Chen,+Thorn

**Humbolt HS, U of Minnesota, Stuyvesant,** **Dartmouth**
I try to let debaters define the agenda of the debate: what are the relevant impacts, what are the nature and goals of the activity, what is the role of the ballot. Debate is at the same time a game, an exercise of critical thinking, a rhetorical and embodied performance, a socially significant ritual, a political arena (e.g. a war by other means). I don't see any of these models as necessarily opposed. It's up to you to articulate to me what is at stake in each of them, and why given specific circumstances, I should prefer one over the other. First and foremost, I evaluate debates based on the criteria that you tell me matter. Another meta-comment: I tend to prefer debates that clash on the level of warrants within cards rather than ones that go via "author-truth claim." E.g. debates that recognize the conversations within the evidence beyond the "card" as a reified object. I understand the preferences below as default presumptions, e.g. prejudices. They are there so that I can be convinced otherwise.

**Style**: Style arguments are fair game. Rhetoric--the capacity for mere language to convince me of something--is something that can't be formalized once and for all but only articulated in specific instances.

**Topicality (excluding "framework")**: The standard that I prefer here are predictable limits that reflect, or are said to reflect, some kind of implicit, reasonable, consensus about the resolution. Contextual evidence is a plus. Limits arguments are preferable to ground arguments.

**Framework**: These arguments are different from T in that they put into contestation the relationship between debaters and the resolution, i.e. why we are here and why we debate. I find nothing inherently wrong with affs that don't affirm the resolution, or do so differently. In these circumstances, negatives who go for framework or T need to compare their impacts vs the impacts of the case. To put it reductively, I find the argument to "evaluate T like a disad" convincing, insofar as the "impacts" share the same plane of clash. Planless affs that respond to the call of the resolution in some way or another tend to be more compelling.

**Kritiks**: My background (PhD student in Cultural Studies) makes me qualified to know what your cards are talking about. More important, however, is how you situate the kritik in the debate round. Interaction with the affirmative case is critical. Why does X mean I need to reject the aff? Specific link level clash is important. Alternatives should be clear in situating what voting negative means. I often find more compelled by K debates that go beyond the clash of card-authors and extract quotes, distinctions, concepts, from the evidence at hand. I don't understand the necessity of alt texts that resemble CP texts.

**Theory:** Often these debates become narrowly construed along the lines of technical clash. I prefer more big-picture views of theory arguments, in depth evaluations of how certain types of arguments/statuses structure the activity and the opposing team's anticipation.

**Evidence Comparison:** Warrants, quals, implications of evidence should be discussed in comparative terms. References to distinctions and rhetorical turns within cards are also important. "My cards are great and their cards suck" will never convince me to read evidence postround.

**CP:** I'm more uneasy with multiple counterplans than most. Conditionality is okay, but certain circumstances will get me to take conditionality bad more seriously.

**D/As**: One well developed impact explanations is better than several impacts that appear to be huge but really are just sound bytes. Uniqueness questions are important but not absolute, e.g. "controlling the direction of the link" does not mean that link turns on the AFF are irrelevant.