joshbentley

Josh Bentley Lone Peak High School Director of Forensics 9 years policy experience

I debated policy debate all through high school, and I have debated for the University of South Carolina, Weber State, and Missouri State. I have judged and coached high school debate for 6 years. Here are some of my preferences:

Affirmative I prefer teams to attempt to be topical. Along these lines I like aff’s that are more policy based or at least make some attempt to defend USFG action. I am not completely opposed to performance but it needs to be articulated well, and impacted well.

Negative

Topicality- I think Topicality all comes down to ground. It is important to check ground and strategic to set up the negative strategy. If I am going to vote on a topicality argument I think a lot of time should be devoted to it, like 4-5 minutes in the block and the same amount of time in the 2nr. I think ground loss should be demonstrated or good potential abuse scenarios. I rarely vote on grammar standards or solely for a jurisdictional voter.

Kritiks- The Kritik should have some form of alternative. I am not the most kritik friendly judge but I do like rhetorical kritiks, because the alternative or impact of it is easy to explain.

Disads- I am a big politics hack, I prefer them to be ran with a counter plan.

Counter plans- Counter plans are generally good for debate, I lean toward the negative on dispositionality. I feel this is the easiest way for negative to win with a counter plan that solves the majority of the affirmative, and has a good risk of a net benefit.

In general I vote for the team that gives the better impact analysis. I like to hear the phrase “even if you don’t think we are winning this, then you still vote for us because…” I really try to do the least amount of intervention possible. I try to not call for too many cards after the round, if I do call for cards I don’t try to make arguments that were not in the debate round.