FTN - Judge Philosophies

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Judge Philosophies

Aleksandra Bratic - DU

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Austin Thoma - Wyoming

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Bekah Reeser - DU

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Brandiann Biggar - Wheaton

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Cathy Shi - Wheaton

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Christopher Langone - Lake Forest

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Cody Walizer - DU

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Dara Davis - Loyol Chicago

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Darrin Hicks - DU

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David Romanelli - Loyol Chicago

David Romanelli School: Loyola Chicago   Section 1: General Information Please begin by explaining what you think is the relevant information about your approach to judging that will best assist the debaters you are judge debate in front of you. Please be specific and clear. Judges who write philosophies that are not clear will be asked to rewrite them. Judges who do not rewrite them may be fined or not allowed to judge/cover teams at the NPTE. I have been judging for 22yrs (Old CEDA, NDT, CEDA/NDT and now Parli). I think the resolution is the focus of debate. If the government team does not support the resolution I have a very low threshold for voting opp.  I like a well-organized flow. I prefer line-by-line debate. I prefer well developed arguments to warrantless tag line debate. I am not a fan of K debates unless the wording of the resolution demands it (the resolution is the focus of the debate).  I do not think performance debates make sense in this forum. Speed up to a point is fine (slow down on plan text, theory dumps etc.). Debaters should adhere to the guidelines of their institution and that of the host.       Section 2: Specific Inquiries   Please describe your approach to the following.   1.       Speaker points (what is your typical speaker point range or average speaker points given)?                                 There is no specific answer for this. I go to a variety of tournaments. At better tournaments I see better debaters who often get higher points.   2.       How do you approach critically framed arguments? Can affirmatives run critical arguments? Can critical arguments be “contradictory” with other negative positions?                                 Contradictions can cost you the debate if the other team knows why. K affs are generally not welcome unless the resolution demands it. That does not mean that the impacts have to be war etc.…. You can and should make arguments about how impacts should be evaluated. 3.       Performance based arguments… No thank you.     4.       Topicality. What do you require to vote on topicality? Is in-round abuse necessary? Do you require competing interpretations? I have no problem with T. There are a variety of ways you could win it. That being said, most will not. You need to explain how it works and answer their arguments. A well explained definition and violation with clear standards is the key to my ballot on T.   5.       Counterplans -- PICs good or bad? Should opp identify the status of the counterplan? Perms -- textual competition ok? functional competition? C/P status is conditional unless explained or asked about (I would ask). Net benefits are my default for competition.   6.       Is it acceptable for teams to share their flowed arguments with each other during the round (not just their plans) I really don’t care, just don’t waste time.   7.       In the absence of debaters' clearly won arguments to the contrary, what is the order of evaluation that you will use in coming to a decision (e.g. do procedural issues like topicality precede kritiks which in turn precede cost-benefit analysis of advantages/disadvantages, or do you use some other ordering?)?                                 If we get to this neither team has done a very good job and you get what you get. T and K’s would most likely come before ads/das.   8.       How do you weight arguments when they are not explicitly weighed by the debaters or when weighting claims are diametrically opposed? How do you compare abstract impacts (i.e. "dehumanization") against concrete impacts (i.e. "one million deaths")? If this happens neither team has “won” the debate and I am now forced to intervene. No one is going to be happy including me. I have no set way to decide these issues. Lots of dead bodies normally = victory. I promise nothing here though. It’s your fault if you don’t weigh things out. As noted above, the debate doesn’t have to be about a body count.

David Steinberg - Miami

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Elvis Veizi - Loyol Chicago

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Hiba Sheikh - Loyol Chicago

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Jeremy Christensen - Washburn

