Emory ’22, Newman ‘18

Conflicts: Woodward Academy, Isidore Newman

Add me to the email chain: rajanagrawal18@gmail.com

Glenbrooks - This is my first tournament judging this topic, so please refrain from using acronyms at first.

General Thoughts:

Ideal debate - CP/DA strategy vs a policy aff. I never read a K aff nor went for any other K aside from cap or security.

Debate is a game

Tech outweighs truth - great spin/technical debating can beat higher quality ev when you have only decent/kinda bad cards

What my ballot does - all my ballot does is decide who wins and who loses a debate - it does not upend the social order and radically transform debate nor does it cause genocide

Line by line is very important – the cleaner the debate, the better the debate. I will add .5 speaker points if you engage in good line by line debate that includes a numbered 2AC.

K-affs:

Read a plan.

If you don’t and the other team goes for FW, I am predisposed to vote neg.

Topicality:

Give examples of what affs would be justified by the aff's interp. Impact comparison between standards is crucial. I'm open to either reasonability or competing interpretations.

Theory:

Condo: I strongly believe there is no non-arbitrary difference between 2, 3, or infinite condo - if you can justify why having multiple CP's is good you probably get to read as many as you want - aff teams can win that the neg should get 1 or 0 condo in front of me, but it will be an uphill battle.

Other theory arguments: please debate about the topic and not some extraneous issue. I really would prefer for a 2ar not to go for theory when substance is an option - if you have a card that actually substantiates your CP, I will almost definitely not vote against you on theory. Super cheaty CPs are the only exception.

Ks:

I believe the aff gets to way the implementation of the plan. I am not the right judge for any high theory or pomo K.

DAs and CPs:

DAs: I love the politics DA. That being said, pointing out logical holes and good analytics get really far with me and can completely take out a DA. Zero risk is possible. Don't drop "DA turns and/or solves the case.”

CPs: I like a good cheaty CP. If you can defend it theoretically, go for it.

Good debate is good debate. My Paradigm will mostly provide you with preferences and strong recommendations of conduct to not pursue in front of me, however, remember good debate is good debate and you will be fine.

Speed- Not a preference but I am fine with it. If I yell clear more than twice you WILL NOT receive over a 28.5

I think speed is often used as alternative to poor or inadequate word economy. Word economy, excellent word economy is key to high speaks with me. Word economy+clear speed is also a good way to earn high speaks even if the ballot does not go your way.

Argumentation- Theory is fine even though I have a preference for substantive topical debate and engagement. Alternatively, non traditional responses to theory are also fine- an "argument is an argument"... with one exception.

Do not run ANY arguments in front of me along the lines of discrimination/racism/sexism good, this is a creative educational space not a morally repugnant one and some discussions contrary to contemporary political opinion don't deserve lip service.

Narratives, not the biggest fan but will listen and vote for them if run effectively.

DISADS/K's/CP's/ I have run all of these arguments before and will evaluate them without any sort of preferential treatment. In my day I was known as a debater who at times could run critical arguments. That reputation is not secret, however, running these arguments in front of me will not persuade me to intervene for or against them simply for the sake that I may have an affiliation or even ran them myself.

Cross X- Stand up, make it interesting, I allow for flex prep but don't prefer it. You cannot get a 30 in front of me if you do not stand for CX, hiding behind a laptop is not persuasive.

Final thought- Have fun, be. strategic( I reward strategic decisions) and always feel free to ask me as many questions as you need after the RFD. Persuasion is key

UPDATE 10/14/22

TL:DR

I have not updated by paradigm in well over a decade but much of what I wrote then continues to be true. I've been coaching/judging various styles and forms of debate for over 12 years. I am most comfortable judging debates in Policy, Lincoln-Douglass, and Public Forum. I flow and listen to all arguments, so please debate in whichever way you are most comfortable and I will attempt to evaluate it to the best of my ability. That being said, if you have a position that is complicated or difficult to follow, the onus is on the debaters to ensure that their arguments are well explained. I will not vote on arguments that I do not understand or are blatantly offensive/discriminatory. Otherwise, try  to have fun!

My email for chains is: carlito2692@gmail.com

Old Paradigm:

I competed in LD at University High School in Newark New Jersey, I was nationally competitive for three years.. I also compete in policy debate for Rutgers University.

Presumption: I typically presume neg unless the affirmative advances arguments for why presumption should flow aff (i.e the negative team introduces a counterplan/kritik alt/etc.

Speed: I don't generally have an issue with speed, however I do have a problem with monotone speed, unclear speed. I will yell clear if I can't understand you, but it will only be maybe once or twice, if you don't become clear by then, my ability to properly evaluate the arguments may possibly become impaired. Also, your speaks probably won't be awesome if I have to keep yelling clear.

-I would like you to significantly slow down when reading tags/card names so I can have a properly structured flow, but while reading the card you are welcome to go at top CLEAR speed(a few caveats to be explained later)

-When making analytical arguments, please be clear, because it's difficult for me to follow analytics when they are weirdly phrased and also being spread.

-I don't like speed for the sake of being fast, I prefer when speed is used as a catalyst for an awesome case or a multilayered rebuttal with really nuanced responses on case.

Evidence: Despite what happened in the round, I may call for the cites for cards read in round, I'll specify which specific cites I would like to see. I do this for two reasons: to ensure that there was no miscutting of evidence, and because I believe in disclosure and am from the school of thought that everybody in the round should have access to all evidence read in the round. I don't appreciate a denial to share citations, if citations are not readily available, I may choose to disregard all evidence with missing citations(especially evidence which was contested in the debate).

Cross Examination: I don't know how much I can stress it...CROSS EX IS BINDING! I don't care if you present arguments for why it shouldn't be binding or why lying in CX is ok, or any arguments with the implication which allows dishonesty in CX, there is NO theory to be ran to change my mind. Nevertheless, I don't flow CX, so its up to the debaters to refresh my memory of any inconsistencies between speeches and CX answers. On the other hand, CX can be the BEST or the WORST part of a debate, depending on how it plays out. A funny yet not disrespectful CX will score big when I'm deciding on how to assign speaks, while a rude and boring CX will negatively influence how I assign speaks. Clarification questions during prep is fine, but I'm not cool with trying to tear down an argument during prep, if it was that important, it should have been in the formal CX, rather than during prep. Don't be afraid to refuse to answer a non-clarification question during your opponents prep time.

Critical/Weird Arguments: I love well explained critical positions. With the caveat that these critical arguments are logically explained and aren't insanely convoluted. I have no issue voting for the argument. But if I can't understand it, I won't vote on it. Also, I am a fan of interesting debate, so if you have a neat performance to run in front of me, I would love to hear it!

Theory: I don't presume to competing interpretations or reasonability. The justification for either one needs to be made in round. I don't like greedy theory debates, which means that I generally view theory as a reason to reject the argument rather than the debater. YES, this means you must provide reasons in or after the implications section of your shell, for why this specific violation is a reason for me to use my ballot against the other debater. I'm not persuaded by generic 12 point blocks for why fairness isn't a voter, I prefer nuanced argumentation for why fairness may not be a voter. RVIs have to be justified but I'm willing to vote on them if the situation presents itself, but its up to you to prove why you defensively beating theory is enough for me to vote for you.

Prestandard: I don't like having preconceived beliefs before judging a round, but this is just one of those things that I need to reinforce. I WILL NOT vote on multiple apriori blips, and winning a single apriori is an uphill battle, a serious commitment to advocacy is necessary(you devote a serious amount of time to the apriori position.)

Speaks: I average about a 27, I doubt I'll go lower than 25(unless you do something which merits lower than a 25) because I personally know how disappointing the 4-2/5-2 screw can be, nevertheless I am more than willing to go up or down, depending on the performance in that particular round. The reason I average around a 27 is not because I generally don't give nice speaks, its because the majority of tournaments, I'll judge only a few rounds that deserve more than a 28. It's not difficult at all to get good speaks from me. I reserve 30's for debaters who successfully execute the following: speak really well, good word economy, good coverage/time allocation, takes risks when it comes to strategy, weighs really well, provides AWESOME evidence comparison, and adapts well to the things happening in the round. I really enjoy seeing new strategies, or risky strategies, I.E. I am a fan of the straight refutation 1N, attempting something risky like this and pulling it off, gives you a higher chance of getting a 30. Another way to get high speaks is to be a smart debater as well as funny without being mean or making any kind of jokes at the expense of your opponent(this will lose you speaks)

Delivery: I need evidence comparison! It makes me really happy when debaters do great evidence comparison. Also, I would appreciate for you to give status updates as the rebuttals progress, as well as giving me implications for each extension. When extending arguments which rely on cards, in order for it to be a fully structured extension it must contain: The claim/tag of the card, author/card name, warrant from the card, and the implications of that extension (what does it do for you in the round).

Miscellaneous: You are more than welcome to sit or stand, I don't mind people reading from laptops or being paperless as long as it doesn't delay the round. Also, I don't care if you are formally dressed, jeans and a tshirt will get you the same speaks that a shirt and a tie will. :) I also believe its impossible for me to divorce my judging from my beliefs, but I'll do my best to attempt to fairly adjudicate the debate.

P.S. I don't like performative contradictions...(just felt like I should throw that out there)

About Me

I attended and debated for Rutgers University-Newark (c/o 2021). I’ve ran both policy and K affs.

Coach @ Ridge HS in Basking Ridge, NJ.

Influences In Debate

David Asafu – Adjaye (he actually got me interested in college policy, but don’t tell him this), and of course, the debate coaching staff @ RU-N: Willie Johnson, Carlos Astacio, Devane Murphy, Christopher Kozak and Elijah Smith.

The Basics

Yes, I wish to be on the email chain!

saied.beckford@rutgers.edu

COLLEGE POLICY: I skimmed through the topic paper and ADA/ Wake will be my first time judging this season. Do with this information what you wish.

GENERAL: If you are spreading and it’s not clear, I will yell clear. If I have to do that too many times in a round, it sucks to be you buddy because I will just stop flowing and evaluate the debate based on what I can remember. Zoom through your cards, but when doing analytics and line by line, take it back a bit. After all, I can only evaluate what I catch on my flow. UPDATE FOR ONLINE DEBATES: GO ABOUT 70% OF YOUR NORMAL SPEED. IF YOU ARE NOT CLEAR EVEN AT 70%, DON'T SPREAD.

In general, I like K’s (particularly those surrounding Afro-Pess and Queer Theory). However, I like to see them executed in at least a decent manner. Therefore, if you know these are not your forte, do not read them just because I am judging. One recent pet peeve of mine is people just asserting links without having them contextualized to the aff and well explained. Please don't be that person. You will see me looking at both you and my flow with a confused face trying to figure out what's happening. Additionally, do not tell me that perms cannot happen in a method v. method debate without a warrant.

I live for performance debates.

I like to be entertained, and I like to laugh. Hence, if you can do either, it will be reflected in your speaker points. However, if you can’t do this, fear not. You obviously will get the running average provided you do the work for the running average. While I am a flow centric judge, be it known that debate is just as much about delivery as it is about content.

The bare minimum for a link chain for a DA is insufficient 99% of the time for me. I need a story with a good scenario for how the link causes the impact. Describe to me how everything happens. Please extrapolate! Give your arguments depth! It would behoove you to employ some impact calculus and comparison here.

Save the friv theory, bring on those spicy framework and T debates. Please be well structured on the flow if you are going this route. Additionally, be warned, fairness is not a voter 98% of the times in my book. It is an internal link to something. Note however, though I am all for T and framework debates, I also like to see aff engagement. Obviously these are all on a case by case basis. T USFG is not spicy. I will vote on it, but it is not spicy.

For CPs, if they're abusive, they are. As long as they are competitive and have net benefits, we're good.

On theory, at a certain point in the debate, I get tired of hearing you read your coach's coach's block extensions. Could we please replace that with some impact weighing?

Do not assume I know anything when judging you. I am literally in the room to take notes and tell who I think is the winner based on who gives the better articulation as to why their option is better. Therefore, if you assume I know something, and I don’t … kinda sucks to be you buddy.

I’m all for new things! Debating is all about contesting competing ideas and strategies.

I feel as though it should be needless to say, but: do not run any bigoted arguments. However, I’m well aware that I can’t stop you. Just please be prepared to pick up a zero in your speaking points, and depending on how egregious your bigotry is, I just might drop you. Literally!

Another thing: please do not run anthropocentrism in front of me. It’s something I hated as a debater, and it is definitely something I hate as a judge. Should you choose to be risky, please be prepared for the consequences. (Update: voted on it once - purely a flow decision)

For My LD'ers

It is often times difficult to evaluate between esoteric philosophies. I often find that people don't do enough work to establish any metric of evaluation for these kinds of debates. Consequently, I am weary for pulling the trigger for one side as opposed to the other. If you think you can, then by all means, read it!

Yale Update: Tricks are for kids.You might be one, but I am not.

I'm gonna have to pass on the RVIs too. I've never seen a more annoying line of argumentation.

In general, give me judge instructions.

On average, tech > truth --- however, I throw this principle out when people start doing or saying bigoted things.

Anthony Berryhill (MBA, M.Phil., M.A., CSM, CSPO) | Judge Paradigm- updated 9/2/2023
email (for speech docs): anthony@elitecollegehacker.com

Experience:

• Professional background: Former Vice President of Learning (executive) at PIMCO, a leading fixed income firm. Stanford (BA) and Yale (PhD Candidate) alumnus--both in political science with a focus on contemporary political theory
• Current job: Running college admissions company (MBA/MD/PhD/undergrad) at www.elitecollegehacker.com.
• Recent Debate Career Highlights: Coach of 3 national champions (College PF, HS LD @ 2019 NCFL, HS PF - International TOC) | 6x LD Wording Committee member | NSDA Final Round Judge (Policy 2022, LD 2019-2022) | Former Managing Director at VBI | LD (TOC-NSDA-NCFL)/Extemp (NCFL)/Congress (NSDA Senate+NCFL) Qualified student @ Isidore Newman (1996-2000)

How I vote (in brief): I vote for the debater who -- through the appropriate decision rule (values, burdens, argument layer) -- convinces me that I should vote for their side of the resolution (and/or performance) above the other debater.

Style info:

Good debate is good debate - I have judged late TOC and NSDA elims of all styles and historically have very successfully coached traditional, policy, performance (at the LD TOC), and K debaters.

I strongly prefer debates about the topic, but can be convinced otherwise if you pull it off well.

Speed is ok if you are clear, avoid monotone, and if you include me on the speech docs.

How to win my ballot and get high points (preferences):

1. I strongly prefer debaters who do the work to cross apply, connect arguments together, extend evidence, signpost, and keep the flow clean. These students get wins and 29.5s+ with shocking consistency.
2. I look for the easiest, most clear way to vote, so I can minimize/avoid intervention (within reason). I am not a judge who will reconstruct a round and read cards for 30 min after a debate. That's the debaters' job. The more work you do to write the ballot, the more weight I will give to your interpretations and positions.
3. In-round analysis and smart strategy counts: Weighing, closing doors (telling me where you can lose and doing the hard work in detail to stop me from doing so), crystallization, and extensions will help you sway the ballot to your side.
4. Clarity matters: I am biased toward debaters who do the work to explain very complicated ideas in a simple, clear, and accessible way. As a former PhD in critical theory @ Yale, I appreciate good argumentation, depth, and skill at explanation.

What I strongly dislike/what you will want to avoid:

1. High Mental/Cognitive load/confusion -> judge intervention: It is in your interest to collapse arguments down in order to reduce how much I have to evaluate or consider. Otherwise, I get to be dangerously creative and decide how I want to vote, which I'd rather not do.

2. Misbehavior in rounds and debate politics. I judge by the "any given sunday" principle. I do not hack--and have never--hacked for anyone, any position, or at any time. Therefore any debater can win in front of me if they adapt. Make sure to avoid behavior that is out of bounds (swearing, use of inappropriate words, and other actions that parents/principals would disapprove).

3. A note about theory and identity arguments. If you need theory or identity based arguments, go for it. HOWEVER, frivolous theory or blippy arguments are not strategic in front of me.

Also, as one of the first students in circuit LD to run heavily race/gender based arguments (in the late 90s) I'm especially sensitive to students treating these arguments with the seriousness they demand.

Therefore, if you run identity arguments, please do not treat these as strategic pawns to be deployed without regard to ethics (i.e., I've seen some folks use racially insensitive language as a strategy, lie about misgendering/pronouns to trap opponents, claim that only people of a certain race can make certain positions, etc.) As an intersectionalist by training, I'm opposed to essentialism, stereotyping, and authenticity policing. Let's do none of that please.

Good luck!

Hello there! I’m Ishan. I am excited to hear what y’all have to say!! For what it’s worth, I haven’t been involved in a couple of years, so please explain jargon and debate a little slower than you would otherwise.

Email for LD: ishanbhatt42@gmail.com. Could you make the subject line something like: “ Tournament -- Year -- Aff vs Neg”?

Updated for Harvard 2024

Form Preferences:

1. Read what you want if it is well-warranted and well-explained. This is theoretically a content-neutral preference, but I may be worse for very short arguments with very extreme implications. The size of an argument’s implication and its length should be inversely correlated.

2. Please be sure that every word you say is understandable. I’ll say clear. If I do, please go back, and say your argument again. I don’t open speech docs until after the round, so I do want to hear all the words of the card.

3. If an argument is dropped, you get the warrant, not the tag. The implication of a dropped argument can still be contested.

4. I’m more persuaded by specific arguments. It’s hard to win no progress if you drop aff solvency, threat inflation if you concede the China war scenario, “fairness always first” without some debating about the internal link, etc.

5. Please be transparent about your argument. Don't be coy about the function or content of the argument, or else I may not understand it either! And please don’t refuse to answer questions at all.

6. The 1NC must fully develop the argument. My sense of the meta is only based on judging twice in the last two years, but I thought many off-case positions I saw weren’t complete arguments and the 1AR could’ve briefly dismissed them.

Content Preferences:

Plans/CPs/DAs:

• I really don’t need everything to lead to extinction.
• For most “cheating” counterplans, a clear theory of “what should be competitive” is most compelling.
• A perm needs explanation in the speech in which it is introduced.

Theory:

• Predictably defining the words in the topic matters the most for topicality. Once you’ve defined a word, proving a good vision for the topic regarding research, ground, limits, etc. is great.
• I basically won’t vote on bad theory arguments, especially really contrived interpretations (e.g., “may not do exactly what you did”). A solid “this is arbitrary + reasonability + don’t drop the debater” push should do the trick for me.
• Reasonability, to me, makes most sense as “voting on theory means we lose out on a substantive debate, therefore defense is sufficient.” I’m often confused by reasonability “bright line” arguments.
• Please don’t claim that a debate practice (like a new case or conditionality) makes debate “unsafe.” I feel like safety is meaningful thing and is probably outside the realm of technical debating.

Ks:

• You need to explain a structural claim, not just say the claim.
• I likely won’t vote on an argument about personal stuff.
• I really don’t understand most arguments over fiat. “Fiat” makes most sense to me as shorthand for the “is-ought” fallacy.
• I might be stricter than the median judge for neg DA links – if you “destroy the system of capitalism,” the neg is probably right about the link to the econ DA.

See also: Andrew Garber's paradigm.

Updated for 2020

Top of mind:

· I default to a comparative worlds paradigm. I would like the affirmative to do something; the negative’s job is to prove why that action is bad/undesirable.

· I need a weighing mechanism and offense that links in to that weighing mechanism. Unless given another method, I will default to v/c structure as the mechanism to evaluate & prioritize the round impacts, otherwise. I acknowledge and endorse the advent of multiple, valid methods of argumentation, but I prefer a topic-centered evidence debate comparing pragmatic solutions using CBA, but you do you. Whatever you do, please make an effort to do it well (your arguments must have warrants). Most importantly, I need you to outline how both debaters can expect to access my ballot - particularly if you are employing a non-traditional method of debate

About me: I competed on various circuits, first in policy debate for 2 years, LD for another 2 at Colleyville Heritage in TX under Dave Huston from 2005-2009. I've worked at Greenhill School as an assistant LD coach under Aaron Timmons from 2010-2018. I haven't been actively involved in debate at all since 2018, but below is still true - I'm just "old."

I'm helping Trinity High School in Texas for the 2020 Debate season.

I feel very strongly about evidence ethics in academia.

IF YOU DO NOT SHARE YOUR EVIDENCE IN SOME WAY WITH YOUR OPPONENT (EITHER THROUGH FLASHING, VIEWING LAPTOPS, SHARING COMPUTERS, E-MAIL CHAINS OR PAPER COPIES) I WILL NOT CALL FOR IT AFTER THE ROUND. Exceptions will be dependent on previous disclosure of the citations and extenuating circumstance.

DO NOT CLIP CARDS - Every time you clip a card, a kitten gets kicked. Don't kick kittens; don't clip cards. You will lose the round if you have clipped. I will not be lenient on this issue. I may spare speaker points if you attempt to follow the norms outlined or demonstrate a norm that prevents the harms of clipping, etc. *e.g. "saying "cut the card there" and then IMMEDIATELY marking where it is cut instead of saying "cut the card at (last word spoken)."

Check out this article if you don't understand "card clipping."
<http://the3nr.com/2014/08/20/how-to-never-clip-cards-a-guide-for-debaters/>

I expect cites to be able to be provided for all evidence used. I reserve the right to call for them if I so choose - I may do so randomly or if I suspect something is amiss. Evidence ethics is extremely important, and I will let card-clipping, plagiarism, and forged evidence affect my decision as I see fit - in the past, it has just affected speaker points. If it is an egregious, intentional violation (yes, I determine this) I may vote you down/decrease your speaks/refuse to vote on that argument, even if your opponent does not point it out; if your opponent does indicate that I should punish, I will be more comfortable smiting your points.
If you do not know how to cite something,
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/11/ is a great resource.
I am happy to talk to you about this. Seriously, y'all, people get kicked out university/have their careers ruined for improper, albeit unintentional, citation. I'm not opposed to an entirely analytical case if you don't want to take the time to give credit where credit is due.
One great way to combat this in the community is to disclose your positions on
http://hsld.debatecoaches.org/bin/view/Main/

Speech Docs:

You can e-mail speech docs to bekahboyer@gmail.com

If I'm sent a speech doc, I will only open it during CX to follow along with questions about the evidence. Pointed indictments about evidence will increase speaker points.

Generally, I don’t call for evidence, unless the debaters haven’t gone in depth enough with a contestation or I want to give you tips, but I do feel comfortable calling for evidence when I I want to see it.

What is on my flow is what counts. You will be able to tell if I am lost or confused.
I consider myself alright at flowing, but I am not afraid to admit I am not perfect or even close to the best. That said, I will not vote on something that I:
a) do not not understand
and/or
b) don't have on the flow

o If you want to win an argument you need to start by extending, at minimum, the basic parts of the argument (e.g. You need to extend T/theory violations; ROB/standards/weighing mechanisms if you want me to vote on them)

· IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU EXPLAIN THE LAYERS OF THE DEBATE FOR ME. IF YOU DO NOT WEIGH THINGS FOR ME, I WILL DO SO BASED ON WHAT I THINK (something on which we may not agree) .

What I don't want: having to wade through the arguments and establish my own opinion

Speaking:

· I'm fine with speed, but I'd prefer you to make a couple of really solid arguments than many blippy ones. I will say clear twice per speech before I stop flowing that speech. After a 3rd "clear" in a speech/round speaks will be noticeably affected. Speed is a strategy - I will be annoyed if you go super fast just to make 4 underdeveloped arguments and sit down with lots of time left. Also, now that I'm old (and during e-Debate), please default to going slowly, esp on card tags and theory args.

· Best way to make sure we are on the same page? Be clear. SLOW DOWN WHEN YOU ARTICULATE A WARRANT AND ITS IMPLICATION IN ROUND. I have a terrible poker face. Use that to your advantage. It is obvious when I am not getting something. Loudness and/or clarity is usually more of the issue for me than speed and if I am having a “bad disability day” with my hearing, I will let you know at the beginning of the round so we can all start at a higher volume.

· IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU EXPLAIN THE LAYERS OF THE DEBATE FOR ME. IF YOU DO NOT WEIGH THINGS FOR ME, I WILL DO SO BASED ON WHAT I THINK (something on which we may not agree).

o Pro tip: Give me prioritized voters. This helps me establish that YOU have a strategy and are not just grasping at straws. AND it will increase your speaker points

· Speaker Points, in general-

o I try to average a 28.5

o A good debater who does everything necessary to win with a smart strategy and clear extensions, evidence comparison, and weighing between arguments will receive a 29-29.8. If it is a local, Texas tournament and I think you should break, I will give you a 29+ ; @ TOC circuit tournaments, anything above a 29 means I think you are the bees knees.

o I only give 30sin certain circumstances, usually for a perfect speech, and I will tell you why you got one. In a given season, I usually give 2-3 30s.

o I assume everyone starts with a 27.5 you go up or down by tenths of a point based on strategy, extensions, speaking style, etc --- if tenths aren't available, I will round to the nearest .5. If I round up, I will indicate that on the ballot or in the RFD. Yes, I know this is subjective: welcome to any evaluation of public speaking.

o Protip: If you give me a phrase I write on my ballot, I start you at a 29 automatically instead of 27.5.

-If you are neg and don't flow the 2ar, I will dock .5 speaker point

Argument Specific Questions:
Theory

o I don't like frivolous theory arguments - I tend to find them underdeveloped and not enjoyable to judge. BUT, I love topicality debate, especially if the 2n goes all in on it.

o I default to drop the arg over drop the debater

o The in round abuse story needs to be strong if I am going to drop the debater on theory

o I default to viewing Topicality/Theory as gateway issues, UNLESS other justifications/arguments are given

o If there is not a voter or a violation extended, I will not vote on theory/T.

o I default to reasonability on T if the interp is inclusive not exclusive. I prefer Competing interps because it leaves me less to wade through

o "Reasonability" vs "Competing Interps": Forget the buzzwords: everything collapses to reasonability if the debaters aren't doing comparative work. I would prefer you to have C/I's and substantial clash/weighing against each other's standards OR establish a metric of "reasonablity"

· RVI's –

o I don’t think you should win by being topical or fair; those are obligations and should not be rewarded --- It is unlikely that I will vote on RVI from an I/M on Topicality unless there is demonstrated abuse in the round (you can prove this by running something where the link depends on the interp --- or you can establish it in CX).

o I am more open to independently justified voters against T/Theory than I am RVIs (e.g., T Is racist)

o I am open to listening to RVIs as long as there is clear, obvious weighing between the standards of a competing interpretation!

Default Spikes/Presumption/etc:

· I hate skep triggers and presumption. You can run them, but I will be annoyed. It’s a pretty common strategy... mostly because it's easy. I have voted on them when the lack of clash leaves me no other option and speaks have suffered. Risk of offense means I will unlikely resort to this. Prove to me why you don't need them and speaks will certainly reflect that.

