Rice,+Tatiana

Hey All! I am a senior collegiate policy debater at the University of Northern Iowa. I never debated in high school due to the fact that Wisconsin doesn't have a debate circuit, therefore I will judge rounds based solely upon my experiences from college debate. One of the biggest deciding factors for a debate is some solid impact calc, which means not only presenting your impacts based on probability, timeframe, and magnitude, but also why your impacts are more important than your opponents (this is especially important for K debates). I'm a 2A, so it's good to remember that I have a 2A framework of debate--I think that debate is a game and very rarely does "winning the ballot" mean you solve structural violence, capitalism, etc. However, I do think that the debate space is a place where "first step" kind of changes can occur within education, but all in all, I will most likely judge a debate based upon which policy/plan/advocation is better for solving the impacts. A few other things to get me to vote for you:


 * DAs**--there needs to be a clear and definite link to the aff; a link of omission is not a link in my book. Needs to have an impact.


 * CPs**-- CPs need to solve the entirety of the impacts of the aff, plus a DA or net benefit. I think PICs are cheater-ey, however, if you have really good evidence that a certain word is extremely harmful especially to the aff's case, then I wouldn't be opposed to voting on it.


 * Ks**--Since I only have a few years of college debate under my belt, I am not completely literate in Ks, however I have a decent understanding of most of the arguments. Just in case I haven't though, make sure you are reiterating what your K is (i.e don't assume I know what your K is) and why the opponents ontology, epistemology, methodology is inherently problematic. Also, there needs to be a definite alternative, don't just say the alt is to reject the affirmative, that's already the job of the negative team.


 * FW**-- __this is extremely important__ for policy v. K teams..tell me how I should weigh each impact and why util or solving for structural violence is more important than anything else in the debate.


 * T**--1) I don't think affs that completely ignore the resolution are ever topical and are ever fair to debate based upon lack of ground or stasis point for the other team; 2) T debates are frivolous for plans that seem pretty straight up. However, T debates are incredibly strategic if you are linking it to another argument. So I'm in favor of them if that's your plan, otherwise, I think T debates are pretty hard to judge and I don't recommend you going for it if you want it to be a clean debate and decision. If it comes down to a T debate I will most likely just judge whether I think the plan is topical and the impacts of if it is not. If you don't do a good job telling me what ground you lose, or impacts of debate that occur from untopical affs, then I might end up voting aff for an untopical team, however, my threshold is pretty low for teams that completely ignore the resolution (at least try to tie //something// to the resolution).


 * Speaks**--Again, I have no idea how high or low speaker points usually are for high school, but for college they are usually around the 27-29 range, which means that's the range I'll usually go. You will get lower speaks if you say something racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. You will get higher speaks if you seem passionate about the issue (without yelling) and/or make me laugh or smile. Pay attention to my body language, if I'm nodding my head, I think that's a good point, if I look confused, it's probably because I am and you should probably make something more clear.


 * Otherwise if you have any other questions feel free to email me at ricetaa@uni.edu & don't forget to have fun (:**