Email Chain:tjbdebate@gmail.com

Assistant Coach at College Prep. Debated at Damien High School (2016-2020).

There are very view things content-wise that I actually have major predispositions about in debate. I do have some biases about some arguments but those are mitigated by clear judge instruction and impact comparison. I mostly desire to judge rounds with explicit ballot writing, line-by-line argument comparison, and impact calculus at the top of each part of the round. I know this sounds obvious, but I believe that the current state of debate is too centered around cloud clash and proliferating warrantless claims and hoping that the judge can resolve it themselves without explicit instruction.

My philosophy is simply that I will flow and listen to every part of the debate and evaluate it given the instructions of the 2NR and 2AR. Absent those instructions, I will try to reconstruct the debate as I saw it and make a decision based on how I view arguments which in many ways can frustrate and upset teams who fail to meet that minimum standard of argumentation. I do not mean this to be a warning but rather a reminder that debate is a communicative activity and that just because it sounds good in your head doesn't mean that is how it was conveyed to me.

Good line-by-line debating means extending not only a central claim and its supporting warrants but also giving some type of comparison between arguments that extends beyond publishing date and author qualifications. There must always be a focus on isolating good warrants and extrapolating how those should be impacted out compared to the opposing arguments. Without this very fundamental concept, debate turns into a comparison of monologues without genuine and effective clash, thus removing value from the activity. If in doubt, the "they say, we say" model is the best and most effective way to attack the line-by-line.

I reward teams that flow, signpost, and clearly segment the debate into identifiable arguments. Speeding through blocks all the way through the 2AR does nothing to influence my ballot and makes me rather upset since it just seems like a reading contest instead of contextual and reactive debating. I try to flow on paper without looking at my computer so the burden of communication is on the debaters. If you are not clear or are spreading to blocks at unchecked speed, you may be upset at my decision since I can only evaluate what I have on my flow. I am human and will make mistakes but I usually do not miss anything of great consequence on my flow but that still requires you to be clear and concise.

Below are some argument choices that I have specific thoughts about:

K-Affs vs. Framework -

I have voted for both sides in these debates. I really couldn't care less about what the 1AC is about. I prefer there to be some link to the topic but if you can a reason why there shouldn't be one then my feelings are irrelevant. Fairness is not a terminal impact to me. In most rounds, the negative just says that is an intrinsic good and that is about it. I think there procedural fairness is good because it can lead to discussions of the topic or solution based dialogue, but on its own there have been no compelling reasons why it is independently good. I am much more persuaded by framework arguments like topic education good, state engagement good, consequence-based clash good, clash and agonism good, and skills good since those have the capacity to effect real world decision making more. I have voted for fairness but I think that it more just seems like whining instead of a genuine call for resolution of cheating, given that there has probably never been a perfectly fair debate ever. I've voted on it because the aff has been technically behind but in closely contested rounds, I think I have a more aff leaning record against fairness. Honestly, if you want to go for this argument I don't mind because if you can win it on the flow then none of my thoughts matter, but if the aff is doing their job well, I won't just check out on it.

Microaggressions -

I would prefer that this argument be reserved for when there have been in-round incidents of interpersonal violence on the basis of identity instead of calling an argument serves as offense against you this. I have plenty of reasons why but the main two are this: 1. If a microaggression has occurred I will probably know that it has and my role has shifted to being the only adult in the room with young students and I will prioritize everyone's safety over the result of the round. I do not think that real instances of violence or aggression can or should be litigated with the power of the ballot. If this happens in a round, I will not hesitate to tell tab and the coaches of both teams what has happened since you all are students first and foremost and competitors second. I think the tab solves argument should resolve any other questions. 2. I think that calling procedural arguments microagressions trivializes true forms of violence in an attempt to win a ballot. This should not be the A strategy because it utilizes real forms of violence and creates what I believe to be a false equivalence with arguments that set a limit to discussion. I think that framework can be criticized for bracketing out content but those arguments are distinct from microaggressions.

**Online update: if my camera is off, i am not there**

I think debate is a game with educational benefits. I will listen to anything, but there are obviously some arguments that are more persuasive than others. i think this is most of what you're looking for:

1. arguments - For me to vote on an argument it must have a claim, warrant, and impact. A claim is an assertion of truth or opinion. A warrant is an analytical connection between data/grounds/evidence and your claim. An impact is the implication of that claim for how I should evaluate the debate. debate is competitive and adversarial, not cooperative. My bias is that debate strategies should be evidence-centric and, at a minimum, rooted in an academic discipline. My bias is that I do not want to consider anything prior to the reading of the 1AC when making my decision.

2. more on that last sentence - i am uninterested and incapable of resolving debates based on questions of character or on things that occurred outside of the debate that i am judging. if it is an issue that calls into question the safety of yourself or others in the community, you should bring that issue up directly with the tournament director or relevant authorities because that is not a competition question. if you are having an interpersonal dispute, you should try resolving your conflict outside of a competitive space and may want to seek mediation from trained professionals. there are likely exceptions, but there isnt a way to resolve these things in a debate round.

3. framework - arguments need to be impacted out beyond the word 'fairness' or 'education'. affirmatives do not need to read a plan to win in front of me. however, there should be some connection to the topic. fairness *can be* a terminal impact.

4. critiques - they should have links to the plan or have a coherent story in the context of the advantages. i am less inclined to vote neg for broad criticisms that arent contextualized to the affirmative. a link of omission is not a link. similarly, affirmatives lose debates a lot just because their 2ac is similarly generic and they have no defense of the actual assumptions of the affirmative.

5. counterplans - should likely have solvency advocates but its not a dealbreaker. slow down when explaining tricks in the 2nc.

6. theory - more teams should go for theory more often. negatives should be able to do whatever they want, but affirmatives need to be able to go for theory to keep them honest.

7. topicality - its an evidentiary issue that many people impact poorly. predictable limits, not ground, is the controlling internal link for most T-related impacts. saying 'we lose the [insert argument]' isnt really an impact without an explanation of why that argument is good. good debates make comparative claims between aff/neg opportunities to win relative to fairness.

8. i forgot what eight was for.

9. 2nr/2ar - there are lots of moving parts in debate. if you disagree with how i approach debate or think about debate differently, you should start your speech with judge instruction that provides an order of operations or helps construct that ballot. teams too often speak in absolute certainties and then presume the other team is winning no degree of offense. that is false and you will win more debates if you can account for that in your speech.

10. keep track of your own time.

unapologetically stolen from brendan bankey's judge philosophy as an addendum because there is no reason to rewrite it:

---"Perm do the counterplan" and "perm do the alt" are claims that are often unaccompanied by warrants. I will not vote for these statements unless the aff explains why they are theoretically legitimate BEFORE the 2AR. I am most likely to vote for these arguments when the aff has 1) a clear model of counterplan/alternative competition AND 2) an explanation for where the

I would prefer that debaters engage arguments instead of finesse their way out of links. This is especially awful when it takes place in clash debates. If you assert your opponent's offense does not apply when it does I will lower your speaker points.

In that vein, it is my bias that if an affirmative team chooses not to say "USFG Should" in the 1AC that they are doing it for competitive reasons. It is, definitionally, self-serving. Self-serving does not mean the aff should lose [or that its bad necessarily], just that they should be more realistic about the function of their 1AC in a competitive activity. If the aff does not say "USFG Should" they are deliberately shifting the point of stasis to other issues that they believe should take priority. It is reciprocal, therefore, for the negative to use any portion of the 1AC as it's jumping off point.

I think that limits, not ground, is the controlling internal link for most T-related impacts. Ground is an expression of the division of affirmative and negative strategies on any given topic. It is rarely an independent impact to T. I hate cross-examination questions about ground. I do not fault teams for being unhelpful to opponents that pose questions in cross-examination using the language of ground. People commonly ask questions about ground to demonstrate to the judge that the aff has not really thought out how their approach to the resolution fosters developed debates. A better, more precise question to ask would be: "What are the win conditions for the negative within your model of competition?"

Maggie Berthiaume Woodward Academy

Current Coach — Woodward Academy (2011-present)
Former Coach — Lexington High School (2006-2008), Chattahoochee High School (2008-2011)
College Debater — Dartmouth College (2001-2005)
High School Debater — Blake (1997-2001)

maggiekb@gmail.com and maggiekb@proton.me for email chains, please.

Meta Comments

1. Please be nice. If you don't want to be kind to others (the other team, your partner, me, the novice flowing the debate in the back of the room), please don’t prefer me.

2. I'm a high school teacher and believe that debates should be something I could enthusiastically show to my students, their families, or my principal. What does that mean? If your high school teachers would find your presentation inappropriate, I am likely to as well.

3. Please be clear. I will call "clear" if I can't understand you, but debate is primarily a communication activity. Do your best to connect on meaningful arguments.

4. Conduct your own CX as much as possible. CX is an important time for judge impression formation, and if one partner does all asking and answering for the team, it is very difficult to evaluate both debaters. Certainly the partner not involved in CX can get involved in an emergency, but that should be brief and rare if both debaters want good points.

5. If you like to be trolly with your speech docs (read on paper to prevent sharing, remove analyticals, etc.), please don't. See "speech documents" below for a longer justification and explanation.

6. I am not willing or able to adjudicate issues that happened outside of the bounds of the debate itself — ex. previous debates, social media issues, etc.

7. In debates involving minors, I am a mandated reporter — as are all judges of debates involving minors!

8. I’ve coached and judged for a long time now, and the reason I keep doing it is that I think debate is valuable. Students who demonstrate that they appreciate the opportunity to debate and are passionate and excited about the issues they are discussing are a joy to watch — they give judges a reason to listen even when we’re sick or tired or judging the 5th debate of the day on the 4th weekend that month. Be that student!

9. "Maggie" (or "Ms. B." if you prefer), not "judge."

What does a good debate look like?

Everyone wants to judge “good debates.” To me, that means two excellently-prepared teams who clash on fundamental issues related to the policy presented by the affirmative. The best debates allow four students to demonstrate that they have researched a topic and know a lot about it — they are debates over issues that experts in the field would understand and appreciate. The worst debates involve obfuscation and tangents. Good debates usually come down to a small number of issues that are well-explained by both sides. The best final rebuttals have clearly explained ballot and a response to the best reason to vote for the opposing team.

I have not decided to implement the Shunta Jordan "no more than 5 off" rule, but I understand why she has it, and I agree with the sentiment. I'm not establishing a specific number, but I would like to encourage negative teams to read fully developed positions in the 1NC (with internal links and solvency advocates as needed). (Here's what she says: "There is no world where the Negative needs to read more than 5 off case arguments. SO if you say 6+, I'm only flowing 5 and you get to choose which you want me to flow.") If you're thinking "nbd, we'll just read the other four DAs on the case," I think you're missing the point. :) It's not about the specific number, it's about the depth of argument.

Do you read evidence?

Yes, in nearly every debate. I will certainly read evidence that is contested by both sides to resolve who is correct in their characterizations. The more you explain your evidence, the more likely I am to read it. For me, the team that tells the better story that seems to incorporate both sets of evidence will almost always win. This means that instead of reading yet another card, you should take the time to explain why the context of the evidence means that your position is better than that of the other team. This is particularly true in close uniqueness and case debates.

Please read rehighlightings out loud rather than inserting them.

Do I have to be topical?

Yes. Affirmatives are certainly welcome to defend the resolution in interesting and creative ways, but that defense should be tied to a topical plan to ensure that both sides have the opportunity to prepare for a topic that is announced in advance. Affirmatives certainly do not need to “role play” or “pretend to be the USFG” to suggest that the USFG should change a policy, however.

I enjoy topicality debates more than the average judge as long as they are detailed and well-researched. Examples of this include “intelligence gathering” on Surveillance, “health care” on Social Services, and “economic engagement” on Latin America. Debaters who do a good job of describing what debates would look like under their interpretation (aff or neg) are likely to win. I've judged several "substantial" debates in recent years that I've greatly enjoyed.

Can I read [X ridiculous counterplan]?

If you have a solvency advocate, by all means. If not, consider a little longer. See: “what does as good debate look like?” above. Affs should not be afraid to go for theory against contrived counterplans that lack a solvency advocate. On the flip side, if the aff is reading non-intrinsic advantages, the "logical" counterplan or one that uses aff solvency evidence for the CP is much appreciated.

What about my generic kritik?

Topic or plan specific critiques are absolutely an important component of “excellently prepared teams who clash on fundamental issues.” Kritiks that can be read in every debate, regardless of the topic or affirmative plan, are usually not.

Given that the aff usually has specific solvency evidence, I think the neg needs to win that the aff makes things worse (not just “doesn’t solve” or “is a mask for X”). Neg – Please spend the time to make specific links to the aff — the best links are often not more evidence but examples from the 1AC or aff evidence.

What about offense/defense?

I do believe there is absolute defense and vote for it often.

Do you take prep for emailing/flashing?

Once the doc is saved, your prep time ends.

I have some questions about speech documents...

One speech document per speech (before the speech). Any additional cards added to the end of the speech should be sent out as soon as feasible.

Teams that remove analytical arguments like permutation texts, counter-interpretations, etc. from their speech documents before sending to the other team should be aware that they are also removing them from the version I will read at the end of the debate — this means that I will be unable to verify the wording of their arguments and will have to rely on the short-hand version on my flow. This rarely if ever benefits the team making those arguments.

Speech documents should be provided to the other team as the speech begins. The only exception to this is a team who debates entirely off paper. Teams should not use paper to circumvent norms of argument-sharing.

I will not consider any evidence that did not include a tag in the document provided to the other team.

LD Addendum

I don't judge LD as much as I used to (I coached it, once upon a time), but I think most of the above applies. If you are going to make reference to norms (theory, side bias, etc.), please explain them. Otherwise, just debate!

PF Addendum

This is very similar to the LD addendum with the caveat that I strongly prefer evidence be presented as cards rather than paraphrasing. I find it incredibly difficult to evaluate the quality of evidence when I have to locate the original source for every issue, and as a result, I am likely to discount that evidence compared to evidence where I can clearly view the surrounding sentence/paragraph/context.

Add me to the chain: zbpolicydebate@gmail.com and smdebatedocs@gmail.com

Top Level: I debated for St. Mark's from 2019-2022. I am a current student at Georgetown.

Tech/Truth, but that doesn't mean abandon all truth--I'll listen to each "if they drop x then we win the debate" argument and be as fair as possible, but I will try my very best to give the benefit of the doubt to well thought out arguments rather than silly shots for the ballot.

I really value impact analysis, you should draw the impacts of the debate out and tell me what I should value more.

I'll love it if you do good case debating, and reward you with high speaks. Prioritize case in the block, it goes a long way.

K's: I am probably not the best judge to pref if you are a high-theory K team. With regards to security, set col, and cap k, I know my way around, so you should be fine. If you run a K-aff, I do buy into T-USFG a little more, but I can be swayed, as with anything ig.

DA: Impact framing is important. I do not want to judge intervene on whether great power war is more important than nuclear terrorism.
I will lean towards 1% chance of the DA. You have to have a very solid, airtight plan if you want to win 0% risk (i.e. DA already happened/impact is impossible)

CP: Counterplans rarely solve 100% of case, but too often AFFs let it happen. Compare solvency deficit impacts with the DA, do not leave that work up to me please. Please EXPLAIN sufficiency framing, don't just say it otherwise I will assume any argument in the 2AR for why CP doesn't solve disproves sufficiency framing.

T: Resolutional debating is hard and confusing, but I will reward teams that do it really well with good speaks. Love watching good T debates, but make sure to have solid understanding of your interps and how they relate to the topic vision.

Closing thoughts: I am pretty open to most arguments. Debate better than the other team and you will win.

College Prep (2015-2019), Wake Forest (2019-2023)

ADA 2023 Champion, CEDA 2023 Co-Champion, 2023 Copeland Panelist, NDT 2023 Quarterfinals, NDT 2022 Octafinalist, NDT 2021 Doubles

Coach at George Mason & Harker

anadebate07@gmail.com

for college policy debates: please also add masondebatedocs@gmail.com

TLDR:

My only actual hardline stances are that I believe line-by-line is good, we should care about how we impact other people, and impact calculus wins debates.

I make decisions based on complete arguments, which require claims, warrants, and impacts/implications.

My favorite debates to judge are the ones in which teams do what they do best. I appreciate in-depth preparation and high-quality clash more than anything.

I am most excited about judging case vs disad debates. Debates not about the effects of the plan are less persuasive, less educational, and less engaging to me in almost every way.

I prefer to judge debates in which the Affirmative is about the topic, and the Negative disagrees with the Affirmative's proposed change from the status quo.

I prefer not to judge a debate about an issue that would best be resolved outside the constraints of a competitive debate.

I try to flow every word said in speeches & cross-ex unless instructed otherwise.

I think about debates in terms of strategic moves and argument function --- explaining arguments on that meta level is the most compelling and understandable to me, especially in debates with complex legislative nuance and/or critical theories.

I do not flow RVI's - I only flow complete arguments.

I refuse to vote on disclosure or other norm based theory arguments unless a) it is entirely conceded b) i witnessed MISdisclosure with an intent to lie or cheat --- anything else is not worthwhile for anyone's time. New AFFs are good.

Framework debates:

My least favorite debates, but I judge them the most

Impacts? Fairness is an impact, but you gotta do impact calc & can't skip out on warrants. I struggle to see how clash is an external impact but am open to hearing otherwise - for me, clash seems to be, at most, a sliding scale/question of maximization - but you provide a warrant otherwise and I'll write it down. Topic education is guided by predictable limits and/or explaining why the (specific) ground you gained/lost is good/bad.

TVA vs Switch Side? I think 2NR strategy is guided by AFF strategic vision, so my preference is probably based on technical concessions and/or context of the debate.

Models vs Violation? Your call, I've judged both and evaluated each on technical bases. The AFF probably has responses to each, so I don't find one approach more true/right than the other. I'm just line-by-line oriented.

Impact turn vs Counter-interp 2AR? Your call! I only think it's strategic that you pick one or the other and full send - typically starting on the Framework flow with your one major disad to the NEG's interp and impacting it out is the start of many winning 2ARs in front of me. If you go for the counter-interp, don't expect me to fill in blanks either way if it can or cannot solve the NEG's offense. If you're going for impact turns to the NEG's model/interp, then explain why that outweighs/turns NEG offense and probably best to have defense to their interp/model as well.

The NEG can win in front of me that case ought not outweigh Topicality, but you should say that. I do not auto-let kritikal AFFs leverage the case against Topicality if the NEG has presented reasons why I shouldn't evaluate that offense; I think the AFF should answer that argument. My burden for answering this argument is rather low, which is why I tend to be less persuaded by Framework interps about the NEG not being required to meet the burden of rejoinder. I like debates where teams disagree with one another, so this interpretation of what debate can and/or should be isn't something that I really find compelling. That doesn't mean the AFF doesn't have to respond, but I definitely think your offense is magnified by this interpretation of debate and explaining why that's true is compelling to me. However, if this is your approach on either side, you just have to win on the technical debating level, and you'll most likely get my ballot.

AFF v K on NEG? Overly specific AFF interps are less compelling than some version of weighing the effects/justifications against the K, and they tend to link far harder to NEG offense. I'm not a 'will always weigh the case' nor a 'loves the fiat k' truther - I just like impact calculus, comparison of warrants, and explanation of any solvency claim presented. You should still answer the links if going for framework or at least say why the case outweighs or solves the links.

General Debate Thoughts:

I auto-judge-kick.

Theory debates aren't fun to judge, but I understand the strategic utility on both sides. 1 reason condo is good & impact calc >> spending a certain amount of time.

I'm not great for competition debates; I don't like evaluating scripts read at each other with minimal impacts and direct engagement on the line by line.

If util and/or consequentialism are wrong, you have to say how I should evaluate impacts otherwise. I don't fill in the blanks for either side. Good impact calc tends to win debates in front of me.

I am not a fantastic judge for a competition debate and tend to need you to do impact calc & internal link comparison for me because I will not fill in blanks for this debate or default one way or another. I'm also not great for a process debate. This is the one style of debate I did and coached the least.

Will vote AFF or NEG on presumption

T debates aren't my favorite to judge but Limits ---X--------------- AFF Ground

You must read the re-highlighting aloud if the other team did not read those exact words in the card. If not reading the rehighlighted words aloud, you can also read the line(s) in cross-ex or explain the implication and what the rehighlighting means for my ballot in the tag of the rehighlighting. I think debate is a communication activity, not one where I read cards on my own and independently decide. However, that doesn't mean low-quality ev constitutes a good argument.

I will let you know if I need a card doc - I probably won't. I strongly dislike judge intervention, so I aim to read every card during the debate as it is read to understand the context and completeness of every argument presented during each speech. I try to be predictable in my decision-making, given I believe debate takes a lot of work, dedication, and time, which judges ought to respect by evaluating debates technically by flowing and comparing each argument as presented. This means I also only evaluate arguments presented in speeches. Cross-ex matters, but I can not vote on arguments not also made in speeches.

I am FAR more persuaded by negative criticisms that prove why the Affirmative as presented is bad, not just nonsolvent. I tend to struggle to see how the Negative does not have to respond to Affirmative defensive claims to the K -- framing out Affirmative offense still requires technical debating.

I stop flowing when the timer goes off.

I care about debate. I don't particularly appreciate when teams read cringe and questionably ethical backfile checks designed to mess with opponents.

I think disclosure is, in nearly every case, good. I have zero tolerance for misdisclosure, lying, and shady practices designed to evade clashing with your opponent.

If high-theory kritikal arguments are your bread and butter, just please lead with implications and claims that I can break down into impact-forward arguments. I just don't know how to spell or define some of the words you say very fast, but I will evaluate every debate as objectively as possible always / nevertheless.

I've read most arguments in debate at one point or another, and I have also judged most arguments in debate at one point or another. I would not suggest prescribing ideological convictions onto me, absent what this paradigm describes. I feel as if my knowledge of the following are roughly equitable, for context: communism, international relations theories and american hegemony (its pros and cons), afropessimism, political capital, conditionality and its history in debate, political capital in congress.

I appreciate historical examples as explication for argumentation, almost as much as an explanation of their relevancy to your argument / comparison to your opponents' warrants.

Speaking:

Speed = arguments effectively communicated per minute.

Clarity >>

Speaker Points? I try to default to this table's scale

[30 = nearly impossible to get/seniors at last tournament

29.9-29.7 = fabulous & expect to be in deep elims

29.6-29.4 = excellent & elim worthy performance

29.3-29.1 = good & expect to break

29-28.7 = median

28.6-28.4 = room for improvement

28.3-28 = some hiccups & things to work on

27.9-27.6 = room to improve and there is some debate stuff to learn

27.5 -27 = there is a lot of room to grow

26.9 and below = something went pretty wrong]

LD:

Not great for LD nonsense unless you want to explain things to me with an emphasis on impact calc & judge instruction.

I do not flow nor know how to evaluate phil, skep, tricks, and the like. If you do not defend some form of consequentialism, I am most likely not your judge.

In LD, I do not believe the 1NC/AR has the burden to rejoin frivolous, ridiculous theory arguments placed in the 1AC/NC to avoid clash.

Counterplan theory is fine. Litmus test is if the argument is prevalent in the activity of policy debate, it's probably fine. Except animal wipeout.

I would certainly prefer to not a LD debate with arbitrary disclosure norms; i think these debates and theory shells are worse for novices and access issues.

The most TLDR:

If I cannot explain your argument to you ethically or technically, the odds are that I cannot vote for you.

RVI's & tricks are nonstarters.

Debate Coach at NSU University School

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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.

Associate Director of Debate @ KU

Last Updated: Pre-GSU 2016

Quick pre-round notes:

I would prefer speech docs while I judge. Please email them to bricker312@gmail.com.

The affirmative should read and defend a topical example of the resolution and the negative should negate the affirmative's example.

I reward teams that demonstrate a robust knowledge of the topic and literature concerning the topic.

More info:

1. The word "interpretation" matters more to me than some. You must counterdefine words, or you will likely lose. You must meet your theory interpretation, or you will likely lose.
2. The words "voting issue" matter more to me than some. I am not searching for cheap shots, nor do I especially enjoy theory debates. However, I feel that I would be intervening if I applied "reject the argument not the team" to arguments that debaters did not explicitly apply the impact takeout to. That said, proliferation of empty voting issues will not only hurt your speaker points, but can be grouped and pretty easily disposed of by opponents.
3. "Turns the case" matters more to me than some. Is it offense? Does the link to the advantage/fiat outweigh or prevent turning the case? Does it mean the aff doesn't solve? Questions that should be answered by the 1ar.

I believe that debaters work hard, and I will work hard for them. The more debaters can show they have worked hard: good case debates, specific strategies, etc. the more likely it is I will reward debaters with speaker points and higher effort. In the same vain, debaters who make clear that they don’t work outside of debates won’t receive high speaker points.

Argument issues:

Topicality – It is a voting issue and not a reverse voting issue. I have not yet been persuaded by arguments in favor of reasonability; however, the reason for this usually lies with the fact that affirmatives fail to question the conventional wisdom that limits are good.

Kritiks – It will be difficult to convince me that I should completely disregard my conceptions of rationality, pragmatism and my aversion to unnecessary death. As a general rule, I think of Kritiks like a counterplan with net-benefits. The more aff specific the better.

Counterplans – I am up in the air about textual vs. functional competition – they both have their time and place, and are probably not universal rules. The cross-ex answer “for your DAs but not your counterplans” has always made negative sense to me. I understand that there are MANDATES of the plan and EFFECTS of the plan; I find this distinction more understandable than the usual c-x answer.

Rundown of general thoughts about counterplans:

Conditionality – it's feeling like a little bit much at the moment
PICs – Good, especially if they PIC out of a part of the plan
Consult/Condition – Up in the air and context specific. Solvency advocates, aff stances, etc. can change my feelings.
Delay – Aff leaning, but might be more competitive based on the structure of the affirmative, or a cross-ex answer. For example, if the affirmative has an advantage that takes the position the advantage can only be solved if it happens before "X" date, then the counterplan to do it after that date seems competitive.
Word PICs – Aff leaning
Alternate non-USFG actors – Aff leaning


Demeanor issues:

Be respectful of your opponent, partner and judge. All types of discrimination are prohibited. Don’t clip cards, don’t cut cards out of context, etc. Don't misclose.

Finally, our community relies on host tournaments with classroom space - don't steal, defame or destroy it.

Any questions, ask.

1. I believe the topic is a hypothesis that is to be tested by argument and analysis during the specific round in which I am assigned to critique. I focus, generally, on line-by-line analysis of the arguments and analysis generated by each team to determine which side did the proverbial "better job of debating." I typically render my decisions based on the positions taken in constructive arguments and advanced through rebuttals. I welcome and invite debaters to provide me with the frameworks and meta-analysis needed to render a decision, but, in the final analysis, I rely on the arguments on the flow and how they are developed in each round. I depend on evidence-based argument as a general rule, but am also open to analysis and strategic constructs which may arise in any particular round. The following may be helpful to in-round participants. I also welcome queries from the in-round participants so long as no attempt is being made to "pre-condition" my ballot.

2. T - When I debated in HS and College, T was "the last refuge of the damned." I have a very high bar for T because I think limiting the topic limits creativity in argument. Also, because I am a lawyer and not necessarily connected to the debate community I don't have the credibility to limit research outside of a debate coach's perogative. In the past, I have rarely balloted on T. I will, however, "pull the trigger" when T arguments are mishandled. With respect to extra-T, I tend to give a little more
"love" to such claims when linked to a specific violation.

3. Counterplans - I tend to be somewhat conservative with C-Plans. I tend to require that they be 1) non-topical, 2) competitive, and 3) provide some net benefit. I perfer that C-Plans are solvent with evidence independent of the affirmative. That being said, I have balloted for topical c-plans, and have balloted for net benefit c-plans. I have also balloted for partial c-plans (not completely solving the aff harm area).

4. K - Affs - I find critical affs interesting and will ballot when they carry the day. To defeat a critical aff, I tend to require specific evidence taking out the authors or positions advanced. As for Neg K, I am generally open to them but usually require some impact analysis - with evidence, please, that overcomes the affirmative.

5. DA - With respect to DA's, I need intrinsic and extrinsic links to some type of terminal impact to ballot. If the links are weak, you need to explain things to me in late rebuttals - althought it's never to early to start this process.

6. I do try to line up and compare analysis and argument at the end of the round to reach my decision, but the more help you give me, the more likely I will find in your favor.

7. The same holds true for LD and POFO debates that I witness.
8. I flow cross-ex and hold teams to the positions they take.

email= rbuscho59@gmail.com

Paradigm Last Updated – Winter2025

Coach @ Shawnee Mission South and the University of Kansas.

Put me on the email chain :) azjabutler@gmail.com

TLDR:

Judge Instruction....DO IT! In other words, tell me what you want me to do with the arguments you're winning and why! Judge instruction will often look different depending on your style of debate. While I do take this into consideration, I expect each team to synthesize their arguments and their relationship (offense/defense) to other moving parts of the debate. Generally, I think clear instruction in the rebuttals about where you want me to focus my attention and how you want me to filter offense is a must.

Please for the love of all that is pure and kind, FLOW! I hate "flow-check" questions and feel they reflect poorly on your ability to organize the debate. To be completely real with y'all I also think they are indicative of lazy debating. Don't get caught up.

General:

I consider myself a reflexive and flexible judge. Meaning, I make a frequent effort to judge a wide variety of debates. Debaters should be allowed to read arguments they feel confident and passionate about. However, I debated more critically--this being the case means I primarily judge "k v k" and "clash" debates. I enjoy these debates best and feel my feedback is the most fruitful for the students here. Regardless, I will approach every judging opportunity with an open mind and try to provide feedback that makes sense to you given your strategy.

If you consider yourself a team who debates primarily in the "traditional policy" camp, I would be cautious preffing me. While I can hang in these debates, and coach a number of these teams myself, my primary expertise is not in these arguments and their broader development within the community. If my time in debate has taught me anything, it's that a lot of policy teams/coaches see debate like math i.e. x argument + y argument + z concession + this particular card = this definitive result... I do not see debate this way. I never have. If you're expecting a decision that sounds something like that, then I am not the judge for you.

Yes, I care about evidence quality! I believe in ethically cut evidence, but I think evidence can come in many forms. I rarely will ever ask for a card document. I don't like reading evidence at the end of a debate in place of students making arguments and doing their own analysis. That being said, I understand that reading evidence has become a large part of judging, BUT because I'm not ever cutting politics updates please be CLEAR and EXPLICIT about why I am reading evidence and what I should be looking for! I think debaters should be able to explain their evidence well enough that I shouldn’t have to read it, so if I'm reading evidence then you probably haven't done your job and will probably receive more judge intervention from me.

Clipping(skipping over words or speaking in such a way that I cannot make out the word that's supposed to be there) or cutting cards out of context is academic malpractice and will result in an automatic loss. I follow along more closely in 1AC and 1NC documents bc this is where clipping happens the most. After these speeches I rarely open sent documents and flow by ear.

Please know I am more than comfortable“clearing” you. If I have to clear you more than twice, your speaks will be affected.

Disclosure is good and should be reciprocated.

___________________________________________________________________

Truth over Tech -OR- Tech over Truth

For the most part, I am tech over truth, but if both teams are ahead on technical portions of the debate, I will probably use truth to break the tie.

Framework

I think debates about debate are valuable and provide a space for confrontation over a number of debate's disparities/conflicts. A strong defense of your model and a set of specific net-benefits is important. Sure, debate is a game, education is almost always a tiebreaker. Fairness is a fake impact -- go for it I guess but I find it rare nowadays that people actually go for it. I think impact-turning framework is always a viable option. I think both sides should also clearly understand their relationship to the ballot and what the debate is supposed to resolve. At the end of the debate, I should be able to explain the model I voted for and why I thought it was better for debate. Any self-deemed prior questions should be framed as such. All of that is to say there is nothing you can do in this debate that I haven't probably seen so do whatever you think will win you the debate.

Performance + Planless Affirmatives

Judge instruction and strong articulation of your relationship to the ballot is necessary. At the end of the debate, I shouldn't be left feeling that the performative aspects of the strategy were useless/disjointed from debate and your chosen literature base. You should be able to articulate why your strategy being located within debate is good.

Kritiks

I filter a lot of what I have read through my own experience both in and out of academia. I think it’s important for debaters to also consider their identity/experience in the context of your/their argument. I would avoid relying too much on jargon because I think it’s important to make the conversations that Kritiks provide accessible. I have read/researched enough to say I can evaluate just about anything, but don't use that as an excuse to be vague or assume that I'll do the work for you. At the end of the debate, there should be a clear link to the AFF, and an explanation of how your alternative solves the links -- too many people try to kick the alt and I don't get it. Links to the AFF’s performance, subject formation, and scholarship are fair game. I don’t want to say I am 100% opposed to judging kicking alts for people, but I won’t be happy about it and doubt that it will work out for you. If you wanna kick it, then just do it yourself... but again I don't get it.

Any other questions, just ask -- at this point people should know what to expect from me and feel comfortable reaching out!

Goodluck and have fun! #RockChalk

@ the Nano Nagle (HS LD / PF)

"Did you read x card..." or "Which cards did you skip" are QUESTIONS so the CX timer should be started, this mess is flighted so please don't waste my or the tournament's time.

Arguments have three parts: 1] Claim 2] Data/Evidence 3]Warrant -- if these are not present your chance of winning in front of me are low.

I primarily judge high school and college policy -- at the point in which you integrate policy arguments, norms, and techne is the point in which I evaluate the debate as a 1v1 policy debate. I will take no notes.

I promise I have no problem clearing you or your opponent so please don't clear one another -- if it's actually unclear I will more than likely beat you to it.

I don't like having to read evidence in place of you all actually debating/making arguments. That being said if your evidence is just a series of one-liners / a sentence long, only partially highlighted I prob won't take your stuff seriously.

Don't read Kant in front of me and expect me to see the debate the way you do -- if you don't know that means: Don't read it.

New (14/9/22)

I currently debate at Boston College (class of 2025) and formerly debated at the University School of Nashville (class of 2021). I lean more heavily towards policy arguments than I think your average judge my age does. Most important to me is that you explain your argument and (at the end of the round) why your argument means you win and your opponent loses. For policy kids this means I will vote on cheapshots and theory - if you explain it better than they do then you win regardless of what people in the debate community generally believe about a theory argument. For K folks, ff I can't explain what you're arguing and how its related to the topic at the end of the round after you've spent 36 minute spreading at me, then I am extremely unlikely to vote for you (this goes for weird process CPs and items of that nature as well). I will not automatically disregard arguments with trivial significance to the topic but I'm unlikely to give them much weight so do with that information what you will or won't. Also I like debate to be fun as well as all the other stuff so if your personality in the round is being mean to opponents or your partner I suggest you find a better personality. I also don't know anything about the HS topic so don't assume I know anything.

Old (this is quite detailed so if you're looking for something specific it might be here if it's not above but it's old and my opinions may have slightly changed)

Short:

Yes I will vote on your ASPEC and your bad T if you argue it better than they do

I have no topic knowledge about water beyond what I remember from AP Chem

You should probably at least skim the long (or don't it really is quite long and I sort of hate it. Just know that I'm a policy leaning judge and I'm generally going to vote for the argument that has been argued more skillfully except in edge cases)

Long:

I used to be a debater for University School of Nashville. Then I graduated and now I’m a freshman at Boston College. I've been a 2N since Gerald Ford Impeachment DA was all the rage.

Here are the reasons I like debate:

1) It's fair

2) It's educational

3) It's fun

I like to have fun. Talk to me when debate is not underway.

The opinions below are mine but they aren't written in stone - if you're good at something and you win it I'll probably vote for you.

With that in mind here are my thoughts on various debate arguments so that my paradigm looks more professional and has a small sliver of utility.

DA: These are my main game and they're great. Know your scenario, you need to be able to explain it because I probably won't vote on it if I don't know what it is I'm voting on. That said if they drop it then obviously you don't need to walk me through it.

CP: Also safely in my realm of enjoyment. I like ADV CPs best but I understand that some people prefer process or conditions. Aff, if you plan to go for theory here you need to do a very good job of it - that means slowing down and actually line by lining their responses from the block and 2NR. I'm pretty sympathetic to the neg on most theory questions as a 2N myself so don't try to go for Process CP as a reason to reject the team.

K: Be careful here. The only K I have successfully deployed in a round is the Ahmed 12 Security K (BTW he is not a 9/11 truther). I also have become less partial to framework debates as I continue to debate. With that said if your strat is one off Bataille Death K, don't expect me to just ignore your speeches, but I like to understand what I'm voting for and sometimes K teams expect me to fill in the gaps - I have neither the knowledge nor motivation to explain the K for myself to vote for you.

T: I love T but I don't love most T debates. I'm not going to throw out any interpretation on face just because I think it might be overlimiting. Try to spend your time comparing your vision of the topic with their vision of the topic not just reading your generic T blocks. A caution to Aff teams, I find reasonability to be pretty unpersuasive in debates, I would far prefer you just win by proving your interpretation is better.

"Kritical Affirmatives": You might guess I'm not a massive fan of these. In most rounds I'm more likely to side with my fellow nerds saying you broke the rules rather than voting on the epistemic cartographic lense of violence DA. Does this mean you're screwed if you read a K aff and they read Ericson 03? Not necessarily but you are going to need ace explanation of your DAs to framework and why I should prefer your method and vision of a topic without the USFG. View framework as a larger version of the T flow and compare your vision of the topic with theirs. Aff; what could the neg team conceivably read in your version of the topic? Neg; how could they access the harms they address within your interpretation of the resolution?

ASPEC, OSPEC, USPEC, etc: Don't. If this is your 2NR don't expect to win. The only way these could possibly be good in a round is if they supplement another argument you're reading like a Politics DA or Agent CP. Unless you are killer at explaining these and the Aff refuses to touch the flow the whole debate, you are not going to win.

Swearing: It's fine, I understand it's how some people express themselves. I'm not your mom so it's fine to swear. Let's avoid slurs though, it's just not cool in an academic (or really any) environment. However, I find especially in debate that some swear because they can't think of a more descriptive or interesting verb or adjective. "The US economy is f-ed" seems a load less persuasive than "The US economy is moribund." On that note if you can correctly use a word I don't know in round I'll throw you 0.1 extra speaks.

Topic Knowledge: I would hope to have a pretty substantial grasp of it. If a small operational difference is the key to your argument you should probably make sure that I know what it is. However, I know the F-35C has the largest range of any of the F-35 series because it has larger wings and fuel tanks to generate sufficient lift to take of from Navy air craft carriers so I’m no slouch with knowing about the Military Industrial Complex.

Speaker Points: These are really fiddly and it's hard to know what to evaluate. I fall into the category of judges the old guard complains about for inflating speaks. I'm pretty sympathetic to debaters so don't expect to get terrible speaks unless you do something truly egregious. Impress me in how well you know your arguments and/or can articulate them and I'll reward you with higher speaks. Have fun and I'll reward your speaks as well, debate should not be a monotone yelling activity. You are a real person, not a robot, you have a personality - don't mask it away beneath blocks and a laptop screen.

Clipping: Everyone says don't. I agree with everyone here. If I catch it you lose mad respect and speaks, if they catch it and have evidence you lose.

Reason for Decision: At the end of the round I'll write and tell y'all who won and why. I will try to reconstruct the debate from what the 2NR and 2AR highlight as key points. I'm a big fan of judge instruction. I'll go off my flow and I'm unlikely to read evidence unless you ask me to in your speech. I'm going to try and give speech by speech comments for every round I judge - we'll see if I keep doing that as I judge more rounds. Ask me any questions you have about my decision or how you could have made something better or more persuasive.

Newbie Coach for ADL

I flow.

I give pretty high speaks if you're nice.

Email Chain: branchen@penncareylaw.upenn.edu

I'm likely more moderate compared to most judges you'll encounter. Running kritiks beyond the Capitalism Kritik would require more thorough explanation and warranting for me to be swayed. I strongly prefer to see a clear and well-defined alternative.

I've coached LASA since 2005. I judge ~120 debates per season on the high school circuit.

If there’s an email chain, please add me: yaosquared@gmail.com.

If you have little time before the debate, here’s all you need to know: do what you do best. I try to be as unbiased as possible and I will defer to your analysis. As long as you are clear, go as fast as you want.

Most judges give appalling decisions. Here's where I will try to be better than them:

• They intervene, even when they claim they won't. Perhaps "tech over truth" doesn't mean what it used to. I will attempt to adjudicate and reach a decision purely on only the words you say. If that's insufficient to reach a decision either way--and it often isn't--I will add the minimum work necessary to come to a decision. The more work I have to do, the wider the range of uncertainty for you and the lower your speaks go.
• They aren't listening carefully. They're mentally checked out, flowing off the speech doc, distracted by social media, or have half their headphones off and are taking selfies during the 1AR. I will attempt to flow every single detail of your speeches. I will probably take notes during CX if I think it could affect my decision. If you worked hard on debate, you deserve a judge who works hard as well.
• They give poorly-reasoned decisions that rely on gut instincts and ignore arguments made in the 2NR/2AR. I will probably take my sweet time making and writing my decision. I will try to be as thorough and transparent as possible. If I intervene anywhere, I will explain why I had to intervene and how you could've prevented that intervention. If I didn't catch or evaluate an argument, I will explain why you under-explained or failed to extend it. I will try to anticipate your questions and preemptively answer them in my decision.
• They reconstruct the debate and try to find the most creative and convoluted path to a ballot. I guess they're trying to prove they're smart? These decisions are detestable because they take the debate away from the hands of the debaters. If there are multiple paths to victory for both teams, I will take what I think is the shortest path and explain why I think it's the shortest path, and you can influence my decision by explaining why you control the shortest path. But, I'm not going to use my decision to attempt to prove I'm more clever than the participants of the debate.
• If you think the 1AR is a constructive, you should strike me.

Meta Issues:

• I’m not a professional debate coach or even a teacher. I work as a finance analyst in the IT sector and I volunteer as a debate coach on evenings and weekends. I don’t teach at debate camp and my topic knowledge comes primarily from judging debates. My finance background means that, when left to my own devices, I err towards precision, logic, data, and concrete examples. However, I can be convinced otherwise in any particular debate, especially when it’s not challenged by the other team.
• Tech over truth in most instances. I will stick to my flow and minimize intervention as much as possible. I firmly believe that debates should be left to the debaters. I rarely make facial expressions because I don’t want my personal reactions to affect how a debate plays out. I will maintain a flow, even if you ask me not to. However, tech over truth has its limits. An argument must have sufficient explanation for it to matter to me, even if it’s dropped. You need a warrant and impact, not just a claim.
• Evidence comparison is under-utilized and is very important to me in close debates. I often call for evidence, but I’m much more likely to call for a card if it’s extended by author or cite.
• I don’t judge or coach at the college level, which means I’m usually a year or two behind the latest argument trends that are first broken in college and eventually trickle down to high school. If you’re reading something that’s close to the cutting edge of debate arguments, you’ll need to explain it clearly. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear new arguments. On the contrary, a big reason why I continue coaching debate is because I enjoy listening to and learning about new arguments that challenge my existing ways of thinking.
• Please mark your own cards. No one is marking them for you.
• If I feel that you are deliberately evading answering a question or have straight up lied, and the question is important to the outcome of the debate, I will stop the timer and ask you to answer the question. Example: if you read condo bad, the neg asks in CX whether you read condo bad, and you say no, I’ll ask if you want me to cross-out condo on my flow.

Framework:

• Don't over-adapt to me in these debates. If you are most comfortable going for procedural fairness, do that. If you like going for advocacy skills, you do you. Like any other debate, framework debates hinge on impact calculus and comparison.
• When I vote neg, it’s usually because the aff team missed the boat on topical version, has made insufficient inroads into the neg’s limits disad, and/or is winning some exclusion disad but is not doing comparative impact calculus against the neg’s offense. The neg win rate goes up if the 2NR can turn or access the aff's primary impact (e.g. clash and argument testing is vital to ethical subject formation).
• When I vote aff, it’s usually because the 2NR is disorganized and goes for too many different impacts, there’s no topical version or other way to access the aff’s offense, and/or concedes an exclusion disad that is then impacted out by the 2AR.
• On balance, I am worse for 2ARs that impact turn framework than 2ARs that have a counter-interp. If left to my own devices, I believe in models and in the ballot's ability to, over the course of time, bring models into existence. I have trouble voting aff if I can't understand what future debates look like under the aff's model.

Topicality:

• Over the years, “tech over truth” has led me to vote neg on some untruthful T violations. If you’re neg and you’ve done a lot of research and are ready to throw down on a very technical and carded T debate, I’m a good judge for you.
• If left to my own devices, predictability > debatability.
• Reasonability is a debate about the aff’s counter-interpretation, not their aff. The size of the link to the limits disad usually determines how sympathetic I am towards this argument, i.e. if the link is small, then I’m more likely to conclude the aff’s C/I is reasonable even without other aff offense.

Kritiks:

• The kritik teams I've judged that have earned the highest speaker points give highly organized and structuredspeeches, are disciplined in line-by-line debating, and emphasize key moments in their speeches.
• Just like most judges, the more case-specific your link and the more comprehensive your alternative explanation, the more I’ll be persuaded by your kritik.
• I greatly prefer the 2NC structure where you have a short (or no) overview and do as much of your explanation on the line-by-line as possible. If your overview is 6 minutes, you make blippy cross-applications on the line-by-line, and then you drop the last three 2AC cards, I’m going to give the 1AR a lot of leeway on extending those concessions, even if they were somewhat implicitly answered in your overview.
• Framework debates on kritiks often don't matter. For example, the neg extends a framework interp about reps, but only goes for links to plan implementation. Before your 2NR/2AR, ask yourself what winning framework gets you/them.
• I’m not a good judge for “role of the ballot” arguments, as I usually find these to be self-serving for the team making them. I’m also not a good judge for “competing methods means the aff doesn’t have a right to a perm”. I think the aff always has a right to a perm, but the question is whether the perm is legitimate and desirable, which is a substantive issue to be debated out, not a gatekeeping issue for me to enforce.
• I’m an OK judge for K “tricks”. A conceded root cause explanation, value to life impact, or “alt solves the aff” claim is effective if it’s sufficiently explained. The floating PIK needs to be clearly made in the 2NC for me to evaluate it. If your K strategy hinges on hiding a floating PIK and suddenly busting it out in the 2NR, I’m not a good judge for you.

