Coburn+Palo,+Nick

**UPDATE 11/2008
Everything below is still basically true, although it is several years old. The difference is that I am no longer a fulltime debate coach. Instead I am a fulltime PhD student in Political Science. So....not having worked a camp this summer, my topic literacy isn't all that great (although I judged at the GDS tournament earlier this fall) and my pen is probably slightly slower than it was in recent years (although I did judge at the Harvard NDT tournament last weekend and I wasn't as out of practice as I expected). You should probably assume that your slick strategy based on topic nuance and misdirection might fool me as effectively as your opponents. However, like I said, pretty much everything below is still true

Affiliation (?) - WCL
School Strikes = CPS and (as of now, I guess) St. Vincents CXphilosophy = My job is to coach debate, so I take it pretty seriously. More than that, it’s an activity and community which I feel a lot of love and respect for. I’ve coached for a little bit over ten years and am currently a teacher and coach at College Prep (CA). I’m not aware of any cemented feeling I have regarding theory issues or arguments. And that’s kind of the problem I’m having with writing this thing. When people write judging philosophies they usually write about who they want to be, not who they necessarily are. Whether this is conscious or unconscious, often philosophies are the judges equivilent of a New Years Resolution. I think the best way to get the straight dope is to go to the debaters and ask. I’d track down one of the CPS debaters. For the most part, I think they’ll be friendly and helpful. Since I feel the need to struggle with this probably futile task, I’ll let you know three areas where I might consider myself a little bit quirkish. After that, I’ll offer my attempt at a take on what I think good debate is, but if you are short on time - and need to highlight down your politics cards instead - I won’t be offended if you skip that part

Topicality - I can be pushed off of this position without too much difficulty, but - in my heart of hearts - I believe in a “reasonability”, as opposed to a “better definition”, standard on Topicality. The notion of “T” being a “game of competing interpretations” has always struck me as kind of twisted, given the assymetric outcomes for the affirmative and negative sides - for one side losing the game(s) is sudden death, on any challenge, while the other side incurs no risk of damage at all. Pragmatically, I think that’s probably why I don’t tend to pull the trigger on “T” very often unless in-round abuse is demonstrated. Overviews - Given the nature of coaching at the TOC, this seems to a point of amplified importance. Anyone who has been to the TOC for a few years is familiar with the phenomenon of a coach storming into a room to interrogate a judge about dropping their team and having them reference the 2NR/2AR overview, in the specific, without that coach having seen any of the debate. Charming. Very classy. It’s not that I expect people not to read prewritten overviews, but please tweak them to the specifics of our debate. Overviews can be truly round-saving, but more often they are as strategically useful as a pair of cement shoes. Too often, they are overly prescripted, in that they don’t address the ways the strategies were deployed in this specific debate, and/or they are little more than the equivalent of a “greatest hits CD” - a long list of their favorite warrants and cards. It sometimes feels like debaters are thinking “as long as I say it in my overview, it’s somewhere in the speech, so the judge had better apply it to the line-by-line for me”. This really seems to pass the buck for being a good rebuttalist from the debater to the judge. I would truly love overviews if they were attempts to identify the two or three literal questions that the debaters thought were going through a judges mind, made strong “even if” comparisons between their warrants and the strongest (most dangerous) warrants of their opponents within the framework of those questions, and isolated a fairly small number of must read cards (depending upon the complexity of the debate, and letting you know this is far from an absolute number, probably 3-8 cards). An overview like this would be truly fantastic. It would mean that all I need to do as a judge is intellectually “check your work” as you nail the specifics of your rebuttals “architecture” in the line-by-line. From the perspective of the debaters, it would go a long way toward making the round “idiot proof”. In addition, although I’d say I’m usually a low point judge, done effectively, this would light me up on speaker points like I was a pinball machine. Mutual Respect - I am not the politeness police. However, I find it hard to suppress my intense dislike of mean spirited and rude people. How does this manifest itself in a debate round. I don’t care how you dress or whether you sit or stand when you speak. I do care if you attempt to maintain an atmosphere of mutual respect in the room. Insulting your opponents, marginalizing your partner, or venting your frustrations about the round on your judge doesn’t seem consistent with that. Also, and this is a relatively small thing, consistently stealing prep time makes you look very cheesy. The “How Do You See Debate” Rant - At the risk of being wrongly perceived as a technophile, let me try to offer a contemporary metaphor. Pretend debate was a video game (okay, scary visual). You can score points by performing some clearly prescribed action, but there is another meter on the screen in addition to your points scored. Kind of like an energy meter. If your character is damaged in the course of getting those points the meter goes down. Sometimes your character might do something exceptional and be awarded extra energy. However, that energy might turn to be entirely irrelevant if you complete the goal of the game before your character’s health allowance expires. I think that there are things debaters do in rounds that make judges more or less inclined to vote for or against them. It’s manifests itself in the subconscious, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Debaters can manipulate their “good will” meter in manners which may have little or nothing to do with the nitty-gritty of the line by line debate. The “good will” meter may be irrelevant in a debate (if one team is clocking another), or it may be very important if the debate is close and the judge is especially tired or stressed out. I think this reflects the practice of judging much more accurately than the antiquated notion of a “blank slate”. I believe that debaters who are aware of this dynamic tend to be the most successful in our activity. To me the best debaters are one part chess master and one part used car salesperson. I love debaters with a great strategic sense and who use regional overviews in the last rebuttal to clearly locate the ultimate function of significant chunks of arguments. Like most in our community I also relish a fast paced comparison of the warrants of specific pieces of evidence. That’s the chess master part. However, I also think that transcendently good debaters tend to be, as Paul Newman’s character in the Color of Money described himself, “a student of human moves”. It allows a few debaters to radiate an odd sort of credibility which seems to place them almost outside of the fray, like the narrator of the story, attempting to help you to understand what’s going on. This “would you buy a used car from this person” quality is actually a function of careful attention to a wide range of communication variables, which I think is one of the more valuable things a person can take from debate. Please don’t let this freak you out too much. Obviously, I believe this is totally compatible with high speed, very technical debate. The best debaters just allow judges the luxury of enjoying the skills of a gifted salesperson and young chess master at the same time. As for myself in particular, I know that I tend to react non-verbally to almost everything I hear in a round. You might want to take notice of that, but be careful not to read too much into it. My reactions probably are just reflecting your “good will” meter, not your “point score”... Finally, good luck and congrats on getting to Kentucky. It is no small achievement.