Struth,+Matt

Matt Struth

Last updated: 10-26-2009 Liberty University – Graduate Student Assistant Debated for the University of Mary Washington 5th year judging, 9th year in debate

Recent thoughts: 1. If I sit in the back of the room to sit near an outlet, please don’t speak from the front of the room. I don’t mind if you speak from pretty close to me. In fact, as long as you’re not spitting on me, I encourage it. 2. My most common advice to debaters is to orient where you sit and speak from in the room towards me. 3. My opinions are less relevant than your skills. Don’t over-adapt. Go for what you’re good at.

Paperless and prep time- 1. Prep time ends approximately when you save the doc and remove the jump drive. Your general goal, paperless or not, is to be completely ready to talk when you say “prep end.” No off-case counting, no shuffling, etc. 2. I won’t take prep if you transfer the version of the speech doc containing marked cards to the other team after your speech (presumably before cross-x). 3. Computer crashes don’t equal prep.

Speaker points (earning them): I think 90% of debaters underestimate the importance of speaking in debate. Passion, ethos, emphasis are things that matter to me. Cross-x is an important part of this (although also an important part of argumentation). If you read evidence unintelligibly, your speaker points will suffer (perhaps a good check is if you read evidence slower than tags to make the tags clearer, I may have a problem). If you’re unclear, or not loud enough, I probably won’t warn you. It’s your job to effectively communicate to me. Other things that will probably cost you points: being a jerk, being a jerk because you act like other types of debate personally offends you, obnoxiousness, being disrespectful, stealing prep, gendered language (referring to women as men, vice versa). Things that earn points: communication skills, speaking clarity, reading quals, the sophistication of your strategy, making it clear through your arguments (sophistication, development) and other ways that you work hard at debate, and your execution. To quote Seth Gannon “Debate is a communication activity. Good debaters recognize that, time pressures and all... they identify breakdowns in communication and correct them.” Excessive profanity is almost always not helpful, and potentially dangerous.

Kritiks: Debaters who have the flexibility to read both policy and critical arguments will learn more and have more strategic flexibility. I feel obligated to warn you of my inexperience and lack of familiarity with some (okay, most) of the literature. If you can make sure that your K debating has clear explanations and is not dependent on jargon / concepts used exclusively in esoteric philosophy literature, I don’t think I’d be a bad judge for you.

Performance/project: As a debater I consistently went for framework arguments against affs without plans. That said, I don’t view these affs as bad for debate or oppose planless affs, I just thought framework was a smart strategic option. I’m more than open to judge teams that don’t read a plan. My experience with framework runs both ways- I’m familiar with its strengths and weaknesses. I like what Seth Gannon has to say about this: “By default, I will determine based on arguments in the round whether or not one and only one topical policy presented by the affirmative is preferable to the status quo and competitive policies… Don’t be afraid to change this decision structure, but change it explicitly. Provide me a rubric with which to evaluate the debate. If the other team accedes to it or fails to prove it less desirable, I’ll use it.” Ultimately I probably think debate is a game, non-plan affs have plenty of room to win in this game. Make of that what you will.

Topicality: I have no problem voting for a team that is winning a T violation, whether that be at the beginning or end of the year. Negatives should be better at impact calculus on T. I don’t think I lean one way or the other on reasonability or competing interpretations, but pretty much everyone needs to do a better job of debating this question.

Theory / counterplans: I don’t think I have a neg leaning but I acknowledge its difficult for the aff to win theory debates- neg has the block, it’s scary to put all your eggs in the theory basket, etc etc. This just means if you want to win a theory debate you need to work hard in the round and before the round. Many judges have a sliding scale in their philosophy- PICS = hard to win, conditionality / multiple counterplans is a little easier, international fiat = questionable, etc, the states counterplan seems pretty illogical for a policy-maker to consider. This seems accurate enough to me, but really its up to you to demonstrate the utility / abusiveness of any particular type of debate. You could win that something is a voting issue in front of me, but usually I think the truth of the matter is that rejecting the argument remedies all of the harms it created- if not, you need to be pretty persuasive on why.

Evidence / clarity: I’ve so far called for less evidence than I thought I would. I want to reward cutting quality evidence by reading it, but you need to do a quality job of extending warranted evidence in order for me to do this. I also won’t call for cards I couldn’t understand the first time around.

Disads: are awesome. Debates are often won and lost in ‘disad turns case’ arguments usually found in overviews.

Important notes that don’t fit anywhere else: 1. “New aff” better mean new aff. If another person on your team has run it, it’s not new. Reading an add-on you’ve already read as an advantage doesn’t make it a new advantage (even with new/different cards). Adding or changing a few cards doesn’t make it a new advantage. Replacing every card in an advantage with a new or different card that functionally amounts to the same story doesn’t make it a new advantage. Tweaking your plan makes the plan new, not the aff. 2. Clipping cards is cheating with a capital C. 3. Label your off-case arguments in the 1NC (just makes it easier for me to flow). 4. Crazy arguments are fine if they are smart crazy arguments. 5. Arguments that don’t meet a minimum threshold of sense and reasonability will be disregarded. If what you say doesn’t add up to a reason to vote for you, don’t expect me to.