Galloway,+Ryan

Ryan Galloway Samford University 13 years judging I think about debate a lot, I re-wrote my judging philosophy about five times last year and was never really satisfied. The basic rule I try to abide by is that I can be persuaded to vote on any argument, and that teams are best left to “doing their own thing” in front of me. I have several pre-dispositions and biases, but generally teams are best left to trying to execute the strategies they are most comfortable with and modify them to my expectations and standards, rather than start wholesale.

Topicality/Theory: Probably my strongest bias is that an affirmative must be topical. While I have voted on T is genocide, the reality is that in a debate between teams of roughly even caliber that fully debate out this issue, the negative should win that the Affirmative must be topical. With that said, in terms of evaluating T, I am more in the reasonability camp than competing interpretations. I think an affirmative that is well grounded in the literature, that uses contextual evidence to prove its topicality claim, and that illustrates why any loss of ground is either trivial or unimportant, should win on topicality. On theory, I am troubled by the prevailing paradigm that judges should err negative on every theory question.

Counterplans: I am growing increasingly concerned about kinds of counterplans that make the Affirmative job too difficult, especially when those counterplans distort the literature base of answers the affirmative can provide to them. For example, I think Counterplans that take US action and then also have other countries provide international FIAT are suspect. I am troubled by the trend toward multiple conditional counterplans. I am unconvinced that it is harder to be negative (Larson's statistics and the Bruschke page confirm that the aff. is winning less than 50% of debates on this topic). A common thread for me on both topicality and theory is that I prefer debates about “evidenced clash” and interpretations that lead to that result are superior. Counterplans that seek to avoid "evidenced clash" or that reduce a debate to a handful of cards that are tangentially related to anything on the topic are suspect.

All this said, I vote for "suspect" counterplans every weekend, and usually the Negative can muster enough answers in the block to make these counterplans work for them. 1ar's seem unwilling to make the time investment necessary to make these arguments winners, however this part of the judging philosophy was designed to encourage them to consider trying, especially when neg. answers are thin or unpersuasive.

Kritiks/Performance: I am an excellent judge for critical teams, and not a very good judge for performance teams. If you attack the underlying assumptions or discourse of an affirmative case with strong evidence and a clearly articulated alternative, you will do well in front of me. I am not a big fan of “framework” as an affirmative answer to kritiks, at least the ways I have seen it argued. Philosophical and discursive questions seem important to understanding policymaking, and trying to divorce the two seems counterproductive. At the same time, teams that challenge flowing, the use of evidence, and/or structural inequities tend to do very poorly in front of me. In addition, I am troubled by teams that attack other debaters personally.

Explicit Performances: This section was added upon Sherry’s request to the recent discussion about explicit material in debates. Although I am quite unfamiliar with the circumstances from which this scenario has arisen, I feel strongly that we should create non-hostile environments in debate. I realize a balancing act needs to be played, and I feel the overwhelming majority of debates I have seen of all kinds do so. However, if your goal is to cause extreme discomfort to your opponents via the use of explicit sexual acts or references in debates, I feel I can be fairly easily persuaded that you can use another method to achieve your goal. The old judging philosophy had a line that “I feel that there are questions better left to outside the competitive debate framework to be resolved.” I feel many of these arguments fall into this category.

Risk Analysis: The strength of the link is often the most important factor in evaluating debates to me. I tend to think we overvalue both uniqueness and tend to race toward hyperbolic impacts, causing a decreased emphasis on more tangible, real world concerns. That said, most debaters have given up challenging links and internal links, so I frequently default to the magnitude/time-frame end of the paradigm. When this occurs, the negative wins a tremendous amount of the time.

Last Thoughts: Despite some of the above commentary, I am not nearly as pessimistic about the future of debate as many seem to be. I think the Middle East is a great topic, an area of tremendous concern to the United States, and most debaters work hard and fight hard to create a fair, fun, equitable competitive environment. I look forward to the upcoming season, and if you have any questions feel free to ask. I promise to try hard and to treat you and your arguments with respect. I take my judging obligations very seriously and try my best to follow Scott Harris’ rule that because I assume you work hard to be here, I will work hard to judge you.