Hirn,+Kevin

Program Manager and Assistant Debate Coach, University of Michigan Debate Coach, Whitney Young High School Last updated: Before Dowling (2016)

Philosophy: I attempt to judge rounds with the minimum amount of intervention required to answer the question, "Who has done the better debating?", using whatever rubrics for evaluating that question that debaters set up.

I work in debate full-time, so I judge a ton of debates, and research fairly extensively. As a result, I'm familiar with the policy and critical literature bases on both the college emissions topic and the HS China engagement topic. I coach my teams to deploy a diverse array of argument types and styles, and I'm always excited to see debaters deploy new or innovative strategies across the argumentative spectrum. My commitment to ideological pluralism isn't just lip service: I was the primary argument coach for Michigan KM from 2014-16, and during 2016-17, I coach a top 25 team in high school that primarily focuses on critical race literature, and I coach two top 25 teams in college that primarily read policy arguments.

What follows is a series of thoughts that mediate my process for making decisions. I've tried to be as honest as possible, and I frequently update my philosophy to reflect perceived trends in my judging. That being said, self-disclosure is inevitably incomplete or misleading; if you're curious about whether or not I'd be good for you, feel free to look at my voting record on tabroom or email me a specific question (reach me at khirn (at) umich (dot) edu, although you may want to try in person because I'm not the greatest with quick responses).

October, 2016 update: I would like to judge more policy debates. Mainly, this is because it's really exhausting and repetitive to judge teams who agree on so little, speak at cross purposes so frequently, and make basically the same set of arguments I've seen in dozens to hundreds of other debates. Additionally, I've done quite a bit of policy research (on both emissions and China, but especially emissions), so it would be enjoyable to judge at least a few debates over subject matter I've recently been engaging. This is not a unique gripe among judges, and I highly doubt that putting it here is going to change anything, given that I'm not going to change how I judge debates to enforce this preference and I'm still committed to voting for the team I think technically wins each debate. To be honest, I do get why policy teams are wary: I'm a pretty good judge for critical arguments given that I've researched and coached many of these arguments extensively, and I have no real bias against the genre (I certainly have some predisposed beliefs listed below, some of which mildly deviate from convention, but for the most part are not terribly ideologically useful). Overall, though, if you're confident in your ability to technically win any given debate, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

**1) Tech v. Truth** I'm a fairly technical judge, but I have a limit. If you have a standard on conditionality that asserts "also, men with curly unkempt hair are underrepresented in debate, vote neg to incentivize our participation," and the 1ar drops it, you're not going to win the debate on that argument (although you will win my sympathies, fellow comb dissident). Generally, I'm not likely to decide an entire debate based on standalone issues explained or extended in five seconds or less. I'm still willing to vote on basically anything that's well-developed, but if your strategy relies on tricking the other team into dropping random nonsense, I'm not really about that.

Does this mean dropped arguments are irrelevant? Obviously not, but this issue gets murky because different judges have different thresholds for what constitutes a "warrant" (and subsequently an "argument"). Dropped arguments are true, but they're only as true as the dropped argument. "Argument" means claim, warrant, and implication. "Severance is a voting issue" lacks a warrant. "Severance is a voting issue - neg ground" also arguably lacks a warrant, since it hasn't been explained how or why severance destroys negative ground or why neg ground is worth caring about. If the 1ar drops a blippy theory argument and the 2nr explains it further, the 2nr is likely making new arguments... which then justifies 2ar answers to those arguments. In general, justify why you get to say what you're saying, and you'll probably be in good shape. By the 2nr or 2ar, I would much rather that you acknowledge previously dropped arguments and suggest reasonable workaround solutions than continue to pretend they don't exist or lie about previous answers.

Arguments aren't presumptively offensive or too stupid to require an answer. Genocide good, OSPEC, rocks are people, etc. are all terribly stupid, but if you can't explain why they're wrong, you don't deserve to win. If an argument is really stupid or really bad, don't complain about how wrong they are. Just answer the argument.

