Boyajian,+Ralph

SCHOOL STRIKES: CLOVIS WEST

NOTE: I haven't judged many rounds on this high school topic. Distinctions within the literature that are important to your arguments should be explained.

SPEED--Go as fast as you want, but be clear. Slow down a little bit on T and Theory--I might not catch each of your sub-points at top speed.

TOPICALITY--I default to an offense/defense model to evaluate the arguments. Both sides would be well served to make their offense comparative to the other team's interpretation. Good evidence goes a long way establishing predictable limits within the literature. The team that does a better job painting a view of debate under their interpretation often wins. Both reasonability and competing interpretation arguments are winnable, and will influence to what standard I hold the affirmative responsible for having the best interpretation in the round versus one that seems to satisfy the resolution fairly well. My bias is that the negative needs to go beyond winning that their interpretation is marginally better than the affirmative's for debate. Predictable limits seems much more important to me than ground in deciding these debates.

I think T is never a reverse voting issue and that nothing outweighs T. Criticisms may challenge the limitations of different definitions or certain impacts that we often prioritize in T, but I don't buy the argument that T is genocidal, blah blah blah.

DA's/CASE--Specificity is key. The further removed I am from debating myself, the more I enjoy listening to a specific disad/cp strategy, or at least quality evidence with good analysis. Comparative, specific link/turn analysis is important in my risk calculus--which is something both sides should spend time doing in addition to their impact calculus. I can be convinced that there is absolute defense on a disad, espescially ones with generic scenarios/links.

CP's--I like them. I think often times affirmatives rely too much on solvency attacks that are not really well thought out, and often not true, and would be better served having some good disads agains the CP. While I'll try to view each theory argument as objectively as possible, my personal biases on counterplan theory are that conditionality--within reason--is good, dispo is good, negative fiat and international fiat exist, condition cps are bad unless very specific within the literature, consult counterplans are iffy, and that PICS are good. Some of these biases are probably because the argumentation against them, such as against PICS, are usually not that good. Teams that are less afraid to make arguments that they think are good, but are perceived less kindly by the community, are probably doing themselves a favor, especially on PICs and Consult CP's.

KRITIKS--Don't use random jargon. I'll probably know what you mean, since I ran a lot of these in my career, but I'll hold you to some level of analysis. If you don't seem to have any grasp of your criticism besides being able to pronounce the words, how can we expect the affirmative? The more specific link and internal link, the more likely you are going to short circuit a lot of the "try or die" and uniqueness problems the Aff tries to convince me of. I don't necessarily think that you need an alternative, but you better explain what I accomplish by voting neg absent one. If you have an alternative, the more time you spend illustrating how you solve the impact or link the better. Affirmatives are usually on the losing end of evidence quality on the specific criticism, so using your 1ac and defending the specific action of your actor in context of the criticism is probably the single most important thing to me. Theory is good if you want to prevent the 2nr from stealing your case.

FRAMEWORK--I prefer substantive argumentation to theory, but understand why there are practical reasons for certain frameworks being more debatable than others. Still, I think a substantive analysis of this is usually beneficial. My own bias is that the affirmative should have a topical plan, but after spending a few years in college I can see how a very well developed non-traditional aff can often out debate the negative on this issue, so it's not something that you're doomed from the start if you go that way in front of me.