Hello,

I am a first time parent judge for debate.

Please do not talk fast as I am unable to understand anything you are saying.

I am a lay judge so please tell me exactly why you have won the round.

Thank you and have a good tournament.

Hi! I'm a former high school debater from the late '80s and early '90s -- yeah, I'm old. So while I know what flow is and will flow your rounds, please note I am a newbie judge.

It would be helpful if you would:

1. Ask, "Ready, judge?" before you launch into each speech. (I will be keeping time, too.) What would be even better would be, "Ready, judge, for my four-minute speech (three-minute crossfire)?..."

2. Sign post your arguments. "Moving onto my second contention, my opponent says, but we contend..."

3. Speak a little slower. Don't spread.

Be good sports and have fun!

Hello my name is Cory Johnson. I am a History teacher and a debate coach.

When I am judging there are a few things I look for:

1. It is extremely important that you have a clear link chain. As I am flowing, I want to be told how each point leads into the next. It is not my job to infer what you are trying to argue. You need to explicitly tell me each part of the argument, and how that creates your impact. If the impact is not made clear, I have nothing to weigh on and therefore voting for you becomes a challenge dependent on your persuasion skills alone. Please extend your cards, and your links, or I will consider them dropped. My final decision will be based on the flow, and how you interact with your opponent during the round.

1. Cross is not binding. In fact I will not even flow it. Cross ex is a time to gather information to then be used in rebuttal. It is also an opportunity for clarification and filling in your flow.

1. In an LD debate, the value is terminal. It is the primary voter issue, and as such must be woven into your contentions, and be present throughout the round, including your rebuttals. LD is a value debate and therefore it is not something to be mentioned briefly in your constructive and then forgotten. I am open to theory and K’s but understand if you take this route, you better be committed to it. Risking a theory to throw it away or using K’s arbitrarily does not sit well with me. It is important to weigh your argument against your opponent, while your value is the terminal issue, weighing gives me as a judge the ability to make an informed decision.

1. In a PF debate, your impact is the primary voter issue. As stated above, this must be made clear. An ambiguous impact leaves very little room for me as a judge to make an informed decision. I want to be told what the result of my vote is. I want to be told how my vote affects the topic at hand. This is where weighing becomes terminal. If you do not weigh your impact against your opponents, I see little to no reason to vote for you, as a lack of weighing leads me to believe your impact is not very important to the round. Within that weighing I want to see a clear comparison between you and your opponent.

1. When speaking, please be clear, and concise. I want to be impressed with your speaking ability, and this is how I decide your speaker points. DO NOT SPREAD! I prefer slower, more evocative speech, with impactful points of emphasis. I do not appreciate redundancy, especially in rebuttal. If you have to repeat yourself outside of the purpose of emphasis, it tells me you do not know what you are talking about.

2. A few extra miscellaneous points to keep in mind: I am a stickler about time. I will not flow anything said after time is up. It will not be considered when voting. It is also very important that you use off-time roadmaps, so I can follow your thought process. Finally keep the card calling to a minimum. Doing this excessively wastes too much time, and becomes annoying and frustrating. If you cannot rebuttal without seeing every card your opponent uses, that most likely means you need to do more research.

I look forward to judging you. Good Luck!

I'm a former speech competitor that has been judging speech, PF, LD, and CX rounds for 5 years. I am currently a public speaking teacher at the collegiate level as well. The things that I look for are consistent throughout both speech and debate events, recent and unbiased information, clear definitions, and NO SPREADING! The point of debate is to cleanly debate topics as educated individuals and to not devolve into a rude, talking over type of argument. There is a difference between debating and arguing.

The long and short of it all: I want a good, clean and fair fight!

Crawford Leavoy, Director of Speech & Debate at Durham Academy - Durham, NC

Email Chain: cleavoy@me.com

BACKGROUND
I am a former LD debater from Vestavia Hills HS. I coached LD all through college and have been coaching since graduation. I have coached programs at New Orleans Jesuit (LA) and Christ Episcopal School (LA). I am currently teaching and coaching at Durham Academy in Durham, NC. I have been judging since I graduated high school (2003).

CLIFF NOTES

- Speed is relatively fine. I'll say clear, and look at you like I'm very lost. Send me a doc, and I'll feel better about all of this.

- Run whatever you want, but the burden is on you to explain how the argument works in the round. You still have to weigh and have a ballot story. Arguments for the sake of arguments without implications don't exist.

- Theory - proceed with caution; I have a high threshold, and gut-check a lot

- Spikes that try to become 2N or 2A extensions for triggering the ballot is a poor strategy in front of me

- I don't care where you sit, or if you sit or stand; I do care that you are respectful to me and your opponent.

