April 2023 Potomac Intramural
2023 — Online, MD/US
Public Speaking Judges Paradigm List
All Paradigms: Show HideEngineering grad and IT practitioner; have been judging debate since 2018. I did PF all through high school in Virginia.
General:
1. I'm fine with speed; just speak clearly.
2a. Time yourself. When you run out of time, finish your sentence gracefully, then stop speaking.
2b. I will also time you. When you run out of time, I will silently stop taking notes on my flow and wait for you to finish. I will cut you off if you are egregiously over time. If I cut you off, it means I didn't listen to anything you said for the last 30-60 seconds.
3. I don't care if you sit or stand. Do whatever works.
PF:
I vote on terminal impacts. Use your constructive to state and quantify impacts that I as a human can care about. I care exclusively about saving lives, reducing suffering and increasing happiness, in descending order of importance. Provide warrants and evidence for your claims, then extend your claims and impacts through to final focus. In final focus, weigh: tell me *how* you won in terms of the impacts I care about.
0. Cut your cards in advance and be on the ball with finding and sharing them. If you can't find your card promptly we'll assume it doesn't exist and move on.
1. Please indict bad cards. Misleading claims, baseless speculation, "studies" that don't exist, that sort of junk: if you convince me it's bad, I'll strike it gleefully from my flow.
2. Be nice to each other in cross; let the other person finish. Cut them off if they are monopolizing time.
3. If you want me to consider an argument when I vote, extend it all the way through final focus.
LD:
Traditionally, I will vote for you if you convince me that your side has the most positive impact on the value-criterion for the value that I buy into in-round.
I am open to the possibility that you can run a K or (much less likely) T and I will like it and vote for it. Both my exposure and my receptiveness to them have been limited in practice. Generally, if you are accusing your opponent of abuse and asking me to sign my ballot on it, the abuse needs to be egregious, not just irritating.
GFC update (9/22):
please go slow and explain <3 these are my first rounds since last spring and I’m pretty unfamiliar with the topic specs right now so over explain in front of me!
jw patterson update (10/21):
Things I'm going to start dropping your speaks for - 1. counting down before your speeches 2. calling me judge/ms. curry(misgendering me)/any formality - please just call me Ausha(Aw-shuh) or don't refer to me lmao (asking "judge ready?" is okay)
^if you do this i'll know either a. you didn't read my paradigm (bad) or b. did read my paradigm and just aren't respecting it (also bad)
_________________________________
Hi! I'm Ausha
I'm a current sophomore at American University majoring in a mix of poli sci/econ, probably going to do some form of debate here too. In high school I did 2 years of policy and 2 years of LD, running stock and critical args in both. I finished top 50 at NSDA Nats in 2021 and was the WA state LD champion.
Put me on the email chain if you make one : ausha.L.curry@gmail.com
tldr -- Run whatever you want to run. I'll listen. I'll vote where you tell me to, that's your job in the rebuttals.
Don't do/say anything racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamphobic, etc. It'll 100% result in an L20. If at any time during the debate you feel unsafe, feel free to email me and i'll end the round and deal with it accordingly
Prefs
Policy/LARP - 1
Basic Ks - 1
T - 1
Uncommon Ks - 2
Phil - 3/4
Other Theory - 3/4
Tricks - strike
General -
1. online - go maybe 80-90% max speed and definitely start a little bit slower in case the audio is shady. also plz locally record your speeches in case either of our internet cuts out !
2. disclosure - I won't vote on disclosure unless the violation is super egregious. i was literally the only circuit debater at my HS and i couldn't afford programs like debate drills, etc. so if you're in a similar boat i will def be empathetic towards you in these rounds. On the flip side if you're from a school that has a massive team and try to run the small school arg i won't buy it (interlake i am looking @ u)
3. tech > truth - please be super clear about signposting especially online. even if your opponent straight out concedes something, I still need extensions of a warrant and some weighing for me to vote on it
4. speed - speed is good, slow down on plan/cp texts, interps, etc. I'll yell clear or just ask for the doc post speech if I feel like I missed anything too significant (if it wasn't sent already). If your 1ar is entirely analytics please either slow down or send them in the doc
5. Ev ethics - if u suspect ur opponent is clipping cards, let me know after their most recent speech. it'll also require some sort of recording for proof. Yes stake the round on it, or you can run a theory violation on it and it'll be nicer for everyone
Argument Specific -
tricks - strike me. i won't go for any of the "neg doesn't get CPs" or "eval the debate after x speech". i think they're genuinely cheating, a bad model of debate, and incredibly exclusionary and i will die on that hill
t/theory - I love t, please run it. I spent a lot of my time in policy going for t in the 2nr so I'd say this is where I'm pretty comfy judging debates. I have a pretty high threshold for other theory, especially super friv theory like font size
LD specific: I didn't run a ton of grammatical stuff like Nebel in LD but if you run it well and explain the violation clearly, it's a pretty good shot I'll vote for it. i've come to the realization i don't particularly love theory 2ars if it's only introduced in the 1ar. I think it's made for some pretty shallow debates, but again, i will vote on it unhappily
Defaults: Competing interps, DTA, condo good, PICs good, yes RVIs (note: this doesn't mean i won't flip, you'll just have to debate it)
trad (LD) - will get through these rounds unhappily, but please spice it up a little bit. Make me not want to rip my ears off. Explain phil well, i've never ran one of these cases but i've won against them if that means anything to you. please do comparative work otherwise i will have no idea how to weigh. (Post GFC outrounds, please do not go top speed for kant I NEED you to slow down and explain how everything interacts with each other)
CPs - please make them competitive and have some sort of solvency evidence unless it's some a structural issue (ie taking an offensive word out of the plan text and replacing it). i use sufficiency framing for weighing the cp against the aff meaning you'll have to do more analysis than just "cp doesn't link to the net benefit" in the final rebuttal for me to vote on it. I think both internal and external net benefits are good.
DAs - I enjoy unique, nuanced das. I really like politics and i'll buy them pretty easily if there's a good link to the aff. Should have an overview in the final rebuttal and the block shouldn't be just reading new ev and not answering line by line.
ks - go for it! I like them if they're ran well but make sure you know that your own lit. I'm most familiar with generics (setcol, cap, security), Foucault, a little Edelman, and Baudrillard, any other high theory ones you should explain more though. open to pomo but never really ran it during high school and only hit it a couple times.
k affs - I like these, i ran more than a few. They don't have to be topical, but I think it's easier to win on t if they're in the direction of the topic. I mostly end up going for k v k against these affs but i also run fw in the 1nc, see the t section above if you have questions about that. tvas can be deadly so please blow it up if T/FW is your nr strat!
performance - never ran this, but always enjoyed watching these rounds. Tell me why the 1ac is important in the debate space and win T and it'll be a super easy aff ballot. negs be careful and please don't say anything offensive <3 but i feel like a different K or pik is always a better bet than fw against these
Speaks -
I think i tend to give relatively high speaks averaging between a 28-29. Things that'll boost your speaks: nice pics of aubrey plaza at the top of the speech doc, good organization, clear weighing, and strategic decisions
+.5 for flashing analytics
I have participated in several speeches during my college time . I think in Debate everyone prepares very well and bring up good and have good arguments .I would like to see how participants are being interactive, informative and being alert during the debate rounds.