Hello everyone!

A little bit about me: My name is Alek Zabel Araguz and I have been competing in speech and debate for about 7-8 years. In my time in High School, I was a 3x NSDA National Finalist, NIETOC Finalist, 3x TFA State Finalist, 2x UIL State Congress Finalist, and have dipped my toes in every event speech and debate has to offer. I now am a freshman at UT and compete on the UT Speech team. I love speech and debate with all my heart, and it makes me so happy to help grow this activity!

My rankings in round depends on a lot of factors, however, there are some overall sections that I look for when judging any type of round!

For I.E.'s, I look for:

• Characterization: Who is the person you are playing, what makes them unique? If you have multiple characters, what is distinct to each character that makes them distinguishable?

• Plot: Is the plot understandable? Is there a beginning, middle, and end? Does it highlight/show us change as the piece progresses? What about this story is different from others?

• Delivery: Is there variation in your delivery? Do we have uses of pauses, emphasis on words, silence, onomatopoeia, and how is it purposeful to your piece? If there are multiple characters, how are their voices different, what is their speed when talking, do they have any speech impediments?

• Blocking: Is the blocking you have PURPOSEFUL? These characters are people, so how do we make these characters multi-dimensional? How do you show us what you are doing when talking/not talking? Does the blocking you have help the message you are trying to convey?

• Confidence: When performing, do you exude confidence? Do you seem familiar with your piece? How connected are you to the message/piece you are doing? Are you confident in your abilities to tell your story? Why does this matter to you and especially to us listening?

• Professionalism: In a round, are you maintaining professionalism? How do you treat your judges and other competitors? Are you being distracting to other competitors? Are you respectful to those performing/ those watching? Do you keep composure when something goes wrong in a round?

For OO, Info, Extemp (and Congress), I look for:

• Structure: Does the structure of your speech enhance the topics you are discussing? Do you provide some sort of claim, evidence, and reasoning for each of your arguments? Does your speech flow make sense? Do your points work hand in hand with each other?

• Information: Is the info provided relevant to what you are saying? Is the article used out-dated? What makes this info different from most other statistics? How revolutionary is this article?

• Delivery: Is there variation in your delivery? Do we have uses of pauses, emphasis on words, silence, onomatopoeia, and how is it purposeful to your speech? Do you incorporate humor or any other devices to appeal to your audience/judge? If you use VAs, how are they purposefully used?

• Confidence: When performing, do you exude confidence? Do you seem familiar with your speech? How connected are you to the message/piece you are doing? Are you confident in your abilities to tell your story? Why does this matter to you and especially to us listening?

• Professionalism: In a round, are you maintaining professionalism? How do you treat your judges and other competitors? Are you being distracting to other competitors? Are you respectful to those performing/ those watching? Do you keep composure when something goes wrong in a round?

Things like these allow people to set themselves apart from their other fellow competitors and are super essential in any event you perform! If you have any questions, please don't be afraid to ask, I would be more than happy to clarify anything you all may need! Good luck and I hope y'all slay all your rounds!!

Hey y’all I am a parent judge

Although I have never judged this event, I have had experience in working with my child in Impromptu and Public speaking. I will be looking for confidence, articulate speech, and hand gestures would help to.

I have over 20 years of experience. pronouns: she/her

Individual Events:

• I love well-rounded characterization. My biggest note is that if you are doing a popular piece I would love to see your version of this character, not an exact copy of the original character ( this is INTERPRETATION after all…). Be sure to have fun with your characterization, especially in HI. If you have multiple characters be sure there is distinction in vocal quality and physicality and that they're adding to the story, not distracting from it.

• When listening to the cutting of the piece I’d like it to flow well. I love a clear, catchy teaser, a brief intro that doesn’t give too much away, a well told and understandable story that leads the characters path, whatever that way be. .

• I am NIT PICKY when it comes to delivery (you’ve been warned). I love clean crisp diction, purposeful emphasis and pauses all while ensuring that they guide the emotions of your piece. When it comes to blocking, be sure you're not moving just to move. Every move you make needs to be justified and should add to the story. Remember, this is blocking not choreo.

• Authenticity is a big topic i look for. I know you've rehearsed your piece a bunch, but I don't want to see that, I want to see it with authenticity and as thought you're in the moment and reacting in real time. With all that being said, we perform because we want to elicit emotions out of our audience. We are looking to inspire, teach, interact and to let the audience get lost in our pieces. The only way to do that, is to be sure you’re having fun with it.

