I am a former LD Debater, State Champion and National Competitor many moons ago.

I have coached and judged Public Forum and LD for the past 8 years. The last seven as Head Coach.

I am a flow judge. Speed is fine but know if it doesn’t hit my flow it didn’t happen. I will be pretty clear in my face and writing if you are losing me.

Overview: I will not do the work for you.

I require extending arguments and vetting sources. IE remember the XX card (I won’t) with out a paraphrase and impact is meaningless and a throw away.

Signpost. If you must jump around the flow, lead me there. I require more than cross apply the arguments. Why?

Narrative: This is an absolute requirement for me. Why do I prefer your offering on the resolution? I do not vote on net zero arguments. IE my evidence is better, more recent, yada yada without context. Making an argument neutral is not winning an argument. Basically, impact the TURN. I am not a technicality judge as I do not feel that is in the true spirit of Debate.

Public Forum:

I do not believe there is a paradigm in this area of debate. I expect logical links and impacts. I am open to where a debater will take the argument. That said, public forum is not Policy light. Use solvency, plans, counter plans, K’s and DisAds at your own risk. There is a reason Policy rounds are 90 minutes and PF only 45. If you can solve for poverty in 4 minutes from a few sentences of some evidence, I will personally take you to the U.N.

I do embrace/expect scope and link chains as it is logical and necessary to weigh any debate.

LD:

I will look to Framework. If you can not access impacts in the V/C clash I cannot vote for you. End of story. You cannot win an LD round with out winning the V/C clash. It is the bedrock of why we are even talking about the subject in LD and not PF or Policy. You have a unique obligation of ought or should while upholding a link to the real world.

Debate should be an educational and communicative activity. I look for debaters that can discuss the topic with intelligence and honesty. Any attempts to play games with my emotions or my sentiments will get very low marks on the ballot. Debate the topic and do so with integrity, this is my expectation.

Brian Geffre

Shanley High School

Fargo ND

she/her

I did 4 years of traditional LD in North Dakota and 2 years of APDA at Columbia. Consider me an expert in traditional debate and philosophy and as having a basic working knowledge of circuit debate.

In general, don’t do anything harmful, I will tank your speaks and vote you down. For traditional LD debates, the winner’s offense links to the winning criterion and outweighs their opponent’s offense that links. In circuit debates, I still want some sort of framework/weighing that I can use to evaluate impacts, and I will plug those impacts in accordingly. This can be basically anything, as long as it’s not harmful.

As I become less and less involved with debate, I become less interested in the technical side. I will still evaluate the round based purely on the arguments made, and will try not to intervene in any but the most egregious of cases. Nevertheless, I question the notion that we can or should be a tabula rasa in or out of debate.

In terms of speed, I’m comfortable with anything ~<200, more than that and you should send a doc.

If you are interested in my personal biases, know that I'm generally more sympathetic to ideas that fall under the "identity politics" umbrella. In high school, I ran a lot of Kant so I really like to see deontological arguments done well. I will of course do everything possible to remain impartial in spite of these biases, but they are there.