Conrad,+Matt

Assistant Coach Polytechnic School, Pasadena, CA La Reina High School, Thousand Oaks, CA Last updated September 2015

TL;DR:

Everything is policy nowadays. Impact calculus and comparative worlds. Don’t be a jerk. If this is parli or pofo, ask me in round for a different judging philosophy.

Overview:

I’ve been involved in forensics since I was your age (1994) and been selected to judge 3 debate state finals. Between the two schools I’ve coached at, we’ve had kids in policy finals at the TOC, Berkeley, and the Berkeley Round Robin. I’m a displaced Rust Belt native (Pittsburgh) and grew up in the Chicago suburbs, competing for speech powerhouses Wheaton Warrenville South and the College of DuPage before earning my screenwriting degree from USC’s film school where I was a scholarship parliamentary debater. Nowadays I coach mostly debate (and mostly LD debate) as that saves the other half of my brain for my work as a screenwriter although over the course of my career I did most every event save for reader’s theater. In a debate context, if you’re going to put me in any box, it would be the USC box because that’s the school of thought I come out of – Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm, Toulmin model, etc. – although on the speech side of things I proudly retain my Midwestern roots.

Policy Creep:

I formally gave up on LD as a distinct format of debate in January 2015 as, whether anyone likes it or not, all forms of American debate invariably devolve back to policy debate because that’s the oldest form of debate in America and that’s where most of the academic literature comes from. You can expect that pofo, IPDA, whatever will all eventually do the same just like college parli has. Now that LD in particular has become more of one on one policy, I welcome T arguments on the negative and will tolerate parametricized cases although they still annoy me, particularly when students pluck one random country out of a hat and pretend that their one small example will somehow magically prove the entirety of the resolution to be true. K’s, K affs, disads… have at it. But please do advocate for an actual value and value criterion, with a little resolutional analysis if appropriate. I don’t care whether you focus on top of case or actual case debate (what an idea) but I think concretely not philosophically so please do IMPACT CALCULUS.

Speed:

Fast but clear. Go 80-90% for me as I have to listen to you and I don’t think it’s right for judges to request for students to flash their cases to them. We’ve had cases stolen that way so I’m not interested in going anywhere near that with any of you. There is also supposed to be an oratorical element to debate which gets lost in most spreading, but the best debaters are still able to be persuasive while still going fast.

Speaks:

My average is around 28.7. I give out maybe a half dozen 30’s per year and that’s for the students who truly impress me. Over 29 is high for me and anything below 27.5 means you’re newer, didn’t have a good round, or otherwise violated the laws of the universe. I rarely use speaks to punish people, as that’s usually reserved for experienced debaters that are unnecessarily mean towards newer debaters or who mock the painful socioeconomic disparities in this activity. I expect those more established competitors to be gracious towards those who are still learning the ropes otherwise a TOC outround kid may get the rare low point loss to a newbie.

Prep time:

I’m fine with flex prep but will get annoyed quickly if I feel that you’re stalling in flashing cases back and forth.

Intervention:

I have a very high threshold for intervention because, all things being equal, this is YOUR round and my job is to really just call balls and strikes. I’ll gladly give a critique after the round and explain what I think you could’ve done better or worse, but it takes a LOT for me to intervene. I will listen to your voting issues and impact calculus and use that as my primary means of weighing the round, although I am still very much a flow judge, and a holistic flow judge at that.

Affirmative:

Remember that your basic burden is to defend what the resolution actually IS, not what you want the resolution to be. Big big big difference. I also VASTLY prefer (outside of policy) defense of the whole rez over micro politics cases.

Negative:

I don’t like cheesy argumentation, which on the negative means 10,000 non-unique disadvantages that don’t link back to the case. If you feel that procedurals like topicality are warranted, then by all means run them. If you don’t then please don’t waste anyone’s time. I rarely vote for K’s alone as I don’t find them to ultimately add up to much – note my above background in show BUSINESS, meaning actually doing something rather than complaining about it. In general, I like neg cases that follow the Saturday morning cereal commercial philosophy – “part of this complete breakfast” – meaning that you have case debate, disads, counterplans, K’s, etc. together rather than putting all of your eggs in one basket.

Both sides:

Beware of the assumptions that you make in the first minute of writing your cases. I think of debate as a professional class version of professional wrestling or ultimate fighting that’s a laboratory of ideas and trains you how to think and look at issues from multiple perspectives. You generally can’t expect to win my ballot by solely playing defense (i.e. solvency takeouts) as that’s akin to a wrestler who just tries to stand back and slap his/her opponent. You have to PIN your opponent to win my ballot. Give me solid voters at the end of the round – 3-4 solid, impacted-out reasons why you’re winning, and why your voters are better than your opponent’s – to make my job easy for me. Neither side is ever perfect, so be sure to explain why ON BALANCE your side is better.

Other:

Politically, I’m an alienated former moderate Northeastern Republican, now an Independent. In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t make me that conservative at all, but for the debate community I might as well live in a paramilitary compound in Montana. I actually do believe in capitalism and American Exceptionalism and have no plans to open up a marijuana collective in Santa Cruz. I am putting that out there so you can be aware of my biases just as much as I hope you become aware of your own biases. I do my best to judge each round on its own merits and not insert my own biases, although I’ve found that that’s essentially impossible. There is a subjective element to this activity, whether we all like to admit it or not.