If you are unable to come up with a better name for me, then you should just call me Andrew.

I debated for the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I have coached for Kansas State University and the University of Pittsburgh. I am currently a Visiting Lecturer in Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies at Bates College. My undergraduate studies were in Philosophy and Political Science. My graduate work has been in Communication (MA) and Rhetorical Studies (PhD).

I am most familiar with critical and performative approaches to policy debate. I have no problem voting on framework, topicality, etc. in clash debates. I am comparatively less skilled at adjudicating traditional policy debates.

In a bygone era of debate (c. 2013-2017), I wrote a judging paradigm that you can find at the bottom of this page. In retrospect, it appears quaint and mildly amusing. In all likelihood, it is not all that helpful any longer. Below, I have provided an update for your consideration. Oddly, this update is less specific but perhaps more useful for determining whether you would like to have me adjudicate your debates.

Generally speaking, I hold the following presuppositions about debate:

(1) policy debate is a mode of inquiry that uses competition to motivate participants to develop divergent lines of argument in their pursuit of knowledge that is related to a predetermined resolution

(2) the intellectual, social, and civic benefits of policy debate accrue primarily through sustained engagement with dynamic points of clash that emerge from the articulation of conflicting propositions and/or performances

(3) the outcome of any individual debate only reflects the extent to which a judge can justify the claim that the winning team was able to establish the persuasiveness of their arguments relative to those of their opponents; such decisions do not determine whether any particular argument reflects the truth of some matter

(4) the value of a proposition and/or performance is not intrinsic to untested arguments any more than it is tied to the outcome of a particular debate; it, instead, emerges as a consequence of its iterative development and refinement through practices of research, revision, re-articulation, and revaluation

(5) your value as a person and your contributions to this community are not determined or measured by your ratio of win to losses; much less does either of those things have anything to do with the way that a judge casts their ballot

As such, I tend to judge debates with preference for the following:

The affirmative should provide and defend a proposition and/or performance in support of the resolution. I would prefer not to judge debates that have nothing to do with the topic.

The negative should provide and defend compelling reasons to reject the proposition and/or performance advanced by the affirmative. I would prefer not to judge debates where negative strategy does not involve direct engagement with the affirmative.

Competition between affirmative and negative arguments should develop by way of clearly identifiable points of clash. I would prefer not to judge debates where the primary inclination is to avoid or eliminate clash.

Participants in the debate are responsible for identifying the points of clash that they would like me to evaluate. I would prefer not to judge debates where clash is assumed, embedded, implicit, unstated, or otherwise unclear.

The quality of a debate is largely correlated with the ability of its participants to identify and address the most significant points of clash by developing reasonable lines of inference in response. I would prefer not to judge debates where it is unnecessarily burdensome to track the ways that the participants determine and interact with divergent lines of argument.

The use of evidence to substantiate a claim or resolve a point of clash is often the best way to qualify the persuasiveness of arguments relative to those of an opponent; as a bonus, establishing reasons why argument evaluation should be guided by appeals to supplemental experiences, perspectives, expertise, and/or external standards of methodological rigor is pretty neat too. I would prefer not to judge debates where little-to-no value is placed in the use of evidence to substantiate arguments.

While I’m at it, here is some thinly veiled advice in a couple of ineloquently formed conditional statements:

If you would like to have me read the evidence that you have introduced in the debate, the likelihood of that happening increases dramatically if you include me in the email chain (aallsupgmail.com).

If you include me in the email chain with the presumption that I will read the evidence that you introduce in the debate, you should also know that the chances of me reading said evidence decreases dramatically when you include an unreasonable number of cards that end up not being read in your speech.

If you make me stare into the abyss (e.g., a “card doc” including cards that were not referenced by name in the rebuttals), I will entertain the possibility of letting the abyss star back at you (e.g., my blank stare when you ask how I evaluated x piece of evidence; I probably didn’t read it).

If you are worried that you are speaking too fast or that your words are too unclear for me to understand, you’re probably right. If you never question whether you are speaking too fast or whether your words are unclear, you should probably give questioning it a try.

If you consciously and willfully use discriminatory, prejudicial, and/or bigoted language to characterize, substantiate, or advance an argument (including, but not limited to, those pertaining to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, disability, class, income, language, heredity, etc.), you can expect to lose the debate and receive a 0 for speaker points.

If you attempt to leverage the competitive nature of this activity to try to justify some right to express and/or advance arguments that create to a hostile or otherwise discriminatory environment for members of a protected class, you can expect to lose the debate and receive a 0 for speaker points.

If your strategy relies on the expectation that you ought to be evaluated favorably for cruelty, humiliation, threats, or otherwise demeaning remarks that you’ve directed toward other debaters, judges, coaches, directors, etc., you shouldn’t expect me to recount much from the debate because I probably stopped listening and found a better use for my time.

Since nobody asked, here is a long-winded series of remarks on flowing, adjudicating, and RFD’s.

I will do my best to fairly adjudicate debates based on the arguments that were presented in the round. I do so, primarily, by referencing the record of those arguments as they appear on my flows. I have been flowing debates since I started debating in 2004. I’ve been using flows to reconstruct and evaluate debates since I started judging in 2013. I still occasionally miss arguments that my fellow judges happen to catch on their flows. Sometimes arguments which seem unclear on my flows end up appearing completely transparent on those of others. There have been many times where I did not record the same connections between arguments that those presenting them believe themselves to have expressed in the debate. I imagine that it has often been the case I may have decided a debate differently were I given a full transcript and the leisure to evaluate every detail, so as to avoid the possibility of having missed or misinterpreted something. Nevertheless, a flow is not a transcript and even the sometimes-indefinite delay in decision times when Harris is assigned to judge a debate is not sufficient to consider every detail of a given debate.

This is all to say that you should bear in mind that I perceive your arguments by both listening to your speech and recording them in writing; the latter serving as the primary basis upon which I will reconstruct arguments in the debate and determine who has won. You should be constructing and presenting your arguments in a way that is fitted to the various processes that are typically involved in judging this format of debate: listening, writing, reconstructing, and evaluating. For those of us who flow debates, we are listening to a constant stream of new information while simultaneously attempting to efficiently record, in writing, what we can recall from our immediate and longer-term memory of the debate. In that same process, we are trying to manage a number of considerations: how different claims relate to each other, the quality of evidence and the ways it is being applied to the debate, we consider lines of inference as they related to those uses of evidence while also comparing them with those that were presented in other speeches, we look for strategic options and anticipate the consequences of those choices relative to others, and so on. The threshold between listening and writing involves a significant degree of information processing that can easily go awry when claims are unclear, speeches are disorganized, connections between claims are unstated, evidence is missing or unhelpful, etc.

This is all to say that, for me, the best thing a debater can do to maximize the likelihood of success is to observe the following maxim: debate in such a manner that you are directing how I should be navigating the threshold between the information that you have presented orally and the record that I am constructing on my flow in writing. In all the time that I have been judging debates, the teams that have been most successful are those who find ways to make these processes work for them rather than against them. This means resisting the temptation to convince yourself that you will win so long as you simply state “x, y, and z.” In addition, you should consider how to communicate “x, y, and z” in such a way that they not only find expression on the flow but, also, that I know what to do with those claims/arguments and how they affect the other elements of the debate. There is no formula to ensure that, in each instance, you will resolve every contingency that arises at this threshold between listening and writing, but there are basic practices that you can do to help me manage it in potentially favorable ways.

(1) The most important practice is to ensure that your strategic choices (including any conditional sub-strategies; e.g., “if we lose this argument, you can still vote for us because…”) are absolutely clear, preferably from the start of a speech and/or the top of a flow. If your strategic choices only become transparent when I’m being post-rounded, that’s obviously a problem. Thankfully, it is easily fixable.

(2) Next, identifying and defining the key points of disagreement or clash can establish the foundation for my decision-making. I would rather take directions from you when it comes to the key issues that require resolution in order to render a judgment about the debate. This is an extraordinarily underused technique, yet it tends to reap significant results when done well. There should be debate over the issues that I must ultimately resolve, the sequence with which they should be resolved, and how I should go about resolving them.

(3) You should be making use of clear comparisons between arguments throughout the debate. Speeches in a debate should involve, well, debate. If I’m comparing one monologue against another monologue—each of which contains some self-serving and otherwise incommensurable criteria for evaluation—my decision will likely be no more informed than a choice that is based on the flipping of a coin.

(4) Building on this discussion of comparison, you should be developing evaluative criteria to help me determine the way that I should adjudicate those comparisons. Refutation is not just about saying something that is different or opposite than your opponent but give clear standards for how to evaluate divergent perspectives, inferences, items of evidence, etc.

(5) Regarding evidence, I will typically only scrutinize or compare evidence when explicitly directed to do so in accordance with some definitive question about it that needs to be resolved. I won’t use your end-of-round “card doc” to reconstruct the debate. If you would like me to review pieces of evidence from the debate, there needs to be a clear reason for doing so. When I review it, what am I likely to find? Why is it significant? How should I use that information? What does it mean for the debate? Keep in mind, I’m not evaluating the arguments being made in the evidence that you provide. I’m evaluating the arguments that you are advancing, often with the utilization of evidence as support for them.

Alright, some final notes on RFD’s. In the event that you believe that I have incorrectly decided a debate, you’re always welcome register your disagreement in person or in writing. I only ask that you engage those discussions with the understanding that my decision reflects the best justifications that I could surmise within the decision time and based on the information on my flow (and, to a lesser extent, what I can reliably recall from memory). We may not see eye-to-eye on a decision, but helping me see the debate from your perspective may have beneficial effects that extend beyond the specific debate in question. Nevertheless, it’s worth recognizing from the outset that I will not change a decision based on a post-round conversation. I will, however, listen intently to your perspective with the goal of learning from it. If necessary, I will offer additional details about my decision with the hope that I can provide further clarity as to the reasons for my decision. In these conversations, however, my inclination will be to diffuse conflict because I don’t believe that RFD’s and post-round commentary ought to be an extension of the debate (let alone its own separate debate). Instead, I believe that they should be reciprocal, dialogical, and ultimately pedagogical opportunities to reflect on the debate while simultaneously participating in an ongoing and iterative effort to determine the value (or lack thereof) of divergent and conflicting propositions and/or performances as they are shaped over the course of a debating season.

When debaters utilize post-round conversations to help others learn more about their arguments and to help those involved in the debate to understand the ways that they think their arguments ought be evaluated, I often find myself more likely to perceive and consider argumentative subtleties and nuances that I didn’t notice initially when evaluating debates in the future. Generally speaking, I am unlikely to engage as openly or be receptive to post-round commentary that is demeaning or otherwise aimed at diminishing me or anyone else involved in the debate. Such conduct is not necessary to get me to admit to my own ignorance or to compel me to confirm that I may have made a mistake. I am quite willing to do so upon recognizing the error of my ways. If our differences in perspective are impossible to reconcile through constructive dialogue, in the absence of intimidation and bullying behavior, then the best remedy is to strike me in your judging preferences. Ultimately, none among us is immune to charges of ignorance and error; everyone involved debate (myself included) still has much to learn about whatever issues happen to be at stake in a given dispute. If we can’t find ways to resolve those issues without cruelty, humiliation, threats, and the like, then I’m not convinced that we can sincerely champion the virtues of dialogue, deliberation, and debate that supposedly drive our commitment to engage our disagreements in this activity.

That all being said, I realize that wins and losses do often function as a kind of social currency in debate. I also realize that there is no way to completely avoid using them, consciously or unconsciously, as a way to measure our own sense self-worth or to determine whether we are meaningfully contributing anything to this activity. I felt those pressures when I debated, at least. Mixing competition with education and advocacy is often a dangerous proposition. It can be downright destructive to self-esteem and the bonds of community and belonging. The optimistic promises of a platform for creativity, expression, and advocacy meets its limits when evaluation and judgement can have the effect of limiting opportunity and access (whether that involves the ability to participate in elimination rounds, denying enjoyment of the social currency that comes with it, etc.). I can’t claim to know how to resolve these effects and preserve the competitive structure of the activity. The best I can offer is to adjudicate debates transparently and to communicate the reasons for my decisions with honesty and care. My hope is that none of my decisions have the effect of diminishing your sense of self-worth or your value in the debate community. If my RFD has the effect on you, I encourage you to either tell me directly or ask a mutual friend or colleague to relay that sentiment to me. My preference is to, hopefully, find a way to make amends. Barring those (hopefully) exceptionally circumstances where there is a need to have difficult conversations about offensive language, objectionable lines of argument, or unacceptable conduct, my goal is to communicate both wins and losses in ways that demonstrate the respect that you deserve and the consideration that your arguments are owed.

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Below is my expired paradigm

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I. Biographical Information:

I am in the second year of a doctoral program in Communication and Rhetoric at the University of Pittsburgh. I helped coach at Kansas State University for two years while earning an MA. I debated for 5 years at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

II. The Big Picture

Evidence:

First, this is a competitive academic activity and I expect the evidence you introduce into the debate to meet a certain level of intellectual rigor. This does not mean that every piece of evidence needs to be from a peer-reviewed source (although it is often preferable) but it should contain a coherent argument (i.e. claim and warrant). Hint: one line cards rarely (read: never) meet this standard.

Second, quality always trumps quantity. The “strategic” decision to read a bunch of cards that either come from questionable sources or fail to make a coherent argument will never beat one well-warranted card. This shouldn’t be controversial yet somehow debate has conditioned otherwise intelligent people to think otherwise.

Third, question your opponent’s sources. This is a quick way to get favorable speaker points from me. Do your opponent a favor and tell them that their sources are unqualified. Do me a favor and explain why I should disregard certain pieces of evidence because they aren’t academically credible and unfit for this academic community. Bottom line: read unqualified/bad evidence at your own risk.

Paperless Information: Prep time stops when you pull the flash drive/send the email. If you are doing an email chain then you should include me in it (my email is aallsup[at]gmail.com).

Good Speaker Points 101:

1. Make an complete argument (claim, warrant, and impact).
2. Clarity: If I cant hear/understand your argument I will not flow/evaluate it
3. “Extinction” or “Nuclear War” is not a tag. Tags include claims AND warrants
4. Author name extensions are insufficient. Don’t do it. Make an argument and use the evidence to support it
5. Cross-X is a speech and it will factor heavily in speaker point distribution. I reward good questions and responses.
6. Get to the point: focus on the core issues of the debate

III. Argument Specific:

Topicality/Theory:

First, I am not the judge for you to stake the round on arbitrary interpretations. You need to be able to defend that your interpretation presents a useful norm that should be universalized within debate. That being said, I default to competing interpretations but have a decently low thresholds for critiques of topicality/theory when interpretations are wholly arbitrary.

Second, if you want to win a critique of topicality/theory you must prove that the exclusion of the affirmative is worse than the negatives ability to expect a fair, limited, or predictable debate.

Third, I tend to side with the idea that conditionality is a beneficial and educational tool in debate. The affirmative will have to win a decisive and tangible impact in order to get me to vote against conditionality. That being said, there is a point at which conditionality can be abused and that abuse trades off with good scholarship. I’m not the person to read nine conditional advocacies in front of. At a certain point there is an inverse relationship between number of advocacies and good arguments that demeans the purpose of engaging each other in this competitive academic forum.

Fourth, you can read your agent/actor counter plans and I will evaluate them fairly but I certainly will not be happy about it. My belief is that the negative should only be allowed to fiat the agent of the resolution. I don’t think competition based on the “certainty” of the plan is productive or interesting.

Fifth, my default is that most theory is a reason to reject the argument and not the team. If you think you can win a reason to reject the team then go for it. I guess we will find out what happens.

Counterplans: I’m not a fan of conditions/consultation counterplans. I think they should be both textually and functionally competitive. The negative should only be allowed to fiat the agent of the resolution. If you’re affirmative, don’t be afraid to go for theory. However, as mentioned before, I often find theory to be a reason to reject the argument not the team. As a former 2a I am not even in the ballpark when it comes to word pics/floating pics. Reading it as a critique solves your pedagogical net benefit. QED.

Disadvantages: Higher risk almost always beats a higher magnitude. You should always make disad turns the case arguments. You must provide some sort of impact calculation in order to have me interpret your strategy favorably.

Politics:

First, the story has to match. Please don’t make me listen to a scenario that doesn’t have matching parts. If the uniqueness and link evidence don’t assume the same politician/group of politicians then you lose.

Second, explain the implication of core defensive arguments. If Obama has no political capital or if the negative is missing a crucial internal link then you need to explain how that affects everything else they are saying.

Third, surprisingly I find myself enjoying politics debates more and more. Don’t hesitate to go for it when I’m judging. Just be smart about it – put your logical-analytic skills to work and make the debate worth listening to.

Critical Affirmatives and Framework:

First, I don’t think framework is a voting issue. Framework is a means by which I determine how to evaluate the round.

Second, topicality is absolutely essential to winning a framework debate when you’re negative.

Third, you need to prove that your interpretation can offer the possibility for the same education as the affirmative has provided to emerge. The best way to do this is to offer a topical version of the 1ac. Another way to do this is provide other topical examples that produce the same pedagogical effect as the 1ac.

Fourth, you also need to prove some competitive reason why the negative has been disadvantaged by the affirmative. More importantly, you need to prove why this violation of competitive equity impacts or implicates their education impacts.

Critiques:

First, the worst thing you can do is read a critique that you have little-to-no knowledge about or practice debating. Critiques are hard to win. I loved debating them. They’re all I debated. However, my experience has led me to conclude that I should have a high standard for those who wish to read critical arguments. It’s better for you (because you learn more about an absolutely fascinating literature base) and it’s better for me (because I don’t have to listen to bad scholarship).

Second, framework against the negative critique is rarely a winning strategy. Reading a bunch of cards is rarely a good strategy. Find the 2 or 3 crucial issues you need to win and win them with good arguments. For example, instead of telling the negative they need to provide a policy option, why not just win that policymaking is the best way to solve the impact to the critique?

North Broward Prep 2020

Vanderbilt 2024

deardt12@gmail.com – add me to the email chain before the round starts

It’s my belief that first-year-outs aren’t particularly good judges. I will do my best to be a good judge, but remember I have far more experience as a debater than as a judge. Explaining why you won is extra important – tell me they dropped an argument that ends the debate and explain why, tell me they haven’t dealt with a framing issue that implicates every other argument.

