McIntosh,+Val

**Val McIntosh**

I would like to be on the email chain - my email address is valeriemcintosh1@gmail.com. Email chains - not pocketbox or speechdrop or whatever the new hotness is.

Assistant Debate Coach - University of Michigan, Niles West High School Institute Instructor - Michigan Debate Institutes Michigan State University '13 Brookfield Central High School '09

I debated for four years at Brookfield Central High School in Brookfield, WI and for two years at Michigan State University. I coach at Niles West High School and the University of Michigan. I judge a lot (A LOT) of debates at a lot of tournaments, judging at every skill level.

**A few top level things:**
 * I hate having to read cards after the round and do evidence comparison for you because I feel like it's an unfair level of intervention, but it is something I have to do regularly because of the lack of evidence comparison done within the debate. I generally tend to default to better evidence comparison in-round ahead of better quality evidence. Good evidence is important to me, but don't expect to let your evidence do the work.
 * If you engage in offensive acts (think racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), you will lose automatically and will be awarded whatever the minimum speaker points offered at that particular tournament is. There is zero room for discussion about that.
 * I'm a very expressive judge. Look up at me every once in a while, you will probably be able to tell how I feel about your arguments.
 * I don't think that arguments about things that have happened outside of a debate or in previous debates are at all relevant to my decision and I will not evaluate them. I can only be sure of what has happened in this particular debate and anything else is non-falsifiable.
 * I won't vote on death good.
 * I've gotten simultaneously more versed in critical literature and much worse for the kritik as a judge over the last few years. I think that often times teams who read exclusively critical arguments get away with asserting things as true with no evidence or explanation and judges treat it as a complete argument. I am not one of those judges. I have more complete thoughts on this further down but I figured I'd throw this at the top.

**Ethics:** I decided to put this at the top because it's something that is very important to me. Ethics challenges are something I take very seriously and so I want to make myself perfectly clear. If you make an ethics challenge in a debate in front of me, you must stake the debate on it. If you make that challenge and are incorrect or cannot prove your claim, you will lose and be granted zero speaker points. If you are proven to have committed an ethics violation, you will lose and be granted zero speaker points. This is something I am unwilling to compromise on.

