St.+John,+Hillary

I am a third year master's student at the University of North Texas, studying rhetoric and performance. I will always try to be a thoughtful and objective judge, and keep an open mind to all arguments. A couple things that are important to me: - Try to be clear in your speaking. I don't want to have to read through all of your evidence at the end of the round to try to figure our what your argument was. By clarity I mean both clear diction in addition to clearly explaining the warrants of your arguments and how they function in the round. - Have direct clash and on point refutation. I was once in a debate round where neither team engaged the other, and the aff ended up winning, "because they went first." I don't want to be forced to make a decision like this, so pay attention to what the other team says, and indicate how your arguments interact and why your points are more important. - Fully utilize impact comparison. You should be able to clearly articulate to me by the end of the round why you should win. - I am very open to kritiks and performance affs. I think that these debates are interesting if they are done well and offer a unique type of education on the topic. That being said, I think that topical education is important to the activity, so you should be able to defend why your performance or kritik is relevant to the topic area.