Crowe Warken Debates at USNA

2020 — Annapolis, MD/US

Judges Paradigm List

All Paradigms: Show Hide

Pirzada Ahmad Dartmouth College 8 rounds

Last changed on Sun February 2, 2020 at 11:34 AM EDT

Experience:

Eight years of policy debate

2014-2018 Dartmouth

What you probably want:

1] Please add me to the email chain with adazrip (at) gmail.com.

2] I have experience with every type of argument. Read whatever positions you want.

3] For planless aff vs topicality/framework, I believe procedural fairness/competitive equity can be effectively explained as an impact. Aff kritiks of framework and limits are usually more effective when specific to the aff.

4] I am fine for topicality vs plan affs.

5] I probably lean more towards truth over tech compared to most, but cross-applications, even under-developed ones, are necessary to overcome concessions. For instance, a ten card slew of wishy-washy uniqueness cards can probably be beaten by two really good cards and a few smart analytics that seem to fall on the side of contemporary “truth.” However, dropping (zero cross-application on either case or the DA flows) lightly developed and somewhat silly turns case and solves case arguments on the DA in the 2AR is likely to not end well for the aff.

6] Please resolve argument interactions. I will make my decision by identifying what I think are the key points of contestation. If neither team writes a ballot for me by identifying these issues and explaining how I should resolve them, then the losing team is likely to be unhappy with my decision as they will probably have thought the debate came down to a different set of concerns.

7] Evidence quality is important. Evidence that is not highlighted to include a claim, warrant, and impact is not going to carry much weight for me. You’re better off reading one good card instead of seven two sentence cards. I love when debaters take the time to explain the merits of key quality pieces of evidence and why they matter in the larger puzzle of the debate.

8] I think I am moderately expressive.

9] Pick and choose arguments. For example, 2-3 well-developed case defense pushes in the 2NR will go way further than 8 shallow extensions.

Topicality:

1] I prefer limits arguments over ones about ground.

2] I like debates over interpretations on the basis of predictable definitions and research burdens. This includes comparative caselist arguments, as well as evidence qualifications.

3] For planless affs vs T/FW debates, please explain the competing arguments’ interaction with one another and how to evaluate the inevitably largely disparate standards/impacts. For example, the neg is likely to win some procedural fairness impact, while the aff is likely to win some educational and exclusion-based offense. Tell me how to resolve the debate and why I should prefer your way of resolving the debate over the other team’s proposed method.

DAs:

1] DAs are most persuasive when the neg tells a story. Especially with the link, try to tell me a story that is tailored to the aff and/or its internal links.

2] Good impact overviews will put you in a great position to execute the DA to its fullest potential. This includes smart external offense, solves case, and turns case claims.

3] It is likely that the aff will have some game on some parts of the DA. Explain to me how I should evaluate the holistic risk of the DA, both at the level of the specific components of the DA (e.g. link frames uniqueness) and in comparison to the likely somewhat mitigated (by a CP, turns case/solves case, or case defense) aff.

CPs:

1] I am okay for well-researched cheating CPs (distinct from a generic process CP like Consult X random agent without an aff-specific solvency advocate). If you can find a wonky process CP that is specific to the aff, more power to you. Evidence for the CP about the literature or topic expertise (note: this is distinct from just having a solvency advocate) is usually helpful/necessary to respond to theory.

2] That being said, I am probably pretty okay for the aff on CP and competition theory. Just debate it well and devote a fair amount of 1AR time to it.

3] The 1AR and 2AR should not include perm do both unless you can explain how one could do both and how that combination can shield the link. Absent explanation of the perm, a simple neg response of “perm do both links to the net benefit because it maintains the aff’s original link” is almost always sufficient. Smart, creative explanations will be rewarded. Silly perms that are well explained should be taken seriously by the neg - don’t just blow them off with “still links to the DA” if they explain how the combination could avoid the link. Even if the necessary response is only a sentence long - don’t just grandstand, explain the warrant against the perm. If the perm explanation is illogical, impossible, or unpredictable [interpretation of the plan], then just say so and explain why.

Ks:

1] Debates are won and lost with the alt. This applies to both teams. The caveat to this is when the neg successfully goes for presumption, which I am probably pretty good for if the aff messes up k framework/role of the ballot/impact framing.

2] Specificity is important for both teams e.g. links for the negative, solvency deficit/DA explanations for the aff, etc.

3] I am probably better for aff inclusive kritiks than most. The aff should probably defend their advantages as opposed to going for theory because the neg is likely to have some great discourses + assumptions matter cards related to their k’s genre. That being said, theory is certainly a viable option, but I am not as put off by AIKs as many others.

4] Please don’t assume I know the kritik’s or the aff answers’ literature bases much at all. Both teams will do well to paint a coherent story and explain as much as possible. Historical examples tend to help both teams.

5] “Not our [insert primary author’s name]” is almost always a lie. Aff teams - please don’t fold in response.

6] I am okay for a big policy aff against a kritik. I promise.

Other things that I like and dislike:

1] Clarity. Start speeches slow. Read analytics and theory slowly. Take deep breaths in between arguments. Tag your arguments with a 3-7 word header. If you blip through an argument or don’t label it effectively, I am likely to either miss it on my flow entirely or misflow it. Emphasize important phrases and key terms in cards. Hard number 2AC arguments on off-case. Reference aff arguments in order (unless explicitly grouped or if you said you were starting in a different place). Most of all, explain your strategy at some point (usually 2NR/2AR).

2] Well executed cross exes are awesome. If you manage to find and poke at a weakness in the other team’s argument, please exploit it (e.g. if their advantage’s uniqueness is wack, read a card about it in the 1NC after poking at it in 1AC CX). Also, let each other talk in CX, please. There are many ways to effectively cut someone off after a while, but if you keep interrupting every two seconds, your CX will not seem that worthwhile to me.

3] I strongly dislike when people dodge questions in CX. Unless you’re reading some form of the opacity K, your speaker points will suffer if you seem to be avoiding CX questions, especially if the other team is asking you to explain your argument. If prompted for an explanation about an argument you made, then you should want to talk MORE, not LESS! Chances are, that if the other team didn’t get it, neither did I - if they’re going to let you explain your argument’s thesis, take advantage and wax poetic!

4] I dislike new 2AR arguments to the point where I scrutinize my flow after the debate to see if all of the aff’s potentially important arguments were in the 1AR in some way or form. The bar is not high for an argument to be considered to have been in the 1AR, but little 1AR development usually means the aff is likely to be limited to little further development in the 2AR before it becomes too new.

5] Don’t grandstand as substitution for extension please. Saying the other team “massively undercovered/dropped X” or that you “are way ahead” on something is not an argument. It is obviously okay and somewhat useful to sometimes point out concessions, my point is just that an extension must go further than just an assertion about coverage.

Dan Bannister University of Kentucky 3 rounds

Tim Barouch Georgia State University 4 rounds

Jenna Bauer Navy 7 rounds

Last changed on Sat January 16, 2021 at 5:30 AM EDT

Debated at Gonzaga, Currently Judging for Navy -

Email: jenna.bauer95@gmail.com - yes you can put me on the doc chain.

I did primarily CP/DA/Case debate in college and that's what I'm familiar with. I'm helping out with research at Gonzaga this year so I'm fairly familiar with the climate college topic. This is what I think that I think about debate, but I intend to continue updating as I judge more and learn more about what I think.

Affs: I like plans that defend the hypothetical implementation of the plan and are topical. You can read your other affs in front of me but I'm more inclined to think that reading a topical plan is important and good for debate. At the very least you should have a stasis point that is in the direction of the topic and then tell me why that's important.

Ks: I'm most familiar with gender based Ks, I do not know much about this area in general and I will not understand you if you throw out a bunch of buzzwords. If you want to read a K, I like a clearly articulated and specific alternative that does something and explains to me why that thing is important. I am inclined to believe things can always get worse. If you are set on going for your K, make sure your explanation is on point and your links are specific to the aff.

DAs: I like them, I'm willing to assign 0 risk of a DA, especially if the link is really bad. I do a lot of elections/politics work. I will still vote for you if I know your DA is a lie and the other team doesn't call you on it, but I won't be happy about it.

CPs: I have always been a 2N - I lean a little negative on CP theory, but you should point out when you think they’re cheating and can definitely win if you debate the theory well.

***Added after recieving an email for clarification on my thoughts on Topicality - response below****

Topicality:

Short version: Affs that Intend to be T, I can be persuaded either way, but most likely lean a little neg. I dislike affs that never intended to be T and am likely to be persuaded by framework.

This topic in my opinion has the potential to be really large or really small depending on the 'acceptable standards' that the community sets on affs that are intending to be topical so your questions are important to me and I hope to answer them well.

Framing for how I think about T - I have always been a 2N and tend to be slightly neg leaning on most things. However, T was never really my A strategy except against teams that were blatantly non-topical so my bias might not be as apparent in this area.

Topicality for affs that intend to be T - I would say at the beginning of the year I'm more willing to listen to all affs and hear what they think a reasonable interpretation of the topic should be, but I think limits are important especially on this topic. I can definitely be persuaded either way. While I think aff creativity is important, the research burden for the neg is also a major concern for me.

Topicality for affs that don't intend to be T - I don't like when teams do not have plans. No plan at all is probably a non-starter for me because it doesn't meet the requirements I list below in the stasis point section.

- Distinction between Framework and Topicality: When I debated I made a distinction between Framework and Topicality. A lot of people don't think there's a distinction, obviously. I think the distinction is based on the explanation of the link to the argument and the impact. Framework, for me seemed to be about what kind of educational paradigms are endorsed, whereas T was more about the effects on the topic and debatability for the neg. These are in many ways artificial distinctions, and both T and framework are often deployed as encompassing both these arguments because different teams have different conceptions of what framework means. Because of this, I'm fine with whatever teams want to call it - Framework or T - and however you explain it is how I will judge. If you would like to separate T and framework and read them both that's also fine with me both can persuade me.

- Stasis point: When reading/debating a non-topical aff the most important thing to me is that there is a stable controversy that isn't one sided that both teams are prepared to debate. If the negative wins that these conditions do not exist I am very likely to pull the trigger on T/Framework. In order to meet all the requirements above, I think it's necessary to be at the very least in the direction of the topic so the neg can debate the aff. I value in-depth debate of the affirmative and give a lot of weight to "topical" versions of the aff in these debates.

*****End email*****

In general, you should be kind to everyone in the round. I really really don’t like rudeness. Especially when it is directed at your partner.

Mike Berry Boston College 6 rounds

Last changed on Thu February 6, 2020 at 6:56 AM EDT

What you should know about me and how I judge.

If you want me to vote for a particular argument, please give me an identifiable reason to do so. I don't care if it is a policy argument or critique or performance, I need a reason to vote the way you want me to. Whether it is the utilitarian value of a disad versus the case advantage to why a particular k is a sufficient reason to win my ballot, I value and reward clear argumentation on important issues.

My flowing skills are adequate. I will strive to write down as much as I can but understand that my skills have eroded over the years. I may verbally tell you to slow down. If you are incomprehensible to me, I will say "Be clearer". Clear signposting is extremely important to me. Provide more than a 3 word claim. Arguments that have full claims and warrants and when necessary evidence are much more persuasive.

Evidence is very important. Each piece of evidence should have a claim, warrant and backing to it. Please do not clip evidence. If I detect it, it will result in a significant reduction of speaker points and potentially a loss. Over the years, I have become more convinced that information literacy is critical. Having sources that are credible with source qualifications is also a good way of winning arguments and increasing your speaker points.

Judging ideas

In a perfect world, I would hear a good case debate with good disads. I am a pragmatist in real life. I evaluate whether doing something would be an improvement over what we currently are doing or if the neg offers a counterplan, what we should be doing instead of the affirmative plan. Strategies that focus on doing this provide the path to victory. I am willing to vote on there being zero solvency to the case. I am willing to vote on there is zero link to a disad. The best debaters will frame the debate with a series of "if, then" type of assessments. The clearer you make these types of arguments, the more likely you are to win my ballot.

Specific Arguments

T-I evaluate this argument primarily through the lens of how fair the aff/neg interpretation is. This is my default position, however, I am willing to let the debaters figure out what standard should be used.

Case- Big impacts are good, small impacts can be compelling. Make sure you have good internal links to your positions.

Disads-They should have good links, uniqueness, internal links and impacts. Link turns are fun and are a very effective means to winning a round. Make sure that your arguments are clear. Statements like "We control uniqueness" are meaningless. At minimum, have a warrant to your argument.

Counterplans. As a default position, I want the negative to provide one counterplan that competes with the affirmative plan. Non USFG actors are not my favorite cp but I have voted for them numerous times. Conditional cps are not my favorite either especially when the aff can demonstrate that the conditional nature of the cps puts the affirmative in an untenable position.

I copied the following from Adrienne F. Brovero. She says it much more clearly than I could.

Critiques/Performance:

Adjudicating critique or performance debates is not my strong suit. Most of these debates take place at a level of abstraction beyond my comprehension. If you have a habit of referring to your arguments by the author’s name (e.g. “Next off – Lacan”), I am not a very good judge for you. I don’t read very much in the advanced political philosophy or performance studies areas. This means, most of the time, I don’t know what the terms used in these debates mean. I am much more the applied politics type, and tend to think pragmatically. This means if you want to go for a critical or performance argument in front of me, you need to explain your arguments in lay-speak, relying less on jargon and author names, and more on warrants, analogies, empirical examples, and specifics in relation to the policy you are critiquing/performing for/against – i.e. persuade me. It also helps to slow it down a notch. Ask yourself how quickly you could flow advanced nuclear physics – not so easy if you aren’t terribly familiar with the field, eh? Well, that’s me in relation to these arguments. Flowing them at a rapid rate hinders my ability to process the arguments. Additionally, make an effort to explain your evidence as I am not nearly as familiar with this literature as you are. Lastly, specifically explain the link and impact in relation to the specific aff you are debating or the status quo policy you are criticizing. Statements like "the critique turns the case” don't help me. As Russ Hubbard put it, in the context of defending his demining aff many years ago, “How does our plan result in more landmines in the ground? Why does the K turn the case?” I need to know why the critique means the plan’s solvency goes awry – in words that link the critique to the actions of the plan. For example: Which part of the harms does the critique indict, with what impact on those harms claims? What would the plan end up doing if the critique turns its solvency? In addition, I find it difficult to resolve philosophical questions and/or make definitive determinations about a team’s motives or intentions in the course of a couple of hours.

Misc.

Here is some background on me. I coached debate for over 25 years and was the head debate coach at King's College while they had a program. We competed on the CEDA/NDT circuit while I was coaching. While my teams ran a variety of arguments, we primarily used a policy framework to advanced arguments. I am pretty well up to date on political matters. I tend to read a variety of newspapers and magazine to stay up to date.

Finally, debate is a wonderful activity and by and large the people that you interact with are some of the best people you will ever meet. Debate has given a lot to me and has positively impacted my life and world view. Please treat others with kindness and respect, be competitive and enjoy the activity as much as you can.

If you have more specific questions, please ask and I will do my best to answer them.

Jacob Bosley Indiana University 6 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 10:14 AM EDT

Assistant Speech & Debate Coach at NSU University School

Last Update: November 2023---Thoughts on "Disclosure" and "Evidence Ethics" in PF added.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1---Big Picture

Please put me on the e-mail chain.

Policy--- uschoolpolicy@gmail.com AND jacob.daniel.bosley@gmail.com

Public Forum--- uschoolpf@gmail.com AND jacob.daniel.bosley@gmail.com

I actively coach and research policy and public forum debate. I enjoy technical, organized debates. I don’t think I have particularly controversial views, but have tried to be thorough where it matters for prefs/pre-round prep.

Policy vs. K---An argument is an argument, assuming it’s complete, warranted, and applicable.

Tech vs. Truth---Tech obviously informs truth, but if I have to decide between intuitive and well-explained arguments vs. terrible evidence, I’ll choose the former. There are few things I won’t vote on, but “death good” is among them.

Offense vs. Defense---This is a helpful paradigm for assessing relative risk, but risk can be reduced to zero.

2---General Practices

Speed---Go for it, but at the higher end you should scale back slightly. I flow on a computer without much shorthand.

Evidence---I read it during debates. When referenced in CX, I’ll likely go to it. Quality is in the back of my mind, consciously or not.

Re-Highlighting---If small, I don’t think you need to re-read in speech. Don’t expect me to read a giant card to figure out if you’re right.

Digital Debate---Make sure everyone is present with confirmation before starting. Be reasonable about tech issues, as I will track tech time. If there are major issues, I’ll default to tournament procedures.

Decorum---Sass, snark, or shade are fine within reason. I’m not a good judge for hostile approaches, e.g. interrupting speeches.

“New” Arguments---The more late-breaking, the more open I am to responses. “Late-breaking” is relative to me catching the initial argument. Happy to strike 1AR/2NR arguments rightly flagged as “too new.”

Alternative Practices---I’m here to flow and judge a debate, awarding a single win. If you’re trying to do something different, I’m not the judge for you.

3---T vs. Plans

“Competing Interpretations”---This makes more intuitive sense to me than “reasonability,” but that's often because the latter isn't explained as a frame. Affs are still better off prioritizing offense.

"Fiscal Redistribution" Specifics---I was not at camp this summer, and at this point in the season still do not have strong views on most of the debated T issues like “FR = tax and transfer” or “FJ = no subsets.” From grad school studying health policy, "Social Security can be turned into single-payer health insurance" seems a bit absurd, but I’ll let evidence dictate decisions.

4---T vs. K Affs

Frustrations---These debates are often two ships passing in the night due to reliance on pre-written blocks. Please make judges lives easier by:

A---Have a robust defense of your model of debate, including roles for teams/judge, examples of how debates play out, net-benefits, etc.

B---Pick and choose your offense and compare it with what the other team has actually said.

"Affirmation"---At a bare minimum, affirmatives should have some relationship to the topic and “affirm” a clear advocacy. I am not sympathetic to purely negative arguments/diagnoses of power relations.

"Debate is a Game" vs. "Subject Formation"----Debate is a complicated space that's competitive, academic, and personal space. Arguments that assume it’s only one seem a bit shallow. Offense can be made assuming all three.

Terminal Impacts---“Fairness” or “clash” can be terminal impacts, though often teams don’t seem to explain why.

"Truth Testing"---I am less persuaded by these arguments because all argumentation seems to rely on some outside/unstated assumptions. I can certainly be persuaded that the structure of debate warps content and that could be a reason for skepticism.

"TVAs"---The 2NR needs to explain what offense they think the TVA resolves instead of expecting me to figure it out.

"T = [X Violent Practice]"---Feel free to impact turn the resulting curriculum, models, debates, etc. of an interpretation of debate, but its difficult to convince me reading an argument about the topic of discussion is analogical to policing/"stop and frisk"/"drone strikes"/other material violence.

5---Kritiks

Framework---I don't get middle grounds by default. I will resolve this debate one way or the other based on what is said, and then determine what remaining arguments count as offense.

Uniqueness---The alt needs to resolve each link, or have some larger reason that’s not relevant, e.g. framework. Affs are often in a better spot pressing poorly explained alternatives/links.

Competition---I presume affs can test mutual exclusivity of alts, whether against a “plan” or “advocacy.” Feel free to argue different standards of competition. The less the aff outlines a clear method, the more I’m persuaded by “no plan, no perm.”

Perm Texts---They are great. This can be difficult when alts are amorphous, but 1AR/2AR explanation needs to rise above “do both.”

6---Counterplans

Judge Kicking---If you want me to explicitly consider multiple worlds post-2NR, e.g. both CP vs. aff and/or status quo vs. aff, make an explicit argument. Saying the words “the status quo is always an option” in CX is not enough for me.

Theory vs. Literature---Topic literature helps dictate what you can persuade me is reasonable. If your only basis for competition is a definition of “resolved”/“should” and a random law review, good luck. If you have evidence contextual to a topic area and a clear explanation of functional differences in implementation, I’m far easier to persuade.

Solvency Advocates---CPs should have solvency advocates of “comparable quality” to the 1AC. If your Advantage CP plank cites 1AC evidence, go for it. If you’re making something up, provide a card. If you’re trying to make card-less “Con Con” a thing, I’m a hard sell.

Intrinsicness---Both the aff/neg need to get better at debating intrinsic/“other issues” perms. I'm an easier sell than others that these obviate many of the sillier CPs.

7---Disadvantages

Framing---It's everything: impact calculus, link driving uniqueness or vice-versa, the works. Smart arguments and coherent narratives trump a slew of evidence.

Internal Links > Impacts---I find most "DA Turns the Case" / "Case Turns the DA" debates don't spend enough time on causation or timing.

Politics Theory---Most 2AC theory blips against Politics DAs aren’t complete arguments, e.g. “fiat solves the link” or "a logical policymaker could do both." Still, intrinsicness arguments against DAs are underutilized.

8---Theory

Conditionality---It’s difficult to convince me some conditionality isn’t necessary for the neg to be viable. Things can certainly change based on substantive contradictions or quantity. Negs should be clear under what conditions, if any, they can kick individual CP planks.

Other Theory Issues---It’s difficult to persuade me that most theoretical objections to CPs or perms are reasons to reject the team.

“Tricks”/“Spikes”---Please no.

9---Public Forum Specifics

I am not a "lay"/"flay" judge.

A few views of mine may be idiosyncrasies:

Paraphrasing---I’m convinced this is a harmful practice that hides evidence from scrutiny. Evidence should be presented in full context with compete citations in real time. That means:

A---Author, Date, Title, URL

B---Complete paragraphs for excerpts

C---Underlining and/or highlighting indicating what is referenced.

D---Sending evidence you intend to read to opponents before the speech is delivered.

Purely paraphrased evidence compared to a team reading cut cards will be treated as baseless opinions.

Line-by-Line

A---You need to answer arguments in a coherent order based on when/where they were introduced.

B---You need to extend complete arguments, with warrants, in later speeches. If not in summary, it’s too late to bring back from the dead in final focus.

If neither side seems to be doing the needed work, expect me to intervene.

Disclosure---I generally think disclosure is beneficial for the activity, which is why our program open sources. However, I am not as dogmatic about disclosure when judging. It is difficult to convince me "disclosure in its entirety is bad," but the recent trend seems to be shifting interpretations that are increasingly difficult to meet.

Absent egregious lack of disclosure/mis-disclosure, I am not the best judge for increasingly demanding interpretations if opponents have made a good faith effort to disclose. For example, if a team forgot to disclose cites/round report for a single round, but is otherwise actively disclosing, it is difficult to convince me that a single mistake is a punishable offense.

While I don't want to prescribe what I think standard disclosure should be and would rather folks debate the specifics, I am an easier sell than others on some things:

A---The quality of debates is better when students know what arguments have been read in the past. This seems more important than claims that lack of disclosure encourages "thinking on your feet."

B---Debaters should provide tags/citations of previously read contentions. A doc with a giant wall of text and no coherent tags or labels is not meaningful disclosure.

C---Round reports don't seem nearly as important as other forms of disclosure.

Evidence Ethics---Evidence issues are getting egregious in PF. However, I also do not like some of the trends for how these debates are handled.

A---NSDA Rules---If an evidence challenge is invoked, I will stop the debate, inform the team issuing the challenge that the entire debate will hinge on the result of evaluating that challenge, and then consult both the NSDA rules and any tournament specific procedures to adjudicate the challenge. Questions of evidence ethics cannot be just "theory" or "off-case" arguments.

B---"Spirit" of Rules vs. Cheap Shots---I admittedly have idiosyncracies on specific issues, but if they come up will do my best to enforce the exact wording of NSDA rules.

i---"Straw" arguments where the cut section clearly does not represent the rest of the article, ellipses out of major sections, bracketing that changes the meaning of an article (including adding context/references the author didn't intend), and fabrication are easy to convince me are round-enders.

ii----A single broken URL, a card that was copy and pasted from a backfile incorrectly so the last sentence accidentally cut off a couple words, and other minor infractions do not seem worth ending a round over, but it's up for debate.

iii---Not being able to produce the original full text of a card quickly seems like a reason to reject a piece of evidence given NSDA wordings, though I worry this discourages the cutting of books which are harder to provide access to quickly during debates.

Adrienne Brovero University of Mary Washington 2 rounds

Last changed on Wed March 27, 2024 at 4:53 PM EDT

Adrienne F. Brovero, University of Kentucky

Closing in on 30 years coaching
adri.debate@gmail.com

Please label your email chain subject line with Team names, tourney, round.

Your prep time does not end until you have hit send on the email.

❗Updated 3-27-24 - I am REAL serious about the highlighting thing below - many cards are literally unreadable as highlighted and if I find myself struggling to read your evidence, I will cease to do so.

❗This is a communication activity.❗

Clarity - Cannot emphasize enough how important clarity is, whether online or in-person.

Highlighting - Highlighting has become a disgrace. Highlighting should not result in anti-grammatical shards of arguments. Highlighting should not result in misrepresentation of the author's intent/ideas. Quite frankly, some highlighting is so bad, you would have been better served not reading the evidence. When highlighting, please put yourself in the judge's shoes for a moment and ask yourself if you would feel comfortable deciding a debate based on how you've highlighted that card. If the answer is no, reconsider your highlighting.

SERIOUSLY - LINE-BY-LINE. NUMBER.

If you like to say "I will do the link debate here" - I am probably not the best judge for you. I would prefer you clash with link arguments in each instance they happen, as opposed to all in one place. Same is true for every other component of an argument.

Qualifications - read them. Debate them.
Line-by-line involves directly referencing the other team's argument ("Off 2AC #3 - Winners Win, group"), then answering it. "Embedded" clash fails if you bury the clash part so deep I can't find the arg you are answering.
Overviews - overrated. Kinda hate them. Think they are a poor substitute for debating the arguments where they belong on the line-by-line.

Things that are prep time:

Any time after the official start time that is not a constructive (9 mins), CX (3 mins), rebuttal (6 mins), or a brief roadmap. Everything else is prep time.
Putting your speech doc together - including saving doc, setting up email chain, attaching it to the email, etc.
Asking for cards outside of CX time. ("Oh can you send the card before CX?" - that is either CX or prep time - there is not un-clocked time).
Setting up your podium/stand.
Putting your flows in order.
Finding pens, flows, timers.

Debate like this: http://vimeo.com/5464508

MACRO-ISSUES
Communication: I like it. I appreciate teams that recognize communication failures and try to correct them. If I am not flowing, it usually means communication is breaking down. If I am confused or have missed an argument, I will frequently look up and give you a confused look – you should read this as an indication that the argument, at minimum, needs to be repeated, and may need to be re-explained. I am more than willing to discount a team’s arguments if I didn’t understand or get their arguments on my flow.

Speaker points: Points are influenced by a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: Communication skills, speaking clarity, road-mapping, obnoxiousness, disrespectfulness, theft of prep time, quality of and sufficient participation in 2 cross-examinations and 2 speeches, the quality of the debate, the clarity of your arguments, the sophistication of your strategy, and your execution. I have grown uncomfortable with the amount of profanity used during debates – do not expect high points if you use profanity.

Paperless/Prep Time: Most tournaments have a strict decision time clock, and your un-clocked time cuts into decision time. Most of you would generally prefer the judges has the optimal amount of time to decide. Please be efficient. Prep runs until the email is sent. I will be understanding of tech fails, but not as much negligence or incompetence. Dealing with your laptop’s issues, finding your flows, looking for evidence, figuring out how to operate a timer, setting up stands, etc. – i.e. preparation – all come out of prep time.

Flowing:
• I flow.
• Unless both teams instruct me otherwise, I will flow both teams.
• I evaluate the debate based primarily on what I have flowed.
• I frequently flow CX. I carefully check the 2AR for new arguments, and will not hold the 2NR accountable for unpredictable explanations or cross applications.
• I try to get down some form of tag/cite/text for each card. This doesn’t mean I always do. I make more effort to get the arg than I do the cite or date, so do not expect me to always know what you’re talking about when you solely refer to your “Henry 19” evidence.
• I reward those who make flowing easier by reading in a flowable fashion (road-mapping & signposting, direct refutation/clash, clarity, reasonable pace, emphasis of key words, reading for meaning, no distractions like tapping on the tubs, etc.). If you are fond of saying things like "Now the link debate" or "Group the perm debate" during the constructives, and you do not very transparently embed the clash that follows, do not expect me to follow your arguments or connect dots for you. Nor should you expect spectacular points.

Evidence:
• I appreciate efforts to evaluate and compare claims and evidence in the debate.
• I pay attention to quals and prefer they are actually read in the debate. I am extremely dismayed by the decline in quality of evidence (thank you, Internets) and the lack of teams’ capitalization on questionable sources.
• I don’t like to read evidence if I don’t feel the argument it makes has been communicated to me (e.g. the card was mumbled in the 2AC, or only extended by cite, or accompanied by a warrantless explanation, etc.).
• I also don’t like reading the un-highlighted portions of evidence unless they are specifically challenged by the opposing team.
• I should not have to read the un-highlighted parts to understand your argument – the highlighted portion should be a complete argument and a coherent thought. If you only read a claim, you only have a claim – you don’t get credit for portions of the evidence you don’t reference or read. If you only read a non-grammatical fragment, you are running the risk of me deciding I can’t coherently interpret that as an arg.
• I don’t like anonymous pronouns or referents in evidence like “she says” without an identification of who “she” is – identify “she” in your speech or “she” won’t get much weight in my decision.
• If you hand me evidence to read, please make clear which portions were actually read.

Decision calculus: Procedural determinations usually precede substantive determinations. First, I evaluate fairness questions to determine if actions by either team fundamentally alter the playing field in favor of the aff or neg. Then, I evaluate substantive questions. Typically, the aff must prove their plan is net beneficial over the status quo and/or a counterplan in order to win.

MICRO-ISSUES
Topicality & plan-related issues:
• The aff needs to have a written plan text.
• It should be topical.
• T is a voter. Criticisms of T are RVIs in sheep’s clothing.
• Anti-topical actions are neg ground.
• Have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation of how nontraditional advocacies or demands are meaningfully different from plans, other than they are usually either vague and/or non-topical.
• On a related note, I don’t get why calling one’s advocacy a performance or demand renders a team immune from being held responsible for the consequences of their advocacy.
• In relation to plans and permutations, I value specificity over vagueness – specificity is necessary for meaningful debate about policies. However, please do not consider this an invitation to run dumb spec arguments as voting issues – absent a glaring evasiveness/lack of specificity, these are typically more strategic as solvency args.

Critiques/Performance:

I generally lean negative on CP theory: topical, plan-inclusive, exclusion, conditional, international fiat, agent, etc. Aff teams should take more advantage of situations where the counterplan run is abusive at multiple levels – if the negative has to fend off multiple reasons the CP is abusive, their theory blocks may start to contradict. Both counterplan and permutation texts should be written out. “Do both” is typically meaningless to me – specify how. The status quo could remain a logical option, but growing convinced this should be debated. [NOTE THAT IS A FALL '18 CHANGE - DEBATE IT OUT] Additionally, another shout-out for communication - many theory debates are shallow and blippy - don't be that team. I like theory, but those type of debates give theory a bad name.

Other:

I like DAs. I’m willing to vote on stock issue arguments like inherency or “zero risk of solvency”.

Hannah Call George Mason University 4 rounds

Last changed on Mon September 19, 2022 at 9:29 PM UTC

Email chains: hcall94@gmail.com

Coach at Mason (2016-Present)

If my camera is off, I am not ready. Please do not start your speech yet or I will likely miss things. Thanks!

Top Level Things:

Tech > truth (most of the time)

Depth > breadth

Strategic thinking/arg development/framing of args > 10 cards that say X

I won't take prep for flashing/emailing, just don't steal it.

If a paradigm is not provided for me to evaluate the round, I will default to util.

I don't keep track of speech time/prep. Please keep your own.

Unless I am told not to judge kick by the 2AR, I will default to judge-kicking the CP or alt (in open).

I won't vote on things that have occurred outside of the round (ie pre-round misdisclosure).

Do not include cards in the card doc if they were not referenced in the 2NR/2AR but they do answer arguments your opponents made in their speech. If you didn't make the arg, I'm not going to read the card.

2:15 judge time is the bane of my existence. I apologize in advance for going to decision time in nearly every open debate. I like being thorough.

Online Debate:

Please. Please. Please. Start slow for the first 5 seconds of each speech. It is sometimes so hard to comprehend online debate, especially if you are even slightly unclear in person.

Make sure to occasionally check the screen when speaking to make sure we aren't frozen/showing you we can't hear you.

I am very understanding of inevitable online tech failures.

Cards:

Main things I end up looking to cards for:

- To clarify questions I have about my flow based on arguments made in the 2NR/2AR.

- To compare the quality of evidence on well-debated arguments. If both teams have done a good job responding to warrants from opponent ev + explaining their own ev, I will look to evidence quality as a tie breaker for those arguments.

- To determine if I should discount a card entirely. If a card is bad, say that. I will then validate if the ev is bad, and if it just doesn't make arguments I will not evaluate it in my decision. If I'm not told a card is bad and the arg is dropped, I'll give the other team full weight of it regardless of ev quality to preserve 2NR/2AR arg choice on arguments dropped by the other team.

I will NOT use evidence to create applications that were not made by debaters to answer the other team's arguments.

Theory:

2021 update: I'm fine with unlimited condo. I am very unlikely to vote on condo but will if it is certainly won.

Other theory stuff:

If theory comes down to reasons that the specific CP is a voter, I view it as a reason to reject the arg and not the team. To be clear, I will not vote someone down for reading a certain type of CP or alt based on theory args alone. Independent CP theory args are highly dependent on whether there is quality evidence to substantiate the CP.

DAs:

There can be 0 percent risk of a link.

Bad DAs can be beaten with analytics + an impact defense card.

Uniqueness isn't given enough credit in a lot of 2NRs/2ARs.

Link typically precedes uniqueness. You should do framing for these things.

DA turns case/case turns DA gets dropped A LOT. Try not to do that.

I miss judging politics debates.

Ks v Policy Affs:

I prefer line-by-line debates and very much dislike lengthy overviews and convoluted alt explanations. I will not make cross-applications for you.

I prefer Ks that have specific links to the topic or plan action significantly more than Ks that have state or omission links.

It is important for you to win root cause claims in relation to the specifics of the aff rather than sweeping generalizations about war. This is especially true when the aff has arguments about a certain countries' motives/geopolitical interests or reasons behind corporate/governmental actions.

Outside of something that was blatantly offensive, I believe that all language is contextual and words only mean as much as the meaning attached to them. Thus, args like "we didn't use it in that context" are convincing to me. I can be persuaded to vote them down, but I am going to be more biased the other way.

Some of the below section is also relevant for these debates.

K affs v Policy Team:

The aff should at minimum be tied to the resolution. Novices should read a plan during their first semester.

Honestly, I would just prefer to resolve a debate that is aff v. case defense + offense specific to the aff (reform CP w/ net benefit, etc) over framework. If you go for framework/if you're giving a 2AR v it, below are some random things I think about clash debates. This is not exhaustive, nor does it mean I will automatically vote on these arguments. I will vote for who I think wins the flow, but in close debates, these are my leanings:

- I dislike judging debates that solely come down to structural v procedural fairness. I find them nearly impossible to resolve without judge intervention.

- Fairness is an internal link. There are multiple impacts that come from it.

- K affs are inevitable and we should be able to effectively engage with them in ways other than fw/t when they are based in discussions of the resolution.

- Ground and stasis points in debate are important for testing and arg refinement.

- Arg refinement can still occur over the process of the aff even w/o a plan if it's in the area of the resolution. Everyone should have X topic reform good cards to answer these affs/go against the K.

- Being topical is not the end of debate.

- Affs that are directly bidirectional are not a good idea in front of me and T should be the 2NR.

- Creativity can exist with plan texts and is not precluded by defending one.

- Affs garnering solid offense from sequencing questions is one of the best ways to win my ballot in these debates.

- Debate itself is good. Gaming is good. W/L inevitable. The goal of a debate is to win.

K v K:

If you happen to find me here, give me very clear judge instruction.

Speaker points:

They're arbitrary. I've given up trying to adapt to a scale but I do try to give speaks based on the division and tournament. Here's some important things to note:

- Confidence gets you a long way.

- If you prevent your opponent from answering in cross ex, that won't bode well for speaks and I will be annoyed.

- I will not give you a 30 because you ask for one. Though I will give birthday and Senior last tournament boosts.

- If I'm not flowing something, and you notice I am staring at you, you are being redundant and should move on.

Cecilia Cerja UT Dallas 4 rounds None

Vida Chiri Liberty University 3 rounds

Last changed on Wed February 7, 2024 at 7:59 AM EDT

Ultimately, I have come to conclusion that debate is a game but this game also has real life effects on the people who choose to participate in it. Therefore,BE NICE, HAVE FUN, and DO YOU!!!

I have found in my time debating that there are a few things that debaters are looking for when they read judging philosophies (including myself) so I’ll get straight to the point:

K's:I’m fine with them and have run them for quite some time in my career. However, this does not mean run a K in front of me for the fun of it - rather it means that I expect you to be able to explain your link story and the way the alternative functions. I find that most teams just make the assumption that the Aff doesn’t get a perm because "it’s a methodology debate". That’s not an argument, give me warrants as to why this is true if this is the argument you are going to for. K Aff's are fine often times debaters lose sight of the strategic benefits of the Aff, So a simple advice I can give isDONT FORGET YOUR AFF!!

DA's:In general I like strong impact analysis and good link story. Make logical argument and be able to weigh the impact story against the Aff.

CP’s: I am open all types of CP’s you just have to prove the competitiveness of said CP and make sure it has a net benefit.

FW: Again….Debate is a game but this game has real life implications on those who choose to engage in it. I think FW can be strategic against some Aff’s but don’t use it as a reason to not engage the Aff. Win your interpretation and weigh your impacts. Aff’s: don’t blow off FW answer it and engage it or tell me why you are not engaging in it.

Theory: Not a big fan of it, but make sure you slow down as to ensure I get all the arguments you are making. But do you!

Cross X: I think this is the best part of debate and LOVE it. Don’t waste those 3 min, they serve a great purpose. I am ALWAYS paying attention to CX and may even flow it.

***Please remember that I am not as familiar with the high school topic so don’t assume I know all the jargon ***

Last but not least,watch me!(take hints from the visual cues that I am sending)

Deven Cooper CSU Long Beach 8 rounds

Last changed on Sat March 2, 2024 at 8:23 AM PDT

High school debate: Baltimore Urban Debate League ( Lake Clifton Eastern High School).

College debate: University of Louisville then Towson University.

Grad work: Cal State Fullerton.

Current: Director of Debate at Long Beach State (CSU Long Beach), former Director of Debate a Fresno State.

Email for chain: Devenc325@gmail.com

Speaker Point Scale

29.5-30: one of the best speakers I expect to see this year and has a high grade of Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, Talent, and Swag is on 100. This means expert explanation of arguments and most arguments are offensive.

29 - 29.5: very good speaker has a middle grade of Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, Talent, and mid-range swag. Explanation of arguments are of great quality and many of the arguments are offensive.

28.4 - 28.9: good speaker; may have some above average range/ parts of the Cha.Uni.Ner.Tal.S acronym but must work on a few of them and may have some issues to work out. Explanation of arguments are of good quality and several of the arguments are offensive.

28 - 28.3: solid speaker; needs some work; probably has average range/ parts of the Cha.Uni.Ner.Tal.S acronym but must work on a few of them and may have some issues to work out. Explanation of arguments are of okayish quality and very few of the arguments are offensive.

27.1 - 27.5: okay speaker; needs significant work on the Cha.Uni.Ner.Tal.S acronym. Not that good of explanation with no offensive arguments.

< 27: you have done something deeply problematic in this debate like clipping cards or linguistic violence, or rhetorically performed an ism without apology or remorse.

Please do not ask me to disclose points nor tell me as an argument to give you a 30. I wont. For some reason people think you are entitled to high points, I am not that person. So, you have to earn the points you get.

IF YOU ARE IN HIGHSCHOOL, SKIP DOWN TO THE "Judging Proper" section :)

Cultural Context

If you are a team that reads an argument based in someone else's identity, and you are called on it by another team with receipts of how it implicates the round you are in, its an uphill battle for you. I am a fan of performing your politics with consistency and genuine ethical relationships to the people you speak about. I am a fan of the wonderful author Linda Martin Alcoff who says " where one speaks from affects both the meaning and truth of what one says." With that said, you can win the debate but the burden of proof is higher for you....

Post Rounding

I will not entertain disrespectful or abrasive engagement because you lost the round. If you have questions, you may ask in a way that is thoughtful and seeking understanding. If your coach thinks they will do this as a defense of your students, feel free to constrain me. I will not allow my students to engage that way and the same courtesy should be extended to EVERYONE. Losing doesn't does not give you license to be out of your mind and speak with malice. Keep in mind I am not from the suburbs and I will not tolerate anyone's nasty demeanor directed at me nor my students.

"Community" Members

I do not and will not blindly think that all people in this activity are kind, trustworthy, non-cheaters, good intentioned, or will not do or say anything in the name of competition or malice towards others. Please miss me with having faith in people in an activity that often reveals people engaging in misconduct, exploitation, grooming, or other inappropriate activities that often times NEVER get reported. MANY of you have created and perpetuated a culture of toxicity and elitism, then you are surprised when the chickens come home to roost. This applies to ALL forms of college and high school debate...

Judging Proper

I am more than willing to listen to ANY arguments that are well explained and impacted and relate to how your strategy is going to produce scholarship, policy action, performance, movement, or whatever political stance or program. I will refer to an educator framework unless told otherwise...This means I will evaluate the round based on how you tell me you want it to be framed and I will offer comments on how you could make your argument better after the round. Comparison, Framing, OFFENSE is key for me. Please indict each other's framework or role of the ballot/role of the judge for evaluation and make clear offense to how that may make a bad model of debate. OR I am down with saying the debate should not be a reflection about the over all model of debate/ no model.

I DO NOT privilege certain teams or styles over others because that makes debate more unfair, un-educational, cliquey, and makes people not feel valued or wanted in this community, on that note I don't really jive to well with arguments about how certain folks should be excluded for the sake of playing the "game". NOR do I feel that there are particular kinds of debate related to ones personal identity. I think people are just making arguments attached to who they are, which is awesome, but I will not privilege a kind of debate because some asserts its a thing.

I judge debates according to the systematic connection of arguments rather than solely line by line…BUT doesn’t mean if the other team drops turns or other arguments that I won’t evaluate that first. They must be impacted and explained. PLEASE always point out reason why the opposing team is BAD and have contextualized reasons for why they have created a bad impact or make one worse. I DO vote on framework and theory arguments….I’ve been known to vote on Condo quite a bit, but make the interp, abuse story, and contradictions clear. If the debate devolves into a theory debate, I still think the AFF should extend a brief summary of the case.

Don’t try to adapt to how I used to debate if you genuinely don’t believe in doing so or just want to win a ballot. If you are doing a performance I will hold you to the level that it is practiced, you have a reason for doing so, and relates to the overall argument you are making…Don’t think “oh! I did a performance in front of Deven, I win.” You are sadly mistaken if so. It should be practiced, timed well, contain arguments, and just overall have a purpose. It should be extended with full explanation and utility.

Overall I would like to see a good debate where people are confident in their arguments and feel comfortable being themselves and arguing how they feel is best. I am not here to exclude you or make you feel worthless or that you are a "lazy" intellectual as some debaters may call others, but I do like to see you defend your side to the best of your ability.

GET OFF THEM BLOCKS SOME! I get it coaches like to block out args for their students, even so far as to script them out. I think this is a practice that is only focused on WINNING and not the intellectual development of debaters who will go on to coach younger debaters. A bit of advice that I give to any debater I come across is to tell them to READ, READ, READ. It is indeed fundamental and allows for the expansion of example use and fluency of your arguments.

A few issues that should be clarified:

Decorum: I DO NOT LIKE when teams think they can DISRESPECT, BULLY, talk RUDE to, or SCREAM at other teams for intimidation purposes in order to win or throw the other team off. Your points will be effected because this is very unbecoming and does not allow this space to be one of dialogue and reciprocity. If someone disrespects you, I am NOT saying turn the other cheek, but have some tact and utility of how you engage these folks. And being hyper evasive to me is a hard sell. Do not get me wrong, I do love the sassiness, sarcasm, curtness, and shade of it all but there is a way to do it with tact. I am also NOT persuaded that you should be able to be rude or do whatever you want because you are a certain race, class, gender, sex, sexuality, or any other intersection under the sun. That to me is a problematic excuse that intensifies the illegit and often rigid criticism that is unlashed upon "identity politics."

Road maps: STICK TO IT. I am a tight flower and I have a method. However, I need to know where things go so there is no dispute in the RFD that something was answered or not. If you are a one off team, please have a designed place for the PERM. I can listen well and know that there are places things should go, but I HATE to do that work for a team. PLEASE FLOW and not just follow the doc. If you answer an arg that was in the doc, but not read, I will take it as you note flowing nor paying attention to what is going on.

Framework and Theory: I love smart arguments in this area. I am not inclined to just vote on debate will be destroyed or traditional framework will lead to genocide unless explained very well and impacted based on some spill over claims. There must be a concrete connection to the impacts articulated on these and most be weighed. I am persuaded by the deliberation arguments, institutional engagement/building, limits, and topical versions of the Aff. Fairness is an interesting concept for me here. I think you must prove how their model of debate directly creates unfairness and provide links to the way their model of debate does such. I don't think just saying structural fairness comes first is the best without clarification about what that means in the context of the debate space and your model of debate.

Some of you K/Performance folks may think I am a FW hack, thas cute or whatever. Instead of looking at the judge as the reason why you weren't adequate at defending your business, you should do a redo, innovate, or invest in how to strategize. If it seems as though you aren't winning FW in front of me that means you are not focusing how offense and your model produces some level of "good." Or you could defend why the model approach is problematic or several reasons. I firmly believe if someone has a model of debate or how they want to engage the res or this space, you MUST defend it and prove why that is productive and provides some level of ground or debatability.

Winning Framework for me includes some level of case turn or reason why the aff produces something bad/ blocks something good/ there's a PIC/PIK of some kind (explained). This should be coupled with a proficient explanation of either the TVA or SSD strategy with the voter components (limits, predictability, clash, deliberation, research burden, education, fairness, ground etc.) that solidify your model of debate.

Performance: It must be linked to an argument that is able to defend the performance and be able to explain the overall impact on debate or the world/politics itself. Please don’t do a performance to just do it…you MUST have a purpose and connect it to arguments. Plus debate is a place of politics and args about debate are not absent politics sometimes they are even a pre-req to “real” politics, but I can be persuaded otherwise. You must have a role of the ballot or framework to defend yourself, or on the other side say why the role of the ballot is bad. I also think those critics who believe this style of debate is anti-intellectual or not political are oversimplifying the nuance of each team that does performance. Take your role as an educator and stop being an intellectual coward or ideology driven hack.

Do not be afraid to PIK/PIC out of a performance or give reasons why it was BAD. Often people want to get in their feelings when you do this. I am NOT sympathetic to that because you made a choice to bring it to this space and that means it can be negated, problematized, and subject to verbal criticism.

Topic/Resolution: I will vote on reasons why or why not to go by the topic...unlike some closed minded judges who are detached from the reality that the topics chosen may not allow for one to embrace their subjectivity or social location in ways that are productive. This doesn’t mean I think talking about puppies and candy should win, for those who dumb down debate in their framework args in that way. You should have a concrete and material basis why you chose not to engage the topic and linked to some affirmation against racism/sexism/homophobia/classism/elitism/white supremacy and produces politics that are progressive and debatable. There would have to be some metric of evaluation though. BUT, I can be persuaded by the plan focus and topic education model is better middle ground to what they want to discuss.

Hella High Theory K: i.e Hiediggar, Baudrillard, Zizek, D&G, Butler, Arant, and their colleagues…this MUST be explained to me in a way that can make some material sense to me as in a clear link to what the aff has done or an explanation of the resolution…I feel that a lot of times teams that do these types of arguments assume a world of abstraction that doesn’t relate fully to how to address the needs of the oppressed that isn’t a privileged one. However, I do enjoy Nietzsche args that are well explained and contextualized. Offense is key with running these args and answering them.

Disadvantages: I’m cool with them just be well explained and have a link/link wall that can paint the story…you can get away with a generic link with me if you run politics/econ/tradeoff disads. But, it would be great to provide a good story. In the 2NC/1NR retell the story of the disad with more context and OFFENSE and compartmentalize the parts. ALWAYS tell me why it turns and outweighs case. Disads on case should be impacted and have a clear link to what the aff has done to create/perpetuate the disad. If you are a K team and you kick the alt that solves for the disads…that is problematic for me. Affs need to be winning impact framing and some level of offense. No link is not enough for me.

Perms: I HATE when people have more than 3 perms. Perm theory is good here for me, do it and not just GROUP them. For a Method v Method debate, you do not get to just say you dont get a perm. Enumerate reasons why they do not get a perm. BUT, if an Aff team in this debate does make a perm, it is not just a test of competition, it is an advocacy that must be argued as solving/challenging what is the issue in the debate.
Additionally, you can kick the perms and no longer have to be burden with that solvency. BUT you must have offensive against their C/P, ALT, or advocacy.

Counterplans/Advocacies: They have to solve at least part of the case and address some of the fundamental issues dealing with the aff’s advantages especially if it’s a performance or critical aff…I’m cool with perm theory with a voter attached. I am cool with any kind of these arguments, but an internal net benefit is not enough for me in a policy counterplan setting. If you are running a counter advocacy, there must be enumerated reasons why it is competitive, net beneficial, and is the option that should be prioritized. I do love me a PIK/PIC or two, but please do it effectively with specific evidence that is a criticism of the phrase or term the aff used. But, know the difference between piking out of something and just criticizing the aff on some trivial level. I think you need to do very good analysis in order to win a PIC/PIK. I do not judge kick things...that is your job.

Affs in the case of PIK/PICs, you must have disads to the solvency (if any), perm, theory, defend the part that is questionable to the NEG.

Race/ Identity arguments: LOVE these especially from the Black/Latinx/Asian/Indigenous/Trans/Sexuality perspective (most familiar with) , but this doesn’t mean you will win just because you run them like that. I like to see the linkage between what the aff does wrong or what the aff/neg has perpetuated. I’m NOT likely to vote on a link of omission unless some structural claim has risen the burden. I am not familiar with ALL of these types of args, so do not assume that I know all you literature or that I am a true believer of your arguments about Blackness. I do not believe that Blackness based arguments are wedded to an ontology focus or that one needs to win or defeat ontology to win.

I am def what some of you folks would call a "humanist and I am okay with that. Does not mean you can't win any other versions of that debate in front of me.

Case Args: Only go for case turns and if REALLY needed for your K, case defense.…they are the best and are offensive , however case defense may work on impacts if you are going for a K. If you run a K or performance you need to have some interaction with the aff to say why it is bad. Please don't sandbag these args so late in the debate.

CONGRESSIONAL DEBATE --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am of the strong belief that Congressional debate is a DEBATE event first and foremost. I do not have an I.E or speech background. However, I do teach college public speaking and argumentation. The comments I leave will talk about some speech or style components. I am not a judge that heavily favors delivery over the argumentation and evidence use.