Counterplans:

• Just like most judges, I prefer case-specific over generic counterplans, but we can’t always get what we want.
• I lean neg on PICs. I lean aff on international fiat, 50 state fiat, condition, and consult. These preferences can change based on evidence or lack thereof. For example, if the neg has a state counterplan solvency advocate in the context of the aff, I’m less sympathetic to theory.
• I will not judge kick the CP unless explicitly told to do so by the 2NR, and it would not take much for the 2AR to persuade me to ignore the 2NR’s instructions on that issue.
• Presumption is in the direction of less change. If left to my own devices, I will probably conclude that most counterplans that are not explicitly PICs are a larger change than the aff.

Disadvantages:

• I’m a sucker for specific and comparative impact calculus. For example, most nuclear war impacts are probably not global nuclear war but some kind of regional scenario. I want to know why your specific regional scenario is faster and/or more probable. Reasonable impact calculus is much more persuasive to me than grandiose impact claims.
• Uniqueness only "controls the direction of the link" if uniqueness can be determined with certainty (e.g. whip count on a bill, a specific interest rate level). On most disads where uniqueness is a probabilistic forecast (e.g. future recession, relations, elections), the uniqueness and link are equally important, which means I won't compartmentalize and decide them separately.
• Zero risk is possible but difficult to prove by the aff. However, a miniscule neg risk of the disad is probably background noise.

Theory:

• I actually enjoy listening to a good theory debate, but these seem to be exceedingly rare. I think I can be persuaded that many theoretical objections require punishing the team and not simply rejecting the argument, but substantial work needs to be done on why setting a precedent on that particular issue is important. You're unlikely to win that a single intrinsic permutation is a round-winning voter, even if the other team drops it, unless you are investing significant time in explaining why it should be an independent voting issue.
• I think that I lean affirmative compared to the rest of the judging community on the legitimacy of counterplans. In my mind, a counterplan that is wholly plan-inclusive (consultation, condition, delay, etc.) is theoretically questionable. The legitimacy of agent counterplans, whether domestic or international, is also contestable. I think the negative has the right to read multiple planks to a counterplan, but reading each plank conditionally is theoretically suspect.

Miscellaneous:

• I usually take a long time to decide, and give lengthy decisions. LASA debaters have benefitted from the generosity of judges, coaches, and lab leaders who used their decisions to teach and trade ideas, not just pick a winner and get a paycheck. Debaters from schools with limited/no coaching, the same schools needed to prevent the decline in policy debate numbers, greatly benefit from judging feedback. I encourage you to ask questions and engage in respectful dialogue with me. However, post-round hostility will be met with hostility. I've been providing free coaching and judging since before you were birthed into the world. If I think you're being rude or condescending to me or your opponents, I will enthusiastically knock you back down to Earth.
• I don't want a card doc. If you send one, I will ignore it. Card docs are an opportunity for debaters to insert cards they didn't read, didn't extend, or re-highlight. They're also an excuse for lazy judges to compensate for a poor flow by reconstructing the debate after the fact. If your debating was disorganized and you need a card doc to return some semblance of organization, I'd rather adjudicate the disorganized debate and then tell you it was disorganized.

Ways to Increase/Decrease Speaker Points:

• Look and sound like you want to be here. Judging can be spirit murder if you're disengaged and disinterested. By contrast, if you're engaged, I'll be more engaged and helpful with feedback.
• Argument resolution minimizes judge intervention. Most debaters answer opposing positions by staking out the extreme opposite position, which is generally unpersuasive. Instead, take the middle ground. Assume the best out of your opponents' arguments and use "even if" framing.
• Demonstrate that you flowed the entire debate. If you're reading pre-scripted 2NC/2NR/2AR blocks without adapting the language to the specifics of your debate, you've only proven that you're literate but possibly also an NPC. I would much rather hear you give a 2NR/2AR without a laptop, just off your paper flows, even if it's not as smooth.
• I am usually unmoved by aggression, loud volume, rudeness, and other similar posturing. It's both dissuasive and distracting. By contrast, being unusually nice will always be rewarded with higher points and never be seen as weakness. This will be especially appreciated if you make the debate as welcoming as possible against less experienced opponents.
• Do not steal prep. Make it obvious that you are not prepping if there's not a timer running.
• Do not be the person who asks for a roadmap one second after the other team stops prep. Chill. I will monitor prep usage, not you. You're not saving us from them starting a speech without giving a roadmap.
• Stop asking for a marked doc when they've only skipped or marked one or two cards. It's much faster to ask where they marked that card, and then mark it on your copy. If you marked/skipped many cards, you should proactively offer to send a new doc before CX.

mlcpolicydebate[at]gmail[dot]com and smdebatedocs[at]gmail[dot]com

Truth/Research > Tech

I have zero topic knowledge. Goes double LD and PF.

Fairness is an impact.

Record for K Affs: K Aff (6 Wins) - Neg (5 Wins)

If you are a team that does the following, your speaks will suffer:

--requires more than two minutes to send an email,

--starts the round late,

--steals prep,

--disrespects others,

--uses SpeechDrop,

--fails to add both emails in the paradigm to the chain.

Asking questions about what was read during a speech counts as CX/prep.

WFU '23

Now at UT-Austin for grad school

Yes email chain — ask before the debate.

D3 Update:

I take district qualifying tournaments seriously because there are people fighting like hell to be here. Please act like you want to go to the NDT if you’d like me to vote for you. I will not hesitate to vote against you if you just say nonsense with no care to engage with opponents’ arguments, and I will not be apologetic in the RFD in refusing to vote for your nonsense. To clarify, say all the nonsense you want, just defend what you say and commit to the bit as if you want to qualify to a selective national championship tournament. Alternatively, demonstrating that you’ve thought about and prepared other teams’ arguments so that you can win a qualifying debate to the NDT will be rewarded handsomely.

As I allude to in other parts of my paradigm, I flow in excel in line by line fashion. I look at the speech doc purely while cards are being read (for clipping + to assess evidence quality) and will not reconstruct parts of a speech if I couldn’t understand an analytic argument or tag. Please number your arguments when you are the first responder (1NC on case, 2AC on DA), answer arguments in order, and refer to your previous arguments by name and number in the final rebuttals.

I'd prefer you not refer to me by any name at all, but if you have to: Ari >> AD >>>>> "judge" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "chat" (you are not a twitch streamer and we are real people. please.)

COLLEGE CLIMATE TOPIC ADDENDUM: If you are a team that reads carded evidence, I expect quality to be very high and will find it hard to vote for you if your cards are from Exxon execs or bloggers without degrees when up against an opponent of near-peer skill level with better/more specific/more qualified evidence. Every author on all sides has a take on climate change. Say something smart about it!

Paradigm:

Say what you want and defend what you say. I reward clash of all kinds and dislike cowardice more than almost anything. I will attempt to write down every argument presented in the way you present it, regardless of your argumentative or speaking “style”, to repeat it in my RFD. This means clarity, both in argument explanation and words coming out of your mouth, is imperative. Don’t over-adapt to what you (probably wrongly) think I want to hear. Debate is for the debaters, just have fun and say smart things and I’m your judge.

The only caveat to this is I have very little interest in parsing through interpersonal disputes between debaters over events that occurred outside of the debate round. I understand that sometimes we have personal disagreements with one another as a community founded on discord, and I also understand that sometimes we don't feel comfortable sharing how we feel with the people we disagree with in other interpersonal settings — and that is reasonable. But I struggle to find why the solution to this is to have that precise conversation during a debate round and for judges to insert their own interpretations over events they have little knowledge of. This applies doubly to high school debate. Given this, while I will not ignore any words you say in a debate, you will notice that my decision proper will not pertain to/include the content of personal disagreements tangential to the topics of the debate. To clarify, if you find something the other team has said or done in the debate round to be objectionable, this is obviously fair game and I am more than happy to hear reasons why it should be a voting issue. I think issues of disclosure fall into this category as well given that prep time is part of a debate round and proper disclosure is what enables proper pre-round preparation.

Also, say words if you want me to judge kick the counterplan. I’m indifferent personally, but prefer to go with what debaters say out loud in a debate. If neg conditionality is not contested, saying “the neg should never be stuck with an option worse than the status quo” is sufficient.

Speaker Points:

My speaker points no longer vary as widely as they once did. This is because despite the fact that the quality of debates I judge varies widely, I am much more invested in using speaker points as a carrot than a stick because I prefer (inevitably) imperfect participation over universalized burnout. From now on, my floor will be at a 27. I do adjust my points to the tournament and division, so for example if you got a 29 at a regional and a 28.5 at a major it does not necessarily mean you got worse (in fact, your performance may have improved!)

My approximate scale for the open division is as follows (does not apply to JV and Novice):

You will not get a 30 unless it's your last prelim debate ever -- and even then, it requires spectacular debating. If you ask for a 30, your speaker points will have a 3 in them, but it won't be the first digit.

A speaker whose performance, if replicated, would land them a Top 5 award + deep elims will receive between 29.9-29.7. Most proficient and well-executed winning performances receive between a 29.6-29.4. Most winning performances receive between 29.3-29. Above average execution with a chance at clearing receives between 28.9-28.7

Middle of the pack gets 28.6-28: speeches need work on technical proficiency, block writing, proper use and comparison of evidence, etc.

Lower than a 28 indicates some or all of the following: speeches and CX execution need work including time management, we're not effectively answering the opponent's arguments (if paying attention to them at all), speech order is messy and not cohesive, speaker is unclear and could benefit from speaking drills, dead speech time, ineffective use of prep, speeches leave time on the clock, CX is spent asking clarification or "wouldn't you agree that..." questions.

Any lower than a 27 means something interpersonal has occurred and we will talk about it prior to speaker points coming out -- whether that is in the RFD, in a talk with your coach, or both.

LD Addendum:

I've been out of the game for a few years now, but I did just teach three weeks at NSD, which gave me a deep refresher across the vast LD argumentative spectrum.

I will not constitutively rule out any particular style of argument, but I will apply a strict "makes sense" test to all arguments. This applies just as much to a sparsely-highlighted DA as to a misrepresented K or a poorly-explained philosophy argument.

I will not pretend that I understood your arguments if you were unclear in your speech. Clarity comprises both structure, in explanation of arguments, as well as my physical ability to hear and type words coming out of your mouth. If an argument in the first constructive was 5 seconds long, but it comprises several minutes of the rebuttal(s), it will be hard to convince me that it was structurally clear enough to warrant deciding the debate on it (I'm looking at you, "resolved a priori"). If an argument was analytically made at top speed with no pen time and it does not appear on my flow in an earlier speech, it will be near-impossible to convince me that it was physically clear enough to appear in my decision given that my decisions rely on repeating words flowed back to the debaters.

Despite my belief that debate is for the debaters and you should be able to make the arguments you want, I will not pretend that I don't have biases.

Regardless of style, I prefer arguments to be about the topic. I prefer advantages to be germane to the plan presented. I prefer criticisms, on both the aff and neg, to use topic language throughout the evidence presented (whether that's carded evidence or organic scholarship). I prefer Process Counterplans to compete off core resolutional mechanisms. I prefer philosophical syllogisms to reflect core topic controversy rather than rely on tricks or theoretically-justified standards. I prefer topicality arguments to be grounded in evidence interpreting words in the resolution.

This is not to say that I will not vote on your generic positions. I will vote on any argument executed proficiently. However, there is a proportional, linear relationship between the specificity of your arguments and the energy necessary for your opponent to defeat them -- as one goes up, so does the other; as one goes down, so does the other.

An aside is that I find "truth testing vs. comparative worlds" to be a false dichotomy. Consequentialist ethical frames simply say that the way to figure out if the resolution is true or not -- that is to say, whether or not the actorought to pursue said action -- is to compare the hypothetical world in which the resolutional statement is enacted to one in which it is not. Counterplan competition is a great example of this -- you define words to prove that the counterplan does not, in fact, prove the resolutional statement to be true and that it instead is a legitimate opportunity cost thatdisproves the question of the resolution. TLDR: less "truth testing good: jurisdiction" and more "our ethical system proves the plan is intrinsically bad, so it should not occur despite its hypothetical positive consequences." Or vice versa, obviously.

Won’t flow RVIs. Make real arguments.

Also unlikely to believe that most non-resolutional procedural arguments aside from condo or spec are “voting issues.” Arguments in favor of reasonability, proportional punishment (rejecting the argument, not the team), and substance crowd-out will be prevalent in my decisions in these debates if made — but you have to make such arguments somewhere for me to vote on it.

After judging, observing, and coaching a significant number of LD debates at the first tournament, I have concluded this activity has a specific dearth of knowledge surrounding counterplan competition on all sides. Teams who effectively exploit this -- on both sides -- will see an exponential increase in win-rate in front of me. Do with this information what you will.

Procedural Addendum:

I follow along with speech documents because I am curious about evidence quality, applicability, as well as your adherence to the text of the evidence. I have noticed an epidemic of clipping across all debate events that I judge at all skill levels. Clipping is generally defined as misrepresenting the words in your evidence you actually read by highlighting more than what is spoken. The brightline of this is contested, but the most lenient, universally-agreed-upon one is "five words skipped in a row in any card, even once."

To this end, if I notice this, I will apply a "yellow card/red card" method for dealing with speaking infractions. I very much understand it's possible a debater has clipped despite their trying not to/without their knowledge. They're stressed, trying to go fast, and sometimes are reading cards they haven't read before (in some instances, they've never read cards before!). Even more, sometimes people have trouble processing words quickly so they don't even know that they've skipped anything because their brain hasn't told them or they're scrolling too fast. I am sympathetic to all of this. Given that, if I notice that a team debating in front of me has clipped and it seems unintentional (it's less than 5 words in a row here or there, or it only happens once), I will let you know after the debate as a warning for the future. If it happens again in another debate, the debater who clipped will lose with 25 speaker points. If it is particularly egregious the first time around, you may lose the debate without a warning. However, for the educational merit of the activity, I will still flow and detail a decision I would have given if it was not decided on clipping.

Yay debate!

Put me on the email chain - sarahelisedavidson@gmail.com

**I don't know anything about this topic, please explain any jargon etc**

Online debate:

-I'd prefer if you have your camera on, but having it off is fine

-If my camera isn't on, I'm not ready

-Ask for confirmation that I'm ready before giving your speech

General things:

-time your own speech and prep

-tech > truth

-fairness > education

-I tend to place a lot of weight on evidence quality. I'll still vote on spin of course, but, if the debate is close, I usually look to the quality of both sides' evidence.

-I care a lot about judge instruction in rebuttals. It's really helpful and will get you good speaks

-I love impact turns, advantage cps, and well-debated disadvantages

-I don't like judging topicality or theory debates, but you should still go for it if you know it's the right strategy.

-I was a 2A, but my views are probably more in line with that of a 2N.

T:

-Topical versions of the aff and case lists are good.

-A smaller topic is probably better than aff innovation.

-Competing interpretations > reasonability

Soft left affs:

- I'm predisposed towards extinction-level impacts, and I tend to think utilitarianism is the best framework for evaluating choices between policies. You're far better off spending more time attacking the link and internal link level of a DA than wasting a bunch of time on framing, which is usually a wash anyway. I think that a securitization-type framing argument is way better than some arbitrary "probability first" or "util bad" claim, BUT winning this requires meaningfully reducing the risk of the DA.

DA:

- My favorite debates are DA/case debates.

- I love politics DAs, but aff specific and topic DAs are even better. But feel free to read whatever contrived DA scenario you want. I'll vote on it if you win it.

- Pls do impact calculus - it makes my decision 1000x times easier

- Turns case is also super persuasive to me

- If you're going for a non-unique + link turn, actually explain why the aff resolves the link

CPs:

- Impact out your solvency deficits or explain why the perm shields the net benefit

- I'm not a good judge for process CPs. Complicated competition debates are confusing to me

- I won't kick the CP for you unless you tell me to

Theory:

- I will vote on theory, but you need to give examples specific to abuse within the debate and impact out theory in the 2AR

- cheaty fiat cps (ie Tsai should resign or Saudi should stop the war in Yemen) are definitely bad

- Agent CPs, 2NC cps, 50 state fiat, consult Cps, con cons, etc are probably good

- condo = good (but, again, I can be persuaded otherwise)

- perf con is a reason you get to sever your reps

Ks on the neg:

- i feel like my views on the k have changed a lot over the past few months. i like it more than i used to.

- cap, security, fem ir, and settler colonialism are the literature bases I'm most familiar with -- if you want me to vote on other things, i need lots of explanation

- i prefer specific links to the plan - the more specific, the better

- actually engage with the 1ac and spend time on case in the 2nr - i like when neg teams take lines out of the 1ac and/or recut 1ac ev

- floating PIKs are bad

- the alt should resolve your impacts and links

- i hate long overviews - your overviews should be short & contextualized to the aff

K affs:

- I prefer that you read a plan & im probably not the best judge for you if you read an untopical aff, but I'll still vote for a k aff and I have several times in the past

- at least have some sort of relation to the topic

- just asserting that the USFG is bad is not enough to get my ballot

- k affs probably don't get perms - if the aff doesn't have to be topical, then Cps / K's don't have to be competitive, but this needs to be explained in the debate

Neg v. k affs:

- framework - fairness is an impact (but you have to explain why it is), TVAs are great, tell me what debate looks like in the world of the aff & neg and why your model is better

- presumption - go for it. a lot of k affs just don't do anything

- k's vs k affs - not great for this. if you're going to go for a k, pls do thorough explanations and impact out each of your links

Speaks

- I'll dock your speaks if you're mean or rude to me or others in the round

Alumni of Liberty University - Debated 2 years in college - qualified to NDT (2019-2020 season)

Email: jareddemunbrun75@gmail.com

tech>truth

I debated 4 years in high school and 2 years in college.

Top Level Things

Debate to your strengths. My role as a judge is to create an environment where participants feel valued and heard. I believe in the power of well-prepared arguments and encourage debaters to engage in discussions on topics they genuinely understand.

I am most familiar with policy arguments, and I like to see good strategy and evidence quality in these debates (Strategy + Quality Evidence = good speaker points).

"K/Non-Traditional" Teams - While I may not be the most adept at adjudicating method versus method debates due to a less comprehensive familiarity with the literature in these discussions, my inclination leans towards non-traditional affirmative positions in clash debates. Approximately 60% of my votes go to non-traditional affirmatives, reflecting a discerning standard for evaluating framework arguments against most K affs. It's important to note that when policy teams thoroughly warrant their arguments in these debates, my predisposition towards voting for framework strengthens. However, it's worth acknowledging that a majority of teams tend to fall short in providing the necessary depth of argumentation in this regard.

Specific Arguments

T - I tend to default to competing interpretations but will buy reasonability if it is explained well with reasons, it should be preferred over competing interpretations. I love a good T debate as long as there are clear standards in the end of the debate and reasons I should vote for a team on topicality.

Framework - I am a 2n in college and think that framework is a very viable option. There should be clear impacts in the rebuttals and treat the impacts just as you treat them on a DA.

DA - I like a good DA debate. At the end of the debate, there should be good link analysis and good impact calculus so that I don't have to insert myself into the debate. I think that all DA debates should have a focus on the IL to impacts of the affirmative – this means make arguments like we access, or we turn their impact.

CP - Love a good CP debate - the more specific the better - good CP's should have a good net-benefit. I tend to lean more towards the negative side when it comes to theory (conditionality). With that said if the neg reads 4 conditional advocacies I will lean towards the affirmative side as long as the standards are flushed out and explained.

K - I am well versed in most forms of K literature. I debated the K as a freshman and sophomore (psychoanalysis, Baudrillard, Settler Colonialism) and am a 2A so I know most K's. I also love a classic Cap K or security K as long as the links are contextualized to the aff. Debate like you know how!

Coppell DR

Texas DK

hetdesai10@gmail.com

"Tech over truth. I do not share the sensibilities of judges who proclaim to be technical and then carve out an exception for death good, wipeout, or planless affirmatives. The only situation in which I will not vote on an argument is when forced to by the Tabroom.

This applies to everything. You do not get a blank check because your opponents’ arguments are “trolls” or “science fiction.” Whether something could be “read identically on a previous topic” has no bearing on whether it rejoins the affirmative. It is my experience and firm belief that the vast majority of judges who describe arguments in such a fashion are dangerously incapable of answering them.

With that in mind, I will decide the debate based on the flow and nothing else."

About me/TL;DR:

• She/her
• Debated at Iowa City West High School 2014-2018
• Education: UMich - Bachelor's ('22) and Master's ('23) studying Economics, Cognitive Science, Biopsychology, Cognition and Neuroscience (BCN), and Management (Master's)

If you get one thing out of my paradigm, it's that I don't flow off docs, I don't look at docs during the debate, and I only look at cards if the debate is really close and the debate hinges on 1-3 cards and there's something about the card itself that is contested (rare event).

Another thing: prep stops when you hit send on your email, not "stop prep, okay I'm sending it out"

With that being said, please put me on the email chain: laernst@umich.edu just in case that rare situation happens.

I have a name, please use it. I will be sad if I am only referred to as "judge".

IF ONLINE: please speak a little slower (tech sound distortion makes you and me sad), and hold timers away from your computer mic, I'm jumpy and the loud beeps are yucky to my brain(especially if they're mid speech, I will likely stop flowing for a sec and potentially miss something)

Ask questions if you want clarification or if I forgot anything :)

Please put trigger warnings on your args as needed and ask if they're okay before the round (for the sake of myself and your opponents) -- one caveat: please do not read su*cide arguments in front of me -- I will go to tab and get you a different judge if needed but no one wants to deal with me crying in the back.

Long Overview --

I debated primarily policy arguments throughout high school and if you rely on jargon my brain will shut off and you will be just as frustrated with me as I am with you. However, I'll be open to whatever you want to debate, just be aware I might need additional explanation. In general, case-specific everything is wonderful. I also actually enjoy well-executed kritiks, just don't read a 2-minute overview, and if you say "sarcophagous DA" I will mentally cry.

Caveat to "open to whatever": if you make the round an unsafe space (race, gender, mental health, disability, etc based), I will end the round, drop you and give you the lowest speaks I can and probably follow up with your coach. Be mature, and good people. If you think "can I say this?" don't. Also, asking for pronouns is always okay. You also are never obligated to share your pronouns.

Also, debate is supposed to be fun, not stressful. Have fun, be nice, and if you make me laugh or excited your speaks will increase. Also, if you get excited about an argument, I'll get excited because smiles and laughter are contagious.

I vote on what I can give a coherent RFD on. If I look lost, I probably am. Help me help you. If at the end of the round, I don't understand your theory, I will not vote on it. I avoid going into the email chain and I do not flow off speech docs. I make decisions based on the shortest path.

Since I do not flow off of speech docs, I would recommend looking up occasionally to see if I am flowing. If I'm not and you want me to be, slow down and fix your clarity. It is not on me to fix your clarity. I will stop flowing and stare at you if I can't understand what you're saying. Oh I also flow cross x. Same thing applies. During cross and in general, remember you should be facing and speaking to the judge. Also, if it's early, you should slow down, no one can go their fastest first thing in the morning.

It has recently come to my attention that ethics violations with respect to broken links, forgetting authors in a cite, etc., are popular ballot-winning tactics. I, for the most part, will not vote on this. Save your crappy ethics violation for a different round, you probably need those 20 seconds to explain a warrant in your card. That being said, if something is legitimately an ethics violation (e.g. clipping cards), I'll vote on that in a heartbeat.

Generic stuff --

I will do my best to be open if you're doing your best to communicate. Debate isn't about who can speak the fastest, it's about who can EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE ARGUMENTS the best (aka how many arguments the judge gets on their flow per minute). I love watching people do what they love and I love to learn, so feel free to do whatever as long as you're confident you can communicate your argument to me and teach me something.

I will not make arguments for you, something has to be on the flow and I try to avoid judge intervention as much as possible. Also along those lines, dropped = true, but you have to tell me WHY IT MATTERS that they dropped it. Otherwise, I'll be frustrated.

If you make any argument vaguely related to behavioral or decision science there will be at least a small part of me that gets really excited, especially if it's psychology related.

My high school experience would land me squarely in the "policy" camp, but y'know I'm here to watch you do something you love so don't stop doing what you love because you're afraid I'll drop you on principle. I read big stick policy affs my first two years in high school, then ended with my senior year reading a soft left aff I cared about and going for the cap k consistently (was a 2A, switched to 2N). Also, I discovered that I like Ks more after finishing my undergrad and returning to debate.

T --

I default to competing interpretations, usually because reasonability is incorrectly debated most of the time. Reasonability applies to the definition, not the aff, that is, is your definition something a reasonable person thinks that word means. Please go slower on T. Don't spread it like you would a card because I'll miss half your standards and everyone will be sad at the end of the debate. Probably especially you.

K --

I'm most comfortable with cap and security. Pomo usually makes me want to cry because it relies so heavily on jargon. If you can successfully explain your kritik with minimal (preferably zero) jargon, I am 110% here for that. However, I am not heavily versed in the lit. The same goes for identity Ks. I love a good identity debate, but I'll need additional explanation because I do not read the lit. Psychoanalysis is a) a pseudo-science, b) written by Freud and I just disagree with what he called "science," and c) is usually not deployed well in debate. I will vote on it, but I'll be sad.

The alt better solve the impacts of the kritik. Otherwise, everyone will be sad.

Also, it'll be difficult to convince me to exclude either the aff or the k.

If I haven't made it clear enough, I hate jargon. It's a crutch and to me, usually functions as words to freak the other team out. My main issue with kritiks is that the theories behind them are usually deployed poorly in debate and come off as an attempt to confuse or intimidate the other team. I am intrigued by the theories behind most Ks, so please explain your argument to me, I'd love to learn more about your theories.

Planless affs --

Look, I went for f/w consistently. I can be persuaded either way, but everyone has to do explanation otherwise I'm going to be sad. Specific analysis of each other's arguments makes the debate better for everyone. I'd rather see a negative strategy engaging with the thesis of the aff rather than framework. For the love of debate and coherent RFDs please explain things.

Aff, labeling your DAs is nice and all but "Sarcophagus DA" makes me sad. That tells me not a lot about the DA and honestly, you probably could have made the same argument without labeling it as a DA. Also, if you show that there is a role for the neg in your world of debate, I am much more likely to vote for you.

Rejecting debate altogether will probably make me sad.

Neg, fairness can be won as an impact in itself, but can also be an internal link to other stuff - e.g. there's a distinction between fairness as a competitive incentive and fairness in terms of education. Make your analysis specific to the aff, don't just read the blocked-out version that your coach gave you.

Topic-specific planless affs actually make me really happy. There was an identity team that I debated on the education topic that had a beautiful model minority aff without a plan and I loved that debate. If you can teach me, great.

CP --

I love me a smart counterplan. Be it a PIC or winged in the 1NC because of a card in the 1AC, if it's smart and kinda sneaky I love it. However, don't be awful and read a lot of one-liner counterplans because that ends up being a waste of paper which will make me sad because I like trees. Plus that sucks as a 2A and I'll listen to theory.

Process counterplans are cool IF THE PROCESS MAKES SENSE IN CONTEXT OF THE AFF. Throwing a process CP at an aff and hoping it sticks is bad. I'll listen to process theory, but it usually isn't a reason to reject the team. These just get kinda tricky so you'd better have a darn good explanation for competition and a legitimate net benefit that isn't contrived and just kinda awful *insert snarky GBN comment here*

2 advocacies, you're fine. 3, you're probably still okay. 4 is pushing it, but if you have a really good reason you might be able to pull it off.

Disclaimer, since I was a 2A for a while, I am sympathetic to theory. However, I usually default to reject the argument, not the team (add reasoning for this please please please if you spread theory I'll be sad).

Theory (because it fits under counterplans best)-- I will just about only vote on condo unless it's something that is never answered but is impacted out. Please, if I have to vote on intrinsic bad or severance bad for a perm you do not go for because you forgot to say "reject the argument not the team solves all of their offense," I will be SAD. Seriously, could be the LAST SPEECH OF THE ROUND AND YOU DROPPED IT THE REST OF THE ROUND BECAUSE IT WAS BLIPPY and I'll grant "reject the arg not the team."

DA --

The more case-specific the better. I am a fan of storytelling and if you can coherently explain link chains and internal links and have it sound more plausible than some DAs sound, I'll be happy.

I feel like I have to mention politics DAs at some point in this. I love politics but gut check yourself, don't pick your most obscure scenario, and hope the other team doesn't have answers because if it's that obscure, a good 2A will wipe the floor with you with just analytics.

For economics, please understand the economic theory behind your disad. I studied econ and I enjoy these arguments, but they're bad disads when not understood or executed poorly. Hopefully it's not an issue this year.

Also, case turns are good. Really good.

Lexington '21, Sarah Lawrence '25, she/her, yes I want to be on the email chain---amandacxdebate@gmail.com

title the email chain something along the lines of Tournament---round x---aff team (aff) vs neg team (neg)

general:

tech>truth

I debated for four years at Lexington and debated at Michigan on the antitrust topic (2021-2022) before transferring. I have always been a 2a.

*online debate: please try to keep your camera on if at all possible

Counterplans:

I think that these are great. I would prefer if there is some form of a solvency advocate but what that looks like is up for debate. Smart perms are preferable to theory debates on a process cp. Links should be a sliding scale and proving the cp links less than the aff should be sufficient. I probably default to judge kick but it doesn't take much to convince me not to.

Theory:

I think that conditionality is probably good but again this is open to debate. I think new 2nc cps are probably abusive unless in response to new 2ac offense. I think cp's should be functionally and textually intrinsic which means making perms to test either textual or functional competition (functionally competitive but textually intrinsic perms or vice-versa are great). Object fiat, private actor fiat or lopez cps are probably not theoretically legitimate. Otherwise, almost all other theory arguments are a reason to reject the argument, not the team, and winning them, especially if they aren't going for the cp, will be an uphill battle.

Disads:

I really love these, I think I give pretty much every 1nr on a da, mostly politics. I would prefer specific links against generic ones. Other than that specific da to the aff are great and I would love to hear them. Everything else here is pretty straightforward.

Topicality:

These debates are okay, I don't really know what the topic should look like so make sure to impact out all of your standards and what limits your interp places on the topic. I don't think plantext in a vacuum is a fantastic we meet but I have voted on it before because oftentimes teams don't have an alternative model. If you can't explain the alternative to plan text in a vacuum you aren't in a great place there. RVI's are not a thing. I also tend to default to competing interpretations.

Impact turns:

I love impact turns! I’m willing to listen to anything. I love space!

K:

In general, I would prefer if you have specific links to the aff otherwise winning case outweighs gets substantially easier. I also think you need to impact out the links and explain how they turn each case. Winning framework for either side makes the debate substantially easier but it hasn’t been game over if a team loses it either. I would prefer if there aren't super long overviews that require a new sheet of paper. If the k is a floating pik please make it clear in the block

Kaff:

The stuff I said about K's applies here, except the framework section, obviously if a team reading a kaff can’t beat framework they lose but that feels obvious. I probably won't understand your aff that well and I probably haven't read most of the literature, but the more time I spend in college the more I have read in an academic sense. However, if you are reading a kaff please explain how you solve and why the ballot is key. I am going to need a specific thing to vote on and if you are hedging all of your bets on one arg please make sure to impact it out. More often than not kaffs will have a blip in the 1ar and then blow it up in the 2ar, please develop your arguments fully, nothing annoys me more that half a sentence that I can’t really give as a full argument but the 2ar makes it seem like THE thing.

Aff:

I prefer extinction affs and am probably more familiar with these as I pretty much solely read hard right affs. That being said I do not think I am a terrible judge for soft left affs, but I need you actually to explain framing and apply it to the other flows.

Framework:

I am probably neg leaning here. Debate is probably a game, and while it can in some ways be more than that, I think at its heart debate is a game. Fairness is the most persuasive impact and I also personally think it's the best impact. Make sure to have a reason why the aff can't weigh its self and preferably get to case in the 2nr. A lot of the aff path to victory was covered above in the kaff section.

k v k:

I have never debated in one of these, but I have found myself in the back of a few. Here are just some basic thoughts I have developed. I think the aff should be able to get a perm. I would like both sides to explain their specific theory comparing it to either the alt or the aff.

Speaks scale:

I try to average around a 28.5 and move up or down depending on what happens during the round. If I go below a 27 something happened in the round that I probably talked to you.

If caught clipping lowest speaks possible (this does mean zeros) and auto L

things that are important but had nowhere else to go:

Speech times in HS are 8 min constructive, 3 min cx, 5 min rebuttals, and however much prep the tournament allows, this is non-negotiable. CX is binding. There is only one winner and one loser. I won't vote on things that happened outside of the round (disclosure, prefs, etc.). If you feel unsafe or something offensive happens I will assist you in going to tab, but do not think this should be a reason to win the ballot and instead a reason for the round to end immediately. Luckily, I have never been in a round where this happens, but I understand that it does which is why tournaments have policies for it.

You have to read rehighlightings you can't just insert them.

I'm becoming annoyed with CX of the 1NC/2AC that starts with "did you read X" or "what cards from the doc did you not read" and will minorly (.1, .2 if it's egregious) reduce your speaks if you do this. I am more annoyed if you try to make this happen outside of speech or prep time. 2As, have your 1A flow the 1NC to catch these things. 2Ns, same for your 1Ns. If the speaker is particularly unclear or the doc is particularly disorganized, this goes away. A marked copy does not mean the cards that weren't read are removed, please don’t do this it takes so long to remove the cards.

I am gay. I am not a good judge for queerness arguments. This isn't a "you read it you lose/i will deck speaks" situation, but you have been warned its a harder sell than anything else mentioned, except the first paragraph of this section where I outlined nonnegotiables.

LD:(stolen basically directly from Eleanora)

I have neither competed nor frequently judged in lincoln-douglass; I have knowledge of the content of the topic but not any of its conventions. I understand the burden for warranted arguments (especially theory) is lower in LD than in policy - I'm reluctant to make debaters entirely transform their style, so I won't necessarily apply my standard for argument depth, but if the one team argues another has insufficiently extended an argument, I will be very receptive to that.

Playlist Update: TFA '25 - i like music a lot, it was going to be my career before debate ruined my life. i listen to a confusingly wide range of it. debaters and coaches can recommend me a song to listen to during prep or decision time - good enough songs may merit a small (+0.1) speaks bump for everyone in the room. a friend told me since i ask debaters to recommend me music, i should put the music i'm listening to here for reference. currently listening to Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble.

TFA Rant - a few big updates that i think matter for strategy and speaker points. nothing new per se, but this season has accelerated my final metamorphosis into a grumpy old person judge and made a few tendencies that generally ring true to me stick out more than usual:

1. neg teams need to read better cards and read cards better. i am not the card machine i used to be, and i will never knock the 2n hustle - sometimes the 2nr just has to be slop by necessity - but i am increasingly frustrated by the absence of quality, aff-specific evidence produced by 1ncs - cutting 2-4 cards about the 1ac's legal framework being nonsense is a much more winning addition to neg strat than the third process counterplan. most affs on this topic do not solve, are not key to the impact, read cards that say nothing, and are an ungodly amalgamation of legal standards that were never meant to intersect in the way 2as are forcing them to - the number of advantages that can be reduced to zero by a smart cx and recuttings or even just close readings of 1ac evidence is only matched by the number of 2ns that fail to do it. i get this topic is rough for the neg, but it's not that rough - we can cut a real disad, a case turn, or a deficit every once in a while (or even, god forbid, go for the K). IP bad is not astounding by any means, but with smart debating and good cards it beats 80% of what qualifies as a neg generic on this topic (*cough*sui generis*cough*).

2. i am increasingly astounded by how good i am for the "soft left" aff. this may be related to the above, but most disads and net benefits have laughable internal links and in no coherent world are a higher risk than the aff. this is not carte blanche to say "menand 5" at the impact and move on, but it is to say that if you are reading a 1ac that is built to capitalize on defending an impact that is "smaller", but starts at 100% risk, you should take me extremely high and expect speaker points bordering on irresponsible if you can execute. i am in no way bad for extinction in these debates, but "util=trutil" is increasingly less an argument and more a dogma judges and debaters cling to, and quality evidence and smart cx beats nonsense 2nr ramblings about 1% risk + 10 cards citing Bostrom/MacAskill and the CSER that border on sociopathic. this could also be me just getting bored of abstractions like "try or die" vs "timeframe controls the direction of turns case" as a substitute for real impact calculus, though, so reading an aff with a real advantage and making smart answers to the disad likely helps you here as well.

3. clash debates suck and framework teams are getting worse. this is not to say i am worse for framework - i am as good, if not better for it, than ever - but it is to say that the 2ns who seem most committed to the idea framework is an engaging and responsive negative strategy are making the best possible case for why it isn't one. most 2ncs and 2nrs are scripted essays with zero allusion to the aff or it's evolution through the debate, and your blocks are brain-meltingly boring. if you gave the same 2nr impact overview on a disad regardless of what aff scenarios you were weighing it against it would be lazy and unstrategic debating (maybe a bad example, since 2ns do this one a lot now too), yet i have heard the same "clash turns the case" speech a billion times without explanation of the contours of said "clash" or what parts of "the case" it turns, which has led to an increasing aff win-rate. look, i'm maybe in the minority of "k people" at this point who actually agrees fairness is an impact and framework substantively answers these affs - but you gotta, you know, answer the aff with it. come on, gamers.

4. k teams are getting annoying again and 2as need to stand on business more. the first time i saw antonio 95 in a neg doc this year i almost had a stroke. 90% of 2ns who go for "microaggressions" as a framework angle couldn't define the term if pushed. i can't really blame neg teams though - the reason these strategies win is because 2as are failing to call stupid stupid and instead pretending calling tabroom over the imaginary microaggression that is "reading a plan" is a substitute for answering the K and forcing the neg to win a real link argument. if the 2nr is 5 minutes of ontology and fiat bad, the 2ar can and should punish them by straight turning this for 5 minutes straight. framework alone is not a neg win condition, it just sets one - 2as need to have the guts to win under it anyways or double down on setting their own so we can get out of this mess (because that's how the meta finally shifted away from this last time we were here). in general, 2ar brute-force against the K needs to make a comeback.

5. debaters should try to be jerks less. i'm not a decorum fiend by any means, and this isn't to say you can't have swagger or enjoy throwing down, but the level of outright posturing has far outpaced any justification for it from debaters. i was *also* annoyingly self-righteous earlier in my coaching and debating career and probably felt every debate was a chance to prove something or settle some imagined beef, so i really get it, but we all grow up eventually, and i cannot help but cringe at this sort of thing in retrospect. i promise you being level-headed and direct while simply debating better is far bigger aura than whatever is happening in most CXes these days. debate is a community of profound differences, but everyone i've ever met in debate tends to agree on a few things: none of us had to show up or do this on a random weekend, this whole thing kinda sucks when you take it too seriously, but we ultimately do it anyways for a shared love of the game. there are far too few rounds in a debater's (or even judge's) career to waste it on being annoying about nothing.

All chains: pleaselearntoflow@gmail.com

and, please also add (based on event):

HSPD: dulles.policy.db8@gmail.com

HSLD: loyoladebate47@gmail.com

CPD: uhoustondebate@gmail.com

please have the email sent before start time. late starts are annoying. annoying hurts speaker points.

Dulles High School (HSPD), Loyola High School (HSLD), University of Houston (CPD) - if you are currently committed to debating at the University of Houston in the future, please conflict me. If you're interested in debating at UH, reach out.

please don't call me "judge", "Mr.", or "sir" - patrick, pat, fox, or p.fox are all fine.

he/him/his - do not misgender people. not negotiable.

"takes his job seriously, but not himself."

safety of debaters is my utmost concern at all times. racism, transphobia, misogyny, etc. not tolerated - i am willing to act on this more than most judges. don't test me.

debated 2014-22 (HSPD Oceans - NDT/CEDA Personhood), and won little but learned lots. high school was politics disads and advantage counterplans with niche plans. college was planless affs and the K, topicality, or straight turning an advantage. i'm a 2N from D3 - this is the most important determinant of debate views in this paradigm.

overall, flexibility is king. on average, i'm happiest in debates where the aff says "plan, it's good", the negative says "disad" or "kritik", and lots of cards are read, but high-quality, well-warranted arguments + judge instruction >>> any specific positions - Kant, planless affs, process counterplans, and topicality can be vertically dense, cool debates. they can also be total slop. every judge thinks arguments are good or bad, which makes them easier or harder to vote on, usually unconsciously. i'm trying to make it clear what i think good and bad arguments are and how to debate around that. i'm a full time coach and i judge tons of debates (by the end of the 24-25 season, i will have judged 900 rounds since graduating in 2019), but my topic/argument knowledge won't save bad debating. i flow carefully and value "tech" over "truth", but dropped arguments are only as good as the dropped argument itself - i don't start flowing until i hear a warrant, and i find i have a higher threshold for warrants and implications than most. i take offense/defense very seriously - debating comparatively is much better than abstractions.

quoth Bankey: "Please don’t be boring. Your pre-written blocks are boring." increasingly annoyed at the amount of rebuttal speeches that are entirely read off a doc. a speech off your flow that is obviously based on the round that just happened with breaks in fluency/efficiency will get higher speaks than a speech that is technically perfect but barely contextual to the debate i'm judging.

Wheaton's law is axiomatic - be kind, have fun. i do my best to give detailed decisions and feedback - debaters deserve no less than the best. coaches and debaters are welcome to ask questions, and i know passions run high, but i struggle to understand being angry for it's own sake - just strike me if you don't like how i judge, save us the shouting match.

"act like you've been here."

details

- evidence: Dallas Perkins: “if you can’t find a single sentence from your author that states the thesis of your argument, you may have difficulty selling it to me.” David Bernstein: “Intuitive and well reasoned analytics are frequently better uses of your time than reading a low quality card. I would prefer to reward debaters that demonstrate full understanding of their positions and think through the logical implications of arguments rather than rewarding the team that happens to have a card on some random issue.” Richard Garner: "I read a lot of cards, but, paradoxically, only in proportion to the quality of evidence comparison. Highlighting needs to make grammatical sense; don’t use debate-abbreviation highlighting"

- organization: good (obviously). extend parts your argument as responses to theirs. follow the order of the previous speech when you can. hard number arguments ("1NC 2", not "second/next"). sub-pointing good, but when overdone speeches feel disjointed, substitutes being techy for sounding techy. debating in paragraphs >>> bullet points.

- new arguments: getting out of hand. "R" in 1AR doesn't stand for constructive. at minimum, new args must be explicitly justified by new block pivots - otherwise, very good for 2NRs saying "strike it".

- inserting cards: fine if fully explained indict of card they read – new arguments or different parts of the article should be read aloud. will strike excessive insertions if told if most are nothing.

- case debates: miss them. advantages are terrible, easily link turned, and most aff's don't solve. solvency can be zero with smart CX, close reading of 1ac ev, and analytics. executing this well gets high speaker points.

- functional competition: good, makes sense. textual competition: silly, seems counterproductive. positional competition: upsetting. competing off of immediacy/certainty: skeptical, never assumed by literature, weird interpretation of fiat and mandates. plank to ban plan: does not make other non-competitive things competitive. intrinsicness: fine, but intrinsic perms often not actually intrinsic. voting record on all these: very even, teams fail to make the best arguments.

- process counterplans: interesting when topic and aff specific, annoying when recycled slop. insane ideas that collapse government (uncooperative fedism), misunderstand basic legal processes (US Code), and don't solve net benefit (most) can be zero with good CX. competition + intuitive deficits > arbitrary theory interps.

- state of advantage counterplan texts is bad. should matter more. evidence quality paramount. CX can make these zero.

- judge kick: only if explicitly told in a speech. however, splitting 2NR unstrategic – winning a whole counterplan > half a counterplan and half a case defense. better than most for sticking the neg with a counterplan, but needs airtime before 2AR.

- "do both shields" and "links to net benefit" insanely good, underrated, require a comeback in the meta. but, most permutations are 2AC nothingburgers, making debates late breaking - less i understand before the block = less spin 1AR gets + more lenient to 2NR. solve this with fewer, better permutations - "do both, shields link" = tagline, not argument.

- uniqueness controls link/vice versa: contextual to any given debate. extremist opinions ("no offense without uniqueness"/"don't need uniqueness") both seem silly.

- impact turns: usually have totalizing uniqueness and questionable solvency. teams should invest here on top of impact debate proper.

- turns case/case turns: higher threshold than most. ideally carded, minimally thoroughly explained for specific internal links.

- impact framing: most is bad, more conceptual than concrete. "timeframe outweighs magnitude" sometimes it doesn't. why does it in this debate? "intervening actors check" who? how? comparing scenarios >>> abstractions. worse for "try or die" than most - idk why 100% impact x 2% solvency outweighs 80% link x 50% impact. specificity = everything. talk about probability more. risk matters a lot.

- the K: technical teams that read detailed evidence should take me high. performance teams can also take me - i coach this frequently with some success, and i'm better for you than i seem (most teams are terrible at recognizing/answering arguments within performances). good: link to some 1AC premise/mechanism with an impact that outweighs the net benefit to a permutation, external impact that turns/outweighs case, a competitive and solvent alternative. bad: antonio 95, "fiat illusory", etc. devil's in the details - examples, references to aff evidence, etc. delete your 2NC overview, do 8 minutes of line-by-line - you will win more.

- aff vs K: talk about the 1ac more, dump cards about the K less - debate on your turf, not theirs. if aff isn't built to link turn, don't bother. "extinction outweighs" should not be the only impact calculus (see above: impact framing). perm double bind usually ends up being dumb. real permutation and deficit > asserting the possibility of one - "it could theoretically shield the link or not solve" loses to "it does neither" + warrant.

- framework arguments: "X parts of the 1AC are best basis for rejoinder/competition because Y which means Z" = good, actually establishes a framework. “weigh the aff”/“reps first” = non-arguments, what does this mean. will not adopt a “middle ground” interp if nobody advances one – usually both incoherent and unstrategic. anything other than plan focus prob gives the negative more than you want (e.g: unsure why PIKs are bad if the negative gets “reps bad” + "plan bad"). consequently, fine with “delete plan”, but neg can win with a framework push that gives links and alt without doing so.

