Vance,+Evan

Name: Evan Vance

School Affiliation: College Prep (CA)

Experience on the policy topic: Long Beach, Fullerton.

Judge philosophy updated 12/29/15

I debated for CPS between 2006 and 2009 and made it to one tournament with Dartmouth, also in 2009. Between 2009 and 2014 I had no contact with debate. I studied Classics and am now a graduate student at UC Berkeley in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology.

I’d like to think I’m open to whatever arguments you feel like reading. Given a choice, I would probably describe myself as more policy oriented, but my 2NRs my senior year of high school were about 2/3 kritiks. That said, I'm not very well-versed in critical theory, especially the authors popular in debate. That doesn't mean I won't vote on your kritik, but please don't assume I understand the complexities of your argument. While I'm still in the process of figuring out how I feel about framework against performance/movement-based teams, I have often thought it was not a particularly compelling argument, as I've seen it executed.

I’ll do my best to evaluate the round based on the line by line. I don’t enjoy extensive overviews and I won’t make cross-applications from the overview to the line by line for you unless you tell me to. I want you to tell me why you win the round because the more that I have to interpret your evidence and weigh arguments against one another, the more that I am intervening. Incidentally, I've almost invariably found myself voting for the team that most impressed me in cross-x.

I want to understand you so that I can evaluate your debate as well as possible. If I can't understand you, I'll say clear. It might be because you’re unclear, or because I’m having trouble understanding you for another reason; it’s my way of communicating to you that I’m not getting what you’re saying.

I think it’s incredibly important that debate be a team sport, so please respect your partner. Please respect the other team as well. I’m not opposed to being entertained. I’m happy to answer any other questions you may have.

LD: I’ll vote based on the line by line. I’m a little bit clueless about value/value criterion so if that becomes important to the debate please be sure to articulate how it ought to affect my ballot.