ADL Modernbrain middle school CX debates
2021 — CA/US
Policy Paradigm List
All Paradigms: Show Hideseva.gaskov@gmail.com - please add me to the email chain!!
she/they
Mamaroneck High School '20, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School '23, Arizona State University 27', 5th year debater
Spreading
Go ahead, I am fine with high speed as long as you are clear. I will try my best to flow everything but if you're unintelligible, I can't guarantee that I will be able to hear everything.
Tech vs. Truth
I am a tabula rasa and tech judge and I will vote on whatever is on the flow as long as it's not offensive.
Policy vs. K
I am fine with most kritiks. If I don't understand what your K says, I won't vote on it, so if you run Baudrillard, explain it well.
In K aff debates, I will usually prefer neg on framework unless it's debated poorly. Also, I want you to make it clear how an aff ballot solves.
Impacts
I am fine with either big stick or soft left impacts, just make sure to prove why your impact outweighs.
T
I am fine with T debates but unless the aff is clearly abusive, I will prefer reasonability. Either way, make sure to have a lot of good evidence and comparison.
DAs
Make sure to have all parts of your DA - uniqueness, link, internal link, and impact. I will treat the takeout of any single part of the DA as the takeout of the entire disad. So if the aff proves you don't link or that your DA is non-unique, I will vote aff on the DA. Give a clear story and do impact calc to explain why your DA outweighs.
CPs
I am fine with any CPs as long as there is a net benefit. I will disallow a type of CP only if the aff proves it's bad on theory.
Theory
I will vote on any theory but explain your standards and impacts well.
Speaks
30: You did something that really impressed me and I really enjoyed listening to your speeches. I have no doubt that you will win the tournament.
29 - 29.9: You did really well and your speeches were very interesting. You will most likely win the tournament or at least get to semifinals.
28.5 - 28.9: You did well and you had good speeches that made you win. You will likely break.
28 - 28.5: You did average and there are a lot of improvements to be made. Perhaps you were not clear or your speeches were messy. You could break.
27-28: You did badly and you need a lot of improvement. I will usually not give those speaks unless I really think that you messed up really badly in your speech. You would also get those speaks if you were unintelligible or if your speech didn't make sense.
27 and less: You probably said something that was offensive and made the debate really unpleasant for either me or your opponents.
peninsulalailai@gmail.com
Peninsula '24
Stanford '28
Novices, remember these things:
Do line by line. Try to answer your opponents' arguments in the order they made them.
Extend your offense first. This means if you're aff, extend your advantages first. If you're neg, extend your disadvantages first. Defense (responding to your opponents' offense) comes later.
I have found two extremes with evidence. In half of the debates I judge, cards get forgotten. In the other half, cards are overemphasized and rebuttals are referring to cites instead of making the actual argument. Remember to find a balance where you explain your arguments, but refer to authors to support your arguments.
Understand the arguments you are making. I understand it's easy to read the files your varsity teammates gave you, but really try to understand, please.
Ask questions!
Peninsula '24
Add me to the email chain: peninsulalailai@gmail.com
Don’t pref me if you don’t read a plan and care about winning.
It is true that every debater enters a two hour round wanting to win, and any argumentation otherwise will result in an immediate vote for the opponents in the spirit of unfairness, because you have just said that you do not want to win.
"When debaters walk in the room, they expect the judge to render a fair decision, not to rob them of years of hard work and dedication by substituting their personal biases for the arguments presented."
I try to make my speaks normally distributed (u = 28.4, sd = 0.5).
Prep ends when email is sent.
Topicality is primarily a question of truth.
Debate is better when debaters are dressed business professional (applies to online debate).
Everything is probabilistic. You can win the full weight of a dropped argument and easily still lose the debate.
Email - reesethomasj@gmail.com - include on all chains
MICHIGAN CAMP - include instead: tjreese@umich.edu
Affiliation - USC
General:
Read what you want. I don't understand the separation between teams calling themselves "policy debaters" or "K debaters." Debate is a process that is performed through close readings.
I think that dropped arguments are mostly true and conceded arguments are 100% true.
