I talk about the evolution of Parliamentary Debate through the lens of my experiences, and what ought to be done about Policy-esque Parli.

This is all candidly and extemporaneously delivered; there’s no script.

I intend to make this a regular segment, so please tell me what you’d like for me to discuss next.

Thanks!

Yale
Date: 9/23 – 9/25
Location: Yale University, CT
Website: yale.tabroom.com

Jack Howe
Date: 10/1 – 10/2
Location: CSU Long Beach, CA
Website: http://beachforensics.com/blog/?page_id=6
http://www.pointofinformation.org/news/csulb-2011-2011/

Sam Barlow
Date: 10/8
Location: Sam Barlow HS, OR
Website: http://www.forensicstournament.net/SamBarlow/11

Silverton Novice Invite
Date: 10/15
Location: Silverton HS, OR
Website: http://forensicstournament.net/SilvertonNovice/11

Jerry Hudson
Date: 10/21 – 10/22
Location: Willamette University, OR
Website: http://www.willamette.edu/cla/debate/events/Hudson2011/

Jon Schamber
Date: 10/28 – 10/30
Location: University of the Pacific, CA
Website: http://www.joyoftournaments.com/ca/uop-schamber/info.asp

Oktoberfest
Date: 10/29<
Location: Neah-Kah-Nie, OR
Website: http://forensicstournament.net/oktoberfest2011/11

Whitman Wilcox HS Tournament
Date: 11/3 – 11/5
Location: Whitman College, WA
Website: http://forensicstournament.net/whitman-hs-tournament/11

Silverton
Date: 11/19
Location: Silverton HS, OR
Website:

Clackamas Holiday Edge
Date: 12/3
Location: Clackamas HS, OR
Website:

Vendlinksi Invitational
Date: 12/4
Location: Bishop O’Dowd HS, CA
Website: joyoftournaments.com/ca/bishopodowd/info.asp

Dempsey Cronin
Date: 12/09 – 12/11
Location: Santa Clara University, CA
Website: http://commweb.fullerton.edu/jbruschke/webhs/ViewInvite.aspx?ID=2

California Lutheran
Date: 1/6 – 1/8
Location: California Lutheran University, CA
Website: http://commweb.fullerton.edu/jbruschke/webhs/ViewInvite.aspx?ID=6

I Have a Dream
Date: 1/13 or 1/14
Location: Monroe HS, CA
Website: trivalleysite.yolasite.com/calendar.php

Martin Luther King Jr.
Date: 01/13 – 01/15
Location: James Logan HS, CA
Website: http://www.joyoftournaments.com/ca/jameslogan/info.asp

Glencoe Crimson Tide
Date: 1/21
Location: Glencoe HS, OR
Website:

PSU Viking
Date: TBD
Location: Portland State University, OR
Website:

Pepperdine
Date: 1/20 – 1/22
Location: Pepperdine University, CA
Website: faculty.pepperdine.edu/sstonew/high_school_tournament.htm

McMinnville
Date: 1/28
Location: McMinnville HS, OR
Website:

Stanford
Date: 02/11 – 02/13
Location: Stanford University, CA
Website: JOT Forthcoming

MHCC First Saints
Date: 2/18
Location: Mt. Hood Community College, OR
Website:

Robert D. Clark (former Bower Ally)
Date: TBD
Location: University of Oregon, OR
Website: http://clarkinvitational.wordpress.com/

Windsor Invitational
Date: 2/25
Location: Windsor HS, CA
Website: http://www.joyoftournaments.com/ca/windsor/info.asp.

