Zahorcak,+Owen

I’ve been competing in and coaching policy debate for sixteen years. My default disposition is that plan is the focus of the round: I'll vote for which world is superior -- aff's or neg's -- which I suppose means being a policy-maker. But I truly believe it’s your round, so feel free to run whatever you’d like - I'll use a different framework if argued and won. I tend to think the entire round is decided solely by the risk analysis and impact comparison in the last two rebuttals; the rest of the debate is just to get around the "no new arguments" rule. Anybody who calls him or herself tab is lying, but I do my best to be as non-interventionist as possible. There are of course arguments of which I'm not a huge fan, but I wouldn't say it affects my judgment. Or more accurately: I, like all human beings, have a handful of tiny biases, but to list them would a) take forever, and b) cause you to overcompensate, so let's just pretend I don't. I have two weird quirks: first, I tend to yell "clear" all the way through rebuttals. It just means I didn't understand what you just said. Most other judges, I think, give up after the first couple of speeches. Come to think of it, they're the weird ones. Second, as a lifelong 2NR, I am fairly hawkish on new 2AR arguments; if I think it's new and you either don't justify it or I don't care for the justification, I'm liable to simply scratch it off the flow. As a corollary, I'm not fond of new 1NR arguments either (I was a 1AR, too), but since there are subsequent speeches I tend to give a little more leeway. If you have specific questions, please ask.