Katsulas,+John

John Katsulas, Director of Debate, Boston College 25+ years coaching

Here are the rules for debate: 1) The affirmative side must advocate a plan of action by the United States Federal Government. If you merely read poetry, dance, or play music, you will lose. 2) The negative side must defend a consistent policy position in the debate. The negative may choose to defend the status quo, or the negative may advocate an unconditional counterplan. 3) Topicality is a voting issue and never a reverse voting issue. 4) Conditionality is prohibited. 5) The resolution is worded as a policy proposition, which means that policy making is the focus of debate. 6) Kritiques are not welcome. 7) Performance-style debate belongs in theatre productions. .  Here are suggestions for debating in front of me:  1) The affirmative side has huge presumption on topicality if they can produce contextual evidence to prove their plan is topical. 2) Agent counterplans are fine. Don’t waste your time arguing PICS bad arguments against them. The legitimacy of international fiat is debatable, but I definitely believe there are far stronger arguments favoring limiting fiat to U.S. governmental actors. 3) Politics disadvantages are welcome. I like to hear them. Affirmatives should attack the internal link stories on many of these disadvantages. This is frequently a more viable strategy than just going for impact turns. 4) Both sides should argue solvency against affirmative plans and negative counterplans. Both sides should attack the links and internal links of impacts. 5) If you are incomprehensible, I won’t re-read all of your evidence after the debate to figure out your arguments. 6) Negative can win my ballot on zero risk of affirmative case solvency. Many affirmatives cases are so tragically flawed that they can be beaten by an effective cross-examination and/or analytical case presses. 7) I am very strict on 1ARs making new answers to fully developed disadvantages which don’t change from the 1NC. 8) Cross-examination answers are binding. 9) ASPEC: I won’t vote on it UNLESS you ask in cross-ex and they refuse to specify an agent. 10) Too late to add new links and impacts to your disadvantages during the first negative rebuttal.

I have a low threshold for dismissing non-real world arguments like nuclear war good and wipe-out.