My personal debate experience is around BP and APDA formats of debate. I have judged and debated BP for 3 years and have done so in APDA for 1 year. I have been instructing PF for 1 years having judged in multiple ADL tournaments

Mel DeBlasio (she/her) Yale '23.5

General Info

I'm a New England girlie who judges West Coast tournaments every once in a while. Parli experience only.

Be kind, be chill, and above all be respectful!! Any act of aggression (table banging), intimidation (yelling), disruption (whispering during speeches), or abusive argumentation will result in the lowest possible speaker points awarded. Please tell me your pronouns prior to round start.

Include trigger and content warnings. Let me know if you have preferences or accommodations that you're uncomfortable sharing with your opponents directly, and I will make an anonymous announcement prior to round start.

If your opponents have strong prefs due to different debate backgrounds/experience, you must try your best to accommodate them. There is nothing satisfying or educationally valuable about gatekeeping your opponents out of a round.

Debate Preferences

I hand-write all of my flow and have the attention span of a four year old on methamphetamine. I can keep up with fast rounds easily but if you spread, I will stop listening and the only RFD you'll get is how many ceiling tiles there are in the room. Spreading is unnecessary and an accessibility concern, and in my mind spreading = bad debater.

Please please please do not rely on tech jargon in the round to describe your arguments. If you cannot explain your case to a random person on the street, it is meaningless. The only "perm" I care about is the one Elle Woods used to win her third-act court case in the 2001 cinematic masterpiece "Legally Blonde", and if you start using half words, acronyms, and other nonsensical ten dollar words I will stop the round to perform the Cincinatti Stroke Scale on you. Techy terminology does not replace actual warranting.

Please no tag-teaming or verbal team communication during speech times, save it for flex time!

ELI5 and pretend that I have never read a book in my life.

I will listen to whatever type of round you want to have, however keep in mind that I don't have a tech background. All arguments will be evaluated the same, regardless of the technical or stylistic context: is it well-warranted? Is it unique? Are the impacts clearly linked? Did you weigh your impacts? And at the end of the day, you have to tell me in the PMR/LOR why your arguments win you the round. Lowest pref is theory because I find it uninteresting.

Please give me your creative, crazy, and radical cases. Please try to present unique and entertaining arguments, and feel free to joke around a bit and have a good time. My Breaking Baby brain loves it, and if you're having fun in the round then I'm having fun in the round. But leave your edgy bigoted "death and suffering are good, actually" cases for your Discord meme channel. And don't try to go OTT on details and style in sacrifice of argument quality... you still have to run a good debate round to win!

Experience: I'm a parent judge. This is my first year as a debate judge and I have no prior debate experience.

Preferences: I will take notes during the round. Please do not speak too fast so that I can clearly understand you. I believe that whichever team has the most convincing argument should win. I will not vote for teams that are disrespectful or rude.

Thank you and have fun debating.

I'm a parent judge with experience judging LD and extemp. Please be clear and signpost your arguments well. No spreading because I won't vote off what I can't flow. I like to see a strong link chain with good warrants for all of your arguments, and I won't buy arguments that I can't understand. Most of all, don't be rude in round, and have fun debating :)

Hello! I am a sophomore at Columbia University and did debate in high school for two years. Since it's been a while since I've done debate and I have only a little bit of judging experience, my preferences aren't very complex or hard to meet. I prefer debaters to talk at a reasonable and understandable speed and to not spread, as I'll be taking notes during the round. I also prefer and won't vote on purely debate theory or mechanics -- I want to be convinced of your argument first and foremost! Overall, I'm not too picky about anything, just be professional and use reasoning and good evidence to build up your argument to prove your point.