Peterson,+Sheila

Edina HS (MN)
__Background__ - I am currently the Director of Debate at Wayzata High School. I also lead one of the 7-week Juniors labs at the University of Michigan. Yes, I still actively cut cards and coach arguments. If you find that hard to believe because anyone over 25 seems ancient to you, I would gladly appreciate you striking me so that I have more time to cut cards and coach arguments for my team at tournaments. If you want to counteract the rampant sexism and ageism in our activity, however, you might want to begin by reassessing your own predispositions about people like me.

__General Philosophy__: To the extent I can classify myself, I would say that I'm a technical judge. Frankly, I have never understood judges who think debate is about discerning truth, and I've been in debate long enough to be skeptical of my own ability to objectively assess the "truth," particularly in a rapid-fire, complex debate round. I actively try to let the debaters do the debating, and that means amongst other things that I call as few cards as possible, and yes, it sometimes means I vote for arguments that most of us might deem absurd. If an argument is bad, you should be able to easily defeat it without any help from me.

For me to consider something an argument, it needs to have both a claim and a warrant. No one likes voting on so-called "cheap shots," but if the other team says something that qualifies as an argument by my definition, I think it's reasonable to expect you to answer it.

I appreciate polite, funny, and charismatic, and reward these qualities with higher speaker points.

In terms of specific issues: __Topicality__ – I tend to view topicality as a DA, meaning I conceive of interpretations as having advantages and disadvantages. Impact calculus is extremely helpful to sorting out these complicated debates, just as is the case with a DA debate. I have actively judged and coached on the China topic and am familiar with the common T arguments being run. __Critical arguments__– I have no special threshold or unusual filter for critical arguments. I haven't kept complete tabs, but I think it's fair to say that I have voted against framework more often than not this season. I judge at least a couple clash debates every tournament. Because of deep-seated bias, however, I often find this news comes as a shock to the majority of high school debaters. Indeed, in our post-truth Trump world, it seems to be almost impossible to prove this points of fact to anyone inclined not to believe it in the first place. Take it for what you will, as I said I will gladly occupy myself cutting more cards for my team. __Theory__ – I don’t require that you spend any specific amount of time to win a theory issue in front of me. Sure, it often helps to commit to theory on the aff in order to cover the block's long-winded responses, but if you can beat quantity with quality fine by me as well. __Speed__ - I have no problem with speed. If you slow down because you presume I have an issue with speed, I'll probably be annoyed. If I can't understand you, I will say "clear." Clarity is obviously more important than speed, and you would be wise to markedly slow down if you find yourself stuttering or gasping for breath etc. __Evidence__ - I typically don't follow along in the speech docs because I think it's your job to adequately communicate your arguments during your speeches.