Perotin,+Ben

My name is Ben Perotin, I'm a senior at Georgetown University. I debated for four years for Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose, California. I qualified to the ToC in LD my senior year, won various local and state level tournaments in debate and speech, and was 3rd place at California State championships in my speech event. I also helped coach Bellarmine in 2011.

My advice to you in short is: whatever style, type of argumentation or strategy you are best at, enjoy the most or you think will be best for the round – just do that. I'm pretty willing to hear just about anything. Just make sure it is well warranted and argued and I'll probably vote on it. That being said, you want specifics.

__Policy Style Stuff in LD(plans, DA's, counterplans etc)__: In a round my senior year I was told by Jon Cruz I was just a maverick policy debate team entered in LD. So take that for what you will. I'm pretty well versed in that sort of thing. That doesn't mean I'll vote for it more or less often than any other type of argument or that you have an advantage if you run this sort of thing and your opponent doesn't. Just that I'm open to them.

__Kritiks__ : I'll admit that I'm not very well versed at all in most of the critical philosophy that debaters rely on. Other than dabbling in Cap K's briefly, I never really ran K's, and didn't really debate them much either. So just assume I don't know whatever literature you are reading. I'll totally vote for it, just make sure to be clear about what you are arguing and your chances of winning will go up a lot more. Protip: Slow down a little if you are gonna run a particularly complex K, even if you have to cut a card out for time, I will be more likely to vote for it if I understand what you are arguing in the first place than if you had your 4 th independent link card. That can be said for the round as a whole too.

__Theory__ : I debated a fair amount of theory when I was in high school. Assuming the general winds of theory debates haven't massively changed, I default to competing interpretations. Please run theory in a shell, because if you don't it becomes a shitshow to flow and adjudicate. I repeat. RUN. THEORY. IN. SHELLS. If you don't, chances are you aren't gonna get me to vote on it. Its just better for the discourse in the round to run a shell. And it increases your chances of winning. I'm open to both “drop the debater” and “drop the argument” impacts to theory, I don't have a big preference either way. Theory is also not an RVI. I mean I guess in extremely egregious examples it // could // be, but as a general rule, no.

__Speed:__ I debated quickly and I debated people who were faster than me. I'm pretty good on speed. I also spend a majority of my career debating slow, so I'm down to hear that too. That being said, it has been almost 4 years since I debated, I'm probably a tad rusty. I'm not saying don't spread, just if you are particularly fast, take a few notches off top speed. In general it is always a good idea for you to slightly slow down on tags or card authors, or if you are running some particularly convoluted or complicated argument. **Specifically if you want to know how fast I can flow go look up the song “Worldwide Choppers” by TechN9ne**, if you are noticeably faster than all the rappers on the track(particularly the last two), then slow down. If not, you should be good.

Random notes: Don't assume I know anything about the topic or whatever argument you are running. I'm writing this for Jan-Feb 2014, which happens to be a topic I know a fair bit about from an academic perspective, but it is definitely in your self interest to just explain your argument fully instead of taking shortcuts and assume I know where you are going. Don't be an asshole to your opponent, no one wants that. Explain the decision calculus for the round, explain how I should evaluate the arguments, it'll make it much easier to decide to give you the win. I will not vote for blatantly offensive positions like Rape Good or Racism Good or Misogyny Good or something. I have a pretty high threshold for voting on skepticism. Run topic specific arguments, generic stuff is boring to debate and to watch debaters debate.

To conclude: run what you want to run(with very few exceptions), just make sure you run it well and win the argument and I'll vote for you. It is really as simple as that.


 * Policy**

I did not do policy debate in high school. That being said, I ran a great number of policy-eseque strategies in LD, so I'm familiar with all the basics. As I have less experience in policy, I'm less married to my preferences. A few things: Floating PICs bad, Condo et al up for debate. I'm less grounded in Topicality as it doesn't really come up in LD that much. That being said, it is obviously an integral part of policy debate and I will vote on it. Run it, but don't take any short cuts in explaining yourself. For most other things, see my the above comments on LD. Probably want to back more off the speed in policy than you would in LD because I'm less versed in the format. I'm not completely lay when it comes to policy, but I'm no pro either.