Email: mary.bobbitt1076@gmail.com  Please include me on your email chains

People I wish to judge like: Sarah Lundeen, Jarrod Atchison, and Matt Struth.

2016-2017 update:

I have recently left the debate community to work full-time. This means I know very little about the literature on the topic and you should explain acronyms etc. 

I. Overview:  Don't over adapt to me. I am a flow centric judge. I flow on paper thus you need to slow down on cp texts, theory, fw etc. I do not think of debate as a classroom but rather a seperate competitive activity.  I default to the offense/defense paradigm. An argument has a claim, a warrant, and an impact. I focus on analysis over evidence. I am most interested in the radical of the left and right.  I am a very expressive judge; if you need different signals than traditional nonverbals please feel free to tell me and we will work something out. 

                A. Timing the debate and paperless:  CX and prep starts as soon as your speech ends. The time ends when the jump drive is pulled out the computer.  You should time yourselves; however, I will be enforcing efficiency.   I am very strict about time. 

Additionally - I will stop flowing as soon as the timer goes off.  

                B. Clarity:  If I cannot understand the full text of your evidence clearly I will not flow your cards and will treat the tags as analytics.  Slurring so badly that you are not reading the text of the evidence is akin to clipping.  I will say clear one time before I stop flowing you.  I will give more leeway in JV and novice.

                C. Speaker points:  While I love snark and jokes and hilarity, there is a line where that passes into just being mean. Snark/Jokes/Puns internal to the debate and arguments you are presenting are better than those just randomly put in.   I think having respect for your opponents is fundamentally a good thing. 

II. The K: The alternative is generally the weakest point of these arguments. I prefer debaters to demonstrate that they know the literature they are speaking from and not simply the cards that have been cut. 

                A. Flowing nontraditional debate: If you would like me to take notes or evaluate rounds beyond the traditional method of flowing, you must outline for me how to do so. 

                B. Perms - Counterperms are a difficult sell.  I don't understand how                        they work. 

                C. Opacity:  If you ask me to leave the debate because I am white you must tell me to do so and tell me what to do with my ballot.  I will not leave you my ballot if I am the only judge – I will take it with me and flip a coin.  I will only leave if both teams would like me to.

                D. Social death theory: This argument is generally asserted rather than explained. Please give warrants for why it is true

                E. Do not try to steal my ballot. They’re now mostly online anyway so I’m not sure how this would work..

III. Framework: I default to counter interpretations.  I prefer traditional debate impacts as opposed to agonism impacts. 

IV. Counterplans: Advantage CPs > Process CPs.  This is probably my weakest point as a judge; if you are reading a techy counterplan you need to spend time explaining to me the mechanism of the cp. I have difficulty with internal net benefits vis-a-vis the permutation.  I love a good theory debate.

                A. Condo: All my predispositions are debatable but I think condo is generally good. I think perf con (CP + K) is good.  However, reading two contradicting k's is probably not legit. I will not kick the CP for you unless you ask me to. Slow down on theory.  

                B. Other CP theory: International fiat seems suspect. The more I judge the less I like 50 state fiat. 

V. DA – uniqueness determines the direction of the link.  The words “Fiat solves the link” is not an argument.  Explain what your interpretation of fiat is and why that doesn’t matter. 

VI. Topicality – Enjoyable.  Specification arguments are fun.  Please provide me a case list for your interpretation.  I think the most interesting part of this debate is competing interps versus reasonability.  How do they function in the debate in terms of abuse and what interpreteations are?  This is rarely developed in these debates. 

VII. Case – I think analytics can take out an entire advantage. Let's have some fun impact turn debates because #reasons. 

VIII. Theory - I

IX. Other comments

                A.  Card clipping: It’s an auto lose.

                B. Marking Cards:  If you do not physically mark a card during your speech I will not evaluate it if you ask me to call for it.  I write down every card that is marked. If is your responsibility to jump a marked document to your opponents at their request. 

                C. If you are reading or showing pornography, I would ask that you explain the theory/method/story/video without actually showing or reading explicitly sexual content for the purposes of arousal.  I will assume you have performed it in some manner to answer solvancy questions.   

                D. I do not enjoy debates where gendered/ableist/racist/exclusionary language is used. 

                E. CX: I flow it. Its binding but open to clarification.

IV. Topic Specific Notes:

 See above. 

 For your enjoyment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWM2joNb9NE

Thank you for the opportunity to judge you.

byaminata@gmail.com

Hi, I debated for Brooklyn Tech for 4 years. I’m currently studying CS and English at Tufts. Afro-pessimism was my 2NR/2AR in every single round for the last three years. I like to watch all sorts of debates so please do what you're best at and I'll adjudicate accordingly.