TCFL State Qualifier
Date: 2/24 – 2/25
Location: Cleveland HS, CA
Website: http://trivalleysite.yolasite.com/calendar.php

CVFL (Sacto) State Qualifier
Date: 03/9 – 03/10
Location: C.K. McClatchy HS, CA
Website: JOT Forthcoming

SCDL State Qualifier
Date: 03/10
Location:
Website: http://www.joyoftournaments.com/ca/scdl-quals/info.asp

CFL State Qualifier
Date: 3/11
Location: Bellarmine HS, CA
Website: JOT Forthcoming

GGSA State Qualifier
Date: 3/16-3/17
Location: Santa Rosa HS, CA
Website: ggsa.org/calendar

College of William Mary Parliamentary Debate Tournament
Date: 3/24
Location: College of William & Mary, VA
Website: register

Date: TBD
Location: CA
Website:

OCSL State Qualifier
Date: TBD
Location: CA
Website:

CBSR State Qualifier
Date: TBD
Location: CA
Website:

SoVFL State Qualifier
Date: TBD
Location:
Website: JOT – forthcoming

YFL State Qualifier
Date: TBD
Location: CA
Website:

WBFL State Qualifier
Date: TBD
Location: CA
Website:

Warrior
Date: TBD
Location: Ygnacio HS, CA
Website: sites.google.com/site/warriorinvite/

Santa Clara Spring
Date: 3/31 – 4/1
Location: Santa Clara University, CA
Website: commweb.fullerton.edu/jbruschke/webhs/ViewInvite.aspx?ID=14

California Cup
Date: TBD
Location: Lynbrook HS, CA
Website: POI

California State Tournament
Date: 4/16 – 4/18
Location: Lowell HS (San Francisco), CA
Website: JOT Forthcoming

Oregon State Tournament
Date: 4/19 – 4/21
Location:
Website: osaa.org/speech

Background
I have been the head coach of the Claremont HS debate team for the past twelve years and as a result I have judged at dozens of tournaments in preliminary and out rounds.

Approach to judging
I am a flow judge. I prefer policy debates over value or fact debates, but I will vote at the end of the round based on the flow. Make it easy for me to sign my ballot, provide clear voting issues in the rebuttal and clearly weigh the impacts of the arguments.

Argument preferences
Again, I prefer rounds that deal with policy, but I will vote on any argument. Just be sure it’s well warranted and explain why I should vote based on it in the rebuttal.

Presentation preferences
Speak clearly, don’t spread, and be polite.

Approach to judging
My name is Justin Lin; I debated in high school so I understand how you want this broken down for easy consumption. I’m a fan of debate that gets into the true substance of the topic, actually get deeper into the content and think about it. Do analysis, not a bunch of blips, overwhelming numbers, or crazy endgames. I hate theory and arguments about “education” which really defeat the point of debating in the first place, but if you drop a priori arguments (even if they suck), you’re probably getting a loss. Tell my why you’ve got to address the issue, not just how, otherwise that opens up another can of worms.
Speed:
I debated Parli, PubFo, and LD in High School. I can tolerate reasonably fast speed but don’t spread please, it’s not enjoyable for anyone, and once again defeats the point of debate.
Style:
Be organized. Don’t be rude. Take POI’s. I love good POI’s and I love good responses to POI’s. Also, I hate “off-time roadmaps”, they’re just frustrating. If your speech is organized throughout, I will not need you to tell me in a convoluted waste of 30 seconds what you’re going over. Roadmaps never help anyway. Signposting does.
Argumentation:
Please, please, PLEASE give me a framework to evaluate the round with. The affirmative’s job is to create some sort of a case with internal logical consistency and strong reasons for its defense. Tell me what wins the round (feel free to argue this out, though), then win the round by doing that. Values and criteria are cheap, but they’re clean. I do believe terminal defense CAN win, but in rare situations. Please actually go on the offensive, weigh issues/impacts against one another, other I’m stuck doing that work for you and your debate just becomes a data presentation. IMPACT things and tell me what actually happens, tracing causes all the way to their finish.
Overall:
Please weigh arguments. I judge debates holistically, I refuse to drop teams because they forgot subpoint beta of section c of the fifth subcontention. I hate that. Exaggeration, obviously, but you get what I mean. That does not mean you’re at liberty to drop huge points and then try and pick them back up in the last minutes of your final speech, but I’m not unreasonable. Give me an overview and overall understanding by tying together the smaller points, not fixating on the minutiae. Follow the rules. Don’t make me think harder than I have to, that’s your job.

