I am a parent PF judge, and a practicing attorney with more than 25 years of experience.

I believe a sound debate is about a fair, intelligible and intelligent dialogue. Speed reading off a computer screen or spreading is incompatible with such a process. Fast speakers assume the risk that I could miss some arguments/points/evidence. Additionally, if in my view you've spoken at a fast clip, I will not view unfavorably your opponent failing to respond to an argument that you have advanced.

Do not resort to speech docs. Make your case orally.

I flow arguments and strictly rely on my flowsheet. While I do not take note of points made/unmade in crossfire, I pay careful attention to astute questions and answers. Please bring up crossfire points that you would like me to flow in a subsequent speech. I am persuaded by well-structured, logical and linked arguments that are honestly supported by key pieces of evidence.

In addition to making your case, you must meaningfully engage with your opponents' case. The team advancing a contention must rejoin the issue and tell me why the opposing team's rebuttal/counter/block does not work.

In crossfire, please avoid questions with long preambles.

While, for the most part, I don't get into the weeds with cards and evidence, I may on occasion call for a piece. Teams should feel free to assail each other's evidence during the debate.

Please do not use debate jargon.

I do not like theory and K's. Hew to the topic of the day.

Keep the discourse civil. Incivility in any form will hurt your cause.

Enthusiasm for, intensity, and passion regarding the proposition you are espousing is welcome. Discourtesy or aggression against your opponents is not.

Tactical and strategic thinking in arguing, rebutting, and in crossfire is always delightful.

I appreciate clear analysis of why your contention should win the day in the summary and final focus. Further, the final focus should have all that you would like me to vote on (akin to writing my RFD for me - pros of your case and cons of your opponent's.) Lastly, all arguments and evidence that are in the final focus must have been in the summary and no new arguments in the summary speech - it is a matter of fairness.

Happy debating!

I am a current Yale University student and am new to PF, so go easy on the lingo, but I have had previous high school debate experience. Please sign post before your speech, so I know how to follow it. If a team calls for evidence, I would like to see it as well. Additionally, do not just bring up evidence, tell me why it's relevant. In final focus, tell me as clear as possible why you won the round. Leave nothing up to my interpretation to make my decision as easy as possible.

I will listen to crossfire, but if you want it to be flowed, please bring up the points made in crossfire in a later speech. Points made in crossfire will not be considered in your scoring if those points are not later brought up in a speech.

Speed will most likely be disadvantageous to you. I am more likely to give my ballot to teams that present their argument in a succinct and well-developed manner rather than to teams who present a plethora of evidence without elaborating further on its relevance. Present your argument in a clear and organized manner instead of bombarding me with disconnected and unelaborated evidence.

Above all else, debate is an educational activity, so please be respectful. Personal attack on the other team will be reflected in the speaker points.

Feel free to ask any questions about this paradigm at the beginning of the round.

Hey all! I have around 5 years of debate experience in PF & LD.

Anything goes. Be nice to your opponents, we're all here to debate not to get harassed.

If you're reading extremely esoteric Ks, I can probably follow along but explain your arguments and send me your speech docs if you're going super fast. I'm acclimated with traditional K lit, so it shouldn't be a problem if its something normal. Just defend your model of debate.

I'm not particularly keen on theory debate unless actually serious violations occur, but will vote off it. Don't run frivolous theory like shoe theory, its annoying. Unless you're absolutely convinced you can make me laugh with it, then go for it.

Extensions are so important, if you don't extend your link chain in the necessary speeches it'll make it really hard for me to vote for you.

Don't do any of the -isms. I'll intervene if this happens.

And most importantly have fun while debating!

I am a parent judge with over 25 years experience as a litigation attorney and will put the most weight on evidence-based arguments. As a native New Yorker I can understand rapid speech, but prefer a more measured tempo.

I competed in PF from 2012-2016 at Bronx Science.

Please use the summary and final focus to clearly weigh arguments and recap the debate, organized into specific voting issues -- do not just go down the flow, meaning: do not try to go for every single issue in summary.

Although the flow is important, big-picture analysis, framework/overview, and superior argument-level warranting can win my ballot.

A little bit about me: I coach for Millburn High School in New Jersey. I competed on the circuit in high school and college.

I do my very best to be as non-interventionist as possible, but I know some students like reading judge's paradigms to get a better sense of what they're thinking. I hope that the below is helpful :).

Overall: You can be nice and a good debater. :)

Here are some things to consider if I'm your Parliamentarian/ Judge in Congressional Debate:

- I am a sucker for a well-executed authorship/ sponsorship, so please don't be afraid to give the first speech! Just because you don't have refutation doesn't mean it isn't a good speech. I will be more inclined to give you a better speech score if you stand up and give the speech when no one is willing to do so because it shows preparedness.

- Bouncing off of the above bullet point, two things I really dislike while at national circuit tournaments are having no one stand up to give the earlier speeches (particularly in out rounds) and one-sided debate. You should be prepared to speak on either side of the legislation. You're there to debate, so debate. I'm much more inclined to rank you higher if you flip and have fluency breaks than if you're the fourth aff in a row.

- Asking the same question over and over to different speakers isn't particularly impressive to me (only in extreme circumstances should this ever be done). Make sure that you are catering the questions to the actual arguments from the speech and not asking generic questions that could be asked of anyone.

- Make my job easy as the judge. I will not make any links for you; you need to make the links yourself.

- Warrants are so important! Don't forget them!

- If you are giving one of the final speeches on a piece of legislation, I expect you to weigh the arguments and impacts that we have heard throughout the debate. Unless there has been a gross negligence in not bringing up a particular argument that you think is revolutionary and changes the debate entirely, you shouldn't really be bringing up new arguments at this point. There are, of course, situations where this may be necessary, but this is the general rule of thumb. Use your best judgment :).

- Please do your best to not read off of your pad. Engage with the audience/ judges, and don't feel as though you have to have something written down verbatim. I'm not expecting a speech to be completely flawless when you are delivering it extemporaneously. I historically score speeches higher if delivered extemporaneously and have a couple of minor fluency lapses than a speech read off of a sheet of paper with perfect fluency.

- Be active in the chamber! Remember, the judges are not ranking students based upon who is giving the best speeches, but who are the best legislators overall. This combines a myriad of factors, including speeches, questioning, overall activity, leadership in the chamber, decorum, and active listening (i.e. not practicing your speech while others are speaking, paying attention, etc.) Keep this in mind before going into a session.

- Please please please don't speak over the top of one another. This being said, that doesn't mean you have a right to monopolize the questioning time, but there is a nice way to cut someone off if they're going too long. Use your best judgment. Don't cut someone off two seconds after they start answering your question.

- I rank based on who I think are the overall best legislators in the chamber. This is a combination of the quality of speeches, questioning, command of parliamentary procedure, preparedness, and overall leadership and decorum in the chamber.

Let me know if you have any questions! :)

Here are some things to consider if I'm your judge in Public Forum:

- Please add me to the email chain if you have one: jordybarry@gmail.com

- I am really open to hearing almost any type of argument (except K's, please don't run K's in PF), but I wouldn’t consider myself a super techy judge. Do your thing, be clear, and enjoy yourselves!

- Please debate the resolution. It was written for a reason.

- It's important to me that you maintain clarity throughout the round. In addition, please don’t spread. I don’t have policy/ LD judging experience and probably won’t catch everything. If you get too fast/ to spreading speed I’ll say clear once, and if it’s still too fast/ you start spreading again, I’ll stop typing to indicate that I’m not getting what you’re saying on my flow.

- Take advantage of your final focus. Tell me why I should vote for you, don't solely focus on defensive arguments.

- Maintain organization throughout the round - your speeches should tell me what exact argument you are referring to in the round. Signposting is key! A messy debate is a poorly executed debate.

- I don't weigh one particular type of argument over another. I vote solely based on the flow, and will not impose my pre-existing beliefs and convictions on you (unless you're being racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, or xenophobic). It's your show, not mine!

- Please please please don't speak over the top of one another. This being said, that doesn't mean you have a right to monopolize the questioning time, but there is a nice way to cut someone off if they're going too long. Use your best judgment. Don't cut someone off two seconds after they start answering your question.

- Be polite!

- Make my job easy. I should not have to (and will not) make any links for you. You have to make the link yourselves. There should be a clear connection to your impacts.

- Weighing impacts is critical to your success, so please do it!

Any questions, please feel free to ask! Have fun and good luck!

Please pre-flow before rounds!!!

Hey everyone, I’m Elliot. I debated with my sister Claire as part of College Prep BB. I'm a sophomore at Duke University and I coach for Durham Academy.

Add me to the chain: eb393@duke.edu

Remember to collapse well, extend your argument fully, and weigh! Good weighing fully compares the impact you are going for with your opponents impact, and tells me through what lens I should make my decision.

I prefer a substance debate with good clash. I am open to evaluating any kind of argument — however I reserve the right to intervene if debaters are reading arguments in an inaccessible manner. Don’t be mean or problematic please, it won’t go well for you.

Feel free to go fast if you want but you should definitely send a speech doc! I can listen to and understand speed but I much prefer to have a doc to make sure I don't miss anything when I flow. If your opponents call for evidence and you have a doc with all of your evidence, just send the whole doc, and send it as a Word doc or in the text of an email. Stop sending a google doc and deleting it after the round...Have all your evidence ready please. If you take a while to send evidence - you’ll lose speaker points and you are also giving your opponents a chance to steal prep.

I think that almost all structural violence framing needs to be in rebuttal or constructive. I wont evaluate a blip read in summary thats like "don't evaluate any other impacts bla bla bla." You can read new weighing in summary but if it's not in summary it shouldn't be in final, unless you are just tweaking implications of the same piece of weighing or making a backline to a new response from first final or second summary.

Returning to in person debate norms:

• You can sit down or stand when speaking, whatever makes you feel most comfortable
• Please at least try to make some eye contact during your speeches and during crossfire
• During prep time, don't talk so loudly that everyone can hear what you are saying

Some of my favorite judges when I debated: Eli Glickman, Will Sjostrom, Sanjita Pamidimukkala, Gabe Rusk

Hi! I am a parent judge and this is my 3d year of judging.

School Affiliation: Summit HS, Summit NJ

Preferences: No spreading! Also, I am unfamiliar with debate jargon so make sure to explain the meanings of the terms you are using. Make sure to sign post and stay organized so I can keep up with the round. I expect you to self time, but I will also keep a timer just in case. Make sure to time all prep taken. Be respectful and have fun!

I am a current Yale University student, and four year Public Forum debater on the national circuit at Carrollton High School. I have extensive experience both participating and judging in Public Forum, as well as other events. I will flow the round, so please sign post. This will greatly benefit me in my ability to follow your arguments, and ensure that I catch everything. If you are going to provide an observation or framework, do not simply tell me to weigh in that manner, explain why I should. Extensions through all speeches are a must if you are going to pick up my ballot. Do not turn a crossfire into a speech. I do not flow crossfire, but it is still a valuable time for the debater to find holes in their opponent's cases. Ensure that you are telling me why you are winning the round, simply reading a card does nothing for the judge, nor for the educational purposes of the round.

Speed becomes an issue when you are not clearly articulating your arguments. Clarity in round is key, and I would prefer to hear a single clear and well explained response over several poorly articulated ones. If I can't understand you, it will not go on the flow. When making my final decision, I take into account; first if an argument was extended throughout the round, then I examine the responses to each argument.

It is most important to consider that debate is intended to be an educational experience. With that being said, I will not tolerate any facetious or degrading remarks in round, as they are counter intuitive to the purpose of the event. As a result, such behavior will be reflected in the speaker points given.

I will expect you to ask questions prior to the round about anything that seems unclear in this paradigm.

Engineering 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 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. 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.

debated for american heritage (c/o 2023), did mostly pf and a little ld

few must-know notes:

1. add me to the email chain (evan.burkeen@yale.edu).
2. don't miscut evidence.
3. warrants are super important, every argument must have them (and no, empirics without arguments are still not arguments).

few notes that aren't must-knows but helpful

1. I care slightly less about impact weighing than the average pf judge, weighing is just an issue of sequencing for me so you might want to spend more time winning the link in front of me. terminal defense >>> "outweigh on scope."
2. extensions on arguments should be thorough. im voting based on the backhalf, and I need a thorough extension to consider voting for your argument. keep it simple.
3. I don't read off docs if you're unclear, I just won't flow.
4. default to dtd, competing interps, rvis, no sticky defense, NO new responses past rebuttal (and no defense disguised as probability weighing), presume neg, and util. can be easily convinced to change any of these in-round. note on new responses: they must be flagged by the opposing team; I'll easily miss them if not.
5. uniqueness thumpers, impact defense, impact turns, and methodology explanations are heavily underused and I appreciate them a lot.
6. im fluent in progressive argumentation. update: these rounds usually don't have good engagement, and they're just read to escape clash. if you read progressive arguments, read them well, or don't read them at all.

things that get you really good speaks

1. analytical debating, I prefer and respect this a lot more than reading off a doc with copy/paste blocks (original analysis is a great skill!) engaging in line-by-line and clash rather than generic overview-esque responses will be rewarded. not exactly a fan of the "let me spread 10 unwarranted responses, hope they drop 1 and go for that" type of debating, although I'll still (reluctantly) evaluate it.
2. keeping the round fun and light-hearted, annoying debaters (one example is if you're wildly aggressive in crossfire) will get a lot lower speaks! sarcasm, wit, etc. are also funny, but don’t do too much.
3. judge instruction (one example: "judge, they have conceded terminal defense on their only piece of offense coming out of summary. if we have a risk of offense at all that's enough for you to vote affirmative").
4. keeping the round running on time.

if you have any questions before or after the round, please contact me at “Evan Burkeen” on facebook messenger. please let me know if there are any accommodations I can make to make the round enjoyable, accessible, and comfortable for everyone. if you are new to debate, and have no clue what im talking about in this paradigm, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. the best way to improve is by asking questions. if you’re looking for no-cost camps, you can visit novadebate.org.

Hi! I am your judge :)

I would like to be on the email chain at BrandyCarboneDebate@gmail.com

I was a pretty successful high school policy debater (carried my banker boxes a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ...) followed by a stint of college public forum debate. I stepped away from debate until my child participated in middle school parli which returned me to judging. This is my return to policy and/or public forum as a judge. NOTE: I am more familiar with policy over pubic forum but have judged all type of debate. I am the worst at timing.

I'm a big fan of debate both as an activity through which students express themselves and acquire knowledge and skills and as a competition. Clearly things have changed over the last 30 years. The introduction of email chains is cool, but I think it allows people to forget how to clearly speak since every word you care about can be read. We spread in the old timey time (of course) but we also had to compete in Extemp because we were not allowed to lose our ability to communicate in our policy fervor. Clue: I still consider this a speech competition.

This paradigm thing is curious. I am tabula rasa. I will take whatever argument you want to throw at me, but you have to be able to explain it, defend it and weigh it. If you want it to be important to me, you have to tell me. A sure way to lose a round with me is to leave the round to my opinion. Clue: I will vote for the team that can convince me their arguments are the best with evidence, logic and (ideally) a little reason.

I flow on paper, and organization and structure in speeches are important for me. I really appreciate it when teams identify their arguments when giving them.

There are probably some current theory issues that will be new to me. I do think there is, and should be, room in debate for issues that affect the broader frameworks and circumstances within which policy is created. I am not absolute about it and will listen to arguments on both sides. I'm more current on policy and current events than I am on theory. Clue: I will listen to the arguments and pick the one argued best. I want to hear your understanding of the argument, and a demonstration of why it matters.

Final speech summaries are probably the quickest way to get my ballot, telling me how you see the round, and identifying the key few issues and assessments I should be making and how they should be made. Clue: Weigh! Weigh! Weigh!

Good luck!

(you can email me if you want extra feedback. but i am a bit blunt at times)

Excellent debaters speak slowly, clearly and with good organization to their presentation.

Speak in plain English and avoid debate speak. Do not "resolve to negate" (no one says that in real life); tell me why I should find that the proposition is wrong or unwise (or the converse).

If you cite to an authority, make it clear what the authority is and why that authority is reliable. For example, it is not "Higgins 26 says". Rather, it could be: "As former Assistant Secretary of Defense John Higgins said in his Foreign Affairs article of _____."

You do not have a "card". You have evidence or opinions described by a third party source.

Be respectful to each other; do not interrupt during crossfire. If you ask a question, allow the opponent(s) to answer. Refer to public officials by their title and with respect in a way that no one knows your politics. For example, refer to them as President Trump, President Obama and President Biden.

If you say your opponents did not respond to your third contention (debate speak!) then make clear what that contention (better referred to as "point", "reason", "premise" etc.) is. The same holds true if you are addressing one of their points.

It is important that I be able to track the organization and logic flow of your arguments. I do that for the purpose of determining overall persuasiveness, not to create a checklist of everything that must be "covered". If there is a major point that I believe is unpersuasive based upon the totality of the arguments, then not every sub-point or sub-argument needs to be addressed. I am definitely not a fan of spreading, it generally shows weakness. To be clear though, if there is a strong argument that is not rebutted, that will weigh heavily in the determination of the winner.

Saying less but in a clear manner is far more important and effective than saying more in a way that cannot be understood.

Stand erect, and make eye contact with the judge(s) and note their reactions. Read my reactions to see if you are going too fast or speaking too softly. I do not care if you yell at me if that is what it takes for you to be loud enough to be heard -- and understood.

If you would like to e-mail me, use: owen.carragher@clydeco.us.

Most importantly:

HAVE FUN AND LEARN EACH TIME.

I am a lay judge and will vote based on who explains their argument most clearly and weighs the best. I don't like when contestants spread. Being respectful and clear are my main priorities.

I'm a senior at Brown studying economics who debated 4 years of Public Forum for Acton-Boxborough. I'll flow to the best of my ability, but I've definitely become more flay as time goes on. In particular, I believe that the debate round can serve as a space for meaningful discourse around important issues, and as a result, I'm not afraid to admit a preference for arguments based in truth as opposed to squirrelly ones meant to catch your opponents off-guard without any basis in the real world. That being said, I have no qualms voting against my own beliefs or for untrue arguments that are insufficiently rebutted. If teams make claims that directly contradict one another, I'm often compelled by evidence comparison that specifically explains why one argument should be preferred. However, please still extend the warranting underlying the research throughout the round.

2nd Rebuttal: Must frontline turns, everything else is optional.

1st Summary: Please extend defense! If it wasn't frontlined in 2nd rebuttal, you can be very quick about it—just be clear and concise.

Theory/Ks: I'll evaluate any argument you make in the round, but I'm not very receptive to these types of arguments and have never voted for a team that's read one. I don't believe theory/Ks belong in PF and strongly prefer a substance debate.

Trigger Warnings: Please provide them if you're going to discuss any sensitive topic. If you're unsure, read one.

Topic-Specific Jargon: Although I'll try to have some level of understanding of the topic, please define any topic-specific acronyms or jargon for me (or avoid using them completely).

I will always analyze the round to the best of my ability, so please don't post-round me—the burden is on you as the debater to win my ballot. Asking me questions is totally fine though, of course.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: Please be kind to your opponents. If I think you're disrespectful or making the round an unsafe space, I'll tank your speaks with no hesitation and potentially drop you. Good luck everyone!

My pronouns are they/them/theirs. Please do not call me ma’am. I know it's a southern respect thing but it's icky to me. If you need a title for me, I unironically like being called judge, Judge Contreras is fine, just Contreras works too. My students call me Coach, and that's also fine. Teens, please don't call me El (that's one southernism I stand by!)

Affiliations:

Head Coach and social studies teacher at L.C. Anderson High School in Austin, TX since 2022.

San Marcos High School- I competed all four years in high school, I did extemp, congress, and UIL Policy.

Speech people!!!!

I will not rank a triggering performance first. I just won’t do that. There’s no need for you to vividly reenact violence and suffering at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning (or like, ever). Triggering performances without trigger warnings will have their rank reflect the performance. Use your talent to tell a story, not to exploit pain. Also, normalize giving content and trigger warnings before your performance!! Give people a chance to take care of themselves. If I'm judging your round and another competitor triggers you, you are welcome to quietly get up and walk out during their performance. I will not dock or punish you for this, your mental health is the most important. Please take care of yourself and each other!! I'm in a "you should do a different piece" mindset on this issue and if you can't reenact that narrative without exploiting suffering, something is wrong.

Debate comments (PF, LD, CX, World Schools)

Just disclose. I know LD's norm is sending 30 minutes before round, I think that's a great norm.

In PF, send case docs. Don't be secretive with your cards. Your opponents should not have to disclose a disability in order to get you to send docs. I also think sending a speech doc for rebuttal and summary is a good norm. This is not (necessarily) something I'll down you for but it could be, if you're intentionally being harmful.

I will evaluate anything as long as it's warranted and extended. I won't make arguments for you, tell me why and how you're winning. I'll vote tech over truth unless the truth overwhelms the tech. Sticky defense is so fake, extend your arguments if you want to win them. Unextended = dropped. Proper extensions, tag and cite, claim, warrant, impact!!

Both partners need to participate in grand cross. PF is a partner event! No, you can't skip grand cross. I'm listening to cross and waiting to hear the questions from cross brought into round.

Please do a www.speechdrop.net room, it is a fantastic site, and I will definitely pop in and read cards and cases if you have the speechdrop room set up. Always send case, always send speech docs. I am #notsponsored, just a fan! My email is down below.

Spell out all the abbreviations you use in round. Don’t assume I know what you’re talking about. People know what the UN is, the EU, etc, people may not know BRI, any random trade agreement, etc.

speed: You don't have to go at a conversational pace but nobody should be full-on-spreading in PF. When you're off the doc, you have to go slower. I try not to flow off the doc but I will use it as support if you're faster than I can follow. I'm not in a debate round to read off your case doc, I'm in round to hear YOU. Slow down on taglines, analytics, authors- basically anything you think is vital to my decision.

PF-specific comments:

• I'll vote on anything, not a huge fan of theory, not the best judge to evaluate theory
• i love frameworks! they should be well-developed. blippy frameworks don't win framework debates
• extensions are not just saying "Extend my contention 2", you must extend the card tag/cite and the claim, warrant, and impact! Let me hear the link chain again!!
• speaker points- these national tournaments keep giving me a rubric to use and I'm trying to apply that to all the realms I judge in. Points start at 28 and I adjust from there. Points will only be below a 27 if you did something harmful or rules/norms were horribly broken.
• PFers, please read cards with actual taglines. "furthermore", "and", are not taglines. A tag is the thesis of the card, it is the summary of the content. I've been seeing a lot of that lately- it's lazy and bad practice.

LD-specific:

• I don't judge LD often, not as comfortable with LD speeds but I'll use the doc
• I will evaluate k's, as long as they're well-developed and defended. i know theory is normative in LD and I'll do my best to evaluate it fairly and wisely. probably not the best judge for your theory debates
• consider me pretty lay, generally pretty trad. Read me a standard, read me a value, slow it down!!
• I know this event is generally more technical but again, don't assume I know what you're talking about!! spell out all your abbreviations, provide definitions (especially if you're reading a K), do your best to make the round and the space more accessible!
• pref me slightly better than a lay judge
• I come from pf so arguments such as kritiks and theory will make less sense to me butI’lltry my best to evaluate them

email- theedebatecoach@gmail.com

and

docs.anderson@gmail.com

please <3

This message is specifically for competitors in debate events; I value respect in the round. Please don’t be rude in front of me. It doesn’t make me laugh, it reminds me of uncomfortable/unpleasant rounds where my competitors were rude to me or my partner. That has no business in a debate space, please don’t bring that energy into a round. This goes double for people in privileged positions who make women and gender/racial minorities uncomfortable or unsafe in the debate space. Not only will I chew you out and tank your speaks, but I will also let your coach know about the harmful practices. it's on all of us to make the debate space inclusive and equitable.

