Coates,+David

David Coates

Yrs coaching/judging--17 Rounds on education topic (as of 4/16): 64 Current affirmative winning percentage: .525 2017-18 rounds (across formats/sanctioning organizations/levels of competition as of 4/29): 110 Current affirmative winning percentage: .477 (There are some notes specifically about LD below and about public forum at the bottom of the page)
 * coat0018@umn.edu if you're doing an email chain (which I //highly// recommend). (I rarely read evidence after rounds, but I appreciate attempts to cut down on dead time).**


 * REALLY SHORT VERSION**


 * 1. The affirmative should defend the desirability of a topical action. The mere fact that the resolution doesn't facially encompass some issue you "feel" is more important than American education policy is not, on its own, a reason to vote for you. A corollary to this is that "T is exclusionary" responses should contain both external impacts and reasons those impacts outweigh the impacts asserted in the 1NC. "Topicality excludes our aff, and that's bad because it excludes our aff" is an exercise in circular illogic, and I'm honestly //shocked// at how many 2As think it's a sufficient argument. Similarly, "there's no topical version of our aff" sounds a lot like "we //absolutely, unequivocally, and unreasonably violate//" to me and //needs// //to be accompanied by __sub__////__stantial non-self-referential__ offense// to be treated as anything else.**
 * 2. Theoretical claims should be based on the resolution. Claims about "fairness" or "theoretical legitimacy" that aren't based on external referents written down somewhere are, by far, the //least-compelling "arguments" you can make.//**
 * 3. Links to substantive positions should be __commissive.__ Not talking about something is not a link. Not solving "the root cause" of something is half-baked case defense, not a link to any conceivable offensive argument.**
 * 4. Your language should be appropriate for an educational activity. __//You should not use profanity nor slurs nor derisive language addressed at your// //opponents//.__ My definition for what is inappropriately derisive is //more expansive// than yours, and if resorting to this type of language is somehow an integral part of your advocacy, you should run something else, strike me, or prepare to acquire the portable skill of tailoring your message to an audience with expectations of civil behavior //the hard way.//**
 * 5. If you're really pressed for time and want more information than #1-4 above, start with the section labeled "IRRITANTS." My tolerance for diversity of substantive argumentation likely encompasses __some__ variation on what you want to do anyway, but that section will help you do it while avoiding poor communication practices that will damage your points.**

GENERAL OVERVIEW What I want most is a technically sophisticated, substantively rigorous debate focused on a specific topical advocacy. It doesn't matter if it's fast or slow*. Absent any theoretically justified reason to view the round otherwise, I will evaluate the affirmative's advantages against the status quo or any competitive counterplan or alternative the negative advances. However, I'm more than willing to consider deontology/abstract moral obligation/intellectual endorsement/discourse arguments advanced by an affirmative when the opportunity arises. **I privilege development of substantive, resolutional argumentation over all other issues in debate. Given the forced choice, and assuming other things are equal, I would rather hear arguments related to the substance of the resolution, even if they're unrealistic, than "realistic" arguments related to "fairness," "education," your personal identity in "the debate space," the relative merits of different styles of presentation, whether you like or dislike the topic selection process, etc.** This is not to say that I won't vote for those sorts of arguments (I do all the time) or will actively intervene against them (if anything, I'm //less// patient than other judges with teams refusing to tackle certain of these arguments directly because they assume I'll intervene on their behalf), but in introducing them you likely face a stronger twin burden of production and explanation (as in...tell me what my ballot is supposed to accomplish //and prove that it will accomplish that goal//) than if you'd simply debated the **substance of the resolution**.

As far as the substance of your argumentation is concerned, so long as you're debating about a topical advocacy, anything goes. Last year, the sorts of negative arguments I voted for ranged from inherency all the way to the kritik of queer black feminism. If you go further back, I can borrow a line from my old friend Les Phillips to indicate how I generally care less about the substantive content of an argument than how well it's used: At different times I have voted for: smoking is good for your health, air pollution is good, damage to the sea turtle population in some particular estuary in Marin County will end all life on the planet, dolphins lead to submarine warfare that eradicates every American city on the East Coast, water pollution is good because it makes it easier to detect bacterial contamination in irrigation canals, nuclear war is good because it prevents us from creating artificial life forms and consigning them to live forever in an infinite array of hell dimensions, nuclear war is good because it prevents intelligent races of space aliens from discovering that we're here and developing super-weapons that destroy the known universe, nuclear war is bad because it causes intelligent races of space aliens to realize that we're a threat, jury nullification is pleasing to the Lord Our God and preventing His divine retribution outweighs every finite impact, Karl Marx is our Savior, failure to stave off senile dementia among IRS agents causes economic collapse because they commit mainframe programming errors, failure to mandate that the President of the United States receive regular psychiatric evaluations causes nuclear war because he might accidentally get drunk and push the proverbial button, feminism outweighs topicality, the 1AC must present both structural and attitudinal inherency, foreign policy toward China should be conducted using traditional Chinese poetry, and various sorts of counterplans that purported to devolve federal powers to localities or give foreign actors veto authority over domestic policy. (I don't think that the Marshall Islands actually care about United States agricultural subsidies...and neither do I think that the District of Columbia has a foreign policy toward Mexico). I didn't think that ANY of these arguments was good, but it's in the way that you use them...don't assume that my ideological leanings will prevent me from voting for a **substantive** (i.e. not solely theoretical) argument with which I disagree if you can articulate it well.

