Abel,+Alex

November 2010

My name is Alex Abel. I debated for four years in high school at Boise High School in Boise, Idaho. I am a current junior at NYU where I debate.

I am very flow oriented and try to intervene as little as possible. I am willing to depart from evaluating the round through dropped arguments and flow evaluation, but that should be impacted and developed by the debaters. I default to the offense/defense paradigm when evaluating debates. I feel like I am usually pinned as a "kritikal" debater. I am open to all forms of debate and appreciate a performance debate just as much as a politics throw down.

I appreciate impact calculus and the comparison of impacts. Contextualizing the debate will help you gain my ballot.

Cards-If you want me to evaluate your evidence you Affirmative's must have clear extension of the evidence by author and preferably date as well in the 1AR AND the 2AR. Negative's must do the same thing from the block to the 2NR. I will not read cards after round that were not explicitly extended by author is the bottom line.

Topicality/Theory/Framework-I tend to start the evaluation of the debate from this point. I am open to debate and impact calculus on this top level of the debate. I am willing to pull the trigger on theory and topicality. On the other side of the equation, if you are a kritikal/performance team, I am willing to evaluate impacts on framework/topicality/theory. I default to competing interpretations in all of these debates unless you provide an argument for me not to.

Counterplans-I tend to err negative on a lot of theoretical counterplan objections such as (dispo, PICs, and condo), but I will vote on these issues with an in round abuse story and good impact calculus on theory. Affirmatives will have to strategically invest time for me to vote on counterplan theory. I am more prone to pull the trigger for the affirmative on consult counterplan and procedural counteprlans like delay counterplans theory. I tend to think that more than one counterplan and one kritik is pushing the limits on topicality and could be persuaded by smart affirmative's to vote on conditionality bad.

Kritik-I do not have a problem with them. Specific link analysis will help you earn my ballot. I despise overviews that are over 90 seconds. I think that the alternative must be explained for me to vote for the criticism. If there is no a criticism, the negative should justify their lack of a solvency advocate for explain why the status quo solves. I am comfortable with a majority of the kritikal literature but you should know I have never run Lacan nor Heidegger and tend to need more explanation of the link/alternative/perm interaction for you to earn my ballot. I have voted for these criticisms though.

Bottom line-I will try and intervene as least as possible. The only "rules" that I will enforce are speech times.