· I just need a reason why those arguments are true, just like any other argument AND how they function as offense/terminal defense. Those arguments have strategic value; I just fear the trend that many debaters employ: blippy spikes as a crutch to avoid substance. If you want to discuss this, please let me know.

Narratives/Micro political arguments –

· I am alright with these. I do believe that the debate space can allow the oppressed to speak.

· I am a firm advocate of the consensual nature of all dialogue. The speech act is half talking and half listening: it is undesirable to force people to participate in discourse that would wound them in some way.

· If the narrative is graphic, I expect you to disclose the nature of the discussion before the round starts to warn me, your opponent, and anyone in the room. Feel free to talk to me about this.

"Policy" Args versus "Traditonal" versus whatever:
Debate is debate. An argument is an argument. As long as it has a claim, a warrant, and an impact. I'll listen.
o A CP need a net benefit. Solvency deficits on their own do not make a CP competitive – e.g. If the CP solves the aff and the aff solves with a risk of advantage and no unique advantage on the CP, I will affirm.

Perms are a test of competition (Affs should have clearly stated perm texts to minimize confusion and/or potential severance)

Misc. Laundry List of Paradigmatic questions:

· You gotta have uniqueness to win a turn.

· If there is inherent harm in the squo and there is a risk that action would solve for that harm, I will take that action. (meaning I'm extremely partial to "risk of solvency" args). Defense doesn't win debate rounds.

Other Issues

Flex Prep:

I am okay with "Flex Prep" if that means you can ask questions during prep. If your "flex prep" is the practice in which you can apply cx time for extra prep, that's not cool. (ex: "I have 1:42 sec of CX left, I'll add that as prep."

Behavior:
Be kind to each other. We are all here because debate is awesome - though our reasons may vary. Be courteous and polite. Say what you need to say and stay appropriate.

Questions?:
If you want to do a rebuttal redo, ask how to clarify an argument/response you made, or ask me anything post-round, that is definitely alright. I will do my best to help with the time I am allotted.
Feel free to ask me anything I may not have covered adequately/did not address at all.
You can always reach me through e-mail at bekahboyer@gmail.com
If I don't respond to the follow-up email within 72 hours, please email again.

Tl; dr: You do you, but watch my face - if I am annoyed or look confused, proceed at your own risk.

David Coates

Chicago '05; Minnesota Law '14

For e-mail chains (which you should always use to accelerate evidence sharing): coat0018@umn.edu

2023-24 rounds (as of 4/13): 89

Aff winning percentage: .551

("David" or "Mr. Coates" to you. I'll know you haven't bothered to read my paradigm if you call me "judge," which isn't my name).

I will not vote on disclosure theory. I will consider RVIs on disclosure theory based solely on the fact that you introduced it in the first place.

I will not vote on claims predicated on your opponents' rate of delivery and will probably nuke your speaker points if all you can come up with is "fast debate is bad" in response to faster opponents. Explain why their arguments are wrong, but don't waste my time complaining about how you didn't have enough time to answer bad arguments because...oh, wait, you wasted two minutes of a constructive griping about how you didn't like your opponents' speed.

I will not vote on frivolous "arguments" criticizing your opponent's sartorial choices (think "shoe theory" or "formal clothes theory" or "skirt length," which still comes up sometimes), and I will likely catapult your points into the sun for wasting my time and insulting your opponents with such nonsense.

You will probably receive a lecture if you highlight down your evidence to such an extent that it no longer contains grammatical sentences.

Allegations of ethical violations I determine not to have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt will result in an automatic loss with the minimum allowable speaker points for the team introducing them.

Allegations of rule violations not supported by the plain text of a rule will make me seriously consider awarding you a loss with no speaker points.

I will actively intervene against new arguments in the last speech of the round, no matter what the debate format. New arguments in the 2AR are the work of the devil and I will not reward you for saving your best arguments for a speech after which they can't be answered. I will entertain claims that new arguments in the 2AR are automatic voting issues for the negative or that they justify a verbal 3NR. Turnabout is fair play.

I will not entertain claims that your opponents should not be allowed to answer your arguments because of personal circumstances beyond their control. Personally abusive language about, or directed at, your opponents will have me looking for reasons to vote against you.

Someone I know has reminded me of this: I will not evaluate any argument suggesting that I must "evaluate the debate after X speech" unless "X speech" is the 2AR. Where do you get off thinking that you can deprive your opponent of speaking time?

I'm okay with slow-walking you through how my decision process works or how I think you can improve your strategic decision making or get better speaker points, but I've no interest, at this point in my career, in relitigating a round I've already decided you've lost. "What would be a better way to make this argument?" will get me actively trying to help you. "Why didn't you vote on this (vague claim)?" will just make me annoyed.

OVERVIEW

I have been an active coach, primarily of policy debate (though I'm now doing active work only on the LD side), since the 2000-01 season (the year of the privacy topic). Across divisions and events, I generally judge between 100 and 120 rounds a year.

My overall approach to debate is extremely substance dominant. I don't really care what substantive arguments you make as long as you clash with your opponents and fulfill your burdens vis-à-vis the resolution. I will not import my own understanding of argumentative substance to bail you out when you're confronting bad substance--if the content of your opponents' arguments is fundamentally false, they should be especially easy for you to answer without any help from me. (Contrary to what some debaters have mistakenly believed in the past, this does not mean that I want to listen to you run wipeout or spark--I'd actually rather hear you throw down on inherency or defend "the value is justice and the criterion is justice"--but merely that I think that debaters who can't think their way through incredibly stupid arguments are ineffective advocates who don't deserve to win).

My general default (and the box I've consistently checked on paradigm forms) is that of a fairly conventional policymaker. Absent other guidance from the teams involved, I will weigh the substantive advantages and disadvantages of a topical plan against those of the status quo or a competitive counterplan. I'm amenable to alternative evaluative frameworks but generally require these to be developed with more depth and clarity than most telegraphic "role of the ballot" claims usually provide.

THOUGHTS APPLICABLE TO ALL DEBATE FORMATS

That said, I do have certain predispositions and opinions about debate practice that may affect how you choose to execute your preferred strategy:

1. I am skeptical to the point of fairly overt hostility toward most non-resolutional theory claims emanating from either side. Aff-initiated debates about counterplan and kritik theory are usually vague, devoid of clash, and nearly impossible to flow. Neg-initiated "framework" "arguments" usually rest on claims that are either unwarranted or totally implicit. I understand that the affirmative should defend a topical plan, but what I don't understand after "A. Our interpretation is that the aff must run a topical plan; B. Standards" is why the aff's plan isn't topical. My voting on either sort of "argument" has historically been quite rare. It's always better for the neg to run T than "framework," and it's usually better for the aff to use theory claims to justify their own creatively abusive practices ("conditional negative fiat justifies intrinsicness permutations, so here are ten intrinsicness permutations") than to "argue" that they're independent voting issues.

1a. That said, I can be merciless toward negatives who choose to advance contradictory conditional "advocacies" in the 1NC should the affirmative choose to call them out. The modern-day tendency to advance a kritik with a categorical link claim together with one or more counterplans which link to the kritik is not one which meets with my approval. There was a time when deliberately double-turning yourself in the 1NC amounted to an automatic loss, but the re-advent of what my late friend Ross Smith would have characterized as "unlimited, illogical conditionality" has unfortunately put an end to this and caused negative win percentages to swell--not because negatives are doing anything intelligent, but because affirmatives aren't calling them out on it. I'll put it this way--I have awarded someone a 30 for going for "contradictory conditional 'advocacies' are illegitimate" in the 2AR.

2. Offensive arguments should have offensive links and impacts. "The 1AC didn't talk about something we think is important, therefore it doesn't solve the root cause of every problem in the world" wouldn't be considered a reason to vote negative if it were presented on the solvency flow, where it belongs, and I fail to understand why you should get extra credit for wasting time developing your partial case defense with less clarity and specificity than an arch-traditional stock issue debater would have. Generic "state bad" links on a negative state action topic are just as bad as straightforward "links" of omission in this respect.

3. Kritik arguments should NOT depend on my importing special understandings of common terms from your authors, with whose viewpoints I am invariably unfamiliar or in disagreement. For example, the OED defines "problematic" as "presenting a problem or difficulty," so while you may think you're presenting round-winning impact analysis when you say "the affirmative is problematic," all I hear is a non-unique observation about how the aff, like everything else in life, involves difficulties of some kind. I am not hostile to critical debates--some of the best debates I've heard involved K on K violence, as it were--but I don't think it's my job to backfill terms of art for you, and I don't think it's fair to your opponents for me to base my decision in these rounds on my understanding of arguments which have been inadequately explained.

3a. I guess we're doing this now...most of the critical literature with which I'm most familiar involves pretty radical anti-statism. You might start by reading "No Treason" and then proceeding to authors like Hayek, Hazlitt, Mises, and Rothbard. I know these are arguments a lot of my colleagues really don't like, but they're internally consistent, so they have that advantage.

3a(1). Section six of "No Treason," the one with which you should really start, is available at the following link: https://oll-resources.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/oll3/store/titles/2194/Spooner_1485_Bk.pdf so get off your cans and read it already. It will greatly help you answer arguments based on, inter alia, "the social contract."

3a(2). If you genuinely think that something at the tournament is making you unsafe, you may talk to me about it and I will see if there is a solution. Far be it from me to try to make you unable to compete.

4. The following solely self-referential "defenses" of your deliberate choice to run an aggressively non-topical affirmative are singularly unpersuasive:

a. "Topicality excludes our aff and that's bad because it excludes our aff." This is not an argument. This is just a definition of "topicality." I won't cross-apply your case and then fill in argumentative gaps for you.

b. "There is no topical version of our aff." This is not an answer. This is a performative concession of the violation.

c. "The topic forces us to defend the state and the state is racist/sexist/imperialist/settler colonial/oppressive toward 'bodies in the debate space.'" I'm quite sure that most of your authors would advocate, at least in the interim, reducing fossil fuel consumption, and debates about how that might occur are really interesting to all of us, or at least to me. (You might take a look at this intriguing article about a moratorium on extraction on federal lands: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-oil-industrys-grip-on-public-lands-and-waters-may-be-slowing-progress-toward-energy-independence/

d. "Killing debate is good." Leaving aside the incredible "intellectual" arrogance of this statement, what are you doing here if you believe this to be true? You could overtly "kill debate" more effectively were you to withhold your "contributions" and depress participation numbers, which would have the added benefit of sparing us from having to listen to you.

e. "This is just a wrong forum argument." And? There is, in fact, a FORUM expressly designed to allow you to subject your audience to one-sided speeches about any topic under the sun you "feel" important without having to worry about either making an argument or engaging with an opponent. Last I checked, that FORUM was called "oratory." Try it next time.

f. "The topic selection process is unfair/disenfranchises 'bodies in the debate space.'" In what universe is it more fair for you to get to impose a debate topic on your opponents without consulting them in advance than for you to abide by the results of a topic selection process to which all students were invited to contribute and in which all students were invited to vote?

g. "Fairness is bad." Don't tempt me to vote against you for no reason to show you why fairness is, in fact, good.

5. Many of you are genuinely bad at organizing your speeches. Fix that problem by keeping the following in mind:

a. Off-case flows should be clearly labeled the first time they're introduced. It's needlessly difficult to keep track of what you're trying to do when you expect me to invent names for your arguments for you. I know that some hipster kid "at" some "online debate institute" taught you that it was "cool" to introduce arguments in the 1N with nothing more than "next off" to confuse your opponents, but remember that you're also confusing your audience when you do that, and I, unlike your opponents, have the power to deduct speaker points for poor organization if "next off--Biden disadvantage" is too hard for you to spit out. I'm serious about this.

b. Transitions between individual arguments should be audible. It's not that difficult to throw a "next" in there and it keeps you from sounding like this: "...wreck their economies and set the stage for an era of international confrontation that would make the Cold War look like Woodstock extinction Mead 92 what if the global economy stagnates...." The latter, because it fails to distinguish between the preceding card and subsequent tag, is impossible to flow, and it's not my job to look at your speech document to impose organization with which you couldn't be bothered.

c. Your arguments should line up with those of your opponents. "Embedded clash" flows extremely poorly for me. I will not automatically pluck warrants out of your four-minute-long scripted kritik overview and then apply them for you, nor will I try to figure out what, exactly, a fragment like "yes, link" followed by a minute of unintelligible, undifferentiated boilerplate is supposed to answer.

6. I don't mind speed as long as it's clear and purposeful:

a. Many of you don't project your voices enough to compensate for the poor acoustics of the rooms where debates often take place. I'll help you out by yelling "clearer" or "louder" at you no more than twice if I can't make out what you're saying, but after that you're on your own.

b. There are only two legitimate reasons for speed: Presenting more arguments and presenting more argumentative development. Fast delivery should not be used as a crutch for inefficiency. If you're using speed merely to "signpost" by repeating vast swaths of your opponents' speeches or to read repetitive cards tagged "more evidence," I reserve the right to consider persuasive delivery in how I assign points, meaning that you will suffer deductions you otherwise would not have had you merely trimmed the fat and maintained your maximum sustainable rate.

7: I have a notoriously low tolerance for profanity and will not hesitate to severely dock your points for language I couldn't justify to the host school's teachers, parents, or administrators, any of whom might actually overhear you. When in doubt, keep it clean. Don't jeopardize the activity's image any further by failing to control your language when you have ample alternative fora for profane forms of self-expression.

8: For crying out loud, it is not too hard to respect your opponents' preferred pronouns (and "they" is always okay in policy debate because it's presumed that your opponents agree about their arguments), but I will start vocally correcting you if you start engaging in behavior I've determined is meant to be offensive in this context. You don't have to do that to gain some sort of perceived competitive advantage and being that intentionally alienating doesn't gain you any friends.

9. I guess that younger judges engage in more paradigmatic speaker point disclosure than I have in the past, so here are my thoughts: Historically, the arithmetic mean of my speaker points any given season has averaged out to about 27.9. I think that you merit a 27 if you've successfully used all of your speech time without committing round-losing tactical errors, and your points can move up from there by making gutsy strategic decisions, reading creative arguments, and using your best public speaking skills. Of course, your points can decline for, inter alia, wasting time, insulting your opponents, or using offensive language. I've "awarded" a loss-15 for a false allegation of an ethics violation and a loss-18 for a constructive full of seriously inappropriate invective. Don't make me go there...tackle the arguments in front of you head-on and without fear or favor and I can at least guarantee you that I'll evaluate the content you've presented fairly.

NOTES FOR LINCOLN-DOUGLAS!

PREF SHORTCUT: stock ≈ policy > K > framework > Tricks > Theory

I have historically spent much more time judging policy than LD and my specific topic knowledge is generally restricted to arguments I've helped my LD debaters prepare. In the context of most contemporary LD topics, which mostly encourage recycling arguments which have been floating around in policy debate for decades, this shouldn't affect you very much. With more traditionally phrased LD resolutions ("A just society ought to value X over Y"), this might direct your strategy more toward straight impact comparison than traditional V/C debating.

Also, my specific preferences about how _substantive_ argumentation should be conducted are far less set in stone than they would be in a policy debate. I've voted for everything from traditional value/criterion ACs to policy-style ACs with plan texts to fairly outright critical approaches...and, ab initio, I'm fine with more or less any substantive attempt by the negative to engage whatever form the AC takes, subject to the warnings about what constitutes a link outlined above. (Not talking about something is not a link). Engage your opponent's advocacy and engage the topic and you should be okay.

N.B.: All of the above comments apply only to _substantive_ argumentation. See the section on "theory" in in the overview above if you want to understand what I think about those "arguments," and square it. If winning that something your opponent said is "abusive" is a major part of your strategy, you're going to have to make some adjustments if you want to win in front of me. I can't guarantee that I'll fully understand the basis for your theory claims, and I tend to find theory responses with any degree of articulation more persuasive than the claim that your opponent should lose because of some arguably questionable practice, especially if whatever your opponent said was otherwise substantively responsive. I also tend to find "self-help checks abuse" responses issue-dispositive more often than not. That is to say, if there is something you could have done to prevent the impact to the alleged "abuse," and you failed to do it, any resulting "time skew," "strat skew," or adverse impact on your education is your own fault, and I don't think you should be rewarded with a ballot for helping to create the very condition you're complaining about.

I have voted on theory "arguments" unrelated to topicality in Lincoln-Douglas debates precisely zero times. Do you really think you're going to be the first to persuade me to pull the trigger?

Addendum: To quote my colleague Anthony Berryhill, with whom I paneled the final round of the Isidore Newman Round Robin: " "Tricks debate" isn't debate. Deliberate attempts to hide arguments, mislead your opponent, be unethical, lie...etc. to screw your opponent will be received very poorly. If you need tricks and lying to win, either "git' good" (as the gamers say) or prefer a different judge." I say: I would rather hear you go all-in on spark or counterintuitive internal link turns than be subjected to grandstanding about how your opponent "dropped" some "tricky" half-sentence theory or burden spike. If you think top-loading these sorts of "tricks" in lieu of properly developing substance in the first constructive is a good idea, you will be sorely disappointed with your speaker points and you will probably receive a helpful refresher on how I absolutely will not tolerate aggressive post-rounding. Everyone's value to life increases when you fill the room with your intelligence instead of filling it with your trickery.

AND SPECIFIC NOTES FOR PUBLIC FORUM

NB: After the latest timing disaster, in which a public forum round which was supposed to take 40 minutes took over two hours and wasted the valuable time of the panel, I am seriously considering imposing penalties on teams who make "off-time" requests for evidence or needless requests for original articles or who can't locate a piece of evidence requested by their opponents during crossfire. This type of behavior--which completely disregards the timing norms found in every other debate format--is going to kill this activity because no member of the "public" who has other places to be is interested in judging an event where this type of temporal elongation of rounds takes place.

NB: I actually don't know what "we outweigh on scope" is supposed to mean. I've had drilled into my head that there are four elements to impact calculus: timeframe, probability, magnitude, and hierarchy of values. I'd rather hear developed magnitude comparison (is it worse to cause a lot of damage to very few people or very little damage to a lot of people? This comes up most often in debates about agricultural subsidies of all things) than to hear offsetting, poorly warranted claims about "scope."

NB: In addition to my reflections about improper citation practices infra, I think that evidence should have proper tags. It's really difficult to flow you, or even to follow the travel of your constructive, when you have a bunch of two-sentence cards bleeding into each other without any transitions other than "Larry '21," "Jones '21," and "Anderson '21." I really would rather hear tag-cite-text than whatever you're doing. Thus: "Further, economic decline causes nuclear war. Mead '92" rather than "Mead '92 furthers...".

That said:

1. You should remember that, notwithstanding its pretensions to being for the "public," this is a debate event. Allowing it to degenerate into talking past each other with dueling oratories past the first pro and first con makes it more like a speech event than I would like, and practically forces me to inject my own thoughts on the merits of substantive arguments into my evaluative process. I can't guarantee that you'll like the results of that, so:

2. Ideally, the second pro/second con/summary stage of the debate will be devoted to engaging in substantive clash (per the activity guidelines, whether on the line-by-line or through introduction of competing principles, which one can envision as being somewhat similar to value clash in a traditional LD round if one wants an analogy) and the final foci will be devoted to resolving the substantive clash.

3. Please review the sections on "theory" in the policy and LD philosophies above. I'm not interested in listening to rule-lawyering about how fast your opponents are/whether or not it's "fair"/whether or not it's "public" for them to phrase an argument a certain way. I'm doubly unenthused about listening to theory "debates" where the team advancing the theory claim doesn't understand the basis for it.* These "debates" are painful enough to listen to in policy and LD, but they're even worse to suffer through in PF because there's less speech time during which to resolve them. Unless there's a written rule prohibiting them (e.g., actually advocating specific plan/counterplan texts), I presume that all arguments are theoretically legitimate, and you will be fighting an uphill battle you won't like trying to persuade me otherwise. You're better off sticking to substance (or, better yet, using your opposition's supposedly dubious stance to justify meting out some "abuse" of your own) than getting into a theoretical "debate" you simply won't have enough time to win, especially given my strong presumption against this style of "argumentation."

*I've heard this misunderstanding multiple times from PF debaters who should have known better: "The resolution isn't justified because some policy in the status quo will solve the 'pro' harms" is not, in fact, a counterplan. It's an inherency argument. There is no rule saying the "con" can't redeploy policy stock issues in an appropriately "public" fashion and I know with absolute metaphysical certitude that many of the initial framers of the public forum rules are big fans of this general school of argumentation.

4. If it's in the final focus, it should have been in the summary. I will patrol the second focus for new arguments. If it's in the summary and you want me to consider it in my decision, you'd better mention it in the final focus. It is definitely not my job to draw lines back to arguments for you. Your defense on the case flow is not "sticky," as some of my PF colleagues put it, as far as I'm concerned.

5. While I pay attention to crossfire, I don't flow it. It's not intended to be a period for initiating arguments, so if you want me to consider something that happened in crossfire in my decision, you have to mention it in your side's first subsequent speech.

6. You should cite authors by name. "Princeton" as an institution, doesn't conduct studies of issues that aren't solely internal Princeton matters, so you sound awful when you attribute your study about Security Council reform to "Princeton." "According to Professor Kuziemko of Princeton" (yes, she's a professor at Princeton who wrote the definitive study of the political economy of Security Council veto power) doesn't take much longer to say than "according to Princeton," and has the considerable advantage of accuracy. Also, I have no idea why you restrict this type of "citation" to Ivy League scholars. I've never heard an "according to Fordham" citation from any of you even though Professor Dayal of Fordham is a recognized expert on this issue, suggesting that you're only doing research you can use to lend nonexistent institutional credibility to your cases. Seriously, start citing evidence properly.

7. You all need to improve your time management skills and stop proliferating dead time if you'd like rounds to end at a civilized hour.

a. The extent to which PF debaters talk over the buzzer is unfortunate. When the speech time stops, that means that you stop speaking. "Finishing [your] sentence" does not mean going 45 seconds over time, which happens a lot. I will not flow anything you say after my timer goes off.

b. You people really need to streamline your "off-time" evidence exchanges. These are getting ridiculous and seem mostly like excuses for stealing prep time. I recently had to sit through a pre-crossfire set of requests for evidence which lasted for seven minutes. This is simply unacceptable. If you have your laptops with you, why not borrow a round-acceleration tactic from your sister formats and e-mail your speech documents to one another? Even doing this immediately after a speech would be much more efficient than the awkward fumbling around in which you usually engage.

c. This means that you should card evidence properly and not force your opponents to dig around a 25-page document for the section you've just summarized during unnecessary dead time. Your sister debate formats have had the "directly quoting sources" thing nailed dead to rights for decades. Why can't you do the same? Minimally, you should be able to produce the sections of articles you're purporting to summarize immediately when asked.

d. You don't need to negotiate who gets to question first in crossfire. I shouldn't have to waste precious seconds listening to you ask your opponents' permission to ask a question. It's simple to understand that the first-speaking team should always ask, and the second-speaking team always answer, the first question...and after that, you may dialogue.

e. If you're going to insist on giving an "off-time road map," it should take you no more than five seconds and be repeated no more than zero times. This is PF...do you seriously believe we can't keep track of TWO flows?

Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

--This is my first major edit to my paradigm in, like, two years, so ask me questions before the round if there's anything here that doesn't make sense or I forgot.--

I debated four years of policy and one year of LD in high school from 2003 to 2008. I've been coaching LD since I graduated and I've been with Lexington for the past 5ish years. I'm also working on a PhD in philosophy (this doesn't mean what you think it means, see below).

General info/Speaker points stuff

--Email chains are cool, include me on them: hcurtis@albany.edu

--Run whatever you want to run as long as it isn't actively offensive. If you want a K debate, have a K debate. If you're looking for a values or stock debate, that's cool too. The space is yours, do what you want with it. There's stuff that I'm probably less good at judging than other people, but I won't drop you for running a specific type of argument unless, again, it's actively offensive.

--I'm 100% team tech over truth. A dropped argument is a true argument. That being said (and this applies generally as well), the dumber an argument is, the lower my threshold for a response is. So, while most arguments require actual, thought out responses, if you respond to "must concede after the AC" by just saying "no I don't", that'll count. So, don't drop stuff, but don't waste time on really bad arguments. If an argument is given without a warrant, it doesn't need as developed of a response.

--On that subject, warrants are cool too. I hate vague extensions, they bother me and that'll reflect in your speaker points. If you're extending a card, a theory shell, anything really, give me the warrant behind the card. What does the [evidence/shell/value/whatever] say, why is it right, and what does that have to do with my ballot? Better extensions and better storytelling mean better speaker points. Blippy extensions with no explanation require less to respond to because, as above, blippy extensions are bad arguments.

--I'm not the best at flowing. This matters less in a world of speech docs, but for stuff like detailed underviews (like cramming drop the debater, RVI, reasonability, and random evaluate theory after the 1AR spike into the same subpoint) or longer theory shells, slow down. No, seriously, slow down. I won't get all of the details, and then when you're posting me after the round about how I could have missed underview A, subpoint 3, as extended with random other thing on a totally different flow as defense somewhere else, I'll just say I didn't get it on the flow and we'll both be mad.

--I don't like doing work for debaters. Embedded clash is a nicer way of saying judge intervention. Don't make me do it. Offense weighing and comparison is probably the most important thing for me (and key to good speaker points). Don't just say why your stuff is good, say why your stuff is better/more important to my ballot than their stuff.

--Last thing for speaker points, the most important factor for me is strategy. If you make strategic arguments and there isn't anywhere where I think you should have done something different, then you'll get very high speaker points. Strategy is number one for me, but that gets weighed against not being a jerk in round, being funny, and being a good speaker. If you do everything perfectly but you're not a clear speaker, then you won't get a 30, but you'll still get above a 29.5. I'll say clear or slow if I need to, but if I say it a couple of times, then you should know what'll happen to your speaks. If I say clear, don't do that thing where you're clear for a couple of seconds and then just go back to how you were speaking before. Also, general rule of thumb, be loud. I don't hear stuff very well, so the louder you are the better. Don't scream at me, but you get the point.

T/Theory

--At least 80% of my neg ballots when I debated policy were on T. Love me a good T debate.

--General stuff: I default to competing interpretations, no RVI, drop the debater unless told otherwise. Also, general pet peeve, if you're going to tell me drop the argument and it isn't blatantly clear what argument I'm dropping, then tell me what argument I'd be dropping.

--RVIs need a little bit of work for me. You need to convince me why you get RVIs in the first place (RVIs are much more convincing against multiple shells or 7 off strats) and then actively identify what constitutes an RVI and why.

