GMU'20. WFU'22. Email chain, please put all three: biba.a.t@gmail.com, wfudbt@gmail.com AND debatedocs@googlegroups.com

Anti-trust: don't know much about it :)

—I will do my best to be as flow-centric as possible in every debate. Tech over truth as long as your argument makes sense.
—Respect your competitors, partner, and the time everyone in the room puts into this activity.
—I enjoy substantive and topic grounded arguments and prefer them over cheap shots/run and gun strategies.
—I realized that good impact calc is where I end up deciding many debates, especially when it is close.
—I tend to think link determines the direction of UQ, but just tell me how to vote.
—Revisionism ends up mattering a lot less than you think, regardless of whatever spin you attach to it.
—Topicality: I will default to competing interps. Explain your vision of the topic and model of debate under your interp.
—Overall neg leaning on theory. Infinite condo is good. Can you convince me otherwise? maybe/gut feeling. Things that will increase my likelihood to vote on condo bad: contradictory worlds, and a million unsupported conditional planks.
—Insert rehighlighting? No/maybe (just don't do it excessively)
—Highlight full sentences, seriously. Fragmented, ungrammatical sentences are not arguments and do not make sense.
—Gimme my pen time....beware of the technical implications of online debate and slow down. I flow on paper. Do not start your speech until you get visual confirmation from me. I will always have my camera on unless I am not there.

Policy vs K things:

I have realized that impact calc/clearly articulated impacts is where I start to evaluate a lot of these debates, then I work my way backward to the link and mechanism debating. I would highly encourage both teams to forefront their offense and solvency explanations in the 2nr/2ar and do comparative impact calc.

—Hard to convince me to disregard the 1AC and not let it be weighed as a source of offense.
—You should have k specific links to the aff.
—The more you can explain how the affirmative makes the status quo worst, the better off you will be infront of me.
—Fairness/clash/research are all impacts. I think some are harder to win against certain affs than others but I do not have an ideological preference toward either.
—I appreciate K affs that are grounded in topic literature. If your aff can be read in its exact format on a different topic, that's probably bad.
—My understanding of K literature is limited. Although I am slowly trying to broaden my knowledge of critical scholarship, you may need to communicate your arguments differently for the sake of my comprehension. This means I will want examples and specific link debating from both sides.
—Both sides should slow down while speeding through their blocks. I flow on paper.

Debated at Gonzaga, Currently Judging for Navy -

Email: jenna.bauer95@gmail.com - yes you can put me on the doc chain.

I did primarily CP/DA/Case debate in college and that's what I'm familiar with. I'm helping out with research at Gonzaga this year so I'm fairly familiar with the climate college topic. This is what I think that I think about debate, but I intend to continue updating as I judge more and learn more about what I think.

Affs: I like plans that defend the hypothetical implementation of the plan and are topical. You can read your other affs in front of me but I'm more inclined to think that reading a topical plan is important and good for debate. At the very least you should have a stasis point that is in the direction of the topic and then tell me why that's important.

Ks: I'm most familiar with gender based Ks, I do not know much about this area in general and I will not understand you if you throw out a bunch of buzzwords. If you want to read a K, I like a clearly articulated and specific alternative that does something and explains to me why that thing is important. I am inclined to believe things can always get worse. If you are set on going for your K, make sure your explanation is on point and your links are specific to the aff.

DAs: I like them, I'm willing to assign 0 risk of a DA, especially if the link is really bad. I do a lot of elections/politics work. I will still vote for you if I know your DA is a lie and the other team doesn't call you on it, but I won't be happy about it.

CPs: I have always been a 2N - I lean a little negative on CP theory, but you should point out when you think they’re cheating and can definitely win if you debate the theory well.

***Added after recieving an email for clarification on my thoughts on Topicality - response below****

Topicality:

Short version: Affs that Intend to be T, I can be persuaded either way, but most likely lean a little neg. I dislike affs that never intended to be T and am likely to be persuaded by framework.

This topic in my opinion has the potential to be really large or really small depending on the 'acceptable standards' that the community sets on affs that are intending to be topical so your questions are important to me and I hope to answer them well.

Framing for how I think about T - I have always been a 2N and tend to be slightly neg leaning on most things. However, T was never really my A strategy except against teams that were blatantly non-topical so my bias might not be as apparent in this area.

Topicality for affs that intend to be T - I would say at the beginning of the year I'm more willing to listen to all affs and hear what they think a reasonable interpretation of the topic should be, but I think limits are important especially on this topic. I can definitely be persuaded either way. While I think aff creativity is important, the research burden for the neg is also a major concern for me.

Topicality for affs that don't intend to be T - I don't like when teams do not have plans. No plan at all is probably a non-starter for me because it doesn't meet the requirements I list below in the stasis point section.

- Distinction between Framework and Topicality: When I debated I made a distinction between Framework and Topicality. A lot of people don't think there's a distinction, obviously. I think the distinction is based on the explanation of the link to the argument and the impact. Framework, for me seemed to be about what kind of educational paradigms are endorsed, whereas T was more about the effects on the topic and debatability for the neg. These are in many ways artificial distinctions, and both T and framework are often deployed as encompassing both these arguments because different teams have different conceptions of what framework means. Because of this, I'm fine with whatever teams want to call it - Framework or T - and however you explain it is how I will judge. If you would like to separate T and framework and read them both that's also fine with me both can persuade me.

- Stasis point: When reading/debating a non-topical aff the most important thing to me is that there is a stable controversy that isn't one sided that both teams are prepared to debate. If the negative wins that these conditions do not exist I am very likely to pull the trigger on T/Framework. In order to meet all the requirements above, I think it's necessary to be at the very least in the direction of the topic so the neg can debate the aff. I value in-depth debate of the affirmative and give a lot of weight to "topical" versions of the aff in these debates.

*****End email*****

In general, you should be kind to everyone in the round. I really really don’t like rudeness. Especially when it is directed at your partner.

Rowland Hall-St Mark's '17

Georgetown University '21

Berkeley Law '26

Put me on the email chain: dwbdebate@gmail.com

Judging Habits of Mine:

--Quality of arguments matters more than quantity of arguments. Debaters win in front of me when they slow down and thoroughly make strategic arguments with clear implications for my decision, rather than throwing out inconsequential arguments and hoping I will put the pieces together for them.

--I tend to follow the Dallas Perkins view of evidence: "If you can't find a single sentence from your author that states the thesis of your argument, you may have difficulty selling it to me." I am going to start more aggressively enforcing this premise. If I decide your card is gobbledygook from the highlighted words, I will not evaluate it. Similarly, you don't need to answer a card if you point out that the card says nothing as currently highlighted. That can have significant impacts for the round when unpacked, such as a 1NC failing to read a coherent link card to a DA.

--Intuitive and well reasoned analytics are frequently better uses of your time than reading a low quality card. I would prefer to reward debaters that demonstrate full understanding of their positions and think through the logical implications of arguments rather than rewarding the team that happens to have a card on some random issue. This is especially true when refuting contrived CPs and silly impact arguments.

--Debaters tend to rely on "extinction outweighs everything" far too much. I am not likely to vote for you simply because you are the only one to have a tenuous connection to an extinction level impact; I am likely to vote for you if you acknowledge relative degrees of risk and recognize that many impacts (e.g. poverty, disease, unemployment, regional conflicts, etc) are bad regardless of whether they will potentially lead to nuclear annihilation.

Operating Procedure:

--I flow on paper.

--I flow cross examination and will refer to that flow when making my decisions.

--I will not be following along closely enough with speech docs to enforce any sort of clipping violations by myself. Debaters should record debates and provide that recording when accusing the other side of an ethics challenge.

--Each debater must give 1 constructive and 1 rebuttal. If it is not your speech and you say something, it will not be on on my flow.

--Not interested in arguments about issues from out of round. Also not interested in hearing arguments about how former debaters are either good or evil people.

--Do NOT read evidence written by undergraduates. I will not evaluate it.

Theory Issues

--Conditionality is good. I will still vote aff on conditionality bad if debated well.

--I am very open to voting neg on plan vagueness arguments.

--Limited intrinsicness can be very good.

CPs

--I'm increasingly in the camp that CPs need solvency advocates (albeit not hard and fast with that rule). CPs grounded in opponent's solvency advocates are frequently an ideal 2NR in front of me.

--I'm getting bored of the States CP, especially in the iteration of "all 50 states uniformly do the plan" and/or "all 50 states should uniformly force the federal government to do the plan." I am open to consider 50 state action (if debated decently), but I don't see why the affirmative shouldn't be able to make solvency deficits about non-uniform implementation.

--I judge legitimacy of CP's on a case by case basis. In the magical world of fiat, it feels tough to categorically exclude specific varieties of CP's.

--Literature determines predictability. If your "cheating" CP is clearly in the lit, I will be more likely to listen to it and allow it in the debate. That also necessitates the literature clearly distinguishing it from the plan.

--If no one says a word about it, I will judge kick for the neg.

Ks

--I heavily prioritize framework in these debates, especially when framed in terms of the "win condition" for both teams. Generally, I find that assumptions/justifications underlying the 1AC are fair game for both aff and neg offense; however, I still require clear framing devices for how to determine who wins the debate should those assumptions be the primary consideration.

--I am open to vote on an alternative that includes the plan or other arguments that may be considered theoretically illegitimate by many. Just be up front about it (preferably in the 1nc) so the aff can respond and so you can have a real debate.

T

--T debates are fun when they focus on evidence, rather than purely abstract discussions of limits or ground.

No Plan/K Affs

--I like it when the aff has a robust defense of what debate looks like in their model, particularly a clear role for the negative team.

Indiana University – Fourth Year Judge

Email Chain: mbricker35@gmail.com

Education: PoliSci BA: IU ‘21; MPA: Policy Analysis/Public Finance: IU ’23

Debate Career: HS: N/A College: Novice/JV

Job: Financial Analyst – DFAS (DoD)

I am not actively coaching. I will read cards if I need to catch up on background knowledge, though I will work to view the round in the way it was debated.

Big Picture

Debaters do best when they do what they do best. Do that.

Debate’s Value – Debate’s Value comes from the process of debate (i.e., reading academic journals, learning how to effectively communicate various arguments/literature bases, traveling to universities across the country, etc.). Post-college your topic knowledge will fade, but the skills you develop, people you meet, and memories you create will enhance your career and enrich your personal life.

Communication – Debate, at its core, is a communication activity. Too often debaters hide themselves behind their laptops, flows, and slews of cards. The best debaters are those that can debate technically and actively engage with their opponents and judges.

Cx – Enthrall me in the drama of the debate. Cx is the perfect time to flex your topic knowledge and rhetorical skills. Ask smart questions, give the best answers. Make me laugh, cry, and feel alive. It is heartbreaking to watch a team get a solid Cx concession and for it to die there.

Speaks – I reward topic/academic knowledge, smart/strategic choices, rhetorical prowess, and growth. Speaks are a combination of how technically clean the ballot was won and how effectively you communicated.

Decorum - Reasonable sass, snark, or shade are fine. I am not a good judge for more hostile approaches, such as belittling opponents or interrupting opponents mid-speech.

Round Adjudication

Judge Role – I am an educator and adjudicator. I am evaluating arguments to determine who did the better debating based on in-round judge instructions.

Write My Ballot – Tell me: where and why I should vote for you and tie up loose ends. Final rebuttals shouldn’t be 6 min overviews, but a little story telling is fun.

Disparate line-by-line blips are frustrating and risk me missing something and voting for the other team. I will try my best to evaluate the whole flow, but I am only human and have 20 mins to submit a ballot.

Evidence – I will only read evidence after the round if it is warranted (Ex. debates over quality or how evidence should be read, etc.). Typically, this means the card is explicitly flagged in the 2NR/2AR. I have limited time and don’t want to re-create the round from a slew of cards. No card docs please, I will ask where a card is if needed.

Post-Rounding – During the RFD, you have the right to my thought process in adjudicating the round, not my belittlement. If I feel that I am being post-rounded I reserve the right to immediately end the RFD and direct you to my email.

Post-RFD Qs – Please email me your post-RFD questions. The sooner the better.

Technical Debate

Flowing - Tech over truth, but if I don’t understand an argument coming out of the round then I can’t vote on it. By “coming out of the round”, I mean the way the 2NR/2AR articulates an argument that can be traced back across the flow. At the end of the round, I prefer to recall speeches through the flow, I only look at docs if needed.

Spreading – Many open debaters would benefit from slowing down 5-10% when reading tags, long blocks/overviews, making important analytics, and transitioning arguments/flows. I will “clear” you once or twice if needed.

Signposting – Give your speech structure (Ex. Verbal cues, speed changes, argument flagging). Force my hand – make it impossible for my flows to not look like yours.

Arguments

T ­– Make your interp/model clear. My prior is that narrower topics are preferable

CPs – My prior is that the 2NR gets 1 world

DAs – Framing is everything. Smart arguments and coherent narratives trump slews of cards. Crystalized links are important; If I don't understand how the aff triggers the DA then I can't vote for it.

K – An invaluable tool in a debater’s toolbox to test the resolution, affirmative, and debate space. I am less familiar with these arguments/literature bases. Explain advocacies, alternatives, and terms of art. I am less inclined to vote for arguments that are unclear, shifty, utopian, or hide behind buzzwords.

K Aff – The aff should at least be germane to the resolution in some intelligible way

FW - Can be done well, usually frustrating

Big picture things to do:
1. Robust Model of Debate – How do you view debate? Why is that important/preferable?
2. Crystalize the ROB/ROJ – What is my role? What does the ballot do? Why does this matter?

3. Terminal Impacts – Fairness? Education? How does your model/ROB/ROJ resolve these?

Open debaters, slow down to 70% of your top speed when reading the key words and subpoint tags that you want me to flow in these rounds. Especially during the block/1AR. Too often people zoom down their analytics and I find myself struggling to keep up on the flow. If this is the case, you risk me flowing straight down. I will be frustrated.

My prior is that debate is an educational activity and a game, and that fairness and education are both terminal impacts.

Theory – Quality over quantity. Give me typing time. A “dropped” argument is only true if it was properly explained and flow-able in the first place. Theory debates frustrate me when the teams are just reading their blocks back and forth without clashing. If your standards, perms, reasons to prefer are un-flowable, I am increasingly likely to write “theory party”.

Online Debate

1. Clarity is key – technology leaves many failure points, and I may miss something. Be clear – especially in the final rebuttals.

2. If my camera is not on, I am not present and/or not ready to start the speech

3. Please locally record your speeches to ensure we have a copy in the event of tech failure

Adrienne F. Brovero, University of Kentucky

Closing in on 30 years coaching
adri.debate@gmail.com

AND

ukydebate@gmail.com, please.

Please label your email chain subject line with Team names, tourney, round.

Your prep time does not end until you have hit send on the email.

❗Updated 3-27-24 - I am REAL serious about the highlighting thing below - many cards are literally unreadable as highlighted and if I find myself struggling to read your evidence, I will cease to do so.

❗This is a communication activity.❗

Clarity - Cannot emphasize enough how important clarity is, whether online or in-person.

Highlighting - Highlighting has become a disgrace. Highlighting should not result in anti-grammatical shards of arguments. Highlighting should not result in misrepresentation of the author's intent/ideas. Quite frankly, some highlighting is so bad, you would have been better served not reading the evidence. When highlighting, please put yourself in the judge's shoes for a moment and ask yourself if you would feel comfortable deciding a debate based on how you've highlighted that card. If the answer is no, reconsider your highlighting.

SERIOUSLY - LINE-BY-LINE. NUMBER.

If you like to say "I will do the link debate here" - I am probably not the best judge for you. I would prefer you clash with link arguments in each instance they happen, as opposed to all in one place. Same is true for every other component of an argument.

• Qualifications - read them. Debate them.
• Line-by-line involves directly referencing the other team's argument ("Off 2AC #3 - Winners Win, group"), then answering it. "Embedded" clash fails if you bury the clash part so deep I can't find the arg you are answering.
• Overviews - overrated. Kinda hate them. Think they are a poor substitute for debating the arguments where they belong on the line-by-line.

Things that are prep time:

• Any time after the official start time that is not a constructive (9 mins), CX (3 mins), rebuttal (6 mins), or a brief roadmap. Everything else is prep time.
• Putting your speech doc together - including saving doc, setting up email chain, attaching it to the email, etc.
• Asking for cards outside of CX time. ("Oh can you send the card before CX?" - that is either CX or prep time - there is not un-clocked time).
• Setting up your podium/stand.
• Putting your flows in order.
• Finding pens, flows, timers.

Debate like this: http://vimeo.com/5464508

MACRO-ISSUES
Communication: I like it. I appreciate teams that recognize communication failures and try to correct them. If I am not flowing, it usually means communication is breaking down. If I am confused or have missed an argument, I will frequently look up and give you a confused look – you should read this as an indication that the argument, at minimum, needs to be repeated, and may need to be re-explained. I am more than willing to discount a team’s arguments if I didn’t understand or get their arguments on my flow.

Speaker points: Points are influenced by a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: Communication skills, speaking clarity, road-mapping, obnoxiousness, disrespectfulness, theft of prep time, quality of and sufficient participation in 2 cross-examinations and 2 speeches, the quality of the debate, the clarity of your arguments, the sophistication of your strategy, and your execution. I have grown uncomfortable with the amount of profanity used during debates – do not expect high points if you use profanity.

Paperless/Prep Time: Most tournaments have a strict decision time clock, and your un-clocked time cuts into decision time. Most of you would generally prefer the judges has the optimal amount of time to decide. Please be efficient. Prep runs until the email is sent. I will be understanding of tech fails, but not as much negligence or incompetence. Dealing with your laptop’s issues, finding your flows, looking for evidence, figuring out how to operate a timer, setting up stands, etc. – i.e. preparation – all come out of prep time.

Flowing:
• I flow.
• Unless both teams instruct me otherwise, I will flow both teams.
• I evaluate the debate based primarily on what I have flowed.
• I frequently flow CX. I carefully check the 2AR for new arguments, and will not hold the 2NR accountable for unpredictable explanations or cross applications.
• I try to get down some form of tag/cite/text for each card. This doesn’t mean I always do. I make more effort to get the arg than I do the cite or date, so do not expect me to always know what you’re talking about when you solely refer to your “Henry 19” evidence.
• I reward those who make flowing easier by reading in a flowable fashion (road-mapping & signposting, direct refutation/clash, clarity, reasonable pace, emphasis of key words, reading for meaning, no distractions like tapping on the tubs, etc.). If you are fond of saying things like "Now the link debate" or "Group the perm debate" during the constructives, and you do not very transparently embed the clash that follows, do not expect me to follow your arguments or connect dots for you. Nor should you expect spectacular points.

Evidence:
• I appreciate efforts to evaluate and compare claims and evidence in the debate.
• I pay attention to quals and prefer they are actually read in the debate. I am extremely dismayed by the decline in quality of evidence (thank you, Internets) and the lack of teams’ capitalization on questionable sources.
• I don’t like to read evidence if I don’t feel the argument it makes has been communicated to me (e.g. the card was mumbled in the 2AC, or only extended by cite, or accompanied by a warrantless explanation, etc.).
• I also don’t like reading the un-highlighted portions of evidence unless they are specifically challenged by the opposing team.
• I should not have to read the un-highlighted parts to understand your argument – the highlighted portion should be a complete argument and a coherent thought. If you only read a claim, you only have a claim – you don’t get credit for portions of the evidence you don’t reference or read. If you only read a non-grammatical fragment, you are running the risk of me deciding I can’t coherently interpret that as an arg.
• I don’t like anonymous pronouns or referents in evidence like “she says” without an identification of who “she” is – identify “she” in your speech or “she” won’t get much weight in my decision.
• If you hand me evidence to read, please make clear which portions were actually read.

Decision calculus: Procedural determinations usually precede substantive determinations. First, I evaluate fairness questions to determine if actions by either team fundamentally alter the playing field in favor of the aff or neg. Then, I evaluate substantive questions. Typically, the aff must prove their plan is net beneficial over the status quo and/or a counterplan in order to win.

MICRO-ISSUES
Topicality & plan-related issues:
• The aff needs to have a written plan text.
• It should be topical.
• T is a voter. Criticisms of T are RVIs in sheep’s clothing.
• Anti-topical actions are neg ground.
• Have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation of how nontraditional advocacies or demands are meaningfully different from plans, other than they are usually either vague and/or non-topical.
• On a related note, I don’t get why calling one’s advocacy a performance or demand renders a team immune from being held responsible for the consequences of their advocacy.
• In relation to plans and permutations, I value specificity over vagueness – specificity is necessary for meaningful debate about policies. However, please do not consider this an invitation to run dumb spec arguments as voting issues – absent a glaring evasiveness/lack of specificity, these are typically more strategic as solvency args.

Critiques/Performance:

Adjudicating critique or performance debates is not my strong suit. Most of these debates take place at a level of abstraction beyond my comprehension. If you have a habit of referring to your arguments by the author’s name (e.g. “Next off – Lacan”), I am not a very good judge for you. I don’t read very much in the advanced political philosophy or performance studies areas. This means, most of the time, I don’t know what the terms used in these debates mean. I am much more the applied politics type, and tend to think pragmatically. This means if you want to go for a critical or performance argument in front of me, you need to explain your arguments in lay-speak, relying less on jargon and author names, and more on warrants, analogies, empirical examples, and specifics in relation to the policy you are critiquing/performing for/against – i.e. persuade me. It also helps to slow it down a notch. Ask yourself how quickly you could flow advanced nuclear physics – not so easy if you aren’t terribly familiar with the field, eh? Well, that’s me in relation to these arguments. Flowing them at a rapid rate hinders my ability to process the arguments. Additionally, make an effort to explain your evidence as I am not nearly as familiar with this literature as you are. Lastly, specifically explain the link and impact in relation to the specific aff you are debating or the status quo policy you are criticizing. Statements like "the critique turns the case” don't help me. As Russ Hubbard put it, in the context of defending his demining aff many years ago, “How does our plan result in more landmines in the ground? Why does the K turn the case?” I need to know why the critique means the plan’s solvency goes awry – in words that link the critique to the actions of the plan. For example: Which part of the harms does the critique indict, with what impact on those harms claims? What would the plan end up doing if the critique turns its solvency? In addition, I find it difficult to resolve philosophical questions and/or make definitive determinations about a team’s motives or intentions in the course of a couple of hours.

I strongly urge you to re-read my thoughts above on “Communication” before debating these arguments in front of me.

Counterplans:

I generally lean negative on CP theory: topical, plan-inclusive, exclusion, conditional, international fiat, agent, etc. Aff teams should take more advantage of situations where the counterplan run is abusive at multiple levels – if the negative has to fend off multiple reasons the CP is abusive, their theory blocks may start to contradict. Both counterplan and permutation texts should be written out. “Do both” is typically meaningless to me – specify how. The status quo could remain a logical option, but growing convinced this should be debated. [NOTE THAT IS A FALL '18 CHANGE - DEBATE IT OUT] Additionally, another shout-out for communication - many theory debates are shallow and blippy - don't be that team. I like theory, but those type of debates give theory a bad name.

Other:

I like DAs. I’m willing to vote on stock issue arguments like inherency or “zero risk of solvency”.

Put me on the email chain please. Ask me for my email

Kingwood High School 2017

University of Minnesota 2020

I judge/coach for the University of Minnesota very occassionally in my spare time. I'm not actively involved with college debate other than judging, so I'm not doing topic research or anything.

I will not adjudicate things that occurred outside the confines of the specific debate around I am judging. There are ways to resolve such issues that exist outside of the ballot, and I have come to believe that relying on ballots to try to resolve them is both futile and contributes to an increasingly toxic debate community. If your strategy relies on ad-hominems, harassment, or otherwise disparaging your opponents, then I am probably not the judge for you

I don't expect debaters to be 'polite' but I do expect debaters to maintain a bare minimum level civility. If racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, etc speech occurs, then I will punish your speaker points accordingly. If I believe the safety or well being of a debater is in danger, I will intervene, including by ending the round if necessary.

As a general note, as the years go on, I am pessimistic about the value of debate as an activity beyond the skills we learn from it and the community we build along the way. I will try to adjudicate rounds in such a way that my ballot does not reward strategies that make the activity worse. Things like issues with evidence ethics and call outs, while important in context, should not be considered your case neg.

Here's the things you are probably looking for right before your round:

Condo-I think a large number of conditional advocacys result in more interesting negative strategies that test the aff from more interesting angles. Trying to draw the line at X number seems arbitrary to me. While I recognize this creates an incentive towards neg teams spamming poorly thought out counterplans, I think the proper remedy is theory rejecting the specific questionable counterplans. I think the bar for the 2ac to answer counterplans with no solvency advocate (whether it be a 1nc card, or a warrant from a 1ac card), is low, and I grant the 1ar leeway when answering counterplans that are made whole in the block.

Judge kick-I default to judge kicking conditional counterplans unless the aff convinces me I shouldn't (condo bad warrants can usually suffice if applied specifically to judge kick)

Other theory-I think 95% of theory arguments other than condo are reasons to reject the arg, not the team. The bar for me to drop a team on a theory cheapshot is extremely high, even if dropped by the other team.

Process CP-I will admit to having a slight bias against negative postions/aff advantages that feel very contrived. This is probably relevant the most to process CPs. I am apparently a dinosaur on the topic of CP competitiveness, so I start with low bar for the aff to win perm:do the cp a lot of the time. If your competition argument isn't straightforward to someone who's only process counterplan they had to deal with as a debater was ESR, then you should slow down and explain it as clearly as possible to me.

I strongly lean toward tech over truth, but arguments still need to have warrants to be complete and to win on tech.

T vs plan aff-I generally am a fan of t debates vs affs with a plan, and I find 2ar pushes on "going for t is a waste of time/uneducational" to be unpersasive. This is topic neutral, so my thoughts might change year to year. I'm not super involved in the activity, so its unlikely I am aware of whatever the community consensus is.

T vs planless affs-it seems like to me clash is the internal link to everything that makes debate valuable and is therefore a relatively large impact by default. If your model of debate (generally the aff's) doesn't preserve clash, then you need to explain why the activity of debate specifically is key your impacts in a way that academic spaces generally aren't. For example, if the aff's main source of offense is the value of their scholarship or method, than either clash internal links turns the aff's offense because clash is the way unique to debate for the community to engage with the aff's method/scholarship or things outside debate can solve your offense as well as debate can, in which case a presumption push by the neg tends to be persuasive (see my above pessimism about the activity). There are other ways for the aff to garner offense, but the aff still needs to have warrant why the activity of debate specifically is key to win that that offense is reason why a model of debate is desirable. Aff strategies that don't defend a specific model are extremely unpersausive to me and functionally end up conceding most of the neg's best offense. Competetive incentives exist in the activity and it seems strange to pretend otherwise. For the neg, TVAs and SSD seem to be powerful defensive tools that in my experience judging neg teams underutilize. Absent egregious concessions by the aff, the 2NR should usually spend some time on case, since the 1ac is often the aff's best source of offense against T.

Arguments that I strongly prefer you don't go for: Death good, Warming good.

Gosh, I needed to update this...

I'm a long-time coach with a lot of policy debate experience. I pay attention to what's going on and try my best to meet you at your level. I've judged every weekend this season.

Include me on the email chain please - charrier@gmail.com

I prefer a more traditional approach to debate - policy evaluation, dead bodies, uniqueness, etc. Not ruling out other methods, I'll listen intently, but it might be more of a roll-of-the-dice.

Disclose in a fair and honest manner, adhering to Kant: "act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”

Noteworthy items:

(1). K vs. K debates leave me confused. K vs. Policy makes more sense, still not your dream K judge. K's of institutions and methods make more sense than K's of in-round whatever. If you are winning a framing issue, tell me why it matters - how does it interact with impacts?

(2) T/Framework. If there is a plan that's even in the ballpark of being topical, don't make T your 2NR strategy. If there is no plan, my ears are much more sensitive to T. But again, not ruling that method out either.

(3). Embedded clash. I'll do my best but I'm going to do the least work for both teams possible. Back in my day, we mocked the lump-and-dump teams without mercy and I still carry that bias. Times change, I'll do my best.

My hope is that you will have enjoyed Debate so much that you will be a lifetime supporter of the activity.

I tend to have a very serious RBF: it's not you; it's me. Just ignore it. I swear it's not you. It's me.

And there's a 95% chance I am late to the round, so be ready to go when I get there, please!

About me:

Email: mcopeland2017@gmail.com

Background: Currently, I am a coach for Liberty University, where I also debated for four years, NDT Octofinalist and CEDA Octofinalist; I started by doing policy args, moved to Kritical/performance things with most of my arguments starting with black women and moving outward such as Cap, AB, Set Col, and so on). As a novice, I started debate in college and worked my way to varsity, so I have a pretty good understanding of each division.

Judging wise (general things)

How I view debate: Debate is, first and foremost, a game, but it's full of real people and real consequences, so we should keep that in mind as we play, even though it has real-life implications for many of us.

Facial Expressions: I often make facial expressions during the debate, and yes, they are about the debate so that I would pay attention to it; my face will usually let you know when I am vibing and when I'm confused

Speaker points: --- subjective these days. I try to start at 28.7 and then go up and down based on a person's performance in a debate. Do you want to earn higher speaks? Don't risk clarity over speed. I'm not straining my ear to understand what you are saying. And a 2NR and 2AR that have judge instructions and tell me what I am voting on at the end of this debate, and we are good. Also, if you follow Liberty debate on Instagram and show me, I'll bump your speech.

K AFFs --Tend to think these should be in the direction of the res. You should be prepared to answer these questions if you read these affs. What is the point of reading the 1AC in debate? What is your beef with the debate or the resolution? I think you need to have a reason why people should have to engage with your model of debate and why the education you produce is good. -- For me big framing questions with no line by line is no good for me tbh

K's --- What's the link? Links need to be contextualized to the aff; generally, don't be generic or links of omission unless they are entirely dropped—the more specific the aff, the better. Leveraging the framework in your favor is an underrated strategy, but I enjoy those debates. At the end of the debate, some explanation of the alternative that solves the links needs to be explained. Less is more condensed than the K in the 2NR, and you can sit and contextualize the args you go for to the 1AC and what is happening in the debate. In general, I understand most K's. Still, you should assume that I don't explain your literature base/theory or power, especially if you read psychoanalysis, Baudrillard, or anything like that in front of me.

(Putting the K on the case page makes my flow so messy, and I like pretty flows....lol)

David Cram Helwich
University of Minnesota
28 years judging, 20-ish rounds each year

Quick version: Do what you do best and I will try to check my dispositions at the door.

Topic Thoughts: We picked the wrong one (too narrow, needed at least sole purpose). Aff innovation is going to require NFU-subsets affs, but I have yet to see a good argument for a reasonable limit to such an interpretation. "Disarming" creates an unanticipated loophole. Process counterplans that are not directly related to nuclear policymaking seem superfluous given the strength of the negative side of the topic literature.

Online Debate: It is "not great," better than I feared. I have judged quite a few online debates over the past 3 years. Debaters will benefit by slowing down a bit if that enhances their clarity, avoiding cross-talk, and actively embracing norms that minimize the amount of "null time" in debates--watch for speechdocs and download them right away, pay attention to the next speaker as they give the order, be efficient in getting your speechdoc attached and sent, etc.

Evidence: I believe that engaged research is one of the strongest benefits of policy debate, and that judging practices should incentivize such research. I am a bad judge for you if your evidence quality is marginal—sources, recency, and warrants/data offered. I reward teams who debate their opponent’s evidence, including source qualifications.

Delivery: I will provide prompts (if not on a panel) if I am having trouble flowing. I will not evaluate arguments that I could not originally flow.

Topicality: I vote on well-developed procedurals. I rarely vote on T cheap shots. T is not genocide—however, “exclusion” and similar impacts can be good reasons to prefer one interpretation over another. Debaters that focus interpretation debating on caselists (content and size), division of ground, and the types of literature we read, analyzed through fairness/education lenses, are more likely to get my ballot. I tend to have a high threshold for what counts as a “definition”—intent to define is important, whereas proximity-count “definitions” seem more valuable in setting the parameters of potential caselists than in grounding an interpretation of the topic.

Critical Arguments: I have read quite a bit of critical theory, and will not dismiss your argument just because it does not conform to ‘traditional’ notions of debate. However, you should not assume that I am necessarily familiar with your particular literature base. I value debating that applies theory to the ‘artifact’ of the 1AC (or 1NC, or topic, etc). The more specific and insightful the application of said theory, the more likely I am to vote for you. Explaining what it means to vote for you (role of the ballot) is vitally important, for both “policy” and “K” teams. Absent contrary guidance, I view ‘framework’ debates in the same frame as T—caselist size/content, division of ground, research focus.

Disadvantages/Risk: I typically assess the ‘intrinsic probability’ of the plan triggering a particular DA (or advantage) before assessing uniqueness questions. This means that link work is very important—uniqueness obviously implicates probability, but “risk of uniqueness” generally means “we have no link.” Impact assessments beyond shallow assertions (“ours is faster because I just said so”) are an easy pathway to my ballot, especially if you have strong evidentiary support

Theory: I will not evaluate theoretical objections that do not rise to the level of an argument (claim, data, warrant). Good theory debating focuses on how the operationalization of competing interpretations impacts what we debate/research and side balance. Thought experiments (what would debate look like if the neg could read an unlimited number of contradictory, conditional counterplans?) are valuable in drawing such comparisons. I tend to find “arg not team” to be persuasive in most cases. This means you need a good reason why “loss” is an appropriate remedy for a theory violation—I am persuadable on this question, but it takes more than an assertion. If it is a close call in your mind about whether to go for “substance” or “theory,” you are probably better off going for “substance.”

Counterplans: The gold standard for counterplan legitimacy is specific solvency evidence. Obviously, the necessary degree of specificity is a matter of interpretation, but, like good art, you know it when you see it. I am more suspicious of multi-conditionality, and international fiat than most judges. I am probably more open to condition counterplans than many critics. PICs/PECs that focus debate on substantive parts of the aff seem important to me. Functional competition seems to make more sense than does textual competition. That being said, I coach my teams to run many counterplans that I do not think are legitimate, and vote for such arguments all the time. The status quo seems to be a legitimate voting option unless I am instructed otherwise. My assumption is that I am trying to determine the "best policy option," which can include the status quo unless directed otherwise.

Argument Resolution: Rebuttalists that simply extend a bunch of cards/claims and hope that I decide things in their favor do poorly in front of me. I reward debaters that resolve arguments, meaning they provide reasons why their warrants, data, analysis, sources etc. are stronger (more persuasive) than those of their opponents on critical pressure points. I defer to uncontested argument and impact comparisons. I read evidence on questions that are contested, if I want the cite, or if I think your argument is interesting.

Decorum: I believe that exclusionary practices (including speech acts) are unacceptable. I am unlikely to vote against you for being offensive, but I will not hesitate to decrease your points if you behave in an inappropriate manner (intentionally engaging in hostile, classist, racist, sexist, heterosexist, ableist etc. acts, for example). I recognize that this activity is very intense, but please try to understand that everyone present feels the same pressures and “play nice.”

Use an email chain--establish one before the round, and please include me on it (cramhelwich@gmail.com) . Prep time ends once the speechdoc is saved and sent. Most tournaments have policies on how to deal with "tech time"--please know what those policies are. I do not have a strong opinion on the acceptability of mid-speech prep for other purposes.

If you have specific questions, please ask me before the round.

Update 4/1/2023

*If you are scanning this philosophy as a nonmember of the community, seeking out quotes to help your political "culture war" cause you are not an honest broker here and largely looking for clickbait. I find your endeavors an unfortunate result of a rage machine that consumes a great deal of quality programs without ever helping them thrive or grow. Re-evaluate your life and think about how you can help high schools and middle schools around this country develop speech and debate programs, core liberal art educational, to improve the quality of argumentation, that otherwise is lacking. In the end, as an outsider looking in, you are missing a great deal of nuance in these philosophies and how they operate in the communities (multiple not just one) around the US and the world.

If you have landed here as a representative of Fox News or an ally or affiliate, I would like to see the receipts of the bias that has and continues to perforate your organization from Roger Ailes to Tucker Carlson and more. Here is my question, when you learned about the Joe McCarthy era of conspiracy theory, along with the hysteria and demonization of potential Americans who are communist (or sympathizers) and "pinko" (gay or sexual "deviants"), is your gripe with McCarthy that he had a secret list without evidence, or do you recognize that a core problem with McCarthy is his anti-democratic fear that there actually ARE communists, gay, trans, bisexual, Americans?

My next question is when and where you think it is acceptable for a person with strong beliefs to exist in democratic spaces. Bias is inevitable and part of this debate game. Organizations attempt to manage types of bias and coaches and debaters learn how to adapt to certain bias while attempting to avoid problematic bias. What do you think? Would right leaning presidential candidates vote for an argument that affirms trans athletes in sports? Should a trans judge leave their identity entirely at the door and embody a leading republican presidential candidate who is against medical care for trans persons? Both answers are no. The issue you seek to lambast for viewership clickbate is much deeper and more complicated than a 3 minute video clip can cover. Thank for reading.

REAL PHILOSOPHY
Background: Indiana University Director of Debate as of 2010. Background is primarily as a policy debater and policy debate coach.

Email Chain: Bdelo77@gmail.com

The road to high speaker points and the ballot

I reward debaters who have a strong knowledge of the topic. Those debaters who can articulate intricacies and relationships amongst topic specific literature will meet what I believe are the educational benefits of having a topic in the first place.

Using evidence to assist you with the argument you are trying to make is more important than stringing evidence together in hopes that they accumulate into an argument. “I have a card judge, it is real good” “pull my 15 uniqueness cards judge” are not arguments. Ex: Obama will win the election – a) swing voters, Rasmussen poll indicates momentum after the DNC b) Washington post “Romney has lost the election” the base is gone… etc. are good extensions of evidence.

Less jargon more eloquence. I get bored with repeated catch phrases. I understand the need for efficiency, but debaters who recognize the need for innovation by individuals in the activity will receive more points.

Speed: I expect I can digest at least 70% of your speech. The other 30% should be general human attention span issues on my part. I firmly believe debate is a communication event, I am saddened that this has been undervalued as debaters prepare for tournaments. If I agree with X debater that Y debater’s speech on an argument was incoherent, I am more and more willing to just ignore the argument. Computer screens and Bayesian calculus aside, there is a human in this body that makes human decisions.

Should affs be topical?

Affs should have a relationship to the topic that is cogent. If there is no relationship to the topic, I have a high standard for affirmatives to prove that the topic provides no “ground” for a debater to adapt and exist under its umbrella. Negatives, this does not mean you don’t have a similar burden to prove that the topic is worth debating. However personally I think you will have a much smaller hill to climb… I find it disturbing that debaters do not go further than a quick “topical version of your aff solves” then insert X switch side good card… Explain why the topical version is good for debate and provides argument diversity and flexibility.

Policy debate is good: When I prep our files for tournaments I tend to stay in the policy-oriented literature. This does not mean that I am unwilling to cut our K file or K answers, I just have limited time and job related motivation to dive into this literature.

K Debate: Can be done well, can be done poorly. I do not exclude the arguments from the round but nebulous arguments can be overplayed and abused.

(Updated 3-2-2022) Conditionality:

1) Judge Kick? No. You made your choice on what to go for now stick with it. 2NRs RARELY have the time to complete one avenue for the ballot let alone two conditional worlds...

I tend to believe that one conditional substantive test of the plan advocacy is good (agent CP, process CP, or ?) and I am open to the idea of the need for a second advantage CP (need to deal with add-ons and bad advantages) or K within limits. I'm not a fan of contradicting conditional advocacies in how they implicate 2AC offense and potential.

Beyond 1-2 conditional arguments, I am torn by the examples of proliferating counterplans and critiques that show up in the 1NC and then disappear in the negative block. There is a substantive tradeoff in the depth and quality of arguments and thus a demotivation incentive for the iterative testing and research in the status quo world of 3+ conditional advocacies. The neg's, "write better advantages" argument has value, however with 2AC time pressure it means that 1ACs are becoming Frankenstein's monster to deal with the time tradeoff.

Plans: I think the community should toy with the idea of a grand bargain where affirmatives will specify more in their plan text and negs give up some of their PIC ground. The aff interp of "we only have to specify the resolution" has pushed us in the direction where plans are largely meaningless and aff conditionality is built into core 2AC frontlines. The thing is, our community has lost many of its fora for discussing theory and establishing new norms around issues like this. Debaters need to help be the change we need and we need more in-depth theory discussions outside of the rounds. Who is the Rorger Solt going to be of the 2020's?

Reading evidence:
I find myself more willing to judge the evidence as it was debated in the round (speeches and cx), and less willing to scan through piles of cards to create a coherent understanding of the round. If a debate is being had about the quality of X card, how I SHOULD read the evidence, etc. I will read it.

Sometimes I just have an interest in the evidence and I read it for self-educational and post-round discussion reasons.

