Hector,+Dorothy

Nov. 2008 I debated and coach for Carrollton Sacred Heart (in Miami) and am currently a freshman at Georgetown.
 * Dorothy Anne Hector**

I am very flow oriented and try to insert myself into the debate as little as possible, which may come from being a young judge. This leads me to evaluate arguments as they develop, and so I evaluate dropped arguments as true. I do however find appeals to logic and truth persuasive within the round (i.e. please call people out on their BS). I default to an offense/defense paradigm.

I think that one of the most important things for me in resolving debates is impact calculus. This is not just a question of terminal impacts but every arguments interaction. Like our link outweighs the link turn for X Y and Z reason, etc. Impact calculus is important as it tells me how to evaluate the debate, and improves your speaker points. Some intervention is probably inevitable and if you are doing the analysis and comparison about what is relevant you can control how much intervention is necessary.

Organization is crucial. You should have a specific order to your speeches, and not jump all over the place. I flow on my laptop and so can organize the debate for myself but I would prefer not to. That being said as with the rest of my judge philosophy take this with a grain of salt, nothing is absolute. I understand jumping between pages when necessary and this wont adversely affect your speaker points.

I think that there is always a risk of a link, obviously unless it’s a link v. link turn question, but more importantly unless the neg drops a theoretical argument (like plan is bottom of the docket etc.) While I don’t think these arguments are terribly good, this just means that you should be able to answer them easily.

I default to evaluating T as I do the rest of the debate (offense/defense). But I think that a very persuasive case can be made for reasonability. You need to have a counter interpretation. I think that RVIs are dumb.

I think that people now are highly unwilling to vote on conditionality or theory in general. I approach theory debates with no biases or predispositions (when I’m the 2a conditionality sucks, and as the 1n it’s awesome.) I agree theory needs to be an option when debating extremely abusive CPs. That said, I default to viewing theory as a question of competing interpretations unless you specify otherwise.

I abhor proliferations of theory and voting issues (you know what I’m talking about).

No “underviews.”

As for specific arguments, I am not very well versed on “critical” literature and so place a higher value on explanation of the K that other judges might. I am very familiar with the topic and love specific PICs. The only CPs I dislike are those that alter normal means, Sunsets, etc. I am persuaded by the argument that the aff should not have to defend normal means against said CPs.