Sarah Snider -- Kansas State
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Judging philosophy:
"OMG, who is this lady"?, I debated until 2000, I have coached at the University of Vermont, The University of Rochester, Catholic University, Georgetown University, UMKC and Kansas State for the last 6 years. What I like: Pleasant debates about the issues. I prefer when the issues you discuss are related to the topic. What I like the MOST: Case debate. I love it when the case gets debated a LOT. Case debaters are my heroes and your counterplan killed my heroes. Couple a case debate with a specific d/a and I am really psyched about watching your debate. That being said, I do really like counterplans, I just don’t like them in place of a case debate because you are too lazy to think about the case and just keep pumping out more cards about the same generic agent you’ve been running for the last 6-8 years……boring. Maybe you need to counterplan out of one advantage and turn another, and I’m all for that. Maybe you have an interesting alternate way of solving the aff’s business, and I’m into that. Obviously if you win your generic c/p and your politics d/a, I’ll vote for you, and it is true that those debates are the easiest ones to judge- just not the most thought provoking. Impacts- fyi, you have to extend it in the last speech in order for me to vote for it. This should be obvious, but recently, I’ve found that its not. K’s- I’m not really that interested in how much goo you have read, especially because its likely that I have not read it. I would really appreciate you applying what you have to say to what the affirmative has said. It makes me really mad when the 1NC says something seemingly unrelated to the aff, uses a bunch of big words and drops the names of authors as if they are your best friends. Why not apply the concepts of what you’ve read to what the aff says. Evidence is not argument, it is used to support arguments that you make. Your 1NC should be a response to the affirmative rather than an annotated bib. Aff’s should defend themselves- the best debates I’ve seen recently are those that take the bull by the horns and offer direct clash i.e. out lefting the K is not as amusing to me as it once was. There is still a part of me that understands that for some of you, debate is your method for seeking social justice. I enjoy these debates a lot and have a hard time separating myself out as someone who is probably a good judge for these teams and not so much a good judge for your super high philosophy business. In the last two years, I’ve voted for red spread more than I’ve voted for D&G and I’ve watched both args about the same amount. Topicality- It’s more important to me than it used to be. I’d like for your aff to discuss the topic, I’d like for you to have an interpretation of the resolution that sounds like good debate. I can be persuaded whether or not education or fairness comes first, but I’d like for there to be some limits on what we’re doing here. There is definitely a debate to be had about what constitutes beneficiary eligibility as well as what is required of an affirmative to increase the number of any subset of visa’s. I can be persuaded to vote on extra topicality pretty easily. Conditionality: I always dug negation theory- there may be an extent to which conditionality is getting out of hand and the negative seems at times to be reducing its burden to “proving that the aff is bad” in a way that has caused the proliferation of conditional arguments in a debate- this is debatable, and more and more people are getting away with more than one counterplan. I’m into it, but might be persuaded otherwise if it’s totally egregious. I noticed myself getting lazy around years 3-6 of being a judge, I’d leave the debate during prep time to smoke a cigarette, or play on the interwebs during down time. I’ve decided that this is BAD and that aside from using the restroom, I have recently committed myself to staying in the room, focused on the debate from the time it begins until it ends. This also means that CX matters and I’m paying attention to it. Make smart args in CX and you will be rewarded. I like to flow, it’s the guide for making my decision, I’d like to understand everything you say. I enjoy fast and clear debate, the best speakers are those that are so clear, you can’t really tell they are going fast. I will for sure let you know if you are unclear. Before we started adapting the speaker point scale to combat inflation and increase the spread, I regularly gave debaters 26.5’s. I consider a 27.5 to be average- if you are below average I’m likely to dock you from 27.5 downwards. You have to be good to get a 28, a particularly good speech will get upwards of 28.5 points, but I really tend to reserve the 29 + points for the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. If its more important to you to get inflated points from people who are playing a popularity game, that’s your deal, but I’m not likely to start giving high points just to get preffed. Paperless: I think its awesome for a lot of reasons, but I definitely think that you should not say that you are “ready” until you have either uploaded your speech to the drop box, or you have handed the other team your jump drive. You won’t be getting free prep time from me to save your speech on a jump drive. The time it takes the other team to get the speech to open on their computers obviously does not come from your prep time. For now, I’m going to say that that time won’t come out of anyone’s prep time, this might change though. I’ve never wanted to be the type of judge who reads a ton of cards after the debate- I’d like for you to communicate the warrants in your evidence to me. I absolutely will not call for all of both team’s cards and reconstruct the debate at the end. Particularly, I will not be reading any cards that were not specifically referenced in the 2NR/2AR. I try to only read cards to confirm that a piece of evidence does, or does not in fact make an argument that is contested in the debate. I love debate, I think its awesome, I love coaching debate and I really do enjoy judging debates.
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