New Update for NSD:

Harrison '22

Columbia '27

Email: nniechen44@gmail.com –- no, there isn't a missing 'a' in the email.

Hey, I'm Annie (: I'm a third year out and study financial economics and mathematics in undergrad.

Please slow down to 60% and explain topic-specific jargon. Since it has been a lonnng time since I've heard spreading, I will call "loud/slow/clear" as necessary without penalizing speaks. That being said, note that I will only evaluate arguments that are a] properly warranted and b] I have flowed.

I debated for Harrison across three years 2019-22, qualifying to the TOC with four career bids, a few round robin invites and championing a couple finals bid tournaments. I briefly taught a session at VBI '22 but keep in mind I haven't been actively judging in the past two years. When I debated, I loved readingidpol Ks including some literature on Asian-American, Black feminist, and Indigenous scholarship. Please substantiate your theory of power and explain your literature clearly---I will not fill in knowledge gaps! I want you to be genuine with what you are reading.

I would much rather debaters read what they're most good and comfortable with than hearing a K be poorly executed. If you must read T or theory, make your arguments smart and original. Try your best to have fun and good luck!

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Longer Older Version

ac5180@columbia.edu

Quick Prefs:

Identity Ks - 1

Non-T & Performance - 1

Soft Left Ks - 1

Policy/LARP - 3

Pomo Ks - 4

T & Theory - 4

Tricks - strike

General

- Leave Debate better than how you found it. This is the most important thing I can say

- Explain everything assuming I know nothing about it---this goes beyond K literature! You must do the work to explain your theory of power and I won't fill in gaps just bc you're reading something common on the circuit

- Idpol Ks and performance are some of my favorite and best positions to judge. That being said, I'll judge anything you want to read with the exception of tricks so read what you're most comfortable with

- Weighing and judge instruction tips the scale in your favour. I hate implicit clash and won't make unprompted cross-apps for you

- Argument quality > Argument quantity

- All arguments need a warrant ("presume aff because 67463 time skew" is NOT a warrant!)

- Don't say something is evidence ethics unless you're stopping the debate and staking the round on it

- I won't tolerate racism, sexism, ableism or bigotry of any kind

Procedurals

- I think slowing or clearing your opponent is fine for accessibility

- Flex prep should majority be for clarification questions

- Signpost

- Disclose is good but make yourself engageable if you have a reason not to

- Look up because I’m pretty expressive

My advice to win in front of me

- You should believe in your arguments in some capacity. This means do not read silly arguments like a prioris or moral skep!

- Talk about something that matters

- 3 offs for less for them to be sufficiently developed

Things I'll reward with higher speaks

- Kindness

- Make me laugh

- Sending analytics or just any notes you have that can make your speech easier to follow

- Not spreading if your opponent isn’t

- Spending a lot of time on the aff if you’re negating

- Reading high quality cards

Updated September 2024

Hi! My name is Charles Karcher. He/him pronouns. Myemail is charlesdebate7@gmail.com

I am affiliated with The Chapin School, where I am a history teacher and coach Public Forum.

This is my 10th year involved in debate overall and my 6th year coaching.

Previous affiliations: Fulbright Taiwan, Lake Highland, West Des Moines Valley, Interlake, Durham Academy, Charlotte Latin, Altamont, and Oak Hall.

Conflicts: Chapin, Lake Highland

Top Level

Debate is what you make it, whether that is a game or an educational activity. Ultimately, it is a space for students to grow intellectually and politically. Critical debate is what I spend the most time thinking about. I’m familiar with most K authors, but assume that I know nothing. I want to hear about the alt. I have a particular interest in the Frankfurt School and 20th century French authors + the modern theoretical work that has derived from both of these traditions. I have prepped and coached pretty much the full spectrum of K debate authors/literature bases. Policy-style debate is fun. I appreciate good analytics more than bad cards, especially when those cards are from authors that are clearly personally/institutionally biased. Inserted graphs/charts need to be explained and have their own claim, warrant, and impact. Taglines should be detailed and accurately descriptive of the arguments in the card. 2 or 3 conditional positions are acceptable. I am not thrilled with the idea of judge kicking. Theory and tricks debate is the farthest from my interests. Being from Florida, I've been exposed to a good amount of it, but it never stuck with or interested me. Debaters who tend to read these types of arguments should not pref me.

