Palmer,+Chris

I'm an assistant coach at Lexington in Mass. The lion's share of my experience as a debate judge is in LD, though I've done a number of PF rounds and coach the policy side too. I used to coach at Newton South HS and Milton Academy.

**LD Debate Paradigm**

I tab a lot of tournaments. Indeed, tabroom.com is my fault. Before you do waste a strike on me, be sure I'm not tabbing and won't judge anyway.

I'm fine on speed as long as you're clear enough; it's been a while since a debater was too fast for me without also being too fast for everyone else. I'll yell clear and won't dock points, unless you don't slow down after I yell clear. However, if you're disorganized and jumping around the flow haphazardly and don't pronounce your authors/tags slower, I tend to get lost, since I flow somewhat idiosyncratically; either go in order or be super clear about your roadmap/signposting is or you may lose me and thus the round.

I do have a threshold for what constitutes an "argument". If I flat out don't understand it, or it doesn't actually link to anything, I won't vote on it. If an arg is clear and functional, but dumb, then you can indeed win a debate on it, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it. Since speaker points are my tool to express happiness, if you want good speaks, you're best off having a real debate and not tactical tricks whose sole purpose is to win a round. You know what I mean. I'm a big-picture kind of guy; one solid clear and convincing voter will tend to win over a cascade of blips in front of me. I default to comparative worlds; you'll have to convince me to become a truth-tester, but you can do it if you try. On individual morality type debates comparative worlds doesn't make sense to me much since that's just dueling strawmen, thus you're by default in truth-testing territory there unless you can talk me out of it.

As you may have guessed, I'm much better with a social philosophy/nature of society type debate with clear real world impacts than abstract philosophy with lots of meta-ethics and individual morality. I coach larpers, deal with it. The finer points of abstract morality doesn't interest me much -- I don't say it's invalid, it's just not my thing. It can therefore lose me; the burden is on you to be clearer, esp in rebuttals, about how such frameworks function in the round. But I do like a good K - emphasis on good - and some classic philosophy never hurts.

However, the above paragraph should not be construed as signing up for the dumbest of the dumb from policy debate. My threshold for a link to politics in LD is very high. You probably can't meet it. LD topics generally are descriptive, not prescriptive - a question of rightness and morals cannot easily be said to trigger some political disaster. Likewise, I almost always find spec arguments and process CPs incoherent. Demanding an agent, or changing that agent, in order to link to DAs is not necessary for negation. LD existed for 30 years without these neg strats. If they're all you've got, you're doing it wrong.

I tend to be a point fairy. That fact conflicts with my bitter sarcastic self-image and I'm not proud of it, but I have to admit it's true. If you're fun I'll like you; if you're actively disrespectful you don't want me in the back of the room. I have yet to run across actively offensive args (rape good, etc) and hope never to; I'm not sure how I'd react. Don't be the one to find out.

I vote on theory if it's less annoying than the abuse it responds to. That said, I'm really bad at flowing theory, so if you toss four shells at me in 90 seconds, chances are I missed something. Be super clear. I've only once pulled a trigger on an RVI and it was a critical discourse RVI; pure theory RVIs don't make much sense to me. But aff's hard enough as it is, so I consciously adopt a lower threshold for responses in the 1AR/2AR to theory; so cover the theory quickly and move on to extend substantive offense and you'll be fine. I vote on reasonability. Note the phrase "default to" is missing from that sentence: your blipstorm about why competing interps is better will get ignored. Made up standards and made up violations are simply not getting resolved into norms after several years of trying, and this approach to debate is destroying LD. I don't care if this is intervention, I'm done endorsing a style of debate that is entirely about itself and otherwise bankrupt.

As it does reflect a norm, I am less annoyed by topicality than other types of theory. I usually prefer to get a preview/example of the type of debate you feel the T violation is excluding to better weigh impacts. Arguments about real limits are your friend. Otherwise T impacts become very hand-wavy and I don't feel comfortable voting on them.