Spurlin,+Jordan

I debated at Desert Vista for three years in high school, including a fair amount of national debate during my senior year. I currently coach LD at Desert Vista.

I'm fine with pretty much anything you want to do in the round, as long as you adequately explain what your arguments are, and why you should be winning the round because of those arguments. This means that you should be explaining how your arguments interact with your opponent's, and you should provide impact calculus to clarify why I should prefer your arguments.

I generally prefer fast debates, and can keep up with most speeds. If you do go too fast for me to catch everything, I'll say slow so that you know I'm missing your arguments. If you're speaking quickly, you absolutely have to be clear so that your words are understandable. If you're not clear enough, I'll say clear, and you should either become more articulate or slow down to a speed where it's possible to understand you.

As I mentioned, you can run whatever you want. It's fine if you don't have a value or criterion, as long as you explain why you should be winning. Obviously, if your opponent brings up a standard in their speech that precludes your arguments, you should address that standard. I'm fine with plans, but equally open to theory arguments saying that plans are bad. Critical arguments are also fine, but you should make sure that you actually have warrants in your case, and you really should provide an alternative to the thing you're critiquing. As with other arguments, you need to explain why the kritik wins you the round.

I don't make many assumptions, so be sure to explain why your impacts are actually bad things. On the other side of this, feel free to make impact turns that might seem offensive to the general public. I'll buy anything as long as you're winning the argument.

I'm not inclined to intervene against theory arguments, but if you run stupid theory just for the sake of running theory, you'll probably lose some speaker points. However, I'll still evaluate whatever is presented in round. Be sure to clarify how your theory shell functions, and make sure that your voter actually explains why I should vote for you, not just that fairness or education is important. When people run theory, I assume that it is operating under reasonability until someone says otherwise, but I don't have a strong preference for either reasonability or competing interpretations. Also, while I don't have a threshold for automatically rejecting theory, don't feel that you need to spend a lot of time answer an obviously unnecessary theory shell. If the theory arguments are bad, and you are able to dismiss them quickly and provide a better counter interpretation, I won't assume that you're losing the theory argument just because you didn't waste a bunch of time over-covering it.

Some other things: I assume that cross examination is binding unless someone tells me otherwise. I assume that if someone has a standard, the only arguments that matter in the round are those that link to the standard, unless someone tells me otherwise. If your opponent asks for something you've read, you should let them see it. I'm fine with flex prep.

In general, feel free to run whatever you like. If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them before the round.