Woodward Academy

Emory

Email: mxabramson@gmail.com (yes I want to be on the chain). Feel free to email me with questions.

Top Level Stuff:

I will not hesitate to call you on card clipping/stealing prep. I don’t need the other team to call you out to vote you down on it. Clearly signpost. I’ll look at the doc if I’m totally lost, but if I have to read along to follow your speech, that’s a problem.

There is no reason not to send out docs or show highlighting of cards you are reading. If you do this you will get a 26.0 — no exceptions.

Tech over truth in general. That being said, my view on the truth of the situation will be a reason I find things more persuasive. If I know a bill has already passed, it doesn't take much to convince me in face of your evidence.

POST-JUDGING NOVICE EDIT: Yes I allow tag team, but don't be too reliant on your partner. Yes I want a roadmap, no you don't have to ask me if I want a roadmap. Please time yourself. No, you cannot start over after starting a speech.

Disclosure: Personally, I think you should post full-text of the 1AC, even if poetry. At a bare minimum, there must be a place where I can theoretically see the whole text. In the case of cites, that means I have the links to see the articles or places to access the cards beforehand. Poetry or narratives must be accessible in some way, either through online availability or being able to ask for the whole text through email. I won't do anything about it if the other team doesn't bring it up, but I am persuaded by disclosure theory.

I am not persuaded by "if you had any questions, you should've asked us," in the absence of them being able to see what they should have questions about.

I don't think new policy affs are a voting issue (because they revolve around the topic), but I think there is an argument for new non-topical affirmatives being a voting issue (because they could be about anything).

Preemption/Changing the Aff:

It's never bad. Not persuaded by links to this or PICs out of this.

Now onto the arguments —

T:

On T, I tend to vote for the vision of the topic that makes the most sense to me (which requires that the teams give me a clear picture of what the topic looks like under their interpretation). I like a good well thought out T debate, but you must have an abuse story that makes sense and doesn't rely on absurd examples. Ground, fairness, and education are all fine, but make it specific.

If this is a non-traditional debate, neg needs a TVA and a reason why their impacts outweigh or come first. Aff needs to do framing of their impact scenarios and why their vision of the topic doesn’t make it impossible to be negative.

Concessionary ground is a fine argument, and the aff needs to answer this beyond saying that they "could've read afro-pess and settlerism." That isn't responsive. The best aff response to this for me is that partial, rather than total, disagreement is best, and that total disagreement (such as DAs) are a negative form of debate (causes dogmatism, bad for education, etc.)

I don't like "fun" as an impact because I think that at best it's an internal link to other impacts and not a very persuasive one at that. I think that there are much better versions of this argument premised on the impact of having to research tons of K affs or bad clash.

EDIT: I have been voting on switch side debate a lot, mostly because people functionally drop it. I find this especially persuasive when your reason to vote aff is "we can spread our message/inject it into debate." If you can reasonably inject it on the neg, I am much more inclined to tell you to go do that. This complicates most aff offense, so I think it's imperative that you have an explicit response along the lines of a criticism of switch side debate (like Spanos or something) or a change in the way that reading it on the neg would complicate your message.

I don't like metaphors about T. I don't think that it is genocide or the settler state. Make arguments about why it is bad specifically that relies on actual implications of their arguments for what it would do to debate, not just what the USFG did previously in the context of your aff.

DAs:

I love a good status quo debate, however, think they frequently lack relative impact framing. I tend to vote for the teams that explain what they’re going to win and why that matters. Turns case is a bigger deal in debates than it often should be, but if it’s not answered it oftentimes determines my decision.

CPs (General):

I don’t judge kick by default, but I will if you make that argument. If both the aff and CP link to the DA sufficiently to trigger the net-benefit, I vote aff. I think of solvency as a sliding scale by default, you will have to prove to me why I shouldn't.

Sufficiency framing is my default until you tell me otherwise, but I'll be more generous about what counts as "sufficient" if you explain why it doesn't need to solve very much.

For specific thoughts, I'll separate these into categories:

States CPs:

Non-uniform is obviously fine, uniform is debatably fine, and multilevel (State and Fed simultaneously) is not fine. Adding on planks (other than the plan) such as funding or removal of balanced budget amendments makes me less inclined to vote that the CP is legitimate.

Advantage CPs:

They’re good. I like these a lot, but make sure you’re explaining why your specific mechanism solves (I think this is often lacking when the other team doesn’t make a lot of specific solvency deficits). Aff teams should make sure to push back against sufficiency framing.

QPQ and Unconditional CPs:

Probably fine, but that's debatable. The closer the solvency advocate is to describing the aff, the harder it is to go for theory. I tend to lean towards the aff on perm do the CP on the QPQ CP (less change), but neg on perm do the CP for the unconditional CP.

Process/Agent CPs:

Probably not fine, but I’ll hear both sides out. Make sure it’s not too contrived. The more “out there” and not related to the topic the mechanism is, the less likely I am to decide it’s legit.

International or Delay CPs:

Not a huge fan of international or delay CPs, but you can try to make your case. Debatability outweighs education as a general rule, but I’m not set in stone if one side is making better arguments.

Ks:

I'm fine with most critical literature, just be clear about what the link is to the affirmative. I'm likely to vote on the permutation if you don't explain beyond jargon. Perms are the argument I like the most, negs should make sure to explain why the perm is mutually exclusive (beyond just “it’s a method debate”). Don't try to go for it as a DA, it almost never gets my ballot.

I tend to lean towards that fiat is good even if not "real," but as with most things it's up for debate.

I dislike "gotcha!" tricks, but if explained well enough I can get on board (ie. say more than the words "serial policy failure").

I’ll also separate these into categories:

High Theory (Baudrillard, Nietzsche, etc.):

These are okay, but don’t get to jargon-y. Explain what happens post-aff if your explanatory theory of the world is true. It’s hard to win my ballot on just a case turn, so make sure you have an alt.

Identity (Wilderson, Settlerism, etc.):

This is a fine debate. Obviously, it comes down to a few critical issues related to ontology and explanatory theories of structures. I think the best versions of these debates acknowledge the extraneous examples and explain why their theory is still true. Perms are probably the hardest to win with this kind of K, so I would primarily focus elsewhere (go for that their ontology is wrong, which means the aff is a DA).

Policy-ish (Security/Neolib kinds of Ks):

Make sure you explain why it’s more productive to change structures in the way you describe before doing the aff. I find these Ks to be more persuasive when run more like impact turns (serial policy failure inev and aff bad, alt solves), rather than as high theory (at least v policy affs). Perm is a persuasive argument here, so make sure you’re playing defense to it.

Theory:

Condo is fine if 2 and under and never outweighs T. I won't vote on ASPEC (or any other spec arg). Vagueness is fine, but you have to prove abuse (I think it can be a good reason to reject perms though). Intrinsicness is almost never persuasive (use this as case defense instead).

Tldr; I'll vote on almost anything, but make it specific.

Non-Topical Affirmatives:

Args About Debate:

Spreading is good (although I am open to suggestions for making it more accessible). I leave proposed bargains (such as less speech time due to disability or other impairment) up to the debaters.

If you ask the other team to go slower and don't slow down yourself you will get very bad speaks (unless the other team agrees to this).

Debate is very good and I am very unpersuaded by arguments to the contrary (why are you here if this is true?).

If you want to speak in another language, that is fine, but make sure I know what you are trying to say (yes this has been an issue).

G-lang and other language Ks require a reason why the debate should be forfeited and could not have continued even with a sincere apology.

A Note I Never Thought I Would Have to Add:

I will not stand by while you do something that can hurt yourself in debate (including, but not limited to, setting things on fire and self-harm). You will lose the round and receive a 0 (yes this has happened).

Ways to Boost Your Speaker Points:

1. Tell jokes about Tripp Haskins, Jason Sigalos, or anyone currently on Emory or Woodward debate. However, PLEASE do not do this if you don't usually do comedy/don't know how to incorporate it into debate. If you tell a joke badly, it'll probably hurt you.

2. Be clear and concise, I prefer quality of arg over quantity. If you’re right on an argument, make sure that I know it rather than trying to marginally convince me of a lot of arguments.

3. Make sure language matches up both with your partner and the other team. It becomes very confusing very quickly if both sides have their own names for each argument (excluding flows).

Noah Baker – Pine Crest ’15 – Emory ‘19
Email: nbakerdebate@gmail.com
@Yes, I want to be on the evidence chain.

*Note I update my paradigm frequently; whenever I change my mind or feel the need to elaborate/emphasize something, I will make that change on here.*

I will format some of this the way debaters can understand by using a similar "tag and card" structure. This way you can get the main ideas, but still have clarification if necessary. Not all tags have cards. I use the @ symbol to mark any "MUST READ" notes, so be sure to look at those.

_______Short Version_______

I have become increasingly nihilistic about debate. I will reward hard work and the will to win. Read what you want, and I will evaluate it based on the arguments made in the round. Wanna read a plan? Wonderful. You don't? That's cool too. If you make this enjoyable for me and do the better debating, you'll win and get good speaks. Further questions? See below or feel free to ask before the round.

_______Long Version_______

--- Prologue ---

Judging's hard but I'll do my best
As a judge, it is difficult to make the best decision (notice I said "best" and not "right" decision), but I promise I will try my hardest to evaluate the debate in the best and most fair way that I can. Please understand, though, that judges make mistakes. I apologize in advance if you feel I made the wrong decision, however, once I have made my decision, I will not change it.

Always open to respectful discussion and feedback
I am always more than happy to elaborate/answer questions, but only if everyone is being respectful. If you feel that I or another team is being disrespectful, I'd love to know so that I can do right by you and fix it. If you don't feel comfortable speaking up in the moment, please feel free to have your coach contact me.

I've debated, coached, and judged
I debated in high school for four years at Pine Crest under the coaching of Jeremy Hammond. I debated in college for two and a half years at Emory, where I am currently a senior studying business. I have broadly similar thoughts about debate as my past coaches and teammates, as those are the people who I spent the most time discussing this strange activity with. Those people are Jeremy Hammond, James Herndon, Stephen Weil, Jason Sigalos, Saul Forman, and Tanner Lewis. A tip for you would be to look at my old college wiki because that might give you an indication of what I like to hear if that is what I read.

Biases exist but persuasion is more important
There’s no such thing as “Read anything in front of me because I have no biases.” Everyone has biases. However, that does not mean I cannot be persuaded. The more persuasive you are, the less likely my bias may influence my decision.

--- I. General Debate ---

Debate is a game
At its core, policy debate is a game. Yes, there are other valuable aspects that are (arguably) more/less important than winning a game. However, I am making a descriptive, not normative, statement that debate is fundamentally a game. It’s supposed to be fun. @Don’t ruin that by being a jerk. I have and will continue to call people out for this, and I am not afraid to make your speaker points reflect it.

Arguments need warrants - no tech/truth preference
I don’t have a preference on tech over truth. A dropped argument is a true argument if and only if it is warranted/explained (A dropped tag is not an argument.) You don’t always need cards; sometimes analytics get the job done. Of course I prefer warranted cards to warranted analytics.

Clarity over speed
Clarity is more important than speed. Speed is measured by number of arguments a judge can understand, not how many words per minute you can speak.

The 2AR isn't the time to make new args
I have been both a 2A and a 2N so I know how annoying new 2AR arguments can be. I don’t give you much leeway on new arguments. If the argument was in the 2AC, not in the 1AR, and then in the 2AR then I will not evaluate it.

@Don't steal/abuse prep
Use your prep time wisely, but don't steal it. I'm pretty lenient on most things (i.e. technology issues or bathroom breaks), but you and I both know when you're stealing prep. Doing something to get a competitive advantage while not taking prep is cheating. I promise that it’ll be reflected in your speaker points. If it's getting egregious, I will say something.

Presumption toward less change
Presumption goes to less change, not necessarily the neg. I will vote on it, and I will vote on absolute defense. In almost all instances, I don't think presumption can be a net bet benefit to a counterplan because less change isn't a quantifiable benefit between the two.

@Don't cheat - you'll lose
A team caught cheating will be given 0 speaker points and a loss. There are some times where I will follow along with the docs, so I'm definitely willing to vote against you even if the other team doesn't bring up an ethics challenge. If you make a clipping accusation, you need a recording.

@Communication is key
Debate is a communicative activity, and speeches have time limits for a reason. If I don't understand something, it's your fault for not explaining it well. Don't assume I understand something just because you do. If you're pointing things out post-round, it's not going to convince me any differently; you should've said it in the round or explained it better.

Bad evidence makes me grumpy - lying about bad evidence makes me really grumpy
I hate bad evidence a lot. I don't care if you're making it sound pretty and your extrapolation of one word sounds good. If your evidence is garbage then you're going to be in a bad spot. I hate evidence that has random portions across that card painted together to make a sentence so you can read the card a little bit faster. I hate choppy/unnatural highlighting. I hate evidence that only highlights claims. I hate evidence that is cut out of context. I hate evidence that cuts the first and last paragraphs of an entire article. And I really hate when people lie about what their evidence says. I promise you that reading one A/B+ card is just far better than five C cards that make no arguments and just repeat each other.

--- II. Topicality ---

Smart topicality is great - last resort topicality is not
I’m not very familiar with the high school topic, so keep that in mind. I enjoy debates over the meanings of words, so feel free to employ it to your advantage when possible. I don't love last resort topicality arguments because they're usually too generic, artificial, and/or don't make sense. But, I get why you have to go for T when you do.

Offense over defense
You need to have good reasons for why they are not topical and why that’s bad. I’m not going to vote on blippy impacts that you don’t explain. I need to know why they make debate worse or why you make debate better. I think you’re reasonable if you explain why including your aff isn’t enough to trigger the impacts.

Some T args are not winners
I strongly suggest that you don't read/go for any impact about debaters dropping out (and similar variations), A-Spec, or O-Spec. Vagueness arguments are plan/topic dependent, so I'm staying neutral there.

--- III. T-USFG and Framework ---

T-USFG and framework are different
The two are distinct. Framework is an exclusion of their argument type. T-USFG is saying that they can still talk about those arguments, but they need to be topical under the resolution. These things are not interchangeable, so don't try to have any sort of ethos moment where you call one of them by the other name for emphasis.

The topic exists for a reason
There is a topic--that's non-negotiable. Everything else is up for discussion. But we're not going to pretend that there isn't a topic that was chosen. If you're blatantly not related to the topic, it's going to be an uphill battle.

Clash is good - it stems from preparation/the ability to prepare

Switching sides is good

Definitions should match the correct words/phrases/terms of art
"United States federal government" is a phrase. "United States" is not you the people. “Resolved:” is different than “Resolve”. “Resolved:” means to introduce a policy into legal forum. It is definitely not to reduce by mental analysis.

Procedure comes before content
The neg should always make an argument that procedure comes before content and that you can't weigh the case. I am very sympathetic to this. I'll default to this if it is not brought up.

--- IV. Theory: ---

I love theory - don't make them late breaking debates
I find myself becoming more entertained with very technical and interesting theory debates. I do have predispositions on certain things, but if you're willing to go in on something like "No Neg Fiat" then great! I've been waiting for this, especially because nobody is really ready for a great theoretical discussion. That being said, view all of this through the lens that debate is a game. Theory is usually late breaking, so don't pretend to extrapolate on things that you never said.

Conditionality - I lean neg
Having been both a 2A and 2N, I have thought a lot about conditionality. When it comes to all of the random debate-ish arguments people have made about it being good or bad (i.e. info-processing, ideological flexibility, etc.), honestly at the end of the day, conditionality really exists becuase the aff has it so easy and it's the only way to make the 2AC hard enough to get the neg back to a fair shot. I think it's really hard to quanitfy this in context of what the threshold is for how many conditional options allows the neg to make it fair without it becoming too unfair for the 2AC. How I see it is that 2 options is fair for the neg and aff, 3 is probably still fair unless there are other theoretical reasons the things they read were bad (i.e. they contradicted, they didn't have solvency advocates, one of them was a 2NC CP, etc.), and 4 is probably too many for the neg. Note - I will not vote on conditionality if it is a new aff.

Counterplans and alts must be competitive
You must be both textually and functionally competitive. I am definitely willing to vote on a perm that proves that disproves either textual or functional competition. I've been waiting a long time for the 2AR to go for "you must be both textually and functionally competitive, but you're only functionally competitive." Process, International, PICs, and Agent CPs aren’t bad, but they must be competitive. Conditions, Threaten, Consult, Delay are usually dumb, so I tend to lean aff on perm do the counterplan for these.

Object fiat is bad and counterplans should not result in the aff

Judge kick is meh
I default to not judge kicking something, but feel free to convince me otherwise.

2NC counterplans are only for answering add-ons

1NR impacts are never discussed
I'm one of the very few people who is willing to not allow new 1NR impacts to a DA, but you have to tell me why. I think they're definitely legit though if its not external but rather acting as turns case. I'll default to allowing them if nobody says anything.

--- V. Disads and Counterplans ---

Impact Calc is key

I am neutral on the politics DA
I read politics/elections/midterms a lot when I debated. However, the current political climate is strange, so be sure to explain scenarios well. I am definitely willing to vote on smart intrinsicness arguments, but I haven't thought about it in a while. Since judging, nobody has gone for it, but you should.

Link turns need uniqueness

I like counterplans - the more specific, the better
Counterplans can get tricky, of course. I really like when teams read aff/advantage specific counterplans, but make sure to do a good job on solvency/solvency deficit explanation. You always need a net benefit, however, even the tiniest of net benefits can win if the counterplan solves the entirety of the aff.

--- VI. Case Debating ---

Please debate the case
Debating the case is one of the most underutilized things in debate. Do it well and you will get an increase in speaker points. Affs are really dumb most, if not all, of the time. Finding logical holes in the aff is quite easy these days. I am really willing to vote neg on presumption. More and more I find myself wishing I could give the 2NR on why the aff is so dumb and why I should prefer the status quo. I'm still waiting for someone to go for 5 minutes of neg on presumption.

--- VII. Kritiks ---

I have an interesting relationship with Ks
I read Kritiks. I don’t hate them, but I don't love them. The simpler, the better because often times teams don't explain anything about their K and just insert random buzzwords. You'll be in a bad spot if you're being vague and/or don't explain how the aff links and how the alt solves. Seriously, teams just never explain alts or alt solvency, and I can't stand that. If I don't know what the alt is and/or what it does, I'm not going to vote for you.

Util good, extinction outweighs, and death is bad
The death part isn't really negotiable. You can try to persuade me otherwise, but you're most likely not going to.

I lean aff on kritik framework and hate PIKs

--- VIII. Other ---

Auto-Losses include, but are not limited to...
- Arguments about judge prefs
- "Roasts"
- "Rape Good" arguments

Being rude will hurt your speaker points
Shaking your head, scoffing, rolling your eyes, etc. in response to the other team is something that will really hurt your speaker points. These things aren't cheating, but they're going to make find ways to not vote for your. Snarky comments about the other team/school is unacceptable. I've been in debates where personal attacks were made, and I can tell you that if I see this, there will be a significant deduction in speaker points. I don't care if you're doing it to have ethos or pathos. I don't care if it's part of your appeal for me to vote for you just to make them look silly. I will not let it happen. If you make fun of the other team or the other team's school, you will be getting a low-point win if you win, but you probably won't because I really won't want to vote for you.

Don't play music before a round
DO NOT play music before a round. I'm not going to say anything to you, I'm just going to reduce your speaker points. Up to you what you want to do with this information.

Other ways to hurt your speaker points include...
--Offensive Language
--Offensive Arguments
--Taking too long
--Hurting your partner over in cross-x
--Being a jerk

You can increase your speaker points with...
--Smart Arguments
--@Jokes (Debate gets boring. Make them. I won’t deduct speaker points for poorly executed jokes. Don’t make jokes at the other teams expense.)
--Good Cross-X

Short-pre-round version: Former Director of Debate and Policy/CX debate coach at Calhoun High School (Georgia). Former NDT debater, college assistant coach. After my re-entry into the activity in 2002, I worked to learn the K, and my paradigm is still evolving. So far, I have been willing to listen to anything. I tend to reward debaters with clash and explanation, and teams that are clever and willing to take risks. I am taking another break from debate starting Fall 2019 and will not be as familiar with the topic or trendy arguments, so please slow down and explain.

Longer, working on prefs, version: Lived the debate life in high school (Southern California) and then college (Univ of Redlands). Started at the bottom but thanks to a great college coach (Southworth), some outstanding partners, and a supportive community, I had some success as a senior (won Kentucky RR, Wake, a few others, and a top 5 bid to NDT). Taught summers at Golden West, Wake, Georgetown, and Emory workshops. I researched for several debate handbooks (something we used to do), and assisted at high schools including Calhoun, Damien, GBN and Holt HS (Alabama). After leaving U of R in 1980, I assistant coached some outstanding high school teams, Samford University, and Calhoun. Co-authored the debate theory article with my friend Dr. Walter Ulrich, "Bad Theory as a Voting Issue" in 1982. Went to law school at Bama after that, and put debate away completely until my children were of age to start debating in Georgia's middle school league in 2002. That led to coaching the high school team, and since 2005 I have been the director of debate at Calhoun (small public school in rural Georgia with great debate and speech history - about an hour north of Atlanta). Was fortunate to bring in Ed Williams to head coach for a couple of years, and have also had some outstanding assistants (Jadon Marianetti, Jim Schultz, Kristen Lowe, Natalie Bennie, Judy Butler, and '16-17 Lenny Brahin, also sister Lynn [former NDT debater for Louisville, also now an attorney].)

Clarity: I may throw in the occasional warning of "clear" to debaters, but after two or three "clears", I will put down my pen and look annoyed until I can comprehend the argument. If you think from visual clues that I am not getting the argument, I probably am not.

I coached for many years on the national and regional (Georgia) circuit. I have a team of very dedicated and intense policy debaters. I have historically written a lot of our arguments, but the team and assistants are doing most all of that this year. Just point this out so you understand that just because my team runs an argument doesn't mean that I like it, or that I completely understand it. Coaching is a purely volunteer position, and my two part-time/full-time jobs are as the Judge of the Gordon County Juvenile (child abuse and neglect, deliquency cases) and as a private attorney representing plainitiffs in personal injury and victim's rights cases. I am usually accompanied at tournaments by my spouse, Carol, who is sort of team Mom, travel agent and organizer of all things.

Likes/dislikes: I judge debate because I love debate and the community and the education it provides. I try to be extremely objective, and believe I have the reputation of voting for teams because I think they won, never because of rep or outside (or inside the round) influences. In fact, I tend to react badly if I believe a team or coach is trying to exert undue influence. Post-round I will give my critique, and will answer respectful and honest questions from the debaters. I expect a team I drop (and their coaches) to be unhappy, but no matter what, please be nice to your opponents, your partner, your coaches, and your judge.

My email: Beardenlaw@aol.com.

Overview

I'm a junior at UC Berkeley and debated in high school. Broke at national and state tournaments.

I was a 2A at Northview High School in GA. I was the 2N in a few tournaments.

I'll listen to anything, but I have more experience in policy-related arguments. That shouldn't discourage you from reading Kritikal arguments, but I will hold you to a higher threshold for them for explanations and warrants.

2AR/2NR needs to have a strong outline for why I should vote for you. Paint my ballot.

Add me on email chain amalbhatnagar@berkeley.edu

AFF

-Keep it traditional. If you're running a non-traditional aff, you have to really explain everything and the threshold for everything is a lot higher. That being said, don't not read a non-traditional aff if that's the kind of debater you are, just make everything clear.

-Focus on case. This is your offense. If you do weak case extensions and analysis, then that does not play out well for you. Paint a picture.

-For FW, how do research and debate look like under your interpretation? How does this round set precedent?

NEG

-Make sure your neg strat makes sense. Don't read 234823423 off case just because you think the 2AC won't be able to answer it. Be strategic and smart about your choices.

-Explain the K. Go ahead and read the most absurd Kritiks if you want but a) prove why I should care b) explain it thoroughly. The alternative should solve the case for the K to be convincing. As a 2A, I hate hitting K's that do not solve the case. Make sure it does. Also, I'm not familiar with a lot of the K literature, so explaining the argument is really important.

-I love a good CP and DA 2NR

-Topicality's great, but case lists are important. I hold T to a higher threshold.

Other

-Do not be block reliant. Debate is about understanding different perspectives of arguments and learning as much as you can. Of course, everyone wants to win, but you won't ever be able to win a big tournament if you just count on blocks and do not understand what you're reading. Judges can smell BS before you even start spreading.

-Condo. 2 is fair. 3 is stretching it. 4 is abusive.

-Don't call me judge

-Easy to get speaker points in CX. Focus on finding flaws in argument and identify warrants in cards.

Background
Senior at the University of Georgia, NDT '15, '16
Alpharetta High School - 4 years debate, TOC '13
Constraints: Alpharetta

Last Updated: 1/2017

Read the arguments you want to read, just do it well. Good strategy and coherent argumentation are key, no matter what arguments you choose.

Anything not covered or explained here? Ask me anything you need to before rounds, and/or email me whenever - tuckerboyce@gmail.com

China Topic: I've judged many in-depth debates this year on China policy. Demonstrating your knowledge of US policy and related news events will be rewarded. 

Cliff Notes:

1. Be Nice - people and friends make debate great, and you should reflect that in how you carry yourself. Being aggressive about arguments and in CX is natural and fine, but there's a line. "Please have fun. Debate is good because we love it" - Maggie Berthiaume

2. Debate how you want to debate - choose the arguments you want, be organized, and execute them well

3. Framing is key - creative and concise 2NR/2AR framings will be rewarded. Clear explanations and comparisons are necessary. The best rebuttals go beyond simple impact calc and form a more cohesive strategic approach.

4. Explanation is often more important than what the card says. If I deem that evidence does need to be called, then I'm going to give more weight to the arguments actually made during the speech on that particular part of the debate. I'm really dislike the idea of reconstructing debates from speech docs after the round.

5. Be interesting - The best debaters have developed a sense of their strengths and use it to their advantage. I enjoy judging rounds where people are able to read technical arguments that they know well.

6. Speech Docs - Use email chains if possible. Props to people who are efficient and quick at this. I don't religiously follow along with docs during speeches.

Case: Well-developed case debates are my favorite - they don't happen enough, even though Affs are normally flawed. At the same time, Affs should debate the case with authoritative nuance and understanding. The more detailed the case debate the better, especially if you indict 1AC evidence and re-cut their cards. Organization and evidence comparison are key. Neg teams should spend more time on case.

Impact turns are potentially fun too (but not super obscure or unethical ones) -- Heg bad, warming-style turns, etc. could be interesting

DA:

- Always a fan. A good Politics throwdown is one of my favorite types of rounds if it's good at the tournament, so is a good topic DA.

- Explain framing issues - 'uniqueness controls' or 'link controls' is only a good argument if it's explained

- The overview should be at the top of the flow (that's why it's called that!)

Counterplans:

- I like well-written and specific counterplans a lot. The more theoretically questionable the CP is, the better the solvency advocate should be. Affs should utilize theory against CP's that do the whole Aff with specific abuse claims.

- Don't be afraid to be creative with advantage counterplans!

- I will not "Judge-Kick" the Counterplan for the Negative unless: It is specifically said and justified - but that does not mean saying "you can kick this if you don't like it"

K:
- I'm relatively familiar with major K's - specific link work is a must, and it's great if you could link cards in the 1AC or specific actions of the Aff within the K. I'm not as familiar with Baudrillard and post-modernism arguments.

- Don't just go for a bunch of tricks - context/explanation are more important

- On the Aff, it is important to think of the broader 2AR strategy vs. the K rather than a collection of loosely connected arguments. I find that often the 1AR extends many arguments without development rather than developing a cohesive 2AR set-up - this can be changed by planning the overall strategy vs. the K before the 1AR even starts. Good 2AR's tie the K answers to a broader story and don't forget Neg tricks.

T:

- The Aff should have unique offense and try to provide examples of various Affs that do and don't fit their interp. 1AR/2AR has to isolate that offense and impact it.

- Neg teams too often rely on generic limits arguments - contextualize it to the Aff. I judged a ton of in-depth surveillance T debates last year and think people needed to be more specific with their impact claims. 

Non-Traditional Arguments: I'm generally fine with most of them, although if I had a favorite type of these, it's Affs that have a stronger connection to the topic.

- Comparisons are key: The role of the ballot and major concepts need to be explained in context of the opposing team's argumentation

- I'm not an expert on these types of Affs because I've read less of the literature compared to policy arguments, so an explanation of more complex arguments is important. As long as the explanation is clear and complex topics are explained sufficiently, it is fine.

Framework:

I judge framework debates based on technical arguments and framing that happened in the debate, and my voting record on it is pretty split because of that. Here's how these decisions normally go down:

- I often vote Aff in framework debates if the Neg is super generic about their impact arguments and/or if the Aff has a convincing impact turn to framework or reason their analysis should be included in the topic. Clear impact calculus and interaction of arguments with the content of the Affirmative vs. Framework is also important. Aff teams should try to get 'internal links' to Neg impacts by making arguments like 'this education is impossible without the Aff because X Y Z'

- I often vote Neg on framework when Neg teams have impacted their arguments and framed impacts in a way that is specific to the Aff, using clear examples. The Neg should also debate the case more than most people do - why does the Aff's method fail? How does Neg offense interact with that?

Theory:
- There needs to be a clear impact and abuse story if it's an issue to reject the team.- Perm theory and blippy 2AC arguments probably aren't reasons to reject the team, but could be argued as such hypothetically with an abuse story.- In order for it to be an argument, it must have a warrant when it is introduced.

- Perm theory and blippy 2AC arguments probably aren't reasons to reject the team, but could be argued as such hypothetically with an abuse story.- In order for it to be an argument, it must have a warrant when it is introduced.

- In order for it to be an argument, it must have a warrant when it is introduced.

 Marking Evidence: If you mark a card during a speech, you need to mark it in the document. If I call up evidence, please check to see that you have marked it appropriately in the document you give to me. If I end up calling up a card and have written on my flow that it was marked, and you did not mark it, I will subtract speaker points from the speaker who read the card.

Points: Obviously good execution of arguments/impact calculus/structure are most important for speaks. Other things are also important, like being nice, having a unique style, executing one area of argumentation particularly well, etc.

Unnecessary trickery and sketchiness in argumentation, whether it's spiking out of offense that actually links, excessive blippy theory arguments, etc. will negatively effect points. Most theory arguments are completely fine, but not when they're made for only 3 seconds in the 2AC.

Scale

26-27.5 = large errors or need for improvement in most areas

27.6-28 = alright overall, but consistent errors in certain areas

28.1-28.5 = good debating but little excellent moments and some small errors

28.6-29 = great debating with some moments of excellent style/etc, probably a team that can break at the tournament

29-29.3 = very impressive speeches and well-executed arguments

29.4-29.5 = best or one of the best speeches I'll hear in a season

29.6-30 = near perfection 

I will assign a 0 for a debater proven to be clipping cards or in violation of some other ethics rule. If you believe that your opponent has clipped evidence, you need to provide me with a recording of the speech for review. The debate will be stopped, and it is all-or-nothing if you initiate a challenge. If needed, consultation with the tab room for specific tournament rules will take place, but there must be a recording. 

CX

I often flow CX to record finer details and distinctions with certain types of arguments. Please use time asking focused, narrow strategic questions rather than just a list of "point me a line..." kind of questions. 

Things you should never say:

- “If you make that argument in your speech we’ll answer it.” – just answer the question

- "I'm not getting to this with much time because [bad reasons]" 

- “You should call this up!” and all variations of that – explain the evidence; I'll call evidence up if needed but you don't need to tell me

- "We'll win this...." - explain why

- "Our evidence is on fire." - explain why it's good (and put it out if it's on fire?)

- "Perm do the plan and the non-mutually exclusive parts of the Alt" - this does not mean anything unless you permute a specific part of the Alt. In fact, this perm actually is literally the definition of a perm, at which point saying "Perm Perm!" would be the same. It's the equivalent of saying "No Link - the link to the DA is not a link".

Some Good Quotes

“Efficiency is next to godliness” – James Herndon, Emory

“How I prep on the neg: cut the 1AC” – Chris Moxley

“The names of the flows changed often and I was scared when the 2N spoke."

Good luck!

Westminster 2017 - marybryceb@gmail.com

I'm a senior at Westminster and I'm a 2A. At some point over the past four years I've been every combination of speaker positions (except for ins & outs).

General --

Please do not try and over-adapt to my philosophy, what I have below is only general guidelines to how I evaluate/think about debates. I would much rather see a good debate and watch you do what you do best.

I don't take prep. for flashing/emailing.

If there is an email chain, I want to be on it. (See email above.)

PLEASE be nice to your partner and everyone else in the round. 

Dropped arguments have to be extended and explained for me to vote on them.

Also if you're funny, please be funny - I love funny people.

Case -- 

The internal links are usually the weakest part of the aff. Make smart analytics, exploit the fact that their internal links don't make sense. This will get you much farther in a debate than reading 10 generic impact defense cards. Although make sure to read Impact D too.

Cross-ex --

Cross-ex is a great time to destroy the aff. Again, attack the internal links.

Only interrupt your partners cross-ex if you are otherwise going to lose the debate.

DAs --

The more specific, the better. No debate is better than a good DA + case debate.

Impact Turns --

These are probably my favorite argument. However, one thing I have noticed in these debates, both from judging them and debating in them, is that they can great extremely messy. Therefore, please make sure you spend a lot of time on framing the debate and giving me a lens through which I should evaluate the debate. A debate that comes down to me just reading a bunch of cards can be very risky for both sides. (This tip about framing the debate/good overview explanation applies to all debates, not just impact turn debates, although it is especially important for those.)

CPs --

Perms do not need to have a net benefit and do not need to be topical. 

Explain clearly how the CP solves the aff. A key thing in doing this is answering all the solvency deficits, no matter how small or dumb they may seem at first. A good 2A can, and should, expand on any the neg. blows off. The aff should also impact their solvency deficits in terms of their advantages and how it affects their terminal impacts. 2As should always try to read an add-on that the CP can't solve for.

I will not kick the CP for the neg. unless I am explicitly instructed to in the 2NR. However, if this argument is at all answered by the aff, it becomes extremely unlikely for the negative that I will kick the CP for them.

Theory --

Condo - 1 K and 1 CP (or 2 condo) is probably fine and any less conditional advocacies than that is fine. More than two conditional options can get risky for the negative, but I can definitely be persuaded otherwise.

Delay CPs, Consult CPs that aren't related to the topic, and some process CPs are all most likely very cheating and a reason to vote aff.

Other - If they don't go for the cheating CP/perm, theory is a reason to reject the argument, not the team.

T -- 

I love a good T debate. A "good T debate" is one where the violation is explained, supported by a good definition and the impacts are explained well in terms of how it affects the topic. Do not just read a generic limits DA, make sure all the arguments you are making are contextualized to the aff/the violation you read. Specificity goes a long way.

Specificity goes a long way.

Aff v. T - defend your interpretation. Explain to me why your interpretation is the best vision for the topic. Reasonability is also important and can go a long way. Explain how your aff meets the core topic controversy.

Ks --

The more generic the K, the better off you are. The more obscure the K is, the more explanation that will be required by the negative. I will not be happy if you are reading a K for the purpose of confusing the other team or ignoring the line-by-line. You should be able to understand the argument you are reading and be able to explain it beyond just buzzwords. Contextualize any links to the aff.

Aff v. K - Defend your aff! Heg is good, empiricism good, reformism good, state good, fiat good, etc. are all arguments I am easily persuaded by. Do not neglect framework. That being said though, I do feel very strongly that weighing the aff is good and should be done.

"Role of the ballot" debating is arbitrary and an excuse for lazy debating. Instead of making arguments that are "Vote (neg/aff) to challenge (x)", instead win that challenging (x) actually outweighs the other teams arguments.

I default to util, but can be persuaded otherwise.

I will not vote on death good.

Planless Affs --

I think the aff should defend a topical action by the USfg. T-USfg is a very persausive argument. If you are the team who is aff in this debate, focus on explaning why reading your aff in a debate round is important and why the education you present in the round cannot be accessed other places (warning: this is an uphill battle). Overall, I am probably not the best judge for you if you do not read a plan.

Last Thoughts --

If you have any questions feel free to email me.

If you read through all of this and still want more info about me as a judge, go read DHeidt's judge philosophy, because I 100% agree with it.

