Jennings,+Rob

**Updated 10/7/17**

Conflicts: Jenks High School

Experience: I debated in high school at Jenks (2011-2015). I qualified to the TOC my Senior year. I now attend the University of Oklahoma, but am not debating. I have done all the speaker positions during my time in debate. I was a 1a/2n my junior year and a 2a/1n my senior year. I have not done any work on the education topic or judged any debates prior to the heritage hall tournament. Bad news: I'm not an expert on the topic and may be a bit rusty on debate conventions. Good news: I have watched a couple of debates that were available online to prepare for the tournament. I also think about debate a lot and keep up with debate at a surface level via my friends still involved in the activity. I can't rep out for a team since I don't know who the top teams are this year. Speed is not an issue for me, just be clear and give me some pen time. I reserve the right to stop flowing if you're unclear. Explain acronyms, I'm not an expert on education policy and likely don't understand your niche K authors literature as well as you do.

Overview: Don’t be hostile. Frame your impacts, make decisions, and win critical issues. Read your best strategy, I don’t have strong enough biases to warrant you completely overhauling how you debate. I’ll do my best to put the biases I do have away. I did K debate mostly towards the end of career, but I find policy debates to be more interesting. Do what you do best.

I understand how hard debaters work and take that very seriously. I will give my undivided attention to you during the debate and work hard for the debaters in making my decision. I will do my best to adjudicate the debate fairly and give a sound RFD. In order to keep the post round short I often withhold some of my comments about the debate. If you would like to hear my advice or have any questions please ask them. I'd love to answer them. If you don't agree with my decision I'm okay with you arguing with me about it as long as it's civil.

Evidence: I will read little to no evidence at the end of the debate. If I’m calling for cards it’s because there’s a dispute about what the card actually says, I’m just curious to read a card, or no one explained their evidence very well and I have to try and reconstruct the debate. Do not clip cards. If I can tell you’re clipping by reading along the cards with you or by a recording I will vote against you and give you zero speaker points. If a clipping challenge is raised the accuser needs a recording and I will adjudicate the debate based on whether or not there is indisputable evidence of clipping. If you issue a clipping challenge and ask me to stop the debate to adjudicate it then that's the debate. I will vote solely on whether or not there is clipping and give the loser 0 points. There must be absolute evidence, if I have any doubt as to whether clipping occurred I will err on the side of caution and assume clipping did not occur. With that in mind, I will ask for a copy off the speech doc so that I can keep an eye on clipping.

Paperless: It’s cool. Prep can stop when you begin saving the document, but be quick or I'll become more draconian. Don’t steal prep. It will make me angry and I’ll dock your points. Email chains are more efficient. If you make one include me.

Theory: Don’t go full speed on your theory blocks. Give me pen time or I’m going to miss an argument and you’re going to be mad about my decision. I will default to reject the argument not the team in basically all theoretical objections, with the notable exclusion being Conditionality/Dispositionality bad. This is not set in stone, but in a close debate I’ll probably default to rejecting the argument (which will often trigger me voting for you since they don’t have much “substance” left). I think most “cheating” counterplans are bad, but having a real solvency advocate goes a long way in convincing me otherwise.

Topicality: T was my favorite argument in high school and I think it’s an underutilized strategy. I often took topicality arguments in the block towards the end of my time in debate. Have an exclusive interpretation, a case list, good reasons your interp is better and impact these out to why you should win. If you’re going for a reasonability argument you need to tell me what reasonability means. I don’t think you need to win in round abuse if you win competing interpretations, but I could be convinced otherwise. I haven't worked with this topic much, so I won't have a good gut check to know if an aff is topical or not. Take that as you may.

Framework: I’ve gone for framework as a 2n, and I’ve been the 2a for a K aff. I evaluate these debate just like a T debate and you should debate it as such. Don’t be afraid to go for old school impacts like limits as I think I’ll find these arguments more persuasive than newer/”bigger” impacts like decision-making. I do think that the aff should at least be tied to the topic.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Counterplans/Disads: They’re neat. I think functional competition makes sense. Make your disad outweigh the case. Contextualize your links. I definitely believe in zero risk of a disad.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Kritiks: This was the primary strategy I utilized my junior/senior year. I think they’re neat. The weakest part of the K is usually the alt, so you need to explain to me what the alt is and what it does. If I can’t explain what your alt is and how it solves to the other team in my RFD I can’t vote for you. Contextualize your links, give examples, don’t use a bunch of jargon.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Case Debates: Does anyone dislike case debate? Go for it.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Miscellaneous:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">- If you are deliberately evading answering a question in CX, I’ll give the other team lots of leeway on the issue the question was asked on

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">- Mark your cards, like actually mark them where you quit reading and say where/when you’re marking them during the speech.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">- Don’t be mean

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-I stop flowing when the timer goes off, even if I'm still writing I'm just catching up to the point where the timer went off.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">-If you have any additional questions or a question that you think of after a debate feel free to send me an email at robdog21@rocketmail.com I'll try to get back to you in a reasonable amount of time.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Debate should be fun so make it fun. Don't take everything too seriously.