******POLICY DEBATE*******

2A/1N ('19-'21), 2N/1A('21-'23)

Part of Stuyvesant HN (guess which initial)

Please add me to the email chain: angryasiantwins11@gmail.com

General:

- Run what you want and have fun because debate is stressful

- Tech > Truth and util good default

- Speed is fine but clarity > speed (I will say 'clear' if you're not)

- I would rather you do good line by line and skimp a little on the overview (don't give a 7-minute overview)

- Roadmaps are very cool and you should do them (signposting as well)

- Don't be racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, or any other -isms. I will definitely dock your speaks and call you out for it.

- 2AR and 2NR tell me why you should win the round based on what's happened (you should be doing this all the time but particularly for your ending speeches).

- I'm fine being called judge but would prefer you call me Talia.

- Online debate sucks so don't stress about tech issues since you have tech prep time

- Cx is open

- Time your own speeches, cx, and prep

Arguments/Experiences:

* Note: I don't hold a particularly strong view of any argument preferences so I can be convinced pretty easily with some good debating*

Policy-

- I learned debate with policy strats and did it for the first year and a half so I'm pretty comfortable with the core arguments. I am a mostly k debater now though so I do NOT have recent policy knowledge.

- Love 10 off and case but only if done well

- Quality > Quantity

K-

Ks: I am a k debater right now so if you run a good k I will be very happy:) Mostly familiar with cap, set col, asian identity, biopower, security, afropess, and antiblackness

kvk: Don't have much experience judging, but have been in quite a few. Clash is good so don't hide behind your theory and fight it out (much better debate and you learn more from it).

kaff v fw: Also been in a lot of these debates(and have done a lot of framework arguing). I think debate can be a game or anything else depending on how the participants use it. I can really go either way so I will lean towards the side that can explain to me why they think their interp of debate is valid and what does that mean for the round. I do however believe that we learn from debate and that there is a level of education that comes from our experiences. AND it doesn't matter whether or not debate is a game if you can't explain an impact to your standards.

Theory- I'll vote for condo and yes judge kick. Other than that, I think theory is pretty unpersuasive

* If you read this all the way pass me a music rec and I will boost speaks if I like it

• +0.1 speaks if you drop a good pun or pickup line

**APDA/PUBLIC FORUM DEBATE*********

TL;DR:
- APDA/BP freshman with 4 years of HS policy debate experience
- 15 min POCs are good
- Speed is chill
- Weighing :)
- I do my best to evaluate all sorts of arguments fairly

Yes, email chain: sohailjouyaATgmailDOTcom

PUBLIC FORUM JUDGING PHILOSOPHY IS HERE

Update:

- Probably not the best judge for the "Give us a 30!" approach unless it becomes an argument/point of contestation in the round. Chances are I'll just default to whatever I'd typically give. To me, these kind of things aren't arguments, but judge instructions that are external to making a decision regarding the debate occurring.

BIG PICTURE

- I appreciate adaptation to my preferences but don’t do anything that would make you uncomfortable. Never feel obligated to compete in a manner that inhibits your ability to be effective. My promise to you will be that I will keep an open mind and assess whatever you chose. In short: do you.

- Truth > Tech, but RELAX: All this means is that I recognize that debate is not merely a game, but rather a competition that models the world in which we live. This doesn’t mean I believe judges should intervene on the basis of argumentative preference - what it does mean is that embedded clash band the “nexus question” of the round is of more importance than blippy technical oversights between certain sheets of paper - especially in K v K debates.
Don't fret: a dropped argument is still a concession. I likely have a higher threshold for the development of arguments that are more intrinsically dubious and lack warrants.

- As a former coach of a UDL school where many of my debaters make arguments centred on their identity, diversity is a genuine concern. It may play a factor in how I evaluate a round, particularly in debates regarding what’s “best” for the community/activity.

Do you and I’ll do my best to evaluate it but I’m not a tabula rasa and the dogma of debate has me to believe the following. I have put a lot of time and thought into this while attempting to be parsimonious - if you are serious about winning my ballot a careful read would prove to serve you well:

FORM

- All speech acts are performances, consequently, debaters should defend their performances including the advocacy, evidence, arguments/positions, interpretations, and representations of said speech acts.

- One of the most annoying questions a judged can be asked: “Are you cool with speed?”
In short: yes. But smart and slow always beats fast and dumb.
I have absolutely no preference on rate of delivery, though I will say it might be smart to slow down a bit on really long tags, advocacy texts, your totally sweet theory/double-bind argument or on overviews that have really nuanced descriptions of the round. My belief is that speed is typically good for debate but please remember that spreading’s true measure is contingent on the number of arguments that are required to be answered by the other team not your WPM.

