Bosch,+Emily

**Updated for 2015-2016**

**Relevant History:** she/her

I debated for 4 years at Yankton High School in Yankton, South Dakota and then 4 years at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. For the final years of my debate career, I was a 2N/1A, but I was a 2A/1N and 2A/2N for many years before that. Now, I am a second year Master's student in Communication Studies and also a graduate assistant debate coach at the University of Kansas

**General Philosophy:** I will do my absolute best to objectively and fairly judge your debate, regardless of the arguments you choose to read. I would much prefer that you read the arguments you’re interested in / are better at debating than attempting to adapt to what you interpret as my preferences based upon this philosophy. I’ll do my best to be up-front about the proclivities that I do have.

First and foremost, I love debate, and I think debate is important. I think debate trains students to engage with one another in a forum that allows for free expression of thoughts and ideas, and that all of those thoughts and ideas deserve attention, critical analysis, evaluation, and of course, debate. I think it’s important to remember that we’re all on that debate grind together, old, young, new, experienced, and inexperienced. In the words of my former coach, have fun, try to learn something. I’m more of a “big picture” judge as opposed to a strict line-by-line judge. Now, that’s not to say that I won’t pay attention to dropped arguments, but I tend to think that there are some foundational arguments that are often made that answer a variety of arguments, even if they aren’t directly lined-up on my flow. Despite that, contextualization is important... so if you're making these meta-level arguments, try to contextualize them to particular parts of the flow [this shows a very high level of engagement with the debate, and Ima love you if you do it well]. I also think of each flow as having several, compartmentalized “mini-debates” within them that I have to resolve at the end of the debate. For example, on a critique, there’s the “framework debate,” “perm debate,” “alternative debate,” etc. If you help label and compartmentalize arguments into this format, I will be a great judge for you.

**Stuff that annoys me or is hella relevant: (you should read this if you didn't read my philosophy and you're about to debate in front of me, probably)**
 * don't call me a guy. please don't call the other team guys if one or more do not identify as such.
 * blatant disregard / lack of effort to utilize someone's preferred gender pronouns
 * microaggressions - I hate them. (http://www.vox.com/2015/2/16/8031073/what-are-microaggressions)
 * please don't refer to me by name if we've never met or been introduced - it's weird. Just call me the judge - keep it neutral. I try to make an effort to ask for all of the debaters' names before judging, if that happens, then feel free to call me Emily (but sometimes I forget) - please introduce yourself to me before the debate if I drop the ball, I really do feel better about knowing everyone's names - I think it creates a friendlier debate.
 * I'm an extremely expressive judge... you should use that to your advantage. You'll know quickly if I am feeling / not feeling your arguments
 * I have a pretty low threshold for discourse-based arguments that are made independent voters in round (for example, misgendering, calling the other team guys, universal masculine pronouns, etc). Be very careful, here, because I tend to evaluate these arguments first and independent of other arguments in the debate.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Femme presenting friends, if you "shush" a dude in cross-x bc he keeps interrupting you, your baseline is a 29. I'm not kidding.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Note about speed:** Speed is fine, but please make your card / argument transitions clear with vocal inflection. If I miss an argument, 97% of the time it’s because I didn’t hear you say “and” and I thought you were still reading evidence. Your speaker points will reflect it if you slow down on tags and don’t just read them like another piece of evidence. IMHO, debate is still a persuasive activity, and being persuasive gets you bonus points. I will always be fan of the slower, persuasive rebuttal.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Paperless**: Email Chains > Flashdrives (internet permitting). I like to be on the email chain to save time at the end of the debate --> ask me.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Affirmatives:** I think affirmatives should, AT THE VERY LEAST, be in the direction of the topic (but being topical is better). I think the best K affs have a resolutional component and have literature that is inherent to the topic. I could, perhaps, be persuaded otherwise, but this is my comfortable threshold. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Affirmatives should have a solvency method - I don't particularly care if that's an instrumental affirmation of US(fg) action or not (see FW discussion below), but you've gotta have a method that you have solvency for - I really don't like affs that state a lot of problems and argue that the revelation of those problems somehow does anything - that's not negatable. This is along the same lines of "advocacy" statements that don't take an "action" (I use the word action very carefully - I think a lot of things are actions). Statements are quite difficult to negate.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Framework:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I think "framework" is one of the most contentious and complicated questions that debate continues to debate. Throughout the decade I've been in the activity, I still don't think my opinions are fully formulated, which, I think, is to the benefit of those I judge. I truly do not have solidified opinions about either side of the framework debate, so please, persuade me. I'll try to map the opinions I do have:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">The core difference between good framework debaters and bad ones: good ones make their framework arguments specific to the aff, bad ones think framework is a generic that can be universally applied. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I think negative limits arguments have the capacity to be quite persuasive if teams go for the correct internal links based upon the aff / 2ac strategy. One of the biggest mistakes I see (primarily) 2Ns make is going for the wrong limits scenario. Just like any argument, some links are stronger than others, and you don't need every link to win in the 2NR, so pick the best ones that you think tell the most compelling limits story based upon the particular affirmative. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I also find myself persuaded by well-developed topic education arguments - specific evidence about why policy-oriented / institution-oriented / whatever-oriented debates about X issues are important / good / whatever. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Things that are not persuasive to me: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">decision-making