- clash debates: vote for topicality against planless affirmatives more often than not because in a bad debate it’s easier for the negative to win. controlling for quality, I vote for the best K and framework teams equally often - no strong ideological bent. fairness or a specific, carded skills impact >>> “clash”. impact turns and counterinterps equally winnable, both require explanation of solvency/uniqueness and framing against neg impacts + link defense. equally bad for "competition doesn't matter" and "only competition matters". language of impact calculus (“turns case/their offense”, higher risk/magnitude, uniqueness, etc) helps a lot. both sides usually subpar on how what the aff does/doesn't do implicates debates. TVA/SSD underrated as offense, overrated as defense - to win it, i need to actually know what the aff/neg link looks like, not just gesture towards it being possible.

- best rounds ever are good K v K, worst ever are bad ones. judge instruction, organization, specificity key. "turns/solves case" >>> "root cause", b/c offense >>> defense. explaining what is offense, what competes, etc (framework arguments) >>> "it's hard to evaluate pls don't" ("no plan, no perm"). aff teams benefit from "functional competition" argument vs 1NCs that spam word PICs and call it "frame subtraction". "ballot PIK" should never win against a competent aff team. Marxism should win 9/10 negative debates executed by a smart 2N. more 2NRs should press case - affs don't do anything. idk why the neg gets counterplans against planless affs - 2ACs should say this.

- critical affs with plans/"soft left" should be more common. teams that take me here do hilariously well if they answer neg arguments (the disad doesn't vanish bc "conjunctive fallacy").

- topicality: for me, more predictable/precise > “debatable” - literature determines everything, unpredictable interpretations = bad. however, risk is contextual - little more precise, super underlimiting prob not winner. hyperbole is the enemy - "even with functional limits, we lose x and they get y" >>> "there are 4 gorillion affirmatives". reasonability: about the counterinterpretation, good for offense about substance crowd-out and silly interps, bad for "good is good enough". plan in a vacuum: good check against extra/fx-topicality, less good elsewhere. extra-topicality: something i care less about than most. extremely bad for arguments about grammar/semantics.

- aff on theory: “riders” to the plan, plan being "horse-traded" - not how fiat works. counterplans that fiat actors different from the plan (including states) - a misunderstanding of negation theory/neg fiat. will probably never drop more than the argument. neg on theory: literally everywhere else. arbitrariness objection strong. i don't think new affs justify neg terrorism - seems silly, 2ns should pre-emptively case neg things - but i do think being neg justifies it. i consider conditionality a divine right and will defend it with religious zeal. RVIs don't get flowed. these are the strongest opinions in this paradigm. i am an unapologetic hack on these matters.LD theory shenanigans: non-starter.

- disclosure: good, but arbitrary standards bad. care little about anything that isn't active misclosure. new unbroken affs: good. "disclose 1NC": lol.

- LD “tricks”: disastrously bad for them. most just feel like defense with extra steps. nobody has gotten me to understand truth testing, much less like it.

- LD phil: actually pretty solid for it. well-carded, consistent positions + clear judge instruction for impact calculus = high win-rate. spamming calc indicts + a korsgaard card or two = less so. i appreciate straight turn debates. modesty is winnable, but usually a cop-out + incoherent.

- if the above is insufficiently detailed, see: Richard Garner, James Allan, J.D. Sanford (former coaches), Brett Cryan (former 2A), Holden Bukowsky, Bryce Sheffield (former teammates), Aiden Kim, Sean Wallace, (former students) and Ali Abdulla (best debate bud). my ordinal 1 for most of college was DML.

procedural notes

- flowing: i do it on my laptop. i have pretty bad hearing damage in my left ear (tinnitus), and i don’t flow off the doc. i will occasionally open docs during CX or prep time if a particular card becomes important, but this is not something you should bank on to save you being incomprehensible. i consider myself really good at flowing, but clarity matters a lot – 2x "clear", then I stop typing, put my hands up, and stare at you uncomfortably until you catch on. debaters go through tags and analytics too quickly – give me pen time, or i will take pen time. you can ask to see my flow after the debate.

- terrible poker face. treat facial and bodily expressions as real-time feedback.

- i have autism. i close my eyes or put my head down during a speech if i feel overstimulated. promise i'm still flowing. i make very little eye contact. don't take it personally.

- card doc fine and good, but only cards extended in final rebuttals – including extraneous evidence is harshly penalized with speaks. big evidence enjoyer - good cards get good speaks, but only when i'm told to read them and how.

- CX: binding and mandatory. it can get you very high or very low speaks. i flow important things. "lying by omission" is smart CX, but direct dishonesty means intervention (i.e: 1NC reads elections, "was elections read?", "no" = i am pausing CX and asking if i should scratch the flow).

- personality is good, but self-righteousness isn't really a personality trait. it's a game - have fun. aggressive posturing is most often obnoxious, dissuasive, and betrays a lack of appreciation for your opponents. this isn't to say you can't talk mess (please do, if warranted - its funny, and i care little for "decorum"), but it's inversely related to the skill gap - trolling an opponent in finals is different from bullying a post-nov in presets.

- prep time ends when the doc is sent. prep stolen while "sending it now" is getting ridiculous. if you are struggling to compile and send a doc, do Verbatim drills. i am increasingly willing to enforce this by imposing prep time penalties for excessive dead time/typing while "sending the extra cards" and such.

- there is no flow clarification time – “what cards did you read?” is a CX question. “can you send a doc with the marked cards marked” is fine, “can you take out all the cards you didn’t read” means you weren't flowing, so it'll cost you CX or prep. not flowing negatively correlates with speaks. be reasonable - putting 80 case cards in the doc and reading 5, skipping around randomly, is bad form, but objecting to the general principle is telling on yourself.flow.

- related to above, if you answer a position in the doc that was skipped, you are getting a 27.5. seriously. the state of flowing is an atrocity. you should know better. flow.

- speaks: decided by me, based on quality of arguments and execution + how fun you are to judge, relative to given tournament pool. 28.5 = 3-3, 29+ = clearing + bidding, 29.5+ = top 5-10 speakers + late elims, 30 = perfect speeches, no notes. no low-point wins, generally - every bad move by a winning team correlates to a missed opportunity by the loser.

- not adjudicating the character of minors I don’t know regarding things I didn’t see.

- when debating an opponent of low experience, i will heavily reward giving younger debaters the dignity of a real debate they can still participate in (i.e: slower, fewer off, more forthcoming in CX). if you believe the best strategy against a novice/lay debater is extending hidden aspec, i will assume you are too bad at debate to beat a novice without hidden aspec, and speaks will reflect that. these debates are negatively educational and extremely annoying.

- ethics challenges: only issues that make continuing in good faith impossible are worth stopping a debate. the threshold is criminal negligence or malicious intent. evidence ethics requires an impact - omitting paragraphs mid-card that conclude neg changes the argument; leaving out an irrelevant last sentence doesn't. open to alternative solutions - i'd rather strike an incorrectly cited card than not debate. ask me if i would consider ending the round appropriate for a given issue, and i will answer honestly. clipping requires a recording to evaluate, and is an instant loss (no other way to resolve it) if it is persistent enough to alter functional speech time (criminal negligence/malicious intent, requires an impact). inexperience grants some (but minimal) leniency. ending a debate means it will not restart, all evidence will be immediately provided to me, and everyone shuts up - further attempt to sway my adjudication by debaters or coaches = instant loss. loser get an L0 and winners get a W28.5/28.4. all this is out the window if tabroom says something else.

- edebate: it still sucks. i keep my camera on as much as possible. if wifi is spotty, i will turn it off during speeches to maximize bandwidth, but always turn it back on to confirm i'm there before speeches. assume i am not present unless you see my face or hear my voice. if you start and i'm not there, you don't get to restart. low-quality microphones and audio compression means speak slower and clearer than normal.

closing thoughts

i have been told my affect presents as pretty flat or slightly negative while judging - trying to work on this - but i truly love debate, and i'm happy to be here. while i am cynical about certain aspects of the community/activity, it is still the best thing i have ever done. debate has brought me wonderful opportunities, beautiful friendships, and made me a better person. i am very lucky it found me, and i hope it can be the same for you.

take care of yourself. debaters increasingly present as exhausted and malnourished. three square meals and sleep is both more useful and better for you than overexerting yourself. people underestimate how much even mild dehydration impacts you. it's a game - not worth your well-being.

good luck! have fun!

- pat

***Updated for 2025***
Bryan Gaston
Director of Debate
Heritage Hall School
1800 Northwest 122nd St.
Oklahoma City, OK 73120-9598
bgaston@heritagehall.com

I view judging as a responsibility and one I take very seriously. I will pay attention, flow, and follow along. I will try my best to evaluate the round fairly. I have decided to try to give you as much information about my tendencies as possible to help with MPJ and adaptation.

**NOTE: I may be old, but I'm 100% right on this trend: Under-highlighting of evidence has gotten OUT OF CONTROL. When I evaluate evidence, I will ONLY EVALUATE the words in that evidence that were read in the round. Debaters, highlight better. When you see garbage highlighting, point it out and make an argument about it. The highlighting is really bad; I will likely agree and won't give the card much credit. This does not mean you can't have good, efficient highlighting, but you must have a claim, data, and warrant(s) on each card.**

Quick Version:

1. Debate is a competitive game.

2. I will vote on framework and topicality-Affs should be topical. But you can still beat framework/T-USFG with good offense or a crafty counter-interpretation.

3. DA's and Aff advantages can have zero risk.Debaters don't challenge internal-link scenarios as much as they should. They are typically weak or sometimes non-existent.

4. Neg conditionality is mostly good.

5. Counterplans and PICs are good (it's better to have a solvency advocate than not). Process CPs are okay, but I lead a little more Aff on some of these theory arguments —topic-specific justifications go a long way.

6. K's that link to the Aff plan/advocacy/advantages/reps are good.

7. I will not decide the round over something X team did in another round, at another tournament, or a team's judge prefs.

8. Be bold and make strategic choices earlier in the debate; it is usually rewarding. Sometimes, hedging your bets leaves you winning nothing.

9.Email Chain access, please: bgaston@heritagehall.com

10. The debate should be fun and competitive. Be kind to each other and try your best.

My Golden Rule: When you can choose a more specific strategy or a more generic one, always choose the more specific one IF you are equally capable of executing both strategies. But if you need to go for a more generic strategy to win, I get it. Sometimes it is necessary.

Things not to do: Don't run T is an RVI, don't hide evidence from the other team to sabotage their prep, don't lie about your source qualifications, don't text or talk to coaches to get "in round coaching" after the round has started, please stay and listen to RFD's I am typically brief, and don't deliberately spy on the other teams pre-round coaching. I am a high school teacher and coach who is responsible for high school-age students. Please, don't read things overtly sexual if you have a performance aff--since there are minors in the room, I think that is inappropriate.

Pro-tip: FLOW---don't stop flowing just because you have a speech doc.

"Clipping" in debate: Clipping in the debate is a serious issue, and one of the things I will do to deter clipping in my rounds is requesting a copy of all speech docs before the debaters start speaking. While the debate is flowing, I read along to check from time to time.

CX: This is the only time you have “face time” with the judge. Please look at the judge, not at each other. Your speaker points will be rewarded for a great CX and lowered for a bad one. Be smart in CX, assertive, but not rude.

Speaker Point Scale updated: Speed is fine, and clarity is more important. If you are not clear I will yell out “Clear.” The average national circuit debate starts at 28.4, Good is 28.5-28.9 (many national circuit rounds end up in this range), and Excellent 29-29.9. Can I get a perfect 30? I have given 3 in 22 years of high school judging, and they all went on to win the NDT in college. I will punish your points if you are excessively rude to opponents or your partner during a round.

Long Version...

Affirmatives: I still at my heart of hearts prefer and Aff with a plan that's justifiably topical. But, I think it's not very hard for teams to win that if the Aff is germane to the topic that's good enough. I'm pretty sympathetic to the Neg if the Aff has very little to or nothing to do with the topic. If there is a topical version of the Aff I tend to think that takes away most of the Aff's offense in many of these T/FW debates vs no plan Affs--unless the Aff can explain why there is no topical version and they still need to speak about "X" on the Aff or why their offense on T still applies.

Disadvantages: I like them. I prefer specific link stories (or case-specific DA’s) to generic links, as I believe all judges do. But, if all you have is generic links go ahead and run them, I will evaluate them. The burden is on the Aff team to point out those weak link stories. I think Aff’s should have offense against DA’s it's just a smarter 2AC strategy, but if a DA clearly has zero link or zero chance of uniqueness you can win zero risk. I tend to think politics DA's are core negative ground--so it is hard for me to be convinced I should reject the politics DA because debating about it is bad for debate. My take: I often think the internal link chains of DA's are not challenged enough by the Aff, many Aff teams just spot the Neg the internal links---It's one of the worst effects of the prevalence of offense/defense paradigm judging over the past years...and it's normally one of the weaker parts of the DA.

Counterplans: I like them. I generally think most types of counterplans are legitimate as long as the Neg wins that they are competitive. I am also fine with multiple counterplans. On counterplan theory, I lean pretty hard that conditionality and PICs are ok. You can win theory debates over the issue of how far negatives can take conditionality (battle over the interps is key). Counterplans that are functionally and textually competitive are always your safest bet but, I am frequently persuaded that counterplans which are functionally competitive or textually competitive are legitimate. My Take: I do however think that the negative should have a solvency advocate or some basis in the literature for the counterplan. If you want to run a CP to solve terrorism you need at least some evidence supporting your mechanism. My default is that I reject the CP, not the team on Aff CP theory wins.

Case debates: I like them. Negative teams typically underutilize them. I believe a well-planned impacted case debate is essential to a great negative strategy. Takeouts and turns can go a long way in a round.

Critiques: I like them. In the past, I have voted for various types of critiques. I think they should have an alternative or they are just non-unique impacts. Framework can be leveraged as a reason to vote Neg by some crafty Neg teams, make sure if you are going for the K framework as an offensive reason why you should win the round you clearly state that and why it's justified. I think there should be a discussion of how the alternative interacts with the Aff advantages and solvency. Impact framing is important in these debates. The links to the Aff are very important---the more specific the better.

Big impact turn debates: I like them. Do you want to throw down in a big Hegemony Good/Bad debate, Dedev vs. Growth Good, or method vs. method? It's all good.

Topicality/FW: I think competing interpretations are valid unless told otherwise...see the Aff section above for more related to T.

Theory: Theory sets up the rules for the debate game. I evaluate theory debates in an offensive/defense paradigm, paying particular attention to each team's theory impacts and impact defense. For me, the interpretation debate is critical to evaluating theory. For a team to drop the round on theory, you must impact this debate well and have clear answers to the other side's defense.

Impact framing is important, especially in a round with a soft-left Aff and a big framing page.

Have fun debating!

Woodward Academy '22

Dartmouth College '26

Email chain: ashna.ghanate@gmail.com

Important

The very most important thing to me is that everyone in the round has fun, learns something, and is respectful. Debate is a wonderful activity, and we should all be grateful for the opportunity (Especially when a lot of people can't do what they love anymore)! Your gratitude is proven through your etiquette.

Short Version + Novices

Win on clarity, clash, and argument comparison.

Flow, be nice, be clear, have fun, and send out analytics.

Please feel free to ask questions!

Longer Version

Case

Impact turns that are reasonable (LIO bad, economic growth bad, etc.) can make for extremely fun, nuanced debates.

Kritiks

I think you should explain your argument well. It's also important that you try to make affirmative specific links.

I personally believe critiques are better with framework that is about weighing the plan vs the competitive alternative. The kritik can also become a "DA". You can still get critiques of representations under this interpretation - just win that representations steer policy implementation. In round debating outweighs this opinion, though.

Topicality vs. USfg Action Affirmatives

It's important to emphasize why your model of debate is better. I think the smaller the case, the more persuasive topicality is. No real predispositions (although I think precision debates often become a wash).

Topicality vs. Critical Affirmatives

I'll most likely defer to the process of debating.

If you are confused about the affirmative, I probably am too. Just point it out.

Procedural fairness is an impact. This opinion can be changed for the ballot by in-round debating.

I think a lot of teams forget that you can read a topical affirmative that is also non-traditional/changes the debate space/creates good pedagogy.

Theory

I enjoy good theory debates. I have no real reservations, but try not to be silly.

Counterplans

I enjoy counterplan debates! Competition debates don't bother me that much, and I think they can be really fun.

Misc

Card/evidence quality matters a LOT.

I don't think framing debates matter as much as some people would like them too. For example, if you are saying "util outweighs," that doesn't mean that just because you think the affirmative has a "small" impact and the DA accesses extinction, I should vote negative. Mitigate the risk of case. Conversely, if you are reading an affirmative and say "probability should come first," I do not think you can just assert that the DA is low probability. You need to actually prove that the DA is low probability.

Intrinsic permutations can be justified.

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.

Hey y’all, my name is Flynn Gray and my pronouns are he/him. I debated for Eagan High School 2018-2022. Now I'm a student at American University and compete on the model UN team.

Logistics:

Please put me on the email chain, my email is flynnfgraydebate@gmail.com

I'm okay with speed, but I wasn't the fastest debater and generally preferred slightly slower rounds. But personal preferences aside, I can keep up if you're spreading. I have some team members that could rival Eminem for their words per minute, however if you’re going to go fast in front of me, just know I’m holding you to high standards on your clarity and emphasis. SLOW DOWN ON ANALYTICS - THEY ARE NOT TAGS.

You should be flowing. please, please, PLEASE, flow.

Yes, tag team cross is fine. As long as you’re not taking over your partners cross completely, I’m cool with it. Not cool with arguing with each-other over an answer in cross though.

Speaker Points:

Debate is a game, debate is fun, you can make debate whatever game you want when you speak. I'll listen to however you present it and I'm convinced by passion and argumentative quality. But also, as part of debate being a game, if you make some sort of claim on how the harms in your affirmative or negative positions affect mermaids you’ll get +0.1 speaks. I love mermaids, they’re cool, and you’ll be cool too if you mention them

If you’re racist, homophobic, transphobic, or sexist, you know the drill: I will give you the lowest number of speaker points I possibly can.

2022-2023 Updates:

I study Turkish and Turkish politics for one of my classes so know that I feel confident in being able to judge a more in depth round on that. I've done some background research on the topic so even though I haven't debated on the topic I know a fair amount.

Onto the Juicy Stuff:

I, probably like so many others, would like to think I'm tabula rasa. However in reality, I'm most likely definitely not. So here's what you need to know to debate in front of me...

First off, you do you! (Cheesy but needed to be said). Debate is better when you go for arguments you know you can win on, not ones you think you can win on in front of me. I'd rather see a debater run something they're confident in than one who's making blind guesses on my personal preferences. Despite whatever caveats you think I have, if you know you can win on a k-aff for example, I’d rather you run that than be uncomfortable trying to conform to Debate’s and my perceived expectations of what you should be running. I will do my best to judge the debate on your work, your words, and your arguments. I will try not to intervene or rearrange the flow, and I will try to make sure my decision will display that. I want to do right by you.

Kritiks:

• I’m cool if you read kritiks, have fun, go for it, I like listening to kritikal literature butwhen I say I can understand kritikal literature I mean more basic kritiks such as a biopower k, queer k, setcol k or cap k. Anything beyond that especially in the realm of psychoanalysis may push my background knowledge, so if you find yourself reading a k in front of me you better be able to explain the thesis of the k and all of the parts in your own terms (that means not a bunch of big words that only make sense if you wrote the article). I want well developed links that are contextualized to the affirmative, either carded and analytical ones. You can read what you want in front of me, but I want you to use real word terms and words that are accessible to everyone. I won’t vote on something I don’t understand, if you’re going to run a k, put in the work to make it easy for me to vote on.
• I'm honestly not the most experienced judge for a k-aff, I don't have a paradigm on how to judge them so make it easy and not super technical for me to vote you up on it.

Topicality:

• I'm a sucker for a good T debate, and that's what I ran mostly in high school. I don't have any strong feelings on where the violation is derived from, and I think debates where one team is arguing plantext in a vaccum and the other is arguing that it can come from anywhere in the aff are interesting and I'm always down to watch more of those. I think education/portable skills is an under utilized impact to topicality that I weigh on par with a fairness or a clash impact for example. Caselists are always a good idea (even if they're kinda bull). And just saying “voter for fairness and education” is not an argument. Provide some warrants and examples of WHY fairness matters, WHY in round impacts matter more than debating the impacts post plan.

Condo:

• I'm probably less okay with conditionality than any judge on the circuit and probably align more with some traditional thoughts here. I think more than three condo starts to push it and I'm down to vote on conditionality. I don't want to vote on condo and most likely won't vote on condo if you can't prove why the existence of three counter plans is different than three disadvantages, and if you can't prove some sort of in round abuse.

DA's:

• DA debating is a skill that I think is hard to do and impressive when done. Crafting a unique DA to the affirmative will help you out, and me out when trying to understand the story of the round. If you need to run your generic DA's, do so with specific links, and if it's not carded but well explained and intuitive it's still going on my flow don't worry (although aff, point out if their link isn't carded, that always helps you). In my view, debate over the DA comes down most critically to uniqueness and the internal link. Warranted out uniqueness and internal link debating is one of my favorite things to flow and I'd rather you shave off a few seconds on impact work or link work or from some other part of the debate and put it there.

CP's:

• Counter plans are not something I have any feelings towards debating or judging, but I think process cp theory and international fiat are totally available options to run against these. I don't have much to say here, I think this might be a spot where I get more tabula rasa.

Case:

• Case debate beyond reading generic impact defense is so often forgotten about, and in front of me is a good attempt for a negative ballot. I can and will vote on no chance of the aff solving, or an impact turn to the aff/a DA on case, or that the aff is non inherent.

Miscellaneous Thoughts:

- if there's an issue with cites, you're not going to get my ballot off of calling it UNTIL the other team/the team "in violation" has time to explain their side of the story

- I'm not a good judge for a heg debate (unless you're pronouncing heg like egg) but if you're running it I'll do my best to keep up

- perm do both and perm do each are the same thing and I have yet to receive an explanation on why they are not

If you made it this far, good luck and have fun!! It's gonna be a great debate :)

Judging Philosophy

Robert Groven

Chair, Assoc. Professor, Communication Studies, Film & New Media, Augsburg University

Director, Minnesota Urban Debate League

Coaching policy at Eagan High School, Eagan, Minnesota

Email: groven@augsburg.edu (please add me to the email/file exchange)

Background: I started policy debate in the 7th grade, debated all through junior high, high school (Como Park, St. Paul, MN) and college (Concordia College, Moorhead, NDT out rounds, Kentucky Round Robin), and since then I've coached for more than 25 years at the college and high school level, both on the national circuit and locally in the Midwest. I have also directed and taught at multiple camps over the years. I’m one of the original founders and current head of the Minnesota Urban Debate League, and am a tenured faculty at Augsburg College where I teach argumentation, rhetoric, persuasion and various specialized forms of public address.

Debate Paradigm: When left to my own devices I function as an educational games player, which means I believe that competitive academic debate is an activity designed to educate, enlighten and improve its students and society. My primary responsibility is to serve the debaters as students, in my role as an educator, both in and out of rounds. Therefore, unless given a different framework, I resolve procedural issues by evaluating the impact the precedent would set for the educational value of the activity. If the debaters do not specify a substantive decision-making framework, I default to being a pragmatic policy maker. However, I have spent many years studying rhetoric and critical theory and I’m happy to function in non-consequentialist and discursive frameworks if the debaters defend them. I am sensitive to the important, manifold issues of identity and have devoted many years attempting to redress systemic injustices in and out of debate.

I greatly prefer specific links and specific evidence when I can get it, but vote without specific links when I must. Topicality is a default voter, but I’m persuadable and have voted for non-topical and non-policy advocacy statements many times. In general, I do my best not to intervene on any issue, and decide rounds based only on what the debaters do and say in the round.

Style Preferences: Respect, kindness, and fun in rounds are high values for me. I do not enjoy debaters who are rude or domineering and will reduce points accordingly. Debating and debate rounds should be intense, passionate, and enjoyable.

Speed is not a problem for me, but comprehensibility is crucial. As I hope you know, most judges, even experienced, well-regarded judges, pretend to understand most of most rounds. 20 years on, I am past pretending. If I cannot understand you I will ask you to be clearer, but I will only make that request three times per person. After that, I just do my best. But, I will not vote on an issue or argument that I could not understand in constructives. And, suddenly giving clear meaning to incomprehensible gibberish in rebuttals, although occasionally entertaining, is grossly unfair to the opposition.

Tag CX is fine as long as the debaters are all respectful to one another. I’ll time prep and time speeches along with you, but you must keep your own time too.

“Be kind whenever possible.

It is always possible.”

-His Holiness the Dalia Lama XIV

Updated 2023 Pre-Northwestern College Season Opener

Assistant Policy Debate Coach at UT-Dallas and Greenhill

Debated at C.E. Byrd HS in Shreveport, Louisiana (class of ’14). Debated in college policy for Baylor University (2014-2016) and the University of Iowa (2017-2019)

Have also coached: Caddo Magnet HS, Hendrickson HS, Little Rock Central HS, Glenbrook South HS, University of Iowa, James Madison University

Email chain should be set up/sent before start time. sam.gustavson@gmail.com

Top level

Please be respectful of one another.

Please prioritize clarity over speed. Everything else you can take with a grain of salt and ultimately do what you are best at, but me being able to understand you comes before anything else.

Debate is hard. People make it harder by making it more complicated than it needs to be. I like debaters who take complex ideas and bring them down to the level of simplicity and common sense.

Judge instruction, impact framing, comparison of evidence, authors, warrants, etc. or “the art of spin” is the most important thing for telling me how I should decide a debate. Making strategic decisions is important.

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.

I care about cross-x A LOT. USE ALL OF YOUR CX TIME PLZ

Organization is also really important to me. Debaters that do effective line by line, clearly label arguments and use things like subpoints are more likely to win in front of me and get better speaks.

High School Specific Thoughts

I did a lot of work in the summer on IPR but I will be doing mainly college debate during the regular season. If I am judging you in high school, don't assume I know everything about the topic, especially how things have evolved since camp in terms of argument norms and things like that.

If you’re interested in doing policy debate in college, feel free to talk to me about debating at UT-Dallas! I am a full-time assistant coach there. We have scholarships, multiple coaches, and a really fun team culture.

CLARITY OVER SPEED APPLIES DOUBLE TO HIGH SCHOOL

Set up the email chain as soon as you get to the room and do disclosure. If you’re aff, ask for the neg team’s emails and copy and paste mine from the top of my paradigm. Let’s get started on time!

Please keep track of your own prep, cx, and speech time.

Don’t flow off the speech doc, it’s the easiest way to miss something and it’s super obvious. Don’t waste cross-x time asking what the did and didn’t read! Flowing is so important.

Aff thoughts

I don’t care what “style” of aff you read, I just care that it is consistently explained and executed throughout the debate.

I like most judges enjoy 2ACs that make strategic choices, smart groupings and cross applications, and effectively and efficiently use the 1AC to beat neg positions in addition to reading new cards.

2ACs and ESPECIALLY 1ARs are getting away with murder in terms of not actually extending the aff.

Neg Thoughts - General

I like negative strategies that are well-researched specific responses to the aff. I think case debating is super important and underutilized. Nothing is more persuasive than a negative team who seems to know more about the 1AC than the Aff team does.

The 1NR should be the best speech in the debate, you have so much prep.

The 2NR should make strategic decisions, collapse down, and anticipate 2ar framing and pivots. The block is about proliferating options, the 2NR is about making decisions and closing doors.

Counterplans

Prefer Advantage CPs, PICs, and Agent CPs over Process CPs.

People say sufficiency framing without doing the work to explain why the risk of the net benefit actually outweighs the risk of the solvency deficit. You have to do some type of risk calculus to set up what is sufficient and how I should evaluate it.

I have no feelings one way or another about judge kick. Win that it’s good or win that it’s bad.

Counterplans vs K affs are underutilized.

Disads

Comparison is important and not just at the impact level. Telling me what warrants to prioritize on the uniqueness and link debate, rehighlighting evidence, doing organized labeling and line by line, etc. Don’t just extend the different parts of the DA, do comparative work and framing on each part to tell me to tell me why you’re winning it and what matters most in terms of what I evaluate.

Like I said in the neg general section, I usually prefer an aff/topic specific DA to politics, but those concerns can be easily alleviated with good link debating on the politics DA. Your link being specific to the aff/resolution is usually important especially for link uniqueness reasons. I typically like elections more than agenda politics just as a research preference.

Impact Turns

Recency, specificity, and evidence quality really matter for most every argument, but these debates especially. It’s pretty obvious when one team has updates and the other is reading a backfile

These debates get unorganized in a hurry. Labeling, line by line, using subpoints/numbers, and making clear cross applications are super important

Topicality

I really like T debates vs policy affs.

Impact comparison on standards is super important. I don’t have any strong preferences in terms of how I evaluate limits vs precision, aff ground vs neg ground, etc. Those are things you have to win and do the work of framing for me.

For the neg: Case lists, examples of ground lost under the aff’s interp, examples of why the debates under your model over the course of the year, topical versions of the aff, etc. will all help me understand in practice why your interp is better for the year of debate on the topic rather than just in theory.

For the aff: A well-explained we meet and/or counter interpretation, a case list of things you allow and things you don’t, and explanation of what ground the neg gets access to under your interp beyond quickly listing arguments and saying functional limits check, explain the warrant for why your interp preserves that ground and why those debates are good to have. N

Not super persuaded by “we meet – plan text in a vacuum” without much additional explanation. If the aff reads a plan text but then reframes/clarifies what that means in cross-x, in 1ac solvency evidence, or in the 2ac responding to neg positions, I think it’s easy for the neg to win those things outweigh plan text in a vacuum.

Framework

I judge a lot of these debates.

Fairness can be and impact or an internal link, just depends on how it’s debated.

If either side is claiming participation as an impact, you have gotta explain how voting for you/your model would solve it.

Affs that have something to do with the topic and can link turn things like topic education and clash are more persuasive to me than affs that try to impact turn every single part of framework. You probably will need to win some defense, because so much of the neg side of framework is defense to the stuff you want to go for.

Having a counter-interpretation really helps me understand how to evaluate offense and defense in these debates. This does not necessarily require the 2AC to redefine words in the resolution, but rather to tell me what the aff’s vision of debate is, what the role is for the aff and neg, and why those debates are good. Even if you are going to impact turn everything, having a counter-interpretation or a model of debate helps me understand what the role of the aff, neg, and the overall role of debate are.

Kritiks

The more aff-specific the better. Links do not necessarily have to be to the plan (it would be nice if they were), but they should implicate the 1ac in specific ways whether it’s their rhetoric, impact scenarios, etc. 2NCs that quote and rehighlight aff evidence, read new cards, proliferate links, and give the 2nr options are good.

Making decisions in the 2NR is still important even when reading the K one-off. You cannot go for every link, framing argument, perm answer, etc. in the 2NR.

The best K 2NRs I’ve ever seen effectively use case to mitigate parts of the aff’s offense. If you give them 100% risk of the aff vs the K, it’s harder to win!

Kicking the alt/going just for links or case turns is not the move in front of me. There are almost always uniqueness problems and I end up usually just voting aff on a risk of case. Whether it’s an alternative or a framework argument, you gotta explain to me how voting neg solves your offense.

I have noticed that in a lot of K debates I find that both the aff and the neg over-invest in framework. I honestly don’t see a scenario where I don’t let the aff weigh the 1AC if they win that fiat is good. I also don’t see a scenario where I vote aff because Kritiks on the neg are unfair. If the neg is making links to the aff, the aff obviously gets to weigh their offense against those link arguments. I really think both sides in most cases would be better served spending time on the link/impact/alt rather than overinvesting time on the framework debate.

Ethics challenges/Clipping/Out of Round Stuff:

In the case that anyone calls an ethics violation for any reason I reserve the right to defer/go to tab, and then beyond that I can only vote based on my interpretation of events. This used to really only apply to clipping, but I’ve been a part of a bunch of different types of ethics challenges over the years so I’ve decided to update this.

Clipping: Hot take, it’s obviously bad. If I have proof you clipped the round will end and you’ll lose. I don’t follow along in speech docs unless someone starts being unclear, so if your opponent is clipping it’s up to you to notice and get proof. I need a recording if I don’t catch it live, even if we are on a panel and another judge catches it. Without a recording or proof, I’m not pulling the trigger.

Be careful about recording people without their consent, especially minors. Multiple states require two-party consent to record, don’t get yourself in legal trouble over a debate round.

I don’t vote on out of round stuff, especially stuff I wasn’t there for.

If you feel that someone in the round has jeopardized your safety, made you uncomfortable, or anything remotely similar, I will do everything in to advocate for you if I witness any of the following. If I am not a witness, I will make sure that the proper channels are used to address the complaint.

LD Paradigm:

Tech over truth but asserting that an argument is dropped/conceded is not the same thing as extending a full argument

My debate background is in policy, so I have much more familiarity with policy/LARP and Kritikal debates than I do with phil. I like phil debate, but you need to treat me like more of a beginner for the more advanced stuff.

Not the best for tricks but I won't outright reject them. Theory is fine, the more frivolous it is the more annoyed I'll be, but I'll flow it.

Clarity is more important than speed. Slow down a bit on counterplan texts, interps, etc. Spreading as fast as you can through theory shells or a million a priori's means there's probably a good chance that I am not going to get everything.

My policy paradigm has a lot of my K/policy specific thoughts as well.

My paradigm is pretty by the books. Please stick to the general rules of each given round and you'll be fine. I believe the best argument, presentation and speakers should win each round. Cross-examination is something that is important to me in each round that I judge so I will flow it and will take it into account when deciding a winner of a round. But again Sticking to the given rules of each round is my biggest preference. here is a list things that I will not accept as a Judge. 

1. Being disrespectful/rude to your opponents. (over-talking, talking out of turn, shouting, cursing at your opponents etc.)
2. Not being on time for your round.
3. Going outside of your allotted speaking times.

Margaret Hecht (She/her)

New Trier alum, Debating at Emory, Coaching for Westminster

margaretdebate@gmail.com

I know absolutely nothing about this topic.

Please time everything (prep, speeches, cx, tech time) yourselves. I am awful about timing things and will forget 99% of the time. Respect your opponents, respect me, don't swear a ton, etc. This activity should be fun.

I only look at speech docs occasionally throughout the debate (mostly to read a card I don't understand, if there's a cx over interpretation of a card, etc.). I read relevant cards at the end of the round. Try to adjust clarity accordingly.

I don't have any strong argumentative preferences. I care much more about how you debate than what you debate about. I think debates are best when people make fewer, more developed arguments. This means referencing specific lines of your evidence, line by line, extending warrants, doing good impact calc, and reading things that are well-researched rather than stuff meant to confuse your opponents. My favorite debates to judge are DA/ case debates.

I generally prefer judging policy debates because I can adjudicate them the best, but I do judge a good number of K debates and can usually keep up. I'm not great for K debates where the NEG 2NR strategy is mostly framework/ the fiat K. I've judged a few K v. K debates and found them hard to follow; if that is your strategy against planless AFFs, I may not be a very good judge for you.

Please go in line-by-line order. This means no multi-minute long overviews or 'I'll do the uniqueness debate here.' This is the easiest way to get good speaker points.

I care about evidence quality more than most people, and I will only read what's highlighted when reading cards at the end of a debate.

Things like inserting rehighlightings, judge kick, etc. are up to the debaters to debate about.

If you have any questions about my philosophy, please email me! (Or if you have any questions about Emory debate)

David Heidt

Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart

davidheidt@gmail.com

Update for IPR topic:

One semester in, I think this topic is pretty bad. It would have been a good topic if the area was limited to just patents. But there's not consistent, topic-specific negative ground against the range of possible affirmatives in the other two areas, so we have a situation where teams feel like they need to extend arguments like "in means throughout" in the 2nr. The last time this happened was in 2001, another notoriously bad topic because of how broad it was.

What does a bad topic mean for how I judge?

1. I'm probably more supportive of conditionality than I otherwise would be. If there aren't consistently good, robust negative arguments against each of the topic areas, then it may not be possible to fill up a 1nc without conditionality. At the very least, I can see a justification for two conditional options, when previously I could only see a justification for 1.

2. I'm not at all sympathetic to process CPs. "It's hard to be neg" =/= "therefore we need to do the aff". I'm probably an easier sell on "process CPs bad" than on permutation debates, but I'm also very aff leaning on permutations in this context. I think intrinsic permutations are good in the limited instance in which the internal net benefit does not have a link to the affirmative. It does not matter to me whether intrinsic permutations are textual or functional; the core issue is whether the plan is a genuine opportunity cost. Plan-specific link is evidence of that; but without a link, I think intrinsic permutations are fully justified.

I have never seen a spillover card that has been read for a process CP that I thought actually made the spillover claim the negative team claimed. I would easily vote aff on 'no net benefit' if it demonstrated that the affirmative actually read and attacked the negative's evidence. It's not a risk issue if the negative has a bad card; it just means they cut bad cards (and this is fully demonstrated by every process CP that has been run so far this year).

At minimum, for something like the multilateral CP to compete, the negative would need a card that says domestic IPR protection harms multilateral regimes, or international law. The only cards that have been read this year alleging this relationship are wildly out of context. I don't think the camp versions of these CPs are winnable arguments. It's hard for me to imagine any CP along these lines is viable, given that domestic IPR protection is routine, and decisions to enforce sanctions against other countries are unrelated to the strength of domestic protection. I could change my mind if someone has good evidence, but that has yet to be established.

Process CPs are the argument I dislike in debate the most. I would rather vote for planless affirmatives in every debate for the rest of my life than hear a single additional process CP.

That said, I think my record on process CPs this year is that I've voted negative in the majority of instances, so debating matters.

3. If you're choosing between going for a bad CP or a bad K, probably choose the strategy with the best evidence (likely the K).

4. IPR bad is under-utilized. The camp versions of these files are weak (in the case of patents), or mostly unusable (in the case of copyright and trademark). All three require research beyond camp, and they're challenging debates. But it's where the best evidence is on this topic, and to me it's the most promising negative strategy by far. If you treat it like a K debate and attack the assumptions, bias and research practices of the affirmative authors, I think it's possible to beat (almost) every aff on this. But it requires a lot of work.

As bad as this topic is for the neg, the advantage CP + IPR bad is potentially overpowered. The affirmative will always have the benefit of specificity, but it really shouldn't matter most of the time if the basic assumptions their authors are relying on are false.

5. I tend to lean negative on topicality when the topic is very broad. But some topicality arguments are very weak by their nature and I think can only win with major affirmative mistakes: T-subsets, T must be the Court, T can't be the Court. Other topicality arguments I've heard are more promising (must be enforcement/can't be enforcement; protection means stopping unauthorized use; Mandel).

Older stuff

Some thoughts about the fiscal redistribution topic:

Having only judged practice debates so far, I like the topic. But it seems harder to be Aff than in a typical year. All three affirmative areas are pretty controversial, and there's deep literature engaging each area on both sides.

All of the thoughts I've posted below are my preferences, not rules that I'll enforce in the debate. Everything is debatable. But my preferences reflect the types of arguments that I find more persuasive.

1. I am unlikely to view multiple conditional worlds favorably. I think the past few years have demonstrated an inverse relationship between the number of CPs in the 1nc and the quality of the debate. The proliferation of terrible process CPs would not have been possible without unlimited negative conditionality. I was more sympathetic to negative strategy concerns last year where there was very little direct clash in the literature. But this topic is a lot different. I don't see a problem with one conditional option. I can maybe be convinced about two, but I like Tim Mahoney's rule that you should only get one. More than two will certainly make the debate worse. The fact that the negative won substantially more debates last year with with no literature support whatsoever suggests there is a serious problem with multiple conditional options.

Does that mean the neg auto-loses if they read three conditional options? No, debating matters - but I'll likely find affirmative impact arguments on theory a lot more persuasive if there is more than one (or maybe two) CPs in the debate.

2. I am not sympathetic about affirmative plan vagueness. Debate is at it's best with two prepared teams, and vagueness is a way to avoid clash and discourage preparation. If your plan is just the resolution, that tells me very little and I will be looking for more details. I am likely to interpret your plan based upon the plan text, highlighted portions of your solvency evidence that say what the plan does, and clarifications in cx. That means both what you say and the highlighted portions of your evidence are fair game for arguments about CP competition, DA links, and topicality. This is within reason - the plan text is still important, and I'm not going to hold the affirmative responsible for a word PIC that's based on a piece of solvency evidence or an offhand remark. And if cx or evidence is ambiguous because the negative team didn't ask the right questions or didn't ask follow up questions, I'm not going to automatically err towards the negative's interpretation either. But if the only way to determine the scope of the plan's mandates is by looking to solvency evidence or listening to clarification in CX, then a CP that PICs out of those clarified mandates is competitive, and a topicality violation that says those clarified mandates aren't topical can't be beaten with "we meet - plan in a vacuum".

How might this play out on this topic? Well, if the negative team asks in CX, "do you mandate a tax increase?", and the affirmative response is "we don't specify", then I think that means the affirmative does not, in fact, mandate a tax increase under any possible interpretation of the plan, that they cannot read addons based on increasing taxes, or say "no link - we increase taxes" to a disadvantage that says the affirmative causes a spending tradeoff. If the affirmative doesn't want to mandate a specific funding mechanism, that might be ok, but that means evidence about normal means of passing bills is relevant for links, and the affirmative can't avoid that evidence by saying the plan fiats out of it. There can be a reasonable debate over what might constitute 'normal means' for funding legislation, but I'm confident that normal means in a GOP-controlled House is not increasing taxes.

On the other hand, if they say "we don't specify our funding mechanism in the plan," but they've highlighted "wealth tax key" warrants in their solvency evidence, then I think this is performative cowardice and honestly I'll believe whatever the negative wants me to believe in that case. Would a wealth tax PIC be competitive in that scenario? Yes, without question. Alternatively, could the negative say "you can't access your solvency evidence because you don't fiat a wealth tax?" Also, yes. As I said, I am unsympathetic to affirmative vagueness, and you can easily avoid this situation just by defending your plan.

Does this apply to the plan's agent? I think this can be an exception - in other words, the affirmative could reasonably say "we're the USFG" if they don't have an agent-based advantage or solvency evidence that explicitly requires one agent. I think there are strong reasons why agent debates are unique. Agent debates in a competitive setting with unlimited fiat grossly misrepresent agent debates in the literature, and requiring the affirmative to specify beyond what their solvency evidence requires puts them in an untenable position. But if the affirmative has an agent-based advantage, then it's unlikely (though empirically not impossible) that I'll think it's ok for them to not defend that agent against an agent CP.

3. I believe that any negative strategy that revolves around "it's hard to be neg so therefore we need to do the 1ac" is not a real strategy. A CP that results in the possibility of doing the entire mandate of the plan is neither legitimate nor competitive. Immediacy and certainty are not the basis of counterplan competition, no matter how many terrible cards are read to assert otherwise. If you think "should" means "immediate" then you'd likely have more success with a 2nr that was "t - should" in front of me than you would with a CP competition argument based on that word. Permutations are tests of competition, and as such, do not have to be topical. "Perms can be extra topical but not nontopical" has no basis in anything. Perms can be any combination of all of the plan and part or all of the CP. But even if they did have to be topical, reading a card that says "increase" = "net increase" is not a competition argument, it's a topicality argument. A single affirmative card defining the "increase" as "doesn't have to be a net increase" beats this CP in its entirety. Even if the negative interpretation of "net increase" is better for debate it does not change what the plan does, and if the aff says they do not fiat a net increase, then they do not fiat a net increase. If you think you have an argument, you need to go for T, not the CP. A topicality argument premised on "you've killed our offsets CP ground" probably isn't a winner, however. The only world I could ever see the offsets CP be competitive in is if the plan began with "without offsetting fiscal redistribution in any manner, the USFG should..."

I was surprised by the number of process CPs turned out at camps this year. This topic has a lot of well-supported ways to directly engage each of the three areas. And most of the camp affs are genuinely bad ideas with a ridiculous amount of negative ground. Even a 1nc that is exclusively an economy DA and case defense is probably capable of winning most debates. I know we just had a year where there were almost no case debates, but NATO was a bad topic with low-quality negative strategies, and I think it's time to step up. This topic is different. And affs are so weak they have to resort to reading dedevelopment as their advantage. I am FAR more likely to vote aff on "it's already hard to be aff, and your theory of competition makes it impossible" on this topic than any other.

This doesn't mean I'm opposed to PICs, or even most counterplans. And high quality evidence can help sway my views about both the legitimacy and competitiveness of any CP. But if you're coming to the first tournament banking on the offsets CP or "do the plan if prediction markets say it's good CP", you should probably rethink that choice.

But maybe I'm wrong! Maybe the first set of tournaments will see lots of teams reading small, unpredictable affs that run as far to the margins of the topic as possible. I hope not. The less representative the affirmative is of the topic literature, the more likely it is that I'll find process CPs to be an acceptable response. If you're trying to discourage meaningful clash through your choice of affirmative, then maybe strategies premised on 'clash is bad' are more reasonable.

4. I'm ambivalent on the question of whether fiscal redistribution requires both taxes and transfers. The cards on both sides of this are okay. I'm not convinced by the affirmative that it's too hard to defend a tax, but I'm also not convinced by the negative that taxes are the most important part of negative ground.

5. I'm skeptical of the camp affirmatives that suggest either that Medicare is part of Social Security, or that putting Medicare under Social Security constitutes "expanding" Social Security. I'll approach any debate about this with an open mind, because I've certainly been wrong before. But I am curious about what the 2ac looks like. I can see some opportunity for the aff on the definition of "expanding," but I don't think it's great. Aff cards that confuse Social Security with the Social Security Act or Social Security Administration or international definitions of lower case "social security" miss the mark entirely.

6. Critiques on this topic seem ok. I like critiques that have topic-specific links and show why doing the affirmative is undesirable. I dislike critiques that are dependent on framework for the same reason I dislike process counterplans. Both strategies are cop-outs - they both try to win without actually debating the merits of the affirmative. I find framework arguments that question the truth value of specific affirmative claims far more persuasive than framework arguments that assert that policy-making is the wrong forum.

7. There's a LOT of literature defending policy change from a critical perspective on this topic. I've always been skeptical of planless affirmatives, but they seem especially unwarranted this year. I think debate doesn't function if one side doesn't debate the assigned topic. Debating the topic requires debating the entire topic, including defending a policy change from the federal government. Merely talking about fiscal redistribution in some way doesn't even come close. It's possible to defend policy change from a variety of perspectives on this topic, including some that would critique ways in which the negative traditionally responds to policy proposals.