A lot of debaters like to ask whether their judges can "handle speed." I was a faster-than-average debater back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and debaters struggled to move their evidence scrolls from round to round by chariot, and my position is that significantly faster-than-conversational delivery is perfectly acceptable //as long as it's obviously intended to achieve a strategic goal.// This is to say: If you're going really fast in the 1NC/2AC/2NC/1NR/1AR in order to pressure your opponents by making many //conceptually distinct arguments//, especially //if they can coalesce into different terminal strategies,// I'm inclined to overlook minor fluency gaps in assigning points. If, however, you're using speed for speed's sake (think of a debater reading a shell with multiple repetitive links and then extending it by reading several non-responsive, repetitive pieces of evidence, each tagged "more evidence" or a debater whose "coverage" substantially comprises //repeating the opposition's arguments//), I am not so inclined and will exercise my prerogative to include effective delivery in how I assign points, meaning that you will suffer deductions you otherwise wouldn't for otherwise minor lapses in fluency or clarity. //This is to encourage you always to consider what you're trying to accomplish.//
 * SPEED/DELIVERY


 * Two caveats: First, I have absolutely nothing against slower debate, if that's still your thing. (Some of the best teams I've ever heard were quite slow by debate standards). However, I won't cut you any slack when it comes to fulfilling your technical responsibilities, so if you want to slow things down you'd better ratchet up your efficiency rather than relying solely on your natural persuasiveness to carry you. Second, I am a __stickler__ for proper clarity and volume. I will yell "clearer" or "louder" at you no more than twice if I can't hear/understand you, but you shouldn't try to push yourself to go so fast that you cease to enunciate and/or project.**

THEORY If there's anything I don't want to hear, it's a theory "debate." These "debates" are usually conducted so poorly and with so little in-depth comparative analysis that by the time the 2AR rolls around there is nothing left on my flow to evaluate but countervailing unwarranted taglines. If an affirmative wants to win on theory, especially when objecting to a counterplan, they should be prepared to slow down, articulate in-round abuse, and make their arguments specific to how they were harmed by the negative's particular argument or combination of arguments. Because this rarely happens, I've decided to make the way I evaluate these arguments very explicit, in the hope that I can discourage teams from subjecting me to bad theory: All issues relevant to the resolution of the theory flow that are poorly articulated or left unresolved //will be construed as strictly as possible against the team/debater running the theoretical objection,// and //absent a __specific__, __clearly articulated__ warrant// for the //specific// theoretical objection you're raising //to be a voting issue//, my default stance is that the remedy merely has to be equitable, which (in the real world) means either "reject the argument, not the team/debater," "stick the team/debater with the 'conditional' argument," or "evaluate the turns to the objectionable position as if the position had been extended." **You may think your PICs bad/conditionality bad/etc. block is super-sweet, but you should be forewarned __t____hat I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have voted on this sort of "argument" in 16 seasons of judging.__ If your idea of strategy is going for a theory claim even when you have a conceivable substantive out, __you should use your portable kritik skills to rethink your alternative options or strike me.__** **Ignore this advice __at your own risk.__ You may otherwise be setting yourself up for __some unpleasant surprises.__**

FYI...I've only heard this done twice IRL, but I find "not wasting speech time running bad theory would have given our opponents plenty of time to answer the substance of our 'abusive' arguments" a //devastating and true// response to "time skew" "impacts."

Further FYI...If you can turn your theory "argument" into a substantive argument, I'll be much happier with you than if you just vomit out some theory. Plan vagueness affects plan solvency...lack of an inherent barrier affects the size and certainty of advantages...

Specific notes on a couple of theoretical "arguments" that don't start with "T" and end with "opicality:"

