me: holland, not "judge," he/him. dartmouth 2025, westminster before that. hollandebate@gmail.com. put me on the email chain.

tldr: i believe that the best debates contain many topic-specific cards and rigorous line by line between two teams over the consequences or core ideological assumptions of topical plans. i am committed to technical evaluation of arguments presented to me, so with jurisdictional exceptions*, you are welcome to do whatever you'd like. however, at the margins, the further your debating deviates from this model, the less likely you are to win.

i will do my best to be tabula rasa. i believe that most debates are not close enough to require intervention, so you should do what you do best and not over-adapt. however, in cases where i do have to intervene, the below should give you a sense of my predispositions. if something is missing from this paradigm, it probably means i have no strong opinions about it.

tech over truth, but the threshold for answering a facially bad argument is low.

ip topic: i know nothing about it. i know a little bit about patents because they have come up on different college topics. slow down on core distinctions, explain acronyms, etc etc

clarity: i care a lot about it. particularly in debates where constructives are >20% analytics, you must be clear. i will also be very amenable to arguments about why i should not allow an unclear team to re-characterize their arguments if i did not understand them the first time. (i mean this. no one has taken advantage of it so far. you should.)

clash debates (general): the more you can do to make these debates not boring, the better off you will be. we have all heard the same speeches on "debate doesnt shape subjectivity" and "competitive incentives determine everything" and, conversely, "the judge is an educator; the ballot can't pass the plan" and "participation is a pre-requisite to accessing clash and fairness" one thousand times. the more you can get off of these enthymemes and actually explain what is happening in the debate at hand, the more you will connect with me and the less my eyes will glaze over. put another way, performance (subconsciously) influences my assessment of these debates; if one side looks like they're going through the motions of "a clash debate" and the other seems invested, quick on their feet, and eager to contextualize, the latter will likely win.

Ks on the NEG:

good for them if they say a core concept in the 1AC is bad. bad for them if they are recycled and/or you dont look like you have done any reading.

in truth, i think "framework, no Ks" should be an uphill battle. conversely, so should "you link, you lose."

your framework interpretation should make sense. i often find that the aff tries to proclaim the framework debate is a wash and so "we get to weigh the aff but they get the k." i have no idea how one would weigh "fiated plan action solves extinction" vs, for example, ks of language or representations, since those two arguments operate on separate planes of evaluation. after stating your framework interpretation, you need to lay out how i would go about making a decision under it.

lastly, the obvious logical conclusion of many neg framework interps in my mind is plan inclusion (since the point of critiques as distinct from counterplans is that the locus of competition is not plan action). i think in many cases it is more strategic for the neg to just say and defend that.

Ks on the AFF: very good for T with the above clash caveat, which very often poses a large hurdle for NEGs that want to give rehearsed framework speeches and seem bored. much more amenable to impacts about the process of debate (clash, fairness) than its content (topic education, skills). i have exclusively been on the NEG side of this debate, so while i am capable and willing to vote for planless AFFs, the threshold for explanation is likely higher for the AFF and i am likely to be able to subconsciously fill in the gaps for the NEG more. the NEG going for a specific position will likely be rewarded with high points.

counterplans: i would say i have a 70% grasp on textual and functional competition. the less you can use buzzwords and rely on me to fill in everything for you in high-level competition debates, the better off you will be.

advantage counterplans are racing toward incoherence. "the USfg should invest in pandemic preparedness, transition to a green economy, and increase supply chain adaptability" is a non-argument.

which way does presumption go? my understanding is that if the AFF is zero, the NEG wins, unless the NEG has gone for a deviation from the squo (CP or alt) and their offense is also zero, in which case the AFF wins. however, i don't really understand WHY this is the case/the origin of this set of questions. so, i will default to this understanding, but you are free to explain to me a different way to evaluate low/no risk.

theory: slow down. my sole strong opinion is that 2nc counterplans out of 2ac straight turns are obviously bad. i often find that objections in the vein of "this cp is too close to the plan" are better expressed as competition, not theory.

disadvantages: the only maybe-quirk i have here is that, due to the nature of debates on the college nukes topic, i have spent a fair amount of time this year thinking about try or die. i think it is pretty silly - but the NEG must say at least something about it or it will be difficult to defeat a 2ar that spends a lot of time explaining and unpacking why it should frame my decision.

T vs plan affs: this will be an uphill battle for the NEG if the AFF seems like it is advancing a reasonable construction of the topic. this is particularly true for short T extensions with nearly no cards. AFF-specific violations and card-heavy 2NCs are great.

evidence quality: i think one of the most valuable parts of debate is the original research skills it teaches. i will greatly reward you for reading good, new, topic-specific evidence that you cut. that said, i will not pick through all the cards before deciding. i will read evidence in two situations:

1. there is contestation over its quality, highlighting, and/or warrants. evidence comparison is wonderful and debaters who can balance it with substantive argumentation will be greatly rewarded.

2. the debate is close enough that i cannot resolve it based on the words on my flow.

this means that if a silly argument is dropped, i will not read the evidence to determine whether it is true. this also means that "read our card" does NOT substitute for extending its warrants. however, if the NEG is reading a bad card for their silly argument and AFF is making smart analytic presses against it despite not having a card of their own, the NEG should not expect to win on "we have a card and they do not."

*jurisdiction:

trufanov: "Being racist, sexist, violent, etc. in a way that is immediately and obviously hazardous to someone in the debate = L and 0. My role as educator outweighs my role as any form of disciplinarian, so I will err on the side of letting stuff play out - i.e. if someone used gendered language and that gets brought up I will probably let the round happen and correct any ignorance after the fact. This ends when it begins to threaten the safety of round participants. You should give this line a wide berth."

awsare: "No double wins, devolution to another game, or soliciting audience participation. First to initiate receives a L and very low speaks." "Ad hominem is a logical fallacy. Screenshots are not ev. I have neither the authority nor resources to launch an investigation about outside behavior, coach indiscretions, and pref sheets."

giampetruzzi: "I strongly believe you should email your opponents if you find an ethical issue with their evidence or strategy pre-round. Treating ethics challenges like case negs is worse for the integrity of the activity than the ethics issues in question."

yes chain: sheima.ben-abdallah.27@dartmouth.edu

4 years HS policy, currently debating @ dartmouth. I am good for what you're good at.

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If it's policy, I have topic knowledge. LD or PF, not so much.

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I primarily read kritiks––– good for k affs

I'm mostly in the back of clash debates--- good for framework

I think conditionality is probably good

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preferences:

(edit: 11/29/2023-- pls do not read LD tricks or PF off-time roadmaps in front of me i will be bored )

please time yourself, ev ethics challenges r not case negs, "concede the ballot and lets have a discussion" = L 24

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speaks usually stay within the range of (28.4––29.4)

I reserve the right to end the round if I think it's reached an uneducational and unsafe point.

Paradigm Last Updated – Summer 2023

Coach @ Shawnee Mission South and the University of Kansas.

Put me on the email chain :) azjabutler@gmail.com

TLDR:

Judge instruction, above all else, is super important for me – I think this looks differently depending on your style of debate. Generally, I think clear instruction in the rebuttals about where you want me to focus my attention and how you want me to filter offense is a must. For policy teams I think this is more about link and impact framing, and for more critical teams I think this is about considering the judge’s relationships to your theory/performance and being specific about their role in the debate.

For every "flow-check" question, or CX question that starts with a variation of "did you read..." I will doc you .5 speaker points. FLOW DAMNIT.

General:

I am flexible and can judge just about anything. I debated more critically, but read what you're most comfortable with. I will approach every judging opportunity with an open mind and provide feedback that makes sense to you given your strategy.

I care about evidence quality to the extent that I believe in ethically cut evidence, but I think evidence can come in many forms. I won’t read evidence after a debate unless there is an egregious discrepancy over it, or I've been instructed to do so. I think debaters should be able to explain their evidence well enough that I shouldn’t have to read it, so if I'm reading evidence then you haven't done your job to know the literature and will probably receive more judge intervention from me. That being said, I understand that in policy debate reading evidence has become a large part of judging etc, because I'm not ever cutting politics updates be CLEAR and EXPLICIT about why I am reading ev/ what I should be looking for.

Please know I am more than comfortable“clearing” you. Disclosure is good and should be reciprocated. Clipping/cutting cards out of context is academic malpractice and will result in an automatic loss.

___________________________________________________________________

Truth over Tech -OR- Tech over Truth

For the most part, I am tech over truth, but if both teams are ahead on technical portions of the debate, I will probably use truth to break the tie.

Framework

I think debates about debate are valuable and provide a space for confrontation over a number of debate's disparities/conflicts. A strong defense of your model and a set of specific net-benefits is important. Sure, debate is a game, education is almost always a tiebreaker. Fairness is a fake impact -- go for it I guess but I find it rare nowadays that people actually go for it. I think impact-turning framework is always a viable option. I think both sides should also clearly understand their relationship to the ballot and what the debate is supposed to resolve. At the end of the debate, I should be able to explain the model I voted for and why I thought it was better for debate. Any self-deemed prior questions should be framed as such. All of that is to say there is nothing you can do in this debate that I haven't probably seen so do whatever you think will win you the debate.

Performance + K Affirmatives

Judge instruction and strong articulation of your relationship to the ballot is necessary. At the end of the debate, I shouldn't be left feeling that the performative aspects of the strategy were useless/disjointed from debate and your chosen literature base.

Kritiks

I filter a lot of what I have read through my own experience both in and out of academia. I think it’s important for debaters to also consider their identity/experience in the context of your/their argument. I would avoid relying too much on jargon because I think it’s important to make the conversations that Kritiks provide accessible. I have read/researched enough to say I can evaluate just about anything, but don't use that as an excuse to be vague or assume that I'll do the work for you. At the end of the debate, there should be a clear link to the AFF, and an explanation of how your alternative solves the links -- too many people try to kick the alt and I don't get it. Links to the AFF’s performance, subject formation, and scholarship are fair game. I don’t want to say I am 100% opposed to judging kicking alts for people, but I won’t be happy about it and doubt that it will work out for you. If you wanna kick it, then just do it yourself... but again I don't get it.

Any other questions, just ask -- at this point people should know what to expect from me and feel comfortable reaching out.

Goodluck and have fun!

Email Chain: neocaidebate@gmail.com

School Affiliations: Interlake '21, Dartmouth '25

Refer to me as Neo (He/Him)

Top:

Be nice and have fun!

Argument preferences:

K-Affs: I default aff should be topical. Fairness! Smart K-Affs should have a strong internal link/internal link turn to impact turn fairness and clash - Good T arguments should treat them as such. No fanciness. Just predictable limits and fairness.

T: Inclined to start with limits, generally err predictability over debatability. Arbitary definitions should be a reason why competing interpretations is bad. Reasonability is offense the aff should use.

CP: Good for process counterplans and counterplan competition debates. No preference for limited intrinsicness - that is up for debate. Condo is great, going for condo is still fun. Counterinterpretations like x number of condo or pre-round make little sense. Quantify aff deficits to CPs in relation to DA risk.

DA: DA debates should be nuanced, describe a unique internal link story. Impact calc. Will not appreciate a barely highlighted 1NC shell that's missing many many internal links or uniqueness. Will reward a 2AC or CX that points out incomplete DAs.

K: Not good for Baudrillard/Batalie. Yes aff specific link analysis - that means highlighting language of the aff and good cx. Buzzword dependency is bad. I am not likely to buy Ks should not be weighed. I am fine for kicking the alt and going for framework. If the 2AR wants to go for a perm it needs to have offense against the alt not just no link/link turn analysis.

Debating Preferences:

1. Clarity over speed

3. Game should recognize Game - the best 2NRs and 2ARs should have that round vision

4. Inf condo is good, 1AR pop quizing is fun tho

5. Do impact calc

6. You WILL lose speaks for hiding Aspec under T because you are a coward, you will also lose speaks for not flowing it

7. I will match your energy, I dislike mean, arrogant people - knowing where you are wrong is just as important as convincing me you are right. If you are going to be mean, you better back it up...

Speaks:

Be smart and be clear. I will stop flowing if u aren't clear. Don't go into a debater mode and yell a bunch at people, let people talk in cx, ad homs will be rewarded with less speaks. Look at judge when cx happens.

Don't forget to have fun! Debate is so cool

Glenbrook South 2014, Northwestern 2018, now Dartmouth, he/him/his

Email chain: c.callahan45@gmail.com

General thoughts:

The older I get and the more time out of debate I spend, the more of a curmudgeon I become. I am interested in in-depth, well-researched debate, and uninterested in things that are not that. This has two implications.

First, I am most likely to vote for strategies that are based in coherent literature bases, lend themselves to high-quality and detailed evidence, and have deep defenses of the way their conclusions arise. I care a lot about interactions between flows -- I'm most comfortable voting for teams that structure coherent narratives across multiple flows and through multiple speeches, and I'm uncomfortable when basic thesis claims are in tension across positions.

Second, I find that I am more willing than other judges to issue decisions in T or theory debates that amount to "I know it when I see it." Just because one relatively reasonable practice might justify the most extreme form of that practice doesn't mean those two are indistinguishable. This doesn't mean I'm unwilling to vote on T or theory. On the contrary, I'm perfectly happy to do so when the other team has engaged in a facially unreasonable practice -- just not otherwise.

K things:

If recent history is any indication, I am an excellent judge for the neg when going for a critique like security or neolib against a typical policy aff. I do think, however, that objective truth is a real thing and that well-defined actions to improve the world are generally good, so I tend to be reluctant to accept most flavors of political or philosophical nihilism.

I'm also willing to vote for teams that don't read plans. My biggest concerns in T/framework debates are the role of the negative and the kind of debates that would take place in an alternative vision of the topic. This means going beyond the typical "you could have read the cap K" and developing a coherent theory for how debate operates and why a topic without a resolutional focus would still promote clash and in-depth debate. I find it hard to vote aff when the neg has won that the aff's interpretation makes debate shallow and prevents the specific testing of aff arguments.

Old man yells at cloud:

If you answer arguments included in the previous speech's document but not read, your speaker points will suffer.

If you spend a significant amount of cross-ex time just figuring out which cards were and weren't read, or asking the speaker to simply restate their arguments, your speaker points will suffer.

If you ask the speaker to remove everything they didn't read from a speech doc, I will tell them they don't have to do that.

Better-than-average for:

50-state fiat bad, dedev, the intrinsic perm against process counterplans, author indicts/debates about qualifications

Worse-than-average for:

Climate change not real, the perm double bind, con con, any argument that could be described as trolling, cards with sentences highlighted across multiple paragraphs, impact arguments that use the word "miscalc" as a substitute for explanation

Ethics stuff:

In general, my priority in cases of ethics questions is to maximize the amount of good-faith debating that can occur. If there is a way to resolve the issue and continue the debate, I will do my best to find it.

I would generally like to assume ignorance rather than malice when it comes to things like mis-citing or mis-cutting evidence. By this I mean cards being cited incorrectly, parts of cards not appearing in the original article, cards being cut in the middle of paragraphs, etc. If this kind of thing happens, I would prefer to just disregard a piece of evidence rather than deciding an entire debate about someone's card-cutting practices. Mistakes happen and people are people, and I would like to think that all debaters are here in good faith. However, if something is super egregious, I can be convinced that it should be a reason for a team to lose.

There needs to be a recording to accuse someone of clipping cards. This is a debate-ender: if you accuse someone of clipping, I will decide the debate on that issue. It has to be clear and repeated, not just missing a line or two. I will often glance at speech docs during a debate, but I do not closely read along with the debaters.