--1AR theory is fine-ish, but when a round turns into shell versus shell, it usually breaks down into incomprehensible nonsense and then I get sad and then I trash your speaker points. If it gets to this point, what makes me happy is offense comparison. This is usually easier if we're weighing between fairness and education voters, but if it's fairness v. fairness, then be super specific about why your opponent is being worse for fairness than you are. Compare offense, don't just extend yours. Alternatively, go meta and tell me why aff or neg theory comes first. Either way, don't ignore the other side of the flow, because then I have to do weighing for you and nobody likes that.

--I'll vote for disclosure shells, but the dumb argument vs. strength of response weighing from before applies here. If there's straight up nothing on the wiki and they're from a school where you'd expect something to be there, then fine. But if it's a small school non-circuit debater and/or your interp is "must disclose all speech docs, past 2NR strategies, and what they've had for lunch the past five days", then a lesser response is required.

--Generally speaking, if there's an obvious win on substance and a more difficult win on T or theory and you go for T or theory, I consider that a less than strategic move and it'll reflect in your speaker points.

DA/Counterplan/LARPy Stuff

--I was a policy debater after all, so I'm pretty comfortable with this kind of debate.

--Impact calc is your best friend. Good impact calc means good speaker points and typically is a tiebreaker if I want to avoid intervening. If I have a better understanding of why your impacts matter more than your opponent's, then you're probably going to win.

--This is a general thing, but I'll highlight it here and elsewhere, but extensions should include storytelling for me. Don't just extend the cards from the disad, explain the warrants and tell me how they link together into the story of the disad. Better extensions, better speaker points.

K/Framework

--So remember how I said that me being a philosophy PhD doesn't mean what you think it means? I study bioethics and general normative theory and have had any knowledge/appreciation of continental philosophy beaten out of me over the last 5 years. So, I'm actually not the best at evaluating super dense Ks, high theory, that sort of stuff. That being said, you can totally run it if that's your thing. However, you're going to ahve to take extra time for storytelling. What's going on in the K, what does the aff/res do that is bad, why should I care, and what do you do to make it better/different? So, don't avoid running Ks if that's your A-strat. Do what you do best. Just be good at it and we're fine. If you've grabbed a K from a teammate that you haven't seen before and don't know how to properly extend and explain, it probably won't go well and you should consider doing something else (this applies generally).

--Framework v. framework debates are almost as bad as theory v. theory debates in terms of incomprehensibility. So, do active weighing work. Why does your framework matter more? If your framework precludes, why? If they say their framework precludes, why doesn't it. If both frameworks preclude each other and I have no in-round way to determine whose actually does, we're all going to be upset.

--Role of the ballot/role of the judge is probably the single most important layer of the flow. I mean, you have the power to tell me what my ballot does. Use it to your advantage. If you win that the only thing I should care about is whatever the role of the ballot says I should care about, that's kind of a big deal. Use it to your advantage. On the other side of the flow, you really should spend time here if you're responding to a K.

--Totally fine with performances, but, and this also applies generally, weighing pre versus post fiat offense and why the performance itself matters is pretty important. This is another area where the role of the ballot is your best friend.

--Like I said, I'm usually pretty good about ethics frameworks since that's kind of what I do for a living. That being said, debate phil is 99% of the time waaaaaaayyyyyyyy different from academic phil. This is especially the case for K authors like Foucault, but also for Kant, Mill, Rawls, etc. So, you'll have a little more leeway with explaining evidence for something like a Kant framework, but you still need to do actual extensions and explanations.

Other miscellaneous stuff

--Again, if this is your thing, this is your thing so do it, but I'm generally not a fan of tricks. Most tricks arguments fall into the camp of bad arguments I describe above where a response of "nuh-uh" is sufficient. Again, if this is what you do, then do it, just be super clear about where stuff is located, both when you're reading it and when you're responding to stuff in c/x. Nothing is more infuriating than shifty c/x responses. Saying stuff like "lol I don't know what an a priori is" when it's pretty clear you do is an easy way to get your speaks docked. Don't be that person.

--In that regard, unless you legitimately don't know what the person is asking about, don't say "I don't know what that means". If you've been to camp or the TOC or on the circuit at all, I assume you at least have some understanding of what terms like pre-fiat or spike mean. That's being shifty and wasting c/x time and it's annoying.

--Flex prep is fine. To a lesser extent, so it using c/x time as prep if you want. It isn't a good look, but c/x time is your time to ask questions and use it strategically. Asking questions is generally better than not. Also, both c/x and flex prep are binding.

That's all I can think of for now, I'll try to be better about updating this more regularly. Again, if something here isn't clear or if you want to know more, find me at the tournament and ask or ask me before the round starts.

EXPERIENCE: I'm the head coach at Harrison High School in New York; I was an assistant coach at Lexington from 1998-2004 (I debated there from 1994-1998), at Sacred Heart from 2004-2008, and at Scarsdale from 2007-2008. I'm not presently affiliated with these programs or their students. I am also the Curriculum Director for NSD's Philadelphia LD institute.

Please just call me Hertzig.

Please include me on the email chain: harrison.debate.team@gmail.com

QUICK NOTE: I would really like it if we could collectively try to be more accommodating in this activity. If your opponent has specific formatting requests, please try to meet those (but also, please don't use this as an opportunity to read frivolous theory if someone forgets to do a tiny part of what you asked). I know that I hear a lot of complaints about "Harrison formatting." Please know that I request that my own debaters format in a particular way because I have difficulty reading typical circuit formatting when I'm trying to edit cards. You don't need to change the formatting of your own docs if I'm judging you - I'm just including this to make people aware that my formatting preferences are an accessibility issue. Let's try to respect one another's needs and make this a more inclusive space. :)

BIG PICTURE:

CLARITY in both delivery and substance is the most important thing for me. If you're clearer than your opponent, I'll probably vote for you.

SHORTCUT:

Ks (not high theory ones) & performance - 1 (just explain why you're non-T if you are)

Trad debate - 1

T, LARP, or phil - 2-3 (don't love wild extinction scenarios or incomprehensible phil)

High theory Ks - 4

Theory - 4 (see below)

Tricks - strike

*I will never vote on "evaluate the round after ____ [X speech]" (unless it's to vote against the person who read it; you aren't telling me to vote for you, just to evaluate the round at that point!).

GENERAL:

If, after the round, I don't feel that I can articulate what you wanted me to vote for, I'm probably not going to vote for it.

I will say "slow" and/or "clear," but if I have to call out those words more than twice in a speech, your speaks are going to suffer. I'm fine with debaters slowing or clearing their opponents if necessary.

I don't view theory the way I view other arguments on the flow. I will usually not vote for theory that's clearly unnecessary/frivolous, even if you're winning the line-by-line on it. I will vote for theory that is actually justified (as in, you can show that you couldn't have engaged without it).

I need to hear the claim, warrant, and impact in an extension. Don't just extend names and claims.

For in-person debate: I would prefer that you stand when speaking if you're physically able to (but if you aren't/have a reason you don't want to, I won't hold it against you).

I'd prefer that you not use profanity in round.

Link to a standard, burden, or clear role of the ballot. Signpost. Give me voting issues or a decision calculus of some kind. WEIGH. And be nice.



To research more stuff about life career coaching then visit Life coach.

Email: caitlynajones1@gmail.com

Pronouns: (she/her)

I have done no topic research. Assume I know nothing

I debated PF for 4 years

• If you want me to vote on it, it needs to be in the summary and the final focus

• Please don’t just yell cards at me. Some analysis please

• If there’s an evidence misconduct problem, I’d rather you point out the issues with your opponent’s interpretation of evidence during your speeches, but I’ll call for a card if you tell me to.

• Any concessions in cross need to be in a speech for me to flow it

• Don't Spread at me. If I need a case doc to follow you, it's too fast.

• I'm not flowing anything after the 10-second grace period

Sheryl Kaczmarek Lexington High School -- SherylKaz@gmail.com

General Thoughts

I expect debaters to treat one another, their judges and any observers, with respect. If you plan to accuse your opponent(s) of being intellectually dishonest or of cheating, please be prepared to stake the round on that claim. Accusations of that sort are round ending claims for me, one way or the other. I believe debate is an oral and aural experience, which means that while I want to be included on the email chain, I will NOT be reading along with you, and I will not give you credit for arguments I cannot hear/understand, especially if you do not change your speaking after I shout clearer or louder, even in the virtual world. I take the flow very seriously and prior to the pandemic judged a lot, across the disciplines, but I still need ALL debaters to explain their arguments because I don't "know" the tiniest details for every topic in every event. I am pretty open-minded about arguments, but I will NOT vote for arguments that are racist, sexist or in any other way biased against a group based on gender identity, religion or any other characteristic. Additionally, I will NOT vote for suicide/self harm alternatives. None of those are things I can endorse as a long time high school teacher and decent human.

Policy Paradigm

The Resolution -- I would prefer that debaters actually address the resolution, but I do vote for non-resolutional, non-topical or critical affirmatives fairly often. That is because it is up to the debaters in the round to resolve the issue of whether the affirmative ought to be endorsing the resolution, or not, and I will vote based on which side makes the better arguments on that question, in the context of the rest of the round.

Framework -- I often find that these debates get messy fast. Debaters make too many arguments and fail to answer the arguments of the opposition directly. I would prefer more clash, and fewer arguments overall. While I don't think framework arguments are as interesting as some other arguments in debate, I will vote for the team that best promotes their vision of debate, or look at the rest of the arguments in the round through that lens.

Links -- I would really like to know what the affirmative has done to cause the impacts referenced in a Disad, and I think there has to be something the affirmative does (or thinks) which triggers a Kritik. I don't care how big the impact/implication is if the affirmative does not cause it in the first place.

Solvency -- I expect actual solvency advocates for both plans and counterplans. If you are going to have multi-plank plans or counterplans, make sure you have solvency advocates for those combinations of actions, and even if you are advocating a single action, I still expect some source that suggests this action as a solution for the problems you have identified with the Status Quo, or with the Affirmative.

Evidence -- I expect your evidence to be highlighted consistent with the intent of your authors, and I expect your tags to make claims that you will prove with the parts you read from your evidence. Highlighting random words which would be incoherent if read slowly annoys me and pretending your cards include warrants for the claims you make (when they do not) is more than annoying. If your tag says "causes extinction," the text of of the part of the card you read needs to say extinction will be the result. Misrepresenting your evidence is a huge issue for me. More often then not, when I read cards after a round, it is because I fear misrepresentation.

New Arguments/Very Complicated Arguments -- Please do not expect me to do any work for you on arguments I do not understand. I judge based on the flow and if I do not understand what I have written down, or cannot make enough sense of it to write it down, I will not be able to vote for it. If you don't have the time to explain a complicated argument to me, and to link it to the opposition, you might want to try a different strategy.

Old/Traditional Arguments -- I have been judging long enough that I have a full range of experiences with inherency, case specific disads, theoretical arguments against politics disads and many other arguments from policy debate's past, and I also understand the stock issues and traditional policy-making. If you really want to confuse your opponents, and amuse me, you'll kick it old school as opposed to going post-modern.


LD Paradigm

The Resolution -- The thing that originally attracted me to LD was that debaters actually addressed the whole resolution. These days, that happens far less often in LD than it used to. I like hearing the resolution debated, but I also vote for non-resolutional, non-topical or critical affirmatives fairly often in LD. That is because I believe it is up to the debaters in the round to resolve the issue of whether the affirmative ought to be endorsing the resolution, or not, and I will vote based on which side makes the better arguments on that question.

Framework -- I think LDers are better at framework debates than policy debaters, as a general rule, but I have noticed a trend to lazy framework debates in LD in recent years. How often should debaters recycle Winter and Leighton, for example, before looking for something new? If you want to stake the round on the framework you can, or you can allow it to be the lens through which I will look at the rest of the arguments.

Policy Arguments in LD -- I understand all of the policy arguments that have migrated to LD quite well, and I remember when many of them were first developed in Policy. The biggest mistake LDers make with policy arguments -- Counterplans, Perm Theory, Topicality, Disads, Solvency, etc. -- is making the assumption that your particular interpretation of any of those arguments is the same as mine. Don't do that! If you don't explain something, I have no choice but to default to my understanding of that thing. For example, if you say, "Perm do Both," with no other words, I will interpret that to mean, "let's see if it is possible to do the Aff Plan and the Neg Counterplan at the same time, and if it is, the Counterplan goes away." If you mean something different, you need to tell me. That is true for all judges, but especially true for someone with over 40 years of policy experience. I try to keep what I think out of the round, but absent your thoughts, I have no choice but to use my own.

Evidence -- I expect your evidence to be highlighted consistent with the intent of your authors, and I expect your tags to make claims that you will prove with the parts you read from your evidence. Highlighting random words which would be incoherent if read slowly annoys me and pretending your cards include warrants for the claims you make (when they do not) is more than annoying. If your tag says "causes extinction," the text of of the part if the card you read really needs to say extinction will be the result. Misrepresenting your evidence is a huge issue for me. More often then not, when I read cards in a round, it is because I fear misrepresentation.

New Arguments/Very Complicated Arguments -- Please do not expect me to do any work for you on arguments I do not understand. I judge based on the flow and if I do not understand what I have written down, or cannot understand enough to write it down, I won't vote for it. If you don't think you have the time to explain some complicated philosophical position to me, and to link it to the opposition, you should try a different strategy.

Traditional Arguments -- I would still be pleased to listen to cases with a Value Premise and a Criterion. I probably prefer traditional arguments to new arguments that are not explained.

Theory -- Theory arguments are not magical, and theory arguments which are not fully explained, as they are being presented, are unlikely to be persuasive, particularly if presented in a paragraph, or three word blips, since there is no way of knowing which ones I won't hear or write down, and no one can write down all of the arguments when each only merits a tiny handful of words. I also don't like theory arguments that are crafted for one particular debate, or theory arguments that lack even a tangential link to debate or the current topic. If it is not an argument that can be used in multiple debates (like topicality, conditionality, etc) then it probably ought not be run in front of me. New 1AR theory is risky, because the NR typically has more than enough time to answer it. I dislike disclosure theory arguments because I can't know what was done or said before a round, and because I don't think I ought to be voting on things that happened before the AC begins. All of that being said, I will vote on theory, even new 1AR theory, or disclosure theory, if a debater WINS that argument, but it does not make me smile.

PF Paradigm

The Resolution -- PFers should debate the resolution. It would be best if the Final Focus on each side attempted to guide me to either endorse or reject the resolution.

Framework -- Frameworks are OK in PF, although not required, but given the time limits, please keep your framework simple and focused, should you use one.

Policy or LD Behaviors/Arguments in PF -- I personally believe each form of debate ought to be its own thing. I DO NOT want you to talk quickly in PF, just because I also judge LD and Policy, and I really don't want to see theory arguments, plans, counterplans or kritiks in PF. I will definitely flow, and will judge the debate based on the flow, but I want PF to be PF. That being said, I will not automatically vote against a team that brings Policy/LD arguments/stylistic approaches into PF. It is still a debate and the opposition needs to answer the arguments that are presented in order to win my ballot, even if they are arguments I don't want to see in PF.

Paraphrasing -- I have a HUGE problem with inaccurate paraphrasing. I expect debaters to be able to IMMEDIATELY access the text of the cards they have paraphrased -- there should be NO NEED for an off time search for the article, or for the exact place in the article where an argument was made. Making a claim based on a 150 page article is NOT paraphrasing -- that is summarizing (and is not allowed). If you can't instantly point to the place your evidence came from, I am virtually certain NOT to consider that evidence in my decision.

Evidence -- If you are using evidence, I expect your evidence to be highlighted consistent with the intent of your authors, and I expect your tags to make claims that you will prove with the parts you read from your evidence. Pretending your cards include warrants (when they do not) is unacceptable. If your tag says "causes extinction," the text of of the part you card you read MUST say extinction will happen. Misrepresenting your evidence is a huge issue for me. More often then not, when I read cards in a round, it is because I fear misrepresentation.

Theory -- This has begun to be a thing in PF in some places, especially with respect to disclosure theory, and I am not a fan. As previously noted, I want PF to be PF. While I do think that PFers can be too secretive (Policy and LD both started that way), I don't think PFers ought to be expending their very limited time in rounds talking about whether they ought to have disclosed their case to their opponents before the round. Like everything else I would prefer were not true, I can see myself voting on theory in PF because I do vote based on the flow, but I'd prefer you debate the case in front of you, instead of inventing new arguments you don't really have time to discuss.

CONFLICTS FOR TOC 2024: Los Altos AK, Lynbrook (BZ and OM), Monta Vista (EY and KR), Walt Whitman HZ, Horace Greeley SG, Flower Mound AV, Village SZ

(I go by Sai + they/them)

Quarry Lane 19, NYU 22

(skaravadi.2001@gmail.com) -- Pls use speechdrop, fileshare, or add me to the email chain! And feel free to ask me questions before round about my paradigm or judging, but pretty extensive notes here!

If there is anything I can do to make the round more accessible, pls don't hesitate to reach out!

I don't know how much this matters, but this is my 9th year in debate -- pls I'm so old. I debated for Quarry Lane in high school and then for NYU in college. I had 9 career TOC bids in high school LD, broke at the TOC, won a college policy tourney and reached late elims at others, and coached LD debaters who reached late elims at the TOC and other bid tourneys. I've also judged like 300 rounds of LD and policy at bid tournaments since 2019, including bid rounds and late elims. I care about my role as an adjudicator and educator, and also think extensively about my paradigm when making decisions, meaning I try to make sure nothing affects my decision that is not on here and I avoid intervention as much as possible to ensure the debate is in your hands, not mine. :))

UPDATE FOR TOC:

This is my last tournament in debate, so I am feeling more generous with speaks than usual, unless I get the ick! Check the bottom for more on how to avoid that.

Will be taking a bit longer to decide than usual since I know rounds are more high stakes for y'all (and will likely be closer), so please bear with me.

No tricks pls! :D

(Moral uncertainty --> util, regress and bindingness, aspec and plan flaw = yes, these are just framework or theory arguments -- those are fine and are just, but no im not evaluating the round before the end of the 2AR or voting for the resolved a priori -- you can ask me if I will evaluate/vote on X argument before the round, but the litmus test should be whether or not the argument is relevant in discussing the aff irl -- plan flaw is and paradoxes are not imo)

TLDR:

Pls go 70-80% speed. Sucker for a good K, techy phil debate, smart impacting on a spec shell standard, well-researched small advantage plan aff, etc. -- framing and impacts!!!!!

Tech > truth -- I aim to be as tab as I can and have experience reading, coaching, and judging every style of debate in LD -- I'll vote on anything, within reason. My approach to rounds has always been who do I need to do the least work for. That means you’re always better off with more judge instruction, clear weighing, impact comparison, and strong line by line as well as overview analysis. That’s obviously a lot (and LD rounds are short), so prioritize issues and collapse in later speeches. I think I probably have a relatively high threshold for warrants, which means quality > quantity.

I have specific sections below for everything, but larp is cute but please comparatively weigh, phil is dope but please collapse, K's are fun but you need to be clear and warrant things, T is I love and I default T > case, and theory is cool but idk what the brightline for spreading is and yes on disclosure but meh on docs, new aff's, open source, etc. -- not discouraging general disclosure theory tho. I am willing to vote on impact turns, perf cons, independent voting issues, etc. — just make them clear, warrant them, and don’t leave me with a ton of questions at the end of the round. I don't like lay debate -- you can spread, but just still answer stuff. Also, misgendering, slurs, etc. -- those are voters.

Also check my rant at the bottom on speed and off's!

My only hardcore paradigmatic policies are that I will not enforce an argument about what a debater should wear because I feel uncomfortable doing that (shoes theory, clothing theory, etc. will earn you an auto-loss) or anything that is overtly violent, but you are also welcome to ask me or have your coaches ask me about my comfort evaluating certain strategies or arguments.

Defaults only matter if not debated, but:

Substantive: comparative worlds, tech > truth, epistemic confidence, presume neg unless neg reads a counter-advocacy or reads 3+ off

Procedural: competing interps, no RVI's, drop the debater

SIDE-NOTE: If you don't want someone in the room, feel free to ask them to leave (or email/contact me privately if you are uncomfortable with having to say it yourself and I will ask them to leave).

For prefs -- I like to think I'm a good judge for you regardless of what you read (except tricks -- im over it), as long as you warrant and explain how I should evaluate arguments. I read everything during my career and have actually mostly judged non-K rounds (despite having mostly read K's as a debater) -- I feel confident I'm a good judge for really any style of debate because I'll grant anything with a warrant -- the bigger the claim, the more established the warrant should be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . So yes, I will grant your non-T aff and be interested, I will grant your framework warrants and be interested, I will grant your interps and be interested, and I will ALWAYS grant a well-researched and updated DA story, but I will also easily grant answers to any of these -- read what you want, just be creative!

SPECIFIC SECTIONS/TYPES OF ARGS:

Policy/LARP:

I don’t think there’s much of an issue here since this is my initial foundation, I defended plan aff's and DA's throughout my career, I was a west coast debater, I read policy strategies in college with my partner, coached a couple policy and LD kids who read topical plan aff's, and I love policy debate. Debate as you do and I doubt there’s gonna be a problem for me.

However, these debates do end up getting quite messy, especially in LD. I am a sucker for strong link overviews with impact calc that's also comparative. I think collapsing, impact overviews, and framing analysis can help here.

I'm a sucker for weighing and warrant comparison -- when I say comparative, I basically mean that you should also make sure you answer/deal with weighing arguments made by the other debater -- these debates can sometimes become frustrating to resolve as a judge because there's a lot of impacts thrown out in later speeches with weighing implications attached to them, but I'm often left having to resolve them or figure out who did that tiny bit of comparison that I can vote on -- you can easily win my ballot by telling me how to evaluate this/compare between weighing args -- you can call it what you want, framing or comparative weighing or second level impact calc -- I find it super persuasive and a smart technical move that often wins my ballot.

Don't be afraid to defend a policy aff against k's or phil -- I don't mind voting aff on Zanotti 14, but I'd rather you have a coherent justification for the aff being a good idea and a developed link turn strategy. Compare between the aff and the alt. Do framework comparisons if there's an NC and don't pretend Bostrom is enough. Also, adding in an impact that applies to marginalized populations could really help in debates where you want to go for a DA against a K aff, which shouldn't be hard to find since shtuff like climate change, war, and poverty affect those groups the most and also first.

DA's and CP's are fine and I have no problem here. I really like specific links and very specific politics scenarios, from like specific bills in Congress to international relations. I think 2 condo PIC's might be starting to push it, but that just means you should be ready to defend that you get them because I don't care as long as you answer any potential theory args.

Phil:

I’m mostly familiar with Butler's work and Kant, but also have experience with Epistemic Humility, Civic Republicanism, Virtue Ethics, Pragmatism, Particularism, Agonism, Butler, Deleuze, Levinas, Hobbes, Rawls, Locke, Descartes, and skep (also of course, util of all forms). I've read into the literature of and/or defended all of these, but never studied them too in-depth academically and wouldn't call myself an expert -- I haven't had trouble judging them and actually enjoying hearing them, so just do your best and you should be fine. Also I love Kant LOL.

I default epistemic confidence, but am open to hearing epistemic modesty and/or other framing mechanisms for evaluating competing ethical theories -- but that's up to you to justify and win.

I think phil arguments are strategic due to the amount of credence I must grant them -- i.e., I don't think someone can ignore independent framework warrants like shying away from answering bindingness or regress -- but I would need you to slow down a tiny bit and collapse harder in later speeches. Again, you do you! I am happy to judge anything and love framework debate a lot.

I find Phil vs. K interactions really interesting, but both sides could benefit from specific warranting when it comes to this rather than just winning your own framework or theory of power, but I am just as willing to vote on Kant as I am to vote on a K.

I also really really like phil vs. phil debates -- these are some of the most interesting debates and I am impressed by both the technical proficiency and critical/logical thinking skills that debaters employ. I am likely to grant both debaters very high speaks in these debates if they are done well, but also really feel like I learn a lot in these rounds. This also includes like Kant vs. util, but I think something like ordo amoris vs. Deleuze would be so so interesting.

I am not very persuaded by author indicts of philosophers, but can be convinced if it is argued well -- BUT I have a higher threshold for this than a turn to the framework itself. For example, I won't auto-vote on Kant (as in the guy) is racist, unless someone proves that his theory itself also is and does the work of proving that thus the aff is as well, OR is able to prove to me why I should not evaluate any of the work that someone who is a racist philosopher/writer has done -- which is a valid argument to make, but again, it requires a LOT more work than simply saying it. Of course, this does not mean I won't vote someone down if they drop the argument and its implications, but you need to give me those implications.

To that end, you can't just end it at Kant or Hobbes (or X author) is racist -- explain to me why that's a voting issue/reason to drop the debater/argument because I'm so far not convinced by the super old and recycled cards everyone keeps reading against aff's that don't actually even cite primary source philosophers. And if you're defending a framework against these objections, stand your ground and defend your aff without being repugnant -- impact turning racism is NEVER ok, but you can definitely win that your framework guides against structural violence even if the original author sucks.

HOWEVER, this is a different story if they actually read cards/cite the author you are calling out -- i.e., if someone read a Kant card (like citing Immanuel himself lol) and you read Kant is racist, I don't see a real no link argument or a way to prove why their reading of Kant is uniquely necessary (i.e., they could just cite Korsgaard instead right?) -- at which point, the author is racist voter issue becomes very very persuasive to me (this is true regardless of whether it's a philosopher) -- however, this is pretty rare and it's 2024, so update your authors.

Theory:

Go for it. I read everything from solvency advocate theory to ROTB spec to body politics, so I as long as it’s not actively violent (I basically won't vote on clothing-related theory) and you're not being too frivolous -- it's fine with me, but the more frivolous it gets, the lower my threshold for responses gets ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Also have some notes on a couple specific shells near the bottom of this section.

My defaults: competing interps, drop the debater, no RVI’s — this is just how I will evaluate the theory debate if you don't give me paradigm issues, but please do and I'm more than willing to vote on reasonability or grant an RVI if it's won.

Reading paradigm issues in your second speech collapsing to a shell is a bit late and persuades me to grant the other side leeway on controlling them, but still debatable I guess (does not mean I will give leeway to brightlines on reasonability, just reasonability itself).

On IVI's -- impact turns are not RVI's, but rather independent voters/offense, and I still haven't heard a single persuasive or compelling reason I shouldn't vote on an impact turn -- feel free to read your no impact turns dump, but I recommend just cleaning up the flow by answering them instead -- a lot of impact turns to both T and theory are just cross-apps of case or huge conflations of arguments -- point that out, make it a link, put offense on that too or make args for why the shell is a prior issue in the case that you go for it -- however you deal with it, deal with it. I feel that the easiest strategy is just to explain why the DA/impact turn doesn't link, why the shell comes first, and/or why something else you're going for (state good, cap K, etc.) disproves the internal link to the impact turn/independent voter.