Word salad highlighting and "the aff causes extinction" = lower speaks.
- All debates ARE ABOUT LISTENING, if you show me you are actively engaged in your opponent’s arguments your speaker points will increase, if you are not listening I will be super upset.
FW: I think the best FW debating answers the question of why FW is important for the thing the aff is trying to solve for. This can include the necessity of having a fair game and a ballot that reflects the desirability of fairness. However, if you go for FW as some abstract Willy Wonka thing dropping all the impact turns and rambling about how big a library is chances are you are going to L on aff offense. AFFs if you think but policing + the topic is racist is sufficient to answer a TVA rethink.
- Not a fan of the approach of listing a bunch of bad/good debaters. None of us know these people and you can be a bad person and debate either style of argumentation. Same goes for aff solvency, not sure how 5 debaters doing x good thing after debate is evidence of reading the aff being good. Also not a fan of mentioning other teams, I can't name a single high schooler and the college debaters that made an impact didn't do so by citing other debaters, their arguments stood on their own merits.
- Not a fan of reading the advocacy statement with US should in front of it and calling it a TVA
- Affs should defend "some-thing" that I can endorse. That thing must at least be related to the subject of the year's resolution, I really really don't want to listen to a personhood aff on the nukes topic or a water aff on fiscal topic.
- Not a fan of "debate is a game" "no it's not, debate is my life" - obviously debate is both, make me understand why a limited/predictable game O/W their offense and vise-versa.
- Please give some case lists/neg ground examples.
Ks - I love Ks. That being said it is hard for me to imagine a world in which I don't consider the imaginative action of the 1AC against the K - FW to me is nothing more than a competition framing argument for how I understand the "fiated" thing against the links the negative goes for. You can go for a K without an alt, you can say research of the 1AC shapes implementation, that in-round things matter, or that performance comes first BUT all of those things if won will only reflect the way that I think about the 1AC - TLDR neg must meet the burden of rejoinder by implicating their arguments to the aff, if I can't start my RFD with "the aff is bad because" or "the aff is good because" you will not win. I am inclined to believe that weighing the aff is equal to fiating the aff, unless the negative has explicit judge instruction otherwise
CPs - I default to judge kick unless instructed otherwise b/ it maintains the burden of proof, equally applies to C/I on FW (so long as there is an alternative means of resolving FW offense) if you don't want me to adjudicate that way tell me.
DAs - UQ, Links, I/Ls, Impacts - do some impact calc
T - See DAs.
Theory - Will vote on any theory although the vast majority are not reasons to reject the team. Often times two teams read debate buzzwords and expect me to weigh debatbility vs. real world neg flex - hard to resolve - also not a fan of this "topic is so x side biased", don't care get good.
Other:
I'm comfortable voting on presumption if your K aff isn't explained or I couldn't explain the central goal of the 1AC EVEN IF presumption is not an argument in the 2NR.
I will tell you "clearer" twice - If I have to tell you once assume I am following along with the whole doc. I won't take initiative in stopping the round based on clipping, but if the other team issues a challenge and stakes the round on it chances are I will have made up my mind. Absent this challenge card clipping and unclarity will just be reflected in your speaker points.
An ethics violation is only an ethics violation if the team stakes the round on it. If a position is introduced and debated through the round it is just a procedural. If the other team truly violated the rules either end the round and I will decide or make actual impact claims as to why norm/rules violations are bad and I will vote on the substance of the argument.
Speech time ends, I stop flowing - not getting paid enough to listen to all that.
Overall:
1. Offense-defense, but can be persuaded by reasonability in theory debates. I don't believe in "zero risk" or "terminal defense" and don't vote on presumption.
2. Substantive questions are resolved probabilistically--only theoretical questions (e.g. is the perm severance, does the aff meet the interp) are resolved "yes/no," and will be done so with some unease, forced upon me by the logic of debate.
3. Dropped arguments are "true," but this just means the warrants for them are true. Their implication can still be contested. The exception to this is when an argument and its implication are explicitly conceded by the other team for strategic reasons (like when kicking out of a disad). Then both are "true."
