Shagrin,+Michael

I’m Michael Shagrin, former LDer from Brentwood School (Class of '09) and my experience in the activity has been minimal since graduating.

While I’m not opposed to you pushing the boundaries, I definitely prefer traditional standards based debate if only because I’m not exactly sure how the conventions of LD have changed during my absence from the activity. But I don't want to punish you for running a unique case or unique arguments, but please don’t rely on obscurity just for the purpose of confusing your opponent. If your opponent doesn’t understand how your case functions and why that means you should win, I probably won’t understand either. However, if you can take a really complex argument and make it simple and interesting in a way that allows your opponent to engage its substance, you’ll probably be on your way to 30 speaks. If you do choose the traditional route, the most important component of standards debate to me is WEIGHING TO THE STANDARD. WEIGH YOUR ARGUMENTS AND BE EXPLICIT. I like it when debaters use phrases like, “I outweigh for x reasons and better achieve the standard than my opponent because of y”. Compare your offense to your opponent's explicitly and do the work for me. I love debaters who can clearly explain why their arguments come before or mitigate their opponents and give me both case level impacts and in-round voting impacts.

** Theory ** : I really prefer hearing about the actual topic and not interpretations of the rules of debate. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop listening when you run theory. If there is clear abuse that skews ground against you – go for theory but do it slow and clearly spell out what the abuse is and how I should resolve it. BIG WARNING: I’m really quite unlikely to vote one way or the other on theory. I understand that it’s a drag to spend time explaining why something is abusive without it giving you an independent voter, but I like resolving debates on substance. I have no problem throwing out arguments if they’re abusive, but definitely think twice before wasting MORE TIME arguing why theory on its own means you should win the round.

** Speed ** : You don’t need to go slow but definitely stay well below your max speed. I will call out clear/slow if you are mumbling or if you are going too fast, but after three times, I will stop and your speaker points will suffer dramatically.