Ciborowski,+Bob

Heimderdinger is OP

I debated for Henry Sibley (MN, now a defunct program) in High School. I qualified to the TOC and to NFL Nationals twice. I now coach for Edina High School in Minnesota.

Philosophy: I am probably not the best judge for framework. I tend to vote affirmative in most of these debates because of a general lack of neg answers to the case impacts and a lack of a logical connection between framework and “good” policies being passed outside of a debate round. That being said, in 2014-2015 I voted negative a few times, because the affirmative failed to answer arguments about how framework is tied to the out of round solving of impacts. Oftentimes on a purely impact comparison level I think the negative loses framework debates, because it comes down to a question of procedural/educational equity versus a completely unanswered affirmative. My biggest criticism of policy debate in general is the lack of warranted analysis, either drawn from evidence or personal analysis. In a debate where one team is really fast and extends a lot of tag line extensions of cards, with no internal link work and no impacts to their arguments, versus a slow team who reads none or little evidence but actually explains in the debate round a clear, coherent argument, I will always vote for the slow team. I rarely call cards to decide debates (besides heavily carded policy debates, but I rarely judge these anymore, I find), usually quality of in round analysis and coherency of argumentation are much more highly prized with me. In a lot of debates one team will pose the question of; why is the ballot useful/a necessary tool, and the other team will fail to engage. I find that engaging key nexus questions about what the purpose of debate is, how the judge/competitors should function in debate are usually pretty important in my decisions, as they serve as framing issues. I think that unanswered links in method debates/new debate/critical vs. critical can, usually, be considered the closest debate can get to a “truth”. I also find that when one team doesn’t answer the links, and the links are Impacted, they are key questions for me. I am fine with policy arguments, it’s what I debated in high school (went for politics almost every 2NR). If you are good at defending U.S. hegemony, the global trade regime, etc. by all means do so. If you give good warranted analysis I will vote you, but I usually tend to think a lot of traditional policy debate arguments are a little silly, if not wholly contrived.

I hope this gives a general enough idea of how I judge rounds.

If you have any questions or want clarification you can email me at robertciborowski4@gmail.com