Tim Alderete - The Meadows School

-It's either Aff prep or Neg prep - No one preps for free.

-Text, from a debater I just judged to their coach, who is a friend of mine: “What is your friend on? He started my timer early because I took a deep breath.” Me: I'm gonna put that in my Paradigm!

-I do want to be on the email chain, but I won't be reading along with your speech doc - timalderete@yahoo.com

-I am cantankerous about Prep time - for me, it ends when you hit Send on the Email.

-The majority of my decisions will revolve around a lack of flowing or line by line structure.

-I will vote for most any coherent argument. A "coherent" argument must be one that I can defend to the team or debater who lost. Many think this makes me interventionist, but you don't pref me anyway.

-I not the best judge for bad arguments, the Politics Disad, or dumb theory. I will try to take them as seriously as you do, but everyone has their limits. (For example, I have never voted for disclosure theory, because I have never heard an intelligent argument defending it.)

-I do not vote for unethical arguments. The "Contact Information Disclosure" argument is dangerous and unethical because it abets online predators. It will receive a loss and minimum points.

-I don't give great speaker points. To compensate, if you show me decent flows you can get up to an extra point. Please do this Before I enter the ballot.

-I "can handle" your "speed" and I will only call "Clearer" once or twice if you are unclear.

-I have judged and coached a lot of LD rounds – I like philosophical arguments more than you may expect.

-I have judged and coached a lot of Policy rounds – I tend to think like a Policy debater.

Diana Alvarez

she/her

dianadebate@gmail.com

Please put me on the email chain.

I am excited to be your judge and I am here to listen to your arguments. As long as they not discriminate or exclude others, I will consider them whether you are reading a K-Aff or have 5 Disadvantages.

I am a former HS policy debater, I judged and coached before. I am familiar with the structure but not the current topic. Please explain your arguments well and remain respectful towards everyone.

For more specific questions, please email me or ask me before the round.

Framework is important to me. I would like to know through what lens I should evaluate your arguments. Why is your framework better than your opponent’s framework?

Experience: 4 years policy debate, George Washington High School, circuit policy for 3 years, nationals senior year. 2 years coaching/judging policy, judging LD and PF so I've heard it all.

Generic: I'll keep my paradigm brief and for all types of debate, if you have specific questions ask in round, I'll answer whatever questions you have. I'm a tab judge, familiar with critical arguments, theory etc, just make sure if it's super squirrely to explain it a little more. The biggest part of my paradigm: AT ALL TIMES, assume that this is the first round I've judged on this specific topic, unless it's policy in which case I've had experience putting together cases on the topic, the only time I experience PF and LD topics are biweekly at tournaments. So if there are topic-specific acronyms or jargon that you think everyone already knows, ASSUME I DONT, it makes it way clearer for me to evaluate the round. Beyond that, I'm totally fine with speed, just slow down a little on tags and dates, if I can't understand you, you'll see me stop flowing, which is not what you want I'd imagine.

Specifics: I will say one thing specifically, regardless of what type of debate you're engaging in, I like clear link stories and clearly fleshed out impacts. The best way to win a debate is to prove why voting for your team is better in terms of two things: How to evaluate impacts, and why your impacts matter more under that framework. 

Etiquette: Please be respectful to the other team in cross-examination periods, during your opponents' speeches and during prep time, debate is an educative, fun and inclusive forum so make sure you respect that. 

Again, if you have any specific questions before the round, don't hesitate to ask(which I recommend doing, it makes the debate a lot cleaner if we both know what the best way to win the round is)

Beyond that, having been in the debate community for 6 years, there's going to be very little I don't understand, haven't heard before or am uncomfortable with so do what you do best and have fun with it!

Head Coach: Harvard-Westlake School, Los Angeles CA | mbietz AT hw.com

I am diagnosed (and am on medication) with severe ADD. This means my ability to listen carefully and pick up everything you say will wane during the round. I would strongly suggest you have vocal variety and slow down, especially for what you want to make sure I get.

Jonah Feldman, friend and former coach at UC Berkeley, summed up a lot of what I have to say about how I evaluate arguments

I do not believe that a dropped argument is necessarily a true argument.

I am primarily interested in voting on high-quality arguments that are well explained, persuasively advanced, and supported with qualified evidence and insightful examples. I am not interested in voting on low-quality arguments that are insufficiently explained, poorly evidenced, and don't make sense. Whether or not the argument was dropped is a secondary concern...

How should this affect the way I debate?

1) Choose more, especially in rebuttals. Instead of extending many different answers to an advantage or off-case argument, pick your spots and lock in.

2) If the other team has dropped an argument, don't take it for granted that it's a done deal. Make sure it's a complete argument and that you've fully explained the important components and implications of winning that argument.

His full paradigm: https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?judge_person_id=6366

More stuff:

I never thought I'd have to say this, but you have to read aloud what you want me to consider in the round. Paraphrasing doesn't count as "evidence."

The affirmative probably should be topical.

I think that I'm one of the few circuit LD judges who votes affirmative more than I vote negative. I prefer an affirmative that provides a problem and then a solution/alternative to the problem. Negatives must engage. Being independently right isn't enough.

I consider myself a policy-maker with an extremely left bent. Answering oppression with extinction usually doesn't add up for me. I'll take immediate, known harms over the long-term, speculative, multi-link impacts 90 out of 100 times. This isn't paradigmatic, so it is NEGS failing to engage the Affirmative Case.

Given my propensity to vote affirmative and give the affirmative a lot of leeway in defining the scope of the problem/solution, and requiring the negative to engage, I'd suggest you take out the 3 minutes of theory pre-empts and add more substance.

Topicality is probably not an RVI, ever. Same with Ks. Today I saw someone contend that if he puts defense on a Kritik to make debate a safe space, the judge should vote for him because he'll feel attacked.

Cut your presumption spikes. It's bad for debate to instruct judges not to look for winning arguments. It also encourages debaters to make rounds unclear or irreconcilable if they need to catch up on actual issues.

Where an argument can be made "substantively" or without theory, just make it without theory. For example, your opponent not having solvency isn't a theory violation. it just means their risk of solvency is very low. Running theory flips the coin again. So it's both annoying and bad strategy. Other examples might include: Plan flaws, no solvency advocate, and so on. Theory IS the great equalizer in that it gives someone who is otherwise losing an argument a chance to win.

Cross-x cannot be transferred to prep time.

Some annoyances:

- Not letting your opponents answer a question. More specifically, male debaters who have been socialized to think it is ok to interrupt females who have been socialized not to put up a fight. If you ask the question, give them a chance to answer.

- Ignoring or belittling the oppression or marginalization of people in favor of smug libertarian arguments will likely not end up well for you.

- People who don't disclose or they password protect or require their opponents to delete speech documents. I'm not sure why what you read is private or a secret if you've read it out loud. The whole system of "connected" kids and coaches who know each other using backchannel methods to obtain intelligence is one of the most exclusionary aspects of debate. This *is* what happens when people don't disclose. I'll assume if you don't disclose you prefer the exclusionary system.

Some considerations for you:

- if you’re reading such old white male cards that you have to edit for gendered language, maybe consider finding someone who doesn’t use gendered language... and if you notice that ONLY white men are defending it, maybe consider changing your argument.

- if you find yourself having to pre-empt race or gender arguments in your case, maybe you shouldn't run the arguments.

Updated for CPS 2018: This update is to mostly reflect how I've been judging rounds lately.

Background:
I debated for four years for Loyola high. I broke at multiple tournaments and had a 4-3 record at the TOC.

I am more familiar with policy arguments, philosophy, and theory, and am less familiar with kritiques. However, I am not really a fan of how most philosophy and theory debates are done today, and thus my familiarity does not always correspond to what arguments I vote on.

Specifically, I think that moral philosophy positions that involves tricks are doing a disservice to the literature. Further, theory debates are often frivolous, although what I may consider frivolous may be different than what others consider frivolous. Some examples of what I consider frivolous theory are the following: font-size theory, must spec status in speech theory, some spec shells, etc. My litmus test for frivolous theory might be the following: does the theory shell isolate an issue of fairness that has actual educational implications on the debate round?

Kritiques usually have good explanations attached to them, so I've voted on them in the past and will probably continue to vote on them in the future.

Overview:
I evaluate the round via an offense/defense paradigm. Thus, I will vote for the debater who provides comparatively more offense back to the framework that has been won in the round, lest there are other issues (theory or kritiques) that precede this evaluation. Beyond this, I will try to evaluate the round in the most objective way possible. However, as all judges do, I have certain basic preferences that it would help to conform to.

First, when there is a clash on an issue or position, I tend to default to the more thorough and comprehensive explanation that makes sense to me. While technical drops are important, I don't think they automatically preclude good analysis. Strong weighing matters more to me than a dropped blippy argument on the flow.

Granted, this threshold only exists when there is clash on a position (and maybe sometimes across positions). If a position is totally conceded, or mostly conceded except for a couple of weaker arguments, my threshold for explanation and extensions becomes much lower (if totally conceded, it approaches zero).

Second, I flow CX, both because of theoretical implications of answers, and because I think your position is only as well warranted as your CX answers indicate. If I don't think there's a warrant after a particularly devastating CX on a position, you're going to have an uphill battle to convince me of the argument. (This is true only if the other debater brings up the flaws they pointed out in CX during a speech. CX by itself is not a rebuttal and thus cannot be the sole basis for my decision).

Third, I heavily favor debater's original analysis and arguments in later rebuttals (2NR and 2AR) as opposed to cards. While cards are good at setting up a position in constructive speeches, I heavily prefer debate styles that can go beyond cards with good explanations.

Theory defaults:
I default competing interpretations. I default no-RVI's. Topicality is a voter. All other issues must be justified by the debater.

Random Notes:

I like numbered responses to arguments, and clear distinction between line-by-line analysis and overviews.

I will only vote on arguments that I have flowed. During rebuttals, I mostly flow from what you're saying, rather than from the speech doc, so adjust accordingly.

While debate is a game, it is an educational game that brings lots of enjoyment to many of our lives. Please treat other debaters and it with respect.

History: I debated for CSU Long Beach for 3 years in Parlimentary debate and coached for San Marino High school for 3 years.

Tl;dr version:

email: chng.lrn@gmail.com

I am a hack for theory.

I type really slow.

I'm fine with most strategies.

Speaks: 30-29 you should be in late elims, 29-28 You should break, 28-27 I'm sorry I might be the reason you get 4-2 screwed.

Regular version:

I am generally of the belief that what debate should be is up to the debaters. I assume the position of a policymaker unless told otherwise. This means I heavily value impact weighing through timeframe probability magnitude within normative frameworks.

Coming from parliamentary debate there are a few shortcomings that I make a genuine effort to compensate for. The most obvious is the use of carded evidence. My process is first I look at what I wrote down, then I compare how arguments interact, and then compare if the evidence says what I wrote down. If there is a discrepancy between what I wrote down and what the cards say I will default to what I wrote down. The exception to this rule is on theory. In high school ld is way too fast for me to write down more than taglines. I would appreciate it if you slowed down significantly and clearly repeat any interpretation. Otherwise, I will evaluate what I write down.

