Foster,+Eric

Hi! I debated LD for three years on the Palo Alto High School Speech and Debate Team in Palo Alto, CA. I graduated in 2016 and am now a student at Yale University in New Haven, CT, where I work as an assistant coach in the New Haven Urban Debate League. In high school, I competed mostly in non-circuit tournaments (judges who have never done debate themselves), though I do have some experience with technical/circuitish argumentation. Although this profile is here so that I am less of a mystery to you, you will probably not find many surprises: I believe that being as conventional and flexible as possible in my judging means that both debaters have a fair and equal shot at the ballot.

If I'm judging at a **non-circuit tournament** (for example, SCU), my preferences are very simple: treat me like a parent judge who knows how debate works and will flow the round. Talk slowly and clearly, make reasonable arguments, and use evidence to support your position. Make sure to tie your arguments to the value criterion (even your opponent's value criterion, if you decide to concede theirs, which is fine). Be confident but respectful. Have a good time! You don't need to do anything special to earn my vote, and I don't have any unusual preferences you might not expect in another judge. Most of the national circuit standards described below will not be relevant at a non-circuit tournament, but some sections that may interest you are crystallization, new in the 2, and value/value criterion debate.

If I'm judging at a **national circuit tournament** (for example, Western States), then judging becomes more complicated. I've written an extensive description of how I will evaluate national-circuit-related issues below.


 * __National Circuit Judging Preferences __**

You probably are reading this minutes before your round, so here is one sentence on some of the issues you may be interested in (alphabetical order):

**Crystallization**: Crystallization and weighing allow you to change what I’m thinking about when I make my decision, so definitely spend some time on them to increase your chances of winning. **Kritiks**: If you’re debating in front of me, it’s easier to win on a more standard position, but go ahead and run the K if that’s what you’re best at, and I’ll vote for you if you did the best job. **New in the 2**: If you bring up new arguments (new evidence is different) in the 2NR or 2AR, I will ignore them and not vote on them. **Offensive arguments**: Just don’t stereotype or offend certain types of people and you’re fine. **RVI’s**: No, I will never vote on an RVI. **Speaker points**: They measure whether or not you’re a good public speaker, nothing more. **Speed**: I’ll flow, __but don’t go too fast__ (spreading or anything >50% above conversational) because then I won’t understand you. **Theory**: Only use it if your opponent did something really bad. **Time**: If you accidentally go a second or two over, I’ll consider what you said, but beyond that, I’m going to ignore it and it will hurt your speaker points, so just sit down. **Value/Value Criterion debate:** Your choice; I won’t hold it against you if you concede the framework, but feel free to debate the framework if you want to.
 * Disclosure ** : Unless I have to, I’m not going to disclose who won.

Here is significantly more detailed information on each of those issues (alphabetical again). You shouldn’t bother reading the whole thing because it’s very, very long; instead, just read the parts that affect you (i.e. if you’re going to run a K, read the section on kritiks).

**Crystallization**: There are a lot of arguments on the flow. A good debater will recognize which are the best ones, which ones s/he has won, and thus which ones to make a big deal about at the end. You don’t have to spend the whole 2NR or 2AR on crystallization or weighing, but if you spend at least 90 seconds in the 2NR/a minute in the 2AR (maybe a little bit in the 1AR or even the 1NR as well) on weighing between different arguments and showing which are the most important, it will definitely influence my decision, and that’s probably good for you.

**Disclosure**: If I have to disclose, I’ll disclose, and if I can’t disclose, I won’t - that much should be obvious. If I have the choice, however, I probably will not disclose. The main reason is that you will have both made a lot of arguments over 40 minutes, and if I want to give the best decision, I need some time to look over the flow and think about your arguments. If I disclose, I have to make a decision before you leave the room, and I don’t think that’s as fair to you because it’s not the most well-informed decision I could be making. Also, nobody likes hearing they lost, and it’s especially bad when the person you lost to is right next to you and feeling happy that they won. I think it’s better to hear it when you’re with your coaches and other teammates than when you’re with the person who just beat you and the person who just voted you down (me). If you want me to disclose speaker points, I can tell you, but just because I give you 29 and your opponent 28 doesn’t mean I’m going to vote for you; I’m fine with low point wins.

**Kritiks**: When someone presents you with a resolution and asks you whether the resolution should be affirmed or negated, a response that is just a complaint about the resolution, a complaint about your opponent, or anything else that falls under the umbrella of kritiks is inherently less persuasive. The ballot, however, asks who did the better debating, not whether I want to affirm or negate, and that is why I will vote for your K if you do a great job debating that position. Just be warned that you really need to be better than your opponent to win if they’re answering the question posed and you’re just complaining about it, even in the interest of social justice, world happiness, or whatever you use to justify the K.

**New in the 2**: You can bring up new evidence in support of or in response to old arguments in any speech, but what you cannot do is make new arguments (including fundamentally new responses to old arguments that are basically new arguments in themselves) in the 2NR or 2AR. If you do this, I will ignore whatever the argument and/or evidence was and I will not vote on it, regardless of whether your opponent points it out or not. As I mentioned in the theory section, you can make sure that I ignore it by saying that your opponent brought up something new in the 2, but I will do my best to notice even if you say nothing. I will mention on the ballot if I threw out any evidence/arguments because of this.