Counterplans:
1. Conditionality bad is an uphill battle. I think it's good, and will be more convinced by the negative's arguments. I also don't think the number of advocacies really matters. Unless it was completely dropped, the winning 2AR on condo in front of me is one that explains why the way the negative's arguments were run together limited the ability of the aff to have offense on any sheet of paper.
2. I think of myself as aff-leaning in a lot of counterplan theory debates, but usually find myself giving the neg the counterplan anyway, generally because the aff fails to make the true arguments of why it was bad.
Disads:
1. I don't think I evaluate these differently than anyone else, really. Perhaps the one exception is that I don't believe that the affirmative needs to "win" uniqueness for a link turn to be offense. If uniqueness really shielded a link turn that much, it would also overwhelm the link. In general, I probably give more weight to the link and less weight to uniqueness.
2. On politics, I will probably ignore "intrinsicness" or "fiat solves the link" arguments, unless badly mishandled (like dropped through two speeches). Note: this doesn't apply to riders or horsetrading or other disads that assume voting aff means voting for something beyond the aff plan. Then it's winnable.
Kritiks:
1. I like kritiks, provided two things are true: 1--there is a link. 2--the thesis of the K indicts the truth of the aff. If the K relies on framework to make the aff irrelevant, I start to like it a lot less (role of the ballot = roll of the eyes). I'm similarly annoyed by aff framework arguments against the K. The K itself answers any argument for why policymaking is all that matters (provided there's a link). I feel negative teams should explain why the affirmative advantages rest upon the assumptions they critique, and that the aff should defend those assumptions.
2. I think I'm less technical than some judges in evaluating K debates. Something another judge might care about, like dropping "fiat is illusory," probably matters less to me (fiat is illusory specifically matters 0%). I also won't be as technical in evaluating theory on the perm as I would be in a counterplan debate (e.g. perm do both isn't severance just because the alt said "rejection" somewhere--the perm still includes the aff). The perm debate for me is really just the link turn debate. Generally, unless the aff impact turns the K, the link debate is everything.
3. If it's a critique of "fiat" and not the aff, read something else. If it's not clear from #1, I'm looking at the link first. Please--link work not framework. K debating is case debating.
Nontraditional affirmatives:
Versus T:
1. I'm *slightly* better for the aff now that aff teams are generally impact-turning the neg's model of debate. I almost always voted neg when they instead went for talking about their aff is important and thought their counter-interp somehow solved anything. Of course, there's now only like 3-4 schools that take me and don't read a plan. So I'm spared the debates where it's done particularly poorly.
2. A lot of things can be impacts to T, but fairness is probably best.
3. It would be nice if people read K affs with plans more, but I guess there's always LD. Honestly debating politics and util isn't that hard--bad disads are easier to criticize than fairness and truth.
Versus the K:
1. If it's a team's generic K against K teams, the aff is in pretty great shape here unless they forget to perm. I've yet to see a K aff that wasn't also a critique of cap, etc. If it's an on-point critique of the aff, then that's a beautiful thing only made beautiful because it's so rare. If the neg concedes everything the aff says and argues their methodology is better and no perms, they can probably predict how that's going to go. If the aff doesn't get a perm, there's no reason the neg would have to have a link.
Topicality versus plan affs:
1. I used to enjoy these debates. It seems like I'm voting on T less often than I used to, but I also feel like I'm seeing T debated well less often. I enjoy it when the 2NC takes T and it's well-developed and it feels like a solid option out of the block. What I enjoy less is when it isn't but the 2NR goes for it as a hail mary and the whole debate occurs in the last two speeches.
2. Teams overestimate the importance of "reasonability." Winning reasonability shifts the burden to the negative--it doesn't mean that any risk of defense on means the T sheet of paper is thrown away. It generally only changes who wins in a debate where the aff's counter-interp solves for most of the neg offense but doesn't have good offense against the neg's interp. The reasonability debate does seem slightly more important on CJR given that the neg's interp often doesn't solve for much. But the aff is still better off developing offense in the 1AR.