TLDR- be nice, be kind, and be self-aware.

Congress comments:

I did congressional debate all four years I competed in high school, I really enjoyed it and love watching a good Congress round. I have a lot of respect for a strong PO and usually reward that with a higher ranking. POs that struggle with precedence, maintaining decorum, and Robert's rules of order will have that reflected in their rank.

Clash, clash, clash! Put the debate into congressional debate.

There's a line between sassy and rude. Tread it carefully.

General comments:

something that I genuinely appreciate in every event is a trigger warning before potentially triggering performances and speeches. controversially, I care about all of your experiences in a round and would like to give everyone an opportunity to opt out. If you’re a spectator or a competitor in a speech room, you deserve the opportunity to step out. If you’re competing in a debate round, you have every right to ask your competitors to read a version of their case that excludes the triggering material. As a judge, I reserve the right to step out/turn off my camera for a moment before you give your performance.

In a debate round, I’d appreciate that triggering material cut out. I don’t think intense/graphic depictions of human suffering add much to your overall case anyway, I’d rather you extend cards in that time or frontline or do anything besides exploit human suffering.

If I correct your pronunciation of a word in my ballot, it’s genuinely to educate you. It’s hard to know how to pronounce a word you’ve never heard aloud, just read (looking at you, Reuters!)

I have a degree in history, with a focus on Latin American history. Keep that in mind when discussing issues focused on Latin America. Feel free to ask me for a reading list to better understand conflicts, revolutions, and government suppression (including US intervention) in Guatemala, Argentina, Honduras, El Salvador, and more.

If you are spectating an event and are fully texting in front of me or attempting to talk to/distract a competitor, I’m going to ask you to leave. I will not warn you once, I have a zero-tolerance policy for disrespecting competitors or interfering with competition in that way.

I am a parent of a current debater. I did not participate in debate growing up but I am an entertainment lawyer who negotiates all day long so I am skilled at making arguments and listening to and judging the arguments of others. This is only my second time judging a formal debate so I may not be as sophisticated at evaluating the debate as other judges and I be most appreciative if the debaters spoke at a more conversational speed. I will do my best to make sure I am judging based on the issues raised by each side so please try to compare your arguments to the arguments raised by the other team. Please be respectful to one another as you compete.

4 years of PF experience. However, assume I don’t know anything.

thanks :)

I competed in Policy for three years in high school, and Parliamentary debate in college for three years. I've been judging PF since then.

Columbia University 2018

New York University School of Law 2022

Speed

It is your burden to make sure that your speech is clear and understandable and the faster you want to speak, the more clearly you must speak. I am generally fine with spreading.

I never time debates. That's not my job. Therefor, it is your job. Police yourselves and eachother. There is an art to this. Opposing teams can hold up their iPhones to indicate their opponent has run out of time.

I generally allow for a 15 seconds grace period to finish sentences.

Posture

Circumstances permitting, you must stand up, in a centralized spot, and face me during constructive arguments. This is preferred but not necessary during cross.

Evidence

If you fail to call out bad evidence, it will be accepted as true for the round.

Judging style

If there are any aspects of the debate I look to before all others, they would be impact analysis and weighing. Not doing one or the other or both makes it much harder for me to vote for you, either because I don't know how to evaluate the impacts in the round or because I don't know how to compare them. If you don't compare them for me, I will do it on my own and no one wants that.

Burden Interpretations

The pro and the con have an equal and opposite burden of proof.

Here are a few things I like to see in the debate:

1. PLEASE don't speak too fast. If you do, don't expect me to get all your arguments

2. Overall, be kind and have fun

Good luck, and may the best team win!

Strake Jesuit '19|University of Houston '23

Email Chain: nacurry23@gmail.com and strakejesuitpf@mail.strakejesuit.org

Questions:nacurry23@gmail.com

Tech>Truth – I’ll vote on anything as long as it’s warranted. Read any arguments you want UNLESS IT IS EXCLUSIONARY IN ANY WAY. I feel like teams don't think I'm being genuine when I say this, but you can literally do whatever you want.

Arguments that I am comfortable with:

Theory, Plans, Counter Plans, Disads, some basic Kritiks (Cap, Militarism, and stuff of the sort), meta-weighing, most framework args that PFers can come up with.

Arguments that I am less familiar with:

High Theory/unnecessarily complicated philosophy, Non-T Affs.

Don't think this means you can't read these arguments in front of me. Just explain them well.

Speaking and Speaker Points

I give speaks based on strategy and I start at a 28.

Go as fast as you want unless you are gonna read paraphrased evidence. Send me a doc if you’re going to do that. Also, slow down on tags and author names.

I will dock your speaks if you take forever to pull up a piece of evidence. To avoid this, START AN EMAIL CHAIN.

You and your partner will get +.3 speaker points if you disclose your broken cases on the wiki before the round. If you don't know how to disclose, facebook message me before the round and I can help.

Summary

Extend your evidence by the author's last name. Some teams read the full author name and institution name but I only flow author last names so if you extend by anything else, I’ll be lost.

EVERY part of your argument should be extended (Uniqueness, Link, Internal Link, Impact, and warrant for each).

If going for link turns, extend the impact; if going for impact turns, extend the link.

Miscellaneous Stuff

open cross is fine

flex prep is fine

I require responses to theory/T in the next speech. ex: if theory is read in the AC i require responses in the NC or it's conceded

Defense that you want to concede should be conceded in the speech immediately following when it was read.

Because of the changes in speech times, defense should be in every speech.

In a util round, please don't treat poverty as a terminal impact. It's only a terminal impact if you are reading an oppression-based framework or something like that.

I don't really care where you speak from. I also don't care what you wear in the round. Do whatever makes you most comfortable.

Feel free to ask me questions about my decision.

do not read tricks or you will probably maybe potentially lose

Hi I am Malcolm. I went to college at Swarthmore. I am an assistant debate coach with Nueva. I have previously been affiliated with Newton South, Strath Haven, Hunter College HS, and Edgemont. I have been judging pretty actively since 2017. I very much enjoy debates, and I love a good joke!

I think debates should be fun and I enjoy when debaters engage their opponents arguments in good faith. I can flow things very fast and would like to be on the email chain if you make one! malcolmcdavis@gmail.com

In general I flow (on paper) (if you find me flowing on my laptop, know that I am sad and desire paper) primarily by listening rather than following along on the doc, but do not let me slow you down. DO let your opponents slow you down respect clears from them more than from me. I believe I have a baseline obligation as an educator to ensure the round is safe for all participants. I also have an obligation to the tournament to make sure we have the round in a timely fashion. I shan't be convinced to act against these obligations.

if you aren't ready to send the evidence in your speech to the email chain, you are not done preparing for your speech, please take prep time to prepare docs. (Prep time ends when you click send on the email, not before).

---| Notes on speech , updated in advance of NSDA nationals 24

Speech is very cool, I am new to judging this, I will do my best to follow tournament guidelines.

I enjoy humor a lot, and unless the event is called "dramatic ______" or something that seems to explicitly exclude humor, it will only help you in front of me, word play tends to be my favorite form of humor in speeches.

Remember to include some humanity in your more analytic speeches, I tend to rank extemp or impromptu speeches that make effective use of candor (especially in the face of real ambiguities) above those that remain solidly formal and convey unreasonable levels of certitude.

---

pref shortcuts:

Phil / High Theory 1

K 1/2

LARP/policy/T 1/2

Tricks/Theory strike

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PF Paradigm (updated for toc 2024):

I will do my best to evaluate the debate based only what is explained in the round during speech time (this is what ends up on my flow). Clear analysis of the way arguments interact is important. I really enjoy creative argumentation, do what makes you happy in debate.

email chains are good, but DO send your evidence BEFORE the speech. I am EXTREMELY easily frustrated by time wasted off-clock calling for evidence you probably don't need to see. This is super-charged in PF where there is scarcely prep time anyways, and I know you are stealing prep. I am a rather jovial fellow, but when things start to drag I become quite a grouch.

I am happy to evaluate the k. In general I think more of these arguments are a good thing. LD paradigm has more thoughts here. The more important an argument purports to be, the more robust its explanation ought to be

Theory debates sometimes set good norms. That said, I am increasingly uninterested in theory. I am no crusader for disclosure. I will vote on any convincingly won position. Please give reasons why these arguments should be round winning. Every argument I have heard called an "IVI" would be better as a theory shell or a link into a critical position.

I think debates are best when debaters focus on fewer arguments in order to delve more deeply into those arguments. It is always more strategic to make fewer arguments with more reasoning. This is super-charged in PF where there is scarcely time to fully develop even a single argument. Make strategic choices, and explain them fully!

--

LD: updated for PFI 24.

philosophy debate is good and I really like evaluating well developed framework debates in LD. That said, I don't mind a 'policy' style util debate, they are often good debates; and I do really love judging a k. The more well developed your link and framing arguments, the more I will like your critical position.

I studied philosophy and history in college, and love evaluating arguments that engage things from that angle. Specific passions/familiarities in Hegel's PdG (Kojeve, Pinkard, Hyppolite, and Taylor's readings are most familiar in that order), Bataille, Descartes, Kristeva, Braudel, Lacan, and scholars writing about them. Know, however, that I encountered these thinkers in different contexts than debaters often approach them in. In short, Yes PoMo, yes german philosophy, yes politics of the body and pre-linguistic communication, yes to Atlantic History grounded criticisms, yes to the sea as subject and object.

Good judge for your exciting new frameworks, and I'd definitely enjoy a more plausible util warrant than 'pleasure good because of science'. 'robust neuroscience' certainly does not prove the AC framework, I regret to say.
If your approach to philosophy debate is closer to what we might call 'tricks' , I am less enthusiastic.

Every argument I have heard called an "IVI" would be better if it were a theory shell, or a link into a critical position.

I really don't like judging theory debates, although I do see their value when in round abuse is demonstrable. probably a bad judge for disclosure or other somewhat trivial interps.

Put me on the email chain.

Happy to answer questions !

--

---

Parli Paradigm updated for 2023 NPDL TOC

Hi! I am new-ish to judging high school parli, but have lots and lots of college (apda) judging and competing experience. Open to all kinds of arguments, but unlikely to understand format norms / arguments based thereupon. Err on the side of overexplaining your arguments and the way they interact with things in the debate

Be creative ! Feel free to ask any questions before the round.

------

Policy Paradigm

I really enjoy judging policy. I have an originally PF background but started judging and helping out with this event some years ago now. My LD paradigm is somewhat more current and likely covers similar things.

The policy team I have worked most closely with was primarily a policy / politics DA sort of team, but I do enjoy judging K rounds a lot.

Do add me to the email chain: malcolmcdavis@gmail.com

I studied philosophy and history in college, and love evaluating arguments that engage things from that angle.

I aim for tab rasa. I often fall short, and am happy to answer more specific questions.

If you have more specific questions, ask me before the round or shoot me an email.

---

I am a speech coach. I don't normally judge PF, but I competed in speech between 2012-2016. I have done PF a few times and have watched numerous PF rounds. I was a poli sci major and currently work in contract law. I would consider myself a lay judge.

Be clear, be concise. I do not enjoy source wars and taking lots of time to send sources to each other, read over, etc. Especially outside of prep time. Unless a source is absolutely untrue / making ridiculous claims, it is not effective debating to be overly scrutinizing over evidence. Don’t get caught up in solvency.

Substance > jargon

Clarity > speed

Quality > quantity of evidence

Don't be rude. There is a difference between being assertive and rude.

Flow: I can flow SOMEWHAT faster than conversational speed. Public Forum is NOT Policy or LD debate. If you spread, I do not flow.

I am a speech AND debate coach for Milton Academy. I am an experienced PF judge who values the key principles of PF. I have been judging PF since 2011, and I debated in 2007 - 2011. Again, Policy/LD /jargon have no home in PF. I understand some jargon is useful, but not all. Be clear, be concise. Do not use framework just for the sake of having framework, don't just state a weighing mechanism and assume that puts it on the flow, do not give me a super lengthy off time road map, that sort of thing. Add me on email chains: lindsay_donovan@milton.edu

I vote primarily on comprehensive analysis, on well-supported AND well-reasoned, "real-world" links, which are the logic building blocks to your impact (no matter how large or larger in scope they may be than your opponents). I do not like source wars, or taking long periods of time to call for evidence or look at evidence, especially out of prep time. If your only strategy is to call into question the validity of evidence, you will most likely not earn my vote. I will primarily vote on the flow, but I think persuasion is the crux of debate and can make flow better... and can stick out more to me than just an extended tag on the flow.

Substance > jargon

Clarity > speed

Argument and evidence distinctions > "our cards are better read them"

Analysis > impacts

Quality > quantity of evidence

Theory/K/what have you: If Theory or K is fair, understandable, and well reasoned I can follow it. But in general I find most theory debates unfair in nature, most people just use it as a tactic to win and have no heart in it for the sake of smart argumentation. Notably I will not vote for Disclosure theory. It is a norm, not a rule :)

Pet Peeves:

• Tech > Truth (If you are saying something blatantly not true or distorting/mis-paraphrasing your opponent's evidence I will mark you down).
• Nuclear war impacts, unclear warranting or no warranting only evidence.
• Overly aggressive/rude tactics. Don't be rude. There is a difference between being assertive and rude. I tend to vote for more calm, collected, and cordial teams.
• "Collapsing" feels like a fancy way to say dropping all your points.... I don't like it. Why bring up points in the first place so easily to discard? Run a 1 contention case then... Never concede anything!
• Also - I hate Solvency (it is a Policy concept, and PF does not have the burden of proving/disproving solvency as a voting issue unless the resolution SPECIFICALLY calls for it.) This means, do not ask how they "solve for" whatever point or that I should downvote teams who cannot completely solve issues.

Spreading and Flow: I can flow SOMEWHAT faster than conversational speed. Public Forum is NOT Policy or LD debate. If you spread I do not flow. I do not believe that PFers should spread AT ALL, even for a “flow” judge. If you cannot speak well and argue well, then you are not competing in this event at your best ability.

Don't be malicious please! It should go without saying, do not say anything racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/ableist etc. or you can expect to get 0 speaker points and a loss. I am an educator first, so I will err on the side of letting the debate continue if someone used certain language that becomes an issue, and correct ignorance afterwards. I will intervene when I feel the safety of the participants becomes an issue (or if you ask me to! Always ask your judge to stop a round if you feel unsafe).

My paradigm is as follows:

1. I vote based off of what happens in the round, or more accurately, what happens according to my flow. If you want me to vote on an argument, it has to make it to my flow. For an argument to do so, stay organized, sign post, and tag. It’s your job to be clear on what your specific response is, not my job to decipher what your tag line is or what you’re responding to.

2. While I am an alumni debater with a Policy, LD, and Parli background, I am very much AGAINST speed talking. You don’t need speed to spread, you just need to be an efficient and effective communicator. POI: if I put my pen down during your speech, it’s not a good sign.

3. I suspend my own personal beliefs and simply follow the arguments for the duration of a round. You only need to make good arguments and impact well to convince me. Don’t assume I agree with you and cut your argument (link, warrant, and/or impact) as a result.

4. I love structure in debate (arguments, cases, format, strategy, etc.) and have enjoyed framework debates in the past. As long as you make it clear why your argument matters both to your side and the resolution, I’ll vote on it. If you and your opponents fail to do so, the argument will not affect the RFD or I will have to insert my own opinion into the round to vote on it.

5. A consistent lack of impacting arguments to the resolution, turns the round into a “two ships passing in the night” experience rather than a high contrast debate round. When this happens, I am forced to insert my own opinion to choose a winner - which I very much don’t like doing.

6. Be professional and respectful. A lack of either of these makes your credibility drop significantly.

Hi! My name is Reed Easterling (he/him).

Disclosure

Teams should start an email chain immediately with the following email subject: [Tournament Name - Rd # - School Team Code (side/order) v. School Team Code (side/order)]. Please add greenwavedebate@delbarton.org and reedeasterling03@gmail.com to the email chain. Teams should send full case evidence, and rhetoric if you paraphrase, by the end of constructive. I cannot accept locked Google Docs; please copy and paste all text into the email and send it in the email chain. It would be ideal to send all new evidence read in rebuttal, but up to debaters.

Experience

I debated on the Missouri PF, LD, and Congressional circuits between 2018 and 2021. I currently compete in the American Parliamentary Debate Association, representing NYU.

I have judged hundreds of debate rounds, including competitive out-rounds in both high school and collegiate formats, including at the APDA Nationals tournament and the East MO NSDA District tournament.

Paradigm

I generally flow rounds carefully—meaning I look for thorough responses to previous speeches. That being said, I don't believe dropping a singular point automatically loses a round. Instead, I look for a clarification on which issues are the most important in the round. That is, both you and your opponent can be (and probably are) right on different issues, so tell me where I should be casting my ballot rather than engaging in an unproductive back-and-forth.

I will struggle to flow extremely fast speeches. This is not to say that you can't give them—but I will likely miss points you give, meaning I will be more lenient on your opponents for dropped points and less likely to catch key pieces of argumentation you give. In practice, this means I am likely to give speeches so fast they are unintelligible lower scores. Go for quality over quantity and try to improve your word economy.

Finally, I believe debate is a learning experience above all else. Thus, please be kind to your opponents and avoid generalizing or inequitable arguments. To this end, I broadly appreciate when debaters take their opponents at their highest ground—it makes for more engaged debates and better argumentation.

Please ask me any questions you may have about my paradigm. Furthermore, please don't feel pressured to alter your debating style for me!

my email is svferrera@gmail.com

Background:

I did public forum debate in high school. I competed in the NYCUDL, (the more relaxed of the two NYC circuits), and occasionally did some larger tournaments.

I am current Columbia University freshman, but I do not do APDA.

I am effectively a competent, informed, lay judge.

I lived for a year in Taiwan. Please do not make any unbelievable claims about US-China relations, I will employ my skepticism and not really believe it. You can argue China is bad or whatever, just do not over-blow the state of relations currently unless you have something to back you up.

Preferences:

• I never learned theory, I never ran theory, I'll be honest I don't really know exactly what it is. If your "theory" arguments make sense in plain English, go for it. Buyer beware.
• I will not use my personal knowledge over what you present to me as fact in the round, but I do find preposterous facts hard to believe.
• I can flow quickly but don't spread unless you truly and wholly need to in order to argue your unbelievably good point (the chances this applies to you are low, so go slow! or just a reasonable pace)
• Signpost, warrant, weigh. Explain your links, point out turns, all that fun stuff. I like in-depth argument of solid points, not two teams spewing argument after argument at each other.
• Cards are important. Please have them. Uncarded arguments lose potency.
• If you think it's important in cross, bring it up in a speech.
• Be respectful.
• Follow all the standard rules
• Please, no BS
• Speaker points are between 27 and 30, no you don't need more details than that. It's not that deep.

If you have any questions about my paradigm, or whatever, ask me before the round starts.

Stephen Fitzpatrick

Director of Debate, Hackley School

I am primarily a Parli debate coach - that said, over the years I have coached and judged virtually every debate format.

As a former trial attorney, I am looking for clear, persuasive, and intelligible speakers - speed-reading from your computer screen will not impress me. If I can't understand what you are saying, either because of the speed with which you are saying it or due to a lack of explanation, reliance on jargon, and no explicit connection to the resolution, it will be far less likely to impact the round. Beware of reading cases you either did not prepare or do not understand. In Public forum, that will be especially evident during cross-fire. I will flow, but only to the extent I can follow what you are saying. Same goes for any Points of Information or other forms of interrupted speech in other types of format. Be polite, be direct, and be persuasive.

As for evidence, spitting cards at me without tying them explicitly to your arguments and the overall resolution will also have a limited effect. I pay close attention to cross-fire - ask good questions, be generous, listen to your opponent's responses, and respond accordingly. I reward debaters who have a solid understanding of the factual underpinnings of the case as well as basic knowledge of current events, historical precedents, and specific details directly related to your arguments. If one of your contentions requires specialized scientific, legal, or economic principles, make sure you can explain them to clear up misunderstandings and clarify factual disputes.

In a Parli round based predominantly on argumentation rather than concrete factual evidence, make sure you explain your logical connections clearly. None prepped rounds does not mean NO evidence - good examples from history, general summaries of common knowledge, and comparisons ore references to basic factual information all have a place in debate. Tethering your arguments to some sense of how the world actually works is preferably to entirely theoretical arguments that have little grounding in reality.

I will be open to persuasive, integrated cases, and critical impacts. In Public Forum rounds, make sure to summarize the round during final focus. I am not an overly technical judge, so I will take every speech into consideration and even consider arguments in cross-fire to be part the round when making my decision. Speaker scores will range based on a variety of factors, but speaking style, demeanor, and argumentation will all factor in.

Overall, I would be considered a FLAY judge - I abhor the phrase "tech over truth" - debaters who like to earn wins on technical conventions not actually in the rules or use arcane jargon that no one outside the debate world understands will be disappointed with my rulings if their arguments aren't clear and easy to follow.

Hi I'm Sebastian :D! I debated for NSU University school in LD and qualified to the TOC 3 times.

Email: sebastianfrazier26@gmail.com

*****Scroll down for PF @ Bronx****

General: Tech>Truth. I'll vote for anything given there's at least some sort of warrant for it. My familiarity is primarily with phil and theory debate but I also read tricks, Ks, and policy arguments throughout my career.

Defaults: These sections are incredibly silly but just in case they are needed they are as follows.

Truth testing if no other ROB is read

2NR theory is legit on new 1AR arguments but not on AC arguments

Competing interps, No RVIs, DTA, and a Norm Setting model on theory and T.

Specifics:

Theory: One of my favorite styles of debate. Good theory includes decent coverage and clash on paradigm issues when strategic (including solid RVI arguments) and effective weighing between shells.

Notes: 1) converse/inverse aren't counterinterps and neither is "ill defend the violation" 2) X side is harder arguments are not good arguments 3) "Frivolous theory" is not some objective concept that defines exact boundaries for what is acceptable and isn't. Ill evaluate any shell but things like shoes theory obviously require a lower threshold for responses 4) I prefer in-depth standard weighing to categorical arguments like "meta-theory first" or "aff theory first". You can read both but direct clash is much more interesting.

T: To be honest, T is just theory with semantics/precision. I like unique grammatical interps a lot as well as classic T shells like Nebel. In terms of framework I do think its preferable to read an aff with some relation to/defense of the topic but if you don't thats cool. One thing I'd love to see is actual clash between a CI on framework and the interp as opposed to solely going for impact turns.

Tricks: To be honest I'm not a huge fan of blipstorm tricks rounds. Of course I'll still vote on them but it is so easy to make tricks debates messy, generic and boring. I'd much prefer a really solid and in depth NIB that you're ready to defend than spamming out 50 arguments you don't think your opponent can get through. If you read unique tricks and/or tricky strategies I'll be happy. The only argument I especially despise in this category is eval after x speech arguments. I don't understand how they practically work and so going for them will require actual explanation of what that means for the round.

Phil: Probably my favorite style of debate because it becomes the most interesting. Effective weighing and cross-applications can turn good framework rounds into great ones and well warranted syllogisms are simply the best.

- Small little aside: act hedonistic utilitarianism is a criminally un-strategic framework. Please defend a more robust and modern conception of consequentialism. Please.

Policy: Personally, I did this style the least but I think good policy rounds can be super interesting. Smart CP vs. Plan debates are among my favorites and I think impact turn debates can be really fun. Err on over-explaining counter-plan theory that isn't condo or process arguments as I am not too familiar.

Ks: I really enjoy K debates and am somewhat familiar with them. I'm less familiar with K v K debates (unless one of them is cap) but am familiar with a lot of K literature. One note is it seems many K debaters have low standards for evidence and for the amount of warranting needed to explain why certain practices are bad. As a side not, I don't like arguments that place value/disvalue on debaters race/gender/ethnicity etc. but I suppose if its completely conceded I'd vote on it.

