Last changed on
Thu April 4, 2024 at 8:54 AM EDT
Jeremy Christensen Philosophy LD 2024 (Updated)
Hired by Washburn University - Currently Unaffiliated. I teach English at a regional community college in eastern Ohio.
Quick Hits
1) Treat me pretty much like a lay judge. This is likely disheartening, but it is my effort to be honest. My hearing is not as good and my mind not as sharp as it was once, and they weren't that great then. Intersection of unlabeled issues is tough for me. For instance, abandoning tags for disadvantages, the K, counterplans, and fundamentally eliminating line-by-line debate as a practice has made the activity difficult for me to manage. My preference is line-by-line and labeled arguments, but even then, I cannot guarantee I'm going to be up to speed on the nuance. You have to explain it to me.
2) I have not judged a single round on this resolution. That means two things for you: 1) I have no background in the literature. You will want to explain arguments to me rather than just referring back to the author names. 2) Also, I have not judged LD since NFA Nationals in the spring of 2022, so it would be in your interest to go at about 80 percent of your max rate rather than your max rate.
3) The Affirmative needs to have an advocacy statement or plan that includes action by the USFG. If your strategy is to reject the resolution, I will not be a good critic for you, as the odds are high you will lose (not inevitable, but high). The Negative will need to argue “USFG” topicality and win the competing interpretations debate, but they will have significant latitude.
4) Probably I lean more toward tech over truth, but just because an argument is dropped does not mean it automatically wins. Someone needs to explain why that argument is important to the overall scheme of the debate. Be nice. That does not mean do not ask hard questions or make direct statements, but I have no tolerance for badgering, bullying, and name calling. Do any of those and even if you win the round, speaker points will be in the zero to five range.
5) I am adverse to intervention and only reading the debate. I know some intervention is inevitable, but I like to stay away from the big ones: imagining links, extending an argument and warrant that were not fully extended, intepreting an internal link that wasn't articulated. I still see the verbal debate as important, and that is where debaters should explain links and the intersection and prioritization of arguments. Everything, for me at least, does not happen on SpeechDrop. I think notetaking is a good skill for everyone, so I don't expect folks to write out their analytics. They probably should slow down a bit, but they should say them if they want then in the debate.
6) Background – I understand folks like to know, but I wouldn’t read a lot into this. My position has changed, so my experience may not help. Still, here it is: I did policy debate in the 1980s and early 90s in college, coached NFA LD from the 2000s to 2019, coached national circuit NPDA from the mid-90s to 2017, coached IPDA from 2010-2019, and dabbled in some NDT/CEDA as coach (novice/JV) and have worked with high school debaters in policy and national circuit LD from 1992 until 2020. I checked-out of coaching debate during the pandemic, as I was just not feeling it. I love the activity, or I wouldn’t have given up thirty years doing it. That means I’m not hostile to what you are doing; I just want you to know where I am on things.
Specifics
Delivery – I have no bias here, but my limits are outlined above. I don’t keep track of how many WPM I can flow, but I know it is not as many as it was before my hearing loss and when I was in tune with the literature. I do not care from what position you speak or how you deliver. Speaker points for me come down to organization and impacting arguments, as well as the quality of the arguments. I rarely go below 24 (out of 30), but see the above cases when I do.
Also, my preferences is to flow the spoken round. I don't like to go back into SpeechDrop and flow because I feel like I'm intervening.
Advocacy – Everything, I understand, is open to debate; however, I am at a point where I have a more difficult time seeing the value in punting the resolution. Therefore, Affirmatives should have a policy statement/plan action. That said, alternative frameworks to net-benefits are welcome, as are critical arguments in the case advocacy. Those, however, need to work through the agent specified in the resolution. If no framework is provided, then I will default to net-benefits and use some matrix of timeframe, magnitude, probability, and reversibility.
Procedurals
Topicality is a voting issue, and I resolve that based upon competing interpretations, which means you need to win the standards debate to get access to your interpretation. For me, my threshold for topicality depends upon the term in question and the nature of the resolution (bidirectional, clearly has greater latitude, for instance).