While I am a strong believer that judges should not categorically prevent debaters from reading certain styles of arguments, there are certain behaviors and norms that I believe should be modeled in the debate space:

1] If you find yourself debating with me as the judge on a panel with a parent/lay/traditional judge (or judges), please just engage in a traditional round and don't try to get my tech ballot. It is incredibly rude to disregard a parent's ballot and spread in front of them if they are apprehensive about it.

2] Speaks are capped at 27 if you include something in the doc that you assume will be inputted into the round without you reading/describing it. You cannot "insert" something into the debate scot-free. Examples include charts, graphs, images, screenshots, spec details, and solvency mechanisms/details. This is a terrible norm which literally asks me to evaluate a piece of evidence that you didn't read. It's also a question of accessibility.

3] When it comes to speech docs, I think about the debate space as an academic conference at which you are sharing ideas with colleagues (me) and panelists (your opponents). Just as you would not present an unfinished PowerPoint at a conference, please do not present to me a poorly formatted speech doc. I don't care what your preferences of font, spacing, etc. are, but they should be consistent, navigable, and readable. I do ask that you use the Verbatim UniHighlight feature to standardize your doc to yellow highlighting before sending it to me.

4] Do not steal prep or be rude to your opponents - I have high expectations for these two things and hope that the community collectively raises its expectations this season. Your speaks will suffer if you do these things.

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Misc. notes:

• I do not, and will not, disclose speaker points.
• Put your analytics in the speech doc!
• Trigger warnings are important
• CX and prep ends as soon as the timer beeps! Time yourself.
• Tell me about inclusivity/accessibility concerns, I will do whatever is in my power to accommodate!

Public Forum

In PF, you should either paraphrase all your cards OR present a policy-esque case with taglines that precede cut cards. I do not want cards that are tagged with "and, [author name]" or, worse, not tagged at all. This formatting is not conducive to good debating, and I will not tolerate it. Your speaks will suffer.

All speech materials should be sent as a downloadable file (Word or PDF), not as a Google Doc, Sharepoint, or email text. I will not look at they are in the latter formats.

RVI’s are not a thing in PF. Ideally, theory isn’t either.

I'm not a fan of teams actively sharing if they are kicking an argument before they kick it. For example, if your opponent asks you about contention n in questioning and you respond "we're kicking that argument." Don’t do it.

Lincoln-Douglas

LD is the event that I’m most comfortable judging – most of my coaching and judging experience is in this event.

I have found that I am increasingly sympathetic to judge kicking counterplans (even though I was previously dogmatically anti-judge kick), but it should still be argued and justified in the round by the negative team; I do not judge kick by default.

My defaults: ROJ > ROB; ROJ ≠ ROB; ROTB > theory; presume neg; comparative worlds; reps/pre-fiat impacts > everything else; yes RVI; DTD; yes condo; I will categorically never evaluate the round earlier than the end of the 2AR (with the exception of round-stopping issues like evidence allegations or inclusivity concerns).

i have (not so) recently shortened this paradigm cuz it was getting really ranty - if you would like to see my thoughts on specific arguments, feel free to look at my rant doc

Intro

• I’m Eva (they/them) - i prefer to be called Eva over judge but say whatever you're used to/makes you comfortable. I did traditional LD (Canfield ‘18) in HS and have coached since graduating - I currently coach at Hawken. I primarily coach traditional debate, but have qualed kids to the TOC and my kids are very all over the place with what they read, so I've coached basically every style

• Email: evathelamberson@gmail.com put me on the chain but speechdrop is better :) i think docs are a good practice even for lay debaters and i would prefer if you send analytics

• Sidenote: I judge every weekend in the season, but Ohio doesn’t use Tabroom so it doesn’t show up :( I've probably judged an additional 500+ local rounds

TL;DR FOR PREFS i actually care very little what you read and hold a minimal amount of dogma re: what arguments should be read and how they should be read. i am good for whatever barring anything offensive, obviously. i have judged & voted for basically everything - if you have good strategy and good judge instruction, i will be happy to be in the back of your round whether you're reading the most stock larp stuff ever or tricky phil or friv theory or a non-t aff, etc. read the rant doc if you're interested in my specific thoughts on specific types of arguments. basically, do whatever you want, seriously

i believe debate is a game and it's not my job to tell you how to play it; i will be happiest when you are debating the way you enjoy the most and are best at

i consider myself a fairly flexible judge and try not to be biased toward any particular style. however, in very close clash rounds, i may lean towards arguments i find to be simpler/easier to vote for or that i understand better. that just means you should be clear and give good judge instruction, not that you should read tricks b/c you think i like them

IF YOUR ROUND HAS BEEN RECORDED FOR VBI AT ANY TOURNAMENT you can contact me with questions or concerns regardless of who recorded it - i can not upload it, change the visibility, etc.

accessibility:

• round safety is very important to me, and if there is a genuine safety concern that is preventing you from engaging in the round, i would prefer it be round ending as opposed to a shell - if you are feeling unsafe in a round, please feel free to email or FB message me and I will intervene in the way you request.

