Clark,+Josh

Montgomery Bell Academy
Email: jreubenclark10@gmail.com
 * University of Michigan - Assistant Coach, Institute Instructor**

**Past Schools:** Juan Diego Catholic Notre Dame in Sherman Oaks Damien

**Debating:** Jordan (UT) 96-98 College of Eastern Utah 99 Cal St Fullerton 01-04

**Website:** HSImpact.com

**Speaker Points** Points will generally stay between 27.5 and 29.9. It generally takes between a 28.6 and 28.7 to clear. I assign points with that in mind. Teams that average 28.65 or higher in a debate means that I thought your points were elimination round-level debates. While it's not an exact science, 28.8-28.9 mean you had a good chance advancing the elimination rounds, 29+ indicates excellence reserved for quarters+. I'm not stingy with these kind of points and they have nothing to do with past successes. It has everything to do with your performance in THIS debate.

**Etiquette** 1. Jumping is no longer considered prep. 2. Please do your best to reserve restroom breaks before the opposing teams speeches and not right before your own. 3. Try to treat each other with mutual respect. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">4. Cards MUST be marked during the speech. Please say "Mark the card" and please have you OR your partner physically mark the cards in the speech. It is not possible to remember where you've marked your cards after the speech. Saying "mark the card" is the only way to let your judge and competitors know that you are not intending to represent that you've read the entirity of the card. Physically marking the card in the speech is necessary to maintain an accurate account of what you did or didn't read.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Overview** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">My 20 years in the community has led me to have formulated some opinions about how the activity should be run. I'm not sharing these with you because I think this is the way you have to debate, but because you may get some insight about how to win and earn better speaker points in front of me.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">1) Conceded claims without warrants - A conceded argument is only given as much weight as the warrant that supports it. You still must have a warrant to support your claim...even if the argument has been conceded. If no warrant has been provided, then it wasn't ever an argument to begin with. For theory arguments to rise to the level of an actual "argument", they have to be properly warranted. If your conditionality argument takes less than 5 seconds to read, it's probably not an argument. "Condo -strat skew, voter....I hope they drop it" very well might be dropped, and not voted on. Politics theory arguments and Permutations fall into this same category. A perm must describe how it resolves the link to the net benefit to be an argument. You can't win on "perm: do the cp" without a reason it resolves the aff and should be theoretically allowed. "Vote NO" and "Fiat solves the link" need to have warrants also. If you are the victim of a theory arg like this, vote no, or intrinsicness, or whatever short thought, do not give up on this argument. You should be honest about not having flowed the argument because of its absurd brevity. You should also make arguments about how the development of those arguments in the 1ar are all new and should be rejected and your new answers be allowed. Affirmatives should make complete theory args in front of me, and negatives shouldn't be afraid to point out that the argument lacked a credible warrant.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">2) Voting issues are reasons to reject the argument. (Other than conditionality)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">3) Don't make affirmative statements in CX to start your response to a CX question you disagree with. For example, if one is asked "Is your plan a bad idea?' You shouldn't start your response with "sure" or "right", and then go on to disagree with the question. If you need a filler word or phrase, find one that doesn't posit an affirming response.

4) Debate stays in the round -- Debate is a game of testing ideas and their counterparts. Those ideas presented inside of the debate will be the sole factor used in determining the winning team. Things said or done outside of this debate round will not be considered when determining a winning team.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Topicality vs Conventional Affs:** I default to competing interpretations on topicality, but can be persuaded by reasonability. Jurisdiction means nothing to me because I see jurisdiction being shaped by the questions of predictability, limits and fairness. Topicality is a voting issue.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Topicality vs Critical Affs**:. I generally think that policy debate is a good thing and that a team should both have a plan and defend it. Given that, I have no problem voting for "no plan" advocacies or "fiat-less" plans. I will be looking for you to win that your impact turns to topicality/framework outweigh the loss of education/fairness that would be given in a "fiated" plan debate. I generally think affirmative teams struggle with answering the argument that they could advocate the majority of their aff while defending a topical plan. I also think that teams who stress they are a pre-requisite to topical action have a more difficult time with topical version type arguments, then teams do who impact turn standards. If you win that the state is irredeemable at every level, you are much more likely to get me to vote against FW. The K aff teams who have had success in front of me have been very good at generating a reasonable list of arguments that negative teams could run against them in order to mitigate the fairness impact of the T/FW argument. This makes the impact turns of a stricter limit much more persuasive to me.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I'm also in the fairness camp as a terminal impact, as opposed to an emphasis on portable skills. I think you can win that T comes before substantive issues.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">One note to teams that are neg against an aff that lacks stable advocacy: Make sure you adapt your framework arguments to fit the aff. Don't read..."you must have a plan" if they have a plan. If a team has a plan but doesn't defend fiat, and base your ground arguments on that violation.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Counterplans and Disads**: The more specific to the aff, the better. There are few things better than a well researched PIC that just blind sites a team. Objectively, I think counterplans that compete on certainty or immediacy are not legitimate. However, I still coach teams to run these arguments, and I can still evaluate a theory debate about these different counterplans as objectively as possible. Again, the more specific the evidence is to the aff, the more legitimate it will appear.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**The K**: I was a k debater and a philosophy major in college and you are welcome to run a criticism in front of me. I prefer criticisms that are specific to the resolution. If your K doesn't discuss K-12 Education this year, then it's unlikely to be my favorite. I think that impact comparisons usually become the most important part of a kritik, and the excessive link list becomes the least of a team’s problems heading into the 2nr. You need to win that either a) you turn the case and have an external impact or b) you solve the case and have an external impact. Root cause arguments are good, but rarely address the time frame issue of case impacts. If you are going to win your magnitude comparisons, then you better do a lot to mitigate the case impacts. I also find most framework arguments associated with a K near pointless. Most of them are impacted by the K proper, and therefor depend on you winning the K in order to win the framework argument. Before devoting any more time to framework beyond getting your K evaluated, you should ask yourself, and clearly state to me, what happens if you win your theory argument. You should craft your "role of the ballot" argument based on the answer to that question. I am willing to listen to sequencing arguments that EXPLAIN why discourse, epistemology, ontology, ect. come first.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Conclusion**: I love debate...good luck if I'm judging you and please feel free to ask any clarifying questions.


 * In an effort to promote disclosure at the high school level, any team that practices near universal "open source" will be awarded .2 extra per debater if you bring that to my attention prior to the RFD.**