Clevenger,+C.J.

C.J. Clevenger School: The Barstow School Years Judging: 10+ Rounds on Topic: ~5 Last Updated 11/2/15

__**Importa****nt** **Update:**__ For those who don't know, I have stopped officially coaching, which means that I have stopped cutting cards and keeping a detailed account of the topic. I will be in attendance at a few tournaments this year, so my knowledge of the topic is not non-existent, but for those of you who have had me previously as a judge and were accustomed to me being deeply on top of the topic, consider this fair warning. That being said, I am actually pretty excited to judge without that intense background of knowledge.

**__General:__** I enjoy watching very technical debates with good strategies. This guide is to get you to a point to win the debate with the best speaker points possible. Arguments need to pass the common sense test (i.e. the use of logic)…There are 3 parts of an argument Claim, Warrant, and Data, your arguments need to use all 3, otherwise they cease to be arguments. It helps to point out missing items of these if you are the opposing team. FLOW! FLOW! FLOW! FLOW! My flow is a written account of the debate and how I make my decision. You should be flowing the debate and use the line by line to answer arguments that the other team is making.


 * __ Clarity: __** SLOW DOWN!!! You are not as clear as you think you are! I don’t call for many cards (read almost zero) unless I need them to clarify and argument or compare the warrants that were discussed by teams. I don’t think it is my job to read your evidence to determine what it says. I do think it is YOUR job as a debater to communicate both with me and the other team what that evidence says and means. Speech docs are not an alternative to your spoken word. I expect to be able to understand every word that you say. The text of the evidence that you read is the most important thing you read in debate because it is what gives you the warrants to win debates in front of me. I think debaters would be well advised to slow down to 85% of their top speed, because you are not as clear as you think you are. Important notes: I will call clear if I can’t understand you twice. After that I will give non-verbal signals like putting my pen down and staring at you. You should take this as a clue that I have quit flowing your arguments and they at that point cease to be arguments in my mind in the round. Your speaker points will suffer if I am yelling clear. Debaters should feel free to make arguments during thier speech about the clarity of an argument that the other team made, I will give non-verbals if I agree or not. This is a good way to show me two things: 1. that you are listening to the speech and not just reading the speech doc and 2. that you are probably flowing. Both of which are likely to help your speaker points.

Too many students are clipping cards, its disrespectful to opponets and to the community. In an effort to deter students from clipping I will take a very ahrdline stance in my future juding. In additions to my normal clarity procedure I will begin implementing a standard policy on checking debater for clipping cards. 1. I will record every debate that I judge. 2. If a team decides to raise a clipping challenge against their opponets I will immediately strop the debate. I will review the tape (if one is available) and speech documents and decide the debate on the clipping in question. Without tape I will look at the speech doc as read and look for the marked section of cards to confirm that the highlighting for first and last matches up with my first and last on my flow. If you have not marked your cards in the speech doc then you have clipped because after the speech you won't have a clue where you stopped on every card. In the past I have given teams a chance to mark thier cards after thier speech (using thier preptime) but this continues to be a problem so I am no longer going to allow that. 3. If there are ANY clarity problems in speeching or if I have ANY cause to question the speaker I will as a default call for the necessary speech docs to decide if my suspicsions are correct. If there is I will vote agains the team that clipped, if there is no clipping I will continue with my decision. To be very celar I do not feel that I need a debater to initiate a clipping challenge, as an educator I feel I have a responsibility to monitor agains cheating. 4. If a student is caught clipping their team will lose and the student who clipped will reveive zero speaker points. I will also talk to the coaches of the team that cheated to explain the procedure that I went through, and if asked, provide evidence of when their student cheated. There is no gray area with clipping - if I cannot tell CLEARLY and DIFINITIVELY that you read a part of the card my presumption is that you did not. Feel free to contact me with any quesitons. **__Update:__** I have been told that I vote very quickly. Most of the time I already know what the nexus issues in the debate are that I have to resolve for me to make a decision, once I have identified these, decisions come quickly. If you want to win, I would recommend you start to identify them as well. Often times I do not call for cards. This is because I am not going to sort through your evidence to find the warrants in it to support your arguments. You should be doing this work not me. If you are not doing it, that is probably a reason that you will lose the debate. This is a spoken activity; I listen to all of the speech, not just the tags. I do this because I want to list to what your evidence actually says (you know the warrants you are supposedly reading that you have not highlighted out of them). I expect clarity through the entire speech, if you are not able to perform this, then you are wasting your breath. I flow warrants of evidence and I also flow the Cross-X.
 * __Clipping__:** I wish there was a world that there did not have to be a section like this in my philosophy, but there is. I have stolen most of this from Gabe Murillo, but I agree 100% with him so here it is:

**__Cliff Notes:__** - I Read/cut a lot of cards usually judge 60+ rounds a year. - Ideal 2NRs include the following things in them (I have not ranked them but find all of these items to be perfectly acceptable and "ideal"): Politics/Econ, Any form of CP (excluding the cheating versions, ie. Delay, veto cheato, I am up in the air about consult CPs. )Impact Turns, T, Kirtik/Critique - Cheap Shots: Can be voters if they are flat conceded. Flowing and the line-by-line are important, pay attention. - K Framework: weighing the impact of the case makes sense to me, often times if the aff gets to weigh case (which most of the time I think they do) then makes it hard for the negative to win. - Topicality: Competing interpretations makes a lot of sense to me. You need to have more than defense to win a T debate. Offense and being able to describe the world of what the topic looks like under your interpretation. -Counterplans: Open For Debate: All -Uniqueness and link arguments don't determine the other. Defense can be an absolute takeout but is probably not always recommended and is much more difficult to win. -I like humor, I like aggressiveness, I don't like meanness or jackassery. These areas are a fine line, if you can't walk them don't try.

