Weiner,+Sarah

Cal Berkeley '12 Updated 5/30/12 saraheweiner@gmail.com
 * Sarah Weiner**

- I believe in prioritizing debating over evidence-reading. That means that well-developed, evidence-less arguments can hold a lot of water. It also means that good spin can improve bad evidence. - I find it difficult to vote for an argument that I couldn’t cogently explain to the other team, even if the other team has done a poor job of capitalizing on that confusion. If I don't get it, I will just have a hard time bringing myself to vote for it. Debate is a persuasive activity, and I’m not too embarrassed to say that I did not understand your argument. - An argument is a claim and a warrant. A dropped 3-second argument consisting of "fiat solves the link" is not yet a full argument. - Arguments often do not come across as important to the judge as they seem to you. There are 3-4 nexus questions in most debates, and the rest is often filler. If you spend less than 10 seconds on something in your final rebuttals, chances are it will not factor into my decision very much. - I don’t think “try or die” makes a lot of sense if the probability of being able to prevent the bad thing is low. It’s like saying, “An asteroid is coming! Quick, give me 5 dollars!” That makes no sense. - I think folks often over-emphasize “turns the case.” It’s a very important argument, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t bank on it and drop the aff. Don’t’ forget that turning the case also relies on you winning a large risk of your link. - Cross-x pet peeves: - Saying "we'll answer that argument if you make it" in cross-x. Answer it now! - Demanding a yes/no answer to your question. This is not Matlock, and sometimes answers really do require nuance.
 * Basics:**

Kritiks: I think the alternative is the most important part of the debate but is unfortunately not always the focus. To me, controlling the "meta-explanations" for how the world works is crucial. I find sweeping claims like "the epistemology of the aff is flawed, so ignore their impacts" difficult to believe when the 1ac has spent a good chunk of time giving some pretty specific reasons why what they think is true is actually true. So please contextualize these epistemology arguments to aff-specific examples. Framework: If you do not read a plan, I'm am not your ideal judge. On the other, hand, questionably cheating affs win all the time because negatives get stuck reading internal links (fairness, ground, predictability) without impacts. I think the best thing we can get out of debate is portable skills, and that has most persuasively been explained to me as decisionmaking/critical thinking skills (see Jonah Feldman’s judging philosophy for a full explanation). So please impact things like ground, limits, etc. with how changing the contours of debate as a competitive activity will change the valuable things we get out of it. "People quit debate" is not an impact. Counterplans: In general I lean neg on conditionality and PICs and am conflicted about international/state fiat. That said, I find myself leaning aff on a lot of competition questions, especially when the CP 1) competes on immediacy / certainty, 2) competes through “normal means”, whatever the hell that is 3) competes though c-x answers instead of the plan text, 4) competes by assuming the aff does ALL instances of the plan (ie, a CP that might PIC out of incentivizing production in a particular state, etc.). Theory: Theory arguments are only reasons to reject the team when you have proven the other team has changed your ability to engage in the substance of the debate. A dropped RVI on an intrinsicness arg on politics, for example, is highly unlikely to rise to that level.
 * Argument things:**

- This new practice of teams refusing to jump the other team their speeches and only giving it to them on a viewing laptop seems a little paranoid and a little more rude. Please try to be as accommodating with sharing your speeches as your coach and technological competence will allow. - The other team has a right to a copy of your speech doc at the end of your speech if you marked cards, and if done efficiently I’m fine with this being off-time. The other team does not have a right to “a doc of only the cards you read.” FLOW! If you want this, it comes out of your prep time.
 * Paperless things:**

I have coached LD for a couple years now, but I'll be honest and say that I still evaluate LD debates much like I would policy debates. That means: 1. You will have a hard time convincing me that plans are bad. I understand that in LD they may not always be necessary, especially given the wording of many topics. 2. My default is to compare the world of the aff to the world of the neg (which means negs would be strongly helped by having offense). If that is not how you want me to view my decision, please clearly articulate and alternative. 3. I generally believe utilitarianism is good and imagine what the world would look like if the aff/neg happend/was true. I'm willing to consider things differently, but you should make that into a developed, persuasive argument. 4. I think the move to make every debate into a theory debate is, frankly, terrible. I understand that the aff is in a tough spot, but that is a reason to build better, more responsive 1ac's, not craft inane theory arguments. Disgruntlement aside, I will try to objectively evaluate even awful theory debates. But understand that I will have a hard time voting against someone on a theoretical objection if you have not proven they made the debate very difficult or impossible to win. Theoretical objections to the way the aff has affirmed the rez or the way the negative has advanced advocacies (counterplans / kritiks) make much more sense to me than theoretical arguments about other things.
 * For LD:**