MPLS South '21

Dartmouth '25 (If you are considering Dartmouth, please talk to me in person or send an email. I would love to talk to you. Go Trees!!)

- If there is an email chain, please add gabemkc@gmail.com and southdebatecoaches@gmail.com (policy only)

Stanford 23 Update: Assume no familiarity with the LD topic. I will judge this like 1 person policy except with LD resolutions I don't think a lot of arguments from policy make sense i.e if the resolution doesn't require a plan I don't get why there should be one.

Answer arguments in the order presented. This is not a suggestion nor a recommendation. It is a rule and if you refuse to follow it, I will be looking for reasons to vote against you.

I have many preferences about debate, but I will try very hard for them not to influence my adjudication of the round. There are a few that I find true:

1. Students spend incredible amounts of time preparing for debate tournaments and I have an obligation to put just as much effort into the round - this means I will try to fairly evaluate each argument as presented and seek to limit my biases.

2. Debate is a research based communicative activity - this means that both how you prepared to speak and what you say matter. I care about evidence quality and correct evidence practices. This means I find arguments that are divorced from external scholarship (academia, pundits, public intellectuals) less convincing. I will be impressed by innovative research, which will make me more likely to err for the well-evidenced team on close questions.

3. My favorite debates are small, evidence heavy and specific to the resolutional controversy - they are intellectually exciting and bring me great joy. The policy or K binary does not determine this - rather, teams that are able to choose points of disagreement early in the debate, go deep on those and outframe their opponent will be more successful in front of me than teams that win by brute force of speed. This is not based on any conviction about the value of arguments - rather, I am not good at adjudicating large debates and am likely to think about what Edmund Zagorin taught me are the "meta questions" in close debates.

4. Debate is good because we get to try new things and change our minds - dogmatic 1ACs/1NCs that don't change from topic to topic are terminally unpersuasive. Arguments based on past ethical failure will not be considered. Behavior that causes immediate harm to other debaters will culminate in an L and a 26.

5. Speaker points should be given based on the judges' discretion - I will intervene against people who ask me to give 30s. I will give you speaker points based on my regular discretion minus 2. I find the modern 29-30 speaker point scale hard to use and expect to give around a 28.7 if you have debated as if you are a member of the top 32 teams in a given pool.

Specific Arguments:

Most arguments are very similar and will be filtered through the above biases. Some are hard to understand from above so I will explain below.

I find well articulated theory arguments about the detrimental effects of specific practices more persuasive than most - articulating the importance of unconditional counterplans, solvency advocates and affirmative specification may be more persuasive to me than most.

Topicality arguments about the most desirable construction of the resolution for debating rather than a single side are most persuasive to me - articulating your impacts in the language of iteration, the game structure of debate and testing rather than AFF/NEG ground has always made the most sense to me.

The K v Policy divide is detrimental to debate - read the arguments you think are best supported and respond to your opponents position. I have no major preference if that results in a Afropessimist critique of democratic theory or a defense of the liberal international order, but I would prefer a planless affirmative that discusses water politics to a plan based affirmative that has more terminal impacts than topic specific cards.

I have been heavily influenced by Oskar Tauring-Traxler, Izak Gallini-Matyas, John Turner, Brett Bricker, Raam Tambe, Holland Bald.

Some judges who I aspire to judge similar to: Anirudh Prabhu, Shunta Jordan, Sean Kennedy, Shree Awsare, Chris Callahan, Brianna Aaron, Ansh Khullar, Kevin McCaffery, Yao Yao Chen and Kevin Hirn.

Ethics

- I will follow docs for evidence of clipping. If I see it, the round will end and the offending team will get L 25. Evidence of clipping or cross reading, along with an accusation, will be evaluated. If correct, L 25 for offender. If incorrect, L for the accusing team.

- agree with Truf -- Being racist, sexist, violent, etc. in a way that is immediately and obviously hazardous to someone in the debate = L and 0. My role as educator > my role as any form of disciplinarian, so I will err on the side of letting stuff play out - i.e. if someone used gendered language and that gets brought up I will probably let the round happen and correct any ignorance after the fact. This ends when it begins to threaten the safety of round participants. Where that line is is entirely up to me.

clara conry - she/her - Minneapolis South 22 - Emory University 26

Email: cc.june20@gmail.com

tech > truth

offense-defense (if you are going for perm do both you need a defecit)

it is extremely obvious when you're not flowing. the amount of high school rounds i've watched this year where it is abundantly clear that not a single person is flowing is egregious. i can SEE you and i can SEE that you have paper out but not a word written.

all my argument biases don't matter as much as technical debating. i won't automatically kick the cp. i'm fine for basically any theory but condo is probably the only reason to reject the team. i find that long explanations of argument biases often don't help that much in mitigating judge bias. especially in policy v policy debates given they usually come down to dropped arguments/explanation.

k debates. i judge a lot of these. i am going to judge them technically ie even if i don't fully understand the minutia of the k as long as i understand what was dropped + there is judge instruction that explains why the argument matters i'm fine. i do think that debate is a game. I'm going to evaluate the flow on a technical level. i will always start evaluating aff v k debates with framework and framework is never a wash.

I need more judge instruction on how winning ontology means you win. "ontology means nuclear war is NUQ" isn't a full argument.

STANFORD & BERKELEY 24: Very thin working knowledge of the topic. Proceed assuming I know almost nothing, ESPECIALLY in heavy econ debates

my name is kyujin (pronounced Q-jin) – he/him, toc elim debater & il state champion @ northside from 2017-21, coaching @ interlake since 2021. email chain: kyujinderradji@gmail.com and interlakescouting@googlegroups.com.

trying to update this once or twice a year every year that I’m active; debaters spend thousands of hours researching and preparing for tournaments, and the least i can do to maximize the benefits that come from that is to let you know how i will approach evaluating the things you prepared to say.

TLDR: no hard and fast rules except that I will not evaluate death good, and i am heavily biased against strategies that eschew line-by-line debating. if you read a planless aff i would put me lower than “k-friendly” judges but not at the bottom of your pref sheet.

LONGER:

top level –

· i have substantive preferences (of course, everyone does even if they don’t say so) BUT those should not change the way you debate. debates are best when debaters are not just Saying The Words They Were Told To Say, but rather when all the debaters have evidently been thinking about their position and making refined and clear arguments that are not intended to confuse but instead to persuade. while, of course, you will not persuade me that we should kill social security to prevent the Hat Man from haunting your dreams, my role is to evaluate the effectiveness of your communication in attempting to prove that such is true.

· additionally, i will exclude arguments prefaced off events that happened outside of what i have witnessed in the debate, ad homs, or otherwise accusatory statements. i will err towards facilitating the continuation of the debate unless it becomes clear that is no longer possible, in which case i will follow tabroom procedure and maximize opportunities to ensure the well-being of the debaters directly affected by malicious and/or harmful behavior.

· do not attempt to pander to me!! there’s obviously a level of comfortability and camaraderie that i think is good and appropriate in the setting of a debate, but ultimately i am almost out of college. many older people in debate lack boundaries when engaging with high schoolers that honestly makes me very uncomfortable. i appreciate being friendly/relaxed etc, and i encourage that, but please do not act like we are old buddies or make comments that you wouldn’t make to a teacher.

· people who have shaped the way i think about debate: john turner, shree awsare, dml, holland bald, luther snagel, addison kane, wayne tang, all of northside c/o '19

pet peeves –

· clarity. i will not clear you. it's up to you to be as clear as possible even if that means sacrificing speed. having to give an rfd where i tell you that i couldn't understand a third of what you were saying is frustrating annoying for me and embarrassing for you.

· kicking stuff. not kicking out of stuff correctly, even if it doesn’t do you any strategic harm, is a very bad look and your speaks will suffer.

· cx. barring the aff is new or you are mav, you must either do cross ex for all 3 minutes or end early. you cannot use cross ex for prep.

speaker points –

· speaker points will be rewarded by knowing what you are talking about, doing research, clarity, strategic vision, and being funny. speaker points will be docked by rudeness/undue assertiveness, lack of clarity, and lack of strategic vision.

· doing my best to accommodate new trends in speaker points even if i might disagree with them. i understand how frustrating it is to have stingy judges give low speaks and jeopardize seeding/breaking.

decision calc –

· tech over truth. BUT! that requires you extend a claim, warrant, and impact. a 2nr should extend an impact and do impact comparison, not something like “they dropped impact #3 in the 1nr, extinction, don’t make me reinvent the wheel” – bad bad bad. setting yourself up for failure at the hands of a smart 2a.

· i need your arguments to make sense – that’s really really crucial. seems like a truism but unfortunately it is not.

evidence –

· i care a lot about evidence quality – i'd say more than the average judge. research is the largest/most valuable portable skill from debate and i will look for ways to reward teams who have clearly conducted original, innovative, and/or high-quality research and can demonstrate the knowledge that research has imparted them with.

· i do read evidence (not every time, but if I feel so compelled) but i will not include that into my decision unless evidence is a subject of disagreement.

· I will read more than the highlighting, but I will only evaluate the un-highlighted portion if I think that you have misrepresented it in a way that makes the evidence read better than it is i.e. you selectively highlight words or ignore paragraphs to make your evidence look more conclusive. I will not include warrants from ev in my decision that you have not read obviously.

· rehighlightings are obvi great, you can insert them, as long as it’s not egregious. You can’t insert cards from other articles that an author has written in order to indict them – you have to read that. the point of inserting recuttings is just to point to the other team’s own evidence and provide direction as to what specifically is at issue with it. introducing other articles obviously requires you read them, because that is not evidence read by the other team.

· caveat to the above – please! make sure you are not mis-recutting evidence. It will look like you didn’t actually read the evidence and assumed it was miscut. Your speaks will suffer.

the rest of this paradigm are my opinions on various positions, but matter much less than what was just said above.

planless affs/framework –

· 70-30 neg. one of the two hardest things for the aff in these debates are when the aff does not have a meaningful reason why debates over the resolution are bad, as opposed to the resolution itself. this usually requires some kind of exclusionary critique of the idea of debating the topic entirely, which is a pretty high bar to clear imo. the other barrier to an aff ballot in my mind is the role of debate. what is the ballot’s function? what does it mean if i vote aff or neg? why is debating the 1ac valuable fro the neg? all of these are questions I think the aff must be able to answer, and often they cannot to a satisfactory degree. given the aff is choosing to forego a traditional defense of the resolution, i think the burden of proof is set significantly higher because the aff must then establish a new set of criteria by which to evaluate the debate – which also often lends to the neg’s predictability offense on framework.

· i heavily prefer impacts pertinent to the process of debate rather than its substance (paraphrased from holland <3). topic education and the like tend to ignore the way that competition/resolutional wording distorts how we approach the topic – and lend themselves to internal link turns absent substantive defense to the 1ac’s thesis claims.

· all good for a da/pic against a planless aff – my favorite debates v k affs senior year were going for tech good against a “zoom bad” aff and heg good against a mao aff.

· NOT good for k v k debates. i will likely be confused and you will likely be unhappy with my decision.

counterplans –

· :thumbs-up:

· fine for intricate competition debates BUT i will need arguments to be warranted – saying “their interp justifies x” is sometimes not immediately intuitive for me, so just err on the side of explaining things more.

· agree with like everyone else that counterplans can’t simply identify an aff internal link and write a plank to the effect of “solve x impact”. it’s like making an alt cause argument that explains no alt causes.

· i won’t automatically judge kick a counterplan.

· i am neg leaning on basically all theory. most theory is better articulated as a competition argument. i am not a good judge for teams who shotgun 1ar extensions of conditionality and make it 5 minutes of the 2ar – obviously can be a legitimate strategy but it feels like it has recently become a safety net for teams who are afraid of debating substance. also, please slow down in heavy theory debates.

disads –

· :thumbs-up:

· comparison and narrative-telling are the most important. telling me why I should care about your thing and using examples/common threads from evidence is very helpful and demonstrates a lot of skill.

t v plans –

· :thumbs-up:

· there should only really be two kinds of t debates to me: one that gets to the core of a topic disagreement (i.e. t-enact on CJR or t-AOS on immigration) and one that points out an egregious instance of a violation. outside of these two instances, i’ll tend to err aff.

· i prefer t debates with lots of evidence, warrants, and little repetition. limits is the best neg impact and (usually) precision or aff ground are the best aff impacts.

k’s vs. plans –

· yes for most. i think these are best executed when they function as an impact turn to core ideological assumptions of the plan. the more the k is [insert theory – no perm because footnote DA] or reps k of [one of your 9 impacts], the less I will be a fan.

· ideally, the function of your framework argument should be to ratchet down the importance of having a coherent alternative.

· i generally quite dislike "you link, you lose", and i have a pretty low threshold for voting aff on framework in these debates. giving the aff some kind of access to their consequences (at least as a defense of their epistemology) will make me much more receptive to a research or epistemology k.

Add me to the chain-- mayaelsharif@gmail.com

Pine Crest '21

UPENN '24 - debating hybrid with Dartmouth

YOU DO YOU! I love this activity (clearly), I want you to as well!

If you are someone who is mean about post-rounding - strike me. I am happy to answer genuine questions, but will not tolerate malignant comments:)

Alright, now for the specifics:

Theory/T-

T: I hate judging T debates unless an aff is actually NOT remotely topical OR you are clearing winning on your interp. I LOVE T-USFG - fairness or clash style impacts are great in front of me, done both.

Other: I do not take a firm stance on theory. Condo is good, I can be persuaded it's bad, but it is good. "Cheating" counterplans are less and less cheaty in front of me.

Kritiks--

K-AFFS- Did not run them in high school, way more persuaded by T when the K-AFF is not even attempting to critique the resolution. If the topic is Fiscal Redistribution do not read an aff about vacuum cleaners. I tend to lean in favor of a well-fleshed-out T argument and went for clash offense in hs, and fairness offense in college. I now read a K-AFF in certain debates, so I am familiar with both sides of clash debates!

Kritiks- I read a lot of K literature - DO NOT read a K that you do not understand. Identity Ks, High Theory, and Cap/Security Ks are all fine with me, but really explain the literature and convince me of the framing. If you can't understand the card, I won't either.

Disads--

I like them, I love when the neg goes for the status quo. They exist on this topic. Politics is more real than before, Econ DA slaps, Horsetrading and Federalism are B-tier.

A well executed straight turn is a solid place to be in front of me.

AFF write me a try-or-die ballot lol

Counterplans--

I lived for a process CP in high school. All CPs except delay are good! Go for PDCP more. I reward good competition debates.

Speaker points:

I hate giving speaker points, everyone has a different style and your score out of 30 points means nothing to me. Things I reward: jokes, humor, personality, flowing, LBL, roadmap, strategic cross-ex questions.

You must disclose!!! I hate teams that try to avoid disclosure; this will affect your speaker points dramatically. If any racial slurs, sexist comments, or degrading language is used intentionally in the round, I will give you a 0 for speaks. Being mean is fun for nobody, don't do it. I am okay with curse words, but not when they are directed at the other team.

Points:

>29.3- AMAZINGGGGGG

29.0-29.3-- great debater, needs more persuasion

28.6- 29 -- need some technical work, but was good

28.2-28.6 -- you were great, but need to work on both technique and picking the best args

28-28.2 -- Needs improvement. It will come with practice

<27 -- lots of improvement or extremely rude/offensive

Please be funny and kind in rounds. I am always tired, if the speeches are boring, everyone will be bored. Make comebacks in a smart manner, but DO NOT be mean. Sarcasm is always welcomed.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING ANYTHING ABOVE OR THE BALLOT AT THE END OF THE DEBATE, EITHER EMAIL ME OR ASK ME, I WILL ANSWER!!! I am also more than happy to send you an email with constructive comments; debate is about improvement, I am happy to help! I also like to get to know people, do not be hesitant to share your name and some fun things about you; the debate community could use more friends!!!

