As the season begins, there are many people who will begin judging for the first time. There are also many people who realize they are terrible judges and want to improve. As such, people will be writing and posting new judge philosophies. I wanted to try and put together a guide for people approaching this task to help guide them through the process. These insights are gleaned from my years in debate looking at judge philosophies and from many revisions to my own philosophy and the effects I saw it have on debates I judged.

I will update this post a few times before Greenhill, but a few people asked me about it so I wanted to get the bare bones out there.

Updated 9-14

Section 1: Things to avoid

1. Being clever- some judge philosophies are very funny, some attempt to be funny and miss the mark. Some are so laced with inside jokes that useful information is almost impossible to glean from them. No one is more guilty of this than me. Judge philosophies are most useful when they can be read quickly, and are written concisely. If you feel the need to be clever, save it for the end.

2. Lying- if you hate the K, just say it. If you hate politics disads, say it. If topicality gives you a warm tingly feeling inside, just admit it. Please drop the “I’m equally open to everything ” nonsense if you don’t really believe it. There are very few people I have judged with or been judged by who were truly equally open to all arguments. This probably sounds obvious to a lot of you, but it really is a problem that makes 75% of JPs totally useless. I would much rather have someone come out and say “I hate speed, disads, counterplans and T” so I can adapt /teach my students how to adapt.

3. Reference other judge philosophies- if you agree with XYZ on ABC issue, either explain that issue or copy and paste into your philosophy. Reading your JP shouldn’t turn into homework, and many people won’t automatically be familiar with the people you are referencing.

How to Structure your judge philosophy

1. Cliffs notes

To me this is the most important section- blunt, to the point, a quick and dirty guide to debating in front of you.

This section should contain 1-10 sentences, preferably in bullet form, that explain the most important things someone should know when debating in front of you. You can go into these concepts in much greater depth later, but offering them in cliffs notes form at the beginning as a guide is extremely helpful to students and coaches alike. Listing things you think are important will also prevent you from writing the rambling stream of consciousness judge philosophy were no one really has any idea what you are talking about/how to debate in front of you because your ideas aren’t expressed clearly. Some suggestions on what should be in the cliffs notes section ( I would select from this list the ones you thought most clearly defined you as a judge/you felt strongest about).

-how familiar are you with the topic/how much do you judge

-what is your ideal rate of delivery, and how many issues would you like to see in a debate

-rank your ideal 2NR strategies from the following list, asuming all positions are well prepared and executed close to as well as possible: Politics case, politics process CP, entirely plan inclusive CP with internal net benefit, impact turning all advantages, topic T argument (not material quals T),  topic K generic (note, this list is not “super specific Pic, case specific disad and case specific cp because everyone obviously loves crap like that, and if you have a super specific pic you aren’t going to consider generic nonsense, the idea here is to guide people when they have to chose from bad options)

-your views on cheap shots- are they voters or not

-your view on K fw that change the decision from yes/no policy- are they acceptable

-your views about T on this topic- are the 2-3 most common violations persuasive to you

-where do you draw the line in terms of what counterplans do you think are acceptable

-uniquess or link- who do you love

-Who are recent debaters/teams that you loved to judge (this is to identify the style of debate you find most persuasive, so you can get specific with examples such as X persons 2AC, Y persons K extension etc). Pick examples the people debating in front of you would know, not golden age titans. This one helped me a lot when I debated. At the Harvard tournament Dallas Perkins said a certain debater was the best he had ever seen, and from that day on whenever I debated in front of Dallas I literally did my impression of this other kid (well, as best as I could given he was a genius) to rave reviews.

-What do you consider the bounds of appropriateness- either in terms of niceness or humor

-offense/defense vs reasonability- where do you fall, does it vary from issue to issue

2. Your views on the classic debate controversies. This can be longer than the above, but make sure you have clear headings/divisions so people can find the relevant portions for their strategies. Many of the classics are explained above- K framework, theory VI’s etc. You can probably figure this out. Some other ideas are discussed in other 3NR posts. As I think of more and as people comment I will update this section of classic controversies, so if there is an issue you think should be in this section comment away.

3. Speaker points – how do people improve them, how do they avoid the pitfalls that result in poor points. Content wise much of this should be addressed above, so this section will probably focus more on style, pet peeves etc.

4. Examples of how you would resolve things- give some context to your preferences above, either with actual examples from real debates or with well explained hypotheticals that you make up.

5. Misc things to include

-paperless rules- I kind of think these should be decided by the tournament , but if not a section for how you will deal with paperless time issues can be good

-who do you judge like- name some people you feel you evaluate debates in the same way, or explain why you see debates differently from certain people. This seems like it would be especially useful in panel situations.

Sean Tiffee—a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and Language Studies and an Assistant Debate Coach at the University of Texas—has written an interesting post on the UTNIF blog about the role of argumentation in debate.

I made the decision to make my blog post about argumentation for two seemingly contradictory reasons. First, debate evolves at a pace that is simply staggering. The ninth grade debaters of today will be the ones shaping our activity in under a decade. As we all know, debate is a time intensive and life encompassing activity. While there are certainly coaches who have committed their lives to the activity, more and more seem to hit their early to mid 30s and decide they don’t want to lose every weekend for a minimal stipend, which leaves the activity in the hands of 20-somethings. A large-scale commitment of high school debaters to focus on argumentation today means that high school and college debate looks a whole lot different in less than 10 years. Second, as fast as our activity can change, we attempt to innovate among calcified thought. Some of these debates have already been had, they say, and there’s no point in going over them again. I disagree. While some of these debates have been had, it can be a good idea to revisit them with fresh eyes and the benefit of hindsight. In particular, I’d like to revisit a portion of a debate that took place in the Fall 1984 edition of The Journal of the American Forensic Association between Robert Rowland and Walter Ulrich. I know this is old school, but hear me out. Further, in the interest of full disclosure, I intend to cherry pick from these articles in an effort to initiate discussion and encourage you to seek out and read these relatively short articles yourself.

While I do not have the JAFA Rowland and Ulrich articles in my collection, I can share a few related articles that might be of interest to readers:

• Hingstman, David. “The Third Reunion of Argumentation and Debate in the Experiences of Debate Practice,” Argument in Controversy: Proceedings of the Seventh SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, 1991.
• McGee, Brian. “Judgment after tabula rasa: defending ‘least intervention’,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate (19), 1998.
• Rowland, Robert. “Debate Paradigms: A Critical Evaluation,” Dimensions of Argument: Proceedings of the Second SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, 1981.
• Ulrich, Walter. “The Influence of the Judge on the Debate Round,” Argument in Transition: Proceedings of the Third Summer Conference on Argumentation, 1983.

