Huang,+Jeff

Name: Jeff Huang Years in Activity: Since 2008-2012

4 years high school debate, no college debate Awards: Double-Octas at Stanford, Quarters at Gonzaga, Double-Octas at Berkeley, 12th in State twice

Years Coaching: Since 2012

School Affiliation: Leland High School, San Jose, California

A little bit about myself: I was a very kritikal debater in high school. Every straight-up policy aff that I read was not a traditional policy aff (asteroids on the space topic, if anyone remembers). This means that I will understand a certain form of debate more than another form and will likely be a better decisionmaker of that form, although I will try to adjudicate any round to the best of my objective ability.

I am a tabula rasa judge – Will listen to and vote on anything as long as they are clearly warranted and explained. One thing that is very important to me is impacting. I want to hear how anything and everything changes the way I should see the debate because those become the key voting issues at the end of the round. Furthermore, I won’t disregard any argument considered “bad for debate” (i.e. SPARK), and will evaluate them as an objective third-party.


 * Theory ** – I went for conditionality a bunch in high school. I honestly think that the way debate has kind of progressed has been bad, simply because teams are just throwing shit at the fan and seeing what sticks. That is not what debate is supposed to be about. I will definitely give extra speaker points to teams that read fewer but very coherent and well-highlighted positions as opposed to 8-off random arguments to spread the other team out.

I also think that running contradictory positions is just straight up bad for debate. That is something that I am very easily persuaded by the affirmative is unfair.

For the team trying to win on theory – you need a contextual story as to why the negative team is abusing you. You need to really prove that you have an impact in this debate, basically. Given this, I understand theory very well. The technical aspects that I think are important for Theory/T are covered in the blurb below, but if there was any judge to strategically go for theory in front of, it would probably be me.


 * Topicality – ** Basically my favorite argument besides the K. I think aff cases should all have a strong defense of why the affirmative’s interpretation of topicality is better for debate than the negative. Reasonability does NOT mean “it sounds topical”, it means that the affirmative team’s case does not destroy the topic in the impacted ways the negative team claims. This may seem neg biased, but it absolutely is not if you have a good, carded definition and have good defenses. For example, the aff will probably always lose a limits claim, but they could have a definitional basis from the government. They could then claim that predictability is a more important standard than limits because [insert warrant here], and therefore, is the standard you evaluate before other standards.

**Disads-** (taken directly from Calum Matheson's judge wiki) "Uniqueness cannot determine the direction of a link. This is not an opinion, just a statement of fact. Some outcome is more or less likely to happen in the future, but because it’s a prediction, the probability is almost never 100%. The link is a net assessment of how the plan changes this—it’s a yes/no, up/down thing. So if one team wins the direction of the link, they should win the argument (although winning the sign of the change doesn’t mean that its magnitude is necessarily enough to result in a particular outcome). Here’s an example: the Aff has three advantages. The Neg has a counterplan that definitely solves two of them, and definitely does not solve the third. The Neg only has inherency arguments on that advantage, which is the only net benefit to the counterplan. Does the Neg win? No. They have no offense so the counterplan can’t possibly be better than the Aff alone. This situation is identical to the case when a counterplan solves all of the case, the Neg wins uniqueness to the net benefit, but the Aff wins (non-unique) link turns."

**Counterplans** - smart, well researched cps w. solvency advocates - love'em. Consult/ Delay/ Condition cp's...meh...no problem with them, but the slew of theoretically justifiable permutations goes up exponentially.

**the K**- This is my territory. The one thing about K’s that matters a lot to me is that the link is legitimate. That means you are calling them out on words that they said, cards that they are reading (literally read lines from their cards), etc. as examples of your link to the K. Another thing is that there must be a real impact. Not some bullshit generic impact, one that is specific to the aff. Case turns specific to the aff mechanism will help you a lot here and prove that your K has an actual impact in the real world. If you are able to conjure up these two points, it means that you are not likely to bastardize the works of these authors and also means you are more likely to make complete sense.

Litmus test: If you can honestly tell your friends outside of a debate setting about your K and have it make sense to other people, then you should read it. That’s because K’s should be fundamentally intuitive.

Finally, good framework is important to me. That’s because framework tells me how I should evaluate the round in a clearer way – should I be evaluating just discourse, or plan action as well? How do these things interact and impact each other?

**Performance Affs:** Go for it. I hope you fucking believe and feel passionate in what you are running though, because that’s when I am most likely to vote for you. You still need a good defense of T that is relevant to your aff (hopefully not a generic K of T), and a good framework.

Couple Suggestions, that would help me help you.

- I've noticed ppl don't really signpost overviews anymore - speaking for 2 minutes at the top of a position before referencing the other team's first arg makes it less clear to me what you might specifically be responding to. I think its up to you to tell me how arguments are interrelated or how they apply to one another. Giving yourself structure to your speech is the best way for you to cover arguments and if a judge can easily follow what you're saying and where you're going on the flow its always going to work out for you. To the extent you want me to be a flow judge - please I implore you: help me keep the flow organized.

- I tend not to call for cards. The only two times I would call for cards is if the debate round was NOT clearly impacted and I have no clear means of adjudication, or if someone calls someone out for lying about evidence. Otherwise, I rely on warrants extrapolated from those pieces of evidence was significantly more important than what they authors say.