Okere,+Mandela

Name: Mandela Okere School Affiliation - Lane Tech High School (Chicago)

For those not interested in my piece by piece preferences, know that no argument you run means an automatic loss (I can even swallow Normativity and Nietzsche) as long as you can explain and clearly justify your warrants. I’m not fantastic with speed, so you must give me the time to get down authors and theory. Impacts, impacts, warrants and impact analysis are the way to my ballot. No fighting or puking in cross-x (both have happened in front of me). That being said, any T debate will be a race to access whatever voters are on the flow (usually fairness or education). These voters usually go un-impacted throughout the round and for some lost reason judges allow it. For the sake of allowing policy debate to degrade itself as it naturally will, I will also not be overly critical on stretching out warrants to impacts on conceded voting issues. I’m sympathetic, for nostalgic reasons, to the Affirmative who decides to criticize the type of ground the neg’s entitled to via Topicality or running T at all, but I’ve historically never voted (nor had the opportunity to vote) on a critique of T, which may be a better testament to my argument choice. Debate is supposed to be a fun and intellectually engaging activity, and despite my facial expressions, I encourage a light-hearted, interesting round.
 * Topicality** – My only caution when it comes to T is speed. Giving me the “pen time” to get the warrants for your theory arguments is key because it’ll weigh in on whether I believe that you actually extended or actually had the argument across the flow.
 * Counterplans** – I have no active disposition against counterplans even though some types are uniquely more abusive than others I leave it to the aff to make those claims, the neg to answer them, and so on and so forth.
 * The K** – The difference between a good and bad K debate is really the link debate, which will include the perm and the permutation’s net benefit. Often times the K debates are a case of two ships passing by in the night, which is a horrible thing to have to sit through and will inevitably make my decision much harder. Whichever team has the cleanest story with the clearest warrant for their argument will usually win the K.
 * Performance** – Performance is a perfectly fine argument, as long as you can justify it at some point throughout the beginning of the round. Although it seems fun to read one poem twice in both your constructive speeches while dodging questions in cross-x, it’s irritating to me and the other team. Try to avoid that.
 * Framework** – I’ve historically looked at framework as a means to evaluate the round, not an end, unless framed otherwise. Winning the fact that a utilitarian framework is the best way to view the world seems pointless if the mechanism to access that framework has offensive reasons to vote against it. Clearly if a debate comes down (and by which I mean it’s the only argument on the flow in the 2ar/nr) then I’ll evaluate that on the level.