//shree

I am a social studies & math teacher who is no longer involved in full-time argument coaching.

I previously served as a DOD at the high school level and as a hired gun for college debate programs. During this time, I had the privilege of working with Baker Award recipients, TOC champions, and NDT First-Round teams; I was very much ‘in the cards.’ Debate used to be everything to me, and I fancied myself as a ‘lifer.’ I held the naïve view that this activity was the pinnacle of critical thinking and unequivocally produced the best and brightest scholars compared to any other curricular or extracurricular pursuit.

My perspective has shifted since I’ve reduced my competitive involvement with the community. Debate has provided me with some incredible mentors, colleagues, and friends that I would trade for nothing. However, several of the practices prevalent in modern policy debate risk making the activity an academically unserious echo chamber. Many in the community have traded in flowing for rehearsing scripts, critical thinking for virtue signaling, adjudication for idol worship, and research for empty posturing. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t guilty of adopting or teaching some of the trendy practices that are rapidly devolving the activity, but I am no longer willing to keep up the charade that what we do here is pedagogically sound.

This ‘get off my lawn’ ethos colors some of my idiosyncrasies if you have me in the back of the room. Here are guidelines to maximize your speaker points and win percentage:

1 – Flow. Number arguments. Answer arguments in the order that they were presented. Minimize overviews.

2 – Actually research. Most of you don’t, and it shows. Know what you are talking about and be able to use the vocabulary of your opponents. Weave theory with examples. Read a book. Being confidently clueless or dodgy in CX is annoying, not compelling.

3 – Please try. Read cards from this year when possible; be on the cutting edge. Say new and interesting things, even if they’re about old or core concepts. Adapt your arguments to make them more ‘you.’ Reading cards from before 2020 or regurgitating my old blocks will bore me.

4 – Emphasize clarity. This applies to both your thoughts and speaking. When I return, my topic knowledge will be superficial, and I will be out of practice with listening to the fastest speakers. Easy-to-transcribe soundbytes, emphasis in sentences, and pen time is a must. I cannot transcribe bots who shotgun 3-word arguments at 400wpm nor wannabe philosopher-activists who speak in delirious, winding paragraphs.

5 – Beautify your speech docs. Inconsistent, poor formatting is an eyesore. So is word salad highlighting without the semblance of sentence structure.

6 – No dumpster fires. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy. I find unnecessarily escalating CX, heckling opponents, zoom insults, authenticity tests, and screenshot insertions uncompelling. I neither have the resources nor interest in launching an investigation about outside behavior, coach indiscretions, or pref sheets.

7 – Don’t proliferate trivial voting issues. I will evaluate a well-evidenced topicality violation; conditionality can be a VI; in-round harassment and slurs are not trivial. However, I have a higher threshold than most with regards to voting issues surrounding an author’s twitter beef, poorly warranted specification arguments, and abominations I classify as ‘LD tricks.’ If you are on the fence about whether your procedural or gateway issue is trivial, it probably is; unless it’s been dropped in multiple speeches, my preferred remedy is to reject the argument, not the team. Depending on how deranged it is, I may just ignore it completely. I strongly prefer substantive debates.

8 – Be well rounded. The divide between ‘policy,’ ‘critical,’ and ‘performance’ debate is artificial. Pick options that are strategic and specific to the arguments your opponents are reading.

9 – Not everything is a ‘DA.’ Topicality standards are not ‘DAs.’ Critique links are not ‘DAs’ and the alternative is not a ‘CP.’ A disadvantage requires, at a minimum, uniqueness, a link, and an impact. Describing your arguments as ‘DAs’ when they are not will do you a disservice, both in terms of your strategy and your speaker points.

10 – I’m old. I won’t know who you are, and frankly, I don’t care. Good debaters can give bad speeches, and the reverse can also be true. Rep has no correlation to the speaker points you will receive. 28.5 is average. 29 is clearing. 29.5 is exceptional. 30 means you’ve restored my belief in the pedagogical value of policy debate.

Emilyn Hazelbrook (she/her)

Please put me on the email chain: emilyndebate@gmail.com

Kamiak '21, Emory '25. Debated policy for four years in high school and in my third year of college debate, although I am not nearly as involved as I once was in the activity.

I adapt to you, not the other way around. Everything below will make it easier for me to understand, weigh, and vote for your arguments, but shouldn't dissuade you from reading anything.

LD for Barkley Forum 2024: I have judged approximately 10 rounds of LD in my life and none on this topic. The closer your debating style resembles policy, the more easily I will be able to evaluate arguments, but I do have experience with evaluating criterion/value debates. My best advice to you is to focus on clash and responding intelligently to the other person's arguments and over-explain terms on this topic. Ask me as many questions before the round as you need.

Tech > Truth.

Argument = claim + warrant (and + impact or reason why it matters in rebuttals). If you say "they dropped the link" and then do not explain warrants and impact out why I should vote on it, I will not vote on it.