My high school experience was relatively balanced with “policy-style” and “K-style” arguments, but I excelled far more with the “K-style.” You should be comfortable running both styles in front of me in that I will be accepting of them, but that doesn’t mean I will immediately understand them. I’m not too picky.

Remember I don’t know very much about the CJR topic. Talk to me like I know debate, not like I know CJR.

Tech, flowing, line-by-line >

Online Debate Specifics – I chose not to participate in the eTOC because of qualms with online debate. You will probably need to be slower and clearer than usual. I probably need more pen time than usual. Debates already take longer than they should – if we can keep the debate moving smoothly, I will be happy.

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

Random things:

- I’m not debating. You keep track of prep. There is nothing more embarrassing than when a team asks the judge or the other team how much prep they have left.

- I don’t like it when the tag of a card is longer than 100 words.

- If this a practice round at debate camp, you don’t need to go more than 6 off.

- Please use verbatim. I get annoyed if you use a google doc or a word doc without verbatim.

//shree

I am a social studies & math teacher who is no longer involved in full-time argument coaching. I am judging this tournament because my wife, a mentor, or a former student asked me to.

I previously served as a DOD at the high school level and as a hired gun for college debate programs. During this time, I had the privilege of working with Baker Award recipients, TOC champions in CX, a NFA champion in LD, and multiple NDT First-Round teams; I was very much ‘in the cards.’ Debate used to be everything to me, and I fancied myself as a ‘lifer.’ I held the naïve view that this activity was the pinnacle of critical thinking and unequivocally produced the best and brightest scholars compared to any other curricular or extracurricular pursuit.

My perspective has shifted since I’ve reduced my competitive involvement with the community. Debate has provided me with some incredible mentors, colleagues, and friends that I would trade for nothing. However, several of the practices prevalent in modern debate risk making the activity an academically unserious echo chamber. Many in the community have traded in flowing for rehearsing scripts, critical thinking for virtue signaling, adjudication for idol worship, and research for empty posturing. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t guilty of adopting or teaching some of the trendy practices that are rapidly devolving the activity, but I am no longer willing to keep up the charade that what we do here is pedagogically sound.

This ‘get off my lawn’ ethos colors some of my idiosyncrasies if you have me in the back of the room. Here are guidelines to maximize your speaker points and win percentage:

1 – Flow. Number arguments. Answer arguments in the order that they were presented. Minimize overviews.

2 – Actually research. Most of you don’t, and it shows. Know what you are talking about and be able to use the vocabulary of your opponents. Weave theory with examples. Read a book. Being confidently clueless or dodgy in CX is annoying, not compelling.

3 – Please try. Read cards from this year when possible; be on the cutting edge. Say new and interesting things, even if they’re about old or core concepts. Adapt your arguments to make them more ‘you.’ Reading cards from before 2020 or regurgitating my old blocks will bore me.

4 – Emphasize clarity. This applies to both your thoughts and speaking. When I return, my topic knowledge will be superficial, and I will be out of practice with listening to the fastest speakers. Easy-to-transcribe soundbytes, emphasis in sentences, and pen time is a must. I cannot transcribe bots who shotgun 3-word arguments at 400wpm nor wannabe philosopher-activists who speak in delirious, winding paragraphs.

5 – Beautify your speech docs. Inconsistent, poor formatting is an eyesore. So is word salad highlighting without the semblance of sentence structure.

6 – No dumpster fires. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy. I find unnecessarily escalating CX, heckling opponents, zoom insults, authenticity tests, and screenshot insertions uncompelling. I neither have the resources nor interest in launching an investigation about outside behavior, coach indiscretions, or pref sheets.

7 – Don’t proliferate trivial voting issues. I will evaluate a well-evidenced topicality violation; conditionality can be a VI; in-round harassment and slurs are not trivial. However, I have a higher threshold than most with regards to voting issues surrounding an author’s twitter beef, poorly warranted specification arguments, trigger warnings, and abominations I classify as ‘LD tricks.’ If you are on the fence about whether your procedural or gateway issue is trivial, it probably is; unless it’s been dropped in multiple speeches, my preferred remedy is to reject the argument, not the team. Depending on how deranged it is, I may just ignore it completely. I strongly prefer substantive debates.

8 – Be well rounded. The divide between ‘policy,’ ‘critical,’ and ‘performance’ debate is artificial. Pick options that are strategic and specific to the arguments your opponents are reading.

9 – Not everything is a ‘DA.’ Topicality standards are not ‘DAs.’ Critique links are not ‘DAs’ and the alternative is not a ‘CP.’ A disadvantage requires, at a minimum, uniqueness, a link, and an impact. Describing your arguments as ‘DAs’ when they are not will do you a disservice, both in terms of your strategy and your speaker points.

10 – I’m old. I won’t know who you are, and frankly, I don’t care. Good debaters can give bad speeches, and the reverse can also be true. Rep has no correlation to the speaker points you will receive. 28.5 is average. 29 is solid. 29.5 is exceptional. 30 means you’ve restored my belief in the pedagogical value of policy debate.

Lexington HS '20 (Policy debate)

UC Berkeley '24

Tl;dr: Tech > Truth. Line by line is always good. If you don't explain why you win the debate or weigh your arguments against your opponents, then I may have to do some of that work for you and that's not fun for anyone.

For Policy: During my time in high school, I went from being a 2N who went for politics DAs and process CPs to being a 2A who ran a planless aff so I like to think I'm pretty middle of the road.

For LD: Most of what I have below should apply but keep in mind that I'm not very familiar with all of the theory and tricks arguments that are exclusive to LD.

For PF: Speak confidently, be organized, show your research, and clash with your opponent. Most of my PF experience comes from coaching and you should expect me to be more on the "evaluating arguments over speaking style" side than other judges.

Put me on the email chain: rsb0117@gmail.com

Case Debate

• Make sure your aff's internal links make sense. A lot of affs get torn apart due to low-quality i/l evidence.
• Good case debate is underrated and can be the difference between a win and a loss if you minimize the aff's offense. 1NCs that recut the 1AC are powerful.

Policy Strategies

• I love politics DAs but if you have a good topic-specific DA on this topic, I'll be impressed because that's hard these days. I like it when people put emphasis on the outweighs/turns debate but in my experience, the link and internal link are the weakest parts of the DA so that's what both teams should focus on.
• I don’t think any CPs are cheating unless the aff wins that they are on the flow. If you have a blippy one line arg on theory, it's an uphill battle to win it since you're kind of destroying its purpose. For what it's worth, I think neg ground has gotten progressively worse every year. Perm shields the link arguments are severely underrated.
• I like generic CPs that are argued well with clear reasoning and aff specific CPs that are well thought out with good evidence. Judge kick isn't a default unless the aff drops it after the 2NR brings it up.
• I don’t care what the T violation is, as long as you win it. T is about what you justify and want for the best model of debate. I also don't care about in-round abuse.

K Strategies

• It looks so bad when people read Ks without knowing what they're talking about and it becomes really obvious in CX.
• I am most familiar with literature bases about anti-blackness, settlerism, capitalism, gender, security, and biopower but I'm fine with anything.
• I like a good alt explanation but I'm not one of those people who thinks that an alt needs to resolve everything- I'm even okay if you kick the alt as long as you can explain how you get offense off of the links or framework.
• K v K debates tend to come down to who explains their method and theory of power better. My favorite ones will actually find problematic aspects in each others' scholarship.
• I understand the point of long overviews but if you drop the line by line, you're letting the aff get away with murder.

FW

• I like FW debates and believe they should be about which model of debate does the most good.
• The best FW 2NCs have shorter overviews and do most of the impact/TVA work on the line by line.
• I think affs should be tied to the resolution in some way but what that means is debatable. If your aff interacts with the debate space more than the resolution, I'll still vote for you if you explain why the ballot is key.
• Debate about how to approach the resolution but please follow speech times and don't ask for 30s.

Speaks

I’ll start at 28.0 and move up and down. I usually only break 29 when I judge people who I think should make it to elims.

I will lower speaks if:

• You’re sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. Debate should be civil.
• You read an aff with trauma impacts that goes into very graphic detail (there's usually one about gender violence or human trafficking every year) and don't give a trigger warning to make sure your opponents are okay with it.
• You say warming is good/doesn't exist. I think that's bad scholarship.
• You're unclear.

I won’t be mad if:

• You ask questions/postround- it's important for learning as long as you're being genuine.
• You use flex prep AKA ask CX questions during your prep.

Glenbrook South 2014, Northwestern 2018, now Dartmouth, he/him/his

Email chain: c.callahan45@gmail.com

General thoughts:

The older I get and the more time out of debate I spend, the more of a curmudgeon I become. I am interested in in-depth, well-researched debate, and uninterested in things that are not that. This has two implications.

First, I am most likely to vote for strategies that are based in coherent literature bases, lend themselves to high-quality and detailed evidence, and have deep defenses of the way their conclusions arise. I care a lot about interactions between flows -- I'm most comfortable voting for teams that structure coherent narratives across multiple flows and through multiple speeches, and I'm uncomfortable when basic thesis claims are in tension across positions.

Second, I find that I am more willing than other judges to issue decisions in T or theory debates that amount to "I know it when I see it." Just because one relatively reasonable practice might justify the most extreme form of that practice doesn't mean those two are indistinguishable. This doesn't mean I'm unwilling to vote on T or theory. On the contrary, I'm perfectly happy to do so when the other team has engaged in a facially unreasonable practice -- just not otherwise.

K things:

If recent history is any indication, I am an excellent judge for the neg when going for a critique like security or neolib against a typical policy aff. I do think, however, that objective truth is a real thing and that well-defined actions to improve the world are generally good, so I tend to be reluctant to accept most flavors of political or philosophical nihilism.

I'm also willing to vote for teams that don't read plans. My biggest concerns in T/framework debates are the role of the negative and the kind of debates that would take place in an alternative vision of the topic. This means going beyond the typical "you could have read the cap K" and developing a coherent theory for how debate operates and why a topic without a resolutional focus would still promote clash and in-depth debate. I find it hard to vote aff when the neg has won that the aff's interpretation makes debate shallow and prevents the specific testing of aff arguments.

Old man yells at cloud:

If you answer arguments included in the previous speech's document but not read, your speaker points will suffer.

If you spend a significant amount of cross-ex time just figuring out which cards were and weren't read, or asking the speaker to simply restate their arguments, your speaker points will suffer.

If you ask the speaker to remove everything they didn't read from a speech doc, I will tell them they don't have to do that.

Better-than-average for:

50-state fiat bad, dedev, the intrinsic perm against process counterplans, author indicts/debates about qualifications

Worse-than-average for:

Climate change not real, the perm double bind, con con, any argument that could be described as trolling, cards with sentences highlighted across multiple paragraphs, impact arguments that use the word "miscalc" as a substitute for explanation

Ethics stuff:

In general, my priority in cases of ethics questions is to maximize the amount of good-faith debating that can occur. If there is a way to resolve the issue and continue the debate, I will do my best to find it.

I would generally like to assume ignorance rather than malice when it comes to things like mis-citing or mis-cutting evidence. By this I mean cards being cited incorrectly, parts of cards not appearing in the original article, cards being cut in the middle of paragraphs, etc. If this kind of thing happens, I would prefer to just disregard a piece of evidence rather than deciding an entire debate about someone's card-cutting practices. Mistakes happen and people are people, and I would like to think that all debaters are here in good faith. However, if something is super egregious, I can be convinced that it should be a reason for a team to lose.

There needs to be a recording to accuse someone of clipping cards. This is a debate-ender: if you accuse someone of clipping, I will decide the debate on that issue. It has to be clear and repeated, not just missing a line or two. I will often glance at speech docs during a debate, but I do not closely read along with the debaters.

For e-mail chains (both pls):

damiendebate47@gmail.com

mcclurecronin@gmail.com

About me - I debated for 8 years competitively, starting at Douglas High School (Minden, NV) before transferring to Sage Ridge (Reno, NV) where I debated with the incredibly brilliant Kristen Lowe. We were the first team from Northern Nevada to qualify to the TOC and had a pretty consistent record of deep elim appearances. I went on to debate at Wake Forest University (class of '17) with varying amounts of success on a wide range of arguments, finishing my career with Varun Reddy in semis of CEDA. I currently work as a legal assistant and lobbyist in Reno/Carson City when I'm not out and about judging and coaching debate.

I have also been published a couple times. I don't think any of it applies, but please don't read my work in front of me. That's just awkward.

2023-24 Update: I am just getting back into debate after a roughly 2 year hiatus. Please slow down a tad and know that my prior experience with the topic (camps, summer files, etc.) is pretty much nonexistent.

Generally - YOU DO YOU!!! I cannot stress that enough. Be aware of my general thoughts on debate, but I want to judge the debate that you want to have!! I have increasingly found that my role as an educator and adjudicator in debate prioritizes the debaters themselves, whatever argument that they want to make, and providing them with the advice and opportunities to be better that I can. It is extremely unlikely (but not impossible) that you read an argument that is entirely new to me.

Whether the 1AC has a plan, an advocacy text, or neither, truly makes no difference to me. It is up to you to explain to me why I should care. I have become increasingly frustrated with the people so quick to say "no plan, no chance at my ballot". This is a pedagogical question.

I consider myself a hard working judge. I will flow, I will read cards, and I will take the time to make the best decision I can.

That being said, the following are my thoughts on certain arguments and some pointers on how to win my ballot.

The kritik - Really dig K debates. I'm pretty well read in a lot of different theories and genuinely enjoy reading critical theory, but I still prefer clarity in explanation. The less jargon you use, the easier it will be to win a K in front of me. Overall, I find that framework args are increasingly irrelevant to the way that I evaluate these debates. Both teams will (hopefully) always win why their conversation is good, so just do the impact calc. But also answer critical framing args about ethics/reps/ontology/etc. For the aff - I find that permutations are pretty underutilized when it comes to mitigating links and find myself voting aff in policy v K debates on permutations more than I would have anticipated. Alternatives are usually the weakest part of a K IMO so leveraging bits and pieces that may not be mutually exclusive, in addition to winning some offense/defense, will go a long way. I also think impact turning is something that is truly underutilized by affirmatives that are facing off with a kritik. Digging in on certain points of neg offense can work wonders. DO NOT say things like anti-blackness, sexism, ableism, etc. are good though. PLEASE explain why your aff outweighs the K, especially if you have big stick impacts that are basically designed for some of these debates... For the neg - framing is absolutely essential. I like 2NRs on the K that guide me through my decision in a technical fashion. Links should obviously be as contextualized to the aff as possible. I am frequently persuaded by teams that realize the alt is a dumpster fire and shift to framework for the same effect. I am more likely to vote negative when there is case debating happening in line with the K, as well. Whether that is impact defense or some sort of "satellite" K, well, that's up to you.

The flourishing of performance debate has really effected the way that I think about form and content in the debate setting. I think these arguments are extremely valuable to the activity and I thoroughly enjoy debates about debate as well.

The DA - I think these debates are pretty straight forward. Do your impact calc, win your link, answer uniqueness overwhelms, etc. I like power plays where the aff straight turns a DA, especially if the 1NC was a lot of off case positions.

The CP - don't judge as many of these debates as I would like. A good counterplan with a specific solvency advocate will impress me. I think these arguments are relatively straight forward as well. In terms of theory issues like PICs bad, condo bad, etc., I truly don't have much of an opinion on these issues, but that doesn't mean I will let you get away with shenanigans. I would prefer arguments to be contextualized to in round abuse claims and how the role of the affirmative became structurally impossible. Rarely do I judge a theory debate, but I would be interested to hear more of them.

I do not default to kicking the CP for the negative. I think the 2NR needs to make that choice for themselves and stick with it. That doesn't necessarily mean I cannot be persuaded otherwise, however. This question should be raised before the 2NR for it to be persuasive to me.

Topicality - I like T debates. Limits isn't an impact in and of itself, I want to hear more explanation on how limits effects what should be your "vision of the topic" holistically, what affs and ground exist within it, and why those debates are good. Education impacts that are contextualized and specific will go a long way for me, whether it be in the context of the aff or the resolution.

I am increasingly persuaded by teams that give me a case list and explain what sort of ground exists within that limited topic.

Framework - I am an advocate for engaging with the affirmative and whatever it is that they have to say. I don't think framework should be taken off the table completely, though, and if you do plan to go for it just know that I require a lot more work on a topical version of the aff and some sort of in-road to how you resolve the claims of the 1AC. There are a lot of framework debates I have judged where I wish the 2NR did some work on the case flow -- ex: aff is about movements, 2NR makes arguments about why movements are coopted or repressed, therefore state engagement is essential.... whatever.

Procedural fairness is becoming less and less persuasive to me. I would vote on it if I have to, but I likely won't be happy.

I believe that debate is a game, but a game that has unique pedagogical benefits.

I may seem "K happy" but I promise my judging record proves that I am more than willing to vote on framework. But like I said, there needs to be more interaction between the affirmative and a limited vision of the topic. I have found that a lot of teams give case lists (both on the aff and the neg) but there is little to no clash over what those affirmatives are and why they are or are not good for debate. If you are trying to make arguments about why your vision of the topic provides a better set of affirmations, whether policy or critical, then there must be some comparison between the two. And those comparisons must have some sort of impact.

Other things - if there is anything else, please feel free to ask me. I know that some of this is vague, but my thoughts tend to change based off of the argument that is being presented and how exactly it is explained. I probably lean more on the side of truth over tech, but that doesn't mean I will make a decision wholly irrelevant to what is said in the debate unless I feel that it is absolutely necessary and something terrible happened. Plus I like to think I keep a clean flow so obvi tech still matters. I have absolutely no qualms checking debaters that are being rude or problematic. That being said, I look forward to judging you and happy prep!

UK, Peninsula

Email

---add: jordandi505@gmail.com, griffithd2002@gmail.com

---forward complaints to: debateoprf@gmail.com

---email title should include relevant information, such as the tournaments, teams, and round.

TLDR

---this is the only section that matters.

---I will flow and decide the debate accordingly. Any preferences can be overridden by technical execution and judge instruction. If I am left to my own devices on particular arguments, I am usually tempted to arrive at the most “reasonable” conclusion.

---as I am flowing and I don’t enjoy suffering, I will flow straight down. While I am a good flow, I am prone to miss things. Debate is a communicative activity and it’s on debaters to make themselves more comprehensible. That doesn’t necessarily mean you must slow down. Rather, there are several other things to do to be more clear: separate analytics with carded arguments, use numbers, differentiate using tone, and frontload argument labels.