I am a judge that enjoys RECENT evidence use, refutation, and clash with the topics you have been assigned.

STRUCTURE OF SPEECHES

I really like organization. With that said, I do prefer debaters have a introduction with a short attention getter, and a short preview statement of their arguments. In the body of the speech, I would like some level of impacting/ weighing of your arguments and their arguments ( if applicable), point out flaws in your opponents argumentation (lack of solvency, fallacies, Alternative causes), cite evidence and how it applies, and other clash based refutation. If you want to have a conclusion, make sure it has a short summary and a declarative reason to pass or fail.

REFUTATION

After the first 2 speeches of the debate, I put heavy emphasis on the idea that these speeches should have a refutation component outside of you extending a previous argument from your side, establish a new argument/evidence, or having some kind of summary. I LOVE OFFENSE based arguments that will turn the previous arguments state by the opposition. Defensive arguments are fine, but please explain why they mean the opposition cannot solve or why your criticism of their evidence or reason raises to the level of rejecting their stance. Please do not list more than 2 or 3 senators or reps that you are refuting because in some cases it looks like students are more concerned with the appearance of refutation than actually doing it. I do LOVE sassy, assertive or sarcastic moments but still be polite.

EVIDENCE USE

I think evidence use is very important to the way I view this type of debate. You should draw evidence from quality sources whether that is stats/figures/academic journals/narrative from ordinary people. Please remember to cite where you got your information and the year. I am a hack for recency of your evidence because it helps to illuminate the current issues on your topic. Old evidence is a bit interesting and should be rethought in front of me. Evidence that doesn't at some level assume the ongoing/aftermath of COVID-19 is a bit of a stretch. Evidence comparison/analysis of your opponent is great as well.

ANALYSIS

I LOVE impact calculus where you tell me why the advantages of doing or not doing a bill outweighs the costs. This can be done in several ways, but it should be clear, concise, and usually happen in the later speeches. At a basic level, doing timeframe, magnitude, probability, proximity, or any other standard for making arguments based on impact are great. I DISLIKE rehash....If you are not expanding or changing the way someone has articulated an argument or at least acknowledge it, I do not find rehash innovative nor high rank worthy. This goes back to preparation and if you have done work on both sides of a bill. You should prepare multiple arguments on a given side just in case someone does the argument before you. There is nothin worse to me than an unprepared set of debaters that must take a bunch of recesses/breaks to prepare to switch.

David Cram Helwich Minnesota 2 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 7:07 AM CDT

David Cram Helwich
University of Minnesota
28 years judging, 20-ish rounds each year

Quick version: Do what you do best and I will try to check my dispositions at the door.

Topic Thoughts: We picked the wrong one (too narrow, needed at least sole purpose). Aff innovation is going to require NFU-subsets affs, but I have yet to see a good argument for a reasonable limit to such an interpretation. "Disarming" creates an unanticipated loophole. Process counterplans that are not directly related to nuclear policymaking seem superfluous given the strength of the negative side of the topic literature.

Online Debate: It is "not great," better than I feared. I have judged quite a few online debates over the past 3 years. Debaters will benefit by slowing down a bit if that enhances their clarity, avoiding cross-talk, and actively embracing norms that minimize the amount of "null time" in debates--watch for speechdocs and download them right away, pay attention to the next speaker as they give the order, be efficient in getting your speechdoc attached and sent, etc.

Evidence: I believe that engaged research is one of the strongest benefits of policy debate, and that judging practices should incentivize such research. I am a bad judge for you if your evidence quality is marginal—sources, recency, and warrants/data offered. I reward teams who debate their opponent’s evidence, including source qualifications.

Delivery: I will provide prompts (if not on a panel) if I am having trouble flowing. I will not evaluate arguments that I could not originally flow.

Topicality: I vote on well-developed procedurals. I rarely vote on T cheap shots. T is not genocide—however, “exclusion” and similar impacts can be good reasons to prefer one interpretation over another. Debaters that focus interpretation debating on caselists (content and size), division of ground, and the types of literature we read, analyzed through fairness/education lenses, are more likely to get my ballot. I tend to have a high threshold for what counts as a “definition”—intent to define is important, whereas proximity-count “definitions” seem more valuable in setting the parameters of potential caselists than in grounding an interpretation of the topic.

Critical Arguments: I have read quite a bit of critical theory, and will not dismiss your argument just because it does not conform to ‘traditional’ notions of debate. However, you should not assume that I am necessarily familiar with your particular literature base. I value debating that applies theory to the ‘artifact’ of the 1AC (or 1NC, or topic, etc). The more specific and insightful the application of said theory, the more likely I am to vote for you. Explaining what it means to vote for you (role of the ballot) is vitally important, for both “policy” and “K” teams. Absent contrary guidance, I view ‘framework’ debates in the same frame as T—caselist size/content, division of ground, research focus.

Disadvantages/Risk: I typically assess the ‘intrinsic probability’ of the plan triggering a particular DA (or advantage) before assessing uniqueness questions. This means that link work is very important—uniqueness obviously implicates probability, but “risk of uniqueness” generally means “we have no link.” Impact assessments beyond shallow assertions (“ours is faster because I just said so”) are an easy pathway to my ballot, especially if you have strong evidentiary support

Theory: I will not evaluate theoretical objections that do not rise to the level of an argument (claim, data, warrant). Good theory debating focuses on how the operationalization of competing interpretations impacts what we debate/research and side balance. Thought experiments (what would debate look like if the neg could read an unlimited number of contradictory, conditional counterplans?) are valuable in drawing such comparisons. I tend to find “arg not team” to be persuasive in most cases. This means you need a good reason why “loss” is an appropriate remedy for a theory violation—I am persuadable on this question, but it takes more than an assertion. If it is a close call in your mind about whether to go for “substance” or “theory,” you are probably better off going for “substance.”

Counterplans: The gold standard for counterplan legitimacy is specific solvency evidence. Obviously, the necessary degree of specificity is a matter of interpretation, but, like good art, you know it when you see it. I am more suspicious of multi-conditionality, and international fiat than most judges. I am probably more open to condition counterplans than many critics. PICs/PECs that focus debate on substantive parts of the aff seem important to me. Functional competition seems to make more sense than does textual competition. That being said, I coach my teams to run many counterplans that I do not think are legitimate, and vote for such arguments all the time. The status quo seems to be a legitimate voting option unless I am instructed otherwise. My assumption is that I am trying to determine the "best policy option," which can include the status quo unless directed otherwise.

Argument Resolution: Rebuttalists that simply extend a bunch of cards/claims and hope that I decide things in their favor do poorly in front of me. I reward debaters that resolve arguments, meaning they provide reasons why their warrants, data, analysis, sources etc. are stronger (more persuasive) than those of their opponents on critical pressure points. I defer to uncontested argument and impact comparisons. I read evidence on questions that are contested, if I want the cite, or if I think your argument is interesting.

Decorum: I believe that exclusionary practices (including speech acts) are unacceptable. I am unlikely to vote against you for being offensive, but I will not hesitate to decrease your points if you behave in an inappropriate manner (intentionally engaging in hostile, classist, racist, sexist, heterosexist, ableist etc. acts, for example). I recognize that this activity is very intense, but please try to understand that everyone present feels the same pressures and “play nice.”

Use an email chain--establish one before the round, and please include me on it (cramhelwich@gmail.com) . Prep time ends once the speechdoc is saved and sent. Most tournaments have policies on how to deal with "tech time"--please know what those policies are. I do not have a strong opinion on the acceptability of mid-speech prep for other purposes.

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

Cody Crunkilton Minnesota 4 rounds

Last changed on Fri March 31, 2023 at 3:08 AM CDT

I debated five years at the University of Minnesota, graduated in 2015. I have always been a 2N.

Pre-round synopsis: Bad for Ks, conditionality is good, enjoys impact turns, dislikes aff vagueness, good for reasonable/less than extinction impacts, zero risk and presumption are things, better than average for the aff on theory vs questionable CPs, better than average for the neg on T (limits are good). On the 2023 topic I've only judged one tournament pre-NDT, so be aware.

Post-2022 NDT notes:

1. I never really went for process CPs as a debater, so I have much less well developed thoughts on competition than people who have debated recently (2021/2022 seemed to have a lot more of those).

2. After a doubles debate I judged + watching finals, I thought I should mention that 1) I enjoy impact turn debates a lot 2) If the 1AC says they solve something then tries to do take backs I'm not very likely to be sympathetic and 3) warming good was my favorite impact turn as a debater and holds a particular place in my heart, though I recognize the evidence has gotten worse since 2014.

**Extended Thoughts**

Kritiks:

Topshelf: I find it very difficult to vote on something which is not an effect of the implementation of the plan. I have no idea how to compare things like ontology to the aff saving people. It is possible to convince me otherwise, but the amount of work you will have to do will be so high that nineteen out of twenty times you would be better off doing something else. I won't hold it against you if you like Ks, and am not going to feel like my time was wasted or you are destroying debate or anything - I am just genuinely very confused about how kritiks answer the aff. I recognize I am way outside of the community norm on this - something just doesn't click for me with kritiks and I want to make sure that no one is caught off guard.

Aff arguments I like:

- Theory: the neg only gets the status quo or fiat from a resolutional actor

- Perm double bind

- New arguments are OK because the neg changed their argument/explained the alt/stopped being vague in the block/2NR

T-USFG note: For whatever reason, I’m mildly friendlier to no plan affs vs framework than I am for kritiks on the neg.

Conditionality:

It isn't impossible to get me to vote on, but one of two things need to happen:

1) the aff explains why something actually bad happened ("they read 6 counterplans" is an FYI, not an arg). For example - Harvard CM counterplaned out of straight turns to disads Wake MT could have read in doubles at Northwestern in 2018. That seems to hurt the aff’s ability to debate. It might be fine! But there's an argument there.

2) the aff goes into depth on why either the neg's model puts an undue burden on the aff, with many specific examples and hypotheticals, or why the neg's model produces a bad educational experience (i.e. depth on CPs > depth on the aff because topic-wide education > plan focused education). Both sides should talk about what the world of debate looks like under your interpretations. Being specific is really important.

The neg args I like the most are testing the aff, reasonability, and skews inevitable/not unique to their interp.

Judge kick I can go either way on, tell me what to do.

Theory:

Impact calc is good. Cheap shots are bad. Reject the argument not the team for everything but conditionality. Severance perms will never be a reason to reject the team.

States, international fiat, and agent/process/consult/condition CPs are probably not necessary.

All of these predispositions can be modified if the literature supports a debate over a specific counterplan.

My ideal form of debate is aff reads a plan neg gets the squo and CPs with a resolutional agent.

Topicality:

I’m friendlier to limits and lit/precision than the average judge.

Disads:

Winning a higher risk of your disad is better than turning the case. I generally care more about links than uniqueness.

Vagueness:

is a real argument. I haven’t been in a situation where it has been the 2nr, but if what the aff does meaningfully affects neg strategy I will vote for it.

**Archive: Old/High School Stuff - can ignore, saved for historical reasons**

Conditionality is good: It isn’t impossible for me to vote on it but probably won’t happen. Judge kick I’m unsure about, so tell me what to do.

Extinction/high magnitude impacts: Most are silly (obvi) and I’m very open to voting on “less than extinction but really bad outweighs 1% risk of extinction). I’m less enamored with try or die than a lot of other judges. If you’re really into doing the high probability/low magnitude stuff you should look at the “K affs with a plan” section below.

Flowing: I flow on paper. I will miss things. Be sure to slow down on important things, and consider slowing down in general.

Wipeout: is not a good argument. However, it is a better argument than most K’s because at least it says the aff is bad and can’t be permed. Aliens wipeout is better than Schopenhauer wipeout.

Presumption: If there’s a counterplan/alt it goes aff and if there isn’t it goes neg but I can be persuaded otherwise. I also am willing to vote on zero risk of the aff/da if you set that framing up and are really beating them on their case/disad.

Offensive stuff: Don't be mean. But, being able to explain why things like imperialism are bad is something debaters should be able to do. There isn't any reason for you to use gendered/ableist/racist language so you should avoid it.

K’s: explain why the aff is bad. Saying “method first” without explaining why that matters is not sufficient. I am very receptive to the neg doesn’t get to fiat different actors than the aff. My problems with Ks are more with the form than with the content, so if you can make your k arguments into reasons why the aff is bad I am much more likely to vote for you.

K’s vs K affs: Read more into my section on K’s than my section on K affs without a plan. I tend to vote aff on the perm/alt does nothing in those debates, but that also might be because people haven’t been explaining links well. Despite going for Marx a lot in college I think that most identity arguments today are set up well to answer it and haven’t voted for it too much recently. Class is likely the most important thing, but other things matter too.

K v K debates: I won't know what your authors say - I'll be asking myself a) is the neg different/not perm-able by the aff and b) which is a better idea. It would likely help if you explained your stuff more than you thought you needed to, and going away from theory and towards examples would be better.

K affs without a plan: T is the path of least resistance. I think we choose topics for a reason and switching sides/some predictability is good. I don't know why reading plans requires teams to "roleplay" the USFG and also think that most of the arguments for why being forced to defend the federal government is bad are silly. The problem is how we do risk calc. If you don’t read a plan and are in front of me, the 3 scenarios where I vote aff tend to be either a. your version of debate gets more people from under-represented groups into debate and debate matters more to them than to others b. the neg team says something silly like if you win the state is bad you win and you technically win that arg, or c. there is a severe skill differential. If you are going for T against a not the topic aff, I am much more likely to be persuaded by limits/skills/stasis point than roleplaying the state makes us awesome policymakers.

K affs with a plan: I am not good for high theory k affs. I am good for affs with reasonable impacts who say they do something and say the neg’s arguments are silly. The best way to win is to take out the probability of their disads- you don’t have to read complexity/predictions cards, but make args why their stuff isn’t true/leaves stuff out. Nate Cohn’s risk calc stuff makes a lot of sense to me (http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php/topic,5416.0.html) so take a look at that if you want.

**Archive: 2019 (Prez power) topic thoughts**

- T: I heard a couple of blocks on T subsets at Wake. I found them somewhat persuasive. The topic seems big.

- ESR theory: it is probably OK but I think I could be convinced to vote aff. I am concerned with the size of the topic, but prefer to limit via T than via counterplans.

- I haven't heard a very persuasive answer to "perm do both shields the link to politics" on ESR.

Warren Decker George Mason University 5 rounds

Cameron Dehmlow Dunne Indiana University 6 rounds

Brian DeLong Indiana University 6 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 2:55 AM EDT

Update 4/1/2023

*If you are scanning this philosophy as a nonmember of the community, seeking out quotes to help your political "culture war" cause you are not an honest broker here and largely looking for clickbait. I find your endeavors an unfortunate result of a rage machine that consumes a great deal of quality programs without ever helping them thrive or grow. Re-evaluate your life and think about how you can help high schools and middle schools around this country develop speech and debate programs, core liberal art educational, to improve the quality of argumentation, that otherwise is lacking. In the end, as an outsider looking in, you are missing a great deal of nuance in these philosophies and how they operate in the communities (multiple not just one) around the US and the world.

If you have landed here as a representative of Fox News or an ally or affiliate, I would like to see the receipts of the bias that has and continues to perforate your organization from Roger Ailes to Tucker Carlson and more. Here is my question, when you learned about the Joe McCarthy era of conspiracy theory, along with the hysteria and demonization of potential Americans who are communist (or sympathizers) and "pinko" (gay or sexual "deviants"), is your gripe with McCarthy that he had a secret list without evidence, or do you recognize that a core problem with McCarthy is his anti-democratic fear that there actually ARE communists, gay, trans, bisexual, Americans?

My next question is when and where you think it is acceptable for a person with strong beliefs to exist in democratic spaces. Bias is inevitable and part of this debate game. Organizations attempt to manage types of bias and coaches and debaters learn how to adapt to certain bias while attempting to avoid problematic bias. What do you think? Would right leaning presidential candidates vote for an argument that affirms trans athletes in sports? Should a trans judge leave their identity entirely at the door and embody a leading republican presidential candidate who is against medical care for trans persons? Both answers are no. The issue you seek to lambast for viewership clickbate is much deeper and more complicated than a 3 minute video clip can cover. Thank for reading.

REAL PHILOSOPHY
Background: Indiana University Director of Debate as of 2010. Background is primarily as a policy debater and policy debate coach.

Email Chain: Bdelo77@gmail.com

The road to high speaker points and the ballot

I reward debaters who have a strong knowledge of the topic. Those debaters who can articulate intricacies and relationships amongst topic specific literature will meet what I believe are the educational benefits of having a topic in the first place.

Using evidence to assist you with the argument you are trying to make is more important than stringing evidence together in hopes that they accumulate into an argument. “I have a card judge, it is real good” “pull my 15 uniqueness cards judge” are not arguments. Ex: Obama will win the election – a) swing voters, Rasmussen poll indicates momentum after the DNC b) Washington post “Romney has lost the election” the base is gone… etc. are good extensions of evidence.

Less jargon more eloquence. I get bored with repeated catch phrases. I understand the need for efficiency, but debaters who recognize the need for innovation by individuals in the activity will receive more points.

Speed: I expect I can digest at least 70% of your speech. The other 30% should be general human attention span issues on my part. I firmly believe debate is a communication event, I am saddened that this has been undervalued as debaters prepare for tournaments. If I agree with X debater that Y debater’s speech on an argument was incoherent, I am more and more willing to just ignore the argument. Computer screens and Bayesian calculus aside, there is a human in this body that makes human decisions.

Should affs be topical?

Affs should have a relationship to the topic that is cogent. If there is no relationship to the topic, I have a high standard for affirmatives to prove that the topic provides no “ground” for a debater to adapt and exist under its umbrella. Negatives, this does not mean you don’t have a similar burden to prove that the topic is worth debating. However personally I think you will have a much smaller hill to climb… I find it disturbing that debaters do not go further than a quick “topical version of your aff solves” then insert X switch side good card… Explain why the topical version is good for debate and provides argument diversity and flexibility.

Policy debate is good: When I prep our files for tournaments I tend to stay in the policy-oriented literature. This does not mean that I am unwilling to cut our K file or K answers, I just have limited time and job related motivation to dive into this literature.

K Debate: Can be done well, can be done poorly. I do not exclude the arguments from the round but nebulous arguments can be overplayed and abused.

(Updated 3-2-2022) Conditionality:

1) Judge Kick? No. You made your choice on what to go for now stick with it. 2NRs RARELY have the time to complete one avenue for the ballot let alone two conditional worlds...

I tend to believe that one conditional substantive test of the plan advocacy is good (agent CP, process CP, or ?) and I am open to the idea of the need for a second advantage CP (need to deal with add-ons and bad advantages) or K within limits. I'm not a fan of contradicting conditional advocacies in how they implicate 2AC offense and potential.

Beyond 1-2 conditional arguments, I am torn by the examples of proliferating counterplans and critiques that show up in the 1NC and then disappear in the negative block. There is a substantive tradeoff in the depth and quality of arguments and thus a demotivation incentive for the iterative testing and research in the status quo world of 3+ conditional advocacies. The neg's, "write better advantages" argument has value, however with 2AC time pressure it means that 1ACs are becoming Frankenstein's monster to deal with the time tradeoff.

Plans: I think the community should toy with the idea of a grand bargain where affirmatives will specify more in their plan text and negs give up some of their PIC ground. The aff interp of "we only have to specify the resolution" has pushed us in the direction where plans are largely meaningless and aff conditionality is built into core 2AC frontlines. The thing is, our community has lost many of its fora for discussing theory and establishing new norms around issues like this. Debaters need to help be the change we need and we need more in-depth theory discussions outside of the rounds. Who is the Rorger Solt going to be of the 2020's?

Reading evidence:
I find myself more willing to judge the evidence as it was debated in the round (speeches and cx), and less willing to scan through piles of cards to create a coherent understanding of the round. If a debate is being had about the quality of X card, how I SHOULD read the evidence, etc. I will read it.

Sometimes I just have an interest in the evidence and I read it for self-educational and post-round discussion reasons.

Judging:

I will work extremely hard to evaluate the debate as the debaters have asked me to judge it.

Kurt Fifelski University of Michigan 4 rounds

Last changed on Sun March 24, 2024 at 2:08 PM EDT

He/him

These are most of the predispositions I have about arguments that I can think of, these are not ironclad as my views on debate are constantly in flux. However, without being instructed otherwise, the below points will likely influence how I evaluate the debate.

Top Level:

-Please add me to the email chain, fifelski@umich.edu and please make the subject something that is easy to search like "NDT 4 - Michigan DM v UCO HS."

-I prefer to flow on paper, but if you would like me to flow on my computer so I can share the flow after the debate, just ask.

-I read along with speech docs and prefer clear, relatively slow, and organized debates. I am still trying to hone flowing in online debate.

-I cannot emphasize enough how important card quality and recency should be in debates, but it requires debaters to frame arguments about that importance.

-If you break a new aff and you don't want to share the docs, I will chalk it up to academic cowardice and presume that the aff is largely a pile of crap.

-Evidence can be inserted if the lines were read in CX, but otherwise this act is insufficient. I will only look at graphs and charts if they are analyzed in the debate.

-I generally think war good arguments are akin to genocide good. I also think dedev is absolute nonsense.

-The past year of my life has been filled with the death of loved ones, please don't remind me of it while I'm judging a debate. I categorically refuse to evaluate any argument that could have the thesis statement of death good or that life is not worth living.

-Affs should be willing to answer cross-x questions about what they'll defend.

Topic thoughts:

-I'm not a fan of this topic, but I don't think "aff ground" arguments make much sense in terms of the topicality debates from fringe affs. The topic is not "adjust nuke policy" so even if "disarming" was a poorly choice word, it doesn't mean you can just get rid of a handful of bombs. Anything else makes the triad portion of the topic irrelevant. It sucks, but the negative should not be punished because the community came to consensus on a topic. Want to fix it? Engage in the thankless work that is crafting the topic.

-Russia is 100% a revisionist power, at war in Europe, and is evil. My thoughts on China are more complex, but I do believe they would take Taiwan if given the chance.

How to sway me:

-More narrativization is better than less

-Ev quality - I think higher quality and recent ev is a necessity. Make arguments about the qualifications of authors, how to evaluate evidence, and describe what events have happened to complicate the reading of their evidence from 2012.

-The 2nr/2ar should spend the first 15-20 seconds explaining how I should vote with judge instruction. If you laid a trap, now is the time to tell me, because I’m probably not going to vote on something that wasn’t flagged as an argument.

-I can flow with the best of them, but I enjoy slower debates so much more.

-More case debate. The 2ac is often too dismissive of case args and the neg often under-utilizes them.

-If reading cards after the debate is required for me to have comprehension of your argument, I’m probably not your judge. I tend to vote on warranted arguments that I have flowed and read cards to evaluate particular warrants that have been called into question. That said, I intend on reading along with speech docs this year.

-I think internal links are the most important parts of an argument; I am more likely to vote for “Asian instability means international coop on warming is impossible” than “nuclear war kills billions” OR “our patriarchy better explains x,y,z” instead of “capitalism causes war.”

-I like when particular arguments are labeled eg) “the youth-voter link” or “the epistemology DA.”

-If you're breaking a new aff/cp, it's probably in your best interest to slow down when making highly nuanced args.

Things I don’t like:

-Generally I think word PICs are bad. Some language obviously needs to be challenged, but if your 1nc strategy involves cntl-f [insert ableist term], I am not the judge for you.

-Overusing offensive language, yelling, being loud during the other team’s speech/prep, and getting into my personal space or the personal space of others will result in fewer speaker points.

-If you think a permutation requires the affirmative to do something they haven’t, you and I have different interpretations of competition theory.

-Old evidence/ blocks that have been circulating in camp files for a decade.

Critical Affs:

-I am probably a better judge for the K than most would suspect. While the sample size is small, I think I vote for critical args around 50% of the time they're the center of the debate.

-A debate has to occur and happen within the speech order/times of the invite; the arguments are made are up to the debaters and I generally enjoy a broad range of arguments, particularly on a topic as dull as this one.

-Too often I think critical affs describe a problem, but don’t explain what voting aff means in the context of that impact.

-Is there a role of the ballot?

-Often I find the “topical version” of the aff argument to be semi-persuasive by the negative, so explain to me the unique benefit of your aff in the form that it is and why switching-sides does not solve that.

-Framework: Explain the topical version of the aff; use your framework impacts to turn/answer the impacts of the 1ac; if you win framework you win the debate because…

Kritiks:

-Links should be contextualized to the aff; saying the aff is capitalist because they use the state is not enough. I'm beginning to think that K's, when read against policy affs, should link to the plan and not just the advantages, I'm not as sold on this as I am my belief on floating pic/ks (95 percent of the time I think floating PIC/Ks aren't arguments worthy of being made, let alone voted on)

-Alternative- what is the framework for evaluating the debate? What does voting for the alternative signify? What should I think of the aff’s truth statements?

-I’m not a fan of high theory Ks, but statistically vote for them a decent percentage of the time.

-When reading the K against K affs, the link should problematize the aff's methodology.

Answering the K:

-Make smart permutation arguments that have explained the net benefits and deal with the negatives disads to the perm.

-You should have a framework for the debate and find ways to dismiss the negative’s alternative.

Disads:

-Overviews that explain the story of the disad are helpful.

-Focus on internal links.

Counterplans:

-I am not a member of the cult of process. Just because you have a random definition of a word from a court in Iowa doesn't mean I think that the counterplan has value. I can be swayed if there are actual cards about the topic and the aff, but otherwise these cps are, as the kids say, mid.

-Your CP should have a solvency advocate that is as descriptive of your mechanism as the affirmative’s solvency advocate is.

Theory/Rules:

-Conditionality is cheating a lot like the Roth test: at some point it’s cheating, otherwise neg flex is good.

-Affs should explain why the negative should lose because of theory, otherwise I’ll just reject the arg.

-I'll likely be unsympathetic to args related to ADA rules, sans things that should actually be rules like clipping.

-I’m generally okay with kicking the CP/Alt for the neg if I’m told to.

Ryan Galloway Samford University 4 rounds

Last changed on Sat March 16, 2024 at 1:26 PM EDT

Ryan Galloway

Samford University

Coached for 29 years

rwlcgalloway@gmail.com

Broad Strokes: I have voted for and against just about every kind of argument in the activity. While my background and research interests are primarily in the policy side of the equation, I have frequently been convinced to vote for critical arguments. I love debate and am happy to be judging you. Debate requires a lot of work and effort on your part, and I plan on returning the favor by working hard to reward your effort in the debate.

Framework: The most important thing I could say about debating this issue, or virtually any other issue, is to listen carefully to what the other team says and to answer it specifically. I find that teams on both sides of the equation become block dependent and fail to answer the nuance of what the other team says. Before last year’s NDT, I thought I was a good judge for the negative, but at the NDT I voted affirmative twice in framework debates. I would recommend more line-by-line from both sides, and less overview dependent arguments. In many framework debates I've judged, the AFF tends to overwhelm the NEG with so many arguments that the NEG can't keep up. I often encourage the NEG to go for other arguments in those situations, even if they are less scripted and rely more on analytic arguments.

Topicality: I tend to be a good judge for contextualized definitions from either side. My ideal topicality debate would be one more about what the word means in context than arbitrary definitions from both sides with appeals to limits and ground. I am more amenable to appeals to reasonable interpretations than most judges. I dislike de-contextualized interpretations that create a meaning that is not in context of the literature or field.

Kritiks generally: Here's where I think I fall on various kritikal strands:

Very good for identity kritiks, very, very bad for high theory kritiks, pretty good for IR kritiks, goodish for nuclear weapons Kritiks, pretty bad for ad hominems disguised as kritiks, do not believe you can cross-x the judge. Unlikely to believe that one theory of power or psychological drive affects everyone in every situation. Do not think the alt or even having an alt is as important as other judges if you prove the ideological or discursive justifications of the affirmative make the world worse. Do not think that there needs to be an alternative to justify permutations to the ideology inherent in the criticism. Kind of bad for tiny risks of extinction mean I should ignore all standards of morality. Think all philosophical endeavors should be geared toward helping real people in their everyday lives. Better for discourse kritiks than most judges. As a vegetarian, I have found myself more sensitive to impacts on non-humans than many.

Identity k's: history shows I'm very good for them. Not as familiar with all the authors, so you need to guide me a bit. Some familiarity with lit on Afro-pess and Afro-futurism. Not good for the logic that suggests “if you link you lose” is somehow a bad standard of evaluation for k’s.

High Theory K's: you should honestly strike me if your primary strategy is to read generic theory cards referencing a dead French or German philosopher and somehow think they apply to nuclear weapons policy in 2024. I have read a fair amount of post-modern authors, who I generally find to be dull, arrogant, incoherent, usually incorrect, and pragmatically unhelpful. I will not apply your general theory of power to specifically link turning a highly nuanced affirmative case .I feel strongly that a lot of what is happening in these high-theory debates is intellectual bankruptcy and am willing to say the emperor has no clothes. I also think I have a higher standard for evidentiary quality in these debates than most.

IR K's: I'll certainly listen to a security K, a fem IR K, Gender kritiks, Complexity Kritiks, Kritiks of realism, etc. Might need to do a little work applying them specifically to the AFF--but I'm pretty open. I think the lit is deep, credible, and important.

Nuke Weapons K's: As long as the K is an actual indictment of nuclear weapons reductions or disarmament, I'm very down. I will caution you that I think most of the cards I've read talking about "nuclear weapons discourse" are in the context of those who discuss building up nuclear weapons and justifying nuclear deterrence, and are not about reductions and disarmament policies.

Clash debates: I find them hard to judge for both sides. I think if each team would line up what they are arguing the debate is about it would be helpful. Am I evaluating the consequences of FIAT'd action? I am evaluating the AFF as a demand for state action? Am I evaluating the educational benefits of a model of a debate? Am I judging the AFF as an artifact of scholarship?

For non-traditional frameworks, having a method or metric to evaluate what the debate is about would be helpful. How do I assess what is good scholarship? What are the benefits of endorsing a particular model of debate?

I've been told I am a k hack. Perhaps. I have been accused of being erratic in clash debates, wracked with guilt, and apply an offense/defense paradigm where it is inappropriate. It is possible that all of these criticisms may be true or false to some extent. I try and judge the debate I’m watching without a pre-prepared standard of evaluation.

Teams that directly engage the argument of the other team and not use generic framing issues tend to do better in front of me. Engage the scholarship directly, even if you don't have cards. Be willing to talk about how your affirmative operates in the framework established by the other team. Be responsive and think on your feet. Surprisingly good for pragmatism and incrementalism arguments. If the k answer fell out of flavor in the mid to late nineties, I probably really like the argument. I am completely uninterested in proving my kritik credentials or proving that I am down with whomever is the new hot theorist making the coffee shop rounds.

Disads and risk: Framing arguments on risk are very important to me. I flow them and will try to evaluate the debate on the terms that you set up. I try to not have a pre-planned position on how to evaluate these arguments. As with most arguments, less overview and more line-by-line is better. I like when teams use their evidence, even if it is not specific, to make link arguments specific to the affirmative. I view evidence as part of the tool-kit that you have, and the specific arguments you make about your evidence are very important to me. Evidence alone is not an argument. The use of evidence to make an argument is a fundamental component of debate.

Counterplans: I enjoy nuanced counterplan debates made specific to the plan/counterplan in the debate. I dislike littering the flow with permutations and generic theory arguments. I like smart counterplans that solve the internal link of the affirmative. I like theory debates where either team responds to what is happening in the debate they are engaged in, as opposed to abstractions. I lean pretty heavily for the neg on conditionality.

Theory: I'm much better for "if they get 'x' we get 'y' then they absolutely should not get 'x' under any circumstances. I like strategic concessions on theory to justify arguments elsewhere on the flow. Standard theory blocks are stale and uninteresting, but if you've got an innovative theory or spin especially based on a concession of their theory, I'd be happy to listen. Standards of logic and whether something truly tests the affirmative plan or method are more persuasive to me than many others. Kind of not good for appeals to time skews and hypothetical strategy skews that are likely non-existent.

Novice Debate: I love novice debate and am so happy to be judging you. Novice is my favorite division to judge. I tend to reward novices who make smart arguments using their own logic to attack the other teams’ arguments. I tend to also reward specific line by line debating, so answer what the other team has to say specifically. Feel free to ask me lots of questions at the end of the debate about style, arguments, the decision, etc.

I have eased off some of my prior criticisms of the way novice is coached, but I will still tend to reward substantive arguments as opposed to arguments I view as cheap shots. I enjoy when novices are taught skills that will benefit them throughout their debate careers, instead of those designed to trick another novice with an esoteric and widely rejected theory they just haven’t heard yet.

Ethics challenges: I strongly believe that you should email your opponent or your coaches if you find a problem with their evidence. I think most mistakes are accidental. I have personally emailed coaches who have incorrectly cited a card and found the mistake to be accidental--cutting a lot of cards with multiple windows open and accidentally putting the wrong cite on a card, etc. I think we have to have a certain measure of trust and respect to make the activity happen.

Ethics challenges are happening way too often and are becoming trivialized. If you worry that my standard for trivial is arbitrary, non-trivial suggests you have contacted your opponents, that you are 100% sure you are factually correct, and you can illustrate intent on your opponents’ parts. I believe accusing someone of being unethical is incredibly serious and the standards should be very high.

Stylistic issues:

I prefer if you number your arguments.
Arguments should be clear in the 1ac/1nc. I dislike the idea that the other team should have to read your evidence to figure out the scope of the argument. The argument should be clear upon its initial presentation.
I prefer clear labels to arguments--no link, non-unique, turn, etc.
I prefer labels to off-case positions as they happen in the debate: The Politics disad, The TNW's PIC, the Security Kritik, etc. instead of just launching into a five plank counterplan text and leave me to figure out what the thesis of the argument is.
I prefer specific line by line debating to doing most of the work in the overview.
I don't read speech docs as the debate goes on and I flow what you say, not what's in the doc.
I am very concerned about how stylistic and demeanor norms in the activity marginalize non-cis-dude debaters. Please don't cut off, mansplain to, talk over, berate, or not listen to non-cis-dude debaters. It is shocking to me how much this still goes on.
I try to judge the debate, and not the quality of the speech docs after the debate is over. I strongly disagree with judges who read all the cards and decide the debate from that.
I seem to be particularly sensitive to aggression in cross-x and cutting someone else off while they are trying to ask or answer a question. I think people should be quiet more and listen to the other side. I also don’t like cross-x filibustering. I don’t think cross-x should be used to “clown” or belittle your opponent. I realize I’m probably saying I believe in the opposite of everything you’ve learned about cross-x, but it’s how I feel. The best cross-x’s set up a trap that isn’t revealed until later in the debate.
I still believe in a place called Hope.

Justin Green Wake Forest University 4 rounds

Last changed on Thu February 29, 2024 at 9:07 AM EDT

Justin Green - Head Coach - Wake Forest University

wfudbt@gmail.com

I plan to clap when the round is done; your effort is appreciated!

Argument Defaults

Preference - The good ones about the topic. Most of my research is on the policy side, but lucky to interact with great debaters and coaches across a wide spectrum of approaches for many years.

Topicality - Yes offense first; defense is essential. Impact turning or going just with reasonability without a quality counter-interp rarely wins.

Policy Aff v the K - Specificity is crucial for both sides. It's rare that I don't consider both the effects of the plan and the scholastic/rhetorical choices including the interactions between the two. Aff's should be prepared to defend the claims made in the 1ac. Winning the world is ordered by an oppressive structure is not enough.

CP Theory - Legitimacy of process CP's increases with more specific advocates. Some conditionality most likely OK - go beyond 2 or 3 or 2nc CP out of impact turns to do the opposite of the 1nc impact; less likely to be ok.

Case Debates - Where have all my heroes gone?

Effective Techniques:

- Articulate when reading! There has been an increasing trend in debates I watch where syllables are consistently muddled or skipped. I'll yell clearer. If I yell it twice know that you are in the danger zone.

- Cross Ex Matters! and it has a time limit – I listen, flow, and those who reference answers from the CX are likely to get higher points. When the timer goes off, it's judge prep even if the two teams decide to continue the CX during prep time. If the two side agree on something when a judge is not there "ex. neg agreed they could kick planks or part of the alt"...please fill me in.

- Smart Analytics exposing flaws can go a long way. Internal link chains and neg K alt solvency are two of many places where this can potentially be effective.

- Quality of Evidence+Quality of Explanation+Quality of comparison=weight of argument

- 2 Tips for last rebuttals beyond impact calculation - Give your partners credit explicitly. Acknowledge where the other side might be correct, but why that is not enough.

Just in case it happens, some strong defaults....

- No shenanigans policy - I expect a 2v2 debate. No three person teams, no one person taking all the speech time, please don't ask for something besides a debate to determine a winner, etc. Two people speaking in the same speech, ok if part of a pre-scripted performance early in the debate. In subsequent speeches, only one person's words count.

- If you ask for a 30. Your speaker points will likely have a 3 in it; 3 will most likely not be the first number. If both you and your partner are asking for a 30, you are playing a dangerous game given the previous sentence.

- Hard to imagine myself voting on elements not related directly to an argument made in the debate (coin flips, previous debates, what their coach did, how someone interacted outside the debate, initials at the end of the card, month of the year). Verified blatant false disclosure of more than a card or two and could be a voting issue.

- Evidence ethics. Yes, follow AFA, ADA and CEDA guidelines. And also, not really trying to vote on: whether the citation includes date accessed, initials of the card cutter (or who cut the card), if there were accidental exclusions of the text that had no material effect.

ENJOY!

Mitch Hagney Trinity University 4 rounds

Last changed on Sat January 6, 2024 at 4:03 AM EDT

email: mitchellhagney@gmail.com

I think debate has lots of epistemological value, though I have voted that it is bad and should be destroyed more than once. I competed at the TOC and NDT, but eventually stopped debating to work in sustainable farming. Today, my day job is as the head farmer for the San Antonio Food Bank, operate a hydroponic farm and coworking kitchen space called LocalSprout (www.localsprout.com), and push local policy change to advance a sustainable and equitable food system through the Food Policy Council of San Antonio (www.fpcsa.org). I made these choices as a direct result of a decision-making style that I got from debate.

Evidence quality is important to me. +.1 speaker points if you mention a methods section in your or their articles.

For critical affs, teams that admit to being outside of the resolution need to describe what content and arguments debates would feature if their interpretation were adopted wholesale. It's best if that sounds like a version of debate where both sides stand a chance and is pedagogically valuable. There need to be strong answers to a topical version and reasons why awarding the ballot in a certain direction is good.

I miss the diversity of structural Ks debate used to feature. For those critiques, I like to know what the alternative looks like or why the details aren't important.

For counterplan theory, in each round there is an amount of conditional negative advocacies that is beyond the reasonable amount of testing the aff, which then degrades the quality of the discussion. Use your judgement on what that limit is. I don't like permanent/recurring inaction or attitudinal fiat. Solvency advocates are the best response to accused CP illegitimacy. If it was impossible to find a solvency advocate for a widely discussed aff, that's usually a bad sign. Multi-actor, international, and delay counterplans rarely seem to challenge the aff or the topic. They often put judges in a strange place between choosing between things no human has the authority over.

For politics DAs, I have a higher threshhold for the link debate than the community at large. I find fiat solves the link arguments persuasive if the aff requires that congresspeople change their mind. If it's normal means that the president expends capital to persuade them, I need reasons why that's normal means or why we should interpret the world that way. Delay, direct horsetrading, or focus links are different from usual political capital arguments and are often times more intrinsic to the aff.

Defense matters - No internal link, uniqueness overwhelms the link, empirically denied, impact inevitable - these arguments are some of the most persuasive to me and I am more likely to think you are smart if you say them.

I am likely to dismiss 2AR arguments entirely if I think they are new.

I usually make decisions based on comparative impact assessment. Relative to other judges, it seems like I pay more attention to impact uniqueness, which are often influenced by arguments like those that have been kicked earlier in the debate and turns case arguments. This is as true for critical debates as it is for policy ones.

Ben Hagwood Liberty University 3 rounds

Last changed on Fri January 5, 2024 at 4:12 AM PDT

Benjamin Hagwood, Director at Vancouver Debate Academy

About me - former college policy debater, flow-centric, like all arguments but the politics DA (Elections gets a pass)

Debate is a game that can be played in a multitude of ways. It is the responsibility of the students to determine the parameters of the games and to call "foul" if they think someone has done something abusive. I will judge the round as it happens. Here are a few things about me that you might find useful when preparing for a round:

Flowing - I do my best to have as accurate a flow as possible while trying to capture but the context and citation of your arguments. Dropping arguments could be detrimental if your opponents extend and weight those arguments properly.
Observer not a Participant - I won't do work for you or insert myself into your debate. You will win OR lose based on the arguments in the round not my person opinion.
Style over Speed - swag is subjective - bring yours.
Petty but not Disrespectful - don't be unnecessarily rude to your opponent - but I must admit being petty is strategic.
Challenges - if you challenge someone and lose the challenge you lose the debate (this could also apply on theory debates depending on the debate - but not RVI's)

Universal Speaker Point Adjustments: all students are evaluated on their level. A 29 in novice is not the same as a 29 in open. 28 is my base for completing all your speeches and using all your speech time.

Wear a bowtie (+.5 point)
Be entertaining (tell jokes...if I laugh...you get points...if I don't you won't be punished) (+.5 point)
Be rude (-.5 point)
Don't use all your time (-.5 point)
Steal prep (-.5 point)

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me and ask. Students may request my flow and written feedback at the end of the debate if they want. I will only share it with the students in the round unless they consent to the flow being shared with other opponents.

Heather Hall Liberty University 3 rounds

Last changed on Thu January 4, 2024 at 6:19 AM EDT

Heather Holter Hall

Hallheather8@gmail.com

Salem and Tallwood High School Debater 1990-93

Liberty University Debater 1993-96

Liberty University Assistant Debate Coach 20+ years

I love this activity and I look forward to meeting you.

For novices:

Congratulations on being at a debate tournament! I like debates with a few pieces of quality research that you can explain well plus some smart logical arguments. You should focus on good explanation of arguments and on getting better at flowing. Putting lots of extra pieces of research that you have never read before into your speech is a waste of your time. I would much rather hear you explain research that you understand, compare that research to your opponent’s research and arguments, and tell me why the plan is either a good or bad idea. The most important comparison in the debate you can make is to tell me whose impacts are bigger, come first, or are more likely.

I will flow what is spoken in the debate, not the speech document. You should highlight and read complete sentences. I do not count sentence fragments as arguments.

If it is an online debate, please make sure you SEE or HEAR me on the camera before you begin your speech. Please say out loud when you are done with prep time and post how much you have left in the chat. When you say prep time is done, you should be ready to email the speech document immediately.

For everyone else:

I have spent the majority of the last 20 years coaching novice debate. I also judge a lot of novice and jv debates. This means that I am not deep into the lit base for most arguments. My days are full of explaining and re-explaining basic debate theory. You should view me as someone who loves learning something new and the debate as your opportunity to teach me. If you want me to assess arguments based upon previous in-depth knowledge of a particular lit base, you will probably be very disappointed. I love the strategic use of each student’s scholarship but get me on the same page first.

Likewise, the theory debates I am used to judging are pretty basic. I would love to hear a well-developed theory debate at a high level, but you will need to slow down, give full warrants, and not assume that “lit checks” means the same to me as it does to you.

About preferred types of arguments—smart strategy with good support that is clearly communicated usually wins. I prefer consistent, thoughtful strategies with a few well developed arguments, but, sadly, I have voted for negatives who won simply by overwhelming the 2AC with skimpy highlighting of 7 off case positions.

I have voted for everything, but I do not judge alternate formats of debates often so you will probably want to slow down, make well developed arguments, and assume I do not know. As long as I am judging and there is a win to assign, my main assumption is that every team is playing the game, maybe in different ways, but still just playing the game. I can only make decisions based on words or actions in a particular debate. I will not begin to speculate about another person’s motive or intentions--that is a job for someone else.

I will flow what is spoken in the debate, including cx. I will reference the speech doc, BUT if I can’t understand your words or if the words you say do not make grammatically complete sentences, they won’t make it on my flow and only my flow counts. Likewise, if you are hedging the debate on a warrant buried three sentences deep in the fourth card by Smith, you will need to say more than “extend Smith here.” The more concrete and specific your warrants are, the more likely you are to persuade me.

If it is an online debate, you need to SEE or HEAR me on the camera before you begin your speech. Yes, this has happened more than once lol. Don’t steal prep—it is obvious and annoying.

Feel free to strike me. I am not offended at all if you think I am not a good judge for you. Hopefully, I still get a chance to meet you at a tournament and chat.

Finally, I hope you all have a great tournament, learn new things, think deeply, speak well, meet fascinating people, and win lots of debates (unless you are debating my teams)! Have fun and please say hi in between debates!

Michael Hall Liberty University 3 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 10:35 AM EDT

Michael Hall - Updated 9/15/22

Liberty University

28 Years coaching

Upfront, you should know that I've only judged a handful of debates over the last two years and those were intrasquad practice debates Second, I've developed slight hearing loss that makes it harder for me to pick out voices when there's background noise.

For the email chain: mprestonhall@gmail.com

The comments below reflect how I'm likely to things left to my own devices, but I do my best to evaluate the debate on the arguments made in the round.

Theory: I am not tabula-rosa. Minimally, each argument should contain a claim, some support (evidentiary or otherwise), and an impact. That said, I do my best to minimize my substantive preferences and therefore find myself voting for positions I don’t particularly like. I attempt to use the decision calculus most persuasively advocated by the debaters.

Topicality: I tend to see topicality as a contest of competing interpretations. I probably vote on T more often than most judges and have no problem voting against "core affirmatives" when the negative has a superior interpretation of the topic. I'm most easily persuaded to vote on T when the negative team develop arguments based on a comparison of ground offered under each interpretation of the resolution. I tend to find in-round abuse arguments less persuasive as its hard to determine whether the negative should have a right to those arguments without first establishing a coherent division of aff/neg ground. I am usually more persuaded by arguments about the quantity and quality of affs allowed by each interpretation and the negative's ability to access a core set of negative arguments. Topicality is by nature exclusionary.

Counterplans: I enjoy debates with creative counterplans tailored to specific affirmatives. The affirmative should be prepared to defend the entirety of the plan, and plan inclusive counterplans are one way of making them do so.

I’ve found myself voting against conditional counterplans a little more often in recent years, which I attribute to the quality of the negative’s defense of conditionality rather than a change in my CP leanings. If the negative justifies the conditional nature of the counterplan, other theory arguments are reasons to reject the counterplan not the team.

The text of the counterplan and all permutations should be written out. Trying to win a perm that doesn’t include all of the plan or that contains action not contained in the plan or counterplan is nearly impossible.

Kritikal Debate: I've found myself becoming much less dogmatic about the need for affirmatives to have topical plan texts. I don't know if I can pinpoint why, but I think it's partially due to conversations with various Liberty coaches and debaters and partially due to my own reading interests gravitating more toward critiques of the enlightenment and religious critiques of capitalism. I can certainly be persuaded to vote negative on framework but debaters should no longer assume it’s a hard default.

I don't think much has changed about the way I evaluate negative K strategies. Like any other part of the negative strategy, the more you tailor your link arguments to the affirmative in question, the more likely I am to find your arguments persuasive. Likewise, an overview that details how the kritik turns the affirmative’s solvency, outweighs the case, etc. would be more helpful than several more impact cards.

Style: Given what I wrote in the first two sentences, this is section of my philosophy almost certainly the most important for you remember during the debate. Things you should know in descending order of importance: (1) I am a better critic for those who collapse the debate in the block and 2NR than for those who go for most of their 1NC arguments into the 2NR. (2) I am a better critic for debaters who emphasize clarity over speed. I’ve found this to be especially true in paperless rounds where everyone in the debate except for the judge is reading along with the speech doc. Again, my hearing isn't what it used to be making the need for clarity even more important. I’ll give you verbal and nonverbal signals if I can’t understand you. (3) I have come to the conclusion that the more evidence I read, the less my decisions have reflected the arguments made by the debaters. As a result, I try to read fewer cards after a debate and am more easily persuaded to see a debate through the lens that allows me to do so. (4) If you think an argument is important, find a way to set it apart from the rest of the debate.

Prep time: Prep time stops when the speech doc is emailed.

Matt Harkins Navy 6 rounds

Matt Harkins

If you have any questions or want to add me to an email chain, I'm at mpharks@gmail.com. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to learn from you.

I have been coaching at the Naval Academy since October 2016, and before that, I coached Cathedral Prep from 2014-2018. I debated on the national circuit in high school and qualified to the TOC twice, but I didn’t debate in college.

Most of my research and coaching is geared toward the K, but I feel comfortable evaluating a da/cp or da/case debate. I often think that the K is the best way to exploit the weaknesses of the affs that I hear, but that doesn't mean you have to take this route.

When debating in front of me, I'd highly recommend developing the implications to your arguments as soon in the debate as possible. In close debates between technically proficient teams, this is especially important. I appreciate it when a debater is creative and tries to relate to me rather than debating like a computer and into their computer.

Virtual Debate
I'd like to make things as easy as possible for you, and you're welcome to set up your speaking/video/microphone situation in whatever way makes you most comfortable.

On my end, I'm still learning how to adapt to zoom debates. There seems to be a lower ceiling on arguments I can process through zoom. This is especially the case on theory debates. If you could help me out by slowing things down, I'd appreciate it.

Debate doesn't translate directly from in-person to zoom. There are some limits that we haven't yet come to terms with, but there are also some possibilities (screen sharing comes to mind) that could be interesting, and you're welcome to experiment with that in front of me.

2021 College Topic
There's an important distinction between labor antitrust and consumer antitrust. In labor antitrust, independent contractors and labor unions are considered the businesses with whom the government is interested in limiting anticompetitive business practices. From the most straightforward reading of the topic, aff ground doesn't seem to allow for much labor antitrust. This would have been a significant consideration in at least half of the debates that I have judged so far.

Because of my academic and professional background, I've thought a lot about labor antitrust, monopolies, market power, and the suitability of the law as a remedy to these issues. To disclose a personal bias: I think that there are significant limits on the capacity of antitrust. That's not to say that I don't think there are many instances in which changes to antitrust law would be a good idea. Nor do I think that there aren't radical possibilities in antitrust. But its limits have become relevant and convincing in kritik debates in which the aff takes for granted the fundamental radicality of their proposal. I think this topic would be worthwhile if the debate community reckoned with those limits. In other words, Robert Bork was a real-life sicko, but so are most people, albeit in less apparent ways, who think that Amazon would stop being a problem if a judge told them to knock it off.

T
- I'm not in touch with community consensus so you might be able to use that to your advantage.
- I really enjoy a good T debate and don't have any strong inclinations toward fairness or education as the ultimate standard.
- I like definitions that define a word as close in a contexts as possible to the other words of the resolution
- I'm often disappointed by T evidence quality. For this reason, source/Expertise/qualifications debates tend to be pretty important. Just because a judge wrote it in a decision doesn't make it a relevant expert definition. Just because the usfg is defined in a certain way in the Bill Emerson English Language Empowerment Act of 1997, doesn't mean it's the best way to understand usfg for debate.
- Debating in the Pennsylvania has given me a comprehensive understanding of inherency as a procedural argument if you want to go there.

