Bietz,+Mike

Head Coach: Harvard-Westlake School, Los Angeles CA | mbietz@hw.com

I'm going to put some ranty-type things at the bottom that I think of as I'm judging.

Email chain is best. Pocketbox was best. Then it went away.

Jonah Feldman, coach at UC Berkeley, summed up a lot of what I have to say about how I evaluate arguments

Specifically:

I do not believe that a dropped argument is necessarily a true argument I am primarily interested in voting on high quality arguments that are well explained, persuasively advanced, and supported with qualified evidence and insightful examples. I am not interested in voting on low quality arguments that are insufficiently explained, poorly evidenced, and don't make sense. Whether or not the argument was dropped is a secondary concern...

How should this effect the way I debate? 1) Choose more, especially in rebuttals. Instead of extending a lot of different answers to an advantage or offcase argument, pick your spots and lock in. 2) If the other team has dropped an argument, don't take it for granted that it's a done deal. Make sure it's a complete argument and that you've fully explained important components and implications of winning that argument.

His full paradigm.

For me:

The affirmative probably should be topical.

I think that I'm one of the few circuit LD judges who votes affirmative more than I vote negative. I prefer an affirmative that provides a problem and then a solution/alternative to the problem. Negatives must engage. Being independently right isn't enough.

I would probably consider myself a policy-maker with an extremely left bent. Answering oppression with extinction usually doesn't add up for me. I'll take immediate, known harms over long term, speculative, multi-link impacts 90 out of 100 times. This isn't paradigmatic so much as it is negatives failing to engage the affirmative.

Given my propensity to vote affirmative and give the affirmative a lot of leeway in defining the scope of the problem/solution, and requiring the negative to engage, I'd suggest you take out the 3 minutes of theory pre-empts and add more substance.

Topicality is probably not an RVI, ever. Same with Ks. Today I saw someone contend that if he puts defense on a Kritik to make debate a safe space, the judge should vote for him because he'll feel attacked.

Cut your presumption spikes. It's bad for debate to instruct judges not to look for winning arguments. It also encourages debaters to make rounds unclear or irreconcilable if they are behind on actual issues.

Where an argument can be made "substantively" or without theory, just make it without theory. For example, you opponent not having solvency isn't a theory violation. it just means they can't solve. Running theory flips the coin again. So it's both annoying and bad strategy. Other examples might include: Plan flaws, no solvency advocate, and so on. Theory IS the great equalizer in that it gives someone who is otherwise losing an argument a chance to win.

There needs to be weighing of "risk" of arguments to being true.

Libertarianism begs the question on most resolutions, since most are a rights v rights conflict.

Cross-x cannot be transferred to prep time.

Some annoyances: - Not letting your opponents answer a question. More specifically, male debaters who have been socialized to think its ok to interrupt females who have been socialized not to put up a fight. If you ask the question, give them a chance to answer. - Ignoring or belittling the oppression or marginalization of people in favor of smug libertarian arguments will definitely not end up well for you. - People who don't disclose or they password protect or require their opponents to delete speech documents. I'm not sure why what you read is private or a secret if you've read it out loud. This whole system of "connected" kids and coaches who know each other using backchannel methods to obtain intelligence is one of the most exclusionary aspects of debate. This *is* what happens when people don't disclose. I'll assume if you don't disclose you prefer the exclusionary system. - **MY FLOW - In the NC, if you're just gonna do a huge resolutional dump on the AC, and make no on-point refutation, just tell me to flow it on another piece of paper. I only need to flow against the AC if you're going to engage it. THE SAME every rebuttal speech.**

Some considerations for you: - if you’re reading such old white male cards that you have to edit for gendered language, maybe consider finding someone who doesn’t use gendered language... and if you notice that ONLY white men are defending it, maybe consider changing your argument. - if you find yourself having to pre-empt race or gender arguments in your case, maybe you shouldn't run the arguments.

General rants: - Minimized text, or text you're not reading in your cards should still be legible. Using anything lower than an 8 (maybe 6) is ridiculous. - Have full source citations right after the author name in the text of your document. NOT in the footnotes.