Powers,+Talon+John


 * Judging Philosophy**: Talon John Powers (Updated October 2011)
 * Affiliation**: Wayzata High School, University of Minnesota, Macalester College
 * Background**: I debated for Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for 3 years and debated for Macalester College, attending the NDT three times. I’ve coached at Wayzata High School the past four years, Edina High School in the two years prior, coached on and off for the University of Minnesota for the past three years and judged policy debate for the last 7.

Very briefly, do what you’re good at and do it well. Concern yourself less with trying to adapt your strategy to me and instead spend the majority of your time focusing on execution and comparison. You will be rewarded for focusing on warrants, evidence comparison, and quality of evidence read. Generally, I prefer fewer pieces of qualified evidence that are much more heavily warranted, but in certain debates (politics, for example) card wars are appropriate and appreciated.

Impacts matter in debates to me. While all of the other components of debate (debating questions of uniqueness/link, argument prioritization, critical or policy frameworks, etc.) are extremely important, most debates come down to which team is better able to articulate their impact and its value within a given debate round. To that end, I tend to reward teams who put in the time during the debate, especially during final rebuttals, fully extrapolating their impacts. This is ideally more than the standard magnitude-probability-timeframe comparison, delving more deeply into issues of argumentative interaction, logical priority, intrinsicness (the missing fourth impact comparison in which a team evaluates the length of the logical chain leading to your impacts) and hopefully more. Obviously the robotic enunciation of magnitude-probability-timeframe is there because it works, but going beyond it tends to help a ton.

Tied into this discussion is the question of implicit versus explicit frameworks. Most teams who run explicit framework arguments do so both poorly and unintelligently. I’m less concerned about resolved coming before the colon and the agent of the resolution being the USFG and not the individual debaters than I am about how to prioritize and evaluate your impacts vis-à-vis the other team’s impact claims. Make the necessary arguments to this end, but don’t get too bogged down in artificial rules-based questions (Note: I will and often do evaluate these debates. I just tend to believe your time is better spend making substantive impact comparisons. If the other team is completely unwilling to engage in such a discussion by constantly sidestepping and ignoring your arguments, then these arguments become entirely more persuasive). What actually tends to persuade me are what I would describe as implicit framework arguments – things like consequentialism versus morality, epistemology/ontology/methodology versus action, etc., all provide a much better basis for argument comparison.


 * Paperless Update (October 2011):** I feel like I should share my thoughts on paperless debate. As our team as transitioned, I've gone from slightly hostile to fairly supportive of paperless debating. That being said, I think many people are truly terrible at the actual "doing" of paperless. I have three minor correctives. //First//, **I will not stop your prep time until you have saved the file and removed the jump drive from your computer**. //Second//, I reserve the right to take away speaker points if you do a truly terrible job with paperless (don't jump major parts of your speech, give the other team more evidence than you read and clutter up the flow, etc.). //Third//, paperless debate is not an excuse not to flow, and if you cannot signpost, answer arguments that weren't made, or miss arguments because you were only looking at the speech doc, that's your own fault and may end up with bad consequences for you. Generally, the people I see doing paperless are doing their best and I appreciate that. Just do your best to be efficient and effective when debating through flash drives.


 * Here’s how I feel on more specific arguments**


 * Topicality:** Topicality is a fairly effective argument that tends to get under utilized in debate. I tend to view it within a competing interpretations frame, but I can be convinced to adopt an abuse based standard. Again, this is all about controlling the implicit framework of the debate. The merits of the definition and its ability to limit the topic and provide substantive education usually are what determine the winner of T debates. Reading cards on topicality and explaining why your interpretation is more contextual and more literature based are both incredibly important arguments.

I am willing to vote on impact turns to topicality (not RVIs or generic “T = genocide” claims, but more specific indicts centering around the affirmative method). I tend to prefer a topicality debate over a generic framework debate as well, so take that into consideration when negating critical affirmatives.


 * Theory**: Theory is offense. I would recommend using it. That being said, don’t just read blocks at each other and then expect me to figure out what happened at the end of the round. Explain how your theory argument interacts with what already happened inside the round and why that deserves a ballot. Treat debating theory like any other impact debate. Many people have been pulled into the “reject the argument, not the team” camp, but I’m certainly more willing to pull the trigger on a theoretical objection to an abusive or artificially competitive strategy.

One brief strategy note: I tend to think teams who say “reject the arg, not the team” as a reason conditionality is not bad are pretty dumb. Affirmatives should argue that the proper recourse is to stick the neg with all of their arguments if they lose the substance of a conditionality debate.


 * Counterplans:**** Pretty big fan of the good old CP, although the modern day counterplan appears to be code for advanced cheating 101. Make sure your counterplan solves a solid chunk of the affirmative, because I consider myself amenable to affirmative solvency deficit arguments absent evidence at the level of specificity of the aff. (Similarly, if the aff has no defense of their agent or answer to a PIC, I’m probably going to vote negative). PICs and word PICs are fine, but be sure you have specific evidence on them (the ideal standard on the word PIC is a card that calls for the replacement of one term with another). **


 * My default position on counterplan competition and theory is to lean negative, but to be more than willing to swat down truly abusive negative arguments or to reward truly outstanding theoretical objections to the CP. I wouldn’t recommend going for a theoretical objection to a counterplan unless you feel you’ve achieved one of these two objectives. **


 * Disads:**** Try to make them as specific to the case as you can, but with as little functional disadvantage ground on this topic as there is, I’ll give you leeway on the link level of the debate if you are able to intelligently articulate the link to your argument. I would probably recommend using all of the tools of the trade (DA turns/solves the case, timeframe distinctions, long-term tradeoffs in funding/focus/administration/whatever, etc.). I would not put myself into the cult of uniqueness (where risk of a link and a counterplan justifies a snap negative ballot), but uniqueness questions are very important for both sides. Be sure to test the uniqueness of both the link AND the impact when affirming. **


 * Case:** Case debates are probably my favorite debates. I would love to hear a 1NC stand up and simply say “Same order.” The more specific the evidence you read and the more in-depth you go on the claims the affirmative makes, the better you will sound. READ THE OTHER TEAM’S EVIDENCE! Usually the link stories on advantages, disads, or whatever, are TERRIBLE. A good analytical taking out the other teams evidence is often better than a bad card. That being said, good evidence is usually rewarded at the end of debates.


 * Critical Args**: At Macalester, I debated a critical affirmative and negative in most debates, so I understand both the utility and futility of these arguments. As a negative team, be sure to leverage as much link and alternative specificity as possible to answer back the claims of aff solvency outweighing the relatively minor risk of the criticism. An effective critique debater should be able to use both framing questions (what comes first, what issues get prioritized, etc) along with standard impact comparison (K makes the world go boom) in order to better leverage their argument against the affirmative.

As the affirmative, I tend to reward teams who are willing to leverage their arguments against a critique instead of trying to hide behind framework positions. Cut a defense of your methodology (the general framework we use in approaching the world), epistemology (the language we use to describe that world), and ontology (our purpose for existing in the world) and be willing to use these cards as offense in K debates. Also be sure to use relative speed of impacts and specificity of solvency as trumps against a more generic worldview.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. Remember to have fun, be funny, and respect your opponents. Everyone in the debate will be much happier for it.