"T" (Framework)
- In the last dozen or so framework rounds that I've judged, the neg has won or lost based on whether they had a compelling claim to significant offense.
- It's frustrating to judge a framework debate wherein framework is deployed as a replacement for debating the case. I get that this is tied in some way to the "ground" and "unpredictability" aspects of the arguments you're advancing, but a failure to contend with fundamental questions posed by the aff can come across more as a sin of the neg.
- For me, framework is most useful as a neg strategy in debates where affs are needlessly obscure or cynical.

Disads
- I evaluate the link first, and I think it's a yes/no question which controls the direction of uniqueness.
- Most of the best answers to politics disads I've seen aren't necessarily carded answers to the U/L/IL/I parts of a disad, but arguments about the nonsensical nature of certain parts of the politics disad as applied to the aff.
- Although I don't cut politics files, I'm extremely aware of what's going on and familiar with who's writing what about Congress and the White House.
- I really like impact turn debates.
- Except in cases where something sophisticated is going on, it's usually a waste of time to read evidence that "warming isn't real" or "warming isn't a pressing issue." Go after the internal link, go after solvency, turn the impact, solve the impact. It's hard to convince me that warming isn't an immediate, urgent, and moral concern, but I'm skeptical that the only thing we need to do is develop the right tech or enter certain climate talks with sufficient leverage.

Counterplans
- I won't kick the counterplan for the negative unless the negative persuades me to do otherwise.
- There's a fine line between creative, technical counterplans and a contrived trick. Avoid the contrived tricks. I enjoy a creative and technical counterplan, but these aren't the kinds of arguments I spend a lot of time thinking about, so you'll do well to simplify your explanation of it as much as possible.

Kritiks
- I’m most familiar with psychoanalysis and Marxism (including left criticism of Marxism, Marxist criticisms of leftism, and Marxist critiques of other Marxisms).
- I spend a lot of time thinking about labor because of my day job.
- I first look at role of the ballot/role of the judge arguments when I'm rendering a decision, so these arguments tend to have a strong effect on the outcome of a debate.
- The perm, which is tied in important ways to the role of the ballot, tends to be the aff's most strategic line of pursuit.
- I'm willing to stop the debate and give someone a loss for using flagrantly inappropriate language.
- I've noticed that, on very many occasions in which a K debate was underdeveloped, I have recommended the second chapter of Wretched of The Earth to both teams.

Theory
- Reject the argument is the default. Spend time on the impact level to convince me to reject the team.
- I heard recently that nobody votes on multiple conditional worlds bad anymore. I guess that means I'd be more willing to entertain this argument than the average judge.
- Against affs which don't read a typical plan text or defend the resolution, I would prefer to hear a nitty-gritty case debate rather than a framework debate. This is a strong preference.
- When debaters unsuccessfully extend framework in front of me, the unsuccess is usually a result of disorganization, a lack of adaptation of pre-written blocks to the specific aff arguments, and my inability to interpret the significance of an abstract debate concept.
- If you go for framework, make sure you clearly implicate the stakes of winning a section of the debate. What I mean by this is that you shouldn't assume we're on the same page about what it means to win, say, that there exists a topical version of the aff, or your limits disad, or the benefits of switch-side debate, or etc. Leave nothing flapping in the wind in the 2nr.

Style
- I enjoy humor a lot.
- Speeches are best when they're persuasive performances; I don't enjoy monotone spreading.
- I like when debaters make smart cross applications from a flow the other team tried to kick out of.
- If the chips are down, flip the table. If, going into the rebuttals, you know you're losing 99% of the debate, see if you can explode that 1% into a win.

Allison Harper Emory University 3 rounds

Last changed on Sun March 31, 2024 at 3:38 PM EDT

2022 Update- I am not longer actively coaching debate. Please do not assume that I know a lot about the topic, have any idea what some other school's aff is, or have strong feelings about what obscure topic wordings mean.

Allison.c.harper@gmail.com. - Put me on the chain please. I will not follow along with the doc or read cards I don't think are necessary to make a decision but spelling my first name is annoying and this was buried near the bottom of my philosophy.

Here are a few ways that I think my judging either differs from others or has changed with online debate:

1) I flow and do not open your speech documents during your speeches. That means you need to try to present arguments in a way that is flowable. Make sure tags are clear. Answer arguments in an order I can follow (such as the order in which they are presented). Add structure and signpost. Avoid reading giant analytical paragraphs without breaking things up. Avoid jumping around the flow arbitrarily or reading blocks in places where they dont belong. Doing these things make sure that I not only have a record of what you said, but helps me understand how you think what you are saying applies/responds to your opponents arguments. When you don't do these things, you increase the odds that I misunderstand what you think you have answered.

2) Make comparisons. I read less evidence during and after debates than other judges. I start my decisions by looking at my flows, deciding what the key questions are, resolving things that I can, and only then look at evidence. Make comparisons between your warrants, quality of evidence. Draw out the interactions for me rather than forcing me to do these things for you. I see that as intervention, but the way that many debaters give rebuttals these days sometimes makes it impossible to decide without that intervention. I would much rather let you do the comparing.

3) I am not in the cult of big impacts/try or die. You need to solve for something. Your counterplan needs a net benefit. I can be convinced to vote for low risk, but presumption and zero risk exist. Not everything needs a card. Smart analytics can knock down the risk of some pretty silly arguments. If the other team does have evidence of sufficient quality, however, a card to the contrary would go a long way.

4) I don’t think I am a bad judge for the k if you debate the k technically, especially on the neg. I am not great for any argument if you are overly relying on an overview to get things done, are speaking in paragraphs without considering flowability, or are addressing components of the debate in ways that ignore the line by line. I am better for specific links and alts that I would be able to explain back to the other team what they do based on the explanation you offered in the round. I think 90% of the time spent on “framework” when the neg reads a k is a waste of time by both sides. The neg gets links to what the aff said and did. The aff gets to weigh the implementation of the plan. Unless another way of thinking about this is presented and dropped, this is how I end up evaluating the debate anyway. I am less of a fan of critical affirmatives that are not topical, do not relate to the topic in a significant way, etc. In K aff vs framework debates, the aff is helped if I can understand what reasonable ways the negative could anticipate an aff like yours and reasonably respond to it.

5) I would rather you make link arguments to kritiks about assumptions that the other team has made during this debate rather than ask me to evaluate something that happened other debates or outside of debates. Other debates had judges who rendered their own decisions. If there are serious concerns about a debater's out of round behavior, please take that to their coaches or tournament administrators.

6) Process debates are boring. They might be necessary on some recent topics, but they are so boring on topics where there are great disads. They would be better with some evidence that suggest this process ought to exist/be used, even better if there are cards about the topic or aff. For example, I am far more into con-con about a constitutional/legal question than con-con to withdraw from NATO. But really, wouldn’t it be cool if we picked debate topics that were actual controversies? Wouldn’t it be cool if topics that had some controversy were limited in a way that makes some sense?

7) When you steal prep time, you are stealing my decision time. Please don’t. If you are making changes to your speech doc (deleting analytics, rearranging blocks, combining multiple docs into one, etc) you should have a prep timer running. Sending a doc is fine outside of prep but should be done efficiently, especially if you are debating at the varsity/open level. Refusing to start CX until you have a marked copy is also a big waste of my time unless you are planning to ask questions that are affected by these markings. I have yet to see that happen, so let's get on with it.

8) In online debate, you MUST make an effort to be clearer. NSDA campus makes you sound like a robot eating rocks. What was passable on classrooms.cloud doesn’t cut it on campus. I should be able to understand the body of your evidence, distinguish tags from cards, etc. I do not open speech documents when you are speaking. I need to be able to hear and understand you.

9) It is much harder to pay attention to online debates. This isn’t your fault. It is a feature of the format. I have found cross-ex in particular difficult to follow and keep in focus. People talking at once is really rough online, and I appreciate attempts to limit this by keeping answers reasonable in length and not cutting off reasonable answers. I will do my best in every debate to give you every bit of attention I have, but it would help me if you would forefront cross-ex questions that might matter to your strategy. Asking the other team what they read is cross-ex time.

Old Philosophy- I don't disagree with this:

I think I am a relatively middle of the road judge on most issues. I would rather hear you debate whatever sort of strategy you do well than have you conform to my argumentative preferences. I might have more fun listening to a case/da debate, but if you best strat or skillset is something else, go for it. I might not like an argument, but I will and have voted for arguments I hate if it wins the debate. I do have a pretty strong preference for technical, line by line style debate.

I am open to listening to kritiks by either side, but I am more familiar with policy arguments, so some additional explanation would be helpful, especially on the impact and alternative level. High theory K stuff is the area where I am least well read. I generally think it is better for debate if the aff has a topical plan that is implemented, but I am open to hearing both sides. To be successful at framework debates in front of me, it is helpful to do more than articulate that your movement/project/affirmation is good, but also provide reasons why it is good to be included in debate in the format you choose. I tend to find T version of the aff a pretty persuasive argument when it is able to solve a significant portion of aff offense.

I don’t have solid preferences on most counterplan theory issues, other than that I am not crazy about consultation or conditions cps generally. Most other cp issues are questions of degree not kind (1 conditional cp and a k doesn’t seem so bad, more than that is questionable, 42 is too many, etc) and all up for debate. The above comment about doing what you do well applies here. If theory is your thing and you do it well, ok. If cp cheating with both hands is your style and you can get away with it, swell.

I have no objection to voting on “untrue” arguments, like some of the more out there impact turns. To win on dropped arguments, you still need to do enough work that I could make a coherent decision based on your explanation of the argument. Dropped = true, but you need a claim, warrant, and impact. Such arguments also need to be identifiable in order for dropped = true to apply.

It’s rarely the case that a team wins every argument in the debate, so including relevant and responsive impact assessment is super important. I’d much rather debaters resolve questions like who has presumption in the case of counterplans or what happens to counterplans that might be rendered irrelevant by 2ar choices than leaving those questions to me.

I try my best to avoid reading evidence after a debate and think debaters should take this into account. I tend to only call for evidence if a) there is a debate about what a card says and/or b) it is impossible to resolve an issue without reading the evidence myself. I prefer to let the debaters debate the quality of evidence rather than calling for a bunch of evidence and applying my own interpretations after the fact. I think that is a form of intervening. I also think it is important that you draw out the warrants in your evidence rather than relying on me to piece things together at the end of the debate. As a result, you would be better served explaining, applying, and comparing fewer really important arguments than blipping through a bunch of tag line/author name extensions. I can certainly flow you and I will be paying attention to your speeches, but if the debate comes down to a comparison between arguments articulated in these manners, I tend to reward explanation and analysis. Also, the phrase "insert re-highlighting" is meaningless to someone who isn't reading the docs in real time. Telling me what you think the evidence says is a better use of your time

I like smart, organized debates. I pay a ton of attention and think I flow very well. I tend to be frustrated by debaters who jump around or lack structure. If your debate is headed this direction (through your own doing or that of the other team), often the team that cleans things up usually benefits. This also applies to non-traditional debating styles. If you don’t want to flow, that’s ok, but it is not an excuse to lack any discernible organization. Even if you are doing the embedded clash thing, your arguments shouldn't seem like a pre-scripted set of responses with little to no attempt to engage the specific arguments made by the other team or put them in some sort of order that makes it easier for me to flow and determine if indeed arguments were made, extended dropped, etc.

Please be nice to each other. While debate is a competitive activity, it is not an excuse to be a jerkface. If you are "stealing prep" I am likely to be very cross with you and dock your speaker points. If you are taking unreasonably long amounts of time to jump/email your docs or acquire someone else's docs, I am also not going to be super happy with you. I realize this can sound cranky, but I have been subjected to too many rounds where this has been happening recently.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Thoughts on Pf and LD:

Since I occasionally judge these, I thought I should add a section. I have either coached or competed in both events. I still have a strong preference for flow-centric debate in both activities.

-You may speak as quickly or slowly as you would like. Don't make yourself debate faster than you are able to do well just because I can keep up

-You can run whatever arguments you are able to justify (see policy debate section if you have more specific questions)

-Too many debates in these events spend far too much time debating framing questions that are essentially irrelevant to judge decisions. Those frames mean little if you cant win a link. If you and your opponent are trying to access the same impact, this is a sign that you should be debating link strength not impact strength. Your speech time is short. Don't waste it.

-Make useful argument comparisons. It is not helpful if you have a study and your opponent has a study that says the opposite and that is the end of the argument. It is not helpful if everyone's authors are "hacks." With complicated topics, try to understand how your authors arrived at their conclusions and use that to your advantage.

-Stop stealing prep. Seriously. Stop. It is not cute. Asking to see a source is not an opportunity for your partners to keep prepping. If a speech timer or a prep timer isn't going, you should not be writing on your flows or doing anything else that looks like prepping. I see this in a disturbing number of PF rounds. Stop

-Give a useful road map or none at all. Do not add a bunch of commentary. A road map should tell a judge what order to put pieces of flow paper into and nothing more. Save your arguments for your speech time.

-Paraphrasing is bad. Read quotations. Send out ev in carded form ahead of time. If you are a varsity, national circuit level competitor, you should have figure out efficient ways to manage allowing the other team to review your evidence.

Andrew Hart University of Georgia 5 rounds

Last changed on Sun September 16, 2018 at 4:00 AM EDT

Andrew.j.hart@gmail.com

I have debated or coached for UGA since 2004 and debated for Stratford for 5 years before that. My knowledge and literature base exists largely on the policy side, but I am fairly ideologically neutral and well acquainted with K and K-ish args as well. After all, I have been in debate for nearly as long as many of the current high school debaters have been alive. That last sentence just hurt my soul, but it is true. My basic belief when judging is that as long as you clearly explain the argument and why it is more important than whatever the other side says, you will probably win the debate. I will do my best to evaluate all arguments fairly and without bias.

When it comes to assigning risk to an argument, I do not ascribe to an offense-defense paradigm. I can and will assign zero risk to an argument if defensive arguments are clearly won. If there is no link, there is no link. And no uniqueness if there is no uniqueness. For example, if your uniqueness evidence on a politics DA is 3-4 weeks old and the Aff has definitive evidence from a few days ago saying the opposite and cites a specific change, then there is zero risk to me. This also equally applies to advantages and solvency and pretty much all arguments. I’m perfectly willing to vote on only defensive arguments such as a perm, no link, and impact/uniqueness D, but it is still much easier to get my ballot by reading and going for offense.

I believe that debate is a communicative activity and not a judge reading comprehension test, which means I will not just call for all of the evidence at the end of the debate because it was read. I will pay attention to and flow the warrants of the evidence read if possible, so you should be clear when reading the text of the evidence if you want me to know what it says. I find that judges that just call for all of the evidence tend to reconstruct the debate in terms of evidence read instead of the arguments made. I will certainly call for evidence if necessary, typically if I did not get the substance of the evidence or if there is a debate over what the evidence actually says. Also, extend the warrants of the evidence in addition to extending the piece of evidence.

I keep a pretty decent record of the debate, but my pen does not move as fast as you speak. This means that you need to slow down when reading theory or other multiple analytical arguments in a row etc. If I do not have an argument on my flow, I cannot and will not vote for it. This also means that jumping around the flow can very quickly lead to flow chaos and potential missed arguments because I cannot just add in new cells or flow straight down and rearrange the flow during prep like on the computer.

As far as prep time goes for flashing speeches, I am reasonable if you are. You should be saving the speech when you say end prep and not continuing to copy and paste or compile the speech.

If you are caught clipping cards or cross reading or any other major ethics violations/cheating in a debate in front of me, you will immediately lose the debate. This is a very serious accusation with serious consequences, so there must be rather substantial/conclusive evidence of this occurring for me to be willing to end the debate. I have no qualms whatsoever dropping the hammer if it’s proven. If you believe that the other team has done this, speak up during C-X/prep, and we will resolve the issue before continuing the debate.

*Treat everyone in the round (and also outside the round) with respect and dignity. I understand that debate is a competitive activity that can lead to some heated arguments, but that is no excuse for being a complete jackass and a terrible human being.*

A couple of minor argument disclaimers/leanings/answer to pre round questions to note. These are clearly not strict rules and should not deter you from doing what you do best. I have voted for Condition/Consult CPs, ASPEC, non-topical Affs, and Affs that refuse to even engage the topic, and I believe that almost anything in the round is debatable with the exception of speech order and time.
1. The aff should at the very least discuss and be in the direction of the topic, so the neg at least has some reasonably predictable ground and the ability to have clash. Plans are often the best/easiest way to establish this, but they are not required – just preferred. I can and have voted for Affs that are neither in the direction of nor talk about the topic.

2. I, like most judges, do not want to have to wade through a big theory debate to decide a round. I much prefer the substance, but I will do it if needed. If you think it is your only option or that you are winning the argument and want to go for it, by all means go for it. I tend to default to reject the arg and not the team (except for condo/status) unless you can explain why the violation warrants that level of punishment. Even dropped theory arguments must be developed and explained as to why I should reject the team.

3. I tend to find the argument that counter-plans that result in the entirety of the plan, especially those with competition based off of certainty (condition, consult) are unfair/not competitive persuasive. You can certainly win the debate with these counterplans because they are strategic, and I do vote for them regularly. However the difference between strategic and unfair is a rather thin line in this area and that argument that can be won in front of me. As I said, I will evaluate the arguments based upon what happens in the debate and not my beliefs. Pointing out that this or other specific notes on arguments are in my philosophy as a justification for your argument is not an argument or reason for you to win. I wrote it. I do know what is in my philosophy. You must still effectively explain why these arguments are unfair and answer the neg arguments. There are still good reasons why these CPs should be allowed and good answers to the perm.

4. I’m not a big fan of most any spec argument. If you need to read A-SPEC to force/generate competition for an Agent CP, then by all means do it. At that point, there is a strategic value to this move. However, A-SPEC should probably not be the A-strat going into the round since it is difficult for me to envision a world in which the Aff must specify more than what the resolution demands. Occasionally, there is a good reason for a spec argument, but that is rather rare.

5. Topicality – I will vote on it if you win it and is well developed. Voting on T becomes easier if the argument is well developed beginning in the 1NC and extended with example case lists that each interp allows.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Jason Houser Navy 7 rounds

Last changed on Tue January 14, 2020 at 6:37 AM EDT

My background is as a policy debater in high school and college in the late 90s and early 2000s. I have judged a good bit nationally between 2003 and 2013.

I come in to the round with no pre-dispositions. I expect you to "debate it out", which includes you telling me what paradigm or lens I should evaluate the debate through. With that said, I’m knowledgeable of all traditional paradigm views.

Also with that said, I’m open to any argument as long as it's not morally repugnant (racism good). My favorite debates to judge are ones with specificity. Specific well-thought out strategies will reflect in your perception and your speaker points. Let me be clear, I do not discourage reading “generic strategies”, when well executed those can be just as effective.

I want explicit standards and how your argument interacts with the other teams arguments. There is nothing I hate more than watching debates where the two teams are like two ships passing in the night. T

he framework provided also must be presented in a way that the other team has the ability to challenge and debate. Preferably, those arguments should be presented earlier rather than later in the debate. I am less inclined to vote for you or your argument if you provide judging criteria in the 2ar, or even the 2nr.

Topicality – T debates are about competing visions on the topic, and the 2nr + 2ar should compare which topic is better. This is best done through some weighing mechanism introduced by either side. Standards should be more than vacuous terms like “limits”, “fairness”, and “predictability”. Absent a reason why those things are good and impact comparison for why they o/w whatever the other side is saying, it becomes hard to evaluate T debates.Terminal impacts are needed to win, just saying “destroys fairness” is vacuous and doesn’t explain why fairness is important. I am partial to fairness and argument testing impacts on the negative and pedagogy/inaccessibility arguments on the affirmative. Topical versions of the aff are great, I would appreciate if the block explicitly stated what the TVA is, instead of asserting there is one.

Critiques – Critique debate done well can be very enjoyable to judge, however the opposite is also true. K debates become frustrating to judge when I'm left with a bunch of different arguments but little interaction between them. Neg things: I think there are several key components every winning K 2nr should have: 1) links that turn the case 2) An external impact 3) A well explained alternative/framework argument that resolves the links. I believe the framework debate is generally underutilized by the negative, usually those debates end up somewhere in the middle resulting in Aff getting to weigh its implementation. Persuasive link analysis should be contextualized to the method/plan of the aff and supported by quotes from 1AC evidence/references to moments in cx. There's a growing tendency of negative team's reading external impacts, but not explaining the internal links to those things.

K Affs – I believe K affs should have some form of method that is clearly defined in the 1ac. The 2ac, 1ar, and 2ar should crystalize the method provided by the aff, then contextualize how it resolves your offense. This will help in comparing the method/offense of the aff vs the strategy of the negative. I believe teams should have some tie to the topic, but can be persuaded otherwise.

Disadvantages – Read them, go for them, make sure they turn the case. The more specific the disadvantage the better. Impact and evidence comparison is great and you should do it. Specific link analysis is also appreciated. I enjoy when affirmative find holes in the DA's scenarios and exploit them. 2ac's should have a good combination of offense and defense, otherwise it becomes easy for the negative to exploit deficiencies in 2ac coverage.

Counterplans – The more specific the better, well researched counter plans from affirmative evidence show the effort put into them, and will be rewarded with good speaker points if debated well. CP’s should probably have a solvency advocate, but won’t be counted as theoretically illegitimate unless debated out. Slow down on the CP text/planks. PIC’s are cool, but can be bad sometimes, again a debate to be had.

John Katsulas Boston College 2 rounds

John Katsulas, Director of Debate, Boston College
30 years coaching

Here are the rules for debate:
1) The affirmative side must advocate a plan of action by the United States Federal Government. If you merely read poetry, dance, or play music, you will lose.
2) The negative side must defend a consistent policy position in the debate. The negative may choose to defend the status quo, or the negative may advocate an unconditional counterplan.
3) Topicality is a voting issue and never a reverse voting issue.
4) Conditionality is prohibited.
5) The resolution is worded as a policy proposition, which means that policy making is the focus of debate.
6) Kritiques are not welcome.
7) Performance-style debate belongs in theatre productions.
.
Here are suggestions for debating in front of me:
1) The affirmative side has huge presumption on topicality if they can produce contextual evidence to prove their plan is topical.
2) Agent counterplans are fine. Don’t waste your time arguing PICS bad arguments against them. The legitimacy of international fiat is debatable, but I definitely believe there are far stronger arguments favoring limiting fiat to U.S. governmental actors.
3) Politics disadvantages are welcome. I like to hear them. Affirmatives should attack the internal link stories on many of these disadvantages. This is frequently a more viable strategy than just going for impact turns.
4) Both sides should argue solvency against affirmative plans and negative counterplans. Both sides should attack the links and internal links of impacts.
5) If you are incomprehensible, I won’t re-read all of your evidence after the debate to figure out your arguments.
6) Negative can win my ballot on zero risk of affirmative case solvency. Many affirmatives cases are so tragically flawed that they can be beaten by an effective cross-examination and/or analytical case presses.
7) I am very strict on 1ARs making new answers to fully developed disadvantages which don’t change from the 1NC.
8) Cross-examination answers are binding.
9) ASPEC: I won’t vote on it UNLESS you ask in cross-ex and they refuse to specify an agent.
10) Too late to add new links and impacts to your disadvantages during the first negative rebuttal.

I have a low threshold for dismissing non-real world arguments like nuclear war good and wipe-out.

Rich Kaye Emory University 8 rounds

Last changed on Tue January 15, 2019 at 9:34 AM EDT

Put me on your email chains: Rich.kaye12@gmail.com

4 Years policy debate at Mason

One year coaching at Mason

Before you pref me, I should make you aware that I have done zero topic research or judging on this topic.

General opinions about debate:

Tech over truth- if it's a bad argument, you should've answered it.

However, this doesn't mean cards over logic- if you have a piece of evidence that belongs in the trash, don't be surprised if the other team wins that argument without evidence and just making logical arguments.

Debate is a communications activity. If I didn't vote for you on an argument you thought you made, you either weren't clear enough when you made it so it's not on my flow, or you didn't explain it enough.

Debate is a game. Do with that what you will.

Read whatever you want, I'm not going to on face reject an argument (exceptions include things like "racism good"- don't do that)

Try and make your transitions between arguments/pages clear - I don't want to miss something you say because you sounded at the same speed for 9 minutes of your speech.

I've been told I make lots of expressions - and this includes when I'm judging debates. Do with that information what you will.

Feel free to email me with questions about my philosophy or after any debate I judge you.

Default to competing interps

I need more than just a neg caselist- what's topical under you interp? What DAs/CPs don't you get? Why do you deserve getting them. This is super important when I don't know what this topic has been like.

Heavy emphasis on impact calc is very much preferred. Do limits outweigh aff innovation? Is precision more important than overlimiting?

Too little evidence comparison happens in T debates generally, so try your best to fight that trend.

SPEC args are a non starter as a voting issue unless you ask in CX and they just don't answer, or if the 2AC just decides to cheat a lot. If you read it for CP competition purposes, that's obviously fine and probably necessary.

T vs K affs

Debate is a game- should the emphasis be on fairness, or whether or not the game has some sort of educational value beyond this space- that's to be debated, but my inclination is towards it needs to be fair to work and can still be educational.

Framework is the best option- Fairness or Delib, doesn't matter to me. Do what you want. I prefer procedural fairness though.

Limits impact is the most persuasive, because it has both in and out of round implications. Followed by health care education good arguments.

If you're a K aff, you're best off just going for the impact turns- you're not going to win you meet, and you probably won't win that your CIP provides enough limits in comparison to the neg's version of the topic.

Topical version doesn't have to solve the aff- just has to provide an inroads to talk about the aff's topic matter

Framework is a procedural- not an advocacy. You can't be stuck with it.

***NOVICES*** should have to be a topical defense of the resolution. Very persuaded by a "T debating good for novice debate" standard.

DAs

My favorite

Logical presses against the DA = carded presses against the DA, if it's a good argument.

Just going for impact d against the case or the DA at the end of the debate is probably not the spot you want to be in. If the aff still solves/causes a massive impact, even if it doesn't cause nuclear war, it could still turn the case/da.

Framing arguments like link determines the direction of uniqueness are helpful for me when judging these debates.

block nuance justifies new 1AR nuance- this doesn't mean "oh, they said turns the case, i'll read the no diversionary wars card the 2AC didn't get to" - but you still need to make the arg why they don't get to do that.

Politics DAs- these tend to be a lot about spin, so I'll try and default more to how you spin the evidence as to opposed what it actually says, if it's reasonable. If your card doesn't even come close to what you're trying to spin it as, you'll be in a rougher spot.

CPs

PICs without literature to substantiate them are bad. Having literature makes them marginally better.

Process/Agent are probably bad, but if that's your jam, go for it. I'll vote aff on theory as a reason to reject the team, or as a justification for the perm, or a kick the arg. Whatever happens in the debate. My default though is reject the team.

I never went for one.

I tend to lean aff on question of the roll of the ballot (the aff gets to weigh the plan) and ethical frames like util. But that doesn't mean I won't vote neg on alternative views of debates/ethics. I actually have voted on those arguments often when judging high school debate.

The less specific your K is to the topic, the worse position you're going to be in. Topic links are almost a necessity when going for the K in front of me.

You're tied to what you say. Econ DA-Cap K in the same 1NC probably won't fly.

PIKs are bad - see comments about process/agent CPs in that section

If your alt is to "do nothing" or I don't have a clear idea of what it actually does to solve your link arguments, you're not going to be in a good spot. Clear explanation of an alt that actually does something is required for you to win these kinds of debates in front of me.

If you're the aff in these debates, watch out for the classic K tricks (fiat is illusory, etc)- I don't want to vote you down on arguments like that, but I will if you drop them. Also make sure you don't lose sight of your aff- yes, read cards, but also remember the thesis of your aff probably impact turns/link turns the K in some way- if not, you can go for whatever your normal strategy is. But contextualization of impacts goes a long way towards my ballot.

Case outweighs is the best strategy vs Ks

I am, admittedly, bad at understanding K debate sometimes- so don't expect me to know all the buzzwords that your favorite author says. Make sure you actually explain some of the concepts in a way that's easy to understand- do not expect me to just know instantly what you're talking about. Likely I don't. You can save us both the trouble by debating your K at a more basic level. So I can understand you and not be frustrated that I dont, and you for not losing because I didn't understand half of the 2NR because they were debating their K at the level of a philosopher.

Theory

Condo beyond 2 is iffy, beyond 3 you better be really good at condo. Unless the aff is new. In that case, have at it.

Same things that apply to T apply to this- competing interps, impact calc, etc.

Theory is a reason to reject the team unless someone says otherwise

Theory doesn't outweigh topicality

These debates are very ticky tacky, so please go slower than your card reading speed- if you're going so fast that I'm missing arguments, it really doesn't matter that you're going so fast- because you're making arguments that won't get evaluated.

David Kilpatrick Texas 1 rounds

Last changed on Wed April 3, 2024 at 12:06 PM CDT

New - NDT 24. Welcome to Atlanta!

The only things you really need to know:
1. If you berate, threaten, verbally or physically attack your opponents, I will end the debate and you'll recieve a loss along with the lowest points tabroom will allow me to asign.
2. Don't endorse self-harm.
3. Arguments admissable for adjudication include everything said from when the 1AC timer starts until the 2AR timer ends. Anything else is irrelevant.

Other than that, do what you do best. Technical debating is more likely to result in you winning than anything else.

I am a coach at Emory, Liberal Arts and Science Academy and The Harker School. Other conflicts: Texas, Westwood, St Vincent de Paul, Bakersfield High School

Email Chain: yes, cardstealing@gmail.com

You will receive a speaker point bump if you give your final rebuttal without the use of a laptop. I will give higher points to speeches with errors/pauses/inconsistencies etc. where the speaker debates off their flows than speeches that sound crystal clear and perfect but are delivered without the speaker looking up from their computer screen. If you flow off your laptop I will use my best judgement to assess the extent to which you're delivering arguments in such a way that demonstrates you have flowed the debate.

Ultimately, do what you do best. Giving speeches you're comfortable with is almost certainly a better path to victory than attempting to adapt to any of this stuff below. Debate is extremely hard and requires immense amounts of works. I will try to give you the same level of effort that I know you've put in.

Debate is an activity about persuasion and communication. If I can't understand your argument because what you are saying because you are unclear, haven't explained it, or developed it into a full argument-claim, warrant, impact, it likely won't factor in my decision.

The winner will nearly always be the team able to identify the central question of the debate first and most clearly trace how the development of their argument means they're ahead on that central question.

Virtually nothing you can possibly say or do will offend me [with the new above caveat] if you can't beat a terrible argument you probably deserve to lose.

Framework- Fairness is both an internal link and an impact. Debate is a game but its also so much more. Go for T/answer T the way that makes most sense to you, I'll do my best to evaluate the debate technically.

Counter-plans-

-spamming permutations, particular ones that are intrinsic, without a text and with no explanation isn't a complete argument. [insert perm text fine, insert counter plan text is not fine].

-pretty neg on "if it competes, its legitimate." Aff can win these debates by explaining why theory and competition should be separated and then going for just one in the 2ar. the more muddled you make this, the better it usually is for the neg.

-non-resolutional theory is rarely if ever a reason to reject the team. Generally don't think its a reason to reject the argument either.

-I'm becoming increasingly poor for conditionality bad as a reason to reject the team. This doesn't mean you shouldn't say in the 2ac why its bad but I've yet to see a speech where the 2AR convinced me the debate has been made irredeemably unfair or un-educational due to the status of counter plans. I think its possible I'd be more convinced by the argument that winning condo is bad means that the neg is stuck with all their counter plans and therefore responsible for answering any aff offense to those positions. This can be difficult to execute/annoying to do, but do with that what you will.

Kritiks

-affs usually lose these by forgetting about the case, negs usually lose these when they don't contextualize links to the 1ac. If you're reading a policy aff that clearly links, I'll be pretty confused if you don't go impact turns/case outweighs.

-link specificity is important - I don't think this is necessarily an evidence thing, but an explanation thing - lines from 1AC, examples, specific scenarios are all things that will go a long way

-these are almost always just framework debates these days but debaters often forget to explain the implications winning their interpretation has on the scope of competition. framework is an attempt to assign roles for proof/rejoinder and while many of you implicitly make arguments about this, the more clear you can be about those roles, the better.

-i'm less likely to think "extinction outweighs, 1% risk" is as good as you think it is, most of the time the team reading the K gives up on this because they for some reason think this argument is unbeatable, so it ends up mattering in more rfds than it should

LD -

I have been judging LD for a year now. The policy section all applies here.

Tech over truth but, there's a limit - likely quite bad for tricks - arguments need a claim, warrant and impact to be complete. Dropped arguments are important if you explain how they implicate my decision. Dropped arguments are much less important when you fail to explain the impact/relevance of said argument.

RVIs - no, never, literally don't. 27 ceiling. Scenario: 1ar is 4 minutes of an RVI, nr drops the rvi, I will vote negative within seconds of the timer ending.

Policy/K - both great - see above for details.

Phil - haven't judged much of this yet, this seems interesting and fine, but again, arguments need a claim, warrant and impact to be complete arguments.

Arguments communicated and understood by the judge per minute>>>>words mumbled nearly incomprehensibly per minute.

Unlikely you'll convince me the aff doesn't get to read a plan for topicality reasons. K framework is a separate from this and open to debate, see policy section for details.

PF -

If you read cards they must be sent out via email chain with me attached or through file share prior to the speech. If you reference a piece of evidence that you haven't sent out prior to your speech, fine, but I won't count it as being evidence. You should never take time outside of your prep time to exchange evidence - it should already have been done.

"Paraphrasing" as a substitute for quotation or reading evidence is a bad norm. I won't vote on it as an ethics violation, but I will cap your speaker points at a 27.5.

I realize some of you have started going fast now, if everyone is doing that, fine. However, adapting to the norms of your opponents circuit - i.e. if they're debating slowly and traditionally and you do so as well, will be rewarded with much higher points then if you spread somebody out of the room, which will be awarded with very low points even if you win.

Judd Kimball University of Mary Washington 4 rounds

Judd D. Kimball, Assistant Coach, University of Mary Washington

Article I. Communication Approach to Debate
Section 1.01 The following are brief explanation of what I envision when I think of the highest quality debate. These are items that can factor in both positively and negatively for you in my determination of who did the better debating.
(a) A primary goal should be to present your ideas and arguments in a communicative fashion. What factors influence the effectiveness of your communication?
(i) Rate of Delivery. You should not present ideas at a rate that interferes with the effectiveness of sharing those ideas with another human being. You must analyze your audience to determine the rate at which they can absorb ideas, and you must evaluate (fairly) your own abilities to speak rapidly which not losing clarity/enunciation or normal tone inflection that signals the beginning and ending of sentences, and is critical to judges understanding concepts and ideas, not just individual words.
(ii) Clarity/Enunciation. Each word should have a beginning and an ending. Each sound should be pronounced, and not mumbled through.
(iii) Interpretation/Tonal inflection. It is a personal belief that the way we normally communicate with other people involves a lot of vocal interpretation and tonal inflection. It’s a way to communicate phrases and ideas, rather than just leaving each word hanging out by itself, merely surrounded by other words. With interpretation the audience has an easier time comprehending, understanding the processing the idea, as they don’t have to put the sentence together from the individual words, and then discover the meaning of the phrase or sentence themselves. Interpretation, by my definition, is the attribute of communication that helps provide understanding to the audience of the ideas being presented through the way the ideas are presented. It has been my experience that most debaters are very interpretative speakers when they are not debating from prepared scripts. It is during this time that the communication skills you have honed since you began talking are on display. Yet when it is time to read evidence, or a prepped theory block, they shift communicative gears and start just reading each individual word, rather than presenting ideas for the consideration of the judge. I am very unlikely to read evidence after the debate if it was not read in a comprehensible manner, or the warrants and reasons of the evidence were not discussed as being important ideas.
(b) A primary focus of your speeches and cross-examination period should be information sharing. This goes beyond your personal motivation to communicate with the judges, and includes a responsibility to present your arguments in a fashion that facilitates your opponent’s comprehension of your position.
(c) Clash. You should seek to create class in your debates by interacting with not only your opponent’s tag lines, but with the warrants for those claims. In essence, clash is explaining to me why I should prefer/believe your arguments over your opponents. In order to effectively do that, you must be making comparisons that take your opponents argument into account. You must clash.

Section 1.02 Effective implementation of these points will most likely result in higher speaker points, and a greater understanding of your arguments by me as a judge. That will help you in winning the debate, as I will hold the other team responsible for answering your arguments, and if they fail toy,your superior communication will be a determining factor (as a process) of your victory.

Article II. Debate Evaluation
Section 2.01 I recognize objective standards and processes are probably impossible, as the subjective creeps into everything, I just desire and strive for objectivity.
(a) I have a default judging perspective, which evaluates the net benefits of a policy proposal, and answers the question of whether the government should take a particular course of action. I prefer a framework which strives to include as many voices and perspectives as possible, and provides a framework in which different perspectives can be compared, contrasted and weighed. I like my decision to be grounded in the arguments made in the debate. I strive not to bring in “baggage” with me, though I recognize the final futility of that effort, and I will make every effort to explain my decision by reference what was actually communicated in the debate
(b) If you wish the debate to be evaluated from an alternate perspective, you will need to provide a well-defined set of criteria for me to apply when evaluating and weighing arguments. The question of controversy needs to be defined, and discussed in order to provide me the necessary framework to avoid subjectively deciding the debate. Now mind you, I don’t mind subjectively deciding a debate, just be prepared to be frustrated by my statement that I can’t explain why I voted for a particular position, just that that was what I wanted to do at that moment of time, or frustrated by the fact that what I voted on wasn’t an argument or part of the debate that you had a chance to answer. That will happen when I find myself stalled out in the decision making, finding no way to decide other than adding in factors that were not included or discussed in the debate.

Section 2.02 I find questions of autonomous action and personal belief difficult to decide in the context of debate competition. I have found myself perplexed by arguments advanced on the basis of exercising personal autonomy, and then be expected to evaluate them without the inclusion of my opinions, my autonomy, in the process. This is difficult when I find that my personal approach to life contrasts with the approach to individual decision making advocated by one team. If the ballot is my endorsement of your idea, then I would be denying my own autonomous position by being constrained by debate conventions of judging (i.e., you did a better job against the opponents objections, but I wasn’t persuaded to change my personal beliefs). Defining your framework for debate evaluation with this in mind will ease my difficulty. I have been close to taking the action of including my position on the question, in the last few debates I’ve had when this situation arose. Questions of Autonomy and personal belief are difficult questions for me to resolve

Section 2.03 I will be very resistant to deciding debates where the character of the participants is the foundation for the decision. I do not like to cast judgments on people and their behavior without having gathered as much information as is possible. I do not feel that in the high pressure competition of debate is the best forum for investigating those issues, or in seeking to engage the other individual in a dialogue about their behavior. Am I totally unwilling to decide a debate on such a question? I’m not willing to say that either. But I would have to be convinced that not only was this an egregious act, but that malevolent intent was involved.

Article III. Other Issues:
Section 3.01 Topicality I think topicality debates hinge on the question of whose interpretation provides for a better debate topic/experience. If your violation and argumentation does not provide an answer to that question, then figure the answer out. You must also be sure to be complete in your argumentation about why the affirmative violates your interpretation. Do not leave issues of plan interpretation vague, or hinge your argument on a vague cross ex question or answer. Make clear and concise arguments about why the affirmative plan doesn’t meet your interpretation.

Section 3.02 Counterplans. I’ll evaluate any counterplan presented. I begin from a bias that "net benefits" is the most meaningful competition standard, and perhaps only standard. But you can argue other standards, and you only have to defeat your opponent’s arguments, not mine. As to other theory questions with counterplans, it will depend on who does the best job defending/indicting a particular theoretical practice used in the debate.

Section 3.03 Kritiks I need to understand what you are saying from the beginning on all arguments, but especially these. Please communicate your ideas to me when you present this type of argument. I won’t go back later and try to figure out what you were arguing about. I need to know what the affirmative does that is bad, and why it is bad enough that I should either vote negative, or not affirmative, or however I should vote.

Section 3.04 Debating and Evaluating Theory Issues. Theory issues are difficult to evaluate, because they are a yes/no question. If you wish to win a theory objection, you must deal with all of your opponent’s defenses, and provide reasoning explaining why a particular theory position is destructive to quality debate. This is not meant to scare you off of theory debates, just to encourage you to be thorough and complete when discussing this issue.

Kaylee Kohlmaier Emory University 6 rounds

Last changed on Tue September 11, 2018 at 2:08 PM EDT

Debated at Vanderbilt for 4 years, Current Law Student at Emory

As a debater, I generally ran policy arguments with some Kritiks on the neg, so that’s what I’m going to be more familiar with. Though I generally prefer topical plans, I’ll still listen to and vote for a nontraditional Aff. At the end of the day, its your job to tell me how to evaluate the round. Though I have not done a ton of research as of GSU on this years, I will be traveling to at least a handful of tournaments each semester.

That being said, here’s some general thoughts

Yes email chain, my email is kaylee.a.kohlmaier@gmail.com

T- I like T debates, but don’t just repeat your 1NC T-Shell and expect me to pull the trigger. Tell me why your definition is better, your interpretation is better, and give impacts.

Framework- It would be dishonest for me to say that I don't have a preference for topical plans enacted by the USFG, so T-USFG/Framework is an argument I will vote for. I generally find truth testing arguments to be most persuasive here and the topical version of the Aff is always your friend. You still need impacts here though for why I should prefer this version of debate to the one that the affirmative is proposing.

I do however still think nontraditional affirmatives provide for good debates and good discussions so long as you have a reason for me to prefer your Framework over the other teams.

I default to debate being a game and myself as a policymaker, so if I should view debate and my role differently, tell me what that view is and most importantly why I should have it.

Case/DA – Case specific DA’s are always going to be better than generics. Utilize attacks on all parts of these arguments (uniqueness, link, internal links, impact). At the end of the day I need to know why case/DA outweighs

K’s – I’m likely less familiar with the lit, so be sure to explain and warrant it out. In particular I need to know why your K links to this Aff and why your alt is better. Same concept for K/ Nontraditional affs, explain why your aff is important and why I should vote for you.

CP’s- run whatever you want, but I’m more likely to believe that some types of CP’s are more abusive than others (like consult CPs or if you run 8 conditional counter plans). Other than that, I’m open to listening to whatever CP or CP theory you got.

Framing is important to me. You probably aren’t winning every argument you’re making, so tell me why the ones you’re winning are more important.

Reach out if you have any questions.

Debate is competitive, but it’s a game. Have fun and don’t be rude.

Eric Lanning Texas 5 rounds

Teja Leburu Northwestern University 4 rounds

Last changed on Fri January 5, 2024 at 10:55 AM EDT

Teja Leburu, Assistant Coach at Northwestern, Email: tejaleburu@gmail.com, College People: debatedocs@googlegroups.com

I don't have a ton of involvement in debate anymore. I will not have a great understanding of community norms around t/competition on the topic, nor experience on many of the substantive issues. Considering this, it will probably help you to overexplain rather than under.

With regards to clash debates, based on the previous rounds I have judged, my record indicates I am not great for non-topical affirmatives and critical arguments. I will attempt to evaluate the debate as fair as possible, but it seems as though I diverge for two reasons with other judges when dealing with non-topical affs, 1) I find that the affirmative offense is not intrinsic to debate about the topic, nor does it outweigh the neg offense 2) I think that aff debating assumes I’ll account for a lot of implicit case interaction with framework, which I have a hard time doing. With regards to the K, I think the two issues lead me to diverge in decisions from other judges, 1) I tend to agree with the affirmative arguments about plan focus and think the negative doesn’t spend enough time responding to the classic “fairness and clash” arguments 2) I think there has to be some response to case either via explicit alt solves arguments or case defense. Absent that, I seem to give a lot of “Aff outweighs the K” decisions.

In more traditional debates, here are the more controversial opinions I have:

I will evaluate rehighlighted/inserted cards, within reason. I get that “within reason” can be an ambiguous line; a general rule of thumb is if it’s text that’s included from the other team's speech doc, that is fine. If it’s from a different section of the article or another article, read it.
I think some 1NCs make close to zero complete arguments, e.g introductions of “just text” CPs without a card, an explanation of how it solves, or what DAs it avoids. If the 1NC is without these things, the 2NC cannot assert the aff has dropped a complete argument and I will be lenient to allow “new” 1AR arguments. I think a good test is if the neg finds themselves asserting the aff has dropped an argument and then proceeding to read more cards about that exact issue; then I’ll think the aff should be permitted to respond to the new evidence read and that will often allow “new” 1AR arguments.
There are few theoretical arguments (aside from condo) that I could entertain as resulting in rejecting the team. I think I’ll have a hard time being convinced otherwise.
I think translated cards or cards from author correspondence are fine and should be encouraged. When the debater or a coach are the ones doing the translating, I can be more convinced that it’s not the best idea.
Condo is starting to approach the point where I am questioning whether “infinite condo” is, in fact, good for debate. If the neg finds themselves exceeding 5 or 6 options, depending on the situation and debating, I could find myself persuaded to vote on it. It’s still a high bar, but not as impossible as it used to be with me.
I seem to not like “process” oriented strategies as much as other judges. The more germane to the topic and the more it competes off of topic specific resolutional phrasing other than merely “immediacy” or “certainty”, the more likely I’ll be to think it’s both legitimate and competitive. In addition, I think merely reading definitions without advancing a reason to prefer those definitions on competition is risky endeavour.
It seems I'm more willing than the average judge to entertain CPs that are often competitive (states, con-con, etc) as theoretically illegitimate, and reasons to reject the *argument*

Edward Lee Emory University 3 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 10:53 AM EDT

Ed Lee

Judge Philosophy

Emory University

ewlee@emory.edu

Revised: November 2013(Remixed by KRS One)

My Philosophy

KRS-One (My Philosophy) Let's begin, what, where, why, or when / Will all be explained like instructions to a game / See I'm not insane, in fact, I'm kind of rational / When I be asking you, "Who is more dramatical?"

KRS-One (Stop The Violence) I want to be remembered as the ghetto kid to jump up for world peace, because the stereotype is that all ghetto kids want to do is sell drugs and rob each other, which isn’t fact. I came from the heart of the ghetto — there ain’t no suburbia in me.

1. We are playing a game and there is nothing wrong with that. I love games. I play a lot of board games with my partner. It is our primary form of entertainment. Collecting board games has actually become a little hobby of mine. Gaming teaches conflict negotiation, winning and losing with honor, and proper ways to respond to adversity. However, all of that is lost if we unfair, disrespect others at the table and turn the game into something it is not. Play hard. Play by the rules. Ignore the wins and losses. Do those three things and you got of a decent shot at your debate career and life turning out pretty well.

2. Competitive debate cannot be the cure all for everything that plagues us. It has a very limited range of things that it can do well and its incentive structures can actually be quite harmful to creating productive conversations over our most intransigent social ills.

I strongly believe that debate educators and students should use our skills to help move our communities to a place where we can engage difference without being divisive. A large part of my job has become the facilitation of conversations on Emory’s campus that encourage students to civilly and civically engage controversy. I wholeheartedly support the effort of the Barkley Forum to provide every student on Emory’s campus with the opportunity to meaningfully engage. Debate educators have the capacity to present an alternative mode of politics and deliberation that is not motivated crisis and inundated in vitriol. Unfortunately, I do not think competitive debate with its uncompromising zero-sum outcomes and time limits will serve us well in our attempt to negotiate interpersonal differences. I see the current crisis in intercollegiate debate as proof of that.

I would prefer that we allow competitive debate to do the few things it does well and utilize our collective expertise to develop other forms of deliberation to address these vastly more important issues. I look forward to talking to anyone who will listen about The Barkley Forums efforts to us debate in partnership with the content experts on our campus to address racism, sexual assault and religious intolerance and a myriad of other social ills. I am sure that the other Emory coaches and students will appreciate it if I had a larger audience for this conversation.

3. One of the unique values of competitive debate is its ability to train students to quickly assess and evaluate information from various sources. I do not think there is a better pedagogical tool for providing this much-needed skill. This has become critically important as the Internet has made information dissemination and access uncontrollable.

4. Competitive debate is a laboratory for experimenting with ideas and identities. It can only function as long as we are not beholden to or damned by every idea we put forward to test. I believe this type of space is essential for our personal and cultural development.

Judging

KRS-One (Know Thy Self) Sometimes you gotta go back to the beginning to learn.

KRS-One (My Philosophy) See I'm tellin', and teaching real facts / The way some act in rap is kind of wack / And it lacks creativity and intelligence / But they don't care 'cause the company is sellin' it

1. While I am a huge fan of quality evidence, my decisions will privilege a debater’s assessment of an argument over my reading of a piece of evidence. I do not believe that every argument needs to be evidenced. I routinely vote on un-evidenced arguments that are indictments of the opposition’s evidence or a defense of one’s claims based on historical analogies, counterinterpetations of political theories, and assessment of an author’s qualifications.

2. Topicality exists to protect the guiding principles articulated above. It will be very difficult to convince me that affirming the reading of 1acs that is outside the bounds of the resolution is more academically beneficial than topically affirming the resolution. While I am not certain, I sense that I am less hesitant to vote on topicality than many others in the judging pool.

I think that we should have topics where the Neg has the ability to and is incentivized to prepare a coherent set of argument strategies that are topic relevant. I don’t think that a model of debate that encourages the AFF to defend truisms is a productive way to utilize this intellectual space.

3. Topic rotation is good. We should encourage students to explore and unearth the unique set of arguments that are germane to each individual topic. I strongly discourage argument strategies that that create disincentives for topic explorations. Counterplans that compete based on immediacy and certainty and narrow interpretations of the topic that deny the Neg opportunities to generate offense are examples of the type of strategies that I find academically lacking.

4. 2As need to reign in the Neg’s counterplan power. They should be more aggressive about launching objections to certain types of counterplans. I am particularly concern with those distort the literature base to such a degree that an informed debate can’t happen because scholars have never entertained the possibility of the counterplan.

5. My weakness as a judge is my ability to flow very quick technical debates. This is particularly true for theory debates that occasionally evolve into a string of unsupported claims with very little engagement with the opposition’s args. Please keep in mind that cards provide enough pen time for judges to catch up even when they miss an arg. We do not have that luxury with theory debates. This also tends to happen in the 2ac on the case. I am a huge fan of efficiency. However, there are some forms of embedded clash that has has made it extremely difficult for judges (at least this one) to follow.

I tend to make up for this shortcoming by paying close attention to every aspect of every debate judge, staying on top of the evolution of a topic and having a pretty decent memory of things even when I fail to write to them. I will put in as much work listening and evaluating your arguments as you put in preparing and delivering them.

I will not vote on evidence/arguments I do not have explicitly extended through the block and contextualized in some way. This tends to hurt some hyper technical tag-liney debaters.

Specifics

KRS-One (South Bronx) “Many people tell me this style is terrific/It is kinda different, but let’s get specific.”

