Paredes,+Chris

=**__Overview__**=

(Updated for Golden Desert 2018; my Tabroom paradigm is always the most up-to-date)

__Experience__: I debated four years of high school (Damien; 2001-2005) with moderate success (one bid, two shadow bids with different partners, and a handful of lost bid rounds). I did not debate in college but I coached HS briefly after college (2009-2010) and judged sporadically during law school for the Atlanta Urban Debate League (2010-2013). I have been coaching for Damien since 2017. Therefore it is best to treat me as fluent in debate, but not fluent in current "meta" trends as they may be.

__Topic Familiarity__: I am relatively familiar with the topic having judged at a half dozen tournaments and having cut neg files, but I do not teach summers so arguments about "heart of the topic" based on whether something was a camp aff are not the effective in front of me (not that I think those arguments particularly persuasive anyway).

__Debate__: I view debate as a game where the rules of the game are mostly made up in round by the debaters. With a very few exceptions (the length of speeches, the order of the speeches, which side the teams are on, etc.) I think everything is fair game for the teams to establish during the round. That means that I am generally open to voting for any argument so long as I have an idea of how it functions within the round and it is appropriately impacted. Note that even though debate is a game, I absolutely can be persuaded that a round should be judged based on real world or post-round effects of the ballot.

__Argumentative Weight__: In-speech analysis goes a long way with me; I am much more likely to side with the team that explains the warrants to their argument vs. the one that extends by tagline and/or author only. I will read cards as long as I am prompted to do so, however I will read critically and evaluate warrants. Without the necessary warrants, I will treat carded claims as little more than analytics. Technique trumps truth, but it is usually much easier to debate well when you are using true arguments.

__Argument Selection__: Almost all of my preferences on this paradigm can overcome if you debate better than your opponents so you should run whatever you are most familiar and comfortable with. However regardless of the style of debate you choose it is in your own interest to debate in a way where you do the work for me. By that I mean that your goal in your final rebuttal is 1) establish what criterion the debate should be evaluated under and 2) demonstrate to me why you win under those criterion.

__E-Mail Chain__: I do not need to be on the chain if there's some reason you would prefer to limit the distribution of your docs/ev, but if that's not an issue go ahead and add me (chris.paredes@gmail.com) so I do not have to deal with calling for cards at the end.

If you still don't know how to pref. me, there is an extensive argument by argument breakdown below.

**__Topicality__**
I appreciate a good T debate, and I will reward teams for well thought out interpretations with nuanced defenses. Debating T well is a question of engaging in responsive impact debate. Generally I vote for the team that provides the best internal links (ground, predictability, research burden) to the terminal impacts (fairness and education). Going full robot mode by just reading blocks is fatal for the aff and unpersuasive on the neg, and I find it hard to judge neutrally when you leave me to weigh the round on a bunch of internal links without a comparison on who accesses the impacts best.

I generally find that competing interpretations is superior to reasonability because it features a built-in mechanism through which to decide between interps. Reasonability is not compelling when it amounts to blips like "They have case specific literature therefore we are reasonably predictable" or "Good is good enough. "Reasonability" is much more compelling when employed relative to standards, like "The aff interp only imposes a reasonable additional research burden of two more cases."

__Fx/Xtra Topicality__: Don't be afraid to go for Fx/Xtra with me in the back. But if you go for these as a subset violation within another flow you should have a clear interp that sets a brite line for what is and what is not fx/xtra, argue why the affirmative violates it, then quantify the impact for me as to why I should pull the trigger.

__Kritiks of Topicality / Topicality Silences Voices__: I dislike this argument on principle because the resolution is one of the bare minimum rules of debate that I think I must enforce on the round. The resolution presumably exists for a reason. Moreover, the argument itself is just weak; there are lots of important and interesting problems in the world to discuss, so the impacts are incredibly non-unique. Ultimately killing the neg's ability to check non-topical affs by kritiking topicality feels like a disingenuous way for the aff to re-orient the debate to their argumentative/topic preferences. However as a rule I punish incompetence over principle so I will vote on this if the negative mishandles it.

__Framework / T-USFG__: In line with my thoughts above on kritiks of topicality, I tend to find this argument pretty persuasive. I find that there is little point in switch-side debate if you are just going to disavow yourself of the resolution when aff to reframe the debate around an external issue. For an aff to beat this argument in front of me, they need to find a specific and compelling reason why they can't embed their specific personal advocacy into a topical policy beyond "The USFG sucks." (That would be inherency; if the USFG is an insurmountable solvency deficit then it's an indication that your plan action is fundamentally flawed.) I am very much a believer that debate, despite all its archaic rules and inaccessibility to a lay audience, is excellent training for real world advocacy. Advocacy for your case is basic training for post-debate advocacy of real world policies.

