Martin,+Jeff

Jeff Martin, debated at SFSU where my partner and I qualified for the NDT in 07-08, coaching Lynbrook and Oakland HS, very few rounds judged on the topic -- I was primarily a critical/performance debater, and these types of arguments are still my favorite. I love creative and nuanced arguments that hold up against a flurry of blips. Generally I'll default to an offense/defense paradigm unless a team wins that I should evaluate the round in another fashion.

As far as traditional arguments, I think my favorite strategy is a PIC specific to the aff with a net benefit that turns case. If you have one of these in your file and can explain it stragetically and clearly, you're in a good place in the debate. When arguing disads and counterplans just remember these arguments were not really my area as a debater, so be clear about how your arguments function in the round.

Procedurals -- I think I have a relatively high threshold for these arguments. When I vote on them, it is usually because there is an abuse scenario that is very well explained. I would almost always rather look to substance over theory, so make sure your offense against a position isn't entirely theoretical unless it really, really has to be. I like smart impacting, for example leeway for the 1ar for a time skew, or a permutation for ground loss due to an abusive pic.

Generally I will look to any argument that has a clear and persuasive warrant when deciding the round. If you don't feature clear ways to vote in the last two rebuttals, it's very likely you'll be angry with my decision. I'm also very unlikely to vote on an argument I don't understand. I have a decent flow, however you're probably better off in front of me speaking a bit slower than your max speed. One last caveat; I tend to flow straight down rather than a follow a strictly line-by-line structure, which means I tend to evaluate conceptual drops over line-by-line drops.

Have fun, be smart, be respectful, and you will get teh speaks. If you are disrespectful, your speaker points will definitely, definitely suffer.

LD --

While I've played around with a few cases on this topic, and I've judged LD some over the years, in 08-09 I haven't judged but one college LD round all year. LD seems uniquely suited for the K vs K battle to me, but I will happily judge policy positions, classical political theory, or your bizzaro cheaterrific theory (or just regular theory for that matter). All I ask is that the debate has meaningful, in-depth clash. I'll tend to vote for the debater that gives me a clearer, more compelling decision calculus that better takes into account the other debater's arguments. I've been told that I'm going to run into problems in LD when a debater wins an extinction scenario but doesn't link it back to the value. I'll probably just evaluate this based on impact comparison, unless you give me good reasons to force the impacts to adhere to your value criterion or whathaveyou. Have fun.