//FRAMEWORK// There is no argument called "framework" that's a voting issue in and of itself unless you can prove that, //interpreting all arguments in the round in the light least favorable to the negative// //team//, the affirmative has presented //nothing that can be interpreted as a topical advocacy **and**// //nothing that can be interpreted// //as justification for a topical advocacy//, but if you can satisfy those tests you should be able to win the round on T, sparing your audience having to listen to a debate about how your "framework" for evaluation is arbitrary (true), self-serving (true), and intended solely to exclude certain points of view from the discussion (also true, and compounded by the fact that your "interpretation" of what the "framework" should be isn't usually based on any external referent nor designed to do anything but prevent your having to debate 1ACs that are designed to be difficult to answer, which is rather the whole point of writing a 1AC in the first place...I'm waiting, with tongue firmly in cheek and nostrils firmly plugged, for a "framework violation" consisting of "our framework is that the 1AC can't preempt disadvantages and the 2AC can't straight-turn them..." spot the difference between that and what you're trying to do). At best, "framework" usually serves to justify evaluating hypothetical policy-making impacts against the discursive/"real world" impacts of the aff, but //a 2NR consisting of five minutes of "framework" doesn't exactly give me any policy impacts to evaluate, does it?//
 * Yes, someone managed to persuade me to vote on an argument labeled "framework" last year, but it was really a way to bootstrap case offense to a T violation. If you're not that creative, just go for T.**

//"ARGUMENTS" ENDING IN "SPEC"//
 * Yes, someone managed to convince me to vote on funding specification last year. No, I don't think this means you should run it.**

My tolerance for these as "voting issues" has always been extremely low. I can understand not wanting to debate plan texts that consist of vague, insubstantial statements like "the United States federal government should substantially increase its funding of X in 'topically-designated areas,'" but I don't know if a 20-second shell with a vague "voting issue" claim is the best way to check them. I'm always of the point of view that the best use of theoretical arguments is to give debaters leverage to introduce //substantive arguments//, and I think it's more or less legitimate to force a vague affirmative to defend normal means for implementing the type of plan they propose, but that's a question of //fact// (what sort of policy does the 1AC really propose? Is it the sort of thing that's usually done by the executive branch? Through legislation? Through the courts?) rather than a question of //how you're being "abused."//

Speaking of which, the sorts of "abuse" claims used to "justify" these sorts of "arguments" are usually laughable. You have no God-given right to topical agent counterplans nor topical PICs, but the ground these "vague" plans give you is better, in a way--now you get to make substantive arguments about the failings of each branch of the USFG, so I don't know why you don't respond to an aff that refuses to specify an agent by ending the 1NC with something like "[N.] Executive action is bad. [N+1]. Legislative action is bad. [N+2]. Judicial action is bad. [N+3]. Cooperation between branches of government is bad."

KRITIKS If you must run a kritik, avoid the tendency to run it as a non-unique disadvantage with a generic link and a nonsensical counterplan that doesn't solve for the case advantages but somehow leads you to the dubious conclusion that it does because you call it an "alternative" as opposed to what it is--a counterplan that makes no sense. By way of illustration, here is how not to run a kritik: "A. Capitalism promotes the drive to consume, which makes its collapse inevitable. B. The plan does something. C. Capitalism causes extinction [though usually this is just tagged as "EXTINCTION," and nothing more, and the fact that "EXTINCTION" is not a real tag is dealt with below] D. The alternative is to do nothing." The fact that this is neither a complete, nor a consistent, argument should be obvious from how it's phrased, but __far too many__ K shells sound more or less like that. If you run an argument you call a kritik that is more intellectually consistent, more complete, and better-explained than that, you should be fine.

The caveat is that you really do have to accept the theoretical baggage that comes along with the K (which means that you ought to defend an evaluative framework that doesn't depend upon hypothetical impacts in the world of fiat) or run the risk of losing the end-of-round impact analysis. I'm not one of those judges who will give extra weight to an argument you say I should vote on because it //"turns the case"// or, God forbid, //"takes out the case"// just because you call it a kritik and read bad, unintelligible evidence from Zizek or Wilderson or Baudrillard as opposed to calling it a disadvantage and reading bad, unwarranted evidence from the Bloomington Pantagraph, the Montgomery Advertiser, or the Fresno Bee. If the aff engages in some sensible policy analysis (the K impacts are non-unique and the neg concedes that they're inevitable...the plan has some comparative advantage because...), you should be very worried if you're engaging in any of the above practices that could properly be described as creating the "kritik morass."

Also, you should always lose a kritik debate if you depend upon a link of omission. The proper response to a "link" that consists of "you don't talk about X" is to ask whether the plan would still be desirable in a world in which X has been discussed. If the answer is "yes," the affirmative wins. By way of illustration, consider this: the link to the capitalism K (ugh) is "you don't talk about capitalism." The proper question to ask (and one that is usually not asked) is whether a society that has discussed and considered the negative implications of capitalism should still do the plan. The answer to this is usually "yes" (i.e., countries that have carefully considered and rejected the negative implications of capitalism usually still have education systems and often pride themselves on the quality thereof...Raisa Gorbacheva was a professor at Moscow State University, while the only non-capitalist country that abolished education was Cambodia, which sounds like a good _impact turn,_ come to think of it), so the link of omission on its own doesn't preclude voting affirmative.

Also, claims that generic "rejection" alternatives or alternatives that encompass only individual endorsement of some point of view on my part somehow "solve the case" are just about the most ridiculous artificial debate constructs I have ever heard, and I am certainly not going to do any work on your behalf if you rely on them without a convincing explanation of why they're true.