If both sides seem to assume that an impact is desirable/undesirable, and frame their rebuttals exclusively toward avoiding/causing that impact, I will work under that assumption. If a team read a 1AC saying that they had several ways their plan caused extinction, and the 1NC responded with solvency defense and alternative ways the plan prevented extincton, I would vote neg if I thought the plan was more likely to avoid extinction than cause it.

**2) General Philosophical Disposition** It is somewhat easy to persuade me that life is good, suffering is bad, and we should care about the consequences of our political strategies and advocacies. I would prefer that arguments to the contrary be grounded in specific articulations of alternative models of decisionmaking, not generalities, rhetoric, or metaphor. It's hard to convince me that extinction = nbd, and arguments like "the hypothetical consequences of your advocacy matter, and they would likely produce more suffering than our advocacy" are far more persuasive than "take a leap of faith" or "roll the dice" or "burn it down", because I can at least know what I'd be aligning myself with and why.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Important clarification: pragmatism is not synonymous with policymaking. On the contrary, one may argue that there is a more pragmatic way to frame judge decisionmaking in debates than traditional policymaking paradigms. Perhaps assessing debates about the outcome of hypothetical policies is useless, or worse, dangerous. Regardless of how you debate or what you debate about, you should be willing and able to mount a strong defense of why you're doing those things (which perhaps requires some thought about the overall purpose of this activity).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">In debates where both teams agree that affs should be topical, I'm a decent judge for the neg, provided that they have solid evidence supporting their interpretation. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Limits are probably desirable in the abstract, but if your interpretation is composed of contrived stupidity, it will be hard to convince me that affs should have predicted it. Conversely, affs that are debating solid topicality evidence without well-researched evidence of their own are gonna have a bad time. Naturally, of these issues are up for debate, but I think it's relatively easy to win that research/literature guides preparation, and the chips frequently fall into place for the team accessing that argument.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">3) Topicality and Specification **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Competing interpretations is definitionally less subjective and arbitrary than a judge-decided reasonability standard, but affs can certainly win that they don't need to meet the best of all possible interpretations of the topic, assuming that they meet an interpretation capable of providing a sufficient baseline of neg ground/research ability. Describing what threshold of desirability their interpretation should meet, and then describing why that threshold is a better model for deciding topicality debates, is typically necessary to make this argument persuasive.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">China topic: I was a lab leader for the 7-Week Seniors lab at Michigan, so I'm relatively familiar with the range of topicality interpretations, and I've read all of the seminal engagement articles (Resnick, Haas and O'Sullivan, etc). Some interpretations of the topic are vague enough that nearly any policy that remotely related to China would be topical, and that does sound like a nightmare for the neg. I'm not convinced that "QPQ" is the most predictable interpretation... but I'm not sure that there's a single interpretation that's a) concretely *more* predictable or b) could produce better debates. I'm not drinking the QPQ kool-aid as strongly as some of its staunch advocates (i.e. only Scott Phillips), but it's certainly a far more reasonable interpretation than its critics (i.e. everyone else) assume.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Emissions topic: A definition of "restrictions" that allows the modification of any condition related to energy production likely makes the topic unmanageable from the perspective of negative research; strict interpretations of restricting emissions are subsequently somewhat persuasive. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">--I'm still not sold on "gotta be a cap" (especially as a reason that taxes aren't restrictions). The negative evidence is good on this question, but it's not so definitive that it clearly and consistently beats very good aff evidence that restrictions on emissions can target either price or quantity. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">--I don't think many people have found good reasons that smaller affs that only set emissions restrictions in specific sectors can be excluded. I'm sympathetic to "substantially" in spirit, perhaps, but moral victories count for very little when the evidence isn't there.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I do have one bone to throw to the negative on emissions, surrounding restrictions specification. Often, "restrictions" is a meaningless word in plan texts that affirmatives use as a substitute for actually having figured out what they want to defend, or for fear of having figured out an idea they can't defend as topical or superior to reasonable counterplans. If the aff refuses to specify what restriction they enact, and/or has no evidence explaining what precisely they restrict and in what way, I am extremely sympathetic to negative arguments that exploit this basic failure. Generally speaking, most carbon tax and cap-and-trade affs that can't answer very basic questions like "what rate do you set the tax at?" or "where would the revenue go?" or "do offsets count?" really seem useless to me. I'm not terribly convinced that all of this needs to be in the plan, but you should have an answer in cross-x and a solvency defense of basic design choices. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I find it hilarious that so many policy teams indignantly refuse to answer questions about the most basic elements of their plan. If you're going to constantly shift your argument using amorphous language that refuses to defend much of anything, just suck it up and read a Baudrillard aff. At least then you'll have an offensive justification for argumentative vagueness. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">All this being said, specification arguments are probably not an independent reason to vote neg, if evenly debated. Reading spec arguments as topicality can help, but as well all know, there's no resolutional burden to specify beyond the words given. However, specification-style arguments can be used to make a very compelling case for sticking the aff with a particular answer to these questions that you're prepared to negate (which can really put the ball in the negative's court, given that you are picking something that the aff is likely not to be adequately prepared to defend). Ideally, you should have evidence that this is a common, likely outcome of the plan's adaption given what analysts and proponents of the aff defend; even if this evidence isn't definitive, reading the aff plan as defending that outcome seems far more desirable than reading the aff plan as saying anything the aff feels like... once the 1NC has already happened.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**4) Risk Assessment** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">In front of me, teams would be well-served to explain their impact scenarios less in terms of brinks, and more in terms of probabilistic truth claims. When pressed with robust case defense, "Our aff is the only potential solution to a Korean war that's coming in a few months, which is the only scenario for a nuclear war that causes extinction" is far less winnable than "our aff meaningfully improves the East Asian security environment, which statistically decreases the propensity for inevitable miscalculations or standoffs to escalate to armed conflict." It may not be as fun, but that framing can allow you to generate persuasive solvency deficits that aren't grounded in empty rhetoric and cliche, or to persuasively defeat typical alt cause arguments, etc. Given that you decrease the initial "risk" (i.e. probability times magnitude) of your impact with this framing, this approach obviously requires winning substantial defense against whatever DA the neg goes for, but when most DA's have outlandishly silly brink arguments themselves, this shouldn't be too taxing.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">There are times where investing lots of time in impact calculus is worthwhile (for example, if winning your impact means that none of the aff's impact claims reach extinction, or that any of the actors in the aff's miscalc/brinkmanship scenarios will be deterred from escalating a crisis to nuclear use). Most of the time, however, teams waste precious minutes of their final rebuttal on mediocre impact calculus. The cult of "turns case" has much to do with this. It's worth remembering that accessing an extinction impact is far more important than whether or not your extinction impact happens three months faster than theirs (particularly when both sides' warrant for their timeframe claim is baseless conjecture and ad hoc assertion), and that, in most cases, you need to win the substance of your DA/advantage to win that it turns the case.