Judge Philosophies
Becca Poliquin - Carroll
n/a
Ben Mann - Utah
They/them or he/him (gender non-binary).
tl;dr for prep time: I evaluate comparative access to comparative impacts. In other words, I will vote for the team that demonstrates to me that they best access the most important impacts in the round. Feel free to read whatever arguments you feel most comfortable with in front of me, including advantages/disadvantages, counterplans, theory, Ks, performance-centered arguments, or any other arrangement inclusive or outside of these categories. I can efficiently flow fast debates, but will say SLOW¢ if youre speaking too quickly (generally not an issue) or CLEAR¢ if I cannot understand your words, regardless of your rate of delivery. I take my role as a critic very seriously and my goal in RFDs is to clearly explain how I reached my decision and offer suggestions in the role of an educator. I will disclose speaker points after my RFD if you ask me to, because I want to be held accountable for why I assign the speaker points that I do. If you have additional questions, feel free to contact me at benwmann@gmail.com
Everything below is more extensive and substantially less important.
---
Experience: this is my ninth year involved in NPDA debate (fifth year out of competing) and tenth year involved in forensics. I competed in NPDA debate on the national circuit for four years at Lewis & Clark College, coached NPDA for two years at University of the Pacific where I received my Masters degree in Communication, and am currently in my third year coaching NPDA at the University of Utah, where I am a primary NPDA coach and a Ph.D. student in Communication.
Things I like:
1. Strategic decision-making and collapse in the back half of debates.
2. Clear impact and warrant comparison in rebuttals.
3. Specific, well-developed link arguments.
Things I dont like:
1. Blips in constructive speeches that suddenly metamorphize into well-developed arguments in rebuttals.
2. Using speed and esoteric postmodern jargon for the purposes of excluding other teams.
3. Treating other teams/competitors poorly, especiallyif said competitors come from community/junior college programs and/or programs with limited resources.
Other notes:
1. My average speaker points are 27.5, and will go up or down from there.
2. Parli is not a textual event. I do not want copies of your advocacies. I dowant you to slow and/or repeat your advocacies or theory interps.
3. Call points of order if theyre close. Ill protect against blatantly new arguments.
4. MG theory is more in vogue these days, and Im fine with these arguments. I am, however, sympathetic to neg arguments telling me I should evaluate MG theory differently than other theory arguments because the block is the only chance to respond.
5. I prefer advocacy-based debates on policy resolutions, but I will listen to debaters/programs who want to engage in trichot-based rounds. If you engage in those debates, I would prefer that you give some sort of stable advocacy statement.
6. I think conditional Ks are often poorly executed, especially on the framework level. I am not opposed to you reading these arguments, but I am persuaded, for example, by two white people kicking a conditional Wilderson K probably being a link to anti-blackness.
7. My research areas pertain to disability rhetoric and disabilitys relationship to gender identity/expression. I do not see this being expressly relevant to evaluating debates, but I will call out ableism and disrespect for gender identity/expression.
8. Im autistic. I have next-to-no awareness of my affect, including my facial expressions, and I will probably give you little-to-no eye contact. Nothing personal.
9. I really, really do not care about the impact of my decisions on the community¢ for many reasons, in part because it would compromise my integrity as a critic, and in part because there is no debate community (Jordan & Stewart, 2017).
Brent Northup - Carroll
n/a
Doug Hall - Casper College
IPDA: The intent of this event is to be accessbile to the layperson. This is 100% how I look at and judge this event. Detailed procedural arguments have no place in this event. I will not vote on kritik and will likely reject a debater attempting these positions. If the procedural argument is accessbile and well linked, I may consider the reasoning. Other than that, I am looking for fluency of speech, sound logic, good argumentation and research, and an appropriate CX. As for rate, my rule in IPDA is if I can't flow it, I won't. Don't rush! I also, always, look for mutual respect between debaters. Treat each other with kindness.
LD/Parli: I will vote on procedural arguments IF they are well linked and make logical sense. If procedural arguments are being run as a strategy, and do not link well to the resolution in question, I'm not likely to consider it; this especially applies to Kritik positions. Linking a Kritik and offering an alt are critical. Without those two things, I will not vote for K. While I don't necessarily like or respect spreading, I will flow what I can.
Erin Shadrick - Casper College
n/a
Jason Jordan - Utah
*I have fairly significant hearing loss. This is almost never a problem when judging debates. This also doesn't mean you should yell at me during your speech, that won't help. If I can't understand the words you're saying, I will give a clear verbal prompt to let you know what you need to change for me to understand you (ex: 'clear,' 'louder,' 'slow down,' or 'hey aff stop talking so loud so that I can hear the MO please'). If I don't prompt you to the contrary, I can understand the words you're saying just fine.
