Hello,

My name is Sarah Bassil. I have been involved in debate for many years in various capacities as a debater, judge and coach. I have no preferences on the pace of your speaking so long as it is comprehensible. In efforts to be efficient, I have put together a simple list of my judging preferences:

-Roadmaps are greatly encouraged

-Sources should not be from newspapers or journalist. They are inherently bias and therefore weaken your argument.

-Including impacts in the structure of the contentions is most important in a proper case.

-Unless your definitions differ greatly from your opponents, please do not waste both of our time by defining them.

-Please use all of your allocated time, even if it just to read through the subpoints/impacts.

-Respect in the round, especially during cross x/grand cross x, cannot be stressed enough.

-Good public speaking skills starts with being prepared and confident with your case. I highly encourage students to have memorized a least 20% of their case in efforts to ensure they have good/decent eye contact.

Debate is an activity where we learn and grow as students together, so come with a positive attitude. Feel free to ask any questions before/after the round!

This is my judging paradigm.

My debate style is unique and eclectic. I am looking for logical and concise arguments. I am unafraid of confrontation, and you should put together solid information that flows with elegance.

I prefer arguments about policy debate.

I've been debating for 6 years now, in high school I did Parliamentary and Public Forum in Oregon during and now I'm a debater for George Washington University on the American Parliamentary Debate Association. I use he/him/his pronouns.

General:

- I've got super limited online-judging experience, but a lot of in-person, so bare with me here

- Don't be snarky, don't be a jerk it absolutely doesn't help you and makes debate less fun for everyone

- I try to be as tabula rasa as I can be, especially in evidence-based formats

- I don't really care about speed but never did policy or circuit LD; if I or your opponents ask you to clear or slow down, do so immediately or your speaks are going to reflect that

- I will listen to whatever wild and zany K or theory you want to read in any format, but it's gonna be much harder to read a cap K in PF than in Policy, so it's in your best interests to avoid it

- With any theory/procedurals, you need to tell me exactly why my ballot is the key to solving the problem you point out, if you don't do this then I can't actually vote on theory over the rest of the flow

- If I don't understand the argument I'm also never gonna vote for it, sorry if I haven't read your favorite philosopher, use your best decision-making, explain things clearly, and only run arguments that you yourself can understand super clearly (I.E. I don't want to hear something a college kid was paid to write for you that you have only skimmed the night before at 2 am)

- Weighing your impacts is the most important thing you can do to get my ballot. If there was no weighing in the round, I'm going to be deferring to my own intuitions about what impacts are more compelling, and that isn't really fair to either team

- Having a card doesn't immediately give you the edge over someone else. If they provide off-the-cuff analytics as to why your card is misapplied/wrong/not important then you might be out of luck. Defending your evidence is half of the battle.

Feedback:

- I am beyond happy to give you feedback on the round/your speech/whatever if you email me at fletchercal777@gmail.com but a couple of conditions apply

- Don't come to me angry I dropped you, it's possible I made a wrong decision because everyone does sometimes, but trust me neither of us get anything out of this

- I'm a college kid, so sometimes I'm busy, just be mindful of that

PF:

- Not really sure that I depart from your average PF judge/debate on how I judge

- I'll actively look for things that are new in final focus, don't need to worry about that

- I'm not going to flow crossfire, but I will pay attention

- I'm not going to tell you what strategies you should use, but I can almost guarantee you that collapsing on one (maybe two) things is beneficial for you in a format with speeches as short as PF

- If there was highly contested evidence, I WILL call for it at the end of the round so have it ready and if you were wrong about it I'm just striking it from the flow, not auto-dropping you (unless its like super obvious that you were lying instead of just wrong about what it says/means)

- Explain your evidence, do not assume I've read Smith '02 or whatever the name is and then exclusively refer to the whole argument as Smith '02 for the rest of the round

A lay judge who's been judging for a few years now, I'm not a big fan of frameworks and I absolutely do not do Theory.

Only votes for performance affs.

I debated in PF for three years in high school, and currently debate on the APDA Collegiate circuit at UVA. I am good with speed, unique arguments, or really whatever you are interested in trying during the round! Please be kind and respectful to all competitors, especially during CX. Feel free to ask my any other questions you have before the round.