Congressional Debate

I think successful congressional debate really requires attention to the roleplaying purpose of the activity: what is the purpose of the debate, who is the intended audience, and what register of language should be used? Although congressional debate is a debate activity, the intended audience is other legislators as well as the American public. Using debate-oriented terminology without context excludes individuals without that background knowledge and shifts the focus from roleplaying to something akin to PF or policy debate. Likewise, speaking skills matter: the best speeches will feature high quality content delivered in a clear, engaging voice with physical presence. Remember, too, that the goal is to solve problems and not necessarily to decimate your opponent.

So what makes high quality content? Clear structure, clear support, citations. Sometimes it's helpful to nitpick details of a bill and use a heavy research-based approach, whereas other bills or portions of the debate will benefit from a more 10,000 foot view of the issue.

It's also important to remember that this is still adebate activity--keeping track of the argument, responding to arguments, being aware of what has been said already and what has not been said already will help your ranking. Ask questions, be involved in the debate event as a whole.

Have something to say in your speeches. Personally, unless you're adding really excellent argumentation or refutation, I don't think it's necessary to speak more than once on a bill, but I'm not entirely opposed to it--just make sure it's worthwhile and not clogging up the debate.

Be smart, have personality, be clear in communication, and remember that this activity is supposed to be FUN.

P.F.

The biggest thing is to debate P.F., don't treat it like policy, meaning don't talk at 500MPH and no crazy "reality is a hologram" type arguments. Please be clear about when you are switching contentions and be sure to weigh your impacts clearly, don't assume that us judges are making the same connections that you are. If you run a one contention case, please have strong links. Please spell out your impacts, Imperialism isn't an impact, you need to tell me why imperalism is bad. As a judge, I won't let my background influence my decision, but that does mean you need to tell me exactly what your impacts mean in terms of quantifiable impacts, number of deaths, cost of money, increase in crime, global destabilization, the kind of thing.

L.D.

I'm a traditional-style debater, meaning I'm not usually a fan of Ks or crazy theory shells; if you run one anyway, be sure to pay some attention to defense; even with a K, you should still respond to their line-by-line arguments. I was a policy debate, and I've been judging LD on the local and national circuit for 3 years, so I'm fine with whatever speed you can do well. One thing that I think LD debaters need to pay more attention to is extending your evidence, too many debaters will just say "Cross-apply my contentions to their DA," and you need to do more then that; you need to actually say how your evidence specific counters theirs and what specific evidence you are citing.

Congress:

I've been judging Congress for 6 years now, and of course, all the basic things are important: good projection, good variation in vocal tone and volume for emphasis, and most importantly, a cohesive, original argument. In addition, please be respectful of your competitors; assertive speech styles are fine, but avoid ad hominem attacks. Similarly, when asking questions, don't interrupt the answerer when they haven't even finished a sentence yet; again, find the line between assertive and just plain rude. Make sure your introduction doesn't have a jarring shift in tone when compared to the rest of your speech. Lots of people enjoy funny intros, but they don't really work if you give a speech about war crimes, for example. Crystalizing is good, but if you have an entire speech that's just crystalizing, you end up with something that is more like 6 30-second long speeches instead of a single 3-minute speech, so don't go overboard with it. Make sure if you use the same arguments as a previous speaker, you do something new with it, or go in greater depth in a specific aspect of the argument. Otherwise, all you're doing is telling the judges that you thought the previous speaker did a really good job.

A smaller thing, but it still bugs me when it happens; please don't use debate lingo in Congress when it doesn't make grammatical sense without a debate background; for example, "sqo solves" is not something that makes sense unless you do debate and this isn't the place for that.

Email: Oscarh.rich@gmail.com