PF/LD

• I did not compete in these formats, but have friends who did. I will likely be a point fairy because of policy points.
• Extend arguments and do ballot instruction!
• Have fun!

Parli

• Organization and line-by-line matters to me.
• I hate that this activity does not have evidence BUT if you can explain something clearly and persuasively that will make me hate it less.

Lindsay Jade (or LJ, whichever works!)

she/her

Greenhill '21 | UT Austin '26 (2A)

assistant coaching for Greenhill

please put me on the email chain! lindsayjadef@gmail.com

generic things:

-tldr: read whatever you're best at! I have preferences, but am generally open to hearing whatever you have to say.

-I'd always prefer to evaluate the round in front of me rather than intervene. I will try to evaluate debates based on the flow before reading evidence, unless explicitly told to read a certain card.

-tech > truth

-numbering arguments = better speaks and better decisions!

-dropped arguments are true, but need to be fully extended along with an explanation of the implications you want them to have on my decision

-fully explaining/developing arguments and good line-by-line skills are important to me and will lead to higher speaker points than reading excessive overviews. If your answer to an argument is to cross-apply the overview, I tend to believe that the arguments in the overview should've just been on that part of the line-by-line. Similarly, I am much less likely to vote on "they dropped this line in my 2-minute long overview" than a more contextualized individual line-by line argument

-please be kind and respectful to each other!

-open cx is fine, but please don't excessively talk over each other/interrupt.

Policy affs:

-framing contentions are fine when you contextualize them to your aff and the CP/DA. "Probability first" still requires substantive answers to the DA to prove the probability is actually low.

-my bias is generally to weigh consequences, but I can be persuaded as to which ones matter more and why

-smart analytics and/or internal link defense > generic impact defense card

K affs vs. framework:

-I am probably slightly better for the neg here, although I have some (very very limited) experience reading k affs

-I'm fine with both limits/fairness and clash/idea testing/education style impacts (however, if your 2NR is the fun impact, the RFD probably won't be very fun for you).

-impact calculus and analysis, explaining how your interpretation best resolves that impact (and theirs can't access it), and how it interacts with the other team's impacts, will make it easier for me to evaluate the debate in your favor

-I'm seeing a trend towards impact turning topicality without extending a counter interp. Personally, I find it more intuitive when the impact turn to framework is resolved by the aff's counter interpretation, and having a counter interp will help me have a clearer understanding of you solve your own offense (even if it doesn't try to be T/in the direction of the topic at all). If you don't want to go for a counter interp, having an explanation for why you don't need one would be helpful.

Ks:

-Some of my favorite debates to judge! I have experience debating pretty much all the Ks you usually see every year, but you should still do your best not to assume knowledge

-2NC overviews longer than 30 seconds seem excessive to me

-I probably care less about framework than most judges - framework determines which arguments I evaluate, but does not guarantee you win those arguments or the debate. If you want it to implicate any other part of the debate, you should explain that to me

-My "default" framework is that the aff gets to weigh the plan, but the negative can probably get most links to representations/justifications. Of course, this can be changed if the aff or neg is just so far ahead on framework, but I tend to not consider "role of the ballot" arguments as much. Instead, substantive arguments about why representations/justifications outweigh material action or vice versa are more persuasive to me. I tend to think teams (especially if you aren't reading an extinction impact on the aff) invest too much time in framework that should be used on the link/perm/alt debate in most cases.

-floating PIKs are probably bad, but if you get away with it, good for you

Topicality vs. policy affs

-I am probably less willing than others to vote on "limits for the sake of limits" just because the topic might be huge. Neg teams' limits arguments are more persuasive when they're explained in the context of those limits being predictable (accompanied by examples). Please impact out your argument and explain how it turns each others' impacts.

-aff teams: good impact analysis (why impacts outweigh and turn theirs), defense to neg impacts, and examples are the way to my ballot

-not a big fan of subsets/whatever the throwaway T argument becomes this year, but really enjoy aff-specific smart T arguments (I know this isn't always possible and will still vote on whatever you win)

-I think reasonability is underrated when explained without relying solely on buzz words. This also applies to CP theory!

CPs and theory:

-love CPs

-aff teams: the permutation and links to the net benefit are your friend. If perm do both is the 2AR strategy, then explanations about how it shields the link starting in the 2AC is best if not necessary (the words "shields the link" alone is not an arg!)

-also, solvency deficits are best when they're clear and impacted out/explained

-neg teams: be sure to have a clear story/explanation for how the aff/perm links to the net benefit and the CP alone avoids it

-theory debates are probably some of my least favorite debates to judge, but if it becomes the debate I understand

-nothing except conditionality is probably a voting issue. my voting record has shown me that as a judge I tend to lean negative on conditionality, but I will do my best not to intervene

-if I think you are partially right about a theory argument but can't fully reject the team or argument, I still might be more sympathetic to a permutation that might not have been a winner in a vacuum. I won't automatically do that cross-application for you, though, so you should tell me to!

-my initial bias is that most process CPs are fine (but can be persuaded otherwise). I'd rather see creative permutations/specific theory interps than "process CPs bad"

-PICs out of words that aren't in the plan text are probably illegitimate

-judge kick: will do what you tell me to - if you care a lot, bring it up early (2AC/block). If the CP is conditional and no one says anything else I'll default to judge kick.

-functionally intrinsic perms (that are limited to neg solvency advocates and only the plan and CP text) are my favorite!

DAs:

-yeah yeah!

-impact calc is very helpful, especially with turns case arguments. However, I usually end up placing more emphasis on the internal links to those impacts, whether the DA is unique, etc. (i.e., the likelihood that you're able to access those turns case arguments) - winning a slightly larger impact or turns case does not mean I'm automatically voting on 1% risk of the DA outweighs.

-that being said, tech > truth - I love (reasonably) creative spin on arguments and will reward you for it speaks-wise even if it doesn't work out for you

-politics is okay! Explaining differences between cards/warrants > the 7th card in your UQ wall

Non-negotiables (stolen from holland bald)

- death good = L

- being racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. or making the debate unsafe for anyone involved (to be determined at my discretion) = L and the lowest speaks i can assign.

- no asking for better speaks

- i will flow a 2-hour long debate comprised of eight speeches. "Calling for a double win, intentionally interrupting an opponent’s speech, soliciting outside participation in a speech or cross-x, breaking time limits, playing board games, or devolving the debate into a 2 hour long discussion is a recipe for a quick L for the team that initiates it." -shree

- you have to read re-highlightings, you usually can't insert them unless it's just one word or something

Final thoughts:

-my goal is to be a judge I would feel good about evaluating one of my debates. Feel free to ask questions after the round if any part of my decision doesn't make sense to you.

-if you have any questions, please email me: lindsayjadef@gmail.com

Debated at Georgetown University for 4 years (2019-2023) and coached there for a year (2023-2024).

This paradigm solely contains information on my predispositions and how I'll resolve debates in the absence of contrary instruction. The set of arguments for which I will not vote is vanishingly small.

I like debates where both teams respect each other and demonstrate they have put a lot of time and thought into their arguments, but I am largely agnostic as to the specific form and content that these arguments take. In other words, don't over-adapt.

egreerdebate@gmail.com

Overall Thoughts

-I prefer debates involving arguments about the topic. I think that policy debate should reward research and innovation within the topic area rather than incentivizing teams to recycle generics from year-to-year.

-Effective communication is imperative. Be clear; use numbers, emphasis, and sound bites to differentiate arguments; and focus on telling a cohesive story about why you win the issues that are most important for the debate. Don't be the kind of team that gets annoyed because I didn't think the one-sentence argument made 5 minutes into the final rebuttal was important for my decision.

-I'm not a disciplinarian. I will refuse to evaluate arguments about an opponent's behavior outside the debate. I have a high threshold for voting on procedural questions about an opponent's in-round behavior. Soliciting opportunities to make such arguments (e.g., by asking inflammatory CX questions) is a bad strategy in front of me.

-Ks are fine provided that they clash with core premises of the 1AC. At best, Ks are effective tools for grappling with and challenging the underlying assumptions of taken-for-granted worldviews. At worst, they are cheap shots that teams use to sidestep argumentative engagement.

-I rarely care about terminal impacts. Terminal impact calculus usually begs the question of the other levels of the debate. Relatedly, "extinction outweighs" is the most overrated impact in debate.

-I give speaker points in a normal distribution with 28.5 at the center.

T (vs. Policy Affs)

-Topicality is a germane criticism. Affirmative teams must take it seriously and answer it like any other argument.

-Community consensus doesn't impact how I view T interps. Popular affs are still subject to the criticism that they are not topical.

-The thing I care about most in T debates is whether an interpretation is well-grounded in topic literature. Given equal debating, the person who is "correct" about what the words mean will usually win. By default, I view limits/ground arguments as a tiebreaker when two interpretations are equally plausible readings of the resolution.

-I haven't taken a grammar class since seventh grade. Please don't throw out random parts of speech with no explanation and expect me to understand.

-Neg teams are better served by speaking in terms of ground rather than limits. I care more about whether the neg has access to a set of cross-contextual topic generics than the number of case negs each team has to cut.

CPs/DAs

-Infinite conditionality is good. Persuading me otherwise is an uphill battle.

-I'm heavily aff-leaning on process CPs that do not include a reason why the plan is a bad idea. In other words, if I conclude that the "other issues" perm solves the net benefit, I'm unlikely to be a fan of your CP. If you can present a substantive DA to this perm (i.e., by proving that inclusion of the plan itself is undesirable), then I'm much more likely to vote neg.

-I default to thinking that it is illegitimate to fiat non-USFG actors, including the 50 states. It's much easier to convince me that 50 state fiat is legitimate than it is to convince me that international fiat or private actor fiat is legitimate.

-I don't judge kick unless the 2NR provides offense for doing so. Debate is about choices, and I won't make yours for you.

-I don't think anything can be "zero" risk. You're better off talking about risk in relative rather than binary terms.

-I won't vote for intrinsicness or theory against politics DAs unless dropped. Politics DAs are easy to beat substantively.

Ks (vs. Policy Affs)

-I have voted for Ks a disproportionate number of the times that they've been in the 2NR in front of me. When I vote neg, it's usually because the neg team invested a lot of time into a framework argument that mooted the aff offense, and the 2AR did not effectively argue that this framework argument was illegitimate.

-That said, I think teams tend to be over-reliant on framework. I would greatly prefer a debate which focuses on the desirability of the 1AC's underlying approach to politics in toto, to a framework debate. Neg teams should present aff-specific link arguments and case turns. Aff teams should present offense in favor of their assumptions.

-I don't find "you link, you lose" and "Ks are cheating" to be intuitively persuasive models of debate, but I will vote for either if executed well in the final rebuttals.

-Aff teams often spend large portions of their speeches making arguments about why the plan is good without investing sufficient time into winning that the plan being good is a relevant question for the debate. Arguments like "extinction outweighs," "perm double bind," and "alt fails" are not super useful when the 2NR is "vote neg because the 1AC as a rhetorical project was unethical." Instead, the 2AR should talk about why I should refuse to evaluate the 1AC solely as a rhetorical project.

-I think it is nearly impossible for the aff to "drop" a "floating PIK" because all aff framework offense is a reason why PIKs are illegitimate. If the aff wins that a plan-focused model of debate is good, then they have adequately answered the PIK because the PIK does not contest the plan's desirability. In contrast, if the neg wins that the plan doesn't matter, then almost all Ks are potentially plan-inclusive.

-Framework determines the threshold for alt solvency. If the desirability of the plan is a relevant consideration to the debate, the neg has a greater burden to produce an alternative approach to the world that would solve the impacts of the aff or solve another set of impacts that outweighs the aff. If the only relevant consideration is the desirability of the aff as a research object/scholarly project, the neg has a greatly reduced burden to explain what the alt means or does; in these instances, I treat "vote neg" as an alternative in itself.

-Fairness matters, but not as an end in itself. Aff teams must defend why fairness is necessary not merely for debate to exist, but for it to be a game worth playing.

K Affs and T/FW

-See the "Ks (vs Policy Affs)" section for thoughts on the fairness debate.

-Critique topicality, not the topic. Flaws in the topic are negative ground and therefore not offense against framework. Arguments such as "nuclear policy is imperialist" are potentially relevant Ks of topical affirmatives, but they are not justifications for reading a non-topical aff.

-I hate arguments that rely on the premise that it's evil to defend or debate about things with which you personally disagree. College students do not have infallible understandings of the world. Debate intrinsically involves confronting the possibility that you could be wrong about your most closely-held beliefs - this is a feature, not a bug, of the activity.

-I prefer it when aff teams defend a specific model of debate. Speak granularly to the role your interp provides for clash/negation. Talk about core points of disagreement under your model and why this disagreement produces better debates.

Tips for Higher Speaker Points

-Read cards where the warrants are highlighted and point out where your opponents have failed to do the same.

-Send docs before ending prep.

-Don't send cards in the body of the email.

-Don't ask flow check questions (including "reasons to reject the team").

-Don't refer to the case pages as "advantage 1" and "advantage 2" when the 1AC provided more descriptive labels, such as "economy advantage."

-Don't read cards written by undergraduates.

-Don't reinsert rehighlighting unless the lines have already been read by the other team.

SMS'23, KU'27

brooklynnjhato@gmail.com

she/her

General

My debate back round is largely critical. Debate the way you've invested. Warranted analysis, quality research, flowing, intentional cx, and ample judge instruction in the context of what your strategy in the debate is! Yes, tech over truth, truth being the tie breaker when both team are both up on the tech portion. Debate is a game, with the debaters using these statures of how to evaluate said game that I said above. An offensive defense paradigm on how/why you've justified your departure from the status squo. Love a good case debate throw down, I flow straight down just tell me what to do and we're good. Not good for a policy throw down.

_____________________________________________________

Assume I'm not reading ev during the debate. Debate is a communicative activity, leave pen time. Evidence quality is good, and can be informed by/look very different, this has value. Disclosure is necessary, I'm v sympathetic to disclosure args. Clipping/unethical card cutting is an L. CX time being used for prep will negatively impact your speaks.

Policy v K

You should probably be able to weigh the plan/it's consequences. fw is at the top of my flow. Quality line by line "our threats are real/extinction outweighs" to set up that slam dunk link turn + alt does nothing is good. If the neg has not isolated a mechanism to resolve 2nr impacts, i'll be pretty liberal to a "you went for a non UQ DA...here's the perm" 2ar.

K v policy

Link specificity is good. I would prefer a "alt solves the links" over a "our research project/fw interp solves our own offense" 2nr but do you. Most familiar with anti-blackness, cap, set col arguments. Over explaining is key, buzzwords don't win debates. Fw/links should out frame aff impacts while you tell me how your judge instruction arguments implicates my flow and vision in round. Not good for pomo. The best K debaters go for the K and still make sure to obliterate the case debate so there's no sneaky 2ars.

_____________________________________________________

Planeless Affs:

I believe affs should be in the direction/relevant to the topic. I should have a clear articulation of what the aff does, who/what it's good for, and why the ballot is necessary. Your performance should not be abandoned in the middle of the debate/you didn't make it important. Going for the impact turn is good, going for the counter interp plus "we have defense to your model, you don't" is great!

