Sprouse,+Warren

2009-10 Debate Season** I am the head coach at Cedar Rapids Washington HS and have coached there for 12 years. Wash teams travel all over the country and participate in most of the national circuit events including NFL Nationals and the TOC. I work closely but not exclusively with Wash teams in developing arguments and judge a moderate amount on each topic. At Wash, I teach AP Comparative Government and AP American Government. **__ Paradigmatic Issues __** : I will default to a policy-making paradigm unless convinced to do otherwise. However, I generally think of policy-making as including some aspects of the “search for truth”. In general I think that “community of scholars/intellectuals” on a particular topic is a better metaphor for what debate should be about than the “congressional committee” metaphor. In practical terms this means that I tend to place a high value on topic-specific debate and think the rules should reward it, and I place a somewhat lower value on “it’s more real world” type justifications. I tend to value greater degrees of specificity and in-depth discussion of the link level of negative positions; I also tend to value depth over breadth as a means to evaluating what is better for debate and more educational for debaters/judges. **__ So You Want to Run the K __** : I am more sympathetic to your critical arguments than you think I am, but to win them in front of me you need to do a couple of things. First, you need to have a link that indicts the plan in some specific way. I have a fairly strong aff bias against criticisms that link mainly to status quo ethics/epistemologies/assumptions/ways of thinking/etc. Affs don’t typically challenge the link levels much in modern K debates, but I will probably weight these sorts of arguments slightly more than other judges if the 2AC puts in the time. You will also usually need to have an alternative that does something other than simply reject the plan. Again, you can overcome this bias, but I am typically much more compelled by K teams that can contextualize the alt in a way that actually solves something; if you can do this in a way that also references specific episodes, social movements, or points of resistance in political history, then you are especially sweet. **__Other Arguments__**: I try to remain as neutral as possible in resolving theoretical issues surrounding neg strategies and time allocation. Conditional positions are usually fine; I don’t have many predispositions on what types of counterplan competition are permissible; I probably have slight Aff defaults in terms of latitude for permutations. Topicality is always a voting issue, but I will interpret that in either a competing interpretations or a reasonability framework. I try to do the necessary work to evaluate the accuracy and context of evidence and the accurate calculation of risk. This tends to mean you can get more mileage out of good defensive arguments, and that the risk of a disadvantage does not necessarily become absolute just because there are no turns from the aff. This also sometimes means that dropped arguments which are complete lies are not necessarily devastating. **__ Ways to Get Good Speaker Points When I am Judging You __** : Debaters should be professional, fair, and treat your opponents with courtesy and respect. Be funny and tell jokes, preferably not at the expense of your opponents. I do not typically flow cross-ex, but I do usually consider it binding and I am totally convinced that good cross-ex skills win a ton of debates, so taking prep prior to your cross-ex may be useful. You should slow down some on theory debates and also on topicality debates in the 2AC- I will not ask for your block after the debate, so making the 5 or 6 good answers that I can flow will always benefit you more than making the 15 jive answers to a particular procedural argument.
 * Judge Philosophy- Warren Sprouse