Hello, my name is Calvin. I debated on the national circuit frequently during high school, and have been involved in PF since 6th grade. I'm now a first-year student at Drake University majoring in Law, Politics, and society on a prelaw track. I am also an assistant coach at Roosevelt.

Add me on the email chain: calvinj.goldsberry@gmail.com

When I am judging, you will have my full attention. I will not be on social media or other websites (Yes, even during crossfire).

Feel free to email me with any questions/concerns etc.

TLDR: I am a tech judge.

Judging Philosophy

I am tabula rasa/tech>truth. This means i will enter the round as if i have 0 topic knowledge, and will evaluate anything I can understand. If your opponents say the sky is green and you drop it, the sky is green.

I don't care about speed as long as you can produce a speech doc that I can follow.

Defence is not sticky.

Extensions must include all parts of an argument, including the uniqueness, link, internal link, and impact.

Evidence ethics are VERY important to me. fabricating/being unable to produce evidence will result in a TKO.

Teams should have evidence readily available in a cut card format as per NSDA guidelines.

How to win my ballot

SIGNPOST pls bro im begging

Clarity>speed

Collapsing is important if you want to avoid judge intervention. It can be extremely difficult if not impossible to weigh 3+ pieces of offense in 2 minutes.

I won't vote on crossfire, but that doesn't excuse being rude. You can be aggressive in cross, but please treat your opponents with respect.

If something important happens in cross, bring it up in the next speech or I won't flow it.

One well-warranted analytic is better than two blippy pieces of evidence

Good COMPARATIVE weighing will probably win you the debate.

Make your evidence comparison more than just "we postdate" why does postdating matter? Get creative with it.

Implicate your responses.

Efficient evidence exchanges facilitate a faster debate, fair competition, and a less annoyed judge.

Preflow before I show up.

Kritiks

I love K debates. I think these debates are extremely important for the debate space and are highly educational when they are run well. I am somewhat inexperienced in evaluating these so please explain things in simple terms so I can understand the warrant-level debate.

Theory

Generally speaking, I believe that open-source disclosure is good and paraphrasing is bad. That said, I am still tech>truth in theory debates.

I struggle to evaluate RVIs, they do not make much sense to me. Why should you win for being fair?

Theory debates can be hard to evaluate; if you want to win, make it simple for me.

Making the round less messy is as simple as collapsing on a standard, just like you would collapse on a link in a substance round.

Tricks

These are uneducational and impossible to evaluate, please don't read them.

Just don't.

Speaker Points

I assign speaker points based on strategy and speaking ability. Smart arguments usually get high speaks. Being condescending/demeaning in cross loses speaks.

Less than 25: You intentionally did something abusive/offensive. I have probably contacted Tab.

25-26: You are SERIOUSLY grinding my gears.

26-27: You made some mistakes.

27-28: Average.

28-29: Pretty good!

29-30: One of the best teams at this tournament.

Other stuff
If you have any questions please send me an email or talk to me before round. also, feel free to postround me; it makes me a better judge and I do not find it offensive.

Be "Good people who happen to be good speakers"

Been involved in debate for over 20 years. Coached mostly PF and Congress, however have judged all events at just about every level.

Speed is fine in LD and policy, but in pf do not sacrifice clarity for speed.

Theory should ONLY ever be used if there is a real violation in the round that skews it greatly.

I like numbers, I will favor an economic impact over a general good of humanity argument. No warm fuzzies.

I HATE performance in any way shape or form. This will end the round for me. If you want to do a passion project go do OO.

Debate the topic. Tie your arguments to the topic. As long as you can establish a clear link we are good to go.

Mostly just ask what you want to know, I am pretty open and just like good debate.

Email for chains Akkrell@hotmail.com

Thomas Mayes

I do not want to be on the e-mail chain.

He/him/his

You are likely to run into me at Iowa tournaments. I nearly always judge LD. (I judge P/F and Policy on rare occasion. Following my LD paradigm in those events would serve you well also.)

Please keep in mind the following three things, which apply to any form of argument you may consider using:
1. Tell me what to prefer.
2. Tell me why to prefer it.
3. Tell me that you did what I should prefer (at least better than your adversary).

My job is to evaluate the round that is presented to me, as it is presented to me. I evaluate rounds based on their internal competitiveness, not against some external standard of goodness.

I have no default "positions" or evaluative mechanisms. I will listen to any type of argument. If there is weighing to do, please do it. Since this is a competitive activity, I must award a ballot to someone. If there is no reason to affirm or negate at the end of the round, and I am left to my own devices (meaning neither competitor has done a good job of attending to the three items above), I will penalize the debater who made the biggest strategic error by assigning that debater the loss. Since this is a competitive activity, I will be constrained by any instructions on the ballot (such as instructions regarding burdens, speaker point allocations, etc.).

I am fairly generous with speaker points, tending to cluster around a 27.5 on the customary 1-30 scale. To ensure I remain generous, (1) be smart, (2) be authentic, (3) be decent to your adversary, (4) be clever, and (5) keep trying and pressing your positions until the timer goes off (even if you think you're losing).

Background: I have degrees from Baylor, Iowa, and Lehigh. I have been a practicing attorney for many years and am currently general counsel for the Iowa Department of Education. My favorite things are running, spicy food, caffeine, collecting passport stamps, and Luka Doncic.

Speechdrop.net is better than email chains for in-round file sharing, in my opinion, but feel free to contact me via Kalen.pop@gmail.com

I've been involved in policy debate since 2012 and a coach since 2018, currently Head Coach at Iowa City Liberty High School. By day, I'm employed as a reporter for a newspaper in Southeast Iowa.