• DO NOT try to SHAKE MY HAND, i'm a germaphobe.if there are covid/illness precautions or anything like that you want us to take in the round, please vocalize this and we will make that happen (open windows, masking, etc.) i'll always have masks on me if you want

Overview

Hi, I am Jacob Palmer (he/they). I did 4 years of policy at Emory. I also did 4 years of LD at Durham and have coached at Durham since I graduated. I mostly judge LD but occasionally find myself in a PF or Policy pool, so most of this paradigm is targeted at LDers. Regardless of the event I am judging though, I will do my best to adapt to you and evaluate the round solely off the flow. TDLR: Don’t cheat. Be a good person. Make real arguments. Do those things, and I will adapt to you.

Add me to the chain: jacob.gestypalmer@gmail.com. I won't backflow off the doc, and I will yell clear or slow if needed. Docs should be sent promptly at the round start time.

Feel free to read the arguments that interest you. If you make warranted arguments and tell me why they matter in the broader context of the debate you will do well. I will evaluate any argument that has a warrant, clear implication, and isn't actively exclusionary. I am tech in that I will keep a rigorous flow and evaluate the debate solely off that flow, but there are some limits to my tech-ness as a judge. I will always evaluate every speech in the debate. I will not evaluate arguments made after speech times end. I think arguments must be logically valid and their warranting should be sound. I think lazy warranting is antithetical to technical argumentation. As a logical extension of that, spamming arguments for the sake of spamming arguments is bad. Reading truer arguments will make your job and my job substantially easier. I won't vote on something not explained in round.

Be a good person. Debate often brings out the worst of our competitive habits, but that is not an excuse for being rude or disrespectful. Respect pronouns. Respect accessibility requests. Provide due content warnings.

Since other people do this and I think its nice to respect the people that helped me in my own debate journey, thank you to the all the people that have coached me or shaped who I am as a debater: Jackson DeConcini, Bennett Dombcik, Allison Harper, Brian Klarman, DKP, Ed Lee, Becca Steiner, Gabe Morbeck, Mikaela Malsin, Marshall Thompson, CQ, Nick Smith, and Devane Murphy. Special thanks to Crawford Leavoy for introducing me to this activity.

Specifics

Policy – Advantages and DAs shouldn’t be more complicated than they need to be. Plan and counterplan texts should be specific and have a solvency advocate. Spec is fine against vague positions but the sillier the shell the harder it will be to win an actual internal link to fairness or education. I'm generally fine with condo, but the more condo you read the more receptive I'll be to theory. To win the 2ar on condo the 1ar shell needs to be more than a sentence. Judge kick is fine, but I won't do it unless you tell me to. The 2nr in LD is not a 2nc. If your 2nr strategy relies on reading lots of new impact modules or sandbagging cards that should've been in the 1nc, I am not the judge for you. To an extent, carded 2nr blocks are fine, e.g. when answering a perm, but all the evidence you should need to win the 2nr should just be in the 1nc.

T – Don't be blippy. Weigh between interps and show what Affs, Advantages, DAs, etc. are actually lost or gained. The worst T debates are an abstract competition over ethereal goods like fairness. The best T debates forward a clear vision of what debates on the topic should look like and explains why the debates based on one interpretation of the topic are materially more fair or educational than others. I think affirmatives should generally be predictably limited. I think functional limits can solve a lot of neg offense if correctly explained.

K – These debates are also probably where I care the most about quality over quantity. Specificity matters - Not all Ks are the same and not all plans are the same. If your 1nc shell doesn’t vary based on the 1ac, or your 1ar blocks don’t change based on the kritik I will be very sad. I generally think I should vote for whoever did the better debating, but y'all are free to hash out what that means.

