I'm very tech!  

seva.gaskov@gmail.com - please add me to the email chain!!
she/they

Mamaroneck High School '20, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School '23, Arizona State University 27', 5th year debater

Spreading
Go ahead, I am fine with high speed as long as you are clear. I will try my best to flow everything but if you're unintelligible, I can't guarantee that I will be able to hear everything.

Tech vs. Truth
I am a tabula rasa and tech judge and I will vote on whatever is on the flow as long as it's not offensive.

Policy vs. K
I am fine with most kritiks. If I don't understand what your K says, I won't vote on it, so if you run Baudrillard, explain it well.

In K aff debates, I will usually prefer neg on framework unless it's debated poorly. Also, I want you to make it clear how an aff ballot solves.

Impacts
I am fine with either big stick or soft left impacts, just make sure to prove why your impact outweighs.

T
I am fine with T debates but unless the aff is clearly abusive, I will prefer reasonability. Either way, make sure to have a lot of good evidence and comparison.

DAs
Make sure to have all parts of your DA - uniqueness, link, internal link, and impact. I will treat the takeout of any single part of the DA as the takeout of the entire disad. So if the aff proves you don't link or that your DA is non-unique, I will vote aff on the DA. Give a clear story and do impact calc to explain why your DA outweighs.

CPs
I am fine with any CPs as long as there is a net benefit. I will disallow a type of CP only if the aff proves it's bad on theory.

Theory
I will vote on any theory but explain your standards and impacts well.

Speaks
30: You did something that really impressed me and I really enjoyed listening to your speeches. I have no doubt that you will win the tournament.

29 - 29.9: You did really well and your speeches were very interesting. You will most likely win the tournament or at least get to semifinals.

28.5 - 28.9: You did well and you had good speeches that made you win. You will likely break.

28 - 28.5: You did average and there are a lot of improvements to be made. Perhaps you were not clear or your speeches were messy. You could break.

27-28: You did badly and you need a lot of improvement. I will usually not give those speaks unless I really think that you messed up really badly in your speech. You would also get those speaks if you were unintelligible or if your speech didn't make sense.

27 and less: You probably said something that was offensive and made the debate really unpleasant for either me or your opponents.

peninsulalailai@gmail.com

Novices, remember these things:

Do line by line. Try to answer your opponents' arguments in the order they made them.

Extend your offense first. This means if you're aff, extend your advantages first. If you're neg, extend your disadvantages first. Defense (responding to your opponents' offense) comes later.

I have found two extremes with evidence. In half of the debates I judge, cards get forgotten. In the other half, cards are overemphasized and rebuttals are referring to cites instead of making the actual argument. Remember to find a balance where you explain your arguments, but refer to authors to support your arguments.

Understand the arguments you are making. I understand it's easy to read the files your varsity teammates gave you, but really try to understand, please.

Ask questions!

Peninsula '24

Add me to the email chain: peninsulalailai@gmail.com

arthur.v.qin@gmail.com

Don’t pref me if you don’t read a plan and care about winning.

It is true that every debater enters a two hour round wanting to win, and any argumentation otherwise will result in an immediate vote for the opponents in the spirit of unfairness, because you have just said that you do not want to win.

"When debaters walk in the room, they expect the judge to render a fair decision, not to rob them of years of hard work and dedication by substituting their personal biases for the arguments presented."

I try to make my speaks normally distributed (u = 28.4, sd = 0.5).

Prep ends when email is sent.

Topicality is primarily a question of truth.

Debate is better when debaters are dressed business professional (applies to online debate).

Everything is probabilistic. You can win the full weight of a dropped argument and easily still lose the debate.

Email - reesethomasj@gmail.com - include on all chains

Affiliation - USC

General:

Read what you want. I don't understand the separation between teams calling themselves "policy debaters" or "K debaters." Debate is a process that is performed through close readings.

I think that dropped arguments are mostly true and conceded arguments are 100% true.