- Pathos: I used to never really think this mattered at all. To a large degree, it still doesn’t considering I’m unabashedly very flowcentric but I tend to give high speaker points to debaters who performatively express mastery knowledge of the subjects discussed, ability to exercise round vision, assertiveness, and that swank.

- Holistic Approaches: the 2AR/2NR should be largely concerned with two things:
1) provide framing of the round so I can make an evaluation of impacts and the like
2) descriptively instruct me on how to make my decision

Overviews have the potential for great explanatory power, use that time and tactic wisely.

While I put form first, I am of the maxim that “form follows function” – I contend that the reverse would merely produce an aesthetic, a poor formula for argument testing in an intellectually rigorous and competitive activity. In summation: you need to make an argument and defend it.

FUNCTION

- The Affirmative ought to be responsive to the topic. This is a pinnacle of my paradigm that is quite broad and includes teams who seek to engage in resistance to the proximate structures that frame the topic. Conversely, this also implicates teams that prioritize social justice - debaters utilizing methodological strategies for best resistance ought to consider their relationship to the topic.
Policy-oriented teams may read that last sentence with glee and K folks may think this is strike-worthy…chill. I do not prescribe to the notion that to be topical is synonymous with being resolutional.

- The Negative’s ground is rooted in the performance of the Affirmative as well as anything based in the resolution. It’s that simple; engage the 1AC if at all possible.

- I view rounds in an offense/defense lens. Many colleagues are contesting the utility of this approach in certain kinds of debate and I’m ruminating about this (see: “Thoughts on Competition”) but I don’t believe this to be a “plan focus” theory and I default to the notion that my decisions require a forced choice between competing performances.

- I will vote on Framework. (*This means different things in different debate formats - I don't mean impact framing or LD-centric "value/value criterion" but rather a "You must read a plan" interpretation that's typically in response to K Affs)That means I will vote for the team running the position based on their interpretation, but it also means I’ll vote on offensive responses to the argument. Vindicating an alternative framework is a necessary skill and one that should be possessed by kritikal teams - justifying your form of knowledge production as beneficial in these settings matter.
Framework appeals effectively consist of a normative claim of how debate ought to function. The interpretation should be prescriptive; if you are not comfortable with what the world of debate would look like if your interpretation were universally applied, then you have a bad interpretation. The impact to your argument ought to be derived from your interpretation (yes, I’ve given RFDs where this needed to be said). Furthermore, a Topical Version of the Affirmative must specifically explain how the impacts of the 1AC can be achieved, it might be in your best interest to provide a text or point to a few cases that achieve that end. This is especially true if you want to go for external impacts that the 1AC can’t access – but all of this is contingent on a cogent explanation as to why order precedes/is the internal link to justice.

- I am pretty comfortable judging Clash of Civilization debates.

- Framework is the job of the debaters. Epistemology first? Ontology? Sure, but why? Where does performance come into play – should I prioritize a performative disad above the “substance” of a position? Over all of the sheets of paper in the round? These are questions debaters must grapple with and preferably the earlier in the round the better.

- "Framework is how we frame our work" >>>>> "FrAmEwOrK mAkEs ThE gAmE wOrK"

-Presumption can be an option. In my estimation, the 2NR may go for Counterplan/Kritik while also giving the judge the option of the status quo. Call it “hypo-testing” or whatever but I believe a rational decision-making paradigm doesn’t doom me to make a single decision between two advocacies, especially when the current status of things is preferable to both (the net-benefit for a CP/linear DA and impact for a K). I don't know if I really “judge kick” for you, instead, the 2NR should explain an “even if” route to victory via presumption to allow the 2AR to respond.
“But what about when presumption flips Affirmative?” This is a claim that I wish would be established prior to the 2NR, but I know that's not gonna happen. I've definitely voted in favour of plenty of 2ARs that haven't said that in the 1AR. The only times I can envision this is when the 2NR is going all-in on a CP.

- Role of the Ballots ought to invariably allow the 1AC/1NC to be contestable and provide substantial ground to each team. Many teams will make their ROBs self-serving at best, or at worse, tautological. That's because there's a large contingency of teams that think the ROB is an advocacy statement. They are not. Even more teams conflate a ROB with a Role of the Judge instruction and I'm just now making my peace with dealing with that reality.
If the ROB fails to equally distribute ground, they are merely impact framing. A good ROB can effectively answer a lot of framework gripes regarding the Affirmative’s pronouncement of an unfalsifiable truth claim.

- Analytics that are logically consistent, well warranted, and answer the heart of any argument are weighed in high-esteem. This is especially true if it’s responsive to any combinations of bad argument/evidence.

