Koo,+Bon

I'll make this better one day, but for now...

Hi. I debated for four years at College Prep in CA, and two years in college at Georgetown. I went to the TOC and NDT twice. I coach for Georgetown Day School and College Prep, and have judged a couple tournaments on the current hs topic.

I will try to be as objective as possible. I will probably not be offended by any arguments you make- you can go for whatever you want, even if its blatantly untrue, but you should be able to defend it. Debaters should tell me how to evaluate the debate, but I guess every judge has some unavoidable opinions. K. In high school I went for the K a lot. That doesn't mean that I love the K, or that I'm really well read on it- in fact, if I had been not lazy and cut some more updates, I probably wouldn't have gone for the K at all. By my second year in college, there was never a K in my 1NCs, and people could often find me mumbling after debates about how much I hate debating the K. But I am okay with you reading a K, if you wish. I used to be one of you. I think the best K debates include specific examples that are historical, and if you can make your links really relevant to the 1ac, that's even better. For both sides- if you're going to spend a lot of time on framework, make it relevant. K affs. They can certainly be strategic, and when done well, are difficult to handle. But, I will not be particularly moved if your answers to disads and counterplans could answer ANY disad or counterplan, and if you refuse to defend any consequences of your plan, and if your K aff is just a jumble of generic postmodern authors and an excuse not to cut answers to things. I think that K affs are legit but can be very persuaded by a good neg framework arg, especially if the aff refuses to defend anything. Speaking&Style. I don’t consider an argument dropped just because there isn’t ink next to it. I think cross-applications or sort of… meta-answers are okay. I would just prefer not to do the cross-ap for you after the debate. I'm going to try to take speaker points pretty seriously. I think a lot of people don't give them enough thought; they affect the tournament way beyond just speaker awards. Please don't steal prep, it's really annoying and it'll lower your speaks. Things that will help your points: being clear, organized in speech, good strategic choices, cross-x, and humor. You can be a bitch, but if you’re going to, at least be hilarious. BE CLEAR; you're probably less clear than you think you are. I'll agree with Calum's judge philosophy here: debate is about communication. If I can't understand you, I'll just happily ignore you. DAs Specific is always better. Impacts are important. And great. Offense/defense is good, but it only applies up to a certain point. You should tell me if the risk of the DA outweighs whatever part of the Aff remains. I default to offense/defense/risk of DA, but affs can certainly persuade me of 100% defense. Theory. I actually really like theory debates if they are debated well. I will try my best to keep my opinions out of these debates too. However, generally, I think that: conditionality (especially multiple), international fiat, and most K alts are unfair/bad, but they all seem to be generally accepted by the community. PICs are probably good, consult counterplans- I’m undecided. What will help you most for theory is if you have a card that says your CP is quite relevant to debate or the topic. Performance. You can do it, and I’ll listen to it as I would any other argument, but this is one place I would prefer not to deal with. I think debate is good, and it probably isn’t genocidal, and the performance won’t change the debate community/racist structures/capitalism much. You should probably read a plan text. If your plan text has nothing to do with the topic, you might as well not read one. I think judges often let performance teams get away with too much in fear of being offensive. I don’t want to be offensive, but I also don’t want to be unfair. Ideally, I think teams should be able to perform if: one partner speaks per speech, and only speech forms are used to perform (not slides, recordings); teams shouldn’t use their performance/personal experiences/situations as an independent reason to vote for them. However, if the opposing team doesn’t refute this, then I guess that’s unfortunate for them.

Good luck to all!