Harris-Campf,+Sean


 * DISCLAIMER**


 * Due to a technical quirk, this will temporarily be the place to find the paradigm of Josh Plumridge (that's me), the coach of Holy Names, for the purposes of Stanford.**


 * I debated in high school and college, although for much less time re: college. I've judged off and on since 2001. I guess I would say an aggregate of 8 years of judging. **

You can of course win a t arg without collapsing down to only t in the 2nr, but it would greatly help if you didn't go for four things in the last speech. I kind of love T when it's run with care, with love - when it's not just an excuse to spread the 2ac, when the standards/impacts debate is fleshed out, when it's made clear why the aff interpretation of the res sets a bad precedent for debate. I am flow oriented and I like technically sophisticated debates, but if the 2nr extends 4 different impacts to an effects t arg, for instance, but there are ZERO warrants, and the 2ar straight up drops the phrases "ground abuse" and "explodes research," I'll still be inclined to not vote on T, because that's just blippy shallow debate. This is why it's often necessary to collapse down to just T because you'll need 5 minutes to elaborate on the nature of ground abuse and limits and potential abuse and all of that.
 * Topicality **

**Kritiks** It seems the most common ks this year are critiques of colonialism/empire and ks whose intellectual roots are found in psychoanalysis or something a little more obscure. Please don't run the latter unless you know what you're talking about. It cheapens the activity and the subject matter. I like Ks, but they're complex arguments. You probably won't win in front of me with the K if you're analysis is "they use the usfg" "the usfg is capitalist" and "that's bad." If you run a K as a policy argument, leveraging it against 1ac policy impacts, or fiating an alternative to create communes in Venezuela, you're probably not going to do well. You're much more likely to win in front of me as a K team if your alternative analyzes the language and representations of the 1ac and suggest actions we can take as individuals in the round. A perm debate is a link debate. If the neg block's response to the perm is "but this still links to the K because they use capitalism" I will be bummed out.

I like them a lot. Especially clever PICs. I really hope the cp debate doesn't devolve into walls of blippy theory. I actually like theory a lot, but only if it's advanced coherently, rather than in some silly glib manner.
 * Counter plans **


 * Theory etc. **

I'm a big fan of vagueness arguments against affs. I can't lie. I think it rewards bad debate to allow affs that "increase support for border infrastructure." You might as well just read the resolution as your plan text. So those types of arguments are less of an uphill battle in front of me.

I like speed as long as you're clear. Duh. Please don't be cocky or disrespectful to the other team. It has never helped someone win. You will probably not win on "a dropped arg is a true arg" unless you heavily impact that drop.
 * Stylistic notes **

I'm not going to say I'm a policy maker or tabula rasa. Both are literally false for almost every judge on the circuit. The more you create your own voting hierarchy and offer compelling impact analysis, the less likely it is that I'll have to intervene. Finally, I obviously prefer offense versus defense, but I also believe in curtailing the hegemony of risk analysis in debate. Sometimes the 2ac reads an impact takeout instead of a turn, and it's a 100% takeout.

Research is an important part of the activity, but I probably won't call for cards at the end of the round unless a particular card is disputed. It's not my job to read them. If you don't read them clearly during your speech then, well, you probably should have

I pretty much agree with Sean Harris on every point, except for he's a lot older than I am. I'm only 30.


 * Now back to Sean Harris, who won't be at Stanford..................**

High School: 12 College: 8
 * Number of YEARS Judging:**

Sean Harris-Campf Holy Names Academy Updated 9/15/2007
 * PHILOSOPHY**

Some things you should know about me:

Paradigm: the older I get, the more I realize that I’m a policymaker. I like case debates, or CP vs. plan debates, much more than K debates. Although this might not change your strategy, be forewarned that I am much more reliable and predictable with policymaking than with the K. I like to think that I'm open to anything, but at some level that's just not true (as evidenced by the following diatribe of opinions).

Evidence: for those of you who know me, this is important: I’m getting old fast. I won’t call for 50 cards any more. More specifically, I no longer feel nearly as compelled to recreate a debate because I didn’t get it the first time. I did far too much of that my first 2 years out as a critic. I will call for cards when it’s important, but I have been placing a VERY large emphasis on how debaters compare their evidence in the debate.

Evidence, part 2: it’s all about comparisons. The team that explains their cards, and can compare their warrants to their opponents, will almost INVARIABLY win my ballot.

The K: Historically, I have tended to vote aff, usually because of the specificity of the affirmative arguments vs. a generic k. My biases influence my judging much more in critical debates than they do in policy debates. One explanation might be that I'm to simple to understand most K args (JP Lacy once told me my 2AR against the K made sense if I was debating in novice division). But I think it's probably because I have strong personal feelings about the nexus between policy debate and political advocacy. I believe we are all advocates in every debate, and that the aff's rhetoric speaking out for the their case is just as likely to have a "real world" change as is the neg's argument about how we should define "security". Because of these feelings, I think I have a higher standard for what constitutes a "good" or "persuasive" critical argument.

K Impact debates: specificity is critical. HOW does the K turn case? HOW do the K implications undercut the assumptions of the aff’s arguments? If you choose to argue fiat is an illusion, be careful. Of course fiat is an illusion. This, in and of itself, is not an argument. You need to explain WHY the K is pre-fiat, or WHY performance should be considered first, and WHICH speech acts should take precedence over other ones. Phrases like “this has discourse implications” are perhaps my biggest pet peeve in all of debate.

Theory Preferences & Biases: My default assumptions going into the debate: PICs are good, functional competition is good, dispo is good, conditionality is bad, T is a voter, Extra-T is a voter, T comes before everything else, and aff/neg win % is irrelevant. I have voted the other way on every one of these, but the arguments that support these positions tend to make sense to me, so you have to clearly outdebate your opponent if you want to say dispo bad, PICs bad, the K outweighs T, etc.

Theory Impact debates: I won’t vote on unimpacted theory arguments, and I’m very hesitant to vote on theory arguments with underexplained impact arguments. It has to be more than “pics are bad, force us to debate against our plan, hurts our ground, voting issue”. Not every theory argument is a reason to reject the team; most of them seem to be warrants for rejecting the argument. For me to vote on a theory argument, the voting issue needs to be a) pretty cleanly dropped in every speech by your opponents, or b) clearly explained how the other team crushes an important part of your ground. Competitive quality/strategic thinking arguments don’t seem to fit into this category.