Varney,+Samantha

2007-2008 Chattahoochee High School 2009-2011 Glenbrook South High School 2011- University of Texas at Dallas

I will remain open to any style of debating as long as you explain your arguments and impact them. That is not to say that I don’t have any preferences – but I will try to leave those outside of the debate as much as possible.

BE SPECIFIC – You should attempt to resolve the crucial questions of the debate for me as much as possible – not just extend your evidence but answer your opponents and explain your evidence in the context of your argument and what it means for the debate – otherwise I feel forced to intervene to some extent at the end when reading evidence.

Extend warrants – tag line claims extended in the rebuttals are not arguments. If you stick to the formula that you need to extend your claim, a warrant, and an implication as in what it means for the debate round – you’ll be in pretty good shape – but even though I haven’t judged a ton, I’ve noticed this is something that is surprisingly lacking from debates. If you do not explain your argument, I’m not going to do the work for you just because you read a card.

Be technical. This is not to say that I will vote on a conceded blip theory argument that was made in the 2ac without a warrant but it does mean that you need to be technical and make sure you’re answering your opponents arguments. If you want me to evaluate a theory argument as a reason to reject the team rather than the argument – you need to explain why that is the case as I usually default to reject the argument not the team – with conditionality being the exception.

Impact Calculus is essential. Use it to your advantage – whether it be the aff versus a disad or case outweighs a criticism, use impact framing statements and compare impacts in detail. Turns case arguments are a plus too so use them.

Cheating is not tolerated – any form of cheating whether it be clipping cards, cross-reading, evidence fabrication, etc will not be tolerated and will result in an automatic loss and the lowest possible speaker points allowed.

Speaker points – clarity is essential – I will say clear but I expect you to immediately slow down or change speaking, after one warning, I will just dock your speaker points. Be nice – I hate when people are assholes in cross-x – this doesn’t mean don’t be confident but don’t be unnecessarily rude or obnoxious – it will just annoy me. Greatly.