Swanson,+Rob


 * __Rob Swanson__**

Having been in your position plenty of times, I understand that it is always difficult to encounter a judge you are not familiar with. I likely fit that description. While this philosophy is mainly for you to use when I’m judging you, I hope I can inform you as to whether I am a sucky random judge or a good judge you just don’t know and may want to pref. So, since you’d probably rather be spending your time cutting case negs and uniqueness updates, here’s a tl;dr version of my philosophy at the top, with your mindset while preffing me in mind: Disadvantages of having me: 1) I’m not intimately familiar with this year’s topic, so I haven’t read the popular authors/cards, I haven’t seen your topic specific disads, and I haven’t seen T debates play out over the course of the season. 2) I haven’t judged you before. Although you can read my philosophy and cater to me as much as possible, judges you’ve seen a lot will likely give more predictable rfd’s from your point of view. 3) While I was a policy debater in high school, I mostly did NPDA/NPTE style parli in college. If you’re not familiar with it, it is pretty similar to policy in terms of argument types and having substantial speed (I also regularly cut plenty of cards). But since my most recent judging, coaching, and debating has been in the context of that event, there are recent tendencies in the policy community I am likely not familiar with, no matter how in touch I am with policy (which I think I generally am, but that’s for you to judge from my specific views below). Advantages of having me: 1) I am highly familiar with high speed, technical debate, and all basic argument structures and types. 2) I try to project myself into the round as little as possible. 3) I know how arguments function, I know all jargon, and I am fully aware of how to sort through arguments as defined by community norms (you won’t see me flowing CX, voting on an arg that wasn’t in the 2AR/2NR, voting on a link turn with no uniqueness, misunderstanding a double turn, etc.)

Please feel free to ask me anything before the debate round. Also feel free to clarify anything about my RFD that you do not understand. Now onto the larger enumeration of my views:

Background: I have 8 years of debate experience, encompassing 4 years of mostly policy in high school and 3 years of successful NPDA/NPTE parli debate at UPS. For those of you only familiar with high school parli or APDA parli, NPDA/NPTE parli is (in terms of types of arguments and having substantial speed) similar to policy. I have judged high school policy, but it has been a while, and more recently I have judged and (occasionally when not busy with law school) coached college parli.

Speed: I have never had trouble with the top speeds, and you should go as fast as you feel comfortable with. Be mindful that I have not seen rounds on this year’s topic, so I am not familiar with the popular topic-specific authors and cards being read. You should therefore be extra clear with your tags and especially your author names. You’ve read your 1AC a million times, but I’ve never heard of that author with the really long name. I obviously am familiar with any generic position (like heg for example), but I haven’t seen a hundred debates on your topic specific disad.

Kritiks: I enjoy kritiks, although in my judging record I haven’t found a bias in their favor. Teach me something new and execute it well. When I debated, the community mostly viewed me as a K debater, but you shouldn’t assume that I’ve read every bit of the lit for your K. Just for reference (and not because I profess perfect knowledge of these arguments), the K’s I often ran included authors like Agamben, Baudrillard, Haraway, Butler, and Heidegger (obviously not all in the same K). In K debates, it is especially important to mention how arguments interact with each other, be this through a framework debate, impact calc, or some other mechanism. I also find that kritiks tend to do better the more contextualized they are to the specific topic or aff in the round. Often, the more generic your links are, the less ability you will have to generate unique impacts that will be well contextualized themselves.

Disads: A strong link can overcome bad uniqueness (but it doesn’t overcome 100% lack of uniqueness). Good brink analysis allows a smaller link to trigger the impacts. I will weigh (and you should be weighing this for me) the risks of scenarios when trying to compare impacts. Good weighing from the debaters prevents surprises come the RFD.

CPs: Feel free to run whatever CPs you feel are strategic. I often smile upon well-executed advantage counterplans. Legitimate permutations include all of the plan and all or part of the counterplan. Try to make your permutations net-beneficial. I view perms as tests of competition. What better way to destroy the CP than to read disads to the CP that are solved by the perm (which should also solve the neg's disad)? I don't feel too strongly about most CP theory. Run your args and I'll sort it out based on the flow, but I'd prefer the debate doesn't get bogged down in too much theory.

Topicality: T is a voting issue. I have never ever felt compelled to make it a reverse voting issue. I default to a competing interpretations framework. If you want me to do something different, make the arguments. In responding to a topicality position, you should always have 1. we meet (if at all possible), 2. counterinterpretation, 3. we meet the counterinterpretation, 4. counterstandards, 5. defense in response to the opposing standards. To win that your counterinterp > their interp, you must win that your counterstandards > their standards. Although they are rare, I think that good, substantive topicality debates can be a lot of fun.

Theory: See topicality for evaluation of a lot of similar issues. I'd rather see a debate about the topic than a ton of theory (I consider good, substantive topicality debates to be about the topic, by the way, so this doesn't apply there), but I will not punish you for doing what you need to do to win. That is, if you're going to win the debate on theory, by all means do so. I tend to err neg on most theory (i.e. you probably won’t win that condo is bad), but I usually carry a presumption that whatever behavior is being criticized is theoretically legitimate (this presumption will not save you if you’re blatantly illegit and the other team calls you on it). I find that most theory backfiles include woefully inadequate analysis. This is likely because most good theory debaters contextualize their theory to the particular behavior they find illegitimate, and that contextualization usually isn’t generic enough to put in backfiles. What this means for you: reading your taglines from your generic backfiles in 10 seconds will not make a winning theory argument in front of me.

Offense/defense: Supplement your offense with defensive arguments. They are especially important on the impact debate. Sure, you can make a bunch of low-probability straight turns, but does everything really cause extinction? Taking ten seconds to make a few incredibly easy impact defense arguments can go a long way, especially if you’re link turning and are behind on the uniqueness/link debate. Also, please start the impact calculus/comparison early.

Speaker Points: I don't know why putting this in my philosophy would change anything, but debaters seem to care about this. I strive for an average of 27 over the course of the tournament. If you got anything over a 28 from me, you were very impressive. I rarely give anything below a 25, but if you got a 30, I most likely meant to give you a 20 and accidentally wrote a 3. That is to say, 30s should be so incredibly rare that almost no one should ever get them. Maybe I will give out one or two over the course of a full season, but probably not.

Although it may be inevitable, I hope that you do not change your strategy too much because of me. Obviously, adapt to me, but more importantly do what you do best, as I will evaluate the arguments made in the debate and try to impose as little as possible.