Carter,+Marvin

A lil help from Sarah, well rather a lot because I find her to be an amazing judge, and I would love to be able to judge at the same "level as her". So i align with this philosophy pretty well. CSUF debater, debated 7 years now, been to the NDT a couple times, and i coached some high school

I’m pretty much willing to listen to whatever debate you prefer to have (K, policy, Other). You’re better off doing what you’re good at than trying to adjust to what you think I want to hear. This topic is pretty sweet, research for all kinds of args so go for whatever you want. I will judge of the flow. Things debaters love to ask me, are you fine with speed, are you fine with theory? Yes, I am fine with CLEAR SPEED, if you spread but i can't understand what you're saying I will say clear one time, after that, there probably will not be much on my flow for your speech if you can't clear up. Theory, yes, you can go for it, but ill say this much 9/10 judges dont want to hear a theory debate unless it is clean dropped.

Timing the Debate & Paperless - I have experimented with being flexible on this policy this year and in almost every instance it is a disaster. This is especially true at large tournaments with an enforced judge decision time. Here’s the deal – I will always have a timer and I keep close to a running clock – when their speech ends your cx time begins. When cx ends your prep time begins. When you say you are done prepping you need to be ready to start speaking (not saving to a jump drive or organizing your flows). If there is an issue in the debate that means we should deviate from this norm I will tell you, not the other way around.

Paperless - For me the burden is on the paperless team to use prep time to prepare their speech, this means when they say they are ready speech should already be on jumpdrive ready to give to the other team. No free time for the other team either, this means both teams have an incentive before the debate to resolve whether the jumpdrive works, how to use the viewing computer, etc. BTW this is not really unique to paperless, at least when i'm judging (no clue why your other judges seem to let free time get out of control) - other things that use prep time include getting your ev back, marking cards, etc. I also agree that there is no divine right to see the cards immediately so no need to wait for you to load all their speech before they begin. Try flowing or at least listening to the speech being given. Burden all on the paperless team not to be jerks, don't put 100 pages of cards in your 2ac document. Opponents are free to print your ev if thats easier for them. Teams on the receiving end of a paperless speech doc should NOT be scrolling ahead, feel free to call your opponents out for this is you see it happening.

CP – I love a good CP strategy. I lean a bit negative on theory debates, but that doesn¹t mean the aff can¹t go for theory (it just means they should develop the arguments) and certainly doesn¹t relieve the neg of defending their theoretical world. I lean less for the neg when the cp involves multiple, independently conditional planks or there are 14 counterplans in the debate – this should be an easier situation for the aff to describe why that strategy has made the debate worse. Permutations are a test of competition – this means neg, they do not need net benefits, they merely need to demonstrate the cp/k is not competitive and aff, this means that if you have some idea you wish to advocate the perm in the 2ar even after they kick the cp/k you will need to have well developed warrants for that, preferably in the debate before the 2ar.

K – I have sympathy for objections to unexplained alternatives, but these args seem to seldom be developed by the Aff, you¹re probably better off using the alternative to win your permutation. Make sure your explaining your argument, especially on a topic like this with plenty of sweet topic specific K ground. I'm a K debater, but that doesn't mean I will just vote for the K. However, Ill probably have a decent shot at understanding some of the critical stances you're coming from.

K affs need to be able to explain their framework/warrant to vote aff in a way which provides negative ground and debatability. Debating against a K I find its probably important that you make SOME answer to the content of the K and not just generic arguments about K's. I'll echo Hester's philosophy - little sympathy for refusing to engage in the subject matter of the resolution, plenty of lit from and about all sorts of perspectives and positions, use it to engage the topic.

Topicality – I lean a little aff here on question of reasonability and “most limited” vs. “best/reasonable limit”, but as with any argument, the burden to do the debating is on you, don’t assume you can blow it off and wait for me to conclude in your favor on reasonability.

In General – I don’t want to call for evidence. Ever. When I do call for evidence, 99.9% of the time, I’m just stealing your cites. If there is some sort of irresolvable dispute about what the evidence says, I’ll call for it (though I won’t like it). Otherwise, I’m probably not going to call for evidence at the end of the round. You should tell me what it says. In fact, I think that one only needs evidence to establish uniqueness scenarios, and everything else is merely bound to the scrutiny of argument (or logic, if you will, but see the First, above). Bottom, line, though, if you say, “extend Hardy evidence, read it after the round,” you will have only wasted precious time. Granted, in more straight-up debates, I tend to call for more evidence because I am not as familiar with the literature base, but that really means that you should explain things to me as thoroughly as possible because I am likely to interject my own thought processes into my reading of the evidence (and this usually tends to make nobody happy, especially myself). Finally, this means that if you’re the kind of debater who goes nice and slow on the tag and cite and blazes through the evidence like a Ukrainian virus attacking Microsoft Outlook, you’ll just be wasting breath. I actually listen to the card and try to write down the warrants—what would be the point in not calling for ev if I wasn’t listening to it in the first place? This is different from how I used to judge—I wouldn’t flow the evidence at all and wait for the debaters to explain it to me, but these days I feel that if you’re going to use your time to spew it, I may as well use my time to write it down. At the end of the day, however, I tend to regard all the words coming out of your mouth as your own, not some experts’. Making fewer, smarter args will get you farther than speeding through some unexplained "more evidence". Impact assessment and evaluation of the debate in the last rebuttals are important.

I don¹t enjoy listening to debates in which gendered/racist/ableist/exclusionary language is used. At the very least your speaker points will effected.

If you have any questions, Marvin.carterjr@gmail.com

Ain't nothin but a peanut! Yeeeee buddy!