Barsky,+Jonathan

Jonathan Barsky La Costa Canyon (2007-2011); Whitman College (2011-2015)

The bottom line for quick reads:

- I’ll listen to basically whatever argument you want to present; I obviously have my own preferences (described below) but I think debates are better when debaters make the arguments that they enjoy, rather than the ones that a judge wants to hear - The flow matters – if an argument isn’t there, I won’t use it to make my decision - I have not been coaching/judging frequently on the surveillance topic, so you should assume that I’m learning about your topic-specific args for the first time - Speed should not be prioritized at the expense of clarity. If I can’t understand you, I’ll miss your arguments - I like to reward good evidence and good evidence comparison - Good analytics should be enough to beat terrible and/or under-highlighted cards - Tech plus truth is always great, but tech over truth if they happen to conflict - I understand that debate is a competitive activity, but there is a difference between being competitive and being disrespectful towards your opponents

Stuff about me:

I did policy debate for eight years between high school and college. In that time, I mostly read policy arguments on the aff and neg, but I was known to occasionally go for the K and read a performative, identity-based affirmative during my senior year at Whitman.

My degree is in rhetoric studies (so I do think that the words you use to make your arguments matter) and have a pretty solid grounding in a lot of political/economic/legal theory, but I am less knowledgeable about some types of critical philosophy, so I would default to explaining more, not less, if that’s your strategy.

Specific arguments:

Case args: Have them! Case debate is an underutilized art these days, and it makes going for other arguments easier. Impact turn debates are always fun.

CPs: Great. I lean slightly neg on many common theory questions, provided that the CP exists in the topic lit. However, I do think that the negative has been able to get away with shady CPs including but not limited to consult, conditions, recommendation, other stuff that competes off the ‘certainty’ of the plan that are mostly nonsense, and there I will be more sympathetic to aff theory args. If the neg is extending a conditional CP, I’m open to judge-kicking the CP and evaluating the aff vs. the squo, but you must explicitly tell me to do so. The aff is, of course, free to argue that I should not do this.

Topic DAs: Always good. Specific links preferred over generics.

Politics: Super into it, if done well. Politics was my bread and butter for a long time and a good politics throwdown is great to watch. That being said, it is still 2015. I would prefer to not watch the elections DA before anyone has even voted in a primary. We all know that it’s pure speculation at this point.

T: Fine. Not my favorite arg to listen to. If you’re going for it, you should have a case list and spend time delineating what each interp means in terms of the research burden, aff/neg ground, etc. No ASPEC please. Never an RVI.

Theory: Most theory arguments are reasons to reject the argument, not the team – but you all should say that. In my experience, many high school theory debates are shallow and therefore bad. I would really prefer to not vote on two competing ten-point blocks that everyone sped through or a three-word blippy cheap shot.

The K: This one is hard to deal with, because “the K” encompasses so many various arguments. My general advice is that you shouldn’t assume that I’m very familiar with your particular literature. Alt explanation matters a lot for me in these debates. I think there are limits to alt shadiness. The alt should be able to resolve your links to the aff. It’s also not enough to prove that some parts of the aff are wrong or suspect – you still need offense. I do not find “no perms in a method debate” compelling without additional explanation. I’ve always enjoyed Marxism debates, but that doesn’t mean that reading it is an auto-win.

K affs and FW: This is a big one these days. I’ve debated many rounds on both sides of this debate; I’ve read K affs and gone for FW a lot in my career. I think debate is about what you can justify, so if you can justify your affirmative approach, it’s fair game. Don’t expect to read FW in front of me and win if you can’t overcome the aff’s offense. On the other hand, affs acting dismissively towards FW is also not a great strategy for winning my ballot. I think it generally is a relevant and competitive argument and should be treated as such.

CX: It matters. I flow it. Arguments made in C-X should be carried over into speeches if they help you. Too many debaters don’t capitalize on that.

Stuff that you shouldn’t do in front of me:

- Clip cards. Ever. Period. - Be unnecessarily rude. - Misgender your opponents, particularly if it’s repetitive or you get corrected. - Using racist/sexist/homophobic/ableist, etc. language – there are almost always easy alternatives for offensive terms and using them should at least result in a reduction in your speaker points.