My focus is on a debate where you have presented solid evidence that flows through to the end. Following structure, good sportsmanship and voting issues are helpful and considered in my decision. Most of all be respectful to each other. When you present your arguments in this way, then everyone learns more and can better clarify thier side. Including the impact summates the strength of their side and brings more clarity on the bigger picture.

I value a good framework backed by logical reasoning and evidence or examples. I also value thorough and effective rebuttal. Prefer appropriately emphasized, none-rush communication style.

Hey guys, this is my second year judging, and I really love a good debate! During rounds I want to see good clash in your speeches and crossfire. But, I also value respect a lot, so I will be vocal if I do not see it.

PF/LD:

1st SPEAKER:

I want to see a range in your voice and be loud with your speech, so that I can hear every detail about your case! I want 1st speakers to weigh during their summary and please use voter's issues! Please organize your speeches as well, so that I can have a good flow! SIGNPOST SIGNPOST SIGNPOST!!!!

2ND SPEAKER:

For 2nd Speakers I want to see aggression and passion in your speech because at the end of the day you are arguing (again not too much aggression). I would like to see ORGANIZATION and for you to SIGNPOST as well! Please don't have your speeches only be evidence, explain your cards and how those connect to your opponent's statements. I want to see a clear connection between arguments and their value to your overall rebuttal. I would also like to see voter's issues to be incorporated and it should be relatively the same with your partner's.

Hello! My name is Maddie Maslan (formally Coach Maslan or Coach M). I am a former LD debater—trad, not prog—in my third year of coaching Fremd’s PF/LD team.

TLDR—

• I rarely do verbal disclosures when not required to, and only offer verbal feedback for very broad things that both sides will benefit from. Otherwise, my RFD and individual feedback will be written on the ballot.
• I will primarily decide a round based on the quality of the voting issues provided by both sides. I should be able to easily track your voters’ development on my flows. Make my job easy for me.
• Your linkchains should be airtight, especially if your impacts are severe (ie: total economic collapse, extinction, etc). I only favor these types of arguments if they are executed flawlessly or if your opponent neglects to address them entirely.
• The better your composure in round, the better your speaks will be. Body language factors into speaks as well.
• Do not neglect framework— it separates LD from all other forms of debate. Poorly addressed frameworks will factor negatively into my decisions.
• Despite my experience judging debate, if you do not signpost exactly where to log your attacks, I cannot guarantee they will make it to my flow accurately.Make my job easy for me.

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Unless specifically directed to by a tournament, I personally do not do verbal disclosures regarding who wins and who loses a round. I find it more distasteful and distracting than beneficial in the moment, and prefer to keep my official decisions and rationale on the ballot rather than in a verbal setting. I will offer verbal feedback if I believe that said feedback would benefit both debaters equally to hear, however I will not offer verbal feedback that addresses only one specific debater unless absolutely necessary. Ultimately, my thoughts on the round (RFD and individual feedback) will be thoroughly outlined on the ballot for your reading pleasure.

The bulk of my decisions will come down to a round’s voting issues. I will likely not vote for you if you don’t provide me any—even if you otherwise would have won the round. Your voters should not come out of nowhere; I should be able to check my flows and very clearly identify their origins in the debate, as well as track their development over the course of the round. Additionally, there should be no doubt in my mind that you did, in fact, win the debate based on the voting issues that you choose –make my job easy for me.

Overall, I frown upon fear-mongering and I favor realistic impacts above all else. If you are claiming that to affirm/negate will directly lead to something as serious as the breakdown of society or the end of the world, I’d better be able to poke no holes in your reasoning. I value skills over tricks any day of the week.

Debaters able to maintain a cool and level head even while in the middle of an intense round of debate capture my interest. I often look for a debater's ability to conduct themselves in a composed manner, especially if the round isn’t going their way. Additionally, I greatly appreciate debaters who are able to balance concise evidence with clear logic. Leave few gaps in your argumentation and linkchain, and you will win me over.

I will admit, I am a little old-fashioned; I look more favorably towards debaters who can make strong and consistent links between their contentions, their impacts, and their framework. I do not see the point in neglecting framework debate in the slightest; I will weigh your arguments more strongly if you can explain how your contentions uphold the values you’ve chosen, or prove how your opponent’s contradict each other.

If you do not adequately signpost where you are on the flow, I can’t promise I won’t lose you. While I am experienced in debate rounds overall, I flow both sides of the debate on a single sheet of paper (Aff on the front and Neg on the back— it’s how I learned back in the day and the habit is hard to break). If you do not tell me exactly where to put your arguments, you run the risk of leaving me stranded on the wrong side of the flow having to guess not only where to put your attack, but also what the heck you’re even saying. Make my job easy for me.