*make arguments, tell me how to evaluate these arguments, and compare these arguments to the other teams arguments and methods of evaluating arguments. I am comfortable voting for just about any winning argument within any framework you want to place me within. I have very few, if any, normative beliefs about what debate should look like and/or be.
Kristy McManus - WWCC
I am an IE coach from a CC. My terminal degree is in theatre. With that being said, I enjoy debate but am not going to be the debate critic you are probably looking for. I have been coaching for 9 years. This is my last year in this community.
I try to come into each debate as tab as possible. This is your debate. I will not do any "work" for you. You must fully explain what you are doing and how you are doing it. Explain well, and I am right there with you.
I do not like abusive arguments. Be smart with your strategy and focus on good debate that uses clear and well developed claims and warrants.
I am fine with speed as long as it is not used as a tactic. I have no problem calling it either. I will always defer to the other team - if they don't want speed, you should adjust accordingly.
Procedurals are a good and strategic aspect of debate. Again, refer to above statements regarding your use and running of them. Be clear, be specific, explain. Tell me what to do, look at, and vote on.
K's are fine...please, please, please take the time to repeat important phrases as well as completely explain. Remember that you might be asking me to engage in YOUR round with K debate. Are you ready to do that?
Enjoy the round, be critically engaged, listen to your opponents, explain in detail, tell me what to do and why.
Kristy McManus - WWCC
I am an IE coach from a CC. My terminal degree is in theatre. With that being said, I enjoy debate but am not going to be the debate critic you are probably looking for. I have been coaching for 9 years. This is my last year in this community.
I try to come into each debate as tab as possible. This is your debate. I will not do any "work" for you. You must fully explain what you are doing and how you are doing it. Explain well, and I am right there with you.
I do not like abusive arguments. Be smart with your strategy and focus on good debate that uses clear and well developed claims and warrants.
I am fine with speed as long as it is not used as a tactic. I have no problem calling it either. I will always defer to the other team - if they don't want speed, you should adjust accordingly.
Procedurals are a good and strategic aspect of debate. Again, refer to above statements regarding your use and running of them. Be clear, be specific, explain. Tell me what to do, look at, and vote on.
K's are fine...please, please, please take the time to repeat important phrases as well as completely explain. Remember that you might be asking me to engage in YOUR round with K debate. Are you ready to do that?
Enjoy the round, be critically engaged, listen to your opponents, explain in detail, tell me what to do and why.
Kyle Cheesewright - CofI
This is my most recent judging philosopy. If you want to see a collection of them, with information that is more or less relevant, Net Benefits has an interesting archive.
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God Is Change.”
–Octavia Butler, “Parable of the Sower.”
Debate is a game. Debate is a strange, beautiful game that we play. Debate is a strange beautiful game that we play with each other.
I love debate. It’s the only game that exists where the rules are up for contestation by each side. There are some rules that aren’t up for discussion, as far as I can tell, these are them:
1/ Each debate will have a team that wins, and a team that looses. Say whatever you want, I am structurally constrained at the end of debate to award one team a win, and the other team will receive a loss. That’s what I got.
2/ Time limits. I think that a discussion should have equal time allotment for each side, and those times should probably alternate. I have yet to see a fair way for this question to be resolved in a debate, other than through arbitrary enforcement. The only exception is that if both teams decide on something else, you have about 45 minutes from the start of the round, to when I have to render a decision.
Pretty much everything else is open to contestation. At this point, I don’t really have any serious, uncontestable beliefs about debate. This means that the discussion is open to you. I do tend to find that I find debates to be more engaging when they are about substantive clash over a narrow set of established issues. This means, I tend to prefer debates that are specific and deep. Good examples, and comparative discussion of those examples is the easiest way to win my ballot. Generally speaking, I look for comparative impact work. I find that I tend to align more quickly with highly probable and proximate impacts, though magnitude is just so easy.
I tend to prefer LOC strategies that are deep, well explained explorations of a coherent world. The strategy of firing off a bunch of underdeveloped arguments, and trying to develop the strategy that is mishandled by the MG is often successful in front of me, but I almost always think that the round would have been better with a more coherent LOC strategy—for both sides of the debate.
At the end of the debate, when it is time for me to resolve the discussion, I start by identifying what I believe the weighing mechanism should be, based on the arguments made in the debate. Once I have determined the weighing mechanism, I start to wade through the arguments that prove the world will be better or worse, based on the decision mechanism. I always attempt to default to explicit arguments that debaters make about these issues.