Having said that, if you're running a planless affirmative and find yourself stuck with me in the back of the room, I still do my best to evaluate all arguments as fairly as a I can. It's a debate round, and not a forum for me to just insert my preferences over the arguments of the debaters themselves. But some arguments will resonate more than others.

Old thoughts

Some thoughts about the NATO topic:

1. Defending the status quo seems very difficult. The topic seems aff-biased without a clear controversy in the literature, without many unique disadvantages, and without even credible impact defense against some arguments. The water topic was more balanced (and it was not balanced at all).

This means I'm more sympathetic to multiple conditional options than I might otherwise would be. I'm also very skeptical of plan vagueness and I'm unlikely to be very receptive towards any aff argument that relies on it.

Having said that, some of the 1ncs I've seen that include 6 conditional options are absurd and I'd be pretty receptive to conditionality in that context, or in a context where the neg says something like hegemony good and the security K in the same debate.

And an aff-biased topic is not a justification for CPs that compete off of certainty. The argument that "it's hard to be negative so therefore we get to do your aff" is pretty silly. I haven't voted on process CP theory very often, but at the same time, it's pretty rare for a 2a to go for it in the 2ar. The neg can win this debate in front of me, but I lean aff on this.

There are also parts of this topic that make it difficult to be aff, especially the consensus requirement of the NAC. So while the status quo is probably difficult to defend, I think the aff is at a disadvantage against strategies that test the consensus requirement.

2. Topicality Article 5 is not an argument. I could be convinced otherwise if someone reads a card that supports the interpretation. I have yet to see a card that comes even close. I think it is confusing that 1ncs waste time on this because a sufficient 2ac is "there is no violation because you have not read evidence that actually supports your interpretation." The minimum threshold would be for the negative to have a card defining "cooperation with NATO" as "requires changing Article 5". That card does not exist, because no one actually believes that.

3. Topicality on this topic seems very weak as a 2nr choice, as long as the affirmative meets basic requirements such as using the DOD and working directly with NATO as opposed to member states. It's not unwinnable because debating matters, but the negative seems to be on the wrong side of just about every argument.

4. Country PICs do not make very much sense to me on this topic. No affirmative cooperates directly with member states, they cooperate with the organization, given that the resolution uses the word 'organization' and not 'member states'. Excluding a country means the NAC would say no, given that the excluded country gets to vote in the NAC. If the country PIC is described as a bilateral CP with each member state, that makes more sense, but then it obviously does not go through NATO and is a completely separate action, not a PIC.

5. Is midterms a winnable disadvantage on the NATO topic? I am very surprised to see negative teams read it, let alone go for it. I can't imagine that there's a single person in the United States that would change their vote or their decision to turn out as a result of the plan. The domestic focus link argument seems completely untenable in light of the fact that our government acts in the area of foreign policy multiple times a day. But I have yet to see a midterms debate, so maybe there's special evidence teams are reading that is somehow omitted from speech docs. It's hard for me to imagine what a persuasive midterms speech on a NATO topic looks like though.

What should you do if you're neg? I think there are some good CPs, some good critiques, and maybe impact turns? NATO bad is likely Russian propaganda, but it's probably a winnable argument.

******

Generally I try to evaluate arguments fairly and based upon the debaters' explanations of arguments, rather than injecting my own opinions. What follows are my opinions regarding several bad practices currently in debate, but just agreeing with me isn't sufficient to win a debate - you actually have to win the arguments relative to what your opponents said. There are some things I'll intervene about - death good, behavior meant to intimidate or harass your opponents, or any other practice that I think is harmful for a high school student classroom setting - but just use some common sense.

Thoughts about critical affs and critiques:

Good debates require two prepared teams. Allowing the affirmative team to not advocate the resolution creates bad debates. There's a disconnect in a frighteningly large number of judging philosophies I've read where judges say their favorite debates are when the negative has a specific strategy against an affirmative, and yet they don't think the affirmative has to defend a plan. This does not seem very well thought out, and the consequence is that the quality of debates in the last few years has declined greatly as judges increasingly reward teams for not engaging the topic.

Fairness is the most important impact. Other judging philosophies that say it's just an internal link are poorly reasoned. In a competitive activity involving two teams, assuring fairness is one of the primary roles of the judge. The fundamental expectation is that judges evaluate the debate fairly; asking them to ignore fairness in that evaluation eliminates the condition that makes debate possible. If every debate came down to whoever the judge liked better, there would be no value to participating in this activity. The ballot doesn't do much other than create a win or a loss, but it can definitely remedy the harms of a fairness violation. The vast majority of other impacts in debate are by definition less important because they never depend upon the ballot to remedy the harm.

Fairness is also an internal link - but it's an internal link to establishing every other impact. Saying fairness is an internal link to other values is like saying nuclear war is an internal link to death impacts. A loss of fairness implies a significant, negative impact on the activity and judges that require a more formal elaboration of the impact are being pedantic.

Arguments along the lines of 'but policy debate is valueless' are a complete nonstarter in a voluntary activity, especially given the existence of multiple alternative forms of speech and debate. Policy debate is valuable to some people, even if you don't personally share those values. If your expectation is that you need a platform to talk about whatever personally matters to you rather than the assigned topic, I encourage you to try out a more effective form of speech activity, such as original oratory. Debate is probably not the right activity for you if the condition of your participation is that you need to avoid debating a prepared opponent.

The phrase "fiat double-bind" demonstrates a complete ignorance about the meaning of fiat, which, unfortunately, appears to be shared by some judges. Fiat is merely the statement that the government should do something, not that they would. The affirmative burden of proof in a debate is solely to demonstrate the government should take a topical action at a particular time. That the government would not actually take that action is not relevant to any judge's decision.

Framework arguments typically made by the negative for critiques are clash-avoidance devices, and therefore are counterproductive to education. There is no merit whatsoever in arguing that the affirmative does not get to weigh their plan. Critiques of representations can be relevant, but only in relation to evaluating the desirability of a policy action. Representations cannot be separated from the plan - the plan is also a part of the affirmative's representations. For example, the argument that apocalyptic representations of insecurity are used to justify militaristic solutions is asinine if the plan includes a representation of a non-militaristic solution. The plan determines the context of representations included to justify it.

Thoughts about topicality:

Limited topics make for better topics. Enormous topics mean that it's much harder to be prepared, and that creates lower quality debates. The best debates are those that involve extensive topic research and preparation from both sides. Large topics undermine preparation and discourage cultivating expertise. Aff creativity and topic innovation are just appeals to avoid genuine debate.

Thoughts about evidence:

Evidence quality matters. A lot of evidence read by teams this year is underlined in such a way that it's out of context, and a lot of evidence is either badly mistagged or very unqualified. On the one hand, I want the other team to say this when it's true. On the other hand, if I'm genuinely shocked at how bad your evidence is, I will probably discount it.

Jack Hightower

Assistant Coach at Georgetown University (2022-Present)

Coach at Mamaroneck High School (2023-2024)

Assistant Coach at Woodward Academy (2022-2023)

Woodward Academy Debater (2017-2022)

He/Him

Email Chains: jch334@georgetown.edu

Emails That Aren't Chains: jack@thehightowers.com

Last Updated 01/20/2025

Energy Policy Topic Knowledge: extremely familiar with the topic and its mechanisms - I produce a ton of files for the topic and spend a ton of time thinking about the various arguments.

IP Topic Knowledge: somewhat familiar with the topic and its mechanisms - I've produced a few files for the topic and worked at a camp. I do have some understanding of IP law, but if you want to have a super in-depth debate about IP law though, you probably should still explain things.

People that have influenced parts of my debate philosophy: Bill Batterman, Maggie Berthiaume, Ashna Ghanate, Nico Juarez, Brandon Kelley, Elizabeth Li, Ria Thakur, Ben Sayers, Tyler Thur, Cole Weese, Kieran Lawless, Zidao Wang, Adam White, Connelly Cowan, Zachary Zinober, Kumail Zaidi, Bryce Rao.

This list is meant more as a tribute than an explanation of how I judge, but use it how you want.

TLDR

Respect your opponents.

Debate what you enjoy and have fun.

Learn something from each debate.

Ask me any questions you have.

Feel free to email me after the round.

Clash > Tricks

All biases are subject to change through debate.

If I cannot flow you, it does not count as an argument.

If something does not have a warrant, it does not count as an argument.

I will read evidence that I deem important. If there are certain cards that you want me to read, you should point me towards them in your speech.

Longer Explanation

Biases

Good debating will always be able to change my mind about issues.

Any argumentative preferences I list below speak to which arguments I find more true/intuitively persuasive than others, but they are certainly not set in stone.

Clash

I reward good clash with speaker points and will most likely punish obvious attempts to evade clash with less speaker points. Making an effort to actively engage with your opponents’ arguments and doing detailed impact and evidence comparison will be a good way to increase your speaker points.

I wish people would flow better and/or at least stop making "did you read this card" and "what are the reasons to reject the team" the very first questions in CX.

Super vague plan texts make me sad.

I'm a huge sucker for really well researched arguments. If you took the time to prepare an aff-specific strategy that involved doing actual debate research, I will reward you for it.

Theory

I don't think I am a particularly amazing judge for theory debates, and I also don't really enjoy them (the same extends to competition). That is not to say that I have strong aff or neg biases on theory/won't vote for certain arguments, but it is meant as a warning about the fact that there is some risk that you will get a decision that you don't like in these types of debates.

I default to conditionality being the only reason to reject the team, but I could be convinced by a few other arguments.

Good theory debating requires in-depth line by line. If one team just reads blocks and the other team does line-by-line, I will almost always vote for the team who did the line-by-line.

Topicality

If you think that the other team is clearly pushing the resolution, and you have good evidence to support it, topicality is an option for a reason.

Plan text in a vacuum has never made sense to me, but you are welcome to try to change my mind.

T is not a reverse voting issue.

CPs

CPs should have a solvency advocate. If the first time a solvency advocate is read is in the block, the affirmative gets new answers in the 1AR.

Unless you have a very good solvency advocate, CPs should compete off of more than definitions of words like “should.”

CPs should fiat a specific policy.

Ks

If your strategy is a more common K like capitalism, settler colonialism, or security, then I should be a good judge for you; however, as you move beyond those, there is a risk you might start to lose me some background knowledge-wise.

If you’re reliant on winning fiat bad/debate bad style arguments, I’m probably not a great judge for you.

You should have a clear vision of what the alternative looks like going into the round. Many teams lose credibility during cross-ex when they are unable to successfully explain what the solution is to the problem they have identified.

K Affs

I'll vote for anything, but I don't think I'm a particularly great judge for K affs.

I will do my best to fairly evaluate the debate, but I do only have experience being negative vs critical affirmatives. I have, however, done some work at Georgetown helping/coaching teams reading K affs.

If you choose not to defend the resolution, you should probably defend the entirety of your 1AC, including your authors and concepts forwarded in evidence, since there's no solid stasis point for competition otherwise. Because of that, I might have a higher threshold for the perm when a negative team has specific links for a critique to the affirmative.

Fairness might or might not be an impact depending on how you explain it, but even if it's not, it's most likely an internal link to a bunch of other things that definitely are impacts.

DAs

The link is usually the most important part of disadvantage debating. Winning a high risk of a link gives you a lot of leeway with the uniqueness and impact.

Most politics DAs are really bad, but teams get away with them because people don’t point out simple flaws in them (even analytically).

If a 1NC DA is not complete (missing uniqueness, internal link, etc.), the 1AR gets new answers when those parts are added.

Turns case can be very useful, but it needs to be well-developed.

Impact Turns

I'm a fan of most of them. My most consistent 2NR in high school might have been degrowth.

Speaker Points

I'm known for giving out higher than average speaker points. I'll try my best to stick roughly to this scale:

29.5-30.0: should win the tournament or gave one of the best speeches I have heard in a long time.

29.2-29.5: top 10% of teams in the pool.

28.9-29.2: top 33% of teams in the pool.

28.6-28.9: middle 14% of the pool.

28.3-28.5: bottom 33% of teams the pool

28.0-28.3: bottom 10% of teams in the pool.

0-27.5: did something offensive.

If you ask for a 30, I'll lower your points.

Random

Prep time ends when the speech doc is saved or you stop writing on your flow.

TLDR;

I like K’s; i believe they have an important place in debate when done right. Don’t be mean. You do you honestly. Read anything and warrant it well, I’ll probably vote for it.

About Me

pronouns: she/her

I am a senior at Stanford in MechE.

put me on the email chain: torihoge@stanford.edu

events i have competed in from most frequently to least: policy, ld, parli, pofo, congress, impromptu (at heart, i am a policy kid)

I coach nationally all levels of policy, LD, and public forum. Do with that what you will.

PET PEEVES:

1. is everybody ready. Say is anyone not ready and begin 2. my timer starts now. Just hit start 3. (for online debate) please turn your camera on when you are speaking 4. don't decide your roadmap while you are talking. at least sound certain of what order you are going in

IMPORTANT READ:

• If there is anything I can do to accommodate your needs, please do not hesitate to let me know.
• Do not read a K just because you saw I like k’s. Do not use other’s oppression for a ballot. This is not okay. You must be well versed in the literature and have a genuine understanding and care for the argument you read, or don’t bother. I don’t like performative activism or reading things just for a ballot. I would rather do a lot of things than watch a bad k debate. If k’s are your thing and you are knowledgeable, then go for it, it’s my favorite kind of debate.
• Also include trigger warnings for graphic depictions of racial/settler/ableist/anti-queer/gender-based violence and anything to do with sexual assault or suicide.
• My philosophy: if you can explain a very complex topic in simple enough words to explain to a grandparent, then you are a very good debater
• If you do anything of the -ists or -ics (think racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, etc.) you will receive an L-25
• email me before or after if you wanna talk about literally anything or if you have any questions about my paradigm or about the round

I’m a great judge for you if:

• you like k debate or read mostly critical arguments
• you like technical, high speed debate
• you have fun, quirky arguments that demonstrate a lot of personality
• you are amazing at T
• you have a well-researched stock case

K’s

I was a k debater in high school. This is not an invitation to read any k ever. I do not know or understand the premise of every single k that exists. For reference k’s I have debated are neolib/cap, fem ir, queer ir, security, imperialism, setcol, and speaking for others. At least, that is what I can remember off the top of my head. Even if you are reading a k that I have read, explain it and warrant it as if I have no idea what is going on. K’s need some alt or a very good explanation of why defense is enough and why you don’t need one. K’s need a specific link otherwise they don’t work. What you’re talking about may be important, but if it does not link, then it is not part of the conversation.

Nontopical/K-affs

I don’t really care if they are in the direction of the topic or not. I believe there is a purpose and reason in the debate space for k-aff's. I read my fair share of k-affs in high school primarily fem killjoy and open borders. I am ok with k-affs, but again do not just read them for a ballot, and do them right.

Topicality (not theory)

I like (and can even love) topicality debates when they are done right. However, if T is not your forte, DO NOT RUN IT IN FRONT OF ME. I despise bad T debates.

Theory (distinct from topicality)

Sometimes can be justified, but it has never been a voting issue for me. Run it if you want, but it better be warranted.

CPs

I think they’re great for stock debate. I think they help generate offense. However, I need a very clear explanation of why the perm cannot work, or else I am prompted to vote on the perm. I default to the perm if the explanation does not make sense, if I do not follow, or if it is contradictory. Perm work here is very important for me. Also this should be obvious but I’m putting it in because I see it wayyyyy too many times. YOUR DA SHOULD NOT LINK TO THE CP. that’s the point of a cp.

DAs

Also good for stock debate. Warrant well. Connect to a terminal impact. I think that they need some sort of CP or K with them.

CHSSA/Lay debate

• I really don’t care what the “rules” are or whatever the handbook says. If your only strategy is to complain that they are cheating or aren’t following the rules, then get better at debate: learn how to debate substance.
• Don’t try any mind tricks. I am flowing. I know when your opponent dropped something or when they did not. Do not claim they dropped something when they did not.

I was very heavily influenced by Andrea Chow. Andrea is the goat and was also my partner in high school. Check out her paradigm for more context as I generally agree with all of her philosophies.

NEW PARADIGM

Update: I'm old and grumpy. I vibe check most things to be honest. Vibe check speaks, vibe check args I don't get down or don't understand, etc. For the Cougar classic I think I'll see if I can get stingy with speaker points cause I used to hand out speaker points like candy. But hey...new year, new me. My speaks start at a 20 flat, and go down from there. I think the number 20 is a pretty number, so I use that as a baseline. I don't know what to make of the activity anymore, I've been out for a while so read my paradigm with a grain of salt. I'm just a dude trying to get to law school. (I'm sorry mom and dad, I'll pass the LSAT eventually).

Post round me and my response will be "My bad G, I ain't got it in me like I used to."

The line by line should guide my ballot - but for me it's less of a roadmap and more of a rollercoaster, I hope to make it out in one cohesive piece with a cohesive ballot story (Inshallah)

My old paradigm should give you a good breakdown of how I used to evaluate rounds. Enjoy.

OLD PARADIGM

Email: shoxha2020@gmail.com

Give me music recommendations and I'll give you +.1 speaker points.

Intro / About Me:

Shout out to Westside High and UH - I wouldn't be anywhere without you. <3

Don't be discriminatory. I'm warning you now if you have to ask, "Is this problematic? Don't read it - there are better strategies out there.

Also Important: If you read spreading bad in front of me, I will not hack for you. I can spread and I can flow, but I am disabled and these skills were harder for me to develop than most. Many debaters see this as an opportunity for a persuasive 2ar and 2nr push, don't let this be you. I consider this motivated and ableist.

You're either winning an argument on the flow or you're not. Trivializing my struggles or the struggles of any judge for the ballot is an easy way to get me to despise you.

Debate is a game, but it is an academic game. Tech over truth, but truth constrains tech. You'll have a harder time convincing me global warming is fake than convincing me warming will destroy the planet. If two debaters are equal on a particular flow, truth is the obvious tie breaker.

I will try to intervene as little as possible - I'm old school in that you need to explain things to me like I'm 5 for me to grant you the arguments you want to go for.

I have been in this space for too long. I have zero clue how some old heads have been here for 20+ years. As such, it's becoming much harder to tolerate cringe, posturing, flexing, and generally being an obnoxious debater stereotype. While I will not punish you for it, it will still make me cringe. Be nice to people, there's a difference between being confident and being mean.

I vibe check speaks, I don't know what a 30 looks like, but I can feel it. But that doesn't mean that speaks are arbitrary because my flow checks my vibes. I default to a 28.5 and go higher or lower based on your strategic decisions.

Online debate and its consequences have been a disaster for the debate community. Disclose quickly, don't steal prep. I am growing tired of people that can't manage their files and make a 45-minute round an hour long.

Post UT update: Post rounding is cool and checks against dumb decisions, I frequently make bad decisions and I encourage you ask questions, but do it nicely.

Now for the gross stuff

K

I love the K. I've read many lit bases.

Know your lit, theorize, and don't neglect the material implications of your literature.

I think generic links are fine, but specific links are always better. Saying that a K link is generic and so I should gut check it is never sufficient - you need to explain why a generic link doesn't apply to your aff.

Don't drop your alt unless you're winning a framework push because dropping the alt means that I have to weigh the aff versus the status quo, and 9 out of 10, you will lose that debate.

I default to weighing the aff against the K or something to that effect. If you wan't me to exclude aff offense, you need to do some heavy work.

Fairness is not a good argument if a K team is winning that your model is problematic, justify policy making and then cry about fairness.

Substantive reasons for why they don't get the perm > Theoretical reasons for why they don't get the perm.

You must explain how the perm works for me and the net benefit. Saying "perm do both" - is okay but super weak and usually will not be enough to overcome disads to the perm.

K Affs

Love kritikal affs, but TVAs usually pick up my ballot here. You need to explain your model of debate / method. You should have a strong relationship to the topic or at least explain why a relationship to the topic is bad or doesn't matter.

Framework:

Define how your method of debate works, the benefits only your method can access, and why you can include their model / arguments, even if they can't argue for their perfect advocacy.

Generally speaking, it's okay if the topic excludes your specific author - you don't get the perfect aff sometimes, it is what it is. Debate is about controversies and every advocacy (mostly) will have side-constraints, disadvantages, or criticism from different schools of thought. You should embrace this.

Don't neglect case - if they're winning that their scholarship is good and key, it'll be much harder for you to win this flow.

T

Debatability is not the sole metric that I use to decide T debates. Real world application of literature is another side-constraint of an interpretation.

Sure, your interpretation might produce the most clash, but if there's no exportable topic education, what's the point of clash?

I'm very happy to vote on "Nobody in X field or expertise defines the words in the resolution in a specific way." I hate fake debate T interpretations with 0 real world application.

You need to weigh between standards and different implications of interpretations.

Also weigh definitions - but saying, "Our definition is from a reliable source, and yours isn't." is not an argument.

Competing Interps > Reasonability.

Policy

Deploy whatever arguments you need to win the round.

I love a good counterplan gimmick.

Pics are good. But my default can change.

Delay counterplans are not legit. Unless, the net benefit is fire and super specific.

Process counterplans are suspect, but I'm willing to vote on them.

Actor counterplans are fine.

You must justify judge kick - and say you're kicking something.

Use differential degrees or lense of sufficiency framing to explain how I should evaluate solvency deficits vs. the net benefit of the counterplan.

Weigh between different scenarios please.

Compare warrants and explain why yours are better, this is super neglected in policy and LD especially.

Explain how the PIC solves the aff. I will not give this to you just because you label something a pic.

No opinions on condo, dispo, or how many offs are too much. I will police this more in LD. I think 2 to 3 condo positions + squo is enough neg flex, but you're more than welcome to convince me otherwise. I really don't care.

There can be 0 risk of a DA - but it's very rare. You need to do stellar work here for me to say there's no risk to the DA.

Theory: 3

I don't like these debates in LD - they're way overused.

In policy, theory debates are fine.

Defaults:

Reasonabilty > Competing Interps

No RVIs.

Yes, 1AR theory.

DTA > DTD, unless DTA is impossible.

Tricks:

I used to discriminate against these arguments, but there's no reason why these arguments are any less legit than the K, a DA, or T. I'm just not qualified to be your judge - read at your own risk.

Pranay Ippagunta

Northview AI, IS

Georgia IP

presumptionflipsneg@gmail.com

First and foremost:

'Tech over truth. I do not share the sensibilities of judges who proclaim to be technical and then carve out an exception for death good, wipeout, or planless affirmatives. The only situation in which I will not vote on an argument is when forced to by the Tabroom.

This applies to everything. You do not get a blank check because your opponents’ arguments are “trolls” or “science fiction.” Whether something could be “read identically on a previous topic” has no bearing on whether it rejoins the affirmative. It is my experience and firm belief that the vast majority of judges who describe arguments in such a fashion are incapable of answering them.

With that in mind, I will decide the debate based on the flow and nothing else.'

Carl Jacobsen

[any] I debated for four years at Eisenhower High School. I'm attending the University of North Texas as a sophomore, majoring in mathematics and minoring in linguistics. I tend to view debate rounds through a game-theory perspective and prioritize tech over truth (though every argument needs a justification and impact to matter). In high school, I ran policy affs and mostly went for policy strategies on the neg, though I feel comfortable with mostly every type of argumentation.

Add me to the e-mail chain: sneep23@gmail.com

Please no overviews! If you must read them, make them very short. If I didn't understand your argument the first time, I'm not going to understand it from you speeding through a wall of text. Everything can and should be on line by line.

Graphs

These graphs will be about my preferences, while the rest of the paradigm will be about more specific thoughts on strategy.

Team should adapt------------------------------X-Judge should adapt

Policy---------------X----------------K

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

(insert) Counterplans aren't fair---------------------------X----Counterplans are fun

Nothing competes-------------------------X------Summers 94

Conditionality good-------X------------------------Conditionality bad

Reasonability------------------X-------------Competing interpretations

Topicality

Topicality is a procedural. It primarily comes down to impact calculus, in terms of limits, or some other neg standard, against game-playing-esque impacts of the affirmative. Other aff arguments (including we meet & reasonability) are just defense to the neg's impacts.

A true we meet arg means the aff wins the page; reasonability can be won and is best framed as a question of interpretations rather than a literal "reasonability" of the case. Grammar is an a-priori standard and an intricate explanation of the other team's interpretation not being grammatical or legally precise will earn high speaks.

Additional interps in the block can be very strategic.

Case

A thorough case debate will result in higher speaks, as will a 2ac that's layered and efficient. A 1nc that spends a lot of time on case doesn't do much if all of their arguments are generic and answered well.

Collapsing the case debate in the block and reading the best literature for your arguments will usually put you far ahead of the aff, especially if you had a wide array of args on case in the 1nc. That being said, a 1ar (and often 2ar) collapse on case can also be very strategic.

Strategic concessions are underutilized on case, and can often take out entire disads.

Impact turns are fun, even large ones such as spark. "Oppression good" args are unacceptable. A block pivot to an impact turn will be rewarded.

Disads on case seem to be generally under-covered by the aff but have no less importance than a disad with a seperate sheet.

Disadvantages

"UQ/link controls link/UQ" args don't make sense to me, but links tend to be the most important component. DA turns case args are very powerful (especially so if you have multiple), and they are even better if they are UQ or Link turns case rather than "war causes their impact." Timeframe is underutilized by the negative.

New 1AR arguments are unacceptable, e.g. a non-uq arg when there were none in the 2ac, and a 2n who calls them out as new will be rewarded. But an additional justification for an argument that was in the 2ac, e.g. a "DIB collapse inevitable--reliance on Congress" card is fine if you have any UQ argument in the 2ac; answering new block arguments is always fine.

An impressive 1nr on a DA will earn high speaks. Extending multiple warrants from each card for every component, having case-specific link walls, having specific cards against individual 2ac warrants, and being knowledgeable about the institutions and topic of the DA make it very difficult for the 1a.

Politics DA's (particularly horsetrading) are good, but "fiat solves the link--bottom of docket"-esque arguments can be persuasive.

Counterplans

"Cheating" counterplans are fine, but always susceptible to theory. Permutations can beat them too, but few people tend to make the correct perms against them. Perm shields link arguments aren't usually answered well, so don't be afraid for going for a perm and one or two other args if you're aff.

I default to "sufficiency framing," solvency deficits have to have impacts to matter. Judge kick might be an extension of condo, but it doesn't often win rounds. I can also be persuaded that it's bad (this argument has to be in the 1ar unless the block makes no mention of judge kick, of course).

Kicking planks and even combining counterplan sheets are fine, but there can always be a debate.

Internal net benefits are fine.

Kritiks

Kritiks are very powerful arguments. I am most familiar with Baudrillard, kritiks of capitalism and security, and psychoanalysis. However, any kritik is fine if you have a consistent thesis and explanation.

Links should turn case and have independent impacts. Alt should solve links, and alt solves case arguments can be very good. Even if the alt doesn't solve case, going for it as a "uniqueness counterplan" for an extinction level impact to a link is good enough to win even with little case offense if you win the perm debate and that the alt solves the link completely.

You don't need to go for the alt if you're winning FW and/or a link well enough. Permutations need to solve every link and must be theoretically legitimate and possible, i.e. negs should argue the alt cannot be accomplished because the aff engages in institutions that the alt makes obsolete.

Aff FW interps are usually not ambitious enough and should include more that factors the intangible internal link chains of the K out of the decision-making process, since the neg team is doing such against the aff. Basically one should say more than "let us weigh the aff", as an interp, but including that phrase isn't a bad idea. You can still lose if you win your FW interp, but it's far more unlikely. Incorporating the substance of the K into your FW interp can make it more powerful.

Link uniqueness is a good thing for the aff to push on, but the neg can solve it with claims about discourse or their alt solving the link. The aff should always contest the thesis of the K and the solvency of the alt, at least in the 2ac.

Dropping K tricks will lose the round against a clever 2n.

Kritikal Affirmatives

I don't have any qualms with these affs, but I also don't have any issues with T-USFG. Use the case to leverage offense against T; impact turns are the best arguments against it. Winning debate is a game, a TVA, or switch-side makes a negative ballot much easier.

Cap K against K affs is always viable. Good links in the block and theory comparison is crucial.

Case debate on K affs is not used enough by either team.

Theory

Can always be a reason to reject the team. However, "reject the arg not the team" will almost always suffice for anything that isn't condo. However, if you're losing a debate badly and the other team drops a theory interpretation, this could be your best path to victory, provided you have reasons they should lose the round.

If you don't want to go for theory, going for a 'remedy' can be useful and possible: e.g. "stick them with the counterplan", "don't evaluate planks that violate the interp", etc.

Condo offense typically doesn't increase with the number of condo they run. Qualitative reasons condo is bad are more persuasive, and even one condo can be abusive in the right circumstances. If you're going for condo, the 1ar should be spending significant time answering every neg standard, and the 2ar should be entirely condo.

You can go quickly in theory, but signposting is especially important.

Finishing Thoughts

Speed is not a problem, but you must be comprehensible. Clarity is more important, and efficiency can more than make up for pure speed. Have fun, and making me smile is never a bad idea. 28.5 will be my average points awarded. Being rude makes it worse for everyone. Let me know if I can accommodate you in any way.

**Just a brief update for the high school community on the IPR topic:

This is a difficult topic for high school students to fully understand. You might be best served by keeping it simple.

T - Subsets -- Waste of time.

Process CPs - Good luck with these in front of me.

If you feel the need to not take prep before the 2AC or 2NC, good luck with that as well in front of me.

**Updated Summer 2024**

Yes I would like to be on the email chain: jordanshun@gmail.com

I will listen to all arguments, but a couple of caveats:

-This doesn't mean I will understand every element of your argument.

-I have grown extremely irritated with clash debates…take that as you please.

-I am a firm believer that you must read some evidence in debate. If you differ, you might want to move me down the pref sheet.

Note to all: In high school debate, there is no world where the Negative needs to read more than 5 off case arguments. SO if you say 6+, I'm only flowing 5 and you get to choose which you want me to flow.
In college debate, I might allow 6 off case arguments :/

Good luck to all!

Misc Info --

Email:addison.kane00@gmail.com

Pronouns she/her

Northside Debate (2014-2018), Michigan Debate (2018-2020)

Coached Niles North High School from 2020-2022

I will be judging you remotely, as I now live in London.

Background --

The last debate round I judged was in February 2023, I have not thought about debate whatsoever since that time. I expect while judging, that norms and buzzwords will come back to me very quickly, but I do want to be transparent that it has been quite a while, and my head has not been in the game.

When I debated for Northside and subsequently Michigan, I debated primarily kritikal arguments, usually Queer Theory or Postmodernism. However, I did begin my debate career debating traditional policy, and coached multiple strictly policy teams from Niles North to TOC outrounds. From 2018 to 2022, I judged multiple hundreds of high school debates, in literally every medium, so I don't give any care about what style of debate you prefer. Just make creative, unique, and captivating arguments and defend those arguments well.

Since leaving the U.S. in 2022, I have received a master's degree in Environmental Policy and now work in the charity sector. I have involved myself in numerous London-based movements and protests surrounding trans rights, housing rights, and climate injustice. I have also taken part in both local and online mutual aid networks primarily focused on helping struggling trans folks with various needs. I have personally found that while debate helped me succeed in my writing and critical thinking skills, its hyper-competitive environment and insular nature were ultimately barriers towards truly understanding the ins and outs of on-the-ground organizing and advocacy work. If I am to judge a clash of civs debate, I would like a clear articulation of your vision for what debates look like under your framework, and what effect it has in debaters themselves to motivate efforts to create material change.

I will enter debates with a few givens in mind such as that genocide, imperialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, inequality, climate change are all bad things that are very real. I will not be impressed with teams that attempt to impact turn obvious truths about the world using bogus science and political hacks. If there is an argument you want to present that you are not certain applies to this sentiment, just ask me prior to the round and I will let you know.

My final note is that I think that debate is first and foremost a performative activity. Clarity is crucial, especially over Zoom. I want to be able to feel that debaters have a strong knowledge of the arguments they are making, and not just reading pre-written scripts. If a debater is making an argument and sounds like they have no idea if what they're arguing saying is actually correct, or they are are unable to hold the warrants up in cross-ex, I'm unlikely to vote for that argument, even if I could possibly justify it as a concession on the flow. Additionally, a convincing well-warranted analytic can beat pretty much any card, good and smart off-the-cuff rebuttals will usually beat out blocked out analytics. Historical examples of things are nice too.

Texas DK

arnavdebates+judging@gmail.com

LD Update

While I will remain technical, I am not sure how the affirmative wins debates. I expect to vote affirmative in ~25% of debates.

background

gbn '20 & umich '24

she/her/hers

yes email chain- aylakaufmandebate@gmail.com

2023-2024 topic

limited experience with the topic (only 1 tournament). 1) define your acronyms 2) spend more time explaining your t interp 3) give me a dummy proof explanation of whatever complicated technical thing you're going for. i don't know topic norms or arguments, act accordingly.

top level

1. debate should be a safe place for all people. if at any point i feel that the safety of a debater is being compromised, i will not hesitate to intervene.

2. a debate round is about 2 hours, involves 8 speeches that follow time limits, and no participation beyond the four debaters and the judge(s).

3. tech over truth. if it's dropped, it's unquestionably true. but you need to impact out why what was dropped matters. ev matters when you tell me it matters.

below are a list of my opinions in the abstract. everything below is subject to change based on the round and technical debating.

policy affs

framing: generic "no war" or "probability first" doesn't make much sense if you don't also win the disad. reading a 2ac overview is not responsive to the neg's 1nc shell.

you will be rewarded for specific and thorough case debate.

k affs

you should read a plan. i am easily persuaded by t usfg.

to win a k aff in front of me: it is not enough to win the 1ac was important or just a disad to t. t usfg is not the aff versus t but the aff's model of the topic versus the negs. for the aff to win, they must defend a model for debate and win a disad to the neg's interp that is a net benefit to theirs.

i will have no idea what to do if you run a k vs a k aff.

k's

the more your k is debated like a disad/counterplan the more i will understand it, like it, and be inclined to vote for you.

tips: over-explain and simplify everything, have aff specific links, be organized, do lbl, have an alt that solves, and slow down.

do not: read death good, use jargon, repeat yourself 8x with different big words, read a long overview.

i do not understand: anthro, bataille, high theory, cybernetics, nietzche, schopenhauer, or weird k's.

t/procedurals

in the 2nr and 2ar please do a brief overview of what you want my ballot to be and include impact calc. judge direction is especially important in these debates and i have found myself struggling to sift through what arguments are important unless they are flagged as such and there's an explanation for WHY those arguments are important. i feel like in t debates it's very common for teams to extend their offense but not do much clash, "even if" statements, or judge direction which means that some level of intervention always happens.

legal precision > limits > ground.

aspec is a theory argument and should be treated as such.

i find effects t to be entirely unpersuasive.

cp's

everything with a solvency advocate, and especially if it's aff or topic specific, i'll likely think is okay.

condo: unlikely to be abusive unless there's in round abuse. kicking planks is fine. don't mistake this as permission for spamming unnaturally short, made up, barely highlighted, or analytical counterplans.

theory args i'm more murky on: object fiat, international fiat, private fiat, and 2nc cps for no reason other than you are losing.

if your perm is not pdb or pdcp: simplify your explanations and spend more time articulating your competition arguments.

da's

i'm totally down for your crazy illogical ptx da. however, i do find disads about whether congress will or will not pass a bill to be boring.

fiat doesn't solve the link and ptx theory isn't a thing.

aff specific da's, links, and impact calculus will be rewarded.

impact turns

i am decently well read on: dedev, executive flex, heg, and soft power bad.

spark/wipeout/strikes good: let’s not.

warming: is bad.

misc.

send cards in a doc, not the body of the email.

you can't insert re-highlightings you must read them.

no clipping. auto loss.

i can't adjudicate issues that occur outside of the round.

speaker points

28 to 29.5- probably where you'll end up.

26- you were rude, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc.

you should have your zoom camera on for the entire round. speaking from a dark abyss is just weird and i will assume that you're stealing prep. just lmk if you have bandwidth/camera problems.

ways to boost your speaker points

put me on the email chain without asking.

good lbl, warrant comparison, judge direction.

use lower case letters, blue highlighting, and calibri font.

be nice, have fun, make conversation, and joke about people i'm friends with or me.

ways to lower your speaker points

double turn yourself (especially with dedev).

send your speech in anything other than a word document.

not start the round on time.

Sarah Lawrence '25, Caddo Magnet High '21, she/her, yes I want to be on the email chain-- ejarlawrence@gmail.com

Top-Level: I prefer a fast, technical debate and default to evaluating debates as a policymaker, but can be persuaded otherwise. Don't overadapt - debate is a game, and winning your arguments is what matters. I like to reward good evidence, but I won't be reading every card after the round unless it is flagged or a close debate and good evidence is not an excuse for unwarranted debating/little explanation.

T vs policy affs: I don't enjoy close definitions debates. T debates where the interpretation becomes clear only in CX of the 2NC or later will be very hard to reward with my ballot. I understand that good T debates happen (T-LPR on immigration comes to mind) but if the topic doesnt have easily understandable, legally precise definitions based in government literature (CJR comes to mind) I'm going to err towards reasonability more than anyone I know. Plan text in a vaccum probably sucks, but if you can't articulate a clear alternative you probably can't win. Predictability probably outweighs debatability.

T vs K affs: Debate is probably a game, but probably also more than that, and neither team's offense is likely truly reliant on winning this anyway. Fairness is probably an impact, but it is frequently pretty small. Neg teams that clearly explain what the aff's interpretation justifies (ie. internal link debating) and why that's bad are more likely to win my ballot. Aff teams that come up with a counter-interp that attempts to solve for some limits/predictability seem more instinctively reasonable to me than those who try to impact turn things I think are probably good like predictability, but either strategy is fine.

Counterplans/Theory: Theory other than conditionality/perfcon is probably not a voter. On a truth level, I think being neg in a world without massive conditionality and theoretical abuse is impossible on lots of hs topics. Given that, I'm actually fairly familiar with and interested in hearing good condo debating- competing interps means if you have something explainable and not arbitrary (infinite condo, infinite dispo, no condo) and can articulate some standards I won't hack for anyone. Default to judge kick, but can be convinced not to, counterplans should probably be textually and functionally competitive, I'd love to hear a real debate on positional competition but I'm not optimistic.

Disads: Uniqueness matters, and determines offense on the link level, but win the link too. No politics disad is true, but some politics disads are more true than others. These were my favorite arguments to cut and go for, and interesting scenarios that are closer to the truth or strategic will be rewarded with speaks. I'm of the somewhat controversial opinion they make for good education and the less controversial one lots of topics are unworkable for the neg without them, so don't go for intrinsicness/floortime DAs bad theory.

Impact Turns: Nothing much to say here, other than a reassurance I will not check out on something I find unpersuasive in real life (any of the war good debates, spark, wipeout). If you can't beat it, update your blocks.

Impact Framing/Soft Left Impacts: I default to utilitarian consequentialism, and have a strong bias in favor of that as a way to evaluate impacts. If you want to present another way to evaluate impacts, PLEASE tell me what it means for my ballot and how I evaluate it. "Overweight probability" is fine for the 1AC, but by the 1AR I should know if that means I ONLY evaluate probability/disregard probabilities under 1%/don't evaluate magnitudes of infinity. Anything else means you're going to get my super arbitrary and probably fairly utilitarian impulse. I would love if whoever's advocating for ex risks would do the same, but I have a better handle on what your deal means for the ballot, so I don't need as much help. "Util Bad" without an alternative is very unpersuasive - BUT a fleshed out alternative can be very strategic.

K vs Policy Affs: I vote neg most often in these debates when the neg can lose framework but win case takeouts or an impact to the K that outweighs and turns the aff. I vote neg somewhat often in these debates when the aff does a bad job explaining the internal links of their FW interp or answering negative impacts (which is still pretty often). For security type Ks, it seems like some people think they can convince me sweeping IR theories or other impacts are false with all the knowledge of a high schooler. Read a card, or I will assume the aff's 3 cards on China Revisionist/cyber war real are true and the K is false.

Brief tangent ahead: If you think the above statement re: the security K does not apply to you because you have a fun way to get around this by saying "it doesn't matter if the K is false because we shouldn't just use Truth to determine whether statements are good to say", I think you're probably wrong. You're critiquing a theory of how we should evaluate the merits of Saying Stuff (traditionally Truth, for whatever value we can determine it) without providing an alternative. So, provide an alternative way for me to determine the merits of Saying Stuff or you're liable to get my frustration and fairly arbitrary decisionmaking on whether you've met the very high burden required to win this. I've judged like four debates now which revolved around this specific issue and enjoyed evaluating none of them. Aff teams when faced with this should ask a basic question like "how do we determine what statements are good outside of their ability to explain the world" please. First person I see do this will get very good speaker points. TLDR: treat your epistemological debates like util good/bad debates and I will enjoy listening to them. Don't and face the consequences.

K vs K affs: I've now judged a few of these debates, and have found when the aff goes for the perm they're very likely to get my ballot absent basically losing the thesis of the affirmative (which has happened). This means I don't think "the aff doesn't get perms in a method debate" is a nonstarter. Other than that, my background in the literature is not strong, so if your link relies on a nuanced debate in the literature, I'm going to need a lot of explanation.

Miscellaneous: These are unsorted feelings I have about debate somewhere between the preferences expressed above and non-negotiables below.

For online debate: Debaters should endeavor to keep their cameras on for their speeches as much as possible. I find that I'm able to pay much more attention to cx and give better speaker comments. Judging online is hard and staring at four blank screens makes it harder.

I am becoming somewhat annoyed with CX of the 1NC/2AC that starts with "did you read X" or "what cards from the doc did you not read" and will minorly (.1, .2 if it's egregious) reduce your speaks if you do this. I am MORE annoyed if you try to make this happen outside of speech or prep time. 2As, have your 1A flow the 1NC to catch these things. 2Ns, same for your 1Ns. If the speaker is particularly unclear or the doc is particularly disorganized, this goes away.

At my baseline, I think about the world in a more truth over tech way. My judging strategy and process is optimized to eliminate this bias, as I think its not a good way to evaluate debate rounds, but I am not perfect. You have been warned.

I am gay. I am not a good judge for queerness arguments. This isn't a "you read it you lose/i will deck speaks" situation, but you have been warned its a harder sell than anything else mentioned

For LD/PF: I have judged very little of either of these events; I have knowledge of the content of the topic but not any of its conventions. I understand the burden for warranted arguments (especially theory) is lower in LD than in policy - I'm reluctant to make debaters entirely transform their style, so I won't necessarily apply my standard for argument depth, but if the one team argues another has insufficiently extended an argument, I will be very receptive to that.

Non-negotiables:

In high school policy debate, both teams get 8 minutes for constructives, 5 minutes for rebuttals, 3 minutes for CX, and however many minutes of prep time the tournament invitation says. CX is binding. There is one winner and one loser. I will flow. I won't vote on anything that did not occur in the round (personal attacks, prefs, disclosure, etc.). I think a judge's role is to determine who won the debate at hand, not who is a better person outside of it. If someone makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, I will assist you in going to tab so that they can create a solution, but I don't view that as something that the judge should decide a debate on.

You have to read rehighlightings, you can't just insert them. If I or the other team notice you clipping or engaging in another ethics violation prohibited by tournament rules and it is found to be legitimate, it's an auto-loss and I will give the lowest speaks that I can give.

It'll be hard to offend me but don't say any slurs or engage in harmful behavior against anyone else including racism, sexism, homophobia, intentionally misgendering someone, etc. I see pretty much all arguments as fair game but when that becomes personally harmful for other people, then it's crossed a line. I've thankfully never seen something like this happen in a debate that I've been in but it'd be naive to act like it's never happened. The line for what is and is not personally harmful to someone is obviously very arbitrary but that applies to almost all things in debate, so I think it's fair to say that it is also up to the judge's discretion for when the line has been crossed.

Elizabeth Li

Woodward Academy 22'

Tufts University 26'

Debated with Harvard as Harvard/Tufts KL and Tufts LS 2022-2023

Last Updated: 01/07/2024

Pronouns: she/her

Please add me to the email chain: elizabethsyli805@gmail.com

Top Level

Have fun, be respectful, and make the most of your debates.

Be clear, have clash, and compare and contextualize your arguments.

Feel free to email or ask me directly if you have any questions!

Online Debate

It's especially important that you focus on clarity for online debates. Speak a bit slower and have organized line by line.

Please also send out a speech document and analytics.

General

Ultimately, you do you, but explain your arguments clearly and why they mean that you should win the debate. This requires clear line by line, warranted claims, comparison with your opponent's arguments, and judge instruction.

Contextualizing links and doing impact calc goes a long way.

Evidence quality is important. If you point out specific evidence and explain why it is better than your opponent's, I will read it.

Conduct your own cross-ex as much as possible and try to minimize speaking over each other. Also, try to use cross-ex strategically to bolster your position.

Please do not hide ASPEC.

Please do not read positions like "death good" in front of me.

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.

Been involved with the game in some way since 2008, do as you wish and I shall evaluate it in the way that I feel requires the least interference from myself.

Put me on the chain please: debate.emails@gmail.com, for the most part I do not look at the documents other than some cursory glances during prep time if a card intrigues me. I still may ask for specific cards at the end of the debate so I do not need to sort through each document, I appreciate it in advance. I may also ask for permutation and Counterplans texts since y’all speed through these things nowadays like an armadillo in the thicket.

I believe that debate is a communication activity with an emphasis on persuasion. If you are not clear or have not extended all components of an argument (claim/warrant/implication) it will not factor into my decision.

I flow on paper, it is how I was taught and I think it helps me retain more information and be more present in debates. I would appreciate yall slowing down and giving me pen time on counterplan texts and theory arguments (as well as permutations).

The most important thing in debates for me is to establish a framework for how (and why) I should evaluate impacts. I am often left with two distinct impacts/scenarios at the end of the debate without any instruction on how to assess their validity vis-à-vis one another or which one to prioritize. The team that sets this up early in the debate and filters the rebuttals through it often gets my ballot. I believe that this is not just true of “clash” debates but is (if not even more) an important component of debates where terminal impacts are the same but their scenarios are not (i.e .two different pathways to nuclear war/extinction).

While I think that debate is best when the affirmative is interacting with the resolution in some way. I have no sentiment about how this interaction need to happen, nor a dogmatic stance that 1AC’s have a relation to the resolution.