One more thing (and this is more something I've noticed than a hard-and-fast rule)...I wish I had a dollar for every round in which a 2NC gave an obviously pre-written, excessively long (I've clocked some of these at over three minutes), excessively carded, not-very-responsive K overview and then proceeded to lose the debate by undercovering an important argument on the line-by-line. I don't know why people do this when debating a kritik but not when debating, say, a technically sophisticated topic disadvantage, but you should be aware that I will not make cross-applications for you if you think this is coverage (it isn't, necessarily). The onus is on you to make //e xplicit cross-applications. // The phrases "that's answered above" and "that's in the overview" are insufficiently explicit.

COUNTERPLANS Perhaps my favorite sort of debate to resolve, at least on the substantive level. (Counterplan theory remains loathsome to listen to. I haven't changed my mind about that). That said, remember your debate 101: there must be an offensive net benefit.

However, too many teams are inexcusably sloppy in how they draft their counterplans (especially of the agent variety). Boilerplate language like "the state legislatures should enact all relevant portions of the affirmative plan" or "XYZ administrative agency should amend ABC piece of legislation" at best creates an insurmountable solvency deficit and at worst gives the affirmative all sorts of interesting ground to stick you with disadvantages. Consider this: neither the states nor federal administrative agencies can amend a piece of federal legislation. Any attempt on their part to do is unenforceable //ab initio// and potentially raises very serious separation of powers concerns. Similarly, counterplans that have "the states" do something exclude action in the territories and the District of Columbia, which might have implications for any asserted international modeling claims. Similarly, state court rulings on federal constitutional grounds are reversible by the federal courts. Similarly, international agencies can't pass domestic American legislation. Similarly, private entities can't pass legislation at all. (There are workarounds for these problems, but you should make them _explicit_ in the 1NC).

Negative teams who run these counterplans in a way that avoids these problems will make me happy. Affirmative teams who //punish// negatives for //failing to avoid// these problems will make me even happier.

//CONSULTATION COUNTERPLANS//

I don't like listening to this kind of counterplan (though they have tended to win in front of me about half the time). There's a right way and a wrong way to run them, and most negative teams run them the wrong way, whilst affirmative teams often fail to capitalize on this fact. If the 1NC's competition claim is predicated upon the possibility of the consulted actor saying "no" and the negative, at any point, claims that the consulted actor will //always// //say "yes" to the plan as originally presented//, the counterplan is functionally non-competitive because it is guaranteed to result in enactment of the whole plan, thereby making it no different from any other non-competitive counterplan that merely adds any meaningless procedural step to the process of plan passage or purports to condition plan passage on the outcome of any other false contingency whose outcome is already known (e.g., "counterplan: do the plan only if the sun rises tomorrow. Net benefit: 'watch ye, for ye knoweth not when the master of the house cometh,'" or "counterplan: do the plan only if the atoms in the bill don't fall through the desk at the signing ceremony. Net benefit: increases public knowledge of quantum uncertainty"). This is perhaps the only situation wherein the now-common phrasing "perm--do the counterplan" makes any sense at all.

Also, the asserted net benefits to these counterplans usually don't qualify as offense. A disadvantage claiming that "actor X will become angry and do something rash if not consulted about //this specific policy//" is a legitimate net benefit. "Consulting X about //something// strengthens the alliance with X, which solves some sort of world problem" isn't an offensive net benefit and, really, isn't much of an argument at all--there's no link that's intrinsic to the plan, no adverse impact is necessarily //avoided// by consulting about //this// plan, any asserted offensive link is //terminally non-unique// because the USFG passes policies without consulting relevant (or irrelevant) actors all the time, and any asserted offensive impact is accordingly //empirically denied// because no total breakdown in relations has ever resulted from the USFG passing an education policy without going through a consultation process with someone else. (Look up Kennedy, John in a dictionary. If creating national standards for physical fitness in schools **to increase military readiness** at the height of the Cold War without consulting NATO didn't completely destroy the alliance, I highly doubt that some proposed reform dealing with some current subset of education policy will.) Accordingly, if the affirmative makes some attempt to use the sketchy nature of the "net benefit" to justify permutations like "pass the plan and consult X about how to fund it" or "pass the plan and consult X about some other item on the legislative calendar," the negative team will have a serious uphill climb proving these arguments, regardless of their metatheoretical legitimacy or lack thereof, have actually cost them any ground to which they were entitled.