Background
1 year of parliamentary coaching experience
2 years of college parli debating experience
2 years of high school parli debating experience

Approach to judging
I am a flow judge and will vote on anything (literally anything, no political biases whatsoever). My preference is to not need to think at the end of the round. Be sure to explain to me how your arguments work. When in doubt, do not leave anything out. Make sure to extend your partners arguments. Impact calculus is critical in my opinion. Tell me where to vote and why or you may not like how I vote.

Argument preferences
I am a circuit level college debater. Run whatever you want. How I will evaluate procedurals is something to be debated. While I am not a fan of most Ks, I will not hold that against you. Make sure that your Ks are well structured and make no leaps. I will not do any additional work for you on Ks.

Presentation preferences
If you want to go fast, go fast, but MAKE SURE YOU ARE BEING COHERENT. I would also strongly prefer it if you would not spread through unique critical arguments.

Background
I competed on Moorpark College’s Forensic team and coach Simi Valley High School’s team. The team has been in existence for one year.

Approach to judging
I look for clarity in arguments with solid connections to the topic. I will be on the lookout for dropped arguments, so structure your speeches clearly and hit every point.

Argument preferences
As long as you speak clearly and in an organized fashion, and link all points, I have no preferences to style.

Presentation preferences
Rate of delivery does not matter AS LONG AS YOU SPEAK CLEARLY. If I cannot understand you, your points are lost. Most students I have watched that speak quickly do not enunciate. If this is you, slow down.

Experience: I competed at CK McClatchy High School in Sacramento, California for four years in policy debate. My senior year I was our team’s captain and competed at CHSAA, Cat Nats, and NFL Nats. While I was decent enough on the local circuit and cleared at most tournaments, I had minimal opportunities to compete at the national level.
Since graduation, I have probably judged about five or six dozen high school circuit policy rounds.
Currently, I am in my second year of parli debate at UCLA. As a freshman, I was a double-octafinalist at NPDA Nationals. This year, I earned a first round bid to the NPTE and cleared to mid/deep elimination rounds at every local and national tournament I attended prior to NPTE and NPDA. (Nationals was an unmitigated disaster. Don’t ask).

Paradigm: I’ll default to a policymaker stance unless you tell me to do otherwise. While I would certainly prefer that your advocacy consist of topical, fiated government action, and while it might be beneficial for you to stray within the boundaries of said preferences, it is beyond the limits of my authority to dictate absolutely what you can or cannot run.
I do not believe in the trichotomy. I think fact cases are universally dumb and force the judge to arbitrarily intervene more often than not. Value debates are slightly less serious offenders, but I’m still not as comfortable judging them. Obviously not all resolutions lend themselves to policy, but feel free to take significant liberties in filtering a fact or value resolution through the lenses of policy action. As long as the plan is constructed as a topical test of the truth-worthiness of the resolution, you’re okay. (Example: “TH believes that infrastructure investment is more important than debt reduction.” It’s a fact resolution, but you can run a policy that spends money to, say, build new highways).
Beyond that, I am looking first and foremost for strong offensive arguments. Defense can and should be an integrated part of your strategy, but if your offense is unwarranted or lacking in specificity, there will be few places on the flow where I can comfortably vote for you, even if you are winning many defensive positions.

Impact calculus: a must. Ideally, my decision in a good, close debate with few obvious concessions should primarily come down to an evaluation of impacts. This may come as a surprise to many teams, but without comparative impact calculus (emphasis on the comparative), your chances of winning the round are drastically reduced. Do not just tell me that you have X impact with Y timeframe and Z probability. Tell me how your impact(s) interact with your opponents’. Give me warrants for why your scenarios are uniquely more probable/timely/larger. Debate is not just a question of which arguments are stronger, it is also a question of which arguments actually matter. If you value the ballot this is something that you should invest heavily in.
I do come from the policy world, so I am very much open to evaluating big stick impacts. Just don’t make a fool of yourself by screaming about nuke war without a coherent internal link story.

