Block,+John

Background: I debated for Little Rock Central High School for 3 years and Missouri State for 2 years.

Currently I assist Little Rock Central High School. This doesn't mean that I am well versed in much of the K lit base.

Big picture things: be nice and read what you are best at reading. I have predispositions like anyone else but everything is debatable and I am open to any style of argument. The important thing is to explain your argument but more importantly is to explain why it matters/why I should care, and what I should do in order to resolve the issue. Impact framing and impact calculus is good but if none is presented I will defer to util. Explain how the arguments you read interact and short-circuit the arguments the other team is reading/going for. This will increase your speaker points and minimize the issues I’m left having to parse through after the round.

Case Debates-entirely under-utilized. Too many teams get to weigh the entirety of the aff advantages regardless of how contrived the series of internal links or how poor the solvency mechanism is at solving alt causes etc. Also case debates don’t necessarily have to have cards to be good, sometimes pointing out bad evidence or just making true/smart arguments is plenty sufficient to greatly mitigate the case’s impacts. I really enjoy impact turn debates.

DA’s- they’re what I extended in the 1NR in college most of the time. Politics disads need to have a coherent link story and good UQ spin. The more specific the links the better off you will be.

CP’s-necessary vs sufficient claims are very smart and good to go for in front of me. I think that counterplans should be functionally competitive but can be convinced otherwise. I think counterplans should have a solvency advocate as much as I think affs should have one.

K’s-I am becoming more familiar with high critical literature K’s, however that doesn’t mean that you should just use buzzwords and expect me to fill in the gaps. Explain what the aff did which is uniquely bad, and what the impact of it is and how I should approach my creation of the ballot. Role of the ballot arguments are typically entirely self-serving and trite however arguments about how I should arrive at my decision tend to be much more persuasive. The alternative is where these debates tend to be the most shallow. Aff teams: challenge what the alternative does and why it would be revolutionary. Neg teams: explain why the alternative can resolve underlying issues/the links to the K and why it would be a good methodology towards X issue.

T/Framework-I like these debates but I don’t like rounds where the debate is solely about these issues. These debates are won and lost on the standards level. It is about competing methodologies about what we should be discussing/how we should approach each debate.

Theory-Go for it, I tend to think that conditionality is good and that agent CPs are fine. Again, as with everything these are debatable. Make sure you don’t read theory args as fast as you read the text of cards or else I will get far less than you said on the theory debate. Most importantly impact out your theory arguments and discuss whether it means I should reject the advocacy/argument or the team.

CX-I tend to flow CX and think that it is important that issues initiated during cross-x make it into later speeches if there’s a point to be made or something that happened in CX which will help you later.

Speaker Points-I tend to think 28 is average and you go up or down from there. Never giving a 30 because every speech can be improved on. Organization and moments of clarity/moments of emphasis are very important and help me prioritize the debate. The more work you do in helping me craft my ballot/frame my decision the better. Word efficiency is good and interactions among different arguments on the flow is better. Also I think the best debaters recognize that they are not winning everything on the flow. Strategic decisions matter and can be useful as long as you show why you still win the debate even if the other team wins X Y or Z.

Things I generally think are true: life is good or at least has the capacity to be good sometime (so if the death K is your main strategy there are probably better judges in the pool for you) and action is better than inaction. Again, these are just leanings but if these are things that you will argue against as the crux of your strategy there are probably other people who will be an easier judge in the back than me.