Zemel,+Quinn

Overview – I debated for Pine Crest in high school for 4 years and I am now a freshman debating at Michigan State. It is my opinion that debate should be up to the debaters, I am much more interested in voting for the team that did the better debating than the team that read arguments that I prefer to listen to. What goes along with that is is that good analysis and evidence spin can get you much farther than just having a better card – that being said evidence quality is still important – if you put the crux of the debate around a single card that is terrible even if you are doing good comparison if the card is awful you may be in trouble.

Kritiks – I am not the biggest fan. This does not mean that I will not vote for it but it does mean unless it is debated well you will have an uphill battle getting my ballot. If you think you have a strategic advantage going for the k despite my predisposition than by all means do so. If you do decide to go for the k as for all judges explanation is extremely important – obviously this depends upon the complexity of the k. If you are reading something like the cap k I can understand the thesis – just explain the links and alternative well, but if you are reading something more complicated don’t just use buzz words – define them. I will not reward a negative team for being vague – if I had trouble understanding your argument odds are so did the other team and I will keep that in mind when deciding.

Disads – the most important thing is impact calc. The last thing I want to have to do is decide which nuclear war scenario is biggest or faster – that is your job. Tell me why your impacts will come first, why they are more likely ect. Disad turns case/case turns disad is extremely important. A well articulated turns case argument goes a long way – i.e. if they have a Middle East war impact and you have an inroad to that impact you are in pretty good shape.

Counterplans – I am aff leaning on a lot of counterplan theory with the exception of conditionality. Of course I will vote on condo if need be but I am not opposed to the neg reading multiple counterplans (Note to the neg: this doesn’t mean 5 counterplans are ok, the more counterplans you have the more likely I am to vote on condo). Consult/Conditions/process/questionably competitive agent counterplans will have to really do a better job on theory. Pics are probably ok but I can be persuaded otherwise – I am more persuaded by competition arguments in reference to pics – I will be sympathetic to the aff if the pic is an example of the plan

Topicality – I will not ever view topicality as a last resort effort – it is a key part of the negative strategy – if you think the aff isn’t topical don’t be afraid to go for T. There is not much that I would enjoy more than listening to an aff plan and question whether it is topical or not just from listening to it and then watching the negative crush them on T.