Donnenfeld,+Lauren

Experience: Debated for Emory (2007-2011) coached at Vanderbilt (2012-2013) and coach at Alpharetta High School (2013- present)

TL;DR: I'd rather see you debate at what you're good at then try to change to a type of debate that you think I would enjoy more.

General thoughts: Be nice and respectful. At the end of the day, debate is a game. I'm likely to dock your speaker points for treating your opponent disrespectfully, excessive cursing, being obnoxious in cross-ex, stealing prep time, etc. I am a very flow-centered judge, so if you do a good job putting out where your opponent has dropped arguments and impacting them I will probably find that persuasive. I try to leave outside ideas about what debate "should" be outside of the round, and do my best to evaluate the round from a tabula rasa standpoint. My face is pretty expressive during rounds.

CP and Disads: These debates are my favorite. I particularly enjoy a well-crafted politics debate. My knee-jerk reactions are probably that conditionality is good (but multiple conditional counterplans are not), PICs are bad, and consult CPs are probably not good unless you have very specific literature. Be careful when writing your CP text, as I will hold it to the same standard as the aff's plan text. In order to win a CP debate, aff needs to prove a solvency deficit and do a good job impacting the case debate against the CP and/or DA.

Kritiks: I think debate should probably be resolved through a policy framework because it results in the most fair playing field. However, this does not mean I will automatically vote for a policy aff against a K; in fact I've probably voted more for the K this year than against it. If you're going to run a K, you need to frame it specifically to the debate and make compelling and persuasive arguments about how the affirmative links. I have a pretty high threshold for voting on the K, and you need to have excellent impact calculus on why the kritik outweighs. Although at some point or another, I have probably read at least a little of your K literature, make my job as easy as possible by building a story from the 1NC onwards. Again, my general inclination is to be persuaded by a policy framework, so if you're running the K you need to extrapolate why your framework is better and spend time winning the fw debate. Most K debates seem to come down to the alt debate, so the aff needs to spend time winning the alt fails debate.

Topicality: I have a high threshold for voting on T. If you are reasonably topical, I'm probably going err your way. In addition, it annoys me when debaters say "this is a voter for fairness and education." If you want me to vote on T, you need to explain why the aff is being particularly abusive and why it warrants voting against them.

Theory: I'm willing to listen to anything, but I don't like theory debates. I prefer policy-centered debates which debate the pros and cons of performing a certain policy action and its implications.

Impact Calculus: Key. You need to weigh your impacts against the impacts of the other side, and do a good job explaining why you outweigh on probability, timeframe, magnitude, etc. This is more than just "DA outweighs the case" or "no risk of the disad." You need to be impacting these arguments and do evidence comparison.

Speed: Is fine. Speak as fast as you want, as long as you're clear.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at ldonnen@gmail.com Good Luck!

-Lauren Donnenfeld