I appreciate well-stated, unique arguments with logical support to back them up. When I can follow your line of thought clearly through signposting, it can only reap dividends.

Let's have some great rounds!

Style and substance are equally important.

If a resolution should be affirmed or negated, an effective debater should be able to persuasively explain why in any professional setting. The way you debate should be a style used in a courtroom, a legislature, a board room, or a conference. I am not a fan of debate "jargon" (i.e., flows, spreading, dropping contentions, frameworks, cards, counterplans, voters, etc.) that is not used in normal professional conversations. You can use those concepts but do so in a way that would make sense in a normal conversation. The pace at which you speak and the style in which you speak should also be a pace and style that would make sense in normal conversational contexts.

In terms of substance, make strong arguments, offer relevant rebuttals and do so in a manner that is persuasive and respectful to your opponent. This is "values" debate so let's discuss values - what they are, why they're important, and why your position enhances them. Don't "lose the forest for the trees" -- i.e., get so caught up in various details and technicalities that you neglect the essence of whether a resolution should be affirmed or negated. Do not expect me to keep a "scorecard" or "check boxes." Convince me that your position is superior to the position of your opponent.

Hi, my name is Mahi! I am a varsity debater from Barrington High School. Here are my paradigms:

1: Connect back to your framework! Don't forget to connect your impacts back to your FW. Show why your VC upholds your Value better than the opponent.

2: Voter's Issues. At the end of your speech tell me the most important reasons as to why you won the round.

3: Impacts. Impacting shows that you're not just reading a card, but you actually understand what the outcome is.

Also, just make sure to have a good time!

Marybeth Sanchez

I appreciate clear communication. Off time roadmaps are appreciated. If I can't understand you, I can't vote for you. Communication is crucial. Always be respectful. I appreciate when debaters actually engage with the internal warrants of their opponents evidence and arguments, point out contradictions between pieces of evidence, expose evidence that is too specific or too general to apply, or call out evidence that is just claims rather than warrants. Any engagement with evidence beyond "my opponent's evidence is wrong because my evidence is right" will greatly increase your chance of winning my ballot.

I know this is long, and hypocritically so since I ask you to be concise in-round. This just grew over several years because I judge a bunch of different events. Instead of paring it down, I've decided to leave it but point you to what actually needs your attention. For an overview, read the TLDR paragraph. Key words are bolded in the middle section to help with skimming (I know you don't have a ton of time between rounds). Then look for your event in bold at the bottom. Feel free to skip what's not relevant to you. If you have questions about what happened after receiving your ballot, coming back here and reading more thoroughly will likely answer your question(s). If it doesn't, feel free to talk to me about it when you see me next.

TLDR: Focus on value and criterion in LD, don't misuse evidence in PF, and speak extemporaneously in Congress. Always warrant your arguments in every event. Don't be too tricky. Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies. Thou shalt not go off-topic by using abusive "progressive debate" tactics such as kritiks, counterplans, or meta-analysis of debate. I am a traditional judge who flows and is tech over truth.

In a debate round, most of all I'm looking for a clear, concise, and robust exchange of ideas. Some ways to work on this are to make sure you're signposting in all of your speeches, planning ahead to ensure that you're fitting the most important contentions and objections into the allotted time, and responding directly to the arguments and objections your opponents put forth in their own speeches. Do all of this without strawmanning your opponents (or committing any other major logical fallacies).

Most importantly, warrant: Don't take it for granted that your judges can see why your opponents are wrong, or that your contentions speak for themselves in response to challenges. Even if I do see these things, I can't score you well unless you are doing this work yourselves in the debate. Don't let any of your opponents' objections make it through the flow uncontested. Always warrant your claims. Cross-apply your contentions liberally in rebuttals so that I don't think you've dropped any of your own arguments.

I'm not a fan of most forms of "progressive debate," as I want you to make accessible arguments relevant to the resolution, not signal your position on whatever is currently in vogue. For example, if the resolution is about whether the United States should raise taxes on the wealthy, and you're arguing in favor of doing so, it is 100% okay (and probably a great idea) to give arguments about how capitalism can leave certain groups behind and how trickle-down economics only exacerbates wealth inequality and thus eliminates equality of opportunity. It is not germane to the resolution, however, to make all of your arguments about how capitalism is nothing but a tool of oppression and we need to abolish it, as this is not what is at question in the resolution. Similarly, I find meta-analysis of debate as an activity in-round to be grating. I will always favor the person/team using their speaking time to discuss the issue at hand in the resolution.

