Pickard,+Claire

Background: I debated LD through high school, and I’m now on the Mary Washington policy team. Paradigm: There’s no such thing as a tabula rasa judge. I try to remain open to critical and theory arguments as long as they are supported by evidence and good analytics, but if your case doesn’t have a core value, it will be slightly more difficult to win me over. I appreciate value clash. Dropping your opponent’s value entirely is not a great idea. Impact calc is cool. I like it. It isn’t always necessary in an LD round, but that’s not to say that successfully utilizing it won’t help you win. There’s definitely a place for line-by-line in the round, but it is pretty meaningless without crystallization and voting issues. Tell me the major reasons that I should vote for you. If you make me go through the entire flow and pick out totally irrelevant drops, I will be very disappointed in you. Cross-X is pretty important to me. I do flow the CX. I can understand high levels of speed, but if you are unclear, I will not hesitate to yell “CLEAR.” Don’t be alarmed by this. I’m only trying to help you. Trust me, you’d rather me yell once during a speech than have me not flow any of it. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but Value-VC links are a must for any case that has a criterion. I’ve seen too many people throw out a quick core and spend 5 minutes on their criterions without establishing any basis. Not good. Theory arguments have a place in LD, as long as you implement them in a way that doesn’t totally desecrate the LD framework. When it comes down to it, I will vote for the case that applies reason and logic to the topic. As long as you’ve got that much, do what you will.