Disad/Counterplan – Love these strategies. The more specific your link story is, the better. Delay, consult, and other shady process counterplans are probably cheating, but I run them anyway and expect others to do the same. Please note that there is no such thing as a “one percent risk of an impact” if the entirety of your link story is proven to resemble last week’s garbage. Your ability to access offense on the flow is dependent first and foremost on your ability to answer arguments that dispute or otherwise question the actual logic of your scenarios. I am more than willing to evaluate terminal defense that is true/conceded/intuitively persuasive as an absolute takeout if it is conveyed as such. Aff: permutations should have a coherent explanation in the MG. Please do not launch a barrage of three-word subpoints that I can barely flow and expect me to give you any leeway in the rebuttals. If I perceive a shift I’ll be upset.

Kritik: Here I will quote the WGLF -
“…SHOULD NOT BE OPERATED BY UNSKILLED HANDS/MINDS. IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBT, CONSIDER YOURSELF UNSKILLED.”
Any rumors you hear through the grapevine of me being a “K debater” are blatant mischaracterizations. Just because I like to run Heidegger on occasion does not mean that I will sign the ballot the second you blurt out “ontology” or “traverse the fantasy.” I enjoy kritiks used as strategic tools, deployed in appropriate situations with specific links to the case at hand. I do not enjoy kritiks that consist of unexplained postmodern gibberish (*cough* Deleuze and Guattari *cough cough*).
Quality impact turn debates are probably fun. One thing that frustrates me is a lot of mediocre teams don’t take the time to explain why the K turns or outweighs the case (or, if on the aff, why this isn’t true). The other thing that frustrates me is that often times the alternative debate does not get the attention it deserves. Frankly, I think the vast majority of K alternatives are either 1) taken completely out of context, or 2) utter gibberish. Rare is the MG who is bold enough to call the neg out on this.

Topicality: Topicality is a voting issue and is never a reverse voting issue. Generally anything ending in -spec is unlikely to warrant my ballot. Comparing, impacting, and weighing standards in the round is a must. I can be persuaded that reasonability is arbitrary, but you need to have a defense of competing interpretations from the get-go. Topicality is not genocide. If the words “T is an RVI” wander out of your mouth, I will imagine myself being drenched in gasoline by angry men wielding Bic lighters for the remaining duration of your speech.

Theory: I’m a self-described theory hack, so go ahead if you think you know what you’re doing. Impacting your standards on two levels – both at the in-round level and the macro level of debate – is probably a good idea. One conditional counterplan or kritik plus the status quo is probably theoretically legitimate in parli. Aside from that I don’t take any preconceived leanings with me into the round, because that should be up to the debaters and not me. Whoever initiates the theory debate has the burden to prove that I should reject the team and not the argument. The phrase “voting issue” without an in-round impact does not a voter make. Sob stories concerning potential abuse are thus exceedingly unlikely to sway me.

Speed: I’m not opposed to it, but note that my hearing is pretty much shot. Kind of ironic, I know. That said, I can flow most “fast” college parli debaters perfectly fine, and I don’t anticipate there being any problems in this department. On the off chance that you’re going too fast, I’ll yell clear. Clarity is also of paramount importance; if you’re slurring words or mumbling I’m not going to be flowing accurately.

Speaker points: I will try my best to assign speaker points in a manner consistent with tournament norms. I base speaks almost solely on the strength of arguments; if you’re particularly witty and make me laugh you might get a bonus. I probably hand out mostly 27s and 27.5s. I have yet to give out a 30; I reserve 25s and under for 1) incomprehensible speakers, 2) blatant cheaters, 3) debaters who believe themselves to be master douches of the known galaxy. If you are a combination of all three, congratulations, you possess an exceedingly rare gift and will be rewarded with zero speaker points. You also might find that debaters who pay attention to my philosophy and adapt to my preferences tend to score exponentially higher speaks.

Questions? Ask.

Background
Debated for South Bay Faith Academy in HS.
Debated for UCLA
I have been involved in forensics for 7 years. I debated HS policy for 3 years, and then 4 years of college parli debate (I am currently in my 4th year of competition). I view debate as an game of intellect, and therefore I believe that any method of debate is viable when used as a strategic ploy to win. I will try to list my views on the major themes within debate.

