for the chain- zaarah.azad@gmail.com

reagan '21, duke '24

pronouns: she/her

qualified to the TOC twice

for churchill:

cx judge in ld - I will not enjoy super tricky ld strat that you run in front of me.

for prefs:

if you're a hardcore policy team, i would not pref me high. i did k debate of 3 of the 4 years i debated so that should probably tell you how well versed i am with policy things. if you do end up having me in the back and only read these arguments, don't worry. you just have to simplify and connect the dots for me more than you would for other judges. for k teams i am probably in the range of a 1-3 and policy teams from a 4-6.

background:

my sophomore year i read settler colonialism and linguistic criticisms like anzuldua. my junior year i read a baudrillard aff and a bunch of k's on the negative like semiocap, wilderson, settler colonialism, and baudrillard. my senior year i only read warren on the aff and neg.

notes:

- clarity > speed

-tech > truth in most instances

- don't be problematic. i am unafraid to vote on microaggressions. (racism, sexism, death good)

- clipping is bad but needs proof (L and 0 speaks for the team who does it)

- try entertaining me! judging can get boring sometimes so enjoyable rounds are always good

- zoom debate can be miserable if you aren't careful. please have a good mic, try and have your camera on, and don't speak over others during cx because nothing can be heard

kritiks:

- these debates can either be really good or really bad - please don't make them bad

- im familiar with antiblackness, set col, cap, and baudrillard. even if i may know what you are reading, you still need to do nuanced analysis on the thesis of your k.

- i never understood long overviews cause you re-explain all of what you said on the line-by-line. if you do have a long overview, try and make it the least redundant as possible.

- i have a deep deep deep hatred for links of omission. please make them specific.

- framework determines the rest of the debate. you need a model of debate that is preferable and probably should have offense on why the other side's model is bad for debate.

- if you read a kritik against a K aff, i will reward specific engagement by holding affirmative teams to a higher standard for permutation explanation.

- you can kick the alt

- just cause you won your theory of power doesn't mean you won the round :P

t-usfg:

- i read k affs a lot but that doesn't mean i wont vote for t usfg. it just means i know a lot about how it should be ran

- clash as an impact>>>>

- fairness and limits > education and ground

- often negative teams forget to do impact comparison when going for t-usfg - this is the easiest way to win my ballot

- subjectivity debates matter and can implicate a lot of the flow

- i think switch side is very persuasive and solves a lot of offense

- i like examples to convince me of why certain standards are more valuable

topicality:

- i lean towards competing interpertations but will still vote on reasonability

- case lists are nice

- i appreaciate intent to define arguments

- impact comparison is pretty important

- good counter interp ev is really cool.

- like t-usfg i am more persuaded by limits fairness and clash than education and ground

- my favorite standard is clash <3

counterplans:

- smart, creative counterplans are appreciated if executed well

- i like counterplans that are textually and functionally competitive, but your counterplan by no means has to be. i mostly just think you should have a solvency advocate.

- i lean neg for most counterplan theory except for consult, condo, solvency advocate. theory debates get wack so do a lot of work here to make it make sense

- i need instruction for judge kick.

disadvantages:

- impact comparison is especially important for these debates

- evidence comparison is also pretty important

- turns case arguments when executed correctly are strategic and beneficial for negative teams

- 1ar gets new arguments to new uniqueness, links, or impacts in the blocks

theory:

- apart from things like condo and judge kicks i am not nuanced in theory arguments. slow down and overexplain things if you plan on doing this in front of me

case debate:

- you should probably do this besties

miscellaneous:

- i hate aspec. if you hide this in a t shell i hate you.

- be nice. being sassy can be fun but there is a limit

- respect your opponents. respect their pronouns. don't cut each other off. just be respectful. did i mention to be respectful?

- !!!!!put a trigger warning on your stuff!!!!!

- i am heavily influenced by philip dipiazza, rahul kolla, and david gutierrez. if you have any questions, their paradigms could probably answer it.

- making me laugh gives you +0.2 speaker points

Casady 2021

University of Kansas 2025

I want the ev. (also questions) pls- alexpbarreto1@gmail.com

Conflict me if you know you're committed to debating at KU.

Follow speech times, don't clip/miscut ev, and don't be problematic.

Debate Coach at NSU University School

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1---Big Picture

"Bosley" preferred, "Jacob" is fine, "Mr. Bosley" if you must for comfort.

Please put me on the e-mail chain.

Policy--- uschoolpolicy@gmail.com AND jacob.daniel.bosley@gmail.com

Public Forum--- uschoolpf@gmail.com AND jacob.daniel.bosley@gmail.com

I actively coach and research policy and public forum debate. I enjoy technical, organized debates. My CX research is generally K-oriented and my PF research generally topic-oriented, but I'd like to believe I can grasp a wide range of debates.

Tech vs. Truth---Tech obviously informs truth, but if I have to decide between intuitive and well-explained arguments vs. terrible evidence, I’ll choose the former. There are few things I won’t vote on, but “death good” is among them.

Offense vs. Defense---This is a helpful paradigm for assessing relative risk, but risk can be reduced to zero.

2---General Practices

Speed---Go for it, but at the higher end you should scale back slightly.

Flowing---I flow on a computer without much shorthand. I will have the document open, but use it for either reading evidence I am not familiar with or checking when I thought I caught an argument/tag and am confirming. If you are incomprehensible in the first place, I will not use the doc to fill-in.

Evidence---I read it during debates. Quality is in the back of my mind, consciously or not.

Re-Highlighting---If small, I don’t think you need to re-read in speech. Don’t expect me to read a giant card to figure out if you’re right.

Digital Debate---Make sure everyone is present with confirmation before starting. Be reasonable about tech issues, as I will track tech time. If there are major issues, I’ll default to tournament procedures.

Decorum---Sass, snark, or shade are fine within reason. I’m not a good judge for hostile approaches, e.g. interrupting speeches.

“New” Arguments---The more late-breaking, the more open I am to responses. “Late-breaking” is relative to me catching the initial argument. Happy to strike 1AR/2NR arguments rightly flagged as “too new.”

Alternative Practices---I’m here to flow and judge a debate, awarding a single win. If you’re trying to do something different, I’m not the judge for you.

3---T vs. Plans

“Competing Interpretations”---This makes more intuitive sense to me than “reasonability,” but that's often because the latter isn't explained as a frame. Affs are still better off prioritizing offense.

"Intellectual Property" Specifics---I was not at camp this summer. Despite judging more than last year, I still don't have strong views on the most common issues, e.g. "courts only," "scope vs enforcement," "subsets," etc. Caselists and examples of specific ground lost/gained is always helpful.

4---T vs. K Affs

Frustrations---These debates are often two ships passing in the night due to reliance on pre-written blocks. Please make judges lives easier by:

A---Have a robust defense of your model of debate, including roles for teams/judge, examples of how debates play out, net-benefits, etc.

B---Pick and choose your offense and compare it with what the other team has actually said.

"Affirmation"---At a bare minimum, affirmatives should have some relationship to the topic and “affirm” a clear advocacy. I am not sympathetic to purely negative arguments/diagnoses of power relations.

"Debate is a Game" vs. "Subject Formation"----Debate is a complicated space that's competitive, academic, and personal space. Arguments that assume it’s only one seem a bit shallow. Offense can be made assuming all three.

Terminal Impacts---“Fairness” or “clash” can be terminal impacts, though often teams don’t seem to explain why.

"Truth Testing"---I am less persuaded by these arguments because all argumentation seems to rely on some outside/unstated assumptions. I can certainly be persuaded that the structure of debate warps content and that could be a reason for skepticism.

"TVAs"---The 2NR needs to explain what offense they think the TVA resolves instead of expecting me to figure it out.

"T = [X Violent Practice]"---Feel free to impact turn the resulting curriculum, models, debates, etc. of an interpretation of debate, but its difficult to convince me reading an argument about the topic of discussion is analogical to policing/"stop and frisk"/"drone strikes"/other material violence.

5---Kritiks

Framework---I don't get middle grounds by default. I will resolve this debate one way or the other based on what is said, and then determine what remaining arguments count as offense.

Uniqueness---The alt needs to resolve each link, or have some larger reason that’s not relevant, e.g. framework. Affs are often in a better spot pressing poorly explained alternatives/links.

Competition---I presume affs can test mutual exclusivity of alts, whether against a “plan” or “advocacy.” Feel free to argue different standards of competition. The less the aff outlines a clear method, the more I’m persuaded by “no plan, no perm.”

Perm Texts---They are great. This can be difficult when alts are amorphous, but 1AR/2AR explanation needs to rise above “do both.”

6---Counterplans

Judge Kicking---If you want me to explicitly consider multiple worlds post-2NR, e.g. both CP vs. aff and/or status quo vs. aff, make an explicit argument. Saying the words “the status quo is always an option” in CX is not enough for me.

Theory vs. Literature---Topic literature helps dictate what you can persuade me is reasonable. If your only basis for competition is a definition of “resolved”/“should” and a random law review, good luck. If you have evidence contextual to a topic area and a clear explanation of functional differences in implementation, I’m far easier to persuade.

Solvency Advocates---CPs should have solvency advocates of “comparable quality” to the 1AC. If your Advantage CP plank cites 1AC evidence, go for it. If you’re making something up, provide a card. If you’re trying to make card-less “Con Con” a thing, I’m a hard sell.

Intrinsicness---Both the aff/neg need to get better at debating intrinsic/“other issues” perms. I'm an easier sell than others that these obviate many of the sillier CPs.

7---Disadvantages

Framing---It's everything: impact calculus, link driving uniqueness or vice-versa, the works. Smart arguments and coherent narratives trump a slew of evidence.

Internal Links > Impacts---I find most "DA Turns the Case" / "Case Turns the DA" debates don't spend enough time on causation or timing.

Politics Theory---Most 2AC theory blips against Politics DAs aren’t complete arguments, e.g. “fiat solves the link” or "a logical policymaker could do both." Still, intrinsicness arguments against DAs are underutilized.

8---Theory

Conditionality---It’s difficult to convince me some conditionality isn’t necessary for the neg to be viable. The two recent times I was asked to vote on conditionality bad/dispositionality-only good, I voted neg. Things can certainly change based on substantive contradictions or quantity. Negs should be clear under what conditions, if any, they can kick individual CP planks.

Other Theory Issues---It’s difficult to persuade me that most theoretical objections to CPs or perms are reasons to reject the team.

“Tricks”/“Spikes”---Please no.

9---Public Forum Specifics

I am not a "lay"/"flay" judge.

A few views of mine may be idiosyncrasies:

Paraphrasing---I’m convinced this is a harmful practice that hides evidence from scrutiny. Evidence should be presented in full context with compete citations in real time. That means:

A---Author, Date, Title, URL

B---Complete paragraphs for excerpts

C---Underlining and/or highlighting indicating what is referenced.

D---Sending evidence you intend to read to opponents before the speech is delivered.

Purely paraphrased evidence compared to a team reading cut cards will be treated as baseless opinions.

Line-by-Line

A---You need to answer arguments in a coherent order based on when/where they were introduced.

B---You need to extend complete arguments, with warrants, in later speeches. If not in summary, it’s too late to bring back from the dead in final focus.

If neither side seems to be doing the needed work, expect me to intervene.

Disclosure---I generally think disclosure is beneficial for the activity, which is why our program open sources. However, I am not as dogmatic about disclosure when judging. It is difficult to convince me "disclosure in its entirety is bad," but the recent trend seems to be shifting interpretations that are increasingly difficult to meet.

Absent egregious lack of disclosure/mis-disclosure, I am not the best judge for increasingly demanding interpretations if opponents have made a good faith effort to disclose. For example, if a team forgot to disclose cites/round report for a single round, but is otherwise actively disclosing, it is difficult to convince me that a single mistake is a punishable offense.

While I don't want to prescribe what I think standard disclosure should be and would rather folks debate the specifics, I am an easier sell than others on some things:

A---The quality of debates is better when students know what arguments have been read in the past. This seems more important than claims that lack of disclosure encourages "thinking on your feet."

B---Debaters should provide tags/citations of previously read contentions. A doc with a giant wall of text and no coherent tags or labels is not meaningful disclosure.

C---Round reports don't seem nearly as important as other forms of disclosure.

Evidence Ethics---Evidence issues are getting egregious in PF. However, I also do not like some of the trends for how these debates are handled.

A---NSDA Rules---If an evidence challenge is invoked, I will stop the debate, inform the team issuing the challenge that the entire debate will hinge on the result of evaluating that challenge, and then consult both the NSDA rules and any tournament specific procedures to adjudicate the challenge. Questions of evidence ethics cannot be just "theory" or "off-case" arguments.

B---"Spirit" of Rules vs. Cheap Shots---I admittedly have idiosyncracies on specific issues, but if they come up will do my best to enforce the exact wording of NSDA rules.

i---"Straw" arguments where the cut section clearly does not represent the rest of the article, ellipses out of major sections, bracketing that changes the meaning of an article (including adding context/references the author didn't intend), and fabrication are easy to convince me are round-enders.

ii----A single broken URL, a card that was copy and pasted from a backfile incorrectly so the last sentence accidentally cut off a couple words, and other minor infractions do not seem worth ending a round over, but it's up for debate.

iii---Not being able to produce the original full text of a card quickly seems like a reason to reject a piece of evidence given NSDA wordings, though I worry this discourages the cutting of books which are harder to provide access to quickly during debates.

Hello! I am a parent judge, so please speak slow and cleary during your speeches. Please make sure to time your own speeches too! Have a fun and friendly debate

I competed in Lincoln Douglas debate for four years in high school. In college I competed in policy debate for four years at the University of Richmond where I was a three-time participant at the NDT. Since graduating from law school I have been practicing as an attorney in the New York state court system. Any argument preference or style is fine with me: good debate is good debate. To me, well-warranted arguments extended and explained in rebuttals combined with strategic control of the flow wins debates. Technical proficiency in terms of argument interaction is also appreciated. Well executed link and impact turns are also impressive. It won't change how I evaluate the debate, but in case you are curious, I was primarily a 2A/1N and ran everything from hard right, to soft left, to ironic affs as well as a full range on the neg. My email is jchicvak at gmail dot com.

**I am functionally retired from debate as of May 2024. I may come back to judge as favors every once in awhile. This will hopefully be rare. Be warned :)**

Put me in email chains or feel free to email me questions: JamieSuzDavenport@Gmail.com

I probably should do an overhaul of my paradigm; it will likely not happen. Seriously just AMA if it will help you going into the round.

Education/Debate Experience:

MPA-MSES @ IU Dec ’23, hoo hoo hoo Hoosiers. CX GA '21-'24.Please note this is an environmental science degree. I have a very low tolerance for climate denial or global warming good and would recommend not going for those args.

BA: IR, Fr, Arabic @ Samford, May ’20, ruff ‘em, CX and novice coaching

HS: LD in GA, ‘16

Misc:

A note: I won't read cards unless instructed or seeking clarity (and if this is the case, I will be grumpy). All comments will be typed in the ballot and am open to questions immediately following the round and via email afterward. I do my best not to intervene or let personal biases cloud my judgment. I do have a deep appreciation for friendly competition and will generally be happier while giving out speaks or making decisions if I think the people in the round embodied that spirit. Conversely, am not afraid to have a come-to-Jesus meeting for unnecessary antagonism.

For eTournaments: I'll need a little more time than normal to adjust to your style of speaking/spreading because online anything gets tricky. Try to keep that in mind for your speeches so my ears can adjust. I'll default to having my camera on.

Zoom debate: PLEASE double-check your mic settings so that background noise suppression is not on. Zoom decides that spreading is background noise and it messes with the audio.

Overall:

Do what you want. I'm pretty go-with-the-flow and will try to adapt to what the round is versus making you adapt to me. The main thing to consider with me is my personal debate experience and potential knowledge gaps because of it. I'm not a great judge for high theory because I simply don't get it and it takes more explaining for me to understand and take it seriously (@ Baudrillard, semio-cap, etc.). There's some k lit that I'm not fully versed in but I try to keep current on major issues. Otherwise go nuts but make good choices.

2AR/NR: I more and more find myself telling debaters to tell me a story so I think I should put it in here. Whether you're going for a K, FW, DAs, extinction - whatever - start the speech telling me what your scenario is and why it's preferable to the other team. This is especially true if going for a perm or in a KvK debate, having a nuanced explanation clearly at the top of the speech frames the rest of the lbl and interactions you go for.

This was formerly organized by each event that I judge but that was getting unmanageable and ugly. If you have specific questions about anything event-specific or otherwise, just email or ask before the round starts.

Theory

Topicality/FW - I'll default that fairness is k2 education – if you want a different standard to be my primary metric, just tell me to do the thing. Might need more explanation of how I can apply the standard but that’s mostly for the atypical ones. Err on the side of over-explaining everything. Please please please explain your (counter)interp and what standards I should apply to favor yours - if there are a bunch of standards, which one do I evaluate first? Why? To reiterate: err on the side of over-explaining everything.

Fiat - I'll imagine it's real for policy v policy debates but more than willing to be sus of it, just tell me why.

Condo – dispo is an archaic interp and I think you can get better offense from other brightlines (2, what they did minus 1, etc.). I’ll vote on dispo but it’ll take more for you to win it than you need to do. Generally, think condo gets to its extremes when in the 3-4+ area, but new affs could change that yadda yadda, do what you want.

Other theory – whatever, just make the interp/counter-interp clear and tell me what to do with it.

RVI’s – please strike me or pref me real real low if this is your thing. I just don’t like it. This is one of if not the only hard-line I draw on content. They’re a time suck to play weird chess instead of engaging in the substance of the debate. Also, the majority of the time, horribly explained/extended.

Content

No huge preferences here

Cross-ex - I don’t flow cx unless something spicy grabs my attention and it’s usually obvious when that happens based on my reaction. Bring it up in a speech to remind me. Open cross, flex prep, is fine – I for real check out for flex prep.

Card clipping – you’ll lose. Might report it to tab/your coach if I’m feeling zesty that day.

Silliness

Love a good joke, wordplay, or reference. I currently am trying to incorporate “slay”, “yeehaw”, “gaslight gatekeep girlboss” and more into my regular debate vernacular. Feel free to also use these and I’ll at least laugh, maybe boost speaks, who knows – depends on how much of a silly goofy mood I’m in.

updated mar 2025

she/her -- please don't call me judge my name is maeve.

please put me on chains -- ask me for email before the round if u dont have it.

clipping and offensive behavior is an auto L + contacting coaches.

i typically flow on paper, please give pen time!

tl;dr

i debated [2019-2024; 2023 NDT + CEDA Octafinalist] at Iowa and read primarily critical arguments on both the aff and the neg. i'm currently an assistant coach at barstow, coaching on both the policy and k side of things. i have a background in plan-style debating and did that in HS and the start of college so run what you're good at. i judge off the flow and am comfortable adjudicating whatever style of debate I am put in.

i will admit that the part of debate i find the most interesting, useful, and engaging will always be critical debate.

however, my main goal as judge will always be to be an educator, not to be influenced by my personal argumentative biases. overcorrection to appease my biases likely will go poorly for you. so please just do what you do best (this includes fwk, despite popular belief). judge instruction is super important for me, and i often find myself voting for the team who has outframed their opponent, this means top 30sec of the 2a/nr should be writing my ballot for me.

i flow cx and you should too, i tend to reward teams who utilize their cx in speeches and find myself using cx moments in my rfds more than most.

k v. fwk

because this is what everyone's here for anyways...

for the aff: impact turns are your best friend with me in the back, im largely unpersuaded by a good portion of the counter-interps i've heard judging and you'd be better off just winning kvk debate is better. proliferating offense is usually the best way to go about fwk debates. good k teams who consistently win fwk debates shut it down in the 1ar -- this requires being attuned to the round and prioritization (for instance, clash turns the aff because we couldn't test it or wtv the silly fwk 2nc block is, does not require more than 10s in the 1ar)

[for hs debate] to me, arguments about ballots spilling up to "change debate" have always seemed silly and easily beatable, i think it would be a better strategy to just win their model creates worse forms of debate.

for the neg: tva's and ssd are underutilized in debates i've judged so be the change i suppose, i also do love a good, tricky tva. fairness isn't an impact imo and i've yet to be persuaded otherwise, you're better off going for limits and clash. the 2nr should not drop case with me in the back. i mean it. it is highly unlikely to go well for you. debate is a game, yes, you do however have to justify why your way of playing the game is good. i'm becoming more and more irritated with the amount of fwk blocks that are just recycled from year to year, pls innovate.

if you make the arg "if we did something violent/racist/transphobic etc. call tab", strike me and do better.

misc. things

condo is probably good, contradicting yourself is probably bad.

i stop flowing after 5 for HS, 6 for college, any more is excessive and cowardly.

for online debates: zoom audio is garbage so please prioritize clarity over speed. also probably dont start a speech if my camera is off

didn't think i'd have to add this but... I am all for debaters questioning my RFD, if something doesn't make sense to you please ask me to elaborate and I will. however, if the way you go about questioning me is disrespectful to me or the other debaters in the room (ie laughing at what i have to say, belittling opponents' arguments, etc) you should probably not pref me.

misgendering me or your opponents caps your speaks at 27. dont like it? dont pref me.

some things i've realized after judging some HS debates:

don't really want to judge wipeout or kant

hidden aspec on any off caps ur speaks at 27, like cmon yall.