Be nice and have fun!

chris, travis, and i are also coaching vaibhav dara

clarity = speed of delivery. pleaseslow down on tags, texts, interpretations, advocacies, analytical arguments, authors, or any argument you want me to get in detail verbatim on my flow. please keep in mind that your speed will always be faster than my keyboarding skills/flowcabulary. i do not flow off the document and will not backflow arguments from the document

i am a great judge for technical, mechanical line-by-line debate

judge instruction is axiomatic. most judging philosophies say "judge instructions please" because debaters rarely do enough of it and judges are left to decide debates on their own devices which leads to inevitable intervention and at least one unhappy debater. please - judge instructions! yes, go for your arguments, say how they outweigh, sure, magnitude timeframe sure, but tell me what to do with them/everything else at the end of the debate

what you debate is up to you - i do not have a preference for how you stylistically debate or which arguments you choose to read. this is my 20th year in debate and i have been around long enough that i have probably heard, debated, coached, and/or judged almost any/every argument you could say or do within reason. all arguments are fair game within reason - do not be violent, racist, et cetera. i consider myself an incredibly flexible coach that believes debaters get the most out of the activity through a student-centered model of debate where the debater is in the argumentative captain's seat and my job as a debate coach is to coach debaters at what they want to do to the best of my ability

i obviously have preferences - every debate judge does - but i try to keep those out of the decision calculus for deciding who wins the debate. given that, the following might help you out while either filling out your pref sheet or in the pre-round prep:

i am an awesome to great to okay judge for almost all arguments that come from policy debate - disads, counterplans, plans, not plans, performance, kritiks, k affs, theory, topicality, the politics da, conditionality bad, et cetera

i am an okay-ish judge for kant/phil - did a lot of academic research in uni on kant, but often struggle with how ld does kant. if you are going to read a bunch of dense cards about the categorical imperative, you are a-okay. if you are spamming a bunch of paradoxes, i would probably take another judge

i'm getting increasingly better for "tricks". a couple years ago this would have said no tricks, but i find myself increasingly voting on arguments like "role of the ballot spec", random ivis, and such when explained/impacted properly. i will only evaluate the debate after the 2ar

my voting record is historically bad for the neg on "t-usfg/framework/must larp/instrumentally defend the topic" and would advise engaging the affirmative

the aff is 29-0 in front of me over the past 5 years when the nr goes for "t-nebel/whole resolution/cannot specify/no plans"

some judge intricacies:

i will not judge kick unless you explicitly make judge kick an option in your speech

team no risk - there is zero risk that i will win the gold medal in the 100m dash at the 2024 paris olympic games

debaters must speaketh the rehighlighting - you can only re-insert text that has already been read

speaker point floor typically 29.0

i do not have a "poker face" and am unabashedly human

I will do my best to evaluate the debate as fairly as possible despite any of my biases. Debate is a persuasive game and read the arguments that you feel most comfortable reading.

Have fun, enjoy the debate, and respect one another! Respect people’s pronouns

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at katiecarithers@gmail.com

Policy:

Debated policy for 4 years in high school as a 2N and 1 year in college as a 2A

Impact calc is extremely important and often under-utilized—it can decide which team wins or loses a debate.

Topicality: I think really any aff can lose to a t violation if argued well and not utterly ridiculous. Debaters should explain their impacts beyond nebulous ideas like “fairness” and “education” and clearly identify and articulate offense. What the topic would look like under each interpretation should be explained including affs allowed and affs excluded.

Topicality vs. Plan-less Affs: I think fairness arguments are persuasive, especially reasons why fairness should precede education or is a pre-requisite to advocacy/engagement/critical thinking skills. I also coach students who read plan-less or advocacy-based affirmatives and think the neg probably needs to win that a state heuristic is a good model of debate.

Ks: I have gone for Ks and am familiar with general K literature. Leverage your links and make the K as specific to the aff as possible. Explain the alt and why it solves for its impacts and why it solves for or accesses the impacts of the aff.

The aff impacts are powerful tool to leverage vs the K, especially when most alts are nebulous or unexplained

K tricks should always still be answered in the 2AR even if the 1AR drops them with an explanation that they were not articulated in that same argumentative form in the block as in the 2NC – example: “fiat is illusory” said in the 2NC and then blown up in the 2NR.

Theory: Well-debated theory debates can be great – I ran a lot of Process/Agent CPs my senior year.

LD:

I taught at the San Jose Debate Institute this past summer and have judged upwards of 40 LD debates. I have also been coaching LD for the past year.

Tricks: I am less familiar with this style of debate

Theory: I am probably less lenient on theory violations without well-explained and rigorously defendable arguments of reasons to reject the team

Experience-This will be my fifth year as the head coach at Northview High School. Before moving to Georgia, I coached for 7 years at Marquette High in Milwaukee, WI.

Yes, add me to the email chain. My email is mcekanordebate@gmail.com

*As I have gained more coaching and judging experience, I find that I highly value teams who respect their opponents who might not have the same experience as them. This includes watching how you come across in CX, prep time, and your general comportment towards your opponent. In some local circuits, circuit-style policy debate is dwindling and we all have a responsibility to be respectful of the experience of everyone trying to be involved in policy debate.*

I recommend that you go to the bathroom and fill your water bottles before the debate rather than before a speech.

LD Folks please read the addendum at the end of my paradigm.

Meta-Level Strike Sheet Concerns

1. Debates are rarely won or lost on technical concessions or truth claims alone. In other words, I think the “tech vs. truth” distinction is a little silly. Technical concessions make it more complicated to win a debate, but rarely do they make wins impossible. Keeping your arguments closer to “truer” forms of an argument make it easier to overcome technical concessions because your arguments are easier to identify, and they’re more explicitly supported by your evidence (or at least should be). That being said, using truth alone as a metric of which of y’all to pick up incentivizes intervention and is not how I will evaluate the debate.

2. Evidence quality matters a bunch to me- it’s evidence that you have spent time and effort on your positions, it’s a way to determine the relative truth level of your claims, and it helps overcome some of the time constraints of the activity in a way that allows you to raise the level of complexity of your position in a shorter amount of time. I will read your evidence throughout the debate, especially if it is on a position with which I’m less familiar. I won’t vote on evidence comparison claims unless it becomes a question of the debate raised by either team, but I will think about how your evidence could have been used more effectively by the end of the debate. I enjoy rewarding teams for evidence quality.

3. Every debate could benefit from more comparative work particularly in terms of the relative quality of arguments/the interactions between arguments by the end of the round. Teams should ask "Why?", such as "If I win this argument, WHY is this important?", "If I lose this argument WHY does this matter?". Strategically explaining the implications of winning or losing an argument is the difference between being a middle of the road team and a team advancing to elims.

4. Some expectations for what should be present in arguments that seem to have disappeared in the last few years-

-For me to vote on a single argument, it must have a claim, warrant, impact, and impact comparison.

-A DA is not a full DA until a uniqueness, link, internal link and impact argument is presented.Too many teams are getting away with 2 card DA shells in the 1NC and then reading uniqueness walls in the block. I will generally allow for new 1AR answers.

Similarly, CP's should have a solvency advocate read in the 1NC. I'll be flexible on allowing 1AR arguments in a world where the aff makes an argument about the lack of a solvency advocate.

-Yes, terminal defense exists, however, I do not think that teams take enough advantage of this kind of argument in front of me. I will not always evaluate the round through a lens of offense-defense, but you still need to make arguments as to why I shouldn’t by at least explaining why your argument functions as terminal defense. Again this plays into evidence questions and the relative impacts of arguments claims made above.

Specifics

Case-Debates are won or lost in the case debate. By this, I mean that proving whether or not the aff successfully accesses all, some or none of the case advantages has implications on every flow of the debate and should be a fundamental question of most 2NRs and 2ARs. I think that blocks that are heavy in case defense or impact turns are incredibly advantageous for the neg because they enable you to win any CP (by proving the case defense as a response to the solvency deficit), K (see below) or DA (pretty obvious). I'm also more likely than others to write a presumption ballot or vote neg on inherency arguments. If the status quo solves your aff or you're not a big enough divergence, then you probably need to reconsider your approach to the topic.

Most affs can be divided into two categories: affs with a lot of impacts but poor internal links and affs with very solid internal links but questionable impacts. Acknowledging in which of these two categories the aff you are debating falls should shape how you approach the case debate. I find myself growing increasingly disappointed by negative teams that do not test weak affirmatives. Where's your internal link defense?? I also miss judging impact turn debates, but don't think that spark or wipeout are persuasive arguments. A high level de-dev debate or heg debate, on the other hand, love it.

DA-DAs are questions of probability. Your job as the aff team when debating a DA is to use your defensive arguments to question the probability of the internal links to the DA. Affirmative teams should take more advantage of terminal defense against disads. I'll probably also have a lower threshold for your theory arguments on the disad. Likewise, the neg should use turns case arguments as a reason why your DA calls into question the probability of the aff's internal links. Don't usually find "____ controls the direction of the link" arguments very persuasive. You need to warrant out that claim more if you're going to go for it. Make more rollback-style turns case arguments or more creative turns case arguments to lower the threshold for winning the debate on the disad alone.

CP-CP debates are about the relative weight of a solvency deficit versus the relative weight of the net benefit. The team that is more comparative when discussing the solvency level of these debates usually wins the debate. While, when it is a focus of the debate, I tend to err affirmative on questions of counterplan competiton, I have grown to be more persuaded by a well-executed counterplan strategy even if the counterplan is a process counterplan. The best counterplans have a solvency advocate who is, at least, specific to the topic, and, best, specific to the affirmative. I do not default to judge kicking the counterplan and will be easily persuaded by an affirmative argument about why I should not default to that kind of in-round conditionality. Not a huge fan of the NGA CP and I've voted three out of four times on intrinsic permutations against this counterplan so just be warned. Aff teams should take advantage of presumption arguments against the CP.

K-Used to have a bunch of thoughts spammed here that weren't too easy to navigate pre-round. I've left that section at the bottom of the paradigm for the historical record, but here's the cleaned up version:

What does the ballot do? What is the ballot absolutely incapable of doing? What does the ballot justify? No matter if you are on the aff or the neg, defending the topic or not, these are the kinds of questions that you need to answer by the end of the debate. As so much of K debating has become framework debates on the aff and the neg, I often find myself with a lot of floating pieces of offense that are not attached to a clear explanation of what a vote in either direction can/can't do.

T-Sitting through a bunch of framework debates has made me a better judge for topicality than I used to be. Comparative impact calculus alongside the use of strategic defensive arguments will make it easier for me to vote in a particular direction. Certain interps have a stronger internal link to limits claims and certain affs have better arguments for overlimiting. Being specific about what kind of offense you access, how it comes first, and the relative strength of your internal links in these debates will make it more likely that you win my ballot. I’m not a huge fan of tickytacky topicality claims but, if there’s substantial contestation in the literature, these can be good debates.

Theory- I debated on a team that engaged in a lot of theory debates in high school. There were multiple tournaments where most of our debates boiled down to theory questions, so I would like to think that I am a good judge for theory debates. I think that teams forget that theory debates are structured like a disadvantage. Again, comparative impact calculus is important to win my ballots in these debates. I will say that I tend to err aff on most theory questions. For example, I think that it is probably problematic for there to be more than one conditional advocacy in a round (and that it is equally problematic for your counter interpretation to be dispositionality) and I think that counterplans that compete off of certainty are bad for education and unfair to the aff. The biggest killer in a theory debate is when you just read down your blocks and don’t make specific claims. Debate like your

Notes for the Blue Key RR/Other LD Judging Obligations

Biggest shift for me in judging LD debates is the following: No tricks or intuitively false arguments. I'll vote on dropped arguments, but those arguments need a claim, data, warrant and an impact for me to vote on them. If I can't explain the argument back to you and the implications of that argument on the rest of the debate, I'm not voting for you.

I guess this wasn't clear enough the first time around- I don't flow off the document and your walls of framework and theory analytics are really hard to flow when you don't put any breaks in between them.

Similarly, phil debates are always difficult for me to analyze. I tend to think affirmative's should defend implementation particularly when the resolution specifies an actor. Outside of my general desire to see some debates about implementation, I don't have any kind of background in the phil literature bases and so will have a harder time picturing the implications of you winning specific arguments. If you want me to understand how your argumets interact, you will have to do a lot of explanation.

Theory debates- Yes, I said that I enjoy theory debates in my paradigm above and that is largely still true, but CX theory debates are a lot less technical than LD debates. I also think there are a lot of silly theory arguments in LD and I tend to have a higher threshold for those sorts of arguments. I also don't have much of a reference for norm setting in LD or what the norms actually are. Take that into account if you choose to go for theory and probably don't because I won't award you with high enough speaks for your liking.

K debates- Yes, I enjoy K debates but I tend to think that their LD variant is very shallow. You need to do more specific work in linking to the affirmative and developing the implications of your theory of power claims. While I enjoy good LD debates on the K, I always feel like I have to do a lot of work to justify a ballot in either direction. This is magnified by the limited amount of time that you have to develop your positions.

Old K Paradigm (2020-2022)

After y’all saw the school that I coach, I’m sure this is where you scrolled to first which is fair enough given how long it takes to fill out pref sheets. I will say, if you told me 10 years ago when I began coaching that I’d be coaching a team that primarily reads the K on the aff and on the neg, I probably would have found that absurd because that wasn’t my entry point into the activity so keep that in mind as you work with some of the thoughts below. That being said, I’ve now coached the K at a high level for the past two years which means that I have some semblance of a feeling for a good K debate. If the K is not something that you traditionally go for, you’re better off going for what you’re best at.

The best debates on the K are debates over the explanatory power of the negative’s theory of power relative to the affirmative’s specific example of liberalism, realism, etc. Put another way, the best K debaters are familiar enough with their theory of power AND the affirmative’s specific impact scenarios that they use their theory to explain the dangers of the aff. By the end of the 2NR I should have a very clear idea of what the affirmative does and how your theory explains why doing the affirmative won’t resolve the aff’s impacts or results in a bad thing. This does not necessarily mean that you need to have links to the affirmative’s mechanism (that’s probably a bit high of a research burden), but your link explanations need to be specific to the aff and should be bolstered by specific quotes from 1AC evidence or CX. The specificity of your link explanation should be sufficient to overcome questions of link-uniqueness or I’ll be comfortable voting on “your links only link to the status quo.”

On the flipside, aff teams need to explain why their contingency or specific example of policy action cannot be explained by the negative’s theory of power or that, even if some aspects can be, that the specificity of the aff’s claims justifies voting aff anyway because there’s some offense against the alternative or to the FW ballot. Affirmative teams that use the specificity of the affirmative to generate offense or push back against general link claims will win more debates than those that just default to generic “extinction is irreversible” ballots.

Case Page when going for the K- My biggest pet peeve with the current meta on the K is the role of the case page. Neither the affirmative nor the negative take enough advantage of this page to really stretch out their opponents on this question. For the negative, you need to be challenging the affirmative’s internal links with defense that can bolster some of your thesis level claims. Remember, you are trying to DISPROVE the affirmative’s contingent/specific policy which means that the more specificity you have the better off you will be. This means that just throwing your generic K links onto the case page probably isn’t the move. 9/10 the alternative doesn’t resolve them and you don’t have an explanation of how voting neg resolves the offense. K teams so frequently let policy affs get away with some really poor evidence quality and weak internal links. Please help the community and deter policy teams from reading one bad internal link to their heg aff against your [INSERT THEORY HERE] K. On that note, policy teams, why are you removing your best internal links when debating the K? Your generic framework cards are giving the neg more things to impact turn and your explanation of the internal link level of the aff is lowered when you do that. Read your normal aff against the K and just square up.

Framework debates (with the K on the neg) For better or worse, so much of contemporary K debate is resolved in the framework debate. The contemporary dependence on framework ballots means a couple of things:

1.) Both teams need to do more work here- treat this like a DA and a CP. Compare the relative strength of internal link claims and impact out the terminal impacts. Why does procedural fairness matter? What is the terminal impact to clash? How do we access your skills claims? What does/does not the ballot resolve? To what extent does the ballot resolve those things? The team that usually answers more of these questions usually wins these debates. K teams need to do more to push back against “ballot can solve procedural fairness” claims and aff teams need to do more than just “schools, family, culture, etc.” outweigh subject formation. Many of you all spend more time at debate tournaments or doing debate work than you do at school or doing schoolwork.

2.) I do think it’s possible for the aff to win education claims, but you need to do more comparative impact calculus. What does scenario planning do for subject formation that is more ethical than whatever the impact scenario is to the K? If you can’t explain your education claims at that level, just go for fairness and explain why the ballot can resolve it.

3.) Risk of the link- Explain what winning framework does for how much of a risk of a link that I need to justify a ballot either way. Usually, neg teams will want to say that winning framework means they get a very narrow risk of a link to outweigh. I don’t usually like defaulting to this but affirmative teams very rarely push back on this risk calculus in a world where they lose framework. If you don’t win that you can weigh the aff against the K, aff teams need to think about how they can use their scenarios as offense against the educational claims of the K. This can be done as answers to the link arguments as well, though you’ll probably need to win more pieces of defense elsewhere on the flow to make this viable.

Do I go for the alternative?

I don’t think that you need to go for the alternative if you have a solid enough framework push in the 2NR. However, few things to keep in mind here:

1.) I won’t judge kick the alternative for you unless you explicitly tell me to do it and include a theoretical justification for why that’s possible.

2.) The framework debate should include some arguments about how voting negative resolves the links- i.e. what is the kind of ethical subject position endorsed on the framework page that pushes us towards research projects that avoid the links to the critique? How does this position resolve those links?

3.) Depending on the alternative and the framework interpretation, some of your disads to the alternative will still link to the framework ballot. Smart teams will cross apply these arguments and explain why that complicates voting negative.

K affs (Generic)

Yes, I’m comfortable evaluating debates involving the K on the aff and think that I’ve reached a point where I’m pretty good for either side of this debate. Affirmative teams need to justify an affirmative ballot that beats presumption, especially if you’re defending status quo movements as examples of the aff’s method. Both teams benefit from clarifying early in the round whether or not the affirmative team spills up, whether or not in-round performances specific to this debate resolve any of the affirmative offense, and whatever the accumulation of ballots does or does not do for the aff. Affirmative teams that are not the Louisville project often get away with way too much by just reading a DSRB card and claiming their ballots function the same way. Aff teams should differentiate their ballot claims and negatives should make arguments about the aff’s homogenizing ballot claims. All that being said, like I discussed above, these debates are won and lost on the case page like any other debate. As the K becomes more normalized and standardized to a few specific schools of thought, I have a harder and harder time separating the case and framework pages on generic “we couldn’t truth test your arguments” because I think that shifts a bit too strongly to the negative. That said, I can be persuaded to separate the two if there’s decent time spent in the final rebuttals on this question.

Framework vs. the K Aff

Framework debates are best when both teams spend time comparing the realities of debate in the status quo and the idealized form of debate proposed in model v. model rounds. In that light, both teams need to be thinking about what proposing framework in a status quo where the K is probably going to stick around means for those teams that currently read the K and for those teams that prefer to directly engage the resolution. In a world where the affirmative defends the counter interpretation, the affirmative should have an explanation of what happens when team don’t read an affirmative that meets their model. Most of the counter interpretations are arbitrary or equivalent to “no counter interpretation”, but an interp being arbitrary is just defense that you can still outweigh depending on the offense you’re winning.

In impact turn debates, both teams need to be much clearer about the terminal impacts to their offense while providing an explanation as to why voting in either direction resolves them. After sitting in so many of these debates, I tend to think that the ballot doesn’t do much for either team but that means that teams who have a better explanation of what it means to win the ballot will usually pick up my decision. You can’t just assert that voting negative resolves procedural fairness without warranting that out just like you can’t assert that the aff resolves all forms of violence in debate through a single debate. Both teams need to grapple with how the competitive incentives for debate establish offense for either side. The competitive incentive to read the K is strong and might counteract some of the aff’s access to offense, but the competitive incentives towards framework also have their same issues. Neither sides hands are clean on that question and those that are willing to admit it are usually better off. I have a hard time setting aside clash as an external impact due to the fact that I’m just not sure what the terminal impact is. I like teams that go for clash and think that it usually is an important part of negative strategy vs. the K, but I think this strategy is best when the clash warrants are explained as internal link turns to the aff’s education claims. Some of this has to due with the competitive incentives arguments that I’ve explained above. Both teams need to do more work explaining whether or not fairness or education claims come first. It’s introductory-level impact analysis I find lacking in many of these debates.

Other things to think about-

1.) These debates are at their worst when either team is dependent on blocks. Framework teams should be particularly cautious about this because they’ve had less of these debates over the course of the season, however, K teams are just as bad at just reading their blocks through the 1AR. I will try to draw a clean line between the 1AR and the 2AR and will hold a pretty strict one in debates where the 1AR is just screaming through blocks. Live debating contextualized to this round far outweighs robots with pre-written everything.

2.) I have a hard time pulling the trigger on arguments with “quitting the activity” as a terminal impact. Any evidence on either side of this question is usually anecdotal and that’s not enough to justify a ballot in either direction. There are also a bunch of alternative causes to numbers decline like the lack of coaches, the increased technical rigor of high-level policy debate, budgets, the pandemic, etc. that I think thump most of these impacts for either side. More often than not, the people that are going to stick with debate are already here but that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to the kinds of harms to the activity/teams as teams on either side of the clash question learn to coexist.

K vs. K Debates (Overview)

I’ll be perfectly honest, unless this is a K vs. Cap debate, these are the debates that I’m least comfortable evaluating because I feel like they end up being some of the messiest and “gooiest” debates possible. That being said, I think that high level K vs. K debates can be some of the most interesting to evaluate if both teams have a clear understanding of the distinctions between their positions, are able to base their theoretical distinctions in specific, grounded examples that demonstrate potential tradeoffs between each position, and can demonstrate mutual exclusivity outside of the artificial boundary of “no permutations in a method debate.” At their best, these debates require teams to meet a high research burden which is something that I like to reward so if your strat is specific or you can explain it in a nuanced way, go for it. That said, I’m not the greatest for teams whose generic position in these debates are to read “post-truth”/pomo arguments against identity positions and I feel uncomfortable resolving competing ontology claims in debates around identity unless they are specific and grounded. I feel like most debates are too time constrained to meaningfully resolve these positions. Similarly, teams that read framework should be cautious about reading conditional critiques with ontology claims- i.e. conditional pessimism with framework. I’m persuaded by theoretical arguments about conditional ontology claims regarding social death and cross apps to framework in these debates.

I won’t default to “no perms in a methods debate”, though I am sympathetic to the theoretical arguments about why affs not grounded in the resolution are too shifty if they are allowed to defend the permutation. What gets me in these debates is that I think that the affirmative will make the “test of competition”-style permutation arguments anyway like “no link” or the aff is a disad/prereq to the alt regardless of whether or not there’s a permutation. I can’t just magically wave a theory wand here and make those kinds of distinctions go away. It lowers the burden way too much for the negative and creates shallow debates. Let’s have a fleshed out theory argument and you can persuade me otherwise. The aff still needs to win access to the permutation, but if you lose the theory argument still make the same kinds of arguments if you had the permutation. Just do the defensive work to thump the links.

Cap vs. K- I get the strategic utility of these debates, but this debate is becoming pretty stale for me. Teams that go for state-good style capitalism arguments need to explain the process of organization, accountability measures, the kind of party leadership, etc. Aff teams should generate offense off of these questions. Teams that defend Dean should have to defend psychoanalysis answers. Teams that defend Escalante should have specific historical examples of dual power working or not in 1917 or in post-Bolshevik organization elsewhere. Aff teams should force Dean teams to defend psycho and force Escalante teams to defend historical examples of dual power. State crackdown arguments should be specific. I fear that state crackdown arguments will apply to both the alternative and the aff and the team that does a better job describing the comparative risk of crackdown ends up winning my argument. Either team should make more of a push about what it means to shift our research practices towards or away from communist organizing. There are so many debates where we have come to the conclusion that the arguments we make in debate don’t spill out or up and, yet, I find debates where we are talking about politically organizing communist parties are still stuck in some universe where we are doing the actual organizing in a debate round. Tell me what a step towards the party means for our research praxis or provide disads to shifting the resource praxis. All the thoughts on the permutation debate are above. I’m less likely to say no permutation in these debates because there is plenty of clash in the literature between, at least, anti-capitalism and postcapitalism that there can be a robust debate even if you don’t have specifics. That being said, the more you can make ground your theory in specific examples the better off you’ll be.

Joshua Clark

Montgomery Bell Academy

University of Michigan - Institute Instructor
Email: jreubenclark10@gmail.com

Past Schools:
Juan Diego Catholic
Notre Dame in Sherman Oaks
Damien

Debating:
Jordan (UT) 96-98
College of Eastern Utah 99
Cal St Fullerton 01-04

Website:
HSImpact.com

Speaker Points
Points will generally stay between 27.5 and 29.9. It generally takes a 28.8 average to clear. I assign points with that in mind. Teams that average 28.8 or higher in a debate mean I thought your points were elimination round-level debates. While it's not an exact science, 29-29.1 means you had a good chance of advancing in elimination rounds, and 29.2+ indicates excellence reserved for quarters+. I'm not stingy with these kinds of points; they have nothing to do with past successes. It has everything to do with your performance in THIS debate.


Etiquette
1. Try to treat each other with mutual respect.

2. Cards and tags should have the same clarity
3. Cards MUST be marked during the speech. Please say, "Mark the card," and please have you OR your partner physically mark the cards in the speech. It is not possible to remember where you've marked your cards after the speech. Saying "mark the card" is the only way to let your judge and competitors know that you do not intend to represent that you've read the entirety of the card. Physically marking the card in the speech is necessary to maintain an accurate account of what you did or didn't read.

Overview
My 25 years in the community have led me to formulate opinions about how the activity should be run. I'm not sharing these with you because I think this is the way you have to debate but because you may get some insight about how to win and earn better speaker points in front of me.

1) Conceded claims without warrants - These aren't complete arguments. A 10-second dropped ASPEC is very unlikely to decide a debate for me. Perm, do the CP without a theoretical justification; it also makes zero sense. Perm - do both needs to be followed by an explanation for how it resolves the link to the net benefit, or it is not an argument.

2) Voting issues are reasons to reject the argument. (Other than conditionality)

3) Debate stays in the round -- Debate is a game of testing ideas and their counterparts. Those ideas presented in the debate will be the sole factor used in determining the winning team. Things said or done outside of this debate round will not be considered when determining a winning team.

4) Your argument doesn't improve by calling it a "DA" -- I'm sure your analytical standard to your framework argument on the K is great, but overstating its importance by labeling it a "DA" isn't accurate. It's a reason to prefer your interpretation.

Topicality vs Conventional Affs: I default to competing interpretations on topicality but can be persuaded by reasonability. Topicality is a voting issue.

Topicality vs Critical Affs: I generally think that policy debate is a good thing and that a team should both have a plan and defend it. Given that, I have no problem voting for "no plan" advocacies or "fiat-less" plans. I will be looking for you to win that your impact turns to topicality/framework outweighs the loss of education/fairness that would be given in a "fiated" plan debate. Affirmative teams struggle with answering the argument that they could advocate most of their aff while defending a topical plan. I also think that teams who stress they are a pre-requisite to topical action have a more difficult time with topical version-type arguments than teams who impact turn standards. If you win that the state is irredeemable at every level, you are much more likely to get me to vote against FW. The K aff teams who have had success in front of me have been very good at generating a good list of arguments that opposing teams could run against them to mitigate the fairness impact of the T/FW argument. This makes the impact turns of a stricter limit much more persuasive to me.

I'm also in the fairness camp as a terminal impact, as opposed to an emphasis on portable skills. I think you can win that T comes before substantive issues.

One note to teams that are neg against an aff that lacks stable advocacy: Make sure you adapt your framework arguments to fit the aff. Don't read..." you must have a plan" if they have a plan. If a team has a plan but doesn't defend fiat, base your ground arguments on that violation.


Counterplans and Disads: The more specific to the aff, the better. There are few things better than a well-researched PIC that just blind sites a team. Objectively, I think counterplans that compete on certainty or immediacy are not legitimate. However, I still coach teams to run these arguments, and I can still evaluate a theory debate about these different counterplans as objectively as possible. Again, the more specific the evidence is to the aff, the more legitimate it will appear.


The K: I was a k debater and a philosophy major in college. I prefer criticisms that are specific to the resolution. If your K links don't discuss poverty and redistribution strategies this year, then it's unlikely to be very persuasive to me.

Impact comparisons usually become the most important part of a kritik, and the excessive link list becomes the least of a team’s problems heading into the 2nr. It would be best if you won that either a) you turn the case and have an external impact or b) you solve the case and have an external impact. Root cause arguments are sound but rarely address the timeframe issue of case impacts. If you are going to win your magnitude comparisons, then you better do a lot to mitigate the case impacts. I also find most framework arguments associated with a K nearly pointless. Most of them are impacted by the K proper and depend on you winning the K to win the framework argument. Before devoting any more time to the framework beyond getting your K evaluated, you should ask yourself and clearly state to me what happens if you win your theory argument. You should craft your "role of the ballot" argument based on the answer to that question. I am willing to listen to sequencing arguments that EXPLAIN why discourse, epistemology, ontology, etc., come first.


Conclusion: I love debate...good luck if I'm judging you, and please feel free to ask any clarifying questions.

To promote disclosure at the high school level, any team that practices near-universal "open source" will be awarded .2 extra per debater if you bring that to my attention before the RFD.

TLDR: I’m fine with any argument you want to throw at me. I prefer a good policy debate for novice, but I would love to hear a critical debate if it is a good one.

History: I debate for Caddo Magnet High, and I am a junior. I’ve been debating for 5 years in policy. I’ve run everything from politics and case to OOO and Anti-Blackness. Please don’t hold back a strategy because you think I won’t buy it.

T: I default to competing interpretations. If you do go for this, you need to have standards that are CLEARLY STATED. It’s not a question of if they are actually topical or not, but rather a question of how much you win that it is not topical. Topicality, for me at least, is evaluated as a disadvantage that if you win a significant risk of, you win the debate.

Framework: (See T) Also if the aff wins a significant risk of a critique to your framework, then they win. You have to do impact calculus with this because you go against arguments that deal with discourse rather than fiated action.

CP’s: I love really sketchy counterplans that have good solvency but sketchy action. Word PICs are great, Agent PICs are great. Perm do the counterplan is terrible. ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A NET BENEFIT.

DA’s: All disadvantages are great. Politics is the best argument for novices—it’s simple, easy to understand, and easy to vote on. Terrorism is one of my favorite arguments. In the 2NR I need a story of the DA.

K’s: One of the most strategic arguments in debate. Make a good case solvency claim in the 2NR so that you can mitigate a good chance of impact calculus. Floating PIKs are totally legitimate, but a dropped theory argument will cost you the round. This is the literature base that I’m most familiar with, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t explain it as best you can.

K Affirmatives: Run them if you can. I love them when you have a plan text. If you have an advocacy statement, please ground it in some type of real and concrete action, but if it’s not concrete, explain why it’s not and why that’s good.

Ethicality arguments: Usually reasons to end the round—card clipping and internet use. Reasons I will refuse to vote for you—racism good and patriarchy good type arguments. You’ll get low speaker points—yelling at your partner or talking to people outside the room. 

I am a 2A at Westminster and this is my fifth year of debate.

Short Pre-Round Paradigm

- add me to the email chain b4 the db8 please -- daftari.manav@gmail.com

- Do you what you do best. Go for any argument you want to. I will vote on any argument that you win. Do NOT let this judge paradigm influence your arguments in the debate.

- I prefer debates to be about the topic.

- if you plan on going for the kritik make sure you explain the alt and most important parts of the K to me

- I love tricky and complex neg strategies to test the affirmatives internal links. Specific CPs are the most fun to see debated out. This doesn't mean I won't vote for a generic strategy.

- Be yourself-- I love jokes, especially good ones. Any jokes about people I know (especially harrison hall, Arjun Mohan, Chris Eckert, and Alex Greene) that are funny might influence speaks. But be respectful.

- I think all affs should defend USfg action.

- I will award each person will +.1 speaker points if they show me your flows before the decision is delivered and they are neat and have been used in the debate.

Long Version:

General Notes:

- Seriously, Do what you want!! Debate is an activity that should be fun for you and everyone else. Don't let this influence you in any way.

- Be respectful. I don't like disrespectful people. I think everyone should be treated equally and debate should be a place where everyone has respect.

- I have found myself nearly obsessed with specific, substantive engagement between the two teams — and increasingly frustrated when one team sidesteps opportunities for well-evidenced clash between arguments in favor of generic, all-purpose positions or supposed trump cards that set aside the majority of the debate. The team at fault — given its responsibility to respond — is often the negative, and on some topics I vote aff at a dizzying clip. -- Seth Gannon

- CLIPPING IS NOT ALLOWED -- I WILL FOLLOW THE SPEECH DOCS

Topicality:

- I think I defer to reasonability. If the aff's interpretation of the topic is reasonable for the topic and doesn't make it impossible to be negative, then I think there is no abuse and no reason to vote negative.

- I do love a good T debate though. Please have an adequate case list for the topic for the affirmative.

Kritiks:

- I am down for topic specific Kritiks. But not the best for 1-off K strategies.

- I think the permutation is the most important part to win for the negative. Random disads to the permutation are NOT reasons I will disregard the permutation.

- You have to win links to the permutation and not links to the aff where the permutation changes the way the aff works or is conceptualized.

- I think the aff gets to weigh it against the K, but can be convinced otherwise.

- The two most important parts of the K debate for me is the alternative and the link debate. Please explain these two parts very clearly.

- Aff-- I love the argument "links must be predicated on the plan text." If this can be executed correctly, I will probably vote on it, and maybe bump speaks.

CPs:

- Love them. Specific and complex CPs are great. Make sure to explain them.

- I am not great on counterplan competition questions. So if you think the CP is competitive, explain why.

- If you are aff, go for the best impacted out solvency deficit to the CP and don't try to spread yourself too thin. One amazing solvency deficit > a couple decent solvency deficits

DAs:

- Love them. Explain the link.

Theory:

- I don't have any pre-dispositions with theory questions. Prove in round abuse.

- I really do feel conditionality is not that bad UNLESS it is above 3 condo.

Have Fun.

Procedural Stuff

Call me Blake or BD instead of Judge, I don't like feeling old

Email chain: blako925@gmail.com

Please also add: jchsdebatedocs@gmail.com

Add both emails, title the chain Tournament Rd # Your Team vs. Other Team ex) Harvard Round 4 Johns Creek XY vs. Northview AM.

1AC should be sent at round start or if I'm late (sorry in advance), as soon as I walk in the room

If you go to the bathroom or fill your waterbottle before your own speech, I'll dock 1 speaker point

Stealing prep = heavily docked speaks. If you want to engage your partner in small talk, just speak normally so everyone knows you're not stealing prep, don't whisper. Eyes should not be wandering on your laptop and hands should not be typing/writing. You can be on your phone.

Clipping is auto-loss and I assign lowest possible speaks. Ethics violation claims = round stoppage, I will decide round on the spot using provided evidence of said violation

Topic Knowledge

I HAVE ZERO TOPIC KNOWLEDGE.

I HAVE ZERO TOPIC KNOWLEDGE

I HAVE ZERO TOPIC KNOWLEDGE

I HAVE ZERO TOPIC KNOWLEDGE

I HAVE ZERO TOPIC KNOWLEDGE

I debated in high school, didn’t debate in college, have never worked at any camp. I currently work an office job. Any and all acronyms should be explained to me. Specific solvency mechanisms should be explained to me. Tricky process CPs should be explained to me. Many K jargon words that I have heard such as ressentiment, fugitivity, or subjectivity should be explained to me.

Spreading

I WRITE SLOW AND MY HAND CRAMPS EASILY. PLEASE SLOW DOWN DURING REBUTTALS

My ears have become un-attuned to debate spreading. Please go 50% speed at the start of your speech before ramping up. I don’t care how fast or unclear you are on the body of cards b/c it is my belief that you will extend that body text in an intelligent manner later on. However, if you spread tags as if you are spreading the body of a card, I will not flow them. If you read analytics as if you are spreading the body of a card, I will not flow them. If I do not flow an argument, you’re not going to win on it. If you are in novice this probably doesn't apply to you.

While judges must do their best to flow debates and adjudicate in an objective matter that rewards the better debater, there is a certain level of debater responsibility to spread at a reasonable speed and clear manner. Judge adaptation is an inevitable skill debaters must learn.

In front of me, adaption should be spreading speed. If you are saying words faster than how fast I can move my pen, I will say SLOW DOWN. If you do not comply, it is your prerogative, and you can roll the dice on whether or not I will write your argument down. I get that your current speed may be OK with NDT finalists or coaches with 20+ years of experience, but I am not those people. Adapt or lose.

No Plan Text & Framework

I am OK with any affirmative whether it be policy, critical, or performance. The problem is that the 2AC often has huge case overviews that are sped through that do not explain to me very well what the aff harms are and how the advocacy statement (or whatever mechanism) solves them. Furthermore, here are some facts about my experience in framework:

• I was the 1N in high school, so I never had to take framework other than reading the 1NC shell since my partner took in the 2NC and 2NR.
• I can count the number of times I debated plan-less affs on one hand.
• As of me updating this paradigm on 01/28/2023 I have judged roughly 15 framework rounds (maybe less).

All the above make framework functionally a coin toss for either side. My understanding of framework is predicated off of what standards you access and if the terminal impacts to those standards prove if your model of debate is better for the world. If you win impact turns against the neg FW interpretation, then you don't need a C/I, but you have to win that the debate is about potential ballot solvency or some other evaluation method. If the neg wins that the round is about proving a better model of debate, then an inherent lack of a C/I means I vote for the better interp no matter how terrible it is. The comparison in my mind is that a teacher asked to choose the better essay submitted by two students must choose Student A if Student B doesn't turn in anything no matter how terrible or offensive Student A's essay is.

Tech vs. Truth

I used to like arguments such as “F & G in federal government aren't capitalized T” or “Period at the end of the plan text or the sentence keeps going T” b/c I felt like these arguments were objectively true. As I continue to judge I think I have moved into a state where I will allow pretty much any argument no matter how much “truth” there is backing it especially since some truth arguments such as the aforementioned ones are pretty troll themselves. There is still my job to provide a safe space for the activity which means I am obligated to vote down morally offensive arguments such as racism good or sexism good. However, I am now more inclined to vote on things like “Warming isn’t real” or “The Earth is flat” with enough warrants. After all, who am I to say that status quo warming isn’t just attributable to heating and cooling cycles of the Earth, and that all satellite imagery of the Earth is faked and that strong gravitational pulls cause us to be redirected back onto flat Earth when we attempt to circle the “globe”. If these arguments are so terrible and untrue, then it really shouldn’t take much effort to disprove them.

