Jones,+Mike

Judging Philosophy Mike Jones University of Southern California Affiliation: Notre Dame School Restrictions: Highland High School (Salt Lake City, Utah), Edgemont (New York) Rounds Judged on the Topic: About 20.

Things that are probably worthwhile to know when I judge:

1. Dropped arguments are assumed to be truthful arguments for the purpose of the debate round. This comes with a caveat – if you are speaking incoherently or cannot logically present an argument to me I will ignore it. For example: “Purple is a voting issue” does not pass the coherency test.

2. I begin debate rounds assuming that I am voting to endorse a world where an example of the resolution is or is not enacted. I typically think most "critical arguments" do not pass a burden of rejoinder; although this obviously up to debate.

3. If you want to go for arguments that are considered "not traditional," you should treat me like I am stupid. I will not be offended. I do not have a formal understanding on Agambans’ conceptions of metaphysics, the Lacanian trajectory of desire, or the Aristotelian contradiction. Explaining to me what certain words and lines in your evidence mean will help me vote for you. Otherwise, you risk me intervening because I simply had no idea what you were talking about and felt that you did not meet the coherency burden outlined above. I have no problem telling teams that I did not understand what they were talking about.

4. My presumption is that rejecting arguments that were unfair is a sufficient remedy to the harm they caused in a round. Changing this presumption requires a warranted argument about why voting against the offending team is necessary.

5. Threshold calculus is more important than impact calculus. I don't care if your disad has a faster timeframe, bigger magnitude, or whatever else you've talked about. Instead you should establish why whichever framing calculus you use is important.

6. This sort of calculus is ESPECIALLY important in theory debates. For example, I think I have a lower threshold than most judges for voting on permutations. In one round this year (2008-2009) I voted on a permutation that I thought solved all of the net benefit even though I couldn't quantify the solvency deficit to the counterplan. I was very uncomfortable making this decision. As I saw it, there were two possible lenses to decide. A. "Traditional Offense - Defense": If I used this, then I probably vote negative because theres only a risk of a net benefit B. "Presumption goes affirmative if there isn't a reason to reject the plan." In this world, the negative didn't meet their burden to prove the counterplan had a net benefit.

I voted aff, which I think says something about my predispositions on competition, etc. The important note for you is simple. Showing me how to pick between various lenses for evaluation helps me make decisions and will almost certainly yield positive results for you.

7. If you are going to be repetitive, just sit down. I don’t really care if you don’t use all your speech time. If you can say everything you have to say in less then the allotted speech time, I will attribute it to you being extremely efficient. That seems to be good, and not bad.

8. Cross-Examination: I write down as much as possible of what you say in cross-examination, and consider it to be binding.

Speaker Points: 30 – Perfect. 29.5 – Either a perfect speech and a small mistake in cross-examination, OR, perfect in cross-examination and very good speeches. 29 – Top Speaker Material. If I think you are the best debater at the tournament then this is reserved for you. Unless you, for some reason or another, get one of the above. 28.5 – Speaker Award Deserving for any given tournament. 28 – Better than average. Probably deserve to be in elimination rounds 27.5 – Average 27 – Slightly below average. Reserved mostly for people who are either average speakers but make stupid arguments, or people who make average arguments but have speaking issues. 26.5 and down– Well, you can figure it out.