Berkman,+Ben


 * Ben Berkman**
 * Years Out: 6**
 * Evanston**
 * Northwestern University BA**
 * University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2015**

Conflicts: Walt Whitman, Evanston, Loyola Academy, Nova


 * I debated for 4 years at Nova High School in Florida, predominantly in Student Congress with some experience in Lincoln-Douglas, Public Forum, and Extemporaneous Speaking. Since graduating, I have coached at the Florida Forensics Institute and I am now an assistant coach at Evanston Township High School. I sort of coached LD for a year or two, and mostly coached Congress and Public Forum. I've seen prolly 75 or so circuit LD rounds. **


 * GENERAL: You need to give me a way to evaluate the round. Explain to me what layers are most important; tell me why you win. Make your decision calculus clear. I don't have a default role of the ballot; if the debaters implicitly decide that I ought to reward whoever best debates the resolution with the ballot, then that's what I'll do. But any warranted reason for a role of the ballot displaces that. **

SPEED: Look, I have no real moral objection to speed, I just can't really flow it because my background is in Congress/Public Forum. You can go faster than conversational, but you certainly can't spread in front of me. Basically, the faster you go, the worse a judge I will be.

FRAMEWORK: I am open to cases without value structures/policy style arguments. Justify your framework, whatever it may be. I am not the best judge to run a dense philosophical position in front of. If you do so, you will have to slow down and walk me through it at points. I think AFC is dumb, and probably uneducational.

THEORY: If you are running theory as an easy no-risk issue so you don't have to engage with an unpredictable/weird position, then I'll be less likely to vote for it. I will never vote off a theory argument that requires anyone to run a plan and I will never vote for disclosure theory. UPDATE: You will get a loss 20 in front of me if you run disclosure theory. If you are winning an offensively worded counter interpretation and linking it to a voter, you don't need an RVI. I tend to believe that education is more important than fairness, so even though I will try to be tab about it, you are probably better off linking to education. But I assume that you decided not to run theory at "predominantly in Student Congress."