From the 2020-1 school year:

tl;dr:

LD: flow judge, but you can argue that stuff like CP's, neg fiat are illegit and that durable fiat is not realistic if there are too many actors. You'd need to tell me why of course and convince me. The val/crit debate determines how I evaluate the rest of the debate, and winning that debate just means I evaluate stuff as specified in the victorious val/crit. Also even though I'm a flow judge, that doesn't mean you're locked into line-by-line for every argument-- you can group stuff and some of the best LDers in my judgement are closer to the PF realm than the Policy realm in style.

PF: public forum is like a TV show, like the McLaughlin Group or CNN's Crossfire. The best PF judge is someone who doesn't understand debate, yet these days you have speed and framework in PF. If I saw speed or framework on the TV, I'd change the channel. When I see a PF debate without these things, my heart soars. But if your opponent makes a lot of points, how do you not get pulled into the speed and the mire? Although you should not neglect to answer the opponent's important points, when you get spread, the magic words from a persuasion perspective seem to me to be, "here's what's really important in this debate," or some variation thereof. As with many speech events, in Pufo fluency is also key to persuasion.

longer:

LD — flow judge. Two debates occur in parallel in every LD round: the value/criterion and the contention debate. Usually the winner is the debater who does the better job telling me why their contentions line up with the prevalent value/criterion in the round. I want to see this weighing underway by the NC and a tad in the 1AR so that both sides have time to rebut each other’s assertions.

One debater may attempt to spread the other in LD. When this happens, the other debater can agree to this kind of line-by-line debate by participating in it. The other debater may instead group arguments and bring the round back to a more ‘common-sense’ manner of argumentation. Most times this year I’ve found that when one debater starts with the line-by-line, the other goes along with it. I’ll evaluate such rounds in this way if there is no dissent in a particular round on it. But the other side of this coin is, neg sometimes just reads 10 esoteric arguments at speed. When this happens, if aff says something like “I didn’t understand that and I suspect you didn’t either,” aff is probably right. If LD is debated like Policy, neg just has the opportunity to get more ink on the flow and win 80% of the time. The preceding is more or less my own ROM of LD theory and arguments to the contrary are very unlikely to change it.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON LD:

If you run a val/crit that would make all aff or all neg cases under the current resolution illegit and this fact is pointed out (truthfully) to me, I am very likely to weight the fact that you did that against you for reasons of fairness and education.

Fiat means that we assume an Aff world and compare the aff world to the squo world. Thus, when we say fiat, we mean “for the sake of argument, suppose we did the aff; now, how would that be different that the squo?” It does not mean, “for the sake of argument, suppose we did the aff, the aff worked as planned, and the world was saved.” Fiat does not mean that political repercussions can’t happen. Fiat does not mean that solvency is assured. I already know what aff fiat means and theory arguments about it won’t persuade me— they have not once done so. Neg fiat, however, is another matter. Does it even exist? Are counterplans legit? I’m agnostic on this question currently.

If we are in a world where neg fiat exists, which I will assume (for now) if neither debater disputes it, the mere fact that a perm is logically possible is not enough for me to prefer the aff. If perms are permitted, then I consider that the aff’s advocacy has shifted from the plan to the perm, and I will vote based on whether the perm or the CP best achieves the prevalent val/crit. Let me give you a sense of what I mean by logical possibility. Many negs will say something like “we can’t do something and also do the opposite of something.” Uh, yes we can. I can dig a hole and fill it up again. I can attempt to dig a hole with one arm and refill the hole with my other arm. The Federal Government can do something with the states attempting to do that same thing (e.g. cops arguing over jurisdiction.) The Federal Government can do something with the states attempting to do the opposite (e.g. Oregon permits drugs while the Feds ban them; California has sanctuary cities while the Feds uphold contrary rules.) Someone can set a fire with one hand and also call the fire department. All these things I have stated are logical possibilities. Are any of them wise, in the sense of, is it wise to have different arms of the same government working at cross-purposes? No, I would say not. Would doing any of them be a waste and probably have terrible effects? Seems obvious that they would. Just don’t tell me that something is logically impossible when it is not.

