Lachewitz,+Joshua

Background: After four years of high school debate, I debated at several tournaments in college due to limited funding (2006-2009). I did a little bit of work for Hopkins and Binghamton over the following two years, judging a handful of tournaments thereafter. 3/4 will be my first tournament on the high school topic for 2016-2017. Please introduce acronyms and jargon before relying on them; speed will be fine, but please make sure that your tags are very clear.

General: I expect that I will be given a question and/or answer that will inform what I am doing with the ballot. I am sort of an anachronism in a double sense:

1) My default paradigm is hypothesis testing—in the sense that I will be interpreting your 'answer' as if it is to a tacit question of the form “What is to be done with/to/... the resolution?”. That said, I am quick to throw that out as I've seen very few hypothesis testing debates executed adeptly.

2) I have ever growing sympathies for the presence of both non-traditional argumentation and the novel debates on debate more specifically (which I find to be interesting and necessary for the longevity of the activity).

With that said, there are no arguments that I won't listen to nor arguments that will be a sure-fire ballot (my odd mix of leanings make something like “Topical Cps are Illegit” an argument I could potentially vote for, but in all likelihood it isn't the best argument you could be making).

Be clear: while I'd consider myself capable of listening to anything, going the whole round without mentioning the resolution at some point (if only to disavow it) is probably a bad idea as I will likely be attempting to locate what you are doing within some resolutional nexus to think through any theoretical or discursive claims you are making.

Particulars:

Theory:

T- My hypothesis testing leanings make me dislike most topicality debates as they end up being about how to set arbitrary parameters on the resolution rather than how to render it intelligible. Deciding between competing interpretations to me is often like deciding whether I like Coke or Pepsi when I don’t like soda. If the debate does come down to competing interpretations, it makes it a lot easier for me when you enunciate clear disadvantages to the other teams interpretation particularly for the negative (and don't leave me deciding between depth or breadth when neither choice will intuitively carry weight for me given its tenuous relationship to sketching out the contours of the resolution). In these situations (where both teams are already affirming the spirit of parametrics), I also find it persuasive when the affirmative can make a permutation and elucidate the kind of education that such an interpretation allows for more globally.

Everything else- I have a slightly higher threshold for voting on theory. With that said, you should not expect me to take anything for granted. Some of the time, I think theory is essential: I do attempt to listen to cross-examination carefully and if your opponent's strategy is skewed based on poor answers to questions (ex: pointing to something as an alt text, but later clarifying that it is some subset of that or something different), I'm going to feel like you are wasting my—just as much as your opponent's—time. NOTE: I don’t see a structural difference between theory and topicality. Formulating an interpretation will bring greater clarity to most of your theory positions.

Framework- Be consistent. In a round with many subsidiary issues, I want to see that your responses elsewhere are in line with your framework (and don't tacitly revolve around acceptance of the other team's—or invoke some other framework—for evaluation). Let me know what's going on with your framework (the implications, benefits, etc. it has for what we are doing in the round or the activity in general) and how that interacts with the other team's framework / performance / positions). If you can point out inconsistencies throughout the debate in the other team's discourse vis-a-vis their own framework or show your framework to be inclusive of the other, this will go a long way for me -- even if this amounts to nothing more than suggesting yours is open: that your framework will not be endangered, but strengthened from a continual questioning of framework. I have a lower threshold for education arguments than ground / fairness / etc.

Disad(/CP) Important note: Tell me a story that is going to be as clear as the affirmative's case. Take nothing for granted. Same goes for counterplans: since I will likely know nothing about your literature specific PICs, I need to see an impact that isn't just a buzzword. Iif it’s nuclear war, tell me every step of how we get there; if its terrorism, tell me what that means. Telling me how these things interact with the affirmative's case (magnitude, probable outcomes, and particularly—with time-frame arguments—tell me in the context of this vision why it turns case if it does) is a really good thing. I think that the aff can garner terminal defense on the link and uniqueness level.

K's: More comfortable here than most anywhere else. Tell me a good story about how we get from case to the implications (and why that should give me pause—how it outweighs, etc.), and then tell me a better story about why the alternative (or some sort of answer/reframing of "What is to be done?") is the way to go. This doesn’t mean just stacking together cards in the overview of the 2NC. I think the moment you start to suspend the roleplaying game and make the theatre of debate into something more open, I in some sense become less of a judge and more of an active conduit in the round. I will have no problem calling for evidence (especially if both teams are doing a bad job unpacking it... if only you are doing a bad job, I will probably call for whatever seems most significant instead of trying to create a constellation of arguments between your cards and speeches that the other side did not have adequate opportunity to respond to in its ill-spoken form). I will have no problem having the ballot ride on my personal disposition if I'm swayed to do so. This could potentially be helpful to you (as I at least pretend to think of myself as well read in much contemporary philosophy after trading my parent's home equity for my undergraduate education), but could also be potentially damning. Please don't make a billion permutations unless there is some 'grand' reason for it. This 'grand' reason should probably be before or after your list of permutations and not in the 1AR (since it probably isn't so 'grand', or is really cheap, if it is there-- though there could be some 'grand' reason for its placement). This is also one place where my sympathies for examining the resolution and what remains the same across resolutions is (potentially) particularly important: Though I can only foresee someone using this argument for the potential for a ballot with a really funny story, the closest thing to an argument that I will not listen to is “Resolutional/Generic K's are Bad”... You will have a hard time convincing me that “this links to the resolution/every resolution” is a problem and not additional reason to vote for the negative.

Performance: Be internally consistent and express something to me that I can become comfortable with without having to have it spoon fed to me later in your last speech as some sacrificial return to a more traditional style of debate. That's always felt disingenuous to me. Example: If the nature of your performance lends itself to answering the other team with complete silence, don't give me a speech about silence—gesture, leave the room, make a minimal remark about how they may speak again (as it may not be obvious). [Another example, if the performance would lend itself to me tearing up the ballot, tell me to tear up the ballot... don't pretend that there is some justification for an aff/neg ballot behind what you're doing {even if eventually the tab room will require a decision}]. Let your performance argue for itself, rather than making arguments about your performance. If you don't, it shows me that 1) you are at bottom more interested in the ballot than crafting something interesting and/or 2) that you don't trust me or the alternative signification of your affirmative (if you think it needs to be explained in typical debate-speak, you've already reduced your performance to a sort of secondary status-- like an illustration in a children's book). I like none of those things. I suppose what I am saying is that I tend to expect a performance not only to announce its necessity over and against the tradition of the activity and to engender different (and perhaps more lofty) questions, but also to remain faithful to the difference that it establishes.

Speaker point bonuses: - Intellectual bravery - Collapsing in the 2NR/2AR

Speaker point drops: - Ad hominem - Relying solely on buzzwords