Gruber,+Julian

Julian F. Gruber III 5th Year of High School Debate – First Speaker at the 2013 Glenbrooks and 2013 Florida State Champion

Novice Version:  For the purpose of judging novice level debates, i have absolutely NO predispositions or preferences, you should read whatever you are comfortable with and i will do my best to evaluate everything equally." You can convince me to vote for anything so long as you are taking the debate seriously and are providing sound good arguments - a dropped argument that makes no sense is still an argument that makes no sense.

 Varsity Version: Do whatever you want.

While I make almost exclusively performance/method based arguments in high school, it has not (as so many others seemingly assume) eradicated my ability flow/decide a techy line by line debate, it has also not rendered my brain into a mush that is incapable of understanding the politics DA. While I believe that arguments like the political capital tradeoff DA or T must be QPQ are incredibly reductionist and an utter waste of everyone in the room’s time, will only slightly influence my willingness to evaluate those arguments in a debate.

Things I like: Arguments between partners (extra speaker point bonus if you make your partner look like a clown) Incoherent strategies that only work when your opponents mess up Speeches that sound more like ethnic drums than people trying to persuade me Arguments about identity that ignore everything the other team says Anti-Blackness arguments

Things I don’t like: A well oiled machine (in debates containing teams that work well together, I frequently find myself bored to the point of hostility… if you want me to flow, I want drama.) Rigidly researched/effective policy strategies that center around a new counter plan or DA that the affirmative may not have thought about Monotone and Mechanical speakers who are professionals at the “line by line” (nobody flows on Notebook paper anyway so that is clearly dumb) The technologies of whiteness (I reserve the right to dock speaker points and assign a loss to any team that embodies the ideology of whiteness)

Good Arguments: Anything you have actually researched – I have a disparagingly low tolerance for people who don’t know what they are talking about – if this means that you are a savant in the studies of joseph smith, id rather hear about mormanism than arguments that I would prefer to run myself. DO NOT look at my wiki and think “well jeez, this dude loves the whiteness kritik, I should just read that as my 8th conditional option so I get better speaker points” If you don’t know who Achille Mbembe is before reading this, you will most likely get a 25

Bad Arguments: Any file you haven’t highlighted/opened before the debate

If you were at all intelligent you would have stopped reading after the first sentence, everything else has been a waste of your time – seriously DO WHATEVER YOU ARE GOOD AT! (If that is the consult nature counter plan, then that is what you need to go for, although I would seriously consider re-evaluating the entirety of your existence.)

Speaker Points

 Speaker Points: I will use the 100-point scale, no matter what the tournament insists. Here is a conversion formula:

 (Original value/(Original value + 1)) + 28

 Here’s a rundown of what certain values mean.

 0-2: You offended me in some way, or made the wrong 2nr decision (what could be easier? It infuriates me to see foolish high school kids prancing about as if they know things when they don’t deserve any of it.)

 3-5: You seem to have a good understanding of the basics, but your speech needs a lot of development.

 6-8: I felt bad for the other team and wanted to make them feel good about outspeaking you.

 9-11: You spoke solidly. I may have voted for you, but am in a bad mood because of what the other team did.

 12-14: Mediocre.

 15-17: You speak too loud.

 18-20: You speak too unclearly.

 21-23: Your debating was fairly poor, but you reminded me of someone I like.

 24-75: Needs work.

 76-78: A good performance. You should expect to be in the top 53 speakers.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 79-81: Top 44 speaker.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 82-84: You should break and potentially receive a speaker award.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 85-87: You have a strong reputation, so I did not flow the debate.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 88-90: Decent – just needs a little more work.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 91-93: Your performance was excellent but you did not do line-by-line.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 94-96: You should be the top speaker at this tournament. I will give this number AT MOST four times per round.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 97-99: Nearly flawless, perhaps you dropped a theory blip but should have won. Another possibility is that I am trying to make you opponents jealous.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> *Crestian 2014 Update*: Due to some complaints I have been receiving, I have been forced to alter my policy on bribes. If you would like to ask, do so privately and covertly.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> 100: You remind me of the happiest moment of my life, a camping trip where that jerk McCue broke his leg. (Note that I have borrowed this from David Gobberdiel’s JP)

Prep Time: I’m pretty loose with prep time, cx, and the intersection of those (usually a shouting match)[alternate use time or whatever it is called], if you think stopping the opponents speech to take prep time is going to help you win (or make me laugh), go for it. Although I prefer files to be jumped via compact disk, jump drives will do, I guess. Auto 30 to anyone who pulls off the “new aff” Trojan horse trick – if you don’t know what I’m talking about – don’t worry about it (or ask me about it, as I find it quite amusing and useful) – Jumping counts as prep unless it takes more than 5 minutes. As Kurt Cobain once said: “take your time, hurry up, choice is yours, just don’t hate”

Email me all speech docs if you don’t want me to flow (this may or may not work in your favor… you decide)

Other Random Thoughts: DA’s – probably not a great option (they are all not intrinsic) Topical CP’s – aff ground… back off neg (unless you say the words “neg flex” [I am a whiny 2N who has lost basically every debate this year on new 2AR arguments, suffice it to say, saying “2AR outweighs” will basically allow me to let you get away with anything]{I am also a 1A and am equally bitter with the block and the crappyness of my 1AR’s vs. strategic blocks so “block o/w” will be treated very similarly} **if both of these impenetrable framing arguments are made, I may only be able to evaluate the round via the first speakers ability to “get crunk” – keep that in mind

Kritiks – you are probably using words you and I both don’t understand… just stop.

T – not an argument (I will vote it though) {I also love RVI’s}

Framework: do at your own risk – I tend to hurl large objects during framework debates

Traditional affs – these are generally lame and ridiculous (except for any aff pine crest has ever read) {don’t break one of our affs though… you know who you are…} – if you have more than a 2 part internal link chain in any advantage you present – I will immediately vote neg (in a low point win) {neg if you care about your speaks – do not let the aff get to internal link part 3 at any cost, if not, this win probably wont help you anyway]

Procedurals – Whole rez is probably true (unless you are bad at debating it) – I will evaluate these debates as if I was a father penguin guarding his egg (the egg being plan focused debate) Hypotesting? – totally underutilized Probability framework? Wipeout? Dada? – will get you high speaks but probably a loss (or suspension from school, depending on the veracity of your argumentation)

Ideal debate for me: Any debate Rayvon Dean is in…but you all aren’t him so…it would probably go something like this: Aff presents an untopical performance (preferably containing a Cyprus-inspired dance routine) <- see here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tu0PAbW75A Neg presents an untopical proposal for change completely unrelated to the performance of the 1AC I vote aff after the 1NC

Best of luck and do pref me if you want a thoughtful decision with post round discussion as productive I can make it.