Reading Evidence

I err on the side of intervening as little as possible, so I don’t read usually read evidence. Don't ask me for a doc or send me anything afterwards. The only time I ever look at ev is if I am prompted to do so during speech time.

This will reward teams that do the better technical debating on dropped/poorly answered scenarios even if they are substantiated by terrible evidence. So if you read a poorly written federalism DA that has no real uniqueness or even specific link to the aff, but is dropped and extended competently, yes, I will vote for without even glancing at your ev.

That being said, this will also reward teams that realize your ADV/DA/Whatever ev is terrible and point it out. If your T interp is from No Quals Alex, blog writer for ChristianMingle.com, and the other team points it out, you're probably not winning the bigger internal link to legal precision.

Case

I love case debate. Negatives who actually read all of the aff evidence in order to create a heavy case press with rehighlightings, indicts, CX applications, and well backed UQ/Link/Impact frontlines are always refreshing watch. Do this well in front of me and you will for sure be rewarded.

By the 2AR I should know what exactly the plan does and how it can solve the advantages. This obviously doesn't have to be a major component of the 1AR given time constraint, but I think there should at least some explanation in the 2AR. If I don't have at least some idea of what the plan text does and what it does to access the 1AC impacts, then I honestly have no problem voting on presumption that doing nothing is better than doing the aff.

Disads

Similar to above, I think that DA's have to be fully explained with uniqueness, link, and impact. Absent any of these things I will often have serious doubts regarding the cohesive stance that the DA is taking.

Topicality

Don't make debate meta-arguments like "Peninsula XY read this at Glenbrooks so obviously its core of the topic" or "every camp put out this aff so it's predictable". These types of arguments mean nothing to me since I don't know any teams, any camp activities, any tournaments, any coaches, performance of teams at X tournament, etc.

One small annoyance I have at teams that debate in front of me is that they don't debate T like a DA. You need to win what standards you access, how they link into your terminal impacts like education or fairness, and why your chosen impact outweighs the opposing teams.

Counterplan

I have no inherent bias against any counterplan. If a CP has a mechanism that is potentially abusive (international fiat, 50 state fiat, PICs bad) then I just see this as offense for the aff, not an inherent reason why the team or CP should immediately be voted down.

I heavily detest this new meta of "perm shotgunning" at the top of each CP in the 2AC. It is basically unflowable. See "Spreading" above. Do this and I will unironically give you a 28 maximum. Spread the perms between cards or other longer analytical arguments. That or actually include substance behind the perm such as an explanation of the function of the permutation, how it dodges the net benefit, if it has any additional NB, etc.

I think 2NR explanation of what exactly the CP does is important. A good 2N will explain why their CP accesses the internal links or solvency mechanisms of the 1AC, or if you don't, why the CP is able to access the advantages better than the original 1AC methods. Absent that I am highly skeptical of broad "CP solves 100% of case" claims and the aff should punish with specific solvency deficits.

A problem I have been seeing is that affirmatives will read solvency deficits against CP's but not impacting the solvency deficits vs. the net benefit. If the CP doesn't solve ADV 1 then you need to win that ADV 1 outweighs the net benefit.

Judge kick is not my default mindset, neg has say I have to judge kick and also justify why this is OK.

Kritiks

I don't know any K literature other than maybe some security or capitalism stuff. I feel a lot of K overviews include fancy schmancy words that mean nothing to me. If you're gonna go for a K with some nuance, then you're going to need to spend the effort explaining it to me like I am 10 years old.

Theory

If the neg reads more than 1 CP + 1 K you should consider pulling the trigger on conditionality.

I default to competing interpretations unless otherwise told.

Define dispositionality for me if this is going to be part of the interp.

Extra Points

To promote flowing, you can show me your flows at the end of a round and earn up to 1.0 speaker points if they are good. To discourage everyone bombarding me with flows, you can also lose up to a full speaker point if your flows suck.

Carrollton '18

University of Pennsylvania '22

18mfelixpadilla@gmail.com -put me on the email chain

Evidence quality matters. I expect the other team to call out bad evidence, but I will probably not decide the debate on a piece of evidence if I am truly appalled at how awful it is.

The affirmative must defend an instance of topical action by the USFG. Allowing the affirmative team to not advocate the resolution creates bad debates. I disagree that debate is bad and I do not understand why I should vote for a team that deliberately came to participate in an activity they claim is bad.

Everything that follows below is way less important than this: I try to evaluate every argument fairly rather than injecting my own opinions.

Case

Soft left affs make the most sense

Framing contentions are good but the outcome of framing debates depends on teams actually answering the claims made in the evidence as opposed to just restating their own arguments

Topicality

Topicality is not a reverse voting issue

I tend to think limited topics make for better topics

I default to competing interpretations and I am very rarely persuaded by reasonability unless a particularly compelling case is made

Make sure to implicate the link in terms of the terminal impact (i.e. why is lack of education important and what does it mean for debate?)

Counterplans

Counterplans need to be functionally and textually competitive

Solvency deficits should be impacted in terms of the aff’s advantages

If the perm is three words up until the 2ar I won't vote on it

Condo, advantage CPs, aff-specific PICs- usually good

Process/delay/consult CPs, 50 state fiat, international fiat, agent CPs- ehh

Word PICs, floating PIKs- usually bad

DAs

I’m not persuaded by politics theory arguments

Good politics disads are great, bad politics disads are awful; my least favorite disads are contrived politics disads with bad evidence that only serve the purpose of trying to confuse the aff team

K

The aff gets to weigh their aff and the neg gets a pragmatic alternative; it’s very hard for me to vote on a framework that holds the affirmative to a perfect standard (in terms of epistemology, representations, etc)

To get me to vote on a kritik: aff specific links are important and feasibility is too

I will not vote on something that no one in the round can explain except you, and I will also not vote on death good/high theory/anything that relies on you confusing the other team

Fiat double bind does not make sense, and fiat is good

I’m not persuaded by arguments that rely on spillover.

Floating PIKs are bad

Other

The USFG is all the aff needs to specify

Fairness is an impact

College Prep ‘14
Emory ‘18

Woodward 2018 Note: Really excited to judge the budding minds of debate's future! Please make sure that you speak clearly (even if you sacrifice some speed). You really need evidence about your counterplan in relation to the aff. Its super boring listening to a generic CP/DA with no nuance or specific link/solvency analysis.

I do want to be on the email chains: mollie.fiero@gmail.com

Very few rounds on the Education topic - watch your acronyms/assumed topic knowledge, this is ESPECIALLY TRUE in T debates when its difficult to assess what is "core ground"

Re: Trump -- Durable fiat does not include things your solvency cards say but aren't in your plan text. Understand the executive branch and its power. CX should lay out what is within the scope of the plan and what is up for Trump/his cabinet to decide. I do NOT want to vote on a Trump good politics DA. Don't make me.

1. Be smart, engaging, and nice. Debate in a way that makes you and your coaches proud. Respect your opponents and your partner. Be aware of the gendered and racial implications of the way you speak to/interact with your opponents and partner. Trust that I know what I'm doing, and I'll give you the same courtesy.


2. Flex is good
No insurmountable policy or K bias. I went for T and read a no plan aff at my last tournament. Its good to be a games player, but if one side has an affective argument, or reasons why their argument implicates debate itself those are usually things the other side must at least acknowledge. That being said I am highly literate in 'conservative' policy debate (7+ years of big DA and case debates under my belt) and think those debates are super fun.

AFFS WITHOUT PLANS: You need to have a good explanation (in cx) of - why is this being presented in debate? what is the role of the judge? the negative?

3. Explanation wins debates
Whether it’s the link turn to politics, the K alt, or counterplan solvency, the team with better depth and argument analysis usually wins.

4. Evidence isn’t the end-all be-all
Indicts are great and so is comparison, what I really mean is that true analytics are slayer.

5. I take my task very seriously and will work hard to make the right decision. Even after 4 years of judging high school I'm still learning about myself as a judge, but I am determined to continue to work hard because I respect your time and effort in debates. You and your coaches should be conscious of the way you interact with all judges, but especially (younger) women, queer, and POC judges in post-round interactions.

Finally -- have fun and talk to me if you're interested in Emory debate!

Debated 4 years at Milton High School (2A/1N)

Debated 3 years at Georgia State University (2N/1A)

Add me to the email chain: my email is t.oliver.flint@gmail.com

For pre-round reading: Do what you want - it's your debate, and I'm here to listen to you. I have not judged policy debate since 2019. 

The rest of this paradigm is a collection of my pre-existing beliefs/thoughts about specific issues circa 2019. I kept it in with minimal edits because I still agree with it, but I (try to) evaluate each debate based on how the debaters frame/explain arguments, so everything below is debateable. 

Basic Summary: 

1. Debate is a game. Consequently, I tend to think that fairness is more important than education etc. However, in order to really weigh the importance of fairness, you have to prove the value of the game, so it's useful to think of fairness as more of an internal link than an impact.

2. I believe that I should evaluate logical opportunity costs to the aff. This means that I'm more likely to be persuaded that neg advocacies that don't use the topic actor don't necessarily disprove the aff (see the section on Agent CPs).

3. I don't like offense/defense. I would much rather vote for a 2AR that clearly explains why a contrived DA doesn't make sense than a 2AR that goes for an equally contrived link/impact turn. I am willing to vote on 0% risk of the case or a DA, but it will require work on your part to explain it to me.

Specific Arguments:

Disads

I like DA/case debates, especially when the neg is investing time and analysis on specific case defense arguments. I read politics throughout high school, so I'll be familiar with it, but I think that it's probably not the best option in most cases. I would rather hear a more case-specific DA that clashes more with the aff.

Counterplans

I generally really like counterplans, but my opinions vary with different types of CPs, so I'll just give my opinions on the different types:

-- Agent CPs: I think the majority of the debate community probably disagrees with me on this, but I tend to think the Agent CPs don't disprove the aff because they don't prove a logical opportunity cost to the topic actor (the USFG). This is not to say that you couldn't win Agent CPs good in front of me, but you will have to prove an interpretation of my role as the judge as someone who has the power to decide between the USFG taking an action and some other actor (States, Other countries, etc).

-- Advantage CPs: I really like these counterplans because I think that they're good at testing contrived aff internal links. I'd say the A+ strategy would be to find advantage CPs in 1AC evidence because it makes for a more compelling CP solvency story.

-- PICs: I love a good PIC debate*. However, the most common way neg teams botch these debates is by either 1.) not properly clarifying exactly what the aff defends in 1AC cross-x, or 2.) not properly writing their CP texts. You can win different theoretical interpretations of what competition means, but it would be best if you could write your CP text so that it is both textually and functionally competitive.

PICs are also a good way to leverage smaller topic DAs, which I like.

*You're unlikely to win that a Word PIC is competitive in front of me.

-- Process CPs: I think that CPs that compete based off of the certainty or immediacy of the plan are generally sketchy but not unwinnable in front of me - I'm more likely to believe that the CP is justified if you have solvency advocate evidence in the context of the aff.

Theory

I'll vote on it if it's well explained and impacted out. The only thing I'll add here is that I tend to think that 1-2 conditional advocacies are defensible, but beyond that I'm more likely to go aff on condo bad.

Kritiks

Kritiks should disprove the affirmative. I think that kritiks tend to fail at this for two reasons: they either don't have an internal link from the aff to their impacts, or they don't present a logical opportunity cost to the aff.

- Internal links: In my experience, the link story of most Ks goes something like plan = capitalism, and then capitalism -> extinction, but it doesn't make the direct connection between the aff and the impacts to the K. I think this vulnerability opens up the K to stronger perm arguments because the aff can more easily prove that the plan is good even if the rest of the status quo is bad.

- Opportunity costs: you can refer to my thoughts on agent CPs here because the same basic logic applies. If the plan advocates an action by the USFG, and the neg advocates a grassroots movement against capitalism, I'm unlikely to think the alt disproves the affirmative/is a logically relevant consideration.

This is where framework debates come in. I think that framework can be used to prove competition for alts that do something about epistemology/ontology/etc. because it proves why the alt's approach is distinct in a way that's important enough for me to consider competitive. However, you're unlikely to win on just FW arguments: the 2NR that just says "epistemology first" and then "the aff's epistemology is capitalist/imperialist/etc." doesn't strike me as a compelling neg ballot because the epistemology arguments are really just defensive indicts to the aff.

- Side note: I tend to think that the neg should have to prove that the alt solves the impacts to the K. This is an important part of the debate that the aff should press on.

Thoughts on specific Ks -

-- Topic Ks - these are my favorite Ks, and most likely the ones that will clash best with the affirmative. However, they're also the Ks that I'm least likely to be familiar with, so they might require extra explanation.

-- Standard Ks (Security K/Cap K/Fem IR/etc.) - I'll be most familiar with these Ks, but they're often very generic and need to be explained in the context of the aff.

-- Identity Ks (Race/Gender/Sexuality/Disability/etc) - Links should be clearly explained and specific to the aff. I'm not very persuaded by links of omission or link arguments that are tied solely to state-based advocacy.

-- Language Ks - if the other team uses slurs, is outwardly rude towards someone's identity, or otherwise tries to invalidate someone's identity, I'm 100% willing to vote on these arguments. However, I think that some language Ks are more persuasive than others, so I would only suggest going for this argument if the language is particularly egregious.

Topicality (vs traditional affs)

I like topicality debates. That being said, I think that your T argument becomes exponentially more persuasive when you can develop a topical caselist or, better yet, a topical version of the aff. The reverse is also true: if the neg can't provide a vision of what their interpretation looks like, I'm more likely to be persuaded by aff characterizations of the neg interp being overlimiting.

I default to reasonability. This means that, absent an alternative framing for the T debate, I'll vote aff if the affirmative is able to win sufficient defense to the negative's interpretation, even in the absence of substantial affirmative offense.

Topicality (vs non-traditional affs)

As I said above, I believe that debate is a game. Therefore, I'll probably find arguments about procedural fairness more persuasive than arguments about changing real-world policy etc. However, the neg also have to prove the value of the game, so that requires the neg to make some claims to educational/skill-based benefits to debate.

Because I think that debate is a game, I also tend to think that rules/limits are good; this means I'd be more persuaded by an aff counterinterpretation that sets a different limit on the topic than an aff argument that we shouldn't have any limits to begin with.

I'm not inclined to think that topicality is a form of violence, but that's mostly because I don't think it's ever been adequately explained to me. I could see myself voting on this argument, but it would require a lot of explanation on the part of the aff.

K vs K aff debates

I'll admit that I have almost no experience with these kind of debates. The depth of my knowledge on this subject does not extend past the phrase "no perms in a method debate", which is a statement I don't understand. In a debate like this, both sides will have to do a lot of explanation of how the aff/alt/perm function and how they relate to each other.

email: eforslund@gmail.com

Copied and Pasted from my judge philosophy wiki page.

Recent Bio:

Director of Debate at Pace Academy

15 years judging and coaching high school debate. First at Damien High School then at Greenhill. Generally only judge a handful of college rounds a year.

Zero rounds on the current college topic in 2020.

Coached at the University of Wyoming 2004-2005.

I have decided to incentivize reading strategies that involve talking about the specifics of the affirmative case. Too many high school teams find a terrible agent or process cp and use politics as a crutch. Too many high school teams pull out their old, generic, k's and read them regardless of the aff. As an incentive to get away from this practice I will give any 2N that goes for a case-only strategy an extra point. If this means someone who would have earned a 29 ends up with a 30, then so be it. I would rather encourage a proliferation of higher speaker points, then a proliferation of bad, generic arguments. If you have to ask what a case strategy involves, then you probably aren't going to read one. I'm not talking about reading some case defense and going for a disad, or a counterplan that solves most of the aff. I'm talking about making a majority of the debate a case debate -- and that case debate continuing into the 2NR.

You'll notice "specificity good" throughout my philosophy. I will give higher points to those teams that engage in more specific strategies, then those that go for more generic ones. This doesnt mean that I hate the k -- on the contrary, I wouldn't mind hearing a debate on a k, but it needs to be ABOUT THE AFF. The genero security k doesnt apply to the South Korean Prostitutes aff, the Cap k doesnt apply to the South Korea Off-Shore Balancing aff - and you arent likely to convince me otherwise. But if you have an argument ABOUT the affirmative --especially a specific k that has yet to be read, then you will be rewarded if I am judging you.

I have judged high-level college and high school debates for the last 14 years. That should answer a few questions that you are thinking about asking: yes, speed is fine, no, lack of clarity is not. Yes, reading the k is ok, no, reading a bunch of junk that doesn't apply to the topic, and failing to explain why it does is not.

The single most important piece of information I can give you about me as a judge is that I cut a lot of cards -- you should ALWAYS appeal to my interest in the literature and to protect the integrity of that literature. Specific is ALWAYS better than generic, and smart strategies that are well researched should ALWAYS win out over generic, lazy arguments. Even if you dont win debates where you execute specifics, you will be rewarded.

Although my tendencies in general are much more to the right than the rest of the community, I have voted on the k many times since I started judging, and am generally willing to listen to whatever argument the debaters want to make. Having said that, there are a few caveats:

1. I don't read a lot of critical literature; so using a lot of terms or references that only someone who reads a lot of critical literature would understand isn’t going to get you very far. If I don’t understand your arguments, chances are pretty good you aren’t going to win the debate, no matter how persuasive you sound. This goes for the aff too explain your argument, don’t assume I know what you are talking about.

2. You are much better off reading critical arguments on the negative then on the affirmative. I tend to believe that the affirmative has to defend a position that is at least somewhat predictable, and relates to the topic in a way that makes sense. If they don’t, I am very sympathetic to topicality and framework-type arguments. This doesn’t mean you can’t win a debate with a non-traditional affirmative in front of me, but it does mean that it is going to be much harder, and that you are going to have to take topicality and framework arguments seriously. To me, predictability and fairness are more important than stretching the boundaries of debate, and the topic. If your affirmative defends a predictable interpretation of the topic, you are welcome to read any critical arguments you want to defend that interpretation, with the above stipulations.

3. I would much rather watch a disad/counterplan/case debate than some other alternative.

In general, I love a good politics debate - but - specific counterplans and case arguments are THE BEST strategies. I like to hear new innovative disads, but I have read enough of the literature on this year’s topic that I would be able to follow any deep debate on any of the big generic disads as well.

As far as theory goes, I probably defer negative a bit more in theory debates than affirmative. That probably has to do with the fact that I like very well thought-out negative strategies that utilize PICS and specific disads and case arguments. As such, I would much rather see an affirmative team impact turn the net benefits to a counterplan then to go for theory (although I realize this is not always possible). I really believe that the boundaries of the topic are formed in T debates at the beginning of the year, therefore I am much less willing to vote on a topicality argument against one of the mainstream affirmatives later on in the year than I am at the first few tournaments. I’m not going to outline all of the affs that I think are mainstream, but chances are pretty good if there are more than a few teams across the country reading the affirmative, I’m probably going to err aff in a close T debate.

One last thing, if you really want to get high points in front of me, a deep warming debate is the way to go. I would be willing to wager that I have dug further into the warming literature than just about anybody in the country, and I love to hear warming debates. I realize by this point most teams have very specific strategies to most of the affirmatives on the topic, but if you are wondering what advantage to read, or whether or not to delve into the warming debate on the negative, it would be very rewarding to do so in front of me -- at the very least you will get some feedback that will help you in future debates.

Ok, I lied, one more thing. Ultimately I believe that debate is a game. I believe that debaters should have fun while debating. I realize that certain debates get heated, however do your best not to be mean to your partner, and to the other team. There are very few things I hate more than judging a debate where the teams are jerks to each other. Finally, although I understand the strategic value to impact turning the alternative to kritiks and disads (and would encourage it in most instances), there are a few arguments I am unwilling to listen to those include: sexism good, racism good, genocide good, and rape good. If you are considering reading one of those arguments, don’t. You are just going to piss me off.

Northwestern '22

Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart '18

camillergm123@gmail.com

General Stuff

Do not let my philosophy dictate what you can and cannot read in front of me. I will do my best to evaluate all arguments fairly assuming everyone is respectful before, during, and after the debate.

If I catch you clipping cards I will automatically vote for the other team.

Ev comparison is an underused tactic that I value greatly. Don't just say their evidence is unqualified, tell me why it is unqualified and why that matters. I will err heavily towards the team who has cards to support their claims although smart analytics are winnable arguments.

FW/ T

Affirmative teams must defend an instance of topical action by the USFG. This is an almost non-negotiable issue and it will be very hard to persuade me to vote affirmative in these debates.

Topicality

Topicality is a voting issue. I will default to competing interpretations

Kritiks

I believe fairness is a legitimate impact to framework. I will weigh the aff against a feasible and well-explained alternative unless given a convincing reason to do otherwise. I am willing to vote on the k if there are specific and well-explained links to the affirmative. I think aff teams are too quick to discredit the power of attacking the alternative's solvency and dismiss the persuasiveness of the perm double bind.

Counterplans

I believe counterplans have to be textually and functionally competitive. It is possible to persuade me otherwise, but counterplans that compete on things like immediacy or certainty will not win my ballot. However, my opinions on consult/ conditions counterplans changes depending on the context of the debate. For me to vote on the permutation the aff needs to explain what that world looks like and how it can overcome the link to the net benefit.

Disadvantages

The phrase "the disad turns the case" is overused in debate and never thoroughly explained. If the negative is able to capitalize on this argument and properly explain it then it can become a crucial factor in determining my decision. I also think the affirmative should consider whether or not they can solve the disad's impact. This argument is underused and I consider it extremely strategic. Affs can beat disads on purely analytics criticizing the thesis/ ev of the disad.

disad not intrinsic, fiat solves the link, and other theory args on the politics disad will almost never win my ballot. Dont waste 2ac time making them in front of me

Theory

Condo- Good

PICs- Probably good

Word PICs- Probably bad

International/ 50 state fiat- Good

Agent CPs- Aff leaning

Floating PIKs- Bad

Spec- Seriously?

I default to reject the arg not the team unless told otherwise

Former policy debater at Alpharetta High School from 2013-2017

2N for 4 years

Big picture:

• I have been out of debate for several years now, so please keep that in mind!
• Read what you're comfortable with. I have pre-dispositions and preferences, of course, but I would like to see you debate what you are well-versed in!
• Be clear in both your argumentation and your speaking. Don't assume I know minute details of what you're saying. Clarity over speed (always).
• Love evidence comparison and cogent analytical arguments.
• Tech over truth with some minor caveats.
• Have fun!

Just to give some context about my debate history: I debated for four years in high school with Dallas Jesuit. I went to Emory, but did not debate while I was there. While in college, I did occasional work for Jesuit and coached/judged at some national tournaments. After graduating, I spent two years coaching and judging at Jesuit before going to law school. I'm currently in my second year and have limited judging experience on this topic (several rounds at the Texas state tournament in March 2019).

Stylistic Preferences
Framing is good - explain why your links supersede the link-turns, why the solvency deficit on the counterplan means you win on disad mitigation, etc. Tell me how you want different parts of the flow (and different pages of the debate) to interact.

I get annoyed by bad highlighting - that is, highlighting that reduces sentences into fragments and phrases that don't coherently fit together. If your opponent reads a card that is severely under-highlighted, and tries to extend warrants that weren't actually in the highlighting, point that out - I'll be receptive.

My speaker point range is usually 28-29 - I find myself going above that more often than I do going below that. If you want good speaks: line-by-line, clash, and be fast but clear (and smart, but that should go without saying).

I like to be included on email chains. I don't scroll/read through the docs during speeches, unless I get worried about clipping cards.

Theory
Slow down. No, really. Slow. Down. Conditionality is probably good – multiple conditional worlds that contradict each other are probably less of a good thing. Most other theory arguments are probably a reason to reject the argument and not the team (yes, even if those blippy theory arguments are conceded) - maybe you can convince me otherwise. You should be talking about the impacts to your theoretical objection (or counter-interpretation) just as you would for any other argument.

When schools break a truly new Aff, they should not have to disclose anything about the substance of that Aff to the Negative before the round. I think that is a powerful incentive for people to innovate. It will be almost impossible for you to convince me otherwise. An Aff that is new to a particular pairing but that has been previously broken by another team from the same school is not "new."

Topicality
At the end of the year, against Affs that have been run for awhile, Neg teams might need to focus more on why the particular Aff's un-topical-ness is bad (not necessarily in-round abuse, but a reason their Aff, and not necessarily what they justify, makes it harder for you to debate). Links and impacts should be discussed just as they would any other argument. I do not think that the limits debate is necessarily the most important standard. I default to competing interpretations (unless a compelling argument against that default can be won), so it is important that you talk about what other debates (not just your own) would look like under your interpretation (my earlier caveat about end-of-the-year debates changes this a bit). Evidence on topicality can be very useful and strategic, but is by no means necessary.

Counterplans
PICs and agent counterplans are usually okay – agent counterplans that play fast-and-loose with excessive amounts of fiat may be less okay. States counterplans are probably okay, especially if you have a solvency advocate.

I’m not the biggest fan of process counterplans, unless those counterplans come with evidence/a solvency advocate (preferably specific to the Aff). That said, a solvency advocate isn't a death knell to the Aff - if you think their process counterplan is bad for debate, tell me why.

All of the above is debatable. I'll vote for a counterplan I don't like if the Aff doesn't win.

Kritiks
As far as framework goes, Aff’s probably get to weigh the action of the plan. Links and impacts should be discussed (and labeled as such) just as they would for any other arguments. It’s probably important that the link is specific to the Aff – even better if you have multiple links specific to the Aff. It’s also probably important that your alternative solves the Aff harms, or at least makes some attempt to. The Negative should bring up and defend what they think the role-of-the-ballot should be.

Thoughts on "non-traditional"/"performance" Affs: Here's my starting point: I think plan texts are probably good, and that the Aff should probably engage (at least some of) the specifics of the topic/resolution. That said, I’m sympathetic to the need to have discussions in the debate space that don't necessary follow those criteria. But I’m also sympathetic to the Neg’s need to, frankly, have something predictable to debate against. Debate isn't just a platform for advocacy, and it isn't just a game - it's a little bit of both combined to make something else entirely. I think that Negatives going for framework or topicality against these types of Affirmatives can get a lot of mileage out of arguing either that there is a "topical" version of the Aff, or that switch-side debate solves. That said, I don't want this to dissuade you from running these Affs in front of me - but if your access point is something other than a plan text, and the pref sheet doesn't prevent me from judging you, I want you to know my usual leanings and still be able to win. I'll judge what gets debated in-round - if you win that your type of advocacy is needed (that your education is uniquely good and uniquely a product of what you're doing in the debate round) and not all that bad, you'll win the round (especially if the Neg isn't doing a good job contesting those points). Tell me why the topical version of the plan doesn't do the trick, tell me why the discussions the Neg wants us to have aren't important/useful, read some great literature that backs up your point of view, etc. Teach me something new - I'm here to learn, too.

Email: ryan.gorman.p@gmail.com

Alex Greene

Westminster

20 March 2018

Judging Philosophy

I view debate as an academic competition where one plays to win. Most importantly, I do not have any predispositions of arguments except for structural K's and K-affs. That being said, if you read either of those arguments, then I am probably not the best judge for you.

I think that 90% of life is presentation. So, make it good.

50 state fiat is a reason to reject the states counterplan in MOST, BUT NOT ALL instances.

Who Am I?

Greenhill 2018

Trinity 2022

email: sgrimsley99@gmail.com

Short

Tech>truth

theory = sad face

make complete arguments

I'm not actively involved in either high school or college debate - my background knowledge will be lacking - do with that what you will

everything below is mostly a list about my preferences in debate that I think are noteworthy or diverge from community norms

T

I like t debates.

I prefer to view these debates in terms of offense/defense. Reasonability will be a hard sell

Winning internal links to predictability or precision is much more important than limits in a vacuum.

I'm more likely to err towards smaller topics than protecting "aff innovation"

plan text in a vacuum is a bad standard

DA

Winning turns case only matters if you win a reasonable risk of the DA.

Politics is great

DA non intrinsic/fiat solves the link/bottom of the docket aren't arguments that I'll ever care about

CP

very neg biased on all counterplan theory.

If the aff makes a theory argument by shotgunning standards without a warrant or coherent argument in 10 seconds or a similar practice, the negative is completely justified by responding by pointing out the incomplete argument and shotgunning standards without warrant in return

Positional competition is good

Counterplans should be functionally and textually competitive

The aff should probably be certain and immediate

I will kick the counterplan for the negative almost always

Condo=infinite+good

FW

used to be no plan no win, unsure now. i will probably vote aff more than you or I'd expect, but at a lower rate than the aff's ideal judge.

less persuaded by fairness things in a vacuum

I care about visions/models of debate more than anything

winning structural claims that implicate the negatives models of research is the ideal route for the affirmative

K

The aff gets to weigh the case

I amenable to weighing impacts to reps/epistemology

framework is much more persuasive as a competition/alt framing argument

I'm relatively familiar with most authors/arguments - but you still need to explain - I don't want to import my own knowledge

If your overview is longer than 45 seconds I will stop flowing after 45 seconds until you start doing line by line

Other/Random Thoughts

Always a risk --> hard to convince me no risk

You can insert evidence you've re-highlighted

"for your da's, but not your cp's" is a silly standard

tech>truth --> impossible to convince me otherwise as long as the original argument was "complete"

Impact turns done well are a route to high speaks

I have a relatively high standard for the 1ar and don't have any problem writing off incomplete 1ar arguments

If you say the words "new affs bad" or "cooperative learning framework" you will lose speaker points and probably lose if it is the 2nr option

Framing contentions are silly

Part-time coach at the University of Kentucky, formerly debated at UK (graduated in 2020)

add me to the email chain: genevieveelise1028 at gmail dot com

General Thoughts

I like for debate to be fun and will generally enjoy judging in debates where it is clear you are having a good time and doing what you're passionate about. Don't be afraid to let your personality show in how you debate - being funny or spicy in the CX are often times I enjoy the debate the most. I understand the amount of time and dedication it takes to do this activity seriously, so I will work very hard to make sure that I am evaluating your debate in a way that respects the hard work that you have put into the activity, and the time and energy you are using to be present at each tournament.

The more I reflect on how I judge, the more I think it is really important for debaters to provide instruction/guidance in their speeches about how to tie all of the different pieces of the debate together. 2NRs and 2ARs that do a lot of this, backed by quality evidence read in earlier speeches, will often find themselves winning, getting good speaker points, and being more satisfied with my decision and how I understood the overarching picture in the debate. I generally believe, in the 2NR and 2AR, reading cards should be an absolute last resort.

Online Debate

I appreciate the accessibility benefits of online debate but do think it suffers from some quality deficit. If my camera is off during prep time, I have probably walked away for a number of reasons. I'll generally try to pop my camera back on when I get back to signal I have returned, and will also usually keep a headphone in to maintain awareness of when you stop prep. Just give me a sec to turn on my camera and get settled before you launch into an order or the speech.

I have an audio processing disorder, which makes it more challenging to flow due to the variety of ways that online debate affects clarity/feedback/etc - please take this into account and put in more effort to be clear on your transitions, tags, etc. It helps me to be able to see you talking, so if you are angled to be completely hidden by your laptop, I will likely be less of a precise flow than otherwise.

Please recall that while I cannot hear you when you are muted on zoom, I can still see you - things like talking for the entire 2AR, blatantly not flowing your opponents speeches, etc are still bad practice, even if you can technically do it.

Nukes Topic

I love this topic, think debating about nukes is educational and based on a robust controversy in the literature, and personally worked in nonprolif/arms control advocacy so it's an issue I care about lots!

That being said, I'm bored - I think assurances/deterrence is a great debate, but have a pretty high threshold for debating the DAs well on both sides - I think innovation in the way people answer and debate the generics could be more interesting and will reward quality in connecting all of the pieces of these debates. I would also enjoy judging some more varied negative strategies, and will reward innovation on the topic with good speaker points

soapbox moment - say it with me: de-clare-uh-tory - declatory is NOT a word

DA/Case/CP

Disad and case is awesome, more case analysis that is smart will be rewarded in points. I think smart and specific counterplans are cool. The more specific and in grounded in the literature your CP is, the less likely I am to care about theory.

Topicality (vs aff with a plan)

I think a limited topic is good and care immensely about the comparison of one version of the topic to another when it comes to T. If you cannot explain coherently what the difference between the two topics are, I am much less likely to care about your very abstract appeals to the notion of limits or ground.

K (vs aff with a plan)

I enjoy judging these debates. Being more specific about the topic is far better than some random backfile check about Baudrillard. You should explain your arguments clearly vs using buzz words because I will be much more likely to understand what you are trying to communicate.

The specificity of the link and explanation of the link and how it coheres with your broader theory about the world and interacts with the consequences of the plan are all things that strongly influence how much I am persuaded by the K. If you have a link to the action of the plan and clearly explain how the impact to that compares to the impacts of the affirmative, as well as having an alternative that resolves this impact, I am likely to vote for you. I find myself less often voting for the K in debates where the neg relies on a strong framework/prioritize rhetorical/discursive links path but would not preclude this entirely because the aff is often time pressured and poorly equipped to debate about framework and fiat.

In addition, I think it's important to resolve how I should weigh impacts in the later speeches - I find myself often concluding I should weigh the aff and its consequences but also weighing the discursive/ethical/structural impacts described by the neg but not getting a lot of instruction about how to compare those two things and decide which one to vote on. I think mitigating claims about total extinction impacts with impact defense and specific solvency take-outs would go a long way to changing how I vote in these debates.

Planless Affs

I have found myself voting both ways in framework debates, but am usually persuaded by the benefits of clash, procedural fairness, etc. The more specific the aff is to the topic & good aff cards are things that most often lead to an aff ballot in these debates. The negative making a strong, coherent limits argument that includes arguments that appeal to clash while providing defense that proves the topic is compatible with the affs theory are things that most often lead to a neg ballot in these debates.

I think specific strategies against these affs are interesting and good (whether that be a da/k/pic) and will reward this specific research with speaker points. I generally think if something is in the 1AC I am likely to believe there is a link to your argument, and am very persuaded by strategies that utilize the cx to pin down specificities of the 1ac advocacy and then predicate the strategy off of that. If the aff is unwilling to speak specifically about the strategy of the advocacy, I generally tend to be more persuaded by framework.

I usually am not persuaded by strategies that rely on the idea that we should destroy debate, or that extinction or death is good. I do not think there is much of a difference between "debating about death being good" and "advocating death being good" so if your strategy relies on a pivot resembling "well we don't think everyone should die but we should talk about death", it is not a good strategy to use in front of me.

Misc.

I tend to lean towards conditionality being good, but would be persuaded otherwise in particularly egregious incidents.

If you are going to read cards written by former debaters, take ten minutes to ask around why they are no longer in the community. Strongly consider if the reason is one which should preclude their evidence from being introduced in a debate. I do not expect perfection in this regard, but I do think we should be talking about this.

It has come to my attention that I am what one might call a "points fairy". I will be working to adjust my points to more accurately reflect the scale I find most other judges follow.

I like when lots of quality evidence is read, and will often read your evidence at the conclusion of the debate (and if evidence is referenced in a cx, will usually try to find what you are referencing while it's being discussed). That being said, evidence is best paired with strong judge instruction in the rebuttals. There are instances when evidence is good enough to speak for itself, but in a debate where both sides read decent ev on an issue, I will often find myself voting for the team who tells me how and why their arguments matter more.

After hosting a bunch of tournaments in my time at UK, I am sympathetic to the pleas of tournament hosts and tabrooms. Please be on time, keep things efficient in debates, and clean up behind yourselves.

My facial expressions are likely unrelated to the things you are saying. In particular, I may come across low-energy. This doesn't mean that I am unhappy with the debate (although if I find your debating upbeat, engaging, and high-energy I will probably be a bit more likely to mirror that). Tournaments are a long-haul, I judge a lot of debates at each tournament (often every debate), and there seems to be increasingly little time afforded to restorative things like sleep or eating, so don't worry too much if I'm coming across a little sleepy.

Also, I sometimes just stare off into space when I'm typing - I'm still paying attention as long as I'm typing.

Michigan '21

Westminster '17

Add me to the email chain- thelasthall@gmail.com

*PF Version

I debated & judged in Policy for about 10 years- this is the first time I have experienced Public Forum debate. Please bear with me as I learn the procedures and rules.

I value well-reasoned arguments that can account for, overcome or dismiss the opponents' arguments. Evidence/cards are good, but need to be explained within the context of your argument.

I'm fine with speed, as long as I can understand what you're saying. Flowing/note-taking is good, I will be doing it. Argument wins debates, style is fun.

I will enter all debates with an unbiased perspective on the arguments.

* Policy Version

NDCA Update

I am the judge to read risky arguments in front of. Some arguments I miss hearing and weirdly have a lot of experience with: dedev, co2 good, anthro, buddhism, t substantial (Neg: do the math, Aff: say math is arbitrary), International fiat. Maybe someone reads Malthus. Keep it interesting.

But there's a caveat. Here are some arguments I never understood and would rather not judge: Heg Bad, Courts Disads, the generic Security K, high food prices good/bad. Basically anything relating to IR...

