Ludwig,+Robert

Name = Robert Ludwig Affiliation = Stuyvesant High School School Strikes = Stuyvesant High School CXphilosophy = To put it succinctly, I am open to anything in the round, I debated both k’s and policy arguments and can follow each in a round. I study Ancient Greek and Latin, but do not get upset if you pronounce words from these languages incorrectly. I do get upset if you talk about words or technical terms without knowing what they mean. Ultimately it’s up to the debaters in the round to convince me of what I should vote for and why, and I try to carry into the debate as few pretensions as possible concerning the resolution, topicality, the issues of the debate, and the relative standing of the four debaters in the debate community at large.. In most instances it should be assumed that I’m not familiar with acronyms, that I’ve never heard of the author you’re running and their backstory, that being funny and interesting is better debating than being uptight or a jerk, and that debating is less about relying on the same old tricks, institutions, annoying fallbacks and catchphrases, and more about having fun playing a game that we all love.
 * Robert Ludwig**

With respect to the 3NR's judging hypothetical of a poorly-explained piece of amazing evidence that predicts and refutes neg arguments vs. an awful piece of evidence that is well-explained and extended, I come down on the side of explanation, rather than evidence quality--I always prefer arguments debaters make in round to making evidence do work, and even if this is the best piece of evidence in the world that contains the entirety of the debate I just saw within it, and judges it for me within an author more qualified than I, if it's not on my flow explained then I won't vote for it, and I think debates are better when teams know what they're talking abut. That being said, I absolutely prefer interesting and original strategies to the same-old agent cp + ptx da. With respect to theory, I am not so likely to vote on a VI that was 5 seconds long in a constructive and was dropped, and I prefer to see an in-depth theory debate if I'm going to punish a team by voting them down on it. This applies to topicality as well: take the voting issues given, and explain to me why your specific interpretation gets better internals to fairness, edu, et. al. Please explain why fairness is more important than education or vice versa, and why I, in this round, need to vote this way or that. For positions on specific issues and the way I go about deciding I was going to copy and paste my former coach Ben Hamburger's wiki, but you can just go there instead. Basically, I'm like a younger, cooler him. I really, really dislike when debaters talk during the other team's speeches. This is doubly true when they are physically between me and the person speaking and I can't hear the speech. This is my main pet peeve. Open C-X is fine but you should strive for parity with your partner or you're going to be behind in speaks. If you're answering a C-X question with "my partner can read evidence on that in the next speech" you're probably also going to be behind in speaks, just bullshit something, please. I'm not the best flow, but I'm not the worst either. If I have to yell at you for stealing prep, you've probably already been punished for it, I am a jerk about this. Paperless debating is fine, as long as you are efficient about it.