Judging:

I will work extremely hard to evaluate the debate as the debaters have asked me to judge it.

he/him delphdebate@gmail.com

year 11 of debate

coach at wake forest

former LRCH and Kansas Debater

TLDR:

When it comes to evaluating debates, two things are the most important for me:

1. Clear judge instructions in the rebuttals of how I should filter offense and arguments made in the round. Impact and Link framing are a must. if I can't explain the argument myself, I probably can't vote on it.

2. Impact comparison and clear reason why I should prioritize impacts in the round between the neg and aff. Each argument should have a claim - warrant - impact for me to evaluate it as such.

Use these to filter the rest of my paradigm and general in round perception.

General

I consider myself to be pretty flexible when it comes to arguments that teams want to read. I debated more critically but you should read whatever arguments that you are comfortable with. Any racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc will be met with speaker points that reflect, so don't be an assho|e.

Most of my debate experience was in critical debates on both the aff and neg (I was a 1A/2N), but I’m not unfamiliar with the technical aspects of policy debates.

I’m probably not the best for Topicality debates in general when it comes to plan-based policy debates and less likely to vote on Framework vs plan-less affs if going for impacts such as fairness/competitive equity or predictability. I generally lean more into truth over tech in most debates, but tech is important for impact comparison.

for college: still formulating how I understand and evaluate as a judge, so making sure I clearly understand what I should evaluate without intervention from me comes down to how you go for your arguments. The less judge intervention I feel like I have to do, the happier we are all in the post-round RFD.

——————————————————————————————

Truth over tech/Tech over truth? - Depends, i view myself evaluating truth before tech concessions but that isn’t always the case. I think technical concession are important for evaluating impact debates, so utilize both these to your advantage.

Framework on the Neg? - I’ll evaluate any negative arguments about the meta of debate. If you win your model of debate is good and the aff in question doesn’t access it then generally I’m pretty neutral on Framework arguments. Same for K’s with framing questions, the way you want me to evaluate a prior question should be framed as such.

10 off? I’d prefer if you didn’t, gish galloping is a fascist tactic.

Theory arguments? I believe theory arguments are heavily underutilized in high school debates. I evaluate conditionality and presumption debates as much as I evaluate K vs Framework. I have a certain threshold for certain arguments that I will vote on in theory debates, I think condo is a definite aff/neg ballot if it gets dropped in the neg block or rebuttals. I tend to vote neg on presumption, in those debates I think a lot of the perm debate and solvency portions of both sides are important to those rounds. CP contextual theory, perm text theory, textual severance, etc im all game for theory. i think theory debates get underutilized a lot

K affirmatives

I read them, I think that you should read whatever you read on the aff. I will vote for them, but I at least think they should be in the direction of the topic and a reason why the topical version doesn't solve.

Performance

If performance is your thing - go ahead go for it.

FW on the neg

I will vote on a neg FW but I think that there are certain arguments that I'm gonna have a harder time pulling the trigger on, i.e. fairness. I don't think fairness is something I would absolutely vote on but of course that all depends on the round. I also think the neg should be doing a lot of work why the state/usfg is worth it, why the aff isnt good for a model of debate, or why the judge should care. Generic args on framework aren't gonna cut it for me tbh, i need a concise way of why i should view the debate through the neg and why the aff doesnt solve etc etc.

K’s

Pretty versed in most of the lit but you shouldn't use a lot of buzzwords in front of me. I think you should say why the aff is uniquely bad and how the alternative can resolve its impacts and the squo. Why perms don't solve, links are disads, etc etc. I find alternative debates to be the most shallow, I think even if you are winning reason the links are disads you still need a reason the alt isn't the squo. Role of the ballot arguments are self-serving but it makes is a lot easier to evaluate them when they are dropped or not contested by the aff. Aff teams: FW on Ks is underutilized, I think you should make arguments about why you should get to weigh your impacts vs the K.

Any other questions just ask before the round, "If you can't dazzle me with excellence, baffle me with bullshit."

Debate Experience:

4 Years at Lansing High School

3 Years at University of Nebraska- Single-person policy.

Past Graduate Assistant for the University of Nebraska debate.

Head Coach at Lincoln NorthStar for 3 Years

3L in law school. Education Law and Policy.

My email is dikecolin@gmail.com, please add me to the email chain OR do a speech drop.... tbh I prefer speech drop at this point in my career. It is much simpler.

Few things before I go into specifics:

1. Clipping will lose you the round and any chance you had at getting a speaker award

2. Disclosure is always good and necessary. This does not guarantee you a ballot if you are losing on the standards debate, but it should tell you that I am very sympathetic to the education claims.

3. DO NOT be an ass. You don't look cool and will not be rewarded.

4. If the opposing team drops a DA or something that is obviously a round winner- do not waste my time. Just extend the dropped argument and sit down.

5. Go as fast as you you want. Just make sure that you are CLEAR and you are SIGN POSTING between cards...... see how I accented those with font and you read it in your brain with a different tone..... do that with your voice on tags and dates.

6. Arguments that I will not find appealing-

-Nuclear terrorism.....like who is giving them the nuke...and how are they developing them? Also, I'm just skeptical of underlying assumptions from people reading Islamic terrorism bad.

-Death good

-Wipeout

-Spark

-Bad impact turns (Racism good, Warming good)

7. Things That Annoy Me:
A) Flowing off the speech doc, then answering cards that weren't read, etc
B) Responding to blippy 2ac theory args without a warrant (e.g., "no neg fiat, voting issue") FOR FORTY FIVE SECONDS!!!
C) Reading un-highlighted cards.

---------------------------Crowe Warken (NDT)---------------------------------

If you are from NFA-LD. Do not read this. Its not for you.

I am a new judge to NDT. A few things:

1) Speed: You all do not fall under point 5 above- Go slower on tags (IDC about the speed you go through the card text). You should probably be going 50%-60% speed on T/Theory debates (the same speed you go on tags). Yes, that's annoying, I apologize. Also- perhaps a hot take- I think flashing analytics and T blocks is good. If you pre-wrote it and it is the best version of your argument, you should not be afraid that the other team understands your arg and should not hope to win on dropped args from speed. The purpose of this addendum is that I am very willing to be lenient on you going faster on T/Theory args if they are in the doc and I can refer back to them. I am talking 75% speed max.

2) If your 2NR/2AR is not starting by writing my ballot, you are doing it wrong. That is not to say that this narrows and precludes other offenses on the rest of the flow, but it does frame the first things I look at when making my decision AND helps you clarify what you think your route to the ballot is for me. The alternative is you charging the mound on me for not seeing your obscure route to the ballot which isn't rad.

3) My paradigm for judging is not going to be nearly as refined as your seasoned NDT vet. or your ordinal 1 pref. My RFD is probably not going to flow like an elegant story that wraps up every issue in the debate. As such, please feel free to ask questions after the round and I will always give you the thoughts I have.

***********************************HIGH SCHOOL LD*****************************************

I come from a policy background. Use that to your advantage. If you want to read value/criterion, you need to have specific instructions on how I weigh impacts under the value.

If you are interested in going for a really dense philosophy argument, I am going to be more work as a judge because of my relative newness to LD. Make sure you are impacting out all the claims you are going for. I also am just not a fan of super old philosophers from the 1600s. It seems to be more of a race to obscurity than actually doing "philosophical" debate as debaters indicate.

STOP ASKING IN CX TO "SUM UP YOUR POINTS." It defeats the whole point of CX. This goes for every format, but it is the worst in LD.

I am all for us sharing evidence. You should always be ready to share your evidence with the other team. If you don't, I am very easily persuaded by arguments saying you can't prove the truth or falsity of the other teams arguments.

If you are reading a framing argument that says that there is a specific burden for the aff/neg (we only have to defend one subsidy is bad, the aff has to repeal all subsidies to meet their burden, ect.), then you need to win standards to win this argument.

Speaker points can be increased if you separate the framing debate from the case debate- (put them on their own sheet of paper). I flow debates this way and deeply appreciate when debaters do this because the clash is all in one place.

Please don't reach to saying an argument is abusive if you don't have another answer. Most of the time it isn't abusive, you just haven't thought of an answer yet.

Neg Kritiks in LD need to have more work done in the 1NC than in policy. Just reading the link, impact, and alt in the 1NC creates super late-breaking debates that always favor the neg and creates poor clash because the aff has to respond to 6 minutes of functionally new offense in as 3 minute 2AR. To that end- I think any representations, Role of the ballot/judge, and alt solves the aff arguments should be in the 1NC. Not doing this substantially lowers my willingness to lean neg on theory objectification (Condo, floating piks bad, etc.)

Underviews with theory preempts are fine, but YOU NEED TO SLOW DOWN. I have to have time to flow the arguments. I generally believe that any prewritten theory should be 1) Flashed and 2) disclosed.

Please read the rest of this paradigm- the things I think in policy that are explained generally transfer to LD- specifically on the theory stuff.

*************************************Policy Debate********************************************************

**Topicality vs. Plan Text

I feel pretty comfortable adjudicating topicality debates. However, this isn’t permission to blow through your 1NC interp and 2NC blocks as fast as you can. The fastest way to get a decision that you don't like is to poorly sign post between arguments and not give me at least a little pen time. Specifically, slow down on nuanced arguments that intersect multiple standards (Bi-directionality controls ground because.....). My views on T primary revolve around the following:

1. T is always a voter and never a reverse voter!

2. Reasonability is a way to determine the sufficiency of the aff’s counter-interp; not whether or not the aff is “reasonably topical.” Delete the phrase "reasonably topical" from your vocabulary. Too many times in high school debates, 1AR and 2AR’s do a poor job of extending reasonability. Saying “good is good enough” is not an argument. You need to give reasons why reasonability is preferable to competing interpretations.

3. Contextualized interactions between different standards (ie: limits controls the direction of ground, or precision determines the lit base for which a team derives limits offense, etc.) needs the most explanation for me, however I find them very compelling.

**T-USfg

I am ok with this argument vs non-topical affs. Reading it is by no means a silver bullet and sometimes a counter-method goes further, but dont feel like you should or should not read this argument.

As far as defense goes I generally am under the impression that T is a floor not a ceiling and discussions of aff’s internal links can happen via topical versions of the affirmative. TVA and switch side debate are defensive arguments and must be paired with a net benefit to win!

**Theory

I love theory debates. The fact that you can debate about the rules of debate makes it the best game out there. I am ok with almost any theory argument if you have a justification for why it produces good education.

Grain of salt- theory debates require the fastest typing and flowing because it is frequently your own words and has the fewest cards. If you want me to understand, you want to slow down to like 75% so I can get everything on my flow.

Generally, condo is good, and delay CP's are abusive

Fairness is a sliding scale. Even if you think I might err neg on condo in a debate with one conditional advocacy, that default level can be reduced by things like multi-plank conditional CP's, CP's with no solvency advocate, etc.

I am also a big fan of whole res v/ plan text theory args in LD.

**CP

I am a big advocate for nuanced and developed counterplans, and believe it is one of the most strategic ways to subsume aff offense. I default to sufficiency framing until told otherwise. If there is no clear victor in the theory debate I will usually default negative.

I generally think that CP’s should be textually and functionally competitive but feel free to tell me otherwise. I tend to lean negative on theory and think that most objections are reasons to reject the argument not the team.

**DA

I’m a fan. Try to read specific links, because I am of the opinion that generic links are usually punished by link thumpers. The 2NR should do impact calc and make turns case arguments.

I am willing to vote on zero percent risk of a link if you clarify that there is zero percent of a link with a justification.

**K

I am always open to K’s but not very familiar with all of the literature. Please refrain from assuming I know what you’re talking about or using buzz words. “death good” K’s or any other assorted shenanigans are not compelling and is a poor strategy for earning my ballot. I think the K should have specific links to plan action rather than to the status quo or links of omission. I think permutations are very compelling against Ks that are not contextualized to the affirmative’s policy. Alternatives need to be clearly explained. I will not do the work for you. One of my biggest frustrations is that some judges seem to front kids alt solvency because the neg tosses around big words. I am not that type of judge; the negative should be responsible for defending the actualization/implementation of the alt.

K's that I have read and have a good understanding of- Militarism, Securitization, Identity (Queerness, Anti-Blackness, Fem, ect.) Spanos, Pan, Warming Reps, Terror Reps, Adaptations of Heidegger, Anthropocentrism.

K's that I am harder to sell on because my knowledge of the lit base is low: Deluze/Guattari, Spacialization, Semio-Cap,

K's that I just really do not like at all: Baudrillard, Battallie, a lot of abstract post-modern philosophy.

I debated at Missouri State for three years and had moderate success. I am now out of the debate community but judge every so often.

Email: engelbyclayton@gmail.com

TL;DR

I prefer policy arguments more than critical ones. I want to refrain from intervening in the debate as much as possible. Extinction is probably bad. I think debate is good and has had a positive impact on my life. Both teams worked hard and deserve to be respected.

My beliefs

-Aff needs a clear internal link to the impact. Teams often focus too much time on impacts and not enough on the link story, this is where you should start.

-I like impact turns that don't deviate from norms of morality.

-Condo is good.

-Fairness is not an impact within itself but could be an internal link to something.

-Kritiks are interesting. Explain your stuff.

-Weighing impacts, evidence comparison, strategic decisions, and judge instruction can go a long way.

Updated 12/10/24

Minneapolis South '17 || University of Minnesota '21

Coach at Minneapolis Edison HS Fall '17 - Spring '20 || Part-time Coach at UMN Fall '21 - Present

Email: josiahferguson3.14@gmail.com Yes put me on the email chain, feel free to email me any questions. Currently work for a city civil engineering department, was a 2A for most of my debate career.

Pronouns: He/Him/His.

Cliff Notes:

HS: low topic knowledge, haven't judged on this topic yet, barely thought about it.

College: mid-high topic knowledge, been doing some work for UMN and judged 10 debates so far, I value debates that show off your knowledge of the topic.

Speed, good if clear, warrant dense and slow > fast nonsense, I flow on paper so I need pen time.

FW v. k aff, yes fairness is an impact, but often a small one. K aff can win, but probably needs some explanation of the role of the negative (and how they can reasonably accomplish this role).

Longer version:

About Me:

I debated 592 rounds (30 middle school, 275 high school, 287 college) and have judged 353 (59 middle school, 130 High School, 144 College), best result: octa-finalist at the 2021 NDT.

Debate is an educational activity. My role as a judge includes being an educator. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you feel welcome and safe.

I value clarity over speed, I still flow on paper so I need pen time and clear communication on what you want me to write down. I usually flow straight down. I often read along with the doc but don't flow from it, except for things like CP texts that I will go back and look at if there is a discussion of exactly how it is written.
Default to tech > truth, though truth often determines how much tech you need. I usually evaluate most args probabilistically on offense vs defense.

Specific arguments:

T vs K affs - Yes. Fairness is probably an impact, though fairly small, clash is about the only other impact worth saying, the neg probably needs some way to mitigate aff offense including: TVA, switch side or process over content. Aff’s should probably have a model of debate, as it is difficult to convince me that an activity that you devoted your time to is wholly bad. Having a clear role for the neg can help against fairness and clash offense. Procedure based DAs to FW are better than content ones.

K vs Policy - Cap or security probably best k options in front of me. I’m fine for some specific Ks, but I haven't read much of the lit in depth. I’m ok for identity Ks (antiblackness, gender, queerness) in that I have a base level of understanding but have a prety high threshold for ontology claims. I’m not good for Baudrillard, Bataille, D&G or Nietzsche, etc. I have a high threshold for no Ks FW on the aff, easily win that you get to weigh the aff, though what that means is up for debate, and should be explained. Please impact out what I should do if you win your interp on FW. Much prefer a push on consequentialism good to just a push on extinction outweighs.

T v Policy - Default to T a priori. Standards with warrants are needed in the 1NC. Tell me what reasonability means and why it is good beyond the generic one liner if you want me to vote on it (ie 1-2 minutes of the 2ar + 2-3 sentences in each speech before then). Think of reasonability as going for presumption, you shouldn't do it often and when you do it should be the focal point of your speech.

Theory/CP - most condo is probably good, types of CPs, and solvency advocates matter more than just the number of condo, though I will vote on condo. I have found myself voting aff on condo more than I would like - 2nr please include neg flex, fairness outweighs and dispo fails. Love a good Adv CP out of a non-intrinsic advantage. 2NC counterplans out of straight turns are probably somewhat bad (Still worth saying, just not as your only answer).
PIC/Ks - aff should be able to defend their plan/advocacy, other pics are debatable.
Perm do the CP is good against process CPs, Default to reject the arg except for condo. International fiat probably bad, multi actor is debatable. Theory args like consult bad are best used as a justification for PDCP. Perm do both needs a net benefit, often a solvency deficit, please compare this with the DAs to the perm.
Yes judge kick, I will do so for the neg if it helps them.

DA/Case - I evaluate probabilistically, so unlikely to win zero risk unless major drop. Default to uniqueness controlling link. Threshold for thumpers is determined by the broadest link argument extended, so if you have a more specific link it can backfire to extend the more general one.
Case debate good, do it more. UQ is a squo solves/solvency deficit unless paired with theory.
I follow politics quite closely, so if you mess up the swing votes on your ptx DA I will be annoyed.

Impact framing - Risk = Magnitude x Probability, so structural violence can outweigh. probability is usually determined based on how well it is debated. Lean 10% chance of 99% dead outweighs 1% risk of 100% dead, but needs an explanation.

He/him

These are most of the predispositions I have about arguments that I can think of, these are not ironclad as my views on debate are constantly in flux. However, without being instructed otherwise, the below points will likely influence how I evaluate the debate.

Top Level:

-Please add me to the email chain, fifelski@umich.edu and please make the subject something that is easy to search like "NDT 4 - Michigan DM v UCO HS."

-I prefer to flow on paper, but if you would like me to flow on my computer so I can share the flow after the debate, just ask.

-I read along with speech docs and prefer clear, relatively slow, and organized debates. I am still trying to hone flowing in online debate.

-I cannot emphasize enough how important card quality and recency should be in debates, but it requires debaters to frame arguments about that importance.

-If you break a new aff and you don't want to share the docs, I will chalk it up to academic cowardice and presume that the aff is largely a pile of crap.

-Evidence can be inserted if the lines were read in CX, but otherwise this act is insufficient. I will only look at graphs and charts if they are analyzed in the debate.

-I generally think war good arguments are akin to genocide good. I also think dedev is absolute nonsense.

-The past year of my life has been filled with the death of loved ones, please don't remind me of it while I'm judging a debate. I categorically refuse to evaluate any argument that could have the thesis statement of death good or that life is not worth living.

-Affs should be willing to answer cross-x questions about what they'll defend.

Topic thoughts:

-I'm not a fan of this topic, but I don't think "aff ground" arguments make much sense in terms of the topicality debates from fringe affs. The topic is not "adjust nuke policy" so even if "disarming" was a poorly choice word, it doesn't mean you can just get rid of a handful of bombs. Anything else makes the triad portion of the topic irrelevant. It sucks, but the negative should not be punished because the community came to consensus on a topic. Want to fix it? Engage in the thankless work that is crafting the topic.

-Russia is 100% a revisionist power, at war in Europe, and is evil. My thoughts on China are more complex, but I do believe they would take Taiwan if given the chance.

How to sway me:

-More narrativization is better than less

-Ev quality - I think higher quality and recent ev is a necessity. Make arguments about the qualifications of authors, how to evaluate evidence, and describe what events have happened to complicate the reading of their evidence from 2012.

-The 2nr/2ar should spend the first 15-20 seconds explaining how I should vote with judge instruction. If you laid a trap, now is the time to tell me, because I’m probably not going to vote on something that wasn’t flagged as an argument.

-I can flow with the best of them, but I enjoy slower debates so much more.

-More case debate. The 2ac is often too dismissive of case args and the neg often under-utilizes them.

-If reading cards after the debate is required for me to have comprehension of your argument, I’m probably not your judge. I tend to vote on warranted arguments that I have flowed and read cards to evaluate particular warrants that have been called into question. That said, I intend on reading along with speech docs this year.

-I think internal links are the most important parts of an argument; I am more likely to vote for “Asian instability means international coop on warming is impossible” than “nuclear war kills billions” OR “our patriarchy better explains x,y,z” instead of “capitalism causes war.”

-I like when particular arguments are labeled eg) “the youth-voter link” or “the epistemology DA.”

-If you're breaking a new aff/cp, it's probably in your best interest to slow down when making highly nuanced args.

Things I don’t like:

-Generally I think word PICs are bad. Some language obviously needs to be challenged, but if your 1nc strategy involves cntl-f [insert ableist term], I am not the judge for you.

-Overusing offensive language, yelling, being loud during the other team’s speech/prep, and getting into my personal space or the personal space of others will result in fewer speaker points.

-If you think a permutation requires the affirmative to do something they haven’t, you and I have different interpretations of competition theory.

-Old evidence/ blocks that have been circulating in camp files for a decade.

Critical Affs:

-I am probably a better judge for the K than most would suspect. While the sample size is small, I think I vote for critical args around 50% of the time they're the center of the debate.

-A debate has to occur and happen within the speech order/times of the invite; the arguments are made are up to the debaters and I generally enjoy a broad range of arguments, particularly on a topic as dull as this one.

-Too often I think critical affs describe a problem, but don’t explain what voting aff means in the context of that impact.

-Is there a role of the ballot?

-Often I find the “topical version” of the aff argument to be semi-persuasive by the negative, so explain to me the unique benefit of your aff in the form that it is and why switching-sides does not solve that.

-Framework: Explain the topical version of the aff; use your framework impacts to turn/answer the impacts of the 1ac; if you win framework you win the debate because…

Kritiks:

-Links should be contextualized to the aff; saying the aff is capitalist because they use the state is not enough. I'm beginning to think that K's, when read against policy affs, should link to the plan and not just the advantages, I'm not as sold on this as I am my belief on floating pic/ks (95 percent of the time I think floating PIC/Ks aren't arguments worthy of being made, let alone voted on)

-Alternative- what is the framework for evaluating the debate? What does voting for the alternative signify? What should I think of the aff’s truth statements?

-I’m not a fan of high theory Ks, but statistically vote for them a decent percentage of the time.

-When reading the K against K affs, the link should problematize the aff's methodology.

Answering the K:

-Make smart permutation arguments that have explained the net benefits and deal with the negatives disads to the perm.

-You should have a framework for the debate and find ways to dismiss the negative’s alternative.

Disads:

-Overviews that explain the story of the disad are helpful.

-Focus on internal links.

Counterplans:

-I am not a member of the cult of process. Just because you have a random definition of a word from a court in Iowa doesn't mean I think that the counterplan has value. I can be swayed if there are actual cards about the topic and the aff, but otherwise these cps are, as the kids say, mid.

-Your CP should have a solvency advocate that is as descriptive of your mechanism as the affirmative’s solvency advocate is.

Theory/Rules:

-Conditionality is cheating a lot like the Roth test: at some point it’s cheating, otherwise neg flex is good.

-Affs should explain why the negative should lose because of theory, otherwise I’ll just reject the arg.

-I'll likely be unsympathetic to args related to ADA rules, sans things that should actually be rules like clipping.

-I’m generally okay with kicking the CP/Alt for the neg if I’m told to.

Yes, email chain. debateoprf@gmail.com

ME:

Debater--The University of Michigan '91-'95

Head Coach--Oak Park and River Forest HS '15-'20

Assistant Coach--New Trier Township High School '20-

POLICY DEBATE:

Top Level

--Old School Policy.

--Like the K on the Neg. Harder sell on the Aff.

--Quality of Evidence Counts. Massive disparities warrant intervention on my part. You can insert rehighlightings. There should not be a time punishment for the tean NOT reading weak evidence.

--Not great with theory debates.

--I value Research and Strategic Thinking (both in round and prep) as paramount when evaluating procedural impacts.

--Utter disdain for trolly Theory args, Death Good, Wipeout and Spark. Respect the game, win classy.

Advantage vs Disadvantage

More often than not, I tend to gravitate towards the team that wins probability. The more coherent and plausible the internal link chain is, the better.

Zero risk is a thing.

I can and will vote against an argument if cards are poor exclusive of counter evidence being read.

Not a big fan of Pre-Fiat DA's: Spending, Must Pass Legislation, Riders, etc. I will err Aff on theory unless the Neg has some really good evidence as to why not.

I love nuanced defense and case turns. Conversely, I love link and impact turns. Please run lots of them.

Counterplans

Short answer to every question is "Having a solvency advocate solves all neg problems."

Conditionality—

I am largely okay with a fair amount of condo. i.e. 4-5 not a big deal for me. I will become sympathetic to Aff Theory ONLY if the Neg starts kicking straight turned arguments. On the other hand, if you go for Condo Bad and can't answer Strat Skew Inevitable, Idea Testing Good and Hard Debate is Good Debate then don't go for Condo Bad. I have voted Aff on Conditionality Theory, but rarely.

Competition—

1. I have grown weary of vague plan writing. To that end, I tend think that the Neg need only win that the CP is functionally competitive. The Plan is about advocacy and cannot be a moving target.

2. Perm do the CP? Intrinsic Perms? I am flexible to Neg if they have a solvency advocate or the Aff is new. Otherwise, I lean Aff.

(2025 ADDENDUM: I feel like this needs to be clearer because it has become an issue. I like Process CP’s when they are relevant to the topic. I give the Aff a fair amount of leeway re: limited intrinsic perms when they are run against a Process CP that has zero topic relevance. This is because I value topic research and will reward the team that accesses an impact that incentivizes hard work and discourages file recycling. You have been warned.)

Other Stuff—

PIC’s and Agent CP’s are part of our game. I err Neg on theory. Ditto 50 State Fiat.

No object Fiat, please. Or International Fiat on a Domestic Topic.

Otherwise, International Fiat is a gray area for me. The Neg needs a good Interp that excludes abusive versions. Its winnable.

Solvency advocates and New Affs make me lean Neg on theory.

If you don't have one, it is acceptable in cases where CP's just ban something detrimental to impact. That just shows good strategic thinking.

I will judge kick automatically unless given a decent reason why not in the 1AR.

K-Affs

If you lean on K Affs, just do yourself a favor and put me low or strike me. I am not unsympathetic to your argument per se, I just vote on Framework 60-70% of the time and it rarely has anything to do with your Aff.

That said, if you can effectively impact turn Framework, beat back a TVA and Switch Side Debate, you can get my ballot.

Topic relevance is important.

If your goal is to make blanket statements about why certain people are good or bad or should be excluded from valuable discussions then I am not your judge. We are all flawed.

I do not like “debate is bad” arguments. I don't think that being a "small school" is a reason why I should vote for you.

Kritiks vs Policy Affs

Truth be told, I vote Neg on Kritiks vs Policy Affs A LOT.

I am prone to voting Aff on Perms, so be advised College Debaters. I have no take on "philosophical competition" but it does seem like a thing.

I am not up on the Lit AT ALL, so the polysyllabic word stews you so love to concoct are going to make my ears bleed.

I like reading cards after the debate and find myself understanding nuance better when I can. If you don’t then you leave me with only the bad handwriting on my flow to decipher what you said an hour later and that’s not good for anybody.

When I usually vote Neg its because the Aff has not done a sufficient job in engaging with core elements of the K, such as Ontology, Root Cause Claims, etc.

I am not a great evaluator of Framework debates and will usually err for the team that accesses Education Impacts the best.

Topicality

Because it theoretically serves an external function that affects other rounds, I do give the Aff a fair amount of leeway when the arguments start to wander into a gray area. The requirement for Offense on the part of the Affirmative is something on which I place little value. Put another way, the Aff need only prove that they are within the predictable confines of research and present a plan that offers enough ground on which to run generic arguments. The Negative must prove that the Affirmative skews research burdens to a point in which the topic is unlimited to a point beyond 20-30 possible cases and/or renders the heart of the topic moot.

Plan Text in a Vacuum is a silly defense. In very few instances have I found it defensible. If you choose to defend it, you had better be ready to defend the solvency implications.

Limits and Fairness are not in and of themselves an impact. Take it to the next level.

Why I vote Aff a lot:

--Bad/Incoherent link mechanics on DA’s

--Perm do the CP

--CP Solvency Deficits

--Framework/Scholarship is defensible

--T can be won defensively

Why I vote Neg a lot:

--Condo Bad is silly

--Weakness of aff internal links/solvency

--Offense that turns the case

--Sufficiency Framing

--You actually had a strategy

PUBLIC FORUM SUPPLEMENT:

I judge about 1 PF Round for every 50 Policy Rounds so bear with me here.

I have NOT judged the PF national circuit pretty much ever. The good news is that I am not biased against or unwilling to vote on any particular style. Chances are I have heard some version of your meta level of argumentation and know how it interacts with the round. The bad news is if you want to complain about a style of debate in which you are unfamiliar, you had better convince me why with, you know, impacts and stuff. Do not try and cite an unspoken rule about debate in your part of the country.

Because of my background in Policy, I tend to look at things from a cost benefit perspective. Even though the Pro is not advocating a Plan and the Con is not reading Disadvantages, to me the round comes down to whether the Pro has a greater possible benefit than the potential implications it might cause. Both sides should frame the round in terms impact calculus and or feasibility. Impacts need to be tangible.

Evidence quality is very important.

I will vote on what is on the flow (yes, I flow) and keep my personal opinions of arguments in check as much as possible. I may mock you for it, but I won’t vote against you for it. No paraphrasing. Quote the author, date and the exact words. Quals are even better but you don’t have to read them unless pressed. Have the website handy. Research is critical.

Speed? Meh. You cannot possibly go fast enough for me to not be able to follow you. However, that does not mean I want to hear you go fast. You can be quick and very persuasive. You don't need to spread.

Defense is nice but is not enough. You must create offense in order to win. There is no “presumption” on the Con.

While I am not a fan of formal “Kritik” arguments in PF, I do think that Philosophical Debates have a place. Using your Framework as a reason to defend your scholarship is a wise move. Racism and Sexism will not be tolerated. You can attack your opponents scholarship.

I reward debaters who think outside the box.

I do not reward debaters who cry foul when hearing an argument that falls outside traditional parameters of PF Debate. Again, I am not a fan of the Kritik, but if its abusive, tell me why instead of just saying “not fair.”

Statistics are nice, to a point. But I feel that judges/debaters overvalue them. Often the best impacts involve higher values that cannot be quantified. A good example would be something like Structural Violence.

While Truth outweighs, technical concessions on key arguments can and will be evaluated. Dropping offense means the argument gets 100% weight.

The goal of the Con is to disprove the value of the Resolution. If the Pro cannot defend the whole resolution (agent, totality, etc.) then the Con gets some leeway.

I care about substance and not style. It never fails that I give 1-2 low point wins at a tournament. Just because your tie is nice and you sound pretty, doesn’t mean you win. I vote on argument quality and technical debating. The rest is for lay judging.

Relax. Have fun.

For the email chain: please put the tournament, round number, affirmative team, and negative team in the subject line, it makes organization and scouting easier. College rounds: Please put debatedocs@googlegroups.com (not my personal email, not the UMich email account with a similar name) on the email chain for me.

If you have questions: don't email debatedocs, email mjgranstrom@gmail.com. Please do not put this on the email chain: I want a clean email inbox, and I will immediately forward the email chain to debatedocs and then delete it. Please save me the effort.

You have my consent to record/stream/publish the round (obviously pending the consent of other participants). Here is my policy judging record, with a brief summary of each round and decision.

I dislike time-wasting and other unprofessional conduct. I strongly dislike kritiks, and in general only vote on them when the risk of the affirmative's impacts is zeroed by external case defense. I dislike argumentative cowardice: making incomplete arguments for strategic reasons, evasiveness in cross-examination, opacity in disclosure, making an argument in a speech and then walking it back immediately afterwards in cross-examination.

I am a very expressive judge -- if I look confused during your speech, you have confused me; if I look frustrated during your speech, it is probably your fault; if I laugh when you make an argument it is not because I will not vote on it, it is because the argument is funny.

I am bad at evaluating topicality debates, this is a skill at which I have been actively seeking to improve. I am confident I am in the top five percent of all judges for topicality against kritikal affirmatives: I have yet to hear a persuasive answer to 'read it on the negative.' I am not bothered by arguments in favor of human extinction or nuclear war or global warming or whatever other 'reprehensible' impacts -- There is a clear difference between the abstract 'the human species is net-harmful' and the concrete 'you, my opponent, have no moral worth.' I am a very cheap date for try-or-die.

I am more persuaded by 'elegant' or 'logical' theory interpretations than those that feel 'arbitrary' or 'contrived': Interpretations like "4 conditional counterplans" or "two counterplans and one kritik" feel much less defensible to me than "arbitrarily many conditional counterplans," or "zero conditional counterplans". The number of conditional advocacies introduced in a debate has no meaningful effect on my willingness to vote on theory -- You are neither made safe by reading only one conditional counterplan nor doomed to a loss for reading a five-plank separable advantage counterplan, four cardless uniqueness counterplans, three process counterplans, two critiques, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Non-negotiables:

I will flow on paper with my laptop closed (for INP debates) -- This means 1: I will need pen time at the top of pages and between short analytic arguments like permutations and 2: I will be displeased if an argument is debated on different pieces of paper in each speech (i.e. a DA and the case page where the aff preempts the DA).

I will not evaluate evidence published in a foreign language unless it has been translated by somebody outside the debate community.

I will evaluate evidence that was inserted but not read only if the mere existence of the evidence constitutes a warrant -- this is frequently (but not exclusively) the case for caselists in topicality debates.

The neg block contains one constructive and one rebuttal. Corollary 1: It is very easy to persuade me to reject new arguments made in the first negative rebuttal. Corollary 2: It is very hard to persuade me arguments made in the second negative constructive should be thought of differently than arguments made in the first negative constructive. Corollary 3: Arguments made in the second negative constructive cannot be 'struck' by the first negative rebuttal.

A forfeit will occur if one side does not wish to debate. I will consult the tournament staff, if they award a forfeit/bye I will not submit a ballot. If I am instructed to submit a ballot, the side withdrawing from the debate will receive the minimum speaker points allowed. I will not participate in any arrangement to evade the forfeit procedures used by the tournament.

Competition rooms are public spaces, and spectators are welcome.

I will not evaluate either arguments about the conduct of the debaters that did not take place in the particular debate I am adjudicating or arguments about the conduct of community members not participating in the particular debate I am adjudicating. Do not feel burdened to respond to them.

Old nukes thoughts:

It seems like the deterrence disadvantage has gone out of style since the last time we debated arms control. That's kind of sad.

Old personhood thoughts:

Plan texts should describe what the aff does. Plan texts should contain all of the things the affirmative wishes to fiat: If your solvency advocate calls for an insurance mandate, you probably already have enough offense against the PIC out of an insurance mandate to win without perm do the counterplan.

Old antitrust thoughts:

I have noticed that topicality interpretations seem exceedingly contrived and largely silly, and I don't know what is limiting this topic. I have noticed that in case-DA or counterplan-case-DA debates I vote negative an astounding amount of the time. This tells me that affirmative teams need 1) better 1ac answers to states and regs, 2) offense against net benefits, and 3) better case coverage in the 2ac.

Pet peeves:

Debaters should be flowing. There are no excuses for answering disadvantages that were in the doc but not read in the speech.

The number of conditional worlds available to the 2NR is two to the power of the number of advocacies introduced in the 1NC, not the factorial of that number.

All of the evidence you read in a debate should be formatted in the same way.

Put arguments in a useful order: If the first advantage has two scenarios, answer scenario 1 then scenario 2. If the 1AC has a solvency page, put circumvention there rather than on whichever advantage you take first.

A performative contradiction is never an independent voting issue -- it is either a double-turn (in which case a team can concede both halves and win) or a result of the introduction of a conditional advocacy (see above).

The speech doc is not a record of what happened in the round, it is a tool to share evidence. Failing to send evidence you read is a problem, failing to read evidence you sent is not.

You are all adults who grew up in an online world. Sending an email should be utterly trivial.

Policy Debate Makes Me Proud To Be An American.

Justin Green - Head Coach - Wake Forest University

wfudbt@gmail.com

I plan to clap when the round is done; your effort is appreciated!

Argument Defaults

Preference - The good ones about the topic! Most of my research is on the policy side, but lucky to interact with great debaters and coaches across a wide spectrum of approaches for many years.

Topicality - Impact turning or going just with reasonability without a quality counter-interp rarely wins.

Policy Aff v the K - Specificity is crucial for both sides. It's rare that I don't consider both the effects of the plan and the scholastic/rhetorical choices. Winning the world is ordered by an oppressive structure is not enough.

CP Theory - Legitimacy of process CP's increases with more specific advocates. Some conditionality most likely OK - how much is too much is up for debate. CP out of straight turns to DA's; far less likely to be ok.

Case Debates - Where have all my heroes gone?

Effective Techniques:

- Articulate when reading! There has been an increasing trend in debates where syllables are consistently muddled or skipped. I'll yell clearer. If I yell it twice know that you are in the danger zone.

- Cross Ex Matters! and it has a time limit – I listen, flow, and those who reference answers from the CX are likely to get higher points. When the timer goes off, it's judge prep even if the two teams decide to continue the CX.

- Smart Analytics exposing flaws can go a long way. Internal link chains and neg K alt solvency are two of many places where this can potentially be effective.

- Quality of Evidence+Quality of Explanation+Quality of comparison=weight of argument

- last rebuttals - yes impact calc and argument resolution. Also, give your partners credit explicitly. Acknowledge where the other side might be correct, but why that is not enough.

Just in case it happens, some strong defaults....

- No shenanigans policy - I expect a 2v2 debate. No three person teams, no one person taking all the speech time, please don't ask for something besides a debate to determine a winner, etc. Two people speaking in the same speech, ok if part of a pre-scripted performance early in the debate. In subsequent speeches, only one person's words count.

- Don't ask for a 30, you will have a 3 in your score, it will not be the first number.

- I'm judging what happens in this debate. Coin flips, previous debates, coach actions, or social media would be hard to justify a ballot on. Verified blatant false disclosure of the present debate of more than a card or two and could be a voting issue.

- Evidence ethics. Yes, follow AFA, ADA and CEDA guidelines. And also, not really trying to vote on: whether the citation includes date accessed, initials of the card cutter (or who cut the card), or if there were accidental exclusions of the text that had no material effect.

ENJOY!

Assistant Coach at Benjamin Banneker, Full-time job: Policy Analyst @ WMATA (DC Metro)

Background: University of Chicago '24 (MPP in International Development and Urban Policy); Indiana University '21 (BS in Business Economics & Analytics; 4 years on the debate team there)

Please add me to the email chain: mehuldebate@gmail.com. Feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or concerns before/after the debate. Please send me a doc at the end of the debate with the relevant cards referenced in the 2NR/2AR, though do not count on me reading them all. Decision times are tight and I find myself having little to no time to read cards.

I try my best not to let outside knowledge affect my decision of the debate. Overall, you do you and I will work hard to make the best decision I can. All of the below are simply predispositions but I will evaluate the round as is. If I look confused during CX/your speech, I probably am and you may want to clarify your point.

Spreading: Dial back to 70% of your top speed (esp. college). I haven't been actively involved with debate and my ears are slow to adjust. Please be clear on the tags, long blocks/overview, important analytics, or a theory debate so that I can flow it. I don't read along with speech docs since this is a communication activity. I flow on paper so a quick pause in between flows is appreciated.

I will not evaluate re-highlighting that's inserted into the debate. You have to read it in your speech.

Online debate: Please slow down and make sure to adjust your microphones. If the audio is distorted, my ears ring which will cause me to miss arguments and I can't flow. I will try to say "clear" but obviously this can be tough over Zoom.

Counterplans

I'm open to most types of counter plans. I love intuitive CPs that are logically based on 1AC internal links/1AC CX. You should probably have a solvency advocate (or otherwise a defense of why you don't need one).

PICs are cool if they are functionally competitive. Not a big fan of word pics.

I won't automatically judge kick in the 2NR. Please make it explicit if that should be an option, although winning this is an uphill battle.

Theory

I'm pretty middle leaning for theory. Condo is probably fair game for the aff after 3ish conditional advocacies. Just slow down on these debates. Otherwise, I default to "reject the argument not the team".

If the neg lies about theory (i.e. says they can't kick planks but still does it), I would encourage affs to capitalize. I will vote against that.

K affs/Framework

I think affs should be related to the topic. I have a hard time voting for critical affs that don't engage with any topic literature. If you're reading a critical aff, you are better off impact turning framework in front of me instead of going for "we meet". It's strange when teams go for "we meet" and then no link topic DAs.

Not a good judge for you if your strategy relies on debate bad/is a rejection of the activity or your arguments orient around "survival strategy".

Negs should focus on what voting negative means and what my ballot can resolve. Fairness can be an impact or an internal link. TVAs are good (not necessary though) but they need to be specific. I think oftentimes 2Ns say a plan text but never explain how that engages with the aff's literature or why that model of debates is better. TVAs from re-highlighted 1AC evidence are very compelling to me.