FW:

The TVA is gas and the aff answers are probably trash. The SSD/Stasis good 2nr's good. I don't evaluate fairness as "you broke nsda rules catch an L" but "if competition/fairness is true, only a universal stasis point is able to determine contestable debates that are predictable [clash args]" Why is your model good, no case debating in the 2NR is probably going to be an L.

Margaret Hecht, she /her

New Trier alum, Debating at Emory, Coaching for Westminster

margaretdebate@gmail.com

The most important thing when I'm your judge: Please time everything (prep, speeches, cx, tech time) yourselves. I am awful about timing things and will forget 99% of the time.

Please be nice. Respect your opponents, respect me, don't swear a ton, etc. This activity should be fun.

I don't have strong argumentative preferences. I care much more about how you debate than what you debate about. I prefer judging policy debates because it's what I can adjudicate best, but I do judge a good number of K debates and can usually keep up.

Pleasego in line-by-line order. This means no long overviews or 'I'll do the uniqueness debate here.' This is the easiest way to get good speaker points.

Debates are best when people make fewer, more developed arguments. This means referencing specific lines of your evidence, line by line, extending warrants, doing good impact calc, and reading things that are well-researched rather than stuff meant to confuse your opponents.

I care about evidence quality more than most people.

I will only read what's highlighted when reading cards at the end of a debate.

[Update Jan. 2023: I have recently judged a few K v. K debates and have found them particularly hard to follow. I might not be the best judge for these debates.]

If you have any questions about my philosophy, please email me! (Or if you have any questions about Emory debate)

I am the Director of Debate at Georgetown University ('21-present), before which I was the Assistant DOD (2017-21). I am also an Assistant Coach for Westminster. Before that, I debated for 4 years at Georgetown. In high school, I debated only regionally, for a tiny high school in West Texas.

Please include me on the email chain: bwk9@georgetown.edu

***Update: November 2022***

My prior paradigm was 5+ years out of date. The following are patterns in my judging that you should be aware of when debating in front of me.

All of the items below, EXCEPT for the "D-Rules (not subject to debate)" section, are simply DEFAULTS in the absence of debaters making an argument that I should evaluate these things differently. I would prefer that the DEBATERS tell me how to evaluate things and why, in which case these priors should rarely , if ever, come into play.

D-Rules (NOT subject to debate)

1. Please include me on the email chain.

2. In high school debates, all of the participants are minors, and I will not hesitate to intervene in a debate if anything legally or ethically dubious is occurring. This includes any bullying, displays of sexism or racism, etc. Relatedly, there are arguments which are appropriate for the college context but that I will not--and, legally, cannot!--countenance in a HS debate (one example: the reading of uncensored explicit evidence a la Preciado).

3. Consider me dead inside with respect to any preferences regarding argumentative substance. However, I have very little tolerance for either arguments or ways of engaging that make any participant feel unsafe, and will intervene if necessary.

4. Allegations of an ethics violation will immediately end the debate. No take-backs. I will then inform the tabroom and follow the tournament's prescribed procedures, or in the lack of such procedures will unilaterally determine whether it rises to the threshold of an ethics VI. If so, the accuser will win; if not, the accuser will lose. If allowed for by the tournament rules, I will make a subjective determination regarding whether the violation (or accusation, if the accuser loses) was engaged in knowingly and/or in competitive bad faith, and if so will assign the lowest allowable speaker points. To help guide this determination: egregious or persistent clipping is a D-Rule. So is evidence falsification. Poor evidence "hygiene," e.g. ending in the middle of a paragraph, is a D-rule, but is unlikely to warrant the additional "poor speaks" sanction if it does not change the meaning of the card, whereas if it cuts out a strawperson it is likely to warrant the "poor speaks" sanction. Minor good-faith mistakes in evidence citation are very unlikely to rise to the threshold of a D-rule if it is left up to my discretion by tab and/or the tournament rules.

Things to Know About Debating In Front of Me

1. Instead of focusing only on extending and answering arguments, it would behoove debaters to begin their final rebuttals by clarifying what the comparative RFD for the Aff/Neg should be, identifying the key questions to be resolved in the debate, and then going through the process of resolving them. You can think of this as providing me a roadmap for how I should approach adjudicating the debate once it ends. Absent this, I will come up with my own roadmap, but it is substantially less likely to work out in your favor and also I will be grumpy about it.

2. I have found that the way that arguments are characterized early in the debate often bears heavily on how I interpret and resolve disputes over them in the final rebuttals. This has accounted for numerous panel splits in debates I've judged the past couple years. If, for example, an argument is articulated in one way in the CXes (all of which I flow), I will tend to treat that articulation as binding; or, if a plan or counterplan is characterized in a given way in the 2NC and the 1AR does not push back on that characterization, I will adopt that understanding of the plan or counterplan and hold the line against 2ARattempts to rearticulate it.

3. Evidence: I value quality of argument and evidence. A smart, well-warranted analytic is far more valuable than a bad card. Research is at the core of what makes policy debate unique and valuable relative to e.g. Public Forum, Parli, etc. However, evidence matters only insofar as it provides reasons to believe you about your arguments (e.g. qualifications, warrants, etc.); it never constitutes an argument itself.

4. I will not read your speech doc, a practice which I've observed account for other panel splits in recent years. I will spot check specific pieces of evidence if they are contested in CX or in speeches. I will read cards I am directed to after the debate, but it is up to you to have leveraged them effectively in your speech--and, how good a card needs to be to get the job done on a given issue is inversely proportional to how well you debate it. If debaters want their evidentiary advantage to matter--as it should--they should do more evidence comparison, including as it relates to source quality, etc. The sole exception to this: if evidence is selectively underlined to an argument not even contemplated by the original, I reserve the right to unilaterally discount it (think here of the difference between underlining a movie script or selectively underlining words in unrelated sentences to concoct an argument never made in the source, vs. cutting a cards as a strawperson - the latter I will very unhappily accept if the other team does not contest it, albeit at the cost of speaker points, whereas the former I will probably not accept, if I notice it, even if the other team does NOT call it out).

5. Conceded arguments are true arguments. However, 1.) A complete "argument" consists of a claim, a warrant, and an impact--assertions are not arguments, and thus are not "true" even if dropped. 2.) Receiving the full weight of an argument does not matter in-and-of itself--you must still unpack why that dropped argument impacts the rest of the debate, and if that explanation was not there initially then the implication component of that can still constitute a new argument to which responses are allowed.

6. CX filibustering: Some amount of it is part of the game, but if this is taken to a silly extreme, then I will not hesitate to pull a Dallas Perkins and tell you to "ANSWER the QUESTION" so as to enable a meaningful debate to occur

Argument Defaults

1. Absent arguments to the contrary, CX and 2AC clarifications of plan mandates constitute binding amendments to the plan text, making them presumptively legitimate sources of counterplan competition. (Merely saying that something is "normal means," however, does not make it a mandate, and thus is presumptively not a legitimate source of CP competition.)

2. My defaults are that conditionality is a.) an all-or-nothing thing and b.) is good. However, I have become increasingly open to contestation of either premise.

3. Plan vagueness is out of control, especially in high school, and I will gladly vote Neg on that, either as a voting issue in-itself or smart circumvention arguments or DA links about the way in which the vague plan would be most likely interpreted and applied.

4. Counterplan vagueness is also out of control. If your CP text boils down to, e.g., "do innovation" rather than outlining a mechanism for how to bolster innovation, and the Affirmative points out that that is meaningless, I will agree with the Aff.

5. Kritiks: By default I assume that the K is not a DA plus a CP and that therefore the debate is a referendum on whatever the Link/Alt is critiquing, e.g. the Aff's reps, epistemology, political paradigm, etc. I can be convinced of plan focus/FW-no Ks, particularly if it is grounded in arguments about the resolutional burden of proof and the Negative's reciprocal burden of rejoinder, though meeting in the middle is often the path of less resistance. I am also willing to adopt very Neg-friendly frameworks, e.g. 'you link you lose,' but with the proper Aff responses I will find them ultimately unpersuasive. Absent Aff FW arguments that render them applicable ('pragmatism good,' for instance, or arguments about reciprocity of burdens), I do not intuitively understand why arguments like 'movements fail,' 'transition wars,' 'alt not feasible / no one is persuaded,' etc. would be relevant considerations--but with them, I do.

Argument Defaults - K Affs

5. K Affs: I prefer that the Affirmative be "topical" slash affirm the resolution. I am pretty good for topical K Affs, insofar as I think that there is substantial room for play regarding what topical AFFIRMATION means/entails, and that the wording of the resolution does not necessarily prescribe that topical "affirmation" take the form of defending the narrow causal desirability of implementing a specific topical policy proposal.

However, if your approach when reading a K Aff is to impact turn topicality, the part I struggle with is how debate can be workable once we have left the resolution behind. To deal with this, please speak DIRECTLY to that question in some manner in the 2AR -- whether by explicitly saying that it's better for debate not to be workable, explaining why it will not become unworkable, clearly defending some alternative limiting principle for what the Affirmative win condition is in place of the resolution, or something else -- AND have that be clearly traceable to arguments you set up in the 2AC and 1AR.

6. Framework v. K Affs: I do find there to be a meaningful difference between "topicality," i.e. the Affirmative must affirm the resolution and did not, and "framework," i.e. the Affirmative did not debate or affirm in the specific manner the Neg would have liked for them to. It would behoove the Neg to leverage those differences in response to Aff offense that presumes the latter or blurs the line.

I find "fairness" unpersuasive as a terminal impact. However, this is primarily a function of Negatives explaining it poorly, because I am extremely compelled by the argument that an axiomatic precondition for debate to operate is that the Affirmative must meet their burden of proof arising from the resolution, and that until they do so there is no logical basis for the Negative having any burden of rejoinder. All of which is to say: definitely feel free to go for fairness, BUT please take care to explain why it logically precedes everything else, AND to explicitly no-link the Aff's various lines of offense, rather than just making assertions about "procedural fairness."

Alternatively: feel free to say whatever "substantive" FW offense you'd like--I do find link turns to K Affs to often be truer than the K Affs themselves--BUT please do not just assert words like "clash" or "second and third level testing" without explication of what exactly you mean, why it is unique to your model of debate/foreclosed by the Aff's, and what the impact is; AND be aware that in so doing, you run the risk of making Aff impact turns LINK which otherwise would not.

I generally do not care about "T version," except insofar as it is explained in terms of what SPECIFIC lines of Affirmative offense are solved by the being able to read the Aff topically. (For example: "we need to go to X section of the library" is probably solved by T version, and arguably solved BETTER insofar as that model preserves a stronger ability and competitive incentive to dig into that issue than does the Aff's model). I DO think that that if a given Aff is COMPATIBLE with topical affirmation, that makes it easy to moot all of their offense while retaining a clear net benefit by saying that they should've have simply read the same Aff TOPICALLY (in essence, the same function that "T version" plays in a T debate vs. a policy Aff). In contrast, K Affs which are INcompatible with topical affirmation is generally better dealt with in front of me by "do it on the Neg" rather than a TVA.

Correspondingly: I tend to think that the best K Affs are centered not on K's of the resolution or topical Affs, but of BEING TOPICAL slash a model of topical debate--in which case the Neg will need to win that their model of debate is better, and a T version will only be useful in very specific, isolated instances for specific reasons.

I am a debate coach at Little Rock Central. Please put both on the email chain: jkieklak@gmail.com; lrchdebatedocs@gmail.com

General

You do you. Let it rip. Seriously. A judge does not exist without the debaters, and I view my role as a public servant necessary only to resolve arguments in a round to help empower young people to engage in meaningful discourse. I believe that it is important for me to be honest about the specific things I believe about common debate arguments, but also I find it more important to ensure I am prepared for debaters to persuade me away from those beliefs/biases. Specifically, I believe that my role is to listen, flow, and weigh the arguments offered in the round how I am persuaded to weigh them by each team. I will listen to and evaluate any argument. It is unacceptable to do anything that is: ableist, anti-feminist, anti-queer, racist, or violent.

I think debates have the lowest access to education when the judge must intervene. I can intervene as little as possible if you:

1) Weigh your impacts and your opponents' access to risk/impacts in the debate. One team probably is not most persuasive/ahead of the other team on every single argument. That needs to be viewed as a strength rather than a point of anxiety in the round. Do not be afraid to explain why you don't actually need to win certain arguments/impacts in lieu of "going for" the most persuasive arguments that resolve the most persuasive/riskiest impacts.

2) Actively listen and use your time wisely. Debaters miss each other when distracted/not flowing or listening. This seems to make these teams more prone to missing/mishandling arguments by saying things like, "'x' disad, they dropped it. Extend ____ it means ____;" yet, in reality, the other team actually answered the argument through embedded clash in the overview or answered it in a way that is unorthodox but also still responsive/persuasive.

3) Compare evidence and continuously cite/extend your warrants in your explanations/refutation/overall argumentation. Responses in cross that cite an individual warrant or interrogate their opponents' warrants are good ethos builders and are just in general more persuasive, same in speeches.

Policy Affirmatives

Go for it. Your pathway to solving a significant harm that is inherent to the status quo with some advantageous, topical plan action is entirely up to you. There are persuasive arguments about why it is good to discuss hypothetical plan implementation. I do not have specific preferences about this, but I am specifically not persuaded when a 2a pivot undercovers/drops the framework debate in an attempt to weigh case/extend portions of case that aren't relevant unless the aff wins framework. I have not noticed any specific thresholds about neg strats against policy affs.

Kritikal Affirmatives

Go for it. Your pathway/relationship to the resolution is entirely up to you. I think it’s important for any kritikal affirmative (including embedded critiques of debate) to wins its method and theory of power, and be able to defend that the method and advocacy ameliorates some impactful harm. I think it’s important for kritkal affirmatives (when asked) to be able to articulate how the negative side could engage with them; explain the role of the negative in the debate as it comes up, and, if applicable, win framework or a methods debate. I don't track any specific preferences. Note: Almost all time that I am using to write arguments and coach students is to prepare for heg/policy debates; I understand if you prefer someone in the back of the room that spends a majority of their time either writing kritikal arguments or coaching kritikal debate.

Framework

This is all up to how it develops in round. I figure that this often starts as a question of what is good for debate through considerations of education, fairness, and/or how a method leads to an acquisition/development of portable skills. It doesn't have to start or end in any particular place. The internal link and impact are up to you. If the framework debate becomes a question of fairness, then it's up to you to tell me what kind of fairness I should prioritize and why your method does or does not access it/preserve it/improve it. I vote for and against framework, and I haven't tracked any specific preferences or noticed anything in framework debate that particularly persuades me.

Off

Overall, I think that most neg strats benefit from quality over quantity. I find strategies that are specific to an aff are particularly persuasive (beyond just specific to the overall resolution, but also specific to the affirmative and specific cites/authors/ev). In general, I feel pretty middle of the road when it comes to thresholds. I value organization and utilization of turns, weighing impacts, and answering arguments effectively in overviews/l-b-l.

Other Specifics and Thresholds, Theory

• Perms: Be ready to explain how the perm works (more than repeating "it's perm do 'X'"). Why does the perm resolve the impacts? Why doesn't the perm link to a disad?

• T: Normal threshold if the topicality impacts are about the implications for future debates/in-round standards. High threshold for affs being too specific and being bad for debate because neg doesn't have case debate. If I am in your LD pool and you read Nebel, then you're giving me time to answer my texts, update a list of luxury items I one day hope to acquire, or simply anything to remind myself that your bare plurals argument isn't 'prolific.'

• Case Debate: I am particularly persuaded by effective case debate so far this year on the redistribution topic. Case debate seems underutilized from an "find an easy way to the ballot" perspective.

