Sydney,+Jonathan

I am a first-year student at Oberlin College. I debated at Head-Royce for four years in high school. I don't think any reasonable person my age should have any unwavering ideas about anything, and it would be patently ridiculous for me to have a strict conception of how of policy debate must be. You should ask me any specific questions that you have that are not addressed here, and I'll most likely be happy to answer. I don't really care what you choose to argue as long as you enjoy it and are decent to your opponents. I'll vote on what is said in the debate and will do my best to leave my biases out of it. That said, here are some of my current thoughts about debate.

General: I have judged few debates and even fewer good ones, so I'm new at this. I'll try and avoid reading evidence as much as possible (other than to resolve competing claims about the content of cards). I will give your evidence significantly more credibility if I can understand you. My flow is decent but not perfect, so please be clear when you're transitioning between arguments, etc...if you are easier to flow your points will be better. A "dropped" argument is not dropped if it is implicitly answered elsewhere on the flow. I'm fine with speed, but if you're so unclear that I can't comprehend the words you are saying then you're not making arguments. My non-verbal reactions should be fairly obvious...if I stop typing and start staring at you, it means I don't know what the hell you're saying. If you don't get it after awhile I might yell clear. I also can't vote on any argument that I can't understand intellectually. This applies to cheap shot theory arguments: "severance is bad, voting issue" is not a coherent thought that I can reasonably interpret as a warrant to vote for you. I think arguments are more important than cards, and common sense is neglected far more than it should be in a persuasive activity. Sometimes you gotta call a bad argument a bad argument. Obviously, doing impact comparison is important cause otherwise I have to do it for you and I don't always think like you do.

Topicality: Competing interpretations vs. reasonability is generally a waste of time because no one articulates what these mean. I tend to think that the affirmative is responsible for defending an interpretation of the topic rather than merely defending a specific case as "reasonably topical" and that the negative is responsible for proving the affirmative's interpretation of the topic unreasonable rather than merely a little bit worse. I default to evaluating topicality through the framework of predictable limits and don't really understand why the negative has a god-given right to any particular ground. I haven't judged a T debate yet this year (as of pre-glenbrooks) so if you're going for (or answering) T you should most definitely err on the side of more explanation. Tell me exactly what your interpretation means for this topic, give me a caselist, etc...I don't really know what is or isn't "core of the topic", so it's on you to make it clear what should be. Topicality is most likely a voting issue, but I'll certainly listen to arguments why this shouldn't be the case. I think that a lot of criticisms of T are silly and yet unanswered, and I'm willing to punish teams who don't engage the affirmative's arguments even if I find them wrong. I'd really really rather not hear you go for ASPEC, OSPEC, etc. but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Theory: Whoever brings up the theory argument has the burden of winning it. Don't be too blippy please. My strongest bias here is against consult/conditioning/other such counterplans which compete based off "normal means" or other such silliness (without specific literature establishing competition in the context of the affirmative plan). If you are negative and you want to run these counterplans, I won't hold it against you in any way or punish your speaker points and I'll try to be objective when making my decision, but the bias is there. Getting me to vote on conditionality/dispositionality bad is a respectively slightly/very uphill battle but if you're ahead on the flow you're ahead on the flow. Other than what I just mentioned I don't have a lot of strong feelings about theory. I lean affirmative on counterplans which don't have a reasonable solvency advocate/any real literature about them (yes this arguably includes 50 state fiat), but this is just an inclination and not close to an absolute, Theory arguments other than conditionality/dispositionality are almost never voting issues, and if they are you need a good reason why that's true. Reject the argument not the team is pretty much always implied. Whoever controls the framing of the theory debate (competing interpretations vs. case by case basis, aff ground vs. neg flex, etc.) is more likely to win. If all things are truly equal, it's probably better to go for substance than theory.

Disads: Go for it. Have a clever defense of all the silly arguments that you make and point out why their impact claims make less sense than yours and you should be fine. I am frustrated by the offense/defense paradigm a lot of the time, and I'm likely to give analytic, defensive arguments significantly more credibility than a lot of other judges would (the same goes for answers to advantages/solvency). Politics disads almost never make any sense. People rarely point this out though, so feel free to go for politics.

Counterplans: These are fine, see theory for details.

Kritiks: If it's your thing go for it. A truly excellent K debate is probably my favorite kind of debate. At the same time, I don't have strong ideological convictions on either side of these arguments. Specific link analysis and references to 1AC evidence usually make the difference between mediocre and good K debating (and oftentimes determine whether the permutation is possible/beneficial). While I'm familiar with a lot of the more basic mainstream arguments (K's of biopower, security, development, some environmental stuff, etc.) and in these instances will probably know what you're talking about, it is alway better to assume that I don't know what you're talking about and err on the side of more rather than less explanation. If I am confused you can figure it out by looking at me. If you have an alternative you should be clear on what it means, and if you don't you should have a defense of why you don't need one. I am open to arguments for and against the theoretical legitimacy of aff-inclusivity and haven't really made up my mind yet. I think that some aff-inclusive kritiks are clearly closer to being legitimate than others. For example, if you can produce a piece of evidence in the context of the affirmative policy saying that a particular assumption that underlies the 1AC directly influences the implementation of that policy, you're in much better shape than a generic dirty word K. I'll be aff-biased on this question if it's not clear that your alternative is aff-inclusive by the end of 1NC CX (and it really should be clear in your speech). Framework is usually argued in a way that frustrates me. Generally I would prefer if you explain how the impact claims to the affirmative and the kritik interact, rather than trying to theoretically exclude one of them. Kritiks of language, representations, etc. are fine, but both sides should be careful about explaining the role of the ballot from a substantive rather than theoretical perspective.

Performance/debates about debate/etc: I didn't have a lot of experience with these arguments (for or against) in high school. From what I've heard, I think a lot of criticisms of the debate community are important and should be discussed rather than ignored. If you're negative, I would prefer that you substantively engage these arguments rather than going for topicality. On questions of T, I probably have a slight bias in favor of these affirmatives if they engage the topic in a non-traditional way and a bias against them if they ignore the topic entirely. But I could be persuaded otherwise (on both questions). All of this, of course, is open to discussion and depends on how it's debated out. Basically, I don't know.

I'll try and keep my speaker points in line with the norms of the tournament. For most national circuit tournaments, this means the scale is basically 26-29 with most debaters getting between 27 and 28.5 and most clearing debaters getting between 28 and 29. I'll update this if I think of other stuff. Again, any questions just ask.