K Affs — Your reason for not defending the resolution should be built into your 1ac. You should prioritize line by line over extensive overviews. Impact turns are more persuasive than counter-interp debating, and clash makes a bit more sense as an impact over fairness, although I will vote on either.

Topicality — I default to competing interps. Make sure to explain what debates would look like under your interp and theirs in rebuttals and read case lists.

Theory — Condo is good until you read 4+ advocacies. Everything but condo is a reason to reject the argument, and I can’t see myself voting on most procedurals unless they're egregiously mishandled. Please slow down on theory standards—you're only speaking as fast as I can flow.

Kritiks — Read very specific links and err on the side of over-explaining your thesis and alt. I'll probably weigh the 1ac impacts, but if the aff is losing that your reps/in-round actions make the world/debate worse, you're in a bad place. I am not the best for postmodernism kritiks and will likely be confused if I have to render a decision on one.

Counterplans — I lean neg on most questions of competition, although I am really not a fan of consult cps. If you're aff, read solvency deficits specific to your aff’s mechanism and smart perms. I default to judge kick if the neg says the cp is conditional, but I also think that smart 2ns won't spend time extending a losing cp.

Disadvantages — Compare the aff and disad impacts in rebuttals and read turns case arguments. I prefer topic-specific disads, but enjoy politics disads when debated with very specific links.

Case — Debates where neg teams invest time into picking apart the 1ac are my favorite to judge. Impact turns, circumvention, and analytics pressing the internal links/aff mechanism are much better than generic impact defense.

Miscellaneous — High-quality historical examples, well-executed jokes, and really good CX will boost your speaker points. Suffering, violence, and death are unquestionably bad. I like debaters who make it easy for me to flow them by numbering arguments, signposting clearly, and avoiding extensive overviews or walls at the top of the flow. I dislike people who cross the line between assertive and unnecessarily rude during CX, and will factor that into speaker points.

Be nice and have fun!

Email: bloayza2019@gmail.com

Experience: 3 years of high school debate for DMHS in LAMDL, now doing my 4th year of college debate at CSUF

I ain't asking for much, just don't be racist, hateful, sexist, homophobic, ableist, and basically, anything that might make a competitor uncomfortable or might make ME uncomfortable.

I'm comfortable with spreading but if you spread through crucial arguments I may not catch it at times so if you want me to flow your most important arguments then slow down a bit. In the realm of online debate sometimes I might not catch arguments if they're not given in conversational speed.

IF you are reading this as an LD debater you will get more info reading the policy page to get a better idea

==LD==

Don't run tricks in front of me. I will not get them, which means I won't vote on them. This also goes for theory debates theory has to be very good at explaining violations and why this is a voting issue or else leave me out of it.

Nebel T isn't a real argument, I do not care who Nebel is.

I probably won't vote on Reverse Voting Issues, they don't make a lot of sense to me as a policy debater (but can possibly be persuaded)

==Policy Debate==

Framing: Framing arguments are a very easy way for me to vote for you, I find it something easy to vote on when teams tell me how I should evaluate the round and why evaluating the round that way is good. This also means that having the role of the ballot/judge argument would be very effective in persuading my decision but these arguments need warrants to them.

K: I'm comfortable judging K's. I'm very comfortable with set col literature and I am familiar with afropess, ableism, and cap literature. Don't worry if I'm not familiar with your K literature all I ask for is a more thorough explanation of your literature and your theory of power. In order to win the K for me, you need to have a link, and if the link is vaguely explained/generic then I really won't buy that you link. If you do link what does that mean and why is that an indictment of the aff (what's the impact).

Kaffs: I'm cool with people running Kaffs and I won't immediately vote them down but I do have to require a good explanation of the aff.

DA: you can win a DA by itself if you have impact framing and how that impact outweighs the affs impacts and part of that impact framing you need to win uniqueness. You also need to win a link on how the aff causes the impacts of the DA. DA must have all its parts in order for me to evaluate it, it must have uniqueness, a link, an internal link, and more importantly an impact.

CP: I also vote for CPs with or without a DA, the DA in my mind is not necessary for a CP but that means proving the competitiveness of the CP and why the CP is preferable over that aff and that means why it solves better for the impacts of the aff or if you're running this with a DA why the CP solves and doesn't link to the DA.

T/FW: In order for me to vote for T you need to win a few questions, why you're model of debate is good, you also need to win how they violate and why that's bad for the round. You need to extend your standards/reasons to prefer your model of debate over theirs.

I debated for SLC West High School for 4 Years, and am currently a Second Year at Emory University

Please add me to the email chain: hanna.ricee@gmail.com

Big Picture Stuff:

Be nice to one another, I really value respect in debates (especially CX)

Read whatever you are comfortable with, I will judge based on the contents of the round- I definitely have more experience with Policy arguments though, so do with that what you will

Tech>Truth but you need warrants

Don't read death good or anything that could be deemed offensive in front of me!

