Schnide,+Joey

Couple quick Emory updates for anyone who procrastinated on their prefs like I did -

I haven't judged a ton this year. That means that I'm not super in tune with whatever the really popular arguments are this year (so like if there's a cool new K or theory voter or framework or something I probably haven't seen it yet). I'm still fine with whatever, but I probably have a slightly higher bar for what I consider a sufficient explanation than a first year out.

I don't like the thing people are doing now where they just mumble incoherently through cards because they know the judge is on the email chain and can just read along with the speech doc. Still put me on the email chain I guess (saves me time at the end of the round and sometimes I miss author names), but please be clear. I don't really want to spend your prep time going back through the speech doc to figure out what you just said. I'll say clear a couple times, and then I'll just give you this super confused look that will probably last until you start being more clear. Or until my face gets tired.

Hi! I'm Joey. I debated for three years at Evanston Township HS on both locally in Illinois and on the national circuit. I went to the TOC as a senior (2014-2015) and worked at VBI the last three summers. Now I coach for Thomas Jefferson HS and Evanston.

I'm a person, and people don't make perfect judges. I'm fine with speed, but that doesn't mean I automatically understand everything you say, especially if you aren't clear and don't do a good job making distinctions between arguments. I'll never consciously intervene (except when you say something that prevents the debate round from being a safe space for everyone involved), but sometimes I might not understand something the exact way you want me to or think that an argument has an implication that it doesn't. I say I'm equally willing to vote on pretty much anything, but as a person I have biases and beliefs about debate, and those probably influence my decisions on some level. The easier you make my job, the lower the chance I'll make a stupid human mistake that upsets everyone in the room.

__**How I try to make decisions**__

I vote based on whoever wins offense linking back to some standard for impacting arguments. It doesn't have to be an ethical framework. If you want to pull out your role of the ballot or a fairness voter or maybe even a super secret purple voter, I'm fine with that. Regardless of the evaluative mechanism, you have to make sure you explain why it comes first and what it means for something to link back to it. If you don't do that work, then there's gonna be some degree of guesswork on my part about what offense links to the framework/evaluative mechanism and I'm assuming you don't really want that to happen. It's also really important that rebuttals crystalize the round. That means explaining what layers come first and what the most important offense on each layer is. I'm learning that there's a really fine line between trying to make sense of a messy round and intervention, and making the round as clear as possible helps me stay on the right side of that line.

I won't vote on any argument I don't understand at the end of the round. If you get up and read Deleuze and Guattari and you're just like "The line of flight connects me to the ballot", I'm not going to be like "mmm, yes, flight lines". I have no problem with you reading something weird or complex, but please make sure you take the time to explain it in rebuttal (or even better, clearly explain it in case). If you don't, I have no problem admitting that I have no idea what a line of flight is and dropping you.

I also won't vote on arguments that I don't flow in the first speech. If you read an AC with 30 theory spikes, and then they drop spike 10b and you extend it and are like "this is GAME OVER" but I didn't flow spike 10b because it took you literally 1.2 seconds to read, I'm not gonna pretend that I know what you're talking about. Making well warranted arguments is probably one of the best ways to get my ballot.


 * Slow down when you read theory interps, plan/counterplan texts, K alts, and any other time the exact wording of what you're saying matters.** It won't take you that much longer and I will know what you are talking about/advocating for, which is probably really important.

__**Here are things I think**__

I'll try my best not to let these things influence my decision (cause intervention is actually the worst thing), but if you're debating in front of me it's probably important for you to know what I do and don't like.


 * Tricks** are not my favorite thing. They're actually probably a lot closer to my least favorite thing. I think that tricky debate is pedagogically bankrupt (for reasons I won't get into here), annoying, and really hard to follow. Because of this, my threshold for responses to dumb tricky arguments isn't very high.


 * Theory** has a very important purpose in checking strategies that are abusive and preclude meaningful clash and discussion. If a case is abusive enough to prevent a substantive debate, then theory is almost certainly the correct response. Conversely, I really don't like it when theory is run as a strategy. Other than the obvious pedagogical objections, I just think it's really boring. Like, I don't really care that your opponent's solvency advocate didn't explicitly say "I advocate for X" or that you think that their ethical framework robbed you of a little bit of "philosophical education". The tl;dr here is that I really like theory when there's real abuse, and I really don't like theory when there isn't. That's certainly a little bit arbitrary and based on what I intuitively think counts as real abuse. Because this is a little bit arbitrary, I won't gut check frivolous theory (unless one debater tells me to and wins the argument that it's good for me to gut check), nor will I attempt to use low speaks as a way of punishing debaters who read theory shells that I don't agree with.

I think that every affirmative has the burden of **advocating** for something and explaining why that advocacy deserves my ballot. If you read an aff that comes down to "vote for me because I said that bad things are bad", I won't be happy and I will be much more sympathetic to topicality arguments than I would be if the affirmative presents a clear method for fixing whatever problem it establishes.


 * Framework debate** is a lost art. A good framework debate will almost certainly result in me giving you very high speaks. Good framework debate involves lots of comparison and explanation. Doing those things will make it easier for me to evaluate the round.

If you trivialize issues of structural oppression like racism/sexism/homophobia/ect, I'll drop you on face. Don't do it. End of story.

__**Speaker Points**__ I'm not sure how to define speaker points other than by saying that they're a judge rating how good they thought you were based on one round. You'll get good speaks from me if you do good debate; if you're efficient, clear, make good strategic decisions, weigh, ect.

If you're a jerk, I'll probably give you lower speaks. Being mean doesn't put you any farther ahead on the flow. It just makes you opponent feel bad about themselves and makes you look like a bully.