Carlman,+Alex

Don’t alter your strategy for me. Just do whatever you think is most strategic. I will flow whatever you say and I will vote on any argument if you are persuasive enough (argument = claim + warrant. If you are extending taglines, you aren’t making an argument).

I’m a college debater at Boston College. I debated for four years in high school. I’ve run all types of arguments from conditions counterplans to TAZ. That said, don’t automatically assume I’m on board/familiar with your outlandish K shit or your hyperspecific CP. Specific case/CP debates are definitely the bees knees, although I’m not very familiar with this year’s high school topic, so you should make any important distinctions as explicit as you can for me. I love debates where the neg goes all-in for the status quo, but I understand why this is not every round.

In an ideal world, debates would be decided without judges having to read any evidence. If you expect me to vote on an argument, it has to be in your speech, not buried in a piece of evidence. Yes, quality of research is super-important. That’s why you have to know your own evidence and read the other team’s and make comparisons. If you make me do this for you, you risk me interpolating my own interpretation. Don’t lie about your evidence.

Kritiks: I’m familiar with most kritik literature read in debates. Specificity is the key to persuading me in these rounds; if you seriously have the goods on an aff’s case then you’ll be in a good place. If you’re going to go for a K, make sure you understand it. I get that you may have “totally read a Zizek book one time” and that that shit “seriously blew your mind,” but realize that to leverage these arguments effectively in a debate round necessitates an amount of nuance that requires much time, effort, reading, and thinking. Framework is also crucial in these debates. Aff, don’t let your 1AC disappear into the ether. Neg, explain your alternative. This doesn’t mean extend your tag from the 1NC. Oftentimes I hear negative teams go through the entire debate on the kritik flow just saying vacuous things like “walking away solves” and “rejecting allows new spaces to be opened.” These sentences sound ridiculous and they don’t mean anything to me until you explain them. Explanation does not mean restating, it means extending warrants and contextualizing. K teams, you gotta adapt to the aff. Examples from empirics are a big plus and boost speaker points.

Theory: I have no deep ideological biases. Consult CPs are dubious. I will vote on conditionality and PICs bad if the aff is ahead on those arguments. “Potential abuse is not a voter” is probably a silly standard for evaluating theory but I can be persuaded otherwise. Impact your theory arguments fully if you expect me to vote for them. If you don’t give me a warrant for why the other team should lose because they read an argument that made it tough for the 2AC, I won’t reject the team. If you make a blippy V/I I will probably give the other time a lot of leeway in terms of what constitutes an answer. Also, I will not kick your conditional CP for you and go tallyho for the status quo unless you tell me to in your 2NR. Affs should point this out.

Topicality: it’s a voting issue, affs should be making arguments about why limits are not the key question for T if they want to win reasonability. If you’re going to go for T, make your interpretation and violation very clear, and give me caselists.

I am down with quote performance arguments, but I think policy debate as it exists is an activity that probably has value. I can be persuaded either way. If you’re aff, you should probably have to relate whatever you’re saying to the resolution in some way.

Clarity over speed. If you’re incomprehensible, I will tell you to be clear. I will try to flow you to the best of my ability, but if I miss an argument because your tag lines are indistinguishable from the text of your evidence, that’s on you. That said, I prefer fast, technical debates to any alternative. Line by line prevents judge intervention, so make sure you’re clearly referencing the other team’s arguments when answering them. Implied clash is a good skill, but it has its time and place, and that’s not always and everywhere. If the 2NR and 2AR are big overviews, it’ll be very hard for me to decide who is the decisive victor/loser.

Impact calculus is a no-brainer, but make sure you are fully impacting your arguments in terms of how I should evaluate the meta-debate. Okay, they’re spotting you your heg impact on the DA. How does that interact with the aff’s econ advantage? LET A BROTHER KNOW

C-x is super important. It gives you a chance to establish the tone for the debate and undermine the other team’s credibility. The importance of perception and ethos in winning is under-exaggerated.

For paperless debaters: prep time doesn’t stop till your speech is saved on a flash drive.

Debate is fun! Don’t be a dick, don’t cry when you lose, go for the jugular.