Crossman,+Mark

Type in the content of your page here Judge's Name: Dr. Mark Crossman School Affiliations: Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, El Camino College Experience: As a competitor, four years of high school policy, four years of college policy, 23 years of coaching experience-primarily college level policy and parliamentary debate Judging Philosophy: I will attempt to adhere to a tabula rasa paradigm. I tend to vote on the flow as much as possible because I believe it helps me to keep my opinion out of the debate. Beyond the rules (speaker order, time limits, etc.), I believe that all aspects of debate are debatable. Absent argument to the contrary, my default theoretical positions generally fall along the lines of the basic stock issues that are associated with resolution/proposition types. In policy debate, those would include topicality, significance/harm, inherency, solvency, and advantages/disads. In LD, Public Forum, and Parliamentary, the topic type may suggest policy, fact, or value ramifications. In all forms of debate, I default to a burden of proof assignment to the side that supports the resolution (the affirmative), and I assign presumption to the negative. Again, these defaults are arguable. For example, if you wish to argue that no one should have presumption, or that inherency should not be a stock issue, you may, and it will be up to your opponent to respond. While I will attempt to remove my biases from the decision, I have a few that I may as well be honest with you about. Which is to say that I will vote against my preferences, but if things get messy on the flow, I may not know whether I am preferring a position because you argued it well or because it is the position that I favor. I am not a big fan of topicality when the case is objectively topical. But don't interpret that to mean that I won't vote on T when the case isn't topical (you know the difference-or should). I prefer evidence that includes a source qualification which is presented with the evidence (I don't like Smith in 2009 as a citation). I prefer case clash to generics. While I will vote for critical positions, I think they are too often used to avoid clash. I believe that speaker order is a rule and, hence, don't care for verbal prompting by partners (note passing is ok). I don't believe that debaters have an obligation to speak at a rate that I would expect in individual events, but I prefer not to judge incomprehensibly fast rounds. Keep in mind that, while I have experience in a variety of debate formats, I now primarily coach college parliamentary debate, and high school parli and public forum. I will, therefore, lack the background understanding of the policy and LD topics. You won't need to waste time explaining stock issues to me, but don't assume that I am familiar with topic specific issues (be sure to explain jargon). Feel free to ask me anything else that you might need to know before the round gets started.