West Point Debate Tournament
2024 — West Point, NY/US
Policy Paradigm List
All Paradigms: Show HideYes, I want to be on the e-mail chain - protectthe2nr@gmail.com
About me:
Coach @ University of Rochester (2024 - Present)
University of Rochester (Class of 2022) - debated for 3 years; 2x NDT qualifier; Octofinalist @ CEDA, Shirley.
WB Ray High School (Class of 2018) - debated for 2 years (mostly Policy, some LD); NSDA Nationals; 2x TFA State.
TL;DR - I believe I'm a good judge for any debate (Policy v Policy, K v K, Clash of Civs, Performance v Performance, etc.) focused on substantive (read: not theory/tricks) clash between aff and neg. I have also been in and judged all types of debates. All this to say, you should do/say/argue for literally whatever you want (as long as you're not saying racism/xenophobia/ableism/structural violence etc. good obviously). If there is an argument that I think meets this threshold, I will say "please move on" and will expect you to move on to the next argument you want to make. That being said I default Tech > Truth (no this doesn't mean I'll vote on an "argument" if it doesn't meet the minimum threshold of having a claim, warrant, and impact that I believe I can explain to the other team/debater using your words) in that I believe what arguments are "true" in the context of debate is determined by how the other team responds to said arguments. This is just my predisposition, however, and you're obviously more than welcome to tell me to evaluate the debate in any way you'd like as long as you give me clear instructions and don't just leave it at "evaluate the debate holistically" because I really don't know what that means without context (see my minimum threshold for an argument above). (If you have a bit more time but don't want to read my whole paradigm the bolded parts below are what you should read)
Miscellaneous Notes - PLEASE READ BEFORE ROUND:
If there's any way I can make the round more accessible for you please don't hesitate to let me know before (or even during) the round.
Please number 1NC args on case and 2AC (1AR for LD) args on off-case positions and keep referring to the arguments by number throughout the rest of the debate.
Can't believe I have to say this but if you intentionally remove tags from your evidence before sending it over, your speaks are capped at a 28 (except if the "tag" is part of a performance script that includes personal information about you that you don't want being shared).
Evidence ethics accusations will stop the round. If I determine the accusing team/debater is correct, they will receive a 29 W and the accused will receive a 25 L. If I determine the accusing team/debater is incorrect, they will receive a 25 L and the accused will receive a 29 W. If the tournament has other rules in place regarding evidence ethics violations, I will default to those. If you think there is even a remote possibility of you invoking an evidence ethics violation, you should read the ethics challenges section of Patrick Fox's paradigm for more detailed info on this. I agree pretty much entirely with his thoughts on this (currently towards the end of his paradigm).
I can handle speed, but please slow down on tags, analytics, and cites. Otherwise, you risk me missing important details. Also please slow down to what you perceive to be 75-80% of your full (clear) card-reading speed in rebuttals. If you think you can be clear above this range/at your full speed, go ahead, you probably won't go faster than I can handle, but I find this to be a good cue for most debaters as I think most debaters seriously overestimate how fast they can go while maintaining clarity.
Relatedly, I will say clear twice before deducting .1 speaks from what I would've given you for each subsequent time I have to say clear. To clarify, I'm probably only saying this if I think you being unclear is a direct result of you going too fast. If you would prefer I say/do something else to signal this please let me know (in person or via email).
Please don't bully small schools with disclosure theory, ESPECIALLY if the school doesn't even have a Wiki page. It'll make you look mean-spirited and me very sad. I will certainly judge the debate like any other theory for the most part, but will probably be more persuaded by the other team/debater's warrants in answering it if you're a school with 5+ coaches reading it against a school that barely has 1. Note this doesn't include misdisclosure theory, if someone misdiscloses and I am convinced it was malicious, I will almost certainly pull the trigger on misdisclosure theory barring some major technical error.
I don't count flashing/emailing as prep. Just don't steal prep, I will deduct speaker points. Yes, I know when it's happening.
Avoid speaking over each other during CX; I love heated CX but 2+ people with their microphones on proves incomprehensible in an online setting.
Open CX is cool in Policy.
Finally, some rules I will unconditionally enforce are decision time, one Win and one Loss, and don't intentionally disrupt your opponent's speech. Most other things are up for debate.
***Policy/CX***
K's -
TLDR - In debates where the aff has a plan: If you don't have links/spin about the PLAN ACTION and why the PLAN ACTION is bad, I don't want to hear it. In debates where the aff doesn't have a plan: I am slightly more amenable to slightly more "generic" K strats as long as there is a link to some essential/key component of the aff's method/framework.
I'm a sucker for specific K's. If you have something that implicates the aff solvency mechanism and have cards actually mentioning the plan action/method, or at least clever spin about why the plan action is bad, I'd love nothing more than to hear it; it will vastly improve my value to life and your speaks. If your A-strat is going for the same K I can find in my inbox from previous topics, unless you have a clever twist or spin specific to the aff, I am likely not the judge for it.
I am familiar with most literature bases that aren't on the absolute cutting edge (say, published in the past 2-3 years or so). I say this not because I will "fill in the blanks for you" but because I believe I can probably give you (i.e. most HS students) some (hopefully helpful) advice on how to improve your reading/understanding/rebuttals of most literature bases in my RFD.
Feel free to read from any literature base, just don't assume I know your buzzwords/concepts. Again my threshold for voting for you is "if I explained this to the other team/debater using your words, do I think they would be able to understand it".
Yes you can kick the alt/go for FW as the alt, though neg teams probably do this too often - in my opinion, the only situation where you should be going for the K without the alt is if 1) the aff has a lot of good offence against the alt, AND 2) you have a unique linear disad to the aff that also acts as a clean case turn.
K tricks (root cause, floating PIK, alt solves the aff, value to life, etc.) are fine/strategic too but I find a lot of teams, especially at the high school level, rely way too much on hiding a bunch of tricks in the block, waiting for the 1AR to drop one of them, and that dropped trick basically being the entire 2NR strategy (I've certainly been guilty of this - I can't remember the number of times I went for Antonio 95 for 5 minutes of the 2NR in HS). If this is your strategy that's fine but I probably won't be giving you anything above like a 28.5 if your entire 2NR is premised off that/those dropped trick(s).
Link turns the case arguments are heavily underutilized in K debates - please use them.
On floating PIKs, these are fine but they have to be CLEARLY articulated as such in the block (preferably in the 2NC) for me to evaluate them. I suppose saying "the alt can RESULT IN the aff" (NOTE this is different from "alt can SOLVE the aff") is sufficient to signal this but it has to be a full argument IN THE BLOCK and not just a 5 second blip. That is to say, if your 2NR strategy relies on hiding a floating PIK in the block and revealing it in the 2NR, I'm probably not the judge for you.
In K v K debates, the link level is probably the most important part of these debates so focus on that. "No perms" arguments can be great if articulated correctly but most of the time they aren't. Most of the negative's time in these debates should probably be devoted to how the alt is different from the aff, why the aff can't/doesn't get a perm, and articulating the links.
Overall, I would consider myself a pretty good judge for the K in that I will most likely understand whatever you're reading and can probably give you some good advice on how to improve your speeches or what literature bases you can look to for further development.
Framework -
I went for it a lot. I debated against it a lot. Most of what I wrote below on T is also applicable here.
If I absolutely had to guess which way I lean, it'd probably be negative by like 1%. Honestly, my thoughts on FW have changed so often that I can be persuaded pretty much equally either way. I also suspect that affect/ethos has a uniquely bigger role for me in these debates than in other debates. This obviously doesn't mean I'll automatically vote for the team with the most ethos or that it has much relevance in my conscious decision-making process, just that I believe it has some subconscious, non-zero effect on how I perceive the arguments presented to me.
If you're neg have an impact, don't forget to extend it in the 2NR, and don't forget to extend some case args so the 2AR has a harder time going for "case outweighs and comes before everything".
By default, I view the TVA(s) as a way the aff could have the same discussion under your interp, i.e. it need simply show how the neg interp does not exclude the aff's content/scholarship. This disposition can obviously be changed by debaters' arguments, but you should start this work early as the aff.
I personally find procedural fairness and clash/refinement/iterative testing the most persuasive impacts, though I go back and forth on whether or not I think procedural fairness is an impact in and of itself. This can obviously be overcome with good debating and impact calc.
Skills would probably be the next most persuasive standard to me, though it often isn't articulated as well as I would like by neg teams.
Topic education is also persuasive to me but this is the impact I feel like you would probably need actual evidence on. I probably won't vote on iterative testing means no aff unless it's dropped/heavily mishandled (though if that's your jam and you feel like you have good warrants/fire evidence for why that should be the case then by all means don't let my predispositions deter you).
If you're aff, you can propose a counterinterp that you think provides a better model of debate or go for impact turns or both or whatever else is fine. Just make sure to compare your models of debate (no CI still implies a model of debate) and tell me why yours is better. I will say that I'm a hard sell for impact turns that aren't tied to a model of debate that resolves them. "Debate bad" isn't a great argument in my opinion, not only because I think it's good (though I can be convinced otherwise), but because it's probably inevitable and not intrinsic/unique offense to framework.
I think it's pretty difficult to win your Counter-Interp solves ALL of the neg's offence, but I can easily be persuaded that it makes some defensive inroads into the neg's impacts, and that combined with offence that you're likely winning on the case debate/on FW outweighs the neg's offence. Impact turns to the neg's impacts can also be persuasive but be more nuanced than just saying "framework is policing", and make sure you explain how your model resolves them.
T (not Framework) -
LOVE a good T debate.
I don't know what the common T interps on this topic are so please give me a cohesive explanation of what the "world" of your interp looks like, i.e. a case list, what affs you exclude, etc.
I default competing interps over reasonability. This doesn't mean I won't evaluate reasonability if the arg is made. In fact I think it can be a very good and strategic argument if articulated correctly. What it does mean however is you have to say more than "If we're reasonably T we're good" if you want me to treat this argument seriously.
Clash and good impact calculus/comparison is also seriously lacking in most T debates so that is definitely something I'd reward with high speaks. I personally think that predictable limits are probably the beststandard (i.e internal link to an impact, NOT an impact in and of itself) for T, but that doesn't mean I can't find other standards persuasive if there's a clear DA to the aff's CI (or lack thereof).
CP's -
Default functional competition >>> textual or functional+textual. This disposition can obviously be changed with good debating, but in a near-equally debated scenario (which, to be fair, is rare) you probably won't convince me that anything involving textual competition is better than functional alone.
I will default to judge kicking the CP (unless the neg says the status of their advocacies is uncondo/dispo). If you make a judge kick bad argument in the 2AC, I'll evaluate the judge kick debate like any other, just know that if it's a wash or equally debated on both sides, I will likely default negative. I think it is very difficult for the aff in these debates to overcome the argument that judge kick is a logical extension of conditionality, short of winning condo bad.
While I lean more neg on questions of legitimacy/theory, I lean more aff on questions of competition. I think it's very difficult for the aff to beat the argument that if a counterplan is competitive, then it is/should be legitimate.
If I had to guess my disposition on the legitimacy of counterplans from most theoretically legit to least, roughly, is: Advantage CPs, PICs, Process CP's that don't compete off of certainty/immediacy, Agent CPs (non-uniform 50 states included in this), International fiat, CPs that compete off of certainty/immediacy, Uniform 50 States, CP's that fiat the object of the resolution.
On counterplan theory, you're probably not going to convince me that a CP is so bad that I should reject the team outright for it unless it is defended by the negative unconditionally (but hey who knows, maybe you have good reject the team warrants that I've just never heard before), but reject the arg is doable for most CPs (probably not advantage CPs or PICs though).
PICs out of parts of the plan text are probably good, word PICs out of any word in the 1AC are probably bad. For other counterplans (Agent, Conditions, Consult), it is substantially harder for the aff to win theory args if the neg has aff-specific solvency advocates or has arguments (i.e good ev in the topic lit base) about why their CP answers a question that is at the core of the topic.
International fiat is probably bad (still pretty winnable for the neg though, especially if you have warrants/ev for why the specific CP you're reading is good on this specific topic/against this specific aff) but definitely not as bad as object fiat (Not very hard to convince me this is bad and should be rejected - and yes some international fiat can be object fiat but not always - debate it out).
Process CP debates are incredibly fun especially if grounded in the literature and resolution-specific wording/terms of art.
Permutations must be explained in the context of which parts of the plan and/or counterplan they modify and how they shield the link to the net benefit in the 2AC. Otherwise, it probably isn't a full argument and the 2NR likely gets new answers (at minimum).
If the CP is uncondo/dispo - My default is that presumption flips aff if the 2NR goes for a CP, but this can be changed based on args made in the round obviously. The only exception to this is if the counterplan is CLEARLY less change from the status quo than the aff (think PIC out of part of the plan), though you should probably still make that argument. To be clear, if I need to put substantial thought into whether a CP is more or less change than the aff, I'll just default to presumption flipping aff. I honestly don't think this is an issue that will be at the center of my decision for most debates though.
2NC CP's are fine if you're making a small change or amendment to a counterplan you read in the 1NC, but probably don't read an entirely new one unless it's an advantage CP answering a 2AC add-on. 1NR CP's are probably bad but debate it out. 1AR obviously gets new answers and perms to either.
DA's -
Turns case arguments are great and you should definitely make them - if you have cards to substantiate it that's even better. Turns case argument that implicate the solvency mechanism of the aff at the link level of the DA are infinitely better than turns case args that go "the impact we read is the same as the aff's impact" but both are/can be strategic.
I think the uniqueness vs. link determines direction of the DA question is highly overemphasized and would probably be better served if the debaters focused on that in the specific context/scenario of the DA rather than having a debate about it in the abstract. If I had to say, I guess I lean towards link determining the direction of the DA, but that really shouldn't change your debating in any meaningful way.
The vast majority of Politics DA's are probably not true but that doesn't mean I don't immensely enjoy these debates or that I won't vote for it (a good number of my 2NR's in college were Politics). That said, Politics and case is not a strategy, unless the aff is atrocious or the negative is absolutely stellar at case debating. For the aff, yes I'll buy your intrinsicness or whatever weird theory args you want to read here if you explain it well and beat the neg on it. I also really don't know why some teams just don't read any offence on the Politics DA in the 2AC - please try to do that. Of course you can obviously win without it but it’s a missed opportunity most of the time, in my opinion.
Cool with intrinsicness args against DA's if the aff invests substantial time and thought into them (they rarely do).
Performance Neg Strats -
I was not very familiar with these until I debated in college. That being said, I think this can be an incredibly valuable and educational form of engagement/debate. Some of the most interesting rounds I've debated in have been performance rounds. I've done everything from playing Naruto for the entire 1NC to poetry about debate to literally doing nothing for the sake of being unproductive.
Just tell me what to vote on and make sure you clearly articulate why your form of engagement/debate is better than the aff's (unless you're a K of that I guess). If that sounds really un-specific and vague that's because I think me going into more depth here is counter-intuitive to what I think these strats are best at/meant for, i.e. new and innovative types of debate.
Theory -
Don't read frivolous theory. By that I mean stuff like "The font of the un-underlined portion of your evidence is too small," (lookin' at you, LDers) not like New Aff's Bad (still not a good arg but not quite frivolous) or Solvency Advocate theory. I won't immediately discount it either I guess but note that I'll have a much higher bar for it, a much lower bar for answering it, and your speaks likely won't be very good.
That said, I'm probably more likely to vote on theory, that's not specific to an off-case position - usually that means conditionality/perf con - than most judges.
I went for condo quite a bit in relation to the number of times I've been the 2A. However, this usually requires the 1AR to spend a substantial (at the VERY LEAST 30 seconds, likely a minute or more if this is the A or B strategy for your 2AR) amount of time on it for it to be a viable 2AR option. Please have an interpretation in the 2AC, the best, in my opinion, is dispositionality (if you can defend it in-depth), just please have a cohesive definition of it IN THE 2AC. Unconditional counterinterp is fine just probably a tough hill to climb at this point. For the neg in these debates, rest assured I'm also a 2N most of the time so don't be afraid to go wild with condo if you want and can defend it.
Infinite condo is becoming an increasingly tougher interp for me to accept, so have a more limiting counterinterp but it's not the end of the world.
For the love of everything, please slow down to slightly faster than normal speech in these debates, especially if this is a viable option for you/if you think this is a viable option the other team will go for. I REALLY don't want to judge two teams reading theory blocks from 2005 at me at 300 words per minute.
Drop the team is a high bar for most theory that's not condo (though if dropped, with a warrant, I will hesitantly vote for it).
Affs -
Again, I've read basically every type of aff, you do you.
If it's a policy aff, make sure to explain your internal link story clearly (I feel like most teams don't do this well enough) and why your impacts outweigh/turn the neg's. Not much else to say here - I have read everything from heg good to soft left structural violence impacts.
If it's a K aff, I'm fine with literally whatever you want to read (i.e. performance, narrative, plan text you don't defend, no plan, advocacy, no advocacy, etc.) as long as you actually explain your arguments to me and don't just expect me to understand your aff from an overview you blazed way too fast through. My threshold for voting for the aff is "if i explained this to the other team using your words, do I think they would understand it".
Presumption is something I feel like more teams should go for and is something I'm very persuaded by against K aff's that don't defend a change from the squo - don't be too scared away by the aff's grandstanding - especially if the aff is just a change in the way we look at the status quo or just a theory of power.
Speaker Points
Will modulate for tournament quality/size. My speaker point scale is: (add ~.2 to most of these ranges for LD - i.e. 28.9-29.1 is breaking, 29.5+ is the same though)
27 & below - You did something offensive and/or you really did not make arguments.
27-27.4 - You didn't have a real strategy in this round but made a few just OK args that didn't really tie into anything.
27.5-27.9 - You had a strategy in this round but it wasn't good at all (i.e. had no relevance or even semblance of a link) or you only made a few good arguments all round.
28-28.2 - Below average team. Expect you to be solidly in the 2-4 bracket. Probably a newer team who has some stuff figured out but isn't quite there yet.
28.3-28.4 - Solid/average team. Expect you to go 2-4 or 3-3. All the pieces were there but you were lacking a higher degree of argument interaction.
28.5-28.6 - You're on the verge of breaking. Probably a team I expect to go 3-3 or 4-2 and be on the verge of breaking. Good arguments, but you made some broader strategic missteps.
28.7-28.9 - I expect you to break/clear. I liked your well-thought-out strategy but still need to work on implementing that strategy and you made some great arguments but could have made the debate clearer, more organized or more nuanced.
29-29.4 - You were great and on the threshold of being amazing. I thought you had a well-thought-out and implemented strategy and great arguments but were somewhat lacking in some form. I expect you to be in later elims.
29.5-29.6- You were amazing. I expect you to be one of the top speakers at this tournament and make it into deep elims. Any problem I found in your speeches was probably nit-picking. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of your speeches.
29.7 - Sensational. If all of your speeches were like the ones I saw you give, I expect you to be the top speaker at this tournament and would be surprised if you didn't win the tournament.
29.8 - Best speeches I've seen in the past few years and probably the best ones I anticipate seeing in the next few years as well. One of the best overall performances I've ever seen.
29.9 - I cannot think of a single minuscule way you could have been better. This is the best performance I;ve seen or ever expect to see, period.
30 - Wow. I am beyond words. Watching you didn't register as judging a debate so much as a gestalt phenomenological experience. You were the best debater I've ever seen and have truly inspired me to do/engage in/advocate for whatever your argument was in that round beyond the debate space. You have cured my depression. No I will not give you one (or increase your speaks) just because you asked for it.
***LD Paradigm***
Quick Prefs
Policy/LARP - 1
K - 1
T - 1
Traditional - 2
Phil - 2/3
Theory - 3 (1 for Policy theory, i.e. CP/alt theory and condo, etc.)
Tricks - 3/4 to strike
LD Paradigm Proper
Did LD a couple of times in HS on both local and Nat circuits before I did Policy (and once after when I didn't have a partner) so am kind of familiar with LD norms but am certainly not a good judge for you if you're going for tricks/friv theory/some weird thing unique to LD but not Policy (Nebel T and traditional cases being notable exceptions).
Most of what I said above in the Policy section applies here as well. If you're looking for my stance/defaults on specific off-case positions (K's, T, CP's, etc), take a look at that respective section of my Policy paradigm.
Not voting on an RVI on T. You don't get a W for being topical (unless T is the only thing the neg goes for obviously).
*sighs* Please note the theory section in my Policy paradigm above... But seriously, if it's a creative theory interp that's actually a somewhat reasonable interp regarding the content of the debate and/or maybe has a critical spin on it, I am surprisingly down. I default competing interps on interps about the substance of the debate and reasonability on others. Please don't make me judge a meta-theory debate. Coming from a Policy background I also have a gut reaction to HATE RVI's, but nonetheless can be convinced to vote on them against theory, not T (T is never an RVI), if dropped or significantly (up for debate what this means) mishandled in LD. Wouldn't suggest that being your go-to though.
Will not evaluate "evaluate the debate after X speech" arguments... I will evaluate the debate after the 2AR...
Please number NC args on case and 1AR args on off-case positions.
Aff theory doesn't need its separate flow just read it on the sheet it applies to or pick an off case to put it on. Neg theory can/should be on its own sheet as an off-case if it's in the NC. Don't really want to judge NR theory unless ABSOLUTELY necessary (like aff condo or something like that)...
Good for Nebel T, just impact out standards like you would with any other T debate. Other T args are cool too, see that section above.
Not good for skep/skep triggers (whatever those are).
*sighs again* If you absolutely feel that you must go for tricks, which you shouldn't, and I'll hate you for it, but that's kind of maybe alright HOWEVER I'd HIGHLY suggest 1) trying to convince me that it was something the other debater should/could have anticipated AND 2) that you make it a FULL argument, warrant AND impact it out, walk me through it, and don't just let it be an 8 word blip.
Floating PIKs in LD, in my opinion, make absolutely no sense because either it's not clearly articulated as such in the 1NC in which case the 2AR gets new answers making it unstrategic or it is articulated clearly in which case it's just a regular PIK. It's the neg's burden to make it absolutely clear that the K is a PIK in the 1NC, NOT the aff's burden to ask if it is one in CX/call it out pre-emptively in the 1AR.
Analytic Philosophy is not my thing but if it's yours I'll respect that and obviously evaluate it like any other debate, just make sure to explain it in terms of how I should view/evaluate each side in the debate through the lens of your theory. Again, my threshold for voting on an argument is "does it have a substantiated claim, warrant, and impact that I think the other debater would understand if I explained it to them using your words in my RFD?"
No underviews please for the love of everything.
********************
EXTRA POINTS
Speaker point scale is above the LD paradigm.
Caveat to this section is I will stop adding points when you reach a 29.3 AND you can't get more than .5 extra than I would've already given you. I want my speaks to actually mean something and reward exceptional debaters.
I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE academically creative arguments/strategies. If you have some new and innovative argument/strategy whose creativity I'm impressed by I'm willing to give y'all up to half a speaker point added to whatever it was I was gonna give you (probably will be closer to .2 on average). This is inherently subjective though so please don't ask me what it would take, it's an "I know it when I see it" type of thing.
If you open source all the ev you read with highlighting it's an extra .2. Just let me know right after the round (before I submit my ballot obvi) and I'll take a look at your Wiki. To clarify, you have to be doing this every round already or at the very least do a significant number retroactively and promise to keep doing it in the future before I submit my ballot.
If y'all give me a PoMo vs. PoMo round and give me some actual clash, both teams/debaters speaks are floored at a 29 (yes you read that correctly, I REALLY wanna see this debate). No this does not apply if only one side is advocating one of these positions. Please don't read these if you don't actually know the positions though.
Updated 1-15-22 Director of the NYU Global Debate Fund. Previously directed policy programs at Columbia University, CUNY. and Fordham University. Founded the New York Urban Debate League, Malcolm X Prison Debate at Riker's Island and helped review/set-up 8 other Urban Debate Leagues nationwide. Coached at and debated for Cornell University,
TLDR: You do you. DA/CP strats, K Affs, FW, K strats, Procedurals - Fine. Disrespecting your partner, opponents or me - Not fine. a) Default to Condo good, not infinite (read CP section for more) Base points - 28.7 Look at who got 29.4+ from me to get a sense of what I like debaters to do in front of me policy and the K front. b) 2NRs should devote time to case (except maybe in T debates) c) when online - get verbal/visual confirmation before you speak & slow down 10%. d) Zero interest in litigating past debates & outside activities with my ballot.
PRE-EMPT- Read no further at your own risk.