 * None of this is to say that the aff should go for theory when confronted with a consultation CP--see "THEORY," //supra--//but I think that your average generic consultation CP is reducible to a real Hobson's choice for the negative. Either the consultee always says "yes," in which case the CP doesn't compete, or there's non-zero probability of the consultee saying "no" or demanding an unreasonable concession in exchange for approving the plan, in which case the aff has all sorts of offensive ground, including the inevitable "fact" that not doing the plan causes global thermonuclear war or some similar parade of horribles. __Affirmative teams who hoist the negative on this petard will make me very__ __happy.__**

Moral of the story: if you are going to run consultation, you'll want to prove that the process would result in some change to the substance of the plan and would avoid some disadvantage that plan passage alone would cause, but if you're going to put in that kind of work you could probably beat _most_ (but certainly not all) 1ACs without going down this particular rabbit hole.

DISADVANTAGES I am also a huge fan of these. However, I do not necessarily use an offense/defense paradigm in evaluating them. It is quite conceivable that there is no link, no internal link, or no impact, and I generally will vote on any of these arguments even in the absence of a turn. Try to avoid hyperbolic claims like "we win uniqueness, that proves there's only a risk of a link, judge" unless you can articulate a legitimate warrant, which most teams can't. Theory objections to politics will face the uphill climb mentioned above--it is probably better to spend that time focusing on the link/internal link debate.

CASE I love a good substantive case debate and I don't think negative teams engage in them often enough. If you have good arguments to make on case, make them! If you're garnering damaging concessions from the 1AC during cross-ex, //make analytical arguments based on those concessions in the 1NC.// It's frustrating to have to vote affirmative when negative teams //fail to challenge questionable case claims// or //fail to pre-empt obvious 1AR cross-applications of 1AC evidence because they don't think that t////he case flow matters anymore, but this is one area where t**he likelihood of my making any assumptions that could help the negative approaches zero.**// It is //not//, in fact, the case that some arbitrarily strung-together chain of probabilistic link evidence from dubious sources //really// means that all life on Earth will end immediately if the affirmative's poorly-worded proposal isn't enacted, //but I have to act as if it will if you do nothing to challenge th////is set of arguments.//

Also, my default setting is that //round-terminal case defense// is possible, however unlikely. It //may// be the case (//really!//) that the plan is too indistinguishable from the status quo to accrue any articulable advantage (we used to call that "inherency" and I have both voted on it and advised negative teams I've judged to initiate debates about it), that the harm addressed by the affirmative is so insignificant that the advantage gained from addressing it is outweighed by the costs intrinsic to policy change (we used to call that "significance"), or that the plan //doesn't solve.//

This sort of argumentation can form an integral part of //any// sort of substantive strategy, too. Without a doubt, the two best 2NRs I've heard over the past two seasons have involved debaters leading with solvency defense...//when they were going for kritiks.// If the affirmative can't //prove// that their plan can be implemented in an advantageous way, "worsening structural violence" starts to seem like a very important impact, and "rejecting the system" starts to sound like a //sensible// alternative.

The point being that, while the traditional whine about the aff having "infinite prep time" isn't literally true, the 1AC is (or should be) a speech containing the aff's //best evidence//, structured to achieve its //maximum persuasive effect//, and negative teams who refuse to challenge any of it //usually start the round substantially behind.//

TOPICALITY Have at it if you must. I don't particularly mind evaluating T debates so long as they're articulated well. One problem I have with T as it's often debated is that questions related to ground loss aren't always resolved clearly. I don't, for a second, believe that the negative is entitled to its preferred ground in every debate. The world's smallest violin will play a dirge while I sign an aff ballot if the best you can do is claim that you couldn't run your pet argument because the aff ran something creative. The flip side of this is that I don't think the mere fact that the neg has //some// ground is sufficient to check abuse. After all, there's some "argument" that can be made with "evidence" against just about anything, but it may be the case that that ground can't be anticipated because of the non-topical nature of the affirmative or is objectively bad ground...
 * If you have the choice between a plausible-to-you theory "argument" and ANY sort of T violation, go for T.**

While I think reasonability-versus-competing-interpretations usually degenerate very quickly into miniature versions of the sort of unresolvable dreck I complain about in the section on "theory," supra, when I think about it, my default stance is closer to the standard "T is a question of competing interpretations" POV than I really should admit. In the past, I've told teams they should have gone for //patently unreasonable// T arguments (of both the "'natural resources' means 'minerals'" and "use of a gerund instead of an infinitive means that only direct mandates are topical" varieties) simply because the 2AC didn't counter an interpretation the aff couldn't possibly have met. If the substance of an affirmative strategy against a T argument is simply to assert that they are "reasonably topical," they're in trouble, and I don't think it's really difficult for the negative to win that an unreasonable-but-predictable-and-finite interpretation is better than one that's either delimiting or arbitrary.

SPEAKER POINTS I'm not averse to using more of the scale than some other judges. I believe that speaker points are the best way we have to discourage bad practices and reward good ones. Last year, the points I assigned ranged from 24 to 29.6. Last time I actually bothered to do math on this, the mean was 27.3. This just goes to show that the extreme ends of the scale cancel each other out in the vast scheme of things and I actually do assign points the way I say I do...you can expect a 26 if you do nothing particularly poorly but also nothing particularly well (i.e., you manage to avoid any automatically issue-dispositive foul-ups but do very little to convince me of the merits of your side's position), a 27 if you do nothing poorly with some redeeming qualities, and points in the 28-29 range based on how uniformly excellent your speeches are. If you're ending up with >29 from me, my suggestions for improvement are going to be solely about things at the margin.

