Lui,+Olivia

I’m open to almost all arguments. You should do what you feel gives you the best chance to win. But here are some things: 1) I think that evidence very rarely speaks for itself. Most of the time, arguments are necessary to tie a piece of evidence to the context of a debate. Judges vote for arguments, not cards. This means that if there’s an instance where one side has better evidence and the other side has better argumentation but poorer evidence, I’ll usually default to the team better utilized their inferior evidence.

2) I think strategy is more important than technique. No argument is “dropped” if it is answered by an overarching meta-argument of the other side.

3) I think that debate is about the arguments, but inevitably a debater’s style of delivery influences the persuasiveness of what they say. This doesn’t mean that you should go slowly, but you should definitely be clear and give emphasis to important arguments.