General Approach: Good debaters work extremely hard so I will make every effort to be very thoughtful and conscientious as your judge. Whatever decision allows me to inject myself the least into the interpretations of issues in the round is the one I will attempt to make. Compare positions, ev and tell a story in your last rebuttal that frames the round the way you wish me to decide it. I’ll vote where you tell me if it's coherent. If you have multiple stories, prioritize them. Don't rely on my post-round reconstruction. If you only spend 10 seconds on a key point in your last rebuttal, don't expect me to spend much more than that evaluating it. Most rounds come down to impact assessment and warrant comparisons. An author’s name is not an argument. Provide warrants for why your ev is better than theirs. Add me to the chain if you have my email already. Start the rd when your opponent has the doc up once you confirm all parties are ready. I don't follow along with your speech docs. I'm flowing on paper so pen time good. Be organized, Be considerate. Be ready. Recuts of opponents' ev need to be read in round not just inserted into the doc.
Tech vs. Truth Tech over truth is an inflection point not a value system. My voting record reflects a tech leaning apparently but that's more reflective of how truth is framed in the 2AR vs. my role to protect the neg. My ballot really comes down to the skills and execution of the particular debaters.
The Aff: Do what you want in terms of policy, K or performance. Explain advantages to your model over theirs. Tell me how to evaluate your affirmation prior to the 2AR if you are performing. Make sure that the role of the ballot is articulated and extended and not a 2AR surprise. My evaluation will come down to offense on the FWK flow based on impacts identified by the debaters unless it's one of those rare rounds where the neg has a viable, specific strat.
The Neg: Well-developed, evidence-based strategies are awesome and will be rewarded. 90% of affs, both kritikal and policy have lit that goes the other way. Cut cards and forward options along with T/FW. If you want to defend your right to a Deterrence DA link or a certain interp, go for it. Presumption matters and is underutilized.
TOPICALITY/FWK: I’ll vote either way on T/FW if you win the relevant impacts to your model of debate e.g. EXTERNAL (why is it or is it not productive?) or INTERNAL (what does it communicate or provide you with in the debate space of importance?). You're more likely to have faith in the credibility of your definition and implicit approaches to the topic than I am so be prepared to defend them. Not a fan of: violations that morph in the block unprovoked, crummy counter-interps or generic TVAs that disregard this 1AC. T against policy affs is underutilized. Elevate your answers from the crap you read in HS. It's disingenuous for experienced debaters to say K-affs about AB, Set Col. or Trans Life were unpredictable or that FW is the ultimate form of violence in the world.
DISADS Fine obviously. Providing reasons why the DA turns case is always a good idea. CAVEAT - Including this since it's come up 2x this year. If there is an Existence question relating your DA or aff story (e.g. a rumored "secret" weapon system, Aliens are coming, etc), try or die only kicks in if you win the Existence question as a precursor.
CPs Smart CPs with solvency advocates improve your strat. If you regularly read CPs with conditional planks leading to 10 different versions or more than 3 conditional advocacies in a rd, I'm not the right judge for you. New/undisclosed 1ACs give neg MUCH more leeway for condo. Feel free to take advantage of teams that read & react without studying your CP text carefully. Sympathetic to "1AR gets new answers" vs CPs with no 1NC solvency ev. or process CPs with no relqtion to how the US government works. I welcome solvency deficits if the AFF is correct on function indicts. I don't judge kick without specific instruction.
K: For teams that generate links from messed-up, in-round behaviors or focus on the debate space-all good. If teams defend external claims and impacts, winning anti-blackness is a superstructure or capitalist gov't solutions have failed on-balance is necessary but not sufficient. Quality examples are essential and readily available whether you're discussing micro-political movements, capitalism, racial injustice, colonialism, sabotage, disability and/or militarism. Your arsenal needs solid answers to scalability, empirical solvency, and why gov't action will not inevitably be needed. Include good reasons why the K turns case. 3 page long cards don't equal explanations.
Pet Peeves that lower points: 1-STEALING PREP TIME -It's a nasty habit. You are taking time from my life that I will never get back. 2-POOR TECH PREP- I have sympathy for unexpected tech issues not poor preparation that delays the tournament. If you're debating online: a) Check your tech between rds for charge etc. b) Have a back-up (phone, tablet, etc.) in case of mid-speech malfunctions c) Get verbal/visual confirmation everyone is back before starting speeches d) don't record people without permission e) slow down 10-20% because it's hard to hear/decipher stuff online3--OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE in your speeches. Thanks to evolving community norms, I don't have a bright line anymore sadly. if you need to ask, you're probably excessive when pushed I responded a 1 curse per 45 wps is probably a decent target. 4--SLOPPY SOURCING. You say “Read the Jones 10 ev after the rd!” I read it and it sucks. In the post-round, it becomes “I meant to say Roberts, not Jones,” or “There were 3 pieces of Jones ev I meant the 1AR card.” That's a "you" problem. Effective communication good.
For NATS - Congrats on attending Nationals. Being at a university with the resources to send you cross-country to represent them is an immense privilege Thank those responsble including partners, teammates, coaches, parents & especially your opponents. People matter. Celebrate, respect and appreciate them while you can.
Daniel Baughman
USMA
I don’t have strong preferences for any particular types of arguments. I do prefer clarity, both in terms of actual comprehensibility of speech and in terms of well-structured argumentation. Clearly explain to me, in terms of the evidence presented in the round, why you should win the debate. If you do this more convincingly (clearly) than the other team, I will vote for you.
Debate is an oral activity. Providing copies of your speeches and evidence to me and the other team is a courtesy, but it does not absolve you of the responsibility to actually say your argument in words that people in the room can understand. I will evaluate what I hear first. I will only start going through evidence if neither team has made their case significantly more clearly than the other.
I am an active-duty Army Officer, and I will likely be in uniform while judging your round. Please do not assume that my military service or appearance in uniform are indicators that I hold any particular political belief.
Four years policy debate at George Mason
Yes I want to be on the chain - Email: bbigbiggs1@gmail.com; please also add: masondebatedocs@gmail.com
General Notes
- PLEASE treat everyone in the room with respect, especially your opponents
- I flow straight down, it's in your best interest to keep it as organized as possible
- More familiar with policy args, but have and will vote for critical args
- Inserting re-highlighting is good if you are pointing out specific context that is left out and in small doses, not if you are essentially making a new card out of it
- These are my general thoughts but things can obviously change on a debate by debate basis depending on how the round goes
- This paradigm is geared towards policy debate since that is what I judge most frequently. If I am judging you in a different format; do no stress about the nuances here, I adopt to the norms of whatever format I am judging without bias to the best of my ability/knowledge
Notes for Online Debate:
- Please be conscientious of speed and clarity. I never will negatively impact your speaks because of mic issues but I can only vote on what I hear.
- If my camera is off assume I am not there.
Policy v Policy
- I will look through the evidence so a card doc would be useful; however, good evidence shouldn't be a substitute for poor explanation.
- Please make sure to extend full arguments. If you just say there is "no impact to US-China war" in the 1ar with no explanation for why, I will not vote for it in the 2ar even if dropped in the 2nr. That is just a phrase not an argument.
T:
- Limits/ground is the impact I find most persuasive. It will take more work to go for precision or other impacts but I can be swayed
- I tend to err on competing interpretation but actually can be persuaded by reasonability IF explained properly
Theory
Condo - tend to be neg leaning though more than three starts to push it. More open to condo args if the CP's are particularly abusive or if they've read multiple with no solvency advocates
PICs - I'm fine with PICs out of specific portions the aff defends. Not the judge for word PICs (unless they say something absolutely egregious in their plan text)
No solvency advocate CPs - I probably don't think this is a reason to reject the team, but I will likely be annoyed and lower speaks if you don't have one. Exceptions if you're against new affs or it is a very niche CP to answer a specific impact.
Other theory - 99 out of 100 times, if it's not condo, it's a reason to reject the arg. You need a clear reason why they skewed the round to get me to drop them even if it is dropped. Having said that, if you win that a CP is illegitimate you're probably in a good spot anyways.
Clash
Top Level: I've found myself judging more of these debates than I expected so I want to update this portion of my paradigm. I tend to have a higher threshold for 2ar re-articulation of arguments than most judges so I find myself voting neg more often in these debates than other rounds I judge.
Policy aff v the K:
- I tend to err aff on the f/w portion of the debate. Weigh the aff vs the alt, key to fairness, etc. are all args I tend to find more persuasive. Impact framing is the portion of the debate you should focus on. Make sure you're answering all the nuances of the util v structural violence (or any other framing) debate
- Be careful with the link debate. Even if you win that your case outweighs the neg can still win a link turns case arg that can make it tough for you to get my ballot.
K's v Policy Affs:
- Impact framing will essential. You will have a hard time persuading me that I should just reject the aff for some reason, but can definitely persuade me that your impact outweighs/is more crucial to discuss in the debate space.
- Specificity of the link is going to be important. Generic state bad links aren't going to be as persuasive as links to the specific action of the plan.
- Simplify the debate. Don't spread yourself too thin, try and pick just one link for the 2NR (unless two are very poorly answered but I'd cap it there) and really impact it out.
- I find embedded turns case args on the link debate very persuasive if it is a specific link to the aff.
- Clarity on the alt will be important. This is an area of the debate that I feel like gets under-explained throughout the debate. I like some explanation of what your alt materially looks like and how it resolves the link.
F/W v K affs:
- Fairness can be an impact, but I generally find the way teams explain it is more of an internal link to education (a pretty good one at that).
- When the aff is reasonably in the direction of the topic - I tend to place a lot of weight on the TVA and need explanation of lost ground and why the ground you lost is good.
- When the aff is blatantly anti-topical or an aff that is meant to be a personal strategy, go for clash good. I don't believe you need a TVA in this instance (or should extend one) as long as you have a good reason why the discussions that happen under your model of debate are good.
K affs v F/W:
- The easiest way to get my ballot is if you win your impact and win the "limits/clash means they can't access the aff's benefits even if it is theoretically good" arg you are in a very good place so long as you don't royally mess up the TVA debate or SSD. Having said that: I am open to other strategies, do your thing, but just understand that I will need more explanation than your typical judge.
- We meet probably not ideal unless the neg messed up the interp.
- If you are an aff that is in the direction of the topic, counter-definitions should be your friend.
- If your aff is outside the scope of being able to do so, you need to impact turn their model of debate. I am not gonna be persuaded by a counter-interp that was clearly designed to include your aff. Obviously extend your interpretation, but don't use it to try and mitigate their offense.
- Things to avoid: I do not find blanket stating "k debate is predictable" persuasive. Give me a reason why your specific aff is predictable for the negative to debate if you want to go that route.
K v K
I will not be as knowledgeable in K literature as either team is going to be. The best thing you could do to get my ballot is to make the debate simple. I may not be familiar with a lot of your terminology - and I am not going to vote on something I do not understand - so you may benefit by clearly explaining certain terms or at least having evidence that is clearly highlighted to define abstract terms/concepts.
Impact framing/explanation is going to be key in these rounds.
***Hi y'all, I've just been informed that I have apparently been lowballing speaker points, my new floor is 27.8 with 29 representing a solid(3-3) varsity speaker***
"The subversive intellectual enjoys the ride
and wants it to be faster and wilder;
she does not want a room of his or her own,
she wants to be in the world, in the world with others
and making the world anew."
-Jack Halberstam, The Wild Beyond: With and For the Undercommons
Email: maxbreiling@gmail.com
Hey y'all
Great to meet ya. I'm new to the NDT/CEDA community but have a background in other debate forms from various technical styles including LD and NPDA. I love new ideas and I love clash and comparative. I start my evaluation of each round top-down by asking how I should evaluate the debate/what impact is most important. From there, I evaluate the different ways each team accesses said impacts and compare their scenarios. The easiest way to get my ballot is to have a well-explained link scenario with clear weighing. I think at its core, debate is storytelling.
Because I'm new to the Policy community, it'd be a good idea to give me explicit judge direction and explain yourself more than you are used to on norms. For example, a condo shell with five buzzwords lined up with no explanation will potentially have a lot less meaning to me than other judges. On the plus side, I'm not listening for specific scripts so if you want to respond to something uniquely, I will listen intently.
While like most judges, I will vote for an argument if it's clearly won and will listen to explicit judge direction, here's an FAQ list for how I tend to lean by default on different controversial issues in the community:
Tech -----x-------------- Truth
Good Analytic --x----------------- Bad Card
New ideas ------x---------------- Prewritten arguments I've heard 1000 times
Resolving outside drama with the ballot -----------------------x This behavior is toxic to the activity
I flow on paper. Please slow down on analytics and find a way to differentiate tags from the cards. I record tags and will take notes on the warrants of the cards as I hear them. If I don't understand you, I will clear or slow you. I will pull up the speech doc on my laptop but like to refrain from using it. During prep time and at the end of the round, I go back and read important evidence to get a full understanding of the warrants, if you'd like me to read a specific piece of evidence please flag it for me and tell me what you think it says.
Conditionality, I lean Aff and will be sympathetic to time skew arguments the more conditional worlds proliferate. That being said, if you win the condo debate, you win it and I will do my best to evaluate it fairly (see theory for more). I define dispositionality as "if there is exclusive offense on the shell, the Neg can't kick it." If you have a different definition, it'd be smart to communicate that sometime during the round.
On sneakier Counterplans like Consult, Process, Actor, Delay; it would help a lot to have direct solvency advocates for me to buy these as legitimate. At bare minimum, I need an explanation of how they are functionally competitive or a comparable alternative. 50 state CP means that the Aff is fiating 50 times the amount of actors, is that fair or educational? If no one runs theory, then I'll take it for granted but I'd encourage your opponents to go for it.
Perms are advocacies. While they are a test of competition, I don't default to perms as a point of terminal defense but an explanation of what the world with both the Plan and Counterplan would look like. If the Counterplan isn't at all competitive then the world is only better off, however, even if there is functional tradeoffs to the Perm, I could be convinced the net benefits outweigh. This means I would like it if 1AR and 2AR extensions of the perm fleshed out what the world of the perm would look like and how it resolves the net benefits of the CP or alt if that's a relevant convo for the ballot. Judge direction telling me to evaluate CPs as tests of competition will change my paradigm if uncontested but I think it's good to list where I lean.
I will not judge kick a CP for you unless there is explicit theory telling me otherwise (as in interp with standards/voters). 2AR and 2NR collapses need to pick an advocacy and tell me why that is better. Same thing with the Aff, you get either the plan or a perm, not both. Your job in the last speech isn't to show how you've won the debate via a thousands cuts, but to synthesize all the elements in the debate and give me a clear story of why I should vote for you.
I love good case debate. I don't take it for granted that 1ACs are put together well. In fact, I usually think the opposite is true. I think alt causes can overwhelm a poorly constructed internal link scenario. The worse the Aff evidence, the more Neg analytics convince me. That being said, negatives please implicate poor evidence quality to my evaluation of the round. If I'm skeptical the Aff's solvency advocate is actually about the plan does that mean I weigh the DA's link scenario or the case turn as higher risk due to its specificity? Please tell me that.
Kritiks:
Generally, I love critical analysis. Like most things, I prefer specific judge direction and comparison.
I need something to give me uniqueness usually an alternative. Alternatives can be as simple as a re-orientation or be full counterplans, but if I buy they have questionable solvency, your kritik impacts become non-unique really fast. I think in some ways, judges let alternatives get away with murder when I think alternative solvency should be a serious consideration when it comes time to vote.
Ideally, framework just tells me how to evaluate the round and contextualizes the links and alt to let me know what level I am evaluating these on (pre-fiat discourse, policymaking, knowledge frames, etc.). I love framework that actually gives fair opportunity to both sides and just lets me know how to compare a plan text to a re-orientation alternative. I dislike I-win statements that get introduced in the 2NC just in case the Neg want to kick the alt. Kicking the alt can be a winning strategy but I would encourage the Aff to point out that if there's no solvent alternative to capitalism than producing anti-capitalist knowledge frames probably doesn't have the planet-saving potential the Neg claims.
That being said, I believe in systemic causality way more than brinks and love root-cause argumentation. However, Serial policy failure means nothing unless contextualized to this Aff's policy (an analytic explaining would do).
Links should be specific and compelling. The more generic or nonspecific the link, the more convinced I am that a perm is net-beneficial (remember I default to perms as advocacies). A link of omission unless under very specific circumstances is simply not a link. Framework will also majorly affect how seriously I take your link. If I buy material proximal causes are what I should care about, rhetoric becomes a lot harder to justify as important. This is also why the Aff arguing there's a different root cause to an ideology that the Neg doesn't solve can go a long way in applying defense to the link and alt.
For the Affirmative on kritiks, specificity applies as well. If the Neg's position is that capitalism creates a harmful ontology, I don't want to hear about how capitalism has been good historically for material luxuries. I think kritiks can have this weird mystical aura where we just assume the Aff now has the burden of defending all of capitalism but that's often not the case. The more specific the defense of your plan, the more I'm likely to buy it.
For those wondering my knowledge base. I am familiar with identity literature (black radical tradition and performance studies particularly) as well as most classic French Theory like D&G, Derrida, or Baudrillard. That being said, most critical arguments are often very different in academia/reality than what they are in the debate context (Baudrillard and Tuck&Yang are particularly egregious examples I've noticed). That's fine, read/use authors how you want, but assume I haven't heard your reading of your critical author before and explain it to me like I'm five.
Critical Affirmatives v T-USFG
Warning I am interventionist in resolving Independent Voter Issues (see below for details)
I despise what's become known as the clash of civilization. I think there is value to exploring the stories of the topic. I've always thought that the scope of the topic being defined as the USFG is dumb. However, I think a limitless topic is harmful to clash. The way I currently see it, debates are storytelling and topics are genres. The farther away from the genre your story is, the harder it is for me to learn about the genre or to see clash with opposing stories. The less germane to the topic you are, the easier it is for the Neg to convince me that clash and literature education have been lost.
If you are a T-USFG team that reads the same scripts about predictability and fairness with no contextualization or comparison to the Aff than I am a probably a bad judge for you.
If you are a critical team that relies upon independent voter issues on how other teams are responding in the 1NC with no contextualization to your advocacy statement than I am probably a bad judge for you.
However, if you are a T-USFG team that comes prepared with a TVA (topical version of the Affirmative) or an articulation of why a more restrictive understanding of the resolution is best for debate or its participants in a way that's comparative to the Aff's impacts than I'm a great judge for you. I don't want to be left with a situation where I have to decide whether accessing radical research or advocacies is more important than predictability, if this is the situation I will likely lean Aff but if you give me a way to weigh clash against alternative epistemologies than I'll defer to the weighing in the round. Just remember that material death is different than social death when designing the TVA.
Likewise, Affs who come prepared with a coherent vision for debate or the topic are awesome. Providing a debate framework that still allows Neg clash and good educational debate to happen will start to evaporate the Neg's offense. Being able to provide Neg ground for engagement will do wonders for both speaks and overcoming ground and predictability standards.
If you drill into my heart, I do believe judges have to take t-usfg framework seriously so as to have predictable core generic for the negative. Therefore, neither team should expect me to do the heavy lifting for them in the framework debate. Do not imply impacts, make them explicit and compare them!
That being said, Fairness is not intuitively a voter for me. I have heard all the basic framework scripts arguing fairness is an intrinsic good and have not found a single one persuasive in the slightest. It just goes right over my head. I think my mental block is because the idea that any award ever handed out is based on "fair" or "equal" opportunity is laughable to me. I'm unsure what fairness looks like in debate beyond me flipping a coin for the winner. By design it is an asymmetric game, judge decisions are subjective, there are huge structural resource disparities (in obvious and unobvious ways), and in some ways, the different positions people find themselves in is very cool and educational. My worst fear for debate is becoming replaceable with AI that autogenerates cases. We are all different humans, with different styles, brains, and perspectives. I want to hear what is interesting to you. However, if you can articulate fairness as a voter to me despite my reservations, go for it.
Outside of framework, I would love Neg clash on the core of the 1AC. There's a lot of literature out there and a well-put together negative strategy on a critical affirmative would be at the very least rewarded with high speaks and seems like a much better way to win as well. Attack their assumptions, attack their methods, provide counter-advocacies. Tell me an alternative story.
To evaluate these debates, I compare offense and whether the 1AC advocacy is net better or worse for the world. Usually the impacts (such as harmful ideologies) are attached to the squo which means solvency is important for both sides (solvency can take many forms beyond traditional policymaking including discourse, affect, debate community impacts, etc) . This doesn't mean the 1AC advocacy has the burden of solving all of white supremacy to gain offense (discourse is probably a linear impact scenario), however, it does mean that I need a specific analysis of what the harm is and what the 1AC advocacy does to solve them. For example, if whiteness is actually constructed top-down by political economic structures, then poetry probably doesn't do anything to solve those harms.
Attached to this, if you choose to read an argument in debate, you've invited others to clash. The Aff chooses the conversation and have invited the Neg. I dislike the idea that 1ACs or certain parts of 1ACs are too personal to be involved in the debate. If that's the case, please save yourself the trauma and leave that out of the speech.
"No perms in a methods debate" doesn't intuitively make sense to me with the caveat that I think that 1ACs should be bounded to their assumptions. If the Aff assumes social death is caused by libidinal investment in institutions, it feels weird that their advocacy would shift to include institutions without in some way having different solvency. Tl;dr I need an articulation from the Negative why one method of activism would trade-off with another.
I am interventionist on Independent voter issues and I judge based on good faith attempts. If you are a team that relies on independent voter issues against the Neg's clash in the debate rather than on articulating your affirmative harms and solvency than I am probably not the best judge for you. Obviously if a Neg team really goes for oppression/dehumanization good or openly racist tropes I will stop the round, but negating the 1AC in a way the Aff didn't expect/want is not constitutive of a procedural issue. I'd prefer to deal with micro-aggressions w/o the ballot. I once judged a debate with two sincere teams where an esl team accidentally misgendered the other team with the "guys" plural form, and we started getting into a debate of whether they should have "known better" and what constituted "proper English." I either don't suffer from white guilt enough or suffer too much to be a good judge of these debates. If a team is actually attempting to do harm in the round than that's a debate safety issue and we should probably stop the round, if it's based on ignorance I would honestly prefer to just stop the debate for a minute, explain the micro-aggression and suggest an alternative way for the team to articulate what they mean rather than make it a procedural debate for the rest of the round. I won't always have the keenest eye and could be ignorant myself, so if there is an issue bothering you that you'd like to address, wait until the speech is over than just mention you'd like it if an argument was reframed in a more equitable way. We're all learners here and each of us deserve safety in the debate space without the weird competitive side getting in the way.
If you care, in the 2013 NDT Finals, I'd have voted for Emporia SW over Northwestern LV (not that anyone would ever ask me to judge a round when I was in Middle School). That's just how I fall as a judge in the way I currently see debate and I'm down to discuss debate history with you after the round.
Theory
I evaluate theory under an offense/defense paradigm. Standards are links, voters are impacts, and your interp is the uniqueness. I think there is a tendency of judges to not vote based on the flow and instead glaze their eyes over as if theory is just an invitation to listen to mechanical dialogue then vote up their personal favorite speaker. Though it may get messy, I will do my best to evaluate each theory shell as it's own flow.
Also theory is more organized way of making a traditional rhetorical argument around what should be allowed in debate which means I don't necessarily need someone to articulate the debate norm that's been violated as an "interp." For novice rounds, rhetorical substitutes such as "abuse" do just fine as long as I can trace your argument to a rule, a violation, and an impact to that violation.
"We Meets" are terminal defense as it renders the impact (voter) nonunique. I am tired of teams not taking the argument seriously and judges letting debaters get away with some of the worst interpretations I have ever seen. If your opponent is arguably topical within your interpretation, I find it hard to take your voters rhetoric seriously. If you are going to run theory in front of me please have a specific interpretation and violation. As for the Aff, if you want to be clever with the We Meet arguments then please do so. To me the violation is the most important part of the t-shell and I wish teams reprioritized it. IT IS A VOTING ISSUE! Expect me to take your interpretation and violation seriously. That part of the flow is my starting question for every theory debate.
Email: timothyabyram@gmail.com
First off, do you. If my judging philosophy meant that you were put at a disadvantage for any particular style of debate, that would be indicative of a larger problem.
