debaters want to rely on the pref sheet and use it to get judges who will automatically check-in, which is antithetical to debate education. Judges should and do vote for the "worse" or "less true" arguments in rounds when they were debated better. Debate is a performative/communicative activity. It's not about who wrote the best constructive only. It's about how teams clash throughout the debate.

Therefore, as a result, I will allow any person or team to ask me to conflict them if they feel uncomfortable debating in front of me or feel that the current system of judge placement requires them to prefer me since I'm a better fit than the other judge(s). I won't ask you any questions and won't even respond to the request beyond replying "request honored". Upon receiving the request I will go into my tabroom.com account and make sure I conflict you from future events. I feel this way you'll have a better chance at reducing the size of the judge pool and you'll get to remove a judge that you don't feel comfortable debating in front of which will narrow the number of judges available to you and might allow you to get more preferable judges. My email is brian.manuel@uky.edu. Please direct all conflict requests to this email.

2014-2015 Season Update: September 2, 2014 (The gift that keeps on giving!!)

The following are not for the faint of heart!

Some days you just can't get ready in the morning without being bothered. Then you just need to be cheered up and it fails or someone threatens to eat your phone.
However, when it's all said and done you can at least sleep having sweet dreams.

**On a more serious note. Dylan Quigley raised a point on the College Policy Debate Facebook group about what "competition" means when people are judging debates. Therefore, I'll go with this answer "Because this is an emerging debate with no clear consensus, I would encourage judges to let the debaters hash out a theory of competition instead of trying to create one for them. I think in an era where students are taking their power to mold the "world of debate" they debate in it is especially important for us judges to *listen* to their arguments and learn from their theories. No shade towards the original post, I just think it's worthwhile to emphasize the relationship between "new debate" (whatevs that is) and student's ability to create theories of debate on their own instead of choosing a theory that's imposed on them." However, in the absence of these debates happening in the round I will default to a traditional interpretation of "competition." This interpretation says the neg must prove their alternative method/advocacy is better than the affirmative method/advocacy or combination of the affirmatives method/advocacy and all or part of the negatives method/advocacy. Also in these situations, I'll default to a general theory of opportunity cost which includes the negative burden of proving the affirmative undesirable.

2013-2014 Season Update: December 25, 2013 (Yes, it's Christmas...so here are your presents!!)

If you love to debate as much as Sukhi loves these cups, please let it show!!

If you can mimic this stunt, you'll thoroughly impress me and be well rewarded: Sukhi Dance

And you thought you had a sick blog!!

Also, why cut cards when you can have sick Uke skills like these and these!!

To only be shown up by a 2-year-old killing it to Adele

Finally, we need to rock out of 2013 with the Stanford version of the Harlem Shake by Sukhi and KJaggz

2012-2013 Season Update: August 22, 2012

Instead of forcing you to read long diatribes (see below) about my feelings on arguments and debate practices. I will instead generate a list of things I believe about debate and their current practices. You can read this list and I believe you'll be able to adequately figure out where to place me on your preference sheet. If you'd like to read more about my feelings on debate, then continue below the fold! Have a great season.

1. TKO is still in play, and will always be that way!

2. You must win a link to a DA - if you don't talk about it I'm willing to assign it zero risk. Uniqueness doesn't mean there is a risk of a link.

2a. "Issue Specific Uniqueness" IS NOT a utopian answer to all affirmative arguments.

3. You must defend something on the aff - by doing so it also implies you should be able to defend your epistemological assumptions underlying that advocacy.

4. T is about reasonability, not competing interpretations. This doesn't mean every affirmative is reasonably topical.

5. Debate should be hard; it's what makes it fun and keeps us interested.

6. Research is good - it's rewarding, makes you smarter, and improves your arguments.

7. "Steal the entire affirmative" strategies are bad. However, affirmative teams are even worse at calling teams out on it. This means they are still very much in play. Therefore, affirmatives should learn how to defeat them, instead of just believing they'll somehow go away.

8. There are other parts to an argument other than the impact. You should try talking about them, I heard they're pretty cool.

9. Your affirmative should have advantages that are intrinsic to the mechanism you choose to defend with the aff. Refer to #6, it helps solve this dilemma.