Read what you want, just don't be rude. Plan or no plan, just win it, champ. I've gone for most arguments. I like bold strategies (think 8 minutes of politics, or just an impact turn, etc.)

Teams can win either side of Framework in front of me. I've read plans (most years), I've read no plan (2 years). That said, my voting record might show a bit of Neg leaning on Framework. Affs trying to beat that: win the TVA is bad and doesn't solve your offense, win the impact debate.

While I hope nobody prefs me, I'm a good* judge for nearly anything.

- *I don't like to use my noggin very much, so go for the easy win. I prefer teams going for the path of least resistance than necessarily taking the core of their arguments head-on (I'd rather judge a pic than a big deterrence good/bad debate). But if that's your thing, then by all means.

General Notes

- I'm very flow-centric. Dropped arg is true, but you gotta give me some semblance of a warrant for it to actually matter. I'm not big on judge intervention, but keep in mind that if neither team explains how I should evaluate some arguments/their implications, I'm probably gonna have to sort that out myself.

- Don't be mean to your partner or opponents.

- I don't know what the high school resolution is, and won't know beyond a surface understanding. Don't make assumptions about community consensus or acronym usage.

Theory

- Win your impact outweighs/turns theirs, and deal with the line-by-line.

- I want to reject the argument, not the team for all theory except Conditionality.

- I lean Neg instinctually on all theory, but, again, if you win I should vote Aff on Conditions CPs bad, then you win. Shooting your shot won't affect your speaks too, if there was good reason to do so.

- Perms are tests of competitions - don't advocate the perm in the 2AR unless they've dropped a normal means argument or something and it's actually useful.

CPs

- Goes hand-in-hand with theory, I never liked judges imposing their own views here. If you win it's legit, then it's legit.

- I've always been a big fan of the CP/DA 2nr. I almost always recommend that over DA/Case.

- I always view a CP through sufficiency framing. If the Neg wins that the CP solves most of the Aff, and that the net benefit outweighs the small risk/impact of a solvency deficit, I vote Neg.

- For the Aff, make all the arguments in the 2AC. Links to net benefit, perms, solvency deficits, etc etc. I know I said I'm Neg on theory, but I also will vote Aff on an intrinsic perm if the Neg fails to win that intrinsicness is bad. To beat sufficiency framing, you've gotta really explain and impact the solvency deficit - why is this more important than the net benefit?

Disads

- Usually filter it through the link primarily, but obviously uniqueness is important too.

- Impact calc is huge, especially turns case.

K (read: Planless) Affs

- I'm pretty familiar with most of the lit/arguments read in these debates.

- Framework isn't an auto-ballot for me. Neither is framework-bad.

- Teams should establish and win why I should give them the ballot.

Ks on the Neg

- Please don't just read pre-scripted blocks. This applies to all arguments, but I see it most frequently with these debates. I don't like big overviews because they incentivize teams to forego line-by-line debating.

- Whatever your big piece of offense is, explain why it matters. If you win framework, what does that mean for the rest of the flow? Same for the links.

- I'm not a great judge for Ks that rely on framework for winning. It's really hard to convince me not to weigh representations/assumptions in the context of the plan. I also rarely hear solid explanations for what it means for the Neg to win framework, and how that implicates the rest of the debate. If I can, I will deprioritize framework in my decision

- Link debating is also really important. Specific lines from 1AC cards will go a lot farther than generic reform-bad links. If possible, every link should have its own impact.

- I think Affs should get perms. Just like with a CP, the perm means the Neg has to prove exclusivity.

- I don't know what the word "Semiotics" means.

- If you read the Lanza card and give a warrant, I'll give you +.2 speaker points.

Ks on the Neg vs K Affs

- I will probably vote Aff on the perm. Obviously this depends on how the debating happens (including what the links and alt are), but this is my first instinct. Neg needs to win exclusivity.

- If the Neg wins that the Aff shouldn't get perms, then there ya go. But I hope the Aff can actually debate why they should get perms because I want to vote Aff on the perm.

- I don't like authenticity testing. There are always competitive incentives in debate that at least play some role.

Framework

- First, win why your impacts outweigh theirs.

- TVA is really useful for dealing with a lot of Aff offense, as are switch side, ballot not key, and whatever other tricks you got up your sleeve.

- Fairness can be an impact, it can not be an impact. Up to how the debate goes down. If you wanna win fairness as a terminal impact, you gotta be heavy on explaining that and why I should care.

T

- Been a while since I threw down on T. See earlier note- I don't know this resolution.

- Be clear about what the topic looks like under your interpretation.

- Neg needs a caselist, clear interpretation and violation, and most importantly: impact work.

- I've never understood the requirements for an Aff to beat T. If you win We Meet, then you don't need to win a counter-interpretation. If you win overlimiting, you also have to win why that's more important than the Neg's impacts.

jeremy.hammond@pinecrest.edu, pinecrestdebatedocs@gmail.com (please put both).

I have experience judging most policy debates that would occur. I have found that there is really only one argument type that I currently won't evaluate which are wipeout based arguments which prioritize saving unknown life to that of saving known life (human/non-human life).

I haven't calculated the percentages but I below are some feelings of where I am in various types of debates.

Policy aff v Core DA - Even

Policy aff v Process CP - 60% for the neg (mostly due to poor affirmative debating rather than argument preference)

Policy aff v K - Probably have voted neg more mostly due to poor affirmative debating or dropped tricks. Side note i'm pretty against the you link you lose style of negative framework, but I have regretfully have voted for it.

Theory v Policy Neg - Probably voted more neg than aff when the aff has a non-sense counter-interpretation (i.e. CI - you get 2 condo). When the aff is just going for condo bad with a more strict counter-interpretation I have voted aff more.

K aff v FW - Probably even to voted aff more (like due to poor negative debating)

K aff v K Neg - Probably judged these the least honestly they don't stick out for me to remember how I voted. I have definitely voted for the Cap K against K affs but I don't know the percentages.

K aff v Policy Neg - (Think State good, Alt Bad, or CP) have judged but can't remember.

I have plenty of more specific thoughts about debate, but mostly those don't play into my decisions. I will add more as the year progresses if something bothers me in a round.

KRHAMRICK@GMAIL.COM

I've been judging debates for a long time. I prefer listening to debates wherein each team presents and executes a well-researched strategy for winning. The ideological flavor of your arguments matters less to me than how you establish clash with your opponents’ arguments. I am open to most anything, understanding that sometimes “you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do” to win the debate.

At the end of the debate, I vote for the team that defends the superior course of action. My ballot constitutes an endorsement of one course relative to another. To win the debate, the affirmative must prove their course is preferable when compared to the status quo or negative alternatives. That being said, I interpret broadly exactly what constitutes a plan/course of action. An alternative is proven a superior course of action when it is net beneficial compared to the entirety of the plan combined with part or parts of the alternative. Simply solving better than the affirmative is not enough: the alternative must force choice. Likewise, claiming a larger advantage than the affirmative is not enough to prove the alternative competitive. A legitimate permutation is defined as the entirety of the "plan" combined with parts or parts of the alternative. Mere avoidance of potential or "unknown" disadvantages, or a link of omission, is insufficient: the negative must read win a link and impact in order to evaluate the relative merits of the plan and the alternative. The 2AC saying something akin to "Perm - do the plan and all noncompetitive parts of the counterplan/alternative" is merely a template for generating permutation ideas, rather than a permutation in and of itself. It's your job to resolve the link, not mine.

I believe there is an inherent value to the topic/resolution, as the topic serves as the jumping off point for the year's discussion. The words of the topic should be examined as a whole. Ultimately, fairness and ground issues determine how strict an interpretation of the topic that I am willing to endorse. The most limiting interpretation of a topic rarely is the best interpretation of a topic for the purposes of our game. The topic is what it is: merely because the negative wishes the topic to be smaller (or the affirmative wishes it bigger, or worded a different way) does not mean that it should be so. An affirmative has to be at its most topical the first time it is run.

I don’t care about any of your SPEC arguments. The affirmative must use the agent specified in the topic wording; subsets are okay. Neither you nor your partner is the United States federal government. The affirmative is stuck with defending the resolutional statement, however I tend to give the affirmative significant leeway as to how they choose to define/defend it. The affirmative is unlikely to persuade me criticisms of advocacy of USFG action should be dismissed as irrelevant to an evaluation of policy efficacy. I believe that switch-side debating is good.

All theory arguments should be contextualized in terms of the topic and the resultant array of affirmative and negative strategies. Reciprocity is a big deal for me, i.e., more negative flex allows for more aff room to maneuver and vice versa). Conditional, topical, and plan inclusive alternatives are presumptively legitimate. A negative strategy reliant on a process counterplan, consultation counterplan, or a vague alternative produces an environment in which in which I am willing to allow greater maneuverability in terms of what I view as legitimate permutations for the affirmative. I’ve long been skeptical of the efficacy of fifty state uniform fiat. Not acting, i.e., the status quo, always remains an option.

Debate itself is up for interrogation within the confines of the round.

I tend to provide a lot of feedback while judging, verbal and otherwise. If you are not clear, I will not attempt to reconstruct what you said. I tend to privilege the cards identified in the last two rebuttals as establishing the critical nexus points of the debate and will read further for clarification and understanding when I feel it necessary. Reading qualifications for your evidence will be rewarded with more speaker points. Reading longer, more warranted evidence will be rewarded with significantly more consideration in the decision process. Clipping cards is cheating and cardclippers should lose.

I value clash and line-by-line debating. Rarely do I find the massive global last rebuttal overview appealing. Having your opponent's speech document doesn't alleviate the need for you to pay attention to what's actually been said in the debate. Flow and, for god's sake, learn how to efficiently save/jump/email/share your speech document. I generally don't follow the speech doc in real time.

"New affs bad" is dumb; don't waste your time or mine. When debating a new aff, the negative gets maximum flexibility.

I believe that both basic civil rights law as well as basic ethics requires that debaters and judges conduct themselves in rounds in a manner that protects the rights of all participants to an environment free of racial/sexual hostility or harassment.

Tripp Haskins

Woodward Academy '17

University of Georgia '21

Duke University '24

tripphaskins@gmail.com

General Info

You do you. Do whatever you are good at.

If blocks don't even start with They Say: "X", what are we even doing here?

Why read a framing contention, when you could read a real advantage instead?

"Inserting highlighting into the debate" is wrong. You have to read the part of their card that makes an argument.

Topicality

Most of the time, there's no good terminal impact calculus that happens in these debates. Debaters should envision T debates like a CP and DA, with the interpretation/counter-interpretation acting as a counterplan to solve most of the other teams offense and having a DA that outweighs the offense it doesn't solve. Most T debates only have internal links, and no terminal impacts that are never weighed against other impacts in the round. I personally don't understand the recent trend of policy judges not even entertaining the idea of a T debate, establishing a coherent topic is important.

Framework

Teams should redefine the words in the resolution to something that they meet. You need to be able to win that your model of debate is preferable to the negative's model of debate. Affirmative teams would be best impact turning something that the negative's model of debate results in. Most of the impact turns to framework that get played out feel like negative ground at the end of the day, so explaining why the model of debate, not just reading a topical plan, is bad. Impact calculus and relative internal link analysis separates winning from losing. Negative teams would be best served forwarding a robust defense of procedural impacts such as fairness combined with a mechanism to resolve a large portion of the affirmative's offense. Things like advocacy skills and topic education need examples of what they influence or create to become impacts. Often times in these debates I decide that neither side wins a big risk of unique offense, so internal link and impact comparison is important for winning.

Kritiks

I did a large amount of critique research, so I am very familiar with most of the literature that will potentially be read in debates. The link debate and framework are the most important aspects for the negative to emphasize. Explain the links in the context of the affirmative, not just overarching structures. The weakest part of the kritik is always the alternative and that's where the aff should gain offense against. You need to be able to explain a specific internal link from the policy or discourse of the 1AC to something, rather than it being the logic of a system. Examples are good for giving context to certain arguments and proving a theory, but are not reasons for why the affirmative is bad. Alt causes are not offense against the 1AC either unless only the alternative and not the permutation solves it.

I find myself voting neg in rounds when the 2NR is the K when the negative wins that something is a prior question to pragmatism or the framework debate. I find myself voting affirmative when the aff wins that they get to implement the aff and weigh it against the alternative. The framework debate is basically the entire debate, it influences how the links, alt, and perm all function. As a result, the rebuttals need to explain how their interpretation solves the other offense, or why their offense outweighs. I am equally likely to disregard the plan in favor of debate's potential for subject formation as I am to exclude kritiks from debate because they are not a logical opportunity cost of the plan. That being said, framework claims are nothing more than lazy impact calculus claims that affirmative teams just accept because they are bad at debate. In the abstract it seems ridiculous that if the negative wins the rhetorical impacts should be privileged, it means that pragmatism should not be considered at all, however most affirmative teams are terrible at debating framework, and end up losing.

Counterplans

They have to be competitive both textually and functionally. Presumption goes to the team that advocates less change. Your solvency advocate for the counterplan needs to be as specific as the aff's solvency advocate. Sufficiency framing makes intuitive sense to me.

David Heidt

Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart

davidheidt@gmail.com

Some thoughts about the fiscal redistribution topic:

Having only judged practice debates so far, I like the topic. But it seems harder to be Aff than in a typical year. All three affirmative areas are pretty controversial, and there's deep literature engaging each area on both sides.

All of the thoughts I've posted below are my preferences, not rules that I'll enforce in the debate. Everything is debatable. But my preferences reflect the types of arguments that I find more persuasive.

1. I am unlikely to view multiple conditional worlds favorably. I think the past few years have demonstrated an inverse relationship between the number of CPs in the 1nc and the quality of the debate. The proliferation of terrible process CPs would not have been possible without unlimited negative conditionality. I was more sympathetic to negative strategy concerns last year where there was very little direct clash in the literature. But this topic is a lot different. I don't see a problem with one conditional option. I can maybe be convinced about two, but I like Tim Mahoney's rule that you should only get one. More than two will certainly make the debate worse. The fact that the negative won substantially more debates last year with with no literature support whatsoever suggests there is a serious problem with multiple conditional options.

Does that mean the neg auto-loses if they read three conditional options? No, debating matters - but I'll likely find affirmative impact arguments on theory a lot more persuasive if there is more than one (or maybe two) CPs in the debate.

2. I am not sympathetic about affirmative plan vagueness. Debate is at it's best with two prepared teams, and vagueness is a way to avoid clash and discourage preparation. If your plan is just the resolution, that tells me very little and I will be looking for more details. I am likely to interpret your plan based upon the plan text, highlighted portions of your solvency evidence that say what the plan does, and clarifications in cx. That means both what you say and the highlighted portions of your evidence are fair game for arguments about CP competition, DA links, and topicality. This is within reason - the plan text is still important, and I'm not going to hold the affirmative responsible for a word PIC that's based on a piece of solvency evidence or an offhand remark. And if cx or evidence is ambiguous because the negative team didn't ask the right questions or didn't ask follow up questions, I'm not going to automatically err towards the negative's interpretation either. But if the only way to determine the scope of the plan's mandates is by looking to solvency evidence or listening to clarification in CX, then a CP that PICs out of those clarified mandates is competitive, and a topicality violation that says those clarified mandates aren't topical can't be beaten with "we meet - plan in a vacuum".

How might this play out on this topic? Well, if the negative team asks in CX, "do you mandate a tax increase?", and the affirmative response is "we don't specify", then I think that means the affirmative does not, in fact, mandate a tax increase under any possible interpretation of the plan, that they cannot read addons based on increasing taxes, or say "no link - we increase taxes" to a disadvantage that says the affirmative causes a spending tradeoff. If the affirmative doesn't want to mandate a specific funding mechanism, that might be ok, but that means evidence about normal means of passing bills is relevant for links, and the affirmative can't avoid that evidence by saying the plan fiats out of it. There can be a reasonable debate over what might constitute 'normal means' for funding legislation, but I'm confident that normal means in a GOP-controlled House is not increasing taxes.

On the other hand, if they say "we don't specify our funding mechanism in the plan," but they've highlighted "wealth tax key" warrants in their solvency evidence, then I think this is performative cowardice and honestly I'll believe whatever the negative wants me to believe in that case. Would a wealth tax PIC be competitive in that scenario? Yes, without question. Alternatively, could the negative say "you can't access your solvency evidence because you don't fiat a wealth tax?" Also, yes. As I said, I am unsympathetic to affirmative vagueness, and you can easily avoid this situation just by defending your plan.

Does this apply to the plan's agent? I think this can be an exception - in other words, the affirmative could reasonably say "we're the USFG" if they don't have an agent-based advantage or solvency evidence that explicitly requires one agent. I think there are strong reasons why agent debates are unique. Agent debates in a competitive setting with unlimited fiat grossly misrepresent agent debates in the literature, and requiring the affirmative to specify beyond what their solvency evidence requires puts them in an untenable position. But if the affirmative has an agent-based advantage, then it's unlikely (though empirically not impossible) that I'll think it's ok for them to not defend that agent against an agent CP.

3. I believe that any negative strategy that revolves around "it's hard to be neg so therefore we need to do the 1ac" is not a real strategy. A CP that results in the possibility of doing the entire mandate of the plan is neither legitimate nor competitive. Immediacy and certainty are not the basis of counterplan competition, no matter how many terrible cards are read to assert otherwise. If you think "should" means "immediate" then you'd likely have more success with a 2nr that was "t - should" in front of me than you would with a CP competition argument based on that word. Permutations are tests of competition, and as such, do not have to be topical. "Perms can be extra topical but not nontopical" has no basis in anything. Perms can be any combination of all of the plan and part or all of the CP. But even if they did have to be topical, reading a card that says "increase" = "net increase" is not a competition argument, it's a topicality argument. A single affirmative card defining the "increase" as "doesn't have to be a net increase" beats this CP in its entirety. Even if the negative interpretation of "net increase" is better for debate it does not change what the plan does, and if the aff says they do not fiat a net increase, then they do not fiat a net increase. If you think you have an argument, you need to go for T, not the CP. A topicality argument premised on "you've killed our offsets CP ground" probably isn't a winner, however. The only world I could ever see the offsets CP be competitive in is if the plan began with "without offsetting fiscal redistribution in any manner, the USFG should..."

I was surprised by the number of process CPs turned out at camps this year. This topic has a lot of well-supported ways to directly engage each of the three areas. And most of the camp affs are genuinely bad ideas with a ridiculous amount of negative ground. Even a 1nc that is exclusively an economy DA and case defense is probably capable of winning most debates. I know we just had a year where there were almost no case debates, but NATO was a bad topic with low-quality negative strategies, and I think it's time to step up. This topic is different. And affs are so weak they have to resort to reading dedevelopment as their advantage. I am FAR more likely to vote aff on "it's already hard to be aff, and your theory of competition makes it impossible" on this topic than any other.

This doesn't mean I'm opposed to PICs, or even most counterplans. And high quality evidence can help sway my views about both the legitimacy and competitiveness of any CP. But if you're coming to the first tournament banking on the offsets CP or "do the plan if prediction markets say it's good CP", you should probably rethink that choice.

But maybe I'm wrong! Maybe the first set of tournaments will see lots of teams reading small, unpredictable affs that run as far to the margins of the topic as possible. I hope not. The less representative the affirmative is of the topic literature, the more likely it is that I'll find process CPs to be an acceptable response. If you're trying to discourage meaningful clash through your choice of affirmative, then maybe strategies premised on 'clash is bad' are more reasonable.

4. I'm ambivalent on the question of whether fiscal redistribution requires both taxes and transfers. The cards on both sides of this are okay. I'm not convinced by the affirmative that it's too hard to defend a tax, but I'm also not convinced by the negative that taxes are the most important part of negative ground.

5. I'm skeptical of the camp affirmatives that suggest either that Medicare is part of Social Security, or that putting Medicare under Social Security constitutes "expanding" Social Security. I'll approach any debate about this with an open mind, because I've certainly been wrong before. But I am curious about what the 2ac looks like. I can see some opportunity for the aff on the definition of "expanding," but I don't think it's great. Aff cards that confuse Social Security with the Social Security Act or Social Security Administration or international definitions of lower case "social security" miss the mark entirely.

6. Critiques on this topic seem ok. I like critiques that have topic-specific links and show why doing the affirmative is undesirable. I dislike critiques that are dependent on framework for the same reason I dislike process counterplans. Both strategies are cop-outs - they both try to win without actually debating the merits of the affirmative. I find framework arguments that question the truth value of specific affirmative claims far more persuasive than framework arguments that assert that policy-making is the wrong forum.

7. There's a LOT of literature defending policy change from a critical perspective on this topic. I've always been skeptical of planless affirmatives, but they seem especially unwarranted this year. I think debate doesn't function if one side doesn't debate the assigned topic. Debating the topic requires debating the entire topic, including defending a policy change from the federal government. Merely talking about fiscal redistribution in some way doesn't even come close. It's possible to defend policy change from a variety of perspectives on this topic, including some that would critique ways in which the negative traditionally responds to policy proposals.

Having said that, if you're running a planless affirmative and find yourself stuck with me in the back of the room, I still do my best to evaluate all arguments as fairly as a I can. It's a debate round, and not a forum for me to just insert my preferences over the arguments of the debaters themselves. But some arguments will resonate more than others.

Old thoughts

Some thoughts about the NATO topic:

1. Defending the status quo seems very difficult. The topic seems aff-biased without a clear controversy in the literature, without many unique disadvantages, and without even credible impact defense against some arguments. The water topic was more balanced (and it was not balanced at all).

This means I'm more sympathetic to multiple conditional options than I might otherwise would be. I'm also very skeptical of plan vagueness and I'm unlikely to be very receptive towards any aff argument that relies on it.

Having said that, some of the 1ncs I've seen that include 6 conditional options are absurd and I'd be pretty receptive to conditionality in that context, or in a context where the neg says something like hegemony good and the security K in the same debate.

And an aff-biased topic is not a justification for CPs that compete off of certainty. The argument that "it's hard to be negative so therefore we get to do your aff" is pretty silly. I haven't voted on process CP theory very often, but at the same time, it's pretty rare for a 2a to go for it in the 2ar. The neg can win this debate in front of me, but I lean aff on this.

There are also parts of this topic that make it difficult to be aff, especially the consensus requirement of the NAC. So while the status quo is probably difficult to defend, I think the aff is at a disadvantage against strategies that test the consensus requirement.

2. Topicality Article 5 is not an argument. I could be convinced otherwise if someone reads a card that supports the interpretation. I have yet to see a card that comes even close. I think it is confusing that 1ncs waste time on this because a sufficient 2ac is "there is no violation because you have not read evidence that actually supports your interpretation." The minimum threshold would be for the negative to have a card defining "cooperation with NATO" as "requires changing Article 5". That card does not exist, because no one actually believes that.

3. Topicality on this topic seems very weak as a 2nr choice, as long as the affirmative meets basic requirements such as using the DOD and working directly with NATO as opposed to member states. It's not unwinnable because debating matters, but the negative seems to be on the wrong side of just about every argument.

4. Country PICs do not make very much sense to me on this topic. No affirmative cooperates directly with member states, they cooperate with the organization, given that the resolution uses the word 'organization' and not 'member states'. Excluding a country means the NAC would say no, given that the excluded country gets to vote in the NAC. If the country PIC is described as a bilateral CP with each member state, that makes more sense, but then it obviously does not go through NATO and is a completely separate action, not a PIC.

5. Is midterms a winnable disadvantage on the NATO topic? I am very surprised to see negative teams read it, let alone go for it. I can't imagine that there's a single person in the United States that would change their vote or their decision to turn out as a result of the plan. The domestic focus link argument seems completely untenable in light of the fact that our government acts in the area of foreign policy multiple times a day. But I have yet to see a midterms debate, so maybe there's special evidence teams are reading that is somehow omitted from speech docs. It's hard for me to imagine what a persuasive midterms speech on a NATO topic looks like though.

What should you do if you're neg? I think there are some good CPs, some good critiques, and maybe impact turns? NATO bad is likely Russian propaganda, but it's probably a winnable argument.

******

Generally I try to evaluate arguments fairly and based upon the debaters' explanations of arguments, rather than injecting my own opinions. What follows are my opinions regarding several bad practices currently in debate, but just agreeing with me isn't sufficient to win a debate - you actually have to win the arguments relative to what your opponents said. There are some things I'll intervene about - death good, behavior meant to intimidate or harass your opponents, or any other practice that I think is harmful for a high school student classroom setting - but just use some common sense.

Thoughts about critical affs and critiques:

Good debates require two prepared teams. Allowing the affirmative team to not advocate the resolution creates bad debates. There's a disconnect in a frighteningly large number of judging philosophies I've read where judges say their favorite debates are when the negative has a specific strategy against an affirmative, and yet they don't think the affirmative has to defend a plan. This does not seem very well thought out, and the consequence is that the quality of debates in the last few years has declined greatly as judges increasingly reward teams for not engaging the topic.

Fairness is the most important impact. Other judging philosophies that say it's just an internal link are poorly reasoned. In a competitive activity involving two teams, assuring fairness is one of the primary roles of the judge. The fundamental expectation is that judges evaluate the debate fairly; asking them to ignore fairness in that evaluation eliminates the condition that makes debate possible. If every debate came down to whoever the judge liked better, there would be no value to participating in this activity. The ballot doesn't do much other than create a win or a loss, but it can definitely remedy the harms of a fairness violation. The vast majority of other impacts in debate are by definition less important because they never depend upon the ballot to remedy the harm.

Fairness is also an internal link - but it's an internal link to establishing every other impact. Saying fairness is an internal link to other values is like saying nuclear war is an internal link to death impacts. A loss of fairness implies a significant, negative impact on the activity and judges that require a more formal elaboration of the impact are being pedantic.

Arguments along the lines of 'but policy debate is valueless' are a complete nonstarter in a voluntary activity, especially given the existence of multiple alternative forms of speech and debate. Policy debate is valuable to some people, even if you don't personally share those values. If your expectation is that you need a platform to talk about whatever personally matters to you rather than the assigned topic, I encourage you to try out a more effective form of speech activity, such as original oratory. Debate is probably not the right activity for you if the condition of your participation is that you need to avoid debating a prepared opponent.

The phrase "fiat double-bind" demonstrates a complete ignorance about the meaning of fiat, which, unfortunately, appears to be shared by some judges. Fiat is merely the statement that the government should do something, not that they would. The affirmative burden of proof in a debate is solely to demonstrate the government should take a topical action at a particular time. That the government would not actually take that action is not relevant to any judge's decision.

Framework arguments typically made by the negative for critiques are clash-avoidance devices, and therefore are counterproductive to education. There is no merit whatsoever in arguing that the affirmative does not get to weigh their plan. Critiques of representations can be relevant, but only in relation to evaluating the desirability of a policy action. Representations cannot be separated from the plan - the plan is also a part of the affirmative's representations. For example, the argument that apocalyptic representations of insecurity are used to justify militaristic solutions is asinine if the plan includes a representation of a non-militaristic solution. The plan determines the context of representations included to justify it.

Thoughts about topicality:

Limited topics make for better topics. Enormous topics mean that it's much harder to be prepared, and that creates lower quality debates. The best debates are those that involve extensive topic research and preparation from both sides. Large topics undermine preparation and discourage cultivating expertise. Aff creativity and topic innovation are just appeals to avoid genuine debate.

Thoughts about evidence:

Evidence quality matters. A lot of evidence read by teams this year is underlined in such a way that it's out of context, and a lot of evidence is either badly mistagged or very unqualified. On the one hand, I want the other team to say this when it's true. On the other hand, if I'm genuinely shocked at how bad your evidence is, I will probably discount it.

Me

Previous debater at UGA and debated in HS at a small school in GA. 
If you have any other questions, email me at camhen.debate@gmail.com - I would like to be on the email chain. 

- I won't read evidence "inserted into the debate." Debate's a communication activity and it justifies highlighting large parts of other people's ev which you couldn't read in a speech because of time constraints. I also don't know why it isn't the same as inserting a 20 min 1AC into the debate. Just read their re-highlighted ev or make broad indicts about the context of the ev. I think this practice is unethical. 

TLDR : Plans or GTFO

Prep Time ends when the jump drive leaves your computer.

I am very much so tech > truth.

Please Don't:
Be Rude or aggressive towards me, your opponent or your partner
Perform or imitate a sex act of any kind

Talk about suicide

Get naked

Please Do:
Read a plan
Defend a course of action
Defend your consequences
Have a competitive methodology

Case Debate

I like specific case debate. Shows you put in the hard work it takes to research and defeat the aff. I will reward hard work if there is solid Internal link debating. I think case specific disads are also pretty good if well thought out and executed. I like impact turn debates. Cleanly executed ones will usually result in a neg ballot -- messy debates, however, will not.

Topicality

I enjoy T debates, but please give me comparing visions of the topic (case lists are important). I default to competing interpretations but can be convinced otherwise; please put some effort into your reasonability arguments. You are fighting an uphill battle if you're trying to go for T must be a QPQ. 

Theory

Slow down. If you want me to vote on it, you have to give me time to actually write down your arguments. I have a pretty high threshold for condo with 2 or fewer condo options. More than 2 conditional advocacies is probably abusive. 

DA

The link is really important to me. 

I love good politics debate. The 1NR should do solid evidence comparison.

K

Links should be specific and well explained (there's a trend here). Don't get lost in buzzwords - make actual arguments. The aff should probably get to weigh their aff, but if they shouldn't, explain to me why. 

Too many times I see debaters forget about case – it’s still there. 
If you’re aff against the K, don’t forget your aff.  I dislike rejection alts- realistically your aff is a DA to the alt, impact it.

Death is bad. Suffering is bad. 

CP

They're cool. The more germane to the aff/topic they are, the more I will like them. 

Process CP’s are probably bad. I think you need a solvency advocate (with rare exceptions). 

K affs

are fine- you have to have a plan. You should defend that plan. Affs who don't will prob lose to framework. A lot....

NonTraditional Teams
If not defending a plan is your thing, I'm not your judge. I think topical plans are good. I think the aff needs to read a topical plan and defend the action of that topical plan. I also think if you've made the good faith effort to engage, then you should be rewarded. These arguments make more sense on the negative but I am not compelled by arguments that claim: "you didn't talk about it, so you should lose."

MBA '18

Emory '22

bjablonski20@gmail.com

In Short

Fairness is an impact and affs should have plans

I do not like T against affs with plans

Higher threshold for voting / rejecting a cp on theory

The long paragraphs below are my general leanings when judging a debate -- all of this goes out the window with uneven debating

CJR Specific

I know nothing about this topic. I have judged three rounds on it, and they were Georgia Novice Packet debates. Please do not assume I have any basic knowledge about anything related to this.

Top Level Stuff

1. Send a doc after the round with the relevant cards. If you find yourself speaking for 20 consecutive seconds in any speech from the 1ac to the 1ar without a card, something has gone wrong.

2. Framing contentions -- I am not a good judge for framing contentions that just say util bad, consequences bad, predictions bad, nuclear war isn't bad; the neg should go for a DA and case

CPs and theory

States, international, multiplank, multiactor, pics, CPs without solvency advocates are good

Process CPs are good when grounded in topic literature. I do not have a predisposition on theory here.

Condo -- Aff teams seem too scared to extend it. A lot of times it truly is the most strategic option.

Advantage counterplans are underutilized - I feel people either stop fiat-ing a dozen planks too early, or they forget about all of the planks except for one or two

I'm apprehensive about kicking the CP for the neg

Ks

The flow is important. 7 minute overviews will never be a good idea. You've probably answered their args somewhere along the way, but it sucks

FW should be a small investment of time -- I will weigh the aff in most situations

Planless affs

I think the aff should defend the hypothetical implementation of a topical plan. Most affs in these debates have little to no offense. I think fairness is the best impact, and other neg impacts link to aff offense that I don't think link to fairness. In these debates, the impact turns rarely make sense to me. You must have a reason that the process of debating the topic is bad not just a reason that the topic itself is bad.

T

Not a big fan - I'd prefer just about any other debate

Reasonability -- i think this could / should be the first minute or two of the 2ar, explain how reasonability turns all of their limits, ground or predictability arguments. I find substance crowd out to be true. I think it outweighs the minimal difference between the two interpretations.

Misc

I will not vote on arguments about things that happened outside of the round.

I am not a fan of spreading bad arguments.

Debated for Caddo Magnet 2014-2018

Assistant Coach @ Caddo Magnet

Law Student at LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center

General

Email chain: nathan.jagot@gmail.com

Prep ends when the speech doc is saved/flashed.

Don't take too long while you're "sending the doc over" and still typing.

Don't clip.

Evidence quality > evidence quantity.

Tech v. Truth is very much over-debated and over-theorized and I'm not sure why it is. If your evidence is correct/accurate about how things operate and your internal links are logical, then you're in the clear. Truth claims warrant a certain amount of technical skills to be won, just as technical arguments need a good deal of truth in reality to be won.

Debate's stressful. Be kind.

Play smart. Be scrappy.

A few of my debate coaches and people who helped shape how I approach everything: Neill Normand, Kasi & Jonathan McCartney, Sam Gustavson, Ian Dill, Darius White, Calen Martin, Cole Allen, Ethan Courtman, and Jake Crusan.

Frame your arguments:

If you can tell me what the central points of the debate are in the final rebuttals, make effective arguments and prove why you're winning, you will most likely win the debate. I think line by line is good, but that you also need to keep in mind the big picture/nexus question for the debate. Being wax poetic is especially good (but not necessary), but tell me what's most important and why, and explain it. "Even if" statements are also really useful in this situation, and be sure to use competing claims and why making the decision for you should be easy even if you're not winning the other/most important parts of the debate.

Be strategic:

Embedded clash is important. For argument extensions, make sure you have a claim, warrant, and an impact. Make sure you use this to your advantage and point out interactions between different arguments, be smart in pointing out double turns, etc.

Clarity > speed:

I'd rather hear a very engaging 4-5 off debate that has a variety of winning 2NRs against a certain aff, rather than a team who reads 8-10 off just to scare the other team. I'm not as inclined to the "throw 9 off at the wall to see what sticks" strategies. Not to be frank, but if you know you can beat an aff without going all out, do just that and make each component of the debate that much more convincing.

Slow down on blocks and analytics, because they're going to be the point in the debate where I really start paying attention to the arguments at hand and seeing how they function (also the point in the debate where you should explain them as such). Being efficient and prepared rather than fast and blippy until the 2NR is better than not.

Line by line is important:

This is very important and I think some debaters sadly forget about. Answer arguments in the order in which they appear - if "they say (x), but (x)" statements are helpful in this instance. Clean flows = good flows = organized debates = good debates.

CX:

CX should be treated as another speech. Write down your questions beforehand and have a strategy. Some judges flow CX, I tend to stray away of that, but I may star an argument a team mentions something multiple times or if an argument seemed to be critical for any particular side during CX. If an important argument is an effective turning point for the debate in CX, point it out in later speeches. Use your time wisely.

Critical Affirmatives:

I'm finding myself frustrated with a lot of these types of affirmatives. The 1AC should ground itself with a foundational disagreement with resolutional action (depending on the way the topic is worded) - meaning a solid, specific topic link - and go from there about debating it. Not doing so will likely result to me just voting negative on T. Debates where the affirmative identifies a problem with resolutional action and uses that as offense against framework/T-USfg are much more interesting than stale debates that recycle old K-affs that change 1-2 cards to fit the topic.

***I think for topics where the resolution mandates the USfg reduces something negative it does (like restrict immigration or reduce arms sales), reading an aff with a plan is much more legitimate than not reading a plan.

***Please ask questions about this. But, if I were debating and reading this paradigm, I'd stick with a plan.

T-USfg:

I think this is the most legitimate strategy against planless affs. Though it's a legitimate claim that the aff not using the USfg as an agent is unfair, you need to explain why in terms of why it's bad for normative debate practices and why it's bad that you can't engage with the aff as well as you could with one that had a specific policy proposal.

Fairness is an impact in itself, but that should be explained in terms of what unfairness is, how the affirmative makes it worse, and then funnel into discussion of other "greatest hits" impacts on the flow.

Make sure your TVA is logical and at accesses the affirmative's offense, and the aff answers need to be logical and established in order for me to not vote on it.

Well-thought out aff impact turns to T/Framework are convincing to me if executed effectively.

Framework should also be debated in the context of every aff - don't just read the same overview you do for every K aff. Specific overviews + reasons to reject the aff = higher speaks and more of a chance I'll vote for you.

Case:

You NEED to engage case. Smart analytics on case are just as good as impact turns/no solvency arguments. Make sure to utilize it, it's there for a reason. Interact with it, don't forget it. Scrap the 2-3 card DA that you won't extend past the 1NC and put some of that time and effort on case.

Good case debates about the warrants of the aff, internal link strength, sensibility, etc. are good. Debating case makes you better.

I like impact turns. I like it when teams read impact turns specific to the aff.

Spark = silly. I won't even bother telling you how silly it is---I'll give you my professors' emails and let you take it up with them.

Topicality:

Caselists = good.

Don't get bogged down in the non-essential details.

Competing interps when actually competitive = good.

Reasonability against arbitrary/asinine interps that are semi-ridiculous = 100% will vote on it.

Counterplans:

Long text = slow down.

Specific PICs are good, I like them. Debate them well.

Consult and conditions counterplans are fine as long as you defend them as you're supposed to practically and theoretically. Don't get too carried away.

