Kelsey,+Mark

C-X Debate Judging Philosophy, 2012 Edition My debate background, briefly: I began my career in policy debate in 1984 as a 9th grader at Valley H.S., West Des Moines, IA, where I debated on the local and national circuits for four years. I then debated for Emory University for four years in the NDT division, served as the graduate assistant for Emory the following year, and was apparently deemed sufficiently competent to judge through the late elimination rounds at the 1993 NDT. During those years I also served as assistant coach to the Westminster School, which won the NFL National Championship on the original Space topic in 1991. I went on to get my Master’s in Education from U.Mass.; during those two years I was an assistant coach to the powerhouse squad at Lexington H.S. (under mentor Les Phillips) which appeared in back-to-back TOC Finals. Then, with my Social Studies teaching credentials in hand, I went to Patrick Henry H.S. in Roanoke, VA, where I founded and coached an all-events forensics team, including qualifying a C-X team to TOC’s in 1999. My life’s path then took some unexpected turns, and I lived abroad for several years, even calling on some friends from Emory to help organize a Jamaican National Debate League. Since my return to the states, I have been a law student working towards my J.D. in December 2012, and I plan to take the California Bar Examination in February 2013.
 * Mark W. Kelsey**

The take-away from the above should be: while I perhaps used to know what I was doing in this activity, //I have only judged a handful of rounds in the last decade, so if you normally debate very fast then take it a little easy on me with the speed!// Not only will I be a bit rusty, but I’ve also developed some minor tendonitis in my writing hand, which will probably further confound my flowing. However, if I’m having problems keeping up, I will immediately let you know. Also, please define any jargon or acronyms the first time you use them. I will also interject myself verbally into the round if I’m not understanding you, or if I think some misunderstanding or miscommunication is taking place, particularly during C-X, since I see my judicial role as to facilitate an intelligent exchange and then to vote impartially based on the content of the arguments presented.

This last point suggests the most central aspect of my judging philosophy, which is fundamentally //tabula rasa//. What that term means to me is that I must be a neutral critic of argument and I must judge according to the rules which most reasonably should govern the debate //as established by the debaters in their speeches//. Everything is up for grabs, except probably the fact that there must be one winning team and one losing team, and it must take a little under two hours to determine which is which. Thus, questions like “do you accept counterplans?” are exceedingly droll, and are subsumed by this central philosophy.

Of course, sometimes the debaters are silent as to the rules which should govern my decision, so the //tabula rasa// requires certain “default settings” that should be disclosed in advance, and which govern if (and only if) not contested by the debaters. Therefore, in the absence of argumentation: Again, all of the statements in the above paragraph represent default settings which disappear upon being addressed by either team during their speeches.
 * I become a policy-maker and believe that the affirmative team’s plan becomes the main focus of the debate, provided that it is reasonably topical.
 * All plans are presumptively topical if not challenged. When challenging topicality, the negative team should present it's interpretation of what the resolution means (def), explain why the plan violates that interpretation (viol), and demonstrate why it is essential to adhere to that interpretation (standards/voting issue). The affirmative may defend against T by defeating any of the just-stated elements, including by showing that the plan meets the affirmative's own //reasonable// interpretation. I am not readily inclined to find any inconsistency between extending both T and substantive arguments into 2NR (however, note that because I set a fairly high bar for voting on T, the 2NR presentation needs to be very tight, so statistically speaking you're usually better off going for one or the other).
 * The negative team may also use any of a variety of strategies to show why I should not adopt the plan, including but not limited to straight case refutation, disadvantages, critiques, and net-beneficial-counterplans. The negative team can also use a combination of any of these strategies, and conditional/dispositional arguments are theoretically defensible, but such defense is up to the debater advancing the seemingly-inconsistent argumentation. I don't necessarily know whether there is any difference between conditionality and dispositionality, and I certainly don't know what the difference is unless you define the terms and explain the difference.
 * Advantages, disadvantages, and net benefits are judged under a utilitarian paradigm, which requires trying to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people, usually by multiplying "risk times magnitude" of the relative impacts.
 * In evaluating counterplans against permutations, I look for the single best policy option, and if that option //includes// the affirmative team’s original plan then the affirmative team should win (since, as I said above, that plan was the original focus of the debate, and a net beneficial permutation shows that there is no reason to reject the plan).
 * Arguments not addressed at the first opportunity (i.e. dropped arguments) are considered conceded if they are labelled as such by the other team. For these purposes, the 2NC and 1NR are considered a single speech, and an "argument" means a claim, a warrant for the claim, and/or the data/evidence supporting the warrant.
 * Generally, all “new” arguments should be presented in constructives unless they are the natural response to an argument raised by the previous speaker, but it is up to the opposing team to identify new arguments in any speech and argue why they should be excluded (except as to new arguments in 2AR, where I must, of necessity, provide the sole safeguard and reject any arguments which in my best judgment were first introduced there).
 * “Educational Value," broadly conceived, is the ultimate standard by which arguments regarding debate rules and paradigms should be evaluated.

In general, in evaluating competing arguments, a claim unsupported by warrants will //always// succumb to a claim with warrants, and a warranted claim without data or evidence behind it will //usually// fall to the counterargument that does have evidentiary support. Optimally, at the end of the debate, at each critical point on the flow I will be evaluating competing claims, both of which are supported by warrants and evidence, and the final rebuttals will provide me with a means for deciding which claim carries the greater weight of warrants and evidence. I highly recommend conserving preparation time throughout the debate to allow for the strongest possible final rebuttal. 2NR/2AR overviews which provide me with a framework for weighing the issues and picking a winner are usually indispensable.

When weighing the relative strength of competing claims, debaters should beware of using enthymematic arguments (i.e. arguments in which one or more premise is unstated). For example, //"their evidence is from FOX News"// is not really an argument at all but merely a statement of fact; //"their evidence is from FOX News, who are a bunch of right-wing hacks"// is a __better__ argument; and //"their evidence if from FOX News, which our evidence from Media Bias Monthly indicates is an entirely unreliable and biased source, whereas our evidence is from more reliable peer-reviewed academic journals"// is almost guaranteed to be the __winning__ argument.

Regarding C-X: I enjoy it immensely and consider it very important, but I don’t flow it. I consider the answers binding on the responding team to the extent that the other team relies on them, but the content of C-X does not establish an argument on which I can base my vote unless it also comes in during one of the speeches. I have no problem with “tag team” C-X where it facilitates more efficient communication, but I will intervene where that end is not being achieved. An effective C-X performance is a good way to improve your speaker points, and conversely if you’re rude that’s the best way to lose points.

Before the debate begins I will gladly answer questions to clarify anything I have said above, provided that at least one representative from each team is present, but don’t attempt to get me to pre-judge the issues or I will know that you either didn’t read or didn't understand my judging philosophy. I will disclose my decision and my reasoning whenever time and the tournament director so allow, and I hope that you take advantage of the learning opportunity being provided therein (I have never been persuaded during a post-round critique to change my ballot...bottom line: if you lost, it was because you failed to do whatever was necessary to win my ballot). Above all, have a good time, debate your best, and try to learn something.