Evidence Ethics: I won't evaluate someone staking the round. If someone truly violated evidence ethics, you should have no problem beating them in a theory debate. I think staking is intervention so I will not vote for you if you do it, even if the violation is correct.

PF Paradigm:

Basically same as LD. Tech>>>Truth. Theory, Ks and whatever other 'tech' arguments you want to read are fine.

Arguments should have Premises, Justifications, and Implications (or claim, warrant, impact)

Speed is fine but I haven't been involved in debate since spring so if you aren't super clear slow down.

Please weigh weigh weigh, otherwise I will be sad (this is equally true in theory debates as it is in contention-level debates)

I am a young professional who debated PF for 4 years in high school

Overall, the most important thing is that you weigh arguments. I do not insert my own opinions into my decision, but this is only possible if you weigh in summary and final focus. The best thing you can do to win my ballot is to make it as clear as possible how arguments compare against each other and win you the round

Beyond weighing, here are a few other logistical aspects of my judging to know about:

If there is an evidence dispute, and there are pieces of evidence that you think I should review, please explicitly mention it in crossfire or in a speech

I believe that the round is yours, so feel free to run any arguments that you would like. With that being said, as I ran pretty traditional arguments when I debated, please make it clear how I should evaluate any arguments within the context of the round and my ballot, as otherwise I might not know how to factor the arguments into my decision

Do not use off-time roadmaps. Speech time begins when you start speaking

As I have not coached for a bit, you should assume that I do not have a lot of background on the topic being debated and present your arguments as such

I am usually able to flow relatively fast speeches. If you are speaking too fast for me to flow, I will quickly say something like "too fast" so that you can adjust

Debate should be a fun activity. Please treat everyone in the room (opponents, your partner, the audience) with respect. To me, rounds are best when all debaters respect each other as competitors and are genuinely excited to debate, and speaker points will reflect that

Jokes and humor in round are fine with me, as long as they are good. It should go without saying, but please don’t be offensive

If you have questions feel free to ask by emailing me at hgiovannelli@gmail.com or asking live before the round

My name is Zak, a first-year student at Harvard College with interests in philosophy, statistics, and economics. I am new to judging debate but understand the basic principles of the competition from limited experience in academic contexts. I plan to do parliamentary debate in college and supplement my time helping out at competitions. I would consider myself a "flay" judge. I will do my best to judge based solely upon flow but cannot assure that other factors will not bleed into my consideration due to inexperience.

Hello! I’m a second-year out, debated in PF for Ransom Everglades for 3 years on the nat circuit. Now I coach and do parli in college. (If you're a senior and going to college in the Northeast ask me about APDA!)

if there is anything I can do to accommodate you before the round or you have any questions about anything after the round, reach out on Messenger (Cecilia Granda-Scott) or email me.

PLEASE PREFLOW BEFORE THE ROUND

TLDR:

tech judge, all standard rules apply. My email is cecidebate@gmail.com for the chain.

my face is very expressive – i do think that if i make a face you should consider that in how you move forward

Safety > everything else. Run trigger warnings with opt-outs for any argument that could possibly be triggering. I will not evaluate responses as to why trigger warnings are bad.

If you say “time will begin on my first word, time begins in 3-2-1, time will start now, first an off-time roadmap” I will internally cry. And then I will think about the fact that you didn’t read or listen to my paradigm, which will probably make me miss the first 7 seconds of your speech.

Card names aren’t warrants. If someone asks you a question in cross, saying “oh well our Smith card says this” is not an answer to WHY or HOW it happens. Similarly, please extend your argument, and don’t just “extend Jones”. I don’t flow card names, so I literally will not know what evidence you’re referring to.

If you are planning on reading/hitting a progressive argument, please go down to that specific section below.

Please don’t call for endless pieces of evidence, it’s annoying. Prep time is 3 minutes.

More specific things in round that will make me happy:

Past 230-ish words per minute I’ll need a speech doc. I hate reading docs and tbh would vastly prefer to have a non-doc round but I have come to understand that nobody listens when I say this so send me the doc I suppose. Also: I promise that my comprehension really is slower than people think it is so stay safe and send it

signpost signpost signpost

"The flow is a toolbox not a map" is the best piece of debate knowledge I ever learned and I think PF has largely lost backhalf strategy recently so if you do interesting smart things I will reward you

How I look at a round:

Whichever argument has been ruled the most important in the round, I go there first. If you won it, you win! If no one did, then I go to the next important argument, and so forth.

Please weigh :) I love weighing. I love smart weighing. I love comparative weighing. Pre-reqs and short circuits are awesome. Weighing makes me think you are smart and makes my job easier. You probably don’t want to let me unilaterally decide which argument is more important - because it might not be yours!

Speech Stuff:

Yes, you have to frontline any arguments you are going for. And turns. And weighing.

Collapsing is strategic. You should collapse. If you’re extending 3 arguments in final focus…why? Quality over quantity.

You need to extend your entire warrant, link, and impact for me to vote on an argument. This applies to turns too. If a turn does not have an impact, then it is not something I can vote on! (You don’t have to read an impact in rebuttal as long as you co-opt and extend your opponents’ impact in summary). Everything in final focus needs to be in summary. If you say something new in final focus, I will laugh at you for wasting time in your speech on something I will not evaluate. I especially hate this if you do it in 2nd final focus.

The best final focuses are the ones that slow down a bit and go bigger picture. After listening to it, I should be able to cast my ballot right there and repeat your final word for word as my RFD.

Progressive:

don't put your kids in varsity if they cannot handle varsity arguments. aka - i'm not going to evaluate "oh well i don't know how to respond to this". it's okay if you haven't learned prog and don't know how to respond, i don't need super formal responses, just try to make logical analysis; but i'm not going to punish the team who initiated a prog argument because of YOUR lack of knowledge (if you would like to learn about theory, you can ask me after the round I also went to a traditional school and had to teach myself)

I dislike reading friv prog on novices or to get out of debating SV. just be good at debate and beat your opponents lol

Disclosure/paraphrasing – I cut cards and disclosed. I don’t actually care super much about either of these norms (I actually won 3 disclosure rounds my senior year before we got lazy and didn’t want to have more theory rounds). So like, go have fun, but I am not a theory hack. I won’t vote for:

• first-3-last-3 disclosure because that is fake disclosure and stupid

• Round reports, I think this new norm is wild and silly

I learned the basics of Ks and hit a couple in my career, now have coached/judged several more, but not super well versed in literature (unless its fem). Just explain clearly, and know that if you're having a super complicated K round you are subjecting yourself to my potential inability to properly evaluate it. With that:

• Identity/performances/talking about the debate space/explaining why the topic is bad = that’s all good.

• If you run ‘dadaism’ or ‘linguistics’ I will be upset that you have made me listen to that for 45 minutes, and I’ll be extra receptive to reasons why progressive arguments are bad for the debate space; you will definitely not get fantastic speaks even if I begrudgingly vote for you because you won the round.

I hate reading Ks and just spreading your opponents out of the round. Please don’t make K rounds even harder to keep up with in terms of my ability to judge + I’m hesitant to believe you’re actually educating anyone if no one can understand you.

when RESPONDING to prog: i've found that evidence ethics are super bad here. It makes me annoyed when you miscontrue critical literature and read something that your authors would disagree with. Don't do it

Trix are for kids. If I hear the words “Roko’s Basilisk” I will literally stop the round and submit my ballot right there so I can walk away and think about the life choices that have led me here.

Frameworks:

• You need warrants as to why I should vote under the framework.

• I’m down with pre-fiat stuff (aka you just reading this argument is good) but you have to actually tell me why reading it is good and extend that as a reason to vote for you independent of the substance layer of the round

• Being forced to respond in second constructive is stupid. If your opponents say you do, just respond with “lol no I don’t” and you’re good.

• I WILL NOT VOTE FOR EXTINCTION FRAMING AS PREFIAT OFFENSE.

Crossfire:

Obviously, I’m not going to flow it. With that, I had lots of fun in crossfire as a debater. Be your snarkiest self and make me laugh! Some things:

• I know the difference between sarcasm and being mean. Be mean and your speaks will reflect that.

• My threshold for behavior in crossfire changes depending on both gender and age. For example: if you are a senior boy, and you’re cracking jokes against a sophomore girl, I probably won’t think you’re as funny as you think you are.

• If you bring up something in grand that was not in your summary, I will laugh at you for thinking that I will evaluate it in final focus. If your opponent does this and you call them out for it, I will think you’re cool.

Speaks:

Speaks are fake, you’ll all get good ones.

If you are racist/sexist/homophobic etc I WILL give you terrible speaks. Every judge says this but I don’t think it’s enforced enough. I will actually enforce this rule.

I judge based on the quality of arguments that you advance on behalf of the resolution. That means you clearly state your claims, provide reputable evidence in support of those claims, and drive home the implications of your claims. Your arguments should be well-developed and category-relevant. Rarely do I find Kritiks persuasive.

Keep in mind that in public forum, the goal is for you to make arguments that are persuasive to a “citizen judge” or lay person. Thus, you should speak deliberately (at a reasonable pace) and clearly, avoid jargon, and demonstrate the logical connections between your evidence and claims, and the resolution. Style/delivery are important considerations but I am most interested in and persuaded by the quality of your arguments and evidence.

Please engage one another respectfully and respond directly to your opponents’ claims and evidence. Ad hominem attacks, grandstanding, and condescending remarks are not appropriate. Good debates, grounded in classical rhetoric, explore relevant claims and evidence, and empower the audience to make an informed decision.

My Background: More than 25 years of teaching argumentation, persuasion, and public speaking at the undergraduate level, a Ph.D. in communication and rhetoric, and a research focus on the implications of argumentation on public policy. I have been actively judging on local and national circuits since 2021.

I am a lay judge.

Speak concisely and clearly!

no spreading

Strake Jesuit Class of 2020

Fordham 2024

Email - hatfieldwyatt@gmail.com

Debate is a game, first and foremost.

I qualified for the TOC Junior and Senior years and came into contact with virtually every type of argument

Summary of my debate style - I just enjoyed the activity while reading all types of arguments with my own spin on them. I think debate is often boring with debaters just reading blocks and not being innovative.

Please note that I have strong opinions on what debate should be, but I will not believe them automatically every round they have to be won just like any other argument. Tech>truth no exceptions.

Triggers - French Revolution and Freemasonry

I am not a fan of identity-based arguments. Please don't run arguments that are only valid based on your or your opponent's identity.

Speaks -

How to get good speaks 29-29.5

• be entertaining either with good music, good jokes etc
• making arguments that I like or agree with; this includes Catholicism and Monarchism.
• Style
• Reference something from Scooby-Doo

How to get 30

• Define the 4 Marian Dogmas
• Explain Unam Sanctam
• Explain who you think the greatest monarch is and why
• Explain who you think the greatest Saint is and why
• Recite the our father or hail mary in latin

How to get low speaks

- Having bad strategy choice

-being really rude or mean

- Swearing or cursing, try to keep it professional and respectful, please

Styles of Debate -

I will vote on all of them if I see your winning them

Tricks - 1

Larp - 2

Phil - 1

K - 3

Theory - 1

K performance - 5

I am a parent judge. Please speak slowly, explain your arguments, back up with evidence.

Please add me to the email exchange chain. Good luck!

Hi, y'all!!
My name is Isa, and my pronouns are she/they. I am originally from Houston, Texas, and moved here recently for school. I competed in NSDA and TFA for four years in high school; I went to state 3x and NATS 2x. I mainly competed in World Schools and a little in PF and Congress. I now attend NYU and compete on the parliamentary debate team (APDA).

Spreading --> I would prefer you to speak slower and emphasize your arguments; it is understandable if you run out of time in your speech, but there is never a guarantee that I will be able to flow ALL your arguments if you are spreading.

Behavior --> I love humor and jokes in rounds. Feel free to bring up pop culture and unusual examples. It makes the rounds so much fun!! However, please keep things polite and civil within the round; there is no need to be openly rude or disrespectful towards other teams.

Organization --> I would love it if you told me what you are going to do in your speech or at least give me some organization through signposting; it will help me flow the round better.

Framework: I will take the scope of the debate to whichever team establishes the framework. The opp/neg can be clarified and restructure the framework, and I will consider that; however, you should try to manipulate the arguments on both grounds.

Impacts and warranting--> Evidence and logic-based warranting need to be given to make me believe your impacts, and I would like you to tell me why I should care about your impacts over your opponents

WEIGH--> Please, please please weighhhhhhhh. Nothing is better than a round where both teams interact and tell me how I should weigh their arguments against their opponents.

Ref --> I love to see multiple refs being used to argue. If you argue they didn't respond to an argument, please tell me why that is bad. I will buy non-unique arguments; however, tell why it's non-unique. Look for ways to co-opt your opponent's arguments; it's my favorite part of the debate.

World Schools --> I'll be able to keep up with all your arguments and framework. I highly recommend taking pois; they are super important to clashing substantive and refutations. I love to hear good principle arguments, but you must emphasize why they matter over the practical. Please refrain from being U.S.-centric; it literally defeats the purpose of this type of debate and limits the scope of the round. I will consider dropped arguments; however, I will judge the round more holistically and look at which teams won which of the main clashes.

PF and Congress --> I competed in y'all a little, so I have some experience; however, if you run unique cases or arguments, please treat me like a lay. I'm sorry. PF: please don't turn it into a card debate. I will cry. You should chill during cross and questioning, be polite, and avoid interrupting your opponent too much.

Everything else --> ask me in the round if you have a specific question, and treat me like a lay if you are running anything unique in format or tech. I have done debate, so I should be able to keep up for the most part.
Basically, tell me what you want me to believe and have fun.

Background: 3 years PF, TOC; *very* limited experience with LD, OO, Info, Expos

Basics:

Tech > truth, tabula rasa. Progressive argumentation is perfectly fine. I will call for cards if concerns aren’t cleared up in-round, but not if those concerns aren't pointed out to me in-round.

Engage in clash. Tell me how each side interacts with the world you're advocating for. I don't like judge intervention -- I can't (and won't) dissect arguments that you don't evaluate for me.

Crystallize as the round progresses. Signpost. Second rebuttal and second summary should frontline. If you’ve dropped an arg on the flow, don’t try to pick it up again later in the round. This means you need to extend your offense through both summary and FF. This goes without saying, but don’t run a case you know isn’t warranted or carded well for the sake of uniqueness. At the end of the day, you should be advocating for a specific and consistent worldview throughout the round.

Substance > presentation when it comes to speaks, but well-structured substance is a large part of presentation.

A few notes on weighing:

Link-level analysis > card-dumping. Voters aren’t the same thing as extensions. The scope and severity of your impacts are only as significant as the links into them. Your weighing mechanism shouldn't only apply to your impacts; they should apply to your links, too. If you want me to vote on something, weigh the argument by extending the warrant and impact, then tell me why I should be voting on it. A lack of engagement with link-level analysis will work against you both on the flow and in speaks.

Interact with the framework of your opponent’s case – dismantling the basic assumptions they’ve built their arguments on is a more effective strategy than dissecting each subpoint one by one (though neither is preferred to the other on the flow).

I know you can find sketchy cards to support almost any claim. As a result, evidence doesn’t necessarily take precedence over warrants, nor vice versa.

A few notes on ethics:

As a judge that belongs to some minority groups but not others, I don't feel I have a right to decide what level of harm a group or individual has incurred as a result of in-round actions that are prejudicial. Because of this, I universally drop debaters that act in ways that are sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., even if the team clearly wins on the flow.

Read content warnings for the constructives that require them. If you’re running anything that requires a content warning, consider offering anonymous opt-outs to both your judges and opponents.

Don’t spread in PF. Speed is okay. Don’t spread against small schools’ teams if they're not spreading (in any format).

Misc.: Speaks start at 28. Recitation of your constructive in metered, rhyming verse will be rewarded with 30 speaks (for legal purposes this is a joke).

If you have any questions, please ask before the round begins. I provide feedback after the round if you'd like me to. Have fun, and good luck!

I was first exposed to forensics as a Lincoln-Douglas debater at the Bronx High School of Science in 1989. In that category, I competed at many local NFL, CFL, Districts, States, Nationals, TOCs, as well as a variety of prestigious invitational and round-robin tournaments throughout the entire country. In addition, I have participated in HS Extemp, Original Oratory, Mock Trial, Model UN/Congress and C-X team debate at the college level. I also have experience judging L-D, C-X, and Public Forum styles.

At Bronx Science, I was trained to largely use the "tabula rasa" approach to judging. That is to say, the criteria that I will use to the determine which side has best resolved the topic will almost entirely be guided by the arguments and evidence that the debaters present. However, the debate does not exist in a vacuum. All of the forensics activities above were intended to be clearly understandable by the average intelligent HS student or a well-informed member of the citizenry included on a typical jury, for example. Common sense will be applied to keep rhetorical devices and tricks in proper perspective. Extraordinary platforms and premises will require stronger evidence and sound arguments in order to defend them. Weight will be given to the credibility and persuasiveness of the arguments made, and will also impact how individual points are awarded. The quality and sophistication of logical reasoning, effectiveness of communication and strength of rebuttal will also influence the relative distribution of these points. Speed reading incoherently or over-reliance on jargon lowers the quality of the debate, and thus will reflect unfavorably in terms of speaker points on my ballot, too. I do not give low-point wins.

I will use flow paper to follow the round. Oral critiques will not typically be given, as my submitted ballot itself will include any constructive feedback I can offer, as well my reasoning for the decision.

Most importantly, though, I want to wish you a good time at this tournament. The weekends spent debating in High School go by really fast, so enjoy them and have fun!

I judge: Truth > Tech.

I value clear and concise arguments that have real life impacts (not impacts with extremely low probability.)

My non-negotiables
1. Be respectful, equitable, and civil.
2. Keep your rate of speech normal. If you talk faster than I can follow, then I cannot flow.
3. If an argument is dropped in the following speech, it's dropped, if not extended, it's not there, I won't evaluate if it has not been carried through the entire round. That being said, don't be afraid to collapse.
4. Roadmaps are not considered part of your time.
5. Do not run progressive arguments, just debate the resolution.

If there's anything I can do to make the round more accessible, please let me know before the round.

Hi, I’m Amit! I’m a PF debater at Brooklyn Tech. I’m not too picky, but there are a few things I prefer!

email: amitkakumanu2009@gmail.com

(credit to Emma Smith for parts of this!)

How I make decisions-

I tend to vote on the path of least resistance. I feel like explicitly identifying your cleanest piece of offense in the round, winning that clean piece of offense, completely extending that clean piece of offense (uniqueness, links AND impacts in BOTH summary and final focus), and then telling me why your cleanest piece of offense is more important than your opponents' cleanest piece of offense is usually an easy way to win my ballot.

General Stuff-

- Do all the good debate things! Do comparative weighing, warrant your weighing, collapse, frontline, etc.

-- Warrants and full link chains are important! I can only vote on arguments I understand by the end of the round and won't do the work for you on warrants/links. Please do not assume I know everything just because I've probably judged some rounds on the topic.

- I won't read speech docs, so please don't sacrifice speed for clarity.

- I have a really low threshold and 0 tolerance for being rude, dismissive, condescending, etc. to your opponents. I'm not afraid to drop you for this reason.

Evidence-

- I personally feel that calling for evidence as a judge is interventionist. I will only do it if 1- someone in the round explicitly tells me to in a speech or 2- reading evidence is literally the only way that I can make a decision (if this happens, it means both teams did a terrible job of clarifying the round and there is no clear offense for me to vote on. Please don't let this happen).

Progressive Stuff-

- I'll vote on Kritiks if they are clearly warranted, well explained, and made accessible to your opponents. (I am admittedly not a fan of K's but will vote on them if I absolutely must.)

- I will also vote on theory that is clearly explained, fleshed out, and well warranted. I believe that theory should ONLY be used to check egregious instances of in-round abuse and reserve the right to drop you for frivolous theory. I won't buy paraphrase or disclosure theory.

- If you plan on reading arguments about sensitive topics, please provide a content warning before the round.

I am a parent judge with limited past judging experience. Please be sure to speak slowly and clearly so that I am able to flow accurately. Clarity over speed. If you use debate jargon, you will need to explain it to me.

I want to see that you are making substantial arguments and consistently defending them well with sources, not just spending the whole time negating your opponents arguments.

If you can keep track of times, that would be helpful.

It's important that debaters be courteous and respectful to each other during the round.

Have a great debate!

Please use content warnings for content related to SA or self-harm.

Hi! I'm Neel (they/them). I debated at Plano East (TX), starting out in circuit PF and debating circuit LD during my senior year. I now attend Michigan (I don't debate for the school) and would say that I'm somewhat removed from debate.

Yes, put me on the chain - gimmeurcards@gmail.com

Be mindful of how rusty I may be - go slower, explain topic jargon, and all that jazz - it'll be tremendously helpful for how confident I am in my decision and your speaks.

Tech > truth, but a combination is ideal. Don't be rude, because I can also decide that not being mean > tech.

I primarily find/found myself in debates that center around policy or kritikal positions both as a debater and a judge. I'm not very confident in my ability to adjudicate very fast and blippy theory/T, phil, or tricks debates. I'd say I'm a 1 for policy, a 1/2 for the kritik (aff or neg), a 3 for theory/T, and a 4/strike for phil or tricks.

For policy -

Impact turns are fine, but I refuse to listen to death good.

Evidence quality is your best friend in front of me.

I'm probably more open to letting CP theory debates unfold than other judges.

Read more than 1 argument on case please.

For the kritik -

I have a soft spot for cool K-affs, but I'm neutral on framework and all of the iterations you can go for.

Your overviews should have a purpose - apply stuff you say to the LBL and contextualize the things you are saying.

I've been in more debates about identity and the "stock" kritiks than pomo stuff - do with that what you will.

Cool case args are my jam (even presumption is cool).

For T/theory -

CIs, no RVIs, DTA for theory. DTD for T.

Huge fan of disclosure but I feel uncomfortable evaluating other violations sourced outside of round.

I'm very mid for frivolous shells.

Be organized and clear please.

For tricks and phil -

Not a great idea - I probably would barely be able to follow along a Philosophy 101 course.

If you want to read these, SLOW DOWN and number stuff.

Evil demons don't force me to vote aff and I only evaluate debates after the 2AR.

I honestly am just uninterested in 95% of this literature base - sorry.

For PF -

Good for all the progressive stuff and PF speed. I will hold you to a higher standard than most progressive PF judges.

Sticky defense is silly. Extend your arguments.

Turns case arguments are the truth. Probability weighing is fake.

Underutilized arguments and strategies are fun - if you can win the presumption debate or the impact turn, go for it.

Hi! My name is Charles Karcher. He/him pronouns. My email is ckarcher at chapin dot edu.

I am affiliated with The Chapin School, where I am a history teacher and coach Public Forum.

This is my 10th year involved in debate overall and my 6th year coaching.

Previous affiliations: Fulbright Taiwan, Lake Highland, West Des Moines Valley, Interlake, Durham Academy, Charlotte Latin, Altamont, and Oak Hall.

Conflicts: Chapin, Lake Highland

-----------TOC 24 UPDATES-----------

Not well-read on the topic.

In PF, you should either paraphrase all your cards OR present a policy-esque case with taglines that precede cut cards. I do not want cards that are tagged with "and, [author name]" or, worse, not tagged at all. This formatting is not conducive to good debating and I will not tolerate it. Your speaks will suffer.

All speech materials should be sent as a downloadable file (Word or PDF), not as a Google Doc, Sharepoint, or email text. I will not look at they are in the latter formats.

