Brockway,James

first and foremost, i think debate is for the debaters, and with that in mind i think that you should read whatever positions you are most comfortable with and if you win them, i will vote for you. while i do have certain personal preferences about arguments, i will do my best to not let them influence my decisions. that being said, here are some things which might be good to know.

in general 1. it is important for me to understand what you are saying--if i can not understand you, there will be problems--it is likely to place a glass ceiling on your points and i am very sympathetic to teams who will blow off your args because they were incomprehensible. i will say clear until you become clear/i give up all hope--please aim at doing the former so i dont have to do the latter. this does not mean that you cant go fast, it just means that i would err on the side of clarity.

2. in close debates i am likely to read the cards that i think are important/have been explained to a degree that i feel i can call for the card in good conscience--given that this is the case, you should be doing evidence comparison and debate things like qualifications because that will shape how i read and evaluate the ev after the debate. controlling how i read evidence will be very important--absent this i am much more likely to be dismissive of your cards if I dont think they apply to the issue at hand/are good/etc.

3. strategic vision will be rewarded with points and wins--i feel like to often debates degenerate into a back and forth on micro-level questions without adequate attention to how arguments interact on a global scale. i have a tendency to view debates holistically, which means both that i'm less concerned about "dropped" arguments when they are answered elsewhere on the flow, and that i will be very receptive to teams who in their last speeches make very clear why given the arguments each side is winning, they line up in a way beneficial to that team (doing extensive, comparative, impact calculus will take you far in that direction).

4. dont be a dick--being aggressive and confident is good, but there is a line, and if you feel like you don't know where it is, err on the side of being nice. also, being funny is sweet.

specific things topicality--i like these debates. do impact calculus between standards--i think this is where these debates are won or lost for the most part. it is important that you have definitional support for your interpretations. i probably default to competing interpretations, but can easily be convinced that reasonability is a better standard.

disads/case--sweet. i like these debates. i believe the aff can win absolute defense--if the argument doesnt link it doesnt link.

cps-- well developed theoretical objections to counterplans can definitely be persuasive to me. this does not mean that theory is an automatic aff ballot, but it does mean that i think negative's need to be prepared to defend what they do. in particular, i think that conditionality bad is probably a viable affirmative strategy in many debates where the negative has multiple strategies which seem to be at least somewhat contradictory. i also can be persuaded by nuanced PICs bad arguments which call out the unbelievably low bar set for negative competition evidence on many of these types of arguments. i should note that for non-conditionality arguments, i think my "arg not team" threshold is pretty high absent particular contextualization.

consult counterplans don't seem competitive for me. i feel as though counterplan competition debates become a lot easier to resolve if people have evidence on these questions. while i would prefer substantive debates to theoretical ones, if you choose to go for theory, it probably should be most if not all of the last rebuttal, and impact arguments should be tailored to the specificity of the debate.

kritiks--this is the literature i am most familiar with. please contextualize links to the affirmative--why is it that their particular exercise of, for example, biopolitics bad in the context of their harms/solvency claims. also, if you have an alternative (which i dont think you necessarily need), explain how it functions in relation to the plan. i think establishing role of the ballot questions is important, though i default to a position which sees the aff as able to access their harms claims, but not separate from the way in which they are justified. framework arguments which exclude critiques entirely are not likely to be persuasive to me. i am willing to vote for alternatives which are plan inclusive. Aff teams, it will behoove you to have a defense of the way you know/understand the world which led you to advocate the plan.

non-traditional approaches/critical affirmatives--i am not convinced that plans must be read, however, if you decide to go this route, be ready to defend why the substance of your strategy outweighs/interacts with the fairness based claims of the negative. despite my reputation, i am willing to vote on framework arguments as long as the negative is able to sufficiently defend the model of debate their interpretation sets forth.

good luck and enjoy your toc.