"Hope is a discipline." -Mariame Kaba
Please put me on the email chain or reach out to me with questions/concerns at 4ristotle.x[@]gmail.com. Let me know if you need me to speak to tab or an ombudsperson before/after/during the round. If the round is unsafe, and you would like to stop the round and ask that I speak to Tab, and I do not seem to notice, please please just stop the round and tell me. I will do everything in my capacity to advocate with you.
Background - I did Policy, LD, and PF, and now coach LD and PF. More art in debate. More art as debate. Tell me if what I am saying doesn't make sense and I will work with you to rephrase/rewind/remix my thinking.
PF: I have 5 minutes before round and I need a TLDR - I'm happy to vote for a team that does good work on the line-by-line. Debaters reading arguments they care about is my favorite part of this event. Grand crossfire is my least favorite part of this event. I err towards K teams getting alts in PF and believing that an alt is not a counterplan.
General/LD: I have 5 minutes before round and I need a TLDR - Ask me how I feel about (x) body of literature and I will let you know if I need you to err on the side of over-explanation. I would love to see more thoughtful and critical sequencing in this event. I don't know what fairness and education are unless you tell me how they are informed by your theorizing and the components of the pedagogical model you are defending.
Preferences -
1- performance, non-topical affs, K
2- LARP
3- theory
4-phil
5-tricks (pref me higher if there is some body of critical literature that grounds your tricks. pref me lower if you are reading bread and butter tricks.)
General - I judge each round with the default assumption that the role of the judge is to be an ethical educator and that the ballot endorses your formas content. Try not to focus too much on my face if I'm smiling/shaking my head/furrowing my brow. Sorry. I make weird thinking expressions, and that doesn't encapsulate how I feel about your thinking. I love performances, creative args, clash of civs, anything that experiments with the space and the activity. (I'm serious. If you use your 30 minutes before the round to write a poem/pick out a song to play and talk about the resolution as a metaphor, I will 100% reward your speaks and evaluate it happily, though I still expect you to rigorously defend your performative choices.)
Speaks - My speaks last season averaged a 29.4. They start/remain here most of the time w/ the exception of any egregious incidents.
Speed - Spreading is fine. Please number your responses -- I have horrible hearing and worsening tinnitus. This means I may accidentally combine or miss lengthy overviews/underviews if they aren't numbered. Numbers help me distinguish between your responses and double-check my flow for anything I've missed. This also means that the more things there are on the doc (even if it is just '12 responses' and the rest is on your flow) is good for me to follow along. If your opponent asks you to not spread, please don't be that person who does so anyways.
Here's how I evaluate the round:
1- I look at my flow for arguments that are warranted as coming before any explicit framing in the round or arguments that tell me to intervene. Especially for arguments labeled as independent voter issues, there needs to be a warrant why I don't evaluate any of the framing prior. If I'm told to throw out the flow for a compelling reason, I will do so and close my laptop/fold up my flow. The IVI needs to be sequenced to the best of your capabilities, or I need to be told why you can't sequence it.
2- I evaluate the framing. I then vote however the winning framing mechanism tells me to.
3- I look for the path of least resistance to the impact I am told is most important. An argument has a warrant. I look at the remaining offense in the round and then evaluate the comparative under the framing.
Defaults - Competing interpretations, no reverse voting issues, and drop the argument. I don't err one way or another on if debate is good/bad but I think it's an important discussion to have. I will not vote on any argument that frames a structure of violence as good (i.e. racism good). I presume the negative when there is no offense/when all offense is violent (i.e. racism good vs. sexism good).
Online Debate - In case of any wifi drops/disconnects, please have a local recording of your own speeches. If there's a disconnect and you have a local recording of your speech prepared, I will bump your speaks by 0.5. If you need to turn off your camera to debate, that’s fine. The Association of Black Argumentation Professionals (ABAP) has a "Digital Debate Bill of Rights" (you can find it online by googling "ABAP Digital Debate Bill of Rights") that informs my philosophy on safety and inclusion in online debate.
Community Clause - For 30 speaks, go above and beyond in-round to advocate for material action or to create affirming spaces for yourself/your community. Some past examples include but aren't limited to -- proposing and testing community projects through debate, mutual aid, passing out educational zines, listing action items to support local circuits (volunteer judging, helping tab or teach, pledging mutual aid).If you include at least 1 organic scholar as evidence/offense in your debating at any point in the round (and explain to me why this is an organic source/what your source does for affirming or negating), and point it out to me, I will give you a 30. Ask me if you're not sure who/what an organic scholar is!
Note on Post-rounding - I'm happy to answer your questions -- please hold me accountable! And also feel free to ask me for lit recs. (Critical literature, poetry, prose...)
Last thoughts - For every student I judge: I know firsthand that debate can sometimes be hard, cruel, and exhausting, and I hope you all find/have some sense of community and joy here. I hope you all have wonderful support systems of educators, trusted adults, and peers. We are all here to learn, in one way or another, and I find myself leaving every round having learned something new. Thank you for trusting me to be in the back of the room for your round. You are going to change the world -- be proud of yourself. From Audre Lorde's The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House: "Without community, there is no liberation."