TLDR: I'll vote on anything you can make me understand. I love DA/CP/Case debates, I'm not a bad judge for the Kritik, but I've been told I'm not a great judge for it either. Speed reading is fine in the abstract, but I do hold debaters to a higher standard of clarity than I think many other judges to. Speed-reading through your analytics will guarantee I miss something, and tank your speaks. Arguments pnly count if they make it onto my flow.

Detailed Paradigm: everything below this line is background on my opinions, NOT a hard and fast rule about how you should debate in front of me. I do everything in my power to be cool about it, check bias at the door, etc.

Speed Reading: is fine. But don't spread analytics, please. 250 WPM on analytical arguments is really pushing it. I know that some judges can flow that fast, but I am not one of them: my handwriting sucks and is capped at like, normal tagline pace. Otherwise, you're free to go as fast as I can comprehend. I'll yell "CLEAR!" if I can't.

Policy stuff: Yeah of course I'll vote on disads and counterplans and case arguments and topicality. Are there people who don't?

CP theory: Listen, I'll vote on it, but I won't like it. I strongly advise that theory-loving 2As give warranted voters in the speech, and that 1ARs do actual line-by-line rather than pre-written monologues.

Kritiks: are pretty rad, whether they're read as part of a 12-off 1NC or a 1-off, no case strat. I want to be clear, though: I REALLY NEED to understand what you're saying to vote for you with confidence. I find a lot of very talented K debaters just assume that I know what "biopolitical assemblages of ontological Being" or whatever means. I do not.

K affs: are fine. I myself usually stuck to policy stuff when I debated, but I'll hear it out. You should probably have a good reason not to be topical, though. Some people have told me I'm a bad judge for K affs, others have told me I was the most insightful judge at the tournament. (More have told me I was a bad judge for it though, for what it's worth.)

Other debate formats:

PF: PF is traditionally about being persuasive, whereas policy is about being right. If you can do both I'll be impressed and probably give you good speaks. Otherwise, I feel like I have a more or less firm grasp on your activity, but I certainly don't have all of its norms memorized.

LD: I have no idea how your activity works and at this point I'm too afraid to ask. Whoever successfully teaches me LD debate will get an automatic 30. Please dumb your Ks down for me, I'm a policy hack.

Congress: Listen, I did one congress round in high school and left it with 0 understanding of how it's supposed to work. If I'm in the back of your room, it means tabroom made a mistake. Because of my background in policy debate, I imagine I'll be biased in favor of better arguments rather than better decorum.

yes please include me on email chain- warrensprouse@gmail.com

Please turn on your cameras when you are speaking if at all possible.

Remember to weigh claims and warrants within your evidence; I am much more likely to vote on well-explained arguments than taglines, even if those arguments do not necessarily have evidence to back them up. If you can do both- awesome.

Do not be rude or disrespectful to your opponents or your partner.

Tell me in the last rebuttals how to weigh your arguments and how to compare your impacts with the other team’s.

If you read cards that are not in the novice packet and were given to you by your varsity debaters, that is cheating and I will yell at you.

What is up

I wrote my old paradigm when I was getting into judging after being out of the activity for 7 years (graduated high school in 2015). Apparently it made me seem like an old dad judge. After a couple years judging tournaments, including some finals and multiple bid-tournament out-rounds, I am ready to write an actual paradigm.

My philosophy of judging is that I do not matter, and it is my responsibility to stay out of your way. Judges are tools used by tab to facilitate the competition. My job is to write the correct RFD so that the results of the tournament best reflect the performances of the debaters. My threshold for intervening is likely also the point where I have to report you to tab. I don't want to talk about style or argument preferences because I think the best debates happen when both sides run their best stuff, and that can't always happen when the debaters are trying to cater their material to the judge. In lieu of preferences, I'll go over what I'm comfortable hearing. This will mostly apply to LD as there seems to be more style variation.

I was an LDer, and have experience with policy and public forum, both as a competitor and a judge. I'm comfortable with the theory debate as long as it's not used as a cudgel by circuit kids against kids who aren't about that life. I have no problem handing out a low-point win for being without honor. Please read a counter-interp so I don't have to do a bunch of work. If the pieces and parts are there, I don't mind informal shells. One benefit of me not being a coach is that I'm not paid to spend time thinking about debate. That means I don't have established beliefs on theory and meta-theory issues. For example, I don't know how I feel about RVIs- make the argument. I am comfortable with the K debate. If you're running a K: 1) Fully commit 2) Have a good enough handle on the material to defend and explain in CX. CX is where I find out you're running someone else's K. If you're running dense stuff, you still need to do all the work. I'm not going to fill in gaps for you just because I also read (past tense) Derrida. I've had to call "clear", I have not had to call "speed". Please don't try to speak faster than you're able to comfortably. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

I'm going to do my best to write the correct RFD. I'm not going to use the ballot as recourse against debate stuff I don't like (behaviors, not arguments). I will, however, use speaker points as recourse against debate stuff I don't like. If there is a clear skill/experience disparity, and you as the clearly superior debater slow it down, and provide a less-stressful educational experience for the other debater, I will give you the thirtiest thirty of all time. I will let you infer what the other side of that coin looks like. I'm not impressed by domineering behavior. I'm not impressed by debaters trying to lock down a CX like it's a criminal trial. I work in special education. Kids being rude to other kids is not something my blood pressure needs to be dealing with on a weekend. If I'm giving you the Kubrick stare during a round, reconsider your in-round disposition. I have never had to do this, and I don't want to ever. I love judging, I am honored to watch you debate; If you aren't doing anything wrong and I look mad, that's just my face.

Yours in Rock,

Grady