Name: Jeremy Christensen School: Washburn University (Hired) Section 1: General Information Please begin by explaining what you think is the relevant information about your approach to judging that will best assist the debaters you are judge debate in front of you. Please be specific and clear. Judges who write philosophies that are not clear will be asked to rewrite them. Judges who do not rewrite them may be fined or not allowed to judge/cover teams at the NPTE. My approach to judging relies upon the round I will judge; or, in short, I try not to decide a round before I enter it. In the follow pages, I explain some things I lean against or am less likely to vote for, that does not mean they are excluded; it means you will have to do more work to win them. With that said, as much as I try to let the round be yours and the arguments be yours, if I am given the choice between sensible and less sensible, I will likely default to the sensible. My sensible may be different than yours. I could be wrong. In nearly thirty years coaching debaters, judging debaters, and competing in debate in every format (excepting Public Forum), I can say I have made a few mistakes. I am honest (I do not rep out); I listen impartially (as long as you don’t attack me or members of the other team); and I want you to have the best educational and competitive experience possible while debating in front of me.  Section 2: Specific Inquiries  Please describe your approach to the following. 1. Speaker points (what is your typical speaker point range or average speaker points given)? 2.  My typical speaker point range is between 25 and 30, although particularly boorish behavior – swearing at a competitor, insulting me, insulting the other team’s college or the college with which I am affiliated, using racist or sexist slurs – will  minimally earn zero speaker points and the latter two issues will result in a report to the tournament director. Frankly, I really don’t expect any of that to happen, but there is the worst case scenario.  3. How do you approach critically framed arguments? Can affirmatives run critical arguments? Can critical arguments be “contradictory” with other negative positions? Critiques are great when they are developed as more than non-unique disadvantages. With that said, I should point out a couple of things. First, I believe you need some alternative. That alternative may emerge as a framework, at which point you expect me to interpret the round through another lens that points beyond dead bodies, but that constitutes an alternative framework. For me that means you are advocating a different view. Second, I can be sold on something as simple as “reject the Affirmative,” but ultimately you need to tell me what that rejection gets me and what it is I embrace. Unless the framework is a Heddigerian nothingness or a Derridian deconstructivist mode, then I’m unclear where rejection leaves me. (Both of those frameworks would need to be fully explained.) Therefore, with your capitalism K, for instance, I would rather see some advocacy from Judith Butler or (gasp) even something from Marx, that suggests a new worldview or course of individual action gets me outside the mental or physical box of the Affirmative advocacy. Perming critiques is absolutely acceptable, although I think one needs to move beyond “I can can think and act,” permutations. To boil it down, I understand critiques as something along the lines of advocating a proposition of personal policy; e.g. “You should reject capitalism.”  The criticism requires no mechanism of coercion as would an agent of systemic policy, but does require a problem (implication) cause (link) and solution (alternative). With that in mind, the alternative becomes the plan and solvency for such a proposition, which means that the Affirmative can perm the critique just as they perm any other counterplan. That also means that I’m very sympathetic to arguments that say the absence of an alternative skews ground, so specification arguments on the criticism would come prior to the criticisms implication, unless, of course, the framework for the criticism can anticipate the objection and in some way mute the specification.  4. Performance based arguments… Strike me if this is your strategy. I do not understand them. That is not to say I find them invalid, it is just that I don’t see how the performance can engage straight refutation without some serious intervention on my part. You don’t want my intervention, as I will likely defer to an aesthetic standard driven by my background in critical theory and literary studies. Based on many of the performances I’ve seen, they would not fair well under the scope of those lenses. In the end, I appreciate your effort, but I am not the person to give the argument fair assessment. 5. Topicality and other procedurals. What do you require to vote on topicality? Is in-round abuse necessary? Do you require competing interpretations? With the exception of topicality, I see procedurals as being viable only when a team can show in-round (meaning during the exchange of arguments), articulated abuse, especially with spec arguments. (See more on this in the flowsheet section.) Topicality, on the other hand, can be won on jurisdiction. I don’t necessarily have to see abuse, although I’m open to whatever on that discussion. Competing interpretations wins topicality debates, so the standards debate controls the internal link to the violation. This does not mean the Affirmative needs to generate counter-standards, if their interpretation meets the given standards better (what is the standard for that?) than the Negative. Also, counter-definitions may be unnecessary. As hard as this may be to believe, on occasion, Negative teams run crummy topicality arguments that the Affirmative actually meets. So, in those cases, a good “we meet” pretty well takes out the link to the violation, which means topicality goes away. This goes for spec as well. Win the standards, and you should be good to go. 6. Counterplans -- PICs good or bad? Should opp identify the status of the counterplan? Perms -- textual competition ok? functional competition? Counterplans can be run as unconditional or dispositional without any challenges from me, although I strongly urge the Affirmative to clarify what the Negative means by dispositionality; e.g. what are the conditions they understand as being valid ground upon which to kick the position. Without that clarification, I’ll assume dispositionality means Negative can only go for one CP or the Status Quo or a procedural; however, I do not understand dispositionality as “whenever I feel like it, even with a perm on it” (that, I would understand as conditionality). A perm on the CP means, just like a turn on DA (which is functionally a Status Quo CP) means offense and the Negative needs out of that before they kick it.  