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Parks Asbury Montgomery Bell Academy 2 rounds

Chanden Climaco Montgomery Bell Academy 1 rounds

Last changed on Wed February 14, 2024 at 11:19 AM CDT

CHANDEN CLIMACO

MBA '23 & Harvard '27
chandenclimaco@college.harvard.edu
debatemba@gmail.com

I have zero pre-dispositions that cannot be budged by good debating. In other words, tech always comes before truth. I value card quality highly, but I will resort first to the arguments made by the debaters, not the arguments made by the evidence. If a tag reads "Warming causes extinction," and that card's body is an explanation of the Pythagorean theorem, I will flow "Warming causes extinction" and not re-evaluate the argument until instructed otherwise. "Their card never says warming causes extinction" is more than sufficient refutation.

This should inform the way you debate in front of me. Go 15-off if you must, but be wary of your speaks getting tanked. I'll vote on dropped ASPEC, warming good, wipeout, or the death K if you win the position.

Some specific thoughts below, but as always, up for debate:

COUNTERPLANS
• Conditionality is good, but 'condo bad' is probably underutilized.
• 2NC counterplans out of straight-turns are bad.
• Delayed and/or uncertain counterplans which result in the aff do not compete. "Perm: do the CP" is highly compelling (and much better than the functionally-intrinsic perm).
• Counterplans probably only need to be functionally competitive; many counterplans that would be excluded by textual competition lose to the perm above.

KRITIKS
• Debate them technically.

PLANLESS AFFS & FRAMEWORK
• Procedural fairness is a terminal impact, but it’s small.
• Clash might produce extrinsic benefits, but I can easily be convinced otherwise.

SPEAKS
≥ 29.5 = top 5 speakers at the tournament
28.9-29.4 = you should break to elims
28.4-28.8 = average
28.0-28.3 = below average
< 28.0 = you were rude or offensive

OTHER
• After the round ends, let me know if you open source. Speaks will be boosted 0.2 for good wiki disclosure.
• I appreciate well-formatted cards and speeches (see: Michigan, Northwestern, Peninsula, Woodward) and will reward them with higher speaks.
• Open cross-ex: do it if needed, but avoid it if possible.
• Same goes for ins/outs.
• Inserting rehighlightings is okay.
• New arguments until the 1NR are fine. New arguments in the 1AR are justifiable (but only if you justify them). New arguments in the 2NR are difficult to justify. New 2AR arguments will not be evaluated.

Taylor Daker Glenbrook North 3 rounds

Dennis Guno Glenbrook North 3 rounds

Gene Herrmann Montgomery Bell Academy 1 rounds

Asher Maxwell Montgomery Bell Academy 3 rounds

Last changed on Sat January 6, 2024 at 11:23 AM CDT

Email: asher.w.maxwell@gmail.com

Debated @ MBA as a 2a/1n. Now, I'm a sophomore at Georgetown University studying government and philosophy, but I'm not debating.

TL: I really don't have strong opinions. I've read a lot of different arguments and am comfortable voting for a lot of different things. Frankly, I think I judge pretty straightforwardly and like a lot of other recently graduated debaters who read a lot of policy arguments in high school.

One quick thing: I like evidence, think it's crucial to the activity, and am generally skeptical of claims made without it.

Two more things about my judging habits.

I generally have very vivid and clear facial reactions to things said in a round. I nod my head, or shake it. Or look skeptical. Sometimes those are reflective of how I feel, but a lot of times I'm just reacting to an argument I like to hear not one that will end up agreeing with in my RFD. I try to keep these reactions to a minimum, but it's very much second nature to me so it'll probably happen regardless. Don't worry about it or overreact to it.
I take a while to make decisions, read all the relevant evidence, try to resolve every part of the flow, and give pretty long, thorough RFDs. I do this to make sure I make the right decision, but I know it can be frustrating to wait for a decision. Don't worry about it too much. This is just how I judge. It happens every round. I also appreciate and encourage questions about my RFD. Please don't hesitate to ask. I don't interpret it as some sort of bitter reaction to the decision.