- My threshold for theory is not particularly high. It’s what you justify, not necessarily what you do. I typically default to competing interpretations, this can be complicated by a team that is able to articulate what reasonability means in the context of the round, otherwise I feel like it's interventionist of me to decode what “reasonable” represents. The same is true to a lesser extent with the impacts as well. Rattling off “fairness and education” as loaded concepts that I should just know has a low threshold if the other team can explain the significance of a different voter or a standard that controls the internal link into your impact (also, if you do this: prepared to get impact turned).

I think theory should be strategic and I very much enjoy a good theory debate. Copious amounts of topicality and specification arguments are not strategic, it is desperate.

- I like conditionality probably more so than other judges. As a young’n I got away with a lot of, probably, abusive Negative strategies that relied on conditionality to the maximum (think “multiple worlds and presumption in the 2NR”) mostly because many teams were never particularly good at explaining why this was a problem. If you’re able to do so, great – just don’t expect me to do much of that work for you. I don’t find it particularly difficult for a 2AR to make an objection about how that is bad for debate, thus be warned 2NRs - it's a downhill effort for a 2AR.
Furthermore, I tend to believe the 1NC has the right to test the 1AC from multiple positions.
Thus, Framework along with Cap K or some other kritik is not a functional double turn. The 1NC doesn’t need to be ideologically consistent. However, I have been persuaded in several method debates that there is a performative disadvantage that can be levied against speech acts that are incongruent and self-defeating.

- Probability is the most crucial component of impact calculus with disadvantages. Tradeoffs ought to have a high risk of happening and that question often controls the direction of uniqueness while also accessing the severity of the impact (magnitude).

- Counterplan debates can often get tricky, particularly if they’re PICs. Maybe I’m too simplistic here, but I don’t understand why Affirmatives don’t sit on their solvency deficit claims more. Compartmentalizing why portions of the Affirmative are key can win rounds against CPs. I think this is especially true because I view the Counterplan’s ability to solve the Affirmative to be an opportunity cost with its competitiveness. Take advantage of this “double bind.”

- Case arguments are incredibly underutilized and the dirty little secret here is that I kind of like them. I’m not particularly sentimental for the “good ol’ days” where case debate was the only real option for Negatives (mostly because I was never alive in that era), but I have to admit that debates centred on case are kind of cute and make my chest feel all fuzzy with a nostalgia that I never experienced– kind of like when a frat boy wears a "Reagan/Bush '84" shirt...

KRITIKAL DEBATE

I know enough to know that kritiks are not monolithic. I am partial to topic-grounded kritiks and in all reality I find them to be part of a typical decision-making calculus. I tend to be more of a constructivist than a rationalist. Few things frustrate me more than teams who utilise a kritik/answer a kritik in a homogenizing fashion. Not every K requires the ballot as a tool, not every K looks to have an external impact either in the debate community or the world writ larger, not every K criticizes in the same fashion. I suggest teams find out what they are and stick to it, I also think teams should listen and be specifically responsive to the argument they hear rather than rely on a base notion of what the genre of argument implies. The best way to conceptualize these arguments is to think of “kritik” as a verb (to criticize) rather than a noun (a static demonstrative position).
It is no secret that I love many kritiks but deep in every K hack’s heart is a revered space that admires teams that cut through the noise and simply wave a big stick and impact turn things, unabashedly defending conventional thought. If you do this well there’s a good chance you can win my ballot. If pure agonism is not your preferred tactic, that’s fine but make sure your post-modern offense onto kritiks can be easily extrapolated into a 1AR in a fashion that makes sense.
In many ways, I believe there’s more tension between Identity and Post-Modernism teams than there are with either of them and Policy debaters. That being said, I think the Eurotrash K positions ought to proceed with caution against arguments centred on Identity – it may not be smart to contend that they ought to embrace their suffering or claim that they are responsible for a polemical construction of identity that replicates the violence they experience (don’t victim blame).

THOUGHTS ON COMPETITION

There’s a lot of talk about what is or isn’t competition and what competition ought to look like in specific types of debate – thus far I am not of the belief that different methods of debate require a different rubric for evaluation. While much discussion has been given to “Competition by Comparison” I very much subscribe to Competing Methodologies. What I’ve learned in having these conversations is that this convention means different things to different people and can change in different settings in front of different arguments. For me, I try to keep it consistent and compatible with an offense/defense heuristic: competing methodologies require an Affirmative focus where the Negative requires an independent reason to reject the Affirmative. In this sense, competition necessitates a link. This keeps artificial competition at bay via permutations, an affirmative right regardless of the presence of a plan text.