Word salad highlighting and "the aff causes extinction" = lower speaks.

• All debates ARE ABOUT LISTENING, if you show me you are actively engaged in your opponent’s arguments your speaker points will increase, if you are not listening I will be super upset.

FW: I think the best FW debating answers the question of why FW is important for the thing the aff is trying to solve for. This can include the necessity of having a fair game and a ballot that reflects the desirability of fairness. However, if you go for FW as some abstract Willy Wonka thing dropping all the impact turns and rambling about how big a library is chances are you are going to L on the impact turn. AFFs if you think but policing + the topic is racist is sufficient to answer a TVA rethink.

• Not a fan of the approach of listing a bunch of bad/good debaters. None of us know these people and you can be a bad person and debate either style of argumentation. Same goes for aff solvency, not sure how 5 debaters doing x good thing after debate is evidence of reading the aff being good. Also not a fan of mentioning other teams, I can't name a single high schooler and the college debaters that made an impact didn't do so by citing other debaters, their arguments stood on their own merits.
• Not a fan of reading the advocacy statement with US should in front of it and calling it a TVA
• Affs should defend "some-thing" that I can endorse. That thing must at least be related to the subject of the year's resolution, I really really don't want to listen to a personhood aff on the nukes topic or a water aff on fiscal topic.
• Not a fan of "debate is a game" "no it's not, debate is my life" - obviously debate is both, make me understand why a limited/predictable game O/W their offense and vise-versa.
• Please give some case lists/neg ground examples.

Ks - I love Ks. That being said it is hard for me to imagine a world in which I don't consider the imaginative action of the 1AC against the K - FW to me is nothing more than a competition framing argument for how I understand the "fiated" thing against the links the negative goes for. You can go for a K without an alt, you can say research of the 1AC shapes implementation, that in-round things matter, or that performance comes first BUT all of those things if won will only reflect the way that I think about the 1AC - TLDR neg must meet the burden of rejoinder by implicating their arguments to the aff, if I can't start my RFD with "the aff is bad because" or "the aff is good because" you will not win. I am inclined to believe that weighing the aff is equal to fiating the aff, unless the negative has explicit judge instruction otherwise

CPs - I default to judge kick unless instructed otherwise b/ it maintains the burden of proof, equally applies to C/I on FW (so long as there is an alternative means of resolving FW offense) if you don't want me to adjudicate that way tell me.

DAs - UQ, Links, I/Ls, Impacts - do some impact calc

T - See DAs

Theory - Will vote on any theory although the vast majority are not reasons to reject the team. Often times two teams read debate buzzwords and expect me to weigh debatbility vs. real world neg flex - hard to resolve - also not a fan of this "topic is so x side biased", don't care get good.

Other:

I'm comfortable voting on presumption if your K aff isn't explained or I couldn't explain the central goal of the 1AC EVEN IF presumption is not an argument in the 2NR.

There are some arguments that in order to win in front of me will need quality evidence to back it up. Debating about the "earth being flat" or "climate change is good for x because island populations will survive and repopulate - only 4 billion oppressed people will die" are such examples. I don't think anyone's livelihood is improved in relation to the time we would spend making these arguments. BUT if the evidence shows a dedication to the subject in order to actually make us better able to combat the position "in the real-world" I will consider much less of my own ethical concerns in making the decision. There is a difference in playing devils advocate and just being ignorant - otherwise I am the Tabula Rosa.

I will tell you "clearer" twice - If I have to tell you once assume I am following along with the whole doc. I won't take initiative in stopping the round based on clipping, but if the other team issues a challenge and stakes the round on it chances are I will have made up my mind. Absent this challenge card clipping and unclarity will just be reflected in your speaker points.

Furthermore, an ethics violation is only an ethics violation if the team stakes the round on it. If a position is introduced and debated through the round it is just a procedural. If the other team truly violated the rules either end the round and I will decide or make actual impact claims as to why norm violations are bad and I will vote on the substance of the argument.

