Kontopoulos,+Ted

**New Trier '11** **Boston College '15 (Debating)** **Preclusions: New Trier, Niles West** **Latin America Topic Experience: None**

**5 Second Version: Same thing applies to me that everyone else says---go for what you are good at, explain stuff, don't be really mean and I am willing to listen to anything---everything is debatable.**

Update: teams advocating non-topical plans, revolutions, etc must actually to some degree involve themselves with their advocacy outside of the debate round in the "real world". Put succinctly, if "project teams" do not attempt to effectuate non-debate change and the opposing team points this out, then the opposing team will de facto win my ballot.

Since everyone basically says the same thing I'll put down what you should do in front of me specifically and what you shouldn't do in front of me (not in any particular order)---

__**--Frame the debate.**__ I don't need a separate sheet for the long overview in the 2NR, explain how I should evaluate everything on all issues---it's your debate, not mine. The team that controls the framing of the debate at the end of the debate wins a vast majority of the time. This means meta-arguments are most important to me (probability vs. timeframe, link drives uniqueness, uniqueness drives link, reasonability vs. competing interpretations, etc.). These framing issues will be what I consider first when resolving the debate at the end of the round and how I award speaker points.

__**--Be clear.**__ Seriously, be clear. I have a harder time than most understanding unclear people. I usually keep a good flow, Randy Rossman once said I kept an excellent flow, for what it’s worth, (probably only hurts my cause), but I just can’t flow you when you are unclear. I won’t feel bad and I’ll probably stop flowing and make annoyed faces. Just look up sometime, I’m sure you’ll be able to tell if I’m flowing or not.

__**--Be loud enough to hear but don't scream at me.**__ Speak a little louder than your conversational voice and you will be fine. If I can't hear you then I can't hear the arguments you make and that will hurt your cause and I will be very sympathetic to the other team if they "dropped 2AC #6" because neither I nor them could hear you.

__**--Cheating**__. This includes: clipping, weird cross-reading tricks, fabrication, harassment, and any other shenanigans like that. I will drop the team and assign minimum speaker points.

__**--What an argument is**__. An asserted claim or tautology doesn't constitute one. Saying a bunch of buzz words without substantiation or explanation or warrants will get you minimal speaker points and hurt your "argument".

__**--I won't punish a team for what they go for**__. I went for a few really bad arguments (subsets) but executed them decently well. If you are good at going for something (despite its stupidity in the community's eyes) don't hesitate and I will reward you if you can argue well.

__**--Theory on CPs are evaluated first**__--my junior year New Trier CS (Dylan Carpenter and Ira Slomski Pritz) went for 50 state fiat a fair amount and were (arguably) the most successful theory team in the nation. They won a lot that the CP should be rejected then that the case outweighed the net benefit. This may not seem very weird, but for some reason a ton of affs go for arguments that rest on the sheer existence of the CP (i.e. links to the net benefit) AND theory in the 2AR then they are in awe when they win their theoretical reason to reject the CP and lose because the net benefit outweighed the case easy. As Randy Rossman says, "it is not a bad strategy to go for both theory and CP links to the net benefit but the 2ar needs to introduce a sequencing argument that tells me to evaluate theory second, otherwise you will be shocked and dismayed"

__**--Project Teams**__. Go for it. Explain why I should vote for you, if you out-debate the other team I will pick you up. In these debates I will evaluate __every__ argument in a balanced way, that being said I will still vote on framework, as well as other arguments you may consider stupid. If you can't beat what you call "stupid" arguments you deserve to lose.

__**--K Heavy Teams**__. I don't care how you go for the K whether going for the argument includes a CP/DA type deal or "I'm going to cheat you out of this round" thing. I read a few Ks in high school and debate them frequently on the college circuit. That said, I hold these debates to a __higher__ level of explanation and less "buzz word" extensions than I would in policy-policy debates. Otherwise, Ks lose value because people don't make arguments, they instead string a bunch of words together in an attempt to formulate an argument. I feel I should note that I am not a Heideggarian or Lacanian scholar, so don't assume I know everything you are saying. If a word you use is a term of art make it a point to explain the term during cross-x.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__**--Getting Good Speaker Points**__. Be reasonably nice, make comparisons, make fun of Alex Kontopoulos, be funny.