Begley,+Hannah

To provide some background, I competed in LD for three years and graduated from Mountain View Mesa in 2011. I competed mostly on my local circuit due to financial constraints, but experienced decent success when I was able to travel nationally. Since graduating, I have written topic briefs for the NSDA, coached students through Skype sessions for the NSDA, coached individual debaters, and coached for two different high schools. I was also a lab leader at SNFI in Palo Alto. At the same time, I am a student at Brown University and have been involved with the Parli debate team there. My judging preferences are:
 * 1) Extending warrants for your arguments is a necessity, and having strong evidence is key. There are perhaps occasions when certain philosophical arguments do not require evidence, but those circumstances are very rare and even then, you should have robust and coherent analytical warrants. Having multiple warrants for your most important arguments is also probably beneficial. Additionally, extensions must always include a restatement of the warrant, even if the argument was dropped.
 * 2) I don't really care what arguments you read in front of me insofar as they are well-warranted. However, I’d much prefer to watch a round with DAs and CPs or a straight up NC than a round with shenanigans like poetry performance. To be clear, egregiously offensive argumentation (racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic) will almost certainly result in a loss accompanied with very low speaks. Don't make the round a hostile environment.
 * 3) I should also mention that my threshold for answers to absurd/bad arguments is low, meaning that I will be more willing to accept the arguments that your opponent makes against them, even if their responses are weak. For example, if your argument concludes that every action is permissible, you've made an absurd/bad argument. If your argument concludes that an obviously bad thing - such as genocide - is actually good, you've made an absurd/bad argument.
 * 4) On the subject of CPs, I default to thinking that CPs are dispositional unless the debater specifies otherwise. If you present well-warranted arguments as to why conditionality is legitimate, I am fully willing to evaluate those arguments. In general though, I think debaters should have to defend arguments that are turned.
 * 5) Running theory is fine, and is encouraged in cases where there is a real abuse story. Generally RVIs are a hard sell for me, but I am more sympathetic towards them in instances where you clearly did not abuse your opponent and yet still had to deal with a lengthy theory shell. Also, I tend to like reasonability but can be convinced to prefer competing interps.
 * 6) Speed is fine insofar as you are able to spread with clarity, but I believe that speed should be used to add depth and complexity to an argument rather than to make a series of weak, blippy arguments. I also believe that speed should not be used to try to overwhelm or intimidate your opponent. Finally, I will say, "clear/loud/slow" if you become difficult to comprehend.
 * 7) Weigh your arguments and have evidence comparison. Please don't leave me to do this work for you, as it is deeply fundamental to the debate round.
 * 8) Give me some sort of mechanism to compare and evaluate arguments. Explain the order of importance of weighing mechanisms if you have more than one in the framework. Breaking away from the traditional value/criterion framework is fine, just have some sort of burdens analysis or something substantive there that I can use to evaluate your arguments. Also, engage your opponent's framework when the need arises. In many cases agreeing on a framework can lend itself to better debates, so that is also fine. Basically, do whatever you want with the framework as long as you explain your weighing mechanism clearly and link back into it.
 * 9) For speaker points, I use them to evaluate your performance in comparison to my impression of what good debate is as such. However, I tend to modulate my speaks at least somewhat to the given tournament. I do this because I think keeping the bar too high would penalize the debaters who end up with me as their judge. My points scale is usually around 25-30. 27 is average, 28 is good, 29 is an outstanding round. 30s are given if you do something special.

Some encounters that I have had recently make me feel obligated to clarify a couple of things about debating ethically:
 * If your opponent correctly points out that you have engaged in card clipping, you will receive a loss accompanied with very low speaks.
 * If your opponent correctly points out that you are intentionally lying about your evidence or have egregiously miscut your evidence in a dishonest way, you will receive a loss with very low speaks.
 * If your opponent correctly points out that you engaged in other severely unethical practices such as stealing prep off of their flashdrive or purposefully flashing them a case that has more depth and analysis than the one you actually read in the round, you will receive a loss with very low speaks.

Let's keep debate an educational activity where two human people actually try to engage with one another. For instance, treat your opponent like a person who has worth. Don't feign ignorance in CX just to avoid clash. Don't engage in what you know to be unethical behavior just for the fun of it. I think these sorts of behaviors make for bad debate. Please do not engage in these behaviors if I am your judge.