10. Have fun and smile! The debaters, judges, and coaches in this activity are your lifelong friends and colleagues. We are all rooting you on to succeed. We all love the activity or we wouldn't be here. If you don't like something, don't hate the player, hate the game!

Clipping/Cross-reading/Mis-marking: I hear that this is coming back. To prosecute cheating, the accusing team needs hard evidence. A time trial is not hard evidence. A recording of the speech must be presented. I will stop the debate, listen to the recording, and compare it to the evidence read. If cheating occurred, the offending debater and their partner will receive zero speaker points and a loss. I'd also encourage them to quit. I consider this offense to be more serious than fabricating evidence. It is an honor system that strikes at the very core of what we do here.

An additional caveat that was discussed with me at a previous tournament - I believe that the status quo is always a logical option for the negative unless it is explicitly stated and agreed to in CX or it's won in a speech.

Newly Updated Philosophy - November 18, 2011

So after talking to Tim Aldrete at USC, he convinced me that I needed more carrots and fewer sticks in my philosophy. Therefore, I have a small carrot for those debaters who wish to invoke it. It's called a T.K.O (Technical Knockout). This basically means that at any point of the debate you believe you've solidly already won the debate, beyond a reasonable doubt, (dropped T argument, double turn, a strategic miscue that is irreparable by the other team) you can invoke a TKO and immediately end the debate. If a team chooses this path and succeeds, I will give them 30 speaker points each and an immediate win. If the team chooses to invoke this but it's unclear you've TKO'd the other team or in fact choose wrong, you obviously will lose and your points will be severely affected. Who dares to take the challenge?

Past Updated Philosophy - September 9, 2010

I am currently the Assistant Coach @ Lakeland/Panas High School, College Prep School, and Harvard Debate. I’m also involved with Research & Marketing for Planet Debate. This topic will be my 14th in competitive debate and 10th as a full-time coach. Debate is my full-time job and I love this activity pretty much more than anything I’ve ever done in my life. I enjoy the competition, the knowledge gained, and the people I’ve come to be friends with, and likewise I really enjoy people who have the same passion I have for this activity.

I last posted an update to my judge philosophy a number of years ago and think it is finally time I revisit it and make some changes.

First, I’ll be the first to admit that I probably haven’t been the best judge the last few years and I think a majority of that has come from pure exhaustion. I’ve been traveling upwards of 20+ weekends a year and am constantly working when I am home. I don’t get much time to re-charge my batteries before I’m off to another tournament. Then while at tournaments I’m usually putting in extremely late nights cutting cards and preparing my teams, which trades off with being adequately awake and tuned in. This year I’ve lessened my travel schedule and plan to be much better rested for debates than I was in previous years.

Second, since my earlier days of coaching/judging, my ideology about debate has changed somewhat. This new ideology will tend to complement hard-working teams and disadvantage lazy teams who try and get by with the same generics being run every debate. Don’t let this frighten you, but rather encourage you to become more involved in developing positions and arguments. When this happens I’m overly delighted and reward you with higher speaker points and more than likely a victory.

Email: tapachecolbdb8er@gmail.com; also on debatedocs if that matters.

***2019 NDT/TOC Update***

1) Background

A) College- I have judged fewer than 15 college debates on the executive powers topic. I have done some research on it.

B) High school- I have judged fewer than 20 high school debates on the immigration topic. I have done significant research on it.

C) I have legal knowledge as a background. Rarely has it made any difference in a debate. It has helped in cutting cards in providing a context I would not otherwise have regarding legal processes.

2) Debaters should be better at resolving debates and providing relative comparisons at a meta-level. Tell me why you have won a particular portion of a debate AND why that matters relative to the remainder of the debate.

3) Specificity matters to me. I have found over the course of judging that debates in the abstract are the most difficult to judge. Whether it is the specificity of a disad link or an explanation of limits on T, specificity to the context of a particular debate is critical in terms of how you contextualize your arguments.

***Old Update***

So I thought about my previous philosophy, and I didn’t think I would like it if I were a debater and read it. So I will try to provide (hopefully) more useful insight into what I think about debate. I have no idea what situations will occur and what defaults I may have given my limited amount of judging, but I think explaining what I thought about debate as a debater will help.

