FTN - Judge Philosophies

Judge Philosophies

A K Pradeep - Bentley

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Abby Lake - SCDS

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Aisha Arshad - Irvington

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Alka Shingwekar - Irvington

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Arshad Qamar - Irvington

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Barbara Friedman - Bentley

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Bilal Mubarack - San Marin

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Bill Ernst - Windsor

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Bryan St. Amant - Windsor

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Christina Arias - SJND

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Debra Ernst - Windsor

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Dr. Kam Pareek - Irvington

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Elizabeth Soloman - Bentley

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Gabor Lakos - Irvington

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Howard Gersh - San Marin

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Jack Jia - Campolindo

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Jerry Yang - Campolindo

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Joel Jacobs - BerkeleyHigh

PARLI/PUFO/LD   THE SHORT VERSION: Avoid speed and jargon, and in rebuttal, focus on fewer arguments and develop them rather than trying to win everything. Connect your arguments to the resolution, and where appropriate (which is probably more often than you think), to the standard for judging the round, and definitions of key terms.   THE LONGER VERSION: I competed in policy debate, LD, and extemp in high school, and APDA parli in college (4 years, winning a couple of invitationals, and taking top speaker at Harvard). I was also the LD and extemp coach at the Collegiate School in New York. I am now a practicing lawyer.   I will be judging you based on your ability to use your verbal communication skills, analysis, and evidence where appropriate to support or disprove the resolution.  On its face, that seems obvious, but in practice it means several things:   1. My decision will be based in significant part on oral persuasion and clarity, rather than a cold review of the flow as a standalone document, although I will flow and give the flow serious weight. 2. I dislike excessive speed (that is, faster than you would talk outside of a debate round) and jargon (any term that would be unintelligible to a non-debater).  Relying on either of these will hurt your chances of winning.   3.  I believe that rebuttals should be clear, organized like real speeches rather than like how you happen to have flowed the round, and focus on a few key arguments.  I've never written (or even seen, at least since my policy days) a ballot that discussed ten or more arguments, because only a couple are truly important in the round by the end.  Focus on those, and really develop them, rather than trying to cover everything, and saying little about each point.  Also, weigh the key arguments: don't act as if there's nothing good about the other side of the resolution--there almost always is--rather, tell me why your arguments outweigh your opponent's. 4. Minor pet peeve: offtime roadmaps.  Sure, preview your substantive points (give me the taglines of your contentions or voting issues before addressing each individually).  But if in the middle of some late constructive, I can't tell from your arguments whether you're discussing the Proposition case or the Opposition case, you have bigger problems than foregoing an offtime roadmap at the top of your speech.    If you're curious about the basis for these preferences, there are two excellent articles by two-time TOC LD champion Jason Baldwin, which I believe every LD, Parli, or Pufo debater should read (even though they are facially about LD): LD Rebuttals as Speeches   https://debate.uvm.edu/NFL/rostrumlib/BaldwinApr%2701.pdf Drinking from Our Own Skulls: the Rhetorical Inversion of Lincoln-Douglas Debate https://debate.uvm.edu/NFL/rostrumlib/LD%20Baldwin%20LD%201-03.pdf   Misc: - No tag teaming speeches or POIs.  It's not your turn to speak.  - I like you, but I really don't need to shake your hand.  Especially during cold and flu season. - If you want to thank people in your speech, go ahead--gratitude does wonders for happiness--but it doesn't affect my ballot at all. - Kritiks.  Checking my views about kritiks before deciding whether to run one may contradict your framework justification for running it, but anyway, here's what I think of them in parli.  http://www.parli.org/opinion/2015/12/8/a-kancer-on-the-korpus-of-parli I'm a bit more receptive, but still pretty skeptical, in LD and PuFo.  I don't have a problem with kritiks in policy debate.     POLICY DEBATE I don't judge policy debate much, but when I do, none of the above applies.  I'll judge it based exclusively on the flow, and try to be as tabula rasa as I can. My flowing skills might be a little rusty, so I might have trouble with an ultra-fast spead.

John Hubinger - Bentley

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Jose Thomas Arias Gomez - Campolindo

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Joyce Colenbrander - San Marin

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Karen Kenyon - San Marin

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Karri Stewart - Windsor

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Kerri Baetkey - San Marin

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Len Girimonte - Windsor

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Linda McCabe - Windsor

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Mark McDowell - Windsor

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Mosten Uddin - Irvington

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Rachael Korcha - Bentley

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Sejal Ghosh - Irvington

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Sierra Maciorowski - SCDS

I competed in parliamentary debate for four years in high school at Sonoma Academy (finalist at NPDI, 5th place at the Tournament of Champions), and I now compete in NPDA and NFA-LD at the SRJC. Full paradigm <a href="http://www.tabroom.com/index/paradigm.mhtml?judge_account_id=16184">here</a>. In voting, I look first to impact calculus. I'll consider all forms of argumentation, but it doesn't matter what you say if you don't compare between your advocacy and the advocacy of your opponents. Well-applied case/link/impact turns and good collapses are beautiful and will get you slightly higher speaks. Be courteous, don’t be offensive, and have clear link stories with solid impacts, and you’ll probably get a 28. I default to probability in impact comparison, and to reasonability on issues of theory/topicality-- I'm less predisposed to vote on theory, but I will if it's the easiest route.

Sophia Burshteyn - Bentley

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Sowmya Srinivasan - Irvington

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Stanley Xu - Irvington

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Teresa Skarr - Windsor

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Wendy Young - Windsor

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Yuyun Shang - Campolindo

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2015 Straight from the Horse's Mouth Parli Tournament