Feel free, however, to make any arguments that dispo is bad; I’ll listen to them and keep my prejudices in check. Conditionality is not totally out of the realm of possibility, but the Negative needs to win the theory in a big way. As far as permutations are concerned, perms test competition, but do not constitute an advocacy. With that said, if the Affirmative keeps telling me they get “double solvency,” I will happily vote for double solvency unless the Negative points out that this perm constitutes an intrinsicness or severance permuation. Often I find teams kick out of part of plan to delink the DA, which would make for a severance perm, as well.  Perms are controlled by the negative at the level of uniqueness on the net-benefit. That means if the Negative can demonstrate how post-plan the impact from the DA exists even if the counterplan could be done later, first, in parts, etc., then the Negative wins the net-benefit and unhinges the perm. In short, I default to net-benefits to determine whether or not the perm is legit, but the negative and Affirmative teams need to do the work here. Finally on this point, develop a more articulated perm than “do both.” Run multiple permutations if you can and make them as clear as possible. Textual competition and functional competition – Given the nature of the format – limited preparation – my prejudices would move me toward a textual competition, (in almost any prepared format I would consider this bogus); however, there are a few exceptions. For instance, if plan does not specify Congress or Executive Order, then one would understand that the function of the plan would through normal means use only one option. (Clearly a bill passed by Congress and signed by the President would not also need an executive order.) Consequently, the Affirmative, like the Negative, gets one advocacy either Congress or XO. Whatever world they do not pick becomes competitive Negative ground insofar as the net-benefit to the counterplan is mutually exclusive with the Affirmative advocacy. As for consultation, which would include an other country or other countries, regulatory negotiation (doubtless a strategy for the environmental topic), mediation, etc., the fundamental structure remains the same. To keep the problems from amassing, clarify the plan in a question or ask for a copy of the plan and then clarify. You already know your CP option based on the disad shell or, hopefully you will prior to standing up, so ask a question or two that will narrow down the Affirmative advocacy and open the space for the CP. 7. Is it acceptable for teams to share their flowed arguments with each other during the round (not just their plans)?  I could care less about this. Share if everyone agrees. By definition, however, if a team coerces another team into surrendering their flowsheet, then it is no longer sharing. For example, one would not see this use of the term “sharing” as viable:  Iraq shared Kuwait’s oil in 1990; the United States Federal Government shared the Black Hills with the Lakota, etc. For the round, if someone declines to share a flowsheet, then the matter is over and I will not be inclined to vote on a tattle-tale procedure (TT spec.):  “Uh…the Negative didn’t give me a copy of their CP text, DA text, procedurals texts” etc. so that was unfair. Too bad. I will not participate in the co-option of the Negative or Affirmative’s physical and intellectual property. With that said, given the importance of the plan text for the debate, I will expect the Affirmative and the Negative to yield to questions that both repeat the plan text and allow for further clarification of the plan text.  Without CX (hopefully that will change some day), there has to be some mechanism for explaining the central concerns of the plan. If the Affirmative and Negative find it more time beneficial to hand the other team a copy of plan text than to repeat it, then great. That should leave more time for clarifying questions and the Affirmative or Negative to generate the position. If either team should refuse to slow down and provide the plan text orally or give a copy, then I would be most interested in a criticism. 8. In the absence of debaters' clearly won arguments to the contrary, what is the order of evaluation that you will use in coming to a decision (e.g. do procedural issues like topicality precede kritiks which in turn precede cost-benefit analysis of advantages/disadvantages, or do you use some other ordering?)? In the absence of a clean debate, I will defer to the frameworks for each position – the criticism against the procedural – and then make my decision. If that doesn’t work, then I will consider the procedurals first, particularly topicality, and make may way through the rest. If my answer seems confused now, imagine how confused it would be during the round. Just avoid confusing me. 9. How do you weight arguments when they are not explicitly weighed by the debaters or when weighting claims are diametrically opposed? How do you compare abstract impacts (i.e. "dehumanization") against concrete impacts (i.e. "one million deaths")? I intervene when debaters do not explain things or weigh them out. Dehumanization sounds pretty awful to me, so depending upon the way people die in the scenario, I might be inclined to vote for dehumanization; e.g. nuclear conflict kills a million versus dehumanization of three million. Of course, it could go the other way, I might feel at that moment nuclear war is worse. It would be exactly how a normal person (not a debate judge) would operate on any given day. Is this bad given what I know and the present circumstances? Is this bad? Hmmm. Avoid putting me in the position. If no one impacts the arguments, tells a story, etc., then I cannot see how they could object to virtually any impact calculus I bring to the table.

Jon Denzler - Regis

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Lucia Bennett - Loyol Chicago

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Marianne Hughes - DU

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Megan Nubel - Loyol Chicago

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Nick Locke - Loyol Chicago

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Noah Symmes-Deszo - Regis

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Richard Skinner - Loyol Chicago

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Travis Cram - Wyoming

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2018 Loyola Rambler IV