I competed in PF, LD and Policy in high school, and have been judging sporadically for the last 19 years. I don't have any particular argument preference and am most looking for thorough warrants and clash through the round. Final speeches should include clear voting issues. Speed is fine. Please use tag lines instead of citations when extending arguments. This is my first time judging this school year, so please don't assume familiarity with the literature.

Email address: mmfrank@pugetsound.edu

I am a debate coach for the University of Puget Sound where I competed in Policy Debate for four years. I also did two years of LD in High School so I have some familiarity with that style of debate as well. I was a K debater but will evaluate any style of debate that is put in front of me, and do not have any qualms with any sort of argument. I am fine with speed and I like performative arguments. If you are going for Framework or Topicality I need to see good impact calculus to be persuaded, but this is true of any argument you may go for. It is very important to me that debaters are respectful towards each other and to anyone else in the room, including myself. I am willing to vote a team down if something they do in round is isolated by another team as problematic and impacted out. I think what you do in a debate round is just as important as the argument you have prepared prior to the debate. That being said, have fun, be nice to each other, and debate well and all we will have a good time :).

Short Version

Tech>Truth

Probably familiar with your K lit, but very open to hearing framework, case outweighs, and liberalism good debates.

Fine with planless affs, as long as you've thought deeply about your argument in relation to the resolution, your positionality, and the discursive model of debate.

Good judge for advantage counterplans, specific PICs, states/politics, and big DA/case debates. Lean aff on process and consult CPs, but if you have to read them I won't hold it against you.

Make real arguments, embrace clash, respect your opponents, and have fun!

Any pronouns, email chain: kashif.ravasia@gmail.com

General Thoughts

Debate is a social, educational, and competitive space, and I'm not going to pretend I don't have biases as a judge or as an educator. The defaults laid out in this paradigm are for the most part debatable, but I also think adaptation is an important skill for debaters to develop, and you will not get good speaks if it's evident you haven't given any thought to your audience.

Ask me as many questions as you want after the round--my favorite debaters are the ones who care about their arguments and the activity. With that said, be respectful. I don't always make the right decision, and you have a right to be upset whether or not you deserved to lose, but please approach the post-round discussion as a space for mutual education. Also, I can't/won't tell you exactly how many speaker points you earned, but I will give you a general evaluation of your speaking skills and tips for improvement on request.

Speed is fine. If your speed is compromising your ability to provide emphasis or to coherently explain the structure of your arguments, I would consider slowing down (especially for the 2NR/2AR).

Offensive language and/or harassment: zero speaks, loss, and tab involvement.

Incomplete arguments justify new answers.

Don't waste your speech time telling me everything your opponents conceded, giving in-depth explanations of arguments you're clearly winning, or telling me that new arguments are illegitimate. Give me a quick explanation of why the conceded arguments matter for the debate as a whole and move on to the more contentious parts of the line-by-line.

CX

I really like debaters who put their personality into cross-x exchanges and rebuttals. That said, if posturing is part of your debate personality, please focus your snark and aggression on arguments, not people, and be nice to your opponents between speeches and between debates.

Please try to avoid speaking over your opponents. I get that it's sometimes necessary, but try to start your questions as your opponents finish their sentences, and try to cut yourself off so you can listen to the next question. I promise I won't think less of your argument because your opponents didn't give you a chance to fully explain, provided that you flesh the argument out in your rebuttals.

Tag team is fine.

Topicality

I default to competing interpretations. If you're going for reasonability, please tell me what it looks like by the 1AR at the latest, because I don't want to arbitrarily decide what reasonability means or incentivize new 2AR interpretations.

Please provide warrants and impact comparisons much as you would on any other flow, and engage with the line-by-line. I find case lists and contextual definitions very persuasive.


Theory

Again, I want a lot more warrant explanation and clash than I usually see in theory debates.

5 minutes of theory in the 2AR is a reasonable strategy against certain CPs.