---I am incredibly malleable. That means judge instruction and “framing” are important to how I make decisions. This also means debaters should utilize this early and often to hash out my rubric for deciding. The range of possibilities are vast but include anything from impact calculus to inserting a re-highlighting to the direction of presumption. I would much rather debaters hash these out rather than be left to my own rather weak defaults. I find myself diverging from other judges usually when I am given a set of arguments with little instruction for how to evaluate them. I assure you, extending argument #10 is less relevant than explaining the implications of #1-9. Debate becomes entirely untenable if I insert my own thoughts and opinions into certain arguments where debaters have explained it in a particular way. For example, if a team explains the link as “perception-based” and that premise is uncontested by the other team, I do not care if the aforementioned team’s evidence actually speaks to this frame or not.

---I don’t know what constitutes a “good” or “bad” argument. All I know is technical and warranted debating, usually with evidence to support it. That being said, I prefer you to read all the evidence.

---I will ask if I want a card doc, but you should assemble one under the presumption I will want one. Evidence should be formatted neatly, using verbatim, and organized coherently. This is true of both the card doc as well as every speech that features evidence.

---I want to adjudicate the round in front of me. Anything that affects my ballot is ideally confined to the start of the 1AC through the end of the 2AR. I have literally zero interest in anything extraneous to that.

---I got rid of the long section about evaluation mainly since it’s now entirely above for the most part.

Other Thoughts

---the topic: I have done quite a lot of topic research and have a better than average understanding of economics. T arguments generally seem bad, but I am quite open to an appeal to limits. What is with all this process garbage when you have the Econ DA. Like, I am pretty good for process stuff, but like the Econ DA exists.

---planless AFFs: specificity is preferable to vagueness, debate is a game could be more, but it certainly is that, AFF offense should hopefully be intrinsic to the process of debate, and K v. K debates are something I think about a lot. My familiarity with your arguments and/or literature is higher than what may be expected.

---DA: K of impacts is better than "probability first" and politics DA is good.

--CP: sufficiency framing is intuitive, judge kick good, condo good, most theory should be perm justifications, and am generally pretty NEG on most theoretical arguments. I am fine for CP competition debates, but prefer the distinction be drawn as early and clearly as possible.

---K: it should either be a DA or framing the AFF out of the debate, specificity is good, framework interps should be mutually exclusive or don't matter, I don't care fiat isn't real. Research about the K is incredibly interesting to me and I want to reward it. Demonstrating a commitment to researching topic- and AFF-specific literature and applying it as such is something that I enjoy.

---T: yes competing interps unless ridiculous, predictable limits are good, more cards are good, definitions of words are good, and internal link debating is good. A note for clarity is I can be pretty good for limits. I'm not as much in the camp of "small difference in predictability outweighs big limits DA" as people I think I am associated with.

---conditionality: since this is increasingly popular and because I've recently had to think about this a lot due to a lousy 2N I know making me answer condo, I decided to put some random thoughts here about it. These will be thoughts for the NEG just because I don't have many interesting thoughts for the AFF other than maybe that these will be the most important things for you to grapple with. Things I am good for the NEG about:

· Theory is usually "cowardice," as per the sentiment of said lousy 2N. I have yet to see a 1NC where I thought the 2A's job was so difficult that it would be impossible to substantively respond. For example, you don't NEED an 8 subpoint response with 5 cards to answer the Constitutional Convention CP. The flip side of this for the AFF is either establishing a clear and consistent violation from the 2AC onward or focusing on the "model" of debate to override my presumption that maybe this 1NC wasn't too bad.

· NEG flex is great. Two sets of arguments are persuasive to me here. First, side bias. 2AR is certainly easier than the 2NR. I am unsure about "infinite prep," but I am persuaded that AFFs typically can answer most NEG arguments thematically. For example, having a good "certainty key" or "binding key" warrant addresses a whole swath of potential CPs. Second, the topic. Teams that appeal to the nature of the topic (honestly for either side) are persuasive to me. For example, the idea that appeals to "specificity" allows the AFF to murder core generics is one I find persuasive.

· The diminishing utility of conditionality seems true to me. Appeals to "infinite condo" allowing the nth degree of advocacies is something I am presumptively skeptical about. There are only so many arguments in the NEG box that disagree with the 1AC in different ways. Take what I said about being able to answer arguments thematically to apply here. In addition, for the NEG to accomplish such a massive proliferation, arguments tend to be incomplete. Again, this was talked about above.

· "Dispo" is a bit ridiculous. The 2AC must define it (the NEG needs to implicate this still). After some tinkering, I unironically began searching for a definition of "dispo." Everything I found either defines it differently from each other or from the way it has been defined in most debates I have judged. Therefore, I can be easily convinced the phrase "dispo solves" by itself does not constitute a complete argument. The only other thought I have other than the "plank + process spam" stuff (which I like) is that I can be persuaded "dispo" would mostly only ever allow one advocacy. It now seems intuitive to me that absent 1NC construction that made sure every DA was a net benefit to every CP, the 2A could force the NEG to have to extend everything but since one links to the net benefit, it would be impossible to vote NEG.

· This is more of a random quibble that I think can be used to frame a defense of conditionality. It seems logical to me that the ability of the AFF to extend both conditionality and substance in the 1AR, forcing the 2NR to cover both in a manner to answer inevitable 2AR shenanigans (especially nowadays) is the same logic criticized by "condo bad" as the 2AR can pick and choose with no cost. It seems worse in this case given the NEG does not have a 3NR to refute the 2AR in this scenario. This is a firm view, but it seems much easier to me for the 2AR to answer the fourth mediocre CP in the 1NC (like uncooperative federalism lol) than for the 2NR to answer the 5-minute condo bad 2AR that stemmed from a 45-second 1AR.

---death good: a quick note since I have had to think about this recently. I won't vote for anything endorsing self-harm or violence against anyone in the debate. That is different than arguments like spark/wipeout, the "death k," death good, or some revolutionary praxis (for example, Huey Newton). I think the line is generally a difference between arguments about the people within the debate vs actual academic controversy.

---evidence ethics or anything else in a similar vein should typically be debated. That's what I prefer but if there is a clear violation consistent with tournament policy, the onus is on the debaters to direct me to stop the round and address it.

---"Being racist, sexist, violent, etc. in a way that is immediately and obviously hazardous to someone in the debate = L and 0. My role as educator > my role as any form of disciplinarian, so I will err on the side of letting stuff play out - i.e. if someone uses gendered language and that gets brought up I will probably let the round happen and correct any ignorance after the fact. This ends when it begins to threaten the safety of round participants. Where that line is entirely up to me." – Truf.

Debate is a fun competitive research game. Ask questions if you have them.

Yes email chain: lincolngarrett49@gmail.com

https://www.debatemusings.org/home/site-purpose-judging-debates

AFF on T

NEG on conditionality, but even I have my limit (more than 3, no evidence for a bunch of them, combining them later in the debate, amending and adding 2NC cps). NEGs are less good at defending their egregiousness in my recent experience.

I will kick the CP if I think it is worse than the status quo. A neg team doesn't have to say "judge kick" and the AFF isn't going to convince me I shouldn't do this.

I reject the argument and not the team for most every other theoretical objection to a CP.

Will vote on K's. Will care about if the plan is a good idea even if the AFF can't physially make it happen.

Don't have to read a plan, but merely saying the res is bad and dropping stuff will lead to L's.

I am not in the market to award AFF vagueness or poor explanations of cases until the 2AR

Evidence quality outweighs evidence quantity.

I will judge your debate by determining which arguments have been preserved to the final speeches and are adequately supported by evidence or persuasive explanation. Then I will compare your arguments, hopefully with instruction from you which frames the important issues and tells me how to make close calls.

Judge philosophies are a bit silly because it is the exceptionally rare case where an issue must be resolved with reference to the judge’s arbitrary preferences. Usually the debaters make their arguments, one side presents a more comprehensive approach to the important issues and frames the close calls, and then judge votes for that team. That being said, I include the following as my thoughts on issues which many teams seem to base their judge preference decisions on.

1. In an ideal world, the affirmative will read a plan that is topical. I do not feel the need to impose a hard rule here; the arguments against affirmative topicality are bad. A debate between equally competent teams should not produce the sentence: “I voted affirmative despite them being untopical.” I do not think debate would function if everyone disregarded the topic, and I think debate—a thing we all do—is good.

2. The arguments against negative conditionality are equally unpersuasive. Again, no hard rule. But I struggle to imagine an affirmative team that convincingly defends an arbitrary limit on the number of a certain type of argument that the negative may read after the 1NC has already occurred, and also that that limit requires the negative team lose the debate. If you think CPs are not “kickable,” then just say that.

3. Cross-examination answers should be binding on the team which made them. Possible exceptions include intricate clarifications of plan mechanism for the purposes of competition (which may not be suitable for on-the-spot Q&A) and promises about how the debate will unfold (e.g., whether a CP will be kicked or whether you will impact turn something if given the chance; I do not think debaters can reasonably rely on advance notice about their opponents’ strategy).

4. Initial constructives should be flowable. Rebuttals should be thoroughly understandable.

5. Speaker points are a composite of argument strategy (ultimately successful or not), clarity in speaking, cross-examination tactics, and organization.

6. I reserve the right to handle ethics challenges on an ad hoc basis to best facilitate the continuation of a fair debate. Sometimes this is impossible.

Email: adam8.thall@gmail.com

Debated for 4 years at Dallas Jesuit.

Short List

Being smart x--------- Being unsmart

Longer Evidence with warrants ---x---------- More Evidence without warrants

Tech --x------- Truth

Line-by-line -x--------- Overviews

Specificity ---x-------- Generics

Read Cards -x----------- Don't Read Cards

Condo can be good or bad

0% Risk is possible

I'm okay with "inserting stuff into the debate" only if it wouldn't make sense to read it (i.e. they forgot to highlight the word "not" in a card.) If you logically could read it, do so.

Being unclear makes me sad.

Long overviews make me sad.

ASPEC makes me sad.

I dislike 1NCs with a lot of filler/throwaway arguments. In most situations, if your off case are reaching into the double digits, I would suggest cutting back.

Online Debate

Go slower than you would in-person.

I would prefer it if you keep your camera on.

General

Clash and argument resolution are paramount. I'm impressed by topic knowledge, an organized flow, and smart CX questions. I'm not impressed by dumb tricks, speaking really fast, or backfile recycling.

Impact calculus.

Topicality

I start most debates with the idea that T is a question of competing interpretations.

Rather than debates about ground, I want T to be argued in terms of the predictability of the research burden/limit set by a definition.

Having a caselist is good.

Disads

Disads are good.

All disads are not created equally, and 2AC time allocation should reflect that.

Internal links are the weakest point of most disads.

Counterplans

They are also good.

I won’t judge kick for you. I am open to being instructed to.

For theory, I lean aff on consult, conditions, delay, international fiat, and anything else that competes off immediacy/certainty. I lean neg on PICs and multi-plank cps that aren't super egregious. Ambivalent on agent cps.

For competition, if the counterplan could theoretically fiat a possible manifestation of the plan, it's probably questionably competitive to me.

Affs should make smart permutations. Limited intrinsicness is an underemployed tool.

Kritiks

I don't have a great grasp of critical theory beyond a debate context.

Not a fan of death good Ks, or anything that establishes “suicide” as its method.

Specificity is key, historical examples are good. K debating includes case debating (which doesn't necessarily have to happen on the case flow), and does not include lengthy overviews, or skipping around on the line-by-line. Some part of the speech should call up reference to 1AC/2AC evidence to bolster the link.

Winning a theory of power without applying it to the aff is meaningless in my perspective. Contextualize links. Discuss external impacts to individual links, and how they access/turn aff offense in some way.

Aff K strategy is sometimes frustrating. Aff teams forget to talk about their aff when they debate a K. Don’t do that. Leverage offense.

FW debates on Ks have little to no impact on my decisions. The aff gets the aff, the neg gets the K, links don't have to be just to the plan. Anything beyond that I probably won't vote on.

Planless Affirmatives

In these debates I am looking for instruction about what is important + how to resolve pieces of offense.

I think critical affirmatives have immense strategic value. That being said, I am more of a fan of ones that are in the direction of/relate to in some way to the resolution, rather than ones that are just a an argument that is normally read on the negative or "a theory of power" with maybe 1.5 cards and a couple tags that reference the topic.

Usually, when affs in this genre lose, it is because they do not explain what voting for them means/looks like. Slow down on overviews and explain an impact. Affirmative teams in this genre too often rely on enthymemes.

Regarding topicality/framework. Impacts based on debate's form (fairness, clash) are better than impacts based on debate's content (topic education/legal engagement). For the affirmative, offensive arguments against negative standards should be coupled with an alternative vision of how debate should operate.

K v K rounds are probably what I have the least familiarity with. I have basic understanding of Historical Materialism. That's about it.

Impact Turns

Sometimes impact turn debates can be very enjoyable, clash, evidence heavy debates. And sometimes they can be a horrible, morally questionable waste of 2 hours. Make the debate the former rather than the latter.

Probably not going to vote on C02 Ag, Spark, Wipeout.

Non-Negotiables

There are 2 speakers on each team who have an equal amount of time to speak, and I will cast a ballot in favor of one winning team. Don't care about ins and outs, but there shouldn't be debates where students are “kicked out” or otherwise don’t participate in an entire debate. Intentionally interrupting an opponent’s speech, breaking time limits, playing board games, etc. is a loss for the team that initiates it.

Speaker Points

Don't be a jerk and don't make my flow too messy.

Will Halverson (he/him/his)

Kent Denver '20

Stanford '25

Coach at Gunn

Standard procedure: 1) Start an email chain and put me on it: willhalverson02 [at] gmail [dot] com. 2) If you have opensourced every card you have ever read (this includes the 2AC and the block), let me know before the RFD and I will boost your speaker points by .3 per debater. 3) Please compile all evidence you believe is relevant after the debate and send it to me.

Top Level:

I don't really care about most of the preferences listed below. I mostly just want to see a debate where both teams are engaging in good faith and are interested in the arguments they're reading. You do you, I'll try to leave my predispositions at the door.

I am unlikely to do any work for you or apply anything that you have not explicitly told me to apply. Judge instruction and argument resolution are the most important parts of debating. Tell me what issues are most important and why you are winning them.

I think the best debates are ones that involve both teams reading well-researched arguments, engaging in line-by-line refutation and clash, and speaking clearly. I prefer debates where both teams go for a few well-developed arguments as opposed to many un-developed ones.

For Online Debate:

Go slower than you usually would. Everyone is more unclear online. (Seriously. Please go slower.)

Please don't speak over each other. It's impossible to hear you.

If my camera's off don't start speaking.

More Thoughts:

Ks: I have a basic understanding of most K literature. Historical examples on both sides are helpful.

I will likely conclude that the aff gets the aff and the neg gets the K. Instead of asking me to completely disregard one side's arguments, make impact calculus arguments about the relative importance of representations vs hypothetical consequences.

Specificity is key. Affs should read aff-specific answers, even if they are analytics, rather than generic cards. The neg should attempt to make the K interact with the aff as much as possible (i.e. quoting your opponent's cards for links, making specific turns case arguments, applying the alt to the aff, etc.).

T vs Planless Affs: I believe that the affirmative should read an aff that is grounded in topical literature.

Fairness is the most compelling impact, but you must explain it well. I will be more persuaded by arguments about predictable limits and research burdens than arguments about skills or ground.

Ks vs Planless Affs: I have limited experience in these debates. Please help me understand your theory if you want my ballot.

DAs: Judge instruction is especially important when evaluating the different parts of the DA. This includes comparative impact calculus as well as explaining the importance of the link versus the importance of uniqueness.

I like creative link spin, even if you don't have a card.

It is possible for an argument to have zero risk, but rare.

CPs: Read the CP text slower please.

I love love love big advantage CPs. Process CPs are less great, but if you gotta read em, so be it. I would prefer that process CPs have a topic-specific solvency advocate.

I will default to judge-kicking the CP unless persuaded otherwise.

Theory: Lean aff on international fiat and multi-actor fiat. I'm neutral on 50 states. On everything else, I'm heavily neg-leaning, especially against new affs. All theory except for condo is probably a reason to reject the argument.

Either you get conditionality or you don't. Numerical interpretations are arbitrary.

I might be more persuaded by your argument that you get new answers than you think.

T vs Plan Affs: Again, I prefer predictable limits-based arguments over arbitrary arguments about ground. Invest more time in evidence comparison to win my ballot.

Framing Pages: I am persuaded by affs that leverage framing pages as kritiks of the DA. I am also persuaded by affs that argue that a utilitarian calculus is best served by evaluating probability, not just magnitude. Affs that argue that structural violence should always come first are less convincing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old Philosophy- I don't disagree with this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Thoughts on Pf and LD:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emory University '24

Dowling HS '20

*add me to the chain --- catahaus@gmail.com

General

I am a senior at Emory University and am no longer actively debating. I debated with the Emory squad my first year of college and with Dowling for 4 years in high school.

Most of my high school career I spent reading policy arguments if that matters to you. I attempt to remove all ideological predispositions from how I evaluate argumentation, but some level of preference is inevitable. I will do my best to outline my preferences below.

Evidence comparison should be made a priority throughout the debate --- asserting "their evidence is awful" or merely explaining why your evidence is "good" is not the same thing as comparing 2 cards (their warrants, author qualifications, etc.).

I am not persuaded by personal callouts or issues external to what occurs within the debate round I am judging.

I will boost your speaker points if you re-highlight evidence.

K affs

- I default to interpreting the ballot as a stasis point that delineates which team did the better debating but can be persuaded to evaluate the ballot otherwise.

- FW --- procedural fairness is the most convincing impact.

- Not persuaded by counter-interpretations to framework such as "x group of debaters do not have to be topical"

- Counter-interp comparison and case lists are very important for both sides in FW debates

Ks

- Don't like long overviews at the top --- include it throughout the flow.

- Affirmative/alternative comparisons are undervalued --- most K debates tend to hyper-focus on/devolve into large impacts rather than solvency comparison. I like Ks that are debated like CPs

- I default to weighing the affirmative but can be persuaded by other interpretations.