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

Mid-season updates to be integrated into my paradigm proper soon: 1. (PF) I'm not a fan of teams actively sharing if they are kicking an argument before they kick it. For example, if your opponent asks you about contention n in questioning and you respond "we're kicking that argument." Not a fan of it. 2. (LD) I have found that I am increasingly sympathetic to judge kicking counterplans (even though I was previously dogmatically anti-judge kick), but it should still be argued and justified in the round by the negative team; I do not judge kick by default. 3. Do not steal prep or be rude to your opponents - I have a high bar for these two things and hope that the community collectively raises its bars this season. Your speaks will suffer if you do these things.

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Debate is what you make it, whether that is a game or an educational activity. Ultimately, it is a space for students to grow intellectually and politically. Critical debate is what I spend the most time thinking about. I’m familiar with most authors, but assume that I know nothing. I want to hear about the alt. I have a particular interest in the Frankfurt School and 20th century French authors + the modern theoretical work that has derived from both of these traditions. I have prepped and coached pretty much the full spectrum of K debate authors/literature bases. Policy-style debate is fun. I like good analytics more than bad cards, especially when those cards are from authors that are clearly personally/institutionally biased. Inserted graphs/charts need to be explained and have their own claim, warrant, and impact. Taglines should be detailed and accurately descriptive of the arguments in the card. 2 or 3 conditional positions are acceptable. I am not thrilled with the idea of judge kicking. Theory and tricks debate is the farthest from my interests. Being from Florida, I've been exposed to a good amount of it, but it never stuck with or interested me. Debaters who tend to read these types of arguments should not pref me.

Other important things:

1] If you find yourself debating with me as the judge on a panel with a parent/lay/traditional judge (or judges), please just engage in a traditional round and don't try to get my tech ballot. It is incredibly rude to disregard a parent's ballot and spread in front of them if they are apprehensive about it.

2] Speaks are capped at 27 if you include something in the doc that you assume will be inputted into the round without you reading/describing it. You cannot "insert" something into the debate scot-free. Examples include charts, graphs, images, screenshots, spec details, and solvency mechanisms/details. This is a terrible norm which literally asks me to evaluate a piece of evidence that you didn't read. It's also a question of accessibility.

3] When it comes to speech docs, I conceptualize the debate space as an academic conference at which you are sharing ideas with colleagues (me) and panelists (your opponents). Just as you would not present an unfinished PowerPoint at a conference, please do not present to me a poorly formatted speech doc. I don't care what your preferences of font, spacing, etc. are, but they should be consistent, navigable, and readable. I do ask that you use the Verbatim UniHighlight feature to standardize your doc to yellow highlighting before sending it to me.

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Misc. notes:

• My defaults: ROJ > ROB; ROJ ≠ ROB; ROTB > theory; presume neg; comparative worlds; reps/pre-fiat impacts > everything else; yes RVI; DTD; yes condo; I will categorically never evaluate the round earlier than the end of the 2AR (with the exception of round-stopping issues like evidence evidence allegations or inclusivity concerns).
• I do not, and will not, disclose speaker points.
• Put your analytics in the speech doc!
• Trigger warnings are important
• CX ends when the timer beeps! Time yourself.
• Tell me about inclusivity/accessibility concerns, I will do whatever is in my power to accommodate!

my email for evidence and etc: esther.kardos@gmail.com

general rule of thumb.... i am now officially 4/5 years removed from pf debating and the format has changed a lot. i am super receptive to this change so if you're doing something especially out of the box it's totally fine with me, i just need a heads-up and you might have to do some extra legwork to teach an old pf-er new tricks.

spreading - yeah, probably. if you can't get through your speech without it, then i can follow until about 230 wpm. after that, maybe send over a copy of your speech to make sure i don't miss anything. i would encourage you to slow down toward the back end of your speeches, but up to you.

theory & beyond - i didn't have to deal with this a ton back when i did pf (pf used to be the "one format without theory" lmao not anymore!), but i've had enough exposure to T/K/plans/counters from judging that i can probably pick up what you're putting down. as a caution, i REALLY need to get persuaded by theory to vote on it, and if it's too complicated for me to understand i'll just default to your opponent.

flowing - make flowing easy for me! start each of your big points with something flashy like "my first contention is..." or "my second independent point is..." or even just "one... two... three...", and then clearly indicate to me the different branches of argumentation under that big point. you don't need to be as obvious as shouting "THIS IS MY WARRANT, THIS IS MY IMPACT", but be able to clearly explain why/how something is true and what's going to result from it, and especially why it matters more than whatever your opponent is saying. i listen to cross-ex but i don't flow it, so if you/your opponent say something important during cross, make sure you remind me during your next speech so it 100% makes it on the flow.

evidence/cards - evidence is only as good as the warranting, weighing, and impacting that goes behind it. i will never base my rfd on how well you were able to gather bits of evidence from the depths of debate's dark web, or if one really good point you were making had a link that couldn't load. instead, if the argument you're creating makes sense to me (with some informational evidence to back it up) because of the warranting, weighing, and impacting you put behind it, then i'll always be more willing to pick that up rather than just buy what the other team is saying because of some guardian article from 2004.

misc - i don't mind "offtime roadmaps" or whatever the kids are calling it these days, just let me know beforehand and plzzz keep them brief. if you're a novice (or even a varsity!!!) and you have questions during the round, please don't be afraid to ask me, i'll never look down on you for wanting to learn! i'm happy to give any timing cues, you just gotta let me know beforehand. be nice to each other, debate is temporary but building a habit of being a jerk follows you forever. and in case I haven't beaten this to death already, WARRANT AND IMPACT AND WEIGH.

if you have any more questions, let me know. i'm so excited to see what arguments you come up with!

Hey!

I am a student at NYU who did 4 years of Public Forum in HS.

I flow so go whatever speed you want as long as it does not impede clarity. Read whatever arguments as long as they are not sexist, racist, etc.

Guaranteed good speaker points if you:

1. Collapse offense in the back half of the round

2. Weigh

3. Are not rude

Tech > Truth - Any dropped argument is considered true. I will not intervene.

Add me to the email chain: Akhil.khade@gmail.com

General Stuff:

I do not flow crossfire, so if something important happens, bring it up in a speech.

When bringing up a new piece of evidence, just the author and date is fine (you don't need the organization or credentials).

Speaker points are not based on your presentation, they're based on what you add to my flow. If you are excessively rude, I will dock though.

It's silly to go for a turn to an argument that you just read defense to if that defense responds to the turn. Your opponents need just point this out at some point in the round for you to lose that turn.

If there is no weighing, I default to strength of link, meaning I vote for the team who wins their offense most cleanly.

Important: If you do not read a content warning on a sensitive argument and your opponents object in any way, you will be dropped. Sensitive arguments do not just exist within the round and they can affect the people around you so please be considerate of others.

First-time parent judge

Please speak slowly.

Pine View KP; NSD Instructor; Lake Highland Prep Coach

Tabula Rasa

The funnier you make the round, the better it will go for you

TLDR

Tech>truth. Weigh, give me good warranting, and DO NOT SPREAD(honestly i prefer if you heir on the side of slower; if your opponents can’t understand you I probably cannot either). Defense is sticky but I only grant you marginal defense(if the ; first FF may read some type of new weighing (NOT elaborate weighing… no overviews, prereq analysis, etc.). Extend your arguments with card names, warrants, links, and impacts in the back half. Weigh links and turns, defense, and pretty much everything else. Please read the evidence section of my paradigm and abide by those rules, they will be enforced.

DEBATE IS A GAME, PLAY TO WIN.

I will vote for pretty much any argument as long as it's warranted well.

Signposting:

This is essential; do it.

Cross:

I might listen but I won't vote off or remember anything said here unless it's in a speech.

Rebuttal:

Read as much offense/DAs as you want, just please implicate them on the line-by-line and weigh them. Second rebuttal MUST frontline terminal defense and turns, probably some defense too

Summary:

First summary only needs to extend turns but should also extend terminal defense if you have time. Defense is sticky, however, I’d prefer for the second summary to extend as much defense as possible. The only new turns or defense I’ll evaluate in summary are as responsive to new implications made by the other team.

Final Focus:

First final can make new implications on weighing but not brand new weighing or new implications of turns, or anything else UNLESS responding to new implications or turns from the second summary. Second final cannot do new weighing or new implications. Final focus is a really good time to slow down, treat me like a flay judge in these speeches and my decision becomes a lot easier.

Voting:

I default to util. If there's no offense, I presume to the first speaking team. I will always disclose after the round. I can also disclose speaks if you ask.

Evidence:

Add me to email chain Rafehk21@gmail.com; I prefer if you send a speech doc beforehand with all evidence unless it's analytics

Speed:

Speed is good in the first half and bad in the second half, collapse strategically; don't go for everything. If you spread (250+ wpm) there is no way you get above 27 speaks. If I miss something in summary or final focus because you're going too fast or not clear and I drop you it's your fault; slow down, don't go for everything, and be efficient.

Time:

You are not a baby, time yourself

Postrounding:

Postround as hard as you want, I think it's educational.

––––––PROGRESSIVE DEBATE———

Theory:

I enjoy theory debate (ONLY IF NOT ABUSIVE). Yes, I think paraphrasing is bad and disclosure is good. No, I will not hack for either of these shells. I think abuse in rounds is bad but if you read other shells it may not go well for you. I EVALUATE THEORY MUCH DIFFERENT THAN OTHER TECH JUDGES (model of debate > than a small random squirrlley turn)

Kritiks: I read a couple K's in my time but I am extremely bad at evaluating them SO if you run one, please WIN the argument sufficiently. TREAT ME LIKE A LAY WITH A MEGAMIND BRAIN.

Tricks: These genuinely create a stupid model of debate but go for them if you want to.

TKO:If your opponent has no path to the ballot (conceded theory shell or them reading a counterinterp that they do not meet themselves) invoke a TKO and you win with 30 speaks, if they did have a path to the ballot you lose with 21s.

Hey y'all. I'm Paul Kim and I just graduated from Duke University with a degree in Biology and a minor in Neuroscience. After a brief encounter with PF in 8th grade, I dabbled in British Parliamentary debate in college and was on Duke's mock trial team for 3 years. Most of my understanding of debate comes from Sim Low

Please send your evidence to ptk1601@gmail.com

For Public Forum:

• I care a lot about evidence quality and ethics – make sure you have appropriate citations and that you are not misrepresenting your evidence or altering it. Please use proper cards and it is preferred that you do not paraphrase, rather, you should read quotes and excerpts while adding your own analysis.
• It’s extremely important that you collapse on one argument and tell me why it outweighs your opponent’s impacts. Give me a weighing mechanism and tell me why it’s preferable/
• Please have clear extensions of your arguments and do not immediately jump into the line by line. Provide a big picture image at the top of what your world looks like and explain the internal links to your impacts.

• I will vote on progressive arguments like kritiks if they are properly explained, and I am only really comfortable with theory arguments about evidence ethics, paraphrasing, or disclosure. Anything frivolous will be lost on me.

For Policy: (everything said in the PF section still applies here)

• I will not consider what I don't hear whether or not it's on your speech doc.
• Feel free to structure your speeches however you please, but any conspicuous signposting is greatly encouraged and appreciated!
• I have next to no knowledge on the topic beyond what little I've heard in the VERY few policy rounds I've judged. There is no such thing as overexplaining with me as your judge so please hold my hand.
• Finally, and most importantly,I CANNOT UNDERSTAND SPREADING. I am working on this as I judge and listen to more rounds of debate, but please understand if I clear you rather quickly.

I will raise your speaks by 0.1 if you can name all of the F1 world drivers' champions in order from 2023-2000 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I debated for four years on the national circuit.

My paradigm breaks down quite simply:

1. Engage arguments constructively. Clash is so important but increasingly teams don't know what that means. When I'm given an argument and a response that just make the polar opposite claims, it becomes impossible to evaluate if both teams don't do extra analysis, so do the extra analysis. Warrants are infinitely more important than card-stacks – good logic beats bad evidence every time.

2. Weigh on the link and impact level. Don't just give me prewritten reasons your impact is large (i.e., "scope and severity"), but instead tell me why your link into the impact is explicitly stronger than any other links/turns your opponents go for, and why your impact is more significant than theirs. Direct comparison of impacts/links will take you far – one good, common sense weighing mechanism adapted to the content of the round is better than four weak pre-typed ones.

3. Be consistent. Not only between summary and final focus (first summary defense is optional but strongly encouraged if important), but also with a story throughout the round. If you read arguments that explicitly contradict each other for strategic value, I might not drop you, but you'll have a hard time establishing credibility (or high speaks). Instead, defend a cohesive worldview throughout the round – and pull that story through (extending both warrants and impacts at minimum).

The easiest way to win my ballot is to follow these three rules. Pick an issue and defend against responses constructively with more than just a re-assertion of your argument. Weigh the link against other links and the impact against other impacts. Use this issue to tell a clear story that leaves me confident when I vote.

With regards to pretty much everything else, I am non-interventionist. I won't tell you how fast to speak, or force you to answer turns in second rebuttal, or ban specific types of arguments, but exercise good judgement. If you do something that a majority of reasonable people would find unfair, abusive, rude, or prejudicial to members of any minority community, I will do something about it. Your speaks will certainly be impacted and the threshold at which I will cast a ballot for your opponent will fall. In elims, that threshold will fall faster because I can't tank your speaks. Don't risk it, and when in doubt, ask.

And on that note, ask me if you have any other questions.

Have fun, and best of luck!

PF PARADIGM:

Head Coach at George Washington in Denver

I have watched many rounds on the topic and am very familiar with the literature base.

I will vote off the flow if I can which means you need to sign post and keep the same names and structures for arguments as they were coming out of case. In other words, do not rename arguments later in the round. If I cannot figure out where to flow the argument, I am not listening to what you are saying, but rather trying to figure out where it goes. I am most happy when you guide my pen to the flow and tell me exactly where to write and what to write!

Make sure whatever you carry into Final Focus, is also part of Summary. All of the sudden extending arguments that have not been part of the debate is not a winning strategy.

Weigh the round, explain why your arguments outweigh your opponents'. Be specific; do not just say you "outweigh" leverage certain cards and contentions to explain

Dropped arguments only matter if you tell me why they matter!

Truth over tech; facts and reality matters. I will not vote off improbable, unrealistic or fundamentally flawed arguments. This does not mean opponents can just say they are improbable and move on, work must still be done to explain why the arguments are flawed, but if it is close and the arguments have been discredited with evidence and analysis, I will err on the side of "truth".

Dates matter and NSDA rules say you should at a minimum read the year of the card; please follow these rules or I will not flow your cards.

Views on Theory: Not a fan of it in PF. Run at your own risk.

Kritiks: See theory above

Views on Spreading: Do not spread! Reading quickly is not the same as a full out spread.

Please share all cards you are reading in a speech before the speech. Set up an email chain! This will avoid the annoying wait times associated with "calling for cards." All cards should be appropriately cut, please do not share a PDF or link and ask the other team to look for the relevant passage.

I am not sure I am a fan of "sticky defense."

Pet Peeves

Please do not ask every single person in the room if they are ready before starting to speak. One simple, "everyone ready?" does the trick! Once you ask, give a little bit of wait time before you actually start speaking.

As far as I am concerned, the only road map in a PF round, is "Pro/Con" or "Con/Pro". Please do not use the term "brief off time road map." Or ask if I time them!

Avoid calling me "judge".

I stop listening to Cross-Fire if it is loud and the debaters talk over each other.

maryrosekohan@gmail.com

POLICY PARADIGM:

Head Coach George Washington High School.

If this paradigm isn't completely clear, please ask questions before the round! I'd rather you be informed than to be inconvenienced by a misunderstanding about anything said here.

Most Importantly: I haven't judged much circuit policy, but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing.

If you want to have a good round in front of me, there's a couple things you should do/not do.

1. PLEASE take it easy on speed. Given that I do not judge on the circuit often, I'm a little out of practice flowing. This means that if you want me to understand what you're saying, you need to slow down. Obviously, this means you should far and away strive for clarity over speed.

2. If you are reading positions that are silly/don't make sense, expect to be disappointed with the decision that I make. Overly absurd Kritikal positions, and politics disads that seem to not have any internal links are definitely a no-go in front of me. I'm open to Kritikal positions, and I think they're interesting, but things like Death-Good aren't up my alley. Read a position that you know well in front of me and I'll enjoy it.

3. I'm comfortable evaluating Framework debates. I think affs should be at least tangentially related to the resolution. I'm not fond of just "Anti-USFG" affs. In addition, don't assume that I know all of the arguments that you're trying to make. On either side, the arguments should be explained clearly and concisely.

LD Paradigm

Although I come from a state that does primarily traditional value-criterion debate, I am an experienced policy coach (see the paradigm above). I can evaluate policy style arguments and am very open to them. I am much more persuaded by arguments that are related to the resolution and can be linked back to it as opposed to Kritikal arguments that do not link. I am, however, excited by some the resolution specific Kritiks and would love to hear them! I am familiar with a number of off case positions and theoretical arguments, please do not make assumptions and take time to give brief explanations.

I may not be able to easily follow or be familiar of all theory arguments. Slow down and explain them.

Dropped arguments only matter if you tell me why. You do not automatically win just because an argument is dropped.

As far as speed goes, I can keep up with it if it is clear and well articulated and has the purpose of covering more arguments. But I am not a fan of going fast just to go fast.

Parent judge.

Describe your frame

No spreading (speak at a conversational pace). No Ks, no theory, only run substance.

Be very clear about your arguments, well warranted, be CLEAR about impacts.

Have well-carded responses.

Be clear with weighing in Summary and FF. Write the ballot for me.

Don't talk over each other in cross.

TLDR:

Add me to the chain and send docs: aditya.kurra@stern.nyu.edu

You'd prob classify me as a flay judge.

I'm bad at flowing so pls don't go too fast

Collapse well, extend clearly, weigh, win.

Please skip grand if u don't actually have questions

UPDATE YALE: Set up email chain before round and you should be ready to start immediately at the posted round time. I will deduct speaks by .3 for every minute you are late.

General:

I debated PF 4 years at Flower Mound

qualled for toc x2

LD/PF:

LARP: Weigh and meta weigh

Phil/ Framing: I default util but feel free to run something else if u want. I'm familiar with kant, struc vio, and sentimentalism. If ur reading something else thats not intuitive slow down a bit and overexplain.

T/Theory: Went for this a lot, its pretty fun to judge. I default competing interps, yes rvis, drop the debater, normsetting > In round abuse. Chill with friv theory. I generally think disclosure/round reports is true and paraphrasing bad but I def wont hack for them.

Ks: I never rlly ran these args but I've hit them—T framework is a godsend. If u run them i'm almost assuredly not familiar with your lit. Err on the side of overexplaining it to me like I'm a 5 year old. Not a fan of alts that do essentially nothing. Complex K debates are where I trust myself the least in making the right decision.

Tricks: Feel free to run. Idk why this needs to be said but if ur just gonna dump a bunch a paradoxes u need to read truth testing. I rlly like eval after, indexicals, and theory tricks.

Presumption: If there's no offense at end of round, I default presumption goes to the team that lost the flip.

Feel free to post round me.

If you have any questions ask me before the round.

Speaker Points: I give some pretty mid speaks based on strategic decisions you make so don't go for everything.

I'll usually start around 28.5 and go up or down from there.

I am a judge from Regis High School. I'm in search of logical, well-reasoned arguments delivered in a civil, respectful manner. I like to see a significant amount of effort put in by the competitor, while still keeping in mind that this is meant to be an enjoyable activity. I am profoundly uninterested in a landslide of dozens of arguments; a few well-reasoned points is always preferable to a novel's worth of statistical sludge. More than anything, I want to see that you have spent a considerable amount of time evaluating the issue and which arguments are worth contending.

kurtisjlee@gmail.com

3 Years Highschool PFD Debate

3 Years College Policy Debate

(Policy)

1. I'm fine with speed. Obviously if you're forcing it and sound off and you dont see me flowing then you need to slow down (which you and your partner should be observing anyway).

2. You will benefit greatly by slowing down on tag lines and reading plans, and flipping between flows.

(PFD + Policy)

I'm really big on the technical side of debate. That means clearly outlining and discussing the:

1. Impact Calculus

-Timeframe
-Magnitude
-Probability
-How your impacts relate to your opponent's impacts
-How these impacts actually happen, the full story behind them, paint a picture. ELI5

2. Links

-They do X so they link, is not a link.

-I weight links pretty heavily in arguments so I prefer when debates spend time to contextualize the links within the story of the debate

3. Uniqueness

-Usually not an issue but i've been surprised before, often gets assumed

4. Internal Link

-Im very skeptical of you just arriving at extinction. I mainly ran policy arguments so I know how ridiculously easy it is to just fit in 16 extinction scenarios in your constructed speech but I need to see that internal link debate fleshed out.

5. Open to any kritiks/performance but the above bullets apply even more so. I do not like when teams brush over the technical side of debate just because they arent running nuclear war. Arguments are still arguments and logic is still logic.

6. Framework - I lean towards debate being a game. That being said, there are obviously millions of ways to debate within that framework.

Anything else just ask.

Kurtis Lee

I debated for Horace Mann in NYC and was the president of my team senior year.

Treat me like a flay judge only in the sense that I prefer slower, well-warranted rounds over the current weird tech meta of dumping as many arguments as possible and making rounds incredibly messy. This doesn't mean that I don't know what's happening on the flow (i.e. don't drop turns or responses because you're debating as you would in front of a lay judge) – just slow down, speak like you would to a normal person, and extend well/provide warrants for everything you say (especially including frontlines and weighing). The more you explain something, the more I'm likely to vote for it.

If you want me to call for a card, tell me to in a speech. Don't read progressive arguments in front of me. I refuse to flow off of a speech doc so just speak at a reasonable pace. If you have any other questions about my preferences, feel free to ask me before the round.

Email: itsedriclei@gmail.com

^ please put me on the email chains, feel free to contact with either if you need something, like speaks or whatnot

I was a PF debater and I've debated PF for around 4 years

I’m gonna disclose and give an rfd because I really hate judges that don’t

Tech > truth so call people out on incorrect things, don't just assume I'll intervene

If you weigh in rebuttal I will give you +0.5 speaker points

I don't flow cross, if you want me to vote on something said during cross, please say it in the next speech

I'm fine with progressive debate, I will evaluate it

tl;dr former PF debater treat me as a flay judge

Email: oliverlin2004@gmail.com

Debated Public Forum at St. John's School. Did some Worlds as a senior.

Speed is fine as long as you maintain clarity. Speech docs are preferred, but I will begin to dock speaks if I need to refer to it multiple times.

I don't flow cross and won't call cards on my own. If you want me to do either, put it in a speech.

I don't mind if you want to postround as long as we have time.

Theory

I'll try to evaluate it tab but I will drop the shell instead of any reasonability stuff.

Kritik

Never ran it. Never hit it. Run at your own risk.

Substance

Tech > Truth. No sticky anything. Please extend and weigh.

Turns should be clearly implicated as they are delivered. A new impact in final focus or second summary is a new argument.

Don't be a jerk in round. I will start by docking speaks, but I will drop you for unacceptable behavior (any -isms, bullying, threats). Please be civil.

Worlds

Same thing as PF except no speech docs and obviously no progressive stuff. I think reading a principle argument is almost always strategic and I like to hear them.

Speech

Zero experience here. As lay as it gets.

I'm a parent judge. Fluent in English but not a native speaker, so slow down, I don't evaluate what I don't understand, including jargon. I vote for the cleanest argument extended through the round, and I care most about logic and argumentative reasoning (that's not to say that I don't care about anything else, however).

Let me keep it short. I have never been a coach nor a debater. English is my second language.

I view a debater as a presenter to convince a graduate committee or a business team on why his/her thesis or project should be endorsed or prevailed.

No matter what topics are, I do not take any consideration of their Pro/Con or Aff/Neg. 

