I am the Upper School Debate Coach at Sidwell Friends School. My email is downesc@sidwell.edu — please put me on the email chain if there is one.

CX

Some stuff you probably care about:

Ks, K affs, performance, and other, non-normative ways of engaging with debate and the resolution are fun and fine in my personal view, but I've voted for framework before and I have no doubt I will again. Even if I think you're being a little bit of a cop about it. I can be convinced of a lot in the space of the round about the proper purposes and form of the activity, but I think the traditional arguments for the virtues of topical, plan-focused, switch-side debate are substantial.

Speed is ok. Clarity is essential. Paperless debate has gotten debaters into some very bad habits, among which is thinking that they can rely on judges to read speech docs to reconstruct basically unintelligible 1ACs and 1NCs. I won't be doing that. This is an oral advocacy competition. It's impossible to articulate a brightline on this but them's the breaks. So consider being conservative on this front. That goes double if the debate is online: you're just flatly not as clear as if we were sitting in a room together and I need you to slow down to compensate for that.

Some stuff I care about:

Cross ex matters. It is a speech, it's binding, we named the event after it, I pay very close attention to it and I firmly believe rounds can be won and lost in cross. It's also just the most dynamic and fun part of the round for me. I have given up on trying to fight for closed cross but just know it's very embarrassing if your 1N can't answer basic questions about the K alt or your 1A can't answer basic questions about your solvency mechanism and if that's obvious it'll be reflected in speaks.

I will vote on defense. A well-articulated, warranted, and contextualized no link argument extended into the last rebuttal can absolutely get me to give zero weight to an impact where the link story is poorly articulated and badly warranted. Relatedly, I will vote on presumption and feel strongly that the aff has the initial burden of persuasion. I realize this all makes me sound a million years old. I don't care.

I care about being told a coherent story. Contradictory off-case neg positions turn me off for that reason, even if you collapse down to some kind of plausibly non-contradictory position in the 2NR and are feeding me a "testing the aff from multiple perspectives good" line. Performative contradiction arguments or clever cross applications between flows are attractive to me for similar reasons.

Presentation matters. A good presentation in a policy round often isn't the same thing as good presentation in other forms of oral advocacy. But you fundamentally want to make me like your debate persona, and if I do I will be looking for reasons to pick you up. If you come off as cruel or a bully, I'll be looking for reasons to drop you.

PF

I think evidence violations of various kinds are, unfortunately, pervasive in PF, as a consequence of bad disclosure and evidence exchange practices combined with the use of paraphrasing. In part as a response to this concerning state of affairs, I hold students to a high standard on evidence ethics and have a comparatively low threshold for voting on this stuff or signing a ballot on an evidence violation. I will ask for evidence I think sounds fake or misrepresented. I will take an evidence ethics issue to tab on my own initiative even if not raised by your opponents.

I try to evaluate PF according to its own standards rather than just being a transplanted policy hack (which is admittedly what I am). To my mind a good PF round should look not dissimilar from talking heads on a cable news show discussing current events. It should be intelligible and engaging to an educated and informed lay audience. And that means this is not an event that should privilege a fast, technical, evidence-driven style of debating. I'm perfectly capable of flowing and judging fast, technical rounds, but I am flatly not going to hold debaters to the same kind of standards on this stuff that I would in a policy round and will afford significantly more leeway to less technical presentations than I might in CX.

For related reasons, I have a very high threshold for voting on theory in PF. If you do not have a credible in-round abuse story or it looks like you are cynically using highly technical theory arguments to bully a less technical team I will be spending the entirety of the debate looking for any halfway justifiable excuse to drop you.

Courtesy and promptness in satisfying requests for cards are something that I will take into account in speaker points. As far as I am concerned (and per NSDA rules), your opponents are well within their rights to ask for every piece of evidence you read or paraphrase, which you must then promptly provide to them in a manner which clearly shows, through e.g. highlighting or underlining, what portions of the evidence you read or paraphrased.

