Smith,+Alex

UPDATED 12/30/13

Background: I am an attorney, but in my past life, I competed in and coached both high school LD and college NPTE/NPDA parliamentary debate. I have worked with high school students from La Reina, Lynbrook, Mountain View, Los Altos, Torrey Pines, and Walt Whitman High Schools and the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, coached the NPTE/NPDA team at UC Berkeley, and taught at the National Symposium for Debate in 2007-2010 and in 2013. I rarely judge LD these days, but in case I do, here is my latest crack at a judging philosophy.

(1) I try very hard to be open-minded and to let you run the debate round. That said, I tend to be more receptive to arguments that are more akin to policy arguments than to philosophical or truth-testing arguments. I find metaethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, etc. really boring and abstruse. I honestly find it difficult to follow or adjudicate these arguments, especially if they are delivered at high speeds or with a minimum of explanation. I am probably better at adjudicating debates about ethics or contemporary political philosophy, although even here you should slow-down and over-explain your arguments.

(2) I don't care if you sit, stand, dress up, use hand gestures, or the like. I flow on a laptop and have no problem with speed as such. That said, if you are not clear, I will have a lot of trouble understanding you. I also don't yell "clear" in high school rounds because it incentivizes debaters to be unclear. If you are worried about whether you are clear, you can do two things: (a) slow down a bit; (b) look at me (I am extremely expressive and give really reliable nonverbals if you pay attention).

(3) I tend to evaluate debate rounds very globally (especially in rounds where the line-by-line is especially confusing or messy). You will do yourself a big favor if you focus on having a big-picture explanation or narrative of your argument, and if you tell me what arguments matter and what arguments don't matter. If you act as if all your arguments are relevant, chances are that none will be. I am not liable to vote on "cheap shots" or random dropped arguments. I am way more tolerant of "new" arguments and way less demanding about what needs to be extended in each speech, particularly because I feel that hyper-technical approaches to evaluating these issues just discourage clash and speech-by-speech argument development. I'm big on embedded clash and generally believe that you should not be punished for dropping line-by-line arguments if they are functionally answered elsewhere.

(4) I have a pretty low threshold for voting on theory arguments. Making specific, substantive, and on-point responses will get you much further than arguing against theory writ large. "My interpretation resolves his offense because . . . " or "this is just a question of what arguments are included or excluded, not a reason I should lose the debate" are two sentences I wish more people would utter during the 1AR. I generally believe that it is impossible to make a complete theory argument in the 1AC because no violation could have occurred yet, and I don't think that new applications of theory spikes in the 1AR should be treated like dropped arguments even if the original spike was conceded.

(5) I historically have a soft spot for the K (by which I mean policy-like Ks, not arguments like "skepticism"). I am also very receptive to arguments that challenge the ideological or methodological frame in which your opponent situates his or her arguments, or arguments that focus on the way in which race, gender, class, etc. influence our political and philosophical thinking. In these debates, it's really important to engage the substance of your opponent's position, and you will do better with that than with framework arguments or the like. I think you can tack pretty far to the right and win a lot of these debates.

(6) My speaker points are higher now than they used to be (probably in the 27-29 range in the majority of debates), although it's still extremely hard to crack into the 29.5-30 range. I have not given a 30 since 2011. As always, you can get better speaker points by making interesting and well-supported arguments, making good tactical decisions, being fun to listen to, and not being a jerk (although intensity, sarcasm, and the like are all fine when used appropriately). You can get worse speaker points by making poor, boring, or inane arguments, making poor tactical decisions, being unclear or unpleasant to listen to, being a jerk, stealing prep, wasting time with unnecessary flash drive shenanigans, or trying to rely on dirty tricks to win the round. Racist, sexist, homophobic, or other derogatory language (as in a slur, not as in "his argument justifies racism because . . .") will earn you a loss with whatever the lowest speaker points the tournament will allow me to give, and I will probably try to talk to your coach or to the tournament director.