Ziegler,+Derek

Derek Ziegler Updated Summer 2015

__**Meta:**__ Have fun and be respectful. I like seeing teams running what they're good at running and not over-adapting. What's written below are things I think about debate but I frequently find myself voting for arguments I don't necessarily like. I'll do my best to vote for the team that best executed arguments.

__**Speaker Points:**__ I reward speaker points for the following: early and effective consolidation of the debate, general clarity / ability to debate line by line, smart and efficient cross-x, smart (read: correct) rebuttal choices, and general demeanor.

__**Topicality:**__ Competing Interpretations > Reasonability unless the neg interp is totally arbitrary. I prefer well carded contextual evidence in these debates. The stronger the interpretation/violation story, the more likely I'll vote neg.

__**Criticism:**__ I'm very middle of the road here. I'm unpersuaded by ignore the aff / ignore the K framework args. I think the link matters more than most things as the strength of the link generally controls turns case / disproves aff scenarios arguments. Debaters would benefit on focusing here.

__**Critical Affs:**__ Affs should be topical. A framework debate should decide what 'topical' means. Too often these debates are too focused on what voting aff means and not what voting aff does. Links to neg offense would benefit from focusing on the latter. My sentiment concerning the K in general probably applies here.

__**Counterplans:**__ Most are probably not theoretically bad - however, most are probably not competitive (normal means, consult, condition, etc). Net benefits need to be unique and be something the aff doesn't solve.

__**Disads / Advantages:**__ Try or die doesn't make sense unless you have an argument for why voting for you reasonably reduces the risk of inevitable impacts. Solvency debates / whether or not the squo solves are underutilized arguments.

__**Condo:**__ Difficult to convince me its bad. Often sheer technical coverage and impact framing determine my ballot on this. This wouldn't be a particularly recommended 2AR strategy absent 2NR undercoverage, the neg not meeting their interp, or some other silver bullet structural issue in the debate.

__**Theory Debates:**__ Teams should meet their interps and do impact framing to those interpretations. "Reject the argument not the team" make most theory debates moot.