Brendan+Burke

I debated for four years at Oak Park-River Forest HS in Illinois. I now go to Amherst College. I was a 2N who ran a variety of strategies and mostly critical affirmatives.

Short: Likes T and the K, but prefers well researched and well understood case-specific strategies (if it’s a case-specific K all the better). Neg leaning on most theory questions. Will defer to analysis over evidence unless told otherwise. Doesn’t like offense/defense too much. Likes line-by-line more than overviews. Defend a plan.

I have not set any opinions in stone, but I think that debaters should know about how I tend to think about certain arguments.

T: As a debater whose 2NRs involved topicality frequently, I understand the value of a good T debate. T is probably always a voter and competing interpretations is the best framework for evaluating it, but reasonability can influence how the interpretations compete. I tend to think that predictable limits is the most important standard but can be convinced otherwise. I think comparative standards analysis is too often missing from T debates and is essential for the aff and the neg. I like when teams give me a meta-level framework for evaluating topicality, like what topicality means in terms of the other arguments in the debate or what it means for debate as an activity. It’s also important to have good cards to back up and contextualize your definition. Believe it or not, T does not have to be in every 1NC.

DA: Not a fan of offense/defense. I prefer to be told a story and to hear how this story interacts with the one the affirmative is telling. Things like how the consequences of the plan change in the world of the disad and why the plan is important enough to cause these bad consequences help in framing your disad. Whether politics disads are legitimate arguments is up for debate insofar as it is possible that fiat protects affirmatives against disad links based on plan passage.

K: I am familiar with most K literature in the context of debate and some outside of debate. I will probably hold you to a high standard of explaining your critique at a conceptual level. This does not mean to recycle the language of your evidence, but to explain how the argument relates to the plan/advocacy. Pointing to specific pieces of affirmative evidence and specific logical leaps that the affirmative makes is essential for good K debating in my opinion. Not a fan of big overviews on the K, I think many of these arguments can be made effectively embedded in the line-by-line as part of a comprehensive response to the arguments made by the 2AC or 1AR. For both the aff and neg, role of the ballot/framework arguments can go a long way in resolving micro-issues for me and the team that establishes the nexus question for the K debate in my mind has a good chance of winning.

CP/Theory: It’s hard to convince me to vote aff on Condo Bad, PICs bad, PerfCon bad, K alts bad. I do think CPs should have solvency advocates, and this implicates how I think about States CPs, Agent CPs, International CPs, and certain PICs (not in a good way for the neg). I tend to find Consult and Process CPs to be sketchy arguments. Theory’s a reason to reject the argument and not the team unless I am compelled otherwise by some good explanation.

I’ve judged four debates on the topic and have cut only a few cards relating to the topic, so err towards being very clear in your explanation of social servicy business.