KRS-One (Step Into A World) I'm 'bout to hit you wit that traditional style of cold rockin' / Givin' options for head knockin' non stoppin' / Tip-toppin' lyrics we droppin' but styles can be forgotten

Topicality

1. Topic anarchy is unproductive. I truly believe we need some stasis in order to have a productive conversation. To be honest, I am not sure if that means you have to defend the state or you gotta have a plan. However, I do believe that it is much easier to encourage a clash of ideas when those things are present. Debates can’t happen unless the AFF is willing to defend something.

2. The most limiting interpretation is rarely the best. I can be easily persuaded that a larger topic is better because it incentivizes AFF creativity while preserving core Neg ground. Far to often the AFF fails to push back on the limits debate and allows topicality to be a referendum on which team has the most limiting interpretation.

3. Topicality is about guiding future research endeavors. That makes source qualification an important aspect of the discussion. Who is defining and for what purpose is worth evaluating.

4. I tend to lean towards “competitive interpretations” over “reasonability” because it feels less interventionists. However, I think there are ways to craft “reasonability” arguments to change the direction arrow on this.

Counterplans

1. I find some theory objections more persuasive than others. It is hard for me to get overly excited about counterplan status debates. While I have and will vote on conditionality, I just don’t consider it that great of an offense when there is only one counterplan. I have some concern about multiple conditional counterplans because of their ability to pervert 2ac strategic choices. It is such a rare occasion that a debate was improved with the addition of a 2^nd or 3^rd counterplan. I will go on record to say that I have never seen a debate with multiple CPs that would not have been improved by reducing the number of CPs to 1.

2. I think counterplans that compete by excluding a part of the plan text is good for debate. They encourage both the AFF and the NEG to research topic mechanism instead of focusing on impact debates that rarely change from one topic to the next. They also create opportunities for a more nuanced impact framing that is not oriented towards maximizing one’s magnitude.

3. I think Perm “Do the CP” is persuasive against counterplans that compete off of things that are not written in the plan. Neg research that supports the necessity of a particular action to do the plan will resolve this debate in their favor. However, the bar is one of necessity and not possibility.

4. I am not a big fan of States or International Actor CPs. They have each effectively narrowed the range of AFFs we can talk about to those that access US hegemony or a set of actions that can only be formed by the military. I am occasionally persuaded by the arg that they are necessary to functionally limit the size of the topic. Aff should keep in mind that topicality exist for that same reason.

5. We need to do a better job telling judges what to do with theory objections. The statement “vote against the arg – not the team” is not an argument. It is claim. Teams need to be more aggressive about telling me the impact of my decision in either direction.

6. My default is to stick the Neg with the CP if go for it in the 2nr. I do not think it is fair to force the 2ar to have to do impact assessment for a world that includes the counterplan and one that doesn’t. The “judge kick” model discourages the 2n from making choices, discourages the development of a coherent 2nr based on that choice and undermines the ability for the 2ar to properly compare relevant impacts.

7. I am starting to toy around with the notion that the AFF should be able to advocate permutations to compensate for the multitude of CP options we have created for the Neg. AFF needs to more creative. The vast majority of argument innovation since I have been around has occurred on the negative.

Critiques

1. The more germane you can make this set of arguments the better. The major problem is that I rarely find the grand sweeping totalizing claims of inevitability and the necessity of radical response to social problems persuasive. I am quite suspicious of claims that are grounded in an indictment of “all” or “every.” I tend to opt for permutations that prove that the AFFs reformist pursuits are in the same direction as the alternative.

2. 2. What is that alt again? I would be a much better judge for the neg if I understood what the alt was and its functionality. AFFs that exploit this weakness by carving out solvency deficits for the case impacts and the squo tend to win these debates. The best 2As highlight the internal links to the advantages and identify those as reasons the Alt can’t solve.

3. The Neg would get much more mileage with this category of arguments if they treated them like ethics/ontology/method DAs with an impact that was more important than the AFF utilitarian impacts. Many will think that is overly simplistic. Keep in mind that I spend most of my life thinking that I am a simple man living in an overly complicated world.

4. 4. The Aff is too dependent on framework args. The plea to weigh the 1ac is not a substitute for engaging the criticism. I kinda agree with the Neg that Aff framework args are arbitrary in their self-importance and exclusion of the Negs link args. A little research on the educational value of talking about your AFF gets you to the same place without appearing dogmatic.

5. The most persuasive critiques are those that challenge the way the 1ac encourages us to understand others and ourselves. They challenge the pedagogical force of the 1ac. These types of arguments are appealing to Ed Lee, the teacher.

Disadvantage

1. My general dispossession is that most impact claims are highly unlikely and the block gives the negative a structural advantage in the competition of lies. All other things being equal, I think a DA+Case strategy is the best path to victory. Keep in mind that the amount of DA you need to win is directly related to the amount of the case that the AFF is winning. You don’t have to win much of your DA if you are sufficiently beating up the case.

2. I believe uniqueness operates on a continuum where the terminal impact of the DA is more or less likely to occur in the squo. Both sides should be more sophisticated in assessing the probability of whether or not the impact will happen and why gradual shifts along the continuum are worthy of a judge’s evaluation.

3. “Turns the case” rarely means turns the case. Neg usually has uniqueness issues with winning this line of arument. A better direction to go in is to explain why the DA impact short-circuits the ability of the Aff to solve the advantage. It gets you to the same place and doesn’t have the uniqueness burden.

4. 2a should invest more time in reading the Negs DA ev. There are usually a goldmine of alt causalities, uniqueness args and impact takeouts. This is a place where you can get a lot of mileage out of witty analytics. I am wmore than willing to vote unevidenced assessment. Don’t just read. Debate.

5. Don’t ignore the internal link debate. Most debates seem to boil down to a limited number of impacts – Hegemony, Trade, Climate, Economy. The better teams will invest time winning that they have a stronger internal link to these impacts then their opposition.

6. 1nc should generate some offense on the case. Impact turns are useful because they force the 2a to read ev on the case and you usually have a counterplan (or 2) that makes this a risk free proposition for you.

Speaker Points

KRS-One (Tears) While you lay the flowers on the grave, let's talk about how you behave. Do you come out the neighborhood or out of the cave?

KRS-One (Health, Wealth, And Self) I'll give you the gift, but use the gift to uplift.

Criteria - Things I Like and will give the gift of points

I will start this discussion by identifying some of the styles/skills I like and tend to reward with high speaker points. It is easier for me to talk about specific people. Some of these folks are still in our community. Others you may find some videos of. All were exemplary in one form or another of what I think great debaters do and what I want to honor them with high speaker points.

Kacey Wolmers (Emory) – Fast, technical and clear. I actually find some beauty in this presentational style. Her 1ncs were artwork. I must emphasize the clarity component. She was one of the few extremely fast debaters that I had no problem following. That had a lot to do with her clarity. She also made arguments and not a random assertion of claims.

Martin Osborn (Missouri State) – Efficient and driven. Martin is a testament to fact that you don’t have to choose between being fast or being a "policy" debater. He was one of the most efficient debaters I ever judged with superb in-round argument selection skills. Words were never wasted and he rarely extended an argument in the final two rebuttals that were not necessary.

Julie Hoehn (Emory) – Dedication to preparation. I never judged Julie. I was her coach. However, I saw how her dedication to prepare won numerous debates. It created a situational awareness that was vast superior to most. Julie was rarely caught off guard and it never happen twice. She had the capacity to quickly diagnose and dismiss trivial and inconsequential arguments.

Gabe Murillo (Wayne State) – Argument Explanation. Some people ask me how they can get me to vote on critiques. I tell them to debate like Gabe. I know very little about most of his arguments. However, Gabe was fantastic at identifying my limitations and biases and developing argument strategies that resolve them. I distinctly remember the times that I voted against him and the post-round being a series of questions about repackaging the argument and ways to alter phrases. Gabe was constantly trying to figure out ways to connect with me as a judge. That was true even he disagreed with my decisions. Most people would be extremely shocked by how often I voted for him.

Naveen Ramachandrappa (UGA) – Research. The stories about his evidence production are absurd. Talk to Hays Watson about it. Much more impressive was that he demonstrated it debate. Naveen was a master at debating evidence and not just reading it. He understood not only the strength and weaknesses of his evidence but his opponents.

Seth Gannon (Wake) – Humor. Humor can stand in for any gift of persuasion you have. Be yourself. Have fun. I never judged Seth and didn’t look like he was having fun. Even during the stressful final round of the NDT, he looked like he enjoyed being there. That makes judging so much easier and pleasurable. The judge is your audience. Connect with them.

Debbie Lai & Varsha Ramakrishnan (Michigan State) - Hard workers. This is my favorite debate team of all time. They were two regional debaters who worked hard to become the best debaters they could be. It was and honor and pleasure to watch them growth and develop. I wanted to vote for them. They were not a first round team and didn’t clear at the NDT. However, they had a genuine love for the activity and were willing to invest a tremendous amount of time an energy to get better even though the odds were long and they started college debate at an experience deficit. I look forward to rewarding those who work hard and value the process.

Criteria - Things I don’t like and will reduce points

I implore you hold Emory’s debaters to the same standard. They should be expected to play fair, be clear and conduct themselves with respect and humility even if you don’t expect it from other debaters. Help me help them to be better people and debaters.

Cheating – Cross-reading, card-clipping, using disclosure/speech doc to gain an fair advantage. Your honor and integrity is far more valuable than winning the game. I don’t play games with cheaters and I will not reward them. I am a guardian of the integrity of this activity and will not wait for others to ask me to perform that role.

Lack of clarity – This is a communication activity. If I don’t understand it, I will not evaluate it. I don’t like the model of debate where students incomprehensibly read at me and then ask me to read a litany of cards after the round to determine who wins. Debate. Persuade. Analysze. Don’t just read.

Creating a hostile environment – Respect is a non-negotiable for me. It always has been. It is the primary reason I go out of my way to be civil and cordial to everyone I interact with. I know that there is no chance that we will have a productive conversation unless you are willing to speak to me in a way that acknowledges my humanity. I not only have that expectation for the way you communicate with me but the way you communicate with each other. It is not healthy for me or anyone else in the room to watch you verbally assaulting your opponent. If you are engaging your opponent in a way that you would not if you were in front of one of your professors or the president of your university then you should not do it in front of me. I am more than willing to have a conversation with anyone about where this line should be drawn. That conversation is long overdue.

My scale

I will the scale established by the tournament. Grandma taught me to never show up to someone's home and not eat the casserole. that's just rude.

29.6 -30: I think you are debating like a Top 10 debater at a national tournament.

29.3 – 29.5: I think you are debating like an Octos debater at a national tournament

28.8 – 29.2: I think you are debating like a 5-3 double octofinalist

28.5 – 28.7: Debating like you are 4-4 and on the verge of clearing at a national tournament

28 – 28.4: You are working to get better

Revised 2-16-94
NAME __Ed Lee_____________________ INSTITUTION __University of Alabama ___
POSITION _Director of Debate ___ YEARS OF COACHING ___5__________
NUMBER OF TOURNAMENTS THIS YEAR ___10____________________
I am a very flexible critic. Win a link and explain why the impact is more important than what the other team is winning. This holds true
regardless of what artificial box we decide to place the argument in - harms, critiques, disads, and theory.
Topicality
I consider topicality to be a discussion about the best way to interpret the resolution so that we create the fairest debates possible. I think about
topicality the same way I think about a plan vs. counterplan debate. Each side needs to explicitly discuss the benefits of their interpretation that
can not be co-opted by the counter interpretation.
Counterplans
Solve for the case harms and win a disad. It sounds like a decent strategy to me. Affirmative needs to offensive in this debate. It is more likely
that I will vote on a disad to the counterplan than theory. Don't take that to mean that you can't win the counterplan theory debate in front of me.
I think this statement stems from the difficulties I some times have flowing quick blippy theory arguments. (Bydaway: Tell me what you want
me to do if you when the theory debate and why. My default is that the line of argument should be evaluated. Winning theory is not an
automatic victory.) Not only are grounded claims easier to flow but they make better arguments. The best affirmative theory arguments use the
negative’s stance to justify a set of affirmative offensive arguments. I operate under the assumption that the negative must make a choice
between advocating the status quo and or the counterplan(s) in the 2NR. I think that it is your argumentative responsibility to stabilize your
position of inquiry.
Disadvantages
I do not believe in the risk of a link. One must first win a link and risk assessments are made when evaluating the probability of the impacts.
Critiques
What is the link and why is it more important than the affirmative? Why does it doom the entire affirmative's project (plan) just because one
piece of evidence uses “nuclear” “terrorism” etc? The affirmative should force the negative to articulate how the criticism interacts with the
1AC and why it is wholly cooptive. The negative needs to be explicit about the opportunity costs of not voting for the criticism. At times, I am
at a lost for what the impact is to the criticism even after the 2NR.
Affirmative needs to be more offensive at the impact level of these debates. Unlike disads, I think that the negative has an advantage at the link
level of this debate and the best Affirmative attacks come at the impact level. The most persuasive 2ACs have been those who turned the
alternative, counter-critiqued, and been generally offensive.
Speaker points
CX should be used for more than gathering cards and talking about tidbits of nothingness. CX is a powerful tool that can be used to setup future
arguments and provide the critic with a filter for evaluating the debate. I listen to CX.
My average speaker points are between 26-27. 28 is reserved for those performances that "wow" me. These debaters are usually able to make
my decision easy even when there are no conceded voting issues. Arguments no longer exist as disparate, isolated blocks on a sheet of paper
but live and interact. 28s are able to competently discuss argument relationships and consistently make link and impact comparisons. 29s are
performances of brilliance. It is a presentation that allows me to forget that I am judging a debate round. The presenter is on and everyone
knows it. I think that it is a measurement of near-perfection that I reserve for only the most amazing speeches. A 30 allows me to temporarily
forget that another speech in the round was worthy of a 28 or 29.
ed lee
Director of Debate
Alabama Forensics Council
University of Alabama
bamadebate@yahoo.com

Joshua Lee Dartmouth College 6 rounds

Last changed on Thu January 4, 2024 at 4:33 AM EDT

Name: Joshua Lee

Last updated/proofread: January 4, 2024.

Background: Currently an attorney with little involvement in the debate community minus the occasional judging. Aside from my prior experience debating the nuclear weapons topic in 2009-2010 as a college freshman, I am completely new to this year's resolution. Before that, the last major judging occurred in the 2023 NDT (and the Navy and Texas tournaments that same season which allowed me to become eligible). Way back, I debated 3 years in high school (Chattahoochee, GA, 2006-2009), and 4 years in college (Dartmouth, 2009-2013) - those 7 years were the only times I was "majorly" involved in debate.

Contact information: joshua.lee.debate@gmail.com (yes email chain, but I will not be following your speech document).

Major procedural issues (less applicable when in a panel except for 1.c and 1.d):

1. I am a strict enforcer of prep and speech time, both for tournament management reasons and competitive integrity reasons.

a. Prep time ends when you "send" the speech document. Of course, if there are delays in receipt of the document, that is "outside your control" so no prep time is docked - but to the extent that your computer is having issues, that is where I draw the line. The presumption is: once prep time ends, you should be ready to speak.

b. No one should be prepping when it is not prep time (that includes when the prep time clock is not running due to technology issues). If I notice it, I will publicly call you out on it.

c. Towards the end of your speech time, I will be extra diligent to mark the last words you uttered before the timer goes off. That "mark" will be what I put down on my flow both for evidence-reading purposes and for argument determination purposes. As one illustration, if your last analytic ends up being an incoherent sentence because speech time cut you off, I will not evaluate that argument; you failed to make one. That "mark" is not negotiable, but oftentimes I publicly announce the last word I flowed so that everyone is aware.

d. Answers to questions asked during prep time are not binding. Sure, you can still ask them for ethos purposes, but you prioritized your cross-examination questions in a certain order and must own the consequences to your strategic choice.

2. For novice debates only, for pedagogical reasons I do not allow tag team cross-examination. Only the speakers subject to cross-examination must ask and answer questions. This ensures that there is a strategic disincentive for one speaker to commandeer/hoard the entire team, and the hope is that in turn everyone is able to actually understand what they just argued during their speech time.

Online debates: I judged 2 online debates in 2023 and that is the full extent of my online judging experience. And to the extent it matters, I flow on my laptop; I imagine that setup could present unexpected technology issues.

Key takeaways (in order of greatest importance to lowest):

1. My pen-time is slow. Even when you are super-clear, there are many occasions when I just can't follow your speed. Go fast at your own risk.

2. I avoid reading evidence after the round, and the interpretation of the evidence ("spin") will matter more to me. At the same time, please call out bad evidence. I hold a tougher standard on what counts as acceptable evidence. If you were to submit a manuscript so that it can get published in Nature, Signs, Foreign Policy, or the Quarterly Journal of Economics, would you really want that manuscript to cite a masters thesis or a blog post?

3. Run what you want. I mean it. I don't mind theory cheapshots (ex: intrinsicness) and cheesy impact turns (ex: wipeout) because I still find them refreshing. I also love hot takes that are only acceptable in policy debate (ex: rocks are people, economic collapse good, death good, etc.). No argument will offend me. If a team cannot defend that patriarchy or racism is bad - even after what I have already discussed in #1 and #2 - that team deserves to lose.

4. My self-reflective understanding of how I judge is as follows. After each speech, I think of what that team did well/poorly, and internally think of "checklists" of what the other team (1) could do to capitalize on such performance, or (2) must address in order to avoid jeopardizing their position. The more each speech resembles #1 and resolves #2, the better chance they have winning. I believe this "checklist" model (unintentionally) creates three implications which I am aware of.

a. First, ethos ends up mattering a lot. The more it looks like you know what you are talking about (especially during cross-examination and rebuttals), the likelier I will frame and decide the debate in your favor.

b. Second, unlike some judges who might first line up the "nexus issues," resolve each of them, then decide a winner based on each sub-resolutions, my decision might start backwards. I first identify the team most likely winning based on my impression, create an RFD that addresses each of the nexus issues in the tentative winner's favor, and overturn that initial identification only if the resolution on any of the nexus issues makes my tentative RFD indefensible.

c. Such flips do happen, but I would say it's less than 50% odds. This is because now I see if the new RFD is defensible to withstand all the nexus issues in the round. And if you were already losing the first impression, chances are you were behind at least some of the nexus issues to begin with.

d. Third, low-point wins are possible. This is most likely going to happen when a team (or both) does one (match positive checklists) but not the other (fail to answer negative checklists). For example, it is entirely conceivable that one team was more persuasive-sounding and had a better handling of the round, but was not technical enough that a failure to address one core issue, when treated to its implication (because it was conceded), unravels the team's entire position under the hypothetical world(s) constructed by the "flow." Note that such technical drop does not necessarily have to be "nexus issues" because it is not something that each team focused heavily on in their rebuttals.

5. I don't hide my emotions well during rounds. If I'm frowning, it most likely means I don't understand your argument, or something is wrong. Conversely, if I'm smiling and heavily nodding, it most likely means I appreciate what is happening.

6. People more involved in the community have provided statistical data points on speaker points, so my scale attempts to match that distribution, with some personal quirks further discussed below. But if the below distribution still is outside of community norms, I apologize in advance. Expectations are adjusted depending on the division (novice/JV) as well, so a novice could receive a 29.9 or even a 30.

a. 30 could be given out, and if so this establishes it is the best speaker I have ever seen in my life so far.

b. 29.5 to 29.9 means top 10 speaker in that tournament, and 29.7+ will be top speaker territory. 29.9 means it is the best speaker of that season I have encountered so far.

c. 29.1 to 29.4 means contender for elimination rounds.

d. 28.7 is the median debater, the ones ending up 3-5s (28.6) and 4-4s (28.7).

e. 28.0 to 28.4 will generally be the floor for debaters that were inadequate but not rude or unprofessional.

f. Rude or unprofessional speeches could go lower than 28.0. However, claims in debate rounds asserting that a particular team should get certain speaker points (including commonly asserted grounds such as gendered language, ableism, etc.) will not be factored into my point calculation; speech conduct is assessed independently based on my observation of the debate round, partitioned from what is on the "flow."

7. Additional biography to the extent any of them might be hints at certain forms of implicit bias:

a. I was mostly a 2A/1N.

b. In high school, I was more policy focused (think hegemony impacts and politics DA). In college, I was more middle of the road - occasionally reading K-friendly affs and impact-turning T, against K affs frequently considering a case-specific strategy instead of T, but many times still reading policy affs with warming or IR-based advantages.

c. Judges that I especially appreciated debating in front of (and aspired to imitate) were: Tripp Rebrovick (Harvard), Sarah Lundeen (West Georgia), and Armands Revelins (Cornell).

d. My favorite argument when I was debating was death cult.

8. I am intentionally not disclosing my thoughts on common issues in debate (which counterplans are abusive? is theory a voter? clash of civilizations? do you judge kick?).

a. What I have noticed during my years of judging is that such disclosures overdetermine debates. And while judge adaptation is a valuable skill, far too many people conflate judge adaptation with argument shortcuts. To illustrate my point, I have encountered too many debates (including at the college varsity level) where a speaker has expressly said in their speech "you said you like X in your judge philosophy which is why I'm going for it."

b. I appreciate the counterpoint, which is that lack of disclosure on how I think about certain debate issues unfairly privileges those who could afford to scout more (ex: once a team finds out I like X theory argument, they go for it more often). For now, my conclusion is that the cost (lazier debates) outweighs the benefit (competitive equity). This is especially because I do not judge that often and therefore I have not yet confronted a situation where I was forced to decide on my predispositions alone. In fact, if the entire round hinges exclusively on whether "status quo is always an option" means the judge must evaluate the status quo (even if the neg never instructed me in the 2NR to use that option), the debate is in much deeper trouble and I have no sympathy for either team.

Nick Lepp University of Georgia 5 rounds

Last changed on Mon February 5, 2024 at 11:52 AM EDT

I am currently an assistant debate coach with both Montgomery Bell Academy and George Mason University. This is my 15th year in policy debate.

I use he/him pronouns.

Last updated: 1/31/2024

Please put me on the email chain & make me an ev doc at the end of the debate. NJL1994@gmail.com.

Set up and send out the 1AC 10 minutes before the debate begins. Please avoid downtime during debates. If you do both of these things without me needing to say anything (send out the 1AC 10 minutes early + avoid downtime) you'll get higher speaker points.

If I'm judging you online, please slow down a bit and emphasize clarity more than normal.

Top level things:

I think about debate in terms of risk (does the risk of the advantage being true outweigh the risk of the disad being true?). I am willing to vote on presumption, particularly when people say really ridiculous stuff or people's cards are highlighted to say nothing.

I like specificity, nuance, and for you to sound smart. If you sound like you've done research and you know what's going on, I'm likely to give you great points. Being specific, having nuances, and explaining your distinctions is the easiest way to get my ballot.

Judge direction is a lost art. If you win the argument that you're advancing, why should it matter? What does this mean for the debate? What does it mean for your arguments or the other team's arguments? This is the number one easiest way to win my (and really anyone's) ballot in a debate. Direct your judges to think a certain way, because if you don't, your judges are likely to go rogue and decide things that make sense to them but not to you. So impact your arguments and tell me what to do with them. I think it's way more valuable to do that than include one more tiny argument and almost certainly the easiest way to get me to overcome any predispositions.

Decorum is very important to me. If your strategy is to belittle, upset, talk down to, yell at, escalate, curse at, or otherwise be rude or mean to your opponents, then you can expect me to give you terrible speaker points. I also reserve the right to end the debate early if I find the behavior particularly atrocious or potentially threatening to anyone in the room. I am very uninterested in the “I know what you did last summer” strategy or any personal attacks. You certainly don't have to be best friends with your opponents, but I do expect a sense of cordiality when engaging your opponents and their arguments.

"The existence of speech time limits, the assumption that you will not interrupt an opponent's speech intentionally, and the fact that I (and not you) will be signing a ballot that decides a winner and loser is non-negotiable." (taken verbatim from Shree Awsare).

I am incredibly uncomfortable adjudicating things that did not occur in the debate I am watching. Please do not ask me to judge based on something that didn’t happen in the round. I am likely to ignore you.

High school debaters in particular: I have consistently noticed over the past few years of judging that I vote for the team whose arguments I understand. If I cannot connect the dots, I'm not going to vote for you. This goes equally for kritikal and policy debaters. Most of my decisions in high school debates come down to this, and I will tell you that your argument makes no sense in my RFD.

How I decide debates:

First: who solves what?-- does the aff solve its impacts, and (assuming it's in the 2NR) does the negative's competitive advocacy solve its own impacts and/or the aff? In framework debates, this means the first questions I resolve are "does the aff solve itself?" and "does the TVA solve the aff sufficiently?"

Second: Who’s impact is bigger? This is the most important question in the debate. Do impact calculus.

Third: Whatever you have told me matters. Because I have started with solvency & impact calculus questions, everything else is always filtered along those lines (including framework/role of the ballot/role of the judge).

Other misc things:

1. A dropped argument is a true argument but it needs to be a complete argument to begin with or I will likely allow people new answers. For example, this epidemic with high schoolers reading aspec on the bottom of T flows to hide it: if it’s so quick I didn’t catch it in the 1NC, the 1AR gets all the new args they want. Additionally, an argument is not just a claim and a warrant, but a claim, warrant, and reasoning. In other words, your warrant needs to be connected to your claim in order for it to be an argument.

2. I am very flowcentric. Do not ask me to not flow, because I won't listen. Please do line-by-line. If you don't, I'll be frustrated and less likely to buy new extrapolations of arguments. Your speaker points will definitely drop if you don't do line-by-line. I do not like overviews ("overviews are evil"-- one of my labbies; "flowing is good for your health" -- another one of my labbies).

3. Show me that you care. Show me that you know things, that you've done research on this topic, that you want to win, and that debate matters to you. I love this activity and if you also love it I want to know that.

4. Judge kicking makes sense to me but I frequently forget about it, so if you want me to judge kick something you should tell me so in the block/2NR.

5. Cards and highlighting: Teams should get to insert rehighlightings of the other team's cards, but obviously should have to read cards if they're new/haven't been introduced into the debate yet. Two offshoots of this-- 1. You should insert rehighlightings of other team's cards if they suck 2. You should read cards that don't suck.

I do not follow along with speech docs during debates.

Please highlight your ev so it reads as complete sentences. This does not mean that I need you to highlight complete sentences, but if you are brick highlighting, I want to be able to read highlighted portions of your ev as complete sentences—it flows better to me. IE don't skip the letter "a" or the words "in" or "the." Just a random pet peeve.

If you do not have a complete citation or at least a full paragraph from your evidence I will not evaluate what you've said as evidence. Cherrypicked quotes with no context are not evidence.

I tend to not read a lot of cards after the debate unless things are highly technical or I think the debaters aren’t explaining things well. That being said, I’ll likely read at least some cards. Please put together a card doc for me.

6. Debaters parroting their partners: I usually just flow what the partner said. That, obviously, only exists within reason (you don’t get to give a third speech in a debate, but you can interrupt your partner to say something and I will flow it).

7. New 2AR args are bad for debate. I consciously hold the line against them as much as I can. I as a 2N feel as if I got a few decisions where a judge voted aff on an arg that didn't exist until the 2AR and it's the most frustrating. You can expect me to try to trace lines between args in earlier & later speeches. However, if I think the argument they're making is the true argument or a logical extrapolation of something said in the 1AR, I'm more likely to buy it. 2As-- this means if you're gonna do some 2A magic and cheat, you should trick me into thinking that you're not cheating.

Some specifics:

Disads: I’m better for the smart DAs than the silly ones, but I understand the value of bad DAs and will vote for them. I will likely reward you with higher speaker points if I think I understand your story really well and/or you have some cool/unique spin on it. I am fine with logical take outs to DAs that don’t require cards (especially if there’s some logic missing internally in the DA). Don’t just read new cards in the block or 1AR, explain your args (although also read new cards obviously).

I really do not understand how the economy works. I'm sorry. I've really tried to get it, but I just don't. You absolutely can go for econ DAs and/or econ case turns in front of me, but please be extra careful to explain (in lots of detail!) what you're arguing here.

Theory, CPs, and K Alternatives: I put these pieces together because my thoughts on these three args blend together.

Competition is determined off the plantext, not off cross-x, nor off the resolution. PICs & PIKs are only competitive if they PIC/PIK out of something in the plantext. I do not believe that you get to PIC/PIK out of a justification or non-plantext based word. The only way I will ever be convinced otherwise is if the aff allows you to do so.

Condo: It’s good. “They should get one less CP” is an arbitrary interp and makes no sense. The phrase "dispo solves" at the end of your bad 2AC condo block is not an argument and I will not be writing it down on my flow. I will vote on this if it's dropped, but I'm pretty persuaded by neg flex and education-style args.

"Performative Contradictions" is a term of art that has been bastardized to no end by debate. You're either saying the neg has double turned themselves or you're saying conditionality is bad; in my mind, perf con is not even worthy of being written on my flow.

Particular Theory: I’m better for this than most judges (and MUCH more persuaded by it than condo). States theory, international fiat, consult/condition, vague alts, utopian alts, etc—I have gone for all of these and actively coach my debaters to do the same. My predisposition is to reject the arg not the team, but I can be persuaded to reject the team on non-condo theory args (you should introduce the arg as reject the team in the 2AC, not CX, if you want this to be an option).

Theory can be a reason you get to make a cheating perm.

Counterplans/alternatives that use aff evidence as solvency advocates are awesome.

If the CP/alt links less I think it makes sense that I prefer it, but make that arg yourself because I won’t make it for you.

Case: I love love love case debate. You should make logical extrapolations that take out the internal link chains and make me question how the advantage makes sense. The block should read more cards but feel free to make logical case take outs without cards. I don't think you should have to go for impact defense to beat advantages-- uniqueness and internal link take outs are almost always the easier place to attack advantages. I tend to prefer a well-developed take out to the death by a thousand cuts strategy.

Affs-- 2NR that don't do well-developed case debate are generally overwhelmed by your "try or die"/"case outweighs"/"1% chance of solvency" args.

Topicality: I'm getting better for this as a strategy lately than I used to be. I do still generally think that it's about the plantext, but can be persuaded that I should think of the plantext in the context of the 1AC. Topicality is only ever a voter, not a reverse voter. I’m not great for silly/arbitrary T interps (I am very persuaded by the arg that these interps are arbitrary).

Kritiks: I like Ks that care about people and things. I'm optimistic to a fault. I certainly believe that things are still terrible for billions of beings, but it's hard to convince me that everything in the world is so absolutely irredeemable.

Your long overview is actively bad for debate and you will not change my mind.

Make your K interact with the affirmative. I want your links to be about the result of the aff as opposed to just the reading of the aff. Fiat bad links are bad. Your "state is always bad" links are slightly better, but also terrible. Don't just explain your theory of how power works, explain how the action of the aff is bad according to your theory of power.

I think that I am worse for structuralist style kritiks than I used to be for two reasons: 1) I feel more so that I want you to be responding to the action of the aff than I used to 2) I generally study poststructuralism and queer theory. I read a lot of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler.

Grad school has taught me that theory is way more complex than I used to think it was. I will get annoyed if I know that you’re deploying the theory wrong. I'm not good for things like "death good," "meaning doesn't mean anything," or "language is meaningless" because I don't think those are questions even worth asking.

I have read some literature about antiblackness academically and have read a bit more from a debate standpoint. I would not call myself an expert by any means in this literature, but I do understand some of it better than I used to. I am still unwilling to fill in those blanks for you if you are lacking them (ex-- just saying the words "yes antiblackness ontological, natal alienation proves" is not an argument in my mind).

99.99% of the time I will entirely ignore your framework/role of the ballot args when you're going for the K against a topical aff. There's a high chance that I will just stare at you and not flow during your incredibly long and generic 2NC/2NR framework block on your K. I am serious, I may not even waste the ink in my pen flowing this. I do not know how to decide debates unless I'm weighing the merits of the aff against the merits of the K. For example, if the aff is an object of study, then to evaluate that object of study I have to weigh the aff's consequences. You are better off just saying "yes the aff can weigh the plan, we'll just beat it" in front of me. This also means that the role of the ballot/judge is only ever to vote for whoever did the better debating in every round I judge.

“Perms are a negative argument” and “method v method debate means no perms” are both not arguments. Despite judging for however long I have, I still do not know what a "method v method debate" even is or why it's different than every other debate. I will not write these words on my flow.

I also generally do not find the "voting for us gives us more wins/sends us to elims" as a solvency mech persuasive or that "X thing done in the debate is policing/surveillance/violence" (other than actual/physical policing/surveillance/violence) to be persuasive.

Ultimately, I evaluate K debates just like I evaluate policy debates. Technical line by line is key. Explain your args well. Put the debate together. Don't ignore the other side.

2NRs on the K that include case debate (with some level of internal link/impact defense; not just your security K cards on case) are substantially more persuasive to me.

Framework against non-topical affs: you should also read my section on Ks (right above this one) as well.

Framework is a strategy and it makes a lot of sense as a strategy. Just like every other strategy, you should try to tailor it to be as specific to the aff as you possibly can. For example, how does this particular aff make it impossible for you to debate? What does it mean for how debate looks writ-large? What's the valuable topic education we could have had from a topical discussion of this aff in particular? Same basic idea goes for when you’re answering generic aff args—the generic “state always bad” arg is pretty easily beaten by nuanced neg responses in front of me. The more specific you are, the more likely I am to vote for you on framework and the more likely I am to give you good speaks.

Stop reading huge overviews. They’re bad for debate. Your points will suffer. Do line by line. Be a good debater and stop being lazy. The amount of times I have written something like "do line by line" in this paradigm should really tell you something about how I think about debate.

I do not find truth testing/"ignore the aff's args because they're not T" very persuasive. I think it's circular & requires judge intervention.

I do, however, think that fairness/limits/ground is an impact and that it is the most important standard in a T debate.

T and/or framework is not genocide, nor is it ever rape, nor is it a microaggression, nor is it real literal violence against you or anyone else.

I’m a sucker for a good topical version. Teams seem to want to just laundry list potential TVAs and then say "idk, maybe these things let them discuss their theory". I believe that strategy is very easily beaten by a K team having some nuanced response. It makes way more sense to me if the TVA is set up almost like a CP-- it should solve a majority or all of the aff. If you set it up like that and then add the sufficiency framing/"flaws are neg ground" style args I'm WAY more likely to buy what you have to say (this goes along with the whole "I like nuance and specificity and you to sound like you're debating the merits of the aff" motif that I've had throughout my paradigm-- it applies to all debaters).

I oftentimes wonder how non-topical affs solve themselves. The negative should exploit this because I do feel comfortable voting neg on presumption. However, I won’t ever intervene to vote on presumption. That’s an argument that the debaters need to make.

Non-topical affs should have nuance & do line by line as well. Answer the neg’s args, frame the debate, and tell me why your aff in particular could not have been topical. You HAVE to have a defense of your model and not just say that framework is bad or else I will probably vote neg on presumption. The same basic idea applies here as it does everywhere else: the more generic you are, the more likely I am to vote against you.

Garbage/Hidden Stuff/Tricks: Nope. New affs are good, hiding aspec makes you a coward, death is bad, free will exists and I don't care if it doesn't. Make better arguments.

Cross-ex: I am becoming increasingly bored and frustrated with watching how this tends to go down. Unless I am judging a novice debate, questions like "did you read X card" or "where did you mark Y card" are counting as parts of cross-x. I tend to start the timer for cross-ex pretty quickly after speeches end (obviously take a sec to get water if you need to) so pay attention to that.

I pay attention & listen to CX but I do not flow it. Have a presence in CX & make an impact. I am listening.

Speaker points-- I do my best to moderate these based on the tournament I'm at and what division I'm in. That being said, I won’t lie—I am not a point fairy.

I will grant extra speaker points to people who number their arguments and correctly/aptly follow the numbering that has been established in the debate.

Paraphrasing from Shree Awsare-- I will not give you a 30.

29.8-- Top speaker
29.2-29.5-- You really impressed me and I expect you to be deep in the tournament
29-- I think you deserve to clear
28.3-- Not terrible but not super impressive
27.5-- Yikes
I will award the lowest possible points for people who violate the basic human dignities that people should be afforded while debating (e.g., non-black people don't say the N word).

I've also been known to give 20s to people who don't make arguments. I will not be giving you a 30; nobody gives a perfect speech.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me before the debate begins, or send me an email. I also do seriously invite conversation about the debate after it occurs-- post-rounds are oftentimes the most valuable instantiation of feedback, the best way to get better at debate, and important for improving intellectually. I know that post-rounds sometimes get heated, and I think we all get defensive sometimes when we're being pressed on things we've said (or think we've said) so I will likely consciously try to take deep breaths and relax if I feel myself getting heated during these times. This also means that I may take a second to respond to your questions because I am thinking. I also might take awkward pauses between words-- that's not because I don't think your question is important, I'm just trying to choose my words carefully so I can correctly convey my thoughts. I only post this here because I don't want anyone to feel like they're being attacked or anything for asking questions, and I apologize in advance if anything I say sounds like that.

Ethics Challenge Addendum:

I would strongly discourage ethics challenges in all but the most extreme instances. I don't want to adjudicate them, you don't want to be the team who makes the challenge, etc. If you notice something is wrong, please contact coaches and/or debaters and try to fix the problem rather than making it a challenge in round.

An ethics challenge is not a no-risk option for me. That is, when an ethics challenge is issued, the debate ends. I will clarify that the team issuing the challenge has issued one and then end the debate and adjudicate the challenge. I will either decide to vote for the team who issued the challenge or the team who the challenge was issued toward then and there. The debate will not continue for me under any circumstances.

An ethics challenge may be issued along one of three lines: either you have accused the other team of clipping cards, of misciting evidence, or of misrepresenting evidence. Nothing else will be considered an ethics challenge for me.

Clipping cards is defined as claiming to have read more or less of the evidence than one actually has. Please note that I do not follow along with evidence as the debate is occurring. Missing a single word/a few words is not enough. I will decide what constitutes enough of the card to be considered clipping.

Misciting evidence is understood as providing the incorrect author and/or date as well as missing the first author, source of publication, and date (at least the year). Please note that putting something like "the New York Times" instead of "Nate Silver" is acceptable for an authorship. Source of publication can be broad (article title, URL, book title). If the article is easily accessible, then it is acceptable. Again, I will determine what constitutes an incomplete or miscited citation if this becomes a relevant question.

I do not consider missing credentials to be unethical but I do consider those pieces of evidence to be incredibly weak.

Misrepresenting evidence is understood as inserting evidence which is missing lines or paragraphs within the parts of the initial article/book being read. So, for example, if you want to read the first and third paragraph from an article, you must leave the second paragraph in the evidence you read in the debate. This means that, for me, ellipses to indicate that parts of the card are missing or stating something like “pages 4-5 omitted” is unethical. Cards need to be full paragraphs.

Providing a single quote from a book or an article is not a card. As such, I will not consider it as you having introduced evidence and it is not unethical for me. However, not providing full paragraph pieces of evidence means your argument is substantially weaker for me (because, again, then you have not read evidence).

I will either decide to vote for the team who issued the challenge or the team who the challenge was issued toward. The debate will not continue for me under any circumstances. Please note that I will take this seriously; an ethics challenge is not something to be debated out in a round.

The speaker points I will give are as follows: 28.6 for the 2^nd speaker of the team I vote for, 28.5 for the 1^st speaker of the team I vote for, 28.4 for the 2^nd speaker of the team I do not vote for, 28.3 for the 1^st speaker of the team I do not vote for. My assumption in the event of an ethics violation is that you made an honest mistake and that you were not intentionally cheating. I do not understand ethics challenges to be the equivalent of academic dishonesty or worthy of any punishment besides my ballot being cast in that particular debate (I do not hold these challenges against you in future rounds nor do I believe that you should be in trouble with your debate coaches or schools).

Please note that what I have written here is designed for varsity debate only; that is, when judging novice and JV debates, I will be more lenient and talk through what's going on with the students and, depending on the situation, allow the debate to continue.

These are thoughts that are still evolving for me as I talk with more people. Please bear with me as I continue to think this out. (Also note that this caveat goes along well with the first statement in this section: I would prefer you not introduce an ethics violation unless it is a serious issue in that particular debate).

Please also note that these rules do not apply to my standards for threatening violence against another debater (physical or otherwise) or hurling slurs at your opponent. I will immediately end the round and give the lowest speaker points that Tab will allow me to in that situation.

Gabe Lewis University of Mary Washington 4 rounds

Last changed on Sat February 24, 2024 at 12:57 PM EDT

Gabe Lewis

Assistant Director of Debate at Georgetown University

gl642@georgetown.edu

_____________________________

NDT Update - February 2024

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

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

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

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

Top Level Debate Thoughts:

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

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

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

Argument Specific Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

Conditionality: Fine - more than three is pushing it.

Adam Lipton Texas 2 rounds

Last changed on Fri January 5, 2024 at 7:01 PM UTC

Been involved with the game in some way since 2008, do as you wish and I shall evaluate it in the way that I feel requires the least interference from myself.

Put me on the chain please: debate.emails@gmail.com, for the most part I do not look at the documents other than some cursory glances during prep time if a card intrigues me. I still may ask for specific cards at the end of the debate so I do not need to sort through each document, I appreciate it in advance.

I believe that debate is a communication activity with an emphasis on persuasion. If you are not clear or have not extended all components of an argument (claim/warrant/implication) it will not factor into my decision.

I flow on paper, it is how I was taught and I think it helps me retain more information and be more present in debates. Given that I would appreciate yall slowing down and giving me pen time on counterplan texts and theory arguments (as well as permutations).

The most important thing in debates for me is to establish a framework for how (and why) I should evaluate impacts. I am often left with two distinct impacts/scenarios at the end of the debate without any instruction on how to assess their validity vis-à-vis one another or which one to prioritize. The team that sets this up early in the debate and filtering the rebuttals through it often gets my ballot. I believe that this is not just true of “clash” debates but is (if not even more) an important component of debates where terminal impacts are the same but their scenarios are not (ie two different pathways to nuclear war/extinction).

While I think that debate is best when the affirmative is interacting with the resolution in some way I have no sentiment about how this interaction need to happen nor a dogmatic stance that 1AC’s have a relation to the resolution. I have voted for procedural fairness and have also voted for the impact turns. Despite finding myself voting more and more for procedural fairness I am much more persuaded by fairness as an internal link rather than terminal impact. Affirmative’s often beat around the bush and have trouble deciding if they want to go for the impact turn or the middle ground, I think picking a strategy and going for it will serve you best. A lot of 2NRs squander very good block arguments by not spending enough time (or any) at the terminal impact level, please don’t be those people. I also feel as if most negative teams spend much time reading definitions in the 1NC and do not utilize them later in the debate even absent aff counter definitions which seems like wasted 1NC time. While it does not impact how I evaluate the flow I do reward teams with better speaker points when they have unique and substantive framework takes beyond the prewritten impact turn or clash good blocks that have proliferated the game (this is also something you should be doing to counter the blocktastic nature of modern framework debates).

It would behove many teams and debaters to extend their evidence by author name in the 2NR/2AR. I tend to not read a large amount of evidence and think the trend of sending out half the 1AC/1NC in the card document is robbing teams of a fair decision, so narrowing in and extending the truly relevant pieces of evidence by author name increases both my willingness to read those cards and my confidence that you have a solid piece of evidence for a claim rather than me being asked to piece together an argument from a multitude of different cards.

Prep time ends when the email has been sent (if for some reason you still use flash drives then when the drive leaves the computer). In the past few years so much time is being spent saving documents, gathering flows, setting up a stand etc. that it has become egregious and ultimately feel limits both decision time and my ability to deliver criticism after the round. Limited prep is a huge part of what makes the activity both enjoyable and competitive. I said in my old philosophy that policing this is difficult and I would not go out of my way to do it, however I will now take the extra time beyond roadmaps/speech time into account when I determine speaker points.

I find myself frustrated in debates where the final rebuttals are only about theory. I do not judge many of these debates and the ones I have feel like there is an inevitable modicum of judge intervention. While I have voted for conditonality bad several times, personally my thought on condo is "don't care get better."

Plan-text writing has become a lost art and should invite negative advocacy attrition and/or substantive topicality debates.

Feel free to email or ask any questions before or after the debate. Above all else enjoy the game you get to play and have fun.

-------------------

Experience:

Competitor-- Winston Churchill (2008-2012)

Assistant Coaching--

Past: Jenks (2012-2015) Reagan (2015-2017) Winston Churchill (2018-2023)

Currently: Texas (2017-present)

Kristen Lowe Dartmouth College 6 rounds

Last changed on Sat March 4, 2023 at 9:28 AM EDT

Debated at Emory. Coached at Harvard and Northwestern and Dartmouth.

Put me on your email thread, thanks: ksten52@gmail.com

TL;DR: Be attentive, prepared, and invested. I will do the same in return.

- Judge instruction is the most valuable skill you have and the most important one for you to use. Good judge instruction establishes tenets for judging the situation at hand by declaring what criteria I should care about when making choices.
- More often than not you can understand how I feel about an argument by monitoring my reaction
- My hearing is in the B- to B+ range but it's definitely not an A. Let's aim for a 10% clarity increase.

Clash Debates *Updated in 2020
I care about my flow, following assumptions to their logical conclusions, internal link defense, and answering the arguments the other team is making not the caricature of the argument you assume they're making.

I try to keep my opinions out of my judging in all contexts, but in this context the opinions that I am predisposed to agree with are:
- People shouldn't have to refute the subjective experiences of others.
- Without explaining the causal pathway, an assertion that debate makes us good or bad at something is an incomplete argument.
- Novelty for the sake of itself is silly
- Being told you're wrong isn't the same thing as being told you're bad.
- The debate round is not the same thing as Debate. Endowing the debate round, the single facet of Debate that is engineered to produce dissensus and us-them thinking, with a preeminent role in achieving community good has never made any sense to me.

Kritiks
- Links should have impacts.
- I tend to measure the utility of theories by my understanding of the consequences of adoption. Debate's understanding of consequence is often too narrow. But if you can't explain the material implications of your thing... we will struggle.
- Solving problems is an invaluable skill, but identifying them is a rather cheap one. I find that this belief influences how I think about the K more than any other.

Theory
- I don't think conditionality is that bad... but if saying it is constitutes your cleanest path to victory then do that.
- I’m generally persuaded that if a prepared 2A could have anticipated the CP, the CP belongs in debate.

Disads/Counterplans/Other
- A disad cannot be low risk unless you've substantively demonstrated that's the case with defensive arguments. Describing the nature of conjunctive risk bias is not that.
- People stopped doing good terminal impact calculus at some point? Don't love it. Please fix.
- Making courageous choices and knowing when to cut your losses is one of the hardest debate skills to master. I reward debaters who do it well.

Best of luck.

Ian Lowery George Mason University 8 rounds

Last changed on Mon February 12, 2024 at 9:19 AM EDT

Ian Lowery (also goes by "Izzy" and/or "Bishop"),

Assistant Director of Debate at George Mason University (2022 - Present).

Former Policy Debater at George Mason University (2014 - 2018).

Former Assistant Coach at James Madison University (2020 - 2022).

Former Head Coach of Speech & Debate at Centreville High School (2018-2019)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Top Level: I believe that my role as the judge is to absorb the information provided within the round and decide who wins based on the debater's ability to explain and defend their positions. Do whatever you were going to do before you saw my name on the pairing. Treat the following as proclivities that may make my decision easier or increase your speaker points.

I mostly ran kritical arguments during my time as a debater. In my earlier years I did traditional policy but most of my best experience is with the K.

Tech over Truth - I believe in voting on the flow, and unless I am more than 95% sure that a statement or argument is universally false, it can be debated and proven true on the flow. Beyond that, I will still try to be unbiased in my evaluation the argument, but you're rolling the dice.

I will evaluate arguments which suggest that I should not flow or not decide the round based on traditional policy argumentation standards - but I need to be given a clear alternative method of evaluating the truth-value of competing arguments. Otherwise, I don't see how I won't just end up voting for whoever I think was more technical or voting for whichever team I vibed with more (which might be the point... I guess. But trying to predict my vibes without knowing me very well is a dangerous game imo).

Conduct - Don't be a jerk. It's aight to be aggressive, if there's a point/reason behind it. At it's core, I think debate is a game, so everyone should have fun.

Time - I don't keep track of time well in my personal life or in debates. Please don't rely on me for that. Keep track of your own and your opponent's time.

E-mail Chain - Yeah, put me on it: itlowery20@gmail.com

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Josiah Macumber James Madison University 6 rounds

Last changed on Thu September 23, 2021 at 12:22 PM EDT

Debated for Liberty University.

Current: University of Florida

Yes email chain: josiahmacumber@gmail.com

TLDR: Do not feel the need to adapt to my preferences I will do my best to judge fairly. Be persuasive and tell me why arguments are important. Dropped arguments are true arguments, but you need to still explain them and why they matter.

Speaking Preferences:

Slow down on analytics people can only write/type so fast, so slow down if you want me to flow it all. Same applies for theory arguments.

I do not have a concrete method for assigning speaker points. That being said things that help are: clarity, volume (not a big fan of barely being able to hear someone), cross ex (good questions/good answers), and strategic decisions.

K: Have a specific link to plan action/reps/epistemology makes it a lot easier to win instead of generic state links- those are cool and all, but at least contextualize it. Many times bad link debating is done so that the link explanation could have been read against any affirmative on any topic. Those are bad ways of explaining a link and it should be articulated in context of the round that is being had. That can take a variety of forms such as reading through the other team's evidence and pulling quotes that prove your link argument or the logic of the link. It could also take the form of using the answers that other teams provide in cross ex. Each link should have it's own unique impact and it would behoove you to explain how the link turns the case.

Framing for these debates is essential and direction is key for what to prioritize. It's nice to win the alternative, but I don't think it's necessary. IF you are not going for the alternative make it clear otherwise I will evaluate the perm and whether the alt can overcome the instances of the links.

CP: A good CP and DA combo is a solid option for the 2NR. I also enjoy well thought out PIC's. CP's don't necessarily need evidence, but it is preferred (solvency advocate theory is probably a good arg against this).

Maybe it's just me, but after a team spreads through the planks and card for a CP I am still somewhat unsure what it does. Explanation is important in terms of explaining how it solves and why it is different from the affirmative.

DA: Explain it well and it's interaction with the case. You need to do the analysis of why it outweighs the case or turns it. Do comparative evidence analysis and provide reasons why their evidence is not as warranted or does not really answer the DA and tell me why your evidence is better. That does not mean "our ev post dates by 3 days so it's better", but rather "our evidence analyzes long term trends through X method that provides a predictive claim, and their's is an opinion article".

T: Not really a big T expert, so explanation is key.

Generally I believe that over limiting is better than under limiting due to in depth research providing better education. Provide a coherent view of what the topic would look like without the limit that you set on it versus what the affirmative justifies when you are impacting out the T debate. That could include a case list that they justify that explodes research burdens or specific ground loss. You do not have to win in round abuse. Just impact it out well and you should be good.

Analyze the other teams evidence and make smart args against it. I think that is specifically true in the context of things like T subs (some ev makes claims of what substantial is not, but does not set a standard for what is substantial).