• Disclosure is generally good, and also it's ok to break a new aff as long as the aff is straight up in doing so. There are right and wrong ways to break new. Debates about this persuade me most when located in questions about education.

• Limited conditionality feels right, but really I am most interested in how these theory arguments develop in round and who wins them based on the fairness/education debate and tech.

• Please do not drop condo or some other well-extended/warranted theory argument on either side of the debate. Also, choosing not to engage and rely on the ethos of extending the aff is not a persuasive way to handle 2NRs all in on theory.

TOC Requested Update for Congress (April 2023)

General

Be your best self. My ranks reflect who I believe did the best debating in the round (and in all prelims when I parli).

The best debaters are the ones that offer a speech that is appropriately contextualized into the debate the body is having about a motion. For sponsors/first negs, this means the introduction of framing and appropriate impacts so that the aff/neg speakers can build/extend specific impact scenarios that outweigh the opposing side's impacts. Speeches 3-10 or 3-12 (depending on the round) should be focused on introducing/weighing impacts (based on where you are in the round and where your side is on impact weighing) and refutations (with use of framing) on a warrant/impact level. I value structured refutations like turns, disadvantages, presumption, PICs (amendments), no solvency/risk, etc. The final two speeches should crystallize the round by offering a clear picture as to why the aff/neg speakers have been most persuasive and why the motion should carry or fail.

The round should feel like a debate in that each speaker shall introduce, refute, and/or weigh the core of the affirmative and negative arguments to persuade all other speakers on how they should vote on a pending motion.

Other TOC Requested Congress Specifics/Randoms

• Arguments are claim, warrant, impact/justification and data when necessary. Speeches with arguments lacking one or more of these will not ever be rewarded highly, no matter how eloquent the speech. It is always almost more persuasive to provide data to support a warrant.

• Impacts should be specific and never implied.

• Presiding officers should ensure as many speeches as possible. The best presiding officers are direct, succinct, courteous, organized, and transparent. Presiding officers shall always be considered for ranks, but ineffective presiding is the quickest way to a rank 9 (or lower).

• More floor debaters are experimenting with parliamentary procedure. Love it, but debaters will be penalized for misapplications of the tournament's bylaws and whichever parliamentary guide is the back up.

• Nothing is worse in floor debate than repetition, which is different than extending/weighing.

• Decorum should reflect effective communication. Effective communication in debate often includes an assertive tone, but read: folx should always treat each other with dignity and respect.

Arkansas Debate

Woo Pig. I am not here to force you to capitulate a paradigm that you find in someway oppressive to what your coach is teaching you to do. I will drop you for clipping/cheating, and I do not reward (and will rank low in congress) bad/no arguments even if they sound as rhetorically smooth as Terry Rose and Gary Klaff singing "Oh, Arkansas."

The only things you really need to know:
1. If you berate, threaten, verbally or physically attack your opponents, I will end the debate and you'll receive a loss along with the lowest points Tabroom will allow me to assign.
2. Don't endorse self-harm.
3. Arguments admissible for adjudication include everything said from when the 1AC timer starts until the 2AR timer ends. Anything else is irrelevant.

4. I'm unlikely to vote for hidden dropped one line theory arguments. Hidden ASPEC, new affs bad, severance in a voting issue, X random CP type is bad etc. I accept that my commitment to the idea judges should assess debates as technically as possible and this notion might seem contradictory but big debates coming down to these types of arguments makes the activity worse and detracts from my belief that hard work is what should be rewarded.

Other than that, do what you do best. Technical debating is more likely to result in you winning than anything else.

I am a coach at The Harker School. Other conflicts: Texas, Emory, Liberal Arts and Science Academy, St Vincent de Paul, Bakersfield High School.

Email Chain: yes, cardstealing@gmail.com

You will receive a speaker point bump if you give your final rebuttal without the use of a laptop. I will give higher points to speeches with errors/pauses/inconsistencies etc. where the speaker debates off their flows than speeches that sound crystal clear and perfect but are delivered without the speaker looking up from their computer screen. If you flow off your laptop I will use my best judgement to assess the extent to which you're delivering arguments in such a way that demonstrates you have flowed the debate.

Ultimately, do what you do best. Giving speeches you're comfortable with is almost certainly a better path to victory than attempting to adapt to any of this stuff below. Debate is extremely hard and requires immense amounts of works. I will try to give you the same level of effort that I know you've put in.

Debate is an activity about persuasion and communication. If I can't understand your argument because what you are saying because you are unclear, haven't explained it, or developed it into a full argument-claim, warrant, impact, it likely won't factor in my decision.

The winner will nearly always be the team able to identify the central question of the debate first and most clearly trace how the development of their argument means they're ahead on that central question.

Virtually nothing you can possibly say or do will offend me [with the new above caveat] if you can't beat a terrible argument you probably deserve to lose.

Framework- Fairness is both an internal link and an impact. Debate is a game but its also so much more. Go for T/answer T the way that makes most sense to you, I'll do my best to evaluate the debate technically.

Counter-plans-

-spamming permutations, particular ones that are intrinsic, without a text and with no explanation isn't a complete argument. [insert perm text fine, insert counter plan text is not fine].

-pretty neg on "if it competes, its legitimate." Aff can win these debates by explaining why theory and competition should be separated and then going for just one in the 2ar. the more muddled you make this, the better it usually is for the neg.

-non-resolutional theory is rarely if ever a reason to reject the team. Generally don't think its a reason to reject the argument either.

-I'm becoming increasingly poor for conditionality bad as a reason to reject the team. This doesn't mean you shouldn't say in the 2ac why its bad but I've yet to see a speech where the 2AR convinced me the debate has been made irredeemably unfair or un-educational due to the status of counter plans. I think its possible I'd be more convinced by the argument that winning condo is bad means that the neg is stuck with all their counter plans and therefore responsible for answering any aff offense to those positions. This can be difficult to execute/annoying to do, but do with that what you will.

Kritiks

-affs usually lose these by forgetting about the case, negs usually lose these when they don't contextualize links to the 1ac. If you're reading a policy aff that clearly links, I'll be pretty confused if you don't go impact turns/case outweighs.

-link specificity is important - I don't think this is necessarily an evidence thing, but an explanation thing - lines from 1AC, examples, specific scenarios are all things that will go a long way

-these are almost always just framework debates these days but debaters often forget to explain the implications winning their interpretation has on the scope of competition. framework is an attempt to assign roles for proof/rejoinder and while many of you implicitly make arguments about this, the more clear you can be about those roles, the better.

-i'm less likely to think "extinction outweighs, 1% risk" is as good as you think it is, most of the time the team reading the K gives up on this because they for some reason think this argument is unbeatable, so it ends up mattering in more rfds than it should

LD -

I have been judging LD for a year now. The policy section all applies here.

Tech over truth but, there's a limit - likely quite bad for tricks - arguments need a claim, warrant and impact to be complete. Dropped arguments are important if you explain how they implicate my decision. Dropped arguments are much less important when you fail to explain the impact/relevance of said argument.

RVIs - no, never, literally don't. 27 ceiling. Scenario: 1ar is 4 minutes of an RVI, nr drops the rvi, I will vote negative within seconds of the timer ending.

Policy/K - both great - see above for details.

Phil - haven't judged much of this yet, this seems interesting and fine, but again, arguments need a claim, warrant and impact to be complete arguments.

Arguments communicated and understood by the judge per minute>>>>words mumbled nearly incomprehensibly per minute.

Unlikely you'll convince me the aff doesn't get to read a plan for topicality reasons. K framework is a separate from this and open to debate, see policy section for details.

PF -

If you read cards they must be sent out via email chain with me attached or through file share prior to the speech. If you reference a piece of evidence that you haven't sent out prior to your speech, fine, but I won't count it as being evidence. You should never take time outside of your prep time to exchange evidence - it should already have been done.

"Paraphrasing" as a substitute for quotation or reading evidence is a bad norm. I won't vote on it as an ethics violation, but I will cap your speaker points at a 27.5.

I realize some of you have started going fast now, if everyone is doing that, fine. However, adapting to the norms of your opponents circuit - i.e. if they're debating slowly and traditionally and you do so as well, will be rewarded with much higher points then if you spread somebody out of the room, which will be awarded with very low points even if you win.

Please put me on the chain: debate@sarahlim.com, interlakescouting@googlegroups.com (high school), debatedocs@googlegroups.com (college)

Interlake '14, Northwestern '18, affiliated with both as of 2023–24. Fairly minimal HS involvement, actively researching/coaching the college nukes topic. she/her

• I am something of a curmudgeon (”old man yells at cloud”), more truth > tech, and extremely persuaded by argumentative rigor. I really do not want to vote for stupid arguments. I want us all to elevate the standard of this activity.
• Please slow down from your top speed, especially on topicality/theory/CP texts, and especially if you're debating online. I flow on paper by listening to the speech, not by following along in the doc. I will "clear" your analytics to a reasonable extent, but I will not vote on theory I cannot flow, and I will not backfill my flow by reading your doc to compensate for your lack of clarity.
• Presumption goes to the status quo, then the aff.
• The 2NR's job is to decide what to go for. I will judge kick the counterplan/fiated counteradvocacy if and only if the 2NR instructs me to do so, and the 2AR drops this argument. Just saying some variation of “the 2NR’s job is to decide what to go for” is usually enough.
• I detest intimidation, rudeness, or snark regardless of your argument content.
• I will not use my ballot to adjudicate non-falsifiable events that occurred outside the round. For in-round behavioral accusations that are debated out (rather than stopping the round), I reserve the right to evaluate these arguments using something other than offense-defense.

Administrative

• Please time your own speeches and prep.
• If you give your final rebuttal without a computer I will award +0.3 speaker points.
• I can’t believe this has to be said: please explicitly kick offcase positions you are not extending in the block/2NR. If you do not do this, the aff can leverage this on conditionality, or at the very least as a reason the world of the 2NR is incoherent.
• I attempt to line up arguments on my flow, rather than simply flowing straight down. Ideally these orderings will coincide, but oftentimes they do not, e.g. if you jump around, skip arguments, only flow off the doc, or otherwise mess up the numbering. When misalignments occur, I waste time trying to figure out where to flow you, and miss more of your arguments. Therefore, number/skip around at your own peril.
  • Given the precarity of numbering schemes, I find it much easier to flow debaters who label the arguments they are answering, either explicitly ("2AC 4 is 'alt fails'") or via embedded clash ("1NC 4: yes China war")
• Rehighlightings must be read out loud. I will not evaluate anything “inserted” into the debate unless it is talked about in the speech.

Affirmatives

• Claiming durable fiat is a prerogative, but not an obligation, of the affirmative.
• I believe the aff gets to make permutations by default, regardless of framework or the nature of the 1AC advocacy. I am open to debates about what kinds of permutations are theoretically legitimate depending on the context, e.g. intrinsicness tests, competing methods, etc.
• Permutations are tests of competition, not advocacies; as a result, they are not offense and do not require net benefits. All permutation texts must be read (they cannot simply be inserted in the doc).

Disadvantages and internal NBs

• I believe that DAs and internal net benefits should be opportunity costs to the plan, and that this produces the fairest and most educational form of debate. Pet peeve: It’s not an “intrinsic perm”, it’s an “intrinsicness perm”, because it tests whether the neg’s offense is intrinsic to the plan. It also makes no sense to say “intrinsicness is a voting issue”, if you wanted to defend the negative should get non-intrinsic offense, the voting issue would be ”intrinsicness perms are illegitimate.”
• Most agenda politics 1NCs are incomplete arguments, and more affirmative teams should leverage the holes. “Plan popular” is link defense, not offense. “Winners win” can be offense. However, it is also a label that gets slapped onto a litany of different internal links. Some (e.g. Singer 9) require the plan be unpopular to count as a win. Others (e.g. Hirsch 13, Waldman 20) don’t really care about the direction of the link. I genuinely can’t tell what Kane 21 wants.

Counterplans

• I am extremely persuaded by analytic common-sense solvency deficits to absurd advantage CPs.
• For counterplans that compete only on "should = immediate and certain" (offsets, sunsets, recommendations, or your exciting new strategy that somehow still reads Summers 94 in the 2NC), assuming competent execution by both teams, the affirmative should almost always win my ballot. I find myself voting for these CPs due to aff execution errors, not because I find them in any way compelling.
• Textual competition is an utterly inane argument because that is not how words work in mainstream American English. Easy litmus test: if the plan says “do X” and the 2NR goes for DA/case, you are functionally going for “CP: don’t do X” which obviously represents an opportunity cost but would not be textually competitive. There are always better arguments for why a CP is illegitimate. The one exception is that this is sometimes a valid negative interpretation: for example, I can think of some topic-specific word PICs of terms of art that would be textually but not functionally competitive, with valid reasons why I should prefer certain language in the context of the aff's policymaking.
• Solvency deficits must be impacted and quantified. Corollary: you don’t need to tell me to use “sufficiency framing,” which is a three-steps-of-telephone mangling of the observation that CPs are tests of the plan’s necessity. This is like going to a DA and saying “evaluate this page using impact framing: if the negative impact outweighs the affirmative’s offense, vote negative.”

Kritiks

• I have a higher bar for the quality and execution of critical arguments. I am a very good judge for well-researched, novel/innovative Ks debated technically without much reliance on blocks. Otherwise zzzZZZZ
• Please be cognizant of your subject position as it relates to your arguments, and debate with the corresponding self-awareness.
• K vs. K rounds should maximize clash; these can be some of the most interesting positions to write.
• I think critical education is valuable and teams are unlikely to convince me otherwise. That being said, to quote Patrick Kennedy's philosophy, "I am interested in learning some things, but I am not interested in deciphering incoherent nonsense. I am not a nihilist, and I think 'things' are generally better than 'not things.' Ontology critiques are very interesting, for example, when articulated effectively. If you want to read the script of Dude, Where's My Car and claim it was an ontological critique, I don't think you want me to judge you. I guess you could win, but I think I hate you."

Topicality

• “Plantext in a vacuum” is incredibly silly because it implies I should reinterpret the words in the plan differently across different parts of the debate, which makes absolutely no sense as either a procedural locus or model of standard American English communication.
• For procedural impacts, I find clash and education more persuasive than fairness by default.
• I am unlikely to reject a team solely for being extra-topical.
• I evaluate “we meet” as a yes/no question. However, there are straightforward W/Ms and oblique W/Ms. Affirmatives depending on the latter would be advised to extend other offense in the 1AR. (Litmus test: suppose you were reading the negative’s interpretation as your own counter-interpretation. If the 2AC would include an additional line for “we meet our C/I” because it’s not blatantly obvious, then it’s an oblique W/M.)

Theory

• Please answer theory on the correct flows. These flow(s) should be present in the roadmap even if you are only answering theory and/or kicking (see above). Example: If the 2AC reads conditionality bad on the States CP and you answer it halfway through your K 2NC, whose roadmap did not include the states CP, that is not the correct flow.
• "C/I: we get what we did" is so annoying. I guess I'll vote for it, but like, why not just say conditionality is good??

Miscellany

• I think that teams often view conditionality as a blank check to make contradictory arguments, as long as they occur on different flows. I do not have substantive theoretical objections to this (assuming the neg is winning conditionality good, of course). However, debate is partly a persuasive activity, and when I hear a negative block consisting of diametrically opposed positions, I find it undermines the persuasiveness of the speech on both sides of the issue and becomes susceptible to 1AR strategic exploitation.

Emory ’26. Calvert Hall ’22. Yes, email chain: lcsrlobo@gmail.com. Chain should be named “Tournament -- Round # -- AFF Team vs Neg Team.”