Below are some thoughts I have that I take into every round and some information that might be helpful to you about what I'll be especially receptive to.

DAs -

Evidence quality matters a lot. I'll comb through cards at the end of the debate. I pretty much only read what was read (the highlighted portions). I'll look to other parts sometime for context, but if you didn't take the time to say it, it's unfair of me to incorporate it into my decision. So, reading good, well-highlighted evidence will be in your favor.

Turns case analysis should always be carded, or I'm unlikely to assign very much weight to it. Cite claims from your 1AC/1NC impact cards or read new short evidence in later speeches. But just asserting your impact will cause the other is not gonna be that credible.

Similarly, generic impact calc is a waste of time without specific reasons why your impact is truly higher magnitude or more probable. For example, "We are the only team with a carded extinction claim" > "Our disease impact is better than their China war impact because covid proves diseases are sooo likely." The latter is just meaningless to me.

Timeframe is an argument to frame the probability debate. It is rarely a relevant impact standard in and of itself. For example, the difference between one world where impact happens in four years and another world where an impact happens in 20 years is almost always subsumed by differences in probability and magnitude in my decisions.

CPs -

Aff-leaning on most theory and competition questions, but much will depend on how each team debates it.

I really think CPs should have solvency advocates. In the event they don't, I'll give the aff some leeway in answering it. For example, if you're solvency claim is without carded warrants, then I won't put the burden on them to find carded solvency deficits. I will also be more generous with new 1AR arguments when the block better articulates the CP.

Similarly, if the block kicks planks or adds them, the 1AR has a lot of leeway for new arguments or new versions of arguments.

Ks - The more technical the debating is, the more likely I am to vote for you. I also appreciate it when you point to evidence. I will read it and use it to influence my decision.

T - I hate plan text in a vacuum and like predictability and limits. I especially need explanation on this topic, as I have not judged many rounds or followed this topic at all.

T against K-affs - I'm not super familiar with these debates. When I debated, I only gave 1NCs and 1NRs, which were mostly on case arguments. I believe that fairness is an impact but am most persuaded by arguments about debate's educational value or skills earned for outside debate.

K-affs generally - I'm gonna like them more if they are connected to the topic. For the neg, I'm very open to hear non-T strategies if you want to try those. I extended a lot of them in my 1NRs in high school.

Things I know a lot about:

Politics/elections/congress - let's just say I watch C-Span in my free time sometimes
Framing contentions
Economics
International relations stuff
Impact turns (heg, democracy, de-dev, spark, etc.)
Environmental science/impacts

Things I don't know a lot about:

The specifies of the economic inequality topic
The intricacies of k literature
The courts
T-USFG debates

Donald Pierce Montgomery Bell Academy 2 rounds

Last changed on Sun January 21, 2024 at 3:32 PM CDT

Please put me on the email chain: donpierce2025@gmail.com and debatemba@gmail.com.

Tech > Truth

Recently, I have become generally more K oriented, but I have made both policy and K arguments, so I have some knowledge in both areas. I will do my best to follow along to any argument that is made. That being said, if the argument has not been explained to the point where I would feel comfortable explaining why I am voting for it at the end of the round, I am not going to vote on it. Explain acronyms.

My ballot generally will start with framing/impact calc and/or framework, where you should be comparing/debating out both which sides framing is better and what that means for my ballot. This sets a threshold for what I should look for on the other pages and minimizes intervention. I can be convinced to build offense from the bottom up, meaning I consider each level of offense as a yes/no question and then consider who access more offense at the end of that chain and then do framing/framework/impact calc, but that is not my default.

Policy

The most important things:

Theory---I will be fine if you want to go for theory but please slow down on it especially if you don't send analytics in the speech doc. Outside of conditionality, I generally don’t think theory arguments are reasons to reject the team, and it would be difficult to persuade me to vote on it.

