Hi there! I debated PF for Harker for 4 years and currently am a junior at Columbia.

1) I'd prefer if you speak slowly, but I'm ok with some speed if you enunciate well. That said, spreading in PF decreases the format's accessibility to lay judges and novice debaters in my opinion.

2) Please understand (or at least make me think you understand) your warrants. I will almost never call for evidence unless there's blatant abuse/misuse of it; it's your responsibility to effectively weigh your warrants.

3) I don't flow cross-x, but I'll listen to it (and hopefully be entertained).

4) Signpost! Tell me where you are going down the flow.

5) I have a very rudimentary understanding of theory, but if you run it you must be explicit in how I should evaluate it.

6) Weigh your arguments in summary/FF (heck, you can even start in rebuttal sometimes). Don't just repeat the warrants of offensive arguments; tell me why your arguments (or their warrants/link-chains) outweigh the opponents' on timeframe, probability, magnitude, etc. In final focus, extend necessary defense and give me your offensive voters/weigh them.

Have fun, and feel free to ask me any questions you have before/after round!

update for toc: i haven't done much research on the topic, so please don't use assume I know anything.

harker 20 ->wellesley 24 and did pf in hs

set up an email chain before round and add me: amandakcheung@gmail.com

pronouns: she/her

Voting:

- everything extended in final focus must be in summary

- weigh impacts: i don't want to do the work for you cuz it probably won't work out in your favor

- tech > truth

- COLLAPSE!!! (if u don't collapse starting in second summary (though preferably you start first summary), i give you a max of 28 speaks)

- implicate turns

- if you read something progressive, tell me the role it should play in my ballot (if its like Theory or a K explain it really clearly and expect me to evaluate it as a parent judge would)

- if its like disclosure theory and your opponents seem confused/ don't know how to debate it, i think its extremely uneducational for the round and will not vote for it/ drop u

General Preferences:

- i will give u < 25 if you are condescending, rude, or making the round unsafe (misgendering anyone's pronouns, being sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist etc)

- speak as fast as you want as long as you're clear (i will stop flowing if you are too unclear). if you think you might be too fast or unclear (zoom quality etc) send a speech doc before your speech or ill just go off of whatever i could understand which will probably hurt you

- second rebuttal should frontline defense from the argument(s) that you are collapsing on and all offense

- second flight should preflow before the round

- ill give u up to a minute to look for evidence (more flexible if there's a lot called) and after that, it comes out of ur prep. also please send CUT CARDS not paraphrases or links to articles

- if you read a TW, please provide an anonymous out (google form etc) for your opponents and anyone in the room. if you don't do this, i will say that i feel uncomfortable regardless of the argument and make you read something else.

most importantly, debate's a safe space; if there's anything i can do to make the round more accessible, pls lmk!!

feel free to pm me with any questions u have on fb or amandakcheung@gmail.com

Please put me on the chain - qtcc@bu.edu

Harker 20' | BU 24'

I did LD at Harker (Go Eagles!), went for a lot of policy arguments with a little bit of K stuff. Now I study computers and philosophy at Boston University.

Biggest thing: I very rarely evaluate theory. See more thoughts below.

Rules that are set in stone

- Arguments that are blatantly sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. and clearly made in bad faith means an instant loss, 0 speaks, and an uncomfortable conversation with your coach. If it's clear the debate is being made violent the debate ends. If you have a question about an argument, ask before the round.

- if you feel uncomfortable participating in the debate (your opp. triggered you, accidentally misgendered you, etc) feel free to discretely email or talk to me if you're uncomfortable making it an issue in the debate and we'll all work to make the debate a more productive space

- If your opponent is speaking too quickly or unclearly for you to flow, you have a right to call clear.

- I won't flow arguments made after the timer ends.

-I'll evaluate evidence ethics and other cheating challenges per tournament rules.

General

I don't think judging from a tabla rasa perspective is either possible nor desirable. The way I make determinations about what is true and false, in the real world and in debate, comes from a Bayesian perspective where I have shifting confidence in the truth of things given my knowledge and exposure to them. Generally, overcoming these priors requires presenting evidence to the contrary proportional to how far away from my current position, and my confidence in that position is. I find that this makes me a bit of an evidence hack in the sense that I frequently look at evidence presented even when not asked to to assess how strongly my priors should be shifted vis a vis a given argument.

Examples:

I have a high certainty that the Pyramids of Giza are in Egypt. To win that they are actually in China would require outrageously strong argumentation or evidence because it is a position very far outside my belief.