Speech time ends, I stop flowing - not getting paid enough to listen to all that.

Overall:
1. Offense-defense, but can be persuaded by reasonability in theory debates. I don't believe in "zero risk" or "terminal defense" and don't vote on presumption.

2. Substantive questions are resolved probabilistically--only theoretical questions (e.g. is the perm severance, does the aff meet the interp) are resolved "yes/no," and will be done so with some unease, forced upon me by the logic of debate.

3. Dropped arguments are "true," but this just means the warrants for them are true. Their implication can still be contested. The exception to this is when an argument and its implication are explicitly conceded by the other team for strategic reasons (like when kicking out of a disad). Then both are "true."

Counterplans:
1. Conditionality bad is an uphill battle. I think it's good, and will be more convinced by the negative's arguments. I also don't think the number of advocacies really matters. Unless it was completely dropped, the winning 2AR on condo in front of me is one that explains why the way the negative's arguments were run together limited the ability of the aff to have offense on any sheet of paper.

2. I think of myself as aff-leaning in a lot of counterplan theory debates, but usually find myself giving the neg the counterplan anyway, generally because the aff fails to make the true arguments of why it was bad.

Disads:
1. I don't think I evaluate these differently than anyone else, really. Perhaps the one exception is that I don't believe that the affirmative needs to "win" uniqueness for a link turn to be offense. If uniqueness really shielded a link turn that much, it would also overwhelm the link. In general, I probably give more weight to the link and less weight to uniqueness.

2. On politics, I will probably ignore "intrinsicness" or "fiat solves the link" arguments, unless badly mishandled (like dropped through two speeches). Note: this doesn't apply to riders or horsetrading or other disads that assume voting aff means voting for something beyond the aff plan. Then it's winnable.

Kritiks:
1. I like kritiks, provided two things are true: 1--there is a link. 2--the thesis of the K indicts the truth of the aff. If the K relies on framework to make the aff irrelevant, I start to like it a lot less (role of the ballot = roll of the eyes). I'm similarly annoyed by aff framework arguments against the K. The K itself answers any argument for why policymaking is all that matters (provided there's a link). I feel negative teams should explain why the affirmative advantages rest upon the assumptions they critique, and that the aff should defend those assumptions.

2. I think I'm less technical than some judges in evaluating K debates. Something another judge might care about, like dropping "fiat is illusory," probably matters less to me (fiat is illusory specifically matters 0%). I also won't be as technical in evaluating theory on the perm as I would be in a counterplan debate (e.g. perm do both isn't severance just because the alt said "rejection" somewhere--the perm still includes the aff). The perm debate for me is really just the link turn debate. Generally, unless the aff impact turns the K, the link debate is everything.

3. If it's a critique of "fiat" and not the aff, read something else. If it's not clear from #1, I'm looking at the link first. Please--link work not framework. K debating is case debating.

Nontraditional affirmatives:

Versus T:

1. I'm *slightly* better for the aff now that aff teams are generally impact-turning the neg's model of debate. I almost always voted neg when they instead went for talking about their aff is important and thought their counter-interp somehow solved anything. Of course, there's now only like 3-4 schools that take me and don't read a plan. So I'm spared the debates where it's done particularly poorly.

2. A lot of things can be impacts to T, but fairness is probably best.

3. It would be nice if people read K affs with plans more, but I guess there's always LD. Honestly debating politics and util isn't that hard--bad disads are easier to criticize than fairness and truth.

Versus the K:
1. If it's a team's generic K against K teams, the aff is in pretty great shape here unless they forget to perm. I've yet to see a K aff that wasn't also a critique of cap, etc. If it's an on-point critique of the aff, then that's a beautiful thing only made beautiful because it's so rare. If the neg concedes everything the aff says and argues their methodology is better and no perms, they can probably predict how that's going to go. If the aff doesn't get a perm, there's no reason the neg would have to have a link.