LD section:
1. I've been judging LD less, but I still have LD students, so my familarity with the topic will be greater than what is reflected in my judging history.
2. Everything in the policy section applies. This includes the part about substantive arguments being resolved probablistically, my dislike of relying on framework to preclude arguments, and not voting on defense or presumption. If this radically affects your ability to read the arguments you like to read, you know what to do.
3. If I haven't judged you or your debaters in a while, I think I vote on theory less often than I did say three years ago (and I might have already been on that side of the spectrum by LD standards, but I'm not sure). I've still never voted on an RVI so that hasn't changed.
4. The 1AR can skip the part of the speech where they "extend offense" and just start with the actual 1AR.
Coach for Peninsula
My default role in a debate isn't an adjudicator or an educator but an audience that needs to be entertained.
But if you are like me in high school and believed winning is all that matters you should read more below...
Unchangeables
- When going for the K, framework is defense. You need an actual link to win.
- Any argument goes. Death good, racism good, whatever you want. I won't automatically punish you for it. But if they make an arg it's fair game. But hiding borjk = eye roll.
Plz put me on the email chain atStevenyu0923@gmail.com
Tech over truth, but I do find it easier to convince me of args I believe in.
Here few principles on getting my ballot:
Simplicity is good. The more complex an argument is, the more it deserves explanations. So, for the K teams with good link work, please cut out the 10 syllable poetic BS.
Every argument needs a claim, warrant, impact. If it misses one, opponent gets new answers or won't vote on it.
You should debate as if I have 0 understanding of the topic. So, explain acronyms and such which especially matters for intricate process CP debates or T debates.
I find myself somewhat expressive during the debate. Feel free to use that to your advantage.
Speaks
Hiding theory is cowardice. You can and might win but speaks = nuked. The act of hiding theory (reading theory really fast but not in the doc especially in the block) makes you guilty, even if they spot you and answer it. This is my way of trying to deter the practice.
For every min of prep you don't use I will give 0.1 of extra speaks up to a cap of 29.5.
Predispositions:
Fairness is likely an impact. Fairness paradox is likely true.
Condo is good.
Process CPs are bad but likely hard to win absent a good answer to arbitrariness.
Reasonability is bad.
Inserting rehighlightings is NOT ok, but aff needs to say that as a theory arg.
Predictability > debatability
Debates and characterizations of ev > ev quality itself
Timeframe matters, determines directionality of turns case. Turns case is only as probable as the rest of the DA. if DA is 1% and turns case is dropped, it net values to 1% so the aff weighs 99% of the aff vs 1% of the DA.
PIKs are probably bad but likely theoretically justifiable against a K aff. (went for this a decent bit)
Plan text in a vacuum is stupid.
Experience: (policy 2NRs)
Adv CPs + impact turns are my favorite 2NRs in high school. (more than 50%)
Adv CPs + topic generic DA (20%)
Process CP (10%)
Ks/K affs
Fighting against fairness on an impact/impact turn level seems to be an uphill battle. Instead, mitigating fairness with logical internal link indicts or how the aff's FW or how the T interp solves fairness is a much better take. For that exact reason, I tend to think I'm actually better for the K team in these situations. Clash is too defensive and I don't recommend it.
- K v T FW. Subjectivity formation here is important. If voting aff can't change minds, I intuitively believe no matter what impact turns, microaggressions, or whatever the neg has committed doesn't matter. For the K team, I believe an impact turn to legal precision/predictability here (with the ontology args to impact turn "legal credibility" or "academic expertise about the state" are best). I also believe impact turns, PIKs, and counter advocacies are creative ways to negate K affs.
- Policy v K. Middle ground is likely the best interp. Whoever debates with that is likely going to win framework. FW Ks are strategic, but I will respect you more if you debate middle ground as a K team and actually engage substance of case.
LD
God forbid I ever judge LD but if I do, please stay as far away as possible from Phil or Tricks.
Lay debate
Please go fast. I dislike lay debate.
Middleschool:
Clarity > speed
Flow
Don't steal prep