Random note on disclosure these days -- I'm not that persuaded by these shells that you should send full on docs before rounds or that you must open source in order for negs to prep, etc. -- not to be an old zealot, but the norm when I was in high school was mostly just to disclose cites, tags, and the first 3 + last 3 words of cards -- we were fine and had more in-depth clash than what I've seen people read these days, so I am not that convinced -- THAT BEING SAID, I will still vote on it, but don't expect me to be that excited bout it or give you the highest speaks + I will have a low threshold for answers. However, if someone is fully not disclosing past rounds or telling you what the aff is gonna be, that changes the matter ofc -- still fine for disclosure, just not convinced that people need to give you every single word that they're about to read

Also not sure how I feel about spreading theory -- feels arbitrary to delineate as a judge where I draw a line between what is too fast and what is not. I'll vote on it, but idk -- the argument that it is impossible to delineate what is too fast prolly makes reasonability super persuasive. That being said, if you're obviously going fast, then LOL it seems reasonable that I would consider that to be spreading and evaluate the debate based on the standards. Either way, going for this in the 2N isn't really the move for me and I hope it's not for you. I'll still vote on it, but ugh, you and I both don't want to bring the debate to this issue (pls). If you read spreading bad and spread, I will prolly tank your speaks. Should be self-explanatory why.

Side note -- if you impact spreading bad or other shells to ableism, maybe think about that -- debate is of course extremely ableist, but I find it paternalistic to generally claim that disabled debaters are unable to debate able-bodied debaters who spread or speak fast. That's not to say I won't vote on it or that I don't think there is some truth to the claim, but I do think you should watch how you phrase the argument at least -- i.e., "disabled debaters cannot debate unless you disclose early cause they have to think on their feet" -- this sounds problematic and like you're saying that disabled people can't critically think in the moment, but "it is better to not spread to encourage access for people with certain disabilities" -- this sounds more agreeable. Be very careful when you talk about ableism because I have heard very problematic collapses that I am not happy with.

Topicality:

I read topicality against most K aff’s that I hit my senior year and every time I hit one in college -- including both defend the topic and read a policy action -- and I read spec bad against like every larp aff my senior year too. I love T, despite reading a ton of method/performative K aff's, but I have no biases here and can be persuaded to vote either way.

I have no issues with you going for 1-off T-FW against K aff’s and I’m more than willing to vote on it, but I do think there are ways to win my ballot easier. Having a clear TVA is always persuasive, but what I mean by this is not just like a literal plan text that mentions the identity group the aff talks about — take it further and explicitly explain to me why that TVA is a much better model for debate than the version of the aff that was the 1AC.

I think either having offense on the case page or doing clear interactions between the aff offense and the T flow is persuasive, and also useful when I write my ballot. I’d prefer you tell me a story in the 2NR and really sell your model of debate to me rather than pretending T has nothing to do with the aff. In other words, it is not sufficient to win that debate is solely a competitive game for me, I want you to really explain the implications of that to me because that’s a pretty bold claim considering all that this activity has been for a ton of people. I'll vote on it either way if you win it on a technical level, but this also leaves room for the aff to grandstand on your model being exclusive.

When debating T — have a clear counter-interp and defend your model of debate. I am more than willing to vote on an impact turn and am down for all the drama of various T strategies. Regardless, have a strong and robust defense of whatever model you choose to defend. I have been on and love debating from both sides of the issue (to some extent -- some language y'all be using in both your topicality extensions and your topicality answers are very iffy), and I find these to be some of the best rounds. I am here for it.

Most of the arguments for why I shouldn't vote on independent voting issues are terrible and not persuasive, BUT I still need y'all to answer them. Collapsing to a single DA on T in the 2AR is a great strat for me and I've done this myself in the past, but you have to answer these args. That being said, I've also been on the other side (kicking T) and feel that the easiest strategy is just to explain why the DA doesn't link, why T is a prior question, and/or why something else you're going for (state good, cap K, etc.) disproves the internal link to the impact turns/independent voters ---- (also check my note on impact turns in the theory section since some of this is copied from there/similar).

Quick side note on Nebel -- I have not read much into Nebel, but it's not very persuasive to me cause it sounds like a colonial norm and I'm not American/English was not my first language -- this does not mean I will auto-vote on grammar/textuality is racist, but I can be very strongly persuaded to and I think negatives need to have a robust defense prepared against this -- as in, take it serious and engage the argument by explaining to me why the argument is not racist/answering the aff arguments, but don't assume I will vote on fairness outweighs or semantics first in a scenario where you are losing on English grammar is racist.

That being said, a simple spec bad shell with a limits standard gets the job done and is a very great strat in front of me.

Kritik’s:

Yes. This is what I’m most comfortable evaluating and what I've spent the most time debating, coaching, and also studying academically. However, I will hold you to really knowing your lit -- buzzwords need to make sense. That being said, I'm pretty familiar with almost every area of critical literature that I've heard of or know of in debate. I like seeing how people use K lit to formulate interesting advocacies or methods, I like seeing new K shells and scholarship (like 2023/24 lol), and I also simultaneously like when someone defends a classic K but does it really really well.

I’m most familiar and comfortable with identity based lit -- especially Critical Race Theory and Antiblackness, Queer Theory and Queer of Color Studies, South Asian/South Asian American Studies, Postcolonialism, and Performance Studies. I'm most familiar with antiblackness, postcolonialism, queer theory, biopolitics, and necropolitics -- some of my fav authors: José Esteban Muñoz, Sarah Ahmed, Tiffany Lethabo King, Alexander Weheliye, Jasbir Puar, Achilles Mbembe, Marquis Bey, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. I'm also comfy with Foucault, Baudrillard, Derrida, Freud, Lacan, Deleuze, etc. -- all the pomo shtuff is fair game. I don't really think there's a K you'd read that I'd be completely unfamiliar with or uncomfortable with, but I also don't care what K it is and am happy to listen -- get creative. :))

Leverage the K against other flows and put offense on different layers — if you’re winning a case turn, implicate it both through the thesis of the K and independently.

Engage the thesis claims and answer the links in the 1AR.

Perms should probably have a text, but I'm open to the 2AR having leeway to explain them. But if you just yell "perm -- do the aff and graffiti the alt" -- I'm not gonna be very inclined to vote aff if I have no explanation of why that does anything. Have a relatively clear warrant and explanation of the perm that you can develop in the 2AR if you collapse to it.

Kicking the alt is fine — win the links and warrant presumption. I’m also fine with all your K tricks, but I’m not gonna stake the round on the 2AR dropping that fiat is illusory ABSENT some clear warranting and judge instruction with it, as well as some comparison between your claim and a 1AR/2AR arg about the value of simulating policymaking or whatnot.

Also, please be aware of your own privilege -- have a strong and robust defense of why you should be able to read the K, what your relationship is to the literature, and how I should evaluate the round given all that. This doesn't mean you need to run from reading the K -- just be able to answer these questions and defend your position. This applies to black studies, indigenous studies, queer theory, etc. -- I can be persuaded to vote either way on these issues.

Update -- you know -- I am slowly getting the ick regarding how people are instrumentalizing literature of specific groups for ballots -- if you are not part of a community and decide to read the literature anyways, but you clearly have a surface level understanding of it, I will be unhappy -- I am tired of cishets using queer pessimism, able-bodied people reading disability pessimism, and white people reading afro-pessimism without any real engagement with the literature -- and I don't think non-indigenous people reading settler colonialism is somehow distinct, nor do I think that non-black people reading other structural criticisms about antiblackness is distinct enough for it to mean that you are somehow using images of suffering more ethically. I am vexed with the inauthentic way that y'all are reading this literature, so I am watching with a very close eye regarding CX answers, the way you structure the K, the authors you read, and the 2N explanations. I won't auto-drop you or anything, but I do reserve the right to drop you on the ick if it's obvious you are not taking the literature seriously. I have had conversations with other judges and coaches who feel similarly, so read things at your own risk from now on. I still think you can read them, but I need you to do it at a level where it is clear you care and know what you're talking about.

Along those lines, since this has become a serious area of discussion on the LD debate circuit -- non-black people reading antiblackness is ok BUT you should be prepared to discuss what your role as a non-black person is, both in reading the K and in relation to antiblackness, and pls do it well. I will vote on arguments for why non-black people shouldn't read antiblackness, but I am also open to voting the other way. I think y'all need to stop running from the challenge of answering the argument because the scholarship is great, BUT be prepared in case the argument is made.

I am also not happy that everyone has just decided to turn to reading (and commodifying) literature about Native American/indigenous peoples instead, especially when debaters actively say they don't pay attention to the authors or only read "X" argument so it's fine -- I am persuaded by arguments that this should not be allowed and find it more persuasive due to this occurrence that literature or images of suffering about a group being used to justify a ballot are instances of detached commodification. You don't need a card, but do need warrants. Bringing up the history of debate and also specific practices in LD is great. Pessimistic claims are somewhat problematic, but more so is using violence against a group as an image to claim you're radically decolonial and using an arbitrary method or alternative to claim you do care about them. I will watch these debates very closely due to the way that debaters are behaving.

On the issue of queer theory -- I am skeptical of whether someone should be able to speak from the closet to read ontological/epistemological, etc., claims about queer people, especially being a queer trans* person of color myself -- if you are reading queer theory, I think you should be prepared to defend whether a cishet person should be allowed to read it, since if you are unwilling to disclose your queerness then that would enable the practice of non-queer people reading queer pess. I don't think outing DA's are that persuasive to me (in these specific circumstances only) if someone asks you whether you are queer while reading this because it should matter whether or not you are and you can choose to say that you are unwilling to disclose that, BUT that still begs the question of whether or not one should be able to do that. That being said, I will vote on an outing DA if it's won, but this is an answer that debaters can make that I believe is a relevant discussion and legitimate answer. I am vexed by openly cisheterosexual people turning to queer theory because they think that they can win every round on an outing DA, so I have decided to add this here to pressure more authentic engagements with the literature base.

Kritikal/performative/planless aff’s:

Yes. These are my favorite aff’s and I find them super interesting. I read them for like 7 years, I've coached them for like 5 years, and I've debated/judged them for longer. I don’t care if you defend the topic or not, but be prepared to defend your aff and all the choices you made in it. I also did read topicality/framework against most non-T aff's I debated lol, so I am happy to vote either way, but I am definitely a good judge for these aff's.

From the moment that I realize the aff is performative and/or critical, I am watching very closely to see how you perform it, defend it, and frame it. I also physically am usually watching you and making eye contact because I know that part of your discussion is also about me and the fact that I am not a passive decision-maker. I know that can make some people uncomfy, so I apologize in advance and promise I'm not like staring at you with bug-eyes or anything, but just noticing the choices you make and the way the aff is presented. I appreciate the fact that you made a lot of intentional choices when writing and formulating the aff, so I am respecting your use of them, especially in CX as well.

Be creative. Have fun. Express yourself. The best kritikal and performative aff’s that I have seen are a result of how they are presented, written, and defended — I think these can be some of the best or some of the worst rounds, but the only thing I’ll hold you to is defending something clear, whether a method, advocacy statement, praxis, or whatnot. Just be clear and tell me how to evaluate the round, considering most of these aff’s ask for a shift in how to evaluate and view debate itself.

Do not read these in front of me just because it’s what I did. Also, feel free to ask me any questions — I’d be more than happy to help you figure out some aspects of how you wanna explore reading this and I know I definitely benefitted from judges who did that for me, so I got you. With that being said, here's some cool things I'd love to see.

Something I loved doing was impact turning presumption args — 1AR’s and 2AR’s that can effectively do this and collapse to it are dope and I’m here for it.

I think CX is a place to perform too -- I love performances that somehow extend beyond just the 1AC because they bring so much more of the drama of debate into question. However, I have also seen many people do this in ways that aren't very tasteful and end up either confusing me or triggering me. On the other hand, I've also found that these can be some of the most brutal and successful CX strategies when done well.

Regardless, don't feel shy about testing the waters in front of me, within reason. However, fire hazards are real and pls warn me about flashing lights (personal medical reason). In other words -- sure, go off, but don't get me (or yourself) in trouble or do anything hazardous/risky. Also, I don't think it's ok for you to infringe on someone else's literal ability to debate, in terms of doing anything to their flows or picking up their computer for whatever reason -- please don't. I won't be happy and coaches/schools won't be happy. Other than that, have fun! I like hearing creative arguments and fun stuff that makes me pay attention and wake up. :))

ANSWERING THESE -- Presumption is fine, but I’m probably not gonna be persuaded by the classic arg that the aff does not affect how I view the world, feel, etc. This is not to say that I will not vote on a ballot presumption argument if it is argued well and won, but don't expect me to bank the round on a 5 second shadow extension that lacks clear warrants or weighing. I prefer presumption arguments to be reasons for why the performance of the aff is inconsistent with the method or other parts of the 1AC somehow, lack of solvency, vagueness, etc., and make sure the turns are impacted out effectively and weighed against affirmative's.

State good is an underused and undervalued strategy, clashes with these aff's so enables you to avoid impact turns on T or other issues that rely on the aff winning internal links for why certain state-oriented procedures are bad, and is a great option (be wary of your language, but hasn't been an issue so far).

I do not like Rickert or other arguments that are like "oh subjectivity is not real in debate, but is elsewhere so please leave" type args -- I think these are actively racist. BUT I think there are certain specific issues you can push on.

What is the advocacy/method past the 1AC? What is the value or impact of the performance? Why is there a binding reason to vote aff? How does the aff resolve skep/induction issues? How does the aff relate to the other debater and/or the judge? Why is debate bad, but also shifted to being good through the aff/voting aff? etc. etc. -- all of these are relevant considerations and valid points of contestation -- i.e., whether or not the ways the aff responds to these questions are good or sufficient.

Also really like K links as case turns against these aff's, skep is fair but be wary of your language and type of skep ofc, counter-K's are fun, T is great, and phil is so interesting and I wish more people did Kant vs. K-aff's (or other frameworks) because these are some of the most interesting rounds I've had or heard.

For Policy/CX Debate:

I'm cool with whatever you read and would prefer you do what you're best at! I'm chill and will follow anything -- I was a college policy debater at NYU and I went to RKS 2018 -- I've also judged and coached high school policy, read every style of debate, and I still currently actively cut both K lit and policy args -- I also read a ton of performative args from cardless aff's about throwing a party to queer bombs, tons of K's (queer theory, gender studies, critical race theory, indigenous studies, disability studies, and pomo), but also read a ton of straight up strats from a Bahrain aff to the classic politics DA + framework/T against almost every non-T aff -- I have been on both sides of most issues, but I don't really care about my opinions and I'm down with whatever you wanna read -- so you do you. Specific sections below might be useful (minus the tricks stuff for LD, etc. -- not gonna vote on tricks, frivolous theory, etc. in policy).

I don't care if you read an aff about great power competition and extinction or a K about settler homonationalism -- I feel comfortable and confident in my ability to render the right decision no matter what you read, but my favorite rounds are when a team reading a plan aff really knows their scenario and evidence super well or when a team reading a K provides really in-depth explanations and examples -- don't adapt your style itself to me, just focus on what you do best and win it. :))

My approach to rounds is typically to vote for the team that I need to do less work for to determine a ballot -- I need warrants for claims that you make and I think these warrants need to be defended in cross-ex, explained in later speeches, and developed with contextualization and examples -- meaning you need to make sure you warrant everything because I will feel uncomfortable voting for something I cannot adequately explain back to y'all without intervention. This kinda just means I wanna hear internal links and their warrants, and/or a strong overview defense of your impacts -- judge instruction, collapsing in later speeches, and framing are your best bets.

I especially think framing specifically is important -- this doesn't mean winning util or a role of the ballot necessarily, but rather please just do weighing, impact comparison, and draw me a ballot story by telling me what matters most in the round in later speeches.

Everything else is pretty straight forward -- tech > truth, judge instruction, and you do you (unless it's overtly discriminatory).

I do really like K's though and this is where most of my background in debate lies -- through debate and my undergrad coursework, I read a ton of Muñoz, Puar, Spivak, Said, Halberstam, Stanley, Ahmed, Lamble, Mbembe, Tinsley, Hartman, Warren, Wilderson, Weheliye, Wynter, Spillers, Gumbs, King, Edelman, Preciado, Bersani, Nash, Bey, Gilmore, Davis, Gillespie, Mignolo, Rodriguez, Morgensen, Eng, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Derrida, Deleuze, Freud, Lacan, and I'm sure I could keep going -- this is mainly to say that I will likely contextually understand what you read, regardless of my familiarity with the literature. I think I am a great judge for any critical arguments and feel super comfortable evaluating these, but also thoroughly enjoy the scholarship and the creativity that debaters employ when reading these arguments. Personally, I also read cardless aff's using original poetry as well as critical aff's that were very close to the topic/resolution -- I don't care how specific or generic your arguments are, I care about how well you go for and explain them!

For policy/plan aff's and teams -- I usually get bored in these debates ngl, but I think I'm a sucker for a really good link story on a DA, straight turns, and strategic advantage counterplans. I think condo is good in policy debate and feel like the condo bad debate is lost on me. Despite everything above, I enjoy the state good or heg good defense and think that I can easily be persuaded to vote on arguments about why we have to focus on policymaking/reform. Do good weighing, impact framing, internal link warranting, evidence comparison, and meta-weighing. I also love T-framework, T-defend the topic, and other topicality arguments -- I also like T or spec bad against non-topical/extra-topical plan aff's -- but I need these arguments to be well impacted out. I think fairness is just an internal link to education really, but I'll vote on either one and I just need the ballot story to be clear. You do need to answer impact turns, TVA's and switch side seem like game over you won T type issues, most T arguments are just about limits or prep and clash, and I am great for T.

Feel free to hit me up and ask me any questions if you have em on either FB or my email.

For PF:

Pls read the TLDR right below this, but I am relatively experienced with debate, so I don't think you need to adapt much. I also went to Quarry Lane for high school till 2019 (QLS was very involved in PF so I'm no stranger to the event) and traveled with the PF debaters everywhere, but also did a bit of PF at smaller tourneys and judged it before. I am down to vote for anything, just don't be racist/homophobic/misogynistic, etc. I also read a lot of performance args and K's as a debater, so that's something I'm comfortable with -- BUT don't read it just to read it, I'm also very chill with policy-esque args and general topic area args + would rather hear what you're good at than a random K that you pulled up.

ALSO -- I have trouble following card names sometimes cause y'all do be paraphrasing and moving past things real quick, so please reference arguments rather than X author name so I can follow you -- I don't expect this to be a big issue, but if you're ramping up the speed and gonna give me one-liners as you move between cards, either send me the doc so I can follow OR reference impacts over last names.

Speaks:

So you want a 30? -- I loved getting speaker awards, so just do you and I got you, but here's some incentives + random things LOL

1. Pls do NOT use my name unless we know each other LOL
2. + speaks for everyone if you have the email chain set up before I walk into the room
3. Clarity and enunciation > speed please
4. If you are able to give a solid speech at a good speed where I can write/type out every word and feel very part of the process, I will be VERY happy
5. Passion and ethos are dope — I don’t care what form this is in, but really sell whatever you read to me
6. I like tasteful references to things -- drag race, anime, Marvel or Disney, sitcoms, etc. -- don't really know much about sports so that might go over my head, but I like creative args that draw on other art forms, whether media/film or otherwise
7. I average a 29.5+ and give higher speaks when you slow down, are very clear, or when you collapse really well
8. If you go on your phone during someone else's speech, you are likely to get the lowest possible speaks I can give without having to talk to tab :))

I have become quite generous with speaks, but humor, creative args, or strong execution is the key! I'm more than willing to give out a 30 and have increasingly done so. Do you and make sure you signpost, warrant, and slow down on important things -- I appreciate passion, strong research and/or analysis, and well-crafted strategies! I also think a smart CX helps with ethos and also definitely will help bump your speaks -- many debates are also lost and won in CX ultimately.

If you slow down to an easily flowable speed and give a good speech, I will be far more likely to be persuaded to vote for you and give you a 30 (or 29.5+). I find that I am also most persuaded by debaters who close doors, slow down and impact things out, and avoid silly args. Go to the bottom for more qualms of mine!

Please give me trigger/content warnings -- go for it, just warn me -- important to me as both a judge and participant in the round — if you’re going to be talking about graphically sensitive topics, please give me (and everyone in the room) a heads up -- this does not mean you don't get to read it tho -- you don't need my permission, just let us all prepare emotionally/mentally

Speed and Off's Rant: I am going to say clear a lot more to ask you to slow down andI think I will need you to go AT LEAST 70% of your top speed. I want to be able to hear every word, but I also think this is important to check for clipping. I think that we should preserve the value of debates through contestation, which I find is less possible when someone spreads through a ton of arguments waiting for something to be dropped, and I also just find myself exhausted listening to those debates because it feels like a waste of everyone's time. I also am just unable to flow some of this most of the time, which is not unique to just me and is a common shared experience of many judges. I believe that the ways that people are spreading through a ton of off case positions at incredibly high speeds is problematic because I find it rather difficult to follow and I should not need to rely on docs to flow you but I cannot hear these words, I find it hard to check if someone is clipping, I don't think I should encourage this practice, I don't think there is or has ever been a need to speak that fast, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, I have found and experienced situations where debaters use speed to get away with performing/reading racist and violent arguments, which I think I have an ethical obligation to correct for by at least making a relevant note here.

SO with that in mind -- please do not spread through analytics -- there is absolutely no way I am going to get all of these down and if you spread through these, it makes me very sad because I do want to get every argument but I just will not be able to.

I also will not be flowing after the 4th off and will dock speaks. If there are more than 4 off's, I also feel comfortable with the 1AR getting up and telling me not to evaluate it since this is on my paradigm. I also think that more than 4 off's will lower my threshold for responses and 2AR spin.

Finally, I have also decided that more than 3 off means I should definitely presume aff under a role of the ballot where I am supposed to vote for the better debater. I think that more than 3 off makes the debate quite structurally difficult for the aff, so I believe the aff did the better debating.

That being said, if you read more than 4 off after seeing me on the pairing, I think we have bad blood from the beginning of the round. Choose your positions with care, defend them, and focus on relevant substantive discussions. If you think you need more than 4 off to beat an aff, you are reading 4 bad off's.

Some qualms of mine (these will affect speaks):

1. I will not give you a 30 if you ask for it.
2. Non-black folx who read anti-blackness specifically against black folx will prolly lose in front of me (I have not yet seen it happen), but I am likely to give you pretty low speaks either way -- however, non-black folx reading anti-blackness generally is fine.
3. I am happy to vote on non-black folx should not read afropess and/or antiblackness, but also to vote for the idea that it's ok -- this is a debatable issue for me -- and I also think that it's debatable whether a non-indigenous person should be reading certain strains of set col (i.e., people who are not Native American reading set col about Native Americans) -- I can be persuaded to vote either way and think this applies to every group-specific strain of literature
4. I will not vote on anything that polices what clothing other debaters are wearing — this is not negotiable sorry and yes, that means I will not vote on shoes theory or formal clothing theory — I don't feel comfortable deciding what children should wear
5. If you are reading a card with more than one color highlighted in it, please remove the highlights of what you're not reading -- it really messes with me and I have issues processing that -- it's not a huge deal, but it will help me adjudicate better
6. Evidence ethics is quite important to me -- just cite stuff and use EasyBib if you are unsure how -- lack of citations is a big issue (the minimum is the author name, name of the book/article, where it was published, and when) and so are clipping, etc.
7. If you do an evidence challenge -- I will stop the round, use NSDA rules standards, and vote -- W 30 and L 0
8. Pronouns are important — misgendering is not cool w me, so try your best — I recommend defaulting to “they” anyways -- I will vote on misgendering
9. If you answer something someone didn't read and skipped, I will not be happy -- you can ask for marked docs tho! -- be prepared for CX and please flow
10. Please send a doc as soon as you stop prep -- putting together the doc is prep time imo (emailing is not, but I will be upset if you spend more than 30 secs before saying "sent")

Hi! My name is Charles Karcher. He/him pronouns. My email is ckarcher at chapin dot edu.

I am affiliated with The Chapin School, where I am a history teacher and coach Public Forum.

This is my 10th year involved in debate overall and my 6th year coaching.

Previous affiliations: Fulbright Taiwan, Lake Highland, West Des Moines Valley, Interlake, Durham Academy, Charlotte Latin, Altamont, and Oak Hall.

Conflicts: Chapin, Lake Highland

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Not well-read on the topic.

In PF, you should either paraphrase all your cards OR present a policy-esque case with taglines that precede cut cards. I do not want cards that are tagged with "and, [author name]" or, worse, not tagged at all. This formatting is not conducive to good debating and I will not tolerate it. Your speaks will suffer.

All speech materials should be sent as a downloadable file (Word or PDF), not as a Google Doc, Sharepoint, or email text. I will not look at they are in the latter formats.

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Mid-season updates to be integrated into my paradigm proper soon: 1. (PF) I'm not a fan of teams actively sharing if they are kicking an argument before they kick it. For example, if your opponent asks you about contention n in questioning and you respond "we're kicking that argument." Not a fan of it. 2. (LD) I have found that I am increasingly sympathetic to judge kicking counterplans (even though I was previously dogmatically anti-judge kick), but it should still be argued and justified in the round by the negative team; I do not judge kick by default. 3. Do not steal prep or be rude to your opponents - I have a high bar for these two things and hope that the community collectively raises its bars this season. Your speaks will suffer if you do these things.

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Debate is what you make it, whether that is a game or an educational activity. Ultimately, it is a space for students to grow intellectually and politically. Critical debate is what I spend the most time thinking about. I’m familiar with most authors, but assume that I know nothing. I want to hear about the alt. I have a particular interest in the Frankfurt School and 20th century French authors + the modern theoretical work that has derived from both of these traditions. I have prepped and coached pretty much the full spectrum of K debate authors/literature bases. Policy-style debate is fun. I like good analytics more than bad cards, especially when those cards are from authors that are clearly personally/institutionally biased. Inserted graphs/charts need to be explained and are their own claim, warrant, and impact. Taglines should be detailed and accurately descriptive of the arguments in the card. 2 or 3 conditional positions are acceptable. I am not thrilled with the idea of judge kicking. Theory and tricks debate is the farthest from my interests. Being from Florida, I've been exposed to a good amount of it, but it never stuck with or interested me. Debaters who tend to read these types of arguments should not pref me.

Other important things:

1] If you find yourself debating with me as the judge on a panel with a parent/lay/traditional judge (or judges), please just engage in a traditional round and don't try to get my tech ballot. It is incredibly rude to disregard a parent's ballot and spread in front of them if they are apprehensive about it.

