Merchant,+Sahar

Glenbrook North High School -- 2014 Emory University -- 2018

As a judge, I think my job is to decide the debate based off of the flow. This means that tech will always come before truth and that **I will vote for anything despite my personal opinions on an argument**. I'll try not to call for too many card because I believe that debaters should do the debating. At the end of the day good evidence matters, but if you can spin and explain your evidence better than the other team, that will help you to get my ballot.

Be clear, be persuasive, and present yourself in a positive matter. This means that being rude to your partner, your opponents, or me means you will most likely lose the debate and get very low points. Clarity is way more important than speed. I will say clear but if you don't improve then your speaker points will be docked. I feel like I shouldn't have to say this but if you clip cards, cross-read, or cheat in any way I will give you zero speaker points and vote against you. If you think that the other team is cheating, accuse them, and fail to prove that they are you will also get zero speaker points and I will vote against you.

Affs: I fundamentally believe that you should read a plan text and defend the hypothetical enactment of USFG action. If you don't read a plan text I would prefer that your aff still revolved around the topic and if you don't do that then I won't be happy but you do you. I like framework but if you are aff and you definitively beat the neg I will obviously vote aff.

DAs: Love them. A well constructed disadvantage and case debate is my favorite 2nr strategy. However, I find that most disadvantages have uniqueness problems and that the internal link debate is almost always the weakest portion of it.

CPs: Coming from GBN, I don't think it is a surprise that I am down for any type of counterplan. Whether you are consulting, recommending, or doing some type of veto cheto -- I'm down. I think that a solvency advocate is necessary to have and if you don't have one about the topic I will lean aff on theory.

Kritiks: Kritik debates can be awesome if they're well constructed. __Explain your arguments.__ Don't use buzzwords/phrases/assertions/general because it only hurts you. When you don't explain your arguments it gives the aff so much leeway to not actually answer the substance of your kritik and just get away with saying "the aff is good."

Theory: 2 conditional advocacies is probably fine but I can be persuaded otherwise. Debaters need to go slower on the standards and make sure that your speeches on theory have lots of ethos.

I learned to debate from people like Alex Pappas and Nate Sawyer so I see debate in a lot of the same fashion that they do. Feel free to read their philosophies to get a better gauge of how I view debate.