Guthrie,+Matt

Judging “philosophy” Mr. Matt Guthrie PCDS Let me begin by stating my judging experience. I began coaching in 1995, and since then have judged probably 40-60 rounds each year. I would guess that most years about ½ of those rounds are at “national circuit” tournaments. This has certain implications. One that probably needs to be elucidated is that I’m now old enough that I’m not quite as quick as I once was. This means that if you’re going to blip off 14 reasons why (eg) conditionality is illegitimate in 3.6 seconds, I’m not going to get them all. I fundamentally believe that a round should be, as much as possible, about the judge adapting to the competitors, rather than vice versa. I don’t believe that a judge has a right to say “you can’t run argument x in this round.” A football referee isn’t allowed to say “I can’t run very fast, so I’m not going to let you throw the ball more than 20 yards downfield”, so why should a debate judge be able to impose analogous restrictions? A corollary of this is that I vote for arguments that I don’t think are “true” and/or that I don’t like all the time. I think that 99% of consult CPs are idiotic (to take just one example) but that doesn’t mean that you can’t/shouldn’t run one in front of me. A second corollary is that because my default position is that arguments are legitimate, I probably have a fairly high standard to meet before I will vote on “argument x illegitimate”. I think theory needs to be well developed, with the as-it-were link and impact both clearly articulated. I’m also probably fairly easy to sway with theory defense of the “reject argument not team” type. (I don’t want this to be interpreted as “don’t run theory in front of this guy”. I think that a good, well-developed theory debate is both fascinating and educational. I just want to make my standards clear.) Additionally, in general I do think it is possible for good defense to completely take out any argument. I have read extensively in the kritikal literature. If you are interested in learning about your kritik, both as a debate argument and as a claim about the world, I might be able to give you fairly coherent, cogent feedback. This doesn’t mean, however that I’ll end up voting for the more kritikal team almost as a default – in fact knowing what the evidence means probably makes me more likely to reject it if it’s being misinterpreted and the other team points that out. A few other points (maybe particularly relevant for less experienced teams): Compare. If you tell me that your impacts outweigh theirs, I’ll believe you. Tell a story. Don’t just extend stuff – explain it. And lastly, but importantly: It is a debate round, not the apocalypse. I get irritated by ad homs and overly intense or snarky behavior. Please remember that the purpose of the activity is to learn and to have fun.