Arnold,+John+E

John E Arnold For 2014 NCFL Nationals

I was an intermittent LD debater for 4 years at Fenwick High School, and now am a junior studying philosophy at a (really) small alternative liberal arts school named Shimer College, which I think all debaters should look at when they're going through the application process. Seriously, we're perfect for the debating type: all classes are less than 12 students and entirely discussion based, and the students, faculty and staff all come together and govern the school democratically through the Assembly, which is one of the main governing bodies of the school and open to all. Do check it out!

Ok, so that's my sales pitch, now on to debate. I was asked to judge policy by the NCFL organizers because they were having difficulty finding enough judges. I have not judged before, and the debate experience I do have is in LD, not CX. You might find this disappointing, and I am in total agreement that it is not ideal, but I am not that concerned, because a good debater should be versatile. Both you and your opponent will be subject to the same constraints vis-a-vis my judging quirks, so the playing field is even. Here are my main concerns:

=Speed= I have no ideological objections to speed; ideally I think everyone should be able to spread as fast as they want. I do, however, have a practical difficulty with speed, in that it's hard for me to understand someone who's speaking very quickly. I will call "clear" as many times as necessary, and you will not lose speaker points for going quickly. I will also never give up on a speaker: I will always try my best to flow everything a debater says. If you're going too fast, though, I may miss something, and if the debate ends up hinging on something I don't have on my flow, that will be awkward for all of us. To prevent this, I would recommend the following: start slow (not necessarily at conversational pace, but slow-ish) and then accelerate through to when I call clear, and stay at that pace for the rest of the debate. Also, be sure to emphasize the beginning of a new point with an increase in volume and the briefest of pauses. This is only my recommendation though: take what I've said into account together with your own comfort levels, and to thine own self be true.

=Jargon= I am not a member of the CX community. I've done some review, but I am not familiar with all the jargon. Be careful of that. Whole-word jargon is probably OK, acronyms and single letters are probably not.

=Flow and Paradigm= I have not flowed a debate in 3 years, and LD flows are different than CX flows anyhow. Accordingly, I will most likely not be flowing this debate like you will be flowing this debate. If you rely often on argumentation which references common flowing practices, it would probably be in your best interest to rethink how you're going to argue in front of me. For me, the flow will function more as a simple transcript of what's said than as a map to trace out the victor. When I go to decide to mark my ballot, I'm going to look for a logical chain of reasoning like the following:

W →Y→X→Z→Me signing the ballot in someone's favor

In that respect, I consider myself a tabula rasa judge, because I am not approaching the debate with standards of //why// I should mark the ballot one way or the other. That's for you to argue for. I need to be CONVINCED to mark the ballot. The opponent dropped something? So they did. Tell me why that should effect my vote. Is the opponent's plan not solvent? Why should I care enough to case a ballot against it? Are you running Topicality/kritik/Theory/performance? Cool! Tell me why that means I mark the ballot for you. Or, for the opponent, concede that the resolution is problematic in some way, but tell me why that does not influence my ballot. Being explicit is good: your goal is, in the end, to make me sign the ballot for you, and so you should be very clear about how everything you say ties together to lead me to that action.

If you have any other questions about me as a judge, feel free to ask.