Last changed on
Tue January 2, 2024 at 6:43 AM PDT
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.