"did you read X" is a c/x question and also tells me you're not flowing... not a great look.

email: eforslund@gmail.com

Copied and Pasted from my judge philosophy wiki page.

Recent Bio:

Director of Debate at Pace Academy

15 years judging and coaching high school debate. First at Damien High School then at Greenhill. Generally only judge a handful of college rounds a year.

Zero rounds on the current college topic in 2020.

Coached at the University of Wyoming 2004-2005.

Assisted Wake, Trinity, and Michigan at various NDTs

2024-2025 Addendum: Stop reading this uncooperative federalism cp. It is junk. If it is in the block you are maxing-out at 27.5 speaker points. The "say yes" arguments are lies, and out of context --- I can't believe this garbage argument has survived this many years --- it needs to die.

I try to incentivize reading strategies that involve talking about the specifics of the affirmative case. Too many high school teams find a terrible agent or process cp and use politics as a crutch. Too many high school teams pull out their old, generic, k's and read them regardless of the aff. As an incentive to get away from this practice I will give any 2N that goes for a case-only strategy an extra point. If this means someone who would have earned a 29 ends up with a 30, then so be it. I would rather encourage a proliferation of higher speaker points, then a proliferation of bad, generic arguments. If you have to ask what a case strategy involves, then you probably aren't going to read one. I'm not talking about reading some case defense and going for a disad, or a counterplan that solves most of the aff. I'm talking about making a majority of the debate a case debate -- and that case debate continuing into the 2NR.

You'll notice "specificity good" throughout my philosophy. I will give higher points to those teams that engage in more specific strategies, then those that go for more generic ones. This doesnt mean that I hate the k -- on the contrary, I wouldn't mind hearing a debate on a k, but it needs to be ABOUT THE AFF. The genero security k doesnt apply to the South Korean Prostitutes aff, the Cap k doesnt apply to the South Korea Off-Shore Balancing aff - and you arent likely to convince me otherwise. But if you have an argument ABOUT the affirmative --especially a specific k that has yet to be read, then you will be rewarded if I am judging you.

I have judged high-level college and high school debates for the last 14 years. That should answer a few questions that you are thinking about asking: yes, speed is fine, no, lack of clarity is not. Yes, reading the k is ok, no, reading a bunch of junk that doesn't apply to the topic, and failing to explain why it does is not.

The single most important piece of information I can give you about me as a judge is that I cut a lot of cards -- you should ALWAYS appeal to my interest in the literature and to protect the integrity of that literature. Specific is ALWAYS better than generic, and smart strategies that are well researched should ALWAYS win out over generic, lazy arguments. Even if you dont win debates where you execute specifics, you will be rewarded.

Although my tendencies in general are much more to the right than the rest of the community, I have voted on the k many times since I started judging, and am generally willing to listen to whatever argument the debaters want to make. Having said that, there are a few caveats:

1. I don't read a lot of critical literature; so using a lot of terms or references that only someone who reads a lot of critical literature would understand isn’t going to get you very far. If I don’t understand your arguments, chances are pretty good you aren’t going to win the debate, no matter how persuasive you sound. This goes for the aff too explain your argument, don’t assume I know what you are talking about.

2. You are much better off reading critical arguments on the negative then on the affirmative. I tend to believe that the affirmative has to defend a position that is at least somewhat predictable, and relates to the topic in a way that makes sense. If they don’t, I am very sympathetic to topicality and framework-type arguments. This doesn’t mean you can’t win a debate with a non-traditional affirmative in front of me, but it does mean that it is going to be much harder, and that you are going to have to take topicality and framework arguments seriously. To me, predictability and fairness are more important than stretching the boundaries of debate, and the topic. If your affirmative defends a predictable interpretation of the topic, you are welcome to read any critical arguments you want to defend that interpretation, with the above stipulations.

3. I would much rather watch a disad/counterplan/case debate than some other alternative.

In general, I love a good politics debate - but - specific counterplans and case arguments are THE BEST strategies. I like to hear new innovative disads, but I have read enough of the literature on this year’s topic that I would be able to follow any deep debate on any of the big generic disads as well.

As far as theory goes, I probably defer negative a bit more in theory debates than affirmative. That probably has to do with the fact that I like very well thought-out negative strategies that utilize PICS and specific disads and case arguments. As such, I would much rather see an affirmative team impact turn the net benefits to a counterplan then to go for theory (although I realize this is not always possible). I really believe that the boundaries of the topic are formed in T debates at the beginning of the year, therefore I am much less willing to vote on a topicality argument against one of the mainstream affirmatives later on in the year than I am at the first few tournaments. I’m not going to outline all of the affs that I think are mainstream, but chances are pretty good if there are more than a few teams across the country reading the affirmative, I’m probably going to err aff in a close T debate.

One last thing, if you really want to get high points in front of me, a deep warming debate is the way to go. I would be willing to wager that I have dug further into the warming literature than just about anybody in the country, and I love to hear warming debates. I realize by this point most teams have very specific strategies to most of the affirmatives on the topic, but if you are wondering what advantage to read, or whether or not to delve into the warming debate on the negative, it would be very rewarding to do so in front of me -- at the very least you will get some feedback that will help you in future debates.

Ok, I lied, one more thing. Ultimately I believe that debate is a game. I believe that debaters should have fun while debating. I realize that certain debates get heated, however do your best not to be mean to your partner, and to the other team. There are very few things I hate more than judging a debate where the teams are jerks to each other. Finally, although I understand the strategic value to impact turning the alternative to kritiks and disads (and would encourage it in most instances), there are a few arguments I am unwilling to listen to those include: sexism good, racism good, genocide good, and rape good. If you are considering reading one of those arguments, don’t. You are just going to piss me off.

Add these to the chain:

sanjith.geevarghese24 [at] montgomerybell.edu

debatemba [at} gmail.com

IPostRound [at] googlegroups.com

MBA '24, Emory '28

Debate is a technical game. I'll do my best to judge solely off the flow and avoid reading cards, unless their quality and content is explicitly called into question. I'll flow entirely off the speech, not the doc, so clarity is critical. There are no predispositions I have that can't be changed by strong argumentation. You're welcome to go for whatever arguments you desire: ASPEC, wipeout, the death k, etc.

Regardless, here are my beliefs/opinions regarding debate:

DAs:

Huge fan of econ debates where both sides are clearly explaining how their internal link interacts with the other sides offense.

CPs:

I dislike process shlop, but acknowledge that this topic isn't the best for DAs.

Competition > Theory

Your advantage CP planks have to advocate for the implementation of an actual policy. "Increase supply chain resilience" does not meet that threshold absent a card that clearly defines what that entails.

Unless instructed not to, I'll judgekick the CP.

Ks:

Fairness is an impact. General clash impacts are fine, but I'm a sucker for specific clash impacts based around 1AC scenarios.

I will not decide rounds on any call-out/reference to an event outside of the round.

I have no issue voting against kritikal arguments that aren't explained, especially given gaps in evidence.

Huge fan of impact turns vs. K affs. No link arguments should be refuted with rehighlights of their evidence to prove that they don't solve case and that they link to your framework offense.

I'm good for the K as long as it's debated technically. I'm not well-versed in complicated kritikal literature, so explain any important terms

Misc:

I am a slow flow. Go slower on analytics and be very clear.

Inserting rehighlights is fine.

I have almost zero knowledge about the IP topic.

Call me Sanjith (Sun-jith), not judge.

If you find any of the writing contained in this paradigm remotely compelling, strike me.

LD:

I have little experience here. I am not a fan of tricks. Debating in a more policy-style way is your best route to my ballot.

Woodward Academy '20

University of Virginia '24

Email chain: ghanate.nishita@gmail.com

People who taught me how to debate and their paradigms:

Bill Batterman: https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?judge_person_id=10298

Maggie Berthiaume: https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?judge_person_id=1265

Meta Comments

1. Respect your opponents. Don't do silly things or make fun of your opponents.

2. The document that you send out should be the exact same document that you are reading from your computer. Not only will you be depriving me the opportunity to read along with you, but you will also be giving me the impression that your arguments are bad enough that if your opponents knew what you were saying they would win.

3. I care the most about clash and nuanced arguments. The best debates are ones with aff-specific strategies that show off what both teams know about the topic. I am not impressed by winning debates on State CPs that fiat out of everything or affirmatives without a solvency advocate with contrived advantages. Engage the literature.

4. I read evidence at the end of a round. It doesn't make or break my decision, but I definitely would lean more to the side of being a "truth over tech" judge.

5. You can win absolute defense in front of me. It's hard but not impossible especially if your opponent reads cards that clearly conclude in the opposite direction or leave out an internal link.

Critiques

If the point of your kritik is to say words that your opponents won't understand, I will not understand what you are saying either. Avoid jargon. Try to explain your arguments more. I am familiar with the most common critiques (capitalism, anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, militarism, feminism, abolition).

I think aff-specific kritiks or generic kritiks with aff-specific links can be an amazing strategy especially if it's a core of the topic kritik (IE the abolition K on the CJR topic). However, I think too many "K teams" get away with reading silly links, links of omissions, serial policy failure, the fiat double bind, or any other K trick you can name. The best K debates are the ones that actually pinpoint something that the aff has done or something in their plan that is in fact bad. I'm not saying that all links should be to the plan, but I am saying that all links should be grounded in the 1AC. If the goal of your kritik is to clash with the aff from a new angle (IE reform vs transformative justice), you're on the right track.

Topicality

For not trying to be topical teams:

I think that teams should read a plan text especially in sub-varsity levels. Debate isn't a forum designed to provide a survival strategy or create a community of resistance. It is inherently a competitive space. Teams that do choose to read a non-topical aff should be prepared to defend every part of the 1AC through the end of the 2AR. CX is binding and I will hold you to what you say regardless of what you say in later speeches.

For teams with a plan text:

I enjoy T debates with concise impacts that actually attempt to exclude affs that shouldn't be a part of the topic. For this reason, T-Substantial is extremely persuasive to me given how well it limited the immigration and arms sales topic. As such, giving me a case list of not only what you include but also what you exclude is going to be extremely persuasive. But, I'm probably not going to vote on an interpretation that excludes a core of the topic aff.

'Planicality' is a non-starter for me. It's silly to think that adding the word substantial (or any other words in the resolution) all of a sudden makes your plan topical. It encourages poorly written plan texts that are incredibly vague so the aff can spike out of DAs while also doing all kinds of things that have no relation to the topic. It also poses an unfair burden on the neg as they now not only have to defend T to limit the scope of the plan, but also win substance as well.

Theory

I generally believe that the only voter is conditionality(No, {insert letter here}SPEC is not a voter), but I can be persuaded that some other theory violation is a voter especially if the theory violation is egregious.

Hiding ASPEC (not putting it on a separate flow) is a great way to lose speaker points for both negative debaters. Calling out your opponents and making hidden ASPEC an RVI is a great way to add to your speaker points.

Impact debating matters just as much in theory debates as it does in any other debate. If you don't have an impact and articulate why it matters more than your opponent's, I will likely not vote for you.

I will not judge kick unless the neg explicitly asks me to and the aff doesn't provide a theoretical reason not to. Keep in mind that if the neg has "dropped" the aff's advantages, a judge kick only benefits the aff.

Counterplans that compete off of certainty or immediacy are likely not competitive. Permutations, even perm: do the counterplan, do not have to be topical, as in they only have to meet definitions of the words in the plan. Similarly, I don't think Agent CPs are competitive unless the aff has specified their agent or read an advantage to their agent.

Disclaimer

While these are my general opinions of debate, I am by no means a norm setter or emotionally attached to them. I can always be persuaded by what happens in a debate round.

If you're running an email chain, please add me: Andrewgollner@gmail.com

he/him

About me: I debated one year of PF and three years of policy at Sequoyah High, and I debated three year of college policy at the University of Georgia. I was a 2N that generally runs policy offcase positions but, especially earlier in my debate career, I ran many critical positions. I'll try to be expressive during the round so that you can discern how I am receiving your arguments.

Judge Preferences: On a personal level, please be kind to your opponents. I dislike it when a team is unnecessarily rude or unsportsmanlike. I am completely willing to discuss my decision about a round in between rounds, so please ask me if you want me to clarify my decision or would like advice. You can email me any questions you have.

FOR PF/LD:

I am primarily a policy judge. This means

1. I am more comfortable with a faster pace. While I don't like the idea of spreading in PF and LD I can handle a faster pace.

2. I am decently technical. If an argument is dropped point it out, make sure I can draw a clean line through your speeches.

3. I am less used to theory backgrounds in your form of debate, slow down and explain these.

4. Ask me any specific questions you have.

FOR POLICY:

I recognize that my role is to serve as a neutral arbiter without predispositions towards certain arguments, but as this goal is elusive the following are my gut reactions to positions. I strive to ensure that any position (within reason, obviously not obscene or offensive) is a possible path to victory in front of myself.

CP: I love a well written CP which is tailored to your opponent's solvency advocate and that can be clearly explained and is substantiated by credible evidence. If your CP is supported by 1AC solvency evidence, I will be very impressed. Generic CPs are fine, I've read a ton of them, but the more you can at least explain your CP in the context of the affirmative's advantages the more likely you are to solve for their impact scenarios.

DA: Make sure to give a quick overview of the story during the neg block to clarify the intricacies of your position. If, instead of vaguely tagline making a turns case arg like "climate turns econ, resource shortages", you either read and later extend a piece of evidence or spend 10 to 15 seconds analytically creating a story of how climate change exasperates resource shortages and causes mass migrations which strain nation's financial systems, then I will lend far more risk to the disadvantage turning the case. Obviously the same goes for Aff turns the DA. I will also weigh smart analytical arguments on the disad if the negative fails to contest it properly. I'm also very persuaded when teams contest the warrants of their opponents evidence or point out flaws within their opponents evidence, whether it's a hidden contradiction or an unqualified author.

T: I've rarely gone for topicality but I have become increasingly cognizant of incidents in which I likely should have. My gut reaction is that competing interpretations can be a race to the bottom, but I have personally seen many affirmatives which stray far enough from the topic to warrant a debate centered over the resolution in that instance.

K: I used to run Ks pretty frequently in high school but I run them far less frequently now. I'm likely not deep in your literature base so be sure to explain your position and your link story clearly.

FW: My gut feeling is that debate is a game and that it should be fair, but I have seen many rounds where the affirmative team has done an excellent job of comparing the pedagogy of both models and won that their model is key for X type of education or accessibility there of. However, I am persuaded that a TVA only needs to provide reasonable inroads to the affirmatives research without necessarily having to actually solve for all of the affirmative. I do find the response that negs would only read DAs and ignore/"outweigh" the case to be effective - try to add some nuance to this question of why negs would or wouldn't still need to grapple with the case.

Non-traditional Aff: I've always run affs with USFG plan texts, but that doesn't mean that these positions are non-starters. I will be much more receptive to your affirmative if it is intricately tied to the topic area, even if it does refuse to engage the resolution itself for whichever reasons you provide.

Theory: I generally think 2 condo is good, more than that and things start to get a bit iffy.

Most importantly, please be kind to your opponents and have a good time.

gene.herrmann4@gmail.com

MBA 22

TCU 26

Tech > Truth

I was a 2N in highschool who went for only policy arguments.

Pretty policy

If you send your plan as a screenshot, speaks capped at 28.5

T

I have no clue about this topic but T is a good and strategic argument if ran correctly.

Ks

Not the best judge here. Kinda my weakness when I was debating. I was never really able to wrap my head around the K no matter how hard I tried. I lean AFF on framework. If you are going for the K, make sure to explain as deeply as possible the K and how it works within the debate. Contextualization to the case is always important.

K AFFs

Fairness > Clash. Win the argument that you go for, so just make sure you choose something that you are comfortable and competent with.

Lean neg in these debates.

Neg - I went primarily for fairness based framework arguments when I was debating, but don't let that make you change your strategy. If you have practiced clash and would rather go for a clash impact, that's fine by me. The most important thing to remember here is defense. I find it very frustrating to vote AFF in these debates, but often do when the NEG doesn't do good enough impact calc to weigh against their impacts.

Aff - Subjectivity is a very important thing to win if you would like to win my ballot. It's also important to think about how subjectivity applies to some but not all arguments and articulate how "subjectivity" is not proper defense to your impact.

CPs

Smart counterplans are fun

Links to the net benefit seems like a strong argument

Lean neg on theory, but it can get out of hand. Neg flex won’t get you out of everything.

Put me on the email chain: Lawsonhudson10@gmail.com;baylordb8@gmail.com (college)

Cabot '19

Baylor '24 - 3x NDT Qualifier

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free

TLDR: Do what you want and do it well. Paradigms can be more dissuasive than informative so let me know if you have any questions before the round. When debating I almost exclusively read K arguments so more judge framing in policy v policy rounds is very helpful. Depth over breadth, if your strat is 8+ off Im probably not the judge for you. I'll always read ev and be engaged in the round but it's your responsibility to tell me how to evaluate the round/impacts. Debate is fundamentally a communicative activity, if you want me to evaluate your args I need you to explain your warrants rather than just extending tags/card names. If there's disputes over what a piece of evidence says I'll read evidence but I shouldn't have to sift through a card doc to resolve a debate. If there's anything I can do to make debates more accessible for you, please let me know before round either via email or a pre-round conversation. Debate well and have fun!

I want to see and will reward with increased speaks the following: argument innovation, specificity, quality ev, jokes/good vibes, good cx, examples, and judge instruction. Please give me judge instruction. Write my ballot in the beginning of your final rebuttal and make sure to resolve the offense on the flow. I want to see clash, the more you clash with your opponents, the more likely you are to get my ballot. Regardless of my background, I really don't care what you read or how you debate; do what you do best and I'll do my best to evaluate the debate at hand.

K affs

Go for it. Affs that defend doing things in the direction of the topic tend to do better in fw debates but if your aff doesn't do that, just win why not doing that is good and you'll be fine. I'm honestly down for whatever. Whether your strategy is to have a connection to the topic and a method that results in topical action, or you read your aff to impact turn fw I've done it and will evaluate anything. I tend to thing presumption is a strategic strategy against k affs that at least forces teams to explain what they are defending. Tell me what my role in these debates is, what the ballot does, and what the benefit to debating the aff is. If you do these things, you're good.

T

Go for it. I think T is especially underutilized against certain policy affs. Contrary to some belief, I will vote for fw and will evaluate it like any argument. I usually evaluate fw debates through the lens of competing models of debate but can be convinced otherwise. For the neg, I find arguments about clash and advocacy centered on the topic generally more persuasive than arguments about procedural fairness. Especially on this topic, I think having offense as to why debating climate change is good would be beneficial for the neg. TVA's probably need to have at least texts, can be convinced they need solvency advocates too. I can be convinced affs make clash impossible, but if your only idea of clash is the politics da and the states cp I'll be less persuaded (I really like politics tho). In my opinion, the best way to go for fw is to win your interp creates a model of debate that is able to solve the affs offense (either through the tva or ssd). For the aff, its usually easier to win impact turns to fw but having a solid defense of your model/counter interp goes a long way in mitigating neg offense. I enjoy creative we meet args/counter-interps. New, innovative approaches to fw are always exciting as these debates can get very stale. I want to see ~clash~.

K's

These debates are where I have the most background and feel the most comfortable judging. The two biggest issues for the negative in K debates tend to be link application and alt explanation. Focusing on these areas along with round framing i.e. fw (for both the aff and the neg) will largely determine the direction of my ballot in these debates. Affs needs to explain how the permutation functions in the context of the alternative rather than simply extending a perm text as well as net benefits to the perm while the negative should equally spend sufficient time explaining why the aff and the alt are mutually exclusive. I don’t think the neg necessarily needs to go for an alt but if that's your thing you need to make sure you win the framework debate. Affs tend to do better when they engage with the actual content of the K and extend offense in addition to the case. If your aff obviously links to the K i.e. cap vs an innovation aff, you're probably in a better position impact turning the K than going for the no link/perm strategy in front of me. Aff teams would benefit from spending less time on framework/reading endless cards and more time engaging with the links/thesis of the K.

CPs/DA's

Make sure to explain how the counterplan is mutually exclusive with the aff and what the net benefit is. When going for the disad the negative needs to have a clear link, preferably reasons why the disad turns the case, and Impact Framing. Both the 2nr and the 2ar need to explain to me why your impacts outweigh theirs because I don't want to do that work for you.