I have low confidence that act utilitarianism is true. To win that Kantian ethics or Hobbesian ethics are correct would only require a minimum viable argument to the contrary.

I have a moderate amount of confidence that there is alien life somewhere in the universe. Winning that they are in our galaxy/sort of nearby would require some evidence, but would not be challenging because it is close to my existing beliefs. Winning the government is concealing terrestrial-alien contact would require a great deal of very strong evidence. Winning there are Alien shape-shifters walking on Earth among us would be virtually impossible.

The rest of my paradigm is an attempt to outline the prior beliefs I have most relevant to debate and what I find compelling (and not) to overcoming them. Broadly, I find my beliefs are pretty aligned with common sense, but I intentionally shoot for epistemic humility (I have low confidence about things I am not an expert in) so it is very unlikely I will totally zap an argument you have evidence for because I vaguely thought it might be incorrect.

About argumentation/debate things: Arguments that are dropped are given a "full weight" of access to change my priors, but not all arguments pass the threshold needed to do that. Saying "The Pyramids of Giza are in Colombia because I think I read it in a book once" is an argument, but does not swing my prior much so if the other side drops it that does not automatically mean I think the Pyramids are in Colombia. My beliefs are changed more aggressively by a] arguments that are explained in-depth and b] by arguments that cite highly qualified authors working closely in the field in which you are arguing.

About the Kritik: I have a moderate amount of confidence that the world is too complex to be totally explained by one social or political philosophy. I have a small amount of confidence in the idea that debate should soley be about the desirability of the plan. I have high confidence that the plan and Aff should be counted at least somewhat in my determination of the resolutional question. I think psychoanalysis is pretty silly. I am highly confident that reading framework/topicality is not violent. Generally, I find it to be the onus of Affirmatives reading explicitly non-topical affirmatives to explain in great detail why I should vote Aff beyond the Aff just being true.

Topicality

I have a moderate amount of confidence that evaluating the plan text in a vacuum is the best way to determine if the plan is topical, and arguments that attempt to argue a thing the plan's solvency claims they do is not in the resolution are better made as solvency arguments. I require a relatively high degree of certainty that the Negative is correct before I will vote on topicality. I usually need definitions that define the words in the resolution, and clearly and strongly exclude the Affirmative, to feel comfortable voting Neg on T. I have a moderate amount of confidence that predictability is more important than "pragmatic" concerns like limits, ground, etc.

Theory

- I have very strong opinions about theory that you cannot change my mind about (you can think of these as "unchangable priors") I have and will give decisions that where I throw out a theory argument most people are fine with. Generally, if you find yourself wanting to go for theory against a counterplan (process cps bad, delay cps bad, etc.) you are better off winning they do not compete somehow.

- T starts as drop the debater, but never an RVI, theory is always drop the argument, and never an RVI. Exception is disclosure theory, which is drop the debater.

- Arguments I will evaluate: non-resolutional actor fiat (like I-Fiat or States), disclosure unless there has clearly been no good faith attempt to get it. Unlikely I vote on stuff like "must have complete round reports" or whatever, but if their disclosure practices are truly terrible and you can explain why this is probably ok. Misdisclosure/intentional trickery in particular is easy to win if you can prove it. Topicality arguments that define words in the resolution, judge kick.

- Arguments I will never evaluate: Any non-resolutional theory argument not listed above. This includes: "object fiat", solvency advocates, PICS bad, conditionality, no neg fiat, new affs bad, any form of spec argument without a card supporting it. I literally do not flow these, and will say as such as part of my RFD. Do not bother making them.

Miscellaneous

- Regarding re-highlighting - to point out flaws in evidence inserting is fine, to make an offensive argument read it.

I was a policy debater at Harker from 2012-2017 and now coach there. I primarily read policy-leaning arguments, and most of my 2NRs consisted of a DA/case, DA/CP, or Topicality. I now primarily judge and coach LD: I would most prefer to judge LARP debates. I would least prefer to judge tricks/theory debates. If you read tricks, phil, ridiculous/frivolous theory, or Ks with "B" letter authors, you will likely lose. RVIs are not a thing.

If you're doing an email chain, I'd like to be on it: anikaluvsla@gmail.com

In broad terms, I'd appreciate if you could use the most warrants and do the most comparisons that you think you need to in order to win. I evaluate arguments by thinking about their relative risk, but don't know if "zero risk" is as much a thing as people say in debates. Your arguments must consist of a claim, warrant, and impact - I will not read your evidence to construct the latter 2 parts of this for you.

CP: with specific solvency advocates are the best; otherwise, are still good. as a longtime 2a, probably lean aff on cp theory but can surely be persuaded otherwise.