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Incidentally, phrasing arguments more moderately and conditionally is helpful for every argument genre: "all predictions fail" is not persuasive; "some specific type of prediction relying on their model of IR forecasting has little to no practical utility" can be. The only person who's VTL is killed when I hear someone say "there is no value to life in the world of the plan" is mine.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">At least for me, try-or-die is often bizarrely intuitive based on argument selection (i.e. if the neg spots the aff that "extinction is inevitable if the judge votes neg, even if it's questionable whether or not the aff solves it", rationalizing an aff ballot becomes rather alluring and shockingly persuasive). You should combat this innate intuition by ensuring that you either have impact defense of some sort (anything from DA solves the case to a counterplan/alt solves the case argument to status quo checks resolve the terminal impact to actual impact defense can work) or invest time in arguing against try-or-die decision-making.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**5) Counterplans** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Counterplan theory is a lost art. Affirmatives let negative teams get away with murder. Investing time in theory is daunting... it requires answering lots of blippy arguments with substance and depth and speaking clearly, and probably more slowly than you're used to. But, if you invest time, effort, and thought in a well-grounded theoretical objection, I'll be a receptive critic. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">It seems reasonable that solvency advocates for counterplans should have a level of specificity that matches the aff. I feel like that standard would reward aff specificity and incentivize debates that reflect the literature base, while punishing affs that are contrived nonsense by making them debate contrived process nonsense.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I'm not a great judge for counterplans that compete off of certainty or immediacy based on "should"/"resolved" definitions. I'm somewhat easily persuaded that these interpretations lower the bar for how difficult it is to win a negative ballot to an undesirable degree. That being said, affs lose these debates all the time by failing to counter-define words or dropping stupid tricks, so make sure you invest the time you need in these debates to win them.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Offense-defense is intuitive to me, and so teams should always be advised to have offense even if their defense is very strong. If the aff says that the counterplan links to the net benefit but doesn't advance a solvency deficit or disadvantage to the CP, and the neg argues that the counterplan at least links less, I am not very likely to vote affirmative absent strong affirmative framing on this question (often the judge is left to their own devices on this question, or only given instruction in the 2AR, which is admittedly better than never but still often too late). At the end of the day I must reconcile these opposing claims, and if it's closely contested and at least somewhat logical, it's very difficult to win 100% of an argument. Even if I think the aff is generally correct, in a world where if I have literally any iota of doubt surrounding the aff position or am even remotely persuaded by the the negative's position, why would I remotely risk triggering the net benefit for the aff instead of just opting for the guaranteed safe choice of the counterplan?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Offense can come in multiple flavors: you can argue that the affirmative or perm is less likely to link to the net benefit than the counterplan, for example. You can also argue that the risk of a net benefit below a certain threshold is indistinguishable from statistical noise, and that the judge should reject to affirm a difference between the two options because it would encourage undesirable research practices and general decision-making. You can likely advance an analytic solvency deficit somewhat supported by one logical conjecture, and if you are generally winning the argument, have the risk of the impact to that outweigh the unique risk of aff triggering the DA relative to the counterplan. But in the absent of any offensive argument of any sort, the aff is facing an uphill battle. I have voted on "CP links to politics before" but typically that only happens if there is a severe flaw in negative execution (i.e. they drop it) or a significant skill descripancy between teams or a truly ill-conceived counterplan.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">States-and-politics/elections debates are not the most meaningful reflection of the topic literature, especially given that the nature of 50 state fiat distorts the arguments of most state action advocates, and they can be stale (although honestly anything that isn't a K debate will not feel stale to me these days). But I'm sympathetic to the neg on these questions, especially if they have good solvency evidence. There are a slew of energy policy analysts that have recommended as-uniform-as-possible state action in the wake of federal dysfunction. With a Trump administration and a Republican Congress, is the prospect of uniform state action on an energy policy really that much more unrealistic than a carbon tax? There are literally dozens of uniform policies that have been independently adopted by all or nearly all states. I'm open to counter-arguments, but they should all be as contextualized to the specific evidence and counter-interpretation presented by the negative as they would be in a topicality debate (the same goes for the neg in terms of answering aff theory pushes). It's hard to defend a states CP without meaningful evidentiary support against general aff predictability pushes, but if the evidence is there, it doesn't seem to unreasonable to require affs to debate it. Additionally, there does seem to be a persuasive case for the limiting condition that a "federal-key warrant" places on affirmatives.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I'm a pretty easy sell on conditionality good (at least 1 CP / 1 K is defensible), but I've probably voted aff slightly more frequently than not in conditionality debates. That's partly because of selection bias (affs go for it when they're winning it), but mainly because neg teams have gotten very sloppy in their defenses of conditionality, particularly in the 2NR.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I don't default to the status quo unless you explicitly flag it at some point during the debate (the cross-x or the 2nc is sufficient if the aff never contests it). I don't know why affs ask this question every cross-x and then never make a theory argument about it. It only hurts you, because it lets the neg get away with something they otherwise wouldn't have.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">All that said, I don't have terribly strong convictions about any of these issues, and any theoretical predisposition is easily overcame by outdebating another team on the issue.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**6) Politics** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">This isn't much of a concern on the college topic, given how awesome the topic DA's are and how awful the politics DA is (although who knows, maybe the first 100 days of a Trump administration will see the winners win DA make a comeback). I'm not desperately mourning the loss of the politics debate, but for what it's worth, most theoretical objections to (and much sanctimonious indignation toward) the politics disadvantage have never made sense to me. Fiat is a convention about what it should be appropriate to assume for the sake of discussion, but there's no "logical" or "true" interpretation of what fiat descriptively means. It would be ludicrously unrealistic for basically any 1ac plan to pass immediately, with no prior discussion, in the contemporary political world. Any form of argument in which we imagine the consequences of passage is a fictive constraint on process argumentation. As a result, any normative justification for including the political process within the contours of permissible argument is a rational justification for a model of fiat that involves the politics DA (and a DA to a model of fiat that doesn't). Political salience is the reason most good ideas don't become policy, and it seems illogical for the negative to be robbed of this ground. The politics DA, then, represents the most pressing political cost caused by doing the plan in the contemporary political environment, which seems like a very reasonable for affs to have to defend against.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Obviously many politics DAs are contrived nonsense (especially during political periods during which there is no clear, top-level presidential priority). However, the reason that these DAs are bad isn't because they're theoretically illegitimate, and politics theory's blippiness and general underdevelopment further aggravate me (see the tech vs truth section).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Finally, re: intrinsicness, I don't understand why the judge should be the USFG. I typically assume the judge is just me, deciding which policy/proposal is the most desirable. I don't have control over the federal government, and no single entity does or ever will (barring that rights malthus transition). Maybe I'm missing something. If you think I am, feel free to try and be the first to show me the light...

