Doyle Srader
8th year judging college debates - 16 rounds on the college topic (UNT, Baylor) - Judging for North Texas
You should debate the way you are most comfortable, and I will do my best to accommodate you. My opinions about the direction in which debate should evolve don't matter at all anymore, even to me, so I suppress them much more than I used to.
I think I'm a relatively critique friendly judge. I also enjoy novel strategies for fending off critiques. Anything you say that makes sense will be fine.
I've never felt very reluctant to vote on topicality, and less so this year than in the past. I have no idea how the topic has developed, so I don't know what everyone's doing or what interpretations few cases could meet, which makes the negative's job easier. Every tournament is UNI for me.
There are winnable arguments for and against every mutilation of debate theory that anyone's ever come up with. It's easier to convince me that you get reciprocal unfairness rights than to make me vote against someone. If you want your opponents' argument choice to decide the debate, you'd better persuade me that what they did made it impossible for me to render a rational decision on the merits of both sides' debating. Not difficult: impossible. If you think you can do that, knock yourself out. If not, think "Two can play at this game." Last, I really think what fiat does to weaken or eliminate political disad links is sadly underdiscussed and underexploited.
Since I don't keep up, you need to overexplain events, people, abbreviations, and so forth. Don't neglect this. Both tournaments I've been at, people have lost entire debates by forgetting this. Feel free to check with me about what I have on my flow at any time.
I give a lot of very noticeable nonverbal feedback. Unfortunately, I'm not that versatile. My look for "I didn't understand that" is identical to my look for "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." If I'm frowning, you need to do something. That might mean explain a bit more, or it might mean go wash your mouth out with soap. Proceed with caution. If I'm visibly mumbling to myself, that's a warning flag: that means I think there's a big glaring problem with whatever you just said. Of course, that means
nothing if the other team doesn't figure out what's bothering me. If you hear me make a loud flatulent noise with my mouth, I didn't even write
your argument down. I generally save that for one-line voting issues. If I'm nodding, everything's golden. Play up whatever argument you think made
me nod. Finally, I give verbal feedback too: usually "Clearer" or "What was that?"
Don't steal prep time. I've gotten more brittle about that as I've aged.
Be nice. Not just civil. Nice. It won't hurt you.
During cross-ex, anyone can talk who wants to, but let the person who just spoke have the first crack at answering ALL of the questions. If s/he demurs, it's open season until the next question.
Surprisingly, I flow a little better than I used to. I think it has to do with getting a lot more sleep than I used to.
I read cards a whole lot more than I used to. I love it when teams read and compare qualifications. The occasional joke is welcome. Obviously, this document won't cover all possible eventualities, so just do your best to play fair, use your brain, and impose some kind of organization on what you say. Congratulations on representing your school here, and good luck attempting to qualify for the NDT!