Galperin,+Michael

GBS '12 UChicago '16 mikegalperin@gmail.com

As a general rule, I think you should worry less about what I think before the debate and worry more about making me think in a way that results in you getting my ballot. That being said, you're probably here to know if a) you can read your stuff in front of me and/or b) if there are things you can do that will make me more likely to vote for you.
 * General Thoughts:**

a) Can you read your stuff in front of me? Whatever it is, sure.

b) What will make me vote for you? This probably trumps (a) because these things cover how I generally look at most arguments. People have the least trouble getting my ballot when the last rebuttal establishes a formula by which I should evaluate the debate, and then explains why me using that formula means I vote for them. In policy debates, this means establishing criteria for what impacts are the most important and telling why you're winning the most important impacts. In K debates, this usually means framing questions - how I should evaluate different kinds of impacts against each other, what comes first, what I should ignore, etc.

This idea is basically stolen from Marc Jacome's philosophy but I think a good test to determine whether I think something is a valid argument is whether I can competently explain it to the other team after the round. That means saying stuff like "x arg is bad because it skews our strat" is insufficient.
 * Smaller things in the order in which I think they'll be important:**

I am, for some reason, more sympathetic than most to less mainstream Ks, just because I think if Nietzsche/Schopenhauer/D&G are as dismissively stupid as everyone says then Affs should theoretically have no trouble beating them. However, if you're reading something extremely esoteric or really new you might want to spend more time explaining it - I think that's something that the complicated literature characteristic of kritiks requires anyway. Performance affs are the same way.

I think absolute defense can be a thing.

Dropped arguments are true, but that doesn't mean you lose if you dropped something or win if they did.

I determine speaker points on the basis of strategy and tech primarily, followed by ethos and sportsmanship; 27.5 is average.

Paperless time isn't prep time unless if it gets ridiculous or you're lying.

Clipping cards will result in a drop and zero speaker points.

I hate it when speeches start with "okay," "so basically," or "on to x thing," and/or when they end with "vote aff/neg."