Really easy ways to see your points go up (and you do want that extra margin) include: executing a substantively difficult strategy well (e.g., ceteris paribus, better points go to a 2NR who goes for a case-specific counterplan than one who goes for a generic states-and-politics strategy because the first is significantly harder to pull off), demonstrating superior research and preparation (you really do want to have that "I can't believe they have cards on that" strategy in front of me), proper evidence comparison (too many teams get away with absolute premeditated murder in terms of reading lousy evidence from rankly unqualified sources...you should point this out when you have something better to offer), and demonstrating creativity and original thought in your choice of arguments (I like hearing novel affirmatives, and I like hearing substantive negative strategies some others might characterize as a little off the hinges).

IRRITANTS (moving from most to least recent):

--The word "status" is not difficult to pronounce. The noise "squo" is not a word.

--A three-second analytical answer to a K permutation is not a "disad." Phrases like "sequencing disad: prioritizing hegemonic policy considerations in the debate space decenters the counter-hegemonic struggles of black and female-identified bodies" are, on their own, barely even //arguments.// I'm wholly in favor of reading disadvantages to permutations, but I think those disadvantages need to include //warranted links and impacts rather than unwarranted strings of annoying jargon.//

--I don't know when debaters started thinking it was acceptable to combine flows or jump between flows without warning or reason, but it needs to stop. I don't want to hear things like "I'm kinda sorta gonna be answering the K on the T flow and the counterplan on the solvency flow...sorry it's messy...I'll try to signpost." If you say things like this, all you're doing is telegraphing the fact that you //do not understand that part of effective communication is sorting out any mess created by your opponents so your audience can understand you, nor the fact that you should have begun the debate with an organizational plan.// To help you out in the future, I'm kinda sorta gonna be deducting speaker points from debaters who create unnecessary messes...and the deductions will be proportional to the actual necessity of overcomplicating your roadmap. If you'd like your points to go on a thrilling spelunking expedition, pull the above stunt in a straightforward three-off-and-eight-case-arguments round and watch what happens.

--I don't know when debaters started retreading this bad debate practice from the 1990s, but it also needs to stop: The phrase "give this full weight" (or anything that's substantially equivalent) //**is not sufficient impact analysis**.// If you tell me to "give [something] full weight" but don't tell me explicitly how much weight to give it //and// how to go about weighing it, //I may arbitrarily decide that I don't want to weigh it at all because I don't know what sort of scale I should use and don't think it's fair to your opponents to guess.// Put another way, as much as I think the standard-order "timeframe/magnitude/probability" calculus is overused, //I'd rather hear you overuse it and execute it poorly than cut yourself short with a phrase **that serves no purpose and doesn't mean anything.** ("This outweighs the case on timeframe because it happens really quickly, on magnitude because our Somehack evidence indicates that the impact is global nuclear war but their Otherhack evidence doesn't specify how large the nuclear war will be, and on probability because our Imbecile evidence indicates that 'nuclear war will be a strong possibility' while their Idiot evidence merely indicates that nuclear war would be 'likely,' and nuclear war turns the case because it would destroy our telecommunications infrastructure and make it impossible to transfer students' academic records...." That's really bad, but better than "give this full weight.")//

--Each tag should contain a subject, a verb, and an object. I'll extinguish some points if you use "extinction" as a tag, and I'll fragment some points for each sentence fragment. The minuscule fraction of a second you save by doing this is outweighed by the confusion you sow with your grammatically incorrect utterances.

--The phrase "the debate space" is vapid. Do you mean the space in which this particular debate is taking place? In that case, your "argument" has no impact because I'm usually the only member of the audience in this particular space. Do you mean "debate as a whole?" If you do, why don't you just say "debate?"

--The fact that something your opponents did or said is "problematic" is not, in and of itself, a reason to vote for you. Keeping with my general stance of not doing work for debaters they should have done for themselves, I will, if the "X is problematic" "impact" is not explained, interpret "problematic" in a manner consistent with standard English usage. The OED defines the adjective "problematic" as "constituting or presenting a problem or difficulty." This interpretation, which everyone but Marxist cultural studies professors shares, renders your "impact" //fascinating but both non-unique and irrelevant.// Everything we do presents problems or difficulties, but in debate, like in life, //the question is whether the problems and difficulties presented by a potential course of action outweigh the benefits it offers.// //I categorically refuse// //to degrade the English language and spare you the burden of explanation by, on my own initiative, importing a non-standard interpretation, issuing from schools of thought with which I vehemently disagree, of a common English word.// This is not to say that I won't vote on linguistic kritiks (I do all the time--see the section on "kritiks," //supra//), but //to avoid losing to arguments like "avoiding thermonuclear war outweighs using vaguely 'problematic' rhetoric," you should explain **explicitly** what problems your opponents' advocacy presents.//