Speed is typically not a problem for me however keep in mind that I default to what I write down. If your style is to sacrifice clarity for speed on cards I will probably miss some stuff. This problem has also occurred for scripted analytics where its usually too late for me to call clear. I have had the most problems with flowing long stream of conscious overviews and multiple planks in advocacies.

The types of debate I like to see tend to be theory heavy first and K heavy second. I really enjoy T debates and framework debates.

Theory: I default to competing interpretations. I think blocks that don't consider the context they are being used is unpersuasive. I think specificity is a necessary pre-requisite for offense on theory. I generally think education outweighs fairness and that rounds that are unfair don't entirely preclude the possibility of education. Some theory positions I have reservations against.

- Disclosure I believe is a good practice however the way the the position is deployed against schools that genuinely don't know about the wiki or people who are new to debate is problematic to me.

- Whole res is not a spicy argument to me but I would still vote for it.

- Rvi's on T I think need more than theoretical abuse. Unless you can show the 1nc is uniquely excessive and abusive then I don't think I'd vote here.

K: For reference I debated a lot of Lacan, Colonialism, and Cap. I'm fairly confident in my ability to understand arguments I haven't heard before. I think the aff should attempt to be in the direction of the resolution. I am open to performance debates and more non-traditional types of debate. I admit I'm fairly inexperienced in judging performance v performance rounds. Competing framing arguments need to be compared very clearly for me. If one team is saying ontology first a response that just says fiat is good is not sufficient as an answer. I default to theory coming before k framing but I am persuaded otherwise quite frequently.

Cp: The only thing I have to say about counterplans is I have a predisposition that excessive planks (2+) pics are really abusive which amounts to me giving more leeway to the perm.

Last notes:

I'd say that I am really really slow at typing. You can ask me to flow on paper especially in outrounds and if my hand is doing alright then I'd be happy to oblige. I think that taglines delivered at a pace of roughly 300 wpm is perfectly comfortable for me. On paper you can go as fast as you want I'll call clear/slow appropriately.

I think I have really expressive non-verbals.

I hold people to the text of their interpretations, role of the ballot/judge, plan/cp, permutations. I don't think condo good is a sufficient counter-interpretation on condo, I don't think perm do both/the cp/the alt are enough.

please be nice

I'll start prep if for whatever reason it is taking an absurd amount of time to start your speech.

Yes I want to be on the email chain mattconraddebate@gmail.com. Pronouns are he/him.

My judging philosophy should ultimately be considered a statement of biases, any of which can be overcome by good debating. The round is yours.

I’m a USC debate alum and have had kids in policy finals of the TOC, a number of nationally ranked LDers, and state champions in LD, Original Oratory, and Original Prose & Poetry while judging about a dozen California state championship final rounds across a variety of events and the Informative final at NIETOC. Outside of speech and debate, I write in Hollywood and have worked on the business side of show business, which is a nice way of saying that I care more about concrete impacts than I do about esoteric notions of “reframing our discourse.” No matter what you’re arguing, tell me what it is and why it matters in terms of dollars and lives.

Politically, I’m a moderate Clinton Democrat and try to be tabula rasa but I don’t really believe that such a thing is possible.

I debated for three years at Notre Dame in Sherman Oaks, CA. I currently am debating for the University of Southern California.

Fine with anything

Disads and Topicality - Offense/Defense paradigm. Lean towards reasonability on most T arguments.

Counter plans: Lean neg on counter plan theory if the counter plan is specific to the affirmative, and vice versa.

Critiques: Prefer critiques with a specific link to the plan action or a very specific link wall to their discourse or what not. For example an apocalyptic rhetoric critique with a link to warming discussions in classrooms or policy setting is much more persuasive than evidence written about commercials or media representations of warming (unless it's a link to a media article the affirmative read).

Critical affirmatives: The closer you are to the direction of the resolution the more likely I am to vote affirmative against framework. Affirmatives that claim to solve broader academic issues or civil problems are less persuasive than affirmatives about debate. I'm not particularly ideological about what the affirmative has to / should defend, but I'm equally open to framework and really enjoy judging framework debates.

zanedille@gmail.com

I am the Director of Debate at Immaculate Heart High School. I am a conflict for any competitors on this list.

General:

1. I will vote on nearly any argument that is well explained and compared to the arguments your opponent has made.

2. Accusing your opponent of an evidence ethics or clipping violation requires you to stake the debate on said allegation. If such an allegation is made, I will stop the debate, determine who I think is in the wrong, and vote against that person and give them the lowest speaker points allowed by the tournament.

3. I won’t vote on arguments that I don’t understand or that I don’t have flowed. I have been involved in circuit LD for almost ten years now and consider myself very good at flowing, so if I missed an argument it is likely because you were incomprehensible.

4. I am a strong proponent of disclosure, and I consider failing to disclose/incorrect disclosure a voting issue, though I am growing weary of nit-picky disclosure arguments that I don’t think are being read in good faith.

5. For online debate, please keep a local recording of your speech so that you can continue your speech and share it with your opponent and me in the event of a disconnect.

6. Weighing arguments are not new even if introduced in the final rebuttal speech. The Affirmative should not be expected to weigh their advantage against five DAs before the Negative has collapsed.

7. You need to use CX to ask which cards were read and which were skipped.

Some thoughts of mine:

1. I dislike arguments about individual debaters' personal identities. Though I have voted for these arguments plenty of times, I think I would vote against them the majority of the time in an evenly matched debate.

2. I am increasingly disinterested in voting for topicality arguments about bare plurals or theory arguments suggesting that either debater should take a stance on some random thing. No topic is infinitely large and voting for these arguments discourages topic research. I do however enjoy substantive topicality debates about meaningful interpretive disagreements regarding terms of art used in the resolution.

3. “Jurisdiction” and “resolvability” standards for theory arguments make little sense to me. Unless you can point out a debate from 2013 that is still in progress because somebody read a case that lacked an explicit weighing mechanism, I will have a very low threshold for responses to these arguments.

4. I dislike critiques that rely exclusively on framework arguments to make the Aff irrelevant. The critique alternative is one of the debate arguments I'm most skeptical of. I think it is best understood as a “counter-idea” that avoids the problematic assumptions identified by the link arguments, but this also means that “alt solves” the case arguments are misguided because the alternative is not something that the Negative typically claims is fiated. If the Negative does claim that the alternative is fiated, then I think they should lose to perm do both shields the link. With that said, I still vote on critiques plenty and will evaluate these debates as per your instructions.

5. Despite what you may have heard, I enjoy philosophy arguments quite a bit and have grown nostalgic for them as LD increasingly becomes indistinct from policy. What I dislike is when debaters try to fashion non-normative philosophy arguments about epistemology, metaphysics, or aesthetics into NCs that purport to justify a prescriptive standard. I find philosophy heavy strategies that concede the entirety of the opposing side’s contention or advantage to be unpersuasive.

6. “Negate” is not a word that has been used in any resolution to date so frameworks that rely on a definition of this word will have close to no impact on my assessment of the debate.

TFA 2023: I haven't judged much since TOC 18. Prior to that, I was heavily involved in the activity and taught / coached for Harvard Westlake. I'm a civil rights attorney now. I love debate and really don't have that strong of feelings on things. It's your debate, do as you will. Just start a bit slower than you normally would..... it's been awhile.

Hard and Fast Rules:

Flashing counts as prep if you are assembling the document. If everything is in one doc and you are just saving then that is not prep.

You must either flash or email your opponent your docs.

Evasiveness of any kind before round is highly frowned upon. My expectation is that debaters are honest with one another in all their dealings.

In general, I really enjoy judging debate. If you have a well thought out and interesting take on the topic/debate, I will be happy. If you use strategies that reflect a shallow understanding of the arguments you're running that avoid clash i will be less happy.

Toc 18:

Here are 8 things i'd like for you to know:

1.I keep a good flow. I will hold you to what you say. I do not mind justifying my decisions after the debate by reading back to you what i have on my flow.

2. I will read your evidence and compare it to your explanation in round. Putting powerful spin on your ev is good and highly encouraged. Falsely representing what your evidence says is not. Similarly, having good ev but explaining it poorly will also hurt you.

3. I like philosophical debates. I majored in philosophy. I read ethics, philosophy of mind, political theory in my free time. But i have found that i do not like "phil debaters" because debaters who identify as such seem much more inclined to try to obscure clash and rely on spikes/tricks. If you debate philosophy straight up and have read primary source material to enhance your explanations, I might be the best judge for you. If you intend to read a million analytics and use trickery, i would be a terrible judge for you.

4. On K's, I start from the perspective of "why are the aff and alt different?" This means i focus my decision on 1. links application to the aff and how they turn case or gut aff solvency. 2. does the alt solve the k or the case?

i tend to think the AFF gets to "weigh" the case in the sense that the plan is some what relevant. I think framework arguments best indict how i evaluate the plan and impact calc more broadly. I think the aff commonly drops a lot of 1NC f/w arguments, but negs rarely capitalize on these drops in persuasive ways.

5. I research the topic a lot. I like debates about the topic grounded in a robust academic/theoretical/philosophical/critical perspective.

6. I think debate is both a game and contains an important educational aspect. I do not lean either way of "must defend the topic" but i tend to believe the topic has a role to be played in the community and shouldn't be totally ignored. How that belief plays out in a given round is much more hard to say. I think my record is about 50/50 on non-T AFF's vs topicality.

7. I like CX. You can't use it as prep.

8. I don't think i've voted in an RVI in like over 2 years. I would consider myself a hard press.

Green Valley HS (NV) '15

UNLV '19

Put me on email chains please - jeffreyrhorn96@gmail.com

Top Level

-Tech over truth, with two caveats: 1) dropped args aren't true if I don't understand them or they were never complete arguments. 2) The bar for explanation is higher the less intuitive the argument is.

-Specificity is crucial. This is true universally regardless of the type of debate. I am usually unpersuaded by the generic nature of framing pages. My tendency is to err on the side of contextualized, specific analysis of a war that could happen over general "no war" theory. Similarly, I don't know what to do with arguments like "util=genocide".

-I try to judge as objectively as possible. I'll vote for just about any argument. I'm very unlikely to be persuaded by "death/suffering/extinction" good.

-"insert rehighlighting" is debatable. I lean towards its allowed if the rehighlighting is summarized. To me, this is no different than a debater just making the argument that evidence in the un-underlined portion says "X", and then after the debate the judge might ask for the debater to point to the paragraphs they are referencing. I can also be persuaded that "insert rehighlighting" is infinitely regressive. If you just re-highlight all of the other side's cards and don't explain the arguments in the re-highlighting until the 2ar, I'm not considering it.

-No touching.

