Hi there! :) I am currently a third year debater at Woodward Academy!

Yes! please include me in the email chain -- 25kbrown@woodward.edu

A few things I like to see from debaters!

1. Utilizing CX. CX is your opportunity to jab at the other team, poke holes in their arguments, ask for clarification, and give me reasons to rethink particular arguments. Please take the time to think about how you can set up your arguments and Strat.
2. BE NICE!! yes debate is competitive but there is a such thing as "friendly competition." So please, be nice and kind toward your opponents.
3. Try giving rebuttal speeches off the flow! I love to see debator's challenge themselves by debating off the flow while still being clear and effective. This raises speaks through the roof!
4. Please invite clash and in depth arguments. It's going to be very hard for me to vote for you, if I don't understand your argument or if its not fleshed out. Prove it to me! Give me evidence based reason why I should vote for you!
5. Lastly, HAVE FUN! :) let loose, and use these opportunities to learn and grow as debators.

add me to the email chain - chrischendebate@gmail.com

Please slow down and be clear on analytics and signpost

Go for whatever arguments you want, I'll vote on it as long as it's done well (unless it's death good stuff racist etc)

For K's, am not that familiar with a lot of K's outside of common ones (set col, cap, fem ir, security etc) so please explain clearly

Generally, I think that three condo is probably fine, but can definitely be convinced otherwise.

Not a fan of aspec

Thaddeus Cross- 3rd year debater at Woodward Academy

I want to be on the email chain: thadcross25@gmail.com

Feel free to ask any questions before the round!

Top 3 things about debate:

1. Be nice to people! - you can be persuasive and nice, there is no reason to be rude

2. Speak clearly! - if I can't flow what you're saying, there is no point in saying it

3. Clash! - if your arguments don't interact with the other team's and apply to the debate, they're bad arguments

My thoughts on arguments and performance:

Cross-Ex: do your own cross-ex, you should know what you are saying, tag teaming is fine, but lowers speaks

Disadvantages: I like good turns case arguments and timeframe comparison for impact calculus.

Counterplans: I like well thought out counterplans with solvency advocates, I dislike bad process CPs that don't have a topic area specific solvency advocate.

Impact Turns: I will not vote for non-unique impact turns, there needs to be a compelling argument why the affirmative is worse than the status quo. I think negative teams win too often on impact turns that are not unique.

Kritiks on the negative: prove to me why the aff is worse than the status quo and how the alternative resolves the links of the kritik. I lean aff on framework (weighing the aff is definitely best for education and clash), but that can be changed with good debating.

Kritiks on the affirmative: Nobody in the first year division should be reading a critical affirmative. You are not good enough to read one as a first year. It is not educational as first years are still learning the fundamentals of debate (learn the rules before you break them). Sadly, I believe in clash and cannot vote down first years immediately for reading a critical affirmative, but the threshold to vote negative on Topicality is very low. Please be topical so that everyone in the round can learn and become better debaters in order to generate the skills necessary to effectively debate a critical affirmative.

My thoughts about debate as a game and educational space:

The best way to learn is asking questions - if you have post round questions please ask.

Debate is about education and competition- reading arguments as a time skew or pulling tricks is not fun for anyone (that doesn't mean I won't vote for it, but those don't gain many speaks)

Having fun is important to debates - I will reward rounds where everyone tries their best and has fun with high speaks for everyone

If you're running an email chain, please add me: Andrewgollner@gmail.com

he/him

About me: I debated one year of PF and three years of policy at Sequoyah High, and I debated three year of college policy at the University of Georgia. I was a 2N that generally runs policy offcase positions but, especially earlier in my debate career, I ran many critical positions. I'll try to be expressive during the round so that you can discern how I am receiving your arguments.

Judge Preferences: On a personal level, please be kind to your opponents. I dislike it when a team is unnecessarily rude or unsportsmanlike. I am completely willing to discuss my decision about a round in between rounds, so please ask me if you want me to clarify my decision or would like advice. You can email me any questions you have.

FOR PF/LD:

I am primarily a policy judge. This means

1. I am more comfortable with a faster pace. While I don't like the idea of spreading in PF and LD I can handle a faster pace.

2. I am decently technical. If an argument is dropped point it out, make sure I can draw a clean line through your speeches.