- Against PIKs, proposing alternative theories of language is far more persuasive to me than reading cards that say "language is less relevant than materiality."

Topicality

- I prefer limits over ground arguments

- Predictability is a pre-requisite to debatability.

- Case lists are important but should not include random arbitrary affirmatives --- include affirmatives that are related to the topic genre but are clearly untopical. I strongly dislike when teams include absurd affirmatives in their case list that no team would ever cut or, rather, read.

CPs and Theory

- I am likely to be persuaded by process CPs bad & intelligent permutations against such CPs

- I will default to judge kicking the CP unless instructed otherwise

- Persuasive arguments against PICs are internal link turns or impact turns that are offense against the net benefit.

Eric He -

Dartmouth '23

eric.he1240@gmail.com

Better than most for cp theory

Slightly neg on condo when equally debated

Kritiks are ok

Affs should probably be topical but will still vote for affs that do not have a plan text - I belive fairness is an impact

Wipeout and/or spark is :(

for LD -

really quickly - CP/DA or DA or CP+some net benefit = good, K = good, T/Condo = good, phil = eh, tricks = bad

I am a policy debater. That means I am ok with speed, and I much prefer progressive debate over traditional LD. Bad theory arguments are :( - that means stuff like no neg fiat

Offense defense risk analysis will be used

solvency is necessary

T is not a rvi

yes zero risk is a thing

please be clear

please do line by line

stop asking if i disclose speaks

also speed reading blocks at blazing speed will get you low speaker points, debating off your flow will get you good speaker points

if i have to decide another round on disclosure theory i will scream

I debated for New Trier in high school ('19) and am now debating at Dartmouth ('23).

Email: kadinhannah [at] gmail [dot] com

she/her

Last updated: July 2020

.

If you do line-by-line and read well-researched strategies, I will be happy. I don't arbitrarily intervene into questions of evidence quality, but your evidence should be good.

In high school, I read arguments across the board; now, I tend to read critical arguments on the negative more often than not. This just means I feel comfortable judging lots of different types of debates.

.

I genuinely do not care what you read. However, I'm predisposed to think that framing contentions for soft left affirmatives should not be about the conjunction fallacy and utilitarianism (do you even know what that is?) being bad, that most process counterplans are not competitive, and that kritiks can get links not solely based on the plan. These predispositions can easily be overcome by good debating.

You can defend a traditional policy interpretation of the resolution or not. I don't really care. Certainly I find some arguments more persuasive than others. Negative impact arguments about clash make much more sense to me than content-based arguments about the 1AC's educational value. Creative affirmative counter/interpretations of the resolution get a lot of mileage. That being said, I will reiterate that I don't really care what arguments you make. It's up to you to win!

.

If your presence and/or arguments make the debate unsafe for another debater in the round, I will stop the debate and you will lose. There is obviously a distinction between that and using suspect language, speaking over someone, being mean rather than aggressive, etc. It's a fine line and I get to determine when you cross it.

background

gbn '20 & umich '24

she/her/hers

yes email chain- aylakaufmandebate@gmail.com

2023-2024 topic

limited experience with the topic (only 1 tournament). 1) define your acronyms 2) spend more time explaining your t interp 3) give me a dummy proof explanation of whatever complicated technical thing you're going for. i don't know topic norms or arguments, act accordingly.

top level

1. debate should be a safe place for all people. if at any point i feel that the safety of a debater is being compromised, i will not hesitate to intervene.

2. a debate round is about 2 hours, involves 8 speeches that follow time limits, and no participation beyond the four debaters and the judge(s).

3. tech over truth. if it's dropped, it's unquestionably true. but you need to impact out why what was dropped matters. ev matters when you tell me it matters.

below are a list of my opinions in the abstract. everything below is subject to change based on the round and technical debating.

policy affs

framing: generic "no war" or "probability first" doesn't make much sense if you don't also win the disad. reading a 2ac overview is not responsive to the neg's 1nc shell.

you will be rewarded for specific and thorough case debate.

k affs

you should read a plan. i am easily persuaded by t usfg.

to win a k aff in front of me: it is not enough to win the 1ac was important or just a disad to t. t usfg is not the aff versus t but the aff's model of the topic versus the negs. for the aff to win, they must defend a model for debate and win a disad to the neg's interp that is a net benefit to theirs.

i will have no idea what to do if you run a k vs a k aff.

k's

the more your k is debated like a disad/counterplan the more i will understand it, like it, and be inclined to vote for you.

tips: over-explain and simplify everything, have aff specific links, be organized, do lbl, have an alt that solves, and slow down.

do not: read death good, use jargon, repeat yourself 8x with different big words, read a long overview.

i do not understand: anthro, bataille, high theory, cybernetics, nietzche, schopenhauer, or weird k's.

t/procedurals

in the 2nr and 2ar please do a brief overview of what you want my ballot to be and include impact calc. judge direction is especially important in these debates and i have found myself struggling to sift through what arguments are important unless they are flagged as such and there's an explanation for WHY those arguments are important. i feel like in t debates it's very common for teams to extend their offense but not do much clash, "even if" statements, or judge direction which means that some level of intervention always happens.

legal precision > limits > ground.

aspec is a theory argument and should be treated as such.

i find effects t to be entirely unpersuasive.

cp's

everything with a solvency advocate, and especially if it's aff or topic specific, i'll likely think is okay.

condo: unlikely to be abusive unless there's in round abuse. kicking planks is fine. don't mistake this as permission for spamming unnaturally short, made up, barely highlighted, or analytical counterplans.

theory args i'm more murky on: object fiat, international fiat, private fiat, and 2nc cps for no reason other than you are losing.

if your perm is not pdb or pdcp: simplify your explanations and spend more time articulating your competition arguments.

da's

i'm totally down for your crazy illogical ptx da. however, i do find disads about whether congress will or will not pass a bill to be boring.

fiat doesn't solve the link and ptx theory isn't a thing.

aff specific da's, links, and impact calculus will be rewarded.

impact turns

i am decently well read on: dedev, executive flex, heg, and soft power bad.

spark/wipeout/strikes good: let’s not.

warming: is bad.

misc.

send cards in a doc, not the body of the email.

you can't insert re-highlightings you must read them.

no clipping. auto loss.

i can't adjudicate issues that occur outside of the round.

speaker points

28 to 29.5- probably where you'll end up.

26- you were rude, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc.

you should have your zoom camera on for the entire round. speaking from a dark abyss is just weird and i will assume that you're stealing prep. just lmk if you have bandwidth/camera problems.

ways to boost your speaker points

put me on the email chain without asking.

good lbl, warrant comparison, judge direction.

use lower case letters, blue highlighting, and calibri font.

be nice, have fun, make conversation, and joke about people i'm friends with or me.

ways to lower your speaker points

double turn yourself (especially with dedev).

send your speech in anything other than a word document.

not start the round on time.

I am the Director of Debate at Georgetown University ('21-present), before which I was the Assistant DOD (2017-21). I am also an Assistant Coach for Westminster. Before that, I debated for 4 years at Georgetown. In high school, I debated only regionally, for a tiny high school in West Texas.

Please include me on the email chain: bwk9@georgetown.edu

***Update: November 2022***

My prior paradigm was 5+ years out of date. The following are patterns in my judging that you should be aware of when debating in front of me.

All of the items below, EXCEPT for the "D-Rules (not subject to debate)" section, are simply DEFAULTS in the absence of debaters making an argument that I should evaluate these things differently. I would prefer that the DEBATERS tell me how to evaluate things and why, in which case these priors should rarely , if ever, come into play.

D-Rules (NOT subject to debate)

1. Please include me on the email chain.

2. In high school debates, all of the participants are minors, and I will not hesitate to intervene in a debate if anything legally or ethically dubious is occurring. This includes any bullying, displays of sexism or racism, etc. Relatedly, there are arguments which are appropriate for the college context but that I will not--and, legally, cannot!--countenance in a HS debate (one example: the reading of uncensored explicit evidence a la Preciado).

3. Consider me dead inside with respect to any preferences regarding argumentative substance. However, I have very little tolerance for either arguments or ways of engaging that make any participant feel unsafe, and will intervene if necessary.

4. Allegations of an ethics violation will immediately end the debate. No take-backs. I will then inform the tabroom and follow the tournament's prescribed procedures, or in the lack of such procedures will unilaterally determine whether it rises to the threshold of an ethics VI. If so, the accuser will win; if not, the accuser will lose. If allowed for by the tournament rules, I will make a subjective determination regarding whether the violation (or accusation, if the accuser loses) was engaged in knowingly and/or in competitive bad faith, and if so will assign the lowest allowable speaker points. To help guide this determination: egregious or persistent clipping is a D-Rule. So is evidence falsification. Poor evidence "hygiene," e.g. ending in the middle of a paragraph, is a D-rule, but is unlikely to warrant the additional "poor speaks" sanction if it does not change the meaning of the card, whereas if it cuts out a strawperson it is likely to warrant the "poor speaks" sanction. Minor good-faith mistakes in evidence citation are very unlikely to rise to the threshold of a D-rule if it is left up to my discretion by tab and/or the tournament rules.

Things to Know About Debating In Front of Me

1. Instead of focusing only on extending and answering arguments, it would behoove debaters to begin their final rebuttals by clarifying what the comparative RFD for the Aff/Neg should be, identifying the key questions to be resolved in the debate, and then going through the process of resolving them. You can think of this as providing me a roadmap for how I should approach adjudicating the debate once it ends. Absent this, I will come up with my own roadmap, but it is substantially less likely to work out in your favor and also I will be grumpy about it.

2. I have found that the way that arguments are characterized early in the debate often bears heavily on how I interpret and resolve disputes over them in the final rebuttals. This has accounted for numerous panel splits in debates I've judged the past couple years. If, for example, an argument is articulated in one way in the CXes (all of which I flow), I will tend to treat that articulation as binding; or, if a plan or counterplan is characterized in a given way in the 2NC and the 1AR does not push back on that characterization, I will adopt that understanding of the plan or counterplan and hold the line against 2ARattempts to rearticulate it.

3. Evidence: I value quality of argument and evidence. A smart, well-warranted analytic is far more valuable than a bad card. Research is at the core of what makes policy debate unique and valuable relative to e.g. Public Forum, Parli, etc. However, evidence matters only insofar as it provides reasons to believe you about your arguments (e.g. qualifications, warrants, etc.); it never constitutes an argument itself.

4. I will not read your speech doc, a practice which I've observed account for other panel splits in recent years. I will spot check specific pieces of evidence if they are contested in CX or in speeches. I will read cards I am directed to after the debate, but it is up to you to have leveraged them effectively in your speech--and, how good a card needs to be to get the job done on a given issue is inversely proportional to how well you debate it. If debaters want their evidentiary advantage to matter--as it should--they should do more evidence comparison, including as it relates to source quality, etc. The sole exception to this: if evidence is selectively underlined to an argument not even contemplated by the original, I reserve the right to unilaterally discount it (think here of the difference between underlining a movie script or selectively underlining words in unrelated sentences to concoct an argument never made in the source, vs. cutting a cards as a strawperson - the latter I will very unhappily accept if the other team does not contest it, albeit at the cost of speaker points, whereas the former I will probably not accept, if I notice it, even if the other team does NOT call it out).

5. Conceded arguments are true arguments. However, 1.) A complete "argument" consists of a claim, a warrant, and an impact--assertions are not arguments, and thus are not "true" even if dropped. 2.) Receiving the full weight of an argument does not matter in-and-of itself--you must still unpack why that dropped argument impacts the rest of the debate, and if that explanation was not there initially then the implication component of that can still constitute a new argument to which responses are allowed.

6. CX filibustering: Some amount of it is part of the game, but if this is taken to a silly extreme, then I will not hesitate to pull a Dallas Perkins and tell you to "ANSWER the QUESTION" so as to enable a meaningful debate to occur

Argument Defaults

1. Absent arguments to the contrary, CX and 2AC clarifications of plan mandates constitute binding amendments to the plan text, making them presumptively legitimate sources of counterplan competition. (Merely saying that something is "normal means," however, does not make it a mandate, and thus is presumptively not a legitimate source of CP competition.)

2. My defaults are that conditionality is a.) an all-or-nothing thing and b.) is good. However, I have become increasingly open to contestation of either premise.

3. Plan vagueness is out of control, especially in high school, and I will gladly vote Neg on that, either as a voting issue in-itself or smart circumvention arguments or DA links about the way in which the vague plan would be most likely interpreted and applied.

4. Counterplan vagueness is also out of control. If your CP text boils down to, e.g., "do innovation" rather than outlining a mechanism for how to bolster innovation, and the Affirmative points out that that is meaningless, I will agree with the Aff.

5. Kritiks: By default I assume that the K is not a DA plus a CP and that therefore the debate is a referendum on whatever the Link/Alt is critiquing, e.g. the Aff's reps, epistemology, political paradigm, etc. I can be convinced of plan focus/FW-no Ks, particularly if it is grounded in arguments about the resolutional burden of proof and the Negative's reciprocal burden of rejoinder, though meeting in the middle is often the path of less resistance. I am also willing to adopt very Neg-friendly frameworks, e.g. 'you link you lose,' but with the proper Aff responses I will find them ultimately unpersuasive. Absent Aff FW arguments that render them applicable ('pragmatism good,' for instance, or arguments about reciprocity of burdens), I do not intuitively understand why arguments like 'movements fail,' 'transition wars,' 'alt not feasible / no one is persuaded,' etc. would be relevant considerations--but with them, I do.

Argument Defaults - K Affs

5. K Affs: I prefer that the Affirmative be "topical" slash affirm the resolution. I am pretty good for topical K Affs, insofar as I think that there is substantial room for play regarding what topical AFFIRMATION means/entails, and that the wording of the resolution does not necessarily prescribe that topical "affirmation" take the form of defending the narrow causal desirability of implementing a specific topical policy proposal.

However, if your approach when reading a K Aff is to impact turn topicality, the part I struggle with is how debate can be workable once we have left the resolution behind. To deal with this, please speak DIRECTLY to that question in some manner in the 2AR -- whether by explicitly saying that it's better for debate not to be workable, explaining why it will not become unworkable, clearly defending some alternative limiting principle for what the Affirmative win condition is in place of the resolution, or something else -- AND have that be clearly traceable to arguments you set up in the 2AC and 1AR.

6. Framework v. K Affs: I do find there to be a meaningful difference between "topicality," i.e. the Affirmative must affirm the resolution and did not, and "framework," i.e. the Affirmative did not debate or affirm in the specific manner the Neg would have liked for them to. It would behoove the Neg to leverage those differences in response to Aff offense that presumes the latter or blurs the line.

I find "fairness" unpersuasive as a terminal impact. However, this is primarily a function of Negatives explaining it poorly, because I am extremely compelled by the argument that an axiomatic precondition for debate to operate is that the Affirmative must meet their burden of proof arising from the resolution, and that until they do so there is no logical basis for the Negative having any burden of rejoinder. All of which is to say: definitely feel free to go for fairness, BUT please take care to explain why it logically precedes everything else, AND to explicitly no-link the Aff's various lines of offense, rather than just making assertions about "procedural fairness."

Alternatively: feel free to say whatever "substantive" FW offense you'd like--I do find link turns to K Affs to often be truer than the K Affs themselves--BUT please do not just assert words like "clash" or "second and third level testing" without explication of what exactly you mean, why it is unique to your model of debate/foreclosed by the Aff's, and what the impact is; AND be aware that in so doing, you run the risk of making Aff impact turns LINK which otherwise would not.

I generally do not care about "T version," except insofar as it is explained in terms of what SPECIFIC lines of Affirmative offense are solved by the being able to read the Aff topically. (For example: "we need to go to X section of the library" is probably solved by T version, and arguably solved BETTER insofar as that model preserves a stronger ability and competitive incentive to dig into that issue than does the Aff's model). I DO think that that if a given Aff is COMPATIBLE with topical affirmation, that makes it easy to moot all of their offense while retaining a clear net benefit by saying that they should've have simply read the same Aff TOPICALLY (in essence, the same function that "T version" plays in a T debate vs. a policy Aff). In contrast, K Affs which are INcompatible with topical affirmation is generally better dealt with in front of me by "do it on the Neg" rather than a TVA.

Correspondingly: I tend to think that the best K Affs are centered not on K's of the resolution or topical Affs, but of BEING TOPICAL slash a model of topical debate--in which case the Neg will need to win that their model of debate is better, and a T version will only be useful in very specific, isolated instances for specific reasons.

Sean Kennedy - Debated at: University of Kansas

Director of Debate at USC

In general I would prefer to judge based upon the perspective presented by the debaters in the debate. Framing issues are very important to me, and I think debaters should make it clear what they believe those issues are through tone, organization, or explicit labeling (ie "this is a framing issue for the debate" or some similar phrase). Embedded clash is fine, but I think that concept carries some limitations - there is only so far that I am willing to stretch my reading of a (negative/affirmative) argument on X page/part of the flow, that does not reference Y (affirmative/negative) argument on another page/part of the flow. Some of my more difficult decisions have revolved around this point, so to avoid any ambiguity debaters should be explicit about how they want arguments to be read within the debate, especially if they intend a particular argument to be direct refutation to a specific opponent argument.

Beyond that I will try to keep as open a mind about arguments as possible - I have enjoyed initiating and responding to a diverse set of arguments during my time as a debater, and I have had both good and bad experiences everywhere across the spectrum, so I think as a judge I am unlikely to decide debates based on my personal feelings about content/style of argument than the quality of execution and in-round performance.

As a caveat to that - I do think that the affirmative has an obligation to respond to the resolution, though I think whether that means/requires a plan, no plan, resolution as a metaphor, etc is up for debate. However, I am generally, although certainly not always, persuaded by arguments that the affirmative should have a plan.

I am also willing to believe that there is zero risk or close enough to zero risk of link/impact arguments to vote on defense, should the debate appear to resolve the issue that strongly.

Whether or not I kick a counterplan/alt for the 2nr (what some people call "judge conditionality" or "judge kick") depends on what happens in the debate. I will always favor an explicit argument made by either team on that score over some presumption on my part. I have similar feelings about presumption when there is a counterplan/alt. The reason for this is that although there may be logical reasons for kicking advocacies or evaluating presumption in a certain light, I think that debate as a pedagogical activity is best when it forces debaters to make their choices explicit, rather than forcing the judge to read into a choice that was NOT made or requiring that both teams and the judge have an unspoken agreement about what the logical terms for the debate were (this is probably more obvious and necessary in some cases, ie not being able to answer your own arguments, than I think it is in the case of advocacies).