Must read: Do line-by-line, judge instruction, warrant arguments, and narrow the debate as it progresses. Any ideological preference can be overcome by good debating. Do not overadapt; going for an argument that your judge goes/went for can often hurt you more than it helps. Led a lab at the DDI but haven’t done any research since then, so do not assume I know seemingly obvious terms or acronyms that evolved throughout the year. Inserting rehighlights is fine. I really don’t want to vote for dropped, arbitrary theory arguments. If you introduce an ethics violation you must stake the debate on it. Tech > truth on most everything that isn’t death good or clearly problematic.

Update 1/27: I have judged way too many debates that involve both teams spewing economic concepts with no explanation of what they mean, why they are true, etc. Please do not do this!

T: persuaded by reasonability when impact/internal link differentials are tiny, less receptive when big. “Good is good enough” alone doesn’t make much sense. Include caselists, do impact comparison, and answer defensive arguments contextual to your interp. It matters a lot to me that every word is counter defined but it matters more that a non-counter defined word has a concrete limits/ground case attached to it.

CPs: No judge kick unless told to. Evidence quality and impacted deficits matter lots. Links less is usually unpersuasive, sufficiency framing usually is. Condo- numerical interps are arbitrary, logic + risk aversion make sense to me, and fairness by default outweighs education. Substance > theory, but if you do go for theory slow down and answer arguments.

DAs: Relative risk precedes and determines turns case. Cards aren’t necessary if logical defense beats a DA, but I’d prefer ev if you have it. Love the politics DA.

Ks: I find myself voting for the team that best compartmentalizes the moving parts of the debate. I want framework to be as much of a wash as possible- “no Ks” and “you link you lose” are equally unpersuasive, so winning alt solves, impact outweighs, or links turn case claims are the path of least resistance in front of me. That's not to say I won't vote on framework, especially if large swaths of offense are dropped/mis-answered. Links should be somewhat unique and include rehighlights/pull lines. Am more persuaded by “aff outweighs” than the perm/link turn unless the alt is fiated. I am fundamentally unpersuaded to one-sentence 'role of the judge' and 'role of the ballot' arguments other than deciding who did the better debating and submitting it to tabroom, respectively. These arguments are often better explained as pieces of framework offense.

Planless: Anything can be an impact (aff or neg) contingent on comparison and turns case. Extremely persuaded by SSD and TVA when contextualized to AFF offense. It’s hard to toe the line between C/I + link turn and impact turn, so picking one or the other is best. KvK debates almost always come down to the perm, so win a theoretical objection (meh) or material DA (better) to it.

Nick Loew - GMU'24 - 4x NDT qualifier, 1x NDT Doubles

nickloew14@gmail.com

I have primarily read 'policy' arguments; however, you should read whatever arguments you are most comfortable with and want to go for. None of my opinions about debate are so significant that they overdetermine deciding who won based on the individual debate in front of me.

Tech > Truth. Complete arguments require warrants.

I appreciate debaters who are simultaneously serious and kind. Being rude or condescending to your opponents will earn you lower speaks than you're probably hoping for.

T - I enjoy well-researched and substantive topicality debates. On the other hand I dislike contrived and unpredictable interpretations that are arbitrary in nature. (T LPR on the HS immigration topic > T substantial on the college alliances topic).

T vs K Affs - I almost always was on the neg going for T in these debates. The aff can win by either presenting a counterinterpretation that seeks to solve the negs offense alongside impact turns to the negs model or impact turns alone. For me I will say that the latter is more difficult as I struggle to vote aff when there is no counterinterp extended in the 2AR to solve some amount of limits/ground.

CPs - I'm alright for most process garbage. Although, I really enjoy specific process CPs that include topic/aff specific evidence. In competition debates I lean affirmative when there is equal debating and the neg has presented a CP that competes based off of certainty or immediacy.

Ks - I like Ks with links to the plan and alternatives that attempt to solve an impact compared to Ks that rely entirely on framework strategies. That being said, I have still voted for positions that were solely critiques of plan-focus or fiat for example.

Theory - Generally I believe that conditionality is good.

If you have any specific questions feel free to email me.

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Lincoln Douglas:

I strongly believe in affirmative disclosure.

Theory: I am mostly unfavorable towards/dislike one sentence theory arguments that seem and are arbitrary in nature. Furthermore, I am unlikely to believe that most theory arguments aside from condo are reasons to reject the debater (ex: solvency advocate theory/states theory/agent CPs etc… is not a reason to reject the team).

Please attempt to be clear. I have found this to be a problem more often in LD likely because of the short speech times.

FAQ: (Nearly identical to Jasmine Stidham's thoughts)

Q:I primarily read policy (or LARP) arguments, should I pref you?

A: Yes.

Q: I read a bunch of tricks/meta-theory/a prioris/paradoxes, should I pref you?

A: No thank you. (This is starting to change insofar that my willingness to vote for these arguments is increasing).

Q: I read phil, should I pref you?

A: I'm not ideologically opposed to phil arguments like I am with tricks. I do not judge many phil debates. You may need to do some policy translation/over-explanation however so I understand exactly what you're saying. (I'm working on getting better at judging these debates!)

Q: I really like Nebel T, should I pref you?

A: Avoid reading evidence from debate blogs. If you'd like to make a similar argument, just find non-Nebel articles. This applies to most debate coach evidence read in LD. T whole-rez generally is fine.

Q: I like to make theory arguments like 'must spec status' or 'must include round reports for every debate' or 'aspec' should I pref you?

A: Not if those arguments are your idea of a round-winning strategy. I am annoyed by strategies that rely on your opponent dropping analytics that weren't sent in the document.

Q: RVIs? No 1AR theory?

A: Nope. Never.

**standard operating procedure: 1) yes, if you are using an e-mail chain for speech docs, I would like to be on it: mikaela.malsin@gmail.com. The degree to which I look at them varies wildly depending on the round; I will often check a couple of cards for my own comprehension (because y'all need to slow down) during prep or sometimes during a heated cross-ex, but equally often I don't look at them at all. 2) After the debate, please compile all evidence that *you believe* to be relevant to the decision and e-mail them to me. I will sort through to decide which ones I need to read. A card is relevant if it was read and extended on an issue that was debated in the final rebuttals.

updated pre-Shirley, 2013 

Background: I debated for four years at Emory, completed my M.A. in Communication and coached at Wake Forest, and am now in my 2nd year of the Ph.D. program at Georgia.

global thoughts: I take judging very seriously and try very hard to evaluate only the arguments in a given debate, in isolation from my own beliefs. I'm not sure that I'm always successful. I'm not sure that the reverse is true either.  In the limited number of "clash" debates that I've judged, my decisions have been based on the arguments and not on predispositions based on my training, how I debated, or how my teams debate. 

speaker points: I will use the following scale, which (while obviously arbitrary to some degree)  I think is pretty consistent with how I've assigned points in the past and what I believe to represent the role of speaker points in debate. I have never assigned points based on whether I think a team "should clear" or "deserves a speaker award" because I don't judge the rest of the field in order to make that determination, I judge this particular debate. EDIT: I think the scale published for the Shirley is very close to what I was thinking here.

Below 27.5: The speaker has demonstrated a lack of  basic communication. 

27.5-27.9: The speaker demonstrates basic debate competency and argumentation skills. Some areas need substantial improvement.

28.0-28.4: The speaker demonstrates basic argumentation skills and a good grasp on the issues of importance in the debate. Usually shows 1-2 moments of strong strategic insight or macro-level debate vision, but not consistently. 

28.5-28.9: Very solid argumentative skills, grasps the important issues in the debate, demonstrates consistent strategic insight.

29-29.5: Remarkable argumentative skills, understands and synthesizes the key issues in the debate, outstanding use of cross-ex and/or humor.

29.6-29.9: The speaker stands out as exceptionally skilled in all of the above areas.

30: Perfection.

Critical arguments: My familiarity is greater than it used to be but by no means exhaustive.  I think  that the "checklist" probably matters on both sides.

Topicality: I believe in "competing interpretations" with the caveat that I think if the aff can win sufficient defense and a fair vision of the topic (whether or not it is couched in an explicit C/I of every word), they can still win. In other words: the neg should win not only a big link, but also a big impact. 

CP’s: Yes. The status quo is always a logical option, which means the CP can still go away after the round. (Edit: I am willing to stick the negative with the CP if the aff articulates, and the neg fails to overcome, a reason why.) Presumption is toward less change from the status quo. 

DA’s: Big fan. At the moment, I probably find myself slightly more in the “link first” camp, but uniqueness is certainly still important. There CAN be zero risk of an argument, but it is rare. More often, the risk is reduced to something negligible that fails to outweigh the other team's offense (edit: this last sentence probably belongs in the all-time "most obvious statements" Judge Philosophy Hall of Fame). 

Theory: RANT is the default. Probably neg-leaning on most issues, but I do think that we as a community may be letting the situation get a little out of control in terms of the numbers and certain types of CP’s. I think literature should guide what we find to be legitimate to the extent that that is both possible and beneficial. 

Good for speaker points: Strategic use of cross-examination, evidence of hard work, jokes about Kirk Gibson (edit: these must be funny) 

Bad for speaker points: Rudeness, lack of clarity, egregious facial hair.

Important: I'm completely deaf in my left ear. This makes it hard to hear you, and it also makes it extra hard to distinguish background noises from voices. The clearer and louder team will often have a significant advantage debating in front of me. Speed: I don't mind speed, but I find it pretty rare that high schoolers are both clear and fast. Which would you prefer, saying 1000 things I can't understand, or saying 100 I can?

Overview: I am open to any compelling and well-articulated argument as to why the game should be played a certain way.

Novices: if you don't roadmap, I will flow straight down and then do my best / flip a coin at the end.

C-X: I don't flow it, but I will pay close attention for speaker-points purposes. Likewise, I think it can be binding if you articulate why it should be.

Style: In my youth I liked full K debates, in my old age I prefer policy. But it's not because I dislike Ks—I just enjoy a techy, hyper-specific policy round most of all. Keep in mind that my knowledge of K literature is well out-of-date with what is fashionable, and even if it weren't, I'm not going to do the work for you by filling arguments that I understand even though you are not explaining them correctly or at all.

she/her

minneapolis south '22

dartmouth '26

annabelledebate@gmail.com

Topic specific:

I do not know anything about this topic! You will have to explain things a bit more than you would like to if I'm judging you at a camp tournament.

I will not evaluate out of round anything - I'm not here to pass moral judgment on the character of any debater.

Top level notes:

I debated for four years at Minneapolis South - policy on the aff and a mix of policy and critical on the negative. I was a 2N through junior year and a 2A senior year. Speed is fine.

T stuff:

I love a good T debate - my favorite T impacts will always and forever be predictability and precision - that being said I will vote on anything if debated well.

Counterplans:

Counterplan/DA debates are my favorite - I think I’m both more willing to vote on perms and more willing to vote on internal net benefits than the average judge so take that how you will

Process counterplans annoy me! I will vote on them but I'll be annoyed about it

Advantage counterplans are awesome - big fan of those debates

DAs:

Politics makes me want to scream but I recognize that it's not your fault - you're going to have to do a lot of explaining about why this specific policy messes up PC or whatever though because this DA probably makes no sense and I don't want to do the work for you

Aff specific DAs are way more fun for me to judge than anything else - always my preference if you have the option

Ks:

I'll completely resolve framework before deciding the rest of the debate.

Contextualize your links to the aff!!! Pull lines, reference specific aff mechanisms, etc...

Every link should have an impact and should be solved by the alternative

Not super well versed in k lit but will do my best

Theory:

I like theory debates - I wouldn't say I'm particularly biased either direction - I'll try to evaluate what happens in the round

ASPEC is dumb - I'm willing to vote on it but you may see steam coming out of my ears if it makes it past the 1NC

Email: sofpiraino@gmail.com

Dartmouth Policy '27

Background: I debated LD for two years and PF for two years for McClintock High School in Arizona. I won the 2023 State Championship for LD and placed third in the state for Extemp in 2023. Additionally, I qualified four times for the Tournament of Champions and debated twice at Nationals.

TLDR:

-I'm a pretty open judge for whatever you want to read, go for it.

-I consider myself somewhere on the tech side of the tech/truth scale. I'm not going to vote for a sky-is-red type of arg just because it's dropped by the opponent, but excluding that type of situation, I vote on the flow.

-Explain your obscure lit to me, don't assume I know what you're talking about. Especially for a K debater.

-I love K debate (and have run Killjoy), if you're reading it I want to hear it.

-Fine with speed, just check with your opponent first.

-Don't use discriminatory or microaggressive arguments/behaviors. Period.

General:

-Framework, framework, framework. Defend your framework and link it to your impacting well. I like hearing new philosophy frameworks but expect you to explain it and its functionality in the round.

-Don't expect me to weigh your impacts for you, I promise you won't like the ballot.

-Slow down on your authors and tags, and flow these through the round (I won't flow your authors for you, tell me what evidence you're extending).

-Are you going to run tricks? Yes? Cool, I will drop you immediately. I will not hear "tricks good" out.

LARP/Policy:

-I find condo CPs iffy, and would prefer either unconditional or dispositional but I won't necessarily vote against you for a conditional CP.

-I will definitely hear you out on why a PIC is good, I don't personally have an issue with them. But, I will also hear the aff out on "anti-pic" if they choose to read it.

Theory:

-Run whatever you want (not frivolous, though).

-Theory should be the top layer of evaluation, but I won't explain/order this for you.

-I will hear you out if you go against disclosure theory.

K:

-I've run Killjoy, I am very comfortable hearing and evaluating K. Honestly, I prefer it.

-Label your K (link, impact, alt, rotb), it improves the clarity of your argument. If the organization isn't typical, please explain it.

-If you're going for a pre-fiat ROTB, still respond to the post-fiat framing.

-If you go for K v. K, make sure there is a genuine clash in the debate, or it will be very difficult to evaluate.

-I'm a big believer that the only absolute rule in debate is time, so if your position is unique, I am willing to hear it out.

Misc:

-Arguments or behaviors that are racist, sexist, homophobic or discriminatory in any form will result in immediate drops and lowest-possible speaks, I will not hear that out and will be letting the tournament directors and your coach know.

-If your opponent is brand-new or clearly doesn't have any familiarity with the arguments you're running, please try to make the round more accessible. We are here to improve the community, not hurt it.

-I won't put your time loading/sharing your speech docs on prep, but it should be within reason. I'm not going to punish you for bad wifi.

-Track your own prep and your opponents.

Feel free to email me with questions.

Georgetown '26

benjamin.sayers@gmail.com

If you want to say death good, strike me (note, this doesn't include spark, wipeout, or war good, just any argument that says VTL is negative so people should die).

I'm not interested in hearing a debate about stuff that happened out of round.

Barring everything above, I try to be as ideologically neutral as possible and minimize judge intervention.

K vs Policy Aff

I don't care what the substance of the K is as long as it is explained coherently. If the Neg clearly identifies what Aff assumptions they disagree with and explains why those assumptions are wrong and bad in such a way that outweighs the other team's offense, I'll vote on anything from the Cap K to Baudrillard.

Framework: I will never say "framework was a wash". If the Aff says I should only care about the plan's direct consequences and the neg says I should only care about the 1AC's assumptions, I will do one of those things. I will not construct a middle-ground interpretation unless either side explicitly forwards one.

K Affs vs T

Less good for K Affs vs T than Ks on the neg. My main barriers to voting Affirmative are usually that I don't know what debate/the role of the neg looks like sans a topic and I struggle to understand why most 2AC DAs/Impact turns are intrinsic to topicality.

