Page,+Joel

My judging philosophy: I view my role differently as a judge of college and high school debate. I am willing to assume that everybody understands their own evidence and blocks in college debate, and I am willing to draw warrants out of evidence even if the debaters never makes reference to them. College debate is essentially a game, and I will consider all of the information before me that has been extended into the last rebuttals, from whatever source. High school is different animal, and I think my role is something of an educator. My heaviest focus will be on the warrants that are explained by the debaters so as to demonstrate an understanding of the argument. I wont look for an answer to an analytic argument in a piece of evidence, even if the evidence seems pretty clearly responsive -- you have to draw the warrants out and engage the arguments that are made by your opponents. If you tell me that evidence, or a pre-written theory or tag, says X, when it in fact says Y, I wont give you the benefit of having said Y. I vote on theory more than I'd like to, and am constantly amazed that no one, when confronted with an argument that could independently cost them the round, doesnt come up with at least one punishment for themselves that would be more fair than losing the round (i.e. if we have abused fiat, give the aff an intrinsicness perm, if we have suggested an intrinsicness perm, give the neg a chance to add provisions to their counterplan, if there is a time skew, dont flow the last thirty seconds of the speech).

Some important logistical points: -- Its probably smart to slow down just a tad on T, theory, and most K's as well if you dont want gaps in my flow. Disads, counterplans, and case arguments can proceed at whatever speed you like. -- I am likely to be persauded that new DA's, T violations, and K's (or like 4 minutes of case) dont belong in the 2NC unless the debate has changed in the 2AC in a way the negative couldnt predict. But if you think you can persuade me otherwise, or just beat the other team on it, knock yourself out. -- I will happily entertain challenges to any convention in debate except the following: 1) speech times, 2) a total of one win and one loss in each round 3) prohibitions on new arguments in the 2AR unless it is set up prior to the 2AR. That leaves an awful lot of room to attack what is ordinarily taken for granted -- I will listen with a perfectly open mind if you want to argue that speed is bad, that the extent of evidence mustered on a position doesnt tell us much about whether it is true, or that something about the way that impact scenarios are constructed in debate renders them poor predictors of the future. That said, I will generally assume that: 1) new arguments in the rebuttals are to be ignored if (but only if) the other team flags them as new, 2) dropped arguments are considered true unless they are stone cold idiotic or grotesquely offensive.

Background: I am unaffiliated. I debated every year in high school and college. My reputation is probably still critiquey because that was my college style, but it doesnt mean that I am unwilling to listen to arguments in either framework, nor that I am unwilling to vote for a defense of policy-making as a framework. Indeed, while I agree that we might get some value out of debating something other than the consequences of a plan that will never be enacted, I am nonetheless sympathetic to complaints that a lot of critiques are deliberately vague. What I would really like to hear is a clear description of what it is that I am supposed to be evaluating or comparing if not the consequences of a plan: the value or consequences of an intellectual movement? the value or consequences of a performance or discourse? a suggested course of social action to be taken by ourselves as individuals in a political world? In other words, I would like you to try to answer this question: if the aff isn't a plan, what is it? The idea of a plan? The ideas that would lead someone to suggest the plan? Something else? I think that a lot of frustration in these debates comes from a failure to answer these questions -- how and why, for example, would I ever compare the consequences of the govt enacting a plan to an alternative of questioning the intellectual movements that inform our policy discourse? An alternative of having everyone question colonialism might be better or worse than the govt giving services to refugees, but they are really undertaken in totally different worlds. What would be more valuable would be to ask whether someone invested in a project of questioning colonialism would go around telling people that the govt should give services to refugees -- thats a comparison of like objects. Anyhoo, your K and performance won't scare me, but spend some time thinking about what you think debate is supposed to compare if you are going there.

Also. I voted on "birds" once -- an argument that Castro was sending diseased birds into the US as WMDs. It was the nineties. I was young. Everyone was doing it. Well, not everyone, like, for instance, not the other two judges on the panel. But me.

Be nice. Have fun. For serious.