Christi Siver
Lewis and Clark College
Rounds judged on topic: 60+
I don’t think any paradigms I’ve heard about really reflect my judging philosophy, because I don’t like to limit the debaters options or strategies. As a debater I preferred rounds based on policies, weighing DA’s versus advantages, but in judging I have voted on almost everything at one time or another. I focus on the flow and the comparisons made in the last two rebuttals. I will not do comparisons for one team that are not done in the round when the other team is doing the comparisons for me. Link assesment, risk assement, and impact comparisons are crucial. Affirmative and negative approaches are determined by the debaters. As long as you can justify your interpretation or approach, I will keep my mind open to it. However, I have a higher threshold for voting on arguments that seem deliberately to exclude the opposite team. I believe that the affirmative should choose an interpretation that allows for ample negative ground. The negative can take whatever approach they choose to disprove the affirmative, but the affirmative can have ground to argue that the negative approach is unreasonable. In my opinion the best negative strategies allow the debate to evolve with several different, non-contradictory approaches the negative could take, with the negative collapsing to one of those strategies in the 2nr. A big pet peeve of mine is "going for the box" in 2nr. Pick the issues you can win and impact during the limited time of your speech. Winning a bunch of little arguments and asking me to figure out which one is best and what is means is a great way to upset me. Presumption for me is almost a non-issue. I guess I believe that in the case of an absolute harms and/or solvency takeout I would vote neg on presumption, but I think that those absolutes would be very difficult to prove. I think the neg has to show a reason to reject the affirmative. Topicality, like any other issue, should have its violations and voting issues determined by the debaters. I believe that procedural arguments like topicality should be in the 1nc unless there are extenuating circumstances. Unlike substantive arguments where the aff can be offensive and turn new block arguments, on T – there is no reciprocity for the aff. I believe evidence should contain claims and warrants. I generally am irritated by highlighted claims and unhighlighted warrants. When I read evidence in the round I only read the parts read in the debate unless specifically asked to read the unhighlighted portions to resolve a dispute of interpretation. Evidence challenges should be taken extremely seriously and the challenging team must be very prepared to back up their claim. In the event I had to evaluate an evidence challenge, the round would stop and the challenge would have to be resolved. Cross examination is an extremely strategic time that is horribly underutilized by most debaters. While I do not "flow" cross ex I believe that c-x answers are binding. Since cross-ex is an important time for clarification, I do not mind if both partners participate. If the person not directly asking or being asked questions dominates the period, I may believe that person does not have faith in his or her partner. As fas as delivery, I enjoy a rapid and clear rate of delivery. I do not enjoy being screamed at or listening as glass begins breaking around me. A speaker who makes smart decisions, is knowledgeable about his or her evidence, and who tells a good story will get good speaker points.