I just graduated from college, having debated for 4 years in high school at Loyola Blakefield and 4 years in college at the University of Mary Washington.

The way to get me to vote for you is to tell me what to vote on and how to evaluate it. Force my hand, think about the debate from a holistic perspective. Compare arguments. Make even if statements.

What did I really value that I got out of debate?

Fun- I thought debate was a ton of fun. Thinking quickly on my feet, trying to predict what people would say, cutting a ton of cards. I loved debate.

Critical thinking- I do not think anything ever made me think as hard and as complexly as debate. Limited prep time, strategic decisions needing to be made. Thinking about the best arguments to be made against a certain team or with a certain judge. Thinking the way debate teaches has helped me in undergrad, law school, and in life. It teaches a certain way of thinking that is invaluable.

Advocacy- debate taught me how to make an argument, and how to win it in front of anyone. Strip debate of the jargon, and you know how to make an argument in any context. It enhanced my paper writing and has helped me in a lot of situations I think.

How did I get this out of debate?

Rigorous testing. Equitably difficult debate where both teams rigorously test each other’s arguments produces an activity that I found fun, helped me to think critically in quick and strategic ways, and taught me how to make arguments efficiently. I fundamentally think that debate is about rigorously testing positions. You can have debates about anything, but I think this is how I would describe it to people outside of debate and is what debate should be in my normative world.

Why does this matter?

It shapes what I think about debate positions, or is my default for evaluation. This is one of many possible frames I could use. But this is where I start, and it shapes my perception of topicality, to CP competition, to Ks, to theory, to speaker points.

FW

I do think I am open to listening to alternative constructions of debate, but what that is and looks like needs to be tangible to me for me. The team that answers the question- what world of debate is most equitably rigorous wins. My presumption about rigorous testing can be challenged, and I do not know what I will think once I start judging. It is my default though. I think the topic has value insofar as it sets a stasis for argumentation from which rigorous testing commences. Topical version of the aff arguments are good, but not necessary for the neg. For the aff (saying debate bad), I think uniqueness arguments about exclusion are persuasive. I think the closer the aff is to the topic, the more persuasive reasonability becomes.

Topicality

Topicality debates should be grounded in the literature. I tend to think limits are a controlling issue in T debates because they determine whether the neg has the opportunity to rigorously test the aff. Caselists are useful for either side.

I think arguments contextual to the topic are useful. I think T is important on the oceans topic given its enormity and the lack of unified negative ground. For the aff, I am compelled by aff flex arguments like its and generic CPs make the topic awful.

CPs

For most CPs, I probably default to reject the argument not the team. I do think there are arguments that can be made that bad CPs are a reason to reject the team, but it is not my default presumption. There are two questions that I think are important to answer- does the CP rigorously test the aff AND how critical is the CP in the literature? I do think that most CP theory debates are invariably shallow which makes evaluating them difficult.

Conditionality does not differ for me from other CP theory in that the question is about rigorous testing. I do think conditionality is rampant. I think contradicting positions are bad, but can also have different implications in debates- does using the same reps you k’ed mean that perm- do the alt is legit, or that the alt fails? Probably. Contextualizing conditionality to the specific practices done in the debate makes the argument very persuasive.

My presumption is against intervening to kick the CP for the 2nr. If I am told to do it, I might if the aff drops the argument. If they don’t, I probably won’t.

College teams – Pics- I am not completely sold that all/nearly all is the death knell for pics on the college topic. My presumption for pics being good makes me think this is a debatable question, even if the resolution tries to write this out of debates.

Ks

I think topic-specific critiques can be interesting because they rigorously test the aff. Whichever team controls the role of the ballot typically wins, and neg teams should invest more if the role of the ballot is distinct from my presumption of testing. I also do not think it is strategic for K teams to not answer the aff explicitly – dropping the 1ac usually means I vote aff – meaning my bar is higher on voting for “x comes first”/ “x means the whole aff is wrong” args. Generalizations do not test the aff. Dropping the 1ac does not test the aff.