Neg Ks vs. Policy Affs

-It'll be difficult to convince me the Aff can't weigh the plan

-The key for me is explaining how the plan causes a unique increase in suffering that some metric can measure. I dislike tying the plan to some abstract theory and explaining why that abstract worldview is bad.

-Alts should do things and are often under-explained.

K Affs

-I'll vote for them. However, in the spirit of honesty, I am generally persuaded by topicality.

-This predisposition has the best chance of being overcome if the Aff 1) explains what the role of the negative and the judge is in their model of debate and why disagreement is necessary. 2) Focus on 1-2 well-explained offensive arguments. 3) Soundly defeat "do it on the neg" and any "topical versions".

-I think fairness can be an impact in and of itself. Variations of "skills" impacts can be too.

-I am more persuaded by the genre of "skills" impacts when the neg is less hyperbolic (read: topical debates solve global warming). Affs often don't dedicate enough time to dismantling hyperbolic impacts to topicality.

Topicality (in policy debates)

-Arbitrariness matters most to me. The question of whose interpretation is more limited/has better ground seems to fall secondary to whether the interpretation is a predictable one. This is where both sides should invest the most time.

-Reasonability is under-utilized. It's usually just explained "come on, we're close." I find the more persuasive version to be an argument about how high to set the ballot threshold for T. If the differences between the interpretations are very marginal, substance crowd out and the possible moral hazard for the neg to go for T seems like a legitimate concern.

Counterplans

-I default to thinking the status quo is always a logical option for the neg. Debating can reverse this. The neg should still flag the possibility of judge kick early and often. The aff should object to judge kick in the 1ar to increase the chances of sticking the neg with the CP.

-I'm usually persuaded the CP linking less than the plan matters. Links are probabilistic assessments.

-Lean neg on conditionality, states, solvency advocates, multi-branch fiat, self-restraint. Can be reversed but I'm generally skeptical of the arbitrariness of most theory arguments.

-Arbitrary conditionality interpretations are unpersuasive. The only logical limit seems to be one.

-Lean aff on international fiat, consult, conditions, delay, and combined federal and state fiat. Also can be reversed with debating.

-I'm very unpersuaded by theory arguments that devolve to "the CP is too good" or "they fiated out of our internal links or solvency deficits". Every CP should "fiat out of deficits", otherwise it wouldn't solve.

Disads

-"Turns case" and "solves case" are different and should be answered differently. Both these arguments are very important and both sides should be thorough in explaining/answering "turns/solves case".

-Better than most for politics, but most politics DAs have no defensible internal link. You still need good evidence.

-Impact comparison wins debates.

Updated March 2023(note this is partially from Greg Achten's paradigm - an update for Kandi King RR 2023)

Email: huntshania@gmail.com-please put me on the email chain

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Overview

I debated for Northland and graduated in 2014. Mostly competed in LD, but also did a bunch of other events and worlds schools debate for Team USA. Coached Northland for a bit, then Harvard-Westlake for 4 years, then I was the director of the MS speech and debate program at Harker for 3 years. Now, I'm in law school and an assistant coach for Harker.

I enjoy engaging debates where debaters actively respond to their opponent's arguments, use cross-examination effectively, and strategically adapt throughout the debate. I typically will reward well-explained, intellectually stimulating arguments, ones that are rooted in well-grounded reasoning, and result in creativity and strategic arguments. The best debates for me to judge will either do a stand up job explaining their arguments or read something policy-based. I love a new argument, but I just caution all debaters in general from reading arguments your judge may not have a background in that requires some level of understanding how it functions (that often debaters assume judges know, then are shocked when they get the L because the judge didn't know that thing).

I haven't judged consistently in awhile, and what that practically means it'd be wise to:

(1) ask questions about anything you may be concerned about

(2) avoid topic-specific acronyms that are not household acronyms (e.g., ASEAN, NATO, WHO, etc.)

(3) explain each argument with a claim/warrant/impact - if you explain the function of your evidence, I'll know what you want me to do with that evidence. Without that explanation, I may overlook something important (e.g., offense, defense, perm, or "X card controls the link to..", etc)

Argument Preferences:

The execution of the argument is as important as the quality of the evidence supporting the argument. A really good disad with good cards that is poorly explained and poorly extended is not compelling to me. Conversely a well explained argument with evidence of poor quality is also unlikely to impress me.

Critiques: Overall, not what I read often in debates, but you'll likely do fine if you err on the side of extra explanation, extending and explaining your arguments, directly responding to your opponents arguments, etc. I try my best to flow, understand more nuanced arguments, etc. But, I don't have a background in critical studies so that will need extra explanation (especially links, framing arguments, alternatives).

Topicality/Theory: I am slightly less prone than other judges to vote on topicality. Often the arguments are quickly skimmed over, the impact of these arguments is lost, and are generally underdeveloped. I need clear arguments on how to evaluate theory - how do I evaluate the standards? What impacts matter? What do I do if you win theory? How does your opponent engage?

The likelihood of me voting on a 1ac spike or tricks in general are exceptionally low. There is a zero percent chance I will vote on an argument that I should evaluate the debate after X speech. Everyone gets to give all of their speeches and have them count. Likewise any argument that makes the claim "give me 30 speaker points for X reason" will result in a substantial reduction in your speaker points. If this style of theory argument is your strategy I am not the judge for you.

Philosophy/Framework: dense phil debates are very hard for me to adjudicate having very little background in them. I default to utilitarianism and am most comfortable judging those debates. Any framework that involves skep triggers is very unlikely to find favor with me.

Evidence: Quality is extremely important and seems to be declining. I have noticed a disturbing trend towards people reading short cards with little or no explanation in them or that are underlined such that they are barely sentence fragments. I will not give you credit for unread portions of evidence. Also I take claims of evidence ethics violations very seriously and have a pretty high standard for ethics. I have a strong distaste for the insertion of bracketed words into cards in all instances.

Cross examination: is very important. Cross-ex should be more than I need this card and what is your third answer to X. A good cross-ex will dramatically increase your points, a bad one will hurt them. Everyone in the debate should be courteous.

Disads/CP's: these are the debates I am most familiar with and have spent nearly all of my adult life judging and coaching. DA turns the case is a powerful and underutilized argument. But this is all pretty straightforward and I do not think I have a lot of ideas about these that are not mainstream with the exceptions in the theory section above.Speaker points: for me are based on the following factors - clarity of delivery, quality of evidence, quality of cross examination, strategic choices made in the debate and also, to a degree, on demeanor. Debaters who are friendly and treat their opponents with respect are likely to get higher points.

Also a note on flowing: I will periodically spot check the speech doc for clipping but do not flow from it. I will not vote on an argument I was unable to flow. I will say clear once or twice but beyond that you risk me missing many arguments.

Public Forum

Pretty much everything in the above paradigm is applicable here but there are two key additions. First, I strongly oppose the practice of paraphrasing evidence. If I am your judge I would strongly suggest reading only direct quotations in your speeches. My above stated opposition to the insertion of brackets is also relevant here. Words should never be inserted into or deleted from evidence.

Second, there is far too much untimed evidence exchange happening in debates. I will want all teams to set up an email chain to exchange cases in their entirety to forego the lost time of asking for specific pieces of evidence. You can add me to the email chain as well and that way after the debate I will not need to ask for evidence. This is not negotiable if I'm your judge - you should not fear your opponents having your evidence. Under no circumstances will there be untimed exchange of evidence during the debate. Any exchange of evidence that is not part of the email chain will come out of the prep time of the team asking for the evidence.

Other than that I am excited to hear your debate! If you have any specific questions please feel free to ask me.

Here are the things that matter:

I did not debate as a student.

I have judged and coached PF and LD for 8 years.

I don’t lean towards any style of debate, just convince me why I should vote for you and you can win.

My favorite philosophy is Utilitarianism... just sayin’

I am the LD coach at Loyola.

I have coached traditional and circuit LD for over 30 years and am comfortable judging most rounds—having judged at many Circuit tournaments, elim rounds, and even TOC finals. That said, I am NOT one of the coaches who is super familiar with ALL of the arguments that are currently in vogue. What does that mean? You make assumptions about my understanding at your own risk. I won’t fill in steps for you, because I happen to know what argument you’re trying to make. And I don’t have “preconceived” notions of how certain arguments are “generally” evaluated by circuit judges nowadays. What you’ll get is a fresh/independent/flow-based look by an impartial judge on those arguments. I don’t have the benefit of knowing how those debates are SUPPOSED to come out.

I can handle spread, but NOT if you’re incomprehensible...and most of you are NOT understandable. If you want to include me on an email chain that helps.

In terms of decisions, I try to make my decisions based on the flow, but will reward debaters for being smart and will generally NOT like to vote on undeveloped blips.

ykamath [at] usc [dot] edu
can't judge: Wichita East, Loyola


Any questions please ask don't assume

Wichita East '15
USC '19
4 years HS policy, currently coaching Loyola policy

Important things:
1. Flashing is not prep.
2. Cross-x will be flowed. You will be held to what you say in cross-x.
3. Clipping cards, reading ahead in speech docs, falsifying evidence, all auto-losses.
4. Please disclose.
5. Stand/sit/dance/jog I don't care. Just look at me when you are speaking.
6. Arguments need warrants. No warrants = not an argument.
7. Please add me to the email chain, pocket box, hand me the flash drive, etc.

I will try my best not to intervene in a debate. Execute whatever strategy you are best at, and do it well. I will listen and evaluate almost every argument tabula rasa.
Here are my argument preferences:
T-
Neg- Case list, impacts to your standards, and topical version of the aff are all very persuasive.
Aff- Reasonability is not as a persuasive as a robust defense of your great counter-interpretation and disads to their interp.

K-
Neg- Explain the alt well. The link and impact story is usually what the neg is superb at, but if you don't explain the alt well, what the hell am I voting for? 2NC/1NR tricks are great if executed properly.
Aff- Impact turns, disads to the alt, and permutations are persuasive.

CP-
Neg- Happy with most, not a fan of process cps or generic word pics, but I will still vote for them if executed properly.
Aff- Solvency deficit, and defense to the net benefit (whatever page it is on), are very persuasive.

DA-
Neg- Turns case, and impact framing are very persuasive.
Aff- You must have offense on this page. With hard technical debating, I do believe in a possible 0 % risk of the disad.

Case
Neg- Case turns, and case specific defense are very persuasive. A ton of generic impact defense not so much.
Aff- Your answers to case args should be fantastic, no excuses for a poor performance on something for which you have had unlimited prep.

Theory-
Mostly lean neg, again interp and counter-interps are key.
2 condo is fine, 3 is still okay, 4 and my threshold for an aff theory arg will be very low.

K affs-
Aff- This is fine. Please explain what voting aff means, what you have to win for me to vote aff. 
Neg- Answer the case. T (content guidelines) not framework (performance guidelines), impact turns, and criticisms are very persuasive.

High speaker points:
1. Great strategic moves. Technical strength will serve you well.
2. Humor. Only if you are funny.
3. Great case debate.
4. Number/letter arguments.
5. Great evidence.

