Last changed on
Sun March 31, 2024 at 3:11 AM EDT
Email: kevinsun127@gmail.com
Debate is a research game. Demonstrate topic knowledge, and you'll earn high speaker points. Isolate one or two questions to hinge the debate on, and you'll have an easier path to victory.
You don't have to read a plan. Just impact turn framework. Don't need an elaborate explanation of your vision of debate.
Fairness is an impact.
Evidence quality matters a little more than in-round strategy. That being said, dropped arguments are true (though it'll be hard to convince me that a 1NC DA shell with 50 words highlighted is a "complete" argument).
Conditionality is good. Unlikely to vote on cheap-shot theory arguments unless dropped.
Topicality usually comes down to evidence quality. If you're decidedly right about the meaning of a word, then you'll probably win. If there's some ambiguity in this, then case-lists help your case better than a generic under/over-limiting block.
Critiques should dispute the reasons to vote affirmative. In other words, not a fan of negative strategies that consist entirely of frivolous pre-requisite questions and framework interpretations. The K should make sense in a world where the plan happens.
Counterplans that compete off of certainty/immediacy are not ideal.
Feel free to post-round.
Send out the 1AC before the speech.
On Evidence Ethics
I have judged a handful of high stakes debates this year that were decided on evidence ethics. I’ve found that these decisions are inevitably unsatisfying as they will rely on my own subjective assessment of the argument in question.
I can safely say that I am completely unqualified to judge these debates. I am not on Twitter or Facebook, and I do not interact with debate people regularly outside of tournaments. I do not know what the community consensus is on certain authors, and I will feel uncomfortable rendering a personal judgement an author’s character after hearing 10 minutes of spreading on the subject.
In hopes of giving debaters some foresight, I would like to clarify my perspective on this genre of theory argument. High stakes evidence ethics challenges (e.g. “reject the team because they included the wrong author qualifications”, “reject the team because [author] is problematic”) will require a high burden of proof and an egregious violation. I have a strong predisposition against positioning these ethics challenges as reasons to fully disregard the rest of your opponents arguments, and I would prefer to just reject the argument in question rather than to hinge my decision on it.
In these circumstances, I would suggest clearly explaining which of your opponents arguments I should throw out if I resolve this challenge in your favor.
Would rejecting this author evaporate your opponent’s framework argument? Should the negative even be allowed to substitute this author with another that makes a similar argument? You’re likely to get further with me by detailing the implications of this ethics challenge in terms of the rest of the debate rather than relying on me to assume that I should automatically make it a gateway issue.
I would suggest finding other ways outside of a competitive debate argument to navigate this ethical challenge rather than placing it in my hands as a judge.
