Vitzileos,+John

I personally find judge philosophies unhelpful because they are more often about what people think of themselves rather than what they do/vote on and include obvious cliches like "Disads, love 'em!" When's the last time you heard someone say, "Disads, absolutely hate them. Thumbs down."

Junior @ USC. Went to Whitney Young High School.

One thing that I try really hard at is making the debate more about the debaters and less about me. What you should take away from that: 1. I tend to care less about ideology. From a judging perspective/coaching perspective, the Policy/K/Performance (or better put, Plan/Not Plan divide) is not something I care much about. I DO care about debaters who debate well, who are smart, and who try. 2. I try to pay attention and flow as much as possible --- this includes cross-x. 3. Debate isn't what I think is true about the world, it is about what happened in a specific debate round. To me, this activity is a communicative one based on persuasion. If you lost the debate, its not because I don't believe you, it is because I thought the other team out-debated you and was more persuasive.

Does this mean that I don't have preferences and there aren't things to easily persuade me on? Of course not. I just try to not let that influence me in debates and do what I can to evaluate the debate in front of me.

Some things that I have come to realize the more and more I judge: ---What makes judging difficult for me is that the debate is hardly ever resolved by the end. Often times, I find the 2NR and 2AR a series of args that coincidentally line up next to one another but are not resolved and lack clash. You can help me out by impacting out how your arguments implicate the rest of the debate and provide lenses to view certain arguments. Do comparison between arguments whether that be impact calc or ev comparison. An example to demonstrate what I mean is one team will say, "PC not key, votes are determined by ideology" while the other team will say just the opposite "PC is key to vote switching and putting pressure on constituencies." The question of how to resolve this debate is really really hard without ev comparison or something along those lines. UPDATE: I wrote this in my original philosophy nearly 3 years ago and it still holds aggressively true - this is still the largest challenge I face when judging debates. ---I find that debaters that are more modest in their final rebuttals are often the most persuasive and effective debaters. Instead of assuming you are going to win every single one of your arguments and you are opponent is going to lose every single one of theirs, be more modest in your approach and be realistic about what you are winning and what you are losing and do the effective comparisons to ensure what you are winning outweighs what you are losing. ---There is often a communication gap between what you are thinking in your head and what you are saying to me. Be cognizant of that and pay particularly close attention to what you are saying and what you are thinking you are saying. (I more say this from a debater perspective than a judge, I find this happens a TON when I debate when I THINK I am saying something, but it just doesn't get interpreted that way.)

Some random thoughts that are important to put in here: 1. If the neg states the squo is a logical option, I do not have a problem kicking the counterplan/alt EVEN IF that argument doesn't exist in the 2NR 2. An argument is a claim and warrant with an impact -- while this seems obvious, you'd be surprised. 3. Impact uniqueness matters and try or die //can// be persuasive. 4. My favorite impacts in debate are economic decline/trade, climate change and Russian miscalc. 5. Zero risk is hard to win. Winning the DA is low enough probability that it should be disregarded is an easier sell. Offense wins debates, defense is undervalued.

Thoughts RE: Permutations v. K's - I have made this comment 6 times this year so I thought I would include in my philosophy. If you are neg and the affs main strategy is the permutation... you must contextualize your links to the perm not just to the plan because ideal aff debating will reconceptualize what the plan means in the context of the alt to solve your link arguments If you are aff and your main strategy is the permutation... you must explain what the permutation means to combine the strategies of the alternative and the aff and explain how this combination solves the neg's link arguments

Finally, I invite you to ask question during my decision, argue with me, etc. I am not a person who is offended by people taking issue with what I have said and will try my best to articulate to you how I thought the debate went down.