LD:

While I've done LD, I have done exclusively progressive LD so I'm not familiar with some of the traditional LD norms. I'm fine with general theory arguments like conditionality and disclosure theory but if your strat relies on your opponent conceding a bunch of blippy, unwarranted statements that don't mean anything I'm probably not the judge for you. I'd much rather you see you win on the content of the debate than extending a blippy 1ar theory argument so you don't have to debate the substance of the case. Go as fast as you want as long as you are clear. I'm not likely to vote on tricks/spikes and long underviews in 1acs are annoying. If the 1ac involves reading 5 minutes of preempts with 1 minute of content I’m probably not the judge for you. I'm a policy debater at heart. I ultimately don't care what you do or say in round as long as it's not racist, sexist, ableist, or transphobic. Just make arguments - claim, warrant, impact - and tell me why you're winning the debate in the rebuttal speeches. I judge LD rounds slightly differently - I flow on my laptop. I first evaluate the fw debate which only ends up mattering when it does I guess? I then evaluate the 2nr/2ar to resolve key points of offense. I find LD debaters are often too defensive in their rebuttals and if that's you its not likely to work in your favor. Have offense. Be willing to impact turn your opponents position. I want to see ~clash~.

questions/email chain -jordant2debate@gmail.com

UWG 15-18. Coached for Riverwood HS in Ga 17-23. No affiliation now.

Top level:

You do you; I do not care. Any style of debating is on the table as long as there is clash, warrants, and respect.

Warrants are key. When flowing, I will often mark a "W" next to arguments that do not have a warrant. I will not be too willing to vote on an un-warranted argument. A dropped argument doesn't count for much if it is not warranted, packaged, and impacted.

Clarity over speed. Always.

Proper flowing is crucial to victory.

Stealing prep is getting bad, so I will be enforcing time restraints. No one should be typing, writing, or whispering if a timer is not running.

I need judge instruction. Starting with the 2AC/Block, I need framing at the top of the speech that filters the key offense for both sides. I also need some explicit direction on where I should be looking at my flow. I often end rounds by asking myself "What are the key arguments I need to decide the debate?" If you have already answered that question, you are in a good spot

I default to an offense/defense paradigm. I pretty much only vote for the team with the better offense. Take that as you will. Too many teams are not doing comparative impact calc, and not enough teams are doing the work to dismiss the opposition's impacts.

More case debate please. I am an active judge. I will be thinking about key applications/problems with the case. If you point those out, I will be very happy to reward you with the ballot. I personally feel that some well-argued analytic arguments can be enough to beat a carded advantage.

Analyzing and applying your own research across the debate earns a lot from me. Same for tying the key arguments together for big framing issues of the debate. Debate is a game of seconds, and the top debates are usually decided by small moments of strongly articulated warrents.

I will not adjudicate out-of-round issues that I have not witnessed. If there is a real conflict or ethical dilemma outside of round, it is better resolved through parties that have REAL influence (coaches, tab, etc.).

Finally, I welcome post-rounds. Feel free to challenge my decisions or ask questions. Debate is a game of persuasion, and I would be happy to explain how you can persuade me more

Specific Arguments:

Planless affs/Kritikal teams - I'm cool with whatever you do, and I have a good familiarity with most literature bases (I stopped deep-reading Ks about 3 years ago, but I keep up with most bases of critical literature). I do need 2 things from all affs that don't defend state action: 1) A clear connection to/indict of the resolution and 2) A clear understanding of what I am voting for. I do not necessarily need actionable voting issues, but the neg could easily persuade me to make that a part of my voting threshold. Alternative Roles of the Judge need to be very heavily warranted. I am willing to adopt them, but I need you to really analyze the debate and the space itself, not just repeat case answers.

Framework - I am feeling underwhelmed by the nature of framework debate recently. As a former K debater, I am more than willing to vote on framework. I view debate as the ultimate classroom, where you can even debate the rules themselves. I also think framework debates are good for K debaters because they teach them how to push boundaries and defend radical positions against institutional pishback. As such, I find immense value in clash debates for both sides.

That being said: Framework teams need to think about how they approach the argument.

First, we need real interpretations. “The aff must be topical” or “The negative does not have the burden of rejoinder in this debate” are not real interpretations of the resolutional question. Furthermore, the interpretations make any definitions meaningless because they aren’t intending to define resolutional terms.

Secondly, framework teams need to hold the line. Framework is (at its best) simply a model that the negative presents in contrast to the aff’s model. Hence, you don’t need to appease nor police the aff. Instead, a simple defense of your model is more than enough to win.

Third, having true case debate (not just presumption arguments) strengthens your position. If you haven’t read the literature, use cross-ex to your advantage and get some good understanding of the affs theory and advocacy. There’s nothing wrong with a cross-x used to gather information.

On the other side, framework against negative K's has never really been a big voting issue for me. Most likely, the framework simply checks neg side skew by allowing the aff to actually weigh the 1AC. I think more aff teams should make proactive arguments as to why I should weigh their impacts before the neg's and shield affirmative prep. Additionally, I think aff teams should make arguments to explicitly lower my threshold to vote on the perm. Pointing out uniqueness issues/alt solvency deficits along with a properly articulated framework could set me up to vote on perms I see as less-than-perfect. All of this to say to Aff teams - stop treating framework like a kill shot; start treating it like an actual framing issue.

T: I am an English Teacher and a grammar nerd, so I love T. A good definitions debate is my heaven. I have no idea why you all hate it now. The neg should clearly outline topic limits, include a list of plans justified by the aff's interp, and mark moments of the debate that they felt the aff spiked core/generic negative ground. Additionally, do not rely on meta references. I do not follow debate enough to know other affs off the back of my hand. Instead, teams should be proactively comparing interpretations based on intent to define, topic purpose, and political nuances.

Extra and effects T are, in my mind, the strongest, under-utilized arguments in debate. Way too many affs violate the boundaries of topical action, and I am easily persuaded that these two topicality violations justify a serious explosion of topic limits.

Cp: I have changed my perspective: I now enjoy process cps. A big part of this is enjoying the debate about theory around the justifications for process cps. Additionally, there are a lot of potential advantage cps that the neg could employ to easily solve aff advantages. Often, aff solvency is heavily limited by topical restraints, and I enjoy the debates around the most effective action to resolve the harms.

Theory: The only theory argument I find inherently persuasive is "Multiple conditional planks bad." Condo becomes a little tricky for me once we have introduced 3+ conditional advocacies. I have never understood the advantage of dispo as an interp and don't really find it persuasive.

I would prefer if all debates used the NSDA file share on tabroom. I am also ok with a speechdrop or email chain (add willkatzemailchain@gmail.com) but NSDA file share is faster, easier, and has all of the benefits of an email chain.

Coach at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart full time and very part time at the University of Kansas.
I have been actively involved in research for the high school IPR topic and lightly involved in research about college energy topic.

I have re-vamped this a lot so that is more "how do I think about debate" and less "what is every debate thought I've ever had."

How do I watch/evaluate debates

Truth and tech work together. I care that you make strong, well-supported arguments. I also care that you are able to explain those arguments, refute answers, and make comparisons. I will evaluate what I hear, including the evidence read in the debate, and how the debaters explain that evidence. I will not assume that you've made paragraphs worth of arguments because you said the word "arbitrary" or "microaggression" or because you made a one sentence assertion. Because I care about technical debating, I will not vote on unwarranted assertions.

I flow on paper. I aggressively monitor the 1ac and 1nc for clarity and read along in the doc. I start flowing with the 1nc on the case, and then flow all subsequent speeches. I will have the doc open, but probably won't look at during speeches after the 1nc. I think I care about clarity more than the average judge.

No ad homs/screen shots. Things that happen outside of the debate are not within my jurisdiction. Contact the tournament director or have your coach do it if you aren't comfortable doing so.

A note on "marked documents"

I am over it. Getting a marked copy is not a substitute for flowing. This is my procedure moving forward.

1. Immediately after a speech, before cx, you can ask to clarify which cards were marked and where.

2. a. If a small number of cards were marked, the speaker will tell you, you will mark it, and then we proceed with cx.

2. b. If a large number of cards were marked, then I will request that the speaker send a marked document. Marked does not mean deleting cards that were not read. It just means marking any cards that were marked.

You have every right to request a document that has all of the unread cards deleted. However, the time it takes to make and fulfill that request will come out of the requesting team's prep time. If you would like to avoid having your prep time abused by the other team, flow the debate or use cx to clarify what was read.

What argument proclivities do I have?

I like topic-specific arguments and dislike hyper generics. Your job is to win the debate, not do things that I like. However, I would suspect that I am terrible for most generic cp's (process, offsets, consult, etc) in close debates. Debaters that effectively deploy specific strategies on both the aff and the neg will be rewarded generously with speaker points.

I am probably not the best judge for a k strategy and generally find the perm double bind to be very strong. When I vote on K's, the neg is great at winning a unique link to the aff and an impact to that link. The fiat k is maybe the least persuasive argument in debate to me.

I am historically very good for topicality..

Many judges are averse to theory because it is "arbitrary." While this absolutely can be a compelling negative answer to theory arguments, arbitrariness is not on its face more compelling than aff ground arguments that support these theory arguments.

I probably care less about "try or die" than others. That doesn't mean I won't evaluate it or ever find it convincing, but I tend to care a lot more about link/solvency. I also think most debaters use that phrasing without knowing what it means.

I will only judge kick if directly told to by the negative. In the absence of any argument, I will not judge kick a cp

There is virtually no world in which I vote for a microaggression argument. If a microaggression occurred to the point where the debate should not continue, I will stop the debate and consult the tab room on how to proceed. Otherwise, I will not allow a team to levy personal attacks under the guise of a debatable argument.

My email for speech documents is: logycdocs@gmail.com. Personal email for all other correspondence: mikekloster@gmail.com.

HS debate from 1991 - 1995. CEDA/NDT debate at Pace University from 1995 - 2000. I assistant coached at St. Marks from 2001-2004.

Long break until 2020.

I am currently coaching a new program.

Clarity is the top priority above all else. When not on a panel, I'll pause your speech as many times as needed to reach a speed / diction combination so that I can hear every word. Lack of clarity is an epidemic only judges can fix.

"Out-tech" your opponents with depth, not breadth. If the strategy clearly hinges on trying to get your opponent to lose by not having time to respond to a large myriad of under-developed arguments, I'm willing to listen to new arguments in rebuttals so we get to have some clash.

My bias tends to be that the devil is in the details. So, the less your argument can be articulated in detail, with a lot of specifics and clarity, the weaker I find the argument. How specific should we be? As specific at the literature/research gets. Research which is more specific, generally carries more weight then research that is less specific.

Thus, plans that are vague, generic Ks or Ks with vague alternatives begin as weak arguments.

K-affs? These developed during my time away from the activity. The starting point for me will be making sure I understand why these are affirmative and not negative arguments.

TLDR; Put jkwon0301@gmail.com on email chain, I will usually vote for the better technical debaters, and BE CLEAR.

Me -

policy debate for 4 years as a 2N at Greenhill

primarily went for "policy" strategies but a very open listener

new to the resolution

Topicality -

flesh out the impact debate

give caselists, examples of aff/neg ground lost, etc.

Counterplan -

give detailed solvency explanations

aff should ask what's kickable early

if you want judge kick put it in the block

tricky/well-thought-out cps (ex. advantage cps using 1AC evidence, smart pics) will get more fiat/theory leeway and more speaker points

Process Counterplan -

perm + theory as a justification 2ARs are infinitely better than theory 2ARs

Disadvantage -

politics DAs are awesome!!!

make turns case arguments specific

please compare evidence

Kritik -

if the framework debate is perfectly debated by both sides, I'm gonna weigh the aff

K tricks are lame so don't drop them

ESPECIALLY for the K: explanation > evidence

T-USFG -

fairness makes sense to me as long as debate is a game

explicit (and early) impact calculus is important

K-Affs-

I'm not the best for these

Other -

no need to read rehighlightings

write my decision at the top of the 2NR/2AR and please clean up unresolved issues

Add me to the email chain: aelee0412@gmail.com

CHS '23

This guy taught me how to debate: https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?search_first=kevin&search_last=bancroft

General stuff: CX is binding; if I catch you clipping you get 0 speaks and an L; I'm expecting y'all to be respectful; don't steal prep.

Online debate: Please turn your cameras on (it's not a necessity but It would be nice for me to see y'all) and send prewritten analytics. If my camera's off please assume I'm not in the room and don't start any speeches.

Sending an email does not count as prep unless you're taking too long.

I'm ok with CX tag-teaming to an extent.

Pretend I have zero topic knowledge.

Tech>Truth

Clarity>Speed

I like overviews, but don't make them too long.

Framework and link debates are very important.

Condo is generally good, but I can be convinced otherwise.

I enjoy off case that are specific to the Aff, I'm less likely to vote on generic ones.

I am not a K expert. Your job on the K is to explain critical race and state-based theory. Jumping in with a thousand random terms will not be good for you. If you make me laugh I'll give you extra speaks.

If you can edit anime hair onto your coach's head before the round and send it to me, ill appreciate you a lot more

Get nae nae'd is acceptable as an answer in cross only once

Dan Lingel Jesuit College Prep—Dallas

danlingel@gmail.com for email chain purposes (the new tabroom file share is actually the easiest and fastest--let's use it)

dlingel@jesuitcp.org for school contact

30 years of high school coaching/6 years of college coaching
I will either judge or help in the tabroom at over 20+ tournaments

"Be smart. Be strategic. Tell your story. And above all have fun and you shall be rewarded."--the conclusion of my 1990 NDT Judging Philosophy

****Top Level--read here first*****
I still really love to judge (its makes me a better coach) and I enjoy judging quick clear confident comparative passionate advocates that use qualified and structured argument and evidence to prove their strategic victory paths. I expect you to respect the game and the people that are playing it in every moment we are interacting.

I believe that framing a strategic victory path(s) and especially labeling arguments and paper flowing are crucial to success in debate and maybe life so I will start your speaker points absurdly high (just look at some of my early season points) and work my way up (look at the data) if you acknowledge and represent these elements: frame a strategic victory path, label your arguments (even use numbers and structure) and can demonstrate that you flowed the entire debate and that you used your flow to give your speeches and in particular demonstrate that you used your flow to actually clash with the other teams arguments directly.

Top 5 things that influence my decision making process:

1. Debate is first and foremost a persuasive and comparative activity that asks both teams to advocate something. Defend an advocacy/method and defend it with evidence and compare your advocacy/method to the advocacy of the other team. I understand that there are many ways to advocate and support your advocacy so be sure that you can defend your choices. I do prefer that the topic is an access point for your advocacy.

2. The negative should always have the option of defending the status quo (in other words, I assume the existence of some conditionality) unless argued otherwise.

3. The net benefits to a counterplan must be a reason to reject the affirmative advocacy (plan, both the plan and counterplan together, and/or the perm) not just be an internal net benefit/advantage to the counterplan.

4. I enjoy a good link narrative since it is a critical component of all arguments in the arsenal—everything starts with the link. I think the negative should mention the specifics of the affirmative plan in their link narratives. A good link narrative is a combination of evidence, analytical arguments, and narrative.

5. Be sure to assess the uniqueness of offensive arguments using the arguments in the debate and the status quo. This is an area that is often left for judge intervention and I will.

Topicality--I am not the biggest fan of topicality debates unless the interpretation is grounded by clear evidence and provides a version of the topic that will produce the best debates—I am still hopeful to find some this year. Generally speaking, I can be persuaded by potential for abuse arguments on topicality as they relate to other standards because I think in round abuse can be manufactured by a strategic negative team.

Kritiks and Framework--I believe that the links to the plan/advantages/representations, the impact narratives, the interaction between the alternative and the affirmative harm, and/or the role of the ballot should be discussed more in most kritik debates. The more case and topic specific your kritik the more I enjoy the debate. Framework should be about competing models of debate and/or provide a sequencing/decision calculus for the ballot process. Too much time is spent on framework in many debates without clear utility or relation to how I should use it to judge the debate.

Theory--being someone who has seen the evolution of all modern theory positions I enjoy a good nuanced and round specific theory debate especially given the proliferation of inconsistent advocacies. Theory should be used more to stop the proliferation of negative positions that do not engage or challenge the core questions of either the affirmative or the topic. For example, general PICs bad is usually an uphill battle but multiple conditional PICs without a solvency advocate could set up a theory victory path. The impact to theory is rarely debated beyond trite phrases and catch words and the implications for both sides of the game are rarely played out so often my default is to reject the argument not the team on theory issues when it could have been a vote against the team victory path.

Speaker points--If you are not preferring me on this issue you are using old data and old perceptions. It is easy to get me to give very high points. Here is the method to my madness on this so do not be deterred just adapt. I award speaker points based on the following: strategic and argumentative decision-making, the challenge presented by the context of the debate, technical proficiency, persuasive personal and argumentative style, your use of the cross examination periods, and the overall enjoyment level of your speeches and the debate. If you devalue the nature of the game or its players or choose not to engage in either asking or answering questions, your speaker points will be impacted. If you turn me into a mere information processor and encourage or force me to scroll vs flow then your points will be impacted. If you choose artificially created efficiency claims instead of making complete and persuasive arguments that relate to an actual victory path then your points will be impacted.

Logistical Notes--if you have not tried it yet I suggest using the file share/speech doc drop that is part of tabroom, if not than an email chain. I feel that each team should have accurate and equal access to the evidence that is read in the debate. I have noticed several things that worry me in debates. People have stopped flowing and paying attention to the flow and line-by-line which is really impacting my decision making; people are exchanging more evidence than is actually being read without concern for the other team, people are under highlighting their evidence and "making cards" out of large amounts of text, and the amount of prep time taken exchanging the information is becoming excessive. I reserve the right to request a copy of all things exchanged as verification. If three cards or less are being read in the speech then it is more than ok that the exchange in evidence occur after the speech.

Finale--I believe in the value of debate as the greatest pedagogical tool on the planet. Reaching the highest levels of debate requires mastery of arguments from many disciplines including communication, argumentation, politics, philosophy, economics, and sociology to name a just a few. The organizational, research, persuasion and critical thinking skills are sought by every would-be admission counselor and employer. Throw in the competitive part and you have one wicked game. I have spent over thirty years playing it at every level and from every angle and I try to make myself a better player everyday and through every interaction I have. I think that you can learn from everyone in the activity how to play the debate game better. The world needs debate and advocates/policymakers more now than at any other point in history. I believe that the debates that we have now can and will influence real people and institutions now and in the future—empirically it has happened. I believe that this passion influences how I coach and judge debates.

Johnisthe4@gmail.com

I debated at Lawrence Free State and the University of Kansas. I flow and decide debates solely on that flow. But because debate is time-constrained communication, and perfect, technical dissection when judging is often impossible under that framework, I have some general defaults and beliefs I will use unless argued otherwise by the debaters:

- Clarity and pace are important. I won’t decide debates based on the text of the speech doc but by how much of what you said made it onto my flow. I will read the text of evidence as the debate is occurring to check for clipping, but otherwise will not follow analytics digitally.

- Words matter. While easily defeated and detrimental to speaker points, arguments not developed with warrants and impacts are still arguments. I won’t use any arbitrary cookie-cutter to exclude the words debaters say, including eye-roll-worthy theory arguments termed “voting issues” and uncontested new arguments prior to the 2AR. My understanding of an argument as communicated is the basis for its consideration.

- Argument narrative is important. To easily and efficiently defeat undeveloped arguments, maintain narrative explanation and consistency. Only when debating is equal will evidence supersede narration in my decision-making.

- Default to judge kick and competing interpretations.

- I will not vote on events that occurred outside of the debate or when I was not present.

- I err on the side of continuing productive debate should ethics issues arise, such as scratching the card.

Debated @ UNT 2009-2014

Coach @ St Marks since 2017

Coach @ Kentucky since 2024

If you have questions, feel free to email me at mccullough.hunter@gmail.com

For college rounds, please add ukydebate@gmail.com to the email chain

For me, the idea that the judge should remain impartial is very important. I've had long discussions about the general acceptability/desirability of specific debate arguments and practices (as has everybody, I'm sure), but I've found that those rarely influence my decisions. I've probably voted for teams without plans in framework debates more often than I've voted neg, and I've voted for the worst arguments I can imagine, even in close debates, if I thought framing arguments were won. While nobody can claim to be completely unbiased, I try very hard to let good debating speak for itself. That being said, I do have some general predispositions, which are listed below.

T-Theory

-I tend to err aff on T and neg on most theory arguments. By that, I mean that I think that the neg should win a good standard on T in order to win that the aff should lose, and I also believe that theory is usually a reason to reject the argument and not the team.

- Conditional advocacies are good, but making contradictory truth claims is different. However, I generally think these claims are less damaging to the aff than the "they made us debate against ourselves" claim would make it seem. The best 2ACs will find ways of exploiting bad 1NC strategy, which will undoubtedly yield better speaker points than a theory debate, even if the aff wins.