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**7) Framework/Non-Traditional Affs** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Despite some of the arguments I've read and coached, I'm still sympathetic to the framework argument (especially in high school). I don't presumptively think that topicality arguments are violent, and I think it's generally rather reasonable (and often strategic) to question the aff's relationship to the resolution. For what it's worth, I would generally prefer to see a substantive strategy if one's available, but I understand that often framework is the best option (especially in certain circumstances, like when the aff is new or you're from a school with a small research base).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Overall, my voting record is relatively even on framework, and I've resigned myself to judging a ton of "clash of civ" debates. "Resigned" may carry too pejorative a connotation, as I really don't mind framework debates all that much, especially if one (or both!) sides are attempting to innovate the argument or deploy new research.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I typically think winning unique offense, in the rare scenario where a team invests substantial time in poking defensive holes in the other team's standards, is difficult for both sides in a framework debate. I think affs should think more about their answers to "switch side solves your offense" and "sufficient neg engagement key to meaningfully test the aff", while neg's should generally work harder to prepare persuasive impacts to rules-based topicality arguments. The argument that "other policy debates solve your offense" can generally push back against skills claims, and the argument that "wiki/disclosure/contestable advocacy in the 1ac provides some degree of predictability/debateability" can often push back against "vote neg on presumption b/c truth-testing- we literally couldn't negate it" but for some reason in many debates neg's completely blow off these arguments.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I'm typically more persuaded by affirmative teams that answer framework by saying that the skills/methods inculcated by the 1ac produce more effective/ethical interactions with institutions than by teams that argue "all institutions are bad".

