Sukin,+Lauren

I’m a senior and a 2N at Pace Academy. I debated for two years at Westminster. I debate with Brian Klarman. I pretend to disagree with everything he thinks about debate, but he's pretty much convinced me that he's right about things, anyway. So it might help you to read his wiki ( http://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com/Klarman%2C+Brian ). That being said, I am not as insane as he is...

I don’t want to do work for you. Tell me how to vote. This is what I think about debate, but it is obviously flexible. And yes, I will vote on anything, including your conspiracy theory. You just have to debate it well. Debate is a game. Capitalize on your opponent’s mistakes. I will absolutely dock speaker points for homophobia and probably for inappropriate behavior. That being said, humor is always good. **Read this if you haven’t debated much:** Cross-ex is not a team activity. Let your partner answer questions as much as possible. If you need to step in, step in, but if you are dominating your partner, it probably makes you look mean and your partner look less credible. Some basic advice for the neg: don’t spread yourself out in the block, and don’t take too many flows in the 2NR. One of our freshmen this year insisted on taking everything in the 2NR for a couple of tournaments. Don’t do that. Know what you are winning.

**T:** I default to competing interpretations if the aff doesn’t meet the neg’s interpretation. If you can win a fairly decent risk of a “we meet” argument, then my frame changes to reasonability. Extra-T and effects-T are not great arguments on this topic, although they are winnable. Permutations of definitions are under-used and useful. Explain why your vision of debate is better. Aff: don’t drop over-limiting good. The Rowland card is bad, but if it’s dropped, it’s dropped. If you have a creative interpretation and can explain and impact it well, I’ll be interested and pleased. The corollary to that is if you are reading your A team’s T-human blocks but don’t have any idea what you are actually saying, I will be displeased (but you can probably still win.) Counter-interpretation: only our aff is topical is not a winner.

**DA’s:** are a great 2NR option. There’s not much to say here that isn’t covered in the risk analysis section. You should do impact calc. If you are debating a team that drops one of your disads, you should extend it but not harp on it. Don’t read a bunch of new impacts or unnecessary cards, because that justifies new 1AR arguments (or impact turns.)

**Impact turns:** Yay. If you are going for these, I’m probably happy. So, to the aff – don’t blow off an impact turn by just extending your 1AC impact card unless you know your 1AC cards are good and deal well enough with the impact turn. To the neg—these debates are complicated, and most affs have good tricks to get out of impact turns, so make sure you keep the details straight, are good on the line-by-line, and catch the trick. Side note: heg high/low is not the same as heg sustainable/unsustainable. **1AR impact turns:** You should probably kick your aff or part of your aff if you are going to do this. It’s a risky option but can get you far.

**CP’s:** are useful. I talk about CP theory below. The aff needs to have a solvency deficit (or go for theory). **Permutations:** are tests of competition, although if you can give me a good reason why you can advocate it, go right ahead. Clever permutations are always a plus. For example, if the CP has China fund and enact the aff, a permutation to have China fund the aff and the US enact it is a clever permutation. Hopefully, though, the neg catches your shenanigans and points out that the permutation is functionally intrinsic because it adds the act of China giving money to the US. Know the difference between function and textual competition and use that knowledge.

