Walrath,+Caitlin

**Debate History:** Juan Diego Catholic: 2011-2014 (1N/2A and 1A/2N)

Rowland Hall-St. Marks: 2014-2015 (1A/2N)

University of Michigan: 2015-Present (1A/2N)

Constraints: Notre Dame, Rowland Hall-St. Marks, Juan Diego Catholic

***Please put me on the email chain: caitlinp96@gmail.com -** **NO POCKETBOXES PLEASE AND THANK YOU ***** **

**TL;DR:** You do you, and I'll flow and judge accordingly. Make smart arguments, be yourself, and have fun. Ask questions if you have them post-round / time permits. I would rather you yell at me (with some degree of respect) and give me the chance to explain why you lost so that you can internalize it rather than you walk away pissed/upset without resolution. An argument = claim + warrant. "Its T, not FW" annoys the hell out of me if not explained.

**General thoughts**: I enjoy debate immensely and I hope to foster that same enjoyment in every debate I judge. With that being said, you should debate how you like to debate and I’ll judge fairly. I will immediately drop a team and give zero speaks if you make this space hostile by making offensive remarks or arguments that make it unsafe for others in the round (to be judged at my discretion). Clipping accusations must have audio or some form of proof. Debaters do not necessarily have to stake the round on an ethics violation.

**General K update**: if you think pretending to be Mich KM or Loyola EM or whatever makes you cool and radical, it doesn't and will probably make me less willing to want to vote for you. I will still judge the round objectively, but c'mon be your own person. I can be persuaded to vote neg/aff on presumption on the arg "you are just copies of previous high theory debaters that have done nothing to change debate - you have to prove you are categorically distinct or new from these old theories of argumentation otherwise vote neg/aff on presumption".

**K (Negative)** – enjoyable if done well. Make sure the links are specific to the case and cause an impact. Make sure that the alt does something to resolve those impacts and links as well as some aff offense OR have a framework that phases out aff offense and resolves yours. Assume I know nothing about your literature base. Try not to have longer than a 2-minute overview

**K (Affirmative) / Framework** – probably should have some relation to the resolution otherwise its easy to be persuaded that by the interp that you need to talk about the resolution. Probably should take some sort of action to resolve whatever the aff is criticizing. I think FW debates are important to have because they force you to question why this space has value and/or what needs to change in said space. Negative teams should prove why the aff destroys fairness and why that is bad. Affirmative teams should have a robust reason why their aff is necessary to resolve certain impacts and why framework is bad. Both teams need a vision of what debate looks like if I sign my ballot aff or neg and why that vision is better than the other side’s.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Pre-NDCA 2016 Addition: -0.1 speaker points for the phrase "it's T not FW" when you are really reading FW. It's a large pet peeve of mine because I feel it teaches students to ignore the complexity of different arguments in debate. T is a question of what the words in the resolution should mean and how that affects how advocacies are constructed. FW, on the other hand, is a question of what the resolution should or shouldn't be. It asks debaters to question what types of advocacies/performances should be the topic of argumentation. If you insist on using the phrase "it's T not FW" to argue why certain affirmative answers don't apply for some reason, it is the negative's burden to explain why it is T and why that means those arguments don't apply. Trust me on this - I've seen debaters get dropped for making "framework" args that "topicality doesn't solve." Just call it framework if its just resolutional debate good and not an interpretation of what the key words in the resolution mean.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Case** – Please, please, please debate the case. I don’t care if you are a K team or a policy team, the case is so important to debate. Most affs are terribly written and you could probably make most advantages have almost zero risk if you spent 15 minutes before round going through aff evidence. Zero risk exists.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**CPs** – Sure. Negative teams need to prove competition and why they are net beneficial to the aff. Affirmative needs to impact out solvency deficits and/or explain why the perm avoids the net benefit. Affs also must win some form of offense to outweigh a DA (solvency deficits, theory, impact turn to an internal nb/plank of the cp) otherwise I could be persuaded that the risk of neg offense outweighs a risk a da links to the cp, the perm solvency, etc.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**DAs** – Also love them. Negative teams should tell me the story of the DA through the block and the 2nr. Affirmative teams need to point out logical flaws in the DA and why the aff is a better option. Zero risk exists.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Politics** – probably silly, but I’ll vote on it. I could vote on intrinsicness as terminal defense if debated well. Appeasement is more my cup of tea on the China 2016-2017 topic.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Post-Trump Election update: I don't think there will be many first 100 day DAs about his policies, but I urge teams to be very, very careful about which policies they choose to defend. Trump is someone who is unacceptable and should be avoid being defended in everyway possible.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Topicality** – I default to reasonability if the interpretation is obviously arbitrary. Negative teams need to point out why their interpretation is better and more accurate for the literature base and need to point out key ground that you lose. Slight pet-peeve: FW =/= T. T is its own argument and can (and should) be a subset of FW (see above). I think that you can win arbitrary defintions are good if you have a reason why they increase debatability even if they limit out predictable ground (I can clarify this more in person).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Theory** – really not my favorite, but I’ll vote on it if its debated well or dropped. Most theory arguments are a reason to reject the argument, not the team. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Things that are probably good: limited condo, judge kick, agent cps, international fiat cps <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Things that are probably bad: unlimited condo, performative contradictions (lets the aff have severance perms), commission cps (even though I love them), certain process cps, no solvency advocate (for obviously arbitrary mechanisms), 50 state fiat w/o literature justification

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Bonus 1** - rounds on China topic: 72 <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Bonus 2** - to give you an idea of the arguments I’ve been going for the last couple of years: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Current neg wiki – https://opencaselist.paperlessdebate.com/Michigan/Goldsclag-Walrath+Neg <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Last year's neg wiki -- http://opencaselist.paperlessdebate.com/Michigan/Pasquinelli-Walrath+Neg <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Semi-relevant high school neg wiki -- http://hspolicy14.debatecoaches.org/Rowland+Hall/ReedGuevara-Walrath+Neg <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">In short, I've debated and gone for almost everything and anything. I'll judge the round purely by the parameters sent up by the debaters and whoever did that the best. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Bonus 3** – Speaker Point Outline – I’ll try to follow this very closely (TOC is probably the exception because y'all should be speaking in the 28.5+ category): <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">29.3 < (greater than 29.3) - Did almost everything I could ask for <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">29-29.3 – Very, very good <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">28.8 – 29 – Very good, still makes minor mistakes <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">28.5 – 28.7 – Pretty good speaker, very clear, probably needs some argument execution changes <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">28.3 – 28.5 – Good speaker, has some easily identifiable problems <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">28 – 28.3 – Average varsity policy debater <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">27-27.9 – Below average <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">27 > (less than 27) - You did something that was offensive / You didn’t make arguments.