Framework: Strategic and I vote on it. However, I think that there are a few different ways to do it that are less offensive / more strategic. Top level winning that debate is a game probably means that fairness is an impact, but that work needs to be done. If education is the impact you are going for there must be good reasons why policy education is desirable or better than critical education. I think it is less strategic to make arguments like "our education spills over and we can one day do _____ to change the system"... that relies on a notion of spill over from policy education. If that is true, why then does that spillover not apply to the affirmative and their method/epistemology?

Theory: Dropped theory arguments are pretty easy to vote on, so don't drop them. Provide a reason why the abuse outweighs any other possible impact and make it a big deal. Just don't blaze through it and expect to win even if it was dropped.

-Policy AFF's: Tell a coherent story and do good impact calculus. Often times teams forget to do that and it's a super important part of the last rebuttals. If you are reading a hard right AFF I find it is better to just stick with it and go for util/death outweighs. I really do think it's more strategic against the criticism to go hard right.

-K AFF's: I think there is a great value to critical affirmatives. Just be prepared for the framework debate and explain why your model of debate is better or have disads to their model. I find it very helpful when critical affirmative provide examples and have in depth historical knowledge about their theory. In addition, providing examples of things the aff could do or would do helps to materialize some of the theory that can make it easier to grasp especially if it is not a literature base I am familiar with.

I typically find that most teams are not ready to defend the entirety of their aff, so if you are negative against a K aff I think that a well developed PIK argument and some case arguments are rather strategic.

There is no single way to my ballot and there are often a variety of strategies that can work in the debate. Be smart and strategic... I often find that the debates I enjoy the most are guided by bold choices from the debaters.

Be nice to other debaters. That doesn't mean you can't be witty or funny just be respectful of others. I think debate is a great activity to make new friends and to enjoy yourself. There is no need to take yourself and other people too seriously, creating a fun environment to debate in makes debates 100% more enjoyable. Jokes are also appreciated. On second thought... maybe don't.

Mikaela Malsin Georgetown 3 rounds

Last changed on Thu January 4, 2024 at 6:28 AM EDT

**standard operating procedure: 1) yes, if you are using an e-mail chain for speech docs, I would like to be on it: mikaela.malsin@gmail.com. The degree to which I look at them varies wildly depending on the round; I will often check a couple of cards for my own comprehension (because y'all need to slow down) during prep or sometimes during a heated cross-ex, but equally often I don't look at them at all. 2) After the debate, please compile all evidence that *you believe* to be relevant to the decision and e-mail them to me. I will sort through to decide which ones I need to read. A card is relevant if it was read and extended on an issue that was debated in the final rebuttals.

updated pre-Shirley, 2013

Background: I debated for four years at Emory, completed my M.A. in Communication and coached at Wake Forest, and am now in my 2nd year of the Ph.D. program at Georgia.

global thoughts: I take judging very seriously and try very hard to evaluate only the arguments in a given debate, in isolation from my own beliefs. I'm not sure that I'm always successful. I'm not sure that the reverse is true either. In the limited number of "clash" debates that I've judged, my decisions have been based on the arguments and not on predispositions based on my training, how I debated, or how my teams debate.

speaker points: I will use the following scale, which (while obviously arbitrary to some degree) I think is pretty consistent with how I've assigned points in the past and what I believe to represent the role of speaker points in debate. I have never assigned points based on whether I think a team "should clear" or "deserves a speaker award" because I don't judge the rest of the field in order to make that determination, I judge this particular debate. EDIT: I think the scale published for the Shirley is very close to what I was thinking here.

Below 27.5: The speaker has demonstrated a lack of basic communication.

27.5-27.9: The speaker demonstrates basic debate competency and argumentation skills. Some areas need substantial improvement.

28.0-28.4: The speaker demonstrates basic argumentation skills and a good grasp on the issues of importance in the debate. Usually shows 1-2 moments of strong strategic insight or macro-level debate vision, but not consistently.

28.5-28.9: Very solid argumentative skills, grasps the important issues in the debate, demonstrates consistent strategic insight.

29-29.5: Remarkable argumentative skills, understands and synthesizes the key issues in the debate, outstanding use of cross-ex and/or humor.

29.6-29.9: The speaker stands out as exceptionally skilled in all of the above areas.

30: Perfection.

Critical arguments: My familiarity is greater than it used to be but by no means exhaustive. I think that the "checklist" probably matters on both sides.

Topicality: I believe in "competing interpretations" with the caveat that I think if the aff can win sufficient defense and a fair vision of the topic (whether or not it is couched in an explicit C/I of every word), they can still win. In other words: the neg should win not only a big link, but also a big impact.

CP’s: Yes. The status quo is always a logical option, which means the CP can still go away after the round. (Edit: I am willing to stick the negative with the CP if the aff articulates, and the neg fails to overcome, a reason why.) Presumption is toward less change from the status quo.

DA’s: Big fan. At the moment, I probably find myself slightly more in the “link first” camp, but uniqueness is certainly still important. There CAN be zero risk of an argument, but it is rare. More often, the risk is reduced to something negligible that fails to outweigh the other team's offense (edit: this last sentence probably belongs in the all-time "most obvious statements" Judge Philosophy Hall of Fame).

Theory: RANT is the default. Probably neg-leaning on most issues, but I do think that we as a community may be letting the situation get a little out of control in terms of the numbers and certain types of CP’s. I think literature should guide what we find to be legitimate to the extent that that is both possible and beneficial.

Good for speaker points: Strategic use of cross-examination, evidence of hard work, jokes about Kirk Gibson (edit: these must be funny)

Bad for speaker points: Rudeness, lack of clarity, egregious facial hair.

Hunter McCullough UT Dallas 4 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 12:01 PM CDT

Debated @ UNT 2009-2014

Coach @ St Marks since 2017

Coach @ UTDallas since 2018

If you have questions, feel free to email me at mccullough.hunter@gmail.com

For me, the idea that the judge should remain impartial is very important. I've had long discussions about the general acceptability/desirability of specific debate arguments and practices (as has everybody, I'm sure), but I've found that those rarely influence my decisions. I've probably voted for teams without plans in framework debates more often than I've voted neg, and I've voted for the worst arguments I can imagine, even in close debates, if I thought framing arguments were won. While nobody can claim to be completely unbiased, I try very hard to let good debating speak for itself. That being said, I do have some general predispositions, which are listed below.

T-Theory

-I tend to err aff on T and neg on most theory arguments. By that, I mean that I think that the neg should win a good standard on T in order to win that the aff should lose, and I also believe that theory is usually a reason to reject the argument and not the team.

- Conditional advocacies are good, but making contradictory truth claims is different. However, I generally think these claims are less damaging to the aff than the "they made us debate against ourselves" claim would make it seem. The best 2ACs will find ways of exploiting bad 1NC strategy, which will undoubtedly yield better speaker points than a theory debate, even if the aff wins.

- I kind of feel like "reasonability" and "competing interpretations" have become meaningless terms that, while everybody knows how they conceptualize it, there are wildly different understandings. In my mind, the negative should have to prove that the affirmative interpretation is bad, not simply that the negative has a superior interpretation. I also don't think that's a very high standard for the negative to be held to, as many interpretations (especially on this space topic) will be hot fiery garbage.

- My view of debates outside of/critical of the resolution is also complicated. While my philosophy has always been very pro-plan reading in the past, I've found that aff teams are often better at explaining their impact turns than the neg is at winning an impact that makes sense. That being said, I think that it's hard for the aff to win these debates if the neg can either win that there is a topical version of the affirmative that minimizes the risk of the aff's impact turns, or a compelling reason why the aff is better read as a kritik on the negative. Obviously there are arguments that are solved by neither, and those are likely the best 2AC impact turns to read in front of me.

- "The aff was unpredictable so we couldn't prepare for it so you should assume it's false" isn't a good argument for framework and I don't think I've ever voted for it.

CPs

- I'm certainly a better judge for CP/DA debates than K v K debates. I particularly like strategic PICs and good 1NC strategies with a lot of options. I'd be willing to vote on consult/conditions, but I find permutation arguments about immediacy/plan-plus persuasive.

- I think the neg gets away with terrible CP solvency all the time. Affs should do a better job establishing what counts as a solvency card, or at least a solvency warrant. This is more difficult, however, when your aff's solvency evidence is really bad. - Absent a debate about what I should do, I will kick a counterplan for the neg and evaluate the aff v. the squo if the CP is bad/not competitive

- I don't think the 2NC needs to explain why severence/intrinsicness are bad, just win a link. They're bad.

- I don't think perms are ever a reason to reject the aff.

- I don't think illegitimate CPs are a reason to vote aff.

Disads

- Run them. Win them. There's not a whole lot to say.

- I'd probably vote on some sort of "fiat solves" argument on politics, but only if it was explained well.

- Teams that invest time in good, comparative impact calculus will be rewarded with more speaker points, and likely, will win the debate. "Disad/Case outweighs" isn't a warrant. Talk about your impacts, but also make sure you talk about your opponents impacts. "Economic collapse is real bad" isn't as persuasive as "economic collapse is faster and controls uniqueness for the aff's heg advantage".

- My general line has always been that "I get the K but am not well read in every literature". I've started to realize that that statement is A) true for just about everybody and B) entirely useless. It turns out that I've read, coached, and voted for Ks too often for me to say that. What I will say, however, is that I certainly focus my research and personal reading more on the policy side, but will generally make it pretty obvious if I have no idea what you're saying.

- Make sure you're doing link analysis to the plan. I find "their ev is about the status quo" arguments pretty persuasive with a permutation.

- Don't think that just because your impacts "occur on a different level" means you don't need to do impact calculus. A good way to get traction here is case defense. Most advantages are pretty silly and false, point that out with specific arguments about their internal links. It will always make the 2NR easier if you win that the aff is lying/wrong.

- I think the alt is the weakest part of the K, so make sure to answer solvency arguments and perms very well.

- If you're aff, and read a policy aff, don't mistake this as a sign that I'm just going to vote for you because I read mostly policy arguments. If you lose on the K, I'll vote neg. Remember, I already said I think your advantage is a lie. Prove me wrong.

Case

-Don't ignore it. Conceding an advantage on the neg is no different than conceding a disad on the aff. You should go to case in the 1NC, even if you just play defense. It will make the rest of the debate so much easier.

- If you plan to extend a K in the 2NR and use that to answer the case, be sure you're winning either a compelling epistemology argument or some sort of different ethical calculus. General indicts will lose to specific explanations of the aff absent either good 2NR analysis or extensions of case defense.

- 2As... I've become increasingly annoyed with 2ACs that pay lip service to the case without responding to specific arguments or extending evidence/warrants. Just reexplaining the advantage and moving on isn't sufficient to answer multiple levels of neg argumentation.

Paperless debate

I don't think you need to take prep time to flash your speech to your opponent, but it's also pretty obvious when you're stealing prep, so don't do it. If you want to use viewing computers, that's fine, but only having one is unacceptable. The neg needs to be able to split up your evidence for the block. It's especially bad if you want to view their speeches on your viewing computer too. Seriously, people need access to your evidence.

Clipping

I've decided enough debates on clipping in the last couple of years that I think it's worth putting a notice in my philosophy. If a tournament has reliable internet, I will insist on an email chain and will want to be on that email chain. I will, at times, follow along with the speech document and, as a result, am likely to catch clipping if it occurs. I'm a pretty non-confrontational person, so I'm unlikely to say anything about a missed short word at some point, but if I am confident that clipping has occurred, I will absolutely stop the debate and decide on it. I'll always give debaters the benefit of the doubt, and provide an opportunity to say where a card was marked, but I'm pretty confident of my ability to distinguish forgetting to say "mark the card" and clipping. I know that there is some difference of opinion on who's responsibility it is to bring about a clipping challenge, but I strongly feel that, if I know for certain that debaters are not reading all of their evidence, I have not only the ability but an obligation to call it out.

Other notes

- Really generic backfile arguments (Ashtar, wipeout, etc) won't lose you the round, but don't expect great speaks. I just think those arguments are really terrible, (I can't describe how much I hate wipeout debates) and bad for debate.

- Impact turn debates are awesome, but can get very messy. If you make the debate impossible to flow, I will not like you. Don't just read cards in the block, make comparisons about evidence quality and uniqueness claims. Impact turn debates are almost always won by the team that controls uniqueness and framing arguments, and that's a debate that should start in the 2AC.

Finally, here is a short list of general biases.

The status quo should always be an option in the 2NR (Which doesn't necessarily mean that the neg get's infinite flex. If they read 3 contradictory positions, I can be persuaded that it was bad despite my predisposition towards conditionality. It does mean that I will, absent arguments against it, judge kick a counterplan and evaluate the case v the squo if the aff wins the cp is bad/not competitive)
Warming is real and science is good (same argument, really)
The aff gets to defend the implementation of the plan as offense against the K, and the neg gets to read the K
Timeframe and probability are more important than magnitude
Predictable limits are key to both fairness and education
Consult counterplans aren't competitive. Conditions is arguable.
Rider DA links are not intrinsic
Utilitarianism is a good way to evaluate impacts
The aff should defend a topical plan
Death and extinction are bad
Uncooperative federalism is one of the worst counterplans I've ever seen

Valerie McIntosh University of Michigan 4 rounds

Last changed on Fri February 16, 2024 at 1:47 PM EDT

Debate Coach - University of Michigan

Debate Coach - New Trier High School

Michigan State University '13

Brookfield Central High School '09

I would like to be on the email chain - my email address is valeriemcintosh1@gmail.com.

A few top level things:

If you engage in offensive acts (think racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), you will lose automatically and will be awarded whatever the minimum speaker points offered at that particular tournament is. This also includes forwarding the argument that death is good because suffering exists. I will not vote on it.
If you make it so that the tags in your document maps are not navigable by taking the "tag" format off of them, I will actively dock your speaker points.
Quality of argument means a lot to me. I am willing to hold my nose and vote for bad arguments if they're better debated but my threshold for answering those bad arguments is pretty low.
I'm a very expressive judge. Look up at me every once in a while, you will probably be able to tell how I feel about your arguments.
I don't think that arguments about things that have happened outside of a debate or in previous debates are at all relevant to my decision and I will not evaluate them. I can only be sure of what has happened in this particular debate and anything else is non-falsifiable.

Pet peeves

The 1AC not being sent out by the time the debate is supposed to start
Asking if I am ready or saying you'll start if there are no objections, etc. in in-person debates - we're all in the same room, you can tell if we're ready!
Email-sending related failures
Dead time
Stealing prep
Answering arguments in an order other than the one presented by the other team
Asserting things are dropped when they aren't
Asking the other team to send you a marked doc when they marked 1-3 cards
Disappearing after the round

Online debate: My camera will always be on during the debate unless I have stepped away from my computer during prep or while deciding so you should always assume that if my camera is off, I am not there. I added this note because I've had people start speeches without me there.

Ethics: If you make an ethics challenge in a debate in front of me, you must stake the debate on it. If you make that challenge and are incorrect or cannot prove your claim, you will lose and be granted zero speaker points. If you are proven to have committed an ethics violation, you will lose and be granted zero speaker points.
*NOTE - if you use sexually explicit language or engage in sexually explicit performances in high school debates, you should strike me. If you think that what you're saying in the debate would not be acceptable to an administrator at a school to hear was said by a high school student to an adult, you should strike me.

Organization: I would strongly prefer that if you're reading a DA that isn't just a case turn that it go on its own page - its super annoying because people end up extending/answering arguments on flows in different orders. Ditto to reading advantage CPs on case - put it on its own sheet, please!

Cross-x: Questions like "what cards did you read?" are cross-x questions. If you don't start the timer before you start asking those questions, I will take whatever time I estimate you took to ask questions before the timer was started out of your prep. If the 1NC responds that "every DA is a NB to every CP" when asked about net benefits in the 1NC even if it makes no sense, I think the 1AR gets a lot of leeway to explain a 2AC "links to the net benefit argument" on any CP as it relates to the DAs.

Translated evidence: I am extremely skeptical of evidence translated by a debater or coach with a vested interest in that evidence being used in a debate. Lots of words or phrases have multiple meanings or potential translations and debaters/coaches have an incentive to choose the ones that make the most debate-friendly argument even if that's a stretch of what is in the original text. It is also completely impossible to verify if words or text was left out, if it is a strawperson, if it is cut out of context, etc. I won't immediately reject it on my own but I would say that I am very amenable to arguments that I should.

Inserting evidence or rehighlightings into the debate: I won't evaluate it unless you actually read the parts that you are inserting into the debate. If it's like a chart or a map or something like that, that's fine, I don't expect you to literally read that, but if you're rehighlighting some of the other team's evidence, you need to actually read the rehighlighting. This can also be accomplished by reading those lines in cross-x and then referencing them in a speech or just making analytics about their card(s) in your speech and then providing a rehighlighting to explain it.

Topicality: I enjoy judging topicality debates when they are in-depth and nuanced. Limits are an an important question but not the only important question - your limit should be tied to a particular piece of neg ground or a particular type of aff that would be excluded. I often find myself to be more aff leaning than neg leaning in T debates because I am often persuaded by the argument that negative interpretations are arbitrary or not based in predictable literature.

5 second ASPEC shells/the like that are not a complete argument are mostly nonstarters for me. If I reasonably think the other team could have missed the argument because I didn't think it was a clear argument, I think they probably get new answers. If you drop it twice, that's on you.

Counterplans: I would say that I generally lean aff on a lot of questions of competition, especially in the cases of CPs that compete on the certainty of the plan, normal means cps, and agent cps, but obviously am more than willing to vote for them if they are debated better by the negative.

I think that CPs should have to be policy actions. I think this is most fair and reciprocal with what the affirmative does. I think that fiating indefinite personal decisions or actions/non-actions by policymakers that are not enshrined in policy is an unfair abuse of fiat that I do not think the negative should get access to. The CP that has the US declare it will not go to war with China would be theoretically legitimate but the CP to have the president personally decide not to go to war with China would not be. Similarly CPs that fiat a concept or endgoal rather than a policy would also fall under this.

It is the burden of the neg to prove the CP solves rather than the burden of the aff to prove it doesn't. Unless the neg makes an attempt to explain how/why the CP solves (by reading ev, by referencing 1AC ev, by explaining how the CP solves analytically), my assumption is that it doesn’t and it isn’t the aff’s burden to prove it doesn’t. The burden for the neg isn’t that high but I think neg teams are getting away with egregious lack of CP explanation and judges too often put the burden on the aff to prove the CP doesn’t solve rather than the neg to prove it does.

Disads: Uniqueness is a thing that matters for every level of the DA. I am not very sympathetic to politics theory arguments (except in the case of things like rider disads, which I might ban from debate if I got the choice to ban one argument and think are certainly illegitimate misinterpretations of fiat) and am unlikely to ever vote on them unless they're dropped and even then would be hard pressed. I'm incredibly knowledgeable about politics and enjoy it a lot when debated well but really dislike seeing it debated poorly.

Theory: Conditionality is often good. It can be not. Conditionality is the ONLY argument I think is a reason to reject the team, every other argument I think is a reason to reject the argument alone. Tell me what my role is on the theory debate - am I determining in-round abuse or am I setting a precedent for the community?

Kritiks: I've gotten simultaneously more versed in critical literature and much worse for the kritik as a judge over the last few years. Take from that what you will.

Your K should ideally be a reason why the aff is bad, not just why the status quo is bad. If not, you're better off with it primarily being a framework argument.

Yes the aff gets a perm, no it doesn't need a net benefit.

Affs without a plan: I generally go into debates believing that the aff should defend a hypothetical policy enacted by the United States federal government. I think debate is a research game and I struggle with the idea that the ballot can do anything to remedy the impacts that many of these affs describe.

I certainly don't consider myself immovable on that question and my decision will be governed by what happens in any given debate; that being said, I don't like when judges pretend to be fully open to any argument in order to hide their true thoughts and feelings about them and so I would prefer to be honest that these are my predispositions about debate, which, while not determinate of how I judge debates, certainly informs and affects it.

I would describe myself as a good judge for T-USFG against affs that do not read a plan. I find impacts about debatability, clash, iterative testing and fairness to be very persuasive. I think fairness is an impact in and of itself. I am not very persuaded by impacts about skills/the ability for debate to change the world if we read plans - I think these are not very strategic and easily impact turned by the aff.

I generally am pretty sympathetic to negative presumption arguments because I often think the aff has not forwarded an explanation for what the aff does to resolve the impacts they've described.

I don't think debate is roleplaying.

I am uncomfortable making decisions in debates where people have posited that their survival hinges on my ballot.

Dustin Meyers-Levy University of Michigan 4 rounds

Last changed on Sun April 14, 2024 at 12:31 PM CDT

Misc procedural things:

1. He/him/his; "DML">"Dustin">>>"judge">>>>>>>>>>"Mr. Meyers-Levy"

2. Debated at Edina HS in Minnesota from 2008-2012, at the University of Michigan from 2012-2017, and currently coach at Michigan and Glenbrook North

3. Please add me to the email chain: dustml[at]umich[dot]edu. College debaters only: please also add debatedocs[at]umich[dot]edu (note that this is not the same as the community debatedocs listerv).

4. Nothing here set in stone debate is up to the debaters go for what you want to blah blah blah an argument is a claim and a warrant don't clip cards

5. Speaks usually range from 28.5-29.5. Below 28.5 and there are some notable deficiencies, above 29.5 you're going above and beyond to wow me. I don't really try to compare different debaters across different rounds to give points; I assign them based on a round-by-round basis. I wish I could give ties more often and will do so if the tournament allows. If you ask me for a 30 you'll probably get a 27.

6. If you're breaking something new, you'll send it out before your speech, not after the speech ends or as it's read or whatever. If you don't want to comply with that, your points are capped at 27. If you're so worried that giving the neg team 9 extra minutes to look at your new aff will tip the odds against you, it's probably not good enough to win anyway.

7. You will time your own speeches and prep time. I will be so grumpy if I have to keep track of time for you.

8. Each person gives one constructive and one rebuttal. The first person who speaks is the only person I flow (I can make an exception for performances in 1ACs/1NCs). I don’t flow prompting until and unless the assigned speaker says the words that their partner is prompting. Absolutely no audience participation. If you need some part of this clarified, I’m probably not the judge for you.

9. I am a mandatory reporter and an employee of both a public university and a public high school. I am not interested in judging debates that may make either of those facts relevant.

10. If you would enthusiastically describe your strategy as "memes" or "trolling," you should strike me.

11. Online debates: If my camera's off, I'm not listening. Get active confirmation before you start speaking, don't ask "is anyone not ready" or say "stop me if you're not ready," especially if you aren't actually listening to/looking at the other participants before you check. If you start speaking and I'm not ready or there, expect abysmal speaker points.

TOC notes:

I cannot express just how bad I am at economics. It is my kryptonite. I am an extremely unreliable judge for any debate that involves treating anything more complicated than the supply-and-demand graph as a given. What's a bond? No idea. Keynes? Never heard of him. Gini coefficient? Sounds like a bad coffee shop. I will be lost in any debate that is more complicated than your freshman year econ class (I'm talking pre-AP) without a lot of explanation. Conversely, it will be much easier to impress me by walking me through your arguments and breaking them down as simply as you possibly can, telling me what it means when your evidence references basically any economic concept, etc. More explanation can only help. This also means you can probably convince me of just about anything if you make it simple enough and line it up with what your evidence says.

Good judge for:

Process counterplans that are topic-specific, especially versus new affs.
Presumption arguments against affs without a plan. I prefer depth over breadth--I'm more likely to vote for one well-developed presumption argument that sets up a clear burden for the aff than I am three or four "vote neg on presumption" one-liners scattered across the flow without a warrant.
K affs that explicitly redefine what being "topical" means, especially when paired with reasonability arguments about what I should choose to understand as a "reasonable" affirmation of the topic. I think affs should be topical, but I'm open to arguments about why being "topical" doesn'tneed to be based in definitions.
Ks with developed alternatives that you're willing to defend the details of. I'm an easier sell on Ks that let the aff weigh the plan and give the neg some leeway on what they get to defend with regards to the alt than "you link you lose"-adjacent framework pushes.

Not a fantastic judge for:

Complicated econ DAs. I'm very sorry. While you were studying the markets, I studied the blade (by which I mean Deleuze).
1ACs/1NCs that are largely opaque or obfuscatory, especially when the team in question is unwilling to clarify in cross-x. If you aren't willing to answer basic clarification questions about your argument from an opponent who isn't following, strike me.
Neg framework blocks that don't change based on the aff. I think framework is best deployed as an internal link turn to the aff's method and appreciate when neg teams use the aff's language/phrasing to explain that. When that's not happening, I think it's a lot easier for the aff to characterize the neg's arguments as exclusive.
Arguments about anything other than the things that both teams say during the span of the round that I'm judging. If you can connect some external thing to an argument that your opponent is making, that's fair game. If you want to win (or your opponents to lose) based purely on that external thing in a vacuum, you may want to focus on the other judges on the panel.
Fiat Ks.

Top-level:

When making my decisions, I seek to answer four questions:

1. At what scale should I evaluate impacts, or how do I determine which impact outweighs the others?

2. What is necessary to address those impacts?

3. At what point have those impacts been sufficiently addressed?

4. How certain am I about either side’s answers to the previous three questions?

I don’t expect debaters to answer these questions explicitly or in order, but I do find myself voting for debaters who use that phrasing and these concepts (necessity, sufficiency, certainty, etc) as part of their judge instruction a disproportionate amount. I try to start every RFD with a sentence-ish-long summary of my decision (e.g. "I voted affirmative because I am certain that their impacts are likely without the plan and unlikely with it, which outweighs an uncertain risk of the impacts to the DA even if I am certain about the link"); you may benefit from setting up a sentence or two along those lines for me.

Intervention on my part is inevitable, but I’d like to minimize it if possible and equalize it if not. The way I try to do so is by making an effort to quote or paraphrase the 1AR, 2NR, and 2AR in my RFD as much as possible. This means I find myself often voting for teams who a) minimize the amount of debate jargon they use, b) explicitly instruct me what I need in order to be certain that an argument is true, and c) don’t repeat themselves or reread parts of earlier speeches. (The notable exception to c) is quoting your evidence—I appreciate teams who tell me what to look for in their cards, as I’d rather not read evidence if I don’t have to.) I would rather default to new 2AR contextualization of arguments than reject new 2AR explanation and figure out how to evaluate/compare arguments on my own, especially if the 2AR contextualization lines up with how I understand the debate otherwise.

I flow on my computer and I flow straight down. I appreciate debaters who debate in a way that makes that easy to do (clean line-by-line, numbering/subpointing, etc). I’ll make as much room as you want me to for an overview, but I won’t flow it on a separate sheet unless you say pretty please. If it’s not obvious to me at that point why it’s on a separate sheet, you’ll probably lose points.

Consider going a little bit slower. I prefer voting on arguments that I am certain about, and it is much easier to be certain about an argument when I know that I have written down everything that you’ve said.

Presumption always initially goes negative because the affirmative always has the burden of proof. If the affirmative has met their burden of proof against the status quo, and the negative has not met their burden of rejoinder, I vote affirmative.

I am "truth over tech." I will not vote for something if I cannot explain why it is a reason that one side or the other has done the better debating, even if it is technically conceded by the other team. Obviously, this is not to say that technical concessions do not matter--they're probably the most important part of my decisionmaking process! However, not all technical concessions matter, and the reasons that some technical concessions matter might not be apparent to me. A dropped argument is true, but non-dropped arguments can also be true, and I need you to contextualize how to evaluate and compare those truths.

I appreciate well-thought-out perms with a brief summary of its function/net beneficiality in the 2AC. I get frustrated by teams who shotgun the same four perms on every page, especially when those perms are essentially the same argument (e.g. “perm do both” and “perm do the plan and non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt”) or when the perm is obviously nonsensical (e.g. “perm do the counterplan” against an advantage counterplan that doesn’t try to fiat the aff or against a uniqueness counterplan that bans the plan).

I appreciate when teams read rehighlightings and not insert them, unless you’re rehighlighting a couple words. You will lose speaker points for inserting a bunch of rehighlightings, and I’ll happily ignore them if instructed to by the other team.

I prefer to judge engagement over avoidance. I would rather you beat your opponent at their best than trick them into dropping something. If your plan for victory involves hiding ASPEC in a T shell, or deleting your conditionality block from the 2AC in hopes that they miss it, or using a bunch of buzzwords that you think the other team won't understand but I will, I will not be happy.

I generally assume good faith on the part of debaters and I'm very reticent to ignore the rest of the debate/arguments being made (especially when not explicitly and extensively instructed to) in order to punish a team for what's often an honest mistake. I am much more willing to vote on these arguments as links/examples of links. Obviously, there are exceptions to this for egregious and/or intentionally problematic behavior, but if your strategy revolves around asking me to vote against a team based on unhighlighted/un-underlined parts of cards, or "gotcha" moments in cross-x, you may want to change your strategy for me.

K affs:

1. Debate is indisputably a game to some degree or another, and it can be other things besides that. It indisputably influences debaters' thought processes and subjectivities to some extent; it is also indisputably not the only influence on those things. I like when teams split the difference and account for debate’s inevitably competitive features rather than asserting it is only one thing or another.

2. I think I am better for K affs than I have been in the past. I am not worse for framework, but I am worse for the amount of work that people seem to do when preparing to go for framework. I am getting really bored by neg teams who recycle blocks without updating them in the context of the round and don’t make an effort to talk about the aff. I think the neg needs to say more than just “the aff’s method is better with a well-prepared opponent” or “non-competitive venues solve the aff’s offense” to meaningfully mitigate the aff's offense. If you are going for framework in front of me, you may want to replace those kinds of quotes in your blocks with specific explanations that reference what the aff says in speeches and cards.

3. I prefer clash impacts to fairness impacts. I vote negative often when aff teams lack explanation for why someone should say "no" to the aff. I find that fairness strategies suffer when the aff pushes on the ballot’s ability to “solve” them; I would rather use my ballot to encourage the aff to argue differently rather than to punish them retroactively. I think fairness-centric framework strategies are vulnerable to aff teams impact turning the neg’s interpretation (conversely, I think counter-interpretation strategies are weak against fairness impacts).

4. I don't think I've ever voted on "if the 1AC couldn't be tested you should presume everything they've said is false"/"don't weigh the aff because we couldn't answer it," and I don't think I ever will.

5. I think non-framework strategies live and die at the level of competition and solvency. When aff teams invest time in unpacking permutations and solvency deficits, and the neg doesn’t advance a theory of competition beyond “no perms in a method debate” (whatever that means), I usually vote aff. When the aff undercovers the perm and/or the alt, I have a high threshold for new explanation and usually think that the 2NR should be the non-framework strategy.

6. I do not care whether or not fiat has a resolutional basis.

Ks on the neg/being aff vs the K:

I am getting really bored by "stat check" affs that respond to every K by brute-forcing a heg or econ impact and reading the same "extinction outweighs, util, consequentialism, nuke war hurts marginalized people too" blocks/cards every debate. That's not to say that these affs are non-viable in front of me, but it is to say that I've often seen teams reading these big-stick affs in ways that seem designed to avoid engaging the substance of the K. If this is your strategy, you should talk about the alternative more, and have a defense of fiat that is not just theoretical.

I care most about link uniqueness and alt solvency. When I vote aff, it's because a) the aff gets access to their impacts, b) those impacts outweigh/turn the K, c) the K links are largely non-unique, and/or d) the neg doesn't have a well-developed alt push. Neg teams that push back on these issues--by a) having well-developed and unique links and impacts with substantive impact calculus in the block and 2NR, including unique turns case args (not just that the plan doesn't solve, but that it actually makes the aff's own impacts more likely), b) having a vision for what the world of the alt looks like that's defensible and ostensibly solves their impacts even if the aff wins a risk of theirs (case defense that's congruent with the K helps), and/or c) has a heavy push on framework that tells me what the alt does/doesn't need to solve--have a higher chance of getting my ballot. Some more specific notes:

1. Upfront, I'm not a huge fan of "post-/non-/more-than/humanism"-style Ks. I find myself more persuaded by most defenses/critical rehabilitations of humanism than I do by critiques of humanism that attempt to reject the category altogether. You can try your best to change my mind, but it may be an uphill battle; this applies far more to high theory/postmodern Ks of humanism (which, full disclosure, I would really rather not hear) than it does to structuralist/identity-based Ks of humanism, though I find myself more persuaded by "new humanist" style arguments a la Fanon, Wynter, etc than full-on rejections of humanism.

2. There's a new trend of Ks about debt, debt imperialism, etc. I may not be the best judge for these arguments, simply because of my difficulty with understanding economics on its own terms, let alone in the context of a K. It's not for lack of trying to understand or familiarize myself, I just have tremendous difficulty understanding even basic economic concepts at a fundamental level, and this is seriously amplified when those concepts are being analyzed by relatively complex critical theory. This isn't to say these arguments are unwinnable in front of me (I've voted for them this year and in past years), but you may want to consider something else and/or investing a really large amount of time in explaining the fundamentals of your arguments to me.

3. I also don't really get all these new Ks about quantum physics in IR and stuff. Again, it's me, not you. I was an English major; every time I try to read these articles I get a headache. I'm interested, I promise, and if you can explain it to me I'll be very appreciative! But for transparency's sake, I think it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to both explain the argument to me in a way that I can comprehend AND invest the time necessary to win the debate in your 36 collective minutes of speaking time.

4. I'm quite interested in emerging genres of critical legal theory. I think I would be a good judge for Ks that defend concrete changes to jurisprudence and are willing to debate out the implications of that.

5. I think that others should not suffer, that biological death is bad, and that meaning-making and contingent agreement on contextual truths are possible, inevitable, and desirable. If your K disagrees with any of these fundamental premises, I am a bad judge for it.

6. I don't get Ks of linear time. I get Ks of whitewashing, progress narratives, etc. I get the argument that historical events influence the present, and that events in the present can reshape our understanding of the past. I get that some causes have complex effects that aren't immediately recognizable to us and may not be recognizable on any human scale. I just don't get how any of those things are mutually exclusive with, and indeed how they don't also rely on, some understanding of linear time/causality. I think this is because I have a very particular understanding of what "linear time" means/refers to, which is to say that it's hard for me to disassociate that phrase with the basic concept of cause/effect and the progression of time in a measurable, linear fashion. This isn't as firm of a belief as #5; I can certainly imagine one of these args clicking with me eventually. This is just to say that the burden of explanation is much higher and you would likely be better served going for more plan-specific link arguments or maybe just using different terminology/including a brief explanation as to why you're not disagreeing with the basic premise that causes have effects, even if those effects aren't immediately apparent. If you are disagreeing with that premise, you should probably strike me, as it will require far longer than two hours for me to comprehend your argument, let alone agree with it.

7. "Philosophical competition" is not a winning interpretation in front of me. I don't know what it means and no one has ever explained it to me in a coherent and non-arbitrary way.

8. There's a difference between utilitarianism and consequentialism. I'm open to critiques of the former; I have an extremely high burden for critiques of the latter. I'm not sure I can think of a K of consequentialism that I've judged that didn't seem to link to itself to some degree or another.

Policy debates:

1. 95% of my work in college is K-focused, and the other 5% is mostly spot updates. I have done very little policy-focused research in the preseason.

For high school, I led a lab this summer, but didn't retain a ton of topic info and have done exclusively K-focused work since the camp ended. I probably know less than you do about economics.

2. “Link controls uniqueness”/“uniqueness controls the link” arguments will get you far with me. I often find myself wishing that one side or the other had made that argument, because my RFDs often include some variant of it regardless.

3. Apparently T against policy affs is no longer in style. Fortunately, I have a terrible sense of style. In general, I think I'm better for the neg for T than (I guess) a lot of judges; reading through some judge philosophies I find a lot of people who say they don't like judging T or don't think T debates are good, and I strongly disagree with that claim. I'm a 2N at heart, so when it comes down to brass tacks I really don't care about many T impacts/standards except for neg ground (though I can obviously be persuaded otherwise). I care far more about the debates that an interpretation facilitates than I do about the interpretation's source in the abstract--do explanation as to why source quality/predictability influences the quality of debates under the relevant interpretation.

4. I think judge kick makes intuitive sense, but I won't do it unless I'm told to. That said, I also think I have a lower threshold for what constitutes the neg "telling me to" than most. There are some phrases that signify to me that I can default to the status quo by my own choosing; these include, but aren't necessarily limited to, "the status quo is always a logical policy option" and/or "counter-interp: the neg gets X conditional options and the status quo."

5. I enjoy counterplans that compete on resolutional terms quite a bit; I'd rather judge those than counterplans that compete on "should," "substantial," etc.

6. Here are some aff theory arguments that I could be persuaded on pretty easily given a substantive time investment:

--Counterplans should have a solvency advocate ideally matching the specificity of the aff's, but at least with a normative claim about what should happen.

--Multi-actor fiat bad--you can fiat different parts of the USFG do things, and international fiat is defensible, but fiating the federal government and the states, or the US and other countries, is a no-no. (Fiating all fifty states is debatably acceptable, but fiating some permutation of states seems iffy to me.)

--No negative fiat, but not the meme--counterplans should take a positive action, and shouldn't fiat a negative action. It's the distinction between "the USFG should not start a war against Russia" and "the USFG should ban initiation of war against Russia."

--Test case fiat? Having osmosed a rudimentary bit of constitutional law via friends and family in law school, it seems like debate's conception of how the Supreme Court works is... suspect. Not really sure what the implications of that are for the aff or the neg, but I'm pretty sure that most court CPs/mechanisms would get actual lawyers disbarred.

--“…large advantage counterplans with multiple planks, all of which can be kicked, are fairly difficult to defend. Negative teams can fiat as many policies as it takes to solve whatever problems the aff has sought to tackle. It is unreasonable to the point of stupidity to expect the aff to contrive solvency deficits: the plan would literally have to be the only idea in the history of thought capable of solving a given problem. Every additional proposal introduced in the 1nc (in order to increase the chance of solving) can only be discouraged through the potential cost of a disad being read against it. In the old days, this is why counterplan files were hundreds of pages long and had answers to a wide variety of disads. But if you can kick the plank, what incentive does the aff have to even bother researching if the CP is a good idea? If they read a 2AC add-on, the neg gets as many no-risk 2NC counterplans to add to the fray as well (of course, they can also add unrelated 2nc counterplans for fun and profit). If you think you can defend the merit of that strategy vs. a "1 condo cp / 1 condo k" interp, your creative acumen may be too advanced for interscholastic debate; consider more challenging puzzles in emerging fields, as they urgently need your input.” -Kevin "Kevin 'Paul Blart Mall Cop' James" James Hirn

Nate Milton Hire 8 rounds

Last changed on Sat January 13, 2024 at 3:28 AM EDT

natemilton@gmail.com

Background

I debated for four years in high school and three years at Liberty. I mostly debated a “CP and politics” type strategy on the neg and also enjoyed going for T and theory when it was strategic. I did read the K sometimes though. My favorite debates are large case debates with a DA or two.

General Philosophy:

I try my best to let the arguments in the debate determine how I evaluate the round although I will admit that I have biases that can influence how I view certain arguments. I have included some opinions that I hope you will find useful in specifically tailoring your arguments to me. I am flow centric. I enjoy clash. I believe that both sides should have an equal opportunity to win the round, so while not defending a “policy action” (ie not having a plan text) doesn’t mean you will automatically lose in front of me, I believe that if pressed, you should have some sort of a division of “ground” that enables the opposing side an equal chance to win (I believe in “fairness”). I believe that having to argue in favor of something you don’t believe is beneficial (“switch side debate is good”). I have a minimal threshold for arguments for me to evaluate them, they must have a warrant that makes sense. It is important for you to talk about impacts and compare them to the other side’s impacts on all arguments. I do not evaluate arguments that aren’t in the last two rebuttals. I don’t think debates should get personal, it should be about the arguments, not the people. I try not to have to read evidence, I prefer it to be explained and impacted in the debate, “call for this card after the round” is not an argument, explaining the warrants of the evidence in question is a more productive use of your time. Don't try to talk too fast (speed is overrated) and you probably shouldn't use profanity.

T + Theory

I will vote on T/Theory. I lean towards competing interpretations on T and that Condo is usually ok (1 CP and 1 K). I ere Aff on T, Neg on Theory. Please remember to impact these arguments, it’s not a “Voter” just because you say it is. T is not a reverse voter. Please be aware of argument interaction between different theory arguments.

Cross-Examination:

CX starts (my timer starts) promptly after the end of the constructive speech. Open CX is fine, however I feel that it is best to not engage in it whenever possible. I think the CX is an underutilized speech, and good questions are often not turned into arguments, it is important to turn CX questions and answers into arguments during a speech. I don’t flow CX but I do pay attention. CX greatly influences how I award my speaker points.

CP’s

I like clever PIC’s (not word PIC’s). I ran SC CP and politics a lot. However, I’ve been doing some thinking about agent CP’s, and the more I think about them the more I think they aren’t competitive (if the agent is within the USFG). Obviously this is a debate to be had and I can be persuaded either way. I am not a fan of delay or multiple CP’s (the exception to the multiple CP’s is if you are reading advantage CP’s and/or unconditional CP’s). In the 1NC, please SLOW DOWN when reading your CP text so I know what the CP is, thank you in advance. For conditional CP’s, unless the 2NR explicitly says that the SQ is still an option, if you go for the CP I transition into Plan vs CP framework in which the CP must be net beneficial to warrant a neg ballot.

K’s

I am not the biggest fan of the K. That being said, I will and have vote/d for/on the K, I would say that I just have a high threshold for the level of explanation that needs to occur for these kinds of arguments to be persuasive and make sense. I do not appreciate a bunch of post modern jargon; the simpler you can explain your K the better. Please explain what your alternative is and what voting for you means/does, what the role of the ballot is, and why all of that is more important than an endorsement of the Aff. I find that when I don't vote for a K it is usually because the explanation of what the alternative is/does is lacking. While I do not find some K's to be very persuasive, just because the debate makes me grumpy(ier) doesn't mean I won't vote for you, I'll probably just complain about it afterwards (although I will happily provide you with a list of my least favorite K's upon request). I will say that I very much dislikes K's based on a link of omission. If in doubt, read what you are best at and most comfortable with and tell me not to be so grumpy.

Paperless

Please be as prompt and courteous as possible. DO NOT: intentionally include 9 million cards that you aren’t going to read into your speech document (please feel free to ask for a new speech document with just the marked cards that are read, no charge), intentionally disorganize your speech document, or steal prep-time (no one should be doing anything during “tech” time). I am rather trusting on this issue so feel free to police yourselves, I won’t hold it against you if you call your opponents out (even if they are behaving).

MISC

I do not prompt for clarity, if I can’t understand you, I will stop flowing and make a face at you. I believe that judge adaptation is an important part of debate and so if you have a question about anything I have not covered here, please feel free to ask, but I will get angry if it’s clear you haven’t read this.

When in doubt: "Make with the good debating, not the bad debating."

Virginia Myers Liberty University 6 rounds

John Nagy Liberty University 3 rounds

Last changed on Sat January 13, 2024 at 9:22 AM EDT

Please include me in your speech doc thread. My email is johnfnagy@gmail.com

If I am judging you online, you MUST slow down. I will not get all of your arguments, particularly analytics, on the flow. You have been warned.

I enjoy coaching and judging novice debates. I think the novice division is the most important and representative of what is good in our community. That being said, I opposed and still oppose the ADA Novice Curriculum Packet. It's an attempt by some in the community, who don't even have novice programs, to use the novice division to further their vision of what debate "should" look like. I don't like that.

I really like judging debates where the debaters speak clearly, make topic specific arguments, make smart analytic arguments, attack their opponent’s evidence, and debate passionately. I cut a lot of cards so I know a lot about the topic. I don’t know much about critical literature.

Framework debates: I don’t enjoy judging them. Everyone claims their educational. Everyone claims their being excluded. It’s extremely difficult to make any sense of it. I would rather you find a reason why the 1AC is a bad idea. There’s got to be something. I can vote for a no plan-text 1AC, if you’re winning your arguments. With that being said, am not your ideal judge for such 1AC’s because I don’t think there’s any out of round spill-over or “solvency.”

Topicality: Am ok with topicality. Competing interpretations is my standard for evaluation. Proving in-round abuse is helpful but not a pre-requisite. If am judging in novice at an ADA packet tournament, it will be very difficult to convince me to vote on topicality. Because there are only 2-3 1AC's to begin with, there's no predictability or limits arguments that make any sense.

Disadvantages: Like them. The more topic specific the better.

Counterplans: Like them. The more specific to the 1AC the better. Please slow down a little for the CP text.

Kritiks: ok with them. I don’t know a lot about any critical literature, so know that.

Rate of Delivery: If I can’t flow the argument, then it’s not going on my flow. And please slow down a little bit for tags.

Likes: Ohio State, Soft Power DA’s, case debates

Dislikes: Michigan, debaters that are not comprehensible, District 7 schools that cut and paste evidence from other schools and present it as their own without alteration. Do that in front of me and I might vote against you automatically.

Theo Noparstak Northwestern University 4 rounds

Last changed on Fri January 5, 2024 at 4:09 AM CDT

Niles West High School '14

University of Kentucky '18

Chicago-Kent Law School '24

Northwestern University Coach '18-21

University of Kentucky Coach '22-23

Put me on the chain theonoparstak22@gmail.com

GENERAL THOUGHTS

I decide debates by re-organizing my flow around the issues prioritized in the 2nr and 2ar, going back on my flow to chart the progression of the argument, reading the relevant evidence, then resolving that mini-debate. Tell me what I should care about in the final speeches. Use the earlier speeches to set up your final rebuttals.

I try not to consider personal biases when judging policy or k debates. Debates hinge on link, impact, and solvency questions that have to be argued whether its plan/cp, perm/alt, fw/advocacy.

I believe the most important skill a debater should have is the ability to do good comparative analysis.

I'll read evidence during and after the debate. Evidence quality influences my perception of the argument's strength. Bad evidence means there's a lower bar for answering the argument and vice versa.

When trying to resolve questions about how the world works, I defer to expert evidence introduced in the debate. When trying to resolve questions about how the debate in front of me should work, I defer to the arguments of the debaters.

The debates I enjoy the most are the ones where students demonstrate that they are active participants in the thinking through and construction of their arguments. Don't be on auto-pilot. Show me you know what's going on.

Have an appropriate level of respect for opponents and arguments.

SPECIFIC THOUGHTS

I would strongly prefer not to judge debates about why death is good that may force an ethical debate about whether life is worth living.

K Affs: There is a place in debate for affirmatives that don't affirm the resolution. I will not vote for or against framework in these situations based on ideological preferences alone. I wish the activity had clearer rules for what we consider fair game in terms of links to negative offense/competitive advocacies against affs that don't affirm the resolution/read a plan text because I enjoy debates over specifics more than rehashed abstractions. But I am sympathetic to neg arguments about how the aff precluded those good debates from occurring, depending on what the aff defends in the 1AC.

T: I would prefer neg teams only go for topicality when the aff is very clearly attempting to skirt the core premises of the resolution. Going for silly T arguments against super core affirmatives is a waste of everyone's time. Having said that, T debates have the potential to be the most interesting and specific arguments in debate, so if you feel really good about the work you've put into developing your position I encourage you to go for it.

Theory: I feel similarly about theory. It's hard for me to take theory arguments seriously when they're not made in specific response to some seriously problematic practice that has occured in the debate at hand. Debate is supposed to be hard. People are way too quick to claim something made debate 'impossible'.

K: When the neg is going for a kritik, I find the framework debating from both sides largely unnecessary. The easiest and most common way I end up resolving framework debates is to allow the aff to weigh their advantages and the neg to weigh their kritik. You'd be better served spending time on the link/impact/alt.

CP: When judging process counterplans, I'm most interested in whether there are cards a) tying the counterplan to the resolution b) tying the net benefit to the plan. This is what usually pushes me aff or neg on theory and perm arguments.

DA: I usually think the link is the most important part of an argument

Danielle O'Gorman Navy

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 5:27 AM EDT

I've been the Director of Debate at the US Naval Academy since 2005. I debated at Catholic University in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Put me on the doc thread: danielle.verney@gmail.com. Please use the wiki as much as possible!

Four things I hate--this number has gone up:

1. WASTING TIME IN DEBATES--what is prep time? This isn't an existential question. Prep time is anything you do to prepare for a debate. That means when it's start time for the debate, everyone should be READY TO START--restrooms visited, water gathered, stand assembled, doc thread started, timer in hand, snacks ready for your judge (jk). Any of these things that need to happen during a debate are technically prep time and thus should probably happen either during your prep or the other team's prep. The 2:15 decision deadline is an unequivocal good because it makes me 100% more likely to get a reasonable amount of sleep at night which makes me a better judge/coach/administrator/human, but y'all need to get better at managing your time to make it work.

2. Elusiveness (especially in Cross-Ex but during speeches too): “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer. Taking your questioner on a goose-chase for the answer to a simple question is not. Pretending you don't know how the plan works or what it does or that there are a whole bunch of ways it MIGHT happen is not persuasive to me, it just makes it look like you don't know what's going on. Answer the counterplan; tell me it's cheating--I'm one of the like 5 judges in the community who believe you.

3. Debaters who get mad that I didn’t read their one piece of really sweet evidence. If you want me to understand the warrants of the evidence and how they compare to the warrants of the other team’s evidence, maybe you should talk about them in one of your speeches. Read less bad cards and talk about the good ones more--tell me how your one good card is better than their 12 bad ones.

4. Rudeness. Don’t be rude to your partner, don’t be rude to the other team, and DEFINITELY don’t be rude to me. Excessive cursing is frowned upon (louder for the people in the back). Conversely, if you are nice, you will probably be rewarded with points. Entertain me. I enjoy pop culture references, random yelling of "D7", humorous cross-x exchanges, and just about any kind of joke. I spend a LOT of time judging debates, please make it enjoyable, or at least not uncomfortable.

Performance/Ks of Debate:

I’m going to be painfully honest here and say that I don’t like performance debate or critiques of current debate practices. I’m also going to state the obvious and say that I really like policy debate. Why? Well, I guess it’s the same reason that some people root for the Yankees over the Red Sox—I’m evil. Actually, it’s because I think there are a lot of specific educational benefits to traditional policy debate that you can’t get anywhere else. There might be a lot of educational benefits to performances, but I think that you can get those benefits from doing other activities too, which isn’t necessarily true of policy-style debate. If this makes you want to strike me, I heartily encourage you to do so.

HOWEVER--the opposing team would need to advance those arguments to win the debate. Do I think status quo debate is good? Yes. Will I vote on "debate is good" without that argument having been made? No. If the opposing team concedes the framework debate or doesn't advance "status quo debate good" as their framework arg, I'm not going to vote on it, obviously; the debate would proceed as agreed to by both teams. I have judged these debates before and have voted on the arguments in the round.

Kritiks:

Whatevs, if it’s your thing, you can do it in front of me. I’m pretty smart, which means I attempt to avoid reading post-modern philosophy as much as possible, and the only languages I currently speak with any level of fluency are English and Pig Latin. This means you should probably SLOW DOWN and find a convenient time to define any words that are Greek/German/made up by an aging beatnik. The problem I have with most Ks is that they have totally sweet, awesome impacts but there’s little link to the aff (or no harder link to the aff than to the status quo), so maybe that’s something that both the aff and neg should work on in the round. I really prefer Kritiks with alternatives, and I prefer the alternative not be “reject the plan”.

