Bell,+Stephanie

Name: Stephanie Bell Affiliation: Albuquerque Academy School Attended: West Des Moines Valley LDphilosophy: I tend to be open to all types of argumentation, but I do have certain preferences when it comes to style and what I like to see in debate rounds. I’ll try to articulate those throughout the rest of this paradigm.

Value/Criterion Debate: I see value debate as rarely necessary in modern LD debate. Most values tend to be quite similar, or even the same (since most debaters go with the value implicit in the resolution), so I usually prefer to see the debate much more focused around the criterion. This is the area I find most lacking in substance and attention in most of the debates that I’ve seen, so I really appreciate an analytical approach to the criterion that gives it the importance that it often warrants. The criterion can be used quite strategically throughout the round, so I prefer to see it used in such a manner. Also, I don’t care if you have a criterion, standard, burdens, or what—the only thing that is important to me is that you give me a clear way in which I’m supposed to weigh the round.

Evidence: I prefer a mixture of evidence and analytical analysis in cases and in the round. Good evidence should usually contain both warrants and impacts, but I don’t mind if it simply contains impacts, provided you give the warrants leading to those impacts with analytics. If it is confusing, explaining it in your own words either before or after the card always helps. If you need to extend it, make sure you extend the analysis as well as the author name- all extensions should contain warrants and impacts for me to give them as much weight as many debaters expect.

Speed: LD has value as a speaking activity. While I’m hard pressed to vote down debaters simply because of their speed, I find little problem with reflecting my displeasure with speaking styles in the speaker points themselves. If, as a debater, you make no attempt to be persuasive in the round, don’t expect high speaks from me. Also, I make it a practice not to call cards or cases. It strikes me as unfair that I as a judge have an infinite amount of time after the round to be able to evaluate what is written on the page, while your opponent, at most, has the length of his or her prep time. If I don't understand an argument as it's being made, I'm not voting on it.

Speaker Points: I have a very wide speaker point range, with 25 as my usual average (meaning that I tend to give anywhere between 20 and 30 speaker points in a tournament and will dip below 20 if I’m offended or something else ludicrous occurs in the round). Speaker points are mainly based on persuasion, but I also factor in things like strategy and how well arguments are made (how well the analytics hold). I often separate the speaker points I give from my judgment of who won the round, so I have no problem with giving low point wins if allowed.

Hopefully this clears up my preferences, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask me in the round.