I think try or die is how I think about ks. Ks that are the strongest in persuading me control the impact uniqueness of the debate. I find aff arguments about trends in the status quo more important than other people because of that (for example, if the environment is sustainable, winning a consumption k becomes much harder). Affs should focus on alt solvency and how to evaluate impacts.

Disads

I tend to think the link controls the direction of the DA, but can be persuaded that uniqueness does.

I think zero risk is possible.

I think turns case arguments really help the neg. I think unanswered turns case arguments by the block in the 1ar are difficult for the aff to come back from.

General

You will receive a bump in speaker points if you read quals.

I flow cross-x.

Demonstrate topic knowledge.

I like specific arguments better than general ones.

I think long overviews are overrated and are a way to avoid clash.

Start impact calculus early.

Indict specific evidence- the quals and the warrants.

Explain to me why I should prefer your evidence over your opponents.

Tell me when an argument is new or dropped.

Be comprehensible.

2as should not blow off arguments on the case.

Smart arguments matter, as long as they are complete. An argument is a claim and warrant.

Clipping is a problem in the activity. Don’t do it. Don’t allege that someone else has done it without evidence via recording – you will not win otherwise. The debate community relies on shared trust. Breaking that trust or accusing someone of doing this is of the utmost seriousness.

Be organized- with yourself in the debate as well as your arguments.

Do not steal prep.

Minimize the amount of time paperless debate causes.

***Previous philosophy***

Short version

I just graduated from college, having debated for 4 years in high school at Loyola Blakefield and 4 years in college at the University of Mary Washington. I have not judged so much that there is a predisposition that is so strong not to be able to be overcome. You do you, most things are up for debate. I prefer specific strategies over general strategies regardless of what those strategies deploy. I prefer CP/Politics or Politics/Case debates. I think the real way to being happy with a decision from me is to tell me what to do and how to assess arguments in the debate. The team that tells me what to do at the end of the debate and has the best reasoning for it will win.

I like hard work. Debaters that work will hard will be rewarded for doing so. I will also work my hardest to give every debater the credit they deserve while I am making a decision.

Coaches who have had a formative impact on me – Adrienne Brovero, Daryl Burch, Tom Durkin.

Judges I liked that I would like to be like – Lawrence Granpre, Scott Harris, Fernando Kirkman, Sarah Sanchez, Patrick Waldinger. I promise I will not be as good as these people, but I use them as a model for how I want to judge.

Background

I was a 2a and a politics debater in college, and a 2n that relied on the cap k and topicality in high school. I have done significant research on the oceans topic, and a little on the college topic.

FW

I default policymaker. I think the topic is set up to be instrumentally affirmed. Again, not so much so that I will not listen to other arguments or perspectives. For the neg, I am strong believer in fairness as well as the skills that debate teaches. I think predictability is necessary for debates to happen. Topical version of the aff arguments are good, but not necessary for the neg. For the aff (saying debate bad), I think uniqueness arguments about exclusion are persuasive. I think the closer the aff is to the topic, the more persuasive reasonability becomes.

Topicality

Topicality debates should be grounded in the literature. I tend to think limits are a controlling issue in T debates. Caselists are useful for either side.

I think arguments contextual to the topic are useful. I think T is important on the oceans topic given its enormity and the lack of unified negative ground. For the aff, I am compelled by aff flex arguments like its and generic CPs make the topic awful.

CPs

For most CPs, I probably default to reject the argument not the team. That does not mean that I think that all CPs are good OR that I would be unwilling to vote on a cheating CP. I do think that most CP theory debates are invariably shallow which makes voting on them difficult. Most teams get away with bad/illegitimate CPs because the aff is terrible at executing, or the neg has some trick. I also think the more contextual a CP is within a set of literature, the harder it is to beat on theory questions. I have no predispositions on CP theory – I am willing to listen to it.

Conditionality is different than other CP theory args for me. It is certainly excessive most of the time. It gets egregious when positions contradict. Contextualizing conditionality to the specific practices done in the debate makes the argument very persuasive.

College teams – Pics- I am not completely sold that all/nearly all is the death knell for pics on the college topic. My presumption for pics being good makes me think this is a debatable question, even the resolution tries to write this out of debates. I think what is “nearly all” is what the literature says it is. I am also compelled that maybe the topic is so bad that these pics are important for the neg.

