Garcia,+Andoni

I was a lone-debater on the LD circuit, from a small school in Southern California, and broke to various out-rounds throughout the year. I am currently a freshman on the parliamentary debate team for the University of Chicago. I typically ran stock deontology cases that were particularly heavy in meta-ethics, but by the middle of my senior year I also started running a lot of Levinas and Existentialism cases that were very philosophically dense.
 * Background:**

I accept any argument, give leeway for extensions, and default to competing interps and drop the argument on theory.
 * tl;dr:**

Throughout my debate career I have noticed that people who ask if speed is an issue typically cannot go fast. That being said: Not having debated LD in a few months, I am slightly rusty with flowing super high-echelon speeds, but as long as you are clear and slow-down slightly for taglines and analytics I will definitely be able to comprehend all of your arguments. I will yell clear twice before docking speaks and will yell speed if you are going too fast for me to understand. The only debater I've ever seen that was too fast was one round by Michelle Choi.
 * Speed:**

I will accept any arguments made what-so-ever. I was the kind of debater that would say that Util advocated slavery -- which to most judges is a little drastic. As long as you give warrants for why its true I will take any argument from reasonable ones to the holocaust was good. If you have justification and don't just assert it, I will accept it. That being said for crazy arguments with shitty warrants, I will give the opponent a LOT of leeway with shitty refutations.
 * Cases:**
 * If you are running some obscure K (anything that's not mainstream like a capK, anthroK, etc): SLOW DOWN AT THE END AND TELL ME WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY THE LINK HOLDS!!! A. If I don't understand the link, it will be VERY easy for the opponent to convince me why the link is bad. B. If I don't understand what the effect of the K is, i.e. some horrid impacts, disregard Aff, etc. then it is useless in my mind. So leave 30 seconds at the end to slow down and explain the link-story. This is especially true if you read a 7-minute K!
 * If you are reading a philosophically dense case such as deep contractarianism or derrida or foucault or something, slow down on the analytics coming off of those cards and explain what they mean to me.
 * If you are reading author-specific ethics then tell me the caveats of your system. I.e. A gauthier contractarianism versus a Hobbes.

I also default to a truth-testing paradigm, but if you want to argue comparative worlds or something else I am willing to accept that. Generally depending on the topic though I believe either aff or neg has to prove the topic true and the other has to prove it untrue under some ethical system. That being said in a truth-testing paradigm if there are competing ethical systems STILL weigh why your system is better. And always weigh competing evidence. The best round I have ever seen was an out round of Sarah Sachs at NDCA championships last year, where the two debaters went extremely deep on the comparison of the epistemology of two pieces of evidence that proved which meta-ethic had to come first giving weigh to the rest of the ethical system. The comparative analysis was the standard that most debates should be at, but debaters never go deep enough in the comparing clashing evidence, clashing ethics, etc. This will GREATLY help your speaks and will help clarify the round. If you can show me that your meta-ethic of contractarianism has to come before the meta-ethic of his/her Naturalism and he/she has no epistemological reason why that is not true, then I will err your ethical system no matter what. Instead of going into shitty meddled debates over ethical systems, a simple comparative analysis will clarify the ENTIRE debate round.

You do not have to fully extend the claim, warrant and impact of every piece of analysis you bring up, but please at least tell me the impact of extending it in the new context of the round. And I will give a TON of leeway for shitty extensions of dropped arguments.
 * Extensions:**

I am open to any argument as said before, but for theory I default to competing interpretations and to drop the argument. If you tell me why I should believe a different paradigm or a different impact, I will be perfectly open to accepting it. Often theory is used as a strategy instead of for actually beating back abuse in debate, and I will be much more inclined to accept arguments showing how you meet the interp/your case isn't abusive/etc if I believe them to be true. Also, it is much more tact to use a drop the argument shell and then show why their case doesn't hold without that card/argument then to drop the debater. You will have to do a lot more work to convince me to drop the debater. I also prefer standards of quality of ground rather than quantity of ground, i.e. turn-ground is necessary because I can't prove terminal defense on X because of Y, and thus turn ground is the only way to refute X. This quality>quantity is also true for unfair burdens/nib's/etc.
 * Theory:**

So I never realized until late in my career how fucking important speaks were. So my standard is a 28.5. If you definitely could have improved I will give lower, and if you deserve to clear I will give you a 29. Things not to do: Things to do:
 * Speaks:**
 * Start super fast and then slow down. Always build up to the fastest speed so I can get comfortable with your voice and speed.
 * Be a douche-bag
 * Engage in pointless theory debate
 * Time-suck your opponent when you are clearly winning
 * Make link-stories clear and obvious
 * Take very tact decisions like going all out on one important point in the 2AR, dropping your case and going for turns on the NC, etc.
 * Double-binds!! I think double-binds make you look extremely intelligent and are a genius way to trap your opponent and clarify the round
 * Set-up good traps in CX
 * Resolve the debate for me, instead of making me work harder.

Overall, I like to see that you can debate well, not just read a bunch of cards and regurgitate ethical systems. I want to see you making smart analytics and refutations.