I am a Junior at Liberty University. I have done traditional policy, critical, and performative debate, though recent experience has drifted heavily toward the latter end of the spectrum. I am decently well-versed in most forms of critical literature. However, my level of familiarity with a topic should be largely irrelevant to the way you debate. I view debate generally as a format established for the clash of pedagogies. This clash can take place on the macro level or the micro, and applies to both policy and critical debate. The key is to explain which premises of your opponent’s arguments are in contestation and why. In other words, it can be as broad as a discussion on the merits or demerits of proximate state action, or as specific as the effectiveness of China deterrence to maintain US hegemony. This principle can be applied to virtually all arguments:
Ks: Isolate what the affirmative has done, explain how their particular methodology/epistemology perpetuates structural violence, and give me a clear explanation of how to avoid those harms. In debate-speak, spell out the link/s, draw a story between that link and a particular impact, and explain to me how your alternative avoids said link/impact story. The debaters who do this best are the ones who can relate the structural to the specific (ie, the aff’s use of x term/methodology/analysis leads to y structural impact writ large through z process). K affs function similarly: Tell me what systems of behavior or thought are perpetuated in the status quo, how this is done, why it is bad, and what you do about it.
FW: Framework can be run in many different ways, and should be contested in accordance to the specific argument run. For the team running it: Tell me the specific violation of the affirmative, and give me palpable reasons why the aff perpetuates a model that is harmful for debate/why your model is relatively better. Central to this argument is an explanation of why your version of debate is good, or at least better than that of the affirmative. Contestability is important, but it must ultimately be tied to the specific impacts of the model you are offering. For the team answering it: tell me in what ways you meet their interpretation, or in what ways that interpretation is bad. On both sides of the debate, blanket statements are insufficient. Tell me specific reasons why your opponents’ framing is bad. This involves an interplay of tech vs. truth that I will attempt to balance depending on the arguments made in the particular round.
DAs & CPs: My assessment of the risk of the DA happening as a result of the aff is dependent on the specific details offered as part of the negative strategy. Give me a clear line of reasoning between that link and the impact. Specificity is also important for Counter Plans, in that you must show me how the Counter Plan is competitive with the aff. Don’t assume I am familiar with the jargon.
T: I like T but I am not particularly well versed in the area. Be creative, slow down a bit, and give me well-reasoned applications to the aff.
First, yes. Please include me on the email chain: angela.cammayo@gmail.com. Thank you.
Experience: NYU Debater 2013 - 2017, Coach / Judge 2017 - Present
Overview
"If you want to achieve enlightenment, you're gonna have to go through me"
I'm just kidding on this one, my friend sent this meme to me and said it'd be great to include on my paradigm
Whatever you do well. I will do my best to listen and evaluate those arguments fairly in the context of the round. Feel free to run whatever you're comfortable with, but remember that you are responsible for your scholarship. I strongly believe that debate offers so many valuable skills -- research and critical thinking being some of the most important.
Remember, debate is game. So have fun.
Details
T- Great if you run it and go for it, but you need to win the topical version of the aff and a violation of your interp to have a shot. I will not vote on it just because the other team drops it. Note: FW is about how you debate. T is about the terms you debate. They're not the same thing. Don't conflate them.
Ks- Have a clear alt, explanation of external impacts and how it solves.
DA/CP- Have fun. But if your CP contradicts other positions in the round, it's fair for the aff to generate offense about your advocacy choices.
Non-traditional---Foregrounding identity to advance scholarship is great, using identity claims just to commodity the ballot is not (you know know who you are).
Ballots
Yes, as with most judges, I want the easiest ballot. However, I believe the Role of the Ballot free to debate. So debate it in round and if you win, I will view the round through that lens. If you go for too much in the 2NR or pick a strategy that takes out your own offense, I will not vote on it just because the aff drops it.
General Stuff
High School: Bronx Science CM 2018-2021
College: Binghamton TC 2023-2024
Send the email chain to achoud19@binghamton.edu
Put the subject in this format please:
Aff (Aff Team Name) v. Neg (Neg Team Name) (Tournament Name) Round X
I currently do policy debate in college and did four years of policy debate in high school. I have gone for many types of arguments on the policy, kritik, and theory aspects of the debate, so as long as you're explaining your arguments clearly you will win my ballot.
KvK
Give me a clear Role of the Ballot/Role of the Judge and explain how it applies to your theory of power and you'll be good.
KvFW/T
I've been on both sides of this debate and understand the strategies employed by both teams to win it. As a college debater, I don't read Framework against K-Affirmatives as frequently as I did in High School, but I am still open to voting either way in these arguments.
Policy v Policy
I like evidence comparisons in these debates.
jmu '25
affiliations: berkeley prep (2022-), solon and saint ignatius (2021-22)
tl;dr
tech>truth
I primarily run policy arguments and coach critical ones.
will vote on 0 risk
I have found that aff teams are just not sufficiently extending solvency to any of their advantages, internal links, etc., thus the I find myself having a lower threshold for neg offense
speed is fine (I will only "clear" you once and then ill flow what I can)
call me conway or matt not judge (he/him)
don't be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
clipping = auto L and 0
unlikely to vote on things that happened outside of the round
K Affs/FW
I think K affs should have some relation to the topic and am less persuaded by debate bad arguments. you don't need a c/I to win. I am persuaded by both fairness and clash. the easiest way to my ballot is establishing external offense vs internal link turns and do real impact comparison. presumption isn't gone for as much as it probably should. contextualizing the links to how they specifically destroy the ability of the alt to happen will help you out a lot. don't assume I know any of your lit.
Ks
you can win without an alt, however I prefer if you generate UQ from somewhere else rather then going for the k as a linear disad. I think teams spend way to much time on fw, in almost every case the aff gets to weigh the 1ac and the neg gets reps links.
CPs
I like well thought out advantage cps. affs don't utilize their 1ac enough when answering cps. condo is good, multi-plank condo is good. pretty much all other theory is probably a reason to reject the arg.
DAs
The politics DA was most of my high school career. I enjoy complex stories with clear internal link turns to the aff or some form of cirvumvention/a solvency take out. teams who explain how the direction of x shapes the direction of y are much more likely to win a close debate. I will probably not read you ev during the debate, but if the final rebuttals include a DA, please send a card doc.
T
default to competing interps but its not hard to get me to vote on reasonability. the simpler the definition/the clearer the violation the better.
misc
organization/signposting is important
I enjoy impacts turns/traps/double binds etc.
have fun
I tend to have a very serious RBF: it's not you; it's me. Just ignore it. I swear it's not you. It's me.
And there's a 95% chance I am late to the round, so be ready to go when I get there, please!
About me:
Email: mcopeland2017@gmail.com
Background: Currently, I am a coach for Liberty University, where I also debated for four years, NDT Octofinalist and CEDA Octofinalist; I started by doing policy args, moved to Kritical/performance things with most of my arguments starting with black women and moving outward such as Cap, AB, Set Col, and so on). As a novice, I started debate in college and worked my way to varsity, so I have a pretty good understanding of each division.
Judging wise (general things)
How I view debate: Debate is, first and foremost, a game, but it's full of real people and real consequences, so we should keep that in mind as we play, even though it has real-life implications for many of us.
Facial Expressions: I often make facial expressions during the debate, and yes, they are about the debate so that I would pay attention to it; my face will usually let you know when I am vibing and when I'm confused
Speaker points: --- subjective these days. I try to start at 28.7 and then go up and down based on a person's performance in a debate. Do you want to earn higher speaks? Don't risk clarity over speed. I'm not straining my ear to understand what you are saying. And a 2NR and 2AR that have judge instructions and tell me what I am voting on at the end of this debate, and we are good. Also, if you follow Liberty debate on Instagram and show me, I'll bump your speech.
K AFFs --Tend to think these should be in the direction of the res. You should be prepared to answer these questions if you read these affs. What is the point of reading the 1AC in debate? What is your beef with the debate or the resolution? I think you need to have a reason why people should have to engage with your model of debate and why the education you produce is good. -- For me big framing questions with no line by line is no good for me tbh
K's --- What's the link? Links need to be contextualized to the aff; generally, don't be generic or links of omission unless they are entirely dropped—the more specific the aff, the better. Leveraging the framework in your favor is an underrated strategy, but I enjoy those debates. At the end of the debate, some explanation of the alternative that solves the links needs to be explained. Less is more condensed than the K in the 2NR, and you can sit and contextualize the args you go for to the 1AC and what is happening in the debate. In general, I understand most K's. Still, you should assume that I don't explain your literature base/theory or power, especially if you read psychoanalysis, Baudrillard, or anything like that in front of me.
(Putting the K on the case page makes my flow so messy, and I like pretty flows....lol)
Anthony Davila
USMA
davilaar@gmail.com
**2024 Midseason Update - it seems I have been around too much heavy machinery/too many explosions in my career. Speed and volume are rarely issues, but clarity is an increasing problem in debate this year. I promise it is better for you to be 10% more clear than 10% faster. I flow tags, authors, and warrants (with warrants being most important). I flow based on what you communicate, not what is in the speech doc. I will announce "clear" if your clarity is lacking once or twice - it is my view that the burden rests on the debater to ensure they are understood.**
I'm up for anything. I prefer to apply the criteria the debaters supply and work things out that way. As a result the final rebuttals should provide me with a clean story and a weighing mechanism. If only one side provides this I will default to their standards. If neither side does this, I’ll use my own opinions and evaluations of the round.
At the end of the day, debate is about impacts- weigh them, their likelihood, and their magnitude relative to your opponents' arguments.
I think it is the debater’s responsibility to explain the analysis of their cards, particularly on complex positions. I will generally only read cards when there is disagreement about the content. If I have to read piles of cards and am forced to apply my analysis to them, you may not like the way it shakes out. Do yourself a favor and be clear and accurate in your descriptions of the evidence. Throughout the debate, don’t just extend the author’s name- also be clear to which argument the card applies.
I'm an active duty army officer, so I will often be judging in uniform. Don't read into that in terms of what you think my politics or preferences are. I prefer good debate. Ks, Topicality, framework, DAs, PICs/CPs/Perms - I love them all. I debated for four years when I was at USMA and ran the gamut of hard policy to total K on both aff and neg.
I wholeheartedly agree with my debate coach Joe Patrice's eternal wisdom: "I will vote on the easy way out of a round- I don’t try to divine the ultimate truth of what the debaters are saying. I’m just adjudicating a game- a fun game that can teach stuff and be pretty sweet- but still a game. So enjoy your round, do your job and I will too."
I am a novice judge, and a previous debater.
My preference is to apply the criteria that debaters provide and resolve the round based on their arguments.
I rely on rebuttals to present a clear and concise narrative and a well-defined weighing mechanism.
If neither side provides clarity, I'll use my own judgment and evaluation of the round's arguments.
I am completely unbiased on this year’s resolution and will place significant emphasis on the debaters' ability to weigh impacts in terms of their likelihood and magnitude, relative to their opponent.
The clearer a debater can make the connection between their arguments and the overall impact, the stronger their position will be. I value well-structured arguments supported by evidence. Debaters should ensure that their evidence is relevant and up-to-date.
I find it incredibly important that information is not lost due to an inability to speed talk with clarity.
I prefer debaters to explain the analysis of their evidence, particularly when the positions are complex. If there is a disagreement about the content of a card, I will consider it, but it's best if debaters provide clarity in their speeches.
My priority is to evaluate a good debate. I am open to a wide range of arguments, including Topicality, framework, Disadvantages, PICs/CPs/Perms
I'm receptive to Kritik debates, but I expect debaters to provide a clear story on the link and implication levels. A well-constructed Kritik argument can be compelling.
Debate is not just a competition but also an opportunity for personal growth and learning. I encourage debaters to enjoy the process, challenge themselves, and engage in respectful and constructive dialogue.
Email: maverickedwards1@gmail.com
Counterplans that result in the plan are problematic; I have a preference for theoretical objections over perm do the cp in the 2AR.
I generally think that fairness is good and the only impact a ballot can 'solve.' Impact turns to clash, fairness, predictability, etc. are difficult to win in front of me absent technical concessions.
I prefer to vote for advocacies with concrete, material strategies. An alternative or 1AC that advocates and defends a movement instead of USFG-based action is much more appealing to me than a strategy based on criticism without contestable action.
Teams that choose to go for a criticism should spend time explaining the critique's theory in front of me in practical terms without jargon. Big words or concepts that are familiar to people well read in the literature but not the general public will hurt your application of the theory and may lead to a frustrating decision.
I am not a good adjudicator of high theory, psychoanalysis, or similar arguments. I do not consider myself well-read in any critical literature.
I strongly prefer strategies that demonstrate why the AFF's plan should not happen. If I cannot identify a reason the AFF's MBI makes the world materially worse, then I am likely to vote AFF.
You should prioritize clarity over speed when debating in front of me. My flow has never been 'sharp,' so please keep that in mind when reading blocks, evidence, etc. 80%, or online-era speed, is probably a reasonable benchmark.
Louis Gleason
Boston College policy debate 2019-2023
Email chain: louisedwardgleason@gmail.com
== Top Level ==
-- Aff needs to read a plan and neg needs to disprove the desirability or topicality of the plan.
-- Tech > truth, but your arguments need warrants.
-- Flow > Speech doc. I won't open the speech doc during the debate (and hopefully won't have to after).
-- Be nice to everybody in the room, especially your partner and opponents.
-- I stop flowing when the timer goes off and prep time ends when you hit save on the doc (but please be quick in emailing). I try to keep track, but you should keep track of your own.
-- I don't evaluate ad homs or anything that happened outside the round.
-- I try to line up arguments on my flow to the best of my ability. Better if you number your arguments or very clearly identify the argument you're addressing in your line by line.
Beyond that, read whatever you want and have fun.
I'm a lot nicer than what my RBF would indicate. I'm happy to stay for as long as you'd like after round to discuss my thoughts, answers questions, etc. Rude post-rounding will get you a 25 speaks.
If you see me typing while you speak, it's because I'm making note of something either as a speaker comment or as something that will likely be important in my decision -- so don't worry, I'm still listening.
== Random Things ==
I try to reduce judge intervention as much as possible. As such, the following is how I understand arguments and how I avoid unduly intervening:
-- I decide in order to flow, then speech doc. I will only read evidence if a) I'm told to do so, b) I feel it is necessary to resolve clash over the interpretation of ev, and/or c) feel neither team is ahead technically and I need to read evidence to settle what are essentially ties in the argument. If you've out-teched the other team on my flow, then I won't be reading your evidence, meaning your spin matters a lot and that you should point out faults in your opponents' evidence.
-- I need a full explanation of the scenario for which you're going in the second rebuttal. If I feel like something I don't understand your argument fully post-second rebuttal, then I don't feel comfortable voting on it.
-- "Extend [author]" or "cross apply from above" and then moving on aren't arguments. Reference specifically what you want me to extend or cross apply if you want it on my flow.
Samantha Godbey, PhD
Director of Civics Institute
Director of Debate
Fairmont State University
Debaters please send speech docs here: fairmontstatespeechdocs@gmail.com I only check this email at debate tournaments.
If you would like to contact me, not during a debate tournament please email at SamanthaEGodbey@gmail.com.
A note about my education-I started as a novice in 2004 (fossil fuels)- debated through college mostly in CEDA Northeast. My PhD is in Political Science, in particular my dissertatation is on the American public policy process in the area of human trafficking policy. I also have comped in International Relations and Comparative Politics- I have never taken a communications class in my life. All of that means literally nothing except that there are pretty good odds I have not read whatever it is you are reading (policy or k lit). It is your job to explain it to me and pursuade me, not assume that I already know what you are talking about.
How I feel about arguments:
I want you all to do whatever it is you do best/ enjoy the most. There is nothing I won’t listen to/ vote on. I really like offense. It is very persuasive to me. I feel as if that is what I look for when I am making my decision at the end of the round, I also like when debaters tell me how they won. I don't like having to look for those reasons/ decide which is most important myself.
Im not crazy about judge intervention, I do my best to come in to every round as tabula rasa as possible. It is your responsibility to persuade me in one way or another to get my ballot.
I believe that I am extremely flow centric (unless you tell me not to be), also seems like I should note that I flow what you say not what is in your speech doc. I wont have your speech doc open at any time unless I am reading cards at the end of the debate. So, if its said in the round, it'll be on my paper. The round is therefore decided by my flow (again, unless told otherwise).
I vote for who wins the debate, I find all types of arguments persuasive from critical policy. I don't care what you do, just do what you do best (and impact it).
I also think it is worth noting in framework debates that though I have, and I'm sure will in the future, vote on fairness being an impact to framework, I do not find it very persuasive. I am much more into topic education, roleplaying government good, TVAs, switch side education good, etc being a reason why debate should conform to certain guidelines (i.e. framework).
Heather Holter Hall
Hallheather8@gmail.com
Salem and Tallwood High School 1990-93
Liberty University 1993-96
Liberty University Assistant Debate Coach 20+ years
I love this activity, and I look forward to meeting you.
For novices:
Congratulations on being at a debate tournament! I like debates with a few pieces of quality research that you can explain well plus some smart logical arguments. You should focus on good explanation of arguments and on getting better at flowing. Putting lots of extra pieces of research that you have never read before into your speech is a waste of your time. I would much rather hear you explain research that you understand, compare that research to your opponent’s research and arguments, and tell me why the plan is either a good or bad idea. The most important comparison in the debate you can make is to tell me whose impacts are bigger, come first, or are more likely.
I will flow what is spoken in the debate, not the speech document. You should highlight and read complete sentences. I do not count sentence fragments as arguments.
If it is an online debate, please make sure you SEE or HEAR me on the camera before you begin your speech. Please say out loud when you are done with prep time and post how much you have left in the chat. When you say prep time is done, you should be ready to email the speech document immediately.
For everyone else:
I have spent the majority of the last 20 years coaching novice debate. I also judge a lot of novice and jv debates. This means that I am not deep into the lit base for most arguments. My days are full of explaining and re-explaining basic debate theory. You should view me as someone who loves learning something new and the debate as your opportunity to teach me. If you want me to assess arguments based upon previous in-depth knowledge of a particular lit base, you will probably be very disappointed. I love the strategic use of each student’s scholarship but get me on the same page first.
Likewise, the theory debates I am used to judging are pretty basic. I would love to hear a well-developed theory debate at a high level, but you will need to slow down, give full warrants, and not assume that “lit checks” means the same to me as it does to you.
About preferred types of arguments—smart strategy with good support that is clearly communicated usually wins. I prefer consistent, thoughtful strategies with a few well-developed arguments, but, sadly, I have voted for negatives who won simply by overwhelming the 2AC with skimpy highlighting of 7 off case positions.
I have voted for everything, but I do not judge alternate formats of debates often so you will probably want to slow down, make well developed arguments, and assume I do not know. As long as I am judging and there is a win to assign, my main assumption is that every team is playing the game, maybe in different ways, but still just playing the game. I can only make decisions based on words or actions in a particular debate. I will not begin to speculate about another person’s motive or intentions--that is a job for someone else.
I will flow what is spoken in the debate, including cx. I will reference the speech doc, BUT if I can’t understand your words or if the words you say do not make grammatically complete sentences, they won’t make it on my flow and only my flow counts. Likewise, if you are hedging the debate on a warrant buried three sentences deep in the fourth card by Smith, you will need to say more than “extend Smith here.” The more concrete and specific your warrants are, the more likely you are to persuade me.
If it is an online debate, you need to SEE or HEAR me on the camera before you begin your speech. Yes, this has happened more than once lol. Don’t steal prep—it is obvious and annoying.
Feel free to "strike" me. I am not offended at all if you think I am not a good judge for you. Hopefully, I still get a chance to meet you at a tournament and chat.
Finally, I hope you all have a great tournament, learn new things, think deeply, speak well, meet fascinating people, and win lots of debates (unless you are debating my teams)! Have fun and please say hi in between debates!
While I have mostly debated policy, I appreciate a well-run K and will vote on them just as easily as voting on a disad or cp; however, if it's obvious you don't understand your K I probably won't give it much weight.
Mainly, I want you to tell me how to vote and why. I do not like to do work for any team, so I will rarely ask for cards. It's your job to tell me what your evidence says and the other team's job to explain why it is BS if it does not say what you assert.
Sign post. It annoys me to realize halfway through flowing a card that you're on a different sheet of paper.
Debate rounds are long, so I like them to be entertaining. I thoroughly enjoy a pointed/intense cross-x.
I'll almost always believe that conditionality is good for debate BUT I am not a fan of multiple worlds. I will vote on theory, but you must spend as much time and effort developing the argument as you would any other argument.
If you take too long to send/pull-up documents I will restart prep.
Email: lucia.hulsether@gmail.com
I see debate as a space where what counts as reason and what is understood as reasonable is constantly under construction and contestation, which is also to say that I’m down to hear any kind of argument that you think you perform at your best.
I am most familiar with the array of K arguments. This is partly because, in my life outside debate, I am a scholar of cultural studies and critical theory. I love judging debates that draw on and theorize from the literature coming out of those interdisciplines and ones adjacent to them. I am very supportive of performance debate, because–again–I understand all debate as performance. So, if you see a performative contradiction, definitely go ahead and point it out.
I also like debates that think through the theory of debate itself. I look forward to hearing framework arguments, since they give us all a chance to think through what we are doing and to what ends. I often like judging novice debaters for the same reasons.
In the rounds themselves. Again, do you! In general, I think it is the debater’s job to tell me clearly what is in their cards. I flow based on what you say, not based on reading your cards (I’ll read along during the speeches but am unlikely to go back through the cards beyond that). On the neg, in most cases I would rather you debate really well on a few substantial arguments than try to cram in a laundry list of off-case positions.
One thing you might want to know about me is that I wasn’t a debater in college. I’ve been judging debates for Liberty about five years now after getting to know the activity through debater friends and through my scholarship. I realize that this is odd in a community where almost everyone else has prior experience and knows the rhythms, histories, and conventions of the activity. If this means that I am sometimes behind the curve on some of the super obscure techy arguments and need them spelled out, I think my nontraditional way into the activity and my outside work can sometimes be a superpower for strategizing with you about creative ways to synthesize literatures into arguments and strategies.
As for institutional location: I am an assistant professor at Skidmore College, where I teach classes listed in our Religious Studies, American Studies, Black Studies, and Gender Studies departments. This year (2024-25) I will be based at Brown University and appointed in Religious Studies and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (CSREA).
General things:
Please add me to the email chain.
Currently the Director of Debate at JMU. I debated on the local Missouri Circuit as a high school student and debated for 3 years at UCF when they still had a policy team (2011-2014). I coached Berkeley Prep for 2 years while in college, coached JMU as a grad student, took some time off to finish my PhD, and have recently returned to debate.
If I seem crabby in the round, there's a high probability it's not your fault. The later in the tournament it is, the higher that probability gets - my ability to mask my crabby faces/moderate my vocal tone is inversely related to my tiredness/hunger/stress levels, so I'm probably not actually mad at you, just irritated at the world.
My decision-making process/how I approach debates:
I tend to prioritize solvency/links first when evaluating a debate. I think it's totally possible to win zero risk of an impact and I'm definitely willing to vote on presumption (but if that's your strategy I expect you to do the work to make it explicit).
I like well-explained, smart arguments. I would rather hear you explain something well with good examples than read a ton of cards that all say the same thing. I'll stick as close to the flow as I can and judge the debate based on how the debaters tell me to judge.
An argument has a claim, warrant, and impact. Dropped things only matter if you make them matter. It is your job to frame the voting issues in the round for me and make it clear how I should weigh arguments against one another.
I prefer to minimize how much evidence I read after the round. I expect you to do more than shadow extend things. If all I have on my flow by the end of the round is an author name, I'm not hunting that card down to figure out the warrant for you.
I flow on paper and line things up on my flow. Please give me sufficient pen time on analytics, signpost, and keep things organized. If I am unable to get something on my flow because you did not do these things or because you were not clear, that's a you problem. I will always do my best to get everything written down, even if it's in the wrong place, but it will make it more difficult for me to meaningfully weigh arguments against each other, which means longer decision times and probably worse decisions.
I don't flow CX, but will pay attention throughout CX and jot down notes if something particularly important/eye-catching seems to be happening. If something occurs in CX that you want me to vote on, it needs to make it into a speech.
I do not follow the speech doc while flowing. I may have the document open and refer to specific cards if they are referenced in CX, but I won't be flowing from your doc or reading your evidence along with you during your speech.
Stylistic things
Prep ends when you hit send on the email, and unless you're planning to ask questions about the extra cards they added, please don't make us wait to start CX until they send them. I will keep as close to a running clock as possible - we all have a role to play in making sure the tournament runs on time, and we all want a chance to get a halfway decent amount of sleep.
If you play music/videos/etc. while you are speaking, please ensure the volume of the music is substantially quieter than the volume of your voice. I have some auditory processing issues that make it extremely difficult for me to understand people's voices while there is any kind of background noise. I want to flow and evaluate your arguments, but I can't do that if I can't process your words.