2] Speaks are capped at 27 if you include something in the doc that you assume will be inputted into the round without you reading/describing it. You cannot "insert" something into the debate scot-free. Examples include charts, graphs, images, screenshots, spec details, and solvency mechanisms/details. This is a terrible norm which literally asks me to evaluate a piece of evidence that you didn't read. It's also a question of accessibility.

3] When it comes to speech docs, I conceptualize the debate space as an academic conference at which you are sharing ideas with colleagues (me) and panelists (your opponents). Just as you would not present an unfinished PowerPoint at a conference, please do not present to me a poorly formatted speech doc. I don't care what your preferences of font, spacing, etc. are, but they should be consistent, navigable, and readable. I do ask that you use the Verbatim UniHighlight feature to standardize your doc to yellow highlighting before sending it to me.

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Misc. notes:

• My defaults: ROJ > ROB; ROJ ≠ ROB; ROTB > theory; presume neg; comparative worlds; reps/pre-fiat impacts > everything else; yes RVI; DTD; yes condo; I will categorically never evaluate the round earlier than the end of the 2AR (with the exception of round-stopping issues like evidence evidence allegations or inclusivity concerns).
• I do not, and will not, disclose speaker points.
• Put your analytics in the speech doc!
• Trigger warnings are important
• CX ends when the timer beeps! Time yourself.
• Tell me about inclusivity/accessibility concerns, I will do whatever is in my power to accommodate!

Harvard 2024 Update: Hi! I took time away from debate in 2020 to focus on mental health. It’s been a while, so I may be rusty and have certainly not kept up with new trends and developments in “the meta”. Please start at 70% top speed if it’s round 1-2. And please be kind to each other. I’ve missed debate and I’m excited to come out of “retirement” to judge again.

Background: LD in HS, CX at Cornell, coached for over 8 years in the Northeast.

The short: I want to see you being the best version of yourself in whatever form of debate you're inclined to. I have a few defaults but will generally evaluate the round however debaters would like me to. I don’t inflate speaks. Please be kind. I’ll call for evidence if I need it; no need to put me on the email chain.

Do

• strategic issue selection, i.e., don't go for everything in your last speech
• organization
• clash
• extend the whole argument: claim, warrant, impact, implication.
• thorough evidence comparison
• clear and thoughtful impact calc
• 30s are for people I think are a model of what debate should and can be. It's not enough to be good at debate; be good for debate.
• Circuit debaters should be nice to transitioning debaters from JV and more traditional programs. That does not mean don't do your best or compromise your round; however, it does mean giving clear answers in CX, making efforts to accommodate for tech, and maybe considering 3 off instead of 4 off.
• FLOW. +up to 0.5 speaks for a good flow. If you tell me you have a good flow and show me at the end of the round before I submit my decision, you will be eligible for some game-y speaker points.

Don't

• steal prep.
• play in CX. answer the question.
• have excessively long underviews. Read a better aff.
• read excessively long overviews. If you have a 1min+ long overview, I would prefer you read it at the bottom after you have done line-by-line. I promise I will get more of it if you do that.
• tag things as independent voters; just weigh. Do the work to resolve arguments so that I don't have to. Calling something independent doesn't make it independent from the rest of the reps/performances/args in the round.
• be a coward. Engage. Have the debate.

Kritiks

• these debates are best when debaters have a lot of content/topic knowledge and can make the connection to their theory of power. It seems sophomoric to critique something you have a limited understanding of. A lot of your authors have likely spent a lot of time writing historical analyses and it would be remiss to be ignorant of that.
• high threshold for explanations
• spend more time explaining the internal link between the speech act or the performance and the impact
• Really sympathetic to voting neg on presumption if the aff doesn't clearly articulate how the aff is a move from the status quo.
• please don't read model minority type args

Policy style arguments (LARP)

• love a well-researched position. Do it if it's your thing.
• probably the easiest type of debate for me to evaluate.
• 90% of time you just gotta do the weighing/impact calc.

T v. stock/larp

• read it
• competing interps
• RVIs on T are a tough sell in front of me

T/FW v. K affs

• these debate becomes better as methods debates implicating the relationship amongst form, content, and norms
• sometimes these get messy. I need more explanation of the implication of the arguments and how to sequence my evaluation.
• Go slow and collapse early

Theory

• Because I default competing interpretations, I treat these as CP/DA debates unless otherwise argued in round. To win my ballot, my RFD should be able to explain the abuse story, the structural implications for the activity (and its significance), and why your interpretation is the best norm to resolve those impacts. If you are not clearly explaining this, then I will have a difficult voting on it.
• I won't vote off:
  • "new affs bad"
  • "need an explicit text" interps
  • disclosure against novices and traditional debaters
• I am sympathetic to a "gut-check" on frivolous theory
• Good interps to run:
  • condo bad;
  • abusive perms bad (severance perms, intrinsic perms, etc);
  • abusive CPs bad (delay CPs, etc);
  • abusive fiat bad (object fiat, multiactor fiat, etc).
• If I'm being honest, I don't enjoy flowing more than 20 sec worth of spikes/theory pre-empts at the bottom of the AC; just read a better aff
• I don't have many defaults about 1ar theory, but generally think it's a poor strategic decision

Email chains are a tangible improvement to debate. RLarsen at desidancenetwork dot org. You can read my entire paradigm for bolded passages, as you would a card. Pronouns are he/him/”Judge”. The affirmative should have speech doc ready to be emailed by round start time. Please keep a local copy of speech recordings. In the event of a 30-second tech blip, recordings will be reviewed; no speeches will be redone, barring tournament policy. Debaters have the right to reserve CX start until receipt of marked speech doc.

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(Long Version is for procrastinating non-debate work)

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(Pre-round Prep/Deadline Preffing): If you're a student doing your own prefs, you're best off reading the next two paragraphs and skimming my voting record. If you're a coach, you likely already know where to pref me.

Debate is a group of people engaging in performances. The nature of those debate performances (including my role as a judge) is settled by the competitors in the round with arguments. My default as a policy judge is to believe that those performances regard policymaking and that plans (/counterplans/alts/advocacies) create worlds with real impacts I should calculate via fiat as the plan is executed. As an LD judge, I think the round is about pursuing philosophical reasons to affirm or negate the resolution, and impacting through the lens of the criterial structure. Any successful movement away from the default paradigm typically entails explaining why I, the judge, should interpret your speech time differently. Most people succeed in shifting my defaults, and would consider me a “tabula rasa” judge. Nearly all of my LD rounds look like solo Policy these days. I’m expressive while judging, and you should take advantage of that, and look for cues. It is my belief that students are owed an explanation of the decision and that the judge is accountable to their evaluation of the round.

Clash happens through the lens of the ballot. The nature of how the ballot is to be considered is the framework flow, and that means that arguments like Kritiks might engage with T/Theory in some rounds and not others. This means I will vote for your take on burning down civil society in one round and vote you down on T in the next. I listen to about 20 rounds/week, so my strong preference is for good argumentation, not specific strategies. More at the top of the long version below.

Negatives are currently going for too much in the 2NR, while dropping case. Affirmatives are currently spending too much time extending case while dropping world of the perm articulations.

Perms: I give the benefit of the doubt to the intuitive status of the permutation. I’m happy to vote against my intuition, but you need to lead me there (more below).

Tricks: If you go for this, impact the tricks out, as you would a dropped card. Slow down for the key line(s) in rebuttal speeches. Eye contact makes this strategy sustainable. Yes, Tricks rounds have '19-'20 ballots from me. No, they should not be your first move.

Disclosure the Argument is great! Drop the debater on disclosure is unimpressive. Read it as an implication to round offense, or you're better off spending time on basically any other sheet.

Topical Version of the Aff (TVA): Gotta read them, gotta answer them. Most of the rounds I vote for T are from a dropped interp or dropped TVA

RVIs =/= Impact Turns: My patience for abusive theory underviews is fading. Quickly

Independent Voters: explain to me why the voter stands apart from the flow and comes first. Debaters are not consistently executing this successfully in front of me, so consider my threshold higher than average

No Risk: I do vote on no risk of the aff/plan doesn't solve. Terminal defense is still a thing

If you expect me to evaluate charts/graphics in your speech doc, give me time during the speech to read any graphics. It will otherwise only be a tie-breaker in evidence analysis

Uplayering: layers of debate often interact with each other; that they exist in separate worlds is not very compelling. Sequencing why I should analyze argument implications before others is the best way to win the layers debate.

While I recognize there's no obligation to share your analytics, the practice serves a good pedagogical benefit for those who process information in different ways. This is even more relevant for online debate. I will begin awarding +.3 speaker points for those speeches including all/nearly all analytics in the speech doc AND that are organized in a coherent manner.

2019-2020 Aff Speaks: 28.801 Neg Speaks: 28.809; Aff Ballots 114 Neg Ballots: 108

222 rounds judged for the '19-'20 season, mixed LD and Policy

Coached students to qualification for 2020 TOC in LD and Policy

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(good luck, get snacks)

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I recognize that this is no longer a viable read between rounds. Because I continue to receive positive feedback for its detail, it will be kept up, but I do not have any expectation that you will memorize this for my rounds. Bold text is likely worth its time, though.

Long Version (Procrastinating Other Work/Season Preffing):

Role of the Ballot:

Framework debaters: if you think the debate space should be predictable and fair, you should articulate what education/fairness/pick-your-voter means to the activity and why the ballot of this particular round matters.

K debaters: if you think rhetoric and its shaping matters more than the policy impacts of the 1AC, you should articulate your world of the alt/advocacy/pick-your-impact in a way that allows me to sign the ballot for you.

Performance debaters: if you think the debate space is for social movements/resistance/pick-your-story, you should explain why your performance relates to the ballot and is something I should vote for. Ideal performance cases explain topic links or provide reasons they actively choose not to be topical.

Everybody else: you get the idea. Clash happens through the lens of the ballot. The nature of how the ballot is to be considered is the framework flow, and that means that arguments like Kritiks might engage with T/Theory in some rounds and not others. This means I will vote for your take on burning down civil society in one round and vote you down on T in the next.

The world is unfair. Fairness is still probably a good thing. We get education from winning, and from losing. Some topics are poorly written and ground issues might not be the fault of your opponent. For debaters pursuing excellence, traditional voters aren’t the end of the conversation. Argument context can be everything. Tech speak, fairness is an internal link more than it is an impact.

“Two ships passing in the night” is something we hear in approximately 143% of RFDs, and it’s almost always the most efficient way to sad faces, frustration, and post rounding. RESOLVE this by finding points of clash, demonstrating that your claims engage with the claims of your opponent in a way that is beneficial for you. Clash shows that you are aware that your opponent has ground, and your following that with an explanation of why that ground couldn’t possibly earn my ballot is very persuasive. A round without clash is a round left to the judge, and you don’t want to leave any argument, big or small, up to the discretion of the judge.

The preventable argument issue that most often shows up on my ballot is how the permutation functions. I give the benefit of the doubt to the intuitive status of the permutation. For example, I think it’s very easy to imagine a world where two separate policy actions are taken. I think it’s very hard to imagine a world in which Civil Society is ended and the 1AC still solves its harms through implementation. The former gets preference for the permutation making sense. The latter gets preference for exclusivity making sense. I’m happy to vote against my intuition, but you need to lead me there.

I flow on paper, because as a wise teacher (Paul Johnson) once (/often) told me: “Paper doesn’t crash.” This means I will NOT:

Flow your overview verbatim

Flow your underview verbatim

Flow your tags verbatim

But I WILL:

Follow the speech doc for author name spelling

Have no issues jumping around sheets as long as you signpost as you go
Still always appreciate another run through the order (if you don’t have the order, or you change it up, that’s O.K. Again, just sign post clearly)

Write in multiple colors (for individual speakers and notes)

Typically respond to body language/speech patterns and give you cues to what should be happening more or what should be happening less (furrowed brow + no writing usually means bad news bears. No writing, in general, means bad news bears)

I will keep the speech doc open on my computer, because it seems like a good idea to live the round as closely to the competitors’ experience as possible. However, it is YOUR job as a debater to COMMUNICATE to me the most important parts of your speech. 9 times out of 10 this means:

SLOW DOWN to emphasize big picture ideas that you use to contextualize multiple parts of the round. Let me know that you know it’s important. That level of awareness is persuasive.

TELL A STORY of the debate round. Are you winning? (the answer is almost always “yes”) Why are you winning? What are your winning arguments? Why do they demolish your opponent’s arguments into a thousand pieces of rubble that couldn’t win a ballot if you were unable to deliver any additional arguments?

WEIGH IMPACTS. Time frame/magnitude/probability. These are all great words that win debate rounds. There are other great words that also win rounds.
PRIORITIZE (TRIAGE) arguments. You don’t need to win all the arguments to win the debate. If you go for all the arguments, you will often lose a debate you could have won.

New Affs Bad may be persuasive, but not to me. Breaking new affs is the divine right of the affirmative.

I’m still hearing this debated occasionally, but cross ex is binding. I flow it/take notes.

Flex Prep is alive and well in my rounds. You have an opportunity to ask further questions, but not a clear obligation to answer them. I also think it’s pretty fair that prep time can be used to just… prep.

If you ask me to call for evidence, you probably didn’t do a sufficient job presenting your cards during the round.

Rhetorical questions seem very clever as they’re conceived, but are rarely persuasive. Your opponent will not provide a damning answer, and your time would have been better spent working to make positive claims.

I tend to like policy arguments and performance more than philosophy-heavy kritiks because Ks often lose their grounding to the real world (and, it follows, the ballot). Policy arguments are claiming the real world is happening in the speeches of the round, and performance debate has had to justify its own existence for as long as it has existed, which makes it more practiced at role of the ballot. If you love your K and you think it’s the winning move, go for it! Just make sure to still find clash. Related: “reject” alts almost always feel like they’re missing something. Almost like a team without a quarterback, a musical without leads, a stage without performers.

Good links >>> more links

Good evidence >>>>> more evidence

Many definition interpretations are bad. Good definitions win [T] rounds.

Many framework card interpretations are bad. Every debater is better off reading the cards in the entirety at some point during their infinite prep, in order to better understand author intent.

My threshold for accepting politics disads as persuasive feels higher than the community average. I think it’s because probability is underrated in most politics disads.

Anything I believe is open to negotiation within the context of debate, but general truths have a much lower standard of proof (i.e. Debater 1 says “we are currently in Mexico.” Debater 2 counters “Pero estamos en Estados Unidos.” I consider the truth contest over at this point). The more specialized the knowledge, the higher the standard of proof.

Technical parts of the flow (T & Theory come to mind) can be really fast. I mentioned above that I’m writing by hand. You are always better off with -50% the number of arguments with +50% presentation and explanation to the remaining claims. Yes, I have your speech doc. No, I’m not doing your job for you. Communicate the arguments to me.

Debaters are made better by knowing how arguments evolve. There’s a reason a permutation is a “test of competition” (see: plan plus). Knowing the roots and growth of arguments will make you better at clash will make you better at debate will make you better at winning real, actual ballots.

My default is always to give an RFD, and to start that RFD with my decision. This will typically be followed by the winning argument(s). Ideally, the RFD should look suspiciously like the final rebuttal speech of the winning team.

I apologize for this paradigm becoming unreasonable in length.

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Ships passing in the night/Clash wins rounds (see above)

Thanksgiving standard: if you can't explain why this argument is important to your Grandma during Thanksgiving dinner conversation, you probably need to keep reading the literature until you can contextualize to the real world. There's also a really good chance it won't win you the round.

At least try to live the advocacy you endorse. If you think coalition-building is the move, you shouldn’t be exclusionary without clear justification, and possibly not even then. The debate space is better for inclusion efforts.

It’s always to your advantage to use cross ex/prep to understand opposing arguments. Don’t realize after a rebuttal speech that your strategy was based on an incomplete understanding of your opponent(s) and their case.

It’s almost always worth your time to take a small amount of prep to sit back, breathe, and consider how you’re going to explain this round to your coach, debate-knowledgeable legal guardian, or friend-who-doesn’t-like-debate-but-supports-you-in-your-endeavors-because-they’re-a-good-friend. It’s an exercise that will tell you what’s important and help clear the clutter of speed, terminology, and tech.

This is also a good test for seeing if you can explain all the arguments using small words. I think the fanciest words I use in this paradigm are “verbatim” and “temporal proximity”. If you can’t explain your arguments in a simple, efficient manner, you need to keep reading.

It’s also almost always worth your time to take a moment, a sip of water, and a breath to collect yourself before a speech. Do this without excess and every judge you compete in front of will appreciate the generated composure and confidence in your ensuing speech.

Don’t start that speech with a million words a minute. Build to it. Double plus ungood habit if you forgot to check that everyone was ready for you to begin speaking.

I have never, not even once, in a decade+ of debate, heard a judge complain that author names were spoken too slowly.

Don’t take 5 minutes to flash a speech or to sort together a speech doc after you’re “done” prepping.

Your speech and prep time is yours to do with as you wish. Play music, talk loudly, play spades.

Opponent prep time is theirs to do with as they wish. That means you don’t get to play music intrusively (read: use headphones), talk intrusively, play spades intrusively, you get where this is going. This is one of the areas I think speaker points is very much at judge discretion.

If it’s not a speech and it’s not cross ex and neither team is running prep, you should not be prepping. Stealing prep is another area that I think leaves speaker points very much to judge discretion.

Don’t set sound alarms to the time you keep for your opponent’s speeches. Nobody ever, ever wants to hear the timer of the opponent go off before the speaker’s. I will keep time in 99% of debates, and if you’re wrong and cutting into their speech time, you’re losing speaker points.

I’m friendly.

I’m almost always down to give notes between rounds/after tournaments/via email on your performance in debate. Temporal proximity works in your favor (read: my memory has never been A1).

There are few things I love in this good life more than hearing a constructive speech that takes a new interpretation of an old idea and expands how I see the world. Writing your own arguments makes the time you invest in debate more worthwhile.

Spend some time teaching debate to others. Most things worth learning are worth teaching, and the act of teaching will give you an excellent perspective to arguments that have staying power in the community.

Lincoln-Douglas Debaters: A priori arguments can win rounds, but I’d rather see a debate where you win on substance than on a single line that your opponent dropped/misunderstood. If you’re going for a dropped analytic, impact it out in the 2R, as you would any other dropped card.

I feel like the rounds that end up being primarily the criterial debate typically indicate that the debaters could have done more to apply their arguments to the lens of their opponent’s criterion.

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This space is for you. We don’t hold debate tournaments so that judges can sign ballots. You don’t spend hours/years preparing arguments and developing this skill because you just really want Tab Staffers to have something to do on the weekends. Mountains of money aren’t shifted so that we can enjoy the sweet, sweet pizza at the lunch hour. We’re here so that you can debate. Performance is about communicated intent, and debate is no exception. You can take anything out of that experience, but articulating your purpose walking into the round, even if only to yourself, will make you more persuasive.

Closing note: I typically think dialogue is the best way to educate, and that my role (at a bare minimum) is to educate the competitors following the round, through the lens of my decision and its reasoning. I will typically write a short Tabroom ballot and give as extensive a verbal RFD as scheduling permits/the students have asked all the questions they desire. The short version of this paradigm caused me physical pain, so that should indicate my willingness to engage in decision-making/pedagogical practices.

4 years high school LD/Extemp/PF

3 years college policy/parli/public

Coaching/teaching debate since 2009-ish

Writing Arguments by Allegory since 2013

Crawford Leavoy, Director of Speech & Debate at Durham Academy - Durham, NC

Email Chain: cleavoy@me.com

BACKGROUND
I am a former LD debater from Vestavia Hills HS. I coached LD all through college and have been coaching since graduation. I have coached programs at New Orleans Jesuit (LA) and Christ Episcopal School (LA). I am currently teaching and coaching at Durham Academy in Durham, NC. I have been judging since I graduated high school (2003).

CLIFF NOTES

- Speed is relatively fine. I'll say clear, and look at you like I'm very lost. Send me a doc, and I'll feel better about all of this.

- Run whatever you want, but the burden is on you to explain how the argument works in the round. You still have to weigh and have a ballot story. Arguments for the sake of arguments without implications don't exist.

- Theory - proceed with caution; I have a high threshold, and gut-check a lot

- Spikes that try to become 2N or 2A extensions for triggering the ballot is a poor strategy in front of me

- I don't care where you sit, or if you sit or stand; I do care that you are respectful to me and your opponent.

- If you cannot explain it in a 45 minute round, how am I supposed to understand it enough to vote on it.

- My tolerance for just reading prep in a round that you didn't write, and you don't know how it works is really low. I get cranky easily and if it isn't shown with my ballot, it will be shown with my speaker points.

SOME THOUGHTS ON PF

- The world of warranting in PF is pretty horrific. You must read warrants. There should be tags. I should be able to flow them. They must be part of extensions. If there are no warrants, they aren't tagged or they aren't extended - then that isn't an argument anymore. It's a floating claim.

- You can paraphrase. You can read cards. If there is a concern about paraphrasing, then there is an entire evidence procedure that you can use to resolve it. But arguments that "paraphrasing is bad" seems a bit of a perf con when most of what you are reading in cut cards is...paraphrasing.

- Notes on disclosure: Sure. Disclosure can be good. It can also be bad. However, telling someone else that they should disclose means that your disclosure practices should bevery good. There is definitely a world where I am open to counter arguments about the cases you've deleted from the wiki, your terrible round reports, and your disclosure of first and last only.

- Everyone should be participating in round. Nothing makes me more concerned than the partner that just sits there and converts oxygen to carbon dioxide during prep and grand cross. You can avert that moment of mental crisis for me by being participatory.

- Tech or Truth? This is a false dichotomy. You can still be a technical debater, but lose because you are running arguments that are in no way true. You can still be reading true arguments that aren't executed well on the flow and still win. It's a question of implication and narrative. Is an argument not true? Tell me that. Want to overwhelm the flow? Signpost and actually do the work to link responses to arguments.

- Speaks? I'm a fundamental believer that this activity is about education, translatable skills, and public speaking. I'm fine with you doing what you do best and being you. However, I don't do well at tolerating attitude, disrespect, grandiosity, "swag," intimidation, general ridiculousness, games, etc. A thing I would tell my own debaters before walking into the room if I were judging them is: "Go. Do your job. Be nice about it. Win convincingly. " That's all you have to do.

OTHER THINGS

- I'll give comments after every round, and if the tournament allows it, I'll disclose the decision. I don't disclose points.

- My expectation is that you keep your items out prior to the critique, and you take notes. Debaters who pack up, and refuse to use critiques as a learning experience of something they can grow from risk their speaker points. I'm happy to change points after a round based on a students willingness to listen, or unwillingness to take constructive feedback.

- Sure. Let's post round. Couple of things to remember 1) the decision is made, and 2) it won't/can't/shan't change. This activity is dead the moment we allow the 3AR/3NR or the Final Final Focus to occur. Let's talk. Let's understand. Let's educate. But let's not try to have a throwdown after round where we think a result is going to change.

Dougherty Valley '19

The Ohio State University '23

Add me to the email Chain: lee.8871@osu.edu

he/they

If you are comfortable, please email me a speech doc before each speech. It makes judging so much easier especially on zoom :)

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FOR yale,

haven't judged in lowkey a minute, be kind. Haven't judged on the topic either so i'm not too familiar with the literature, cards, etc. If there is a problem, make it clear, if an argument doesn't make sense, tell me why.

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I competed nationally in PF and Extemp in HS, did a bit of Congress and LD as well.

I am tabula Rasa, and I'll vote on anything.
I try really hard to be non-interventional, but with more and more debaters reading scripts instead of cards, etc. I've grown the habit of calling for cards to confirm statements made by debaters.

In general:

I like warranted arguments. In fact, I would buy a strong Warranted and logical argument over an argument backed my evidence any day. Although I'll vote on anything, this is just how I evaluate it. I really enjoy impact calculus and would like to see that starting to be set up in Summary and maybe even in rebuttal. Just be really clear and extend your links cleanly.

I believe that 2nd Rebuttal should frontline, at least that's what I always did. I think it is a better competitive choice for 2nd Speaking team. At least touch the major offensive points of the case.

I am open to any critical argument and theory; however, I HATE frivolous theory. While I Think debate is a game, I do believe that public forum was an event made to be accessible to all as LD and policy became more progressive. That being said, go for it but proceed at your own caution.

Go as fast as you want, I'll tell you if you're going too fast. but for zoom, go slower.

Speaks depends on my mood. I won't ever go lower than a 27 for national rounds unless you give me a reason to tho.

Wear what you want, I just care about what you say (although I will include feedback for future lay rounds)

MY PARADIGM is also very similar to Saad Jamals:)

https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?judge_person_id=70840

Don't be afraid to ask Questions before the round because I know this Paradigm is short, but don't overcomplicate it!

Affiliations and History:
Please email (damiendebate47@gmail.com and tjlewis1919@gmail.com) me all of the speeches before you begin.
I am the Director of Debate at Damien High School in La Verne, CA.
I was the Director of Debate for Hebron High School in Carrollton, TX from 2020-2021.
I was an Assistant Coach at Damien from 2017-2020.
I debated on the national circuit for Damien from 2009-2013.
I graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles with a BA in Critical Theory and Social Justice.
I completed my Master's degree in Social Justice in Higher Education Administration at The University of La Verne.
My academic work involves critical university studies, Georges Bataille, poetics, and post-colonialism.
Author of Suburba(in)e Surrealism (2021).

Yearly Round Numbers:
I try to judge a fair bit each year.
Fiscal Redistribution Round Count: About 40 rounds
I judged 75 rounds or more on the NATO Topic.
I judged over 50 rounds on the Water Topic.
I judged around 40 rounds on the CJR topic.
I judged 30 rounds on the Arms topic (2019-2020)
I judged a bit of LD (32 debates) on the Jan-Feb Topic (nuke disarm) in '19/'20.
I judged around 25 debates on the Immigration topic (2018-2019) on the national circuit.
I judged around 50 rounds on the Education topic (2017-2018) on the national circuit.
LD Protocol:I have a 100% record voting against teams that only read Phil args/Phil v. Policy debates. Adapt or lose.
NDT Protocol: I will rarely have any familiarity with the current college topic and will usually only judge 12-15 rounds pre-NDT.
Please make your T and CP acronyms understandable.

Front Matter Elements:
If you need an accommodation of any kind, please email me before the round starts.
I want everyone to feel safe and able to debate- this is my number one priority as a judge.
I don't run prep time while you email the speech doc. Put the whole speech into one speech doc.
I flow 1AC impact framing, inherency, and solvency straight down on the same page nowadays.
Speed is not an issue for me, but I will ask you to slow down (CLEAR) if you are needlessly sacrificing clarity for quantity--especially if you are reading T or theory arguments.

