Moss,+Zach

Section 1: General Information

Competitive Experience: 1 year CEDA, 3 years NPDA

Coaching Experience: 5 years of parliamentary debate during which I judged 50+ rounds a year. 25 CEDA rounds judged on the 2014/15 topic. Please provide me with a copy of the evidence read in round as soon as possible, preferably via email chain. I flow on paper so if I can follow along with the speech doc during the speech it will prevent me from needing half an hour after the 2AR to read through all the evidence before trying to make a decision. It also lets me keep track of what is actually read in the round as opposed to what is in the speech doc just in case. Impact calculus is the most important thing you can do once the card reading section of the debate is over. Explaining why your argument is true based on the warrants you have provided, comparing those arguments with what your opponents are saying and then explaining why your argument is more important than your opponents' is the simplest way to win my ballot. I think the most important thing for competitors to remember is that while debate is a competitive exercise it is supposed to be an educational activity and everyone involved should act with the same respect they desire from others in a classroom.

With that being said I try to keep my judging paradigm as neutral as possible. I think the debaters should identify what they think the important issues of the resolution are and the affirmative will offer a way to address these issues while the negative will attempt to show why what the aff did was a bad idea. This means impact analysis and warrant comparison is critical in the rebuttals, your claims should be examined in comparison with the opposing teams, not merely in the vacuum of your own argumentation.

Section 2: Specific Inquiries

Speaker points (what is your typical speaker point range or average speaker points given)? My baseline is 28, if you show up and make arguments you'll get at least that many points. I save scores below that for debaters who are irresponsible with their rhetorical choices or treat their opponents poorly. Debaters can improve their speaker points through humor, strategic decision-making, rhetorical flourish, SSSGs, smart overviewing and impact calculus.

How do you approach critically framed arguments? Can affirmatives run critical arguments? Can critical arguments be “contradictory” with other negative positions? I approach critically framed arguments in the same way I approach other arguments, is there a link, what is the impact, and how do the teams resolve the impact? Functionally all framework arguments do is provide impact calculus ahead of time, so as a result, your framework should have a role of the ballot explanation either in the 1NC or the block. Beyond that, my preference is for kritiks which interrogate the material conditions which surround the debaters/debate round/topic/etc. as opposed to kritiks which attempt to view the round from a purely theoretical stance since their link is usually of stronger substance, the alternative solvency is easier to explain and the impact framing applies at the in-round level. Ultimately though you should do what you know; I would like to believe I am pretty well read in the literature which debaters have been reading for kritiks, but as a result I'm less willing to do the work for debaters who blip over the important concepts they're describing in round. There are probably words you'll use in a way only the philosopher you're drawing from uses them, so it's a good idea to explain those concepts and how they interact in the round at some point.

Affirmative kritiks are still required to be resolutional, though the process by which they do that is up for debate. T & framework often intersect as a result, so both teams should be precise in any delineations or differences between those. Negative arguments can be contradictory of one another but teams should be prepared to resolve the question of whether they should be contradictory on the conditionality flow. Also affirmative teams can and should link negative arguments to one another in order to generate offense. Performance based arguments

Teams that want to have performance debates: Yes, please. Make some arguments on how I should evaluate your performance, why your performance is different from the other team's performance and how that performance resolves the impacts you identify.

Teams that don't want to have performance debates: Go for it? I think you have a lot of options for how to answer performance debates and while plenty of those are theoretical and frameworky arguments it behooves you to at least address the substance of their argument at some point either through a discussion of the other team's performance or an explanation of your own performance.

Topicality To vote on topicality I need an interpretation, a reason to prefer (standard/s) and a voting issue (impact). In round abuse can be leveraged as a reason why your standards are preferable to your opponents, but it is not a requirement. I don't think that time skew is a reverse voting issue but I'm open to hearing reasons why topicality is bad for debate or replicates things which link to the kritik you read on the aff/read in the 2AC. At the same time, I think that specific justifications for why topicality is necessary for the negative can be quite responsive on the question, these debates are usually resolved with impact calculus of the standards.

FX-T & X-T: For me these are most strategically leveraged as standards for a T interp on a specific word but there are situations where these arguments would have to be read on their own, I think in those situations it's very important to have a tight interpretation which doesn't give the aff a lot of lateral movement within your interpretation. These theory arguments are still a search for the best definition/interpretation so make sure you have all the pieces to justify that at the end of the debate.

Counterplans Functional competition is necessary, textual competition is debatable, I don't really think text comp is relevant unless the negative attempts to pic out of something which isn't intrinsic to the aff. If you don't want to lose text comp debates in front of me on the negative you should have normal means arguments prepared for the block to show how the CP is different from how the plan would normally be resolved. I think severence/intrinsic perm debates are only a reason to reject the perm, and are not automatically a neg leaning argument. Delay and study counterplans are pretty abusive, please don't read them in front of me if you can avoid it. If you have a good explanation for why consultation is not normal means then you can consider reading consult, but I err pretty strongly aff on consult is normal means. Conditions counterplans are on the border of being theoretically illegitimate as well, so a good normal means explanation is pretty much necessary.

Condo debates: On the continuum of judges I am probably at the conditionality bad pole but like everything else, it's debatable. If you're aff I think "contradictory condo bad" is a much more persuasive option than generic "condo bad". In the absence of debaters' clearly won arguments to the contrary, what is the order of evaluation that you will use in coming to a decision (e.g. do procedural issues like topicality precede kritiks which in turn precede cost-benefit analysis of advantages/disadvantages, or do you use some other ordering)?

Given absolutely no impact calculus I will err towards the argument with the most warrants and details. For example if a team says T is a priori with no warrants or explanation for why that is true or why it is necessary an aff could still outweigh through the number of people it effects (T only effects the two people in the round, arguments about T spillover are the impact calc which is missing in the above explanation). What I'm really saying here is do impact calculus. How do you weight arguments when they are not explicitly weighed by the debaters or when weighting claims are diametrically opposed? How do you compare abstract impacts (i.e. "dehumanization") against concrete impacts (i.e. "one million deaths")?

I err towards systemic impacts absent impact calculus by the debaters. But seriously, do your impact calculus. I don't care if you use the words probability, magnitude, timeframe and reversability, just make arguments as to why your impact is more important.

Cross-X: Please don't shout at each other if it can be avoided, I know that sometimes you have to push your opponents to actually answer the question you are asking but I think it can be done at a moderate volume. Other than that, do whatever you want in cross ex, I'll listen (since it's binding) just don't expect me to flow it. I like to see fresh and strange debates. If you want to try something new or push the boundaries of debate, I'd like to see it. At the same time, it's your round and my privilege to evaluate it so you should do what you want, just try to be persuasive.