Updated Dec 2023

I prefer not to read cards unless I have to (and won't follow along live in the doc) but you can include me on email chains. My email is sarahsmaga@gmail.com.

About Me:
Groves High School '10, Michigan State University '13
I debated for three years in high school and was a coach and judge in college (mostly for Niles North HS). Since then, I've judged a handful of NYCUDL and BAUDL rounds each year.

These days, I'm a pretty flexible judge - just make sure that you stay organized, explain your arguments well, and help me understand why I should vote for you. If you're interested in my more technical thoughts (circa 2013), see below.

General:
Take my philosophy into consideration when prepping your strategy, but ultimately you should run arguments you feel comfortable running.

1. Clipping cards is cheating. If you are caught clipping cards, you will lose the round and get the lowest possible speaker points that the tournament will allow.
2. (new) Prep ends when your speech is saved on the flash drive and that flash drive is removed from your computer. I used to be more relaxed about this, but realized it makes rounds inefficient.
3. Tag-teaming in cross-x is fine. Prompting during a speech is fine. Neither should be excessive. That being said, if two people are talking over each other, I can't flow/hear anything.
4. Be nice to other people in the round. Being condescending, rude, mean, etc. will impact your speaker points.
5. Speed is not as important as clarity: I need to be able to understand you read your arguments in order to vote on them.
6. Please define specific acronyms and topic-specific terms of art - I didn't work at camp last summer and have had limited exposure to the topic.

Specifics:

Counterplans - I'm fine with multiple conditional worlds, but they might make the aff's "condo bad" arguments more convincing. I'm less fond of process counterplans, dirty word PICs, etc. Make sure you explain specifically how your counterplan solves the aff advantages - this might require more work if you run an excessively complicated counterplan. Affirmatives should be making perms, solvency arguments, exploring any links to the net benefit, etc.

Disads - These are good. The negative should be making disad turns case arguments, and the affirmative should be careful not to drop them. I think it is possible for the affirmative to win terminal defense, but it's often very difficult - make sure you're also making offensive arguments as well. I'm not a huge fan of intrinsicness, vote no, bottom of the docket, etc. but I would vote on them if dropped and impacted accordingly.

Kritiks - Try to avoid jargon and explain your arguments, I'm probably not familiar with them and I don't come across critical literature very much in my science major classes. I'm much less persuaded by super-generic or "dirty word" kritiks, especially if they don't prove that the affirmative plan is a bad idea. I think the aff can weigh their advantages and should be doing impact calc versus the kritik, especially on issues of timeframe. The negative should interact with the affirmative and clearly explain the alternative - if these things are unclear by the 2NR, I find it difficult to vote neg.

Theory - I think most theory questions (with the exception of conditionality, PICs) are a reason to reject the argument, but not necessarily the team. If you think otherwise, make sure it's articulated in the debate. Theoretical objections against the consult counterplan, etc. are also convincing if argued well. I find it more difficult to vote on theory when there is a distinct lack of clash - don't just reread blocks, engage with the other team's arguments. Please explain what "conditionality" and "dispositionality" mean - clarify judge-kicking, etc.

Topicality - I prefer a competing interpretations framework. There should be substantive analysis, starting in the block, about why I should prefer your interpretation/standards/voters (just re-reading the 1NC shell in the block isn't sufficient). Impact calc is important here too.

Project Teams/Nontraditional Affs - Historically these are not the debates I feel most comfortable in. Make sure you explain your position and make efforts to engage with the other side's arguments.

Grant Zhang

NOTE: I've been outside of debate for a decent amount of time, and I'm not entirely aware of what current norms are. Please be patient with me and explain arguments in detail. That being said, I'm also not the best flow in the world, so please be extra clear. The notes below explain the lens through how I view debate.

I work as an investor today, and my education was centered around finance and economics, so I tend to think of events and policies in terms of opportunity cost and risk weighted evaluations. To me, these elements are heavily present within debate, although they lack discrete quantitative values. I weigh conflicting positions by their opportunity cost and the risk and magnitude of those opportunity costs. I probably evaluate risk and internal link consistency much more heavily than other judges you may have (e.g. global financial crisis with no war outweighs small resource wars in west Africa with a nuclear war impact on a risk-adjusted basis provided internal links are consistent).

