Newton,+Jordon

First, a little background on my experience in the debate community. I debated at Saint George's for 4 years in high school, and am in my second year debating at Gonzaga University. As for some general things, I think debate is supposed to be a fun activity for everyone involved. Please try to be respectful of those participating of the activity, and do not be rude or offensive in front of me, that's an easy way to tank your speaks. For paperless debate, I stop prep when the debater is done preparing their speech. I think that framing of how I should evaluate the arguments in the debate is critical in the 2nr/2ar. In close debates, the team who does a better job framing why I should evaluate their impacts first will shape how I look at the debate going into the decision, and you should try to use your framing argument as a lens to how I view the majority of the debate. That being said, don't take this as an excuse to decrease technical coverage, because that will only hurt you in the long run. About some views I have on specific arguments: Kritiks/Non-traditional affs: As a judge, I've found myself much more willing to vote for teams defending non-policy frameworks than I thought I would have been. Don't hesitate to read your normal arguments in front of me. Just be warned, I might not be an expert in the literature you are reading, and you should have a strong explanation of how what the argument is/how it functions for kritiks that are further from the political realm. While I'm willing to evaluate any framework, I think there is something to be said for a strong defense of political action. I'm unlikely to vote on 'kritiks shouldn't be allowed' in debate type arguments. Especially in terms of kritiks and kritik impacts, I think that impact framing is the most important thing in terms of how I'll evaluate both sides arguments, and a defense of why your impacts matter is critical. I find myself less willing to vote on generic, broad sweeping turns case/serial policy failure arguments unless the team advancing those positions provides a warrant for why it applies to the other teams scenarios. Specificity of link arguments are critical for any criticism. Counterplans: I love a good advantage counterplan, or case specific counterplan. I'm generally fine with other agent counterplans as well. I tend to err aff on counterplan theory related to counterplans that do the entirety of the aff, and counterplans that are not textually competitive. These are not unwinnable, but I am very convinced by theory arguments against arguments like consult, delay, and process counterplans. As for conditionality, I believe that conditionality is probably good, but am uncomfortable with the idea of three conditional worlds. Contextualizing how I should evaluate counterplan vs aff internal link structures can only help your chances of winning the debate. DA's: Impact comparison is the most significant portion of the debate for me. Turns the impact arguments are very compelling in debates where there is little else to distinguish impacts, but you need to be more articulate than just x turns y, you need to explain what about your impact uniquely accesses your opponents, especially if access your opponents impact args are going in both directions. I personally dislike the uniqueness controls the direction of the link framing on DA's, especially in close debates, but can be convinced to evaluate in that direction if you provide a strong warrant to do so. The more specific your DA/Link arguments, the better. T/Theory: I love a good T debate. However, if you are not clearly impacting your education/limits claim, I find it very difficult to evaluate at times how I should vote. I do not think that limits are good for limits sake, the debaters need to articulate why the aff uniquely is bad or causes bad cases to be read. For theory, I mentioned most of my theory preferences above, but I'll make a note here about my evaluation: these debates are very messy, and think that clearly articulating a small number of offensive arguments and explaining those in depth gets you a lot further than reading a generic block at me. I believe most arguments are a reason to reject the argument and not the team, external of conditionality, and think it woiuld be difficult to win an argument they don't go for is a reason the other team should lose. In terms of 2nr choice, unless the 2nr says conditionality means I can kick the counterplan/alt for you if you lose them, I will not kick those arguments for you. And even if you do, if the 2ar provides a compelling reason why I shouldn't, its a debate to be evaluated. Overall, just do what you do best, and try to have fun in the debate.