Ivens-Duran,+Ellen

I debated LD for four years in high school, then judged intermittently during college

Paradigm: (in which I borrow heavily from the spirit of Dan Meyers' paradigm): 1. PLEASE WEIGH. I know you think the round breaks down simply, but oftentimes the 2A and 2N conspire to give a muddled ballot story with minimal clash and maximum potential for judge intervention. If you do not want me to intervene, please clearly weigh the arguments in the round, tell me which order to evaluate them, and give me a nice, clean ballot story. 2. Speed is fine, clearly, but you should not spread to spread, you should spread because you have too many good arguments to fit into speech time if speaking at a normal pace. Spreading does not warrant blippy args, in fact it should diminish them. 3. Speaking of blippy args, I will be much more likely to give you at least high speaks if not the round if you make actual extensions. I mean taking 10 seconds to extend the claim and warrant of a card. Conversely, I do not look kindly on people who say "you can literally just extend my whole case." That is not an extension. 4. I am not the judge to run mountains of frivolous, strategic theory in front of. I do not find potential abuse stories compelling. I will most likely not drop the debater, unless there is serious in-round abuse. Often, theory is used as a cop-out instead of what it is meant to be: a chance to check in-round abuse. And no, I do not buy the argument that theory cannot be abusive. 5. Please do not spend 5 minutes flashing speech docs. This is an abhorrent practice that has come into practice while I've been away from the debate world and I find it extremely irritating. When you end prep, you should be ready to speak. If you need 30 seconds to send an email, fine, but more than that and I am tempted to take it out of your prep. 6. Mostly, have fun! Read interesting arguments, think of creative rebuttals, enjoy yourselves.