I will not evaluate evidence identifiable as being produced by software, bots, algorithms etc. Human involvement in the card’s production must be evident unique to the team, individual, and card. This means that evidence you directly take from open source must be re-highlighted at a minimum. You should change the tags and underlining anyways to better fit with your argument’s coherency.

Decision-making:
I privilege technical debating and the flow. I try to get as much down as I possibly can and the little that I miss usually is a result of a lack of clarity on the part of the speaker or because the actual causal chain of the idea does not make consistent sense for me (I usually express this on my face). Your technical skill should make me believe/be able to determine that your argument is the truth. That means warrants. Explain them, impact them, and don't make me fish for them in the un-underlined portion of the six paragraph card that your coach cut for you at a camp you weren't attending. I find myself more and more dissatisfied with debating that operates only on the link claim level. I tend to take a formal, academic approach to the evaluation of ideas, so discussions of source, author intentions and 'true' meaning, and citation are both important to me and something that I hope to see in more debates.

The best debates for me to judge are ones where the last few rebuttals focus on giving me instructions on what the core controversies of the round are, how to evaluate them, and what mode of thinking I should apply to the flow as a history of the round. This means that I'm not going to do things unless you tell me to do them on the flow (judge kick, theory 'traps' etc.). When instructions are not provided or articulated, I will tend to use (what I consider to be) basic, causal logic (i.e. judicial notice) to find connections, contradictions, and gaps/absences. Sometimes this happens on my face--you should be paying attention to the physical impact of the content of your speech act.

I believe in the importance of topicality and theory. No affs are topical until proven otherwise.
Non-impacted theory arguments don't go a long way for me; establish a warranted theory argument that when dropped will make me auto-vote for you. This is not an invitation for arbitrary and non-educational theory arguments being read in front of me, but if you are going to read no neg fiat (for example), then you better understand (and be able to explain to me) the history of the argument and why it is important for the debate and the community.

Reading evidence only happens if you do not make the debate legible and winnable at the level of argument (which is the only reason I would have to defer to evidentiary details).

I find framework to be a boring/unhelpful/poorly debated style of argument on both sides. I want to hear about the ballot-- what is it, what is its role, and what are your warrants for it (especially why your warrants matter!). I want to know what kind of individual you think the judge is (academic, analyst, intellectual etc.). I want to hear about the debate community and the round's relationship within it. These are the most salient questions in a framework debate for me. If you are conducting a performance in the round and/or debate space, you need to have specific, solvable, and demonstrable actions, results, and evidences of success. These are the questions we have to be thinking about in substantial and concrete terms if we are really thinking about them with any authenticity/honesty/care (sorge). I do not think the act of reading FW is necessarily constitutive of a violent act. You can try to convince me of this, but I do start from the position that FW is an argument about what the affirmative should do in the 1AC.

If you are going to go for Fairness, then you need a metric. Not just a caselist, not just a hypothetical ground dispensation, but a functional method to measure the idea of fairness in the round/outside the round i.e. why are the internal components (ground, caselist, etc.) a good representation of a team's burden and what do these components do for individuals/why does that matter. I am not sure what that metric/method is, but my job is not to create it for you. A framework debate that talks about competing theories for how fairness/education should be structured and analyzed will make me very happy i.e. engaging the warrants that constitute ideas of procedural/structural fairness and critical education. Subject formation has really come into vogue as a key element for teams and honestly rare is the debate where people engage the questions meaningfully--keep that in mind if you go for subject formation args in front of me.

In-round Performance and Speaker Points:
An easy way to get better speaker points in front of me is by showing me that you actually understand how the debate is going, the arguments involved, and the path to victory. Every debater has their own style of doing this (humor, time allocation, etc.), but I will not compromise detailed, content-based analysis for the ballot.

I believe that there is a case for in-round violence/damage winning the ballot. Folks need to be considerate of their behavior and language. You should be doing this all of the time anyways.

While I believe that high school students should not be held to a standard of intellectual purity with critical literature, I do expect you to know the body of scholarship that your K revolves around: For example, if you are reading a capitalism K, you should know who Marx, Engels, and Gramsci are; if you are reading a feminism k, you should know what school of feminism (second wave, psychoanalytic, WOC, etc.) your author belongs to. If you try and make things up about the historical aspects/philosophical links of your K, I will reflect my unhappiness in your speaker points and probably not give you much leeway on your link/alt analysis. I will often have a more in-depth discussion with you about the K after the round, so please understand that my post-round comments are designed to be educational and informative, instead of determining your quality/capability as a debater.

I am 100% DONE with teams not showing up on time to disclose. A handful of minutes or so late is different than showing up 3-5 min before the round begins. Punish these folks with disclosure theory and my ears will be open.

CX ends when the timer rings. I will put my fingers in my ears if you do not understand this. I deeply dislike the trend of debaters asking questions about 'did you read X card etc.' in cross-x and I believe this contributes to the decline of flowing skills in debate. While I have not established a metric for how many speaker points an individual will lose each time they say that phrase, know that it is something on my mind. I will not allow questions outside of cross-x outside of core procedural things ('can you give the order again?,' 'everyone ready?' etc.). Asking 'did you read X card' or 'theoretical reasons to reject the team' outside of CX are NOT 'core procedural things.'

Do not read these types of arguments in front of me:
Arguments that directly call an individual's humanity into account
Arguments based in directly insulting your opponents
Arguments that you do not understand

Debated for Winston Churchill High School (TX). Debated at Texas. Camps worked at: VBI, Baylor, UTNIF.

Email: jacoblugo101@gmail.com

Please have the email chain ready as soon as both opponents meet before the round.

A few thoughts:

• I consider my role in the debate is to decide who did the better debating.
• I prefer for there to not be any room in the debate to input my own opinions. Prefer debates to be as clean and explicit as possible to make the most objective decision.
• I'll listen to most any type of argument. Not a fan of vacuous theory arguments or paragraphs of spikes/preempts (most pertinent to LD).
• I tend to/prefer to flow on paper. Take that into consideration. If you see me flowing on my computer, be mindful when you are transitioning between arguments.
• I flow what you say. Not looking at the doc during speeches unless I have absolutely no idea what you are saying (at which point I will stop flowing and stare at you until you notice). I read the docs between speeches/during CX/after the round.
• Please slow down during analytics. For some reason people tend to read through these faster and faster every year.
• I'm very expressive. My face is a good indicator of where the debate is going.
• If I'm absolutely unsure of what is going on/no arguments have been made, I'm most likely going to err neg.
• I'm always listening.
• Speaker points: I like to be entertained. I care about pathos. I enjoy creative and strategic argumentation. I generously doc speaks if I feel that you are being unnecessarily rude.

Elise Matton, Director of Speech & Debate at Albuquerque Academy (2022–present)
EMAIL CHAIN: enmatton@gmail.com

· B.A. History, Tulane University (Ancient & Early Modern Europe)
· M.A. History, University of New Mexico (U.S. & Latin America)

Competitive Experience:
· CX debate in NM local circuit, 2010 State Champion (2005-2010)
· IPDA/NPDA debate in college, 2012 LSU Mardi Gras Classic Champion (2011-2014)

Coaching Experience:
· Team Assistant, Isidore Newman (primarily judging/trip chaperoning — 2012-2016)
· Assistant Coach, Albuquerque Academy (LD & CX emphasis — 2017–2022)

Judging Experience:
· I judge a mix of local circuit and national circuit tournaments (traditional & progressive) primarily in CX and LD, but occasionally PF or other Speech events.

Note Pre-Jack Howe:

· Jack Howe is my 1st national circuit tournament in policy this season — I haven't seen or judged many rounds at all yet this year and definitely not too many fast/technical/progressive rounds on the topic. Do not assume I know Aff topic areas, core neg ground, abstract topic-specific acronyms, etc. Adjust accordingly!

General Notes (this is catered for policy and national circuit LD. PF notes are at the bottom).

· Speed is fine generally so long as it's not used to excessively prohibit interaction with your arguments. I do think there is a way to spread and still demonstrate strong speaking ability (varying volume, pacing, tone etc) and will probably reward you for it if you're doing both well. Go slower/clearer/or otherwise give vocal emphasis on taglines and key issues such as plan text or aff advocacy, CP texts, alts, ROB/ROJ, counter-interps, etc. Don't start at your max speed but build up to it instead. If you are one of the particularly fast teams in the circuit, I recommend you slow down SLIGHTLY in front of me. I haven't been judging many fast rounds lately, so I'm slightly rusty. I'm happy to call out "clear" and/or "slow" to help you find that my upper brightline so you can adjust accordingly as needed.

· Put me on the email chain (enmatton@gmail.com) but know I don't like rounds that REQUIRE me to read the doc while you're speaking (or ideally at all). I tend to have the speech doc up, but I am annoyed by rounds where debaters ASSUME that everyone is reading along with them. I flow off what I hear, not what I read, and I believe that your delivery and performance are important aspects of this activity and you have the burden of clearly articulating your points well enough that I theoretically shouldn't need to look at the docs at all for anything other than ev checking when it's requested. If someone who wasn't looking at your speech doc would not be able to tell the difference between the end of one card/warrant and the beginning of a new tagline, you need better vocal variety and clarity (louder, intonation change, inserting "and" or "next" between cards etc, etc.

· The most impressive debaters to me are ones who can handle intense high-level technical debates, but who can make it accessible to a wide variety of audiences. This means that I look for good use of tech and strategy, but ALSO for the ability to "boil it down" in clearly worded extensions, underviews, overviews, and explanations of your paths to the ballot. I strongly value debaters who can summarize the main thesis of each piece of offense in their own words. It shows you have a strong command of the material and that you are highly involved in your own debate prep.

· I believe that Tech>truth GENERALLY, BUT- Just because an argument is dropped doesn't necessarily mean I'll give you 100% weight on it if the warrants aren't there or it is absurdly blippy. I also have and will vote for teams that may be less technically proficient but still make valid warranted claims even if they aren't done formatted in a "Technical" manner. Ex: if you run some a theory argument against a less technical team who doesn't know how to line-by-line respond to it, but they make general arguments about why this strategy is harmful to debaters and the debate community and argue that you should lose for it, I would treat that like an RVI even if they don't call it an RVI. Etc.

· Use my occasional facial expression as cues. You’ll probably notice me either nodding occasionally or looking quizzically from time to time- if something sounds confusing or I’m not following you’ll be able to tell and can and should probably spend a few more seconds re-explaining that argument in another way (don't dwell on this if it happens — if it's an important enough point that you think you need to win, use the cue to help you and try explaining it again!) Note the nodding doesn't mean I necessarily agree with a point, just following it and think you're explaining it well. If you find this distracting please say so pre-round and I’ll make an effort not to do so.

· Use Content warnings if discussing anything that could make the space less safe for anyone within it and be willing to adapt for opponents or judges in the room.

Role as a Judge

Debate is incredible because it is student-driven, but I don't think that means I abandon my role as an educator or an adult in the space when I am in the back of the room making my decision. I believe that good debaters should be able to adapt to multiple audiences. Does this mean completely altering EVERYTHING you do to adapt to a certain judge (traditional judge, K judge, anti-spreading judge, lay judge, etc etc)? No, but it does mean thinking concretely about how you can filter your strategy/argument/approach through a specific lens for that person.

HOW I MAKE MY RFD: At the end of the last negative speech I usually mark the key areas I could see myself voting and then weigh that against what happens in the 2AR to make my decision. My favorite 2NR/2AR’s are ones that directly lay out and tell me the possible places in the round I could vote for them and how/why. 2NR/2AR’s that are essentially a list of possible RFDs/paths to the ballot for me are my favorite because not only do they make my work easier, but it clearly shows me how well you understood and interpreted the round.

Topicality/Theory

Part of me really loves the meta aspect of T and theory, and part of me loathes the semantics and lack of substance it can produce. I see T and Theory as a needing to exist to help set some limits and boundaries, but I also have a fairly high threshold. Teams can and do continue to convince me of appropriate broadenings of those boundaries. Reasonability tends to ring true to me for the Aff on T, but don’t be afraid to force them to prove or meet that interpretation, especially if it is a stretch, and I can be easily persuaded into competing interps. For theory, I don’t have a problem with conditional arguments but do when a neg strat is almost entirely dependent on running an absurd amount of offcase arguments as a time skew that prevents any substantive discussion of arguments. This kind of strat also assumes I’ll vote on something simply because it was “flowed through”, when really I still have to examine the weight of that argument, which in many cases is insubstantial. At the end of the day, don’t be afraid to use theory- it’s there as a strategy if you think it makes sense for the round context, but if you’re going to run it, please spend time in the standards and voters debate so I can weigh it effectively.

Disadvantages

I love a really good disad, especially with extensive impact comparisons. Specific disads with contextualized links to the aff are some of my all-time favorite arguments, simple as they may seem in construct. The cost/benefit aspect of the case/DA debate is particularly appealing to me. I don’t think generic disads are necessarily bad but good links and/or analytics are key. Be sure your impact scenario is fully developed with terminal impacts. Multiple impact scenarios are good when you can. I'm not anti nuke war scenarios (especially when there is a really specific and good internal link chain and it is contextually related to the topic) but there are tons more systemic level impacts too many debaters neglect.

Counterplans

I used to hate PICs but have seen a few really smart ones in the past few years that are making me challenge that notion. That being said I am not a fan of process CPs, but go for it if it’s key to your strat.

Kritiks

Love them, with some caveats. Overviews/underviews, or really clearly worded taglines are key here. I want to see *your* engagement with the literature. HIGH theory K's with absurdly complicated taglines that use methods of obfuscation are not really my jam. The literature might be complex, and that's fine, but your explanations and taglines to USE those arguments should be vastly more clear and communicable if you want to run it in round! I have a high threshold for teams being able to explain their positions well rather than just card-dump. I ran some kritiks in high school (mostly very traditional cap/biopower) but had a pretty low understanding of the best way to use them and how they engaged with other layers of offense in the round. They weren’t as common in my circuit so I didn’t have a ton of exposure to them. However, they’ve really grown on me and I’ve learned a lot while judging them- they’re probably some of my favorite kind of debate to watch these days. (hint: I truly believe in education as a voter, in part because of my own biases of how much this activity has taught me both in and out of round, but this can work in aff’s favor when terrible K debates happen that take away from topic education as well). Being willing to adapt your K to those unfamiliar with it, whether opponents or judge, not only helps you in terms of potential to win the ballot, but, depending on the kind of kritik you're running or pre-fiat claims, also vastly increases likelihood for real world solvency (that is if your K is one that posits real world solvency- I'm down for more discussion-based rounds as theoretical educational exercises as well). I say this because the direction in which I decided to take my graduate school coursework was directly because of good K debaters who have been willing to go the extra step in truly explaining these positions, regardless of the fact I wasn’t perceived as a “K judge”. I think that concept is bogus and demonstrates some of the elitism still sadly present in our activity. If you love the K, run it- however you will need to remember that I myself wasn’t a K debater and am probably not as well versed in the topic/background/author. As neg you will need to spend specific time really explaining to me the alt/role of the ballot/answers to any commodification type arguments. Despite my openness to critical argumentation, I’m also open to lots of general aff answers here as well including framework arguments focused on policymaking good, state inevitable, perms, etc. Like all arguments, it ultimately boils down to how you warrant and substantiate your claims.

MISCELLANEOUS
Flash time/emailing the doc out isn’t prep time (don’t take advantage of this though). Debaters should keep track of their own time, but I also tend to time as well in case of the rare timer failure. If we are evidence sharing, know that I still think you have the burden as debaters to clearly explain your arguments, (aka don’t assume that I'll constantly use the doc or default to it- what counts is still ultimately what comes out of you mouth).

I will yell “clear” if the spread is too incoherent for me to flow, or if I need you to slow down slightly but not if otherwise. If I have to say it more than twice you should probably slow down significantly. My preference while spreading is to go significantly slower/louder/clearer on the tagline and author. Don’t spread out teams that are clearly much slower than you- you don’t have to feel like you have to completely alter your presentation and style, but you should adapt somewhat to make the round educational for everyone. I think spreading is a debate skill you should employ at your discretion, bearing in mind what that means for your opponents and the judge in that round. Be smart about it, but also be inclusive for whoever else is in that round with you.

**PUBLIC FORUM**

I don't judge PF nearly as frequently as I do CX/LD, so I'm not as up to date on norms and trends.

Mostly when judging PF I default to util/cost-benefit analysis framing and then I evaluate clash and impacts, though the burden is on you to effectively weigh that clash and the impacts.

Final Focus should really focus on the ballot story and impact calc. Explain all the possible paths to the ballot and how you access them.

Compared to LD and CX, I find that clash gets developed much later in the round because the 2nd constructive doesn't (typically?) involve any refutations (which I find bizarre from a speech structure standpoint). For this reason, I appreciate utilizing frontlining as much as possible and extending defense into summary.

Impressive speaking style = extra brownie points for PFers given the nature of the event. Ultimately I'm still going to make a decision based on the flow, but this matters more to me when evaluating PF debaters. Utilize vocal intonation, eye contact, gestures, and variance in vocal pacing.

Grand Crossfire can be fun when done right but horribly chaotic when done wrong. Make an effort to not have both partners trying to answer/ask questions simultaneously or I'll have a really hard time making out what's going on. Tag-team it. If Grand Crossfire ends early, I will not convert the time remaining into additional prep. It simply moves us into Final Focus early.

I have a much lower threshold for spreading in PF than I do for CX/LD. I can certainly follow it given my focus on LD and CX, but my philosophy is that PF is stylistically meant to be more accessible and open. I don't mind a rapid delivery, but I will be much less tolerant of teams that spread out opponents, especially given email chains/evidence sharing before the round is not as much of a norm (as far as I've seen).

I am often confused by progressive PF as the structure of the event seems to limit certain things that are otherwise facilitated by CX/LD. Trying to make some of the same nuanced Theory and K debates are incredibly difficult in a debate event structured by 2-3 mins speeches. Please don't ask me to weigh in on or use my ballot to help set a precedent about things like theory, disclosure, or other CX/LD arguments that seem to be spilling into PF. I am not an involved enough member of the PF community to feel comfortable using my ballot to such ends. If any of these things appear in round, I'm happy to evaluate them, but I guess be cautious in this area.

Please feel free to ask any further questions or clarifications before/after the round!- my email is enmatton@gmail.com if you have any specific questions or need to run something by me. Competitors: if communicating with me by email, please CC your coach or adult chaperone. Thank you!

Email chains are good. Include me ericmelin76@gmail.com

Debate Coach @ Coppell (9th Grade Center and Coppell High School)

Greenhill 2022

Top Level

I will work hard to be the best judge possible for your debate. I will flow your speeches and cross-ex and base my decisions as much as possible on your words. I love debate and know how much work you put into it and the least I can do is be the best judge I can be for you. Tech over truth. I’m doubling down here this year because so few judges do this in practice. I would rather vote for high quality execution of untruthful argument that is won than interject myself into the debate.

Some thoughts you may care about when doing your pref sheet in no particular order:

1. I don't have any massive preferences in terms of argument content. Please forward a well-developed ballot story. Compare methods and offense. I don't care what you do as long as you do what you do best. Tell me what you want me to vote on. Judge instructions are good. I prefer lbl to long overviews.

2. Evidence quality matters a great deal to me. I enjoy debates where cross-ex is spent digging in on your opponents claims and referencing their ev. Re-highlighted evidence should be read.

3. T - I rarely see 2nr’s that go for T unless a massive mistake has been made by the aff.

4. KAff/TFW - Appeals to Fairness and clash are both persuasive. I find it extremely difficult to overcome the notion that an unlimited prep burden for the neg is undesirable. To me that means the aff should probably be related to the topic in some way. That said, I often vote aff in these debates. The neg either isn't prepared to deal with case cross-applications and impact analysis of the team they are debating, don't do sufficient work establishing the impact to limits , and sufficiently leverage TVA's and Switch Side arguments to mitigate aff offense. Aff teams often lose when they are too defensive, insufficiently develop their counter model of debate, or make mistakes on the technical portions of this debate.

5. K - Like most judges, case-specific links pulled from ev, tags/rhetoric, established in cx, etc. are what I'm looking for. I find that too much of the debate often devolves into reading framing blocks which means argunents aren't ansered in a satisfactory way by both teams. This means that framing is rarely decisive. Moreover, I am not usually persuaded by arguments that say that aff offense just poof goes away unless the neg is substantially ahead on framing. The sooner you realize that framework may not be decisive, begin to engage what often become comparisons of apples and oranges (in round scholarship vs the results of hypothetical policy scenarios), and give me a way to wade through that muck, the better. Please do us a favor and stay organized - clearly label different portions of the debate on the k. Signpost! Please stick to the line-by-line. Short overviews are ok but long are not.

6. CP - Case-specific is best here again. There's almost nothing better than specific cp with high quality evidence. 2ac permutation explanations are your friend. Later in the debate, I tend to think your explanations are just flat out new and not spin. Just invest a bit more time to unpack your initial permutations and I will hold them to answering the nuance.

7. DA - Not a lot to say here. Good evidence matters. Creative spin is welcome. Zero risk is possible and extremely small risk of an extinction scenario can matter a great deal or not much at all depending on the evidence and analysis accompanying these arguments.

8. Theory - Defaults: Condo -> drop team. Everything else = drop argument.

Jenn (Jennifer) Miller-Melin, Jenn Miller, Jennifer Miller, Jennifer Melin, or some variation thereof. :)

Email for email chains:

melindocs@gmail.com

If you walk into a round and ask me some vague question like, "Do you have any paradigms?", I will be annoyed. If you have a question about something contained in this document that is unclear to you, please do not hesitate to ask that question.

-Formerly assistant coach for Lincoln-Douglas debate at Hockaday, Marcus, Colleyville, and Grapevine. Currently assisting at Grapevine High School and Colleyville Heritage High School.


I was a four year debater who split time between Grapevine and Colleyville Heritage High Schools. During my career, I was active on the national circuit and qualified for both TOC and NFL Nationals. Since graduating in 2004, I have taught at the Capitol Debate Institute, UNT Mean Green Debate Workshops, TDC, and the University of Texas Debate Institute, the National Symposium for Debate, and Victory Briefs Institute. I have served as Curriculum Director at both UTNIF and VBI.

In terms of debate, I need some sort standard to evaluate the round. I have no preference as to what kind of standard you use (traditional value/criterion, an independent standard, burdens, etc.). The most important thing is that your standard explains why it is the mechanism I use to decide if the resolution is true or false. As a side note on the traditional structure, I don't think that the value is of any great importance and will continue to think this unless you have some well warranted reason as to why I should be particularly concerned with it. My reason is that the value doesn't do the above stated, and thus, generally is of no aid to my decision making process.

That said, debates often happen on multiple levels. It is not uncommon for debaters to introduce a standard and a burden or set of burdens. This is fine with me as long as there is a decision calculus; by which I mean, you should tell me to resolve this issue first (maybe the burden) and that issue next (maybe the standard). Every level of analysis should include a reason as to why I look to it in the order that you ask me to and why this is or is not a sufficient place for me to sign my ballot. Be very specific. There is nothing about calling something a "burden" that suddenly makes it more important than the framework your opponent is proposing. This is especially true in rounds where it is never explained why this is the burden that the resolution or a certain case position prescribes.

Another issue relevant to the standard is the idea of theory and/or off-case/ "pre-standard" arguments. All of the above are fine but the same things still apply. Tell me why these arguments ought to come first in my decision calculus. The theory debate is a place where this is usually done very poorly. Things like "education" or "fairness" are standards and I expect debaters to spend effort developing the framework that transforms into such.

l try to listen to any argument, but making the space unsafe for other bodies is unacceptable. I reserve the right to dock speaks or, if the situation warrants it, refuse to vote on arguments that commit violence against other bodies in the space.

I hold all arguments to the same standard of development regardless of if they are "traditional" or "progressive". An argument has a structure (claim, warrant, and impact) and that should not be forgotten when debaterI ws choose to run something "critical". Warrants should always be well explained. Certain cards, especially philosophical cards, need a context or further information to make sense. You should be very specific in trying to facilitate my understanding. This is true for things you think I have read/should have read (ie. "traditional" LD philosophy like Locke, Nozick, and Rawls) as well as things that I may/may not have read (ie. things like Nietzsche, Foucault, and Zizek). A lot of the arguments that are currently en vogue use extremely specialized rhetoric. Debaters who run these authors should give context to the card which helps to explain what the rhetoric means.

One final note, I can flow speed and have absolutely no problem with it. You should do your best to slow down on author names and tags. Also, making a delineation between when a card is finished and your own analysis begins is appreciated. I will not yell "clear" so you should make sure you know how to speak clearly and quickly before attempting it in round.

I will always disclose unless instructed not to do so by a tournament official. I encourage debaters to ask questions about the round to further their understanding and education. I will not be happy if I feel the debater is being hostile towards me and any debater who does such should expect their speaker points to reflect their behavior.

I am a truth tester at heart but am very open to evaluating the resolution under a different paradigm if it is justified and well explained. That said, I do not understand the offense/defense paradigm and am increasingly annoyed with a standard of "net benefits", "consequentialism", etc. Did we take a step back about 20 years?!? These seem to beg the question of what a standard is supposed to do (clarify what counts as a benefit). About the only part of this paradigm that makes sense to me is weighing based on "risk of offense". It is true that arguments with some risk of offense ought to be preferred over arguments where there is no risk but, lets face it, this is about the worst type of weighing you could be doing. How is that compelling? "I might be winning something". This seems to only be useful in a round that is already giving everyone involved a headache. So, while the offense/defense has effectively opened us up to a different kind of weighing, it should be used with caution given its inherently defensive nature.

Theory seems to be here to stay. I seem to have a reputation as not liking theory, but that is really the sound bite version of my view. I think that theory has a place in debate when it is used to combat abuse. I am annoyed when theory is used as a tactic because a debater feels she is better at theory than her opponent. I really like to talk about the topic more than I like to wax ecstatic about what debate would look like in the world of flowers, rainbows, and neat flows. That said, I will vote on theory even when I am annoyed by it. I tend to look at theory more as an issue of reasonabilty than competing interpretations. As with the paradigm discussion above, I am willing to listen to and adjust my view in round if competing interpretations is justified as how I should look at theory. Over the last few years I have become a lot more willing to pull the trigger on theory than I used to be. That said, with the emergence of theory as a tactic utilized almost every round I have also become more sympathetic to the RVI (especially on the aff). I think the Aff is unlikely to be able to beat back a theory violation, a disad, and a CP and then extend from the AC in 4 minutes. This seems to be even more true in a world where the aff must read a counter-interp and debate on the original interp. All of this makes me MUCH more likely to buy an RVI than I used to be. Also, I will vote on theory violations that justify practices that I generally disagree with if you do not explain why those practices are not good things. It has happened a lot in the last couple of years that a debater has berated me after losing because X theory shell would justify Y practice, and don't I think Y practice would be really bad for debate? I probably do, but if that isn't in the round I don't know how I would be expected to evaluate it.