OO/INFO:

• I prefer when I can easily tell what the goal and persuasive points of your speech are.
• I love learning so for me, be sure the research lines up and gives me reason to really that your stance into consideration.

Extemp:

• Most importantly, be sure to state AND answer your question. It's one of the big things that I look for when judging.

• Your 3 points should support your decision and explain why you made that choice, 7-10 sources is a great spot to be for the whole performance and within those sources should be a solid foundation.

Sometimes tabroom doesn’t save ballots, Ialways leave ballots no matter what. if you are not seeing a ballot tell your coach to email me and I will forward it to them. I pre-write and save all of my ballots on google docs.

Experience: Teacher and Coach of Speech & Debate! Although I have a few years of experience I am BIG on public speaking skills!

What I look for: A speaker who keeps the audience in mind by applying speaking techniques that keep the listener interested. (Eye contact, non-verbal communication, body language is important to get an overall perspective of the speaker).

Each speech or performance needs the basics: intro, body conclusion.

For extempers, I love to see the waltz during your delivery.

I am always open for the speakers to find their own unique ways to make their topics interesting and purposeful! I am all about the persuasion and emotion behind a performance (THINK ethos, pathos and logos).

*Treat the round as a "communication experience" and remember to have FUN!!

For debaters, DO NOT spread during a round. I like to flow during rounds and understanding your arguments is most important.

I enjoy clash during CX and voter reasons! (Remember part of a debate is in the art of persuasion)

He/Him

Judge or Shauri is fine, if you call me Mr. Yedavalli or sir part of my soul will wither away

Add me on chains - hendricksondydebate@gmail.com

Did policy debate + speech events at hendrickson hs

LD:

I'll understand most of what you talk about, but I honestly have no clue what a trick is so I'm probably not the judge you want to run it in front of, unless you like explain it to me pre-round or something and believe in your teaching abilities.

I'm decently familiar with k lit bases but try to explain your K like I have no clue what you're talking about

PF:

Tech > Truth

Do your thing I'm a policy kid but that probably means I'll have a higher standard for progressive pf stuff. If you run it well though then I'll vote on it.

Have fun, try to gain something from your rounds, and be chill.

CX:

Top Level stuff

Overall I'd put myself at about 60% K debater and 40% policy debater so you should probably just run whatever, that being said I'm really bad about knowing K lit bases so don't assume I'm gonna understand more niche k topics.

I got indoctrinated into policy debate by Aly Mithani so if you want a better paradigm just look at his and imagine a more K version of it

Being fun is fun, try to enjoy yourself during rounds, make jokes and stuff, try to care a little bit, it just makes tournament days go by a bit faster so it'd be cool if you weren't a cx robot but if not that's cool too I guess.

If you're stealing prep trust me I'll notice, stare at you and take off speaks.

Open cx, prompting, spreading are all chill but my flow is mid so if your gonna do a card doc try to be clear on analytics

I'll follow along with your doc and read your cards

I'll probably forget to start a timer at some point so time yourself and your opponents

If your a varsity debater hitting a novice you do not have to destroy someone new to the activity to make yourself look/feel good your not gonna lose the ballot or anything but I'll just be bummed out and you'd probably prefer that the person filling in your speaks is not bummed out.

Don't be a bad person - y'all can figure out what that means

Biases

I think condo is probably good, and if a team that everyone in the room knows is losing goes for theory I'll have a harder time being objective on it

If you read an RVI I will unconsciously and consciously take you less seriously for the rest of the debate

I think competing interps > reasonability, but T v policy aff is something I'm not great at judging and if it's muddled I'd probably be biased by if I just think the aff should be part of the resolution

As someone who has only been a 2N I have a neg bias when it comes to most things about the model of debate cause I think the neg side is already on the short end of the stick

Entertainment bias: I kinda just like seeing more creative strategies and usually it'll help speaks in particular eg (against planless affs running a pik that displays research instead of. framework + cap, or adv cp with 1AC ev as a solvency advocate)

If your opponents read something that you'd think any slightly competent judge would ignore (i.e. absurdly random and subjective procedurals) feel free to give a thumbs down and move on. On the other side if you read one of these your kinda just throwing away time.