I judge by the following:

- Clarity of your points to support your position is important. This incudes both information clarity and speak clearly.
- Whenever you state numbers and facts, I take particular attention to whether you have references. The party provides more precise and comprehensive references, I score the party higher on the specific point.
- I value your own thinking and work, such as your analysis of the information you collected and connecting the dots. I especially value if you can frame them in a way that I can follow and understand.
- I judge how you counter the other party’s points. Avoiding or missing the points is a deduction.

Please feel free to ask me questions anytime. 

email: cbm2158@columbia.edu

I am a judge and coach for Brooklyn Technical High School. I mostly coach public forum now, but I have more experience with policy. I competed on the national policy circuit in high school ten years ago. I am currently a PhD student in English and Comparative Literature.

I do my best to maintain a detailed flow and place a premium on clear and consistent signposting.

I like Ks and theory, but I think they are difficult to run well in public forum.

I don't typically ask for evidence after the round unless there is some contention about what a piece of evidence actually says. Flag it in your speech, and I'll be happy to look.

Feel free to raise any other questions or concerns before the round!

Hey, 

I debated for four years at Bronx Science and am now a student at Vanderbilt where I am studying Neuroscience and Public Policy. I loved Speech and Debate in high school and I hope it brings you the same excitement it brought me! Here are a few things you can do to tip the scales in your favor if I'm your judge: 

- Don't be mean or obnoxious to your opponent, no matter what - especially if you're clearly winning the round. Doing that takes away the educational value of debate and it makes your opponent less likely to continue to engage and improve in the activity, which lowers the standards in our community as a whole. I will drop you. I don't care how many other arguments are in your favor - this one outweighs all. That said, I was sassy, my partner was sassy, and I appreciate sass and humor - as long as it adds to everyone's experience rather than ruins the competative - but mutually respectful - atmosphere. 

- I will always prefer a logical argument to one with evidence and no logical basis. In the same vein, I would rather you give me one or two good arguments for a point rather than all the ones in your brief/blocks packet. Reading off jargon won't work in the real word - but a logical analysis always will. That said, please have evidence to support your claims. A claim without a warrant, even if it could make sense, isn't enough either. That said, if you don't have evidence to block evidence but you can give me a really solid logical reason for why that evidence isn't something I should buy - go for it. I'm more inclined to listen to that kind of argument than not. 

- Make sure you abide by the NSDA rules for fairness in the round. No wifi on (that will also cause me to drop you if someone points it out or I notice it) and observe what extent of your evidence you need to have on hand. Regardless of whether or not your opponent calls you out on it, if I don't buy some kind of evidence you cite - especially if it becomes a huge point in the round - (or if I just need to see it to clarify, miss it the first time around, etc) chances are I will want to see the entire study, not just the card. 

At the end of the day, I'm a super friendly college kid who really loved Speech and Debate and pursues similar kinds of activities/engagements. Also, because this is always a thing, I'm taking Econ, so don't try to sell me some nonsense about GDP we both know isn't true. 

Hope you have fun in all your endeavors! Also, no pressure. A really amazing person told me when I was a competitor you remember rounds, not wins - and I am telling you from the other side it is true. Focus on learning, improving, and getting something meaningful out of this activity - that is what will matter in the end. 

Best,

Minnie 

Hey! I'm Pranav. I debated PF for four years in high school and now I'm a sophomore in college.

email: pranav.mantri@columbia.edu

You can run whatever non-exclusionary arguments that you want. An ideal winning team writes the path to the ballot for me. I'm lazy. I never really hit/ran progressive arguments but if you explain what you are running it should be fine.

Don't go fast. If you really want to, send a speech doc but I'm not gonna spend any time reading it cuz then I'm doing work for you. I'm lazy.

Would appreciate fun cross fires. Back when I was a debater (less than a year ago) I always tried to make jokes or have fun because its one of the chill parts of debate. Dead air is bad. Say something.

Do what u want in first rebuttal but don't "rebuild [y]our case."

Frontline in second rebuttal or responses are conceded.

Defense is sticky and extension in final focus is unnecessary, but if you want to seal the deal I suggest at least reminding me that the dropped response is there.

Offense is not sticky lol. Ideal extensions are short summaries of the arguments you are going for (uniqueness-> warrant-> impact).

Impact numbers are unnecessary, but impacts are necessary. "No impact" defense isn't terminal on impacts that exist but are unquantified. Quantifying is overrated ballparks is where its at. Vagueness can be fun and unfun at the same time. Either way, if there is no weighing and I'm left with one quantified impact and one unquantified impact I will prolly j vote on the "more convincing argument." But don't let it get to this stage.

Rebuttal weighing=good speaks for team.

Winning weighing/framing ≠ winning round. Weighing is a whey for me to way-in your offense. If no offense, weighing don't matter. Probability analysis isn't weighing. If you tell me what it really is i'll give you +0.2 speaks.

Good debate ability = good speaks. Speaking style doesn't necessarily matter. I weigh smarts over delivery, but delivery matters too (i.e. stuttering w big brain debating would yield higher speaks than a soothing voice that is saying empty words).

Ways to get good speaks:

a. Say something funny/ make jokes in speech

b. Give me any food/drink

c. Not being a speechdoc debater cuz flows are cool.

d. Good Eminem reference (+0.5-1 speaks).

L Friv Theory

Nota Bene: As I said in my paradigm above, I have little to no experience with progressive argumentation, but I am willing to hear it. In fact, I'm excited to judge it because I think that that is the best way to vote. Avoid jargon and you should be fine.

This isn't to deter anyone from reading prog arguments. If you do so and you succeed and you educate me well, I'll give you 30 speaks.

If you are reading anything off topic definitely send it to my email.

Speed: 300 wpm MAX and then I lose you. Send a speechdoc to pranav.mantri@columbia.edu if you really are gonna go mega fast (300 wpm<=), but even so I evaluate off my flow and if I forget to write something down from the speechdoc that's your fault not mine.

2 clears then no flowing

Ask Questions before round.

I am a parent judge. This is my second time judging after thoroughly enjoyed the first time. Please speak slowly and do not use jargon. In my day job, I give many presentations and mentor students in giving effective scientific presentations. I look for both style and substance in a good debater. Be respectful to your peers and judges, do your best, and have fun!

Rachel Mauchline

Durham Academy, Assistant Director of Speech and Debate

Previously the Director of Forensics and Debate for Cabot

she/her pronouns

TL;DR

Put me on the email chain @ rachelmauchline@gmail.com

speed is fine (but online lag is a thing)

tech over truth

Policy

I typically get preferred for more policy-oriented debate. I gravitated to more plan focused affirmatives and t/cp/da debate. I would consider myself overall to be a more technically driven and line by line organized debater. My ideal round would be a policy affirmative with a plan text and three-seven off. Take that as you wish though.

Lincoln Douglas

I've judged a variety of traditional and progressive debates. I prefer more progressive debate. But you do you... I am happy to judge anything as long as you defend the position well. Refer to my specific preferences below about progressive arguments. In regards to traditional debates, it's important to clearly articulate framework.

Public Forum

weighing.... weighing.... weighing.

I like rebuttals to have clear line by line with numbered responses. 2nd rebuttal should frontline responses in rebuttal. Summary should extend terminal defense and offense OR really anything that you want in final focus. Final focus should have substantial weighing and a clear way for me to write my ballot. It's important to have legitimate evidence... don't completely skew the evidence.

Here are my specific preferences on specific arguments if you have more than 5 mins to read this paradigm...

Topicality

I enjoy a well-articulated t debate. In fact, a good t debate is my favorite type of debate to judge. Both sides need to have a clear interpretation. Make sure it’s clearly impacted out. Be clear to how you want me to evaluate and consider arguments like the tva, switch side debate, procedural fairness, limits, etc.

Disadvantages/Counterplans

This was my fav strat in high school. I’m a big fan of case-specific disadvantages but also absolutely love judging politics debates- be sure to have up to date uniqueness evidence in these debates though. It’s critical that the disad have some form of weighing by either the affirmative or negative in the context of the affirmative. Counterplans need to be functionally or textually competitive and also should have a net benefit. Slow down for CP texts and permutations- y’all be racing thru six technical perms in 10 seconds. Affirmative teams need to utilize the permutation more in order to test the competition of the counterplan. I don’t have any bias against any specific type of counterplans like consult or delay, but also I’m just waiting for that theory debate to happen.

Case

I believe that case debate is under-covered in many debates by both teams. I love watching a case debate with turns and defense instead of the aff being untouched for the entire debate until last ditch move by the 2AR. The affirmative needs to continue to weigh the aff against the negative strat. Don't assume the 1AC will be carried across for you throughout the round. You need to be doing that work on the o/v and the line by line. It confuses me when the negative strat is a CP and then there are no arguments on the case; that guarantees aff 100% chance of solvency which makes the negative take the path of most resistance to prove the CP solves best.

Kritiks

I’ll vote for the k. From my observations, I think teams end up just reading their prewritten blocks instead of directly engaging with the k specific to the affirmative. Be sure you understand what you are reading and not just read a backfile or an argument that you don’t understand. The negative needs to be sure to explain what the alt actually is and more importantly how the alt engages with the affirmative. I judge more K rounds than I expect to, but if you are reading a specific author that isn’t super well known in the community, but sure to do a little more work on the analysis

Theory

I’ll vote for whatever theory; I don’t usually intervene much in theory debates but I do think it’s important to flesh out clear impacts instead of reading short blips in order to get a ballot. Saying “pics bad” and then moving on without any articulation of in round/post fiat impacts isn’t going to give you much leverage on the impact level. You can c/a a lot of the analysis above on T to this section. It’s important that you have a clear interp/counter interp- that you meet- on a theory debate.

I have no prior experience in speech and debate. I have never competed and only recently started judging. I understand basic debate argumentation but am still learning specific jargon and technicalities. Please try not to speak too fast but I understand that this is a space that requires time constraints. I want to hear any kind of arguments that you have prepared. Please clearly extend your arguments throughout the round, with author names or taglines so I know exactly what you’re extending. I am excited to see what all of you have to say, but please be respectful of each other in round.

He/Him

I debated PF for Bronx Science for four years. Treat me like your average flow judge.

Tech > Truth

Couple of things:

I'm fine with normal PF flow speed, just don't spread.

I like warranting. If you assert something and don't give me a reason for it, then it essentially means nothing. This applies to literally everything in the round. Warranted Analytics > Unwarranted Cards.

Please weigh big bro ????????????

You must frontline in second rebuttal

Defense is not sticky, in summary you must extend even conceded defense & do the same in final.

I pay very little attention to crossfire and probably will be on my phone during it, so if something important is said/conceded just bring it up in a later speech.

No new info in final. New implications off of stuff already read is chill.

Please read content warnings. If you have even a shadow of a doubt as to whether you should or not, always air on the side of caution, we want debate to be a safe space.

Please be respectful in cross!

Progressive Stuff:

Theory: Only read if there is a genuine violation. Friv theory is stupid theory and you know it.

K's are very cool! Run them however you want about whatever you want, but I hate the 'academiazation' of critical arguments into a very rigid and complex structure. In the words of Noam Chomsky who, although is talking about philosophy, exclaims in a way I think K's today can often be described as which is “a way of insulating sectors of a kind of radical intelligentsia from popular movements and actual activism..." I find it ironic when a K calls for an upheaval of some preexisting flawed structure, and then literally is spread in the format of some jargon-y preexisting flawed structure.

If you genuinely do care about this argumentation you would want the average person to be able to engage and in a meaningful way. Don't get lost in the sauce.

And FINALLY:

If you are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc I will stop the round, probably call you a terrible human being, immediately drop you, and make sure to slaughter your speaks.

Have fun! Bonus speaks if you say "I'm sorry thats just cap" in a SPEECH, or if you make a strong effort to cite non-western authors (I am sick of your Reuters and Carnegie Endowment evidence) especially on foreign policy resolutions.

Email: cydmarie.debate@gmail.com

Hi everyone! Here are a few things about my style/preferences to keep in mind:

1. Tabula Rasa: I try my best to enter each debate round with a "clean slate." I leave my biases at the door and will judge solely based on the quality and skills of your argumentation. I consider myself a pretty chill judge.

2. WEIGH WELL. I often find it difficult to judge rounds involving little to no weighing. I HIGHLY consider impacts in my decision-making.

3. Rebuttal Speeches: Stay away from being redundant, meaning your rebuttal speeches shouldn’t sound like your constructive speeches. Paint a picture, and tell me why your side should win.

4. Create a legitimate clash. Please show me the contrast between your world and your opponent’s world. Make the distinction obvious to me.

5. I enjoy cross-examination/cross-fire periods. Take advantage of your c/x periods and ask your opponents specific, meaningful questions.

6. A bit of aggression is fine in debate, but I will not tolerate disrespect. Please be a kind and decent human being. *Any racist, and discriminatory arguments or language will result in low speaker points and may result in the loss of the round.*

7. Impacts: I rock with the nuclear war impact, but it's getting a little old, lol. The concept of a nuclear war is too complex and I find that it's been thrown too loosely in the debate space. I know it's cliche, but please don't generate this impact and tell me you win on magnitude and expect that to be a reason for me to give your team an easy ballot. If one of your impacts genuinely leads to an outbreak of a nuclear war, please warrant it well.

8. I will never vote for a "human extinction good/death good argument."

9. Speed: Clarity>Speed. Just please project your voice and roadmap, and make sure you're clear. Speak at a reasonable pace. If I can't understand you, then I will probably stop flowing and that's a problem.

10. There's a theatrical component to debate. I want everyone to have fun. Be expressive, focus on your posture, gestures, and eye contact. I will increase speaker points if I see a great demonstration of this in the round.

BEST OF LUCK AND HAVE FUN! :)

hi I’m Arya (she/her), and I'm a sophomore at Emory. I did PF in Minnesota, and competed on the national & MN circuit for 4 years. if you have any questions before the round, please ask!

tldr: normal flow judge, collapse, extend (warrants not just taglines), weigh, have fun in round

if there is anything I can do to accommodate you before the round, reach out on Messenger or email (arya.mirza23@gmail.com)

general:

- if you're gonna spread send a doc

- tech>truth

- implicate your responses - tell me what they mean in the context of your round instead of card dumping

- signpost! I will not know where you are if you aren’t signposting and will probably miss stuff

- warranted analytic>unwarranted evidence

- collapse

- don't spread against novices

- I'll presume whichever team reads a presumption warrant, and if neither does, I'll presume first

- you can postround just don‘t be rude about it

- read content warnings for sensitive topics with an option to opt out. form template here, feel free to make a copy and use this.

crossfire:

- don't be that one person that cuts everyone off and doesn't let people speak

- nothing from cross flowed unless you mention it in a speech

2nd rebuttal:

- frontline

- don't read DAs or offensive overviews in 2nd rebuttal

summary and FF:

- defense is not sticky, extend it in both summary & FF if you want me to evaluate it

- weighing is the most important part in the back half of the round, please make a comparative. 3 second blips of buzzwords is not weighing.

- extend your argument fully–uniqueness link internal link impact–otherwise I can't vote off it

progressive args:

- please stop having theory debates where you're not engaging at the basic level, like reading a CI but not responding to no RVIs, it makes it really hard for you to win the round

- I don’t know K lit well so if you’re going to run one, explain the argument super clearly

- I am predisposed to thinking friv theory bad but I won't auto drop you just for reading it

evidence:

- paraphrasing is fine, just do it ethically please (and don't paraphrase 12 paragraphs in one sentence)

- every card you read needs to be cut; if any evidence is called for, send the cut + the paraphrase that you read. if you don't have the cut card it's off my flow

speaks:

- entirely based on strategic in round decisions, not speaking style, way you dress, etc.

- speaks go up if you start weighing in rebuttal

- speaks go down for bad extensions (a tagline is not an extension), misconstruing evidence, and hacking prep

- do not be any kind of -ist or I will intervene

overall, be nice in round and have fun :)

General

Speed: Go for it. However, if you're not clear, and nothing changes after I say clear twice, I'll go play 2048.

LARP: Yes, please. Just don't do it if you're not going to weigh.

Theory: As long as your theory isn't absolutely terrible, unnecessary, or abusive, it's completely fair game. Just slow down a little on theory. I love theory debates when they're good. I default to education, competing interps, drop the debater, no RVIs.

K's: I didn't do a lot of K debate in high school, and don't expect me to know all of the high-level critical literature. If your running K, make sure it's well-explained if it's something outside of the norm. The story has to be clear.

Phil: Basically the same explanation as K's. I dabbled in phil debate toward the end of high school, but I was mainly a util debater. Doesn't mean I won't vote on it.

Topicality: You're starting off with a pissed-off judge if you run a non-topical aff.

Disclosure: Please disclose. Go for disclosure, unless it's obvious that you're using it because someone doesn't know what the wiki is or how to use it.

I am a lay judge. Please talk slow. I prefer thoughtful arguments over long lists of brief evidence from cards. Speak clearly. Avoid emotional or angry tones. Do not spread. Do not overload your speech with debate jargon. I do appreciate good weighing. I do take notes but I do not flow.

I will ask each team to sit on the side that lines up with my tab room ballot. It helps me to use the right timers. I will try to time you. I mess this up sometimes so time yourselves and opponents time each other. I do not like opponents to set an alarm, simply raise your phone or timer when time is up. An exception to this is if both teams prefer to set alarms. Then that is fine.

I do not judge you on your crossfire so please do not use it as a time to try to sway my opinions. Crossfire is for you to better understand your opponents case so you can address it in your next speeches. Treat it as if I am not listening. Make your case in the next speech.

If you are running an extinction argument be sure it plausible. For example I have a hard time believing affirming or negating health care for all (a LD topic) would lead to nuclear war and thus extinction yet both sides argued it in different rounds. If you opponents run an extension argument that is not plausible do be sure to address it, as it can not just be the judge who thinks it is not plausible.

I evaluate your speaker points on clarity, articulation, appropriate speed, eye contact. So I do sometimes give low speak wins.

Be kind and courteous to your opponents.

I am a non remediated dyslexic so please excuse my short amount of feedback. I will not disclose unless required to by the tournament officials, but I will get my RFD in fast and publish it. If the debate was good I am often still deciding when you walk out. I will talk to you or your coach between rounds (not Flights) to give verbal feedback if you would like.

For speech docs or evidence sharing use jenmize2020@gmail.com

Please do not be late to a round. That puts extra pressure on me as a judge. Please do not tell me you know my daughter before during or after the round. I do not know if that would make me judge you harder or be more lenient and I don't want to find out. I would of course try not to let it sway me in either direction.

Standard FLAY Judge; I competed in Public Forum and World Schools Debate for Boston Latin for 6 years.

TLDR: Warrant + Weigh = Win

Specific things to know for me as a judge:

1. Be honest about the flow and extend arguments by tag, not by citation. I like to think I can generally flow decently well. Repeatedly telling me your opponents dropped something that they actually had multiple responses to it tends to annoy me and degrade your credibility (and speaker points) pretty quickly. That said - don't assume I've snagged every card citation you blitzed in your constructive. When you extend carded arguments, extend via the tag-not via the citation. Even if I do have the cite for that specific card it's going to take me longer to find it that way and while I'm doing that I'm paying less attention to what you're saying.

2. Don't be a [jerk]. I don't generally flow CX, though I do listen and may jot down relevant things. DON'T BE A JERK IN CX (or elsewhere). Like many people, I tend to have a bit of a subconscious bias to see kinder and more respectful people as more reasonable and more likely to be correct. So even if you're not interested in kindness for its own sake (which I hope you would be), consider it a competitively useful trait to develop for judges : )

3. Warrants really matter. I generally care much more about warrants than I do about citations. That means that putting a citation behind a claim without actually explaining why it makes logical sense won't do you a ton of good. There are a fair number of teams that cut cards for claims rather than the warranting behind them, and that practice won't go very far against any opponent who can explain the logical problems behind your assertion.

4. Extend Offense in Summary, Defense extensions are optional there. What it says. Any offense that isn't in the Summary generally doesn't exist for me in the Final Focus. Extending your offense though ink also doesn't do much - make sure to answer the rebuttal args against whatever offense you want to carry though. On the flip-side, if you have a really important defensive argument from Rebuttal that you want to hi-light, it certainly doesn't hurt to flag that in the Summary, though I will assume those arguments are still live unless they're responded to by your opponents

5. Explicitly weigh impacts. Every judge always tells you to weigh stuff, and I'll do the same, but what I mean specifically is: "tell me why the arguments you win are more important than the arguments you might lose." At the end of the vast majority of rounds each side is winning some stuff. If you don't directly compare the issues that are still alive at the end of the round, you force me to do it, and that means you lose a lot of control over the outcome. As a follow up (especially as the first speaker) make sure to compare your impacts against the best impacts they could reasonably claim, not the weakest.

6. Collapse down. I respect strategic concession - make choices and focus on where you're most likely to win. By the Summary you should have an idea where you're likely to win and where you're likely to lose. If you try to go for everything in the last two speeches you are unlikely to have enough explanation on anything to be persuasive.

**My partner and I made it our mission to run environmental arguments on every topic in our senior year. That being said, I'd look favorably upon climate change related impacts and links, if ran well.

**Regarding progressive args, I'm not very well versed in them so run them at your own risk. The likelihood of me voting for K's, t shells and theory shells etc. are low simply because I'm not familiar with them. If there's actual abuse in the round, just explain it in paragraph form or put it in a way that I would be able to easily follow.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask or reach me at cinly.mo@columbia.edu

Good luck, have fun, and learn things!

Email chain: owenmm@utexas.edu

tech only, no truth.

default TT

I did PF for Flower Mound, and I broke at TOC (2x qual), TFA (2x qual), NSDA (2x qual), and a bunch of natcirc tourneys (if that matters to you, idk).

PF

Skip grand cross and I'll like you (but if you actually have questions to ask please don't skip because of me).

I only give less than 29.9 if you give me a reason to.

Obviously, I will tank if you are disrespectful -- including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. -- just be a good person please.

and I only give 30 if you dedicate the debate to Sid Thandassery before constructive.

for all: quality > quantity — I need good warranting, explanations, implications, etc. It’s much easier to vote on one really good argument than a few bad ones.

Theory (1)

default: DTD, CIs, norm-setting, fairness > edu, no RVIs

but it doesn't matter, make any arguments, I don't hack (unless you disclose full-text, then good luck)

LARP (2)

extend, probably nothing is sticky.

collapse, signpost, be organized

weigh and meta-weigh

Tricks (1-2)

please run tricks in PF.

Phil (2-3)

I read phil and I like it, but don't be too crazy.

K (4)

I have no problem with them, I'm just not familiar with many Ks. Run whatever you want, but if you want me to vote right, I can prolly follow Cap, Set Col, most Pess Ks, and maybe Psycho.

LD

Speaks are based on strategy.

Bonus if you mention Sid Thandassery, any ex-Flower Mound debater, or bring me caffeine.

Basically same arg prefs as PF

Hi! I'm excited to be your judge today. I am a trained speech and debate judge but did not compete myself.

For debate - Please don't speak too quickly. If you speak too fast, I will stop flowing and your arguments will not be evaluated as part of the round. Please add signposts to make arguments as clear to me as possible. Impacts are important to me - I want to understand the real world significance of the argument. Don't just tell me the argument, tell me why I should care.

For speech - I love speech events where you incorporate personal stories and humor. Have fun, because your energy will be contagious!

He/Him

email: prateek.motagi@stern.nyu.edu

lots of circuit experience (gtoc and more)

ask me anything before round!

tldr: run whatever, explain it, win!

disclosure is good (I mean for my decision, ofc)

• Tech>Truth. I'll vote off ANYTHING extended cleanly on the flow. I was forced by my partner to love impact turns (do what you will with that). More on progressive stuff below.