Logic is incredibly important which rules out a lot of critiques and disadvantages. Weak arguments tend to maker larger logical leaps and overgeneralized statements.

Evidence is only needed if you are making a positive statement that requires some statistical or probabilistic research or expert opinion to make a well-reasoned argument. This does not include broad philosophical claims like value to life is more important than life, and I trust that you can make reasoned arguments to defend these claims on your own. This also applies for things that are common sense or readily apparent to anyone.

Things I care about:

Comparison and clash

Quality of evidence

Speaking clearly

Logical Consistency

Things I'm not persuaded by:

Oppression Olympics

Debate as a survival strategy

Death Good

Whether or not voting for you spills over

Whether or not this debate sends you to elims or the ToC

The 2NC is generally the last speech that gets new arguments for me, the rebuttals may read evidence to answer arguments and make new comparisons. I'm not a fan of late breaking debates, but if it's a situation where there is a new aff or negative position, I'll be a little more lenient about new arguments in rebuttals. If an argument is dropped or mishandled, a clever 2NR or 2AR will make comparisons or applications of arguments they already have to make it a smaller issue.

Tech vs. Truth

Most of the time, I fall in the middle here. In a debate where one team is clearly annihilating the other team, I am more likely to side with the technical aspects of the debate. In a debate where I think one team is dominating on most of the flow but the other team still has a fighting chance, the quality of evidence becomes very important in my decision. I'm not a fan of one liners that maybe viewed as technical knockouts when dropped like unarticulated floating PIKs and topical versions.

Aff

Aff Stuff

I think you have a good aff if:
1. It is at the center of the topic with a large literature base
2. It has good warrants about why it’s specific solvency mechanism is the best way to address it’s impacts
3. It has a diverse amount of impacts that can be weighed against disadvantages. I think it’s smart to have a war impact, an environment impact, and another type of impact. (disease, terrorism, ethics) This gives you a lot of headway in debates that are big on impact calculus. The strategic utility of having an aff with multiple impacts is that certain impacts are more strategic to deploy against different types of disadvantages and critiques.
4. It has good USFG key warrants.
5. The aff has good solvency evidence specific to each advantage.
6. The internal links add up and there aren’t lapses in consistency from internal link to internal link. For example, I would dislike an advantage that would solve for terrorism in Eastern Europe, but your impact evidence is about Al Qaeda having nuclear capabilities and the ability to initiate a nuclear exchange.
7. It is able to tackle and beat disadvantages and critiques rather than being dodgy about the aff’s mechanisms. It will be difficult to win my ballot if your aff’s purpose is to no-link as much stuff as possible. I like a consistent and coherent position. Not something that changes once during the 2AC or the 1AR.

Soft left

I think these types of affs are poorly debated most of the time. You need to be doing high level impact calculus; otherwise, I will side with the disadvantage outweighing the aff.

I view the majority of debates as a risk analyst. I ask myself: If I adopt a policy, what is the expected return on that policy and what is the opportunity cost of the policy, is there a free lunch opportunity, and how should I evaluate that risk?

I tend to believe the idea of risk premiums in finance are relevant in debate; High magnitude impacts have very low probability, and many low magnitude impacts have a very high probability. The high magnitude compensates the lower probability of the impact. It is the job of the debater to shape my preferences; am I an elderly risk averse investor who doesn't want to take on much volatility, or am I a 25 year-old whose incentive is to "go to Vegas!"

Under this paradigm, it doesn't make sense for me to vote for a low magnitude impact over a high magnitude impact if the debaters present them to me with equal weights. I am getting a free lunch with the high magnitude impact. If I am presented the two scenarios with equal risk, I will always choose the higher magnitude scenario. Unless you somehow convince me to abandon my preferences of being a rational person (incredibly unlikely), I expect you to do impact calculus on the probability level, and you should shape my preferences. What is missing in these debates is an extrapolation on why large impacts have low probability. An assessment with impact defense and a push on alt causes would likely convince me to prefer the security of a high probability, low magnitude impact.

