Sullivan,+DeeDee

Teach and coach s/d at Bellarmine College Prep.

If it is a slow round: Use policymaker approach. Rarely vote on T. Unless the Aff is clearly abusive, most T violation cases tend to strike me as a waste of time. If you take lots of your time arguing the T violation, it makes me think you don't have much more to say.

If it is a fast round: Still not a huge fan of T **unless it is clearly abusive**. I tend to give broad latitude to the Aff plan and truly despise when rounds become about competing interpretations of words and your attempt to define what is and is not educational. I far prefer to hear an informed, smart exchange about the wisdom and details of a policy. I can count the number of times that T has determined my ballot on one hand. If you are the hot-stuff you think you are, then you should be able to have a round without whining about t-subs and boo-hoo, this isn't educational.

I like the range and sophistication of arguments that you can make in fast, but I hate listening to you gasping for air. Seriously. It is one of the most unpleasant experiences. Therefore, my preference is for **medium speed** as opposed to the four of you sprinting your way through the round, at which point my ballot depends upon cross-ex because that is where issues become clarified since I can't follow you all that well when you are at full speed.

I enjoy the K (and sort of hate myself for it) when you ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND THE POSITIONS OF THE PEOPLE YOU ARE INVOKING. Knowing one sentence of a philosopher's work does not make you an expert and tends to make you distort his argument. It's great that you can read K cards that your coach has cut for you, but not so great if you can't speak about those ideas on your own. If the K does not persuade me, I don't drop you. I look at the other parts of the flow. That being said, I don't know that I've ever picked up any team based on a K alone.

Generic DA's are okay. Overall I prefer DA's to K's and use that to decide my ballot with some frequency. OK with CP, too.

I'd rather see you do 3-4 off case arguments well than 8 off that are not well developed. I want you to have an **exchange of ideas**, not just try to win because you can do a good job wasting people's time by keeping them from giving substantive responses to your args because there's so much for them to cover on the flow.

Also prefer to see people who can debate without losing all sense of decorum. I have nothing against circuit debate, although I lament the fact that it tends to encourage people to be incredibly (and unnecessarily) rude in their debating. You don't need to condescend to your opponent, you don't need to throw out lingo to try to look cool. This event is about presenting ideas persuasively. It's hard for me to find you persuasive if I'm also finding you to be a jerk.

Strongly prefer real-world impacts and encourage you to be very clear in your impact calc.

For both: Prefer not to have tag-team cross-ex. Too frequently it means one partner is doing all the heavy lifting. When cross-ex is your responsibility, then you should meet that responsibility.