Gosain,+Rahul

I debated for 4 years for Scarsdale High School and graduated in 2015.

Debate is your activity not mine, which means that I’ll try to avoid injecting my personal biases into my evaluation of arguments. If you’re ahead, even by just a little bit, on the side if an issue I’m not inclined towards, I’ll vote for you. This means that I’m not committed to a particular vision of what "noninterventionist" norms are; I’ll attempt to use the paradigmatic preferences that debaters assume in the round.

The preferences below are for situations in which debaters' assumptions are unclear or there are no arguments resolving a clear disagreement. They are (unless specifically noted) entirely up for debate. In general, I hope to evaluate rounds similarly to Tom Evnen or Mark Gorthey. Here are some basics:
 * I default to truth testing.
 * I default to competing interps, but mean that merely in the sense that defense is not sufficient to win a theory debate. If you have a different understanding, explain how your warrants for the paradigm justify the conclusion you want them to.
 * Theory is drop the argument, topicality is drop the debater.
 * I have an extremely low threshold for extensions of conceded arguments, but I would like some mention of the argument in every speech. The exception is conceded paradigm issues (drop the debater, competing interps, aff gets perms in method debates, etc),.
 * No new 2AR RVIs. This is a hard requirement. I don’t see a way to evaluate these debates in a wholly noninterventionist way, so I’d prefer to minimize the direct ballot implications of new 2AR arguments.

I assign speaks mainly based on strategy and argument quality.
 * I'll say slow and clear as much as necessary - if you're making an effort to adapt, I won't lower speaks, and I will be especially conscious about not penalizing debaters with a speech impediment. However, if I don't hear an argument because of a lack of clarity, I won't vote on it.
 * I won’t hesitate to lower speaks for rude post-round behavior like exaggerated expressions of confusion or loudly dropping objects. I believe that post-round discussion is valuable so this deliberately doesn’t apply to questions from the debaters or others who watched the round.