Mulloy,+Sean

I am in my seventh year of debate. I debated three years in high school at Chandler Prep Academy in Arizona and am currently in my fourth year of debate in college debating for Whitman College.

General Overview: I am a middle of the road judge, who if willing to listen and vote on anything so long as it is well articulated, defended, and impacted. I have more experience with traditional policy strategies (DA, CP, etc.) in my debate career most recently, but focus more in my academic studies on more critical literature/understandings of the world. Please run whatever arguments you are most comfortable and competent debating. I get frustrated when people run arguments they cannot explain and do not have an adequate understanding of the literature of those arguments.

Style: I am fine with speed and generally have a proclivity for technical, efficient, line-by-line debating. I will consider arguments not answered dropped, but it is up to the other team to articulate why that dropped argument matters. For instance, placing blippy voting issues in random places will have little impact on how I vote unless they are given adequate analysis and weight in the round.

DAs: Love them - topic specific DAs are the best. That said, I enjoy a good politics DA throw down. Nuanced and specific link stories will be rewarded. Impact analysis is crucial - how does the DA interact with the impacts of the case?

CPs: Advantage CPs, smart PICs, and case specific mechanism CPs are great. I have a slight leaning towards the neg on issues of conditionality, unless it is egregious or very well debated. I am very skeptical about the legitimacy of consult CPs and other questionably legitimate/cheating CPs and probably am much more enticed by theoretical objections to these.

Ks: Debating for Whitman, people often assume I am hostile to critical argumentation - this is not true. I am very fond of critical approaches that challenge the underlying assumptions and practices of mainstream policy making. Please be sure to clearly explain the argument and how it engages with affirmative - specific links based on the plan are best, recycled generics are fine but require a higher bar of analysis on your part to make them specific. Have a clear interpretation of how debate as an activity should function and what is my role as a judge. Please, please engage directly with the sorts of truth claims that aff is making and explain how I as a judge should view them (are the irrelevant? based on flawed epistemology? are the masking a larger issue at hand? etc). Make sure to utilize your alternative in a way that gives me a clear picture of how it functions and how it remedies the links you isolate. For affs answering Ks: I thoroughly enjoy impact turn debates on the K when possible.

Performance/Non-Traditional: I am very open to non-traditional styles of debate, but have little experience debating or judging them. Please articulate how the debate space should function and please directly clash with the arguments that are made against your interpretation.

T: Same as above, I view it as a DA. Generally think T debates get boring, but I will obviously vote for them. I usually default to competing interpretations unless reasonability is straight dropped.

Feel free to email me with any questions or for clarification: mulloysp@whitman.edu