Smith,+Mike

I was involved in LD Debate for Iowa City West High School for four years. I am now a senior at the University of Iowa.

Speed

Since I debated for four years and have been judging somewhat consistently for the past three, I am okay with speed to a point. I never did get into the craze about LDers pretending to be policy debaters though. This means first of all, if you start acting like a policy debater with your double breathing, monotonous, high-pitched yelling style of debate I will be emotionally off-put which may subliminally affect your speaker points. Second, "to a point" is the key phrase up there, I can flow some speed, but it can get too fast for me. I have combined this shortcoming on my part with my enjoyment of some level of eye-contact in that my policy for too-fast debaters is to stare at the debater in confusion when I do not understand what is being said. During this time, I will keep trying to flow, but am not likely to get down all the arguments I should. With this in mind, please be sure to look at me at least some of the time if you opt for speed, so that your insightful arguments don't go unheard.

Value/Criterion

These are generally pretty important to me, and only in a few cases do I think that a case may be made without one. Impacting back to them is good, connecting them is good. If your value/criterion is similar to your opponent's and you think they can be merged without significantly affecting either side's offense, I welcome that approach, so "winning" the value/criterion is not everything. Alternate case styles will be met with initial skepticism and must be well-explained in terms of how they contain offense with reference to the resolution.

Plans/Counterplans

Yuck. In my opinion the same sort of offense that you can get from this style of debate can be obtained through writing conditional and annoying affirmative cases (plans) and attacking impacts in a certain way (counterplan). That being said, counterplan-esque stuff is not so bad, and impacted properly may be okay. Plans are bad, please avoid them. Avoid phrasing things in those terms too (unless your opponent forces you to), since this is LD.

Theory

I don't really like theory. There are way too many assumptions involved that are not compelling to me. There are also a lot of technical things about theory I simply never learned, like RVIs, or why time-skew is actually important. I could probably take time out of my life to find these things out, but would rather occupy myself with slightly more important tasks like getting into law school. In short, avoid theory unless there is a situation of clear abuse that really calls for it, and even then, I don't really feel that theory gains offense so much as it just makes me ignore the abusive offense. Finally, there are often alternatives to theory, and I suggest you use them.

Line-By-Line/crystallization

I am a big fan of the uncool practice of crystallizing things. Addressing arguments is important, but it is certainly not everything. Bringing the round back to the big picture and PERSUADING me that your side is correct is very important and will help you. As for debaters who say that persuasion distracts from the substance of arguments and the true technicalities, I agree wholeheartedly and understand that this is the way the world works. Persuasion is important, getting the judge to believe something they know is false or crazy is a wonderful skill. Employ it.

Philosophy

Philosophy is good. I am a philosophy major. I enjoy meta-ethical discussions in rounds as long as they are done correctly. This means that you should go for that approach if you feel able, but also that you should try avoid the standard debate practice of asserting massive metaethical assumptions as true like, "and my value is correct because morality is a social construct based in collective self-interest," and then moving on. That alone won't hurt your argument, but it will make me cringe.