Bajwa,+Sabrina

Sabrina Bajwa Kinkaid School ‘17 Brown University ‘21

I debated for four years at Kinkaid coached under Eric Emerson. I qualled to the TOC sophomore through senior year and for you Texas people, I qualled to TFA state freshman through senior year. I was a 2A/1N for the first three years of high school and 1A/2N as a senior.

 **Top level:** I have a pretty bad poker face, so if you look up every once in awhile, you’ll probably see what I think about your args. Yes, I want to be on the email chain: sabrinazbajwa@gmail.com.

** Framing is key :** Debates are won and lost in the framing of the last rebuttals. If you can isolate the nexus question in your last rebuttal and prove why you’re winning it, you’ll probably end up winning the debate. Line by line is great but that helps you win arguments in isolation not necessarily the debate. This doesn’t mean abandon the line by line and just wax poetically in your final rebuttals but tell me stuff like: Which impacts are most important? Which impacts control the escalation of other impacts? Most importantly: How do I weigh your claims vs your opponent's claims? “Even if” statements are the best way to clearly tell me how to weigh arguments. You’re rarely winning everything in a debate, so acknowledging what you’re losing and why it doesn’t matter makes it much easier to render a decision between competing claims.

** Tech > truth: ** (except for morally reprehensible arguments racism good, sexism good etc.), but be wary—just because a team “dropped” an argument on the line by line but answered it somewhere else (let’s say in the overview) and is controlling the meta framing for that issue, the arg isn’t actually dropped. In other words, embedded clash exists. Don’t ignore it.

** Be smart: ** Recognize interactions between different arguments and flows and bring it up in CX and in speeches. Exploit contradictions and double-turns. Flows don’t exist in isolation, and when someone reads 9 off, there’s almost always a double turn. Point these out.

** Clarity > speed :** If I can’t understand you, I’ll say clear probably twice but after that, I’ll just stop flowing. Make your speeches easy for me to flow--slow down on long blocks of analytics (especially for T/theory) and try to follow the line by line as best you can. It’s easier for both of us to recognize clash when you put the argument next to the argument it's responding to instead of giving a 7 minute overview and saying “that was the overview” 15 times. Don’t steal prep, clip cards, or be mean.

Below are my predispositions to certain args. Obvi pre-dispositions can be disproven by making args to the contrary, but since everyone has inherent biases, you can read about my thoughts on your sick new 20-plank process counterplan here—

 **“K Affs”:** You need to be related to the topic in some way. It’ll be very easy for me to vote on framework if you’re not at least somewhat about the topic. Most of these affs tend to be large, sweeping FYIs and then claim to “disrupt the system”. For you to win these debates in front of me, you need to explain the method of your aff, and the impacts that you claim to “solve”. You should have some sort of an advocacy statement (doesn’t have to be a USFG plan) or a role of the ballot for me to evaluate your impacts. If you’re going to read high-theory affs, explain relevant terminology and buzzwords. Don’t assume I know what you super sick new libidinal jouissance epistemology aff is. I don’t think conditional ethics is a viable 2AR strategy because I fundamentally believe that neg should be able to test the aff from multiple perspectives but you do you.

** Framework: **/T/whatever you want to call it is a legitimate strategy against non-topical affs and can be a means of engaging the aff. I’m fine for whatever impacts you want to go for; however, in high school, I tended to like the procedural fairness/dialogue/”debate is a game” type arguments as opposed to decision-making/skills type impacts. I generally think “skills” based arguments work better against identity affs while fairness works better against high-theory affs. Topical versions of the aff are as close as it gets to silver bullets, and if you have a solvency advocate for it, I’ll be super impressed. For the neg, you also need to remember to explain both the link and internal link to your impact. Too often, teams just yell about fairness for a while without actually explaining what the aff has done that has “rigged the game”. For the aff, you need to explain why the TVA is either illogical or can’t solve; just saying roleplaying as the USFG is bad is not going to cut it. I also think the best way to win framework in front of me if you’re aff, is on your impact turns. A random technical “we-meet” is probably not going to be persuasive to me. Other relevant K aff things: I lean towards not letting planless affs perm counter-advocacies (can easily be convinced otherwise). Neg teams need to be careful to clearly point out the differences between the aff and the alt.