Finally, I can't stress how much I appreciate a well developed standards debate. Its fine if you choose to disregard that piece of advice, but I hope that you are making up for the loss of a strategic opportunity on the standards debate with some really good decisions elsewhere. You can win without this, but you don't look very impressive if I can't identify the strategy behind not developing and debating the standard.

I cannot stress enough how tired I am of people running away from debates. This is probably the biggest tip I can give you for getting better speaker points in front of me, please engage each other. There is a disturbing trend (especially on Sept/Oct 2015) to forget about the 1AC after it is read. This makes me feel like I wasted 6 minutes of my life, and I happen to value my time. If your strategy is to continuously up-layer the debate in an attempt to avoid engaging your opponent, I am probably not going to enjoy the round. This is not to say that I don't appreciate layering. I just don't appreciate strategies, especially negative ones, that seek to render the 1AC irrelevant to the discussion and/or that do not ever actually respond to the AC.

Debate has major representation issues (gender, race, etc.). I have spent years committed to these issues so you should be aware that I am perhaps hypersensitive to them. We should all be mindful of how we can increase inclusion in the debate space. If you do things that are specifically exclusive to certain voices, that is a voting issue.

Being nice matters. I enjoy humor, but I don't enjoy meanness. At a certain point, the attitude with which you engage in debate is a reason why I should choose to promote you to the next outround, etc.

You should not spread analytics and/or in depth analysis of argument interaction/implications at your top speed. These are probably things that you want me to catch word for word. Help me do that.

Theory is an issue of reasonability. Let's face it, we are in a disgusting place with the theory debate as a community. We have forgotten its proper place as a check on abuse. "Reasonability invites a race to the bottom?" Please, we are already there. I have long felt that theory was an issue of reasonability, but I have said that I would listen to you make arguments for competing interps. I am no longer listening. I am pretty sure that the paradigm of competing interps is largely to blame with for the abysmal state of the theory debate, and the only thing that I have power to do is to take back my power as a judge and stop voting on interps that have only a marginal net advantage. The notion that reasonability invites judge intervention is one of the great debate lies. You've trusted me to make decisions elsewhere, I don't know why I can't be trusted to decide how bad abuse is. Listen, if there is only a marginal impact coming off the DA I am probably going to weigh that against the impact coming off the aff. If there is only a marginal advantage to your interp, I am probably going to weigh that against other things that have happened in the round.

Grammar probably matters to interpretations of topicality. If one reading of the sentence makes sense grammatically, and the other doesn't that is a constraint on "debatability". To say the opposite is to misunderstand language in some pretty fundamental ways.

Truth testing is still true, but it's chill that most of you don't understand what that means anymore. It doesn't mean that I am insane, and won't listen to the kind of debate you were expecting to have. Sorry, that interp is just wrong.

Framework is still totally a thing. Impact justifying it is still silly. That doesn't change just because you call something a "Role of the Ballot" instead of a criterion.

Util allows you to be lazy on the framework level, but it requires that you are very good at weighing. If you are lazy on both levels, you will not make me happy.

Flashing is out of control. You need to decide prior to the round what the expectations for flashing/emailing are. What will/won't be done during prep time, what is expected to be flashed, etc. The amount of time it takes to flash is extending rounds by an unacceptable amount. If you aren't efficient at flashing, that is fine. Paper is still totally a thing. Email also works.

Updates for TOC 2023

(1) If the negative is making a claim about the future based on structural analysis about the world I need to know why the negative's theory about the world makes this claim about the future true. "the plan won't solve and nothing will get better because e.g. capitalism exists and capitalism is bad" is not a complete argument. I will vote aff unless the negative explains why it is the case that the existence of e.g. capitalism means the aff's understanding of the world, the future, etc is wrong/cannot be true.

(2) I like it when the 2nr/2ar cleanly outlines what's going on in the round and tells me what to do with all of the pieces: "If I win X, it means Y"/"They need to win X in order to win Y", that kind of thing. This is especially important to me in debates that aren't about whether or not the 1AC plan would bring about a world that is better than the status quo. I am very impressed by debaters who have the ability to distill a complicated round into its most fundamental questions.

(3) My flow template has space for the 1AC + 5 off case positions.

******

Please put me on the email chain: myersanna2019@gmail.com

I graduated from Greenhill in 2019. I have coached a bit and judged here and there and worked at camps since then.

I have talked a lot about debate with Rodrigo Paramo, Bennett Eckert, Aaron Timmons, Eli Smith, Chris Randall...so if you have technical questions maybe their paradigms will help give you a picture about how I tend to think about things. I have thought the most about "policy style" debate (plans, counterplans, disads, kritiks, topicality) and this is the style of debate I am most comfortable judging.

Mostly I am at a point now where I want you to show me that you have some strategic grasp on what's going on in the round. This means I'd like you to both thoroughly explain your arguments and thoroughly explain what winning these arguments means in the context of the round, i.e. why winning X,Y,Z, means you win the debate even if your opponent is ahead on A,B,C.

I think it's important that your cards say what you tell me they say. And when you implicate a card to address a particular argumentative context, I think it's very important that you remain within the bounds of what constitutes a reasonable interpretation of its text.

I find I tend to vote affirmative when the negative "splits" the 2nr (e.g., when the negative extends both topicality and a kritik as separate reasons to negate). I'd prefer it if you thoroughly developed your strongest ballot story and kicked out of everything else.

I don't think you should read arguments that you think are bad because you want to waste your opponents time. You are only wasting your own time!

"severance/intrinsic perms bad" is DTA

If you are debating someone and it's more or less an even match and all of a sudden there's a genuine TKO -- make it short and sweet and sit down! I don't need to hear you talk for 3 minutes about how they conceded condo etc etc

i debated in LD and policy in high school, graduating in '13. this is my 6th year coaching @ greenhill, and my second year as a full time debate teacher.

[current/past affiliations:

• i coached independent debaters from: woodlands ('14-'15), dulles ('15-'16), edgemont ('16-'18);
• team coach for: westwood ('14-'18), greenhill ('18-'22);
• program director for dallas urban debate alliance ('21-'22);
• full time teacher - greenhill, ('22-now);
• director of LD @ VBI ('23-now) - as a result of this, I am conflicted from any current competitor who will teach at VBI this summer. you can find the list of those individuals on the vbi website]

i would like there to be an email chain and I would like to be on it: greenhilldocs.ld@gmail.com -would love for the chain name to be specific and descriptive - perhaps something like "Tournament Name, Round # - __ vs __"

I have coached debaters whose interests ranged from util + policy args & dense critical literature (anthropocentrism, afropessimism, settler colonialism, psychoanalysis, irigaray, borderlands, the cap + security ks), to trickier args (i-law, polls, monism) & theory heavy strategies.

That said, I am most comfortable evaluating critical and policy debates, and in particular enjoy 6 minutes of topicality 2nrs if delivered at a speed i can flow. I will make it clear if you are going too fast - i am very expressive so if i am lost you should be able to tell.

I am a bad judge for highly evasive tricks debates, and am not a great judge for denser "phil" debates - i do not think about analytic philosophy / tricks outside of debate tournaments, so I need these debates to happen at a much slower pace for me to process and understand all the moving parts. This is true for all styles of debates - the rounds i remember most fondly are one where a cap k or t-fwk were delivered conversationally and i got almost every word down and was able to really think through the arguments.

i think the word "unsafe" means something and I am uncomfortable when it is deployed cavalierly - it is a meaningful accusation to suggest that an opponent has made a space unsafe (vs uncomfortable), and i think students/coaches/judges should be mindful of that distinction. this applies to things like “evidence ethics,” “independent voters,” "psychological violence," etc., though in different ways for each. If you believe that the debate has become unsafe, we should likely pause the round and reach out to tournament officials, as the ballot is an insufficient mechanism with which to resolve issues of safety. similarly, it will take a lot for me to feel comfortable concluding that a round has been psychologically violent and thus decide the round on that conclusion, or to sign a ballot that accuses a student of cheating without robust, clear evidence to support that. i have judged a lot of debates, and it is very difficult for me to think of many that have been *unsafe* in any meaningful way.

A note on the topic - after judging at hwl, i have realized that many of the policy debates I am seeing are too big, have too many moving parts, and are not being clearly synthesized by either the affirmative or the negative debaters. this leaves me liable to confusion in terms of what exactly the world of the aff / neg does, and increases how much i appreciate a comparative speech that explains the stakes of winning each argument clearly, and in relation to the other moving parts of the debate.

8 things to know:

• Evidence Ethics: In previous years, I have seen a lot of miscut evidence. I think that evidence ethics matters regardless of whether an argument/ethics challenge is raised in the debate. If I notice that a piece of evidence is miscut, I will vote against the debater who reads the miscut evidence. My longer thoughts on that are available on the archived version of this paradigm, including what kinds of violations will trigger this, etc. If you are uncertain if your evidence is miscut, perhaps spend some time perusing those standards, or better yet, resolve the miscutting. Similarly, I will vote against debaters clipping if i notice it. If you would like me to vote on evidence ethics, i would prefer that you lay out the challenge, and then stake the round on it. i do not think accusations of evidence ethics should be risk-less for any team, and if you point out a mis-cutting but are not willing to stake the round on it, I am hesitant to entertain that argument in my decision-making process. if an ev ethics challenge occurs, it is drop the debater. do not make them lightly.

• i mark cards at the timer and stop flowing at the timer.

• Complete arguments require a claim warrant and impact when they are made. I will be very comfortable rejecting 1nc/1ar arguments without warrants when they were originally made. I find this is particularly true when the 1ar/1nc version are analytic versions of popular cards that you presume I should be familiar with and fill in for you.
• I do not believe you can "insert" re-highlightings that you do not read verbally.

• please do not split your 2nrs! if any of your 1nc positions are too short to sustain a 6 minute 2nr on it, the 1nc arg is underdeveloped.

• Evidence quality is directly correlated to the amount of credibility I will grant an argument - if a card is underhighlighted, the claim is likely underwarranted. I think you should highlight your evidence to make claims the author has made, and that those claims should make sense if read at conversational speed outside of the context of a high school debate round.

• i do not enjoy being in the back of disclosure debates where the violation is difficult to verify or where a team has taken actions to help a team engage, even if that action does not take the form of open sourcing docs, nor do i enjoy watching disclosure theory be weaponized against less experienced debaters - i will likely not vote on it. if a team refuses to tell you what the aff will be, or is familiar with circuit norms but has nothing on their wiki, I will be more receptive to disclosure, but again, verifiability is key.

• topicality arguments will make interpretive claims about the meaning or proper interpretation of words or phrases in the resolution. interpretations that are not grounded in the text of the resolution are theoretical objections - the same is true for counter-interpretations.i will use this threshold for all topicality/theory arguments.

Finally, I am not particularly good for the following buckets of debates:

• Warming good & other impact turn heavy strategies that play out as a dump on the case page

• IR heavy debates - i encourage you to slow down and be very clear in the claims you want me to evaluate in these debates.

• Bad theory arguments / theory debates w/ very marginal offense (it is unlikely i will vote for theory debates where i can not identify meaningful offense / where the abuse story is very difficult for me to comprehend)

• Identity ks that appropriate the form and language of antiblackness literature

• affs/nc's that have entirely analytic frameworks (even if it is util!) - i think this is often right on the line of plagiarism, and my brain simply cannot process / flow it at high speeds. my discomfort with these positions is growing by the round.

Feel free to email me with any questions about my paradigm

Only send speech docs to Powell.demarcus@gmail.com

ASK FOR POLICY PARADIGM - The paradigm below is designed mostly for LD. Some things change for me when evaluating the different events/styles of debate. Also when you ask please have specific questions. Saying "What's your paradigm?", will most likely result in me laughing at you and/or saying ask me a question.

About Me: I graduated from Crowley High School in 2013, where I debated LD for three years mostly on the TFA/TOC circuit. I ran everything from super stock traditional cases to plans/counterplans to skepticism, so you probably can't go wrong with whatever you want to run.I debated at The University of Texas at Dallas, in college policy debate for 3 years. I taught and coached at Greenhill School from 2018 to 2022. Running any sort of Morally repugnant argument can hurt you, if you're not sure if your argument will qualify ask me before we begin and I'll let you know.

Speed: I can flow moderately fast speeds (7-8 on a scale of 10), but obviously I'll catch more and understand more if you're clear while spreading. I'll say "clear"/"slow" twice before I stop attempting to flow. If I stop typing and look up, or I'm looking confused, please slow down!! Also just because I can flow speed does not mean I like hearing plan texts and interpretations at full speed, these things should be at conversational speed.

Cross Examination: While in front of me cx is binding anything you say pertaining to intricacies in your case do matter. I don't care about flex prep but I will say that the same rules of regular cx do apply and if you do so your opponent will have the chance to do so. Also be civil to one another, I don't want to hear about your high school drama during cx if this happens you will lose speaker points.

Prep Time: I would prefer that we don't waste prep time or steal it. If you're using technology (i.e. a laptop, tablet, or anything else) I will expect you to use it almost perfectly. These things are not indicative of my decision on the round rather they are pet peeves of mine that I hate to see happen in the round. I hate to see rounds delayed because debaters don't know how to use the tools they have correctly.UPDATE. You need to flow. The excessive asking for new speech docs to be sent has gotten out of hand. If there are only minor changes or one or two marked cards those are things you should catch while flowing. I can understand if there are major changes (3 or more cards being marked or removed) or new cards being read but outside of this you will get no sympathy from me. If you are smart and actually read this just start exempting things. I don't look at the speech doc I flow. If you opponent doesn't catch it so be it. If this happens in rounds I am judging it will impact your speaker points. If you would like a new doc and the changes are not excessive per my definition you are free to use your own prep time, this will not effect your speaker points.

Theory: I don't mind theory debates - I think theory can be used as part of a strategy rather than just as a mechanism for checking abuse. However, this leniency comes with a caveat; I have a very low threshold for RVI's (i.e. they're easier to justify) and I-meet arguments, so starting theory and then throwing it away will be harder provided your opponent makes the RVI/I-meet arguments (if they don't, no problem). While reading your shell, please slow down for the interpretation and use numbering/lettering to distinguish between parts of the shell!

Also theory debates tend to get very messy very quickly, so I prefer that each interpretation be on a different flow. This is how I will flow them unless told to the otherwise. I am not in the business of doing work for the debaters so if you want to cross apply something say it. I wont just assume that because you answered in one place that the answer will cross applied in all necessary places, THAT IS YOUR JOB.

• Meta-Theory: I think meta-thoery can be very effective in checking back abuses caused by the theory debate. With that being said though the role of the ballot should be very clear and well explained, what that means is just that I will try my hardest not to interject my thoughts into the round so long as you tell me exactly how your arguments function. Although I try not to intervene I will still use my brain in round and think about arguments especially ones like Meta-Theory. I believe there are different styles of theory debates that I may not be aware of or have previously used in the past, this does not mean I will reject them I would just like you to explain to me how these arguments function.

Speaks: I start at a 27 and go up (usually) or down depending on your strategy, clarity, selection of issues, signposting, etc. I very rarely will give a 30 in a round, however receiving a 30 from me is possible but only if 1) your reading, signposting, and roadmaps are perfect 2) if the arguments coming out of your case are fully developed and explained clearly 3) if your rebuttals are perfectly organized and use all of your time wisely 4) you do not run arguments that I believe take away from any of these 3 factors. I normally don't have a problem with "morally questionable" arguments because I think there's a difference between the advocacies debaters have or justify in-round and the ones they actually support. However, this will change if one debater wins that such positions should be rejected (micropol, etc). Lastly, I do not care if you sit or stand while you speak, if your speech is affected by your choice I will not be lenient if you struggle to stand and debate at the same time. UPDATE. If you spend a large chunk of time in your 1AC reading and under-view or spikes just know I do not like this and your speaks may be impacted. This is not a model of debate I want to endorse.

General Preferences: I need a framework for evaluating the round but it doesn't have to be a traditional value-criterion setup. You're not required to read an opposing framework (as the neg) as long as your offense links somewhere. I have no problem with severing out of cases (I think it should be done in the 1AR though). NIBs/pre standards are both fine, but both should be clearly labeled or I might not catch it. If you're going to run a laundry list of spikes please number them. My tolerance of just about any argument (e.g. extinction, NIBS, AFC) can be changed through theory.

Kritiks and Micropol: Although I do not run these arguments very often, I do know what good K debate looks like. That being said I often see Kritiks butchered in LD so run them with caution. Both should have an explicit role of the ballot argument (or link to the resolution). For K's that are using postmodern authors or confusing cards, go more slowly than you normally would if you want me to understand it and vote on it.

Extensions and Signposting: Extensions should be clear, and should include the warrant of the card (you don't have to reread that part of the card, just refresh it). I not a fan of "shadow extending," or extending arguments by just talking about them in round - please say "extend"!! Signposting is vital - I'll probably just stare at you with a weird look if I'm lost.

Some of the information above may relate to paper flowing, I've now gone paperless, but many of the same things still apply. If I stop typing for long stretches then I am probably a bit lost as to where you are on the flow.

yes, add me to the email chain: claudiaribera24@gmail.com

I've worked/taught at camps such as utnif, stanford, gds, and nsd.

overall thoughts: I believe it's important to be consistent on explicit labeling, generating offense, and extending some sort of impact framing in the debate because this is what ultimately frames my ballot. Debate is a place for you to do you. I will make my decisions based on what was presented to me in a debate and what was on my flow. This means I am unlikely to decide on debates based on my personal feelings about the content/style of an argument than the quality of execution and in-round performance. It is up to the debaters to present and endorse whichever model of debate they want to invest in. Have fun and best of luck!

Case

-- Case is incredibly underutilized and should be an essential part of every negative strategy. You need to have some sort of mechanism that generates offense/defense for you.

Policy affs vs. K

-- I am most familiar with these types of debates. With that being said, I think the affirmative needs to prioritize framing i.e. the consequences of the plan under a util framework. There need to be contestations between the aff framing versus the K's power of theory in order to disprove it, as not desirable, or incoherent, and why your impacts under the plan come first. Point out the flaws of the kritiks alternative and make solvency deficits. Aff teams need to answer the link arguments, read link defense, make perms, and provide reasons/examples of why the plan is preferable/resolve material conditions. Use cross-x to clarify jargon and get the other team to make concessions about their criticism.

CP

-- CP(s) need to have a clear plan text and have an external net benefit, otherwise, I'm inclined to believe there is no reason why the cp would be better than the affirmative. There needs to be clear textual/function competition with the Aff or else the permutation becomes an easy way for me to vote. Same with most arguments, the more specific the better.

-- The 2NR should generally be the counterplan with a DA/Case argument to supplement the net benefit. The 1AR + 2AR needs to have some offense against the counterplan because a purely defensive strategy makes it very hard to beat the counterplan. I enjoy an advantage counterplan/impact turn strategy when it’s applicable. Generally, I think conditionality is good but I can be persuaded otherwise.

DA

-- Please have good evidence and read specific DAs. If you have a good internal link and turn case analysis, your speaker points will be higher. For the aff, I think evidence comparison/callouts coupled with tricky strategies like impact turns or internal link turns to help you win these debates.

Theory

-- I don't really have a threshold on these arguments but lean towards competing interps over reasonability unless told otherwise.

-- When going for theory, please extend offense and weigh between interps/standards/implications.

-- When responding/going for theory, please slow down on the interps/i-meets.

Topicality

-- Comparative analysis between pieces of interpretation evidence wins and loses these debates – as you can probably tell, I err towards competing interpretations in these debates, but I can be convinced that reasonability is a better metric for interpretations, not for an aff. Having well-explained internal links to your limits/ground offense in the 2NR/2AR makes these debates much easier to decide, as opposed to floating claims without warranted analysis. A case list is required. I will not vote for an RVI on T.

T-FW

-- I prefer framework debates a lot more when they're developed in the 1NC/block, as opposed to being super blippy in the constructives and then the entire 2NR. I lean more toward competing interps than reasonability. Aff teams need to answer TVA well, not just say it "won't solve". Framework is about the model of debate the aff justifies, it’s not an argument why K affs are bad or the aff teams are cheaters. If you’re going for framework as a way to exclude entire critical lit bases/structural inequalities/content areas from debate then we are not going to get along. I am persuaded by standards like Clash and topic education over fairness being an intrinsic good/better impact.

K affs vs. T-Framework

-- There are a couple of things you need to do to win: you need to explain the method of your aff, the nuanced framing of the aff, and the impacts that you claim to solve. You should have some sort of an advocacy statement or a role of the ballot for me to evaluate your impacts because this indicates how it links into your framework of the aff. If you’re going to read high theory affs, explain because all I hear are buzzwords that these authors use. Don’t assume I am an expert in this type of literature because I am not and I just have a basic understanding of it. If you don’t do any of these things, I have the right to vote to neg on presumption.

-- You need a counter-interp or counter-model of debate and what debate looks like under this model and then go for your impact turns or disads as net benefits to this. Going for only the net benefits/offense without explaining what your interpretation of what debate should look like will be difficult. The 2AC strategy of saying as many ‘disads’ to framework as possible without explaining or warranting any of them out is likely not going to be successful. Leveraging your aff as an impact turn to framework is always good. The more effectively voting aff can resolve the impact turn the easier it will be to get my ballot.

Kritiks

-- I went for the Kritik in almost every 2NR my senior year. I have been exposed to many different types of scholarship, but I am more familiar with some critical race theory criticisms. This form of debate is what I am most comfortable evaluating. However, it is important to note I have a reasonable threshold for each debater's explanation of whatever theory they present within the round, extensions of links, and impact framing. I need to understand what you are saying in order for me to vote for your criticism.

-- You should have specific links to affirmatives because without them you will probably lose to "these are links to the squo" unless the other team doesn't answer it well. Link debate is a place where you can make strategic turns case/impact analysis. Make sure you have good impact comparison and weighing mechanisms and always have an external impact.

-- The alt debate seems to be one of the most overlooked parts of the K and is usually never explained well enough. This means always explaining the alt thoroughly and how it interacts with the aff. This is an important time that the 2NR needs to dedicate time allocation if you go for the alternative. If you choose not to go for the alternative and go for presumption, make sure you are actually winning an impact-framing claim.

K vs. K

-- These debates are always intriguing.

-- Presumption is underutilized by the neg and permutations are allowed in a methods debate. However, it is up to the teams in front of me to do this. There needs to be an explanation of how your theory of power operates, why it can preclude your opponent’s, how your method or approach is preferable, and how you resolve x issues. Your rebuttals should include impact comparison, framing, link defense/offense, permutation(s), and solvency deficits.

Tricks/frivolous theory/skep

-- I am not the best at evaluating these types of arguments. It is important to extend the claim, warrant, and impact of your argument and WEIGH. Please slow down on analytics that are important, especially in theory debates.

I'm the current assistant coach at Coppell High School where I also have the lovely opportunity to teach Speech & Debate to great students. I did LD, Policy, and Worlds in High School (Newark Science '15) and a bit of Policy while I was in college (Stanford '19). I'm by no means "old" but I've been around long enough to appreciate different types of debate arguments at this point. As long as you're having fun, I can feel it and will probably have fun listening to you, too!

WSD

This is now my main event nowadays. Given my LD/Policy background, I do rely very heavily on my flow. That doesn't mean you have to be very techy--you should and can group arguments and do weighing--but I try my best to not just ignore concessions. Framing matters a lot to me because it helps me filter what impacts I should care about most by the end of the debate.

If you have any specific questions please feel free to ask.

Also follow @worldofwordsinstitute on Instagram or check out www.worldofworldsinstitute.com for quality WSD content :)

LD/Policy

I'd love to be on the email chain. My email is sunhee.simon@gmail.com

Pref shortcut for those of you who like those:

LARP: 1-2

K: 1-2

Phil: 1-2

Tricks: 5/strike

Theory (if it's your PRIMARY strat - otherwise I can be preffed higher): 3

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Credentials that people seem to care about: senior (BA + MA candidate) at Stanford, Director of LD at the Victory Briefs Institute, did LD, policy, and worlds schools debate in high school, won/got to late elims in all of those events, double qualled to TOC in LD and Policy. Did well my freshman year in college in CX but didn't pursue it much after that. Now I coach and judge a bunch.

LD + Policy

Literally read whatever you want. If I don't like what you've read, I'll dock your speaks but I won't really intervene in the debate. Don't be sexist, ableist, racist, transphobic, homophobic, or a classist jerk in the round. Don't make arguments that can translate to marginalized folks not mattering (this will cloud my judgement and make me upset). I've also been mostly coaching and judging World Schools debate the past two years so you're going to need to slow down for me for sure. As the tournament goes on my ear adjusts but it's likely I'll say "slow" to get you to slow down. After 3 times, I won't do it anymore and will just stop listening.

Otherwise have fun and enjoy the activity for the 45 or 90 mins we're spending together! More info on specific things below:

Stock/Traditional Arguments

Makes sense.

Ks

I get this. The role of the ballots/framing is really helpful for me and usually where I look first.

T

I understand this. If reading against a K team I'd encourage you to make argument about how fairness/education relates to the theory of power/epistemology of the K. Would make all of our lives better and more interesting.

Theory

I also understand this. But don't abuse the privilege. I am not a friv theory fan so don't read it if you can (or else I might miss things as you blip through things).

Plans/CP/DAs

I understand this too. Slow down when the cards are shorter so I catch the tags.

I don't default to anything necessarily however I do know my experiences and understandings of debate were shaped by me coming from a low income school that specialized in traditional and critical debate. I've been around as a student and a coach (I think) long enough to know my defaults are subject to change and its the debaters' job to make it clear why theory comes first or case can be weighed against the K or RVIs are good or the K can be leveraged against theory. I learn so much from you all every time I judge. Teach me. Lead me to the ballot. This is a collaborative space so even if I have the power of the ballot, I still need you to tell me things. Otherwise, you might get a decision that was outside of your control and that's never fun.

On that note, let it be known that if you're white and/or a non-black POC reading afropessimism or black nihilism, you won't get higher than a 28.5 from me. The more it sounds like you did this specifically for me and don't know the literature, the lower your speaks will go. If you win the argument, I will give you the round though so either a) go for it if this is something you actually care about and know you know it well or b) let it go and surprise me in other ways. If you have a problem with this, I'd love to hear your reasons why but it probably won't change my mind. I can also refer other authors you can read to the best of my ability if I'm up to it that day.

Last thing, please make sure I can understand you! I understand spreading but some of y'all think judges are robots. I don't look at speech docs during the round (and try not to after the round unless I really need to) so keep that in mind when you spread. Pay attention to see if I'm flowing. I'll make sure to say clear if I can't understand you. I'll appreciate it a lot if you keep this in mind and boost your speaks!