If anyone has access to the fall 1984 issue of JAFA, please let me know.

Interested in opinions from judges or debaters.

A while ago the nooch and I had a brief discussion on here about judges intervening in cx when one team is clearly giving a long drawn out BS answer (which nooch dubbed the filibuster)

A few other instances I have been observing semi frequently have me wondering whether or not judges should be exercising a heavier hand in what goes on in the debate.

I have never and probably will never say anything in these instances, but I have ranked them by likelihood I would say something. For some I have suggested other potential remedies and would love to hear about others ( a common one being debaters could just ask the judge)

-what were the vis? This is where one team asks the other team what voting issues were in their last speech and the team gives them a wrong answer (either from forgetfulness or malice). My reservation for not saying anything is obviously the other team should flow better. Potential alternative remedy- don’t vote on an arg that wasn’t relayed to the other team. Similarly “what cards say turns the case” is a question I hear misanswered a lot in the same vein.

-Did you kick X? I hear this more than you would think, if something is unclear- like was an argument extended, oftentimes teams will try and push the envelope and be like “oh yea, that was extended for sure” when iI am pretty sure it wasn’t, so I would consider being like “i didn’t have that extended”. Again- flow better, but a lot of times this is when the last speech was really unclear and I myself am unsure

-what cards did u read? Similar to the first, but this I feel is both more and less of a flowing issue- you should know what args they made, but sometimes finding out exact cards is difficult. After many debates I have been handed 6 uniqueness cards when i thought the team read 1/2 that or less, if they are handing that many to the other team that seems questionable obviously but does it rise to level of judge intervention?

-Beep beep beep- oftentimes people have asked what the last arg I wrote down was when someone keeps talking after the timer- and I would encourage people to do that. A similar confusing thing is the ventriloquism routine where one partner is telling the other word for word what to say, but the “puppet” is not saying it all, only parts of it- often resulting in a non argument. I don’t think i would ever jump in here, but would def proffer my opinion if queried by the debaters

While we (ok, mostly me) vent about the struggles debaters have with the paperless process (no need to really rehash them all is there?), there is one facet of the debate that we haven’t talked about much, post round decision time.

In theory having all or most of the evidence electronically should streamline decision times.  Only one person can read a paper card at a time but multiple people can have a document with the same card open.  Unfortunately what I’ve found in the debates I’ve judged or waited for decisions on, is that the opposite is the case.  Laptops are constantly being exchanged, evidence is being added to documents, more word files are being opened, etc etc.

There is an easy solution to this problem that I think could drastically reduce decision times and make the post round process much more efficient.  Paperless teams at the conclusion of the debate should compile all the evidence they read into a single word document, and organize / sort them by appropriate headers.  When a judge calls for X or Y piece of evidence, the debater can either provide them their laptop with all the cards there or jump them the document with all the cards read in the debate on it and let the judge find the cards in the word document.

I’m guessing some teams do this already but ALL teams definitely do not do this.  The laptop merry go round is too inefficient a process to continue especially on elim day where people are constantly stressed about making flights and decisions taking a long time anyhow.

A while back I combined 2 concepts in my mind

1. Judge philosophies are for the most part totally useless. Most of them read exactly the same “i’ll vote for anything if you explain it well etc”. Even the few that break from this mold are usually a series of opinions followed by “however, these are just my defaults, I will ignore them based on arguments in a debate”.

2. There doesn’t seem to be a better way to get the crucial information you need as a debater out of a judges head. Asking questions before the debate usually yields more of the same-  a bland, flavorless mush of information not helpful for you to adapt.

There had to be a better way. So I decided to come up with a hypothetical that would serve as a debate rorschach test. I tried to create a scenario that would be as balanced as possible so that people could then project onto it their views of debate.

Some issues I wanted to address included (among others)

-what constitutes an argument

-what emphasis is placed on evidence quality

-how big a part of the activity is research

-how do judges interpret/reward spin

-many judges tell debaters to call out bad/stupid arguments, will they put their money where their mouth is?

These are issues I think judges often aren’t entirely honest about in their JP’s.

I will use Bill as an example here. I use Bill not because I thought his comments were uniquely interesting, but because due to his writing on here and his comments on the podcasts there is a larger body of his work to draw on.

In his JP Bill says-

I have voted negative when the 2NR has gone for positions that I think are stupid—even once for Heidegger—but this is usually because the affirmative messed something up, not because the negative really “won”. On the other hand, I have often voted affirmative despite believing that the negative debated very well and demonstrated superior technical skills when they have gone for a stupid argument/strategy. If you rely on spin control and technical superiority to overcome the odious quality of your stale and generic 1NC strategies, I am a really bad judge for you.

Yet his posts about the hypothetical indicate he would vote neg and endorse the technical spin in a K debate.

He later writes-

2. I really don’t get the Heidegger argument. At all. You know how some judges are extremely frustrating because they won’t vote on a particular argument or genre of argument and you don’t find that out until after you’ve gone for it and lost? It’s like that, except I’m warning you ahead of time. I’ve actually voted negative once this year when the 2NR went for Heidegger: the 1AR spent about 15 seconds on it (the 1NR had taken it for five minutes) and I still almost voted aff on “calculative thought is inevitable and good beep beep beep”. I used to think the reason I couldn’t wrap my head around the Heidegger argument was because I just hadn’t seen someone competent extend it, but I’m still waiting and I’m not very optimistic. Unless you think you’ll be the first person to successfully convince me that identifying problems and solving them causes extinction (or *gasp* something worse!), you are encouraged to go for another position.

Bill no doubt has read more K literature, and more about Heidegger specifically, then the average high schooler trying to write a 2AC block to it. And yet here he indicates that it is possible he just can’t “wrap his head around it”, but believes a student debating in front of him should understand it.

I was honestly shocked when I read that Bill would vote neg because I think we have been on a few panels where a debate broke down very similar to the hypothetical (though obviously not this extreme) and Bill voted aff and I voted neg.

Similarly, if I was asked to wager how Herndon would vote based on judging with him and this from his JP:

I ultimately think that I am a pretty fair judge that falls somewhere in the middle in terms of K debates. I’d probably PREFER a politics throw down. However, I enjoy a discussion of postcolonialism and ontology as much as the next person. I think you should read whatever you want. Being good on an argument I dislike is better than being bad on an argument I like. Both sides should focus on the role of the ballot, how the impacts interact with one another, and why the world of the alt/aff is better in comparison. I will vote for the K and do so regularly – although i will often make jokes about being openly hostile towards it. If you give me a piece of Zizek or Baudrillard evidence you can expect me to scoff at it as I read it. If you aren’t explaining the K I will vote against you if it makes no sense. I think the neg has to work very hard for me to completely ignore the advantages to the aff. I default to comparing the philosophical and political implications to the aff.