I vote on things that happened during the debate. I do not vote on things that the other team (or their friends, coaches, squad-mates, acquaintances, enemies, etc.) did during pre-round prep, in the hallway yesterday, at the bar last tournament, this morning at the hotel, etc. I will not attempt to adjudicate interpersonal events I was not present to witness.
I generally think debate is good. That doesn't mean I think debate is perfect. There are absolutely valid critiques of debate that should be addressed, and I think there is value in pushing this activity to be the best version of itself. However, if your arguments rely on the assumption that debate is irredeemably bad, I'm probably not the right judge for you. I think you need a model of debate that you think is desirable and achievable within the confines of an activity in which two sides argue with each other and at the end one side is selected as a winner.
Most debaters would benefit from slowing down by about 20%. Not because speed is bad, but because few debaters are actually clear enough for the average judge to get a good flow when you're going at 100% speed.
Examples, examples, examples. If you take one thing away from my paradigm, it is that I like to be given examples. What does your theory look like in practice? What kinds of plans are included/excluded under your T interp? Etc.
Please do not assume I know what your acronyms/etc mean. If I don't know what the bill/organization/event you're talking about is, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to evaluate your link story.
I will open the speech doc, but will not necessarily follow along. I may look at a card if something spicy happens in CX, if you're referring to a card in a rebuttal, etc., but I do not look at or flow from the doc. If you are not clear enough for me to flow without looking at your doc, I will not fill in gaps from the doc.
Ethics Violations:
I take ethics challenges extremely seriously. I consider them to be an accusation of academic dishonesty equivalent to plagiarism. Just like any other instance of academic dishonesty, ethics violations can have serious consequences for debaters and programs, and the perception that our activity condones such behavior could have serious repercussions for the survival of our activity. If an ethics challenge is issued, that is the end of the debate. If the tournament invitation includes a protocol for handling ethics challenges, I will follow the tournament rules. If the tournament does not have a clear set of protocols, I will clarify that an ethics challenge has been issued, make a determination in regards to the challenge, and either vote for the team issuing the challenge or for the team against whom the challenge was issued.
If you become aware of something you think might be an ethics violation prior to the round (you notice a card that is cited incorrectly, etc.) I would STRONGLY PREFER that you reach out to the team/their coach before the round and let them know/give them a chance to fix it, rather than initiating an ethics challenge in the round.
Because of the seriousness of ethics challenges, I consider it the responsibility of the team issuing the challenge to 1) prove that a violation (defined as card clipping or intentionally manufacturing or mis-representing the source or content of evidence) occurred and 2) provide a reasonable degree of evidence that the violation was intentional or malicious (i.e., I do not consider someone mumbling/stumbling over words because they were tired to be the same thing as intentional card clipping, and do not think it should have the same consequences).
That said, I understand that proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt is an impossible standard. I do not expect you to prove exactly what was going on in the other team's mind when the event happened. However, you should be able to show that the other team reasonably should have known that the cite was wrong, the text was missing, etc. and chose to engage in the behavior knowing that it was unethical. I do not think we should be accusing people of academic dishonesty as a strategy to win a round. I also do not think we should be engaging in cheating behavior to win rounds. No one debater's win record is worth more than the continued health of our activity as a whole. If we would like this activity to continue, we must have ethical standards, including not cheating and not frivolously accusing people of cheating.
Speaker Points:
These are relative for each division (e.g., what I consider an "average performance" that gets a 28.3 in novice will be different from what I think of as an "average performance" that gets a 28.3 in varsity)
29.5-30: You should be in the top 3 speakers at the tournament. I can count the number of times I have given above a 29.5 on one hand.
29-29.5: This was an incredible performance. I expect you to be in late out rounds at this tournament and/or to win a speaker award
28.6-29: This was an above-average performance. Something about your speeches/CXs impressed me. Keep this up and I anticipate you will clear.
28.3-28.6: This was an average performance. You had some good moments, but nothing incredible happened.
27.5-28.3: I like your attitude. Some rough things happened during this round. Maybe you dropped an off-case position, only read blocks, were extremely unclear, etc.
Below a 27.5: Something majorly wrong has happened in this round. You failed to participate meaingfully in the debate and/or failed to demonstrate basic human decency toward other people in the room.
Case debate
Yes, please. I love a good case debate, particularly when it is grounded in specific and detailed analysis of what the aff claims their plan/advocadcy does vs what their cards actually say.
T/Framework
I judge a lot of these debates, and enjoy them. Ultimately, these are debates about what we think debate should be. Because of that, I think you need a clear description of what your model of debate looks like, what it includes/excludes, and why that's a good thing.
Debate is an educational activity unlike any other, and I think that's a good thing. I generally default to believing education is the most important impact in these debates, but can absolutely be persuaded that something else (i.e. fairness) should come first.
Despite what I just said, I think the competitive nature of debate is also good, which means there should probably be at least some parameters for what the activity looks like that allows both sides a reasonable shot at winning. What that looks like is up for debate.
I prefer affirmatives with some clear tie to the resolution. That doesn't mean you have to fiat a topical plan text, but I do think it means debate is better when the affirmative is at least in the direction of the topic and/or about the same general content as the resolution.
Your TVA needs to actually access whatever offense the aff is leveraging against T. Lots of TVAs fail this test. I think a good TVA can be super important, but a bad TVA is typically a complete waste of time.
Against policy affs, I think giving me specific examples of ground you lost (not just "we lost some DAs" but "We specifically couldn't read these 2 core DAs and this core CP") is important. If you can show in-round abuse via spiking out of links, that would be ideal.
Please give me pen time.
Counterplans
If your counterplan has a bajillion hyper-specific planks, you need to slow down enough for me to at least get an idea of what they are in the 1NC.
I like counterplans that are specific, well-researched, and have a clear basis in a solvency advocate. I don't love counterplans that have a million planks that are not clearly explained until the block or the 2nr and are not grounded in some kind of solvency advocate/literature.
You should be able to clearly articulate how the implementation of the CP works. I think most aff teams should spend more time articulating solvency deficits based on the negative team's inability or refusal to articulate what the implementation process of the CP looks like in comparison to the aff.
I think conditionality is good, within reason. I think PICs are good, within reason. I think multi-actor fiat, counterplans with a zillion planks, etc. are probably not great, but generally are reasons to reject the argument, not the team. I can be convinced that any of the above opinions are wrong, given the right arguments by either team.
Disads
Please make clear what your acronyms mean, what your specific link story is, etc. early in the debate. I don't spend a ton of time judging giant big-stick policy rounds, so I'm probably not as versed in this literature as you. Please don't make me spend 20 minutes after the debate trying to decipher your impact scenario. Give me a very clear explanation in the 2nc/1nr overview.
Kritiks
I think the aff gets to weigh their impacts if they prove that the ideas underwriting those impacts are good and accurate. I think the neg gets links to the aff's reps/discourse/etc. I think the negative needs to win a specific link to the aff (i.e., not just to the status quo) and also either that the links are sufficient to undermine the aff's internal links (i.e. I should vote on presumption) or that the alternative can resolve the links. I don't think any of those statements are particularly controversial.
The role of the ballot is to decide who did the better debating in this round. Always. How I should evaluate what counts as "better debating" is up for debate, but I am pretty unsympathetic to obviously self-serving roles of the ballot.
If you say the phrase "vote aff to vote neg" or "vote neg to vote aff" in a round I am judging, you owe me $10.
SHORTEST VERSION: THINGS I BELIEVE ABOUT DEBATE
_______________________________________________________
Lawful Good -----|----Neutral Good -----|----Chaotic Good
1AC Plan Texts, ----|----- Case Debate,------|----Performance Debate,
Open Debaters -----|----Novice Debaters----|----JV Debaters
_______________________________________________________
Lawful Neutral ---|---True Neutral------|---- Chaotic Neutral
Topicality -----------|----Counterplans ------|------Dispositionality
_______________________________________________________
Lawful Evil -------|----Neutral Evil ------|-----Chaotic Evil
Framework args ---|----Standard Nuke ----|----- Baudrillard
from 1996 that ----|---- War Disad
say no K's
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SHORT VERSION:
You are prepping and don't have time to read everything, or interpret. So this is the stuff you most need to know if you don't know me :
1) I run The New School program. The New School is in the Northeast, around the corner from NYU where I actually work full time. (CEDA has Regions, not Districts. The NDT and the Hunger Games have Districts.) I care about things like novice and regional debate, and pretty much only coach for resource poor programs. You need to know this because it affects how I view your ETHOS on certain "who are we" arguments.
2) Email: vikdebate@gmail.com. Skip the rant below about want/need to be on chain.
3)SLOW THE HELL DOWN, especially ONLINE. I flow on paper. I need PEN TIME. I am not reading along with the doc unless the connection gets bad or I have serious misgivings.
4) Do what you need to do to make the tech work.
5) Do what you do in this activity. Seriously, especially in novice, or on a panel, you are not 100% adapting to me, so change how you debate those things a bit maybe, but not what you debate. To help with that:
6) Yes, my threshold for "is there gonna be a nuclear war" is WAY higher than it is for "what we talk about in the debate round going to affect us personally". I will vote on the wars, but I don't enjoy every debate about prolif in countries historically opposed to prolif. That isn't "realism" - that's hawk fetish porn. So if this IS you, you gotta do the internal link work, not read me 17 overly-lined down uniqueness cards.
7) I am more OFTEN in K rounds, but honestly I am more of a structural K person than a high theory person. Yes, debate is all simulacra now anyway, but racism and sexism - and the violence caused by them - ARE REAL WORLD. Your ability to talk about such things and how they relate to policies is probably one of your better portable skills for the modern world in this activity.
8) Performance good. Literally, I have 2 degrees in theater. Keep in mind that it means I am pretty well read on this as theory. All debate is performance. (Heck, life is performance, but you don't have time for that now...). My pet peeve as a coach is reading through all the paradigm that articulate performance and Kritikal as the same thing. It.Is.Not. Literally, it is Form vs. Content.
9) Winning Framework does not will a ballot. Winning Framework tells me how to prioritize or include or exclude arguments for my calculation of the ballot. T is NOT Framework (but for the record I err towards Education over Fairness, because this activity just ain't fair due to resource disparity, etc, so do the WORK to win on Fairness via in round trade offs, precedents, or models.)
10) Have fun. Debate can be stressful. Savor the community you can in current times.
PS: I am probably more flow focused than you think, BUT I still prefer the big picture. Tell me a story. It has to make sense for my ballot.
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Previous Version
The 2020 Preamble relevant to ONLINE DEBATE:
1) Bear with my tech for September for the first round of each day - I work across multiple universities and I am still sorting out going across 3 Zoom accounts, 5 emails accounts, and 2 Starfish accounts for any given thing. Working from home for 6 months combined my day-job stuff into my debate stuff, so I may occasionally have to remember to do a setting. This is like the worst version of a Reese's peanut butter cup.
2) Look, it would be great if I COULD see you as you debate. I am old - I flow what you say and I don't read along with the speech doc unless something bad is happening (bad things include potential connection issues in 2020, concerns over academic integrity/skipping words, and you don't actually do evidence comparison as a debater when weighing your cards and theirs). I don't anticipate changing that in the online debate world. But also, tech disparity and random internet gremlins are real things (that's why we need so many cats in the intertubes), so I ALSO understand if you tell me the camera is off for reasons. That's cool.
3) Because of connections and general practices - SLOW DOWN. CLARITY is super important. (Also, don't be a jerk to people with auditory accommodation needs as we do this). Trade your speed drills for some tongue twisters or something.
4) Recording as a back up is probably a necessary evil, but any use of the recording after a round that is shared to anyone else needs explicit - in writing, and can be revoked - permission of all parties present. PRACTICE AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT. See ABAP statement on online debate practices.
5) I have never wanted to be on the email chain/what-not; however, I SHOULD* be on the chain/what-not. Note the critical ability to distinguish these two things, and the relevance of should to the fundamental nature of this activity. Email for this purpose: vikdebate@gmail.com .
(Do not try to actually contact me with this address - it’s just how I prevent the inevitable electronically transmitted cyber infection from affecting me down the road, because contrary to popular belief, I do understand disads, I just have actual probability/internal link threshold standards.)
((And seriously Tabroom, what the F***? First you shill for the CIA, and now you want to edit the words because "children" who regularly talk about mass deaths might see some words I guarantee you then know already? I was an actual classroom teacher....debate should not be part of the Nanny State. Also this is NEW, because the word A****** used to be in my paradigm in reference to not being one towards people who ask for accessibility accommodations. ARRGGHHH!!!))
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Things I am cool with:
Tell met the story
Critical Args
Critical Lit (structural criticisms are more my jam)
Performative strategies - especially if we get creative with the 20-21 format options.
CP fun times and clever intersections of theory
A text. Preferable a well written text. Unless there are no texts.
Not half-assing going for theory
Case debate
Reasonability
You do you
Latin used in context for specific foreign policy conditions.
Teaching Assurance/Deterrence with cats.
Things that go over less well:
Blippy theory
Accidentally sucking your own limited time by unstrategic or functionally silly theory
Critical lit (high theory … yes, I know I only have myself to blame, so no penalty if this is your jelly, just more explanation)
Multiple contradictory conditional neg args
A never ending series of non existent nuclear wars that I am supposed to determine the highest and fastest probability of happening (so many other people to blame). You MAY compare impacts as equal to "x number of gender reveal parties".
Not having your damn tags with the ev in the speech doc. Seriously.
As a general note: Winning framework does not necessarily win you a debate - it merely prioritizes or determines the relevancy of arguments in rounds happening on different levels of debate. Which means, the distinction between policy or critical or performative is a false divide. If you are going to invoke a clash of civilizations mentality there should be a really cool video game analogy or at least someone saying “Release the Kraken”. A critical aff is not necessarily non Topical - this is actually in both the Topic Paper for alliances/commitments and a set of questions I asked at the topic meeting (because CROSS EX IS A PORTABLE SKILL). Make smarter framework arguments here.
Don't make the debate harder for yourself.
Try to have fun and savor the moment.
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*** *** ***
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*Judges should be on the chain/what-not for two reasons: 1)as intelligence gathering for their own squad and 2) to expedite in round decision making. My decisions go faster than most panels I’m on when I am the one using prep time to read through the critical extended cards BEFORE the end of the debate. I almost never have the docs open AS the debaters are reading them because I limit my flow to what you SAY. (This also means I don’t read along for clipping … because I am far more interested in if you are a) comprehensible and b) have a grammatical sentence in some poor overhighlighted crap.) Most importantly, you should be doing the evidence comparisons verbally somehow, not relying on me to compare cards after the debate somehow. If I wanted to do any of that, I would have stayed a high school English teacher and assigned way more research papers.
Gabe Lewis
Assistant Director of Debate at Georgetown University
_____________________________
Top Level Debate Thoughts:
Explanation: I am a bit of a dinosaur (or maybe I'm just right) when it comes to expectations about explanation. I want to know exactly what internal links you solve & how you solve them for each impact. I want to know this in every speech. If after the debate I do not understand how the aff resolves the internal links, I am not going to vote on your impact outweighing.
Delivery and Evidence: Debaters should SLOW DOWN especially when reading blocks. I understand that there is an incentive to be the fastest speaker in the room but this negatively impacts you when I cannot understand what you are saying let alone to flow your arguments. Debate is a communicative activity first and foremost. That means I am uninterested in reading a lot of evidence after the debate.
Decision Making: Think about what argument you will win the debate on and then spend your time appropriately developing that argument in the final rebuttals. I understand it can be frustrating if a judge doesn't vote on the argument you think is capital T true but if you spend a few seconds on it four minutes into your last speech, you're probably doomed because judges have countless other arguments to think through and evaluate. You should put your best arguments at the top of the speech and you should also do judge instruction.
Stylistic Things: Please number your arguments and slow down between pages. Please do not put nine consecutive permutations at the top of the CP flow in the 2AC. Every time you refuse to label an off-case position, I die a little inside. You can "insert the rehighlighting" as much as your heart desires but I refuse to acknowledge it unless you've read the rehighlighting given the communicative activity of it all.
Argument Specific Thoughts
Kritiks: I did not read them in college and am not familiar with the various literature bases. Going for a K against a policy aff will be an uphill battle for you. I am, at my core, a pragmatist and it will be difficult to convince me that the alternative (or doing nothing) is preferable to the affirmative without a significant amount of case defense.
K Affs: I think affirmative teams should affirm the resolution and I am sympathetic to negative topicality/framework arguments. I am not convinced by "in the direction of the topic" We Meet/Counter-interpretations because I find them very self-serving, vague, and arbitrary.
T v Policy Affs: I evaluate these as debates about comparative models of the topic. What does the topic look like under two different interpretations? Is that good or bad for debate? Does it limit out all affs on the topic? Does it explode the limits of the topic? Does it obfuscate all negative ground? These are considerations you should grapple with when answering and extending Topicality/defending your model. I am more likely to side with a solid version of the topic as explained by the debaters than I am to side with a better evidenced explanation of the topic that provides no clear brightlines or guardrails.
Politics: I thoroughly enjoy politics debates - even if it's midterms or elections. I think internal links can be generally contrived so I would encourage aff teams to point out the various uniqueness issues these DA's tend to present. I am not a fan of politics theory arguments (Vote No, Intrinsicness, Fiat Solves the Link) because I think they are generally warrantless arguments that negative teams hope the aff will miss. Without a warrant, a dropped claim does not matter as I do not believe it to be a completed argument.
CP: I think CP theory is a reason to reject the argument, not the team. I HATE when teams read multiplank CP's and do not explain the utility of the planks in the solvency debate. Why are you reading ten planks if you explain the CP like it is a single plank? If your explanation of a plank in the 2NC is rereading it without explanation and context, I'm not the judge for you. Not great on counterplan competition questions and have little experience debating competition or judging these debates.
Conditionality: Fine - more than three is pushing it.
Email Chain: vli40@binghamton.edu (I might not read your docs, but I should still have them in case).
Background: I debated at the University of Georgia for four years as their lone K debater reading Baudrillard and various pomo theories. I've been coaching at Bing for 4 years where I also primarily coach Baudrillard and various pomo theories. I think that debate is an incredible activity and equally value the potential for creativity and education. I tend to think of myself as an educator, and I generally prefer to let people read the arguments that they want to read.
1) Important Note about Adaptation: I have asymmetrical hearing loss. That means that I generally don't hear as clearly as some, which is an issue compounded by the fact that I was a slow K debater and am a slow K judge. I generally don't have an issue catching K and clash debate unless you're spreading quickly or incoherently through prewritten blocks. I do have an issue following fast policy vs. policy debate especially because I rarely know the nuances of any particular topic (certainly not high school). To adapt, you should make sure a) there is an obstacle free line between me and you, so that I can see and hear you, b) slow down if necessary if it seems like I'm flipping through my flows a lot or look annoyed, c) focus on explanation and judge instruction; smart debating can easily overcome tech for me because it will help me organize what is going on.
2) Conduct If you're in high school, college novice, or college junior varsity, don't be excessively mean to your opponents. If you are in college varsity, you should be funny.
Arguments:
Kvk
1) Explain methodologies. Why am I voting for you? How do I know that your argument is true? Because I don't generally have the same stable default of rational, utilitarian policy-maker, it is extremely important for you to tell me how to think about the round and that means defending your methods and presuppositions. If you don't have a reason why a particular framing is good or should be adopted, then that's the equivalent of making a warrantless claim for me.
2) Perms. I don't generally assume that there are no perms in a method debate, but I do think that the current state of debating perms is abusive. It is important that you explain what it is that I am voting for with respect to both the permutation and/or an alternative. If the alt is largely not-mitigated, then it is much harder for you to win the permutation because I am willing to weigh a risk of the perm being worse than the alt against the alt itself.
3) You should try to be as specific as possible and try to contextualize your Theory of Power to the aff. It is literally possible to win neg debates on Theory of Power alone, but I think it's easy for the non-pess team to beat back totalization in which case you will be losing Theory of Power. You can certainly still win debates where you lose Theory of Power as the pess team, and this will usually be through winning links, solvency indicts, or an alternative. This is true for all psychoanalysis arguments and Baudrillard.
4) I will hack for novelty. It's incredible to me how much critical theory we don't use in debate because it fails to meet the bar for what we think is the correct way to execute a Kritik. There's too little incentive for rethinking familiar arguments. If you go equal against a team that is reading something weird and new while you are reading old blocks and recycled 2nrs, then you did the worse debating.
Clash
1) Framework is boring. There are so many things that I would rather hear besides or in addition to framework such as impact turns/disads, cap, topical counterplans, indicts of authors, and other kritiks. If you read framework in front of me me, here are somethings that matter to me
A) Tell a story about actual abuse. I much prefer that framework be read with arguments that you expect your opponents to spike out of. Conversely, if you are the K team and you don't spike disads, then it is much more likely that you will win framework. Winning actual abuse will always legitimate whining about models.
B) Know that I think that fairness is an impact, but I don't think that it can easily be outweighed by structural injustice or the reproduction of violence. It is certainly a tie-breaker when the K team loses that voting for them does nothing or the TVA.
C) Clash is generally an internal link, not an impact. If you win that you have more detailed discussions of something that we shouldn't be talking about, you haven't won anything good.
2) Doing good is good, but you still have to explain buzzwords like utilitarianism and pragmatism. You don't win these arguments by just repeating the word because that's equivalent to a claim without a warrant.
3) Theory usually comes before topic education because it is assumed that we don't need to read conditional offcase or pics to access kritikal education. Again if you can tell me an abuse story, I'm more willing to buy the violation. I also really like 'x justifies y' arguments.
Policy vs. Policy
1) Ideally, I wouldn't be in these rounds, but it happens.
2) I will assume a utilitarian cost benefit analysis unless told otherwise. This means that I will vote for whatever you tell me to vote for. I've voted for first-strike russia, curbing counterplans, and condo.
3) Slow down and don't assume I read and understand what your aff does. Even if I do, I still believe that debate is a communicative activity and expect you to explain your arguments to me.
Nick Loew - GMU'24 - 4x NDT qualifier, 1x NDT Doubles
masondebatedocs@gmail.com [College ONLY Please]
You should read whatever arguments you are most comfortable with and want to go for. None of my opinions about debate are so significant that they overdetermine deciding who won based on the individual debate in front of me.
Tech > Truth. Complete arguments require warrants to substantiate them.
T vs Plans- I enjoy well-researched and substantive topicality debates. On the other hand I dislike contrived and unpredictable interpretations that are arbitrary in nature. (T LPR on the HS immigration topic > T substantial on the college alliances topic).
T vs K Affs - I almost always was on the neg going for T in these debates. In front of me the aff is best set up for victory by presenting a counterinterpretation that seeks to solve the negs offense alongside impact turns to the negs model, although of course you can also win with impact turns alone. For me I will say the latter is more difficult as I struggle to vote aff when there is no counterinterp extended in the 2AR to solve some amount of limits/ground.
CPs - I enjoy specific CP strategies that include topic/aff specific evidence. In competition debates I likely lean affirmative when there is relatively equal debating and the neg has presented a CP that generically competes off of certainty or immediacy.
Ks - I like Ks with links to the plan and alternatives that attempt to solve the links impact compared to Ks that rely entirely on framework strategies. That being said, I have still voted for positions that were solely critiques of plan-focus or fiat for example. Overall, I think I’m alright for most critical positions on the neg.
Theory - Often I find myself deciding that conditionality is good.
If you have any specific questions feel free to email me.
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Lincoln Douglas:
I strongly believe in affirmative disclosure.
Theory: I am mostly unfavorable towards/dislike one sentence theory arguments that seem and are arbitrary in nature. Furthermore, I am unlikely to believe that most theory arguments aside from condo are reasons to reject the debater (ex: solvency advocate theory/states theory/agent CPs etc… is not a reason to reject the team).
Please attempt to be clear. I have found this to be a problem more often in LD likely because of the short speech times.
FAQ: (Copied from Jasmine Stidham's paradigm)
Q:I primarily read policy (or LARP) arguments, should I pref you?
A: Yes.
Q: I read a bunch of tricks/meta-theory/a prioris/paradoxes, should I pref you?
A: No thank you. Theory thoughts above.
Q: I read phil, should I pref you?
A: I'm not ideologically opposed to phil arguments however I do not judge many phil debates. You may need to do some policy translation/over-explanation however so I understand exactly what you're saying.
Q: I really like Nebel T, should I pref you?
A: Avoid reading evidence from debate blogs. If you'd like to make a similar argument, just find non-Nebel articles. This applies to most debate coach evidence read in LD. T whole-rez generally is fine.