Make sure it's actually competitive---this means it needs to access not only the impacts of the advantage, but the rest of the advantage itself.

Disadvantages:

The DA should have specific links to what the aff is talking about, or at least a claim that what the aff is fiating will cause what you say it will because it's that large of a policy.

Your block work on the DA should be thorough explanation, as well as lots of cards that prove your argument(s). Specific links/analysis to the aff are highly appreciated.

Lots of cards + lots of analysis = extra good.

Kritiks:

Being from a relatively small school, I understand their strategic value. If you think there may be a risk that I don't know what you mean, don't use buzz-words and be sure to explain your args well.

Couple of K things I value:

Link Contextualization---You absolutely need to win a link to the affirmative. Generic links rarely grab my attention, unless the aff just mishandles it completely. A K 1NC that has mechanism and content links to the aff (links to the aff's process, either K-based or state-based, depending on the type of aff) is better than a K 1NC that has the link arguments "state + scenario analysis bad," without mentioning the aff's advantages. A smart 2NR will go all-in on 1 or 2 solid links with clear impacts. Links should be able to turn case without winning the alternative (even though you should still win your alt), and should each have an impact-level claim that are distinct from the other links and that can independently win you the debate. But, you need to win the alternative to win the debate, tell my why it resolves your links specific to the aff and any other link you may read - this is where the links that fit the aff best come in. I'd rather hear the 2NR go for 2 solid links rather than 3-4 not-so-good links.

Framework---a decisive win on framework will make me much more likely to vote for you, regardless if you're aff or neg.

Theory:

I'll consider theory only if it is severely mishandled/conceded by the other team. I think having it as your A-game strategy isn't as strategic, but don't be discouraged and think you can't go for it in front of me, just remember there are certain times and places for those debates.

Conditionality is bad if an absurd number of advocacies are in the 1NC (more than 4 is questionable, but I'm open to a debate on whether or not that is true), but make sure to contextualize your theory blocks to the debate at hand and tell me why what they did in round is bad and incentivizes worse debates for everyone else. Tell me more of a story about what they did, why they should lose, and what your model of debate looks like under a certain interpretation (that isn't just repeating your interpretation you read in the 2AC/2NC).

Final rebuttals:

These should be used to write my ballot. Easy ways to do this are to do the "final review of the debate" at the top of the 2NR/2AR and then get into the substance/nuance of individual arguments you're winning on the flow.

If Debating In Louisiana:

You're on the clock. You can thank me after the round, don't use your speech time for it.

Explain your arguments well. Answer your opponents' arguments well. I judge LD sometimes in-state because of tab-based restraints and something I've noticed is a severe lack of clash in these debates, and I think forcing yourself to interact with the other team's arguments is generally a good thing in debate.

Good luck and have fun!

**Just a brief update for the high school community on the Inequality topic:

T - Taxes and Transfers - Heavily lean Aff here, but the Neg can win it I guess.

Process CPs - Good luck with these in front of me.

If you feel the need to not take prep before the 2AC or 2NC, good luck with that as well in front of me.

**Updated Summer 2023**

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

I will listen to all arguments, but a couple of caveats:

-This doesn't mean I will understand every element of your argument.

-I have grown extremely irritated with clash debates…take that as you please.

-I am a firm believer that you must read some evidence in debate. If you differ, you might want to move me down the pref sheet.

Note to all: In high school debate, there is no world where the Negative needs to read more than 5 off case arguments. SO if you say 6+, I'm only flowing 5 and you get to choose which you want me to flow.
In college debate, I might allow 6 off case arguments :/

Good luck to all!

Background

Junior Debater, Northview High 

2N (3 years)

Email: Faeez.juneja@gmail.com

Stuff

• Be nice. I don't come to judge and take time from my weekend to watch someone making nasty comments or hurting someone's feelings just because he/she thought it would be "funny." 
• Super policy oriented. I prefer disads + case debates and CP + DA debates. They're super fun and love those 2nrs. This by no means says that you're restricted to go for them in the 2nr. I'm down to hear 2nrs in Ks or whatever you think is bes to win. 
• Tech over truth, no exception. Reading poor, ridiculous arguments like racism good, patriarchy good, suicide good, etc. will reflect in low speaks.
• Cross Ex. I will flow this and will reward good performances in higher speaks. I think cross ex can be extremely strategic in debate and a really good time to display ethos. Don’t waste it.
• Evidence. A claim should have sufficient warranting for me to consider it a piece of viable evidence. If I call up a card after the round and see that the card doesn’t really support the claim you’re making, I’m not willing to give you credit.
• Email chains. Put me on them.
• Clarity. I'll yell clear 3 times max in a speech. I can't be flowing anything if I don't understand what you're saying. 
• Condo: 1-2: great. 3: uphill battle for the neg. 3+: nope. 
• Prep. I don't consider it prep for flashing unless it's more than 30 seconds. Then, the timer starts.
• Don't expect me to be taking track of your speech or prep. 

Aff

• I think that all affs should defend the USFG. I absolutely love topical policy affs and am fine with soft left affs that defend the state.  
• I really, really don't like K affs. I’m easily persuaded by framework against non-traditional affs.

DA:

• Love them especially specific turns case arguments
• Impact Calc is super important. Slowing down and actually doing impact comparisons is what I’m looking for.

CP:

• More neg leaning in terms of competition.
• Should have a solvency advocate. 
• Conditional Multiplank CPs are a no-no.

T:

• Should probably be able to provide a caselist when asked.
• Not really a fan of T QPQ.

K:

• I’m familiar with Security, Neolib/Cap, Heidegger, and other popular Kritiks.
• I prefer there be specific links to the aff instead of just a general link. Have them somewhere in the neg block.
• Alt explanations are super important to me. If you’re aff I encourage you to find holes in that. 

Background
I'm a senior at UGA who debated a little bit in college. I debated four years at Northview High School.

**Haven't judged any debates on this topic so I have 0 topic knowledge - so please please please explain everything**

Add me on email chains: eshaankalra2000@gmail.com

Nontraditional: I strongly believe that the affirmative must defend the hypothetical implementation of a topical plan by the United States federal government.

Impact Calc/Framing­-
Very imporant.

DAs and Turns
My favorites.

T
- I like T debates – impact it out.
- usually default to reasonability

K
- I'm not the best judge for kritiks. I'm comfortable with Cap, Neolib, and Security. But I'm probably not the best judge for K literature.

CP
- Yes please...

Theory
- Pretty neutral on conditionality, 2 condo is pretty standard.
- Most of the time it’s a reason to reject the arg.

Case
- Love a good case debate that's not just impact D.

Random
- be respectful, have fun, be clear, make the round easy for me

I do want to be on the email chains: harvard.debate[at]gmail.com and kviveth [at] gmail.com

Evidence/Debating:

Dropped arguments and spin can be true/good to an extent. I tend to look more holistically at the argument even if it was "dropped".

CX ends after three minutes. You can take more prep time to ask questions, but it won't be "on the record"

"Framework" -

I think some of the most meaningful things I've learned from my decade doing policy debate have come from debating, researching, and preparing arguments that are "not about the topic".

That being said, debate is a competitive activity and the resolution is the only non-arbitrary starting point from which to begin research and preparation. If there were no equal prospect of victory and people were just showing up every weekend to talk about different things, there'd be some engagement, but the incentive to test other people's ideas with a level of rigor and tenacity that we value debate for just wouldn't exist.

The fact that there are a myriad of issues that may or may not be more important than the chosen resolution is certainly an important question we should be asking of ourselves and of the topic selection process, but the topic has already been chosen - that's when limits become important.

In general, I'm much better for aff teams that impact turn topicality / framework than teams that try to engage deeply with counter-interpretations.

Counterplans -

The plan is the focus of the debate and perms don't have to be topical.

If you have evidence that compares your CP to the plan, it's probably legitimate

I have a hard time seeing the neg winning on CPs that compete solely off of certainty and immediacy.

The "always a risk of the CP linking less than the plan" is silly.

You don't need solvency advocates especially for smart and intuitive advantage CPs and 2NC CPs out of addons.

I will kick CPs for the neg if the CP is conditional until told not to by the aff.

Critiques -

Framework is either the most important part of a critique debate or totally irrelevant. It's really helpful to me to elaborate on the what the consequence of either team winning their framework argument is.

In recent years, aff teams have radically underutilized the permutation and alt solvency arguments in favor of impact turns. If that's your strategy I'm all for it! However, given that the worst part of almost every critique is the alternative and lack of actual links this could be a good path for teams to take.

Theory -

Most theory arguments are reasons to reject the argument, not the team.

Conditionality - Neg teams are garbage at defending conditionality and the aff should capitalize.

Literature usually guides theory questions for CP legitimacy - if you have evidence that compares the CP to the plan it's probably legitimate.

2N @Greenhill, Junior

2A @Greenhill, Senior

debated as 2N for 3 yrs and 2A for 1 yr

***If you have any questions that the philosophy doesnt answer dont be afraid to ask me before the round

K-Affs

High Theory = No, You can read Identity style K-Affs in front of me, but I will warn you that I am pretty predisposed to thinking teams should defend a plan.

T

I can be convinced to vote on almost anything in regards to Topicality in terms of reasonability/competing interpretations, and which impacts matter most. Impact Comparison is super important. Strength of Counter-Interp ev also matters a lot.

CP's

I have gone for process CP's in a majority of my 2NR's. The more topic specific the CP is, the happier I will be. Be creative w/ CP's and don't be constrained by not having a solvency advocate for smart CP's that test the mechanism of the Aff. I usually lean neg on theory, but this year I have become more middle-leaning on theory questions.

I can be convinced that Counterplans do not have to be both functionally and textually competitive, however, I think all counterplans should be functionally competitive. This means Word PICs are probably not the best 2NR in front of me.

50 State Fiat is probably good considering how bad the education topic is for the negative, but by no means is 50 State Fiat Bad an unwinnable argument in front of me.

DA's

I like DA's. I have extended politics a lot. PTX Theory = wrong, and I don't like hearing 1ARs on intrinsicness. I am in the camp of Uniqueness controls the link, but can be convinced the other way. For the Aff, most DA's have pretty terrible internal links, so a DA can be heavily mitigated with just smart analytics.

K

I like the K and I like watching good debates on the K, but if you don't know how to explain the K without using buzzwords pls dont go for it. Also, dont go for high theory - i will not be happy. Education Topic = Yes K

Other Stuff

also - don't be scared to be funny - If you do it wrong however, it looks stupid. If you are not a funny person, don't try to be funny. I appreciate jokes about Aden Barton, Ben Jablonski, the Greenhill team, James Steiner, and Nate Glancy.

Impact Turns are pretty sweet, and undervalued on a topic with such bad neg ground.

About Me: Junior at Emory University. I debated for 4 years in high school at the University School of Nashville. Add me to the email chain: akurupa@emory.edu

New Paradigm [9/27/2019]

I am re-writing this paradigm to be a little bit more transparent on some of the key issues which have been affecting a lot of the ways I judge debates. I used to consider myself more of a neutral judge, but I think it is time that I recognize my own biases because they definitely do affect a lot of my decisions.

Addressing each of the key issues outlined below is a great way to get my ballot. I would definitely recommend reading this thoroughly before your round because I definitely differ from other judges.

Key issues -

1.) K - If you are running a K, I want you to treat me as if I do not understand the literature. This way your argument becomes clearer in the round, and if I am genuinely not familiar with the literature then you have still done the work necessary to win the round. I think that this is a very hard skill to do in round with the limited time allotted to you (especially with the more jargon-heavy kritiks), but I think it is an important persuasive tool and it shows that you actually know your argument and aren't just relying on the other team's lack of understanding to win the round. I would rather you spend a minute or two on explanation rather than just reading additional sub-points to an irrelevant argument on the flow.

2.) Speed/Clarity - I prefer slower, clearer debate to faster technical debate. I think that this realm is where the best debates happen as it leads to better clash and argumentative nuance within the round. It also takes me a bit longer to understand arguments, so many times I just won't understand an argument if you are blazing through it. If you are debating whether to be fast or be clear - I would definitely recommend clarity in all instances. Some implications of this:

a.) I don't appreciate 1NC strats designed to spread the 2AC thin

b.) Signpost and number your arguments!!

c.) Please take time in speeches to clarify complicated/nuanced issues (especially in final rebuttals)

d.) I appreciate slow final rebuttals (except when you have a lot to cover - then almost certainly go fast) and writing my ballot at the start of the 2AR/2NR.

e.) Always start slower in speeches then go faster

f.) If you don't understand something the opponent said then please signal that in your response to it (as I probably didn't understand it as well)

g.) I don't read cards until after the round, so clearly spreading through the text of the card matters just as much as the tag!

3.) T/Theory - My least favorite debates to judge, but I understand the necessity of it at times. In front of me, I really do not want these to be the 2NR/2AR except where actual abuse occurs (Cheaty CPs/Non-Topical Affs). If you can debate substance over going for either of these, always go for substance.

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Old Paradigm: Nothing here is really "different", so you can still look at this as a reference for how I evaluate debates.

Quick Version: Run arguments that you are comfortable with. I will vote on anything if it is well argued and defended. I am familiar with kritikal literature as well as policy arguments.

About Me: Sophomore at Emory University. I debated for 4 years in high school at the University School of Nashville. Add me to the email chain: akurupa@emory.edu

Argument Preference - Pretty non-existent. I don't want to tell you what to run so here is a tl;dr:

CP: Win the tech to win the CP

DA: Impact Comparison goes far.

K: Define your terms and have specific analysis

T: I will vote for whoever wins the tech debate - I lean towards reasonability on affs which are core of the topic.

K affs: Win framework and defend your method. Perms are probably illegit if the link is decent to the method/analysis.

Theory: Warrant out your arguments and don’t spread through blocks. Please don't go for theory unless there is legitimate abuse.

Quick 2022 update--CX is important, use it fully. Examples make a big difference, but you have to compare your examples to theirs and show why yours are better. Quality of evidence matters--debate the strengths of your evidence vs. theirs. Finally, all the comments in a majority of paradigms about tech vs. truth are somewhat absurd. Tech can determine truth and vice-versa: they are not opposed or mutually exclusive and they can be each others' best tools. Want to emphasize your tech? Great--defend it. Want to emphasize your truths? Great--but compare them. Most of all, get into it! We are here for a bit of time together, let's make the most of it.

Updated 2020...just a small note: have fun and make the most of it! Being enthusiastic goes a long way.

Updated 2019. Coaching at Berkeley Prep in Tampa. Nothing massive has changed except I give slightly higher points across the board to match inflation. Keep in mind, I am still pleased to hear qualification debates and deep examples win rounds. I know you all work hard so I will too. Any argument preference or style is fine with me: good debate is good debate. Email: kevindkuswa at gmail dot com.

Updated 2017. Currently coaching for Berkeley Prep in Tampa. Been judging a lot on the China topic, enjoying it. Could emphasize just about everything in the comments below, but wanted to especially highlight my thirst for good evidence qualification debates...

_____________________________ (previous paradigm)

Summary: Quality over quantity, be specific, use examples, debate about evidence.

I think debate is an incredibly special and valuable activity despite being deeply flawed and even dangerous in some ways. If you are interested in more conversations about debate or a certain decision (you could also use this to add me to an email chain for the round if there is one), contact me at kevindkuswa at gmail dot com. It is a privilege to be judging you—I know it takes a lot of time, effort, and commitment to participate in debate. At a minimum you are here and devoting your weekend to the activity—you add in travel time, research, practice and all the other aspects of preparation and you really are expressing some dedication.

So, the first issue is filling out your preference sheets. I’m usually more preferred by the kritikal or non-traditional crowd, but I would encourage other teams to think about giving me a try. I work hard to be as fair as possible in every debate, I strive to vote on well-explained arguments as articulated in the round, and my ballots have been quite balanced in close rounds on indicative ideological issues. I’m not affiliated with a particular debate team right now and may be able to judge at the NDT, so give me a try early on and then go from there.

The second issue is at the tournament—you have me as a judge and are looking for some suggestions that might help in the round. In addition to a list of things I’m about to give you, it’s good that you are taking the time to read this statement. We are about to spend over an hour talking to and with each other—you might as well try to get some insight from a document that has been written for this purpose.

1. Have some energy, care about the debate. This goes without saying for most, but enthusiasm is contagious and we’ve all put in some work to get to the debate. Most of you will probably speak as fast as you possibly can and spend a majority of your time reading things from a computer screen (which is fine—that can be done efficiently and even beautifully), but it is also possible to make equally or more compelling arguments in other ways in a five or ten minute speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQVq5mugw_Y).

2. Examples win debates. Well-developed examples are necessary to make the abstract concrete, they show an understanding of the issues in the round, and they tend to control our understandings of how particular changes will play out. Good examples take many forms and might include all sorts of elements (paraphrasing, citing, narrating, quantifying, conditioning, countering, embedding, extending, etc.), but the best examples are easily applicable, supported by references and other experiences, and used to frame specific portions of the debate. I’m not sure this will be very helpful because it’s so broad, but at the very least you should be able to answer the question, “What are your examples?” For example, refer to Carville’s commencement speech to Tulane graduates in 2008…he offers the example of Abe Lincoln to make the point that “failure is the oxygen of success” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMiSKPpyvMk.

3. Argument comparison wins debate. Get in there and compare evidence—debate the non-highlighted portion of cards (or the cryptic nature of their highlighting). Debate the warrants and compare them in terms of application, rationale, depth, etc. The trinity of impact, plausibility, and verge analysis doesn’t hurt, especially if those variables are weighed against one another. It’s nice to hear good explanations that follow phrases like “Even if…,” “On balance…,” or “In the context of…” I know that evidence comparison is being done at an extremely high level, but I also fear that one of the effects of paperless debate might be a tilt toward competing speech documents that feature less direct evidence comparison. Prove me wrong.

4. Debates about the relative validity of sources win rounds. Where is the evidence on both sides coming from and why are those sources better or worse? Qualification debates can make a big difference, especially because these arguments are surprisingly rare. It’s also shocking that more evidence is not used to indict other sources and effectively remove an entire card (or even argument) from consideration. The more good qualification arguments you can make, the better. Until this kind of argument is more common, I am thirsty enough for source comparisons (in many ways, this is what debate is about—evidence comparison), that I’ll add a few decimal points when it happens. I do not know exactly where my points are relative to other judges, but I would say I am along a spectrum where 27.4 is pretty good but not far from average, 27.7 is good and really contributing to the debate, 28 is very good and above average, 28.5 is outstanding and belongs in elims, and 29.1 or above is excellent for that division—could contend for one of the best speeches at the tournament.

5. All debates can still be won in 2AR. For all the speakers, that’s a corollary of the “Be gritty” mantra. Persevere, take risks and defend your choices

(https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit). The ballot is not based on record at previous tournaments, gpa, school ranking, or number of coaches.

6. Do not be afraid to go for a little more than usual in the 2NR—it might even help you avoid being repetitive. It is certainly possible to be too greedy, leaving a bloated strategy that can’t stand up to a good 2AR, but I usually think this speech leaves too much on the table.

7. Beginning in the 1AR, brand new arguments should only be in reference to new arguments in the previous speech. Admittedly this is a fuzzy line and it is up to the teams to point out brand new arguments as well as the implications. The reason I’ve decided to include a point on this is because in some cases a 2AR has been so new that I have had to serve as the filter. That is rare and involves more than just a new example or a new paraphrasing (and more than a new response to a new argument in the 2NR).

8. Very good arguments can be made without evidence being introduced in card form, but I do like good cards that are as specific and warranted as possible. Use the evidence you do introduce and do as much direct quoting of key words and phrases to enhance your evidence comparison and the validity of your argument overall.

9. CX matters. This probably deserves its own philosophy, but it is worth repeating that CX is a very important time for exposing flaws in arguments, for setting yourself up for the rebuttals, for going over strengths and weaknesses in arguments, and for generating direct clash. I do not have numbers for this or a clear definition of what it means to “win CX,” but I get the sense that the team that “wins” the four questioning periods often wins the debate.

10. I lean toward “reciprocity” arguments over “punish them because…” arguments. This is a very loose observation and there are many exceptions, but my sympathies connect more to arguments about how certain theoretical moves made by your opponent open up more avenues for you (remember to spell out what those avenues look like and how they benefit you). If there are places to make arguments about how you have been disadvantaged or harmed by your opponent’s positions (and there certainly are), those discussions are most compelling when contextualized, linked to larger issues in the debate, and fully justified.

Overall, enjoy yourself—remember to learn things when you can and that competition is usually better as a means than as an ends.

And, finally, the third big issue is post-round. Usually I will not call for many cards—it will help your cause to point out which cards are most significant in the rebuttals (and explain why). I will try to provide a few suggestions for future rounds if there is enough time. Feel free to ask questions as well. In terms of a long-term request, I have two favors to ask. First, give back to the activity when you can. Judging high school debates and helping local programs is the way the community sustains itself and grows—every little bit helps. Whether you realize it or not, you are a very qualified judge for all the debate events at high school tournaments. Second, consider going into teaching. If you enjoy debate at all, then bringing some of the skills of advocacy, the passion of thinking hard about issues, or the ability to apply strategy to argumentation, might make teaching a great calling for you and for your future students (https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_emdin_teach_teachers_how_to_create_magic note: debaters are definitely part of academia, but represent a group than can engage in Emdin’s terms). There are lots of good paths to pursue, but teaching is one where debaters excel and often find fulfilling. Best of luck along the ways.

I'm open to pretty much any arguments as long as they are well-explained and contextualized to the round. Tag team CX is fine but don't overpower the person who is supposed to be answering questions. I don't really have a K/policy preference. I've read some K affs so I'm down with that too, but I definitely have more experience with policy arguments. As for spreading, be clear because if I can't understand you I just won't flow. 

Beomhak Lee

Updated March 2021

Affiliation - Dallas Jesuit.

If you have any concerns/questions/asking for email chain: lbh7746@gmail.com

CJR topic - Very interesting topic. I have pretty good exposure to the topic. Yet, this still does not justify teams in speaking jargons. Personally, I find DA and CP literature on this topic quite disappointing (unless the link narrative can be specific to the aff). So I believe this perhaps is a good opportunity for some teams to engage in critical literature deeper than before.

Stylistic Issues:

- Speed is fine. But clarity >>> speed. Especially given the virtual-ness of debating, I would suggest going a bit slower.

- Please line by line. If you don't even at least attempt to line by line, your speaks will suffer.

- Depth outweighs breadth. One well-warranted argument beats numerous poorly explained/constructed arguments. This applies to the cards too. Poorly and disjointedly highlighted cards are bad. Call them out on it.

- No I don't take prep for emailing/flashing unless it's excessive.

- Usually, it is tech > truth but not all the time.

- Stop being a jerk. There is a fine line between being passionate/competitive vs. being a total jerk.

- I am totally fine with any style of argument. You do you. I am here to listen. Obviously, this excludes arguments like racism or sexism good :)

- This is probably obvious but I think it's important. For me to vote on an argument, it has to make sense in my head. While I will probably understand the general thesis for most of your arguments myself, every argument (K, DA, CP, T, K aff, etc.) requires a nuanced explanation that is different, depending on the circumstances of the round. So, spend some time doing that in the round.

Topicality

Love them if done well. Personally think they are very underutilized in this topic. Will default to competing interpretations if not convinced otherwise. T is all about weighing your interpretation versus theirs. Specificity (i.e. examples of how the aff would explode limits or gut grounds) is good. Just saying meaningless phrases like 'they explode limits' won't be convincing at all.

Counterplans/Disadvantages

Most of my 2NRs were CP+DA or DA alone. More specific your evidence (solvency advocate or link) is to the aff, the better. I think solvency advocate for the CP should be a thing most of the time. If you don't, it's not really a theoretical reason to lose but rather a solvency question. Impact calculus on DAs usually is really really really important. Use the impact debate to frame the ballot and be comparative (especially if you are going for the DA without the CP with only the case defense, which by the way is heavily under-utilized). Good link narratives on DAs will be awarded. Smart analytics will be awarded as well.

Kritiks

Love them. But, if you start to talk in disjointed vocabularies without contextualizing the K to the aff, then the K is not so loving. I think that aff should generally get to weigh the action of the plan, though I can be convinced otherwise in many ways - so put in the work.

Winning a general explanation of the world is not enough. Use the specific link and internal link narratives to prove why the aff would make X worse. To do that, I think real-world manifestations or examples help a ton. Way too many teams just assume "if I win a link, then the impact happens" - welp, a good internal link work will be awarded. Long overviews are mostly useless. Line by line is good.

K/Non-traditional affirmative

Personally, I find these affs way more interesting than listening to generic process CP debates per say. Clarity on what the aff does (i.e. the mechanism of the aff) is the single most important thing to explain to me. Personal narrative, music, poetry - anything is fine with me. Just have a particular reason why you included those parts in 1AC. You need to have at least some relations to the topic, and some reason why you don't use governmental institutions. You still need a reason why your ROB is good, and for the neg teams going for FW, that must be challenged. As always, impact debates on FW must be comparative.

Theory

Chill for a second and SLOW DOWN

Don't run New Affs bad in front of me - I'm not gonna vote on it.

Conditionality is usually good - unless multiple conditional contradictory world is a thing (but is it a theoretical reason to reject the team? Eh - though I think it would benefit you substantive-wise if used well)

Other theory arguments (generally) probably are a reason to reject the argument, not the team UNLESS I'm convinced otherwise. If they drop theory, then the story is quite different (assuming that you invest some time into it).

ETC.

I really love this activity. There probably is a reason why I keep in touch with debate and the community even though I decided not to debate in college. If I happen to judge you, know that I will judge debates as fairly as I can Please respect each other and have fun.

Also, for more nitty-gritty judging philosophies on the style of arguments, look into these judges’ philosophies: Tracy McFarland, Ryan Gorman, and Dan Lingel. They introduced/influenced me a lot (like debate + life) that we almost have a similar "view of debate" if that makes sense. If three judges contradict in their judging philosophy, it would be on my therapy list.

Overview

Rowland Hall 2016; Emory 2020; University of Chicago Law School 2023

Ask if you have questions: jadenlessnick@gmail.com

Add me to the email chain; no need to ask. Please make the subject line something easily searchable (e.g., GSU 2023 Round 1 – Emory LS v. Georgetown AM)

I. How Should You Pref Me?

Experience

---I have spent years competing, coaching, and judging in policy debate. I have been fortunate to coach many terrific teams, several of whom qualified to the TOC, including, most recently, a TOC finals appearance by Chaminade AH. I have judged late outrounds of many major tournaments. As a competitor, I cleared at the TOC twice, reaching the quarterfinals my senior year. I received 15 total bids while in high school—9 with my primary partner during my senior year. My partner and I attended the Greenhill and CPS round robins.

---I feel comfortable with this topic’s subject matter, but I have judged only at the Meadows and Notre Dame tournaments thus far.

---I like fast, technical debate regardless of argument style.

Ideology

---I consider myself a generalist, and I have yet to find an argument I am ideologically unwilling to vote for. I have read, coached, and voted for arguments running the ideological gamut. In high school, I read mostly K arguments; in college, mostly policy arguments. My research as a coach is about 50/50 policy/K.

---I also believe that I can learn enough about a new argument—policy or K—throughout a debate that I can and will vote for it, even if previously unfamiliar, assuming your explanation is satisfactory.

---Using T-USFG as a modest proxy for prefs, I would likely conclude fairness is an impact assuming equal debating. It can be dispositive, but only with the right framing. I rarely think the substance of any given debate meaningfully impacts what we do in the real world, so “skills,” “education,” or “violence” typically face an uphill battle on either side. I am much better for planless affs that say "debating about the USFG is bad" than those that say "the USFG is bad."

---I'm in the "if you can't beat dumb arguments, you should lose" camp—but I reward teams who identify the dumb arguments and address them accordingly.

---I am a law clerk for a federal court of appeals judge, so my day-to-day involves a considerable amount of reading about technical aspects of government structure. But I don’t think that has made me any less comfortable evaluating kritikal arguments.

Other

---If your strategy, policy or kritikal, depends primarily on tricks intended to obfuscate clash, I will likely look for ways to vote for the other team.

---I don’t mind vertical 1NCs, but the more that you’re including obviously throw-away positions, the more likely I am to give the aff some flexibility as the debate goes on.

II. Argument Idiosyncrasies

This section lists the places where I think I deviate from community norms in my evaluation of certain arguments.

Top Level

---I care more than most about card quality, especially internal link evidence. It's not dispositive if overcome by debating, but I have been incredibly skeptical of: (1) the ability of certain CPs to solve an internal net benefit or avoid an external net benefit, (2) the necessity of an aff internal link to an advantage (as opposed to its sufficiency), and (3) the internal link to the terminal impact of a DA, even granting the negative a link to the plan.

---I seem to have a higher threshold than most for thoroughness in making an argument analytically/extending an argument. I will be deeply uncomfortable voting for an argument that was less than 3 complete sentences in the prior speech unless absolutely conceded (obvi that number is arbitrary; it depends on the argument and the debate).

---In exactly zero debates has swearing made me more likely to vote for a team.

---I am unlikely to vote on a “cheap shot.” If you bury ASPEC in your answer-to-condo block, I’m unlikely to care if the aff drops it. Whether something is a “cheap shot” depends on (1) how apparent the argument was when you made it, and (2) the degree of argument development when it was first introduced.

Topicality

---I care more about precision and predictability than most. That often means I care a fair bit about the card quality of an interpretation. Precision doesn't always mean a technical definition. Generally, dictionaries > court opinions/white paper/etc > defining a word for a social science paper. There are also other indicia of meaning than defining a word; the structure of the res and other words might be relevant, too.

---I'm agnostic about whether reasonability requires a counter-interpretation. If the neg goes for a contrived but limited interpretation of the topic, and the aff is one of the primary and predictable affs on the topic, I could see myself voting aff even absent a counter-interpretation if done right.

---If the plan uses the phrase you're defining, you might consider redeploying your T arguments as link/CP competition arguments rather than T arguments, unless your definition of the phrase is incompatible with another part of the plan. E.g., if you say "FJG requires taxes," and the plan says "FJG," winning T simply means you've won that the aff taxes people. It would be different if the plan said "an FJG funded by deficit spending."

T-USFG/Framework

---I’m better for fairness-style impacts than skills/education/whatever because it's substantially easier to quantify. I don't automatically think that any deviation from instrumental implementation is per se unfair; I care about what the state of negative/affirmative ground looks like under each interpretation.

---The more that aff offense critiques debating ABOUT THE USFG and not just debating about the TOPIC, the better position they will be in.

---Is my role as a judge to actually remedy an instance of procedural unfairness in this particular debate, or is it to hypothetically adopt a model for debate more broadly? If it’s the former, do interpretations/counter-interpretations/limits even matter?

---What happens if the counter-interpretation links to the aff’s offense? Does it matter if it links less?

Ks

---I'm comfortable and experienced evaluating these debates. I have read everything from identity Ks to postmodernist Ks in my time as a debater (and coach). I will be careful not to let my independent knowledge of an argument compensate for a lack of explanation.

---the burden of specificity goes both ways. Specific links/alts/etc. are good; so are specific aff answers.

---If the links exist in a different world from the hypothetical implementation of the aff, you need to win a framework argument. The argument that “the aff gets to weigh the aff and the neg gets its K” makes no sense to me in such scenarios.

---For that reason, framework arguments on either side often fare better in front of me than they do other judges.

---K tricks are dumb. Most of the time, they are implicitly answered by other aspects of the debate. If your strategy primarily depends on the aff dropping a K trick, I'll be unhappy.

DAs

---I often get hung up on link uniqueness, and I rarely think that "our uniqueness evidence prices that in" is meaningfully responsive, because it still empirically disproves the link. Negative teams fare better if they can qualitatively differentiate the aff from the other things that would have triggered the link. This is one of the places where the quality of evidence matters to me a lot.

---The internal link is usually the weakest part of a DA, typically because of poor card quality. The internal link often says that "X bad thing will contribute to Y impact," but rarely is avoiding the DA sufficient to stop the impact.

---For both of those reasons, I usually think that negative teams should spend more time CPing offense into the debate.

CPs, Competition, and Theory

---As a matter of abstract preference, I'm neg on conditionality—even in 2+ conditional options. I have been persuaded otherwise. This preference comes more from the fact that I think debate is more fun with multiple conditional options in a debate than any feeling about the quality of arguments on either side.

---I’d prefer a competition debate over a theory debate. Theory doesn’t necessarily require an “interp” if you think what they did was unfair.

---Having a solvency advocate that compares the CP against normal means assuages a lot (but not all) of my concerns about process CPs. I'm not convinced all CPs need solvency advocates, though.

---Not sure what the best form of CP competition is. I’m uncomfortable with the notion that CP competition can be determined only by reference to the words of the plan text, but I’m not sure whether competing off of normal means makes the most sense either. I might be persuaded that something like positional competition is the best we’ve got.

---Relatedly, I can be persuaded relatively easily that if the aff chooses not to specify something in the 1AC cx, they don't get to claim offense based on that thing later in the debate. E.g., if the aff says "we don't specify whether we mandate a tax increase," the aff shouldn't get to read an add-on based on tax increases. I'm more agnostic about whether this applies to the aff's agent.

---I will default to NOT kicking the CP. That means if the aff wins PDCP, it will necessarily avoid the link to the DA. I will NOT kick the CP for you if the first time you say "judge kick" is in the 2NR, and saying "logic" on conditionality in the 2NC won't do the trick.

Case

---Necessity vs. sufficiency matters a lot for internal links. If your card says something is necessary to solve an impact, that doesn’t mean the plan is sufficient to solve it. This often gets explained as “reverse causality,” but I think of it more in terms of necessary vs. sufficient.

III. Rules of Decision

The following default rules will apply when I’m making my decision, absent debating otherwise.

---Generally, tech over truth, with the following two caveats. First, the argument needs to pass a minimum threshold of reasonableness. If you say, “PICs are a voting issue because they steal the whole aff, so vote against them even if they kick it,” I probably won’t vote for that argument; it’s a non-sequitur. Second, the argument needs to pass a minimum thoroughness threshold. If you say, “extinction outweighs—it’s irreversible,” and nothing more, I’ll give the argument almost zero weight. This will inevitably involve some subjective judgment on my part, so it’s better to err on the side of more explanation.

---If a complete argument is dropped, you can extend it without explaining the warrant, but you need to at least mention it in each speech (and subsequently impact it). If the neg drops reasonability in the block, and you don’t point that out in the 1AR, can’t re-raise it in the 2AR; but you can say, in the 1AR, “they dropped reasonability—this obviates their offense because XYZ.”

---Presumption is less change.

---No inserting. The mere act of inserting something does not constitute justification for insertion—you need to independently justify it.

---I will not kick the CP, even if you say you're conditional, unless judge kick is explicit. If the aff wins PDCP, they will necessarily avoid the link to the net benefit. If judge kick is raised for the first time in the 2NR and the 2AR answers it sufficiently, I'll likely default aff. Saying "you can kick the CP for us, it's most logical" borders on too blippy.

---Absent any debating, I will assume the CP doesn't link to the net benefit—even if it obviously does.

IV. Immutable Rules

These are rules that cannot be changed by the debating.

---If you ask for certain speaker points, I will give you a 25.

---Speech times and orders

---I will flow only the person who is supposed to be speaking, unless part of a 1AC/1NC performance. If both people are speaking during the 1AC/1NC as part of a performance, I reserve the right not to flow the person who should not be speaking if it seems like allowing them to speak will confer an inappropriate advantage on the team (e.g., if they are considerably faster than their partner).

---CX is three minutes long, and anything said outside of those three minutes isn’t binding—including the status of advocacies, whether there were any theory arguments, etc.

---When marking a card, you must do so during your speech.

---Clipping requires a recording, but I reserve the right to raise it sua sponte if I’m following along and I see you’re clipping.

---If you make an ethics challenge, it will stop the debate. I will consult tab before proceeding. Whomever loses the ethics challenge will get the lowest points possible. My strong preference is that substantive evidentiary issues get cached out over the course of a debate.

V. Miscellanea

---The best CXs are those that subtly get another team to make a concession without realizing it, and then referencing it later. Using CX as a "gotcha" moment is usually unhelpful.

---I don't like saying "clear." It encourages debaters to push the envelope of clarity. I will still try to flow an unclear debater, but I'll be far more willing to give the other team some leeway in responding.

Dan Lingel Jesuit College Prep—Dallas

danlingel@gmail.com for email chain purposes

dlingel@jesuitcp.org for school contact

"Be smart. Be strategic. Tell your story. And above all have fun and you shall be rewarded."--the conclusion of my 1990 NDT Judging Philosophy

Updated for 2023-2024 topic
30 years of high school coaching/6 years of college coaching
I will either judge or help in the tabroom at over 20+ tournaments

****read here first*****
I still really love to judge and I enjoy judging quick clear confident comparative passionate advocates that use qualified and structured argument and evidence to prove their victory paths. I expect you to respect the game and the people that are playing it in every moment we are interacting.

***I believe that framing/labeling arguments and paper flowing is crucial to success in debate and maybe life so I will start your speaker points absurdly high and work my way up (look at the data) if you acknowledge and represent these elements: label your arguments (even use numbers and structure) and can demonstrate that you flowed the entire debate and that you used your flow to give your speeches and in particular demonstrate that you used your flow to actually clash with the other teams arguments directly.