Kritiks

Make sure you slow down in the overview, talk about the specifics of the aff, and have offense (this includes having a specific impact). Please explain buzzwords or high-theory concepts. I do not actively read K literature, so it's likely I have little to no background on your argument.

If your overview is more than 30-40 seconds, I'm not the right judge for you. Not a fan of "cloud clash" where the 2N just cross applies the overview to the line by line. I'm fairly sympathetic to the aff in debates (1AR especially) where the neg relies on that strategy.

Something that always annoys me is when teams can't explain their alternatives in CX. You should be able to explain what the world of the alternative looks like and why it's better than the status quo.

I don't think a team needs specific link cards to every argument in the block as long they do specific analyses using historical and contemporary examples of their theory and how it interacts with the aff.

Topicality

I love a good T debate. Just make sure to have clear impacts, of which fairness can be one. Please slow down and make sure to not go for the "buffet" in the 2NR - pick your best argument and sit on it. And please don't forget the case list, something I think it's underutilized by negs.

DAs

Impact calc is important here. Spend some time in the 2NR/2AR on how I should evaluate the impact, turns case, magnitude, etc. The more you write the ballot for me, the easier it is for me to vote for you.

Read uniqueness. If the 2AC says "they didn't read uniqueness so we get new 1AR answers", I'm pretty sympathetic to that.

Politics DAs are cool, especially if there are real topic links. Not a fan of rider DAs or anything of that sort.

Heather Holter Hall

Hallheather8@gmail.com

Salem and Tallwood High School 1990-93

Liberty University 1993-96

Liberty University Assistant Debate Coach 20+ years

I love this activity, and I look forward to meeting you.

For novices:

Congratulations on being at a debate tournament! I like debates with a few pieces of quality research that you can explain well plus some smart logical arguments. You should focus on good explanation of arguments and on getting better at flowing. Putting lots of extra pieces of research that you have never read before into your speech is a waste of your time. I would much rather hear you explain research that you understand, compare that research to your opponent’s research and arguments, and tell me why the plan is either a good or bad idea. The most important comparison in the debate you can make is to tell me whose impacts are bigger, come first, or are more likely.

I will flow what is spoken in the debate, not the speech document. You should highlight and read complete sentences. I do not count sentence fragments as arguments.

If it is an online debate, please make sure you SEE or HEAR me on the camera before you begin your speech. Please say out loud when you are done with prep time and post how much you have left in the chat. When you say prep time is done, you should be ready to email the speech document immediately.

For everyone else:

I have spent the majority of the last 20 years coaching novice debate. I also judge a lot of novice and jv debates. This means that I am not deep into the lit base for most arguments. My days are full of explaining and re-explaining basic debate theory. You should view me as someone who loves learning something new and the debate as your opportunity to teach me. If you want me to assess arguments based upon previous in-depth knowledge of a particular lit base, you will probably be very disappointed. I love the strategic use of each student’s scholarship but get me on the same page first.

Likewise, the theory debates I am used to judging are pretty basic. I would love to hear a well-developed theory debate at a high level, but you will need to slow down, give full warrants, and not assume that “lit checks” means the same to me as it does to you.

About preferred types of arguments—smart strategy with good support that is clearly communicated usually wins. I prefer consistent, thoughtful strategies with a few well-developed arguments, but, sadly, I have voted for negatives who won simply by overwhelming the 2AC with skimpy highlighting of 7 off case positions.

I have voted for everything, but I do not judge alternate formats of debates often so you will probably want to slow down, make well developed arguments, and assume I do not know. As long as I am judging and there is a win to assign, my main assumption is that every team is playing the game, maybe in different ways, but still just playing the game. I can only make decisions based on words or actions in a particular debate. I will not begin to speculate about another person’s motive or intentions--that is a job for someone else.

I will flow what is spoken in the debate, including cx. I will reference the speech doc, BUT if I can’t understand your words or if the words you say do not make grammatically complete sentences, they won’t make it on my flow and only my flow counts. Likewise, if you are hedging the debate on a warrant buried three sentences deep in the fourth card by Smith, you will need to say more than “extend Smith here.” The more concrete and specific your warrants are, the more likely you are to persuade me.

If it is an online debate, you need to SEE or HEAR me on the camera before you begin your speech. Yes, this has happened more than once lol. Don’t steal prep—it is obvious and annoying.

Feel free to "strike" me. I am not offended at all if you think I am not a good judge for you. Hopefully, I still get a chance to meet you at a tournament and chat.

Finally, I hope you all have a great tournament, learn new things, think deeply, speak well, meet fascinating people, and win lots of debates (unless you are debating my teams)! Have fun and please say hi in between debates!

Matt Harkins

If you have any questions or want to add me to an email chain, I'm at mpharks@gmail.com. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to learn from you.

I have been coaching at the Naval Academy since October 2016, and before that, I coached Cathedral Prep from 2014-2018. I debated on the national circuit in high school and qualified to the TOC twice, but I didn’t debate in college.

Most of my research and coaching is geared toward the K, but I feel comfortable evaluating a da/cp or da/case debate. I often think that the K is the best way to exploit the weaknesses of the affs that I hear, but that doesn't mean you have to take this route.

When debating in front of me, I'd highly recommend developing the implications to your arguments as soon in the debate as possible. In close debates between technically proficient teams, this is especially important. I appreciate it when a debater is creative and tries to relate to me rather than debating like a computer and into their computer.

Virtual Debate
I'd like to make things as easy as possible for you, and you're welcome to set up your speaking/video/microphone situation in whatever way makes you most comfortable.

On my end, I'm still learning how to adapt to zoom debates. There seems to be a lower ceiling on arguments I can process through zoom. This is especially the case on theory debates. If you could help me out by slowing things down, I'd appreciate it.

Debate doesn't translate directly from in-person to zoom. There are some limits that we haven't yet come to terms with, but there are also some possibilities (screen sharing comes to mind) that could be interesting, and you're welcome to experiment with that in front of me.

2021 College Topic
There's an important distinction between labor antitrust and consumer antitrust. In labor antitrust, independent contractors and labor unions are considered the businesses with whom the government is interested in limiting anticompetitive business practices. From the most straightforward reading of the topic, aff ground doesn't seem to allow for much labor antitrust. This would have been a significant consideration in at least half of the debates that I have judged so far.

Because of my academic and professional background, I've thought a lot about labor antitrust, monopolies, market power, and the suitability of the law as a remedy to these issues. To disclose a personal bias: I think that there are significant limits on the capacity of antitrust. That's not to say that I don't think there are many instances in which changes to antitrust law would be a good idea. Nor do I think that there aren't radical possibilities in antitrust. But its limits have become relevant and convincing in kritik debates in which the aff takes for granted the fundamental radicality of their proposal. I think this topic would be worthwhile if the debate community reckoned with those limits. In other words, Robert Bork was a real-life sicko, but so are most people, albeit in less apparent ways, who think that Amazon would stop being a problem if a judge told them to knock it off.

T
- I'm not in touch with community consensus so you might be able to use that to your advantage.
- I really enjoy a good T debate and don't have any strong inclinations toward fairness or education as the ultimate standard.
- I like definitions that define a word as close in a contexts as possible to the other words of the resolution
- I'm often disappointed by T evidence quality. For this reason, source/Expertise/qualifications debates tend to be pretty important. Just because a judge wrote it in a decision doesn't make it a relevant expert definition. Just because the usfg is defined in a certain way in the Bill Emerson English Language Empowerment Act of 1997, doesn't mean it's the best way to understand usfg for debate.
- Debating in the Pennsylvania has given me a comprehensive understanding of inherency as a procedural argument if you want to go there.

"T" (Framework)
- In the last dozen or so framework rounds that I've judged, the neg has won or lost based on whether they had a compelling claim to significant offense.
- It's frustrating to judge a framework debate wherein framework is deployed as a replacement for debating the case. I get that this is tied in some way to the "ground" and "unpredictability" aspects of the arguments you're advancing, but a failure to contend with fundamental questions posed by the aff can come across more as a sin of the neg.
- For me, framework is most useful as a neg strategy in debates where affs are needlessly obscure or cynical.

Disads
- I evaluate the link first, and I think it's a yes/no question which controls the direction of uniqueness.
- Most of the best answers to politics disads I've seen aren't necessarily carded answers to the U/L/IL/I parts of a disad, but arguments about the nonsensical nature of certain parts of the politics disad as applied to the aff.
- Although I don't cut politics files, I'm extremely aware of what's going on and familiar with who's writing what about Congress and the White House.
- I really like impact turn debates.
- Except in cases where something sophisticated is going on, it's usually a waste of time to read evidence that "warming isn't real" or "warming isn't a pressing issue." Go after the internal link, go after solvency, turn the impact, solve the impact. It's hard to convince me that warming isn't an immediate, urgent, and moral concern, but I'm skeptical that the only thing we need to do is develop the right tech or enter certain climate talks with sufficient leverage.

Counterplans
- I won't kick the counterplan for the negative unless the negative persuades me to do otherwise.
- There's a fine line between creative, technical counterplans and a contrived trick. Avoid the contrived tricks. I enjoy a creative and technical counterplan, but these aren't the kinds of arguments I spend a lot of time thinking about, so you'll do well to simplify your explanation of it as much as possible.

Kritiks
- I’m most familiar with psychoanalysis and Marxism (including left criticism of Marxism, Marxist criticisms of leftism, and Marxist critiques of other Marxisms).
- I spend a lot of time thinking about labor because of my day job.
- I first look at role of the ballot/role of the judge arguments when I'm rendering a decision, so these arguments tend to have a strong effect on the outcome of a debate.
- The perm, which is tied in important ways to the role of the ballot, tends to be the aff's most strategic line of pursuit.
- I'm willing to stop the debate and give someone a loss for using flagrantly inappropriate language.
- I've noticed that, on very many occasions in which a K debate was underdeveloped, I have recommended the second chapter of Wretched of The Earth to both teams.

Theory
- Reject the argument is the default. Spend time on the impact level to convince me to reject the team.
- I heard recently that nobody votes on multiple conditional worlds bad anymore. I guess that means I'd be more willing to entertain this argument than the average judge.
- Against affs which don't read a typical plan text or defend the resolution, I would prefer to hear a nitty-gritty case debate rather than a framework debate. This is a strong preference.
- When debaters unsuccessfully extend framework in front of me, the unsuccess is usually a result of disorganization, a lack of adaptation of pre-written blocks to the specific aff arguments, and my inability to interpret the significance of an abstract debate concept.
- If you go for framework, make sure you clearly implicate the stakes of winning a section of the debate. What I mean by this is that you shouldn't assume we're on the same page about what it means to win, say, that there exists a topical version of the aff, or your limits disad, or the benefits of switch-side debate, or etc. Leave nothing flapping in the wind in the 2nr.

Style
- I enjoy humor a lot.
- Speeches are best when they're persuasive performances; I don't enjoy monotone spreading.
- I like when debaters make smart cross applications from a flow the other team tried to kick out of.
- If the chips are down, flip the table. If, going into the rebuttals, you know you're losing 99% of the debate, see if you can explode that 1% into a win.

2022 Update- I am not longer actively coaching debate. Please do not assume that I know a lot about the topic, have any idea what some other school's aff is, or have strong feelings about what obscure topic wordings mean. 

Allison.c.harper@gmail.com. - Put me on the chain please. I will not follow along with the doc or read cards I don't think are necessary to make a decision but spelling my first name is annoying and this was buried near the bottom of my philosophy.

Here are a few ways that I think my judging either differs from others or has changed with online debate:

1) I flow and do not open your speech documents during your speeches. That means you need to try to present arguments in a way that is flowable.  Make sure tags are clear. Answer arguments in an order I can follow (such as the order in which they are presented). Add structure and signpost.  Avoid reading giant analytical paragraphs without breaking things up. Avoid jumping around the flow arbitrarily or reading blocks in places where they dont belong.  Doing these things make sure that I not only have a record of what you said, but helps me understand how you think what you are saying applies/responds to your opponents arguments.  When you don't do these things, you increase the odds that I misunderstand what you think you have answered.

2) Make comparisons.  I read less evidence during and after debates than other judges. I start my decisions by looking at my flows, deciding what the key questions are, resolving things that I can, and only then look at evidence.  Make comparisons between your warrants, quality of evidence. Draw out the interactions for me rather than forcing me to do these things for you. I see that as intervention, but the way that many debaters give rebuttals these days sometimes makes it impossible to decide without that intervention. I would much rather let you do the comparing.

3) I am not in the cult of big impacts/try or die. You need to solve for something. Your counterplan needs a net benefit. I can be convinced to vote for low risk, but presumption and zero risk exist. Not everything needs a card. Smart analytics can knock down the risk of some pretty silly arguments.  If the other team does have evidence of sufficient quality, however, a card to the contrary would go a long way.

4) I don’t think I am a bad judge for the k if you debate the k technically, especially on the neg. I am not great for any argument if you are overly relying on an overview to get things done, are speaking in paragraphs without considering flowability, or are addressing components of the debate in ways that ignore the line by line. I am better for specific links and alts that I would be able to explain back to the other team what they do based on the explanation you offered in the round.  I think 90% of the time spent on “framework” when the neg reads a k is a waste of time by both sides. The neg gets links to what the aff said and did. The aff gets to weigh the implementation of the plan. Unless another way of thinking about this is presented and dropped, this is how I end up evaluating the debate anyway. I am less of a fan of critical affirmatives that are not topical, do not relate to the topic in a significant way, etc. In K aff vs framework debates, the aff is helped if I can understand what reasonable ways the negative could anticipate an aff like yours and reasonably respond to it.

5) I would rather you make link arguments to kritiks about assumptions that the other team has made during this debate rather than ask me to evaluate something that happened other debates or outside of debates. Other debates had judges who rendered their own decisions. If there are serious concerns about a debater's out of round behavior, please take that to their coaches or tournament administrators. 

6) Process debates are boring. They might be necessary on some recent topics, but they are so boring on topics where there are great disads. They would be better with some evidence that suggest this process ought to exist/be used, even better if there are cards about the topic or aff. For example, I am far more into con-con about a constitutional/legal question than con-con to withdraw from NATO. But really, wouldn’t it be cool if we picked debate topics that were actual controversies? Wouldn’t it be cool if topics that had some controversy were limited in a way that makes some sense?

7) When you steal prep time, you are stealing my decision time. Please don’t. If you are making changes to your speech doc (deleting analytics, rearranging blocks, combining multiple docs into one, etc) you should have a prep timer running. Sending a doc is fine outside of prep but should be done efficiently, especially if you are debating at the varsity/open level. Refusing to start CX until you have a marked copy is also a big waste of my time unless you are planning to ask questions that are affected by these markings. I have yet to see that happen, so let's get on with it.

8) In online debate, you MUST make an effort to be clearer. NSDA campus makes you sound like a robot eating rocks. What was passable on classrooms.cloud doesn’t cut it on campus. I should be able to understand the body of your evidence, distinguish tags from cards, etc. I do not open speech documents when you are speaking. I need to be able to hear and understand you.

9) It is much harder to pay attention to online debates. This isn’t your fault. It is a feature of the format. I have found cross-ex in particular difficult to follow and keep in focus. People talking at once is really rough online, and I appreciate attempts to limit this by keeping answers reasonable in length and not cutting off reasonable answers. I will do my best in every debate to give you every bit of attention I have, but it would help me if you would forefront cross-ex questions that might matter to your strategy. Asking the other team what they read is cross-ex time.

Old Philosophy- I don't disagree with this:

I think I am a relatively middle of the road judge on most issues. I would rather hear you debate whatever sort of strategy you do well than have you conform to my argumentative preferences. I might have more fun listening to a case/da debate, but if you best strat or skillset is something else, go for it. I might not like an argument, but I will and have voted for arguments I hate if it wins the debate. I do have a pretty strong preference for technical, line by line style debate.

I am open to listening to kritiks by either side, but I am more familiar with policy arguments, so some additional explanation would be helpful, especially on the impact and alternative level. High theory K stuff is the area where I am least well read. I generally think it is better for debate if the aff has a topical plan that is implemented, but I am open to hearing both sides. To be successful at framework debates in front of me, it is helpful to do more than articulate that your movement/project/affirmation is good, but also provide reasons why it is good to be included in debate in the format you choose. I tend to find T version of the aff a pretty persuasive argument when it is able to solve a significant portion of aff offense.

I don’t have solid preferences on most counterplan theory issues, other than that I am not crazy about consultation or conditions cps generally. Most other cp issues are questions of degree not kind (1 conditional cp and a k doesn’t seem so bad, more than that is questionable, 42 is too many, etc) and all up for debate. The above comment about doing what you do well applies here. If theory is your thing and you do it well, ok. If cp cheating with both hands is your style and you can get away with it, swell.

I have no objection to voting on “untrue” arguments, like some of the more out there impact turns. To win on dropped arguments, you still need to do enough work that I could make a coherent decision based on your explanation of the argument. Dropped = true, but you need a claim, warrant, and impact. Such arguments also need to be identifiable in order for dropped = true to apply.

It’s rarely the case that a team wins every argument in the debate, so including relevant and responsive impact assessment is super important. I’d much rather debaters resolve questions like who has presumption in the case of counterplans or what happens to counterplans that might be rendered irrelevant by 2ar choices than leaving those questions to me.

I try my best to avoid reading evidence after a debate and think debaters should take this into account. I tend to only call for evidence if a) there is a debate about what a card says and/or b) it is impossible to resolve an issue without reading the evidence myself. I prefer to let the debaters debate the quality of evidence rather than calling for a bunch of evidence and applying my own interpretations after the fact. I think that is a form of intervening. I also think it is important that you draw out the warrants in your evidence rather than relying on me to piece things together at the end of the debate. As a result, you would be better served explaining, applying, and comparing fewer really important arguments than blipping through a bunch of tag line/author name extensions. I can certainly flow you and I will be paying attention to your speeches, but if the debate comes down to a comparison between arguments articulated in these manners, I tend to reward explanation and analysis. Also, the phrase "insert re-highlighting" is meaningless to someone who isn't reading the docs in real time. Telling me what you think the evidence says is a better use of your time

I like smart, organized debates. I pay a ton of attention and think I flow very well. I tend to be frustrated by debaters who jump around or lack structure. If your debate is headed this direction (through your own doing or that of the other team), often the team that cleans things up usually benefits. This also applies to non-traditional debating styles. If you don’t want to flow, that’s ok, but it is not an excuse to lack any discernible organization. Even if you are doing the embedded clash thing, your arguments shouldn't seem like a pre-scripted set of responses with little to no attempt to engage the specific arguments made by the other team or put them in some sort of order that makes it easier for me to flow and determine if indeed arguments were made, extended dropped, etc.

Please be nice to each other. While debate is a competitive activity, it is not an excuse to be a jerkface. If you are "stealing prep" I am likely to be very cross with you and dock your speaker points. If you are taking unreasonably long amounts of time to jump/email your docs or acquire someone else's docs, I am also not going to be super happy with you. I realize this can sound cranky, but I have been subjected to too many rounds where this has been happening recently.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Thoughts on Pf and LD:

Since I occasionally judge these, I thought I should add a section. I have either coached or competed in both events. I still have a strong preference for flow-centric debate in both activities.

-You may speak as quickly or slowly as you would like. Don't make yourself debate faster than you are able to do well just because I can keep up

-You can run whatever arguments you are able to justify (see policy debate section if you have more specific questions)

-Too many debates in these events spend far too much time debating framing questions that are essentially irrelevant to judge decisions. Those frames mean little if you cant win a link. If you and your opponent are trying to access the same impact, this is a sign that you should be debating link strength not impact strength. Your speech time is short. Don't waste it.

-Make useful argument comparisons. It is not helpful if you have a study and your opponent has a study that says the opposite and that is the end of the argument. It is not helpful if everyone's authors are "hacks." With complicated topics, try to understand how your authors arrived at their conclusions and use that to your advantage.

-Stop stealing prep. Seriously. Stop. It is not cute. Asking to see a source is not an opportunity for your partners to keep prepping. If a speech timer or a prep timer isn't going, you should not be writing on your flows or doing anything else that looks like prepping. I see this in a disturbing number of PF rounds. Stop

-Give a useful road map or none at all. Do not add a bunch of commentary. A road map should tell a judge what order to put pieces of flow paper into and nothing more. Save your arguments for your speech time.

-Paraphrasing is bad. Read quotations. Send out ev in carded form ahead of time. If you are a varsity, national circuit level competitor, you should have figure out efficient ways to manage allowing the other team to review your evidence.

Debated: UNI 2007-2011

Coached: University of Minnesota 2011-2017, James Madison University 2017-2021, Texas Tech, 2021-2022

Currently: Senior Lecturer in Communication-RPI

Email: al.hiland@gmail.com

Note: I'm now judging very infrequently. This doesn't change the way I evaluate debates, but debaters may want to adjust their performance in the following ways.
-I will not know the topic nearly as well as I did when coaching. I am likely to need more explanation for topicality and competition debates where the wording of the topic is an essential question.
-I will not be as up to date on acronyms or terms of art in the topic as I once was.
-I probably am not quite as fast at flowing as I once was. That isn't to say that I object to debaters going at their desired speed, but it might be an important consideration for some debaters.

When evaluating debates I try to privilege the arguments made by debaters in the debate, and attempt to resolve the debate based on those arguments as much as possible. Which is to say, I attempt to resolve debates to the greatest of my ability by evaluating competing claims rather than relying on my own assumptions. I do not have any aesthetic or political investment in defending a particular model of debate in how I render decisions, but instead seek to render a decision that reflects my subjective perception of which side did the better debating. Read: I am as comfortable with debaters who choose to pursue critical lines of argumentation as I am with policy debate. Where these differing styles meet I decide the debate on the merits of the arguments advanced. The description below is an attempt to sketch my process for deciding which side advances the better argument.

When rendering a decision I begin by evaluating arguments that establish a framework for comparing the impacts advanced by both sides during the debate. This can be as abstract (from the resolution) as determining whether the arguments in favor of a more fair debate format is more important than a particular kind of education derived from changing the norms of debate, or as concrete as determining whether or not the magnitude of a disadvantage should outweigh the probability of an advantage. Debaters who emphasize comparing impacts in a manner that is clear, helpful, and grounded in a combination of evidence and the nature of the arguments advanced tend to have more success debating in front of me.

After determining what impacts ought to be prioritized I evaluate whether or not those impacts are valid based on the arguments provided. This means determining whether a team has sufficiently proven the constituent elements of the individual argument (for instance, the uniqueness/link/impact of a disadvantage) for me to give the argument credence. One predilection that I have which is unlikely to change is that I do believe that it is possible to win 100% defense against an argument, so debaters should not presume that there is “always a risk” to any claim entered into the debate.

When evaluating individual arguments I usually apply two criteria. First, is the argument is internally consistent? Meaning, the argument should have a consistent logic and avoid internal contradictions. Second, is the argument externally coherent? Meaning, the argument should be consistent with other claims advanced in the debate and has an (arguably) factual correspondence with reality. In both of these criteria I emphasize the way the argument is explained by debaters as well as the quality of evidence provided to support that explanation. Arguments without evidence have value for me, but many claims need evidentiary support in order to satisfy the criteria described above.

Ultimately my decision tends to reflect which team provides the best way to evaluate competing claims where both sides have won at least parts of the position they have advanced. This almost never reflects an absolute view of the value or validity of the arguments advanced. Instead, it reflects a contingent decision based on the debate which has taken place in my view based on the process described above.

Other things that debaters should know about me as a judge:

Clarity is important. While I can flow most speeds I will admit that I am not the fastest around. This is made worse by a lack of clarity. When judging a debate I flow on paper, I do not follow along on speech docs, and I do not look at them during prep time (although I often am on my computer to make comments on the ballot). I will look at evidence after the debate if necessary to make a decision, but my predisposition is to do so as little as possible. Usually when I do look at evidence it is because of a flowing error on my part or the need to do my own interpretive work due to an error on the part of the debaters. Debaters are best served to be clear about how I should read a piece of evidence and its significance rather than relying on me to sort it out after the debate. The more clear that debaters are, both in terms of their speech and the explanation of their argument, the more predictable and consistent I am as a judge.

Cross examination matters for me. I will take notes, and I will be attentive. I consider questions asked and answered to be binding pending an explanation or argumentation to the contrary.

I do have a minimum threshold for argument explanation. Uttering “permutation do both” without any elaboration over the course of the debate is not sufficient, nor is saying “permutation links to the disadvantage.” I am open to debaters giving more thorough explanations over the course of the debate, but simply relying on the fact that a claim has been uttered is not sufficient, as it is not a complete argument.

I will follow the directions provided by debaters on how to treat arguments. For example, if a theoretical objection is raised as “reject the team” I will treat it as such unless it is challenged. Additionally, in keeping with my minimum threshold for argument, an instruction should come with a justification for why that direction makes sense. Similarly, I will not “judge kick” an argument for a team unless directed to do so, and that instruction is not challenged.

I believe that presumption follows from the burden of rejoinder. The affirmative has the burden to respond to the resolution, and I presume to vote negative unless the affirmative succeeds in responding. Subsequently I presume affirmative until the negative has provided a competitive option.

Debaters should not presume that I know anything of substance about goings on in the debate community. That is to say, if the community has decided that a particular argument is a bad one, or that an affirmative is decidedly not topical, that I am unlikely to be clued in to that decision.

Speaker points are at my discretion. That said I modulate the scale quite a bit to account for division and the size/norms of the tournament. I do very occasionally use them as a way to indicate my displeasure, usually at how a debater treats their peers (I think I’ve done this all of five times in as many years).

Online things:
1. Please let me know when you are done prepping and send a message in the chat box letting me know you are done and how much time remains if the platform supports it.

2. I have solid internet and decent equipment, but I have noticed that clarity is still lost somewhat. Mostly it happens where debaters are not enunciating while going quickly. For folks who are clear to begin with it's not generally a problem, but if you have struggled with clarity when debating in person you may need to take just a hair off your top speed for me.

3. Cross-ex is a little messier online because usual techniques for bringing long winded answers and questions to an end don't transmit as well online as in person. Please practice turn taking and be reasonable with how you use your time. Unnecessarily long and convoluted questions and answers used to soak up time are unlikely to be very popular with me.

4. I'm going to follow tournament guidelines for how to deal with tech questions wherever they exist. If there are no guidelines I'm going to assume all debaters are acting in good faith and let you do what you need to do in order to debate.

5. I am not requiring students to have video on in order to debate. I will have my own video on, and I do encourage it because I do think it helps debaters make appeals, but I will do my best to not let the decision to not use video influence my decision or the speaker points that I assign.

Competed:

2011-15 – Lawrence Free State, KS, Policy (Space, Transportation, Latin America, Oceans)

2015-17 – JCCC, KS, NDT/CEDA (Military Presence, Climate Change); NFA-LD (Bioprospecting, Southern Command)

2017-20 – Missouri State University, MO, NDT/CEDA (Healthcare, Exec Authority, Space); NFA-LD (Policing, Cybersecurity)

Coached:

2016-17 – Lawrence High School, KS, (China Engagement)

2017-19 – Olathe West High School, KS, (Education, Immigration)

2019-22– Truman High School, MO, (Arm Sales, CJR, Water)

2020-Present– Missouri State University, MO, (MDT Withdrawal, Anti-Trust, Rights/Duties, Nukes); NFA-LD (Climate, Endless Wars)

2022-23- Truman State University, MO, NFA-LD (Elections)

2022-2024 - The Pembroke Hill School, MO, (NATO, Economic Inequality)

2024-Present - Lawrence Free State, KS (IP Law)

Always add:

phopsdebate@gmail.com

Also add IF AND ONLY IF at a NDT/CEDA TOURNAMENT: debatedocs@googlegroups.com

If I walk out of the room (or go off-camera), please send the email and I will return very quickly.

Email chains are STRONGLY preferred. Email chains should be labeled correctly.

*Name of Tournament * *Division* *Round #* *Aff Team* vs *Neg Team*

tl;dr:

You do you; I'll flow whatever happens. I tend to like policy arguments more than Kritical arguments. I cannot type fast and flow on paper as a result. Please give me pen time on T, Theory, and long o/v's etc. Do not be a jerk. Debaters work hard, and I try to work as hard as I can while judging. Debaters should debate slower than they typically do.

Evidence Quality X Quantity > Quality > Quantity. Argument Tech + Truth > Tech > Truth. Quals > No Quals.

I try to generate a list of my random thoughts and issues I saw with each speech in the debate. It is not meant to be rude. It is how I think through comments. If I have not said anything about something it likely means I thought it was good.

Speaker Points:

If you can prove to me you have updated your wiki for the round I am judging before I submit the ballot I will give you the highest speaker points allowed by the tournament. An updated wiki means: 1. A complete round report. 2. Cites for all 1NC off case positions/ the 1AC, and 3. uploaded open source all of the documents you read in the debate inclusive of analytics. If I become aware that you later delete, modify, or otherwise disclose less information after I have submitted my ballot, any future debate in which I judge you will result in the lowest possible speaker points at the tournament.

Online debates:

In "fast" online debates, I found it exceptionally hard to flow those with poor internet connections or bad mics. I also found it a little harder even with ideal mic and internet setups. I think it's reasonable for debates in which a debater(s) is having these issues for everyone in the debate to debate at an appropriate speed for everyone to engage.

Clarity is more important in a digital format than ever before. I feel like it would behoove everyone to be 10% slower than usual. Make sure you have a differentiation between your tag voice and your card body voice.

It would be super cool if everyone put their remaining prep in the chat.

I am super pro the Cams on Mics muted approach in debates. Obvious exceptions for poor internet quality.

People should get in the groove of always sending marked docs post speeches and sending a doc of all relevant cards after the debate.

Disads:

I enjoy politics debates. Reasons why the Disad outweighs and turns the aff, are cool. People should use the squo solves the aff trick with election DA's more.

Counter Plans:

I generally think negatives can and should get to do more. CP's test the intrinsic-ness of the advantages to the plan text. Affirmatives should get better at writing and figuring out plan key warrants. Bad CP's lose because they are bad. It seems legit that 2NC's get UQ and adv cp's to answer 2AC thumpers and add-ons. People should do this more.

Judge kicking the cp seems intuitive to me. Infinite condo seems good, real-world, etc. Non-Condo theory arguments are almost always a reason to reject the argument and not the team. I still expect that the 2AC makes theory arguments and that the neg answers them sufficiently. I think in an evenly matched and debated debate most CP theory arguments go neg.

I am often not a very good judge for CP's that require you to read the definition of "Should" when answering the permutation. Even more so for CP's that compete using internal net benefits. I understand how others think about these arguments, but I am often unimpressed with the quality of the evidence and cards read. Re: CIL CP - come on now.

Kritiks on the Negative:

I like policy debate personally, but that should 0% stop you from doing your thing. I think I like K debates much better than my brain will let me type here. Often, I end up telling teams they should have gone for the K or voted for it. I think this is typically because of affirmative teams’ inability to effectively answer critical arguments

Links of omission are not links. Rejecting the aff is not an alternative, that is what I do when I agree to endorse the alternative. Explain to me what happens to change the world when I endorse your alternative. The aff should probably be allowed to weigh the aff against the K. I think arguments centered on procedural fairness and iterative testing of ideas are compelling. Clash debates with solid defense to the affirmative are significantly more fun to adjudicate than framework debates. Floating pics are probably bad. I think life has value and preserving more of it is probably good.

Kritical Affirmatives vs Framework:

I think the affirmative should be in the direction of the resolution. Reading fw, cap, and the ballot pik against these affs is a good place to be as a policy team. I think topic literacy is important. I think there are more often than not ways to read a topical USfg action and read similar offensive positions. I am increasingly convinced that debate is a game that ultimately inoculates advocacy skills for post-debate use. I generally think that having a procedurally fair and somewhat bounded discussion about a pre-announced, and democratically selected topic helps facilitate that discussion.

Case Debates:

Debates in which the negative engages all parts of the affirmative are significantly more fun to judge than those that do not.

Affirmatives with "soft-left" advantages are often poorly written. You have the worst of both worlds of K and Policy debate. Your policy action means your aff is almost certainly solvable by an advantage CP. Your kritical offense still has to contend with the extinction o/w debate without the benefit of framework arguments. It is even harder to explain when the aff has one "policy" extinction advantage and one "kritical" advantage. Which one of these framing arguments comes first? I have no idea. I have yet to hear a compelling argument as to why these types of affirmative should exist. Negative teams that exploit these problems will be rewarded.

Topicality/procedurals:

Short blippy procedurals are almost always only a reason to reject the arg and not the team. T (along with all procedurals) is never an RVI.

I am uninterested in making objective assessments about events that took place outside of/before the debate round that I was not present for. I am not qualified nor empowered to adjudicate debates concerning the moral behavior of debaters beyond the scope of the debate.

Things that are bad, but people continually do:

Have "framing" debates that consist of reading Util good/bad, Prob 1st/not 1st etc. Back and forth at each other and never making arguments about why one position is better than another. I feel like I am often forced to intervene in these debates, and I do not want to do that.

Saying something sexist/homophobic/racist/ableist/transphobic - it will probably make you lose the debate at the worst or tank your speaks at the least.

Steal prep.

Send docs without the analytics you already typed. This does not actually help you. I sometimes like to read along. Some non-neurotypical individuals benefit dramatically by this practice. It wastes your prep, no matter how cool the macro you have programmed is.

Use the wiki for your benefit and not post your own stuff.

Refusing to disclose.

Reading the 1AC off paper when computers are accessible to you. Please just send the doc in the chain.

Doing/saying mean things to your partner or your opponents.

Unnecessarily cursing to be cool.

Some random thoughts I had at the end of my first year judging NDT/CEDA:
1. I love debate. I think it is the best thing that has happened to a lot of people. I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to get more people to do it. People should be nicer to others.
2. I was worse at debate than I thought I was. I should have spent WAY more time thinking about impact calc and engaging the other teams’ arguments.
3. I have REALLY bad handwriting and was never clear enough when speaking. People should slow down and be clearer. (Part of this might be because of online debate.)

4. Most debates I’ve judged are really hard to decide. I go to decision time often. I’m trying my best to decide debates in the finite time I have. The number of times Adrienne Brovero has come to my Zoom room is too many. I’m sorry.
5. I type a lot of random thoughts I had during debates and after. I really try to make a clear distinction between the RFD and the advice parts of the post-round. It bothered me a lot when I was a debater that people didn’t do this.

6. I thought this before, but it has become clearer to me that it is not what you do, it is what you justify. Debaters really should be able to say nearly anything they’d like in a debate. It is the opposing team’s job to say you’re wrong. My preferences are above, and I do my best to ignore them. Although I do think it is impossible for that to truly occur.

Disclosure thoughts:

I took this from Chris Roberds who said it much more elegantly than myself.

I have a VERY low threshold on this argument. Having schools disclose their arguments pre-round is important if the activity is going to grow/sustain itself. Having coached almost exclusively at small, underfunded, or new schools, I can say that disclosure (specifically disclosure on the wiki if you are a paperless debater) is a game changer. It allows small schools to compete and makes the activity more inclusive. There are a few specific ways that this influences how ballots will be given from me:

1) I will err negative on the impact level of "disclosure theory" arguments in the debate. If you're reading an aff that was broken at a previous tournament, on a previous day, or by another debater on your team, and it is not on the wiki (assuming you have access to a laptop and the tournament provides wifi), you will likely lose if this theory is read. There are two ways for the aff to "we meet" this in the 2ac - either disclose on the wiki ahead of time or post the full copy of the 1ac in the wiki as a part of your speech. Obviously, some grace will be extended when wifi isn't available or due to other extenuating circumstances. However, arguments like "it's just too much work," "I don't like disclosure," etc. won't get you a ballot.

2) The neg still needs to engage in the rest of the debate. Read other off-case positions and use their "no link" argument as a reason that disclosure is important. Read case cards and when they say they don't apply or they aren't specific enough, use that as a reason for me to see in-round problems. This is not a "cheap shot" win. You are not going to "out-tech" your opponent on disclosure theory. To me, this is a question of truth. Along that line, I probably won't vote on this argument in novice, especially if the aff is reading something that a varsity debater also reads.

3) If you realize your opponent's aff is not on the wiki, you should make every possible attempt before the round to ask them about the aff, see if they will put it on the wiki, etc. Emailing them so you have timestamped evidence of this is a good choice. I understand that, sometimes, one teammate puts all the cases for a squad on the wiki and they may have just put it under a different name. To me, that's a sufficient example of transparency (at least the first time it happens). If the aff says it's a new aff, that means (to me) that the plan text and/ or advantages are different enough that a previous strategy cut against the aff would be irrelevant. This would mean that if you completely change the agent of the plan text or have them do a different action it is new; adding a word like "substantially" or "enforcement through normal means" is not. Likewise, adding a new "econ collapse causes war" card is not different enough; changing from a Russia advantage to a China, kritikal, climate change, etc. type of advantage is. Even if it is new, if you are still reading some of the same solvency cards, I think it is better to disclose your previous versions of the aff at a minimum.

4) At tournaments that don't have wifi, this should be handled by the affirmative handing over a copy of their plan text and relevant 1AC advantages etc. before the round. If thats a local tournament, that means as soon as you get to the room and find your opponent.

5) If you or your opponent honestly comes from a circuit that does not use the wiki (e.g. some UDLs, some local circuits, etc.), I will likely give some leeway. However, a great use of post-round time while I am making a decision is to talk to the opponent about how to upload on the wiki. If the argument is in the round due to a lack of disclosure and the teams make honest efforts to get things on the wiki while I'm finishing up my decision, I'm likely to bump speaks for all 4 speakers by .2 or .5 depending on how the tournament speaks go.

6) There are obviously different "levels" of disclosure that can occur. Many of them are described above as exceptions to a rule. Zero disclosure is always a low-threshold argument for me in nearly every case other than the exceptions above.

That said, I am also willing to vote on "insufficient disclosure" in a few circumstances.

A. If you are in the open/varsity division of NDT-CEDA, NFA-LD, or TOC Policy your wiki should look like this or something very close to it. Full disclosure of information and availability of arguments means everyone is tested at the highest level. Arguments about why the other team does not sufficiently disclose will be welcomed. Your wiki should also look like this if making this argument.

B. If you are in the open/varsity division of NDT-CEDA, NFA-LD, or TOC Policy. Debaters should go to the room immediately after pairings are released to disclose what the aff will be. With obvious exceptions for a short time to consult coaches or if tech problems prevent it. Nothing is worse than being in a high-stress/high-level round and the other team waiting until right before the debate to come to disclose. This is not a cool move. If you are unable to come to the room, you should be checking the wiki for your opponent's email and sending them a message to disclose the aff/past 2NR's or sending your coach/a different debater to do so on your behalf.

C. When an affirmative team discloses what the aff is, they get a few minutes to change minor details (tagline changes, impact card swaps, maybe even an impact scenario). This is double true if there is a judge change. This amount of time varies by how much prep the tournament actually gives. With only 10 minutes between pairings and start time, the aff probably only get 30 seconds to say "ope, actually...." This probably expands to a few minutes when given 30 minutes of prep. Teams certainly shouldn't be given the opportunity to make drastic changes to the aff plan text, advantages etc. a long while after disclosing.

PFD addendum for NSDA 2024

I am incredibly concerned about the quality of the evidence read in debates and the lack of sharing of evidence read.

Teams who send evidence in a single document that they intend to read in their speech and quickly send an addendum document with all evidence selected mid speech will be rewarded greatly.

I will ask each team to send every piece of evidence read by both teams in ALL speeches.

I am easily persuaded that not sending evidence read in a speech with speech prior to the start of the speech is a violation of evidence sharing rules.

Questions/Email for speech docs: Shannon.Howley97@gmail.com

Coached for Wake Forest University

Debated for George Mason University

General:

- Be nice to your opponents and your partner

- I will read cards – do not clip them, and do not lie about what your evidence says.

- I will flow CX

- Zoom debate – it makes it much harder to understand spreading, so be considerate of that and slow down

- Tech > Truth

Kritiks:

- I am less knowledgeable of the literature, so just make sure you are providing thorough explanations and examples.

- I prefer they have a specific link to the affirmative.

Planless affs:

- I prefer affs have some relation and/or discussion of the topic literature, but this does not mean it must be an affirmation of the resolution.

- Generally, I think your aff should do/defend something – please do not wait until after the 1NC to determine why I should be voting affirmative.

Framework:

- Fairness can be an impact [but this does not mean I will not vote for impact turns to fairness, etc]

- Negative teams are more likely to lose if they do not interact with the aff in some way.

Counterplans:

- I prefer they have a solvency advocate – but do not let this dissuade you from reading CPs that generate solvency from the arguments/cards in the 1AC.

