Saxe,+Ryan

I debated at the Meadows School in Las Vegas for four years. I am the coach at a UDL school in Berkeley, California.

T/Theory - I view these arguments as disads. By that, i simply mean there has to be a link and an impact worth voting for. That being said, I don't think "time skew" or "topic specific education" or other jargon-based terms heard in every debate round are impacts. That would be like if you read a disadvantage and the impact was "and judge this increases heg!"

Counterplans - In all honesty, I am not a big fan of the Consult or the Conditioning Counterplans. I tend to think they are not competitive, especially without a solvency advocate. They are winning arguments, and I will vote on them if you win them, just to be fair you should know that you are fighting an uphill battle.

I am kind of opinionated of theory, but you can win the opposite of my views:

Conditionality is usually a good thing. PICs bad and arguments of the sort are at most reasons to reject the Counterplan. International Fiat is good. Consult/conditioning counterplans are bad, not because they are unpredictable or force the aff to debate itself, but because they hurt the elements of what makes debate a good thing.

- Advantage counter-plans are strategic ways of testing aff solvency. Specific PICs based on superior research are the best arguments in debate. I will probably judge the debate on the Net Benefit v. the solvency deficit of the Counterplan.

Case - I wish more teams made more smart arguments on case. with or without evidence.

K's - I ran them a lot in high school. In college, I am studying rhetoric and Peace and Conflict Studies, so I am pretty familiar with most of the literature. I actually enjoy a good framework debate. Good link analysis should focus on specific aspects of the 1ac, and not just a wall of cards.

Answering Kritiks - I am much more influenced by framework arguments that focus on specific reasons why simulating the plan is a good thing, instead of how the K isn't fair or moots the 1ac. If there's one thing you do, make a permutation.

I don't think K aff's are cheating, especially if they are topical.

Performance - I only debated in the standard policy formation. I do, however, see many problems with the way debate is structured, and can be persuaded by performance debates more than the average judge. I do think policy debate is a very productive activity, so it's your burden to convince me otherwise.

The way I normally give out speaker points is primarily based upon your adherence to the flow, and secondly by style and clarity. Try to avoid large overviews. Most aspects of an overview would be more persuasive in the actual line by line. Make my life easy as a judge, and I will reward you. I judge strict to the line by line, but I don't see a dropped argument as an automatic loss (especially a dropped bad argument.) I will call for cards and make decisions based on them sometimes when necessary. I feel like I value the quality of evidence more than the average judge, but maybe I'm just being narcissistic.

Please ask questions if you have any.

I have done limited research on this year's topic (military deployment) but I am mostly unaware of what the big cases are outside of the UDL where I work, so I might not immediately understand some topic specific terms or abbreviations.