Ks---you can read Ks in front of me but do not use excessive jargon or just assume that I understand the underlying theory. The framework debate is often ignored or not fleshed out, which means I generally have to give the aff their plan and the k their links.

K affs---I have read both policy affs and K affs, so you should run what you want to run in front of me. The focus of these debates need to be on clashing and comparing the two sides. Avoiding excessive jargon and using many examples will be the most useful. I generally think procedural fairness is an impact, but I can be persuaded away from it, like most things.

Other things:

CPs---they are great. If you say judge kick and say I could in the 2nr, you should do that impact calc/framing for both a ballot with the cp + da and da + case defense. Generally speaking, I think the literature determines which counterplans are legitimate and which aren’t, but I can be persuaded that against that

DAs---also great. DA plus case is an underrated strategy vs bad affs.

Ts---a good T debate is really fun to listen to, but it requires a lot of judge instruction in order to not intervene.

I have no background in PF. My policy paradigm will help shed light on what I have the best background on, content wise, but ultimately, I am fairly open to anything. Given my lack of background in the activity, I will need more explanation on arguments/acronyms that are isolated to the activity.

I flow closely and track argument consistency throughout the round. If the argument you are going for is brand new in your last speech, I will be very skeptical of it.

sam rubinstein Glenbrook North 3 rounds

Shayna Seiler Glenbrook North 3 rounds None

Colin Smith Montgomery Bell Academy 2 rounds

Julia Smith Glenbrook North 3 rounds

Last changed on Tue February 7, 2023 at 3:54 PM EDT

debated policy for glenbrook north high school

put me on the email chain: julia.s.debate@gmail.com

pronouns are she/her - for online debate, please change your name to include your school and preferred pronouns.

(last updated for the CJR topic)

tech > truth

I don't tolerate rudeness/racism/sexist/homophobia/transphobia etc.

don't read death good

clipping/false accusations of clipping will result in a loss

specific arguments:

theory: I will vote on most theory arguments - if impacted out well enough. However I will not vote on aspec or rvi's even if they're dropped. As a 2a, I love 2ars on theory, but I really encourage for them to be given off the flow for the most part. Prewritten blocks aren't always responsive to their arguments, and it's kind of weird to get up and give a big speech about education and argument development when you haven't thought out what your saying well enough to extrapolate it without reading a script.

counterplans/disads: I think that counterplans should compete off of non-artificial net benefits - but i'll still vote on them if you can win that they are theoretically legit (I tend to lean aff on this question, but that doesn't mean I'll kick the cp the second they read their 2ac theory block - articulate why your counterplan specifically is good for debate). Normally not a fan of agent cps, but given the only disads on cjr being politics I am sympathetic to them. disad debates are great, please do impact calc. I won't judge kick unless explicitely instructed to.

impact turns: for the most part i'm fine with them - although I will not vote for trump good, or impact turns to soft left impacts (racism, etc).

ks: k's on the neg are fine - I have some experience running ones like security, set col, cap/neolib, etc. i don't have a great understanding of higher theory ks, but if you can articulate them well enough to me then that's fine. Long overviews at the top are a no for me, please just have a quick explanation and then detailed line by line.

k-affs: novices should read a plan, and it should defend hypothetical government action. otherwise it’s fine.

other:
- fairness is an impact.
- if you are going to k the disad/cp do not put some egregious tag like "doesn't solve" and then get up in your rebuttal and saying "they dropped the k of the disad/cp..." that is ridiculous

Jack Young Montgomery Bell Academy 1 rounds

Last changed on Sat April 20, 2024 at 10:26 AM CDT

Former policy debater for MBA. I now study political science and philosophy at Loyola Chicago. I have worked for ModernBrain, OCSA, and MBA. I have been active in debate for 7 years and have judged ~50 debates on this topic and cut a few files.

jackyoungpqw@gmail.com

debatemba@gmail.com

Please add both to chains.

I don't do speech-by-speech comments, and I will probably be briefer than most in giving an RFD. I generally don't look at evidence unless it's a 'deep' debate, and take concessions seriously. I don't envision every outcome to vote for a certain side, and if one issue has already settled the debate, I will vote on that issue immediately.