UPDATED: 2/15/2024- California Round Robin

Quick Tips:

-Please be clear- No exaggeration my eardrums are nonexistent. I'm like half deaf.

-Over explanation> Blips- I understand your arguments, I just haven't judged them enough to make extrapolations for you.

-Send analytics too- Its ethically shady to not. Debates are won by the better debater, no the better trickster. Also, see tip 1.

Paradigm Proper

TL;DR: Check Bolded

GENERAL STUFF:

I wanna keep this relatively simple, so: Hi, I'm J.D. Swift. I am a former competitor and former coach of Holy Cross School, currently an Assistant at The Delores Taylor Arthur School for Young Men (New Orleans, La). I'm too old to use this platform as an ego boost so I won't bother re-putting my qualifications, accolades, etc. I have either judged, coached, or competed (or done all of the above) in nearly every event under the sun, so I'd call myself pretty familiar.

My resting face may not prove it, but I am always approachable. If you have any questions about stuff before or after around, and you spot me, please don't hesitate to have a conversation, its why I still do this activity.

For Everyone:

+ I do not tolerate any forms of: racism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, or ableism. This activity is special because it is the most inclusive activity that I know of. This space actively works to include all members of society and I will not stand for any tarnishing of that. I do not believe that you will be any of those things, but if it happens in round, I will stop the debate, give you a loss with the lowest possible speaks, and have a conversation with your coach.

+ I prefer an email chain, please add me:jdswift1028@gmail.com

+ I prefer to disclose. You won't be able to adjust from round to round if you don't know exactly how you won or lost a round. That being said: if any competitor in the round would prefer me not to disclose, I will not.** I also don't disclose speaks, that's just kinda weird to ask **

+ On Postrounding: I'm absolutely down to answer any and all questions as long as time permits. I take pride in the notes I take alongside the flow to give back to debaters. However, if you begin to challenge my decision, or (yes, this has happened before) you get your coach to challenge me, you can finish postrounding with the empty chair I left behind.

+ I know you care about speaker points. I don't give a whole lot of 30s (you can fact check me on this) so if you get one from me, I will be speaking high praises to others about your stellar performance. 2 rules of thumb for if you have me as a judge: 1. Make the debate accessible, 2. Let your personality shine through. No, I won't clarify on what those things mean. ;)

+ My face is very readable. This is semi-intentional. If I'm confused, you will see it. If I'm impressed, you will see it.

+ If you don't see me writing, specifically if my pen is obviously away from the paper/iPad (usually palm up) and I'm just staring at you, then I'm intentionally ignoring your argument. (I only do this when you are clearly over time, or if you are reading new in the 2)

+ In terms of intangibles such as: Your appearance, dress, how you sit or stand, etc. I do not care at all. A wise man once said: "Do whatever makes you comfortable, I only care about the arguments." -JD Swift, (circa 20XX)

For Novices:

+ I hate information elitism, meaning, if any jargon or terms in my paradigm confuse you-- please, please, please ask me for clarification.

+ Debate is a competitive activity, but it is foremost an educational one. If you see me in the back of the room, please do not feel intimidated, we as coaches and judges are here for y'all as competitors.

For LD & Policy:

+ Run whatever you like, please just explain it well. If you don't trust your ability to provide quality warrants on an argument, do not run it.

+ Please extend full arguments, most importantly the warrants. Not just impacts, Not just card names, but all of it.

+ No amount of signposting is too much. The more organized you are, the better I can give you credit.

+ Speed does NOT impress me. I can hang, but if you're sacrificing clarity for speed, I won't strain myself trying to catch the argument. If you want to go fast, go for it, just make sure you're clearly distinguishing one argument from the next, and that your tags and authors are clear.

+ Please do not reread a card, unless the card is being re-read for a different purpose(re-highlighting, new warrants, etc.). You're killing your own speech time.

+ If an argument or concession is made in cross, and you want credit for it, it has to show up in speech. I'll listen out for it, but if I don't hear it, in speech, it didn't happen.

+ Not a fan of petty theory at all. If there is real, round impeding abuse, I'll vote on it in your favor. If the theory argument is petty, I give RVI's heavy weight.

+ I don't like tricks. This is not a forum for deception.

+ If you're gonna kick the alt on the K, and use it as a disad, please articulate why the disad is a sufficient reason to not pass the plan.

FOR PF

+ Framework is important, otherwise I believe topic areas get too broad for this format. Win your framing and then use that to win your impact calculous. That's the fastest way to my ballot.

+ I have little patience for paraphrasing. If you want credit for evidence, read the card and give context.

+ I hold PF to the same evidence ethics and standards as Policy and LD.

Most importantly: please have fun; If what you are doing is not fun then it's not worth your time.

Affiliation: Marlborough (CA), Apple Valley (MN)

Past: Peninsula (CA), Lexington (MA)

Email: ctheis09@gmail.com — but I prefer to use speechdrop.net

Big Picture

I like substantive and engaging debates focused on the topic's core controversies. While I greatly appreciate creative strategy, I prefer deeply warranted arguments backed by solid evidence to absurd arguments made for purely tactical reasons.

I find the tech or truth construction to be reductive — both matter. I will try to evaluate claims through a more-or-less Bayesian lens. This means my knowledge of the world establishes a baseline for the plausibility of claims, and those priors are updated by the arguments made in a debate. This doesn’t mean I’ll intervene based on my preexisting beliefs; instead, it will take much more to win that 2+2=5 than to prove that grass is green.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" — Carl Sagan

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" — Christopher Hitchens

Default Paradigm

I default to viewing resolutions as normative statements that divide ground, but I’m open to arguments in favor of alternative paradigms. In general, I believe the affirmative should defend a topical policy action that's a shift from the status quo. The negative burden is generally to defend the desirability of the status quo or competitive advocacy.

Affirmatives should advocate a clearly delineated plan or advocacy, which can be the resolution itself. The aff's advocacy text is the basis for negative competition and links, and as such, it must contain any information the aff feels is relevant to those discussions. Affs cannot refuse to specify or answer questions regarding elements of their advocacy and then later make permutations or no-link arguments that depend on those elements. "Normal means" claims can be an exception but require evidence that the feature in question is assumed. Proof that some possible version of the aff could include such a feature is insufficient. Refusal to answer direct questions about a particular element of the advocacy will likely take "normal means" claims off the table.

I prefer policy/stock arguments, but I’m certainly open to critical or philosophical positions and vote for them often.

If you refer to your arguments as “tricks,” it’s a good sign that I’m not the best judge for you. Debaters should, whenever possible, advance the best arguments at their disposal. Calling your argument a "trick" implies its value lies in surprise or deception, not quality.

Note: an odd topic construction could alter these priors, but I'll do my best to make that known here if that's the case.

Topicality

Generally, affirmatives should be topical. I have and will vote for non-topical positions, but the burden is on the aff to justify why the topicality constraint shouldn't apply to them.

Topicality is a question of whether the features of the plan/advocacy itself being a good idea proves the resolution. This means I will look unfavorably on a position that is effects topical, extra-topical, or related to the topic but doesn't in and of itself prove the resolution.

In topicality debates, both semantics and pragmatic justifications are essential. However, interpretations must be "semantically eligible" before I evaluate pragmatic advantages. Pragmatic advantages are relevant in deciding between plausible interpretations of the words in the resolution; pragmatics can't make those words mean something they don't. I will err aff if topicality is a close call.

Theory Defaults

Affs nearly always must disclose 30 min before start time, and both debaters should disclose which AC they will read before elim flips.

Affirmatives should usually be topical.

Plans are good, but they need to be consistent with the wording of the topic.

Extra T is probably bad

Severance is bad

Intrinsicness is usually bad, but I'm open to intrinsic perms in response to process cps

Conditionality is OK

PICs are OK

Alt agent fiat is probably bad

Competing interpretations>reasonability, usually

Probably no RVIs

Almost certainly no RVIs on Topicality

I don't like arguments that place artificial constraints on paradigm issues based on the speech in which they are presented.

No inserting evidence. Re-highlights should be read aloud.

Kritiks

I am open to Ks and vote on them frequently. That said, I’m not intimately familiar with every critical literature base. So, clear explanation, framing, and argument interaction are essential. Likewise, the more material your impacts and alternative are, the better. Again, the more unlikely the claim, the higher the burden of proof. It will take more to convince me of the strongest claims of psychoanalysis than that capitalism results in exploitation.

Establishing clear links that generate offense is necessary. Too often, Ks try to turn fundamentally defensive claims into offense via jargon and obfuscation. A claim that the aff can’t or doesn't solve some impact is not necessarily a claim the aff is a bad idea.

It's essential that I understand the alternative and how it resolves the harms of the Kritik. I won't vote for an advocacy that I can't confidently articulate.

Arguments I will not vote for

An argument that has no normative implications, except in situations where the debater develops and wins an argument that changes my default assumptions.

Skep.

A strategy that purposely attempts to wash the debate to trigger permissibility/presumption.

A contingent framework/advocacy that is "triggered" in a later speech.

Any argument that asks me to evaluate the debate after a speech that isn't the 2AR.

Arguments/Practices I will immediately drop you for

Mis-disclosing/disclosure games. (There is an emerging practice of hiding/adding theory arguments or tricks to the AC without including them in the doc that's disclosed pre-round and/or the doc sent out in the debate. This is intentional deception and will result in an automatic loss).

Clipping. (There is an emerging practice of including long descriptive tags in the docs sent out during debates but only reading truncated versions. I consider this clipping. By sending those analytics you're representing, they were read in the round.)

Any argument that concludes that every action is permissible.

Any argument that creates a hostile environment for either myself, the other debater, or anyone watching the debate.

Any argument that explicitly argues that something we all agree is awful (genocide, rape, etc.) is a good thing. This must be an argument THAT THE DEBATER AGREES implies horrible things are ok. If the other debater wins an argument that your framework justifies something terrible, but it is contested, then it may count as a reason not to accept your framework, but it will not be a reason to drop you on its own.

Public Forum

I only judge PF a few times a year, mostly at camp. Arguments are arguments regardless of the format, so most of my typical paradigm applies. The big caveat is that I strongly prefer teams read actual cards instead of paraphrasing evidence. I understand that there are differences of opinion, so I won't discount paraphrasing entirely, but I'll have a lower bar for indicts. Also, I'm not reading ten full articles at the end of the debate, so I'd appreciate it if you could prepare the paraphrased portions in advance.

Aaron Timmons

Director of Debate – Greenhill School

Former Coach USA Debate Team

Curriculum Director Harvard Debate Council Summer Workshops

Updated – April 2024

Please put me on the email chain – timmonsa@greenhill.org

Contact me with questions.

General Musings

Debate rounds, and subsequently debate tournaments, are extensions of the classroom. While we all learn from each other, my role is a critic of argument (if I had to pigeonhole myself with a paradigmatic label as a judge). I will evaluate your performance in as objective a method as possible. Unlike many adjudicators claim to be, I am not a blank slate. I will intervene if I see behaviors or practices that create a bad, unfair, or hostile environment for the extension of the classroom that is the debate round. I WILL do my best to objectively evaluate your arguments, but the idea that my social location is not a relevant consideration of how I view/decode (even hear) arguments is not true (nor true for anyone.)

I have coached multiple National and/or State Champions in Policy Debate, Lincoln Douglas Debate, and World Schools Debate (in addition to interpretation/speech events). I still actively coach and I am involved in the strategy and argument creation of my students who compete for my school. Given the demands on my time, I do not cut as many cards as I once did for Policy and Lincoln Douglas. That said, I am more than aware of the arguments and positions being run in both of these formats week in and week out.

General thoughts on how I decide debates:

1 – Debate is a communication activity – I will flow what you say in speeches as opposed to flowing off of the speech documents (for the events that share documents). If I need to read cards to resolve an issue, I will do so but until ethos and pathos (re)gain status as equal partners with logos in the persuasion triangle, we will continue to have debates decided only on what is “in the speech doc.” Speech > speech doc.

2 – Be mindful of your “maximum rate of efficiency” – aka, you may be trying to go faster than you are capable of speaking in a comprehensible way. The rate of speed Is not a problem in many contemporary debates, the lack of clarity is an increasing concern. Unstructured paragraphs that are slurred together do not allow the pen time necessary to write things down in the detail you think they might. Style and substance are fundamentally inseparable. This does NOT mean you have to be slow; it does mean you need to be clear.

3 – Evidence is important - In my opinion debates/comparisons about the qualifications of authors on competing issues and warrants (particularly empirical ones), are important. Do you this and not only will your points improve, but I am also likely to prefer your argument if the comparisons are done well.

4 – Online Debating – We have had two years to figure this out. My camera will be on. I expect that your camera is on as well unless there is a technical issue that cannot/has not been resolved in our time online. If there is an equity/home issue that necessitates that your camera is off, I understand that and will defer to your desire to it be off if that is the case. A simple, “I would prefer for my camera to be off” will suffice to inform me of your request.

5 – Disclosure is good (on balance) – I feel that debaters/teams should disclose on the wiki. I have been an advocate of disclosure for decades. I am NOT interested in “got you” games regarding disclosure. If a team/school is against disclosure, defend that pedagogical practice in the debate. Either follow basic tenets of community norms related to disclosure (affirmative arguments, negative positions read, etc.) after they have been read in a debate. While I do think things like full source and/or round reports are good educational practices, I am not interested in hearing debates about those issues. ADA issues: If a student needs to have materials formatted in a matter to address issues of accessibility based on documented learning differences, that request should be made promptly to allow reformatting of that material. Preferably, adults from one school should contact the adult representatives of the other schools to deal with school-sanctioned accountability.

6 – Zero risk is a possibility – There is a possibility of zero risks of an advantage or a disadvantage.

7 – My role as a judge - I will do my best to judge the debate that occurred versus the debate that I wish had happened. I see too many judges making decisions based on evaluating and comparing evidence after the debate that was not done by the students.

8 – Debate the case – It is a forgotten art. Your points will increase, and it expands the options for you to win the debate in the final negative rebuttal.

9 – Good “judge instructions” will make my job easier – While I am happy to make my judgments and comparisons between competing claims, I feel that students making those comparisons, laying out the order of operations, articulating “even/if” considerations, telling me how to weigh and then CHOOSING in the final rebuttals, will serve debaters well (and reduce frustrations on both our parts0.

10 – Cross-examination matters – Plan and ask solid questions. Good cross-examinations will be rewarded.

11 - Flowing is a prerequisite to good debating (and judging) - You should flow. I will be flowing your speech not from the doc, but your actual speech..

Policy Debate

I enjoy policy debate and given my time in the activity I have judged, coached, and seen some amazing students over the years.

A few thoughts on how I view judging policy debate:

Topicality vs Conventional Affs:

Traditional concepts of competing interpretations can be mundane and sometimes result in silly debates. Limiting out one affirmative will not save/protect limits or negative ground. Likewise, reasonability in a vacuum without there being a metric on what that means and how it informs my interpretation vis a vis the resolution lacks nuance as well. Topicality debaters who can frame what the topic should look like based on the topic, and preferably evidence to support why interpretation makes sense will be rewarded. The next step is saying why a more limiting (juxtaposed to the most limiting) topic makes sense helps to frame the way I would think about that version of the topic. A case list of what would be topical under your interpretation would help as would a list of core negative arguments that are excluded if we accept the affirmative interpretation or model of debate.

Topicality/FW vs critical affirmatives:

First – The affirmative needs to do something (and be willing to defend what that is). The negative needs to win that performance is net bad/worse than an alternative (be it the status quo, a counterplan, or a K alternative).

Second – The negative should have access to ground, but they do not get to predetermine what that is. Just because your generic da or counterplan does not apply to the affirmative does not mean the affirmative cannot be tested.

Conditionality

Conditionality is good but only in a limited sense. I do not think the negative gets unlimited options (even against a new affirmative). While the negative can have multiple counter plans, the affirmative will get leeway to creatively (re)explain permutations if the negative kicks (or attempts to add) planks to the counterplan(s), the 1ar will get some flexibility to respond to this negative move.

Counterplans and Disads:

Counterplans are your friend. Counterplans need a net benefit (reasons the affirmative is a bad/less than desirable idea. Knowing the difference between an advantage to the counterplan and a real net benefit seems to be a low bar. Process counterplans are harder to defend as competitive and I am sympathetic to affirmative permutations. I have a higher standard for many on permutations as I believe that in the 2AC “perm do the counterplan” and/or “perm do the alternative” do nothing to explain what that world looks like. If the affirmative takes another few moments to explain these arguments, that increases the pressure on the 2nr to be more precise in responding to these arguments.

Disadvantages that are specific to the advocacy of the affirmative will get you high points.

Lincoln Douglas

I have had students succeed at the highest levels of Lincoln Douglas Debate including multiple champions of NSDA, NDCA, the Tournament of Champions, as well as the Texas Forensic Association State Championships.

Theory is debated far too much in Lincoln – Douglas and is debated poorly. I am strongly opposed to that practice. My preference is NOT to hear a bad theory debate. I believe the negative does get some “flex;” it cannot be unlimited. The negative does not need to run more than four off-case arguments

Words matter. Arguments that are racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, etc. will not be tolerated.

I am not a fan of random; multiple sentence fragments that claim to “spike” out of all of the other team’s arguments. At its foundation, the debate should be about argument ENGAGEMENT, not evasion.

I do not like skepticism as an argument. It would be in your best interest to not run it in front of me. While interesting in a philosophy class in college, training young advocates to feel that “morality doesn’t exist” etc. is educationally irresponsible.

I do not disclose speaker points. That seems silly to me.

Dropped arguments and the “auto-win” seem silly to me. Just because a debater drops a card does not mean you win the debate. Weighing and embedded clashes are a necessary component of the debate. Good debaters extend their arguments. GREAT debaters do that in addition to explaining the nexus point of the clash between their arguments and that of the opposition and WHY I should prefer their argument. Any argument that says the other side cannot answer your position is fast-tracking to an L (with burnt cheese and marinara on top).

It takes more than a sentence (or in many of the rounds I judge a sentence fragment), to make an argument. If the argument was not clear originally, I will allow the opponent to make new arguments.

Choose. No matter the speech or the argument.

Cross apply much of the policy section as well as the general musings on debate.

World Schools

Have you chaired a WS round before? (required)

Yes. Countless times.

What does chairing a round involve? (required)

How would you describe World Schools Debate to someone else?

World Schools is modeled after parliament having argumentation presented in a way that is conversational, yet argumentatively rigorous. Debates are balanced between motions that are prepared, while some are impromptu. Points of Information (POIs) are a unique component of the format as speakers can be interrupted by their opponent by them asking a question or making a statement.

What process, if any, do you utilize to take notes in the debate? (required)

I keep a rigorous flow throughout the debate.

When evaluating the round, assuming both principle and practical arguments are advanced through the 3rd and Reply speeches, do you prefer one over the other? Explain.

These should be prioritized and compared by the students in the round. I do not have an ideological preference between principled or practical arguments.

The World Schools Debate format requires the judge to consider both Content and Style as 40% of each of the speaker’s overall score, while Strategy is 20%. How do you evaluate a speaker’s strategy? (required)

Strategy (simply put) is how they utilize the content that has been introduced in the debate.

World Schools Debate is supposed to be delivered at a conversational pace. What category would you deduct points in if the speaker were going too fast?

Style.

World Schools Debate does not require evidence/cards to be read in the round. How do you evaluate competing claims if there is no evidence to read?

Students are required to use analysis, examples, and interrogate the claims of the other side then make comparative claims about the superiority of their position.

How do you resolve model quibbles?

Model quibbles are not fully developed arguments if they are only questions that are not fully developed or have an articulated impact.

How do you evaluate models vs. countermodels?

I utilize the approach of comparative worlds to evaluate competing methods for resolving mutual problems/harms. The proposition must defend its model as being comparatively advantageous over a given alternative posed by the opposition. While many feel in World Schools a countermodel must be mutually exclusive. While that certainly is one method of assessing if a countermodel truly ‘forces a choice,” a feel a better stand is that of net benefits. The question should be if it is desirable to do both the propositions model and the opposition countermodel at the same time. If it is possible to do both without any undesirable outcomes, the negative has failed to prove the desirability of their countermodel. The opposition should explain why doing both would be a bad idea. The proposition should advance an argument as to why doing both is better than adopting the countermodel alone.

https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml

TLDR

Condo is probably bad. I don't like tricks and rude stuff. I don't like people beating their opponents down in a disrespectful manner. True champions find a way to win with style, finesse, and some measure of grace. Basically, "say what you mean, and mean what you say" in front of me. Kick outs and shifts are not received well. If you shift your position and the other team catches you, calls you on it, labels it a voter, impacts it, and you do not give that response serious consideration, you will have missed the opportunity to respond to something likely important in the decision. I prefer that debaters determine the issues in the round. My job is to evaluate how well, how clearly, how expertly, and how meaningfully the debaters present, refute, and summarize versus each other.

I like and am comfortable with crystal clear debaters and crystal-clear rebuttals. I am open to a lot of different types of discussions, and I'm excited to listen to what you bring to the debate space.

NO MATTER WHAT YOUR ARGUMENT, In a nutshell:

Tell Me What Your Argument Is

Tell Me Why I Should Prefer It

Tell Me Why If I Do Prefer Your Argument Why You Should Then Win The Debate---Some form of Impact Calculus/Weighting Magnitude, Probability and Time Frame-ish args are goods.

If you think you are really winning something, "sit on it" and explain why you win.

Updated 1/05/2024

Overview: I firmly believe that policy debate is first and foremost a communication activity. Consequently, oral presentation plays a large factor in my adjudication process. I focus on the “story” of the debate, but line-byline refutation can be a component of that. Know your order before you announce it. Don't change the order after you announce it. Clearly articulated arguments at any speed can be evaluated. Inarticulate utterings that cannot be understood cannot be evaluated. Especially in online debates. Slow down and be really clear on why you are winning. Be quick, but don't hurry. I will not tolerate rudeness. Cross X is binding. I don’t like “camp games” that steal time. I see you. Keep it to a minimum. If there is a mistake or misunderstanding just apologize. Saying you are sorry is often overlooked. You might clean it up well and still be in the debate. At the very least, you will save yourself low speaks if you make an honest effort to play it smart and on the level.

My paradigm biggies are as follows:

1. I agree that conditionality is "probably" bad. So, its "probably" not a bad idea to speak to this and support reasons why I might or might not vote on this---if it becomes an issue. Don’t just wait to see what I’ll do. In a vacuum of no direction on a debate argument, I am left to ignore the argument or evaluate by my own standards. I prefer to not do this. Its your debate. Clean it up. As far as just throwing out a bunch of stuff and then dropping it as a strategy---it does not usually go very well. I do not automatically judge kick. If you run 10 off, then win 10 off that do not contradict each other. Most importantly, be sure that you are clear as crystal even attempting it. When you time skew and then kick out, I am predisposed to vote for the other team if they argue time shew is a reason to reject the side that initiates such practices in the debate space. Absent compelling reasons why I should not do this--that's my predisposition. Again, its your debate so remember to tell me as the judge why I should prefer you style or point of view. Say what you mean and mean what you say is always best---as long as you are not being rude to your opponents. Practice civility always in debate rounds.

2. Topical Counterplans are probably not OK. If at the end of the round I have been effectively persuaded that there are two Affirmative teams, I'll probably vote Affirmative. Give me reasons to not do so, if this is part of your normal strategy. Explain why in a manner that includes what the AFF is doing and WHY even a topical CPLAN is preferred.

3. I prefer not to judge topicality debates. If you're ahead on it, explain to me why it’s important to care about this, or I might not understand why to vote on it. Again, compare your position to your opponents and why your side should win.

4. I enjoy case debates. Solidly clear, irrefutably presented and reasonably current inherency evidence could really win a debate. Really. Postdating sources is good. Supported evidence indicts are good. If you introduce an ethics challenge into a debate round, be prepared to win it. The penalty for challenging someone in such a manner seems to be leading toward the initiator losing the round if they lose their challenge.

5. Kritikal arguments on both AFF and NEG are fine, but pay close attention to the way you communicate your positions (clear and concise!).

6. The topic should be debated, but how you approach the resolution, and how you approach debate generally (content, style, etc.), is left up to the debaters.

7. If you're Negative, show me how your approach is specific to this Affirmative. Be thoughtful in explaining what a vote for your side means and why I should endorse it. Ask me to vote for your side. Don't completely on-face grant the 1AC in favor of pre-set tangentially related points and expect me to get why that means the Negative wins the debate. Be particularly clear on fairness and why ground is or isn't lost and warrants a decision. These are usually not presented clearly and powerfully. And without why they should matter, I tend to be persuaded by other issues

8. I appreciate when the AFF and NEG teams sit on the correct sides of the room with respect to the judge. Otherwise, I might want to vote for someone but accidentally vote for the wrong team. If you're not on the proper side of the room, at least say in your speech which side of the debate you represent and why you think your side should win the debate. That is taken for granted a lot. :)

Best,

Marna Weston

Conflicts: Minnetonka

Background:

Did mainly LD and some policy in college.

Update 11/27/20

Nat circuit debaters should try to make the round as accessible as possible for local circuit debaters. I will intervene on behalf of the local circuit debater.

Overview of Debate:

Debate is a competitive educational activity to me. I think you should be well prepared and polished in your augments regardless of the format or type of circuit you participate in. At the end of the round I expect debaters to have made a strategic and well articulated argument to win my ballot.

Better to ask questions before round.

Specifics:

K - These are good if done correctly. I do tend to vote often for ID politics

Plans/DA/CP - Good

Philo that isn't tricks - Good, I will probably understand at an intro/intermediate level

Tricks - part of the game but I don't really enjoy these and haven't voted off of them in awhile

Theory - Actual abuse will be most persuasive to me otherwise I'll probably buy the reasonability arguments

T - Probably should defend the topic but I'm not super set on it.

Quick notes:

Debate is a game.

Evidence quality matters.

I prefer if you run arguments that make sense.

I generally do not enjoy voting for tricks and have not in most rounds.

Other than that do w/e you feel.

Can't Judge: Stuyvesant, Lexington

Background: I debated for 4 years at Lexington and competed almost exclusively on the national circuit.

I coached for Stuyvesant from 2014-2017 and also helped out some former students for TOC 2018. I haven't judged since that tournament and have 0 content knowledge about the topic.

I think part of what makes debate great is its incredible openness. Given that fact, I am fine with speed, theory, policy-style argumentation, dense framework arguments, kritiks, performance, tricks, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Debate is your game. Play it how you want to.

Feel free to message me with any questions at pzhou@wesleyan.edu

Some judges that influenced me: Sam Azbel