3. I am less used to theory backgrounds in your form of debate, slow down and explain these.

4. Ask me any specific questions you have.

FOR POLICY:

I recognize that my role is to serve as a neutral arbiter without predispositions towards certain arguments, but as this goal is elusive the following are my gut reactions to positions. I strive to ensure that any position (within reason, obviously not obscene or offensive) is a possible path to victory in front of myself.

CP: I love a well written CP which is tailored to your opponent's solvency advocate and that can be clearly explained and is substantiated by credible evidence. If your CP is supported by 1AC solvency evidence, I will be very impressed. Generic CPs are fine, I've read a ton of them, but the more you can at least explain your CP in the context of the affirmative's advantages the more likely you are to solve for their impact scenarios.

DA: Make sure to give a quick overview of the story during the neg block to clarify the intricacies of your position. If, instead of vaguely tagline making a turns case arg like "climate turns econ, resource shortages", you either read and later extend a piece of evidence or spend 10 to 15 seconds analytically creating a story of how climate change exasperates resource shortages and causes mass migrations which strain nation's financial systems, then I will lend far more risk to the disadvantage turning the case. Obviously the same goes for Aff turns the DA. I will also weigh smart analytical arguments on the disad if the negative fails to contest it properly. I'm also very persuaded when teams contest the warrants of their opponents evidence or point out flaws within their opponents evidence, whether it's a hidden contradiction or an unqualified author.

T: I've rarely gone for topicality but I have become increasingly cognizant of incidents in which I likely should have. My gut reaction is that competing interpretations can be a race to the bottom, but I have personally seen many affirmatives which stray far enough from the topic to warrant a debate centered over the resolution in that instance.

K: I used to run Ks pretty frequently in high school but I run them far less frequently now. I'm likely not deep in your literature base so be sure to explain your position and your link story clearly.

FW: My gut feeling is that debate is a game and that it should be fair, but I have seen many rounds where the affirmative team has done an excellent job of comparing the pedagogy of both models and won that their model is key for X type of education or accessibility there of. However, I am persuaded that a TVA only needs to provide reasonable inroads to the affirmatives research without necessarily having to actually solve for all of the affirmative. I do find the response that negs would only read DAs and ignore/"outweigh" the case to be effective - try to add some nuance to this question of why negs would or wouldn't still need to grapple with the case.

Non-traditional Aff: I've always run affs with USFG plan texts, but that doesn't mean that these positions are non-starters. I will be much more receptive to your affirmative if it is intricately tied to the topic area, even if it does refuse to engage the resolution itself for whichever reasons you provide.

Theory: I generally think 2 condo is good, more than that and things start to get a bit iffy.

Most importantly, please be kind to your opponents and have a good time.

he/him, junior @ Westminster

add me to the email chain: arthurguodebate@gmail.com

T/L

Please do line by line, flow, and answer arguments in the order presented

Clarity, judge instruction, and not being mean are good

K stuff

On the Neg

---I don't care what the substance of your argument is, all I care about is that you do line by line and explain how the K interacts with the Aff.

---I'm not going to list literature bases I'm familiar with because that shouldn't change how much you explain stuff.

---I will probably be more likely to vote for a strategy that centers on the alt/links turning the case than a "you link you lose" approach, but the second is possible if there's a big asymmetry in how the debate plays out.

---Framework, I try to resolve this first because it frequently determines how the rest of the debate is evaluated so I will never say "framework was a wash" unless neither team explains their interpretation. I don't really have any revolutionary thoughts here. However, I do think if the neg is trying to go for a you link, you lose/don't weigh the plan framework, there needs to be offense other than "caring about rhetoric is good". I've never heard a great reason that an Aff middle ground interpretation along the lines of "reps can be a basis for making the alt competitive but you should still weigh the case" doesn't solve this. Offense along the lines of "policymaking/fiat bad", or really good cards establishing a tradeoff between analyzing policy outcomes and analyzing rhetoric both seem fine.

---Framework for the Aff, the fastest way to lose a framework debate in front of me is to drop a series of the defensive arguments at the bottom of any framework 2nc/1nr.