The way I evaluate the round:
Being involved in policy and parli (only), I tend to fall back to evaluating the round through the eyes of a policy maker. Unless I am told other wise, I tend to fall back on Net Benefits. This means that i will evaluate the arguments based on how clear the impacts are weighed for me (probability, timeframe, and magnitude). I will however evaluate the round based on how you construct your framework. If (for example) you tell me to ignore the framework of Net Benefits for an ethics based framework… I will do so. On the flip side, I will also listen to arguments against framework from the Neg. You win the framework if you provide me clear warranted arguments for your position, and weigh out why your framework is best.

Speed:
I am usually a fast debater and thus I believe that speed is a viable way of presenting as much evidence as possible within the time alloted. I can flow just about anything and I’m confident that you can not out flow me from the round. That being said, I value the use of speed combined with clarity. If you are just mumbling your way through 25 cards on Zizek, I won’t be able to flow you. While I won’t drop you for the act of being unclear… I will not be able to get everything on the flow (which I am confident is probably just as bad).

Counter Plans:
I will listen to any CP that is presented as long as it is warranted. In terms of CP theory arguments… I understand most theory and have been known to vote on it. All I ask is for the theory argument to be justified and warranted out (this also goes for perm theory on the aff).

Topicality:
I have a very high threshold for T. I believe that there needs to be articulated abuse for me to consider voting on it. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT I HATE T. I actually like hearing T debates… I just have a high threshold on T when the neg runs it just to run it. Additionally, I have an extremely high threshold for “RVIs”. If the neg decides to kick out of the position, I usually don’t hold it against them. I will vote on T if the Aff makes a strategic mistake (it is an easy place for me to vote).

Kritical Arguments:
I believe that any augment that is present is a viable way to win. Kritical arguments fall into that category. I am well versed in many of the theories that most critical arguments are based in. Therefore if you run them i will listen to and vote on them as long as they are well justified. I will not vote on blips as kritical arguments.

Framework:
i will listen to any alt framework that is presented (narrative, performance, kritical Etc.) If you decide to run a different framework that falls outside the norm of debate… you MUST justify the framework.

Evidence: Have it (warranted arguments for parli)!

Background:
High School: 2 years LD/Parli, 4 years Speech
College: Debating for UC Davis

Approach to Judging
As a judge, I take the path of least intervention. This means that I find impacts crucial. That being said, I’m open to any sort of round. If you want a more performative one, that’s totally fine as long as it’s well warranted and there’s a clear link to why going away from the ‘typical format’ is good or better.
I am a flow judge but voters and crystallization are important because voters are the first place I look when making my decision. Show me where and why you’re winning and I’ll vote there if I can. Otherwise I have to sort through all the speeches and find impacts, and I really don’t want to intervene.

Argument Preferences
Clear rounds are preferable. In terms of theory, if you set up stupid definitions and your opponents run Topicality, I’m going to have a much lower threshold than if I feel you start with a reasonable premise. The same goes for stupid arguments. If you make up factual evidence or twist analysis in a way that suits your case, if you’re blatantly wrong, I won’t directly intervene against you but my threshold will be a lot lower and there’s a higher chance that a simple argument will be able to take out your point.
I’m open to any kind of argumentation, be it style or just plain arguments. I don’t feel like having statistics or quotes furthers your case in terms of outweighing the opposing side’s analysis. I also don’t feel like one side can win because their source is ‘better.’ Your impacts and link story have to be clearer to get my vote on that specific argument.

Presentation Preferences
I flow and I can handle speed. That being said, if you’re running really technical positions that need clear framework, slow down and be clear on the A, B, C…
Speaker points have nothing to do with who wins. I give speaker points for speaking style – eye contact, courtesy, posture, etc. I give wins for argumentation.
Thank you’s really are NOT necessary. They function as a time sap because I do time them. If the first speaker from each side wants to say “thank you for being here” or something short, that’s fine. Otherwise…really not necessary.
Overall, just have fun and have clear impacts. And tell me how they function in the round.