- I have no predispositions about theory for PICs, Conditions, Consult CPs– I think it depends on context

- I will not kick the CP unless instructed for me to do so by the 2NR

- Delay CPs seem pretty abusive

Theory:

- Slow down while reading it, that is all :)

- Condo: I will vote for infinite conditionality, but I will also vote for an interp of only one conditional advocacy. It entirely depends on the arguments presented on the flow. However - it will be difficult to convince me to vote for no conditionality.

- *Besides conditionality - theory arguments are usually a reason to reject the argument and not the team.

TLDR: Despite my preferences, debate what makes you happy

Email: lucia.hulsether@gmail.com

I see debate as a space where what counts as reason and what is understood as reasonable is constantly under construction and contestation, which is also to say that I’m down to hear any kind of argument that you think you perform at your best.

I am most familiar with the array of K arguments. This is partly because, in my life outside debate, I am a scholar of cultural studies and critical theory. I love judging debates that draw on and theorize from the literature coming out of those interdisciplines and ones adjacent to them. I am very supportive of performance debate, because–again–I understand all debate as performance. So, if you see a performative contradiction, definitely go ahead and point it out.

I also like debates that think through the theory of debate itself. I look forward to hearing framework arguments, since they give us all a chance to think through what we are doing and to what ends. I often like judging novice debaters for the same reasons.

In the rounds themselves. Again, do you! In general, I think it is the debater’s job to tell me clearly what is in their cards. I flow based on what you say, not based on reading your cards (I’ll read along during the speeches but am unlikely to go back through the cards beyond that). On the neg, in most cases I would rather you debate really well on a few substantial arguments than try to cram in a laundry list of off-case positions.

One thing you might want to know about me is that I wasn’t a debater in college. I’ve been judging debates for Liberty about five years now after getting to know the activity through debater friends and through my scholarship. I realize that this is odd in a community where almost everyone else has prior experience and knows the rhythms, histories, and conventions of the activity. If this means that I am sometimes behind the curve on some of the super obscure techy arguments and need them spelled out, I think my nontraditional way into the activity and my outside work can sometimes be a superpower for strategizing with you about creative ways to synthesize literatures into arguments and strategies.

As for institutional location: I am an assistant professor at Skidmore College, where I teach classes listed in our Religious Studies, American Studies, Black Studies, and Gender Studies departments. This year (2024-25) I will be based at Brown University and appointed in Religious Studies and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (CSREA).

I debated at Coeur d’Alene High school for 3 years and Gonzaga University for 4 years.

My email is mdrjohnson26@gmail.com

I haven’t been heavily involved in debate for a few years as I was working abroad.

Essentially, do whatever you want and I’ll do my best. I try my absolute hardest to pay 100% attention while a debate is happening. This means that I try to make eye contact, listen attentively, and catch all of the arguments the best I can. This also means, however, that I flow on paper. As such, please give me some pen time especially if you have a really important argument you want to get across. **This is 10x more true for theory arguments/T debates - you must slow down.

Also, I really hate interrupting a debate. I don’t yell clear, please just…be clear?

Updates as of Kentucky

1. Line by line is important to me - I understand we're on a time crunch, but I have to know what you're answering. Numbers are great, use them consistently.

2. I like research - I love this aspect of the activity a lot. That said, I think that the way a lot of teams highlight cards is odd. I'm naturally more skeptical of a piece of evidence if you've made 1 sentence from 15 lines of text by highlighting a few words. I also really don't like the size 2 font on cards.

3. Compare your cards! I think every debate I've watched in recent memory could have been improved if no one said "their card is really bad". I'm more persuaded if you first tell me what makes your evidence so persuasive and why the opponent's evidence can't meet that threshold.

4. That said, CX needs to extend beyond just evidence. Asking "where in you card does it say 'x'" for 3 minutes isn't persuasive to me.

5. There is no clarification period. If you are asking a question, that is CX.

Decorum
I don’t like obnoxious people. I have a pretty good sense of humor and I know when being funny crosses a line. I’m also not persuaded when debaters tell others to do harm to themselves or others. It won’t necessarily cost you the debate (unless I’m instructed otherwise) but I will tell you now; it’s a waste of breath that will probably lose you speaker points. I also do not enjoy debates where debaters don't defend the things they have said/read. If you read Irigaray, you have to defend Irigaray. If you try to weasel out of it, I'm either going to think you a) are unprepared/don't understand your evidence b) are a weasel c) are an unprepared weasel.

Theory
I lean neg, but everything is open to debate. This was never my favorite kind of debate and it is definitely not my strength. I don’t consider most things reasons to reject the team unless you tell me and give a good reason. I tend to lean negative on conditionality.

Topicality
Love it. Read it, but be honest with yourself. You and I know both know that T – Sub isn’t the best argument ever, but I’ve won on it and voted on it, so here we are. An important note: I find it easier to vote for/against T when I know what exactly a debate round looks like on average. What are the affs? Are they winnable? What are the DAs? Are they winnable?

Counterplans
Love them. If you’re going to have a super long, complicated text, please read it slowly. I try to write it down the best I can. If you have a lot of planks, you should probably have solvency cards for all the planks.

DAs
Love these too.

Ks
Go for them if they’re your thing. I was a philosophy student, but the K lit most kids read was never my jam. I like a specific link story and I would like to know how the alt solves or why, if it doesn’t, I still shouldn’t vote aff. Something that often confuses me about K debates is that I don’t know what to do with the things I am told, so please impact things clearly and let me know what to do with the information you provide.
I’m not a big fan of the dead-on-the-inside stuff as it all sounds like gobbledygook to me, but if it’s your thing and you want to shine, shine on, friend. I’ll do my best.

K Affs
The more about the topic they are, the happier I am. That said, I don’t hate things that have nothing to do with the topic. Just explain the aff well and try to be as clear as possible. I will say, if all of your cards have paragraph-long tags, it will be harder for me to flow.

Please don’t hesitate to ask me questions before/after the debate. I really love debate and want everyone to do well and get better.

Important Update

**Clarification questions about the speech doc are CX time**

I am the Director of Debate at Georgetown University ('21-present), before which I was the Assistant DOD (2017-21). I am also an Assistant Coach for Westminster. Before that, I debated for 4 years at Georgetown. In high school, I debated only regionally, for a tiny high school in West Texas.

Please include me on the email chain: bwk9@georgetown.edu

***Update: November 2022***

My prior paradigm was 5+ years out of date. The following are patterns in my judging that you should be aware of when debating in front of me.

All of the items below, EXCEPT for the "D-Rules (not subject to debate)" section, are simply DEFAULTS in the absence of debaters making an argument that I should evaluate these things differently. I would prefer that the DEBATERS tell me how to evaluate things and why, in which case these priors should rarely , if ever, come into play.

D-Rules (NOT subject to debate)

1. Please include me on the email chain.

2. In high school debates, all of the participants are minors, and I will not hesitate to intervene in a debate if anything legally or ethically dubious is occurring. This includes any bullying, displays of sexism or racism, etc. Relatedly, there are arguments which are appropriate for the college context but that I will not--and, legally, cannot!--countenance in a HS debate (one example: the reading of uncensored explicit evidence a la Preciado).

3. Consider me dead inside with respect to any preferences regarding argumentative substance. However, I have very little tolerance for either arguments or ways of engaging that make any participant feel unsafe, and will intervene if necessary.

4. Allegations of an ethics violation will immediately end the debate. No take-backs. I will then inform the tabroom and follow the tournament's prescribed procedures, or in the lack of such procedures will unilaterally determine whether it rises to the threshold of an ethics VI. If so, the accuser will win; if not, the accuser will lose. If allowed for by the tournament rules, I will make a subjective determination regarding whether the violation (or accusation, if the accuser loses) was engaged in knowingly and/or in competitive bad faith, and if so will assign the lowest allowable speaker points. To help guide this determination: egregious or persistent clipping is a D-Rule. So is evidence falsification. Poor evidence "hygiene," e.g. ending in the middle of a paragraph, is a D-rule, but is unlikely to warrant the additional "poor speaks" sanction if it does not change the meaning of the card, whereas if it cuts out a strawperson it is likely to warrant the "poor speaks" sanction. Minor good-faith mistakes in evidence citation are very unlikely to rise to the threshold of a D-rule if it is left up to my discretion by tab and/or the tournament rules.

Things to Know About Debating In Front of Me

1. Instead of focusing only on extending and answering arguments, it would behoove debaters to begin their final rebuttals by clarifying what the comparative RFD for the Aff/Neg should be, identifying the key questions to be resolved in the debate, and then going through the process of resolving them. You can think of this as providing me a roadmap for how I should approach adjudicating the debate once it ends. Absent this, I will come up with my own roadmap, but it is substantially less likely to work out in your favor and also I will be grumpy about it.

2. I have found that the way that arguments are characterized early in the debate often bears heavily on how I interpret and resolve disputes over them in the final rebuttals. This has accounted for numerous panel splits in debates I've judged the past couple years. If, for example, an argument is articulated in one way in the CXes (all of which I flow), I will tend to treat that articulation as binding; or, if a plan or counterplan is characterized in a given way in the 2NC and the 1AR does not push back on that characterization, I will adopt that understanding of the plan or counterplan and hold the line against 2ARattempts to rearticulate it.

3. Evidence: I value quality of argument and evidence. A smart, well-warranted analytic is far more valuable than a bad card. Research is at the core of what makes policy debate unique and valuable relative to e.g. Public Forum, Parli, etc. However, evidence matters only insofar as it provides reasons to believe you about your arguments (e.g. qualifications, warrants, etc.); it never constitutes an argument itself.

4. I will not read your speech doc, a practice which I've observed account for other panel splits in recent years. I will spot check specific pieces of evidence if they are contested in CX or in speeches. I will read cards I am directed to after the debate, but it is up to you to have leveraged them effectively in your speech--and, how good a card needs to be to get the job done on a given issue is inversely proportional to how well you debate it. If debaters want their evidentiary advantage to matter--as it should--they should do more evidence comparison, including as it relates to source quality, etc. The sole exception to this: if evidence is selectively underlined to an argument not even contemplated by the original, I reserve the right to unilaterally discount it (think here of the difference between underlining a movie script or selectively underlining words in unrelated sentences to concoct an argument never made in the source, vs. cutting a cards as a strawperson - the latter I will very unhappily accept if the other team does not contest it, albeit at the cost of speaker points, whereas the former I will probably not accept, if I notice it, even if the other team does NOT call it out).

5. Conceded arguments are true arguments. However, 1.) A complete "argument" consists of a claim, a warrant, and an impact--assertions are not arguments, and thus are not "true" even if dropped. 2.) Receiving the full weight of an argument does not matter in-and-of itself--you must still unpack why that dropped argument impacts the rest of the debate, and if that explanation was not there initially then the implication component of that can still constitute a new argument to which responses are allowed.

6. CX filibustering: Some amount of it is part of the game, but if this is taken to a silly extreme, then I will not hesitate to pull a Dallas Perkins and tell you to "ANSWER the QUESTION" so as to enable a meaningful debate to occur

Argument Defaults

1. Absent arguments to the contrary, CX and 2AC clarifications of plan mandates constitute binding amendments to the plan text, making them presumptively legitimate sources of counterplan competition. (Merely saying that something is "normal means," however, does not make it a mandate, and thus is presumptively not a legitimate source of CP competition.)

2. My defaults are that conditionality is a.) an all-or-nothing thing and b.) is good. However, I have become increasingly open to contestation of either premise.

3. Plan vagueness is out of control, especially in high school, and I will gladly vote Neg on that, either as a voting issue in-itself or smart circumvention arguments or DA links about the way in which the vague plan would be most likely interpreted and applied.

4. Counterplan vagueness is also out of control. If your CP text boils down to, e.g., "do innovation" rather than outlining a mechanism for how to bolster innovation, and the Affirmative points out that that is meaningless, I will agree with the Aff.

5. Kritiks: By default I assume that the K is not a DA plus a CP and that therefore the debate is a referendum on whatever the Link/Alt is critiquing, e.g. the Aff's reps, epistemology, political paradigm, etc. I can be convinced of plan focus/FW-no Ks, particularly if it is grounded in arguments about the resolutional burden of proof and the Negative's reciprocal burden of rejoinder, though meeting in the middle is often the path of less resistance. I am also willing to adopt very Neg-friendly frameworks, e.g. 'you link you lose,' but with the proper Aff responses I will find them ultimately unpersuasive. Absent Aff FW arguments that render them applicable ('pragmatism good,' for instance, or arguments about reciprocity of burdens), I do not intuitively understand why arguments like 'movements fail,' 'transition wars,' 'alt not feasible / no one is persuaded,' etc. would be relevant considerations--but with them, I do.

Argument Defaults - K Affs

5. K Affs: I prefer that the Affirmative be "topical" slash affirm the resolution. I am pretty good for topical K Affs, insofar as I think that there is substantial room for play regarding what topical AFFIRMATION means/entails, and that the wording of the resolution does not necessarily prescribe that topical "affirmation" take the form of defending the narrow causal desirability of implementing a specific topical policy proposal.

However, if your approach when reading a K Aff is to impact turn topicality, the part I struggle with is how debate can be workable once we have left the resolution behind. To deal with this, please speak DIRECTLY to that question in some manner in the 2AR -- whether by explicitly saying that it's better for debate not to be workable, explaining why it will not become unworkable, clearly defending some alternative limiting principle for what the Affirmative win condition is in place of the resolution, or something else -- AND have that be clearly traceable to arguments you set up in the 2AC and 1AR.

6. Framework v. K Affs: I do find there to be a meaningful difference between "topicality," i.e. the Affirmative must affirm the resolution and did not, and "framework," i.e. the Affirmative did not debate or affirm in the specific manner the Neg would have liked for them to. It would behoove the Neg to leverage those differences in response to Aff offense that presumes the latter or blurs the line.

I find "fairness" unpersuasive as a terminal impact. However, this is primarily a function of Negatives explaining it poorly, because I am extremely compelled by the argument that an axiomatic precondition for debate to operate is that the Affirmative must meet their burden of proof arising from the resolution, and that until they do so there is no logical basis for the Negative having any burden of rejoinder. All of which is to say: definitely feel free to go for fairness, BUT please take care to explain why it logically precedes everything else, AND to explicitly no-link the Aff's various lines of offense, rather than just making assertions about "procedural fairness."

Alternatively: feel free to say whatever "substantive" FW offense you'd like--I do find link turns to K Affs to often be truer than the K Affs themselves--BUT please do not just assert words like "clash" or "second and third level testing" without explication of what exactly you mean, why it is unique to your model of debate/foreclosed by the Aff's, and what the impact is; AND be aware that in so doing, you run the risk of making Aff impact turns LINK which otherwise would not.

I generally do not care about "T version," except insofar as it is explained in terms of what SPECIFIC lines of Affirmative offense are solved by the being able to read the Aff topically. (For example: "we need to go to X section of the library" is probably solved by T version, and arguably solved BETTER insofar as that model preserves a stronger ability and competitive incentive to dig into that issue than does the Aff's model). I DO think that that if a given Aff is COMPATIBLE with topical affirmation, that makes it easy to moot all of their offense while retaining a clear net benefit by saying that they should've have simply read the same Aff TOPICALLY (in essence, the same function that "T version" plays in a T debate vs. a policy Aff). In contrast, K Affs which are INcompatible with topical affirmation is generally better dealt with in front of me by "do it on the Neg" rather than a TVA.

Correspondingly: I tend to think that the best K Affs are centered not on K's of the resolution or topical Affs, but of BEING TOPICAL slash a model of topical debate--in which case the Neg will need to win that their model of debate is better, and a T version will only be useful in very specific, isolated instances for specific reasons.

Judd D. Kimball, Assistant Coach, University of Mary Washington

Article I. Communication Approach to Debate 
Section 1.01 The following are brief explanation of what I envision when I think of the highest quality debate. These are items that can factor in both positively and negatively for you in my determination of who did the better debating. 
(a) A primary goal should be to present your ideas and arguments in a communicative fashion. What factors influence the effectiveness of your communication? 
(i) Rate of Delivery. You should not present ideas at a rate that interferes with the effectiveness of sharing those ideas with another human being. You must analyze your audience to determine the rate at which they can absorb ideas, and you must evaluate (fairly) your own abilities to speak rapidly which not losing clarity/enunciation or normal tone inflection that signals the beginning and ending of sentences, and is critical to judges understanding concepts and ideas, not just individual words. 
(ii) Clarity/Enunciation. Each word should have a beginning and an ending. Each sound should be pronounced, and not mumbled through. 
(iii) Interpretation/Tonal inflection. It is a personal belief that the way we normally communicate with other people involves a lot of vocal interpretation and tonal inflection. It’s a way to communicate phrases and ideas, rather than just leaving each word hanging out by itself, merely surrounded by other words. With interpretation the audience has an easier time comprehending, understanding the processing the idea, as they don’t have to put the sentence together from the individual words, and then discover the meaning of the phrase or sentence themselves. Interpretation, by my definition, is the attribute of communication that helps provide understanding to the audience of the ideas being presented through the way the ideas are presented. It has been my experience that most debaters are very interpretative speakers when they are not debating from prepared scripts. It is during this time that the communication skills you have honed since you began talking are on display. Yet when it is time to read evidence, or a prepped theory block, they shift communicative gears and start just reading each individual word, rather than presenting ideas for the consideration of the judge. I am very unlikely to read evidence after the debate if it was not read in a comprehensible manner, or the warrants and reasons of the evidence were not discussed as being important ideas. 
(b) A primary focus of your speeches and cross-examination period should be information sharing. This goes beyond your personal motivation to communicate with the judges, and includes a responsibility to present your arguments in a fashion that facilitates your opponent’s comprehension of your position. 
(c) Clash. You should seek to create class in your debates by interacting with not only your opponent’s tag lines, but with the warrants for those claims. In essence, clash is explaining to me why I should prefer/believe your arguments over your opponents. In order to effectively do that, you must be making comparisons that take your opponents argument into account. You must clash. 

Section 1.02 Effective implementation of these points will most likely result in higher speaker points, and a greater understanding of your arguments by me as a judge. That will help you in winning the debate, as I will hold the other team responsible for answering your arguments, and if they fail toy,your superior communication will be a determining factor (as a process) of your victory. 

Article II. Debate Evaluation 
Section 2.01 I recognize objective standards and processes are probably impossible, as the subjective creeps into everything, I just desire and strive for objectivity. 
(a) I have a default judging perspective, which evaluates the net benefits of a policy proposal, and answers the question of whether the government should take a particular course of action. I prefer a framework which strives to include as many voices and perspectives as possible, and provides a framework in which different perspectives can be compared, contrasted and weighed. I like my decision to be grounded in the arguments made in the debate. I strive not to bring in “baggage” with me, though I recognize the final futility of that effort, and I will make every effort to explain my decision by reference what was actually communicated in the debate 
(b) If you wish the debate to be evaluated from an alternate perspective, you will need to provide a well-defined set of criteria for me to apply when evaluating and weighing arguments. The question of controversy needs to be defined, and discussed in order to provide me the necessary framework to avoid subjectively deciding the debate. Now mind you, I don’t mind subjectively deciding a debate, just be prepared to be frustrated by my statement that I can’t explain why I voted for a particular position, just that that was what I wanted to do at that moment of time, or frustrated by the fact that what I voted on wasn’t an argument or part of the debate that you had a chance to answer. That will happen when I find myself stalled out in the decision making, finding no way to decide other than adding in factors that were not included or discussed in the debate. 

Section 2.02 I find questions of autonomous action and personal belief difficult to decide in the context of debate competition. I have found myself perplexed by arguments advanced on the basis of exercising personal autonomy, and then be expected to evaluate them without the inclusion of my opinions, my autonomy, in the process. This is difficult when I find that my personal approach to life contrasts with the approach to individual decision making advocated by one team. If the ballot is my endorsement of your idea, then I would be denying my own autonomous position by being constrained by debate conventions of judging (i.e., you did a better job against the opponents objections, but I wasn’t persuaded to change my personal beliefs). Defining your framework for debate evaluation with this in mind will ease my difficulty. I have been close to taking the action of including my position on the question, in the last few debates I’ve had when this situation arose. Questions of Autonomy and personal belief are difficult questions for me to resolve 

Section 2.03 I will be very resistant to deciding debates where the character of the participants is the foundation for the decision. I do not like to cast judgments on people and their behavior without having gathered as much information as is possible. I do not feel that in the high pressure competition of debate is the best forum for investigating those issues, or in seeking to engage the other individual in a dialogue about their behavior. Am I totally unwilling to decide a debate on such a question? I’m not willing to say that either. But I would have to be convinced that not only was this an egregious act, but that malevolent intent was involved. 

Article III. Other Issues: 
Section 3.01 Topicality I think topicality debates hinge on the question of whose interpretation provides for a better debate topic/experience. If your violation and argumentation does not provide an answer to that question, then figure the answer out. You must also be sure to be complete in your argumentation about why the affirmative violates your interpretation. Do not leave issues of plan interpretation vague, or hinge your argument on a vague cross ex question or answer. Make clear and concise arguments about why the affirmative plan doesn’t meet your interpretation. 

Section 3.02 Counterplans. I’ll evaluate any counterplan presented. I begin from a bias that "net benefits" is the most meaningful competition standard, and perhaps only standard. But you can argue other standards, and you only have to defeat your opponent’s arguments, not mine. As to other theory questions with counterplans, it will depend on who does the best job defending/indicting a particular theoretical practice used in the debate. 

Section 3.03 Kritiks I need to understand what you are saying from the beginning on all arguments, but especially these. Please communicate your ideas to me when you present this type of argument. I won’t go back later and try to figure out what you were arguing about. I need to know what the affirmative does that is bad, and why it is bad enough that I should either vote negative, or not affirmative, or however I should vote. 

Section 3.04 Debating and Evaluating Theory Issues. Theory issues are difficult to evaluate, because they are a yes/no question. If you wish to win a theory objection, you must deal with all of your opponent’s defenses, and provide reasoning explaining why a particular theory position is destructive to quality debate. This is not meant to scare you off of theory debates, just to encourage you to be thorough and complete when discussing this issue. 

Justin Kirk - Director of Debate at University of Nebraska-Lincoln

General philosophy – Debate is primarily a communications based activity, and if you are not communicating well, your arguments are probably incoherent, and you are probably not going to win many debates in front of me. It is your responsibility to make quality arguments. An argument consists of a claim, a warrant, and an impact. Evidence supports argumentation, it does not supplant it. However, analytic arguments and comparative claims about argument quality are essential to contextualizing your evidence and applying it to the issues developed throughout the debate. Quality arguments beat bad evidence every time.

I flow every debate and expect teams to answer arguments made by the other team. You should also flow every debate. That does not mean start flowing after the speech documents run out. Cross-examinations that consist mostly of "what cards did you read" or "what cards did you skip" are not cross examinations and do you little to no good in terms of winning the debate. If you have questions about whether or not the other team made an argument or answered a particular argument, consult your flow, not the other team. The biggest drawback to paperless debate is that people debate off speech docs and not their flows, this leads to shoddy debating and an overall decline in the quality of argumentation and refutation.

Each team has a burden of refutation, and arguing the entire debate from macro-level arguments without specifically refuting the other side's arguments will put you at a severe disadvantage in the debate. Burden of proof falls upon the team making an argument. Unwarranted, unsupported assertions are a non-starter for me. It is your responsibility is to make whole arguments and refute the arguments made by the other side. Evaluating the debate that occurred is mine. The role of my ballot is to report to the tab room who I believe won the debate.

Online Debate - everyone is adjusting to the new world of online debate and has plenty of burdens. I will be lenient when judging if you are having technical difficulties and provide ample time. You should record all of your speeches on a backup device in case of permanent technical failures. Speech drop is the norm for sharing files. If there are bandwidth problems, I will ask everyone to mute their mics and videos unless they are talking.

Paperless Debate – You should make every attempt to provide a copy of the speech documents to me and the other team before the speech. The easiest way to resolve this is through speech drop. I suspect that paperless debate has also led to a substantial decrease in clarity and corresponding increases in cross-reading and clipping. I have zero tolerance for cheating in debate, and will have no qualms about voting against you, assigning zero speaker points, and speaking to your coaches about it. Clarity is a must. You will provide me speech documents to read during the debate so I may better understand the debate that is occurring in front of me. I will ask you to be clearer if you are not and if you continue to be unclear, I will stop flowing your arguments.

Topicality – Is good for debate, it helps to generate clash, prevents abusive affirmatives, and generally wins against affirmatives that have little to no instrumental relation to the topic. Topicality definitions should be precise, and the reasons to prefer your topicality violation should be clear and have direct relation to your interpretation. Topicality debates are about the scope of and competition generated by the resolution. I usually default to competing interpretations, as long as both sides have clear, contextual, and well warranted interpretations. If your interpretation is missing one of these three elements, go for another argument. Reasonability is a winnable argument in front of me as long as you offer specific and warranted reasons why your interpretation is reasonable vis-à-vis the negative. I vote on potential abuse and proven abuse.

Kritiks – Should be based in the resolution and be well researched with specific links to the affirmative. Reading generic links to the topic is insufficient to establish a link to the affirmative. Alternatives should be well explained and evidenced with specific warrants as to the question of link solvency. A majority of kritik debates that are lost by negative teams where they have failed to explain the link debate or alternative adequately. A majority of kritik debates that are lost by affirmative teams when I am judging are ones where the affirmative failed to sufficiently argue for a permutation argument or compare the impacts of the affirmative to the impacts of the criticism sufficiently. I firmly believe that the affirmative gets to weigh the advantages of the plan against the impacts of the criticism unless the link to the criticism directly stems from the framing of the Affirmative impacts. I also believe that the affirmative can usually win solvency deficits to the alternative based upon deficits in implementation and/or instrumentalization of the alternative. Arguments that these solvency deficits do not apply because of framework, or that the affirmative has no right to solving the affirmative, are non-starters for me.

Counterplans – Yes. The more strategic, the better. Should be textually and functionally competitive. Texts should be written out fully and provided to the other team before cross examination begins. The negative should have a solvency card or net benefit to generate competition. PICs, conditional, topical counterplans, international fiat, states counterplans are all acceptable forms of counterplans. NR counterplans are an effective means of answering new 1AR arguments and add-ons and are fair to the affirmative team if they are responses to new 1AR developments. I believe that counterplans are the most effective means of testing the affirmative's plan via competitive policy options and are an effective means of solving for large portions of the affirmative. Counterplans are usually a fair check against new affirmatives, non-intrinsic advantages, and affirmatives with bad or no solvency evidence. If you have a theoretical objection to the counterplan, make it compelling, have an interpretation, and win offense. Theoretical objections to the counterplan are fine, but I have a high threshold for these arguments unless there is a specific violation and interpretation that makes sense in the context of competitive demands in debate.

Disads – Yes and yes. A likely winning strategy in front of me usually involves going for a disadvantage to the affirmative and burying the case with quality arguments and evidence. Disadvantages should have specific links to the case and a coherent internal link story. It is your job to explain the causal chain of events that leads to the disadvantage. A disadvantage with no internal links is no disad.

Case Debate - Is a lost art. Most affirmatives are a hodgepodge of thrown together internal links and old impact evidence. Affirmatives are particularly bad at extending their affirmative and answering negative arguments. Especially new affirmatives. Negative teams should spend a substantial portion of the debate arguing why the affirmative case is problematic. Fewer and fewer teams invest any time in arguing the case, at the cost of a criticism or disadvantage that usually isn't worth reading in the first place. Time trade-offs are not nearly as valuable as quality indictments of the 1AC. Spend those three minutes answering the advantages and solvency and don't read that third criticism or fourth disadvantage, it usually doesn't help you anyway. Inidict the 1AC evidence, make comparative claims about their evidence and your evidence, challenge the specificity or quality of the internal links.

Evidence - Qualifications, context, and data matter. You should answer the evidence read in the debate because I will read evidence at the end. One of the largest problems with paperless debate is the persistence of reading cards to answer cards when a simple argument about the context or quality of the evidence will do. It takes less time to answer a piece of terrible evidence with an analytic argument than it does to read a card against it. It is useless to throw good cards after bad.

Speaker Points - Are a reflection of the quality of speaking, arguments, and strategic choice made by debaters in the debate – no more, no less.

Disclosure (12/2/23 update) - I lifted this from Parker Hopkins at his blessing who borrowed from Chris Roberds.

TLDR - disclosure is an essential element to small-school competitiveness, the educational functions of the activity, and should be practiced by all teams.

I took this from Chris Roberds who said it much more elegantly than myself.

I have a VERY low threshold on this argument. Having schools disclose their arguments pre-round is important if the activity is going to grow/sustain itself. Having coached almost exclusively at small, underfunded, or new schools, I can say that disclosure (specifically disclosure on the wiki if you are a paperless debater) is a game changer. It allows small schools to compete and makes the activity more inclusive. There are a few specific ways that this influences how ballots will be given from me:

1) I will err negative on the impact level of "disclosure theory" arguments in the debate. If you're reading an aff that was broken at a previous tournament, on a previous day, or by another debater on your team, and it is not on the wiki (assuming you have access to a laptop and the tournament provides wifi), you will likely lose if this theory is read. There are two ways for the aff to "we meet" this in the 2ac - either disclose on the wiki ahead of time or post the full copy of the 1ac in the wiki as a part of your speech. Obviously, some grace will be extended when wifi isn't available or due to other extenuating circumstances. However, arguments like "it's just too much work," "I don't like disclosure," etc. won't get you a ballot.

2) The neg still needs to engage in the rest of the debate. Read other off-case positions and use their "no link" argument as a reason that disclosure is important. Read case cards and when they say they don't apply or they aren't specific enough, use that as a reason for me to see in-round problems. This is not a "cheap shot" win. You are not going to "out-tech" your opponent on disclosure theory. To me, this is a question of truth. Along that line, I probably won't vote on this argument in novice, especially if the aff is reading something that a varsity debater also reads.

3) If you realize your opponent's aff is not on the wiki, you should make every possible attempt before the round to ask them about the aff, see if they will put it on the wiki, etc. Emailing them so you have timestamped evidence of this is a good choice. I understand that, sometimes, one teammate puts all the cases for a squad on the wiki and they may have just put it under a different name. To me, that's a sufficient example of transparency (at least the first time it happens). If the aff says it's a new aff, that means (to me) that the plan text and/ or advantages are different enough that a previous strategy cut against the aff would be irrelevant. This would mean that if you completely change the agent of the plan text or have them do a different action it is new; adding a word like "substantially" or "enforcement through normal means" is not. Likewise, adding a new "econ collapse causes war" card is not different enough; changing from a Russia advantage to a China, kritikal, climate change, etc. type of advantage is. Even if it is new, if you are still reading some of the same solvency cards, I think it is better to disclose your previous versions of the aff at a minimum.

4) At tournaments that don't have wifi, this should be handled by the affirmative handing over a copy of their plan text and relevant 1AC advantages etc. before the round. If thats a local tournament, that means as soon as you get to the room and find your opponent.

5) If you or your opponent honestly comes from a circuit that does not use the wiki (e.g. some UDLs, some local circuits, etc.), I will likely give some leeway. However, a great use of post-round time while I am making a decision is to talk to the opponent about how to upload on the wiki. If the argument is in the round due to a lack of disclosure and the teams make honest efforts to get things on the wiki while I'm finishing up my decision, I'm likely to bump speaks for all 4 speakers by .2 or .5 depending on how the tournament speaks go.

6) There are obviously different "levels" of disclosure that can occur. Many of them are described above as exceptions to a rule. Zero disclosure is always a low-threshold argument for me in nearly every case other than the exceptions above.

That said, I am also willing to vote on "insufficient disclosure" in a few circumstances.

A. If you are in the open/varsity division of NDT-CEDA, NFA-LD, or TOC Policy your wiki should look like this or something very close to it. Full disclosure of information and availability of arguments means everyone is tested at the highest level. Arguments about why the other team does not sufficiently disclose will be welcomed. Your wiki should also look like this if making this argument.

B. If you are in the open/varsity division of NDT-CEDA, NFA-LD, or TOC Policy. Debaters should go to the room immediately after pairings are released to disclose what the aff will be. With obvious exceptions for a short time to consult coaches or if tech problems prevent it. Nothing is worse than being in a high-stress/high-level round and the other team waiting until right before the debate to come to disclose. This is not a cool move. If you are unable to come to the room, you should be checking the wiki for your opponent's email and sending them a message to disclose the aff/past 2NR's or sending your coach/a different debater to do so on your behalf.

C. When an affirmative team discloses what the aff is, they get a few minutes to change minor details (tagline changes, impact card swaps, maybe even an impact scenario). This is double true if there is a judge change. This amount of time varies by how much prep the tournament actually gives. With only 10 minutes between pairings and start time, the aff probably only get 30 seconds to say "ope, actually...." This probably expands to a few minutes when given 30 minutes of prep. Teams certainly shouldn't be given the opportunity to make drastic changes to the aff plan text, advantages etc. a long while after disclosing.

(Justin's final thought on disclosure) - JV and Novice divisions need disclosure the most. There is a reason that CARD and ADA Novice divisions use a packet. There is a reason that the Nothern Tier used a packet when it was still a thing. Disclosure on the wiki serves a similar if not a congruent function for the community. Give those coaches some time to prepare their young debaters to engage their opponents and have a productive debate!

Updated for NU 22

NOTE: I have not thought about debate since the 2022 NDT. I am excited to be back but know that these rounds will be the first time I am hearing about Legal Personhood.

Yes Email Chain brent.lamb97@gmail.com

The short version

I am a judge who will vote for essentially any argument. I am as likely to vote on FW versus K affs than I am to vote for impact turns on FW. Simply put, run whatever arguments you are the most comfortable with and dont feel the need to change your style for me.

I will say that because of my debating style I am much more experienced in Policy v Policy and Policy v K debates but I still view K v K debate as amazing and will be excited whenever I get a chance to judge one of those rounds! NOTE: I am super inexperienced at Pomo debates. I have and will continue to vote for them IF I can understand them, pref me if you read those arguments at your own risk.

I think it is important as I judge more rounds to note areas that I have noticed that have become more important to me. The biggest thing I have noticed is debate is a communication event as a result I place a higher premium on communication than some other judges do. Don't read great evidence and leave it at that but rather connect it to the debate round as a whole. I am a judge who loves judge instruction and telling me how I should evaluate arguments or impacts is going to put you in a much better position than simply hoping that I will follow your same line of thinking.

The long version: Most of these comments below are my specific thoughts. Things like DA's and CP's are pretty straightforward. Have a link for the DA and be able to solve some or all the aff with the CP.

Tech over truth: If an argument goes conceded and you impacted it well enough and explain why I should vote for it, I will.

Speed: I have a high threshold for speed and will yell clear out twice in a speech before I stop flowing. That being said with this year most likely being all on Zoom it is important to go at a speed that everyone can understand online. I recommend 80% of your normal speed but you know what works best for you.

K-affs: This is an area where I have experience in but was never my main focus during debate. K's and K affs are the areas where I am the most likely not to vote on an argument because I did not understand it. All that means is to make sure to explain your argument and dont assume that I will fill in the gaps with the same level of knowledge that you all have.

I prefer affs that are in the direction of the topic (that doesn't mean defending USFG action) but affs that are not in the direction of the topic are still able to win my ballot if it is well debated.

K-aff's Vs T/FW: My opinion of what arguments against framework that I find persuasive is still very malleable. All that really means is answer framework in whatever way you think is the most strategic. Reading my advice on T/FW vs K-aff's will give you a good idea of what I find important and being able to beat those arguments will put you in a good place in the debate. Affirmative teams usually win against T/FW in front of me when you prove that the neg's interp excludes the possibility of being able to discuss your scholarship (got to beat the TVA), combined with offense.

After judging multiple framework vs K aff rounds I have come to find that I am more persuaded by whatever team does better impact comparison (why does fairness outweigh education or vice versa?). I will also say that I am less persuaded by general debate bad arguments. I agree that the community is messed up and there is a lot we can do to improve it but saying that debate provides no benefit is a harder sell. If that is your A strat you are not out of luck instead it just requires you to invest more time in this argument if you would like to win it. In general impact turning, T/FW is very viable in front of me.

T/FW vs K-aff's: Im relatively open to all type of negative impacts for framework. I am much more persuaded by T impacts that are centered around skill-building or resolution focus good compared to impacts such as fairness but again am open to any impact. TVA's are pretty much must haves and at the very least make your odds of winning much higher.

K's: Just like above I have some experience but it was not my main focus. Having links to the aff and winning impact calc and/or framework will put you in a good spot.

Going for CP's: I default to no judge kick unless told otherwise.

Theory: Theory is a tool that is underutilized by a lot of aff teams Neg's get away with a lot and needs some checks. Condo theory I view as a reason to reject the team. I am more lenient on reject the arg with everything non-condo but I can be convinced why reading those CP's in the first place is a reason to reject the team. I enjoy theory debates less typed out/reading blocks and more engaging on the line by line and vision of debate.

Topicality for policy affs: Having a specific violation and examples of in round abuse puts you in a better place than just a generic T-shell. Also in the later speeches if you are still going for it, make sure to explain what a world of your interp looks like (What affs are aloud, why are only those affs good for debate, etc)

Impact Turns: Love them and think they are underutilized as well. I have had experience with impact turns from Heg bad to Nuke war good.

Random Info

Prep: I do not count flashing/emailing as prep, as soon as your document is finished you can stop prep. If I see you stealing prep I will call you out once and then start the clock for your prep.

Language: Your language matters racist,homophobic,abelistic,misgendering language is probelmatic just be kind to people.

Clipping cards: If someone is accused of clipping cards the round will stop, you must have video evidence and make the claim in the round. Clipping cards causes an instant loss and low speaks. Accidents happen just make sure you are reading everything you said you read. Mark where you said to mark.

If you have any questions before the round don't be afraid to ask!

Brent

Updated for 2014-2015 debate season.

I am no longer awarding points for people taking the veg pledge. However, I still strongly believe that if you care about the environment, racism, or injustice that you should register at tournaments vegetarian or vegan. Tournaments will provide for your nutiritional needs and you will have abstained from using your registration fees paying for the slaughter of sentient creatures whose death requires abhorent working conditions for people of color, massive greenhouse gas emissions, and the death of individuals. 

What people decide to consume is a political act, not a personal one. Deciding to consume flesh at debate tournaments continues the pattern of accepting violence and discrimination. This happens for workers, for people living in food deserts, people living in countries across the world, and for the non/human animals sent to slaughter. Tournaments are not food deserts. Your choice to consume differently can make a tangible impact on debate as a community and beyond. Your choice has global and local ramifications. I urge you to make the correct choice in registering your dietary choice even if it has no impact on your speaker points. Several people said that they didn't want to be coerced into making the decision to go vegetarian or vegan at tournaments for speaker points. Now is your chance to make that choice without the impact of speaker points.

All that being said, how you choose to debate is a political choice as well. You can debate however you like but you should realize that the methodology and the content you put forth are not neutral choices. Whatever choices you make you should be ready to defend them in round. “As Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen emphasize in Channels of Desire: The politics of consumption must be understood as something more than what to buy, or even what to boycott. Consumption is a social relationship, the dominant relation-ship in our society – one that makes it harder and harder for people to hold together, to create community. At a time when for many of us the possibility of meaningful change seems to elude our grasp, it is a question of immense social and political proportions.” (hooks 376).

If it is not already clear, I will say it outright: I view debate as a space for education, activism, and social justice. This does not mean I won't vote on framework or counterplans. What it does mean is that the arguments that I will find most appealing are those arguments that speak to how traditional approaches to debate are beneficial to us as individuals to create a better world. It is not that fairness is irrelevant, but that fairness is relevant only to that extent. Fairness plays a part in constructing meaninful education and activism but is not the sole standard to enable good debate. Concepts of fairness are not value-neutral but it is a debate that can be defend and won in front of me since I do not think fairness is irrelevant either. For teams breaking down such structures, you still must win the debate that your approach to debate is better for advacing causes of social justice. If you like policymaking and are running counterplans you merely need to win that your counterplan is a better approach. The same applies for theory violations. I will vote on them if you win that the impact to the violation is important enough for me to pull the trigger. The same is also true for kritiks and other styles of debate. Win that your approach and your argument deserves to win because of the impact that it has.

Again, to be clear, this does not mean that I intend to abandon the flow or vote based upon my personal beliefs. My belief is that debate is more than a game and that the things we say and do in it are not neutral-choices. This does not necessarily mean that so-called traditional policy debate is bad but that the way it should be approached by those teams should not be assumed to be neutral.

Whether it is what you eat, or what you debate, your choice is political. Our world can change. It is up to all of us to make it happen. Movements are already happening all around us. Don't let the norms dictate what you debate or what you consume. Debate should be at the forefront of these initiatives. Use the education you gain in debate to say something and to do something meaningful both in round and beyond.

I am currently an assistant debate coach with both Montgomery Bell Academy and Michigan State University. This is my 16th year involved with policy debate. I finished my PhD at the University of Georgia (go dawgs) in October 2024. My dissertation is a Derridean/rhetorical reading of the word queer.