The idea that the education presented by your aff outweighing the impacts in the debate is unpersuasive to me. I can't seem to find a reason why voting for you is necessary for additional education, and it seems more of a reason about why researching the genre of ideas that you have presented is more important, which is more suited to a topicality argument. Regardless of whether or not you are in an academic setting, policy setting, or any setting where research and ideas are rigorously scrutinized, the idea that you can present heavily flawed ideas and be praised for it because it is novel is ridiculous.

If you aren’t going to defend instrumental action by the United States Federal Government
Read this if you don’t have a lot of time
I’ve worked a lot with these affs my senior year in high school. Just because I may have read some of these arguments does not mean I am the best judge for them. I read a Nietzsche aff at a few tournaments for the purpose of strategy, not because I like these arguments. In fact, if the strategy of your aff is to create reasons why predictability and switch-side debate is bad, I’m not a good judge for you. If you would think of any of the arguments you read as “troll,” then I am definitely a bad judge for you. In most instances, I believe critical affs should be heading in the direction of defending a topical plan that relates to the resolution. I am not persuaded by any arguments that are along the lines of "the federal government is violent," therefore we shouldn't attempt to engage it. Most of the time, affs that deal with large macro-level issues are much more persuasive when they are implemented by the government. A better response is to be making arguments that problematize current government responses related to the topic and problematizing the logic of using instrumental action, but this does not mean "federal government violent" so they don't solve; that still isn't persuasive. I also do not believe that topical versions need to win that they solve 100% of the aff; topical versions are a way to talk about your scholarship while also giving the negative a nexus to debate you on. Winning a topical version doesn't matter if they are winning impact turns to T / Framework (which I think 95% of them can easily be answered by saying they don't apply to debate).

I also need to know what the aff does by the end of the debate. In a lot of "French theory" debates, I often lose track of or never find out what the aff does. In those debates, I think the negative is well-positioned to go for a Topicality presumption combo.

I'm not a big fan of affs that are in the vein of altering the form of debate, examples are like the "we rupture debate," the "we make debate a safe space," or "vote for us because we represent marginalized knowledge" arguments if your aff sacrifices actions in the direction of the topic. I am easily persuaded by impact turns to these affs like research oriented debate is good and using debate to prepare students for the real world is good.

T and Framework are not the same thing. Framework is a limit on form while topicality is a limit on content.

Fairness is an impact, but the way that most teams go for it doesn't reflect it as an impact. I don't think you need to win a large Lundberg impact to win the debate. Debatability and research are excellent impacts to go for.

I'm not persuaded by no spillover arguments in the context of other people will still read non-topical affs.

Role of the ballot arguments are unpersuasive but competing models of debate and role of the judge arguments may be important in these debates.

Most reasons for not reading a plan are bad; I don't think you have to defend the USFG is violent and that most state links are going to be the status quo anyways. If the primary reason you have for not reading a plan is to not have to debate disads and counterplans, I won't be persuaded by your answers to T.

I am likely to grant the negative disadvantages to your scholarship. If your aff is geneaology about why military presence is bad, I will still grant the negative a deterrence DA if you no link that because you don't actually reduce military presence for the sake of ground and direct clash with the scholarship that you presented. It is unacceptable to be dodgy against direct impact turns to your aff. Along with this, I won't buy your defense on T if you do something like this.

Affs should:

