Our activity should first and foremost be an educational experience for everyone involved. Because we are practicing an academic exercise in a competitive space, sportsmanship is imperative. I tell my students to model the type of debate they would like to compete against; if the way they engage in the activity makes their opponents want to quit our activity...they are doing it wrong. Debate should be for everyone - a healthy debate circuit, like a healthy democracy, thrives off high engagement/participation. I invite you to engage with this narrative; if you love this activity, you should want to share it with as many as possible.

Debaters are sometimes shocked when they come into a round asking me for my paradigm; I will often defer my paradigm to be determined first by the preferences of their opponents. I bring this up because I would rather all participants be comfortable setting norms with one another prior to engaging with what my preferences are as an adjudicator--it makes for a more balanced debate rather than one team having an advantage because they are better at adapting to a specific paradigm of any specific judge. A fast way to lose my ballot is to treat people (judges, opponents, and spectators) within the debate space with disregard because your goals of winning don't require their preferences to be met. I'm not a lay judge, but the debate should primarily be accessible by everyone in the space in order for it to be maximally educational. If I'm on a panel, I pay attention to the paradigms of my fellow judges (and the experience level of your opponents)...so it's always safe to assume I'll vote you down for debate for exploitive, patronizing, and exclusionary behaviors and language. *Extend this line of thought to the literature you're reading and the narratives you're sharing; the people in your impact scenarios matter, they are not a chess piece in your "game of words".

Rather than seeing the debate space as "competitive" (yes, I acknowledge a judge determines a winning side--or best reasoned/articulated/defended side), I choose to see the debate space as "collaborative". Debate asks us to engage in perspective taking; the purpose of switch-side debate is so students gain perspective based on research and critical thought. Ideally, we (judges, spectators, coaches, and participants) should enter into the debate space with good faith; with the goal of everyone ending the round having learned something new, considered a different point of view, and enjoyed the experience (and with the sentiment that it was worth it/we'd do it again if we could).

I reward teams who bring topical research into the space. Fewer substantive arguments with thorough analysis of the literature will always be preferred over trying to win because your opponent doesn't have time to respond to an argument (because you chose to run many under-developed arguments). I understand and enjoy theory, kritik, performance, and fw/value debate when they are done well. I don't think it is productive or required to advocate a position you don't believe in; you may not get to choose your side, but you do get to choose your arguments. 99% of the time I'm going to vote for legitimate advocacy over an overly technocratic strategy developed specifically for the round. Internal consistency is important to me - especially when there are in-round impacts being weighed.

I generally view the debate space as both a lab/playground for testing ideas and *also* as a space for engaging in deliberative democracy - because of this, I discourage deterministically framed arguments that disempower or remove agency from others sharing the space. There's a difference between framing an argument as non-unique and framing it as *inevitable*; if your opponents do this, you'll probably be able to win the impact by making space for an alternate narrative in the round (and I may likely be willing to vote on the in-round impact of preferring your alternate narrative). For example, the inability to eliminate corruption or suffering isn't a reason to reject a plan or framework that minimizes it (this is also true for narratives of peace as the absence of violence, narratives of environmental stewardship, and so on). You'll do well to not dismiss your opponent's impacts in a way that perpetuates a narrative that excludes an alternate narrative that might be better for us to engage with. I enjoy when debaters challenge narratives that often go unquestioned as a means to empower.

I'm going to flow, you should too--it's annoying when you argue against evidence your opponent doesn't read - don't think of reading/skimming through your opponent's files as a substitute for listening/flowing (conversely, don't give your opponents large quantities of evidence you don't plan on reading).

Aside from the rules of the activity, I ask that you're open to earnestly engaging with arguments as your opponents present them; not everyone is taught how to debate the same way, and part of what makes our activity beautiful is the potential it has to evolve and change to become *more* inclusive. I generally believe all constructive speeches are fair game for new lines of argumentation (though topicality probably needs to be run directly subsequent to the interp violation), and rebuttals require debaters to both consolidate and prioritize - I believe *how* we choose to consolidate and *what* we prioritize in rebuttals to be revelatory and this will be where you may get yourself into trouble with internal consistency.

Treat the activity and everyone in the round with respect--that'll get you far.

Zach Brisson

I debated @ Arizona State 2014-15, 2018-19, did three years of policy and one year of LD @ McClintock HS, 2010-2014.

Fancy myself as rigidly line-by-line. I default to offense/defense unless otherwise told. Will hear all good arguments, would prefer none of the bad ones. Intervention is bad and instruction to read a piece of evidence in place of explaining it shouldn't be part of a speech.

In terms of strategy, I believe depth is preferable to breadth. This applies to both sides. Well-developed, smaller negative strategies are almost invariably better than dumping everything you have in the box into the 1NC. Similarly, affs often benefit by banking on their central offense throughout the debate.

K Affs/FW: ... impact comparison and crystalization often gets lost in aff strategy, so do that. For neg teams running framework, these debates are more easily won on the substance side over theory. ...

Theory: ... will have to go in on a very clear abuse scenario has occurred in round to make this a viable option, ... Critical conditionality is good stuff and I have a slightly lower threshold for condo, in general. Other theory arguments are 99 out of a 100 times a reason to reject the argument.

The rest is pretty run-of-the-mill, please ask for any clarification. Questions to zach.brisson@gmail.com

I am a lay judge. Please don't spread or run K's. I will try to understand to the best of my ability, but I may not be able to.