Congress

If you are giving a speech that is not an authorship speech and it contains no clash, you will not get more than a 4/6 score on that speech. If you are giving a speech that is not an authorship speech and you appear to be reading the speech in its entirety, with no extemporaneous elements at all, you will not get more than a 4/6 score on that speech. If your speech is substantially repetitive of prior speeches, you will not get more than a 4/6 score on that speech.

I will generally rank a PO who effectively manages the chamber at #3. Other than the PO, I rank largely based on my scoring of speeches.

LD

I never did this event, don't coach this event, and have judged it only a handful of times. I do have a background in philosophy; it's what I got my undergraduate degree in. You'll probably find some helpful things under my CX section. I'll do my best.

Who are you?

I debated CX at Scituate High School in the conventional stock issues focused style of the Southeastern Massachusetts Debate League, then at UMASS where I turned into a K debater while learning everything I actually know about debate from Jillian Marty. Following a hiatus from debate I was an assistant coach for policy debate at James Madison High School in Virginia from 2018 to 2022. I have been the debate coach for Sidwell Friends School since fall 2022.

In terms of my non-debate life, I am among other things a Christian, a socialist, and a practicing class action plaintiff's lawyer.

Judging Philosophy: I do not judge based on my personal position on a matter before me. I judge on whether the arguments are supported and defended between the teams or individuals.

Background: I am experienced Circuit and Classic judge having judged local, regional, and national tournaments for the past twenty years. Recently judged all preliminary 2023 NCFL Grand National Policy Rounds and the Octo, Quarters, and Semi-Final Rounds. I was the 2022 NCFL Grand Nationals Parliamentarian for Student Congress (Semi-Finals) in Washington, DC; 2022 NSDA Parliamentarian for Student Congress; 2022 NSDA National Tournament Supplemental Congress Parliamentarian (Finals); 2022 WACFL Student Congress Metrofinals; 2021 NSDA Policy Finals; 2021 Parliamentarian for Student Congress; 2020, 2019 NSDA Policy Finals (including qualifying rounds); 2018 NSDA Policy Rounds; 2017 National Qualifiers for NSDA Speech; 2016 NSDA Nationals for Congress (Parliamentarian); 2016 NCFL Grand Nationals (Policy Debate); 2016 Congress WACFL Metrofinals (Parliamentarian); 2015 NSDA CX Policy Semi-Finals; the 2015 NCFL CX Quarterfinals; 2014 NCFL LD Finals.

For Policy and Public Forum: I judge as a policy maker and not truly on a line by line (but will evaluate all arguments in the context of a policy making decision). Better debaters analyze the opponents' case/points and prove why their opponents' case is either without foundation or weak and the policy position should not be adopted.

Able to judge Circuit style policy arguments. However, to prevail with Circuit style arguments, the debaters must still ensure they meet their prima facie obligations. See Unusual Points No. 1 below as an example.

Speed is an issue if the speaker is unintelligible and the speaker points will reflect that problem. What I don't understand, I can't flow, and if it is not on my flow, I cannot evaluate. Clarity is the name of the game. Teams should properly provide clear "taglines" for their arguments in order for me to follow (I will not accept flash drives or links to arguments).

For LD: I judge on the basis of cogent and clear arguments without reaching the value and value criterion debate. The better debaters, however, will incorporate the philosophical rationale in their arguments. Unless both cases are weighted equally in terms of argumentation, do I then go to the value criterion debate. The better debater demonstrates that his value is met using his/her value criterion. If the debater does not have a value criterion, I will weigh that debater's value against his/her opponent's value criterion.

For Congress Debate: (1) As a Parliamentarian, I rank and judge the PO based on his/her effective control of the Chamber, fairness to the Representatives or Senators on recency, and understanding and implementing the Tournament Rules and Roberts Rules of Order when necessary. (2) As a Judge, I rank and judge a speaker on clarity of his/her argument for or against a Bill or Resolution along with appropriate evidence following Tournament evidentiary rules; the better speaker is one who does not read a speech and who rebuts another Representative's or Senator's points. I do not appreciate form (sounding good) over substance. I give less points and ranking for consistent "rehash" throughout the Session. The effective Congressor is one who blends persuasive speaking with substance and debates the other speakers.