1. Affirm the topic. It is unpersuasive to me when your argument is that it is unethical to affirm the topic. Debate is a place where we see an exchange of ideas and open-mindedness towards new things. If your aff doesn’t mandate a plan, it must at least be in the direction of the resolution. If it is not, I will find it very difficult to grant you any internal link defense to their topicality arguments, and you will likely lose without defense.
2. You need defense against topicality/framework. I think predictability and limits are important and that the aff should provide for a substantive debate the negative can engage them on. Impact turns to limits and predictability are not persuasive to me. There needs to be ongoing dialogue in debate. I think debate is an important activity where an exchange of ideas needs to happen. In order for that to happen, there needs to predictability and limits for the negative. People often read cards in the context of educational institutions but not clash and dialogue focused activities like debate when they choose to impact turn predictability and limits. The logic of a lot of your "debate is bad" is often reliant on a metaphor, and none of your evidence is about debate. If you find a piece of evidence that says switch side debate causes genocide and the war on terror in explicit terms, I might buy the argument.
3. You need a reason why debate is key for your advocacy. If your excuse for reading an untopical aff is "we think messing around in debate is fun, and we should get to do whatever we want," then I will not like you. I am particularly fond of wrong forum arguments when articulated in an instance as such. There are many other places where you can mess around. I do think that debate has an element of contributing to self-awareness and developing skills.
4. Your aff should solve for its impact. Often times, I hear absurd methodologies that don’t have any policy relevance claim to solve for huge overarching extinction impacts and power structures. I don’t think methodologies like coalition building within debate are very reasonable or effective unless they transport that knowledge into politics. It’s more persuasive to me that we should strive to become policymakers than it is to say debaters should start protesting on the streets. I have a large qualm with affs that start their advocacy statements with [partner's name] and I. I don't understand how you and your partner can claim to solve such a huge impact. If your answer to this question is, "who cares? it's not like affs with a plan solve anything," you are starting off the debate in the wrong direction for me. I need a clear and logical reason as to why the methodology that you proposes does anything.
5. Policy relevance is a plus. I like practicality and concreteness. If your aff is more practical and logical, I will find it more persuasive.
6. Just like if you were to read a policy aff in front of me, give me a reason why your solvency mechanism is key. Give me a reason why it is preferred over the topical version. If your answer to topicality is the USFG is always racist, I will probably vote negative on the topical version. To beat the topical version, you need intuitive and thoughtful answers about why your methodology is key, not why an institution is bad. Give disadvantages to the topical version. I tend to view a lot of T-USFG/framework debates in offense defense.
7. Have a strong impact, multiple if possible. I think you need to weigh an impact that cannot be encapsulated by the negative’s interpretation. You need to do impact calculus about why your impact outweighs. Why is it worth sacrificing substantive clash in debate? Why are the skills we build from the Lundberg evidence not as important? If you are able to have some type of extinction impact, that is a big plus, just make sure your aff logically solves for it. Framing is the most important thing in many critical debates. You should make comparisons so that I can see what is and isn't relevant. However, if you aren't going to engage the other team, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Neg related stuff about these affs

You should push teams that read non-traditional affirmatives on the competition level. If competition is based around the explicit statement of the plan text, why do planless affs get permutations? Of course, there is the response that advocacy statements check, but there is the unique nature of the stability of a plan text that is important to consider when evaluating negative ground and competitive equity.

Neg

The Case

People tend to read a lot of impact defense because it is generic and applies to everything. I think the neg is at a disadvantage in many debates if the route they take is disadvantage and impact defense. If you are only pushing them on the impact level, and the aff is shooting holes in all parts of your DA, then it is easier for them to compare the 100% aff solvency that I will award them (because you didn’t pursue anything but impact defense) to a lower risk of a disadvantage. In an ideal debate, where the aff and neg are great at impact calculus, I’m probably voting aff because I think there is a higher risk that the aff solves for some impact than the risk imposed by the DA. That being said, there are many holes in an aff’s internal links that don’t require evidence to make it a problem for them. I rather hear your own intuitive thoughts about the aff's terrible internal links than your generic (and probably bad) impact defense. Push them on the solvency level as well; we often let affs get away with solving too much.

Disadvantages

Don't start your speeches with "The disad outweighs and turns the case." I know you are going to make the arguments if you are a semi-competent debater. Most of the time when debaters start off their speech with this statement, I don't have a warrant as to why your impact outweighs the case; I rather have you make comparative arguments that describe how your impact escalates and what sets it apart from the affs impacts than you asserting that you outweigh the aff. Good debaters don't need to remind themselves to make these arguments; they just make them.

I think a good disadvantage has a specific link to the aff and is also more intrinsic to the aff than politics. Another way to impress me is to have your disadvantage also answer the internal link story of the aff. If the thesis of your disadvantage also covers why the aff doesn't solve for its internal links, I will certainly be impressed. I think aff link uniqueness arguments are very convincing and smart link uniqueness analytics can significantly lower the risk of generic disadvantages, which is all of the better a reason to research plan specific disadvantages.