The above comment mainly applies to 2AC strategies centered on rejecting the idea of a topic altogether. I am much better for Affs that creatively define words in the resolution and find intrinsic critiques of neg definitions.

Policy v Policy

2ACs on case get away with murder a lot, and I am very willing to punish a bad case 2AC. If the 2AC merely repeats 1AC claims while flippantly ignoring the warrants of 1NC evidence, I am very willing to zero the case regardless of what the 1AR and 2AR say.

I care a lot about evidence quality but only insofar as what the evidence says is contested. I will likely not read all the cards in the doc.

The neg probably needs a counterinterpretation in the plan text in a vacuum debate or other debates about how the judge should evaluate what the plan requires the aff to defend.

I'll go either way on judge-kick and inserting vs reading re-highlighted evidence.

Head Debate Coach - University of Georgia

jstupek8@gmail.com

Top Level

- Clarity and flowability are the strongest qualities that drive my speaker points. I encourage debaters to adopt speaking practices that enhance their flowability such as: structured line-by-line, slowing down when communicating plan or counterplan texts, emphasizing particularly important lines in the body of evidence, and descriptively labeling off-case positions in the 1NC.

- Arguments do not always need cards to be impactful. I care about logical analytic arguments, particularly those that are set up well in cross-examination.

- Plan and counterplan text vagueness is an under-exploited issue. As such, I'm likely more amenable to specification arguments than your average judge.

- While no judge is a true blank slate, I have and am willing to vote on basically anything.

Disads

- I begin resolving these debates by comparing the relative risk of the internal link chains of the disadvantage and the advantage(s) the 2AR went for. All things being equal, I frequently resolve these debates without turning to questions of impact comparison or impact interaction. The advice I often find myself giving after debates is that second rebuttalists should spend less time on traditional impact calculus or turns case arguments and more time making sure you win your advantage or disadvantage. Of course, all things are not always equal and second rebuttalists should point out when there's a tangible timeframe or magnitude distinction between impacts.

- Brink + link uniqueness is not an adequate substitute for traditional uniqueness and link claims.

- Always been a fan of agenda politics, probably always will be.

- For affirmatives reading framing arguments, your time is almost always better spent making substantive answers to the disadvantage rather than meta arguments about the complex nature of disadvantages.

Counterplans

- Please stop starting your counterplan 2ACs with consecutive permutation arguments delivered at top speed. This is the single most difficult thing to flow properly in my experience. The easiest fix here is to read cards in between each different permutation and slowing down when communicating perm texts.

- I have no inherent aversion to process counterplans. I think that at times these debates can be really interesting, especially when contextualized to the topic.

- I still believe in an abstract academic sense, that the benefits of conditionality outweigh its costs. This issue, however, is so rarely evenly debated that more affirmative teams should consider going for conditionality bad.

- My default view is that counterplan theory arguments that are not conditionality bad are reasons to reject the argument rather than reasons to reject the team. This presumption can be overcome, but the bar is high.

- My default view is that I will judge kick the counterplan and compare the aff vs. the status quo. I can and have been persuaded not to do so when the affirmative team advances that argument.

Topicality vs. Policy Affirmatives

- Including resolutional language in your plan text does not in and of itself persuade me the aff is topical.

- Caselists are incredibly useful for articulating just how under or over limiting a particular interpretation is.

- For affirmative teams, I would rather hear impacts about the benefits of a broader topic for affirmative innovation and flexibility than appeals to education about the affirmative's content. I am unlikely to be persuaded that I should reject a negative topicality interpretation because the affirmative would have a difficult time constructing solvency deficits to a particular counterplan under said interpretation. That argument seems to be a theoretical objection the counterplan rather than a topicality standard.

- Teams articulating a "precision" standard should take care to clearly explain what their threshold for a "precise" interpretation is, why their interpretation meets that threshold, and why the opposing team's interpretation does not.

Kritiks On The Neg

- I care about the alt quite a bit. Teams that have persuaded me to vote for kritiks have often done so on the basis of strong alt debating.

- The way "framework" arguments are currently deployed is somewhat puzzling to me. Most aff/neg framework standards seem to get more at the question of "how much" weight I should give to a particular impact than to whether I should consider a particular impact in the first place. I've never been persuaded that framework means I don't consider the merits of the 1AC. I've equally never been persuaded that framework means the alt has to be policy.

- Kritiks that derive their offense from the affirmative not doing enough or being too incremental are vulnerable to permutations.

- Alt causes are not link arguments. Link arguments are not "disads."

Planless Affirmatives

- I have been persuaded that the aff doesn't have to read a plan or say USFG should, but I have not encountered a situation where I have been persuaded that the aff doesn't have to be topical. Having some sort of counter-interpretation, even if it's just "resolved means to analyze," is important for how I ground and resolve aff arguments about the neg's interpretation. I want to hear in detail about what the affirmative's model of debate might look like. I would rather hear one or two conceptual impact turns to the negative's model, than eight different "DA's" that are difficult to distinguish between.

- For the negative, I would rather hear arguments about the value of procedural fairness than than some of the more "substantive" framework arguments.

- The vocabulary of "internal link" and "impact" is not particularly useful in a debate about theory. Certainly the negative needs to explain why fairness is a valuable concept, but that explanation does not have to involve the same kind of cause and effect logic chain we encounter in advantages or disadvantages. The "just an internal link" pejorative often applies just as well to arguments forwarded by the affirmative. As a whole, these debates would be so much better if no one used the words "impact," "internal link," or "disad."

Speaker Points

- I hesitate to offer some sort of static scale for speaks because I think that speaker points are relative and I am constantly reflecting on whether my speaker point distribution is in line with the rest of the judging community.

- Debaters who debate technically and make good strategic decisions will receive good points.

- Debaters who debate with style (humor, passionate rebuttals, exceptional clarity) will receive good points.

Closing Thoughts

If you've made it this far, I want to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for the work you do as debaters and coaches. I know how hard everyone works to prepare for debates and I strive to provide judging and feedback that lives up to that standard.

"As I look back at the contours of my own life, many things about it I would change if I could. But not this. The long hours, the demanding schedules, all that goes into effective debating and effective coaching, the lost weekends. I would do it all again. I would do it all again not for any particular tournament or trophy, not for the specifics of any topic, not even for the intellectual benefits debate bestows upon its participants, critical thinking and the like. I would do it all again for the chance to work with hard-working, dedicated, and committed students like those assembled in this room." - Scott Deatherage

If you are starting an email chain for the debate, I would like to be included on it: psusko@gmail.com

Default

Debate should be centered on the hypothetical world where the United States federal government takes action. I default to a utilitarian calculus and view arguments in an offense/defense paradigm.

Topicality

Most topicality debates come down to limits. This means it would be in your best interest to explain the world of your interpretation—what AFFs are topical, what negative arguments are available, etc—and compare this with your opponent’s interpretation. Topicality debates become very messy very fast, which means it is extremely important to provide a clear reasoning for why I should vote for you at the top of the 2NR/2AR.

Counterplans

Conditionality is good. I default to rejecting the argument and not the team, unless told otherwise. Counterplans that result in plan action are questionably competitive. In a world where the 2NR goes for the counterplan, I will not evaluate the status quo unless told to by the negative. The norm is for theory debates to be shallow, which means you should slow down and provide specific examples of abuse if you want to make this a viable option in the rebuttals. The trend towards multi-plank counterplans has hurt clarity of what CPs do to solve the AFF. I think clarity in the 1NC on the counterplan text and a portion of the negative block on the utility of each plank would resolve this. I am also convinced the AFF should be allowed to answer some planks in the 1AR if the 1NC is unintelligible on the text.

Disadvantages

I am willing to vote on a zero percent risk of a link. Vice versa, I am also willing to vote negative on presumption on case if you cannot defend your affirmative leads to more change than the status quo. Issue specific uniqueness is more important than a laundry list of thumpers. Rebuttals should include impact comparison, which decreases the amount of intervention that I need to do at the end of the debate.

Criticisms

I am not familiar with the literature, or terminology, for most criticisms. If reading a criticism is your main offensive argument on the negative, this means you’ll need to explain more clearly how your particular criticism implicates the affirmative’s impacts. For impact framing, this means explaining how the impacts of the criticism (whether it entails a VTL claim, epistemology, etc.) outweigh or come before the affirmative. The best debaters are able to draw links from affirmative evidence and use empirical examples to show how the affirmative is flawed. Role of the ballot/judge arguments are self-serving and unpersuasive.

Performance

In my eight years as a debater, I ran a policy affirmative and primarily went for framework against performance AFFs. The flow during performance debates usually gets destroyed at some point during the 2AC/block. Debaters should take the time to provide organizational cues [impact debate here, fairness debate here, accessibility debate here, etc.] in order to make your argument more persuasive. My lack of experience and knowledge with/on the literature base is important. I will not often place arguments for you across multiple flows, and have often not treated an argument as a global framing argument [unless explicitly told]. Impact framing and clear analysis help alleviate this barrier. At the end of the debate, I should know how the affirmative's advocacy operates, the impact I am voting for, and how that impact operates against the NEG.

Flowing

I am not the fastest flow and rely heavily on short hand in order to catch up. I am better on debates I am more familiar with because my short hand is better. Either way, debaters should provide organizational cues (i.e. group the link debate, I’ll explain that here). Cues like that give me flow time to better understand the debate and understand your arguments in relation to the rest of the debate.

Notes

Prep time continues until the jump drive is out of the computer / the email has been sent to the email chain. This won't affect speaker points, however, it does prolong the round and eliminate time that I have to evaluate the round.

I am not a fan of insert our re-highlighting of the evidence. Either make the point in a CX and bring it up in a rebuttal or actually read the new re-highlighting to make your argument.

The debaters that get the best speaker points in front of me are the ones that write my ballot for me in the 2NR/2AR and shape in their speeches how I should evaluate arguments and evidence.

Depth > Breadth

Dartmouth, Sonoma, Head Royce. He/him.

Email Chain

Add me: ant981228 at gmail dot com

College people, add: debatedocs at googlegroups dot com

Please include the tournament, round, and teams debating in the subject line of the email.

Key Things to Know

I will flow and vote based on the things you said. Negs can say whatever but the more it says the plan is bad the better. Conditionality and judge kick are good. Affs should be T and are likely to lose if they aren't. If you say death good you lose. If you ask for a 30 you will get a 25.

I do a lot of work during tournaments and will be tired on their last few days. I have found that this makes it harder for me to focus. To counteract this, I have gone back to flowing on paper, which I have found helps me process the debate as it is happening. You will benefit if you make my paper flowing life easier (give me time to flip the page, warn me if you're going to make an abnormally large number of arguments about part of the flow, tell me to make an overview or framework page if I need one, etc.).

Online

I STRONGLY prefer that all cameras be on whenever anyone in the debate is speaking, but I understand if internet or other considerations prevent this.

If my camera is off, assume I am away from my computer and don't start talking. If you start your speech while I am away from my computer you do not get to restart. That is on you.

Here is how to successfully adjust to the online setting:

1. Inflect more when you are talking.

2. Put your face in frame. Ideally, make it so you can see the judge.

3. Get a microphone, put it close to your face, talk into it, make sure there is an unobstructed line between it and your mouth.

4. Talk one at a time.

T/L

Tech determines truth unless it's death good. If you tell me to embrace death because life is bad I will vote against you even if you do not go for the argument. More broadly, all else being equal, I strongly prefer to solve problems without resorting to violence or force if possible.

Otherwise, unless my role as a judge is changed, I will attempt to make the least interventionary decision. This means:

1. I will identify the most important issues in the debate, decide them first based on the debating, then work outward.

2. What is conceded is absolutely true, but will only have the implications that you say it has. Unless something is explicitly said, conceded, and extended, or is an obvious and necessary corollary of something that is said, conceded, and extended, I will attempt to resolve it, rather than assuming it.

3. I will intervene if there is no non-interventionary decision.

4. I will attempt to minimize the scope of my intervention by simplifying the decision-making process. I would prefer to decide fewer issues. If an issue seems hard to resolve without intervening, I will prioritize evaluating ballots that don't require resolving that issue.

This procedure typically means (for example):

1. I will prioritize resolution of impact claims.

2. I will deprioritize resolution of claims that do not affect the relative magnitude of two sides' offense. For example, in a DA/case debate where turns case is conceded, uniqueness is often irrelevant since aff solvency is reduced to the same extent neg offense is inevitable.

I am aware that this procedure can influence my assessment of substance. Given infinite decision time, I would decide every question in the debate. However, shrinking decision times make this impractical. Minutes spent resolving complex or under-debated issues that are not outcome-determinative trade off with the quality of my assessment of issues that are. I believe this process net reduces error costs.

As of end-of-season 2024, I have voted aff 47% of the time, and sat on 11% of panels.

I often vote quickly. This does not necessarily mean the debate was lopsided or bad; more likely, it is a sign that the teams clearly communicated the relationships between their arguments, allowing me to perform evaluations as the debate is happening. If I take a long time that means I was unable to do this, either because there was significant complexity in the debate or because communication was poor.

The following are my inclinations - if you don't like them you can change them through debating.

DAs

The agenda DA will usually not survive a rich, accurate description of the current legislative agenda based on thoughtfully reading the news.

CPs

If no one says anything I will assume I can judge kick. It is very hard to use theory to stop me from thinking about the status quo. Nothing but conditionality is a voting issue. Pretty neg on most theory, except fiating out of your own straight turned offense.

Competition is usually more impactful than theory. Theory arguments that logically presume you have won a competition argument ("CPs that steal the aff are a voting issue" assumes you have demonstrated that the CP has stolen the aff, which is a competition argument. "CPs that are not functionally and textually competitive are a voting issue"... come on, what are we doing here) are a waste of time. Just win the competition argument.

Functional competition + explaining what your plan does + definitions + reasons to prefer your definitions >>>>> anything involving the concept of textual competition. Textual competition is mind poison that corrupts any competition model it touches. "Should =/= immediate" with a real card should be a crush.

If I can't explain what a CP does and how it accomplishes whatever the neg says it does, I am unlikely to vote for it. You can avoid this by writing a meaningful CP text AND explaining it in the speech.

T

I like judging good T debates. I really don't like judging bad ones. What sets these apart is specific application of broad offense to interpretations and impact debating that is specific to internal links, grounded in a vivid vision for debates under your topic.

I do not think the intrinsic value of being "factually correct" about your T argument is very high.

Many parts of a T argument can be enhanced with cards - e.g. link to limits, claims of aff/neg bias in the literature, predictability via prodicts/indicts.

Argue by analogy and comparison to other affs, especially in CX.

Ks / Planless Affs

Good for specific Ks on the neg, bad for random backfile slop, bad for K affs, death good = L.

If your K is secretly a DA, refer to the DA section. If your K is not a DA, it needs a framework and alternative (you don't have to use those words, but some argument needs to serve those functions).

I do not judge many debates involving nontraditional affs. The biggest hurdles to voting aff for me are usually: 1) why can't the aff be read on the neg, 2) why is the aff's offense inherent to resolutional debate or to voting neg on framework instead of some avoidable examples, and 3) how do I reconcile the aff's vision of debate or the topic with debate's inherently (even if not exclusively) competitive nature.

I am very willing to entertain arguments that attempt to denaturalize debate as competition but struggle when these critiques lack an alternative or a theory of why debate as a way of putting two teams and a judge in conversation with one another is nevertheless useful.