I use he/him pronouns.

Last updated: 12/10/2024

Please put me on the email chain & make me an ev doc at the end of the debate. NJL1994@gmail.com.

Set up and send out the 1AC 10 minutes before the debate begins. Please avoid downtime during debates. If you do both of these things without me needing to say anything (send out the 1AC 10 minutes early + avoid downtime) you'll get higher speaker points.

If I'm judging you online, please slow down a bit and emphasize clarity more than normal.

Top level things:

I think about debate in terms of risk (does the risk of the advantage being true outweigh the risk of the disad being true?). I am willing to vote on presumption, particularly when people say really ridiculous stuff or people's cards are highlighted to say nothing.

I like specificity, nuance, and for you to sound smart. If you sound like you've done research and you know what's going on, I'm likely to give you great points. Being specific, having nuances, and explaining your distinctions is the easiest way to get my ballot.

Judge direction is a lost art. If you win the argument that you're advancing, why should it matter? What does this mean for the debate? What does it mean for your arguments or the other team's arguments? This is the number one easiest way to win my (and really anyone's) ballot in a debate. Direct your judges to think a certain way, because if you don't, your judges are likely to go rogue and decide things that make sense to them but not to you. So impact your arguments and tell me what to do with them. I think it's way more valuable to do that than include one more tiny argument and almost certainly the easiest way to get me to overcome any predispositions.

Decorum is very important to me. If your strategy is to belittle, upset, talk down to, yell at, escalate, curse at, or otherwise be rude or mean to your opponents, then you can expect me to give you terrible speaker points. I also reserve the right to end the debate early if I find the behavior particularly atrocious or potentially threatening to anyone in the room. I am very uninterested in the “I know what you did last summer” strategy or any personal attacks. You certainly don't have to be best friends with your opponents, but I do expect a sense of cordiality when engaging your opponents and their arguments.

"The existence of speech time limits, the assumption that you will not interrupt an opponent's speech intentionally, and the fact that I (and not you) will be signing a ballot that decides a winner and loser is non-negotiable." (taken verbatim from Shree Awsare).

I am incredibly uncomfortable adjudicating things that did not occur in the debate I am watching. Please do not ask me to judge based on something that didn’t happen in the round. I am likely to ignore you.

High school debaters in particular: I have consistently noticed over the past few years of judging that I vote for the team whose arguments I understand. If I cannot connect the dots, I'm not going to vote for you. This goes equally for kritikal and policy debaters. Most of my decisions in high school debates come down to this.

How I decide debates:

First: who solves what?-- does the aff solve its impacts, and (assuming it's in the 2NR) does the negative's competitive advocacy solve its own impacts and/or the aff? In framework debates, this means the first questions I resolve are "does the aff solve itself?" and "does the TVA solve the aff sufficiently?"

Second: Who’s impact is bigger? This is the most important question in the debate. Do impact calculus.

Third: Whatever you have told me matters. Because I have started with solvency & impact calculus questions, everything else is always filtered along those lines (including framework/role of the ballot/role of the judge).

Other misc things:

1. A dropped argument is a true argument but it needs to be a complete argument to begin with or I will likely allow people new answers. For example, this epidemic with high schoolers reading aspec on the bottom of T flows to hide it: if it’s so quick I didn’t catch it in the 1NC, the 1AR gets all the new args they want. Additionally, an argument is not just a claim and a warrant, but a claim, warrant, and reasoning. In other words, your warrant needs to be connected to your claim in order for it to be an argument.

2. I am very flowcentric. Do not ask me to not flow, because I won't listen. Please do line-by-line. If you don't, I'll be frustrated and less likely to buy new extrapolations of arguments. Your speaker points will definitely drop if you don't do line-by-line. I do not like overviews ("overviews are evil"-- one of my labbies; "flowing is good for your health" -- another one of my labbies).

3. Show me that you care. Show me that you know things, that you've done research on this topic, that you want to win, and that debate matters to you. I love this activity and if you also love it I want to know that.

4. Judge kicking makes sense to me but I frequently forget about it, so if you want me to judge kick something you should tell me so in the block/2NR.

5. Cards and highlighting: Teams should get to insert rehighlightings of the other team's cards, but obviously should have to read cards if they're new/haven't been introduced into the debate yet. Two offshoots of this-- 1. You should insert rehighlightings of other team's cards if they suck 2. You should read cards that don't suck.

I do not follow along with speech docs during debates.

Please highlight your ev so it reads as complete sentences. This does not mean that I need you to highlight complete sentences, but if you are brick highlighting, I want to be able to read highlighted portions of your ev as complete sentences—it flows better to me. IE don't skip the letter "a" or the words "in" or "the." Just a random pet peeve.

If you do not have a complete citation or at least a full paragraph from your evidence I will not evaluate what you've said as evidence. Cherrypicked quotes with no context are not evidence.

I tend to not read a lot of cards after the debate unless things are highly technical or I think the debaters aren’t explaining things well. That being said, I’ll likely read at least some cards. Please put together a card doc for me.

6. Debaters parroting their partners: I usually just flow what the partner said. That, obviously, only exists within reason (you don’t get to give a third speech in a debate, but you can interrupt your partner to say something and I will flow it).

7. New 2AR args are bad for debate. I consciously hold the line against them as much as I can. I as a 2N feel as if I got a few decisions where a judge voted aff on an arg that didn't exist until the 2AR and it's the most frustrating. You can expect me to try to trace lines between args in earlier & later speeches. However, if I think the argument they're making is the true argument or a logical extrapolation of something said in the 1AR, I'm more likely to buy it. 2As-- this means if you're gonna do some 2A magic and cheat, you should trick me into thinking that you're not cheating.

Some specifics:

Disads: I’m better for the smart DAs than the silly ones, but I understand the value of bad DAs and will vote for them. I will likely reward you with higher speaker points if I think I understand your story really well and/or you have some cool/unique spin on it. I am fine with logical take outs to DAs that don’t require cards (especially if there’s some logic missing internally in the DA). Don’t just read new cards in the block or 1AR, explain your args (although also read new cards obviously).

Theory, CPs, and K Alternatives: I put these pieces together because my thoughts on these three args blend together.

Competition is determined off the plantext, not off cross-x, nor off the resolution. PICs & PIKs are only competitive if they PIC/PIK out of something in the plantext. I do not believe that you get to PIC/PIK out of a justification or non-plantext based word. The only way I will ever be convinced otherwise is if the aff allows you to do so.

Condo: It’s good. “They should get one less CP” is an arbitrary interp and makes no sense. The phrase "dispo solves" at the end of your bad 2AC condo block is not an argument and I will not be writing it down on my flow. I will vote on this if it's dropped, but I'm pretty persuaded by neg flex and education-style args.

"Performative Contradictions" is a term of art that has been bastardized to no end by debate. You're either saying the neg has double turned themselves or you're saying conditionality is bad; in my mind, perf con is not even worthy of being written on my flow.

Particular Theory: I’m better for this than most judges (and MUCH more persuaded by it than condo). States theory, international fiat, consult/condition, vague alts, utopian alts, etc—I have gone for all of these and actively coach my debaters to do the same. My predisposition is to reject the arg not the team, but I can be persuaded to reject the team on non-condo theory args (you should introduce the arg as reject the team in the 2AC, not CX, if you want this to be an option).

Theory can be a reason you get to make a cheating perm.

Counterplans/alternatives that use aff evidence as solvency advocates are awesome.

If the CP/alt links less I think it makes sense that I prefer it, but make that arg yourself because I won’t make it for you.

Case: I love love love case debate. You should make logical extrapolations that take out the internal link chains and make me question how the advantage makes sense. The block should read more cards but feel free to make logical case take outs without cards. I don't think you should have to go for impact defense to beat advantages-- uniqueness and internal link take outs are almost always the easier place to attack advantages. I tend to prefer a well-developed take out to the death by a thousand cuts strategy.

Affs-- 2NR that don't do well-developed case debate are generally overwhelmed by your "try or die"/"case outweighs"/"1% chance of solvency" args.

Topicality: I'm getting better for this as a strategy lately than I used to be. I do still generally think that it's about the plantext, but can be persuaded that I should think of the plantext in the context of the 1AC. Topicality is only ever a voter, not a reverse voter. I’m not great for silly/arbitrary T interps (I am very persuaded by the arg that these interps are arbitrary). Literature should drive these debates.

Kritiks: I like Ks that care about people and things. I'm optimistic to a fault. I certainly believe that things are still terrible for billions of beings, but it's hard to convince me that everything in the world is so absolutely irredeemable.

Your long overview is actively bad for debate and you will not change my mind.

Make your K interact with the affirmative. I want your links to be about the result of the aff as opposed to just the reading of the aff. Fiat bad links are bad (high schoolers, why are we so obsessed with the fiat K? Didn't we resolve this question 25 years ago? Can't we research and talk about the topic even just a little bit?). Your "state is always bad" links are slightly better, but also terrible. Don't just explain your theory of how power works, explain how the action of the aff is bad according to your theory of power.

I think that I am worse for structuralist style kritiks than I used to be for two reasons: 1) I feel more so that I want you to be responding to the action of the aff than I used to 2) I generally study poststructuralism and queer theory. I read a lot of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler.

Grad school has taught me that theory is way more complex than I used to think it was. I will get annoyed if I know that you’re deploying the theory wrong. I'm not good for things like "death good," "meaning doesn't mean anything," or "language is meaningless" because I don't think those are questions even worth asking.

I have read some literature about antiblackness academically and have read a bit more from a debate standpoint. I would not call myself an expert by any means in this literature, but I do understand some of it better than I used to. I am still unwilling to fill in those blanks for you if you are lacking them (ex-- just saying the words "yes antiblackness ontological, natal alienation proves" is not an argument in my mind).

99.99% of the time I will entirely ignore your framework/role of the ballot args when you're going for the K against a topical aff. There's a high chance that I will just stare at you and not flow during your incredibly long and generic 2NC/2NR framework block on your K. I am serious, I may not even waste the ink in my pen flowing this. I do not know how to decide debates unless I'm weighing the merits of the aff against the merits of the K. For example, if the aff is an object of study, then to evaluate that object of study I have to weigh the aff's consequences. You are better off just saying "yes the aff can weigh the plan, we'll just beat it" in front of me. This also means that the role of the ballot/judge is only ever to vote for whoever did the better debating in every round I judge. The flip side of this, however, is that I almost never find a 2AR that is entirely or almost entirely framework persuasive.

“Perms are a negative argument” and “method v method debate means no perms” are both not arguments. Despite judging for however long I have, I still do not know what a "method v method debate" is or why it's different than every other debate. I will not write these words on my flow.

I also generally do not find the "voting for us gives us more wins/sends us to elims" as a solvency mech persuasive or that "X thing done in the debate is policing/surveillance/violence" (other than actual/physical policing/surveillance/violence) to be persuasive.

Ultimately, I evaluate K debates just like I evaluate policy debates. Technical line by line is key. Explain your args well. Put the debate together. Don't ignore the other side.

2NRs on the K that include case debate (with some level of internal link/impact defense; not just your security K cards on case) are substantially more persuasive to me.

Framework against non-topical affs: you should also read my section on Ks (right above this one) as well.

Framework is a strategy and it makes a lot of sense as a strategy. Just like every other strategy, you should try to tailor it to be as specific to the aff as you possibly can. For example, how does this particular aff make it impossible for you to debate? What does it mean for how debate looks writ-large? What's the valuable topic education we could have had from a topical discussion of this aff in particular? Same basic idea goes for when you’re answering generic aff args—the generic “state always bad” arg is pretty easily beaten by nuanced neg responses in front of me. The more specific you are, the more likely I am to vote for you on framework and the more likely I am to give you good speaks.

Stop reading huge overviews. They’re bad for debate. Your points will suffer. Do line by line. Be a good debater and stop being lazy. The amount of times I have written something like "do line by line" in this paradigm should really tell you something about how I think about debate.

I do not find truth testing/"ignore the aff's args because they're not T" very persuasive. I think it's circular & requires judge intervention.

I do, however, think that fairness/limits/ground is an impact and that it is the most important standard in a T debate.

T and/or framework is not genocide, nor is it ever rape, nor is it a microaggression, nor is it real literal violence against you or anyone else.

I’m a sucker for a good topical version. Teams seem to want to just laundry list potential TVAs and then say "idk, maybe these things let them discuss their theory". I believe that strategy is very easily beaten by a K team having some nuanced response. It makes way more sense to me if the TVA is set up almost like a CP-- it should solve a majority or all of the aff. If you set it up like that and then add the sufficiency framing/"flaws are neg ground" style args I'm WAY more likely to buy what you have to say (this goes along with the whole "I like nuance and specificity and you to sound like you're debating the merits of the aff" motif that I've had throughout my paradigm-- it applies to all debaters).

I oftentimes wonder how non-topical affs solve themselves. The negative should exploit this because I do feel comfortable voting neg on presumption. However, I won’t ever intervene to vote on presumption. That’s an argument that the debaters need to make.

Non-topical affs should have nuance & do line by line as well. Answer the neg’s args, frame the debate, and tell me why your aff in particular could not have been topical. You HAVE to have a defense of your model and not just say that framework is bad or else I will probably vote neg on presumption. The same basic idea applies here as it does everywhere else: the more generic you are, the more likely I am to vote against you.

Garbage/Hidden Stuff/Tricks: Nope. New affs are good, hiding aspec makes you a coward, death is bad, wipeout and/or spark in all of its various forms are indefensible, free will exists and I don't care if it doesn't. Make better arguments.

Cross-ex: I am becoming increasingly bored and frustrated with watching how this tends to go down. Unless I am judging a novice debate, questions like "did you read X card" or "where did you mark Y card" are counting as parts of cross-x. I tend to start the timer for cross-ex pretty quickly after speeches end (obviously take a sec to get water if you need to) so pay attention to that.

I pay attention & listen to CX but I do not flow it. Have a presence in CX & make an impact. I am listening.

Speaker points-- I do my best to moderate these based on the tournament I'm at and what division I'm in. That being said, I won’t lie—I am not a point fairy.

I will grant extra speaker points to people who number their arguments and correctly/aptly follow the numbering that has been established in the debate.

Paraphrasing from Shree Awsare-- I will not give you a 30.

29.8-- Top speaker
29.2-29.5-- You really impressed me and I expect you to be deep in the tournament
29-- I think you deserve to clear
28.3-- Not terrible but not super impressive
27.5-- Yikes
I will award the lowest possible points for people who violate the basic human dignities that people should be afforded while debating (e.g., non-black people don't say the N word).

I've also been known to give 20s to people who don't make arguments. I will not be giving you a 30; nobody gives a perfect speech.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me before the debate begins, or send me an email. I also do seriously invite conversation about the debate after it occurs-- post-rounds are oftentimes the most valuable instantiation of feedback, the best way to get better at debate, and important for improving intellectually. I know that post-rounds sometimes get heated, and I think we all get defensive sometimes when we're being pressed on things we've said (or think we've said) so I will likely consciously try to take deep breaths and relax if I feel myself getting heated during these times. This also means that I may take a second to respond to your questions because I am thinking. I also might take awkward pauses between words-- that's not because I don't think your question is important, I'm just trying to choose my words carefully so I can correctly convey my thoughts. I only post this here because I don't want anyone to feel like they're being attacked or anything for asking questions, and I apologize in advance if anything I say sounds like that.

Ethics Challenge Addendum:

I would strongly discourage ethics challenges in all but the most extreme instances. I don't want to adjudicate them, you don't want to be the team who makes the challenge, etc. If you notice something is wrong, please contact coaches and/or debaters and try to fix the problem rather than making it a challenge in round.

An ethics challenge is not a no-risk option for me. That is, when an ethics challenge is issued, the debate ends. I will clarify that the team issuing the challenge has issued one and then end the debate and adjudicate the challenge. I will either decide to vote for the team who issued the challenge or the team who the challenge was issued toward then and there. The debate will not continue for me under any circumstances.

An ethics challenge may be issued along one of three lines: either you have accused the other team of clipping cards, of misciting evidence, or of misrepresenting evidence. Nothing else will be considered an ethics challenge for me.

Clipping cards is defined as claiming to have read more or less of the evidence than one actually has. Please note that I do not follow along with evidence as the debate is occurring. Missing a single word/a few words is not enough. I will decide what constitutes enough of the card to be considered clipping.

Misciting evidence is understood as providing the incorrect author and/or date as well as missing the first author, source of publication, and date (at least the year). Please note that putting something like "the New York Times" instead of "Nate Silver" is acceptable for an authorship. Source of publication can be broad (article title, URL, book title). If the article is easily accessible, then it is acceptable, and I am likely to not vote on this ethics challenge if I don't determine this to have radically altered the debate. Again, I will determine what constitutes an incomplete or miscited citation if this becomes a relevant question.

I do not consider missing credentials to be unethical but I do consider those pieces of evidence to be incredibly weak.

Misrepresenting evidence is understood as inserting evidence which is missing lines or paragraphs within the parts of the initial article/book being read. So, for example, if you want to read the first and third paragraph from an article, you must leave the second paragraph in the evidence you read in the debate. This means that, for me, ellipses to indicate that parts of the card are missing or stating something like “pages 4-5 omitted” is unethical. Cards need to be full paragraphs.

Providing a single quote from a book or an article is not a card. As such, I will not consider it as you having introduced evidence and it is not unethical for me. However, not providing full paragraph pieces of evidence means your argument is substantially weaker for me (because, again, then you have not read evidence).

I will either decide to vote for the team who issued the challenge or the team who the challenge was issued toward. The debate will not continue for me under any circumstances. Please note that I will take this seriously; an ethics challenge is not something to be debated out in a round.

The speaker points I will give are as follows: 28.6 for the 2^nd speaker of the team I vote for, 28.5 for the 1^st speaker of the team I vote for, 28.4 for the 2^nd speaker of the team I do not vote for, 28.3 for the 1^st speaker of the team I do not vote for. My assumption in the event of an ethics violation is that you made an honest mistake and that you were not intentionally cheating. I do not understand ethics challenges to be the equivalent of academic dishonesty or worthy of any punishment besides my ballot being cast in that particular debate. I do not hold these challenges against you in future rounds nor do I believe that you should be in trouble with your debate coaches or schools.

Please note that what I have written here is designed for varsity debate only; that is, when judging novice and JV debates, I will be more lenient and talk through what's going on with the students and, depending on the situation, allow the debate to continue.

These are thoughts that are still evolving for me as I talk with more people. Please bear with me as I continue to think this out. (Also note that this caveat goes along well with the first statement in this section: I would prefer you not introduce an ethics violation unless it is a serious issue in that particular debate).

Please also note that these rules do not apply to my standards for threatening violence against another debater (physical or otherwise) or hurling slurs at your opponent. I will immediately end the round and give the lowest speaker points that Tab will allow me to in that situation.

Matt Liu

University of Wyoming

Last updated: 9-12-22

Email chain: mattliu929@gmail.com

Feb 2022 update: If your highlighting is incoherent gibberish, you will earn the speaker points of someone who said incoherent gibberish. The more of your highlighting that is incoherent, the more of your speech will be incoherent, and the less points you will earn. To earn speaker points, you must communicate coherent ideas.

If you want to read far more than necessary on my judging process: https://wyodebateroundup.weebly.com/blog/reflections-on-the-judging-process-inside-the-mind-of-a-judge

I put a pretty high premium on effective communication. Too many debaters do not do their evidence justice. You should not expect me to read your evidence after the round and realize it’s awesome. You should make sure I know it’s awesome while you read it. I find many debaters over-estimate the amount of ideas they believe they communicate to the judge. Debaters who concentrate on persuading the judge, not just entering arguments into the record, will control the narrative of the round and win my ballot far more often than those who don’t. I have tended to draw a harder line on comprehensibility than the average judge. I won’t evaluate evidence I couldn’t understand. I also don’t call clear: if you’re unclear, or not loud enough, I won’t intervene and warn you, just like I wouldn't intervene and warn you that you are spending time on a bad argument. Am I flowing? You're clear.

Potential biases on theory: I will of course attempt to evaluate only the arguments in the round, however, I'll be up front about my otherwise hidden biases. Conditionality- I rarely find that debaters are able to articulate a credible and significant impact. International actor fiat seems suspect. Uniform 50 state fiat seems illogical. Various process counterplans are most often won as legitimate when the neg presents a depth of evidence that they are germane to the topic/plan. Reject the arg not the teams seems true of nearly all objections other than conditionality. I will default to evaluating the status quo even if there is a CP in the 2NR. Non-traditional affirmatives- I'll evaluate like any other argument. If you win it, you win it. I have yet to hear an explanation of procedural fairness as an impact that makes sense to me (as an internal link, yes). None of these biases are locked in; in-round debating will be the ultimate determinant of an argument’s legitimacy.

Clock management: In practice I have let teams end prep when they begin the emailing/jumping process. Your general goal should be to be completely ready to talk when you say ‘end prep.’ No off-case counting, no flow shuffling, etc.

Cross-x is a speech. You get to try to make arguments (which I will flow) and set traps (which I will flow). Once cross-x is over I will stop listening. If you continue to try to ask questions it will annoy me- your speech time is up.

Pet-peeves: leaving the room while the other team is prepping for a final rebuttal, talking over your opponents. I get really annoyed at teams that talk loudly (I have a low threshold for what counts as loudly) during other teams speeches- especially when it’s derisive or mocking comments about the other team’s speech.

**standard operating procedure: 1) yes, if you are using an e-mail chain for speech docs, I would like to be on it: mikaela.malsin@gmail.com. The degree to which I look at them varies wildly depending on the round; I will often check a couple of cards for my own comprehension (because y'all need to slow down) during prep or sometimes during a heated cross-ex, but equally often I don't look at them at all. 2) After the debate, please compile all evidence that *you believe* to be relevant to the decision and e-mail them to me. I will sort through to decide which ones I need to read. A card is relevant if it was read and extended on an issue that was debated in the final rebuttals.

updated pre-Shirley, 2013 

Background: I debated for four years at Emory, completed my M.A. in Communication and coached at Wake Forest, and am now in my 2nd year of the Ph.D. program at Georgia.

global thoughts: I take judging very seriously and try very hard to evaluate only the arguments in a given debate, in isolation from my own beliefs. I'm not sure that I'm always successful. I'm not sure that the reverse is true either.  In the limited number of "clash" debates that I've judged, my decisions have been based on the arguments and not on predispositions based on my training, how I debated, or how my teams debate. 

speaker points: I will use the following scale, which (while obviously arbitrary to some degree)  I think is pretty consistent with how I've assigned points in the past and what I believe to represent the role of speaker points in debate. I have never assigned points based on whether I think a team "should clear" or "deserves a speaker award" because I don't judge the rest of the field in order to make that determination, I judge this particular debate. EDIT: I think the scale published for the Shirley is very close to what I was thinking here.

Below 27.5: The speaker has demonstrated a lack of  basic communication. 

27.5-27.9: The speaker demonstrates basic debate competency and argumentation skills. Some areas need substantial improvement.

28.0-28.4: The speaker demonstrates basic argumentation skills and a good grasp on the issues of importance in the debate. Usually shows 1-2 moments of strong strategic insight or macro-level debate vision, but not consistently. 

28.5-28.9: Very solid argumentative skills, grasps the important issues in the debate, demonstrates consistent strategic insight.

29-29.5: Remarkable argumentative skills, understands and synthesizes the key issues in the debate, outstanding use of cross-ex and/or humor.

29.6-29.9: The speaker stands out as exceptionally skilled in all of the above areas.

30: Perfection.

Critical arguments: My familiarity is greater than it used to be but by no means exhaustive.  I think  that the "checklist" probably matters on both sides.

Topicality: I believe in "competing interpretations" with the caveat that I think if the aff can win sufficient defense and a fair vision of the topic (whether or not it is couched in an explicit C/I of every word), they can still win. In other words: the neg should win not only a big link, but also a big impact. 

CP’s: Yes. The status quo is always a logical option, which means the CP can still go away after the round. (Edit: I am willing to stick the negative with the CP if the aff articulates, and the neg fails to overcome, a reason why.) Presumption is toward less change from the status quo. 

DA’s: Big fan. At the moment, I probably find myself slightly more in the “link first” camp, but uniqueness is certainly still important. There CAN be zero risk of an argument, but it is rare. More often, the risk is reduced to something negligible that fails to outweigh the other team's offense (edit: this last sentence probably belongs in the all-time "most obvious statements" Judge Philosophy Hall of Fame). 

Theory: RANT is the default. Probably neg-leaning on most issues, but I do think that we as a community may be letting the situation get a little out of control in terms of the numbers and certain types of CP’s. I think literature should guide what we find to be legitimate to the extent that that is both possible and beneficial. 

Good for speaker points: Strategic use of cross-examination, evidence of hard work, jokes about Kirk Gibson (edit: these must be funny) 

Bad for speaker points: Rudeness, lack of clarity, egregious facial hair.

natemilton@gmail.com

Background

I debated for four years in high school and three years at Liberty. I mostly debated a “CP and politics” type strategy on the neg and also enjoyed going for T and theory when it was strategic. I did read the K sometimes though. My favorite debates are large case debates with a DA or two.

General Philosophy:

I try my best to let the arguments in the debate determine how I evaluate the round although I will admit that I have biases that can influence how I view certain arguments. I have included some opinions that I hope you will find useful in specifically tailoring your arguments to me. I am flow centric. I enjoy clash. I believe that both sides should have an equal opportunity to win the round, so while not defending a “policy action” (ie not having a plan text) doesn’t mean you will automatically lose in front of me, I believe that if pressed, you should have some sort of a division of “ground” that enables the opposing side an equal chance to win (I believe in “fairness”). I believe that having to argue in favor of something you don’t believe is beneficial (“switch side debate is good”). I have a minimal threshold for arguments for me to evaluate them, they must have a warrant that makes sense. It is important for you to talk about impacts and compare them to the other side’s impacts on all arguments. I do not evaluate arguments that aren’t in the last two rebuttals. I don’t think debates should get personal, it should be about the arguments, not the people. I try not to have to read evidence, I prefer it to be explained and impacted in the debate, “call for this card after the round” is not an argument, explaining the warrants of the evidence in question is a more productive use of your time. Don't try to talk too fast (speed is overrated) and you probably shouldn't use profanity.

T + Theory

I will vote on T/Theory. I lean towards competing interpretations on T and that Condo is usually ok (1 CP and 1 K). I ere Aff on T, Neg on Theory. Please remember to impact these arguments, it’s not a “Voter” just because you say it is. T is not a reverse voter. Please be aware of argument interaction between different theory arguments.

Cross-Examination:

CX starts (my timer starts) promptly after the end of the constructive speech. Open CX is fine, however I feel that it is best to not engage in it whenever possible. I think the CX is an underutilized speech, and good questions are often not turned into arguments, it is important to turn CX questions and answers into arguments during a speech. I don’t flow CX but I do pay attention. CX greatly influences how I award my speaker points.

CP’s

I like clever PIC’s (not word PIC’s). I ran SC CP and politics a lot. However, I’ve been doing some thinking about agent CP’s, and the more I think about them the more I think they aren’t competitive (if the agent is within the USFG). Obviously this is a debate to be had and I can be persuaded either way. I am not a fan of delay or multiple CP’s (the exception to the multiple CP’s is if you are reading advantage CP’s and/or unconditional CP’s). In the 1NC, please SLOW DOWN when reading your CP text so I know what the CP is, thank you in advance. For conditional CP’s, unless the 2NR explicitly says that the SQ is still an option, if you go for the CP I transition into Plan vs CP framework in which the CP must be net beneficial to warrant a neg ballot.

K’s

I am not the biggest fan of the K. That being said, I will and have vote/d for/on the K, I would say that I just have a high threshold for the level of explanation that needs to occur for these kinds of arguments to be persuasive and make sense. I do not appreciate a bunch of post modern jargon; the simpler you can explain your K the better. Please explain what your alternative is and what voting for you means/does, what the role of the ballot is, and why all of that is more important than an endorsement of the Aff. I find that when I don't vote for a K it is usually because the explanation of what the alternative is/does is lacking. While I do not find some K's to be very persuasive, just because the debate makes me grumpy(ier) doesn't mean I won't vote for you, I'll probably just complain about it afterwards (although I will happily provide you with a list of my least favorite K's upon request). I will say that I very much dislikes K's based on a link of omission. If in doubt, read what you are best at and most comfortable with and tell me not to be so grumpy.

Paperless

Please be as prompt and courteous as possible. DO NOT: intentionally include 9 million cards that you aren’t going to read into your speech document (please feel free to ask for a new speech document with just the marked cards that are read, no charge), intentionally disorganize your speech document, or steal prep-time (no one should be doing anything during “tech” time). I am rather trusting on this issue so feel free to police yourselves, I won’t hold it against you if you call your opponents out (even if they are behaving).

MISC

I do not prompt for clarity, if I can’t understand you, I will stop flowing and make a face at you. I believe that judge adaptation is an important part of debate and so if you have a question about anything I have not covered here, please feel free to ask, but I will get angry if it’s clear you haven’t read this.

When in doubt: "Make with the good debating, not the bad debating."

Last Updated 7/19/2024.

Pronouns: Xe/Xem/Xey. I need to be on the email chain -Nyx.Debate@gmail.com. Mostly debated the K, will listen to any type of debate.

If there is stuff in the chain you don't want shared with others, I would still appreciate it if you could email it to me separately - I'll make sure to delete the files after the round. It helps me to physically see what you are doing as I flow. If you don't want to send me stuff, you should not send me stuff.

I started debate as a novice at Johnson County Community College -> debated/coached at the University of Central Oklahoma -> Independent Debate Work -> Coached at Texas Tech -> Coached at University of Texas - San Antonio -> Current Coach at KU.

How can I make the debate better/easier for you, the debater? Let me know if you need any accommodations, I'll do my best to make them happen.

Paradigm Proper:

I will listen to any debate. Please, do whatever you do best, just explain it to me. Why is your aff/neg amazing, and why do I need to vote for it? I love impact comparison and think it should be done more. When looking at evidence comparison, if I can be persuaded that an author has a flawed epistemology, it's hard for me to justify voting for said scholarship. I'm more interested in voting on deep pieces of evidence that are solid rather than short two sentence thoughts.

I'm fine with speed, especially if I have a doc that I can follow along with. I will yell clear if I can't understand you, and on the third clear I will stop flowing.

I'm all about the game - I can go either way on condo.

I like unique PICs - the aff should be able to defend their use of rhetoric in the debate.

Evidence needs a claim, warrant, and impact. "Write my ballot for me" by making it clear to me in the last speech what really matters in the round and why I should vote on it.

Nuanced evidence explanation is key to me. If I can't figure out how the aff uniquely makes the K worse, it's an uphill battle to win the K. On the flip side, I don't think the aff should get to duck out of links by simply saying "oh, that's not us." Warranted evidence explaining why these things are true or not is critical.

Open CX is fine.

Eric Morris, DoF - Missouri State – 29th Year Judging

++++ NDT Version ++++ (Updated 10-22-2019)

(NFALD version: https://forensicstournament.net/MissouriMule/18/judgephil)

Add me to the email - my Gmail is ermocito

I flow CX because it is binding. I stopped recording rounds but would appreciate a recording if clipping was accused.

Be nice to others, whether or not they deserve it.

I prefer line by line debate. People who extend a DA by by grouping the links, impacts, UQ sometimes miss arguments and get lower points. Use opponent's words to signpost.

Assuming aff defends a plan:

Strong presumption T is a voting issue. Aff should win you meet neg's interp or a better one. Neg should say your arguments make the aff interp unreasonable. Topic wording or lit base might or might not justify extra or effects T, particularly with a detailed plan advocate.

High threshold for anything except T/condo as voting issues*. More willing than some to reject the CP, K alts, or even DA links on theory. Theory is better when narrowly tailored to what happened in a specific debate. I have voted every possible way on condo/dispo, but 3x Condo feels reasonable. Under dispo, would conceding "no link" make more sense than conceding "perm do both" to prove a CP did not compete?

Zero link, zero internal link, and zero solvency are possible. Zero impact is rare.

Large-scale terminal impacts are presumed comparable in magnitude unless you prove otherwise. Lower scale impacts also matter, particularly as net benefits.

Evidence is important, but not always essential to initiate an argument. Respect high-quality opponent evidence when making strategic decisions.

If the plan/CP is vague, the opponent gets more input into interpreting it. CX answers, topic definitions, and the literature base helps interpret vague plans, advocacy statements, etc. If you advocate something different from your cards, clarity up front is recommended.

I am open to explicit interps of normal means (who votes for and against plan and how it goes down), even if they differ from community norms, provided they give both teams a chance to win.

Kritiks are similar to DA/CP strategies but if the aff drops some of the "greatest hits" they are in bad shape. Affs should consider what offense they have inside the neg's framework interp in case neg wins their interp. K impacts, aff or neg, can outweigh or tiebreak.

Assuming aff doesn't defend a plan:

Many planless debates incentivize exploring important literature bases, but afer decades, we should be farther along creating a paradigm that can account for most debates. Eager to hear your contributions to that! Here is a good example of detailed counter-interps (models of debate). http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php/topic,2345.0.html

Impact turns are presumed relevant to kritikal args. "Not my pomo" is weak until I hear a warranted distinction. I prefer the negative to attempt direct engagement (even if they end up going for T). It can be easier to win the ballot this way if the aff overcovers T. Affs which dodge case specific offense are particularly vulnerable on T (or other theory arguments).

Topicality is always a decent option for the neg. I would be open to having the negative go for either resolution good (topicality) or resolution bad (we negate it). Topicality arguments not framed in USFG/framework may avoid some aff offense.

In framework rounds, the aff usually wins offense but impact comparison should account for mitigators like TVA's and creative counter-interps. An explicit counter-interp (or model of debate) which greatly mitigates the limits DA is recommended - see example below. Accounting for topic words is helpful. TVA's are like CP's because they mitigate whether topics are really precluded by the T interp.

If I were asked to design a format to facilitate K/performance debate, I would be surprised. After that wore off, I would propose a season-long list of concepts with deep literature bases and expect the aff to tie most into an explicit 1AC thesis. Such an approach could be done outside of CEDA if publicized.

This was too short?

* Some ethical issues, like fabrication, are voting issues, regardless of line by line.

Former debater and now coach for GMU

Top Level Things:

Tech > truth.

Depth > breadth.

I will default to util if no other paradigm is provided.

I will judge kick the CP/alt unless 2AR tells me not to and 2NR says nothing.

Do not include cards in the card doc if they were not referenced in the 2NR/2AR but they do answer arguments your opponents made in their speech. If you didn't make the arg, I'm not going to read the card.

Evidence quality is important because ideally both teams should be doing card comparisons; however, if no comparisons/indicts are made, I will generally only look to the claims/warrants in the card.

CPs/CP Theory:

I lean heavily neg on condo, especially against new affs. If there is offense, defense and a counter interpretation in the block, I don't think the 1AR should extend it unless its really egregious (eg. 1NC reads a lot of condo, block kicks/combines various CPs or planks of CPs to create a new CP; or something to that effect). Unless 2AR spends all 6 minutes on it, I won't vote for it.

Other theory stuff:

If theory comes down to reasons that the specific CP is a voter, I view it as a reason to reject the arg and not the team. To be clear, I will not vote someone down for reading a certain type of CP or alt based on theory args alone.

Delay & consult CPs are almost always theoretically abusive, 2AR on this plus perm do CP is a good move when extended well. I lean aff on perm do the CP against process CPs, but if the aff drops a definition or doesn't answer something, I will vote neg.

PICs Good------------X-----------PICs Bad

Process CPs Good-----------X----------Process CPs Bad

DAs:

Bad DAs can be beaten with analytics + an impact defense card.

Uniqueness isn't given enough credit in a lot of 2NRs/2ARs. I value thumpers a lot, and if neg mishandles it, I think the aff should cash in.

Case:

Case debates are good. Solvency presses are underutilized.

I enjoy good debates about internal link differentiation between the aff and the case turn. Even better when there's a CP involved that avoids the turn.

Ks v Policy Affs:

Aff gets to weigh the aff unless the 2AC doesn't make that arg.

I prefer Ks that have specific links to the topic or plan action significantly more than Ks that have state or omission links.

Please explain how the alt solves the links/impacts. If the explanation is vague and the aff has cards that say it can't, I will find it hard to weigh neg offense.

Outside of something that was blatantly offensive, I believe that all language is contextual and words only mean as much as the meaning attached to them. Thus, args like "we didn't use it in that context" are convincing to me. I can be persuaded to vote them down, but I am going to be more biased the other way.

K affs v Policy Team:

I'm fine with most things, and I will try to evaluate the debate fairly on a line-by-line basis. That said, framing arguments and impact calc are very important. Also, if the aff has no connection to the resolution, I'm more likely to be persuaded by certain neg framework arguments about limits/ground.

FOR COLLEGE TOURNAMENTS: ukydebate@gmail.com

FOR HS TOURNAMENTS:devanemdebate@gmail.com

My name is Devane (Da-Von) Murphy, and I'm the Associate Director of Debate at the University of Kentucky. My conflicts are Newark Science, Coppell High School, University High School, Rutgers-Newark, Dartmouth College, and the University of Kentucky. I debated 4 years of policy in high school and for some time in college, however, I've coached Lincoln-Douglas as well as Public Forum debaters so I should be good on all fronts. I ran all types of arguments in my career, from Politics to Deleuze and back, and my largest piece of advice to you with me in the back of the room is to run what you are comfortable with. Also, I stole this from Elijah Smith's philosophy

"If you are a policy team, please take into account that most of the "K" judges started by learning the rules of policy debate and competing traditionally. I respect your right to decide what debate means to you, but debate also means something to me and every other judge. Thinking about the form of your argument as something I may not be receptive to is much different from me saying that I don't appreciate the hard work you have done to produce the content"

2025 edit

Happy New Year yall! I felt it was important to note a recent change I've noticed in myself regarding my growth as a judge. I have undoubtedly become more truth over tech as a judge. This is ironic as I'm a much better flow these days than I ever had been. But this does mean that I don't see the "drop" as the most critical thing for my decisions as much as my colleagues.

***Emory LD Edit***

I'm a policy debater in training but I'm not completely oblivious to the different terms and strategies used in LD. That being said, I hate some of the things that are supposed to be "acceptable" in the activity. First, I HATE frivolous Theory debates. I will vote for it if I absolutely have to but I have VERY HIGH threshold and I will not be kind to your speaker points. Second, if your thing is to do whatever a "skeptrigger" is or something along that vein, please STRIKE me. It'd be a waste of your time as I have nothing to offer you educationally. Another argument that I probably will have a hard time evaluating is constitutivism/truth testing. Please compare impacts and tell me why I should vote for you. Other than that, everything else here is applicable. Have fun and if you make me laugh, I'll boost your speaks.

DA's: I like these kinds of debates. My largest criticism is that if you are going to read a DA in front of me, please give some form of impact calculus that helps me to evaluate which argument should be prioritized with my ballot. And I'm not just saying calculus to mean timeframe, probability or magnitude but rather to ask for a comparison between the impacts offered in the round. (just a precursor but this is necessary for all arguments not just DA's)

CP's: I like CP's however for the abusive ones (and yes I'm referring to Consult, Condition, Multi-Plank, Sunset, etc.) Theoretical objections persuade me. I'm not saying don't run these in front of me however if someone runs theory please don't just gloss over it because it will be a reason to reject the argument and if its in the 2NR the team.

K's: I like the K too however that does not mean that I am completely familiar with the lit that you are reading as arguments. The easiest way to persuade me is to have contextualized links to the aff as well as not blazing through the intricate details of your stuff. Not to say I can't flow speed (college debate is kinda fast) I would rather not flow a bunch of high theory which would mean that I won't know what you're talking about. You really don't want me to not know what you're talking about. SERIOUSLY. I will lower your speaker points without hesitation

Framework: I'm usually debating on the K side of this, but I will vote on either side. If the negative is winning and impacting their decision-making impact over the impacts of the aff then I would vote negative. On the flip side, if the aff wins that the interpretation is a targeted method of skewing certain conversations and wins offense to the conversation, I would vote aff. This being said I go by my flow. Also, I'm honestly not too persuaded by fairness as an impact, but the decision-making parts of the argument intrigue me.

K-Affs/Performance: I'm 100% with these. However, they have to be done the right way. I don't wanna hear poetry spread at me at high speeds nor do I want to hear convoluted high theory without much explanation. That being said, I love to watch these kinds of debates and have been a part of a bunch of them.

Theory: I'll vote on it if you're impacting your standards. If you're spreading blocks, probably won't vote for it.

Last updated 9-9-24

Please include me in your speech doc thread. My email is johnfnagy@gmail.com

New for Fall of 2024: I've decided that the arguments i have on my flow are going to account for the vast majority of how i calculate who won the debate. That means you need to flesh out the warrants of your best or most important evidence in the actual debate. I am finished reading evidence docs sent after the debate. Don't bother, i won't read it. Tell me why your evidence is good or your opponents evidence is bad during the debate. At most i'll look at up to five cards after a round is over. Am making a decision to value the arguments made on the flow. Pref me accordingly.