DA: good. politics too.

Topicality: enjoyable when there is clear and specific clash, not enjoyable if extremely generic or out of context violations. case lists and impact comparisons are important. don't really want to see your pre written Nebel 2nr

Kritiks: enjoy these when there is a clearly articulated and specific link, not a random set of cards you read in every debate. i am more familiar with kritiks of security, capitalism, etc., and enjoy when the neg can point to specific things regarding the affirmative rather than blanket statements. I also enjoy the use of historical examples and well thought out impacts in these debates. The alt is very important. I am not inclined to voting on a K without a clear explanation of the alt. not interested in arguments that rely on the idea that death is good, not real, or anything similar to that.

Planless Affs: I went for framework against every planless aff I ever debated: do with that information what you will. topical version of the aff will compose a significant part of my decision in these debates, though I've come to think it's not necessary. I also do not think it necessarily would have to solve the aff.

Theory: I probably have some predispositions but will try my best to put them aside when I judge your debate. Especially in LD, I have a low threshold for what I consider a dumb argument (read: rvi, spec, afc), and I don't particularly want to judge a debate where you throw out a bunch of random shells and see what sticks.

Speaker Points: I'm a pretty sarcastic person, so I appreciate some of that and humor (while still maintaining respect). Be nice but bold, and use CX well. If you are not clear and I do not hear an argument then that is on you: be clear enough to convey the arguments you want to win on. I'm becoming increasingly annoyed with lots of CX/prep spent asking your opponent to list all the arguments they made, or waiting forever for a marked copy so you can see what cards they skipped- you should be flowing.

Hi! I'm Emmiee (they/them) - emmiee@berkeley.edu is the email

I did 4 years of debate in HS (3 policy, 1 LD) and 3 years of college policy for UC Berkeley. In both I started off reading very LARP/policy arguments and then branched out into more soft left and K territory. The arguments I've spent most of my time reading are queer pessimism, psychoanalysis, and Russian set-col. I've been coaching Harker LD for 6 years now and have taught at ~10 LD/policy camp sessions.

TL;DR/For Prefs:

I try to stay as tab and non-interventionist as possible. There is literally not a single argument I have not voted for. All of my decisions are purely based off of how the flow lines up and I don't care if you're going for an RVI on Nebel, a PoMo FrankenK, indexicals, a heg DA, "surrender to ____", the Hobbes NC, etc. If I stopped voting for downright horrible arguments that were won on the flow, I would quickly end up having to give out double losses.

It's not my job to "preserve the sanctity of the activity" or whatever, especially given all of the things I pulled in my own debate career; it's my job to vote for whoever won and then roast any arguments I didn't personally like in the RFD. There are only three arguments I don't want to see: those that are blatantly oppressive (___icm good, etc), those that are unethically read (clipped, text of article altered, etc), or those that lack a claim/impact/warrant.

Other Important Info:

• In general, I judge a lot of clash debates, bubbles, bid rounds, etc and I get that stress is high, different schools/regions/circuits have different norms and habits, everyone's tired, etc but please do your part to make the round as un-painful as possible. Assume good intent, don't be purposefully sketchy or mean, etc.

• I am 100% cool with post-rounding - if you think I forgot to flow something important, gave a nonsense RFD, didn't address something you think should have decided the debate, etc by all means grill me over it, as long as you're not actively rude to me or your opponent.

• Some rounds I take a super long time to decide and have a lot of comments - it's usually because I'm typing all the comments out on my flow for a while. If I take forever or dump feedback on you, it's not a bad thing - I probably just have a lot of random thoughts, especially if it's a K debate. If it's too fast, too much, it's the end of the day and you want to go to bed, you need to run to another round or prep, etc just let me know I 100% get it.

• Incoherently rapid-spread a million blippy analytics and lose - if you want me to flow your giant analytic wall via online debate without missing anything important, you are going to need at least 3 of the following: [1] doc was sent out with the analytics in it, [2] you are at least somewhat clear and aren't going the same speed you go reading a random line in a card, [3] there's intonation/volume changes when you go from arg to arg and/or on the important terms, or [4] the arguments are numbered/labelled/separated somehow and you more-or-less stick to the flow when you extend them instead of dropping them in a bunch of random places.

• Don't over-accommodate but don't be mean to traditional/novice debaters - if you're in the top 50% of the pool I will boost speaks if you slow down somewhat (especially on tags), are polite and don't clown on your opponent for not understanding something basic, generally try to be helpful and CX and try to help them understand your arguments if they're confused, etc. Likewise, will drop speaks if your strategy for the W is very blatantly just to spread out a newer kid with a bunch of arguments they've never heard of while being rude to them the whole time.

