Freeman,+Jim

I coach Policy, LD, and IEs and help out with PF. I debated Policy in college. The 13-14 school year will be my 6th year of judging high school debate.

Judges who claim that they are "tabula rasa" judges should be regarded with deep suspicion. I view debate similarly to "Calvinball" from //Calvin and Hobbes //  where the games were always different and they made up the rules as they went along. As a courtesy, I will be brutally honest with you about my biases in debate so neither of us feel cheated.

Speed: If you can read comprehensibly at a lightning pace, more power to you. All I request is a **brief pause after reading your tagline** so I know where the citation begins. This will help you in later speeches when you extend evidence.

Affirmatives: I don't really care what you do as long as you talk about the topic in some manner. I can appreciate the pedagogical aspect of the many "civilizations" in debate; most of all I really enjoy learning new things about the topic. Originality in either a policy or k affirmative scores mad points with me.

Policy stuff on the neg: If you're going for a straight DA and nothing else, you better have specific link evidence. I really enjoy the uniqueness debates on politics DAs, but I have the opposite opinion when it comes to twenty blippy internal links leading to a card that has the single word "extinction" as the tagline. I outright despise consult counterplans and word PICs, but I appreciate a well-run agent or international actor counterplan as long as you can rock the theory debate. Case arguments are woefully underused and the 1AR woefully undercovers them.

K stuff - I probably had to read your author for class when I was an undergrad, but don't assume I did. The best Kritik debaters that I've encountered are able to take a bunch of psychobabble and explain it in a way that a middle schooler could understand. If you can't explain the K without using words that end in "ology" or "ism", you're better off running straight off policy with me in the back of the room. I see many teams make the case that you should vote for them on the negative because they do something good, while outright ignoring what specifically the affirmative is doing wrong for me to reject them. I prefer a good old fashioned "one-off" kritik over a three card shell sandwiched between two T violations and a DA that links to the K in the 1NC.

Full disclosure: I don't care for Zizek or Psychoanalysis. I outright loathe Object Oriented Ontology.

Theory: I am more apt to vote on theory if it is presented to me in such a way that the other team is being so shady that there is no possible way you could win other than theory. I've heard many people repeat "this is bad for fairness and education" over and over again without explaining the external impacts of fairness and education. If you expect to win by reading blocks that were written back when Michael Jackson topped the charts without engaging with the other team's arguments on the line by line you will be sorely disappointed.

Framework- Framework is how you frame your work and tells me how I should evaluate the round. I do not see it as an independent reason to reject one team or another. "They said a bunch of big words so we don't have to respond to their arguments and still win" is an absolutely terrible way to debate. Good framework arguments include that the aff gets to weigh their impacts vs. that of the K, negative consequences of ceding the political, and things like "even if our plan might be a little messed up, you should prefer pragmatic action that benefits the world instead of sitting around and talking about what some dead dude wrote like a bunch of pretentious liberal arts students."

ASPEC- Political Science 101: Affirmatives should always specify their agent whether it is a government agency, themselves, or their cat. I can easily be compelled to vote for it as a reason to prefer an agent counterplan. But if you go for straight ASPEC and I have to vote for you I'll need the next round off to cry in the shower.

Topicality - This may be too old for some of you, but to quote Mr. Horse from Ren and Stimpy: "No sir, I don't like it."

But Jim, what about Lincoln Douglas? All you need to know is that if you refuse to answer anything the other debater says and just run theory in your rebuttals, you're gonna have a bad time. Especially if your 1AC is four minutes of theory and RVIs and then one contention. I only judge LD on the local circuit, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem because people are usually just glad that I'm not the bus driver judging.

But Jim, what about Public Forum? Tell me how to evaluate the round and don't be a racist. What is it with PF debaters and saying racist shit?

Open cross-x, asking questions to the other team during rebuttal prep time, having your partner say stuff during your speech, giving speeches sitting, collapsing everything onto one flow and other things that might irritate a middle-aged dude in a buzzcut and tie who debated back when they stapled 1ACs are probably okay with me. Just don't don't commit any felonies.

NEW ADDITION: 12/23/13--I have a 26.5 speaker point cap if you're wearing a fedora. Seriously, don't you look like a dork.

I have a BA in History; use that information to your advantage.