Reed,+Andrea


 * mid-season update:
 * 1) So far this year, I’ve read very few cards after the debate is over. Maybe I’m getting old too fast, but I’ve increasingly found myself to be part of the camp where I won’t read your cards to reconstruct arguments that you failed to communicate yourself during your speech. I will read cards that are intelligently contested by both teams.
 * 2) To borrow from Alex Lamballe’s philosophy: “I find many debates difficult to understand because debaters are far too unclear. This is not a critique of talking fast, just talking unclearly. Speed is the number of arguments effectively communicated to the judge per minute.” Yes.
 * 3) Paperless teams- your prep time ends when you are ready to hand your jump drive to the other team. Saving your speech to the drive is part of your prep time.

Topicality- Things that will help you out: explaining which affs we should be debating and why, which affs they allow that would be bad to have to debate, which arguments we should be debating and why your interpretation best facilitates that discussion, ect. I also think this year will put a premium on comparing definitions beyond who limits the most. Maybe the neg’s definition of eligibility is more limiting, but if the aff can clearly explain why we should defer to the State Department or the INA for visa related definitions, they will have something big going for them. Explaining who is doing the defining and why should I prefer that definition will get you far.

DAs/CPs- like em. Don’t take counterplan competition for granted, take clever perms seriously, especially on this topic as visa policy is very intricate. Politics debates- affs, several plan popular cards does not a link turn make. Just because some super narrow lobby I’ve never heard of likes your plan does not mean that they will be able to successfully save the bill the negative claims you tank. Negs have to read internal links to their arguments, link turns are no different. Rant over.

Ks- like ‘em more than you might think. I’ve voted neg on the K a lot since I started judging. Affs will do well by reading as much specific evidence about the neg’s author/-ism as possible. Most CXs about framework are vacuous- both teams just talk past each other and no one really accomplishes much. K affs are a tougher sell for me, I do think you should read a plan. That being said, there are some really awesome K affs on this topic that can read plans and have no issue whatsoever with doing so.

Cross-x- really important for me. I will often flow it. It’s where a lot of evidence comparison happens now. Being smart here can win or lose you the debate.

Paperless teams- sigh, still waiting for when paperless debating will SAVE time in debates. But whatever, I’ll get over it even if I seem grumpy at the time. I may very well ask you to jump me your speech when you are jumping it to the other team. This is because I am taking cites for you because for some reason, paperless teams seem to be bad at using this little awesome thing called the cite list macro. Nothing personal, most people are just bad at sharing intel.

Lastly, please be civil to your opponents. Some sass works, sometimes its way over the top. Having your judge cringe at you is never a good thing. I suppose I have a good poker face in terms of what I think about the arguments in the round, but your attitude, not so much. You should be able to tell how I’m feeling if you look up once and a while.