Pregman,+Will

About Me: I am a Sophomore at UNLV currently competing in my sixth year of policy debate. I am primarily affiliated with Coronado High School and this is my second year of judging/part-time coaching. My background and experience as a debater has mostly been with policy-oriented arguments, but I have gone for the K here and there. I have been told that my face is not very expressive but despite this I do really like debate and judging and I aim to be as constructive as I can be with feedback. My email: wpregman@gmail.com

Technical things first: 1. Do your thing. I'm not here to enforce any particular style of debate or types of arguments but to facilitate your education as a debater as best I can via my decision and critique. 2. I am a huge fan of paperless debate! That said I expect paperless teams to a) only stop prep time WHEN THE DRIVE EXITS YOUR COMPUTER, b) provide a viewing laptop for teams without a computer and c) be tech-savvy enough to jump/transfer speeches quickly and efficiently. A lack of professionalism in this regard will be reflected in your speaker points. This is not because I want to be mean, it's because I want to make sure that rounds start and end on time in order for the tournament to run smoothly. 3. I am totally comfortable with speed, but clarity is of chief importance. I’d appreciate it if you slow down just a bit and be extra clear for: plan texts, counter-plan texts, alternative texts, perm texts, advocacy statements, and topicality/framework/theory interpretations. 4. Chill out and enjoy yourself. I hate it when people act like jerks.

My particular preferences: I think it’s possible to win zero risk of anything so you should not neglect making/answering defensive arguments.

Using CX effectively can generate ethos and help communicate your arguments. Take advantage of this.

I like debates about evidence. Don’t let the other team get away with reading a bad card; please make fun of their evidence! That said, evidence does not make an argument, you do. Your evidence is there to support and prove your argument. Therefore, warrant analysis is really important to me and controlling the "spin" is crucial to selling/underselling the quality of evidence read in the debate. While I will call for cards, I don't really like to have to read a lot after the debate, so my opinion on how good a piece of evidence largely depends on how it gets represented or "spun" in your speeches.

I don’t have any inherent predisposition against any type or quantity of counterplan(s). This does not mean that I side with the neg automatically on theory questions, just that I think the legitimacy of certain strategies is a debate to be had if you feel compelled to initiate it. Having a solvency advocate for counter-plans is a must. A good way for the Aff to convince me that the counter-plan is bad for debate is by pointing out the lack of a solvency advocate.

Topicality and Theory should have impacts, not just buzzwords. “Voter for fairness” is fine for the shell, but if you go for it I need to know what that means and why it should matter. Theory is more often a reason to reject the argument rather than the team, but that shouldn't diminish it's strategic utility.

Disads are a thing. I think the question of whether the link or uniqueness is more important really depends on the argument and warrants of the evidence. Arguments about which to prioritize can and probably should be used tactically to serve your ends.

Kritiks are fine and I have (despite debating at UNLV) grown rather fond of them. I can usually understand and follow along until I get into the high theory territory. I am **__not__** well-read in high theory or philosophy beyond the very basic concepts, so explaining that stuff in simple, straight-forward terms is vital if you want to go for anything postmodern, French, or with generally lots of big words that hurt my brain. I wish that more teams would talk about the alternative and how it solves (or doesn't solve). I also like impact turn debates. I typically prefer criticisms that are related to the topic in some way; it makes the "turns case" explanation much more persuasive.

The best framework debates are ones that contain lots of offense. I think these debates are important and valuable to comparing different strategies to approach certain issues. Also, the Aff team always gets to weigh their Aff (whatever you think that means) and I can't imagine a situation where that wouldn't be allowed. Rather, framework to me is more a question of priority and/or methodology than procedural.