Aragon,+Richard

I competed in parliamentary debate for 1 year on the community college circuit and 3 years on the national circuit ending in 2009. During this time I also dabbled in LD as well as policy debate. Since then I coached LD for Brunswick High school in Maine in 2010 and currently am a coach for the San Joaquin Delta College Speech and Debate team in Stockton, CA.

Topicality: I enjoy good T debates with well impacted standards. I am more apt to vote on T with articulated abuse but have voted for T before under a Competing Interpretations framework.

Procedurals: I tend to err neg. on condo/dispo args. PIC’s bad etc. I will tend to err neg. unless clear arguments of abuse can be made ie. Consult, Delay, Plan minus a penny, etc.

Kritiks: I am fine with K’s but find most to be way too generic and or easily defeated on the alternative level. All K’s should have a clearly outlined and easily comprehensible F/W. Basically treat it like I have never seen or heard of your lit. in my life as there’s a good chance I haven’t. The further your F/W deviates from some derivative of a utilitarian paradigm for accessing my ballot the more explicit you should make your F/W to me to ensure a good decision.

D/A, C/P Debate: While most of my career was spent running Kritiks I have found that I enjoy watching a good D/A C/P debate. During the last year and a half I have been working around the country on various political campaigns so as a result am very well versed as far as the politics debate. A good case debate should have a mix of offense and defense as well as in depth impact calculus and comparison.

Performance: I am probably not a good judge to run performance in front of. That being said I will not vote anyone down simply for running performance I simply have a harder time evaluating and formulating an objective decision on a performance round. If you do run performance in front of me, I think all aff.’s should be topical although I am open as to exactly what being topical is and make your framework for evaluating the round very explicit. (The further your F/W deviates from some derivative of a utilitarian paradigm for accessing my ballot the more explicit you should make your F/W to me to ensure a good decision.)

* I will try and leave all biases and previous assumptions at the door to the extent that if an argument is made that I know to be factually inaccurate I will vote for the arg. if conceded but i also think it is impossible to be completely tabula rasa so I will preference one good well warranted arg. over several janky arguments *Not everything has to be carded, analytics can be just as successful as carded args. *IMO debaters should be more willing to debate author quals. Just because someone wants a card saying x so they write a blog post on an obscure website under a pseudonym, it does not make it credible evidence just because they printed it off.