Last changed on
Sat November 19, 2022 at 4:03 AM EDT
General Paradigm
If you have questions about my decision/want feedback or want to complain about what a terrible judge I am
email me: benlbrazelton@gmail.com
(If there are any issues I need to know before the round regarding physical/non-physical accessibility, shoot me an email.)
Experience
Competed for Madison West High School. Public Forum, Extemp, and limited Congress experience in High School. I coach a few schools privately now, and teach at camps.
Personal Info
I study Education with an emphasis on critical race/queer theories. I'm further left than liberal, so I especially respond to well-constructed Critical Race, Gender or Queer Theory arguments. Equity is the name of the game, but I'll accept any criteria that is well-warranted.
As a Judge, I am...
- Pretty Flow. I will be flowing on excel or paper or whatever else.
- A little lay. Teams that speak clearly and persuasively have an innate advantage over those that don't.
- Very lazy. Do the work for me, because I hate the mental gymnastics for teams that don't weigh, signpost, etc.
- Kind of Tabula Rasa. I'll drop my individual opinions, and technical knowledge, etc. and be as close to a blank slate as I feel comfortable being. That said, I'm not going to pretend like people aren't incorrect or lying. Also, see the next section for when I stop being tabs.
What you MUST DO when I am judge:
- If you choose to make arguments that concern sexual assault, racialized/gendered violence, stuff like that, and either a. do not offer some sort of warning ahead of time or b. do it without the delicacy it deserves, I will almost categorically drop the argument. These arguments are almost always personal to someone (whether they be in the room or at the tournament), so that needs to be respected.
- Don't be blatantly (or subtly) racist, sexist, classist, etc. It's obvious to put in a paradigm, not so obvious in round. I will call you out, and (based on the magnitude of what you said/did) drop you. Tabs come off.
- Don't be a jerk. Gendered and racialized dynamics are everywhere, and if I get a whiff of exploitation therein, tabs are off.
What you CAN do:
I'm a big fan of including theory and Kritikal debate-- if we are talking about debate, any kinds of arguments (no matter how 'accessible' they may be) should be fair game. If you want to run K's or theory, whatever, that's fine by me, so long as you give me clear reasons to vote for them.
What I look for in argumentation:
- Be smart. This seems obvious, but you aren't going to win the round by obfuscating arguments, or trying to convince me that basic facts aren't true. This is one of the most cliche things to put in a paradigm, but smart analytics beat a lot of cards. Having an appreciation for what the world is like when the debate round is over helps everything. Teams that can find contradictions in opponents' cases can cross out contentions without every dropping a carded response.
- Claims, Warrants, and Impacts. Please extend the later two into summary, and absolutely in Final Focus. If it isn't in both I won't vote for them. Please refrain from extending through ink, or resurrecting dead arguments.
- WEIGHING. Please weigh for me, because I get really frustrated having to weigh myself. If you don't weigh the round for me, I will, and I will use criteria that will definitely frustrate at least 50% of competitors in the room.
- Teams that tell a consistent story will do much better than teams that stretch themselves out. Paint me a picture of what the world will look like, aff or neg, and stick to that. Framework and overviews help.
What I look for in Cross-X:
- I don't flow CX, but I will sit patiently and wait for it to end.
- If you get any strong concessions, they should be in your speeches too. If they aren't, they didn't happen.
- Don't be a jerk. I don't just consider it rude, I think the predatory, aggressive debater really exploits a lot to get there. Assertion should not trespass into aggression, and if it does, I will wreak havoc on your speaker points.
Speaking Points:
Points are evaluated based on the tournament (TOC will be tougher to get 30s than a local).
- 30s = you are a flawless debater. J. Scott Wunn himself would fall to his knees and praise you.
- 29.5s = you are a very, very good debater. J. Scott Wunn would likely shake your hand after the round.
- 29s = Very good debater. Maybe you make a few mistakes, but overall gave a very high-quality performance. J. Scott Wunn would likely call you "buddy."
- 28s = Exactly average. J. Scott Wunn probably would not remember you.
- 27s = Quite a bit of room for improvement. J. Scott Wunn would be concerned.
- 26s = you either have a lot to work on, or you messed up big.
26> = Uh oh. You must've said something very offensive.
Evidence Ethics
It is the responsibility of the other team to call for evidence, unless I absolutely know it to be miscut, or there is so little weighing in the round that I need to evaluate the strength of link/impact myself.
If someone miscut/misinterpreted evidence, call for it and let me know in your speeches. If you are accused of miscutting, offer something more substantive than "no it's not"-- either apologize and drop it from the round, or defend your interpretation.
My vengeful judging fury:
- I'm a very spiteful judge, so if you are acting like jerks, or making stupid arguments, I will earnestly want to drop you. I've picked up teams very begrudgingly, and that is typically reflected in speaker points. Consider yourselves warned.
"Finally, I flow as completely as I can, generally in enough detail that I could debate with it. However, I'm continually temped to follow a "judge a team as they are judging yours" versus a "judge a team as you would want yours judged" rule. Particularly at high-stakes tournaments, including the TOC, I've had my teams judged by a judge who makes little or no effort to flow. I can't imagine any team at one of those tournaments happy with that type of experience yet those judges still represent them. I think lay-sourced judges and the adaptation required is a good skill and check on the event, but a minimum training and expectation of norms should be communicated to them with an attempt to comply with them. To a certain degree this problem creates a competitive inequity - other teams face the extreme randomness imposed by a judge who does not track arguments as they are made and answered - yet that judge's team avoids it. I've yet to hit the right confluence of events where I'd actually adopt "untrained lay" as a paradigm, but it may happen sometime."
- My Coach in High School
Policy Paradigm
K's and Performance
If they run T and don't engage with the warrants, they've conceded them. Please extend warrants and don't just make it a Framework debate.
I'm a big fan of K's if they have something important to say. That said, if y'all just wanna win spreading Baudrillard and try and trick people out, I'm less convinced. I see K's as a kind of necessary resistance to the oppressive structures of debate––if you're going to reject the resolution, make sure it's for a good reason and not just to be tricky.
I'm a big fan of intellectual clarity in your K's, so don't run sources that don't agree with each other (i.e. Afropessimism and Marxism shouldn't be in the same speech without clarifying those ideological differences).
Spreading
After however many years of debate, I'm pretty good at flwoing. That said, I shouldn't have to read the round to understand it. If you are speaking in a way that I don't understand and can't follow the round, I won't flow. That means heavy tech debaters who do double-breaths will probably be disappointed. Speak clearly––if your card is read so fast you don't care if I catch it, it's probably not valuable enough to be in your speech.
Policy-making
I'm far more convinced by a strong link (high probability/timeframe) than a big impact (magnitude and scope). I tend to weigh based on how real the arguments sound and if it sounds like you're making a stretch I'm less interested. That is to say, I'm far more likely to vote for a well-warranted regional impact than global nuclear extinction. I'll almost never vote for global nuclear extinction if I'm presented with a clear alternative impact.
Please feel free to run evidence indicts in justifying the strength of the link––if somebody is justifying nuclear war impacts with a Krauthammer card, just indict.
Public Forum Paradigm
See general paradigm
As of Harvard 2018: no off-time roadmaps; evidence indicts should be a part of strategy.