Please be kind to your competitors and treat their arguments with respect - you don't know where they come from or what their arguments mean to them, and I think this community can only work if we value basic decency towards others as much as much as we do argumentative prowess. In that vein, jokes are good, but I'm certainly much less amused by personal attacks and derision than I am by dry humor or cheekiness.

Judge Philosophy

Conflicts: UGA, Emory University, and North Broward

Email: Brianklarmandebate@gmail.com - Yes, put me on the thread. No, I won't open all of the docs during the round and will likely ask for a doc of cards I find relevant at the end.

2024 Updates:

I am not a fully time debate coach. I am working with the UGA & North Broward debate teams part time.

I am someone who believes tech > truth. However, I do not look at cards during debates, so if your arguments are not clear by explanation/flowable tags/very clearly read card text, they are not "tech" that is on my flow. My favorite debates involve strategy (think: creative "cross applications," argument that are "good because the other teams can't read their best answers," etc). I enjoy a good theory debate (conditionality, solvency advocate, perms, politics theory arguments, etc.) and I would prefer that debates have some depth by the end of the negative block.

College - Assume I know things about the topic, but have not cut cards on it in the past year. I have had conversations with debaters/coaches and am very familiar with nuclear strategy. My knowledge of the college topic extends to knowing: assurance, deterrence, IR Ks, military process CPs*, and anything that would have been read on the past college exec power/military presence/alliance topics. I have written many iterations of both ICBMs and NFU affs & negs.

*If you are going for a T argument or process CP, keep in mind that I could not tell you the wording of the resolution off of the top of my head, so any arguments related to grammatical construction of the resolution might require you explaining with another sentence or going a bit slower. I am under the impression that the topic is pretty small and the negative ground is pretty good, so make sure to impact your limits (or "functional limits")/ground arguments

High School - I have had very little interaction with the current topic. I cut a number of cards on UBI in the past, but I know very little about the other parts of the topic. I did not teach at a debate camp. I have judged a handful of rounds and they were almost all on capitalism or race Ks. I am under the impression that the "core" negative arguments are some combination of States, Politics, "Redistribution" PICs, and Ks about the economy; I assume that the "core" affirmative arguments are all related to the economy and inequality.

2021 Post-NDT Updates:

(1) "X Outweighs Y" - If the 2NR/2AR does not start with some version of this (or include this elsewhere), I will almost certainly vote the other way. I don't super care how you say it, but if you are unwilling to say that the impact you will win is more important than the impact the other team will win, things aren't going well.

(2) T & Theory - I seem to like them more than everyone else I judge with. Go for conditionality bad! I don't necessarily think it is true but never seem to hear 2NC or 2NR blocks that have great offense or impact calc. After judging on a slew of panels, I realize that I am more likely to be into technical theory & T arguments then others. I also tend to expect complete arguments in the 1NC/2AC/2NC (theory needs warrants, T needs the necessary defense and offense).

(3) Tech > Truth - I feel like I have said this a number of times, but I realized that I think this more than others (or at least more than people that I judge with). A "bad" disad has high risk until/unless answers are made. This also has made me amenable to voting on some not great disads vs. planless affs just on the basis of 2ACs lacking necessary defense.

(4) T vs. Planless affs - I have found that I tend to vote affirmative when something is conceded or answered completely incorrectly. I tend to vote negative when the negative goes for a limits/fairness impact and responds to every argument on the line by line. I tend to find myself confused about the relevance of all arguments that the content of the resolution is either good or bad. I feel like I find my voting record to be like 50/50, but I haven't done the math.

(5) Decision making process - I tend to read less cards then others who I judge with. Not because I am against reading cards, but because I only read evidence to resolve questions in a debate. If you want me to read cards (which you likely do), make them relevant.

(6) Points - At the NDT, my points were about .1-.2 below everyone else on every panel. I plan on upping my points by .1-.2. That said, I don't give great points.

2020-2021 Updates - Online Judging: Judging online is difficult - a few implications:

(1) Ask if I am in the room / paying attention before you start speaking. Non-negotiable. "Brian, are you ready?" or "Klarman, are you here?" or anything that requires me to respond. I will give you a thumbs up or say yes (or I am not in the room and you shouldn't start).

(2) Clarity matters more - I don't usually follow along in the doc and I am unlikely to read cards from both teams if one team is significantly clearer. On a related note, organization and numbering can help a lot with clarity because it tells me what arguments to expect.

(3) Technology skills matter - Emails should be sent out on time. If you are taking "no prep" for the 2AC, 1NR, etc. I assume that means the doc is sent and we are ready to go. I get that tech issues happen, but unnecessary tech time hurts decision time and makes concentration harder.

(4) Interesting arguments help keep attention and boosts points - I am really trying to flow and get everything down. I flow CX. I line up arguments. I am more aggressive than most about the flow. That being said, staring at the computer for the 3rd or 4th round of the day is very difficult. I will do my best. I find flowing very important because it lets the debaters do the debating instead of me deciding what I like. That said, online it is taking me a little more energy to focus. I've found when I hear arguments that I either haven't judged before, things I haven't blocked out, or even a new explanation, I tend to think the debate is more interesting which helps points & engagement. I really do love debate, so if you are excited, I will be too. On the other side, if this is the 9th time i am hearing the same school read the same block (and this could be Politics, T, Fairness bad, Deterrence or a K) with no emphasis at the same tournament, its hard to focus.

(5) Internet issues - they happen, I get it. They might happen to you, they might happen to me. I've heard best practice is to have some backup of yourself speaking in case this occurs. If the tournament has rules, follow those. Otherwise I will likely just ask tab what to do if this happens. I'm open to other ideas of how to deal with it. Please please please have one (or all) debaters look to make sure the judge hasn't gotten booted from the room.

2020-2021 Updates - Other:

(1) Points - I think my points average around 28.5. I usually don't go under 28 unless something has gone wrong. If you get a 29.3 or 29.4 that is very good. I'm willing to go above that, but mostly when I hear something and am like "wow, that was memorable. I am going to try to tell people who I coach/teach in lab/judge to do things like this in the future."

(2) I often decide debates by (1) determining what I need to decide (2) looking through my flow for if it is resolved and then (3) reading cards if necessary. I'm unlikely to read a card (for the decision) to figure out something that the debaters never made clear. That said, I am happy to talk about some card or look through your evidence to give advice after the debate if you want - I tend to think debate is collaborative and we should all make each other better.

(3) I miss theory debates - this is the thing I have thought the most about, this is how I debated, and I just think its fun. I don't like "pointless" theory, but if you can convince me that something is the debate in the literature and predictable - from process CPs to T arguments to even spec arguments - I'm happy to hear it. That said, if you make your theory argument intentionally blippy ("ASPEC, they didnt, its a voter") I won't care.

I also left my old paradigm up here, but I think it mostly says: I did more "DA/CP/T" stuff than "K" stuff, I am familiar with "K" literature about race/gender/biopower/cultural studies, I like specific strategies, good case debating always impresses me, and I am very particular about the flow.

Old Stuff:

Preferences: I don't really care about what argument you make. I tend to think bad arguments will lose. The debate things I think about the most are counterplans and topicality arguments. That being said, I cut everything and coach everything. I feel like I mostly judge K debates where no one agrees about anything at this point. In those, I generally am familiar with that set of arguments (I am completing my MA in cultural studies, focusing on questions of race & gender) but not how to fit them into a debate. I tend to be very comfortable with how DAs, CPs, T arguments, and case fit into debate, but I tend to do weird research so I might not know what all the technical stuff of the CP is. That also means that the purpose of a K argument (or answer to the purpose) might require more explanation than the purpose of another argument. The things I think you actually need to know about me are below. I tried to lay out what I do in most debates while they are happening and afterwords and be as honest as possible.

Flowing: I will try to flow every argument in the debate. I expect that debaters will be doing the same thing. I could not possibly care less what the speech doc says or if you are "skipping a card" in the doc (that being said, I would like to be on the chain because I like glancing at cards after debates & trying to learn more about the topic/have informed discussions after the debates; also if you are doing some super annoying thing in the doc just to mess with the other team, I will likely be upset at you when I realize that in the post round/give points). When I flow speeches that set up argument structure (1nc on case, 2ac on off case), I will attempt to number the speech and will give higher speaker points to 1ns and 2as who set up that structure themselves (as well as be able to better understand their arguments; the 1nc that makes 4 analytics in a row without numbering is basically unflowable which means when the 2ac drops something I won't care). In subsequent speeches, I will go by the order of those numbers and will attempt to find what you are answering before I flow what you say. This means that if the 2nc starts on 2ac 4, I will mostly likely miss the first few arguments trying to figure out where to flow it (unless they say "2ac 4 - X - here's our answer" which would just be easily flowable but I might be confused about why the 2nc started on 2ac 4). If the 2nc starts on 2ac 1, I will not have an issue flowing. If the negative block (or 1ar) decides that the order is irrelevant, I am likely to be very grumpy; it is hard to vote on technical concessions or other things if the flow gets ruined and it makes it hard to tell a 1ar "you dropped X" when the block does not answer 2ac arguments. In addition to initial numbering, I will be able to better understand later speeches if you give me some idea (probably by number or argument) where the thing you are extending is on my flow. If you would like to only extend an impact turn or thumper or some no internal link argument in the 1ar that is 2ac 9 on my flow but don't tell me that you are starting at 2ac 9, it is going to take me a minute to find it on my flow. If, however, the 1ar goes to a flow and says "2ac 9 - they dropped X - here's what it is and why it matters" I will be able to immediately find it on my flow (it is easier to find numbers than exact arguments on a flow).

CX: I love CX. It is maybe my favorite "speech." I often try to flow it or take some notes at the least. That means you should pick words carefully in CX. I will especially try to write down anything about the advocacy and frameworks for evaluating debates (meaning metrics for thinking about things, which is not always how debate uses the word). CX can be fun even when teams get heated, but when CX is just people yelling at people and it is clear that people are more upset than enjoying things, I tend to lose interest. I like when people answering questions are honest, explain things, etc. I sometimes have the docs open and if we are having a fight about some card, I will look at it. I am not yet entirely comfortable with this, but if I miss the answer to a question, I may re-ask for the answer after the timer (I will do this with things like status or clarification, I don't think I will with other things yet but I might). I am also not comfortable interrupting CX to say things, but if someone is intentionally saying something that isn't true to answer clarification questions or refusing to answer clarification questions I may do so. If I make any definitive judgement about these things, I will try to update my philosophy again.

Look at me: I do not have a good poker face. I'd recommend looking for expression or other gestures. When I cannot flow people, I tend to look very confused. Same when an argument is bad. When I think an argument has already been explained and/or you are saying things that aren't arguments, I tend to sit there with my pen on my paper waiting for you to say something that needs to be flowed.

How I make a decision: At the end of the debate, I try to figure out what arguments are going to decide the debate (there tend to be 1-3), parse those out, and figure out what happens from there. It is generally better if debaters tell me what those things will be either on the line by line or in an overview (this is the only reason I could really imagine having an overview unless it is to explain some super complicated thing). I tend to think the best speeches are the ones that both identify these key points, explain why they win and then what happens if they win those key things. If there is no discussion of key points (either implicit or explicit), it is highly possible that I will try to find a few points that are key and then explain my decision from there (I determined this argument was probably the most important, here's how I evaluated it, here's why it deals with lots of other stuff). Any decision like that just makes me grumpy, especially because it always ends with the judge CX forever about why I decided this way and my answer tends to be "I didn't know how else to decide"

Speaker points: I'm going to be honest, I don't know if I understand this entire speaker point thing. I think my points might be a bit low. I don't plan on just raising them; if you need higher points I get that I might not be the judge for you. At the moment, I don't think that raising points just to raise them is a great idea because it eliminates a lot of range and variation in points that I think signal improvement for debaters and help communicate about the debate. I might revisit this later on if people want. I don't really know what an "average" speech looks like. If I had to try and articulate some made-up scale, it would probably look something like this: if the speech you gave was the best it could have been and/or basically won you the debate, its in the 29.3+ space. If the speech kept things going and helped a bit but not as much as it could, its in the 28.7+ range. If the speech was fine but didn't have much value value, I tend to think its in the 28.2+ range. If the speech wasn't good and didn't help much, it in the 27.5+ area. If the speech is bad, we are in the like 27 or even 26.8+ range. I don't think I've given many points lower than 27 and if I did, something must have gone very wrong. I tend to find most speeches between that 28-29 range. I think I average in the low 28s but I don't really know or care. Only a few speeches have just crushed the debate for me. I tend to have a lot of issue judging debates when I feel that all the speeches were about 28.2s or something and I have to give people different points. I think my default is to make the thing I think the top end or top middle (so if it was 28.2, maybe i'd give 28.3-28 to everyone). That being said, I think I am more willing to use high range in points based on speeches. I am also happy to add points for well used CX, good numbering, clarity of cards and highlighting (like if I can understand all the warrants in the evidence while you are reading), partners who work well together and make each other look good (I think basically every bold move in debate could be characterized by the 2nr/2ar as a big mistake or a big efficiency gain; if you can convince me that the 1ar under-covering the DA was to trick them to go for it, I will likely think the 1ar choice was smart and hence deserves better points, same with other speeches), etc. If people have a better way of doing speaker points, I am happy to talk about it.

Do not: Clip cards, lie, use something out of context, or do anything else unethical. These will result in loss of speaker points or loss of rounds.

Little Rock Central '20

Please add me to the email chain: valorielam@gmail.com

TLDR: I am fine with anything! I went for kritikal args most of high school but I have a general understanding of policy args and am a very tech-oriented judge. If you do impact calc, explain your args, contextualize, and answer arguments then you will be okay.

Jack Landgraff

Kent Denver 2020

Northwestern 2024

jacklandgraffdebate [at] gmail.com

I hate process counterplans.

I am not a good flow.

Fairness is a good impact to Topicality. I am not inclined to vote for visions of debate that lack predictable limits.

I will ignore the fiat doublebind.

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

I use he/him pronouns.

Last updated: 1/31/2024

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

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

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

Top level things:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How I decide debates:

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

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

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

Other misc things:

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

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

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

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

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

I do not follow along with speech docs during debates.

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

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

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

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

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

Some specifics:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ethics Challenge Addendum:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zoey Lin (she/her/hers)

Lexington '20 | Dartmouth '24

Please put me on and properly name the email chain! [lin.debate@gmail.com] [Tournament - Round X: Aff Team v Neg Team]

I'm colorblind, so please highlight in green (or give me time to change your color)

Also if y'all wanna bring me food, like... I won't say no. To be clear I'm not asking for food, I'm just saying it will make me happy <3

tl;dr

Be genuine, be nice, just do what you’re good at. I promise I'm very low maintenance, as long as you're nice, give me an outlet and a chair, and are a reasonable human being I will and flow what you say! Don't be rude pls

This picture encapsulates both my personality and my judging philosophy

Please be super clear. I can flow you, but I might not be able to flow you + mumble + echo + distance + zoom. If you're unclear and lose even though "but I said it in my speech", imma give you this look: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Policy (Updated 9.23.23)

Do what you're good at, don't adapt for me (yes I have biases, but if I'll be persuaded more by what you say than what I think).

Frame the round and tell a good story, unless told otherwise I am tech > truth, theory is a reason to reject the arg (but condo is a reason to reject the team), judges don't kick, and anything goes. Other than that, I am a sucker for specific strategies. Even if you don't go for them I will reward case specific research (aff recuts, counterplans that solve the internal link, specific pics against k affs, etc). Do your best with neg ground—even though you need a DA, that's not an excuse for awful ptx scenarios.

Other thoughts: I don't think enough 2a's are willing to go for theory and I'm happy to vote on 2+ condo bad!

What You're Here For (K Stuff)

Debate is definitely a game and clash is an intrinsic good for debate. I find myself particularly persuaded by switch-side debate arguments and well crafted TVAs. Despite that, I think debate could be much more than a game even though we're here "playing" it and the history of the args I read supports that idea. I'm most familiar with and went for identity critiques (anti-blackness and queer theory) and security (fem ir, racial ir, and traditional ir). I'm pretty decent for psychoanalysis and various anti-capitalist lit bases (marxism, left accelerationism, semio-capitalism). I'm average for other white pomo, and pretty bad for death good. That being said, I don't want to listen to nebulous appeals to buzzword impacts... K teams win when they are able to contextualize their k to their opponent's args, especially with links. You don't need a "good k" you need a well applied k.

LD (Updated 11.18.23)

I'm a policy debater who doesn't care what you read. The only thing you should consider is that although I will flow your argument and its warrants, I might not fully understand it to your liking (i.e. just because you said permissibility doesn't mean I'll fill in the warrant for you).

If you want to know specifics though, I'm definitely better for k/larp compared to phil, and definitely questionable for theory and tricks*. I don't care if you defend the topic, but have some sort of grounded criticism, please.

Long LD Specific Paradigm: I aspire to be Henry Curtis

*Caveat: Lexington Debater Brett Fortier told me "if you're willing to listen to tricks, you're a tricks judge." While that is me... I really do not want to listen to RVI's, trick's, nebel t, a prioris and just LISTS of paradoxes. Much thanks!

Misc Stuff

I flow on a computer and sometimes often away or stare blankly. Don't worry I can type without looking, this just means I'm thinking

I've realized that zoom debate has made it so that y'all prep so loudly. I don't super care but it's also just jarring that I can hear all of your conversations about the debate and especially your conversations about me...

Bottom Line

Debate is a great place to challenge yourself and have fun while doing it... the first thing that I want to see is that everyone is enjoying themselves and having a good time. Some debaters think that they're too good or cool to afford their opponents respect and decency in-round: if this is you, I will not be a good judge to have in the back of your round. We are all here to have fun and get better, so if you are jeopardizing that in any way, don't expect me to be as willing to vote for you.

I really care about the participation of queer debaters, especially gender minorities and poc. It's really difficult to find queer spaces in general, never mind in debate and worst of all in an online debate environment. I will be extremely sensitive to the way people who are not cis white men are treated in the debate space. If you are looking for additional resources, please check out https://www.windebate.org/ for the most passionate mentors and https://www.girlsdebate.org/ for funny memes, cool people, and amazing overall help.

