Appelbaum,+Dotan

Harvard edit: I'd love to hear some more anti-cap. But come on folks, let's call it what it is. It's not 'lower class', it's not 'economically disadvantaged'. It's the proletariat. Harvard update: I haven't judged in a few months. This is my first tournament on this topic. Don't assume I know anything about the topic, cuz I don't (other than whatever I know from every court clog DA that everyone has read on every single topic ever). **Dotan Appelbaum. He/Him/His.** I'm a freshman at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. I graduated from Saint Louis Park High School in Minnesota. I debated LD for 4 years, 3 on varsity. I competed at mostly Midwest national circuit tournaments, with a few others thrown in (Bronx, Yale). I competed in the Valley Round Robin last year. I mostly debated on the flow—framework, contention, all that fun stuff. But I did debate K's, theory, policy, etc. plenty, often with aspects of those styles as parts of my cases. I generally understand jargon and buzz words. However, if you are using very esoteric language/buzzwords, make sure you explain them. I have some experience judging, though it was novices whom I judged. I am a tab judge, so if you're in a rush to get to the round, you should hurry up and stop reading. **TL;DR** I'm a tab judge. Read anything. Please, make the round clear—take control of what's going on and write the ballot for me. Also, the one thing I won't vote on is disclosure theory. If you're gonna read it, you'll have to do a spectacular job of why the lack of disclosure in that round specifically disadvantaged you to the extent that you can't win, and to the extent that it outweighs the harms to small schools. Also, I love K's but please don't have an oppression Olympics debate. Those arguments run counter to the literature. Solidarity is key. **General**: -Claim, warrant, impact are all musts. -extend the claim, warrant, impact. If you drop one, I won't be able to consider the argument. -Make sure you signpost well. Otherwise, the debate gets super muddled. -If you think I'm making non-verbals, I'm probably not. Don't let it affect you. -If you are blatantly offensive/problematic, I will end the round. -Good (and true) voting issues are the best way to win. Write my ballot for me. -If I say that I default to something in the rest of this paradigm, it does not mean you have to win me over. If there is a shitty justification for the opposite, and your opponent doesn't respond, I won't default. -I don't presume aff or neg unless arguments are made. I doubt a round would come down to presumption. I've only seen it once on a split ballot. But, if I have to presume, and no arguments were made, there will be a coin toss. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-Please enjoy! I don't want to make rounds scary. Let's have fun with debate! <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Speaking:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-I'm pretty good with speed. Don't go top speed right away. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-Enunciate <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-I will yell clear. If you see that I am not flowing, it's because I can't. Slow down. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-Don't ask me how to get a 30 because I have nothing profound to say. You know how to get good speaker points. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Framework**: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-If your framework doesn't have real justifications, lord help you. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-Values are derived from the topic. Unless you can derive 'human decency' from the wording of the resolution, steer clear. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-If you engage in value debate, I will cry. (exceptions: see bullet point above) <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Theory**: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-There are two areas in which I put my foot down/do not evaluate arguments—bigotry, and disclosure theory. 1) It is very difficult to verify in round. 2) Disclosure hurts small school debaters—significantly. It makes debate more exclusive than it already is. 3) It makes debate way less interesting. Show your argumentative skills—not your prep skills. If you really want to risk it and read disclosure theory, you need to have a damn good reason to convince me that your opponents choice not to disclose their case disadvantaged you to the point that I should decide the round based on that. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-Other than that, I'm open to theory. Though, if it's out of round abuse, it will be very hard for me to be able to verify the violation occured. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-I really don't want a debate to end on a shitty spike numbered 6 on an 11 point underview. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-I default to reasonability and drop the argument. However, I don't even like to default to drop the argument, because after you tell me what rule they violated, you need to tell me what consequence is fitting. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**K's:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-These are kool. Especially when they are grounded in the real world and deal with real issues of identity. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-You gotta have all the parts, including a role of the ballot. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-If your role of the ballot functions like a standard for evaluating the round, I will decide the round accordingly. This means that a ROTB does not necessarily up-layer a framework debate. Tell me why I should judge the round based on the ROTB. That means that if you read a framework, and your opponent reads a ROTB, prove to me that the framework is a better mechanism for judging the round. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-If your role of the ballot functions as an indictment of something your opponent did (i.e. language used, problematic words or arguments), you need to tell me what I should do about it, and justify it. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-If you're reading high theory or other super esoteric critical stuff, slow down and explain what the giant salad of words you just threw at me meant. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-Ok let's talk about K debate and what it is. A K is a critique (obviously). K's can be a critique of the resolution, of the affirmative's approach, of a debater's actions/language, etc. However, K debate has become almost entirely strategic. Debaters are invoking discussions of oppression for the sake of winning a round, expecting that simply saying certain words (like role of the judge, root cause, etc) will uplayer anything else said in the round. There are a couple problems with this. First, if you are ingenuine about your K, it's really easy to tell and the round gets much much worse. Second, in the real world these discussions of oppression are coming out of leftist movements and analysis. Do you think leftist movements argue that anticapitalism is more important than fighting antiblackness? NO! Please don't run an oppression olympics round. Any argument that a certain oppression is a root cause or is more important than any other axiom of oppression is itself oppressive, reductionist, and wrong. Wilderson is an anticapitalists. Anticapitalists fight antiblackness. These forms of oppression are linked. I'm not gonna drop you for making these arguments, but I can assure you that any debate centered on these arguments is going to be muddled, wrong on both sides, and generally bad praxis. It may as well come down to a coin flip. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Policy:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-Sure, go for it. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Misc:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-Make the round clear. Explain to me what the highest level of the debate is, and why you're definitively winning on it. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-As of the end of the Bronx tournament, my judging is 50-50 +1 to one side since I have so far judged an odd # of rounds.