**__Topicality:__** Competing interpretations really make sense to me. Reasonability seems pretty circular. I am a judge will to vote on T. The biggest problem that I see in T debates is the lack of internal link and impact work in the standards debate. Painting a picture for me of what the topic looks like under your interpretation (usually large or small) and WHY that interpretation is best for debate is the simplest that I can break it down. Too often teams just say, here is our interp and we/they are in/out of it. That is not enough, because the inclusion/exclusion of one case does not make a topic. It is all of the other things that your interp allows/excludes that make the topic, it is really just happenstance that it excludes/includes the affirmative.

**__Kirtiks:__** I am getting there. I have read some lit now, I am coming along slowly. Still think I am not the best judge for the K, but there is not an ideological predisposition for voting against it. Read more below on the "performance" debate section about teams that want to pref me who go for the K. I think the same things apply here as well. Sometimes I get lost, once I am lost, like most people I tend to seek ground in debates that I am familiar with, this probably means aff arguments like No V2L without Life and case outweighs or permutation arguments.

**__Performance/Non-Resolution Engaging AFFs:__** In my ideal world I think the Affirmative should defend some form of engagement of the resolution. My predisposition does not require the defending of a "plan" but does incline me to believe that the AFF should certainly engage the idea that there should be an increase in Economic Engagement. Now, saying that I think the AFF should engage the resolution does not mean they have to, nor do I have a predesignated will to vote against teams that choose not to. I will and have listened to debates about the state of debate and other things. The difference in my comfort has to do with a level of understanding of arguments. I will be honest. The more often I am preffed into these debates and watch them I think the better understanding I will have for the arguments, allowing me to develop a better skill set as a judge. If you are a team chooses to debate in this style, I understand the perceived risk in prefing me, I will definitely say I am not a perfect judge for this style of debate right now, but to be clear - this is a statement of a willingness to learn and expand upon my capabilities as a judge. So on that note - I appreciate the opportunity you have given me to both broaden and sharpen my skills.

**__Theory:__** Still have yet to hear a good reason that makes sense for conditionality, especially when used in conjunction with contradictory arguments. I spend a lot of time coaching and thinking about theory. I actually don’t mind theory debates. I give 2ARs and 1ARs a little more leeway in going for theory, but the argument still needs to be there for the 2AR from the 1AR. I want to hear a warrant for your argument not 7 points of blip. I think 3 good warranted arguments are better than 7 sentences about 7 different things. That being said, plenty of people run conditional arguments in front of me, and it still takes the right arguments from the AFF to win conditionality debates. That being said I think I voted AFF on condo bad when the AFF went for it in the 2AR (does not need to be the whole speech, but you need to invest some time to get it done) probably around 80% of the time. Most of the other theory questions you have about CPs will be answered below.

**__Counter-Plans:__** I think most CPs are legit. You should have some form of solvency advocate for your CP. Evidence about the link to the net-benefit is not a solvency advocate. In these instances lit checks abuse for the most part. Be willing to spend time talking about the impact. So be willing to do an impact comparison that "if I reject the argument not the team, then they d/n have a cp to solve case, which was conceded by the 2NR and it outweighs their net-benefit without a CP" This will get you a very long way. NEG read the inverse if you think you are schooling them on the rest of the debate and this is their only way out, a little preempt will go a long way to better speaks. Consult CPs/Condition CPs/PICs are a different monster. AFFs too often fail to debate or understand the normal means, that can get them out of a lot of the consult debates. PICs out of words are probably not the best strat in front of me. There are a TON of CPs on this topic, and there is zero reason why we should not debate them. International fiat is a risky endeavor. I can be sold either way.

**__Rebuttals (specifically 2NR/2AR):__** This is where you should be comparing impacts for me and explaining how I should vote. A good impact comparison does more than just magnitude, timeframe, and whatever.. it actually compares your impact risk in relation to their impact risk. Reality is you are not winning all of your arguments. You will start to lose fewer debates once you can realize what arguments that you are and are not losing. This is the speech that you have to think like a judge. The tag line in the rebuttals is not an argument, you need to be drawing distinctions between the text of your authors and theirs and giving me reasons why your evidence or analysis answers their arguments and theirs does not answer yours and what that means to me in how I should evaluate those claims. Seem like a lot to do? Really helps if you are setting this up in the block and 1AR. Just remember that if I have to do work for you, you might not like the outcome…..

**__Paperless Stuff:__** This really only applies to how I stop prep time for those teams debating paperless. Your prep time stops when the speech is saved on the jump drive. If you are the person giving the speech, you do not need to go and open up the speech on the other teams computer. Your partner can or better yet the other team. If the speeches are clearly labeled on the drive then there should not be an issue. Once you hand the drive over to the other team, you can give the order and debate. End of Story...

**__Speaker Points:__** Some have asked me about how I assign speaker points. So the things I think about when I am assigning speaker points are (in no particular order), clarity, delivery, style, strategy, success, how bad you made my flow look (I flow unlike you. My flow is how I decide the debate, the more painful you make my life the more pain I inflict on your speaker points. Line-by-line argumentation is good, and is a dying art. Note: this is about the umpteenth reference in my judging philosophy to flowing...it might be important!