Q: I like to make theory arguments like 'must spec status' or 'must include round reports for every debate' or 'aspec' should I pref you?
A: Not if those arguments are your idea of a round-winning strategy. I am annoyed by strategies that rely on your opponent dropping analytics that weren't sent in the document.
Q: RVIs? No 1AR theory?
A: Nope.
Ian Lowery (also goes by "Izzy" and/or "Bishop"),
Assistant Director of Debate at George Mason University (2022 - Present).
Former Policy Debater at George Mason University (2014 - 2018).
Former Assistant Coach at James Madison University (2020 - 2022).
Former Head Coach of Speech & Debate at Centreville High School (2018-2019)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Top Level: I believe that my role as the judge is to absorb the information provided within the round and decide who wins based on the debater's ability to explain and defend their positions. Do whatever you were going to do before you saw my name on the pairing. Treat the following as proclivities that may make my decision easier or increase your speaker points.
I mostly ran kritical arguments during my time as a debater. In my earlier years I did traditional policy but most of my best experience is with the K.
Tech over Truth - I believe in voting on the flow, and unless I am more than 95% sure that a statement or argument is universally false, it can be debated and proven true on the flow. Beyond that, I will still try to be unbiased in my evaluation the argument, but you're rolling the dice.
I will evaluate arguments which suggest that I should not flow or not decide the round based on traditional policy argumentation standards - but I need to be given a clear alternative method of evaluating the truth-value of competing arguments. Otherwise, I don't see how I won't just end up voting for whoever I think was more technical or voting for whichever team I vibed with more (which might be the point... I guess. But trying to predict my vibes without knowing me very well is a dangerous game imo).
Conduct - Don't be a jerk. It's aight to be aggressive, if there's a point/reason behind it. At it's core, I think debate is a game, so everyone should have fun.
Time - I don't keep track of time well in my personal life or in debates. Please don't rely on me for that. Keep track of your own and your opponent's time.
E-mail - itlowery20@gmail.com
masondebatedocs@gmail.com ONLY for College Policy
If you have any questions, feel free to email me.
The briefest background info ever:
former 2A at Binghamton - I did a lot of K debate.
1- K, phil
2- policy/LARP
3/strike- theory/tricks
Put me on the email chain
Do whatever you want* just tell me how to vote, what to vote on, and why I should vote on it
* Misc things that are not up for debate
- problematic behavior/rhetoric/language/vibes means your speaks = the number of hours of sleep I got last night
- I will flow shared speeches, please do not feed lines to your partner, just say them yourself
- If you're reading Schmitt or Heidegger your speaks are capped at 26 regardless of whether or not you win
- if you are reading afro pess blocks to answer a position that's not afro pess I am subtracting 1 point from your speaks
- Brownie points in the form of speaks for a well-executed phil strat in any event (that includes util if you do it right)
- if you spread your unsent analytics at card speed im only going to evaluate what i was able to flow so be careful
My default procedure for evaluating a debate -
*I believe very strongly that the three points under this heading are up for debate - these are just defaults*
1. Who am I, what is the round, what is the ballot and what can it do? Absent arguments that tell me otherwise:
- I am a recently graduated college debater who majored in linguistics and psychology, I care a lot more about the activity than policymaking
- The round is a competition predicated on your ability to persuade me to vote for you
2. What are the roles/burdens of the aff and the neg
- I don't care if the aff reads a plan, defends a change from the status quo, makes no arguments at all, you just have to explain why it means I should vote aff
- the negs job is to convince me to vote neg
3. Who solves which impacts and how do I evaluate/compare them?
- I start my evaluation with framework/framing
- discourse/education matter (ie. I would rather you just go for liberalism good than argue that your reps aren't important)
more detailed takes for people who want them:
K's:
I have probably read your lit base, if I haven't I'm equally excited to hear it
Do something fun and exciting, do something we've all seen before, just do it well and enjoy doing it. It's your round, I'm just living in it
There are probably no perms in a methods debate, but you still have to win that
DAs:
Love them (and never get to judge them lmao)
Don't be afraid to go for a DA and case just don't forget presumption
CPs:
Solvency advocate theory is probably true
These are a solid and underutilized strategy against k affs
Theory/T:
think of this as like a break glass in case of emergency option in front of me; if you can demonstrate and impact out in round abuse then do it
I am very persuaded by perf con
Disclosure theory means I need screenshots with a timestamp
if you're a circuit debater and your opponent has no idea what's going on I will deck your speaks
affs
I've read all kinds of affs.
K aff's- literally do whatever you want. I don't care if you mention the topic. I don't care if you have a c/i on fw.
I will vote for soft left affs, and honestly, I miss them, probability>magnitude is very winnable in front of me.
Policy affs- please keep your internal link chains alive ???? - tell me how the aff solves your extinction scenario
Last updated 9-9-24
Please include me in your speech doc thread. My email is johnfnagy@gmail.com
New for Fall of 2024: I've decided that the arguments i have on my flow are going to account for the vast majority of how i calculate who won the debate. That means you need to flesh out the warrants of your best or most important evidence in the actual debate. I am finished reading evidence docs sent after the debate. Don't bother, i won't read it. Tell me why your evidence is good or your opponents evidence is bad during the debate. At most i'll look at up to five cards after a round is over. Am making a decision to value the arguments made on the flow. Pref me accordingly.
If I am judging you online, you MUST slow down. I will not get all of your arguments, particularly analytics, on the flow. You have been warned.
I enjoy coaching and judging novice debates. I think the novice division is the most important and representative of what is good in our community. I don't support rules that mandate what arguments novices can and cannot run at tournaments.
I really like judging debates where the debaters speak clearly, make topic specific arguments, make smart analytic arguments, attack their opponent’s evidence, and debate passionately. I cut a lot of cards so I know a lot about the topic. I don’t know much about critical literature.
Framework debates: I don’t enjoy judging them. Everyone claims their educational. Everyone claims their being excluded. It’s extremely difficult to make any sense of it. I would rather you find a reason why the 1AC is a bad idea. There’s got to be something. I can vote for a no plan-text 1AC, if you’re winning your arguments. With that being said, am not your ideal judge for such 1AC’s because I don’t think there’s any out of round spill-over or “solvency.”
Topicality: Am ok with topicality. Competing interpretations is my standard for evaluation. Proving in-round abuse is helpful but not a pre-requisite. If am judging in novice at an ADA packet tournament, it will be very difficult to convince me to vote on topicality. Because there are only 2-3 1AC's to begin with, there's no predictability or limits arguments that make any sense.
Disadvantages: Like them. The more topic specific the better.
Counterplans: Like them. The more specific to the 1AC the better. Please slow down a little for the CP text.
Kritiks: ok with them. I don’t know a lot about any critical literature, so know that.
Rate of Delivery: If I can’t flow the argument, then it’s not going on my flow. And please slow down a little bit for tags.
Likes: Ohio State, Soft Power DA’s, case debates
Dislikes: Michigan, debaters that are not comprehensible, being asked to read tons of cards after a debate
I've been the Director of Debate at the US Naval Academy since 2005. I debated at Catholic University in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Put me on the doc thread: danielle.verney@gmail.com. Please use the wiki as much as possible!
Four things I hate--this number has gone up:
1. WASTING TIME IN DEBATES--what is prep time? This isn't an existential question. Prep time is anything you do to prepare for a debate. That means when it's start time for the debate, everyone should be READY TO START--restrooms visited, water gathered, stand assembled, doc thread started, timer in hand, snacks ready for your judge (jk). Any of these things that need to happen during a debate are technically prep time and thus should probably happen either during your prep or the other team's prep. The 2:15 decision deadline is an unequivocal good because it makes me 100% more likely to get a reasonable amount of sleep at night which makes me a better judge/coach/administrator/human, but y'all need to get better at managing your time to make it work.
2. Elusiveness (especially in Cross-Ex but during speeches too): “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer. Taking your questioner on a goose-chase for the answer to a simple question is not. Pretending you don't know how the plan works or what it does or that there are a whole bunch of ways it MIGHT happen is not persuasive to me, it just makes it look like you don't know what's going on. Answer the counterplan; tell me it's cheating--I'm one of the like 5 judges in the community who believe you.
3. Debaters who get mad that I didn’t read their one piece of really sweet evidence. If you want me to understand the warrants of the evidence and how they compare to the warrants of the other team’s evidence, maybe you should talk about them in one of your speeches. Read less bad cards and talk about the good ones more--tell me how your one good card is better than their 12 bad ones.
4. Rudeness. Don’t be rude to your partner, don’t be rude to the other team, and DEFINITELY don’t be rude to me. Excessive cursing is frowned upon (louder for the people in the back). Conversely, if you are nice, you will probably be rewarded with points. Entertain me. I enjoy pop culture references, random yelling of "D7", humorous cross-x exchanges, and just about any kind of joke. I spend a LOT of time judging debates, please make it enjoyable, or at least not uncomfortable.
Performance/Ks of Debate:
I’m going to be painfully honest here and say that I don’t like performance debate or critiques of current debate practices. I’m also going to state the obvious and say that I really like policy debate. Why? Well, I guess it’s the same reason that some people root for the Yankees over the Red Sox—I’m evil. Actually, it’s because I think there are a lot of specific educational benefits to traditional policy debate that you can’t get anywhere else. There might be a lot of educational benefits to performances, but I think that you can get those benefits from doing other activities too, which isn’t necessarily true of policy-style debate. If this makes you want to strike me, I heartily encourage you to do so.
HOWEVER--the opposing team would need to advance those arguments to win the debate. Do I think status quo debate is good? Yes. Will I vote on "debate is good" without that argument having been made? No. If the opposing team concedes the framework debate or doesn't advance "status quo debate good" as their framework arg, I'm not going to vote on it, obviously; the debate would proceed as agreed to by both teams. I have judged these debates before and have voted on the arguments in the round.
Kritiks:
Whatevs, if it’s your thing, you can do it in front of me. I’m pretty smart, which means I attempt to avoid reading post-modern philosophy as much as possible, and the only languages I currently speak with any level of fluency are English and Pig Latin. This means you should probably SLOW DOWN and find a convenient time to define any words that are Greek/German/made up by an aging beatnik. The problem I have with most Ks is that they have totally sweet, awesome impacts but there’s little link to the aff (or no harder link to the aff than to the status quo), so maybe that’s something that both the aff and neg should work on in the round. I really prefer Kritiks with alternatives, and I prefer the alternative not be “reject the plan”.
Counterplans:
I think lots of counterplans (consult, international actor, conditions, etc) are probably cheating. As a director of a small school, I don't have a huge problem with cheating if you can defend it and do it well. I wouldn't make this the "A strat" for me if you've got other options, but I appreciate that there sometimes aren't any and I promise not to throw things or set the ballot on fire if you've gotta roll with it.
Not to sound like a grumpy old person (though I am) but I think conditionality run amok is hurting debate. I'm probably okay with 1 CP, 1 K, and the status quo as an option until the 2nr (test the rez from a variety of standpoints, etc). Any more than that and you're pushing my buttons. I'm about as likely to "judge kick" a CP for you as I am to kick a winning field goal for the Steelers (not gonna happen).
Disads:
There’s nothing better than a good disad. What do I mean by a good disad? Well, it should have a pretty clear, and ideally pretty specific, link to the affirmative. It should also (and here’s the part lots of debaters forget about) have some form of internal link that goes from the link to the impact. Aff—if the neg doesn’t have one of those things, you might want to point it out to me.
If your disad makes my internal BS-ometer go off I'm gonna tank your points.
Topicality/Other Procedurals:
I don’t evaluate T like it’s a disad, which I think is the current fashionable thing to say, because unlike lots of people, I don’t think your aff advantages can outweigh T in the way that the aff could outweigh a disad. So I don’t focus as much on the “best” interpretation—if the aff interp is good but not as good as the neg’s, the aff will probably win in front of me. This means I think the neg really needs to focus on the ground and limits debate—here is where you can persuade me that something is really bad.
I think topics are becoming more broad and vague, and understand negative frustration at attempting to engage in a debate about the plan's mechanism or what the plan actually does (often the very best parts of a debate in my opinion). I feel like I can be fairly easily persuaded to vote against a team that just uses resolutional language without a description of what that means in a piece of solvency evidence or a cross-examination clarification. I think neg teams will need to win significant ground loss claims to be successful in front of me (can't just roll with agent cps key) but I think I am more easily persuaded on these arguments than I have been in the past.
GENERAL
plz put me on the chain: dopron4@gmail.com
tech>truth
I'm a debater at West Point and run both policy and critical arguments
speed is fine (I will clear you once then flow what I can)
pronouns: (he/him)
don't be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
don't cut cards out of context
K Affs/FW
I think K affs should have some relation to the topic and am less persuaded by debate bad arguments. you don't need a c/I to win. I am persuaded by both fairness and clash. Presumption isn't gone for as much as it probably should. Contextualizing the links to how they specifically destroy the ability of the alt to happen will help you out a lot. don't assume I know any of your lit.
Ks
you can win without an alt, however I prefer if you generate UQ from somewhere else rather then going for the k as a linear disad. I think teams spend way to much time on fw, in almost every case the aff gets to weigh the 1ac and the neg gets reps links. as long as the link is somewhat contextual to the aff or fw resolves you link you lose args I am a good judge for the k.
CPs
I like well thought out advantage cps. affs don't utilize their 1ac enough when answering cps. condo is good, pretty much all other theory is probably a reason to reject the arg.
DAs
I always love a good disad. teams who explain how the direction of x shapes the direction of y are much more likely to win a close debate. I will probably not read you ev during the debate, but if the final rebuttals include a DA, please send a card doc.
T
default to competing interps but its not hard to get me to vote on reasonability. the simpler the definition/the clearer the violation the better.
misc
organization/signposting is important
I enjoy impacts turns/traps/double binds etc.
have fun
Joe Patrice
USMA
Paperless Policy:I'm at joepatrice@gmail.com. Or I can do the situational dropbox thing. Whatever. Regale me with your evidence. I don't read it during the round, I just want it all for post-round evaluation and caselist obligations. I still flow based on what you SAY so don't cut corners on clarity just because I have your speech docs in my inbox.
Flowing: Seriously, I’m not reading your evidence during your speech. Why doesn’t anyone ever trust me on this? Did I do something in a past life that makes debaters pathologically incapable of believing me? Anyway, if you’re not articulating your distinct arguments, you’re taking your chances that I’m not getting what you’re trying to put out there. I consider debate to be a contest between teams to communicate to me what should be on my flow and where, so orient your argumentation accordingly.
Everything Else: I characterize myself as a critic of argument, which is the pretentiousway of saying that I listen to everything, but that, all else equal, certain things are more compelling than others.
NOTE: Do not necessarily interpret any of my preferences as bans on any kind of arguments, or even guides to how to select down. It's a threshold of believability issue.
Policy Debates: Compare your impacts, weigh them, and tell me a story of the world of voting Aff vs. voting Neg. I’ll choose the one that’s comparatively advantageous.
I prefer fewer positions withlonger evidence, clearer scenarios, and more analysis of impact probability ratherthan harping on the massive scale of the impacts. If I hear that a slight increase in spending collapses the world economy triggering a nuclear war, you may as well tell me aliens are invading. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote on it, but I’ll die a little inside and there’s frighteningly little of my soul left to kill – I’m a lawyer.
I’m not particularly excited about the world of flinging 4 CPs at the Aff and just playing the coverage game. It’s just not the makings of a compelling debate, you know? Pick a lane! And it doesn’t seem especially cool on a topic featuring legal scholars proposing almost infinite specific counter-proposals to research. I’ve got no preferences on CP/Perm theory arguments other than it bugs me that people don't feel compelled to explain the abuse story like they would on T. I do not think the blip "the Perm is severance" is enough to get the job done and if I’m going to vote on it, I’d really prefer if, before the round is over, I can comfortably explain why it severs and preferably a reason why that is uniquely disadvantageous. But given that caveat, I'm more than willing to vote on these args because people all too often don't answer them well enough, probably because they don't know how to flow anymore. NOTICE A TREND!
In other words, if you're going the policy route, you’ll make me so happy teeing off with specific arguments tied to the real academic/policy debate over the subject.
And if you’re reading this harsh criticism of policy debate with a smug look on your face, slow your roll there Kdebater...
Kritik Debates: Kritiks challenge the advocacy of the other team in salient ways that could be lost in a pure utilitarian analysis. Issues of exclusion and oppression ingrained in the heart of a policy proposal or the representations of the other team can be called out with kritiks ranging from simple “-ism” args to a postmodern cavalcade.
It is NOT an excuse to say random pomo garbage that sounds cool but doesn’t bear upon what’s happening in the round. Esoteric ramblings from some dead French or German thinker can – and often do – have as little to do with the debate round as the hypothetical global nuclear wars that have killed us a million times over in this activity. Look, I actually KNOW what most of that garbage means, but that's not a reason for you to not make sense. Make the K relevant to the specific policy/issue discussion we’re having and I’ll be very happy.
Again, I vote on this stuff, but see above about killing me inside.
When it comes to K/Performance Affs, I’m pretty open to however you justify the Aff (metaphorically, as activism, as some kind of parable), so long as deep down you’re advocating that all things equal, “giving rights or duties to the things listed in the topic would be good.” Faint in the direction of the topic and you’re in good shape.
With that caveat, if you outright refuse to "affirm" anything in the "topic," that's all well and good, just be a really good T/Framework debater. I'll vote for a compelling justification — I’ve recently been told that according to Tabroom, I’m almost exactly .500 in K v. Framework debates over the last few years. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds right. Frankly, I'd rather hear "we can't be Aff because the resolution is broken and we'll win the T/Framework debate" than some squirrely "we're not topical, but kind of topical, but really not" thing.
But who am I to judge! Oh right... I'm the judge. Kinda my job.
An honest pet peeve (that I can be talked out of, round-by-round) is that I don't think “performance” means acting out the argument in-round. For example, Dadaism is an argument, not a reason to answer every question with “Fishbulbs!" You job is to sell me that people answering questions with “Fishbulbs” would be good – if you’re doing it in-round you’ve skipped the foundational part.
Every time you steal prep time will also kill me a little more inside. But you’re going to do it anyway.
Debater at JMU, add me to the email chain. Call me Eric, not judge please.
I'm comfortable judging any type of debate, so don't significantly change your strategy based on anything on here. I'll vote for almost any argument as long as you contextualize it to the debate and give me clear impact calc and judge instruction on how I should filter out different arguments in my decision.
Tech>truth
Clarity>speed - just make sure I can understand you
K Affs/FW
I think K affs should have some relation to the topic, but I'm not unwilling to vote on debate bad arguments. I don't think fairness is an impact by default. I'm not completely unwilling to vote on it, but it's probably better to go for it as an internal link in front of me because I think it's easier for the aff to win structural fairness should be prioritized. C/Is are good but not necessary, I like creative impact turns. I enjoy KvK debate, the neg should have clear links to the advocacy or worldview of the aff that are best when contextualized to why they make the alt impossible. I read critical literature, but don't debate like I'm an expert, less word vomit makes me think you know what you're talking about.
Ks
Links are the most important part of the K for me but please don't go for too many, one maybe two are enough. I enjoy reps/discourse links if you prefer running those. I think teams spend way too much time on FW, in almost every case the aff gets to weigh the 1ac and I am pretty dissuaded to not let them, the only exceptions during which I'll evaluate the debate differently are reps or discourse debates. You can win without an alt, however I prefer if you generate UQ from somewhere else rather then going for the K as a linear disad.
CPs
I like well thought out advantage cps. Affs don't utilize their 1ac enough when answering cps. Unless it's dropped or mishandled horribly, I'll likely only vote on condo if it's 3+. Pretty much all other theory is probably a reason to reject the arg. Not a huge fan of generic agent cps.
DAs
I'm most likely to vote aff on thumpers with link defense. I enjoy complex scenarios that have very good evidence, so run whatever you want. Politics DAs are boring, I'll vote on them but the debate will be less fun for me to judge.
T
Default to competing interps but it's not hard to get me to vote on reasonability. The simpler the definition/the clearer the violation the better.
Garrison Phillips
Director of Debate West Virginia University
Email for chain/contact: glp00003@mix.wvu.edu
Background: I debated between 2020-2024 in policy for WVU, and have a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and History with minors in philosophy and military science. I was just commissioned as a 2LT in the Virginia National Guard and have been in the military for about 4 years and am aiming to start law school in the fall of 2025.
Notes:
All this to say this is my background but it does not bias me toward one argument or another, I will make every effort to be as unbiased as possible when evaluating those. This also means I am down to vote for just about anything within reason so long as I can understand it. Thankfully my time debating has allowed me to learn a lot of different literature more policy than critical. That doesn't mean run just policy with me I'm game for anything and have seen plenty of critical arguments before so do what you are most comfortable with or prefer. Just generally, don't assume I know what you're talking about critical or policy, and be sure to explain and persuade me with your arguments because I genuinely may not know what you're talking about.
Don't forget to disclose accurately to your opponents, it's super important to good debates.
Please include your positions in documents, do not remove wording just because you do not want your opponent to see it and to try and pull a fast one. Specifically taglines, perms, and texts for counter plans and alternatives.
Finally, if you are speaking too fast for me to understand I will audibly say "slow down please" but don't expect me to repeat that more than once. Me understanding is better for you than getting an extra off-case position or a few cards read in that time.
Final Thoughts:
To set yourself up for success do these few things: explain your positions, persuade me, and compare and contrast the aff vs the neg world post-ballot, especially with impacts (how I evaluate generally is magnitude x probability x timeframe = how bad it is).
My job is to make sure it's a good and comfortable atmosphere for you to debate so anything I can do to facilitate that let me know. Ultimately I'm there to listen and cast a ballot the easier you can make this for me the better.
Be respectful to everyone and their time, and adhere to the very few rules and courtesies that debate reasonably expects. I hope everyone has a good debate!
About me:
Director of Debate at George Mason University.
Please add both of these emails to the chain:japoapst@gmail.com and masondebatedocs@gmail.com
2024 Updates:
1. I have mild hearing loss. With that in mind, please be loud and clear. If you are a speedy spreader, possibly slow down a tick. I have included a link below of a debate where all debaters in the round are debating at an optimal speed/clarity/volume for when I am in the back:
https://youtu.be/mkahaj93Xuo?si=BRA3RECXs3mkI4KW
2. I do not flow from the doc. If I have it open, it is to double check for clipping or to look at a cite for my own curiosity. If your tactic to win debates is to assume putting all your analytics in the doc gives you permission to go incomprehensibly fast, I am not the judge for you.
3. I will award .1 boost in speaker points for every well placed and funny NFL joke. Bonus points if they are jokes that make fun of NFC East teams that are not the Eagles, the Chiefs, or the 49ers. Poorly time and not funny jokes will receive a penalty of -.1
5+ Random Things that Annoy me:
1. Hostility - I am too old, too cranky, and too tired to hear undergraduate students treating opponents, partners, or me like trash. I literally can't handle the levels of aggression some rounds have anymore. Please just stop. Be community minded. You are debating another person with feelings, remember that. Opponents are friends on the intellectual journey you are having in debate, not enemy combatants. Give people the benefit of the doubt and try to practice grace in rounds.
2. Debaters who act like they don't care in debates. If being a troll or giving some performance of apathy about debate is your shtick I am absolutely not the judge for you. Debate is a privilege that many individuals do not have the ability to participate in due to lack of collegiate access or financial well being, and I think we should treat the opportunity we have to be in this activity with respect.
3. Multiple cards in the body of the email.
4. Yelling over each other in cx - everyone will lose speaks.
5. Interrupting your partner in cx - I am seriously close to saying I want closed cx, I am so annoyed at how egregious this is becoming. I will deduct speaks from both partners.
6. Extending Cross ex past 3 minutes. I will actively stop listening in protest/leave the room. Anything past the 3 minutes should be for clarification purposes only.
7. Wipeout, Baudrillard, Malthus, Con Con CPs, Strike 'x' country CPs, trivializing the holocaust, reading re-prints of books from 1995 but citing it as the reprint date, fiating mindset shifts.
Topicality:
I sincerely do not like the climate topic and could be convinced in either direction about whether it should be bigger or smaller. Whether MBI is just pricing and caps or the 3 list of friction, pricing, etc...or that list of five people are throwing around...who knows. I just want it to be over.
I may be one of the few people around who thinks precision arguments are compelling. I think it is a good affirmative push back to limits arguments if the affirmative interpretation is the more accurate legal interpretation, even if it is a broader one...
