Last changed on
Tue March 5, 2024 at 1:13 PM PDT
Email - benmanens@gmail.com - put me on the chain
Camp Tournament:
1) Don't change how you debate for me - this tournament is for you to learn, so I'll listen to anything you throw at me.
2) Be a good sport - this is a first varsity tournament for many, and the beginning of the end for many others. Make sure everyone learns and has a good time and you will be rewarded with speaker points.
General thoughts:
1) Tech over truth - I like certain arguments and dislike others. This does not change how I evaluate them in the context of a debate and my ideological predispositions are easily overcome by outdebating the other team. That being said, while adapting to my argumentative preferences will not affect my likelihood to vote for you, it may affect the quality of my judging for both sides absent clear explanation and judge instruction.
1b) Dropped arguments are true, but only as long as they are attached to a claim, warrant, and impact. My threshold for what constitutes those three components is low if left unanswered.
2) I have zero experience with the topic. Err on the side of overexplaining rather than underexplaining.
3) I flow on paper, and have never been very neat. I will reward good signposting* and clear judge instruction that frontloads the most important arguments in the debate.
*From Surya Midha's paradigm: "Number everything. 'One, two, three' is preferable to 'first, second, third.' If your gripe with numbering is that it 'interrupts the flow of your speech,' you have incidentally just articulated the most compelling justification for the practice."
4) Final rebuttals should identify the most important issues in the debate and coherently flesh them out. 2NRs and 2ARs too often get lost in the weeds of line by line and forget to extend complete arguments and/or instruct the judge on why the debate so far should lead them to a decision one way or the other.
5) I flow CX. It's a lost art. You can go ahead and waffle or use it as prep time, but smart, well-thought out CX strategies that impact the course of the debate will be rewarded.
Topicality:
1) I default to competing interps, but have recently been more and more open to reasonability if the aff invests time in fleshing it out and making it a part of their strategy. I'm most compelled by aff explanations that use reasonability to weigh substance crowdout as offense against whatever the negative goes for.
2) Reading a piece of evidence that defines a word in the resolution is a very basic threshold for a T interp, but one that less and less T interps are meeting. If you have to spin what the words in your interp card say, you're probably stretching it. Not only does it make it a nightmare to watch, it should, if executed properly, make it very easy for the aff to win on predictability.
3) I've gone back and forth on plan text in a vacuum - I lean neg but oftentimes teams are underprepared for a 2A bold enough to go all-in on the argument.
4) It is the negative burden to establish a violation. Please don't make your 1NC shell say "Interp: [x must do y], Violation: they don't."
Theory and Competition:
1) Condo can (or can not) be a voting issue, everything else is a reason to reject the argument. I dislike that a 15 second argument in the 1AR can be blown up to a 5-minute 2AR, and will hold the line on egregious overextrapolation.
2) I'll vote for dropped ASPEC (and other arguments of the sort), but I will not be happy doing so. Don't drop it.
3) Slightly neg-leaning on condo and process CPs, solidly neg-leaning on PICs, multiplank, agent, solvency advocate, and concon theory, solidly aff-leaning on delay and international fiat. Still, dropped arguments are true, and I will happily vote on conceded or undercovered pieces of offense.
4) The 2NC is a constructive, 1NR is not.
5) You will be best served by ditching whichever blocks you stole from a college round to spread at top speed and instead collapsing down to your best one or two pieces of offense, fleshing that out, and comparing it to your opponent's main piece of offense.
6) I'll default to judgekick unless debated out.
7) I generally prefer competition over theory, but theory bolsters whatever arguments you make about competition. Positional competition is a hard sell, limited intrinsicness, PDCP, and all the other typical process CP perms can go either way. It is the neg burden to establish competition.
Counterplans:
1) Sufficiency framing is both underrated and overutilized. It is extremely helpful in establishing burdens and thresholds in regards to judge instruction, but is only valuable insofar as you apply it to specific internal links rather than a 5-second buzzword-filled explanation at the top.