I would have bet on him going neg. This is not to insult/denigrate the judging skills of either Herndon or Batterman. I will save the insults/denigration for Roy.

Roy starts out

As I’ve gotten older (maybe grumpier too) more things seem to frustrate me with the debates I judge. I’m not sure if some of the debating has transitioned (note that means become worse) or I’ve become a pickier critic. I feel like this may become more of a blog post then judge philosophy but I promise it’s a good read one way or another.

Roy, your promise was broken.

He later says:

2.) Key argument emphasis- The other speeches seldom slow down and emphasize key arguments, most of it is a random array of blitzing through arguments. I can count the number of times my kids and others have walked out of rooms saying we just got screwed XYZ judge just didn’t understand our argument. Are you really naïve / cocky / dumb enough to think that they didn’t get it? If you win the debate I promise I’ll vote for you, but if you don’t do the work to win the debate I won’t gift it to you.

3.) Even if statements. While you obviously always think your opponents arguments suck, I don’t necessarily always agree. Why don’t you tell me about how even if they win xyz crappy argument that you should still win because of ABC? This is why coaches want their kids to judge debates more. The perspective you gain from the back of the room helps you know how to sell your argument. Your goal is not just to be right, but to easily convince me of it. Decisions take much longer because this is missing from so many debates

…

5.) Evidence comparison anyone? It seems like since 2002 anything with a tag, cite, url and some text is considered evidence. Notice how “quals” is missing from that. Aside from the fact that evidence is usually so bad, its qualifications are often worse. Teams do not invest sufficient time into beating up people’s evidence. Where is it from? Who wrote it? Is that person qualified? When is it from? Does it have a warrant? Does It even say what its tagged? I am convinced a 2ar could beat up most politics disads by just indicting the evidence, mocking it for quality, and extending the aff. I will not do the work here for you. I will not read another team’s evidence and say because it was bad I won’t vote on it unless YOU TELL ME TO DO THIS. Maybe judges are to blame for accepting too much, but the relative non interventionist in me finds it reasonable that teams should have to point out their evidence is bad. While this might encourage people to cut bad “cards”, they will get their act together when they lose on bad evidence.

Obvi he votes neg…

I will stop for a moment here to discuss how I would vote. From 2001 until probably 2007 I would of voted neg without even thinking about it. 2007- now probably voted neg after some thought, perhaps a great deal of it. Now I am less sure.

You can obviously debate how well I constructed a hypothetical that is actually balanced, but I think if you read back through the comments knowing what I was trying to accomplish you can quickly see that everyone who comments (including me in my devils advocate posts) is injecting a LOT into the debate, and especially after their views are challenged they double down on their initial impressions and cast them as absolutes.

This is particularly evident in the “toulmin model” posts that just keep repeating the aff has not made “an argument”. This seems clearly false. They may not have “made an argument” about the substance of the K (though that is also debatable), they have clearly made an argument about how the judge should resolve competing claims when 1 is “spin” and 1 is “evidence”.

In this particular instance, one thing I tell kids all the time and that I have heard several of the posters in the thread tell students is that it is bad to just repeat your arguments and not clash with what the other team is saying. That is what the neg is doing here, repeating their ABC in each speech. The aff has already made their response to ABC, and read a piece of evidence on it. The aff then moved on to arguing about why you should prefer that piece of evidence over analytics from a debater. At the end of many debates judges are left to decide for themselves whether or not to prefer a piece of evidence or an argument from a debater. Several people I talked too about this all responded “yes” that it would be better for the neg to re-read or paraphrase parts of the evidence then it would be to give this 1AR. That seems totally insane, and to me is what is wrong with many debates. Teams who don’t understand their arguments “fake it” and then win, never being forced to actually go back and learn what they are talking about.

I think the obvious part that throws people off here is the aff admission that they don’t know what is going on/understand the arguments in the round. If that part of the 1AR had been removed, and the aff had just said “the block spin is garbage, prefer our card, it answers all their warrants” and then paraphrased parts of the card, I think many more people would have voted aff. And IMO that demonstrates how silly their “tolmin model” point is, it can be manipulated to feign understanding so easily that it serves no purpose.

The neg here has given “claim, warrant, evidence”, but based on all the cards in the debate (which is their evidence) and the aff’s card, it is wrong. They have misinterpreted their evidence. The aff is pointing this out, but can’t really explain why. How often does this happen in debates about the economy, climate science, or international relations theory? Based on the responses in this thread one would guess never. Based on my experience, quite frequently.

The last thing I will comment on for now is the people who have told me something like “if we just look at cards, why not just mail them in and skip the speaking”. This seems facially ridiculous. The aff has not said ‘evidence should always trump talking’. They have made a specific argument about the content of this debate, the team they are debating, and this particular argument. The neg FAILED to talk their way out of it- they didn’t respond to it in any way. If you really read this hypothetical and the conclusion you came to was voting aff means the death of speaking and the rise of the cult of evidence I am a little amazed. This, to me, seems like the weakest challenge of them all- if we place so much emphasis on speech should the neg not be required to SAY that the aff’s argument is ridiculous as you think it to be? Apparently not.

The reduction of the hypothetical to “spin vs evidence” is fatally flawed- both sides are using spin and evidence, just in different places.

Team A is negative. They read a very complex and sophisticated kritik, that all comes from 1 author. Team B is affirmative, and in the 2AC they read 5 or 6 sort of stock K answers and then a card just tagged “Neg loses”, that goes on for about a minute.

In response to this card the neg says a lot of spin that sounds very good about why this piece of evidence is wrong and doesn’t understand what their K is about.

The 1AR goes only to this piece of evidence and says the following:
“Look, we have no idea what the neg is saying. However, we have a card that is soo good it will make you crap your pants. Not only is it directly responding to what they are saying, it specifically indicts their author and goes through point by point every argument in the 2NC overview and refutes it. I would explain the warrants, but quite frankly, I don’t get it. However, we debated this K at the last tournament and didn’t understand it then either. We spent a whole month researching answers and after reading 20+ books on the subject we found this amazing card. The neg may sound good, but ultimately every argument in the 2NC in response to this card is unevidenced, made up on the spot drivel from a high school student- it may sound good, but there is no real substance behind it. The purpose of the judge is to decide what arguments were the best- we have by far read the best arguments, in order to vote negative you have to decide that we should lose even though we made the best argument, simply because we didn’t understand it. This defeats the whole purpose of a research based activity and punishes us for spending time reading about the topic instead of about obscure philosophy”.