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">“People quit”

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">“Small schools disad” (particularly when read by a not-small school)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**“Role of the ballot”:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I still have significant gripes with ROBs in general. I think "role of the ballot" is an empty and meaingless phrase. The "role of the ballot" is to let tabroom know who won and lost the debate. I don't think my ballot does anything for activism / changing the structures of debate / anything at all. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Now, this is different than telling me how to evaluate the debate, how I should filter impacts, how I should prioritize arguments, or in general, how I should make my decision. You can and must do that to win the debate. The 2ar/2nr should "write the ballot" for me - or at least spend some time at the top telling me why you won and which arguments are the most important. Give me the RFD. I think the best 2ARs basically give an RFD for the aff in 6 minutes. I think the best 2NRs give a decision for the neg and pre-emptively answer all of the aff's questions.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**When negative teams read critiques:** It is going to be VERY HARD (read: impossible unless it is totally conceded) for you to persuade me that the negative doesn't get critiques. BUT, I DO think you can (and should) read a framework argument about why the aff gets to weigh their impacts / which impacts matter in which order.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Topicality:** I’ll default to competing interpretations unless you tell me otherwise.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Theory:** Although I thought I had 2N neg bias on many theory questions, I find myself increasingly persuaded by well-developed conditionality arguments, particularly when negative strategies are blatantly contradictory. I'm far from defaulting to condo bad (definitely still think condo is mostly good), but I do think affirmatives should be willing to go for it if you think the neg is being particularly heinous. I'm also pretty down for critical conditionality / discursive conditionality arguments when you read a K aff, quite like those, I think they are strategic - negatives, don't answer them like traditional condo, you'll lose.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Perm Competition:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I think in the majority of debates, permutations are tests of competition. That means if you read severance / intrinsicness - those are reasons to reject the perm, not the team (unless the negative team gives me a compelling reason for why the team should be rejected, tbh, haven't heard one yet.).

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Perm competition in critical v critical debates:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">There is a lot of dicussion happening about why competition standards for advocacies / methods should change when a K aff is read - eh, I don't really know what to do with it. My default position is that your method should compete, which means, it has to withstand the permutation test. But I think I could be persuaded that the affirmative shouldn't get a perm if the negative is willing to committ the time and energy to explaining why competition standards should change, how they should change, what debate looks like with those competition standards, how it applies in that particular debate, etc. Sound like a lot? Yeah, it kinda is... just beat the permutation with disads and solid link explanations. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">You can be certain that I absolutely will not reject a perm on an assertion of "no perms in critical debates" or "no plan, no perm."

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Counterplans:** If you can win that you should get the most cheating-est counterplans, I have no problem voting for them. I am quite fond of cheating in debate and getting away with it.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">**Critiques:** Above logic applies - if you win that your critique gets to float through every debate ocean, I'm all about it. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I think that a lot of teams have forgotten that you need a link to make an argument. There is a massive proliferation of linkless critiques, and I'm over it. To make a link argument, YOU HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THE AFF. The aff has to have DONE SOMETHING that you have linked to an argument. Does that sound like I won't listen to links of omission? Yeah -- kind of. I'm becoming less and less persuaded by links of omission. You've gotta have an extremely compelling reason why that omission is implicit to the affirmative - which, hey, means you're still talking about the aff, thus, passing my above test. Please, just talk about the aff. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I don’t think criticisms always need an alternative (critique IS a VERB, after all). Make sure you explain how the "alternative" interacts with affirmative solvency / how they are different / how the alt accesses the aff (beyond just a generic root cause explanation).