Framework/T-USFG

I evaluate this through a lens of offense-defense of each teams model of debate

Aff teams have to give a clear role for negative teams within their model of debate and should be able to adequately differentiate that from if the sides were just swapped in a given round because ssd just solves that

I think debate probably is just a game (I read K's against warmakers all of last year but will definitely pick up the phone if Lockheed Martin gives me a job offer). Though at the same time being stuck within this space probably does change your subjectivity at least a little bit (I'd feel kinda bad about working for a hedge fund)

Fairness isn't a terminal impact and definitely is non-unique but it's the aff teams job to prove that; clash > fairness

Remember this is about a model for the entire debate space not just how this round should've gone - negative teams have to make it clear that their model of debate makes the space as a whole better.

T

I will evaluate all T arguments mostly from a competing interps standpoint unless you give a compelling reason to evaluate it on reasonability (prefer reasonability isn't compelling)

If you do read a T even as a time suck - it is your burden to provide a case list if you're not able to give one then the aff will win on that flow 95% of the time.

I lean more towards limits than aff ground because I see policy debate as inherently aff biased.

Evidence quality matters otherwise it's a race to the bottom

Neg teams using clash have to explain what ground they are losing because of the affirmative or just why it makes the research burden too high to clash with well.

In order to win a T debate you must explain why your model would be better for debate examples are good for this but including one or two examples with a good explanation for its value is significantly better than spamming examples without reason

Ks

I'm into Ks, I think they're fun and (usually) good at educating debaters. That being said I'm definitely not as well read on as much K lit as I should be so if you go [X author obviously means Y] it will not be obvious to me. Also buzzword spamming is kinda weird but I should be able to get what your saying.

If you are running an identity K and you're demonstrably not within that identity I understand that as a debater you're a vessel for your scholarship but optically you do kinda lose the inherent moral high ground you get by reading a K

I don't really get why perf con doesn't justify severance on a reps K, but if you can give me a good reason then I'm down cause it (probably) is good for education.

Perceptually I don't really like seeing one-off K teams completely ignore the case debate in the neg block imo it just supercharges aff framework offense, in the 2NR though more power to you.

Fiat is fake and policy affs are often just as utopian as K-alts, but you should still have a coherent solvency mechanism for how your alt works.

The only K I think I'm legitimately biased against are psychoanalysis Ks: imo psychoanalysis is probably pseudoscience and kinda patronizing, if you could equally run psychoanalysis or some other K against a team in front of me I'd choose the other K but if you'd be substantially better off running psychoanalysis just send it and if I vote you down feel free to be upset at me.

CPs

I definitely prefer counterplans that actually engage with the specific processes of the plan to generic agent counterplans.

Agent CP's will often get the job done for me just fine, but I think more specific ones especially using 1AC cards as solvency paired with a DA is much more compelling for me as a judge and much more frustrating for an opponent to go against

Adv CPs are cool, and Adv CPs made with a random unhighlighted portion of a 1AC solvency card are super dope

I'm about 50/50 on whether your cheaty counterplans are chill or not so I wouldn't base any cp decisions for a round based on me being the judge

DAs

Yeah I don't really have much of an opinion on these they're kinda the most fundamental neg arg, just make the story of it make some sense as the round goes on.

For politics DAs I don't really like the idea of just handing a team the uniqueness debate because they cut an article slightly later than the other teams, so as a neg team I just want you to do a little bit of work to contextualize why that actually means your ev should be preferred and for the aff team try to get at warrant comparisons because like 75% of the politics uniqueness cards that I've ever read didn't have a legit warrant.

Misc.

Death good args are not good

Wipeout will be listened to but given a side eye

Good formatting of a doc that you send is good and makes your arguments easier to follow

There's a fine line between banter and disrespectfulness, try your best to not cross it

I'm not 100% sure about how my face looks during a debate but if I look upset I'm probably just thinking and if I look happy then just keep doing what you're doing

Try to give me time to switch flows, so just slow down a bit at the top of your new flow.

I'll probably default to judge kick but it's liable to switch based on arguments

Light blue >>> green > yellow > anything else

Since I am an English teacher, I care about the organization of your speeches. If I have a hard time figuring out your argument, I will be more likely to dock speech points. I absolutely do not tolerate any discrimination in my rounds. I prefer hard facts that are relevant and up to date, and if you lie or exaggerate/understate your evidence, I will vote that down.