Meyers,+Dan

Name: Dan Meyers School: Presentation High School (Formerly coach @ The Meadows School) Event: LD Philosophy: For both our sakes I’m going to try and keep this simple (following the Ryan Lawrence model I like to think I influenced).

1. I don’t care what arguments you make with few exceptions. Blatantly offensive rhetoric/argumentation will not be evaluated and will likely result in a loss and very low speaker points. My tolerance for stupid/bad arguments continues to decrease the more I judge. While I won’t disregard these I will be quick to accept (weak) answers. 2. I firmly believe that debate is about the topic. The more topical your arguments and evidence, the more I will enjoy the round. 3. I am a stickler for quality of evidence. If your evidence does not say what you claim it says, I will take that into consideration when evaluating arguments. 4. Speed is fine as long as it is appropriate, is accompanied by reasonable clarity, and does not ignore the paradigm of another judge on the panel. Blippy (shallow) argumentation is an abuse of the leeway I give you. Speed should enhance the breadth and depth of argumentation, not destroy it. 5. To me, speaker points are a way for me to evaluate your performance in the grand scheme of debate. Which is to say, I've seen a lot of debate and the way I assign speaker points is a way for me to rank you in accord with everything else I've seen. Consequently, my scale is usually 25-30 with 27 being the average. Anytime I have to do something for you (because you didn’t do it yourself) your speaker points will go down. Don’t expect a 30 from me unless you do something very special - I have not given a 30 since 2009 I think. That said, 29+ is not an impossible threshold to cross. 6. If you want to make theory arguments do it well and deploy those arguments strategically or don’t do them at all. Failure to do so will hurt your speaker points and invite a post-round lecture. I generally want to see a real abuse story (rather than potential). Also on theory, RVIs are a hard sell for me as I do believe they attempt to justify (for the most part) 'vote for me for doing something right'. Would require a lot to convince me otherwise. 7. Weigh your arguments. You never know how I will weigh arguments on your behalf. 8. I will evaluate arguments in whatever order I am told. If nobody tells me to evaluate an argument separate from the standard I’ll use the standard I think is winning to evaluate the round (I would love it for you two to agree on a standard as I think that produces the best debates). If there are multiple pre-standard reasons to vote I need to know what order to evaluate them in. If you don’t do that for me I’ll do it for myself. 9. I will say "loud," "clear," and/or "slow" as I deem appropriate. If my requests are not heeded your arguments may not be flowed (well) and your speaks will suffer.

Finally, in the spirit of adopting what I think are best practices, I'm borrowing the following from Chris Theis's paradigm: Arguments that I will not vote for
 * An argument that has no normative implications, except in situations where the debater develops and wins an argument that changes my default assumptions.
 * A strategy that attempts to wash the debate on purpose in order to trigger permissibility/presumption.
 * A contingent framework/advocacy that is "triggered" in a later speech.

Arguments/Practices I will immediately drop you for
 * Any argument that concludes that every action is permissible
 * Any argument that creates a hostile environment for either myself, the other debater, or anyone who is watching the debate.
 * Any argument that explicitly argues that something that we all agree is awful (genocide, rape, etc) is actually a good thing. This could either be an advocacy or a framework THAT THE DEBATER AGREES says horrible things are ok. If the other debater wins an argument that your framework justifies something horrible, but it is contested, then it may count as a reason to not accept your framework, but I will not drop you for it.

Please ask questions to fill in anything I failed to cover here. Also always feel free to email me questions about my judging philosophy: danmeyers@gmail.com