• Pleeeease read content warnings for potentially triggering args or u lose speaks (saves u from theory)

• for novices- a content warning is when you read a warning for potentially harmful stuff in speech. for example, if I'm running solving domestic violence in my case, which some people could be uncomfortable debating about since that's an issue personal to them, I would say 'content warning: domestic violence' before constructive to notify them :)

• Tell me if you're in the bubble and I'll give you 30s

• If there is a lay or a flay on the panel, kick me. I'm fine with a nice, chill debate, and you should adapt to the majority!

Speeches

• Paraphrasing is chill, just don't lie about evidence. HOWEVER, I’m open to cut-card theory–I won’t intervene with my personal ideologies.

• I'm fine with any speed, I don’t want to limit you as the judge. However, notify me before your speech so I know what to expect! I'll let you know if I need a doc or not.

• Enunciate even if you're spreading, don't try to slur words to get more stuff out pls.

Rebuttal

• You must frontline in 2nd rebuttal.

• Independent DAs in 2nd rebuttal are sus, but responsive/overviews are fine.

Summary/FF

• Must extend your link, impact, and clear warrant!!! (idc about author names I don't flow them)

Framework

• Framework's cool! Please warrant it. Too many times, teams will just read a blip at the top of case saying “The fw for this debate should be how x will help in the future”

• I GUESS I'll buy any framing. If it makes my head hurt then I will not vote off of it (this is maybe the most I’d intervene?)

Progressive

• ngl idk much about prog

• I was not a theory debater

judge simp bad!

Hello, I am a parent judge.

My son is on the Bronx High School of Science Speech and Debate Team.

Please explain your arguments clearly.

Please speak slowly. I want to be able to follow what you are stating.

Good Luck!

I'm a parent volunteer judge. I did parliamentary debate in Ireland in the late 1980s — in other words, I know little about contemporary American PF jargon. I've been listening, and I've read the paradigms of fellow judges who have deep and recent PF experience and I'm slowly learning from them! Learning on the job, from judging, from talking to coaches and from talking to my daughter who debates.

So what do I understand? I want to understand you! Speak slowly, I want to follow your argument, and I want to feel like you're having a powerfully felt conversation with your opponents and with me. Don't talk at me, talk with me. Use tone intentionally. I'm your kind but slightly cranky uncle at the Thanksgiving table, you want to persuade me. You can use warmth and humor, as well as clarity and ruthlessness. Give me facts, but give me a point of view.

Lastly, and above all. Listen to your opponent. Really truly listen to them. Don’t talk over each other, but also don’t take a minute to ask your “question”—“don’t take up cross.” Try to understand the very heart of their argument. If you "block" the heart of their argument, you are more likely to win than five little nitpicks. (Yes, I'm learning, I know what "block" means, and heart of the argument is another way, perhaps, of "weighing"—the heart weighs more than five nitpicks..)

One last thing—my day job is as an executive and leadership coach. In that capacity I work a lot with leaders of large organizations, often helping with public speaking and executive presence. Show leadership, gravitas, charisma and presence out there!

Truly the last thing: a debater told me I should say, Truth over tech. Though her coach pointed out that’d be pretty obvious from the above.

I've been judging PF debate for two yea and have taught in both middle school high school. I deeply appreciate clarity of argument and for debaters to speak slowly enough that I can understand what is being said. I flow on the entire debate including cross

This is also my first year as a LD judge. Likewise, clarity is essential. Please don't speak too quickly!

This is my second year as a judge. I have judged Public Forum and Lincoln Douglas debate events, both at the novice and varsity levels. I have also judged multiple speech events, including Extemp, Impromptu, HI, DI, etc. at the novice and varsity levels.

For Debate competitors:

My preference is for the debaters to speak slowly and clearly. It's better to have lesser but more impactful statements, rather than to cram in too much information all at once that doesn't flow properly. Debaters should also take advantage of the prep time available to them, instead of rushing into things.

Start with an off-time roadmap, in order to clearly describe what you will be speaking about and to keep yourself organized. Also summarize your key points in the beginning... and at the end. "Tell me what you're going to tell me, then tell me, and then tell me what you just told me."

Don't spread, as it tends to put you at a disadvantage with me as a judge and with your opponent who can use your spreading to attack you. Enjoy yourself, and be respectful to your opponent and your judge.

For Speech competitors:

Based on your event, take advantage of your opportunities to show emotion, changing of voice tones, gestures, and overall personification. Use roadmaps when appropriate, and speak clearly and slowly. Don't forget to clearly and accurately state the question / topic / title in your intro and in your conclusion, and summarize your answer / key points in your intro and conclusion.

LES PHILLIPS NUEVA PF PARADIGM

I have judged all kinds of debate for decades, beginning with a long career as a circuit policy and LD coach. Speed is fine. I judge on the flow. Dropped arguments carry full weight. At various times I have voted (admittedly, in policy) for smoking tobacco good, Ayn Rand Is Our Savior, Scientology Good, dancing and drumming trumps topicality, and Reagan-leads-to-Communism-and-Communism-is-good. (I disliked all of these positions.)

If an argument is in final focus, it should be in summary; if it's in summary, it should be in rebuttal,. I am very stingy regarding new responses in final focus. Saying something for the first time in grand cross does not legitimize its presence in final focus.

NSDA standards demand dates out loud on all evidence. That is a good standard; you must do that. I am giving up on getting people to indicate qualifications out loud, but I am very concerned about evidence standards in PF (improving, but still not good). I will bristle and register distress if I hear "according to Princeton" as a citation. Know who your authors are; know what their articles say; know their warrants.

Please please terminalize impacts. Do this especially when you are talking about a nebulosity called "The Economy." Economic growth is not intrinsically good; it depends on where the growth goes and who is helped. Sometimes economic growth is very bad. "Increases tensions" is not a terminal impact; what happens after the tensions increase? When I consider which makes the world a better place, I will be looking for prevention of unnecessary death and/or disease, who lifts people out of poverty, who lessens the risk of war, who prevents gross human rights violations. I'm also receptive to well-developed framework arguments that may direct me to some different decision calculus.

Teams don't get to decide that they want to skip grand cross (or any other part of the round).

I am happy to vote on well warranted theory arguments (or well warranted responses). Redundant, blippy theory goo is irritating. I have a fairly high threshold for deciding that an argument is abusive. I am receptive to Kritikal arguments in PF. I will default to NSDA rules re: no plans/counterplans, absent a very compelling reason why I should break those rules.

LES PHILLIPS NUEVA PARLI PARADIGM

I have judged all kinds of debate for decades, beginning with a long career as a circuit policy and LD coach. I have judged parli less than other formats, but my parli judging includes several NPDA tournaments, including two NPDA national tournaments, and most recent NPDI tournaments. Speed is fine, as are all sorts of theoretical, Kritikal, and playfully counterintuitive arguments. I judge on the flow. Dropped arguments carry full weight. I do not default to competing interpretations, though if you win that standard I will go there. Redundant, blippy theory goo is irritating. I have a fairly high threshold for deciding that an argument is abusive. Once upon a time people though I was a topicality hack, and I am still more willing to pull the trigger on that argument than on other theoretical considerations. The texts of advocacies are binding; slow down for these, as necessary.

I will obey tournament/league rules, where applicable. That said, I very much dislike rules that discourage or prohibit reference to evidence.

I was trained in formats where the judge can be counted on to ignore new arguments in late speeches, so I am sometimes annoyed by POOs, especially when they resemble psychological warfare.

Please please terminalize impacts. Do this especially when you are talking about The Economy. "Helps The Economy" is not an impact. Economic growth is not intrinsically good; it depends on where the growth goes and who is helped. Sometimes economic growth is very bad. "Increases tensions" is not a terminal impact; what happens after the tensions increase?

When I operate inside a world of fiat, I consider which team makes the world a better place. I will be looking for prevention of unnecessary death and/or disease, who lifts people out of poverty, who lessens the risk of war, who prevents gross human rights violations. "Fiat is an illusion" is not exactly breaking news; you definitely don't have to debate in that world. I'm receptive to "the role of the ballot is intellectual endorsement of xxx" and other pre/not-fiat world considerations.

LES PHILLIPS NUEVA LD PARADIGM

For years I coached and judged fast circuit LD, but I have not judged LD since 2013, and I have not coached on the current topic at all. Top speed, even if you're clear, may challenge me; lack of clarity will be very unfortunate. I try to be a blank slate (like all judges, I will fail to meet this goal entirely). I like the K, though I get frustrated when I don't know what the alternative is (REJECT is an OK alternative, if that's what you want to do). I have a very high bar for rejecting a debater rather than an argument, and I do not default to competing interpretations; I would like to hear a clear abuse story. I am generally permissive in re counterplan competitiveness and perm legitimacy. RVIs are OK if the abuse is clear, but if you would do just as well to simply tell me why the opponent's argument is garbage, that would be appreciated.

Hi! I'm Veer(he/him). I did PF for four years at Durham Academy as part of Durham HP. Now I'm a freshman at NYU Stern and an assistant coach for the Taipei American School.

Put me on the email chain: vp2150@nyu.edu AND taipeidocz@gmail.com

TLDR: I'll vote on the flow. Read whatever you want, but please make sure it's warranted properly instead of blippy arguments.

General

Debate should be fun. Yes, debate is a competitive activity, and you can make it funny(it makes my job a lot more entertaining), but don't be condescending. Enjoy every round.

To win an argument, it must be fully extended in both summary and final focus, i.e. the uniqueness, link, internal link(s) and impact with warrants on each of those levels. If it is not, I will not vote on it.

Signpost — tell me where you are on the flow clearly and efficiently, number responses, clear contention tags, etc.

Please collapse. Slow down in the back half and don't go for your whole case. I'm not voting off of a 5 second extension of a half fleshed-out turn. It will better serve you to spend your time in the back half extending, front-lining, and weighing one or two arguments well than five arguments poorly.

I don't flow cross. A little bit of humor goes a long way in making my judging experience more enjoyable and shouting over each other will go a long way in tanking your speaks.

Go as fast as you want as long as you're clear. Send a doc, don't clip, and remember you're allowed to yell "clear" if your opponents are incomprehensible. If you're going to go fast, slow down for the tags.

If you misconstrue evidence and the other team gives me a reason to drop you, I'll do it. Please do good research and read good evidence.

If you are _ist or discriminatory in any way, you will lose the round.

How I Evaluate

I look at weighing/framing first and then evaluate the best link into said weighing. Make sure your weighing is actually comparing both arguments efficiently, use real weighing mechanisms and do the metaweighing if you need to. I will not evaluate non-comparative weighing.

Defense is not sticky — respond to everything the previous speech said. Everything in the first rebuttal must be responded to in second rebuttal or it will be considered conceded. Similarly, everything in second rebuttal must be responded to in first summary, including weighing.

Prog

Theory: I have read theory, but I think that it is most often used in PF in a way that significantly decreases accessibility for the entire space. I will evaluate theory, but only if your opponents know how to engage with those arguments OR are in the varsity division of a TOC-bidding tournament. Please do not be the team that reads 4 off on novices for the ballot.

Read whatever shells you want to read but interps should be read ASAP in the speech immediately following the violation; counterinterps should come in the speech immediately following the interp.

My threshold will be low on stuff that’s obviously frivolous. If you're going to have a tricks debate or anything that resembles it, it's probably best to make sure everyone's comfortable with that decision beforehand.

I default to competing interps and yes RVIs, you have to read No RVIs and reasonability with warrants if I'm going to vote on it.

Topical Ks: Don't steal it off of some policy or LD wiki page. Do your own research and make the round accessible by explaining implications that you do based on the literature. I want to understand the argument if I'm going to vote on it.

Non-T Ks: I've had experience with these, but it's hard to pull off in PF. I've seen it work and I've seen it not work. Avoid personal attacks and stay respectful. Also, please make my role as the judge and the role of the ballot as explicit as possible.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE JUDGES WHEN I DEBATED: Gabe Rusk, Brian Gao, Bryce Pitrowski

I flow

Did PF for 4 years in high school (on the national circuit)

Go as zoom as you want (speech doc if ur going like Policy level Zoom tho)

Second Rebuttal should frontline turns + defense of offense they are going for - I think second summary is way too late to read new frontlines.

Weighing is very very important

Ks are chill

Shells are chill (but I default grant RVI - so if u read a shell you should also read "No RVI" if u don't want it to cost you the round)

If the round is a wash I default first speaking team - very rarely will happen.

Speaks based on speaking argumentation/contribution to the RFD.

I will disclose at the end of the round - but I'll make it quick.

It's been over 40 years since I've judged or debated in a policy or L-D round (and back then L-D was slow), and I've now judged one tournament in PF, so I'm pretty close to a lay judge. That said, I know the basics of current terminology and abbreviations and don't mind some speed, but you're probably going to have to explain more than to a recent debater, signpost really clearly, and not go full blast on speed. Be kind; I'm old.

Even so, I am certainly open to whatever wild arguments you want to make: If you make an evidence-supported argument that your case will prevent invasions of martians and the other side doesn't reply, I'm happy to vote on that. (I'll probably want to know the impacts of martians; maybe they're nice, maybe not, you tell me.) I'm perfectly happy to vote on theory, but you'd better explain it really well. In any event, by the end of the round you really need to have told me what I ought to be voting on; don't leave me to find your arguments in my flow.

Feel free to put me on the chain. resnick@episteme.net

Welcome debaters!

This marks my second year judging, and I'm here to ensure a fair and productive round. Please keep a steady pace, speak clearly, and make your arguments compelling. I value clarity and strategic thinking. If you seek feedback, I'll provide it in the comment section on Tabroom. Good luck, and let's have a constructive debate!

I am a Bronx Science alumnus, Class of 2014, where I debated PF for all four years and I judged throughout my college career.

Well warranted arguments are the most important element of the debate to me. I also judge on based on the flow, but well extended arguments that are weakly warranted are really difficult for me to value in my final decision.

I appreciate technical arguments and a good guiding framework on which to evaluate the round, but anything overly technical brought in from other formats of debate is not something that I am likely to vote on or value.

Please feel free to ask me questions before the round. 

TOC:

Evidence and Docs: There was a little confusion about evidence exchange and prep time this morning in the Judges Meeting. PF Tab clarified in an email that page 56/57 PF rules still stand and if Team A calls for Team B's evidence they can get free prep until Team B produces that evidence. When Team A gets that evidence in hand then prep time starts. Please let your judges know they got an email with the clarification. But please just send the evidence ASAP.

Let me stress again... I think it is an intervention to look at speech doc during a speech if you cannot understand the speaker. This incentivizes 2,000 word cases. I will not look at the speech doc until after the speech to read evidence only if it is relevant to a discussion in the round. If I clear you twice it probably means I am not going to be able to effectively flow what you want.

Emails: Please put gabriel.rusk@gmail.com on the email chain as well as fairmontprepdebateteam@gmail.com

Uniqueness: If you are running an argument that is based on some fairly recent dynamic or fluid geopolitical scenario you prob should have UQ updates from this week. Postdates aren't automatic evidence triumphs please still implicate why they matter.

Gabe Rusk

☮️

Background

Debate Experience: TOC Champion PF 2010, 4th at British Parli University National Championships 2014, Oxford Debate Union competitive debater 2015-2016 (won best floor speech), LGBTQIA+ Officer at the Oxford Debate Union.

Wanna come hang with me this summer? Sign up for the Summer Speech & Debate Think Tank at Stanford University.

NSDA PF Topic Committee Member: If you have any ideas, topic areas, or resolutions in mind for next season please send them to my email below.

Coaching Experience: Director of Debate at Fairmont Prep 2018-Current, Senior Instructor and PF Curriculum Director at the Institute for Speech and Debate, La Altamont Lane 2018 TOC, GW 2010-2015. British Parli coach and lecturer for universities including DU, Oxford, and others.

Education: Masters from Oxford University '16 - Dissertation on the history of the First Amendment. Religion and Philosophy BA at DU '14. Other research areas include Buddhism, comparative religion, conlaw, First Amendment law, free speech, freedom of expression, art law, media law, & legal history. AP Macroeconomics Teacher too so don't make econ args up.

2023 Winter Data Update: Importing my Tabroom data I've judged 651 rounds since 2014 with a 53% Pro and 47% Con vote balance. There may be a slight subconscious Aff bias it seems. My guess is that I may subconsciously give more weight to changing the status quo as that's the core motivator of debate but no statistically meaningful issues are present.

Email: gabriel.rusk@gmail.com

Website: I love reading non-fiction, especially features. Check out my free website Rusk Reads for good article recs.

PF Paradigm

Judge Philosophy

I consider myself tech>truth but constantly lament the poor state of evidence ethics, power tagging, clipping, and more. Further, I know stakes can be high in a bubble, bid, or important round but let's still come out of the debate feeling as if it was a positive experience. Life is too short for needless suffering. Please be kind, compassionate, and cordial.

Big Things

• What I want to see: I'm empathetic to major technical errors in my ballots. In a perfect world I vote for the team who does best on tech and secondarily on truth. I tend to resolve clash most easily when you give explicit reasons why either a) your evidence is comparatively better but also when you tell me why b) your warranting is comparatively better. Obviously doing both compounds your chances at winning my ballot. I have recently become more sensitive to poor extensions in the back half. Please have UQ where necessary, links, internal links, and impacts. Weighing introduced earlier the better. Weighing is your means to minimize intervention.

• Weighing Unlike Things: I need to know how to weigh two comparatively unlike things. If you are weighing some economic impact against a non-economic impact like democracy how do I defer to one over the other? Scope, magnitude, probability etc. I strongly prefer impact debates on the probability/reasonability of impacts over their magnitude and scope. Obviously try to frame impacts using all available tools. I am very amicable to non-trad framing of impacts but you need to extend the warrants and evidence.

• Weighing Like Things: Please have warrants and engage comparatively between yourself and your opponent. Obviously methodological and evidentiary comparison is nice too as I mentioned earlier. I love crossfires or speech time where we discuss the warrants behind our cards and why that's another reason to prefer your arg over your opponent.

• Don't be a DocBot: I love that you're prepared and have enumerated overviews, blocks, and frontlines. I love heavy evidence and dense debates with a lot of moving parts. But if it sounds like you're just reading a doc without specific or explicit implications to your opponent's contentions you are not contributing anything meaningful to the round. Tell me why your responses interact. If they are reading an arg about the environment and just read an A2 Environment Non-Unique without explaining why your evidence or warranting is better then this debate will suffer.

• I'm comfortable if you want to take the debate down kritical, theoretical, and/or pre-fiat based roads. I think framework debates be them pre or post fiat are awesome. Voted on many K's before too. Here be dragons. I will say though, over time I've become increasingly tired of opportunistic, poor quality, and unfleshed out theory in PF. But in the coup of the century, I have been converted to the position that disclosure theory and para theory is a viable path to the ballot if you win your interp. I do have questions I am ruminating on after the summer doxxing of judges and debaters whether certain interps of disc are viable and am interested to see how that can be explored in a theory round. I would highly discourage running trigger warning theory in front of me. See thoughts below on that. All variables being equal I would prefer post-fiat stock topic-specific rounds but in principle remain as tabula rasa as I can on disc and paraphrasing theory.

Little Things

• (New Note for 2024: Speech docs have never intended to serve as an alternative to flowing a speech. They are for exchanging evidence faster and to better scrutinize evidence. Otherwise, you could send a 3000 word case and the speech itself could be as unintelligible as you would like without a harm. As a result there is an infinite regress of words you could send. Thus I will not look at a speech doc during your speech to aid with flowing and will clear you if needed. I will look at docs only when there is evidence comparison, flags, indicts etc but prefer to have it on hand. My speed threshold is very high but please be a bit louder than usual the faster you go. I know there is a trade off with loudness and speed but what can we do).

• What needs to be frontlined in second rebuttal? Turns. Not defense unless you have time. If you want offense in the final focus then extend it through the summary.

• Defense is not sticky between rebuttal and final focus. Aka if defense is not in summary you can't extend it in final focus. I've flipped on this recently. I've found the debate is hurt by the removal of the defense debate in summary and second final focus can extend whatever random defense it wants or whatever random frontlines to defense. This gives the second speaking teams a disproportionate advantage and makes the debate needlessly more messy.

• I will pull cards on two conditions. First, if it becomes a key card in the round and the other team questions the validity of the cut, paraphrasing, or explanation of the card in the round. Second, if the other team never discusses the merits of their opponents card the only time I will ever intervene and call for that evidence is if a reasonable person would know it's facially a lie.

• Calling for your opponent's cards. It should not take more than 1 minute to find case cards. Do preflows before the round. Smh y'all.

• If you spread that's fine. Just be prepared to adjust if I need to clear or provide speech docs to your opponents to allow for accessibility and accommodation.

• My favorite question in cx is: Why? For example, "No I get that's what your evidence says but why?"

• Germs are scary. I don't like to shake hands. It's not you! It's me! [Before covid times this was prophetic].

• I don't like to time because it slows my flow in fast rounds but please flag overtime responses in speechs and raise your phone. Don't interrupt or use loud timers.

Ramblings on Trigger Warning Theory

Let me explain why I am writing this. This isn't because I'm right and you're wrong. I'm not trying to convince you. Nor should you cite this formally in round to win said round. Rather, a lot of you care so much about debate and theory in particular gets pretty personal fairly quickly that I want to explain why my hesitancy isn't personal to you either. I am not opposing theory as someone who is opposed to change in Public Forum.

- First, I would highly discourage running trigger warning theory in front of me. My grad school research and longstanding work outside of debate has tracked how queer, civil rights advocates, religious minorities, and political dissidents have been extensively censored over time through structural means. The suppression and elimination of critical race theory and BLM from schools and universities is an extension of this. I have found it very difficult to be tabula rasa on this issue. TW/anonymous opt outs are welcome if you so wish to include them, that is your prerogative, but like I said the lack of one is not a debate I can be fair on. Let me be clear. I do not dismiss that "triggers" are real. I do not deny your lived experience on face nor claim all of you are, or even a a significant number of you, are acting in bad faith. This is always about balancing tests. My entire academic research for over 8 years was about how structural oppressors abuse these frameworks of "sin," "harm," "other," to squash dissidents, silence suffragettes, hose civil rights marchers, and imprison queer people because of the "present danger they presented in their conduct or speech." I also understand that some folks in the literature circles claim there is a double bind. You are opting out of trigger warning debates but you aren't letting me opt out of debates I don't want to have either. First, I will never not listen to or engage in this debate. My discouragement above is rooted in my deep fear that I will let you down because I can't be as fair as I would be on another issue. I tell students all the time tabula rasa is a myth. I still think that. It's a goal we strive for to minimize intervention because we will never eliminate it. Second, I welcome teams to still offer tw and will not penalize you for doing so. Third, discussions on SV, intersectionality, and civil rights are always about trade offs. Maybe times will change but historically more oppression, suppression, and suffering has come from the abuse of the your "speech does me harm" principle than it benefits good faith social justice champions who want to create a safe space and a better place. If you want to discuss this empirical question (because dang there are so many sources and this is an appeal to my authority) I would love to chat about it.

Next, let me explain some specific reasons why I am resistant to TW theory in debate using terms we use in the literature. There is a longstanding historical, philosophical, and queer/critical theory concern on gatekeeper shift. If we begin drawing more and more abstract lines in terms of what content causes enough or certain "harm" that power can and will be co-opted and abused by the equally more powerful. Imagine if you had control over what speech was permitted versus your polar opposite actor in values. Now imagine they, via structural means, could begin to control that power for themselves only. In the last 250 years of the US alone I can prove more instances than not where this gatekeeping power was abused by government and powerful actors alike. I am told since this has changed in the last twenty years with societal movements so should we. I don't think we have changed that significantly. Just this year MAUS, a comic about the Holocaust, was banned in a municipality in Jan 22. Toni Morrison was banned from more than a dozen school districts in 2021 alone. PEN, which is a free press and speech org, tracked more than 125 bills, policies, or resolutions alone this year that banned queer, black, feminist, material be them books, films, or even topics in classrooms, libraries, and universities. Even in some of the bills passed and proposed the language being used is under the guise of causing "discomfort." "Sexuality" and discussions of certain civil rights topics is stricken from lesson plans all together under these frameworks. These trends now and then are alarming.

