Munoz,+Avi

8 years debating (high school & college), 5th year judging high school debate current grad student at U of Minnesota

below are my thoughts about specific arguments. these are not strict predispositions - do what you do best/want to do, and i will do my best to decide the debate fairly and based on what the debaters said in the round, not what i personally think of their arguments.

prep stops when the jump drive is out of the computer.

Specific Arguments: Topicality: I tend to default to competing interpretations. The aff should have offense in the form of a counter-interpretation and reasons why it's better; k's of T are ok, but need to be impacted beyond "we're being excluded and that's bad" - what does including/excluding your aff do that is good/bad for debate as an activity?

Disads: Specific links are better than generic links. Uniqueness doesn't determine the direction of the link or vice versa. Be as specific as possible with your disad turns/outweighs the aff arguments. Reading 1 really good card is better than reading 5 terrible cards. There can be zero risk of a disad; intrinsicness is a legit argument.

CPs: Should have solvency advocates and exploit generic link chains in aff advantages; the more specific to the aff the better. Slow down on CP texts - don't let the aff get away with clarifying the CP because I couldn't tell what the text was in the 1NC. PICs are good. Consult and conditions CPs probably aren't competitive, and also probably theoretically illegitimate. I will NOT kick the counterplan and default to the status quo for the 2NR unless the 2NR explicitly says so.

Theory: 2 conditional worlds in the 1NC is probably ok (unless they are blatantly contradictory and the aff points this out), more than that and I'm more inclined to believe the aff's arguments. Slow down on these debates, and impact your arguments/answer the other team's - just reading theory blocks at each other is not debating. I lean more towards "reject the argument not the team" but that can change if the team in question is doing something very questionable.

K/Performance Affs: I'm open to teams that criticize the topic/debate and/or that engage in alternative forms of debating. I do not necessarily think framework is responsive to these kinds of affs, and the negative should try to engage with the substance of the affirmative. If you really want to go for framework, I'm more persuaded by arguments about the efficacy and viability of the aff's method than arguments that essentially say "Ks/performance are cheating, go away".

K's: Specific links to the aff/the topic are better than generic links about heg, the state, the economy, etc - pick out lines from 1ac evidence, use their rhetoric in speeches and CX against them. Impact framing is essential - if you're going to win that the K outweighs the aff, you need to get me to evaluate the impacts of the K before the aff's impacts - epistemology indicts, x comes first, root cause, systemic impacts outweigh, v2l are all examples of this. Turns case arguments are best when specific to the aff advantages. You don't need to win an alternative, but if you don't have an alt then you need some way of generating uniqueness for your links and turns case arguments. Affs should be aware of the tricks - x comes first, root cause, epistemology means aff isn't true, etc - don't let the neg get away with these, if they do then you're in trouble. Don't forget about the aff when answering the K - reading a bunch of cards about why pragmatism or positivism are good doesn't matter if you don't extend the aff or explain how it's positivist, pragmatic, whatever. When on the aff debating the K - framework is either a reason to reject the alt or to weigh the impacts of the aff against the K, but never a reason to reject the entirety of the K or the negative. When on the neg answering framework - I'm of the opinion that allowing for critical debate is a good idea for providing different avenues of education and thought within debate, so it would be in your best interest to have a counter-interp that allows you access to the K with some sort of education arg; however, if they just want to weigh the aff then the framework debate isn't just about K vs policy but also the impact framing for the round - have some defense to their impact framing, otherwise you'll be in trouble when the 2ar extends a bunch of extinction scenarios.