I was coached by William Cheung for my entire career and have just about absorbed his judging philosophy so for anything more specific, his paradigm is pasted directly below:

Here is the start of my paradigm:
As everyone else says, rule of thumb: DO WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT
Whether your go-to strat is to throw stuff at the wall and hope it sticks, a straight up disad/cp, or a one-off K; I will be more than happy to judge your round…
given that you:

1) Have a claim, warrant, and impact to every argument. It isn’t an argument absent these three elements, and I will have trouble/not be able to/want to adjudicate what you’ve said.
2) Make sure, on that note to properly explain your positions, don’t make an assumption that I know your DA scenario (perhaps fill me in on the internal work), or K jargon. Maybe i haven't judged that many rounds this topic and don't understand abbreviations right away - help me out.
3) Have comparative analysis of evidence, arguments, and preformative styles as it compares to your own and how I ought toprioritize impacts as it relates to your framing of the round.
4) Be Persuasive, it will go a long way to making me to sign my ballot your way if you can make the round enjoyable, touching, funny, etc – it will also help your speaks.
5) Write the ballot for me in your 2nr/2ar, tell me how you win. Take risks, and don’t go for everything. Make me think, “woah, cool, gonna vote on that” “What they said in the last rebuttal was exactly how I prioritized stuff too, judging is soooo easy [it's often not :(]"

As for some nitty gritty details:

1) I love a good K or performance debate but absent the four points above, I won’t “hack” for your position. For instance, saying racism bad without analysis towards your opponent’s position (warrant comparison) won’t get you very far in the debate. I will very often sympathize with you, as my personal debate career revolves around the K more than often, but I will NOT do the work for you.
2) I love smart, strategic CPs

3) I love absurd, creative arguments – unlike most judges (don’t get too carried away), I enjoy inventive and properly executed arguments whether they be freshly cut CPs like above, or criticisms that challenge debate structures. Reading poems, speaking babble, and “mirroring” your opponents etc, are things I will not immediately hate, just again, PROPERLY execute it. On that note, if you are a victim of some babbly criticism, please go for framework
4) Go for theory cheap shots in front of me, just do it persuasively. In-round abuse stories help, pre-empt your opponents final speech, and close the doors
5) Go for T in front of me – A good T debate that that includes a discussion on how the topic should be limited, what the value of a particular interp is, and how judges ought to evaluate an interpretation is something I find enjoyable. Just as always, be persuasive!
6) Have case debates – forcing your opponents to debate their case position with specific, smart arguments will always go a long way. Even if it is only defensive, mitigating offense will go a long way, and often throws people off balance. I find there to be a striking lack of case debate from my experience, and would be more than happy to judge more of it

Also, some other things:

1) Look up sometimes when I judge you to gauge my reaction - perhaps you might have said something off-putting sounding unintentionally (race/gender/etc) or have gone for a terrible, terrible flow and I have cringed. It will give you a clue
2) I have no problem voting on terminal defense or presumption
3) I will default to competing interpretations and body counts unless alternative mechanisms of evaluating the round or alternative impacts are introduced and analyzed in opposition to bodies in a debate. For instance, I will presume nukes hurt, unless you tell me death isn’t an impact and why
4) I will avoid looking at evidence, unless there is a dispute over evidence in a round or a debater spins it as part of being persuasive
5) I am an open minded judge, and respect all “realms” of debate, though of course, I will always already have some bias, I will do my best to mitigate it.

Roberto Montero, Bronx Science ’16, Binghamton ’20. I debated 4 years in high school and broke at the ToC if that means anything to you.

There are two types of arguments in debate (and their inverses): smart arguments and good arguments. Some arguments happen to be both but most of the time they are neither (thus either a bad argument or a not-so-intelligent argument). A smart argument is well-researched, nuanced, and interesting. Good arguments are strategic and effective at winning debates. For example, the politics disad is a ‘good argument’ in that it wins a lot of debates and can be executed and deployed to perfection in the correct hands. That doesn’t make it a smart argument because every novice can tell you that it doesn’t reflect real politics outside of a basic uniqueness claim (which half the time is cut out of context because news articles aren’t written as conclusive as cards are purported to be). A smart argument isn’t always good however. If you have a critique that you’ve put a grad thesis amount of work into, it might make some interesting observations about the world/aff but may not be the most strategic.

Understanding the distinction between these two types of arguments is a recipe for combining them and developing the most well rounded arguments and a higher quality of debates. However, it isn’t my job to sit behind my laptop and mock the quality of your arguments, rather it is up to you as debaters to develop and articulate your arguments as such. When judging I do my best to let debaters do the debating so regardless of what my opinions/thoughts on your arguments are, as long as they are warranted, impacted and clearly extended throughout the speeches. This is also important for understanding how I judge debates—framing your rebuttals with important technical concessions on the line by line is valuable in making my decision easier and not make me sift through dropped arguments on both sides.

