Munger,+Nate

Judge Philosophy – Nate Munger Strikes: Palo Alto High School

Background: I'm a freshman debater at the University of Puget Sound. I debated in high school for Palo Alto High in California.

Paperless: I'm fine with it and I think I'm fairly lenient about allowing time for jumps etc. However, any issues that result from debaters failure to flow based on the expectation they will receive a speech doc will fall on their prep time and probably their speaks.

Top Level Info: -Do what you do best-I don't feel that your strategies should be inhibited by the judge and I will do my best to avoid intervening, though I recognize that it is impossible to do so completely. When my preferences are less negotiable I will try to flag them as such.

-When judging, I usually find myself looking at debates from a "top-down" perspective-This means that if I'm judging DA vs. case, the first thing I look at is the impact debate; if I'm judging a Levinas aff vs. the politics DA the first thing I look at is whether or not I'm going to be consequentialist, etc.

-I prefer tech to truth, but I believe that smart analytics/1 good card beat a slew of cards which don't really say anything. What constitutes "good" evidence depends on how you use it. I am happy to vote on a 1 or 2 sentence evidence comparison argument that gives me a lens through which to evaluate your opponents evidence. For example, in a politics debate, a brief argument advising me to prefer predictive evidence to snapshot descriptions can make my decision a lot easier when I'm sifting through massive stacks of UQ evidence.

Argument Categories: The K: I'm fine with it. Remember what I said above about meta-level arguments-Good K debaters are able to dominate the meta-level to make a good number of their opponents arguments irrelevant. Phrases like "Value to Life," "root cause," "ethics first," "D-rule," "floating pik," "flawed epistomology," and the like generally should be red flags to opposing debaters. If accompanied by sufficient explanation, such arguments cannot afford to be dropped. I generally find that most 1NC alt texts are fairly meaningless, and high school debaters love to just shift around the alternative. My willingness to hold the line vs. the permutation depends on how well the neg holds to the alt text. If the alt changes from "vote neg" into "here's a fairly specific strategy that we'll advocate to overcome X," I'm not going to vote on "their permutation do both includes the phrase vote neg." High speaker points will be given to K debaters with specific evidence, or debaters who use historical examples and the like to make somewhat generic arguments applicable to the aff. I am VERY reluctant to vote on vanilla framework arguments which exclude any discussion of critiques.

Topicality/Framework: I'm more open to reasonability than most, but I find myself defaulting to competing interpretations in most debates because usually the block just reads too many CI good arguments for the 1AR to bother to cover. I don't really have a strong predisposition here. I also default to thinking that affs should have a stable advocacy text, and that said text should make a statement on U.S. space exploration such that if the negative wins that any kind of exploration (whether or not this includes actually going to space or not) is bad, they win the debate. This does not at all mean that affs have to defend implementation of a plan by the USfg, but I'd like it if you engaged with the topic. Again, my predisposition here is not that strong.

Theory: Absent some twist or unique abuse scenario, I think I'm unlikely to vote on condo bad. NOTE: I don't know how this got to be a confusion, but in my (STRONG, i.e. non-negotiable unless they drop it) opinion conditionality means that you can kick an advocacy, not that you kick all the truth claims you made on a given flow. If you say the neolib K and SKFTA, and the 2AC concedes Santos 3, the fact that the K was conditional means that you don't have to go for the alt, but it does not mean that the collective suicide turn to your disad goes away. (We are presuming the aff in this case has a critical bent; if it didn't this particular maneuver would be asinine). **If you are going to run a multi-plank independently conditional CP, you need to flag it as such when asked about the status in CX. If they say "What's the status?" and you say "conditional," you are either going for all of it or none of it absent further clarification. The correct response to "What's the status?" if your intention is for it to have independently conditional planks is "All planks are independently conditional."** Be warned that I have much more serious doubts about the theoretical legitimacy of such an interpretation of conditionality. Absent 2NR argumentation on the question, I will not compare the aff to the squo if the 2NR goes for a conditional counterplan and loses a DA to it, and I think in general I would be very reluctant to do so.

I find theory arguments to be more persuasive when they are framed in terms of the way I as a judge should view decision making, rather than simply framed in terms of fairness. I'm much more inclined to reject the states CP because there's no rational actor to compare it to the aff than because it's unfair for debate. In general, I think it's hard to win a unique and quantifiable fairness DA to a given practice, but it can be relatively easy to win reasons why I as a judge should disregard certain arguments based on my role as a decision maker.

Disads: Do impact comparison. A lot of it. Every block extension of a disad should include reasons why it outweighs case (or even better, that the UQ argument on the disad will solve the case). Turns case arguments should not be of the "A nuclear war would cause racism" variety. I'm a fan of big politics debates. 2ARs and 1ARs need to contest the relevance of most turns case claims. (Hint: If you control uniqueness that an impact is happening now, I care a lot less that failure to pass whatever bill will make it worse)

Counterplans: Run them. I do think that I hold counterplans to a higher standard of competition than other judges do. I don't think a lot of "normal means"/process based counterplans are competitive, and I will not default to assuming that the affirmative must defend certainty/immediacy of the plan for the purposes of counterplan competition. This means I am also very likely to want to vote on a permutation against consult/conditions CPs. Inanely specific interpretations of normal means for the affirmative can make for interesting permutations. Make them. Voting for a creative perm is often more appetizing than rejecting a counterplan. I can also be a sucker for arguments about the role of the judge in relation to whether or not a given CP should be relevant to my decision-Arguments like "no rational actor can choose between the aff and the CP" can earn my ballot fairly easily, not because I think these arguments are necessarily slayers but rather because a lot of negs are bad at answering them. I think that PICs are good. If you want to earn my ballot on PICs bad, you need to find a reason why their kind of PIC is somehow a uniquely bad instance of plan-inclusivity. If your argument is that any amount of plan inclusivity is bad, I view your argument as similar in quality to should=past tense of shall. (Maybe that's an exaggeration, but I'm not a fan). TL;DR I'm not a great judge for consult/process. I'm a great judge for PICs, especially absurdly specific ones that reveal you know more about their case than they do. One more note: High school teams going for referendum CPs in front of me have a cumulative 5-0 record. Believe me, I wish it were the other way around. Please, for the love of all that is good, keep those files stored away. Reading referendum might win you the round, but I assure you your speaks will leave much to be desired.

Case: Just like every single judge out there, I love big case debates, and will rewards debaters who try to engage case with higher speaks. I have noticed a lot of debaters kill their policy strats in the 1NC by failing to contest try-or-die claims-Most 1NCs NEED to read squo solves arguments/terminal impact defense. It only takes a little mitigation in the right places to substantially reduce the applicability of try-or-die type arguments, but those are probably the most common reason I vote aff in DA/case situations.

Happy Debating.