Lopez,+Andrew

River Hill '13 Wake Forest '17

A brief warning: I have not worked at a camp this summer, so I have little Oceans topic knowledge. If there are any intricacies of how the topic, your aff, or really anything operates that I should know in order to vote for you, please tell me. It'll show your expertise on your arguments, which will get you higher speaks, and make my decision much easier.

I do not care what arguments you make, just be passionate about them and execute them in a way that demonstrates that passion. Understand however that some arguments are of higher quality than others. While I will not be unwilling to hear a throwdown on the "The" PIC, my value to life may decrease because of it.

One caveat to the first statement about "run what you want". If you make an argument that is morally repugnant, I will feel no remorse when voting against you. Impact turns such as Racism Good, Sexism Good, Homophobia Good, etc. are unjustifiable and I would like to think that the debate community is above that in terms of promoting meaningful education and argumentative strategy. If this is just your thing, you are always welcome to strike me. I'm sure we'd both be happier that way.

Also, some people may consider me a "point fairy." Just throwing that out there.

Since I have little preference about what specific arguments you do read, here are some meta issues that I think will better describe how I evaluate debates:

I will try my best to stick to the flow and not to intervene in my decision, HOWEVER no judge is perfectly objective. Judges are humans and not flow-bots. There are certain aspects of debate, argumentation, and communication that cannot be understood by staring at long pieces of paper with various colors of scribbles scrawled upon them. This means persuasion is not solely based on logic, but also emotional connection and personal credibility communicated to the judge. Odds are that if you combine these three factors, you will receive substantially higher speaker points and, if the stars align, you might just win.

Cross-X is very important and I try to flow it. Take time to think this through just as you would any other speech. Good cross-x's that get utilized in later speeches will earn you higher speaker points.

An argument consists of a claim, a warrant, and an impact. Without one of these, you do not have an argument. Similarly, fewer arguments with more warranted and impacted analysis is always superior to more arguments with fewer warranted and impacted analysis.

Speed is the number of arguments effectively communicated to the judge that the other team must be held accountable to answer. This means I need to have your argument understood and somehow, somewhere written down on my flow AND this argument must be developed in a way that it holds enough importance that the other team has to answer it. I would rather you be clear and flowable than blazing "fast" and impossible to understand. On a related note, I like to flow the warrants of cards. If you are unclear when reading evidence, it will decrease the persuasiveness of your argument because I will not have a full understanding of what your card actually says. Unlike many other judges, I will not yell "clear" if I cannot understand you. If you are unflowable, that is not my problem, it's yours. Pick up on visual cues such as my facial expressions or inability to write things down and you can probably tell just how unflowable you are. Please, just be clear and we will never run into problems. If this requires you to slow down and read fewer cards than you would have otherwise, trust me it's probably worth it.

Quality over quantity. Always. I cannot stress this enough. I'd much rather you have a well developed, specific neg strategy with fewer, longer, more warranted cards that apply directly to the affirmative then a 1NC that throws arguments at the wall in hopes that something sticks. The same applies for 1AC's. A well developed advantage with fewer impacts that have many warrants is preferable to one shoddy internal link and solvency claim followed by endless number of impact cards. Innovation is awesome and will be greatly rewarded. Just know that your new argument should still make sense. Some arguments aren't run for a reason.

Tech vs truth is entirely situational. If an argument is "conceded", it better have a claim, warrant, and impact in order to then count as "true" within the confines of the debate. If something elsewhere on other flows implicitly answers the argument and the other team provides a coherent explanation of this connection, the argument is not "conceded." If an argument is conceded, it does not automatically win the debate. It needs further explanation about what that concession means in relation to the other arguments in the debate.

The debaters who often win and receive the highest speaker points are those who make meta-level "framing issue" arguments, such as reasons to prefer only certain kinds of evidence, impacts, responses etc. If there is something that you think the other team has no game on, please tell me what that is, why it matters, and how it implicates how I evaluate everything else.

In this same vein, it is VERY, VERY, VERY important to tell me how to evaluate certain arguments, mainly permutations and framework arguments, often beyond the simple "perm's are tests of competition" or "we should weigh our plan." Tell me what it means for you to win the perm or framework, how they interact with other arguments on the flow. If the aff wins the perm, but the neg wins their framework, what does that mean? Impact these important portions of the flow so I know how arguments work together on the flow.