- If you cannot explain it in a 45 minute round, how am I supposed to understand it enough to vote on it.

- My tolerance for just reading prep in a round that you didn't write, and you don't know how it works is really low. I get cranky easily and if it isn't shown with my ballot, it will be shown with my speaker points.

SOME THOUGHTS ON PF

- The world of warranting in PF is pretty horrific. You must read warrants. There should be tags. I should be able to flow them. They must be part of extensions. If there are no warrants, they aren't tagged or they aren't extended - then that isn't an argument anymore. It's a floating claim.

- You can paraphrase. You can read cards. If there is a concern about paraphrasing, then there is an entire evidence procedure that you can use to resolve it. But arguments that "paraphrasing is bad" seems a bit of a perf con when most of what you are reading in cut cards is...paraphrasing.

- Notes on disclosure: Sure. Disclosure can be good. It can also be bad. However, telling someone else that they should disclose means that your disclosure practices should bevery good. There is definitely a world where I am open to counter arguments about the cases you've deleted from the wiki, your terrible round reports, and your disclosure of first and last only.

- Everyone should be participating in round. Nothing makes me more concerned than the partner that just sits there and converts oxygen to carbon dioxide during prep and grand cross. You can avert that moment of mental crisis for me by being participatory.

- Tech or Truth? This is a false dichotomy. You can still be a technical debater, but lose because you are running arguments that are in no way true. You can still be reading true arguments that aren't executed well on the flow and still win. It's a question of implication and narrative. Is an argument not true? Tell me that. Want to overwhelm the flow? Signpost and actually do the work to link responses to arguments.

- Speaks? I'm a fundamental believer that this activity is about education, translatable skills, and public speaking. I'm fine with you doing what you do best and being you. However, I don't do well at tolerating attitude, disrespect, grandiosity, "swag," intimidation, general ridiculousness, games, etc. A thing I would tell my own debaters before walking into the room if I were judging them is: "Go. Do your job. Be nice about it. Win convincingly. " That's all you have to do.

OTHER THINGS

- I'll give comments after every round, and if the tournament allows it, I'll disclose the decision. I don't disclose points.

- My expectation is that you keep your items out prior to the critique, and you take notes. Debaters who pack up, and refuse to use critiques as a learning experience of something they can grow from risk their speaker points. I'm happy to change points after a round based on a students willingness to listen, or unwillingness to take constructive feedback.

- Sure. Let's post round. Couple of things to remember 1) the decision is made, and 2) it won't/can't/shan't change. This activity is dead the moment we allow the 3AR/3NR or the Final Final Focus to occur. Let's talk. Let's understand. Let's educate. But let's not try to have a throwdown after round where we think a result is going to change.

I am the Speech and Debate Coach at Carolina Day School in Asheville, NC.

Our program at Carolina Day focuses on Lincoln-Douglas, Public Forum, and some speech events. In competition, I primarily judge Lincoln-Douglas.

I will always be flowing debates and will be familiar with the topics. I hear a lot of debates and can handle speed, but speed cannot come at the expense of clarity. If I can’t understand what you are saying and get it down on the flow, I won’t be able to weigh it later in the round.

I value frameworks in PF. If you don’t have a framework in the constructive, I will assume we are employing a cost-benefit analysis.

I judge primarily on a traditional local circuit. I'm open to progressive argumentation, but it will need to be clearly explained and clearly connected to the topic.

Big Picture: I'm a judge with few heartfelt convictions about what you can or should do to win a debate. Do you.  

Theory: Do whatever you please, as long as you carefully weigh the impacts of your competing interpretations of any given theory. I think that most theory debates are inconclusive given that folks do not take the time to parse out what values or goals are furthered by their theoretical framework. You’ll have a greater chance of winning my ballot if you carefully and explicitly impact your theory arguments relative to the other side.  

Topicality/Framework: I think the same basic thing about T/Framework--do what you will. I am of the school of thought that fairness, ground, and so on are not terminal impacts, and it is important to me that you make some normative comparisons about about how debate should be configured in debates about framework.  

A note on competition: With the "do what you please" maxim in mind, I should say that I have some defaults. If you are a policy team, I do tend to have a greater negative bias on counterplans than others in this area, so feel free to test the limits of fiat and competition, if you wish.

When it comes to debates around starting points, I will say that I have a decided (though revisable) bias for opportunity cost as a model of competition, so I am probably more conservative (by default) than most on whether or not differences in starting point are a sufficient ground for competition. The world is a complex place, in my opinion, and so simply starting at a different place than another team does not guarantee that views of the world are de facto competitive options in the absence of some other claim for competition.  