If you want to win me over, good impact calculus will get you far. Give reasons why whatever impact filter you are going for is the most important and how that implicates the aff and how it implicates the other filters. A good 2NC/1NR on a DA will read cards on the impact level, and it will read cards on why the DA turns the advantages of the aff. When you read cards on the uniqueness, link, and internal link level, it’s more effective to have different warrants in each card. A wide variety of warrants on each level of the debate will give you more options and it will let you encapsulate on the 1AR’s mistakes. I like specificity. A link argument about the aff is better than 5 generic links that the aff might fall under. However, if it is a really small aff, you need to apply the aff to the generic links and give warrants as to why the aff may fall under some of those links.

Some more politics specific stuff

I think the quality of evidence that often surrounds politics DAs are terrible. To me, politics is a terrible strategy unless you have stellar link evidence, a really specific counterplan, or are completely crushing the case (most likely not just impact defense). I am tired of seeing one-lined cards within these debates because that seems like it has become the norm of acceptibility surrounding politics. A good aff team will do a good job crushing incoherent internal links as their main strategy. A good politics debate that is card intensive and clash heavy is one of my favorite debates to watch provided there is good evidence. Specificity usually wins these debates, meaning unless you have good cards about the aff or a litany of links that the aff can apply to (but the aff drops some), I probably will vote aff given that their link defense is about the plan's mechanism.

Link determines the direction of uniqueness in most debates. The only times where I don't see this happening is when budget and debt ceiling roll around because there is actually a short timeframe where the vote can happen at any moment.

A reason as to why the politics disadvantage is good is not a reason to why it’s intrinsic. If the 2AC says the disadvantage is not intrinsic, I don’t see a reason why you would answer that with politics is good. I think public pressure and constituency obligation is a better answer to intrinsicness.

Winners win is much better the bigger your aff is. Another way to encapsulate on winners win is to apply it specifically to their politics DA and give reasons why your aff is different from the instances in which winners win theory is disproved.

Counterplans

The way that counterplans are assessed puzzle me because I find that process to be vastly oversimplified. I'm not convinced that counterplan solvency is a yes or no question. Solvency is a probability between 0 to 1, and impacts have a probability of 0 to 1. This also means sufficiency framing doesn't make sense to me. Negative teams should be framing their counterplan as the risk of a solvency deficit is less than or not as important as the risk of the net benefit and affirmative teams should make the argument that the risk of a solvency deficit is more than or outweighs the risk of the net benefit.

Your counterplan should be both functionally and textually competitive. By textually competitive, I don’t mean by redefining the word “should.” Normal means counterplans are always bad. I’m not a good judge for you if your strategy relies on the consult or the conditions counterplan. However, I can be convinced that these counterplans compete and are legitimate if you have a stellar solvency advocate about the aff. For the aff, to deal with the giant blocks of theory that they read at you, I would suggest giving me a filter to evaluate theory arguments. For example, the aff should say “evaluate the impacts to theory in the context of debate because any of their policymaking education arguments are subject to change because the process of policymaking is always changing and the education that we get now may not be applicable in twenty years.” I also really don't want to hear the block's 4 minute dump on theory when they choose to read word pics and the dirtiest process counterplans.

I think a solvency advocate is a good measure of whether not a questionable counterplan like the International Actor Counterplan and the States Counterplan should be allowed, but you will find that I tend to be rather lenient as to what I consider as a solvency advocate simply because I believe the Aff should be tested on why action by the USFG is key.
Process counterplans are rarely persuasive. You will need to have a pretty specific solvency advocate to make me consider it in terms of whether is theoretically legitimate as well as some way to make the counterplan competitive.

I will never be persuaded to vote for an artificially competitive counterplan unless it's against a team that doesn't defend a plan.

Critiques

When I'm judging a critique, a lot of the time I find that I am pushed into a situation where the debate is very difficult to decide due to poor debating and bad evidence. These situations tend to involve a lot of judge intervention, and I end up heavily relying on my own preferences to evaluate the debate. Much of the time, technical concessions weigh more heavily than framing issues that end up being a wash.

In most of the debates where the 2NR is a critique, I have voted for the critique on presumption + risk that the alternative solves something. There are a lot of logical holes within how alternatives, impacts, and links interact with each other. Questions that I often ask myself are how does the plan lead to the large impacts that the critique has isolated? How is the plan so significant that it derails the alternative from resolving the harms of the critique? Why isn't the permutation able to overcome the residual links to the plan? With the way that contemporary critiques are structured, I find it difficult for me to resolve these questions for the negative in any logically coherent way.

