Daily,+Nicholas

I am a former Policy debater, and current Freshman at UH.

I defer wholly to the Tabula Rasa paradigm. I have no qualms about voting on any form of argument (including T's, theory, K's, or even inherency), so long as... 1-You win the argument and, 2-You give me a proper contextualization of how winning this argument wins you the round. E.g., "Inherency is a voter b/c of stock issues" won't get you my ballot. On a personal note, I think that many of the major issues with debate is that many teams try to conform to normal strategies to answering arguments. This applies more to theory and stock issues. I'd much prefer an interesting voter or standard than a very discursive and unexplained "education or fairness claim". Get creative with your standards and answers.

I don't evaluate whether or not an action made by aff or neg is abusive or not unless the other team brings it up. I don't believe it's my job as a judge to pre-decide what should or should not occur in a debate, I see each debate as an independent construction unto itself. Therefore if you make an abuse claim, make it structured and impacted. The only exception is if the 2AR reads new arguments, (because the neg can't stand up and call aff out). If this happens, I won't evaluate any of the new arguments, I will dock speaks, but it won't be an automatic loss.

Don't extend arguments as a singular entity ("extend the D/A"). The only exceptions would be dropped inherency, if all solvency is dropped one author/date (single reason you solve) is all I would need On Adv's I expect analysis on the impact claim even if it is dropped. If you don't extend a piece of evidence until two speeches later (was read in 1nc, not extended in 2nc/1nr but brought up again in 2nr)

Specific Arguments: First, I've always been more comfortable evaluating straight policy arguments because a good half of my debate experience excluded kritiks. This said, I am familiar with the most common K's (cap, neo-lib, security, colonialism, nietzsche, biopower, gendered/discourse, ableism etc.). The more obscure the K, the more work that you should do explaining it because I am certainly not as familiar as you will be with the literature. (Give me a good overview in the 2NC).

Second, I was a T/theory hack in high school so I will pull the trigger on T/theory. My expectations are listed below, 1-If you go for fairness you either have to have an AMAZING potential abuse shell, or a good source of in-round abuse. A major issue for teams going for T is that they don't set up the abuse story in the 1NC. If you're going for ASPEC, read politics/agent solvency takeouts. If you're reading Dev: "on the ocean" T, read a generic ecosystem damage D/A. 2-Slow down on T-standards, full speed on T and I'll miss a few. 3-If you go for T I want it to be 1 off in the 2NR, same goes for theory. You should only reference your other offcase in order to generate abuse stories for a fairness voter or to contextualize the lost education. Going for T and another argument undercuts the legitimacy of your T argument and usually results in under-coverage of standards/voters. I will evaluate all arguments you extend (if you do T in the 2NR and a K or D/A), I don't believe it's a strategic decision though.

I always evaluate the round in terms of offense/defense (unless a conceded framing issue says otherwise), so extending impacts into the final rebuttals is crucial to winning my ballot. If you're going fully on a stock issue, please frame this within this paradigm.

On a final note, I have never judged a performance debate or even seen one. Again, this does not make me unwilling to vote on it, but explaining it in terms of voters may be an uphill battle. So if you are going to perform, make your argument very clear.

Speaks, usually between 26.5-30.

25 if you're offensive.

If anything here is unclear ask me before the round. I don't want there to be any ambiguity in my paradigm and if you don't understand it I'll do a rewrite here on the wiki as well.