You do you and I'll judge accordingly. Run the arguments with which you are most comfortable.

Email chain, please! jhollihan18@gmail.com

he/him

Policy:

I debated for four years in high school, most of that time being a 1A/2N, and on these topics: China Relations, Education, Immigration, and Arms Sales. Most of my 1ACs were soft left and I usually went for DA + case or the Cap K in the 2NR.

Please try not to spread or at the very least, SLOW DOWN. I have not debated competitively since high school and have become more numb to spreading; I've also become more ideologically opposed to it. If you are going at top speed, odds are I might miss something you say and you don't want that to happen. I try not to look at the speech doc, but that may depend on the speed at which you read. Try to go slower than you normally would. If you are zipping through your theory/T blocks, I will assume that you have not read this and I will be annoyed.

PF/LD:

I find myself judging very similar debates halfway through a resolution cycle. However, please don't assume I know the ins and outs or the trends of a given topic (e.g., acronyms, legislation/litigation, key arguments/data).

As a debater with a policy background, I really dislike evidence sharing norms in PF and LD. Why are we not just sharing the speech docs? Since email chains are not the community norms, you should have ALL of your evidence ready to go (though, an email chain would always be appreciated). Wasting 5-10 minutes to find one piece of evidence is not only frustrating for me, it can also hold up the tournament.

TLDR: my paradigm is intended to

a) facilitate a fair debate and actively intervene against slime like making new arguments in the last speech, forcing progressive debate on unprepared teams, and misconstruing evidence.

b) emphasize the importance of preparation, research, and evidence interpretation.

c) encourage pre-round agreements between debaters in order to improve the quality of the round.

I’ve debated a mix of public forum and policy in high school and have judged PF, LD, and CX (not recently tho so explain everything pls ty) for a long, long time. I will occasionally coach one really strong PF partnership. Please mention the credentials and methodology for your evidence! If you do not explain why your numbers are true, I will not grant you the statistic. I don't care what evidence is there, I care about causality, confidence, and proof beyond reasonable doubt. Without empirical proof, your warrants are just claims.

At National Tournaments: please flash or email chain your cards to me and your opponents:

frankielidc [at] gmail.com

In PF I value truth >= tech and am neither a tabula-rasa judge nor a traditional judge. As long as the opposing team agrees before round, read whatever you want. In LD and CX I am tabula-rasa (I don't prep the topics for these formats anyways) with exceptions: no RVIs unless it is frivolous, I'm not experienced judging non-topical affs, I don't like listening to extinction level impacts but will vote on it, and I evaluate Theory above Ks unless the K interacts with our concepts of debate, fairness, education, or competition.

I am impartial to speed in most cases but will say "Clear" if it is difficult to understand and "Louder" if it is too quiet. Please don't spread faster than 300 wpm, flash or email the doc and please slow down at important taglines.

PF Specific: Unless the rebuttal is a stomp, the round is almost always determined in summary. I will grant sticky defense in first summary, unless it’s terminal. Second summary needs to extend defense if they want it in FF. All offense arguments in FF must have already been in Summary. No need to extend cards for impacts in Summaries, but you must weigh. I like line-by-line. If for some reason the running late and flagged by Tabroom, I will evaluate the Summaries to determine the round. This implies that you aren't forced to frontline in second rebuttal.

If you read anything new in second FF, I will drop you with the lowest speaker points. If there was a new argument in first FF, I will drop them with the lowest speaker points. A quick "z is new in FF" will make it easier for me to identify it. If both teams do it, I'll judge based on other parts of the round and just dock speaks.

You can loosely abstract that out to the other speeches in other debate events for my preferences there--just ask a question anytime during the round if you are unsure!

Citing Cards: Citing the affiliated organization or academic journal > a random last name. If you aren't reading a peer-reviewed study from a journal, government agency, or educational institution, I'm probably not writing that card down. I don't mind paraphrasing, but you leave the interpretation of the evidence up to me. I will call cards out of interest and I will drop teams based on NSDA evidence rules.

Calling Cards: If you enter "it says x; no it says y" over the specifics of a piece of evidence, you're wasting time in the debate. Call the card, say the indictment in a speech and request that I call the card myself. After this is mentioned, the evidence should not be contested anymore in the round and I will consider it credible until I have looked over it after the round and decided for myself on the relevance of the evidence. In addition, unless you specify, I will choose whether the indict drops the argument, evidence, or team. Telling me how to vote off of subtleties in evidence makes it so much easier for me.

If a card is called during the round, please don’t prep until the other team receives the card. If you're giving the evidence, please don't stand by your opponents' desk awkwardly...

Please time yourself and use the honor system. Please don’t communicate with anyone outside the round or spread without letting everyone else know before the round.

I will disclose after round with an RFD if time allows. I can give individual feedback as well after the round by email or if you track me down.