If I am judging you online, you MUST slow down. I will not get all of your arguments, particularly analytics, on the flow. You have been warned.

I enjoy coaching and judging novice debates. I think the novice division is the most important and representative of what is good in our community. I don't support rules that mandate what arguments novices can and cannot run at tournaments.

I really like judging debates where the debaters speak clearly, make topic specific arguments, make smart analytic arguments, attack their opponent’s evidence, and debate passionately. I cut a lot of cards so I know a lot about the topic. I don’t know much about critical literature.

Framework debates: I don’t enjoy judging them. Everyone claims their educational. Everyone claims their being excluded. It’s extremely difficult to make any sense of it. I would rather you find a reason why the 1AC is a bad idea. There’s got to be something. I can vote for a no plan-text 1AC, if you’re winning your arguments. With that being said, am not your ideal judge for such 1AC’s because I don’t think there’s any out of round spill-over or “solvency.”

Topicality: Am ok with topicality. Competing interpretations is my standard for evaluation. Proving in-round abuse is helpful but not a pre-requisite. If am judging in novice at an ADA packet tournament, it will be very difficult to convince me to vote on topicality. Because there are only 2-3 1AC's to begin with, there's no predictability or limits arguments that make any sense.

Disadvantages: Like them. The more topic specific the better.

Counterplans: Like them. The more specific to the 1AC the better. Please slow down a little for the CP text.

Kritiks: ok with them. I don’t know a lot about any critical literature, so know that.

Rate of Delivery: If I can’t flow the argument, then it’s not going on my flow. And please slow down a little bit for tags.

Likes: Ohio State, Soft Power DA’s, case debates

Dislikes: Michigan, debaters that are not comprehensible, being asked to read tons of cards after a debate

Nate Nys
Affiliations: Blake and Wake Forest

Yes, I want to be on your email chain: nate.nys@gmail.com

Quick update for the Wake High School Tournament:

I haven't been as involved with debate recently so please explain any acronyms or other specifics related to the resolution. I did very little topic research so it is very important for you to give me context throughout the round.

I am no longer as adept at evaluating policy vs policy and theory debates. My lack of topic knowledge and lack of time spent flowing these debates makes me uncomfortable judging them. This does NOT mean that I am biased against policy or theory-based arguments - just that your level of explanation needs to be much higher for me to have an understanding of what's going on.

General Information (useful if you're checking this 5 minutes before the round starts)

- I'm relatively apathetic to styles of argumentation within debate. You should not be dissuaded from a particular strategy because I'm judging.

- Yes, I'll listen to aff's that don't defend the hypothetical enactment of a federal policy. I will also listen to some variation of a topicality argument in response to such aff's.

- Debate is a game, you should play to win. I'm not terribly invested in how you accomplish that goal.

- I've predominantly debated critical arguments, however, I do have a strong background in policy v. You shouldn't pref me because you think I'm an automatic ballot on the K.

How I View Debate

I see policy debate as a game and approach it as such. I believe both teams want to win a ballot and will attempt to do so through varying argumentative strategies. I have very little interest in taking strong ideological positions on the functionality of debate and the strategies employed within the activity. Debate presents a unique opportunity to adopt and defend a myriad of positions with varying epistemological backgrounds against an opponent who has a strategic incentive to argue against you. If your arguments meet my admittedly subjective understanding of what "strategic" means, then you're far more likely to win than an opponent who hasn't engaged with the core argumentative tenants within the round.

Critical vs Policy

In my opinion, this subjective divide is bad and contributes to large amounts of dogmatism on both sides of the binary. Critical theory, political science, identity studies, environmental issues, and a litany of other theoretical positions all hold at least some relevance to the world. As such, the exclusion or prioritization of any of these lenses is against what I believe to be "good" debate. If you're defending a position that requires a federal policy be implemented, then actually defend your theory. "Extinction is bad" is a very persuasive argument under that theoretical frame and should be advanced through the debate. Yes, engaging with an opponent's theoretical frame of the world is necessary, however, having offense is exceptionally important and should be prioritized before engaging with the micro-details of an opponent's theory.

Strategy

I'm ambivalent toward what you want to read in debate, whether that's a multi-planked process counterplan, an identity-centered performance, or a DA with seven internal links. It should go without saying that large blocks of topicality, counterplan, and kritik extensions should be communicated in a way that I can flow. Although I don't have many opinions set-in-stone, I would say theory is a slightly uphill battle when I'm judging, mostly because I see it as an aversion to the substance of the debate itself. Substantive theory debates are obviously more persuasive and easier to vote on.

Other Things

- Speaker points and speech lengths aren't up to the debaters.

- Zero risk is possible and presumption is under-utilized.

- I appreciate intense debating where I can see everyone in the round has a vested interest in winning the debate.

- CX is supremely important. I appreciate when debaters make their opponents look incompetent. This does not mean you can/should be a horrible person.

I've been the Director of Debate at the US Naval Academy since 2005. I debated at Catholic University in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Put me on the doc thread: danielle.verney@gmail.com. Please use the wiki as much as possible!

Four things I hate--this number has gone up:

1. WASTING TIME IN DEBATES--what is prep time? This isn't an existential question. Prep time is anything you do to prepare for a debate. That means when it's start time for the debate, everyone should be READY TO START--restrooms visited, water gathered, stand assembled, doc thread started, timer in hand, snacks ready for your judge (jk). Any of these things that need to happen during a debate are technically prep time and thus should probably happen either during your prep or the other team's prep. The 2:15 decision deadline is an unequivocal good because it makes me 100% more likely to get a reasonable amount of sleep at night which makes me a better judge/coach/administrator/human, but y'all need to get better at managing your time to make it work.

2. Elusiveness (especially in Cross-Ex but during speeches too): “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer. Taking your questioner on a goose-chase for the answer to a simple question is not. Pretending you don't know how the plan works or what it does or that there are a whole bunch of ways it MIGHT happen is not persuasive to me, it just makes it look like you don't know what's going on. Answer the counterplan; tell me it's cheating--I'm one of the like 5 judges in the community who believe you.

3. Debaters who get mad that I didn’t read their one piece of really sweet evidence. If you want me to understand the warrants of the evidence and how they compare to the warrants of the other team’s evidence, maybe you should talk about them in one of your speeches. Read less bad cards and talk about the good ones more--tell me how your one good card is better than their 12 bad ones.

4. Rudeness. Don’t be rude to your partner, don’t be rude to the other team, and DEFINITELY don’t be rude to me. Excessive cursing is frowned upon (louder for the people in the back). Conversely, if you are nice, you will probably be rewarded with points. Entertain me. I enjoy pop culture references, random yelling of "D7", humorous cross-x exchanges, and just about any kind of joke. I spend a LOT of time judging debates, please make it enjoyable, or at least not uncomfortable.

Performance/Ks of Debate:

I’m going to be painfully honest here and say that I don’t like performance debate or critiques of current debate practices. I’m also going to state the obvious and say that I really like policy debate. Why? Well, I guess it’s the same reason that some people root for the Yankees over the Red Sox—I’m evil. Actually, it’s because I think there are a lot of specific educational benefits to traditional policy debate that you can’t get anywhere else. There might be a lot of educational benefits to performances, but I think that you can get those benefits from doing other activities too, which isn’t necessarily true of policy-style debate. If this makes you want to strike me, I heartily encourage you to do so.

HOWEVER--the opposing team would need to advance those arguments to win the debate. Do I think status quo debate is good? Yes. Will I vote on "debate is good" without that argument having been made? No. If the opposing team concedes the framework debate or doesn't advance "status quo debate good" as their framework arg, I'm not going to vote on it, obviously; the debate would proceed as agreed to by both teams. I have judged these debates before and have voted on the arguments in the round.

Kritiks:

Whatevs, if it’s your thing, you can do it in front of me. I’m pretty smart, which means I attempt to avoid reading post-modern philosophy as much as possible, and the only languages I currently speak with any level of fluency are English and Pig Latin. This means you should probably SLOW DOWN and find a convenient time to define any words that are Greek/German/made up by an aging beatnik. The problem I have with most Ks is that they have totally sweet, awesome impacts but there’s little link to the aff (or no harder link to the aff than to the status quo), so maybe that’s something that both the aff and neg should work on in the round. I really prefer Kritiks with alternatives, and I prefer the alternative not be “reject the plan”.

Counterplans:

I think lots of counterplans (consult, international actor, conditions, etc) are probably cheating. As a director of a small school, I don't have a huge problem with cheating if you can defend it and do it well. I wouldn't make this the "A strat" for me if you've got other options, but I appreciate that there sometimes aren't any and I promise not to throw things or set the ballot on fire if you've gotta roll with it.

Not to sound like a grumpy old person (though I am) but I think conditionality run amok is hurting debate. I'm probably okay with 1 CP, 1 K, and the status quo as an option until the 2nr (test the rez from a variety of standpoints, etc). Any more than that and you're pushing my buttons. I'm about as likely to "judge kick" a CP for you as I am to kick a winning field goal for the Steelers (not gonna happen).

Disads:
There’s nothing better than a good disad. What do I mean by a good disad? Well, it should have a pretty clear, and ideally pretty specific, link to the affirmative. It should also (and here’s the part lots of debaters forget about) have some form of internal link that goes from the link to the impact. Aff—if the neg doesn’t have one of those things, you might want to point it out to me.

If your disad makes my internal BS-ometer go off I'm gonna tank your points.


Topicality/Other Procedurals:
I don’t evaluate T like it’s a disad, which I think is the current fashionable thing to say, because unlike lots of people, I don’t think your aff advantages can outweigh T in the way that the aff could outweigh a disad. So I don’t focus as much on the “best” interpretation—if the aff interp is good but not as good as the neg’s, the aff will probably win in front of me. This means I think the neg really needs to focus on the ground and limits debate—here is where you can persuade me that something is really bad.

I think topics are becoming more broad and vague, and understand negative frustration at attempting to engage in a debate about the plan's mechanism or what the plan actually does (often the very best parts of a debate in my opinion). I feel like I can be fairly easily persuaded to vote against a team that just uses resolutional language without a description of what that means in a piece of solvency evidence or a cross-examination clarification. I think neg teams will need to win significant ground loss claims to be successful in front of me (can't just roll with agent cps key) but I think I am more easily persuaded on these arguments than I have been in the past.

Tom O’Gorman – Mary Washington 2018 Update
Navy Debate Husband for 9 years, CUA debater for 4 years – D7 for life!

TLDR: DAs, Ks, T, most CPs fine. Non-T affs should strike. Be nice. Not super uptight about paperless prep, but don’t abuse it. Yes, I would like to be included on the email chain – my email is tomogorman@gmail.com

D7 2019 update: I think I am fine with the ESR CP if its just a policy shift/plain XO (e.g. declaratory NFU), and less fine with it when teams start attaching planks to make it more permanently binding (e.g. OLC opinion). I think Affs should justify that the Prez should not have power to make XYZ decision rather than merely Trump's XYZ decision is bad, but Negs are definitely headed towards stealing ground if they have the Prez surrender the power to make decisions rather than simply change the current decision (this also seems to have real tension with the flex da which is usually, and oddly, the net benefit). Obviously, has to be debated out - but these are my current leanings.

ASPEC:

Normally, I would be fine with USFG but given the 2018/2019 topic is specifically whether the other branches should restrict the executive branch I think you need to do more on this topic. Ideally you would just spec Congress or the Judiciary and be ready to answer the CP. At minimum you should be willing to spec which you will defend unless the Neg runs a Congress/Judiciary CP - and then if the Neg does so I think perm do the CP is a debatable position.

I do think the Neg needs to set this up in CX (or pre-round questioning when I am in the room). I don't think the loss of pre-round prep is abusive - the aff is either a statutory or a judicial restriction - prep both.

CPs:

I am skeptical of the ESR CP, it feels similar to object fiat, but I haven't had enough rounds with it to be sure. see update up top

I am idiosyncratic in that I think advocating perms even if the Neg kicks the CP seems reasonable. Many of the warrants for condo good would also apply to advocating the perm. I am open to being persuaded that perm is just a test of competitiveness; therefore the Aff cannot advocate it (and if Aff states its only a test this is all irrelevant). But, if contested, a warranted argument would need to be made for that position. If no one makes a statement one way or another until the 2AR, I am going to let the Aff do it and feel about as sympathetic to the Neg as if the Aff had never asked the status of the CP (i.e. not at all)

I highly prefer CPs that have specific solvency advocates and net benefits that reference topic literature. I am skeptical of CPs that rely on very generic solvency advocates and/or compete entirely on generic disads (usually politics) Nonetheless, I more often than not end up voting with the Neg in CP debates because theory is so poorly developed by the Aff. Most theory blips are warrantless and question begging (in the pedantic original sense, e.g. to argue the CP steals your ground assumes the conclusion that it was your ground which is the argument being contested). I would much prefer 2-3 actual sentences to 5-6 blips. Attempting to contextualize the CP's theoretical legitimacy in light of this specific topic is extremely desirable.

As to Condo, in general I am fine with the sort of ad hoc norm we have developed of up to 2 CPs/Ks (total - not each) and the squo, and less fine as the number of conditional advocacies increase beyond that (or if they start developing strong contradictions between eachother)– but that’s just biases – willing to vote either way. To me, by default, Condo means that if you are extending the CP/K in the 2NR you are stuck with it. If you want me to judge kick I need you to tell me so explicitly earlier in the debate. I hear "status quo is always an option" as 2NR has option to kick the CP, not as judge can kick after 2AR. So be even more explicit than that if you mean judge kick is an option.

Disads:

Disads are good. Usually consider the link debate more important than the uniqueness debate, but both matter. Try or die is usually a way of saying we are losing. Debaters would do well to a) question terminal impacts more (particularly since the internal links at the nuke war/extinction level are often highly tendentious and b) leverage the lower levels more. Stopping one patriarchal practice almost certainly does not stop all patriarchal practices. Likewise while it possible that an act of nuclear terrorism sparks WW III and extinction, its also very likely that cooler heads in the major powers prevail and while there is some war its more like Afghanistan + Iraq than WW III. This doesn’t mean I don’t like big impacts, it just means I am more likely to see them as increasing the risk of the terminal impact by a percent or two than directly causing then end of days, and, therefore more grounded systemic impacts can trump them. War, recession, oppression, environmental destruction et. al are all bad things even if humanity survives. Given all this I am most likely to care about probability as an impact framing device and put it before magnitude or timeframe.

Flowing:

I am an ok flow, but I definitely cannot flow author names I may not be familiar with at high speed. If you refer to something later as the X evidence without extending the warrant of that evidence as well I may have no idea what you are talking about; therefore extend evidence by more than author + year.

This includes in CX. I do not follow along in the speech doc, and generally do not even look at it until after the debate is over. You need to make what you are talking about clear to someone who is not looking at the evidence at the time you are talking.

Framework:

I am not sure what this means anymore it usually means one of the following.

Aff is Not T and/or reads a T plan text but doesn’t defend implementation of that text; therefore Vote Neg. I agree – and am strongly biased in this – you should probably make the T component explicit.

Ignore the DA/K, its irrelevant/unfair – I am not likely to believe the strong version of this argument, instead take as your starting point the next option and frame your arguments to outweighing instead of excluding.

The K o/w the DA/Advantage (and vice versa) – awesome, guidance and impact framing is central.

Kritiks:

The key issue for winning a kritik debate on the negative in front of me is the link debate. Good negatives will be able to identify specific cards, phrases, concepts of the Aff and re-contextualize them in the context of the K. Big K overviews are often unhelpful to me as they spend too much time on the general story of the K and too little time on the link or specific answers to the K alt is meaningless/utopian. K Affs are great as long as they are topical.

Overviews:

Bad overviews highlight the speaker’s team’s impact and mumble something about timeframe, probability and magnitude, but basically skim over everything the other team will go for. Good overviews compare the speaker’s team’s impacts directly with the other teams. Best overviews highlight the key arguments and their interactions that determine each sides impacts and why that means the speaker’s team wins. (Example: bad overview - CP solves 100% of case and DA is the biggest impact in the round. Good overview – Even if there is a solvency differential to CP its small and DA o/w b/c xyz. Best overview – there is at best a small solvency differential to the CP b/c we are winning argument X. The risk of the D/A is high b/c y and their responses don’t address that. Risk of D/A o/w solvency differential b/c Z.) I am a better judge for people who narrow things down and tell stories rather than go for a lot of arguments.

T:

Team Reasonability – although for me that means that there is a presumption in favor of the aff counter interpretation, and that it is a Neg burden to prove the Aff’s interpretation bad – not merely not as good as the Neg’s interpretation.

Yes, you do have to be topical in front of me. Some leeway on creative counter -interpretations, but that does not mean topic as metaphor or free word association. Resolutional is another way of saying not topical.

ADA packet thing; I have seen people say that unlikely to vote on T because packet affs are obviously predictable. This makes negative sense to me. The Packet is intended to teach arguments including T (hence why the T files were included). So I don't see why that would be a persuasive answer at all. Happy to vote on T even if Aff is well known, in the packet or on the wiki, if the Neg wins the line by line.

Damien HS '12
Gonzaga University '16

UPDATED: 1/9/22

I debated back between 2008-2016 in both high school and college at Damien and Gonzaga respectively. I am a Ph.D student in Philosophy and Cognitive Science, so when I say that I evaluate arguments, I mean it. Debate is about communication of arguments, meaning it’s about the arguments you articulate that I can understand.

You can do anything you want in a debate, but remember that I have to be able to recognize it as an argument for or against something. This means that, you should have some claim and some way to defend that claim. In terms of literature bases, I am familiar with both old school policy and K debate, as well as the more contemporary versions of each.

We all have some biases, so here is a few of the things that are generally true about me: I was both a 2N and a 2A, equally. I almost always default to evaluating if the Aff wins the case debate first. I think the negative can do anything that challenges the Aff as being a good idea, including the epistemic and ontological framework underlying it. I think conditionality is good. I think alternatives and CP’s should be functionally competitive not necessarily textually competitive. I am not white, and I do not have any white guilt. I think language and arguments are a tool to be used, and therefore have ascribed (i.e. not static) meaning. I think clash is good. I think fairness should be preserved. I think policy implementation matters and acting as policymakers looking for the best course of action is good. I think that perms can be more than tests of competition. I think that debate is about argument and communication. I think that it is your burden to make something understandable to me. I think that there should be offense and defense in a debate. I will vote on any argument, so long as I have a reason to do so, and it is your burden to give me an argument to vote for.

I try to mitigate my bias whenever I can, and try to ask myself if I am making a judgement based on what was said in the debate. So I try to be as objective as possible, and find that I tend to have this, if you want to call it, a bias towards fairness in-round and in competition.

drmosbornesq@gmail.com

My judging paradigm has evolved a great deal over time. These days, I have very few set opinions about args. I used to think I had a flawless flow and a magnet mind but now I can't follow each little detail and/or extremely nuanced or shrouded arguments with 101% accuracy like once upon a time. Still pretty good tho lol. And that said, I believe I've come to prioritize debaters' decisions more than ever and try harder than ever to base my decision on what debaters are trying to make happen in the round, and how well they do it, as opposed to how I logically add up what occurred. No judge can totally eliminate their process of sorting things out or their lived personal experience but I try to judge rounds as the debaters tell me to judge them, and with the tools they make available to me. I do think debate is about debaters, so I try to limit my overall judge agency to an extent. But sometimes my experience with traditional policy debate matters and favors a team. Sometimes my lived experience as a brown dude effects my encounter of an argument. These things happen and they are happening with all of your judges whether they admit it or you know it or not. I competed with "traditional policy arguments" (which, frankly, I am unsure still exist #old) but by now I have voted for and coached stupidly-traditional, traditional, mildly-traditional, non-traditional, and anti-traditional arguments in high-stakes rounds for a ton of programs in high school, college, internationally, in different eras, dimensions, all kinds of shi*. If you think your reputation matters in how I see the round, don't pref me. If you or your coaches are used to attacking in the post-round, you're gonna play yourself because I'll either be 101% and crush you or I won't care and I'll just mock you. Debate's a game but we are people so we should treat each other with respect. Self-control is one of the hallmarks of critical thinking and a disciplined intellect; if you cannot make peace with results in a subjective activity, you are simply not an elite debater, imho. Take it or leave it. Good luck to all debaters, seriously -- it's a hell of a thing.

DR. SYDNEY PASQUINELLI

• Director of Debate @ Wayne State University
• Program Director of the Detroit Urban Debate League
• BA- Wayne State University
• MA - Wake Forest University
• PHD - University of Pittsburgh
• she/her
• email chains: wayneCXdocs@gmail.com

Stylistics:

- I like debates with a lot of direct clash and impact calculus.

- I am very flow-oriented, and I often vote on based on "tech over truth." In other words, I like debates where teams debate LBL, and exploit the other team's errors and use technical concessions to get ahead strategically.

- I really dislike tag-teaming in CX, especially when the result is that one person dominates all the CXs.

- I don't usually read along in the speech docs during your speeches, because I like to stay true to the flow.

- I would appreciate if you sent me compiled card docs at the end of the round.

Default Voting Paradigm:

- If the aff is net beneficial to the status quo, I default to voting aff unless the negative wins another framework.

- If the neg wins a substantial risk of a DA, which has an external impact that outweighs and turns the case, the affirmative is probably going to lose my ballot. The 1AR can't drop "turns the case" arguments and expect the 2AR to get new answers.

- If the neg wins a substantial risk of the K, which has an external impact and turns the case, the negative still has to win an alternative or a framework argument (to take care of uniqueness), and beat back the perm.

- The perm which includes all the aff and all or part of the CP/Alt is a legitimate test of competition. If the neg proposes a framework to exclude perms, it has to be very well-justified, because I see the role of the neg is to win a DA to the aff as it was presented.

- Severance perms are not a reason to vote aff - if the aff is abandoning ship, this signals to me a neg ballot.

Topicality / Theory:

- I do not default to competing interpretations on framework or topicality. Winning that AFF could've started the round debating within a net-better "competing model" does not fulfill the role of the negative, which is to disprove the desirability of the aff.

- I think topicality is a question of in-round debatability. If you win that the aff was so unpredictable, vast, conditional and/or a moving target, and thus made it implausible for you to win the debate, then I will vote for T as a procedural issue. (A TVA or a net beneficial model is not a substitute for doing the work to prove their model is undebatable).

- Theory is also a question of in-round debatability. If you win that your opponent did something theoretically objectionable, that made it impossible for you to win this debate, I can see myself voting against your opponent. This includes excessive conditional worlds. I want to reiterate here that competing interpretations don't help in theory debates - procedurals are a yes/no question of in-round abuse.

Joe Patrice

USMA

Paperless Policy:I'm at joepatrice@gmail.com. Or I can do the situational dropbox thing. Whatever. Regale me with your evidence. I don't read it during the round, I just want it all for post-round evaluation and caselist obligations. I still flow based on what you SAY so don't cut corners on clarity just because I have your speech docs in my inbox.

Flowing: Seriously, I’m not reading your evidence during your speech. Why doesn’t anyone ever trust me on this? Did I do something in a past life that makes debaters pathologically incapable of believing me? Anyway, if you’re not articulating your distinct arguments, you’re taking your chances that I’m not getting what you’re trying to put out there. I consider debate to be a contest between teams to communicate to me what should be on my flow and where, so orient your argumentation accordingly.

Everything Else: I characterize myself as a critic of argument, which is the pretentiousway of saying that I listen to everything, but that, all else equal, certain things are more compelling than others.

NOTE: Do not necessarily interpret any of my preferences as bans on any kind of arguments, or even guides to how to select down. It's a threshold of believability issue.

Policy Debates: Compare your impacts, weigh them, and tell me a story of the world of voting Aff vs. voting Neg. I’ll choose the one that’s comparatively advantageous.

I prefer fewer positions withlonger evidence, clearer scenarios, and more analysis of impact probability ratherthan harping on the massive scale of the impacts. If I hear that a slight increase in spending collapses the world economy triggering a nuclear war, you may as well tell me aliens are invading. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote on it, but I’ll die a little inside and there’s frighteningly little of my soul left to kill – I’m a lawyer.

I’m not particularly excited about the world of flinging 4 CPs at the Aff and just playing the coverage game. It’s just not the makings of a compelling debate, you know? Pick a lane! And it doesn’t seem especially cool on a topic featuring legal scholars proposing almost infinite specific counter-proposals to research. I’ve got no preferences on CP/Perm theory arguments other than it bugs me that people don't feel compelled to explain the abuse story like they would on T. I do not think the blip "the Perm is severance" is enough to get the job done and if I’m going to vote on it, I’d really prefer if, before the round is over, I can comfortably explain why it severs and preferably a reason why that is uniquely disadvantageous. But given that caveat, I'm more than willing to vote on these args because people all too often don't answer them well enough, probably because they don't know how to flow anymore. NOTICE A TREND!

In other words, if you're going the policy route, you’ll make me so happy teeing off with specific arguments tied to the real academic/policy debate over the subject.

And if you’re reading this harsh criticism of policy debate with a smug look on your face, slow your roll there Kdebater...

Kritik Debates: Kritiks challenge the advocacy of the other team in salient ways that could be lost in a pure utilitarian analysis. Issues of exclusion and oppression ingrained in the heart of a policy proposal or the representations of the other team can be called out with kritiks ranging from simple “-ism” args to a postmodern cavalcade.

It is NOT an excuse to say random pomo garbage that sounds cool but doesn’t bear upon what’s happening in the round. Esoteric ramblings from some dead French or German thinker can – and often do – have as little to do with the debate round as the hypothetical global nuclear wars that have killed us a million times over in this activity. Look, I actually KNOW what most of that garbage means, but that's not a reason for you to not make sense. Make the K relevant to the specific policy/issue discussion we’re having and I’ll be very happy.

Again, I vote on this stuff, but see above about killing me inside.

When it comes to K/Performance Affs, I’m pretty open to however you justify the Aff (metaphorically, as activism, as some kind of parable), so long as deep down you’re advocating that all things equal, “giving rights or duties to the things listed in the topic would be good.” Faint in the direction of the topic and you’re in good shape.

With that caveat, if you outright refuse to "affirm" anything in the "topic," that's all well and good, just be a really good T/Framework debater. I'll vote for a compelling justification — I’ve recently been told that according to Tabroom, I’m almost exactly .500 in K v. Framework debates over the last few years. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds right. Frankly, I'd rather hear "we can't be Aff because the resolution is broken and we'll win the T/Framework debate" than some squirrely "we're not topical, but kind of topical, but really not" thing.

But who am I to judge! Oh right... I'm the judge. Kinda my job.

An honest pet peeve (that I can be talked out of, round-by-round) is that I don't think “performance” means acting out the argument in-round. For example, Dadaism is an argument, not a reason to answer every question with “Fishbulbs!" You job is to sell me that people answering questions with “Fishbulbs” would be good – if you’re doing it in-round you’ve skipped the foundational part.

Topicality: I feel like I've told enough people in enough rounds about this that I'm comfortable putting it here: if you're running this Scalia evidence as a definition of "vest" despite the fact that it is EXPLICITLY not about rights and duties and solely about Article II power or if you're running the "rights are 15 things" from a definition about how the Indian legal system makes distinctions between constitutional rights and statutory legal rights, you're engaged in an act of such intellectual dishonesty that I think I'm willing to vote on that alone if the other team mentions it.

Every time you steal prep time will also kill me a little more inside. But you’re going to do it anyway.

Glenbrook North- he/him

I don't know what has happened to wiki disclosure but current practices are unacceptable. Rather than hard and fast rules, I've decided to just incorporate wiki disclosure into speaker points. The baseline is round reports for all your rounds, including what was in the 1NC, the block, and the 2NR, with full text of your 1ACs and cites for all your off-case. Going beyond that will boost your points. Not meeting that baseline will hurt your points.

Use the tournament's doc share if it's set-up, speechdrop if it's not.

I won't vote for death good.

If you're taking prep before the other teams speech, it needs to be before they send out the doc. For example, if the aff team wants prep between the 2NC and 1NR, it needs to happen before the 1NR doc gets sent out, so I'd recommend saying you're going to do it before cross-x.

1. Flow and explicitly respond to what the other team says in order. I care a lot about debate being a speaking activity and I would rather not judge you if you disagree. I won't open the speech doc during the debate. I won't look at all the cards after the round, only ones that are needed to resolve something being debated out that are explicitly extended throughout the debate. If I don't have your argument written down on my flow, then you don't get credit for it. As an example, if you read a block of perms, I need to be able to distinguish between the perms in the 2AC to give you credit for them. If you are extending a perm in the 2AR I didn't have written down in the 2AC, I won't vote on it, even if the neg doesn't say this was a new argument. The burden is on you to make sure I am able to flow and understand everything you are saying throughout the debate. If you don't flow (and there are a lot of you out there) you should strike me.

2. Things you can do to improve the likelihood of me understanding you:

a. slow down

b. structure your args using numbers and subpoints

c. explicitly signpost what you are answering and extending

d. alternate analytics and cards

e. use microtags for analytics

f. give me time to flip between flows

g. use emphasis and inflection

3. I think the aff has to be topical.

4. I'm not great at judging the kritik. I'm better at judging kritiks that have links about the outcome of the plan but have an alternative that's a fiated alternative that's incompatible with the world of the plan.

5. You can insert one perm text into the debate. You can insert sections of cards that have been read for reference. You can't insert re-highlightings. I'm not reading parts of cards that were not read in the debate.

6. I flow cross-x but won't guarantee I'll pay attention to questions after cross-x time is up. I also don't think the other team has to indefinitely answer substantive questions once cx time is over.

7.Plans: If you say the plan fiats something in CX, you don't get to say PTIV means something else on T. So for example, if you say "remove judicial exceptions" means the courts, you don't get to say you're not the courts on T. If you say normal means is probably the courts but you're not fiating that, you get to say PTIV but you also risk the neg winning you are Congress for a DA or CP.

8. If your highlighting is incoherent, I'm not going to read unhighlighted parts of the card to figure out what it means.

*Pronouns: they/them
Put me on the doc chains: pgreddy411@gmail.com

Assistant Coach at GMU, 4 years of debate experience starting as a college novice, I primarily work with novice debaters

PF Coach at The Potomac School

PF

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I'm starting to get frustrated with the amount of teams reading disclosure theory and making it the core of their strategy. I would much rather judge rounds that have substantive debating about the topic and think that theory as it's being deployed is actively harming schools with less coaching resources to learn about how to answer it effectively. You can still probably win the theory flow in front of me, but your speaks will reflect this perspective.

I'm semi-new to the PF community, but I've judged several rounds and am now coaching for Potomac. I tend to draw from my experience in the college policy community for my argumentative preferences/biases. For the most part, I think you'll be fine running whatever cases you've prepared in front of me. I don't care much about presentation or what speed you make your arguments. So long as I can flow you or you adapt successfully if I clear you, then you'll be good doing pretty much anything.

Policy

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Topicality:

I default to competing interpretations. If you are reading a policy aff that has little relevance to the topic, or a very small portion of it, you should have good defenses for doing so. I try to vote off of the flow as much as I can, and then look to evidence secondarily unless told otherwise.

CPs/CP Theory:

Slow down while reading theory/CP texts

You need to provide a detailed explanation of how the CP solves all of the aff's internal links starting in the 2NC. If it does not claim to solve 100%, there needs to be a lot of explanation coming out of the block explaining why I shouldn't care about the solvency deficit as part of your sufficiency framing. You need to disprove perms well. Multiplank CPs with a plank to solve various internals are fun, though planks should be unconditional. CPs should have solvency advocates.

DAs:

Priority for me is link over uniqueness. If you're going to group sections, answer each argument made against that section, don't just read a generic link wall and assume that I'll connect everything on the line-by-line.

Case:

Case debates are great. Impact defense is the most important argument to get on these flows. I will vote neg on presumption, but you need to spend a lot of time on it. Disads on case are cool. Impact turns were amongst my favorite arguments in debate, and I love to see them.

Kritiks:
Top Level: I debated policy all 4 years I participated, but I’ve spent my recent time in grad school engaging in critical scholarship within public health. So, I at least feel mildly more comfortable listening to a K. Due to this, I'm probably interested in hearing your args but will lack somewhat fundamental “debate” knowledge/will lack the experience to relate the concepts in your literature to policy as it exists in-round. This is especially true when using literature bases that are less common/higher theory.

However, if you wind up with me in the back of a round both teams should be careful with if you’re giving enough time to comprehend/incorporate every warrant you want me to get. Giving some extra pen/brain time, like even more than you think you needed, will help you get my ballot more easily. If you’re trying to go for a late-breaking PIK, then flag what args you’re pulling it from earlier in the debate with your explanation.

My default is that the aff gets a perm. It's up to the aff to explain to me why the kritik is not mutually exclusive. Neg teams can win no perms, but I haven't been in the back of a round where this arg was won or made effectively.

FW: I try to be as blank template as I can be for clash rounds. But, despite personally believing in/studying critical discourse, I am too inexperienced in these rounds to register the args a K team would make on framework without giving more time to process them compared to what a policy team would need. At the same time, I'm not great when it comes to parsing through framework/T against K affs. I'll need clear judge instruction for what my ballot should be in these rounds.

Other:

-Clarity should never be sacrificed for speed, though I make exceptions if you're trying to squeeze out one last card. This is especially true of online debate. I'll do my best to flow you, but I could be missing args you want to make if you're not at least differentiating between args.

-I've got worsening audio processing issues and spreading with online debate only compounds this. I'll do my best to try and keep up with you, but don't be surprised if you think you made an argument and I don't catch it. Going slower than your usual speed will definitely improve the chances of me flowing your argument properly.

Gonzaga University
Judging Experience: 19 years
Email: jregnier@gmail.com (yes, include me on the email thread)

Big Picture: There is no one right way to debate. We all have our biases and preconceptions, but I try to approach each round as a critic of argumentation and persuasion. Some people will define themselves as being more influenced by either “truth” or “tech.” For me, this is a false binary. Tech matters, but it doesn’t mean that I will focus on the ink on the flow to the detriment of argument interconnections or ignore the big picture of the debate. Truth matters, but pretty much every debate I will decide that both teams win arguments that I don’t necessarily believe to be true. In my view, “argument” falls into a third category that overlaps with tech and truth but is distinct from them. Make your argument more effectively than your opponent and you’ll be in good shape. For me, that means making clear claims, developing warrants for those claims, and explicitly identifying what’s important in the debate, how it’s important, and why. Use logos, ethos, and pathos. Look like you’re winning. Your adaptation to the stylistic/technical comments below is far more important than your adaptation to any particular type of argument.

Comment about debate ethics: By debate ethics, I mean both what has been conventionally called “ethics violations” – like clipping cards, evidence fabrication, etc – as well as the interpersonal dynamics of how we treat one another in debate. I group them together here because they are both areas where somebody has crossed a line and upset the conditions necessary for debate to occur. For me, neither of these things is “debatable” in the sense I used above (“making clear claims, developing warrants…,” looking like you’re winning, etc). If a team is suspected of clipping cards, the debate stops and we do our best to resolve the issue before either ending the debate or moving forward. Similarly, if there is a concern that a team made racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted – or even just excessively mean-spirited or rude remarks – the debate should not continue as normal. I have zero interest in watching a competitive debate in this context about what was said, whether an apology was sincere, the terminal impact of discourse, whether the ballot is an appropriate punishment, etc. In this, I aggressively fall into the “truth over tech” crowd.

What this means for me is that I will try to be attentive to these things happening. I do not believe that a debater has to say something for me to vote on an ethics violation. At the same time, there is a lot of gray area in interpersonal relationships and we all draw our own boundaries.

What this means for you is if you believe one of your ethical lines has been crossed, I need you to point it out *outside of speech time* and not treat it like you would other debate arguments. As we all know, there are different ways of arguing that the other team has said offensive things. An argument that the Aff’s Economy advantage is based in colonial & white supremacist logic seems to fall squarely “within the game” as a debatable position. On the other hand, if a debater refers to another debater with an offensive racial epithet, this seems to pretty clearly transcend the game. There’s a million miles of microaggressions and not-so-micro aggressions in between. My working presumption is generally that if you are debating about it, then you consider it debatable and that I should evaluate it within the context of argumentation, persuasion, and competition. But if you feel that the other team has crossed a line and that I should not continue evaluating the round as I would a regular competitive debate, say something – again, *outside of speech time* – and we will work together to reach an understanding and figure out the best resolution to the situation.

Stylistic/Technical Issues: I am a medium flow. My ear for extremely fast speech is not particularly great, and my handwriting is not particularly fast. Extremely fast debates oriented around the techne of the flow are not my forte. There is a fairly clear inverse relationship between the speed at which you speak and the amount that I get written down on my flow. This greatly rewards debaters who give fewer – but more fully developed and explained – arguments. I will probably not read very many cards at the end of the debate, so don’t rely on your evidence to make your arguments for you. At the same time, I do generally try to attend to the quality of cards and bad cards can definitely undermine your arguments. I categorically do not want to be forced to reconstruct the debate by rereading all of the cards. This means that explanation and prioritization in the final rebuttals weighs more heavily for me than it might for other judges. Attend to the big picture, make direct comparisons showing why your arguments are better than your opponents’, and most important, find the hook that allows you to frame the debate in your favor.

Theory Debates: This is the area where my thinking has evolved the most as I’ve aged. There are many theory issues that I can be persuaded by. However, I will say that many theory debates that I have seen are vacuous. The key question for me is what kind of world is created by each side’s interpretation – is it good for debate or bad for debate. The impacts that I find most persuasive are the ones that are less about whether the other team made debate hard for you and more about what their interpretation does to argumentation and whether that’s an educational and constructive vision of what debate should be. Generally, impacts like “time skew” or “moots the 1AC” are pretty empty to me. But an argument that uniform 50 state fiat is an artificial debate construct that’s not rooted anywhere in the solvency literature and distorts the “fed key” debate so wildly as to make it meaningless is maybe something that I can get behind. A short list of a few of my current theory pet peeves: the States CP, object fiat, vaguely written – and downright misleading – plan texts, and nonsense permutations. While I wouldn’t necessarily call it a pet peeve, I may be growing increasingly persuaded that excessive conditionality is not good for debate.

Critical Stuff / Framework: I regularly vote both ways in framework debates. I evaluate these debates much like I would a debate over the "substance" of the case. Both sides need to play offense to amplify their own impacts while also playing defense against their opponent's impacts. In most cases where I have voted against critical affirmatives, it is because they have done a poor job answering the negative's debatability/fairness impact claims. In most cases where I have voted against traditional policy frameworks, it has been because they have done a poor job defending against the substantive critiques of their approach. My general set of biases on these issues would be as follows: critical (and even no-plan) affirmatives are legitimate, the aff needs to either have a defensible interpretation of how they affirm the topic or they need to full bore impact turn everything, a team must defend the assumptions of their arguments, critiques don't need (and are often better served without) alternatives (but they still need to be clear about what I am actually voting for), debate rounds do not make sense as a forum for social movements and “spill up” claims are vacuous, and most of the evidence used to defend a policy framework does not really apply to policy debate. However, to state the obvious, each of these biases can be overcome by making smart arguments.

Speaker Points: I try to give them careful consideration, but I admit that often it becomes a gestalt thing. I intend somewhere around 28.8 to be my median. I will occasionally dip into the high 27s for debaters that need significant improvement. Good performances will be in the low 29s. Excellent performances will get into the mid to high 29s. This was generally close to how things broke down the last time I was actually able to run the numbers on speaker point data.

Here are the things I value in a good speaker. I love debaters that use ethos, logos AND pathos. Technique should be a means of enhancing your arguments, not obfuscating or protecting them. Look like you're winning. Show that you are in control of yourself and your environment. Develop a persona that you can be comfortable with and that shows confidence. Know what you're talking about. Use an organizational system that works for you, but communicate it and live up to it (if you do the line-by-line, then *do* the line-by-line). Avoid long overviews with content that belongs on the line-by-line. Overviews should have a clear and concise purpose that adds something important to the debate. Be clear, which includes not just articulation & enunciation. It also includes the ability to understand the content of your evidence. If I can't follow what your evidence is saying, it will have as much weight in my decision as the tagline for that evidence would have had as an analytic. Debaters who make well thought out arguments with strong support will out-point debaters who just read a lot of cards every time.

Obstinate side-stepping and refusal to answer CX questions makes me grumpy and is a good way to lower your speaker points. So is talking over your opponent and refusing to give them the time and space to answer the questions that you've asked.

Other things: If your highlighting is so fragmented that it doesn't sound like actual sentences, I'm likely to disregard the evidence.

my email for email chains is arevelins@gmail.com

Quick update 2018 - some years ago I drafted the rubric for speaker points that you see below. Since then I have monitored developments in the debate community on typical speaker point distribution across all judges/tournaments, as discussed online by people who keep track of such things. I don't really dwell on this data much, but I do try to be mindful of community tendencies. Also, I notice how my own debaters read judge philosophies in crunch-time right before a round, and realize debaters reading this want a tl:dr.