Specification arguments are welcome, but you should show some articulated abuse. Potential abuse standards in the shell are okay, but at the end of the day, you needed to be using the procedural to leverage a DA, CP, or criticism. My advice is that if it is important the NR will go for both the procedural and the argument it is holding in place.
Conditionality/Time Suck arguments are fine. I am probably in the minority here, but I really don’t care if someone reads four CPs and seven DAs and goes for one DA. While the 1AR is short, I think there are opportunities to point-out double turns in that many arguments. Also, I am not smart, so that number of arguments will probably confuse me, so there is that. Likewise, if an AFF kicks the 1AC and goes for a turn on a procedural, I am open to that too, or kicks the 1AC and goes for a turn on a DA only, then I’m okay there. Read the theory, have the debate, but just be aware that if someone reads multiple arguments and collapses to the best one, I think that is pretty smart, not unethical. Feel free to persuade me otherwise.
Other Procedurals– More on this later, but I won’t vote on a procedural that requires another debater to write-out analytics. I just won’t do it. I guess if there is an ADA requirement that is documented, requiring the entire debate to be scripted and provided to the other debater, then that is different, but absent that, I am not interested in that argument
Presumption – If the affirmative meets the prima facia burden, the Aff has overcome presumption of the status quo. The Negative does NOT need a CP, though I welcome one. To win on the negative, assuming the AFF has met that burden (and most often the AFF does), then some offense that outweighs the advantage of the AFF is necessary (case turns + solvency mitigation, solvency mitigation + DA, CP + solvency mitigation, as the differential between the CP solvency and the Aff solvency is a disadvantage to endorsing the Aff.)
Criticisms – This is tough for me. Since the early 2000s I like to think I have been open to all of these arguments and have heard a fair number. I have a solid background in critical theory (deep in Foucault, Marxism, and Lacan, shallow on feminism, queer theory, and gender studies), and I have taught several courses in critical theory, so I'm not put off by criticism in any way. The problem I have, however, is that the way the cards are cut and employed sometimes, works against the theory advanced or is misrepresenting it. Consequently, that confuses me, and then debaters are disappointed that I just don't get it. In short, these are a risk. Just because I understand critical theory, doesn't mean I understand your approach or brand of critical theory.
My other challenge, increasingly, is that I like to see specific links to the resolution. Critical affirmative arguments should be linked there, critical negative arguments should be linked to the Aff’s advocacy statement or literature and not to the AFF or NEG as a person. Just reading settler colonialism or militarism without some specific indication why that links to the AFF makes me, again, feel like I have to intervene. If the kritik is a “call out,” I am very uncomfortable with that, and am highly unlikely to vote for you. Otherwise, go for it. I view criticisms as arguments rooted in personal policy statements. I do like an alternative. If your particular diet of criticism eschews alternatives, that is fine, but read a card that explains why leaving out an alternative is key to solving the problem. outlined in the criticism . Read good links and win the framework debate.
Rebuttals and Pulling Cards – I like to be a listener in a round and not a reader. I want to judge your interpretation of evidence and analysis and not have my intervene. To that end, I really like rebuttals that weigh-out issues (not just names of cards or post-date questions) and that write the ballot for me. Of course, I will look at evidence, but only if the particular nuance of a card is discussed in the debate.
Credentials and Flowsheets - It is in the interest of both debaters to discuss their advocates' credentials. I, however, do not think having an infinitely regressive standard of citing the citation of your citations is necessary. Even in an academic literature review that practice is rare, so to insist upon it in a speech of six or seven minutes seems silly. That said, what you say verbally is what I will flow, and I see my flow as the record of the debate (for better or worse), not the submitted briefs. Analytics do NOT need to be written out and shared, though slowing down a bit to give me pen time on those will help me to get them.
Final Thoughts – I have given thirty-five years of my life to this activity, so I love it. I hope you do too, and to that end, I really hope you have fun and appreciate what a privilege it is to get to convene with so many good people who enjoy doing what you do.
I have no idea what I may have overlooked here. In the end, I know some about debate, and I will do my best to serve as a fair and reasonable critic, but if you are looking for a perfect critic, that is not me.
