Harrison,+Kasey

I have been judging LD debate for 15 years or so. I am the director of debate and forensics at Norman High School in Oklahoma. In 2013 I had the 24th and 15th place LD'ers at the NSDA National Tournament, later that summer one of them won the UTNIF camp tournament, at the 2014 NSDA National Tournament I coached the national runner-up, and the national champion in LD in 2015 at NSDA.

In the summer I am the coordinator of the Advanced Lincoln Douglas Division of the Cameron Debate Institute in Lawton, OK.

My paradigm is pretty traditional, my team doesn't do so well at the TX tournaments because we don't debate very progressive things in state, but I feel like that's one of the things that makes us successful at NSDA. The one thing I ask you to do is to debate the way you're comfortable debating. I don't want to see a bad debate between two kids trying to debate the way they think I want to hear the round. I'd rather see a good debate between two intelligent kids doing what they're comfortable doing and me having to adapt to their styles. Having said that, I should explain my paradigm.

I feel like having the more complete framework will go a long way in winning my ballot. Winning the more offensive arguments is also a given, there is a necessity to play defense, but I'll generally vote on who does the better offensive debating. Standards should be fair to both sides, don't limit your framework to only being able to uphold your own argumentation, this will put you at a disadvantage.

Theory is one of those things that I'm not super comfortable with. I really don't like to vote on it and you MUST show real abuse for me to consider it.

I like to see well carded blocks, I love new cards read in later speeches so long as they're not power-tagged and don't set up new argumentation (obv). PLEASE NO BLIPPY ARGUMENTS!!! They do nothing for you and only go to foster a culture of laziness in debate!!!

I'd probably put myself at a 7 out of 10 for rate, but so long as you're clear and fast I can probably keep up.

In the event of what appears to be a tie on my flow I'll probably defer to the more perceptually dominant debater. Ethos, pathos, and logos still go into every decision whether the judge knows they are effecting them or not. I don't often give perfect speaks, but I will if I feel like you are a truly exceptional speaker (I'll generally rank between 27.5-29.5).

Bottom line, DO NOT try to adapt to everything on this paradigm! Make me adapt to you, I'll listen to anything so long as it's good argumentation. Debate the round the way you want it to play out, I'll follow. Don't let yourself regret the fact that you tried to adapt to a judge and did yourself a disservice by debating out of your comfort zone.