The biggest problem in most debates starts with that whole line by line thing. Teddy Albiniak taught me that one of the ways that high schoolers develop bad habits is through imitating prominent college debaters. The thing that bothers me the most is the reliance on 7/8 minute overviews. While this may be something that works for some very talented college debaters, generally it shouldn’t be a tactic employed by most. There is a place for an overview, and it serves a valuable and strategic function but there is such a thing as excessive. This is one of the biggest tradeoffs with engaging in the line by line in general which is pretty important.

*This last portion, like most of my paradigm, assumes a basic model of debate. This means that if you present an alternative model of debate and a different metric for evaluating arguments I will accept that. To quote Alain Badiou It’s only a principle, it’s not a programme. Debate isn’t standard and that is one of the things that makes it such an enjoyable and valuable activity, so take this with a grain of salt.

The second biggest problem is case debating. ~~Newsflash~~ most affs are bad. Not even most, definitely all of the affirmatives are bad. One of the best way to satisfy judges (and me) is by exploiting that on the case page. The threshold for smart 1nc case analytics is a little high but by the block some smart engagement with the warrants and internal links of the 1ac, especially at a basic, logical level, can only help you in the long run. This is particularly important for me as a judge because I can easily justify pulling the trigger on a presumption/0 risk of the aff type argument if mishandled by the affirmative and well-articulated/nuanced by the negative. This is not to say it’s impossible to be aff or that even that the standard is higher but that you should be prepared to defend the 1ac against larger level solvency questions.

We also need to talk about presumption. It is important, especially versus critical affirmatives. If your aff cannot answer the question of why the ballot is key or implicate it in any sense, you have abdicated my role as an adjudicator. All I can really do is enter a team that is victorious on a ballot, just saying that this is obvious does not mean the issue goes away. Perhaps this contradiction is too much to overcome in 8 minutes of a 1ac, and maybe is a problem with how we construct affirmatives but something persuasive needs to be said that doesn't amount to "You're right nothing we said or do matters but you should vote for us anyways" in 1ac cross-x.

Tl;dr please debate the case. Just do it. Like cigarettes and overviews it’s not cool just because the big kids do it.

As for specific arguments I don’t have much to say on all the ~nuances~ of agent counter plans or the intricacies of politics disad theory. I think the go through every issue thing is cliché and generally just a waste of time. If you have any specific questions about my thoughts on some random thing I’d be happy to answer it but I won’t bother to write down an arbitrary opinion on the 7th subpoint of some condo block from 2006. The only issue worth addressing (and what I’m almost confident is the only thing people look at) is framework.

Framework

The biggest problem with framework is that a lot of 2nr’s seem to forget to extend an impact. And when they do remember to extend an impact it turns out to just be a really bad impact. Although I’m willing to vote on a dropped fairness argument I’m still skeptical that the age old phrase ‘Debate is a game so fairness you broke the rules you lose’ meets the necessary threshold of an argument. If you plan on going for this impact in front of me make sure it is clearly articulated and not the same circular claim without a warrant.

What I think the so called ‘intrinsic’ value of debate is can be loosely understood as clash. The ability for two teams to debate the merits of competing positions seems valuable not only for education but is just plain fun. Not to say that clash is an impact in it of itself because at some level it’s fundamentally inevitable, but it’s a question of what that clash looks like. This should structure how you articulate a framework impact (or answer one for that matter) most likely to get my ballot. If framework is a question of competing models or visions of debate then you just have to prove comparatively that your model produces better debates, skills or education.

The second biggest problem with framework debates is that negative teams let affs get away with too much. If the 2ar gets to stand up and weigh the entirety of the 1ac versus framework it puts you way behind. The easiest way for an affirmative to defeat framework is to complicate and problematize the way they have constructed the world. This means if you win some truth claims about your aff and the way the world operates through your theory or interpretation then it nullifies a lot of their arguments. For example if you read an affirmative that says the global system of capitalism is bad and the 2nr doesn’t answer the case debate, then what do their skills matter if they can only reproduce a system of capital you have critiqued. This, like any good framework rebuttal, requires a lot of framing and contextualizing the line by line through these bigger picture questions.

The best way for negative teams to check back against this is to just reduce the risk of the aff. You can look back up to that whole portion about case debating, it applies to K affs as well. The other necessary piece is a topical version of the aff. Obviously not helpful against an anti-topical aff but in a majority of framework debates a persuasive and nuanced topical version of the aff goes a long way in resolving a lot of their offense. It still requires a larger impact in conjunction because at the end of the day it is still a defensive argument.

Tl;dr don’t waste time, make good arguments, do line by line, debate the case, extend a framework impact, don’t say talks about how.

.

Tags slow. Speed for the rest of the card is okay.

Overt Speed - not my favorite

If I request "clear" a couple of times - and you don't do it - I will put my pen down. If you see that, it's a problem...for you.