**Theory:** 1. Perf Con: This is probably the theory note you most want to pay attention to. Truth claims are not conditional. An economy impact and a cap bad K contradict. If you read a DA with a warming impact and security, the aff can weigh a warming add-on against your security K. This, of course, is just my default, not something set in stone. 2. Condo: I honestly think this is fine if the neg isn’t doing something else that’s abusive (like reading contradictory arguments or questionably legitimate CP’s.) That’s only true up to a point, though. If there are unnecessary amounts of worlds in the 1NC just to skew time, condo becomes increasingly illegitimate. I’m still willing to vote on condo bad if you only read one conditional CP, but the aff will have a harder time winning that in front of me than in front of some other people. 3. Judge kick: it’s okay, even if not explicitly explained in the 2NR, unless the aff says otherwise. 4. CP competition: I generally think PIC’s are okay unless they are word PIC’s and international fiat is fine. The aff can always change my perception of that. Process CP’s, agent CP’s, multi-actor international CP’s are probably cheating, but also probably only a reason to reject the CP. You can still win any CP in front of me, it just depends how good you are at theory. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">5. Intrinsicness: I don’t think you can cross-apply it to other disads unless your 2AC interpretation is really vague, and at that point, you haven’t made a very good intrinsicness argument. Also, this argument should really only be valid on disads that aren’t an opportunity cost. However, if you make it or cross-apply it, and it’s dropped, then you are in a good place. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">6. Fiat: Don’t abuse it. It doesn’t get you out of roll-back arguments on a debris DA unless you are pretty good at explaining what “durable fiat means.” (You could say it means we send up a new satellite for every one that gets knocked down, but that probably makes the link to the DA stronger and costs a lot more money than you want to defend.) That’s not to say that this type of argument on the neg is so great, either. The aff still gets all of their short or mid-term impacts, and time frame is useful for impact comparison. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">7. Presumption: goes neg unless the 2NR includes a CP. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">8. ASPEC: if you have to go for this in front of me, you are in a bad place unless there is some sort of legitimate abuse story (i.e. they spike a disad) or it’s a new aff.

<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">**Risk analysis:** Defense matters. If it didn’t, the aff would always be able to win on a tiny risk of “try or die” framing and the neg would be able to simply read a bunch of terminal impact cards and go for “there’s a .0000000001% chance they cause this.” You can win a 100% risk of a no link argument. However, that is pretty difficult to do. I will generally adhere to an offense/defense paradigm unless told to do otherwise. Dropped arguments are usually true arguments.

<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">**K’s:** I’m putting this at the bottom so that you read the rest of this before just skimming to here. If you did just skim, this will be less helpful. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">My partner says I read the K strangely. I tend to go for “turns case” arguments rather than cheating arguments, read new K’s in the block to answer their impacts, rarely extend a floating PIK, don’t always extend the alternative at all, and spend too much time on framework. That may be an exaggeration, but if it makes a difference, I probably do view the K as a strange impact turn debate. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">First, I probably understand your K. Aff, if you understand the K well enough to make smart arguments that actually respond to the thesis of what the author was writing about, it will get you better speaker points (if you do it well and make it useful) than stumbling through someone else’s framework blocks. But it can also often a waste of time, as true engagement with a K from the aff doesn’t always get you as far as a severance permutation and some realism cards. Then again, understand realism. If your aff isn’t realist, be careful reading it unless you are willing to defend your aff in that framework. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Second, I’m not going to be very happy listening to one-off-Schopenhauer or a K with a link of omission. If you really want to read a race K, read an orientalism K instead. I think semiotics is a really interesting field. That doesn’t make it a good K. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Third, the 1A needs to respond to tricks. If you drop key arguments (like error replication or fiat is illusory), I will understand why the 2N is going for the K, and I’m not likely to give the 2AR a lot of leeway on answering these things. A good 2A, though, can usually find a way to imbed responses in 1AR analysis, and if you do that well, then you are probably fine. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Fourth, impact comparison matters. Aff, that means if you answer the necessary framework and cheap-shot arguments, you have a shot with aff outweighs if you can do that well. Neg, that means don’t just extend “infinite imperialism” as your impact, because that’s probably the status quo. Contextualize the aff in the context of your argument. Good link analysis will get you quite far, especially if you can pull quotes from 1AC cards or provide indicts of their authors. <span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Fifth, I will listen to your performance aff. I’d rather listen to a K aff than a performance aff, and I’d rather listen to a policy aff than both of those. But, I am willing to hear it, and if you debate it well enough, you can win with it. If you are neg against one of these, framework and topicality are very good options. Just make sure you actually answer the aff’s responses.