Last changed on
Thu April 4, 2024 at 4:11 AM EDT
Hello! My email is mosieburkebdl@gmail.com - Please add me to the chain!
I debated for six years, high school and middle school, in the Boston Debate League for Boston Latin Academy, attending national circuit tournaments for four of those six years. I graduated from Haverford College in 2021 with a degree in Philosophy and a minor in Statistics, and wrote a thesis offering Deleuzian (and related) readings of data visualizations. I received a Master's in Accounting/MBA from Northeastern University in 2022 (despite loving the Cap K).
I began coaching the Boston Debate League's Travel Team, which is composed of teams from multiple schools in the Boston area, in Fall 2022. I coached for Boston Collegiate Charter School during the 2021-2022 season.
Short version:
-I lean K, and I will know your K's lit base. This increases your burden to explain your theory well, and I will not do theoretical work for you in my RFD
-I was a 1N who took T in 95% of my 1NRs and I will understand and appreciate your tricks
-Evidence comparison will get you much farther than 15 new 1nr cards
-Solid development on the case pages gets great results
-Speed and tons of off-case positions are okay. Read the important warrants in your cards.
-I'm not the judge for your condo 2AR, though i'm sure it's great, no really
-This paradigm has not been adapted for virtual debate, but I will gladly answer any questions about how this applies to virtual debate
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As of the 2024 Urban Debate National Championship, I have judged 8 tournaments on the fiscal redistribution topic including outrounds on the national circuit. I actively coach and write arguments of all styles on the fiscal redistribution topic.
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Full paradigm:
***I follow NSDA guidelines for evidence violations, including card clipping and misrepresentation of evidence, in the absence of guidance from tournament admin***
Style:
Speed is fine. Card-speed and non-card-speed should be different. If you blast through 8 arguments in 15 seconds, I won't get them all, it won't be my fault, and I don’t want to get post-rounded because I didn’t catch that they dropped the 6th of 8 2AC permutations. Don't bury your best arguments!
Strong, direct CX is great! (However:)
Don't be cruel, disrespectful, or belittling. This is especially true if you are more experienced/knowledgeable than the other team. If you're a senior with 4 years of national circuit experience and 3 summers of camps, don't be a jerk to sophomores at their first varsity tournament. This doesn't mean you should go easy, it means that you should take your opponents and their arguments seriously.
K (and K affs):
I am well-versed in a bunch of K literature (and you should ask if you'd like to know about my familiarity with your specific K author), but that doesn't mean you don't have to explain things. Pedagogically, it's important to communicate the theoretical nuances you're using to make your arguments. “Ontology means we win” isn’t a complete argument, even though I know how to connect those dots.
I am sympathetic to arguments about ivory tower positions/armchair philosophy. I debated in a UDL, on a small team, and in a program that often lacked funding. Don't aim to win arguments by virtue of your opponents not having the resources to engage them. If you do this, you're causing direct harm to the activity and to fellow debaters, and that's an impact scenario I am happy to vote on.
Performance is 100% fine by me. If you incorporate a performance as part of your aff's methodology, I will evaluate is as I would any other methodology - so please incorporate it in later speeches and make sure I know why it's important to relevant perm/framework/T/etc debates.
T:
I was a 1N, and there wasn't a single neg block my senior year where I didn't take the T flow. I LOVE good T debates, and this is where all of your clever tricks will be appreciated. Make strategic concessions, go hard on "they don't meet the counter-interp", do fun things with internal links. Defense usually won't win by itself.
Compare interp evidence! This comparison can win you debates. 90% of interpretation evidence sucks enough to give the aff the edge on reasonability.
RVI arguments on these flows won't win you any rounds.
Theory:
If it's a time suck and it works, nice job.
I am rarely a judge where the 2AR should go for theory, and I’m a particularly hard sell on conditionality bad.
I think the neg gets to run multiple conditional advocacies with the exception of abusive cross-application of offense between contradictory positions.
I default to reject the argument, unless you have very strong reasons I should reject the team.
FW vs K Affs:
Run it well. You should have good reasons why your interpretation matters. Fairness is an impact.
Don't throw in arguments about "small schools" to get the moral high ground if you don't care about accessibility absent a ballot, please :)
DAs:
Links are almost always a sliding scale as opposed to Yes/No. How much of a link is there? How does that effect the impact debate?
"We win on magnitude so vote Aff" is not impact calc, nor is it an argument.
CPs:
I was not a counterplan debater and I’m probably a little behind the times on whatever tricky counterplan strategies have made their way into the meta, so give me the more detailed versions of why those arguments solve. Give me warranted sufficiency framing starting in the Block, please.
The likelihood of a PIC 2NR winning is proportional to the scale of the link to the net benefit.
Please slow down on the warrants and impact debate for counterplan theory debates.
Alt cause arguments on case > re-cutting aff solvency evidence to make a PIC to solve alt causes
Case:
Yes please. I don’t need lengthy overviews or underviews. Strive to put more on the case debate against K affs than state good.