If cross ex actually checked for specification questions (i.e. "who is the actor" - and they tell you "Congress") - that is the only argument the 2ac needs to make against a 1NC spec argument.
NOVICE NOTE: I think it is ridiculous when novices read no plan affs - do whatever you want in other divisions, but these kids are just learning how to debate, so providing some structure and predictability is something I think is necessary. I err heavily on framework in those debates for the negative in the first semester.
Theory:
Besides conditionality, theory is a reason to reject the argument and not the team. Anything else is an unwinnable position for me. I genuinely do not know how I lean in condo debates. Some rounds I feel like the amount of conditional positions we are encouraging in debates is ridiculous, others I wish there were more. Open to being convinced in either direction. **Edit for 2025 - I am starting to lean a bit more heavily to unlimited condo is inevitable/good
Counterplans:
Are awesome. The trickier, the better. I’m okay with most of them, but believe that the action of the CP must be clearly explained at least in the 2NC. I don’t vote on something if I don’t know what my ballot would be advocating. I shouldn’t have to pull the CP text at the end of the round to determine what it does. I err to process/agent/consult cp’s being unfair for the aff (if you can defend theory though, this doesn’t mean don’t read them). Also, I think that perm do the cp on CPs that result in the plan can be rather persuasive, and a more robust textual/functional cp debate is probably necessary on the negative's part.
**Delay and consultation cp’s are illegit unless you have a specific solvency advocate for them. Agenda DA Uniqueness cp’s are too – I’m sorry that the political climate means you can’t read your politics strat on the negative, but that doesn’t mean you should be able to screw the aff’s strategy like that. Have other options.
Important CP Judge Kick Note: I always judge kick if the negative would win the debate on the net benefit alone. However, I will not judge kick to vote on presumption. Going for a CP forfeits the negative's right to presumption.
Disadvantages:
Wonderful. Disadvantages versus case debates are probably my favorite debates (pretty much every 2NR my partner and I had). I love politics disads, however, I can be very persuaded by no backlash/spillover answers on the internal link – in so many situations the internal link makes NO sense. I think there is such a thing as 100% no link and love thumper strategies. Like elections DA's - not a huge fan of impact scenarios relying on a certain party/candidate doing something once they get in office. Think shorter term impact scenarios are necessary.
Unless it is about NFL sports betting, assume I know absolutely nothing about the economy.
Kritiks:
2023 update: For the past several years my work with Mason Debate has primarily focused on research and coaching of our varsity policy teams and novices. I am not keeping up with the K lit as I was a few years ago. Please keep this in mind. Everything below is from a few years ago.
I wrote my thesis on queer rage and my research now focuses on a Derridian/Althusserian analysis of Supreme Court rhetoric - but that does not mean I will automatically get whatever random critical theory you are using. Due to who I coach and what I research for academics, I am most familiar with identity theories, biopower, Marxism, any other cultural studies scholarship, Baudrillard, Derrida, and Deleuze. If your K isn't one of those - hold my hand. I think the most persuasive kritik debaters are those who read less cards and make more analysis. The best way to debate a kritik in front of me is to read slower and shorter tags in the 1NC and to shorten the overviews. I find most overviews too long and complicated. Most of that work should be done on the line-by-line/tied into the case debate. Also, debating a kritik like you would a disad with an alternative is pretty effective in front of me. Keep it structured. Unless your kritik concerns form/content - be organized.
Note for policy v K regarding the "weigh the affirmative or nah" framework question - basically no matter how much debating occurs on this question, unless the affirmative or negative completely drops the oppositions' arguments, I find myself normally deciding that the affirmative gets to weigh their aff but is responsible for defending their rhetoric/epistemology. I think that is a happy middle ground.
Critical Affirmatives:
Climate note: I think the affirmative should *at least* defend a more towards "clean energy" (whatever that may mean) and decarbonization. Some type of critique in the direction of the resolution. Inserting the word "climate" or "environment" into your aff is not enough of a topic relevant claim imo. In general, I believe affirmatives should defend some universalized praxis/method and that deferral is not a debatable strategy.
Overall Framework update: Procedural fairness IS an impact, but I prefer clash key to education. I find it difficult to vote for impacts that preserve the game when the affirmative is going for an impact turn of how that game operates.
Generic Case Update: I find myself voting neg on presumption often when this is a large portion of the 2nr strategy. I recommend affirmatives take this into account to ensure they are explaining the mechanism of the aff.
I find judging non-black teams reading afro-pessimism affirmatives against black debaters an uncomfortable debate to decide, and my threshold for a ballot commodification style argument low. Despite my paradigm getting put on a conservative legal brief for this sentence, I will not delete it. Afropessimist ontology arguments rely on scholarship that argues whiteness desires to see black suffering...seems a bit circular to give recognition/value to a non-black scholar based on them winning this claim to be true.
Individual survival strategies are not predictable or necessarily debatable in my opinion (i.e. "This 1AC is good for the affirmative team, but not necessarily a method that is generalizable). I enjoy critical methods debates that attempt to develop a praxis for a certain theory that can be broadly operationalized. For example, if you are debating "fem rage" - you should have to defend writ large adoption of that process to give the negative something to debate. It is pretty difficult for a negative to engage in a debate over what is "good for you" without sounding incredibly paternalistic.
Overall Sound:
I am partially deaf in my left ear. It makes it difficult to decipher multiple sounds happening at the same time (i.e. people talking at the same time/music being played loudly in the background when you are speaking). I would recommend reducing the sound level of background music to make sure I can still hear you. Also means you just have to be a smidge louder. I'll let you know if sound level is an issue in the debate, so unless I say something don't let it worry you.
Flowing:
I love flowing. I do my best to transcribe verbatim what you say in your speech so I can quote portions in my RFD. I do NOT flow straight down, I match arguments. I most definitely WILL be grumpy if speeches are disorganized/don't follow order of prior speeches. If you ask me not to flow, the amount I pay attention in the debate probably goes down to 20% and I will have mild anxiety during the round.
My Decorum:
I am extremely expressive during round and you should use this to your advantage. I nod my head when I agree and I get a weird/confused/annoyed face when I disagree.
<3 Jackie
*Pronouns: they/them
Put me on the doc chains: pgreddy411@gmail.com, (only for college policy debaters, please put: masondebatedocs@gmail.com in addition to my personal email)
Assistant Coach at GMU, 4 years of debate experience starting as a college novice, I primarily work with JV/novice debaters
PF Coach at The Potomac School
PF
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I'm starting to get frustrated with the amount of teams reading disclosure theory and making it the core of their strategy. I would much rather judge rounds that have substantive debating about the topic and think that theory as it's being deployed is actively harming schools with less coaching resources to learn about how to answer it effectively. You can still probably win the theory flow in front of me, but your speaks will reflect this perspective.
I'm semi-new to the PF community, but I've judged several rounds and am now coaching for Potomac. I tend to draw from my experience in the college policy community for my argumentative preferences/biases. For the most part, I think you'll be fine running whatever cases you've prepared in front of me. I don't care much about presentation or what speed you make your arguments. So long as I can flow you or you adapt successfully if I clear you, then you'll be good doing pretty much anything.
Policy
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Topicality:
I default to competing interpretations. If you are reading a policy aff that has little relevance to the topic, or a very small portion of it, you should have good defenses for doing so. I try to vote off of the flow as much as I can, and then look to evidence secondarily unless told otherwise.
CPs/CP Theory:
Slow down while reading theory/CP texts
You need to provide a detailed explanation of how the CP solves all of the aff's internal links starting in the 2NC. If it does not claim to solve 100%, there needs to be a lot of explanation coming out of the block explaining why I shouldn't care about the solvency deficit as part of your sufficiency framing. You need to disprove perms well. Multiplank CPs with a plank to solve various internals are fun, though planks should be unconditional. CPs should have solvency advocates.
DAs:
Priority for me is link over uniqueness. If you're going to group sections, answer each argument made against that section, don't just read a generic link wall and assume that I'll connect everything on the line-by-line.
Case:
Case debates are great. Impact defense is the most important argument to get on these flows. I will vote neg on presumption, but you need to spend a lot of time on it. Disads on case are cool. Impact turns were amongst my favorite arguments in debate, and I love to see them.
Kritiks:
Top Level: I debated policy all 4 years I participated, but I’ve spent my recent time in grad school engaging in critical scholarship within public health. So, I at least feel mildly more comfortable listening to a K. Due to this, I'm probably interested in hearing your args but will lack somewhat fundamental “debate” knowledge/will lack the experience to relate the concepts in your literature to policy as it exists in-round. This is especially true when using literature bases that are less common/higher theory.
However, if you wind up with me in the back of a round both teams should be careful with if you’re giving enough time to comprehend/incorporate every warrant you want me to get. Giving some extra pen/brain time, like even more than you think you needed, will help you get my ballot more easily. If you’re trying to go for a late-breaking PIK, then flag what args you’re pulling it from earlier in the debate with your explanation.
My default is that the aff gets a perm. It's up to the aff to explain to me why the kritik is not mutually exclusive. Neg teams can win no perms, but I haven't been in the back of a round where this arg was won or made effectively.
FW: I try to be as blank template as I can be for clash rounds. But, despite personally believing in/studying critical discourse, I am too inexperienced in these rounds to register the args a K team would make on framework without giving more time to process them compared to what a policy team would need. At the same time, I'm not great when it comes to parsing through framework/T against K affs. I'll need clear judge instruction for what my ballot should be in these rounds.
Other:
-Clarity should never be sacrificed for speed, though I make exceptions if you're trying to squeeze out one last card. This is especially true of online debate. I'll do my best to flow you, but I could be missing args you want to make if you're not at least differentiating between args.
-I've got worsening audio processing issues and spreading with online debate only compounds this. I'll do my best to try and keep up with you, but don't be surprised if you think you made an argument and I don't catch it. Going slower than your usual speed will definitely improve the chances of me flowing your argument properly.
my email for email chains is arevelins@gmail.com
Quick update 2018 - some years ago I drafted the rubric for speaker points that you see below. Since then I have monitored developments in the debate community on typical speaker point distribution across all judges/tournaments, as discussed online by people who keep track of such things. I don't really dwell on this data much, but I do try to be mindful of community tendencies. Also, I notice how my own debaters read judge philosophies in crunch-time right before a round, and realize debaters reading this want a tl:dr.
Therefore, note that I probably now give speaker points that inch higher than what I initially suggested. This means in most cases I'm giving 28 and above, for debaters who seem to be doing elim-level debate it's usually 28.5 and above, and for especially impressive debate it's 29 and above. I do still dip into the mid-to-high 27's in occasional instances where I want to make it clear that I think the particular speeches really could use some work. At the time of writing (Jan 2018) my average speaker points are about a 28.5.
*******Paradigm Edited 11/10/13, prior to Wake Forest 2013 *******
** Scroll past speaker point scale to get a shorter philosophy explanation **
Speaker point scale:
0 = the debater committed some sort of ethics violation during the round (e.g. clipping cards)
26 to 26.9 = one or both of the following things happened: a) the debater made some kind of major tactical mistake in the debate, such as a completely dropped off-case position, without any attempt to address how they might still win the debate even if that argument is charitably given the full weight that the opposing team prefers. (more leeway on this is given to novice debates) b) the debater was hostile or rude towards competitors in the debate such that opportunities for respectful discourse concerning different ideas devolved into a breakdown of communication. Debaters have different personalities and approaches and I encourage you to explore ways of comporting yourself that express these personalities and approaches (be proud, indignant, cunning, provocative, etc), but please at all times also communicate with each other as students from different schools who respect each other for taking the time to have a lengthy debate round, in whatever part of the U.S. where you may presently have journeyed for such an encounter.
27 to 27.4 = the debater's overall strategy made sense, but various parts of the debate could have used more depth when instead those parts were fairly 'paint by numbers' (e.g. addressing certain arguments with generic/block answers instead of dealing with them more specifically). Evidence comparisons were fairly sparse, but the basic story on a given sheet of flow paper was clear enough.
27.5 to 27.9 = the debater did a solid job of debating. A coherent strategy was executed well. For certain key issues, initial clash advanced into higher forms of assessment, including a charitable understanding of why your opponent's arguments might be good yet your argument is ultimately more important/relevant.
28 to 28.4 = the debater did a solid job of debating across all the flows that were alive in the round. The debater focused on what mattered, was able to swiftly discount what did not ('closing doors' along the way), and took initial clash on key points to highly advanced levels. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if a debater with points like this advanced to early elimination debates (e.g. double octo's)
28.5 to 28.9 = the debater did everything from the previous scale, but was also able to do this with incredible organization: the most important things were in rank order, the crucial arguments were made without repetition/with cogent word economy, and I felt that the debater's communication seemed to guide my flow along with me. If cards/evidence are in question, you're able to speak of the overall ideologies or motivations driving a certain scholarship/movement, thus "getting behind" the card, in some sense. If a point is made without evidence or without a traditional claim/warrant structure, the debater does so in way that requires translation/interpretation on my part, yet the manner in which I should translate/interpret is also elicited from me/taught to me over the course of the debate. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if a debater with points like this could advance past early elimination debates.
29.0 to 29.4 = the debater did everything from the previous scale, but approached a sort of fluency that amazed me. The debater not only did what they needed to in order to match or outclass their opponents, but I furthermore felt that the debater was connecting with me in such a way where your arguments trigger understanding almost as a gestalt phenomenological experience. Given what I just witnessed, I would not be surprised if you did well in any of your other debates, prelim or elim.
29.5 to 30 = If memory serves, I have rarely if ever given speaker points that inch this close to 30. This is because 30 is perfection, without any umms, ahhs, odd turns of phrase, instances where you just lost me or where, given a rebuttal redo, you yourself would probably have done that part of your speech differently. If you are this close to 30 then you have perfect command of your opponent's position, of whatever gap you have to bridge in order for things to 'click' with me, and you are able to talk about your research and core arguments in a way where you yourself are clearly ready to push the scholarship/performance that you draw upon to its next heights, if you are not doing so already.
Objectivity and consistency is an elusive ideal: the reality is that subjectivity and some variability is inevitable. I think a good judge should be attentive in debates and vigiliant with self-assessments, not solipsistically but in light of evolving encounters with others. One of the biggest lessons I got out of my philosophy work was the extent to which all humans are prone to habits of self-deception, on many levels.
***** Debate experience
- Debated policy 4 years in high school (won the TOC)
- Debated policy 4 years at University of Southern California (4-time NDT qualifier, elims in my senior year)
- I was away from debate while in graduate school for philosophy
- I have coached Policy and PF debate at two high schools (Notre Dame and Millburn)
- I have coached Policy debate at two universities (Binghamton and Cornell)
- I am currently Assistant Director of Forensics/head debate coach at Cornell University
***** Some views on certain arguments
Any kind of argument is fine by me: I wait to see how debaters respond to what happens in the round and try not to import any predispositions concerning the default way that I should evaluate things. There are various harms/impacts that can orient a given side’s concern, plus various meta/framing/sequencing arguments that grant, reorient, or block my access to consideration of those harms/impacts, depending on how these issues play out in a debate.
Various kinds of challenges to the resolution and norms of the community are fine by me.
Kritiks: I ran them often in high school/college. I studied philosophy in graduate school.
Counterplans can take various forms: bring it on. See below about having full cp/permutation text for the entire round (to check against ‘morphing advocacies’).
Topicality debates: if an affirmative is trying to present a topical example of the resolution being true, but the negative thinks the aff is not topical then it is the negative’s right to go ‘all in’ on such an argument.
I debated policy advantage/da/impact debates almost as often as kritiks. Any politics link and link turn debates need to be laid out pretty clearly for me - mind your jargon please. The same goes for impact scenarios: who, what, against what country, etc.
For any asserted advocacy or test of competition, the plan text, permutation, etc needs to be clearly articulated in the round and written down so that it can be evaluated. For any card that you want me to read in last rebuttals, you should be telling me what I will find when I read that card and why it matters for the debate. I won't sift through a series of cards if you have just mentioned them/rattled off the citations without making use of them.
***** final notes
I have an aversion towards 'cloud clash', i.e. rattling off 2-3 minutes of overview and then basically hoping that the judge plucks out whatever applies towards some later part of the debate. Line-by-line debate and the elegance of organization that it offers is in decline lately. This has a lot to do with recent norms and computer-debating. This is at the cost of clash and direct refutation, and can come across as being aloof/wanting the judge to do the work for you. So, overviews should be short and then get on with actually responding to individual arguments.
I prefer the email chain over jumping flash drives, when possible. One click of ‘send’ and there is no longer the agonizing wait of flash drive driver installation, throwing jump drives around, etc.
Please communicate with each other, instead of yelling at each other (see my speaker point scale above for the under 27 range).
At the end of any round, I will vote for one team over the other and indicate this with my written ballot. This will be the case for any debate round that I can presently imagine.
That is all I can think of. Feel free to ask me more questions in person.
Kathryn Rubino
USMA
Put me on the chain: kathrynrubino@gmail.com
I dislike intervening in debate rounds. I would much rather apply the criteria the debaters supply and work things out that way. As a result the final rebuttals should provide me with a clean story and a weighing mechanism. If only one side provides this I will default to their standards. If neither side does this, I’ll use my own opinions and evaluations of the round.
Simply put the debate is about impacts- weigh them, their likelihood and magnitude and we’re doing fine.
I think it is the debater’s responsibility to explain the analysis of their cards, particularly on complex positions. However, I recognize the time constraints in a round and will read cards that receive a prominent place in rebuttals. But I do not like to read piles of cards and being forced to apply my analysis to them. As a side note, I rarely flow author names so don’t just extend the author’s name- also be clear to which argument the card applies to.
I’ll listen to whatever people want to say- but you should probably know my dispositions ahead of time. Be warned however, I have voted against my preferences many times and anticipate doing it again in the future.
I like kritik/advocacy debate. That being said, I do not have a knee-jerk reaction when I hear them. Part of what makes kritiks interesting is the variety and depth of responses available. To get my vote here I generally need a clear story on the link and implication levels.
I enjoy framework debates- debating about debate is fun- and as a bonus I don’t think there are any right or wrong answers- just arguments that can be made.
I rejoice the return of topicality! And I have no problem voting on topicality, even if I don’t agree with a particular interpretation, but I do think a T story needs to be clear and technically proficient.
DAs are great, and the more case specific the better. Make sure you have a clear story and try to create distinctions between multiple end of the world scenarios if that's your thing.
I don’t mind listening to PICs or other interesting CPs, and I often feel they’re good way to test the validity of a plan. However, I am open to theoretical debate here and I’m willing to vote on it.
I will vote on the easy way out of a round- I don’t try to divine the ultimate truth of what the debaters are saying. I’m just adjudicating a game- a fun game that can teach stuff and be pretty sweet- but still a game. So enjoy your round, do your job and I will too.
Suffolk SW
Northview IS, MS
Assistant Coach - Suffolk University
Top
**If I look confused, I am confused, please make me not confused.
**Yes you can read the K in front of me HOWEVER reading the K in front of me on either side IS NOT a guaranteed ballot. Quite frankly I've grown frustrated with the K especially when it's poorly debated.
**Novices: "I’m a firm believer in flowing and I don’t see enough people doing it. Since I do think it makes you a better debater, I want to incentivize it.So if you do flow the round, feel free to show me your flows at the end of the debate, and I’ll award up to an extra .3 points for good flows.I reserve the right not to give any points (and if I get shown too many garbage flows maybe I’ll start taking away points for bad ones just so people don’t show me horrible flows, though I’m assuming that won’t happen much), but if you’ve got the round flowed and want to earn extra points, please do!By the way you can’t just show one good flow on, lets say, the argument you were going to take in the 2nc/2nr – I need to see the round mostly taken down to give extra points" - Ben Schultz
**LD folks scroll to the bottom for specific LD stuff
General
1—Please don't call me judge. Makes me feel hella old. Just call me Juliette.
2—Tech over truth to its logical extent. Debate is not about solely the truth level of your arguments but your ability to substantially defeat the other team’s claims with your technical ability.
3—When debating ask the question of Why? Technical debating is not just realizing WHAT was dropped but WHY what was dropped matters and how important it is in the context of the rest of the debate. “If you start thinking in these terms and can explain each level of this analysis to me, then you will get closer to winning the round. In general, the more often this happens and the earlier this happens it will be easier for me to understand where you are going with certain arguments. This type of analysis definitely warrants higher speaker points from me and it helps you as a debater eliminate my predispositions from the debate."- Matt Cekanor
4—For those curious, I mainly debated the K in high school (on both sides). I'm usually good with most Ks, even so, you still have the burden of explaining it to me well as I vote off the flow and won't do additional work for you even if I read the lit. (Excuse the rant but...) I think most POMO arguments in debate are stupid and for some reason every POMO debate I've judged the team has double turned themselves (lowk probably cuz most (if not all) POMO is ridiculous to read in this activity). Then again, debate it well and yes I will vote on whatever POMO stuff you throw my way.
K-Affs
Yes, I read a K aff. Yes, I will vote on them. No, I don't think a majority of these affs solve any of the impacts they claim to solve. I think a key thing that most of these affs lack is proper solvency. If you're going to convince me that you solve things, I need a good reason to either why your method is good (i.e. give me concrete examples of what your aff looks like) and/or tell me why an aff ballot in this debate solves. That being said, for the negative, I often find a good presumption push to be a solid strat.
Framework
1. No preference on what impact you go for (but come on, clash is not an impact... alas, if you debate it well I will vote on it). Some impacts require more case debating than others. For example, if going for fairness, you need to spend more time winning the ballot portion of your offense and defense against the other team’s theory of how debate operates. If going for clash, you need to spend more time winning how your model over a year’s worth of debates can solve their offense and spend more time with defense to the affirmative.
2. I have spent a large part of my high school career thinking about arguments for the negative and the affirmative in these debates. To put it into perspective, almost 90% of my debates over a given season are framework debates, on the neg and the aff. For a large amount of framework debates, the better-practiced team always wins.
3. Use defense to your advantage. Nebulous claims of inserting the affirmative can be read on the negative with no specific internal link or impact debating will largely not factor in my decision. However, there are fantastic ways to use defense like switch side debate and the TVA.
4. Very specific TVA’s can work against very specific types of framework arguments. If the affirmative has forwarded a critique of debating the topic then TVA’s can mitigate the affirmative’s DAs. However, if the affirmative team has forwarded an impact turn to the imposition of framework in the round, they are less useful.
5. Impact turning topicality - Do it. Do it well and you'll be rewarded.
6. Often times when starting out, 2AR's go for too much in the 2AR. If you are impact turning T, go for one DA's and do sufficient impact comparison. Your 2AR should answer the questions of how T is particularly violent or links to your theory of power and most importantly HOW MY BALLOT CAN RESOLVE THOSE THINGS. Your impact only matters as much as its scope of solvency. You must also do risk comparison. Most neg framework teams are better at this. The way the aff loses these debates is when there's a DA with substantive impact turn and there's a negative impact that is explained less but is paired with substantively more internal link work and solvency comparison.
If going for a CI, focus on one impact turn and focus on how the CI solves it and how the DA links to their interp. Think of it like CP, your CI should include some aspects of their interpretation but avoids the risk of your DAs.
K v Policy AFF
Two types of 2NRs. Ones that go for in round implications and ones that go for out of round implications.
A)In Round—In round route requires a larger push on framework and a higher level of technical debating on the level of the standards but is usually much easier if you’re a practiced K 2NR. 2NC will usually have like 10 arguments on framework, 1AR extends their standards and answers like 2 arguments. 2NR just goes for the DA and all conceded defense, GGs. In addition, the best K 2NRs going for the in round version will have a link to the “plan or the effects of the plan”. What this means in this sense is that they will tie affirmative implementation to a link that proves their ethic mobilizes bad subjects IN DEBATE.
B)Out of Round—Out of round requires like close to 0 time on framework. Most policy 2As now just grant the K links but just say affirmative vs the alternative. Thus, if you are going for the alternative with links to the plan, just spend time winning the link debate, explaining why the affirmative doesn’t happen in the way they think. Most times these Ks will have a substantial impact turn debate so winning that is essential.
K v K Debates
1. Technical Debating is often lost in these debates but this necessarily happens due to the nature of K v K debates as theory of power debating is often the most important part. That being said, vague link debating will mitigate you winning your theory of power.
2. You need to pick something and defend it. The neg team will ask about the affirmative in 1AC CX, that explanation should stay consistent throughout the round. Lack of a consistent explanation will lower my threshold for buying a risk of a link and higher the burden for you to win the permutation.
3. Use links to implicate solvency. Often times its hard to make a K aff stick to in round or out of round solvency. Use links in the 2NC and 2NR to mitigate parts of both so even if the 2AR consolidates to one, you still have defensive arguments.