TOC update: If you read disclosure or paraphrase theory [especially given what I said about consent between both teams] I will automatically drop you with lowest speaker points and end the round.

Less serious stuff:

PLEASE interrupt your opponent in crossfire when appropriate with a quick statement or brief question. It isn't a 3 minute speech, just don't be excessive and don't raise your volume.

If your opponent doesn't know an answer to your question in cx or crossfire, don't move on. Let them stew in silence >:)

Don't say "Outweigh on scope, we have the largest number in the round."

On topics where I am actually coaching a partnership, I will know every single study back-to-front on the topic.

If you read a turn, bonus speaks if you physically turn around during the speech.

No off-time roadmaps. We all know you're trying to compose yourself before the speech.

If you define every word in a resolution, your speaks will drop by the number of words in the resolution.

Bonus speaks if you show off mental math and it's correct. If you're incorrect, I'll deduct speaks.

Down to listen to fun cases if you know you're not advancing to out-rounds.

3 "Clears" and you're out!

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Contention 2 is Drowning in Debt:

In states without right-to-work laws, companies anticipate demands from union negotiations and naturally increase their financial leverage, which the Corporate Finance Institute ‘22 defines as the amount of debt used to pay for a company’s expenses. This happens for two reasons:

First is To Limit Union Demands. Deere of the Quarterly Journal of Economics warrants, a union can demand no more than the value of future revenues. By borrowing money, a firm must pay the creditors and shareholders a portion of future revenues first. That’s why shareholders prefer unionized firms that use financial leverage.

Second is To End The Negotiations. Bronars of the Quarterly Journal of Economics explains what happens when a union doesn’t back down. As debt rises, the firm declares bankruptcy, forcing the union to now bargain with the creditors, who could simply replace the union with nonunion labor and restart the firm.

For these two reasons, Dalia of ISU ‘15 empirically concludes, a 0.1 percent increase in the probability of unionization increases a company’s debt by one million dollars and increases its debt-to-equity ratio by 12.3 percent. This relationship only exists in states without right-to-work laws as Chava continues, firms immediately decrease leverage within one year of right-to-work’s implementation. Thus, Dalia furthers, firms in right-to-work states use 13 percent less leverage than firms in non-right-to-work states.

The impact is a financial catastrophe. Debt quickly piles up as Patti of the Italian Economic Journal ‘14 quantifies, a 10 percent increase in leverage raises the probability of default by 6 percent. Disastrously, Campello of the Review of Financial Studies ‘17 reports, each bankruptcy of a highly unionized firm costs an additional $343 million to the firm and $51 million to shareholders. After the dust settles, Dalia concludes, firms in non-right-to-work states underperform by 9.5 percent each year.

We urge a negative ballot.

Hey, just wanted to say this is my first time back judging since COVID began, so I don't have any experience on this topic in-round, you could consider me casually knowledgeable about this topic, as it is adjacent to many of my interests, but some details you think may be base topic knowledge I might not have been exposed to yet.

Below is my paradigm from 2020, i doubt my preferences have changed much from then. But I will say that if you try to run politics shells, or international relations scenarios, I will not be able to help myself from simply just believing your authors are getting paid to talk out their asses. I genuinely don't think accurate predictions can be made in those realms in this current context, so as a judge I will very begrudgingly listen and look visibly upset if you put me through these arguments. You're gambling on me if you choose to run an argument like that, im not just gonna give you want cause you happen to have a card from this morning or whatever.

I will not shake your hand after the round. I mean no disrespect but y'all keep getting me sick. Just think about how many hands you've shaken by round 5, and how many hands your opponents have shaken. Its unsettling. (Yes this part is unedited from 2020, i was right that we are all disgusting)

I debated throughout high school and have been judging since (four years). I studied History and Philosophy of Science, and Sociology at Pitt. I've competed in and judged national break rounds. I'm experienced in running and evaluating traditional or critical arguments. Feel safe to run whatever arguments and frameworks you wish, but I am not without some preferences.

I would prefer to see unique arguments in the round, things like politics disads or the states counterplan are run in the same exact way so often it becomes horrible to sit through and often ends the same. However, I would strongly prefer you running your generics that you know well over poorly running something you aren't used to. On a similar point, in the past I've seen a lot of rounds ruined by trying to run four or five off case arguments at a sub-par level. I would much rather see a directed, thought-out, and well-debated round, and I think it would serve you best strategically as well. At the end of the day, you know your files and many of your opponents better than I do.

The arguments I have a bias towards are low magnitude - high probability affs that address structural violence and I typically prefer those frameworks and how they affect the debate. K's are probably going to win impact and link debates on me a little more than some other judges because I find a lot of their claims to be true, thus I think one of the best ways to defend against them is on the framework flow, an alt debate, or having a critical edge of your own. But again, stick with what you know, these are debates you could easily lose through inexperience.

EMAIL: nickpweb@gmail.com