Khalessi,+Daniel

[This has not been updated since February, 2010. Will update soon].

My name is Daniel Khalessi and I am a freshman at Stanford University, CA. I debated for four years in high school for Mountain View, CA. I accumulated 8 career bids and reached Semis of both St. Marx and Glenbrooks my senior year. This past summer, I worked as a lab leader at the National Symposium for Debate (NSD). I coached the Mountain View-Los Altos Debate team until January 2010, when I decided to leave the activity. I might judge now and then, but here's my paradigm:

I strongly believe that debates should be centered around the debaters, not the subjective preferences of judges. I try to be as objective as possible in my decision calculus and will accept any advocacy or argument as long as it is well-warranted and sufficiently weighed against opposing advocacy/arguments. In return, I expect debaters to engage in weighing the justificatory rationale behind their arguments (whether the arguments are based off of some deontological prioritization of duties, some utilitarian impact calculus, a hybrid of the ethical theories, or any other interesting ethical theory you can justify).

Speed: I can flow any speed as long as you're clear.

I will yell "clear" if you're unclear

Speaker Points: I will begin by awarding both debaters thirties. For every poorly-justified argument or crucial strategic mistake a debater makes, I will dock him or her half a speaker point. However, you will receive higher speaker points if you elucidate exactly what you need to do in the 2NR/2AR in order for me to vote for you. Big-picture debating is key for receiving good speaks in front of me.

Theory: I am willing to vote on theory if and only if a) the abuse is clear and demonstrated, b) there is some implication for ground skew, c) the standards have clear internal links back to the voters, and d) there is a voter. When running a shell, slow down for the violation. However, please keep the following in mind when debating theory in general: I feel like the LD community (both debaters and judges) generally misunderstands the offense/defense paradigm in theory debate. When run, theory is a deontic issue, not a two-way comparison of impacts. In other words, when someone runs theory for offensive purposes, they are asking the judge to prosecute the debater who committed the abuse by voting against them. If the opponent runs a counter-interpretation in response to the theory argument and wins the counter-interpretation, that means that the opponent solely gains ACCESS to the arguments whose abusive nature is in question. This allows the opponent to gain offense off of theory, but not win the round. In order to win the round through offense on a theory debate, the person responding to the theory argument needs to run some form of a reverse voting issue (RVI) in order to make the theory debate a two-way street.

Lastly, be nice to your opponents. I reserve the right to zero your speaks or drop you if you are mean. That being said, keep the game on the court and respect each other. Have fun and I look forward to judging you.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me at: danielkk@stanford.edu or dktennis@yahoo.com