I have voted for procedural fairness and have also voted for the impact turns. Despite finding myself voting more and more for procedural fairness I am much more persuaded by fairness as an internal link rather than a terminal impact. Affirmative’s often beat around the bush and have trouble deciding if they want to go for the impact turn or the middle ground, I think picking a strategy and going for it will serve you best. A lot of 2NRs squander very good block arguments by not spending enough time (or any) at the terminal impact level, please don’t be those people. I also feel as if most negative teams spend much time reading definitions in the 1NC and do not utilize them later in the debate even absent aff counter definitions which seems like wasted 1NC time.

My small 2024ish update on framework/topicality is- I think teams have gotten far worse at going for the impact turns and might be better served explaining why their change in stasis point is good and still allows us to debate a portion of the resolution. I’ve voted far more for “unpredictability is good” than “topicality is racist.” Telling me a team going for topicality is the same as the “prl” lacks all three components of an argument. I’m still very down to check in on topicality is a tool used to eliminate perspectives from debate but I think the level of explanation has declined to a point where it’s hard for me to vote on in recent years. I have voted for fiat causes heart attacks almost as many times as I have for “you dropped completion shapes debate means you shouldn’t evaluate the impact turns.” As someone who judges a lot of clash debates I am hopeful to see innovation on BOTH sides of this game. I may be crazy (probably am) but I enjoy judging clash debates and encourage everyone to diversify these debates more often than the every 6-10 year cycle it feels we have been on.

While it does not impact how I evaluate the flow I do reward teams with better speaker points when they have unique and substantive framework takes beyond the mostly prewritten impact turn or clash good blocks that have proliferated the game (this is also something you should be doing to counter the blocktastic nature of modern framework debates).

It would behove many teams and debaters to extend their evidence by author name in the 2NR/2AR. I tend to not read a large amount of evidence and think the trend of sending out half the 1AC/1NC in the card document is robbing teams of a fair decision, so narrowing in and extending the truly relevant pieces of evidence by author name increases both my willingness to read those cards and my confidence that you have a solid piece of evidence for a claim rather than me being asked to piece together an argument from a multitude of different cards.

Prep time ends when the email has been sent. In the past few years so much time is being spent saving documents, gathering flows, setting up a stand etc. that it has become egregious and ultimately, I feel limits both my decision time and my ability to deliver criticism after the round. Limited prep is a huge part of what makes the activity both enjoyable and competitive. I said in my old philosophy that policing this is difficult, however I will now take the extra time beyond roadmaps/speech time into account when I determine speaker points.

I find myself frustrated in debates where the final rebuttals are only about theory. I do not judge many of these debates and the ones I have feel like there is an inevitable modicum of judge intervention. While I have voted for conditonality bad several times, personally my thought on condo is "don't care get better."

Plan-text writing has become a lost art and should invite negative advocacy attrition and/or substantive topicality debates.

Feel free to email or ask any questions before or after the debate. I have been privileged to coach some incredible competitors and judge some awesome debaters, I will do my best to give yall the same level of judging I think they deserve(d) and beyond.

Above all else enjoy the game you get to play and have fun.

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

Experience:

Competitor-- Winston Churchill (2008-2012)

Assistant Coaching--

Past: Jenks (2012-2015) Reagan (2015-2017) Winston Churchill (2018-2023)

Currently: Texas (2017-present)

File sharing: My preference these days is to use the tabroom or NSDA campus file share system. If you absolutely need to use email chain then:

gavinloyddebate@gmail.com - please format the subject as "Tournament Name -- Round # -- Aff School AF vs. Neg School NG." Example: "TOC -- Finals -- MBA BM vs. WY MM."

If you have any questions before the round starts, please don't hesitate to ask.

LD specific stuff is at the very bottom.

Quick Bio:

Hebron '20. Did CX all 4 years. Read K affs/negs sophomore-senior year. 2A Soph, 2N Junior, 2A Senior.

UT Austin '24

TLDR:

Spreading - Yes

Open CX - Yes

Flex Prep - Yes, but only clarifying questions

No Plan Text (Varsity/JV)- Yes

No Plan Text (Novice) - No

Kritiks - Yes

Disclosure Theory -- Ideally, you'll have some proof of mis/lack of disclosure to make things easier, but I'm willing to vote on it.

Cards in Body of the Email - You get 1 per speech given. If there are more cards than that, then you put them in a document.

If you open-source and do round reports with the details of the 1AC, 1NC, and 2NR, tell me right when the round ends, and I'll increase your speaks by .2 after checking.

I do not keep track of your prep unless you explicitly ask me to and there's some reason you can't do it.

General Philosophy:

I conceptualize much of debate as who is winning the "framing issue." How do I evaluate offense, what do I prioritize, post fiat or pre-fiat? Answer this question of debate for me, and it'll give you a strong cushion to supercharge your line by line and gives me very simple ways to conceptualize my RFD.

I'll vote on anything, but some things I'm more comfortable evaluating than others. My debate history was entirely Ks, but don't over-adapt to me.

Reconcile what impacts come first or how to weigh them relative to your opponent's.

If you say something racist or sexist, I reserve the right to drop you and go on about my day.

Disadvantages:

Look, it's a DA; just extend it properly, please.

Ideally, do not read a soft left DA versus a plan text aff.

Counterplans:

Clever counter-plans and PICS are fun. Generics are also fun if run well. I probably lean neg on most CP theory except for consult and solvency advocate.

If a CP text just has "do the aff" or something similar instead of explicitly saying the portion of the aff that the CP is doing, the Aff team can just say "They don't know how to write a plan text. They don't fiat an action - textuality matters so they don't get the part of the CP that claims to do the aff" and that will be sufficient for the aff to win that portion of the CP, or maybe all of it depending on the context.

Kritiks:

UPDATE 3/3/25: Now that I'm a few years out from actively debating, I'm certainly less well-versed in K literature than I once was. This likely means K teams need more explanation of their theory of power and sneaky K tricks to win my ballot.

4-minute overviews make me cry. Case-specific links are great. Generic links are fine and can definitely be won.

I have the most experience with Settler Colonialism, Afropess, Virilio, Heidegger, Cap, and Black Nihilism. However, I also have worked with Ks like Agamben, Baudrillard, Foucault, Security, Queer Theory, Psychoanalysis, etc. That does not mean I will do the work to fill in the analysis for you.

Unfortunately, most framework debates in the 2NR/2AR often become meaningless with a lack of clash. At that point, I functionally default to weigh the aff, but the K gets its links in whatever form they are. If this isn't strategic for you, put the work in and win FW by answering their stuff and not just extending yours.

I'll vote on all the cheaty K tricks like floating PIKS or all in on FW. Similarly, I'll vote on hard right approaches to answering Ks, whether that means going all-in on heg good/impact turning the K.

Root cause arguments are not links. If your only link is just a root cause, then I won't be voting negative.

I seem to judge a fair amount of Wilderson/Warren debates, so here are a few things.

On the state good side -- just winning a list of reforms isn't enough for me. I need to hear a clear counter-theorization of how the world operates and comparative claims to take out social death/equivalent claims. Reforms prove that counter-theorization but don't make a theory itself. This doesn't require reinventing the wheel. Think "progress is possible. institutions are malleable tools of humanity and biases can be overcome."

On the Wilderson/Warren side -- you need to justify your theory of the world rather than rehashing debate's greatest hits. Saying "Jim crow to prison industrial complex" repeatedly does not make a full argument. Ideally, I'll hear some thesis-level explanation, like a few seconds on social death or what the libidinal economy is, rather than just "extend the conceded libidinal economy." The "Jim Crow to PIC" explanation requires the thesis-level explanation to be true.

For both teams -- I've found that I decide most debates by who undercovers ontology/libidinal economy the most. Many arguments on the flow come secondary to winning this and applying it to those other things, so identify what you can afford to give up to make my decision easier. You can still win ontology/metaphysics and lose the debate, but there are fewer scenarios where that's true.

University K's that PIK out of the university or debate suck. Do with that information as you will.

Kritikal Affs:

For the negative - I am a bad judge for going for fairness as a terminal impact. So, I'll probably need some external benefit to fairness like clash. Don't read this as me being dogmatically against voting on fairness. Instead, I need an incredibly robust explanation of fairness with significant case mitigation to vote on it. A couple of conditions that the neg ideally meets at least one of for me to vote on fairness as the 2NR terminal impact include:

1. Dropped TVA/Neg is clearly ahead on TVA that solves all of the Aff's offense.

2. The aff has failed to explain a counter-model for what debate is/should be and concedes that debate is only a game with no implication past that.

3. Significant explanation for how fairness implicates and turns aff offense at the level of the aff's explanation, not just generic claims.

4. External offense not within that framework flow that impact turns the Aff's value claims and implicates the Aff's fw offense.

Independent of all that, fairness is a great controlling IL to filter things, so definitely leverage it as a part of other impacts if you go that route.

Ks vs the K aff are cool. A good debate here is realistically one of the top places I'll give high speaks along with impact turns. I default to the aff gets a perm, but feel free to win they don't. Just winning your theory of power isn't sufficient for me to vote negative, but it definitely supercharges link arguments.

Impact turns are great. Feel free just to drop 10 scenarios and challenge the fundamental assumptions of the 1AC.

DAs -- if a K team is trying to be tricky and give you topic DAs. Feel free to go for the DA and CP, but make sure you have case mitigation or some framing device.

For the aff -

You need to either win a) your model is better than theirs or b) their model is really, really bad if you don't have a c/i.

I find myself voting negative in these debates when the Aff fails to give me a framing argument to filter negative offense.

Be ready to defend your solvency mechanism if it is attacked. I need a coherent story about what my voting aff does. Do I signify a good political strategy, does my ballot literally break the system (lol), does it change mindsets, etc. Presumption is persuasive. Don't disrespect it by under-covering it.

I'm not the judge for rounds where you and the opponent agree to have a "discussion" and talk about important issues outside the traditional speech times of debate. These things are likely important, but I don't want to have to decide on something like that. It requires too much judge intervention for my liking. Strike me if this is something you plan on doing. If you do not strike me and this type of round happens, then I am flipping a coin. Heads for the aff. Tails for the neg.

Topicality:

I am not anywhere near the best judge for T. If your A strat is Topicality, then I'd recommend striking me. If you are forced to go for T in the 2NR/answering it the 2AR, then hold my hand through the RFD and explain how things should interact.

If you're put in a position where T is your only option, don't worry and keep the things below in mind.

I default to competing interpretations.

Give me a case list, especially if it's a weirder interp.

Go slower than you would with a DA/K/CP. I find it harder to flow T than other off-cases at high speed.

Make sure you tell me why I should vote for you rather than just have floating offense.

Weird and Random Technical Things:

Speech times are a rule, while things like topicality are a norm. That means I'm willing to entertain a debate about the benefits of topicality/FW vs. a K aff. If you speak over the timer, I will not flow or evaluate what you are saying, even if it is a part of your argumentation.

No, the neg will never get a 3NR.

I greatly dislike completely new 1AR cards if the argument was made in the 1NC and dropped in the 2AC. There is a big gray area here for what it means to be "dropped," but you should be able to realize what is abusive or not.

1NC/1AC mistakes -- if you read something like a CP or T and forget to read some critical component or have a massive typo in that critical component (where relevant), the 2NC is not an "oopsie, we can revise that" speech. This also includes situations where a policy aff forgets to read a plan text in the 1ac. If your T/FW shell is missing a violation in the 1NC, you do not get to create one in the 2NC. If you read a CP text with a massive typo including part of the text of a different 1AC from a previous round rather than the 1ac you are debating, you don't get a new one in the 2NC. However, if you have a typo in your speech doc and verbally correct yourself in the 1NC, I am completely ok with that revision. I'm sure other judges and people in the community have different opinions about what the 2NC/2AC can and can't do, but I'm going to be transparent about my bias. Theoretically, you could argue to change my mind in the debate, but it will be an incredible uphill battle.

Off-case positions should be clearly labeled in the 1NC.

I'll generally evaluate inserted rehighlighting of the opponent's evidence. There is obviously a point where a team could abuse this -- don't do that. But, I think that teams should be punished for under highlighting/mis highlighting their evidence. Due to time trade-offs/competitive incentives, I think that forcing you to verbally re-read the evidence punishes you more. Essentially, one or two key inserted rehighlightings is fine, but if you're inserting the entire 1ac re-highlighted, that's not ok.

Don't say "brief off-time roadmap." Just say roadmap, please.

The only thing I want to hear in your roadmap is the name of off-case positions and specific case pages. If there's a large overview, then maybe add that to the roadmap. "Impact calculus" happens within one of those flows, so just signpost in speech rather than making it a part of the roadmap.

Please don't send pdfs. Verbatim > Unverbatimized Word > Google Docs > Pdfs.

LD --

I am not evaluating tricks.

In order of args I'm best suited to judge (best to worst) -- K, LARP, Phil, Tricks.

Most of my thoughts on policy debate apply to LD. However, the way y'all debate T, theory, procedurals, etc sounds like a second language to me that is vaguely mutually intelligible to my own. I'm not great for these arguments in policy, so I'm probably even worse for them in LD. Y'all will need to be very clear and overexplain argument interaction to get my ballot

Top shelf:

Pronouns are she/her

Just call me Alyssa or ALB - do not call me judge and dear debate Lord do not call me ma'am.

RE: Truf's flowing off the doc post - times I look at the doc:

-I typically will read the plan text and CP texts during the round in the sense that if I mis flow those we are all kinda cooked. I spot check for clipping on cards every once in a while. If there is an ornate perm text I will check that during the debate. If a specific piece of evidence is called into question during CX or during a speech I may check that piece of ev during CX or during prep. Besides that I will not under any circumstances flow off the doc. If you are unclear and I therefore do not understand your argument I could not expect your opponents to and therefore I will not vote for you.

Email chains: SonomaCardsCardsCards@gmail.com AND alyssa.lucas-bolin@sonomaacademy.org AND ipostround@googlegroups.com I strongly prefer email chains over speech drop etc.

I deleted most of my paradigm

...Because I have run into way way way too many situations where people wildly misinterpret my paradigm and it leads to a rather miserable situation (mostly for myself.)

Debate well and we'll figure it out.

I'd prefer you talk about the topic and that your affirmative be in the direction of the topic. I could not possibly care less if that is via policy debate or K debate. False divide yada yada. Both policy teams and K teams are guilty of not actually talking about the topic and I am judging ALL of you.

Speed is fine but I need clear distinction between arguments and I need you to build up your speed for the first 10 seconds.

Tag team is fine but I'd prefer that the designated partner handle most of the cross ex - only intervene if it is absolutely necessary. I am an educator and would prefer to see each student develop their skill set.

Stop stealing prep.

Please make as many T Swift references as possible.

Have solvency advocates - plz plz plz don't read a cardless CP :(

Heavy stuff:

*No touching. Handshakes after the debate = fine but that is it.

*I am not the right judge for call outs of specific debate community members

*I am a mandatory reporter. Keep that in mind if you are reading any type of personal narrative etc in a debate. A mandatory reporter just means that if you tell me something about experiencing violence etc that I have to tell the authorities.

*I care about you and your debate but I am not your debate mommy. I am going to give you direct feedback after the debate. I won't be cruel but I'm also not a sugar coater. It takes some people off guard because they may be expecting me to coddle them. It's just not my personality - I deeply care about your debate career and want you to do your best. I also am just very passionate about arguments. If you're feeling like I'm being a little intense just Shake It Off (Lauren Ivey.)

*Clipping = zero points and a hot L. Clarity to the point of non-comprehension that causes a clipping challenge constitutes clipping.

*I am more than fine with you post rounding as long as you keep it respectful. I would genuinely prefer you understand my decision than walk out frustrated because that doesn't help you win the next time. Bring it on (within reason). I'm back in the ring baby.

Let's have a throwdown!!! If you're reading this before a round I am excited to see what you have to offer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*wear a mask if you are any degree of ill*

neutral or they/them pronouns // aprilmayma@gmail.com

me: 4 yrs TOC circuit policy @ Blue Valley West ('19: surveillance, china, education, immigration) // BA Political Science @ UC Berkeley ('22) // [Current] PhD student, Political Science @ Johns Hopkins. did not debate in college.

conflicts: college prep (2019-present), georgetown day (2023-2024), calvert hall (2023-2024)

judging stats: 264 sum, aff: 126(46.8%) - neg: 143(53.2%) // panels: 63, sat: 6x, split: 19 // decisions regretted: like 2, maybe 3

non-policy: dabbled but will evaluate like a policy judge.

its been a hot minute since ive judged, have mercy on me

[][][][][]***i literally dont know anything about this topic!***[][][][][] read:I know nothing :-)

___

juj preferences

[me] my debate opinions are influenced primarily by KU-affiliated/Kansas debate diaspora (ian beier, allie chase, matt munday, jyleesa hampton, box, hegna, Q, countless others, peers I had the privilege to debate against). i read heg affs as a 2A. I went for the K, impact turn & adv cp, and T as a 2N. Great for policy/T, policy/policy & policy/K, OK for K/policy, mid for K/K & theory. I think i'm good for a fast/technical debate for someone having been out of debate for 6 years. LOL. have mercy on me.

[norms] CX is a speech except when using extra prep. I do not care about respectability/politeness/"professionalism", but ego posturing/nastiness is distinct from assertiveness/confidence/good faith. respect diverse skill levels and debating styles. non-debate (interpersonal) disputes go straight to tab, NOT me. I am a mandated reporter.

[rfd] I will take the easiest way out. I try to write an aff and neg ballot and resolve one of them with as little intervention as possible - read: judge instructions necessary. I only read cards if they're extended into rebuttals w authors & warrants. Ev work, like Mac dre said, is not my job. framing the round through offensive/defense framing, presumption, models, etc. also helpful (if consistent). i flow on paper so slow down where it matters.

[online] do not start if my camera is off. SLOW DOWN, like slower than an in-person tournament, or else your cpu mic/my speaker will eat all your words; I will type "clear" in the round chat box once per speech.

[IRL] I'll clear u once per speech & stop flowing if i don't understand. my facial expressions reveal a lot about what I do/dont understand. track your own prep, but if you're bad at stealing prep (aka, I can tell), you will not like your speaks. cut my rfd short if you need to prep another round immediately.

[gen] debate is not debaters adjusting to the judge. do the type debate you are good at, not what you think I will like. I will meet you where you are, as long as you can explain your args. I like efficiency & will not punish a shortened speech unless its prematurely concluded. i do not read "inserts", a recut card is still a card - read it. I will not evaluate what I cannot flow & I do not flow analytics off the doc. #lets #signpost. clarity > speed, tech > truth. content warnings/disability accommodations/etc should be made verbally before disclosure/round.

** TLDR: I like good debate; as in, the more rounds I judge, the less strong feelings I have about specific arguments. I can be persuaded by most arguments (if you are good at being persuasive). do the work and you will win me over. good luck and have fun! :)

___

argument notes

[ETHICS VIOLATIONS] Teams must call an ethics violation to stop the round. if verified, the violating team drops with lowest speaks. otherwise, the accusing team drops with lowest speaks. [clipping] usually necessitates recording, contingent on debaters consent & tournament rules. clipping includes being unclear to the point of being incomprehensible & not marking.**I am following at least the 1AC and 1NC - read every word. seriously READ ALL THE WORDS!!!! if I notice clipping and no one else calls it out, I will not stop the round, but your speaks will reflect what I hear.

[case] yes. plan texts are my preference, but not a requirement. #1 fan of case debate. case turns too. does anyone go for dedev anymore?

[K-aff] okay, but not my neck of the woods. being germane to the resolution is good, or affs must resolve something or have offense. don't miss the forest for the trees- ex: 2NR responds LBL to the 1AR but fails to contextualize to the rest of the debate. I find myself often w a lot of info but unclear reasons to vote. judge instruction prevents judge intervention (esp. re: kvk debate).

[K-neg] sure. tell me what ur words mean. I'm familiar with most neolib/security/ontology-relevant K's, but never never never assume I know your theory of power. idk your white people (heidegger, bataille, schlag, baudrillard, wtv). K tricks r dope, if you can explain them.

[disads] yes. impact turns/turns case are awesome. idk anything about finance, spare me the jargon or at least explain it in baby words.

[cp] okay. slow down/signpost on deficits & impact out. "sufficiency framing" "perm do ____" are meaningless w/o explanation. abolish perm vomit! adv cp's r awesome!! I evaluate the risk of the net ben before CP solvency (unless told otherwise... judge instruction is your friend). remember to actually "[insert aff]" in your cp text.

[T] good (but I'm waiting for it to be great...). default to competing interps/framing through models unless told otherwise. caselists are good. SIGNPOST. slow down, i need to hear every word. + speaks for T debate off the flow. Impress me, & your speaks will reflect it! [re: T vs. K-aff]: I admittedly lean neg for limits being good & personal familiarity of args, but can be persuaded. i find K-aff v. fw rounds are increasingly uncreative/unadaptive... TVA's are persuasive (aff teams are not good at debating against them). judge instruction is your friend!

[theory] rule of thumb: equal input, equal-ish output. aka, blipped theory warrants blipped answers. do not expect a good rfd if you are speeding through theory blocks like you are reading the Cheesecake Factory menu. I will not vote on theory if you are simply asserting a violation - it is procedural argument, treat it like one.

[speaker points] i am anti speaks inflation. everyone starts at 28. I drop speaks for aforementioned reasons + disorganization + offensive/bad faith behavior. speaks are earned via efficient/effective speech construction, cx usage, succinctness, and strategy. 29.2+ reserved for exemplary speeches. below 28 indicates more pre-tournament prep is needed.

debate.ianmackeypiccolo@gmail.com

My background is doing and coaching policy debate with lots of process counterplans and impact turns. I will vote for K arguments. I consider them as true as process counterplans and impact turns.

I will vote on what was said during the debate in a vaccum. I have many opinions about what arguments are good, but I am not a better judge for good arguments. Your arguments only have to be relatively better than the responses they get from your opponents.

I will not supplement my flow by reading evidence on my own after the debate. If there's a problem with your opponent's evidence, it's on you to point it out. I will read evidence at the end of the debate when it's justified by your debating, or if the debating is exceptionally shallow or to break ties.

Speaker points are boosted mostly by strategic decisions and richly warranted rebuttals.

Assistant Director of Debate -- UTD... YOU SHOULD COME DEBATE FOR US BECAUSE WE HAVE SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

So I really dont want to judge but if you must pref me here's some things you should know.

Arguments I wont vote on ever

Pref Sheets args

Things outside the debate round

Death is good

General thoughts

Tl:Dr- do you just dont violate the things i'll never vote on and do not pref me that'd be great.

Line by Line is important.

I generally give quick RFDs this isnt a insult to anyone but I've spent the entire debate thinking about the round and generally have a good idea where its going by the end.

Clarity over speed (ESP IN THIS ONLINE ENVIRONMENT) if I dont understand you it isnt a argument.

****NEW THOUGHTS FOR THE NDT**** I generally dont think process CPs that result in the aff are competitive -- I'm more likely to vote on perm do both or the PDCP if push comes to shove... could I vote on it sure but I generally lean aff on these cps.

Online edit -- go slower speed and most of your audio setups arent great. (See what I did there)

Only the debaters debating can give speeches.

I catch you clipping I will drop you. So suggest you dont and be clear mumbling after i've said clear risk me pulling the trigger.

ecmathis AT gmail for email chains... but PLEASE DONT PREF ME

Longer thoughts

Can you beat T-USFG in front of me if your not a traditional team.... yes... can you lose it also yes. Procedural fairness is a impact for me. K teams need to give me a reason why I should ignore T if they want to win it. Saying warrantless claims impacted by the 1AC probably isnt good enough.

Aff's that say "Affirm me because it makes me feel better or it helps me" probably not the best in front of me. I just kinda dont believe it.

Reading cards-

I dislike reading cards because I do not fell like reconstructing the debate for one side over another. I will read cards dont get me wrong but rarely will I read cards on args that were not explained or extended well.

K-There fine I like em except the death good ones.

In round behavior- Aggressive is great being a jerk is not. This can and will kill your speaks. Treat your opponents with respect and if they dont you can win a ballot off me saying what they've done in round is problematic. That said if someone says you're arg is (sexist, racist, etc) that isnt the same as (a debater cursing you out because you ran FW or T or a debater telling you to get out of my activity) instant 0 and a loss. i'm not about that life.

Samuel Maurer
Part time coach @ Head-Royce

Yes I want to be on the speech doc. samuel.maurer@gmail.com

TOC 2024 update

I haven't judged a debate in a year so you're going to have to fill me in on topic nuance if you want me to vote on it. Since I also haven't been flowing for awhile, focusing on transmission of the important stuff is probably a very valuable use of your time.

ALSO...I clarify below that CXing and getting CXed are speeches to me. If you waive your CX to prep, the floor for speaker points falls well below a 27, just as if you had 'opted-out' of a rebuttal. Not being able to come-up with any useful attempts at CX questions screams "I don't understand strategy" to me so I don't have reservations about wrecking points. You've been warned.

old stuff

A note on speech docs: I read them during the debate to enhance my knowledge of your arguments. I do not read them to fill-in the blank for a speech that is incomprehensible. I judge the debate speeches, I don't referee emails. So assuming that the written existence of an argument in the document is a sufficient means of introducing it into the debate is dangerous in front of me. If that key comparison was buried in the middle of a wall of text you read like a bored robot, I'm not going to evaluate it. Conversely, if you are deliberately unpacking evidence that I can re-read to verify your interpretations and arguments, your doc can help add depth to your argument. I read the doc as a speech supplement, not a substitute.

I’ll talk about some more specific proclivities that may be useful for your strike-sheet since, if you are reading this, you’re probably filling it out.

Speaker points/CX: I believe that debaters give 4 “speeches” in a debate: C, R, CX, and Being CXed. My speaker points are based on all 4. If you don’t answer/ask a CX question, your speaker points will suffer dramatically. If you’re an jerk or don’t answer simple questions or are simply obstructionist, speaker points suffer. Don’t neglect CX. I will diligently flow cross-examination but if you take prep to ask questions, I consider it to not be part of the debate. Don't be offended if I leave while you go into overtime.

Know when its better to slow down

-- if I’ve never judged you before, give me time at the beginning of a constructive to get used to your voice.

-- complex/tricky CP texts – please slow down during these. I’m not going to look at the speech doc and CX won’t always clear it up. Clearly emphasize the differences (supreme court, different language pic, etc.)

-- Judge instruction helps me -- big picture moments in rebuttals -- "if we win this, we win the debate", etc. Crucial moments of impacts/evidence comparison.

Evidence: Quality over Quantity – I know this is almost a cliché in judging philosophies but I don’t just mean lots of bad cards are worse than 1 good card. That is obvious. I also mean that you should consider focusing on fewer cards in front of me than you might otherwise.

-- Indexing – judging debates where last rebuttals (more often 2NR’s) mention every name of every card and say how it interacts with an argument concept (“McCoy means we turn the link”, “Smith is the impact to that”) is very frustrating for me. I thrive on the big picture. I don’t view your evidence as that or even an argument unto itself – I view your evidence as a tool. You have to explain how it works and why.

-- highlighting – I find myself increasingly choosing to ignore or assign very little weight to evidence because scant highlighting leaves a lot to the imagination. In front of me, it might be wise to select a few important cards in the debate that you would read a longer version of (crucial internal link card for elections, link to the PIC’s net benefits, alt cards, etc.).

-- I read evidence after debates to confirm its function in your speeches, not so that it can “make an argument” to me in some disembodied fashion 15 minutes after the round ends.

I prefer narrower, deeper debates: Not going to lie, when debates get horizontally big and stay that way through rebuttals, I’m less comfortable making a decision. I think this has to do with how I read evidence (above) in that often times debates that stay horizontally big require the judge to do a lot of inference into conclusions made in cards they read as opposed to speeches they evaluate. I’m okay with debates on several sheets of paper but just make sure you are identifying what you think are the strategic bottlenecks of the debate and how you are winning them. “they can’t win X if we win Y because the following impact comparison wasn’t answered…”

Links/UQ: I think debaters too often think of link direction in purely binary terms. In addition to winning links, debaters need to explicitly create mechanisms for evaluating link direction. don’t just put “this thing key” cards in my hands and expect me to ref an ev fight. Tell me why this internal controls the other or vice versa.

Framework: I’ve voted for either side of this debate plenty of times. If it’s a choice between an engaging strategy against a critical aff and T, the former is a preferable strategy in front of me. I will vote on impact turns to topicality even if the negative doesn’t go for it (provided, of course, the affirmative makes a valid argument for why I should). I find myself often frustrated in debates that lack concrete nouns and instead choose arguments/strategies where abstractions are posited in relationship to one another, concretizing through examples helps a lot. I think 'fairness' is an internal link that, when well-developed with method for debate that is academically engaging and balanced, can have a large impact on my decision. By itself, a fair game is just stable, could be good or bad. I think negs running framework are best when talking about dynamics of the debate, not just complaining about how much/many affs there are. I'm not one who believes in the "procedural fairness or education" dilemma, good framework execution involves both I think. TVA's and SSD's are defense/counterplan type arguments that I think both sides are wise to not just address but frame in my decision.

Theory: Seems dead. Seemingly fewer and fewer affirmatives even make a meaningful press on theoretical objections to the CP. I still appreciate theory on the aff and not just as an “independent voter” but rather a good way to strategically dictate the landscape of the debate. This by no means implies that I’m a hack for any affirmative theory argument. But it does mean aff’s that hear a 3 cp’s in the 1NC and don’t make more than a 10 second conditionality block and don’t mention that there were 3 counterplans are giving up on some production. I think it goes without saying that very blippy theory debates are terrible. Slowing down and being more thematic and explanatory is almost always a better approach the theory execution in front of me. In the end, I'm pretty old school and think theory needs to make a comeback (mostly so aff's can not give their cases away to disposable 15-plank hydras every debate) but it seems perfunctory in execution anymore.
Finally, please make sure to mark evidence as you read it.

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)

Updated Jan 11, 2025

Tracy McFarland

Jesuit College Prep - for a long while; back in the day undergrad debate - Baylor U

Please use jcpdebate@gmail.com for speech docs. I do want to be in the email chain.
However, I don't check that email a lot while not at tournaments - so if you need to reach me not at a tournament, feel free to email me at tmcfarland@jesuitcp.org

New update for post-Inauguration world:

Trump's presidency has radically altered how the government works. You should account for this in your debates - whether its K or policy - both with smart arguments and with evidence. Yes, fiat is a thing - it's probably even be durable - but that doesn't mean that you get to fiat over problems with your DA or advantage internal links -- that means that even if you win a link, the Squo may have ruined the rest of the argument.

Other stuff that I didn't change

Clash - it's good - which means you need to flow and not script your speeches. using blocks = good - placing them where they belong on the LBL = good. LBL with some clear references to where you're at = good. Line by line isn't answer the previous speech in order - it's about grounding the debate in the 2ac on off case, 1nc on case.

Dates and "real world" matter - andI am persuaded by teams that call out other teams based on their evidence quality, author quals, lack of highlighting (meaning they read little of the evidence).

Process CPs and other neg trickeration - I get it. I do, however, think that the aff can make compelling arguments about why the process doesn't result in the aff and/or that the prioritization of the process is a bad thing. A discussion of what normal means is by the aff and neg would also help both sides to explain how the CP is competitive.

DAs - it's possible to win zero risk that the DA is an opportunity cost to the aff. Specific to agenda and elections - the aff can make compelling no link and non-unique arguments. The direction of the link doesn't influence uniqueness on these DAs. And, yes, even in a world of a CP Affs could win zero risk of agenda politics or elections. The aff should make arguments - even without evidence - that the link needs to be specific, the internal link needs to be about specific voting blocks in sufficient swing states to shift the electoral college.

Ks - specific links are good. You should have a sense on the aff and the neg what FW is going to get you in a debate -- too often that FW debate really just ends up two ships passing in the night.

K affs - should be tied to the topic in some way. If they aren't, then neg args with topical versions or ways to access the education the K aff offers through the resolution are usually persuasive to me. The neg can win that the TVA solves sufficient access to the lit. If the aff has a K of the topic, that's great offense that negs need to have an answer. I don't think that debate is just a game. Its a competitive activity that does shape our political subjectivity. And, despite all that, I often vote aff on these debates - so negs should make sure that they are engaging why their model creates better skills than the affs.

T - if you have a good violation and reasons why an aff should be excluded, by all means read it. If you are just reading it as a "time suck" then, meh, read more substance. And, an argument that ends in -spec is usually an uphill battle unless it's clever [this cleverness standard does preclude generally a- and o-]

Impact turns - topic specific one = good; generic ones - more meh

New affs are good - and don't need to be disclosed before a debate if it's truly the very first time that someone at your school has read the argument. But new affs may justify theoretically sketchy args by the neg - you can integrate that into the theory debate, you don't need a new affs bad 1nc arg to do that.

Be nice to each other - it's possible to be competitive without being overly sassy.

Modality matters - when you are debating in person, remember that people can hear you talk to your partner and you should have a line of sight with the judge. If you are online, make sure that your camera is on when possible to create some engagement with the judge.

Misc procedural things:

1. He/him/his; "DML">"Dustin">>>"judge">>>>>>>>>>"Mr. Meyers-Levy"

2. Debated at Edina HS in Minnesota from 2008-2012, at the University of Michigan from 2012-2017, and currently coach at Michigan and Glenbrook North

3. Evidence sharing procedures:

High school: Speechdrop or the Tabroom/NDCA fileshare are preferred due to the requirements of my employer.
College: Email preferred; please add dustml[at]umich[dot]edu and debatedocs[at]umich[dot]edu (note that this is not the same as the community debatedocs listerv).

4. Nothing here set in stone debate is up to the debaters go for what you want to blah blah blah an argument is a claim and a warrant don't clip cards

5. Speaks usually range from 28.5-29.5. Below 28.5 and there are some notable deficiencies, above 29.5 you're one of the best debaters I've seen all year. I don't really try to compare different debaters across different rounds to give points; I assign them based on a round-by-round basis. I wish I could give ties more often and will do so if the tournament allows. If you ask me for a 30 you'll probably get a 27.

6. If you're breaking something new, you'll send it out before your speech, not after the speech ends or as it's read or whatever. If you don't want to comply with that, your points are capped at 27. If you're so worried that giving the neg team 8/9 extra minutes to look at your new aff will tip the odds against you, it's probably not good enough to win anyway.

7.Each person gives one constructive and one rebuttal. The first person who speaks is the only person I flow (I can make an exception for performances in 1ACs/1NCs). I don’t flow prompting until and unless the assigned speaker says the words that their partner is prompting. Absolutely no audience participation. No touching your opponents or their property without consent. If you need some part of this clarified, I’m probably not the judge for you.

8. I am a mandatory reporter and an employee of both a public university and a public high school. I am not interested in judging debates that may make either of those facts relevant.

9. If you would enthusiastically describe your strategy as "memes" or "trolling," you should strike me.

10. Online debates: If my camera's off, I'm not listening. Get active confirmation before you start speaking, don't ask "is anyone not ready" or say "stop me if you're not ready," especially if you aren't actually listening to/looking at the other participants before you check. If you start speaking and I'm not ready or there, expect abysmal speaker points.

11. I am trying to be more militant about timing, because decision times are getting shorter and shorter and people are getting worse and worse about it. I expect a degree of promptness and put-togetherness from you, and if you can't maintain that, it will likely cut into your speaker points. Conversely, if you are timing yourself (and your opponents) and are respectful of my time, I will bump your points. Here are a few things that I am going to try to enforce more diligently than I have in the past:

a. Prep ends when the speech doc has been emailed or uploaded to speechdrop/the fileshare.

b. A "marked document" only involves cards that were marked, not cards that were skipped. If you aren't sure whether or not the other team read a card, or an entire off-case argument, you can use your cross-x or prep time to ask about that. Unless you intend to ask cross-x questions about cards that were marked, you may not ask for a marked document before cross-x starts, and you may not delay the start of prep until the document is sent. I am willing to make exceptions for this when a speech is egregious in a way that seems like it might be trying to confuse the other team (e.g. dozens of marked cards, many more cards in the document than were read, etc), but you should ask me if that's okay.

c. I would prefer no bathroom breaks before your speech unless it's an emergency. Please don't make me ask you if it's an emergency.

d. There is no reason that you should be typing or whispering to your partner while prep is not running or a speech is not happening. If you do, I'll ask one time if you need prep; if you do it again, I'll start docking prep time for you.

e. Please time yourself and your opponents and write your prep time down. I don't keep a timer on me and I like to stretch my legs/get water or coffee during prep. If I have to guess how much time you have left, I will round down precipitously.

Top-level:

When making my decisions, I seek to answer four questions:

1. At what scale should I evaluate impacts, or how do I determine which impact outweighs the others?

2. What is necessary to address those impacts?

3. At what point have those impacts been sufficiently addressed?

4. How certain am I about either side’s answers to the previous three questions?

I don’t expect debaters to answer these questions explicitly or in order, but I do find myself voting for debaters who use that phrasing and these concepts (necessity, sufficiency, certainty, etc) as part of their judge instruction a disproportionate amount. I try to start every RFD with a sentence-ish-long summary of my decision (e.g. "I voted affirmative because I am certain that their impacts are likely without the plan and unlikely with it, which outweighs an uncertain risk of the impacts to the DA even if I am certain about the link"); you may benefit from setting up a sentence or two along those lines for me.

Intervention on my part is inevitable, but I’d like to minimize it if possible and equalize it if not. The way I try to do so is by making an effort to quote or paraphrase the 1AR, 2NR, and 2AR in my RFD as much as possible. This means I find myself often voting for teams who a) minimize the amount of debate jargon they use, b) explicitly instruct me what I need in order to be certain that an argument is true, and c) don’t repeat themselves or reread parts of earlier speeches. (The notable exception to c) is quoting your evidence—I appreciate teams who tell me what to look for in their cards, as I’d rather not read evidence if I don’t have to.) I would rather default to new 2AR contextualization of arguments than reject new 2AR explanation and figure out how to evaluate/compare arguments on my own, especially if the 2AR contextualization lines up with how I understand the debate otherwise.

I flow on my computer and I flow straight down. I appreciate debaters who debate in a way that makes that easy to do (clean line-by-line, numbering/subpointing, etc). I’ll make as much room as you want me to for an overview, but I won’t flow it on a separate sheet unless you say pretty please. If it’s not obvious to me at that point why it’s on a separate sheet, you’ll probably lose points.

Consider going a little bit slower. I prefer voting on arguments that I am certain about, and it is much easier to be certain about an argument when I know that I have written down everything that you’ve said.

Presumption always initially goes negative because the affirmative always has the burden of proof. If the affirmative has met their burden of proof against the status quo, and the negative has not met their burden of rejoinder, I vote affirmative.

At the margins, I would describe myself "truth over tech," in the sense that I must always vote for who did the better debating, and I tend to think that a team who drops "grass is green, voting issue" can still have done the better debating despite that concession (and, indeed, may have done the better debatingbecause they did not waste time answering that). I will not vote for something if I cannot explain why it is a reason that one side or the other has done the better debating, even if it is technically conceded by the other team. Obviously, this is not to say that technical concessions do not matter--they're probably the most important part of my decisionmaking process! However, not all technical concessions matter, and the reasons that some technical concessions matter might not be apparent to me. A dropped argument is true, but non-dropped arguments can also be true, and I need you to contextualize how to evaluate and compare those truths.

I appreciate well-thought-out perms with a brief summary of its function/net beneficiality in the 2AC. I get frustrated by teams who shotgun the same four perms on every page, especially when those perms are essentially the same argument (e.g. “perm do both” and “perm do the plan and non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt”) or when the perm is obviously nonsensical (e.g. “perm do the counterplan” against an advantage counterplan that doesn’t try to fiat the aff or against a uniqueness counterplan that bans the plan).

I appreciate when teams read rehighlightings and not insert them, unless you’re rehighlighting a couple words. You will lose speaker points for inserting a bunch of rehighlightings, and I’ll happily ignore them if instructed to by the other team.

I prefer to judge engagement over avoidance. I would rather you beat your opponent at their best than trick them into dropping something. If your plan for victory involves hiding ASPEC in a T shell, or deleting your conditionality block from the 2AC in hopes that they miss it, or using a bunch of buzzwords that you think the other team won't understand but I will, I will be hard-pressed to conclude that you did the “better debating.”

I generally assume good faith on the part of debaters and I'm very reticent to ignore the rest of the debate/arguments being made (especially when not explicitly and extensively instructed to) in order to punish a team for what's often an honest mistake. I am much more willing to vote on these arguments as links/examples of links. Obviously, there are exceptions to this for egregious and/or intentionally problematic behavior, but if your strategy revolves around asking me to vote against a team based on unhighlighted/un-underlined parts of cards, out-of-round "receipts," or "gotcha" moments in cross-x, you may want to change your strategy for me.

K affs:

1. Debate is indisputably a game to some degree or another, and it can be other things besides that. It indisputably influences debaters' thought processes and subjectivities to some extent; it is also indisputably not the only influence on those things. I like when teams split the difference and account for debate’s inevitably competitive features rather than asserting it is only one thing or another.

2. I think I am better for K affs than I have been in the past. I am not worse for framework, but I am worse for the amount of work that people seem to do when preparing to go for framework. I am getting really bored by neg teams who recycle blocks without updating them in the context of the round and don’t make an effort to talk about the aff. I think the neg needs to say more than just “the aff’s method is better with a well-prepared opponent” or “non-competitive venues solve the aff’s offense” to meaningfully mitigate the aff's offense. If you are going for framework in front of me, you may want to replace those kinds of quotes in your blocks with specific explanations that reference what the aff says in speeches and cards.

3. I prefer clash impacts to fairness impacts, though I think fairness matters and will be hard-pressed to consciously choose to carry out the procedure of adjudication in an unfair manner. I differ from many other judges in that I actually prefer when the neg goes for framework as a straight turn to the aff without an external impact that "outweighs" (though they can help as tiebreakers). I vote negative often when aff teams lack explanation for why someone should say "no" to the aff. I find that fairness strategies suffer when the aff pushes on the ballot’s ability to “solve” them; I would rather use my ballot to encourage the aff to argue differently rather than to punish them retroactively. I think fairness-centric framework strategies are vulnerable to aff teams impact turning the neg’s interpretation (conversely, I think counter-interpretation strategies are weak against fairness impacts).

4. I don't think I've ever voted on "if the 1AC couldn't be tested you should presume everything they've said is false"/"don't weigh the aff because we couldn't answer it," and I don't think I ever will.

5. I think non-framework strategies live and die at the level of competition and solvency. When aff teams invest time in unpacking permutations and solvency deficits, and the neg doesn’t advance a theory of competition beyond “no perms in a method debate” (whatever that means), I usually vote aff. When the aff undercovers the perm and/or the alt, I have a high threshold for new explanation and usually think that the 2NR should be the non-framework strategy.

6. I do not care whether or not fiat has a resolutional basis.

Ks on the neg/being aff vs the K:

I am getting really bored by "stat check" affs that respond to every K by brute-forcing a heg or econ impact and reading the same "extinction outweighs, util, consequentialism, nuke war hurts marginalized people too" blocks/cards every debate. That's not to say that these affs are non-viable in front of me, but it is to say that I've often seen teams reading these big-stick affs in ways that seem designed to avoid engaging the substance of the K. If this is your strategy, you should talk about the alternative more, and have a defense of fiat that is not just theoretical.

I care most about link uniqueness and alt solvency. When I vote aff, it's because a) the aff gets access to their impacts, b) those impacts outweigh/turn the K, c) the K links are largely non-unique, and/or d) the neg doesn't have a well-developed alt push. Neg teams that push back on these issues--by a) having well-developed and unique links and impacts with substantive impact calculus in the block and 2NR, including unique turns case args (not just that the plan doesn't solve, but that it actually makes the aff's own impacts more likely), b) having a vision for what the world of the alt looks like that's defensible and ostensibly solves their impacts even if the aff wins a risk of theirs (case defense that's congruent with the K helps), and/or c) has a heavy push on framework that tells me what the alt does/doesn't need to solve--have a higher chance of getting my ballot. Some more specific notes:

1. Upfront, I'm not a huge fan of "post-/non-/more-than/humanism"-style Ks. I find myself more persuaded by most defenses/critical rehabilitations of humanism than I do by critiques of humanism that attempt to reject the category altogether. You can try your best to change my mind, but it may be an uphill battle; this applies far more to high theory/postmodern Ks of humanism (which, full disclosure, I would really rather not hear) than it does to structuralist/identity-based Ks of humanism, though I find myself more persuaded by "new humanist" style arguments a la Fanon, Wynter, etc than full-on rejections of humanism.

2. I think that others should not suffer, that biological death is bad, and that meaning-making and contingent agreement on contextual truths are possible, inevitable, and desirable. If your K disagrees with any of these fundamental premises, I am a bad judge for it.

3. I don't get Ks of linear time. I get Ks of whitewashing, progress narratives, etc. I get the argument that historical events influence the present, and that events in the present can reshape our understanding of the past. I get that some causes have complex effects that aren't immediately recognizable to us and may not be recognizable on any human scale. I just don't get how any of those things are mutually exclusive with, and indeed how they don't also rely on, some understanding of linear time/causality. I think this is because I have a very particular understanding of what "linear time" means/refers to, which is to say that it's hard for me to disassociate that phrase with the basic concept of cause/effect and the progression of time in a measurable, linear fashion. This isn't as firm of a belief as #2; I can certainly imagine one of these args clicking with me eventually. This is just to say that the burden of explanation is much higher and you would likely be better served going for more plan-specific link arguments or maybe just using different terminology/including a brief explanation as to why you're not disagreeing with the basic premise that causes have effects, even if those effects aren't immediately apparent. If you are disagreeing with that premise, you should probably strike me, as it will require far longer than two hours for me to comprehend your argument, let alone agree with it.

4. "Philosophical competition" is not a winning interpretation in front of me. I don't know what it means and no one has ever explained it to me in a coherent and non-arbitrary way.

5. There's a difference between utilitarianism and consequentialism. I'm open to critiques of the former; I have an extremely high burden for critiques of the latter. I'm not sure I can think of a K of consequentialism that I've judged that didn't seem to link to itself to some degree or another.

6. I am a bad judge for Kant. I just don't get it. I have voted for it, but I have also voted against it more than once because I simply did not understand many of the arguments being made.