---Specific impact explanation/how the K interacts with the case is also vital. Saying the word "militarism" or an analogy to the iraq war aren't impacts.

---Going to be honest, in a debate setting, trying to convince me utilitarianism is bad might be an uphill battle given I haven't heard any great alternative ethical frameworks that don't rely on utilitarian justifications. Thats not to say "extinction outweighs" is unbeatable in front of me, i just think I'll be persuaded better by other approaches to mitigating the Affs extinction impact including: answering the case, a plan exclusive framework interpretation, turns case arguments, having your own extinction impact, some sort of risk analysis argument (predictions fail, conjunctive fallacy etc.) a root cause claim (securitization makes threats inevitable etc.).

On the Aff

---The 2AR I am most likely to vote on has a counter interp that defines words in the resolution in an attempt to solve some neg offense (doesn't necessarily mean traditional definitions) or at the very least, a clear vision of what the topic looks like. Establishing a role for the neg beyond "you can read baudrillard" will help you a lot. Fairness is an impact (if the neg takes the time to explain why), clash might be a better one though.

Policy stuff

I care about evidence quality but only insofar as its debated out. i.e If the neg's politics uniqueness cards are far better than the Aff's but only the Aff is doing evidence comparison/spin, I'll probably end up Aff.

Absolute defense/presumption is a thing.

I'll go either way on judge-kick.

I think predictable limits matter a lot and that unpredictable but limiting interpretations don't solve anything. I can be convinced that small differences in card quality/predictability are outweighed by a big limits DA though.

The neg probably needs a counter interpretation in plan text in a vacuum debates.

theory predispositions (none of these are strongly held).

---I find the argument that competition determines legitimacy fairly persuasive. It seems to me that going for theory while conceding the CP competes is analogous to ASPEC or going for T without reading any definitions of words in the resolution.

---For process cps, there is a big difference between CPs that solve by causing the Aff via follow on, and CPs that fiat the plan but said action is conditioned on X. I.e a CP that has Mexico recommend the plan but doesn't fiat anything else is way more competitive/legitimate than a CP that fiats the plan if Mexico agrees.

---Condo debates---I think that debates where the Aff defends 2 condo and the neg defends 3 are kinda silly. The neg should defend conditionality and the Aff should defend dispositionality, unconditionality et cetera.

---Very ambivalent about everything else, ill go either way on condo, process cps, international fiat etc.

Anna Jane Harben - Third Year Debater for Woodward (AJ is also fine)

Pronouns - She/her

Please put me on the email chain 25aharben@woodward.edu

Main things to remember about debate:

1. Be nice — there is a difference between being assertive and being aggressive
2. Argument clash — it's important that your arguments interact with other arguments in the debate and that you support your claims with warrants
3. Line by line is essential — it makes it much easier to follow the debate when you have clear line by line
4. Be clear — speaking fast is great until no one can understand you. If you're not clear its better to slow down
5. Please ask me questions that's the only way to learn!

Use CX time to your advantage. It's extra speech time for you and a place to set up your strategy for the rest of the debate

she/her/hers

add me to the chain: 24amurthy@woodward.edu

Woodward '24

General:

- Be respectful to your opponents throughout the entire round

- Racism/homophobia/sexism/etc intolerable. Auto-loss

- Clarity>Speed online.

- ROADMAPS.

- slow down on analytics

- cameras on is preferred, however, if you are unable to I understand.

- down for any argument as long as it's not offensive.

Case:

- IMPACT ANALYSIS in last speeches!! Why should I weigh the aff first?

- remember to answer all turns/squo-solves on case

- open to voting on presumption so defend the case well

DAs:

- must have a complete shell read in order for me to weigh

- not super keen on reading new DAs in the block

- explain how the aff specifically links

- impact calc is always good

CPs:

- must have a solvency advocate in the 1NC

- run w/ a net benefit always (internal net benefits also works)

Ks:

- SPECIFIC LINKS

- be able to explain the thesis of the K in simple terms

• be able to explain in cx

T:

- if you are going for T - evidence comparison is a must.

