Archbishop Mitty ‘21
Wake Forest University '25
Been both a 2N/2A
Done both Policy and LD ( 4 years policy, 1 year LD )
[updated 2/10/2022]
I am a coach with the DebateDrills Club Team. Information regarding conflicts, team policies, and harassment reports can be found at Club Team Information. Should you have any questions or concerns, email leadership@debatedrills.com
Yes Email Chain: archbishopmittydr[at]gmail.com -- please format the subject As “Tournament Name -- Round # -- Aff School [team code] vs Neg School [team code]. Example: “Berkeley -- Dubs -- AFF Archbishop Mitty DR vs NEG Interlake GQ”
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I find paradigms to be largely useless because no one is ever transparent and 99% of times debaters and judges put way too much value into these things. I could care less about argumentative preferences -- I have coached, judged, and participated in debates where teams have gone for everything from Politics DA, Process CP’s, K’s, Trix, Phil NC’s to T. TLDR: Stick to your guns and you do you.
At the end of the rebuttals -- I start by looking at what the teams have flagged as the most important pieces of offense. 2NRs and 2ARs rarely do enough judge instruction. The best type of RFD is where I don't have to do too much work and I can parrot back to you what the rebuttals said.
I guess I’ll do the thing about argument Preferences (although it would behoove you to stick to what you are good at). In the words of Debnil Sur “Above all, tech substantially outweighs truth. The below are preferences, not rules, and will easily be overturned by good debating. But, since nobody's a blank slate, treat the below as heuristics I use in thinking about debate. Incorporating some can explain my decision and help render one in your favor”.
Speed: Fine -- just make sure you are clear (especially true in the context of e-debate). Yes I will have the doc open, but no I will not be flowing off it -- only what you say will be on my flow.
Insert or Read: All portions of evidence that has already been introduced into the debate get to be inserted. This is a way to provide an incentive for in depth evidence comparison while also creating a strategic incentive to read good quality cards. Any portions of evidence that hasn’t already been introduced into debate should be read.
Paradigm Issues: I will almost always default to an offense defense paradigm -- if you argue about stock issues, I will most likely get bored.
Tech vs Truth: Seems like one of the most asinine things on everyone's paradigm. Obviously if you drop an argument or something on the flow it is considered true, but in a world where another team clashes with you Truth (argument/ev quality) becomes an important tie breaker.
Policy Affs: Do your thing. 1AC’s with 3 minute advantage and framing page is fine, but please do not just make it a bunch of probability indicts have some offensive framing in either an alternative understanding of ethics or a kritik of the way that impact calculuses are framed. Affs with as many impact scenarios stuffed together as possible probably have terrible ev that should be re-highlighted and pointed out.
K Affs: Not dogmatic about whether or not you follow the resolution. Make sure you have offense on framework that isn’t just you exclude our aff. I’m fine for impact turn or counter interp strategies -- just do impact calculus. The easiest way to lose reading a K aff in front of me is just saying buzzwords in the overview without unpacking what the aff does -- I am not scared to say I vote neg on presumption because I don’t know what the aff does. Neg teams debating K affs do whatever you think is best -- just remember impact calculus wins debates. Going for framework is fine, fairness can be an impact, but oftentimes it's a better impact filter, and having something external to fairness will be more persuasive. I've thought about this a little bit more now that I finished my first year of college debate and the 3 most convincing AFF turns to FW are 1] K v K debates good + offense about the model of clash they produce 2] An Indict of the performance of the Negative team that i should evaluate prior to the debate and proof of how violence gets naturalized in debate and 3] A critique of FW that articulates its relationship towards the history of debate and why the negative team shouldn't get to kick out of such baggage.
K v K debates are dope -- make sure you have offense on why the perm doesn’t shield the link.
Topicality: While freshman and sophomore year being my least favourite argument that I dismissed as negative teams whining, it has honestly become one of my favourite arguments in the activity. My senior year I was undefeated going for T-Substantial. I think a lot of teams do not put enough practice into debating teams making it one of the most strategic arguments for neg teams. I probably lean towards competing interps -- reasonability is a defensive argument for filtering how I evaluate interps. 2NR’s and 2AR’s shouldn’t go for every argument on the T page but collapse to one impact and do thorough weighing. I am a huge sucker for a precision 2NR/2AR.
Counterplans: Love em -- go for em. Cheaty Counterplans are cheaty only if you lose the theory debate. Having a solvency advocate or core of topic cards will go a long way to helping you win that debate. No strong predispositions on counterplan theory -- its up to the debaters.
Disads: Yes -- Do them. Not sure what's a good topic DA on this year’s policy topic. I have a soft spot for politics DA with a thick link wall -- just do impact calc. Teams don’t do enough of link turns case analysis that if conceded is just gg.
Kritiks: Despite my reputation as a K hack, I’m pretty agnostic here. My decisions tend to start from the framework debate and this guides how I evaluate the other parts of the flow. This determines the threshold needed for link UQ, whether the aff gets to be weighed, etc. That being said if you impact turn the K -- you can make f/w largely irrelevant. K teams should do more link turns case analysis -- it allows you to short circuit a lot of offense on the case page. If not make sure you make persuasive framing arguments about why the case doesn’t outweigh. If you are aff, your best bet is either to go for a big framework + Extinction outweighs push or just impact turning the K. Not the best for a team that wants to go for link turn and perm because I typically don't tend to find a net benefit to voting aff that the alt doesn't solve.
Theory/Trix: Not my favourite argument in the world, but I will vote on it. I’m pretty neg leaning on conditionality in traditional policy vs policy debates, but have heard some pretty fire kritiks of condo by some K teams. No real dispositions regarding anything else. Theory interps need to be impacted out and have a claim warrant and an impact.
Speaker Points: I’m gonna steal Debnil’s scale which makes a lot of sense to me.
“Note that this assessment is done per-tournament: for calibration, I think a 29.3-29.4 at a finals bid is roughly equivalent to a 28.8-28.9 at an octos bid.
29.5+ — the top speaker at the tournament.
29.3-29.4 — one of the five or ten best speakers at the tournament.
29.1-29.2 — one of the twenty best speakers at the tournament.
28.9-29 — a 75th percentile speaker at the tournament; with a winning record, would barely clear on points.
28.7-28.8 — a 50th percentile speaker at the tournament; with a winning record, would not clear on points.
28.3-28.6 — a 25th percentile speaker at the tournament.
28-28.2 — a 10th percentile speaker at the tournament.”
Ev Ethics: Clipping will receive a 25 L. The team going for ev ethics needs recording as proof and must be willing to stake the round on it.
Any other alleged ethics violation, I will ask the team going for the ethics violation whether they would like to stop the debate and stake the round on it. In this case, like Debnil, I will let both teams offer a written defense of their practice and decide based on such defenses. This is important because I feel that this will disincentivize ethical disintegrity, while also letting the accused have a chance to defend themselves (especially when ev ethics has been weaponized against small schools using open ev or otherwise widely circulated ev cut by bigger schools that has a flaw that the debaters didn’t know when receiving the ev). If teams would rather let the debate continue (which would be my preference), I will evaluate it like I would any other theory debate.
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