4. K affs have built in theory of power and solvency that's inherently offensive. I'll be grumpy if you jettison the aff but will not if you provide extrapolated offensive explanations in the 2AR using your affirmative and pieces of offense that they dropped. 2AR's that do this will be rewarded with higher speaks.
Topicality (Policy v Policy)
1. Fine judge for these debates. T can lower your burden of prepping out some affirmatives that are inherently untopical and it's a good strat to have in your back pocket. However, for this topic the caselists and violations are pretty overlimiting.
2. Caselists are always useful for understanding these arguments.
3. Impact debating doesn't matter much in these debates but internal link debating does. Make sure to indict and compare interps and both sides. Predictability is the IL to all impacts.
4. The best 2AR's in these debates are ones that pick through negative evidence and identify no intent to define, arbitrariness, and combine that with reasonability
Counterplans
1. Probably err negative on theory concerns but if there's a technical crush I will certainly vote affirmative.
2. My predisposition toward counterplans is that they must be both textually and functionally competitive but always up to interpretation by the theory debate in round.
3. The best counterplans are PICs and other counterplans that are cut to beat specific affs. That being said, I do find some PICs to be extremely abusive so I will be sympathetic towards the aff on a PICs bad theory debate.
4. Presumption flips aff when you read a CP.
5. Affirmatives always freak out when they hit a CP they don't have blocks to but your advantages are there for a reason, its not hard to write specific deficits during the 1NC.
Theory
I dislike generic theory debates. I do not think anything but condo/extremely abusive PICs is a reason to reject the team but I can be persuaded otherwise if there is extreme in-round abuse or the other team straight-up drops it.
It will take a lot to convice me to vote aff on condo in a one/two conditional off debate. Three conditional off can start getting more legit in novice. Four and plus and sure I'll listen.
DA
1. Risk matters most when evaluating a DA. The affirmative arguments are made to give me skepticism in the internal links and the negatives job is to mitigate that by link work and turns case debating implicating affirmative solvency.
2. DA is not a full DA until a uniqueness, link, internal link, and impact arguments are presented. If not present in the block, the 1AR will get new answers. I also need a full scenario in the 2NR for me to vote on.
3. When the DA is the best utilized is the 1NR. Very hard for the 1AR when 1NR gets 5 minutes to read a slew of cards answering all 2AC claims.
Case
1. Yes you can win on a straight-up presumption ballot. This type of ballot is not popular anymore but it should be. Too many teams get away with reading an affirmative with no specific evidence or internal links. This was especially prevalent on the criminal justice reform topic but it is still a problem on the water topic too. Teams will highlight evidence terribly and act like the solve it even though it makes no sense, especially against the K. K teams should take advantage of this. Ex. aff that talks about financing technologies- solvency advocates will mention one type of technology but the advantage area will be about a different kind. Neg teams call this out and go for presumption.
2. Affirmative teams must answer all case arguments not merely by extending their impact again but by answering the warrants in the card. Most policy teams just say "doesn't assume our x" without refuting the warrants in the card.
Argument Preferences
1. Don't really care what you read in front of me. Though I've spent the vast majority of my high school career in the K realm, and probably because of that, I've thought about most policy answers to the K so either side can make sense to me. However, it is your job as debaters to ensure a technical win, and ensure my job is to solely evaluate the flow.
2. If you are going to read the K in front of me, please do it well. Because I've seen the K debated at some of the highest levels, it's annoying to see it butchered.
3. I'm fine for policy v policy throw-downs. These debates are often much easier to resolve as one team almost always clearly wins on the flow and are much easier to understand.
Speaker Points
I find myself giving speaks on the higher end. Ways to improve your speaks include:
Being funny, making smart arguments, having fun, being clear, not saying your opponent conceded/dropped something when they didn't, talking about penguins, make fun of anyone I know.
Cross-ex can be a great way to improve speaks, however, there's a thin line between being competetive and just being rude and I have no shame in docking speaks if you choose to be a jerk.
It irks me when debaters claim their opponents "dropped" something when I have it on my flow. I understand that sometimes mistakes happen and you don't flow an argument or something similar. However (comma) if it becomes a recurring problem in a speech I will dock speaks each time it happens.
Also, I will yell "clear" three times, if you choose not to slow down or be clear I will start docking speaks. If you are speaking faster than I can move my pen or type then don't complain when I didn't catch something on my flow. "I don’t care how fast or unclear you are on the body of cards b/c it is my belief that you will extend that body text in an intelligent manner later on. However, if you spread tags as if you are spreading the body of a card, I will not flow them. If you read analytics as if you are spreading the body of a card, I will not flow them. If I do not flow an argument, you’re not going to win on it." - Blake Deng
LD
I’m not an LD person, so keep things as simple and direct as possible.
I sorta know what a value criterion is.
You gotta do more weighing in phil debates.
Now on a technicality I’m probably best for the K, however, because policy speech times are longer, I tend to look for more warranted comparisons by the end of the debate. Also, I just have high standards for explanations.
I refuse to vote on something I don’t comfortably understand.
Important thing to remember is I was a policy debater NOT and LD debater. Lucky for you, my face says it all, if I look confused, I am confused, please just make me not confused. Also, NO TRICKS.
Email for chain: Jsantor9@binghamton.edu
Hi, I'm Jeremy. I did 4 years of policy debate in high school and three in college. I did almost exclusively critical debate with an emphasis on post-structuralism and marxism.
General Thoughts:
- Do what you do best and win the flow. Overcorrecting too much is probably a bad thing.
- Debates are won and lost in the final rebuttals. When those speeches pick a decisive ballot path, provide judge instruction by flagging key framing questions, and utilize those framing questions to evaluate and bracket out offense on the line by line, the probability that I vote in your favor increases. I find role of the judge arguments to be useful, especially when they provide me with an epistemic/ethical position from which to adjudicate arguments on the flow.
- Debate is ultimately a communicative activity that requires you to persuade me to vote in a particular way. If I need to sort through evidence at the end of the debate to make a decision, I will be disappointed. I would much rather debaters draw out warrants from their evidence and spin them as necessary to convince me of the validity of their claim relative to their opponents. That being said, if you have a really good piece of evidence that you want me to look at, specifically flag it in your speech and tell me to do that as part of your judge instruction.
- I think robust case debates can be useful, especially by the late rebuttals. I find that negative teams are disadvantaged when affirmative teams get to weigh 100% of their case. Impact defense, internal link takeouts, and solvency deficits can be powerful tools when deliberately incorporated into comparative impact analysis. Well researched case turns are also very persuasive.
- I tend to find impacts that are material and proximate to be more persuasive than those that are abstract and distant. What does my ballot solve?
K affs vs Framework
- I tend to be skeptical of whether models of debate really exist or not. There seems to be just an actual debate occurring in front of me that requires adjudication and those often take a myriad of forms. I find that affirmative teams are more persuasive when they dispute a focus on models and instead shift the nexus of the debate to the validity and utility of the practices of the activity. When the debate is evaluated through the question of models, I find that it favors the negative team.
- I find concessionary ground claims to be largely unpersuasive given the diversity of ways programs have found to engage with critical affirmatives without resorting to framework. It seems like many teams choose to read framework to avoid substantive engagement. However, against new affirmatives, I may be more receptive to such claims.
- Fairness is certainly an internal link to many things such as skills and education. I think it can be an impact in its own right when attached to external implications such as people quitting and debate dying as an activity. However, those implications still beg a question about the value of the activity and thus why it ought to be preserved. That is a premise that you must win to win this argument in my mind.
- I feel similarly about clash as an impact. I think it often lacks external implications. Those are as far as I understand, are skills and education.
- I find TVAs without solvency advocates to be unpersuasive because they do not prove that there is a viable affirmative case that could be written. TVAs cut from affirmative evidence are especially persuasive.
- Affirmative strategies with an external piece of offense to weigh vs the negative impact + some kind of defense (counter-interpretation or otherwise) to be a persuasive strategy.
K v K Debates
- I think affirmative teams get to a perm, theoretically speaking; but if they are unable to defend that they get the perm when challenged I won't grant them it.
- I find an effective affirmative strategy to be either 1) a permutation with case, link turns, and an alternative disadvantage as Net benefits or 2) case outweighs with a disadvantage to the alternative.
- A find an effective negative strategy to be outweighing the affirmative's impact while having some form of defense whether it be an alternative that resolves a significant portion of the aff, impact defense, or solvency takeouts.
- Robust case debates vs k affs are particularly persuasive. I am willing to vote on presumption.
Policy v K Debates
- Aff: Win that you get to weigh case and the substance of the case, outweigh the k. Defense on alt solvency helps.
- Neg: Win that the aff does not get to weigh the case OR have an impact that outweighs and some case defense.
DA/CP
I don't judge these debates very often and thus don't have any specific thoughts that aren't captured by stuff i said above. just win the flow.
Include both emails please: Uhhbeessaidhi@gmail.com; Dukesdebate@gmail.com
Important Things To Consider:
Slow down and be clear. Especially in your rebuttals. Do not speed through your blocks or analytics, as I am an okay flow at best. I recommend including your analytics in your Speech Docs. Tell me why you have won at the top of the 2NR & 2AR and prove it throughout the rest of your speech i.e. make it easy for me to identify what your strongest reason for winning is. Try to put together the story of the debate at the end, otherwise if I have to, then the decision may not be the one you agree with.
Decision
I evaluate the case first. Does the aff solve its impacts, Aff solvency is paramount. In general, I/Ls are the weakest points of affs and DA's. They also are the strongest points when not well contested. So i would look at internal link D and impact D as well as internal link turns first. Regardless of the aff, there is almost never 100% risk of the internal link chain being true, its always probabilistic.
After that I try to find out if the neg has a way for me to filter out Aff offense/solvency. This means I try to determine whether the neg has a counterplan that solves the aff advantages or a k solves case claim. Other things I'd look for is whether the Neg offense turns the Aff offense. Remember that if you go for a case turn, you need uniqueness or else its just defense.
Next I see what the neg's impacts are for their K, DA or case turns. Again, Links and internal links matter. Rarely is the impact the thing that makes it or breaks it. Things to consider here are whether the magnitude of the internal link and the links are high. Inevitability arguments can be quite powerful. Additionally, I am in the camp that whether the uniqueness determines the direction of the link or other way around is fundamentally context dependent. Elections may hinge on a big link because things are muddled now. Lastly, there is the impact level. Turns case args are always well appreciated. They can really neutralize an aff and make debates easy. Impact comparison is obviously helpful; keep an eye out for strategic concessions you can use off of impact defense.
Topicality
I prefer affs that have some relationship to the topic and that generally means more than just adding a couple words from the resolution into your 1AC. That relationship can be debated though. If you are not topical I would prefer to see you provide unique insights about the topic that traditional policy affirmatives miss. I am unlikely to be persuaded that debating topicality is the worst kinds of violence. It might be a very serious problem. You can win impact turns in front of me about why T is a problem, explain your metaphors and have in depth reasons and examples that contextualize how topicality mirrors or causes the problems you highlight. Limits is the internal link I tend to be most persuaded by. Topical versions of the Aff are big for me that actually make inroads into solving harms identified by the affirmative.
Clash Debates
Not likely to be convinced Ks shouldn't be allowed in debate. Winning framework i.e. Util vs structural violence is huge to how I filter out the Impacts of the debate round. I/L turns are important. Affs that make inroads into solving harms the K has identified helps to tip the scales. The Alt does not necessarily have to solve in order for me to vote on a K but it does leave the negative in a tenuous position that the Affirmative should take full advantage of. I am not likely to vote outright on presumption or you link you lose. If you make well evidenced and developed impact claims from the links you win is a different story. Ks that win the "theory" of their critique on a metaphysical/ontological level but do not apply how that alters or shapes the specific impact/solvency scenario the affirmative is narrating can leave the negative in a vulnerable spot. On the flip side, affirmatives should try to take full advantage of how their unique scenario/solvency mechanism overcomes or blunts the link to the critique.
Theory
Slow down. If you're expecting me to evaluate two teams reading blocks at each other at top speed, I am not the judge for you. In these instances, if I do not have the arguments flowed, it will be a lot harder to win theory debates on technical concessions in front of me. Textually AND functionally competitive counterplans AND advantage counterplans are legitimate to me. Otherwise I tend to be a bit less forgiving for CPs that are not both. Having a CP solvency advocate, especially a good one is something that would go a long way in how I view the legitimacy of the CP, not a prerequisite but certainly a boost for you. Unless theory is outright dropped or mishandled I wouldn't make it your A strategy in front of me.
valentinshatilenkowpdebate@gmail.com
GENERAL
Be clear. Audibly differentiate tags from cards - do not spread through them. I will clear you once, and then flow what I can.
Tech over truth.
I have run both policy and critical arguments.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, etc are a no-go.
Clipping is an automatic loss.
K Affs/FW
I think K affs should have some relation to the topic and am less persuaded by debate bad arguments. you don't need a c/I to win. I am persuaded by both fairness and clash. Presumption isn't gone for as much as it probably should. Contextualizing the links to how they specifically destroy the ability of the alt to happen will help you out a lot. Don't assume I know any of your lit.
Ks
You can win without an alt, however, I prefer if you generate uniqueness from somewhere else rather than going for the k as a linear disad. I think teams spend way too much time on framework, in almost every case the aff gets to weigh the 1AC and the neg gets reps links. As long as the link is somewhat contextual to the aff or FW resolves "you link you lose" arguments I am a good judge for the k.
CPs
I like well-thought-out advantage cps. Affs don't utilize their 1AC enough when answering cps. condo is good, pretty much all other theory is probably a reason to reject the arg.
DAs
I always love a good disad. teams who explain how the direction of x shapes the direction of y are much more likely to win a close debate. I will probably not read your evidence during the debate, but if the final rebuttals include a DA, please send a card doc.
T
Default to competing interps but it's not hard to get me to vote on reasonability. The simpler the definition/the clearer the violation the better.
MISC
Organization/signposting is important.
I enjoy clever arguments: impact turns/traps/double binds etc.
Finally - have fun!
Nathan Stolzenfeld (they/them)
GMU '25 (started as college novice)
Email chain (yes please): stolzdebate@gmail.com. If this is a college round ALSO add masondebatedocs@gmail.com
Important stuff if you are reading this 5 minutes before a round
I have light PF experience from high school, read a plan for a year, then a planless aff for a year. My honors thesis is in critical security studies and postmodern IR. However, I am still an undergrad, and I have shifted to coaching GMU novices due to outside of debate obligations.
I think debate is a performance, no matter the content of the round. I would never vote just on vibes, but vibes help me remember your arguments and frame what is important in my decision. Once you leave the room, I have to contend with 2 hours of debate with just my flows, being memorable will help. My decision comes down to tech, but my speaks come down to who is the most persuasive or best speaker, I feel like i'm more inclined to give low point wins than other judges.
I am incredibly expressive, you will know what works. I will also vote on anything, yes, anything. My ballot comes down to who has the clearest advocacy and the biggest impact at the end of the round, as well as framing as to what "the biggest impact" means.
Other quick things:
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I have auditory processing issues --- give me more pen time than you usually do. For local HS tournaments: your speed is fine, just be clear.
- Don't call me judge, please. Nathan is fine.
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Don’t be racist, transphobic, homophobic, or otherwise terminally offensive/discriminatory, I will end the debate, without question, and vote you down.
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Keep your own time AND your opponent's time. I think time is fake, but your opponent may disagree with that. If it is called out I will take some speaks away for egregious stuff. Time allocation is an important skill in all three of the styles of debate, don't crash it's integrity.
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Just tell me what to do. Judge instruction might be the most important thing to me in a round.
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Ask me any questions pre round, I judge HS mainly, and may do some college novice judging this year, so a lot of this is vague to appeal to both sides. After round: ask as many questions as you want, I am here to clarify as much as you need. Just do not be rude, even if you disagree with the decision, the ballot is already in at that point.
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I evaluate most debates starting with a ballot for the status quo. For K rounds, I have a lower bar for uniqueness than policy rounds, which makes the FW debate very important to me. If the aff does not convince me it solves for its impacts(or the neg convinces me it does not), it is very hard for me to look away from presumption. Only after the aff wins solvency do I delve into framework/impact work, and other nexus questions of the round.
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I vote like every ballot I cast affects the "world." You can debate what the "world" is within the round.
Content
DAs: I think I need more link articulation than the average judge, and I am not willing to do a lot of judge interventions on DAs unless the debate is really messy. However, I grant a little bit more leeway than I should to internal link chains, as long as they make sense and your card actually makes the argument. I enjoy 2NRs that are just a DA, and really value DA turns case arguments embedded throughout.
CPs: The states are probably competitive. Delay CPs are not. Anything else I can be convinced either way. I weirdly find myself with a really high bar for counterplan solvency, idk why. Internal net benefits are my beloved and they can outweigh if you do enough work. The squo is always an option even with a CP in the 2NR. For the aff: explain what your perm does. Perm do both is not a perm, explain what PDB looks like, pls. To go for a perm in a 2AR you need to explain what the advocacy does. Sure, it is a test of competition, and you can frame it that way, but if you do not then I need to know *exactly* what voting on the permutation does to prevent the NB.
K/KAffs: I am very into clash debates, but do not have a lot of experience judging them, so this section is a collection of thoughts rather than a coherent way to go about any debate with me in the back: at the top, I need a scope of the ballot. I will understand what I am trying to solve with my ballot, but need guidance on where I am solving. In that same line, I think most 1NC FW shells are robotic and repetitive, this means I probably lean towards creative interpretations of the resolution. If this comes across as "I should never go for framework with Nathan in the back," you still can, just tell me why the aforementioned creative interpretation is bad. For Policy v K or KvK debates where someone is going for a perm, an explicit explanation of what the world after the perm looks like is needed. Also influenced from Addison Wagner's paradigm: saying util/prag/state bad without an alternative frame is not complete for me, it may be implicit in your theory of power, but make it explicit.
Topicality: I’ll vote on it but I default to competing interpretations. After attending the Nukes CEDA topic meeting I have a love-hate relationship with arguing about specific words. Neg must defend all interps read. Also make sure your interpretation is good, I hold T evidence to a very high degree of truth and will look at it whether an ev indict was made or not.
Theory: 4+ condo is probably bad and I enjoy debates over fiat. Other than that, I love theory debates and my “vote on anything” principle extends here. Clearly explain the violation, interpretation, AND clearly impact out what a future world of debate would look like if the violation is allowed to continue or how it would look without the violation.
Other Stuff
Conduct: Please don’t be mean. If you are egregiously disrespectful in CX or through analytics it will heavily affect your speaks. If you are not giving a speech, or if your partner is deep in prep, at least look like you are doing something. In the words of my teammate Noah Reed: “If your partner is prepping the 2NR and you are sitting there pen flipping it looks silly. And unless that 2NR is god's gift to debate, you will lose speaker points for it.” If I yawn during your speech, you are chill, I'm just sleepy, tournaments start way too early.
Speed: I need more pen time than most. I am always learning and adjusting, but I have never been the fastest at processing a nine point analytic at light speed. If you spread fast, please be as clear as possible. I will yell clear a maximum of two times, and give a thumbs up or something if you have fixed yourself. I will stop flowing if you get unclear the third time, and that’s on you to notice. I will follow what I hear from that point.
Tech vs truth: I will vote on what occurred in the debate and what I have flowed. However, I am human and have flaws, so will always have a lower threshold to counter false stuff. If someone stands up and flat out lies, and has evidence to back it up, and it goes unanswered, I will assume the falsity is true on tech.
Cross ex: I do not agree with closed cross-ex tbh. If your partner has a good question, or has a good answer to a question asked, they by all means should be able to articulate. HOWEVER, there is a risky situation that I will be vigilant to: interruptions. If you decide to indulge my open cross-ex idea, make sure you are respectful to your partner and communicate well.
LD and PF
LD: Everything from policy applies. I didn't do LD in high school, I've judged 4 rounds of LD in my life, I can handle any argument as long as you can explain it to me, I can also do spreading but for online tournaments please be considerate of your tech. You can treat this as one person policy debate with values within it. I am not good for tricks debates, or death good debates, and disclosure violations will not get my ballot. In short: I am more than a lay judge and less than someone who does this for a living, because I don't. I debate policy in college.
PF: CREATE AN EMAIL CHAIN AND ADD ME TO IT. I guess this isn't a must in PF so I can entice with speaker boosts if the doc is sent out before a speech. You don't even need to take prep as long as you are just sending me the doc. Everything from policy applies. As in my LD note, I can handle any argument as long as you can explain it, that includes disclosure theory, but the bar is high. I think that clash and comparison is much more important in PF than the other two debate formats due to the time constraints. You should obviously be doing impact analysis and weighing throughout the summaries and final focus, but I have found myself more convinced by which team has link and impact turns on the other contentions AND explains them well. An example from the single use plastic topic: pro reads an environment advantage - the con can read an economy contention that says "if the economy declines, we have less money to solve climate change in other ways." My decision ultimately comes down to who has the best developed link (or solvency) and the largest (well explained) impact. DO JUDGE INSTRUCTION. PLEASE.
ADD ME TO THE CHAIN: randystorywpdebate@gmail.com
Ultimately, my flow will determine who wins the round, so please be orderly!
Theory:
I love theory and will vote on it; it depends on the answered/unanswered questions.
Ks:
I enjoy K debates and I am very familiar with Afro-pessimism.
For NEG: ROB is crucial—it is a framing question of how I should view the round. Explain your link story, how it turns the aff & how your alt functions
For AFF, explain what the perm is and what is wrong with their framework.
DAs/Case:
Disads should apply to the AFF. If it is a tricky disad, explain it. Trickiness does not win rounds if I don't understand. Always try to answer the case. Make sure to interact with the other team's evidence. NOT two boats moving in the night!
Lastly, I LOVE a debate filled with histrionics—but remember, attack the argument, not the team.
I coach for NYU and used to debate for Cornell University and Georgetown Day School. While I almost exclusively ran Ks, I'll vote on anything. Run whatever you're good at and I'll adapt to you.
Please add me to the email chain - my email is ntilmes@gmail.com.
General Info:
I am a technical, flow-centric judge and aim to intervene as little as possible. The more I have to extrapolate and cross-apply your arguments, the less likely I am to vote for you. Tech over truth, but that often depends in part on how well the 2NR closes doors and how the 2AR frames the truth; a handful of well-developed arguments and smart analytics often trump mountains of shoddy ones. While this is the default way I evaluate debates, you can convince me to do so differently.
When coming to a decision, I try to identify the central questions that frame the debate, which often hinge on impact assessments and warrant comparisons, and then work outwards from those questions. I’m a fan of high-quality evidence, re-cuts of the other team's cards, and historical examples.
Racist, sexist, ableist, etc. behavior will result in a loss. Please honor accessibility requests.
The K vs. Policy:
In-depth knowledge of your theory is not a substitute for historical examples. Tailor your offense to specific lines from aff evidence instead of relying on jargon.
It's fine to jettison the alt and just go for framework and a link or two, but then you need to flesh out the links as case turns or somehow generate uniqueness. That said, you need not shy away from defending your alt; just have a strategic vision and commit to it.
Policy vs. The K:
Explain what the perm looks like early and often rather than waiting until the 2AR. K affs rarely do enough framing; I’m a solid judge for stock policy arguments (e.g., pragmatism, extinction first) and clever impact turns.
Too many Ks contain multiple divergent literature bases, so exploit those tensions. Internal non-contradiction is a low bar, but failing to clear it is devastating. Similarly, 2ACs that contain every generic K answer and don’t engage specifics are disappointing to watch.
K Affs v. Policy:
I don't care whether you're topical or not, but you should have some relation to the topic and depart from the status quo. The more your aff looks like it could be read on any topic, the more likely I am to vote on T.
Whether you argue your aff is contestable and articulate a model of debate with a clear role for the neg or just impact turn framework, your 2AC should explain why the topic is irredeemable. Frame your offense in ways that makes it difficult for the 2NR to kick flows.
Policy v. K Affs:
Debate might be a game, but it also has aspects that go beyond the room. As such, fairness can be an impact, but your impacts should be contextualized to the room, activism, organizing, etc.
It is difficult to convince me not to weigh the aff against framework, so don't neglect the case page, especially as most K affs don't solve their impacts. The best TVAs don't just speak to the aff's stakeholders, but also to their theory of power.
K v. K Debates:
Affs should have an advocacy statement and depart from the status quo, or they risk being vulnerable to presumption. Distinctions can collapse quickly in method debates, so find some metric/parameter by which I can evaluate advocacies.