- Impact out the violation

Theory:

If you're going for theory it needs to be almost the entire 2NR/2AR with nuanced impacts/etc

Extra:

• be funny and I'll give you high speaks

- be patient with tech issues - they're inevitable

- most importantly have fun

2nd year debater at Woodward

I want to be on the email chain: 25lpaladugu@woodward.edu

If your a rookie reading this ignore everything below just try to clash with your opponents and do impact calc (I promise you'll get super high speaks if you do both!)

tech >>> truth

If an arg is dropped, the opposing team still has to extend it with warrants

clash >>> tricks

I get it tricks r a part of debate, but even if you win cause of a trick, your speaks will be alright at best

clarity >> speed

If I can't understand you; I can't flow

I'll only shout "clear" if I cannot understand you for a long period of time

No hiding ASPEC (like you'll at least get -3 speaks)

Overviews should have a point so don't re-explain things that don't need to be explained (confusing Ks NEED overviews tho)

I'm a WA debater so I am heavily influenced by Ms. B and Coach B

There paradigms are below:

https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?search_first=maggie&search_last=berthiaume

https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?search_first=&search_last=batterman

Last edited on 5/27/23 to rewrite the sections on experience, Statement on Racism, and K Affirmatives.

Pronouns: she/they

Experience: I have spent my entire life in the debate community one way or another. That said, I spent five years debating middle school/high school, took a break from debating in undergrad, then came back to judge and coach for a variety of schools.

Statement on Racism (& other Prejudices) in Debate

Debate should encourage students to see themselves as agents capable of acting to create a better world. We will not achieve this vision for our activity so long as we pretend it is in a realm separate from reality. Judges have an ethical obligation to oppose prejudice in round including but by no means limited to: racism, queerphobia, antisemitism, sexism, Islamophobia, ableism, and classism, among others. Debate, as an activity, has its fair share of structural inequities. We, as coaches and judges, need to address these and be congnizant of them in our decisions.

General Philosophy

I see the role of the judge as that of an educator concerned primarily with what teams learn from the experience. Therefore, the most important aspect of being a judge, to me, is to provide good constructive criticism to teams about their arguments and performance, and to promote the educational qualities of debate. When teams are using prep time, I am usually writing speech by speech feedback for my ballots––which I very much hope teams and their judges will read. As a judge, I want you to come out of the round, win or lose, feeling like you learned something worthwhile.

As an educator concerned with what can be learned from the round, I think the quality of arguments are much more important than their quantity, and whenever possible prefer to reward well researched and articulated arguments more than arguments will few warrants that might be read in the hopes of their being dropped. I prefer to decide rounds based upon the meaning of the arguments presented and their clash rather than by concession.

I flow the round based on what I hear, preferring not to use speech documents. For this reason, clarity is more important than speed. For an argument to exist in the round, it needs to be spoken intelligibly. Rounds that are slower typically offer better quality arguments and fewer mistakes.

Argument Specific preferences:

Plan-less critical affirmatives: I am happy to judge and vote on them. K affs are a useful tool for contesting the norms of debate, including those which are the most problematic in the activity. Over time, I have changed my threshold on their topicality. These days, my position is that so long as they are clearly related to the topic, I am happy to consider them topical. When aff teams argue critical affirmatives, I strongly prefer there be a specific solvency mechanism for their interpretation of the role of the ballot. For negative teams arguing against K affs, I have a strong preference for specific case answers. Given that K affs are a fixture of debate and are generally available to find on open evidence and the caselist wiki, prepping to specifically answer them should be possible. While I am unlikely to vote in favor of arguments that would outright eliminate K affs in debate, counter kritiks are a strategy I am amenable to.

Kritiks: At its most fundamental level, a kritik is a critical argument that examines the consequences of the assumptions made in another argument. I love well run kritiks, but for me to decide in favor of a kritik it needs a specific link to the assumptions in the 1AC and a clearly articulated alternative that involves a specific action (as opposed to a vague alt). Experience informs me that K's with generic links and vague alternatives make for bad debate.

Framework: Lately this term seems to have become a synonym for a kind of impact calculus that instead of focusing on magnitude, risk, and time-frame attempts to convince me to discard all impacts but those of the team running this argument. Framework, as I understand it, is a synonym to theory and is about what the rules of debate should be. Why should it be a rule of debate that we should only consider one type of impact? It seems all impacts in debate have already boiled themselves down to extinction.

