McLoon,+Andrew

University of California, Berkeley '15 Notre Dame High School '11

I debated for 3 years at Notre Dame, qualifying for the TOC my senior year. I debated at Cal during my first semester of college.

Important things to consider:

1. Clarity: My biggest issue is when debaters transition from the text of a card to the tag for another without any indication until I hear the author's name. Make it obvious to me that you're going to a new card (saying 'and' loudly right before reading a tag, numbering the cards, etc.).

2. Impact calc: I feel like this is where the last rebuttals tend to go wrong. I want you to tell me how to evaluate the round and how to compare aff and neg impacts at the end of the round (for example: "probability trumps magnitude for abc reasons," "magnitude trumps time frame for xyz reasons," etc.).

Other areas:

Politics: Run it.

Impact turns: My favorite kind of debate.

DA's in general: Strong impact D by the aff can be enough for the aff to outweigh. There's no point to evaluate the risk of the link if the impact won't happen anyway.

Theory: I'll pull the trigger on a cheap shot theory arg that gets dropped by the 2NR and is extended by the 2AR, but I'll usually just reject the argument if it's not extended. 2 condo advocacies are probably okay, 3 is pushing it. Dispo checks can be convincing if run in tandem with condo advocacies.

Word PIC's: Love them. Ran them all the time in high school. Affs usually lose to this only because they forget to make a solvency deficit or don't have offense against it. Other than that, it comes down to a theory debate.

Consult CP's: I like them.

Topicality: I hate T. I default to reasonability. Having been a 2A my whole career and running a blatantly non-topical aff during most of my senior year of high school, I've learned to despise competing interps. However, as a judge, my defaulting to reasonability is mostly in the case of topic generic affs. If this is an extremely common aff on the topic, you probably aren't losing neg ground or being abused, but I'm way more open to competing interps on smaller affs if you can show me a topical version of the aff or if there's blatant in-round abuse. A few things for smaller affs and for affs in general, I think forcing teams to do specific research against your aff is good (even if it's borderline non-topical) and unpredictability is solved by things like the NDCA wiki and if a bunch of teams run the aff. The wiki argument may seem insignificant, but it has completely revolutionized how we research other teams' arguments ever since it was created.

K's: Since I went to Notre Dame, it's safe to guess that I'm a decent K fan. I like to run K arguments on the aff, but love running policy arguments on the neg (as a 1N I usually take impact turns, politics, or consult NATO). Make role of the ballot arguments, do specific link analysis, tell me why I shouldn't evaluate their impacts or whatever you want to do as long as you don't run something so absurd that I can't follow. Explain everything to me, don't just assume that I know what you're talking about. I think K's that don't have alts are usually non-unique offense unless for example, you hit an ethics aff and you read an ethics K as offense against them, then it works in my book. K's I'm most familiar with: Security, Kappeler, Cap, Fem IR, Chernus, Ethics K, Psychoanalysis, Grossberg/Rorty, Heg good K.


 * For the aff against K's: I'm more convinced by offense against K's (like security good) than realism being inevitable since realism is just one of three major explanations about how states interact with each other, but feel free to argue both.