Examples are the evidence of Parliamentary debate. Control the examples, and you will control the debate.
On specific issues: I don’t particularly care what you discuss, or how you discuss it. I prefer that you discuss it in a way that gives me access to the discussion. I try not to backfill lots of arguments based on buzzwords. For example, if you say “Topicality is a matter of competing interpretations,” I think I know what that means. But I am not going to default to evaluating every argument on Topicality through an offense/defense paradigm unless you explain to me that I should, and probably try to explicate what kinds of answers would be offensive, and what kinds of answers would be defensive. Similarly, if you say “Topicality should be evaluated through the lens of reasonability,” I think I know what that means. But if you want me to stop evaluating Topicality if you are winning that there is a legitimate counter-interpretation that is supported by a standard, then you should probably say that.
I try to flow debates as specifically as possible. I feel like I have a pretty good written record of most debates.
Rebuttals are times to focus a debate, and go comprehensively for a limited set of arguments. You should have a clear argument for why you are winning the debate as a whole, based on a series of specific extensions from the Member speech. The more time you dedicate to an issue in a debate, the more time I will dedicate to that issue when I am resolving the debate. Unless it just doesn’t matter. Watch out for arguments that don’t matter, they’re tricksy and almost everyone spends too much time on them.
Before I make my decision, I try to force myself to explain what the strongest argument for each side would be if they were winning the debate. I then ask myself how the other team is dealing with those arguments. I try to make sure that each team gets equal time in my final evaluation of a debate.
This is a radical departure from my traditional judging philosophy. I’ll see how it works out for me. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. For the record, I have strong opinions on just about everything that occurs in a debate round—but those strong opinions are for down time and odd rants during practice rounds. I work to keep them out of the debate, and at this point, I think I can say that I do a pretty good job on that account.
I just thought of a third rule. Speaker points are mine. I use them to indicate how good I thought speeches are. If you tell me what speaker points I should give you, I will listen, and promptly discard what you say. Probably.
For the sake of transparency: My personal gig is critical-cultural theory. It’s where my heart is. This does not mean that you should use critical theory that you don’t understand or feel comfortable with it. Make the choices in debate that are the best, most strategic, or most ethical for you. If your interested in my personal opinons about your choices, I’m more than happy to share. But I’ll do that after the debate is over, the ballot submitted, and we’re just two humans chatting. The debate will be decided based on the arguments made in the debate.
“[Y]ou can’t escape language: language is everything and everywhere; it’s what lets us have anything to do with one another; it’s what separates us from animals; Genesis 11:7-10 and so on.”
-David Foster Wallace, “Authority and American Usage.”
Michael Middleton - Utah
A Quotation:
"The present situation is highly discouraging" -Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari
A Haiku:
Debate is Awesome
Judging Makes Me Cry Softly
Do I weep in vain?
Some things to consider (when debating in front of me):
10. I DO NOT support speed as a tool of exclusion
9. I DO NOT like deciding for myself what is the most important thing in the round or how to evaluate the competing arguments; You should do this for me. You will like it less if you don't. On the other hand, I will like it more.
8. I DO like well-structured debates. I also like interesting structures.
7. I DO like creative interpretations; I DO NOT like when you don't explain/provide a rationale for why your interpretation makes for a productive/rewarding/interesting/good debate.
6. I DO NOT like nor understand potential abuse arguments; I DO like and reward teams that demonstrate compellingly that the quality of the debate has been compromised by an interpretive choice made by the other team.
5. I DO NOT vote for any given argument or against any given type of argument. Run whatever strategy you like; Be clear about your strategy.
4. I am a participant in the round also. While I make my best effort to vote on who is winning and losing the debate based on the arguments, I use speaker points to evaluate and highlight both excellent and poor behaviors, i.e. if you create a hostile environment, you get massively low speaker points.
3. Jargon does not equal argument. Nor does it equal a good time.
2. Cross-application does not equal new argument. It doesn't really equal anything.
1. Debate is not life. Losing a ballot will not steal your humanity. I tend to prefer rounds that demonstrate everyone in the room knows this.
0. Have Fun
Ron Price - CofI
Um so I really don't have a judging philosophy per se. Background in high school policy, high school Lincoln-Douglas and college parliamentary debate. I have been the Assistant Speech and Debate Director at the College of Idaho for over a decade. Prefer arguments that make sense and are logical. Prefer content over speed any day of the week. Have fun and be kind. I'm not sure what else to put down
Ryan Clark - BHSU
n/a
Tyler Pierce - Casper College
n/a
Tyler Pierce - Casper College
n/a