T: I enjoy T debates with substantive and applicable interps/deep lit bases- try not to read contrived interps- I normally default to competing interpretations but reasonability is cool too

CP: condo is probably good- aff teams should read lots of theory against cheaty CPs- I'm a good judge for CP/DA debates- I like CPs with funky mechanisms/processes as long as you can explain them clearly and have specific solvency evidence

DA: super fun, have specific link evidence and tell the story of the DA- I <3 turns case

K: not the best judge for Ks- I understand basic K lit such as Capitalism, Settler Colonialism, Security, etc, but reading any other K requires deep explanation and specific links to the aff and the aff's mechanism

Have fun! :)

Stjsuben@gmail.com

Mamaroneck '20

Binghamton '24

assistant coach @ Berkeley Prep

As of fall 2021, I no longer actively debate. This was not by my own choice, but rather the result of partner scarcity/other people quitting at a small program, and is something I am sort of sad about. It does however, mean a few things:

1. My engagement with the activity entirely takes place through coaching/judging, thus, I will be especially committed to making these debates as good as possible in whatever ways I can.

2. Many of the views and/or biases (particularly concerning k debate) stated in this paradigm are far more weakly held than they were even a few months ago. You probably get away with anything if you do it well.

In high school I was flex but went for the K very often. I would typically go for topicality against critical affs. I have predispositions towards both sides of the clash of civs depending on issue. My closest mentors in the activity were/are "policy-leaning" and my brief college career was largely k-oriented. Do with all that what you will.

I read a great deal in my spare time and as part of my academic career. This mostly focuses on putatively "critical" bases of literature like world-systems analysis, Russian Studies, Marxism, and development economics. I strive to be neutral but I believe that judges who are highly engaged with scholarship outside of the activity should not try to pretend that it doesn't influence how they think about debates.

Basic predispositions:

+0.3 speaks if you opensource after the debate and tell me

tech determines the direction of truth

protecting the 2nr = yes

not your baudrillard

I will not evaluate arguments made outside of speech times and thus will stop flowing if you continue after the timer

don't be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc

an expressive judge, but tend to express my feelings about extremely irrelevant things and make difficult to discern expressions

horrible with eye contact

speed = good

I am extremely unlikely to vote in favor of mandating pref disclosure

Do not ask for high speaks

Moralizing is prohibited

I would frankly prefer not to hear fascist and genocidal arguments about "first striking" Russia or China or Iran

other than that, more general "death good" is fine

"kritik affs"/planless affs/t-usfg/framework:

Debate is a game. It is also 1) A game with potentially meaningful effects on the social/political consciousness of the participants and 2) A game with a community, culture, and history. This history may mean that even if an argument is narrowly true, the actual enforcement/implementation of a rule may have historically been used as a tool of exclusion. On the flipside, without rules to the game it might cease to function entirely, and then whatever benefits there are to it would be lost. I can be convinced of either of these things.

affs should not defend a moral truism

i will lean more strongly towards the policy side of these debates when affs do not clearly advocate for something and more strongly towards the critical side when negatives make very racist or orientalist arguments

critiques generally:

Critical debates are good when done well. As mentioned above, I am very knowledgeable about literature bases related to Marxism, critiques of imperialism, or orientalism. I am also conversant in baudrillard, foucault, wilderson, etc -- most of the literature that is conventionally read in debates.

links to the plan + alts that function as counterplans OR links that function as impact turns are the most enjoyable k debates for me. these debates produce the most interesting revolutionary research. this doesn't change at all that affs that can't justify weighing the plan will lose in front of me.

I think "weighing the aff" is not all-or-nothing, insofar as the aff is attached to a number of things (political and educational methodology, engagement with certain structures, goals, etc) besides its scenarios which these debates are almost entirely about

Impact turns when well explained and well carded are often a good strategy.

t vs policy affs

I default to competing interpretations.

reasonability is not a thing

not much else to say here

disads

I read most if not all evidence

uq + link + internal link + impact

counterplans:

I like well-researched, specific, techy, creative, etc counterplans. I am a big fan of the advantage cp. I especially enjoy cps that rely on a macroeconomic or ir theory to ground solvency (mmt, prolif good, etc). uniqueness cps are cool

Process counterplans become better the more they are grounded in topic literature. Process counterplans become worse the more they use neg fiat to manufacture an opportunity cost or lead to the aff. Theory will be covered below.

Sufficiency framing >>>>

Logical arguments or arguments based on obvious holes in the aff don't necessarily need solvency advocates

obviously you can kick specific planks

theory:

lean negative on: condo, pics (including plan-inclusive alts), no plan no perm

lean affirmative on: fifty state fiat, multi-actor fiat generally, agent counterplans generally, process counterplans that don't very obviously compete

i am open to intrinsic perms being okay to punish shitty process cps

LD:

Same views as in policy apply for the most part. Best for larp or structural k debates.

Biases in no plan debates significantly weaker in this activity

I do not know much about analytic phil. I know a decent amount about continental and political phil.

People who have influenced how I debate/judge/view debate:

Ronak Ahuja, Ken Karas, Atticus Glen, Daryl Burch

If you make (nice) jokes at the expense of someone from Mamaroneck chances are that I will laugh, especially if it is Sonia Suben

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