Ks

I think topic-specific critiques can be interesting. The more specific to the topic, and the more specific to the aff, the better. Whichever team controls the role of the ballot typically wins. I also do not think it is strategic for K teams to not answer the aff explicitly – dropping the 1ac usually means I vote aff – meaning my bar is higher on voting for “x comes first”/ “x means the whole aff is wrong” args.

Disads

I tend to think the link controls the direction of the DA, but can be persuaded that uniqueness does.

I think zero risk is possible.

I think turns case arguments really help the neg. I think unanswered turns case arguments by the block in the 1ar are difficult for the aff to come back from.

General

I think long overviews are overrated.

Start impact calculus early.

Be comprehensible.

Smart arguments matter, as long as they are complete.

Clipping is a problem in the activity. Don’t do it. Don’t allege that someone else has done it without evidence via recording – you will not win otherwise. The debate community relies on shared trust. Breaking that trust or accusing someone of doing this is of the utmost seriousness.

Be organized.

Do not steal prep.

Minimize the amount of time paperless debate causes.

Have fun – that’s why I do this.

me:
I debated at Michigan on the military presence topic. I was a 2A on a Baudrillard aff. On the neg I did a lot (policy & K things). In the 2016-2017 school year I coached Traverse City Central. I haven’t been regularly involved in judging/coaching since then.

general:
There's not much I won't vote on. Any well-explained and well-constructed argument is one that I would vote on. If you can explain things and give good impact calculus, I will want to vote for you and give you good speaker points!

"non-traditional" affs:
The trend of copying & pasting affs from college wikis is a terrible form of education and debate. If you can't explain the thesis of your aff, what a ballot means, etc., I won't really want to vote for you. I have no problem voting for an aff that doesn't have a plan if you debate it well.

framework:
I judge a lot of framework vs. no-plan aff debates (these are the majority of my aff debates in college). Similar to what I've written above, I think some teams that read high theory arguments in high school are a bit confused and have a difficult time explaining their aff. Framework is an appealing argument to me when it is explained contextually (when you talk about the aff). In the same vein, teams that default to framework when they don't hear a plan in the 1AC usually get out-contextualized by the affirmative when they refuse to engage the 1AC.

speaker points:
I reward people who are smart and pleasant. It's advantageous for debaters to be human-like in debates (have fun, joke around, etc.). Makes the debate more enjoyable for everyone and hopefully takes some stress away.

theory:

I lean neg when there is not clear in-round abuse, but once again, attempt to be impartial.

etc.:
Don't be mean. Debate should be a fun/educational space for everyone. That being said, if you're reading an argument or use discourse that is super offensive to someone/some group, you'll get low speaks and I most likely will not vote for you.


If you have questions you can email me at rennpasq@gmail.com

UPDATED FOR THE THE GLENBROOKS 2023

uclabdb8@gmail.com

***history***
- Director of Programs, Chicago Debates 2023-current
- Head Coach, Policy - University of Chicago Laboratory Schools 2015-2023
- Assistant Coach, PF - Fremd HS 2015-2022
- Tournament of Champions 2022, 2021, 2018, 2016
- Harvard Debate Council Summer Workshop - guest lecturer, lab leader
- UIowa 2002-2006
- Maine East (Wayne Tang gharana) 1999-2002

***brief***
- i view the speech act as an act and an art. debate is foremost a communicative activity. i want to be compelled.
- i go back and forth on kritik/performance affs versus framework which is supported by my voting record
- i enjoy k v k or policy v k debates. however i end up with more judging experience in policy v policy rounds because we're in the north shore
- academic creativity & originality will be rewarded
- clarity matters. pen time on overviews matters. i flow by ear and on paper, including your cards' warrants and cites. people have told me my flows are beautiful
- tag team cx is okay as long as its not dominating
- don't vape in my round, it makes me feel like an enabler
- i have acute hearing and want to keep it that way. kindly be considerate of your music volume. i will ask you to turn it down if it's painful or prevents me from hearing debate dialogue

**background**
identify as subaltern, he/they pronouns are fine. my academic background is medicine. i now spend my time developing programming for Chicago's urban debate league. you may be counseled on tobacco cessation.

