Grayson,+Bryan

Bryan Grayson
I love debate and enjoy judging. As a debater, nothing frustrated me more than a judge that seemed completely annoyed with the fact that he/she is stuck in a room watching a debate. You can be sure that I will take my role seriously.

My only real predisposition is that I think the resolution should serve a function in guiding debates. For me, this means that the aff must defend a topical course of action. The best interpretation of the resolution is however up for debate. But predictability is a critical determinant of what the best interpretation of the resolution is and I’m not prone to believe that metaphorical or non-literal interpretations of the resolution are predictable for the negative.

By default, I view debate as a search for the best policy option. Therefore, unless a team defends an alternative framework, I'll decide the debate by comparing the benefits and disadvantages of the affirmative plan against either the status quo or a counterplan.

I’m more than willing to vote on topicality, even against core affirmatives. It’s to the benefit of debaters if the reasonability vs. competing interpretations debate is hashed out in the course of the round, as I don’t have a strong feeling as to what the superior way to evaluate topicality debates is.

Counterplans, disadvantages, and case debate are all great. I love debates that involve strategic counterplans and I also love a good politics debate.

As for kritiks, I understand the strategic utility of these arguments even though I didn’t run them much as a debater and I’m willing to vote on them. However, you should know that I am probably not the best judge for these debates simply because I have little personal familiarity with much of this literature and I am not a judge willing to read all of your evidence to try to make sense of your argument after the round. If I don’t get it, I will probably vote aff. Winning that the K is a unique case turn should be next to impossible if the aff makes any challenges to the uniqueness of the implications. In general, defending an alternative is probably to your advantage. And be prapered to defend your alternative; I'm consistently amazed by how teams will read a cap bad K and then try to argue that none of the aff's cap good arguments are responsive. I also should add that I’m somewhat confused by the proliferation of “reject the aff” alternatives. Though this alternative may not be permutable, in my mind it does nothing in the way of creating uniqueness for the impacts to the K, which I perceive to be the function of an alternative. As for other types of kritiks dealing with discourse or representations, don’t assume I will evaluate “discursive” issues prior to policy considerations absent explicit claims (coupled with warrants) that these considerations should be evaluated first.

I’m sort of unsure about how to deal with language Ks that argue that a loss is the appropriate remedy for an egregious language choice (gendered language, etc.). The way I evaluate these arguments may be highly contingent on the way I perceive the offense in a given round. I did occasionally make these arguments as a debater, but I sometimes felt a little bit dirty for doing so.

I think I'm a pretty fair arbiter of theory debates. Dispo, conditionality, PICs, multi-actor fiat, and international fiat are all up for debate. Some spec args are good; some are absolutely stupid. Hopefully, you know the difference.

Cordial debates are best. Being rude or acting maliciously towards your opponents (or partner) will never help you in terms of speaker points.