- I kind of feel like "reasonability" and "competing interpretations" have become meaningless terms that, while everybody knows how they conceptualize it, there are wildly different understandings. In my mind, the negative should have to prove that the affirmative interpretation is bad, not simply that the negative has a superior interpretation. I can obviously be persuaded either way, but I generally find T debates rarely come down to this regardless.

- My view of debates outside of/critical of the resolution is also complicated. While my philosophy has always been very pro-plan reading in the past, I've found that aff teams are often better at explaining their impact turns than the neg is at winning an impact that makes sense. That being said, I think that it's hard for the aff to win these debates if the neg can either win that there is a topical version of the affirmative that minimizes the risk of the aff's impact turns, or a compelling reason why the aff is better read as a kritik on the negative. Obviously there are arguments that are solved by neither, and those are likely the best 2AC impact turns to read in front of me.

- "The aff was unpredictable so we couldn't prepare for it so you should assume it's false" isn't a good argument for framework and I don't think I've ever voted for it.

CPs

- I'm certainly a better judge for CP/DA debates than K v K debates. I particularly like strategic PICs and good 1NC strategies with a lot of options. I'd be willing to vote on consult/conditions, but I find permutation arguments about immediacy/plan-plus persuasive.

- I think the neg gets away with terrible CP solvency all the time. Affs should do a better job establishing what counts as a solvency card, or at least a solvency warrant. This is more difficult, however, when your aff's solvency evidence is really bad. - Absent a debate about what I should do, I will kick a counterplan for the neg and evaluate the aff v. the squo if the CP is bad/not competitive

- I don't think the 2NC needs to explain why severence/intrinsicness are bad, just win a link. They're bad.

- I don't think perms are ever a reason to reject the aff.

- I don't think illegitimate CPs are a reason to vote aff.

Disads

- Run them. Win them. There's not a whole lot to say.

- I'd probably vote on some sort of "fiat solves" argument on politics, but only if it was explained well.

- Teams that invest time in good, comparative impact calculus will be rewarded with more speaker points, and likely, will win the debate. "Disad/Case outweighs" isn't a warrant. Talk about your impacts, but also make sure you talk about your opponents impacts. "Economic collapse is real bad" isn't as persuasive as "economic collapse is faster and controls uniqueness for the aff's heg advantage".

Ks

- My general line has always been that "I get the K but am not well read in every literature". I've started to realize that that statement is A) true for just about everybody and B) entirely useless. It turns out that I've read, coached, and voted for Ks too often for me to say that. What I will say, however, is that I certainly focus my research and personal reading more on the policy side, but will generally make it pretty obvious if I have no idea what you're saying.

- Make sure you're doing link analysis to the plan. I find "their ev is about the status quo" arguments pretty persuasive with a permutation.

- Don't think that just because your impacts "occur on a different level" means you don't need to do impact calculus. A good way to get traction here is case defense. Most advantages are pretty silly and false, point that out with specific arguments about their internal links. It will always make the 2NR easier if you win that the aff is lying/wrong.

- I think the alt is the weakest part of the K, so make sure to answer solvency arguments and perms very well.

- If you're aff, and read a policy aff, don't mistake this as a sign that I'm just going to vote for you because I read mostly policy arguments. If you lose on the K, I'll vote neg. Remember, I already said I think your advantage is a lie. Prove me wrong.

Case

-Don't ignore it. Conceding an advantage on the neg is no different than conceding a disad on the aff. You should go to case in the 1NC, even if you just play defense. It will make the rest of the debate so much easier.

- If you plan to extend a K in the 2NR and use that to answer the case, be sure you're winning either a compelling epistemology argument or some sort of different ethical calculus. General indicts will lose to specific explanations of the aff absent either good 2NR analysis or extensions of case defense.

- 2As... I've become increasingly annoyed with 2ACs that pay lip service to the case without responding to specific arguments or extending evidence/warrants. Just reexplaining the advantage and moving on isn't sufficient to answer multiple levels of neg argumentation.

Paperless debate

I don't think you need to take prep time to flash your speech to your opponent, but it's also pretty obvious when you're stealing prep, so don't do it. If you want to use viewing computers, that's fine, but only having one is unacceptable. The neg needs to be able to split up your evidence for the block. It's especially bad if you want to view their speeches on your viewing computer too. Seriously, people need access to your evidence.

Clipping

I've decided enough debates on clipping in the last couple of years that I think it's worth putting a notice in my philosophy. If a tournament has reliable internet, I will insist on an email chain and will want to be on that email chain. I will, at times, follow along with the speech document and, as a result, am likely to catch clipping if it occurs. I'm a pretty non-confrontational person, so I'm unlikely to say anything about a missed short word at some point, but if I am confident that clipping has occurred, I will absolutely stop the debate and decide on it. I'll always give debaters the benefit of the doubt, and provide an opportunity to say where a card was marked, but I'm pretty confident of my ability to distinguish forgetting to say "mark the card" and clipping. I know that there is some difference of opinion on who's responsibility it is to bring about a clipping challenge, but I strongly feel that, if I know for certain that debaters are not reading all of their evidence, I have not only the ability but an obligation to call it out.

Other notes

- Really generic backfile arguments (Ashtar, wipeout, etc) won't lose you the round, but don't expect great speaks. I just think those arguments are really terrible, (I can't describe how much I hate wipeout debates) and bad for debate.

- Impact turn debates are awesome, but can get very messy. If you make the debate impossible to flow, I will not like you. Don't just read cards in the block, make comparisons about evidence quality and uniqueness claims. Impact turn debates are almost always won by the team that controls uniqueness and framing arguments, and that's a debate that should start in the 2AC.

Finally, here is a short list of general biases.

• The status quo should always be an option in the 2NR (Which doesn't necessarily mean that the neg get's infinite flex. If they read 3 contradictory positions, I can be persuaded that it was bad despite my predisposition towards conditionality. It does mean that I will, absent arguments against it, judge kick a counterplan and evaluate the case v the squo if the aff wins the cp is bad/not competitive)
• Warming is real and science is good (same argument, really)
• The aff gets to defend the implementation of the plan as offense against the K, and the neg gets to read the K
• Timeframe and probability are more important than magnitude
• Predictable limits are key to both fairness and education
• Consult counterplans aren't competitive. Conditions is arguable.
• Rider DA links are not intrinsic
• Utilitarianism is a good way to evaluate impacts
• The aff should defend a topical plan
• Death and extinction are bad
• Uncooperative federalism is one of the worst counterplans I've ever seen (update: this whole "we're going to read an impact turn, but also read a counterplan that triggers the impact so we can't lose on it" thing might be worse)

I am a Black Jewish lesbian. Tech over truth.

I’m really hoping dedev is true

Affiliation: Debated at Jesuit Dallas and Trinity University

2N Life

Email:mojack221.goo@gmail.com

Updated: 1/16/25

*Things in bold are either huge speaker point opportunities or huge speaker point killers/round losers.

*******

Round Procedure:

-Send out the 1ac before start time, not after. The debate starts at start time. Absent a technical failure,I’ll start docking speaks

- Send cards in a doc - not the body of the email

- Prep stops when docs are saved. Deleting Analytics is Prep. Don't send cards in the body of the email. I

- Respect your opponents and be nice to each other.

- Inserting Evidence: I'm conditionally fine with it. If it from a different part of the article that the other team hasn't cut, you must read it. If it's highlighting parts of the card that they just didn't underline or highlight, you don't have to read it IF you paraphrase or do the work to explain why the re-highlighting matters. BUT, if it's so important, you may as well read it because that's powerful

- Disclosure: new affs are good. Disclosure ought to happen, but it does not need to happen. Mis-disclosure is the only type of disclosure theory I will vote on and for that to happen I either need to have seen the mis-disclosure, which I probably won't OR both teams need to agree on what happened during CX or something.

- While I won't punish the lack of disclosure, I think generally keeping an updated wiki is good, so tell me if you have one and if you update it before my decision, I'll add a few points. If the wiki is down or some uncontrollable happens where that's not possible, I'll assume good faith.

*******

Online Debates:

- if my camera is not on, I'm not ready

- please slow down.

- I'd encourage cameras to be on the whole debate, but obviously understand that's not always possible

- please get confirmation everyone is ready.

*******

How I Go About Judging Debates:

- I take judging very seriously and recognize the hard work you all put into it. Debate is not easy and sometimes it is very difficult to even show up to a tournament, much less debate your best every round. I do my best to keep a positive attitude and facilitate learning. You get my full attention during the debate and in the post round. I appreciated the judges and coaches who helped me grow as a debater by not just deciding the round, but also giving extensive feedback on how to improve. I strive to do the same.

- I'm not very expressive unless you say something absurd. I'm not really grumpy, that's just my face.

- I’m not a blank slate. Nobody is. If someone says they can evaluate the debate only from a technical point of view, they are lying to you and themselves. To some degree, the arguments we read or don’t engage, shape our beliefs and the way we go about our lives. The good thing about me, is I’ll be very honest in this philosophy on what I will not vote on and what I’m generally not persuaded by. While I believe in the technical evaluation of the debate, this activity is also about persuading people who might disagree with you. If both teams seem to agree on larger value claims within a debate, I have an easier time setting aside some of my biases, but they are never truly gone.

- I’m deeply concerned by members of this community who refuse to think about critical literature because they just like the DA thing better. I think it is a political and unfortunate choice to say you are not good for the K because you are unwilling to learn about K debate.

- I think the obsession with the US military that sometimes goes on in debate is creepy. I don’t take defenses of imperialism or disparaging descriptions of other countries lightly Can you still read your heg or tech dominance adv? Of course! I still believe it’s valuable to evaluate debates that happen and not every performance against those arguments will be victorious. But context matters. My suggestions if you read these types of arguments in front of me: 1) Read qualified and peer-reviewed people, not the garbage that comes out of the National Interest, the Breakthrough Institute, or other propaganda websites; 2) I'm less persuaded by hot takes about other countries being revisionist because a) that's not an impact or a predictor of all behavior, and b) the US has revised the "international order' more comprehensively and violently than any other force in history. The super ideological defenses of heg are simply ignorant. Focus on the particulars of your case and keep the bashing of other countries to a minimum.

- Flowing:

- a) medium: I flow on paper 99% of the time. For me, that means I flow the debate and track it by the line by line. Even if you just speak "straight down" in overview fashion, I will still try to line things up to where I think that goes on the flow. It would benefit you to tell me either directly where you are going on the line by line OR tell me a different way to flow and give me plenty of pen/organization time.

- b) instrument: I prefer pen. G2 .38 or .5. I write a lot so slowing down is good

- Reading Evidence: I don’t read along with you in the docs because that would compromise my flowing. I do not fill in my flow using the doc. It’s your job to communicate the argument, not the speech doc. I do read cards during prep time and after the debate.

- Speed: Go for it. Clarity, Organization, and Pen Time are all essential to effective speed.

- Evidence quality > quantity. Part of this includes highlighting sentences/making your cards comprehensible. If I look at cards, I only look at the highlighting you read.

- Decisions: I start with important frames and judge instructions given by the 2nr/ar. I think through different ballots that could be given, exploring all possible victories for each team. I pick the one I think is most supported by the round.

- Trolls: If you've done the work to cut a lot of cards that at least have the illusion of quality and demonstrate how your argument interacts with the other teams in significant ways, I'm fine for you. If it's a terrible back file check or something that anyone could prep in 30 minutes, I'm not your judge and your points will suffer. It also helps if your argument has an impact instead of only trying to trigger presumption.

- I'm not interested in evaluating a round about things that occurred out of round.

*******

Intellectual Property Rights Topic:

- T is questionable on this topic

- When all things lead to innovation, differentiation and comparison of the internal links are super helpful. “Our internal link o/w theirs because XYZ warrants”

- FW and perm double bind vs the cap k are cowardice. Defend your stuff

*******

College Climate Topic

- If you read warming good, I’ll presume you think I’m immoral or incapable of knowing the truth.Your speaks will suffer for this insult.There's a tendency to say "if it's such a bad argument, just beat it." No. We're willing to turn away from other arguments we find morally repugnant. I think this is one of them. As a person in the Global North, it comes across badly when you say we can benefit from warming while people have been dying because of those lies.

*****

The rest of the philosophy is mostly me rambling and heavily influenced by the explanation in any given round.

Case:

- It's underutilized - specific internal link and solvency arguments go a long way in front of me. Strategically, a good case press in the block and 2nr makes all substantive arguments better

- Impact turns are fantastic. The better the literature, the better the impact turn.

Topicality:

- It's only a serious threat when the words of the rez have a specific meaning.

- Plan text in a vacuum is ridiculous and not a helpful way to evaluate a T debate, especially when plans are incredibly vague and the solvency evidence describing it is right there. If you do the topic mechanism by doing something that's not the topic, I can't comprehend why you think you would meet.

- We meet is a yes/no thing. I never understood attempts to evaluate this in terms of risk.

- Case lists please. Be realistic about what is included/excluded and explain why debates over those affs =good/bad/too burdensome to prepare for/whatever.

- T Should = predictive will always have a place in my heart. The haters were really wrong about this one.

DA:

- I will vote on defense against a DA. There's probably always a risk, but that doesn't mean I care about such risk

- ev comparison or judge instruction about micro-moments in the debate goes a long way for winning individual parts of a DA.

- Neg teams defending the status quo should make a comprehensive case press. Even if your DA isn't the best, it may very well be more important than the advantages.

- I like good evidence that contains arguments. You should keep that in mind before going for politics.

CP:

- For questionably competitive CPs, clarity on the difference between the aff and the cp, what words if any are being defined, and an organized presentation of why your standard is better are crucial. It would also be helpful to slow down on texts, perms, theory, the usual stuff. Blippy cards and analytics mixed with speed are the enemy of the flow. If you say something about textually competitive but functionally intrinsic perms or something – you’re probably losing me.

- Solvency advocates that compare the CP to topic or plan mechanisms greatly help in winning competition and theory

- I don't judge kick unless instructed to in the 2nr. Debate to me is about choices and persuasion. Unless your choice in the 2nr explicitly includes the failsafe of judge kick, I'm not going to do it for you.

Theory:

- I don't think I lean heavily aff or neg.

- Unless there is a clear interp and standards with warrants in the initial presentation of the theory arguments, I’m unlikely to vote for it.

- Conditionality is debatable. Quantitative interps don’t make sense to me. Condo is good or bad. Fun fact, dispositionality was originally used because it was in a thesaurus under the word conditionality. This is to say, if your interp is anything under than condo bad, I'm going to need you to unpack the terms for me.

- My default is to reject the argument for all things except conditionality. This shouldn't deter you from going for theory because rejecting a CP usually means the neg has little defense left in a debate.

K on the Negative:

- Good K debating is good case debating. A good critique would explain why a core component of the 1ac is wrong or bad.

- The link is the most important part of the debate. Be specific, pull 1AC lines, say what you are disagreeing with, give examples, etc. Explain why winning the thesis takes out specific parts of the solvency or internal link chain. More link debating is my number one comment to teams going for the K.

- I really really really do not understand most Aff FW args vs the K. They claim to be some sort of “middle ground,” but that middle ground requires the neg to present their K like a DA and a CP. That’s not a K. That’s not a middle ground. That’s no Ks in disguise. The idea that assumptions, discourse, or general political orientation have no bearings on policy is absolutely lost on me. I also don’t believe most Ks that engage the aff or the topic moot the aff. Simply put, I think questions of fairness are rarely relevant to the debate. Aff teams are in an infinitely better position if they are making substantive arguments about how I should make a decision, i.e. impact calc. When the K is in floaty land, I’m much more persuaded by defenses of pragmatism or incrementalism than I am by “you’re breaking our activity.” An exception is something like a word PIK. Other PIKs I don't find too persuasive because the links are usually to strong to justify inclusion of the aff's policy or the neg's alt card is not written in aff specific pik language.

- That might seem difficult for the Aff, but the other side is I don’t really think many K strats that exclusively rely on FW or Ks of debate get very far for me. Particularly with topics that either demand an expansion of the intellectual property regime or use of a market mechanism to solve climate change, we can do a little better than a glorified FYI about fiat. Win a link, win an impact, do impact calc.

-Interventions good = L. I’m disgusted by judges who have let this slide.

- Recycling the Escalante dual power organizing alt is a thumbs down.

- Perms against pessimism Ks, absent some super specific perm card, have generally been unpersuasive to me.

- While my critical vocabulary is fine, I find some of it difficult to flow paragraph style tags that drop a bunch of important sounding words/concepts with no definitions. I suggest you slow down a bit on the most important things you want on my flow.

- I really don’t care for alt debating. Questions about alt fiat are boring and ridiculous. However, the neg should be able to explain how their alt works (imagination of alternate conditions of possibility, rejection, new discourse to use, etc.)

- Perm double bind is not a persuasive argument in front of me.

- Card quality matters in k debates. Most cap good cards don’t meet good ev standards in my opinion.

K on the Aff:

- Go for it. I think critical ways of affirming while debating a resolution are very interesting. If you can read your aff on every topic without changing cards or tags, I’ll enjoy the debate less, but it's your debate, not mine.

- Role of the ballot means nothing to me and is often a substitute for argument comparison

- Presumption questions are usually just questions of framework and the value the aff's model provides. Neg teams spend way too much time asking questions about ballot spill up or the debate round changing the world. We all agree fiat illusory is a bad argument in a policy prescription model of debate. Why is it all of the sudden good now? Your time is much better served explaining how the aff's model of debate is counterproductive to its benefits.

K vs a K

- I don't evaluate these debates too differently. Tell me what the major issues and disagreements are, win an impact, and compare it to the other team

- "No perms in a method debate" has never really made sense to me. Justifications for this argument tend to rely on quasi FW arguments that have likely been thoroughly critiqued or don't live up to basic aff responses. If you have something more specific to your strategy that has substantive warrants to it, I'm definitely willing to listen. Otherwise, your time is better spent making link arguments that demonstrate mutual exclusivity between the aff and the neg.

Framework/T USFG:

- These debates are really good and specific or extremely repetitive and shallow. Strive for the former and actually do the clash thing that everyone says is so good.

- I'm open to most impacts to framework. I judge them like most debates where I compare the aff's offense to the neg's offense, defense, and framing arguments from 2nr and 2ar. I have voted for and against all the common impacts for T-USFG/traditional FW (procedural fairness, clash, topic mechanism education, agonistic democracy, advocacy skills, etc). I’m more often persuaded by aff defense to procedural fairness than I am neg defense to education/subjectivity.

- I'm not the biggest fan of aff strategy's vs T that exclusively rely on the impact turn. It's a really hard sell that the idea of a topic for debate shouldn't be a thing. I think the impact turns are more persuasive if the neg is exclusively going for fairness or it's a game with no other value. However, if the neg has a coherent defense of clash, negation, or research over a limited topic plus defense against the impact turn, I'm likely to be persuaded by the impact turn strategy.

- The inverse of this is that when the aff has a counter interpretation that defines resolution words in creative ways, I find it very hard for the negative to win much offense. I'm much more persuaded by an argument that says singular interpretation of the topic as mandating simulated federal government policy are unpredictable and bad than I am by the argument we should throw away the topic because it can be read in a singular way.

- I'd rather the impact turn cards to fairness be from the academic journals or publications about debate. The cards and literature exists because of decades of academics in this activity who have put the care into writing about it. I think the K of fairness or what not is much more persuasive when specific to debate and not trial proceedings for example.

- Hypotesting is better than T USFG. Change my mind.

*******

Speaker Points:

- a bit arbitrary, but I'll start at 28.5 and go up and down based on the round

-If all your cards on the arg you are going for are super-specific and good, I will probably start at 28.8 and go up. If I see your initials next to a bunch of cards you’re reading, that’s an extra speaker point boost.

- I have trouble being able to evaluate you as speakers and then compare that to some arbitrary standard based on where I think you'll be in the tournament. Factors I do consider include: smart arguments, strategic choice, organization and good evidence.

- No 30s unless rd. 8 of the NDT. Don't ask for speaker points. Even if you think your arg is persuasive, I'm not flowing it and am much more concerned with the actual debate. Sorry high schoolers, no 30s for you.

ctrl + f "Planless Affs v. T", “Policy Aff v. T”, "Policy Aff v. CP/DA", "Policy Aff v. K", or "K v. K" for relevant sections

Cambridge '20

Georgia '23 (https://comm.uga.edu/debate/recrutiment or email jstupek8@gmail.com) Go Debate Dawgs!

they/them. ask your opponents what pronouns they prefer before the round and stick to them. pls call me jack or big dawg not judge

jackmdebate@gmail.com - please have the 1ac sent by the round start time.

mc hammer reads philosophy, you should too

i am autistic, don't read into my facial expressions as a reliable predictor of the ballot. apologies in advance for any confusion

IF YOU READ GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE, INCLUDE A TRIGGER WARNING AND HAVE A VERSION OF THE CARDS OMITTING THE GRAPHIC DETAILS READY IF SOMEONE INDICATES IT'S AN ISSUE. I DON'T WANT ANYONE TO HAVE TRAUMATIC FLASHBACKS BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO LAZY TO TYPE OUT A SENTENCE ON THE WIKI/AT THE TOP OF THE DOC.