I am listening to you speak, I am not reading your cards as you spread.

Rebuttals - stop reading cards. Talk to me. Line by lines - yes!

Roadmaps and signposting make me happy. Be organized and direct my flows appropriately. If you don't, you might lose and that won't be my fault.

Multiple DA's annoy me. How many ways we can die and in what order?

Depth over breadth. I really dislike a bunch of off cases, and then you drop 9/10's of them.

T is important so prove why you meet. Or, if you are running a K Aff - please explain why T isn't important.

Agent cps, I understand how government works. Show me that you do too. Multiple CP's? Why? Game theory - nah. Not my fave.

Income Inequality is REAL. I think that I am going to love me some K's.

Peace

I’ve competed in Policy Debate at Science Park High School/University High School (Jersey Urban Debate League now known as Newark Debate Academy) in Newark, NJ.

*Experienced Judging in LD, Policy Debate as well as Public Forum.*

-I prefer debaters to stand when speaking.

Speed: I generally don’t mind debater spreading as long as they are clear when they are reading evidence. I would like for debaters to slow down when reading tags. I want to be able to hear your warrants in the evidence. If you are going to be making any analytical arguments be sure to slow down for that as well.

Cross-Examination: I love C-X! Good C-X that is. Open C-X is OK with me as long as the debater whose turn it is does most of the speaking.

Speaker Points: 27 is average, I generally don’t go lower than a 25.

Evidence: Evidence should readily be available to everybody participating in the debate round. If there’s evidence read that doesn’t have any citation, I will disregard it.

I really appreciate it when debaters in rebuttals provide an overall summary of the round and crystallization.

The team that makes the best arguments and overall does superb job persuading me wins!

LD: Standards should be clear (Values and Criterion)

Put me on the email chain: ayan0376@bths.edu

about me: i debated for brooklyn tech from 2013-2017, qualing to the TOC my senior year. i went for afropess for every 2nr/2ar for 3 years. i am more familiar with K lit but have no predispositions about what debate should look like and will try my best to stick with my flow.

top level stuff:

1) I always default to my flow, however absent a claim, warrant, and impact to every argument-I will have trouble adjudicating.

2) Please properly explain your positions. I find that the best debates are ones with material examples and not reliant on K jargon.

3) The 2nr/2ar should write my ballot and tell me why you win. I find myself increasingly frustrated by defensive 2nr/2ars that are more of an FYI then telling me how I should frame my ballot/prioritize things. I love an easy way out so that means go for theory cheap shots, under covered arguments, etc

4) 7 minute long overviews in the 2NC upset me. You should strike me if you plan on doing that or send me your entire speech doc and not give a 2NC...I will give both partners an auto 30 but drop you.

t vs k affs

Affs should have a clear relationship to the topic-if your aff doesn't mention the words "immigrant", "borders", or "immigration", my threshold for framework is going to be pretty low for the neg to win. I also think a stable advocacy is important for educational debates, if the aff is shifty-you should call them out on it.

For the aff:

1) the aff should impact turn the neg's model of debate and win why normative policy debate is bad for X, Y, Z reason

2) Provide a counter interpretation with net benefits for why your own model of debate is better for in round education or spillover claims. Both teams should be explaining to me what your model of debate looks like: what's the neg's role, what affs are included/excluded, etc

For the neg:

1) I view fairness as an important impact and think every team should enter the round with a 50/50 shot of winning. I can be fairly easily persuaded that K-affs make debate less fair but I find that the neg often times neglect to answer aff arguments about how fairness is bad/unimportant. However fairness arguments that have a clear internal link to topic education, clash, and your model of debate are more persuasive for me.

2) Defend your model of debate. I default to competing interpretations unless you tell me otherwise.

K

I'm pretty familiar with a good portion of contemporary critical literature, however that does not mean that you can get away with not explaining the argument/jargon outside of the literature base it comes from.

If you are reading a K vs a policy aff, it is the burden of the negative to prove the undesirability of the implementation of the plan. The 2NR must extend framework, link, and do impact calc or I will vote aff on presumption if there is no alt extended.

K vs non-traditional affs, again please DO NOT read an overview for 8 minutes with "embedded clash" and never get to the line by line. I will NOT draw any lines for you. Please explain how the aff/neg theories compete and do a lot of framing. I'm skeptical of a permutation in method vs method debate but if the neg doesn't explain how their theory of power is incompatible with the aff/perm theory then it's a really easy aff ballot for the perm. I think the 2NR should have an alt because I generally default to viewing a K vs K debate as a question of competing methods and who has a better orientation towards resolving the impacts presented in the round.

Counterplans/DAs

I'm honestly not great for these debates but a good DA debate with solid links is cool. Have a counterplan text with net benefits. I'm a fan of smart, strategic, and weird CPs.