Smiley,+Adam

Coach at Alpharetta High School 2006-Present Coach at Chattahoochee High School 1999-2005 Did not debate in High School or College.

General thoughts- I expect debaters to recognize debate as a civil, enjoyable, and educational activity. Anything that debaters do to take away from this in the round could be penalized with lower speaker points. I tend to prefer debates that more accurately take into account the types of considerations that would play into real policymakers' decision making. On all arguments, I prefer more specifics and less generics in terms of argument choice and link arguments. The resolution has an educational purpose. I prefer debates that take this into account and do not go out of their way to moot any real discussion of the topic or try to avoid any real discussion of the merits of the aff. Everything in this philosophy represents my observations and preferences, but I can be convinced otherwise in the round and will judge the arguments made in the round. I will vote on most arguments, but I am going to be very unlikely to vote on arguments that I consider morally repugnant (spark, wipeout, malthus, cancer good, etc). You should avoid these arguments in front of me.

Paperless debate- First, prep time stops when the flash drive leaves the computer of the next speaker. Second, while I think that paperless debate has been a great thing for the debate community, it should not be a crutch to avoid flowing speeches. Debaters who obviously did not flow (answering arguments that were not made, clearly not flowing during speeches) should expect their speaker points to suffer.

K- I have become far more open to kritiks in the past few years, but it would still consider it one of my weaker arguments in terms of my depth of understanding of the literature. This does not mean that I will not vote for kritiks, and I have become more receptive to them over the past few years, and I vote on them often. However, this does mean a couple of things for the debaters. First, I do not judge as many kritikal rounds as other judges. This means that I am less likely to be familiar with the literature, and the debaters need to do a little more work explaining the argument. Second, I may have a little higher threshold on certain arguments. I tend to think that teams do not do a good enough job of explaining how their alternatives solve their kritiks. I also tend to find that the team that spends more time contextualizing the K to the world of the aff and talking about the aff wins the debate. Generally, I leave too many rounds feeling like neither team had a real discussion or understanding of how the alternative functions in the round or in the real world. I also tend towards a policy framework and allowing the aff to weigh their advantages against the K. However, I will look to the flow to determine these questions. Too many framework debates become two ships passing in the night, which often favors the neg education claims absent any clash on these questions. Finally, I do feel that my post-round advice is less useful and educational in K rounds in comparison to other rounds.

Identity based arguments- As a result of many of my preferences and the MPJ system used at most tournaments, I have never judged an identity based round at a tournament (queer theory, Wilderson, etc.). While I am generally sympathetic to the issues being critiqued in these rounds, I am not a fan of these arguments in the context of the resolution and policy debate. I am open to voting for these arguments, but I will have a bias against them in terms of the ability to provide a fair division of ground and provide topic education. Just as on Kritiks, I am not very familiar with this literature, so both teams should give more in-depth explanations of how their arguments function and limit their use of argument specific jargon that I may be less familiar with.

T- I generally enjoy good T debates, and I generally think T is necessary to provide a predictable limit on the topic. Be sure to really impact your standards on the T debate. Also, do not confuse most limiting with fair limits. Finally, be sure to explain which standards you think I as the judge should default to and impact your standards. I do not think affs without a plan text defending the USFG are topical. This does not mean that I will not vote for them, but it is a bias that you need to be aware of when framing the debate.

Theory-I am willing to pull the trigger on theory arguments as a reason to reject the argument. However, outside of conditionality, I rarely vote on theory as a reason to reject the team. If you are going for a theory arg as a reason to reject the team, make sure that you are impacting the argument with reasons that I should reject the team. Too many debaters argue to reject the team without any impact beyond the argument being unfair. Instead, you need to win that it either changed the round in an unacceptable way or allowing it changes all future rounds/research in some unacceptable way. I will also tend to look at theory as a question of competing interpretations.I feel that too many teams only argue why their interpretation is good and fail to argue why the other team’s interpretation is bad.Also, be sure to impact your arguments. I tend towards thinking that topic specific education is often the most important impact in a theory debate.I am unlikely to do that work for you. Given my preference for topic specific education, I do have some bias against generic counterplans such as states and international actor counterplans that I do not think would be considered as options by real policymakers. Finally, I do think that the use of multiple, contradictory neg advocacies has gotten out of hand in a way that makes the round less educational. I generally believe that the neg should be able to run 1 conditional CP and 1 conditional K. I will also treat the CP and the K as operating on different levels in terms of competition. Beyond that, I think that extra conditional and contradictory advocacies put too much of a burden on the aff and limit a more educational discussion on the merits of the arguments. Finally, there are some theory arguments that I simply will not vote on: no neg fiat and reverse voters on T are 2 examples of theory arguments that I think are useless and their discussion is bad for the round and education.

Disads- I generally tend towards evaluating uniqueness as the most important part of the disad debate. If there are a number of links and link turns read on a disad debate, I will generally default towards the team that is controlling uniqueness. I also tend towards an offense defense paradigm when considering disads as net benefits to counterplans. I think that the politics disad is a very educational part of debate that is my favorite argument to both coach and judge. I will have a very high threshold for voting on politics theory. Finally, teams should make sure that they give impact analysis that accounts for the strong possibility that the risk of the disad has been mitigated and tells me how to evaluate that mitigation in the context of the impacts in round.

Counterplans-I enjoy a good counterplan debate. However, I tend to give the aff a little more leeway against artificially competitive counterplans, such as consult counterplans. I also feel that a number of aff teams need to do more work on impacting their solvency deficits against counterplans. While I think that many popular counterplans (especially states) are uniquely bad for debate, I have not seen teams willing to invest the time into theory to help defeat these counterplans.

Calling for cards- I prefer to call for as few cards as possible.I think that it is up to the debaters to give clear analysis of why to prefer one card over another and to bring up the key warrants in their speeches. That said, research is an important part of the education in this activity, and when I do need to call for cards on important questions in the debate round, evidence quality will have an impact on my decision that extent to which different impacts are weighed.

Speaker point specifics:

Below is the basic guideline I follow when assigning speaker points. Most of this will be based on argument quality. However, issues such as clarity, ethos, politeness toward your opponent and your partner, inappropriate language, evidence of flowing/line by line will also impact speaker points:

30- This individual gave the most perfect speech that I have ever seen. There is literally nothing that could have been done better..  29.5- This is the best speech that I expect to be made at any similar tournament this year. Based on this round, I expect this individual to win top speaker at top national tournaments.  29.0- Based on this round, I expect this individual to win top speaker at most tournaments.  28.5- Based on this round, I expect this person to win a speaker award at this tournament  28.0- Based on this round, I expect this person to be in the top half of speakers at the tournament but not win a speaker award.  27.8-Based on this round, I expect this person to be the exact middle of the field at the tournament.  27.5- Based on this round, I expect this person to be in the bottom half of speakers at the tournament.  27.0- This person made a legitimate effort, but is one of the bottom speakers at the tournament.  26.0- This person showed little to no effort or understanding in the round.  Below a 26- This person did something extremely rude or disrespectful.