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Lengthier version here: Ask me for questions/preferences/opinions. I am comfortable evaluating most things. Otherwise, please just do a good job on the line-by-line.
Note on scholarship: A description of the scholarship I enjoy evaluating (because I have realized the borders between bodies of literature are always overlapping/shifting/changing/imagined): I like debaters who do not forget the ways racial capitalism grows and changes in response to new landscapes. I love learning about: queer studies, trans studies, coloniality, Asian American studies, performance studies, fugitivity, study/planning, semiocap, capitalism. (Students also like to read Deleuze and Lacan in front of me. That's fine. Just know you're on thin ice -- and I say this semi-affectionately -- when you pull out the Zizek evidence. I won't not vote on it, but I will be happier to vote on something else.)
I am excited to hear about your original contributions to critical scholarship -- your identification of weak points in systems of domination, ways we can apply pressure, and how they shift/change/adapt. Do not just read old taglines and uncontextualized work! These systems evolve, grow, and change in response to us pressing on its weak points. You need to reflect and acknowledge that. I will reward innovative/creative affs and negs.
I am absolutely a good judge for you if you are new to the K and you are doing your best to engage! I always think more people should read/engage with the K. Unless you have a really good reason, please extend K/case/performance/whatever kritikal argument you want me to vote for. If I don't know what the aff does/you are just reacting to whatever is said in the last speech and not leveraging the case page, I will be very sad and have a very hard time voting for you.
K aff: Do what pleases you (or do nothing if that is the aff). I appreciate when kritikal affirmatives include a ballot story. Later in the round -- leverage the 1AC! Effective sequencing is how I find myself voting for the aff, and I appreciate well-warranted sequencing that tells me how an opponents' strategic decisions (i.e. their collapse) can reflect or influence the sequence of evaluating arguments in each debate. The theorization in the affirmative should be used to indict the theory/topicality page -- how you debate is intertwined/produced from what you debate, and vice versa.
Against the K aff: I am excited to see new strategies that rely on scholarship/strategies that you love. I think this sets up the round for great debates around competing methods. I am not excited to see multiple blips as offs and a 2NR strategy that relies on going for the most undercovered off. I appreciate it when teams identify framing deficits and propose creative CROTBS. I appreciate it even more when the framing debate is specific, prioritized, and applied to the space that we take up in this round.
T-FW: If you are reading the same old "the 1AC plays with hand grenades" shells, please seriously consider just reading a counterperformance and finding a song to play that you really care about instead if you want my ballot. I think T-FW needs to have a TVA with some form of solvency advocate (doesn't need to be carded, I'm happy to evaluate warrants, please just tell me why the TVA solves). I live for creative TVAs. The TVA to "dismantle anti-queerness in the workplace" compels me less than the TVA to crash the courts because the former engages with the aff in a much shallower manner than the latter. I would like to see more forms of TFW that experiment with what it means to be topical, or why topicality is necessary to access liberatory impacts. I would like to see less forms of TFW that go for fairness as a voter, "ballot subjectivity impossible," and "debate is a game." These arguments tend to be overhashed and non-interactive. I default to fairness as an internal link to education but have been compelled to vote otherwise. Tell me why TFW forecloses aff outs (i.e. epistemic suspicion).
Performance: See K aff section. I notice I tend to be a little harsher when judging performance debaters if they neglect the performance and sit on the theory -- synthesizing your theorizing with your practice is your path to the ballot. I am on board with almost whatever you choose to perform. I am super compelled by arguments that identify performative offense on any page (i.e. their collapse, reading evidence/not reading evidence, actions in cross). Don't be afraid to sit on things and just sequence it out! The flow is never my end-all-be-all in these rounds. The performative contradiction needs to be sequenced. I'm less compelled by reasons why the perfcon decks fairness than I am by reasons why the perfcon reinforces a system of domination or damages the team's pedagogical/liberatory value. If you are going to include me in the performance that is fine, please just be clear what your expectations for my participation are before the speech (i.e. the judge should play Mahjong during the 1AC).
My one exception to your performance choreography is that I will not physically touch a debater I am judging. Please extend the performance beyond the constructive. It is good offense and you should be able to synthesize your theorizing and your performance to articulate how it affects you, me, us. Be safe when you perform (i.e. please do not injure yourself and/or others) -- if you are reading an argument and you are worried anyone other than you/your partner will read the ballot, PLEASE LET ME KNOW and I will alter my language on my ballot to give you educational feedback while respecting your privacy and give you a longer verbal rfd.
K: Link evidence needs to be specific in both tags and analysis. Please pull quotes!! If you are reading a K with pulled links from another round, I can tell and it will make me sad. I think it is incredible and reflects how rigorous your work is as a debater when you historicize the K or provide compelling reasons as to why we shouldn't/cannot. I think it is even more incredible when you can point to your experiences in debate or in this round and say, "Here is how the theory of the K has influenced the way we act and talk and judge in this round." I am happy when the K builds links from the form of the affirmative debater and justifies why performances in collapsing, cross, docs/cites, etc. are all links to the K. I am sad when the K overview is only an extension of your theorization and not a reactive implication of how the K out-sequences or interacts with the rest of the round. Against the K, perms I am not compelled by are often a little too blippy and don't ID a net benefit or contextualize themselves through the aff. I would love fewer well-contextualized perms instead of plenty of underdeveloped perms.