**how to win my ballot**
*entertain me.* connect with me. teach me something. be creative. its impossible for me to be completely objective, but i try to be fair in the way i adjudicate the round.

**approach**
as tim 'the man' alderete said, "all judges lie." with that in mind...
i get bored- which is why i reward creativity in research and argumentation. if you cut something clever, you want me in the back of the room. i appreciate the speech as an act and an art. i prefer debates with good clash than 2 disparate topics. while i personally believe in debate pedagogy, i'll let you convince me it's elitist, marginalizing, broken, or racist. in determining why i should value debate (intrinsically or extrinsically) i will enter the room tabula rasa. if you put me in a box, i'll stay there. i wish i could adhere to a paradigmatic mantra like 'tech over truth.' but i've noticed that i lean towards truth in debates where both teams are reading lit from same branch of theory or where the opponent has won an overarching claim on the nature of the debate (framing, framework, theory, etc). my speaker point range is 27-30. Above 28.3-4 being what i think is 'satisfactory' for your division (3-3), 28.7 & above means I think you belong in elims. Do not abuse the 2nr.

**virtual debate**
if you do not see me on camera then assume i am not there. please go a touch slower on analytics if you expect me to flow them well. if anyone's connection is shaky, please include analytics in what you send if possible.

**novices**
Congrats! you're slowly sinking into a strange yet fascinating vortex called policy debate. it will change your life, hopefully for the better. focus on the line by line and impact analysis. if you're confused, ask instead of apologize. this year is about exploring. i'm here to judge and help :)

***ARGUMENT SPECIFIC***

**topicality/framework**
this topic has a wealth of amazing definitions and i'm always up for a scrappy limits debate. debaters should be able to defend why their departure from (Classic mode) Policy is preferable. while i don't enter the round presuming plan texts are necessary for a topical discussion, i do enjoy being swayed one way or the other on what's needed for a topical discussion (or if one is valuable at all). overall, its an interesting direction students have taken Policy. the best form of framework debate is one where both teams rise to the meta-level concerns behind our values in fairness, prepared clash, education, revolutionary potential/impotence, etc. as a debater (in the bronze age) i used to be a HUGE T & spec hack, so much love for the arg. nowadays though, the these debates tend to get messy. flow organization will be rewarded: number your args, sign post through the line-by-line, slow down to give me a little pen time. i tend to vote on analysis with specificity and ingenuity.

**kritiks, etc.**
i enjoy performance, original poetry & spoken word, musical, moments of sovereignty, etc. i find most "high theory," identity politics, and other social theory debates enjoyable. i dont mind how you choose to organize k speeches/overviews so long as there is some way you organize thoughts on my flow. 'long k overviews' can be (though seldom are) beautiful. i appreciate a developed analysis. more specific the better, examples and analogies go a long way in you accelerating my understanding. i default to empiricism/historical analysis as competitive warranting unless you frame the debate otherwise. i understand that the time constraint of debate can prevent debaters from fully unpacking a kritik. if i am unfamiliar with the argument you are making, i will prioritize your explanation. i may also read your evidence and google-educate myself. this is a good thing and a bad thing, and i think its important you know that asterisk. i try to live in the world of your kritik/ k aff. absent a discussion of conditional advocacy, i will get very confused if you make arguments elsewhere in the debate that contradict the principles of your criticism (eg if you are arguing a deleuzian critique of static identity and also read a misgendering/misidentifying voter).

