Chessman,+Christian

Brief Background
I am a student at UC Berkeley Law. I completed my undergraduate degree at UF in political science with a certificate in analytic philosophy. I competed for three years in college policy debate at UF, and four years of Public Forum at Suncoast High School. My policy debate career spanned the spectrum of argument styles, from traditional plan-focused policy debate to performance debate. I currently coach Lincoln-Douglas at Lake Highland Prep. in Florida.

__**//See bottom for updates!//**__


 * General Important Notes**
 * **Speed -** my writing hand was injured when I was a kid, so I have limited ability to flow top-speed spreading. Slow down on taglines and things you want to emphasize. Otherwise, spreading is absolutely fine. If I'm struggling to flow, I will yell "clear" twice, and then stop flowing until you reach a speed I can flow.
 * **I'm expressive -** if I look confused, I likely am confused. If I look happy that you caught a clever argument interaction, I likely am happy and your speaks likely just increased.
 * **All standards can be changed by debaters -** what follows are the inevitable impressions that my personal exposure to debate has developed. They are defaults. None are set in stone. Any argument - from performance to politics DAs and everything in between - can be a voting issue. I'll anticipate judging a lot of clash of civilizations debates.


 * Things I like**
 * **CX Demeanor -** there's a fine (and often gendered) line between confidence and aggression. Don't be rude to your opponents, or you'll lose speaks. Be polite but incisive and you'll get extra speaks.
 * **Argument Interactions -** I'm willing to give extra speaker points for debaters who make clever catches on argument interaction.
 * **Reading Defense -** I'm willing to vote on terminal defense and no link arguments. I'm fine with offense/defense, but I recognize that it collapses into incoherence in some cases.
 * **PICs -** I'm pretty strongly disposed to the idea that the aff should defend everything they've said. It's hard to get me to vote aff on PICs bad theory.
 * **Impact** **comparison -** please explain what impact comes first (ethics, ontology, utility, discourse) and why. __//**Quickest way to get my ballot.**//__

>
 * Things I feel neutrally about **
 * **Topicality -** don't love it, don't hate it. I think the neg deserves predictable link ground, but I don't think that means the aff has to roleplay the state. At a minimum, the aff should be passive voice topical - affirmatives wholly unrelated to the topic are easy for me to vote down absent a strong justification.
 * **Most agent counterplans** - I like them at a level inversely proportional to the degree to which they're generic.
 * Things I dislike **
 * ** Throwaway theory shells - **I have a relatively high theory threshold absent an in-round abuse story. Debaters who want to win my ballot should articulate how the round would have occurred differently but for the offending theory violation ("but for their untopical 1AC, I could have read X disad")
 * ** Most Politics Disads - **politics disadvantages rarely resolve the complicated relationship between fiat and their internal links. A politics disad that did this while otherwise maintaining argument coherence is A+ great. I'm strongly opened to affirmative theory arguments on politics that relate to fiat, though.
 * ** Badly Executed Kritiks - **if you don't understand a kritik, don't run it. I'm well versed in the major kritik literature cited by the preponderance of the community.
 * **Delay and consult** **counterplans -** defensible but not optimal.


 * Other Preferences **
 * **I typically**
 * **Err aff on topicality**
 * **Err neg on conditionality** up to three or four advocacies (in policy - am less persuaded conditionality is fair neg game in LD)
 * **Balance truth and tech.** I'm willing to vote on "you dropped ontology before the aff" and "you dropped evaluate the plantext in a vacuum as the sole source of offense". I'm less willing to vote on "you dropped the five word condo shell I buried".
 * **Err permissible on theory -** debaters making theory arguments should explain why their opponents' argument is not only suboptimal for debate, but so unfair or uneducational that the opponent deserves to lose. "X is bad" doesn't amount to "X is a reason to drop the team".
 * **Give leeway on "new" arguments** if they're clearly an extrapolation of previous arguments. For example, impact weighing is nearly never "new" if it wholly references previously read impacts and compares them.
 * **Feel comfortable voting on "discourse first"** and other performative arguments (including performance 1ACs)


 * Updates 1/20/15***
 * **Paragraph Theory** needs to be a //lot// slower than the rest of your spreading if you have //any// interest in it being flowed.
 * **Differentiate taglines** with speed differences - debaters who are identical speed on cites, cards, tags, and paragraphs of analytic arguments make it hard to differentiate for flowing purposes.
 * **I am strongly persuaded** that out-of-round conduct that I did not witness is irrelevant to my ballot. If your opponent has done something that you feel deserves redress, nearly every tabroom will be willing to hear you out. I don't have the same fact-finding abilities as tab (I can't talk to coaches or other observers, for example).
 * **I am strongly persuaded** that hostile in-round conduct is a voting issue. I cannot think of a single instance where raced, gendered, or otherwise subordinating language or conduct do not justify rejection with a ballot.

> **Tagline Differentiation** is my single biggest pet peeve about LD. I actually don't care how you differentiate them - get louder, get slower, use "and" at the start of each new tag, whatever - but debaters need to differentiate.
 * Pre-TOC Updates 4/17/15***
 * **I have yet to vote on theory in an LD debate.** To be clear - I will absolutely, unhesitatingly vote on theory if the aff/neg wins it, but I get the increasing sense that my threshold for "winning it" is a lot higher than the average judge. If theory is your A-strat, then the ways to win my ballot are specificity and depth. Explain how and why I should drop the other team.
 * **Skep is like theory for me -** I'll vote on it, but it's probably harder to convince me to do so than most other LD judges. I am persuaded by arguments that both moral and epistemological skepticism are defensive claims ("there's a risk our knowledge production / moral approach is accurate, and offensive no reason not to act on it".) I can certainly be brought past this default sentiment ("skepticism is a yes/no question, not a risk-of-impact question" arguments, for example) but fundamentally I don't like the argument.
 * **Line-by-line -** a large number of debates I've judged lack direct refutation or line-by-lines. Fix that and speaker points will rain on you. Don't fix that and I will draw sad faces on your ballot.
 * **I'm generally on the higher end of speaker** **points** - not for any political reason, but I tend to average middling 28s. Conversely, I also have a lower floor - I'm not hesitant to award 26s and 27s to debaters who are sloppy.
 * **Framework interacts with kritiks and vice versa** - if an aff wins a contractualism framework and the neg reads a cap k without contesting the contractualism framework, the neg better have reasons why they access contractualism. I think the debaters most likely to get a thirty from me catch argument nuances like this.
 * **How to get a 30** - make me say "wow" at some point during the debate. There's no specific way to do it - a beautifully executed aff, hyperspecific case analysis, an incisive cross - but general effective execution combined with a "wow" moment is a thirty from me.
 * **Paperless debate -** after a relatively lengthy discussion in the CPD group, I am convinced that judge follow-along is a net good idea. As such, I'd like a copy of each speech flashed in the round. Ideally, I'd like the LD students to follow the college policy trend of emailing each other the speech docs, but I'm fine with USB flashing too.
 * **Theory claims that have no warrants are not arguments.** If you make a bald assertion that does not have a warrant, I will not vote on it. For example, if the aff declares "the neg is unfair" and the neg does not say "nuh uh", the four words "the neg is unfair" - without more - do not make an argument. However, //any// warrant - including a warrant I personally think is untrue, a warrant that is not well explained, or a warrant that has merely a tenuous relation to the claim - is sufficient to vote an argument I am willing to vote on.