A note on the K in PF: I know times are shorter. I will not fault you for not completely hashing out a theory of power so long as the extension/overview contextualizes the K to the round. Please stop reading a K and also your case. Just use the full time to sit on the K. Trust me. I will be happier with four minutes of a kritik as opposed to two minutes of the K and two minutes of why U.S. diplomacy is key to resolve oil prices.
LARP: I like creative case turns. I like impact scenarios with rigorous internal links. I like when debaters can defend or draw on increasingly-recent events and historical trends to explain situations as more than isolated events.
DA: See LARP.
CP: There comes a point where there are diminishing returns on the number of conditional advocacies you choose to read. Please include full text in your doc/please don't extemp your text. I am also not super convinced by "risk of net benefit" as a reason to instantly write a negative ballot. I am super convinced when the affirmative is able to takeout or weigh against the net benefit, because this makes it easier for me to understand how offense at the end of the round interacts with each other under different metrics. I don't think process CPs, internationally-fiated CPs, or PICs are terrible. I think creative CPs (i.e. consult tumblr) are incredible.
Phil: I'm fine for most foundational authors and some of their secondary literature. This is definitely the section where you should ask if I am familiar with (x) author. If I am not, please slow down and over-explain the evidence. I recognize the overlap between phil and kritikal scholarship (i.e. Spinoza and Deleuze), and I'm able to follow along best when you explain things in K terms to me (sorry). Generic arguments about non/ideal theory good/bad are not super compelling to me in the backhalf -- instead, they are excellent foundations for you to enter a critical conversation about scholarship, and it helps me to evaluate phil debates better when you're able to use them as the foundation for contextualized criticisms of the aff/neg.
Theory: I am happy when I judge a shell with standards that are comparative and isolate unique benefits of your interpretation. I get more persnickety about theory the later it's introduced and I absolutely need to hear an interpretation, violation, and standards extended to vote on it. The blippier it is the less compelled I am to consider it. See notes on defaults at the top.
Tricks: I understand if this form of debate brings you joy. It usually does not for me and I am probably not the best judge for this. If you are reading this ten minutes before your round and have nothing prepared except for skep/paradoxes, please know I am more compelled by you reading/writing a poem in these ten minutes as a path to the ballot than I am by tricks. Please. Give me poetry instead of tricks.
Things debaters do to make me vote for them:
-Taking the time to compare between different warrants, or compare methodologies, or compare evidence.
-Numbering responses.
-Winning the framing page.
-Original scholarship.
-Adding me to the email chain or flashing me your speeches (Please don't do the latter unless absolutely necessary--I would prefer to social distance).
-Being kind to yourself and to others.
-Art. (Music, poetry, dance, sitting in silence, meditation, etc.)
Things debaters do that will result in the proverbial hot L (and will likely result in a conversation with tournament administrators and/or your school):
-Any form of impact turn on racism/sexism/fascism/a turn that frames a structure of violence as good. Seriously? Debate has no space for these types of arguments. I am hard-pressed to find pedagogical value in them, and even as some form of satire/accelerationism/whatever justification you come up with, I find it difficult to justify the harm that's being done in round if I endorse violent content. I did not think I would have to include this on my paradigm, but I am sad that arguments like these are still run. I would like to believe that debaters are brilliant, kind, and caring towards each other in the community. I will drop you immediately and assign the lowest speaks possible.
-Misgendering. Language like "they," "the aff/neg," "the rebuttal," is good and should be your default. Disengaged arguments about "non-verifiability," "mutual harm," "lying for the ballot," or "new in the 2AR/NR" will not convince me and will make me unhappy. I understand that mistakes happen. However -- if you are misgendering another debater repeatedly and that debater introduces it as a reason to drop you in the round, I will vote on it and give you the lowest speaks possible. If you have 5 minutes to prepare for your next round, you have 5 minutes to practice your opponent's pronouns and avoid using gendered language that misgenders them. If your opponent has not disclosed pronouns, please use gender-neutral language. One way to practice: "They dropped the argument." "This is their flow paper." "The charger belongs to them." Using students' correct pronouns is important for them to feel safe and engage with the debate round at a level that is educational for both you and your opponent. If you wish, you can include your pronouns on Tabroom to be sent in blasts in your profile (the icon of a person) here.
-Theory arguments that criticize your opponents' presentation -- shoes theory, hat theory, formal/informal clothes theory are the fastest ways for me to cast a (losing) ballot before first cross. I will not evaluate these arguments under any circumstances -- not even as time-fillers or as the only offense in the round. If you have a genuine concern about something your opponent is wearing, notify the tournament administrators or a coach. I will not use my ballot to tell a student how to dress.