**__Procedurals__**
I can be swayed either way on most theory disputes; what matters to me most is how the debaters play the arguments out.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Generally speaking I probably have much less aversion to voting on theory than other judges due to my view of debate. However if you intend to read theory I believe you should be prepared to actually debate theory. If you treat the theory debate seriously and your opponent doesn't, it makes it extremely easy for me to pull the trigger on theory. However I rarely find going on auto-pilot and reading blocks to be persuasive.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">It is important to quantify your impacts vs. your opponents' in a theory debate; if you do not give me a framework by which the pro and con lists can be weighed, then I have to make my own and you may not like the results. The best theory debates should play out like topicality debates with two interpretations that present different worlds of debate and give reasons why one world is superior.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">A special note on condo, I don't necessarily believe that negative's entitlement to multiple worlds includes severance of discourse/rhetoric pursuant to that world. For example, I don't see why conditionality means you can run your Fear of Death K with a reps link along with a Hege Nuclear War Impact to your Politics D/A and still access your K's alt solvency just because you kicked out the D/A before the 2NR. This is even worse if you claim there's no external impact to the ballot besides a rejection of a negative mindset. (That's not to say I think this is an automatic wining argument, I simply find it most logical to assume the negative is responsible for their discourse as much as the Aff is unless explicitly explained otherwise.)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**__Kritiks__**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I enjoy critical theory, however I tend to dislike critical rounds because I feel many teams run the K (or a K-affs) with a shallow understanding of the literature and are simply relying on the chance the other team knows slightly less about the argument than they do.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">With that said if you are confident in your ability to run a kritik do not be deterred by my judging. I have a generally high level of academic familiarity basic critical arguments (Philosophy and English lit majors in undergrad). I ran a critical fem aff when I debated plus a few affs without the basic inevitable nuclear war scenario.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">A good kritik should be able to clash with the affirmative head-on. Quintessential bad K debate is defined by shifting the debate to repetition of some generic talking points based on your tag lines. I only read cards to examine warrants, so do not expect me to make the argument coherent for myself. Also power-tagging also tends to backfire once I begin reading cards since the vast majority of HS debaters under-highlight K cards (as a result of not understanding the argument and the necessary warrants, which is usually because you did not cut the books/articles yourself) so you have a lot of incentive to keep me judging purely on the flow. Therefore having good familiarity with the literature is essential to debating the K well.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**I don't have any biases or predispositions about what my ballot does or should do. But if you do not explain your alt and/or how my ballot interacts with the alt (or lack thereof), I will usually default to treating the K as a non-unique disad.** To be clear, that's generally not a good thing for you. So it behooves you to devote some time to telling me what my ballot does and what the alternative is -- even the answers are just "Reject the aff" and "Vote neg." If the alt is some actual action which solves back for the implications of the kritik, in fiat world or the real world, the solvency process of the alt should be explained.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Affirmatives should be offensive with their 1AC. You presented an advocacy in the 1AC and that advocacy is supposed to be the focus of the round, not a tangent for whatever philosophy or social issue the negative wants to talk about.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">If you are a critical aff, show that your affirmative is a better advocacy than the alt because it is an advocacy for specific real world change. Most K impacts are generic structural violence so presumably your efforts to stop people from dying, being discriminated against, or otherwise suffering are decent link turns. I advise you to find specific perm solvency advocates. Most of the negative's cards on the perm can't solve tend to be supercharged by the polarity of authors who wholesale reject the system, therefore a generic "can transform the state from within" cards tends to lose in a warrant war because your realism/state good authors just aren't as prone to hyperbole. But a good perm solvency card that is specific towards your plan makes a pretty devastating case for "Perm + No brink to the implications means that any risk of a link is outweighed by the short term advantages of solving the case." The chances are that the neg won't have the specificity of evidence required to show that your plan is the tipping point.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Straight up affs should not be afraid of going for straight impact turns and defending the body count. Facing eight minutes of threat construction? Counter with eight minutes of "the Other will murder us unless we kill them first." I won't necessarily vote for you because I think that realism always wins, but I'm more willing than most judges to consider the merit in challenging the ideology head on rather than labeling your discourse a link.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**__Counterplans__**
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I think that research is a core part of debate as an activity, and good counterplan strategy goes hand-in-hand with that. I think the fact that counterplans are more straight forward than kritiks allows for more room for technical debate and fertile plan specific clash, which favors the better team because that is where you can leverage your skills as a debater.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Generic PICs are more vulnerable to perms and carry a much higher threshhold burden on the net benefit, but PICs with specific solvency advocates or highly specific net benefits are devastating and one of the ways that debate rewards research.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**__Misc.__**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">__Speaker Points__: I think speaker points are arbitrary and bad, but there is no real alternative to them. I try to follow any provided tournament scale very closely if it's available. In the event that there is no scale my baseline is 27.5 and I distribute speaks as if I was grading debaters on a bell curve. There are two relevant take-aways from that. First is that I consider "average" relative to the tournament since a bell curve is standardized. Second is that I'm aggressive at BOTH addition and subtraction from this baseline since on a bell curve most people should be in the range of average but those people will all either be above or below the average and not sitting exactly at average. Points above the baseline are rewarded for entertaining, organized, strategic, and clever speeches. Points are docked for being the opposite of entertaining, organized, strategic, and clever.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">__Delivery__: Speed is recommended; it is a tool in your arsenal to introduce either more arguments or more clarification. However your speed should be limited by clarity. Additionally realize that even if I can hear and understand you, no one is flowing all 16 points of your theory block if you spit it out in twenty seconds. Also don't be afraid to lose ten seconds on things like sign-posting the line-by-line; you will likely make it up in efficiency (besides your arguments won't mean much if I don't know where to flow them).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">__Organization__: I believe good line-by-line is a fundamental of good debate that is becoming increasingly rare and is the number one way most debaters can improve their speeches. Establishing (or following) a numbered (and, if necessary, sub-pointed) 2AC line by line structure is a bare minimum requirement for anything over a 28.5 and failure to follow the line-by-line by definition is below average and will get you something under 27.5 (or whatever the tournament's average scale is set at)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">__Cross-X and Prep__: Tag-team CX is fine but it's part of your speaker points to be giving and answering most of your own cross session. I think that finishing the final question in the first few seconds of prep is fine. Simple clarification and non-substantive questions during prep is fine.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">__Prep and Tech__: I generally don't charge prep for tech, but tech should be limited to emailing docs or flashing; it is not time to compose the secondary card-only version of your speech doc. When you end prep, you should be ready to distribute.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">__Accommodations__: Feel free to ask for accommodations in round or email me ahead of time