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Fairness is not necessarily an impact; it certainly may implicate the education that the aff produces, but calling fairness "procedural" doesn't bestow upon it some mystical external impact without additional explanation (i.e. without an actual impact attached to that).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">If you're looking for an external impact, there are two impacts to framework that I have consistently found more persuasive than most attempts to articulate one for fairness/skills/deliberation, but they're not unassailable: "switch-side debate good" (forcing people to defend things they don't believe is the only vehicle for truly shattering dogmatic ideological predispositions and fostering a skeptical worldview capable of ensuring that its participants, over time, develop more ethical and effective ideas than they otherwise would) and "agonism" (making debaters defend stuff that the other side is prepared to attack rewards debaters for pursuing clash; running from engagement by lecturing the neg and judge on a random topic of your choosing is a cowardly flight from battle; instead, the affirmative team with a strong will to power should actively strive to beat the best, most well-prepared negative teams from the biggest schools on their terms, which in turn provides the ultimate triumph; the life-affirming worldview facilitated by this disposition is ultimately necessary for personal fulfillment, and also provides a more effective strategy with which to confront the inevitable hardships of life).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I'm a fairly good judge for the capitalism kritik. Among my most prized possessions are signed copies of Jodi Dean books that I received as a gift from my debaters. Capitalism is persuasive for two reasons, both of which can be defeated, and both of which can be applied to other kritiks. First, having solutions (even ones that seem impractical or radical) entails position-taking, with clear political objectives and blueprints, and I often find myelf more persuaded by a presentation of macro-political problems when coupled with corresponding presentation of macro-political solutions. Communism, or another alternative to capitalism, frequently ends up being the only macropolitical solution in the room. Second, analytic salience: The materialist and class interest theories often relatively more explanatory power for oppression than any other individual factor because they entail a robust and logically consistent analysis of the incentives behind various actors committing various actions over time. I'm certainly not unwinnable for the aff in these debates, particularly if they strongly press the alt's feasibility and explain what they are able to solve in the context of the neg's turns case arguments, and I obviously will try my hardest to avoid letting any predisposition overwhelm my assessment of the debating.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**8) Kritiks (vs policy affs)** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I'm okay for 'old-school' kritik's (security/cap/etc), but I'm also okay for the aff. When I vote for kritiks, most of my RFD's look like one of the following: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">1) The neg has won that the implementation of the plan is undesirable;