Counterplans:

I think lots of counterplans (consult, international actor, conditions, etc) are probably cheating. As a director of a small school, I don't have a huge problem with cheating if you can defend it and do it well. I wouldn't make this the "A strat" for me if you've got other options, but I appreciate that there sometimes aren't any and I promise not to throw things or set the ballot on fire if you've gotta roll with it.

Not to sound like a grumpy old person (though I am) but I think conditionality run amok is hurting debate. I'm probably okay with 1 CP, 1 K, and the status quo as an option until the 2nr (test the rez from a variety of standpoints, etc). Any more than that and you're pushing my buttons. I'm about as likely to "judge kick" a CP for you as I am to kick a winning field goal for the Steelers (not gonna happen).

Disads:
There’s nothing better than a good disad. What do I mean by a good disad? Well, it should have a pretty clear, and ideally pretty specific, link to the affirmative. It should also (and here’s the part lots of debaters forget about) have some form of internal link that goes from the link to the impact. Aff—if the neg doesn’t have one of those things, you might want to point it out to me.

If your disad makes my internal BS-ometer go off I'm gonna tank your points.

Topicality/Other Procedurals:
I don’t evaluate T like it’s a disad, which I think is the current fashionable thing to say, because unlike lots of people, I don’t think your aff advantages can outweigh T in the way that the aff could outweigh a disad. So I don’t focus as much on the “best” interpretation—if the aff interp is good but not as good as the neg’s, the aff will probably win in front of me. This means I think the neg really needs to focus on the ground and limits debate—here is where you can persuade me that something is really bad.

I think topics are becoming more broad and vague, and understand negative frustration at attempting to engage in a debate about the plan's mechanism or what the plan actually does (often the very best parts of a debate in my opinion). I feel like I can be fairly easily persuaded to vote against a team that just uses resolutional language without a description of what that means in a piece of solvency evidence or a cross-examination clarification. I think neg teams will need to win significant ground loss claims to be successful in front of me (can't just roll with agent cps key) but I think I am more easily persuaded on these arguments than I have been in the past.

Tom O'Gorman Navy 6 rounds

Last changed on Sat January 13, 2024 at 3:22 AM EDT

Tom O’Gorman – Mary Washington 2018 Update
Navy Debate Husband for 9 years, CUA debater for 4 years – D7 for life!

TLDR: DAs, Ks, T, most CPs fine. Non-T affs should strike. Be nice. Not super uptight about paperless prep, but don’t abuse it. Yes, I would like to be included on the email chain – my email is tomogorman@gmail.com

D7 2019 update: I think I am fine with the ESR CP if its just a policy shift/plain XO (e.g. declaratory NFU), and less fine with it when teams start attaching planks to make it more permanently binding (e.g. OLC opinion). I think Affs should justify that the Prez should not have power to make XYZ decision rather than merely Trump's XYZ decision is bad, but Negs are definitely headed towards stealing ground if they have the Prez surrender the power to make decisions rather than simply change the current decision (this also seems to have real tension with the flex da which is usually, and oddly, the net benefit). Obviously, has to be debated out - but these are my current leanings.

ASPEC:

Normally, I would be fine with USFG but given the 2018/2019 topic is specifically whether the other branches should restrict the executive branch I think you need to do more on this topic. Ideally you would just spec Congress or the Judiciary and be ready to answer the CP. At minimum you should be willing to spec which you will defend unless the Neg runs a Congress/Judiciary CP - and then if the Neg does so I think perm do the CP is a debatable position.

I do think the Neg needs to set this up in CX (or pre-round questioning when I am in the room). I don't think the loss of pre-round prep is abusive - the aff is either a statutory or a judicial restriction - prep both.

CPs:

I am skeptical of the ESR CP, it feels similar to object fiat, but I haven't had enough rounds with it to be sure. see update up top

I am idiosyncratic in that I think advocating perms even if the Neg kicks the CP seems reasonable. Many of the warrants for condo good would also apply to advocating the perm. I am open to being persuaded that perm is just a test of competitiveness; therefore the Aff cannot advocate it (and if Aff states its only a test this is all irrelevant). But, if contested, a warranted argument would need to be made for that position. If no one makes a statement one way or another until the 2AR, I am going to let the Aff do it and feel about as sympathetic to the Neg as if the Aff had never asked the status of the CP (i.e. not at all)

I highly prefer CPs that have specific solvency advocates and net benefits that reference topic literature. I am skeptical of CPs that rely on very generic solvency advocates and/or compete entirely on generic disads (usually politics) Nonetheless, I more often than not end up voting with the Neg in CP debates because theory is so poorly developed by the Aff. Most theory blips are warrantless and question begging (in the pedantic original sense, e.g. to argue the CP steals your ground assumes the conclusion that it was your ground which is the argument being contested). I would much prefer 2-3 actual sentences to 5-6 blips. Attempting to contextualize the CP's theoretical legitimacy in light of this specific topic is extremely desirable.

As to Condo, in general I am fine with the sort of ad hoc norm we have developed of up to 2 CPs/Ks (total - not each) and the squo, and less fine as the number of conditional advocacies increase beyond that (or if they start developing strong contradictions between eachother)– but that’s just biases – willing to vote either way. To me, by default, Condo means that if you are extending the CP/K in the 2NR you are stuck with it. If you want me to judge kick I need you to tell me so explicitly earlier in the debate. I hear "status quo is always an option" as 2NR has option to kick the CP, not as judge can kick after 2AR. So be even more explicit than that if you mean judge kick is an option.

Disads:

Disads are good. Usually consider the link debate more important than the uniqueness debate, but both matter. Try or die is usually a way of saying we are losing. Debaters would do well to a) question terminal impacts more (particularly since the internal links at the nuke war/extinction level are often highly tendentious and b) leverage the lower levels more. Stopping one patriarchal practice almost certainly does not stop all patriarchal practices. Likewise while it possible that an act of nuclear terrorism sparks WW III and extinction, its also very likely that cooler heads in the major powers prevail and while there is some war its more like Afghanistan + Iraq than WW III. This doesn’t mean I don’t like big impacts, it just means I am more likely to see them as increasing the risk of the terminal impact by a percent or two than directly causing then end of days, and, therefore more grounded systemic impacts can trump them. War, recession, oppression, environmental destruction et. al are all bad things even if humanity survives. Given all this I am most likely to care about probability as an impact framing device and put it before magnitude or timeframe.

Flowing:

I am an ok flow, but I definitely cannot flow author names I may not be familiar with at high speed. If you refer to something later as the X evidence without extending the warrant of that evidence as well I may have no idea what you are talking about; therefore extend evidence by more than author + year.

This includes in CX. I do not follow along in the speech doc, and generally do not even look at it until after the debate is over. You need to make what you are talking about clear to someone who is not looking at the evidence at the time you are talking.

Framework:

I am not sure what this means anymore it usually means one of the following.

Aff is Not T and/or reads a T plan text but doesn’t defend implementation of that text; therefore Vote Neg. I agree – and am strongly biased in this – you should probably make the T component explicit.

Ignore the DA/K, its irrelevant/unfair – I am not likely to believe the strong version of this argument, instead take as your starting point the next option and frame your arguments to outweighing instead of excluding.

The K o/w the DA/Advantage (and vice versa) – awesome, guidance and impact framing is central.

Kritiks:

The key issue for winning a kritik debate on the negative in front of me is the link debate. Good negatives will be able to identify specific cards, phrases, concepts of the Aff and re-contextualize them in the context of the K. Big K overviews are often unhelpful to me as they spend too much time on the general story of the K and too little time on the link or specific answers to the K alt is meaningless/utopian. K Affs are great as long as they are topical.

Overviews:

Bad overviews highlight the speaker’s team’s impact and mumble something about timeframe, probability and magnitude, but basically skim over everything the other team will go for. Good overviews compare the speaker’s team’s impacts directly with the other teams. Best overviews highlight the key arguments and their interactions that determine each sides impacts and why that means the speaker’s team wins. (Example: bad overview - CP solves 100% of case and DA is the biggest impact in the round. Good overview – Even if there is a solvency differential to CP its small and DA o/w b/c xyz. Best overview – there is at best a small solvency differential to the CP b/c we are winning argument X. The risk of the D/A is high b/c y and their responses don’t address that. Risk of D/A o/w solvency differential b/c Z.) I am a better judge for people who narrow things down and tell stories rather than go for a lot of arguments.

Team Reasonability – although for me that means that there is a presumption in favor of the aff counter interpretation, and that it is a Neg burden to prove the Aff’s interpretation bad – not merely not as good as the Neg’s interpretation.

Yes, you do have to be topical in front of me. Some leeway on creative counter -interpretations, but that does not mean topic as metaphor or free word association. Resolutional is another way of saying not topical.

ADA packet thing; I have seen people say that unlikely to vote on T because packet affs are obviously predictable. This makes negative sense to me. The Packet is intended to teach arguments including T (hence why the T files were included). So I don't see why that would be a persuasive answer at all. Happy to vote on T even if Aff is well known, in the packet or on the wiki, if the Neg wins the line by line.

Austin Oliver George Mason University 8 rounds

Last changed on Sun February 5, 2023 at 8:39 AM EDT

Add me to the chain - OliverLanier@gmail.com.

Coaching history:

Oakton High School 2017-2018

Gilman School - 2019-Present

George Mason University - 2018-2020

I decided to add this to the top of my paradigm as it impacts my decision making a lot: you should spend more time actually making arguments. This is distinct from simply slowing down, which shouldn’t be necessary if you commit to your chosen arguments to a greater degree. II think the fastest paced and most technical debates require judges that can both flow at an extremely fast pace (not a bad thing) and have such a great amount of argument-specific/topic knowledge that they’re able to take “small” arguments and make them “big” ones based on their ability to extrapolate from what has been said. While this is impressive, I don’t think it’s a necessarily productive standard to hold judges to, and I believe that it is an expectation that is often fulfilled at the expense of valuable clash. Personally, I can guarantee you that what I spend my time reading and writing about has nothing to do with what you’re saying in a given debate, and the way I’m used to thinking outside of debate looks very different from what debate requires. Don’t assume I am familiar with with your argument(s). Don’t assume I’m going to read a card you’ve read and reconstitute your 1AR sentence/little word cluster. I will absolutely tell you after a debate that I missed an argument if it was underdeveloped, in earnest, and not feel bad about it. I’m sure you can avoid this from happening—I believe in you.

Now I'm just going to give my opinions on things that I always scroll down to when reading people's paradigms:

Topicality: It's in the neg's interest to explain clearly why the dynamics of the topic mean I should err neg on limits, and/or why debatability outweighs aff offense. Absent that kind of common-sense impact framing deciding between a limited neg-leaning topic and a relatively unlimited aff-leaning topic is too intervention-y for my comfort. I see reasonability as a schema through which to evaluate competing interpretations, not an exclusive paradigm. I can be convinced to apply reasonability in an alternative fashion, but I am unconvinced by "arguments" that use reasonability as a stand-in for impact comparison (do not repeat that you are reasonable without explanation in the hopes that my gut-approach to the topic includes your aff). These are debates that I would prefer be had at slower speeds more conducive to me being able to flow complete arguments instead of excessively shallow shorthand (possibly to your detriment).

Theory: I'm open to anything but my threshold for voting aff on delay cps bad is quite different from my threshold for voting aff on vague alternatives bad. If you're negative and reading something that is obviously pushing it it would be helpful for you to have arguments as to why reading your horribly unfair argument is distinct from every other time said horribly unfair argument has been read or is warranted by the topic/specific affirmative. See above note about speed.

Condo: I don't care but see above.

DAs: I believe there can be zero risk of one. Having a diversity of arguments does not have to and shouldn't trade off with smart framing arguments. Spending time winning a single damning argument with certainty is more helpful to me than reading a block your 1A wrote that extends every piece of UQ/Link/Impact ev in the debate. "Link determines direction of uniqueness" is generally more intuitive to me than the inverse.

Ks: If you read it one off I understand if your speeches don't reflect standard practice procedural organization and think it's in your interest to mix things up. I'll flow straight down. If you're affirmative in one of these debates it's your job to use that to your advantage and reconstruct things for me.

Framework: I often vote for non-topical affirmatives in part because framework debates are unnecessarily complicated. Simplifying things will substantially increase your chances of winning a ballot. For the neg this means picking an impact in the 2NR; fairness is one and is often (in my opinion) a better 2NR choice than decision-making/delib (explanation of which tends to be very nebulous and vulnerable to aff link/impact turns). If you go for an education impact, explain why your interp/model solves it or just explain why the aff precludes it. It doesn't take much to convince me that you should get topic education as an impact turn against affs that are explicitly anti-topical, but outside of that context this will require work for me. I say that fairness is often a better option because I generally believe that fairness is required for debate to have internal consistency/meaning, and teams whose strategy on T line up with that will put themselves in a good position in debates that I am judging. As explained above, I am partial to fairness/competitive equity impacts and so it is in the aff's interest to explain why they produce/justify reasonably fair debates/affirmatives OR spend a lot of time impact turning fairness instead of repeating that it's infinitely regressive/doesn't have a brightline/is just an internal link to education/shadow extending another sentence-long 2AC arg. Please don’t drop 100 DAs to framework in the 2AC which are largely the same few arguments with some flashy titles. This having been said, if you have a few core impact turns that you can tease out a lot of vertical depth from/craft an ultimate strategy around, using consistent language to refer to them distinctly is good.

These statements represent my feelings and quite likely my proclivities in judging; they do not, however, represent any hardline stance that I will take regardless of the context supplied by a debate. I flow a lot and will use it more than anything else to make a decision if I am judging you.

- Austin xoxo

Thomas Pacheco Georgetown 7 rounds

Last changed on Sat March 16, 2024 at 4:16 PM UTC

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Be organized.

Do not steal prep.

Minimize the amount of time paperless debate causes.

Have fun – that’s why I do this.

Joe Patrice United States Military Academy 4 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 10, 2024 at 4:53 AM EDT

Joe Patrice

USMA

Paperless Policy:I'm at joepatrice@gmail.com. Or I can do the situational dropbox thing. Whatever. Regale me with your evidence. I don't read it during the round, I just want it all for post-round evaluation and caselist obligations. I still flow based on what you SAY so don't cut corners on clarity just because I have your speech docs in my inbox.

Flowing: Seriously, I’m not reading your evidence during your speech. Why doesn’t anyone ever trust me on this? Did I do something in a past life that makes debaters pathologically incapable of believing me? Anyway, if you’re not articulating your distinct arguments, you’re taking your chances that I’m not getting what you’re trying to put out there. I consider debate to be a contest between teams to communicate to me what should be on my flow and where, so orient your argumentation accordingly.

Everything Else: I characterize myself as a critic of argument, which is the pretentiousway of saying that I listen to everything, but that, all else equal, certain things are more compelling than others.

NOTE: Do not necessarily interpret any of my preferences as bans on any kind of arguments, or even guides to how to select down. It's a threshold of believability issue.

Policy Debates: Compare your impacts, weigh them, and tell me a story of the world of voting Aff vs. voting Neg. I’ll choose the one that’s comparatively advantageous.

I prefer fewer positions withlonger evidence, clearer scenarios, and more analysis of impact probability ratherthan harping on the massive scale of the impacts. If I hear that a slight increase in spending collapses the world economy triggering a nuclear war, you may as well tell me aliens are invading. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote on it, but I’ll die a little inside and there’s frighteningly little of my soul left to kill – I’m a lawyer.

I’m not particularly excited about the world of flinging 4 CPs at the Aff and just playing the coverage game. It’s just not the makings of a compelling debate, you know? Pick a lane! And it doesn’t seem especially cool on a topic featuring legal scholars proposing almost infinite specific counter-proposals to research. I’ve got no preferences on CP/Perm theory arguments other than it bugs me that people don't feel compelled to explain the abuse story like they would on T. I do not think the blip "the Perm is severance" is enough to get the job done and if I’m going to vote on it, I’d really prefer if, before the round is over, I can comfortably explain why it severs and preferably a reason why that is uniquely disadvantageous. But given that caveat, I'm more than willing to vote on these args because people all too often don't answer them well enough, probably because they don't know how to flow anymore. NOTICE A TREND!

In other words, if you're going the policy route, you’ll make me so happy teeing off with specific arguments tied to the real academic/policy debate over the subject.

And if you’re reading this harsh criticism of policy debate with a smug look on your face, slow your roll there Kdebater...

Kritik Debates: Kritiks challenge the advocacy of the other team in salient ways that could be lost in a pure utilitarian analysis. Issues of exclusion and oppression ingrained in the heart of a policy proposal or the representations of the other team can be called out with kritiks ranging from simple “-ism” args to a postmodern cavalcade.

It is NOT an excuse to say random pomo garbage that sounds cool but doesn’t bear upon what’s happening in the round. Esoteric ramblings from some dead French or German thinker can – and often do – have as little to do with the debate round as the hypothetical global nuclear wars that have killed us a million times over in this activity. Look, I actually KNOW what most of that garbage means, but that's not a reason for you to not make sense. Make the K relevant to the specific policy/issue discussion we’re having and I’ll be very happy.

Again, I vote on this stuff, but see above about killing me inside.

When it comes to K/Performance Affs, I’m pretty open to however you justify the Aff (metaphorically, as activism, as some kind of parable), so long as deep down you’re advocating that all things equal, “giving rights or duties to the things listed in the topic would be good.” Faint in the direction of the topic and you’re in good shape.

With that caveat, if you outright refuse to "affirm" anything in the "topic," that's all well and good, just be a really good T/Framework debater. I'll vote for a compelling justification — I’ve recently been told that according to Tabroom, I’m almost exactly .500 in K v. Framework debates over the last few years. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds right. Frankly, I'd rather hear "we can't be Aff because the resolution is broken and we'll win the T/Framework debate" than some squirrely "we're not topical, but kind of topical, but really not" thing.

But who am I to judge! Oh right... I'm the judge. Kinda my job.

An honest pet peeve (that I can be talked out of, round-by-round) is that I don't think “performance” means acting out the argument in-round. For example, Dadaism is an argument, not a reason to answer every question with “Fishbulbs!" You job is to sell me that people answering questions with “Fishbulbs” would be good – if you’re doing it in-round you’ve skipped the foundational part.

Topicality: I feel like I've told enough people in enough rounds about this that I'm comfortable putting it here: if you're running this Scalia evidence as a definition of "vest" despite the fact that it is EXPLICITLY not about rights and duties and solely about Article II power or if you're running the "rights are 15 things" from a definition about how the Indian legal system makes distinctions between constitutional rights and statutory legal rights, you're engaged in an act of such intellectual dishonesty that I think I'm willing to vote on that alone if the other team mentions it.

Every time you steal prep time will also kill me a little more inside. But you’re going to do it anyway.

Jackie Poapst George Mason University 4 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 12:33 PM EDT

About me:

Director of Debate at George Mason University.

Please add me to chain: japoapst@gmail.com

11/26/2023 Speaker Point Update:

I will be utilizing the Regnier speaker point scale

May be an image of ‎text that says '‎Fabulous Percentile 100 100 99 98 97 96 Excellent Good Median Point 30 29.9 29.8 29.7 29.6 29.5 29.4 29.3 29.2 29.1 29 28.9 28.8 28.7 28.6 28.5 28.4 28.3 28.2 28.1 28 27.9 27.8 27.7 27.6 27.5 Below Average 93 89 84 77 69 60 50 39 28 20 13 Ùˆ 6 4 3 2 1 1 1 1 Poor Very Poor‎'‎

5+ Random Things that Annoy me:

1. Hostility - I am too old, too cranky, and too tired to hear undergraduate students treating opponents, partners, or me like trash. I literally can't handle the levels of aggression some rounds have anymore. Please just stop. Be community minded. You are debating another person with feelings, remember that. Opponents are friends on the intellectual journey you are having in debate, not enemy combatants. Give people the benefit of the doubt and try to practice grace in rounds.

2. Debaters who act like they don't care in debates. If being a troll or giving some performance of apathy about debate is your shtick I am absolutely not the judge for you. Debate is a privilege that many individuals do not have the ability to participate in due to lack of collegiate access or financial well being, and I think we should treat the opportunity we have to be in this activity with respect.

3. Multiple cards in the body of the email.

4. Yelling over each other in cx - everyone will lose speaks.

5. Interrupting your partner in cx - I am seriously close to saying I want closed cx, I am so annoyed at how egregious this is becoming. I will deduct speaks from both partners.

6. Extending Cross ex past 3 minutes. I will actively stop listening in protest/leave the room. Anything past the 3 minutes should be for clarification purposes only.

7. Wipeout, Baudrillard, Malthus, Con Con CPs, Strike 'x' country CPs, trivializing the holocaust, reading re-prints of books from 1995 but citing it as the reprint date, fiating mindset shifts.

Topicality:

The nukes topic is great for the negative and I do not think I will be persuaded on sub-sets arguments against NFU. This topic is too small give the aff a break.

If cross ex actually checked for specification questions (i.e. "who is the actor" - and they tell you "Congress") - that is the only argument the 2ac needs to make against a 1NC spec argument.

NOVICE NOTE: I think it is ridiculous when novices read no plan affs - do whatever you want in other divisions, but these kids are just learning how to debate, so providing some structure and predictability is something I think is necessary. I err heavily on framework in those debates for the negative in the first semester.

Theory:

Besides conditionality, theory is a reason to reject the argument and not the team. Anything else is an unwinnable position for me. I genuinely do not know how I lean in condo debates. Some rounds I feel like the amount of conditional positions we are encouraging in debates is ridiculous, others I wish there were more. Open to being convinced in either direction.

Counterplans:

Are awesome. The trickier, the better. I’m okay with most of them, but believe that the action of the CP must be clearly explained at least in the 2NC. I don’t vote on something if I don’t know what my ballot would be advocating. I shouldn’t have to pull the CP text at the end of the round to determine what it does. I err to process/agent/consult cp’s being unfair for the aff (if you can defend theory though, this doesn’t mean don’t read them). Also, I think that perm do the cp on CPs that result in the plan can be rather persuasive, and a more robust textual/functional cp debate is probably necessary on the negative's part.

**Delay and consultation cp’s are illegit unless you have a specific solvency advocate for them. Agenda DA Uniqueness cp’s are too – I’m sorry that the political climate means you can’t read your politics strat on the negative, but that doesn’t mean you should be able to screw the aff’s strategy like that. Have other options.

Important CP Judge Kick Note: I always judge kick if the negative would win the debate on the net benefit alone. However, I will not judge kick to vote on presumption. Going for a CP forfeits the negative's right to presumption.

Disadvantages:

Wonderful. Disadvantages versus case debates are probably my favorite debates (pretty much every 2NR my partner and I had). I love politics disads, however, I can be very persuaded by no backlash/spillover answers on the internal link – in so many situations the internal link just makes NO sense. I think there is such a thing as 100% no link and love thumper strategies. Like elections DA's - not a huge fan of impact scenarios relying on a certain party/candidate doing something once they get in office. Think shorter term impact scenarios are necessary.

Kritiks:

2023 update: For the past several years my work with Mason Debate has primarily focused on research and coaching of our varsity policy teams and novices. I am not keeping up with the K lit as I was a few years ago. Please keep this in mind. Everything below is from a few years ago.

I wrote my thesis on queer rage and my research now focuses on a Derridian/Althusserian analysis of Supreme Court rhetoric - but that does not mean I will automatically get whatever random critical theory you are using. Due to who I coach and what I research for academics, I am most familiar with identity theories, biopower, Marxism, any other cultural studies scholarship, Baudrillard, Derrida, and Deleuze. If your K isn't one of those - hold my hand. I think the most persuasive kritik debaters are those who read less cards and make more analysis. The best way to debate a kritik in front of me is to read slower and shorter tags in the 1NC and to shorten the overviews. I find most overviews too long and complicated. Most of that work should be done on the line-by-line/tied into the case debate. Also, debating a kritik like you would a disad with an alternative is pretty effective in front of me. Keep it structured. Unless your kritik concerns form/content - be organized.

Note for policy v K regarding the "weigh the affirmative or nah" framework question - basically no matter how much debating occurs on this question, unless the affirmative or negative completely drops the oppositions' arguments, I find myself normally deciding that the affirmative gets to weigh their aff but is responsible for defending their rhetoric/epistemology. I think that is a happy middle ground.

Critical Affirmatives:

Nukes note: I think the affirmative should *at least* defend that the US' reliance on nuclear weapons for military policy is bad. Some type of critique in the direction of the resolution. Inserting the word "nuclear" or "weapons" into your aff is not enough of a topic relevant claim imo. In general, I believe affirmatives should defend some universalized praxis/method and that deferral is not a debatable strategy.

Overall Framework update: Procedural fairness IS an impact, but I prefer clash key to education. I find it difficult to vote for impacts that preserve the game when the affirmative is going for an impact turn of how that game operates.

Generic Case Update: I find myself voting neg on presumption often when this is a large portion of the 2nr strategy. I recommend affirmatives take this into account to ensure they are explaining the mechanism of the aff.

I find judging non-black teams reading afro-pessimism affirmatives against black debaters an uncomfortable debate to decide, and my threshold for a ballot commodification style argument low.

Individual survival strategies are not predictable or necessarily debatable in my opinion (i.e. "This 1AC is good for the affirmative team, but not necessarily a method that is generalizable). I enjoy critical methods debates that attempt to develop a praxis for a certain theory that can be broadly operationalized. For example, if you are debating "fem rage" - you should have to defend writ large adoption of that process to give the negative something to debate. It is pretty difficult for a negative to engage in a debate over what is "good for you" without sounding incredibly paternalistic.

Overall Sound:

I am partially deaf in my left ear. It makes it difficult to decipher multiple sounds happening at the same time (i.e. people talking at the same time/music being played loudly in the background when you are speaking). I would recommend reducing the sound level of background music to make sure I can still hear you. Also means you just have to be a smidge louder. I'll let you know if sound level is an issue in the debate, so unless I say something don't let it worry you.

Flowing:

I love flowing. I do my best to transcribe verbatim what you say in your speech so I can quote portions in my RFD. I do NOT flow straight down, I match arguments. I most definitely WILL be grumpy if speeches are disorganized/don't follow order of prior speeches. If you ask me not to flow, the amount I pay attention in the debate probably goes down to 20% and I will have mild anxiety during the round.

Your Decorum:

Debate should be fun - don't be jerks or rhetorically violent. This includes anything from ad homs like calling your opponent stupid to super aggressive behavior to your opponents or partner. Speaker points are a thing, and I love using them to punish jerks.

My Decorum:

I am extremely expressive during round and you should use this to your advantage. I nod my head when I agree and I get a weird/confused/annoyed face when I disagree.

<3 Jackie

Hope Reamer Indiana University 6 rounds

Last changed on Sun February 3, 2019 at 10:56 AM EDT

I would like to be included in the email chains (hope.lana22@gmail.com). Feel free to email me with any questions post round as well.

I am a graduate student at Indiana University studying environmental management. I debated at Samford Univerisity during my undergrad.

Aff:

I am ok with critical affs but prefer that they are germane to the resolution. Frame my ballot as why I should prefer critical impacts over policy impacts or framework impacts that the neg is making.

Policy affs: If you’re not topical make sure you’re really good at debating topicality.

Neg:

Das:

Totally down with DAs just make sure you explain your link. Impact calculus is your best friend.

CP:

I prefer CPs that are functionally competitive with the affirmative. I think theory should always be a response but I’m unlikely to vote on it unless it’s been dropped or you’re going all in on it. I will not kick the CP for you unless you tell me to.

Ks:

Again, fine with them just explain them well. Explain what your alt does and why I should prefer your impacts over policy impacts. Don't assume that I know/have read all the lit on your K, I probably haven't. Therefore, make sure you're explaining the warrants of the args well. I need good articulation of what the alternative actually does either within the debate or spillover claims and why is mutually exclusive with the aff.

Make sure you’re engaging in the actual line by line and not just reading blocks. I need competitive arguments between the t interpretation and the affs counter interpretation. Listing what affs their interpretation excludes/allows and what ground is lost in round is good.

FW:

Make sure you’re doing good impact work and why I should prefer that in the realm of the debate space.

General:

1. Don’t be rude.

2. I’m fine with speed just make sure you’re clear. If I can’t understand you I can’t flow.

3. Respect people’s preferred pronouns.

4. I don't have time to sit through and read ever card you tell me is awesome. If a card is important to a round I'll read it after but clear articulation of the warrants of the card are important and how it functions as an argument in the debate.

Jason Regnier Gonzaga University 2 rounds

Last changed on Thu January 4, 2024 at 6:32 PM EDT

Gonzaga University
Judging Experience: 19 years
Email: jregnier@gmail.com (yes, include me on the email thread)

Big Picture: There is no one right way to debate. We all have our biases and preconceptions, but I try to approach each round as a critic of argumentation and persuasion. Some people will define themselves as being more influenced by either “truth” or “tech.” For me, this is a false binary. Tech matters, but it doesn’t mean that I will focus on the ink on the flow to the detriment of argument interconnections or ignore the big picture of the debate. Truth matters, but pretty much every debate I will decide that both teams win arguments that I don’t necessarily believe to be true. In my view, “argument” falls into a third category that overlaps with tech and truth but is distinct from them. Make your argument more effectively than your opponent and you’ll be in good shape. For me, that means making clear claims, developing warrants for those claims, and explicitly identifying what’s important in the debate, how it’s important, and why. Use logos, ethos, and pathos. Look like you’re winning. Your adaptation to the stylistic/technical comments below is far more important than your adaptation to any particular type of argument.

Comment about debate ethics: By debate ethics, I mean both what has been conventionally called “ethics violations” – like clipping cards, evidence fabrication, etc – as well as the interpersonal dynamics of how we treat one another in debate. I group them together here because they are both areas where somebody has crossed a line and upset the conditions necessary for debate to occur. For me, neither of these things is “debatable” in the sense I used above (“making clear claims, developing warrants…,” looking like you’re winning, etc). If a team is suspected of clipping cards, the debate stops and we do our best to resolve the issue before either ending the debate or moving forward. Similarly, if there is a concern that a team made racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted – or even just excessively mean-spirited or rude remarks – the debate should not continue as normal. I have zero interest in watching a competitive debate in this context about what was said, whether an apology was sincere, the terminal impact of discourse, whether the ballot is an appropriate punishment, etc. In this, I aggressively fall into the “truth over tech” crowd.

What this means for me is that I will try to be attentive to these things happening. I do not believe that a debater has to say something for me to vote on an ethics violation. At the same time, there is a lot of gray area in interpersonal relationships and we all draw our own boundaries.

What this means for you is if you believe one of your ethical lines has been crossed, I need you to point it out *outside of speech time* and not treat it like you would other debate arguments. As we all know, there are different ways of arguing that the other team has said offensive things. An argument that the Aff’s Economy advantage is based in colonial & white supremacist logic seems to fall squarely “within the game” as a debatable position. On the other hand, if a debater refers to another debater with an offensive racial epithet, this seems to pretty clearly transcend the game. There’s a million miles of microaggressions and not-so-micro aggressions in between. My working presumption is generally that if you are debating about it, then you consider it debatable and that I should evaluate it within the context of argumentation, persuasion, and competition. But if you feel that the other team has crossed a line and that I should not continue evaluating the round as I would a regular competitive debate, say something – again, *outside of speech time* – and we will work together to reach an understanding and figure out the best resolution to the situation.

Stylistic/Technical Issues: I am a medium flow. My ear for extremely fast speech is not particularly great, and my handwriting is not particularly fast. Extremely fast debates oriented around the techne of the flow are not my forte. There is a fairly clear inverse relationship between the speed at which you speak and the amount that I get written down on my flow. This greatly rewards debaters who give fewer – but more fully developed and explained – arguments. I will probably not read very many cards at the end of the debate, so don’t rely on your evidence to make your arguments for you. At the same time, I do generally try to attend to the quality of cards and bad cards can definitely undermine your arguments. I categorically do not want to be forced to reconstruct the debate by rereading all of the cards. This means that explanation and prioritization in the final rebuttals weighs more heavily for me than it might for other judges. Attend to the big picture, make direct comparisons showing why your arguments are better than your opponents’, and most important, find the hook that allows you to frame the debate in your favor.

Theory Debates: This is the area where my thinking has evolved the most as I’ve aged. There are many theory issues that I can be persuaded by. However, I will say that many theory debates that I have seen are vacuous. The key question for me is what kind of world is created by each side’s interpretation – is it good for debate or bad for debate. The impacts that I find most persuasive are the ones that are less about whether the other team made debate hard for you and more about what their interpretation does to argumentation and whether that’s an educational and constructive vision of what debate should be. Generally, impacts like “time skew” or “moots the 1AC” are pretty empty to me. But an argument that uniform 50 state fiat is an artificial debate construct that’s not rooted anywhere in the solvency literature and distorts the “fed key” debate so wildly as to make it meaningless is maybe something that I can get behind. A short list of a few of my current theory pet peeves: the States CP, object fiat, vaguely written – and downright misleading – plan texts, and nonsense permutations. While I wouldn’t necessarily call it a pet peeve, I may be growing increasingly persuaded that excessive conditionality is not good for debate.

Critical Stuff / Framework: I regularly vote both ways in framework debates. I evaluate these debates much like I would a debate over the "substance" of the case. Both sides need to play offense to amplify their own impacts while also playing defense against their opponent's impacts. In most cases where I have voted against critical affirmatives, it is because they have done a poor job answering the negative's debatability/fairness impact claims. In most cases where I have voted against traditional policy frameworks, it has been because they have done a poor job defending against the substantive critiques of their approach. My general set of biases on these issues would be as follows: critical (and even no-plan) affirmatives are legitimate, the aff needs to either have a defensible interpretation of how they affirm the topic or they need to full bore impact turn everything, a team must defend the assumptions of their arguments, critiques don't need (and are often better served without) alternatives (but they still need to be clear about what I am actually voting for), debate rounds do not make sense as a forum for social movements and “spill up” claims are vacuous, and most of the evidence used to defend a policy framework does not really apply to policy debate. However, to state the obvious, each of these biases can be overcome by making smart arguments.

Speaker Points: Since Tabroom stopped making speaker points accessible, I honestly don’t really even know what they mean anymore. I try to give them careful consideration, but I admit that often it becomes a gestalt thing. I intend somewhere around 28.7 or 28.8 to be my median. I will occasionally dip into the high 27s for debaters that need significant improvement. Good performances will be in the low 29s. Excellent performances will get into the mid 29s. This was generally close to how things broke down the last time I was actually able to run the numbers on speaker point data.

Here are the things I value in a good speaker. I love debaters that use ethos, logos AND pathos. Technique should be a means of enhancing your arguments, not obfuscating or protecting them. Look like you're winning. Show that you are in control of yourself and your environment. Develop a persona that you can be comfortable with and that shows confidence. Know what you're talking about. Answer your own cross-ex questions. Use an organizational system that works for you, but communicate it and live up to it (if you do the line-by-line, then *do* the line-by-line). Avoid long overviews with content that belongs on the line-by-line. Overviews should have a clear and concise purpose that adds something important to the debate. Be clear, which includes not just articulation & enunciation. It also includes the ability to understand the content of your evidence. If I can't follow what your evidence is saying, it will have as much weight in my decision as the tagline for that evidence would have had as an analytic. Debaters who make well thought out arguments with strong support will out-point debaters who just read a lot of cards every time.

Armands Revelins Cornell 4 rounds

Last changed on Fri January 5, 2024 at 11:00 AM EDT

my email for email chains is arevelins@gmail.com

Quick update 2018 - some years ago I drafted the rubric for speaker points that you see below. Since then I have monitored developments in the debate community on typical speaker point distribution across all judges/tournaments, as discussed online by people who keep track of such things. I don't really dwell on this data much, but I do try to be mindful of community tendencies. Also, I notice how my own debaters read judge philosophies in crunch-time right before a round, and realize debaters reading this want a tl:dr.

Therefore, note that I probably now give speaker points that inch higher than what I initially suggested. This means in most cases I'm giving 28 and above, for debaters who seem to be doing elim-level debate it's usually 28.5 and above, and for especially impressive debate it's 29 and above. I do still dip into the mid-to-high 27's in occasional instances where I want to make it clear that I think the particular speeches really could use some work. At the time of writing (Jan 2018) my average speaker points are about a 28.5.

*******Paradigm Edited 11/10/13, prior to Wake Forest 2013 *******

** Scroll past speaker point scale to get a shorter philosophy explanation **

Speaker point scale:

0 = the debater committed some sort of ethics violation during the round (e.g. clipping cards)

26 to 26.9 = one or both of the following things happened: a) the debater made some kind of major tactical mistake in the debate, such as a completely dropped off-case position, without any attempt to address how they might still win the debate even if that argument is charitably given the full weight that the opposing team prefers. (more leeway on this is given to novice debates) b) the debater was hostile or rude towards competitors in the debate such that opportunities for respectful discourse concerning different ideas devolved into a breakdown of communication. Debaters have different personalities and approaches and I encourage you to explore ways of comporting yourself that express these personalities and approaches (be proud, indignant, cunning, provocative, etc), but please at all times also communicate with each other as students from different schools who respect each other for taking the time to have a lengthy debate round, in whatever part of the U.S. where you may presently have journeyed for such an encounter.

27 to 27.4 = the debater's overall strategy made sense, but various parts of the debate could have used more depth when instead those parts were fairly 'paint by numbers' (e.g. addressing certain arguments with generic/block answers instead of dealing with them more specifically). Evidence comparisons were fairly sparse, but the basic story on a given sheet of flow paper was clear enough.

27.5 to 27.9 = the debater did a solid job of debating. A coherent strategy was executed well. For certain key issues, initial clash advanced into higher forms of assessment, including a charitable understanding of why your opponent's arguments might be good yet your argument is ultimately more important/relevant.

28 to 28.4 = the debater did a solid job of debating across all the flows that were alive in the round. The debater focused on what mattered, was able to swiftly discount what did not ('closing doors' along the way), and took initial clash on key points to highly advanced levels. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if a debater with points like this advanced to early elimination debates (e.g. double octo's)

28.5 to 28.9 = the debater did everything from the previous scale, but was also able to do this with incredible organization: the most important things were in rank order, the crucial arguments were made without repetition/with cogent word economy, and I felt that the debater's communication seemed to guide my flow along with me. If cards/evidence are in question, you're able to speak of the overall ideologies or motivations driving a certain scholarship/movement, thus "getting behind" the card, in some sense. If a point is made without evidence or without a traditional claim/warrant structure, the debater does so in way that requires translation/interpretation on my part, yet the manner in which I should translate/interpret is also elicited from me/taught to me over the course of the debate. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if a debater with points like this could advance past early elimination debates.

29.0 to 29.4 = the debater did everything from the previous scale, but approached a sort of fluency that amazed me. The debater not only did what they needed to in order to match or outclass their opponents, but I furthermore felt that the debater was connecting with me in such a way where your arguments trigger understanding almost as a gestalt phenomenological experience. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if you did well in any of your other debates, prelim or elim.

29.5 to 30 = If memory serves, I have rarely if ever given speaker points that inch this close to 30. This is because 30 is perfection, without any umms, ahhs, odd turns of phrase, instances where you just lost me or where, given a rebuttal redo, you yourself would probably have done that part of your speech differently. If you are this close to 30 then you have perfect command of your opponent's position, of whatever gap you have to bridge in order for things to 'click' with me, and you are able to talk about your research and core arguments in a way where you yourself are clearly ready to push the scholarship/performance that you draw upon to its next heights, if you are not doing so already.

Objectivity and consistency is an elusive ideal: the reality is that subjectivity and some variability is inevitable. I think a good judge should be attentive in debates and vigiliant with self-assessments, not solipsistically but in light of evolving encounters with others. One of the biggest lessons I got out of my philosophy work was the extent to which all humans are prone to habits of self-deception, on many levels.

***** Debate experience

- Debated policy 4 years in high school (won the TOC)

- Debated policy 4 years at University of Southern California (4-time NDT qualifier, elims in my senior year)

- I was away from debate while in graduate school for philosophy

- I have coached Policy and PF debate at two high schools (Notre Dame and Millburn)

- I have coached Policy debate at two universities (Binghamton and Cornell)

- I am currently Assistant Director of Forensics/head debate coach at Cornell University

***** Some views on certain arguments

Any kind of argument is fine by me: I wait to see how debaters respond to what happens in the round and try not to import any predispositions concerning the default way that I should evaluate things. There are various harms/impacts that can orient a given side’s concern, plus various meta/framing/sequencing arguments that grant, reorient, or block my access to consideration of those harms/impacts, depending on how these issues play out in a debate.

Various kinds of challenges to the resolution and norms of the community are fine by me.

Kritiks: I ran them often in high school/college. I studied philosophy in graduate school.

Counterplans can take various forms: bring it on. See below about having full cp/permutation text for the entire round (to check against ‘morphing advocacies’).

Topicality debates: if an affirmative is trying to present a topical example of the resolution being true, but the negative thinks the aff is not topical then it is the negative’s right to go ‘all in’ on such an argument.

I debated policy advantage/da/impact debates almost as often as kritiks. Any politics link and link turn debates need to be laid out pretty clearly for me - mind your jargon please. The same goes for impact scenarios: who, what, against what country, etc.

For any asserted advocacy or test of competition, the plan text, permutation, etc needs to be clearly articulated in the round and written down so that it can be evaluated. For any card that you want me to read in last rebuttals, you should be telling me what I will find when I read that card and why it matters for the debate. I won't sift through a series of cards if you have just mentioned them/rattled off the citations without making use of them.

***** final notes

I have an aversion towards 'cloud clash', i.e. rattling off 2-3 minutes of overview and then basically hoping that the judge plucks out whatever applies towards some later part of the debate. Line-by-line debate and the elegance of organization that it offers is in decline lately. This has a lot to do with recent norms and computer-debating. This is at the cost of clash and direct refutation, and can come across as being aloof/wanting the judge to do the work for you. So, overviews should be short and then get on with actually responding to individual arguments.

I prefer the email chain over jumping flash drives, when possible. One click of ‘send’ and there is no longer the agonizing wait of flash drive driver installation, throwing jump drives around, etc.

Please communicate with each other, instead of yelling at each other (see my speaker point scale above for the under 27 range).

At the end of any round, I will vote for one team over the other and indicate this with my written ballot. This will be the case for any debate round that I can presently imagine.

That is all I can think of. Feel free to ask me more questions in person.

Brian Rubaie University of Iowa 4 rounds

Last changed on Mon January 29, 2024 at 2:53 PM EDT

brubaie at gmail -- Please add to email chains, thank you

Updated March 2022 for championship season -- congratulations yall!

1. Just do what you do and do it well.I like every "style" of debate and have been lucky to debate, coach, or judge most over these past two decades. Thank you for being stewards of a beautiful game at a pivotal moment in debate history.

2. Above all. The 2NR/2AR should clearly describe what the most important issue(s) in the debate are, why they're the most important issues, and how voting your way best addresses them. Choose, compare, and dig in on a few A+ arguments over a greater volume of A- arguments.

3. Framework. I judge quite a few framework debates and like them. I don't have a strong "lean," but I do notice some slight trends;

-- For the neg, I often find that leaning on fairness/some procedural impact is best. It's the thing the neg's interp most often clearly solves relative to a counter-interp. I think the TVA + aff doesn't solve combo is an effective strategy. I often find that lots of direct pushback vs. case (even without evidence) is necessary and effective. If you don't win some significant defense to the aff it can complicate most paths to victory.

-- For the aff, it helps to clarify a role for each side and to negate/impact turn the neg's interp from there. If you don't have a description of why debating the aff is good and/or how the other team can engage then it can complicate most paths to victory. I am more moved by "here's what the neg could do" than counter-interpreting "resolved."

4. Evidence quality. It's very important, but the key to activating it in my RFD is rebuttal framing. The way evidence is utilized and framed in the final rebuttals is usually the most important variable in how I assess it. The easiest way to hypothesize which evidence I read is a simple if/then: if I hear a clip/quote/even an author name referenced directly in the last speech then I'll 100% read it. Beyond that I'll read for comprehension but that is less likely to drive the outcome of my RFD than direct framing by debaters.

5. Counterplans/theory. Not the worst judge for a funky counterplan. Most common 2AC theory objections seem like competition concerns remedied by kicking the counterplan. I'm not terrible for conditionality bad, but that's almost always because of tech concerns like a flippant block that doesn't answer the 2AC than truth concerns like any real aversion to conditionality (I generally think it's good).

6. Topicality. I haven't really judged a big T throwdown this year. If you prefer someone with no set preferences I'm great, but if you want someone to adhere to consensus I'm afraid I'm unsure what consensus is and will need more explanation than most. Despite my unfamiliarity with many interps, T has generally been an efficient/low-risk/high reward block option in past rounds I've judged.

7. Critiques. The more a K identifies specific parts of the 1AC/2AC that it disagrees with, the better. The aff should attempt to identify which parts of the aff are offense, why only the aff solves them, and why they outweigh. I generally think the aff gets to weigh the aff and most neg framework arguments just seem like impact calculus.

8. National championships!! Congrats again yall :) March 2022 will mark my first tournament judging in person since February 2020. I am thrilled to see you all again and to celebrate all you've done for debate. I know it's the national championship and it's tough to relax, but try as hard as you can to just have fun and enjoy it. Debate goes by way too fast and is very easy to take for granted. Sending all who read this the best of luck and hope you can lift each other up and give each other some really fun, challenging debates to end the season.

Wes Rumbaugh Hire 6 rounds

Last changed on Mon December 30, 2019 at 11:04 AM EDT

General Principles

My main goal as a judge is to resolve arguments made by debaters to form a coherent decision about the issue that the debaters have decided upon. I will attempt to do this, as much as possible, solely based on the arguments presented by the debaters in their speeches and transcribed onto my flow. I will likely read a decent amount of evidence, but will use it mostly as a fact finding/verification mechanism that there was a complete version of that argument presented in the first instance. I will try to be vigilant about policing new arguments, though debaters are encouraged to assist in this task.

Updates

- I only judge two or three times a year and don't actively coach, so my knowledge of topic/argumentative conventions will be limited. I may not be familiar with certain acronyms or shorthand all the cool kids are using. On the other hand, I really enjoy wonky in-depth debates, so feel free to really dig in on topic-specific issues. With regards to the college space topic, you can expect that I will be fairly familiar with the issues that are security/military related (particularly anything to do with missile defense) due to my job, but less familiar with cooperation/exploration parts of the topic.

- Affs that write vague plan texts to avoid relevant counterplans annoy me. These Affs are essentially value statements, not statements of policy. Debating against counterplans is valuable because it provides focus to debates and forces affs to think about important details of the policies they propose. Find some stuff you can defend and put it in your plan.

- When reading evidence after a debate I am looking for very specific things, mostly whether the evidence supports the argument that I have written down made by the debaters. This can also lead to me missing things that hurt the team that read the evidence if I am not looking for it. The best way to ensure I notice these problems is to control the spin of evidence while debating.

- It's pretty hard to get me out of the competing interpretations mindset, even when judging theory debates. Arguments about potential abuse not being a voter and 'it's what we did not what we justify' have been tough in front of me. I think in some ways this is a viscereal reaction I have to these arguments from T debates where they make much less sense. Using the term reasonability to describe these arguments will make them sound more persuasive to me even though there isn't much of a functional difference.

- Debaters would often be better served by going for fewer arguments in front of me. This will give you more time in final rebuttals to resolve arguments by setting up metrics for evaluation and indicting your opponents evidence. When I have to resolve debates with larger numbers of arguments I often feel like I impose a bit too much and my decision doesn't reflect the debating as well.

Topicality

Topicality is a potentially relevant and important argument to every single affirmative. The length of time and number of teams reading an affirmative do not make an aff topical.

To me there has never really been a mutual exclusivity between competing interpretations and reasonability. Topicality is fundamentally about comparing interpretations, and naturally in a competitive format, those interpretations tend to have points of contention. Reasonability to me has always meant a presumption-style bar to clear for differences in those interpretetations, i.e. it's insufficient to win that there is a 1 case difference between Aff and Neg and "small topics are good, judge."

Affirmative teams often lose these debates because they fail to question the aforementioned "small topics good, judge" forumla.

Topicality debates are often very messy to flow. Extra speaker points to debaters who efficiently organize concepts in these debates rather than throwing debate catch phrases around willy nilly.

Disads

Debaters should recognize the strengths and weaknesses of different impacts in the traditional timeframe, magnitude, probablity frames. Your warming impact is not fast so stop wasting your time trying to convince me of that and instead spend it arguing about why magnitude is more important. Feel free to use novel impact evaluation frames outside these golden oldies, just explain why your frame makes sense for the context of the decision at hand.

The link is usually very important to me in these debates. The strength of the link determines if uniqueness can overwhelm it. Rarely will a disad already be literally happening, i.e. totally non-unique, but previous examples of things that should have triggered the link raise the bar for proving the plan is enough to cause a negative impact, and thus raise the threshold for the link.

Counterplans

Debating CP competition forces debaters to think about essential economic concepts like opportunity costs and decisionmaking at the core of policy debate. I will try to keep a very open mind in judging debates about questionably competitive CP's to foster some of these educational values. The affirmative still has a strong gripe about many of these CP's being wholly unfair debate creations, but I would say I am more willing than most to hear the Neg out.

My general feeling about presumption is that it favors less change due to institutional inertia against change.

Most conditionality counterinterps strike me as arbitrary. I tend to think of these debates as simple referendums on conditionality good/bad as long as this is pointed out.

Case Debating

2A's must actually make an attempt to be flowed while they are on the case in the 2AC. Preferably, this is done by responding to the arguments made by the 1NC in the order that they were read.

I like really dorky impact turn debates. I also really appreciate strategies that revolve around case turns. These strategies are both often difficult to pull off and I will likely be more generous to teams that are willing to take on the challenge.

Critiques

I have very little academic background in these arguments, so will likely need more guidance in deciphering what arguments mean. Being able to clarify dense philosophical concepts for me will help me understand the implications of your arguments more fully.

Oddly, these are the debates I see turning on technical problems most often. I think this is related to both sides talking past each other in a lot of these debates. Aff teams should be sure to not drop the standard tricks

Framework arguments are often central to my decisions in these debates. These issues often implicate what impacts are relevant to my decision, what an alternative should have to accomplish, and what link arguments a perm can solve. I think that most compromise framework formulations make negative sense, but if debaters agree to them I will do my best to resolve the debate as they have told me to.

Nontraditional Affirmatives

Negative teams forwarding any version of a framework argument should likely have a topicality component to it. Affirmative teams should be attentive to answering the framework argument made by the negative, not just reading their general A2: Framework block.

When answering topicality style arguments, nontraditional affirmatives should have some sort of counterinterpreation of what the topic means. This interpretation should clarify what debates would be about under this interpretation. I generally think that the issues for debate should be founded in something that all debaters can predict and research before the tournament. The depth of preparation is what differentiates the style of debate that we do from others in my mind. These are values that I will likely be persuaded are important to continue under alternative visions of debate.

Competition questions are very difficult to resolve in many of these debates for critiques and counterplans. The less clear it is to me what the aff will defend, the more likely I will be persuaded by negative arguments against permuations. Framework arguments about what I am deciding between can often be the tipping point for these debates even if neither team labels these arguments as "framework" arguments per se.

