Ryan,+Sarah

Harrison HS (2012-2016) toc Harvard University (2016-present)

Updated for Harvard 2017 by Lawrence Zhou.

I debated LD for four years at Harrison High School. If you have any questions feel free to ask me before the round or message me on Facebook.

**General Things:**
I will listen to any arguments you want to make provided that they are well warranted and clearly explained to me. I won’t vote on things that I don’t understand so if you’re running something confusing please make sure you slow down and give me a clear explanation of your case. Also I am much more likely to vote on one well explained, weighed and warranted argument than a few one-liners.

Flashing and compiling documents won’t count as prep time but please don’t be ridiculous and abuse this.

**In round behavior:**
I don’t care how fast or slow you talk or whether you sit or stand. I’ll say clear if I can’t understand you but if I have to continuously say clear and nothing changes then I won’t be able to flow your arguments and can’t vote on things that I haven’t flowed. Also please slow down on author names and for tags.

Please be respectful to each other. Debate should be a space where everyone is comfortable to engage and participate and if I feel that someone is acting exclusionary / overtly rude I will drop speaks or the debater depending on the severity of the behavior.

Also I won’t vote on offensive (as in "offends other people", not offense as in "offense/defense" like Matt Zinman thought) arguments and if the offense is bad enough I will drop you.

**Ks:**
I love Ks. I read them quite frequently throughout high school. I mostly read topical fem Ks or performances. That being said, feel free to read whatever types of Ks you want and are comfortable with.

Also just because I ran a lot of Ks myself doesn’t mean that it’s the only argument I will listen to or want to hear. If you’re not comfortable running Ks don’t feel as though you have to run them.

**Plans / CPs / DAs:**
These are great. I think that good plan / cp debates can be really interesting. Just make sure that your link story is very clear. Also please do weighing and impact calc.

**Theory/T:**
These are fine. Generally I would prefer if theory was used mostly to check abuse, as opposed to as a strategic tool, but I won’t disregard theory arguments you make just because I don’t agree with them. However if a theory debate is close I will probably be more persuaded by responses to frivolous theory than the theory itself.

When you’re reading theory please slow down on interpretations and tags. This is especially true if you’re making a lot of short arguments. Also please do a lot of weighing and try and make this debate as clear as possible for me. I’m probably not the best person to evaluate a messy theory round so it’s in your best interest to be as clear as possible.

**Framework / philosophy:**
I think that sometimes these cases can be really interesting. I’m definitely open to voting on framework heavy arguments, but please make sure you explain your arguments to me clearly because otherwise I will be confused and I won’t vote on something that I really don’t understand. This probably means that you will have to read your framework slower than you would something else so that I can catch everything.

**Tricks / spikes:**
I don’t really like these and am very open to theoretical or critical objections to tricky cases or spikes. Usually I won’t just blatantly ignore these, but they’re not the best strategy in front of me. I also think it depends on how well the arguments are run. For example, I much more likely to vote on a well-explained descriptive framework than on a one-sentence presumption trigger in the AC.

**Extensions**:
I would prefer if you extend individual cards explicitly and provided some type of reiteration of the warrant.

**K vs Theory:**
I think these debates are interesting and I’m willing to vote on either side. I think it’s really important in these types of debates to do lots of argument interaction and big picture analysis.

Feel free to ask me questions after the round.

This is how I look sometimes during the round. Do not be afraid I promise I'm really funny and nice and cool and funny.