*i have hearing difficulties, please either send the doc you're reading from or SLOW DOWN. i.e. you probably don't need to send your T-USfg 2NC analytics but make sure you're reading them at a speed that people that don't have the exact blocks you're looking at in front of them can still understand

**LD/PF - i only competed in policy and i'm unfortunately unfamiliar with the particular nuances of LD/PF debate so i am more likely to vote for substantive arguments than procedurals that rely on an understanding of LD/PF debate norms.

Top Level

- debate is too serious. i enjoy fun rounds, i greatly appreciate jokes. kindness is underrated - opponents are (most likely) not your enemy but rather fellow participants in an extracurricular activity who have decided to spend their weekend debating with you instead of doing literally anything else. please treat them that way.

- you get three perms per arg. new 1AR articulation of the perm warrants new 2NR responses.

- i am uncomfortable with being asked to adjudicate things that occurred outside of the round. (note: i consider the round to start when the pairing comes out, so disclosure theory etc. are still fair game i just have the same institutional (lack of) capability to handle things like Title IX violations as you). i take ethics violations very seriously. if you believe your opponents have behaved in a manner inconsistent with ethical participation in this activity, let me know and i'll contact tab instead of starting the round.

- racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anything that makes the round unsafe is a quick way to earn an instant L and zero speaker points. i will not hesitate to intervene.

- speaker points: my range is generally high-27s to mid-29s. i would probably be considered a point fairy but occasionally it goes the opposite way so warning you in advance. making and executing strategic decisions in rebuttals is the best way to get higher speaks in front of me. i reward taking risks. while i try to hold the line on new args, most judges are inherently suckers for a lying 2A. contextualizing your arguments to the other side’s will earn you more points than just spreading through a K or CP explanation written by coaches four years ago devoid of context or specificity. i.e. "CP solves advantage 1 because [warrant], solves advantage 2 because [warrant]" as opposed to "CP solves entire topic because [warrant]" or "K solves our links and case because [warrant]" and not "THEY DROPPED THE ALT (they probably didn't if we're being honest), WE WIN BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW THAT'S JUST HOW DEBATE WORKS I GUESS".

Scale based on my immediate reaction after the speeches:

30 - Perfect. I do not want anyone I coach to hit you in elim rounds because it's gg.

29.9-29.5 - Woah. You're almost done! The summit is near and you'll be there with a few more practice speeches.

29.4-29 - Yo that was fire. Y'all did your thing and executed well. Good job!

28.9-28.5 - Nice!

28.4-28 - Pretty Good.

27.9-27.5 - Needs some work.

<27.5 - If I've given you this, you know what you did.

- the roughly two hours that i am in the room are your time. if you want to post-round me, go for it (although once i submit the ballot there's nothing i can do to change the decision) but please be courteous regarding your opponents' desires and make sure any more immediate concerns they may have have been resolved before we get into it

- read whatever you want. although i personally lean in certain directions on common debate args, i try to check as many biases as possible at the door and base my decisions on the actual debating done. i want to limit judge intervention as much as possible so comparison and telling me how i should resolve the debate is very important. if i don't have judge instruction coming out of the 2XR, i intervene to resolve the round the best i can. condo is probably the arg you are least likely to win in front of me but i'll vote for it if it's mishandled

- the status quo is always a logical option unless you tell me it isn't

- 2xr should start with: "[Our arg] outweighs [their arg] because"

- dropped args are true, it's up to you to make that matter though

- rather than tell you what i think about specific issues, i think it may be more helpful to disclose how i come to decisions. in the absence of a clear dub for either team, i evaluate the flow. if i can't come to a decision based purely on my flow and memory of the round, i read the ev for each arg and decide whether the cards support the args that are being made as well as which team has better ev for each specific arg. if i still can't come to a decision based on reading cards, i'll reconstruct the debate and necessarily fill in gaps for both sides based on my understanding of the best version of each team's args. YOU DO NOT WANT THIS. there is a non-zero probability that your cards are not as good as you think and potentially a very large probability that filling in the gaps works out better for the other team. to avoid this, DO GOOD COMPARISON. compare ev quality, risk of impact scenarios, EVERYTHING. i understand how frustrating it is when you catch an L after a super close debate because it feels like the judge did slightly more work for the other side. i do not want this for you. you do not want this for you. work with me and you'll probably be much happier with the result. in the absence of judge instruction, i will intervene as necessary to resolve the round.

Planless Affs v. T

- planless affs typically beat T in front of me with nuanced impact turns or a C/I based on counter-definitions of words in the resolution with a DA. i am not a good judge for C/Is that aren’t based in definitions of words in the rez as i am typically persuaded by the 2NR argument that it’s arbitrary and self-serving (which is irrelevant/actually good if you go for the impact turn to T). i'm most persuaded by fairness and clash as impacts to T. TVAs are defense, i won't vote on that alone so make sure you have offense against the aff's model (even if it's just that the TVA is good and the aff's model precludes reading it). i believe that procedural fairness is a terminal impact although i can be persuaded that it’s only an i/l if you make the arg

- i will vote on presumption if the neg proves that the aff just results in the squo

- i went double 2s most of my debate career. my favorite neg rounds in college were 2NC T/1NR Case but i read planless affs my senior year and prepped against T so i think i'm pretty 50/50 in these debates when equally debated

Policy Aff v. CP/DA

- affs typically beat the CP/DA strategy in front of me by either winning a solvency deficit to the CP that outweighs the DA or proving that the CP is not competitive. I will vote on zero risk of the DA but only if there's offense against the CP.

- probably a better judge for theory than most against CPs. i default to believing that CPs must be textually and functionally competitive but can be convinced otherwise absent aff warranted argumentation

- note for soft-left/K affs with a plan - although i am convinced by framing that says we should prioritize structural violence or reject util/extinction logic, you're not going to win on that alone if the neg has a CP that resolves the aff's impacts especially if the neg is winning that i should view CP solvency through sufficiency framing

Policy Aff v. T

- i am a grammar nerd, args that are based on grammatically incorrect definitions are unlikely to win in front of me i.e. i can't vote for "United States" is an adjective because that's wrong

- models are important

- i tend to do the most intervention in these debates. absent a 2NR/2AR that completely writes my ballot, i find myself resolving the round by going through my flow and the docs and reconstructing the debate with the best version of both sides' arguments.

Policy Aff v. K

- 2AR should be either fwk + case outweighs/offense OR fwk + perm + no link/alt fails. if the negative wins framework but the affirmative wins that the aff is a good idea it likely means that the aff's knowledge production is good which often solves the link.

- specificity is the most important thing is these debates. well-warranted analytics contextualized to your argument as well as the other team's will get you further than shotgunning cards with no explanation.

- if your 1AR/2AR framework explanation is entirely "you link, you lose bad" but they're going for links that have uniqueness you are probably going to lose.

- the vast majority of my college debate rounds involved cap sustainability debates so i am very familiar with the args made and ev read by both sides. although i personally believe that the cap bad cards are better, i've always cut the cap good file and will vote happily for McAfee (despite my personal belief that the card is garbage) if the other side doesn't explain their offense adequately.

- i tend to be persuaded by smart turn args regarding trivialization or cruel optimism when links seem especially contrived i.e. it's bad to say a team reading a soft left aff on a reform vs. rev topic is literally enacting physical violence against marginalized peoples "outside of the debate space" (this isn't to say i'm not persuaded by those same link args as i have and will continue to vote for "you link you lose" logic when it's debated well despite 2As whining)

K v. K

- these are the rounds i judge the least (although i find them to be interesting and wish i got to judge more) so i don't have many predisposed biases aside from defaulting to allowing the aff to read perms until the neg convinces me they shouldn't get them.

- i (believe i) am familiar with most lit bases, although this might work against you. for example, i do not want to vote for you if you read ev by José Esteban Muñoz and then claim that he makes a blanket "utopia bad" arg because that's the literal opposite of everything the author has written.

- if the neg wins the alt solves the aff, i vote neg.

- 2N - do not forget that the squo is a logical option. i.e. if you're winning that the aff doesn't solve and that there's risk of a link (for example, that the aff would cause backlash against [x] people), the squo is probably better than the aff regardless of whether or not you're winning alt solvency.

Theory

- condo is a yes/no question (i am unlikely to vote for "the negative gets [x] number of conditional advocacies", you should instead say "the negative gets NO conditional advocacies or dispositional advocacies etc"). i default to weighing the aff against the alt/squo but can be convinced to disregard the theoretical implementation of either of those options. probably not going to convince me that the neg should not get to read a K wholesale but that's more logical than some of the fw interps i've seen so ????...

- you probably should not read conflicting interps in the 1NC. 2AC to "T-read a plan" and "fiat bad" is really easy which negates any of the time skew benefits

- fiat - both sides get it until someone tells me they don't or wtv idk no neg fiat never really made sense to me but i'd vote on it if it's mishandled

authors whose work i found enjoyable or informative in no particular order: sylvia wynter, nietzsche, toni morrison, enriqué dussel, dahlma llanos-figueroa, judith butler, karl marx, gilles deleuze, felix guattari, jafari s. allen, josé esteban muñoz, reinaldo arenas, nina maria lozano, vine deloria jr., guy hocquenghem, desiree c. bailey, langston hughes, manuel zapata olivella, nicholas guillén, josé martí, colin dayan, kit heyam, ishmael reed, maggie nelson, viola f. cordova

helpful notes on a few of these authors: http://www.protevi.com/

Tejas Murugesh

he/him

Jesuit '23, IU Bloomington '27 - currently a freshman

Updated somewhat but does not cover econ stuff 2/1/2024

---I hope you realize for T and any procedural arguments that I will not follow as well along with your caselists and blippy lists - so I would rather have more explanation-y oriented stuff than the blippy lists

Yes email chain please - tejassmurugesh@gmail.com

Top Level

People do not use current evens

All in all, go for what you are best at going at -- I can evaluate most arguments BUT you must always assume that I cannot understand something i.e. don't go for the cap k and just say cap causes war without warranting it out.

Truth > Tech but can be convinced otherwise that is explained and justified i.e. you can't just say you win an argument because it's dropped. However, I err more on the truth side when it comes to bad ev quality and I try my best to pay attention to news.After spending a couple months off of debate, I hope you realize how terribly awful it is to read cards that don't assume current events. They are like history books...it already happened!

I will do my best to evaluate arguments from the flow, but if you tell me (i.e. during your speech) to read a card after the round for an argument you extended in the final rebuttals, and the card says the opposite of what you said, then that argument will be null. Regardless, telling me to read a card so you don't have to do the actual warrant extension/why it matters is a BAD strategy in front of me, especially with the terrible ev quality we have these days.

I do not endorse reading a ton of off - like 10 off - it's such an awful model of debate - if you are a policy team on the neg, you can EASILY crush the aff with just like 6 off (without having to make me waste more trees with 10 off - but I still am wasting trees lol) - and making smart args you will be fine. Even that isn't necessary, I was a one off K debater and was happy enough with the run I had

I am not going to make arguments for you. I flow on paper, and that means I will SOLELY evaluate what warrants YOU have extended, nothing more. The only time I am going to make arguments for myself is when there is no clash, requiring me to evaluate and compare the merits of each argument and card on my own. BUT of course that won't happen because you are a great debater, and if you think you're not, well then fake it till you make it! You are each your own unique snowflake!

A theme you will notice is the contextualization of an argument to a given debate = best thing to ever do in front of me. Too many people read blocks for arguments that sound unpersuasive and make it hard to vote on.

Below are my preferences:

CPs

I dont really vibe with artificially competitive CPs, sorry not sorry! :)

I'm not doing this judge kick nonsense for you. If you're gonna go for an arg in the 2NR, then that's YOUR decision, not mine

Having a good, specific solvency advocate makes it a lot more convincing to vote on. When you start to get process-y, you need a quick overview explaining the mechanism.

For the aff, specific theory is underutilized (see theory section below). Smart permutations (like combining texts of aff and CP in unique ways etc.) show me you think outside the box, and executing and flushing out the permutation makes it super convincing.

Explain how the perm looks like/how it solves and how shields link to net benefit

If you are going for a CP flaw, impact the argument out - saying something along the lines of, "The CP text is wrong, so that means vote aff," then that is not a complete argument for me. I need standards - and ultimately a persuasive reason(s) why the incorrectness of the CP text means to vote aff (the same goes for the neg on aff plan flaws).

DAs

A good politics debater is 90% spin and 10% truth. Just kidding, you need some updated ev to win in front of me.

Heavy impact calculus coupled with link walls that have spin and contextualized (assuming you are winning the uniqueness debate) to the aff is best. All parts of a DA must be won (uniqueness, link, internal link, and impact); otherwise, it is an incomplete argument. Read cards when necessary, not just for the sake of being a policy argument.

Good evidence quality matters a lot.

Topicality

Default to competing interpretations unless told otherwise. Case lists that include affs allowed under your interp and affs allowed under the counter-interpretation, tying that in with a clear internal link and impact extension = yes please. Reading a lot of cards doesn't do much for me unless you say what you are doing with those cards (like if it's to prove your precision standard etc).

Theory

I am more likely to vote on your argument if you are making a specific theory argument and have detailed impact calculus over one-liner arguments - AND DON'T READ IT FAST PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (bc I actually have to flow all ur stuff as a judge - I can't just be goofing around or prepping like the other team who would not be listening)

If debating a CP, I find specific theory arguments tons more convincing (example: 50 state fiat vs. conditional 50 state fiat with no solvency advocate). Every argument is a reason to reject the argument, not the team, unless told otherwise.

Ks

How I evaluate Ks at the end of the debate (unless you instruct me to do differently) -- FW, link, impact, alt

Link arguments contextualized to the aff are most persuasive to me. Having a generic link arg in the 1NC is ok, but I would really love to see research and evidentiary innovation -- having specific links shows a lot to me about your strategy thinking.

Doing a lot of work on the FW page is great and all - BUT you need to say WHY THAT MATTERS!!!!!!!! I always start on framework as the framework interpretation that wins is the one I will use as a lens to evaluate the rest of the arguments on the flow. A lot of negative interpretations need to be fleshed out more than people think they do to actually make it useful for the rest of the flow, coupled with saying what winning FW means for the rest of the flow (this goes for K affs as well); otherwise, I don't know what your big K word salad is despite having read some of the common literature bases used in debate.

If the neg says something like "the judge should evaluate the epistemological implications of the aff's research practices," then that's a pretty ambiguous interp - it becomes less ambiguous when you define what are "epistemological implications" and "aff's research practices" in the context of this debate - like just edit your blocks with some specific examples and ta-da it's a lot more interesting!

If the aff says something like "weigh the consequences of the plan/aff vs the k" - then define for me what the consequences are in this debate - because otherwise the neg will just make consequences fit their own definition and not give you the offense you want.

For the aff, I find offensive reasons against the alternative quite impressive coupled with reasons how the aff might avoid that; however, permutation/link turn strategies are quite nice as well (I personally did this one the most). I do think that when a K is a non-starter for the neg team to go for (as in just being a time suck for the 2AC to card dump), then I think the aff should make that clear in CX - BUT if the aff messes up in the 2AC because of that and then the neg takes the aff on it...I'll definitely consider it.

Also for the aff -- if you're always going for that same impact turn strategy -- it has to be specific to the K and what is happening in that debate. Too many debaters' 2AR sounds like it can be copied and pasted into any other debate and I wouldn't even notice -- and the same goes for the neg with all your scripts.

Framework vs K affs

Procedural fairness is fine to run in MOST instances - you can still run it but I would be careful with your words, most especially with Ks of 1) debate and 2) the topic that err more on the identity side - if you make some sort of actually pejorative argument towards any folk, than I might have to seriously consider auto voting. I generally find impacts like skills and education more persuasive than fairness as a lot of teams when going for fairness just say, "It's an intrinsic good to debate." I can always be persuaded otherwise by this if you actually impact out fairness - like trust me I'm all for it just impact it out

Arguments about why your impact turns the aff's impacts is quite persuasive coupled with external reasons = high chance I'm voting for you.

Negatives reading arguments about how there are other ways that the aff would be accessible outside of this debate (like going to a book club and reading their scholarship etc.) are quite persuasive as well.

TVA/SSD are quite useful because most affs don't have good defense to them.

Saying FW is policing because it causes psychic violence is a tough argument for me to vote on - this is a voluntary activity, and if you actually are feeling psychic violence then I am here to help.

Case vs K affs

Presumption is soooooooooooo badddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd. Unless it's against like some high theory mash-up jumbo bumbo soup, then sure. But like if it's against some K aff that's in the direction of the topic and is just like a really big K of debate community -- then pleaseeeeeeeeee for the love of god to nottttt go for it.

You are much better off with saying why the aff's method is bad, why their theory of power is bad, and if they reject the state then say why state and institutional engagement good. and you know all the other types of those args are good too.

K affs

Sure, but am more likely to vote on a well-researched topic-y aff rather than a generic one that has no tie to the topic and/or is a backfile, so if you are reading one that has no tie to the topic/generic, make sure to be on your A game. Judge instruction vs T-FW is very very useful.

With the amount of mash-up K affs these days and if the aff wants to have a high chance of winning, then you need to have a quick overview at the top of the case page explaining what your advantage/theory of power/construction of the world is about and what your advocacy is. Or even a 10 second one of just saying the advocacy statement in easier words really goes a long way. That way I can really plunge my brain into your type of theory of power (and this honestly goes for all theories - what would an anticapitalist ecosocialist think of economic policy?? you get the idea)

Miscellaneous & Stylistic Items

Extending evidence means saying saying the warrants you are extending to support your argument in addition to perhaps referring to the author name

Clarity > speed otherwise I can't flow you, which means if I can't flow you then I don't know what arguments you are speaking and hence you are kinda screwed

Line by line > your own order

Speaker points

Russia invaded Ukraine, there's a conflict between Palestine and Israel, there's constant political changes happening all the time in literally every sphere, COP28 just happened in early December, etc. You gotta mention all the possible current events or have inherency cards (for your specific arg/theory) to prove your point is true. Remember, debate is a scholarly activity that revolves around what is happening rn, not yesterday, but NOW!

27.5 and above. Strategic usage of cross-ex by setting up your arguments and asking questions that shed light on the sketchiness of the other team's argument means your points will increase. Ima put you real low if you be asking me for points or telling me how to do points cuz that's just wrong

Another way to increase points is choosing certain arguments in the rebuttals and thoroughly extending them, clashing with the other team's arguments, meaning the 1AR-2AR (same for the neg) should not be re-reading the 2ac.

Being rude, racist, sexist, etc. would decrease points and potentially lose you the debate if it becomes too much. But I know that you won't do that because you are a nice human being and must exemplify that. Debate is merely a competitive activity, not the $5 million lottery (and nor is it a gambling addiction). Enjoy the ability to engage in such a fun and novel activity when the world is not doing the best right now. Be the policy maker or critical theorist you always wanted to do.

Speaker points should not be your goal in debates, but you, as a novice/JV, should focus on the argument at hand in the debate. Honestly, if you want good speaks, don't be a jerk and get your head into the game (i.e. this debate round).

Email: shannonnierman@gmail.com

I debated for Wylie E. Groves High School for four years, debated for 3 years at MSU, and currently coach at Groves.

Topicality: I’m not opposed to voting on T, but rereading T shells is insufficient. There needs to be substantial work on the interpretations debate from both teams, in addition to the standards and voters debate, i.e. education and fairness. As long as the aff is reasonably topical and it is proven so, T is probably not a voter. Also, if you are going for T in the 2NR, go for only T, and do so for all 5 minutes.

Counterplans: Any type of counterplan is fine; however, if it is abusive, do not leave it for me to decide this, make these arguments.

Disads: Any type of DA is fine. A generic link in the 1NC is okay, but I think that throughout the block the evidence should be link specific. When extending the DA in the block, an overview is a must. The first few words I should here on the DA flow is “DA outweighs and turns case for X and Y reasons.”

Kritiks: I will vote on the K, but I often find that in the K rounds people undercover the alternative debate. When getting to this part of the K, explain what the world of the alternative would look like, who does the alternative, if the aff can function in this world, etc. I am well versed in psychoanalytic literature i.e. Zizek and Lacan and I do know the basis of a plethora of other Ks. This being said, I should learn about the argumentation in the round through your explanation and extrapolation of the authors ideas; not use what I know about philosophy and philosophers or what like to read in my free time. Read specific links in the block and refrain from silly links of omission.

Theory: I am not opposed to voting on theory, but it would make my life a lot easier if it didn’t come down to this. This is not because I dislike the theory debate rather I just believe that it is hard to have an actual educational and clear theory debate from each side of the debate. Now, this said, if a theory argument is dropped, i.e. conditionality bad, by all means, go for it!