**spec, ethics challenges, theory**
PLEASE DO NOT HIDE YOUR ASPEC VIOLATIONS. if the argument is important i prefer you invite the clash than evade it.

i have no way to fairly judge arguments that implicate your opponent's behavior before the round, unless i've witnessed it myself or you are able to provide objective evidence (eg screenshots, etc.). debate is a competitive environment so i have to take accusations with a degree of skepticism. i think the trend to turn debate into a kangaroo court, or use the ballot as a tool to ostracize members from the community speaks to the student/coach's tooling of authority at tournaments as well as the necessity for pain in their notion of justice. i do have an obligation to keep the round safe. my starting point (and feel free to convince me otherwise) is that it's not my job to screen entries if they should be able to participate in tournaments - that's up to tab and is a prior question to the round. a really good podcast that speaks to this topic in detail is invisibilia: the callout.

i'm finally hearing more presumption debates, which i really enjoy. i more often find theory compelling when contextualized to why there's a specific reason to object to the argument (e.g. why the way this specific perm operates is abusive/sets a bad precedent). i always prefer the clash to be developed earlier in the debate than vomiting blocks at each other. as someone who used to go for theory, i think there's an elegant way to trap someone. and it same stipulations apply- if you want me to vote for it, make sure i'm able to clearly hear and distinguish your subpoints.

**disads/cps/case**
i always enjoy creative or case specific PICs. if you're going to make a severance perm, i want to know what is being severed and not so late breaking that the negative doesn't have a chance to refute. i like to hear story-weaving in the overview. i do vote on theory - see above. i also enjoy an in depth case clash, case turn debate. i do not have a deep understanding on the procedural intricacies of our legal system or policymaking and i may internet-educate myself on your ev during your round.

**work experience/education you can ask me about**
- medical school, medicine
- clinical research/trials
- biology, physiology, gross anatomy, & pathophysiology are courses i've taught
- nicotine/substance cessation
- chicago
- udl
- coaching debate!

**PoFo - (modified from Tim Freehan's poignant paradigm):**

I have NOT judged the PF national circuit pretty much ever. The good news is that I am not biased against or unwilling to vote on any particular style. Chances are I have heard some version of your meta level of argumentation and know how it interacts with the round. The bad news is if you want to complain about a style of debate in which you are unfamiliar, you had better convince me why with, you know, impacts and stuff. Do not try and cite an unspoken rule about debate in your part of the country.

Because of my background in Policy, I tend to look at debate as competitive research or full-contact social studies. Even though the Pro is not advocating a Plan and the Con is not reading Disadvantages, to me the round comes down to whether the Pro has a greater possible benefit than the potential implications it might cause. Both sides should frame the round in terms impact calculus and or feasibility. Framework, philosophical, moral arguments are great, though I need instruction in how you want me to evaluate that against tangible impacts.

Evidence quality is very important.

I will vote with what's on what is on the flow only. I enter the round tabula rasa, i try to check my personal opinions at the door as best as i can. I may mock you for it, but I won’t vote against you for it. No paraphrasing. Quote the author, date and the exact words. Quals are even better but you don’t have to read them unless pressed. Have the website handy. Research is critical.

Speed? Meh. You cannot possibly go fast enough for me to not be able to follow you. However, that does not mean I want to hear you go fast. You can be quick and very persuasive. You don't need to spread.

Defense is nice but is not enough. You must create offense in order to win. There is no “presumption” on the Con.

I am a fan of “Kritik” arguments in PF! I do think that Philosophical Debates have a place. Using your Framework as a reason to defend your scholarship is a wise move. You can attack your opponents scholarship. Racism, sexism, heterocentrism, will not be tolerated between debaters. I have heard and will tolerate some amount of racism towards me and you can be assured I'll use it as a teaching moment.

I reward debaters who think outside the box.

I do not reward debaters who cry foul when hearing an argument that falls outside traditional parameters of PF Debate. But if its abusive, tell me why instead of just saying “not fair.”

Statistics are nice, to a point. But I feel that judges/debaters overvalue them. Some of the best impacts involve higher values that cannot be quantified. A good example would be something like Structural Violence.

While Truth outweighs, technical concessions on key arguments can and will be evaluated. Dropping offense means the argument gets 100% weight.

The goal of the Con is to disprove the value of the Resolution. If the Pro cannot defend the whole resolution (agent, totality, etc.) then the Con gets some leeway.

I care about substance more than style. It never fails that I give 1-2 low point wins at a tournament. Just because your tie is nice and you sound pretty, doesn’t mean you win. I vote on argument quality and technical debating. The rest is for lay judging.

Relax. Have fun.