Topicality: Please slow down so that I can hear all your arguments and flow all their warrants. The quality of your T arguments is much more important to me––especially if you argue about the precedent the round sets––than how many stock voters you can read. I may prefer teams that offer a clear argument on topicality to those that rely on spreading, however tactically advantages the quickly read arguments may be.

Counter plans: The burden of demonstrating solvency is on the negative, especially with PICs. PICs are probably bad for debate. Most of the time they are just a proposal to do the plan but in a more ridiculous way that would likely never happen. So if you are going to run a PIC, make sure to argue that changing whatever aspect of the plan your PIC hinges on is realistically feasible and reasonably advantageous. Otherwise, I will do everything I can to avoid deciding the round on them.

Conditionality: I have no problem with the negative making a couple conditional arguments. That said, I think relying on a large number of conditional arguments to skew the aff typically backfires with the neg being unable to devote enough time to create a strong argument. So, I typically decide conditionality debates with a large number of conditional arguments in favor of the aff, not because they make debate too hard for the aff, but because they make debating well hard for everyone in the round.

For rookie/novice debaters:

If you're reading this, then you're already a step ahead and thinking about the skills you will need to be building for JV and varsity debate. What I want to see most in rookie/novice debates is that teams are flowing and clearly responding to each other.

pasdebate@gmail.com

Subject the email chain - Tournament Name Round # - Aff Team AFF vs Neg Team NEG

Debated at Maine East (2016-2020, TOC Circuit) and the University of Pittsburgh (2020-2023, NDT Qual)

I will boost speaker points if you follow @careerparth on tiktok, bring (vegetarian) food/snacks, and end the debate as fast as possible.

I took most of this paradigm from Reed Van Schenck:

Career wise, my arguments of preference were more critical (Afropessimism, Settler Colonialism, Capitalism, and the likes). I enjoy judging clash debates, policy vs critical. Traditional policy debaters should take note of my lack of experience in policy v policy debates and rank me very low on their judging preferences.

The one thing you should know if you want my ballot is this: If you say something, defend it. I mean this in the fullest sense: Do not disavow arguments that you or your partner make in binding speeches and cross-examination periods, but rather defend them passionately and holistically. If you endorse any strategy, you should not just acknowledge but maintain its implications in all relevant realms of the debate. The quickest way to lose in front of me is to be apprehensive about your own claims.

When in doubt, referring to the judging philosophies of the following folks will do you well: Micah Weese, Reed Van Schenck, Calum Matheson, Alex Holguin, & Alex Reznik

Everything below this line is a proclivity of mine that can be negotiated through debate:

I think that debate is a game with pedagogical and political implications. As such, I see my role as a judge as primarily to determine who won the debate but also to facilitate the debaters' learning. Everything can be an impact if you find a way to weigh it against other impacts, this includes procedural fairness. When my ballot is decided on the impact debate, I tend to vote for whoever better explains the material consequence of their impact. Use examples. Examples can help to elucidate (the lack of) solvency, establish link stories, make comparative arguments, and so many more useful things. They are also helpful for establishing your expertise on the topic. All thing said, at the end of the day, I will adapt to your argument style.

I dislike judges who exclude debaters because of what they decide to read in a debate round, I will NOT do that as long as you don't say anything racist, sexist, etc.

Speaker points are arbitrary. I tend to give higher speaker points to debaters who show a thorough understanding of the arguments they present. I am especially impressed by debaters who efficiently collapse in the final rebuttals. I will boost speaker points if rebuttals are given successfully with prep time remaining and/or off the flow!

Public Forum Debate

The faster you end the debate, the higher your speaks.

I am a flow-centric judge on the condition your arguments are backed with evidence and are logical. My background is in policy debate, but regardless of style, and especially important in PF, I think it's necessary to craft a broad story that connects what the issue is, what your solution is, and why you think you should win the debate.

I like evidence qualification comparisons and "if this, then that" statements when tied together with logical assumptions that can be made. Demonstrating ethos, confidence, and good command of your and your opponent's arguments is also very important in getting my ballot.

I will like listening to you more if you read smart, innovative arguments. Don't be rude, cocky, and/or overly aggressive especially if your debating and arguments can't back up that "talk." Not a good look.

Give an order before your speech