Kennedy,+Patrick

Updated: 10/28/2013 *****Clarity is seriously an a priori concern**. You get one verbal warning then terrible points. Don't care who you are. This isn't **that** hard to fix. This is my second year judging (college debate, since this website is also for high school I guess). I debated at the University of Kansas for four years, from the ag topic to the MENA topic. I coach at Harvard and New Trier HS currently. I have realized that research quality is becoming increasingly important to me. I don't think "having a card that says our claim in it" is a stand in for evidence with a warrant or explanation of logic falling evidence with a warrant. Evidence utilizing a rigorous methodology and debate over said methods should be the baseline in policy debates. That means you need to know some things about your authors' research methods. I don't mean "empiricism good" either. I mean a discussion about the benefits of using one model over another. As an example: I don't want to hear "Royal says statistics prove econ decline leads to conflict" come out of your mouth (I mean that as an exemplar of poor methodological debate). Royal's review of literature might reference statistical analysis conducted elsewhere regarding the linkage between certain economic indicators and conflict. Why don't you just go cut the methodologically robust, but less strongly worded, evidence? At least go and read it so you can explain what "statistics" your evidence is talking about. The model of debate I believe in is one that makes as many things as possible **endogenous** to the debate itself. I think this produces the most dynamic model for the debate community. I can't (won't? either way) vote on arguments that I don't understand, which behooves you to make me understand your arguments. I promise I'll try to understand them, but there is only so much I can get from you when your argument is incoherent or poorly developed, so please meet me halfway. That said, here are my thoughts about myself as a judge: A lot of my perspectives about debate has come from debating for Dr. Harris, so reading his judging philosophy probably gives a pretty good insight into my thoughts about debate. As he says, “I do my best to judge rounds from the perspective presented by the debaters. I have voted for just about every kind of argument imaginable. I believe I have an obligation to work as hard at judging as the debaters do preparing for the debates…I try my best to resolve a debate based on what the debaters have said in their speeches. I try not to impose my own perspective on a debate. Any argument, assumption, or theory is potentially in play.” That being said, __**framing issues are** **//critical//**__ and shape most of my decisions- I will do my best to judge based upon the agreed upon parameters within the debate. I am fairly convinced that the following things matter the most at the margins- if you are really good at debate, and debating a really bad team, my preferences will not be strong enough to outweigh you being really good at your thing. This is just how I think I will end up resolving close situations that often come up in debates. __General style issues__: I think that the best debaters successfully integrate tech and communication skills, rather than presenting speeches dominated by one or the other. Reading a list of cards is not particularly persuasive to me, and I frequently think **a clear point of analysis defeats stupid cards**. Another way of putting this, when there is a deadlock between logic on one side and “we’ve got a card” on the other, I think I am likely to vote for logic almost every time. I don’t really like it when people debate with their heads down all the time. I don't like it when debaters are difficult to understand because they are trying to speak faster than their natural pace. **I think you would be better served slowing down and actually saying things, instead of trying to force the other team to drop stuff.** __Embedded clash__ is useful on a micro level, but fails as a macro-communicative strategy. Debaters who utilize this method of connecting arguments rely on me to fill in the gaps. This works when it is a case defense argument you are responding to, but not when you are trying to frame a debate. Your framework for the decision should not be up to my interpretation, or else you better not complain when things go wrong. __Offense-defense vs. zero risk__: things can have a zero probability within the limited confines of a debate, irrespective of their general probability to occur. Empirically it is unlikely that some event will have a zero probability, but I think that the aff has a responsibility to substantiate the necessity to depart from the status quo to a substantial degree, not just a slight comparative advantage. That means that the negative has presumption above the “zero risk” level. I think that disadvantages can be similarly insignificant. __Presumption__: **I am willing to vote negative on presumption**. I think the aff has to construct a strong case for a departure from the status quo. I don't think the aff can say that a counterplan's mechanism is normal means and then say it doesn't solve and still win the debate. Affirmatives that don't have an explanation for how we should depart from the status quo should be losing every debate on presumption. I am willing to vote affirmative on presumption. I think that the neg has to have a net benefit to their counterplan, and that "any risk of a link means you vote neg" is not a very educational standard for counterplan debates (though there are cases in which it makes sense). Bad pics should lose on zero risk of a net benefit. My presumption is not for less change. This standard assumes that change is inherently bad, even when we don't know the consequences of that change. I don't really think there is any basis for that assumption. Random change could just as easily be bad as good- you have to make an actual argument as to why less change it better. __Stock issues__: I am an old Kansas high school debater, so I think that it is still important for affirmatives to be inherent, identify a problem with the status quo and present a remedy for that problem. Obviously this takes a variety of different forms, but I would not be uncomfortable voting on a well-explained inherency argument. However, these arguments work best when combined with an explanation of the importance of, for instance, attitudinal inherency (much like one would a theory argument). I think that would get a long way with me against a dubiously inherent aff. This applies just as much to critical affs. You don't get to criticize something that is not actually a problem in the squo, just because you read some critical theory cards. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__Counterplans__: I think counterplans that do the entirety of the aff’s explicit mandates are probably not very competitive, and that certainty and immediacy are not explicit mandates of the plan just because you’ve got a definition of the word should that implies “mandatory action.” I really like advantage counterplans, agent counterplans that are actually substantively different, and clever PICs. I don’t think the judge should eliminate the counterplan for the neg when deciding a debate, unless the debaters specifically state that I should do so. I’m not so sure that the states counterplan and/or international fiat help to realistically assess the desirability of policy action by the United States federal government. Not sure how I feel about self-restraint on this topic. Convince me I guess? <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__Conditionality__: I am strongly convinced that conditionality is good, but I suppose it is conceivable that I would vote on conditionality (I did once last year...I guess). Going for it is definitely playing with fire. Don't be surprised when you lose. However, I think that conditionality implies that the negative can choose to introduce multiple, sequential, non-contradictory worlds and then eliminate them, but not that the judge can eliminate them without the debaters saying the judge can eliminate them. That means extending both a counterplan and a K that links to it in the 2NR is probably a mistake, unless you have CLEARLY structured a sequence of decisionmaking for me. "The status quo is always an option" means the same thing to me as conditionality, since I think the option is the debaters', not mine. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__Reading of “plans” and framework__: I think that the aff should probably defend a parametricized advocacy in order to provide some point of stasis for the debate. I have never been convinced that the activity can function effectively without the aff defending some clear departure from the status quo. That does not mean it has to be a “plan” in the strictest sense. I would say I think that you should read a plan in the loosest sense, and can be convinced to loosen or tighten that restriction by what happens in the debate. I don’t think that framework is a voting issue, topicality is the voting issue in debates that people frequently call “framework.” It is asinine to me to say that a team should lose for reading a topical plan, but telling the judge to evaluate it in a way that does not see it as a literal question of federal policy. If you win framework and the plan is topical, it is a reason that the debate should be evaluated using the lens of analysis you were supporting. However, what a lot of people call framework actually has a topicality argument embedded. Just make sure you don't lose sight of that topicality argument. I am extremely likely to vote on well-executed topicality arguments about the substance of the topic (restricting war powers authority, for example). <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__Critiques__: Debate is an interesting activity because its purpose is endogenous and not exogenous. I think that any model of debate that makes it exogenous will have a tough time prevailing in front of me. That means that you should be prepared to defend the desirability of your vision of debate, in addition to your prescriptions within that vision. I think that the most important issue in resolving a critique debate is usually: what set of choices is the judge **__actually__** picking between? If I am deciding between a bundle of potential policy alternatives to the status quo, it might mean the aff wins, because the negative did not lodge an effective objection to the aff at that level. However, if I am deciding which team has a better method of analysis for confronting the problems of the status quo, I may decide that the aff’s analytic procedure is not desirable. Thus, the nexus question of the debate is often not “our impact outweighs,” but what impacts should actually be weighed at all. __Note__: I am not interested in piecing together your poorly explained critical theory- I do not like intentional obfuscation. If you want to make a point, please make it and quit writing tags that say nothing so the other team doesn’t know what your argument is. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am interested in learning some things, but I am not interested in deciphering incoherent nonsense. I am not a nihilist, and I think "things" are generally better than "not things."Ontology critiques are very interesting, for example, when articulated effectively. If you want to read the script of //Dude, Where's My Car// and claim it was an ontological critique, I don't think you want me to judge you. I guess you could win, but I think I hate you. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am interested in alternative forms of evidence to traditional intellectualism, but I think that you should apply it to some context, not just say that having alternative forms of evidence is important for itself. Please do not be surprised if I vote against your personal experience for rigorous aggregate analyses of peoples' personal experiences. Keep in mind your experience, like mine, might not be the experience of everyone. This hasn't actually been a debate I've had to judge I'm pretty sure, but just so you have some thoughts on that subject. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__*Note: "Race teams"/"performances"/"project"/"movements"__- all of these are terms that are used reductively, dismissively and/or pejoritively towards arguments that are nuanced and varied (often not truly nuanced, as with most debate arguments-see discussion of policy debate methods above). I don't like it when people do that in general, and I think it is an absurd practice in this specific case. I think that debate is always a performance in some sense, all policy is in some sense a project and all activity is raced, in the sense that the agents of that activity are raced, which means these terms could easily apply to any form of debate. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__Decorum__: **I strongly discourage any form of hate speech**- you might (probably will) get 0-10 speaker points, and may even lose. Won't feel bad for you, so hold the tears. I feel ok with voting against you because you were clipping cards, even if there is no ethics challenge formally presented- cheating is 100% not ok. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">*Speaker points are endogenously determined- I do not have evaluative criteria I always use and I will not develop one, because I know I won't actually stick to it (I've tried before). I often give higher points or lower points in a given debate based on a variety of factors that are extremely ill-defined at the outset of a debate. I will not be inflating or deflating my points in any systematic fashion- my points tend to fall between a 27.5 and a 29. Do with that what you will.