Spence,+Clay

I'm Clay Spence. I debated at Strake Jesuit for four years, and am fairly well-versed in the nuances and quirks of national circuit debate, and will try to judge rounds just like Chris Castillo with the following (possible) exceptions:

1. I don't think risk of offense makes any sense if a debater is winning defense to a framework and so will not evaluate risk of offense unless debaters explain what it is and why I should use it when evaluating a round. If a scenario occurs in which there is defense against both frameworks, and absent meta-weighing of the sort discussed on Christian Tarsney's wiki (Sepielli/Bostrom type arguments) I will just go to presumption and resolve the debate there. I'm open to some debater explaining the notion of risk of offense clearly to me in round, but haven't heard a cogent explanation yet. 2. I'm pretty bad at flowing so be clear, try to number/label your arguments, and go relatively slowly. I particularly have trouble following high-pitched/quiet voices. 3. I think that the burden of argument comparison is on the person reading responses. If you're reading a block against another case, explain how the arguments apply to the specific arguments the AC is making. I would prefer not to have to intervene to do argument comparison for you. 4. I won't evaluate arguments if the debaters running them can't clearly explain them in CX. I have a low threshold for explanation, particularly with younger debaters, but if a debater reads, for instance, a dump of arguments about why Levinas is incoherent and then just absolutely can't explain the arguments in his/her own words, I'm not going to evaluate them. This tends to be a problem when debaters read stuff they haven't written/comprehensively read, so do your own work.

If anyone wants suggestions for philosophy readings or ways to beat theory or has other questions, email me at cwspence12@gmail.com.