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to shoot me an email or ask before the round starts. I'd be happy to clarify anything on this paradigm or offer you any other insight that I might have forgotten to include here.

Good luck!

**standard operating procedure: 1) yes, if you are using an e-mail chain for speech docs, I would like to be on it: mikaela.malsin@gmail.com. The degree to which I look at them varies wildly depending on the round; I will often check a couple of cards for my own comprehension (because y'all need to slow down) during prep or sometimes during a heated cross-ex, but equally often I don't look at them at all. 2) After the debate, please compile all evidence that *you believe* to be relevant to the decision and e-mail them to me. I will sort through to decide which ones I need to read. A card is relevant if it was read and extended on an issue that was debated in the final rebuttals.

updated pre-Shirley, 2013 

Background: I debated for four years at Emory, completed my M.A. in Communication and coached at Wake Forest, and am now in my 2nd year of the Ph.D. program at Georgia.

global thoughts: I take judging very seriously and try very hard to evaluate only the arguments in a given debate, in isolation from my own beliefs. I'm not sure that I'm always successful. I'm not sure that the reverse is true either.  In the limited number of "clash" debates that I've judged, my decisions have been based on the arguments and not on predispositions based on my training, how I debated, or how my teams debate. 

speaker points: I will use the following scale, which (while obviously arbitrary to some degree)  I think is pretty consistent with how I've assigned points in the past and what I believe to represent the role of speaker points in debate. I have never assigned points based on whether I think a team "should clear" or "deserves a speaker award" because I don't judge the rest of the field in order to make that determination, I judge this particular debate. EDIT: I think the scale published for the Shirley is very close to what I was thinking here.

Below 27.5: The speaker has demonstrated a lack of  basic communication. 

27.5-27.9: The speaker demonstrates basic debate competency and argumentation skills. Some areas need substantial improvement.

28.0-28.4: The speaker demonstrates basic argumentation skills and a good grasp on the issues of importance in the debate. Usually shows 1-2 moments of strong strategic insight or macro-level debate vision, but not consistently. 

28.5-28.9: Very solid argumentative skills, grasps the important issues in the debate, demonstrates consistent strategic insight.

29-29.5: Remarkable argumentative skills, understands and synthesizes the key issues in the debate, outstanding use of cross-ex and/or humor.

29.6-29.9: The speaker stands out as exceptionally skilled in all of the above areas.

30: Perfection.

Critical arguments: My familiarity is greater than it used to be but by no means exhaustive.  I think  that the "checklist" probably matters on both sides.

Topicality: I believe in "competing interpretations" with the caveat that I think if the aff can win sufficient defense and a fair vision of the topic (whether or not it is couched in an explicit C/I of every word), they can still win. In other words: the neg should win not only a big link, but also a big impact. 

CP’s: Yes. The status quo is always a logical option, which means the CP can still go away after the round. (Edit: I am willing to stick the negative with the CP if the aff articulates, and the neg fails to overcome, a reason why.) Presumption is toward less change from the status quo. 

DA’s: Big fan. At the moment, I probably find myself slightly more in the “link first” camp, but uniqueness is certainly still important. There CAN be zero risk of an argument, but it is rare. More often, the risk is reduced to something negligible that fails to outweigh the other team's offense (edit: this last sentence probably belongs in the all-time "most obvious statements" Judge Philosophy Hall of Fame). 

Theory: RANT is the default. Probably neg-leaning on most issues, but I do think that we as a community may be letting the situation get a little out of control in terms of the numbers and certain types of CP’s. I think literature should guide what we find to be legitimate to the extent that that is both possible and beneficial. 

Good for speaker points: Strategic use of cross-examination, evidence of hard work, jokes about Kirk Gibson (edit: these must be funny) 

Bad for speaker points: Rudeness, lack of clarity, egregious facial hair.

mancininicholas20@gmail.com

I'm Nick. I debated for North Broward (won 2019 TOC) and Dartmouth (cleared at 2021 NDT). In high school, I solely read critiques. In college, I solely read policy arguments. As a result, I am willing to listen to most arguments. I will evaluate the round based on the technical execution of the debaters rather than my personal preferences.

Please go slow and use numbering.

The UC Berkeley (Feb 2024) tournament will be the first time I have judged on the high school topic. Help me so I can help you - assume I know nothing and explain your arguments more than you normally would.

Assistant Director of Debate -- UTD... YOU SHOULD COME DEBATE FOR US BECAUSE WE HAVE SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

So I really dont want to judge but if you must pref me here's some things you should know.

Arguments I wont vote on ever

Pref Sheets args

Things outside the debate round

Death is good

General thoughts

Tl:Dr- do you just dont violate the things i'll never vote on and do not pref me that'd be great.

Line by Line is important.

I generally give quick RFDs this isnt a insult to anyone but I've spent the entire debate thinking about the round and generally have a good idea where its going by the end.

Clarity over speed (ESP IN THIS ONLINE ENVIRONMENT) if I dont understand you it isnt a argument.

****NEW THOUGHTS FOR THE NDT**** I generally dont think process CPs that result in the aff are competitive -- I'm more likely to vote on perm do both or the PDCP if push comes to shove... could I vote on it sure but I generally lean aff on these cps.

Online edit -- go slower speed and most of your audio setups arent great. (See what I did there)

Only the debaters debating can give speeches.

I catch you clipping I will drop you. So suggest you dont and be clear mumbling after i've said clear risk me pulling the trigger.

ecmathis AT gmail for email chains... but PLEASE DONT PREF ME

Longer thoughts

Can you beat T-USFG in front of me if your not a traditional team.... yes... can you lose it also yes. Procedural fairness is a impact for me. K teams need to give me a reason why I should ignore T if they want to win it. Saying warrantless claims impacted by the 1AC probably isnt good enough.

Aff's that say "Affirm me because it makes me feel better or it helps me" probably not the best in front of me. I just kinda dont believe it.

Reading cards-

I dislike reading cards because I do not fell like reconstructing the debate for one side over another. I will read cards dont get me wrong but rarely will I read cards on args that were not explained or extended well.

K-There fine I like em except the death good ones.

In round behavior- Aggressive is great being a jerk is not. This can and will kill your speaks. Treat your opponents with respect and if they dont you can win a ballot off me saying what they've done in round is problematic. That said if someone says you're arg is (sexist, racist, etc) that isnt the same as (a debater cursing you out because you ran FW or T or a debater telling you to get out of my activity) instant 0 and a loss. i'm not about that life.

Gabriel Morbeck

Strath Haven High School (PA) - 2014 to 2016

Emory University - 2016 to 2020

gsmorbeck28@gmail.com

I am currently an assistant coach at Emory and a part-time coach at Woodward Academy.

Please add me to the email chain!

If you're judged by me, here are the most important things for you to know:

1. I prefer affs that defend a topical plan. If they do not, I find framework arguments about fairness and limits very compelling. If you choose to not defend a plan, you have to play at least some defense on fairness/limits to make any education arguments compelling.

2. I think about debates through an offense/defense lens more than most judges. Unwilling to vote on presumption in almost every situation.

3. How I evaluate your explanation is shaped by how much quality evidence you have. I think I care about evidence quantity much more than most judges. Reading 5 cards on something in the 1AR is much more likely to get you back into the debate than explaining why you think its wrong.

4. Tech is important, but so is developing robust positions throughout the debate. If you go for something that the other team has hardly covered or dropped, but you have barely spent any time developing it, I can't guarantee I'll vote on it.

5. Strong neg bias on condo. Generally fine with 2NC counterplans, modifying/kicking planks, etc. I do think that neg teams need to say judge kick in the 2NR for me to consider it. I don't find most other counterplan theory arguments very compelling. You're much better off winning competition arguments than saying that a whole category of counterplan doesn't belong in the debate.

6. I'm not very good at evaluating T debates against policy affs. Go for it at your own risk.

7. I love politics DAs.

8. Debate is fun! I understand everyone cares a lot about wins and losses, but I appreciate debaters who remember that they're functionally just playing a game with their friends on the weekend. I'll enjoy judging you if you enjoy being in the debate!

LD paradigm

I debated policy for 6 years so debates that look closest to policy debates are what I probably want to see. I want to see debates about substance. Plans and counterplans are great, critiques too. Please do impact calc--at least the top 30 seconds of the final rebuttals should be devoted to it.

I care about evidence. I'd rather see you read more cards to build your arguments (throughout every speech except the 2AR) than rely on spin.

I'm meh for theory. From my understanding there is generally a lower threshold for theory args in LD than in policy, so if your are making impassioned appeals to fairness I probably do not feel as cheated as you do.

In K debates--do link debating. I care more about that than framework/role of the ballot args. The strength of the link affects how I view every other arg in the debate.

Values stuff--I generally lean towards util/consequentalism when thinking about debates.

Strath Haven '19

Emory '23

andrewpak4@gmail.com

I care about the flow a lot. Tech determines truth. Explanation matters more than evidence, but in close debates, evidence quality and quantity become very important.

I don't know much about this NATO topic. Please keep this in mind, especially for T and theory arguments.

K:

- I'm good for T vs K Affs.

- I don't care that fiat isn't real.

Policy:

- I'm fine for T vs policy Affs, but I would usually prefer that the Neg goes for CPs/DAs/Ks vs these Affs.

- I don't care about framing contentions. Just answer the DAs.

Theory:

- Condo is probably good. I won't judge-kick the CP unless the Neg tells me to.

- Everything except condo is probably a reason to reject the argument.

rujuta.debate@gmail.com

BACKGROUND:

gbn '20 & dartmouth '24

rounds judged on the 23-24 fiscal redistribution topic - 3. be SO clear when using acronyms or explaining concepts to me because I do not know this topic.

TOP LEVEL:

- tech over truth/personal opinion unless your argument is egregiously offensive - an argument is a claim, warrant, and an impact

- not good for k affs, ok for ks with das inside of them, good for almost everything else

- condo is probably the only reason to reject the team

- i won't vote on things that happened outside of the round. i won't assign speaker points based on in-round deals.

- i believe that my role as a judge includes the responsibility to maintain debate as a safe space for participants (especially given that most high schools are minors) and i will act accordingly in response to sexism/homophobia/racism etc.

- everything below is a personal opinion that i will contradict in my ballot if you win the flow

POLICY AFFS: framing pages have never had any relevance in any debate ive judged

T: i care a lot about evidence quality and comparison in these debates

DAs: do whatever

CPs: good for adv cps and legitimate, well-researched pics, meh for cheaty cps. i won't judge kick unless i'm told to

IMPACT TURNS: love them except for wipeout and spark - more ridiculous impact scenarios are entertaining but not compelling

K AFFS: for me to vote for your k aff you should at minimum have a connection to the topic. i refuse to adjudicate a decision in which my ballot is a referendum on identity or a survival strategy. EVERYONE IN THESE DEBATES NEEDS TO SLOW DOWN - if you choose to spam analytics without sending them I can’t catch your 20 counter interps or your 20 DAs to those counter interps.

FOR THE NEG:

- @ t/fw teams: fairness is probably an internal link not an impact but i can be convinced otherwise. i prefer limits and clash as impacts.

- neg teams that execute a well-prepared, aff-specific strategy (a pic with a small net benefit, an aff specific k...) against a k aff will get 29.5+ in speaks. i find these debates far more interesting than framework debates BUT i've found that im more likely to vote neg on fw (this information is probably not helpful sorry)

Ks: the closer your k is to a da or impact turn with a cp THAT ACTUALLY SOLVES the better it will go for you. dont read high theory.

THEORY: personally not a fan of cheaty cps but i'll listen to them. new affs warrant neg terrorism.

Tufts Veterinary '24

Michigan State ‘20

Oakwood High School, OH ‘16

she/her

pepperdebate@gmail.com

I do not coach on this topic - I don't know acronyms, I have no concept of what ground looks like. Please explain these things to me.

I debated for 4 years in high school, graduated from MSU with degrees in zoology and public policy after debating for 4 years, and am currently in veterinary school. (On a side note: please email me if you have any questions about vet school admissions! They're unnecessarily opaque and I'm so happy to help anyone out.)

Don't be rude. If you need extrinsic motivation, I'll lower your speaks if you're mean.

I think this is me becoming an old person, but the trend of asking for a copy of the speech with unread cards taken out bugs me. Please flow.

Prep time ends when you're ready to attach the doc to the email. If you need to do anything else within the doc, it's still prep.

CPs -

I like counterplans that solve case. By that I mean saying “cp does everything case does” without any explanation isn’t gonna cut it if the aff has any type of solvency deficit.

I default to judge kicking the counterplan unless the aff goes for a links to net benefit argument, but can be easily convinced otherwise if that debate starts early.

DAs -

Love 'em. I'm down for your weird DA, as long as you have the ev and can explain it well.

I definitely think politics is dead but also recognize how few DAs there are, so you can read those DAs in front of me if you feel they're your best strat. I voted for them many times last season, and definitely went for stupid politics DAs in undergrad.

I've voted aff on 0 risk of the DA before and will probably do it again.

Ks –

I debated almost exclusively against the K in college, but that wasn't because of any ideological commitments; I am sympathetic to any argument that isn't death good or science bad.

Just like counterplans, I won't do any work for you. If you're claiming the alt solves the case, explain how.

Links/impacts generally need to prove that the aff is worse than the status quo, but I am very willing to vote neg on 0 risk of aff solving + alt solvency of something that's not the aff.

T –

competing interps > reasonability

You cannot win reasonability without a counter-interp.

If you're making an "x modifies y" argument, I won't vote for it if you're not actually correct about the function of that modifier/auxiliary. This is a bias that I am not willing to shake; my semantics professors would never forgive me.

K affs -

I'm down. The aff needs to be clear about their solvency mechanism. When answering T, defining neg ground is always necessary.

For the neg, I'm always happy to judge a methods debate, and I am sympathetic to T IF the neg team argues it in an empathetic way that does not preclude discussions of critical literature. The neg impact I am most persuaded by is clash, I am not very persuaded by fairness.

Coppell 20

Emory 24

Email Chain: shreyasr711@gmail.com

I really do not think extensively about debate outside of actively debating and researching the college nukes topic to have strong opinions about certain argument styles. In high school, I was a 2A that exclusively read a critical affirmative. In college, I was a 2N whose 2NRs are almost always policy positions or framework. The only "arguments" I will not adjudicate are those that put other debaters on trial or forward ad hominem attacks.

I have much respect for debaters who have a strong grasp of their arguments, make bold yet strategic decisions in-round, and work hard to research and innovate. Though I value and reward topic-specific positions, I nevertheless understand the utility of debate's "greatest" hits like Con Con and the Fiat K.

Cypress Bay High School 2020

Emory University 2024

Note for 2023-24 Season: I have not done debate-oriented research for this topic, so I likely will not be the most familiar with your arguments before the debate begins. I have done some light research on topics peripheral to the resolution this year for my undergraduate work though.

hielijah@gmail.com

TLDR: I primary focused in high school on reading CPs, DAs, and Affs with plans, but I will vote on whatever. Speaker points explanation is at the bottom of the paradigm if you are here for that. I enjoy pretty much any debate, so don't let my paradigm influence what arguments you make. Just have a fun time. Please add me to the email chain before the round starts. If you have any questions just ask before the round

DA's: Impact comparison is super important. I've always thought that politics DA's are usually pretty bad, but if you are bringing the heat with the politics cards on the neg, or can point out the flaws in your average politics DA during the round I will be extra happy.

CP's: I am not a huge fan of the average consult counter plan in past years, but given the shallow DA ground on this topic I am more tolerant of them than I usually would be.

CP Theory: If you want to go for theory go for it, if you can stop the flow from being messy that would be nice.

Ks: Do whatever you like, not a huge fan of long overviews. I am not super convinced by plan focused style arguments, but I can be convinced otherwise.

T: Do whatever. As of now I have not judged any rounds on cjr and have not cut many cards for the topic either. Do with that information as you will.

planless affs: Go for it, just do impact calc when going for and answering T. K v K debates I'm down to watch, but will need clear link explanation during the debate.

Tech vs Truth: Tech over truth, but if something is untrue it is easier to answer.

Speaks: Generally I will try to conform to tournament norms and community norms

LD Notes:

Quick pref help: (LARP>K>Trad>Theory>Phil>Tricks)

Most of stuff from policy paradigm applies.

Not a huge fan of tricks, spikes, or rvi's but if you win on them I'll vote for them.

PF Notes:

Do whatever you want.

Sammi Rippetoe

Director of Debate @ DePauw University

University of Georgia, PhD

Communication Graduate Student, Assistant Debate Coach, Wake Forest University '15-'17

I competed for Humboldt State University in Worlds style (or Brittish Parlimentary) for 4 years.

Please add me to your email chains (as proof that you read these things)- sjrippetoe@gmail.com

Top level things

I will reward debaters with better speaker points for a good cross-x that helps their overall strategy in the debate.

If you describe graphic violence (sexual or otherwise) a trigger warning would be greatly appreciated by me, and the other debaters.

Rebuttals are for story-telling, if I'm not interested in buying what you're selling I'm probably not voting for you.

I don't feel personally responsible to read all of your evidence after the debate.  Your job is to explain to me why certain pieces of evidence should be considered/read, if you don't do that, I won't take the time to read them.  This is debate, not Sammi's research hour.

Topicality

Love em, read some cards, make some args.  I am pretty persuaded by reasonability, especially when the aff has a community norm argument behind them, but I'm not wedded to the concept enough that you can't persuade me otherwise.  If we can avoid spec-type violations, that would be nice (but hey you do you).

Counterplans and Disads

Love em.  The more specific they are to the aff, the more I am willing to buy negative spin/negative sufficiency framing arguments.  Impact calc is super important, but don't confuse the timeframe or probability of your impact with that of your internal links.  Most teams do, and that's not fun.  Make sure you don't lose sight of your disad (and conversely, your aff) by the end of the debate, it's not only about comparing terminal impacts so don't lose the story for what you're selling me.

Theory

I don't have a strong preference on any particular theory arguments, but I will vote on them if well impacted and debated beyond the annoying re-reading of blocks in the 1ar and 2nr.  The caveat to this, however, is that I will not kick a CP for the negative if it is extended in the 2nr.  You forfeited your right to the status quo, deal with it.  I'm not against multiple counterplans being read in the same debate, but I do believe the enjoyment of a debate correlates to how well crafted (wink-wink) the negatives strategy is.  Do not see what sticks.

