Lockner,+Lorelei

I have been involved with debate as a competitor, judge or coach for over a decade. I currently coach for Kent Denver. I attended a small public school in Kansas and did not compete in National Circuit Debate, but performed extremely well locally.

Here area few things I believe about debate:

It is not my job to frame the debate. I do not have a default other than offense/defense. I am not inherently a policy maker, but I will be. I believe each round should be framed by the competitors.

I believe in tech over truth as a general rule, but I do believe there are some limits to this. If you offend me morally by making racism good/sexism good or if act flippant about discrimination or misgendering, I will most likely find a reason to drop you. Although I believe in tech over truth as a general rule, as a competitor I generally employed truth over tech. I do believe it is generally easier and more enjoyable to argue for a position you actually support. I’m impressed by passionate debaters who understand the complexities of what they’re presenting. In an extremely close debate technically, I tend to prefer social justice to terminal impacts.

I do not prefer speed. It is the least impressive attribute in a policy debater, in my opinion. Do not sacrifice speech clarity or organization for speed. I prefer direct, line by line clash. If you do embedded clash that’s great just make sure I can hear every word so I will know where to flow it. If you refuse to slow down for me, you should strike me as a judge because I will dock your speech points considerably for not adapting.

If you want me to flow your overview, tell me to. I find it sloppy when debaters give all their answers in the overview and skimp on the line by line. I can tell when you’re just reading blocks and it is not an excuse to drop the line by line clash. If you accuse the other team of dropping arguments when they didn’t, I will be frustrated. Essentially, I am annoyed by anything that messes up my flow.

I enjoy critical debate and K Affs as long as I can hear the analysis. In college I studied gender, queer, and critical race theory so I do tend enjoy these arguments although I never ran them. If you run them we can likely have a great conversation at the end of the round.

In a more traditional policy round I like good solvency debate and I believe it is the most underutilized strategy in policy debate.

I do not prefer the PTX DA, but will vote for them. I’ve heard the politics scenarios just too many times.

I vote on T. If you are good at T, it is an extremely effective strategy for my ballot. I have a high threshold for what I consider to be topical,and you can take advantage of this. However, just because I have a high threshold for T, doesn’t mean I won’t vote on T is not a voter framework. You have to win every part of T for my ballot, not just that I believe the Aff violated.

DA/CPs are good. Conditionality is key to Neg ground. Switch side debate okay. RVIs are ridiculous. Multiple worlds/advocacies okay.

Method Ks are good, but my link threshold for them is higher than for other Ks.

I will and have voted for almost every argument in debate. You should do what it is you do best to win my ballot. In general, I will adapt to you.

Everyone has biases. The best judges are those who openly and consciously acknowledge theirs as I have tried to do here. I take judging very seriously and make a genuine and sincere effort to intervene as little as possible and give constructive feedback.