Wittwer,+Ben

Ben Wittwer 2009-10

Background: Formerly Head Coach at Edgemont High School. Currently a law student at Wash U-St. Louis. Debated Policy in college at Univ. of Rochester. Qualified for the NDT twice and did other good debate things. My degree is in Political Science focusing on comparative political systems and American elections.


 * Overview:** I believe I'm as tabula rasa as any judge in this activity. However, even if something is dropped or mishandled I need to be able to explain why I voted on it using meaningful lines from your speech or I can't do it.You should impose a high threshold on yourselves for explaining your arguments.


 * Speaker points:** Your points reflect how well I think you are doing __your job__ in the debate. Might be good for 1Ns and 1As. I adjust my speaker points for the competition level at the tournament and for the division.


 * T**: A Competing interpretations framework is the least arbitrary way to decide these debates, even though it can become obviously illogical when taken to extremes. If the Affirmative wants to persuade me on reasonability, they should still have an explanation of how I should determine if Topicality is a voter and/or if they are reasonable. I generally vote for the team who is able to relate all of their arguments back to their thesis instead of just proliferating "voters" which are meaningless in of themselves.


 * Theory:** Theory arguments are effective tools to restrict what the other team can do and justify things you want to do. I enjoy good theory debates and am comfortable judging them, though in many cases, I do not think they have ballot implications, and are more useful for constructing the debate in a favorable light for your side. When you debate theory you should relate your examples to the actual round. Don't debate in a vacuum. All theory discussions which occur in the abstract are ridiculous and unhelpful. In the interest of fairness, if the other side drops a blippy theory argument **which was impacted during the speech it was introduced**, I will vote on it even though it's probably stupid, because I think being fair is more important that imposing argumentative standards which I have subjectively created.


 * DAs**: Where to place the status quo has to be the starting point for evaluating any DA. If one team wins an absolute direction of uniqueness, then the disad can only be offense for that team, even if the other team is ahead on the link. Affs, your "link turn" is actually link defense when you don't read any competing UX. Uniqueness is rarely an absolute question so if it is 50/50 or 60/40 the link debate becomes very significant.

I hate the canned "timeframe-magnitude-probability" overview. A good 2R will tell me which of those things is most important, as opposed to asserting that you've won all 3 (you probably haven't). Impact calculus IS vital but engage in a specific discussion of how the impacts in the round interact.

Offense/defense is my default framework for evaluation but it is not an absolute lens. Tell me how I should weigh impacts. Zero risk does not exist, but small enough risk that it should not be evaluated does.

If you're the type of team that likes to have an intricate politics debate, I'd love to judge it. I read political news every day and will be super annoyed if you read a scenario which has already passed/failed. I will be more annoyed if the other team does not call you out. This happens more often than it should.


 * CPs:** I don't have any predispositions about competition or counterplan acceptability, and may be better than some for dumb PICs for that reason. I think a common mistake Affs make against these arguments is making even-more-abusive permutations instead of just sitting on theory. Conditionality is ok; it gets dicier when there are multiple conditional advocacies, but I have rarely if ever seen a team explain why. I kind of like it when teams give creative, reasonable, and/or original interpretations of advocacy status.
 * Oh yeah:** The common claim "the status quo is always a logical option" has //NO WARRANT,// and is in fact //NOT LOGICAL.// When I vote Aff or Neg, I am endorsing the world supported by that team in their last speech. If, on the negative, you make the strategic decision at the end of the round to advocate a world besides the status quo for my ballot to endorse, then voting neg has to mean voting for that world. A vote for "no change" could just as easily justify an Aff win as a Neg win at that point. The negative abdicated the option of no change in favor of imagining a competitive policy to the Aff. You can't justify giving the Neg FIAT (no negative resolution, yo) if they simultaneously win whenever the status quo is better than the plan. It's arbitrary and probably justifies two seperate 2ARs. This also applies if the Aff __advocates__ a Perm in the 2AR, the plan alone is no longer an option. There are only 2 worlds I will choose between end of the round, but until then, by all means, propose as many as you want...