I am old, and my ears and flow are not quite what they once were. I tend to decide quickly, and not to look at a ton of evidence. Taking this into account in resolving the important issues in the debate, and, even better, providing a compelling narrative framing of your argument will go a long way with me.  

My name is Max Moskovitz and I’m currently a Junior at Virginia Tech studying microbiology and biochemistry. I did debate for one year in high school and attended a few tournaments, but most of my time was spent focusing on Model United Nations club which I did for four years and was the co-president of. In Public Forum debate I like seeing intense scrutiny of opposing arguments during crossfire and both sides keeping debate lively and civil

Public Forum debater for four years, judge for three. Feel free to ask specific questions at the beginning of the round but here is generally what I will be looking for:

Sign Post (and Road Maps): Outlining and numbering in each speech not only adds organization to your arguments but ensures that I flow where intended.

Clarity and Presentation: Your arguments are only as good as the way you present them. Apply this concept to speed; speak at a pace so that your points are not only heard but also processed. Present arguments in both a logical and supported manner (with qualitative and quantitative evidence). Rely on BOTH evidence and logic throughout the round, not only the evidence, because I am much more likely to buy into evidence that is BOTH credible and that you can explain (since that shows you have a thorough understanding of what you are advocating for). Succinct explanation, including clear claims, warrants, and impacts will work in your favor. Impacts are especially crucial in explaining to me why what you are saying matters and why your impacts should be prioritized. Remember that link chains should not be implied but explicit.

Respect: Always keep in mind that the round should be clean, civil, and based in evidence. Anything you say will ultimately be a reflection of your character so stay level-headed and grounded in fact. If you question evidence, talk about its credibility, reliability, citations and card-cutting, etc. rather than using subjective words such as bad, atrocious, terrible, etc.

Weighing: Please refrain from squeezing this in at the very last minute! It does not matter if an argument goes uncontested if its impact, and all others, are not weighed against the other side and explained in terms of magnitude, morality, time frame, scope, probability, etc. Use world comparison to explain why it should be a clean ballot for your team. This will help relay a cohesive story to me on why to vote PRO/CON.

Above all, be confident and have fun with the round!

Email: rayelucamyers@yahoo.com

Yes, I want to be on the email chain. jmsimsrox@gmail.com

UT '21 update (since I'm judging policy): I judge probably around a dozen policy rounds on the DFW local circuit a year (since about 2011), so I'm not a policy debate expert but I shouldn't be confused by your round. That means that I will probably understand the arguments you're making in a vacuum, but that you should probably err on the side of over-explaining how you think those arguments should interact with each other; don't just expect me to be operating off the exact same policy norms that you/the national circuit do. I am fairly willing to evaluate arguments however you tell me to. I have read a decent bit of identity, setcol, and cap lit. I am less good on pomo lit but I am not unwilling to vote on anything I can understand. Totally down for just a plan v counterplan/disad debate too.

Tl;dr I'm fine with really any argument you want to read as long as it links to and is weighed in relation to some evaluative mechanism. I am pretty convinced that T/theory should always be an issue of reasonability (I obviously think that some debates are better when there is a clear counter-interp that offense is linked back to); if you trust me to compare and weigh offense on substantive issues in the debate, I can't figure out why you wouldn't also trust me to make the same judgments on T/theory debates (unless you're just making frivolous/bad T/theory args). I enjoy any debate that you think you can execute well (yeah this applies to your K/counter-plan/non-T aff; I'll listen to it). I base speaker points on whether or not I think that you are making strategic choices that might lead to me voting for you (extending unnecessary args instead of prioritizing things that contribute to your ballot story, dropping critical arguments that either are necessary for your position or that majorly help your opponent, failing to weigh arguments in relation to each other/the standard would be some general examples of things that would cause you to lose speaker points if I am judging). Beyond those issues, I think that debate should function as a safe space for anyone involved; any effort to undermine the safety (or perceived safety) of others in the activity will upset me greatly and result in anything from a pretty severe loss of speaker points to losing the round depending on the severity of the harm done. So, be nice (or at least respectful) and do you!

