Kolodziej,+Colin


 * University School of Nashville Class of 2015**


 * Debated on national/TOC circuit for four years**


 * Last updated 3/16/2015 prior to Woodward 2015**


 * CLIFF NOTES VERSION**

Do you.

An argument is a claim and a warrant. "They conceded the disad is non intrinsic" is not an argument.

I don't like calling for evidence. When I do call for evidence, it is to resolve awesome comparison and spin over it. I filter my reading of ev through spin.

Be respectful to the wonderful people who take part in this activity at all times when I'm judging.

Don't make arguments that are offensive to any reasonable person like death good, racism good, etc because my threshold for voting against these arguments is extremely low and your speaker points will be terrible.

Good debaters make arguments, great debaters resolve arguments by making comparison.

I love and flow crossx. I'm not a fan of people interrupting their partner or speaking out of turn in crossx.

Be funny if you are.

I think debaters should make more choices in rebuttals and impact arguments in a comparative way more.

As a debater, I’ve read 7 off, 1 off, gone for T, Ks, Disads, Counterplans, Impact Turns, Theory, Read Policy Affs, and K affs so I don’t have a predisposition to any particular genre of argument except that it is strategic and interesting.

Clipping, scrolling ahead in speech doc, stealing prep, and other forms of cheating are frowned upon and will result in a loss or loss of speaker points depending on the severity of the crime.

Add me to the email chain if there is internet.

Have fun or spontaneously combust.


 * LONG VERSION**

Debate is an awesome, intellectually- challenging game. My role as a judge is to provide a respectful environment for competition and to as objectively as possible decide who won the debate based on the arguments verbally articulated by both teams. This means two things about the way I make decisions.

1. **Tech over truth.** As a debater, I hated two types of decision. The first type is the decision where the judge calls for all the ev and says something along the lines of "I read this one unhighlighted part of your card so I completely disregarded the fact that you were way ahead on evidence comparison on that issue." The second is where a judge's predisposed opinion on a particular argument influence their decision. In other words, I will rarely call for evidence and I have opinions, but I actively will strive to disregard them when making my decision.

2. **I provide a respectful environment to all people in a debate.** I have no tolerance for personal attacks, discrimination of any kind, or being a dick. As jon sharp says "We must love each other or die." Arguments like genocide good, death god, racism good fall under this standard. Also, don't steal prep, clip cards, etc.

If you follow the above stuff, you'll do fine the rest of this is a rant about my thoughts on debate arguments that will likely not influence my decision if you make arguments countering my opinions.


 * Topicality**

I generally think limits are good. I can be convinced otherwise. Good neg teams will provide a comparative description of the aff and neg ground under their interpretation and why those are good for debate and why the counterinterpretation is worse for debate based on a similar description. Good aff teams will explain why the aff under their interpretation are necessary to good debate and why they provide sufficient neg ground for the other team or are sufficiently limiting. I hate hearing the terms "in round abuse" and "potential abuse". I don't think child services has ever had to be called to a debate round because someone read an untopical aff. In the absence of argumentation, I view T in terms of competing interpretation unless arguments are advanced for reasonability. Reasonability is a question of whether the aff’s counterinterpretation and not the aff itself gives the neg reasonable ground for negation or is sufficiently limiting. Debaters should do more impact calculus on topicality. Why does loss of topic education outweigh loss of aff ground? Why does education outweigh fairness?


 * K Affs**

I generally think that defending a plan is good, but will do my best not to let that influence my decision and evaluate framework debates in term of who won the arguments in the debate. Neg teams should go for fairness and less of the silly Steinberg and Freeley deliberation key solve extinction impacts because I think the link threshold for solving portable skills is absurdly low. Aff teams should explain why their type of debate is better and cannot be solved by the neg’s interpretation and why the neg has sufficient ground under their interpretation. I think neg teams should read cps or ks against these affs or impact turn because more often than not that is the more strategic option. But if going for T is your thing, more power to you. If you are a K aff that defends a plan, then awesome.


 * Ks**

Do you. I’ve gone for these a good bit because affs are terrible at answering them. Stop making silly framework arguments. “We get to Weigh the aff” vs a K that indicts the epistemology of the aff and thus reduces the weight of the aff is non-sensical. That’s like if I said your first card is from Dick Cheney who lies all the time and shot someone in the face and should be rejected, then you responded with “That’s unfair we get to weigh the aff”. Instead, ditch the framework argument unless their framework is something self serving like “Judge=resistance to capitalism”. Don’t beat around the bush. If you’re aff against the security K and say heg is good, then defend why realism is an accurate understanding of the world and based in science which is an preferable epistemology to constructivism. Generally, win your aff is true and the K doesn’t solve it. I’m familiar with most types of Ks, but that doesn’t mean you should use a bunch of buzzwords without explaining anything because that makes me sad face and harms your speaker points.


 * Disads**

I like these. I despise the politics disad generally, because I think that there is a better disad to basically every aff if you are willing to do the research, but again most people are bad at pointing out the logical fallacies in these so if this is your best option, I won’t hate you for making a good strategic choice. Turns case arguments are appreciated and are best when made farther up the internal link chain i.e. “Commercial crew is key to access to the International Space Station which is vital to disease research so the link turns the aff’s internal link into disease” is a better argument than “we can’t prevent disease if a nuke war happens”. Debaters should assess the magnitude of things other than the impact more. Assess the magnitude of the link. For example, “The plan costs 7 billion and the program on the chopping block costs 15 billion so the plan would cut half of the program’s budget which would make it impossible to complete, while the aff’s advantage is largely solved in squo (insert warrant here)”

There is a thing as zero risk of a disad. There is also a thing as zero risk of an advantage. Smart analytics against the politics disad like “No link—their PC key card for TPA is about Obama needing to lobby democrats and their link ev is about angering the republicans who ideologically support free trade anyway” will get you farther than “won’t pass—card”. I enjoy smart case debating. This can be done with investing time in intelligent analytics or by picking a few key arguments and reading a ton of cards with different warrants to back up that claim and comparing evidence in the block.


 * Counterplans**

They’re good. I’m pretty agnostic when it comes to theory except I think conditionality is pretty good. Aff’s going for conditionality should stop making arbitrary interpretations with no offense like 1 condo and just go for all conditionality is bad or dispositionality is good and have disads to conditionality.

Negs should do more than just explain why the solvency deficits aren’t solvency deficits and contextualize counterplan solvency to each of the aff’s solvency mechanisms for their advantages and explain why the cp accesses those internal links.

I enjoy multiplank weird monstrosities paired with innovative disads or case turns as net benefits.

Counterplans link to the net benefit more often than most would think, but the aff fails to point this out most of the time.
 * Speaker points**

I tend to stay in the 27.5-29 range. 29 and above go to top 10 speakers at a tournament. 28.5-28.9 go to someone who is really good and will likely clear or I think should clear. 28-28.4 average will go 3-3 maybe 4-2 if a few breaks go their way, but will miss clearing by a little. 27.5-27.9 someone who showed some promise, but needs to improve to be in contention to clear. 27.4 and below—you were mean, cheated, or I was having a rough day.

Best of luck, have fun, work hard and don’t be a dick!