Hello!

I am a parent judge who has little experience. Please refrain from using theory and kritiks as well as jargon.

I enter round tablarosa, and want to see a good, equitable debate.

Most of all, make sure to have fun!

Hi. I am Anna Cederstav, a parent who has been judging for three years. I am a scientist by training but mentor and work with attorneys.

Eloquent, logical, well-supported arguments will impress me. Speaking at a sprint and using techy debate tricks will not.

I appreciate debates that address the entire topic, approached from a global perspective. I prefer evidence-based arguments with solid analysis over emotional appeals or exaggerated hypotheses.

Please make debate accessible to me, other judges and your opponents by speaking clearly and concisely. I am unlikely to vote in favor of kritiks.

I hope you will have fun and approach debate as if you are in a real-life situation where something important is at stake, and you are doing your best to convince others to join you.

I believe that the purpose of debate is to learn how to think critically and to communicate effectively. I value evidence, logic, and persuasion. I expect debaters to be prepared and to present their arguments in a clear and concise manner. I will evaluate the arguments in a debate round based on their strength, clarity, and persuasiveness. I will also consider the debaters' research, preparation, and presentation. I will give an equal chance for both Affirmative and Negative to win, and I will focus on creating an educational experience for all debaters.

Speak at a pace that people can understand. In order to cover too many thing in your time limit don't speak so fast that i cannot understand anything .

Be authoritative in what you say. if you are not convinced what you are saying, i am not convinced either.

Enjoy speech and debate!!!!

Dinesh Elaprolu

I have been involved as a debate judge for last 2 years. I am familiar with both Middle School debate and Parliamentary debate.

As a judge, I believe my role is to evaluate objectively and not introduce my personal beliefs or opinions in my decision process. I want the students to follow the ground rules and be clear with their arguments and evidences. I will flow the round, so I expect clear reasonings and properly cited evidences in my decision process. As per the rules, I will not allow new evidence or arguments in the final speeches. I am comfortable with any speed, provided the debater can articulate his reasonings well.

I expect debaters to treat each other and the judge with respect and as I mentioned above my decision will be based on debaters performance and not my personal beliefs.

Please feel free to ask me questions after the round and I will try my best to clarify your doubts.

I am a new judge interested in hearing logical debates and paced speeches from well spoken debaters.

My name Sarah Karimi it is my second time being a judge I am not super experienced

• Please speak clearly and loud
• Speed is fine but also long as you annunciate
• I value truth over logic
• No evidence is better than falsified evidence

Have a great/fun round !

hi everyone!

my name is tristan (she/her) and i'm in my 4th year of competing in npda for uc berkeley. my partner and i won the 2023 npda and npte.

june dense says it best: never worry about me auto-rejecting an argument because it's 'blippy' or 'frivolous', just make sure it's sufficiently weighed. i'm down for whatever, barring a few of the things listed below.

cowardice: i understand cheating has become somewhat of a norm in high school parli. if you feel the need to cheat, keep two things in mind. one, get good. two, i will be more than happy to intervene and drop you (and take any additional steps needed to ensure competitive integrity) if a rules violation occurs. note: this only applies in cases of copy-pasting prep or accessing the internet in round, not like you rejecting the res or being condo lol.

trigger warnings: probably a good thing to read. if you forget to give one and get called out on it, just apologize and move on. i would prefer not to evaluate a tw collapse unless the instance is egregious.

speed: go as fast as you want, but please, give me pen time (or keyboard time, rather) when we are switching between sheets. i will slow or clear verbally as needed. i can hang.

theory: i default to competing interps and will vote on any sheet if won. however, i find the trend of frivolous theory vacuous and boring and, if you have a choice between spending two minutes reading tropicality or spending two minutes reading case-turns, i would prefer the latter. t violations should be derived from the text of the advocacy, unless the plan is the res.

condo: condo good. reading condo bad also good. if i have a bias here, it probably occurs when multiple condo advocacies are read.

kritiks: i probably don't have the best understanding of your lit base, but i feel comfortable enough evaluating most positions. throughout my career, my partner and I primarily read occultism, dual power, some eco stuff, and some neolib early in our career.

aff ks: i don't mind if you reject. do what ya gotta do. if I have a bias re; aff-k vs fw-t, i am not aware of it.

and lastly, if lay debate is your thing, don't let this scare you. i will do my best to accommodate your style, just make it easy for me by telling me how i should vote and which impacts are the most important.