For Speech: Speech is not "acting", it is interpretation of an event, a person's situation, or a story-line that is impactful. The use of one's voice, body, and facial expression all play into the scoring of an individual's performance. I am not a fan of "popping" to delineate characters, but do not take any points off for using that method.

Each event has particular rules that must be followed. For example, in prose and poetry, the individual uses a binder and must appear to be reading it to the audience. In duo, the partners must not look at each other nor touch. In dramatic interp, if you have multiple characters, your characters must be distinct by voice characterization or body language.

Now with Extemporaneous Speaking, I look to the speaker's ability to explain and answer a domestic or international question with poise and understanding of the topic question. I am not a true fan of the "Unified Analysis" ("UA") approach, but it is the standard in HS Speech. I coach a hybrid UA approach that stresses persuasive argumentation and analysis. I do not appreciate the "extemp walk", which is very stilted and not natural.

Impromptu Speaking, the ability to tell a story with an impactful meaning is what I look for between the competitors. Using the UA approach is fine, but any way of telling an impactful story or narrative will do.

Unusual points.

1. Burden of proof for all forms of debate. Because the AFF has the burden of proof of presenting a prima facie case, so too the NEG has the burden of proof when presenting its case. For example, if the NEG argues a Kritik without providing an alternative, it has failed, in the classic sense, to meet its burden of proof and I have the ability as a judge to mark down the argument as carrying little weight. A NEG Kritik without an alternative is nothing more than a non-unique disadvantage. To that end, the same goes with the AFF in terms of its failure to provide a Plan Text and Inherency if it is running an AFF K.

2. Kritik for all forms of debate. A Kritik as an AFF case in Policy can be run. However, be warned that as a classic judge, you must present the Kritik as an AFF by presenting a prima facie case and solvency through a detailed Plan. Failure to do that most likely will result, as in any case not meeting the burden of proof, a loss. The team must provide a Plan or Solution that solves the underlying Kritik whether it be Capitalism, Racism, Sexism, or any other "ism".

Although not favored by some, a Kritik can be argued in LD as a "classic" counterargument to realism or rationalism. To get around the prohibition, a creative student will argue that if the Affirmative fails to address the underlying "ism", the Affirmative Case in support of the Resolution cannot be accomplished because there will be more harm than good.

3. Cross-Ex for all forms of debate. Cross-examination information will be used in the decision making process. As in real life, cross and direct examination are oftentimes the key to resolving issues and the answers can and will be held for and against a team. In "Open CX", if one debater is answering all the questions, the one who should be answering will have a lower speaker point.

4. Topicality for Policy. If the Case and Plan directly link to the Resolution and appropriate definitions are provided to clearly establish that link, topicality is generally not a voter. However, this does not mean that I will not entertain all T arguments. As previously stated, the NEG has the burden of proof of demonstrating a violation.

5. Counterplans. If the Negative runs a counterplan, it must not be topical (i.e., using a federal government agency). Otherwise the Negative concedes that the Resolution should be upheld. In order to win a counterplan you must show that it is better than the Affirmative Plan and that it is net-beneficial to do only the counterplan as compared to the Affirmative Plan.

6. Document Share. I do not partake in document sharing. This is a communications event, not reading event, which requires the debaters to inform the judge of their arguments. However, when required, I do ask for evidence that has been challenged as incorrect or improperly cited for the position it advanced.

Qualifications.

1. Assistant Coach for Dominion HS, Sterling VA, for all Debate and Speech Events since its opening in 2003. Total time as a judge commenced in 2002.

2. Former HS policy debater at the Championship Level (dating myself) and Forensics (Dramatic Interp and Declamation).

3. Former HS Model United Nations Third Place North American Invitational Model United Nations winner (representing Belarus).

4. Former Judicial Clerk to the Honorable Roger J. Miner, US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, former Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, former USAF JAG Civilian Attorney, and former Assistant General Counsel for a Global IT Company. Current Legal Counsel to R&D IT Engineering Firm specializing in AI, AIOPS, ML, Cybersecurity, and Secured Cloud Operations.