Wolf,+Chris

Chris Wolf Bellarmine College Prep, Coach I have been coaching and judging policy debate for 14 years.

Preliminary Remarks:

First: whether you speak at a conversational pace or spread faster than the micro-machine man (I know that dates me), debate is still about persuasion. You need to convince me that your arguments are stronger or better, that your evidence is stronger or better, that your conclusions (read: impacts) are more likely and/or more significant. You can't do that if you aren't explaining explicit comparisons between your arguments/evidence and theirs. You run an infinitely larger risk of being unhappy with the outcome of the debate if you let me make up my own mind about these things by making tons of claims without any discussion of their warrants and/or how the arguments in the round impact and relate to one another.

Second: the strategy and intellectual rigor of circuit debate, which I find exciting, relies directly on the use of conventional argument structures, but ironically, over-reliance on these shortcuts actually diminishes the quality of the explanation, discussion and learning in the round in two ways. Unfortunately, your counterplan shell will, of necessity and design, eliminate the vast majority of the advocacy in the 42 page article published by its original author. I may or may not have read those 42 pages, but by the end of the round I should leave feeling like I understand the vast majority of the arguments in them. Similarly, when you under-explain too many arguments and shortchange the explanation of how they all fit together on your side of the debate (that is, when the impact calculus is blippy with no warrants to support your comparative claims) and you leave it to me to sort it all out without any guidelines, you run an infinitely larger risk of being unhappy with the outcome of the debate.

Third: It is my opinion that **THE** hallmark of the best debaters is not speaking, it's careful listening. Listening well means you can answer your opponents arguments efficiently, precisely, and decisively. If you listen carefully, you'll usually find out that you don't need all of sub points "little a" through "little r" on argument 25 on your block and that you may not need all 25 of those args. Now you can spend more time explaining the 6 or 7 or even 10 that are on-point and will sway the round because you could explain them and their in-round significance that much better (see the above two points).

Finally: I see my coaching and judging as an extension of my teaching. I did not compete in high school or college and so I came to the activity as a teacher first. I have stayed because I have been and continue to be so impressed and excited by the learning, intellectual training, and exchange of ideas about the substantive issues within the resolutional focus that the activity entails for all of us at its best. I love walking away from a round feeling that I learned something. At its worst, however, the activity breeds arrogance and disrespect as competitors try to show off for immature judges or compensate for lack of preparation by crossing the line from aggressive intellectual discussion to ridiculing their opponents. I have no problem using my ballot to send a clear message that doing so is inappropriate in a community that supposedly respects intellectual pursuits and the free exchange of ideas.

The Specifics:

Topicality: I tend to think of topicality as fundamentally a question of reasonable limits. In other words, the fine print of the arguments about increasing/decreasing education and research burdens, etc. is usually comprised of a bunch of claims with unresolvable warrant clash because they come right off the generic block with only minimal adaptation to the specifics of the round. Winning topicality for me is a matter of resolving that warrant clash in your favor by convincing me that the resulting limits are less arbitrary and contrived (hence, more reasonable and expected) as demonstrated by the division of ground in this round. Practically, I guess this turns out to be a fairly high set of expectations, which is why I don't often vote on T. Also, as far as I'm concerned, "jursidiction" is not a voter.

Case/ DAs -- I love when the neg team has done their homework and can dish out a solid throw down on case. I am not a fan of the Politics DA, but I don't think it's killing debate either. See above on persuasiveness, especially with regard to links for generic DAs. I think morphing, moving target, and magically revived internal links (especially when they are as generic as they tend to be in Politics DAs) are often tantamount to cheating.

Counterplans -- The more specific the better, the more solvency evidence the better. See above on over-reliance on argument shortcuts and the need to explain how the arguments all relate to one another and to explain the impacts persuasively.

Theory -- It generally makes me rather unhappy to vote on theory for three reasons. First, see above regarding substantive issues. Second, see above on over-reliance of argument shortcuts and not explaining the impacts/ implications persuasively. Third, I always end up feeling that it's a necessary evil. On the one hand, forewarned is forearmed -- that is, I think Affs should be ready to defend against all common Neg strats -- while on the other hand there needs to be some leverage against totally artificial competitiveness and moving targets. Again, see above on over-reliance on argument shortcuts and the need to explain how the arguments all relate to one another and to explain the impacts persuasively. If you really think there is reason for me to vote here, I expect you to do the work in making sure I understand clearly why.

Framework -- The Aff needs to be able to defend the philosophical assumptions and implications of their proposed policy action just as they would the "real world" consequences, mostly because the Neg needs to make the implications of the criticism "real world". In other words, just as they would in a DA, the Neg's criticism needs to engage the Aff with a **strong** link and provide a **specific** reason to vote against the Aff. Also, like a CP, the Neg needs to demonstrate an "opportunity cost" -- that is, if the Neg cannot / will not identify a policy action that the Aff could've chosen that would have at least some more compliance with the criticism (an alternative, preferably written), I see no reason to vote against the Aff. To some extent, I think the Aff needs to be able to weigh Case against the implications of the K in the same way that the Neg should be able to leverage the implications of their chosen criticism in relation to both its effects on how the plan operates as well as the broader consequences.

Critiques -- I like philosophy and I think philosophical considerations must be considered in order for anyone to arrive at a well deliberated plan of action even in the "real world." I intensely dislike the way the work of intellectuals is routinely bastardized by cutting and pasting the convenient parts without any consideration for their consistency with the author's overall work or with the intellectual context in which that work was written. You don't get to throw together the most flaming paragraphs of Betty Friedan, Judith Butler, and Susan Faludi and call it a feminism K since each would fundamentally disagree with the others. Similarly, if you're going to talk to me about the evils of biopower in your Foucault derivative K, you had better include how you suppose he would have resolved the fundamental problem that his theories eliminate the agent (anything that would comprise "the person") that this supposed evil would have negative impacts on. Further, I think it is entirely illegitimate to read excerpts from the author and then claim to be exempt from the criticisms of the author's work because you chose only some parts. For example, I'm not sure there is legitimacy to the idea that all of society as a whole can be psychoanalyzed using Freudian ideas, so when you read form bits from works whose authors make this assumption, and the other team makes this challenge, I think you need to be ready to defend it and not sidestep it. In short, though I have seen it done on occasion, I think it's really difficult to use critical arguments in an intellectually honest manner within the constraints of debate times and purposes and if you run the K to obfuscate and avoid engaging in a real debate, you probably won't be happy with my decision.

THE TIP: nine times out of ten, a little less can mean a lot more.