I did PF for four years in HS but competed more regularly in college on the IE Side (public address and limited prep). 

Given my background in speech, I’m not the best with speed. Organization, road maps and structure are important for me. 

Have fun and be respectful of your opponent! 

Lay judge -

- Impact calculus is important, leave time in the 2AR and 2NR for you to compare your impacts with your opponents

- Speak clearly, spreading is fine but isn't preferred. Mumbling words fast isn't debate nor spreading

- The less LD slang, the better.

- Speak with evidence, it is clear when something is made up

Put your cases in the file share, along with any speech documents you have.

Hi! My name is Lily (she/her) and I am a freshman at UC Berkeley. I tend to be pretty nice, but I have a very expressive face and may be staring at you during your speech like you have just said the most insidious thing. I am likely not thinking anything negative, that is just my thinking face.

Please abstain from spreading and using jargon unnecessarily. I am a feeble minded gal and won’t understand nor do I find it particularly charming.

If you are going to run a Kritic or other theory take a step back and think: “Is this going to leech academic value from the debate?” If your answer is yes, reconsider.

Be respectful to your opponents. It is supposed to be fun. If you are especially rude to your opponents, I will shamelessly talk smack about you to my team. Also, it won’t make me want to vote for you.

Most importantly, warrant out your impacts.

<3

I am a high school English teacher with some past parliamentary debate experience. This is my first year judging.

I appreciate well articulated, professionalism during a debate; please do not rush or disparage anyone. I expect a clearly stated roadmap; concrete evidence, facts, and specific arguments to defend your side; acknowledge and argue the issues of your opponents; and include direct refutation.

Hi,

I would like the students to speak clearly and not rush through while debating.

Understand the topic and provide the arguments relevant to the topic.

Have a healthy environment when debating and not be too aggressive when debating on your topics.

Debate gets repetitive towards the end, try to bring unique perspective

Do not read out the points

All the best and good luck for the competition.

My name is Leo Mutarelli, and I am a former HS Parliamentary Debater.

I do not believe I have any particular judging preferences which would strike you as abnormal; however, I'll briefly go over some of my preferences.

Fact Checking: I did Parli for 4 years and I understand Parliamentary debaters can often times have a unique relationship with the truth. With that being said, I will not generally fact check unless a piece of information becomes so important that the result of the entire debate is contingent on the veracity of the fact.

Theory: I am perfectly fine with theory arguments; however, I have a general dislike for arguments that seem pre-baked.

Spreading: I cannot state in strong enough professional terms how much I despise spreading. Do with that information what you will.

Speed: I understand that many of you will have a lot to get through, and I have no problem with you talking fast in order to do so.

Disclosures: Provided the tournament does not have any specific regulations barring judges from disclosing, I am happy to disclose.

This list is by no means an exhaustive list of all my preferences, and if you have questions regarding my preferences, I am happy to discuss them with you once both teams are in the round.

Always judge everyone fairly.

Beginner parent judge. I will be looking for clear and concise arguments and how well a student is prepared. Clear and respectful speech with logical flow. And overviews should be given for visualizing the big picture.

I am a rookie judge, excited to learn and evaluate your arguments fairly. Let's have a great debate!

It is exciting to watch our next generation of leaders build the foundation for a robust, intellectually honest, and respectful national discourse on future matters of urgent public policy. I hope to see those qualities in the participants, and particularly dislike presentations founded on unpleasantness.

hi all, i'm sim (she/her). currently a second year NPDA and NFA-LD competitor, i also competed in high school (mostly for Congress) at the TOC level. a little bit about my judging preferences:

parli-

1) i evaluate the flow. you can read almost any argument you want and i will do my best to ignore my biases and treat debate like the game it is.

a. at the top, this should go without saying, but don't be rude, don't be a bigot or a bully. i hate judge intervention, but you doing any of the above is grounds for intervention.

b. for speaks, i think i'm a pretty fair judge. i evaluate not based on your articulation necessarily, but on the weight of your arguments and strats. if you want better speaks, feel free to drop a giulia tofana reference somewhere lmaoo.

c. please clash. implied clash is not good enough. i won't connect the dots for you.

d. collapse. debate is like a bell curve. it should be at its most wide right in the middle, but narrow it down at the end. tell me exactly what to vote on and why.

e. impact calculus. don't forget your impacts and weighing. i don't care about your argument if it has no impacts.

e. signpost! signpost, signpost, signpost.

f. i protect against new arguments in the last two speeches, but make sure to call them out anyways.