Topicality versus plan affs:
1. I used to enjoy these debates. It seems like I'm voting on T less often than I used to, but I also feel like I'm seeing T debated well less often. I enjoy it when the 2NC takes T and it's well-developed and it feels like a solid option out of the block. What I enjoy less is when it isn't but the 2NR goes for it as a hail mary and the whole debate occurs in the last two speeches.

2. Teams overestimate the importance of "reasonability." Winning reasonability shifts the burden to the negative--it doesn't mean that any risk of defense on means the T sheet of paper is thrown away. It generally only changes who wins in a debate where the aff's counter-interp solves for most of the neg offense but doesn't have good offense against the neg's interp. The reasonability debate does seem slightly more important on CJR given that the neg's interp often doesn't solve for much. But the aff is still better off developing offense in the 1AR.

LD section:
1. I've been judging LD less, but I still have LD students, so my familarity with the topic will be greater than what is reflected in my judging history.

2. Everything in the policy section applies. This includes the part about substantive arguments being resolved probablistically, my dislike of relying on framework to preclude arguments, and not voting on defense or presumption. If this radically affects your ability to read the arguments you like to read, you know what to do.

3. If I haven't judged you or your debaters in a while, I think I vote on theory less often than I did say three years ago (and I might have already been on that side of the spectrum by LD standards, but I'm not sure). I've still never voted on an RVI so that hasn't changed.

4. The 1AR can skip the part of the speech where they "extend offense" and just start with the actual 1AR.

Peninsula 24'

Plz put me on the email chain at Stevenyu0923@gmail.com

I judge very similarly to Scott Wheeler. If that means anything.

Tech over truth dropped arguments are presumed to be true, but I do believe that true arguments are easier to defend.

Simplicity is good.

Every argument needs a claim, warrant, impact.

If it takes more than 1 minute to send out a document I start running prep unless justified. ("My computer isn't loading for more than 1 whole minute is usually not a justified answer")

If you don't slow down after I clear you I will stop flowing.

Some degree of aggression is fine, love a heated clash heavy debate.

I take starting debates on time very seriously. When we read the time debate needs to start, it doesn't mean you start sending the 1AC. It means you have the 1AC sent, and you are ready to start the speech.

Don't advise you go for arguments like racism, extinction, suffering good or anything of those kind. But if you do, I will reluctantly evaluate it fairly.

For every min of prep you don't use I will give 0.1 of extra speaks to award going off the flow.

I am fine for any policy arguments, and extra speaks for teams who do detailed case debating. If you are reading a tricky argument then you should start your speech with an overview of how it operates. Otherwise, I only want to hear quick overviews of impact calculus.

I am usually fine for CP theory from both sides. If you are going for theory, please don't read blocks straight down. You need to actually clash with their specific arguments instead of reading generic answers. It is hard to convince me to vote on something that occurred outside of the round, but if you do plan on going for it make sure you have concrete evidence of what your opponents did and articulate specific impacts to it. Relatively good at understanding funky permutations against process CPs.

Nonetheless, here are my preferences below.

Familiar with majority of the literature, but I wouldn't try high theory in front of me though. K debate is case debate. The more you debate the case the more you convince me of the flaws in the 1AC's critical scholarship. Perf con most likely bad but generally not enough to reject the team. Going for the K successfully in front of me likely entails going for a competitive alternative with links that turn case. That being said, I will pull the trigger on mishandled framework arguments. Just know I personally believe a middle ground framework interpretation (weigh consequences of the plan against consequences of reps links with a solvent alternative) is most strategic.

T Framework is fine. Fairness is most likely an impact. Debate most likely shapes subjectivities to some degree.

K affs can be very successful in front of me. One should approach beating framework from the internal links not the impacts, meaning impact turning fairness likely isn't the way to go.

Middleschool:

Clarity > speed

Flow

Don't steal prep