Hyun,+Byunghun

Below are the detailed (i.e. unnecessarily long) judging philosophy that I wrote primarily out of boredom and fueled by the misguided and inflated ego of mine. You can save time by just reading the following:

1. If you're clear (ENUNCIATE), you don't have to worry about speed. 2. Pay attention to V/CR debate. If there is no winner of standards, I will use my own V/CR (which you have no idea what it is. It might be "The debater who coughed first in the round wins" for all you know). 3. I don't drop arguments "just because I don't like it", but statistically traditional arguments do better when I judge (Theory especially does not do well) 4. Tell my WHY on everything - in other words, assume that I have the education of a 4th grader when you are explaining your argument. This is **especially** critical if you're running a progressive argument. 5. No appeal to authority. If you have a Stephen Hawkings Card saying that "The universe is expanding" but giving no warrant, and your opponent has a [random professor who's probably made up] Card saying that "The universe is constant" but giving sufficient warrant, then Stephen Hawkings is a dirty, filthy liar in the round.


 * The Rules for Myself**

First and the most important rule that I put myself under is that I need to be as fair and unbiased as humanly possible. I don't mean that in terms of politics or ideology, but in terms of debate philosophy and methods. This is very important for me because

1. You, the debater has absolutely no idea what kind of arguments/strategies I prefer in a round when you are preparing for a tournament. 2. Even if you did (say, through a site like this), it is extremely unfair for me to punish you for having the bad luck to be judged by me when your argumentative style/logic doesn't match what **I** want.

Because of this, I do not "vote on" one singular strategy or "vote down" because of it. (Hint: Don't tell me "You can vote AFF/NEG on [issue] right there." I never have, and I never will)

But I am human, and statistically speaking (from what I've calculated after looking through my old flows), I vote for traditional argument types over progressive ones roughly by 3:1. Theory especially does not do well with me, because I always end up thinking that you're just whining. Unless it's "OMG, I can't believe you just did that!", it's not going to work. I've been judging for 7 years now, and I think I considered a theory shell significant 5 times in total. And all of them were just "icings on the cake", meaning that the debater that picked up had other parts of the debate going for him or her.

I will also never, ever interrupt you during a round for whatever reason. This is mainly to inform you that I will never, ever let you know if you are being incomprehensible (which is an important factor).


 * The Rules for the Round**

LD differentiates itself from other debates by allowing for the "goal" of the debate itself to be debated - the Value and the Criterion. Unless you are going the progressive route (and structurally does not require a V/CR mechanism), you'll want to make sure that I choose the V/CR structure that is most advantageous for you. It always surprises me that even the most veteran debaters will waste time talking about the economic benefits that gives them offense when they have completely ignored their opponent's V/CR that concerns itself with, say, human dignity. V/CR tells me how to judge a round, like deciding how much points a touchdown and a field goal are worth before a football game. You WANT to make sure that you are solid on this end when I'm judging.

You want to make sure that every components of your arguments are connected by sound logical links. If you don't have the time to properly lay out the components and links during your speech time, then your argument is either not elegant enough or your wordings are too verbose. I pay extremely close attention to this, so make sure that what you're saying doesn't have logical leaps the size of the Grand Canyon.

One thing that is always a pet peeve of mine is appeal to authority, which seems to be occurring in rounds more and more these days. It isn't just enough that Professor Stanley Fish of the Oregon State University stated X. Professor Fish better have an acceptable warrant for why X is true, or he's going to get ignored.

Be civil. I don't mean in terms of social interaction with your opponent (though you should be nice anyway), but in terms of the debate itself. Don't just assume that I'm "cool" with some of the "less official" rules - ask me. And then I'll ask your opponent if he or she is okay with it. If you start asking questions during your prep even though you haven't asked whether it's okay to flex prep, I'll stop you even though I am totally open to the rule (and yes, this happens at least once in a tournament).
 * The Rules for the Debaters**

If you're going to be reading 500 words per second, make sure you enunciate. Enunciation is absolutely more important than the speed of the speech itself. I have seen countless debaters who reads extremely fast but still understandable and twice as many debaters who reads at a normal pace and still manage to make me confused about what they had just said. Speed through cards if you must, but even Policy debaters slow down and enunciate when they're making their arguments. And as I've said before, I won't interrupt you in a speech. Even if it would have notified you that you weren't being "CLEAR!"