April 2023 Potomac Intramural
2023 — Online, MD/US
Public Speaking Judges Paradigm List
All Paradigms: Show HideEngineering grad and IT professional living in DC; I did PF in Virginia 2013-2017 and have been judging debate since 2018.
General:
1. Please pre-flow before round start time. I value keeping things moving along, and starting early if possible, so that the round does not go overtime.
2. I'm fine with speed, if you speak clearly and preferably provide a speech doc.
3a. Time yourself. When you run out of time, finish your sentence gracefully, on a strong note, and stop speaking.
3b. I will also time you. When you run out of time, I will make a hand gesture with my fist, then silently stop taking notes on my flow and wait for you to finish. I will cut you off if you are 30 seconds over time; if I cut you off, it means I didn't listen to anything you said for roughly the last 30 seconds.
4. I don't care if you sit or stand. Do whichever you prefer.
5. I am unlikely to vote on a K. I like hearing Ks, I think they're cool, I like when debaters deconstruct the format/topic/incentive structure of debate, I'm learning about them, but evaluating them as a voting issue is outside my comfort zone as a judge and I don't have the experience and confidence to evaluate Ks in a way that is consistent and fair.
6. I like case/evidence disclosure. It leads to better debates and better evidence ethics. When a team makes a pre-round disclosure of case/evidence or shares a rebuttal doc, I expect that the other team will reciprocate. I expect that you have an evidence doc and can quickly share any evidence the opposing team calls for. If you have not prepared to share your evidence, you should run prep to get your evidence doc together. I want rounds to proceed on schedule and will note it in RFD and speaks if a significant and preventable waste of time occurs in the round.
PF:
I typically vote on terminal impacts. Use your constructive to state and quantify impacts that I as a human can care about. I care 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. You should also weigh to help me decide between impacts that are denominated in different units, for instance if one side impacts to poverty and the other side impacts to, idk, life expectancy, your job as debaters is to tell me why one of those is more important to vote on. If you both impact to the same thing, like extinction, make sure you are weighing the unique aspects of your case, like probability, timeframe, and solvency against the other side's case.
1. If you call a card and begin prepping while you wait to receive it, I will run your prep. Calling for evidence is not free prep.
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:
The way I vote in LD is different from how I vote in PF. In the most narrow sense, I vote for whichever team has the best impact on the value-criteron for the value that I buy into in-round.
This means you don't necessarily have to win on your own case's value or your own case's VC. Probably you will find it easier to link your impacts to your own value and VC, but you can also concede to your opponent's value and link into their VC better than they do, or delink your opponent's VC from their value, or show that your case supports a VC that better ties into their value.
Congress:
I don't judge Congress nearly enough to have an in-depth paradigm, but it happens now and then that I judge Congress, particularly for local tournaments and intramurals. I will typically give POs top-3 if they successfully follow procedure and hold the room together.
Ranking is more based on gut feeling but mainly I'm looking to evaluate: did you speak compellingly like you believe and care about the things you're saying, did you do good research to support your position, and did you take the initiative to speak, particularly when the room otherwise falls silent.
BQ:
I've never judged BQ before and have been researching the format, watching some rounds and bopping around Reddit for the last week or so to understand the rules and norms. Since I'm carrying some experience with other formats in, you should know I will flow all speeches, and only the speeches. I will give a lot of leeway to the debaters to determine the definitions and framing of the round, and expect them to clash over places where those definitions and framings are in conflict, and ultimately I will determine from that clash what definitions and framing I should adopt when signing my ballot.
_________________________________
Hi! I'm Ausha
I competed in Policy 2017-2019 and LD 2019-2021 in Washington State, 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
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.