The 2NR Says (amongst other things) the following:

“Their evidence misses the boat- our K makes three key arguments, which are A, B, and C. This indict doesn’t respond to thee arguments because of …..” And then gives a long winded explanation.

Is this debate winnable for the aff at this point in your mind?

Assume the 2AR says more of the same the 1AR said.

You call for the neg cards and the 1 aff card. Upon reading the neg cards, you find that they do clearly make arguments A, B, and C and explain them well, just like the negative said.

Now you look at the aff card. You actually crap your pants. Never before in your life have you seen an on point response that is this good. The card clearly identifies A, B, and C as arguments made by the neg author, and then deconstructs them in such a devastating way that you would bet your life that they are not only false, but that the opposite is true. Assume the neg cards nor the aff card speaks to the “spin” placed on the evidence by the negative.

How do you vote and why?

Another link from Alderete, this time about the nature of judging. Summation quote:

Under such circumstances, justices can no more be neutral umpires—in Chief Justice John Roberts’ famous formulation—than they can be dispassionate microcomputers. You can be the greatest reader of text in the world and the most profound diviner of linguistic meaning, but it still won’t help you in any but the handful of very easy cases, which, as Souter correctly observed, “do not usually come to court, or at least the Supreme Court.” That is precisely why, he added, “the fair-reading model has only a tenuous connection to reality.” It describes a nonexistent universe in which all cases are easy and all the constitutional directives are perfectly clear.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Roy raised a lot of questions in his post TOC reflections post that I think deserve some discussion. The ones I didn’t address were generally dumb.

RL:

Many of the toc elim panels had younger judges and or judges who had judged less on the topic (we were extremely happy with our panel all 3 hs coaches).  I’m not one to judge other people’s preferences but it seemed interesting at how that happened.  These judges are obviously preferred highly by people (not making a value judgment here) but is it because they know and have been judged by these people or because in order to fill spots in their pref sheets they needed to move people up.

I think Roy has put together quite a few issues here that need to be separated out.

First – Young judges. I think there are quite a few reasons young judges get preffed a lot more at the TOC, some of the most important being

-profile- people generally assume they have a better grasp on how these people think (based on how they debate) then they do on coaches who they are quite a few years removed from

-neg terrorism – most people assume (prob correctly) that if winning on the negative requires a 1NC filled with multiple conditional PICS and a K that younger judges are a better target audience. That they have to be aff seems not to factor in as much.

-Ageism- its obviously a fact that younger judges are more chic than the dinosaurs, no rational expectation required.

Issue 2- judges who aren’t familiar with the topic

I don’t really think this is much of an issue- how many of the elim debates were actually about/required topic knowledge? Personally I would rather have a good judge than a knowledgeable judge.

Issue 3- Judges available on elim day

This, as I see it, is the biggest problem in college and high school. The pool of judges available for elims is much smaller that need be in order to give all the teams highly preferred judges in their elim debates. Travel is often a limiting factor, but even accounting for that there are always lots of judges around it seems who could be put in the pool. Some kind of incentive system could be used to make more judges available.

RL:

4.)     We need to consider a strong and enforced version of the NDT “Lupo” rule.

No, we don’t.  Lets set aside for a second that this kind of rule is totally impossible to monitor, unenforceable, and in general unworkable.

Lets look through a bunch of different situations and how the quotae would play out. In order

1. Small team- 2 debaters, 1 coach who fulfills the whole commitment. Perhaps they get a little better judging due to quota

2. Same as above, only coach hires out commitment so they can cut cards/scout. Under quota they now have to judge 3, almost cutting their work time in half. Disaster.

3. Small team again, this time they have 2 coaches who are splitting the commitment. Under quota 1 of them judges an extra debate, no major change either way.

So for small schools the quota is negligible or very bad. Moving on to large schools, which is primarily who this quota is designed to effect. So say large school A called shmoodward has 1 team but brings a staff of 5 people (why they are a large school is apparently based on number of coaches or historical success…). Under the quota their judges are in for 15 rounds when their commitment is 5.

The problem with the quota is it tries to take from people a ton of free labor. Why will schools pay to bring people to the TOC if they will be giving away their labor to the commons?
If you really want more judges in the pool for more debates you need to raise the commitment per team, not use a quota. Forcing people to prepare for and allocate the rounds in advance means the market will take care of things. Schools will either have to hire more rounds or bring more people to judge and put in the pool.

Now the obvious objection to this approach is “bad judges will be in for more debates, while good judges will still be in for 1/0″. This is a fair objection. But the problem isn’t unique to upping the commitment, the problem is that teams are able to provide non preferred judges in the first place. This is why you never have this sort of problem at the St Marks tournament (and why in general Mahoney should run every tournament)- because the issue of quality judging is made a priority by the tournament and is therefore taken care of.

If the issue is “we don’t like that people are brought to the TOC who don’t judge” then by all means -quota. If the issue is “we want more highly preferred judges judging a lot of debates” then quota is dumb.

RL:

The elim debates seemed to be really close, or at least there were a lot of split decisions.  5 out of 8 octos were 2-1s, 3 out of 4 quarters debates, one semis, and the finals

It’s always kind of puzzled me that the TOC hasn’t moved to larger elim panels in the vein of the NDT. Obviously if judging is already tight moving to larger panels will be a disaster. But with so many 2-1 decisions there has to be a lot of disgruntled students wishing for larger panels.

RL:

Some rambling to the effect of elims were neg biased.

Is anyone shocked by this? This has to have been the worst topic for the aff in quite some time. Add to that its apparently ok to read 4 cp’s and a K in the 1NC.  Anyone who planned to flip aff one elim day should get their head examined. This makes Westminster’s run even more amazing.

RL:

What happened to the courts as an aff mechanism?

The fact that so many people were impact turning nonsense like independent judiciary during the year meant that anyone wanting to switch to the court had to do a crapload of work to get ready for it effectively nullifying any advantage they gained. Add to that the politics disad blew, which moots another traditional advantage of the court.

In the last 6 months or so there have been quite a  few articles in the Rostrum attacking fast, national circuit policy debate. I was going to write a response for the NDCA coaches corner but in the interim several other response pieces were posted, so having my thunder stolen I decided to write something else. Below is some of what I wrote in a rough draft for the article.

Not so fast Mr. Clark. Yours is the latest in a series of articles I have noticed in the Rostrum decrying the state of policy debate as it is now practiced on the national circuit. I won’t rehash the old arguments about critical thinking, psychological studies on rate of delivery etc. that demonstrate fast debate is more educational. Instead I want to start off talking about basketball.