The K

Most of my thoughts from the next two categories apply here.  I will say, have links specific to the plan, with impacts to those link arguments.  Root cause arguments aren't super persuasive to me, unless you can prove that the root cause prevents the aff's specific internal link from solving whatever impact is in question.  

Non-Traditional Affs

My general feelings about them is that they should be in the direction of the topic, and they should change something in the status quo. While this doesn't necessitate a plan text, the aff should have a method that defends some action/change.  I am not a fan of affs that don't do anything, or believe that just pontificating is enough to win the round. You have to prove that your aff is important and creates positive change, not just that it analyzes something (what does that analysis do? And why should I vote for it as a positive change to status quo?). I am very persuaded by presumption when the aff hasnt proven that they do anything.  

Framework

These debates can often can be good, but generally are not.  You all read blocks like it's your job, and they are way too generic.  I'm really persuaded by specific link arguments for things like limits or ground da's that point to in round examples to validate them, and TVA's that are well developed and actually specific to either the aff's method or the impact the aff is attempting to resolve.  I do not believe fairness is an impact on it's own, it's an internal link to variety of other impacts.  

Language Args

These are persuasive, you should not be violent with your language. If you go against a team that you feel has been violent with their word choice, you should make it an argument in the round. Performative consistency is important. You do have to be clear about what the impact of their bad language is, and why I should care about it. You can't just say "this is offensive" with no impact and expect me to fill in the blanks. 

Philosophy Updated 9-5-17

Nick Ryan – Liberty Debate – 10th year coaching/Judging

Please label your email chains “Tournament – Rd “#” – AFF Team vs Neg Team” – or something close to that effect. I hate “No subject,” “Test,” “AFF.” I would like to be included “nryan2wc@gmail.com”

Too often Philosophy’s are long and give you a bunch of irrelevant information. I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet.

1. I spend most of my time working with our “Policy teams,” I have a limited amount of working with our “K/Non traditional” debaters, but the bulk of my academic research base is with the “traditional” “policy teams;” don’t expect me to know the nuances of your specific argument, debate it and explain it.

2. Despite this I vote for the K a fair amount of time, particularly when the argument is contextualized in the context of the AFF and when teams aren’t reliant on me to unpack the meaning of “big words.” Don’t rely on me to find your “embedded clash” for you.

3. “Perm Do Both” is not a real argument, neg teams let AFFs get away with it way too often and it shifts in the 1AR. Perms and Advocacy/CP texts should be written out.

4. If neither team clarifies in the debate, then I default to the status quo is always an option.

5. These are things that can and probably will influence your speaker points: clarity, explanations, disrespectfulness to the other team, or your partner, stealing prep time, your use of your speech time (including cx), etc.

6. Prep time includes everything from the time the timer beeps at the end of the lasts speech/CX until the doc is sent out.

7. I think Poems/Lyrics/Narratives that you are reading written by someone else is evidence and should be in the speech document.

ADA Novice Packet Tournaments:

Evidence you use should be from the packet. If you read cards that weren’t in the packet more than once it’s hard to believe it was a “honest mistake.”

If you have any questions about things that are not listed here please ask, I would rather you be sure about my feelings, then deterred from running something because you are afraid I did not like it.

Current Associate Director of Debate at Emory University

Former graduate student coach at University of Georgia, Wake Forest University, University of Florida

Create an email chain for evidence before the debate begins. Put me on it. My email address is lace.stace@gmail.com

Do not trivialize or deny the Holocaust

Online Debates:

Determine if I am in the room before you start a speech. "Becca, are you ready?" or "Becca, are you here?" I will give you a thumbs up or say yes (or I am not in the room and you shouldn't start).

I get that tech issues happen, but unnecessary tech time hurts decision time.

Please have one (or all) debaters look periodically to make sure people haven't gotten booted from the room. The internet can be unreliable. You might get booted from the room. I might get booted from the room. The best practice is to have a backup of yourself speaking in case this occurs. If the tournament has rules about this, follow those.

DA’s:

Is there an overview that requires a new sheet of paper? I hope not

Impact turn debates are fine with me

Counterplans:

What are the key differences between the CP and the plan?

Does the CP solve some of the aff or all of the aff?

Be clear about which DA/s you are claiming as the net benefit/s to your CP

"Solving more" is not a net benefit

I lean neg on international fiat, PICS, & agent CP theory arguments

I am open minded to debates about conditionality & multiple conditional planks theory arguments.

Flowing:

I strongly prefer when debaters make flowing easier for me (ex. debating line by line, signposting, identifying the other team’s argument and making direct answers)

I strongly prefer when debaters answer arguments individually rather than “grouping”

Cross-X:

"What cards did you read?" "What cards did you not read?" "Did you read X off case position?" "Where did you stop in this document?" - those questions count as cross-x time! If a speech ends and you ask these, you should already be starting your timer for cross-x.

Avoid intervening in your partners cross-x time, whether asking or answering. Tag team is for professional wrestling, not debate.

Public forum debate specific thoughts:

I am most comfortable with constructive speeches that organize contentions using this structure: uniqueness, link, and impact.

I am comfortable with the use of speed.

From my experience coaching policy debate, I care a lot about quantity and quality of evidence.

I am suspicious of paraphrased evidence.

I like when the summary and final focus speeches make the debate smaller. If your constructive started with 2 or 3 contentions, by the summary and final focus your team should make a choice of just 1 contention to attempt winning.

Because of my background in policy debate, it takes me out of my comfort zone when the con/neg team speaks first.

Head Debate Coach - University of Georgia

jstupek8@gmail.com

Top Level

- Clarity and flowability are the strongest qualities that drive my speaker points. I encourage debaters to adopt speaking practices that enhance their flowability such as: structured line-by-line, slowing down when communicating plan or counterplan texts, emphasizing particularly important lines in the body of evidence, and descriptively labeling off-case positions in the 1NC.

- Arguments do not always need cards to be impactful. I care about logical analytic arguments, particularly those that are set up well in cross-examination.

- Plan and counterplan text vagueness is an under-exploited issue. As such, I'm likely more amenable to specification arguments than your average judge.

- While no judge is a true blank slate, I have and am willing to vote on basically anything.

Disads

- I begin resolving these debates by comparing the relative risk of the internal link chains of the disadvantage and the advantage(s) the 2AR went for. All things being equal, I frequently resolve these debates without turning to questions of impact comparison or impact interaction. The advice I often find myself giving after debates is that second rebuttalists should spend less time on traditional impact calculus or turns case arguments and more time making sure you win your advantage or disadvantage. Of course, all things are not always equal and second rebuttalists should point out when there's a tangible timeframe or magnitude distinction between impacts.

- Brink + link uniqueness is not an adequate substitute for traditional uniqueness and link claims.

- Always been a fan of agenda politics, probably always will be.

- For affirmatives reading framing arguments, your time is almost always better spent making substantive answers to the disadvantage rather than meta arguments about the complex nature of disadvantages.

Counterplans

- Please stop starting your counterplan 2ACs with consecutive permutation arguments delivered at top speed. This is the single most difficult thing to flow properly in my experience. The easiest fix here is to read cards in between each different permutation and slowing down when communicating perm texts.

- I have no inherent aversion to process counterplans. I think that at times these debates can be really interesting, especially when contextualized to the topic.

- I still believe in an abstract academic sense, that the benefits of conditionality outweigh its costs. This issue, however, is so rarely evenly debated that more affirmative teams should consider going for conditionality bad.

- My default view is that counterplan theory arguments that are not conditionality bad are reasons to reject the argument rather than reasons to reject the team. This presumption can be overcome, but the bar is high.

- My default view is that I will judge kick the counterplan and compare the aff vs. the status quo. I can and have been persuaded not to do so when the affirmative team advances that argument.

Topicality vs. Policy Affirmatives

- Including resolutional language in your plan text does not in and of itself persuade me the aff is topical.

- Caselists are incredibly useful for articulating just how under or over limiting a particular interpretation is.

- For affirmative teams, I would rather hear impacts about the benefits of a broader topic for affirmative innovation and flexibility than appeals to education about the affirmative's content. I am unlikely to be persuaded that I should reject a negative topicality interpretation because the affirmative would have a difficult time constructing solvency deficits to a particular counterplan under said interpretation. That argument seems to be a theoretical objection the counterplan rather than a topicality standard.

- Teams articulating a "precision" standard should take care to clearly explain what their threshold for a "precise" interpretation is, why their interpretation meets that threshold, and why the opposing team's interpretation does not.

Kritiks On The Neg

- I care about the alt quite a bit. Teams that have persuaded me to vote for kritiks have often done so on the basis of strong alt debating.

- The way "framework" arguments are currently deployed is somewhat puzzling to me. Most aff/neg framework standards seem to get more at the question of "how much" weight I should give to a particular impact than to whether I should consider a particular impact in the first place. I've never been persuaded that framework means I don't consider the merits of the 1AC. I've equally never been persuaded that framework means the alt has to be policy.

- Kritiks that derive their offense from the affirmative not doing enough or being too incremental are vulnerable to permutations.

- Alt causes are not link arguments. Link arguments are not "disads."

Planless Affirmatives

- I have been persuaded that the aff doesn't have to read a plan or say USFG should, but I have not encountered a situation where I have been persuaded that the aff doesn't have to be topical. Having some sort of counter-interpretation, even if it's just "resolved means to analyze," is important for how I ground and resolve aff arguments about the neg's interpretation. I want to hear in detail about what the affirmative's model of debate might look like. I would rather hear one or two conceptual impact turns to the negative's model, than eight different "DA's" that are difficult to distinguish between.

- For the negative, I would rather hear arguments about the value of procedural fairness than than some of the more "substantive" framework arguments.

- The vocabulary of "internal link" and "impact" is not particularly useful in a debate about theory. Certainly the negative needs to explain why fairness is a valuable concept, but that explanation does not have to involve the same kind of cause and effect logic chain we encounter in advantages or disadvantages. The "just an internal link" pejorative often applies just as well to arguments forwarded by the affirmative. As a whole, these debates would be so much better if no one used the words "impact," "internal link," or "disad."

Speaker Points

- I hesitate to offer some sort of static scale for speaks because I think that speaker points are relative and I am constantly reflecting on whether my speaker point distribution is in line with the rest of the judging community.

- Debaters who debate technically and make good strategic decisions will receive good points.

- Debaters who debate with style (humor, passionate rebuttals, exceptional clarity) will receive good points.

Closing Thoughts

If you've made it this far, I want to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for the work you do as debaters and coaches. I know how hard everyone works to prepare for debates and I strive to provide judging and feedback that lives up to that standard.

"As I look back at the contours of my own life, many things about it I would change if I could. But not this. The long hours, the demanding schedules, all that goes into effective debating and effective coaching, the lost weekends. I would do it all again. I would do it all again not for any particular tournament or trophy, not for the specifics of any topic, not even for the intellectual benefits debate bestows upon its participants, critical thinking and the like. I would do it all again for the chance to work with hard-working, dedicated, and committed students like those assembled in this room." - Scott Deatherage

Kent Denver 2020

Debating at Dartmouth 2024

she/her

Please include me on the email chain: ellielsul@gmail.com

Do what you want. I am fine with all types of arguments.

Please keep your camera on for the whole debate unless you are having tech issues.

T/L

-Go slower.

-I like well-researched debates that have substantial clash over several issues

-I will give very little weight to evidence that is highlighted in a way that doesn't make grammatical sense

-numbering arguments (especially in the 2AC/on case 1NC) is very good

-impact comparison and "even if" statements are good in rebuttals

-i strongly dislike debate "buzzwords" and will not vote on them even if dropped

(ie dropping "serial policy failure" or "sufficiency framing" is not an issue unless the other team has already explained why this is something I should actually care about)

-good evidence matters but good understanding of your ev matters more

-I don't know tons about CJR

-if you open source ALL your cards and show me I will give you +.2 speaker points

DAs

DAs are good. If the 1NC doesn't have every part of the DA, the 1AR probably gets new answers. I enjoy well-researched debates on the politics DA.

CPs

Clever advantage counterplans and topic CPs are good. Generic process CPs are less good. Process CPs without a solvency advocate are bad.

Ks

I have some understanding of most critical literature, but you should assume I know nothing about your K. You will definitely benefit from slowing down in the 2NC.

I strongly enjoy Ks that interact with major premises of the affirmative.

Defending your aff's specific assumptions about hegemony, economic growth, progress, etc. should always be the A-strat in these debates.

I think FW is overused and either side can probably win without it. If your k actually interacts with major premises of the affirmative it probably shouldn't be necessary. You should explain to me why your critical theory outweighs/turns/disproves the aff's specific impacts rather than relying on vague FW blocks to do it for you.

Affs should spend their time defending their affirmative rather than saying they only have to defend the plan.

T vs. Planless Affs

Fairness is the only impact I find compelling to topicality. (Read whatever you want in front of me but fairness is your best bet).

Affs will win these debates in front of me by choosing to (1) impact turn T OR (2) have a counter-interp that solves most of the offense with a DA to reading a plan.

Both the 2AR and 2NR would benefit from a 15-30 second overview where you explain what your main strategy is.

TVAs and SSD are overused--they literally only solve you exclude "x" discussion.

K vs. Planless Affs

Sure. Be clear and organized when executing these debates.

Theory

All theory except condo is reason to reject arg not team.

Hiding 5 second ASPEC shells under topicality/cutting them out of the doc makes me VERY lenient for new 1AR answers.

Seriously, go slower.

Have fun and good luck!

Peninsula ‘17

Dartmouth ‘21

raamtambe@gmail.com

UPDATE: 2022-2023 season 

I am no longer deeply involved with topic research. I most likely won’t know what’s going on (not sure if I ever did). 
Be like el Greco and give me a bigggg picture. 

UPDATE: 2021-2022 season 

Imagine yuppie John Turner and begin.

***Paradigm – updated as of 4/13/20****

General:

1. Please do line by line. If you do not, I will not just “flow straight down.” If your speech does not follow any order, I will consider arguments that are not directly addressed as dropped. If you number your arguments, all the better.

2. I care more than most about the academic validity of your argument. I find that smart analytics can overcome unqualified or generally weak evidence (whether too old, out of context etc.). A general rule of thumb here is “don’t be preposterous.”

For plan/counterplan/disad/case debates:

1. Plan (and counterplan) texts must be specific. The aff does NOT get to "define what their own plan means," the plan text means only what evidence supports it to mean. Similarly, the aff does not get to make arguments regarding what they will defend "for the purpose of disads." If you read a plan that's vague, you do not get to say "no link - we only do x version of the plan," unless of course you read evidence that says the only or overwhelmingly likely way for the plan to occur would be through that mechanism. Negs should take advantage of slippery plans by making solvency arguments, and, in rather egregious circumstances, read a specification theory argument. This does not apply to agent specification unless the agent of the plan seems highly relevant to the topic, such as for example on the executive power topic.

2. Link > Uniqueness.

3. Not a great judge for politics DA/process CP: see #2 in the general section.

4. Theory: I’m hard to sell on international fiat good. I think that is my only atypical theory opinion.

For critiques:

1. I’m a tough sell on any totalizing framework argument: I don’t think I’ll ever vote on “aff doesn’t get a plan,” “alternatives must be counterplans,” or “ROB/ROJ: aff impact only thing that matters,” unless they are dropped.

2. Specificity matters (in most cases). If your 1NC shell and 2NC link blocks don’t vary based on the 1AC, don’t take me. Equally, if you read the same set of 2AC cards against every critique, don’t take me.

For T/neg theory:

1.T v affs with a plan:

a. I’m hard to persuade on “overlimiting” because I find it hard to believe the community would exhaust the possible arguments for a given case. Barring a few circumstances, the aff should go for “arbitrariness” as their primary piece of offense.

b. “Reasonability” does not mean auto-vote aff.

2. Specification arguments/other procedurals:

a. Fine but must be developed and supported by evidence.

b. I will allow either side to make reasonable cross applications to answer shallow theory arguments like a dropped 1 sentence aspec shell.

3. T v planless: Please pay attention to your opponent’s arguments. I often find myself making decisions in these debates simply because one side has dropped a series of arguments made by other. I believe that is because teams tend to go on “autopilot” in these debates. Like #2 in the critiques section, your argumentation should make clear that you recognized your opponent’s arguments and accordingly tailored your explanation.

wake 24 | law magnet 20

call me asya, like asia.

pls add me to the chain - asyadebates@gmail.com

be fun/funny/interesting, unless you’re not, then don’t be.

i’d rather watch debates i’m normally in (clash, k debates). i’d also rather be doing things that aren’t judging debates so don’t feel like it’s adapt or die if you wanna do plan things, just know i need more handholding on argument interaction.

defend what you say, hold people responsible for what they say. i’m not here to resolve your personal beef with someone, but i do find myself responsible for making sure this space is maximally safe.

“with high risk comes high reward, etc, etc” -- you win more the more you’re willing to try things you wouldn’t go for, and you can persuade me of most things (not ethnic genocide good, never ethnic genocide good).

i flow, but sometimes not very fast or well. if i’m judging you, assume that i’m in the camp of people who are literally writing down what you’re saying and not always the argument you’re making. i don’t suck at debate, i just have short term memory loss and don’t want to literally miss arguments you’re making.

i can’t flow when people are atrociously unclear, which is like saying “i can’t flow when the debaters are completely silent” because you are effectively saying nothing. i get being nervous though so i try as much as possible to not punish debaters for stuttering or anything else that people traditionally suggest makes someone a "bad speaker"

i’m unclear on why people try to resolve debates in their paradigm - if i could resolve a debate on my own, then i would ask you to send speech docs for the 1ac/1nc and get back to you in thirty.

argument specifics:

-convincing me fairness matters as anything more than an internal link will be difficult.

-if debated equally, i tend to err aff on framework.

-default offense-defense, technical concessions matter - unless someone says they don’t or another frame of evaluation

-won’t judge kick unless told to

-unless the negative is crushing framework, at best i default to weighing the non-idealized version of the plan in most aff v k debates (i.e. i’m unlikely to ‘moot’ the aff)

-don’t really follow docs to be honest, if i’m sus about clipping i certainly will (will dock speaks, won’t drop team unless the other team suggests it)

ask me questions about my paradigm, wake debate/the rks, or my rfd. disagreeing with me is fine, insulting me is not.