**Offensive arguments**: Some judges make a really big deal about this, but I don’t, at least to a reasonable extent. Do I think slavery is wrong? Of course I do. But I don’t see why that’s a reason to vote you down if you advocate slavery: I probably have an opinion on whether the resolution’s good, but of course that’s completely out of bounds in terms of evaluating the round, and I don’t see how voting you down because I disagree with the affirmative/negative position is any different from voting you down because I think slavery is bad. Where I will draw the line is actively offending or stereotyping other people. If you show that slavery is the best way to the value criterion, that’s great, and you get my vote. But if your argument is racist, offensive, etc. in the process, I will vote for your opponent and give you the lowest number of speaker points I can. So don’t do that.

**RVI’s**: The short answer is no, I will not vote on RVI’s. If you run theory and I don’t buy it, I’ll probably just ignore it and you just wasted your time. But I will not use the fact that you did not win a theoretical argument as an excuse for voting for your opponent, because that is pretty nonsensical to me. RVI’s aren’t really a check on abusive theory because I will not vote on abusive theory anyway.

**Speaker points**: I award speaker points on your ability as a speaker - nothing else. If you stand up and say super convincingly and persuasively that 1 + 1 is 5 while your opponent incomprehensibly mutters that you don’t know how to do math, you will get 30 speaker points and a loss; your opponent will get 25 speaker points and a win. In short, arguments rarely affect speaker points (unless they’re really offensive; see above.)

**Speed/Flowing/Eye Contact:** I will flow the round, provided I can understand what you’re saying. If you want me to flow your arguments, you probably shouldn’t go much faster than 50% above conversational speed. If you spread, I’ll understand bits and pieces, but not enough to constitute something I can use to vote for you. If I can’t understand a reasonable proportion of what you’re saying, I’ll say “Clear!” loudly. Depending on the circumstances, I may do so again, but I know it’s really annoying to have someone yelling at you while you’re trying to give a speech, so I’m not going to do it often. If I put my pencil down and look up at you while you’re giving your speech, then I’m not flowing anymore because I can’t understand you, and that’s bad. If you make at least some effort at eye contact, you will realize if that happens and hopefully slow down. Note: as I alluded to in the speaker points section, your ability to make eye contact is evaluated in speaker points, not in whether you win or lose the round. But if I have no clue what you’re saying and you never look up so you don’t realize that, then I can’t vote for you because I don’t know what you said.

**Theory**: Theory was developed to combat really bad, dishonest things that debaters were doing, but its use has extended far beyond that in a way that undermines the purpose of debate. If you want my ballot, don’t walk into a round assuming you’re going to run theory, but do walk in knowing you have theory in your back pocket in case of emergency. If your opponent does something really abusive, go ahead and run theory on them, but if you’re looking to win on purely theoretical arguments, it’s very, very unlikely to work. Perhaps a good standard is this: nobody thinks about this very much anymore, but LD debate was modeled after the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Only run theory if you think the abuse is so bad that even Abraham Lincoln would agree with you. If you went up to Honest Abe and asked him whether he thought running a plan was abusive, I don’t think he would say it was. I will not vote on Plans Bad (or Must Run a Plan, for that matter) for the same reason - it’s just not worthy of theory. If you asked him whether he thought lying about evidence was abusive, he would probably say yes. Don’t stretch the metaphor to the extreme, but the point I’m trying to make is that you should save theory for really bad stuff. If you don’t run theory but I think your opponent has done something abusive, I will ask you both about it after the 2AR, and if I determine that s/he deserves to lose the round as a result, I will vote him/her down even if you never touched theory. Of course, if you want to make sure the issue comes to my attention and it’s really bad, use theory.

**Time**: Going over time is really annoying and unfair to your opponent. However, I realize that you are not looking at your timer every two seconds and the beep may catch you by surprise. Thus, I will take into consideration any argument you make within two seconds of the timer going off. This is not meant to allow you to make blippy arguments: if you make your entire argument in the last ten seconds of your speech, including the two seconds over, then by these rules I’ll consider it, but since it’s an undeveloped, blippy argument, I’m not going to vote on it anyway, so using the two seconds didn’t help you. Any decent argument will take a while to develop in your speech. The reason I give you the two seconds is that if it’s the 1AR and you’ve been making an argument since the 3:30 mark, but there was just one more word you needed to say to finish the argument, I’ll let you say that word after the timer goes off. Beyond two seconds, I will stop flowing, ignore everything that you said, and reduce your speaker points, since blatantly violating time limits is the mark of a bad speaker. In sum, plan that your time will be up a couple seconds before your timer goes off. If disaster strikes and there were a couple words you needed to say that possibly go a second or two over, say them. But beyond that, you’re much better off sitting down than saying more past the timer. If I threw out an argument because it was made after time, I will mention this on the ballot.

**Value/value criterion debate**: This is where I deviate a bit more from the “traditional judge” category. A value and value criterion help to evaluate the round, but I realize that trying to extract the confession out of your opponent that justice is better than morality is really slow and really annoying. If you get up in the NC and instantly concede your opponent’s framework, that’s completely fine, and I won’t hold that against you (or use it as a bonus for you, either). As long as you can show how your arguments reach the value criterion, I don’t care who came up with the value criterion in the first place. In fact, conceding the framework can reduce risk, because then you know how I’m going to evaluate the round. If you don’t, you have to show how your arguments lead to both value criteria because you don’t know which one I’m going to choose, and if there are two frameworks at the end of the debate, I will have to choose one against which to evaluate the arguments. If you had just conceded utilitarianism at the beginning, for example, you wouldn’t have had to worry about that. Of course, if you want to debate the value and value criterion, feel free to go ahead. If the debate comes down to the framework and you do a better job on that, I’m happy to vote for you over it. That will not hurt you, so long as you manage to reach the framework better than your opponent.

In sum: debate persuasively and bring me to your side. That’s all! Good luck, and have fun!