Some things that influence my decision making process

1. Debate is first and foremost a persuasive activity that asks both teams to advocate something. Defend an advocacy/method and defend it with evidence and compare your advocacy/method to the advocacy of the other team. I understand that there are many ways to advocate and support your advocacy so be sure that you can defend your choices. I do prefer that the topic is an access point for your advocacy.

2. The negative should always have the option of defending the status quo (in other words, I assume the existence of some conditionality) unless argued otherwise.

3. The net benefits to a counterplan must be a reason to reject the affirmative advocacy (plan, both the plan and counterplan together, and/or the perm) not just be an advantage to the counterplan.

4. I enjoy a good link narrative since it is a critical component of all arguments in the arsenal—everything starts with the link. I think the negative should mention the specifics of the affirmative plan in their link narratives. A good link narrative is a combination of evidence, analytical arguments, and narrative.

5. Be sure to assess the uniqueness of offensive arguments using the arguments in the debate and the status quo. This is an area that is often left for judge intervention and I will.

6. I am not the biggest fan of topicality debates unless the interpretation is grounded by clear evidence and provides a version of the topic that will produce the best debates—those interpretations definitely exist this year. Generally speaking, I can be persuaded by potential for abuse arguments on topicality as they relate to other standards because I think in round abuse can be manufactured by a strategic negative team.

7. I believe that the links to the plan, the impact narratives, the interaction between the alternative and the affirmative harm, and/or the role of the ballot should be discussed more in most kritik debates. The more case and topic specific your kritik the more I enjoy the debate. Too much time is spent on framework in many debates without clear utility or relation to how I should judge the debate.

8. There has been a proliferation of theory arguments and decision rules, which has diluted the value of each. The impact to theory is rarely debating beyond trite phrases and catch words. My default is to reject the argument not the team on theory issues unless it is argued otherwise.

9. Speaker points--If you are not preferring me you are using old data and old perceptions. It is easy to get me to give very high points. Here is the method to my madness on this so do not be deterred just adapt. I award speaker points based on the following: strategic and argumentative decision-making, the challenge presented by the context of the debate, technical proficiency, persuasive personal and argumentative style, your use of the cross examination periods, and the overall enjoyment level of your speeches and the debate. If you devalue the nature of the game or its players or choose not to engage in either asking or answering questions, your speaker points will be impacted. If you turn me into a mere information processor then your points will be impacted. If you choose artificially created efficiency claims instead of making complete and persuasive arguments that relate to an actual victory path then your points will be impacted.

10. I believe in the value of debate as the greatest pedagogical tool on the planet. Reaching the highest levels of debate requires mastery of arguments from many disciplines including communication, argumentation, politics, philosophy, economics, and sociology to name a just a few. The organizational, research, persuasion and critical thinking skills are sought by every would-be admission counselor and employer. Throw in the competitive part and you have one wicked game. I have spent over thirty years playing it at every level and from every angle and I try to make myself a better player everyday and through every interaction I have. I think that you can learn from everyone in the activity how to play the debate game better. The world needs debate and advocates/policymakers more now than at any other point in history. I believe that the debates that we have now can and will influence real people and institutions now and in the future—empirically it has happened. I believe that this passion influences how I coach and judge debates.


Logistical Notes--I prefer an email chain with me included whenever possible. I feel that each team should have accurate and equal access to the evidence that is read in the debate. I have noticed several things that worry me in debates. People have stopped flowing and paying attention to the flow and line-by-line which is really impacting my decision making; people are exchanging more evidence than is actually being read without concern for the other team, people are under highlighting their evidence and "making cards" out of large amounts of text, and the amount of prep time taken exchanging the information is becoming excessive. I reserve the right to request a copy of all things exchanged as verification. If three cards or less are being read in the speech then it is more than ok that the exchange in evidence occur after the speech.

Jake LoRocco

Updated 1/10/2023

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About Me

I did policy debate for four years in high school at Dallas Jesuit. I did not debate in college but judged throughout and stayed involved in the community.

Currently judging/volunteering with the Boston Debate League.

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General

I'm good with any type of argument (as long as it's not racist, sexist, etc...) in any form (K, DA, CP, etc...). No matter the argument though, tell me why it's important and why I should vote for it. And please make it aff specific.

You can talk as fast as you want (and I will let you know if you aren't clear).

I don't think new affs bad is a legitimate argument.

Debated at Emory. Coached at Harvard and Northwestern and Dartmouth.

Put me on your email thread, thanks: ksten52@gmail.com

TL;DR: Be attentive, prepared, and invested. I will do the same in return.

- Judge instruction is the most valuable skill you have and the most important one for you to use. Good judge instruction establishes tenets for judging the situation at hand by declaring what criteria I should care about when making choices.
- More often than not you can understand how I feel about an argument by monitoring my reaction
- My hearing is in the B- to B+ range but it's definitely not an A. Let's aim for a 10% clarity increase.

Clash Debates *Updated in 2020
I care about my flow, following assumptions to their logical conclusions, internal link defense, and answering the arguments the other team is making not the caricature of the argument you assume they're making.

I try to keep my opinions out of my judging in all contexts, but in this context the opinions that I am predisposed to agree with are:
- People shouldn't have to refute the subjective experiences of others.
- Without explaining the causal pathway, an assertion that debate makes us good or bad at something is an incomplete argument.
- Novelty for the sake of itself is silly
- Being told you're wrong isn't the same thing as being told you're bad.
- The debate round is not the same thing as Debate. Endowing the debate round, the single facet of Debate that is engineered to produce dissensus and us-them thinking, with a preeminent role in achieving community good has never made any sense to me.

Kritiks
- Links should have impacts.
- I tend to measure the utility of theories by my understanding of the consequences of adoption. Debate's understanding of consequence is often too narrow. But if you can't explain the material implications of your thing... we will struggle.
- Solving problems is an invaluable skill, but identifying them is a rather cheap one. I find that this belief influences how I think about the K more than any other.

Theory
- I don't think conditionality is that bad... but if saying it is constitutes your cleanest path to victory then do that.
- I’m generally persuaded that if a prepared 2A could have anticipated the CP, the CP belongs in debate.

Disads/Counterplans/Other
- A disad cannot be low risk unless you've substantively demonstrated that's the case with defensive arguments. Describing the nature of conjunctive risk bias is not that.
- People stopped doing good terminal impact calculus at some point? Don't love it. Please fix.
- Making courageous choices and knowing when to cut your losses is one of the hardest debate skills to master. I reward debaters who do it well.

Best of luck.

Email: madhavansiddharth@gmail.com

Background: I am a former 4th year 2N varsity debater for Alpharetta High School. I was mostly a policy debater so i prefer to have debates centered around the resolution. ***IMPORTANT: I GUARANTEE you that I have zero knowledge of the topic so you might have to go out of your way to explain some things to me*** 

Aff: If you read a plan textless aff you need to be able to: A. Explain the aff to both me and the other team well and B. be able to answer framework well... If you cannot do both of these things expect your speaks to be docked. As far as policy affs go i'm fine with anything as long it has a plan text that can be proven topical... You can even go ahead and add some kritikal impacts if you want.

Neg: I'll go more in-depth into each kind of off-case(including specifically politics and elections) below but as far as general neg strat goes expect me to be very critical of your block and 2NR choices(especially since I was a 2N myself). 

T: I default to competeing interpretations but that doesn't mean you cannot convince to vote on reasonability if you win it and justify it well. Also if you're going for T... I DEMAND A CASELIST FROM BOTH SIDES.

Ks: I'm much better with them than I was a year ago(I went for death cult multiple times during my senior year...as sad as I am to admit that) but I'm not into super high theory debates though... basically make sure you know what your going for and make sure you can contextualize it to the aff and explain it to me(and just make sure you stay away from a certain french philosopher okay?)

D.As: Don't have any problem with them in fact I encourage you to read them.

Politics: YOU NEED UNDERSTAND IT IF YOU WANT ME TO VOTE YOU UP ON IT.  DON'T TRY GOING FOR POLITICS IF YOU CANNOT EXPLAIN THE SCENARIO TO ME WELL. Aside from that I will generally storngly encourage you to read it as well.

Elections: Same as politics pretty much and also be prepared to defend the candidate ur saying is good.

C.Ps: I LOVE EM.  USE EM. As far as competition goes i default to functional but once again if you can prove that textual competition is more important i will still vote on it.

Framework: I LOVE FRAMEWORK DEBATES(even though I'm not that good at them lol). 

Updated for immigration - I found out the topic was about immigration 5 minutes before round 1 :eyes:
__________________

Ive debated for 4 years in highschool and a year in a half in college.

I only read policy arguments for my first three years, and only high theory for my last 3 years of debate

I dont care what arguments you make as long as you explain them well and explain why you should win the debate.

Conceding an argument means nothing if you dont explain why the argument is important and why their concession is important for the overall debate.

It seems like everyone is reading the K even if they dont know what it means... If you dont know what 2/3rds of the words in your evidence means... dont read the arguments or it'll be very obvious and your speaker points wont be as happy

The only argument im slightly biased on is "capitalism is bad", I dont think its bad in the abstract, but ive thought a lot about capitalism and theres one reason which has convinced me its evil. Thats up for you to figure out.

Assistant Director of Debate -- UTD... YOU SHOULD COME DEBATE FOR US BECAUSE WE HAVE SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

So I really dont want to judge but if you must pref me here's some things you should know.

Arguments I wont vote on ever

Pref Sheets args

Things outside the debate round

Death is good

General thoughts

Tl:Dr- do you just dont violate the things i'll never vote on and do not pref me that'd be great.

Line by Line is important.

I generally give quick RFDs this isnt a insult to anyone but I've spent the entire debate thinking about the round and generally have a good idea where its going by the end.

Clarity over speed (ESP IN THIS ONLINE ENVIRONMENT) if I dont understand you it isnt a argument.

****NEW THOUGHTS FOR THE NDT**** I generally dont think process CPs that result in the aff are competitive -- I'm more likely to vote on perm do both or the PDCP if push comes to shove... could I vote on it sure but I generally lean aff on these cps.

Online edit -- go slower speed and most of your audio setups arent great. (See what I did there)

Only the debaters debating can give speeches.

I catch you clipping I will drop you. So suggest you dont and be clear mumbling after i've said clear risk me pulling the trigger.

ecmathis AT gmail for email chains... but PLEASE DONT PREF ME

Longer thoughts

Can you beat T-USFG in front of me if your not a traditional team.... yes... can you lose it also yes. Procedural fairness is a impact for me. K teams need to give me a reason why I should ignore T if they want to win it. Saying warrantless claims impacted by the 1AC probably isnt good enough.

Aff's that say "Affirm me because it makes me feel better or it helps me" probably not the best in front of me. I just kinda dont believe it.

Reading cards-

I dislike reading cards because I do not fell like reconstructing the debate for one side over another. I will read cards dont get me wrong but rarely will I read cards on args that were not explained or extended well.

K-There fine I like em except the death good ones.

In round behavior- Aggressive is great being a jerk is not. This can and will kill your speaks. Treat your opponents with respect and if they dont you can win a ballot off me saying what they've done in round is problematic. That said if someone says you're arg is (sexist, racist, etc) that isnt the same as (a debater cursing you out because you ran FW or T or a debater telling you to get out of my activity) instant 0 and a loss. i'm not about that life.

Updated Sept 5, 2022 

Tracy McFarland

Jesuit College Prep - for a long while; back in the day undergrad debate - Baylor U 

Please use jcpdebate@gmail.com for speech docs. I do want to be in the email chain.
However, I don't check that email a lot while not at tournaments - so if you need to reach me not at a tournament, feel free to email me at tmcfarland@jesuitcp.org

Reason for update - I have updated my judging paradigm not because my fundamental views of debate have changed, really.  BUT , as one of my labbies put it this summer, apparently the detail of my previous paradigm was "scary".  So, I have tried to distill down some of the most important ways I evaluate debate.  

Clash - it's good - which means you need to flow and not script your speeches.  LBL with some clear references to where you're at = good.  Line by line isn't answer the previous speech in order - it's about grounding the debate in the 2ac on off case, 1nc on case.

Dates and "real world" matter - with WMD after 9/11 and immigration during Trump as close rivals, this topic seems one of the most current event influenced debate topics I've experienced.  Obviously I mean this in terms of Russia invasion on Feb 24, 2022 - but I also mean in the sense of Madrid Summitt and new Strategic Concept as it relates to the areas; new president in the US as of 2021 with very different policies about NATO and IR; etc.  You do not need evidence to integrate current events into your argument - you do need an explanation about why dates matter - ie what's happened that the other team's arguments don't assume.  But these arguments can go far in my mind to reduce risk of a DA or an advantage - so you should make these arguments and use as indicts of the other team's evidence as appropriate. . I am persuaded by teams that call out other teams based on their evidence quality, author quals, lack of highlighting (meaning they read little of the evidence

Process CPs and other neg trickeration - it's such a good topic that I would definitely prefer to see topic specific arguments.  This means that there are some process CPs or other debates grounded in the lit that are really good debates; there are some that are not.  Particularly as the season progresses, I would expect a discussion of what normal means is - both on the aff and the neg to justify process-y cps.  

DAs - it's possible to win zero risk that the DA is an opportunity cost to the aff.  

Ks - specific links are good.  You should have a sense on the aff and the neg what FW is going to get you in a debate. 

K affs - should be tied to the topic in some way.  If they aren't, then neg args with topical versions or ways to access the education the K aff offers through the resolution are usually persuasive to me.  If the aff has a K of the topic, that's great offense that negs need to have an answer.  I don't think that debate is just a game.  Its a competitive activity that does shape our political subjectivity.  

T - if you have a good violation and reasons why an aff should be excluded, by all means read it.  If you are just reading it as a "time suck" then, meh, read more substance.  And, an argument that ends in -spec is usually an uphill battle unless it's clever [this cleverness standard does preclude generally a- and o-] 

Impact turns - topic specific one = good; generic ones - more meh 

New affs are good - and don't need to be disclosed before a debate if it's truly the very first time that someone at your school has read the argument.  But new affs may justify theoretically sketchy args by the neg - you can integrate that into the theory debate, you don't need a new affs bad 1nc arg to do that. 

Be nice to each other - it's possible to be competitive without being overly sassy.  

Modality matters - when you are debating in person, remember that people can hear you talk to your partner and you should have a line of sight with the judge.  If you are online, make sure that your camera is on when possible to create some engagement with the judge.  

Edited for Woodward 2017

TL; DR: I’m cool with whatever, have fun 

Rohan Menon

Northview High School ‘17

Northwestern ‘21

Add me to the email chain 😃 : rohmann98@gmail.com

Tech>Truth. This paradigm is just my views on debate, generally if you debate what you like well enough you should be able to get my ballot.

Have fun and make jokes 😊

Paperless

I won’t take prep for flashing BUT DO NOT ABUSE THIS. I can tell when you’re deleting analytics, its not worth the prep time/getting caught for stealing prep.

K Affs/Framework

I pretty much exclusively read affs that defend the rez. I think that to win a K aff in front of me, you really need to win that you are either resolutional (and defend why that is sufficient on the framework debate) or you need to prove that you are prior to doing the resolution. As a result, affs that vaguely mention the word China probably won’t be the best in front of me.

I liked going for framework and I think that the aff should defend a topical plan, but that doesn’t mean you’ll automatically win in front of me. I think you really need to try to access the impacts that the 1AC tries to access with your defense of normative debate. Hold the Aff to an advocacy and debate them there.

Theory

T outweighs theory

To win a theory argument (esp something other than condo) you will need to put in a LOT of work impacting out the argument. Just saying Fairness/Education is not enough, you need to go further.

Condo is probably good, but I can be persuaded otherwise

Kritiks

I read a lot of kritiks freshman and sophomore year but I shifted to more traditional policy args in my Junior and Senior year (@thePoliticsDA). As a result, I don’t think I’m the person to judge really really left debates, but I can probably understand the argument if you read it. I’m more comfortable with Kritiks like the Security K as I am more familiar with those more Right-Leaning types of arguments.

CP/DA

I like these. I think whether or not a counterplan is legitimate is up to the debating being done, I don’t have a predisposition.

Challenges:

1.       If you can win a debate and your only answer on the politics DA is intrinsicness, I will give you a 29.5 as my MINIMUM.

2.       Debate without prep time: If you take no prep the entire debate you will definitely get good speaks

gl;hf

Former Assistant Coach for Wayzata (2012 - 2016)
Experience: Debated for Wayzata (2009 - 2012), and on and off for University of Minnesota (2012 - 2016), Assistant Coach at University of Minnesota (2020)

ONLINE DEBATE

I understand this isn't exactly what every one was hoping for this season to look like, and I also recognize that most of us will be experiencing a new form of debate together--I am hoping that we will work together during rounds to ensure that the online video call debate experience goes smoothy. Please remember despite this being frustrating for some of you, this is an incredibly important movement to make debate more accessible to more members of the community.

On this note of online video call, I have some preferences:
1) Camera: If you are speaking, please keep your camera on. You may turn it off once your speech is over.
2) Volume: Be wary of your speaking volume. Some times mics don't pick up spreading well because of the volume changes. I struggle sometimes with flowing every single argument, so this is really really important to me.
3) Recordings: I know you all will be recording these rounds--I am uncomfortable with being recorded consistently during the round. We live in a very different world than before, and I want people to recognize that recordings will be leaked and edited. For that reason, I'd prefer not to be recorded for long periods of time. I recognize this is frustrating.

POLICY PARADIGM
1) Dropped Arguments -- They need a claim, warrant, and implication. You cannot just say they dropped and therefore it is true.

2) Impact calc, Impact calc, Impact calc. Please do it.

3) Tech > Truth - I interpret this as I will judge things as they go on the flow, not as how I think things should go. I try to intervene very little. Intervention sometimes, but only if something comes across / is problematic.

4) Flow Troubles -- I'm forthcoming about this, so please work with me! I still flow on paper, so there is nothing I love more than a structured flow. It will reflect in your speaker points. On clarity, I will say clearer three times before I give up flowing.

5) Email Chain - I always want to be on the email chain.

Some specifics:

1) Disads - case specific disads are fun-- I like them. I'm not particularly sure if I like politics at all, but I'll vote for it. I get exhausted by trump oriented conversation though...

2) Counterplans – Many are theoretically questionable, but affirmatives rarely push back on this. Substantive PICs are awesome – multi-actor object fiat is the worst. Everything else is somewhere in between. I care about what the perm looks like post fiat AND how it functions in round. Please explain it to me.

3) Framework – So I think I have changed opinions on the K since I started only judging clash rounds in recent years--and I have been surprised to learn that I tend to lean towards "a more inclusive form of debate is good". I often am pref'd by policy aff teams hoping for lenience in K debates, and I want to highlight that this isn't the wisest strategy given how many times I have voted against framework.

Despite this, I do believe that framework can be a compelling argument in front of me if read in a way that is specific and conscious about the round. Please keep this in mind.

4) Kritiks - I'm not k-illterate and tend to be able to wade through evidence pretty well, but I am not super familiar with the literature. Explain to me the specific link, impact, and alt action, and please explain it specifically. I want you to get detailed and nuanced, and explain the scope of the argument. I really want you to contextualize a specific link to the 1AC / 1NC / Topic literature.

What are more popular kritiks nowadays? Generic postmodernism is something difficult for me sometimes, but then again, I'll vote on many different things. Honestly, I'd prefer you to go to a little slower on this, which would reflect in your speaker points. I like topic-specific K’s. Neolib, imperialism, etc. are all very viable strategies in front of me, but they need to be applied specifically. I would also highly recommend extending case defense to bolster your K – the most common aff argument I vote on against K’s is “case outweighs”.

Off-beat note: Many years into debate, I still like small, soft policy, K-friendly topical affs which defend a small-ish impact, and critique disads / net benefits. I find this kind of debate refreshing. An aesthetic I can stan for.

5) Theory – conditionality is almost certainly good, unless it is way excessive, like 5 counterplans. I do however think that if the neg makes performative contradictions – for example, reads a security K and then a terrorism impact on a disad – it can be justification for the aff to sever their reps/judge choice. I do not default to judge kick unless told to do so.

Finally, I hate wipeout, I think the argument is gross and irresponsible, and I'd appreciate if you don't read it in front of me.

PUBLIC FORUM PARADIGM

I will evaluate the debate using skills from policy -- technical debate will be had!

I do not like Kritiks. 

he/they

Coaching affiliations: Atlanta Urban Debate League Debate Ambassadors (Grady, Decatur, Drew Charter, etc.), 2018-2022; Emory University, 2022-

Scroll to the end for non-policy

ADD ME TO THE CHAIN - mnav453[at]gmail[dot]com

SEND OUT A TEST EMAIL 5-10 MINUTES BEFORE THE ROUND. Subject should be formatted something like: "Tournament Name and Year - Round Number - Aff team vs Neg team." For example, "ADA 2023 - Round 1 - Greendale Community College AA vs Springfield University BB"

ONLINE DEBATE NOTES: If I am judging you online, please go slower, especially when you are starting your speeches; my audio set up is not the best. You should also get some sort of confirmation that everyone is present before starting your speech. If I have my camera off, I am not there and you should wait until I have turned my camera back on before starting your speech or CX.

Feel free to email if you have questions about anything I've written here or if you thought of a question after post-round feedback.

I have organized the policy portion into a short version for the pre round and a long version for prefs. After that is some procedural stuff, i.e. how I handle ethics violations.

NDT 2024 UPDATES

I have not judged since the first semester, so I am pretty unaware of topic innovation and metagame shifts from Wake onwards. I am also trying to rely less on docs when flowing, so you may want to go slower than you normally do.

TL;DR (FOR THE PRE-ROUND)

If I'm judging you in person, then I would appreciate wearing masks when you're not actively speaking or eating/drinking. It's not a requirement and I won't change your speaks for it, but we are still living with COVID and I'd rather minimize risk if possible. Thank you for the consideration.

Do you and make choices. I am most experienced judging policy aff v policy neg and policy aff v critical neg debates, but I will try my best to judge the arguments in front of me in the ways that the debaters want me to. Just make sure to choose the most important arguments and resolve them in the final rebuttals. In other words not every argument on a sheet of paper needs to be extended into the final speeches.

I care a lot more about the flow then the card doc. I will read along during speeches, but I try not to read cards after the debate unless either the debaters have explicitly instructed me to do so or I feel that I have to in order to resolve an important argument. As a result, go slower and follow the line by line. That doesn't mean numbering every argument you make, but rather sticking to the arguments in the order they were originally presented in and explicitly saying so when you deviate from that order.

In the event that you want me to read cards, please do some evidence comparison: tell me how I should read, not just what, i.e. what does your ev assume that theirs doesn't, is their evidence rhetorically powerful instead of argumentatively substantive, etc. This can help in determining close debates.

I care more about big picture storytelling and substantive engagements than cheap shots and minor technical concessions. I'd rather decide a debate on the basis of well warranted evidence or great judge instruction than "multiple perms are a reason to reject the team".

If you're extending a negative advocacy (CPs & Ks), assume I know nothing about your mechanism/literature/whatever, and spend some time in the block just explaining the premise(s) of your argument.

2023-2024 college policy topic thoughts: Judged a few debates at Kentucky and UMW. More comfortable with the core affs/core DA's. Don't have a strong opinion on T questions.

LONG VERSION (FOR PREFS)

Still figuring myself out as a judge, so what follows are not my indelible Thoughts on Debate but rather what I happen to think at this moment in time. I will try my best to adjudicate the debate in the way(s) the debaters want me to. That being said, I think how someone approaches judging will be much more useful to you as you fill out prefs than the whats of their pre existing biases.

Most people seem to be debating to the 2AC/block and card doc instead of the 2NR/2AR and the flow these days. I don’t say this because I want to show off my flowing skills (I am pretty average with respect to flowing ability, perhaps slightly worse on a laptop), but because this an easy way to extend arguments but not resolve them. You can read all of your impact turns to T in the 2AC or every neg UQ card on politics in the 1NR, but extending all of them without saying why you’re extending them in a strategic sense makes it difficult to determine what the most important arguments are and how to resolve them. It also doesn’t help that most people blaze through their blocks without slowing down on tags, using transition words, or otherwise making their speech palatable to the human ear.

As such, I will try to reward strategic decision making and judge instruction more than just who read more cards. This does not mean I hate cards – obviously well-researched and well-prepared arguments are better than badly-researched and ill-prepared ones – but rather that, unless the debaters have instructed me to read specific cards or I feel I must do so in order to resolve an important argument, I will try not let the evidence speak in place of the debaters. I will note however that in close debates, good evidence comparison can be a massive help in resolving the debate. By “good evidence comparison” I mean telling me what parts of the evidence I should prioritize, what the implications of the comparison is, etc. In other words, evidence comparison is another aspect of judge instruction.

In terms of how this actually affects your debating, you should generally go slower and prioritize your flowability. Start the 2AR/2NR by isolating what is the most important argument to resolve and why resolving that one argument filters the rest of the debate. From there you pick the most important arguments on your flow, follow the line by line, and explain why each argument is a necessary component of my decision, and explain why I should resolve them in your favor. If you want me to read a specific card or set of cards, then you should tell me to do so.

What follows are my biases and thoughts on different genres of debates.

K aff v T: While I have run the occasional aff without a plan, most of my debate experience, whether competing or coaching, is policy affirmatives against either some version of CP/DA or K strategies. Most of how I think about debate follows on from this style. This does not mean that T versus an aff without a plan is an auto-win in front of me, but rather that I have less experience and knowledge about these types of affirmatives. I think that affirmative teams should at least have some relation towards the resolution and should try to offer some sort of model of the topic and/or debate in general. Conversely, negative teams need to explain why fairness/education/whatever your standard is would be a preferable to whatever standard the affirmative proposes. In other words, you can win fairness is an impact but still lose if you don't win it outweighs the aff's impacts. I am sympathetic to limits arguments, but only to the extent they resolve some kind of impact that interacts with the opponent’s impacts. TVA’s and switch side arguments can serve as useful tiebreakers for the negative. I also think these affs should defend some departure from the status quo.

Policy aff v K: I find that the two basic ways to win a K in front of me are either to explain why I should change my decision calculus from utilitarianism and/or consequentialism to a different model (“framework”) or why I should prefer a different way of approaching the world/politics than standard USFG action (“alt”). “Links as linear DAs” I don’t find super persuasive. With regards to more framework-type strategies, you need to explain the implications of winning framework: does it change how I evaluate the link debate? Is winning framework enough to justify a ballot? This also applies to the aff: you need to explain why I should care about your framework arguments beyond “now we don’t lose on framework”. I also find role of the ballot/role of the judge arguments not super useful, since they seem to be round about ways of doing framework and impact analysis; they most frequently appear in my RFDs when the other team has conceded them. For framework strategies, it may be useful to forefront your defense and minimize how much the other team can access their offense. For alt-type strategies, you should explain why the alternative is competitive with the affirmative's intervention and how it resolves the affirmative's offense and/or your offense. My biggest comment to affirmative teams is to pick the focus of disagreement in advance and not just let the negative dictate the terms of the debate.

Policy v policy: Please, go for "substantive" strategies and not cheap shots; those debates are maybe harder to execute well but are much more rewarding for everyone involved. Case debating is a lost art these days, between the rise of massive multi plank CPs that fiat everything possible and most people prioritizing impact defense in their 2NR case coverage. Cases tend to be weakest in their internal link chains and solvency, so negative teams should think about what the weakest part of the case is and not just what you have backfiles to answer. In other words I am willing to vote negative on presumption. I am not good for complex process CPs or CPs that fiat in offense. To go for that strategy, I find it requires a lot of theory debating, which I have more thoughts on below, but also the ability to impact your theory and competition arguments. I also don’t find “sufficiency framing” a useful argument in a vacuum since I don’t know what counts as sufficiently solving the case. I like DAs and impact turns, since they more or less force disagreement over some part of the case. Just make sure to highlight the important cards you want me to read after the round. You also need to explain why winning certain parts of the flow are enough to win you the debate even if you are losing other parts. For example, in a debate about de-development/degrowth, my ballot gets a lot easier to decide if you win that sustainability is more important than a transition or vice versa.

K v K: I have the least experience judging these kinds of debates. I need some sort of clear idea of what the aff does and why its intervention is important and a departure from the status quo, and the negative needs some reason why that intervention is not desirable. I would describe my knowledge of critical literature as broad but shallow: I have some idea of the main arguments of many of the most cited authors but either haven’t read most of the primary works or haven’t thought about how they function in the debate context. If you want to go for the cap k as a policy team versus an aff without a plan, you should explain why I should care about extinction impacts or the desirability of your political project as compared to the negative's.

T and Theory: I think of T against policy affs as fall back options for when substantive strategies don't work out. If you want to win T then you need to explain why the aff's interpretation of the topic so unlimiting so as to make the topic not worthwhile from either an education perspective or games playing one. Condo is pretty much the only theory argument for which I would reject the team. To win on condo as the aff you need to explain why the practice of conditionality makes debate uniquely worse, i.e. why is the skew in this instance worse than skew as a result of a lot of DAs and T violations. I think going for condo is all or nothing; there is no reason why 1 condo is good but 2 is bad, and so on. The negative should explain why the practice of conditionality makes debate uniquely better. I won’t judge kick unless told to do so. All that being said I think that CP theory is an underutilized toolkit for the aff considering how prevelant massive CPs are in contemporary negative strategies. I care more about functional competition than textual competition, at least with respect to process CPs.

PROCEDURAL STUFF (POLICY)

An accusation of an ethics violation i.e. clipping will result in the immediate stop of the round. The accusing team will need video/audio evidence of this accusation.

I am not fond of "insert this re highlighting." If you think the other team's evidence actually concludes in the opposite direction of their argument, you should be confident in re reading the evidence. The only insertion of evidence I would prefer is if your evidence is a chart/graph/visual information, something that doesn't translate into words/speech very well.

Arguments I will never vote on: death/self harm good; pref sheets args; out-of-round incidents

LD-SPECIFC STUFF

tl;dr I don't know much of the activity and thus you should approach like in a "policy-esque" way. Additionally, it would behoove you to do less theory work than you might be used to. Overall, my advice is to pref me only if you are comfortable with a standard policy debater judging; if not, then don't.

I have very little understanding of the nuances of the activity, i.e. what constitutes a well-constructed case for me might be different than what is generally considered to be such in the community. I'm also a policy debater by training and so I probably lean towards "progressive" trends than some (as in, I am fine with spreading). I also have ZERO knowledge of the topic and you should be prepared to break down its complexities for me. One other thing: I will probably use my policy speaker point scale from the beginning of this philosophy but I have no idea if that scale is typical of current LD numbers or not.

PF-SPECIFIC STUFF

PLEASE kick scenarios by the end of the debate; my ideal debate has each side go for 1-2 impacts and most of the final focuses being spent on impact comparison (Mr. T, for example).

Most crossfires I have seen are filled with bad or leading questions. Instead of asking "You failed to respond to our card about (insert issue here), so doesn't that mean we win" you should be asking questions like "why should the judge prefer your evidence over ours"

Pet peeves - offenders will be docked speaks:

don't say "we tell you about (insert issue here)": just say what you want to say about the issue

DO NOT END YOUR SPEECH WITH "FOR ALL THESE REASONS I STRONGLY URGE A (INSERT SIDE HERE) BALLOT": I know what side people are on and will intuitively understand what you say is a reason to vote for you...

Please put me on the email chain: eriodd@d219.org.

Experience:

I'm currently an assistant debate coach for Niles North High School. I was the Head Debate Coach at Niles West High School for twelve years and an assistant debate coach at West for one year. I also work at the University of Michigan summer debate camps. I competed in policy debate at the high school level for six years at New Trier Township High School.

Education:

Master of Education in English-Language Learning & Special Education National Louis University
Master of Arts in School Leadership Concordia University-Chicago
Master of Arts in Education Wake Forest University
Juris Doctor Illinois Institute of Technology-Chicago Kent College of Law
Bachelor of Arts University of California, Santa Barbara

Debate arguments:

I will vote on any type of debate argument so long as the team extends it throughout the entire round and explains why it is a voter. Thus, I will pull the trigger on theory, agent specification, and other arguments many judges are unwilling to vote on. Even though I am considered a “politics/counter plan” debater, I will vote on kritiks, but I am told I evaluate kritik debates in a “politics/counter plan” manner (I guess this is not exactly true anymore...and I tend to judge clash debates). I try not to intervene in rounds, and all I ask is that debaters respect each other throughout the competition.

Identity v. Identity:
I enjoy judging these debates. It is important to remember that, often times, you are asking the judge to decide on subject matter he/she/they personally have not experienced (like sexism and racism for me as a white male). A successful ballot often times represents the team who has used these identity points (whether their own or others) in relationship to the resolution and the debate space. I also think if you run an exclusion DA, then you probably should not leave the room / Zoom before the other team finishes questions / feedback has concluded as that probably undermines this DA significantly (especially if you debate that team again in the future).

FW v. Identity:
I also enjoy judging these debates. I will vote for a planless Aff as well as a properly executed FW argument. Usually, the team that accesses the internal link to the impacts (discrimination, education, fairness, ground, limits, etc.) I am told to evaluate at the end of the round through an interpretation / role of the ballot / role of the judge, wins my ballot.

FW v. High Theory:
I don't mind judging these debates. The team reading high theory should do a good job at explaining the theories / thesis behind the scholars you are utilizing and applying it to a specific stasis point / resolutional praxis. In terms of how I weigh the round, the same applies from above, internal links to the terminal impacts I'm told are important in the round.

Policy v. Policy:
I debated in the late 90s / early 2000s. I think highly technical policy v. policy debate rounds with good sign posting, discussions on CP competition (when relevant), strategic turns, etc. are great. Tech > truth for me here. I like lots of evidence but please read full tags and a decent amount of the cards. Not a big fan of "yes X" as a tag. Permutations should probably have texts besides Do Both and Do CP perms. I like theory debates but quality over quantity and please think about how all of your theory / debate as a game arguments apply across all flows. Exploit the other team's errors. "We get what we get" and "we get what we did" are two separate things on the condo debate in my opinion.

Random comments:

The tournament and those judging you are not at your leisure. Please do your best to start the round promptly at the posted time on the pairing and when I'm ready to go (sometimes I do run a few minutes late to a round, not going to lie). Please do your best to: use prep ethically, attach speech documents quickly, ask to use bathroom at appropriate times (e.g. ideally not right before your or your partner's speech), and contribute to moving the debate along and help keep time. I will give grace to younger debaters on this issue, but varsity debaters should know how to do this effectively. This is an element of how I award speaker points. I'm a huge fan of efficient policy debate rounds. Thanks!

In my opinion, you cannot waive CX and bank it for prep time. Otherwise, the whole concept of cross examination in policy debate is undermined. I will not allow this unless the tournament rules explicitly tell me to do so.

If you use a poem, song, etc. in the 1AC, you should definitely talk about it after the 1AC. Especially against framework. Otherwise, what is the point? Your performative method should make sense as a praxis throughout the debate.

Final thoughts:

Do not post round me. I will lower your speaker points if you or one of your coaches acts disrespectful towards me or the opponents after the round. I have no problem answering any questions about the debate but it will be done in a respectful manner to all stakeholders in the room. If you have any issues with this, please don't pref me. I have seen, heard and experienced way too much disrespectful behavior by a few individuals in the debate community recently where, unfortunately, I feel compelled to include this in my paradigm.

drmosbornesq@gmail.com

My judging paradigm has evolved a great deal over time. These days, I have very few set opinions about args. I used to think I had a flawless flow and a magnet mind but now I can't follow each little detail and/or extremely nuanced or shrouded arguments with 101% accuracy like once upon a time. Still pretty good tho lol. And that said, I believe I've come to prioritize debaters' decisions more than ever and try harder than ever to base my decision on what debaters are trying to make happen in the round, and how well they do it, as opposed to how I logically add up what occurred. No judge can totally eliminate their process of sorting things out or their lived personal experience but I try to judge rounds as the debaters tell me to judge them, and with the tools they make available to me. I do think debate is about debaters, so I try to limit my overall judge agency to an extent. But sometimes my experience with traditional policy debate matters and favors a team. Sometimes my lived experience as a brown dude effects my encounter of an argument. These things happen and they are happening with all of your judges whether they admit it or you know it or not. I competed with "traditional policy arguments" (which, frankly, I am unsure still exist #old) but by now I have voted for and coached stupidly-traditional, traditional, mildly-traditional, non-traditional, and anti-traditional arguments in high-stakes rounds for a ton of programs in high school, college, internationally, in different eras, dimensions, all kinds of shi*. If you think your reputation matters in how I see the round, don't pref me. If you or your coaches are used to attacking in the post-round, you're gonna play yourself because I'll either be 101% and crush you or I won't care and I'll just mock you. Debate's a game but we are people so we should treat each other with respect. Self-control is one of the hallmarks of critical thinking and a disciplined intellect; if you cannot make peace with results in a subjective activity, you are simply not an elite debater, imho. Take it or leave it. Good luck to all debaters, seriously -- it's a hell of a thing.

Woodward '17

UGA '21

Yes, I would like to be on the email chain: rishika.pandey21@gmail.com

Feel free to ask me any questions before the round or email me afterwards, I'm here to help!

When reading through these comments, just remember that they reflect my background and thoughts based on debates that I've had, watched, or judged so far - don't let them determine your neg strat or 2AR decisions. You do you. I can keep up.

General comments:

1. Be nice. There's a difference between confidence and rudeness, and I will dock speaker points if you are rude/offensive to anyone (yes, including me and your own partner) in the room at any point.