I also understand this could be minimizing the trauma you relive when a specific topic or graphic description is read in round. I again do not deny your experience on face ever. I just cannot comfortably see that framework co-opted and abused to suppress the mechanisms or values of equality and equity. So are you, Gabe, saying because the other actors steal a tool and abuse that tool it shouldn't be used for our shared common goals? Yes, if the powerful abuse that tool and it does more harm to the arc of history as it bends towards justice than I am going to oppose it. This can be a Heckler's Veto, Assassin's Veto, Poisoning The Well, whatever you want to call it. Even in debate I have seen screenshots of actual men discussing how they would always pick the opt out because they don't want to "debate girls on women issues in front of a girl judge." This is of course likely an incredibly small group but I am tired of seeing queer, feminist, or critical race theory based arguments being punted because of common terms or non-graphic descriptions. Those debates can be so enriching to the community and their absence means we are structurally disadvantaged with real world consequences that I think outweigh the impacts usually levied against this arg. I will defend this line for the powerless and will do so until I die.

All of these above claims are neither syllogisms or encyclopedias of events. I am fallible and so are those arguments. Hence let us debate this but just know my thoughts.

Like in my disclaimer on the other theory shell none of these arguments are truisms just my inner and honest thoughts to help you make strategic decisions in the round.

jonahpsah@gmail.com, put me on the chain and please send speech docs for case and rebuttal.

First year out, did PF for 8 years, semifinaled the prestigious 2018 middle school tournament of champions

I'm a flow judge, tech > truth etc. Everything said in a speech is true until someone says otherwise.

have fun/be funny; it's high school debate; I think rounds should be relaxed. that being said, I will do my best to take the round seriously. debate takes a lot of work and I know what it feels like to have judges who aren't trying their hardest, so I will do my best to match or exceed your effort.

Collapse (for your own good)

When deciding the round, I will look to the following: I'll evaluate weighing, then look if there is any extended offense being won off of the weighing, then to any other offense.

If it isn't in summary and final, I won't evaluate it (so extend case/whatever you're going for). Don’t just say “extend this argument/card,” you need to re-explain the argument/its warrants. I'm not really afraid to drop a team that is winning bc they screwed up their extensions. The one caveat is that I'm ok with the weighing debate unfolding kind of late: if there is new weighing in second summary, you can respond in first final.

Regarding speed: I can flow just about anything under 300 wpm if you are clear. A few caveats though: a) I won't flow off of a doc in PF unless I space out or something. I know that makes me kind of old-fashioned but as a wise man once told me, "this isn't an essay writing contest." If you ask before round, I will clear you so that you know exactly what I'm catching. b) SLOW DOWN FOR TAGS PLZZ like even in policy they do that, it barely takes more time

If it isn't frontlined in 2nd rebuttal, it's dropped. (This applies to offense and defense, but not weighing.)

It's not 2017, defense isn't sticky

cross is binding? obviously? what is the point otherwise? obviously bring up anything important in a speech. I will pay at least some attention to cross though so don't lie, it's kind of obvious

I don't care about presentation: wear whatever, be silly, swear if you want. this also means that the whole jostling-for-perceptual-dominance in cross stuff is unnecessary (in fact it kinda pisses me off). I'll give speaks based on how good the content of your speeches is, not how pretty you say it.

Unless evidence is a) going to decide the round and b) contested in a way that I can't resolve, I won't call or look at anything. I think evidence debates are the same as any other argument: something is true unless it is responded to. If someone indicts your ev, that indict is true until you say otherwise, and I'm not going to check it to make sure. The only time I will look at ev is if teams can't agree on facts about the evidence itself (eg. the date it was written, author quals, etc.).

An argument with evidence obviously carries more weight than one without, but I like when teams make a bunch of analytics, especially in rebuttal.

I'm ok with postrounding, if you disagree with my decision you don't have to dance around it with polite questions (as long as you aren't rude). It is entirely possible that I screw up a decision. I will say 2 things though: first, if I screw up it's probably at least partially on you. anything that can decide the round should be clearly laid out for me. second, you may convince me that I'm wrong, but that won't change anything. I can't change the ballot, so all that will happen is that I will feel kinda bad and you will still have lost. So by all means, go ahead and prove that I'm wrong, but it will only do so much for you.

FW: two thoughts: a) a group being underprioritized is not enough a reason to prioritize it: explain why there are fewer intervening actors or it leads to better real world policy etc. b) read it in case or rebuttal... I'm not gonna evaluate framing in summary, that's obviously so unfair.

Ks: I think Ks are awesome, I wrote/read some in high school (cap, securitization, orientalism). That being said, I was still in PF, so I'm not that familiar with most K lit. I also think Ks can be read kinda poorly, so make sure you have at least a link, impact and alt in your case (and that you extend them). It's pretty clear when people read args that they don't really understand themselves, and if you can't articulate your argument and I don't get it I won't vote for it.

theory: I will not lie. I find most theory rounds tedious and kind of boring and not that important. I learned a lot in debate, but I don't think I would have learned much more or less if everyone did or didn't disclose/paraphrase/whatever. That being said, I ended up having a lot of theory rounds, and I'm comfortable judging it. However, if anyone feels actively unsafe/uncomfortable, you don't have to whip out a shell: just tell me/message me on FB and I will stop the round.

I'm not a fan of reading progressive arguments on inexperienced kids -- it will not lead to better norms/interesting discourse, it's just kinda mean. If you are being a jerk I'll tank your speaks so just use your judgment. -Maya sachs

If you read dumb stuff (you know exactly what I mean) you're getting like 0 speaks. I just don't think friv theory/tricks/whatever are that funny, and beyond that I have no idea what benefit anyone gets from them.

shoutout to my boo thang george tiesi #thepartnership

30 speaks if you can name all 40 barbie movies from memory before round. no notes or anything. blindfolded. in order of release date. while spinning around in a circle. while balancing on one foot.

I debated for Bronx Science Public Forum from 2010-2014. I spoke first for most of my career and really value the strategy of the first cross and summary speech.

On summary, if you are going to break out a new case based on extensions, make sure it's logical, fair, and can help you. If you are going to do straight ref, then you better manage some form of offense. Just make sure there is a strategy and you can use it well. The final focus can't say anything that wasn't in the summary (other than framing).

Most of all, be ethical, clear, and present yourself well. Weigh a lot. 

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THAT MEANS I AM (PROBABLY) YOUR JUDGE. YIPEE!!

*:・ﾟ ₍ᐢ•ﻌ•ᐢ₎*:・ﾟ

HE/SHE/HIM/HER

D.K.SEEP@GMAIL.COM

BACKGROUND: Debated for four years for Horizon High School in Arizona, graduated 2019 and now I judge for Collegiate Academy in New York. I mostly ran performance/queer rage Ks in high school, if that matters to anybody reading.

CRASH COURSE: The floor is truly yours, run whatever you like I want to hear it!! Please explain your complicated lit, I really hate having to read a bunch of fine print in order to judge the round.Oh my gosh please please please use speechdrop.net I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE EMAIL CHAINS THEY TAKE SO STINKIN' LONG. STOP. I am fine with spreading, but please pause and emphasize important bits of your speeches. Card tags/authors, impacts, links, anything that you think NEEDS to be on my flow, take .5 seconds to pause and emphasize. Even raising your voice helps if you dont have the time to pause, it really helps me out on my flow. WEIGH WEIGH WEIGH, IMPACT ANALYSIS IS KEEEEYYY to winning my ballot! Also please extend, otherwise I will LITERALLY drop anything you did not extend by the end of the round.

PF: I never really was a PF person, so it's hard to say what I like to see in a PF debate. My big thing is impact analysis, I don't really care for "my evidence is better than YOUR evidence" debates. I feel like a lot of PF debates focus too much on things that don't really affect /my/ ballot (how recent your evidence is, statistics, etc.) which I personally don't like, but I also know thats just part of the event.

FRAMEWORK: I love me some good framework debate. If you're running traditional I think you should REALLY focus in on framework.Please, add some extra meat to your framework beyond "value: [BLANK], criterion: [blank],"I want to know why you chose your framework and how it fits into the round before you even get into contentions.

LINKS: To me, anything is a link. And Imean anything.You tell me it links, and I'll believe you.That is not the same for delinking, please tell me why a link is BS and I will believe you.Too many debaters have simply tried to tell me "this doesn't link, drop the argument," without telling mewhyit doesn't link.

IMPACTS: You need to really hammer in why your impacts win the round!! EVEN WITH EXTINCTION IMPACTS, TELL MEWHY IT MATTERS.YOU CANNOT JUST GIVE ME EXTINCTION IMPACTS AND EXPECT ME TO VOTE FOR YOU WITHOUT DOING THE PROPER WEIGHING!! Magnitude, scope, whatever,weigh. all. of. the. impacts. in. round.

PLANS/COUNTERPLANS: I'm lukewarm on plans, I think if you're gonna run a plan it should be very fleshed out otherwise why not just run a trad aff lol? Counterplans are cool too, but please just let me know when you ARE running a counterplan. Obviously plans and counterplans can be run as trad, but it's just to help me flow and keep track of what is being said, thank you!

KRITIKS: My faaaavooritteeeeee!!! I love em all!However, I have not competed in almost 5 years(ohgeezthatscrazyimgettingold)and I am NOT college edumacated. Please explain your lit!Add some extra analytics after cards, something, anything like that. I have a pretty good understanding of a lot of phil, but I just need my hand held a little bit.Also if your opponent clearly is confused, PLEASE DO NOT CONFUSE THEM MORE BY NOT EXPLAINING THINGS.That is really, really mean and I do not like it ONE BIT.This is why I encourage flex prep, let your opponent ask clarification questions and answer themHONESTLY.Oh and also please LABEL each section of the K!! Makes it a lot easier for me as a judge.

THEORY: Personally, I am not super big on theory. I like that debate doesn't have any rules, why argue about made up rules? Either way, I encourage theory, but please make the violation very very clear to me. AND PLEASE MAKE IT A WELL FLESHED OUT THEORY SHELL. IF I HAVE TO MAKE AN ENTIRE NEW FLOW FOR THEORY JUST FOR YOU TO SPEND 15 SECONDS ON IT I WILL BE SO MADD!!! Basically, if you are trying to win my ballot, do not think that a theory shell will do it.

TOPICALITY: I personally don't see why ANYBODY has to be topical in LD, so please please give me some clear impacts. Again, I'm willing to listen to it, but you really need some good impacts for me to vote on it.

DISCLOSURE: Same for above, I NEED a valid violation for disclosure especially. I think a lot of disclosure theory is very frivolous, so please flesh out your shell if you're going to run it in front of me.

PERFORMANCE: I love performance in debate. I come from a theatre background, so if you've always wanted to run performance and you've never done it before, I am the perfect judge to do it front of.Please do not drop your performance after your first speech because I will be so sad):

SPEAKER POINTS: Much to tabroom's dismay, I am not a fan of speaker points. It is my least favorite part of judging I hate having to give a number value to your speaking ability I think it is kind of dumb and doesn't make any sense in a debate setting. I'll almost always give pretty high speaks, unless you're like crazy offensive or something.

Well, that is basically everything I can think of. I encourage all debaters to have fun, debate is a really stressful activity and you all need to remember to prioritize yourselves and your own mental wellbeing. Please feel free to email me with ANY questions that you have before AND after the round! I am always happy to answer any questions and provide extra feedback as needed.

If you are still reading, pet this cat!

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　＼二つ

I am a parent judge and am new to judging. I am also new to the topic, so please explain your arguments thoroughly and avoid jargon.

Please do not spread; speak at a reasonable pace. If I cannot follow your argument, i will not vote off of it.

Please signpost.

I am fine with a healthy pace, but don't like a full on scream-and-gasp, stomping spread; I like to be able to actually process what you say. Be sure to emphasize key points and signpost. (If I don't flow it, it is unlikely that I will vote off of it). I like to hear authors' credentials and heavily frown upon power-tagging and heavy paraphrasing. Don't tell me, "I have a card that says..." unless you actually read the card and citation. I want to hear actual application of evidence/analysis through the round (not just shells/blocks), so explain to me how you actually interact with the opposing side or I will get frustrated as judge. Weigh impacts and pull them through framework; I overwhelmingly vote on offense (though it should have appropriately support for the moral framework in LD as well). Rudeness and condescension will do you no favors for speaks.

Flower Mound High School '23, Debated PF 2 Years, Outrounds of Gold ToC, TFA, and Nats Senior Year

Email for chain: ameysemail@gmail.com

Sending docs before speeches is preferable.

TLDR: Tech>Truth, read fun stuff. Cool with spreading even though I can’t flow it that well, just send a doc. Collapse well, extend clearly, weigh, win. I really like debating and judging theory, defaults are below.

LARP: Basic substance paradigm, check out Eli Glickman, Amogh Mahambare, or William Erard's paradigms for good info. Weighing is really important and lots of teams don’t know how to do it right. Weighing arguments in an intelligent manner will make it easy for you to get my ballot. Organization and signposting are also really important and make it easier for me to vote. DON’T BE SCARED OF COLLAPSING ON A SINGLE ARGUMENT, EVEN A TURN. I really enjoy clean collapsing even if it’s on a turn on your opponents case. If it’s strategic, it’s a really good and fun way to win my vote and I’ll probably boost your speaks too.

Framework: I really enjoy philosophical frameworks and arguments. If you have a unique way of looking at and framing a certain resolution, please go for it. Kant and Util are pretty interesting to me and I have the most knowledge on them, but feel free to run other frameworks as well if you can explain them properly.

Theory: Very open to voting on theory especially regarding disclosure practices. I default to reasonability, no RVIs, and DTA. Give me reasons as to why your opponent has to provide a CI, be dropped for reading a shell, or be dropped for a violation and I’ll vote on them though.

K’s: Little to no experience against or running these, will require a lot of explanation if you want to run complex Kritiks but of course I’m open to voting on them. Probably have the most understanding of Mollow out of any Kritikal argument.

Tricks/TT: No problem with them, but try not to run them in Pf if you don’t have a decent understanding.

Speaks: I’ll mostly separate speaks from the actual debate and award them based on presentational ability, but strategic decisions and good organization also go a long way. I’ll give you a +.5 boost if you shout out a friend that’s quit debate OR Sid Thandassery before your speech.

• Hello!

• I am a parent judge.

• I was not a debater in high school, but public speaking is an important part of my job.

• I am not a very experienced judge, so it is really important that you do not talk faster than conversational speed.

• Do NOT use debate jargon, if you choose to use this language please explain it thoroughly, or I will not understand it.

• I believe the best debaters are those who are respectful to one another while still showing their arguments to be superior to the arguments made by their opponents.

• I am voting on the issues each side raises in the round, so compare your arguments to the arguments made by your opponent.

• I do not want to be on the email chain - you can settle evidence disputes in round. I will look at evidence if it is absolutely necessary to the round, however do not rely on me to accurately evaluate "better" evidence.

• Good luck!

PF Paradigm: I am an experienced PF judge and PF coach on the national circuit. I judge primarily on impacts. You need to give a clear link story backed up with logic and evidence. Framework is important. Weighing is very important. It is better to acknowledge that your opponent may be winning a certain argument and explain how the impacts you are winning outweigh than it is to ignore that argument made by your opponent. Don't extend through ink. If your opponent attacks your argument you need to respond to that attack and not just repeat your original argument. I don't mind rapid conversational speed - especially while reading evidence, but no spreading. I will keep a good flow and judge primarily off the flow, but let's keep PF as an event where persuasive speaking style, logic, evidence, and refutation are all important. Also let's keep PF distinct from national circuit LD and national circuit policy -although I will listen to any arguments that you present, in public forum, I find arguments that are directly related to the impacts of the resolution to be the most persuasive. Theory arguments as far as arguing about reasonable burdens for upholding or refuting the resolution are fine, but I don't see any reason for formal theory shells in public forum and the debate should be primarily centered around the resolution.

LD Paradigm: I am an experienced LD judge. I do prefer traditional style LD. I am, however, OK with plans and counter-plans and I am OK with theory arguments concerning analysis of burdens. I am not a fan of Kritiks. I will try to be open to evaluate arguments presented in the round, but I do prefer that the debate be largely about the resolution instead of largely centered on theory. I am OK with fast conversational speed and I am OK with evidence being read a little faster than fast conversational as long as tag lines and analysis are not faster than fast conversational. I do believe that V / VC are required, but I don't believe that the V / VC are voting issues in and of themselves. That is, even if you convince me that your V / VC is superior (more important, better linked to the resolution) than your opponent's V / VC that is not enough for me to vote for you. You still need to prove that your case better upholds your V / VC than your opponent's case does. To win, you may do one of three things: (1) Prove that your V / VC is superior to your opponent's AND that your case better upholds that V / VC than your opponent's case does, OR (2) Accept your opponent's V / VC and prove that your case better upholds their V/VC than their case does. OR (3) Win an "even-if" combination of (1) and (2).

CX Paradigm: I am an experienced LD and PF judge (nationally and locally). I have judged policy debate at a number of tournaments over the years - including the final round of the NSDA national tournament in 2015. However, I am more experienced in PF and LD than I am in policy. I can handle speed significantly faster than the final round of NSDA nationals, but not at super-fast speed. (Evidence can be read fast if you slow down for tag lines and for analysis.) Topicality arguments are fine. I am not a fan of kritiks or critical affs.

Hello, I am a former traditional LD debater, with some experience with PF from Maggie Walker Governor's School in Richmond, Virginia, and current pre-law student at Fordham University. I have had experience at all levels of debate in high school.

I am flexible and responsive to various debating styles. If you debate progressive, I will flow your debate. If you are traditional, I will flow your debate. I appreciate when debaters offer their opponent the option to have a traditional round because this creates a better space for newer debaters, but I do not by any means expect it or drop debaters for not doing so.

If the round is non-traditional in any way, I will ask for speech docs. My email is pikaz1337@gmail.com. It helps me keep everything in order on my end, and it also means I can keep your arguments organized should I fail my flow. I will note if any cards are unethically cut or arguments misrepresented, but it will still be the duty of the opponent to point out that the evidence is deficient before I strike it. The counter to this is that if evidence is so unethically cut to the point that the argument is simply incoherent, then I just cannot flow it. This has only ever been a problem once, but the disclaimer is needed: bad evidence ethics makes for bad debates.

The only thing I don't like flat-out are tricks. All your opponent has to do to win the round if you use tricks is say "Tricks are For Kids," and I will immediately scratch it from the flow.

Make sure that if you are using progressive debate tactics, whether that means Kritiks, Theory, or some other thing I am not familiar with, it is clear what your tactic is intended to accomplish. It should make sense or be explained by the debater in-round during speeches. If I cannot rationally buy into it or the logical flow of the argument is just not there, I will not vote for you. I need to also buy that the goal you are seeking to achieve is more important than any discourse advantages of discussing whatever the resolution is. If a ballot for your K does not accomplish more than a ballot for your opponent to reward them for learning about a topic, I will default to voting for your opponent for contributing to an instructive debate on the merits of a specific policy. Respect for debaters' and all people's identities is also paramount: that is one thing not up for debate. If you have any questions about this paradigm, please bring it up before the round. If you are worried that I won't let something fly, I probably will but just ask me before the round. Treat your opponent with respect and honor the activity we are doing, and I'll be a happy judge.

Michael Siller Paradigm

About Me: I am a parent judge on behalf of either Stuyvesant High School or the Bronx High School of Science, depending on the tournament. I am not a "technical" judge. I have been a practicing attorney for over 30 years and have a good sense of what makes a persuasive argument and an effective presentation style.

Procedural Preferences: There are a few guidelines I will ask you to follow as you present your case, to allow me to most effectively understand and judge your arguments:

(i) Please identify yourself at the start. I want to make sure I get your names, schools, the side you will be arguing, and the order in which you will present so that I can correctly assign speaker points.

(ii) Please try to avoid speaking too quickly. I prefer that you speak clearly, focus on your most important points, and avoid trying to cram in every argument you can think of. It will be more difficult for me to follow the flow if you are speaking too quickly.

(iii) Mind your time: I will not be judging you by how many seconds you are under or over the limit. A few seconds over is not going to be penalized; on the other hand, you should strive to use up as much of your available time as possible.

(iv) Be polite. There's an apt maxim from the field of legal ethics: One may disagree without being disagreeable. Attack and criticize your opponents' arguments, not your opponents.

"Theory" arguments. If you intend to make theory arguments that's fine, provided you also engage on the merits of the topic at issue. Debaters will be judged and scored on how they address the assigned topic.

Evaluation Criteria: I will evaluate your presentation based on a combination of how well you: (a) appear to demonstrate a mastery of the substance (about which you may I assume I know far less than you); (b) present your arguments logically, coherently, and persuasively; and (c) refute and weigh your opponents' arguments, as well as on your presentation style (e.g., poise, professionalism, and ability to think on your feet). Concerning thinking on your feet, I pay particular attention to how well you comport yourself in cross-fire.

For purposes of sharing evidence, my email is mbsiller1@gmail.com

I wish everyone good luck and look forward to your presentations!

tech > truth

did PF for lambert, current freshman doing APDA at Harvard, here’s my competition record if that matters to you

add me to the chain: sahilsood@college.harvard.edu

send me full case and rebuttal docs with cut cards. no exceptions.

order of prefs: good theory>friv theory>traditional K's>meme cases (spark, ddev, etc)>substance>identity K's>non-T aff>trix, but i’ll eval anything

**note if you read a K of any sort: while I am receptive, you need to do adequate research of your own. I've seen K's in PF work and not work because the speech times are so short. if it is obviously stolen off of a policy or LD wiki, I will be much less receptive. if you choose to run these arguments, run them well.

regardless, win the flow and I'll vote for you

would love if you skipped grand cross and took 1:30 of prep

feel free to post round i think it’s educational

someone please call a TKO

speaks:

• 30 to any second speaker who can give a rebuttal off the flow (doc-botted rebuttals are fake smh)
• minimum 29.5's if you read anything that i have preffed higher than substance in my prefs above
• otherwise, i will probably average around 28.7-29 with speaks (i try to be generous)

I am new to competitive judging. I have a Master's Degree in Devised Theatre. My expertise is in communication and collaboration.

Hello, my name is Qibin

This is my second year and fifth tournament judging, I am a lay judge.

A few preferences:

1) Please don't rush/speak too fast

2) I may ask to see the evidence you cite

3) Please signpost clearly so I know what arguments you are addressing

4) Please weigh in summary and final focus

5) Please have clear extensions of your arguments so I can understand them better.

