Cavecche,+Adam

About Me:

I am a current 2nd year Physics Major at the University of California, Berkeley and have several years of debate experience. During high school I helped launch my school's debate team and eventually went on to compete at the state and national level (sadly didn’t have the money to also make it to TOC). Mainly I competed in PF but I have done most of the major forms of debate and have experience judging LD, Parli, PF and CX.

General Rules: > > > > > > > > >
 * I am purely a flow judge, the only things which will matter in the debate is which side has the largest benefits in accordance with the framework. I will try to be tabula rasa as a judge
 * If there is no framework defined in round I will judge according to utilitarian net benefits
 * Quality of evidence is key, context is everything; if forced to choose between competing evidence I will side with the team that has more clearly explained why their evidence is relevant
 * I will not call evidence unless there is serious (usually ethical) dispute over it during the round, it is the debaters job to call the other team for poor evidence not a judge's
 * Do not abuse evidence rules to try and win a debate you are otherwise losing as judges have discretion over what constitutes improper citations of evidence
 * After evidence, argument structure is the next most important thing. Make sure all contentions, disadvantages, kritiks etc. are structured properly. If your opponent calls out a missing part of your argument that will be sufficient to disqualify that argument in my mind
 * Simply using debate parlance is not enough to attack an opponent's argument. Just saying your opponents are missing a link or are nonunique is not enough, you must explain specifically how that piece of their argument is missing
 * Make sure your arguments are probable or at least reasonable
 * Otherwise just standard stuff, omission = concession, uncontested definitions or arguments flow etc.

For Policy: > >
 * My biggest pet peeve is the poor link work often found in policy debate, please provide good warrants and explain why your evidence is relevant
 * Pretty much everything is fair in policy, consequently I am willing to buy any kind of argument and do not have any serious structural preferences

For LD: > > >
 * I am strongly against the use of abusive plans/counterplans that sound like they are out of a policy case because LD is supposed to be a values debate. While some specifics and advocacies can be useful to frame the debate, I will be sympathetic to abuse arguments if the plan is designed to be too specific to be responded to
 * All theory is in play
 * Spread is fine (although I will knock speaker points for defensive spreading since I think it is strange to change tempo so rapidly during the course of a debate)

For Parli: > > > >
 * All theory is in play for Value and Policy Debates but not for Fact Debates that are supposed to be more similar to PF
 * Define the type of debate you plan on having right off the top of the first speech
 * AFF does not automatically have right to define, I will not buy that against a T
 * Structure is everything in Pali, please make your arguments very clear and follow all exact rules especially on voters that come up in Parli a lot (T’s, K’s, etc.)

For PF: > > > > > > > >
 * THIS IS NOT POLICY!!!! Speed is good but DO NOT start spreading
 * You cannot provide plans, some general advocacies are fine but do not try and win by creating policy like plans that other teams cannot respond to
 * FLOW YOUR ARGUMENTS ALL THE WAY, if something is not mentioned in the 3 IT IS DROPPED. I cannot even tell you how many teams do this and get away with it because of poor judge flow. Since it ended my high school debating career on a sour note it is my largest pet peeve, meaning I am very likely to drop you if you do this
 * Pretty much the only theory I will buy in PF is time skew, severance or topicality (no need to structure this formally) as PF is not supposed to be about a ton of theory
 * No new arguments after the 2 and no new evidence after the 3
 * Please provide voting issues at the start of the 3 and begin to amalgamate contentions to make weighing the final impacts easier
 * Framework debate is highly encouraged but should be left to a reasonable level as PF is not LD
 * Crossfire is for debaters clarification not judges judgments so please do not try to grandstand during a CX. It will have no effect on my vote.

Best of luck to all of you!