Kaul,+Maya

I debated on the national and the local circuit for Presentation High School for four years and graduated in 2013. I am currently a student at Pomona College and coach for Presentation.

My goal is to intervene as little as possible, so there are a few preferences that I have that you should be aware of that will affect the outcome of the round

1. Weigh your arguments (unless you feel comfortable leaving it up to me to evaluate argument interaction but my guess is that the way I evaluate arguments will not always align to the way you do). This is true for all levels of the round.

2. Don’t run blatantly offensive arguments (i.e. genocide good) that create a hostile in-round environment for anyone involved. Please just be respectful and considerate of others and this should not be an issue. I feel comfortable dropping debaters on face who run these sorts of positions.

3. Other than offensive arguments, you can run whatever types of arguments you would like to; however, it is your job to make sure that the decision calculus is clear (policy arguments, kritiks, theory, etc. are all fine). I am also open to using whatever decision calculus is best justified in the round. Though, as a background, I am most comfortable using a util/consequentialist framework to evaluate rounds. That being said, I am open to using another decision calculus so long as it is clear and justified.

4. I prefer rounds that are close to the heart of the topic. I will evaluate positions that are less related but I would much prefer to see around that actually engages the topic in a meaningful way.

5. Speed – I can handle speed. However, if you are running more obscure critical arguments or just more dense philosophical ones in general, please slow down so that I can catch all that I need to.

6. Extensions—I prefer full extensions. That means extending the warrant/impact as well if you want me to evaluate the argument. I will accept shorter extensions for dropped arguments, but that should not mean that you expect me to do all weighing for you.

If you have any other questions that this did not cover, feel free to ask.