Davis,+Stephen

Ive been know to give really low points in the past... i am recitifying this problem and i vow to, no matter what, stay above the 27 line unless something extremely bad takes place. This shifts everything else up and will prolly keep my average around 27.75 to 28... if you win a debate in front of me and get less than a 28 call me a douchebag and a liar... im gonna try and 28s a standard for winners but who knows i've been feeling more and more generous(not point fairy generous, but generous just the same)...knocking my socks off will prolly require a level of intensity that few people muster on the day to day but is entirely possible. giving someone a 30 is blaspheme and doing it is not likely and may happen only 1 time this year but 29.5 may happen once a tournament... well see.

i think that the most important thing that a debater can do in front of me is "show up" i find i respond well to people who are really going all out and trying to win and i respond well to "boldness" in debaters.

A lot of people claim to be open to anything but really arent. I am prolly no exception. While id like to say that i am i recognize that my particular pedogogical positioning within this community makes that a difficult sell. there are prolly food prices deabtes that i honestly have no interest in juding but as i will have to inevitably i want to do the best possible job making those decisions. i find that is made easiest for me when the flow is neat and tidy and the answers i need to draw from it are obvious. i dont flow on a laptop and my flow is not great as it is so i think its important to watch me and give me plenty of pen time between the clear switches that you make. if the flow is the gatekeeper fo the ballot(i.e. drops are conceded by both teams as more important than substance) i am infinitely persuaded by voting issues. i think it is normally adventatgeous to any super fast super technical team that i judge to not give me room to think about stuff and to write my ballot for me by the end of the debate. the more i have to think for you(do work for you) the higher a liklihood there is that i will drop you.

If u have a text that is obviously written to be topical it should be really flippin topical... Not sort of, not reasonably, not functionally, but textually. And i love to see teams that think that because the topic has become decentered it means they can be lazy and not cross their T's and Dot their I's when it is clearly what their iteration of debate culture would have them do. T is like pregnancy you are or you arent. That having been said, a good team can prolly survive with defense most of the time. I tend to think of it as a tie breaker and would much rather see debates that didnt rely on it but if someone has a plan flaw and you are ready to roll em for it, by all means... do your thing. IF your text is majorly skewed in one way or another, like you should do something or we should do something or its a starting point for a discussion or something like that then i understand that their are necessary liberties that have to be taken with the wording and once whole parts of the res or the entirety of the res are just occluded for political reasons(metaphysical, epistemological, or ontological too) then it really doesnt make sense to run T USFG. obviously there is reason they dont roll like that and i dont find it strategic or persuasive to run a disad to prove the link... i think that debate has evolved beyond those means of dealing with the K.

AFF: affs are most sucessfull to me when they sort of bully the negative and force them to talk about the aff shit. Offense is really all that matters for an aff and while i understand that the affiramtive seeks to take the path of least resistance i feel like the good ones are built to link turn the K and i get very annoyed when the O is obviously there but is patently ignored by the affirmative. the same goes for the alt debate wherein the aff doesnt recognize that they are allready the alternative.

Disads: if you win a consequentialist framework or somthing like that i feel like i am often persuaded by a good solid DA which Outweighs clearly and obviously the affs impact. I am also pretty interested in seeing how politics DAs play out this year(at least in terms of elections) and think that there are potentially good (critical) offense on both sides of that debate that could be integrated seemlessly into a disad stategy that would otherwise be about nuke war.

CP/PIC: i say it every year but no one ever does it... Tricky PICS are sweet... Sherin Vargese was hired by bard, in my opinion, because she made me vote on acrynyms bad like it was her job. CP's are often a good way to leverage offense against a critical team and i think it should prolly happen more than it does.

PERM: dont run that juxtoposition permutation and the crappy blieker evidence that it comes from. that arg is stupid.

K: Ive grown bored of the K and i think that new and innovative things should be happening with it. I think that positioning the ballot becomes so important in these debates and while i think that framing the ballot and having a competition scenario are key but sometimes not as important as having a poignant and astute critisism with a solid link story that provides little room to wiggle. i am a link judge... i think in a world of a decentered topic it makes the most sense and preserves clash to think of debate this way.

FW: consequentialism frameworks are actually not that bad and i can occasionally be into them if well argued. I think that every team has a framework and that every team should have a way to access thier impact/solvency claims and should couch that converstation somewhere in the framing of the ballot. I dont judge many clash of civs debates but i feel as tho i prolly should as people debating in front of me get away with way too much dumb shit that they dont have justifications for and i think someone should bring them to task a little bit to prevent a world of warrantless claim making. there has always been a method to the madness that i have perpetrated on this community and i think that all good madness should have a method. \

Performace: do your thang, have an arg... make it win. its how i roll, i like it, i love it, i want more of it...

in my mind an argument is a claim a warrant and an impact, so long as you have those things then i cant imagine having a problem with what you do. I love debate and i want everyone to do it however they see fit and refuse to intervene in that process based on my own ideological or social desires. I coach Towson now before that i coached Bard and its important to note that my politics are not the politics of my debaters and appealing to what you think i know or want to hear will prolly not help you win. go for the arg you think you are winning and make sure i dont have a choice in the matter. thats all. good luck, have fun, be like water...