7. Would really rather not vote for "you-link-you-lose," "mooting the 1AC=good" approaches to K debating. If your strategy is to swamp the 1AR with backfile check fiat Ks that have little to do with the 1NC, I will suspect that you have a weak will-to-power and I'll be very sympathetic towards the aff.

Policy debates:

1. 95% of my work in college is K-focused, and the other 5% is mostly spot updates. I have done very little policy-focused research so far this season.

For high school, I led a lab this summer, but didn't retain a ton of topic info and have done largely K-focused work since the camp ended. I probably know less than you do about economics.

2. “Link controls uniqueness”/“uniqueness controls the link” arguments will get you far with me. I often find myself wishing that one side or the other had made that argument, because my RFDs often include some variant of it regardless.

3. Apparently T against policy affs is no longer in style. Fortunately, I have a terrible sense of style. In general, I think I'm better for the neg for T than (I guess) a lot of judges; reading through some judge philosophies I find a lot of people who say they don't like judging T or don't think T debates are good, and I strongly disagree with that claim. I'm a 2N at heart, so when it comes down to brass tacks I really don't care about many T impacts/standards except for neg ground (though I can obviously be persuaded otherwise). I care far more about the debates that an interpretation facilitates than I do about the interpretation's source in the abstract--do explanation as to why source quality/predictability influences the quality of debates under the relevant interpretation.

4. I think judge kick makes intuitive sense, but I won't do it unless I'm told to. That said, I also think I have a lower threshold for what constitutes the neg "telling me to" than most. There are some phrases that signify to me that I can default to the status quo by my own choosing; these include, but aren't necessarily limited to, "the status quo is always a logical policy option" and/or "counter-interp: the neg gets X conditional options and the status quo."

5. I enjoy counterplans that compete on resolutional terms quite a bit; I'd rather judge those than counterplans that compete on "should," "substantial," etc.

6. If you think that the affirmative should specify which branch of the United States federal government the plan goes through, you should make that argument as its own separate offcase position. Hiding ASPEC as part of a different T violation is -.1, hiding it on a non-T offcase or case flow is -.3.

7. I would rather judge substance over theory in basically every situation. That said, here are some aff theory arguments that I could be persuaded on pretty easily given a substantive time investment:

--Counterplans should have a solvency advocate ideally matching the specificity of the aff's, but at least with a normative claim about what should happen.

--Multi-actor fiat bad--you can fiat different parts of the USFG do things, and international fiat is defensible, but fiating the federal government and the states, or the US and other countries, is a no-no. (Fiating all fifty states is debatably acceptable, but fiating some permutation of states seems iffy to me.)

--No negative fiat, but not the meme--counterplans should take a positive action, and shouldn't fiat a negative action. It's the distinction between "the USFG should not start a war against Russia" and "the USFG should ban initiation of war against Russia."

--Test case fiat? Having osmosed a rudimentary bit of constitutional law via friends and family in law school, it seems like debate's conception of how the Supreme Court works is... suspect. Not really sure what the implications of that are for the aff or the neg, but I'm pretty sure that most court CPs/mechanisms would get actual lawyers disbarred.

--I think extreme conditionality is nearly indefensible, but I am also finding that I kind of hate judging conditionality debates, especially when I think that the aff has a substantive path to victory.

Debated for UWG ’15 – ’17; Coaching: Notre Dame – ’19 – Present; Baylor – ’17 – ’19

email: joshuamichael59@gmail.com

Online Annoyance

"Can I get a marked doc?" / "Can you list the cards you didn't read?" when one card was marked or just because some cards were skipped on case. Flow or take CX time for it.

Policy

I prefer K v K rounds, but I generally wind up in FW rounds.

K aff’s – 1) Generally have a high threshold for 1ar/2ar consistency. 2) Stop trying to solve stuff you could reasonably never affect. Often, teams want the entirety of X structure’s violence weighed yet resolve only a minimal portion of that violence. 3) v K’s, you are rarely always already a criticism of that same thing. Your articulation of the perm/link defense needs to demonstrate true interaction between literature bases. 4) Stop running from stuff. If you didn’t read the line/word in question, okay. But indicts of the author should be answered with more than “not our Baudrillard.”

K’s – 1) rarely win without substantial case debate. 2) ROJ arguments are generally underutilized. 3) I’m generally persuaded by aff answers that demonstrate certain people shouldn’t read certain lit bases, if warranted by that literature. 4) I have a higher threshold for generic “debate is bad, vote neg.” If debate is bad, how do you change those aspects of debate? 5) 2nr needs to make consistent choices re: FW + Link/Alt combinations. Find myself voting aff frequently, because the 2nr goes for two different strats/too much.

Special Note for Settler Colonialism: I simultaneously love these rounds and experience a lot of frustration when judging this argument. Often, debaters haven’t actually read the full text from which they are cutting cards and lack most of the historical knowledge to responsibly go for this argument. List of annoyances: there are 6 settler moves to innocence – you should know the differences/specifics rather than just reading pages 1-3 of Decol not a Metaphor; la paperson’s A Third University is Possible does not say “State reform good”; Reading “give back land” as an alt and then not defending against the impact turn is just lazy. Additionally, claiming “we don’t have to specify how this happens,” is only a viable answer for Indigenous debaters (the literature makes this fairly clear); Making a land acknowledgement in the first 5 seconds of the speech and then never mentioning it again is essentially worthless; Ethic of Incommensurability is not an alt, it’s an ideological frame for future alternative work (fight me JKS).

FW

General: 1) Fairness is either an impact or an internal link 2) the TVA doesn’t have to solve the entirety of the aff. 3) Your Interp + our aff is just bad.

Aff v FW: 1) can win with just impact turns, though the threshold is higher than when winning a CI with viable NB’s. 2) More persuaded by defenses of education/advocacy skills/movement building. 3) Less random DA’s that are basically the same, and more internal links to fully developed DA’s. Most of the time your DA’s to the TVA are the same offense you’ve already read elsewhere.

Reading FW: 1) Respect teams that demonstrate why state engagement is better in terms of movement building. 2) “If we can’t test the aff, presume it’s false” – no 3) Have to answer case at some point (more than the 10 seconds after the timer has already gone off) 4) You almost never have time to fully develop the sabotage tva (UGA RS deserves more respect than that). 5) Impact turns to the CI are generally underutilized. You’ll almost always win the internal link to limits, so spending all your time here is a waste. 6) Should defend the TVA in 1nc cx if asked. You don’t have a right to hide it until the block.

Theory - 1) I generally lean neg on questions of Conditionality/Random CP theory. 2) No one ever explains why dispo solves their interp. 3) Won’t judge kick unless instructed to.

T – 1) I’m not your best judge. 2) Seems like no matter how much debating is done over CI v Reasonability, I still have to evaluate most of the offense based on CI’s.

DA/CP – 1) Prefer smart indicts of evidence as opposed to walls of cards (especially on ptx/agenda da's). Neg teams get away with murder re: "dropped ev" that says very little/creatively highlighted. 2) I'm probably more lenient with aff responses (solvency deficits/aff solves impact/intrinsic perm) to Process Cp's/Internal NB's that don't have solvency ev/any relation to aff.

Case - I miss in depth case debates. Re-highlightings don't have to be read. The worse your re-highlighting the lower the threshold for aff to ignore it.

LD

All of my thoughts on policy apply, except for theory. More than 2 condo (or CP’s with different plank combinations) is probably abusive, but I can be convinced otherwise on a technical level.

Not voting on an RVI. I don’t care if it’s dropped.

Most LD theory is terrible Ex: Have to spec a ROB or I don’t know what I can read in the 1nc --- dumb argument.

Phil or Tricks (sp?) debating – I’m not your judge.

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.

Last Updated 7/19/2024.

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

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

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

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

Paradigm Proper:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open CX is fine.

Updating in progress, January 2025.

Yes, I want to be on the email chain, please put all three emails on the email chain.

codydb8@gmail.com (different email than years past)

smdebatedocs@gmail.com

colleyvilledebatedocs@gmail.com

I am willing to listen to most arguments. There are very few debates where one team wins all of the arguments so each of you must identify what you are winning and make the necessary comparisons between your arguments and the other team's arguments/positions. Speed is not a problem although clarity is essential. If I think that you are unclear I will say clearer and if you don't clear up I will assign speaker points accordingly. Try to be nice to each other and enjoy yourselves. Good cross-examinations are enjoyable and typically illuminates particular arguments that are relevant throughout the debate. Ending cx early and turning that time into prep time is not a thing in front of me. You have either 8 or 10 minutes of prep time, use it judiciously. Please, do not prep when time is not running. I do not consider e-mailing documents/chains as part of your prep time nonetheless use e-mailing time efficiently.

I enjoy all kinds of debates. If you run a critical affirmative you should still be able to demonstrate that you are Topical/predictable. I hold Topicality debates to a high standard so please be aware that you need to isolate well-developed reasons as to why you should win the debate (ground, education, predictability, fairness, etc.). If you are engaged in a substantive debate, then well-developed impact comparisons are essential (things like magnitude, time frame, probability, etc.). Also, identifying solvency deficits on counter-plans is typically very important.

Theory debates need to be well developed including numerous reasons a particular argument/position is illegitimate. I have judged many debates where the 2NR or 2AR are filled with new reasons an argument is illegitimate. I will do my best to protect teams from new arguments, however, you can further insulate yourself from this risk by identifying the arguments extended/dropped in the 1AR or Negative Bloc.

If the first thing you do on counterplans is read 3 or 4 permutations and a theory argument at top speed then you know I won't be able to flow all of the distinctions. Why not separate every other analytical argument with an evidenced argument or what if you slowed down just a tad.... I am a great flow, it is just analytical arguments aren't supposed to be read at top speed stacked on top of each other. Same on K's F/w then numerous Perm's all at top speed stacked on top of each other is silly and not realistic for judges to get all of the distinctions/standards.

GOOD LUCK! HAVE FUN!

LD January 21, 2025

No tricks, A few clarifications... As long as you are clear you can debate at any pace you choose. Any style is fine, although if you are both advancing different approaches then it is incumbent upon each of you to compare and contrast the two approaches and demonstrate why I should prioritize/default to your approach. If you only read cards without some explanation and application, do not expect me to read your evidence and apply the arguments in the evidence for you. Be nice to each other. I pay attention during cx. I will say clearer once or twice and then it is up to you if you are going to choose to read clearly. If you are unclear, you can look at me and you will be able to see that there is an issue. I might not have my pen in my hand or I could look annoyed both of which are clues. I keep a comprehensive flow and my flow will play a key role in my decision. With that being said, being the fastest in the round in no way means that you will win my ballot. Concise well explained arguments with compelling warrants will surely affect the way I resolve who wins, an argument advanced in one place on the flow can surely apply to other arguments, however the debater should at least reference where those arguments are relevant and why. Dropped arguments are true arguments. Please, be nice to each other. GOOD LUCK!!!

LD Paradigm from May 1, 2022

I am not going to dictate the way in which you debate. I hope this will serve as a guide for the type of arguments and presentation related issues that I tend to hear and vote on. I competed in LD in the early 1990's and was somewhat successful. From 1995 until present I have primarily coached policy debate and judged CX rounds, but please don't assume that I prefer policy based arguments or prefer/accept CX presentation styles. I expect to hear clearly every single word you say during speeches. This does not mean that you have to go slow but it does mean incomprehensibility is unacceptable. If you are unclear I will reduce your speaker points accordingly. Going faster is fine, but remember this is LD Debate.

Despite coaching and judging policy debate the majority of time every year I still judge 50+ LD rounds and 30+ extemp. rounds. I have judged 35+ LD rounds on the 2022 spring UIL LD Topic so I am very familiar with the arguments and positions related to the topic.

I am very comfortable judging and evaluating value/criteria focused debates. I have also judged many LD rounds that are more focused on evidence and impacts in the round including arguments such as DA's/CP's/K's. I am not here to dictate how you choose to debate, but it is very important that each of you compare and contrast the arguments you are advancing and the related arguments that your opponent is advancing. It is important that each of you respond to your opponents arguments as well as extend your own positions. If someone drops an argument it does not mean you have won debate. If an argument is dropped then you still need to extend the conceded argument and elucidate why that argument/position means you should win the round. In most debates both sides will be ahead on different arguments and it is your responsibility to explain why the arguments you are ahead on come first/turns/disproves/outweighs the argument(s) your opponent is ahead on or extending. Please be nice to each other. Flowing is very important so that you ensure you understand your opponents arguments and organizationally see where and in what order arguments occur or are presented. Flowing will ensure that you don't drop arguments or forget where you have made your own arguments. I do for the most part evaluate arguments from the perspective that tech comes before truth (dropped arguments are true arguments), however in LD that is not always true. It is possible that your arguments might outweigh or come before the dropped argument or that you can articulate why arguments on other parts of the flow answer the conceded argument. I pay attention to cross-examinations so please take them seriously. CONGRATULATIONS for making it to state!!! Each of you should be proud of yourselves! Please, be nice in debates and treat everyone with respect just as I promise to be nice to each of you and do my absolute best to be predictable and fair in my decision making. GOOD LUCK!

Please add me to the email chain:

mwmunday@gmail.com

wildcatdebatedocs@gmail.com

Affiliations and History

Director of Debate at Westminster. Debated in college between 2008 and 2012. Actively coaching high school debate since 2008.

A Note About WSD

Although I am primarily involved with policy debate, I am familiar with the structure and format of World Schools Debate. I intend to adhere to the norms of this division and judge it accordingly. I strongly discourage teams from adapting to my policy debate preferences. Do not adapt to me - I will adapt to you.

Policy Debate Views

I am not the kind of judge who will read every card at the end of the debate. Claims that are highly contested, evidence that is flagged, and other important considerations will of course get my attention. Debaters should do the debating. Quality evidence is still important though. If the opposing team's cards are garbage, it is your responsibility to let that be known. Before reading my preferences about certain arguments, keep in mind that it is in your best interest to do what you do best. My thoughts on arguments are general predispositions and not necessarily absolute.

T – Topicality is important. The affirmative should have a relationship to the topic. How one goes about defending the topic is somewhat open to interpretation. However, my predisposition still leans towards the thought that engaging the topic is a good and productive end. I find myself in Framework debates being persuaded by the team that best articulates why their limit on the topic allows for a season's worth of debate with competitively equitable outcomes for both the aff and the neg.

Disads/Case Debate – While offense is necessary, defense is frequently undervalued. I am willing to assign 0% risk to something if a sufficient defensive argument is made.

Counterplans – Conditionality is generally fine. Functional competition seems more relevant than textual competition. If the affirmative is asked about the specific agent of their plan, they should answer the question. I increasingly think the affirmative allows the negative to get away with questionable uses of negative fiat. Actual solvency advocates and counterplan mechanisms that pass the rational policy option assumption matter to me.

Kritiks – I teach history and economics and I studied public policy and political economy during my doctoral education. This background inherently influences my filter for evaluating K debates. Nonetheless, I do think these are strategic arguments. I evaluate framework in these debates as a sequencing question regarding my resolution of impact claims. Effective permutation debating by the aff is an undervalued strategy.

Theory – A quality theory argument should have a developed warrant/impact. “Reject the argument, not the team” resolves most theory arguments except for conditionality. Clarity benefits both teams when engaging in the substance of theory debates.

Speaker Points

(Scale - Adjective - Description)

29.6-30 - The Best - Everything you could ask for as a judge and more. (Top 5 speaker award)

29-29.5 - Very, Very good - Did everything you could expect as a judge very, very well.

28.6-28.9 - Very Good - Did very well as a whole, couple moments of brilliance, but not brilliant throughout.

28.3-28.5 - Good - Better than average. Did most things well. Couple moments of brilliance combined with errors.

28-28.2 - OK - Basic skills, abilities, and expectations met. But, some errors along the way. Very little to separate themselves from others. Clearly prepared, just not clearly ahead of others.

Below 28 - OK, but major errors - Tried hard, but lack some basic skills or didn’t pay close enough attention.

About Me:

NLHS Policy 2013-2017

UT 2017-2021 (just judging, no debate)

A&M Law 2021-

Top Level

Email for chain: steelemusgrove17@gmail.com

Email for contact: steelemusgrove@yahoo.com

The easiest thing I can tell you about my paradigm is that I am tab. I'll vote on anything, and I essentially ran anything while I was in high school, so you're not going to lose me in running any of your favorite arguments.

Further in-depth stuff (this is primarily for policy, but can be cross-applied to LD (or PF I guess)):

When I say I'm tab that means that I will vote in any framework you give me, don't mistake that for if you win the framework you win the round (this is especially true in traditional LD). I have voted for teams that lose the framework debate, but still had better offense under the opposing framing. Therefore, you need to both win your framework and meet that framework better than the opponent to win the round. However, if you don't run a framework I default to an offense-defense paradigm where I vote on whichever team has managed to generate the most offense.

If you're baffled by a decision it is because you did not warrant. I am a stickler for warranting, especially in extensions, and if you don't extend a warrant, even over a dropped argument, then I'm not doing that work.

Kritiks

Like I said, I'm tab, so naturally I'm fine with/a fan of Ks. I am NOT a fan of 2NC/2NR overviews of kritikal buzzwords that do nothing to advance debate in the round. I'm not 100% read on all K literature, so if you're going to use technical terminology - define them, tell me how they relate to your alt, to the link debate, and to the aff. Line-by-line is generally much easier for me to flow and understand a K debate.

That being said, I would avoid reading one-off K in front of me. I won't vote down one-off K on face, but I find that it's not terribly strategic, and doubly so if you're the type to concede all of case by going for the one K. All of the eggs in one basket just isn't good strategy, and it's super boring to listen to.

People will talk about how you need a specific link - I'm not that type. If the aff has a good reason that you need a specific link then you should be able to provide one, but a good generic link to the topic, state, or debate will suffice without aff contest.

Presentation

Stylistically I don't really care what you do. I can handle your spreading if you can handle your spreading. If you're unclear then don't spread. Furthermore, signposting is an absolute must between flows and cards. That can be as a simple as saying "next off" or "onto the K," and between cards inserting an "and." If I miss a card or argument that you didn't signpost clearly where I should've flowed it will not be evaluated, and that's on you.

Offensiveness in round is always bad, and I'll penalize any aggression appropriately depending on severity of the aggression. There are instances where you might just be ignorant which will only result in a minor speak penalty and a stern reprimanding in RFD. Above all, be polite to your opponents. You can be competitive, but don't be rude, especially in CX.

Redundancy isn't great. That means reading a bunch of repetitive cards, putting an explanation under a card that explains the card you just read, or just saying the same thing over and over. I get tired of this quickly and it does harm speaks. Card dumps seriously aren't persuasive or strategic about half the time. If you're card dumping like five new impacts onto a undercovered disad in the 2NC that's chill, but just reading like 5 uniqueness cards that all say the same thing isn't.

I evaluate speaks through strategy, not presentation. A 30 happens through really good decisions, time allocation, unique argumentation, etc. I can't tell you what exactly gets a 30, nor will I attempt to define it further decisively here, but I know it when I see it.

Theory

I don't err anything on any argument before a debate, so all theoretical objections are up for dispute. That being said, I've seen a lot of debates where people read two shells at each other (such as states bad v. good) and don't have any actual clash. If that is the ONLY sort of argumentation being put down on a theory flow before the 2NR/2AR, do not try to convince me to vote for theory because it'll end up being a wash, and I'll vote on presumption.

Speaking of presumption; I tend to vote it on it a lot because many people end up not winning anything. So in the case that there doesn’t seem to be any offense for any team I default to presumption. Most of the time for me that means neg, but if there’s an alternative advocacy on the flow then it goes aff. If you have a different model of presumption in mind - make it an argument, but otherwise that's how I vote.

Note about disclosure: I have an impressively high threshold for voting on disclosure, and there are a number of ways that debaters articulate disclosure that I find objectionable. Please do not make arguments for disclosure based on the capabilities of small/rural schools (especially if you are from a (sub)urban/large school). Moreover, please do not read interpretations that mandate your opponent post any sort of contact information on the wiki - I will not vote on this interp no matter how hard you're winning the flow.

T

I wouldn't say that I have a high threshold for T, I will vote on T if you win it, but you need to win each part of the T: interp, violation, standards, and voters. (Theoretically you could get me to vote on a T with just an interp, violation, and standards if you win that a stock FW is good)

The "all three branches T" is really popular right now. I'll vote on it, but it's the worst T argument. Nothing uses all three branches because that's not how government works.

Disads/CPs

I don't think you absolutely have to have either of these in the 1NC to win; if you like em, go for em, and if you don't, don't. I'm not a person who's super convinced that things have to be super specific or anything like that - generic links are fine, just try to contextualize to the aff or give a good scenario analysis.

Misc.

Please, god, do not sit at the door weirdly if I'm in the room waiting for my queue to give you agency. Just walk in. I'm the judge; you are ALLOWED to come in if I'm in here.

I don't care where you sit. I don't want to shake your hand before or after the round (especially true as of March 2020).

“My partner will answer that in the next speech” is NOT a cx answer, and if you use it it’s minus 1 speak.

Same thing goes for asking questions that are prefaced with "in your own words."

I am timing, my time is the time. You should still time yourself. I do not give signals during speeches, CX, or prep.

This is specifically for UIL tournaments: there's no such thing as "UIL style" and most "UIL rules" aren't actually rules. Any appeal to the UIL that aren't in any UIL handbook will not be flowed and is again, -1 speak.

PF Debate:

- I don't judge this event nearly at all, but please just select sides in such a way that pro always speaks first. I get confused when it's reversed.

- Also, there's nothing I hate more than the PF convention of sharing evidence. Please just flash entire cases.

rujuta.debate@gmail.com

BACKGROUND:

GBN '20 & Dartmouth '24

Below are my opinions from when I used to think about policy debate a lot more than I do today. My most consistent view now is that tech > truth unless an argument is egregiously offensive. An argument is a claim, warrant, and an impact, not 2/3 parts of this. Be clear when using topic-specific acronyms or explaining concepts.

Have fun, be kind, and answer your opponents' arguments instead of just extending yours.

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TOP LEVEL:

- Not good for k affs, fine for ks with das inside of them, good for almost everything else

- Condo is probably the only reason to reject the team

- I won't vote on things that happened outside of the round. I won't assign speaker points based on in-round deals.

- I believe that my role as a judge includes the responsibility to maintain debate as a safe space for participants (especially given that most high schools are minors) and I will act accordingly in response to sexism/homophobia/racism etc.

- Everything below is a personal opinion that I will contradict in my ballot if you win the flow

POLICY AFFS: Framing pages have never had any relevance in any debate ive judged

T:I care a lot about evidence quality and comparison in these debates

DAs: Do whatever

CPs: Good for advantage cps and legitimate, well-researched pics, meh for cheaty cps. I won't judge kick unless I'm told to.

IMPACT TURNS:Love them except for wipeout and spark - more ridiculous impact scenarios are entertaining but not compelling

K AFFS: Please don't pref me to judge one of these debates... If I end up in the back of the room despite this plea: For me to vote for your k aff you should at minimum have a connection to the topic. I refuse to adjudicate a decision in which my ballot is a referendum on identity or a survival strategy. EVERYONE IN THESE DEBATES NEEDS TO SLOW DOWN - if you choose to spam analytics without sending them I can’t catch your 20 counter interps or your 20 DAs to those counter interps.

FOR THE NEG:

- @ T/FW teams: Fairness is probably an internal link not an impact but I can be convinced otherwise. I prefer limits and clash as impacts.

- Neg teams that execute a well-prepared, aff-specific strategy (a pic with a small net benefit, an aff specific k...) against a k aff will get 29.5+ in speaks. I find these debates far more interesting than framework debates BUT I've found that I am more likely to vote neg on fw

Be realistic. After debate, you will enter the real world and realize that utopian idealism is a fairly futile mission and "movements" are not a realistic form of solving anything. I want to know what you do to solve the structural issues that you condemn, not just what you reject.

Ks:The closer your k is to a da or impact turn with a cp THAT ACTUALLY SOLVES the better it will go for you. Don't read high theory.

THEORY: Personally not a fan of cheaty cps but I'll listen to them. New affs warrant neg terrorism.

Claire Park (she/they)

Email: claireparkdebate@gmail.com

Short Version

- Read whatever you want

- tech = truth

- I like good evidence, I like spins more

- "status quo is always an option" means judge kick

- Judge direction is always good

I prefer to evaluate the debate on what is said in the debate, and I can vote for any argument. I think slight judge intervention is inevitable, but l do my very best to limit it as much as I can.

Online debating

- If I can't hear you or if my wifi is bad, I'll verbally let you know

- My camera will be on, if it is off I am not ready

Background Info

- Georgetown '25: not debating

- Major: Science, Technology, and International Affairs concentrating in Security, especially with AI.

- Notre Dame ‘21: 2N/1A

Case

Please use your 1AC

Disadvantages

Turns case is good

Impact calculus is close to essential

Topicality

Case lists and TVAs are really persuasive to me

Usually, competing interpretations > reasonability

Counterplans

As a 2N, I love a good cheaty and tricky counterplan, so I'll consider it more than the average judge.

Kritiks

Honestly, you can read any K in front of me

Specific links can only help you

K affs

The aff

- I'm fine with them - the closer you are to the topic the better

- I'm more inclined to say that you get a perm

the neg [overview]

Framework [neg]

- Same thing as topicality portion

- I've voted for framework and I've voted against framework - as long as you debate it well I'm all for it

K v K

- My favorite debates to judge when done well, and my least favorite when done messily

Theory

- Similar to the topicality paradigm

- I don't really have a strong opinion on condo

- I'm inclined to think that perf con isn't a voting issue

Miscellaneous

*I'm fine with tag-team cross-x, as long as you give the person who's supposed to question and/or answer the chance to do so

*Also if an argument is dropped, I won't give it weight unless you extend the argument. Don't just point out it's dropped

- I don't really have that many strong opinions on debate that'll affect the decision. I prefer to be convinced of your argument despite my opinion.

SPEECH PARADIGM

wsd & extemp

I've judged only some wsd & speech, BUT I have done some debates in wsd and know a bit about speech and understand the structure. Honestly, just debate, argue, and convince well and I will judge to the best of my abilities.

jiyooon.park@gmail.com

Washburn Rural ‘22

Michigan ’26

Assistant Coach for Washburn Rural and TAS

Judging

I will decide debates purely on my flow and the words I hear you speak. Prioritizing dropped arguments will be the best and quickest way for me to vote for you, and I will be more likely to decide on small technical errors, especially if you point them out or make them relevant.

If my flow is not sufficient to decide an argument I will look at evidence, whether it is because:

1. The flow is too close, i.e., no dropped arguments, lack of impact calculus, the debate is two ships passing by, etc.

2. The line-by-line is a dispute over evidence, whether quality or applicability.

If you predict debates coming down to this, provide a metric for how I should evaluate and elevate certain types of evidence and name specific authors or cards for my decision. This metric can include recency, expertise, causality, citations, etc. If a metric is never set, I will favor better-highlighted evidence, complete warrants, and conclusiveness.

I will try my hardest to flow, judge, and make the best decision possible, but I am imperfect. My biggest flaws that you can quickly adapt to are:

1. Typing. I attempt to flow cross-ex and transcribe every speech, but the combination of debaters blitzing through blocks at 300 WPM, typos, and debaters talking over each other means I miss 5-10% of text per debate. I do not think I have ever missed an argument in its entirety, but it would behoove you to be clear and flowable. Even when I miss things, I will remember the context and the surrounding words, but that is not as reliable as the words on my flow.

2. Knowledge Gaps. I try to stay in tune with wikis, argumentative trends, the news, and core topic themes, but there is a lot I do not know about. Things I have learned about in my time judging without much prior knowledge or personal debate experience include interest rates, Erdogan’s political trouble, the racism paradox, the many ways humans could survive nuclear war, laches, textual topicality, and the barebones of random philosophies. While most debates do not require an in-depth knowledge of individual issues, the best debates and debaters do, and I will try to match that. If it turns out that I am a moron, over-explaining different arguments could benefit you, i.e., speeding through moral philosophy and hypotheticals at 300 WPM is a way to win, but probably not the way to win.

Both can be easily overcome with clear, precise, technical debating and having a more explanatory narrative than the other team. While I appreciate and reward technically proficient debaters, making my decision come down to the second half of subpoint D of subpoint 11 at 250 WPM is not ideal.

Here is my decision-making process proper if this helps you structure final rebuttals:

1. I will almost always start deciding debates where the debaters tell me to start, i.e., in framework debates, most debaters say to start on fairness as an impact or ballot solvency, or if the 2NR is a DA and impact defense, I will start assessing the risk of impacts first. This also means picking and choosing arguments is better than shot-gunning arguments.

2. If neither rebuttal tells me where to start deciding, I will start where I think is the most logical point of contestation. Given the lack of (1), this is where I start most of my decisions.

3. I will highlight cells on my flow for what is dropped and/or relevant to deciding first-order issues and so forth until every cell with words in my cell is highlighted (if this includes reading cards, I will put relevant card authors/warrants next to those cells). This process also includes striking new cells that could not be traced back to the 2AR.

4. I try to decide based on the exact words said by debaters to avoid intervening.

Observations

The above should obviate everything below because none of my ideologies, thoughts about the debate, or biases will affect my decision, but here are my impressions that could matter to you:

1. Ideology. The critique has been less than 5% of my 2NRs since I joined the activity, but about half of the debates I judge are clash debates. Critical teams that impact turn framework have had the most success in front of me, especially because most 2ACs do not counter-define the resolution. Framework 2NRs with a robust defense of fairness combined with lots of no link + the AFF links more to their offense has had the most success. Both sides are better suited to specify and apply their blocks to the debate or 1AC at hand. Critiques on the NEG usually succeed when they moot the plan; every other version seems more fallible.

2. Side bias. I have been a 2N my whole career and think being NEG is hard on most topics. My default is infinite conditionality, but I have been persuaded otherwise in a handful of debates. 2Ns should make their condo blocks topic-specific and go for flexibility or arbitrariness. 2As should ensure their 1ARs say enough words so the 2AR is not new and needs a robust defense of dispositionality. My default is to judge kick. Most 2ACs and 1ARs commit egregious amounts of under-coverage on the case, and 2Ns should quickly point this out. I will quickly strike ‘new’ parts of the 2AR to protect the 2NR. Lastly, I find myself voting NEG frequently on turns case where I think most AFFs do not have a great answer to.

3. Argument quality. All arguments are fair game. Degradation in quality should be quickly dispatched with high-quality evidence or low-hanging responses. I do not feel distaste for generic impact turns like dedev or spark or ‘generic’ CPs like process. I think the AFF is favored in both debates, but the NEG normally has tricks that help them. Your speaks most likely will not suffer from deploying strategies like above. However, if your A-strat is hiding ASPEC in the middle of the 2NC, you may get the ballot, but your speaks will definitely suffer. Lastly, I think most debate impacts and internal links are non-intrinsic or rely on a reality distortion, so I am more amenable than most to smart analytical advantage CPs.

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: Debating at UTD (2022–), and debated at Plano East (2018–2022). Please put me on the chain; my email is rahulpenumetcha10@gmail.com.

The debate should be up to the debaters, and I will not intervene—any of my opinions discussed below will not affect my decision-making process if any argument in the debate is made over them.

I will vote on any argument, even if I disagree with it or believe it to be untrue, as long as it is won at a technical level (this does not apply to non-negotiables).

If an argument is bad, you should be able to answer it, and the threshold will always be lower for what constitutes an "answer."

Don't change the way you debate for me—do what you do best, and I'll try my best.

Make clash debates interesting. I like when teams use the TVA/SSD to provide an inroad to the AFF’s DAs/Impact Turns while also winning an external impact of clash and/or fairness. I like when teams win an impact turn to T and provide a metric to evaluate the AFF/debate through. Reading straight down T blocks is uninteresting. Reading straight down "debate bad" blocks is uninteresting.

Case debating and impact defense debating are important, as is "try or die."

DA debating is about winning that the risk of the DA is larger than the risk of the impact the 2AR has gone for. Turns case, ev comparison, and in-depth impact defense debating are persuasive to me.

CPs that are recycled or can be are less persuasive to me. Competition debates should involve articulating how debates under their respective models play out.

Ks are far more persuasive to me when links are causal and provide an opportunity cost to the AFF.Ks with a theory of power or a lens to view the AFF through simplify the debate. In-depth alt and link debating are far more interesting to me than generic FW debating.

I appreciate the activity of debate and the research that every debater puts into it. The more you show me that you have put work, time, and thought into your strategy, the better.

Random notes; Please avoid downtime between speeches.Rehighlightings are fine, but explain what they mean.Do not be racist, sexist, homophobic, or misgender.CX is binding.I will not vote on anything that did not happen in the round because that is not what a judge ought to do.

If the debate can be made safer, accessible etc. Please let me know.

Preface
Yes I want to be on the email chain. nickspereda@gmail.com.
Don't steal prep
I have not done research or judged a lot this year so at least for the first few tournaments keep that in mind.

Summary
I like flex debating and enjoy diverse strategies, so you do you and I will try to judge you with as little argumentative biases as possible. That being said, I am a human and I do have preferences.

I think the aff should read a plan text and defend it. At worst, I think the aff should have a strong resolutional basis. Probably related to that, I'm likely not the greatest judge for super K-oriented strategies. This is not to say I do not enjoy these debates or won't vote for Ks, but that you will have to do more work explaining the theory and its relationship to the aff than average.

I feel much more qualified in "policy" debates. I like wonky and technically intensive stuff so do something interesting.

Isolate what impacts you think you have a chance of winning and compare it to the impacts you think the other team has a chance of winning.

Speed:
I'm good with it but don't sacrifice clarity. Slow down on theory arguments, give me pen time.

*For online tournaments: Maybe slow down a bit to compensate for mic quality so I can still understand what you're saying.

Tech vs. Truth:
Tech> Truth. Being on the side of truth is obviously a good thing and I'm hesitant to consider arguments that are objectively false, but if you can't answer an argument that's really really bad, then you should lose anyways.

Evidence vs. Spin:
I think research is the most important aspect of debate and should be rewarded. I will read every card that I think I need to at the end of the round, so isolate evidence you think is really good or important. That being said, cards are support for larger arguments, meaning that I will default to your explanation of an argument or card whenever it makes sense.

In technical debates, have a card doc for the end of the round so I don't have to look around for relevant cards.

Quality>quantity

Specific argument preferences:
Topicality:

I went for T a lot in both high school and college and think a lot of debaters just aren't as good at debating it or as willing to go for it as a lot of other argument categories. Well executed T debates are really fun for me, but poorly executed T debates are the least enjoyable type of debate to judge. Limits and ground aren't impacts, they're internal links to things like education, fairness, research models, etc. I default to competing interpretations but reasonability is a winnable argument.

RVI's are bad arguments.

T comes before theory.

Case lists are good and necessary.

Actually engage with the other teams arguments, most T debates I've judged at this point have felt like ships passing in the night and forced me to resolve a lot of stuff on my own which should never be what you want. Statistically I lean neg in these debates, but I think that's because a lot of 2Ns only go for T if it's very clear cut which is unfortunate.

DA:
Cool. Aff specific DAs are much cooler (and usually easier to win).

There is such thing as zero risk and I think the link usually controls the direction of uniqueness.

Do a lot of turns case analysis that's actually contextualized to the internal links of the 1AC. Not much else to say.

CP:
Good, not much else to say. I will say that I like advantage CP + Impact turn debates a lot.

Word PICs should be based on a word in the plantext, anything other than that is meh.

Read a solvency advocate, each plank should be based on evidence or something the other team said.

I will not kick the counterplan for you unless you tell me to.

Ks:

Material> High theory

I have a high threshold for the link portion of the debate. Root cause claims are not links but they can be solvency deficits. Fiat not being real is not an argument. Links of omission are the worst arguments in debate.

If I don't feel like I can explain your K to someone else by the end of the round then I will not feel comfortable voting for you.

Ks that advocate for death or suicide are not only bad arguments in the context of debate, but also morally objectionable and I will not vote for them.

K affs:
I am not the best judge for this. I prefer debates focused around a plan, and in nearly all of the clash debates I have judged at this point I have voted for FW.

I don't know that my ballot has the potential to do anything beside designate a winner or loser, and debate isn't meant to come to a final decision on the truth of any given statement but come to a determination on subjective truth so I don't think subject formation arguments are very persuasive.

The aff should at a minimum be related to the topic. You should also have some clear advocacy statement that you defend consistently. The CI should be predictable and res grounded with definitions. USFG = "the people" is intellectually dishonest and just not a good argument.

FW vs. K Affs:
Go for it, it's the most strategic 2NR available.

I'm more likely to vote on procedural fairness than I think the community at large is. Structural fairness disparities are inevitable but procedural fairness disparities aren't.

FW is not violent or policing and saying so is insulting to people that have dealt with those issues.

Theory:
Usually a reason to reject the argument not the team. 3 conditional advocacies are probably ok but more is iffy. Consult, delay, and condition counter-plans are sketchy. Each conditional plank is its own world if you can kick them individually. I have been both a 2A and 2N, so I don't have any strong protectionist feelings for either team, and sometimes cheating is pretty fun to watch. Also I think the impact of some theory arguments should sometimes just be that you should get to cheat too.

Speaker points
They're entirely subjective. That being said, I do understand that context (tournament size, quality, etc.) should influence my scale. Speaker points are a holistic reflection of how I think you did. I used to have a scale here but with speaker point inflation I don't think it really matters anymore. My average hovers around 28.5-28.6.

I have shortened my paradigm over time to make it easier to read, if you have questions for prefs just email me.

quals:

UVA '26

SLC West '22, TOC in policy '22

Tldr:

email chain: sterling.pe88@gmail.com

"If you can't explain [the argument] simply, you don't know [the argument] well enough" - Albert Einstein.

I am good with absolutely any form of argumentation as long as its not explicitly or intentionally hurtful to someone else. I debated strictly policy, ran a Baudrillard k-aff, and everything in between. You do you and I will adapt to your style, not the other way around.

Irrespective of your style, try to do line-by-line like it's a politics DA and speak with rhetorical power like it's a set col K

I try to be the most predictable and least interventionist judge possible, so I will NOT do work for you. Actually do quality line-by-line, and answer your opponents' arguments specifically. The more judge instruction you can do effectively, the better and more logical my decision can be. Any style of debate you do is fine so long as you are clashing with the specifics of your opponents' arguments. Reading generic blocks mindlessly is not the most effective way to win debates. Everything below is more a suggestion about how to be more strategic, not my preferences. I try to come into each round as a blank slate and will not arbitrarily prioritize certain arguments because "I like them" or "I debated them" or some random thing like that.

K-Aff v FWK

I've definitely been on both sides of this debate. Sometimes it seems like k-aff teams struggle to coherently and specifically explain how the aff is a substantial departure from the squo, but a lot of neg teams aren't effective at going for presumption. I don't have an opinion on whether fairness is an impact. That's for the debate to decide.

The aff overviews in these debates often seem absurdly long and useless filled with buzzwords - I would use this time to explain the affirmative in the simplest and clearest way possible - if you find you're struggling to explain why the judge should vote aff in a specific and simple way in 2 sentences, that might be a sign you might need to reconstruct your affirmative.

K v K

Plz dont read generic blocks and just never clash with the other team. The best examples of these debates are when the neg isolates and specifically explains why the aff has done something bad, not just why their theory of power is better.

Are there perms in method debates? That's for the debate to decide

Policy v K

If I need a separate sheet for your overview, you should probably be doing extemp. I will of course still do my best to flow, but these debates almost always turn into a incoherent jumble of writing with the 2nc then saying "that was answered in the overview" five separate times. If you ever find yourself doing that, you should be doing that analysis as a response to their argument, not admitting you just read a generic block you read every 2nc on the K and then asserting it applies to their argument.

Do specific line-by-line and analysis of why the aff links. Try to use quotes, rehilightings, or other specific ways to contextualize the K to the aff

Policy v Policy

Honestly these are sometimes some of my favorite debates. I love innovative strategies, impact turns, and other unusual ways to get the ballot. I think specific and smart analytical arguments against both affs and DAs are under-utilized. Reading a wall of cards is not always necessary when the opponent's arguments are just not logical, which is most of the time considering we're not extinct yet.

I will judge kick if the 2nr says so as long as the aff doesn't have a warranted objection

I personally think infinite condo is great and the 1nc could have 50 CPs if it could read that many, but obviously I won't use that bias when evaluating condo in a round.

Scott Phillips- for email chains please use iblamebricker@gmail in policy, and ldemailchain@gmail.com for LD
Coach@ Harvard Westlake/Dartmouth

My general philosophy is tech/line by line focused- I try to intervene as little as possible in terms of rejecting arguments/interpreting evidence. As long as an argument has a claim/warrant I can explain to your opponent in the RFD I will vote for it. If only one side tries to resolve an issue I will defer to that argument even if it seems illogical/wrong to me- i.e. if you drop "warming outweighs-timeframe" and have no competing impact calc its GG even though that arg is terrible. 90% of the time I'm being postrounded it is because a debater wanted me to intervene in some way on their behalf either because that's the trend/what some people do or because they personally thought an argument was bad.

I am a good judge for you if/A bad judge for you if not

1. You cut good cards and highlight them to make complete arguments in at least B- 7th grade English, which is approximately my level. Read uniqueness. If your disad is non unique, not putting a uniqueness card in the 1NC is not cute, its a waste of time. If your best answers to an IR K are Ravenhall 09 and Reiter 15 you are not meeting this criteria, ditto answering pessimism with "implicit bias is malleable".
2. You debate evidence quality/qualifications and read evidence from academic sources rather than twitter/forum posts. If you are responding to a zany argument not discussed in academia, blog/forum away. If that is not the case I implore you to ask why these sources are the only ones you can find.
3. You listen to what the other team is saying and give a speech that demonstrates that you did by answering all of their arguments correctly and in the order in which they were presented . Do not read a collection of non responsive blocks in random order. And then in follow up speeches you compare/resolve those arguments rather than repeating yourself.
4. You make smart analytics against arguments with obvious weaknesses. Most 1NC disads and 1AC advantages in current debate are incoherent/missing several pieces. You do not have to respond to an incomplete argument, point out it is incomplete and move on. Once completed you get new answers to any part of it.
5. You rely on knowing what you are talking about more than posturing/grandstanding.
6. You understand your arguments/can explain things. In CX and speeches you should be able to explain words/concepts from your evidence correctly, and be able to apply them. If your link card says "the aff is not disarm" thats not a link, thats an observation
7. You can cover/don't drop things. Grouping things is fine. Making a philosophical argument for why line by line debate is bad, and instead making your argument in the form of big picture conceptual analysis is fine. Randomly saying things in the wrong place, dropping 1/2 of what the other team said and then expecting me to figure out how to apply what you said there is not. I will not make "reject argument not team" for you.

I operate on a "3 strikes" rule: each side gets up to 3 nonsense arguments- a CP that is just a text, a bad disad or advantage, an unexplained perm etc. After that your points and credibility plummet precipitously. If I'm reading your card doc I will stop reading your evidence after 3 cards highlighted into nothing. If you include 3 "rehighlightings" of the other teams evidence that are obviously wrong I will ignore all your evidence/default to the other sides.

If debated by two teams of equal skill/preparation, the following arguments are IMO unwinnable but I vote for them more often than not because the above suggestions are ignored.

-please let us weigh our case or we said the word extinction so Ks don't matter

-the framework is: object of research, you link you lose, debate shapes subjectivity, ethics first without explaining what ethics are/mean

-War good, pollution good, renewables bad- it doesn't matter if these are in right wing heritage impact turn form or academic K form

-the neg needs more than 1cp and 1K for debate to be fair. Arguments like "hard debate is good debate... so make it hard for them" are so bad you should be able to figure it out/not say them

-PICS that do/result in the whole plan are legitimate. The negative can actually win without these, especially on a topic where there are 3 affs.

-counterplans that ban the plan as their only form of competition are legitimate, especially on a topic with only...

email: picklara4@gmail.com

- she/her

Glenbrook North '20

Northwestern University '24 (not debating)

- name chain logically (pls include name round and turney)

-- Novices/JV: if you follow my labeling advice for docs I will give you +0.1 speaks

-- if you can, pls send your analytics so I can flow better - if helps me and you, I promise

- clarity > speed (especially when online), seriously go slower or I will probably miss much of what you're saying

- impact everything out!

- no hateful language, don't clip, don't steal prep, death is not good, etc

- tech>truth (within moderation)

-- if I don't understand any part of what you said, that means you did not sufficiently explain your arguments

-- if you want me to flow every word of your analytics, send them in the chain

- Novices: don't read condo if there's only one counterplan or kritik (one advocacy)

- its probably fair to assume I'm not particularly well-versed in your kritik (especially if high theory) and need more explanation to fully understand your arguments. Be mindful of

- not read up on this topic so be sure to explain arguments fully

Glenbrook North- he/him

I don't know what has happened to wiki disclosure but current practices are unacceptable. Rather than hard and fast rules, I've decided to just incorporate wiki disclosure into speaker points. The baseline is round reports for all your rounds, including what was in the 1NC, the block, and the 2NR, with full text of your 1ACs and cites for all your off-case. Going beyond that will boost your points. Not meeting that baseline will hurt your points.

Use the tournament's doc share if it's set-up, speechdrop if it's not.

I won't vote for death good.

If you're taking prep before the other teams speech, it needs to be before they send out the doc. For example, if the aff team wants prep between the 2NC and 1NR, it needs to happen before the 1NR doc gets sent out, so I'd recommend saying you're going to do it before cross-x.

1. Flow and explicitly respond to what the other team says in order. I care a lot about debate being a speaking activity and I would rather not judge you if you disagree. I won't open the speech doc during the debate. I won't look at all the cards after the round, only ones that are needed to resolve something being debated out that are explicitly extended throughout the debate. If I don't have your argument written down on my flow, then you don't get credit for it. As an example, if you read a block of perms, I need to be able to distinguish between the perms in the 2AC to give you credit for them. If you are extending a perm in the 2AR I didn't have written down in the 2AC, I won't vote on it, even if the neg doesn't say this was a new argument. The burden is on you to make sure I am able to flow and understand everything you are saying throughout the debate. If you don't flow (and there are a lot of you out there) you should strike me.

