Atchison,+Jarrod

Atchison, Jarrod (Wake Forest University)

Position: Director of Debate Number of Years Coaching: 8 Number of TOURNAMENTS Judged (This Year's Topic): 9 Number of ROUNDS Judged (This Year's Topic): 70+

It is time I updated my judge philosophy so here it goes:

(Skip to the check list below if you are reading this quickly before a debate)

Argument Evolution: Adapt or Die Once upon a time, I would only judge policy debates because I basically only coached policy strategies. Now, however, I have judged a wider range of debates because I have begun coaching a wider range of strategies. It seems to me that we now require more of our debaters than ever before. We expect them to master complex policy strategies while simultaneously learning the intricacies of complex critical theory. The increasing demands used to make me upset and I tried, in vain, to focus only on policy arguments. What I found, however, was that I was missing the immense opportunities (both strategic and intellectual) that come with coaching students to have total argument flexibility. I tend to enjoy debates and reward debaters that have this flexibility.

The problem I have had in translating this perspective to my friends/colleagues is that they presume that I am only speaking to the policy debate side of the continuum. Although it is true that I believe that rigid policy debaters are limiting their argument potential, I also believe that critical teams that never venture outside of their area of specialization are missing the tremendous intellectual and strategic benefits that come with rigorous policy research. At the end of the day I would prefer to judge an intense policy debate, but I now feel far more comfortable than I did in the past judging critical arguments.

Theory Debates: Hack-a-Shaq I believe that debating theory is the equivalent of shooting free throws. It is something that debaters learn early in their careers and they should rarely lose a debate on theory if they have practiced appropriately. That being said, I believe we are at a moment when debaters are (with rare exception) bad at debating theory at a time when negative teams have a vast array of arguments at their disposal. I am rarely persuaded that speaking first/last, etc…makes up for our current world which includes multiple CPs, multiple Ks, etc…The problem is that affirmative teams don’t/can’t advance a serious theory threat and the negative merely needs to invest an appropriate amount of time in the block to scare the 1AR into reading another two more uniqueness cards on the DA rather than extending theory.

Part of the problem stems from judges who are unwilling to vote on theory arguments. Trust me, I get it. Theory debates are often boring, shallow, and stagnate. That being said, it seems to me that there is a segment of our judging community that has let their preference to protect the neg run rampant. For the most part we have designed our resolutions to make the affirmative extremely predictable (relative to other topics) and it is unthinkable today to argue that CPs should be unconditional…which means that it is now simply become a question of how many. I still do not understand judging philosophies that pronounce that theory is never a voting issue. I would hate to be a debater today with only a few options left and have a judge in the back of the room that is not even willing to consider theory as a winning argument. Suffice it to say, I am not one of these judges.

That being said, the reason that I rarely vote AFF on theory is because theory debates have (for the most part) become tagline extensions of blippy 2AC arguments. Here are the three things that you need to do to win a theory debate in front of me:

First, be extremely technical. Theory debates are often won or lost because of an execution error so don’t make one.

Second, assess terminal values. Yes, conditionality improves negative flexibility, but at what cost? Is there any competing affirmative value that we should consider? Far too often, I judge a theory debate where I resolve that both teams are correct about their characterization of a practice, but neither team assesses the values for the judge.

Third, offer an impact to the theory debate outside of calling it a voting issue. For instance, what if the aff won that instead of conditionality being a voting issue; it simply meant that the 2AR had the choice to decide for the negative whether or not any position advanced in the block was kicked. In other words, the 2NR would be forced to debate in the multiple worlds of the 2AC/1AR. Yes, this would make 2NRs cringe, but it might also make them think twice about sticking another CP in the 1NC for fun. This is obviously the place that theory debates need to evolve the most. I believe there is plenty of room for this type of innovation but it needs to start with the debaters.

Fixing The Debate Community One Win At A Time Although I have become more comfortable with judging a wider range of arguments, I have become firmer in my belief that the community is not well suited for change through competition. I have written about this in other places so I will not repeat myself here, but suffice it to say that if you ask for my ballot to represent something other than the team that did the best debating in this debate then you are asking me to engage in a practice that I believe represents a serious problem in the debate community. Although the community norm against judge intervention is paramount, I believe you have asked me to become personally involved at the moment you characterize my ballot as something else.

Pre-Round Checklist:

1) I prefer policy debate, but I feel more comfortable now than ever before evaluating good K debates. Judges, like debaters, should have the flexibility to evaluate a wide range of arguments.

2) Negative teams get away with murder because Affirmative teams don’t /can’t extend basic theory arguments.

3) I am not a good judge for testing the argumentative boundaries of debate.

4) I do not feel comfortable being asked to sign my ballot for a particular political purpose or to join a movement.

5) Execution comes first: I am still at the point of my judging career when I assess the quality of arguments after I assess whether or not they were answered.