Philips,+Amelia

Amelia K. Philips pronouns: she/her/hers things you can call me: amelia, mia, kit

experience/education: 3 years competing in high school (graduated in 2012), 4 years coaching thereafter, mostly local, a little bit of national. university of louisiana-lafayette '16 [b.a. - majors: polisci/history, minor: psych] penn state law '19 [j.d. candidate]

-=- contact: i haven't decided whether i want to set up an email inbox for this or something else however, if you use reddit at all, you're free to inbox me at [|/u/amelia_k]

please use this if you have questions at any time! i'm willing to answer questions in person, but if you need something answered ahead of time, it'll benefit me because i can put my thoughts on paper first, and it'll benefit everyone because it could potentially be something i make a general statement about here. ask away!

-=- this is probably going to be wordy, but i'm going to put things into broad containers so that you can kinda go where you need to quickly if you have a specific interest. also, ask me anything, anytime (unless i am clearly doing something that it would be rude to bother me doing, such as eating, coaching/giving critiques, crying, etc.) -=-

A. comfort, safety, and human interaction

i'm going to get on a soapbox for a minute. debate is an activity that, ideally, should be educational, competitive, inclusive, and safe. while my role as a judge doesn't let me enact broad changes, obviously, i do strive to make the in-round experience as positive a space as possible. 1. as a trans woman, i recognize the discomfort involved with being deadnamed, having the wrong pronouns used, and being misgendered. i also understand the need to be a chameleon, at times - because of family, school, or other pressures that prevent people from being public about themselves. to preface my next statement, i routinely go over my decisions and flows with debaters individually - i don't expect this to be applicable to rounds with other people in the room unless you are comfortable otherwise. if there's a name you prefer and pronouns you'd rather me use, let me know! i promise not to disclose the information to any degree that you would be uncomfortable with. should you be comfortable with disclosing this information in rounds, i will also enforce the same confidentiality agreement upon your opponent and any other parties in the room. 2. there are a couple of things that sort of bridge the gap between in-round argumentation and human conduct. the first i'd like to address is language. unless there is a very good reason for using them, slurs are a huge no-no. i understand if you wanna critique something where using slurs might be part of that, but simply using them to be edgy, funny, offensive, antagonistic, et cetera, will get your speaks torpedoed. the world is already a hostile enough place for marginalized individuals; as debaters who presumably understand the impacts of language, i expect you to be better. 3. following from the previous point, i do think that you should also have content warnings for material that should reasonably have content warnings. i understand debate broaches many serious topics, and that asking you to tag everything potentially sensitive would get theory run on me as a limits question, that doesn't excuse you from flagging things that should be obvious before exposing spectators, opponents, and judges to that material. 4. additionally, in a similar vein as the previous two statements, and bridging the gap again between in-round material and conduct, i'd simply like to quote my friend sean fahey. running "[h]ateful, 'substantive' arguments for the sake of strategy…" is something i most definitely do not want to see. to quote: "If you impact-turn oppression, I will impact-turn your record with my ballot." 5. aside from all that, generally don't be a bad person, please? that includes: don't cheat! stealing prep or misrepresenting the rules (or lack thereof) to a newer debater constitutes unfair behavior and i reserve the right to penalize you for such behavior. also related: don't roll over outmatched debaters! i'll talk about this more in the theory section, but the general feeling here is that if debate is to be educational, debaters don't learn anything from having 6 offs read against their local circuit aff. i know you want to win, but chill. i will reward being nice to outmatched debaters with better speaks. i will nuke your speaks if you are mean and spread them out of the round (i have done this and it caused the debater not to break at the tournament; this is not an empty threat.)

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B. B is for "Ballot, Role of the"

so, i used to have written-out different paradigms for different events. they weren't radically different, but even so, i don't think that's entirely necessary nowadays anyway. i've also been out of the game a while, so i'm not totally up on what's hip in the debate community nowadays. all i have is my experience and some recent thinking i did when i sat down to write this. my philosophy starts here: at the beginning of a round, the flow is empty and nobody has told me what to do with the ballot. your job is to tell me what to do with it, and why. this isn't anything new, really. i just found that "role of the ballot" language is generally confined to Ks, but i think it accurately encapsulates something that i think each debater should make clear in any given round.

sometimes this role of the ballot is implicit in the structure of the case. for instance, running a plan tells me (roughly) that to you, the role of the ballot is to reward the debater that better endorses or rejects a particular policy position, or proffers a better policy position. sometimes the role of the ballot needs to be explicit, as with kritiks that ask me to endorse a particular mindset or vote to enact change in the debate community. that being said, those implicit roles of the ballot often have to become explicit when challenged - "why are we roleplaying as policymakers," etc. at any rate, i want you to tell me what debate is, in the round. framework, in my view, doesn't start with framing the resolution, it starts with framing the ballot, the round, and in some cases the activity, holistically.