2. Things you can do to improve the likelihood of me understanding you:

a. slow down

b. structure your args using numbers and subpoints

c. explicitly signpost what you are answering and extending

d. alternate analytics and cards

e. use microtags for analytics

f. give me time to flip between flows

g. use emphasis and inflection

3. I think the aff has to be topical.

4. I'm not great at judging the kritik. I'm better at judging kritiks that have links about the outcome of the plan but have an alternative that's a fiated alternative that's incompatible with the world of the plan.

5. You can insert one perm text per CP into the debate. Those need to be sent out prior to the 2A getting to those perms. The idea that you can "make" a perm but then actually write it later is absurd. You can insert sections of cards that have been read for reference. You can't insert re-highlightings. I'm not reading parts of cards that were not read in the debate.

6. I flow cross-x but won't guarantee I'll pay attention to questions after cross-x time is up. I also don't think the other team has to indefinitely answer substantive questions once cx time is over.

7.Plans: If you say the plan fiats something in CX, you don't get to say PTIV means something else on T. So for example, if you say "remove judicial exceptions" means the courts, you don't get to say you're not the courts on T. If you say normal means is probably the courts but you're not fiating that, you get to say PTIV but you also risk the neg winning you are Congress for a DA or CP.

8. If your highlighting is incoherent, I'm not going to read unhighlighted parts of the card to figure out what it means.

Experience: I debated for 4 years at Notre Dame in CA (2011-2015); University of San Francisco (BA in Psychology); JD from UC Davis School of Law (2022). Previously taught 4 classic week labs at University of Michigan Debate Camp.

Update for 2024 TOC: Currently am an attorney and I judge here and there. I judged a few rounds at Long Beach this year, but have not judged rounds since then.

tldr: I'll judge anything but I like policy debates more. Just make warranted arguments and tell me how I should vote and why.

Newest thoughts:

- steal prep and I'm docking points

- don't make your opponent send you a marked doc for just 1-2 marked cards - that is something you should be tracking - I notice this is something teams do and then they just use the time to keep prepping their next speeches

General Notes:

1. I am definitely very, very flow oriented. I flow on paper and care a lot about structure. That being said, to have a full argument you need to make a claim, warrant, and impact. If those things aren't there, I'd rather not do the work for you and reward the team that did.

2. Other than that, you do you. I'm down to listen to anything you want to talk about if you can defend it well.

3. I'm super easy to read. If I'm making faces, it's probably because I am confused or can't understand what you're saying. If I'm nodding, that is generally a good thing.

4. Be good people. There's nothing I hate more than people being unnecessarily rude.

5. There is always a risk of something, but a low risk is almost no risk in my mind when compared to something with a high risk.

6. I'll always prioritize good explanation of things over bad cards. If you don't explain things well and I have to read your evidence and your evidence sucks, you're in a tough spot. That being said, I would rather not call for cards, but if you think that there is a card that I simply need to read, then say so in your speech.

7. Tasteful jokes/puns are always accepted. They can be about anything/anyone (ie Jacob Goldschlag) as long as its funny :)

Topicality: I love topicality debates because they're techy and force debaters to really explain what they are talking about in terms of impacts. That being said, 2nr's/2ar's really need to focus on the impact debate and explain to me why education is an impact or why I should prefer a limited topic over an unlimited one. Reasonability is debatable. I was a 2n in high school and I lean towards a more limited topic, but I'm very easily persuaded otherwise.

K Aff's: I am very convinced by most framework arguments on the negative side. I think that K aff's need to be closer to the resolution than not and I do not think that many of them are. However, this does not mean that I will not vote for a K aff; I just have had trouble understanding the proliferation of Baudrillard and Bataille affs, so if you are aff, you will definitely need to be doing a higher level of experience. I think Cap K's versus these aff's can be very persuasive, but I also think Framework makes a lot of sense if the aff isn't topical. That being said, do you and make smart args. I'm not the most literate in a lot of high-theory literature, so if you want to play that game in front of me, do it BUT explain your theories and I'll catch on quick.Framework: I think that "traditional" framework debates fall prey to a big exclusion DA from the aff. I think we should be able to talk about K affs and that they should be included in the topic - HOWEVER I believe that K aff's do need to prove that they are topical in some way. I lean more towards the neg in framework debates because I do think that many K aff's have little to do with the topic, but there have been so many times when K aff's actually engage the topic in a great way. That being said, on the aff be closer to the resolution and on the neg, explain how your interpretation and model of debate interacts with the aff. Most teams forget that the aff will always try to weigh their impacts against framework, which sucks because it is hard to resolve real world impacts versus theoretical arguments about fairness and education.

Theory: I will most likely lean neg on most theory questions unless a CP is simply very, very abusive, but even those can be defended sometimes :)

Disads: I love disads, specifically the politics DA. Prioritize impact work! Despite my love for DA's, most of them are dumb and you can easily convince me that they are dumb even using analytics and indicting the neg's evidence. However, I still love DA's and wish I got to go for them more in high school. Good politics debates make me happy.

Counterplans: Everything is debatable in terms of theory, so do you. If a CP is very abusive, hopefully the aff says so. If the aff concedes planks of your CP, you should make sure you say that. I think all CP's need a solvency advocate, otherwise it will be hard for the neg to win solvency and potentially theory.

Kritiks: I really like the K when the link debate is specific and I can articulate a SPECIFIC link and reasons why the aff is bad. Fair warning - I am not the most literate in high-theory arguments. This doesn't mean I won't listen to your Baudrillard K's, but it means that I have a very high threshold for SPECIFIC links and also simple explaination of the argument since I will most likely be confused until you explain yourself. The neolib k was my baby in high school and I think it answers everything. Security was Notre Dame's main thing when I was there so go for that too. Teams need to explain what I need to prioritize first, whether that is epistemology, reps, framework, or whatever, just make sure you say so! I don't like overviews and I am a big believe in putting your link and impact work where it makes sense on the line by line because it will always make sense somewhere.

North Broward MR

Michigan PR

nogreatpowerwar@gmail.com

A K aff or K on the neg will give you the best chance of winning. This does not mean I am not open to evaluating topicality or framework arguments, just that I prefer not to adjudicate policy vs. policy debates.

This is my twenty sixth year as an active member of the policy debate community. After debating in both high school and college I immediately jumped into coaching high school policy debate. I have been an argument coach, full time debate instructor, program director, and argument coach again for Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami, FL for the past seventeen years.

I become more convinced every year that the switch side nature of policy debate represents one of the most valuable tools to inoculate young people against dogmatism. I also believe the skills developed in policy debate – formulating positions using in depth research that privileges consensus, expertise, and data and the testing of those positions via multiple iterations—enhance students’ ability to think critically.

I am particularly fond of policy debate as the competitive aspect incentivizes students to keep abreast of current events and use that information to formulate opinions regarding how various levels of government should respond to societal needs.

Equipping students with the skills to meaningfully engage political institutions has been incredibly valuable for me. Many of my debate students have been Latina/Latinx. Witnessing them develop an expert ability to navigate institutions, that were by design obfuscated to ensure their exclusion, continues to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I am constantly grateful for that privilege.

I am deeply concerned by the ongoing trend toward clash avoidance. This practice makes debate seem more trivial each year and continues to denigrate our efforts in the eyes of the academics we depend on for funding and support.

Affirmatives continue to lean into vague plan writing and vague explanations of what they will defend. This makes for late breaking and poorly developed debates. I understand why students engage in these practices (the competitive incentive I lauded above) I wish instructors and coaches understood how much more meaningful their contributions would be if they empowered students to embrace clash over gimmicks.

I will be less persuaded by your delivery if you choose to engage in clash avoidance. Actions such as deleting analytics, refusal to specify plans, cps, and K alts, allowing your wiki to atrophy, and proliferating stale competition style and Intrinsicness arguments will result in my awarding fewer speaker points.

Remember your friends’ hot takes and even your young coaches/lab leaders’ hot takes are just that – they are likely not the debates most of your critics want to adjudicate.

If you are not flowing during the debate, it will be difficult to persuade me that you were the most skilled debater in the room.

Be “on deck.” By that I mean be warmed up and ready for your turn at bat. Have your table tote set up, the email thread ready, you pens/paper/timer out, your laptop charged, go to the restroom before the round, fill up your water bottle, etc. I don’t say all this to sound like a mean teacher – in fact I think it would be incredibly ableist to really harp on these things or refuse to let students use the facilities mid-round – but being ready helps the round proceed on time and keeps you in the zone which helps your ability to project a confident winning persona. It also demonstrates a consideration for me, your opponents, your coaches and teammates and the tournament staffs’ time.

Be kind and generous to everyone.

You can likely deduce most of this from the discussion of clash avoidance and why I value debate above.

I would prefer to see a debate wherein the affirmative defends the USFG should increase security cooperation with the NATO over AI, Biotech, and/or cybersecurity.

I would like to see the negative rejoin with hypothetical disadvantages to enacting the plan as well as introducing competing proposals for resolving the harms outlined by the affirmative.

One of the more depressing impacts to enrolling in graduate school has been the constant reminder that in truth impact d is >>> than impact ev. A few years ago, I was increasingly frustrated by teams only extending a DA and impact defense vs. the case – I thought this was responsible for a trend of fewer and fewer affirmatives with intrinsic advantages. I made a big push for spending at least 50% of the time on each case flow vs the internal link of the advantage. My opinion on this point is changing. Getting good at impact defense is tremendously valuable – you are likely examining peer reviewed highly qualified publications and their debunking of well…less than qualified publications.

I find Climate to be one of the most strategic and persuasive impacts in debate (life really). That said, most mechanisms to resolve climate presented in debates are woefully inadequate.

I am not averse to any genre of argument. Every genre has highs and lows. For example, not all kritiks are generic or have cheating alternatives, not all process counterplans are unrelated to the topic, and not all politics disadvantages are missing fundamental components but sometimes they are and you should work to avoid those deficiencies.

The folks with whom I see debate similarly:

Maggie Berthiaume

Dr. Brett Bricker

Anna Dimitrijevic

David Heidt

Fran Swanson

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.

Emory 26, Lawrence Free State 22

serenajosephinerupp@gmail.com

I am extremely tech > truth, which frames the rest of my thoughts about debate. Every time I judge this paradigm gets shorter because my predispositions are weak and irrelevant to the vast majority of debates.

Only non-negotiables:

1. No death good.

2. I won't vote on things that happen outside of the round. I'm 20 years old and so unqualified to mediate high schoolers' interpersonal conflicts.

T:

Absolutely love T debates when debaters do impact comparison. Competing interpretations > reasonability.

Truthfully, I think that predictable limits are the gold standard. Limits for the sake of limits are bad. The most legally precise definition isn't necessarily the best one for debate. That being said, just debate.

Ks:

I am comfortable judging Ks like cap, set col, antiblackness, security, etc. I know basically nothing about postmodernism/poststructuralism/high theory.

My predisposition is that teams should get to weigh their aff and that framework interps that entirely exclude Ks are unpersuasive.

K affs:

In a close T debate, I’m a bit better for the neg. This is an issue with experience more so than bias. I’ve basically always been on that side of the debate, so I can subconsciously fill in more gaps when both teams lack judge instruction. With that said, I am so flow-oriented that this rarely matters. I’m just going to vote for the team that wins more of their impact and explains why it outweighs. Fairness is an impact so long as you can explain it as one. I don’t have a strong preference between clash and fairness. If you’re neg, I’m on par better for T than the K because that’s where my experience lies.

DAs:

Obviously great. Smart turns case explanation = good speaks.

CPs:

Functional and textual competition is the gold standard. Default to judge kick.

Theory:

Conditionality is the only reason to reject the team. I'm a 2N and personally believe that condo is good, but quality of debating matters most. The aff needs to clearly explain an impact prior to the 2AR, or else I’m very sympathetic to the neg. Please do line by line.

Debate Experience
Law Magnet High School: 2012-2016
The University of Texas at Dallas: 2016-2019
Former assistant debate coach at Coppell HS: 2018-2024

sanchez.rafael998@gmail.com - I would like to be on the email chain :)

Specifics:
Case: You should read it. Lots of it. It's good, makes for good debates and is generally underutilized. Impact turns are best when they are debated correctly.

Topicality: I enjoy T debates. If you're looking for a judge willing to pull the trigger on T, I'm probably a good judge for you.

DAs: DAs are a core debate argument and I love judging DA(& CP) v. case debates. Specific DAs are always a plus, but obviously that's not always possible. I tend default to an offense/defense paradigm.

Counterplans: A well thought out specific counterplan are one of the strongest debate tools that you can use. I will vote on almost any cp if you can win that it is theoretically legitimate and that it has a net benefit.

Kritiks: I have a pretty good grasp of a lot of the more popular Kritiks, but that isn't an excuse for a lack of explanation when reading your argument. But be aware that if you are reading more PoMo/high-theory args, you might have to explain the arg a bit more.

K AFFs: I have no problem with teams running untopical affs but this doesn't mean that I wont pull the trigger on FW, you still have to win the affs model ow the negs model of debate.

Theory: I have no problem voting on theory if it is well warranted. I honestly believe affirmative teams let the negative get away with a ton of stuff, and shouldn't be afraid to not only run theory but to go for it and go for it hard.

*Note for online debates: I'm very forgetful and my keyboard is loud af, so if I forget to mute, remind me to mute myself if the keyboard noise is being bothersome.

lunakansasdebate@gmail.com

mid tournament stanford update: i would like teams to explain re-higlights and then insert them. I hope being able to insert is a sufficient boon to boost explanations of what's going on for my flow.

You should aim to be clear in front of me. Double what you think is clear enough.

KU '26

"judge" or "Luna"

Do whatever. I'm an educator first. Maximize your chances of winning by arguing with my ballot not your opponent.

Final rebuttals are most likely to win if they start with: "Our argument is X. Their best argument is Y. Even if they win Y, we have still won the debate on X for Z reason."

Feel free to email or ask any questions.

Ev ethics (L25) is skipping more than 5 words in a card, misciting author or article title, cards cut missing at least 1 sentence, or cards cut that don't start and end with the start and end of paragraphs in the article.

It is an evidence ethics issue when not better explained by: an accident that results in leaving off an author, an accident that produces minor discrepancies in the article title, an accident that results in a missing letter, single word, or instance of punctuation at the beginning/end of a paragraph, or discrepancies better explained by the existence of multiple versions of the article. In essence, close is close enough, but wrong is never enough.

Flowing is important. I flow straight down. I flow with attention to detail. I attempt to construct a decision based on the arguments on my flow, in the ways that they are applied. Because I flow straight down, I evaluate debates holistically and make clear and obvious applications of arguments where necessary. That does not mean that I will invent arguments, but it does mean 'lining things up' is less important than being clear about the implications of your argument to me.

Framework:

Clash and fairness are impacts. The 2NR is most likely to win when it is good at an internal link level that explains what good debates are enabled by your model and precluded by theirs. 2ARs are most likely to win when it is good at an impact level that explains why the impact turn is more significant than the explanation (or lack thereof) of the 2NR's model.

Negative debaters are most likely to win when they answer the case and make significant and contextual responses to aff offense. Negative debaters are most likely to lose when the case is dropped, an impact turn is dropped, or the 2NR is lack essential pieces of instruction on the internal link, impact, and impact calculus level that is called out by the 2AR. Affirmatives are most likely to lose when they do not condense the debate down to a central piece of offense and a way to generate uniqueness for that offense.

Kritiks:

Good for KvK. I participate in a fairly high amount of these debates in college.

I think the aff wins in K v K rounds when the aff is good, not just offense that says the alt is bad. I think the neg wins when it sets up framing questions for how to evaluate the aff and neg strategies and then does specific link work.

I am of the school that kritik debating is primarily a question of link debating. I think that the negative should prioritize spinning a problem with the aff - whether that be material, ideological, representational, political, or debate-related is not my concern. I only care that the negative attempt to create a problem with the affirmative and frame the debate around it. I think the negative is most likely to win with a smart, well-explained link argument. I think that the affirmative is most likely to win when it has won offense against the link, be that on the link level or alternative/solvency level, and justified the presentation of the affirmative.

I am agnostic on 2AC framework interpretations. I believe that the negative has the ability to moot the aff. I think that if the negative wants to go for a K of fiat or win that the affirmative should not get to weigh the plan, then the best execution of this is when the negative makes a specific critique of the aff's introduction, rhetoric, or justifications rather than a sweeping claim about microaggressions or fiat. I think that the affirmative is likely to win that weighing the aff is good when they have justified why debating about the aff is good - that can be for clash/fairness reasons or if you read a hard right aff and want to go for 'cap is good justifies us debating with that positions' then I am open to that as well.

Counterplans:

Given equal debating, I lean negative on theory because I think debate is best when the negative gets to respond to the affirmative. However, I lean aff on competition arguments given equal debating because I prefer when the negative engages in substantive debating.

Topicality:

Prioritize clarity and judge instruction, I have not seen very many topicality debates on the high school topic so I do not know what the 'meta' is, I might be unfamiliar with your interpretation, and I cannot and will not extrapolate an impact story for you.

Top level:

• Tech > truth but cards decide close debates. Both sides need cards to back up their advantage and DAs, but I will not read cards unless they are disputed and/or the content of them is relevant to my decision. I will be happy to vote on your analytical press against a DA or someone's case. The best takeouts to most DAs and even advantages won't have cards for them but you SHOULD make the argument and I will vote on it. However, if both sides are clashing on an issue in the debate I will read the cards and they will shape my decision.
• Macro-strategy is the best way to win my ballot. A lot of debates I watch have a lot of good line-by-line and clash going on, but neither side is thinking about how arguments interact and what they want the ballot to say. The more judge instruction and thinking about the debate you do the more likely you are to win my ballot.
• A note on how I evaluate debates - At the end of every debate, I make a T chart where I write down what "world" is being advocated by each team in the final rebuttal and the pros and cons of each "world." Keeping this in mind when doing final speech impact calculus and judge instruction could help you win a close debate. This also means that I care about 'try or die' a lot more than most. In K debates, the neg could probably get pretty far by explaining how their framework should alter how I approach the debate and my decision.

Framework debates:

• I care more than the average judge about:
• The NEG robustly describing the role of critiques under their model
• The link to exclusion DAs run by the AFF. Whoever wins the link debate on this argument is likely to win my ballot. I highly encourage the neg to focus a lot of time here and make offensive arguments rather than just defense. Your fairness/clash impact is unlikely to outweigh this sort of argument if you blow it off.
• Models of debate. The best AFF framework arguments connect an in round action by the NEG to an implication for their broader model.
• The TVA. A well crafted NEG TVA can eliminate most AFF offense. In most cases, this shouldn’t just be an afterthought.

K debates:

• I care more than the average judge about:
• The framework debate. I won’t just default to my own arbitrary “middle ground.” One side will win the framework debate and that will frame my ballot. However, I am very open to one side defending their own compromise framework if they can clearly articulate how I should decide the round.
• “Soft left” impacts. Evenly debated, I am unlikely to significantly discount non-extinction impacts in my decision. However, I am more than willing to vote on “only extinction matters” if decisively won.

pasdebate@gmail.com

---

General Background:

I debated at Maine East (2016-2020) on the TOC circuit and at the University of Pittsburgh (2020-2023), including the NDT. Currently, I work in the tech industry and am an Assistant Coach for the University of Pittsburgh.

My debate career focused on critical arguments (e.g., Afropessimism, Settler Colonialism, Capitalism). I particularly enjoy judging clash debates, or policy vs. critical. Traditional policy debaters should note my limited experience in policy v policy debates and rank me significantly lower / accordingly on their judging preferences.

If you follow @careerparth on tiktok, I will boost your speaker points.

Key Principles

The most important thing to know: If you make an argument, defend it fully. Do not disavow arguments made by you or your partner in speeches or cross-examination. Instead, defend them passionately and holistically. Embrace the implications of your strategy in all relevant aspects of the debate. Hesitation about your own claims is the quickest way to lose my ballot.

For reference, my judging philosophy aligns with those of Micah Weese, Reed Van Schenck, Calum Matheson, Alex Holguin, & Alex Reznik.

Debate Philosophy

I see my role as a judge as primarily to determine who won the debate but also to facilitate the debaters' learning. Everything can be an impact if you find a way to weigh it against other impacts, this includes procedural fairness. When my ballot is decided on the impact debate, I tend to vote for whoever better explains the material consequence of their impact. Using examples can help to elucidate (the lack of) solvency, establish link stories, make comparative arguments, and help establish your expertise on the topic.

While I have preferences, I will adapt to your argument style. I don't exclude debaters based on their choice of arguments, as long as they avoid racist, sexist, or similarly offensive content.

Speaker points are arbitrary. I tend to give higher speaker points to debaters who show a thorough understanding of the arguments they present. I am especially impressed by debaters who efficiently collapse in the final rebuttals and those who successfully give rebuttals with prep time remaining and/or off the flow.

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Public Forum Debate

I am a flow-centric judge on the condition your arguments are backed with evidence and are logical. My background is in policy debate, but regardless of style, and especially important in PF, I think it's necessary to craft a broad story that connects what the issue is, what your solution is, and why you think you should win the debate.

I like evidence qualification comparisons and "if this, then that" statements when tied together with logical assumptions that can be made. Demonstrating ethos, confidence, and good command of your and your opponent's arguments is also very important in getting my ballot.

I will like listening to you more if you read smart, innovative arguments. Don't be rude and/or overly aggressive especially if your debating and arguments can't back up that "talk." Not a good look.

Give an order before your speech and the faster you conclude the debate, the higher your speaker points will be.

Email chain: zahir.shaikh112@gmail.com

I have read and voted for many different styles of arguments. I appreciate thorough, technical debating, regardless of the content of your argument. Try to understand what issues you're winning, which ones you're behind on, and how that shapes the debate. Explain why winning certain issues frames the debate.

Being confidently wrong isn't a good thing. Debaters who exhibit general lack of awareness of the world or the topic will lose speaker points. I am far more likely to vote for the team that knows what they are talking about.

Leland '22 Michigan '26

conner.shih.debate@gmail.com

You can insert rehighlightings as long as its implication is explained. Recuttings of parts of the article not originally present in the card should be read.

I will not vote on events that occurred outside of the round or personal callouts. Additionally, using author indicts as case negs is terrible for the activity and will not be evaluated. Epistemological indicts are obviously fair game, but 'X was problematic on twitter' is not.

Fairness is good. It is an independent impact.

You should read cards.

Try or die is important. Identify why it matters.

Please email me your speech documents. I have judged over a 1000 HS and College Debates over the last 18 years. I am a lawyer and lectured this past summer on this year's HS topic at Institutes for the NY UDL and the DC UDL Coaches Workshop and at Summer Institutes at the University of Michigan, Gonzaga, Georgetown and Harvard.

If you run a K, and actually have an ALT that can be proven to SOLVE a problem - - - any problem - - - it would be the first one I have heard that does solve a problem in 18 years of judging debates and then you might get my ballot, but probably not depending on how well the AFF does. If you are AFF and have a Plan that SOLVES a problem without creating more or larger problems - - - you might well get my ballot, depending on how well you debate during the round.

I listen to arguments, favor clash to determine who does the better job of debating, and no matter the chosen framing or style of either or both teams, I judge the debate based on what is said during the DEBATE by the Debaters.

I began high school judging in 1973.

I started judging college debate in 1976.

Between 1977 and 2002, I took a vacation from debate to practice law and raise a family.

Since 2002, I have judged between 40 and 80 Rounds a year in High School and had brief stints judging college and professional debate while "coaching" for the University of Redlands, my alma mater, in, I believe, 2010.

You can debate your own stuff, but I am not a theory fan.

I believe I have voted NEG on topicality four times in 18 years, twice in non-traditional AFF debates and once at the Kentucky RR when I thought the AFF made a mistake and I also thought the NEG made them pay, although a very competent and distinguished judge who was also judging the same round felt differently. So, even in the one traditional debate round where I voted NEG on T, I was probably wrong. I believe in AFF creativity, reasonability which guarantees predictability.

BUT (and and this is a CAPITAL BUT) I like/strongly prefer substantive debates ABOUT the topic area, so long as the Plan is a reasonable illustration of the Resolution.

People who listen and answer arguments well get great speaker points. People who are nice and friendly and not jerks also like their speaker points.

I have had teams run K's and all kinds, types and nature of CP's. The PERM Debate really makes a difference in a K and CP Round. I am not the most philosophically literate humyn being on the planet, so please explain your esoteric K and your even more esoteric K responses.

Cross-Examination is IMPORTANT, so please ask questions, get answers and ask more questions. When responding, please listen to the question that is asked and ANSWER it. No need to fight or argue. Ask questions, Get Answers, move on.

For the clash of civilization people who want to know more about my feelings and leanings, perhaps the best information I can give you is that I listened to a recording of the final round of the 2013 NDT and would have voted for Northwestern had I been judging. The framework debate in my mind flowed Negative.

I enjoy DISADS and case debates. I am particularly fond of hidden Case Turns that become huge Disads.

I know how hard you work and will attempt to work just as hard to get things right.

Current Associate Director of Debate at Woodward Academy

Former Associate Director of Debate at Emory University.Former graduate student coach at University of Georgia, Wake Forest University, University of Florida

Create an email chain for evidence before the debate begins. Put me on it. My email address is lace.stace@gmail.com

Do not trivialize or deny the Holocaust

Online Debates:

Determine if I am in the room before you start a speech. "Becca, are you ready?" or "Becca, are you here?" I will give you a thumbs up or say yes (or I am not in the room and you shouldn't start).

I get that tech issues happen, but unnecessary tech time hurts decision time.

Please have one (or all) debaters look periodically to make sure people haven't gotten booted from the room. The internet can be unreliable. You might get booted from the room. I might get booted from the room. The best practice is to have a backup of yourself speaking in case this occurs. If the tournament has rules about this, follow those.

DA’s:

Is there an overview that requires a new sheet of paper? I hope not

Impact turn debates are fine with me

Counterplans:

What are the key differences between the CP and the plan?

Does the CP solve some of the aff or all of the aff?

Be clear about which DA/s you are claiming as the net benefit/s to your CP

"Solving more" is not a net benefit

I lean neg on international fiat, PICS, & agent CP theory arguments

I am open minded to debates about conditionality & multiple conditional planks theory arguments.

Lately I have noticed I am hoping to see a good AFF solvency deficit or theory argument as the way the AFF tries to win in the rebuttal more so than a permutation/competition type of debate

Flowing:

Make flowing easier for me (ex. debating line by line, signposting, identifying the other team’s argument and making direct answers, answer arguments individually rather than “grouping”)

Cross-X:

"What cards did you read?" "What cards did you not read?" "Did you read X off case position?" "Where did you stop in this document?" - those questions count as cross-x time! If a speech ends and you ask these, you should already be starting your timer for cross-x!

Avoid intervening in your partners cross-x time, whether asking or answering. Tag team is for professional wrestling, not debate.

Public forum debate specific thoughts:

I am most comfortable with constructive speeches that organize contentions using this structure: uniqueness, link, and impact.

I am comfortable with the use of speed.

From my experience coaching policy debate, I care a lot about quantity and quality of evidence.

I am suspicious of paraphrased evidence.

I like when the summary and final focus speeches make the debate smaller. If your constructive started with 2 or 3 contentions, by the summary and final focus your team should make a choice of just 1 contention to attempt winning.

Because of my background in policy debate, it takes me out of my comfort zone when the con/neg team speaks first.

Affiliation: Winston Churchill HS

email: s.stolte33@gmail.com

**prep time stops when the email is sent, stop stealing prep**

Updates 24-25 (more recent towards top)

-I did not spend my summer looking at IPR evidence or cases coming out of camp.Like zero.Do not assume based on past knowledge that I know what the acronyms you are using or what your plan does. You should be explaining things as you would to any other judge who did not work a summer camp/does not know the topic well

-maybe this is really "get off my lawn" of me, but the correlation between teams who under-highlight evidence and who are incomprehensibly unclear is becoming increasingly frustrating to me. It won't necessarily lose you the debate, but surely these practices don't help anyone

-LD living wage: See above ^ It feels like almost every "give a living wage to XYZ worker" aff has some 'creatively' highlighted ev that more often than not indicates a lack of competitive wages, but not lack of living wages

_________________________________________________________________

Do what you do well:I have no preference to any sort of specific types of arguments these days. The most enjoyable rounds to judge are ones where teams are good at what they do and they strategically execute a well planned strategy. You are likely better off doing what you do best and making minor tweaks to sell it to me rather than making radical changes to your argumentation/strategy to do something you think I would enjoy.

-Clash Debates:No strong ideological debate dispositions, affs should probably be topical/in the direction of the topic but I'm less convinced of the need for instrumental defense of the USFG. I think there is value in K debate and think that value comes from expanding knowledge of literature bases and how they interact with the resolution. I generally find myself unpersuaded by affs that 'negate the resolution' and find them to not have the most persuasive answers to framework.

-Evidence v Spin: Ultimately good evidence trumps good spin. See above statement about highlighting, but it's hard to buy an argument when the card read supporting it consists of like 3 disparately highlighted sentences and no warrants read. I will accept a debater’s spin until it is contested by the opposing team. I often find this to be the biggest issue with with politics, internal link, and permutation evidence for kritiks.

-Speed vs Clarity: I don't flow off the speech document, I don't even open them until either after the debate or if a particular piece of evidence is called into question. If I don't hear it/can't figure out the argument from the text of your cards, it probably won't make it to my flow/decision. This is almost always an issue of clarity and not speed and has only gotten worse during/post virtual debate. Things you can do to fix this: pen time on theory args, numbering responses, not making a bunch of blippy analytical arguments back-to-back-to-back.

-Inserting evidence/CP text/perms: you have to say the words for me to consider it an argument

-Permutation/Link Analysis: I am becoming increasingly bored in K debates. I think this is almost entirely due to the fact that K debate has stagnated to the point where the negative neither has a specific link to the aff nor articulates/explains what the link to the aff is beyond a 3-year-old link block written by someone else. I think most K links in high school debate are more often links to the status quo/links of omission and I find affirmatives that push the kritik about lack of links/alts inability to solve set themselves up successfully to win the permutation. I find that permutations that lack any discussion of what the world of the permutation would mean to be incredibly unpersuasive and you will have trouble winning a permutation unless the negative just concedes the perm. Reading a slew of permutations with no explanation as the debate progresses is something that strategically helps the negative team when it comes to contextualizing what the aff is/does. I also see an increasingly high amount of negative kritiks that don't have a link to the aff plan/method and instead are just FYIs about XYZ thing. I think that affirmative teams are missing out by not challenging these links.

FOR LD PREFS (may be useful-ish for policy folks)

All of the below thoughts are likely still true, but it should be noted that it has been about 5 years since I've regularly judged high-level LD debates and my thoughts on some things have likely changed a bit. The hope is that this gives you some insight into how I'm feeling during the round at hand.

1) Go slow. What I really mean is be clear, but everyone thinks they are much more clear than they are so I'll just say go 75% of what you normally would.

2) I do not open the speech doc during the debate. If I miss an argument/think I miss an argument then it just isn't on my flow. I won't be checking the doc to make sure I have everything, that is your job as debaters.

3) I'll be honest, if you're going to read 10 blippy theory args/spikes, I'm already having a bad time

4) Inserting CP texts, Perm texts, evidence/re-highlighting is a no for me. If it is not read aloud, it isn't in the debate

5) If you're using your Phil/Value/Criterion as much more than a framing mechanism for impacts, I'm not the best judge for you (read phil tricks/justifications to not answer neg offense). I'll try my best, but I often find myself struggling to find a reason why the aff/neg case has offense to vote on. I don't offhandedly know what words like 'permissiblity' or 'skep' mean and honestly everytime someone describes them to me they sound like nonsense and no one can actually articulate why they result in any sort of offense for the team reading them

6) Same is true for debaters who rely on 'tricks'/bad theory arguments, but even more so. If you're asking yourself "is this a bad theory argument?" it probably is. Things such as "evaluate the debate after the 1AR" or "aff must read counter-solvency" can *seriously* be answered with a vigorous thumbs down.

7) I think speaker point inflation has gotten out of control but for those who care, this is a rough guess at my speaker point range28.4-28.5average;28.6-28.7should have a chance to clear;28.8-28.9pretty good but some strategic blunders;29+you were very good, only minor mistakes

In all debate formats, I am looking for link stories and fully developed argumentation. Please fully explain your ideas such as debate theory and include impacts in your explanations.

Policy - I am a policy maker

LD - I'm slowly warming up to policy techniques in this format. Yet, value/criterion/framework will always be a priori when I make a decision. I like to see the connections of how the framework influences your cases and argumentation.

PF - I'm always looking for argumentation and clash.

Interp - I go down the questions on a ballot and look to see techniques like distinguishing characters and how you block.

Speech--

What are your stylistic preferences for extemp? I like good introduction that sets the tone of the speech. How much evidence do you prefer? I prefer a minimum of three pieces of evidence for each focus area. I think you get more analysis when you have something to analyze. I would like to hear good warrants with your claims. Implications are good. Any preference for virtual delivery? I’m in between. I can see standing up and moving to mimic in person, but it’s hard to hear. I can handle sitting down with good gestures and eye contact as well. I’m listening nite for speech. If round is close round then I start liking at technicalities and then the most persuasive.

What are your stylistic preferences for Oratory/Info? How much evidence do you prefer? Any preference for virtual delivery? Minimal evidence. I would like speeches to be unique or silly ideas in a new way. No preference for virtual

Any unique thoughts on teasers/introductions for Interpretation events? Love them. I like the tongue in cheek humor.

Any preferences with respect to blocking, movement, etc. in a virtual world? No

What are your thoughts on character work? Necessary

Personal history if you care about stuff like that:

- Debated for 4 years at a small school called HTPA as a part of the Los Angeles Metropolitian Debate League.

• Qualified to the TOC my senior year
• qualified to the NDT for Northwestern my freshman year

-Top-level

I think Judge adaptation creates worse debates. Everybody has biases and preferences no matter what they say but I think over-adapting to judges often causes students to do things they are less comfortable with and execute arguments they wouldn't normally. That being said DO YOU. You came here with an idea of the kinds of arguments you want to execute so don't change them for me. I will always evaluate debates with the maximum level of objectivity and will intervene as little as possible. This means the 2nr/2ar should do a lot of judge instruction and write my ballot for me.

All that being said we all have our preferences so here are mine

Disads

I always think impact calc is what makes or breaks these debates. Yes there is 0% risk

Kritiks

I am most familiar with Set col, Antiblackness, Cap, and Security type arguments. Pomo teams will need to over-explain concepts to me. I have no issue telling you I voted for the other team because I didn't understand what you were talking about, It is your job to explain your arguments to me. I don't think links have to be exactly specific to the aff so long as the block does a good job contextualizing the evidence to the aff, but more specific ev is always better. I don't think you need to win the alt if you win the framing for the debate but I won't kick the alt for you, you have to tell me to do that.

For the affirmative, I think the most convincing argument is the permutation. Of course case outweighs can win you the debate but I think any good 2n will be able to beat you to the punch there. The perm seems like the best arg to get the case back and be able to implicate the impacts of the aff without having to full-fledge win the framework debate. That being said do what your best at cuz tech/truth always

FW

A lot of my high school debates (and most of my college ones) were framework debates so I am pretty familiar here. I don't have a preference for whether affs go for counter interps or just impact turning T. I think that the most convincing argument for negatives to go for are education-based ones. I am sympathetic to arguments about predictability and engagement with the aff. Fairness is an impact and an internal link.

KvK

These are my favorite type of debates. I think they usually come down to the links and the perms. More specific evidence usually is better for the negative in terms of selling a convincing link story. I will vote on presumption if the aff is explained well enough.

Explicitly Racist/sexist/homophobic/ableist rhetoric will lose you the debate and I will nuke your speaks. Be respectful to the other team and try to have as much fun as you can!

he/him/his

Pronounced phonetically as DEB-nil. Not pronounced "judge", "Mister Sur", or "deb-NEIL".

Policy Coach at Lowell High School, San Francisco

Email: lowelldebatedocs [at] gmail.com for email chains. If you have my personal email, don't put it on the email chain. Sensible subject please.

Lay Debate: I care deeply about adaptation and accessibility. I find "medium" debates (splits of lay and circuit judges) incredibly valuable for students' skills. In a split setting, please adapt to the most lay judge in your speed and explanation. I won't penalize you for making debate accessible. Some degree of technical evaluation is inevitable, but please don't spread. If both teams explicitly tell me they want a lay debate before hand, I will gladly toss out all my knowledge about debate and judge like a parent (think San Jose Indian father). Speaks will range from 28.5 to 30, and like a lay judge, I will choose random numbers in that range based on your aesthetic appeal.

Resolving Debates: Above all, tech substantially outweighs truth. The below are preferences, not rules, and will easily be overturned by good debating. But, since nobody's a blank slate, treat the below as heuristics I use in thinking about debate. Incorporating some can explain my decision and help render one in your favor.

I believe debate is a strategy game, in which debaters must communicate research to persuade judges. I'll almost certainly endorse better judge instruction over higher quality yet under-explained evidence. In most debates, voting for either team is defensible; I will likely vote for the team that does more comparison and requires less intervention in terms of resolution. I flow on my laptop, but I only look at the 1AC and the 1NC. Subsequent evidence is only read when deciding the debate. (When online, I always have docs open.) I will only read a card in deciding if that card was contested by both teams or I was told explicitly to and the evidence was actually explained in debate.

I take an above-average time to decide debates. My decision time has little relationship with the debate's closeness, and more with the time of day and my sleep deprivation. (I am typically the sole coach and judge with my teams, so I'm quite tired by elim day.) I usually start 5-10 minutes after the 2AR, so I can stretch my legs and let the debate marinate in my head. Debaters work hard, and I reciprocate that effort in making decisions. My decisions themselves are quite short. Most debates come down to 2-4 arguments, and I will identify those and explain my resolution. You're welcome to post-round. It can't change my decision, but I want to learn and improve as a judge and thinker too.

General Background: I work full-time in tech as a software engineer. In my spare time, I have coached policy debate at Lowell in San Francisco since 2018. I am involved in strategy and research and have coached both policy and K debaters to the TOC. I am, quite literally, a "framer", as a member of the national topic wording committee. Before that, I read policy arguments as a 2N at Bellarmine and did youth debate outreach (e.g., SVUDL) as a student at Stanford.

I've judged many excellent debates. Ideologically, I would say I'm 60/40 policy-leaning. I think my voting records don't reflect this, because K debaters tend to see the bigger picture in clash rounds.

I am judging some college debate, mostly to help the return of Stanford's team. No topic knowledge or college judging experience. I'm likely a policy-leaning clash judge in college prefs?

Topic Background: I judge and coach regularly and am fully aware of national circuit trends. I'm not super in the weeds as a researcher. I don't cut as many cards as I did in the pandemic years, and I don't work at debate camp.

I do work in software and have applied for patents on my day-to-day work. This personal experience will make me more skeptical of sweeping innovation or tech impacts. But if you're detailed, granular, and apply technical knowledge well, your speaks will benefit.

Voting Splits: I haven't updated these in a couple of years. I've been too busy with my non-debate life post pandemic. I think the trends exhibited on water are likely still accurate.

As of the end of the water topic, I have judged 304 rounds of VCX at invitationals over 9 years. 75 of these were during college; 74 during immigration and arms sales at West Coast invitationals; and 155 on CJR and water, predominantly at octafinals bid tournaments.

Below are my voting splits across the (synthetic) policy-K divide, where the left team represents the affirmative, as best as I could classify debates. Paradigm text can be inaccurate self-psychoanalysis, so I hope the data helps.

I became an aff hack on water. Far too often, the 2AR was the first speech doing comparative analysis instead of reading blocks. I hope this changes as we return to in-person debate.

Water

Policy v. Policy - 18-13: 58% aff over 31 rounds

Policy v. K - 20-18: 56% aff over 38 rounds

K v. Policy - 13-8: 62% aff over 21 rounds

K v. K - 1-1, 50% aff over 2 rounds

Lifetime

Policy v. Policy - 67-56: 55% for the aff over 123 rounds

Policy v. K - 47-52: 47% for the aff over 99 rounds

K v. Policy - 36-34: 51% for the aff over 70 rounds

K v. K - 4-4: 50% for the aff over 8 rounds

Online Debate:

1. I'd prefer your camera on, but won't make a fuss.

2. Please check verbally and/or visually with all judges and debaters before starting your speech.

3. If my camera's off, I'm away, unless I told you otherwise.

Speaker Points: I flow on my computer, but I do not use the speech doc. I want every word said, even in card text and especially in your 2NC topicality blocks, to be clear. I will shout clear twice in a speech. After that, it's your problem.

Note that this assessment is done per-tournament: for calibration, I think a 29.3-29.4 at a finals bid is roughly equivalent to a 28.8-28.9 at an octos bid.

29.5+ — the top speaker at the tournament.

29.3-29.4 — one of the five or ten best speakers at the tournament.

29.1-29.2 — one of the twenty best speakers at the tournament.

28.9-29 — a 75th percentile speaker at the tournament; with a winning record, would barely clear on points.

28.7-28.8 — a 50th percentile speaker at the tournament; with a winning record, would not clear on points.

28.3-28.6 — a 25th percentile speaker at the tournament.

28-28.2 — a 10th percentile speaker at the tournament.

K Affs and Framework:

1. I have coached all sides of this debate.

2. I will vote for the team whose impact comparison most clearly answers the debate's central question. This typically comes down to the affirmative making negative engagement more difficult versus the neg forcing problematic affirmative positions. You are best served developing 1-2 pieces of offense well, playing defense to the other team's, and telling a condensed story in the final rebuttals.

3. Anything can be an impact---do what you do best. My teams typically read a limits/fairness impact and a procedural clash impact. From Dhruv Sudesh: "I don't have a preference for hearing a skills or fairness argument, but I think the latter requires you to win a higher level of defense to aff arguments."

4. Each team should discuss what a year of debate looks like under their models in concrete terms. Arguments like "TVA", "switch-side debate", and "some neg ground exists" are just subsets of this discussion. It is easy to be hyperbolic and discuss the plethora of random affirmatives, but realistic examples are especially persuasive and important. What would your favorite policy demon (MBA, GBN, etc.) do without an agential constraint? How does critiquing specific policy reforms in a debate improve critical education? Why does negative policy ground not center the affirmative's substantive conversation?

5. As the negative, recognize if this is an impact turn debate or one of competing models early on (as in, during the 2AC). When the negative sees where the 2AR will go and adjusts accordingly, I have found that I am very good for the negative. But when they fail to understand the debate's strategic direction, I almost always vote affirmative. This especially happens when impact turning topicality---negatives do not seem to catch on yet.

6. I quite enjoy leveraging normative positions from 1AC cards for substantive disadvantages or impact turns. This requires careful link explanation by the negative but can be incredibly strategic. Critical affirmatives claim to access broad impacts based on shaky normative claims and the broad endorsement of a worldview, rather than a causal method; they should incur the strategic cost.

7. I am a better judge for presumption and case defense than most. It is often unclear to me how affirmatives solve their impacts or access their impact turns on topicality. The negative should leverage this more.

8. I occasionally judge K v K debates. I do not have especially developed opinions on these debates. Debate math often relies on causality, opportunity cost, and similar concepts rooted in policymaking analysis. These do not translate well to K v K debates, and the team that does the clearest link explanation and impact calculus typically wins. While the notion of "opportunity cost" to a method is still mostly nonsensical to me, I can be convinced either way on permutations' legitimacy.

Kritiks:

1. I do not often coach K teams but have familiarity with basically all critical arguments.

2. Framework almost always decides this debate. While I have voted for many middle-ground frameworks, they make very little strategic sense to me. The affirmative saying that I should "weigh the links against the plan" provides no instruction regarding the central question: how does the judge actually compare the educational implications of the 1AC's representations to the consequences of plan implementation? As a result, I am much better for "hard-line" frameworks that exclude the case or the kritik.

3. I will decide the framework debate in favor of one side's interpretation. I will not resolve some arbitrary middle road that neither side presented.

4. If the kritik is causal to the plan, a well-executing affirmative should almost always win my ballot. The permutation double-bind, uniqueness presses on the link and impact, and a solvency deficit to the alternative will be more than sufficient for the affirmative. The neg will have to win significant turns case arguments, an external impact, and amazing case debating if framework is lost. At this point, you are better served going for a proper counterplan and disadvantage.

5. I will not evaluate non-falsifiable statements about events outside the current debate. Such an evaluation of minors grossly misuses the ballot. Strike me if this is a core part of your strategy.

Topicality:

1. This is about the plan text, not other parts of the 1AC. If you think the plan text is contrived to be topical, beat them on the PIC out of the topic and your topic DA of choice.

2. This is a question of which team's vision of the topic maximizes its benefits for debaters. I compare each team's interpretation of the topic through an offense/defense lens.

3. Reasonability is about the affirmative interpretation, not the affirmative case itself. In its most persuasive form, this means that the substance crowdout caused by topicality debates plus the affirmative's offense on topicality outweighs the offense claimed by the negative. This is an especially useful frame in debates that discuss topic education, precision, and similar arguments.

4. Any standards are fine. I used to be a precision stickler. This changed after attending topic meetings and realizing how arbitrarily wording is chosen.

5. From Anirudh Prabhu: "T is a negative burden which means it is the neg’s job to prove that a violation exists. In a T debate where the 2AR extends we meet, every RFD should start by stating clearly what word or phrase in the resolution the aff violated and why. If you don’t give me the language to do that in your 2NR, I will vote aff on we meet." Topicality 101---the violation is a negative burden. If there's any uncertainty, I almost certainly vote aff with a decent "we meet" explanation.

Theory:

1. As with other arguments, I will resolve this fully technically. Unlike many judges, my argumentative preferences will not implicate how I vote. I will gladly vote on a dropped theory argument---if it was clearly extended as a reason to reject the team---with no regrets.

2. I'm generally in favor of limitless conditionality. But because I adjudicate these debates fully technically, I think I vote affirmative on "conditionality bad" more than most.

3. From Rafael Pierry: "most theoretical objections to CPs are better expressed through competition. ... Against these and similar interpretations, I find neg appeals to arbitrariness difficult to overcome." For me, this is especially true with counterplans that compete on certainty or immediacy. While I do not love the delay counterplan, I think it is much more easily beaten through competition arguments than theoretical ones.

4. If a counterplan has specific literature to the affirmative plan, I will be extremely receptive to its theoretical legitimacy and want to grant competition. But of course, the counterplan text must be written strategically, and the negative must still win competition.