It is likely that I will think that arguments that link to methodologies and their application outside of debate are relevant considerations to 1AC's unless they are explicit that their criticism applies only to the debate community. This is especially true if the negative argument is something that is a a core topic impact turn.

The "role of the ballot" and "role of the judge" to me will always be to determine a winner and lose of the debate. Arguments about what I am deciding to determine that winner and loser are welcome, but a team dropping the words "role of the ballot" is not a slayer in my opinion.

Speaker Points

Make debate an enjoyable experience. Seriously, these people are willing to fly across the country to argue with you on weekends. Debate has an awesome group of people that combine intelligence and competitiveness in a way that is unique and incredible. I will use any scale published by the tournament. Most of your speaker points will be determined by the quality of debating done (which includes both answering and asking cross-x questions).

Clipping is a fast way to make me angry. I was really slow and resisted the temptation. You can do it too. I won't have the speech documents in front of me so challenges will have to come from the debaters. Those caught clipping will lose and get zero speaker points. The same is true for those whose allegations are proven false. A recording is required as evidence of clippling so that I have something to evaluate. The debate panoptican has become ever present enough to where this technical hurdle isn't too large.

My flash drive policy is do it fast enough to not annoy me.

Questions: wesrumbaugh@gmail.com

Kristopher Samuel James Madison University 6 rounds

Last changed on Fri February 26, 2021 at 1:31 PM EDT

I debated at Liberty University and currently a grad student at James Madison. I won a speaker award as a novice in highschool, so you can say I am pretty experienced in debate. Also, Octo-Finals of the NDT.

I view debate as a forum to critically test and challenge approaches to change the world for the better. I prefer in depth debate with developed material that you look like you have a grasp of. I will always work hard to evaluate correctly and with little intervention, especially if you are putting in hard work debating.

Learning debate from within the Liberty tradition I began by running conventional policy arguments with a proclivity to go for whatever K was in the round. However, during my final 3 years my partner and I did not defend the resolution and our 1nc looked very similar to our 1ac. Personally, I’m a believer and coach for advocating liberatory and conscious debate practices. However, there will certainly be a gap at times between my personal preferences and practices and what I vote on. I’m not going to judge from a biased perspective against policy arguments, and although tabula rasa is impossible I will try to evaluate the arguments presented with limited interference.

In terms of arguments, I am not the best judge in the back of a room in a policy throw-down type debate. That said, if I do end up in the back of your room, please slow down when explaining the scenarios and just unpack for me. In terms of K on K debate, I am fine. In terms of Clash, I prefer to judge those types of debate.

FRAMEWORK (when run by the neg):

I think that negatives have the ability to and should engage with affirmatives that don’t defend a normative implementation of a plan. Even if the aff doesn’t defend the resolution there are still many substantive things that they will defend that provide ample ground. Although this ground might not be as predictable as your interpretation on FW calls for, it is still predictable enough to meet the threshold that you should be prepared for it.

Having said that, I think I’m one of those few sick individuals that will actually enjoy listening to framework debates as long as they are well developed on both sides. Granted, I will most likely be a harder sell than most, but I don’t think this should dissuade you from going for it if you think it is your best option. You will need to make inroads to the aff’s arguments by articulating ways traditional debate solves for their impacts. If you lose the impact turn to politics you will not win FW debates. You need to make arguments to the effect of traditional policy debate being key to a better form of politics and articulate net benefits to your interpretation from this. I think that the type of education we foster in debate far outweighs the preservation of the game in the strictest sense. That is to say that fairness claims alone are not the way to persuade me on FW. You should instead use claims of fairness to hedge against the impacts from the aff.

However, the main substance of FW debates (for both sides) should be about the competing benefits to the type of education and scholarship different traditions lead to.

For affirmatives concerning framework strategies, your greatest offense will be specific to your particular argument. I will be more easily persuaded if your aff is connected to the topic. I don’t appreciate aff’s that are written that hide their purpose or are exclusively constructed to impact turn FW. While I prefer some kind of relationship to the topic, I don’t think it is necessary. However, you do lose the ability to make an important strategic argument that other plan-less aff’s should employ, which is that your aff is important to topic education. More developed, this argument should be that your aff is necessary to topic education and that without it the debate ground that is left leads to bad forms of scholarship. That is to say that you aff is essentially topical. This argument is both inherently offensive and also provides the ability to make defensive claims against the neg’s offense.

KRITIKS:

This is the type of debate that I am most familiar with and have the largest literature base with (I was a philosophy major). However, messy and poor K debates are probably the worst. The key to winning this kind of debate is making the general link and alternative cards as specific as possible to the aff. I am not saying that the key is reading the most specific evidence (although this would be nice, however most of our authors here don’t write in the context of every affirmative), but that you need to find ways to apply the generic concepts to the specifics of the aff. Without this it is easier to be persuaded by the perm.

Teams are responsible for the discourse and performances in which then engage in given the context of the world we are situated in as well as the argument style the team engages in.

Aff’s have a wide range of arguments they can deploy, and are probably best sticking with the ones they are most comfortable with while doing a good job showing how they relate to the critique.

Concerning the perm, it is usually not enough work to simply show how the two different advocacies could work together. At this point it becomes easy to vote on the alternative as a purer form of advocacy without the risk of links. Aff’s should articulate net benefits to the perm to hedge against residual links and different DA’s to the perm itself. Case should be one of these net benefits, but aff’s need to watch out for indicts to foundational assumptions (concerning methodology, epistemology, ontology etc.) behind your impact claims.

Concerning framework: when was the last time a relatively moderate judge decided that the neg shouldn’t be able to run their K? The answer is probably a long time ago. The majority of these debates are compromised in the 1ar by allowing the K given that the aff gets to weigh their impacts after a lot of wasted time by both teams. I can hardly think of a situation where I would be persuaded to only evaluate the plan verses the status quo or a competitive policy option that excluded the alternative. However, I can envision certain ways that this debate goes down that convinces me to discount the impacts of the aff. In general, however, most of debate is illusory (somewhat unfortunately) and these framework questions are about what type of education is more important. If you chose to run framework with you aff you should keep these things in mind concerning your interpretation for debate.

PERFORMANCE or project verses a similar style:

These debates are some of the most important and essential ones for our community, particularly as more and more teams are participating in this form of advocacy. We need to debate and judge in light of this fact. These are also some of the most difficult debates to have. There are several reasons for this, one of the most poignant being the personal nature of these debates combined with the close relationships that most people amongst this insular community have with one another. We need to realize the value in these opportunities and the importance of preserving the pureness of our goals for the debate community. That might mean in some situations that conceding and having a conversation might be the best use of a particular debate space, and in others debating between different competing methodologies is a correct rout to go. In either case we need to realize and cherish common goals. In light of this it isn’t a bad thing to agree with large portions of your opponent’s speeches or even advocacy. Instead of reproducing the gaming paradigm of traditional debate, where competition is valued over advocacy and winning over ethics, we should instead choose to celebrate the areas of alignment we find. Conceding every round where this happens, however, is not a good idea either. This would send a message to the debate community that debate dies under this framework. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a possible time and place for it though.

When both teams largely agree on certain foundational framework questions efficacious debate can still happen. While making distinctions between advocacies and methodologies is essential for this kind of a debate, you should probably not manipulate and create links that are artificial. Distinctions that are made out of an in depth knowledge of the issues are far more beneficial and consistent. Traditional debate might look at these kinds of rounds as two ships passing in the night, but I think there can be a different metaphor – one where the teams are two ships starting at the recognition that the resolution and the debate community is flawed and that the round can be decided upon which team provides a better methodology and performance to get their ship further in the direction of what we should be as a community and culturally aware individuals.

I am undecided as to whether the aff should be allowed a perm and this should probably be debated out. However, I think that the aff should always have the ability to point out when a negative advocacy is the same as theirs.

THEORY / T:

Any bias I have towards theory will probably result in placing a burden on the team that reads the violation to prove that it should result in a voting issue. However, I don’t like shady stuff done only to be obnoxiously strategic. Don’t do it.

One thing that I definitely do not like is when teams read multiple conditional strategies that contradict each other. This will usually call into question the solvency of the critique if the aff takes advantage of this.

I don’t think that I have a bias concerning reasonability or competing interpretations, but I will probably default to competing interpretations until the aff is shown to be reasonable and from there it is up for debate.

COUNTERPLANS / DA’s:

I am probably liberal concerning counter plan theory, and aside from the question over conditionality most other theory arguments are probably reasons to reject the cp. Aside from traditional theory answers, showing why a certain CP is justified given the specific aff is a good response.

PICS that are specific to the aff are great, however word pics should probably just be articulated as links to the K.

Uniqueness controls the link only if a particular side definitively wins it.

I generally evaluate from an offense / defense standpoint, but it doesn’t mean anything if the CP links less than the plan does to a DA if the CP still meets the threshold for triggering the link. In that world there isn’t greater offense to the CP.

Ultimately, do not let any of this sway you from debating how you prefer. Doing what you think you are best at will probably be your greatest option. If any of this is unclear or you have questions that I have not address below please feel free to ask me before a round. Have fun, debate confidently, and be genuine.

Also, be nice to your opponents. It's not cool to be mean and talking down to your opponents can honestly hurt them both emotionally and physically, and just sets a bad example for younger debaters to adopt those practices. Sometimes, being nice to your opponents/judges, even when you feel they don't deserve it, can be the wisest choice in that moment. And if you gotta be a jerk, you can just yell at me instead.

email: krissamuel319@gmail.com

Abhis Sedhai James Madison University 6 rounds

Last changed on Sat January 20, 2024 at 5:57 AM EDT

Include both emails please: Uhhbeessaidhi@gmail.com; Dukesdebate@gmail.com

Important Things To Consider:

Slow down and be clear. Especially in your rebuttals. Do not speed through your blocks or analytics, as I am an okay flow at best. I recommend including your analytics in your Speech Docs. Tell me why you have won at the top of the 2NR & 2AR and prove it throughout the rest of your speech i.e. make it easy for me to identify what your strongest reason for winning is. Try to put together the story of the debate at the end, otherwise if I have to, then the decision may not be the one you agree with.

Decision

I evaluate the case first. Does the aff solve its impacts, Aff solvency is paramount. In general, I/Ls are the weakest points of affs and DA's. They also are the strongest points when not well contested. So i would look at internal link D and impact D as well as internal link turns first. Regardless of the aff, there is almost never 100% risk of the internal link chain being true, its always probabilistic.

After that I try to find out if the neg has a way for me to filter out Aff offense/solvency. This means I try to determine whether the neg has a counterplan that solves the aff advantages or a k solves case claim. Other things I'd look for is whether the Neg offense turns the Aff offense. Remember that if you go for a case turn, you need uniqueness or else its just defense.

Next I see what the neg's impacts are for their K, DA or case turns. Again, Links and internal links matter. Rarely is the impact the thing that makes it or breaks it. Things to consider here are whether the magnitude of the internal link and the links are high. Inevitability arguments can be quite powerful. Additionally, I am in the camp that whether the uniqueness determines the direction of the link or other way around is fundamentally context dependent. Elections may hinge on a big link because things are muddled now. Lastly, there is the impact level. Turns case args are always well appreciated. They can really neutralize an aff and make debates easy. Impact comparison is obviously helpful; keep an eye out for strategic concessions you can use off of impact defense.

Topicality

I prefer affs that have some relationship to the topic and that generally means more than just adding a couple words from the resolution into your 1AC. That relationship can be debated though. If you are not topical I would prefer to see you provide unique insights about the topic that traditional policy affirmatives miss. I am unlikely to be persuaded that debating topicality is the worst kinds of violence. It might be a very serious problem. You can win impact turns in front of me about why T is a problem, explain your metaphors and have in depth reasons and examples that contextualize how topicality mirrors or causes the problems you highlight. Limits is the internal link I tend to be most persuaded by. Topical versions of the Aff are big for me that actually make inroads into solving harms identified by the affirmative.

Clash Debates

Not likely to be convinced Ks shouldn't be allowed in debate. Winning framework i.e. Util vs structural violence is huge to how I filter out the Impacts of the debate round. I/L turns are important. Affs that make inroads into solving harms the K has identified helps to tip the scales. The Alt does not necessarily have to solve in order for me to vote on a K but it does leave the negative in a tenuous position that the Affirmative should take full advantage of. I am not likely to vote outright on presumption or you link you lose. If you make well evidenced and developed impact claims from the links you win is a different story. Ks that win the "theory" of their critique on a metaphysical/ontological level but do not apply how that alters or shapes the specific impact/solvency scenario the affirmative is narrating can leave the negative in a vulnerable spot. On the flip side, affirmatives should try to take full advantage of how their unique scenario/solvency mechanism overcomes or blunts the link to the critique.

Theory

Slow down. If you're expecting me to evaluate two teams reading blocks at each other at top speed, I am not the judge for you. In these instances, if I do not have the arguments flowed, it will be a lot harder to win theory debates on technical concessions in front of me. Textually AND functionally competitive counterplans AND advantage counterplans are legitimate to me. Otherwise I tend to be a bit less forgiving for CPs that are not both. Having a CP solvency advocate, especially a good one is something that would go a long way in how I view the legitimacy of the CP, not a prerequisite but certainly a boost for you. Unless theory is outright dropped or mishandled I wouldn't make it your A strategy in front of me.

Simon Sheaff Navy 6 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 6:57 AM EDT

Background: 4 years at Baylor University, 1-Time NDT Qualifier. Assistant Coach at the U.S. Naval Academy, 2018-2022, Assistant Coach at Dowling Catholic High School, 2019-Present. Currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science and I work for the Legislative Services Agency in Iowa.

Yes I want to be on the email chain: Sheaffly@gmail.com. Also email me with questions about this paradigm.

Paradigms are difficult to write because there are so many potential audiences. From novice middle schoolers to varsity college debaters, I judge it all. As a result, I want everyone reading this paradigm to realize that it was written mostly in terms of varsity college debates. I think about debate a little differently in high school and a little differently when it comes to novice debates, but I hope this gives you a general idea of how to debate in front of me

== TL;DR ==

Do line-by-line. I do not flow straight down and I do not flow off the speech doc. I am a DA/CP/Case kind of judge. I am bad at understanding kritiks and I am biased towards the topic being good. Be nice.

== Top Level - Flowing ==

It has become clear to me after years of judging that most of my decisions center not around my biases about arguments (which I won’t pretend not to have), but rather around my ability to understand your argument. My ability to understand your argument is directly related to how clean my flow is. Thus, it is in your best interest to make my flow very clean. I used to think I was bad at flowing, but I've come to the conclusion that line-by-line and organized debate has become a lost art. Debaters who learn this art are much more likely to win in front of me.

You are NOT as clear on tags as you think you are. Getting every 4th word of a tag is okay only if every 4th word is the key nouns and verbs. This is never true. So slow down on your tags, I am NOT READING THEM.

I’m not gonna flow everything straight down and then reconstruct the debate afterwards. The 1NC sets the order of the debate on the case, the 2AC sets the order of the debate off case. Abide by that order. Otherwise, I will spend time trying to figure out where to put your argument rather than writing it down and that’s bad for you.

Another tip: Find ways to give me pen time. For example, do not read 4 perms in a row. It’s impossible for me to write down all of those words. Plus, it’s always first and you haven’t even given me time to flip my paper over. And then your next argument is always an analytic about how the CP doesn’t solve and then I can’t write that down either. So stop doing things like that.

== Top Level – Arguments ==

Basic stuff: I love creativity and learning from debate. Make it clear to me how much you know about the arguments you are making. I don’t think this means you have to have cut every card you read, but understanding not just the substance of your argument, but the tricks within them is important.

As I said above, the thing that will be a problem for me is not understanding your argument. Unfortunately, this probably impacts Kritik debaters more than policy debaters, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

I am probably a little more truth > tech than most judges. I believe in technical debate, but I also believe that debate is a place where truth is important. I don't care how many cards you have that say something, if the other team asserts it is not true and they are correct, they win the point.

== Top Level - Community Norms ==

1) For online debate, prep time stops when you unmute yourself and say stop prep. A couple of reasons for this. a) I have no way of verifying when you actually stopped prep if you come out and say "we stopped 15 seconds ago" and b) neither do your opponents, which means that you are basically forcing them to steal prep. I don't like it so that's the rule.

2) Debate is a messed-up community already. Don't make it more so. Be nice to each other. Have fun in the debate while you are disagreeing. If you make it seem like you think the other team is stupid during the debate, it's gonna make me grumpy. I love debate and I love watching people do it, but I hate confrontation and I hate it when people get angry about debates that don't matter that much in the long term. Be nice. Please.

3) This is mostly for high schoolers, where I see this issue all the time: If you are going to send a document without your analytics in it, making the version of the doc without the analytics in it IS PREP TIME. You don't get 45 seconds to send the document. Y'all are GenZ, I know you can send an email faster than that. You get 15 seconds before I break in and ask what the deal is. You get 20 seconds before I start prep again.

== Specifics ==

Affirmatives...

...Which Defend the Topic - I enjoy creativity. This includes creative interpretations of topicality. You should also read my thoughts on DAs as they apply to how you construct your advantages. Clear story is good.

...Which Do Not Defend the Topic - I am likely not a great judge for you. I think I may have a reputation as someone who hates these arguments. That reputation is not unearned, I built it up for years. But over time I’ve come to become a lot more accepting of them. There are many of these affirmatives that I think provide valuable debate. The problem I have is that I cannot figure out an interpretation of debate that allows the valuable "K Affs," but limits out the affs that I think are generally created to confuse their way to a win rather than provide actual valuable propositions for debate. I will always think of framework as a debate about what you JUSTIFY, rather than what you DO, and every interpretation I have ever seen in these debates simply lets in too much of the uneducational debates without providing a clear basis for clash.

I realize this sounds like I have been totally brainwashed by framework, and perhaps I have. But I want to be honest about where I'm at. That said, I think the above makes clear that if you have a defensible INTERPRETATION, I am willing to listen to it. You should also look at the section under kritiks, because I think it describes the fact that I need the actual argument of the affirmative to be clear. This generally means that, if your tags are poems, I am not ideologically opposed to that proposition, but you better also have very clear explanation of why you read that poem.

Negative Strategies

Framework: See discussion above. Good strategy. Impact, impact, impact. Education > procedural fairness > any other impact. “Ks are bad” is a bad argument, “their interpretation makes debate worse and uneducational” is a winnable argument. Topical version of the aff goes a long way with me.

Topicality: Good strategy. Impact, impact, impact. Case lists. Why that case list is bad. Affirmatives, you should talk about your education. I love creative interps of the topic if you defend them. But for the love of god slow down.

Disads: Absolutely. Well constructed DAs are very fun to watch. However, see truth vs. tech above – I have a lower threshold for “zero risk of a [link, impact, internal link] etc.” I love Politics DAs, but they’re all lies. I am up-to-date on the news. If you are not, do not go for the politics DA using updates your coaches cut. You will say things that betray that you don’t know what you’re talking about and it will hurt your speaks. Creative impact calc (outside of just magnitude, timeframe, probability) is the best impact calc.

Counterplans: I'm tired of the negative getting away with murder. I am VERY willing to listen to theory debates about some of these crazy process CPs which compete off of a net benefit or immedicacy/certainty. Theory debates are fun for me but for the love of god slow down. Otherwise, yeah, CPs are fine.

Kritiks: Eh. You can see the discussion above about K affs. I used to be rigidly ideological about hating the K. I am now convinced that the K can make good points. But because I was so against them for so long, I don’t understand them. I still think some Kritiks (here I am thinking mostly of French/German dudes) are basically designed to confuse the other team into losing. Problem is, I can’t tell the difference between those Kritiks and other Kritiks, because all Kritiks confuse me.

Very basic Ks are fine. Realism is bad, heg is bad, capitalism is bad, I get. Get much beyond that and I get lost. It's not that I think you're wrong it's that I have always been uninterested so I never learned what you're talking about. I cannot emphasize enough how little I understand what you're talking about. If this is your thing and I am already your judge, conceptualize your K like a DA/CP strategy and explain it to me like I have never heard it before. Literally, in your 2NC say: "We believe that X is bad. We believe that they do X because of this argument they have made. We believe the alternative solves for X." I cannot stress enough how serious I am that that sentence should be the top of your 2NC and 2NR. I have had this sentence in my judge philosophy for 3 years and this has been the top of the 2NC once (in a JV debate!). I do not know how much clearer I can be. Again, I am not morally opposed to Kritiks (anymore), I just do not understand them and I will not vote for something I do not understand. I believe you need a good link. Yes, the world is terrible, but why is the aff terrible. You also need to make your tags not a paragraph long, I never learned how to flow tags that were that long.

Lindsey Shook James Madison University 3 rounds

Last changed on Tue January 2, 2024 at 11:43 AM CDT

EMAIL lindseyshook@gmail.com

Currently - Director at the University of Oklahoma

Previously – Director at James Madison and Univ. of Central Florida

Way previously – graduate student coach at Univ. of Kansas

Long long ago – debated for the Univ. of Central Oklahoma

BIG PICTURE

My default way of viewing a debate is as follows – I am deciding between hypothetical worlds. In general debates are either about the world at outside of our activity (fiated plans, CPs, and critical advocacies that are about what society at large should do or think or change). Or debates are about debate as an activity (topicality, theory, critical advocacies that are about endorsing or rejecting particular kinds scholarship or argument or forms of presentation).

In either case I assume I am being asked what is the preferrable world? The world where the aff plan is enacted into law? The status quo? The world of debate where everyone meets your version of the topic? The world of debate where no one reads conditional advocacies? Etc.

Arguments that directly challenge this are things like reject the team for reasons of fairness or because they did something problematic. I have and am certainly willing to vote on those reasons but they need to be clear and specific to what has gone wrong in the debate you are in. Ideally not a generic set of reasons (at least by the last rebuttals).

I can certainly be persuaded to understand debate in a different way or to evaluate your arguments from a different perspective but just so you know that is where I start.

OTHER IMPORTANT NOTES

- - A drop matters if you make it matter and if it actually implicates the round

- - I am not offense defense oriented. You can win on defense alone particularly against poorly written advantages and disadvantages.

- - It is hard but not impossible to win you link you lose style debates. You are better off with some version of an alt or a more specific framing argument in front of me.

- - I flow on paper. I can generally keep up with speed but the less you sound like a person reading fast and the more you sound like a robot spitting out random words with no rhythm or cadence the harder it is for my brain to process what you are saying. So if you know you are in the wordwordwordwordwordword spreading habit either slow down a bit or work on getting some normal speech patterns into the reading.

- - I’m old so I try to line arguments up on my flow. This makes me annoyed with overviews and people who don’t do the line by line. I will still flow it but I will try to line things up until I can’t keep up with you and line things up. Then I will flow straight down but it makes my decision take longer at the end so be warned.

SPECIFICS

Case – more case debate is good. Always. In every kind of debate. The more specific and in depth the better. I think that is coldest take in debate at this point.

T – I mostly judge clash debates and I don’t hate judging them or T. If the aff can be used as offense against your topicality argument you would do well to have specific arguments to neutralize that (not all TVAs or do it on the neg etc. are good and having a bad one is a waste of time). You can win fairness comes first. Again it helps to have some specificity about why this round or affs like this one are so bad. I am not convinced affs have to have a counter interpretation to win. Impact turning the neg. interpretation can be enough.

Kritiks – framework against the K from the side of a traditional policy aff is generally meh. You get to weigh your impacts if you win that those mechanisms are good. Util? policy making? Extinction? If those are good things to value when I make a decision win that. Fairness is useless as a standard. They get a K. Stop it. See above for alts are preferable. Floating PICs are generally useless. Most K tricks are tricks for a reason they don’t work in the face of answers. I still have no idea what no perms in a method debate is supposed to mean.

CPs – I love theory and think it is absolutely crucial for most 2As (including critical affs) to help fend off counter advocacies and counter plans. CPs are probably the easiest way to neutralize the aff – I probably care more about how they solve than most judges so more time on solvency deficits in both directions is a good idea.

Disads – great arguments with often terrible evidence and spin. If your ev is bad debate well enough that I don’t have to read it. You are better being honest about your evidence and making up for it with spin and common sense than pretending your cards are amazing only for me to figure out that’s not true.

Joe Skoog Gonzaga University 4 rounds

Last changed on Sat October 2, 2021 at 4:33 PM MDT

jrskoog17@gmail.com

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer

I debated at Brophy College Prep and then debated at Gonzaga University.

I now coach at Gonzaga in Spokane, WA.

Everything under this are my defaults but obviously any argument that is contrary to any of these override my presuppositions. I'll try not to intervene to the best of my ability.

The Highlights:

I don't like when teams read evidence from debate coaches. It is absurd and self-referential.
Tech over truth
I'll call for ev, but only if it is a key part of the debate or I have been told to look at it. I put a lot of stock into the quality of evidence when deciding debates.
I default to reject the arg for everything except conditionality unless told otherwise.
Awesome strategic moves will be rewarded.
For the love of Przemek Karnowski, please don't cheat.
I'm not particularly expressive, but it doesn't mean I hate your argument, I'm just thinking to myself.
Keep your shoes on in the round.

Specifics:

Evidence:
Read warrants please. I will reward fantastic ev. Quality outweighs quantity. Use spin and compare your evidence to theirs.

Case/Impact Defense:
I do tend to default to less change and think that there is such thing as zero risk of the aff. Using very smart case defense arguments is awesome. Internal link defense and solvency arguments are, in my opinion, underused. That makes me sad. So please use them.

Counterplans:
I'm a huge theory nerd so I'm down with being convinced something is competitive. HOWEVER, I do think that a lot of counterplans that are commonly run are not competitive. Granted, I ran Reg Neg and Consult Russia a lot, and I understand why they are necessary sometimes, but I will reward case specific counterplans with net benefits that justify the status quo. To be clear: Artificial net benefits be dumb, yo. Counterplans should have solvency advocates--preferably normative one--which will go a long way in defending the theoretical legitimacy of the advocacy.

Against big stick affs, don't read stupid PICs like "the" or "should" because then I will cry. And I am an ugly crier.

I won't kick a conditional CP in the 2NR unless I'm explicitly told to in the debate.

Disads:
For politics, gotta have the goods evidence-wise.
Political capital key cards should say that political capital is key.
I think that an aff shooting apart the internal link chain of a stupid scenario is sufficient.
I would really like it if your DA was an actual opportunity cost to the plan.
Link controls direction of uniqueness.

Kritiks:
I exclusively went for the K almost all of college, so I know a lot of the literature. I've read a lot of Foucault, Baudrillard, Nietzsche and Deleuze but I won't pretend I know all K authors equally. Please explain it in relation to the aff, not just in high theory terms.
I don't think I'm the federal government. I am a sleepy coach judging a debate. However, I can be persuaded differently by args made in the debate.
Getting to weigh the aff is distinct from a "role of the ballot" argument because Role of the ballot determines how/what I am voting on or evaluating.
I love highly technical K debate ie. LINE BY LINE and clash.
Well researched and case specific Ks will make me smile.

Theory:
I really do enjoy theory debates if it is delivered at a rate consistent with the arguments. For example, if you are saying conditionality is bad in the 1AR don't speed through it because it is difficult to flow in its entirety. I will vote on unconditionality good, or 5 conditional CPs good. Debate is debate. If a theory violation is well impacted and explained, I will vote on it.

Topicality:
I default to competing interpretations unless told to evaluate it differently. I love when people read a lot of cards on tea, or have a hyper specific topicality argument. I evaluate it like a DA, so impacting things such as limits and ground is important.

Framework vs K affs:
I'm down to listen to really anything, and I was usually on the side of the team answering framework for most of my career. That being said, I really really enjoy framework debates. I think that "no Ks" isn't very convincing, but there should probably some agreed upon stasis point. This doesn't mean you need to defend the hypothetical implementation of plan in front of me, but if the other team wins that fiat is a good model of education, I will vote on it.

Jamie Snoddy Minnesota 2 rounds

Last changed on Sun November 3, 2019 at 10:18 AM CDT

Hello, I'm Jamie Snoddy (pronounced like snotty, but with the [d] sound). I'm a community coach for Patrick Henry HS and also a coach at the University of Minnesota. I did a year of debate at Patrick Henry and debated two years for UMN. I graduated in 2018 with a Bach. in Linguistics (Puns get you extra speaks). Please add me to the email chain with the following email address: snodd003@umn.edu

Overview

Learning is the main focus of debate. I like arguments to be presented in a clear and logical manner (it can even be flawed logic, as long as it's coherent and feasible, I think it's legit.). So, there aren't many things I'm against teams running. TELL ME WHAT TO VOTE FOR PLZ! Impact Calc and Roll of the ballot args are great.

Place a higher precedence on presenting evidence clearly and consistently (so not reading things incoherently fast unless e.v.e.r.y s.i.n.g.l.e t.h.i.n.g. is in your speech doc. Which it shouldn't be. If I'm not looking at you and typing, you're good. If I'm looking at you and leaned back, I'm waiting for flow-able info. If I'm looking at you and nodding I'm listening to good points that I feel have already been flowed.

Full disclosure: I'm a sucker for wipeout/death good args, idc which side it is lbvs. Maybe it's the high school emo in me. Best way to combat these args, to me, is go all into VTL and some change better than no change and, if applicable, the ppl who are getting effed over by sqou violence still don't want to die... then that gets into cruel optimism, yada yare yare.

Case

I'm fine with no plan affs. You just have to reeeeeally be ready to answer FW and T. You need to convince me of why running this aff w/o a plan will not work within the resolution. I'm a former 2A so sympathize with defending your case baby from the big scary neg lolz jk.

CPs

As long as the Neg can keep track of all the CPs they have, have all the cps you want. Just be ready to defend needing all of the cps if the aff chooses to go that route. Condo... is... a thing... I guess. The more cps you have, the high chance I'll believe condo bad args, cuz having that many multiple worlds is sorta abusive. So if you're running 7 or 8 cps, they better be dispo or uncondo, or have really great answers for why having that many condo worlds is necessary...

DAs

Fine and necessary args in policy.

Great! I love Ks and really love non-basic Ks. I don't like flimsy, vague alts. Even if it is as simple as Reject "x", I need to know what exactly what the world of the alt will look like and why it should be preferred to the aff's.

Topicality, to me, is different than theory (I flow them sep) and as long as voters are attached to it, I'll consider the args.

Theory

Is a prior question and needs to be addressed before talking about anything else. If we can't agree on how we talk to each other, then what does anything we say matter? ROB args are persuasive if voters are attached to it.

Speaker Points

Switching between hs and coll. debate sometimes throws me of, but I try to be really generous with them? If you're chill, courteous and not a butt during a round you get higher speaks.

Cutting people off aggressively and being unnecessarily snarky looses you speaks. I get if you're having a bad day or are going through some things that it may get taken out here in our community. If that's the case, just give the people in your round a heads up that you're in a mood.

Michael Souders James Madison University 3 rounds

Last changed on Thu January 12, 2023 at 9:28 AM EDT

Mick Souders

Director, James Madison University

20th year judging NDT/CEDA debate

micksouders@gmail.com

Updated 11/2/2022

CNTRL F "Short Version" for a summary version.

CNTRL F "Long Version" for rambling long version.

CNTRL F "Critical Identity Team" for full views on that.
CNTRL F "Ethics Challenge" for full views on that.
CNTRL F "Speaker Point Scale" for full views on that

CNTRL F "Procedure Notes" for info about card procedures and humbugs about CX.

*SHORT VERSION*

Debate is game with a very serious purpose: teaching critical thinking, argument and research skills, subject knowledge, and tactical and strategic perspectives. I will take your debate seriously.

-I try to be objective, not neutral. I see job my as evaluating the disagreement in debate using my critical thinking abilities and, if necessary, my prior knowledge and experience.

-Disclosure is a courtesy, not a rule. I will not vote on an argument about a team not disclosing. I will only vote on a mis-disclosure argument if you can show its (a) factual and (b) intentionial.

-The topic is important to promote clash. However, I often vote for non-topical teams because topicality is debate-able and teams arguing for the topic must be able to win the topicality argument.

-I am not likely to be persuaded debate is a bad activity. Criticism of how we debate is different than saying debate is bad.

-I flow on paper. Iexpect debaters to flow/note take and do not think opponents are required to provide pristine speech docs or analytics.

-I do not usually read speech docs during the speech. I read lots of cards after debates/in prep time.

-I believe I am a good judge for a variety of K teams but most K teams disagree. This is probably due to my views on topicality. I think that establishing a negative framework for impact evaluation and alternative solvency are the two most important aspects of winning a criticism.

-I am burden of proof oriented. I expect claims to be supported, not presumed. That means I vote on no risk of a link or no solvency more often than other judges.

-I am not a good judge for self-referential/circular arguments (i.e., 'Vote for what's best for me and I'm the judge of what's best for me').

-CX is not prep time. Prep time is not CX time. I will end CX if you aren't using it. I will not listen to prep time CX. Blow off your CX and see the results in your points.

-I have of views on counterplans and counterplan theory. If that matters to you, see below.

-I often look and sound upset, annoyed or angry but I am actually rarely these things in any meaningful sense. My thinking face looks like an angry scowl. My slightly confused face looks like I'm seriously enraged. My 'slightly annoyed for 2 sec' face looks like I'm about to toss over a desk. Sorry about this. I was born with this face.

*END SHORT VERSION*

LONG VERSION

Mea culpa

I believe that I’m out of step with contemporary debate. I feel it almost every time I judge. It’s not about the type of arguments that are made, it’s about how I judge them. I try to be even-handed and fair to both sides, but compared to most debaters’ expectations: I’m too opinionated about what constitutes adequate support, I’m too willing to dismiss badly supported arguments, I have too high of standards of engagement between two teams, I expect extra-ordinary claims to have at least decent proof, I don’t think repeating a prior block is a respectable extension of an argument even if the other team didn’t respond, I don’t think 2-3 sentences is usually enough to win a major argument. I do think you need to explain the claim, warrant, data for arguments in rebuttals, even when dropped. I don’t think a dropped assertion is necessarily true for the purposes of debate. I will ignore arguments I cannot understand and I have a coherence standards for positions and arguments. I think lots of ‘defensive’ arguments end up being terminal for positions.

Which is all to say that I am probably far too opinionated and interventionist for most debaters’ tastes. I like to think of it as being a principled critic of argumentation, but call it what you will. Does that make me a bad judge? Well, I certainly don’t think I’m what debaters want. I don’t know. But I am this way because I feel like these principles matter and I find them impossible to ignore.

Philosophy

Debate is the kiln in which minds are strengthened into ever better forms. The goal of each debate is not necessarily to find the right answer to a question, but an exploration of ideas and an experiment with concepts, enabled by the unique forum of debate that protects us from the full consequences of the ideas we advocate. It is the freedom of debate which enables it to be so effective. Hence, debate is a political project as well as an educational one. It is a democratic experiment. In it, we exercise our freedom to advocate for ideas—and to oppose them—in the spirit of putting our minds to work on a wide set of problems.

As a judge, I try to evaluate the quality of ideas and argumentation that debaters present. I do not have a preference for policy debate, critique debate, non-traditional debate or whatever any wishes to call their format. I do ask that ideas are presented coherently, cogently, and be well-supported by epistemologically-appropriate evidence.

I do have some argument biases (charted, per others):

Killing/letting die on purpose good--------------------------X--Killing/letting die on purpose bad.
Children are good-X--------------------------------Children are bad.
Ha funny debate only stupidity good!------------------------X-Ha funny debate only stupidity bad!
Topic ------X------------------No Topic.
Conditionality Good--X------------------Bad
ESR good for debate--------------------X---ESR is nonsense.
Offense/defense paradigm yes----------------X----no.
Alt-less Ks yes-----------------------X---no.
Stupid contrived fiat on CPs yes!-----------------------X--no.
Asserting another person has no role in debate: YES good strat-------------------------X---no.
Fairness It's an objective truth--------X--------------------It doesn't exist & we shouldn't consider it.

Here's that in another form.

I tend to dislike misanthropic arguments that ask me to kill people or increase suffering. If you read any argument says people dying is irrelevant, mass suffering is good for people or that children should not exist or be killed, you simply do not want me as a judge.

I tend to dislike arguments that rely on ideas almost everyone knows are wrong or originate out of dubious sources.

I tend to dislike arguments that attempt to stop rather than promote the development of ideas.

I tend to think the concept of a resolution is good and affirmatives should be topical, although I vote for non-topical affirmatives when it seems warranted by the debate (see note).

I tend to err negative on many theory questions, except when it comes to fiat. In that, I believe that international fiat, state fiat, and object fiat are unfair to affirmatives but to be honest these don't seem like voting issues, just reasons the counterplan should be ruled out.

I do not believe your assertion alone constitutes an argument that I am required to respect.

I tend to place great weight on cross-examination.

I tend to dislike arguments or positions that indicate that the other team has no place in the conversation.

I’ll limit how much I inject my own ideas into decisions but I will not prohibit my evaluative skills from the debate. I demand greater argumentative power from what appear to me to be counterintuitive arguments. I try to be reflective about my biases but I will not defer to other persons to make decisions for me.

I fundamentally believe in standards of decency and respectful treatment of colleagues and a sporting attitude toward competition. I understand that debate is serious. I realize that civility is sometimes a policing standard and there are limits to its application. But I persist in believing debaters should be free to make their arguments free from undue personal insults, discriminatory remarks, interruption, intimidation, or slurs regarding their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, sex, sexual behavior, religion or socioeconomic standing. I am quite willing to step in and object or refuse to continue to participate in debates in which such activity continues.

Speaker Point Scale (novice doesn't follow this scale):

2021-Present Averages:
Open: 28.49; JV: 28.05; Novice: 28.31

29.5-29.9 Very to extremely high quality speeches that I would consider very good even for Copeland/Top 5 plaque competitors.

29-29.4 Excellent speeches that significantly advanced your team's chances of winning. Good to very good speeches for First Round-level competitors.

28.6-28.9 Above average speeches that I would expect to see out of clearing teams. Good to very good speeches for competitors at the NDT qualifier level.

28.1-28.5 Average to somewhat above average speeches that contributed to your team's chances of winning. Slightly above to somewhat below average speeches for the NDT qualifier level.

27.6-28 Mediocre to average speeches that only moderately advanced your team's position toward winning the debate.

27.1-27.5 Fairly poor speeches that did not significantly advance your teams position in the debate and likely did not sound good.

26.5-27 Poor speeches that had a negative impact on your team's chances of winning.

< 26.4 You did something very insulting and/or turned a near-certain win into a certain loss via your speech

**I am moderately hearing impaired. This should not affect you except that it helps if you enunciate clearly and project your voice. Rooms with echoes or ambient noise pose particular problems for me. If you see me moving around the room to hear, it's not necessarily you, it may be me trying to get a better angle to hear you.

Critical Identity Teams

Originally written in 2014 so maybe out of date. I haven't revised it in quite a while. Most of it still accurate to me even if the language and named arguments are a bit out of date.

I find it a nearly undeniable fact that the growth of critical identity arguments has dramatically increased the inclusiveness of our community in the past ten years. This is meaningful change. So I’m taking the time to write this extensive addendum to my judging philosophy because I think it’s important to recognize that there are terminological differences and stylistic differences in debate right now and I want to help the teams that are helping make our community more inclusive feel more comfortable in front of me.

Teams that make critical identity arguments are widely varied and so I’m reluctant to comment on them (or define them), except that I have noticed that those I think of *provisionally as critical identity teams are sometimes surprised by my decisions (for and against them). After some thought, I think it is because of a certain divergence in the judging pool. Critical identity teams, roughly speaking, share a common judging pool that emphasizes certain things, takes others for granted and has certain expectations. My background in traditional critique and policy debating has emphases and vocabularies different from this pool. In a few decisions that a few teams have not liked, I’ve explained my perspective and it’s sometimes been rejected or received push back and even dismissal. That’s regrettable. I want these teams (you, if you’re reading this) to see me as pointing them to the path to victory with me as the judge and I encourage these teams to see me as an opportunity rather than as a barrier.

So, rather than wait until a post-round to translate my views—which is too late—I’m going to post them here. It’s long, yes, but I put some effort and thought into this.

Overview over, here are my notes:

NEG:

It’s probably true that it’s easier for you to win on the negative because there’s no topical barrier for you. There’s a huge exception to this, noted in the affirmative section. Here’s my hints:

-Argue the alternative. This is the number one point of difference between myself (and judges like me) and the pool of judges I’ve noted above. Winning a link and impact isn’t enough. You’re going to need to focus on extending, arguing, and explaining how your alternative solves your link arguments, how it solves the case and/or how it is the ‘better’ choice in the face of affirmative case arguments. If your alt solves the case, explain how. If it doesn’t solve the case, explain why that doesn’t matter. Your alternative needs to solve the link to the case, because if not, there’s simply no uniqueness to your arguments against the affirmative—they are true whether I vote affirmative or negative. That doesn’t mean that you need to solve the WHOLE link. For example, if the law is fundamentally anti-black, then even if the alternative doesn’t solve the law being anti-black it might provide us with a path to a non-law based perspective or something of that sort. When I’ve voted AFF against critical identity teams, there’s often been a post-round attempt at a gotcha question: “So, you just voted for a law you agree is anti-black/queer/ableist?” And I’ve answered: “No. Voting for an anti-black/queer/ableism law was inevitable because the alternative didn’t solve any bit of anti-blackness/queerness/ableism.” I will say that 90% of the time I’ve come to the conclusion NOT because I evaluated a contested debate about the alternative but because the negative barely extended the alternative or did not do so at all. I'm generally unpersuaded by "reject" arguments without some value to the rejection.

-Argue the case. Affirmatives often solve impacts—and those impacts can outweigh. If you don’t just let that slide, the fact that they CAUSE another impact cannot be easily dismissed. I watched a debate at the NDT where the critical race team just slayed the policy affirmative by reading phenomenal cards that indicating the structural, racist roots of climate change and consumption patterns. It was excellent. However, that doesn’t happen very often. Being anti-queer is bad…but so is climate change that kills millions, particularly vulnerable populations. It’s easier to pick which one I must address first if the chances of the cases chances of solving climate change are either mitigated or critiqued in a fashion that undermines its solvency.

-Frame the impact. A certain group of judges might think that if you win “social death now” that means basically all the impacts of the case are irrelevant. I don’t think it’s nearly that easy. Think of it this way—you, the debater, are often in the population that your argument says is socially dead. Yet I think that your life matters. And I want to stop bad things from happening to you despite your state of partial or total social death. So, you must say MORE than social death. You may explain, for example, that social death perpetually PERMITS radical violence at a constant or increasing rate; that massive real violence is a terminal and immutable consequence of social death. This does not, by the way, mute the entirety of offense gained by an opponent’s policy action, but in combination with a won alternative provides a nice pairing of a systemic impact with strong empirical grounding and very high future risk with a method of addressing that risk. Some framing evidence helps here.

-Fiat is illusory isn’t a real argument (nor is the affirmative argument that the “The plan REALLY happens!”). I get the plan doesn’t happen but it’s a worthwhile thought experiment that enables us to discuss the merits of the plan. I don’t AUTOMATICALLY assume this, but if the affirmative team frames their case as an representative anecdote of how we can learn to engage in politics, or how this kind of debate informs politics, either in general or in specific, I tend to agree that’s reasonable since that is the whole reason I think debate is educational. THUS! The KEY is is not to argue, “Fiat is illusory, they lose on presumption”—which is a bad argument—but to argue that given that they are teaching a BAD politics and that you present a better one. Your better framework may include arguing for the abandonment of plan-based politics.

-Frame the meaning of winning a key premise. To some extent, I find that to be true of anti-blackness or anti-queerness or anti-intersex, etc. If you win that blackness is an ontology and anti-blackness is a political ontology (although, to be honest, I’m not sure I understand what a political ontology is) you’ve won a premise that gets you a long way in the debate. However, you haven’t WON the debate, per se (nor does losing this premise necessarily lose you the debate). If society is anti-black, does that means politics is irrelevant? My presumption is NO. If you are black and live in anti-black civil society, I still presume that it would be better to do things that blunt the force of anti-blackness with ‘liberal’ policies. Now, you have a huge advantage if you win your premise because in a larger sense you’re winning that liberalism is doomed—but you need to make that clear. Finally, you should work at backstopping this argument. I’ve seen teams go all-in on winning queer is ontological without looking at how they could win if they did not win this premise. I saw a team at the NDT nicely win a debate where they lost that blackness is ontological by arguing that even if its socially constructed, its so deeply embedded that it can’t be extracted and that the alternative resolved it best. Well done.

AFF

Most of this is about topicality because once you’re beyond that barrier you’re just in regular debateland and the above guidelines apply.

Topicality

First hint with me on this overall—persuade your opponent not to go for topicality. When negative teams don’t go for topicality against blatantly non-topical teams, I have a ridiculous affirmative voting record. The reasons are obvious: Links and competition are hard to generate when you’re not topical. That’s why topicality is vital for those teams. But let’s ignore that for a moment.

-Topicality: First hint: Be topical. I think it’s possible. I particularly think it’s possible to defend the topic from the outside—I think it’s possible for queer victims of police violence to argue police who harass queers should be arrested by the state without being or endorsing the state. I think you can be topical and argue that you shouldn’t need to answer process arguments. As the coach of repeated, successful topical K teams I don’t think topicality automatically means role-playing in the strong sense. I also think these debates are essential. Surely it can’t be the case that all critical identity positions of value require non-topicality and I’m very interested to hear the ways critical queer, race, gender, intersex values can be met with a topical plan. ***HOWEVER, if you have me as a judge and you’re NEVER topical, it’s probably a bad idea to just toss a plan in. It’s bad because you haven’t thought through how to defend yourself against arguments.

-Ok, so you’re not topical. Let’s talk about my presumptions on that. The main barrier for you here is that I don’t believe that any state action 100% pollutes any action. That doesn’t mean the state is good. Far from it. But considering the fact that many of the teams that refuse to ever agree with the topic attend STATE UNIVERSITIES with coaches receiving paychecks from THE STATE it’s hard for me to understand why talking about state action is impossible. That’s not a killer argument, but it does seem to hint that SOME state actions are not entirely poisonous. This is my own view and while it does color my T arguments, it’s not insurmountable. Here’s how you overcome that.

-Don’t be anti-topical. It’s a lot easier for me to vote for you if you’re not anti-topical. If you are anti-topical, say, your affirmative says (last year’s topic) that prostitution is bad (and implies shouldn’t be legal) then it’s going to be much harder for you to win in front of me. The reason is simply that you’ve staked out negative ground. You’ve admitted there’s a debate to be had on something and chosen NOT to take your assigned side. You refuse to take up the affirmative side yet you functionally attempt to force the other team to do just that.

- Being PRO-TOPICAL still requires you to be smart. The problem is that the other team will ask, “Why NOT be topical?” You need an answer to that question that isn’t just “State messed up, yo.” You CAN argue that. You CAN win that argument. But I’m going to want nuanced reasons that are specific to a particular to a place and time. Saying, “The US government is messed up and did bad things” seems to me to beg the question of what it SHOULD do to change. So, to overcome that you’ll need to explain why it’s better to debate about your adjacent discussion of topical things rather that government action AND you’ll need to explain why that’s an AFFIRMATIVE argument and not a negative argument.

-Answer their offensive arguments on T. Limits, ground, fairness, predictability, education—these are real things in debate and they matter. You will do well to answer these arguments with both offense and defense. I often see all offense (limits debate protect white folks) without any defense. PARTICULARLY answer their arguments about why topical/legal debating is good, in addition to the regular T argument set. These cards tend to be pretty good so your responses need to be good as well. “Fairness for who?” is a good question—but it needs to be answered rather than just leaving it open ended. On your education arguments you need to move beyond “All our arguments are educational” to explaining why you lead to good, predictable debates that are relatively fair and deeply educational. I am in agreement with the point that critical identity arguments are intrinsically educational (see my intro to this whole thing) but the bigger question is how do they create good debates where both sides explore issues in depth? There are really good reasons that this is the case—you need to make those arguments.

-Address topical version of the affirmative and understand that the legal debates good is a net benefit to this argument. A good team T will argue that you do not have a right to the perfect affirmative, just one that lets you discuss similar key issues. Also understand that “State bad” isn’t necessarily an answer. If can be, but even the anti-statist needs to understand the state. As a former anti-capitalist advocate, I still needed lawyers to get me out of jail and I still needed knowledge of the law to protect myself from the police as much as could be managed..

-Realize that “No Topical Version” is a trap. If you say no topical version, you are setting yourself up to link to the “this is anti-topical” argument, i.e., that your aff is wholly unpredictable and in the reverse direction of all of the regular topic negative arguments. The “no topical version of the aff” made by the 2AC sounds like, “Our whole affirmative advantage is illegitimate.” If you say “yes, topical version” then obviously you’ve also set yourself up. At the very least, so don't assert the 'no topical version' and set yourself up for this debate intentionally.

-Have an answer for the topical research burden argument. Critical identity teams are fond of arguing that there are many different versions of their arguments—TRUE! Which for teams going for T just shows how large the research burden becomes to prep for every single iteration—every different case is its own topic area. You need offensive and defense arguments. The argument that “You just don’t want to answer/research queer/black/feminist/trans/ableism arguments” is a good starting point but it’s not enough (and solved by topical version of the affirmative). “Case list” is also not answer to this argument, because research burden isn’t a question of predictability. Don’t fall into the trap of listing off a bunch of crappy positions you refuse to defend (state good, cap K) as neg ground.

-Find A CERTAIN TOPICALITY. Optimally, a strategic team will find a way to be topical, yet not defend the state. FYI, I absolutely do not think that having a plan that mentions what the US or USFG should do obligates you to defend “the State”. I think it obligates you to defend that particular state action. However, I think you can go beyond that. I think you can defend the plan as a critical intervention, as an imaginative starting point, as epistemological experiment etc. without defending state action in other ways. Now, you’ll have to defend your plan (or a topical advocacy statement—you need not have a PLAN, per se) in SOME ways but probably not a lot of different things.

-Impact turn topicality. If all else fails, impact turn and be extremely offensive against it. Disallow me from voting for T—you can complete this tactic by providing defense against their impact arguments while working on your own. Defense wins championships.

Hints not related to topicality

Once you’re past the topicality gate, you’re in the realm of normal non-procedural arguments and I have few suggestions in this area to avoid common errors (certainly not universal errors) I see in debates in front of me:

-Back up outrage with arguments. Excellent critical identity teams do this…but younger/lesser teams seem to struggle with this. Don’t get so wound up in your position that it stops you from making your argument.

-Antagonizing your opponent won’t sway me. There are reasons that you may choose to antagonize your opponent, some of which may be strategic, some not, some both. But as for how I view the debate, it will not contribute to me voting for you. See note in original philosophy about respectful behavior toward colleagues.

-Make the history lesson pay. Sometimes these debates collapse into scattered historical anecdotes that are only lightly tied together—get full credit for your analysis of history by investing time in explaining its application in this case.

