Rossman,+Randy

I debated at New Trier and Michigan State. Now, I help out at Niles North. Control the frame and explain why your arguments beat their arguments under that framing. The framing could be anything. Really, the framing could be anything. Frames that have won my ballot: magnitude comes first, only epistemology matters, the judge is a critical intellectual, reasonability dictates T debates. Other ones have won, too! I strive to be as non-interventionist as possible. Make sure your winning arguments make it onto my flow. Answer the arguments your opponent can win on. Read the arguments you are best at. I doubt you will be better at debating something totally new that you think I will like than reading something you are familiar with that you think I do not like. Top-level: these are either defaults that your arguments can render meaningless or opinions that probably only matter for speaker points, if they matter at all. Topical plans>topical advocacies>topical planless speech-acts>not-quite-topical 1ACs of any variety>>>>>affs that ignore the topic The most entertaining negative strategies are case-specific. I will evaluate theory and/or T before I evaluate anything else. Education, fairness, jurisdiction, limits, ground, and their friends are internal links, not impacts. What do I do with the offending arguments? Please tell me. If you do not tell me, I will vote against the team that you win read an untopical aff or ran their neg advocacies conditionally. If a permutation or negative advocacy is shown to be theoretically illegitimate, then I won’t consider it in my decision, unless, of course, you win that I should do something else. I love DAs. I view counterplans as opportunity cost DAs. As a default, I will kick them for the neg if they link to the net benefit. Just a default, though. I tend to view counterplans that compete on the certainty and/or immediacy of the plan or the process of its implementation do not compete but are probably theoretically legitimate. Critiques tend to win when the other team drops a checklist argument. Sufficiently answer arguments such as X comes first, value to life, X is the root cause of violence, then you will probably beat the critique. If you have questions or something needs to be clarified, feel free to email me at randy.rossman@gmail.com.
 * How to win my ballot **
 * Preferences **
 * Have fun, make jokes, love debate. **