Sundaram,+Jeyshri

I took part in debate for two years in high school in Wales. It was a form of debate similar to LD. I am currently studying at Northeastern University and I do sporadically take part in APDA tournaments.

General Philosophy: 1) Spreading - Please don’t let **spreading** ruin your argument. I’d rather hear you make detailed arguments with warrants and impacts than give me several weak arguments. I believe clashes are key to a good debate round, so please engage in the spirit of debate and don’t mention an unreasonable number of arguments so that you can later argue that you should win because your opponent dropped several of your arguments.

2) Logical Fallacies - I expect you to avoid some of the common fallacies like begging the question and by extension circular reasoning, ad hominem, red herring and worst of all **straw man**. I cannot stress enough how frustrating it is to hear a debater present a weakened version of opp’s argument so that they can then refute it.

3) Specific to LD - Please elaborate not only about your value and value criterion but also about why I should judge the round based on your framework as opposed to opp’s. I’d also like to point out that **it is possible to win the round even if I choose opp’s framework** to be the standard by which I judge the round. Additionally, please don’t present new arguments in the final rebuttal of a round.

4) Examples - Although I believe examples can be useful when warranting an argument, please don’t use the example itself as a warrant. Also, it’s more effective to refute opp’s argument in which they provided the example than the example itself.

5) General Conduct - Please be respectful to your opponents and be wary of the pronouns they’d prefer to use. You can be an effective speaker without raising your voice unnecessarily or being aggressive to your opponent.