Evidence in many areas of our lives is a good thing to consider. In certain areas of our lives, it may be the only important thing in determining what we should do. But this is not the case for all questions. In particular, evidence may not be salient on all questions of values. Let’s consider a topic that is not yet controversial but that we can imagine might become controversial: the eleventh amendment to the US constitution, which, according to wikipedia as of today, “restricts the ability of individuals to bring suit against states in federal court.” Imagine a debate happening on whether this was right or wrong. One side says more or less, “It’s unjust that you can’t sue states. The judicial system is our recourse, and if states act wrongly, people, foreign or domestic, should be able to sue them.” The other side says, “Federal courts are not the only form of recourse. The Federal government can already sanction and impose restrictions on states, and additional methods to hold states accountable are not needed and would be disadvantageous. Also changing the constitution in this way would open the door to frivolous lawsuits which would hurt everyone. From a utilitarian standpoint, we should keep the 11th amendment as it is.” Now what if a third party came in and said, “Well, according to philosophy professors at Princeton, Yale, and Oxford, you should prefer utilitarianism over justice.” Well, that’s not really how debates on values work. You argue values via talking about why the values you advocate are good. Appeals to authority might work when the subject is something very complicated like molecular biology or quantum mechanics, but for questions of values, citing a source usually won’t work.

PF — The ideal public forum judge is someone who has never seen public forum before. Now, although I have seen it before, I have, and I believe the community has, an interest in keeping it true to its original form. This is the genesis of how I judge PF.

I was asked to write a PF paradigm, but I believe that PF judges should not have a paradigm. Bottom line, when I watch PF, I pretend that the debaters are on my TV and are trying to convince me of their point of view. If someone is trying to convince me of something, running theory or topically are not a good idea. A better idea is, if your opponent is discussing irrelevant things, remind the judge/audience what the debate is about and proceed to talk about it better.

If someone is trying to convince me of their point of view, saying “extend and cross-apply Johnson 2015, I already responded to that” is not going to convince me of anything. Instead, consider saying “as we have stated previously, and as underscored by Dr. Johnson…” and so on.

If someone trying to convince me starts talking very quickly, that does not get them very far. I’m not going to expect the other person to speak very quickly as well. Everyone has similar speech times, and a reply such as “my opponent mentioned many interesting details, but here’s what you really need to know…” will probably suffice.

Courtesy is of course important, but don’t spend to long with the ‘you ask a question first, oh thank you so much,’ game. Most rounds I’ve seen lately have been fine in this dimension, so you’ll probably do well too.

I’m not going to flow PF rounds. I will take notes to help my memory, but if you say, “extend point 3, subpoint b,” I’m not going to know what you mean.

The more you use debate to explain to regular people why issues matter to them in the real world, the more you’ll get out of debate in the long run, I feel confident. So, emerge from the cave of speed and jargon and gaze upon the sunlight of excellence!

Policy - I'm a deconstructionist judge.

I’m the head coach of the Mount Vernon HS Debate Team (WA).

I did policy debate in HS very, very long ago - but I’m not a traditionalist. (Bring on the progressive LD arguments-- I will listen to them, unlike my daughter, Peri, who is such a traditional LD'er.)

Add me to the email chain: kkirkpatrick@mvsd320.org

Please don’t be racist, homophobic, etc. I like sassy, aggressive debaters who enjoy what they do but dislike sullen, mean students who don't really care-- an unpleasant attitude will damage your speaker points.

Generally,

Speed: Speed hasn't been a problem but I don't tell you if I need you to be more clear-- I feel it's your job to adapt. If you don't see me typing, you probably want to slow down. I work in tabroom in WA state an awful lot, so my flowing has slowed. Please take that into consideration.

Tech = Truth: I’ll probably end up leaning more tech, but I won’t vote for weak arguments that are just blatantly untrue in the round whether or not your opponents call it out.

Arguments:

I prefer a strong, developed NEG strategy instead of running a myriad of random positions.

I love it when debaters run unique arguments that they truly believe and offer really high speaker points for this. (I'm not inclined to give high speaks, though.)

Any arguments that aren’t on here, assume neutrality.

Do like and will vote on:

T - I love a well-developed T battle but rarely hear one. I don't like reasonability as a standard-- it's lazy, do the work.

Ks - I like debaters who truly believe in the positions they’re running. I like critical argumentation but if you choose to run an alt of "embrace poetry" or "reject all written text", you had better fully embrace it. I’m in touch with most literature, but I need a lot of explanation from either side as to why you should win it in the final rebuttals.

Don’t like but will vote on if won:

“Debate Bad” - I DO NOT LIKE "Debate is Futile" arguments. Please don't tell me what we are doing has no point. I will listen to your analysis. I may even have to vote for it once in a while. But, it is not my preference. Want a happy judge? Don't tell me that how we are spending another weekend of our lives is wasting our time.

Very, very, very... VERY traditional LD - if you are reading an essay case, I am not the judge for you.

Not a huge fan of disclosure theory-- best to skip this.

Don’t like and won’t vote on:

Tricks.