As a first time basketball fan with no previous experience playing the sport, I was somewhat amazed at the success of the San Antonio Spurs in the 2003 NBA playoffs. As far as I could tell they didn’t have any elite superstar players, and played a style of basketball that was quite boring to me. “I don’t understand this!” I proclaimed, “Why don’t they play basketball the way I want them to play basketball!”. A friend then explained to me the many reasons for the spurs success using lots of jargon like “pick and roll” that I didn’t understand. I had always assumed basketball was a random chaotic game where 10 people ran around as fast as they could trying to get an open dunk, but now I was being told there were actual plays and strategies going on that I just wasn’t seeing. This seemed like nonsense to me, however, since I was totally inexperienced and was being schooled by someone with much more knowledge then me, I decided to investigate further before reaching my conclusion. This process of researching an issue before I formed an opinion was something I learned doing fast national circuit policy debate. It is always interesting to me when critics of this style of debate spout off the same old arguments about why its bad and in so doing indicate that they clearly have not carried out this process of research and exploration. The scene is usually something like this: I am in the judges lounge of a major national tournament that brings in students of many debate styles. In the room there will be a few people spread around with computers out preparing “canned” material for their students. There will be another group who sit their drinking their coffee, and discussing the educationally bankrupt style of fast policy debate. The truth is- fast policy debate is really really hard. Coaching it well is also really really hard. Sitting around complaining is very very easy.

Learning jargon is difficult, but as Condilac observed, “Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas”. That’s what debate is- a science. You wouldn’t walk into an organic chemistry class at Harvard and say “Slow down here, what is all this jargon”- or maybe you would. Jargon is useful- its an intellectual heuristic that makes communication among people educated in a particular field much easier. I don’t see why a person on the street should be able to understand every single debate anymore than they should understand every article in the Review of International Studies. Debate is about judge adaptation. When you have a judge who is knowledgeable about the topic, and about debate in general, speaking quickly and using jargon allows you to introduce and examine an exponentially larger number of ideas. Obviously if your judge is not up for it, you should slow down and avoid using jargon- but what is to be gained by making all debate homogeneously this way? That is the crucial issue- critics of speed and jargon don’t just want the debates they judge to be that way, they wan’t all debates to be their way because their way is the best. When was the last time you saw an article from a fast national circuit style judge decrying the lack of speed or lack of critical arguments from a non national circuit team? Critics of fast circuit debate hate what they don’t understand, what they can’t comprehend. Rather than put in the hours to learn, they wish that everyone else would simply forget. No one grows taller by cutting down giants.

Mr. Clark worries about the reputation of debate, and while I appreciate his concern, this is a bit like a freshman at Yale who doesn’t think his class about The Wire is academic enough worrying about the institutions reputation. Having such little experience Mr. Clark I do not believe you are in a position to worry. The issue of speed in debate is not one you discovered recently any more than Columbus discovered America. In a 1992 edition of Unger and Company a group of the top college coaches in the country got together to hash out this very issue (it was not new then either, but it is the oldest recording of such a discussion I can find). In it they discuss the doom and gloom prophecies of fast debate destroying the activity. Almost 20 years later, the sky has not yet fallen. Also in the video the coach of the Harvard debate team Dallas Perkins says that in an academic competition relying on critical thinking he will take his debaters vs any other students at Harvard and I have to say- I wouldn’t bet against that Texan coming down the stretch.

An implicit assumption of all these critics seems to be that all forms of debate need to be the same- homogenized mush pandering to the least informed and least adept. Last I checked, there were like 40 different speech activities and two other kinds of debate you could do at NFL nationals. If you don’t like fast, evidence intensive, complex debate about policy making you don’t have to. I don’t know of anyone from a fast circuit policy school deriding Public Forum in a Rostrum article for being too slow or or too accessible. As a wise philosopher once said, it takes different strokes. But more importantly than that, not only do the styles of debate not have to be the same, the goal of the activities do not have to be the same either. If you talk to policy alums from the 60′s,70′s, and 80′s who have moved on into business or law and ask them what it is about their time in policy debate that helps them in their careers now they won’t tell you its their “persuasion” skills. In their professions its rational, well evidenced argument that wins the day. Goldman Sachs doesn’t make investment decisions based on which analyst talked the prettiest, and the Supreme Court doesn’t rule in favor of smooth talking attorneys. So when asked what skill set does fast talking jargon filled policy debate prepare students with to enter the world  compared to other kinds of debate I would have to say: the right one.

I’ll leave you with two closing thoughts. First, speed is not exclusive with other styles- people who go fast can go slow while the opposite is not true. As proof: in the last 20 years a fast, circuit style policy team has won every NFL nationals, no team eschewing speed and jargon has won the Tournament of Champions in that time period. Second, the reputation of fast jive talking policy debaters seems to be doing just fine: Robert Allen recent editor of the Harvard Law Review and future Supreme Court clerk, Michael Gottlieb former supreme court clerk and now associate counsel to the president, Colin Kahl- deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, Neal Katyal- principle deputy solicitor general, Larry Summers – chair of the council of economic advisors…

A closing quote from Michael Gotlieb- two time NDT winner, two time NDT top speaker, and one fast mofo:
For those of you judges who are moving towards hating fast debate, etc.  PLEASE REMEMBER: many of you [not all] engaged in fast intense debates  where you read tons of cards. You did this for a reason. Please ask  yourself why you did it. I do it because IT IS FUN. I love doing it. I  don’t think that we should be denied the opportunity to continue this  practice. However, I’m pragmatic enough to recognize that if all judges  want to discontinue the practice, than it will be so. I have no problem  with judge adaptation, I grew up debating in Kansas. I just think, after  sampling both forms of advocacy, that the fast intense one is a) more  educationally rewarding, b) more intellectually challenging and c) more fun.

I don’t know that analytics have ever been particularly prominent in the time that I’ve been involved in debate, but they have definitely moved from the endangered species act to extinct. One of the reasons for this is that many judges don’t seem to be giving weight to reasonable analytics- like say sever perms are a vi…

Just kidding. But this is related to Part 1 about judge intervention because I believe that many judges are inserting themselves into the debate and making the argument “evidence trumps analytics” when that argument is not made by the team on the side of the card. The most common instances I see of this are things like:

-generic K link card vs specific K no link analytic, same with alt solvency

-generic CP solvency card (like states) vs specific analytic no solvency arg

-disad internal link card vs internal link press

So, the thesis of this post is: if you are a tabula rasa judge (which you should be) you should not give particular weight to an argument simply because it is carded in the absence of an argument made by the team that you do so.

