Sloven,+Louie

Louie here.

I attended Valley High School and graduated in 2004. I debated LD at the TOC and really enjoy the activity.

I have some concerns about the activity as it is today. I do not enjoy seeing debaters speak as fast as they can to put as much ink as possible on the flow. Rather, I would like to see debaters strategically select the arguments that they believe they need to win to win the round, and spend time explaining them in depth and explaining why they outweigh other arguments their opponents are making. If you address all of your opponents' turns, and your arguments are well-warranted and strategically impacted, you will most likely win the round.

I think that debaters need to be careful when trying to establish a value criterion or standard, and when trying to win the standard debate. Often, it is tough to have real clash in a round; debaters end up simply restating their internal links in response to their opponents' internal links, or making blip responses that don't carry much weight in the round. The standard debate is supposed to be the starting point for establishing a metric to decide who wins; do you really want the round to hinge on whether or not I flowed "Two: it's not sufficient"? The best way to deal with an opponents value standard is holistically; try to absorb what they're saying and compare it to your value standard advocacy. If I don't think you understand what your opponent is saying about a standard for what is "good", "moral", "just", etc., then it's going to be hard for me to be persuaded by your arguments against it. These are complex concepts we're dealing with, and I want to hear debaters acknowledge that by attempting to handle complex issues carefully.

In terms of argumentation, I definitely find it much easier to track and evaluate arguments if the meat of the argument is clearly highlighted. This means that the claim of your argument should be explained in a tagline to your card. If you have multiple warrants for something, or multiple impacts, you ought to number them. This applies even in rebuttals. I am not bad at flowing, and I do try to flow everything that matters. So, in my mind, if you are speaking in such a way that means that I miss a part of your argumentation, then you accept the inevitable outcome of that. Debate is an activity that is about communication; if you make the right arguments but do not communicate effectively, you may lose the round.

If you go line by line in the 2AR, or if you spend the entirety of your NR going line by line, you are probably going to lose. Why? Because the point of the flow is to organize the progression of argumentation in the round in such a way that it makes it easy for you to pull material from it to make your final case about why you win the round, about why your advocacy is supreme, about why the resolution is true/false. If you neglect your responsibility to synthesize and crystallize, you are putting extra roadblocks in your own way, as I have to try to figure out what exactly you were trying to say to me in all of those bizarrely disjointed claims strewn across the flow.

Theory is tricky for me to vote on. I find it hard to believe a debater who calls an argument "unfair", "uneducational", "abusive", etc., unless there's a really good reason to call it that. In other words, don't run theory against stock. If someone runs a stock argument, you should probably debate the resolution.

It is strange to me that all this has to be said. Why do people do LD debate? What is the purpose of us being sheparded into tiny little rooms, to discuss issues at the precarious intersection of philosophy and policy? I want the activity to encourage not only strategic thinking, but also make debaters better at communicating ideas persuasively. I want debaters to be able to listen to their opponents advocacies and take advantage of practice and preparation in rounds against stock arguments while being able to think on their feet in rounds involving totally new argumentation. Perhaps most importantly, I want to see debaters who are relaxed, respectful, and cognizant of the fact that normal rules of decorum do not disappear in the context of a debate round.

That's all.