Shaheen,+Peter

Philosophies are tricky gizmos. They can be helpful only to a degree because judging paradigms frequently change often without the adjudicator realizing his or her stance on the particular issue has shifted. Additionally, the major premise is that the judge has a paradigm and is capable of articulating it. I am not that reflective, certain, or good. I will try to be fair and do the best I can.

If you are affirmative debating in front of me, you probably want to keep the debate as small as possible. If the 2AR can get away with explaining why the affirmative outweighs the negative and answers any tricks that the 2NR might have gone for, it should be a clean win.

If you are negative debating in front of me, you probably need to explain the weight of your impacts in relation to the affirmative. It is probably not enough to simply extend the tag and embed clash. In your calculus, you probably should tell me what key responses were dropped and what those concessions gain you. You will also need to answer any arguments from 1AR. AND close all the doors you can. I don't think I am especially good with picking up on embedded clash so you might have to be more explicit than you might otherwise.

While it probably seems obvious, debates are rarely that easily constructed. The mess around the margins is what makes them interesting. Your ability to navigate through the mess in the end will determine the winner of the round. I am a sucker for a good comparison.

I think that that I am open to all arguments. The critical debates on race, gender, and class seem are of particular interest to me. Those debates are fun. However, I may not be the best at adjudicating them all the time. I am trying to work through the read framework and framework is evil debate. I think framework should be argued in rounds that have no clear advocacy or perhaps even lack a plan and just have an advocacy statement. I also like hear your twist on why framework silences and marginalizes debaters. However, I have not framed any particular perspective on these debates so I am likely to go either way.

It may help to know that I think debate is probably a game but it certainly is not one with a single set of rules. You can make them up as we go along. Feel free to make it up as you go along. Just know that the the more more norms you violate, the more chaos you introduce into the round. Debate is large, in contains world of contradictions and I will never be smart enough to fully distinguish between the world of the debate round and the world outside of it.

Most of the time I try to have a pretty low threshold for new in the 2AR. If the 2NR tells me something was dropped and asks me to allow for no new responses or some version of that scenario, I will agree if I can't find it in the 1AR. On the other hand, the better is the speaker is at creating pathos, the more likely I am going to be tricked into buying that it wasn't new.

I am not especially technical when I evaluate rounds, so try to keep the round as small as possible when you are winning. I think if you are losing the round, you might be smart to muddle the debate as much as you can to force me to work my way through the decision, but that would never be a preferred coursed of action if it can be avoided.

As far as points go, I think in most varsity rounds, I start at 28. 29's are fairly rare. In novice debate I will start at 27. I will give 28's for good debates much more readily in novice than I would give a 29 in varsity.

At the end of the round, when you ask me questions about my decision, please be nice. I am doing the best I can to process what I experienced. I will be as objective as I can be but I am far from perfect. I have been coaching for a long time. I generally have someone with me like Brad (if you know who Seaholm is, you know Brad) who does the varsity work, and I generally focus on the novices. If I were to grade myself as a judge, I would probably give myself a C/C+ on a good day. But we live in in an age of grade inflation.

In short:

“Truth is part of the absurdity of art,” says Foucault; however, according to Porter[1], it is not so much truth that is part of the absurdity of art, but rather the absurdity of truth. In a sense, Bataille’s critique of the structural paradigm of reality states that narrative is created by communication, but only if consciousness is interchangeable with reality. The characteristic theme of the works of Madonna is the bridge between society and class.