Larue,+Patrick

I debated 5 years for Caddo Magnet in Middle/High School. I dabbled in college debate at UNT. What I really enjoy about debate is the ability for logic and argumentation to thrive. That being said, the best debates are the ones where arguments are thought out well, explained well, and evidenced well. These things make it much easier for me to prefer one team over the other. If you debate well, it makes it much more likely that you will have my ballot. Recently, it has been much more dificult for me to judge well because of the lack of quality argumentation. Reading evidence back and forth only goes so far. Debate is not just a slew of evidence that I have to sift through. Debate is a forum for argumentation which is backed up by evidence. Just because you have some stellar piece of evidence doesn't mean you automatically win the argument. If the other team has good enough evidence backed by solid articulation and logical analysis, they are much more likely to win the argument. I typically only see evidence at the end of a round when I am having trouble trying to figure out who did the better debating.

One additional thing. Performance debates I will almost always vote against. As a judge, I am not here to learn about how the nature of debate is racist, sexist, etc. Policy debate is labeled as such for a reason. If the other team says something like "competitive equity" or "if debate is bad, why do you do it" I will probably sign the ballot immediately.

Other than that, I'm fair game. Happy debating.