Simon,+Dan

[Updated for Loyola 2014]

Hi. My name is Dan Simon. My son, Noah, is a debater. I have no debate experience as a judge or debater, though I have been receiving training from Noah. If you have any specific questions, direct them to him (noahsimon13@gmail.com).

Here is my paradigm.

As a general overview- run everything you normally would, just explain it as if I've never been in a debate round before. The more you explain, the likelier I'll be to understand, and thus the likelier I'll be to vote for you. If you're running a meta-ethical framework from authors I've never heard of, I'm not going to understand it. If you spread, I'm not going to understand you. Even if you speak at a normal pace, if you use debate jargon, I'm most likely not going to understand you. So, if you're running a pre-fiat K, don't speed through it with the same level of explanation you normally do, but instead walk me through it and explain why it should be a voting issue. Same goes for everything. I have no clue what theory/T are, but if you explain why it's a voting issue and walk me through the different parts and explain their function, I'll be fine voting off of it. That does come with a few exceptions of things I will not vote off of, however, and here they are: morally repugnant positions, skep, or determinism. To be safe, I would recommend pausing after every card/part of your case and explain what's happened so far.

The benefit of this is that I have no biases. I don't have any theory defaults, no competing worlds/truth-testing default- which means you have complete control over how the round is resolved. It's on you to explain to me what's happening.

Be eloquent. Eloquence means a lot. The more I understand you, the better your speaks will get. The more professional and knowledgable you sound, the higher speaks you'll get. I will call clear three times and then stop flowing. However, after each time, if you don't slow down, I will stop flowing until you do. Make the round useful for yourself and your opponent- don't spread. I also encourage civility: be fair and respectful to everyone in the room.

Here are a few things that you should not do. Do not be condescending or rude and do not make anybody feel uncomfortable, do not steal prep time (I will notice), do not flash a wrong case, do not run skep/determinism, do not be racist/offensive, do not run for morally repugnant positions, and do not argue with me after the round (I fully expect roughly one half of you to think that I was a buffoon).

As for awarding speaker points: all the “do” and “don’t do” items will affect your speaker points. I start at a 27 and move up/down from there. A 27 means you were OK, a 28 means you were good, a 29 means you were great, and a 30 means you were fantastic. A 26 means you need improvement, a 25 means you were not ready to debate that round, and anything below that means you did something from the “don’t do” list or you were offensively bad.

Have fun, relax, and enjoy the round.