Marsh,+Doug

Judge's Name: Marsh, Doug High School Graduation Date: 2002 Judge's e-mail: maestus@gmail.com Experience: - Coach a team - High School debater - Frequently Judge Rounds Judged this topic: 5 Judge Paradigm: Policymaker Rate of Delivery: 5 Fast Quantity of Arguments: 4 Relatively many Topicality: 4 Moderately Rarely Counterplans: 1 acceptable Generic Disadvantages: 3 sometimes acceptable Conditional Negative Positions: 2 usually acceptable Debate Theory Arguments: 1 acceptable Kritik arguments: 3 sometimes acceptable Overall judging paradigm: I am an open-minded judge looking for the greatest possible depth of arguments in a round. I enforce MIFA regulations (no prompting or tag-teaming, uphold courtesy and etiquette or lose speaker points, evidence reviewable upon challenge, etc). Specific topics ...

Speed - Go ahead with speed and I'll issue verbal warnings if I find things too slurred or unclear.

Evidence/tags/warrants - I like to hear Name, Publication, Date. I dislike power-tagging as I think it is intellectually dishonest. Obviously I won't expect debaters to be changing tags on-the-fly, but know that I listen carefully to warrants and evidence content, so that if you later refer to the argument I will not grant the tag as the end-all of the argument. If your tag says "leads to nuclear extinction" and the evidence states that "use of a nuclear device could be possible" and presents no clear, actual extinction scenario, your tag is moot to me.

Topicality - Obvious, gross violations of topicality are acceptable and grounds for voting. Interpretation arguments are good, but must be very persuasive from the negative side to win a round. If it comes down to splitting hairs and the Negative appears reasonably prepared to argue the case, Topicality's importance in the round tends to become reduced, more like tie-breaker ground.

Kritik - If you're going to get critical, know what you are doing. A poorly understood Kritik is a waste of everyone's time. This means that if you are running a K, you should be familiar with the material contained within it as well as secondary literature pertaining to its sources. That is, if you read evidence from Foucault, you should have extensive knowledge of the concepts of Biopower and genealogy. If you are reading a block of intense philosophy prepared by someone else and basically unfamiliar to you, you will fail, I can all but guarantee it.

Theory - If debaters want to argue theory, my paradigm is flexible. If policy issues are deemphasized and a rich and engaging theory debate ensues, I am more than willing to judge the round from a more tabula rasa standpoint. If theory amounts to a lot of quibbling and evasion and refusals by opponents to see eye-to-eye, I will likely default to the policy issues that remain live in the debate.

New in the 2 - Off-case belongs in the 1NC. Negatives ought to be making offensive positions clear in this speech. The 2NC is a constructive, and so new arguments can be raised, but these should be, by and large, developments of positions already established to some extent in the 1NC.

CP - I like counterplans, generally. They should be competetive. I don't think there are hard and fast rules about conditionality, intrinsicness, etc that will apply to every counterplan that could ever be run. If the conditionality of a counterplan is relevant, or an attempted permutation strategy by the aff, I think it should be explained why and how it affects the debate in progress.

General - I like to see a debate collapse to the most important arguments, instead of petty drops waved around like magical talismans. I like to see comprehension of the opposition, and of one's own position, by all speakers. I like internal links, turns, and a general sense of coherence to emerge by the later speeches. Impact calc, as supported by a number of related points and coherent, understandable stories. Respect each other; avoid ad-hominem. Have fun. Good luck.