Smith,+Hank

Affiliation: I was a high school and college (CEDA-policy) debater in the early, mid-'90s. I am currently the coach for Cairo High School, a Georgia public school about 4 hours south of Atlanta.

Policy Debate: I have about 30 rounds of tournament judging experience on the Infrastructure topic.

Philosophy: I am by default a Policy Maker. My favorite rounds involve CP/Net Benefit debates. I am not prejudiced against the K, but you must successfully redefine the role of the ballot. Using the aff's own evidence against them is a big plus with the K.

I would consider myself a "flow" judge. If you have good analysis but don't do the work on the flow it will be tough to get my ballot. To that end, I have picked up some counter-intuitive arguments because they won the flow. I try not to intervene at all except in the 2AR. I have picked teams up on impacts to a DA that obviously didn't link because the 2AC didn't challenge the link. I have voted on new arguments presented in the 2NR because the 2AR didn't point out the argument was new.

Speed is generally not a problem as long as you are clear. I do struggle sometimes if debaters get a little too blippy on analytics.

Neg Strategy - I generally believe the negative has the right to run 1 CP and 1 K in the 1NC. I dislike multiple CP's/K's and have a low threshold for theory arguments calling for me to reject the negative for such a strategy. Other than that, anything's debatable.

Theory - I generally need to see some type of in-round abuse in order to vote on it.

Topicality - For the negative to win on T, three things usually need to occur: a) the aff must be non-topical according to reasonable interpretations rather than obscure, over-limiting interpretations and b) the negative must win the standards debate on the flow and c) the 2NR usually needs to devote an overwhelming majority of their time (if not the entire 5 minutes) to T. The exception to this is an aff that does not defend a policy action. The neg needs to do little more than point out the aff has no policy option to pick up my ballot.

I like to be told exactly what my RFD should be. Tell me what you are winning on and why you are winning. Don't leave it up to me to decide.