Lets think for a second- why do we read cards. I can think of a few reasons (though this list is not exhaustive)

1. Expert testimony- someone smarter than you says something, so you use them to present your case

2. Studies- similar to numebr 1- someone has conducted a study, so instead of redoing the study yourself you present their findings

3. Insider knowledge- this person may not be an expert per se, but they are in a position to have insider knowledge- often used in politics uniqueness evidence

4. Historical/empirical claims- sort of a combination of 1 and 3 but not quite either- usually you read a card about history (instead of just making the argument yourself) in order to give it some more credibility. While you do not need an expert to report history, usually this evidence implies some sort of interpretation for which expert qualification is useful.

I could go on but I think this is sufficient to serve the purpose of the post.

A key distinction I want to draw is that while an analytic (by definition) does not read evidence (in the debate sense) , that does not mean that it does not PRESENT evidence – and in that case by evidence I mean support for an argument, not a “card”. Lets look at an example.

You could have an evidence vs evidence debate about the relationship between the great depression and world war 2. One side could read Mead 92, the other Goldstein 88. Once two pieces of evidence have been presented usually what happens is the judge will read the cards and decide which is “better” (occasionally one side will debate their argument better making this irrelevant obviously).

Or you could have an evidence vs analytic debate. One side could read mead 92, and the other side could make the uncarded argument “The great depression did not cause world war 2- it happened 10 years prior. By the time war started economies were booming again. This proves economic growth is a precondition to war- countries don’t fight when they have pressing domestic concerns.” While certainly not genius level, that analytic is at least equal, if not better, than the ol mead 92 card and its rhetorical questions. So what happens at the end of a debate? It may be an absurd simplification, but I think for many judges they call for the neg card, realize there is no aff card to call for, and give the aff argument zero weight. Obviously not all judges do this, and even the judges who do it don’t do it all the time. But it happens. A lot.

One could give a lot of reasons why this is bad-discourages thought, makes us nothing more than court reporters, why don’t we just submit briefs etc. Or reasons its good- encourages research, punishes the lazy blah blah blah.

But instead I thought I would go over some categories of analytic that I think should be important/argued more often.

1. link threshold- i won’t revisit this but it is a classic

2. False choice/False Dichotomy- This one comes up a LOT in K debates, for both sides. A false choice is basically something like “how does your alternative respond to hitler in 1942- violently or non violently?” Many people also refer to this as a “rigged game”, or the “blackmail of the enlightenment”. I will defer to a quote here

We must try to proceed with the analysis of ourselves as beings who are historically determined, to a certain extent, by the Enlightenment. Such an analysis implies a series of historical inquiries that are as precise as possible; and these inquiries will not be oriented retrospectively toward the ‘essential kernel of rationality’ that can be found in the Enlightenment and that would have to be preserved in any event; they will be oriented toward the ‘contemporary limits of the necessary,’ that is, toward what is not or is no longer indispensable for the constitution of ourselves as autonomous subjects.

This ethos implies, first, the refusal of what I like to call the ‘blackmail’ of the Enlightenment. I think that the Enlightenment, as a set of political, economic, social, institutional, and cultural events on which we still depend in large part, constitutes a privileged domain for analysis. I also think that as an enterprise for linking the progress of truth and the history of liberty in a bond of direct relation, it formulated a philosophical question that remains for us to consider. I think, finally, as I have tried to show with reference to Kant’s text, that it defined a certain manner of philosophizing.

But that does not mean that one has to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ the Enlightenment. It even means precisely that one has to refuse everything that might present itself in the form of a simplistic and authoritarian alternative: you either accept the Enlightenment and remain within the tradition of its rationalism (this is considered a positive term by some and used by others, on the contrary, as a reproach); or else you criticize the Enlightenment and then try to escape from its principles of rationality (which may be seen once again as good or bad). And w e do not break free of this blackmail by introducing ‘dialectical’ nuances while seeking to determine what good and bad elements there may have been in the Enlightenment.

Reading the wiki entry linked above would also be illustrative here. I will say that many people use the false choice as a justification for intrinsicness, and while that position has a certain logic I want to distinguish what I am talking about from that. While intrinsicness does question whether there is an either or relationship established, as I see it the important part of the false choice argument is that there are in fact more than 2 sides. For this reason I prefer to call it the false dichotomy or blackmail of the enlightenment. The point of this argument is not to say “we can do both” it is to say that your characterization is misleading because it artificially reduces us to 2 options when in fact there are many more options you are concealing. This is the rhetoric that is used in what I will call “blinders” k alterantive evidence. These cards take the argumentative approach of saying something like “we are so enthralled by capitalism that we cannot imagine a world outside of it. For this reason revolutionary projects are discredited as being utopian fantasies. The truth is there are practical alternatives, we just can’t see them because of the way we have been conditioned to think.” So basically they are saying that indicts of “utopianism” create a false dichotomy between extending the status quo and alternative worlds that are utopian. I think perhaps most people are probably skimming at this point as this has gone on long, so I will move onto another argument and clarify if need be.

3. Reverse causality- This basically tackles the problem off does proving a link one way mean that the converse is necessarily true. So, if economic decline causes war, odes that mean that growth prevents war? In many debates a piece of impact evidence will be read that does not perfectly fit the scenario described- it is the best fit the neg could find, but does not accurately describe the chain of events they are arguing. In these instances the affirmative should present an argument as to why we cannot assume reverse causality. The basic premise of most of these arguments is that there are other variables involved that change on the different slopes of causality. So for instance, economic decline may cause the election of nationalist leaders. This may already have occurred by the time growth pics up again for the negs econ recovery DA, so reading the same impact card may not be possible in this instance. A more extreme example I saw was the neg read an impact card that said when the econ declines governments resort to military spending as a stimulus, which promotes militarism and war. However their DA argued that the aff killed military spending, thereby collapsing the economy. A recent politics example is the health care climate impact. Many of these cards say climate cannot pass without healthcare, but do not say it WILL pass with HC. In this instance there is perhaps a blurring between reverse causality and necessary but insufficient, which brings me to our next point

4. Necessary but not sufficient- this is a classic and needs to be brought back. Many times teams tag internal links to the economy or hegemony or any big impact as “x key to y”. These usually do not say x is the only factor in y and that is often enough to defeat them. Military readiness is a good example of this. Reading a card that says X hurts military readiness and then an impact that says no military readiness causes war is not a complete argument. You have to prove that the plan forces us to cross a certain threshold (see point 1) to win that impact.

Intervention is bad, non intervention is good. Let’s get to it

“What is intervention?”