 **Case Debate:** People don’t make use of case debate as much as they should—make smart analytics to take down the aff. 2As need to answer case instead of just extending your advantage and you need to say more than just “hegsolvesgreatpowerwar - that’sbrookikenberrywohlfoth”. I also feel people under-utilize impact turns (true in both K aff rounds and straight-up policy rounds). If you hear an aff that seems to say cap is bad, why not read cap good in the 1NC and then 8 min of cap good in the 2NC? Does the 1AC kinda sorta reject the American empire? Seems like not going for heg good for a large part of the block is just a missed opportunity.

 **Topicality:** I love good T debates. Don’t get bogged down in the nitty-gritty. You should explain your vision of the topic and why it’s better than your opponents’. You also need to explain terminal impacts. Why do I care if the topic is more limited? Why does intent to define matter? What matters more: limits or predictability? You need to have a case-list, otherwise I’ll lean towards overlimiting args. I default to competing interpretations but reasonability makes hella more sense if explained in terms of aff predictability.

 **Counterplans**: Though my neg record senior year might suggest otherwise, I love a good counterplan debate. If a counterplan text is like 20 planks long, for the love of god slow down at least a little in the 1NC. Necessary vs sufficient framing is incredibly persuasive and the 1AR needs to answer this. The best counterplans are specific PICs. As a 2A, I hated counterplans that would require a 4 minute AT: perm do the counterplan block but as a 2N, I loved cheating counterplans. I went for all kinds of counterplans my senior year from the human rights conditions counterplan (China topic) to Track 2 CP, so really it’s up to you. If you want me to judge-kick the counterplan, you need to tell me and justify it in the 2NR.

<span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;"> **Theory:** I don’t really lean either way and these debates tend to be blippy and frustrating to evaluate. Make them not blippy and not frustrating to evaluate if you’re going for theory (totally viable against Word PICs for example and process counterplans) <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">I’m probably not the best judge for conditionality bad args because I think conditionality is amazing and also what’s really the difference between 2 conditional worlds and 2? I just really don’t care about how abusive it is but as always tech > truth.

<span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;"> **Kritiks:** I went for Ks all the time my senior year against many different types of affs. I’m the most familiar with security and psychoanalysis kritiks. I’m not the best judge for pomo because I’m pretty easy to convince that material violence comes first, however it all depends on how you go for those args. Baudrillard is probably right about most of his theories but who cares? You need to explain the jargon and have specific link applications to the aff you’re debating. Saying the state is bad and calling it a day is not going to cut it and makes it really easy for me to vote on the perm + “try/die aff”. You need to contextualize all of your link explanations to the aff; using smart empirical examples and referencing lines from their ev is a great way for you to appear ahead on the link debate. The biggest problem aff teams usually have is that they forget about their 1AC. Don’t forget about your 1AC! That’s usually 8 minutes of solid offense you can use against the kritik.

<span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">** Cross-x: ** This is functionally a speech and you should prepare/think of it as such. Preparing smart questions will enable you to use CX as a time to generate args. You should have a coherent CX strategy (e.g don’t just spend 3 minutes jumping from flow to flow with no real goal). Be smart about how you use CX time, and while I don’t ever think it’s a good strategy to use CX as prep, I do understand if it’s a new aff (though be aware your speaks may suffer).

<span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;"> **Point scale:** Below a 27 means you did something extremely offensive (racist, sexist etc.) I reward you for smart arguments, clear execution, good CX, and clever strategies. Above a 29.5 is reserved for incredibly amazing speeches. Making any jokes about Sam Richey, Sita Yerramsetti, Linda Gong or Eric Emerson will also get you a .1 increase in speaks.

<span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">** In the words of Eric Emerson, "Debate well and have fun!" **