LeDuc,+Joe

Some quick things

- I've had a bit of experience on this topic. Taught at a summer institute and judged many practice debates and debates at the camp tournament.

- I feel like I can handle speed but I can't handle being incomprehensible during your speech. It's a big pet peeve when debaters read the tag slowly and spew through their evidence at a rate that isn't understandable.

- Although I prefer not to, I'm willing to vote on cheap shots but only if there's a warranted reason for why I should reject the team. Going for dropped severance or agent counterplan arguments when the team doesn't go for the position isn't persuasive to me.

- I'm a big fan of substantive framework debates (Meaning discussing questions of ontology/epistemology in relation to political action as opposed to purely theoretical arguments). I feel like high school debaters mishandled a lot of the nuances of these kinds of debates and smart negative teams should capitalize on that in front of me.

- I think counter-plans should be both textually and functionally competitive. That said I'm a big fan of innovative, topic specific ways to explain counter-plan competition. It just means that in an old fashioned consult throwdown, I'm probably more likely to err that those counter-plans are probably bad for debate.

- Be respectful but personality is key in many debates and lacking in far too many.

- I think you can win totalizing defense.