Last changed on
Tue October 31, 2023 at 5:29 PM CDT
I did two years of PF, one year of LD, and one year of extemp. If you have a question about something not on this paradigm, feel free to ask before the round.
Public Forum:
I would consider myself a fairly technical and flow based judge. While I can flow decently well, I generally don’t want to see any spreading (very fast speaking) in PF unless it’s clear both teams are fine with it beforehand.
I also don’t want to see any theory or Kritiks in PF as I feel PF as an event should solely be about the resolution. That being said, there isn’t really a type of argumentation that I will auto-drop, but it’s going to be very hard to win my ballot if your main strategy is off-resolutional arguments. Counterplans are fine as long as they and the resolution are mutually exclusive.
Weighing is absolutely crucial. It’s not enough to win arguments on the flow, you need to tell me why those arguments matter the most in terms of the resolution. If you have to make a choice between weighing and covering the entire flow, choose weighing. The most frustrating rounds to judge are when no one does any weighing or telling me the framework to evaluate the round, and I have to decide on that myself.
LD:
I’m fine with any type of argumentation as long as you tell me why I should vote on it, but I’m somewhat pre-disposed to on-resolution types of argumentation. I don’t have a problem with speed, I will say ‘clear’ if I want you to be more clear.
The framework debate and weighing are very important. Don’t just extend arguments without telling me why they matter. Again, winning the most critical arguments is way more important than winning the most arguments.
Extemp:
If a tournament allows competitors to use notes, I prefer that competitors don’t use notes, and will generally rank competitors who don’t use notes over those who do. I will give time signals. Using sources are important, with publication, author, and date (month and year are fine unless you have a story covering fast-changing events). I consider speaking ability and content/structure to have roughly equal importance.
Congress:
Quality over quantity. I value better speeches and better questions over more speeches and better questions. The best speeches have a good structure, multiple sources, and refute the points of previous speakers. The worst speeches are those that just rehash the same points as previous speakers while adding nothing new.
Policy:
If I am judging Policy, there is a severe shortage of policy judges at the tournament you are at. I don’t know much about Policy Debate at all aside from the amount of policy type arguments I saw in LD. In all honesty, it’s probably best to treat it like a more technical PF round with longer speeches.