The most important thing to me is that you are clear and intentional about laying out the big picture. It will help a lot for you to very explicitly say 1) what you're winning and 2) how that interacts with the other team's important arguments in a way that adds up to a ballot. I think the essential skill that the best debaters have is the ability to do this eloquently, concisely, and with the right strategic instincts. Even if you do this in a clunky and inefficient way that's still much better than not doing it at all.

The second most important thing to know is that I am not a good flow, and will miss a lot of what you're saying if you don't accommodate this. I'll try to make it clear if I'm struggling to keep up.

Finally, I've gone for and voted for lots of different arguments, and I'm happy to vote on anything as long as you keep the above in mind. For what it's worth I went for mostly DAs at the end of my career but enjoyed reading and thinking about critiques as well.

1. You have to have truth

The Blake School (Minneapolis, MN) I am the director of debate where I teach communication and coach Public Forum and World Schools. I also coach the USA Development Team and Team USA in World Schools Debate.

Public Forum

Some aspects that are critical for me

1) Be nice and respectful. Try to not talk over people. Share time in crossfire periods. Words matter, think about what you say about other people. Attack their arguments and not the people you debate.

2) Arguments must be extended in each speech. This idea of "sticky defense" and not answering arguments in the second rebuttal doesn't understand how debate works. A debater can only make strategic choices about their speech if they base it on what was said in the speech previous to them.

3) Read evidence. I don't accept paraphrasing -- this is an oral activity. If you are quoting an authority, then quote the authority. A debater should not have to play "wack a mole" to find the evidence you are using poorly. Read a tag and then quote the card, that allows your opponent to figure out if you are accurately quoting the author or over-claiming the evidence.

4) Have your evidence ready. If an opponent asks for a piece of evidence you should be able to produce it in about 60 seconds. At two minutes or so, I'm going to just say the evidence doesn't count in the round because you can't produce it. If I say the card doesn't count then the card doesn't count in the round. If you say you can't produce the card then you risk losing. That is called fabrication to cite evidence and then not be able to produce it. If I ask for a card after the round and you can't produce it, again you risk losing the round. Good evidence practices are critical if this format is to rely on citing authorities.

5) I tend to be a policymaker. If there is no offense against trying a new policy then I suggest we try the new policy as it can't hurt to try. Offense is important for both sides.

6) Use voting issues format in summary and final focus. Learn that this allows a clear story and weighing. A voting issue format includes links, impacts, and weighing and provides clarity to just "our case/their case". You are still doing the voting issues on "their flow" or "our flow".

7) Lead with labels/arguments and NOT authors. Number your arguments. For example, 1) Turn UBI increases wage negotiation -- Jones in 2019 states "quote"

8) Racist, xenophobic, sexist, classist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, and other oppressive discourses or examples have no place in debate.

Enjoy the debate and learn from this activity, it is a great one.

2017: I coach k teams and pay rent through /education/ (interestingly the current resolution). also, typically, i coach teams whose 2nr/2ar riff alongside either afro-pessimism or a certain european variation of philosophy.

2016: hi - i am a graduate student studying media theory and cultural studies coaching brooklyn technical high school (brooklyn, ny) and would like to be added to email chains via lzausen @ gmail

for me comprehension is a precondition to understanding. rigorous and textual argumentation, performance, theoretical impact assessment are all aesthetic choices valued highly. use the above words as stylistic assessments for my flow. in my opinion, the judge's roll is to facilitate; best case scenario, you clearly articulate an interpretation of what the round is, and I vote. i coach k teams. but, I hold performative affirmatives to the same degree as state action, and thus all the rhetorical, performative, logical turns are signs of misreading, and are considerably more noticeable to me with the critical team. even if I tend to vote for k / critical argumentation, I will similarly vote for nuanced permutation arguments as the easiest way for affirmative teams against the k - a competitive perm should have a net benefit. but as a judge, I attempt to come into the round with as little pretenses as possible, and if policy-orientation debate is your approach to the resolution I will certainly and easily vote on these types of arguments in the face of a incomprehensible criticism and/or blatant inattentiveness in this game we call policy debate. on this, I find that in-round education is a funnel that both types of debate can accomplish, and I’ve noticed myself more willing to continue these through on the flow.