I have a higher threshold for the perm in debates where the aff doesn't have a plan, so warrant out what it looks like. "Perm do the aff" is not a real argument. For "perm we do us, you do you" to be a real argument, it must be supported by a broader K of competition/rejoinder.
Policy v. Policy:
I often read more evidence than I otherwise might after the round in these debates, and in-depth comparisons are important. That said, smart analytics can also go a long way.
You’re more likely to persuade me of the direction of link or uniqueness questions than convince me about them in absolute terms, though I suppose you could do so.
Solvency advocates are ideal but not necessary for CPs. I don't have strong opinions about what constitutes an abusive number of advocacies. I dislike voting on theory over substance, but will do so.
Impact calculus is very important but don't forget the links. For example, how should I weigh solvency deficits and links ? In my mind, the lower the risk of the link, the lower the risk of the impact. Also, brief 2 NR, 2 AR impact stories at the top of the speech can help you and me frame my rfd.
Offense-defense: this is the second most important issue. Realize that winning a bunch of defensive arguments will most likely make it hard to win if your opponent has an offense against you.
Nexus question: what is the most important thing to evaluate a debate. You don't have to clearly flag this in the 1 AR for me, but I should at least see the inkling of the doors to analysis you are going to blow up in the 2 AR.
1 ARs and 2 NRs if you could clean things up for me, it would be so much appreciated. Labeling groups of arguments helps me know what you are extending or responding to.
Prep time starts when cross x ends. Please don't try to steal prep time.
If the aff is going for theory against the neg like process counter plans bad, they should know I have a high threshold for rejecting the team and not the argument. I think the 2AR has to provide examples of arguments they would not have been able to run or examples of in-round abuse. This is not impossible. It just requires some thought on your part going into the 2 nc and 2 nr as to what kind of topic-specific education you think is lost or round advantages the neg procures. Against topicality try to use offensive reasons to prefer your counter-interpretation. I may have trouble voting on reasonability unless you can articulate what the vagueness of the resolution is this year and what might be considered reasonbly topical or untopical.
arontrujillo@gmail.com
Years judging college: 12
Topicality: My default is that topicality is about competing interpretations of the resolution. Prove that yours is more net beneficial and provide an impact and you win the debate. I think of this as an evaluative tool for T debates and it applies to non-traditional aff's as well, unless the debaters provide me with an alternate framework. Spec args are fine also.
Theory: Love good technically proficient theory debates. Sentences like "Dispo solves the Neg's offense" are good but warranting them is even better. When I am judging a debate I always feel like it is more important to evaluate the arguments made as opposed to inserting my own personal opinion in the mix. However, when I say that to debaters they still seem to what to know what my general feeling is regarding things like Dispo and Agent CP's... So here you all go. I tend to think that Dispo is OK, Conditionality is rather shady and PICS can go either way depending on the nature of CP. Just to let you know... not a huge fan of the "Our K is a gateway arg". I think that it is often advantageous to have the groundwork for weighing the impacts to CP theory, perm theory, and alternative theory debates explicated and framed by the 1AR. This means reasons why this comes before T and warrants as to why it is a reason the reject the team and not just the arg should probably be made by that point in the debate.
Kritiks: For me, most times good critical debates that center around a position that has an alternative come down to offense (disads) to the permutation vs. in roads against the "solvability" of that alternative. I'd prefer not to feel as though I have to read a ton of your cards at the end of a round to synthesize your argument. My preference when I have to read evidence is to only read cards that is the focus of the finals rebuttals.
CP/DA: I heart a really involved DA/CP debate. I often think some of the best deployment of the DA involves interacting the disad impact with the case. Please take the time to kick them cleanly.
Framework- I really enjoy these debates. Framework debates necessitate that both teams do extremely effective impact work. My biggest suggestion when debating framework in front of me is to make sure to keep the rest of the debate in mind. How can your Aff be offensive even in a world that you are loosing a portion of the framework debate? Competitiveness- Are portions of the Neg’s framework not competitive with Aff's? How does that circumvent the Neg’s ability to garner offense off of the impacts to the framework debate?
Engaging the Resolution/Performance- If you are a performance team with a coherent arg that in some way engages with the topic area of the resolution you are good to go. I don't need you to advocate state action, endorse fiat... but I do think the Aff should in some way engage the topic area (legalization and one of the subtopics). I really enjoy these debates when they are done well and when, at the end of the round, there is an argument that is being made. I am not the best judge for you if your strategy is to say nothing in an effort to bait the other side into being the only one who actually makes an argument. I feel as though this leads to debate that are woefully underdeveloped, frustrating, and debate only actually occurs when the final rebutalists decide to finally illuminate why they think they should win.
Run what you want and what you feel you are good at. Speed is fine. Speed and clarity are even better :) Please remember to be polite and considerate. I know many of us tend to turn into a cracked out version of Perry Mason when the timer starts but please forgo this urge and remain civil. Answer questions in CX. Being evasive/sketchy looks bad and makes you seem unsure/insecure about your args. Make me laugh. Don't steal prep. I hate it. No, I really hate it. I feel a certain burden to protect the 2NR from new and unpredictable 2AR extrapolations and cross applications. Finally, debate is for the debaters. Take what I have said above as a guide and not the end all. If you have any questions feel free to ask me! Good luck to all and have fun!
Background:
Head Coach, Binghamton University (2021-current)
Debated + coached GMU (2009-2019)
-----Super short version 10 min before round-----
Yes Email Chain - add woodward@binghamton.edu
I am down for any argument, just win it + a reason I should vote for you
Am a sucker for judge instruction -> If you tell me to evaluate in a certain way and the other team doesn't rebut it then I'm going to.
I prefer explanation to card dumps- I vote on what you say not what the cards say, so the more you break things down and are clear the easier it is for me to vote for you. This matters for critical debates and policy rounds in different ways.
In K rounds- Don't assume I get the tricks/ideas behind your affirmative, or negative arguments especially if it's the first time I've heard your argument. I'm down for it of course but I do tend to look at debates very big picture, so nuances, or hyperspecific literature focused type of things WILL pass me by, but if you can break those arguments down then you'll go far with me.
In Policy rounds- Don't assume I know all acronyms or the most up to date negative/affirmative trends. Bing doesn't read policy affs usually in JV or Open. I cut our policy cards but outside of novice there's not a lot of DA/CP debates happening here. I expect to judge plenty of policy debates this season but I'm not as up to date on things as the season goes on, just because that's not our focus as a squad. So explanation is going to be important the more nuanced/specific a counterplan or DA is to an affirmative.
Be Polite- that's different from being nice.
Would prefer that people slow down/go to about 90% of top speed. I don't think this matters for most debates but it would be appreciative. I will yell slow/clear as applicable.
----Thoughts After 1st Semester/Wake---
1. I'm very much on the let affs cook side. Doesn't mean I won't vote on T-MBI is only Carbon Tax/Cap & Trade, but mileage varies depending on the mech, some of the areas I can see being fine, others not so sure.
2. I miss case debates, regardless of the aff or neg I do get a little sad seeing so little actual case debating on this topic. something something maybe speaker point increases etc. I like those a lot more than the counterplan prolif i've seen on various wikis
-----You have time to read/more specific things-----
---Novice/JV---
Is the most important division. We should be doing what we can to help the division grow and new debaters to improve and feel welcome- the community depends on it.
I'm fine with novices reading whatever arguments they wish. I would prefer if novices defend the topic, or if they took alternate routes to the topic they still defended topic DAs and were in a topical direction.
I am not a fan of misinformation type arguments in novice. This doesn't mean hiding DAs or case turns on case, or an extra definition on T (because those promote better flow practices) This means arguments that are obtuse to be obtuse for no reason.
---Topicality---
Is a voting issue and never a reverse voting issue.
I am not persuaded by "norms" or "it's 1st/last tournament etc." style arguments. I do not need abuse to vote on topicality.
---Disadvantages---
They are good and should be read- turns case arguments are persuasive to me, Uniqueness vs Link questions don't super matter to me- tell me what to prioritize.
Politics and Elections DAs are strategic. But the current political system is so flawed it is hard to take the arguments seriously. I am very persuaded by arguments about why radicalism in our government has doomed the ability for it to function.
Elections/Midterms DAs, the closer we get to November, the better the DA sounds in front of me. Interpret this as you wish.
---Counterplans---
I reward teams for more specific reasons why the CP solves the aff vs no federal/xyz process good key warrant. I'm not a fan of no solvency advocate + just the CP text in the 1NC. I think the states counterplan may be a mistake on this topic.
I don't judge kick for the negative if a counterplan is extended in the 2NR barring exceptional justifications for doing so by a negative team.
I default to reject the argument on theory. I can be persuaded most things could be a reason to reject the team, or gives leeway on other arguments. My standards for voting on theory even with this are high. Affs should go for more theory, negatives do too much these days.
Conditionality in limited instances is good. That being said I get suspicious if the negative presents more than 2 conditional worlds. It's still debatable, but more than 3 seems excessive to me
---Critiques (When you are neg) ---
Judge instruction + framework is your friend. I usually compare the aff vs the alt in a vacuum, but when one team is telling me what to do, and one is not with this information this goes a long way into deciding my ballot. Sometimes good judge instruction can overcome technical drops. "Weigh the aff" is not an aff interp on framework. I think it does you a disservice unless the neg's interp is legitimately you don't get the aff without jumping through multiple hoops. I would prefer interps based on something more specific, whether it's extinction/impact based, or even better education towards an issue, or even the self serving ROB = best at fighting nuke weapons.
I require a bit of explanation. My critical knowledge is better than it was in the past but you are more likely to know your argument more than me. Empiric examples, applications to the affirmative, etc are all useful and persuasive.
Go for tricks, if the aff messes them up then it's a valid strategy, I don't think you need the alt alone if you're winning a sizeable enough impact + link for a case turn type of argument
--- Critiques (When you are aff) ---
I prefer affirmatives that are in the direction of the topic and do something, or if they do neither have a good justification for doing so.
Defend your arguments and be strategic. IF your 1AC is saying Heg + Prolif, it does not make sense to go for the link turns. This doesn't mean don't make the arguments if it's what you've prepped for but think about what your aff is designed to do and don't shy away from impact turns or offense.
Framework is viable and a decent strategy in front of me. I default to Limits > Fairness > Skills based arguments. Another thing from being at Bing is I am slowly leaning towards Fairness is more of an internal link vs an impact alone BUT I can be persuaded otherwise. I am also fine with impact turn debates but not having defense on neg framework standards (Or case defense to the aff) is pretty devastating and a problem for the team without said defense.
Something I have noticed as a pattern for lots of the framework rounds I judge is that not having defense, or at least references/cross applications that can be clear to answer terminal impacts on either side is usually something that can be a round ender. I find that I am somewhat persuaded by 2NR/2ARs that go for conceded impact scenarios on framework/affirmative answers to framework. Outside of heavy framing articulations this is usually hard to overcome.
Critical teams should think hard about if they want to defend DAs or not. I give negative teams lots of leeway if the 2AC says they'll defend the DA, but the 1AR/2AR immediately spikes the link/does some shenanigans (unless the neg did not actually read a link)
---Misc---
Speaker points: My guidelines end up looking like this for varsity debates. This may adjust due to trends at all levels. JV/Novice will usually be lower than this.
Nationals
Speaker award - 29.3
should/can clear - 28.7
Regional
Speaker Award -29
Should clear - 28.6
I adjust for division, but IF I give a student in JV or Novice a 29+ I believe they could debate a division up and succeed.
I don't like trolling - if you do not want to debate, simply forfeit, or have a discussion/pursue other methods of debating. IF you read an argument with the sole plan of being disruptive or trolling a debate you get a 15. IF you're funny you get a 25.
Don't cheat- if you accuse someone, round ends and will not restart. We don't have that many rules in debate, we should follow them, especially the rules about academic honesty/evidence.
Be polite- doesn't have to be "nice" but generally we shouldn't make rounds overly hostile for 0 reason. We will see each other multiple times over the next few years. There is a cutoff for being snarky and being a jerk.
"Inserting" Highlighting is silly, if you want to say the other team's ev goes neg/sets you up for an argument you have to read it for me to give you credit
---Other Events---
I am a policy coach. I have spent the vast majority of my time coaching and preparing things in policy formats. I will flow, I evaluate my decisions based on that flow. I believe the best debaters are ones who both prove their side of an issue is the most effective, and have combatted the opposing side effectively. I will never determine a round solely based on presentation, decorum or speaking style unless something problematic happened to where coaches/tab have to be involved.
yes chain: ashleywrightdb8@gmail.com (she/her)
Maize High '19-23 (arms sales, CJR, water, NATO)
George Mason '23-present
T/L
tech + truth > tech > truth
clarity + speed > clarity > speed
do whatever you are best at and I will adapt. my only exception is anything bigoted/harmful.
judge instruction is incredibly important for me in all debates - tell me why you are winning specific arguments and what it means in context of the overall debate if you win them
read re-highlightings (either in cx or in your speech) don't just insert them
obviously, my predispositions here don't mean I won't vote for an argument if you're winning it. they are just my preferences.
I will read evidence out of interest during the round, but it wont impact my decision unless debaters make it matter. This means telling me how I should evaluate evidence and then naming authors that are important in the round. Analytics can hold similar weight to evidence if it's warranted out and smart!
FW
fairness is an impact that I am more than willing to vote on, however, I prefer clash
if you are going for ground you should be prepared to tell me what ground you lost in the debate
competing interps are good - affs should tell me what their model of debate looks like and why that's good.
K Affs
Judge instruction is really important. Affs need a clear theory of power and should explain to me what voting aff endorses and why their model is uniquely better than whatever the neg proposes. Consistency is really important to me.
neg teams should engage with case more---especially in the 2nr, even if it is just presumption or telling me how fw engages with the case page and why it should come first.
K's on the neg
i think that teams are getting kind of lazy on the link level - teams should do a better job of explaining the direct effect of the aff (pulling lines from evidence and other things of that sort). I also think that the neg should explain how the alt overcomes these links - a solid link story gives you a better chance of winning without the alt. and on the aff if the neg doesnt have a solid link and kicks the alt your chances of winning are significantly higher
fw should function as an advantage of the k's impacts but also have clear parameters for what the aff has to do to get weighed. at the end of the day I usually end up thinking that affs get to weigh their impacts but the neg gets links to scholarship/discource/etc,
on perms---i think more teams should explain why the perm doesnt work in context of specific alt solvency while also explaining why links mean they dont get a perm. On the aff, teams should have a net ben to the perm and explain how it resolves links, disads, etc.
CPs
Neg leaning on CP theory. However, I am more than open to teams winning that they are bad. Aff teams should punish the neg for being cheaty more often.
The aff should be able to prove why the cp can't solve the aff and/or why the perm is better
you have to tell me to judge kick
Case
i loveeee case debates however teams have gotten kinda lazy when it comes to this part of debating :(
aff solvency advocates are horrible a lot of the time, call this out.
impact turns are fun and silly and my favorite type of debates to judge
DAs
I love a good disad. However, I've noticed a lot recently that the link debate seems to be overlooked. A low risk of a link = low risk of me voting for it.
crappy internal link chains make me sad.
T
I prefer limits over ground but can be persuaded by either. I think predictability arguments are convincing (on either side) especially when it is in terms of research burdens. Competing interps are good. Case lists are good. Reasonability is meh.
I'm probably forgetting some other stuff so please feel free to ask questions before round --- I will be happy to answer :)
I'm the assistant director of forensics at the University of Rochester. I'm also a history grad student. I think more debaters should be historians.
There will very likely be a pigeon judging with me. You are free to bring seeds to give to them if they're not covered in sugar or salt. No speaker points or anything, my birds don't get paid to judge debates.
Any and all styles are great since I love it when folks that come out swinging strong for their positions. When y'all can actually be RESOLVED, that's that kind of debate speech I love to see.
email for the chain:
truckdebater AT gmail
A few loose thoughts:
- I don't like it when people ask for high speaker points. If you want a 30, give me a speech that makes me think you're better at debate than Gabby Knight or Kaine Cherry. I'm going to ignore any requests for high speaker points, even if your opponent tells me to follow your instructions. My immediate thought when someone makes this an argument is めんどくさい
- There's a trend of teams not sending out taglines/plan texts on email chains/docs, don't do that. While I still have an aversion to paperless debate, if we're going to be debate cyborgs, be open with what your evidence/positions are so your opponents can engage in good faith.
-I do my best to keep a tight flow, but that said, please slowdown for interps/counter-interps/plan texts, especially if you're not emailing those out and you expect me to say something about that debate.
- I tend to think conditionality is good, since I think Affs should be able to beat the squo or a counterplan/alternative but I have voted on condo bad in the past.
- I think that debates are better with fewer off cases. I just don't think that you need more than 4 off cases to win a debate. I understand you may be facing a first round or something and you wanted to time to be your ally, and I won't hate, but I do think you oughta have the courage to give substance to arguments in the block, at a minimum.
- I'm generally not persuaded by new affs bad theory. Not saying I won't vote on it, but I'm not a fan.
- Music during speech time gives me a little bit of anxiety, you may want to do a pre-round sound check because I'm worried I'll miss something important and someone will get mad at me for work that I didn't hear because of said music. I would prefer the decibel level be lower than higher because I want to focus on the arguments.
- I'm pretty emotive. It might be a mild form of intervention, but it's boring to pretend like I don't have a reaction to what debaters are saying. I think debate should be fun and an emotionally tuned in judge makes it more fun. I understand debaters can also have very emotive responses to their opponents, and feel free to be expressive, but there is a too much disruption point you shouldn't cross.
- I hate it when debaters bring in their opponents personal business outside of debates. At first it was a little bit funny, but as I've taken a bit more time to think about it, very few judges like/are willing to vote on those args and I am not one of them.
For LD:
In the off chance I'm in the LD pool, I did conservative value-criteria debate during my time in high school and I'd be lying if I said I liked it. That said, I heard rumors of circuit LD and how y'all seem to have a low threshold for theory arguments and that sounds appalling. I like substantive arguments. I like kritik arguments.
Read that as you wish.
Policy > LD.
Also, I strongly suggest y'all check out Keiko Takemiya's To Terra. It's really good.
Email: ayim160@gmail.com
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I've debated for 8 years, 4 for Broad Run High School, and 4 for James Madison University (JMU); so I like to think I know a thing or two about debate.
I’m open to any and every argument. You do you because I want to see YOU in the round, and I will evaluate those arguments based on how the debate plays out. I also enjoy clash in-round, so do that well and your speaker points might get a present.
Main Key Points
- 1. Have fun. Debate is supposed to be fun. You can be both serious and playful.
- 2. Be respectful to your partner and opponents both in and out of the round. There's a difference between passion and aggression in debates, and I'm sure you know that difference. Nothing makes me more agitated and annoyed than a debate that turns into an angry accusation match.
- 3. I know you want to win, but don’t put your ego in front of others. This is supposed to an inviting activity, you’re all (soon-to-be) adults, be responsible and check yourselves. Y'all enjoy debate for a reason; so don't rob others of theirs.
- 4. I value effort over everything else. I will be happy to offer feedback and advice to help improve your future debates. Producing your full effort throughout the round yields greater feedback and gives you a better reputation as a student and as a debater.
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Specific Prefs
T - I have a decently high threshold on T. If you’re extending a standard, warrant the impact and the given round, and prove why your interpretation meets these standards. T needs to be coherent and not treated just as an argument with separate unlinked entities. Teams who run critical affs, don't just mention that "T leads to X violence/abuse/etc." That statement alone isn't an argument. Explain and elaborate why that applies to your case. For me, this argument is just trying to avoid a T debate unless you can specifically prove why it is true. Also, please know the difference between T-Framework and the procedural implications of T.
DA - Uniqueness and links are important, but you still have to explain why both matter. Just because you have either doesn't mean you'll win the debate. Internal link stories and impacts are equally as important. Explain why they prove the DA story in relation to the case and/or your other arguments. I'm also not a huge fan of PTX theory, so if you’re going to run it, just make sure to articulate it well.
CP - Make sure to have a CP text. I can't stress this enough. CPs should also have a net-benefit(s) because without it, there’s no reason for me to vote for it. You also need to prove why it's textually and functionally competitive against the plan. Also, explain why the plan doesn’t access the net benefit(s) and articulate your perm answers well. When answering the CP, warrant your perms and solvency deficits.
K - I'm open to most K's. However, just because the other team doesn't understand the K doesn't mean I'm going to default vote for you. You still have to explain the K's functionality and be consistent with it rather than just say “they dropped the link, extend the alt, and they didn’t perm. We should win this round.” Specific links are nice. Also, make sure to explain the alt solvency and why your impacts outweigh the aff’s. I will be skeptical if the story isn’t told well or if a key element wasn’t explained thoroughly. When answering the K, make sure to at least perm and extend it throughout the debate if you're going for it. Also, perm theory, perf con, condo, and multiple worlds are still viable options to go for if the violation is proven.
Critical Affs - I’m willing to listen to any argument as long as they’re articulated well. Most of my K aff paradigm is a cross-over from the K section: if you want me to evaluate your argument the way you want me to, then make sure to tell a significant story, why it matters, and why your methodology matters. The perm debates should also be specific and analysis-heavy.
Framework - I will vote for framework if they are explained properly and can either prove abuse or no abuse depending on the side. Also, make sure to consistently defend your interpretation and impacts. Whoever’s interpretation should also apply to both teams and not just to favor one's chances of winning.
Theory - Don’t spread theory (at least not at top speed). I have a pretty high threshold when voting on it. If an argument is dropped, don’t just reread it because that's not going to mean much. Warrant the abuse, and impact it because a couple/few well-explained dropped theory args is probably better than rereading the same jargon-filled theory lines in your block.
Extending/Cross-Applying - When extending evidence, don’t just read the cites and the tag line. Provide a warrant(s) to your claims and why that particular evidence is important in your speech. A card or extension is useless without warrants; so if you give me just the tag, author, and date, it will either not be evaluated, or labeled as a weak argument extension. Extending arguments well and comparing evidence (providing clash between arguments) will also help your speaker points.
Spreading & Flowing - Spreading is fine, but clarity is definitely more important. Flowing shouldn't be a problem, but I do expect you to follow your roadmap.
Prep Time - I only have 3 rules:
- 1. Don't steal prep. This means when someone says "stop prep", that means EVERYONE stops what they're doing and stop thinking about debate.
- 2. Prep ends when you're about to pull the flash drive (with the file) out of the laptop, or the email is about to be sent. Doing the whole "stop prep, now I just need to copy and paste the cards and put the doc on the flash drive" or "okay let me cut out the analytics from this doc and then I'll send the email out" is basically stealing prep and only hurts the amount of time you allow for me to give feedback.
- 3. DON'T. STEAL. PREP.
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In Conclusion...
Look, I know it's a lot to read and consider with seemingly nit-picky points on all types of argumentation, but all of this doesn't necessarily represent any form of arbitrary stance on any particular issue. These are just my opinions and practices when judging, and I will always prioritize flowing as my main tool in making a decision over the above block of text. Like I said before, you do you, as long as you own up to it.
I debated policy for NYU's CEDA team for four years from novice to open from the Emissions topic through Space. While we had some similar arguments under Emissions (e.g. Carbon Tax, Cap & Trade, Oil DA, Cap, etc.), I haven't judged any rounds on the current topic.
Regardless of style, tell me how to weigh impacts, compare your evidence, and point out key concessions by your opponents that tip the scales to your side.
If your aff relies on a lot of jargon or acronyms, it's a good idea to explain the ones that will matter for my decision. For the most part, I ran traditional Disad/CP policy strats early on then moved to a flex debater incorporating a mix of Asian-identity arguments. Feel free to do what you do best. Please treat your fellow competitors and your judges with respect.
Currently, I attend NYU Law, and I have helped out the team doing trainings on Dropbox, assisted at workshops, and offered support for team projects.
KRITIKS - Be clear about your theory of power, links to the aff, perm offense, and what the alt does.
K AFFS - Our top NYU teams ran them regularly back then. My one suggestion is to assume I don't know your particular philosophical lit base but other than I'm game.
TOPICALITY/FRAMEWORK - Outcomes will be a matter of execution rather than philosophy leaning so if T/FW is your go/to strategy against K affs, go for it.
DISADS/CPS - Go for it.
CASE DEBATE - If there are recuts, read them in your speech, don't just insert it into your doc.
COUNTERPLANS - No predispositions on the number of advocacies the neg can test the aff with. Solvency advocates add credibility and viability.
DEALBREAKERS - I will not evaluate Sexism/Racism Good and other on-face offensive positions.