Performance: An interesting and unique type of debate that should still relate to the resolution. As long as there is substantive and legitimate argumentation through your rapping or dancing and whatever else you can come up with, I am willing to vote on it. Even if you are rapping, I would prefer to have a plan text to start.

*As technology is vital in our life, many of us have switched toward paperless debate. I do not use prep for flashing, because I have also debated both off of paper and paperlessly in debate and I understand that technology can sometimes be your opponent in the round, rather than the other team. I am being a nice and fair judge in doing this, so please do not abuse this by stealing prep, because I will most likely notice and take away that stolen prep.

FAQs: Speed – I’m okay with speed as long as you are clear!
Tag teaming - I’m okay with it as long as it’s not excessive.

Things not to do in rounds I’m judging: go for RVIs, go for everything in the 2NR, and be mean. Believe it or not, there is a distinction between being confident and having ethos vs. being rude and obnoxious when you don’t have the right to be.

IR Master's Candidate @ Georgetown

University of Kansas '23, Washburn Rural '19

Coaching Taipei American School and Harvard

jpark.debate@gmail.com

Also add:

for college:harvard.debate@gmail

for high school: taipeiamericanpolicy@gmail.com

________________________________________________________________________________________

TLDR:

I enjoy case-specific, fully developed strategies that are well-explained and backed with high-quality evidence/persuasion.

I am a bad judge for teams that rely on the brute force of conditionality, proliferate incomplete arguments, and use strategies that moot the AFF and K AFFs.

I know functionally zero about the high school and college topics.

General Judging:

1. Respect your opponents.

2. Be efficient. The email chain should be sent out early. Don't steal prep. CX ends after 3 minutes. Prepare a card document ASAP.

3. Flow.

4. Clarity. I should hear every single word you say.

5. One debater, one constructive, one rebuttal. I will not flow the other debater if they interject or read parts of another person's speech.

6. Net benefits should be verbally specified in the 1NC.

7. Will not vote on ad homs.

8. Teams should disclose and open source their evidence.

9. Will try to avoid filling in gaps if debaters don't explain it

Flowing Practices:

I flow on my computer straight-down, include CX, and have docs open the whole debate (usually) — I don't flow based on the doc, but check for clipping/like following along. I wouldn't consider myself the best "flow," but I type relatively quickly, so this has not been a problem in my judging career (yet).

My Biases:

1. Vertical proliferation > horizontal proliferation

2. Specificity > vagueness

3. I prefer debates to be topic-specific. AFFs and NEG strategies should be germane to IPR/clean energy policy — this means 2NRs on wipeout, spark, or generic process counterplans are less strategic in front of me.

4. Dispo > condo

5. Plans don't exist in a 'vacuum.'

6. Counterplans should compete via text AND function.

7. Willing to vote for theoretical objections considered 'arbitrary' if the outlined practice is unreasonable.

8. AFFs should be topical.

9. Links should be to the plan.

10. AFF-specific Ks > generic Ks

Last edited on 2/28/25 to re-write the section on framework and to add a section on dispositionality.

Pronouns: she/they

Experience

Policy debate coach at Stuyvesant High School

Began judging debate in 2015

Debated policy in middle and high school

Statement on Racism (& other Prejudices) in Debate

Debate should encourage students to see themselves as agents capable of acting to create a better world. We will not achieve this vision for our activity so long as we pretend it is in a realm separate from reality. Judges have an ethical obligation to oppose prejudice in round including but by no means limited to: racism, queerphobia, antisemitism, sexism, Islamophobia, ableism, and classism, among others. Debate, as an activity, has its fair share of structural inequities. We, as coaches and judges, need to address these and be cognizant of them in our decisions.

General Philosophy

I see the role of the judge as that of an educator concerned primarily with what teams learn from the experience. Therefore, the most important aspect of being a judge, to me, is to provide good constructive criticism to teams about their arguments and performance, and to promote the educational qualities of debate. When teams are using prep time, I am usually writing speech by speech feedback for my ballots––which I very much hope teams and their judges will read. As a judge, I want you to come out of the round, win or lose, feeling like you learned something worthwhile.

As an educator concerned with what can be learned from the round, I think the quality of arguments are much more important than their quantity, and whenever possible prefer to reward well researched and articulated arguments more than arguments will few warrants that might be read in the hopes of their being dropped. I prefer to decide rounds based upon the meaning of the arguments presented and their clash rather than by concession.

I flow the round based on what I hear, preferring not to use speech documents. For this reason, clarity is more important than speed. For an argument to exist in the round, it needs to be spoken intelligibly. Rounds that are slower typically offer better quality arguments and fewer mistakes.

Argument Specific preferences:

Plan-less critical affirmatives: I am happy to judge and vote on them. K affs are a useful tool for contesting the norms of debate, including those which are the most problematic in the activity. Over time, I have changed my threshold on their topicality. These days, my position is that so long as they are clearly related to the topic, I am happy to consider them topical. When aff teams argue critical affirmatives, I strongly prefer there be a specific solvency mechanism for their interpretation of the role of the ballot. For negative teams arguing against K affs, I have a strong preference for specific case answers. Given that K affs are a fixture of debate and are generally available to find on open evidence and the caselist wiki, prepping to specifically answer them should be possible. While I am unlikely to vote in favor of arguments that would outright eliminate K affs in debate, counter kritiks are a strategy I am amenable to.

Kritiks: At its most fundamental level, a kritik is a critical argument that examines the consequences of the assumptions made in another argument. I love well run kritiks, but for me to decide in favor of a kritik it needs a specific link to the assumptions in the 1AC and a clearly articulated alternative that involves a specific action (as opposed to a vague alt). Experience informs me that K's with generic links and vague alternatives make for bad debate.

Framework: This term is vague enough to refer to a multitude of argument types. 1) In reference to kritikal frameworks, either as run by K aff teams or on the negative in service of kritiks, I want a well warranted explanation of why your theory of the round means your arguments should take precedence over your opponents. 2) In reference to the theory argument which holds that an aff team must have a plan text: I am likewise judging the rounds primarily on warrants and whichever team has the best warranted position should carry my ballot.

Topicality: Please slow down so that I can hear all your arguments and flow all their warrants. The quality of your T arguments is much more important to me––especially if you argue about the precedent the round sets––than how many stock voters you can read. I may prefer teams that offer a clear argument on topicality to those that rely on spreading, however tactically advantages the quickly read arguments may be.

Counter plans: The burden of demonstrating solvency is on the negative, especially with PICs. PICs are probably bad for debate. Most of the time they are just a proposal to do the plan but in a more ridiculous way that would likely never happen. So if you are going to run a PIC, make sure to argue that changing whatever aspect of the plan your PIC hinges on is realistically feasible and reasonably advantageous. Otherwise, I will do everything I can to avoid deciding the round on them.

Conditionality: I have no problem with the negative making a couple conditional arguments. That said, I think relying on a large number of conditional arguments to skew the aff typically backfires with the neg being unable to devote enough time to create a strong argument. So, I typically decide conditionality debates with a large number of conditional arguments in favor of the aff, not because they make debate too hard for the aff, but because they make debating well hard for everyone in the round.

Dispositionality: Is functionally identical to conditionality. If an aff team runs dispo as their interpretation of conditionality and the negative argues that dispo is the same as condo, I am liable to resolve the flow in favor of the negative.

For rookie/novice debaters:

If you're reading this, then you're already a step ahead and thinking about the skills you will need to be building for JV and varsity debate. What I want to see most in rookie/novice debates is that teams are flowing and clearly responding to each other.

Background

- Jesuit Dallas '21 - Debated Education, Immigration, Arms Sales, and Criminal Justice Reform (If this matters)

- A&M '25

- 2N/1A - 1 year (Freshman year)

- 2A/1N - 3 years

- Email for email chains and speech docs: joshram2021@gmail.com and jcpdebate@gmail.com (email my personal email for questions about past rounds/general questions; for questions, just give me a couple days to respond)

-- For GDI, just use my personal email

Top Level

- Line By Line matters, clash is key (I will auto number Case args and the 2AC block, if it isn't numbered)

- Please be nice

- My coaches have impacted my view of debate a lot (Tracy McFarland and Dan Lingel), along with my fellow Jesuit Class of 2021 and some alum

- All of these are just my initial views on certain things but obviously my mind can be changed based on who did the better debating

- Evidence comparison is great

- Read your re-highlightings in round unless it doesn't makes sense to do it

- Underviews and overviews that aren't used for judge instruction aren't useful for anyone

- CX is a useful reference to refer to in speeches, I'll try to pay attention

- Short Overviews --X------- Long Overviews

- Explanations X--------- Enthymemes

- Tech ----X----- Truth

- Don't steal ev and disclosure is good, re-highlighting or recutting a card is different than using a card from another team in a debate (I can help with giving access to pdfs/articles, especially if they're Jesuit cut). Also don't clip

- I will try to read the important ev after the round, especially if you flag it down

- Please feel free to ask any clarifying questions before and after the round

- PLEASE don't read any advocacy advocating for suicide, I will vote you down if you do end up advocating for suicide (There are explicit arguments for that phrase that the authors who use it have, USE THAT EXPLANATION, you are still open to criticisms of that advocacy to begin with). Regardless, I think there are better arguments instead of suicide advocacy.

- Feel free to ask if you need a clarification of my RFD, I sometimes ramble

FOR NOVICES - Novice year really pushed me to want to continue debate so make sure to have fun and ask questions, I'll do my best to explain the argument and what your answer could've been.

FOR ONLINE DEBATE - I'd ideally like everyone's camera to be on during the debate, or at least when you're giving a speech, but I understand if there's technical problems that mean it's not possible. PLEASE start slightly slower, I have good quality headphones now but like if your mic is peaking I'm just not gonna properly process what you're saying

Econ Topic Specific Thoughts/Ramblings

- Rounds Judged: 5

- T over what "financial redistribution" is seems important

- I'm a little new to learning about how some of the econ stuff works so I'm more likely to read the ev when it comes down to some of the nitty gritty tech stuff for it

T/Procedurals

- Majority of my 1NRs were either a DA or T

- Good T debates are really fun to watch and judge, clear up impacts and how your interp best accesses those

- I default to competing interpretations (Reasonability requires you to win some semblance of a we meet or your Counter interp resolving limits)

- Caselists are very very important

- Limits is important but limits for the sake of limits is bad

- Ev should be read in T debates (either interps or what their interp would justify; If you can read a solvency advocate for what their interp would include, that would be very impressive and gives Neg's game on the limits debate), call out interps that aren't related to the topic (PLEASE DON'T JUST CARD DUMP, especially if your interps contradict or aren't in the context of the res, cause the 1AR will be very persuasive to me if they point that out)

- That being said, Interps should probably be in the context of the res, Aff's should either point out it doesn't or draw lines from their interp to prove we meet

- Please make these clean, messy T debates are really easy to cause and make everything harder

- Procedurals should have some relation to the res

- Extra-T and Effects T are both cool, but need thorough explanation (I would know cause some 1NRs I would just say it without like a decent explanation). Will definitely vote on it though (probably Extra more than Effects cause Extra is more justifiable)

DAs

- Specific DAs = perfect

- There can be 0% risk of a DA

- It's very important that DAs have some form of external impact compared to the Aff, please do impact calc that frames the impact stories and their interaction (through like turns case or time frame/probability/magnitude)

- Evidence specificity is important when it comes to DAs

- Politics DAs are potentially alive now, stay within reason, I value recent ev over tech (unless you're spinning the ev harder than Beyblades), I also need you stay coherent with the link story

- Diversify Links and give them some short, flowable labels

CPs

- Sufficiency framing should work for most things except structural violence impacts

- Smart, specific CPs are great combined with specific DAs

- Creative Perms are good

- CPs should be competitive, at least functionally if not both textually and functionally

- Affs should call out shady CPs (i.e. the process of the CP or how the CP would solve the Aff)

- Clear up the technical parts of process CPs as I can get lost in the jargon when it's not explained clearly

- I won't automatically judge kick (I also am adverse to judge kick)

Ks

- A K was in all of my 1NCs except for one round my senior year (the break down is something like 55% Abolition, 35% Cap/Historical Materialism, 5% Security, 5% Settler Biopolitics, and then like 0.1% Borders)

- FW is so underutilized

- I'm still confused with high theory Ks (like pomo type stuff, am familiar with the theories but the more vocab you throw at me the more I'm gonna get lost)(race/identity based stuff I'm super familiar with and am comfortable deciding on as long as it doesn't get messy) but I'll do my best (I've run Cap/Historical Materialism, Borders, Deschooling, Security, Abolition, and Bioptx and debated a plethora)

- Link stories are important and explaining exactly what part of the Aff you are kritiking (your life is so much easier if you impact out links)

- Overviews that require a page or half of my flow are not good and will annoy me, ESPECIALLY if you start doing just all the K work on the other page, cause then what's the point of that initial K flow

- Case debating is very important, I'll give the Aff leeway on weighing the Case vs the K if there's 0 contestation throughout the debate/in the 2NR (i.e. Case impacts, value of debating the Aff on FW, Perm explanation, etc.). Neg's can challenge this by either A) actually implicating case args with the K or B) on the K flow, explaining how it relates to the mechanisms of the 1AC/Aff, if that make sense

- K alts should be explained (i.e. explain how the world of the alt would looks), they are often the weakest parts of the K so please try to explain them in some way that resolves the links and the Aff (I use the language of resolve because the Alt doesn't need to "solve" but like prove how the Alt addresses the bad assumptions of the Aff and the harms that the Aff attempts to address); Also, please don't make your K's just sad tarnished case turns.

- Diversify the Links (either with cards, how they explained the Aff would function, or how the Aff is written), if you read generic evidence, please explain how it relates to the Aff and how the Aff is what the card is talking about (generic links are probably alright if they relate to the Aff in some aspect, i.e. if the card doesn't have x part of the Aff in the card or mentions the Aff in any capacity, the Neg should explain why the card still applies)

K Affs

- Explain what voting for you means and what my vote means in the context of the Aff (I know that I vote for the better debater, at least that is my default understanding of what the ballot means, but what is the advocacy/worldview of the Aff), both sides must explain the importance of the ballot in relation to the Aff (There's a big difference between advocating for a method related to the topic vs pointing out how x thing is racist and that's bad, etc.; Just because I read K Affs doesn't mean I won't vote on presumption if I have no idea why I vote Aff or what the Aff's method is trying to accomplish)

- Please have some form of advocacy, related to the topic, that you can defend throughout the debate (Don't shift it because it confuses me more and probably gives more leverage to T/FW; consistency is key for Aff offense and fighting the zump)

- I'm much more persuaded on Models of Debate discussions paired with turns/offense over straight Impact turns to education and fairness (doesn't mean I won't vote on education and fairness turns, I just happen to be more familiar with these debates over Counter Interps/Models of Debate)

Neg strats

- T/FW - Debate is a game (a very fun game), Fairness is more of an internal link (Like debate is a game but education/portable skills is stuff we actually get out of round, it's the telos), I prefer Clash/Advocacy Skills/External Impacts over the usual Fairness/Education, TVAs are great and almost always a must. Focus on forwarding offense cause these debates can get compartmentalized, contextualize your blocks (please clash with the args instead of reading your blocks, this goes for both teams) (I find many rounds when I was Aff where I got away with a lot of things b/c of the moving parts of offense). I understand the small distinction between T and FW but at the end, it comes down to models of debate (that is gonna be my default unless you make the distinction clearer for me)

- K's - I understand Historical Materialism/Cap the best out of all the K's in K vs K Aff debates. Probably neutral on whether there are Perms in a method debate (ofc depends on the types of methods engaged in), link debate and framing is where I determine whether I should allow a Perm (FW debate too, probably). Please PLEASE contextualize links to the Aff's method or theory's assumptions, it makes the Link clearer and gives the Aff less room for link turns/Perm explanation.

- Other strats - PICs, procedurals, Counter Advocacies etc. are strategic and interesting. I'll listen to them but will probably evaluate them similar to some of the way I view things above. Feel free to ask specifics.

- Case is/can be important for either 2NR you would go for and some of the Case cards should be cross applied if not referenced. 2NRs not getting to Case gives 2ARs way too much room to use the weight of the Aff vs whatever the 2NR was, which I'm sympathetic to because there wasn't an answer to case (super helpful during my Senior year when Case was like barely anything in the 2NR)

Theory

- Theory is pretty cool

- Specific theory = even cooler

- Contextualize it to other arguments run and what happens in the round, this is probably my weakest area to judge a debate on, partly cause if you go too fast, I can't write everything down (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ACTUALLY COMPARE STANDARDS AND INTERPS, it gets frustrating when both teams just rant about what their interp on theory is, without actually clash between the two)

- Ask if there are any specific views that I have on CPs and other things (Condo is dependent on the situation, PICs are good, Word PICS are 50/50 (probably need a good interp on what words you should be able to PIC out of), Multi-plank CPs with more than one solvency advocate aren't good, Dispo is just spicy Condo, Process CPs are meh, Con-Con and NGAs are boooo)

- This is probably my weakest area to judge (ironic for a former 2A), so please please please make sure that you're clear when spreading through your blocks and make sure that you're doing the right work, because I really don't want to do the comparison for you, especially if I wasn't able to get half your standards

Case

- If I didn't have a DA or T, I always took Case in the 1NR, it showcased how important/helpful it is for in depth case debating that relates back to whatever the 2NC took, whether it was a K or DA or CP

- Offense and defense matters, make sure to frame them

- Impact turns that are smart are great (Won't vote on Racism good, Sexism good, etc.; I don't think I understand Death Good well enough to be able to form an opinion, at least the high theory Baudrillard level of it) (PLEASE don't just card dump, I've done this before and it wasn't clean; if it works against a K Aff go for it)

- 2AR/2NR framing/judge instruction is pretty important and very helpful, didn't realize how important it was until I started listening to some of my speeches, there's a big difference between extending your offense and framing offense against each other and giving me words to write in my ballot and give in the RFD

LD: please add my email AND breakdocs@googlegroups.com. please do not add me to a speechdrop. read this section and the must reads.

if the argument doesn't exist in policy, you will probably need to explain it. this includes strange acronyms and phrases that seem to only exist in LD like "does x trigger y". stop asking for marked copies and a million questions about which cards were and weren't read.

Tech--x--------Truth

K-----x-----Policy

Phil------x----No

Theory--------x--Substance

Disclose------x----Unverifiable

Tricks----------x-Literally anything else

GCB+30 speaks---------x-Please stop

More NC arguments/cards--x--------New in the NR

policy: read below.

i am semi-involved, but haven't extensively cut cards on IP. i did not judge at camp, but have judged ~20 rounds and 10 practice debates on this topic. a detailed judging record (including arguments read) is here, poached from David McDermott.

must reads:

1. joe, not judge. i'm not that old. yes, email chain. joerhee779@gmail.com
2. email subject should be include tournament, round, teams, and codes. ex: 2021 TOC - Round 4 - Mitty AP (Aff) vs Little Rock GR (Neg)
3. safety and integrity are prior. do not touch each other, me, or anyone's property, say slurs, misgender, etc. outside help is prohibited. each debater must give 1 constructive and 1 rebuttal, unless there's a maverick situation that has been pre-approved. speech times are non-negotiable. do not clip. clipping = misrepresenting evidence. if you skip a word on accident, don't worry. if you skip a sentence, several words, or even paragraphs, in more than one card, i will be less forgiving. these are an auto-L and lowest speaks possible.
4. send out the 1AC and be ready to give it at start time. deleting analytics and excessive downtime between the email being sent out will incur prep.
5. communication first. pausing for pen time, not spreading through blocks like they're cards, and being clear when reading cards is imperative. rehighlightings that explain warrants beyond the tag should be read.

me:

1. little rock central '22, vanderbilt '26. human and organizational development major, data science minor. you can ask about vandy if you want after a decision has been made or through email.
2. read basically everything in high school as a 2A and 2N. did two tournaments in college. did the toc once. broke there. qualed twice. read about 55-60% K/45-40% policy args. I research more Ks and K answers than anything else. i judge about 40% policy v. policy, 35% policy v. K, and 25% K v. K debates (adjusted for varsity debates alone). i am probably ideal for an impact turn or policy v. K debate, but am confident i can evaluate anything.
3. i agree most with Debnil Sur.

argument evaluation:

1. tech over truth. arguments must have a claim, warrant, and implication. i must be able to explain what i flowed to the other team, not agree with it. worse warrants should be (and are) easier to beat. yes, you can win death/war/warming good, no condo, racism outweighs T, fairness is an impact, etc. however, if i didn't hear/understand the argument (including clarity), i won't vote on it, so hide arguments at your own risk. explaining the importance of dropped arguments 1-3 is more important than extending dropped argument 4. if i can't resolve the debate using tech alone, something has gone horribly wrong.
2. i will not judge personal character. i lack the resources and willpower to discuss debaters' personal lives. barring a debater saying we ought to openly hate entire groups of people online on a publicly accessible website (screenshots are not evidence), i am unwilling to vote on minors' actions. if someone says something that could be problematic, i will likely correct it after the fact, not drop the debater. you are free to make this a link argument or voting issue, but i will evaluate it like any other argument.
3. evidence quality matters and is under-debated. a good analytic can beat a bad card, but no cards decreases the chance of a win. evidence comparison is underutilized, but if no one mentions it in the debate, i will not make it part of my decision, nor insert my personal opinion on the evidence unless someone only says "read it after the round" .
4. i am very expressive. if i don't like an argument, it will show, but i have still voted for teams i made faces at.
5. debaters work hard, so i will not give a lazy decision. if you disagree post-round, please explain why and i will walk through my reasoning with you.

specific arguments:

1. Ks: framework is important, and i will only vote on an interp introduced in the debate. i do miss when debaters went for other tricks than the fiat K like link turns case or impact calc, but i'll evaluate the flow technically. in K v. K debates, unsure why framework and impact calculus suddenly disappears and why "no perms in a method debate" is a truism.
2. K affs: vs. T, choose either a counter interp or impact turn strategy. i am ok with fairness, clash, or education when actually explained. TVAs are usually meh unless the aff is close to the topic. SSD is slightly better but may link to DAs. impact turns like heg/cap/state good are fine. i vote aff when the neg drops DAs to T or can't explain their impact. i vote neg when the aff drops tricks like the ballot pik or subjectivity defense.
3. T: offense-defense. reasonability doesn't make sense without a counter-interp. thoughts on theory are essentially the same, except that because they lack evidence, most claims like aff and neg bias are usually unwarranted.
4. CPs: a. solvency deficits must be real, otherwise write a better aff. b. most theory objections would be better phrased as competition, though i'm 50/50 on the legitimacy of most counterplans. c. i've heard enough competition debates to know what's happening. d. not sure why people aren't reading more advantage counterplans.
5. DAs/case: many DAs and affs are fake, especially the internal link. presumption/zero risk is possible, but is a high bar. 2As - during the 2AC please actually explain line-by-line warrants. half the time it is incomprehensible. 2Ns - exploit 2A posturing and bad evidence quality. read more than just impact d. impact and straight turns are fun, but stay organized.

speaks:

speaker point inflation is terrorism. i will use a wider range than the average judge. more stats are in the judging record linked above.

below 27.0 - reserved for ethics violations.

