Eli Brennan

University of Pittsburgh

2002: Judge Perspective

Rounds on Topic: 30’ish

Global Comments:

Popular wisdom aside, I like to see a good policy debate. I’m pretty familiar with most of the critical literature people like to draw on for their funky strategies, but am too frequently subjected to nothing but gooey INC’s, which has become a little more than tiresome.  If that’s what a team is good at, I’m a decent person to have as a judge, but teams with more developed straight-up angles needn’t fear letting me see them. 

Rebuttal Tips:

I tend to read a lot of evidence after debates, but am often irritated at needing to interpret and compare key pieces of evidence all by myself.  If I get a little creative comparing evidence, I usually feel that somebody put me in the spot where I needed to.  Pivot points in the debate require evidence comparison, if a debater wants me to do it for them, to save time on pointless line-by-line effort, I will, but the team that does stop to assess for me wins nearly all the time. 

Theory Notes: 

I’m a little more accepting of severe plan inclusion for counterplans, esp. if there’s solvency evidence for the difference.  The debate about regimes of competition, i.e. text competition versus implementation competition are usually under-developed for my taste.  It seems like many folks assume their regime of competition reigns while they debate the perm and the theory debate, if both teams do this it can be a nightmare to sort out.  I usually need to see some severe abuse on T, or the topic explosion has to be made very palpable and extreme.  40-50 cases never seemed like that many to me, so if you need/want to go for T, lotsa focus on the abuse will be necessary. 

Decorum:

I don’t mind spicy C-X’s and some rhetorical flaring in heated debates, but formal politeness is a

prerequisite.  A sense of humor is priceless.  Intense debates should be intense, but civility is

needed to keep the game going.    A final note: I am very expressive nonverbally, a team that

keeps an eye on me has a useful advantage over one who doesn’t.