Post-Emory thoughts:

Honestly, I think debate is in a relatively good space overall. It's usually this time of year that I find myself pessimistic on a few different tracks, but this year I'm incredibly optimistic. But still, a few thoughts as we're moving into championship season:

1. Concepts of fiat need a revisiting in PF. No one believes it to be real, and the call back for it to be illusory as an answer to offensive arguments is not adequate. The distinguishment between "pre" and "post" fiat is relatively unneeded and undeveloped, most of this is being mistaken for a debate about topicality really. In fact, the pre/post debate is rooted in a weird space that policy resolved or at least moved past in the 90s. If non topical offense is your game, why not explore some wikis of prominent college teams that are making these arguments?
2. I cannot stress this enough, the space of post modern argumentation is confusing for me. I can more easily dissect these arguments when constructives are longer than four minutes, but in PF I especially do not have the ability to ascertain as to what the specific advocacy is or why it's good in a competitive setting. I am an idiot and the most I can really talk about my college metaphysics course is a dumb rhyme about Spinoza and Descartes(literally if you are well read on your subject, this should be ample warning as to what I can work through). That being said, criticisms focused on structures of power or the state specifically I can understand and don't need hand holding. Just not anything to do with the French(French speakers like Fanon do not count).
3. Deep below any feelings I have about specific schools of thought or even behavior in round, I do know that debate as an activity is good. That does not mean I am full force just deciding ballots on ceding the political, but rather I need to hear why alternative methods to approaching the competitive event have distinct advantages. There is a huge gulf between somehow creating a more inclusive space and burning that same space to the ground that no team in PF has even begun to explain how to cross or even conceptually begun to explain why it can be overcome.
4. RVIs != offense on a theory shell. No RVIs being unanswered does not mean the opponent cannot go for turns or a comparative debate on the interp vs the counter interp
5. A competing interpretation does not conceptually create another shell.
6. Teams need to signpost better, I will not read from docs and I truly believe that the practice is making everyone worse at line-by-line debate.

For WKU -

The last policy rounds I was in was around 2015 for context. I do err neg on most theory positions though agent counterplans do phase me. Other than that, the big division when it comes to other arguments I don't really have much of a stance on.

Affs at the end of the day I do believe need to show some semblance of change/beneficial action

Debate is good as a whole

Individual actions I don't think I have jurisdiction to act as judge over.

Who am I?

Assistant Director of Debate, The Blake School MN - 2014 to present

Co-Director, Public Forum Boot Camp(Check our website here) MN - 2021 to present

Assistant Debate Coach, Blaine High School - 2013 to 2014

This year marks my 14th in the activity, which is wild. I end up spending a lot of my time these days thinking not just about how arguments work, but also considering what I want the activity to look like. Personally, I believe that circuit Public Forum is in a transition period much the same that other events have experienced and the position that both judges and coaches play is more important than ever. That being said, I do think both groups need to remember that their years in high school are over now and that their role in the activity, both in and out of round, is as an educator first. If this is anyway controversial to you, I’d kindly ask you to re-examine why you are here.

Yes, this activity is a game, but your behavior and the way in which you participate in it have effects that will outlast your time in it. You should not only treat the people in this activity with the same levels of respect that you would want for yourself, but you should also consider the ways through which you’ve chosen in-round strategies, articulation of those strategies, and how the ways in which you conduct yourself out of round can be thought of as positive or negative. Just because something is easy and might result in competitive success does not make it right.

Prior to the round

Please add my personal email christian.vasquez212@gmail.com and blakedocs@googlegroups.com to the chain. The second one is for organizational purposes and allows me to be able to conduct redos with students and talk about rounds after they happen.

The start time listed on ballots/schedules is when a round should begin, not that everyone should arrive there. I will do my best to arrive prior to that, and I assume competitors will too. Even if I am not there for it, you should feel free to complete the flip and send out an email chain.

The first speaking team should initiate the chain, with the subject line reading some version of “Tournament Name, Round Number - 1st Speaking Team(Aff or Neg) vs 2nd Speaking Team(Aff or neg)” I do not care what you wear(as long as it’s appropriate for school) or if you stand or sit. I have zero qualms about music being played, poetry being read, or non-typical arguments being made.

Non-negotiables

I will be personally timing rounds since plenty of varsity level debaters no longer know how clocks work. There is no grace period, there are no concluding thoughts. When the timer goes off, your speech or question/answer is over. Beyond that, there are a few things I will no longer budge on:

1. You must read from cut cards the first time evidence is introduced into a round. The experiment with paraphrasing in a debate event was an interesting one, but the activity has shown itself to be unable to self-police what is and what is not academically dishonest representations of evidence. Comparisons to the work researchers and professors do in their professional life I think is laughable. Some of the shoddy evidence work I’ve seen be passed off in this activity would have you fired in those contexts, whereas here it will probably get you in late elimination rounds.

2. The inability to produce a piece of evidence when asked for it will end the round immediately. Taking more than thirty seconds to produce the evidence is unacceptable as that shows me you didn’t read from it to begin with.

