Batik,+Mark

Mark Batik I teach debate and assist coaching at Jesuit College Prep of Dallas.

I have been coaching and/or judging high school debate for 17 years.

A note about evidence. If your evidence does not have a full citation either on the evidence or in a place that can be readily accessed and associated with a piece of evidence, I will not consider the piece of evidence as support for an argument. A full citation minimally contains the author (or publication title for items without a recognizable author), the date, the publication (book, journal title, newspaper, website, etc...), and relevant retrieval information (name of book, database used, URL). Qualifications are important, but I am concerned with the state of citation and the ability to easily find and verify evidence with the above rant.

The affirmative must be a defense of the resolution. You don't have to have a plan, you can do it ironically, you can do it with a poem. Whatever mechanism you choose must be a defense of the resolution.

Topicality--I err affirmative on topicality. You might be able to win on defense alone if the violation is particularly bad. Negative violations should set fair and debatable limits on the topic rather than be the most limiting interpretation. I do not think that competing interpretations is the only objective way to evaluate topicality or perhaps the best way to evaluate topicality. If you go for topicality you need a fair interpretation that's good for debate. Theory--your best 5 explained theory arguments are far preferred over a dump of answers that increasingly I don't want to flow. I want you to do some comparison at the end of a debate to assess who is winning and losing a theory debate. Theory requires both links and impacts and your ability to explain a clear impact that is clearly associated with an action of the other team is probably dispositive as to who wins. I am disposed to hating unchecked conditionality but am coming around to limited conditionality. Kritiks--if you go for a kritik that requires a decision calculus outside the traditional policy making framework (i.e. balancing lives or benefits) then you need to win your framework for evaluation. I do not have a problem with frameworks offered by the affirmative or negative that exclude the other. This is all debatable. I think it's very important for the negative to win their framework if there's even a chance the case will outweigh because I am probably going to vote aff if the case outweighs. I think that most kritiks without alternatives are to be evaluated like disadvantages (and those are fine for me). If you need to win an alternative to leverage the kritik against the affirmative, I believe the K is subject to permutations as would a counterplan. Counterplans--can be topical, and plan inclusive (although I will listen to the debate why they shouldn't). I am disposed to voting affirmative on permutations to counterplans that others might describe as cheating (consult, delay, and veto, for example). I think a very specific and strategic counterplan is a better option than a big old generic one. Disadvantages are your best friend when negative. I tend to establish the direction of the uniqueness first to establish the risk of the link/link turn. I do think a DA can be beaten on defense alone but the defense has to be absolute or the defense has to be sufficient that that the affirmative still outweighs the DA.

The debate is your debate. Be nice and don't swear too much. I think I am harder on speaker points than most.

30-haven't given one in years. It is so long that I actually cannot remember the person to whom I last gave this mythical number to. I think it won't happen again because it seems that if you get a 30 you are perfect and there's no such thing as a perfect debate. 29.5-best speaker I saw this year or the best speech (1AR, 2NR, for example) I saw all year. 29-excellent. I believe you should be one of the top 5 or top 10 speakers at the tournament. 28.5-very good 28-good 27.5-average 27-below average 26-5 and below-you probably need work on something major or were not a nice person in the debate