27.0 - 0.0 percentile speaker at the tournament.

27.5 - 17th percentile speaker at the tournament.

28.0 - 33rd percentile speaker at the tournament.

28.5 - 50th percentile speaker at the tournament.

29.0 - 67th percentile speaker at the tournament.

29.5 - 83rd percentile speaker at the tournament.

30 - 100th percentile speaker at the tournament.

this is the baseline based on speeches. how to get higher or lower:

1. good CX. "tag team" cx is fine, but if one debater is taking every question, speaks will suffer. don't ask a bunch of questions like "what cards did you read" or "can you explain the aff". hard limit is 2 before speaks start dropping.

2. humor, kindness, and demeanor. don't have to be nice all the time because i get debate's competitive and tensions are high, but making a good joke, being generally respectful to others and making debate a better place are all great.

Marist, Atlanta, GA (2015-2019, 2020-Present)
Pace Academy, Atlanta GA (2019-2020)
Stratford Academy, Macon GA (2008-2015)
Michigan State University (2004-2008)

Pronouns- She/Her

Please use email chains. Please add me- abby.schirmer@gmail.com.

Short version- You need to read and defend a plan in front of me. I value clarity (in both a strategic and vocal sense) and strategy. A good strategic aff or neg strat will always win out over something haphazardly put together. Impact your arguments, impact them against your opponents arguments (This is just as true with a critical strategy as it is with a DA, CP, Case Strategy). I like to read evidence during the debate. I usually make decisions pretty quickly. Typically I can see the nexus question of the debate clearly by the 2nr/2ar and when (if) its resolved, its resolved. Don't take it personally.

Long Version:
Case Debate- I like specific case debate. Shows you put in the hard work it takes to research and defeat the aff. I will reward hard work if there is solid Internal link debating. I think case specific disads are also pretty good if well thought out and executed. I like impact turn debates. Cleanly executed ones will usually result in a neg ballot -- messy debates, however, will not.

Disads- Defense and offense should be present, especially in a link turn/impact turn debate. You will only win an impact turn debate if you first have defense against their original disad impacts. I'm willing to vote on defense (at least assign a relatively low probability to a DA in the presence of compelling aff defense). Defense wins championships. Impact calc is important. I think this is a debate that should start early (2ac) and shouldn't end until the debate is over. I don't think the U necessarily controls the direction of the link, but can be persuaded it does if told and explained why that true.

K's- Im better for the K now than i have been in years past. That being said, Im better for security/international relations/neolib based ks than i am for race, gender, psycho, baudrillard etc . I tend to find specific Ks (ie specific to the aff's mechanism/advantages etc) the most appealing. If you're going for a K-- 1) please don't expect me to know weird or specific ultra critical jargon... b/c i probably wont. 2) Cheat- I vote on K tricks all the time (aff don't make me do this). 3) Make the link debate as specific as possible and pull examples straight from the aff's evidence and the debate in general 4) I totally geek out for well explained historical examples that prove your link/impact args. I think getting to weigh the aff is a god given right. Role of the ballot should be a question that gets debated out. What does the ballot mean with in your framework. These debates should NOT be happening in the 2NR/2AR-- they should start as early as possible. I think debates about competing methods are fine. I think floating pics are also fine (unless told otherwise). I think epistemology debates are interesting. K debates need some discussion of an impact-- i do not know what it means to say..."the ZERO POINT OF THE Holocaust." I think having an external impact is also good - turning the case alone, or making their impacts inevitable isn't enough. There also needs to be some articulation of what the alternative does... voting neg doesn't mean that your links go away. I will vote on the perm if its articulated well and if its a reason why plan plus alt would overcome any of the link questions. Link defense needs to accompany these debates.

K affs are fine- you have to have a plan. You should defend that plan. Affs who don't will prob lose to framework. A alot.... and with that we come to:

NonTraditional Teams-
If not defending a plan is your thing, I'm not your judge. I think topical plans are good. I think the aff needs to read a topical plan and defend the action of that topical plan. I don't think using the USFG is an endorsement of its racist, sexist, homophobic or ableist ways. I think affs who debate this way tend to leave zero ground for the negative to engage which defeats the entire point of the activity. I am persuaded by T/Framework in these scenarios. I also think if you've made the good faith effort to engage, then you should be rewarded. These arguments make a little more sense on the negative but I am not compelled by arguments that claim: "you didn't talk about it, so you should lose."

CPs- Defending the SQ is a bold strat. Multiple conditional (or dispo/uncondish) CPs are also fine. Condo is probably good, but i can be persuaded otherwise. Consult away- its arbitrary to hate them in light of the fact that everything else is fine. I lean neg on CP theory. Aff's make sure you perm the CP (and all its planks). Im willing to judge kick the CP for you. If i determine that the CP is not competitive, or that its a worse option - the CP will go away and you'll be left with whatever is left (NBs or Solvency turns etc). This is only true if the AFF says nothing to the contrary. (ie. The aff has to tell me NOT to kick the CP - and win that issue in the debate). I WILL NOT VOTE ON NO NEG FIAT. That argument makes me mad. Of course the neg gets fiat. Don't be absurd.

T- I default to offense/defense type framework, but can be persuaded otherwise. Impact your reasons why I should vote neg. You need to have unique offense on T. K's of T are stupid. I think the aff has to run a topical aff, and K-ing that logic is ridiculous. T isn't racist. RVIs are never ever compelling.... ever.

Theory- I tend to lean neg on theory. Condo- Good. More than two then the aff might have a case to make as to why its bad - i've voted aff on Condo, I've voted neg on condo. Its a debate to be had. Any other theory argument I think is categorically a reason to reject the argument and not the team. I can't figure out a reason why if the aff wins international fiat is bad that means the neg loses - i just think that means the CP goes away.

Remember!!! All of this is just a guide for how you chose your args in round. I will vote on most args if they are argued well and have some sort of an impact. Evidence comparison is also good in my book-- its not done enough and i think its one of the most valuable ways to create an ethos of control with in the debate. Perception is everything, especially if you control the spin of the debate. I will read evidence if i need to-- don't volunteer it and don't give me more than i ask for. I love fun debates, i like people who are nice, i like people who are funny... i will reward you with good points if you are both. Be nice to your partner and your opponents. No need to be a jerk for no reason

Email: jet.semrick@gmail.com, taipeiamericanpolicy@gmail.com

Coach @ Taipei American School | Debated @ University of Kansas 2019-2023 and Shawnee Mission East 2015-2019

______________________________________________

Summary:

--AFFs should be topical and solve a unique problem.

--I am good for any negative position that argues the plan is undesirable. Bad for arguments that intentionally avoid the case.

--Argument quality matters. I am more likely to be persuaded by complete, sound, and logical arguments. However, technical debating can change this predisposition.

--Preference for fewer, but more developed positions over many underdeveloped ones.

--Be reasonable with down time, sending out emails, and please don't send out or ask for a marked doc if it's not needed.

--Ethos, clarity, and strategic decisions will be rewarded with speaker points.

--I try to transcribe the debate and cross-ex on my computer. I generally don't follow along with speech docs. At the end of the debate, I read cards if needed to resolve important disputes in the debate.

--I do high school topic research. Outside of debate I am a graduate student studying machine learning at Cornell. My undergraduate was in computer science and economics at the University of Kansas.

______________________________________________

Policy:

Topicality vs. Plans

Plan text in a vacuum is not a persuasive defense of a non topical AFF.

Ground is the most compelling standard because a 'limits explosion' can be mitigated by existence of predictable and high quality negative ground.

Counterplans

Evidence that compares the CP to the plan is the gold standard.

Process CPs are awful for debate. If evidence quality is good and comparative to the plan, I am game, otherwise my biases heavily favor the affirmative on theory and competition questions.

I will judge kick counterplans unless instructed otherwise.

I think conditionality is bad, but my voting record favors the negative. One or two conditional advocacies seems reasonable, anything more quickly reduces the quality of the debate.

Ideally, the negative specifies net benefits and establishes competition in the 1NC.

Disadvantages

Link debating and evidence is often the important part of a DA.

Case

Solvency deficits and alt causes are more compelling than impact defense.

Case debating is better than counterplan debating.

If you decide to read a framing page, make it meaningful. Generic framing arguments are boring and generally still devolve to magnitude x probability. I don't need a framing page to vote affirmative for a low magnitude high probability impact vs. low probability DA.

______________________________________________

Critique:

Topicality vs. K AFFs

You should strike me if you don't read a plan. I will vote negative if minimum expectations are met when going for framework.

I think fairness is the best impact, but am also persuaded by arguments about iteration, research, and clash. Without a predictable affirmative constraint, I don't think debate could exist.

Critiques vs. Policy AFFs

I enjoy well researched and specific critical arguments. The negative should win link turns case arguments, solvency deficits, or impact turns.

Framework arguments should have implications. The 2NR and 2AR should give instruction for what to do if you win or lose your interpretation. I default to weighing the impacts the plan can solve against the impacts of links the alternative can solve.

I will vote negative for a linear DA.

The alternative should solve a material problem and am not persuaded by alternatives that 'reject' the plan.

Performative contradictions matter. I am persuaded that the negative does not get to sever reps if other arguments are explicit contradictions. Examples of this are reading the cap K and economy DA.

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Ethics Violations:

I would prefer for debates to be completed and am not interested in judging the moral character of debaters or events that took place outside of the round. I value my role as an educator and will intervene or answer questions mid debate if that leads to an agreeable resolution that allows the debate to continue.

I would prefer to strike evidence rather than end the debate. Questions about qualifications, context, and argument representation should be argued in speeches to undermine the credibility of a position.

If there is a formal ethics challenge by a team, the debate ends. If the challenge is successful, the team who made the challenge wins and receives average speaks. If not, they lose and receive low speaks. I will defer to tab, my experience, and advice of others.

If the issue could have been resolved before the debate and is unintentional, I will likely reject the challenge. If I catch clipping, I will give a warning during the speech under the assumption that debaters are competing in good faith. If there is an egregious pattern or the warning is ignored, I will vote for the other team at the end of the debate.

Introduction

Call me Sam, Oak Park River Forest '21 & Emory '24, coach for Pace Academy, yes email chain oprfgs@gmail.com, I know absolutely nothing about this topic...

In my mind there are two serious reasons you might be reading my paradigm: either 1. you are determining prefs before a tournament or 2. you are determining how I will respond to your strategy before the round. I have organized my paradigm accordingly.

Listed below are the things I think are most important to point out about the way I judge, and the places where I might differ from the "consensus" of the debate community. If I do not bring up a certain issue, you should assume that I adopt the general "consensus view." If there is a particularly question that is important to you that I do not mention, you should absolutely feel free to email me before a tournament or even before a round. I will not write you an essay on what arguments to go for but I will answer straightforward yes or no questions like "is inserting a card ok if it was read in cx" (yes) or "when debated equally, do you think a textually legitimate but functionally illegitimate perm is valid if both teams agree a counterplan must be textually and functionally competitive" (also yes). If you are unsure whether your question is appropriate, ask anyway.

For Prefs

General

-I like smart arguments. I like line by line. I like spreading (while being clear) and reading lots of cards and comparing evidence.

-I put substantial effort into evaluating every debate I judge to the best of my ability. That being said, the following is a ranking from most to least of my average confidence in evaluating each type of debate: DA/CP/Case Turn v Policy Aff, T v Policy Aff, K v Policy Aff, T/FW/DA v K Aff, K v K Aff.

FW/K

-Debate is a competitive research game with a winner and a loser. It is my job to determine who the winner and the loser are based on who does the better debating in the round. It is very difficult to convince me to vote for something outside of the round (however, a team responding to "out-of-round" arguments should still defend why these arguments exceed the ballot's purview).

-I have not judged many T-USFG/FW debates, so I am not sure how idiosyncratic my approach of them is compared to common community practices. However, all else being equal, I have yet to see a convincing argument for why the affirmative should not have to defend a topical plan.

For Pre- (and Post-) round

General Notes

-Do not over-adapt. Do what you do, do it well, and you will get my ballot.

-I am easily impressed by debaters who demonstrate that they command an extensive but approachable understanding of American foreign policy, the internal politics of other countries, "critical" debates in academia, etc. I am easily depressed by debaters who's knowledge of these subject is superficial or who can not describe these things in a way that is easily digestible. The best way to prove to me your quality as a speaker is to debate an important area of study both in-depth and in a way that a non-expert could understand.

-Read re-highlightings.

-Have perm texts (it's ok to insert them).

-I generally flow in-person debates on paper. If you think you are going too fast you are. If you think you are unclear you are. Please slow down when you are making a lot of non-carded arguments in constructives, especially on T/Theory/K OVs.

-Generally, after the debate ends, I will create a list of the questions I need to resolve to determine which side won. If the answers to any of these questions can clearly be determined based on my flow I will resolve them in the appropriate way. Finally, I will read the evidence presented by both teams on the more ambiguous questions on my list, and incorporate evidence, spin, and analytical arguments into evaluating them. Therefore, while good evidence is always important, evidence quality begins to matter a lot more to me if you have done less work with spin/analytics/etc, which is something you should keep in mind in how you approach your 2nr/2ar.

-Online: I highly encourage you to turn on your video if you are able to do so. Debate is a communicative activity and seeing you speak significantly helps me understand you on a psychological level.

T

-If the most precise reading of the resolution results in a bad topic, that's a gripe for the topic comity, not a justification for trying to re-define the topic (on either the aff or the neg). Is it possible to win my ballot on debatability? Yes. Does it require a lot of impact work? Also yes.

-Instead of focusing on only winning I should look at debatiability, predictability, or any of their component parts, consider how I will evaluate the round after it ends. Often times both teams have offered multiple lenses that modify one or more of these categories and how they interact. The teams that win T debates in front of me are usually the ones who come closest to identifying all the impacts and framing devices in the debate and explaining how they resolve.

DAs

-I love the politics DA. However, politics DAs require a story. The words "strong-arming moderates" in your uq ev + an "aff requires PC" card do not a story make. I will give good points for (decent) innovative politics strategies because I think they get at the heart of what makes debate fun and the ambiguities that fiat creates.

-There is a direct, positive, linear relationship between the amount of impact calc you do and how likely I am to vote for you. I know that's a cliché and I'm still including it here which should clue you in to how important this is. This also means that I am not a fan of framing contentions, and I only think they are useful in so far as you impact out and do impact calc with the applicable arguments on the appropriate DA or counterplan page. This is not to say I will throw out framing contentions; I will still try to adjudicate the debate as fairly as possible, just know that all else being equal I lean negative on theses issues and if you are running a framing contention you are better off convincing me the neg's impacts are securitized and bad then you are convincing me that DAs are fake.

CPs

-I default to counterplans needing to be functionally and textually competitive. However, the way the affirmative determines if the CP meets that burden is the permutation. Therefore, when debated equally, a textually legitimate but functionally illegitimate perm is valid.

-I am sympathetic to being time pressed in the 2AC and think the threshold for a sufficient explanation for a perm or solvency deficit in the 2AC is that I am able to reasonably predict the subsequent 1AR explanation. However, I am a lot less sympathetic to perms and solvency deficits (especially impacts to solvency deficits) that sound substantially different in the 2AR then they do in the 1AR (or that barely feature in the 1AR but feature prominently in the 2AR). While this is opposite to your strategic incentives, the earlier you explain your arguments the better for me as a judge, and perms or solvency deficits that are explained thoroughly in the 2AC require less time investment to explain in the 1AR, so there is a cost/benefit calculus you have to take on.

-In my mind, perms are a yes/no question. My default way to evaluate perms is to look at each one, see if it clearly establishes that the counterplan is not an opportunity cost the the plan, and depending on if the answer is yes or no discard the counterplan or move on to other arguments respectively. One implication of this is that I am generally unsympathetic to "any risk of a link to the net benefit" answers to the perm. Nevertheless, my stance on perms as a yes/no question is somewhat malleable if debaters make explicit arguments for why I should understand the perm in a different way.

-I view CPs through the lens of negation theory. The negative is, first and foremost, responsible for giving me a reason the aff is bad (not just a reason the aff is less good than it could be). That means all counterplans must have offensive net benefits. I will never vote for a counterplan whose net benefit is better aff solvency. Even if the counterplan solves the aff better, and is mutually exclusive with the aff, it has not provided a reason the aff is bad.

-By default neg leaning on theory. The two most important things to my ballot on a theory argument: 1. Win topic side bias AND/OR how this theory argument implicates this topic specifically AND explain the implications of this. 2. Do impact calc. These debates often get messy, so being simple and formulaic is to your benefit.

-If judge kick is not brought up in the debate, I will kick the CP for you if it has been clearly designated as conditional/dispositional. Otherwise, I will evaluate the arguments for/against judge kick presented in the debate. If the counterplan has not been clearly designated as conditional I will not kick it.

Ks

-If neither team forwards a "middle ground" fw interpretation, like "weigh the advantage but also weigh reps links," I will not intervene and make one for you. I will only decide between the fw interpretations forwarded by either side, but a team can make arguments that modifying its fw interpretation in later speeches to attempt to take the "middle of the road" and capture the other team's offense.

-I am uncomfortable adjudicating anything other than the debating that took place within the round I am assigned. If there is harassment within the round, I hold the appropriate course of action to be stopping the debate and going to tab, where I am happy to argue that the team doing the harassment should be expelled from the tournament and talk to the team's coaches about the debaters facing repercussions. If there is harassment outside the round, talk to me and/or send me an email and we can go to tab and/or try to determine an appropriate course of action.

Final thoughts

-I think debate is no fun when everyone is up-tight and being a little fun and/or silly is a good thing. However, this should never come at the expense of debating well.

-I am probably a better judge for arguments like death good than the rest of this paradigm makes it seem.

-If you feel unsafe during a round for any reason, send me an email.

-I am still paying attention even I am staring off into the distance, especially if I am flowing on my computer.

About Me:

-Hello! Please add rnivium@gmail.com to the email chain.

-Debated at: University of Kansas '18-'22. Arapahoe HS '14-'18.

-Coached for: Asian Debate League '22-'23, Arapahoe HS '22-'23, Lawrence Free State HS '20-'22.

Paradigm:

-I don't think arguments start at 100% weight/risk. I believe it is my responsibility to assess the extent to which your warrant supports your claim.

-I encourage you to have a coherent overall narrative/strategy, to provide argument comparison/interaction, and to emphasize clarity/organization.

-I would definitely prefer to judge the "best possible argument" as opposed to the "most possible arguments."

-I'm apprehensive about "insert this re-highlighting." If you do this, please make the tagline very clear and don't highlight more than the key part. The trend of "insert this section of a card we read earlier for reference; its warrant is applicable here" seems fine.