Evidence makes arguments, but so should debaters. Just because you have a card on something does not mean you will win. Sensible analytic arguments will be valued as highly as evidence, and definitely higher than shoddy evidence.

Offense-Defense is a useful heuristic for evaluating risk. However, I do think that there is such thing as terminal defense. It is still safer to extend offense. PLEASE tell me whether or not I should use an offense-defense paradigm. This is especially important in topicality and theory debates when it can be harder to win substantive offense.

Impact calculus is extremely important. The triumvirate of Magnitude, Timeframe, and Probability are overrated though. Certainly make these arguments, but explain them and why they are important/more important than the other team's impact. Impact calculus should tell a story. I want to know what the world, or lack thereof, will look like post-ballot. This is ESPECIALLY important in critique debates where the impacts can be more ethereal.

Theory debates are messy, but don't have to be. If you clean up the flow and make larger, conceptual framing arguments as opposed to bullet point extensions of your theory block, you will be rewarded with good speaks and maybe even a ballot. Most theory arguments are a reason to reject the argument and not the team. If you do wish to go for theory in the 2AR, you will win if you overcome this threshold.

The only strong theory bias I hold is against "judge kick." I do not think that the 2NR can go for both the CP/Alt AND the status quo, meaning that during the decision the judge should be able to kick the advocacy and vote for the status quo. The 2NR is very hard, but the 2AR should not be expected to read the judge's mind and debate in both the world where the neg's advocacy is kicked and where it's not. 2N's should make strategic choices by **actually making a choice** of what you want to go for. If you defend judge kick in the 2NR, I will be very unhappy and will probably not end up kicking the advocacy (unless the 2AR really drops the ball on this theory question AND there's no other way to resolve the debate). If in cross-x the neg says "status quo is always an option", I assume that means that it's always an option for the neg and that they can kick the advocacy and go for the status quo and NOT that I can judge kick. To counter this form of negative shadiness, 1NC CX should always include questions of the status of advocacies AND whether the judge can kick the advocacy after the debate. It takes 10 seconds tops and is well worth your time. If the 1NC does defend "judge kick", please make this into a seperate theory argument in the 2AC. It's not a round winner, but bringing it up will hopefully deter this practice in some way.

I love debate, but understand it has LOTS of problems and is in serious need of improvement. However, it is still the most rewarding activity I have ever had the privilege of participating in. If your argument claims that debates in the status quo are exclusionary/oppressive/pure-evil, then I am perfectly willing to vote for you **if** you provide an alternate method capable of changing debate for the better. This can even include "burn it down" style arguments, but I want to know what myself as a judge can do while **in** debate **about** debate. This does not necessarily have to be framed in terms of a typical critique "alternative", but I would just like to know what ideal debates would look like after I sign my ballot. Having said that, I think all forms debate can be highly educational. Whether one likes to call arguments performative, non-traditional, or anything else, it's all still arguments. Framework arguments have varying levels of persuasiveness against these forms of debate. I find framework most persuasive when you paint a picture of what their world of debate looks like for both aff and neg teams, for debate research, for judges, for the community overall etc. and not simply by rehashing limits and ground arguments. Topical versions of the aff need fleshing out and I hold a higher standard for explanation on how they actually address not just the advantage of the aff but also their solvency approach as well. The same goes for other forms of topicality arguments. Limits and ground are internal links and not impacts by themselves. Debate about what debate should/shouldn't look like. Conversely, teams having framework run against them need a defense of their argument's form, content (explanation for whether there is even a difference between those things), and a reason why their view of debate is superior to the other team's.

I've rethought my policy on paperless prep time. Prep time stops when you save the speech and the other team has access to it, whether this means you hand it to them on a flashdrive or you sent it to them through an email chain. Please just be quick about it or be a more efficient prepper.

Debate is built on trust. Cheating or unethical behavior will not be tolerated. If a team is proven to have debated unethically, that team will receive extremely low speaker points and will lose the round. However, if the team accusing the other fails to prove that any unethical behavior occurred, that team will receive the same punishment. This is to prevent off-the-cuff accusations of cheating that delegitimize actual, warranted charges. Another important thing to note here: these accusations are not to be evaluated with an "offense-defense" paradigm. There can be no grey area. You must 100% prove that the other team performed unethically using substantive evidence. The best example of this is a recording of the debate along with a copy of the speech.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

Also, have fun!! Debate is competitive, but don't let that get in the way of your enjoyment of the whole process.