Leung,+Jonathan

Fordham University (not currently debating) Strikes: Stuyvesant High School

General things: //Tabula rasa// should be the position all judges should assume - that is, the understanding of as close to nothing as possible to be as fair as possible. This is, of course, performatively impossible, as we're influenced by the debates we've been in, our personal engage with the topic, etc etc. Running parallel to this, I will try my very best to be as impartial as possible in giving a ballot. I flow as many words as I can hear and I like to think I type pretty fast, though I'll probably call for at least one or two cards in the round.

Speaker Points: I want to be entertained by good speaking. Of course, giving a very dry set of constructives and rebuttals while winning the round won't hurt you, but my preference is to enjoy my time in there. Please try not to be rude to your opponent. They, too, took time out of their weekend to come and debate - seeing as debate is a learning process, having a somewhat safer environment is probably better for this process.

T/Theory debates: Competing interpretations is what I'll default to absent a different framework for judging this. I will certainly vote on we meet, no case meets, etc, but I think that absent a competing interpretation, the aff has to do a ton of work to beat T. K of T is welcome, but you should probably argue it engage the substance of the topicality argument as much as you can without contradicting yourself. As a response, I think standards debates or fairness debates are vaguely relevant and more relevant respectively, but you'd better give me a good reason to vote for or against this argument (talking to both teams here).

K: I'm a student of critical philosophy (specifically Deleuze and Hardt) in college, so I'll be vaguely disappointed if I hear some critical arguments used incorrectly, or if people are just blowing s*** out their a**. As my old coach would say, a good one is awesome, but a bad one is aggravating, and the difference is probably engaging the arguments vs. reading blocks. I'll probably give some leeway to teams that aren't too prepared in terms of evidence against rather obscure critical literature (as most of it's probably bad and logically unsound - speaking from scholarly experience here). I'll be pretty keen on voting for specific in-round abuse if that's actually a thing in the structure of the K, but far less keen on voting for wrong forum claims. Framework isn't to the K as Topicality is the Case. Framework is about deciding the playing field in which the K operates - it's a rather organic argument that should probably evolve throughout the round to some sort of compromise that allows me to actually evaluate the substance debate. It should, in many cases of Ks that I've seen, play a role in the specific substance of the critique as well. As to critiques that have strange effects on the judging of the round (i.e. Lacan), please do know what you're talking about. Reading a tag and a card, then rereading the tag in a rebuttal does not a debate make.

CP: Rather standard CP theory I think - a good CP should probably have a net benefit of some sort to win, and probably should capture some case solvency. As to things like PICs, I'm willing to hear them, but I'm also willing to hear theory arguments. Not willing to hear arguments like "CPs shouldn't exist" because no, go spend your time on actually answering it.

DA: Probably standard as well, impact calculus and all.

Case: For an affirmative team to win, they should probably actually have a case. Otherwise it's far too easy for me to be swayed to arguments like "default neg because what are they even doing here, what is going on I'm so confused and they should lose". I believe that kritik is as effective if not more so on the affirmative than the negative (in postmodern cases, at least). I'm open to listening to you play rap, give out food, talk about debate disneyland or whatever in your case. As I said for critical things, please actually make sense. It's aggravating when you don't.