Let's have a fun and educational round!

hi i'm medha! i did natcirc pf for four years in high school & i'm now a college soph

in general: i get that you can use your computers and you can recite your whole speech from a doc but if i wanted to hear the word-for-word prewritten prep you (and whatever coach(es) you may have) typed up before the tournament i would just read the doc myself and eliminate the middleman (you). please for the sake of my sanity don't doc bot, and if you do, at least pretend you're not

tldr be chill, say something interesting, debate well, and tell me to call for sus evidence in ff. look at the tldr of pranav mantri's paradigm – i'm on the same vibe as him

the basics

- frontline offense & weighing in 2nd rebuttal, ideally frontline everything but i won't hate you if you don't

- defense is sticky

- paraphrasing is cool and honestly i would prefer it (only half-joking)

- i have a relatively solid understanding of progressive args, but i will say there is a very real chance i could make the wrong decision when evaluating one, so do some risk appetite self-eval before round

- i don't wanna be on the email chain & i also would rather not flow off a speech doc

- fully extend args in both summary and ff

- i can handle a considerable amount of speed (<300 wpm), just be clear

- i would consider myself tech > truth. i am willing to vote on arguments that i might personally believe to be factually untrue if they go completely uncontested; ie if your arg is that elmo is the head of mossad* and nobody argues otherwise, i'll buy it. on the flip side my threshold for responses to terrible args is obv low

specifically on evidence

I CANNOT OVERSTATE HOW LITTLE I CARE ABOUT EVIDENCE THAT NOBODY TELLS ME TO CALL FOR IN FF.

maybe this is a hot take but i quite literally have zero interest in unilaterally verifying whether your evidence is real or not. i firmly don't think it's my job as a judge to sleuth through your ev and see what's legit. even if you tell me you have evidence saying the world is unified under a secret governmental organization run fully by cows*, I WILL BUY IT IF NOBODY TELLS ME TO CALL FOR IT. this does not mean i condone bad evidence ethics. if you have a problem with your opps' evidence, PLEASE tell me to call for it and i will tank speaks and potentially the team if it's super bad. if yall spend the entirety of your speeches debating a single controversial piece of evidence but nobody tells me to call it in ff, i will drop it from my flow (in pain) and find somewhere else to vote. i do this bc 1) i am convinced it's your opps' job to police your ev ethics, not mine & 2) i think it's interventionist to let my unsolicited interpretation of your ev affect the round outcome

scenarios in which i will give auto-30 speaks (assuming you were not a jerk)

- if it’s your bubble (just lmk before the round) and you generally followed my paradigm

- if you read > 10 independent well-warranted, impacted, and weighed turns in first rebuttal

- if you're super funny

- if you bring me food or hot chocolate :)

in general i will be extremely generous w speaks as long as you're not rude bc imo speaker points can only be assigned in one of two ways: 1) to measure "how good you sound" which is variable to several factors you may not be able to control, or 2) to measure clarity/skill which is largely adjudicated by the actual decision anyway. therefore i have decided i don't care and almost everybody will be getting above 29s unless you do something egregious in round like addressing me by "judge" instead of just my name (kidding but like not really pls just call me medha)

overall

relax and have fun i just wanna judge a good round and not see anything racist/sexist/any other exclusionary -ist, so make those two things happen and you can show up in your pajamas or swear or eat mcdonalds in round or roast each other or whatever & i won't care

if you need any accommodations or have any questions, please let me know either irl before round or at my email: medha.tambe@columbia.edu

good luck & lmk if there's anything i can do to make the round less stressful/more accessible for you! also if both teams are down i am willing to scrap the debate and oversee a 2v2 chess match instead (again only half-joking)

* note: i may or may not actually believe elmo is the head of mossad and that cows run the world – if you make a convincing arg to me before/after round in favor of either or both i might possibly be inclined to give you 30 speaks

* note 2: i am unironically a really good lay judge in the sense that i am great at zoning out (if you ask me to, not in general obv lol) and then making a decision based off vibe. i have about a 97% accuracy rate in guessing decisions made by lay judges in rounds, so if you want me to judge lay or you have a lay panel and you'd rather not adapt lmk and i'll scrap the paradigm & judge lay

I am a parent lay judge and have been judging for the past few years.
This means try to keep the debate at a conversational speed.

I have a business and marketing background.

Whilst I will do my best to take notes, I do appreciate sound logic and constructive evidence.
It would be beneficial for you to hash out your link chain and narrative throughout the round.

Please engage with what your opponents say in their speeches and not just ignore it.

Above all, please make the debate an inclusive space and be respectful to your fellow debaters.
Remember to have fun!

Add me to the email chain: htang8717@yahoo.com

I'm a current freshman at the University of Pennsylvania with little to no experience in debate (lay judge). Please speak at a reasonable pace, enunciate, define terms that a non-expert may not be familiar with, and be respectful :) I will take notes and put aside my own views when judging.

Judged couple in-person and online tournament last year, still pretty new to PF debate judging, but I have been following debate topics very closely in the past couple years. Please keep your delivery slow and clear. I am looking forward to hearing from both sides arguments.

I debated at PolyPrep. My team code was Poly Prep TS.

Email Chain: gdtiesi@gmail.com

I hate when judges are way too picky about how kids debate so literally just do what you want. I'll adapt to you and anything you wanna do. I'm open to any args just if you're are running some crazy stuff, warrant well and make it digestible to my dumb pf brain. Also I don't care about the speaking part of the round but if I can't understand you I'll be a way worse judge.

Frontline is 2nd rebuttal, 2nd sum is too late imo

Also obviously nothing offensive, I'll instantly drop you if you endorse any sort of hate speech.

Disclosure theory: I will evaluate Disclosure like any other theory argument and will be as impartial as I can be. With that being said, you need to understand that I am probably the most anti-disclo debater on the circuit. Anyone that knows me well knows that. I truly do believe it's a bad norm and bad for debate. If you want, convince me! If you want to run it, and you are confident, I urge you to do it!

Speech docs:I don't like when teams use speech docs to get their point across. If I can't understand your speech I'm not reading your doc. If I don't get something on my flow, that is your fault.

Good Luck and have fun!

Shout out to my boo thang Jonah Sah #thepartnership

If you need more details, I will be mostly (some of her takes are... questionable) aligned with Sophia Lam.

—Updated for Glenbrooks 2022—

Background - current assistant PF coach at Blake, former LD coach at Brentwood (CA). Most familiar w/ progressive, policy-esque arguments, style, and norms, but won’t dock you for wanting a more traditional PF round.

Non-negotiables - be kind to those you are debating and to me (this looks a lot of ways: respectful cross, being nice to novices, not outspreading a local team at a circuit tournament, not stealing prep, etc.) and treat the round and arguments read with respect. Debate may be a game, but the implications of that game manifest in the real world.

• I am indifferent to having an email chain, and will call for ev as needed to make my decision.
• If we are going to have an email chain, THE TEAM SPEAKING FIRST should set it up before the round, and all docs should be sent immediately prior to the start of each speech.
• if we are going to do ev sharing on an email, put me on the chain: ktotz001@gmail.com

My internal speaks scale:

• Below 25 - something offensive or very very bad happened (please do not make me do this!)
• 25-27.5 - didn’t use all time strategically (varsity only), distracted from important parts of the debate, didn’t add anything new or relevant
• 27.5-29 - v good, some strategic comments, very few presentational issues, decent structuring
• 29-30 - wouldn’t be shocked to see you in outrounds, very few strategic notes, amazing structure, gives me distinct weighing and routes to the ballot.

Mostly, I feel that a debate is a debate is a debate and will evaluate any args presented to me on the flow. The rest are varying degrees of preferences I’ve developed, most are negotiable.

Speed - completely fine w/ most top speeds in PF, will clear for clarity and slow for speed TWICE before it impacts speaks.

• I do ask that you DON’T completely spread out your opponents and that you make speech docs available if going significantly faster than your opponents.

Summary split - I STRONGLY prefer that anything in final is included in summary. I give a little more lenience in PF than in other events on pulling from rebuttal, but ABSOLUTELY no brand new arguments in final focuses please!

Case turns - yes good! The more specific/contextualized to the opp’s case the better!

• I very strongly believe that advocating for inexcusable things (oppression of any form, extinction, dehumanization, etc.) is grounds to completely tank speaks (and possibly auto-loss). You shouldn’t advocate for bad things just bc you think you are a good enough debater to defend them.
• There’s a gray area of turns that I consider permissible, but as a test of competition. For example, climate change good is permissible as a way to make an opp going all in on climate change impacts sweat, but I would prefer very much to not vote exclusively on cc good bc I don’t believe it’s a valid claim supported by the bulk of the literature. While I typically vote tech over truth, voting for arguments I know aren’t true (but aren’t explicitly morally abhorrent) will always leave a bad taste in my mouth.

T/Theory - I have voted on theory in PF in the past and am likely to in the future. I need distinct paradigm issues/voters and a super compelling violation story to vote solely on theory.

*** I have a higher threshold for voting on t/theory than most PF judges - I think this is because I tend to prefer reasonability to competing interpretations sans in-round argumentation for competing interps and a very material way that one team has made this round irreparably unfair/uneducational/inaccessible.***

• norms I think are good - disclosure (prefer open source, but all kinds are good), ev ethics consistent w/ the NSDA event rules (means cut cards for paraphrased cases in PF), nearly anything related to accessibility and representation in debate
• gray-area norms - tw/cw (very good norm and should be provided before speech time with a way to opt out (especially for graphic descriptions of violence), but there is a difference between being genuinely triggered and unable to debate specific topics and just being uncomfortable. It's not my job to discern what is 'genuinely' triggering to you specifically, but it is your job as a debater to be respectful to your opponents at all times); IVIs/RVIs (probably needed to check friv theory, but will only vote on them very contextually)
• norms I think are bad - paraphrasing!! (especially without complete citations), running theory on a violation that doesn’t substantively impact the round, weaponization of theory to exclude teams/discussions from debate

K’s - good for debate and some of the best rounds I’ve had the honor to see in the past. Very hard to do well in LD, exceptionally hard to do well in PF due to time constraints, unfortunately. But, if you want to have a K debate, I am happy to judge it!!

• A prerequisite to advocating for any one critical theory of power is to understand and internalize that theory of power to the best of your ability - this means please don’t try to argue a K haphazardly just for laughs - doing so is a particularly gross form of privilege.
• most key part of the k is either the theory of power discussion or the ballot key discussion - both need to be very well developed throughout the debate.
• in all events but PF, the solvency of the alt is key. In PF, bc of the lack of plans, the framing/ballot key discourse replaces, but functions similarly to, the solvency of the alt.
• Most familiar with - various ontological theories (pessimistic, optimistic, nihilistic, etc.), most iterations of cap and neolib
• Somewhat familiar with - securitization, settler-colonialism, and IR K’s
• Least familiar with - higher-level, post-modern theories (looking specifically at Lacan here)

I'm new to judging Public Forum, having judged Speech for the last four years.

I ask that you speak slowly and clearly. Present arguments/points of view that address your position, supported by an adequate amount of evidentiary citations. Please try to be concise and to the point.

Please avoid a rapid delivery of arguments followed by a lot of citations which will make it difficult for me to follow and understand you. You can be firm and forceful in your positions, but not aggressive in your demeanor.

***penn update: if you're flight two, be outside the door ready to debate 10 minutes before your flight is scheduled to start. thanks!

i debated for oakwood w elle balle !

+0.5 speaker point boost: add me to your email chains/evidence docs: sylviet@sas.upenn.edu, please send a speech doc before constructive and rebuttal.

above all else, conduct yourself responsibly in round. please be respectful to your opponents, don't talk over each other in cross. i'll vote down teams that are -ist. the goal is for the debate space to be accessible and safe for everyone, act in a way that furthers that.

if you spread i will put down my pen and put my head in my hands. put the public back in public forum as leon huang would say :(

make sure your evidence says what you're asserting it says; if the other team calls for a card and the evidence is miscut/misconstrued, i'll cross it off my flow. on that, if you want me to look at a contested card post-round in order to factor it into my decision, tell me.

weigh!!!!! please make weighing comparative; explain to me how to resolve the clash between your two weighing mechanisms. definitely have it in summary and final focus, i'd love it to be in 2nd rebuttal.

signpost clearly during your speeches.

you MUST extend the same pieces of evidence throughout your back half speeches. final must match summary.

i ran, love and am comfortable evaluating Ks and prog, with two notes.

first, don't run progressive arguments against novice debaters. don't be mean. make sure your argument is accessible, and that there are ways for your opponents to engage.

second, it's extremely unlikely i'll vote on frivolous theory, or any shell with no clear violation. i think theory is fine but i will literally never be happy voting on it - especially disclosure. run at your own risk

let me know if there's anything i can do to make the round a more comfortable space. if you have thoughts/questions after the round, feel free to ask.

I am a parent judge who loves debate and debated LD in High School and worked as a lawyer. I am a lay judge who is learning (flay?). That being said, I do not fully know debate jargon.

Do not speak too quickly to be understood. If I do not hear an argument and understand it, I am not weighing it in the round. If you are speaking to quickly, I will not penalize your opponents for missing points in your speeches because they could not hear them.

I am a tech > truth judge. If one team does not rebut or weigh against another team's argument that argument, however untrue, stands in the round.

I do not know the specifics of card-cutting, but I value good evidence ethics. If another team asks for your evidence and you cannot produce it in five minutes, you don't have that evidence. I would like to be included in email chains with evidence. My email is hvarah@yahoo.com

That being said, debate is an amazing activity and one that I love. Compete with each other, but show respect to your opponents and the art of debate itself. Let's have some fun.

I'm a freshman in college, and I debated in public forum in high school. I judge a lot, so I'm happy to give advice and answer questions at the end of the round.

Add me to the email chain: rv2529@barnard.edu.

• I'm open to theory and progressive arguments when ran well.
• I can follow speed, but please provide a speech doc if you expect I will miss something on my flow. That being said, speed shouldn't tradeoff with clarity.

• In both rebuttals, I expect teams to 1) signpost as you go down the flow so that I know where you are and what is being responded to 2) weigh the arguments and not just say, “we outweigh, ” tell me which weighing mechanism and WHY you outweigh.

• For second rebuttal, frontline terminal defense and turns.
• PS: I like link-ins from case and preq. arguments a lot. I don't like when teams use their case arguments as their only responses ie. deterrence vs. escalation debate (interact with the individual warrants and links!)
• In summary, extend all contentions, blocks, frontlines you are collapsing on. Please weigh to show me how these arguments compare against one another.
• I like meta-weighing -- tell me which mechanism is better.
• Not a fan of sticky defense but I will consider it if that's what the round comes down to.
• The final focus speech is a good time to slow down and explain the argument and the direction the round is going in. Please do not bring in any new responses or implications during this speech.
• I generally enjoy listening to crossfire. Still, I will LISTEN to crossfire, but I will not FLOW crossfire. I can only evaluate good points made in cross if they are brought up in speeches later.
• Clarity and strategy are the key factors that will impact your final speaks.

• I like framework when it is well warranted and unique... I don't like "cost-benefit analysis" framework

Montville Highschool 23'

Rutgers University 27'

Hey, im Tanay. I debated for 4 years in PF, Parli and LD, and won the NJ state tournament for parli junior and senior year and qualified to Parli TOCs in my senior year.

Scroll down if your in PF.

Parli:

I think can get really muddled, to you have to make it clear to me as to why you win. I want a clear collapse in the last speech, and please WEIGH. impact comparison will win or lose rounds. Weighing ideally should start in the second speech, last is fine but doing it earlier allows for more contextualization in the back half. Always do meta weighing, just saying we outweigh on probability or something is not enough if your opp is doing contextual meta weighing of why scope outweighs probability. Make it clear to me as to WHY YOU WIN.

Make sure to make clear definitions in the beginning of the round to ensure a clear debate into later speeches. I'll mostly listen to any argument, as long as it isn't abhorrently abusive. Lastly, I enjoy when debaters go top down in their rebuttals and have some sort of signposts to me as to where I should be on the flow.

POIs - I expect a team to take at least 2 POIs per round. Raising your hand is enough to signal your question, competitors should be paying attention to any requests.

POOs - I'll take them into consideration, but if I come to conclusion right away I'll let you know. Otherwise I'll let you know of my decision in my RFD.

For the rest of the conventions, look to the live doc for tournament specific preferences.

PF:

My general judging preferences in PF don't change much from parli but i'll list some stuff that could be important below:

• ALWAYS WEIGH!! - This is not just for between straight impacts but also goes for when deliniating between what impact calc is more important. You should be doing that meta weighing for me throughout the round, e.g, timeframe ows magnitude for xyz reasons.

• Collapsing should ideally start in rebuttal.

• Don't go overkill on LBL especially in the back half of the round, there should be geninue world comparision. This means later speeches should prioritize judge instruction and telling me how to vote instead of just responding to everything they said. If all I have is just a bunch of LBL on my flow and 0 instruction of what I should prioritize or whats the highest layer, do not expect speaks to be high.

• I do not think defense is sticky

• Tech > truth, but if a argument is probably false the brightline for response is much lower compared to a arg that may be more true/more warranted.

• Don't really like progressive arguments in PF. If you're spreading and i cannot understand what you're saying, theres a greater chance things do not go in your favor.

• Speaks will start at 29 and either go up or down depending on what happens in the round. Good weighing, collapsing, and just instruction all go a long way in increasing your speaks.

Email: tanayv05@gmail.com

I am a parent judge with several PF tournaments under my belt since Fall 2023.

I expect debaters to treat each other with civility, though I like good clash, where you engage the other side's arguments rather than simply read off script. I will try to flow (though not during cross), and I've found roadmaps and a conversational rate both helpful in this regard.

Impact and weighing are VERY important. That said, I value style as well as argument. I especially appreciate when debaters refer back to their partner's words.

One last note: I have never called for cards, though I've wondered whether I should have. I think I will leave it to debaters to call attention to things like dubious sources or questionable interpretations.

tl;dr: your friendly neighborhood parent judge.

long version:

1. most importantly, be nice, polite, and respectful
2. use good evidence, bad evidence is bad
3. i don't know debate jargon
4. if you talk fast, i will turn off my ears (like a 850+ word case and card dumping in rebuttal, this won't win you the round!!!)
5. be persuasive but don't lie
6. i will not time you, but if you blatantly go over prep/speech time, i most likely won't care, so time your opponents!!!
7. cross will influence my decision, keep this in mind
8. if you want to win, tell me why your arguments matter more then your opponents, and make this clear

I'm Sean, any pronouns. I've debated 1 year of JV CEDA Policy debate and I've done about 2.5 years of pf and half a year of Parli. I like to think I'm pretty experienced, I can handle whatever speaking speed, if you're going to go fast just send me a speech doc. My general judging philosophy is that debate is a game, there is no truth value when the round starts. Tell me whatever and I will probably flow it unless it's violent to someone in the debate space.

I love to be included in things, especially things like email chains! sw4641@nyu.edu

I've read/hit pretty much everything, I like Ks quite a bit, especially weirder ones, so run whatever your heart desires.

I like link level debates a lot, and I feel like I see them pretty rarely in pf. Actually interacting with the other team's arguments rather than talking about your own is probably going to be more productive to me and other judges.

When it comes to weighing, I need you to tell me why your impact is better than the other team's, not just why your impact is good. Comparative weighing makes my job as a judge easier. I'm hearing way too many buzzwords like scope and magnitude, let's just cut it with the terms and tell me straight why your impacts matter more than the other team's.

For pf:

Second summary is a little late to be bringing up new responses, I don't weigh these as heavily and I'm really generous for the first final focus frontlining. Other than that, evidence and new stuff in final focus kind of goes out the window for me.

I know y'all are probably not too used to it but please make an email chain and get your opponent and me on it. Evidence ethics are super sketchy in this event and I just do not want to deal with the 20 minutes wasted every round looking and reading for cards. Just send your speech docs, especially if they use evidence, and we'll all be happier.

1. Try to be clear and concise.

2. Spend more time on your main argument than on your lesser arguments.

3. Similarly spend more time on countering your opponent's main argument than on their lesser arguments.

4. Try not to speed talk.

I am a lay judge. Please speak slowly and clearly. You will lose my attention if you speed talk.

Make a clear summary of your arguments upfront. Focus on your key arguments and provide substantive evidence. Do not waste time on less important, peripheral arguments.

Clear counter-arguments (with evidence) to your opponents' points can make or break your case.

Do not talk over each other in cross. Be respectful.

Please refrain from using debate jargon.

Email: yiwen.wu76@gmail.com

Please add both yiwen.wu76@gmail.com and mcleanpublicforum@gmail.com to the email chain.

Background: I am a parent judge. I have judged a few PF tournaments in the past (mainly on the local circuit).

PF: Please do not spread; explain your logic clearly. Do not use debate jargon, I probably won't understand it.

I will flow what I hear. Sign post with arguments not authors.

I will not evaluate arguments with weak or misleading evidence/warranting.

All offense/defense you want me to evaluate must be in both summary and final focus. Please weigh.

I will not understand or evaluate progressive arguments. 

Speaker Points: Please be polite and respectful at all times. I will take off speaker points if you are not doing well/rude in cross.

In your speech, please don't forget that you are speaking to an audience and the greatest arguments in the world won't help you if I can't understand what you're saying. For example, some issues include speaking so fast, lacking clear structure to arguments, mumbling, speaking in a low voice.

The best debaters can respond to the actual arguments the other team is making, while making their own argument.

On crossfire, craft questions that will get the other side to agree with your argument or a portion of the argument. Don't ask open ended questions that allow your opponent to speak endlessly. Ask specific pointed questions. If your opponent asks you a specific quesiton, don't give one word answers.

PF being what it is, I'd strongly prefer it if you treated me in rounds as a generally informed person off the street whom you're trying to persuade. Here is an excellent paradigm that you can treat as my own.

Two small additions: 1) I prefer that you summarize in summaries; group arguments, recap the debate, start weighing, focus on and resolve your clash, etc., rather than just running straight down the flow after rebuttal. 2) Theory or metadebate isn't appealing to me, nor do I think it gels well with the point of PF. I'd strongly prefer the debate to be about the substance of the topic.

I occasionally judge LD, in which case the anti-theory preference is softened but the rest should still apply.

Rapid speaking and excessive technical language may hinder your performance. It's acceptable to speak quickly as long as you remain clear. But if speed affects your clarity, it's better to slow down.

I won't share my decision post-round to ensure the tournament progresses smoothly and to uphold fairness in all debates. The decision will solely be reflected in the ballot.

I consider myself a lay judge, but I will attempt to flow during the round. Here are a few of my preferences to keep in mind:

• Please be clear and concise. You should be explaining your arguments (and context) in-depth. Give me a clear link that I can follow. As always, I need to hear good warranting in case AND hear it be extended.

• NO SPREADING. If I don’t understand an argument, I’m not voting for it.

• Organization matters, please signpost.

• Do comparative weighing. Give me something tangible to vote for. Tell me what is most important, and why I should be valuing this over everything else.

• It is easier for me to follow along if you could send the rhetoric of your case(s). My e-mail is treeonrock3@gmail.com

• Finally, the best debate rounds are inclusive and respectful. Be a good, kind person. You can be skilled and assertive without being rude.

Best of luck everyone!

Hi, I debated four years on the national circuit for Seven Lakes from 2018-2022.

gtoc 3x, nsda 3x, nsda finals

zhang.justi@northeastern.edu

Update for Harvard 2/17: im pretty serious about the "speed" line in my paradigm. i wont assume you said something if I didn't hear it/flow it in speech. I generally find myself voting for teams that do a better job with explanation and warranting rather than going super fast. I was never really a fast debater in high school, so I'd much prefer judging debates <250 wpm.

I will not flow off of or look at a doc. I do, however, want to be on the chain to expedite looking for evidence if necessary.

Defense -implicate the defense I won't do it for you AND weigh the defense against their case.

Turns -please extend warrants for turns and implicate them.... also weigh the turns against their case.

Weighing -Please make it comparative and interactive.

Frontlining - second rebuttal should frontline everything, no sticky defense.

speed - if I can't understand u and miss warrants, I'm not ghost extending them for you. So go as fast as you want at your own risk.

Progressive Arguments -I feel somewhat comfortable evaluating almost all progressive arguments. With that being said, I am very receptive to reasonability arguments and "we can't engage" answers as well.

msc-

• am okay with and would prefer to cut grand for a min of prep but up to debaters.
• please try to setup the email chain ahead of time so we can save time
• will not entertain post rounding.
• ill give speaks adjusted by division. for instance, an average varsity speech may receive a 28-28.5 in the varsity division, but that same speech may receive a 29-29.5 in JV etc.