i don't have a particular preference for any sort of role of the ballot. i've been thinking about this a lot, though, because i think there are potentially two options that i'm faced with when framework debates break down - either the ballot means nothing, or the ballot has some sort of default (which runs into the problem of seeming preferential towards certain types of arguments.) part of me wants to err towards the "traditional" roles of like, LD and policy ballots given that role vs. a roughly equally badly-presented framework that seeks to shift into some type of less traditional position, because i feel like those positions often have to justify themselves against debate presumptions in the first place. this is still a problem i'm working through in my head; i'll update once my thoughts are clearer.

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C. theory

i will be upfront: my understanding of theory didn't really become robust at all until i had already graduated. now that i've been out of the game, my understanding of theory has deteriorated with its replacement with legal doctrines and episodes of only connect. so read all of this with that in mind.

i would prefer if you use theory to check abuse and not as pure strategy, but i am not opposed to strategic theory necessarily.

i have a weird relationship with disclosure theory because i went to a small school and i'm of a divided mind about how disclosure affects small schools. for me it kinda varies. like if the tournament requires disclosure, point out the rule to me. (even if i'm already aware of the rule, which i may be, you should still cite to it. ideally, everyone in a courtroom knows the federal rules of evidence, for example, but when you make an objection, you should still cite the rule.) additionally, i apply the same rule for outmatched debaters generally to theory specifically, and if you run disclosure theory against someone who's clearly fresh off their local circuit and just experiencing this stuff for the first time, i will be harder on you. there are legitimate reasons to want disclosure for all. there are also legitimate concerns with it, and there are also legitimate concerns with a small-school debater who isn't familiar with the norms of disclosure to lose a round because they weren't already integrated into certain parts of the activity.

i think a lot about whether i should be gut-checking theory. i can't remember a time i have, and the time i didn't it didn't matter, because the reason the person lost is because they spent time badly answering bad theory and so lost at the substantive level.

i think the moral of this story is i'm not theory-averse, but i'm not wise to all the theory stuff like the new kids on the block are.

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D. speaks, speakers, and speaking

i view speaks pretty conventionally, i guess. i don't know what conventions are anymore? but i think of them as a combination of speaking ability, decorum, and strategy. if you are a well-spoken, nice, funny, and strategically intelligent debater, you are perfectly capable of getting a 30. conversely, if you speak poorly, behave poorly, and debate poorly, your speaks will suffer.

i don't like to give lower than a 25 unless you have seriously done some reprehensible nonsense in my round. so 27.5 would be the sweet spot for average points between perfection and the cellar, provided you didn't call me the T-slur or do something else offensive, and you like, at least tried to debate the whole round. all i ask is that you do your best, and also be the best version of you, and you'll be okay.

as far as little things go, i would appreciate you maybe going slower than your top speed, if you're spreading. my ears are not trained like they used to be. you're free to sit down or stand or kneel or whatever you want to do to speak as well as you feel you can. one specific thing i would really like you to do is to break up the hum of spreading in particular ways. this is to help me get things on the flow. in particular, i would really appreciate taking a breath and slowing down for the following:

divisions in the case - "contention 1," etc.

tags for contentions and cards

authors and dates

i would really love if you delivered these at a conversational speed, and then spread the analytics and cards if you so choose. if i can get the big ticket items, i can always call for cards if i need to, which i don't always (it's mostly in cases where it's disputed what a card actually says.) i say this because i'm not used to flashing docs or being on email chains or anything. also from what i've witnessed debaters are notoriously slow at sending emails? but i'll totally consider it as an option, reading along with the speech doc is definitely something that would benefit me.

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E. an appendix about the law

so, for those of you who saw my vitals at the top, i am a law student. i want to talk about the law briefly because when i was a debater, i remember horror stories of lawyer judges penalizing debaters for having an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the law, even though they won the round on paper. i want to avoid this.

the law is complex, and i don't expect high school debaters to be experts; i expect them to do the best that they can. i will hold your legal claims to the same threshold i would hold other factual claims. if they are wildly wrong ("the sun is made of cheddar jalapeno cheetos brand snacks"), depending on the notoriety of the case itself, i may gut-check discard the argument. but if you make an honest mistake about an interpretation of case law (oversimplifying the holding of a case, et cetera) i'll be more generous. this is not an invitation to intentionally get whatever you can under the radar. it's a promise to you that i will not be an aggressively interventionist judge solely because of my chosen profession. in fact, i will probably take the opportunity to teach - if you're making bad claims about law, i'll talk about that in my oral critiques where possible.