-Don’t rely too heavily on enthymeme (don’t rely on me filling in the blanks for you). Too often, I hear judges (on MANY sides) say, “I guess I just know what they’re talking about.” No. You have an explanatory burden to help me cognitively grasp the situation. I grasp the frustration that comes with my lack of cultural connection to your argument, but I’m doing my best. If you think, “I’m tired of explaining myself to straight people, white people, cis gender people, able-bodied people, etc” and then don’t explain, it becomes really hard for me to vote for you (as well as making a bunch of assumptions that may or may not be accurate, depending on your judge). I won’t vote on what I can’t explain.

FINAL NOTE: You might be thinking, after reading this, ‘WOW, we’re NEVER preferring him. Look all the things he wants us to do—his presumptions are just too high. What a T hack.’

Maybe. But what I’ve tried to do is review almost every argument I find persuasive on T and flag it for you and send you in the right direction in answering it. In REAL DEBATES, teams won’t make all these arguments and they won’t always make them well. I ALWAYS evaluate the debate in front of me. But I wanted to flag all these so you could think through your answers and win my ballot. I wanted to flag these because winning my ballot is possible, not impossible.

I also think this can serve as a primer for winning in front of judges that are like me. To succeed in the big picture, you need to expand your judging pool. At the NDT and in national circuit elimination debates, you can’t hide from all the judges who think topicality is a thing or who have a grounding in traditional critique or policy debate. In my ideal world, you’d see me (or someone like me) on a panel against a non-critical identity team and think, “Good. Mick is a fair judge who sees the value of our arguments. He cares about our role in debateland and the world and even though he might not be our wheelhouse judge, we know the route to win with him.”

And, in the ideal world, your opponent would think the exact same thing.

Ethics Challenge

I want to say that I am not a fan of ethics challenges but they may be the only resolution to certain circumstances. In most cases, I prefer lesser solution from a team with a ethics-related issue: i.e., rejection of the piece of evidence, rejection of a position, rejection of all evidence with demonstrated problems, etc.

I have a relatively standard procedure on ethics challenges. Ethics challenges are accusations of academic misconduct against the opposing team that are outside the bounds of what can be adjudicated by the debate. Justifications for an ethics challenge include, but are not limited to:

1) Mis-representing evidence, i.e., “cutting out of context”--This includes highlighting, reading, or constructing evidence in a way that allows the team to present the evidence as supporting a claim that directly contradicts the intention of the author.

2) Fabricating evidence– This includes altering evidence by adding or deleting parts of cited evidence or wholesale making up evidence and presenting it in a debate.

3) Mis-representing what evidence has been read in the round, i.e., “clipping” or “cross-reading” or falsely claiming a piece of evidence has been read when it has not, or, alternatively, claiming a piece of evidence has NOT been read by the team when it has.

4) Refusing to provide your cited/read evidence to your opponent in the debate or intentionally leaving evidence out of a speech document in order to gain a competitive advantage.

5) Intentionally mis-citing evidence in order to gain a competitive advantage, i.e., leaving out an author or source that might be a liability in a debate. Incidental mis-citation is not subject to an ethics challenge.

6) Using ellipsis or leaving out parts of evidence that are part of the context of the evidence because the part excluded by the ellipsis would be a significant liability in the debate.

7) Intentionally mis-disclosing to another team in pre-round pre-round preparation in order to gain a competitive advantage.

8) If you generally accuse the team ‘cheating’ on any non-debate argument issue and try to make it a ‘voting issue’ (disclosure, speech docs, cards, etc), I will ask if you intend this as an ethics challenge.

This is not a complete list. Please note that some of these include a factor of intention and others do not. If you read a card that’s out of context or fabricated, it doesn't matter if you or your partner didn’t cut the card. In other cases, there must be intention.

Process and burden of proof for ethics challenges:
1) An ethics challenge will stop the round. I may pause once and try to talk through the issue briefly, trying to find a negotiating solution short of the challenge. But once the challenge is confirmed, it’s round over for me. If the tournament or organization procedures turn it over to the tournament officials, I will do that. If it is left to me to decide, I will ask for proof and defense and make a decision. I may give time for teams to produce evidence. For example, to provide a full length version of a card, article, book to demonstrate a defense. Moreover, I am NOT simply relying on team arguments. This is no longer a debate where I rely solely on the arguments presented. I will use any resource I can to reach a conclusion. If I am on a panel and it is not in my sole power to stop the round, I will adjudicate the debate based on the initial charge and defense. I will not evaluate the rest of the debate, even if the rest of the debate proceeds.

(2) I have a fairly high bar for voting on them. I must see clear and convincing evidence of the conditions above. Suspicion or even simply me believing it’s likely is not sufficient for me to vote on an ethics challenge against a team.

(3) If an ethics challenge is proven with clear and convincing evidence it’s a loss for the team challenged. If it is not proven to a clear and convincing level, it’s a loss for the team conducting the challenge.

***PROCEDURE NOTES.

1. I am worn out of looking through 6 different speech documents for cards. I am implementing a policy of asking that cards on positions that have been gone for in the 2NR/2AR be consolidated and sent to me). You don't need to sort out WHICH cards you went for, it's easier if I pick through what matters. Just consolidate them, organized by SUBJECT and SPEECH and send them to me. If you are paper team, you're are a cruel person who wants trees to die, but, on the other hand you make judging much easier :).

2. Most CX answers that given outside the 3 minutes of designated CX are not relevant to my decision. You want to get your argumentative question in? Fit your question and the opportunity to answer it into the CX time. You don't get to use some prep time to cover the argument you dropped, so you don't get to used prep time to ask the questions you forgot. Exception A: Filibustering to run out the clock will cause me to ignore this rule. CXer, you'll know you are free to keep asking because I will keep paying attention instead of getting up or walking away. Exception B: While answers might be non-binding, deception is misconduct foul, auto-loss. If the Cx-ee answers a clarifying question in prep like, "What's the status of the counterplan?" and then CHANGES it and thinks that's a clever trick, I see that as misconduct. Exception C: I think clarifying questions are fine in CX. Examples: What was your third argument on the DA? What's the status of the CP? Which card did you read? Answering these questions are matters of courtesy and fair play. Of course, they might just answer: "We didn't take a position on CP rules in the 1NC." And you'll be out of luck in arguing with them.

Rebecca Steiner University of Georgia 4 rounds

Last changed on Tue January 2, 2024 at 4:39 PM EDT

Current Associate Director of Debate at Emory University

Former graduate student coach at University of Georgia, Wake Forest University, University of Florida

Create an email chain for evidence before the debate begins. Put me on it. My email address is lace.stace@gmail.com

Do not trivialize or deny the Holocaust

Online Debates:

Determine if I am in the room before you start a speech. "Becca, are you ready?" or "Becca, are you here?" I will give you a thumbs up or say yes (or I am not in the room and you shouldn't start).

I get that tech issues happen, but unnecessary tech time hurts decision time.

Please have one (or all) debaters look periodically to make sure people haven't gotten booted from the room. The internet can be unreliable. You might get booted from the room. I might get booted from the room. The best practice is to have a backup of yourself speaking in case this occurs. If the tournament has rules about this, follow those.

DA’s:

Is there an overview that requires a new sheet of paper? I hope not

Impact turn debates are fine with me

Counterplans:

What are the key differences between the CP and the plan?

Does the CP solve some of the aff or all of the aff?

Be clear about which DA/s you are claiming as the net benefit/s to your CP

"Solving more" is not a net benefit

I lean neg on international fiat, PICS, & agent CP theory arguments

I am open minded to debates about conditionality & multiple conditional planks theory arguments.

Flowing:

I strongly prefer when debaters make flowing easier for me (ex. debating line by line, signposting, identifying the other team’s argument and making direct answers)

I strongly prefer when debaters answer arguments individually rather than “grouping”

Cross-X:

"What cards did you read?" "What cards did you not read?" "Did you read X off case position?" "Where did you stop in this document?" - those questions count as cross-x time! If a speech ends and you ask these, you should already be starting your timer for cross-x.

Avoid intervening in your partners cross-x time, whether asking or answering. Tag team is for professional wrestling, not debate.

Public forum debate specific thoughts:

I am most comfortable with constructive speeches that organize contentions using this structure: uniqueness, link, and impact.

I am comfortable with the use of speed.

From my experience coaching policy debate, I care a lot about quantity and quality of evidence.

I am suspicious of paraphrased evidence.

I like when the summary and final focus speeches make the debate smaller. If your constructive started with 2 or 3 contentions, by the summary and final focus your team should make a choice of just 1 contention to attempt winning.

Because of my background in policy debate, it takes me out of my comfort zone when the con/neg team speaks first.

Peter Susko University of Michigan 6 rounds

Last changed on Wed January 3, 2024 at 5:09 AM EDT

If you are starting an email chain for the debate, I would like to be included on it: psusko@gmail.com

Default

Debate should be centered on the hypothetical world where the United States federal government takes action. I default to a utilitarian calculus and view arguments in an offense/defense paradigm.

Topicality

Most topicality debates come down to limits. This means it would be in your best interest to explain the world of your interpretation—what AFFs are topical, what negative arguments are available, etc—and compare this with your opponent’s interpretation. Topicality debates become very messy very fast, which means it is extremely important to provide a clear reasoning for why I should vote for you at the top of the 2NR/2AR.

Counterplans

Conditionality is good. I default to rejecting the argument and not the team, unless told otherwise. Counterplans that result in plan action are questionably competitive. In a world where the 2NR goes for the counterplan, I will not evaluate the status quo unless told to by the negative. The norm is for theory debates to be shallow, which means you should slow down and provide specific examples of abuse if you want to make this a viable option in the rebuttals. The trend towards multi-plank counterplans has hurt clarity of what CPs do to solve the AFF. I think clarity in the 1NC on the counterplan text and a portion of the negative block on the utility of each plank would resolve this. I am also convinced the AFF should be allowed to answer some planks in the 1AR if the 1NC is unintelligible on the text.

Disadvantages

I am willing to vote on a zero percent risk of a link. Vice versa, I am also willing to vote negative on presumption on case if you cannot defend your affirmative leads to more change than the status quo. Issue specific uniqueness is more important than a laundry list of thumpers. Rebuttals should include impact comparison, which decreases the amount of intervention that I need to do at the end of the debate.

Criticisms

I am not familiar with the literature, or terminology, for most criticisms. If reading a criticism is your main offensive argument on the negative, this means you’ll need to explain more clearly how your particular criticism implicates the affirmative’s impacts. For impact framing, this means explaining how the impacts of the criticism (whether it entails a VTL claim, epistemology, etc.) outweigh or come before the affirmative. The best debaters are able to draw links from affirmative evidence and use empirical examples to show how the affirmative is flawed. Role of the ballot/judge arguments are self-serving and unpersuasive.

Performance

In my eight years as a debater, I ran a policy affirmative and primarily went for framework against performance AFFs. The flow during performance debates usually gets destroyed at some point during the 2AC/block. Debaters should take the time to provide organizational cues [impact debate here, fairness debate here, accessibility debate here, etc.] in order to make your argument more persuasive. My lack of experience and knowledge with/on the literature base is important. I will not often place arguments for you across multiple flows, and have often not treated an argument as a global framing argument [unless explicitly told]. Impact framing and clear analysis help alleviate this barrier. At the end of the debate, I should know how the affirmative's advocacy operates, the impact I am voting for, and how that impact operates against the NEG.

Flowing

I am not the fastest flow and rely heavily on short hand in order to catch up. I am better on debates I am more familiar with because my short hand is better. Either way, debaters should provide organizational cues (i.e. group the link debate, I’ll explain that here). Cues like that give me flow time to better understand the debate and understand your arguments in relation to the rest of the debate.

Notes

Prep time continues until the jump drive is out of the computer / the email has been sent to the email chain. This won't affect speaker points, however, it does prolong the round and eliminate time that I have to evaluate the round.

I am not a fan of insert our re-highlighting of the evidence. Either make the point in a CX and bring it up in a rebuttal or actually read the new re-highlighting to make your argument.

The debaters that get the best speaker points in front of me are the ones that write my ballot for me in the 2NR/2AR and shape in their speeches how I should evaluate arguments and evidence.

Depth > Breadth

Terrell Taylor University of Mary Washington 5 rounds

Last changed on Fri January 5, 2024 at 9:53 AM EDT

Terrell Taylor

add me to doc chains: terrell taylor at gmail dot com. No punctuation, no space, no frills.

Debated at Mary Washington from 2007-2011

Debate is an intellectual activity where two positions are weighed against each other. A part of this is making clear what your position is (plan, cp, alt, advocacy, status quo etc.) and how it measures up against the other team’s position. Arguments consist of a claim (the point you want to make), warrant (a reason to believe it), and an impact (reason why it matters/way it functions within the debate). Evidence is useful when trying to provide warrants, but is ultimately not necessary for me to evaluate an argument. Debates get competitive and heated, but staying polite and friendly and remembering that the name of the game is fun at the end of the day makes for a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Disads/Case and Advantages

These arguments should be stressed in terms of a coherent story of what the world looks like in terms of the status quo, affirmative plan or alternative option. These positions should be attacked from a variety points including the link and internal link chain, impact and uniqueness level. When it comes to link turning, my default thought is that uniqueness determines the direction; if you have an alternative understanding that is particular to a scenario, be sure to explain why it is that the direction of the link should be emphasized or what have you. Impacts should be compared not only in terms of timeframe, probability and magnitude, but in terms of how these issues interact in a world where both impact scenarios take places (the popular "even if.." phrase comes to mind here). Also, keep in mind that I have not kept up with the trends in disads and such within the topic, so explaining specifics, acronyms and otherwise is useful for me. I prefer hearing case specific scenarios as opposed to generic politics and similar positions. This does not mean I will not vote for it or will dock your speaker points, just a preference.

Counterplans and Counterplan Theory

Counterplans should be functionally competitive; textual competition doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me (see later section on theory). I think that perms can be advocated, but am more than willing to hear reasons why they shouldn’t be and why that is a bad way to frame debates. When it comes to agent counterplans, I tend to think that topic specific education should trump generic presidential powers or judicial independence debates. Consult and condition cps just make the logician inside my head painfully confused (not sure why a reason to talk to X country is also a reason why the plan is bad). International fiat is suspect to me, and I tend to think that limiting the discussion to US policy (including its international relevance) is a good thing.

All of this being said, I am open to voting for any of the above arguments. These are merely my general theoretical leanings, and I will certainly flow, listen to, and evaluate arguments from the other side.

Topicality

I haven’t seen many debates on this topic, so if a debate comes down to T, don’t be surprised if you see me googling to find the resolution to check the words. In general I think Topicality is important for two reasons. One is the general reason that most people think it’s good, being that we need to be prepared/have set limits and parameters for debate. The second is that I think each year presents an opportunity to gain in depth education on an issue, even if it's not a policy perspective of that issue. I feel that competing interpretations is generally the default for T, but I am open to defenses of reasonability and in fact, think that there are cases where this is the best means of evaluation. Standards should be impacted in terms of education and fairness, and the debate should come down to the best internal links between the standards and these terminal values. If you are the type to critique T, your critique needs to come down to these terms (education and fairness). RVIs don’t make sense to me. If you want to take the challenge of trying to make one make sense, be my guest, but it’s an uphill battle.

General Theory

As mentioned, I am not wedded to any particular frame or “rulebook” for debate. Part of the beauty of debate to me is that debaters get to be both the players and referee. As such, I enjoy theory and think that such discussions can be fruitful. The flipside to this is that most theory debates devolve into tagline debating, shallow and repetitive arguments, and a race to see who can spit their block the fastest. These debates are 1) hard to flow and 2) not really a test or display of your ability so much as a test of your team’s theory block writer. I reward argumentation that is clear, comprehensible and complete in terms of theory debates, and urge debaters to these opportunities seriously.

I’ve laid out most of my theoretical dispositions in the counterplan section. Conditionality to me is like siracha sauce: a little bit heats up the debate, too much ruins it. I don’t know why three or four counterplans or alternatives along with the status quo is key to negative flex or good debating (one is good, two is ok). Also, if you want to use a status other than conditional or unconditional, (like the imaginary “dispo”) you should be ready to explain what that means. Again, I think that it is okay to advocate permutations as positions in the debate.

In terms of alternate frameworks for the debate (i.e. anything other than policy making) I’m honest when I say I’m not extraordinarily experienced in these areas as I’d like to be. I’ve seen a decent few of these debates and think that they provide some nuance to an otherwise stale activity. That being said (and this is true for all theory positions) you should try and weigh the educational and competitive equity benefits of your position versus the other teams proposed framework the debate. I debated for a squad that saw framework as a strategic and straightforward approach to most alternative forms of debate, so those arguments make sense to me. On the other hand, especially when it comes to arguments concerning structural issues in society/debate, if argued well, and with relevance to the topic in some way, I am willing to listen and evaluate.

Critical arguments (Kritiks/K-affs)

Much of what I just said applies here as well. I had the most success/felt most comfortable debating with these types of arguments as a debater (I did, however, spend most of my career debating with “straight-up” affs and disads that claimed nuclear war advantages). I studied English and Philosophy in undergrad and am pursuing a MA in English with a focus on critical theory, so there’s a decent chance that my interests and background might lean more towards a topic oriented critique than a politics Da.

I will avoid following the trend of listing the genres of critiques and critical literature with which I am familiar with the belief that it shouldn't matter. Running critiques shouldn't be about maintaining a secret club of people who "get it" (which often in debates, is construed to be a club consisting of the critique friendly judge and the team running the argument, often excluding the other team for not being "savy"). In other words, Whether I've read a great deal of the authors in your critique or not, should not give you the green light to skimp on the explanation and analysis of the critique. These debates are often about making the connections between what the authors and literature are saying and the position of the other team, and hence put a great burden on the debater to elucidate those connections. A shared appreciation or research interest between a team and a judge does not absolve you of that burden, in my opinion.

I agree with many recent top tier collegiate debaters (Kevin Kallmyer, Gabe Murillo, etc.) that the difference between policy and critical arguments is overstated. An important piece of reading critical arguments with me in the back of the room is explaining what your arguments mean within the context of the aff/da. If you read a no value to life impact, what about the affs framing makes it so that the people involved see their lives differently; if the critiqued impact is a merely constructed threat, reveal to me the holes in the construction and explain how the construction came to be. Doing that level of analysis (with any argument, critical or policy) is crucial in terms of weighing and relating your arguments to the other teams, and engaging in a form of education that is actually worthwhile. This probably entails removing your hypergeneric topic link and replacing with analysis as to the links that are within the evidence (and therefore, the assumptions, rhetoric, methodology, so and so forth) of your opponents. In terms of vague alts and framework, I have mixed feelings. The utopian fiat involved in most alts is probably abusive, but there is something to be said for making the claim that these arguments are vital to thorough education. On the framework question, gateway issue is probably a poor way to go. I don’t understand why the fact that your K has an impact means that you get to suck up the entire debate on this one issue. Instead, a framing that opens the door to multiple ways of critiquing and evaluating arguments (both on the aff and the neg, or in other words, doesn’t hold the aff as a punching bag) is preferable.

Performance

I didn’t do a whole lot of handling with this genre of argument, but have debated semi-frequently and enjoy the critical aspects of these arguments. I think that there is a difference between the type of critical debater that reads a couple of disads along with a K and case args, and a team that reads a indictment of the topic or reads narratives for nine minutes. If you read a poem, sing, recite a story or anything of that nature, I will be more interested in observing your performance than trying to flow or dictate it on my flow (my reasoning for this is that, unlike a speech organized for the purpose of tracking argument development and responses, I don't think flowing a poem or song really generates an understanding of the performance). More importantly, framing should be a priority; give me a reason why I should look at the debate through a certain lens, and explain why given that framing you have done something either worth affirming your advocacy. I think that these types of debates, especially if related to the topic, can be fruitful and worthwhile. Performance affirmatives should try to find some in road to the topic. If your argument is pervasive and deep enough to talk about, I generally think it probably has a systemic implication for the resolution in some way, even if that doesn’t manifest as a topical plan or even agreeing with the resolution.

For teams going against performance strategies, Framework based arguments are options in front of me. A good way to frame this argument is in terms of what is the best method to produce debates that create the most useful form of education, as opposed to just reading it like a procedural argument. I do think it is important to engage the substantive portion of their arguments as well, (there are always multiple dimensions to arguments of these forms) even if it happens to be a critical objection to their performance or method. Many policy based strategies often want to avoid having to engage with the details involved, and in doing so often fail to rigorously challenge the arguments made in the debate.

Good luck, and have fun. I spent a great deal of my debate career stressing out and losing sleep, instead of experiencing the challenge and fun of the activity; Enjoy your time in the activity above everything else.

Anthony Trufanov University of Kentucky 3 rounds

Last changed on Tue April 9, 2024 at 12:35 AM EDT

Dartmouth, Interlake. He/him.

Email Chain

Add me: ant981228 at gmail dot com

College people, add: debatedocs at googlegroups dot com

Please include the tournament, round, and teams debating in the subject line of the email.

Key Things to Know

I will flow and vote based on the things you said. NEGs can say whatever but the more it says the plan is bad the better. Conditionality and judge kick are good. AFFs should be T and are likely to lose if they aren't. If you say death good you lose. If you ask for a 30 you will get a 25.

Online

I STRONGLY prefer that all cameras be on whenever anyone in the debate is speaking, but I understand if internet or other considerations prevent this.

If my camera is off, assume I am away from my computer and don't start talking. If you start your speech while I am away from my computer you do not get to restart. That is on you.

Here is how to successfully adjust to the online setting:

1. Inflect more when you are talking.

2. Put your face in frame. Ideally, make it so you can see the judge.

3. Get a microphone, put it close to your face, talk into it, make sure there is an unobstructed line between it and your mouth.

4. Talk one at a time.

T/L

Tech determines truth unless it's death good. If you tell me to embrace death because life is bad I will vote against you even if you do not go for the argument. More broadly, all else being equal, I strongly prefer to solve problems without resorting to violence or force if possible.

Otherwise, unless my role as a judge is changed, I will attempt to make the least interventionary decision. This means:

1. I will identify the most important issues in the debate, decide them first based on the debating, then work outward.

2. What is conceded is absolutely true, but will only have the implications that you say it has. Unless something is explicitly said, conceded, and extended, or is an obvious and necessary corollary of something that is said, conceded, and extended, I will attempt to resolve it, rather than assuming it.

3. I will intervene if there is no non-interventionary decision.

4. I will attempt to minimize the scope of my intervention by simplifying the decision-making process. I would prefer to decide fewer issues. If an issue seems hard to resolve without intervening, I will prioritize evaluating ballots that don't require resolving that issue. Example: a DA is heavily and messily contested, and may be straight turned, but the case would outweigh the DA even if the DA was 100% NEG. I will likely not attempt to resolve the DA page. In complex debates, it would help you to instruct me on how I should do this, or instruct me not to do this if you would prefer that I resolve the debate a different way. You can also stop this from happening by debating in ways that don't require intervention to evaluate.

I am aware that this procedure can influence my assessment of substance. Given infinite decision time, I would not do this. However, decision times are shrinking. Post-round time is limited; minutes spent resolving complex or under-debated issues that are not outcome-determinative trade off with the quality of my assessment of issues that are. I believe this process net reduces error costs.

I have voted NEG 53% of the time.

I often vote quickly. This does not necessarily mean the debate was lopsided or bad; more likely, it is a sign that the teams clearly communicated the relationships between their arguments, allowing me to perform evaluations as the debate is happening. If I take a long time that means I was unable to do this, either because there was significant complexity in the debate or because communication was poor.

The following are my inclinations - if you don't like them you can change them.

DAs

The agenda DA is not a serious argument, but can be a strategic one.

"Framing pages" where you say "DAs are bad" are bad.

CP'ing in offense is underrated.

CPs

If no one says anything I will assume I can judge kick. It is very hard to use theory to stop me from thinking about the status quo. Nothing but conditionality is a voting issue. Pretty NEG on most theory, except fiating out of your own straight turned offense.

Competition is usually more impactful than theory. Theory arguments that logically presume you have won a competition argument ("CPs that steal the AFF are a voting issue" assumes you have demonstrated that the CP has stolen the AFF, which is a competition argument. "CPs that are not functionally and textually competitive are a voting issue"... come on, what are we doing here) are a waste of time. Just win the competition argument.

Functional competition + explaining what your plan does + definitions + reasons to prefer your definitions >>>>> anything involving the concept of textual competition. Textual competition is mind poison that corrupts any competition model it touches.

If I can't explain what a CP does and how it accomplishes whatever the NEG says it does, I am unlikely to vote for it. You can avoid this by writing a meaningful CP text AND explaining it in the speech.

I like judging good T debates. I really don't like judging bad ones. What sets these apart is specific application of broad offense to interpretations and impact debating that is specific to internal links, grounded in a vivid vision for debates under your topic.

I do not think the intrinsic value of being "factually correct" about your T argument is very high.

Many parts of a T argument can be enhanced with cards - e.g. link to limits, claims of AFF/NEG bias in the literature, predictability via prodicts/indicts.

Argue by analogy and comparison to other AFFs, especially in CX.

Ks / Planless AFFs

OK for specific Ks on the NEG, bad for random backfile slop, bad for K AFFs, death good = L.

If your K is secretly a DA, refer to the DA section. If your K is not a DA then yes, you need framework and you need an alternative. Whatever issue your framework says should determine the round should be what your link, impact, and ALT are about.

I do not judge many debates involving nontraditional AFFs. The biggest hurdles to voting AFF for me are usually: 1) why can't the AFF be read on the NEG, 2) why is the AFF's offense inherent to resolutional debate or to voting NEG on framework instead of some avoidable examples, and 3) how do I reconcile the AFF's vision of debate or the topic with debate's inherently (even if not exclusively) competitive nature.

I am open to different understandings of what it means for things to compete if there is no plan. However, "no plan, no perms" is nonsense.

The only effect of my ballot is to decide the winner.

Speaker Points

Strong strategy, being fun/engaging to watch, being smart, being classy, being clear = higher speaks.

Making wrong strategic choices, being underprepared or ignorant about substance, making CXs annoying/pointless, making bad arguments, being needlessly mean, being a mumbler... = lower speaks.

I do not view speaker points as divorced from substance.

My points are slightly below average.

Asking for a 30 will yield a 25.

Ethics and Conduct

If the tabroom tells me to do something, it is not up for debate. I will do that thing. The rest is what I will do if left to my own devices.

Evidence ethics (out of context? straw-person? lied about quals? cut in middle of paragraph?) should be debated out like any other theory argument. Alternative remedies short of an automatic loss could be more responsive or proportional to the harm: scratching the argument AND evidence, scratching only the evidence and treating the argument as if it is made analytically, assuming an author is absolutely unqualified, requiring the team to produce the full text of articles in question, requiring the violating team to establish a paper trail authenticating other important evidence and presuming unauthenticated evidence to be fabricated, requiring a team to produce the full text of every article in the debate and presuming unauthenticated evidence to be fabricated, reducing speaker points, informing the team's coaches after the fact. They MAY be a reason to reject the team, but I will not treat them as such by default.

Clipping - claiming you read words from evidence that you did not read - is different, and a voting issue. It is a form of dishonesty that irreparably distorts teams' speech times, which affects every other issue in the debate, and which opponents are uniquely poorly positioned to police. If you are inexperienced or appear to have clipped by mistake, I will be lenient. Otherwise, it is non-negotiable.

Thoughts on stopping the debate early:

1. This is an exceptional measure to be avoided if possible.

2. Once the debate stops because of an ethics challenge, my first step is to consult the tabroom and do whatever they say.

3. Unless expressly instructed otherwise by the tabroom, the debate will not resume once stopped. The winner and loser will be determined solely by the ethics challenge.

4. An accusing team can stop the debate at any time except during a speech or a cross-ex. They win if they are correct, present compelling evidence that they are correct, and I agree that the conduct justifies a penalty loss. The winner will receive 28.5 and 28.6. Losers who have personally committed an ethics violation receive the lowest points allowed. Losers who have not personally committed an ethics violation - either due to an unsuccessful accusation, or because the partner committed the violation - receive a 27 and 27.1.

5. During the dispute, both teams must engage in good faith. The accusing team must submit evidence of their accusation as soon as possible. I will not consider evidence submitted within 20 minutes of decision time. Any filibustering or other unreasonable behavior by the accusing team will result in a win for the accused.

6. An accused team can stop the debate, even if the accusing team does not wish to do so, if the accusation concerns the fundamental academic integrity of the accused. This is a very high bar.

7. An accusing team may ask me if I believe certain conduct justifies a penalty loss without stopping the debate. I will take judge prep to answer. This answer is not an invitation to negotiate and obviously doesn't bind the tabroom.

8. I will proactively end the debate for clipping. I will not do this for other evidence ethics or academic integrity issues.

9. Basically none of this applies to novice or JV, where I will resolve the dispute as quickly and narrowly as possible with the aim of maximizing the number of speeches that can happen.

Being racist, sexist, violent, etc. in a way that is immediately and obviously hazardous to someone in the debate = L and 0. My role as educator outweighs my role as any form of disciplinarian, so I will err on the side of letting stuff play out - i.e. if someone used gendered language and that gets brought up I will probably let the round happen and correct any ignorance after the fact. This ends when it begins to threaten the safety of round participants. You should give this line a wide berth.

Caitlin Walrath University of Kentucky 2 rounds

Last changed on Fri January 5, 2024 at 10:49 AM EDT

Debate History:

Juan Diego Catholic: 2011-2014 (1N/2A and 1A/2N)

Rowland Hall-St. Marks: 2014-2015 (1A/2N)

University of Michigan: 2015-2019 (1A/2N)

University of Kentucky: 2019-2020 (Assistant Coach)

Wake Forest University: Present (Assistant Coach)

*Please put me on the email chain: caitlinp96@gmail.com - NO POCKETBOXES OR WHATEVER PLEASE AND THANK YOU*

TL;DR: You do you, and I'll flow and judge accordingly. Make smart arguments, be yourself, and have fun. Ask questions if you have them post-round / time permits. I would rather you yell at me (with some degree of respect) and give me the chance to explain why you lost so that you can internalize it rather than you walk away pissed/upset without resolution. An argument = claim + warrant. You may not insert rehighlighted evidence into the record - you have to read it, debate is a communicative activity.

General thoughts: I enjoy debate immensely and I hope to foster that same enjoyment in every debate I judge. With that being said, you should debate how you like to debate and I’ll judge fairly. I will immediately drop a team and give zero speaks if you make this space hostile by making offensive remarks or arguments that make it unsafe for others in the round (to be judged at my discretion). Clipping accusations must have audio or some form of proof. Debaters do not necessarily have to stake the round on an ethics violation. I also believe that debaters need to start listening to each other's arguments more, not just flowing mindlessly - so many debates lose potential nuance and clash because debaters just talk past each other with vague references to the other team's arguments. I can't/won't vote on an argument about something that happened outside the debate. I have no way of falsifying any of this and it's not my role as a judge. This doesn't apply to new affs bad if both teams agree that the aff is new, but if it's a question of misdisclosure, I really wouldn't know what to do (stolen from DML and Goldschlag). *NOTE - if you use sexually explicit language or engage in sexually explicit performances in high school debates, you should strike me. If you think that what you're saying in the debate would not be acceptable to an administrator at a school to hear was said by a high school student to an adult, you should strike me. (stolen from Val)

General K thoughts:

- AT: Do you judge these debates/know what is happening? Yes, its basically all I judge anymore (mostly clash of civs)

- AT: Since you are familiar with our args, do we not have to do any explanation specific to the aff/neg args? No, you obviously need to explain things

- AT: Is it cool if I just read Michigan KM speeches I flowed off youtube? If you are reading typed out copies of someone else's speech, I'm going to want to vote against you and will probably be very grumpy. Debate is a chance for you to show off your skill and talent, not just copy someone's speech you once saw on youtube.

K (Negative) – enjoyable if done well. Make sure the links are specific to the case and cause an impact. Make sure that the alt does something to resolve those impacts and links as well as some aff offense OR have a framework that phases out aff offense and resolves yours. Assume I know nothing about your literature base. Try not to have longer than a 2-minute overview

K (Affirmative) / Framework – probably should have some relation to the resolution otherwise it's easy to be persuaded that by the interp that you need to talk about the resolution. Probably should take some sort of action to resolve whatever the aff is criticizing. I think FW debates are important to have because they force you to question why this space has value and/or what needs to change in said space. Negative teams should prove why the aff destroys fairness and why that is bad. Affirmative teams should have a robust reason why their aff is necessary to resolve certain impacts and why framework is bad. Both teams need a vision of what debate looks like if I sign my ballot aff or neg and why that vision is better than the other side’s. Fairness is an impact and is easily the one I'm most persuaded by, particularly if couched in terms of it being the only impact any individual ballot can solve AND being a question of simply who's model is most debatable (think competing interps).

T is distinct from Framework in these debates in so far as I believe that:

- T is a question of form, not content -- it is fundamentally content neutral because there can be any number of justifications beyond simply just the material consequences of hypothetical enactment for any number of topical affs

- Framework is more a question of why this particular resolution is educationally important to talk about and why the USfg is the essential actor for taking action over these questions

Case – Please, please, please debate the case. I don’t care if you are a K team or a policy team, the case is so important to debate. Most affs are terribly written and you could probably make most advantages have almost zero risk if you spent 15 minutes before round going through aff evidence. Zero risk exists.

CPs – Sure. Negative teams need to prove competition and why they are net beneficial to the aff. Affirmative needs to impact out solvency deficits and/or explain why the perm avoids the net benefit. Affs also must win some form of offense to outweigh a DA (solvency deficits, theory, impact turn to an internal nb/plank of the cp) otherwise I could be persuaded that the risk of neg offense outweighs a risk a da links to the cp, the perm solvency, etc.

DAs – Also love them. Negative teams should tell me the story of the DA through the block and the 2nr. Affirmative teams need to point out logical flaws in the DA and why the aff is a better option. Zero risk exists.

Politics – probably silly, but I’ll vote on it. I could vote on intrinsicness as terminal defense if debated well.

Topicality – You need a counter-interp to win reasonabilty on the aff. I default to competing interpretations if there is no other metric for evaluation.

Theory – the neg has been getting away with murder recently and its incredibly frustrating. Brief thoughts on specific args below:

- cps with a bunch of planks to fiat out of every possible solvency deficit with no solvency advocate = super bad

- 3+ condo with a bunch of conditional planks = bad

- cps that fiat things such as: "Pence and Trump resign peacefully after [x] date to avoid the link to the politics da", "Trump deletes all social media and never says anything bad about the action of the plan ever", "Trump/executive office/other actor decides never to backlash against the plan or attempt to circumvent it" = vomit emoji

- commissions cps = still cheating, but less bad than all the things above

- delay cps = boo

- consult cps = boo (idk if these exist on the immigration topic, but w/e)

- going for theory when you read a new aff = nah fam (with some exceptions)

- 2nr cps (yes this happened recently) = boo

- going for condo when they read 2 or less without conditional planks = boo

- perf con is a reason you get to sever your reps for any perm

- theory probably does not outweigh T unless impacted very early, clearly, and in-depth

Bonus – Speaker Point Outline – I’ll try to follow this very closely (TOC is probably the exception because y'all should be speaking in the 28.5+ category):

(Note: I think this scale reflects general thoughts that are described in more detail in this: http://collegedebateratings.weebly.com/points-scale.html - Thanks Regnier)

29.3 < (greater than 29.3) - Did almost everything I could ask for

29-29.3 – Very, very good

28.8 – 29 – Very good, still makes minor mistakes

28.5 – 28.7 – Pretty good speaker, very clear, probably needs some argument execution changes

28.3 – 28.5 – Good speaker, has some easily identifiable problems

28 – 28.3 – Average varsity policy debater

27-27.9 – Below average

27 > (less than 27) - You did something that was offensive / You didn’t make arguments.

Ryan Wardak Hire 7 rounds

Last changed on Thu October 13, 2022 at 7:01 PM EDT

email: ryanwardak2009@gmail.com

Note: I have reasonably fine ears, but I would advise you go slow on theory and on Counterplan texts. I also will not follow you on the speech doc while you speak. Lastly, I have not really judged since COVID, so I may be getting familiar with IT. Apologies!

Three sections in this paradigm--

How I deliver a decision

How I come to a decision

Some of my predispositions

Delivery

I pledge to do two things as a result. Start off my decision with who won or lost. Next, I pledge to give a summary of which teams won in specific areas of the debate and how that factored into my calculus for why X team won the debate. Only after the summary of my decision, will I give advice. I do this because the judge's first role is to render as clear and concise a decision as possible.

Coming to a decision

I evaluate the case first. Does the aff solve its impacts? In general, internal links are the weakest points of affs and DA's. They also are the strongest points when not well contested. So I would look at internal link D and impact D as well as internal link turns first.

After that I try to find out if the neg has a way for me to filter out Aff offense/solvency. This means I try to determine whether the neg has a counterplan that solves the aff advantages. I could also be looking for a floating pik or a k solves case claim. Other things I'd look for is whether the Neg offense turns the Aff offense. Remember that if you go for a case turn, you need uniqueness or else its just defense.

I go on to see what the neg's impacts are for their K or Da or case turns. Again, links and internal links matter. Impacts matter, but in my opinion, usually internal link defense at the beginning of a chain tends to be most effective. Things to consider here are whether the magnitude of the internal link and the links are high. Whether every level of the Da is unique from the total uniqueness, to the link uniqueness to internal link uniqueness to even impact uniqueness. Inevitability arguments can be quite powerful, and I feel they aren't taken seriously enough.

Predispositions

Topicality— Go with your best arguments to justify your vision of debate. I am quite apathetic on the question of topicality and what impacts are most persuasive. I generally will treat theory and topicality like I do other parts of the debate, which means its incumbent to tell me what your vision of debate is, why its better than their vision, and why your vision doesn't cause their harms or why their harms are good or why your vision solves them better. I don't really default to either reasonability or competing interpretations. That's for debaters to debate out, and I am not quite passionate about this subject.

Counterplans (Theory)—I will treat theory like I treat any other argument. What that means is that you are debating the other team. You are not debating me. If they drop in the block that the CP is a reason to reject the team, and you win theory, its likely game over. Compared to other judges, I will probably vote for who did the best debating in the round on the subject and not on an invisible threshold that I think you should meet that forces me to vote for you. As a result, I may be more aff leaning than most judges on theory. People give way too much short shrift to theory debating. Be slow on theory. Slower is better. I write all your args down if you do, if you don't, I may just have a few standards written down. I used to have a lot of passionate thoughts about what counterplan's make me sad or happy, I don't have any at all now, be able to justify what you do.

K’s—I think of K's largely as a counterplan (the alt) that may or may not attempt to solve an impact that is already happening and has a case defense portion of it (impact inevitability claims/root cause/epistemology arguments). I am more likely to vote on certain arguments than others. If I vote aff, it is likely because they won that the case outweighs. For instance, at some point the Neg has to win a framework argument or an alt + link/impact claim (and likely some defense to the aff). The weak point of a K is almost always the alt. Usually it will not solve the policy aff, and probably not even the impact because the alternative doesn't make a persuasive argument that it solves the isolated harms. In this case, I need a different framing. So ontology or epist etc. first arguments can not only neutralize an aff, but even be a reason why I as a critic, philosopher, activist or pedagogue should reject the aff. Policy teams win/k teams lose when I think that its good to evaluate the consequences of a policy, and the alt does not do anything to resolve the harms the neg isolates.

Whit Whitmore Emory University 4 rounds

Last changed on Thu January 4, 2024 at 3:39 AM EDT

add me to the email chain: whit211@gmail.com

Do not utter the phrase "plan text in a vacuum" or any other clever euphemism for it. It's not an argument, I won't vote on it, and you'll lose speaker points for advancing it. You should defend your plan, and I should be able to tell what the plan does by reading it.

Inserting things into the debate isn't a thing. If you want me to evaluate evidence, you should read it in the debate.

Cross-ex time is cross-ex time, not prep time. Ask questions or use your prep time, unless the tournament has an official "alt use" time rule.

You should debate line by line. That means case arguments should be responded to in the 1NC order and off case arguments should be responded to in the 2AC order. I continue to grow frustrated with teams that do not flow. If I suspect you are not flowing (I visibly see you not doing it; you answer arguments that were not made in the previous speech but were in the speech doc; you answer arguments in speech doc order instead of speech order), you will receive no higher than a 28. This includes teams that like to "group" the 2ac into sections and just read blocks in the 2NC/1NR. Also, read cards. I don't want to hear a block with no cards. This is a research activity.

Debate the round in a manner that you would like and defend it. I consistently vote for arguments that I don’t agree with and positions that I don’t necessarily think are good for debate. I have some pretty deeply held beliefs about debate, but I’m not so conceited that I think I have it all figured out. I still try to be as objective as possible in deciding rounds. All that being said, the following can be used to determine what I will most likely be persuaded by in close calls:

If I had my druthers, every 2nr would be a counterplan/disad or disad/case.

In the battle between truth and tech, I think I fall slightly on side of truth. That doesn’t mean that you can go around dropping arguments and then point out some fatal flaw in their logic in the 2AR. It does mean that some arguments are so poor as to necessitate only one response, and, as long as we are on the same page about what that argument is, it is ok if the explanation of that argument is shallow for most of the debate. True arguments aren’t always supported by evidence, but it certainly helps.

I think research is the most important aspect of debate. I make an effort to reward teams that work hard and do quality research on the topic, and arguments about preserving and improving topic specific education carry a lot of weight with me. However, it is not enough to read a wreck of good cards and tell me to read them. Teams that have actually worked hard tend to not only read quality evidence, but also execute and explain the arguments in the evidence well. I think there is an under-highlighting epidemic in debates, but I am willing to give debaters who know their evidence well enough to reference unhighlighted portions in the debate some leeway when comparing evidence after the round.

I think the affirmative should have a plan. I think the plan should be topical. I think topicality is a voting issue. I think teams that make a choice to not be topical are actively attempting to exclude the negative team from the debate (not the other way around). If you are not going to read a plan or be topical, you are more likely to persuade me that what you are doing is ‘ok’ if you at least attempt to relate to or talk about the topic. Being a close parallel (advocating something that would result in something similar to the resolution) is much better than being tangentially related or directly opposed to the resolution. I don’t think negative teams go for framework enough. Fairness is an impact, not a internal link. Procedural fairness is a thing and the only real impact to framework. If you go for "policy debate is key to skills and education," you are likely to lose. Winning that procedural fairness outweighs is not a given. You still need to defend against the other team's skills, education and exclusion arguments.

I don’t think making a permutation is ever a reason to reject the affirmative. I don’t believe the affirmative should be allowed to sever any part of the plan, but I believe the affirmative is only responsible for the mandates of the plan. Other extraneous questions, like immediacy and certainty, can be assumed only in the absence of a counterplan that manipulates the answers to those questions. I think there are limited instances when intrinsicness perms can be justified. This usually happens when the perm is technically intrinsic, but is in the same spirit as an action the CP takes This obviously has implications for whether or not I feel some counterplans are ultimately competitive.

Because I think topic literature should drive debates (see above), I feel that both plans and counterplans should have solvency advocates. There is some gray area about what constitutes a solvency advocate, but I don’t think it is an arbitrary issue. Two cards about some obscure aspect of the plan that might not be the most desirable does not a pic make. Also, it doesn’t sit well with me when negative teams manipulate the unlimited power of negative fiat to get around literature based arguments against their counterplan (i.e. – there is a healthy debate about federal uniformity vs state innovation that you should engage if you are reading the states cp). Because I see this action as comparable to an affirmative intrinsicness answer, I am more likely to give the affirmative leeway on those arguments if the negative has a counterplan that fiats out of the best responses.

My personal belief is probably slightly affirmative on many theory questions, but I don’t think I have voted affirmative on a (non-dropped) theory argument in years. Most affirmatives are awful at debating theory. Conditionality is conditionality is conditionality. If you have won that conditionality is good, there is no need make some arbitrary interpretation that what you did in the 1NC is the upper limit of what should be allowed. On a related note, I think affirmatives that make interpretations like ‘one conditional cp is ok’ have not staked out a very strategic position in the debate and have instead ceded their best offense. Appeals to reciprocity make a lot sense to me. ‘Argument, not team’ makes sense for most theory arguments that are unrelated to the disposition of a counterplan or kritik, but I can be persuaded that time investment required for an affirmative team to win theory necessitates that it be a voting issue.

Critical teams that make arguments that are grounded in and specific to the topic are more successful in front of me than those that do not. It is even better if your arguments are highly specific to the affirmative in question. I enjoy it when you paint a picture for me with stories about why the plans harms wouldn’t actually happen or why the plan wouldn’t solve. I like to see critical teams make link arguments based on claims or evidence read by the affirmative. These link arguments don’t always have to be made with evidence, but it is beneficial if you can tie the specific analytical link to an evidence based claim. I think alternative solvency is usually the weakest aspect of the kritik. Affirmatives would be well served to spend cross-x and speech time addressing this issue. ‘Our authors have degrees/work at a think tank’ is not a response to an epistemological indict of your affirmative. Intelligent, well-articulated analytic arguments are often the most persuasive answers to a kritik. 'Fiat' isn't a link. If your only links are 'you read a plan' or 'you use the state,' or if your block consistently has zero cards (or so few that find yourself regularly sending out the 2nc in the body rather than speech doc) then you shouldn't be preffing me.

LD Specific Business:

I am primarily a policy coach with very little LD experience. Have a little patience with me when it comes to LD specific jargon or arguments. It would behoove you to do a little more explanation than you would give to a seasoned adjudicator in the back of the room. I will most likely judge LD rounds in the same way I judge policy rounds. Hopefully my policy philosophy below will give you some insight into how I view debate. I have little tolerance and a high threshold for voting on unwarranted theory arguments. I'm not likely to care that they dropped your 'g' subpoint, if it wasn't very good. RVI's aren't a thing, and I won't vote on them.

Moriah Windus Samford University 4 rounds

Last changed on Thu August 4, 2022 at 2:55 PM CDT

I'm a former policy debater from Samford University and started debating as a novice my first year in college (2016). I qualified to the NDT twice (2017-2018, 2018-2019). I spent my last year in college coaching Novice and JV teams at Samford. I am currently a 3L in law school.

Update for August 2022: Hi! This is my first-time judging debate in a while, so please realize that I may not have the deepest topic specific knowledge. Please take time to explain out your arguments and don't assume that I've done prior topic specific research.

I'm very much a "you do you" type of judge and want the debate to be what the debaters want it to be about, that said I do have some preferences:

For the Neg:

1. Disads

As a former 2N, I love disads, but I'm going to be skeptical of your ability to win the disad if your uniqueness and link work isn't done well throughout the entire debate. Impact calc is your best friend, in the 2nr I want you to write my ballot for me and tell me why your link chain is much more probable than your opponents and why your impact turns the case debate.

2. CPs

I'm not particularly persuaded by Aff claims that the CP should be textually competitive, and err on the side of functionally competitive. If the CP has multiple planks I want a clear explanation of how each one functions (or how they function together) at some point in the debate, so many debaters don't synthesis their CP planks to work together which ultimately ends up hurting them in the debate. As far as 50 states goes, the Aff is 100 % right! 50 state fiat isn't the most real world model of education, however, as a 2N I can definitely be persuaded by the arg that it's important to test federal vs. state action---just make sure that these arguments are well drawn out if the debate comes down to 50 states fiat.

3. K debate

All too often the alt isn't clearly explained. While I would definitely vote on "we prove the aff is bad even without the alt," you'd really have to be winning case turns arguments which ultimately makes more work for you. It's best to work with an alt that you are familiar with and can clearly explain with well-articulated links to the case. I try to interfere with the debate as little as possible, so even if I understand the literature base you're working with, I'm not going to do the work for you if you don't fully explain your arguments or develop them.

4. Topicality

It's really important that you win your interpretation though explaining why it is comparatively better than the Aff's CI. It's a good practice to include a list of topical versions of the affirmative that the aff could easily have adopted. Also, I want to see good impact work done in the 2NR (what ground you lost, how they over or under limit etc & why those things matter).

5. FW

Win the TVA debate and I'm 89% convinced you'll win my ballot. If there is a TVA that solves all your offense and gives the Aff the ability to debate the things that they want to debate, that's an easy neg ballot. BUT you need to do the work for me and do impact work in the 2NR that explains what ground you lost (and it needs to be more than "I couldn't run my econ da").

6. Final Tips

A) Clarity over speed

B) When the debate is too big in the 2NR, the neg often loses

C) If the Aff reads add-ons in the 2AC, impact turn them and make the debate fun :)

D) 1NRs should be offensive not defensive, it's a strategic time to read lots of cards because the aff usually focuses more on the 2NC.

For the Aff:

1. For Policy Affs

A) Be topical, or be really good at debating topicality--I'm going to err neg in a debate that you're not winning the topicality debate. Persuasive counter interpretations are a good thing to have in your toolbox and explaining why your interpretation is comparatively better (for debate, for this round etc.) is a must.

B) Impact calc---write my ballot in the 2AR

2. For K Affs

I think that it is helpful for K aff's to be germane to the resolution, it makes it harder for the neg to win aspects of the FW debate (if it is a K vs policy debate) and increases the nuance level of the debate.

A few final things

1. Pronouns are very important, please be respectful and ask the other team their preferred pronouns before the debate starts and adhere to those throughout the debate.

2. Microaggression and rudeness will result in your speaker points being docked, please keep the debate civil and respectful.

Tyler Wiseman George Mason University 7 rounds

Last changed on Tue October 2, 2018 at 2:54 PM EDT

Debated at and now coach for George Mason.

Please put me on the email chain! twisema3@gmail.com

Big picture:

- This is a communication activity. Please be clear. You're probably going much faster than you need to be.

- The aff should defend an unconditional change from the status quo.

- Tech (usually) comes before truth.

- Presumption is a thing. I default to the least change.

Case/CPs/DAs:

- Please debate the case. Terribly constructed affs too often get away with it.

- The only types of CPs I feel any particular bias against are uniqueness CPs and new 2NC CPs. As with all things, this is a threshold/preference thing; if you win the theory debate, you're good.

- There can be zero risk of a DA.

Kritiks/framework:

- I did very little K debating, but am familiar with the more popular/classic lit. Historical examples and analogies are much more helpful in explaining your arguments than just dropping buzz words or author names.

- I'll vote on non-topical affirmatives. The aff probably does need to do something, though.

- Fairness is an impact, but not always the most strategic one.

Theory:

- More than two conditional advocacies puts you in the danger zone.

- Contradictory conditional advocacies are probably bad for debate.

- Condo doesn't outweigh T, but I guess a fire 1AR could change my mind on this.

Procedural issues:

- Cross-ex ends after 3 minutes. Anything after that is not "on the record" but still binding when it comes to things like if the CP is conditional.

- Don't clip cards. A team that calls for an ethics challenge against a team clipping needs to provide proof in the form of an audio recording. If I agree that the team did indeed clip, they'll lose the round and get 0 speaker points. If I decide that the team did not clip, the challenging team will lose the round and get 0 speaker points. This being said, if a tournament has a different procedure for this, I'll obviously adhere to it.

- Mark your cards during the speech. If you can't provide accurately marked cards to your opponents, it makes sense to me that I should disregard that evidence.

Login to Tabroom

Crowe Warken Debates at USNA

2020 — Annapolis, MD/US

Judges Paradigm List

My Philosophy

Judging

Specifics

Speaker Points

Judges