Intervention is when a judge inserts themselves into a debate either to ignore an argument, make a cross application of an argument that was not made in the debate, or to add an explanation/warrant to an argument that was not in the debate. Classic examples of intervention I see now with some frequency

-I didn’t vote on XYZ theory argument- I just rejected the argument even though the other team did not say that

-Even though the aff did not explain how their “social services increasing now” evidence applied to every disad, they did read it in the 1AC so I applied it to your disad for them

-Neither team clearly won the k framework debate, so I decided to make up my own BS interpretation of who gets what arguments and decide the debate that way

-X team read a piece of evidence earlier in the debate, and even though they never reference or explain Y warrant in the piece of evidence it’s a card, so I voted for them instead of for your well reasoned analytic

Etc etc.

“Isn’t judge intervention inevitable?”

No, actually it isn’t. Judges can actually choose to resolve the debate based on the arguments presented there within. Usually when people say this what they are saying is “sometimes debates are bad and hard to resolve” which is true. However, usually the level of intervention is not equal to the requirement. Take an example outlined above- aff drops sever perm is a VI. No intervention is required here- you can just vote neg. Now some think “but the neg didn’t really explain why it was a reason to reject the team”- which is a fine point, and one that should have been raised by the affirmative. In the absence of such an argument you can 100% make a decision with zero intervention, the problem is some people don’t like this. So they justify it in their minds by saying “well they didn’t’ give  a warrant, so to vote for them I would have to intervene on their behalf and insert a warrant for why I should reject the team”. This is prima facia false- you do not have to insert for them a warrant to answer an argument the affirmative did not make. You have now intervened twice- once to make an answer for the aff, and second to create an answer to the answer for the neg.

Another instance where people say intervention is inevitable is when no impact analysis is given. It is true that absent impact analysis sometimes decisions are hard but there is a difference between interpretation and intervention. Interpretation is when you look at the totality of arguments presented by both sides and try and figure out which side has won based on a calculation of risks. So in a debate where the economy is not compared vs terrorism and both sides have read “x –> extinction” you would decide like this: neither side made an impact argument that was different from the other- both are extinction, so we move on to a different criteria- probability. Now the critics of intervention will says “you just intervened to say probability is important so ha!”. That is stupid. Both teams in a substance debate know that you as a judge are going to decide which team has won a more likely impact- this is interpretation. Sure if you said “well I decided economic decline was more probable because of XYZ that wasn’t in the debate” that is intervention. If you say econ decline is more probable because the team arguing that side won more of the arguments than that is interpretation.

I could go on and on about this and will be happy to if people have questions in the comments, but right now I have more rant to get to so we will stop there. Let’s move on to some of the offensive justifications for intervention

“intervention is more educational”

This belief is usually tied to “XYZ argument is stupid, so I intervene against it”. I am tempted to just say “ if its dumb, the other team should be able to refute it”. The obvious logical weight of this argument seems undeniable, and yet here we are, so I guess I will have to say more. Debate is a unique activity in a few regards, but for my purposes the part that is unique is that the coaches are also the judges. No other activity is like that- sports have 3^rd party referees for obvious reasons, but in debate that is not how things are done. If football coach A acting as a referee in a game between two other schools called more penalties on the team running the west coast offense because they didn’t agree with that strategy would probably cause an uproar. In debate when coaches impose their views onto other coaches students its apparently ok. For shame. I have basically 3 points about this

1. No matter how smart you think you are, I guarantee you are actually substantially less smart than that. To assume that you know a better way of debate than the debaters and should therefore decide the debate for yourself is a pernicious form of academic colonialism. What you are doing when you decide to intervene is a calculated political act- you are choosing to set aside the arguments made within the debate and instead decide based upon a criteria decided by you before the debate takes place. It is my contention that no goal- whether it be the promotion of education, diversity, or tolerance- can justify such a move. This move in and of itself compromises the competitive integrity of the game. Which brings me to point 2

2. You are more than welcome to consider yourself  as primarily an “educator”. Many coaches are also teachers and so that role fits. However when you get to a tournament you are no longer an educator, you are an adjudicator. A tournament by definition is a competitive realm. The students you are judging came there under the impression that they would be able to compete, not be preached at. Judge intervention violates this fundamental social contract of debate as an activity. You have no contract or obligation to “educate” the students of another school, and furthermore, have no right to attempt to instill your beliefs on them.

3. Intervention is both an unnecessary and insufficient method for achieving your goal- whether it be education or something else. Let’s look at the sever perm example again-the purpose of intervention here is to discourage an argument the judge considers silly and uneducational. What are the effects of intervention here- they are to signal to the team that this argument will not serve a competitive purpose. This is an ineffective signal however since it does not show that the argument has no utility, but only that it did not work in this instance for this judge. Furthermore, the signal sent to the opposing team is that they can avoid clash and refutation and rely on the judge to sort things out and they are therefore told that strategically they can ignore their opponents arguments to gain time answering other arguments. A vastly superior alternative would be to explain in the post round why this is a bad argument and how to defeat it.

Contention One: Inherency

In the status quo, the vast majority of high school policy debate judges (at least those at “national circuit” tournaments) do not provide written comments on their ballots. A very small subset of judges—approximately ten percent based on an unscientific assessment of the publicly-posted ballots from the St. Mark’s and Blake tournaments—provide any written content at all. Of that subset, an even smaller group of judges provides “substantial” written commentary (defined as more than a short, one or two sentence reason for decision). Some tournaments have responded to this norm by eliminating ballots entirely—The Glenbrooks, for example, only provides small judge cards that are not copied or scanned for the competitors.

Thus The Plan:

High school policy debate judges should provide written comments on their ballots. This commentary should supplement—not replace—post-round oral disclosure and discussion of the debate.

Contention Two: The Advantage

The plan is superior to the status quo for all three relevant constituencies: debaters, coaches, and judges.

Subpoint A: Debaters

In order to improve, debaters require feedback from their judges. Currently, this feedback is provided almost exclusively in post-round discussions that center around the judge’s reason for decision. Most often, this discussion focuses on the losing team: the judge explains why they voted the way that they did and then proceeds to explain to the losing side why their arguments were not successful and what they could have done differently to emerge victorious. Some judges, at least some of the time, also provide helpful comments for the winning side. But for the most part, post-round discussions center around the judge’s decision—and that is as it should be.

While the decision is obviously important, however, it does not exhaust the feedback that students need in order to improve. In many cases, significant opportunities for improvement are not addressed because they did not proximately cause the win or loss. In order to help students identify and correct shortcomings in their debating, it is vital that judges communicate more thoughtfully regarding aspects of a given round that were not decisive —at least not directly—in determining the outcome.

The following is a list of areas that judges can briefly discuss via their written commentary on the ballot.