Low speaker points:
1. Not clear. Can't stand this. Hurts me, your partner, the other team, and the quality of the debate at the whole.
2. Really stupid arguments. If you have to ask if it meets the really stupid threshold then don't read it.

Don't be rude or obnoxious. In debate and in life.

I do want to be on the email chain: rkezios@gmail.com

tl;dr version: Currently a GA at Baylor. I debated mostly policy argument for 4 years in high school at Notre Dame under Christina Phillips, and 5 years in college at UNLV under Jacob Thompson reading only critical arguments. My view of debate is heavily influenced by Tyler Snelling and Darrian Carroll. I have dabbled in most areas of critical literature, but tended to lean towards the postmodern. I also enjoy good framework debates, but if you have me in a policy v policy round you have done your prefs incorrectly. I was a 2N my entire career.

Long version:

I'm here to see good debates. I can't imagine ever giving a 30 to someone who followed my paradigm to the letter, and as such didn't change my view in some way. With that being said, these are the positions I find myself generally inserting myself most as a judge:

Framework in general - I think both sides are always cheating. I think debate is and has always been a game of who cheats best. If you are on either side of a K aff v framework debate do not assume I am your friend. To be clear I do draw the line of rhetorical cheating at the point at which you actively impede your opponent ability to debate that rise to the level of ethics challenges, such as but not limited to clipping.

Framework impacts. I think both fairness and education are things that can be articulated as impacts, but neither are in and of themselves. I tend to assume fairness is an internal link to education because I am more likely to buy education as an inherent impact. On the same note I think if the affirmative impact turns these questions it makes most of the flow irrelevant for me, and would expect a strategy to put substantial depth here.

Permutation debates. I don't know what a permutation is anymore when a K aff is involved, and I haven't for a long time. At this point I consider its existence in the 2ac a placeholder for a real argument that will come forth in the 1ar. Because of this I grant an amazing amount of leeway to the 2nr in answering it. I hate that this creates late breaking debates, so developing standards for competition and explicit definitions of the permutation early in the debate is more likely to earn you higher speaker points and make me more likely to hold the line on the later speeches.

I try to make sure I can draw lines between 2ar and 1ar arguments before submitting each decision.

I've probably both left out and unintentionally lied about things so definitely look at my actual judging record.

Reuben Lack
Alpharetta High School '12
Emory University '16

I debated four years at Alpharetta and qualified to the TOC in my senior year before debating for Emory University. Currently, I'm a dubbing producer & director for Disney, with a specific focus on anime & animation content.

My top-line advice if you have me in the back of the room is do what you do best. These are general predispositions, not immutable laws of judging, and you're always best off advancing a strategy you know well.

Please add me to the email chain: reubenlack1@gmail.com.

We only have 5 minutes before the round, what should we know about you?
I consider myself a 'middle of the road' judge on most meta debate issues. When I was in the activity, I did everything from Politics DA 2NR's to more obscure 1-Off Kritik strategies. I'm comfortable with pretty much anything. I'm neither a "K judge" nor a "policy judge," and will do my best to examine the debate from the arguments you give me. Tactically, judge instruction and comparative evidence analysis are appreciated. My thresholds for theory arguments are probably lower than most judges.

To the extent I have certain leans on close calls, or musings about debate issues, I've done my best to illustrate those below.

Are you OK with K's/Critical Affs/Planless Affs/Performance/Non-Traditional Affs?
I've run everything from super 'policy' affs with giant heg and econ advantages to 1ACs that consisted largely of a poem and leftist arguments. In high school and college, I went for stuff like Security, Badiou, Derrida, and had a good share of 1NCs that were 1-Off Kritik. That said, it's been years since I've delved into these arguments, so explanation is a must for any high-theory strategies.

When it comes to framework and framework-related arguments against these types of Affs/K's, your 2NR/2AR 'story' should focus on the educational implications of each side's approaches. I'm interested in the question of how to make debate an educational and useful activity for students. How does your position interact with those considerations?

As for how to align your strategy, I'm more likely to be persuaded by a direct challenge to the efficacy of the non-traditional team's method/model for debate than a procedural fairness claim, which often falls short. It's always better to go on offense. There are serious & legitimate objections to K Aff's/performance Aff's that Neg teams should feel comfortable to make as part of their FW arguments. I have a particular soft spot for turns of the "cede the political" variety (e.g., withdrawing from the state/policy-making leads to state apparatuses controlled by conservatives).

Thoughts on the Politics DA & DA Strategy?
Love them. My senior year was almost entirely me taking that week's Politics DA in the 1NR. My favorite 1NR's dig deep into the aff evidence, tear it apart, and make solid comparative analysis. For the aff, don't be shy about putting all your firepower against 1 or 2 serious logical holes in the DA (this goes for any, not just Politics/Elections). The internal linkage between a particular bill passing to a terminal impact is typically pretty flimsy, and Aff's that push that point will do well in front of me. Zero risk of the disad is an RFD I've given.

Should I ever make Theory arguments an option in your rounds?
I'm probably more willing to vote on theory arguments than your average judge. That said, if you want to make "Conditionality Bad," "50 State Fiat Bad," or other theory arguments an option, you need to focus on what debate looks like under the other side's interpretation. What happens to prep, strategy, research, and why is it bad? Do the impact work, talk about what your vision of optimal debate looks like. These debates tend to be especially messy, so minimizing theory jargon is recommended.

Anything else you really like?
Impact turns, advantage counterplans, highly-specific case debates.

Any strong opinions about Topicality?
I enjoy a good T debate and was something of a "T Hack" for the first few years of my high school career. Reasonability is hard to win in front of me, but strong counter-interpretations are underrated. Like Theory debates, jargon is overused in T 2NR's/2AR's; I recommend focusing on the impact level, i.e., what happens to the topic if X is/isn't considered topical.

At the end of the round, how do you usually go about making your decision?
When the round ends, I take a note of all the key questions to resolve, then work through them one-by-one. This means framing arguments and judge instruction ("prioritize X," "view the [X] through the lens of [Y]," "here are the 2 ways to vote [X]") are great ways to win my ballot. My default state, unless guided by arguments in-round, is to assess the debate through an offense-defense paradigm, weighing how one area of risk interacts and/or outweighs another. I also rarely call for cards unless a nexus question of evidence quality decides the round. To borrow from Ed Lee's paradigm, "while I am a huge fan of quality evidence, my decisions will privilege a debater’s assessment of an argument over my reading of a piece of evidence."

What can I do to get high speaks if you're my judge?
Have fun! Be nice! Utilize cross-x effectively. My favorite debaters were all fairly slow at spreading, yet extremely strong speakers. And hey, I work in the anime industry, so pandering with references never hurts.

Any pet peeves we should know about?
Two pet peeves. First, please, please, please email/flash speeches in a timely fashion. Second, there is no "flow clarification" segment in policy debate, i.e., if you're asking what cards a team read, that's part of CX. You should always be flowing, with the speech doc as a reference, but not as the source of truth. There's been an unfortunate trend away from strong flowing skills, please don't let needless mistakes happen to you.

"Don't forget. Believe in yourself. Not in the you who believes in me. Not the me who believes in you. Believe in the YOU who believes in yourself."
- Kamina, Gurren Lagann
I wish you the best of luck and hope my feedback will help for future rounds. I love the activity and the fantastically cool people in it. I’ll do whatever I can to support you and help you grow as a debater.

Hello y'all!

It's everyone's favorite time, to read the philosophy of the judge so they can bs their way to winning rounds.

Background:

My background is pretty baller. I did speech for 4 years of high school and was ranked in the state. I did debate for 2 years, mid lay level LD and parli. After I graduated, I started coaching at Chaminade College Prep. To my dismay, they were mostly a policy school. I cried for weeks about this.

I've been the assist head coach there for 2 and half years and now the head coach for the past year. Surprisingly, no one has died. I've now judged rounds of all debate events in California, at almost all levels, except Varsity Policy, because I'm not too masochistic.

Here are some general things, then you can look at event specific things below:

I try my best to not put my beliefs onto the flow. I don't mind any critical arguments, just realize most of you run them wrong/weak links. Don't do that. Be clear and articulate, explain to me how it impacts the round. Don't just say "Dumb judge, I win because of (fancy jargon word)" Explain why you win. If you're going to cross apply, explain how it cross applies. "Cross apply this to all of my contentions because in reality, I have no answers, but want to seem like I didn't drop everything on the flow"

Don't run K's with no clear link. If I feel you've run this K against every aff you've hit, not matter the topic, I won't be happy. Make the link very clear. This comes off as lazy to me.

Speed: I'm alright with speed. Usually by the rebuttal level, I'm fine. I'd say in policy try to go 70% your fastest. LD you can go 80% your fastest. I have yet to have an issue with speed in PF and parli, so don't worry. You'll want to go slower with me, mostly because I tend not to give any indication if I can't understand what you're saying because I'm trying so hard to understand what you're saying.

Also, when spreading, there is this thing called enunciating. Do that. I like that.

And in spreading, I know that tends to turn into yelling, try not to do that. As a speech a coach, I feel horrible for your vocal cords that your abusing and misusing. Also, no one likes to be yelled at for an hour.

There's no reason to be rude. I will tank your speaks if you're a jerk. Be passionate by all means, but making your opponent cry, or just being a "meanie face" will not make me like you. I will still give you the win in the round, if you won the round, but you can say bye bye speaker award, because your speaks are destroyed. Moral of this story: Win, but let your arguments win, being a jerk doesn't gain you ground on your arguments and it hurts your speaks for me. Being a meanie poo (I'm avoiding curse words, for if some reason my school I work at finds this) isn't educational and won't help you in the real world.

I generally enjoy rounds where the topic and cases are engaged. I'm more of a straight policy/LD person. However, trust me when I say, I'm totally fine with any arguments you want to run, just please make it follow a clear train of logic.

I'm cool with flex prep, if everyone agrees. In the prepared debate events, especially LD and policy, if your opponent is misrepresenting evidence, and you call that out, I love that.

LD:

Yo, LD, I like that event.Since it's LD, I'm a big fan of the values debate. Otherwise just go into policy.

Policy:

If I'm judging a policy round, I'm already crying inside. Don't make those tears turn into a full out sob. Meaning, clearly explain everything, go slow on your tag lines. I won't time "flash" time towards prep, but don't go super slow.

Parli:

I love parli. As a judge, I realize that you've only had 20 minutes of prep. For this reason, unless you cite where you are getting your information, I'll probably assume you're lying.

I'm definitely fine with any critical arguments you want to run. However, I'm not a huge fan of parli in which the topic is ignored entirely. If it's a poorly written topic, call that out, but don't refuse to debate it because you think it's poorly written. If we're getting a resolution on if we need to send aid to the Sahel region, I don't want the aff to come in an talk about how we need to stop oppression in America or an entirely different case for a resolution (unless there is a very clear link to the resolution) Again, if you feel the topic is horribly skewed, explain that in round, but I don't like when the aff comes in with a new topic, It just comes off as lazy and not willing to engage the debate and topic.

