Benson,+Mackiel

Who am I? My name is Mackiel Benson, this is my first year competing in college policy debate for Weber University. I graduated in 2012 and during the time in between I coached for Hunter High School. When I was competing, I floated between participating in Policy Debate and Lincoln Douglas.

Big Picture: First; Case or K’s? I don’t have any particular disposition to either form of argumentation; I enjoy listening to both insofar as the arguments are of quality. I will admit I’m a bit of a ‘rebel’ at heart and like to listen to criticisms that speak to that. However, I am much better at understanding and evaluating case debate simply because I’ve had more experience with it. I would love to listen to any well put together criticism insofar as you put enough work in that you don’t expect a lot of judge intervention on my behalf or assume that I have extensive prior context to the argument you are presenting. Regardless of my skill set or background, I firmly believe that it is the job of the debater to present each argument based not on the assumed general knowledge of their audience, but on their own ability to present and push forward said argument.

Case; I’m interested in case-based arguments on this topic in particular. I’m currently listed as a geoscience major, but my passion has always been marine biology and the study of climate cycling/change. I’d love to hear well thought out and put together arguments regarding the subject. That does mean certain things however. Warming is happening, and it’s anthropogenic, and it’s most probably bad for people at least. That’s something it won’t be very hard to convince me of. Of course I won’t assume its truth, your arguments still need to be substantiated in round. I have a particular love for the deep sea and would really enjoy hearing some science affs on this topic. I’d love to hear about anything that has to do with speciation diversity, questions regarding recent discoveries of methane bubbling along the east coast, science affs about //Dendrogramma// would be cool. I love learning about Cnidaria, which are organisms like jellyfish, anemone, etc, or most deep sea creatures. Basically just run wild. Talk to me about sea snow and the effect climate change is having on algae and microbial populations in the ocean. Talk to me about thermal vents on the ocean floor filled with organisms that can withstand temperatures exceeding 300F. Should we extract fuels/minerals from the sea floor? Just how awful are fishing corporations for coral reefs? Are coral reefs an ecological keystone?

Counterplans; Run ‘em, run lots of them. I firmly believe that the negative has the right to multiple non-contradicting advocacies. If you want to read contradicting texts amongst your counterplans I think that’s fine. You should test the aff from every angle and as long as your net benefit scenarios don’t contradict, I have no problem with you running multiple **well explained** counterplans. Well explained is key because, as always, is need to understand the likelihood of your impact if I’m going to evaluate your impact calc at the end of the 2NR. It’s only for your critical alternatives where the ground gets a little sketchy for me and I’m much more likely to vote on some perf-con theory than listen to why you should have the ability to switch in and out of your ideological representations in round. Doesn’t mean I won’t vote on them, there’s not really anything that Ill REFUSE to vote on, but the general ideas I’m mentioning will make it an uphill battle for you.

DA’s; Please be specific. Please be specific. Please be specific. I don’t have a whole ton to say here. Know that I’m not a big fan of politics, and the reason why is that I probably evaluate probability over magnitude or timeframe in most instances. I am much more interested in the educational opportunities that clean, reliable, likely link stories can provide than discussing the magnitude of six separate nuclear extinction scenarios, the decline of our entire biozone, and the eradication of all life in the universe because someone thought it might be a good idea to search for Atlantis.

