Izak's+Judging+Philosophy

experience: Four years debate at Idaho State, one year coaching at Idaho State

A lot of people have pegged me as a certain kind of judge—crazy, in other words. While I may be crazy in the head, I don’t think that I judge rounds in a particularly different way than other critics. I, like other judges, vote for which team did the better debating. How I come to this conclusion is much the same as other critics: I allow myself to be persuaded by the rhetorical force of one or another team’s arguments (and I believe that the source of this force, be it truth or technical proficiency, is not important).

So, I’ll let you in on some of the methods to my madness:

First, I believe in the principle of noncontradiction, if only because I have to. I’m not so sure about the law of the excluded middle, but I can’t seem to think without the first, in any case. This is to say that I believe in the truth—I believe, for example, that “true” or well-articulated defense is enough to win Topicality (the eternal return of the “we meet”), and even a disad or kritik (though I do think that the CP has the advantage, for the negative, of forcing the debate into an offense/defense paradigm). On the other hand, I feel that the arguments as to why Competing Interpretations are Good are persuasive, but articulating these reasons as “weigh T as a disad” is not smart in front of me, since I weigh good defense on disads conclusively. In other words, I believe in the principle of noncontradiction, not the offense/defense paradigm (though there are many situations where it certainly applies, if only for providing a clear and simple way for evaluating certain rounds).

Second, I believe that vegetarians are barbaric because they eat their prey while it is still alive. In other words, I am amenable to critical wipeout arguments. In fact, this is what I ran for a good portion of the end of my career. Thusly, I also believe in psychologically tricking opponents into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory—hey, I come from D9 where a good cheap shot is worth its weight in narcotics. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I do not prefer either “traditional” or “non-traditional” debates, on the one hand, and neither do I prefer either “straight-up” or “kritik” debates on the other hand. Certainly, I am more qualified to judge kritik debates—it’s the literature I’ve been focusing both my debate and academic careers on for years—but I don’t necessarily enjoy them more than straight-up debates. The same goes for presentation—traditional versus non-traditional is an empty preference as well (non-traditional straight-up debate would be sweet, though—no evidence, no theory!...I think…). Truly, I will simply come out and say it: I like good debates where everyone is charitable to each other (nota bene: I love charitable trash talk). I think that this is the case with most critics, despite their ideologies. Verily, I hate bad kritik debates more than I hate bad straight-up debates, and bad non-traditional debates are the worst of them all (in other words, for kritik debaters and non-traditional debaters, there is no excuse). I also hate Zizek. I’m just joking (am I?).

Third, I don’t believe in a clash of civilizations. I think that fairness is an illusion, but an important one to maintain. I think that framework is an amazing argument, and I prefer it to be articulated in the most banal of terms: “The affirmative wins if….the negative wins if…” I think a framework of evaluation is present in every debate, and I think that it is precisely what has been missing from the kritik for years. I find “real” impacts the most important aspect of the framework debate—“we should evaluate debates like this because…” of the education the framework provides and the impact of that type of education. Also, I don’t think you are allowed to have a framework that makes it impossible for the other team to win (though, I think, it is the point of having any framework, to make it harder for the other team to win).

Fourth, I believe in the debate. That is, I flow it, and I believe it occurs. A note on my method: I put sufficiently different arguments on different sheets of paper. However, I don’t even try to line everything up in the debate—I just flow from the top down on each sheet of paper, titling your arguments with catchy headers as you go through the debate (you say, “group the link debate” and I don’t draw a line next to the whole link debate, wherever it may be, but instead draw a circle around an L and flow all of your link arguments under it). If you provide me with these catchy headers, all the better—just don’t go overboard like Murillo. Also, I tend to weigh dropped arguments more heavily than answered arguments, but the drop has to be more than a mere technicality (it has to be a functional drop or a complete drop, not just missing ink next to something on the flow…as I said above, I’m not concerned about ink next to ink, just the ink in general). It’s a bit tougher, however, to actually drop something completely when I’m judging, simply because I don’t try to line things up.

Fifth, I don’t want to call for evidence. Ever. When I do call for evidence, 99.9% of the time, I’m just stealing your cites. If there is some sort of irresolvable dispute about what the evidence says, I’ll call for it (though I won’t like it). Otherwise, I’m probably not going to call for evidence at the end of the round. You should tell me what it says. In fact, I think that one only needs evidence to establish uniqueness scenarios, and everything else is merely bound to the scrutiny of argument (or logic, if you will, but see the First, above). Bottom, line, though, if you say, “extend Hardy evidence, read it after the round,” you will have only wasted precious time. Granted, in more straight-up debates, I tend to call for more evidence because I am not as familiar with the literature base, but that really means that you should explain things to me as thoroughly as possible because I am likely to interject my own thought processes into my reading of the evidence (and this usually tends to make nobody happy, especially myself). Finally, this means that if you’re the kind of debater who goes nice and slow on the tag and cite and blazes through the evidence like a Ukrainian virus attacking Microsoft Outlook, you’ll just be wasting breath. I actually listen to the card and try to write down the warrants—what would be the point in not calling for ev if I wasn’t listening to it in the first place? This is different from how I used to judge—I wouldn’t flow the evidence at all and wait for the debaters to explain it to me, but these days I feel that if you’re going to use your time to spew it, I may as well use my time to write it down. At the end of the day, however, I tend to regard all the words coming out of your mouth as your own, not some experts’.

Anyways, just a glimpse into the madness.

izak dunn

P.S. I think I’m over my 30’s addiction, so please stop asking. I have found a new addiction to 26.0. I’m sure this will all balance out in the end.