Burdette,+Zachary

I debated for St. Mark's and (briefly) for Georgetown. I am currently a grad student.

Debate's chief value is to teach students how to research and argue in a way that is useful after they leave the activity. My decisions tend to reward debaters with well-researched strategies who know a lot about the topic and directly engage the other team's arguments.

The "tech vs. truth" distinction in debate is somewhat odd. I obviously don't like it when debaters make arguments that are a figment of the community's imagination that sidestep clash and facilitate lazy thinking and research (e.g., process counterplans without solvency advocates). At the same time, a key part of debate is students learning how to communicate clearly why arguments are dumb. Smart analytical arguments are an underutilized tool for doing so, and often can be more impactful than reading evidence.

Based on the above criteria, I generally think theory and topicality are crutches that enable lazy debating and inhibit more productive learning. There are obviously exceptions for both. If the affirmative is clearly not topical (including not reading a plan), then topicality is an extremely useful tool. I'm also often surprised that teams will read the most contrived topicality interpretations imaginable but don't read T substantial versus minuscule affs. For theory, the presence/absence of a solvency advocate is the default standard I use to evaluate the legitimacy of a CP. If it’s in the literature, you should be prepared to debate it. If it's consult NATO and they don't have a solvency advocate in the context of the aff, it's a waste of everyone's time--but you still have to explain why (either substantively or theoretically).

Policy vs. K: Specificity matters more than anything else. There are two kinds of specificity I care about. First, that the debate is actually about the topic. I don't see a meaningful distinction between whether the impacts are policy or critical as long as the team defends the desirability of a topical plan. Second, negative arguments need to respond to the aff. They should not be something you can recycle word-for-word in every neg debate. If you know in advance your 2NRs will likely be a generic process cp, aspec, cap bad, baudrillard, etc. then you should just go ahead and strike me for both of our sakes.

Because debate is a communication activity, I need to understand what you are saying. When you are speaking, I should understand the text of the evidence as well as the tag. To reward debaters who communicate well and punish those who do not, I won't read evidence after the debate if it was incomprehensibly delivered.

Excessive arrogance, rudeness, or personal attacks are unacceptable.