Pattabi,+Aakash

St. Mark’s School of Texas class of 2015. Stanford University class of 2019. Working with The Harker School. I’ve been a 2N for my entire high school debate career, and many of my predispositions will at least tacitly reflect that. The vast majority of my 2NRs my senior year were either a topicality argument, the politics DA, or a generic topic counterplan and a generic topic DA as the net benefit. I worked at the Georgetown Debate Seminar this summer and a little familiar with the topic/the lingo/the acronyms y’all are going to use.
 * About me:**

I appreciate sarcastic but not offensive humor. Making jokes about Greenhill is always a good way to lighten the mood. Negative strategies and affirmative advantages that demonstrate thoughtfulness and topic research will inevitably be rewarded over poorly executed generics. Similarly, thorough explanation of arguments will tell me that you’re well versed in the evidence you’re reading, which is a good thing. Clarity would be much appreciated. Cross ex is the best part of debate, and y’all should act like it.
 * Speaker points:**

Read them. The politics DA is great. Politics theory arguments are a little stupid, but probably still shouldn’t be totally dropped.
 * DAs:**

I think I went for T in about 40% of my 2NRs my senior year; I would love to judge nuanced, specific topicality debates with concrete explanations on both sides of the impacts to your standards. One of the easiest ways to receive high speaker points from me would be to blow me away with good topicality debating. One of the easiest ways to get awful speaker points would be to utterly confuse me with gibberish. As a 2N, I am probably a little partial to the competing interpretations topicality paradigm, though that’s also in large part due to the fact that I can’t see how being “reasonably” topical is an offensive affirmative argument.
 * Topicality:**

I must confess that as a youthfully rebellious sophomore, I went for the state bad/anarcho-capitalism critique a disgusting number of times. All jokes aside, I have no ideological objection to negative critique debating; I would just prefer to judge debates in which the negative indicts particular assumptions, metaphors, or theories that the affirmative defends instead of broadly critiquing the affirmative team as people or debate as an activity. Judging a security debate in which the negative says “interventionism bad” and the affirmative says “interventionism good” and both sides reference and compare specific examples would make my day. Judging a debate that heavily features European philosophers whose names begin with the letter “B” would probably not (for example, Baudrillard, Bataille, Bifo, Bagamben, Beleuze and Buattari, etc.). I think the surveillance topic has a lot of critical potential and I’m excited to judge left-leaning policy affs like the Islamophobia affirmative.
 * Critiques:**

In every non-traditional debate of my career, I went for a topicality/framework argument in the 2NR, except for one moment of weakness in which I went for hegemony good as an impact turn to the affirmative. Non-traditional teams are definitely fighting an uphill battle in front of me, and as much as I would love to say “I promise my biases about what debate should look like won’t factor into how I evaluate these debates,” the reality is that that is not true. I firmly believe that debating the topic, and not just “about” the topic or “in the direction of” the topic, is important. From St. Mark’s coach Jason Peterson’s philosophy: “If you are affirmative and unwilling to defend a world where the federal government takes topical action then you should find other judges who think it is ok for someone to sign up for a basketball tournament and instead show up with a tennis racket and tennis balls. Questions of personal identity and personal politics should not, and probably won’t, determine which team wins this debate.”
 * Non-traditional affirmatives:**

Honestly I don’t care if you choose to go for a theory argument in the 2AR. That is a strategic choice that often reflects the reality that the affirmative is losing, but doesn’t need to. I would love to see a gutsy 2A beat a team on condo just because they can. Obviously if you can’t do that though, don’t? I think 2 conditional options is debatably reasonable. Any more than 2 is probably unreasonable. 1 conditional option and the status quo is almost always a reasonable negative strategy. Other theory arguments like “international fiat bad” are welcome – my love for paradigmatic topicality debates also applies to these procedurals. If you read an argument that relies on creatively interpreting “should” or ascribing some kind of biblical significance to the position of the colon in the resolution, I probably won’t like you. Reminder: you NEED to slow down when you’re debating topicality and theory arguments, or I just won’t flow things and you’ll be angry with me afterwards, and that’ll suck far more for you than it will for me.
 * Theory arguments:**

On my first day of 8th grade debate, my high school coach, Tim Mahoney, told me that debate is about “listening and responding.” If you follow that maxim, you’ll be golden. Debate is an amazingly formative activity that we are all fortunate to be a part of. Respect it and each other and have fun.