*NOTE - if you use sexually explicit language or engage in sexually explicit performances, you should strike me. If you think that what you're saying in the debate would not be acceptable to an administrator at a school to hear was said by a high school student to an adult, you should strike me. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Cross-x:** Questions like "what cards did you read?" are cross-x questions. If you don't start the timer before you start asking those questions, I will take whatever time I estimate you took to ask questions before the timer was started out of your prep. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Inserting evidence or rehighlightings into the debate:** I won't evaluate it unless you actually read the parts that you are inserting into the debate. If it's like a chart or a map or something like that, that's fine, I don't expect you to literally read that, but if you're rehighlighting some of the other team's evidence, you need to actually read the rehighlighting. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Topicality**: I enjoy judging topicality debates when they are in-depth and nuanced. Limits are an an important question but not the only important question - your limit should be tied to a particular piece of neg ground or a particular type of aff that would be excluded. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Edu topic specific: I tend to think many neg interpretations on the education topic are arbitrary or make the topic worse in some way - especially because they exclude types of affs that have better federal key warrants - this is particularly true of T-classrooms and T-courts, in my opinion. This doesn't mean I won't vote for those arguments - just that they're a little harder for me to feel comfortable voting for. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Healthcare topic specific: I guess I tend to lean neg against affs that tweak existing healthcare laws (think ACA fix type affs) but that doesn't mean I won't vote for those affs, just that my general idea of what the topic should look like probably doesn't include those.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Counterplans:** For me counterplans are more about competition than theory. While I tend to lean more neg on questions of CP theory, I lean aff on a lot of questions of competition, especially in the cases of CPs that compete on the certainty of the plan, normal means cps, and agent cps. I'm somewhere in the middle on whether you need a solvency advocate for a CP - it definitely helps and I will feel more comfortable granting competition and solvency to the CP if there is a solvency advocate but it's not strictly necessary (especially in the case of uniqueness CPs). However, CPs that add a bunch of planks that don't have solvency advocates in order to fiat out of the aff's solvency deficits is something I don't really think is okay. I also think what constitutes a solvency advocate for the neg is affected by whether or not the aff has a solvency advocate. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">50 state fiat - I think it's good. That doesn't mean I won't vote on 50 state fiat bad - but I do think that, at a bare minimum, the neg should get to fiat that the 50 states all take a similar action. For me, arguments about uniformity and the necessity of solvency advocates are way more persuasive than no 50 state fiat.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Disads:** I am not very sympathetic to politics theory arguments (except in the case of things like rider disads, which I might ban from debate if I got the choice to ban one argument) and am unlikely to ever vote on them unless they're dropped.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Theory:** I tend to lean neg on most theory questions. Conditionality is usually good. So are PICs. Conditionality is the ONLY argument I think is a reason to reject the team, every other argument I think is a reason to reject the argument alone. Areas where I tend to lean aff: delay CPs, CPs that result in the aff, object fiat, multiple conditional contradictory advocacies, word PICs, floating PIKs, no text to the alternative, 50 state uniform fiat. I generally view theory as a reason only to reject the argument, not to reject the team (except for conditionality), unless you work to convince me otherwise. Tell me what my role is on the theory debate - am I determining in-round abuse or am I setting a precedent for the community? <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">*One additional note - I will not kick the k or counterplan for the neg unless the 2NR explicitly says that I can and the 2AR does not contest that. I think that if the neg makes the strategic choice of going for the counterplan or k, I am doing the affirmative a disservice by intervening to remedy the neg's unstrategic choice.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Kritiks:** I consider myself a policymaker unless you tell me otherwise, the implication of that being that if you want me to consider my ballot as something other than advocating a hypothetical policy that would be enacted, you need to explain to me what it is and why that is better than the framework the affirmative is providing. I have voted on the K, I will vote on the K. I understand most Ks very well but that doesn’t mean that throwing out jargon and buzzwords will mean anything to me.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Your K should ideally:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Be a reason why the aff is bad, not just why the status quo is bad. If you’re going to read Cap Bad, give me a reason why the aff’s specific instance of capitalism is bad, not just why the capitalist system is bad. Specific links are beautiful. Links of omission are not a reason to vote neg.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Not have a generic alt. I tend to have pretty high standards for alternative solvency. Convince me that the world of the alternative would be better than the world of the plan or that the alternative solvency is less important than something unethical about the plan.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Fiat double bind = thumbs down frowny face**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Non-traditional/no plan affs:** I generally go into debates believing that the aff should defend a hypothetical policy enacted by the United States federal government. I am not unmovable on this question - I consider myself a very tech over truth judge and if you are winning that your aff should be allowed even though it does not advocate a plan, I will certainly vote for it, but I cannot pretend that I don't come into the debate without some bias on this question. I think that it's important to impact the productive benefits of your advocacy vis-a-vis the negatives of proposing a USFG policy and to prove why there couldn't be a topical version of the aff for me to vote affirmative in those framework debates. I believe fairness is an impact in and of itself. I find many of the issues that many non-traditional affs discuss very interesting, socially and academically, but I need to be convinced why having that discussion is a reason I should vote affirmative. I am easily persuaded that if the aff does not defend a plan, they should not get a permutation against kritiks. I think there is a turn in debate toward the "deferrral strategy" - saying little to nothing in the 1AC and then impact turning whatever the neg said or saying that the aff is whatever the neg said. If your aff relies on that strategy, I am decisively a bad judge for you.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I enjoy critical affs that defend a plan but more critical advantages and make me question what types of impacts to prefer. Make sure to provide a method for evaluating impacts and explain the interactions between impacts. I have found myself enjoying these types of debates more and more as teams become better at evaluating their critical advantages on an impact level.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Speaker points:** If you do the following things, you can expect to get good speaker points from me:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Act like you care. If I feel like you care and you want to be there, whether you're 5-0 or 0-5, that means a lot. If you don't seem like you care or you're not engaged, it'll reflect poorly in your speaker points.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Be nice (that means both to the other team and to your partner)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Be clear. Be as fast as you want, as long as you’re clear, you’ll get flowed. I would prefer you be slower and clearer than fast and unclear.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Don’t steal prep.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Don’t prompt your partner if it is unnecessary. On that same thought, if the person giving the speech hasn’t said it, it isn’t going on my flow.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Engage in thoughtful cross-x. That means not being a jerk, not merely reading lines of evidence back and forth to one another, not having the non-cross-xing partner dominate.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Generally, I try not to give below a 27 unless you're rude, unethical, or you have no idea what's going on. I also typically adjust my speaker point scale relative to the quality of the pool. This means that if you got a 29 from me at a regional semis bid and then a 28.3 at a major octas bid tournament, it doesn't mean I think you've gotten substantially worse, it just means that relative to the pool, you aren't as close to being the best.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Paperless-related issues:**
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I'm about as laid back of a judge as you will find on most things, so I don't have any issues with the time necessary to email speech documents, etc., but I would ask that you attempt to do so in as timely of a manner as possible. If the time being used becomes excessive, I will begin taking it out of your prep time.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">You should send one compiled speech document to your opponents. If you try to send them more than one document before your speech, I will make you take prep time to compile them.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I can't emphasize enough something that I mentioned earlier which is absolutely DO NOT STEAL PREP. There is nothing that bothers me more when I'm judging than when debaters steal prep. It's a lot easier to do when there's dead time from paperless transfers, so make sure to control yourself or I will yell at you and if I'm annoyed enough, it will reflect in your speaker points.