• I also tend to get progressively stupider as the tournament goes on and I'm sorry if you catch me on the end of day 2 and I'm a little spacey. Tournaments tend to aggravate disability-related things and I burn out especially fast. I can still make coherent decisions, but will just take a little longer and give less concise RFDs. If you're going to break a DA with a super convoluted and nuanced I/L chain or get into a super ticky-tacky phil throw down in R6, please adjust your degree of hand-holding accordingly.

Specific Arguments:

• LARP: This is the style of debate that I mainly coach and am most comfortable with (along with Ks). I'll vote for your totally contrived politics DA and for "heg good outweighs the K/soft left AFF" if you win it on the flow.

Various other things of use:

• I default to presuming NEG, unless the NEG reads a counter-advocacy.
• I also tend to rely on how people explain their arguments and don't do a lot of card reading unless I'm forced to or someone asks me to do it.
• If you're AFF and the NR dropped the AFF so the 2AR is clearly going to be impact v. offcase weighing and then all about the DA or CP or whatever please give me at least 1 sentence about the 1AC scenario somewhere so I know how we got to a certain impact outweighing something else or what the PERM on the CP would look like. If the NC totally drops the AFF and you go for 100% SOL we O/W whatever whatever in the 2AR please give me a sentence in the 1AR about the AFF because it's weird to have it disappear and then reappear and very confusing. 
• I'm agnostic on a lot of things that the LARP community seems to be split on and will let it slide or let debaters debate it out in round. If you insert rehighlightings and say in your NC something to the extent of "their ____ scenario is horribly cut - we've inserted the rehighlightings" so I know it's something you meant to insert and not something you didn't read due to time constraints and the other team says nothing, I'll evaluate it. If they read theory, I guess we're having a theory debate now. Same with judge kick - I'll do it if I'm asked to, won't do it if you don't or you do and your opponent wins that I shouldn't for some reason. Multiplank CPs where you kick out of planks, "haha PERM do the CP this is normal means" reveals in the 1AR, etc are all very much in the same camp - I'll roll with it if it's not contested, will evaluate contestation and potentially roll with it anyways otherwise.

• K: I'm generally very down for weird/memey arguments but on god if you choose to pull a bunch of conflicting pomo ev into a doc just so you can spend the round yelling vague buzzwords without making any attempt to say anything specific about the AFF I will tank your speaks. If you're not familiar with whatever you're reading so your arguments or cards you end up cutting aren't phenomenal that's fine. If your K is about the need to sideline the AFF/topic and instead center your performance, community, something else, etc that's that's fine. If you have a genuine defense of why you need to sound like the PoMo generator or remain very nebulous and vague that's fine. I truly don't care what it is you do, but please don't just try to win by being too incoherent/confusing for your opponent. 

Other fun things:

• If someone's reading a K vs. you and you're confused, at least 50% of the time in my experience the argument is just incoherent and you should make the common sense "the alt obviously doesn't solve because ___"/"nothing about their K vaguely makes sense"/"___ isn't a link and the card isn't even about the topic or the tag it's something else entirely" argument that's in your head. I keep having to vote for Ks that I know are poorly executed because the other side psychs itself out. 

• I vote for K AFFs and I vote for FWK all the time - it usually comes down to which side actually engages the other as opposed to reading generic prewritten overviewy dumps because that's the side that doesn't drop a bunch of things in the 1AR/NR/2AR. I'm down to vote for the "debate is a game and only a game ergo procedural fairness" flavor of FWK as well if you win it, but I very quickly start getting turned off if part of that strategy involves being a jerk to the other side. 

• White debaters doing the Race War disclosure stuff confuses me. I'm not opposed to voting on it at all but I simply have no idea what this does so if it's going to be part of your strategy I need you to articulate the I/L link between that and whatever you claim it solves or allows you to do. Strategy-wise, "I'm not ____ but I get to read arguments about ____ group because ____" is a lot more intuitive to me than whatever is going on here.