Public Forum:

I've never had any issues with speed or anything in Public Forum. Basically, if you're in Public Forum, do you boo. PF you understand me and I love you for that public forum.

Also, because I'm fat, I'm receptive to receiving donuts, cheesecake and fettuccine Alfredo. It won't give you the win, but I'll give me something to cry into during the policy rounds.

Director of Forensics, Cal State Northridge

Email speech documents to lemuelj@gmail.com

Any other inquires should go to joel.lemuel@csun.edu

He/him pronouns

***********

A. Judging/Coaching History

- Over 19 years of experience judging/coaching competitive debate events; less experience with speech and individual events (5 years)

- Worked with students of all ages: elementary (MSPDP), middle school (MSPDP), high school (policy, LD, public forum), and college (NDT/CEDA, NFA-LD, NPDA, IPDA, CPFL)

B. General Philosophy

1. Do you thing! This activity should center the stylistic proclivities of students, not judges. Full stop. My academic background has taught me reasonable arguments come in a variety of forms, styles, and mediums. I've coached and judged a wide range of styles from very traditional (e.g. topicality, disads, cps, and case), critical (e.g. post-structural/modern/colonial theory), to very non-traditional (e.g. performative/identity/method debate). There are things I like and dislike about every style I've encountered. Do what you do and I'll do my best to keep up.

2. "Inside Baseball" Sucks. These days I mostly judge college policy and high school LD. That means I am unlikely to know most of the acronyms, anecdotes, inside references about other levels of debate and you should probably explain them in MUCH more detail than you would for the average judge.

C. Pedagogical/Competitive Points of Emphasis

1. Importance of Formal Evidence (i.e. "cards"). I once heard a judge tell another competitor, “a card no matter how bad will always beat an analytic no matter how good.” For the sake of civility I will refrain from using this person’s name, but I could not disagree more with this statement. Arguments are claims backed by reasons with support. The nature of appropriate support will depend on the nature of the reason and on the nature of the claim. To the extent that cards are valuable as forms of support in debate it’s because they lend the authority and credibility of an expert to an argument. But there are some arguments where technical expertise is irrelevant. One example might be the field of morality and ethics. If a debater makes a claim about the morality of assisted suicide backed by sound reasoning there is no a priori reason to prefer a card from an ethicist who argues the contrary. People reason in many different ways and arguments that might seem formally or technically valid might be perfectly reasonable in other settings. I generally prefer debates with a good amount of cards because they tend to correlate with research and that is something I think is valuable in and of itself. But all too often teams uses cards as a crutch to supplement the lack of sound reasoning. The takeaway is … If you need to choose between fully explaining yourself and reading a card always choose the former.

2. Burden of Persuasion vs. Burden of Rejoinder One of things that makes policy and LD debate (and perhaps public forum) a fairly unique activity from a policy/legal perspective is our emphasis on the burden of rejoinder. If one competitor says something then the opponent needs to answer it, otherwise the judge treats the argument as gospel. Debaters might think their judges aren't as attentive to the flow as they would like, but ask any litigator if trial judges care in the least whether the other attorney answered their arguments effectively. Emphasizing the burden of rejoinder is a way of respecting the voice and arguments of the students who spend their valuable time competing in this activity. But like everything else in debate there are affordances as well as constraints in emphasizing the burden of rejoinder. Personally, I think our activity has placed so much emphasis on the burden of rejoinder that we have lost almost all emphasis on the burden of persuasion. I can’t count the number of rounds I have participated in (as a debater and as a judge) where the vast majority of the claims made in the debate were absolutely implausible. The average politics disad is so contrived that it's laughable. Teams string together dozens of improbable internal link chains and treat them as if they were a cohesive whole. Truth be told, the probability of the average “big stick” advantage/disad is less than 1% and that’s just real talk. This practice is so ubiquitous because we place such a heavy emphasis on the burden of rejoinder. Fast teams read a disad that was never very probable to begin with and because the 2AC is not fast enough to poke holes in every layer of the disad the judge treats those internal links as conceded (and thus 100% probable). Somehow, through no work of their own the neg’s disad went from being a steaming pile of non-sense to a more or less perfectly reasonable description of reality. I don't think this norm serves our students very well. But it is so ingrained in the training of most debates and coaches (more so the coaches than the debaters actually) that it’s sustained by inertia. The takeaway is… that when i judge, I try (imperfectly to be sure) to balance my expectations that students meet both the burden of rejoinder and the burden of persuasion. Does this require judge intervention? Perhaps, to some degree, but isn't that what it means to “allow ones self to be persuaded?” To be clear, I do not think it is my job to be the sole arbiter of whether a claim was true or false, probable or unlikely, significant or insignificant. I do think about these things constantly though and i think it is both impossible and undesirable for me to ignore those thoughts in the moment of decision. It would behoove anyone I judge to take this into account and actively argue in favor of a particular balance between the burdens or rejoinder and persuasion in a particular round.

3. The Role of the Ballot/Purpose of the Activity/Non-Traditional Debate. The first thing I want to say isn’t actually a part of my philosophy on judging debates as much as it is an observation about debates I have watched and judged. I can’t count the number of rounds I have watched where a debater says something akin to, “Debate is fundamentally X,” or “the role of the ballot is X.” This is not a criticism. These debaters are astute and clearly understand that defining the nature and purpose of the activity is an extremely useful (often essential)tool for winning debates. That said, in truth, debate is both everything and nothing and the role of the ballot is multiple. Asserting the "purpose of debate" or "the role of the ballot" is essentially a meaningless utterance in my opinion. Arguing in favor "a particular purpose of debate” or “a particular role of the ballot” in a given round requires reasons and support. Policy debate could be conceived as a training ground for concerned citizens to learn how to feel and think about particular policies that could be enacted by their government. Policy debate could also be conceived as a space students to voice their dissatisfaction with the actions or inactions of the governments that claim to represent them through various forms of performance. Excellent debaters understand policy debate is a cultural resource filled with potential and possibility. Rather than stubbornly clinging to dogmatic axioms, these debaters take a measured approach that recognizes the affordances and constraints contained within competing visions of "the purpose of debate" or the "role of the ballot” and debate the issue like they would any other. The problem is assessing the affordances and constraints of different visions requires a sober assessment of what it is we do here. Most debaters are content to assert, “the most educational model of debate is X,” or the “most competitive model of debate is Y.” Both of these approaches miss the boat because they willfully ignore other aspects of the activity. Debates should probably be educational. What we learn and why is (like everything else) up for debate, but it’s hard to argue we shouldn’t be learning something from the activity. Fairness in a vacuum is a coin-flip and that’s hardly worth our time. On the other hand, probably isn’t a purely educational enterprise. Debate isn’t school. If it were students wouldn’t be so excited about doing debate work that they ignore their school work. The competitive aspects of the activity are important and can’t be ignored or disregarded lightly. How fair things have to be and which arguments teams are entitled to make are up for debate, but I think we need to respect some constraints lest we confuse all discourse for argument. The phrase “debate is a game/the content is irrelevant” probably won’t get you very far, but that’s because games are silly and unimportant by definition. But there are lots of contests that are very important were fairness is paramount (e.g. elections, academic publishing, trials). Rather than assert the same banal lines from recycled framework blocks, excellent debaters will try to draw analogies between policy debate and other activities that matter and where fairness is non-negotiable. So the takeaway is … I generally think the topic exists for a reason and the aff has to tie their advocacy to the topic, although I am open to arguments to the contrary. I tend to think of things in terms of options and alternatives. So even if topicality is a necessarily flawed system that privileges some voices over others, I tend to ask myself what the alternative to reading topicality would be. Comparison of impacts, alternatives, options, is always preferable to blanket statements like “T = genocidal” or “non-traditional aff’s are impossible to research.”

4. Theory Debates (i.e. Debates about Debate Itself) I have a relatively high threshold for theory arguments, but I am not one of those judges that thinks the neg teams gets to do whatever they want. You can win theory debates with me in the back, but it probably isn’t your best shot. As a general rule (though not universal) I think that if you didn’t have to do research for an argument, you don’t learn anything by running it. I have VERY high threshold for negative theory arguments that are not called topicality. It doesn’t mean I wont vote on these arguments if the aff teams makes huge errors, but a person going for one of these argument would look so silly that it would be hard to give them anything about a 28.

tl;dr yeah, you can go fast

Yes, I would like to be on the email chain: jrmartin707@gmail.com

--

Debated in college for UC Berkeley, have coached high school and college teams at local and TOC levels, etc. Doing a bit of occasional coaching and judging now but I'm not plugged into the circuit hardcore; you should assume I'm familiar with everything argumentatively/stylistically and very little on the topic. Generally, same stuff everyone says: debate like you want to debate, explain things and impact them, tell me why you winning or losing an argument does or does not influence my decision, and have fun. Otherwise, here’s some things you probably want to know:

- My own argumentative evolution has been from a pretty exclusively K debater early on to almost all policy work by the end, though I've coached all kinds. For what it’s worth, if you need an easy way to rank me, I lean more and more towards enjoying straight-up policy debates the more I judge. It's tough to disentangle "what are you a good judge for" and "what are you gonna have more fun watching" sometimes, even though they're definitely different, so I'm just gonna be honest and say that if you have no good reason to pick the K or the DA or which of your affs you're gonna read, might as well read the policy one. My favorite debates to judge are: huge in-depth case throwdowns, techy aff-specific counterplan debates, K on K clashes that are grounded in true disputes in the literature, impact turn debates (on the case or against a DA/K), and well-executed topicality debates.

- I do fundamentally believe that framework is true and debate would be better if people read plans, not that that means I exclusively vote negative in those debates. Predictability and debatability sound like pretty important things to me, and I think most aff framework counter-interps do not develop a feasible role for the negative and what neg prep should look like in their version of debate, but that doesn't mean any given neg team executes properly. I think like most everyone I’d rather here some clever unique strategy, but I dislike the dichotomy that framework isn’t a “substantive” argument and that the negative “didn’t engage the aff” by reading it. It's a good argument. The best aff answers lay out really clear alternatives for what debate should look like and impact turn all the skills that policy-focused debate generates.

- I’m generally unpersuaded by arguments along the lines of “the permutation/framework/etc. is violence/stealing our advocacy/etc.”, arguments that the negative doesn’t have to disprove the affirmative, purely nihilistic alternatives, and K speeches that consist entirely of buzzwords where you expect me to fill in what I already know about your concepts. I’m not afraid to give decisions which consist mostly of “I have no idea what you were talking about most of the time” if you just repeated the words “rhizome” or “foundational antagonism” at me, even if I know what you were trying to mean. Additionally, I'm super not down with arguments that are about things outside of the debate, like "show us your prefs" style stuff. I think the other team needs like a ten second defense of "you can only critique stuff we actually said" and I'm checked out.