Don't extend theory, even conceded theory, on arguments that have been kicked (other than condo). It's good form to answer all theory arguments, and your speaker points will reflect that, but I'm not voting on their vague alts shell when you go for states/politics.

I don't have any real thoughts one way or the other on T vs theory. Convince me.

Counterplans
Advantage counterplans are awesome. I tend to think multiple conditional planks are legitimate; if the aff can't defend their internal links, they probably deserve to lose.

Specific mechanism counterplans and specific PICs: love em. I don't usually think you need a solvency advocate for PICs, but if the aff has a carded defense of their mechanism and you don't have a carded indict of it, you'll be behind.

Counterplans cut from aff ev are the best, but make sure they have real net benefits.

Agent CPs are probably legitimate, especially CPs like Congress and Courts. I lean slightly neg on unlimited condo, international fiat, and multi-actor fiat.

CPs that compete off of immediacy and certainty are highly questionable, and I lean aff unless you have high-quality, topic-specific evidence.

Default to judge kick--Idk why a CP being a bad idea is a reason to do the plan, but I can be convinced not to kick the CP for fairness reasons.

DAs

Make sure your DA is a real argument: highlight your cards appropriately, and if you can't get the link and internal link story to sound coherent, don't read the DA.

Specificity wins DA debates, but spin can also work in a pinch.

Politics DAs: Love em. Recency wins rounds, but prove it matters in the context of the link/internal.

If you think your topic DA might be racist, it probably is.

Death/Suffering Good Arguments (Policy and K)

I cannot be convinced, within debate, that we should not attempt to maximize well-being and minimize suffering. This is more a "rules of the game" thing that anything else; a simple, pseudo-objective evaluation frame minimizes the extent to which debaters have to compensate for their judges' ethical idiosyncrasies. On the other hand, feel free to make arguments about how attempts to prevent suffering and death backfire (Buddhism Ks, Nietzsche Ks, even spark). I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to imagine worlds in which suffering is reduced, nor do I believe that there is never value in short-term sacrifice; I just think reducing suffering is valuable. If you make these arguments, please avoid dipping into "poor people dying is an acceptable sacrifice" territory, because those debates are horrifying. Reactionary death good takes create bad debates.

Anthro debates are always kind of a mess because there's no community or academic consensus on how to weigh animal suffering. I would prefer not to have to weigh human lives against animal ones, but I realize you might not have the ability to adapt to this part of my paradigm, so I'll do my best to evaluate these debates fairly. Just know that my decision will largely come down to my subjective evaluation of your storytelling, ethos-building, and general persuasiveness, as it is primarily a question of values rather than evidence.


Kritiks-general

Good K debates are my favorite debates to watch. Bad K debates are painful.

This section is the longest part of my paradigm not because I'm actually that much of a K hack but because Ks are based in dense, complex scholarship, and I have more biases to unpack.

The easiest way to improve the quality of your K debating is to make more specific link arguments. Generic links broaden the scope of the K, giving the aff more opportunities to generate offense and making the alt harder to defend.

Framework

I'm not convinced fairness is an impact, but it's a great internal link to education if you can win that your form of education matters (which probably requires engaging with the aff on some level). I probably lean slightly toward a belief that institutions can be reformed in the long run, but I find myself agreeing more often than not with the aff's description of how power functions in the status quo. I am impressed by neg teams that understand critical literature well enough to meaningfully compare the aff's method to the neg's model of debate/politics, and I am equally impressed by aff teams that use both the topic literature and current events to contextualize the K.

All of this is to say that I believe framework, debated well, is both a strategic and an educational argument. With that said, I am not a good judge for neg teams who want to use procedural framework as a way to avoid engaging with K affs, nor am I a good judge for aff teams who think that, because I'm familiar with their lit, they don't have to defend their relationship to the resolution.

K v. K rounds

I usually look at the theory of power and alt debates first, but link specificity can also win or lose the round.