I'm also not a fan of counterplans because they shift the burden of proof in the round to the NEG/CON. The burden of proof belongs on the AFF/PRO. If you don't want to defend the status quo, I think you need to ask yourself why you're spending your free time doing this activity. As a coach and an instructor, the greatest value I see in debate is that it teaches students to charitably look at and adopt perspectives that are fundamentally different from their own. Using abusive tactics to get around doing this robs you of the greatest benefit of doing debate, and robs your opponent of the opportunity to engage in a robust exchange of ideas about the actual topic of the round. Here I'll provide the analogy of papers: if a student handed me a paper that was well-written, but never actually addressed the topic they were supposed to write about (or worse, questioned the process of writing the paper in the first place), they would fail because they did not actually complete the assignment. The same is true in a debate round.

This doesn't mean I just want to seestock cases. Unusual and inventive arguments are often a major plus. Traditional judges don't want to see the same round over and over again, either. Just make sure you're warranting these arguments and that they're topical.

A note on speed: I don't mind spreading and can keep up with it as long as you don't talk like you have marbles in your mouth. But before you spread, consider that you will have many lay judges in this circuit who are unfamiliar with this speed or even hostile to it. Proceed at your own peril. Additionally, I often see debaters spread to try and overwhelm their opponents with cards to respond to without ever substantially developing or warranting their arguments. When I read student philosophy papers, I look for two things before anything else: clarity and concision. The lesson from this is that sometimes less is more because it forces you to focus on what really matters in the round, and as such you develop your arguments around key voting issues far more than you would if you were just hammering your opponent with as much evidence as possible.

A couple of notes on questioning: I'm not a fan of debaters interrupting or steamrolling their opponents. Be courteous and give the other team/person a chance to respond and to ask their own questions during grand cross while still using your own speaking time well. Being the loudest person in the room is not synonymous with being the best debater. I do not flow questioning, either. If you want something that came up in questioning to factor into my decision, you need to bring it back up in one of your speeches.

A final note on my ballots: I try to write pretty detailed ballots because I know how frustrating it is to lose a round and then not understand why, or to be told something vague or even get a blank ballot. I try to make up for this all-too-pervasive problem with debate judging by providing you with detailed feedback. However, I want you to understand that only the comments in my RFD directly factored into my decision. I'm writing comments throughout the round to you individually to try and provide feedback on your cases (especially because I know some of you may not have coaches), as well as your argumentation and speaking styles. Sometimes I will write things in the individual comments section that are my personal opinion on what makes a good case, or whether something is a convincing argument. As a tabula rasa judge, this kind of thing does not factor into my decision unless the other debater(s) call(s) you on anything I mention in one of their speeches. I provide this individualized feedback not to explain my decision, but to potentially help you grow as a debater. The RFD is the real explanation of my decision.

For Lincoln-Douglas: If you're using a moral or political theory from analytic philosophy (i.e. utilitarianism/consequentialism, deontology/rights-based, virtue ethics, Rawlsian distributive justice/justice as fairness, any kind of social contract theory, principles from medical ethics, etc.) please make sure you know what you're talking about. I have way too many rounds where a utilitarian or consequentialist framework devolves into deontology or rights-based theory, and vice versa. Or worse, where a debater uses a contradictory value and criterion, such as pairing autonomy with consequentialism. And these are the simplest moral theories; the bar will be even higher if you choose Rawls or something more obscure. I'm not against you using these theories (in fact, as a philosophy teacher I want you to do so), I just want you to use them well and appropriately. I highly recommend that all LD debaters read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy extensively in order to better prepare for using and coming up against philosophical concepts in rounds. Theories from continental philosophy will be a tougher sell for me in general because they're even more difficult to use appropriately.

No matter what value and criterion you choose, make sure you're linking all of your impacts back to your framework throughout the round. A brief mention at the top of each speech is not nearly enough attention to framework in LD. Also, please don't make your value "morality." That's redundant. All of these resolutions have the word "ought" in them; morality is implicitly valued in the round. You're not actually giving me any real information here about how you're using a theory of value to evaluate the resolution at hand.

For Public Forum: Evidence matters here even more than in the other debate events. Make sure you're reading all of your sources in their entirety before cutting cards. I'm always paying attention, and so are most of the other debaters: if you're using something out of context, you will get called on it eventually by one of your opponents or judges. I will call for evidence in close rounds, so be prepared to hand over your cards. Making empirical assertions without providing empirical evidence will make it very hard for me to vote for you, and misusing evidence will make it nearly impossible. Additionally, spitting out cards and contentions you're hoping your opponent will drop is not the path to my ballot. Well-reasoned and charitable argument is.

For Congress: It is to the whole chamber's disservice to get stuck on one bill or one series of bills. Even if your favorite bill is being discussed and you haven't gotten a chance to speak yet, it's in your best interest not to extend a tired debate. I would rather see fresh debate on a bill that is less familiar to you than continue to see the same arguments recycled over and over again.