The most successful critiques in front of me develop specific links to the plan and frame them as solvency takeouts to the plan. Alternatives avoid these solvency deficits, so they potentially solve better than the aff. On top of that, successful teams flip impact calculus to the framework level and convince me about why their specific orientation is better for an education model or better informs decision-making. Most macro-level impacts on critiques are absurd to me because most likely your impact evidence isn't unique to your link evidence about the affirmative; it's probably about why the system that you are critiquing is bad. Impacts about the way the affirmative approaches decision-making makes a whole lot more sense to me.

People go for reject alts incorrectly; the best reject alts frame themselves as we are not the aff, and the aff is bad. I think they can also be strategically coupled with presumption claims, framed like the aff doesn't solve and is error replication, the alt has a chance of solving and avoiding error replication. I think if you are not winning a link and turns case arguments, reject alternatives end up working against you because I often compare a world where we reject the aff to a world where the aff is done, and most the time I end up deciding that the aff is a good idea, given that the alternative is artificially competitive.

I think the permutation double bind argument and the permutation do the aff and the alt in all other instances is underutilized and makes a lot of sense against most critiques.

More teams should be going for utopian fiat bad.

The term role of the ballot is a way I filter impacts. This also means it’s a way of saying impact calculus. I don’t think a role of the ballot is dropped if a team is beating you on impact calculus, but they don’t specifically speak to the question of the role of the ballot. I need a reason why I should prefer the role of the ballot you are advancing.

You should do impact calculus. You should give me reasons why I should prefer root cause arguments.

Debate the case. The aff is probably telling a more coherent internal link story with higher levels of specificity. Unless you mitigate the case in some way, either through the way you frame link arguments or other solvency arguments, I will most likely vote aff on the coherence of internal links and the story of escalation that the aff presented to me.

Framework arguments that ask me to exclude an analysis of the results of the implementation of the plan are often successful in front of me because affs only extend a cursory extension of framework and choose not to provide me with a model of how I should assess impacts. That being said, I have never seen a good response to fairness from a negative team; they mostly give me reasons as to why other standards matter more, but do not grapple with this question. To me, fairness is the most underrated impact. Comparative reasons why I should prefer fairness would help me side with aff on the framework question.

Aff's should impact turn critiques more often. Most affs against critiques are built upon winning the permutation as debate has been shifting leftward, and I think critique teams are losing touch with answering impact turns because of this practice. Don't be afraid to make arguments like Western science and knowledge production, objective data driven statistics, neoliberalism, capitalism, colonialism, and masculine IR are good.

Topicality

Teams should go for substance if they have a chance to win on substance. I side with competing interpretations. I think if the negative has an arbitrary interpretation then it should be easy for the aff to win that their interpretation is better. Reasonability is also viable if coupled with functional limits and precision arguments. I value precision the most as a standard for comparing interpretations. I think the quality of evidence is absolutely critical in topicality debates.

If the aff meets the interpretation, then they meet the interpretation. I do not believe in an offense/defense paradigm around the we meet; there is no such thing as 1% risk that the aff doesn't meet the interpretation. I heavily compare the evidence presented to me on the we meet debate in a textualist manner and use the plan text as a standard for evaluating whether or not the plan meets the interpretation.

Topical versions could be a tie breaker in many debates, but if the aff wins that your interpretation is absolutely horrible, I don't think there is any net benefit to the topical version.

Theory
Conditionality and Neg flex is good to an extent. Beyond 3 conditional advocacies is pushing it. It also makes your counterinterpretation meaningless because your counterinterpretation in no way solves for the affs impacts when they get too large. I like arguments that are substantive and about the specific skills that conditionality allows us to build as well the skills we lose with conditionality. Fairness is usually an internal link to something bigger like people quitting or incentivizing research and education.

Every argument other than conditionality and performative contradictions is a reason to reject the argument.

I am heavily aff-leaning on consult counterplans that don't have intrinsic net benefits, delay counterplans, process counterplans, word PICs and offsets counterplans.

I am slightly aff-leaning on agent counterplans without solvency advocates for the aff they are debating, and heavily neg-leaning on agent counterplans that do have solvency advocates.