Souza,+Adam

Background: I debated for several years in high school and have numerous years experience in the field of education.

L/D Debate Philosophy: I'm open to any number of the newer postmodern or contemporary debating strategies, kritik ect., but debaters are going to have to do the work verbally/intellectually to prove that their frame work is relevant and superior to a more conservative reading of the question, and this is and should be difficult. In terms of personal biases, I tend to be a hopelessly logically/linguistically pedantic person so, while I of course strive to check this tendency in myself and put equal weight in my assessments on both logic and rhetoric, you should be warned that you'll swimming, at least, against the currents of my tastes if you sacrifice accuracy for rhetorical flourish. I suppose I'm also biased in that I want to feel like I'm watching a genuinely interactive debate between genuinely human actors. It is said that "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy", and this should to a certain extent be true of your debating strategy; if I feel like you're mechanically executing a flow chart, I'll generally be less impressed than if I hear you really responding dynamically to your opponent's arguments, which necessitates a certain level of improvisation. It should be also be noted that recitation at an unnatural clip also strikes me as particularly unimpressive in that it side steps the demands of verbal economy and ignores the demands of appealing to any real audience and so seems both intellectually lazy and rhetorically terrible.