Davis,+Kyle

Kyle Davis—4 years of high school policy debate at MBA As an initial note, I must warn anyone with me in the back of the room that I’ve been out of the activity since June of 2007 and the limited involvement I’ve had with policy debate since then has been mainly with the college topic, not the Africa topic. While I don’t consider myself to be an old dinosaur quite yet, it would be a good idea for teams to be cautioned against using terminology that may be commonplace for judges familiar with the topic but maybe not so familiar to me (What are Africom and MedFlag, for example?). Granted, I can catch on quickly if the full names of acronyms/terms are explained once or twice, but I might be confused if things aren’t explained well enough, which might force me to try to figure things out for myself, and that could be bad for all involved. Having said that, I can give a general rundown of my views on debate, in Woodward JV Nationals Judge Philosophy Style: Topicality: I used to think I simply hated topicality as an argument (my last two years in debate I ran affirmatives that were widely believed to be non-topical), but I’ve realized upon later reflection that my disdain for T debates usually results from a few mistakes I think debaters make that could be corrected. Mainly, I don’t think debaters do a good enough job impacting standards, especially limits vs. predictability vs. ground, how the three interact and which ones most affect fairness in the round. I feel it’s fair that I reveal my own biases: limits are important but only if predictable, and by predictable, I mean based on a clear definition or piece of contextual evidence that defines the topic as something that EXCLUDES the Aff. Example: if the negative uses a piece of evidence that says “public health assistance from the US to Africa often occurs in the form of monetary donations to public health organizations,” I will most likely NOT be persuaded to think that evidence supports the negative interpretation “public health assistance is ONLY financial aid”; I think affs should point out more often that negative interpretations of “X is only Y” from evidence that says “X is often Y” are arbitrary; such unpredictable arbitrariness takes away all value of a limit they provide, just as the arbitrary affirmative “only our case is topical” provides a useless limit as well. I find Ground an unconvincing internal link to fairness simply because of the varying nature of ground: Unless the team doesn’t use the federal government, doesn’t give anything to Africa, or doesn’t use the United States, I think individual tiny pieces of negative ground are never CRUCIAL, and teams should always be able to fall back on generic disads and, most likely, almost any Kritik. I think education is almost always less important than fairness, as true fairness is a precursor for debate and, thus, education. All of these biases are certainly not absolute; I merely feel it’s fair for affirmatives and negatives to know them, as I hope they should deter many negatives from running violations I’ll find simply annoying and easily defeated by the above affirmative gutcheck arguments. At the same time, negatives should not be afraid of running a violation with very good, exclusive evidence that provides a predictable limited topic inside which the AFF does not fall. Lastly, there’s no shame in running a 1NC without a T violation, especially if the Aff is pretty clearly topical or if you have absolutely no intention of going for T anyway. Kritiks: Also not the biggest fan of them, simply because of annoying errors I believe debaters make in advancing them. Again, my biases: for negatives to win a Kritik in front of me, they need to prove that the affirmative plays into some malicious system of oppression, that the alternative solves it, that the permutation corrupts alternative solvency, and that the impact of the K (yes, IMPACT) outweighs/turns the case. Especially crucial is the last part, because I’m almost never going to be convinced that the affirmative plan doesn’t happen