LD STUFF:

I evaluate debate like a policy debater that reads k's and read 'larp' or more traditional arguments in high school. I value really good thought out strategies over obfuscating the debate. Debate should be about substantive issues so it's easier to get me to reject the argument and not the team for theory.

please don't ask me for your speaks (uncomfortable), please set up an email chain (not fileshare)

if you need help preffing me, nate kruger gave me this guide:

k - 1

larp - 1

theory (topicality) - 1

phil - 4

tricks/theory - 5

Dartmouth, Interlake. He/him.

Email Chain

Add me: ant981228 at gmail dot com

College people, add: debatedocs at googlegroups dot com

Please include the tournament, round, and teams debating in the subject line of the email.

Key Things to Know

I will flow and vote based on the things you said. Negs can say whatever but the more it says the plan is bad the better. Conditionality and judge kick are good. Affs should be T and are likely to lose if they aren't. If you say death good you lose. If you ask for a 30 you will get a 25.

I do a lot of work during tournaments and will be tired on their last few days. I have found that this makes it harder for me to focus. To counteract this, I have gone back to flowing on paper, which I have found helps me process the debate as it is happening. You will benefit if you make my paper flowing life easier (give me time to flip the page, warn me if you're going to make an abnormally large number of arguments about part of the flow, tell me to make an overview or framework page if I need one, etc.).

Online

I STRONGLY prefer that all cameras be on whenever anyone in the debate is speaking, but I understand if internet or other considerations prevent this.

If my camera is off, assume I am away from my computer and don't start talking. If you start your speech while I am away from my computer you do not get to restart. That is on you.

Here is how to successfully adjust to the online setting:

1. Inflect more when you are talking.

2. Put your face in frame. Ideally, make it so you can see the judge.

3. Get a microphone, put it close to your face, talk into it, make sure there is an unobstructed line between it and your mouth.

4. Talk one at a time.

T/L

Tech determines truth unless it's death good. If you tell me to embrace death because life is bad I will vote against you even if you do not go for the argument. More broadly, all else being equal, I strongly prefer to solve problems without resorting to violence or force if possible.

Otherwise, unless my role as a judge is changed, I will attempt to make the least interventionary decision. This means:

1. I will identify the most important issues in the debate, decide them first based on the debating, then work outward.

2. What is conceded is absolutely true, but will only have the implications that you say it has. Unless something is explicitly said, conceded, and extended, or is an obvious and necessary corollary of something that is said, conceded, and extended, I will attempt to resolve it, rather than assuming it.

3. I will intervene if there is no non-interventionary decision.

4. I will attempt to minimize the scope of my intervention by simplifying the decision-making process. I would prefer to decide fewer issues. If an issue seems hard to resolve without intervening, I will prioritize evaluating ballots that don't require resolving that issue.

This procedure typically means (for example):

1. I will prioritize resolution of impact claims.

2. I will deprioritize resolution of claims that do not affect the relative magnitude of two sides' offense. For example, in a DA/case debate where turns case is conceded, uniqueness is often irrelevant since aff solvency is reduced to the same extent neg offense is inevitable.

I am aware that this procedure can influence my assessment of substance. Given infinite decision time, I would decide every question in the debate. However, shrinking decision times make this impractical. Minutes spent resolving complex or under-debated issues that are not outcome-determinative trade off with the quality of my assessment of issues that are. I believe this process net reduces error costs.

As of end-of-season 2024, I have voted aff 47% of the time, and sat on 11% of panels.

I often vote quickly. This does not necessarily mean the debate was lopsided or bad; more likely, it is a sign that the teams clearly communicated the relationships between their arguments, allowing me to perform evaluations as the debate is happening. If I take a long time that means I was unable to do this, either because there was significant complexity in the debate or because communication was poor.

The following are my inclinations - if you don't like them you can change them through debating.

DAs

The agenda DA will usually not survive a rich, accurate description of the current legislative agenda based on thoughtfully reading the news.

CPs

If no one says anything I will assume I can judge kick. It is very hard to use theory to stop me from thinking about the status quo. Nothing but conditionality is a voting issue. Pretty neg on most theory, except fiating out of your own straight turned offense.

Competition is usually more impactful than theory. Theory arguments that logically presume you have won a competition argument ("CPs that steal the aff are a voting issue" assumes you have demonstrated that the CP has stolen the aff, which is a competition argument. "CPs that are not functionally and textually competitive are a voting issue"... come on, what are we doing here) are a waste of time. Just win the competition argument.

Functional competition + explaining what your plan does + definitions + reasons to prefer your definitions >>>>> anything involving the concept of textual competition. Textual competition is mind poison that corrupts any competition model it touches. "Should =/= immediate" plus a cr

If I can't explain what a CP does and how it accomplishes whatever the neg says it does, I am unlikely to vote for it. You can avoid this by writing a meaningful CP text AND explaining it in the speech.

T

I like judging good T debates. I really don't like judging bad ones. What sets these apart is specific application of broad offense to interpretations and impact debating that is specific to internal links, grounded in a vivid vision for debates under your topic.

I do not think the intrinsic value of being "factually correct" about your T argument is very high.

Many parts of a T argument can be enhanced with cards - e.g. link to limits, claims of aff/neg bias in the literature, predictability via prodicts/indicts.

Argue by analogy and comparison to other affs, especially in CX.

Ks / Planless Affs

Good for specific Ks on the neg, bad for random backfile slop, bad for K affs, death good = L.

If your K is secretly a DA, refer to the DA section. If your K is not a DA then yes, you need framework and you need an alternative. Whatever issue your framework says should determine the round should be what your link, impact, and alt are about.

I do not judge many debates involving nontraditional affs. The biggest hurdles to voting aff for me are usually: 1) why can't the aff be read on the neg, 2) why is the aff's offense inherent to resolutional debate or to voting neg on framework instead of some avoidable examples, and 3) how do I reconcile the aff's vision of debate or the topic with debate's inherently (even if not exclusively) competitive nature.

I am very willing to entertain arguments that attempt to denaturalize debate as competition but struggle when these critiques lack an alternative or a theory of why debate as a way of putting two teams and a judge in conversation with one another is nevertheless useful.

I think affs that creatively reinterpret the resolution in a way that does not create excessively demanding curricular demands would be more up my alley, but no one has tested this, so proceed with caution.

I am open to different understandings of what it means for things to compete if there is no plan. However, "no plan, no perms" is nonsense.

The only effect of my ballot is to decide the winner.

Speaker Points

Strong strategy, being fun/engaging to watch, being smart, being classy, being clear = higher speaks.

Making wrong strategic choices, being underprepared or ignorant about substance, making CXs annoying/pointless, making bad arguments, being needlessly mean, being a mumbler... = lower speaks.

I do not view speaker points as divorced from substance.

My points are slightly below average.

Asking for a 30 will yield a 25.

Ethics and Conduct

If the tabroom tells me to do something, it is not up for debate. I will do that thing. The rest is what I will do if left to my own devices.

Evidence ethics (out of context? straw-person? lied about quals? cut in middle of paragraph?) should be debated out like any other theory argument. Alternative remedies short of an automatic loss could be more responsive or proportional to the harm: scratching the argument AND evidence, scratching only the evidence and treating the argument as if it is made analytically, assuming an author is absolutely unqualified, requiring the team to produce the full text of articles in question, requiring the violating team to establish a paper trail authenticating other important evidence and presuming unauthenticated evidence to be fabricated, requiring a team to produce the full text of every article in the debate and presuming unauthenticated evidence to be fabricated, reducing speaker points, informing the team's coaches after the fact. They MAY be a reason to reject the team, but I will not treat them as such by default.

Clipping - claiming you read words from evidence that you did not read - is different, and a voting issue. It is a form of dishonesty that irreparably distorts teams' speech times, which affects every other issue in the debate, and which opponents are uniquely poorly positioned to police. If you are inexperienced or appear to have clipped by mistake, I will be lenient. Otherwise, it is non-negotiable.

Thoughts on stopping the debate early:

1. This is an exceptional measure to be avoided if possible.

2. Once the debate stops because of an ethics challenge, my first step is to consult the tabroom and do whatever they say.

3. Unless expressly instructed otherwise by the tabroom, the debate will not resume once stopped. The winner and loser will be determined solely by the ethics challenge.

4. An accusing team can stop the debate at any time except during a speech or a cross-ex. They win if they are correct, present compelling evidence that they are correct, and I agree that the conduct justifies a penalty loss. The winner will receive 28.5 and 28.6. Losers who have personally committed an ethics violation receive the lowest points allowed. Losers who have not personally committed an ethics violation - either due to an unsuccessful accusation, or because the partner committed the violation - receive a 27 and 27.1.

5. During the dispute, both teams must engage in good faith. The accusing team must submit evidence of their accusation as soon as possible. I will not consider evidence submitted within 20 minutes of decision time. Any filibustering or other unreasonable behavior by the accusing team will result in a win for the accused.

6. An accused team can stop the debate, even if the accusing team does not wish to do so, if the accusation concerns the fundamental academic integrity of the accused. This is a very high bar.

7. An accusing team may ask me if I believe certain conduct justifies a penalty loss without stopping the debate. I will take judge prep to answer. This answer is not an invitation to negotiate and obviously doesn't bind the tabroom.

8. I will proactively end the debate for clipping. I will not do this for other evidence ethics or academic integrity issues.

9. Basically none of this applies to novice or JV, where I will resolve the dispute as quickly and narrowly as possible with the aim of maximizing the number of speeches that can happen.

Being racist, sexist, violent, etc. in a way that is immediately and obviously hazardous to someone in the debate = L and 0. My role as educator outweighs my role as any form of disciplinarian, so I will err on the side of letting stuff play out - i.e. if someone used gendered language and that gets brought up I will probably let the round happen and correct any ignorance after the fact. This ends when it begins to threaten the safety of round participants. You should give this line a wide berth.

T—I prefer limits over ground arguments. Rather than right to particular ground I would like interpretations argued in terms of the predictability of the research burden/definition. Case lists are important. I consider T an argument that doesn't specify the relationship between the debaters and the resolutional actor (i.e. how the debate is evaluated and what the role of the judge for evaluating the debate is still in question).  To me, framework is a category of arguments that establish a limit that restricts not just the resolution but the role for the judge.  I find most framework arguments unnecessarily restrictive in their interpretation about how we impact/assess a debate whereas a T interpretation can maintain significant freedom for different ways of couching an affirmative while providing predictable limits. For this reason kritiks of T are difficult for me to accept, while criticisms of framework have frequently been successful. 

DAs- I’m unlikely to assess uniqueness/link in absolute terms.  It tends to be easier to get me to consider direction/quality of link & internal link over uniqueness.   Evidence qualifications are important. I probably give analytic and defensive arguments more weight than many judges. 

CPs--I've rarely voted against CPs for theory reasons. This probably has more to do with what affs are willing to do/commit time to more than it demonstrates any real appeal of certainty-based competition arguments. 

K pickiness—I am more open to aff inclusion and textless alternatives than most. I am frustrated by debates where the alternative “vote negative” squares off against permute “do all the parts of the alternative that don’t compete with the plan.” Those are both just abstract descriptions of what any alternative or permutation entails. In depth debate on these issues might be helped by being less tied to a text and more to not being obnoxious in the c/x in describing an alternative. Pay attention to language/phrasing—pull quotes from evidence and speechs instead of debating author names (Yes, pot-kettle, but still). I prefer Ks that aren’t debated like disads—too much big impact/impact turn and not enough about the aff/alt from either side in most debates I judged. Neg link arguments should include reference to 1AC evidence/tags. Historical examples help a lot for either side.
 
Theory—I tend to dislike theory debates focused on narrow comparison of interpretations.  For the most part, people would be better off discussing the logical implications of a practice rather than a potentially arbitrary implementation of that practice (i.e. conditionality rather than "neg gets 1 CP and 1K").   I am biased in favor of conditionality, though not that strongly.  To me, "status quo is always a logical option" or other logic-oriented defenses of conditionality require a judge to evaluate the plan versus the status quo even if the negative goes for their CP.  I say this for clarifying purposes -- this has very rarely changed the outcome of a debate that I have judged.  I often judge debates that do not presume conventional plan-focused models for debate yet still contain theory arguments that presume a plan-focused terminology and its resulting constraints.  I point this out only to suggest that I think debaters should devote some time to thinking about the consequences of strucutral changes in the form of debate that they advocate for the smaller theoretical practices that occur within those debates. 

Evidence comparison. In most debates I’ve judged if I hear about the other side’s evidence it’s only in the 2NR/2AR or it’s about how the opponent’s evidence is “terrible.” Granted, many people read terrible evidence, nevertheless, sophisticated evidence comparison should begin early in the debate. I intensely dislike random unqualified internet evidence.

I prefer cross-ex strategies premised on listening to an opponent's answer and using it in a subsequent speech, not posturing/arguing as though c/x were another speech.

I'm a bit of grump, especially when it comes to my consistent facial expressions in debates.  It's not often that is about you,  the debaters.  I often talk a great deal after debates. 

I desperately wish I were funny so I will probably appreciate your humor even if I rarely laugh out-loud. My sense of humor is definitively geeky. My speaker point scale is lower than our current average.  I've tried to get more in line with current norms so as not to punish people for speaker point inflation.  That said, for high points (28.5+) I still need to be impressed. 

Daniel Wakefield

TOC | NDT | Judging for the UGA Debate Tournament

georgiadebatemw@gmail.com

I'm a former college debater who's been out of the activity for a few months. My main ideological bias is wanting to see debaters commit to a certain strategy. If you like condo, read double digits and ask me to judge kick planks. If you like the K, read your weird stuff and impact turn something about the aff that the 2a has left unquestioned. If you like debating straight up and down, then show me your research and don't get pushed around by nonsense. I flow as best I can, read cards that are read in the debate round, and almost never read an argument I agreed with during my time in debate. Best of luck and don't take it too seriously.

0 Rounds judged on the water topic.

Top Level

I enjoy judging debates. The best way to get high points is to be excited about your argument. Most of my thoughts as a judge are centered around wanting to judge rounds where debaters enjoy themselves.

The best way to get my ballot is judge direction. This means doing impact comparison at the top of your 2xr and then contextualizing the line by line to that impact comparison. The most important questions for me are why does the disadvantage/k outweigh the case? Why is a predictable but imprecise topic more preferable to a precise yet unpredictable one?

If you open source your evidence, please tell me after the 2ar and I'll bump your speaks. Open source is awesome. If you don't read traditional forms of evidence, posting a few sentences about the types of arguments you made/ evidence you read also works. Feel free to post round me.

I'll flow you and your partner talking in whatever manner you feel is appropriate save speech times being enforced. If one partner doesn't talk the whole debate they'll get a 0, but I've always thought having the repeat what your partner prompts you about is a little ridiculous.

I won’t vote on things outside debate.

Asking questions between cx starting and your speech ending makes me sad. It's ok to use cx time asking for clarification.

Yes please send a card doc.

I'm a mandatory reporter for the purposes of judging the UGA Debate tournament.

Theory

I'm better than most as a judge for conditionality bad, mostly because the 2nr is generally awful at defending it.

I've spent a decent amount of time thinking about competition. Currently I'm in the textual + functional competition camp, though I'm very intrigued to see a justification otherwise. I'm not sure why the presentation of a solvency advocate would make a counterplan more competitive, it certainly doesn't seem to make an aff more topical. Count me in for any well developed responses to the above (maybe functional alone?)

I'm a better sell for competition theory than "x" counterplan is bad. Most 2ac interpretations seem pretty arbitrary. Maybe consider a universally applicable counterplan theory argument (counterplans must use the same actor as the affirmative) rather than one designed to just beat the negative's counterplan (nga bad.)

The K

The fiat K is great at taking you from the 1-5 to the 3-3 bracket. Not as good for getting you to clear/ win big elims.

I enjoy judging K debates. The wonderful part about the K is that you get to impact turn almost everything the other team says/does. A 2nr that is offense first and picks a few key points to out debate the 2ar on will get high points and a W. The easiest way to lose these debates is to either bite off more than you can chew, or to prioritize not that great defensive arguments over a fleshed out link or impact debate.

My main ideological bias here is to err against voting for arguments made for 10 seconds or less that then become a voting issue. You're much better off putting your cards on the table as soon as possible. If you want to say predictions are impossible, say it in the 1nc and every subsequent speech. If you're on the other side of this debate and are reading a giant heg good aff, why bother extending no link/ perm arguments that you don't intend to go for?

If you are reading an argument with an alternative, please read it somewhere other than the case page.

Policy throw-downs

Love them! The two things I care about most in these debates are judge direction from the 2nr/2ar, and how the evidence read in the debate supports that judge direction.

Similar to my thoughts on the Kritik, I reward debaters who recognize that they're in a losing position and make a bold choice to attempt to salvage the debate. If you're getting out carded 3-1 on a disadvantage and are behind on several key pieces of defense, consider risking it all for a 1ar impact turn to the 1nr's new impact module.

Topicality

T debates are wonderful when teams read comparative evidence about the meaning of specific words and/or phrases in the resolution and then contextualize that evidence into impact comparison. If "Limits" as a value should be upheld over "Legal Precision" than it matters little how legally precise your interpretation evidence is. I think both the 2nr and 2ar should begin with impact comparison in these.

Generally I'm a big believer in how debatable a given interpretation is (usually some combination of both a limited and predictable topic) but I'm willing to hear explanations otherwise.

Planless Affs

Framework has gotten odd recently. In the debates I've judged/seen, teams are prioritizing shotgunning a lot of bad arguments and not spending much time on their good arguments. I'd much prefer one well developed substantive response for "at: Fairness" then a bunch of one liners that you don't intend to go for. Counter interpretations are fine, but a big offensive push against the process of debate is more important.

I enjoy hearing T debates on this subject, though there is a special place in my heart for negative teams who commit to an impact turn and/or a topic disadvantage.

Unrelated Thoughts

I debated under the AUDL ambassadors program, and am conflicted with quite a few schools as a result. I should not under any circumstance be judging Grady/Midtown HS, Decatur, Roswell, Rockdale, and Drew Charter for example. This hopefully should never come up, as I've conflicted myself from all of them, but there's not a universal "Atlanta Urban Debate League" conflict option. I also coached a singular northview team for the TOC in 2021 and have conflicted myself from those two debaters.