Bankey,+Brendon

Spring 2015 Update: I would like debates about solvency to make a comeback in 2015. I feel like the majority of debates I watch follow one of two formulas: 1) Aff reads a litany of impact scenarios that are hardly intrinsic to the plan. Neg stands up and reads a bad K, two counterplans, a politics DA, and defense to the case. 2AC’s solvency explanation on the case is that it’s “try or die for the aff.” 2AC’s link discussion on the politics DA is that political capital isn’t real and winner’s win. Block kicks out of most conditional advocacies and extends politics and case impact defense. 2NR v 2AR comparison becomes about whether the politics DA impact or the case impact is more important. Does the aff solve the case impacts? Does the politics scenario actually resolve the neg’s impacts? Would Obama even be tied to the plan (or the agenda item)? Noone seems to care. 2) Aff identifies a flaw in the world around them and says the role of the ballot is to vote for whatever team best investigates the impact they brought up in the 1AC without ever offering a strategy for minimizing that problem because reforms are rude. Neg team stands up and says one of three things: the aff should be rejected because voting for it makes debate impossible, the aff isn’t anti-capitalist enough, or the aff has this one flawed assumption so it’s too humanist to be a good idea. At no point does either team make an effort to compare solvency claims, and by the end of debate both teams think they should win by poking holes in their opponent’s advocacy without ever defending anything substantial.  We’ve become far too good at identifying problems and focused far too little on how to actually solve them. Side Rant: Lots of folks are comfortable with debates being about methodologies but I am generally uncomfortable with what passes for an academic methodology these days. Teams should ideally have to explain what their method is and how it resolves the impacts they’ve identified. “That’s not our [insert author]” doesn’t count as an argument. “You do you, we’ll do us” is not a method. The term “survival strategy” made sense in relation to the teams that popularized the phrase on elim day of the 2013 NDT but has since proliferated into vapidity.  For my policy crowd...I will evaluate whether the plan effectively mitigates X impact before I make an effort to care about how valuable your apocalyptic representations are. Noone should get to win on the 2AR argument "Even if the plan doesn't solve X, you should vote for us cause we chose to talk about it." Alternatively, I'm uncompelled by reps K's that don't implicate the plan's ability to solve its impacts. Saying that X group is historically excluded from a discussion does not refute whether technological/statist solutions can solve the problem. The onus is on negative teams to explain how links of (c)omission undermine the plan's implementation. Lastly, you'll lose a speaker point for every time you mention "ctrl f"-ing a document. I am not impressed by your ability to navigate a keyboard correctly. Figure out a more persuasive way to say your opponent's ev is garbage.  2014-2015 Update Relevant History: Debated at Trinity University for 4 years (I was a 2A) Coached at Wake Forest for 2 years This is my second year coaching at Kansas  I am not going to “break up with the K” as some have suggested. I am, however, trying to spend this season getting back together with the burden of proof. Here are some basic expectations: --The affirmative should defend a clear proposition as an example of the resolution. This proposition should be contestable by the negative team. --The 2NR/2AR should ideally begin with a short explanation of how I should evaluate the debate and attempt to “write my ballot for me.” <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--My ballot indicates which team did the better debating. It is not an indicator of my ideological beliefs. I don’t have the jurisdictional authority to police people. I am not a trained psychologist and have difficulty thinking my ballot can alleviate any individual’s sense of social alienation. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--I would appreciate it if debaters did more to explore the role of presumption. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">Evaluating Competition <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--The negative should argue against the affirmative’s proposition. If the affirmative’s proposition is not an example of the resolution and/or intentionally vague about how it relates to the resolution the negative is entitled to defend that the United States should not legalize M/OG/PAS/P/TSOHO. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--I prefer kritiks targeted at the proposition and/or aff mechanism. Kritiks of representations are difficult to evaluate next to a policy. You should provide a reason for how certain representations will effect the implementation of policy. Otherwise I will consider your reps K impact defense and/or FYIs about how a certain representation has been used in the past. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--I’m less and less convinced by “try or die” impact calculus. The affirmative must win a solvency claim (a link) before I evaluate the claim’s harms. In general I will equate the most importance to the link debate. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--I am generally uncomfortable with the power of uniqueness for teams that defend miniscule propositions. If the negative wins the aff is an example of something bad happening in the status quo I feel pretty good about rejecting it even if the 2AR presses hard on inevitability. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Debaters should do more to challenge counterplan competition. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Permutations: <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">a) are tests of competition, not advocacies (despite what Jarrod might have led his 7 week labs to believe). A bsent an argument about why the cp/alternative is not competitive I likely will not vote for “perm do the counterplan” or “perm do the alt.” <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">b) make more sense when explained in terms of who is enacting the proposition v. who is enacting the alternative – discussing the role of the judge in the debate is important here. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">c) make little sense if the negative wins that that the method of the criticism is exclusive with the affirmative’s proposition. Simply asserting “this is a method debate” without explaining the function of that argument is not the same and provides the affirmative ample room for describing a world in which its proposition could occur while adopting core assumptions of the alternative. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">d) are much less convincing when the affirmative is intentionally vague about its proposition. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">e) presume that the affirmative has met the burden of proof. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">Topicality <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Prioritize answering the question, “What should debate look like?” <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--It is my hope that the affirmative will defend a world where one of the 5 topic areas is legalized by the United States (whatever that means). If this does not occur, it is my hope that the affirmative should provide a nuanced reason why they should not have to defend legalization. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Counter-interpretations are important. If your goal is to endorse an alternate style/model of competition then it is your burden to demonstrate what the resolution would look like in that model. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--I’m unconvinced that Framework is distinct from T-USFG. I generally won’t agree that certain types of evidence (narrative, personal experience, performances) should be categorically excluded. You would be better served making arguments that question the intrinsicness of the performance to the aff’s proposition. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--If teams have not reached agreement on what debate should look like, then I am less likely to associate your limits disad with a voting issue. I would prefer you make arguments about why limitless deliberation is harmful for the public sphere. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">-- Despite this being one of the few topics where the Shively example applies, I think you would be better off revisiting that article for its argument about why a shared starting point is necessary for the success of resistance stragegies than you would relying on it for claims of procedural jurisdiction. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--[If Policy v Policy] – Limits > potential ground loss. I interpret the phrase “evaluate the debate through the lens of reasonability” as “we don’t solve the entirety of the limits disad but our interpretation still has tangible benefits….” I don’t think the phrase “reasonably topical” makes sense. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">Concluding Tidbits <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Tech > Truth. This is a statement about execution and constraining the final rebuttals. If going for a technically conceded argument please explain the full weight of its implications instead of asserting, “It’s dropped so it’s 100% true.” <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Conditionality is a conceivable voting issue because it creates multiple worlds of uniqueness that affect the course of the debate. It does not outweigh topicality. Other theory issues are reasons to reject the argument. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Debaters should do more to investigate quality of evidence/author qualifications/source publications. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--C-X is important for speaker points and keeping me on your side throughout the course of the debate. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Clarity is important for speaker points. If challenged by an opponent, I will treat being unintentionally clear the same as cross-reading. I will not require opponents to initiate a challenge to vote against a team I determine is acting unethically. That said, I don’t anticipate recording every speech and will not adjudicate an ethics challenge without a recording. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Prep the jokes. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Unless your goal is to call more dudes, please say “y’all” over “guys.” <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--You will LOSE speaker points if: you’re late, you’re bad at paperless, you don’t flow (negotiable if the team has a criticism of flow-based debate), C-X belligerence.