Iyer,+Subbu

Conflicts: Katy Taylor and Hendrickson LAST UPDATED: Pre-St.Marks 2017

Tabroom Wiki&Full Judging Record: https://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?judge_person_id=10717

I debate at Texas. Explain your arguments. Warrant out your claims. Impact them out. Give me all the pieces put together because I think judge intervention hampers the ability for students to make debate what they want it to be. I will only vote on an argument if I can explain it to the other team – this might seem arbitrary but it forces debaters to disengage in shallow explanations so I think it’s reasonable. I prefer you to debate what you enjoy reading. Specificity and well thought out strategies are always enjoyable to judge.

General information:
 * **Speaker Points**: General note: differentiate the tone between tags and the text of the evidence. Clarity is important. Here’s a simple scale -
 * Below 27 - You were offensive OR you REALLY need to improve on speaking, explaining and executing your arguments.
 * 27-28 – need to improve on a technical level, better explanation of your arguments and the ability to interpret and execute based on the interaction of different/multiple arguments.
 * 28-28.5 – Average speaks + need improvements on technicality and speaking.
 * 28.6-28.9 – good speeches + efficient + need slight tweaking on some technical and speaking issues + need more argumentative contextualization to the other team.
 * 29-29.9 – very technically proficient, great speaker, overall fantastic speeches.

Specifics: For any other questions, feel free to ask me before round or email me at subbu.iyer98@gmail.com
 * **Framework**: It's about competing models of debate. Have a defense why the education your model produces is good. I’ll usually default to competing interpretations unless persuaded otherwise by reasonability/competing interps bad. I think people are scared more so than ever nowadays given the proliferation of K affs to read framework. If you feel like you need to read it, do it. That being said, I think it’s important to have procedural fairness and education claims just to hedge back against the 1AC’s offense. Specificity of evidence in relation to the affs politics and state engagement also makes your policy making good argument seem more persuasive. __Make sure you have a T-Version of the Aff__. I think there are two ways that I see framework debates –
 * **VS Identity Affs** – I’m most persuaded by the argument that the state is a heuristic/good tool to deliberate about rather than state good or bad, complemented with argument testing/limits.
 * **VS High Theory Affs** – By all means, take a hard stance. Choosing a middle of the road way for these affs is a bad idea. I find argument testing and Limits to be especially persuasive versus these affs.
 * **Topicality**: It's about competing models of debate. Reasonability usually is just asserted by the aff so unless there’s a robust defense of why the aff really is reasonable, I will default to competing interpretation. Impact out your standards - give me reasons why fairness and limits matter. Flesh out the violation in the 2nr to prevent simple we meet arguments in the 2ar.
 * **Disadvantages:** The more specific the DA, the better. Have good/specific link and turns case analysis, doing so will reflect better in your speaker points. For the aff, I think evidence comparison/call outs coupled with tricky strategies like impact turns or internal link turns helps you win these debates.
 * **Counterplans:** Always go slow on the CP text(s). Having specific solvency advocates tells me that you’ve done good research and when deployed well, your speaker points will definitely be rewarded. Without a solvency advocate, it makes a permutation seem a lot more convincing unless the link to the aff for the net benefit is specific. Strategic PICs are appreciated.
 * **Kritiks **: The biggest pitfall of K debaters is making a bunch of vacuous link/impact and framing arguments without any contextualization to the aff or providing me with a way to weigh your arguments versus the affs impacts – leaving me with a bunch of floating pieces is not a good place to be. That being said, I think that link debate is a place where you can make smart turns case/impact analysis and embed tricks that the aff possibly won’t catch – quoting their evidence or referring to moments in cross-x is also very persuasive and makes it much easier for you to win a link. As I said above, make sure you have good impact comparison and weighing mechanisms and always have an external impact. The alt debate seems to be one of the most overlooked parts of the K and is usually never explained well enough. The 2AR will mostly always control the way that the aff is explained, so always explain the alt thoroughly and how it interacts with the aff – with that, you’ll be in a good position.
 * **Kritik Affs **: Give me a robust explanation of the mechanism of the aff in both the 1ar and the 2ar and how it resolves or accesses their offense – this will put you in a much better position for the permutation/link turn debate or even an impact turn debate depending on your strategy, but it will also help me explain to the negative why I voted aff (in a scenario where I do). Lack of explanations of the aff’s solvency mechanism puts me in a tough spot because I won’t assume to know how the it functions unless you tell me – this also probably makes the negative’s explanation of whatever their strategy is much more persuasive and allows them to dictate what your own aff says which is a position you don’t want to be in.
 * **Case:** Severely underused part of debate. Not engaging the aff makes it difficult to hedge back versus the aff’s offensive claims and makes voting aff much easier. Read impact defense, specific solvency deficits, impact turns, straight turns, etc. That being said, I’m also completely open to voting on no risk of the aff and voting neg on presumption. A good case debate will be rewarded with more speaker points and can make the neg’s life infinitely easier.
 * **Theory:** It's fine - if it is your 2ar strategy make sure there is sufficient 1ar time allocation to it.