Criticisms; Similar to as I mentioned in the case section; there are certain things that it will not be difficult to convince me of. Things like structural oppression exist, and we should be able to talk about those things in the debate space, and racism and sexism and transphobia are things that deserve being discussed. At the same time, I really take seriously the ability for a critical team to deliver to me a very solid and tangible solvency mechanism. What do you do to solve for these large, very important issues. I need to understand your story inside and out by the end of the block or I will have a very difficult time voting for any type of criticism after the 2NR. I am of firm belief that real transformation doesn’t happen because of techy wins on a ballot record; rather, it is because debaters are grappling with truths and uncovering their validity in a public space. Yes, I am quite good and listening to very fast speeds and no you do not need to slow down for me, but you need to ensure that the language that you are using and the arguments you put forward are clearly labelled and delivered in a way that is understandable. If you start just ‘spouting words’ I may have a difficult time justifying voting for an extension of your link scenario filled with unintelligible jargon when the negative tells me that your particular forms of expressing your criticism is bad for debate because education. At the same time, know that I’ve read a lot of deep ecology literature. I’m very familiar with managerialism/anthro lit. That doesn’t mean just always go for anthro in front of me, it means that I like the literature but I’m not very fond of the way it is generally applied in the debate space because oftentimes the literature is taken very much out of context to make the alternative seem more stark and the solvency mechanism more efficient. I mean, that’s what happens with all arguments in debate most of the time, but heh, this stuff bothers me a bit in particular I suppose. I like a good environment K because to a certain extent I believe a lot of the arguments are true to an extent, but make sure it’s very specific and curtailed, not just a simple generic file. I am quite a fan of well put together fem identity or queer identity arguments. But that’s just a bias that exists inside of me because I happen to be a queer woman who very powerfully identifies with both social movements. When you hit teams running this argument; please don’t tell me that my suffering is good (Heidegger/Nietzsche) without talking about the specific context of individual people. You probably won’t win an argument like this unless you can, for example, win why I should allow women to be disproportionally represented in human trafficking circles being bought and sold like objects simply because we ought embrace suffering. Please contextualize your arguments. The debate space is a place for learning and gathering knowledge types that will be important and relevant to you outside of the debate space. Winning techy args about how abstractly suffering is probably something we should accept isn’t going to cut it. Also don’t tell me that I should tell a transgendered youth that their voice is not appreciated or welcome in the debate space because it doesn’t fit inside the box that the founders of debate (white, male, heterosexual, cis, wealthy) laid out for us. Instead, please tell me interesting ways in which their way of engaging with the system could be bettered. I’d much rather hear a counter criticism or counterplan to these sorts of affs.

Theory/Topicality/Framework; I really have a hard time voting for a theory scenario without an in round abuse scenario. You can go for potential abuse, but know that you’ll have to put a chunk of work on the arg. Also, same thing as will all of your arguments actually, but even more particularly here, I need a very, very clean story being delivered during the entire five minutes of your last rebuttal about this argument. Be very clear, be very clean. Thank you :) On Topicality, the resolution exists. I don’t care if you don’t want to affirm it, be sure you’re just ready to defend your reason for rejecting it. I’m not particularly invested in the idea of the debate space only being open to policy-based education. FW. Tell me why your particular model of debate is good and why theirs is bad. I’m persuaded by education-based impacts and deconstruction/reformative impacts. This is why if you’re running a criticism, me understanding your solvency mechanism is so important. I need to understand how you translate into positive change in the world, the framework is an apparatus through which I can understand and evaluate that mechanism. Tell me that I’m an educator, or a revolutionary, whatever. It doesn’t matter as long as you give me very good reasons why I should be.

Second is Evidence. I don’t call for evidence unless you tell me to. I am a firm non-believer of judge intervention in as many cases as possible. It is your debate, not mine. I’m not interested in showing off how intelligent I am or how harsh I can be, I’m interested in giving back to a community that has given a lot to me, and that means I expect you to present your arguments independent of my will/intervention. If I am told to call for evidence, I will have a very high standard for it. I will ask for all evidence relevant to that bit of clash and compare them to one another. I will choose the best piece and make my decision within the context of what was actually spoken aloud in the speech. I need to see clear warrants and stories that do not contradict from one piece of evidence to another. If your opponents have ‘bad’ evidence, be sure to call them out on it. If it’s under highlighted, that’s a reason for me to toss the card out of my evaluation. If you can highlight a relevant contradiction within the text, go for it. This is the nitty gritty part of debate that I really love and it goes for any type of debate; case, da, criticism, cp, etc. As for the quality of your author, if you can convince me that it doesn’t matter that your author is a news columnist for the salt lake tribune, then fine, I’ll evaluate that piece of evidence if the warrant is logical and strong enough, but it won’t beat out a more qualified author unless their evidence is contradictory or logically unsound. That mostly tends to happen because of bad highlighting.

Third is Prep/Speaking Issues I don’t count flashing as prep, but I’m one the brink of changing this standard and converting to a more harsh ‘prep stops when the flash drive leaves the computer’ type deal. I’m so done with debaters stopping prep, typing a bit, reading, and then eventually handing their flash over after they’ve essentially taken an extra minute of preparation time. For speaker points I’m fairly lenient. If you were able to give a full speech and didn’t cut it short, if you didn’t bombard me with blocks that don’t clash or completely miss your opponents arguments, and if you were generally pleasant to your partner and your opponent, you won’t get below a 26.5 If you did all of the above and managed to win a few arguments on the flow and/or were particularly charismatic, you’ll likely get somewhere around a 28. 29’s are given to individuals who work well as a team, seem very prepared, and are making arguments that they are personally passionate or interested in (or at least seem like it). 30’s are given to those who can impress me very much with their skill and/or knowledge base about a particular subject area.