Brents,+Spencer

Spencer Brents Katy Taylor 16’ Vanderbilt University 20’ Conflicts: Katy Taylor Debated on the Transportation Infrastructure, Latin America, Oceans, and Domestic Surveillance topics. LAST UPDATED: January 22, 2016

If you’re curious about the arguments I read and debated, here are the links to my aff and neg wiki: [] []

General information:
 * **Experience: ** I debated for four years at Katy Taylor High School and have been both the 2A for the entirety of my tenure. I qualified and went to the TOC my senior year with two bids, won the University of Houston tournament, got to semis of the University of Texas tournament and snagged some speaker awards along the way. For all you Texas people, I also qualified thrice to TFA
 * **Argumentation **: Given the amount of resources I had in my high school career, I tried to be as flexible as possible. A vast majority of my aff’s my senior year were K and relevant to disability studies, while my 1NR’s were a wide range of PTX DA’s, K’s, and framework/T on occasion. The literature that I am familiar with aside from the generics (Cap, Anthro, Security, etc.) include: Nietzsche, Foucault, Disability Studies, Death (kinda? Subbu probably wouldn’t think so but why not ,
 * **Things to Avoid **: There’s a difference between being assertive and rude. You can be assertive and still respectful towards your opponents, but when you take that respect away, you’re being rude – don’t do that. Don’t say anything offensive things OR make severe accusations towards people that you can’t prove i.e. clipping. Debate is a place where you foster important and good relationships with people so try not to personally attack other debaters for no reason unless they truly fucked up, then by all means, go ahead. Simple.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Speaker Points **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">: General note: differentiate the tone between tags and the text of the evidence. I’m A-OK with speed, but don’t be unclear – clarity is important. Here’s a simple scale -
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Below 27 - You were offensive OR you REALLY need to improve on speaking, explaining and executing your arguments.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">27-28 – need to improve on a technical level, better explanation of your arguments and the ability to interpret and execute based on the interaction of different/multiple arguments.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">28-28.5 – Average speaks + need improvements on technicality and speaking.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">28.6-28.9 – good speeches + efficient + need slight tweaking on some technical and speaking issues + need more argumentative contextualization to the other team.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">29-29.9 – very technically proficient, great speaker, overall fantastic speeches.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Specifics:
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kritiks **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">: The biggest pitfall of K debaters is making a bunch of vacuous link/impact and framing arguments without any contextualization to the aff or providing me with a way to weigh your arguments versus the affs impacts – leaving me with a bunch of floating pieces is not a good place to be. That being said, I think that link debate is a place where you can make smart turns case/impact analysis and embed tricks that the aff possibly won’t catch – quoting their evidence or referring to moments in cross-x is also very persuasive and makes it much easier for you to win a link. As I said above, make sure you have good impact comparison and weighing mechanisms and always have an external impact. The alt debate seems to be one of the most overlooked parts of the K and is usually never explained well enough. The 2AR will mostly always control the way that the aff is explained, so always explain the alt thoroughly and how it solves your impacts, links AND the aff – with that, you’ll be in a good position.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kritik Affs **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">: They can be the most absurd non-topical aff and I will definitely listen to it. Give me a robust explanation of the mechanism of the aff in both the 1ar and the 2ar and how it resolves or accesses their offense – this will put you in a much better position for the permutation/link turn debate or even an impact turn debate depending on your strategy, but it will also help me explain to the negative why I voted aff (in a scenario where I do). Lack of explanations of the aff’s solvency mechanism puts me in a tough spot because I won’t assume to know how the it functions unless you tell me – this also probably makes the negative’s explanation of whatever their strategy is much more persuasive and allows them to dictate what your own aff says which is a position you don’t want to be in.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Framework **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">: I went for framework a good share my senior year and actually like to debate/evaluate these rounds. I’ll usually default to competing interpretations unless persuaded otherwise by reasonability/competing interps bad. I think people are scared more so than ever nowadays given the proliferation of K affs to defend the wall. If you feel like you need to read it, do it. That being said, I think it’s important to have procedural fairness and education claims just to hedge back against the 1AC’s offense. Specificity of evidence in relation to the affs politics and state engagement also makes your policy making good argument seem more persuasive. __Make sure you have a T-Version of the Aff__ coupled with SSD. I think there are two ways that I see framework debates –
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">VS Identity Affs **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">– I’m most persuaded by the argument that the state is a heuristic/good tool to deliberate about rather than state good or bad, complemented with argument testing and decision making arguments. It always seemed safer to me not to be too Right versus these affs.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">VS High Theory Affs **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">– By all means, take a hard stance. Choosing a middle of the road way for these affs is a bad idea and you’ll probably lose. I find argument testing and Limits to be especially persuasive versus these affs.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Topicality **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">: This is a very technical portion of debate and I will treat it as such. Reasonability usually is just asserted by the aff so unless there’s a robust defense of why the aff really is reasonable, I will default to competing interpretation. IMPACT OUT YOUR STANDARDS – lack of doing so will probably lose you the debate. Flesh out the violation in the 2nr to prevent simple we meet arguments in the 2ar. Just genero T101 things.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Disadvantages: **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> As asinine the politics DA may be, I really like it, although I never had the chance to read it much. The more specific the DA, the better. Have good/specific link and turns case analysis, doing so will reflect better in your speaker points. For the aff, I think evidence comparison/call outs coupled with tricky strategies like impact turns or internal link turns helps you win these debates.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Counterplans: **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Always go slow on the CP text(s). I never really read a lot of counterplans but I really appreciate a specific, well run counterplan debate. Having specific solvency advocates tells me that you’ve done good research and when deployed well, your speaker points will definitely be rewarded. Without a solvency advocate, it makes a permutation seem a lot more convincing unless the link to the aff for the net benefit is specific. PICs are also super cool – read them.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Case: **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Severely underused part of debate. Not engaging the aff makes it difficult to hedge back versus the aff’s offensive claims and makes voting aff much easier. Read impact defense, specific solvency deficits, impact turns, straight turns, etc. That being said, I’m also completely open to voting on no risk of the aff and voting neg on presumption. A good case debate will be rewarded with more speaker points and can make the neg’s life infinitely easier.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Theory: **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> I’m not really down with LD style meta-theory bullshit. Here are some specifics –
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Conditionality – **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> I’m down with condo debates and will vote aff if you’re simply out-teching the neg with well impacted standards/abuse claims. Besides that, I’m pretty neg leaning on these debates.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">PICs Bad **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> – also neg leaning on these debates unless it’s some absurd PIC/Work PIK like the “The” PIK. I can be persuaded either way so it’s a debate to be had.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Spec Arguments **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> – I think specification args are stupid but don’t shy from reading them if you feel like it’s necessary. I will vote neg on the most mundane spec args, but if not sufficiently debated I’ll probably just default aff on reasonability and simple cross-x checks arguments.
 * **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Spec Arguments **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> – I think specification args are stupid but don’t shy from reading them if you feel like it’s necessary. I will vote neg on the most mundane spec args, but if not sufficiently debated I’ll probably just default aff on reasonability and simple cross-x checks arguments.

I’m a first year out so after being in the activity for 4 years I feel I have a decent understanding of debate, but have a lot to learn and experience. I’ll will adjudicate to the best of my abilities and if you have any questions regarding my decision, feel free to ask but please don’t be an asshole about it.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">For any other questions, feel free to ask me before round or email me at <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">spencerbrents@gmail.com <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> :)