Counterplans:

1. I'm better for strategies that depend on process and competition than most. These represent one of my favorite aspects of debate---they combine theory and substance in fun and creative ways---and I've found that researching and strategizing against them generates huge educational benefits for debaters, certainly on par with more conventionally popular political process arguments like politics and case.

2. I have no disposition between "textual and functional competition" and "only functional competition". Textual alone is pretty bad. Positional competition is similarly tough, unless the affirmative grants it. Think about how a model of competition justifies certain permutations---drawing these connections intelligently helps resolve the theoretical portion of permutations.

3. Similarly, I am agnostic regarding limited intrinsicness, either functional or textual. While it helps check against the truly artificial CPs, it justifies bad practices that hurt the negative. It's certainly a debate that you should take on. That said, if everyone is just spreading blocks, I usually end up negative on the ink. Block to 2NR is easier to trace than 1AR to 2AR.

4. People need to think about deficits to counterplans. If you can't impact deficits to said counterplans, write better advantages. The negative almost definitely does not have evidence contextualizing their solvency mechanism to your internal links---explain why that matters!

5. Presumption goes to less change---debate what this means in round. Absent this instruction, if there is an advocacy in the 2NR and I do not judge kick it when deciding, I'm probably not voting on presumption.

6. Decide in-round if I should kick the CP. I'll likely kick it if left to my own devices. The affirmative should be better than the status quo. (To be honest, this has never mattered in a debate I've judged, and it amuses me that judge kick is such a common paradigm section.)

Disadvantages:

1. There is not always a risk. A small enough signal is overwhelmed by noise, and we cannot determine its sign or magnitude.

2. I do not think you need evidence to make an argument. Many bad advantages can be reduced to noise through smart analytics. Doing so will improve your speaker points. Better evidence will require your own.

3. Shorten overviews, and make sure turns case arguments actually implicate the aff's internal links.

4. Will vote on any and all theoretical arguments---intrinsicness, politics theory, etc. Again, arguments are arguments, debate them out.

Ethics:

1. Cheating means you will get the lowest possible points.

2. You need a recording to prove the other team is clipping. If I am judging and think you are clipping, I will record it and check the recording before I stop the debate. Any other method deprives you of proof.

3. If you mark a card, say where you’re marking it, actually mark it, and offer a marked copy before CX in constructives or the other's team prep time in a rebuttal. You do not need to remove cards you did not read in the marked copy, unless you skipped a truly ridiculous amount. This practice is inane and justifies debaters doc-flowing.

4. Emailing isn’t prep. If you take too long, I'll tell you I'm starting your prep again.

5. If there is a different alleged ethics violation, I will ask the team alleging the violation if they want to stop the debate. If so, I will ask the accused team to provide written defense; check the tournament's citation rules; and decide. I will then decide the debate based on that violation and the tournament policy---I will not restart the debate---this makes cite-checking a no-risk option as a negative strategy, which seems really bad.

If you could have emailed the other team about your ethics violation, I will only evaluate it if there's proof you contacted the other team. Prepping ethics violations as case negs is far worse than any evidence ethics violation I've seen.

Note that if the ethics violation is made as an argument during the debate and advanced in multiple speeches as a theoretical argument, you cannot just decide it is a separate ethics violation later in the debate. I will NOT vote on it, I will be very annoyed with you, and you will probably lose and get 27s if you are resorting to these tactics.

6. The closer a re-highlighting comes to being a new argument, the more likely you should be reading it instead of inserting. If you are point out blatant mis-highlighting in a card, typically in a defensive fashion on case, then insertion is fine. I will readily scratch excessive insertion with clear instruction.

Miscellaneous:

1. I'll only evaluate highlighted warrants in evidence.

2. Dropped arguments should be flagged clearly. If you say that clearly answered arguments were dropped, you're hurting your own persuasion.

3. Please send cards in a Word doc. Body is fine if it's just 1-3 cards. I don't care if you send analytics, though it can help online.

4. Unless the final rebuttals are strictly theoretical, the negative should compile a card doc post 2NR and have it sent soon after the 2AR. The affirmative should start compiling their document promptly after the 2AR. Card docs should only include evidence referenced in the final rebuttals (and the 1NC shell, for the negative)---certainly NOT the entire 1AC.

5. As a judge, I can stop the debate at any point. The above should make it clear that I am very much an argumentative nihilist---in hundreds of debates, I have not come close to stopping one. So if I do, you really messed up, and you probably know it.

6. I am open to a Technical Knockout. This means that the debate is unwinnable for one team. If you think this is the case, say "TKO" (probably after your opponents' speech, not yours) and explain why it is unwinnable. If I agree, I will give you 30s and a W. If I disagree and think they can still win the debate, you'll get 25s and an L. Examples include: dropped T argument, dropped conditionality, double turn on the only relevant pieces of offense, dropped CP + DA without any theoretical out.

Be mindful of context: calling this against sophomores in presets looks worse than against an older team in a later prelim. But sometimes, debates are just slaughters, nobody is learning anything, and there will be nothing to judge. I am open to giving you some time back, and to adding a carrot to spice up debate.

7. Not about deciding debates, but a general offer to debate folk reading this. As someone who works in tech, I think it is a really enjoyable career path and quite similar to policy debate in many ways. If you would like to learn more about tech careers, please feel free to email me. As a high school student, it was very hard to learn about careers not done by my parents or their friends (part of why I'm in tech now!). I am happy to pass on what knowledge I have.

Above all, be kind to each other, and have fun!

About

• Co-Director @ Coppell
• Outreach Director @ Mean Green Comet Debate Institute
• Debated NDT/CEDA at North Texas around the turn of the century
• Email chain preferred: sykes.tx @ gmail.com & coppelldebatedocs @ gmail.com

Basics (See Bottom of Doc for PF & Congress)

• This document offers insight to the process I use to make decisions unless directed to do otherwise.
• Clarity is important to me. I prefer not to look at the speech doc until after the debate. I'm also working to adjust speaker points to keep up with inflation.
• I won't claim to be perfect in this area, but I believe debate has strong potential to build community. Please play nicely with others.
• I view all debate as comparison of competing frameworks. I considered myself a flex debater, and I’m willing to evaluate all arguments. I will attempt to minimize intervention in the evaluation of a) the selection of framework and b) the fulfillment of the framework's demands.

Policymaking

• The older I get, the more I see shades of grey with respect to uniqueness. Risk, for me, isn't as unidirectional as it used to be. I generally tend to determine that uniqueness debates are "close" and find I prefer warranted explanations of link vs. link turn in this relationship.
• If forced by lack of comparison to default on framework, I will consider time frame, probability, and magnitude of your impacts as part of cost benefit analysis of endorsing the affirmative plan.

Theory/Topicality

• I believe the topic can provide debatable ground, and I don't think that should necessarily be exclusive of other positions. The resolution is a starting point.
• On questions of framework, T-USFG, etc., I strongly recommend grounding arguments in academic literature whenever possible. I am particularly interested in how debate shapes agents of change.
• Consistent with my view of competing frameworks, there is no difference in my mind between "competing interpretations" and "abuse." Abuse is a standard for evaluating competing interpretations.

Counterplans/Counter-advocacy

• I don't believe I have strong predispositions related to counterplan types or theory.

Kritiking

• The division in the community between "kritik people" and "policy people" frustrates me. We should constantly seek more effective arguments. Questions of an academic nature vary from method to application.
• A working definition of "fiat" is "the ability to imagine, for the purposes of debate, the closest possible world to that of the advocacy."

Rebuttals/How to win

• You should either win in your framework and show how it's preferable, or simply win in theirs. This applies to theory debates and impact comparison as much as anything else.
• I find that many debates I judge are heavily influenced by the quality, persuasiveness, and effectiveness of warranted explanation and comparison.

Lincoln Douglas, specifically

• While my background in policy debate leads me to a more "progressive" or policy-oriented perspective toward LD, I have evaluated many traditional LD debates as well. You do you.
• I am open to theoretical standards in LD that are different than those in CX, but understand that my experience here affects my perception of some issues. For example, I may have a predisposition against RVIs because there are vastly different standards for these arguments across events. I'll do my best to adapt with an open mind.

Public Forum, specifically

• PF should transition to reasonable & common expectations for disclosure, evidence use, and speech doc exchange.
• Email chains and/or speech docs should be used to share evidence before speeches.
• Evidence should be presented in the form of direct quotes and accompanied by a complete citation. If you must paraphrase, direct quotations (fully cited with formatting that reflects paraphrased portions) should be included in the speech doc. If I feel you've abused this expectation (e.g., pasting and underlining an entire article/book/study), I won't be pleased.
• Time spent re-cutting evidence, tracking down URLs, or otherwise conforming to these conventions should be considered prep time.
• Regardless of the way the resolution is written, I think teams should make arguments based on how the status quo affects probability. Uniqueness and inevitability claims, therefore, would greatly benefit the analysis of risk in most of the PF rounds I evaluate.

Congress, specifically

• Remain active in the chamber. Move things along. Stay engaged.
• All speech & debate should be rigorous. I'm interested in quality of research and depth of content.
• PO - Mistakes with respect to precedence or procedure can be devastating. It's hard for me to imagine winning a big tournament without ever giving a speech.

Quarry Lane, CA | 6-12 Speech/Debate Director | 2019-present
Harker, CA | 6-8 Speech/Debate Director | 2016-18
Loyola, CA | 9-12 Policy Coach | 2013-2016
Texas | Assistant Policy Coach 2014-2015
Texas | Policy Debater | 2003-2008 (2x NDT elims and 2x top 20 speaker)
Samuel Clemens, TX | Policy Debater | 1999-2003 (1x TOC qual)

Big picture:
- I don't read/flow off the doc.
- no evidence inserting. I read what you read.
- I strongly prefer to let the debaters do the debating, and I'll reward depth (the "author/date + claim + warrant + data + impact" model) over breadth (the "author + claim + impact" model) any day.
- Ideas communicated per minute > words per minute. I'm old, I don't care to do a time trial of flowing half-warrants and playing "connect the dots" for impacts. 3/4 of debaters have terrible online practices, so this empirically applies even more so for online debates.
- I minimize the amount of evidence I read post-round to only evidence that is either (A) up for dispute/interpretation between the teams or (B) required to render a decision (due to lack of clash amongst the debaters). Don't let the evidence do the debating for you.
- I care a lot about data/method and do view risk as "everyone starts from zero and it goes up from there". This primarily lets me discount even conceded claims, apply a semi-laugh test to ridiculous arguments, and find a predictable tiebreaker when both sides hand me a stack of 40 cards.
- I'm fairly flexible in argument strategy, and either ran or coached an extremely wide diversity of arguments. Some highlights: wipeout, foucault k, the cp, regression framework, reg neg cp, consult china, cap k, deleuze k, china nano race, WTO good, indigenous standpoint epistemology, impact turns galore, biz con da, nearly every politics da flavor imaginable, this list goes on and on.
- I am hard to offend (though not impossible) and reward humor.
- You must physically mark cards.
- I think infinite world condo has gotten out of hand. A good rule of thumb as a proxy (taking from Shunta): 4-6 offcase okay, 7 pushing, if you are reading 8 or more, your win percentage and points go down exponentially. Also, I will never judge kick - make a decision in 2NR.
- 1NC args need to be complete, else I will likely buy new answers on the entire sheet. A DA without U or IL isn't complete. A CP without a card likely isn't complete. A K with just a "theory of power" but no links isn't complete. A T arg without a definition card isn't complete. Cards without any warrants/data highlighted (e.g. PF) are not arguments.
- I personally believe in open disclosure practices, and think we should as a community share one single evidence set of all cards previously read in a single easily accessible/searchable database. I am willing to use my ballot to nudge us closer.
-IP topic stuff - I have a law degree and am a tech geek, so anything that absolutely butchers the law will probably stay at zero even if dropped.

Topicality
-I like competing interpretations, the more evidence the better, and clearly delineated and impacted/weighed standards on topicality.
-I'm extremely unlikely to vote for a dropped hidden aspec or similar and extremely likely to tank your points for trying.
-We meet is yes/no question. You don't get to weigh standards and risk of.
-Aff Strategy: counter-interp + offense + weigh + defense or all in on we meet or no case meets = best path to ballot.

Framework against K aff
-in a tie, I vote to exclude. I think "logically" both sides framework arguments are largely empty and circular - the degree of actual fairness loss or education gain is probably statistically insignificant in any particular round. But its a game and you do you.
-I prefer the clash route + TVA. Can vote for fairness only, but harder sell.
-Very tough sell on presumption / zero subject formation args. Degree ballot shapes beliefs/research is between 0 and 1 with neither extreme being true, comparative claims on who shapes more is usually the better debate pivot.
-if have decent k or case strat against k aff, usually much easier path to victory because k affs just seem to know how to answer framework.
-Aff Strategy: Very tough sell for debate bad, personalized ballot pleas, or fairness net-bad. Lots of defense to predict/limits plus aff edu > is a much easier path to win.

Framework against neg K
-I default to (1) yes aff fiat (2) yes links to 1AC speech act (3) yes actual alt / framework isn't an alt (4) no you link you lose.
-Debaters can debate out (1) and (2), can sometimes persuade me to flip on (3), but will pretty much never convince me to flip on (4).

Case Debate
-I enjoy large complex case debates about the topic.
-Depth in explanation and impacting over breadth in coverage. One well explained warrant or card comparison will do far more damage to the 1AR than 3 new cards that likely say same warrant as original card.
-the current D tier link/solvency to core IL to greatest hits of all time impact spam 1AC construction makes me sad. The resolution as plan text model also does. Am happy to zero (or near zero) affs in these debates if the neg comes prepared.

Disads
-Intrinsic perms are silly. Normal means arguments less so.

Counterplans
-I think literature should guide both plan solvency deficit and CP competition ground.
-For theory debates (safe to suspect): adv cps = uniqueness cps > plan specific PIC > topic area specific PIC > textual word PIK = domestic agent CP > ban plan then do "plan" cp = certainty CPs = delay CPs > foreign agent CP > plan minus penny PICs > private actor/utopian/other blatant cheating CP
-Much better for perm do cp (with severance justified because of THEORY) than perm other issues (with intrinsicness justified because TEXT/FUNCT COMP english games). I don't really believe in text+funct comp (just eliminates "bad" theory debaters, not actually "bad" counterplans, e.g. replace "should" with "ought").
-perms and theory are tests of competition and not a voter.
-debatable perms are - perm do both, do cp/alt, do plan and part of CP/alt. Probably okay for combo perms against multi-conditional plank cps. Only get 1 inserted perm text per perm flowed.
-Aff strategy: good for logical solvency deficits, solvency advocate theory, and high level theory debating. Won't presume CP solves when CP lacks any supporting literature.

Critiques
-I view Ks as a usually linear disad and the alt as a CP.
-Much better for a traditional alt (vote neg -> subject formation -> spills out) than utopian fiated alts, floating piks, movements alts, or framework is my second alt.
-Link turn case (circumvention) and/or impact turns case (root/prox cause) is very important.
-I naturally am a quantitative poststructuralist. Don't think I've ever willingly voted on an ontology argument or a "zero subject formation" argument. Very open to circumvention oriented link and state contingency link turn args.
-Role of ballot is usually just a fancy term for "didn't do impact calculus".
-No perms for method Ks is the first sign you don't really understand what method is.
-Aff strategy: (impact turn a link + o/w other links + alt fails) = (case spills up + case o/w + link defense + alt fails) > (fiat immediate + case o/w + alt too slow) > (perm double bind) > (ks are cheating).
-perms generally check clearly noncompetitive alt jive, but don't normally work against traditional alts if the neg has any link.

Lincoln Douglas
-no trix, phil, friv theory, offcase spam, or T args written by coaches.
-treat it like a policy round that ends in the 1AR and we'll both be happy.

Public Forum
-no paraphrasing, yes email chain, yes share speech doc prior to speech. In TOC varsity, points capped at 27.5 if violate as minimum penalty.
-if paraphrase, it's not evidence and counts as an analytic, and cards usually beat analytics.
-I think the ideal PF debate is a 2 advantage vs 2 disadvantage semi-slow whole rez policy debate, where the 2nd rebuttal collapses onto 1 and the 1st summary collapses onto 1 as well. Line by line, proper, complete argument extensions, weighing, and card comparisons are a must.
-Good for non-frivilous theory and proper policy style K. TOC level debaters usually good at theory but still atrocious executing the K, so probably don't go for a PF style K in front of me.
-prefer some civility and cross not devolve into lord of the flies.

Name : Lauren Velazquez

Affiliated School: Niles North

Email: Laurenida@gmail.com

General Background:
I debated competitively in high school in the 1990s for Maine East. I participated on the national circuit where counterplans and theory were common.

Director of Debate at Niles North

Laurenida@gmail.com

ME

Experience:

I competed in the 90s, helped around for a few years, took a bit of a break, have been back for about 7 years. My teams compete on the national circuit, I help heavily with my teams’ strategies, and am a lab leader at a University of Michigan. In recent years I have helped coach teams that cleared at the TOC, won state titles and consistently debated in late elim rounds at national tournaments. TL/DR--I am familiar with national circuit debate but I do not closely follow college debate so do not assume that I am attuned to the arguments that are currently cutting edge/new.

What this means for you---I lean tech over truth when it comes to execution, but truth controls the direction of tech, and some debate meta-arguments matter a lot less to me.

I am not ideological towards most arguments, I believe debate structurally is a game, but there are benefits to debate outside of it being just a game, give it your best shot and I will try my best to adapt to you.

The only caveat is do not read any arguments that you think would be inappropriate for me to teach in my classroom, if you are worried it might be inappropriate, you should stop yourself right there.

DISADS AND ADVANTAGES
When deciding to vote on disadvantages and affirmative advantages, I look for a combination of good story telling and evidence analysis. Strong teams are teams that frame impact calculations for me in their rebuttals (e.g. how do I decide between preventing a war or promoting human rights?). I should hear from teams how their internal links work and how their evidence and analysis refute indictments from their opponents. Affirmatives should have offense against disads (and Negs have offense against case). It is rare, in my mind, for a solvency argument or "non unique" argument to do enough damage to make the case/disad go away completely, at best, relying only on defensive arguments will diminish impacts and risks, but t is up to the teams to conduct a risk analysis telling me how to weigh risk of one scenario versus another.

TOPICALITY

I will vote on topicality if it is given time (more than 15 seconds in the 2NR) in the debate and the negative team is able to articulate the value of topicality as a debate “rule” and demonstrate that the affirmative has violated a clear and reasonable framework set by the negative. If the affirmative offers a counter interpretation, I will need someone to explain to me why their standards and definitions are best. Providing cases that meet your framework is always a good idea. I find the limits debate to be the crux generally of why I would vote for or against T so if you are neg you 100% should be articulating the limits implications of your interpretation.

KRITIKS
Over the years, I have heard and voted on Kritiks, but I do offer a few honest caveats:

*Please dont read "death good"/nihilism/psychoanalysis in front of me. I mean honestly I will consider it but I know I am biased and I HATE nihilism, psychoanalysis debates. I will try to listen with an open mind but I really don't think these arguments are good for the activity or good for pedagogy--they alienate younger debaters who are learning the game and I don't think that genuine discussions of metaphysics lend themselves to speed reading and "voting" on right/wrong. If you run these I will listen and work actively to be open minded but know you are making an uphill battle for yourself running these. If these are your bread and butter args you should pref me low.

I read newspapers daily so I feel confident in my knowledge around global events. I do not regularly read philosophy or theory papers, there is a chance that I am unfamiliar with your argument or the underlying paradigms. I do believe that Kritik evidence is inherently dense and should be read a tad slower and have accompanying argument overviews in negative block. Impact analysis is vital. What is the role of the ballot? How do I evaluate things like discourse against policy implications (DAs etc)

Also, I’m going to need you to go a tad slower if you are busting out a new kritik, as it does take time to process philosophical writings.

If you are doing something that kritiks the overall debate round framework (like being an Aff who doesnt have a plan text), make sure you explain to me the purpose of your framework and why it is competitively fair and educationally valuable.

COUNTERPLANS
I am generally a fan of CPs as a neg strategy. I will vote for counterplans but I am open to theory arguments from the affirmative (PICs bad etc). Counterplans are most persuasive to me when the negative is able to clearly explain the net benifts and how (if at all) the counterplan captures affirmative solvency. For permutations to be convincing offense against CPs, Affs should explain how permutation works and what voting for perm means (does the DA go away, do I automatically vote against neg etc?)

RANDOM

Tag team is fine as long as you don’t start taking over cross-ex and dominating. You are part of a 2 person team for a reason.

Speed is ok as long as you are clear. If you have a ton of analytics in a row or are explaining a new/dense theory, you may want to slow down a little since processing time for flowing analytics or kritkits is a little slower than me just flowing the text of your evidence.

I listen to cross ex. I think teams come up with a lot of good arguments during this time. If you come up with an argument in cross ex-add it to the flow in your speech.

Email chain - solomonsonofwat@gmail.com

** Post UT update **

Recognize my speaks are low, will boost. Also recognize a need to incorporate more advice and, 'this is what you should have done' into my decisions.

Spark notes

Bio and process

Flex. Favorite argumentative form is the impact turn, followed by the PIC. My final year and a half, gave as many case turn 2nrs as CP/DA 2nrs (11). Leaning policy, also went for the K alot (14). Capitalism/neoliberalism, colonialism studies, and psychoanalysis is the literature bases most heavily drawn from. T and FWK were rare 2nrs, preferred substance. Despite being a 2n, there was decent time spent in both hs and college as a 2a reading K and policy aff's I cut. Tend to judge a 2:1 of clash to policy debates at most tournaments. There seems to be a great karmic debt owed to the debate spirits, considering how many FWK and T debates I'm given. Regardless of plan or advocacy.

Flow centric, vote against my preferences often. What is on my flow is what I try hardest to solve the debate with. Not that my flow is perfect, but as a competitor there were high expectations for judge's record keeping abilities and I try to hold myself to those same standards. Sometimes my flow isn't enough. At which point the dreaded interventions become necessary, reading/interpreting cards and making judgment calls to resolve debates left unresolved by the debaters.

My process is very much taking the round as a puzzle. Taking the pieces given to me, putting them together, and voting on the image staring back at me. Good debaters make the puzzle easy, bad debaters usually make it harder. The puzzle is an enduring passion of debate for me. Some people do the wordle, I solve debate rounds. You're welcome to post round, ballots are written with the expectation that they must survive the most wounded test.

Arguments

Don't have alot of constraints on what I I'll vote for, however character attacks, call outs, and generally arguments that require me to adjudicate people's out of round character as opposed to advocacies are incredibly frustrating debates. Not up on the tea like that.

Don't ask for a 30, the moment I feel the resonate spiritual unity of the muses of reason, craft, form, poesis, and personality as though the very gods were being conjured with your speech is the moment for a 30. None of have been assigned yet.

1. Conditionality --- Tend to see it more as a yes/no question, numerically oriented c/i's are less persuasive to me. Debate is better with conditionality. Easier to sell me on conditionality bad when its done to do things like cp out of 2ac impact turns.

2. Counter-plan competition --- Alot of competition debates seem vacuous. CPs compete through net-benefits ie a da to the aff the cp avoids. Perms should always be debated in the context of the particular NB to the cp. Perm do the cp in alot of process debates is really a complex theory oriented link/no link debate. Solves better is not a net-benefit, its not a reason why the aff is a bad idea. I'll usually judge kick in debates where I think the CP doesn't solve but the DA by itself o/ws the aff.

3. T vs Policy affs --- Not attached to reasonability or competing models, one usually seems more contextually appropriate than the other. Unlike most other questions in debate, treat we meet debates as truth questions. Prefer T debates where teams will pick their best offense (limits, topic edu, ground, etc) and do the impact explanation at the top and then apply the impact calq on the line by line.

4. FWK/T v K-affs --- Not a fan of fairness only pushes, still vote on it. Debate is an academic game, there has to be an end to the game itself. Prefer when its debated as a models question. Good for no burden of rejoinder against personal/survival strat style affs. Don't see enough case in 2nrs, too many teams lose because they concede x aff thesis claim about the world/debate.

5. K-affs v FWK/T --- Arguments that account for how debate is over-coded by competition do better in front of me, otherwise its likely clash will turn it. Better for debates about debate, resolutional debates bad (not resolution bad), impact turns to fwk, and C/I debates with offense about including a marginalized lit base. Not as good for state bad, personal/survival strategy, and affs that do not engage the resolution at all (as opposed to, as a point of departure for criticism or as non-topical topical advocacy). Community becomes important in these debates, finding community in debate is like finding friendship in a warzone. A wounded form of attachment. Community in debate can be invaluable. If debate is your only community it is incredibly toxic. Advocacy statements are important, don't be shifty.

6. Da/Case --- Impact calq is everything, relate the u/q and link debates back to their effect on how I read the impact debate. You can easily get me on zero risk of a da or case. People get away with reading nonsense.

7. Theory --- Prefer substance to theory in most debates, still vote on it. Treat it as a models debate, pick an impact, and frame all the internal debates through it.

8. K v policy affs --- FWK usually is a impact framing or level question. For example, if both teams concede to a scholarship debate, I look less at the hypothetical impacts of the 1ac and instead the benefits of reading the scholarship. Those benefits could still be learning to avoid war/climate/ai etc but the way that offense needs to be debated is why reading and debating that kind of scholarship is good, what it teaches us, how it shapes future interactions or approaches in the real world, and so on.

Below is my answer to the question; What are my commitments as a Judge?

To treat people as people is my governing maxim, for debate it is to treat arguments as arguments. This activity lacks any coherence without a judge who adheres to such a universal. The energy generated in this activity relies on the thesis that everyone's argument will be heard, recognized, and reason will be in the decision.

Reason is the product of a unity between the particular argument and the universal debate, reason as the substantive new achieved only at the moment of synthesis of the particular and the universal. Biases are not only inevitable but to some degree necessary, to the degree any objectivity can be achieved it is through recognition of the self’s position in the universe.

I competed at grady (now midtown) high school as an ambassador from the atlanta udl, later coaching for the atlanta ambassadors (grady, decatur, roswell, cross keys, etc) from 2018-2020. Completed a political science degree while competing at utd for 4 ½ years. Continuing to coach and work with utd while completing a philosophy, politics, and economics masters program at the university of groningen.

While there is likely a good number in this judging pool with more experience/success in both debate and education, my experience can still make my ear somewhat demanding. As a competitor I approached debate as a game of exploiting strategic vulnerabilities, with the round itself a puzzle to be solved. This approach led to my participation (as both competitor and judge) in high level policy, K v K, and clash debates. My background has made me both familiar with a wide number of literature bases and argument genres, consequently I'm agnostic to both style and content. All I’m looking for are arguments.

When it comes to an argument, I’m looking for a claim with a warrant that’s has an implication for the round/debate at large. A conceded claim with a warrant is not a conceded argument, because it may lack an explicit explanation about the claim’s implication for the round. My commitment to treat arguments as arguments leads me to focus on reading arguments as they are presented and not if they are true. This commitment also leaves me in total deference to the arguments made by students about what the round is about, what the role of the judge or students are, and changes to the traditional calculation or weight of certain arguments.

Debates about the metaethics of the activity or the community are welcomed, in so far as you can articulate a reason why these ethical considerations are of more significance than the procedural concerns that come with alterations to the status quo of the activity. Deference to procedure for the sake of procedure is not always a sufficient defense of the procedure in question. Debates about the metaethics of debates are often most aided by comparing the benefits or harms of proposed models of debate rather than technical conversations that may proliferate the flow.

Referees allow, judges merely adjudicate. If you want to do something, make the argument for why you should do it. 2nc cps? Word PICs? Floating PICs? Make the argument and argue it, as the judge I will adjudicate who won. The door to creativity will be left open. Creation of arguments is the self-expression of debaters; self-expression is the life blood of self-aware creatures. Creativity can only exist with limitations, precisely as something for creativity to overcome. The precise boundaries of the limits of the round are for the competitors to argue.

Adjudication is a process of reading arguments through a combination of their technical presentation, offense defense framing, evidentiary/warranted support, and implication for the round. I flow as I did as a competitor, half my screen is the card doc the other half is my flowing template. Another monitor for the stream. The goal is to record as much of the substance of the speech as possible, referencing the doc for clipping and reading cards that interest me. My flow is straight down. Case is one page, the off their own. Linear LBL debating is very much appreciated, but understand for pragmatic reasons my record keeping is not structured by it. Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is the interpretive model employed to resolve clash.

My commitment to non-interventionism spills over to my conduct, I tend to say and interact as little as possible during the round. The debate is for the debaters to define, I’m merely an observer. My ballots tend to be littered with misspellings and grammatical errors. Generally, I use the ballot as a space for me to cohere my thoughts into a comprehensible rfd, from which I essentially use as a script for my oral feedback. If post facto questions exist about a ballot I encourage reaching out by email for clarity.

To treat people as people is very important to me, any actions on the part of competitors during the round that would negate this maxim will be rewarded with speaker point deductions or a loss depending on the severity. Moves that deny the personhood of participants based on otherization, class, race, gender, ability, religion, migrant status, etc are clear violations, be they epistemic, discursive, or interpersonal. Essentially, don't be an ass.

Introduction-

My name is Marcus Williams and i'm a senior at the University of Kentucky.

My email is marcusvwilliams.ii@gmail.com . You can email me with any questions you have. If you do email chains you can also add me to it before the round.

General -

I really enjoy debate and I think it should be a fun activity that everyone should be comfortable doing. With that being said, I am open to all arguments that teams make. I have NOT done any debating or research on this years high school/middle school topic, but that doesn't mean I am clueless to how things work. It just means you need more explanation.

Disads -

Do impact and framing work. I prefer specificity when it comes to link arguments. Generic link arguments can get it done with nuance, but I am lenient to aff no link arguments if they press your very general evidence.

Topicality -

Topicality should be treated as a disad, meaning that you should do similar impact calc. Violations should be aff specific. T debates can be kinda confusing if you are just repeating your arguments without answering the other teams, so make sure to do comparative work.

Counterplans -

Generic counterplans are fine. Ensure you isolate all 1AC internal links early on and how you resolve them in advance.

Theory -

I am persuaded by a lot of aff theory arguments however, I find I vote neg a lot more in theory debates because of a lack of impact comparison and technical drops. going for one liner theory arguments are fine if their dropped, but they have to be clearly communicated and substantiated with an impact.

Kritiks -

let em rip

Background:

USN head coach 2012-present

MBA assistant coach 2000-2002

The stuff you are looking for:

email chain: bwilson at usn.org

K Aff: Defend a hypothetical project that goes beyond the 1AC.

Framework: My general assumption is that predictable limits lead to higher quality debates. Aff, how does your method/performance center on the resolutional question in a way that adds value to this year's topic education? Why does the value of your discussion/method outweigh the benefits of a predictable, topic-focused debate?

Topicality: I am agnostic when it comes to the source of your definitions. Just tell me why they are preferable for this debate. Aff reasonability defense must be coupled with an interpretation, and RTP that interpretation. I will be honest, when it's a T round against an aff that was cut at workshop and has been run all year, I have a gut-check lean to reasonability. Competing interps becomes more compelling when there is significant offense for the interpretation.

Theory: Other than condo, a theory win means I reject the argument unless you do work explaining otherwise. For condo debates, please have a clear interpretation and reasons to reject. I am more open to theory when it is about something particular to the round and is not read from pre-written blocks.

CP's: I prefer CP's that have a solvency advocate. I think a well articulated/warranted perm can beat most plan plus, process CP's.

Politics: I like it better on topics without other viable DAs, but I am fine for these debates.

DAs: I find "turns the case" analysis more compelling at the internal link level.

Cheating: If you are not reading every word you are claiming through underlining or highlighting, that is clipping. If it seems like a one time miscue I will yell something, and unless corrected, I'll disregard the evidence. If it is egregious/persistent, I will be forced to intervene with an L.

If the other team raises a dispute. I will do my best to adjudicate the claim and follow the above reasoning to render a penalty either to dismiss the evidence in question or reject the team. I think I have a fairly high threshold for rendering a decision on an ethics challenge.

RIP wiki paradigms, or how my paradigm started for years but is now showing its age:

I like it when debaters think about the probability of their scenarios and compare and connect the different scenarios in the round. If it is a policy v critical debate, the framing is important, but not in a prior question, ROB, or "only competing policy options" sense. The better team uses their arguments to access or outweigh the other side. I think there is always a means to weigh 1AC advantages against the k, to defend 1AC epistemology as a means to making those advantages more probable and specific. On the flip side, a thorough indictment of 1AC authors and assumptions will make it easier to weigh your alternative, ethics, case turn, etc. Explain the thesis of your k and tell me why it it is a reason to reject the affirmative.

Email: womboughsam36@gmail.com

UGA Law '28

Georgia Tech '23 (History and Sociology)

Woodward Academy ’20

Last Substantively Updated: 1/12/25

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Short Version + Novices (est. 45 sec. to read)

"Debate like an adult. Show me the evidence. Attend to the details. Don't dodge, clash. Great research and informed comparisons win debates." — Bill Batterman

Flow.

Be nice.

Be clear.

Have fun!

Time yourselves.

It’s probably not a voting issue.

If you read a plan, defend and clarify it.

Do not request a marked copy in lieu of flowing.

Be an evidenced, well-reasoned critic, not a cynic.

If you stop prep and then re-start prep, take off 10 seconds of prep.

If you don't have your video on in online debate, I will struggle to stay engaged.

An argument must be complete and comprehensible before there is a burden to answer it.

Focus on depth in argument. It's more engaging and is the only reliable way to beat good teams.

Write my ballot for me at the top of your late rebuttals, without using any debate jargon or hyperbole.

"Marking a card" means actually clearly marking that card on your computer (e.g. multiple Enter key pushes).

If you advocate something, at some point in the debate, you need to explain the tangible results of your advocacy without relying on any debate or philosophy jargon.

There has been a significant decline in the quality of speaking since online debate started because debaters became less familiar with speaking directly to the judge and because judges gave more leeway to the absence of clarity due to the computer instrument. Judges should never have to rely on reading along with the speech document in order to flow tags/analytics. If you have no intonation nor emphasis during tags/analytics/rebuttals, you are a bad speaker.

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More Stuff (est. 1:45 min. to read)

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Debate

I really enjoy debate. Debate is the most rewarding activity I have ever done. But debate didn't always feel rewarding while I was doing it. Accordingly, I hope that everybody prioritizes having fun, and then learning and improving.

From Johnnie Stupek's paradigm: "I encourage debaters to adopt speaking practices that make the debate easier for me to flow including: structured line-by-line, clarity when communicating plan or counterplan texts, emphasizing important lines in the body of your evidence, and descriptively labelling off-case positions in the 1NC."

Purging your speech documents of analytics and then rocking through them will be just as likely to "trick" me into not flowing an argument as it will be your opponents.

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Case

I will vote on absolute defense.

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Critiques

Explain; don’t confuse.

It is anti-black for debaters that are not black (team) to present afropessimist arguments. This practice exists because of the anti-blackness or cowardice of some non-black educators in debate. Frank Wilderson III claims that he "grieves over" debate's appropriation of his work (“Staying Ready for Black Study: A Conversation”).

Radical thought is born from specific context, and that specific context is important. I appreciate when debaters understand the context of their scholarship and/or their opponents' scholarship. For example, many radical affirmations of identity from 30 years ago are now mainstream to people in the average policy debate. Some mainstream economic theories 70 years ago are treated as very radical today. Perhaps any progressive policy-making at all would be highly radical in our present moment.

I've seen a few debates exclusively about personal identity that were extremely distressful for both sides. I think it's inappropriate for a high school student to prompt a rejoinder from their peers to a pure affirmation of their identity. Please don't make me adjudicate it.

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Non-Topical Debates

"No" to aff conditionality. Defend your aff and comparatively weigh offense.

I will reject 1AC performances if they are, in my subjective opinion, racist. I think it is racist for non-black students to essentialize, dehumanize, and/or commodify black people. I think it is appropriative for non-black debaters to use anti-blackness to justify the strategic advantage that they gain from not trying to be topical.

Please don't reference specific college debate rounds that you only know about thirdhand and that I don't know about at all.

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Theory

The more conditional advocacies there are in the 1NC, the worse the debate usually is.

I am sympathetic to affirmative complaints about process counterplans and agent counterplans that do nearly all of the affirmative. These counterplans, with the States-multi-plank CP in mind, tend to stagnate negative topic innovation and have single-handedly ruined some topics (Education).

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Extra

I almost always defer to technical debating, but in close debates:

I am a degrowth hack. T: Substantial against a quantifiably small aff is fun.

I am easily convinced that Bostrom-esque "extinction first" is incoherent and can justify repulsive ideologies.

I strongly believe that China is not militarily revisionist. I think Sinophobic scholarship festers in debate.

With respect to "Catastrophe Good" arguments, "we must die to destroy a particle accelerator that will consume the universe" is less convincing to me than a nihilism or misanthropy argument, not to suggest that I enjoy the latter; I just value accurate science.

Don't purposefully try to fluster the judge if you want quality post-round answers.

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Cheating

In the instance that a team accuses the other of clipping, I will follow the NDCA clipping guidelines (2).

Strawmanning is an ethics violation as per the NSDA guidelines.

(1) https://the3nr.com/2014/08/20/how-to-never-clip-cards-a-guide-for-debaters/

(2) https://static.squarespace.com/static/53416a18e4b0aa2aaadf85e4/t/53665f81e4b03af4b79e088f/1399218049326/clipping.pdf

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More References

https://the3nr.com/2009/11/03/judging-methodologies-how-do-judges-reach-their-decisions/

https://the3nr.com/2016/04/15/an-updated-speaker-point-scale-based-on-2015-2016-results/ (I inflate this).

https://new.debateus.org/to-consult-or-not-to-consult-on-the-theoretical-legitimacy-of-the-consultation-counterplan/

Lowell '20 || UC Berkeley '24 || Assistant Coach @ College Prep || she/her/hers

Please add both kelly@college-prep.org and cpsspeechdocs@gmail.com to the chain.

Something along these lines for the subject line would be great: Tournament Name - Round # - Aff Team Code [Aff] vs Neg Team Code. Please make sure the chain is set up before the start time.

Background

I debated for four years at Lowell High School. I’ve been a 2A for most of my years (2Ned as a side gig my junior year). Qualified to the TOC & placed 7th at NSDA reading arguments on both sides of the spectrum. My comfort for judging rounds is Policy vs. Policy ~ Policy vs. K ~ Clash Rounds >>> K vs. K.

I learned everything I know about debate from Debnil Sur, and I talk about debate the most with Tristan Bato and Ian Beier.

Most Important Things!

Tech >>>> truth and I'll vote on anything as long as it is debated well. I do not hold any firm thoughts about any argument, I will vote for anything as long as there is a claim, warrant, and impact.

I think debate is a communicative research game that can impact student subjectivity. I have found that rounds that are the most frustrating to judge and have to rely on intervention are those in which debaters fail to write a ballot and impact arguments out in the 2NR/2AR. If your strategy is to proliferate as many arguments as possible in the 2NR/2AR without framing how I resolve core controversies of the debate, you'll find yourself unhappy with my decision because my biases may come into play. My biases for certain arguments can, and certainly has, been beaten by good debating. The answer to the question of "how did you evaluate [x argument]" should be "the way that you had instructed me to do so in the final rebuttal". If I don't have an answer you like, you likely did not impact it out or do enough judge instruction for me, and I am unwilling to piece together for you what you wanted the implication of the argument to be.

I am unwilling to use my ballot to take a stance on anything that happened outside of the round (I guess the only exception would be disclosure). Things like call outs that require me to "punish" a team for behavior that I did not witness are a non-starter -- happy to allow you to end the round and take it to tab if you feel like your safety is at risk.

Microaggressions:I fear I have lost the plot with teams proliferating accusations of microaggressions. I interpret microaggressions as a form of interpersonal violence that occurred between debaters within the round, and it should be distinct from questions of whether forms of scholarship or procedural norms can cause psychic violence writ large. I have felt very uncomfortable having to evaluate a few debates now in which both teams have accused each other of committing microaggressions, and will continue to feel uncomfortable having my ballot serve as a referendum on accusations of interpersonal violence within the round. If you strongly believe a microaggression has occurred that requires me to stop the round, I am willing to do so and help mediate accordingly with adults from your school who are responsible for your well-being.

2024-2025 Round Stats:

Policy vs. Policy (14-19): 42% aff over 33 rounds, 40% aff in a theory/T debate over 5 rounds

Policy vs. K (2-7): 22% aff over 9 rounds

Clash (1-2): 66% neg over 3 rounds

K vs. K (3-0): 100% aff over 3 rounds

Sat once out of 13 elim rounds

2023-2024 Round Stats:

Policy vs. Policy (11-20): 35.93% aff over 31 rounds, 22.22% aff in a theory debate over 9 rounds

Policy vs. K (5-2): 71.43% aff over 7 rounds

Clash (2-3): 40% aff over 5 rounds

K v K (1-0): 100% aff over 1 round

Sat once out of 13 elim rounds

Disads

Not much to say here - think these debates are pretty straight forward. I start evaluation at the impact level to determine link threshold & risk of the disad. My preference for evaluation is if there is explicit ballot writing + evidence indicts + resolution done by yourself in the 2NR/2AR, I would love not to open the card document and make a more interventionist judgement.

CPs

Default to judge kick. If the affirmative team has a problem with me doing this, that words "condo bad" should have been in the 2AC and explanation for no judge kick warranted out in the 1AR/2AR.

The proliferation of 1NCs with like 10 process counterplans has been kind of wild, and probably explains my disproportionately neg leaning ballot record. Process/agent/consult CPs are kind of cheating but in the words of the wise Tristan Bato, "most violations are reasons to justify a permutation or call solvency into question and not as a voter."

I think I tend to err neg on questions of conditionality & perf con but probably aff on counterplans that garner competition off of the word “should”. Obviously this is a debate to be had but also I’m also sympathetic to a well constructed net benefit with solid evidence.

Ks

Nuanced link walls based on the plan/reps + pulling evidence from their ev >>>> links based on FIATed state action and generic cards about your theory.

Very bad for post-modernism, simply because I've never read them + rarely debated them in high school. If you have me in the back you need to do a LOT of explanation.

Better for impacts like clash rather than fairness on framework. Generally, I think the internal link to clash > the internal link to fairness because I'm not sure Ks of reps skew the 1AC so much that are at a significant disadvantage. I am more persuaded by the argument that mooting most of the offense in the 1AC decks clash, which is usually a good internal link turn to the neg's offense.

Planless Affs/Framework

For the aff: Tying your criticism to the topic >>>>>>>> saying anything in the 1AC. I’ll probably be a lot more sympathetic to the neg if I just have no clue what the method/praxis of the 1AC is in relation to the topic. I think the value of planless affs come from having a defensible method that can be contested, which is why I’m not a huge fan of advocacies not tied to the topic.

For the neg: Procedural fairness is harder to win for me as compared to other standards - I think to win this standard you would have to win pretty substantial defense to the aff’s standards & disprove the possibility of debate affecting subjectivity. The way that most debaters extend it just sound whiney and don't give me a reason to prefer it over everything else. Impacts like agonism, legal skills, deliberation, etc are infinitely more convincing to me. Absent a procedural question of framework, I am just evaluating whether or not I think the advocacy is a good idea, not that I think the reading of it in one round has to change the state of debate/the world.

Topicality / Theory

Impact framing & explicit judge instruction is the most important thing in these debates!

Ethics Violations/Procedurals

I don't flow off speech docs, but I try to follow along when you're reading evidence to ensure you're not clipping. If I catch you clipping, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't know what you're doing. I will give you a warning, but drop you if it happens again. If the other team catches you, they can stake the round on an ethics challenge.

Questions of norms ≠ ethics violations. If you believe the ballot should resolve a question of norms (disclosure, open sourcing, etc), then I will evaluate it like a regular procedural. If you believe it's an ethics violation (intentionally modifying evidence, clipping, etc), then the round stops immediately. Loser of the ethics challenge receives an auto loss and 20s.

Evidence ethics can be really iffy to resolve. If you want to stake the round on an evidence distortion, you must prove: that the piece of evidence was cut by the other team (or someone affiliated with their school) AND there was clear and malicious intent to alter its meaning. If your problem isn't surrounding distortion but rather mistagging/misinterpreting the evidence, it can be solved via a rehighlighting.

Online Debate

Please don't start until you see my camera on!

If you're not wearing headphones with a microphone attached, it is REALLY hard to hear you when you turn away from your laptop. Please refrain from doing this.

I would also love if you slowed down a tiny tiny tiny tiny bit on your analytics. I will clear you at most 3 times, but I can't help it if I miss what you're saying on my flow ;(.

Lay Debate / GGSA
I actually really appreciate these rounds. I think at the higher levels, debaters tend to forget that debate is a communicative activity at its core, and rely on the judge's technical knowledge to get out of impacting out arguments themselves. If we are in a lay setting and you'd rather not have a fast round when I'm in the back, I'll be all for that. There is such a benefit in adapting to slower audiences and over-explaining implications of all parts of the debate -- it builds better technical understanding of the activity! I'll probably still evaluate the round similar to how I would a regular round, but I think the experience of you forcing yourself to over-explain each part of the flow to me is greatly beneficial.

Public Forum

I've never debated in PF, I will evaluate very similarly to how I evaluate policy rounds.

I despise the practice of sending snippets of evidence one at a time. I think it's a humongous waste of time and honestly would prefer (1) the email chain be started BEFORE the round and (2) all of the evidence you read in your speech sent at once. Someone was confused about this portion of my paradigm -- basically, instead of asking for "Can I get [A] card on [X] argument, [B] card on [Y] arg, etc...", I think it would be faster if the team that just spoke sent all of their evidence in one doc. This is especially true if the tournament is double-flighted.

If you want me to read evidence after the round, please make sure you flag is very clearly.

I've been in theory/k rounds and I try to evaluate very close to policy. I'm not really a huge fan of k's in public forum -- I don't think there is enough speech time for you to develop such complex arguments out well. I also don't think it makes a lot of sense given the public forum structure (i.e. going for an advocacy when it's not a resolution that is set up to handle advocacies). I think there's so much value in engaging with critical literature, please consider doing another event that is set up better for it if you're really interested in the material. However, I'm still willing to vote on anything, as long as you establish a role of the ballot + frame why I'm voting.

If you delay the round to pre-flow when it's double-flighted, I will be very upset. You should know your case well enough for it to not be necessary, or do it on your own time.

Be nice & have fun.