2. If I have to remind you to be clear, then you shouldn't expect above a 28. Use your words.

3. Prep-time: I'll stop the timer when you tell me the speech doc is done; however, if it takes you too long to email/flash the speech to everyone, I'll probably be suspicious and dock prep time.

4. I read evidence apposite to the nexus question of the debate.

5. Yes, absolute defense is possible.

6. Smart analytics over trash evidence.

7. Evidence - don't underhighlight, clip, or do any of that cheat-y stuff. You're not as cool or sneaky as you think you are.

Specific arguments:

T - Nuanced T debates are great. T over theory unless explained otherwise. Reasonability is fair if the neg interp is meta and non-specific to the aff. You need to explain what the topic would look like under your interp and provide clear case lists and DAs to the other team's interpretation.

DAs - GOOD aff-specific researched DAs are pretty much my favorite arguments. On the other hand, I'm fine listening to politics and other general topic DAs (although you'll have a harder time convincing me to vote for your generic budget or trade-off DA).

CPs - I get excited judging innovative CPs. Defend your CP against CP theory, especially if you think you have a great solvency advocate (though not all CPs need one). No, I won't "judge-kick" a CP for you - you need to make a decision and stick to it.

Theory - 1-2 conditional advocacies is fine; any more is probably excessive and/or abusive. Politics theory is fine as a time-skew, but I'm not likely to vote on it. Floating PIKs/PICs and process CPs are generally bad.

Ks - I'm good with most general/topic/identity/reps critiques, but not necessarily all of the high-theory Name Ks. The best Ks in front of me are contextualized to the aff (using aff evidence as links). Clear explanations and in-depth analysis will most likely help you win a K debate in front of me, not just evidence.

Affs/case - Affs should generally have a plan text/advocacy statement, but I'll listen to affs that don't. Also, case debates are AWESOME and way too undervalued - I love impact turns, alt causes, link turns, etc. Be innovative.

For extra clarity, if necessary, my debate ideology has been strongly influenced by Maggie Berthiaume - see her paradigm.

Woodward Academy - C/O 2015

University of Alabama: Birmingham - C/O 2019

Add me to the email chain: krsh1pandey@gmail.com

***I'm coming into this season with no topic knowledge whatsoever. I can keep up with general arguments and the flow of speeches just fine; however, you may find it worth your while to take time to explain more specific/niche acronyms that pop up throughout the course of the debate.

Last Updated/Written prior to: The Fall 2018 Chattahoochee Cougar Classic

Background: Debate at Woodward Academy for 3 years. Was pretty much exclusively the 2N/1A. I'm 4 years out of the activity now so I'm not very familiar with many new community norms that have developed since my time debating.

Meta/Activity Preferences:

1) Prep time: I won't take prep for emailing speech docs in Varsity unless it becomes excessive (I will inform you before I start taking prep off if I decide things are taking too long). I do take prep time in JV/Novice in order to facilitate rounds running on time.

2) Tag team C-X: Fine if it happens once (maybe twice); if it happens too much, it will reflect in your speaker points and my general view of how much I think you know your arguments.

3) Be nice and respectful to everyone in round (me, the other team, your partner).

Critical/Performance/Non-traditional/No Plan Affs - I enjoy listening to anything that you as the affirmative feel comfortable presenting. I'm highly unlikely to vote for arguments that I find morally reprehensible. But if you are reading high theory or some other very obscure affirmative, you will have a higher burden of explanation if I'm not too well versed with the literature.

Theory - Smart theory debates are fun, but bad theory debates are some of my least favorite to watch (probably second only to a round involving ethics violations or a bad T debate). I usually lean neg when it comes to conditionality.

T - If you can do it well then go for it; I do tend to lean Aff on questions of topicality.

Feel free to ask for clarification or other specific questions before round if you have them! Bear in mind, these are just general thoughts/observations that I hold going into the round; they are not set-in-stone viewpoints.

UPDATED FOR THE THE GLENBROOKS 2023

uclabdb8@gmail.com

***history***
- Director of Programs, Chicago Debates 2023-current
- Head Coach, Policy - University of Chicago Laboratory Schools 2015-2023
- Assistant Coach, PF - Fremd HS 2015-2022
- Tournament of Champions 2022, 2021, 2018, 2016
- Harvard Debate Council Summer Workshop - guest lecturer, lab leader
- UIowa 2002-2006
- Maine East (Wayne Tang gharana) 1999-2002

***brief***
- i view the speech act as an act and an art. debate is foremost a communicative activity. i want to be compelled.
- i go back and forth on kritik/performance affs versus framework which is supported by my voting record
- i enjoy k v k or policy v k debates. however i end up with more judging experience in policy v policy rounds because we're in the north shore
- academic creativity & originality will be rewarded
- clarity matters. pen time on overviews matters. i flow by ear and on paper, including your cards' warrants and cites. people have told me my flows are beautiful
- tag team cx is okay as long as its not dominating
- don't vape in my round, it makes me feel like an enabler
- i have acute hearing and want to keep it that way. kindly be considerate of your music volume. i will ask you to turn it down if it's painful or prevents me from hearing debate dialogue

**background**
identify as subaltern, he/they pronouns are fine. my academic background is medicine. i now spend my time developing programming for Chicago's urban debate league. you may be counseled on tobacco cessation.

**how to win my ballot**
*entertain me.* connect with me. teach me something. be creative. its impossible for me to be completely objective, but i try to be fair in the way i adjudicate the round.

**approach**
as tim 'the man' alderete said, "all judges lie." with that in mind...
i get bored- which is why i reward creativity in research and argumentation. if you cut something clever, you want me in the back of the room. i appreciate the speech as an act and an art. i prefer debates with good clash than 2 disparate topics. while i personally believe in debate pedagogy, i'll let you convince me it's elitist, marginalizing, broken, or racist. in determining why i should value debate (intrinsically or extrinsically) i will enter the room tabula rasa. if you put me in a box, i'll stay there. i wish i could adhere to a paradigmatic mantra like 'tech over truth.' but i've noticed that i lean towards truth in debates where both teams are reading lit from same branch of theory or where the opponent has won an overarching claim on the nature of the debate (framing, framework, theory, etc). my speaker point range is 27-30. Above 28.3-4 being what i think is 'satisfactory' for your division (3-3), 28.7 & above means I think you belong in elims. Do not abuse the 2nr.

**virtual debate**
if you do not see me on camera then assume i am not there. please go a touch slower on analytics if you expect me to flow them well. if anyone's connection is shaky, please include analytics in what you send if possible.

**novices**
Congrats! you're slowly sinking into a strange yet fascinating vortex called policy debate. it will change your life, hopefully for the better. focus on the line by line and impact analysis. if you're confused, ask instead of apologize. this year is about exploring. i'm here to judge and help :)

***ARGUMENT SPECIFIC***

**topicality/framework**
this topic has a wealth of amazing definitions and i'm always up for a scrappy limits debate. debaters should be able to defend why their departure from (Classic mode) Policy is preferable. while i don't enter the round presuming plan texts are necessary for a topical discussion, i do enjoy being swayed one way or the other on what's needed for a topical discussion (or if one is valuable at all). overall, its an interesting direction students have taken Policy. the best form of framework debate is one where both teams rise to the meta-level concerns behind our values in fairness, prepared clash, education, revolutionary potential/impotence, etc. as a debater (in the bronze age) i used to be a HUGE T & spec hack, so much love for the arg. nowadays though, the these debates tend to get messy. flow organization will be rewarded: number your args, sign post through the line-by-line, slow down to give me a little pen time. i tend to vote on analysis with specificity and ingenuity.

**kritiks, etc.**
i enjoy performance, original poetry & spoken word, musical, moments of sovereignty, etc. i find most "high theory," identity politics, and other social theory debates enjoyable. i dont mind how you choose to organize k speeches/overviews so long as there is some way you organize thoughts on my flow. 'long k overviews' can be (though seldom are) beautiful. i appreciate a developed analysis. more specific the better, examples and analogies go a long way in you accelerating my understanding. i default to empiricism/historical analysis as competitive warranting unless you frame the debate otherwise. i understand that the time constraint of debate can prevent debaters from fully unpacking a kritik. if i am unfamiliar with the argument you are making, i will prioritize your explanation. i may also read your evidence and google-educate myself. this is a good thing and a bad thing, and i think its important you know that asterisk. i try to live in the world of your kritik/ k aff. absent a discussion of conditional advocacy, i will get very confused if you make arguments elsewhere in the debate that contradict the principles of your criticism (eg if you are arguing a deleuzian critique of static identity and also read a misgendering/misidentifying voter).

**spec, ethics challenges, theory**
PLEASE DO NOT HIDE YOUR ASPEC VIOLATIONS. if the argument is important i prefer you invite the clash than evade it.

i have no way to fairly judge arguments that implicate your opponent's behavior before the round, unless i've witnessed it myself or you are able to provide objective evidence (eg screenshots, etc.). debate is a competitive environment so i have to take accusations with a degree of skepticism. i think the trend to turn debate into a kangaroo court, or use the ballot as a tool to ostracize members from the community speaks to the student/coach's tooling of authority at tournaments as well as the necessity for pain in their notion of justice. i do have an obligation to keep the round safe. my starting point (and feel free to convince me otherwise) is that it's not my job to screen entries if they should be able to participate in tournaments - that's up to tab and is a prior question to the round. a really good podcast that speaks to this topic in detail is invisibilia: the callout.

i'm finally hearing more presumption debates, which i really enjoy. i more often find theory compelling when contextualized to why there's a specific reason to object to the argument (e.g. why the way this specific perm operates is abusive/sets a bad precedent). i always prefer the clash to be developed earlier in the debate than vomiting blocks at each other. as someone who used to go for theory, i think there's an elegant way to trap someone. and it same stipulations apply- if you want me to vote for it, make sure i'm able to clearly hear and distinguish your subpoints.

**disads/cps/case**
i always enjoy creative or case specific PICs. if you're going to make a severance perm, i want to know what is being severed and not so late breaking that the negative doesn't have a chance to refute. i like to hear story-weaving in the overview. i do vote on theory - see above. i also enjoy an in depth case clash, case turn debate. i do not have a deep understanding on the procedural intricacies of our legal system or policymaking and i may internet-educate myself on your ev during your round.

**work experience/education you can ask me about**
- medical school, medicine
- clinical research/trials
- biology, physiology, gross anatomy, & pathophysiology are courses i've taught
- nicotine/substance cessation
- chicago
- udl
- coaching debate!

**PoFo - (modified from Tim Freehan's poignant paradigm):**

I have NOT judged the PF national circuit pretty much ever. The good news is that I am not biased against or unwilling to vote on any particular style. Chances are I have heard some version of your meta level of argumentation and know how it interacts with the round. The bad news is if you want to complain about a style of debate in which you are unfamiliar, you had better convince me why with, you know, impacts and stuff. Do not try and cite an unspoken rule about debate in your part of the country.

Because of my background in Policy, I tend to look at debate as competitive research or full-contact social studies. Even though the Pro is not advocating a Plan and the Con is not reading Disadvantages, to me the round comes down to whether the Pro has a greater possible benefit than the potential implications it might cause. Both sides should frame the round in terms impact calculus and or feasibility. Framework, philosophical, moral arguments are great, though I need instruction in how you want me to evaluate that against tangible impacts.

Evidence quality is very important.

I will vote with what's on what is on the flow only. I enter the round tabula rasa, i try to check my personal opinions at the door as best as i can. I may mock you for it, but I won’t vote against you for it. No paraphrasing. Quote the author, date and the exact words. Quals are even better but you don’t have to read them unless pressed. Have the website handy. Research is critical.

Speed? Meh. You cannot possibly go fast enough for me to not be able to follow you. However, that does not mean I want to hear you go fast. You can be quick and very persuasive. You don't need to spread.

Defense is nice but is not enough. You must create offense in order to win. There is no “presumption” on the Con.

I am a fan of “Kritik” arguments in PF! I do think that Philosophical Debates have a place. Using your Framework as a reason to defend your scholarship is a wise move. You can attack your opponents scholarship. Racism, sexism, heterocentrism, will not be tolerated between debaters. I have heard and will tolerate some amount of racism towards me and you can be assured I'll use it as a teaching moment.

I reward debaters who think outside the box.

I do not reward debaters who cry foul when hearing an argument that falls outside traditional parameters of PF Debate. But if its abusive, tell me why instead of just saying “not fair.”

Statistics are nice, to a point. But I feel that judges/debaters overvalue them. Some of the best impacts involve higher values that cannot be quantified. A good example would be something like Structural Violence.

While Truth outweighs, technical concessions on key arguments can and will be evaluated. Dropping offense means the argument gets 100% weight.

The goal of the Con is to disprove the value of the Resolution. If the Pro cannot defend the whole resolution (agent, totality, etc.) then the Con gets some leeway.

I care about substance more than style. It never fails that I give 1-2 low point wins at a tournament. Just because your tie is nice and you sound pretty, doesn’t mean you win. I vote on argument quality and technical debating. The rest is for lay judging.

Relax. Have fun.

Put me on your email chains: pointer.debate@gmail.com

I am done with trying to use your speech docs to fill in tags. You need to recognize that there is an expectation of clarity, even when we're debating remotely.

Early thoughts on the criminal justice reform topic, or at least K affs on the criminal justice reform topic:

I find myself much less persuaded by the claim to need to read an aff that refuses to directly engage with the topic than in previous years. The argument that you must refuse to engage with the state as a survival strategy/mode of alternative political organization seems to me to be subject to a higher degree of scrutiny when the topic allows you to abolish prisons or police. This leads me to presume much more that affirmatives that rely on the carceral or policing as metaphor, or just say that policing/prisons are a product of modernity and thus modernity must be abolished because the state/civil society are always bad are much more about the strategic advantage to be gained in the debate activity than a discussion of a model of engagement/activism/thinking. I'm predisposed to be persuaded that the aff getting to abolish prisons/police/etc. is probably good enough aff ground. Does this mean that I think teams have to defend the process of implementation in a traditional fashion? Debateable. It does, however, mean that I should think the 1AC should be willing to commit to defending a reform in policing or sentencing. But seriously, this isn't the arms control topic. Prison abolition or eliminating policing is the topical version of the affirmative. I feel like I will hold your inevitable "but reforms are always bad" claims to a higher standard this year.

This likely may cause me to alter my position on the nature of T/Framework as concerns the fairness/model of debate question. I find it far less compelling that a metaphorical interpretation of the topic language, or some pessimism, or a connection to an analogous logic is part of a strategy of activism/critical thinking rather than an attempt to gain advantage in a debate on this topic (as opposed to other topics). My thoughts on this will likely develop more throughout the year.

And if the Baudrillard aff is still your thing, and you refuse to change that on this topic for whatever reason (I have my theories) please reconsider. I've been generous to you in the past, but come on.

Previous random thoughts and rants:

Debate is better when claims come from some form of evidence. This expanding trend of taking the K in the 2NC, not reading any cards (or 1-2 max) and asserting claims like "the state is always bad" and "humanism is always bad" is not really appealing to me. I don't start the debate with a predisposition to think those arguments are already decided, and I don't find your assertion persuasive. You need some evidence to back up those claims. That being said, I'm pretty open to alternative forms of evidence and will do my best to evaluate them, but there has to be something there.

I've been coaching debate for quite a while now, and I've coached teams that run just about everything. I've judged debates about most things as well, so the odds are that you won't be doing anything that I'm not somewhat familiar with. That being said, I find myself less willing than I used to be to unpack your buzzword-laden cryptic statements about continental philosophy or psychoanalytic concepts. If your strategy revolves around obfuscation or deferral, I am not the most sympathetic judge for you. If you are talking about Lacan, I have a higher burden of explanation than you are probably meeting. I also find rejection as an isolated concept to be a generally uncompelling alternative absent some development.

Debate is a game, but it is a game that needs to have some value. Therefore, any good debate practice should be both fair and educational, but the content of such education and the neutrality claims of procedural fairness become internal links, not terminal impacts, once contested. In other words, be able to defend the value of your model of debate, and you'll have a much better chance in front of me when the opponent offers a different model of debate.

Most of you would be better off slowing down, especially on tags and analytics and overviews. Seriously, most of you read them like they're cards, which just makes them unflowable. Typing time and mental processing time are real things that judges need. I know you are just flowing the speech doc, but please don't make me do that too. Be slow enough that you can be clear.

Now to the stuff you actually care about:

Can I read the K? Yes. But please have a better link than the state or civil society. The more germane you are to the topic, the better.

Can I read a K aff? Yes

Does that K aff have to be about the resolution? It should be. I've been persuaded that it doesn't matter in some debates, but I am going to be skeptical about aff claims about that on this topic, see the initial rant above. Questions of process or implementation are generally up for debate.

Will you vote on framework/T against K affs? Yes. However, you probably need to make inroads against the aff's structural fairness claims about the world to have a shot. I am generally more persuaded by engagement/institutions arguments than fairness arguments, but have voted for both. I think the value of fairness in debate often begs a larger question about the value of the model of debate that particular claims to procedural fairness would preserve, and I'm open to hearing that debate. I think debates about the merits of ending mass incarceration, abolishing prisons, or defunding police are much better and more educational debates than debates about the negative struggling to find a link because the aff refuses to defend abolition.

Can I read a "traditional" policy aff and not automatically lose to the K? Yes. I don't think that because you said the word "reform" that the permutation debate is always already over.

Conditionality? It's good. Contradictory conditional advocacies, however, are probably not. Note that a K that links to the CP as well as the plan probably does not meet this threshold of being a contradiction in this sense. Your 3-4 counterplans in the 1NC are probably not complete arguments, and likely haven't made a solvency argument worth comparing to the case, so those might be better arguments than conditionality. Conditionality only allows you to jettison an advocacy statement and default to the status quo or another advocacy, not the series of truth claims made on a page. Losing that conditionality is bad means at a minimum that the 2NR is stuck with the CP. Rejecting the argument makes it de facto conditional, thus rewarding teams for losing conditionality debates.

Theory arguments? Be clear when you present them. Everything other than conditionality bad is probably a reason to reject the argument, not the team.

Judge kick? Not by default. If you make the argument and win it, sure I'll kick the CP for you. Otherwise, you made your choice and I won't default to giving you a second 2NR in my judging.

I like smart, strategic debate and quality evidence. I give pretty clear nonverbals when I can't understand you, either because of clarity or comprehension. I'm not above yelling clear if I have to. Policy teams, your highlighting is bad. K teams, your tags are unflowable.

Despite our best efforts to avoid it, sometimes clash accidentally occurs and a debate breaks out. Be prepared.

carrollton sacred heart '17

university of michigan '21

yes, i want speech docs – allison.m.pujol@gmail.com

2024 update for college debate

I'm currently a grad student at UT-Austin studying English and Information Studies. I did almost exclusively policy things when I debated, but I read a fair amount of critical theory/study poetry/think about art + literature a lot these days, if that means anything.

I'm a fairly technical judge, and I reward debaters that are clear, efficient, and deliberate in their speed (tags/theory should be slower than text of card, for example).

It benefits nobody when debaters are hostile or overly aggressive to each other. Please be courteous to your opponents. It goes without saying that if you are verbally harassing, physically threatening or in any way being a real jerk to the other team, I will stop the debate.

affs without plans/framework debates

Definitely better for the neg than the aff, but I have been persuaded otherwise in the past more than a few times. Ultimately my technical proclivities determine where I end up far more than my ideological biases / policy background does (i.e., I will vote for the team that does the better debating).

I often think about framework debates the same way I think about topicality/competing interpretations: what does debate look like in a world of the aff vs the neg? This means, regardless of whether you are aff or neg, you need to robustly defend whatever your interpretation of debate is. I do think procedural fairness is a thing. I also think debate as it exists now certainly isn't perfect.

topicality:

Please for the love of everything good slow down

Evidence quality matters a lot to me in T debates, and the better your interp ev is the better your chances are.

it's a voting issue, no RVIs, this isn't LD

counterplans:

My own bias is to be aff leaning with process CPs – If your CP tries to “compete” based on immediacy or certainty, it probably doesn’t compete. Additionally, if your CP leads to whatever the plan mandates, does it in some arbitrary way, or adds a part to the plan, I am likely to be sympathetic when the aff goes for the perm.

If you are extending a permutation in the 1ar, it should be explained way beyond three words for me to evaluate it – what it does and how it shields the link, etc. Otherwise, I'll likely protect the 2nr from 2ar extrapolation.

If you have aff-specific or topic-specific ev to support the CP, I'll likely err neg on competition/theory.

Aff – winning a credible solvency deficit is important. Ideally, there should be evidentiary support or an internal link chain from which you can base the solvency deficit.

kritiks:

You read death good = you get 20-21 points (whoever said it first gets 20) and a fat L

Other than the death good stuff, I'm probably better for most K debates than people think.

Identity args - Given the breadth and diversity of argumentation in critical theory, I am a little bit hesitant to assign a universal political and/or social identity to an entire population. I can be persuaded alternatively, although it seems important to note that I am rather uncomfortable in debates where non-black debaters make Wilderson's argument about all black people experiencing social death or anything analogous to that.

disads:

Theory arguments vs the link are usually not winners for me

Block/2nr impact calc is one of the most important things that determine my decision. My decision will be the easiest if you win that the disadvantage outweighs and controls a larger internal link to solving the aff impacts/advantages than the aff actually does.

There can be 0% risk of an impact – don’t underestimate defense.

theory:

Again, aff-specific ev is a gamechanger for competition and theory questions - but these are my defaults:

Condo – probably good ... within limits -- 2 condo is not 5 condo

PICs – good

Word PICs – depends on ev, but when the ev is decent these are awesome to judge

International / 50 state fiat – usually good

Agent CPs – good

Floating PIKs – bad

SPEC – set it up in cross-ex, or I won’t vote on these

If it’s not conditionality, I’ll probably default to rejecting the argument, not the team. But, that's just a default - I can be persuaded otherwise.

Best of luck and have fun!

Robbie Quinn, coach at Montgomery Bell Academy, mucho judging on this topic, which is the one with ASPEC, Consult NATO, and the Death K.

I have no prejudices toward any argument type. I do have prejudices to people who don't have fun. You have to have fun. I'm a librarian, so at the very least you can have fun making fun of that.

I determine which way to evaluate any argument based on who most convinces me of the superiority of a certain way to evaluate it.

I like humor, stories, and creative uses of historical examples. Cross-ex is very important to me and I watch it closely. I think it sways my thinking on key issues. What judge won't admit to actively monitoring who seems to be winning? Cross-ex, to me, is a powerful barometer of that.

Things I've been telling debaters lately that make me feel like I am incredibly awesome but are really just things that everybody knows that I rephrased into something snappy and I'm taking credit for:

1. Don't unnecessarily cut people off in CX. The best CX questions are the ones they can't answer well even if they had all 3 minutes to speak.

2. Be a guardian of good debate. Yes, debate's a changing network of ideas and people, and winning a debate on bad arguments isn't a crime punishable by death. But I reward debaters who seek to win on good arguments. I love good debates. I don't like making "easy" decisions to vote on bad arguments, even though I often do.

3. The most sensible kritik alternatives to me are the ones that defend the idea of a critical-political resistance to the assumptions of the plan and how that idea works in real-world situations. Even if an alternative isn't as cleanly recognizable or linear as the passage and enforcement of a piece of legislation, that doesn't mean that it can't be something concrete. I watch so many bad kritik debates that are bad because both sides never give the alternative any sensible role in the debate. I will reward debaters that give up on gimmicky and irrelevant defenses and attacks of kritik alternatives.

Reasons why my judging might mimic the real world:

1. I might be consciously and unconsciously swayed against your arguments if you're a mean person. Humans are good judges of sincerity.

2. I appreciate style. Rhetorical style and the style of your presence. There's a big difference between going-through-the-motions and having presence in a debate.

3. I like endorsing and praising passionate debaters. Lots of people who articulate that "this debate and the discourse in it matter" don't really energize their discourse to make me feel that. On the other hand, lots of people who don't think that "this debate round matters" often sway my thinking because they speak with urgency. I love listening to debates. If you want to speak, I want to hear you.

Me and cards: I'm very particular about which cards I call for after the debate. If there's been evidence comparison/indicts by one side but not the other, that's usually reason for me not to ask for either side's evidence on that question since one team did not engage the evidence clash.

Northview 

2N

Read whatever you want and whatever you are best at. I won't take prep for flashing/emailing. Tech>> Truth. 

 add me to the email chain: 

I usually read policy affs or soft left affs, but Affs do not necessarily have to contain cards or an advocacy statement. Poetry, music, videos, and stories are perfectly fine, but non-rez affs are probably not good. There is always a way to engage the 1AC and to read framework at the same time. I find framework excessively persuasive against high theory affs but not necessarily against Identity Affs. But if thats your thing, go for it. I tend to default to reasonability on Topicality unless the Neg is ready to go indepth on impact analysis. Case Turns are super persuasive, and politics is fantastic. Counterplans don't necessarily have to have a solvency advocate but there's a higher threshold on solvency. Multiplank, consult, international, 50 state, and most processes are fine. I tend to allow Affs to weigh their impacts unless told differently. I'm not super well versed in high theory. I probably won't vote on Condo unless its blatantly excessive or dropped. Most other theory arguments are reasons to reject the argument. 

This is my twenty sixth year as an active member of the policy debate community. After debating in both high school and college I immediately jumped into coaching high school policy debate. I have been an argument coach, full time debate instructor, program director, and argument coach again for Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami, FL for the past seventeen years.

I become more convinced every year that the switch side nature of policy debate represents one of the most valuable tools to inoculate young people against dogmatism. I also believe the skills developed in policy debate – formulating positions using in depth research that privileges consensus, expertise, and data and the testing of those positions via multiple iterations—enhance students’ ability to think critically.

I am particularly fond of policy debate as the competitive aspect incentivizes students to keep abreast of current events and use that information to formulate opinions regarding how various levels of government should respond to societal needs.

Equipping students with the skills to meaningfully engage political institutions has been incredibly valuable for me. Many of my debate students have been Latina/Latinx. Witnessing them develop an expert ability to navigate institutions, that were by design obfuscated to ensure their exclusion, continues to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I am constantly grateful for that privilege.

I am deeply concerned by the ongoing trend toward clash avoidance. This practice makes debate seem more trivial each year and continues to denigrate our efforts in the eyes of the academics we depend on for funding and support.

Affirmatives continue to lean into vague plan writing and vague explanations of what they will defend. This makes for late breaking and poorly developed debates. I understand why students engage in these practices (the competitive incentive I lauded above) I wish instructors and coaches understood how much more meaningful their contributions would be if they empowered students to embrace clash over gimmicks.

I will be less persuaded by your delivery if you choose to engage in clash avoidance. Actions such as deleting analytics, refusal to specify plans, cps, and K alts, allowing your wiki to atrophy, and proliferating stale competition style and Intrinsicness arguments will result in my awarding fewer speaker points.

Remember your friends’ hot takes and even your young coaches/lab leaders’ hot takes are just that – they are likely not the debates most of your critics want to adjudicate.

If you are not flowing during the debate, it will be difficult to persuade me that you were the most skilled debater in the room.

Be “on deck.” By that I mean be warmed up and ready for your turn at bat. Have your table tote set up, the email thread ready, you pens/paper/timer out, your laptop charged, go to the restroom before the round, fill up your water bottle, etc. I don’t say all this to sound like a mean teacher – in fact I think it would be incredibly ableist to really harp on these things or refuse to let students use the facilities mid-round – but being ready helps the round proceed on time and keeps you in the zone which helps your ability to project a confident winning persona. It also demonstrates a consideration for me, your opponents, your coaches and teammates and the tournament staffs’ time.

Be kind and generous to everyone.

You can likely deduce most of this from the discussion of clash avoidance and why I value debate above.

I would prefer to see a debate wherein the affirmative defends the USFG should increase security cooperation with the NATO over AI, Biotech, and/or cybersecurity.

I would like to see the negative rejoin with hypothetical disadvantages to enacting the plan as well as introducing competing proposals for resolving the harms outlined by the affirmative.

One of the more depressing impacts to enrolling in graduate school has been the constant reminder that in truth impact d is >>> than impact ev. A few years ago, I was increasingly frustrated by teams only extending a DA and impact defense vs. the case – I thought this was responsible for a trend of fewer and fewer affirmatives with intrinsic advantages. I made a big push for spending at least 50% of the time on each case flow vs the internal link of the advantage. My opinion on this point is changing. Getting good at impact defense is tremendously valuable – you are likely examining peer reviewed highly qualified publications and their debunking of well…less than qualified publications.

I find Climate to be one of the most strategic and persuasive impacts in debate (life really). That said, most mechanisms to resolve climate presented in debates are woefully inadequate.

I am not averse to any genre of argument. Every genre has highs and lows. For example, not all kritiks are generic or have cheating alternatives, not all process counterplans are unrelated to the topic, and not all politics disadvantages are missing fundamental components but sometimes they are and you should work to avoid those deficiencies.

The folks with whom I see debate similarly:

Maggie Berthiaume

Dr. Brett Bricker

Anna Dimitrijevic

David Heidt

Fran Swanson

2022+ Update

I am no longer actively involved in debate. If I'm judging you please assume its the first debate I've judged on whatever topic you are on.

Basics

Put me on the chain. rosenthalb17@gmail.com

Former Coach @ USC, Marlborough, MBA. Former Debater @ USC and MBA. Won some tournaments along the way.

Things I Care About

Your burden is to make it make sense. I will evaluate tech before truth, but separation from debate decreases my threshold for things not making sense and your speaker points will benefit for choosing arguments that are intuitively compelling

Otherwise, strategic cross applications and creativity are the path to good speaks

I want to hear you debate. Cards dumps as substitution for explanation is bad. If your highlighting is just a repeat of the tag you might as well not have read the card.

I refuse to vote for theory I subjectively believe to be frivolous regardless of the line by line, but speeches can alter my views on what is frivolous. Don't makes args that only win if dropped.

Ks dont have to link the plan; the aff gets to be weighed. Consequences matter. K Affs v Framework usually comes down to who wins what the purpose of debate is.

Meta-Thoughts

Consequences-X---------------------------------No Consequences

Always 1%----------------------------X----------0% Risk a Thing

Stone Faced------------------------X------------Reacts to your args

Policy----------X----------------------------------K

Hot takes

Asking what cards were read counts as prep.

Affs need solvency advocates, neg cps (probably) don’t.

"We Meet" vs T to me means "prefer an interpretation of their interpretation that we meet over one that we dont" rather than a factual yes/no question

Disclaimer about RFDs:

I don't like telling people they lose in close rounds, and my natural response to anxiety is to be very smile-y. If you see me smiling while deciding or explaining my rfd please don't assume it means I'm going to vote one way or another, or that I was really excited to vote the way I did.

Ricardo Saenz
Debated at Georgia Tech (Parli & Policy) for ~2 years
Debated at Alpharetta High School - 4 years

STEM background (studied Engineering in College)

Currently configure Leak Detection software for a Pipeline Company for a living.

risaenz(at)gmail

last updated 1/2/2020

TLDR: Debate what you're good at and debate well. I'll do my best to vote for the team that did the better debating.

General notes for everyone:

1. I vote for the team that did the better debating. What the "better debating" means is up to the debaters. If no one defines what it means to win the round, I usually default to weighing offense and defense. I also tend to be quick to decide rounds. It's not you... it's me!

2. Debate what you're comfortable with and debate it well. I don't really have many biases anymore and will hear you out on practically anything. There are a few arguments that will make me unhappy and affect your speaker points, but if you win the sheet of paper, you win the debate.

3. Add me to the email chain and please add your coaches, too. I will reply all with my comments and flow to the thread so y'all can have my record for redos.

4. I will try to keep with community norms in terms of speaker points. Just make sure I can understand you. You've seen me flow on the live stream so that should give you a good idea of my capabilities and limitations in that department.

4. It's very important that I can understand everything in your speech as I don't tend to read cards as much as most judges. I also try to write down key warrants on my flows and decide the round based on that.

5. I have been out of the activity for a while now and don't know much about the topic. Please keep that in mind and adjust accordingly.

6. Get the little stuff right - if it's clear that you have the paperless stuff down (no delays emailing, using flash drives etc...) you're likely to get on my good side and earn higher speaker points.

6. Let's all try to be friends here.

Argument Specific:

Performative Method - I am less persuaded by arguments that the ballot means something. That being said, I think arguments that focus on the scholarship of afro-pessimism and black feminism can be very persuasive. I am not very well read in the literature but did pick up a bunch from watching Kansas BR a bajillion times last year. Just be clear about what my role as a judge is and what the ballot means.

Kritiks - I don't really get Baudrillard but I think that's the point. If you want me to vote on one of your tricks, debate it well and impact it. Don't assume your job is done after the 1AR forgets the floating PIK. I debated many topic Ks back in the day, but make you explain stuff and... debate well...

Disads - Love DA/Case debates. This was one of my favorite strategies. Not much to say here.

Politics/Elections - sure

CPs - Make sure it competes. If it doesn't make sure you're good at theory.

Conditionality - I'm closer to 50/50 on this than most. Counterinterpetations are silly and self serving in these debates. The debate should be about conditionality being good or bad if it comes down to this.

Questions? Just ask!

Supri Sama
3rd year debater 
Chattahoochee High School

put me on the email chain: suprajasama@gmail.com


Do what works for you. Debate is ultimately a game of persuasion, stick with the style of debate that works best for you. My philosophy is just a random collection of my thoughts on debate, not hard rules that you should or must follow. I do my best to resolve the central questions of the debate using the arguments that are supplied by both teams. I try not to intervene and will stick to my flow as much as possible this way I weigh the warrants that are actually communicated in the round rather than tagline extensions.

Debating versus Evidence 
I think that it is very important for debaters to be proficient in line-by-line debating while also being able to explain and develop the warrants for their arguments. With that said, I believe that debate is also somewhat of a referendum on the quality of evidence researched and the quality of argument constructed. To me, it is important both to have a good argument and to have the ability to debate that argument well. 

It is difficult to develop a uniform standard for judging debates in which debaters do a great job on an argument that is not substantiated with great evidence. At the margins, however, my flow dictates the degree to which evidence matters. 

None of this should give you the impression that I require every argument to be supported with evidence. On the contrary, analytic arguments are extremely useful and often under-utilized in debates. 

Paperless Debate 
First -- I'm pretty lax about prep time and I don't take prep for saving and sending, this being said, if it starts to get egregiously bad, then I will intervene. 

Second -- Flowing is monumentally important in a debate round, and, if it's clear to me that you are not flowing, I will call you out for it and probably dock your speaks. 

Topicality 
It does not make much sense to me for topicality to be evaluated entirely via risk or offense/defense. If the affirmative meets a good interpretation of the topic, it is difficult to persuade me that they need to meet the best possible interpretation of the topic. Negatives can convince me otherwise by doing a good job impacting their limits / predictability / ground claims. 

CP/DA
I thoroughly enjoy a good CP/DA debate, especially when it's specific to the affirmative

A counterplan is competitive if there is a functional difference between what the counterplan mandates and what the plan mandates as determined by their texts. If a counterplan includes all of the mandates of the plan, it is not competitive. 

The following is a list of counterplans that I have come to regard as probably illegitimate: 
-Counterplans that are wholly plan inclusive 
-Counterplans that are not functionally distinct from the plan 
-Counterplans that compete off of the certainty or immediacy of the plan

Hopefully your DA has a link specific to the affirmative, the more specific and well-researched, the better.


No risk of a link is definitely a thing, however, a clearly articulated link threshold is less arbitrary and therefore more convincing to me.

Impact work is especially important when the neg is defending the status quo. Don't just tell me that your impact has a larger magnitude, tell me why that's true and why magnitude is more important that the aff's framing choice.

Kritik
Interact with the aff well or be overwhelmingly good at not interacting with the aff. 

I enjoy debates that treat the K like a CP/disad debate - the K cannot be an excuse not to be technical, nor an excuse to evade concepts like uniqueness, comparative impact calc, etc. "No value to life" is borderline-completely meaningless to me the vast majority of times it's referenced. Debate the K like a disad - impacts need a unique link to the aff, and then need to actually be impacts - "epistemology first means vote neg on presumption" is not an impact. Value to life presumptively does not outweigh extinction. 

I think if the neg can garner a significant risk of the link and that the impact to the kritik outweighs any impact the aff may have, the the alternative doesn't necessarily need to have 100% solvency (see above). This doesn't mean that you don't need an alt in the 2NR, just that if you do enough impact analysis between the aff and the K to convince me that the aff causes more harm than good, I will probably vote for you. 


Theory 
As a 2N, I firmly believe that conditionality is beneficial. However, I am not sure if this gives the negative the right to introduce arguments that directly contradict with one another and if the aff can make a cohesive argument that is well thought out and can provide me with specific examples of in-round abuse, I may be persuaded to vote aff. 

It is difficult to persuade me that theoretical objections are voting issues. It seems that there is always a more appropriate remedy. This is true even if a theory argument is dropped. For example, dropping “multiple perms are illegitimate – voting issue” in the 1AR does not mean that the negative automatically wins; these cheap shots are silly and I think it is pedagogically unsound for the debate to be decided on them. 


Performance 
The affirmative team should defend a plan that affirms the resolution. 

Warning
Don't be rude. 
Cheating is bad, don't do it.

