Harper,+Tim

Judging philosophy: Experience: I have been debating for 7 years – Three for Ashland High School and this is my fourth for Gonzaga. I have 20+ rounds of experience on this year’s topic.

Preferences:

General: I default to an offense-defense paradigm. I don’t think a conceded argument automatically constitutes a win—you must explain the arguments you want me to evaluate and extrapolate why I should do so. why do I care and what does it mean to the rest of the debate? That said, concessions are tie-breakers. I will read evidence. Most likely, I will read lots of it. However putting evidence in my hands means I will give it only as much weight as it deserves and not necessarily as much as you tell me it does. Make sure if you tell me to read a card that you are willing to stake the debate on it being as good as you think it is. I reward concise, articulate, well-reasoned arguments over pedantic soap boxing. With this in mind, you will be well served to remove filler phrases from your vocabulary – “pull the trigger,” “at the point where,” “extend across the flow” etc, etc… If you could choose to be funny or be smart and professional while debating in front of me, the latter will serve you better.

CP: I will accept a lens of sufficiency for evaluating counterplans and believe the aff must win a large risk of a solvency deficit, permutation or disadvantage to the counterplan to win a debate against a counterplan that logically resolves a large portion of the aff. I am not adverse to conditions, multi-plank advantage, process, or consultation counterplans. Theory arguments except conditionality are a reason to reject the team unless persuasively proven otherwise.

DA: I think a DA that turns the whole case can outweigh the whole aff without substantive case defense, but you are well suited to cover your bases and sufficiently mitigate aff advantages to be safe. For the aff, I will vote on terminal defense on a disadvantage, however because I default to offense-defense, the threshold for winning zero risk of the DA is somewhat higher than winning some risk of offense, especially if there is a counterplan that solves all of the aff. Impact calculus should not be ignored – it can often be the tie-breaker in close case v. disad debates.

Topicality: I will default to competing interpretations but will usually lean aff unless the T argument is particularly compelling or the affirmative is very obviously non- or anti-topical.

Kritik: Although I am not a K debater, I increasingly find myself voting for K teams because highschool debaters largely do not a) understand- or b) forward- a framework argument. That said, I will likely understand and simultaneously detest your kritik. If you think your opponent is smart enough to read my philosophy (an admittedly unlikely proposition) and therefore decide to go for framework, you are likely in a less-than-desirable position.

I will evaluate alternatives in the following manner—It will either need to establish a competing role of the ballot through which I should view the alternative, or I will default to assuming it operates within the same worldview of the aff and therefore should it should be able to outweigh or solve those competing impacts.