I think affs that creatively reinterpret the resolution in a way that does not create excessive curricular demands would be more up my alley, but no one has tested this, so proceed with caution.

For whatever it's worth, I do most of my thinking about debate arguments through the lens of competition theory. This includes neg K framework arguments (which, in front of me, would benefit from disaggregating the questions of what about the aff is a basis for competition, what alternatives are legitimate, and what impacts are the most important). If you say "ontology first," what I will hear is that the aff's ontology is a basis for competition. I will expect the link arguments to be about the aff's ontology, and I will expect to hear about an alternative ontology. When these components are misaligned, my struggle with neg perm answers tends to increase. To me, this is no different than saying "CPs must compete functionally, and here is my argument for why this one competes textually."

I am open to different understandings of what it means for things to compete if there is no plan. However, "no plan, no perms" is nonsense.

The only effect of my ballot is to decide the winner.

Speaker Points

Strong strategy, being fun/engaging to watch, being smart, being classy, being clear = higher speaks.

Making wrong strategic choices, being underprepared or ignorant about substance, making CXs annoying/pointless, making bad arguments, being needlessly mean, being a mumbler... = lower speaks.

I do not view speaker points as divorced from substance.

My points are slightly below average.

Asking for a 30 will yield a 25.

You can find my ethics and conduct policies here.

T—I prefer limits over ground arguments. Rather than right to particular ground I would like interpretations argued in terms of the predictability of the research burden/definition. Case lists are important. I consider T an argument that doesn't specify the relationship between the debaters and the resolutional actor (i.e. how the debate is evaluated and what the role of the judge for evaluating the debate is still in question).  To me, framework is a category of arguments that establish a limit that restricts not just the resolution but the role for the judge.  I find most framework arguments unnecessarily restrictive in their interpretation about how we impact/assess a debate whereas a T interpretation can maintain significant freedom for different ways of couching an affirmative while providing predictable limits. For this reason kritiks of T are difficult for me to accept, while criticisms of framework have frequently been successful. 

DAs- I’m unlikely to assess uniqueness/link in absolute terms.  It tends to be easier to get me to consider direction/quality of link & internal link over uniqueness.   Evidence qualifications are important. I probably give analytic and defensive arguments more weight than many judges. 

CPs--I've rarely voted against CPs for theory reasons. This probably has more to do with what affs are willing to do/commit time to more than it demonstrates any real appeal of certainty-based competition arguments. 

K pickiness—I am more open to aff inclusion and textless alternatives than most. I am frustrated by debates where the alternative “vote negative” squares off against permute “do all the parts of the alternative that don’t compete with the plan.” Those are both just abstract descriptions of what any alternative or permutation entails. In depth debate on these issues might be helped by being less tied to a text and more to not being obnoxious in the c/x in describing an alternative. Pay attention to language/phrasing—pull quotes from evidence and speechs instead of debating author names (Yes, pot-kettle, but still). I prefer Ks that aren’t debated like disads—too much big impact/impact turn and not enough about the aff/alt from either side in most debates I judged. Neg link arguments should include reference to 1AC evidence/tags. Historical examples help a lot for either side.
 
Theory—I tend to dislike theory debates focused on narrow comparison of interpretations.  For the most part, people would be better off discussing the logical implications of a practice rather than a potentially arbitrary implementation of that practice (i.e. conditionality rather than "neg gets 1 CP and 1K").   I am biased in favor of conditionality, though not that strongly.  To me, "status quo is always a logical option" or other logic-oriented defenses of conditionality require a judge to evaluate the plan versus the status quo even if the negative goes for their CP.  I say this for clarifying purposes -- this has very rarely changed the outcome of a debate that I have judged.  I often judge debates that do not presume conventional plan-focused models for debate yet still contain theory arguments that presume a plan-focused terminology and its resulting constraints.  I point this out only to suggest that I think debaters should devote some time to thinking about the consequences of strucutral changes in the form of debate that they advocate for the smaller theoretical practices that occur within those debates. 

Evidence comparison. In most debates I’ve judged if I hear about the other side’s evidence it’s only in the 2NR/2AR or it’s about how the opponent’s evidence is “terrible.” Granted, many people read terrible evidence, nevertheless, sophisticated evidence comparison should begin early in the debate. I intensely dislike random unqualified internet evidence.

I prefer cross-ex strategies premised on listening to an opponent's answer and using it in a subsequent speech, not posturing/arguing as though c/x were another speech.

I'm a bit of grump, especially when it comes to my consistent facial expressions in debates.  It's not often that is about you,  the debaters.  I often talk a great deal after debates. 

I desperately wish I were funny so I will probably appreciate your humor even if I rarely laugh out-loud. My sense of humor is definitively geeky. My speaker point scale is lower than our current average.  I've tried to get more in line with current norms so as not to punish people for speaker point inflation.  That said, for high points (28.5+) I still need to be impressed. 

jvt.debate@gmail.com - add to thread, please.

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I did Policy Debate for 8 years at Solorio HS in Chicago (2016-2020) and at Dartmouth College (2020-2024).

Debate is a research-based communicative activity. Arguments that are divorced from external scholarship are not persuasive to me.

Answer arguments in the order presented.

I am at my best in debates where the Affirmative has presented a topical plan and the Negative strategy involves a counterplan and/or disadvantage.

Criticisms are A-OK, but I generally think Links should be about the plan and/or its justifications. If your speeches sound like they could be about any affirmative, I am unlikely to vote for you.

In Topicality debates (against policy or planless affirmatives) I am more persuaded by arguments about limits than ground. With planless affirmatives, the biggest issue/concern that I have is about what the desired role of the negative is and what kind of debates would be had under an alternative vision of the topic. I generally believe that this explanation should go beyond "the neg gets [insert list of generic criticisms]".

Basically no patience for debate shenanigans. This is especially true of egregious Negative practices of conditionality.

I miss One Direction, they broke up right when they found their style and were finally starting to mature as a band #Zouis best ship.

Unironically have read Tuck & Yang 2012 one centillion times.

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ONLINE DEBATE:

If my camera is off, please assume that I am not at my computer and do not start speaking.

Bellarmine ‘19, Dartmouth ‘23

Email: tvergho@gmail.com – put me on the chain.

Last Updated: April 2024

Topic Knowledge: I coach for Bellarmine and Dartmouth, but am not deeply involved in topic research. Explain your arguments accordingly.

I have read and voted for all types of arguments. I really don’t care what you say. I appreciate debaters who engage the line-by-line, advance smart and well-researched arguments, and generally seem like they want to be there. The best debaters answer and reference arguments in the order they were presented, crystallize the debate into a few central issues in the final rebuttals, and frame the decision they want me to give by resolving those issues.

Tech over truth, but conceded arguments only have the implications you say they do. Nothing you say will convince me to stop flowing or abandon the line-by-line. Otherwise, any of my predispositions can be easily reversed by out-debating the other team.

The one exception to this is: post-TOC, I will no longer vote on "new affs bad" or a similar theory argument if newly read in the block. The standard I will enforce is that theory arguments that could feasibly have been introduced in the 1NC must be. Hiding cheap shots is not debating; debate as if you are grown.

Debaters should presume good-faith engagement by their opponents. If your strategy primarily relies on ad hominems, references to out-of-round events, screenshots, or accusations that could have been resolved by emailing your opponents or their coaches before the round, you should strike me.

Affs should probably be topical. I don’t have a strong ideological bias against planless affs, but evenly debated I’m skeptical of most common aff responses to framework. Procedural fairness is not automatically an impact.

Conditionality is fine. Anything else is a reason to reject the argument, not the team.

I default to judge kick. If equally debated, I’ll likely err negative as the logical extension of conditionality.

Objections to counterplans are generally better expressed through competition than theory.

You can insert re-highlightings as evidence indicts, provided that the re-highlighting actually comes from the card your opponent read. If it comes three paragraphs later, you actually have to read the part where the author concludes the other way. I will treat this as the equivalent of an evidence indict with added context. Advancing some extrinsic argument always requires reading the card.

Asking for a 30 = auto 25.

For a description of my procedure on evaluating in-round ethics and conduct issues, see here. (Largely stolen from Truf's paradigm.)

Sidwell '23, Dartmouth '27.

Please put me on the chain - s.k.wallace.09@gmail.com.

Debate should be fun for everyone. If I can help you in any way when it comes to your comfort or safety in the round, let me know.

OV:

1. Not sure how much I will be judging, but I know next to nothing about IPP - my sole contribution to the DDI this year was a 30 minute Kant lecture.

2. I will not open docs until after the debate ends.

3. I am best for teams that, in the 2NR/2AR, tell a cohesive and pretty story about the technical debating that has occurred.

Cards serve as a tiebreaker for technical debating on a particular argument - if I can reach a decision without reading the docs, I will.

Try or die framing is not very persuasive to me. I evaluate relative risk of advantage vs disadvantage. The risk of the advantage linearly decreases with the risk of solvency.

I will almost certainly not reject the team for anything other than conditionality.

Historically, I'm pretty good for the aff on competition/theory vs process. I try my best to overcome this bias but it is certainly one that I have - be warned.

Planless affs:

I think T debates are very fun. I usually vote affirmative either when the negative mishandles something like "unfairness inevitable", or the aff wins sufficient defense to neg debatability offense such that a K of the reading/imposition of T outweighs. I don't think I am great for the aff for "x outweighs debatability" in a vacuum, without any defense.

I am a big fan of 2ACs that hide Ks of T on every flow and blow them up in the 1AR.

I can't imagine a 2AR that convinces me to vote on "they flipped neg to read T and that's bad." It's a logical criticism of a non-topical affirmative.

K:

I generally vote negative when the neg wins a framework argument and a link that outweighs aff link turns.

I really enjoy topic Ks that utilize framework arguments that emphasize the importance of how we do research.

I am very bad for Ks that rely on the logic of cause and effect - if links are non-unique, it makes no sense to attempt to attempt to garner offense from a unique consequence of the plan. For example, "the plan is capitalist, capitalism causes extinction, therefore the plan causes extinction" is nonsensical, but variations on it appear in a shocking amount of 2NRs! Similarly, I don't think I have ever given a decision that included the phrase "the alt solves the case."

"Debaters should presume good-faith engagement by their opponents. If your strategy primarily relies on ad hominems, references to out-of-round events, screenshots, or accusations that could have been resolved by emailing your opponents or their coaches before the round, you should strike me."

Misc:

I have a tendency to talk a lot in the post round for debates that involve theory/philosophy that I am interested in - especially psychoanalysis. If you need to leave or don't want to listen to me, feel free to tell me you need to leave or to hurry up - I won't be offended!

Feel free to ask/email me about debating at Dartmouth/in college.

Background: Debated 2006-2010 at Michigan State University, Assistant Coach at Gonzaga 2010-2011, Coach at MSU 2011-present

carly.wunderlich@gmail.com

---Updates Based on Getting Old---

1. What happened to 1NC DA shells that were complete arguments? Card 1 – Dems will win now – health care is a thing that matters. Card 2 – Dem win stops impeachment. Card 3 – Trump causes nuclear war. Um, no. You don’t have an argument here. The aff gets a wreck of leeway to answer stuff in the 1AR because this isn’t even starting to establish a causal link chain in the 1NC.

3. What happened to 1NC solvency cards for CPs? If your 2NC starts “they dropped the announcements plank in the 2AC it’s GAME OVER” but you haven’t read solvency for that plank that’s a no as well.

They all have huge strategic benefits, I get it – you can just spread them out and then piece it together once the aff drops everything. It’s gross to watch, your speaker points will reflect it and I won't forget who's fault it is that the debate is a wreck to try to decide because the debating didn't start until the block. This is also all true of ludicrous aff moves in the same vein

---Old Philosophy + Minor Revisions---

Things I like about debate

1. Working hard/preparation--- I think quality research should be a guiding factor when making decisions. Specific strategies rewarded, poo-nuggets punished

2. Critical thinking--- nothing gets you thinking you your feet like debate. I like interesting pivots and fast-moving debates

3. Argument testing---looking at both sides of an issue to parse out the most compelling arguments on both sides without confirmation bias – more important than ever, in my opinion

Topicality

As an old 2A I think reasonability works out well for the aff in a lot of spots. I'm very close to living in a post-T world if I'm being honest. The link to the limits DA should be well explained and evidenced (either by analysis or with actual evidence). Need clear case lists with explanation why you do/don’t include a specific case. T-substantial/significant is no for me.

CPs

I find myself leaning neg on a lot of CP theory questions (agent, pics, states) as reasons to reject the team. I do not think that CPs that compete on the certainty of plan (consult, condition) are competitive but that this is a reason the aff should get permutation and not a reason to reject the CP in most instances. I also do not think that distinct is competitive and I think the neg should compete off a mandate of the plan.

Conditionality- for the last decade my philosophy has read “this is an area where I've started to move farther into the aff camp. My predisposition is that the neg should get one conditional counterplan. I've not heard many good reasons that the neg should get multiple counterplans. It think that 1 is a logical limit and that to say that 2 or more is OK becomes a slippery slope. I think we all need to do a better job of protecting the aff in this department.” Unfortunately, I have failed the aff and voted neg in a LOT of spots. I still wish in my heart that we could limit the number of CPs read in a debate but unfortunately my voting record has not reflected that.

Unless the neg explicitly says it I will not "reject the CP and default to the status quo because it's always a logical option."

DAs

I think there are many logical inconsistencies with DAs that often go unremarked on by the aff in favor of impact defense. I think the aff would generally do better on engaging at the link/internal link level of dubious DAs. Picking one argument to deal a death blow to the DA works better than death by a thousand cuts.

Ks

Topic specific Ks that turn and/or solve the aff are better. Links to the plan action are best. Affs get far on “K doesn’t remedy “x” advantage and that outweighs” if the neg is not good and explicit about it. Almost all frameworks are a race to the middle. Neg gets to question assumptions of the aff, aff gets to weigh advantages- that’s a warning to the aff and the neg.

The Aff

I feel that there are lots of instances where crummy affs get away with it because the neg only focuses on impact calc. I think this is another instance, like DAs, where focusing on solvency/internal link args can pay bigger dividends than impact calc.

Speaker points

Things I like in speeches

1. Connections on central questions- slowing down and effectively communicating about guiding issues

2. Technical proficiency- answering clearly all necessary arguments

3. Clarity- I’m doing my best to be mindful of this but I honestly sometimes just forget- I’ll call clear once if you’re incomprehensible but at a certain point it will affect whether or not I vote on arguments

4. Strategic cross-exs- I’d prefer not to spend another 12 mins listening to “where does your card say that?”

Things that will result in reduced speaker points

1. Cross-reading, clipping- if there is an ethics challenge made I will stop the debate and evaluate it. If the person in question is found to be doing it they will lose the debate and receive zero speaker points.

2. Tech fails- please be prompt and quick with tech things. In a world of decision times this is increasingly getting to me.

3. Creating an environment that is hostile or unsafe for me or the other team – It's important for productive conversations and it's not healthy for all of us to leave tournaments hating each other.

4. Talking over everyone in c-x – I get it, you think you’re cool but I’m pretty bored with watching people get themselves all worked up and then just yell over the other team

My Speaker Point Scale (unless otherwise published by the tournament)

29.6 -30: You should receive a Top 10 speaker award

29.3 – 29.5: In this debate, you were an quarters level debater

28.8 – 29.2: In this debate, you were a 5-3, octos or double octos debater

28.4 – 28.7: In this debate, you were a 4-4 debater on the verge or bubble of clearing

28 – 28.3: You are improving but not quite there on big picture issues

27.5 – 28: You need some improvement on technical items as well as big picture things