Therefore, note that I probably now give speaker points that inch higher than what I initially suggested. This means in most cases I'm giving 28 and above, for debaters who seem to be doing elim-level debate it's usually 28.5 and above, and for especially impressive debate it's 29 and above. I do still dip into the mid-to-high 27's in occasional instances where I want to make it clear that I think the particular speeches really could use some work. At the time of writing (Jan 2018) my average speaker points are about a 28.5.

*******Paradigm Edited 11/10/13, prior to Wake Forest 2013 *******

** Scroll past speaker point scale to get a shorter philosophy explanation **

Speaker point scale:

0 = the debater committed some sort of ethics violation during the round (e.g. clipping cards)

26 to 26.9 = one or both of the following things happened: a) the debater made some kind of major tactical mistake in the debate, such as a completely dropped off-case position, without any attempt to address how they might still win the debate even if that argument is charitably given the full weight that the opposing team prefers. (more leeway on this is given to novice debates) b) the debater was hostile or rude towards competitors in the debate such that opportunities for respectful discourse concerning different ideas devolved into a breakdown of communication. Debaters have different personalities and approaches and I encourage you to explore ways of comporting yourself that express these personalities and approaches (be proud, indignant, cunning, provocative, etc), but please at all times also communicate with each other as students from different schools who respect each other for taking the time to have a lengthy debate round, in whatever part of the U.S. where you may presently have journeyed for such an encounter.

27 to 27.4 = the debater's overall strategy made sense, but various parts of the debate could have used more depth when instead those parts were fairly 'paint by numbers' (e.g. addressing certain arguments with generic/block answers instead of dealing with them more specifically). Evidence comparisons were fairly sparse, but the basic story on a given sheet of flow paper was clear enough.

27.5 to 27.9 = the debater did a solid job of debating. A coherent strategy was executed well. For certain key issues, initial clash advanced into higher forms of assessment, including a charitable understanding of why your opponent's arguments might be good yet your argument is ultimately more important/relevant.

28 to 28.4 = the debater did a solid job of debating across all the flows that were alive in the round. The debater focused on what mattered, was able to swiftly discount what did not ('closing doors' along the way), and took initial clash on key points to highly advanced levels. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if a debater with points like this advanced to early elimination debates (e.g. double octo's)

28.5 to 28.9 = the debater did everything from the previous scale, but was also able to do this with incredible organization: the most important things were in rank order, the crucial arguments were made without repetition/with cogent word economy, and I felt that the debater's communication seemed to guide my flow along with me. If cards/evidence are in question, you're able to speak of the overall ideologies or motivations driving a certain scholarship/movement, thus "getting behind" the card, in some sense. If a point is made without evidence or without a traditional claim/warrant structure, the debater does so in way that requires translation/interpretation on my part, yet the manner in which I should translate/interpret is also elicited from me/taught to me over the course of the debate. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if a debater with points like this could advance past early elimination debates.

29.0 to 29.4 = the debater did everything from the previous scale, but approached a sort of fluency that amazed me. The debater not only did what they needed to in order to match or outclass their opponents, but I furthermore felt that the debater was connecting with me in such a way where your arguments trigger understanding almost as a gestalt phenomenological experience. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if you did well in any of your other debates, prelim or elim.

29.5 to 30 = If memory serves, I have rarely if ever given speaker points that inch this close to 30. This is because 30 is perfection, without any umms, ahhs, odd turns of phrase, instances where you just lost me or where, given a rebuttal redo, you yourself would probably have done that part of your speech differently. If you are this close to 30 then you have perfect command of your opponent's position, of whatever gap you have to bridge in order for things to 'click' with me, and you are able to talk about your research and core arguments in a way where you yourself are clearly ready to push the scholarship/performance that you draw upon to its next heights, if you are not doing so already.

Objectivity and consistency is an elusive ideal: the reality is that subjectivity and some variability is inevitable. I think a good judge should be attentive in debates and vigiliant with self-assessments, not solipsistically but in light of evolving encounters with others. One of the biggest lessons I got out of my philosophy work was the extent to which all humans are prone to habits of self-deception, on many levels.

***** Debate experience

- Debated policy 4 years in high school (won the TOC)

- Debated policy 4 years at University of Southern California (4-time NDT qualifier, elims in my senior year)

- I was away from debate while in graduate school for philosophy

- I have coached Policy and PF debate at two high schools (Notre Dame and Millburn)

- I have coached Policy debate at two universities (Binghamton and Cornell)

- I am currently Assistant Director of Forensics/head debate coach at Cornell University

***** Some views on certain arguments

Any kind of argument is fine by me: I wait to see how debaters respond to what happens in the round and try not to import any predispositions concerning the default way that I should evaluate things. There are various harms/impacts that can orient a given side’s concern, plus various meta/framing/sequencing arguments that grant, reorient, or block my access to consideration of those harms/impacts, depending on how these issues play out in a debate.

Various kinds of challenges to the resolution and norms of the community are fine by me.

Kritiks: I ran them often in high school/college. I studied philosophy in graduate school.

Counterplans can take various forms: bring it on. See below about having full cp/permutation text for the entire round (to check against ‘morphing advocacies’).

Topicality debates: if an affirmative is trying to present a topical example of the resolution being true, but the negative thinks the aff is not topical then it is the negative’s right to go ‘all in’ on such an argument.

I debated policy advantage/da/impact debates almost as often as kritiks. Any politics link and link turn debates need to be laid out pretty clearly for me - mind your jargon please. The same goes for impact scenarios: who, what, against what country, etc.

For any asserted advocacy or test of competition, the plan text, permutation, etc needs to be clearly articulated in the round and written down so that it can be evaluated. For any card that you want me to read in last rebuttals, you should be telling me what I will find when I read that card and why it matters for the debate. I won't sift through a series of cards if you have just mentioned them/rattled off the citations without making use of them.

***** final notes

I have an aversion towards 'cloud clash', i.e. rattling off 2-3 minutes of overview and then basically hoping that the judge plucks out whatever applies towards some later part of the debate. Line-by-line debate and the elegance of organization that it offers is in decline lately. This has a lot to do with recent norms and computer-debating. This is at the cost of clash and direct refutation, and can come across as being aloof/wanting the judge to do the work for you. So, overviews should be short and then get on with actually responding to individual arguments.

I prefer the email chain over jumping flash drives, when possible. One click of ‘send’ and there is no longer the agonizing wait of flash drive driver installation, throwing jump drives around, etc.

Please communicate with each other, instead of yelling at each other (see my speaker point scale above for the under 27 range).

At the end of any round, I will vote for one team over the other and indicate this with my written ballot. This will be the case for any debate round that I can presently imagine.

That is all I can think of. Feel free to ask me more questions in person.

I'm jumping back into judging for the first time in years. I don't know anything about this topic, but I am excited to learn.

In terms of arguments, I tend to prefer quality over quantity and think of debate as more of discourse community than a game. I'm more interested in fixing ongoing problems than preventing obscure hypothetical scenarios. I tend to favor a broad interpretation of the topic.

I gravitate towards critical arguments and I'm generally more interested in disadvantages to the perm/alt than framework or theory blocks.

I'm not a huge fan of speed. That goes double for card dumps. I would rather see you extend and explain your 1AC/1NC evidence than listen to you read a slew on new cards in the 2AC/2NR. I came to hear your analysis of the evidence, not listen to how fast you can read.

Generally speaking, the team that wins my ballot is the team that spends more time talking about the aff. If you're aff, this means explaining your solvency and extending your impacts. If you're neg, this means explaining 1) why your CP/Alt solves the aff better or 2) why you've turned the case.

Whitney Young ‘15

University of Kentucky ‘19

Cornell Law '23

Former WY and UK coach; Officially not coaching anymore. This means that I have less topic knowledge than normal and you should not assume I know what your aff is or will know what those acronyms you just threw out stand for. When in doubt, invest more time in explaining your argument.

Top Level

Add me to the email chain- Jacindarivas@gmail.com

My name is Jacinda (Juh-sin-duh) so call me that instead of judge.

I will reward smart teams that can effectively and efficiently communicate their arguments to me. Engaging with your opponent, having a well-thought out strategy, and demonstrating that you’re doing consistent, hard work is what this activity is about.

Please be nice. I am not very responsive to raising voices/yelling.

Clash debates

No one ENJOYS clash debates but I end up judging quite a few. I really do believe that affs should have a tie to the topic and should be in the direction of the topic. I am not the judge for an aff that has a couple cards that say a theory and then pretend to say something about the topic. I also believe that debate is an inherently good activity so indicting the entirety of the activity we participate in is not great for me. I think this matters a lot for the way some teams answer framework so be cognizant of this. The only thing that my ballot decides is the winner.

Ks

Links should be causal, specific and about the plan. They NEED to be contextualized to what the aff actually did. I have too often judged debates where a team presents a theory of the world but have not explained what the aff has done to implicate that. Explanation is key. That applies to all Ks cause if you are just spitting jargon at me and the other team, you aren’t gonna have a good time. I am not persuaded by arguments that the aff just doesn’t get fiat.

CPs/DAs

Love them. Obviously better the more specific to the aff they are. I default to judge kick unless expressly informed not to.

There can be zero risk of a DA

Theory

Conditionality is good.

Random Things

You can insert a re-highlighting of a card- you shouldn’t have to waste time re-reading a card if they suck at research

Ethics violations (ex. Clipping, a card being cut in the middle of the paragraph, etc.) should just have the debate staked on it. It is a bad form of education and should be rejected. No point in drawing it out.

Further questions- email me at jacindarivas@gmail.com

Kathryn Rubino
USMA
Put me on the chain: kathrynrubino@gmail.com

I dislike intervening in debate rounds. I would much rather apply the criteria the debaters supply and work things out that way. As a result the final rebuttals should provide me with a clean story and a weighing mechanism. If only one side provides this I will default to their standards. If neither side does this, I’ll use my own opinions and evaluations of the round.

Simply put the debate is about impacts- weigh them, their likelihood and magnitude and we’re doing fine.

I think it is the debater’s responsibility to explain the analysis of their cards, particularly on complex positions. However, I recognize the time constraints in a round and will read cards that receive a prominent place in rebuttals. But I do not like to read piles of cards and being forced to apply my analysis to them. As a side note, I rarely flow author names so don’t just extend the author’s name- also be clear to which argument the card applies to.

I’ll listen to whatever people want to say- but you should probably know my dispositions ahead of time. Be warned however, I have voted against my preferences many times and anticipate doing it again in the future.

I like kritik/advocacy debate. That being said, I do not have a knee-jerk reaction when I hear them. Part of what makes kritiks interesting is the variety and depth of responses available. To get my vote here I generally need a clear story on the link and implication levels.

I enjoy framework debates- debating about debate is fun- and as a bonus I don’t think there are any right or wrong answers- just arguments that can be made.

I rejoice the return of topicality! And I have no problem voting on topicality, even if I don’t agree with a particular interpretation, but I do think a T story needs to be clear and technically proficient.

DAs are great, and the more case specific the better. Make sure you have a clear story and try to create distinctions between multiple end of the world scenarios if that's your thing.

I don’t mind listening to PICs or other interesting CPs, and I often feel they’re good way to test the validity of a plan. However, I am open to theoretical debate here and I’m willing to vote on it.

I will vote on the easy way out of a round- I don’t try to divine the ultimate truth of what the debaters are saying. I’m just adjudicating a game- a fun game that can teach stuff and be pretty sweet- but still a game. So enjoy your round, do your job and I will too.

Philosophy Updated 9-5-25

Nick Ryan – Former Assistant Director at Liberty
Stopped actively judging in the fall of 2023, I mostly tab tournaments know. Assume I don't know a ton of about your acronyms.

Please label your email chains “Tournament – Rd “#” – AFF Team vs Neg Team” – or something close to that effect. I hate “No subject,” “Test,” “AFF.” I would like to be included “nryan2wc@gmail.com”

Too often Philosophy’s are long and give you a bunch of irrelevant information. I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet.

1. I spend most of my time working with our “Policy teams,” I have a limited amount of working with our “K/Non traditional” debaters, but the bulk of my academic research base is with the “traditional” “policy teams;” don’t expect me to know the nuances of your specific argument, debate it and explain it.

2. Despite this I vote for the K a fair amount of time, particularly when the argument is contextualized in the context of the AFF and when teams aren’t reliant on me to unpack the meaning of “big words.” Don’t rely on me to find your “embedded clash” for you.

3. “Perm Do Both” is not a real argument, neg teams let AFFs get away with it way too often and it shifts in the 1AR. Perms and Advocacy/CP texts should be written out.

4. If neither team clarifies in the debate, then I default to the status quo is always an option.

5. These are things that can and probably will influence your speaker points: clarity, explanations, disrespectfulness to the other team, or your partner, stealing prep time, your use of your speech time (including cx), etc.

6. Prep time includes everything from the time the timer beeps at the end of the lasts speech/CX until the doc is sent out.

7. I think Poems/Lyrics/Narratives that you are reading written by someone else is evidence and should be in the speech document.

ADA Novice Packet Tournaments:

Evidence you use should be from the packet. If you read cards that weren’t in the packet more than once it’s hard to believe it was a “honest mistake.”

If you have any questions about things that are not listed here please ask, I would rather you be sure about my feelings, then deterred from running something because you are afraid I did not like it.

Background: 4 years at Baylor University, 1-Time NDT Qualifier. Assistant Coach at the U.S. Naval Academy, 2018-2022, Assistant Coach at Dowling Catholic High School, 2019-Present. Currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science and I work for the Legislative Services Agency in Iowa.

Yes I want to be on the email chain: Sheaffly@gmail.com. Also email me with questions about this paradigm.

Paradigms are difficult to write because there are so many potential audiences. From novice middle schoolers to varsity college debaters, I judge it all. As a result, I want everyone reading this paradigm to realize that it was written mostly in terms of varsity college debates. I think about debate a little differently in high school and a little differently when it comes to novice debates, but I hope this gives you a general idea of how to debate in front of me

== TL;DR ==

Do line-by-line. I do not flow straight down and I do not flow off the speech doc. I am a DA/CP/Case kind of judge. I am bad at understanding kritiks and I am biased towards the topic being good. Be nice.

== Top Level - Flowing ==

It has become clear to me after years of judging that most of my decisions center not around my biases about arguments (which I won’t pretend not to have), but rather around my ability to understand your argument. My ability to understand your argument is directly related to how clean my flow is. Thus, it is in your best interest to make my flow very clean. I used to think I was bad at flowing, but I've come to the conclusion that line-by-line and organized debate has become a lost art. Debaters who learn this art are much more likely to win in front of me.

You are NOT as clear on tags as you think you are. Getting every 4th word of a tag is okay only if every 4th word is the key nouns and verbs. This is never true. So slow down on your tags, I am NOT READING THEM.

I’m not gonna flow everything straight down and then reconstruct the debate afterwards. The 1NC sets the order of the debate on the case, the 2AC sets the order of the debate off case. Abide by that order. Otherwise, I will spend time trying to figure out where to put your argument rather than writing it down and that’s bad for you.

Another tip: Find ways to give me pen time. For example, do not read 4 perms in a row. It’s impossible for me to write down all of those words. Plus, it’s always first and you haven’t even given me time to flip my paper over. And then your next argument is always an analytic about how the CP doesn’t solve and then I can’t write that down either. So stop doing things like that.

== Top Level – Arguments ==

Basic stuff: I love creativity and learning from debate. Make it clear to me how much you know about the arguments you are making. I don’t think this means you have to have cut every card you read, but understanding not just the substance of your argument, but the tricks within them is important.

As I said above, the thing that will be a problem for me is not understanding your argument. Unfortunately, this probably impacts Kritik debaters more than policy debaters, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

I am probably a little more truth > tech than most judges. I believe in technical debate, but I also believe that debate is a place where truth is important. I don't care how many cards you have that say something, if the other team asserts it is not true and they are correct, they win the point.

== Top Level - Community Norms ==

1) For online debate, prep time stops when you unmute yourself and say stop prep. A couple of reasons for this. a) I have no way of verifying when you actually stopped prep if you come out and say "we stopped 15 seconds ago" and b) neither do your opponents, which means that you are basically forcing them to steal prep. I don't like it so that's the rule.

2) Debate is a messed-up community already. Don't make it more so. Be nice to each other. Have fun in the debate while you are disagreeing. If you make it seem like you think the other team is stupid during the debate, it's gonna make me grumpy. I love debate and I love watching people do it, but I hate confrontation and I hate it when people get angry about debates that don't matter that much in the long term. Be nice. Please.

3) This is mostly for high schoolers, where I see this issue all the time: If you are going to send a document without your analytics in it, making the version of the doc without the analytics in it IS PREP TIME. You don't get 45 seconds to send the document. Y'all are GenZ, I know you can send an email faster than that. You get 15 seconds before I break in and ask what the deal is. You get 20 seconds before I start prep again.

== Specifics ==

Affirmatives...

...Which Defend the Topic - I enjoy creativity. This includes creative interpretations of topicality. You should also read my thoughts on DAs as they apply to how you construct your advantages. Clear story is good.

...Which Do Not Defend the Topic - I am likely not a great judge for you. I think I may have a reputation as someone who hates these arguments. That reputation is not unearned, I built it up for years. But over time I’ve come to become a lot more accepting of them. There are many of these affirmatives that I think provide valuable debate. The problem I have is that I cannot figure out an interpretation of debate that allows the valuable "K Affs," but limits out the affs that I think are generally created to confuse their way to a win rather than provide actual valuable propositions for debate. I will always think of framework as a debate about what you JUSTIFY, rather than what you DO, and every interpretation I have ever seen in these debates simply lets in too much of the uneducational debates without providing a clear basis for clash.

I realize this sounds like I have been totally brainwashed by framework, and perhaps I have. But I want to be honest about where I'm at. That said, I think the above makes clear that if you have a defensible INTERPRETATION, I am willing to listen to it. You should also look at the section under kritiks, because I think it describes the fact that I need the actual argument of the affirmative to be clear. This generally means that, if your tags are poems, I am not ideologically opposed to that proposition, but you better also have very clear explanation of why you read that poem

Negative Strategies

Framework: See discussion above. Good strategy. Impact, impact, impact. Education > procedural fairness > any other impact. “Ks are bad” is a bad argument, “their interpretation makes debate worse and uneducational” is a winnable argument. Topical version of the aff goes a long way with me.

Topicality: Good strategy. Impact, impact, impact. Case lists. Why that case list is bad. Affirmatives, you should talk about your education. I love creative interps of the topic if you defend them. But for the love of god slow down.

Disads: Absolutely. Well constructed DAs are very fun to watch. However, see truth vs. tech above – I have a lower threshold for “zero risk of a [link, impact, internal link] etc.” I love Politics DAs, but they’re all lies. I am up-to-date on the news. If you are not, do not go for the politics DA using updates your coaches cut. You will say things that betray that you don’t know what you’re talking about and it will hurt your speaks. Creative impact calc (outside of just magnitude, timeframe, probability) is the best impact calc.

Counterplans: I'm tired of the negative getting away with murder. I am VERY willing to listen to theory debates about some of these crazy process CPs which compete off of a net benefit or immedicacy/certainty. Theory debates are fun for me but for the love of god slow down. Otherwise, yeah, CPs are fine.

Kritiks: Eh. You can see the discussion above about K affs. I used to be rigidly ideological about hating the K. I am now convinced that the K can make good points. But because I was so against them for so long, I don’t understand them. I still think some Kritiks (here I am thinking mostly of French/German dudes) are basically designed to confuse the other team into losing. Problem is, I can’t tell the difference between those Kritiks and other Kritiks, because all Kritiks confuse me.

Very basic Ks are fine. Realism is bad, heg is bad, capitalism is bad, I get. Get much beyond that and I get lost. It's not that I think you're wrong it's that I have always been uninterested so I never learned what you're talking about. I cannot emphasize enough how little I understand what you're talking about. If this is your thing and I am already your judge, conceptualize your K like a DA/CP strategy and explain it to me like I have never heard it before. Literally, in your 2NC say: "We believe that X is bad. We believe that they do X because of this argument they have made. We believe the alternative solves for X." I cannot stress enough how serious I am that that sentence should be the top of your 2NC and 2NR. I have had this sentence in my judge philosophy for 3 years and this has been the top of the 2NC once (in a JV debate!). I do not know how much clearer I can be. Again, I am not morally opposed to Kritiks (anymore), I just do not understand them and I will not vote for something I do not understand. I believe you need a good link. Yes, the world is terrible, but why is the aff terrible. You also need to make your tags not a paragraph long, I never learned how to flow tags that were that long.

jrskoog17@gmail.com

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer

I debated at Brophy College Prep and then debated at Gonzaga University.

I now coach at Gonzaga in Spokane, WA.

Everything under this are my defaults but obviously any argument that is contrary to any of these override my presuppositions. I'll try not to intervene to the best of my ability.

The Highlights:

I don't like when teams read evidence from debate coaches. It is absurd and self-referential.
Tech over truth
I'll call for ev, but only if it is a key part of the debate or I have been told to look at it. I put a lot of stock into the quality of evidence when deciding debates.
I default to reject the arg for everything except conditionality unless told otherwise.
Awesome strategic moves will be rewarded.
For the love of Przemek Karnowski, please don't cheat.
I'm not particularly expressive, but it doesn't mean I hate your argument, I'm just thinking to myself.
Keep your shoes on in the round.


Specifics:

Evidence:
Read warrants please. I will reward fantastic ev. Quality outweighs quantity. Use spin and compare your evidence to theirs.

Case/Impact Defense:
I do tend to default to less change and think that there is such thing as zero risk of the aff. Using very smart case defense arguments is awesome. Internal link defense and solvency arguments are, in my opinion, underused. That makes me sad. So please use them.

Counterplans:
I'm a huge theory nerd so I'm down with being convinced something is competitive. HOWEVER, I do think that a lot of counterplans that are commonly run are not competitive. Granted, I ran Reg Neg and Consult Russia a lot, and I understand why they are necessary sometimes, but I will reward case specific counterplans with net benefits that justify the status quo. To be clear: Artificial net benefits be dumb, yo. Counterplans should have solvency advocates--preferably normative one--which will go a long way in defending the theoretical legitimacy of the advocacy.

Against big stick affs, don't read stupid PICs like "the" or "should" because then I will cry. And I am an ugly crier.

I won't kick a conditional CP in the 2NR unless I'm explicitly told to in the debate.


Disads:
For politics, gotta have the goods evidence-wise.
Political capital key cards should say that political capital is key.
I think that an aff shooting apart the internal link chain of a stupid scenario is sufficient.
I would really like it if your DA was an actual opportunity cost to the plan.
Link controls direction of uniqueness.

Kritiks:
I exclusively went for the K almost all of college, so I know a lot of the literature. I've read a lot of Foucault, Baudrillard, Nietzsche and Deleuze but I won't pretend I know all K authors equally. Please explain it in relation to the aff, not just in high theory terms.
I don't think I'm the federal government. I am a sleepy coach judging a debate. However, I can be persuaded differently by args made in the debate.
Getting to weigh the aff is distinct from a "role of the ballot" argument because Role of the ballot determines how/what I am voting on or evaluating.
I love highly technical K debate ie. LINE BY LINE and clash.
Well researched and case specific Ks will make me smile.


Theory:
I really do enjoy theory debates if it is delivered at a rate consistent with the arguments. For example, if you are saying conditionality is bad in the 1AR don't speed through it because it is difficult to flow in its entirety. I will vote on unconditionality good, or 5 conditional CPs good. Debate is debate. If a theory violation is well impacted and explained, I will vote on it.

Topicality:
I default to competing interpretations unless told to evaluate it differently. I love when people read a lot of cards on tea, or have a hyper specific topicality argument. I evaluate it like a DA, so impacting things such as limits and ground is important.

Framework vs K affs:
I'm down to listen to really anything, and I was usually on the side of the team answering framework for most of my career. That being said, I really really enjoy framework debates. I think that "no Ks" isn't very convincing, but there should probably some agreed upon stasis point. This doesn't mean you need to defend the hypothetical implementation of plan in front of me, but if the other team wins that fiat is a good model of education, I will vote on it.

Debaters should have the ability to argue about what the terms of the debate are and how that relates to my decision. I prefer judging debates where the competitors are invested in their arguments, whatever those might be.

It is very rare in the debates I’ve judged that one team loses every argument on the flow. Consequently, it often seems going for a few less arguments improves the quality of the debating for both sides. Most debates tend to be decided in terms of how well either team characterizes each other’s options and framing what matters. At the top of your final rebuttal, please clearly prioritize how I should evaluate the debate. I love when debaters give me a roadmap of what's going to happen and then make it happen.

E-debate/Paperless:

Prep time only goes until you’re done prepping your speech, which means email time doesn't count against you. Please always include me on your email chain.

I'm pretty sympathetic that the transition to online debate is hard for many people and not the same as doing it in person. I'll try to do my best to make sure the rounds go smoothly.

I am better at flowing if I can maintain eye-contact with the person speaking. If you need to have your camera off for connection issues / personal reasons, I totally understand.

Speaker Points:

I spend most of my time at the end of the debate trying to decide who won and what I would have needed from the other team to win the debate or general commentary about the debate. While I’m filling out the ballot, I spend a few seconds trying to decide speaker points. I don’t have a static starting point for assigning or categorizing speakers, but try to decide how well the speakers used / responded during cross-x, whether a decision made by one of the speakers uniquely helped improve/hurt the teams chances of winning, and how well the speakers brought together the debate in their final rebuttals.

I take notes during cross-x and enjoy when debaters get strategic concessions that are used in their speeches.

Argument related comments:

- Counterplans generally require a solvency advocate. This can be aff evidence or neg evidence.

- Critiques may not need to have an alternative to be competitive with the aff, but I will not judge kick an alt (or counterplan) for you unless the framing in the 2NR justifies that option.

- I often find it insufficient to read a hodgepodge of cards or arguments that “critique the squo” and call it an affirmative. Good affs have compelling methods, approaches to the space, or defenses of the resolution.

- In all debates but especially K aff verse K debates, links need impacts / clear internal links. The negative can win a link and still lose the debate if it’s unclear why that link “matters”.

- Competing methodologies is too often left as a buzz phrase that does not establish why the aff should not have a permutation. Similarly, asserting there is a permutation that is advantageous, does not explain why I should allow the aff to access that option. In either case, having a bit of depth goes a long way to win whether the aff should or should not have a perm.

In-round Accessibility

Part of my responsibility as the judge is to make the debate accessible. If there is something I can do to help with that – please let me know. If you don’t feel like verbally disclosing then you’re welcome to email me or have one of your coaches reach out (address above).

Pet Peeves:

1- Clipping cards is punishable with a loss and 0 speaker points. I do not feel that I need a debater to initiate a clipping challenge, as an educator I feel I have a responsibility to monitor against cheating.

2- I value very highly the safety for ALL competitors to engage in this activity, so please be considerate of others. Making arguments with sexist, racist, ableist, and other exclusionary language can be especially harmful for people in the activity.

3- Please make sure you ask your opponents what pronouns they use. Misgendering is a serious issue.

4- Stealing prep time

5- Reading conditional arguments that clearly and unquestionably contradict

6- Repeating that an argument was conceded- especially if it clearly was not

7- Asking cross-x questions that go nowhere in developing the strategy or understanding of the debate.

8- Don’t be disrespectful to the people who host tournaments.

Brief Bio

I studied philosophy and sociology as an undergraduate, communication at UNLV for an MA, and finished PhD in communication studies at U-Iowa,

3 years of debate at Millard South High School,

4 years of debate at Concordia College – Moorhead,

2 years coaching at University of Nevada- Las Vegas,

5 years as a graduate assistant coach at the University of Iowa and 3rd year as the Head Debate Coach at Iowa.

Hello, I'm Jamie Snoddy (pronounced like snotty, but with the [d] sound). I'm a community coach for Patrick Henry HS and also a coach at the University of Minnesota. I did a year of debate at Patrick Henry and debated two years for UMN. I graduated in 2018 with a Bach. in Linguistics (Puns get you extra speaks). Please add me to the email chain with the following email address: snodd003@umn.edu

Overview

Learning is the main focus of debate. I like arguments to be presented in a clear and logical manner (it can even be flawed logic, as long as it's coherent and feasible, I think it's legit.). So, there aren't many things I'm against teams running. TELL ME WHAT TO VOTE FOR PLZ! Impact Calc and Roll of the ballot args are great.

Place a higher precedence on presenting evidence clearly and consistently (so not reading things incoherently fast unless e.v.e.r.y s.i.n.g.l.e t.h.i.n.g. is in your speech doc. Which it shouldn't be. If I'm not looking at you and typing, you're good. If I'm looking at you and leaned back, I'm waiting for flow-able info. If I'm looking at you and nodding I'm listening to good points that I feel have already been flowed.

Full disclosure: I'm a sucker for wipeout/death good args, idc which side it is lbvs. Maybe it's the high school emo in me. Best way to combat these args, to me, is go all into VTL and some change better than no change and, if applicable, the ppl who are getting effed over by sqou violence still don't want to die... then that gets into cruel optimism, yada yare yare.

Case

I'm fine with no plan affs. You just have to reeeeeally be ready to answer FW and T. You need to convince me of why running this aff w/o a plan will not work within the resolution. I'm a former 2A so sympathize with defending your case baby from the big scary neg lolz jk.

CPs

As long as the Neg can keep track of all the CPs they have, have all the cps you want. Just be ready to defend needing all of the cps if the aff chooses to go that route. Condo... is... a thing... I guess. The more cps you have, the high chance I'll believe condo bad args, cuz having that many multiple worlds is sorta abusive. So if you're running 7 or 8 cps, they better be dispo or uncondo, or have really great answers for why having that many condo worlds is necessary...

DAs

Fine and necessary args in policy.

Ks

Great! I love Ks and really love non-basic Ks. I don't like flimsy, vague alts. Even if it is as simple as Reject "x", I need to know what exactly what the world of the alt will look like and why it should be preferred to the aff's.

T

Topicality, to me, is different than theory (I flow them sep) and as long as voters are attached to it, I'll consider the args.

Theory

Is a prior question and needs to be addressed before talking about anything else. If we can't agree on how we talk to each other, then what does anything we say matter? ROB args are persuasive if voters are attached to it.

Speaker Points

Switching between hs and coll. debate sometimes throws me of, but I try to be really generous with them? If you're chill, courteous and not a butt during a round you get higher speaks.

Cutting people off aggressively and being unnecessarily snarky looses you speaks. I get if you're having a bad day or are going through some things that it may get taken out here in our community. If that's the case, just give the people in your round a heads up that you're in a mood.

Current Associate Director of Debate at Woodward Academy

Former Associate Director of Debate at Emory University.Former graduate student coach at University of Georgia, Wake Forest University, University of Florida

Create an email chain for evidence before the debate begins. Put me on it. My email address is lace.stace@gmail.com

Do not trivialize or deny the Holocaust

Online Debates:

Determine if I am in the room before you start a speech. "Becca, are you ready?" or "Becca, are you here?" I will give you a thumbs up or say yes (or I am not in the room and you shouldn't start).

I get that tech issues happen, but unnecessary tech time hurts decision time.

Please have one (or all) debaters look periodically to make sure people haven't gotten booted from the room. The internet can be unreliable. You might get booted from the room. I might get booted from the room. The best practice is to have a backup of yourself speaking in case this occurs. If the tournament has rules about this, follow those.

DA’s:

Is there an overview that requires a new sheet of paper? I hope not

Impact turn debates are fine with me

Counterplans:

What are the key differences between the CP and the plan?

Does the CP solve some of the aff or all of the aff?

Be clear about which DA/s you are claiming as the net benefit/s to your CP

"Solving more" is not a net benefit

I lean neg on international fiat, PICS, & agent CP theory arguments

I am open minded to debates about conditionality & multiple conditional planks theory arguments.

Lately I have noticed I am hoping to see a good AFF solvency deficit or theory argument as the way the AFF tries to win in the rebuttal more so than a permutation/competition type of debate

Flowing:

Make flowing easier for me (ex. debating line by line, signposting, identifying the other team’s argument and making direct answers, answer arguments individually rather than “grouping”)

Cross-X:

"What cards did you read?" "What cards did you not read?" "Did you read X off case position?" "Where did you stop in this document?" - those questions count as cross-x time! If a speech ends and you ask these, you should already be starting your timer for cross-x!

Avoid intervening in your partners cross-x time, whether asking or answering. Tag team is for professional wrestling, not debate.

Public forum debate specific thoughts:

I am most comfortable with constructive speeches that organize contentions using this structure: uniqueness, link, and impact.

I am comfortable with the use of speed.

From my experience coaching policy debate, I care a lot about quantity and quality of evidence.

I am suspicious of paraphrased evidence.

I like when the summary and final focus speeches make the debate smaller. If your constructive started with 2 or 3 contentions, by the summary and final focus your team should make a choice of just 1 contention to attempt winning.

Because of my background in policy debate, it takes me out of my comfort zone when the con/neg team speaks first.

I have the following preferences, but I will vote counter to these biases if a team wins 
their arguments in the debate. 
1. I view debates from a policy perspective as clash of competing advocacies. For me 
this means that minus a counterplan, the affirmative must prove that their plan is better 
than the current system. Fiat operates only to bypass the question of whether something 
could pass to focus the debate about whether something should pass. I do believe that 
fiat is binding so rollback arguments can be difficult to win. 
2. I will vote on topicality if the negative can clearly articulate how the affirmative is 
non-topical and why their interpretation is superior for debate. In this regard I see 
topicality debates as a synthesis between a good definition and a clear explanation of the 
standards. Critical affirmatives must be topical if the negative is to be prepared to debate 
them. I won’t vote on topicality as a reverse voting issue under any circumstance. 
3. I don’t find most theory debates to be very compelling, but I have voted for these 
arguments. These debates are often filled with jargon at the 
expense of explanation. If you do want me vote on these arguments then don’t spew your 
theory blocks at me (I’ve tried – but I just can’t flow them). Have just a couple of 
reasons to justify your theoretical objection and develop them. Pointing out in-round 
abuse is helpful, but if their position justifies a practice that is harmful for debate that is 
just as good. Identifying the impact to your theory arguments in the constructive is a 
must. 
4. I am a big fan of all types of counterplans (pics, agent, consult etc.). The only 
prerequisite is that they be competitive. I am not a big fan of textual competition and tend 
to view competition from a functional perspective. When evaluating counterplans I believe that the negative has the burden to prove that it is a reason to reject the plan. This 
means that the counterplan must be net beneficial compared to the plan or the 
permutation. Affirmatives can prove that some of these counterplans are theoretically 
illegitimate, but be aware of my theory bias (see above). 
5. Kritiks are fine as long as it is clear what the argument is and that there is a clearly 
defined impact. Statements that the kritik takes out the solvency and turns the case need 
a clear justification. Hypothetical examples are extremely useful in this regard, and the more specific the example the better. I prefer frameworks discussions occur on a separate page from the K – from a judging perspective I’ve noticed that when it’s all done on one piece of paper things tend to get convoluted and debate gets extremely messy. Having an alternative is helpful, but I can be persuaded that you don’t need to have one. 
7. The most important thing for you to know to get my ballot is that my decision is highly 
influenced on how arguments are explained and justified during the course of the debate 
rather than thru evidence. While I do think that at certain levels you must have evidence 
to substantiate your claims, good cross-examinations and well developed explanations and comparisons are often the key to persuading me to vote for one side over the other. Other than that just be polite but competitive, intelligent, and enjoy the debate. 

Email: brithomas1412@gmail.com

Former coach for GMU, former debater at Liberty University, 7 years debating experience overall, NDT 2x, 2019 1st round, 2019 CEDA Top Speaker, and have judged all the tingz. After doing both policy and performance debate, I have learned that the most important thing for me is to create a space for myself and the arguments I want to read. Even though I think this is an educational and competitive activity that pays the bills (#schmoney), I still think it should be fun! That being said, my hope is that you will run what you are passionate about! If that's the Econ DA, Anti-blackness K, Fem K, or USFG, then let's get it! DO YOU BOO! This also means that yes debate is a game, but its full of real people and real consequences so we should keep that in mind as we play.

UD 11/16/21

The above thoughts are still true, but thought it's probably time to update this thing in the case people actually read it. The biggest update is making sure y'all know that I want to be a puppet. I don't want to do more work than I have to, I don't want to have to read your evidence, I don't want to have to find pieces across the flow to make my decision, and I just don't want to intervene. So, please stop card dumping and just explain the warrants you have, please give me a clear ballot you want me to repeat back to you, and please talk about you really cool concepts in relation to the other team's arguments and not just as rants (even though they are really smart rants).

Now, that that's been said, I've found myself mostly in the back of the room of either KvK or clash debates, with the very rare appearance of a policy v policy round (minus novice and so my rant on theory doesn't apply to them), it may help to unpack my thoughts based on type of round.

K v K (jv/open):

There seems to be a lack of explanation burden for affs and alts recently. As a result, it normally ends up hurting the aff on presumption because the neg can kick the alt but the aff can't kick the aff. A few recommendations -

For the aff, make sure you know what your aff does and that you can explain the i/l to resolve your impacts. It really isn't enough to use words within your method to explain your method because it becomes circular logic very quickly. The second is to find ways to make it harder for the negative to kick out of the alt or have less burden to prove solvency than you do.

For the neg, take advantage if the aff has a lack of explanation. You should be pressing them to explain every impact in the aff even if they don't flag it as the big impact. I am very persuaded by presumption when its read offensively so make the aff do their job.

Other comments for k v k include the permutation debate. A lot of neg teams make the argument about no perms in a method debate and the only reason I am persuaded by that is 1ars never answer it and the 2ar answer is so new and lacks depth. As a result, aff's should probably have a better prepared answer and then I would be more open to your perm.

Clash (jv/open):

I vote on who wins the round which means one round I may vote on fmwk against a k aff, the next on the k aff. Each round is different so please, innovate! Even with the same argument, you should be searching for ways to re-articulate arguments. Seeing the same 1nc/2n/1nr read off same blocks is not a good look and this is speaking to both sides policy and k.

In these debates, I normally end up siding with tech over truth insofar as it has let me do the least amount of judge intervention. I want to be very clear about what I mean by this, truth normally requires me to read cards for people which if you're not explaining cards I don't want to do the work for you, which is why I say I tend to lean towards clash. I'm saying this to reassure K teams that tech > truth is not automatically a bad thing for you. Ultimately, the best debaters find a good balance between tech and truth, but again I'm a puppet so if you want me to lean a certain way, tell me to do so and why I should.

Policy v Policy (jv/open):

Again, I am rarely in these but the few I have been in tend to come down to the most random theory arguments and I have to be honest - condo is not bad. Whenever I hear condo read in front of me, it just feels like policy teams whining cause I'm like - this is literally the ground you want when you read fmwk, but now its abusive? 5 off is abusive? 3 off is abusive? I meaaaaan ... it just ain't clicking for me because its mostly teams who are absolutely losing other flows because the other team is better and theory is your hail mary. But that means I reward you for avoiding the fight? ok... That being said, people will continue to read condo and I get that - I don't want neg to read this and be like "bri says condo isn't bad in paradigm therfore I don't have to do a lot of work" - no. Please answer it accordingly. What I'm saying is I do not want to vote for condo so neg please don't create a world in which I end up voting for condo - close that door for the aff and I will forever appreciate you.

The only theory arg I find persuasive is perf con - because it means reading a k with something that contradicts makes you a fake radical. Do with that what you will.

End of update.

Now I know some debaters still like to worry about what the person in the back of the room thinks so I'll break down some key points.

Overview:

-I used to say spreading is fine, but in the era of online debate, folks be more unclear than usual. Spread at your own risk because if you don't pace yourself, then it may not get on my flow.

-Explanation > reading more cards

-Organization is key. Even if the other team is messy, it puts you in a better position to clear things up for the judge so line by line can help

-I'm a very expressive person so look at my face cause my visual cues might help you out (and I oop...)

-More people should pref Tyler Wiseman.

-At the end of the debate, be sure to tell me why I should vote for you; if you don't, then you can't get big mad when I don't ... periodt

K's:

I love running the K and the moment I was able to get into critical literature in my debate career, I dived right in. That being said, two important conclusions: One, I understand the foundations of most literature bases so feel free to run them if that is the style of argumentation you prefer.

Two, I have a larger threshold for the K because I expect you to explain the link story and the alternative with warrants so don't assume that just because I know the theory means you don't have to put in the work for the ballot. Links should be contextualized to the aff - please don't restate your tags and author, but pull lines from 1ac/2ac. I would also warn against just running a K because you think I'm only a K debater. Again, DO YOU BOO! If your heart is in the K, go for it! If its not, don't force yourself.