//--//Contention one should not be called "the status quo." Unless your opponents are radical nihilists, the **existence** of the present system is **never** going to be a matter of **contention.**

--Phrases like "perm--do both" on their own aren't arguments, and the negative team should ridicule you if you think they are. At a minimum, //a permutation should describe what specific actors are to take what specific actions// //and what benefit would result.// You're //much better off// running //one well-articulated permutation// (e.g., "Perm: have the federal government enact the plan and have the states simultaneously enact the counterplan. This solves the case because...and avoids the link to the net benefit because...") than you are engaging in the perm dump (e.g., "Perm: do both and perm: do the plan and perm: do the counterplan and perm: do the counterplan, then the plan and perm: do the plan, then the counterplan and perm: do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the counterplan and perm: do the counterplan and all non-competitive parts of the plan and perm: do the plan and each non-competitive part of the counterplan and perm: do the counterplan and each non-competitive part of the plan") because in the first instance you're making something resembling an argument and I have some idea of what the world of the permutation would look like, while in the second instance you're uttering a meaningless string of words that sound, for all the world, like you're throwing down about proper hair care.

--Don't use acronyms or initialisms without reading out what they really mean the first time you use them. You can fudge on this a little bit--in context, the full versions of "DOE," "AFT," "NEA," and "IDEA" are rather obvious--but when in doubt, especially when you're using a term of art or something that can be interpreted in more than one way ("NFL" used to be the best example of this), err on the side of explanation in order to avoid sowing the seeds of confusion.

--I //am// among the judges who get annoyed at the modern tendency to overuse the word "probably." Your //arguments are never strengthened by the use of the modifier "probably"// //on its own.// The only time it's ever appropriate to use "probably" is //in its comparative or superlative form.// Thus, I //expect// you to explain how "X argument is //more probable// than Y argument," or how "Z impact is //the most probable// impact," but you should save your breath if you tend to use "probably" as filler, as in "this probably causes extinction" or "we probably turn the disadvantage," or I will probably reduce your speaker points because this particular weak formulation is probably bad for your ethos.

--Similarly, you should eschew use of the phrase "I feel." This is a debate tournament. This is not the "talk about our feelings and regain our self-esteem support group." Your feelings are not evidence for your arguments. Neither are they reasons to vote for you. You may argue things. You should attempt to prove things. You may think, demonstrate, show, and in some instances extrapolate or even theorize, but you should try not to feel...or at least not to talk about how you feel as if it affects the issue of who did the better debating.

--Arguments should be clearly labeled and should have identifiable substructure. It's extraordinarily difficult to flow you when you start an argument with "NEXT OFF" and then immediately start reading the text of your first tag.

--I have noticed debaters increasingly phrasing comments in their speeches in the second person. This is a debate. This is not a schoolyard argument. Accordingly, your speeches should be addressed //to your audience// and not //to your opponents. The only time I should hear "you said" coming out of your mouth is during cross-examination.// Otherwise, "he/she said" (as appropriate) or "they said" would be preferable--or you could, y'know, learn and use your opponents' names.

--Unlike the great actor named Reinhold, my first name isn't "Judge," and I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me "Judge" in the second person. "David" or "Mr. Coates" would be fine, or you can rephrase things so they're in the third person instead. Thus, "a/the judge should" is acceptable, while "Judge, you should" is just annoying.

LANGUAGE

In my old days as an amateur baseball umpire, the use of profane language in my presence got the offender automatically ejected from the game and usually earned him a fine to teach him not to run his mouth where small children could hear him. I can't make you pay donations to the local park board, but I can enforce standards that require you to treat this activity with the respect it deserves.

Language used in a debate should reflect language that is acceptable in a policy-making forum in the real world. If you're using words that you wouldn't say in front of the relevant Congressional committee, you are doing it wrong. This activity has never had many advocates in the real world in the first place, and it seems to make the news only when someone engages in some sort of offensive behavior. Do you really want to contribute to this by swearing at each other and having someone who already doubts the benefits of debate (or knows the activity only from sensational news stories) overhear you? You don't. This state has suffered a net loss of 30 debate programs since I started debating in 1996, and we should make a concerted effort not to come off as a bunch of ill-mannered jerks who curse at each other when we should be cultivating a reputation for nothing more than substantively rigorous discussions of matters of public concern.

ACCORDINGLY, and in order to motivate you properly, I have been imposing the following for years: Any use of profane or indecent language or racist, sexist, xenophobic, or homophobic slurs during the debate or immediately before or after will result in a minimum deduction of two points per instance. I will go really low, so you don't want to test me on this unless you're seriously pining for a tour of the bottom of the bracket whilst I inform your coach about exactly what parts of your vocabulary need adjusting.


