Acuff,+Jack

I debated for 4 years for The Barstow School in Kansas City.

I know most of you checking this are only interested in how Kish I am as a person. I feel like debate is a game, and if you justify your argument, then I will vote for it. That said, not all arguments are created equal. If you're even considering running arguments like timecube, lizards, zombies, consult jesus, or any of that other cutesy crap, please strike me now.

I am 100% on board with paperless debate. If you do debate paperless, please save as much as your speeches as you can into a word doc and jump them to me after the round. It makes things much easier on everybody and there's no shuffle when I call for cards, which I do frequently.

I personally don't find speaker points very important. There's no clear cut criteria for judges to give them out, and they're a necessary evil for seeding I suppose. It's weird that on a 30 point scale that anything below a 27.5 is bad. Earn speaks by making good arguments. That's about as simply as I can say it. Empirical examples of your impacts, quality analyticals, and clear speech are an easy path to speaks. I will not hesitate to drop speaks if you are unclear, repeatedly stumble over yourself, or steal prep. If you are stealing prep and I notice, I will tell you to stop and you'll lose at least a point. I understand that now that paperless debate has become prevalent this is now sort of a gray area. I am cognizant of that and won't be a prep nazi. One thing that's very important to me is the integrity of the activity. When I debated, there was a team that would reply, "funconditional" when they were asked what the status of their argument was, in the hopes that the other team thought they said unconditional, and would get away with running a conditional argument. This kind of cheesy nonsense is anti-competitive and harmful to the activity. If a team clips cards, steals another teams' evidence, or engages in other sorts of cheating, I will not hesitate to give that team zeros and speak with their coach.

In terms of Ks on the negative, I'm very familiar with the literature base and more often than not my 2NR was a K. I frequently read Heidegger and discursive based Ks, and I cut a Bataille affirmative prior to my senior year. Framework arguments with Ks for me should be about how I weigh the impacts and view the K, if discourse comes first, etc. It would be pretty difficult to win a framework argument that running K's on the negative should be excluded in front of me. But it is possible.

BIG CAVEAT: Running K's is not necessarily the optimal strategy in front of me. I am familiar with the literature, but I am also familiar with lit regarding heg, poltics disads, etc. Please do not run a K just because you see that I used to run them. It was a strategic choice rather than a philosophical one. Attempting to pander to me by going for a K isn't helpful. I'd rather see an outstanding heg debate than a mediocre K debate

The affirmative is a little bit trickier. Critical affs are interesting and I read at least partially critical affs my entire career. That said, I do feel as though the best thing for affirmatives to do is defend implementation of the plan. This is NOT a hard and fast rule however. As I said before, I've cut a few absolutely ridiculous affirmatives where the topic was hardly discussed at all. If you win that your thought project/advocacy statement/speech act/painting/play or whatever has value, I will vote on it. Framework against critical affirmatives is one of my favorite parts of debate to explore, and I can be persuaded either way. As I said, this is a game. Prove to me your argument is good for the game, and you'll win

"Project" style affirmatives. I wish I could think of something better to call them, because that's not really fair to the teams that run them. I'm very familiar with these types of arguments. My first friends in this activity were from Kansas City Central, and I've seen and debated against these types of affirmatives a lot. I am not averse to these arguments, and view them as I would any other argument.

Topicality on this topic really interests me. I view topicality as I would any other argument. I know a lot of judges don't like seeing T debates but I am not one of them. When executed properly, a good T debate is probably my favorite to see. When executed poorly, it immediately becomes my least favorite. Saying more T buzzwords than your opponent won't win you the debate, however. Actual impact analysis is needed. This should be obvious, but T is a real argument with real impacts. Don't treat it differently because you don't say uniqueness and link in the 1NC shell.

Theory is similar to T for me, I'll vote on it if you make it viable and spend time on the impact level. Again, just telling me how OMG ABUSIVE they are isn't going to get a ballot. If you have a well thought out argument and interact with their arguments, I'm more than happy to vote for you. If both teams just read their standard theory block and do not respond to one another, I will be grumpy and be much less inclined to vote. I don't really have any predispositions on theory, as I haven't decided how I feel about a lot of these issues myself.

Counterplans: they're fun. Run them. My only caveat is that I am kind of iffy on consult counterplans. I do think advantage counterplans are interesting and are a very underutilized argument.

Disads: They are also fun. Run them. Specific links to the aff are preferable, and I would like to hear how in interacts with the aff. Again, these should go without saying but it amazes me how often I need to say them

Case debate is an important and underutilized part of high school debate. It's really frustrating to hear the 1AC, and have the aff never come up again in the entire debate. Case debates are fun and should be utilized more.

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask me.