1. Feedback Regarding Constructive Speeches

Most post-round discussions hinge on the argumentation and execution of the final two (and sometimes three) rebuttal speeches. When constructives are discussed, it is usually only to the extent that they effected the way the final rebuttals were debated. Other aspects of the constructive speeches are typically left unaddressed—only the opaque judgment provided by speaker points signals to debaters the judge’s impression of their performance.

Smart debaters often ask questions to solicit feedback from their judges—”how was my time allocation in the 2AC?”, “how was my politics speech in the 1NR?”, and other similar questions are commonly advanced. But unless the judge has written notes during the debate, it can be difficult to provide specific, meaningful answers. By providing written comments on the ballot as the round progresses, judges can better convey their opinions of each debater’s performance.

2. Feedback Regarding Cross-Examinations

In the vast majority of high school debates, the cross-examinations are not instrumental in determining the winner. Most post-round discussions reference the cross-examinations only if an important concession was made or if an important issue was unclear and should have been clarified. It is even rarer for debaters to inquire about their cross-examinations, further pushing these vital components of the debate into the background.

Instead of complaining about the poor quality of most cross-examination periods—a frequent occurrence in judges’ lounges—judges should write comments that highlight things that debaters did well during CX as well as things that debaters could improve. “The cross-ex of the 1AC lacked focus and wasn’t helpful in setting up any of the 1NC positions,” for example, would be a helpful comment. So would “the cross-ex of the 2NC did a good job of attacking the solvency of the counterplan, but you should explicitly reference the 1AC cards by cite that you are relying on to establish your claims.”

Even if the cross-examinations are not discussed in the post-round, the fact that students have an opportunity to reflect on the judges’ written comments after a tournament can help them improve their CX strategy and tactics.

3. Feedback Regarding Arguments Not Central To The Debate

Judges sometimes comment on the overall strategy of a given team, but they typically do so only after having seen a debate unfold. Common post-round comments include:

• “The negative should have gone for politics and the counterplan instead of the critique—I thought you were much farther ahead on those arguments.”
• “The 2AC needed more offense on the disadvantage—you spent way too much time on the critique and didn’t get to the DA with enough time.”
• “The 1NC wasn’t very strategic—without better case defense, you couldn’t really win the DA, leaving you only with T and the K.”

These can be helpful comments, but the details of a judge’s reaction to the initial presentation and development of arguments that are not ultimately extended in the final rebuttals is often forgotten by the time the post-round discussion rolls around. Did the 2AC’s topicality frontline leave something to be desired? Did the 2NC’s extension of the counterplan miss a golden opportunity to exploit a hole in the affirmative case? Could the 1NC have read better evidence to support their case hit? By writing comments on the ballot as the debate progresses, judges can provide debaters with important feedback that would otherwise never be communicated.

4. Feedback Regarding Stylistic Practices, In-Round Presence, and Ethos

Many debaters speak in a way that can only be honestly described as awful: they are too loud or too quiet, they fall into annoying cadences, they distract everyone by banging on tubs or stomping their feet, and most of all they are incomprehensible. While judges will often comment on debaters whose speaking represents an extreme instance of “needs improvement,” they typically let most borderline offenders slide without explicit criticism. The result, of course, is that many students continue their bad habits under the assumption that if they were doing something bad enough, their judges would say something.

Other stylistic practices and “ethos issues” deserve comment, too. Is a debater being too aggressive or too passive in cross-ex? Does a debater throw their blocks on the floor after reading them? Does a debater rely on certain “crutch” words like “at the point at which” or “we’ll always win that”? Does a debater wander around the room during their opponents’ speeches instead of sitting down and flowing? Judges should communicate these criticisms to debaters on the ballot so that they can work to make improvements.

Subpoint B: Coaches

Better feedback for debaters means better feedback for coaches and more opportunities to teach—that much should be obvious. But in addition to the kinds of comments that debaters would find helpful, judges can provide feedback specifically aimed at a team’s coach. Instead of relying exclusively on their debaters to inform them about a judges’ comments after a debate, written ballots can provide coaches with an objective source of documentation that can be used to guide their conversations with students after a tournament—improving the quality of these “debriefings” exponentially.

What kinds of comments can be especially helpful for coaches?

1. Comments about interpersonal relations. This can involve a student’s relationship with their partner—Is one partner dominating the other? Does one partner jump in at the first opportunity to take over a cross-ex? Do the debaters visibly argue with one another during the round?—or their relationship with their opponents. This kind of feedback is rarely communicated in post-round discussions and when it is, it is not something that debaters often share with their coaches.

2. Comments about the allocation of preparation time. Did the 1NC take two minutes of preparation time despite having a strategy developed before the round? Did the 1AR take six minutes of prep while the 2A attempted to pre-script large parts of their speech? These tactical errors can be rectified—but only if coaches know about them.

3. Comments about knowledge of content areas. Did the 2NC seem to struggle with their explanation of the case arguments? Did the 1AC demonstrate their expertise of the case when cross-examining the 1NC about the counterplan? Was it clear that one or both teams did not have a strong understanding of a central argument or concept? Informing coaches about deficits in familiarity with specific content areas ensures that these shortcomings are remedied.

In addition to their utility as a tool to teach students, written ballots can also provide coaches with important insights into a judge’s philosophy and tendencies. While nothing can replace a post-round oral critique when it comes to gaining perspective on the way a judge views debate, written comments are probably the next best thing. Does a judge frequently comment about the debaters being unclear? Coach your students to slow down. Does a judge find a certain disadvantage unpersuasive? Coach your students to defend a different position. The opportunity to read the comments that a judge has provided as they were experiencing the debate can help coaches better prepare their students to debate in front of that individual in the future.

Subpoint C: Judges

Writing comments on the ballot during a debate obviously requires a bit of effort on the part of judges. And equally obviously, the vast majority of judges have determined that it isn’t worth it. But if the benefits previously described are valid, this norm should be changed.

Most directly, judges have an important educational role to fulfill and written commentary can help improve the quality of their service to the students that are debating in front of them. By improving the feedback that they provide to debaters, judges can directly improve the caliber of future debates. At a minimum, written comments can help debaters better adapt to a given judge in future rounds—resulting, hopefully, in a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Written comments also have immediate benefits for judges themselves. By outlining one’s thoughts about the round as it is unfolding, judges can construct better oral critiques and ensure that post-round discussions are as targeted as possible. Because issues not central to the debate are communicated on the ballot, judges can focus their oral commentary on the major issues while still ensuring that debaters and coaches receive feedback regarding the range of other issues that arose in the debate.

I’m now open to cross-examination.