2) speed: i can hang with most speed, so go as fast as you want. i just ask that you slow down for interps/plan texts/rob's and/or provide them to me written out. don't sacrifice clarity in favor of speed. if i can't understand you because there is no clarity and you're going 1000wpm, it might not get on the flow. in that case, tough. also, please don't try to spread out obviously inexperienced debaters. you shouldn't have to resort to speed to outdebate a novice. be inclusive!

3) theory: i'd like to think i'm pretty comfortable with most topicality and framework arguments. i'm down to vote on condo bad args, down for MG theory, don't love RVIs, default to competing interps over reasonability like 99% of the time, will totally vote on potential abuse. frivolous theory is so fun to watch so feel free to run it -- but know that you probably have to collapse to it 100% to win my vote there.

a. ivi's: unless its an ivi about an equity issue, you have to do a lot of work to convince me to vote here. this means reading an ivi as a proper shell, not as a last ditch one-line effort when you're losing on theory.

4) kritiks: i'll listen to whatever you want to read, but please explain the lit to me like i'm a five year old. i understand some authors (marx, kant, fanon, tuck and yang), but for most of them i'm probably lost. i'm not much of a k debater myself, but i'll do my best to evaluate.

--

LD
pls share the speechdrop. for the love of debate, don't forget to flash ALL the positions you're reading and don't drop the wrong doc. i am not familiar with the topics or what people are reading rn, so telling me your aff is the most common aff on the circuit in response to t won't really be helpful.

other than that, i generally evaluate ld in a fairly similar style to parli.

State-ranked High School debater. Run whatever you like. I judge based as close to the flow as I can, if an argument is not responded to and is flowed through by an opponent, I will take it as true. Will decide at the end of the round by assesing the landed impacts on both sides and then weighing them against eachother in reference to the established paradigm value. Please make sure to weigh impacts at the end of your speech and tell me why I should prefer your winning arguments over your opponents.

Of course, I will judge as tabula rasa as I possibly can but, of course, this is also not completely possible; I will always have some biases. For that reason, I think it is more fair if I state my political leanings: I am a registered independant and have been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the US, for going on 4 years. Again, I will never ever do something like drop arguments counter to my views but, being transparent, I also recognize that I have some bais towards a certain view point and thus I think it is better and more fair that I simply state them out right from the beginning rather than keep them secret. So there they are. Should all judges have to do this? Perhaps... I would like to see a round on that one day.

I always write long RFDs where I go through each argument and explain how I assessed them. For this reason it usually takes me awhile to write each round up, do not fret if you don't see the RFD as soon as the tournament ends, check back later. It is also for this reason that I do not often give oral RFDs. I love to keep talking about rounds after they end and hear your critiques on my judging, if you have any. Thus I always leave my email: dylanskolnick@gmail.com.

I am looking for a good understanding of the matter at issue and content that promotes healthy debate. I value well-structured and cogent arguments with relevant evidence. I prefer quality over quantity! So please lean towards clarity of delivery rather than the number of words you can get out. I am a lay judge, so if your content is not clear to me you will hurt your ranking. Feel free to do a roadmap for me (off time if allowed in the event rules).

Claim uniqueness is important and entering new evidence and unique perspectives always make for a more interesting debate, and scores points with me. How well you defend your arguments or how relevant and incisive your questions/refutations are will rank you higher in my book.

Overall, I am looking for erudite content as well as an effective speaking style. The speakers with an optimal combination of both will get the highest ranks in my judging.

I am a beginner parent judge without personal experience in debate.

I value quality over quantity in a debate setting - how effectively you make your points is more important to me than the number of arguments made. I am looking for both well-constructed logic and clarity of delivery.

I’ve been a parent judge since 2019 with experiences in Congress, Public Forum, and Lincoln Douglas.

In my judging, I weigh more on how the debaters make their argumentation clear and understandable to the audience than how much information they cover. Appreciate a complete argument with definitions, claim, reasoning, and impact.

In addition, real-world impacts matter. I value a strong and convincing rebuttal focusing on key points/facts that can materialize.

Very importantly, follow the tournament code of conduct and respect your competitors and partner.

Enjoy debate and have fun!