Kauppi,+Dan

Dan Kauppi Head Coach of Edina HS 2012-13 Head Coach of Eden Prairie HS 2004-12


 * About me** **(feel free to skip this)**: I am the volunteer head coach of Edina – that means that coaching and judging is not how I make my living. I am here because I believe that debate is immensely valuable and profoundly transformational. Given that this is not my job and I am here for fun, please dispense with nastiness, condescension, or affectation in your dealings with your opponents or with me. I have judged ~500 rounds in my coaching career, and I am strongly committed to neutrality and fairness in judging. Judging debate is very challenging, and I am not a computer that can calculate with certainty the “correct” outcome in my decisions, but I try my best to ensure my votes aren’t arbitrary, political, or taking the easy way out of complex issues. I also want to avoid intervention, but avoiding intervention isn’t always possible or desirable – I’ll explain below.


 * Decision making method:**
 * **The basic way I resolve rounds involves comparison of the 2NR with 2AR arguments that I can definitively trace back to the 1AR. I strictly protect 2NRs probably more than your average judge.**
 * **I strongly prefer to not read cards at the end of the round.** Debate should be an interpretive activity where students analyze and explain the significance of evidence presented in the round rather than an activity where evidence is dumped into the record and the judge is left to figure it all out. However, I find myself reading cards frequently to resolve complex debates. A degree of intervention is inevitable when I have to read cards – and I hate finding myself in a position where I’m forced to do the warrant indicts between competing cards on key round issues.
 * Bad debates feature distinct key arguments being conceded by each team. Mediocre debates feature perhaps tag and basic warrant extension by both teams on the key round issues. Good debates have comprehensive author and warrant extension – and **excellent teams can save me from reading cards and control the debate by both extending their warrants on key questions and indicting the warrants/authors/evidence quality of the cards their opponents rely upon in final rebuttals**. My preference for non-intervention dictates that **I will default to your characterization of evidence on key questions if that characterization is conceded by the other side**.
 * Round overviews are awesome at the end of the round. Write my RFD. I have to pick a winner, and when I decide that winner, I have to adopt one team's position, despite the best arguments of the other team. Your final rebuttals should include a lot of "even if" statements and explain why you win despite the best arguments the other team will have left.


 * Here are the answers to the hot button questions where judges differ in approach - I am offering guidance to my thoughts, rather than absolutes about how I feel debate must be structured:**


 * Contested theory issues:** **I think in general aff teams are too willing to go for condo bad in the 2AR and far too unwilling to extend theoretical objections to abusive CPs in rebuttals.** I think the negative probably is reasonably entitled to one conditional K and one conditional CP and absent more flagrant abuse of the 2AC than 1 CP/1 K I am not likely to vote aff on condo. On the other hand, I am broadly sympathetic to affirmative teams facing a wide variety of cheating CPs – I am inclined to believe that Consult, Conditions, Referenda are very questionable from both fairness and educational perspectives and that international actor, private actor, government agent (and therefore ASPEC), etc., are at least somewhat questionable.


 * The K**: I find myself voting negative on the K pretty often. They’re really strategic and many Ks raise important intellectual questions. That said – **I am not a shoo-in to immediately understand why your literary theory journal article from 1989 is a reason to vote against implementing SPS.** Saying “ontology” a lot in the 2NC isn’t enough. **I also think the aff is frequently better served by reading substantive offense against the K than by reading generic policy making good framework** (“interpretation: the affirmative gets a topical aff and the negative gets the status quo or a competing policy option…”). Spend that 20 seconds reading a card about why capitalism is good or why your authors’ threat framing is theoretically sound.


 * Performance affs**: Any particular aff method is probably defensible – dance, rap, story tell, whatever. **Disregarding the year’s topic probably isn’t ok**. That doesn't make me a right wing reactionary - reading whatever you want on the neg probably solves your education/consciousness raising offense.


 * Topicality:** While I am increasingly viewing T as a strictly offense/defense issue, **I am a bit old school in that I do have a preference that T be more a check on abusive/untopical affs rather than another sphere of technical gamesmanship**. In other words, gut check – if the aff plan is cheap, absolutely keep T as a 2NR option. If your 2NR is that it’s not what they do but what they justify, and you have a baroque, overlimiting interpretation my sympathy (though not always my vote) will be with the aff.


 * Case/DA debates:** Controlling link direction and strength is radically more important than counting up terminal impacts. **Impact defense tends to be very persuasive and an efficient use of your time** - the world isn't perpetually going down in flames. You should indict impact uniqueness or impact evidence that isn't in the context of the advantage/disadvantage. Back in 2000 Lieutenant Colonel Bearden wasn't talking about Congress failing to pass the Andorran Free Trade Agreement.


 * Style:** For those who have mastered spreading at the varsity level, I’d probably prefer you go no more than about 80% of your top end speed. I think with the advent of paperless debating, students generally no longer flow one another, and subsequently, **few of you know how hard it is to flow speeches without brief pauses between flows, cards, and cites and card bodies. If you can’t pause, change intonation or volume at these key points, it becomes practically impossible to flow you.** It's better for flowability to start at a medium speed and ramp up during the speech. **Do not read long blocks of analytics at full speed. Do cite author names left and right in final rebuttals**.