3. Arguments that are racist, sexist, transphobic, etc. will end the round immediately in an L and as few speaker points as Tab allows me to give out.

4. Questions about what was and wasn’t read in round that are not claims of clipping are signs of a skill issue and won’t hold up rounds. If you want to ask questions outside of cross, run your own prep. A team saying “cut card here” or whatever to mark the docs they’ve sent you is your sign to do so. If you feel personally slighted by the idea that you should flow better and waste less time in the round, please reconsider your approach to preparing for competitions that require you to do so.

5. Defense is not “sticky.” If you want something to count in the round, it needs to be included in your team’s prior speech. The idea that a first speaking team can go “Ah, hah! You forgot about our trap card” in the final focus after not extending it in summary is ridiculous and makes a joke out of the event.

Negotiables

These are not set in stone, and have changed over time. Running contrary to me on these positions isn’t a big issue and I can be persuaded in the context of the round.

Tech vs truth

To me, the activity has weirdly defined what “technical” debate is in a way that I believe undermines the value of the activity. Arguments being true if dropped is only as valid as the original construction of the argument. Am I opposed to big stick impacts? Absolutely not, I think they’re worth engaging in and worth making policy decisions around. But, for example, if you cannot answer questions regarding what is the motivation for conflict, who would originally engage in the escalation ladder, or how the decision to launch a nuclear weapon is conducted, your argument was not valid to begin with. Asking me to close my eyes and just check the box after essentially saying “yadda yadda, nuclear winter” is as ridiculous as doing the opposite after hearing “MAD checks” with no explanation.

Teams I think are being rewarded far too often for reading too many contentions in the constructive that are missing internal links. I am more than just sympathetic to the idea that calling this out amounts to terminal defense at this point. If they haven’t formed a coherent argument to begin with, teams shouldn’t be able to masquerade like they have one.

There isn’t a magical number of contentions that is either good or bad to determine whether this is an issue or not. The benefit of being a faster team is the ability to actually get more full arguments out in the round, but that isn’t an advantage if you’re essentially reading two sentences of a card and calling it good.

Theory

In PF debate only, I default to a position of reasonability. I think the theory debates in this activity, as they’ve been happening, are terribly uninteresting and are mostly binary choices.

Is disclosure good? Yes

Is paraphrasing bad? Yes

Distinctions beyond these I don’t think are particularly valuable. Going for cheapshots on specifics I think is an okay starting position for me to say this is a waste of time and not worth voting for. That being said, I feel like a lot of teams do mis-disclose in PF by just throwing up huge unedited blocks of texts in their open source section. Proper disclosure includes the tags that are in case and at least the first and last three words of a card that you’ve read. To say you open source disclose requires highlighting of the words you have actually read in round.

That being said, answers that amount to whining aren’t great. Teams that have PF theory read against them frequently respond in ways that mostly sound like they’re confused/aghast that someone would question their integrity as debaters and at the end of the day that’s not an argument. Teams should do more to articulate what specific calls to do x y or z actually do for the activity, rather than worrying about what they’re feeling. If your coach requires you to do policy “x” then they should give you reasons to defend policy “x.” If you’re consistently losing to arguments about what norms in the activity should look like, that’s a talk you should have with your coach/program advisor about accepting them or creating better answers.

IVIs

These are hands down the worst thing that PF debate has come up with. If something in round arises to the issue of student safety, then I hope(and maybe this is misplaced) that a judge would intervene prior to a debater saying “do something.” If something is just a dumb argument, or a dumb way to have an argument be developed, then it’s either a theory issue or a competitor needs to get better at making an argument against it.

The idea that these one-off sentences somehow protect students or make the activity more aware of issues is insane. Most things I’ve heard called an IVI are misconstruing what a student has said, are a rules violation that need to be determined by tab, or are just an incomplete argument.

Kritiks

Overall, I’m sympathetic to these arguments made in any event, but I think that the PF version of them so far has left me underwhelmed. I am much better for things like cap, security, fem IR, afro-pess and the like than I am for anything coming from a pomo tradition/understanding. Survival strategies focused on identity issues that require voting one way or the other depending on a student’s identification/orientation I think are bad for debate as a competitive activity.

Kritiks should require some sort of link to either the resolution(since PF doesn’t have plans really), or something the aff has done argumentatively or with their rhetoric. The nonexistence of a link means a team has decided to rant for their speech time, and not included a reason why I should care.

Rejection alternatives are okay(Zizek and others were common when I was in debate for context) but teams reliant on “discourse” and other vague notions should probably strike me. If I do not know what voting for a team does, I am uncomfortable to do so and will actively seek out ways to avoid it.