• If you're going to go for "____ thing that wasn't on-face morally abhorrent is a V/I" I need to hear: [1] a warrant in both speeches and [2] some articulation of why this comes before whatever other framing arguments/layers exist in every speech this argument is made in - you can obviously have a lot more extrapolation on #2 when you go for it, but I find it hard to be persuaded by a 5 word argument that only really gets explained at the end of the debate

• Phil: I'm pretty familiar with the literature at this point even though this really wasn't my corner as a debater. A lot of the stuff immediately below applies - phil debates tend to devolve into each side proliferating a bunch of one-liners and then going for three of them without much weighing/etc and that makes it very hard to parse through. When one side says "nuclear bomb kills everyone so we can't enjoy life or discuss values ergo util" and the other side says "adding a circle to a circle doesn't make it more circular ergo kant" it is two ships passing in the night that hurt my brain. Please for the love of God tell me what the implication of you winning something on your end is for the phil debate writ large, why your stuff comes first, how it interacts with what's going on on the other side, etc. If you extend your 3 hot takes on the NC and do 0 actual interaction with the AC FWK or vice-versa you will either lose or have to sit for an hour while I stare at the flow and try to make it make sense. 

• T/Theory: I will vote for it; I'll vote for the RVI on it. I don't think my personal opinions on how many condo is ok or semantics matter because it shouldn't factor into how I judge. In the absence of clear warranting from either side, I will obviously be more swayed by nebulous abuse or reasonability claims depending on the context of that specific round. The bullet point about incoherent rapid-spreading analytics definitely applies here - I can't vote for what I can't flow and a few good arguments go so much farther than proliferating random impacts and links that'll just get everyone confused all over the place. It's hard to yell "clear" over Zoom because it cuts out the other person's audio for a second so if you're blitzing through huge walls of text I'm probably going to miss arguments.

If you write the RFD for me in the debate that explains how impacts and layers stack up and weigh, you are overwhelmingly likely to have that be the actual RFD. If you end up neck deep in a super messy and dense theory/T debate and manage to stay organized, clear, and pretty line by line, you will get a 29.5 minimum. My biggest issue with these debates by far is the messiness and lack of weighing on both sides. It is really hard for me to evaluate debates when no one explains why they have the stronger I/L to education, why phil education outweighs topic education, why their NC theory should come before 1AR theory, whether T or theory comes first, etc.

Only other relevant things is that I presume T/Theory > K unless told otherwise and am not the best with grammar so I can flow your upward entailment test argument and vote for you off it, but I don't have more than a surface level understanding of it outside of its strategic value in debate.

• Trix: I've voted for lots of tricks debaters, but think that tricks objectively are all silly and false and have adjusted my threshold for responding to them to a comparable level. My bar for responding is "this is nonsense and you shouldn't vote on it because ___". If there's three hidden words in an analytic wall that are dropped, the threshold changes to the above along with "you should allow this response even though it's new because ____" in the next speech. I'm very sympathetic to newer LDers or policy cross overs losing over mishandling some silly spike they didn't know about and personally took a lot of Ls that way, but if you decide to sit the entire round without making a single argument about why "evaluate the round after the 1AC" is a horrible idea, you will lose to it.

All of the stuff in the T/Theory section about spreading through analytics, the fact that no one weighs or implicates anything, etc all applies.

My paradigm is pretty similar to this one: https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?judge_person_id=35843

*EXCEPTION* I will accept what the evidence says unless the other team asks enough questions that make it sound stupid. I will not vote for anything that sounds incredible or just completely dumb.

General:

1. Assume I'm bad at debate. I hate doing work.

2. If you read two cards correctly and they make sense, I will buy them instantly. (these are not specific for a reason)

• Guardian card that says 420.
• A card that says chance of civil war jumps to ~77.6%.

3. I don't know how to evaluate theory. Shoutout to Kyle Chong.

Speaks:

1. I don't often give 30s but if you make me laugh or make me cringe, I’ll give you a 30. Also, if you make a half decent pun with the topic, I’ll give you a 30.

2. If you go more than 5 seconds over time I’ll take off 0.5 speaks per second after.

3. I’ll take off a point every time a terrible analogy is used. (selling an apple for $5 is not comparable to international trade)

Evidence:

1. Make me call for it. I also hate reading a lot, so don't tell me to read it unless you think it’s critical.

2. If you read a card I know, you should hope you're not misrepresenting it.

Case read:

Speed is not an issue.

Cross-x:

1. You get first question if you speak first.

2. Don't be mean.

3. Refer to point 2.

4. Refer to point 2.

5. Point 2 is really important.

Summary/FF:

1. Anything works.

2. No new evidence in FF.

Argument stuff:

1. If you read a link turn and say "if you don't buy that", then proceed with an impact turn, you better explain why I can't evaluate your impact turn under your link turn. Otherwise, it's a double turn.

2. If you read anything diabetes or sugar related, I will not like the arg. Although it is important to recognize that whether I like the argument does not matter. If it’s well developed, I'll vote for it.