Email chain: zahir.shaikh112@gmail.com

I have read and voted for many different styles of arguments. I appreciate thorough, technical debating, regardless of the content of your argument. Try to understand what issues you're winning, which ones you're behind on, and how that shapes the debate. Explain why winning certain issues frames the debate.

Being confidently wrong isn't a good thing. Debaters who exhibit general lack of awareness of the world or the topic will lose speaker points. I am far more likely to vote for the team that knows what they are talking about.

Chattahoochee High School 2015
University of Michigan 2019
Assistant Coach --- Wayzata High School (2015-Present)

Personal Information

I debated for four years at Chattahoochee High School on the national circuit, and three-ish years at the University of Michigan. As a debater, most of my experience involved reading policy-oriented arguments (my most frequent 2NRs included DA/Case or DA/CP strategies, T, and the Security K). As a judge, I've voted for arguments at pretty much every point on the argumentative spectrum. Judging is a privilege, and I'll work hard to make the best decision I possibly can.

Thoughts About Debate

I reward smart debaters who control the spin of the debate with quick, technical comparisons and intuitive analytics because, as a debater, I've always disliked judges that I felt were overly interventionist or reppy. I penalize debaters who tell me to "read 'X' flaming hot card" instead of comparatively explaining its warrants during their speeches. It's your job to make arguments within the debate, not mine to do so during the RFD.

With that said, I (like all judges) have some personal preferences about specific arguments that are likely to shape my decisions at the margins:

Counterplans: Obviously I prefer them to be specific, but I'm better than most judges for process CPs because most affirmative teams are bad at contesting their theoretical legitimacy or competitiveness.

DA/Case Debate: It's your job as debaters to tell me how I should weigh different components of these debates. Is winning the link more important than winning uniqueness? How does turns case analysis impact aff solvency? The team that better responds to these kinds of general framing questions within their speeches tends to be the one I end up voting for in close rounds.
Well-developed case defense is an incredibly under-utilized weapon, especially when people read bad affs that can be beaten with logical analytics.

Kritiks: The best critique debaters I've seen contextualize their links to the specificity of the aff and it's advantages and don't rely on random dropped K tricks. When I was asked "how far left is too far left" before a debate, my response was "if you can't explain your argument in a coherent fashion, you've gone too far". Take that as you will.

Theory: The most likely theoretical violation to result in me rejecting the team is conditionality. Many theory debates are difficult to adjudicate because they lack impact analysis. Explain why what your opponents have done is a reason to reject the team and explain the consequences of not doing so in a persuasive manner. I'm not likely to vote on blippy theory arguments like vague alts or multiple perms that are minimally articulated early in the debate, but these are useful as reasons to reject arguments.

Topicality: I generally default to competing interpretations. Many 2N's lack impact analysis or comparison between interpretations, which makes general aff arguments for their interpretation relatively convincing. Caselists for your interpretation and your opponent's are useful for helping me conceptualize and compare competing visions of the topic.

Planless Affirmatives: My voting record reflects a fairly even split of aff and neg ballots in framework debates, which some may find surprising given my personal inclinations towards reading plans and defending American hegemony. Maybe this just means teams are really bad at going for framework, but I hope it's more of a reflection of the fact that I care a lot more about what you say in the round than what I personally believe. Teams that win these debates in front of me tend to control the overarching framing of the round --- while technical debate is important, don't miss the forest for the trees. Impact-wise, procedural fairness has historically been more successful in front of me than skills and education-based arguments, but it requires better defense given the inherently smaller scale of the impact.

Hello - I debated for Emory for four years and just graduated.  I have some biases but will try to not let them affect me during the debate.  I also don't read speech docs during the round unless a certain card becomes a huge deal in c/x.  Below is my speaker point scale - I will try to reference this to avoid inconsistent point distribution throughout the year/at any given tournament.

Below 27.5: The speaker has demonstrated a lack of  basic communication. 

27.5-27.9: The speaker demonstrates basic debate competency and argumentation skills. Some areas need substantial improvement.

28.0-28.4: The speaker demonstrates basic argumentation skills and a good grasp on the issues of importance in the debate. Usually shows 1-2 moments of strong strategic insight or macro-level debate vision, but not consistently. 

28.5-28.9: Very solid argumentative skills, grasps the important issues in the debate, demonstrates consistent strategic insight.

29-29.5: Remarkable argumentative skills, understands and synthesizes the key issues in the debate, outstanding use of cross-ex and/or humor.

29.6-29.9: The speaker stands out as exceptionally skilled in all of the above areas. 

I think vagueness is going to be an interesting argument on this topic - I would encourage teams to specify as much as their solvency advocate does to encourage good debates and interesting neg strategies

Counterplans: I think CPs must be both functionally and textually competitive. I think process, consult, and agent counterplans are bad for debate/not competitive

Disadvantages: The link controls the direction of the disadvantage. If the disad turns and outweighs the case, but has no link, I won’t vote for it. Absolute defense is possible.  All of this equally applies for aff advantages

Critiques: Alts are important and not just a K prior question.  Negatives should explain what the alternative does and what it means to vote for the critique.  I can be persuaded to vote for any critique, as long as I understand it

I think that debate is a game that should revolve around a topical plan/action.  I am persuaded more by topicality arguments rather than framework arguments. Topicality is more along the lines of you have to defend the resolution/debating about the resolution is a good thing.  Fairness is an impact in and of itself-but the negative still has to explain why

Seven—Misc:

Presumption goes to less change, not necessarily the negative.

I am very willing to grant absolute defense, especially if I feel an argument is silly.

Smart analytics = good. You don’t need evidence to make an argument.

Evidence v. Debating—if an argument is conceded and explained (or if one team is out-debating another), I won’t look to evidence. If arguments are well contested (at the margins), evidence is very important to me. Better evidence > more evidence. Evidence > spin.

Coach at Alpharetta High School 2006-Present
Coach at Chattahoochee High School 1999-2005
Did not debate in High School or College.

E-mail: asmiley27@gmail.com

General thoughts- I expect debaters to recognize debate as a civil, enjoyable, and educational activity. Anything that debaters do to take away from this in the round could be penalized with lower speaker points. I tend to prefer debates that more accurately take into account the types of considerations that would play into real policymakers' decision making. On all arguments, I prefer more specifics and less generics in terms of argument choice and link arguments.

The resolution has an educational purpose. I prefer debates that take this into account and find ways to interact with the topic in a reasonable way. Everything in this philosophy represents my observations and preferences, but I can be convinced otherwise in the round and will judge the arguments made in the round. I will vote on most arguments, but I am going to be very unlikely to vote on arguments that I consider morally repugnant (spark, wipeout, malthus, cancer good, etc). You should avoid these arguments in front of me.

Identity arguments- I do not generally judge these rounds and was traditionally less open to them. However, the methods and messages of these rounds can provide important skills for questioning norms in society and helping all of us improve in how we interact with society and promote justice. For that reason, I am going to work hard to be far more open to these arguments and their educational benefits. There are two caveats to this that I want you to be aware of. First, I am not prima facie rejecting framework arguments. I will still be willing to vote on framework if I think the other side is winning that their model of debate is overall better. Second, I have not read the amount of literature on this topic that most of you have and I have not traditionally judged these rounds. This means that you should not assume that I know all of the terms of art used in this literature or the acronyms. Please understand that you will need to assist in my in-round education.

K- I have not traditionally been a big fan of kritiks. This does not mean that I will not vote for kritiks, and I have become much more receptive to them over the years. However, this does mean a couple of things for the debaters. First, I do not judge as many critical rounds as other judges. This means that I am less likely to be familiar with the literature, and the debaters need to do a little more work explaining the argument. Second, I may have a little higher threshold on certain arguments. I tend to think that teams do not do a good enough job of explaining how their alternatives solve their kritiks or answering the perms. Generally, I leave too many rounds feeling like neither team had a real discussion or understanding of how the alternative functions in the round or in the real world. I also tend towards a policy framework and allowing the aff to weigh their advantages against the K. However, I will look to the flow to determine these questions. Finally, I do feel that my post-round advice is less useful and educational in K rounds in comparison to other rounds.

T- I generally enjoy good T debates. Be sure to really impact your standards on the T debate. Also, do not confuse most limiting with fair limits. Finally, be sure to explain which standards you think I as the judge should default to and impact your standards.

Theory-I am willing to pull the trigger on theory arguments as a reason to reject the argument. However, outside of conditionality, I rarely vote on theory as a reason to reject the team. If you are going for a theory arg as a reason to reject the team, make sure that you are impacting the argument with reasons that I should reject the team. Too many debaters argue to reject the team without any impact beyond the argument being unfair. Instead, you need to win that it either changed the round in an unacceptable way or allowing it changes all future rounds/research in some unacceptable way. I will also tend to look at theory as a question of competing interpretations. I feel that too many teams only argue why their interpretation is good and fail to argue why the other team’s interpretation is bad. Also, be sure to impact your arguments. I tend towards thinking that topic specific education is often the most important impact in a theory debate. I am unlikely to do that work for you. Given my preference for topic specific education, I do have some bias against generic counterplans such as states and international actor counterplans that I do not think would be considered as options by real policymakers. Finally, I do think that the use of multiple, contradictory neg advocacies has gotten out of hand in a way that makes the round less educational. I generally believe that the neg should be able to run 1 conditional CP and 1 conditional K. I will also treat the CP and the K as operating on different levels in terms of competition. Beyond that, I think that extra conditional and contradictory advocacies put too much of a burden on the aff and limit a more educational discussion on the merits of the arguments.

Disads- I generally tend towards evaluating uniqueness as the most important part of the disad debate. If there are a number of links and link turns read on a disad debate, I will generally default towards the team that is controlling uniqueness unless instructed by the debaters why I should look to the link level first. I also tend towards an offense defense paradigm when considering disads as net benefits to counterplans. I think that the politics disad is a very educational part of debate that has traditionally been my favorite argument to both coach and judge. I will have a very high threshold for voting on politics theory. Finally, teams should make sure that they give impact analysis that accounts for the strong possibility that the risk of the disad has been mitigated and tells me how to evaluate that mitigation in the context of the impacts in round.

Counterplans-I enjoy a good counterplan debate. However, I tend to give the aff a little more leeway against artificially competitive counterplans, such as consult counterplans. I also feel that a number of aff teams need to do more work on impacting their solvency deficits against counterplans. While I think that many popular counterplans (especially states) are uniquely bad for debate, I have not seen teams willing to invest the time into theory to help defeat these counterplans.

Reading cards after the round- I prefer to read as few cards post round as possible. I think that it is up to the debaters to give clear analysis of why to prefer one card over another and to bring up the key warrants in their speeches.

Dartmouth College, 2022

Woodward Academy, 2018

Last Updated: 01-06-2023

Put me on email chain: ask at the beginning of the round :)

Overview

Be nice, be clear, and make arguments supported by evidence.

My promise: I will try my best to judge each debate attentively and enthusiastically and provide each debater with constructive criticism.

Fran Swanson
Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart ’13
Harvard ‘17
franswanson95 [at] gmail.com (please add me to the email chain)

I debated at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart for 4 years and I'm currently a college senior. Assume no familiarity with the topic: acronyms, “norms” that have developed about topicality, and other topic-specific knowledge must be explained.

The aff should defend a plan that is an example of a topical action by the United States federal government. Teams that do not do this (or vaguely claim to in 1AC cx but shift out of this later) will be vulnerable to framework/topicality. A topical example of the aff when paired with well-impacted arguments about ground and fairness is a persuasive 2NR.

Each debate comes down to a few key questions. Give 2NRs and 2ARs that "write the ballot" by resolving these. Make fewer, more well-explained arguments (this goes for the 1AR too) with "even if" statements. 

Debate in a way that shows me how hard you work: read high quality evidence, be familiar with it, have an end-of-round vision, and plan strategic CXs.

Silly T violations, procedurals (ASPEC, etc), and bad theory arguments (new affs bad, no neg fiat, etc) are a waste of time and will hurt your speaker points.

Kritiks must be made specific to the aff/advantages/impacts (possible with an IR or consumption K, impossible with a death/suffering K). Don't neglect the case-- use solvency deficits, impact defense, and framing arguments. The aff is often in good shape with well-explained perms, attacks of alt solvency, and distinguishing the 1AC from the neg's (usually broad) link arguments.

Theory must be slow, consistently explained/extended, and impacted to be winnable. I will hold the 2AR very closely to the 2AC/1AR extension. Conditionality is good, within limits. A well-explained, impacted, and flowable push by the aff could persuade me otherwise. Theory requires a significant 1AR time investment. 

Non-condo theory is usually a reason to reject the argument but can be explained otherwise with significant investment on impact assessment. Conditions, consult, process, and agent CPs need specific solvency advocates and are very susceptible to theory. They are often so poor that they can be beaten on well-worded/explained perms and low risk of a net benefit.

Don’t overlook the internal link level of the case debate. Negs with well-impacted solvency take outs are in great shape against 2AR “try-or-die” framing. Case turns and impact turn debates are awesome and often determined by evidence and time frame comparison.

Competing interpretations seems like the least arbitrary way to evaluate topicality but a well-explained reasonability argument can help the aff. Reasonability requires a counter-interpretation. Evidence comparison is essential. So is a case list and topical version of the aff. Topicality is never a reverse-voting issue.

Dropped arguments are true but must be impacted and can be outweighed by other arguments.

I am a Senior Highschool debater at Chattahoochee High School and this is my 4th year debating. 

K affs: I believe that aff's should probably have a plan or at least be somewhat relevant to the resolution. My biggest problem with K aff's is how they claim to solves their impacts so if running a K aff, make sure you have a very clear line of reasoning. Not the most knowledgable on high theory so if you are running high theory K affs be sure to explain the thesis of your aff very clearly.

Disads: Fine with disads! I enjoy impact comparison

Counterplans: Also fine with counterplans!

Kritiks: not the best person to read high theory kritiks in front of. I find middle of the road frameworks most persuasive. I will vote on K's but make sure that a link makes sense and is very clearly explained and why the alternative actually solves (and obviously extend your impact as well). I'm fine with generic K's like seceurity, neolib, cap, agamben, pan, etc

Topicality: I like topicality debates. If you are going for topicality debate it like a DA and make sure you have an impact (like education/fairness/etc) and explain why that impact matters, not just your internal links (standards) like limits and ground. If the aff has a pretty decent reason why they meet your interpretation, I will find that very persuasive.

Theory: I'm fine with theory. If you go for theory make sure its something with somewhat credibility (like conditionality, PICs bad, condition CPs bad, etc) instead of something with minimal credibility (Like no neg fiat).

Assume I want to be added to your email chain: andre.d.washington@gmail.com

Andre Washington
Rowland Hall St. Marks
Assistant Coach

IMPORTANT CHANGES: After 5 years of judging a wide range of debate styles, I think I've come to the conclusion that I just can't connect with or enjoy the current iteration of HS high theory debate. Being able to act as an educator is an important reason for why I judge, and I don't think I can offer that in your Baudrilliard debates anymore.

This will be my sixth year with the program at Rowland Hall, and 10th year of debate overall.

I love debate and want students to love it as well.

Do what you want, and do it well. ---

Kritiks: Despite the revision above, you absolutely should still be reading the K in front of me. I am fine with the K. I like the K as it functions in a greater neg strategy (ie, I'd rather judge a 5 off round that includes a K than a 1 off K round). However, I went 1-off fem K in highschool for many rounds, so I am genuinely pretty accepting on this issue. Given that I don't spend a great deal of my time working through K literature, I think it's important that you explain these to me, but that's basically what a good K debater should expect to do anyway.

Disads: I cut politics every week. I love both sides of the politics debate and can benefit you as a judge on how to execute these debates well.

Counterplans: Counterplans of all shapes and sizes are a critical place to form a strategy and I enjoy these debates. Theory is to be argued and I can't think of any predisposition.

Topicality: I think that debaters who can execute "technical" args well are enjoyable enough to watch and judge, and I think I can probably benefit as a judge to any technical debater. I think that any violation, on face, has validity and there are no affs that are so "obviously" topical that they cannot be beaten on T.

Kritikal affs: I am not ideologically opposed to K affs at all and even enjoy these debates, although I primarily work on and with policy affs so I would say explanation is still key.

Framework: I find that good framework debaters know how to make the flow accessible to the judge. I think that there are a number of compelling claims and debates to be had on framework, and they can be just as strongly argued as anything else (including your kritik or kritikal aff).

Email chain - solomonsonofwat@gmail.com

Whats good.

To treat people as people is my governing maxim, for debate it is to treat arguments as arguments. This activity lacks any coherence without a judge who adheres to such a universal. The energy generated in this activity relies on the thesis that everyone's argument will be heard, recognized, and reason will be in the decision.

Reason is the product of a unity between the particular argument and the universal debate, reason as the substantive new achieved only at the moment of synthesis of the particular and the universal. Biases are not only inevitable but to some degree necessary, to the degree any objectivity can be achieved it is through recognition of the self’s position in the universe.

I competed at grady (now midtown) high school as an ambassdor from the atlanta udl, later coaching for the atlanta ambassdors (grady, decatur, roswell, etc) from 2018-2020. In 2022, I graduated with a political science degree from utd, after competing there for 4 ½ years. And continued briefly coaching at utd before enrolling in the philosophy, politics, and economics masters program at the university of groningen.

While there is likely a good number in this judging pool with more experience/success in both debate and education, my experience can still make my ear somewhat demanding in certain conversations. As a competitor I approached debate as a game of exploiting strategic vulnerabilities, with the round itself a puzzle to be solved. This approach led to my participation (as both competitor and judge) in high level policy, K v K, and clash debates. My background has made me both familiar with a wide number of literature bases and argument genres, consequently I'm agnostic to both style and content. All I’m looking for are arguments.

When it comes to an argument, I’m looking for a claim with a warrant that’s has an implication for the round/debate at large. A conceded claim with a warrant is not a conceded argument, because it may lack an explicit explanation about the claim’s implication for the round. My commitment to treat arguments as arguments leads me to focus on reading arguments as they are presented and not if they are true. This commitment also leaves me in total deference to the arguments made by students about what the round is about, what the role of the judge or students are, and changes to the traditional calculation or weight of certain arguments.

Debates about the metaethics of the activity or the community are welcomed, in so far as you can articulate a reason why these ethical considerations are of more significance than the procedural concerns that come with alterations to the status quo of the activity. Deference to procedure for the sake of procedure is not always a sufficient defense of the procedure in question. Debates about the metaethics of debates are often most aided by comparing the benefits or harms of proposed models of debate rather than technical conversations that may proliferate the flow.

As the judge I do not allow, merely adjudicate. If you want to do something, make the argument for why you should do it. 2nc cps? Word PICs? Floating PICs? Make the argument and argue it, as the judge I will adjudicate who won. The door to creativity will be left open. Creation of arguments is the self-expression of debaters; self-expression is the life blood of self-aware creatures. Creativity can only exist with limitations, precisely as something for creativity to overcome. The precise boundaries of the limits of the round are for the competitors to argue.

Adjudication is a process of reading arguments through a combination of their technical presentation, offense defense framing, evidentiary/warranted support, and implication for the round. I flow on my computer and will passively read evidence throughout the round. Therefore, I tend not to need card docks after rounds, even in policy debates. That being said, if specific attention is made to a piece of evidence or the debate otherwise hinges on a piece(s) of evidence I will return to it.

My commitment to non-interventionism spills over to my conduct, I tend to say and interact as little as possible during the round. The debate is for the debaters to define, I’m merely an observer. My ballots tend to be littered with misspellings and grammatical incorrections. Generally, I use the ballot as a space for me to cohere my thoughts into a comprehensible rfd, from which I essentially use as a script for my oral feedback. If post facto questions exist about a ballot I encourage reaching out by email for clarity.

To treat people as people is very important to me, any actions on the part of competitors during the round that would negate this maxim will be rewarded with speaker point deductions or a loss depending on the severity. Moves that deny the personhood of participants based on otherization, class, race, gender, ability, religion, migrant status, etc are clear violations, be they epistemic, discursive, or interpersonal. Essentially, don't be an ass.

Mark E. Weinhardt

Put me on the email chain: mweinhardt@weinhardtlaw.com

Background:

I debated a very long time ago: Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Washington (1975-78) and Dartmouth (1978-1982). I was fortunate to have some success (quarters at TOC in high school; quarters, finals, and semis at 3 NDT’s and #1 and #6 at large bids in college). I then left the activity entirely, returning as a judge and assistant coach in 2010 when my kids started debating at West Des Moines Dowling Catholic High School. I attend several tournaments a year and judge a mixture of competitive levels. In real life I am a trial lawyer with my own firm (see www.weinhardtlaw.com).

Overview:

I believe it is called “policy debate” for a reason, and my default approach is to evaluate the round as a policy maker in the real world (i.e., I am a U.S. Senator; the plan text is a bill before me). I can and will judge the debate differently, but you must ask me to do so and persuade me it's a good idea. Other than the kritik movement[1], debate has changed much less in 40 years than you think it has. We went fast and I can flow fast.

HOW to debate in front of me:

—This is an oral activity. At live tournaments, I must get your content from the spoken word, not the written word. And if I can't flow it, it's not in the debate. I will sometimes, however, look at evidence after the round to resolve conflicts in or weigh the evidence. I am willing to be on the email chain to get speech docs for this purpose (mweinhardt@weinhardtlaw.com), but do not expect me to look at that content during the round. At online tournaments, however, I may look at speech docs in round to makeup for lag in the electronic format. Don't depend on that, though--you'd best slow down a little.

—Line by line GOOD. Giant overviews BAD.

—During speeches and cross-ex, I allow only one team member to talk. The other debater can’t talk to his/her partner or to me. Always stand when speaking.

—When arguing analytics, don’t just stare at your laptop and read fast. You need to look at me and persuade me why you are right, especially in late rebuttals.

WHAT to debate in front of me (almost anything, but here are some thoughts):

Kritiks

I will vote on K's but am not deep in the literature. If your K is named after a concept (capitalism, security), I am probably conversant with it. If it is named after a philosopher, you'd better explain it very clearly. I will weigh the case against a K absent a compelling reason not to.

Topicality

I believe the affirmative is required to affirm the resolution. But I am generally lenient on T if the affirmative does this. That is, I like breadth over depth within the resolution but hate it when the aff wants a debate that has nothing to do with the resolution. Against policy affs, I think many negatives waste their time on T. But T is always a voting issue if the affirmative loses it.

Counterplans

I believe a counterplan must be competitive with the affirmative plan; i.e., the negative must explain why I can’t do both. I am very willing to vote on the idea that a counterplan cannot be topical. Affirmatives should argue this in front of me. I am generally not a fan of little cheating PICs.

Other theory issues

I will vote on theory but much prefer debates about the desirability of the plan text/resolution as a policy matter. Calling a theory argument a “voter” does not make it so. One conditional advocacy is OK; more than that could try my patience. Three things matter to me in theory debates: (1) Competitive fairness to both sides. (2) Education about things that transcend debate. (3) The rules of this game should attract, not repel, students from participating in it. I will vote for theory positions that do those things and I will punish positions that don't.

Miscellaneous

I applaud debaters who separate what evidence actually says from the spin their opponents put on it. I like case debates; negs invest way to little in this in most rounds.

[1] Here is how old I am: Many credit a guy named Bill Shanahan with inventing the concept of the K. I debated against him in college.

whitakerdebates@gmail.com

Currently working with Alpharetta, previously worked with Chattahoochee. I debated throughout high school, then at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Central Oklahoma, and am now a member of U of West Georgia debate.

I’m comfortable with all speeds and styles, especially those regarding the k – I’m most familiar with poststructural + positional criticisms, though you should do whatever it is you do best – you can just as easily win with a plan, theory, framework, etc. If you want to test a sneaky new framework strategy, I'll happily adjudicate your chess match; if you're all about the Death K, well, I've done my fair share of that stuff too. Give me your best args and write my ballot. I privilege tech over truth and frequently vote for arguments that contravene my personal beliefs. I judge k affs frequently but this only thickens my belief that they need some relation to the resolution, even if only neg-neg. I thus also believe that the neg, in turn, needs to prove why either A) the aff links to harder to the k than squo does, or B) why that distinction doesn't matter - i.e. how I can vote without presumption and/or L/UQ or why presumption still goes neg, does not exist, sucks, whatever. I am not, personally, keen on the notion that presumption can flip aff, but am willing to entertain the argument and have voted on it when used to exploit a neg weakness.

I flow on paper, if you care. I'll say clear twice and then stop flowing anything incomprehensible. If you begin a speech in unsettling fashion (e.g. giving an inaccurate roadmap or jumping the gun with 400+wpm), I'll act flustered and require a few effervescently dramatic seconds to get my affairs in order. If I'm otherwise not flowing or I'm on the wrong sheet, it's because either you've created a mental backlog of arguments that I'm flowing in retrospect or I'm repackaging your arguments to make them more palatable to my flow, or both.

Some things that frustrate me: excessive rudeness (toward opponents or judges), offensive strategies (racism inevitable/good, for instance), and clipping (zeroes + L = bad time for you). The advent of digital debate brings with it a new and widespread sense of suspicion, and though I will do my best to catch any and all forms of cheating, I ask that debaters remain vigilant for it as well. Also, and I can’t believe I need to write this, please don’t engage in acts of self-harm to win my ballot (you know who you are). Instead, please demonstrate mastery of persuasion, word economy, and 2nr/2ar prescience – teams that reverse-engineer strategies and execute them methodically speech-by-speech impress me the most – a searing cross-ex is, of course, welcome – entertaining and innovative teams will be rewarded with speaker points.

A few final notes: not a huge fan of process counterplans (but I’ll still vote for them), conditionality is pretty good (as is neg fiat), link uniqueness wins k rounds, and maybe, just maybe, go for presumption.

add me to the email chain: whit211@gmail.com

Do not utter the phrase "plan text in a vacuum" or any other clever euphemism for it. It's not an argument, I won't vote on it, and you'll lose speaker points for advancing it. You should defend your plan, and I should be able to tell what the plan does by reading it.

Inserting things into the debate isn't a thing. If you want me to evaluate evidence, you should read it in the debate.

Cross-ex time is cross-ex time, not prep time. Ask questions or use your prep time, unless the tournament has an official "alt use" time rule.

You should debate line by line. That means case arguments should be responded to in the 1NC order and off case arguments should be responded to in the 2AC order. I continue to grow frustrated with teams that do not flow. If I suspect you are not flowing (I visibly see you not doing it; you answer arguments that were not made in the previous speech but were in the speech doc; you answer arguments in speech doc order instead of speech order), you will receive no higher than a 28. This includes teams that like to "group" the 2ac into sections and just read blocks in the 2NC/1NR. Also, read cards. I don't want to hear a block with no cards. This is a research activity.

Debate the round in a manner that you would like and defend it. I consistently vote for arguments that I don’t agree with and positions that I don’t necessarily think are good for debate. I have some pretty deeply held beliefs about debate, but I’m not so conceited that I think I have it all figured out. I still try to be as objective as possible in deciding rounds. All that being said, the following can be used to determine what I will most likely be persuaded by in close calls:

If I had my druthers, every 2nr would be a counterplan/disad or disad/case.

In the battle between truth and tech, I think I fall slightly on side of truth. That doesn’t mean that you can go around dropping arguments and then point out some fatal flaw in their logic in the 2AR. It does mean that some arguments are so poor as to necessitate only one response, and, as long as we are on the same page about what that argument is, it is ok if the explanation of that argument is shallow for most of the debate. True arguments aren’t always supported by evidence, but it certainly helps.

I think research is the most important aspect of debate. I make an effort to reward teams that work hard and do quality research on the topic, and arguments about preserving and improving topic specific education carry a lot of weight with me. However, it is not enough to read a wreck of good cards and tell me to read them. Teams that have actually worked hard tend to not only read quality evidence, but also execute and explain the arguments in the evidence well. I think there is an under-highlighting epidemic in debates, but I am willing to give debaters who know their evidence well enough to reference unhighlighted portions in the debate some leeway when comparing evidence after the round.

I think the affirmative should have a plan. I think the plan should be topical. I think topicality is a voting issue. I think teams that make a choice to not be topical are actively attempting to exclude the negative team from the debate (not the other way around). If you are not going to read a plan or be topical, you are more likely to persuade me that what you are doing is ‘ok’ if you at least attempt to relate to or talk about the topic. Being a close parallel (advocating something that would result in something similar to the resolution) is much better than being tangentially related or directly opposed to the resolution. I don’t think negative teams go for framework enough. Fairness is an impact, not a internal link. Procedural fairness is a thing and the only real impact to framework. If you go for "policy debate is key to skills and education," you are likely to lose. Winning that procedural fairness outweighs is not a given. You still need to defend against the other team's skills, education and exclusion arguments.

I don’t think making a permutation is ever a reason to reject the affirmative. I don’t believe the affirmative should be allowed to sever any part of the plan, but I believe the affirmative is only responsible for the mandates of the plan. Other extraneous questions, like immediacy and certainty, can be assumed only in the absence of a counterplan that manipulates the answers to those questions. I think there are limited instances when intrinsicness perms can be justified. This usually happens when the perm is technically intrinsic, but is in the same spirit as an action the CP takes This obviously has implications for whether or not I feel some counterplans are ultimately competitive.

Because I think topic literature should drive debates (see above), I feel that both plans and counterplans should have solvency advocates. There is some gray area about what constitutes a solvency advocate, but I don’t think it is an arbitrary issue. Two cards about some obscure aspect of the plan that might not be the most desirable does not a pic make. Also, it doesn’t sit well with me when negative teams manipulate the unlimited power of negative fiat to get around literature based arguments against their counterplan (i.e. – there is a healthy debate about federal uniformity vs state innovation that you should engage if you are reading the states cp). Because I see this action as comparable to an affirmative intrinsicness answer, I am more likely to give the affirmative leeway on those arguments if the negative has a counterplan that fiats out of the best responses.

My personal belief is probably slightly affirmative on many theory questions, but I don’t think I have voted affirmative on a (non-dropped) theory argument in years. Most affirmatives are awful at debating theory. Conditionality is conditionality is conditionality. If you have won that conditionality is good, there is no need make some arbitrary interpretation that what you did in the 1NC is the upper limit of what should be allowed. On a related note, I think affirmatives that make interpretations like ‘one conditional cp is ok’ have not staked out a very strategic position in the debate and have instead ceded their best offense. Appeals to reciprocity make a lot sense to me. ‘Argument, not team’ makes sense for most theory arguments that are unrelated to the disposition of a counterplan or kritik, but I can be persuaded that time investment required for an affirmative team to win theory necessitates that it be a voting issue.

Critical teams that make arguments that are grounded in and specific to the topic are more successful in front of me than those that do not. It is even better if your arguments are highly specific to the affirmative in question. I enjoy it when you paint a picture for me with stories about why the plans harms wouldn’t actually happen or why the plan wouldn’t solve. I like to see critical teams make link arguments based on claims or evidence read by the affirmative. These link arguments don’t always have to be made with evidence, but it is beneficial if you can tie the specific analytical link to an evidence based claim. I think alternative solvency is usually the weakest aspect of the kritik. Affirmatives would be well served to spend cross-x and speech time addressing this issue. ‘Our authors have degrees/work at a think tank’ is not a response to an epistemological indict of your affirmative. Intelligent, well-articulated analytic arguments are often the most persuasive answers to a kritik. 'Fiat' isn't a link. If your only links are 'you read a plan' or 'you use the state,' or if your block consistently has zero cards (or so few that find yourself regularly sending out the 2nc in the body rather than speech doc) then you shouldn't be preffing me.

LD Specific Business:

I am primarily a policy coach with very little LD experience. Have a little patience with me when it comes to LD specific jargon or arguments. It would behoove you to do a little more explanation than you would give to a seasoned adjudicator in the back of the room. I will most likely judge LD rounds in the same way I judge policy rounds. Hopefully my policy philosophy below will give you some insight into how I view debate. I have little tolerance and a high threshold for voting on unwarranted theory arguments. I'm not likely to care that they dropped your 'g' subpoint, if it wasn't very good. RVI's aren't a thing, and I won't vote on them.

Email: lemuel30034@gmail.com

I will listen to most arguments. I have problems with most theory arguments in LD. Topicality is like the death penalty so I proceed with care. I understand policy arguments and kritiks. I flow most of the time. If you have questions about what I think about your arguments you should ask.

I believe debaters should be civil to each other. I would prefer that high school students not use foul language in debates.

I am ok with performance debates. I do believe the teams should engage the topic. If a team chooses not to engage the topic, then I will give the other team leeway to deal with the lack of engagement.

Reverse voting issues do not make sense in most instances.

I am ok with counterplans and disadvantages.

I will vote for the team that makes the most sense at the end of the debate.

USN 2017

Michigan 2021

Topic experience: to be honest, virtually none.

TL;DR pre-round version:

Do you, I really don't care. I’d much rather listen to you go for something you can do well vs. an over-adapted round.

For email chains: hannahwolfson25@gmail.com.

How I evaluate specific arguments:

Clash debates – I've voted both ways. Take that as you will.

Aff teams: I like it when the aff relates to the resolution in some way. That doesn’t mean you have to have a plan, but talking about the topic might be a good idea.

Neg teams: yes, I'm in the camp that thinks there is a difference between T and FW. Do: have an impact. Don’t: just yell about limits.

Kritiks – go ahead.

I understand the basics, but don't skimp on explanation. Lemme know before the 2NR how the alt functions/solves. Floating PIKs are probably not a reason to reject the team. Links of omission aren’t real; if you need them to get offense, perm probably solves.

On framework, I lean towards weighing the aff, but I can be persuaded otherwise. I'll vote on "K tricks", but you have to do more than just saying "fiat is illusory" or "serial policy failure".

Topicality – words mean things.

When it comes to evaluating the minutiae of T debates on the HS topic, I can't stress this enough: I have no topic knowledge. I won't know what your acronyms mean nor what the camp consensus is re: what's core of the topic this year, so please explain/contextualize things. It sounds obvious, but apparently I have to say it: if you don’t have a coherent violation in the 2NR, easy L.

Theory – if we really have to.

I’m not predisposed to sides, but condo's prob the only reason to reject the team. You can win that one condo is bad or 10 condo are good in front of me, it all depends. Please slow down and do actual LBL.

Counterplans – yeah.

The more specific to the aff the better. Re: where I lean on theory, see above.

I don't judge kick. Even if they dropped judge kick, I don't judge kick. If it's in the 2NR, the status quo is no longer an option.

Disads – can't beat the classics.

Don't read things that are racist. "Cops good" is an uphill battle with me.

Same with CPs, the more specific the better. Ptx disads are fine, in theory; they’re probably not bad for debate but they ARE badly constructed.

That's pretty much it. If you have any other more specific questions, ask before the round. GLHF.

Debate

I'm pretty open minded to all argumets as long as they make sense and relate to the topic. I prefer policy affs just because I have more experience with them. Tag teaming in CX is acceptable so long as it is limited. Go as fast as you want as long as I can understand your tags and authors. If you don't signpost and you make it difficult for me to follow where you're going, I will give you no more than 28 speaker points. I do this for the betterment of your debating skills and for my own sanity. No judge likes having to scramble for another flow when they realize that you've changed. Anything that goes unanswered and is extended, I will probably consider to be true. I don't take prep for flashing.

Ks- I am fine with them if you explain it well. Keep in mind I don't spend much time reading K literature, so reading an obscure K is probably not a good idea.

Theory- I have a relatively high threshold for theory. I will only vote a team down on theory if the other team is decisively winning on it. Conditionality arguments (and all other theory arguments) are more persuasive with in round abuse. Despite my policy on dropped arguments, I will have a hard time voting down a team on theory outside of Condo, PICs, and PIKs.

As A Person

Don't be rude, especially not to your partner. This means don't cut them off too frequently in CX and don't shake your head in dismay when they do something wrong. In most rounds, it's pretty obvious who has the most experience, so if I notice that person being too hard on his/her partner, I've been known to dock speaker points. Also, have fun and by all means crack a few jokes (preferably Star Wars ones). We're all here for fun after after all.

she/her/hers

La Costa Canyon/Leucadia Independent 2012-2016

Emory University 2016-2019

Yes, I want to be on your email chain: gabi.yamout1@gmail.com

Read into these

• an argument has a claim, warrant, and impact
• line by line is important
• try or die is a bad way to make decisions
• zero risk is possible

Affs:

Do your thing. I prefer affs to have a tie to the topic in some way.

Framework/T-USfg:

Sure. Impact comparison is important. I don't like late-breaking cross applications in these debates.

Kritiks:

I do not read very much high theory/postmodernism literature.

Do good, specific link work, make smart turns case arguments, and use empirical examples to demonstrate your argument.

You are unlikely to convince me that the K should be rejected on face, or that the aff shouldn't get to weigh the implementation of their plan.

Topicality:

Love it. Please please please do impact comparison. Have a clearly articulated vision of what the topic would look like under both interpretations. Reasonability is best articulated as an argument for aff predictability.

You should assume I know little about the HS topic - that means your examples (eg what affirmatives the aff's interp would allow) need to be explained.

Counterplans:

Cool. I like advantage counterplan debates.

Disads:

Love to hear topic DAs, and I like impact turn debates.

Misc:

• I don’t have a strong opinion about conditionality.
• The shorter your overviews, the better your speaks.
• Create as much spin as you can - control the way I look at issues and pieces of evidence.
• Death is bad.
• If a team asks to use prep to ask more cx questions, feel free to say no. And no, you can't use your cx as prep.
• Don't be an asshole.