Vijay,+Madhu

Bellarmine College Prep (CA) '13 Harvard '17 (not currently debating)

I did 4 years of policy debate in high school, and I was a 2A. Most of what I know about debate came from Adi Limaye, so it may be worth reading his philosophy if something's unclear here.

I'll start with what every judge tells you -- you should go for what you're good at, my predispositions are weak and malleable opinions, tech determines truth in general, etc. I have some experience in most argumentative styles and I don't have many hard argumentative preferences, so I'll start with overarching ideas and general things you need to know. If something is not described here, I probably have no strong opinions on it.

I am judging for Debate Rhode Island at Harvard, but I'm doing that purely as a favor for a friend; I am not a consistent coach of their teams. Any positive or negative impressions you have about them should not carry over to me.

I basically **know nothing about the resolution**; the Harvard tournament is the first tournament I'm judging this year. Keep that in mind and don't assume I know what all your acronyms stand for, or that I know anything at all about your T violation.

I am honestly not great at flowing. I never was, and I'm sure that has gotten worse since I've been out of practice for about 8 months. Therefore, make sure you go in some semblance of an order, or at least be very clear about what you're doing. Similarly, **clarity** will matter a lot for speaker points and for me to determine what is going on. This is most important on T/theory and when you first start speaking. Like most judges, I will shout "clear" for a little while and then stop caring. I am also an indecisive person. I can never figure out which dish to order or what shirt to wear, and judging involves even more critical decisions. Be **persuasive** and make me really want to vote for you, in addition to out-teching.


 * Paperless issues:** Prep ends when the flash drive leaves your computer. Provide a viewing computer if the other team needs it. Obviously don't clip/cross-read -- if you do that intentionally, you'll lose and get 0 speaks. If you want to mark a card in a speech doc, don't just shout "mark it there" and hope everyone got that perfectly. Do it manually, and be able to reflash the speech with marks to the other team. I will probably ask everyone to flash me speeches as well, but I am fallible and bad at multitasking, so everyone should keep watch for clipping. I trust you not to read ahead in speech docs.


 * Familiarity with K arguments** (I am putting this higher than it should be because I bet a lot of people base prefs on it, for better or for worse): I am not super familiar with a lot of critical literature, but I'm not entirely uninformed. With the exception of a K aff my senior year, I mostly worked on defending policy arguments. This doesn't mean I'm hard-right or unsympathetic to the K; you just might have some explaining to do. I am familiar with some isolated lit (mostly environment-related K's and Levinasian literature), but that's just for reference; in general, assume I know nothing about your argument, and explain it clearly. Understand the implications of arguments instead of spewing jargon.

Too many teams get away with not **highlighting** enough of their evidence. If you fail to highlight sufficient warrants in your evidence, I think the other team has the license to point that out and blow off your arguments. Otherwise, there's a perverse incentive to make a very large number of terrible unbacked claims.


 * Calling for cards:** I will not go sifting through your cards to find warrants you didn't explicitly lay out for me. In general, I will call for and read a card iff I want to verify that warrants explained in the debate are actually in the cards, and that you weren't lying.

Make it clear whether I should be expected to **kick advocacies for the neg**. I will defer to the status quo unless convinced otherwise.


 * Presumption:** Directly from Adi's philosophy: "Presumption sides with less change, not necessarily with the affirmative. This is a “soft” preset and I have heard arguments as to why siding with less change is good (see: Thomas Hodgman). The degree of “change” is always hard to quantify post-round, so please don’t make me intervene and highlight if your CP does less than the aff (if you think the debate will be close)."


 * Analytic arguments: ** Use them. It seems almost indisputably true that >90% of common internal link chains in debate have at least one component that cannot stand up to simple logical arguments and is backed by terrible evidence. (Otherwise, we would probably be engulfed in multiple simultaneous nuclear conflicts and weirdly escalating environmental disasters.) Exploit that fact.


 * Case debate:** Obviously, like nearly every judge, I love a specific case strategy (which may be critically-oriented) that demonstrates hard work by the neg. One specific preference on case -- I tend to think that the community is too lenient about dropped case arguments in both directions. 2AC's need to stop dropping case arguments left and right; and if they do, the block should capitalize by pointing it out and impacting appropriately. Conversely, I think that if the 1AC said something that the 1NC dropped (e.g. an impact or advantage), then the dropped argument should be considered true, just like a dropped argument anywhere else. (Mainly, I don't see why 2AC's are accountable for dropping parts of a DA, but 1NC's face almost no similar accountability; and I think that although the 2NC is a constructive with new arguments, dropped arguments are still true.) I know this is controversial, so if it becomes relevant, both sides should justify their positions. As with other theoretical issues, predispositions are less important than what happens in-round.

Do good **impact calc**, as you should well know by know, and do impact calc calc or whatever -- i.e. tell me why the impact calc args you're making are more important than your opponents'. Discuss the implications of **impact framing** arguments like utilitarianism or whatever, and tell me how they impact the ballot.


 * Debates involving a soft-left strategy vs. something on the right** (e.g. K aff with a plan text vs. a CP with a policy NB): I'm adding this oddly specific category because lots can (and often does) go wrong here. Make sure your ships collide head-on in the night. If there are some problems with the negative's speech act but the plan causes extinction and the CP doesn't, who do I vote for? Answers to this and similar questions are often not on-face obvious in debates involving both the policy realm and the debate spaaaaaace. Please answer those questions and make good "even if" arguments.


 * Framework:** I don't have a super strong preference -- I personally tend to believe the aff should defend some advocacy, preferably related to policy. However, framework, like other theory, is based on tech, and I can definitely go either way. Please tell me what I have to do with a framework argument, regardless of which direction it's being read -- e.g. if you're aff making a framework argument against a K, tell me whether I have to reject the alt, let you weigh your impacts, etc.


 * T/Theory:** The team that wins the tech will win my ballot, regardless of the underlying argument's quality. (Of course, it's harder to make a compelling, technically sound case for something like no neg fiat.) Impact calculus is absolutely vital and underutilized. My substantive preferences aren't very relevant -- I will say that in general, the closer a CP is to the plan and the less specific differentiating evidence the neg has, the less likely I will be to believe it's competitive/legitimate. That is a very loose preference, and tech >>>>>>>> vague predispositions here. I tend to default to competing interpretations because reasonability is often debated vaguely/poorly by aff teams; if you can do otherwise, do so. As every judge says, theory/T are like DA's; you should debate them as such, and I will judge them as such. A caveat is that if you do things like not meeting your own interpretation, you'll probably lose.


 * CX:** Just one small note -- there is a fine line between being funny in cross-x and avoiding questions or being an ass, and many people sprint over that line.

Some other philosophies have extra advice, but I doubt you've come to an out-of-debate college freshman's judge philosophy looking for debate advice, so I'll spare you.

If you have any questions, please ask.

[last edited: 2/15/14]