Chernick,+Mira

Updated for Harvard 2013:

I debated for four years at Lexington High School, graduating in 2007. I had 7 career bids and attended TOC my junior and senior years. I taught at VBI for two summers, coached Stuyvesant for the 09-10 season, and currently coach for Lexington. I've judged the current topic at Columbia, Lexington, and the Lexington RR.

I'll start with my preferences: I enjoy smart, substantive debate. I appreciate and will reward with higher speaks people who approach the topic creatively or through nuanced positions. The best way to guarantee my ballot is to be comparative and weigh: identify the levels of the debate and how arguments interact with each other, and compare the relative strength of offense through one or both standards. Extensions should follow a claim/warrant/impact structure (e.g. "Extend Rogers. A meta-analysis of 14 studies shows that rehab programs reduce recidivism by 50%. This outweighs all other impacts to the standard of protecting public safety on probability, since it has been shown to hold true in reality while the neg's psychological analysis about deterrence is speculative and empirically unconfirmed.") The more clearly you write my ballot for me and the less work you make me do, the less likely you are to be surprised by my decision.

Things not to do in front of me: Do not run theory. I don't flow it, and I won't vote on it. No need to remove theory spikes from the AC; they won't offend me, but don't bother extending them. By "theory," I mean arguments that link to fairness or education, particularly ones that take the form of a shell. I am open to //theoretical// arguments that argue that my role as a judge is to perform a specific function in the round (unless that role is voting on theory), or explain that a given argument makes the resolutional question irresolvable and should therefore be rejected in order to salvage the coherency of the round. This does not mean you can be as abusive as you like: I will gut-check on issues of abuse. If your opponent is really being abusive, explain your objections coherently and in paragraph form, and if I agree with you I will probably be nodding emphatically and will not vote on the abusive arguments/position. I will //not// drop the debater for running them. If I'm not nodding, you're probably just whining and should answer the arguments.

I'm fine with speed as long as it doesn't sacrifice clarity. Enunciate, inflect, slow down for author names and tags, and pause between distinct analytical arguments. I will say "clear," but not more than twice; after that you're on your own and speaks will probably suffer.

On this topic specifically: I have not yet heard an extinction impact that sounded remotely plausible. I will vote for impact stories that link to extinction if the links are won and weighed effectively, but I have a relatively low threshold for accepting defensive responses to link stories that are extremely tenuous to begin with. It is a safer strategy in front of me to go for a smaller impact with a stronger link story than the reverse.

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