2) I will reward long, creative advantage counterplans that throw a curveball at 2As. I will also reward 2As that respond with deficits that demonstrate they've thought through the strategic value of their advantages and can creatively apply them. On that same note, solvency deficits are underrated vs process CPs if you've written your aff correctly.
Disadvantages:
1) Try-or-die, impact turns case, and other impact framing arguments of the sort are rhetorically compelling, but not very helpful in terms of evaluating relative risk. The question I ask myself in these debates is which side I vote for will prevent the greatest impact. This also means that saying "timeframe - intervening actors/live to fight another day" absent a specific warrant behind that is not super helpful.
2) Specific link analysis and contextualization is indispensable. Carded evidence is the gold standard, but cleverly spinning generic evidence can suffice in a pinch. Storytelling is key.
3) I don't believe in zero risk unless something damning is dropped, but that doesn't tend to matter much. Quantifying the risk of disadvantages only matters insofar as it is necessary to make a comparative claim, and oftentimes the arbitrary difference between zero and near-zero risk does little to change that comparison.
4) Always down for an impact turn - am not a huge fan of spark/wipeout, but will still evaluate it. Organization of these debates is key, and especially in later speeches collapsing down to a couple of core claims and clearly explaining how they implicate the debate.
5) I have a soft spot for politics and the rider DA. Doesn't mean I'll vote for it (the rider DA goes away if the aff says the right things), but I'll be happy to see it well executed.
Kritiks:
1) The quickest way to my ballot on the aff is winning that your case outweighs. The quickest way to my ballot on the neg is winning a framework interp that mitigates that. I find that oftentimes they are poorly answered and implicate the other, so taking advantage of that will do you a lot of good.
2) I don't mind long overviews in the right circumstances if flagged beforehand. They're helpful to explain necessary thesis-level components of your argument, but counterproductive when they begin replacing line-by-line.
3) I'm somewhat familiar with most common kritiks - afropess, setcol, security, cap, etc. Err on the side of overexplaining if unsure.
4) From Anirudh Prabhu's paradigm, "All debate is storytelling, but K debate especially so." Specific link analysis is not only satisfying to watch, it will make it more likely that you win.
5) The Cap K is my pet peeve. I find it ridiculous that someone labeled capitalism bad a kritik and then could basically read that as an impact turn versus almost any aff. At the same time, aff teams tend to do a poor job at exploiting the tensions between the impact and framework, link magnitude and the perm, etc. I say this not to stop you from reading it, but be aware when it's strategically valuable to extend.
K Affs/Framework:
1) Ideologically, probably not great for the aff. I've never read a K aff nor gone for anything other than FW against K affs, and I believe affirmative teams should affirm the resolution. However, I will do my best to evaluate these debates independent of my own beliefs. Good framework vs K aff debates are my favorite to watch, and many of the judges I look up to are quite middle-of-the-road in these debates so I strive to reach that standard myself.
2) Packaging and framing in framework debates is just as important as the arguments themselves. The team that is more offensive in final rebuttals gains a massive advantage.
3) I find impacts grounded in debate's form more compelling than those related to the content of the debates themselves, not out of personal belief, but in terms of strategic utility. Fairness is probably good, but whether it is an impact is left up for debate - I've gone back and forth, can be persuaded either way.
4) I have a slight preference for the aff to forward one or two impact turns rather than a counter-interp with numerous shoddily extended disads, but oftentimes negative teams do far too little to exploit the offense they could generate from the counter-interp. Regardless of which route you take, the best way to persuade me and excise any of my implicit skepticism is to phrase your offense as if you were answering the question, "why not read it on the neg?" It is not necessary, but it will go a long way to help me vote for you.
5) Specificity, specificity, specificity - on both sides, please explain in concrete detail what debates would look like under each team's model: what affs and off-case positions get read, what those debates come down to, etc.
6) I have never been in a K v K debate, nor have I ever judged one. Please overexplain, and then explain a bit more just for good measure.
