Ford,+Katie

**Katie/Katelyn Ford--4 years of high school debate at Fremont Senior High School, Nebraska. I am currently in my 4th year of college debate at Emporia State and debated for 3 years collectively at KCKCC and Emporia State University prior to this season. Double-octafinalist at CEDA Nationals 2014 and 9th speaker at the CEDA Nationals 2014 tournament. Multiple time tournament champion and outround qualifier.**

**My paradigm is not what I require of debaters when I'm judging them, but mere suggestions that I think can improve the quality of debate. If I am judging you, your best bet is to go for whatever arguments you're comfortable with, I'd rather see you debate well with what you know well, than struggle to cater to what you think I want to hear. Regardless of my preferences or the arguments I read in debates, I will still vote for whatever argument wins the round.** **You will receive speaker points based on what I have experienced as the scale for college policy debate, mainly because I like the way it works, and I think that if most judges are moving up the scale slightly, it's unfair for debaters to get stuck with judges that are still awarding points on outdated models, receiving less speaker points for the same quality debates.** **My speaker points are generally as follows:** 27s & Below: **These are reserved for debaters who have said violent things in the debate round. The lower speaker points you receive will depend on how much I think you are harmful for this activity. If you actively harass, assault, or make anyone in the room feel unsafe, I will likely give you a 0.** 27.1s-28.5s: **These speaker points are for average speeches that perhaps were poorly constructed or were just not well explained in the round.** 28.6s-29.3s: **These speaker points are for debaters who are well versed in their arguments, and are able to win flows and make smart decisions in their answers, links, etc.** 29.4s-29.7s: **These speaker points are given to debaters who have all-but owned the debate, there isn't much more I could ask out of them in the round, perhaps a few small things here and there that were not a big deal. Smart choices, persuasive speeches, and confidence in your arguments and advocacies.** 29.8s-30s: **I think that I can count how many time I have given these out on one hand, and I don't think I've ever awarded a high school debater a 30. If you are receiving these speaker points, I will be surely surprised if you are not in late outrounds of the tournament, if not winning it. These debaters are able to completely own what is happening in the debate, and I believe that they could be nationally competitive in high school, if not on the regional college curcuits.** **Aff Things:** **I literally don't care if you are going to read a plan text or not, either way, you need to have a well-explained story for how your method/plan/advocacy/etc. solves the impacts that you claim it does, whether it be through a plan text, ROB, advocacy statement, or just a well-constructed 1AC. I think affirmatives have seriously started slipping when it comes to internal links.** **I would rather listen to a couple of really good pieces of evidence than 37 cards that you can divide up into four sections of arguments that all say the same thing. Quality over quantity, this is still a communication activity.** **Whatever you like to do, is what I'd like to see you debate about.** **Neg Things:** **Find good links, I feel like debaters have gotten into this habit of constructing really awesome K's or negative methods or CP's or whatever, and focus too much on making arguments about how awesome their strategy is, and not enough on why the affirmative strategy is not a viable one, or why it's WORSE than the neg's. On the same level, I think more negative teams should go for case turns and presumption arguments. Because there are too many affirmatives that are lacking internal links (as I noted above), I think teams need to be taking advantage of that, explain why the aff doesn't solve their impacts, or their advocacy doesn't make any sense, etc. and have a better one, or just case turn their affirmative and go for the status quo. I feel like teams forget that the status quo is negative ground.** **If your reading K's, I'm down. But please don't assume I know exactly what your entire K said, how it solves, etc. just because you said a particular author that I am in general familiar with. You are still held to the responsiblity of explaning your advcocacy and solvency, just like the affirmative is. Also, don't just keep repeating the same words that your author uses without contextualizing your arguments to the affirmative teams' or the debate in general.** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Framework/Topicality: If you're going to go for Topicality, do it smartly. Don't read really generic, old, boring, and bad T shells, like Spending T's. Make nuanced arguments that makes the affirmtiave defend why their argument is productive educationally for debate. I'd rather listen to T debates that just start out as T debates, than Framework debates or Framework debates that just turn into a T.... just read T. The time suck isn't even that effective anymore, most teams answer them the same way. If you are going to go for framework, I'd rather you didn't read it in the generic, unproductive way that everyone tends to. To me, if you genuinely believe that policy education is so awesome, you should probably be introducing policy education into the debate. This means, that instead of just reading F/W to attempt to force the affirmative team into talking about what you wanted to talk about, just talk about what you wanted to talk about. Construct Counterplans that are policy plans that resolve impacts of certain affirmatives (a real version of a Topical version of the aff) and then you can either construct a DA to use as a Net Benefit or use your standards on framework as net benefits to your policy counterplan. I legitimately feel like the way Framework is read now as a procedural argument only is a cop-out, because you shouldn't win a debate by telling the affirmative team that they should be doing something that you didn't even do. I feel like debates would be so much more interesting and intriguing, and EDUCATIONAL if both teams are attempting to put forth solutions to real world impacts and then testing the validity of each others' approaches via DEBATING ABOUT THEM. I know, it's mind-blowing.** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**DA's: They're cool. Make them actually link. If you're going to go for a DA just as a way to prove the aff is untopical via a no link argument they'll likely make, please don't spend half your time on it and then kick it in the block or 2NR. I don't want to waste that much ink. Just spend a little time on it to bait the no link argument, or go for it if it's actually a legit DA to the aff.** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**"Non-Traditional" Negatives: That's cool. You probably don't have to worry about losing on framework, because I think aff framework arguments are some of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever heard, and almost never win debates I've seen or heard of. Explain what your advocacy is, contextualize it to the aff, have links.** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Other Things:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Don't steal prep time, it's obvious, and also annoying.** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Don't purposefully take forever to exchange files if flashing or emailing... it's also obvious and also annoying.** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**I don't take prep for flashing/emailing/whatever** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**I will likely keep track of prep time/speech times** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Don't cut cards and don't lie about what cards you read** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Don't fight with your partner, it makes you look bad** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Have fun, do you, debate your heart out and good luck.**