 * AND SPECIFIC NOTES FOR LINCOLN-DOUGLAS!**

GENERALLY

As you can tell from the above, I'm primarily a policy judge. I coach at a school that offers only policy debate and, while I've been judging Lincoln-Douglas debate off-and-on for well over a decade, I might judge 20 rounds of LD in a good year. (I judged exactly 25 rounds of LD in 2016-17). This may affect you inasmuch as I won't necessarily be as familiar as some of my colleagues with the latest-breaking developments in LD-specific terminology and practice, so your explanatory responsibilities may be somewhat higher in front of me than in front of someone who's been on the front lines, so to speak.

Also, my specific preferences about how _substantive_ argumentation should be conducted are far less set in stone than they would be in a policy debate. I've voted for everything from traditional value/criterion ACs to policy-style ACs with plan texts to fairly outright critical approaches...and, //ab initio//, I'm fine with more or less any //substantive// attempt by the negative to engage whatever form the AC takes, //subject to the warnings// //about what constitutes a link outlined above.// (Not talking about something is not a link). Engage your opponent's advocacy and engage the topic and you should be okay.


 * N.B.: All of the above comments apply only to _substantive_ argumentation.** See the section on "theory" in my policy philosophy if you want to understand what I think about those "arguments," //and square it.// If winning that something your opponent said is "abusive" is a major part of your strategy, you're going to have to make some adjustments if you want to win in front of me. I can't guarantee that I'll fully understand the basis for your theory claims, and I tend to find theory responses //with any degree of articulation// more persuasive than the claim that your opponent should lose because of some arguably questionable practice, especially if whatever your opponent said was otherwise substantively responsive. **I also tend to find "self-help checks abuse" responses issue-dispositive more often than not.** That is to say, **if there is something you could have done to prevent the impact to the alleged "abuse," and you failed to do it, any resulting "time skew," "strat skew," or adverse impact on your education is your own fault, and I don't think you should be rewarded with a ballot //for helping to create the very condition you're complaining about.//**


 * I have voted on theory "arguments" unrelated to topicality in Lincoln-Douglas debates precisely zero times. Do you really think you're going to be the first one to persuade me to pull the trigger?**


 * AND SPECIFIC NOTES FOR PUBLIC FORUM**

This may be a bit late for some of you, but in the interest of being thorough, and because it's quite possible that I may judge PF again in the future, I thought I'd put some added thoughts on this iteration of the activity in here. I did judge elimination rounds at the state tournaments in Delaware and New York on the H-1B visas topic, so my most recent PF experience was not that far in the past.

That said:

1. You should remember that, notwithstanding its pretensions to being for the "public," this is a //debate event.// Allowing it to degenerate into talking past each other with dueling oratories past the first pro and first con makes it more like a //speech event// than I would like, and practically forces me to inject my own thoughts on the merits of substantive arguments into my evaluative process. I can't guarantee that you'll like the results of that, so:

2. Ideally, the second pro/second con/summary stage of the debate will be devoted to engaging in //substantive clash// (per the activity guidelines, whether on the line-by-line or through introduction of competing principles, which one can envision as being somewhat similar to value clash in a traditional LD round if one wants an analogy) and the final foci will be devoted to //resolving the substantive clash.//

3. Please review the sections on "theory" in the policy and LD philosophies above. I'm not interested in listening to rule-lawyering about how fast your opponents are/whether or not it's "fair"/whether or not it's "public" for them to phrase an argument a certain way. These "debates" are excruciatingly painful to listen to, and they're even worse in PF because there's less speech time during which to resolve them. Unless there's a written rule prohibiting them (e.g., actually advocating specific plan/counterplan texts), I presume that all arguments are theoretically legitimate, and you will be fighting an uphill battle you won't like trying to persuade me otherwise. You're better off sticking to substance (or, better yet, using your opposition's supposedly dubious stance to justify meting out some "abuse" of your own) than getting into a theoretical "debate" you simply won't have enough time to win, especially given my strong presumption against this style of "argumentation."

4. If it's in the final focus, it should have been in the summary. I //will// patrol the second focus for new arguments. If it's in the summary and you want me to consider it in my decision, you'd better mention it in the final focus. It is definitely not my job to draw lines back to arguments for you.

5. While I pay attention to crossfire, I don't flow it. It's not intended to be a period for //initiating arguments//, so if you want me to consider something that happened in crossfire in my decision, //you have to mention it in your side's first subsequent speech.//

6. You should cite authors by name. "Harvard," as an institution, doesn't conduct studies of issues that aren't solely internal Harvard matters, so you sound awful when you attribute your study about //immigration// to "Harvard." "According to Professor X of Harvard" doesn't take much longer to say than "according to Harvard," and has the considerable advantage of //accuracy.//

You're always free to ask me any specific questions you have about anything not addressed herein.