Last changed on
Thu March 21, 2024 at 3:11 PM EDT
TL;DR: Convince me of a story, tell me why it's true, treat me like a smart baby.
email me evidence at dtimor@emory.edu
About Me: I have a solid speech background but a more solid debate background from competing at Valley International Prep in local circuit Parli for my first two years and national circuit PF for my last two (the T in VIP GT). Quartered at the TOC in 2019 and got 11th at NSDA in 2020.
How to Win the Round: I'll break it down for you.
Framing: This is the top layer of the round. It's basically any debate on what is the most important argument in the round (i.e. weighing or role of the ballot). If an impact is effectively argued to be the most important in the round I'll consider it first, and whatever team best links into this impact will win the round. Make your impact the most important in the round.
Impact Terminalization: Make your impact clear, if I don't know what your impact is i'm gonna have a lot of trouble voting for it. Usually this means a specific scenario with numbers to contextualize what it means. Give me either a number or a very VERY clear image of what I'm voting for.
Links: I need to know how your impact happens, starting from the implementation of the resolution all the way to your terminalization. Tell me the chain of events that follows after I vote aff or neg. Try not to be convoluted, simple intuitive link chains are the easiest thing for me to vote on.
CONSISTENT THEMES THAT WILL HELP YOU WIN THE ROUND:
Narrative: Tell me a story, i want to vote for a good story both consciously and subconsciously. This is a great practice to adopt because it works well on all types of judges. Simply put, people like stories so tell a good one.
Warrants: I'll keep this short, without warrants you won't win. Every claim you make needs to come with an explanation as to WHY it's true. If i can't answer the question "Why is this true" for every step of your link chain, it will be incredibly difficult for me to vote for your argument.
Summary FF Synchronization: In most rounds, summary wins the round and FF explains why you won. That means that anything in FF MUST be in summary, no questions about it. I don't care if they dropped defense from rebuttal. If it was important enough to be in FF and matters that much to my decision, it would've been in summary, if it wasn't that's on you, get creative with what the summary DID extend.
Tech Stuff:
1. Frontline turns in 2nd rebuttal.
2. Overviews are fine but they have to actually interact with your opponents arguments. My favorite overview is one that uses your in case arguments and contextualizes and weighs them to make the entire round center around that argument.
3. I like to act like I know theory well, but I'm a normal PF kid so like, I'll evaluate it like a normal argument. This doesn't mean don't read theory, just don't expect me to know all the ins and outs of the rules of theory. At the end of the day, if you're debating the shells well and are following the rules i outlined above to win my ballot you should have no problem winning the round on a theory shell. None of this should dissuade you from calling out abuse, real abuse ruins debate and should definitely be called out and voted against if you win the shell AND if you do a good job explaining the abuse I'll vote off of paragraph theory. *FYI, I think paraphrasing is good and disclosure is bad*
4. Ks are fine, but like I said earlier, don't expect me to be a pro at evaluating them. I've read like, one ever, so do with that what you will. If you read a K you increase the probability that I vote incorrectly because I'm simply less experienced with that form of debate, nonetheless if you clearly won I should be able to see that.
5. This one's big: saying a tagline is not an extension. Tell me the argument AGAIN.
Other Things:
I give speaker points based on how well you speak (hence the name SPEAKer points), if you have a problem with that let me know in speech.
mostly stolen from my partner:
Speed: Keep it under 270 WPM. Quality>Quantity
I’m logic >>>>>> evidence. You can win my ballot without reading a single card. I care about ideas, not authors. I will not evaluate a card without a warrant. The warrant can be either in the card or made analytically by you. Only evidence > logic if both teams have rock solid logic but one has evidence.
Take your opponents at their highest ground. Don't lie to me. If they responded to your argument, don't say that they conceded it. If they read a warrant or an impact, don't tell me that they didn't. That's lazy, disingenuous, and bad debating. You'll do a lot better by saying, "Even if you believe everything my opponents said, we STILL win the round," and then weighing your arguments against the best iteration of theirs.
(Stolen from Callan Hazeldine (Stolen from Danny Cigale)) I will try my best to be "tech over truth", but I am a just a young man and I do have my own thoughts in my head. To that end, my threshold for responses goes up the more extravagant an argument is. For example, an argument about a conventional war seems more persuasive to me than an argument about a nuclear war. That being said, I will not punish you if – and I would even encourage you to – make novel and counter intuitive arguments; I just expect that you will put in the work to persuade me.
I will disclose no matter what... even if it's against tournament rules (just don't tell on me). My least favorite thing as a debater was not getting any feedback or knowing the results of a round.
I'll only call for evidence if there is debate about what the evidence says or if you tell me to for a good reason.
Feel free to post-round me if you disagree with or have questions about my decision. I think post-rounding will help you improve/understand my decision better and will make me a better judge.
