Switzer,+Veronica

Hello All-

Before I go into issue specifics, I want to let you know about your audience when I am in the back of the room. Judging philosophies are supposed to help teams adapt to their critic so some general information first and then I will get down to brass tax. This will be the second tournament judging this season so please do not assume I am hip to all of the affs and use acronyms and topic specific jargon assuming I know what you are talk about.

But I am experienced in the judging world generally. I debated in high school for a year and a half for Northwestern. I judged all four years of college for New Trier and Walter Payton high school, coaching walter payton for a year.

Ok now to the nitty gritty. First, I would say that I am not a strict flow judge. I keep a good flow, but if a team dropped an arg it is not necessarily a "pull the trigger" situation. I am persuaded by comprehensive, compelling and well argued debate rather than the high tech debates.

Theory: I have a high threshold for theory arguments (excluding T). I do not enjoy the blippy theory debate and then a sandbag of theory in the final rebuttals. I am very unlikely to vote on theory unless there is clear abuse. I am persuaded by the argument that debate should focus on substance rather than procedural objections.

T is a different story. I am compelled by the T flow and will vote in both an abuse world and competing interpretations world. Abuse must be clearly articulated and just because you only go for T, it does NOT mean that you were abused. I usually find that teams get too sucked into line by line on T and forget the focus of debate is still to make cogent and comprehensive arguments.

Kritiks- Cool. I am not going to pretend that I know what many of the postmodern authors are talking about, so, please, explain. I do prefer some sort of framework debate, but one with clash please. Simply reading policy making good against a K is not sufficient, and vice verse. You must engage the other team's philosophical foundation for the debate. I am not a fan of teams that have a really good K block and then use the same catch phrase over and over in the 2NR to explain the K. "Ontological questioning comes first" "They don't win the perm because they didn't question ontology first" "the impacts of case are solved if we question ontology." See what I am saying. Do not collapse in the last rebuttals. It is important to establish a link and define the clash in the debate.

CP/Ptx- Whatever Whatever. I am cool with the policy making framework too. Make sure you have a NB and what not to the CP. I really have a hard time voting for textually competitive counterplans that are not functionally competitive.

A note on speed, I can flow speed to a certain extent. If you put out thirty two-sentence answers to a T flow in 45 seconds or something, I ain't getting that business.Slow down through tags if you are hyper fast. I am not afraid to tell you that I will miss answers if you don't. So...adapt to that please.

Tag team CX cool.

I would like people to be friendly, make jokes (not stupid ones) I will increase speaker points for good ethos.

Also, if you ask me questions that are explicitly stated in my philo, I may be slightly annoyed and compelled to impact your points...sorry. Debate is a game of preparation as well. Prepping judges is part of that...regardless of the caliber of the judge, if you want to win the debate, it is key to know what you judge wants you to say.

Otherwise, lets have good debate.

Peace Veronica