Congress is meant to be an extemporaneous event. I don't want your speeches to be pretty and polished like a speech event, or even like a constructive speech in PF or LD. I want you to show me that you have a range of knowledge and interest in an even wider range of topics in current events, and can speak extemporaneously on these topics in the chamber. There's little I dislike more in debate than for a Congress chamber to take a recess so everyone can "write their speeches." This fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of Congress. The best advice I can give Congressional debaters for prep isn't to write polished speeches, but to regularly read (not watch) reputable news sources like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Economist. If you must watch your news, go with the PBS News Hour or something international (i.e. the BBC), not partisan entertainment-oriented channels like CNN, FOX, or MSNBC. Podcasts are fun, but not a substitute for reputable news organizations with full-time fact checkers.

For Extemporaneous Debate, most of the above goes in various degrees. If one person runs a framework in this event, I'll weigh it against whatever framework is the best fit for the other debater's arguments (usually cost-benefit analysis, occasionally a rights-based theory). I won't just default to the person who has an explicit framework since it is not a norm to always have one in this event. Other than that, this is a rapid-fire version of the other events. The most important thing is to warrant, warrant, warrant, whether we're talking about arguments, evidence, tangible impacts, or a framework. Like with PF, spitting out cards and contentions you're hoping your opponent will drop is not the path to my ballot.

For Big Questions, the NSDA briefs are usually weird and unhelpful. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is your friend. Think very carefully about what makes a good argument, and nuance is most often the key with these kinds of resolutions. Trying to do something tricky or gimmicky (such as saying that objective morality is real because of natural selection instead of arguing in favor of actual normative moral truth) is usually going to work less well than offering a substantive, multi-faceted account of the issue at hand. However, I'm not totally opposed to these kinds of arguments and have voted for them in the past. Just tread carefully as the bar will be higher for them.

This event (usually) isn't about the empirical, but the metaphysical, and you should approach it as such. This means that looking for "evidence" from science instead of philosophy is often the wrong tactic. Reasoning and logic is evidence, as shown by the entire history of thought. Think about it this way: you can't find numbers in the natural world, but rockets still wouldn't work without mathematics. The same goes for logic, which is just verbal mathematics.

I am a flow judge.

1) Signpost & provide an Off-time roadmap. Very important!

2) Prioritize clash, both contention-level and framework-level (or collapse/concede fw if necessary)

3) Connect contentions & impacts to the framework.

4) Outweigh on voters.

5) Extend arguments

6) I can somewhat handle speed, but don't spread (it will tank your speakers)

7) While I won't flow CX, make sure your questioning leads you somewhere. Try to poke holes and stump your opponent's case, rather than asking worthless questions to fill time.

8) All arguments are welcome.

8) Be respectful and have fun. This is all a learning experience! If you make me laugh or if I learn something new – easy 30 speaker points :)

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SPEAKERS
30: I wish I could frame your speeches – hard to imagine a better speaker.
29.0-29.5: You left no doubt about who won and are an excellent speaker.
28.0-28.5: You were effective and strategic, and made only minor mistakes.
27.5: You hit all the right notes, but could improve (e.g. depth or efficiency).
27.0: You mainly did the right thing, but left something to be desired. No Signposting.
26.5: You missed major things and were hard to follow;
26.0: You advanced little in the debate or the round was messy; Spreading.
25.0-25.5: You are not ready for this division/tournament.
Below 25: You were offensive, ignorant, rude, or tried to cheat (Report to tabroom).

As a Lincoln-Douglas Debate judge, I have two primary jobs: to vote for the winner of the round and assign speaking points to both debaters. When deciding a winner, I must evaluate the arguments made during the round and vote for the debater who presents the better case for their side of the resolution. To conduct this evaluation, I look to the flow. The outcome of the framework debate provides the standards I use to weigh the substantive contentions that have survived the round (e.g. if a debater makes an argument in their constructive but drops that argument in their rebuttal, I will not weigh that argument when voting). The winning debater is the one whose arguments best achieve the standards established in the round.

Debaters who wish to present "critiques" or "theory" as reasons they should win the round should proceed with caution. As a matter of fairness and respect for the activity, I cannot vote for a debater who does not advance arguments related to affirming or negating the resolution. Framework/observation/definition/etc. debate is healthy and encouraged, but ultimately the point of such debate is to define parameters for evaluating arguments for or against the resolution.

When deciding speaker points, I look at both the quality of the oral presentation and effective use of time. I can flow speed, but I think excessive speed is unnecessary and often counter-productive. I also encourage all debaters to enunciate clearly.