sharp,+jon

Judging philosophy: I have had a couple of these over the years and they generally boil down to the suggestion offered once by Fat Tony: "Follow yer heart." The best debates i hear are the ones in which all of the debaters make the arguments they want to make in the ways that they wish.

Unfortunately, this means that the majority of the debates that i get to hear are of the "clash of civilizations" variety. Uh...fantastic. With this information, you should do what you will; and, i say this knowing that it may well prompt a sort of "Right Flight" in which the policy teams that are still willing to pref me in the age of MPJ abandon ship. More the pity. While i try to maintain the position that the debaters should be the ones who decide what the debate will be about and how it will be conducted, it cannot be underestimated that my entire debate career expired before the advent of framework or floating PICs or performance or ASPEC or social location debates or multiple conditional alternatives. Now, i'm not saying that these are negative outcomes. Anyone who knows me knows that my love for the Activity is at the center of my being. What i am saying is that my love for the game was shaped by the debates that i remember as a debater and the vast majority of those involved debating the merits of the case and whether or not the plan was net dis/advantageous.

Having said that, there are a couple of practical matters:

1 - i am addicted to the flow - i will try and write down (yes, write down, which means that if you want to divide up particular parts of the flow you gotta remember that i cannot just insert cells wherever i please so try and keep it together or it is gonna be difficult to avoid flow-chaos) as much of what you say as i can and my judging will be guided by this after the debate. This seems to hold true even if the debate is not one in which the flow is particularly important to one or both sides.

2 - i try and pay particular attention to the evidence when flowing and i am committed to the (increasingly outdated) position that this is an oral activity, which means i do not call for cards just cause you read them. Your evidence will only end up in my hands if there is clash over what the card actually says or if i failed to get the substance of said evidence. If you would like me to know what your evidence says, you should be clear when you read it, as your lack of clarity is not a persuasive reason for me to give you an advantage by fondling your cards after the round.

3 - MPJ critically facilitates the ideological divide that currently operates throughout the activity.

4 - People go too fast when they are reading detailed substructured theory blocks - and they do the same thing when they are reading complicated, excessively pithy kritik rants - having blocks or overviews should produce a wall of ink, not a wall of sound.

5 - Who ever told you that it was somehow helpful or more efficient not to say what the argument is called at the top of each new page in the 1NC or at the start of the 2AC when you launch into the first "answer"? That person should be universally booed each and every time they enter the room.

6 - We must love one another or die. Try and remember that nobody devotes themselves to the activity without some irreducible kernel of love for the game. If we cannot treat each other as if we have something basic and fundamental in common, then we have already lost.

Now that i have gotten that off my chest, here is a link to my favorite judge philosophy of all time. This one is a couple years old, but i think that it sums the whole deal up nicely. i hope it helps:

http://www.watutor.com/tournament/policy/policy/Policy%20Judges/Sharp,%20Jon%20--%20Policy.doc