The aff should look to generate offense against the alt. Assuming the K is germane to your aff, your authors likely speak to comparative methodological questions. If they don't, that's awkward for both you and your authors, and you should consider reading more recent and more inclusive theory.

The aff probably gets perms. I can be convinced otherwise if the aff has no clear method or if the neg is reading a rhetoric K.

Structuralist and poststructuralist Ks of oppressive institutions (Settlerism, antiblackness, orientalism, ableism, etc.)

I love listening to these debates, and they're almost always determined by the strength of the link argument.

On the neg, make as specific a link argument as possible, and be ready to explain your link(s) as an answer to the permutation.

On the aff, pay close attention to what the neg is critiquing, and respond accordingly. If the neg is attacking your heg advantage, defend the importance of American hegemony. If the neg is attacking liberalism, defend liberalism. If the neg is attacking specific rhetorical choices you made in the 1AC, defend those choices or present a framework argument about plan focus.

In a general sense, I tend to think that the poststructuralist and intersectional versions of these Ks are great against K affs and potentially strategic against both soft left and big stick affs. They take a bit more explanation than the older, more ontologically rigid versions, but they also have a number of tricks that can be used to mitigate aff offense and win the theory of power debate.

Nietzsche, D and G, Baudrillard, Derrida, and other Ks that implicate language and/or truth

These debates largely come down to the quality of explanation. A lot of these authors use arcane jargon and make generic, sweeping statements about ontology, epistemology, and language. This is both a strength and a weakness, because they'll apply to almost any aff but you have to do the work of unpacking your authors' arguments and applying them to your opponents' case.

Make sure I have a non-arbitrary way to evaluate impacts. This probably means steering away from the more extreme interpretations of relativism.

I don't think these Ks are strategic on the aff, because these authors' orientations toward becoming, fluidity, and deconstruction make it really hard to build a consistent 1AC, and you'll probably lose a lot of debates on presumption, at least in front of me. On the other hand, I find these affs fun to hear and contemplate, and I won't vote for an argument that isn't explained well in the round, so if you're feeling bold, go for it.

Psychoanalytic Ks

Psychoanalysis is not an area in which my understanding of the lit is particularly strong, and I am deeply suspicious of universalizing arguments about drives and desires, especially when deployed as answers to structural critiques.

If you want to read Ks that draw on psychoanalysis as a way to discuss affect and social relations, on the other hand (Berlant, Irigaray, Ahmed, Butler, Sexton), I'm definitely willing to listen and familiar with the lit base. These debates generally end up intersecting heavily with CRT, queer studies, and intersectional feminism, so many of the above points apply.

Cap K

If you want to discuss capitalism/neoliberalism, you need to be more specific than "the aff is capitalist--capitalism is bad." In what ways does the 1AC expand class inequalities or contribute to capitalist ideological structures? What is your method for transitioning away from capitalism? What systems and institutions should be implemented in its place? If you can't answer these questions, I'm holding the aff to a very low standard in responding, because it's impossible to come up with disadvantages to "something other than capitalism" until the neg specifies what that something might be. On the other hand, I am inclined to consider (specific) alternatives to capitalism seriously even in the absence of a thoroughly developed lit base, because I am sympathetic to the argument that capitalism crowds out and delegitimizes alternative scholarship.

As suggested by the above paragraph, I'm a better judge for Gramsci, historical materialism, or Bifo than for your Kovel or Giroux alt, but as long as you can explain your method, feel free to read whatever.

On the aff, you should be able to characterize your 1AC's relationship to capitalism/globablization/neoliberalism. Not every policy that promotes economic growth necessarily prioritizes the demands and interests of the capitalist class, and if the aff is structured around wage increases, labor organization, or improvements in working conditions, the debate should be about reformism vs radicalism rather than the value of capitalism writ large. On the other hand, if your aff is incompatible with the alternative, impact turns are going to be much more persuasive than a bunch of link and perm tricks.