Powell,+Ed

I'm Ed Powell, a student at the University of Chicago. I debated policy for 4 years at Montgomery Bell Academy, with which I am affiliated for tournament-related intents and purposes. I have judged policy debate for 3 years, but have not judged any rounds on this year's topic. Here's what I like:

Overall: Explain your arguments. Explain why you win the round because of said arguments. "Cross-apply X" or "extend X" by itself is not an argument. Explain why X is still relevant/valid, even if it was dropped by the other team. Also, don't read too many offcase (4 or 5 is a good limit). Pick your guns and stick with 'em.

Topicality: I think it's a voter. Otherwise, I'm cool with pretty much anything you can say about it - just explain whatever you say. It gets tempting to throw out a bunch of one-liners on T; try not to do that. If you go for T and have a shitstorm of one-line arguments on the flow, I will probably end up voting on whether or not I think the plan is topical enough to debate about (if the aff does a reasonably good job of answering the important arguments), which generally goes aff. If you K T, tie it into your case somehow and make sure the impact on the round, not just the arg, is clear.

Other theory: Not too many preconceptions. I don't think much of anything's super-abusive but can definitely be convinced otherwise. Like T, explain your arguments. I don't want to hear (and probably won't vote on) your 15-point block on conditionality bad if each point takes 2 seconds to read. In other words, don't shitstorm. Framework arguments are cool. Explain them really well and I'll exclude pretty much anything.

K's: Encouraged. I was a K debater in high school, so I'm familiar with much of the lit. I'm not as familiar with the lit specific to this topic, so explain your topic/plan specific links especially well. I tend to think that the aff gets to weigh their policy impacts against the K impacts, so be specific about why that isn't true in this case. Please have an alternative other than "reject".

CP/DAs: Also encouraged, but try to make it imaginative. I'd much rather hear an advantage counterplan and something like a wage inflation DA than states & politics or any other super generic agent CP/DA combination. In general, I have a high threshold for politics DA's, so make it at least a little bit specific.