More often than not, it seems like I am judging K debates nowadays. Whether you are the K debater or the Policy/Phil debater in these rounds, judge instruction is essential. The 2nr and 2ar should start with a clear explanation of what arguments need to be won to warrant an aff or neg ballot and why. The rest of the 2nr or 2ar should then just do whatever line-by-line is necessary to win said arguments. I find that in clash debates more than other debates, debaters often get lost in extending their own arguments without giving much round-specific contextualization of said extensions or reasons why the arguments extended are reasons they should win the debate. You need to tell me what to do with the arguments you think you are winning and why those specific arguments are sufficient for my ballot.

Non-T/Planless Affs – I am happy to judge these debates and have no issues with non-t affs. Solvency is important. From the 1ac there should be a very clear picture of how the affirmative resolves whatever harms you have identified. For negatives, T USFG is solid. I’ve read it. I’ve voted on it. Turn strategies (heg good, growth good, humanism good, etc.) are also good. For T, I find topical versions of the aff to be less important than some other judges. Maybe that’s just because I find most TVAs to be largely underdeveloped or not actually based in any real set of literature. Cap and other kritiks can also be good. I no qualms evaluating a K v K or methods debate.

Phil – I love phil debates. I think these debates benefit greatly from more thorough argumentation and significantly less tricks. Explain your syllogism, how to filter offense, and tell me what you're advocating for. If I don't know how impact calc functions under your framework, then I will have a very hard time evaluating the round. If your framework has a bunch of analytics, slow down and number them.

Theory – Theory should be used to check legitimate abuse within the debate. As with blatantly untrue DAs or Advantages, silly theory arguments will be winnable, but my threshold of what constitutes a sufficient response will be significantly lower. Slow down on the analytics and be sure to weigh. I think paragraph theory is fine, but you still need to read warrants. I think fairness and education are both important, and I haven’t really seen good debates on which matters more. Debates where you weigh internal links to fairness and/or education are generally much better. I think most cp theory or theoretical objections to other specific types of arguments are DTA and really don’t warrant an RVI, but you can always convince me otherwise.

Tricks – If this is really your thing, I will listen to your arguments and evaluate them in a way that I feel is fair, granted that may not be the way you feel is most fair. I have found many of the things LDers have historically called tricks to be neither logically valid nor sound. I have no issue with voting on arguments like skep or determinism or paradoxes, but they must have a sufficient level of warranting when they are first introduced. Every argument you make needs to be a complete argument with a warrant that I can flow. All arguments should also be tied to specific framing that tells me how to evaluate them within the larger context of the debate. Also, be upfront about your arguments. Being shady in cx just makes me mad and sacrifices valuable time that you could spend explaining your arguments.

Independent Voters - I think arguments should only generate offense through specific framing mechanisms. Somewhat tied into this I feel incredibly uncomfortable voting on people's character or using my ballot to make moral judgements about debaters. I also don’t want to hear arguments about events outside of the round I am judging. If something your opponent did truly makes you feel unsafe or unable to debate, then you should either contact me, your coach, tab, or the tournament equity office. We can always end the round and figure something out.

Updated for VBI LA- 

Idk why I have to say this, but if your opponent is pointing out that you have misgendered them and you continue to misgender them you will not be happy with your speaks. If your opponent wants this to be a bigger issue, I will gladly drop you. Don't be a jerk- respect people. 

Also- I have realized that I am relatively verbal when listening to some bad arguments. I sigh, put my head down, scrunch my face, and take my hands off my keyboard. If you see me doing that- prob don't be making the argument that you are making.

Creativity will be rewarded! I get bored when I hear the same aff for the 5th time!

Found this on someone's paradigm and I greatly agree with it

"Consider me dead inside -- moralizing and tugging on my heart strings will only earn you negative speaks"

Seriously.

Hi my name is Abhi and I debate at Claudia Taylor Johnson HS in LD. TOC qual 2x, TFA 2x, NSDA 2x

Chain- apulapaka6@gmail.com

K debate>Tricks Debate>Phil Debate> Larp Debate

Debates where there is greater clash will make my decision easier for me. Here are my pref of debates

1. Clash of Civs

2. Larp v K/ Phil v K

3. Tricks v K

4. Tricks v Larp

5. Theory v K

I am coached by Ibbi Sheikh and Joey Georges. I am somewhere between them in the way I view debate.

Note about tricks:

I enjoy these debates a lot but I am kinda bad at flowing so slow down. I am better at evaluating theoretical tricks than abstract paradoxes (and the like).