Douglis,+Allison

Allison Douglis Ridge High School, Yale University I competed for four years at Ridge High School in New Jersey on the local, regional, and national circuits. I now coach for Ridge.

I am a first-year judge. This means that a lot of my judging preferences really aren't ironed out, and I'll probably be changing my views about how and what I'd like to judge frequently over the course of the next year. For now, I'll try to answer the questions that most people seem to want answered when they look at these things.

1) speed. I'm fine with speed (I competed on the national circuit and have both watched and debated very fast debaters). That being said, I'm sure I have some kind of upper limit for speed that I haven't been given a chance to quantify as of yet, so when I reach it, I'll let you know in-round. So, if you consider yourself very fast, maybe opt not to go at your maximum pace, but I can probably handle something in its vicinity.

2) theory. I will be honest: I do not like the prevalence of what I consider to be largely frivolous theory in LD. If you plan to run theory, be forewarned that while I will attempt to objectively evaluate the argument in terms of whether it wins you the round (including ideas of competing interpretations and other arguments that would inherently make the debate focus more around theory), but I will subjectively evaluate it in terms of whether I think it was necessary for you to win. If I think that you are just running theory as a strategic tool, I WILL drop your speaker points accordingly. But I also appreciate theory in response to truly abusive positions, and so I will not require a formally structured shell - the argument should have the main arguments that a theory shell would have, but I understand that some people do not have that training and they should not be penalized by being unable to respond to case positions that can only really be answered by theory. And, if you do have some background in theory, I am very open to RVIs and encourage you to debate theory run against you on that level.

3) "weird" argumentation. As long as an argument's clear, I will evaluate it, but I am not familiar with a lot of the philosophy these arguments tend to rest on, so don't assume that I am. This also means that I won't be able to recognize whether a piece of evidence is representative or not of the author's larger viewpoint, so point that out for me, and I won't be able to understand an argument from a few "commonly known" lines without further elaboration. Sorry.

4) before the standard. I am not a fan of pre-standards arguments, as I feel they always appeal to some greater standard that is never sufficiently explained. I'll vote off them, but I'll definitely hold you to a higher standard of argumentation.

5) general evaluative mechanism. I guess I default to truth-testing, and I'll accept arguments from both sides that link into the inherent truth of the resolution, but I will definitely evaluate the round in any other way if those arguments are made.

6) speaks. I'll try to give reasonable speaks (27.5 if you're average, going up to around a 29.5). I will probably be terrified of giving out 30s my first few tournaments, but I'll also be terrified of giving out anything lower than a 27.

7) demeanor in round. BE NICE BE NICE BE NICE BE NICE BE NICE BE NICE BE NICE. I cannot stress this enough. If you are being a jerk to your opponent, I will dock your speaks. Don't do things like appeal to my paradigm in-round. Also, if you are an experienced debater and you are hitting a novice, I don't expect you to dumb yourself down, but being cordial about the whole situation will definitely help your image if you also choose to run a very technical strategy.