Patrice,+Joe

Joe Patrice USMA Years Judging College: 14

I listen to everything, but I characterize myself as a critic of argument. Branson and Olney both wrote compelling edebate posts in May and June of 2007 that sum up my feelings on debate pretty well. I often worry that the "game" aspect of debate unjustly stamps out the focus on the substantive literature in the field we are debating. Staff writers for the Sacramento Bee can report what figures and experts have said, but if you want to convince me of the way of the world I'd rather hear from an author who works in that field. And I embrace nuance if it is available – if your evidence is less succinct than the other team’s but there are substantive reasons why your evidence better reflects the real world, go ahead and make that argument.

I’m a human being and not a machine. I catch almost everything but the only way to guarantee that I catch something AND give it the interpretation you want is to be explicit about it in the rebuttals. You need to be explaining the analysis of your cards or theory arguments, because I don’t want my initial understanding of the nuances of your argument to come from bunches of cards that I read after the round. When I read cards I’d like to be confirming and not learning because intervening makes me uncomfortable. If your strategy usually involves reading great amounts of evidence with snippets of analysis in the hopes that I read it all to fill in the blanks, that is the opposite of my ideal round.

With the caveat that I can vote on anything depending on how the round plays out, here’s some insight into how I think in some paradigmatic rounds that may help you.

In a “policy” debate, I will prefer fewer positions featuring longer evidence. Clear scenarios and analysis of the probability of the impacts not just the size of the impacts. If I hear that an increase in spending will collapse the world economy and trigger a nuclear war, you may as well tell me aliens are invading. Don’t get me wrong I’ll vote on it, but I’ll die a little inside. I’m much more concerned with internal links and uniqueness. I love specific case turns and interesting DA scenarios rather than generics. Counterplans are nifty. I don’t think I have a feeling either way on CP theory. Compare your impacts, weigh them, and tell me a story of the world of voting Aff vs. voting Neg.

When evaluating a “K” debate, I need clear explanations of how they interact with other impacts in the round, in particular other discursive or framework arguments. I’ve seen rounds where both sides argue kritiks in some form or another and their interplay is not clearly debated out. For most kritiks, the links and impacts are usually easy to argue, so I need the debate of the “alternative” or the “rejection” to be very clear. What am I voting for and how will it help? Some kritiks involve a lot of big, confusing words (usually in French or German), in which case you really need to be clear about what your advocacy means, because despite my reputation for being friendly to critical arguments, I don’t have a philosophy degree and those big words just prevent me from giving a clear decision.

The clash of civilizations. When a “policy” and “K” debate come together I think I’m more likely to vote on turns that people run against each other than any theory arguments about why either framework is better. I don’t particularly think a well-explained K is something that marginalizes the Aff, and I don’t think accepting the K is “key” to learning about some issue that is wildly tangential to the topic.

On topicality and theory, while I of course evaluate these on the flow, I feel that I’m more compelled by these arguments when there is a cohesive story because these debates often have so many short blippy answers on them that without a story I worry that blips are morphing into unpredictable answers by the end of the round. Recently I've been very harsh to CP/Perm theory arguments. I think these arguments are akin to T, yet unlike T people don't feel compelled to explain the abuse story. I do not think "the Perm is severance" is a link...I need to know why it severs and preferably a reason why that is uniquely disadvantageous.

I think evidence represents author advocacy of your argument. A compelling argument for me would be impeaching the author’s true advocacy, his/her biases, or political slants that may be affecting the logic of the position, or conflicting with other authors within the position. For that matter, I would enthusiastically welcome any level of evidence comparison.

The final rebuttals must provide me with a clear, coherent story. The final rebuttal for both sides should, in essence, hold my hand through the process of making a decision. I want to do the least work possible so your best bet is to give me the concise and easy way to vote for you.

Every time you steal prep time I die a little inside. But you’re going to do it anyway.