Fannon,+Mike

Mike Fannon Pinecrest Debate First and foremost, this is your debate, not mine. Your job is to try hard and be respectful; my job is to evaluate the soundness of your arguments and the relevance and significance of them in relation to the central questions of the debate round. You have a better chance of winning with the arguments you have practiced and thought about than trying to guess what arguments are my favorites. I have been judging debates since 2005. I debated for four years in high school and have some college debate experience. During this time, it seems some trends have distracted from hard work and critical thinking (note: making debates about trivial and contrived notions that do not test the literature-based actions of the affirmative do not count as “critical thinking” in the context of the activity to me. FYIs are great, but forcing 2ac’s to deal with a bunch of FYI material that does not test the actions endorsed by the plan and citing this as promoting “critical thinking” is a pretty poor standard for evaluating the health of debate as an activity). Affirmatives should expect to defend the desirability of their plan/advocacy being implemented and the negative should expect to challenge that desirability by defending the status quo or a literature based alternative. In other words, I have seen many negative strategies that focus and depend upon “how” the plan “uses” fiat to an extent that, to me, demonstrates a misunderstanding on why the assumption of the plan “happening” allows for a conversation on the desirability of a proposal. Otherwise, we are just a bunch of idiots footnoting a bunch of phrases. I believe debate should be about promoting research, logic, and communication. I believe an argument is a claim, a warrant, and an impact and that many debaters reference phrases they commonly hear when comparing impacts, but fail to really connect with the discussion at hand. Impact assessment is absolutely critical to all aspects of argument evaluation. Specifics: Topicality/theory – I think these debates are almost always won or lost on what types of solvency mechanisms are most desirable. Case lists should be compared. I usually think theory arguments are reasons to reject the argument and not the team and speak to evaluating what worlds will work best given the literature you are really going to find, i.e. sometimes condition counuterplans test relevant questions, and sometimes they are entirely contrived. Sometimes PICs test important policy considerations, and sometimes they create a model for debate that promote really absurd conversations in order for the affirmative team to “win”. I can’t think of a time that a consult counterplan made anyone understand that topic any better. Disadvantages – These are probably the best way of testing the desirability of a proposal. Kritiks – Specificity to the thesis of the affirmative is important. Otherwise I think you are on the wrong side of the perm vs alternative question. Counterplans – It’s hard for me to justify the virtue of more than 2 worlds in addition to the status quo. Lack of a solvency advocate makes it hard to asses “risk of a link” kind of competition strategies. I am a diehard tigers fan, and I am not willing to listen to Red Sox fans. If this is you, and you like to talk about it, don’t pref me.