Permutations are merely tests of mutual exclusivity. They do not solve and they are not a shadowy third advocacy for me to evaluate. I naturally will view permutations more as a contestation of linkage – and thus, are terminal defense to a counterplan or kritik -- than a question of combining texts/advocacies into a solvency mechanism. If you characterize these as solvency mechanisms rather than a litmus test of exclusivity, you ought to anticipate offense to the permutation (and even theory objections to the permutation) to be weighed against your “net-benefits”. This is your warning to not be shocked if I'm extrapolating a much different theoretical understanding of a permutation if you go 5/6 minutes for it in the 2AR.
Even in method debates where a permutation contends both methods can work in tandem, there is no solvency – in these instances net-benefits function to shield you from links (the only true “net benefit” is the Affirmative). A possible exception to this scenario is “Perm do the Affirmative” where the 1AC subsumes the 1NC’s alternative; here there may be an offensive link turn to the K resulting in independent reasons to vote for the 1AC.

LD and PF: I am not experienced in either, nor do I have any topic knowledge. If you want to be safe, treat me like a lay judge.

Please add me to email chains at swangdebate@gmail.com

You can always email me after rounds with questions and such

I’m Sophie Wang, she/her, a junior at Lexington High School, policy debater for 3 years.

Top Level:

Be clear. I can’t weigh your arguments if I can’t hear them, esp online when the mic might not be that clear. Signpost between arguments and flows.

Don’t spread analytics or theory as fast as you would cards.

Respect your opponents, judges and any spectators

Tech>truth

Won’t vote on racism good, sexism good, homophobia good, or any arguments that are homophobic, racist, sexist.

Clipping cards in varsity is probably an auto-loss. For novices, I’ll probably just give a warning, but let the round proceed. If your opponent does it, point it out to me.

Explain your evidence, and why you win the flow.

Line by line, impact calc, ev comparison, argument extension, are all good.

FLOW please.

If you mark your cards (which is fine) offer a marked copy at the end of the speech.

Time all your speeches, don’t assume someone else will. Don’t steal prep.

Open CX is fine

Virtual debate:

Please try to have cameras on

CPs

On the aff, perms are great to take out cps but make sure you explain the scenario of the perm and why it works. Throwing out 5 perms in the 2ac only works if you actually extend them properly.

On the neg, explain really well why the perm can’t work/is worse than the cp alone. Make sure I know what the net benefit is throughout the round.

On cp theory, my default is that condo is good, and I have a somewhat high bar to vote on condo bad, but I’m not against voting for it and I think it’s a good argument. Be specific to the round and extend terminal impacts.

I mostly err neg on process cps and adv cps, but I’m willing to vote on any theory if it’s actually extended throughout the round.

I have a somewhat high bar for justification of PICs, so you need to have a very good justification of why an idea or word is bad.

DAs

You need impact calc, and why it outweighs the case. Would be great if it turns case too. Make sure you explain links.

Even better if it’s avoided by a cp :3

Framing:

Explain to me why your framing is good and better than your opponents. Otherwise I will default to probability*magnitude, Util framing.

In impact calc, extend probability, time frame, magnitude. I’m willing to weigh that any of the three outweigh the others, but you have to explain why it outweighs.

I do think that saying extinction outweighs all time-frame and probability (such as, saying even the slightest probability of extinction outweighs all else) needs to have more explanation and extension for me to completely buy it.

Ks

Besides core generics, I’m not super familiar with most K lit. Doesn’t mean I won’t vote for it, just that you have to explain your argument very clearly or I might not understand it.

Specific links are better than generic links but in the end links are still links and I’ll still weigh them, as long as they’re explained well .

On the aff, focus on case o/w and turns the K, extinction o/w, disproving the theory, winning that fairness matters. Defense is always good but not enough to win.

K-Affs. Make sure you win why your aff is better for debate.

On FW/T-USFG, I prob err more on FW but I’m not against voting for K Affs.

I think fairness is an impact. Usually FW teams lose on the impact framing debate or when they lose the internal link debate.

K affs have to either impact turn debate in general, the model of debate, or the reading of FW. Talk about why the aff is good for certain participation or why it is good to facilitate certain care communities. Kaffs shouldn't go for the W/M unless they have a plantext.

On KvK debates, I haven’t really seen any KvK before.

Topicality

On the neg, don’t forget to extend impacts in every speech, and why they should be preferred over the opponents. Make sure your definition and violation are clear.

I’ll only consider the quality of the interpretation if the opponents bring it up.

On the aff, I advise that you have and extend a counter interp throughout the debate, even if you are winning “we meet.” If you don’t have a counter interpretation, as long as the neg wins the slightest probability of the aff violating their definition (which they have plenty of time to explain in the 2nr,) then the judge is forced to weigh that violation and impacts, because you’re not providing an alternative. I won’t auto vote you down but it allows the neg to easily garner offense.