Johannes,+Erik

I am new to the speech and debate world this year. I began judging to support my son's High School team in Oregon. I don't have any previous debate or speech experience. During the past year, I have judged at 8 tournaments. For debate I have judged in the various forms of debate such as LD, Parli, Public and Policy. I am mostly able to keep up if the participants speak clearly and offer good markers as they make their arguments. During the debate I do my best to flow the arguments, but have no formal training in it. In Policy I can judge the Novice/JV levels but when teams start throwing around strange Kritiques and Frameworks I do start to get lost and wonder why it is relevant to the topic we are supposed to be discussing. Thus the nuances of a high level open level debate would most likely be lost on me.  When judging a debate: Speak the tag lines clearly. Give me a good road map of what you will be covering. Let me know when you get to the different stages (i.e. On case, off case, T, F, etc).