I love performative links not personal attacks so if you are unsure what that line is, talk to your coaches or email me before you dive in. With performative links, just make sure to give a warranted analysis as to why I should vote on it and what the impact is.

K aff's:

Love them! I do prefer K aff's to be in the direction of the topic or make some attempt to include a discussion of the resolution, but if you are not, then at least give me a warranted explanation as to why you have chosen that route. For those that are in the topic of the resolution, have a clear impact and solvency story. Many times, debaters will get so caught up in the negative arguments that they lose sight of what is important...their aff! So make sure to keep a story line going throughout the entirety of the debate.

When you get into FMWk/T debates, be sure to extend and explain your counter-interpretation. What is your model and why is it good? That plus impact turns = a pretty easy ballot from me.

FMWK/T:

It's a strategy that is read against K aff's, it's a strategy I have won against, a strategy I have lost to, a strategy I have voted on and against. My personal outlook - debate is a game but it has real impacts that can help or harm certain individuals. While it is a competitive strategy, I do not think it is an excuse to not engage the affirmative because most of the time, your lack of engagement is what the aff will use to link turn the performance of reading fmwk (hint hint to K debaters reading this).

PSA - fairness is not an impact... at best, its an internal link to education. That being said, unless the aff has no justification for their aff, then you will have a 2% of getting my ballot by reading fairness. I find it most compelling when you prove in round abuse so be on the lookout and don't miss opportunities if you really down for that fairness life. I like the impact of education a lot more because it has better spill over claims. I also don't think you need a role of the ballot because I think fmwk is a counter RoB, but you should probably indicate that. Don't be shifty with your interp, but I believe a capable 2N will be able to accurately counter the 2AC shift and reframe the debate through the same interp in the 1nc. Please have a TVA! No, it does not need to solve the entirety of the aff because that is neg ground, but it should be able to solve the main impacts they go for. Lastly, defend your model of debate and explain why it would be better for the debate community writ large. If you are only focusing on the one round, then explain why that is better.

CPs:

I don't have a preference meaning I am open to all types of CPs. What I do ask is that you have a net benefit and explain how your CP solves the aff. It's also nice if your CP is competitive...

DAs:

I'm down for some good old throw downs on the DA flow, but make sure you have a clear and warranted link story and awesome impact calc for ya girl.

Theory:

I think theory is procedural just make sure you explain very clearly and slowly what the violation is and why that matters...if you are going to go for theory, I expect the 2n or 2a to spend a good amount of time on it which means not just 30 sec or 1 min.

Policy Affs vs K:

Engage the K! Too many times policy teams just write over the K with their fmwk thinking that is the only work they have to do but it's just like debating a DA or CP. Do the link work and the more specific answers you have to the alt, the better position you are in. Don't just say Perm DB or Perm aff then alt, but really explain what that means and looks like in the world of the aff. I think you do need fmwk to get to weigh your aff but that is all the fmwk will get you which means don't forget to extend your aff and the impact story. A really good way to engage the K is to prove how the plan not only outweighs but resolves the specific impacts.

CX:

I think cross-ex is a really good place to assert your arguments and point out key flaws in the other team's arguments. This means you should take advantage of the time to really prove to me why the entire speech they just gave don't matter. While I think cross-ex is binding, you still have to bring it into a speech to explain why that moment was so important and the impact of it.

hello! i started as a novice at gmu where i debated for 5 years. i then went and coached at binghamton for 2 years and then back to mason for 3.

my email is mthomasgmu@gmail.com

for hybrid, I tend to keep my camera on during speeches. If my camera is off please assume I am not there and do not begin. I’m probably not far from my computer but if it’s been a while shoot me an email. '

Do whatever you do best. i was a flex 2n and read both k affs and policy affs, so i am down for just about anything

I am pro-Palestine. It is already worrying enough how little care debaters take when debating about current events when people’s lives, families, and liberation are on the line, but for one where an ethnic cleansing is currently being funded by our tax dollars, I have very little patience for this topic coming up in policy debates in an unethical way. Tread carefully

FW - this is a huge chunk of the db8s i have judged/debated during my now decade long tenure in debate, so i have heard just about it all. i find clash impacts more persuasive than fairness. topic education das are generally not a winner in front of me - the process of debate does not translate well to the real world so i dont believe you when you say debating w/e topic is going to make you a more persuasive advocate or a better congress person. most of us are far too busy between school, debate, work, etc for this to leave the space so lets not pretend like it will. take advantage of the other teams screw ups - if their counter interp is nonsense, take advantage of that. meanwhile, make sure your tva is relevant and can actually engage with the content of the aff. please also always answer the aff - presumption and turns case args are your friends! side note, if the aff gives you disads or impact turns, i far prefer that debate and will be very grumpy if you chose to go for fw instead.

for answering fw - please defend some sort of action that solves some sort of impact. it obvi doesnt have to be capital T Topical, tho preferably it is in the direction or spirit of the revolution. i have voted for affs with no relevance to the topic, but i have a much lower threshold for fw in that world.

t - again i know little to nothing about the topic but i love a good t debate. ive voted on my fair share of bad t args before (shout out to t subs) because aff teams never seem to provide a meaningful limit with their c/i. i need it explained to me exactly what the case list is under either interp, and what ground was lost. i obvi dont really know the aff/neg ground on this topic but i like to think i can follow along.

Counterplans - not the biggest fan of cheaty cps. condo is good up until a point (probably max 3, preferably 2). dont like perf con or condo planks. not a fan of states but i guess y'all dont really have a choice this year.

case debate - big big fan of good impact turn debates. presumption is also a useful argument.

K - it would be cool if your link would be about the aff - i have judged too many clashless debates where the neg just goes on some adjacent historical tangent but never brings it back to the aff. i like alts but they are not necessary - win the framework debate and you're golden. idk why theres a trend to go for a cap k and then spend a ton of time on framework when it is functionally an impact turn debate??

some odds and ends -

im typically a big picture thinker, so meta level questions and framing args are critical to instructing my ballot, especially in debates involving a k. im very interested in what the ballots relationship is to voting for whichever side, particularly in issues involving things within and outside my social location. i dont really like being perceived as a judge, but what does my ballot as a white queer woman mean? (aka i find the ballot k persuasive more often than not)

if im in a straight up policy debate, i dont get these too terribly often, so id recommend not making it too big - id prefer depth over breadth.

ive found im a pretty expressive judge, and if i am confused or cant understand you my face will make that clear.

Have fun, be clear, be clever.

*Updated November 2023*

CONTACT INFORMATION

Email: thurt11@gmail.com

LD NOTE

I've been in debate for fifteen years as a competitor, judge, and coach. In that time, I've almost exclusively done policy debate (I think I've judged <10 LD rounds ever). That's to say, judging LD at the Glenbrooks will be a bit different for me.

I don't think you'll need to dramatically adjust how you debate. In fact, I'd prefer to judge you in your best style/approach/form. Relatedly, I don't think I'm particularly ideological, and I'm like not a bus driver or parent who has been dropped into the judge pool. That said, be aware of my still-developing topic knowledge, norms of LD, and theory. I will do my best to resolve the debate before me. That said, folks should know that I'll likely have many idiosyncracies of someone who has basically always been in policy debate.

PF NOTE

Much of what is said about LD is true here too. Some thoughts on evidence that I stole from Greg Achten:

First, I strongly oppose the practice of paraphrasing evidence. If I am your judge I would strongly suggest reading only direct quotations in your speeches. My above stated opposition to the insertion of brackets is also relevant here. Words should never be inserted into or deleted from evidence.

Second, there is far too much untimed evidence exchange happening in debates. I will want all teams to set up an email chain to exchange cases in their entirety to forego the lost time of asking for specific pieces of evidence. You can add me to the email chain as well and that way after the debate I will not need to ask for evidence. This is not negotiable if I'm your judge - you should not fear your opponents having your evidence. Under no circumstances will there be untimed exchange of evidence during the debate. Any exchange of evidence that is not part of the email chain will come out of the prep time of the team asking for the evidence. The only exception to this is if one team chooses not to participate in the email thread and the other team does then all time used for evidence exchanges will be taken from the prep time of the team who does NOT email their cases.

PERSONAL BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION

I debated for four years at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Go Packers/Brewers/Bucks! In college, I debated for four years at Michigan State University, earning three first-round bids and a semifinals appearance at the NDT.

Currently, I work on the non-debate side of Michigan State, doing education data analysis, program evaluation, and professional development. On the side, I coach for Georgetown University. I still love debate, but it is no longer my day job. Given that, I'm not a content expert on this topic like some of your other judges might be.

More generally, any given debate can get in-depth quickly, so you should be careful with acronyms/intricacies if you think that your strategy is really innovative or requires a deep understanding of your specific mechanism. Teams sometimes get so deep in the weeds researching their business that they forget to provide a basic explanation for the argument's context/history/background. Instead, they jump into the most advanced part of the topic. If something is creative, that's an issue because it's likely the judge's first time hearing it.

Everyone says it and almost no one means it, but I think that you should debate what you care about/what interests you/what you're good at doing. In other words, put me in the "big-tent" camp. All of the stuff below is too long and shouldn't impact your debating (maybe besides the meta issues section). It really is just my thoughts (vs. a standard), and is only included to offer insight into how I see debate.

META ISSUES/ABBREVIATED PHILOSOPHY/STRIKE CARD ESSENTIAL

1. Assuming equal debating (HUGE assumption), I'm *really* bad for the K on the neg/as planless aff. I find myself constantly struggling with questions in decision-time like: Does the neg ACTUALLY have a link to the plan's MECHANISM or even their SPECIFIC representations? What is the alternative? How does that advocacy change the extremely sweeping and entrenched problems identified in the 1NC/2NC impact evidence? If it's so effective, why doesn't it overcome the links to the plan? If the alt is just about scholarship/ethics/some -ology, how does that compare to material suffering outlined by the 1AC? This year, some of these biases are accentuated by the "disarm" and negative state action planks of the topic. On the affirmative, I think there are many creative ways to critically defend the idea of ending nuclear weapons (especially by the "United States" rather than the "United States federal government"). On the negative, I have hitherto been unimpressed with the Ks of "disarm" (like the ACTUAL "We end the nukes and dismantle them because they risk horrific US first use/nukes are bad" disarm) I've seen.

In the end, when I vote negative for Ks or affirmative for planless affs, it's generally because the losing team dropped a techy ballot like ethics first, serial policy failure, or "we're a PIK." Do you, don't overadapt, and feel confident that I approach every debate with the intention of deciding the question of "who did the better debating?" REGARDLESS of the subject of the debate. Relatedly, know that I'm excited to have the chance to evaluate your arguments (even if it's really late and I'd rather not be judging at all in the abstract) basically no matter what you say. Instead, I would take my above biases as things to keep an eye out for from your opponents/come up with novel responses to/overcover/etc.

2. College debate made me more oriented to tech than truth. In my experience as a debater and judge, ignorance of tech resulted in a callous dismissal of arguments as “bad” and increased judge intervention to determine what is “correct” instead of what was debated in the round and executed more effectively. That said, truth is a huge bonus, and being on the right side makes your task of being technically proficient easier because you can let logic/evidence speak a little for you.

3. I care about evidence quality - to an extent. Debate is a communicative activity, and I'm not going to re-read broad swaths of evidence to ensure that your opponents read a card on all their claims. To be clear, I do think that part of my role in judging is comparing evidence *when it's contested and through the lens with which it was challenged.* Put concretely, if your 2NR says "all their evidence is trash and doesn't say anything" or is silent on evidence comparison, I'm not gonna be doing you any favors and looking at the speech doc. I'm certainly not going to be reading un-underlined text in 1AC/1NC cards without explicit direction of what I'm looking for. Instead, if you're like "Their no prolif cards are all before Kishida and only talk about means vs. motive," I'm happy to read a pile of cards, looking to assess their quality on those two grounds. If that sounds time-consuming for your final rebuttals, it is. You should create time by condensing the debate down to the core issues/places of evidentiary disagreement.

4. Every round could use more calculus and comparisons. The most obvious example of this thesis is with impact calc, but I think there is a laundry list of other examples like considering relative risk, quality of evidence, and author qualifications. As a format, any of these comparisons should have a reason why your argument is preferable, a reason why that frame is important, and a reason why your opponent’s argument is poor/viewed through a poor lens. In the context of impact calc, this framework means saying that your impact outweighs on timeframe, that timeframe is important, and that while your opponent’s impact might have a large magnitude, I should ignore that frame of decision-making. Engaging your opponents’ arguments on a deeper level and resolving debates is the easiest way to get good points. Beyond that, making a decision is functionally comparing each team’s stance/evidence quality/technical ability on a few nexus questions, so if you’re doing this work for me you will probably like my decision a lot more.

5. I hold debaters to a high standard for making an argument. Any claim should be supported with a warrant, evidence, and impact on my decision. Use early speeches to get ahead on important questions. For instance, I won’t dismiss something like “Perm do Both,” but I think the argument would be bolstered by a reason why the perm is preferable in the 2AC (i.e. how it interacts with the net benefits) instead of saving those arguments for the 1AR/2AR. By the way, you should consider this point my way out in post-rounds where you're like "but I said X...It was right here!" For me, if something is important enough to win/lose a debate, you should spend a significant amount of time there, connect, and make sure your claim is *completely* and *thoughtfully* warranted.

6. All debates have technical mistakes, but not all technical mistakes are equal or irreversible. Given those assumptions, the best rebuttals recognize flaws and make “even if” statements/explain why losing an argument does not mean they lose the debate. I think debaters fold too often on mistakes. Just because you dropped a theory argument doesn’t mean you cannot cross-apply an argument from another theory argument, politics, or T to win.

7. I'm a bad judge for yes/no arguments like "presumption," "links to the net benefit absolutely," or "zero risk of X." I think the best debaters work in the grey areas.

8. Things people don't do enough:

a) Start with the title for their 1NC off case positions (i.e. first off states)

b) Give links labels (i.e. our "docket crowdout link" or "our bipart link")

c) Explain what their plan actually does - For instance (in college), what nuclear forces do you disarm? Who does it? What is the mechanism? I've decided that if the aff is vague to an egregious extent, I'll be super easy on the negative with DA links and CP competition. Aff vagueness is also a link to circumvention and explains why fiat doesn't solve definitional non-compliance. I will say, I'd rather lacking aff clarity (e.g. when aff's include resolutional language in their plan and say "plan text in a vacuum") be resolved by PICs/topic DAs than by T. I don't think that the negative gets to fully define the plan or have some weird positional competition vision for T even if I think 2As frequently dance around what they do. Punish affs for ambiguity and lazy plan writing for the purposes of T on substance!

d) Call out new arguments - I don't have sympathy if you *wish* you said no impact in the 2AC. There are times that I wish it existed, but there isn't and can't be a 3AC. I will say that for mostly pragmatic reasons, I'm not to the point of reviewing every new 1AR argument. I'll protect the 2NR for the 2AR, but you have to do the work before that.

9. Random (likely to change) topic thoughts:

a) Both sides are likely to get to some risk of Russia and/or China nuke war. The best 2Ns/2As will dehomogenize these impacts based on scenarios for escalation and their internal links.

b) Be careful your UQ CP doesn't overwhelm the link to your DA. Sometimes the neg goes a bit too far. I do love a good UQ CP though!

c) This is a rare topic where I'm less interested in process stuff! Who would've thought?

d) Debated equally, I'm 60/40 that we should include NFU subsets and "disarm" actions that fall short of "elimination/abolition." I get the evidence is good. I'd just abstractly rather have these arguments as affs than PICs/would prefer a bit more than the smallest topic since single payer.

GENERIC DISPOSITIONS

Planless affirmatives – The affirmative would ideally have a plan that defends action by the United States (least important). The affirmative should have a direct tie to the topic. In the context of the college resolution, this means you would have a defense of decreasing nukes/their role (pretty important). The affirmative MUST defend the implementation of said "plan" - whatever it is (MOST important). While I will NOT immediately vote negative on T or “Framework” as a procedural issue, if you don’t defend instrumental implementation of a topical plan *rooted in the resolutional question*, you will be in a tough spot. I’m especially good for T/Framework if the affirmative dodges case turns and debates over the question if nukes are good or bad. In particular, I am persuaded by arguments about why these affirmatives are unpredictable, under-limit the topic, and create a bad heuristic for problem-solving. Short version is that you can do you and there is always a chance I’ll vote for you, but I’m probably not an ordinal one for teams that don’t want to engage the resolutional question.

I do want to say that at tournaments with relaxed prefs, I will do my absolute best to keep an open mind about these assumptions. That shouldn't be read as "Thur says he's open to our planless aff - let's move him up to push down 'policy' people." It should be read as if I come up at one of these tournaments, you might as well do what you're most comfortable with/what you've practiced the most instead of over-adapting.

Critiques—Honestly, just read the first point in the "meta issues" section. I understand neolib/deterrence/security pretty well because they were a big part of my major. If you want to push against my confusion on the K (as a concept), you need to have specific links to the plan’s actions, authors, or representations. Again, trying to be honest, if you're itching to say Baudrillard, Bataille, Deleuze, death good, etc., I'm not your guy. On framework, the affirmative will almost surely be able to weigh their 1AC (unless they totally airball), and I'm pretty hesitant to place reps/scholarship/epistemology before material reality. One other thing - substitute out buzzwords and tags for explanation. Merely saying "libidinal economy" or "structural antagonism" without some evidence and explanation isn't a win condition.

In terms of being affirmative against these arguments, I think that too often teams lose sight of the easy ballots and/or tricks. The 1AR and 2AR need to “un-checklist” those arguments. In terms of disproving the critique, I think I’m pretty good for alternative fails/case outweighs or the permutation with a defense of pragmatism or reformism. Of those 2 - I'm best for "your alt does nothing...we have an aff..."

Case- I’m a huge fan. With that, I think that it’s very helpful for the neg (obviously?). I believe that no matter what argument you plan to go for, (excluding T/theory) case should be in some part of the 2nr. In the context of the critique, you can use case arguments to prove that the threats of the 1AC are flawed or constructed, that there are alternative causes to the affirmative that only the alternative solves, or that the impacts of the affirmative are miniscule and the K outweighs. For CPs, even if you lose a solvency deficit, you can still win because the net benefit outweighs the defended affirmative. Going for case defense to the advantage that you think the CP solves the least forces me to drop you twice as I have to decide the CP doesn’t solve AND that the case impact outweighs your net-benefit. That seems like a pretty good spot to be in.

CP- My favorite ones are specific to the 1AC with case turns as net benefits. Aside from that, I think that I am more inclined than most to vote aff on the perm when there is a trivial/mitigated net benefit vs. a smallish solvency deficit, but in the end I would hope you would tell me what to value first. I had a big section written up on theory, and I decided it's too round-dependent to list out. I still think that more than 2 conditional positions is SUPER risky, functional > textual competition, competition is dictated by mandates and not outcomes (i.e. CPs that are designed to spur follow-on are very strategic), judge kick is good, consult/condition/delay/threaten generally suck, and interpretations matter A LOT.

Topicality- People have started flagging violations based on things not in the plan (solvency lines, advocate considerations, aff tags, 2ac arguments, etc.). This is a bad way to understand T debates. The affirmative defines the plan, positional competition is bad, plan text in a vacuum makes sense, and the way to beat teams that include resolutional language in the plan is on PICs not T.

I default to reasonability, but I can be convinced that Competing Interpretations is a decent model. The negative does not need actual abuse, but they do need to win why their potential abuse is likely as opposed to just theoretical. That is, I'll be less persuaded by a 25-item case list than a really good explanation of a few devastating new affirmatives they allow. If I were to pick only one standard to go for, it would be predictable limits. They shape all pre-round research that guides in-round clash and ensure that debates are dialogues instead of monologues. Finally, as a framing point, I generally think bigger topics = better.

SPEAKER POINTS

They're totally broken...

I'll try to follow the below scale based on where points have been somewhat recently.

29.4 to 29.7 – Speaker Award - 1 to 10

29.2 to 29.3 – Speaker Award - 11 to 25

28.9 to 29.1 – Should break/Have a chance

28.4 to 28.8 – Outside chance at breaking to .500

28 to 28.3 – Not breaking, sub-.500

27 to 27.9 – Keep working

Below 26 – Something said/done warranting a post-round conversation with coaches

T—I prefer limits over ground arguments. Rather than right to particular ground I would like interpretations argued in terms of the predictability of the research burden/definition. Case lists are important. I consider T an argument that doesn't specify the relationship between the debaters and the resolutional actor (i.e. how the debate is evaluated and what the role of the judge for evaluating the debate is still in question). To me, framework is a category of arguments that establish a limit that restricts not just the resolution but the role for the judge. I find most framework arguments unnecessarily restrictive in their interpretation about how we impact/assess a debate whereas a T interpretation can maintain significant freedom for different ways of couching an affirmative while providing predictable limits. For this reason kritiks of T are difficult for me to accept, while criticisms of framework have frequently been successful.

DAs- I’m unlikely to assess uniqueness/link in absolute terms. It tends to be easier to get me to consider direction/quality of link & internal link over uniqueness. Evidence qualifications are important. I probably give analytic and defensive arguments more weight than many judges. I am much more likely to care about probability than other axes of impact comparison. I regard debates over small fractions of catastrophic risks (i.e. is an impact literally going to cause human extinction or "only" billions of deaths) as useless for comparison. The most underutilized aspect of impact comparison that I care about are about those portions of impacts not covered by those debates (i.e. I don't care much about whether or not a pandemic will kill every last person, but I care a lot about whether a pandemic would kill a lot of people if the impact defense read in the debate is focused on only those last few people).

CPs--I've rarely voted against CPs for theory reasons. This probably has more to do with what affs are willing to do/commit time to more than it demonstrates any real appeal of certainty-based competition arguments. CPs should include solvency evidence when they are introduced. One thoughtful perm is worth more than all 6 of the four word perms that I can't flow.

K pickiness—I am more open to aff inclusion than most. I am frustrated by debates where the alternative “vote negative” squares off against permute “do all the parts of the alternative that don’t compete with the plan.” Those are both just abstract descriptions of what any alternative or permutation entails. In depth debate on these issues might be helped by being less tied to a text and more to not being obnoxious in the c/x in describing an alternative. Pay attention to language/phrasing—pull quotes from evidence and speechs instead of debating author names (Yes, pot-kettle, but still). I prefer Ks that aren’t debated like disads—too much big impact/impact turn and not enough about the aff/alt from either side in most debates I judged. Neg link arguments should include reference to 1AC evidence/tags. Historical examples help a lot for either side. Teams often spend too much time explaining their framework argument without answering their opponent's (on both sides). I also find many framework debates fail to establish the stakes of winning either framework (relying too much on a general perception that winning framework means winning the debate). I tend to think of framework as establishing the burden for a link or an alternative rather than an impact. Framework arguments that treat impacts as a matter of debate theory (i.e. "you should only evaluate X category of impact") don't make much sense to me, if conceded I am willing to evaluate a debate according to those limits, but otherwise I am unlikely to do so.

Theory—I tend to dislike theory debates focused on narrow comparison of interpretations. For the most part, people would be better off discussing the logical implications of a practice rather than a potentially arbitrary implementation of that practice (i.e. conditionality rather than "neg gets 1 CP and 1K"). I am biased against conditionality, though not that strongly. We appear to be willing to stretch it to extremes in a way that has changed my presumptions. To me, "status quo is always a logical option" or other logic-oriented defenses of conditionality require a judge to evaluate the plan versus the status quo even if the negative goes for their CP. I say this for clarifying purposes -- this has very rarely changed the outcome of a debate that I have judged. I often judge debates that do not presume conventional plan-focused models for debate yet still contain theory arguments that presume a plan-focused terminology and its resulting constraints. I point this out only to suggest that I think debaters should devote some time to thinking about the consequences of strucutral changes in the form of debate that they advocate for the smaller theoretical practices that occur within those debates.

Evidence comparison. In most debates I’ve judged if I hear about the other side’s evidence it’s only in the 2NR/2AR or it’s about how the opponent’s evidence is “terrible.” Granted, many people read terrible evidence, nevertheless, sophisticated evidence comparison should begin early in the debate. I intensely dislike random unqualified internet evidence.

I prefer cross-ex strategies premised on listening to an opponent's answer and using it in a subsequent speech, not posturing/arguing as though c/x were another speech.

I'm a bit of grump, especially when it comes to my consistent facial expressions in debates. It's not often that is about you, the debaters. I often talk a great deal after debates.

I desperately wish I were funny so I will probably appreciate your humor even if I rarely laugh out-loud. My sense of humor is definitively geeky. My speaker point scale is lower than our current average. I've tried to get more in line with current norms so as not to punish people for speaker point inflation. I do not follow along in the doc, please do not speak or organize your speech as though I were.

Patrick Waldinger 

Assistant Director of Debate at the University of Miami

Assistant Debate Coach at the Pine Crest School 

10+ years judging 

Yes, please put me on the speech doc: dinger AT gmail

Updated 9.2.14

Here are the two things you care about when you are looking to do the prefs so I’ll get right to them:

1. Conditionality: I think rampant conditionality is destroying the educational aspects of debate slowly but surely. You should not run more than one conditional argument in front of me.

Reading a K without an alternative and claiming it is a “gateway” issue doesn’t count. First, it likely contradicts with your CP, which is a reason that conditionality is both not educational and unfair. Second, there are no arbitrary “gateway” issues – there are the stock issues but methodology, for example, is not one of them the last time I read Steinberg’s book.

I also think there is a big difference between saying the CP is “conditional” versus “the status quo is always an option for the judge”. Conditional implies you can kick it at any time, however, if you choose not to kick it in the 2NR then that was your choice. You are stuck with that world. If the “status quo is always an option” for me, then the negative is saying that I, as the judge, have the option to kick the CP for them. You may think this is a mere semantic difference. That’s fine – but I DON’T. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

The notion that I (or any judge) can just kick the CP for the negative team seems absurd in the vein of extreme judge intervention. Can I make permutation arguments for the aff too? That being said, if the affirmative lets the negative have their cake and eat it too, then I’ll kick CPs left and right. However, it seems extremely silly to let the negative argue that the judge has the ability to kick the CP. In addition, if the negative never explicitly states that I can kick the CP in the 2NR then don’t be surprised when I do not kick it post-round (3NR?).

Finally, I want to note the sad irony when I read judge philosophies of some young coaches. Phrases similar to “conditionality is probably getting out of hand”, while true, show the sad state of affairs where the same people who benefited from the terrible practice of rampant conditionality are the same ones who realize how bad it is when they are on the other side.

2. Kritiks: In many respects going for a kritik is an uphill battle with me as the judge. I don’t read the literature and I’m not well versed in it. I view myself as a policymaker and thus I am interested in pragmatics. That being said, I think it is silly to dismiss entirely philosophical underpinnings of any policy.

Sometimes I really enjoy topic specific kritiks, for example, on the immigration topic I found the idea about whether or not the US should have any limits on migration a fascinating debate. However, kritiks that are not specific to the topic I will view with much more skepticism. In particular, kritiks that have no relation to pragmatic policymaking will have slim chance when I am judging (think Baudrillard).

If you are going for a K, you need to explain why the PLAN is bad. It’s good that you talk about the impact of your kritik but you need to explain why the plan’s assumptions justify that impact. Framing the debate is important and the frame that I am evaluating is surrounding the plan.

I am not a fan of kritiks that are based off of advantages rather than the plan, however, if you run them please don’t contradict yourself. If you say rhetoric is important and then use that same bad rhetoric, it will almost be impossible for you to win. If the 1AC is a speech act then the 1NC is one too.

I believe that the affirmative should defend a plan that is an example of the current high school or CEDA debate resolution. I believe that the affirmative should defend the consequences of their plan as if the United States or United States federal government were to actually enact your proposal.

The remainder:

“Truth over tech”? I mull this over a lot. This issue is probably the area that most judges grapple with, even if they seem confident on which side they take. I err of the side of "truth over tech" but that being said, debate is a game and how you perform matter for the outcome. While it is obviously true that in debate an argument that goes unanswered is considered “true”, that doesn’t mean there doesn’t have to be a logical reason behind the argument to begin with. That being said, I will be sensitive to new 2AR arguments as I think the argument, if logical, should have been in the debate earlier.

Topicality: Topicality is always a voting issue and never a reverse voting issue. I default to reasonability on topicality. It makes no sense to me that I should vote for the best interpretation, when the affirmative’s burden is only to be good. The affirmative would never lose if the negative said there is better solvency evidence the affirmative should have read. That being said, I understand that what “good’ means differs for people but that’s also true for what “better” is: both are subjective. I will vote on competing interpretations if the negative wins that is the best way to frame the debate (usually because the affirmative doesn’t defend reasonability).

The affirmative side has huge presumption on topicality if they can produce contextual evidence to prove their plan is topical. Specific examples of what cases would be/won’t be allowed under an interpretation are important.

People think “topical version of the aff” is the be all end all of topicality, however, it begs the question: is the aff topical? If the aff is topical then just saying “topical version of the aff” means nothing – you have presented A topical version of the aff in which the affirmative plan is also one.

Basically I look at the debate from the perspective of a policy debate coach from a medium sized school: is this something my team should be prepared to debate?

As a side note – often times the shell for topicality is read so quickly that it is very unclear exactly what your interpretation of the topic is. Given that, there are many times going into the block (and sometimes afterwards) that I don’t understand what argument you are making as to why the affirmative is not topical. It will be hard for me to embrace your argument if I don’t know what it is.

Counterplans: It is a lot easier to win that your counterplan is theoretically legitimate if you have a piece of evidence that is specific to the plan. And I mean SPECIFIC to the plan, not “NATO likes to talk about energy stuff” or the “50 states did this thing about energy one time”. Counterplans that include all of the plan are the most theoretically dubious. If your counterplan competes based on fiat, such as certainty or timeframe, that is also theoretically dubious. Agent counterplans and PICS (yes, I believe they are distinct) are in a grey area.  The bottom line: the counterplan should not be treated as some throw away argument – if you are going to read one then you should defend it.

Theory: I already talked a lot about it above but I wanted to mention that the only theoretical arguments that I believe are “voting issues” are conditionality and topicality. The rest are just reasons to reject the argument and/or allow the other side to advocate similar shenanigans. This is true even if the other side drops the argument in a speech.

Other stuff you may care about if you are still reading:

Aspec: If you don’t ask then cross-examination then I’ll assume that it wasn’t critical to your strategy. I understand “pre-round prep” and all but I’m not sure that’s enough of a reason to vote the affirmative down. If the affirmative fails to specify in cross-examination then you may have an argument. I'm not a huge fan of Agent CPs so if this is your reasong to vote against the aff, then you're probably barking up the wrong tree. 

**Addendum to ASPEC for "United States"**: I do think it is important for the aff to specify in cross-ex what "United States" means on the college topic. The nature of disads and solvency arguments (and potentially topicality) depend on what the aff means by "United States". I understand these are similiar arguments made by teams reading ASPEC on USFG but I feel that "United States" is so unique and can mean so many different things that a negative team should be able to know what the affirmative is advocating for. 

Evidence: I put a large emphasis on evidence quality. I read a lot of evidence at the end of the debate. I believe that you have to have evidence that actually says what you claim it says. Not just hint at it. Not just imply it. Not just infer it. You should just read good evidence. Also, you should default to reading more of the evidence in a debate. Not more evidence. More OF THE evidence. Don't give me a fortune cookie and expect me to give the full credit for the card's warrants. Bad, one sentence evidence is a symptom of rampant conditionality and antithetical to good policy making. 

Paperless: I only ask that you don’t take too much time and have integrity with the process, e.g., don’t steal prep, don’t give the other team egregious amounts of evidence you don’t intend to read, maintain your computers and jump drives so they are easy to use and don’t have viruses, etc.

Integrity: Read good arguments, make honest arguments, be nice and don’t cheat. Win because you are better and not because you resort to cheap tricks.

Civility: Be nice. Debate is supposed to be fun. You should be someone that people enjoy debating with and against – win or lose. Bad language is not necessary to convey an argument.

In my ideal debate world, the affirmative would read a topical plan and defend the implementation of that plan.  The negative would read disadvantages, counterplans, and case turns/defense.  Topical research is probably my most favorite part of debate, so I would assume that I would have a tendency to reward teams that I see as participating in the same way I view the game.

I get that my ideal debate world isn't everyone's ideal debate world.  I also vote for teams that prefer to run Topicality, Kritiks, or other arguments as their "go to" strategies.  Good critical debaters explain specific links to the affirmative case and spend some time discussing how their argument relates to the impacts that are being claimed by the affirmative team. I also think it helps a lot to have specific analogies or empirical examples to prove how your argument is true/has been true throughout history.

I expect that paperless teams will be professional and efficient about flashing evidence to the other team. It annoys me when teams flash large amounts of evidence they don't intend to read or couldn't possibly read in a speech to the other team and expect them to wade through it.  It should go without saying that I expect that you won't "steal" prep time in the process of flashing, or any other time really.  It also annoys me when teams don't flow just because they are "viewing" the evidence in real time.    

I expect that teams will post their cites to the wiki as soon as the debate is over, and ideally before I give my decision and otherwise participate in information sharing efforts.  

I like to have a copy of speeches flashed to me as well so I can follow along with what everyone else sees in the debate and because I think it makes the decision making process go faster.

The best way to get high speaker points from me is to be clear, be polite, participate fully in your cross-examinations and use them to your advantage to point out flaws in your opponents’ arguments, try hard, and use appropriate humor. 

Ask me questions if this doesnt cover what you need to know or you can't find the answer from someone else that I have judged/coached.  Obviously there will be tons of other things I think about debates that I haven't posted here.  Have fun.

Currently leaving this blank due to doxxing of judges. Ill update again before the season or debaters can email me for a copy. SovietHistory2396@gmail.com

Background:

Head Coach, Binghamton University (2021-current)
Debated + coached GMU (2009-2019)

-----Super short version 10 min before round-----

Yes Email Chain - add woodward@binghamton.edu

I am down for any argument, just win it + a reason I should vote for you

Am a sucker for judge instruction -> If you tell me to evaluate in a certain way and the other team doesn't rebut it then I'm going to.

I prefer explanation to card dumps- I vote on what you say not what the cards say, so the more you break things down and are clear the easier it is for me to vote for you. This matters for critical debates and policy rounds in different ways.

In K rounds- Don't assume I get the tricks/ideas behind your affirmative, or negative arguments especially if it's the first time I've heard your argument. I'm down for it of course but I do tend to look at debates very big picture, so nuances, or hyperspecific literature focused type of things WILL pass me by, but if you can break those arguments down then you'll go far with me.

In Policy rounds- Don't assume I know all acronyms or the most up to date negative/affirmative trends. Bing doesn't read policy affs usually in JV or Open. I cut our policy cards but outside of novice there's not a lot of DA/CP debates happening here. I expect to judge plenty of policy debates this season but I'm not as up to date on things as the season goes on, just because that's not our focus as a squad. So explanation is going to be important the more nuanced/specific a counterplan or DA is to an affirmative.

Be Polite- that's different from being nice.

Would prefer that people slow down/go to about 90% of top speed. I don't think this matters for most debates but it would be appreciative. I will yell slow/clear as applicable.

----Thoughts After 1st Semester/Wake---

1. I'm very much on the let affs cook side. Doesn't mean I won't vote on T-MBI is only Carbon Tax/Cap & Trade, but mileage varies depending on the mech, some of the areas I can see being fine, others not so sure.

2. I miss case debates, regardless of the aff or neg I do get a little sad seeing so little actual case debating on this topic. something something maybe speaker point increases etc. I like those a lot more than the counterplan prolif i've seen on various wikis

-----You have time to read/more specific things-----

---Novice/JV---

Is the most important division. We should be doing what we can to help the division grow and new debaters to improve and feel welcome- the community depends on it.

I'm fine with novices reading whatever arguments they wish. I would prefer if novices defend the topic, or if they took alternate routes to the topic they still defended topic DAs and were in a topical direction.

I am not a fan of misinformation type arguments in novice. This doesn't mean hiding DAs or case turns on case, or an extra definition on T (because those promote better flow practices) This means arguments that are obtuse to be obtuse for no reason.

---Topicality---

Is a voting issue and never a reverse voting issue.

I am not persuaded by "norms" or "it's 1st/last tournament etc." style arguments. I do not need abuse to vote on topicality.

---Disadvantages---

They are good and should be read- turns case arguments are persuasive to me, Uniqueness vs Link questions don't super matter to me- tell me what to prioritize.

Politics and Elections DAs are strategic. But the current political system is so flawed it is hard to take the arguments seriously. I am very persuaded by arguments about why radicalism in our government has doomed the ability for it to function.

Elections/Midterms DAs, the closer we get to November, the better the DA sounds in front of me. Interpret this as you wish.

---Counterplans---

I reward teams for more specific reasons why the CP solves the aff vs no federal/xyz process good key warrant. I'm not a fan of no solvency advocate + just the CP text in the 1NC. I think the states counterplan may be a mistake on this topic.

I don't judge kick for the negative if a counterplan is extended in the 2NR barring exceptional justifications for doing so by a negative team.

I default to reject the argument on theory. I can be persuaded most things could be a reason to reject the team, or gives leeway on other arguments. My standards for voting on theory even with this are high. Affs should go for more theory, negatives do too much these days.

Conditionality in limited instances is good. That being said I get suspicious if the negative presents more than 2 conditional worlds. It's still debatable, but more than 3 seems excessive to me

---Critiques (When you are neg) ---

Judge instruction + framework is your friend. I usually compare the aff vs the alt in a vacuum, but when one team is telling me what to do, and one is not with this information this goes a long way into deciding my ballot. Sometimes good judge instruction can overcome technical drops. "Weigh the aff" is not an aff interp on framework. I think it does you a disservice unless the neg's interp is legitimately you don't get the aff without jumping through multiple hoops. I would prefer interps based on something more specific, whether it's extinction/impact based, or even better education towards an issue, or even the self serving ROB = best at fighting nuke weapons.

I require a bit of explanation. My critical knowledge is better than it was in the past but you are more likely to know your argument more than me. Empiric examples, applications to the affirmative, etc are all useful and persuasive.

Go for tricks, if the aff messes them up then it's a valid strategy, I don't think you need the alt alone if you're winning a sizeable enough impact + link for a case turn type of argument

--- Critiques (When you are aff) ---

I prefer affirmatives that are in the direction of the topic and do something, or if they do neither have a good justification for doing so.

Defend your arguments and be strategic. IF your 1AC is saying Heg + Prolif, it does not make sense to go for the link turns. This doesn't mean don't make the arguments if it's what you've prepped for but think about what your aff is designed to do and don't shy away from impact turns or offense.

Framework is viable and a decent strategy in front of me. I default to Limits > Fairness > Skills based arguments. Another thing from being at Bing is I am slowly leaning towards Fairness is more of an internal link vs an impact alone BUT I can be persuaded otherwise. I am also fine with impact turn debates but not having defense on neg framework standards (Or case defense to the aff) is pretty devastating and a problem for the team without said defense.

Something I have noticed as a pattern for lots of the framework rounds I judge is that not having defense, or at least references/cross applications that can be clear to answer terminal impacts on either side is usually something that can be a round ender. I find that I am somewhat persuaded by 2NR/2ARs that go for conceded impact scenarios on framework/affirmative answers to framework. Outside of heavy framing articulations this is usually hard to overcome.

Critical teams should think hard about if they want to defend DAs or not. I give negative teams lots of leeway if the 2AC says they'll defend the DA, but the 1AR/2AR immediately spikes the link/does some shenanigans (unless the neg did not actually read a link)

---Misc---

Speaker points: My guidelines end up looking like this for varsity debates. This may adjust due to trends at all levels. JV/Novice will usually be lower than this.

Nationals

Speaker award - 29.3

should/can clear - 28.7

Regional

Speaker Award -29

Should clear - 28.6

I adjust for division, but IF I give a student in JV or Novice a 29+ I believe they could debate a division up and succeed.

I don't like trolling - if you do not want to debate, simply forfeit, or have a discussion/pursue other methods of debating. IF you read an argument with the sole plan of being disruptive or trolling a debate you get a 15. IF you're funny you get a 25.

Don't cheat- if you accuse someone, round ends and will not restart. We don't have that many rules in debate, we should follow them, especially the rules about academic honesty/evidence.

Be polite- doesn't have to be "nice" but generally we shouldn't make rounds overly hostile for 0 reason. We will see each other multiple times over the next few years. There is a cutoff for being snarky and being a jerk.

"Inserting" Highlighting is silly, if you want to say the other team's ev goes neg/sets you up for an argument you have to read it for me to give you credit

---Other Events---

I am a policy coach. I have spent the vast majority of my time coaching and preparing things in policy formats. I will flow, I evaluate my decisions based on that flow. I believe the best debaters are ones who both prove their side of an issue is the most effective, and have combatted the opposing side effectively. I will never determine a round solely based on presentation, decorum or speaking style unless something problematic happened to where coaches/tab have to be involved.