- I have relatively few strong predispositions about common theory arguments; conditionality is probably fine but not necessarily, etc. I'll be extremely flow-centric here: I have absolutely voted for really bad theory args that got dropped, and also refused to vote for dropped ones when they were never a full argument with an impact in the first place.

- Evidence comparison, and calling out your opponent’s terrible, terrible evidence for what it is, is both extremely important and probably the best way to rack up your speaker points, alongside detailed impact calculus. The best ways to hurt your speaker points are to be a jerk to your partner, to get angry for no reason in cross-ex, and to spend your whole speech behind your laptop not paying any attention to the judge's reactions. Try to be a kind person who knows their stuff and the rest will follow.

- Because so many debates start with the question, "Can we do open CX?", the answer is always the same: you can, technically, there's no rule against it. But I would really recommend you don't - it's always better to get practice handling your CXs alone, going to your partner only as a last resort. It's important that they have the time to prep their next speech (that's three full minutes of free prep time!) and it's also much better for both of your speaker points if you each look organized and have mastery of your material.

Be good people.

I like frameworks and impacts back to the framework.

I'm probably too tired to keep up with top speeds. Go for conversationally brisk.

I have not been in the circuit scene for years. I'm guessing it's gone through some changes.

edited: no text

Background: I debated CX for four years in high school for GWHS, but I am also familiar with judging and debating PF and LD. On aff, I tended to run policy aff's, with a significant focus on framework and theory. On neg, I focused on T or K's. 

Paradigms:

I aim to be as tab as possible. Consequently, I try and vote based on the flow. 

I'm comfortable with any type of argument, including critical and theory arguments. I have not debated in two years however, so my knowledge of the relevant literature in critical debates is limited, so good understanding and articulation of all of the cards you read is important. 

Spreading is fine; if I can't understand you I'll clear you once.

Affiliations/Judging conflicts: Harvard-Westlake, Marlborough
I debated for four years at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, qualifying to TOC thrice. I now coach for Marlborough.
If you have questions, email me at mdokrent@gmail.com

Short version:
I like hearing well-developed, supported, smart arguments. This can include philosophy, t or theory, Ks, plans, CPs, DAs, etc. Form doesn't matter a huge amount to me. Just steer clear of my landmines and make good arguments: your speaks and win record will show it.

Flashing/emailing is on prep time.

Traditional Policy stuff: yes
Theory: yes if there’s real abuse.
Philosophy (almost all sorts): yes
K: yes
Shenanigans: no
Performance: yes

Do I say clear? Yes.
How many times? Until you get clear or it becomes clear that you're ignoring me.

Mandatory scary stuff:

Landmines: The following things are not ok in debate. I WILL INSTANTLY DROP YOU FOR:
-Religious/theistic arguments *I don't think very many (if any) other judges hold this prohibition, so I want to emphasize that I do hold it, and I will hold you to it.*
-moral skepticism (unless the topic specifically mandates it, like the Nov-Dec 2011. I'll specifically note it at the top of my paradigm if one of these comes up.)
-presumption (if you tell me I should ignore substance to vote on presumption. I might presume if there is legitimately no offense but I will do everything in my power not to.)
-any argument that is “triggered” in a later speech. If you defend it, you must say so in your first speech
-biting the bullet on something atrocious like genocide, rape, mass murder, etc. (That is, openly acknowledging that your framework would not condemn something like this. Simply arguing that your opponent’s framework can’t condemn genocide will not be a reason to drop them.)
-an a priori (these are arguments that say that the resolution is true or false for linguistic/semantic reasons and don't link to a framework. Despite debaters' best efforts to hide them, a prioris are pretty easily visible.)
-blatantly lying in cx
In general, be honest. I won’t instantly drop you for anything not on this list, but if you pull tricks or are generally sketchy I will be pissed. My stance on this is pretty similar to Chris Theis’.



The following arguments I will not listen to, but will not drop you for the sole reason that you ran one of them (you can still win elsewhere on the flow). I will not vote on:
-any argument that is not normative, like ought implies can or ought means logical consequence.
-theory arguments against an interp in the AC are counterinterpretations/defense only


Things I dislike but will vote on if you win them by a wide margin (either they're conceded or you crush):
-Competing interps requires a counterinterpretation.
-Affirmative “ethics” choice (When the aff gets to pick the standard/value criterion – distinct from AFC as run in policy, which I am ok with)
-Meta-theory comes before “regular” theory. OK to run a “meta-theory” shell and weigh impacts, but I don’t believe that meta-theory exists differently than theory. One sentence in a theory voter will not convince me otherwise.
-Anything that would have me take an actual action other than judging. (It takes a really good reason to make me not be lazy. I might vote for the position and ignore the action anyway.)

And a bunch of theory shells fall into this category too. If you run one of these shells, I will be skeptical and probably find the most stock responses persuasive. I'll vote on it, but you'll have to do lots of work and win it by a lot:
-Must run/not run framework
-Must run/not run plan/counterplan (inc. plans bad)
-Must run/not run kritik (noticing a theme?)
-Must run/not run DAs, etc.
-Can't have both pre- and post-fiat impacts
-Can't make link/impact turns (yes, people actually run this shell)
-Negatively worded interps bad ("Must have positively worded interp" for the formalists)
-Neg must defend the converse

Email: oliviapanchal@gmail.com
High School Debate: Heritage Hall School (OK)
College Debate: University of Southern California (2017)

The following are just MY thoughts on policy debate. In general, you should do what you are comfortable with– this will make the debate better for both of us.

T/Theory:
–you must have a counter-interpretation
–you must have terminal impacts like you would for any DA (your standards are not your impacts, they are internal links to greater skills that are integral to debate)
–I will typically default to competing interpretations over reasonability

Disads:
–case-specific links will only help you
–strong/creative DA turns case/case turns DA arguments are most convincing to me
–impact calculus is very important, but it's more than just magnitude and probability. I am much more convinced by arguments that prove how the DA impacts interact with the case (see above point)

Counterplans:
–I will kick the cp for you if told to do so
–you must have a solvency advocate
–CP's that compete off the mandate of the plan and use the same actor are legitimate
–I am not opposed to questionably legitimate CP's, in fact, I kind of like them. However, the aff can easily beat them with a WELL-DEVELOPED AND IMPACTED theory argument

K's:
–I am not the best person to read high-theory, obscure K's in front of. I am not well versed in the literature and you'll have to do an exceptional job explaining your argument. However, that does not mean I will never vote on the K.
–The K does need a specific link to the aff and more importantly, the neg needs to talk about the aff in terms of the K. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT.

Other thoughts:
–dropped arguments are true arguments
–I don't take prep for flashing
–the last 2 rebuttals should not be a reiteration of the debate so far, but rather you should be telling me what you need to win to win this round and CLOSING DOORS. too often the final rebuttals are just two ships passing in the night, which means I have to resolve things on my own. this will not make you or me happy
–over everything... have fun, be nice, and learn stuff

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. Fight on!

Scott Phillips- for email chains please use iblamebricker@gmail in policy, and ldemailchain@gmail.com for LD
Coach@ Harvard Westlake/Dartmouth

My general philosophy is tech/line by line focused- I try to intervene as little as possible in terms of rejecting arguments/interpreting evidence. As long as an argument has a claim/warrant I can explain to your opponent in the RFD I will vote for it. If only one side tries to resolve an issue I will defer to that argument even if it seems illogical/wrong to me- i.e. if you drop "warming outweighs-timeframe" and have no competing impact calc its GG even though that arg is terrible. 90% of the time I'm being postrounded it is because a debater wanted me to intervene in some way on their behalf either because that's the trend/what some people do or because they personally thought an argument was bad.

I am a good judge for you if/A bad judge for you if not

1. You cut good cards and highlight them to make complete arguments in at least B- 7th grade English, which is approximately my level. Read uniqueness. If your disad is non unique, not putting a uniqueness card in the 1NC is not cute, its a waste of time. If your best answers to an IR K are Ravenhall 09 and Reiter 15 you are not meeting this criteria, ditto answering pessimism with "implicit bias is malleable".
2. You debate evidence quality/qualifications and read evidence from academic sources rather than twitter/forum posts. If you are responding to a zany argument not discussed in academia, blog/forum away. If that is not the case I implore you to ask why these sources are the only ones you can find.
3. You listen to what the other team is saying and give a speech that demonstrates that you did by answering all of their arguments correctly and in the order in which they were presented . Do not read a collection of non responsive blocks in random order. And then in follow up speeches you compare/resolve those arguments rather than repeating yourself.
4. You make smart analytics against arguments with obvious weaknesses. Most 1NC disads and 1AC advantages in current debate are incoherent/missing several pieces. You do not have to respond to an incomplete argument, point out it is incomplete and move on. Once completed you get new answers to any part of it.
5. You rely on knowing what you are talking about more than posturing/grandstanding.
6. You understand your arguments/can explain things. In CX and speeches you should be able to explain words/concepts from your evidence correctly, and be able to apply them. If your link card says "the aff is not disarm" thats not a link, thats an observation
7. You can cover/don't drop things. Grouping things is fine. Making a philosophical argument for why line by line debate is bad, and instead making your argument in the form of big picture conceptual analysis is fine. Randomly saying things in the wrong place, dropping 1/2 of what the other team said and then expecting me to figure out how to apply what you said there is not. I will not make "reject argument not team" for you.

I operate on a "3 strikes" rule: each side gets up to 3 nonsense arguments- a CP that is just a text, a bad disad or advantage, an unexplained perm etc. After that your points and credibility plummet precipitously. If I'm reading your card doc I will stop reading your evidence after 3 cards highlighted into nothing. If you include 3 "rehighlightings" of the other teams evidence that are obviously wrong I will ignore all your evidence/default to the other sides.

If debated by two teams of equal skill/preparation, the following arguments are IMO unwinnable but I vote for them more often than not because the above suggestions are ignored.

-please let us weigh our case or we said the word extinction so Ks don't matter

-the framework is: object of research, you link you lose, debate shapes subjectivity, ethics first without explaining what ethics are/mean

-War good, pollution good, renewables bad- it doesn't matter if these are in right wing heritage impact turn form or academic K form

-the neg needs more than 1cp and 1K for debate to be fair. Arguments like "hard debate is good debate... so make it hard for them" are so bad you should be able to figure it out/not say them

-PICS that do/result in the whole plan are legitimate. The negative can actually win without these, especially on a topic where there are 3 affs.

-counterplans that ban the plan as their only form of competition are legitimate, especially on a topic with only...