I am a fundamentals judge. I like it when debaters flow and execute intelligent strategies. I don't like it when people say "Can we have a marked copy, including you deleting cards you didn't read?" or ask for cards not read before cross-ex. I view debate as a strategy game, which should reward good competitors. Spreading should be intelligible and line by line should be organized.

The purpose of a paradigm is to detail to debaters your biases. The goal of my paradigm is to indicate where I stand, and I often do so by saying "I dislike..." or something similar. This does not mean I will never vote for a K aff (look at my judging history), but that K debaters should know that I'm not generally persuaded by them. Don't be led astray by the language of my paradigm. I will do my best to vote technically.

I. Judging Framework

I flow tags of cards, authors, and analytic "arguments." If you want to make sure your analytic argument is flowed, put it in a numeric list or make it distinct from whatever else you are saying. My flowing ability is as good as your organizational ability. A lot of kids go too fast between flows or spamming analytics.

Obviously untrue statements can be, if dropped, true. This applies to statements about the debate itself, such as "they dropped x." Some of my decisions are awkward because I attempt to apply this principle unconditionally. I don't necessarily care what I vote on--spark, the extinction K, or the econ DA--so long as it is executed intelligently.

One relevant caveat is notably what constitutes an "argument" in this context. "Condo is a voting issue" is not an "argument" because it lacks a warrant, but "condo is a voting issue for aff ground" is. This goes away when discussing factual information--"the sky is red" is not an "argument" per se because it is a claim (it lacks an impact/implication). So, for instance, if someone said "Hell is upon us: the sky is currently red" then I could logically assume, given dropped, that doomsday is near.

I don't care what arguments I vote on, nor what values I am signaling by voting for them. Debate topics are generally unbalanced, so if a team defends an 'evil' impact turn, surely their opponent can articulate why it's evil.

Inserting highlightings is fine, most of the time.

II. K Affs

I think fairness is good, individual debates have no impact on our subjectivities, and most K affs are bad. Honestly, I don't love judging these debates, but I have adhered to all of my technical principles and on many panels have become the 'swing judge.'

My opinions derive from a valuation of debate's value: I think it's almost impossible to say particular rounds have a noticeable value on political practice. Merely proposing radical beliefs does not generate revolutionary potential. But when teams claim that T is "psychic violence," or that there was an "in-round violence" that occurred, usually I have no idea what they're talking about. It's as if teams reading an untopical affirmative are surprised their opponent is reading topicality. And it makes even less sense when teams say that topicality makes kids have headaches or cardiac arrest.

Fairness can be an impact of models or individual debates. I quite like when neg teams are fine with debating this "only this round" offense by saying "sure, and we still outweigh!"

I enjoy PIKS/CPs against these affirms and have a low bar for competition with K Affs.

The more persuasive K aff arguments to me understand that individual debate rounds likely have no value, but that the individual practices of exclusion over the long-run are bad. I don't think debate has zero impact on our subjectivities, it obviously has some impact over the course of many years.

III. Theory, Competition, T

I like these debates. Most topics demand some sort of aid for either side and in principle, these debates can equal the playing field. To succeed in front of me, you should treat these debates similarly to disads, where each side has links and impacts. "Neg ground" is not intrinsically an impact.

I am a conditionality maximalist and a competition minimalist. My general presumption is that process CPs are bad, even on aff-biased topics, and if they were to be universally accepted, debate would disappear. Conditionality is good, but aff teams don't need to prove an "in-round impact," so long as they're going for models. I'm fine with neg teams defending infinite conditionality, as there aren't infinitely many CPs and Ks to be leveraged against affirmatives, and if the CP/K is bad, the 2AC should be good at answering it.

Generally, I'm more deferential to predictability than debatability. This informs a lot of other things, too: "condo is a fake rule that doesn't matter" makes more sense to me than neg flex does. I would rather see a permutation with an "aff ground" standard than a theory argument. "Small changes in predictability" are, indeed, not so small to me.