 * Ks:** A kritik is a kritik because it has an alternative. Otherwise, it is a philosophy disad or a caseturn. An alternative is an advocacy which is not a policy option and also not the status quo. There is no further way to refine the definition because Ks vary so much in nature now, so please, both sides, make sure a discussion about this occurs so it becomes clear what the negative endorsement is, what it means, and where it happens. By the latter I mean, is it a "do this because you're a debate judge" thing, does it utilize some notion of FIAT, is the government doing it, am I part of a movement... Clarify. I find that it is often in the best interest of the Aff to ensure that this happens, and I think theoretical arguments in order to mitigate alt vagueness are often useful. I think alternatives that claim to "endorse the policy" absent some representational issue are terribly unfair but the other team has to make the argument. I do not think that "Aff choice" is a good argument.
 * New about Ks:** For the most part, I think that if the Neg allows the Aff to weigh their case against the K the Aff will win, probably on timeframe of their impacts, unless the alternative solves for the specific Aff advantage scenarios. That means to win on the K you must a) invalidate the Aff scenarios b) invalidate the Aff's ability to solve and/or c) win that the K has to be a prior consideration. The Alternative has strong utility in all 3 of these areas: you can offer a competitive way to view impacts, a competitive approach to preventing harms of case, or a competitive decisionmaking framework, respectively. If you are Aff, I am less persuaded by arguments that kritiks are unfair than by arguments that simply refute them at the levels I have described: Win that your harms are true and that you solve for them. Defend the representation they are criticizing. Defend a post-FIAT focus on the effects of the plan, not because it would be unfair to do otherwise but because it would be undesirable from the standpoint of a policymaker. I think arguments about paralysis and fatalism go a long way for the Aff and the Neg should use the alt to hedge against those accusations.


 * Switch side debate:** I don't want to make a section about "non-traditional" or "performance" affs because debate doesn't have any rules and you can make whatever choices you want in regard to style and content. What you should know is that I think switch-side is potentially the foremost educational benefit of debate and that when all other things are equal I will pretty much always decide that is true. So if you are Aff and don't defend the resolution at all it may be hard to persuade me that is good, even if you win that the resolution is bad. I feel strongly that the Neg gets to say the resolution is bad, and cannot muster a vision of debate where the Aff didn't defend the resolution that held any of the benefits I find policy debate to hold (despite its problems). I encourage debaters who genuinely feel that advocating the resolution when Aff is personally troubling to explore unexpected and creative methods of doing so in ways that still allow you to have your voice. I think that this approach can also be compatible with one which criticizes aspects of debate which are worthy of examination.


 * Times I call for ev:** To resolve a factual disagreement, to test evidence comparison done by a debater, to settle the meaning of evidence that is being debated, and to check for clipping. I will not go warrant-hunting for you. If I think you clipped I will ignore the evidence in my decision and lower your speaker points.


 * Misc:** This section is relatively unimportant and mainly reflects my feelings about debate, as opposed to how I judge.

-Preround disclosure is a community standard I expect teams to adhere to. If your opponent is unwilling to disclose, at a bare minimum, the plan text they will be reading in the debate before the round, you should make a procedural argument about it and I will be likely to vote for you. This does not apply if you are breaking a new aff. If you make it a practice not to disclose, strike me. If you don't disclose to my teams, expect them to make you defend that decision during the round.

- I think the vast majority of 1ARs go about it the wrong way and I would encourage you to treat this speech like the rebuttal it is. While you must obviously "cover," that need not mean extend every point from the 2AC or hit every single point on the line by line of the block. 3-4 solid, developed arguments on each flow are going to put more pressure on the 2NR.

-I'll protect the 2NR from new args in the 2AR but I'm pretty lenient on newness when the other team has an opportunity to respond.

- I inflate speaker points for people who are good at cross-examination and decrease them for people who are evasive to the point that it is detrimental to the debate.

-I think sandbagging is a weak tactic. I could be convinced it's a reason to ignore an argument and it justifies new responses. I understand that it was important to also have time in the 1NC for aspec, a throwaway T argument and that K you never go for. But I'd rather hear complete arguments (this also applies to Aff advantages i.e. Advantage 1 is Hegemony: A. Plan helps the military somehow B.Khalilzad!).

-I make an effort not to give non-verbals because I think it is unfair.

-I would prefer that debaters be reasonably cordial to eachother. It's uncomfortable when they aren't.

-Every moment from the beginning to the end of a debate is either speech time or prep time. I will generally have my own timer and I will begin CX/prep immediately after the speech ends. I hate hate hate it when you steal prep. Not only is it unfair, it temporaly elongates the round. Your points will suffer if this happens.