About Me: Debated for Notre Dame HS (Sherman Oaks, CA) 2012-2016. Quarterfinals of the TOC in 2015. Top Speaker at NDCA Championships 2015

Favorite Debaters and Coaches: Christina Tallungan, Andres Gannon, Andrew Markoff, Hemanth Sanjeev, Elsa Givan, Ryan Wash, Harry Aaronson, Aron Berger, Alex Miles, Natalie Knez, John Spurlock

General Notes: Down for whatever, just do your thing and do it well. Haven't judged in a while (Berkeley will be my first tournament of the 2018-2019 school year) so go a tad slow and assume I know nothing about the topic. I generally was policy in high school but also went for k's (mostly security) a lot. Generally tech over truth. Went for almost everything in high school at least once, including t, politics, security, heidegger, wilderson, anthro, and framework.

I would like to be on the email chain, my email is jpscoggin at gmail.com

I am the coach of Loyola High School in Los Angeles. I also own and operate Premier Debate along with Bob Overing. I coach Nevin Gera. I prefer a nuanced util debate to anything else.

Arguments

In general, I am not a fan of frivolous theory or non-topical Ks.

High speaker points are awarded for exceptional creativity and margin of victory.

I am fine with speed as long as it is comprehensible.

Procedure

If you are not comfortable disclosing to your opponent at the flip or after pairings are released it is likely in your best interest to strike me. If the tournament has a rule about when that should occur I will defer to that, if not 10 minutes after the pairing is released seems reasonable to me.

Compiling is prep. Prep ends when the email is sent or the flash drive is removed from your computer.

I was a policy debater at the Harker school from 2012- 2016 and I now coach for the Harker LD team.

In short, read what you want as long as you understand it and can defend it. I read mostly policy arguments in high school although I do have experience debating against kritical and performative arguments. This means I'm going to be a lot more familiar with more traditional arguments, so if you're going to be reading other stuff make sure you explain it well and weigh it against your opponents arguments. That being said, I enjoy watching debates with case specific das and cps, as I find those have the most clash and development of arguments.

Speaking: SLOW DOWN AND BE MORE CLEAR WHEN READING ANALYTICS, THEORY, AND TAGS. I have had a lot of experience with debaters just speeding through these because they assume I'm going to know what they're saying and be able to type lightening fast. I am a human however, and I cannot flow that fast, and if I cannot flow you, I am much less likely to give you your arguments later in the debate. An extra note about tags, make sure I can tell the difference between the tag of a card and the text. I do not enjoy having to look at the speech doc to figure out when you're reading a tag, and it will hurt your speaker points and I will be at higher risk of missing an argument.

Change to my previous paradigm: I have found that as I judge more LD, I am more likely to vote on arguments that I had previously thought I would not. Therefore, feel free to read any theoretical or performative arguments that you like. You must, however, have a good reason for reading your arguments and be able to defend your position well, as usually in these debates I have little intrinsic bias as to which side I prefer. That being said, I still do not understand arguments like skep, rvis, and traditionally more "ld" arguments very well. If you do decide to read these, you should be extremely clear and explain your arguments very well. Otherwise, you are better off not preffing me or reading different arguments.

UPDATED 6/1/2022 NSDA Nationals Congress Update

I have been competing and judging in speech and debate for the past 16 years now. I did Parli and Public Forum in High School, and Parli, LD and Speech in College. I have judged all forms of High School Debate. Feel free to ask me more in depth questions in round if you don't understand a part of my philosophy.

Congress

Given that my background is in debate I tend to bring my debate biases into Congress. While I understand that this event is a mix of argumentation and stylistic speaking I don't think pretty speeches are enough to get you a high rank in the round. Overall I tend to judge Congress rounds based off of argument construction, style of delivery, clash with opponents, quality of evidence, and overall participation in the round. I tend to prefer arguments backed by cited sources and that are well reasoned. I do not prefer arguments that are mainly based in emotional appeals, purely rhetoric speeches usually get ranked low and typically earn you a 9. Be mindful of the speech you are giving. I think that sponsorship speeches should help lay the foundation for the round, I should hear your speech and have a full grasp of the bill, what it does, why it's important, and how it will fix the problems that exist in the squo. For clash speeches they should actually clash, show me that you paid attention to the round, and have good responses to your opponents. Crystallizations should be well organized and should be where you draw my conclusions for the round, I shouldn't be left with any doubts or questions.

POs will be ranked in the round based off of their efficiency in running and controlling the round. I expect to POs to be firm and well organized. Don't be afraid of cutting off speakers or being firm on time limits for questioning.

Public Forum

• I know how to flow and will flow.
  • This means I require a road map.
  • I need you to sign post and tell me which contention you are on. Use author/source names.
• I will vote on Ks. But this means that your K needs to have framework and an alt and solvency. If you run a K my threshold for voting on it is going to be high. I don't feel like there is enough time in PF to read a good K but I am more than willing to be open to it and be proven wrong. For anyone who hits a K in front of me 'Ks are cheating' is basically an auto loss in front of me.
• I will vote on theory. But this doesn't mean that I will vote for all theory. Theory in debate is supposed to move this activity forwards. Which means that theory about evidence will need to prove that there is actual abuse occurring in order for me to evaluate it. I think there should be theory in Public Forum because this event is still trying to figure itself out but I do not believe that all theory is good theory. And theory that is playing 'gotcha' is not good theory. Having good faith is arbitrary but I think that the arguments made in round will determine it. Feel free to ask questions.
• Be strategic and make good life choices.
• Impact calc is the best way to my ballot.
• I will vote on case turns.
• I will call for cards if it comes down to it.

Policy Debate

I tend to vote more for truth over tech. That being said, nothing makes me happier than being able to vote on T. I love hearing a good K. Spread fast if you want but at a certain point I will miss something if you are going top speed because I flow on paper, I do know how to flow I'm just not as fast as those on a laptop. Feel free to ask me any questions before round.


LD Debate

Fair warning it has been a few years since I have judged high level LD. Ask me questions if I'm judging you.

Framework
You do not win rounds if you win framework. You win that I judge the round via your framework. When it comes to framework I'm a bit odd and a bit old school. I function under the idea that Aff has the right to define the round. And if Neg wants to me to evaluate the round via their framework then they need to prove some sort of abuse.

Background: I competed on national and local level LD for all of high school during which I achieved moderate success and qualified to the TOC. I judged consistently throughout college and coached for 3 years on the national level. I have only judged a few times in the past two years. My pronouns are he/him/his.

Email for chain: calenjsmith@gmail.com

Warning: I haven't judged in a bit but find that I am still ok at keeping up in high speed rounds, though the Stanford 2021 tournament is my first virtual tournament so just check in throughout the round.

Speaking: I used to do and coach national circuit debate so I am fine with speed however my tolerance is diminished so I will probably be better at judging medium paced rounds. I will tell you to slow down. If I tell you to slow down I have probably already missed arguments you are making.

Substance: Ill judge any round (K, Theory, Substance, etc) I am probably more adapt at judging framework debates but I enjoy anything that is well explained and am happy to judge kritiks, theory, policy making etc.

UPDATED: 4/11/2024

1998-2003: Competed at Fargo South HS (ND)

2003-2004: Assistant Debate Coach, Hopkins High School (MN)

2004-2010: Director of Debate, Hopkins High School (MN)

2010-2012: Assistant Debate Coach, Harvard-Westlake Upper School (CA)

2012-Present: Debate Program Head, Marlborough School (CA)

Email: adam.torson@marlborough.org

Pronouns: he/him/his

General Preferences and Decision Calculus

I no longer handle top speed very well, so it would be better if you went at about 75% of your fastest.

I like substantive and interesting debate. I like to see good strategic choices as long as they do not undermine the substantive component of the debate. I strongly dislike the intentional use of bad arguments to secure a strategic advantage; for example making an incomplete argument just to get it on the flow. I tend to be most impressed by debaters who adopt strategies that are positional, advancing a coherent advocacy rather than a scatter-shot of disconnected arguments, and those debaters are rewarded with higher speaker points.

I view debate resolutions as normative. I default to the assumption that the Affirmative has a burden to advocate a topical change in the status quo, and that the Negative has a burden to defend either the status quo or a competitive counter-plan or kritik alternative. I will vote for the debater with the greatest net risk of offense. Offense is a reason to adopt your advocacy; defense is a reason to doubt your opponent's argument. I virtually never vote on presumption or permissibility, because there is virtually always a risk of offense.

Moral Skepticism is not normative (it does not recommend a course of action), and so I will not vote for an entirely skeptical position. I rarely find that such positions amount to more than weak, skeptical defense that a reasonable decision maker would not find a sufficient reason to continue the status quo rather than enact the plan. Morally skeptical arguments may be relevant in determining the relative weight or significance of an offensive argument compared to other offense in the debate.

Framework

I am skeptical of impact exclusion. Debaters have a high bar to prove that I should categorically disregard an impact which an ordinary decision-maker would regard as relevant. I think that normative ethics are more helpfully and authentically deployed as a mode of argument comparison rather than argument exclusion. I will default to the assumption of a wide framework and epistemic modesty. I do not require a debater to provide or prove a comprehensive moral theory to regard impacts as relevant, though such theories may be a powerful form of impact comparison.

Arguments that deny the wrongness of atrocities like rape, genocide, and slavery, or that deny the badness of suffering or oppression more generally, are a steeply uphill climb in front of me. If a moral theory says that something we all agree is bad is not bad, that is evidence against the plausibility of the theory, not evidence that the bad thing is in fact good.

Theory

I default to evaluating theory as a matter of competing interpretations.

I am skeptical of RVIs in general and on topicality in particular.

I will apply a higher threshold to theory interpretations that do not reflect existing community norms and am particularly unlikely to drop the debater on them. Because your opponent could always have been marginally more fair and because debating irrelevant theory questions is not a good model of debate, I am likely to intervene against theoretical arguments which I deem to be frivolous.

Tricks and Triggers

Your goal should be to win by advancing substantive arguments that would decisively persuade a reasonable decision-maker, rather than on surprises or contrived manipulations of debate conventions. I am unlikely to vote on tricks, triggers, or other hidden arguments, and will apply a low threshold for answering them. You will score more highly and earn more sympathy the more your arguments resemble genuine academic work product.

Counterplan Status, Judge Kick, and Floating PIKs

The affirmative has the obligation to ask about the status of a counterplan or kritik alternative in cross-examination. If they do not, the advocacy may be conditional in the NR.

I default to the view that the Negative has to pick an advocacy to go for in the NR. If you do not explicitly kick a conditional counterplan or kritik alternative, then that is your advocacy. If you lose a permutation read against that advocacy, you lose the debate. I will not kick the advocacy for you and default to the status quo unless you win an argument for judge kick in the debate.

I am open to the argument that a kritik alternative can be a floating PIK, and that it may be explained as such in the NR. However, I will hold any ambiguity about the advocacy of the alternative against the negative. If the articulation of the position in the NC or in CX obfuscates what it does, or if the plain face meaning of the alternative would not allow enacting the Affirmative plan, I am unlikely to grant the alternative the solvency that would come from directly enacting the plan.

Non-Intervention

To the extent possible I will resolve the debate as though I were a reasonable decision-maker considering only the arguments advanced by the debaters in making my decision. On any issues not adequately resolved in this way, I will make reasonable assumptions about the relative persuasiveness of the arguments presented.

