Folberg,+Effy

Name: Effy Folberg Experience: 4 Years @ GBN

General Note: You should run whatever you feel comfortable running, everything I say really doesn't have much to do with me liking or not liking an argument it's just a self-assessment of how I have decided debate rounds on various arguments. I don't really hate any arguments Also, I have not judged much on this topic, so please make sure to explain any topic specific acronyms, overviews explaining the general gist of the argument and all that jazz. I'm a stickler on clarity, so if you know you have issues you might want to adjust accordingly. If you don't have a lot of time to read through all this, then here's the quick and dirty. Aff teams should try and defend only what they have to and keep everything tightly compacted around the case. Teams that do this usually don't have a problem. Neg teams should find arguments that engage the aff. Obviously properly extending your arguments and making links and impacts, warrants for why something is a voting issue are all musts, but I assume this is common knowledge and won't waste your time with the usual

Topicality: My thoughts are probably with the mainstream on this issue, the debate comes down to standards. I'll vote on cheap T violations but clearly a case specific T violation with in-round abuse will have a better chance of winning than OSPEC with only potential abuse most of the time, but I'll vote on any T violation as long as it's properly articulated. The only thing I really differ on is that I think Affs give up way too easily on reasonability. I think if Aff team spend time on explaining why the Negs interp is hypertechnical then they only have to win their interpretation is good and predictable. That's not to say I don't vote on competeting interpretations--I was the 1N so I'm well versed on why competiting intepretations are good.

Theory: Again pretty much with the mainstream. I tend to err neg most of the time on theory and tend to not vote on potential abuse unless one side screws up the debate on that end. Obviously something like a conditional PIC is more likely to be abusive than a dispositional kritik, and aff's should try and combine theory arguments to make their case more persuasive. For the neg, your objective isn't to be fair, it's to win, be as abusive as you can defend. Reading your theory block at top speed is a good way to get me to miss at least 1 one theory argument depending how fast you are.

CPs: A quick side note: I think Agent CPs and Consult CPs are a little bit on the boring side. That's not to say I won't vote on them, but I think it robs the debaters out of a real educational debate about the topic. That's not to say don't run these arguments, but CPs become much more persuasive (and less abusive) the more the CP directly engages the case, and your speaker poitns are likely to be higher (you won't be penalized for running consult or agent) if you run something specific to the case--I'm getting paid to judge, but learning something new is also nice as well. I've never seen or heard of a team advocating a perm, but someone must have done it at one point for this concept to get into debate. A quick reminder again

DAs - My thoughts on DAs are rather similar to CPs, the more case specific the better. Politics isn't my cup of tea, but it is a great way to make a counterplan competative. I'm not saying dont' run politics, but keep in mind, I'm not on the debate ciruit, and aren't necessarily up to date on all the things on the ballot and current political scene.

Kritiks - Fine by me. I think the framework debate is rather pointless for a lot of kritiks. I think more often that not the negs do themselve a disservice trying to argue the aff doesn't get their case (tho if they are letting you get away with it, then by all means). You'll have a hard time winning a kritik with just your authors jargon. You must be able to clearly articulate an action the plan does or its effect that causes the impact of your kritik. Likewise, Affs that read a bunch of generic K answers (to Kritiks in general and the K in question) are likely to not fair well in the debate. The K debate is really set in the 2ac, so make sure I know how you want me to see how your aff specifically interacts with the K as early as possible.

Random side note: If you are able to make a joke about any GBN Debater and it's well incoporated into the debate (ie not just randomly put in there) and it's funny, you'll probably see a boost in your points.