"Err aff" vs "err neg" usually means nothing to me. It seems irreconcilable.

I'm not too fond of reasonability. Competing interpretations are intuitive to me. I don't like intervening, and so why would I say a neg's interp is "unreasonable?" Time is better spent logically advancing a counter-interpretation that is defensible. The "reasonability should become offense" crowd should thus call their offense what it is, whether it's predictability or otherwise, instead of "reasonability" if it is an offensive argument.

Not a fan of plan text in a vacuum, either. This is probably my least principled T-related take, but cross-ex, tags, and pieces of evidence seem inevitable without constraints on plan-text writing. I enjoy T debates when done well, and plan text in a vacuum seems to obfuscate them.

I dislike procedural arguments, including aspec and vagueness.

Process CP competition: I'd say I'm decently good at evaluating these debates. I generally think the aff is correct, and process CPs are junk. Sometimes, junk wins debates. That's ok.

IV. Ks vs policy

I almost always decide framework, then use that framework to adjucate the rest of the debate. This seems fairly obvious to me; indeed, "framework" means "the evaluating mechanism I should use for the debate." Linkscan andshould influence the framework, especially if the aff's interpretation devolves into "no Ks." It seems like the most reasonable approach is that neg teams can get links to the plan, and the aff team can leverage offense. But often I'm forced to judge debates on the extremes, like it's a matter of mooting the aff or mooting the neg. K teams let aff teams get away with murder on this issue.

Most of my framework opinions are transferrable. Some Ks might be more permissible, however. A demilitarization K vs a heg aff seems fairly logical, contingent upon the alternative.

I dislike ideological competition because it devolves into vibes-based competition.

V. Impact Calculus and Related Thoughts

If neither team instructs otherwise, I will defer to a consequentialist utilitarian framework that attempts to maximize value and minimize suffering. Utilitarianism is defensible and logical but has valid criticisms. Criticisms should have an alternative system of value.

I agree with KHirn in that most impact calculus is mediocre and non-consequential. Most debates are probabilistic questions: when voting for either team, what's the chance the world perishes? Differences in magnitude are irrelevant if both equate to extinction, and timeframe is unpersuasive unless it's wedged within a defensive claim (for example: "warming takes a while means intervening actors can check" is better than "1% risk of war that causes extinction matters more because its quicker than 99% risk of extinction due to warming").

I don't think everything needs to result in extinction to be bad. Perhaps extinction is categorically different than death of billions--but I think probability has a role to play there. Similarly, extinction is a few categories different than smaller structural impacts, but probability should have a role. The question is how much probability should have a role. The whole .000000001% risk crowd is pretty unpersuasive.

This has implications for impact turn teams: I think I'm more of a sustainability guy than an s-risks guy if that makes sense. I also am generally reluctant to sacrifice vast swaths of the world to prevent some nanotech.

VI. Politics

Politics remains a consistently decent arsenal in the negative's toolbox. That's good! I like politics, but don't read the minutia of politics every day. Somewhere in between Asher Maxwell and Marshall Green.

How do affs get passed? Probably not instantaneously, and probably not without discussion.

VII. Misc

Speaker Points

I disdain speaker points: they're arbitrary, no one knows what a "29 debater" is because the standard isn't universal. When someone complains about a 28.7, I think it's pretty funny--even when I started debate in 2017 inflation wasn't as high. But judging is a rigged game in which I either ruin your tournament by giving you what I thought the speaker point spectrum was, or I cave to the inflationary mob. I shall cave. My speaker points are placed on a standardly derived spectrum where 28.7 is the mean, ~.25 is the standard deviation. Top teams will earn themselves ~29.6.

Disclosure

It's universally good. There's zero scenarios in which disclosure is bad, and I will vote on disclosure theory. People that are petty about disclosure are crazy. If you don't disclose, strike me.

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GBNMBA Scrimmage

2021 — NSDA Campus, IL/US

Novice Policy Paradigm List

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