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">2) The neg has explicitly argued (and won) that the framework of the debate should be something other than "weigh the plan vs squo/alt" and won within that framework.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">If you don't do either of those things while going for a kritik, I am likely to be persuaded by traditional aff presses (case outweighs, try-or-die, perm double-bind, alt fails etc). Despite sympathies for much poststructural thought, it's often hard to divorce my thinking from utilitarian-style cost-benefit analysis.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">That might sound pretty harsh for neg's, but affs should be warned that I think I'm more willing than most judges to abandon policymaking paradigms. If the negative successfully presents and defends an alternative model of decisionmaking, I'm totally down to tell the aff they don't get access to their impacts. The ballot is clay; mold it for me and I'll do whatever you win I should.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**9) Kritiks (vs K affs)** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Anything goes!

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Seriously, I don't have strong presuppositions about what "new debate" is supposed to look like. For the most part, I'm happy to see any strategy that's well researched or well thought-out. Try something new! Even if it doesn't work out, it may lead to something that can radically innovate debate.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Most permutation/framework debates are really asking the question: "Is the part of the aff that the neg disagreed with important enough to decide an entire debate about?" (this is true in CP competition debates too, for what it's worth). Much of the substantive debating elsewhere subsequently determines the outcome of these sub-debates far more than debaters seem to assume. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Role of the ballot/judge claims are obviously somewhat self-serving, but in debates in which they're well-explained (or repeatedly dropped), they can be useful guidelines for crafting a reasonable decision (especially when the ballot theorizes a reasonable way for both teams to win if they successfully defend core thesis positions).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Yes, I am one of those people who reads critical theory for fun, although I also read about domestic politics, theoretical and applied IR, and economics for fun. Yes, I am a huge nerd, but who's the nerd that that just read the end of a far-too-long judge philosophy in preparation for a debate tournament? Thought so.