Barry,+Matt

Hello, My name is Matt Barry and I debated for four years with Homewood-Flossmoor. I currently attend Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois and am an International Relations and Economics major and am not debating in college.

First let me say that I will try my hardest to let you determine the terms of the round. If something is better argued, it should always win. I will listen to anything, no matter how crazy. That being said, it would be unfair of me not to let you know how I look at issues and what will probably affect my decision.

By argument: Affirmative: The affirmative should have a plan text and defend its implementation. I will listen to other affirmatives but I’m not going to pretend I’m a fan. On the flip side, in my opinion you shouldn’t get to automatically exclude kritik impacts unless the negative does a really bad job of arguing otherwise.

Topicality: I am not a big fan of most topicality violations. Most topicality violations seem to me nothing more than time sucks that the negative rarely even believes themselves. With that in mind, you can run them, but proving in round abuse would be very helpful to you. Otherwise, I will probably default to reasonability. Specification arguments are not something that will endear you to me.

Counterplans: Negative should get one counterplan that is functionally competitive and can run it at whatever status they so desire. Agent CPs are almost always fine, functionally competitive PIC’s less so, and consults are probably abusive in most cases. I don’t care if NATO wants to talk with the US about Afghanistan unless you have evidence that it is about exactly what the plan is about. Also, I enjoy creative advantage counterplans. Planking them in fine.

Disadvantages: Impact calculus is pretty important if you’re going for the DA. I don’t think I’m all that different from most judges in this respect. Explain your story, especially on politics.

Kritiks: I would describe myself as pretty sympathetic to the kritik. For most of my debate career I was a hack kritik debater. I only reformed near the end of my senior year. I still love a well-done kritik debate. For this to happen, the negative should make a convincing link story that is as contextualized to the aff as possible and how the kritik impacts outweigh the affirmative (yes, the aff gets to weigh impacts). My familiarity with the literature varies by author, so just assume I have no idea what you’re talking about and you will be safe. I tend to find most of the authors to be intriguing, but generally wrong. Overviews are very helpful. A word here about my IR background. I personally view realism as inevitable in the international arena and that will be reflected in how I view critiques of international relations. Also, realism is not nearly as responsive to arguments such as Nietzsche as debaters consistently are convinced it is.

Theory: I’m also not very sympathetic here, though it varies by specific violation. I can see myself voting on conditionality bad, but that is unlikely to be the case on something like multiple perms bad. Just like topicality, in round abuse is very persuasive to me. Also, please go line-by-line. Theory debates are virtually impossible to flow otherwise.

Assorted things: My pet peeve with debaters is when they clearly don’t know what they’re talking about, whether because they are just parroting cards they clearly don’t understand the warrants of or because they are just making things up off the top of their heads. If I can figure out you are doing either of these things it is going to hurt you.

Be polite to each other. Debate should be about improving our public discourse, not descending to the level of cable news punditry.

Speed is fine. If I’m having problems understanding you I will yell at you.

And finally, Have fun.