Jiang,+Jessica

Updated April 2017 / jessicajiang10@gmail.com

Debated for Interlake High School for 4 years, now judging intermittently and coaching with the RIUDL. I read all sorts of arguments in high school and liked some more than others. I now study transnational racial formations, settler colonialism, and digital/new media ecologies at Brown.

I'll listen to anything as long as you're smart, kind, and earnest about it. Most importantly, please **impact** things! Particularly solvency deficits, kritik links through the 2NR, theory, and everything on the topicality flow. For example: "Education" is always a buzzword – be specific about what kind of education and why that education matters and I'll be happy to vote for you no matter which side of the (so very illusory) K/policy divide you fall on. That said, I am not really sure why procedural fairness is an auto-terminal impact these days, so convince me beyond the buzzwords if that's your thing.

__**A few more misc considerations:**__
 * I tend to think that **smart analytics** can put up a good, and often winning, fight against even the best of cards. Particularly in kritik debates, where critical theory is just analytics of varying degrees of complexity/smartness anyway, a specific contextualization of a link or a compelling historical explanation can stand their own ground as fairly devastating arguments. That said, I took my own evidence quite seriously as a debater and still think that having a coherent/well-researched literature base can be very powerful.
 * Be mindful of your **in-round affect**. I'm not generally a fan of rudeness/snark, nor condescension masquerading as critique. It's probably useful to consider your relative social location when thinking through what ethos looks like for you (i.e. I think this is certainly //situationally// justified – but please be self-reflexive about this and know where to draw the line!).
 * Debate is first and foremost an **educational activity**!! If you're winning rounds with jargon but not helping other teams learn in the process, I will cringe a lot and be unhappy. Take care of yourselves and each other in these times.

__**Will reward speaker points if you:**__
 * Demonstrate fluency in the scholarship and academic fields you're working with. I'm familiar with most strains of critical theory read in debate, but also think that one characteristic of mastery is the ability to explain dense/complex concepts and apply them to particular issues accessibly and coherently. Even outside of kritik debating, having a good theoretical grasp of concepts like realism, thermohaline circulation, etc. will put you far ahead in debating the warrants of your cards.
 * Make a joke about Washington debate or abolishing marriage.

Judges and judge philosophies that I dig: [|James Stevenson], Sarah Lim, Vikram Kohli, Allan Xu