He/him/his. wsoper03@gmail.com

I am the debate coach at Manhattan High School. I did NDT/CEDA debate for four years at the University of Kansas. I worked at both the Michigan and Kansas debate camps this summer and I've judged dozens of debates on the topic.

I am a better judge for topic-specific, evidence-based arguments. ASPEC, counterplans that compete off of certainty and immediacy, and impact turns which argue large portions of the population should die are not persuasive to me.

Clarity. Clarity is very important to me. I do not have the speech document pulled up when the debate is happening. If I don't understand you, I will not vote for your argument.

Evidence matters a lot. Debaters should strive to connect the claims and warrants they make to pieces of qualified evidence. If one team is reading qualified evidence on an issue and the other team is not, I'll almost certainly conclude the team reading evidence is correct. I care about author qualifications/funding/bias more than most judges and I'm willing to disregard evidence if a team raises valid criticisms of it.

Presumption/Vagueness. I am willing to (and have) voted negative on vagueness and that the affirmative has not met its stock issues burdens. Similarly, if the negative is reading a CP with an internal net benefit and doesn't have evidence demonstrating that the inclusion of the plan prevents the net benefit, I am willing to vote on "perm do both" even if the aff doesn't have a deficit to the CP. I am willing to dismiss advantage CP planks which are overly vague or not describing a policy.

Plan text in a vacuum. I think there are two ways the negative can demonstrate a topicality violation. 1. Explaining why the affirmative's plan text does not meet the specific requirement set by the interpretation or 2. referencing a CX where the affirmative clearly committed to a mandate of their plan.
The plan text is the focus of the debate. If you think the affirmative's solvency advocate or advantages describe something other than their plan text, that is a solvency argument, not a topicality argument.

Kritiks. Since I have been in debate, negative kritiks have started to look more and more like process CPs. Often, the 2NR will be 4.5 minutes of a framework interpretation that amounts to "if we disprove one part of the affirmative, ignore the case and vote neg," with the remaining 30 seconds restating the thesis of a "link" argument. This version is unpersuasive to me, in part, because it treats the link part of the kritik as a box to check to satisfy the negative's arbitrary framework interpretation, rather than an indict of the aff's core assumptions.

For example, let's say the affirmative reads an advantage about beating China in the tech race. A kritik that says the aff's descriptions of China are inaccurate and make war more likely because they rely on Eurocentric assumptions about state behavior would be very persuasive to me. A kritik that says calling China a threat is a microaggression to Chinese debaters in "the debate space" would not be very persuasive to me. I cannot remember the last time an "ontology" argument was relevant to my decision.

Planless affs. I strongly believe affirmative teams should read a topical plan. I am happy to listen to affirmatives that have creative justifications for why their plan is topical or affirm the resolution in a non-traditional way. However, the justifications for affirmatives which advocate explicitly non-topical action are increasingly unpersuasive to me. Reasons the resolution is bad are negative arguments, not arguments against topicality. Clash/fairness/debate bad arguments are non-starters in a voluntary activity. This isn't to say I will automatically vote negative if the aff doesn't read a plan, just that in a close debate, I am strongly biased in favor of the negative's interpretation.

Things which will make your speaker points higher: exceptional clarity, numbering your arguments, good cross-x moments which make it into a speech, specific and well-researched strategies, developing and improving arguments over the course of a season, slowing down and making a connection with me to emphasize an important argument, not being a jerk to a team with much less skill/experience than you. I decide speaker points.

You're welcome to post-round or email me if you have questions or concerns about my decision.