Young,+Jason

Experience/Background: I debated policy for 4 years in high school (Centerville High School, OH), I did not debate in college. I started a policy team at Garfield High School, WA in 2014, and have been coaching them since then. I probably judge ~50 rounds a year, split between the local Washington and national circuits. As a debater I pursued a mix of policy and critical arguments, so I'm familiar and comfortable with a wide range of arguments. My own PhD work drew from a wide range of critical theory (especially postcolonial and Deleuzian thinking), so my knowledge base for kritiks is reasonably extensive. I am a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual male that was educated and socialized within a Western context, which has likely produced certain subtle biases in terms of my epistemological view of the world.

Judging Framework: I believe that a debate should be about the debaters, not about me. I will therefore do my best to decide the round based on arguments made by the debaters, rather than based on my own beliefs. Be clear about how you think I should be judging, and there shouldn't be any big surprises.

Biases: Unless I am convinced to do something different, I will generally do/believe the following:

-I will flow the round, and will give weight to arguments that are not answered by the opposing team. -I will protect the negative team from new arguments in the 2AR. This means that if I cannot connect an argument in the 2AR back to the 1AR, then I will likely give that argument less, or no, weight. -In general, I do not believe that completely new arguments should be made in the rebuttals. I also think that it is difficult for the negative to introduce completely new off-case positions in the 2NC and then develop them completely. This isn't to say that the 2NC shouldn't be allowed to introduce new off-case positions... I just think that the negative has to do a lot of work to convincingly develop such arguments to the point where I will vote for them. -I will vote for one team or the other. -I personally believe that the open source movement in the debate community too often takes an unnuanced approach, without considering how the open sourcing of knowledge reproduces new forms of inequalities (often along neoliberal/service economy lines, wherein better resourced schools are better able to take advantage of the open knowledge economy). Therefore, I rarely find 'non-disclosure' or 'you should lose because you don't participate in the wiki' theory arguments to be persuasive.

Speaking: Be clear! Also, I tend to like transition words between your arguments, and find that my ears pick up the word 'next' better than 'and'. Not a requirement by any means, but perhaps something you would want to know about me. One pet peeve, especially at local tournaments in Washington: I really dislike it when debaters are only clear on tags. I'm listening to all of your evidence, not just the tag... so make sure I can hear everything! If I can't hear the evidence, then your tag was just an analytical assertion.

I learned to flow in the paper era, and I continue to flow on paper. Take this into account when structuring your speech - I cannot copy/paste or create additional room on my flow in the same way that a judge flowing on a computer can do. As a result, my flow tends to be much more orderly if you do your line-by-line straight down the sheet of paper rather than when jumping around. Generally, I think that this straight-down organization will help your line-by-line coverage anyway. If you choose not to organize your speech in this way, I will still flow it. But, my flow is likelier to be messier than I (or you) would like.

Finally, please feel free to ask me questions before the round! I'm happy to answer specific questions about my paradigm.