Jack,+Andrew

Update: Now in my fourth year coaching. I didn't lead a camp lab this season, but I have already judged about 10-15 rounds on the topic and am at least familiar with what all seems to be the big stick cases on this topic. All of the below thoughts still apply. -

Debate Experience: 4 years at Manhattan High School (in Kansas). Debated the last 3 years at the University of Kansas. Currently in my third year coaching at Shawnee Mission East. I also led a lab at the JDI debate camp this season, so I have some knowledge of the topic (although I wouldn't say that I have a particularly deep understanding of it). Judged 10-15 rounds on the topic.

Whatever you do, stick to your guns. Do whatever you do best. I doubt that there are any teams that would be well-served by radically adjusting their strategy because I'm judging a debate. I don't think any of my ideas are particularly radical and pretty much everything is fair game. The following information represents my default leanings, which can easily change depending on how a debate went down.

Topicality: I am quite fond of T debates. However, I'm not so fond of T debates that consist entirely of ten second assertions about fairness and ground and education and framers intent etc etc. T is well debated when there are descriptions of topical affs and guaranteed disad ground under both interpretations, or when negatives can explain a topical version of the aff. These larger issues of what debate looks like are almost always more important than the minutiae of the technical aspects. I default to competing interpretations minus a good explanation of why reasonability matters, or what it even means in the context of the T argument.

Theory: My thoughts on T all apply here: theory is about competing interpretations and explaining why debate is better under your interp.

Cheap shots: I will tend to give teams a lot of leeway in answering cheap shots (perm do the disad, define all words, etc), simply because these almost never rise to the level of an argument when they are made in the 1NC or 2AC. When you have to take a minute to explain why the 5 second argument in the 2AC is a voter, you are invariably making new arguments and the other team gets to answer those new arguments. This doesn't mean that the team that dropped the argument gets a free pass - you still need to answer it once the warrants are made.

Disads: Everything is cool here. Generic link evidence is sufficient as long as you can at least spin it a bit to make sense against the aff, but will lose if matched up against a more specific, well warranted piece of evidence. As far as weighing disad vs case impacts, it makes sense to me to risk short-term impacts to prevent a larger impact in the long run. Unless given a compelling reason to think otherwise, timeframe doesn't play a huge role in my impact calc.

Counterplans: I err negative on most counterplan theory. For me, the problem with many of the more controversial counterplans (Agent CPs and word PICs are two examples) isn't that they are cheating for whatever reason, but is that they probably aren't competitive. How exactly I evaluate competition in any round is obviously up for debate.

Ks: To be honest, I've spent a lot more time answering Ks than I've spent running them. More than anything this means that you should not assume that I'm super familiar with the literature behind your K or any lingo that comes with it. It is extremely important for negatives to win arguments like K solves the aff or the K means the aff impacts aren't true. If the aff just gets to weigh 100% of the case impacts vs the K, then the neg is very rarely going to win that debate. However, these arguments need to be explained in the context of the 1AC. Just saying "epistemology" a bunch doesn't mean anything without an explanation of what is wrong with specific aff arguments. Affs, when in doubt, just impact turn the K. That rules.

Framework on the aff: Negs probably get to run their Ks. Wrong forum arguments are very rarely persuasive. However, there are some other important questions that can be resolved through these kind of framework arguments, such as whether Ks compete with the plan vs the whole 1AC and how the aff impacts are weighed against the K. Against a K, your time is probably better spent ensuring you get access to all of your offense instead of making it so the neg doesn't get their K.

Framework on the neg: I find this most persuasive as a topicality issue. In general, I think affs should probably have to defend a topical plan text. However, it is certainly possible to convince me that you don't need to defend a plan. The most compelling aff arguments against framework almost always utilize the 1AC in some fashion. Exclusively reading switch-side debate bad and role-playing to answer framework is a waste of 8 minutes of potential offense. For the negative, this means that to win these kind of arguments, you need to either win arguments that shield you from the aff impacts or you need to have well developed answers to the substance of the 1AC. One quick aside: I've never understood why role-playing good/bad is relevant to framework. When did debate become model U.N.? There is a difference between pretending to be an actor and making recommendations for change. This is just one of many, many arguments made in these framework debates that I don't think is actually analogous to what happens in a debate round.