Holland,+Erik

Name: Erik Holland Years in the activity: 15 (yikes, I'm getting to old for this $h?t) Debated at: The Head Royce School, University of Southern California Coaching for: California State University, Northridge I have historically been of a very critical background, but I have found myself thrust into quite a few straight up debates these past few years on both the high school and college level and, to be honest, I haven’t minded at all. That being said, my personal preference still leans towards critical argumentation, although I would much rather see a good disad and case debate than some contrived critical mess that you think makes sense. It seems that, too often, people assume that because I did crazy things as a debater that I will automatically love whatever crazy thing you want to do. While I certainly won’t vote against you based on your argument or stylistic choice alone I do still have standards for explanation and am not afraid to vote against you if I can’t explain your argument to the other team at the end of the debate. If you’re doing something tricky or reading some complex lit, fine, but you need to SLOW DOWN and EXPLAIN your argument in a way that does not simply recycle the jargon within your evidence. I **detest** framework debates and would much prefer that teams try to engage each other in meaningful debate/discussion instead of trying to define or limit each others’ abilities to advocate a particular vision of the activity. I am very unlikely to vote on some story about how debate should be played, performed or enacted in a particular set manner. I reward creativity, humor and wit, and I truly believe that it is important for debaters to continually push the activity to its limit whenever possible, but don’t pursue this for the sole purpose of gaining my ballot. The easiest way to win my ballot is to be the best debaters in the room. This means that you should always choose the argumentation that you are most comfortable with instead of trying to adapt your argument choice to appease me. Lastly, I do not often read evidence unless there is an issue of contestation regarding evidence read. I feel it is the job of the debaters to explain the warrants in their evidence in a sufficient manner that does not require me calling for cards. My process of deciding debates occurs primarily as the debate evolves from speech to speech and I get a sense by the last two rebuttals of the arguments that seem key to me at the end. If, during the last rebuttals, you see me not flowing it is most likely because I don’t find your arguments relevant to how I will decide the debate. Either that or I don’t really understand what your argument is and I have stopped flowing to devote my full attention towards grasping your argument. Most importantly, have fun and don’t take yourself too seriously. After all, its just debate. And now, a few specifics: Topicality: I consider myself a pretty decent T judge (whaand these are some of the few debates that I usually read something (evidence, the plan, the 1nc violation) after the end of the debate. I tend to let the debaters work out how I should evaluate T, whether it be in-round abuse, competing interps etc. Generally I have a slight aff bias on T if the debate is really close, although I am persuaded by more nuanced interpretations or tricky hidden arguments in the standards debate etc. Disads: Yeah. Sure. These will probably help you win debates if that's your thing. Counterplans: Probably a good thing, but the more specific to the aff the better. Too many debates have evolved into crappy agent CP’s with (usually) no specific solvency evidence. Whatever happened to counterplaning out an advantage and straight turning the other one? Or PICing out of a key component of the plan with a specific net benefit? Critiques: This is discussed above. Just remember, specificity and explanation are the two most important things. There’s not much I like more than a good critique debate but not much I like less than a bad one. Good examples that reference the plan or at least the world we live in would be nice. That and pop culture references that are applicable will most likely get you extra speaker points. I’m a communication studies graduate student with an emphasis on rhetoric and cultural studies, so my exposure to critical literature is fairly deep but not exhaustive. If it's a postmodern (whatever that means) or a poststructuralist theorist, there's a good chance I've read something that they've written but don't make any assumptions that my reading of the work in question mirrors yours. Theory: I have a very quick trigger on conceded theory (that isn't complete nonsense, of course) with clearly labeled voting issues. Making the decision easier for me should always be your goal. However, I have a much higher threshold for voting on answered theory arguments. I have a particular negative bias on most theory although I also give the aff a pretty wide latitude to push the limits of acceptable aff ground and discussion of the resolution.