Speed

The speed at which you choose to speak will not affect my evaluation of your arguments, save for if that speed impairs your clarity and I cannot understand the argument. I prefer debate at a faster than conversational pace, provided that it is used to develop arguments well and not as a tactic to prevent your opponent from engaging your arguments. There is some speed at which I have a hard time following arguments, but I don't know how to describe it, so I will say "clear," though I prefer not to because the threshold for adequate clarity is very difficult to identify in the middle of a speech and it is hard to apply a standard consistently. For reasons surpassing understanding, most debaters don't respond when I say clear, but I strongly recommend that you do so. Also, when I say clear it means that I didn't understand the last thing you said, so if you want that argument to be evaluated I suggest repeating it. A good benchmark is to feel like you are going at 75% of your top speed; I am likely a significantly better judge at that pace.

Extensions

My threshold for sufficient extensions will vary based on the circumstances, e.g. if an argument has been conceded a somewhat shorter extension is generally appropriate.

Evidence

It is primarily the responsibility of debaters to engage in meaningful evidence comparison and analysis and to red flag evidence ethics issues. However, I will review speech documents and evaluate detailed disputes about evidence raised in the debate. I prefer to be included on an email chain or speech drop that includes the speech documents. If I have a substantial suspicion of an ethics violation (i.e. you have badly misrepresented the author, edited the card so as to blatantly change it's meaning, etc.), I will evaluate the full text of the card (not just the portion that was read in the round) to determine whether it was cut in context, etc.

Speaker Points

I use speaker points to evaluate your performance in relation to the rest of the field in a given round. At tournaments which have a more difficult pool of debaters, the same performance which may be above average on most weekends may well be average at that tournament. I am strongly disinclined to give debaters a score that they specifically ask for in the debate round, because I utilize points to evaluate debaters in relation to the rest of the field who do not have a voice in the round. I elect not to disclose speaker points, save where cases is doing so is necessary to explain the RFD. My range is approximately as follows:

30: Your performance in the round is likely to beat any debater in the field.

29.5: Your performance is substantially better than average - likely to beat most debaters in the field and competitive with students in the top tier.

29: Your performance is above average - likely to beat the majority of debaters in the field but unlikely to beat debaters in the top tier.

28.5: Your performance is approximately average - you are likely to have an equal number of wins and losses at the end of the tournament.

28: Your performance is below average - you are likely to beat the bottom 25% of competitors but unlikely to beat the average debater.

27.5: Your performance is substantially below average - you are competitive among the bottom 25% but likely to lose to other competitors

Below 26: I tend to reserve scores below 25 for penalizing debaters as explained below.

Rude or Unethical Actions

I will severely penalize debaters who are rude, offensive, or otherwise disrespectful during a round. I will severely penalize debaters who distort, miscut, misrepresent, or otherwise utilize evidence unethically.

Card Clipping

A debater has clipped a card when she does not read portions of evidence that are highlighted or bolded in the speech document so as to indicate that they were read, and does not verbally mark the card during the speech. Clipping is an unethical practice because you have misrepresented which arguments you made to your opponent and to me. If I determine that a debater has clipped cards, then that debater will lose.

To determine that clipping has occurred, the accusation needs to be verified by my own sensory observations to a high degree of certainty, a recording that verifies the clipping, or the debaters admission that they have clipped. If you believe that your opponent has clipped, you should raise your concern immediately after the speech in which it was read, and I will proceed to investigate. False accusations of clipping is a serious ethical violation as well. *If you accuse your opponent of clipping and that accusation is disconfirmed by the evidence, you will lose the debate.* You should only make this accusation if you are willing to stake the round on it.

Sometimes debaters speak so unclearly that it constitutes a negligent disregard for the danger of clipping. I am unlikely to drop a debater on this basis alone, but will significantly penalize speaker points and disregard arguments I did not understand. In such cases, it will generally be unreasonable to penalize a debater that has made a reasonable accusation of clipping.

Questions

I am happy to answer any questions on preferences or paradigm before the round. After the round I am happy to answer respectfully posed questions to clarify my reason for decision or offer advice on how to improve (subject to the time constraints of the tournament). Within the limits of reason, you may press points you don't understand or with which you disagree (though I will of course not change the ballot after a decision has been made). I am sympathetic to the fact that debaters are emotionally invested in the outcomes of debate rounds, but this does not justify haranguing judges or otherwise being rude. For that reason, failure to maintain the same level of respectfulness after the round that is generally expected during the round will result in severe penalization of speaker points.

I debated LD for a small school in Arizona, from 2008-2011, then went on to coach local and circuit LD from 2011-2012, before coaching privately for curcuit-level students 2012-2015 when I retired.  From 2016 on I only judge infrequent tournaments in the LA area.

I've heard and voted on every kind of argument imaginable, at any speed.  I'm tabula rasa, so the only thing I don't want you to do is be rude or offensive.  I loved running Ks and Theory when I was in my prime, but I also could do the traditional NFL-era LD style too, so any style will work in front of me, so long as you execute it well.

That said, I'm not coaching anymore, so I'm probably not going to know your authors as well, nor will I be as well-read on the topic or whatever arguments are in style at the time.  Consequently, you'll probably want to go a little slower with me, and think bigger picture.  I like it when the final speeches write my RFD for me.  Don't get upset with me when you lose after you wanted me to vote on an issue you didn't spend enough time explaining in your last speech.  Going for 3 or more voters on 3 or more sheets is a sure-fire way to know you're not spending enough time explaining those issues to me in your rebuttal.

Ask questions before the round if you need to.  I'm cool with flex prep or different lengths of prep (unless prohibited by tournament rules) so long as it's agreed upon before the 1AC.  Unless flex prep has been declared before the round, CX is the only binding discussion time; I do not listen to chatter during prep.  

Overall:
1. Offense-defense, but can be persuaded by reasonability in theory debates. I don't believe in "zero risk" or "terminal defense" and don't vote on presumption.

2. Substantive questions are resolved probabilistically--only theoretical questions (e.g. is the perm severance, does the aff meet the interp) are resolved "yes/no," and will be done so with some unease, forced upon me by the logic of debate.

3. Dropped arguments are "true," but this just means the warrants for them are true. Their implication can still be contested. The exception to this is when an argument and its implication are explicitly conceded by the other team for strategic reasons (like when kicking out of a disad). Then both are "true."

Counterplans:
1. Conditionality bad is an uphill battle. I think it's good, and will be more convinced by the negative's arguments. I also don't think the number of advocacies really matters. Unless it was completely dropped, the winning 2AR on condo in front of me is one that explains why the way the negative's arguments were run together limited the ability of the aff to have offense on any sheet of paper.

2. I think of myself as aff-leaning in a lot of counterplan theory debates, but usually find myself giving the neg the counterplan anyway, generally because the aff fails to make the true arguments of why it was bad.

Disads:
1. I don't think I evaluate these differently than anyone else, really. Perhaps the one exception is that I don't believe that the affirmative needs to "win" uniqueness for a link turn to be offense. If uniqueness really shielded a link turn that much, it would also overwhelm the link. In general, I probably give more weight to the link and less weight to uniqueness.

2. On politics, I will probably ignore "intrinsicness" or "fiat solves the link" arguments, unless badly mishandled (like dropped through two speeches). Note: this doesn't apply to riders or horsetrading or other disads that assume voting aff means voting for something beyond the aff plan. Then it's winnable.

Kritiks:
1. I like kritiks, provided two things are true: 1--there is a link. 2--the thesis of the K indicts the truth of the aff. If the K relies on framework to make the aff irrelevant, I start to like it a lot less (role of the ballot = roll of the eyes). I'm similarly annoyed by aff framework arguments against the K. The K itself answers any argument for why policymaking is all that matters (provided there's a link). I feel negative teams should explain why the affirmative advantages rest upon the assumptions they critique, and that the aff should defend those assumptions.

2. I think I'm less technical than some judges in evaluating K debates. Something another judge might care about, like dropping "fiat is illusory," probably matters less to me (fiat is illusory specifically matters 0%). I also won't be as technical in evaluating theory on the perm as I would be in a counterplan debate (e.g. perm do both isn't severance just because the alt said "rejection" somewhere--the perm still includes the aff). The perm debate for me is really just the link turn debate. Generally, unless the aff impact turns the K, the link debate is everything.

3. If it's a critique of "fiat" and not the aff, read something else. If it's not clear from #1, I'm looking at the link first. Please--link work not framework. K debating is case debating.

Nontraditional affirmatives:

Versus T:

1. I'm *slightly* better for the aff now that aff teams are generally impact-turning the neg's model of debate. I almost always voted neg when they instead went for talking about their aff is important and thought their counter-interp somehow solved anything. Of course, there's now only like 3-4 schools that take me and don't read a plan. So I'm spared the debates where it's done particularly poorly.

2. A lot of things can be impacts to T, but fairness is probably best.

3. It would be nice if people read K affs with plans more, but I guess there's always LD. Honestly debating politics and util isn't that hard--bad disads are easier to criticize than fairness and truth.

Versus the K:
1. If it's a team's generic K against K teams, the aff is in pretty great shape here unless they forget to perm. I've yet to see a K aff that wasn't also a critique of cap, etc. If it's an on-point critique of the aff, then that's a beautiful thing only made beautiful because it's so rare. If the neg concedes everything the aff says and argues their methodology is better and no perms, they can probably predict how that's going to go. If the aff doesn't get a perm, there's no reason the neg would have to have a link.

Topicality versus plan affs:
1. I used to enjoy these debates. It seems like I'm voting on T less often than I used to, but I also feel like I'm seeing T debated well less often. I enjoy it when the 2NC takes T and it's well-developed and it feels like a solid option out of the block. What I enjoy less is when it isn't but the 2NR goes for it as a hail mary and the whole debate occurs in the last two speeches.

2. Teams overestimate the importance of "reasonability." Winning reasonability shifts the burden to the negative--it doesn't mean that any risk of defense on means the T sheet of paper is thrown away. It generally only changes who wins in a debate where the aff's counter-interp solves for most of the neg offense but doesn't have good offense against the neg's interp. The reasonability debate does seem slightly more important on CJR given that the neg's interp often doesn't solve for much. But the aff is still better off developing offense in the 1AR.

LD section:
1. I've been judging LD less, but I still have LD students, so my familarity with the topic will be greater than what is reflected in my judging history.

2. Everything in the policy section applies. This includes the part about substantive arguments being resolved probablistically, my dislike of relying on framework to preclude arguments, and not voting on defense or presumption. If this radically affects your ability to read the arguments you like to read, you know what to do.

3. If I haven't judged you or your debaters in a while, I think I vote on theory less often than I did say three years ago (and I might have already been on that side of the spectrum by LD standards, but I'm not sure). I've still never voted on an RVI so that hasn't changed.

4. The 1AR can skip the part of the speech where they "extend offense" and just start with the actual 1AR.