Den (She/They) - dnisecarmna@gmail.com
AmeriCorps Member for Chicago Debates
Coach at Thomas Kelly

Work in debate full-time coaching policy debate (CX) and teaching public forum (PF) to middle schoolers in the Chicagoland area. Routinely, I have topic knowledge working at debate camp(s) throughout the summer. Additionally, I do admin and social media stuff for Potomac Debate on the side. During the season, I accumulate over 60+ rounds judged on the urban debate and national circuit. I do not coach any high school program besides my alma mater, which means I have no conflicts with any other CD/UDL school.

Default towards a tech over truth style of judging unless stated otherwise in-round. I will operate on the parameters the debaters assign to me. Good practices in the debate space such as disclosure are non-voting issues. However, if your arguments are descriptive in its explicit/graphic content, please provide a trigger warning pre-round. This includes death good. Let's avoid going to tab at all costs. I will stop the round if the other team deems the environment as uncomfortable.

I open the speech document to get the plan/advocacy statement/counterplan text. Moreover, I started having to mark cards manually and delete what's not read after inspecting my flow post-speech. It's just to make sure debaters don't claim 1nc cards they didn't read put on the card doc end of the debate.

The non-negotiables

[1] adherence of resolutional discussion either by an advocacy or policy implementation
[2] order of speeches given (1 constructive, 1 rebuttal)
[3] speech and prep times allocated by the tournament

My broader thoughts on debate

Counterplans

Affirmative teams should be able to defend against process counterplans. If your solvency mechanism is strong, you should be able to beat them. Multiplank counterplans and if the negative gets to kick out of individual planks is up for debate. Affirmative teams should be prepared to answer counterplans based on the proposals their 1AC authors write out that's distinct from the plan.
I will need hand-holding on the competition debate. Questions of severance and/or Intrinsicness permutations should not be glossed over. Especially, if the affirmative wants to win perm do the counterplan.

Disadvantages

My only thought is that 'fiat' does not solve the link of the disadvantage, unless it's a rider DA. Explain why links based on trade-offs are theoretically illegitimate.

Kritiks

This is the type of argumentation I spend the most time thinking about. Be consistent on your framework throughout the debate. You must answer the line of thinking "If we win framework, that means..." and how that affects the state of the flow. On the kritik proper, reading long overviews hurts you more than helps you. Hate it when teams respond to an argument and say "that's from the overview above". Make sure to establish the role of the alternative, is it meant to solve material conditions and/or changing the way we think about things is a prerequisite. I will reward teams for early-on link work in the 1NC extrapolating lines from the 1st aff constructive.

Topicality

For the negative to win Topicality, they must [1] provide a model that best adheres to the topic, [2] exclaim why the affirmative fails to meet that model, [3] flesh out why the negative's model of debate is preferable, [4] evaluating the flow through competing interpretations is best. For the affirmative to beat Topicality, they must [1] explain why they meet the negative's model and/or [2] provide a counter-model that's better for the topic, which leads to [3] more educational and fair debates moving forward. [4] Frame the debate through reasonability.

T-USFG

Prefer the debate to be framed similar to topicality (better model of debate). However, teams going for the impact turn(s) are welcome to do so. Affirmative teams running an advocacy statement tend to go for "the negative's model of debate is inherently worse, therefore by default the judge should vote for the affirmative's model". Definitely, the best approach when 1ACs are built to counter FW by embedding claims on the game of debate and how to best approach the topic. However, I have seen my fair share of critical affirmative's that.. could be read on any other topic. Negative teams should emphasize switch side debate. Provide TVA(s) under your model of debate. Explain the affirmative's burden and the negative's role in this game. Convince me that the negative should be the one reading all these different theory of powers against teams defending a policy. If they break structural rules such as going over speech time, call it out. Procedural fairness leads to better education. Don't rely too heavily on portable skills.

K-Affs

If your affirmative is not structured as an impact turn to framework, you're not going to have a fun time. It's not a question of the literature base, it's more so your ability to explain the jargon within it. Make sure to do impact framing work to not lose to the impact turn (cap good, heg good). Lastly, please continue the act of the performance. Teams should *probably* weigh their performance more past the 1AC.

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Hall of Famers / Ppl I Interact with the most...

Kelly Lin, Lisa Gao, Ramon Rodriguez, Jocelyn Aguirre, Juan Chavez, Victoria Yonter, Aasiyah Bhaiji, Abigail Spencer, Jairo