Hopper,+Elizabeth

I am a parent of a high school debater and have been judging LD debate for the past two years.

I am interested in the logic and structure of your arguments and I like to see values, criteria, arguments, and analysis. If you do plan on running a non-traditional case (one not centered on a value criteria structure), be sure to provide me with a reasonable and clear way to evaluate the round, as I am not familiar with such cases.

I do not intervene; I like to vote on what happens in the round so debaters need to weigh arguments and crystallize, and the winner is usually the one who best supports the value structure.

I like to understand the arguments that debaters are making: if you are speaking so quickly that I can’t understand you, then I can’t vote for you. Speaking quickly is fine as long as it’s intelligible; excessive speed is not, especially if you can’t enunciate clearly. Spreading might not be a great idea.

I’m a little biased against theory and will evaluate such with skepticism. That being said, if you think you have a compelling reason as to why you must use theory as a defense, I’ll listen.