E-Mail: cstewart[at]gallowayschool[dot]org

Disclaimer #1:I am a mandatory reporter under Georgia law. If you disclose a real-world risk to your safety, or if I believe there is an imminent threat to your well-being, I will stop the debate and contact the Tabroom. Arguments that talk generally about how to engage systems of power in the debate space are more than okay and do not violate this.

Disclaimer #2: I am partially deaf in my left ear. While this has zero impact on my ability to flow in 99.9% of debates, exceptionally bad acoustics may force me to be closer than usual during speeches.

NDCA 2025 Update: I am in the LD pool at 2025 NDCA Nationals. You should not over-adapt and assume that I am only familiar with LARP strategies. I did LD in HS, and coached / judged circuit LD for a number of years. While it has definitely been a while, I would much rather hear you execute your Phil / Tricks strategy well than have you try to over-adapt.

Speaker Points Update (November 2023):Moving forward, I will be following Regnier's speaker points distribution (see below). This should align my points with national trends and ensure I am not unfairly penalizing (or rewarding) debaters I am judging.

--- Fabulous (29.7 - 29.9) / Excellent (29.4-29.6)

--- Good (29.1 - 29.3) / Average (28.7 - 29)

--- Below Average (28.4 - 28.6) / Poor (28 - 28.3) / Very Poor (27.6 - 27.9)

Experience

Debate Experience

--- Lincoln-Douglas: 3 Years (Local / National Circuit)

--- Policy Debate: 4 Years of College Policy Debate (Georgia State University)

-- 2015 NDT Qualifier

-- Coached By: Joe Bellon, Nick Sciullo, Erik Mathis

-- Argument Style: Kritik (Freshman / Sophomore Year) & Policy (Junior / Senior Year)

-- Caselist Link (I Was A 2N My Senior Year): https://opencaselist.com/ndtceda14/GeorgiaState/StNa/Neg

Coaching Experience

--- Lincoln-Douglas: 4 Years (Local / National Circuit)

--- Policy Debate

-- University of Georgia - Graduate Assistant (3 Years)

-- Atlanta Urban Debate League (3 Years)

-- The Galloway School - Head Coach (3 Years)

Preferences - General

Overview:

Debate is a game; my strongest belief is that debaters should be able to play the game however they want to play it. I remain committed to Tabula Rasa judging, and have yet to see an argument (claim/ warrant) I would not pull the trigger on. The only exception to this is if I could not coherently explain to the other team the warrant for the argument I'm voting on. Unless told otherwise, I will flow the debate, and vote, based on the line-by-line, for whomever I thought won the debate.

What follows are my general thoughts about arguments, because for some reason that's what counts as a "judging paradigm" these days. Everything that follows WILL be overridden by arguments made in the debate.

Evidence:

Evidence is important, but not more than the in-round debating. Substantial deference will be given to in-debate spin. Bad evidence with spin will generally be given more weight than good evidence without.

Theory:

No strong predispositions. Run theory if that's your thing, there's actual abuse, or it's the most strategic way out of the round. I have no default conception of how theory functions; it could be an issue of competing interpretations, an issue of reasonability, an RVI, or a tool of the patriarchy. Given my LD background, I likely have a much lower threshold for pulling the trigger than other judges. Defaults such as X is never a reason to reject the team, RVIs bad, and a general disregard of Spec arguments aren't hardwired into me like the majority of the judging pool.

If you're going for theory, easiest thing you can do to win my ballot is to slow down and give an overview that sets up a clear way for me to evaluate the line-by-line.

Counterplans:

Read 'em. While I'm personally a big fan of process CPs/ PICs, I generally default to letting the literature determine CP competition/ legitimacy. If you have a kickass solvency advocate, then I will probably lean your way on most theoretical issues. On the other hand, as a former 2A, I sympathize with 2AC theory against CPs against which it is almost impossible to generate solvency deficits. 2ACs should not be afraid to bow up on CP theory in the 1AR.

DAs:

Specific DAs/ links trump generic DAs/ links absent substantial Negative spin. Love DAs with odd impact scenarios/ nuanced link stories.

Politics:

I functionally never read this as a debater, but my time coaching at UGA has brought me up to speed. Slow down/ clearly flag key points/ evidence distinctions in the 2NR/ 2AR.

Topicality:

Read it. Strategic tool that most 2Ns underutilize. Rarely hear a nuanced argument for reasonability; the T violation seems to prove the 1AC is unreasonable...

Kritiks:

I do not personally agree with the majority of Kritiks. However, after years of graduate school and debate, I've read large amount of Kritikal literature, and, if you run the K well, I'm a good judge for you. Increasingly irritated with 2ACs that fail to engage the nuance of the K they're answering (Cede the Political/ Perm: Double-Bind isn't enough to get you through a competently extended K debate). Similarly irritated with 2NCs that debate the K like a politics DA. Finally, 2ACs are too afraid to bow up on the K, especially with Impact Turns. I often end up voting Negative on the Kritik because the 2AC got sucked down the rabbit hole and didn't remind there was real-world outside of the philosophical interpretation offered by the K.

Framework (2AC):

I am generally unpersuaded by theoretical offense in a Policy AFF v. Kritik debate. You're better off reading this as policymaking good/ pragmatism offense to defend the method of the AFF versus the alternative. Generally skeptical of 2ACs that claim the K isn't within my jurisdiction/ is super unfair.

Framework (2NC):

Often end up voting Negative because the Affirmative strategically mishandles the FW of the K. Generally skeptical of K FW's that make the plan/ the real-world disappear entirely.

Preferences - "Clash" Debates

Clash of Civilization Debates:

Enjoy these debates; I judge alot of them. The worst thing you can do is overadapt. DEBATE HOWEVER YOU WANT TO DEBATE. My favorite debate that I ever watched was UMW versus Oklahoma, where UMW read a giant Hegemony advantage versus Oklahoma's 1-off Wilderson. I've been on both sides of the clash debate, and I respect both sides. I will just as easily vote on Framework as use my ballot to resist anti-blackness in debate.

Traditional ("Policy" Teams):

DO YOU. Traditional teams should not be afraid to double-down against K 1ACs,/ Big K 1NCs either via Framework or Impact Turns.

Framework (As "T"):

Never read this as a debater, but I've become more sympathetic to arguments about how the the resolution as a starting point is an important procedural constraint that can capture some of the pedagogical value of a Kritikal discussion. As a former 2N, I am sympathetic to limits arguments given the seemingly endless proliferation of K 1ACs with a dubious relationship to the topic. Explain how your interpretation is an opportunity cost of the 1ACs approach, and how you solve the 2ACs substantive offense (i.e. critical pedagogy/ our performance is important, etc.).

Non-Traditional ("Performance"/ "K" Teams):

As someone who spent a semester reading a narrative project about welcoming veterans into debate, I'm familiar with the way these arguments function, and I feel that they're an integral part of the game we call debate. However, that does not mean I will vote for you because you critiqued X-ism; what is your method, and how does it resolve the harms you have isolated? I am greatly frustrated by Kritik Teams that rely on obfuscation as a strategic tool---- even the Situationist International cared deeply about the political implications of their project.

AT: Framework

The closer you are to the topic/ the clearer your Affirmative is in what it defends, the more I'm down with the Affirmative. While I generally think that alternative approaches to debate are important discussions to be had, if I can listen to the 1AC and have no idea what the Affirmative does, what it defends, or why it's a response to the Topic beyond nebulous claims of resisting X-ism, then you're in a bad spot. Explain how your Counter-Interp solves their theoretical offense, or why your permutation doesn't link to their limits/ ground standards.

Fairness/ Education:

Are important. I am generally confused by teams that claim to impact turn fairness/ education. Your arguments are better articulated as INL-turns (i.e. X-ism/ debate practice is structurally unfair). Debate at some level is a game, and you should explain how your version of the game allows for good discussion/ an equal playing field for all.

Misc. - Ethics Violations

Ethics Violations:

After being forced to decide an elimination debate on a card-clipping accusation during the 2015 Barkley Forum (Emory), I felt it necessary to establish clarity/ forewarning for how I will proceed if this unfortunate circumstance happens again. While I would obviously prefer to decide the debate on actual substantive questions, this is the one issue where I will intervene. In the event of an ethics accusation, I will do the following:

1) Stop the debate. I will give the accusing team a chance to withdraw the accusation or proceed. If the accusation stands, I will decide the debate on the validity of the accusation.

2) Consult the Tabroom to determine any specific tournament policies/ procedures that apply to the situation and need to be followed.

3) Review available evidence to decide whether or not an ethics violation has taken place. In the event of a clipping accusation, a recording or video of the debate would be exceptionally helpful. I am a personal believer in a person being innocent until proven guilty. Unless there's definitive evidence proving otherwise, I will presume in favor of the accused debater.

4) Drop the Debater. If an ethics violation has taken place, I will drop the offending team, and award zero speaker points. If an ethics violation has not occurred, I will drop the team that originally made the accusation. The purpose of this is to prevent frivolous/ strategic accusations, given the very real-world, long-lasting impact such an accusation has on the team being accused.

5) Ethics Violations (Update): Credible, actual threats of violence against the actual people in the actual debate are unacceptable, as are acts of violence against others. I will drop you with zero speaker points if either of those occur. Litmus Test: There's a difference between wipeout/ global suicide alternatives (i.e. post-fiat arguments) and actually punching a debater in the face (i.e. real-world violence).

You do you, and I will do everything to evaluate the round equitably.

HS Policy Debate for 4 years at Marist School

College Policy Debate for 4 years at the University of Michigan

Columbia Law School '24

Good for anything and everything as long as it's explained clearly. I have bias against high theory because I'm not well read. However, if you can establish a unique link, win FW, or win other parts of the critique, I'll absolutely evaluate it.

Make sure to impact things out -- tell me why those things matter, why they mean you win/the other team loses.

add me to the email chain: whit211@gmail.com

Do not utter the phrase "plan text in a vacuum" or any other clever euphemism for it. It's not an argument, I won't vote on it, and you'll lose speaker points for advancing it. You should defend your plan, and I should be able to tell what the plan does by reading it.

Inserting things into the debate isn't a thing. If you want me to evaluate evidence, you should read it in the debate.

Cross-ex time is cross-ex time, not prep time. Ask questions or use your prep time, unless the tournament has an official "alt use" time rule.

You should debate line by line. That means case arguments should be responded to in the 1NC order and off case arguments should be responded to in the 2AC order. I continue to grow frustrated with teams that do not flow. If I suspect you are not flowing (I visibly see you not doing it; you answer arguments that were not made in the previous speech but were in the speech doc; you answer arguments in speech doc order instead of speech order), you will receive no higher than a 28. This includes teams that like to "group" the 2ac into sections and just read blocks in the 2NC/1NR. Also, read cards. I don't want to hear a block with no cards. This is a research activity.

Debate the round in a manner that you would like and defend it. I consistently vote for arguments that I don’t agree with and positions that I don’t necessarily think are good for debate. I have some pretty deeply held beliefs about debate, but I’m not so conceited that I think I have it all figured out. I still try to be as objective as possible in deciding rounds. All that being said, the following can be used to determine what I will most likely be persuaded by in close calls:

If I had my druthers, every 2nr would be a counterplan/disad or disad/case.

In the battle between truth and tech, I think I fall slightly on side of truth. That doesn’t mean that you can go around dropping arguments and then point out some fatal flaw in their logic in the 2AR. It does mean that some arguments are so poor as to necessitate only one response, and, as long as we are on the same page about what that argument is, it is ok if the explanation of that argument is shallow for most of the debate. True arguments aren’t always supported by evidence, but it certainly helps.

I think research is the most important aspect of debate. I make an effort to reward teams that work hard and do quality research on the topic, and arguments about preserving and improving topic specific education carry a lot of weight with me. However, it is not enough to read a wreck of good cards and tell me to read them. Teams that have actually worked hard tend to not only read quality evidence, but also execute and explain the arguments in the evidence well. I think there is an under-highlighting epidemic in debates, but I am willing to give debaters who know their evidence well enough to reference unhighlighted portions in the debate some leeway when comparing evidence after the round.

I think the affirmative should have a plan. I think the plan should be topical. I think topicality is a voting issue. I think teams that make a choice to not be topical are actively attempting to exclude the negative team from the debate (not the other way around). If you are not going to read a plan or be topical, you are more likely to persuade me that what you are doing is ‘ok’ if you at least attempt to relate to or talk about the topic. Being a close parallel (advocating something that would result in something similar to the resolution) is much better than being tangentially related or directly opposed to the resolution. I don’t think negative teams go for framework enough. Fairness is an impact, not a internal link. Procedural fairness is a thing and the only real impact to framework. If you go for "policy debate is key to skills and education," you are likely to lose. Winning that procedural fairness outweighs is not a given. You still need to defend against the other team's skills, education and exclusion arguments.

I don’t think making a permutation is ever a reason to reject the affirmative. I don’t believe the affirmative should be allowed to sever any part of the plan, but I believe the affirmative is only responsible for the mandates of the plan. Other extraneous questions, like immediacy and certainty, can be assumed only in the absence of a counterplan that manipulates the answers to those questions. I think there are limited instances when intrinsicness perms can be justified. This usually happens when the perm is technically intrinsic, but is in the same spirit as an action the CP takes This obviously has implications for whether or not I feel some counterplans are ultimately competitive.

Because I think topic literature should drive debates (see above), I feel that both plans and counterplans should have solvency advocates. There is some gray area about what constitutes a solvency advocate, but I don’t think it is an arbitrary issue. Two cards about some obscure aspect of the plan that might not be the most desirable does not a pic make. Also, it doesn’t sit well with me when negative teams manipulate the unlimited power of negative fiat to get around literature based arguments against their counterplan (i.e. – there is a healthy debate about federal uniformity vs state innovation that you should engage if you are reading the states cp). Because I see this action as comparable to an affirmative intrinsicness answer, I am more likely to give the affirmative leeway on those arguments if the negative has a counterplan that fiats out of the best responses.

My personal belief is probably slightly affirmative on many theory questions, but I don’t think I have voted affirmative on a (non-dropped) theory argument in years. Most affirmatives are awful at debating theory. Conditionality is conditionality is conditionality. If you have won that conditionality is good, there is no need make some arbitrary interpretation that what you did in the 1NC is the upper limit of what should be allowed. On a related note, I think affirmatives that make interpretations like ‘one conditional cp is ok’ have not staked out a very strategic position in the debate and have instead ceded their best offense. Appeals to reciprocity make a lot sense to me. ‘Argument, not team’ makes sense for most theory arguments that are unrelated to the disposition of a counterplan or kritik, but I can be persuaded that time investment required for an affirmative team to win theory necessitates that it be a voting issue.

Critical teams that make arguments that are grounded in and specific to the topic are more successful in front of me than those that do not. It is even better if your arguments are highly specific to the affirmative in question. I enjoy it when you paint a picture for me with stories about why the plans harms wouldn’t actually happen or why the plan wouldn’t solve. I like to see critical teams make link arguments based on claims or evidence read by the affirmative. These link arguments don’t always have to be made with evidence, but it is beneficial if you can tie the specific analytical link to an evidence based claim. I think alternative solvency is usually the weakest aspect of the kritik. Affirmatives would be well served to spend cross-x and speech time addressing this issue. ‘Our authors have degrees/work at a think tank’ is not a response to an epistemological indict of your affirmative. Intelligent, well-articulated analytic arguments are often the most persuasive answers to a kritik. 'Fiat' isn't a link. If your only links are 'you read a plan' or 'you use the state,' or if your block consistently has zero cards (or so few that find yourself regularly sending out the 2nc in the body rather than speech doc) then you shouldn't be preffing me.

LD Specific Business:

I am primarily a policy coach with very little LD experience. Have a little patience with me when it comes to LD specific jargon or arguments. It would behoove you to do a little more explanation than you would give to a seasoned adjudicator in the back of the room. I will most likely judge LD rounds in the same way I judge policy rounds. Hopefully my policy philosophy below will give you some insight into how I view debate. I have little tolerance and a high threshold for voting on unwarranted theory arguments. I'm not likely to care that they dropped your 'g' subpoint, if it wasn't very good. RVI's aren't a thing, and I won't vote on them.

Last Updated: November 6, 2024

Assistant Policy Debate Coach @ Berkeley Prep & Northwestern University.Debated at Little Rock Central High School (TOC Finalist '16) and Wake Forest University (NDT 1st round '19).

Put me on the email chain:williamsd.j.jr@gmail.com

General/TLDR:

Tech over truth. Only caveat, I won't vote on a unwarranted claim without an impact. For example, if a team drops "X is a microaggression," but you fail to explain why, I will not check out for you.

Please be CLEAR. If I can't understand you, then I WON'T flow it. Speed great, just want clarity (Slow down + enunciate on tags). If your strategy is to outspread the other team then name and number offense and don't forget my caveat to tech over truth

No argument preference. I primarily read Ks/K affs; however, I started my career only reading plans, T, DAs, and CPs. Lately, I have found myself in many policy v. policy debates, and I am fan.

I will not evaluate personal attacks against debater's, UNLESS I am a first hand witness to it in a debate round.

"One of the things that makes debate truly unique is the research that is required, and so I think it makes sense to reward teams who are clearly going above and beyond in the research they’re producing. Good cards won’t auto win you the debate, but they certainly help “break ties” on the flow and give off the perception that a team is deep in the literature on their argument.But good evidence is always secondary to what a debater does with it." -- Sam Gustavson

Framework:

1. Debate is a game. My sole concern when I competed and now coach as a coach is winning. However, I don't think this means competition is inherently adversarial or that there isn't value to debate outside of competitive incentives.

2. Fairness is an impact. Games require rules, but what those rules should be is up for debate. I don't start from the presupposition that anything is inherently fair/unfair. The onus is on you to explain why your interpretation of how the game should be played is preferrable.

3. Clash is an underutilized impact. I believe in-depth research/argumentation is something both policy and K teams fundamentally agree is good. I am sympathetic towards arguments that clash turns the affirmative's impacts and/or is necessary to develop certain skills (e.g. advocacy/activism, critical thinking, etc.). Additionally, I think the best models of debate, whether plan focused or not, should ensure some level of predictable ground for both sides. I am less convinced that clash solves dogmatism because I don't believe debaters 1) necessarily believe the arguments they read or 2) determine the validity of their arguments after engaging in SSD/researching both sides.

4. I don't think FW is inherently violent, but it is complicit in legacy and pathos of exclusion. That being said, I dislike the argument that purely reading FW is a microaggression unless there is a specific link to the way it has been deployed in that round. FW/T is exclusionary by nature, so is any counter-interp that imposes a limit on what arguments should/shouldn't be read. The team that best justifies their exclusion or inclusion will earn my ballot.

5. I prefer K-affs be in the direction of the topic. A-topical affs are fine, but I am probably more neg leaning if FW is well developed or the debate is close.

6. These are my personal feelings not a metric for how I evaluate these arguments in debate:

- Fairness paradox misses the forest for the trees. There is no universal notion of fairness everyone agrees to in debate rounds. This is why judges have paradigms outlining their dispositions/preferences and why debater's get a pref sheet to strike judges who are predisposed to their arguments. Debate is a subjective activity and judges aren't provided a formula for making decision

- Alt causes to subjectivities + Double down are silly. Yes, family, friends, school, etc. shape who you are, but 1) those things are involuntary, 2) doesn't disprove the claim that debate also influences subject formation and 3) you're admitting to being easily influenced by people and institutions.

Topicality:

1. I default to competing interpretations. The negative must 1) offer an interp, 2) win the aff clearly violates that interp, and 3) prove the superiority their interp to the affirmative. I can be persuaded to use a reasonability standard, but competing interps is decisively less arbitrary.

2. Plan text in a vacuum makes sense, but how effective it is for determining whether an aff is topical depends on the resolutional wording.

Counterplans:

1. I'll judge kick the CP unless the aff tells me not to.

2. Multi-plank CPs are fine, but if the planks are conditional then the aff gets to permute as many random plank combos as they desire.

3. Process CPs are fine as long as there is a clear internal net benefit. Competition debates are cool, but it'll probably go over my head at times/require more in-depth explanation.

4. Condo is good. I am easily persuaded on conditionality being good (at least 1 CP/ 1 K is fine), but I am willing to vote on conditionality bad, especially when the neg has multiple contradicting positions.

5. Don't make a sufficiency framing argument without doing the work to explain why the CP does not need to solve the entire aff or why I should prefer it as long as it solves most/certain parts of the aff. You have to instruct me on what is "sufficient" and how that influences the way I should evaluate impacts.

Kritiks:

1. Links don't have to be to the plan, but the more specific the better.

2. K v. K - No preferences

Disadvantages:

1. Good impact calc is usually what tips the scales for me if the rest of the debate is fairly even.

2. Evidence quality matters. I will not evaluate links/link turns not grounded in evidence.