VARSITY LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE [28 Entries]

Hadrian Balaban Bronx Science
Max Weinreich Bronx Science
Sidney Balaban Bronx Science
Talal Syed Bronx Science
Vishal Mahadeo Bronx Science
Richard Haddad Harrison High School
Robby Tiburzi Harrison High School
Jill Klein Horace Greeley
Nicole Shimer Horace Greeley
Charlie Lasswell Hunter College
Justin Hahn Hunter College
Andrew Gunther Monticello
Jay Cumming Monticello
Kristen Druse Monticello
Rachelle Walker Monticello
Rebecca Goodman Monticello
Devin Kasinki NFA
Phoebe Wolfe NFA
Victor Bramble NFA
Zach Schuyler NFA
Alon Daks Scarsdale
Chistopher Filos Scarsdale
Evan Kratzer Scarsdale
Geoffrey Kristof Scarsdale
Ian Rabin Scarsdale
Zach Edelman Scarsdale
Eric Han Stuyvesant
Loully Saney Stuyvesant

NOVICE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE [39 Entries]

Adam Freilich Bronx Science
Albert Han Bronx Science
Dorian Kaminski Bronx Science
Frank Chiang Bronx Science
JJ Zhu Bronx Science
Mahmudur Rahman Bronx Science
Matthew Fernandes Bronx Science
Michael Boateng Bronx Science
Michael Mazursky Bronx Science
Pratyusha Mutyala Bronx Science
Ryosuke Nava Bronx Science
Sam Goree Bronx Science
Shai Szulanski Bronx Science
Sunpreet Singh Bronx Science
Ashley Muller Harrison High School
Christina Loguidice Harrison High School
Rachel Kalichman Harrison High School
Joel Gellis Horace Greeley
Eva Jacobs Hunter College
Ilana Kaufman Hunter College
Nina Dahabe Hunter College
Rachel Kaly Hunter College
Sasha Grajdian Hunter College
Safiya Osisami Monticello
Taylor Roome NFA
Ben Rosenbaum Scarsdale
Callie Gilbert Scarsdale
Grant Reiter Scarsdale
Harris Gurney Scarsdale
Jordana Cooper Scarsdale
Larry Milstein Scarsdale
Mukand Murari Scarsdale
Sam Natbony Scarsdale
Sarah Kurzac Scarsdale
Steven Friedman Scarsdale
Donald Ho Stuyvesant
Lillian Lung Stuyvesant
Mei Yin Wu Stuyvesant
Samantha Hom Stuyvesant

VARSITY POLICY DEBATE [20 Entries]

Johnson & Beckford American History
La Fontaine & Morrell American History
Elias & Gorman Bronx Science
Bansal & Mathew Edgemont
Kim & Shrestha Edgemont
Feig & Mehta Edgemont
Kempner & Mistry Edgemont
Chong & Tocilla Lakeland
Doan & Yeong Lakeland
Berhent & Aguirre Monticello
Challes & Shariff NFA
Morehead & McCormick NFA
Siper & Shukla NFA
Kataria & Kaplitt Stuyvesant
Gordan & Louvis Stuyvesant
Bystritskaya & Fan Stuyvesant
O’Brien & Lavina Stuyvesant
LouAllen & Maldonado Technology
Gold & Gornick The Beacon School
Hammond & Bhatti University

NOVICE POLICY DEBATE [21 Entries]

Moses & Harris American History
Athanapolous & Morales Bronx Law
Cabrera & Laine Bronx Law
Garcia & Santiago Bronx Law
Liriano & Pashtriku Bronx Law
Thom & Vargas Bronx Law
Alperson & Kang Bronx Science
Belhachmi & Kazteridis Bronx Science
Perrotti & Chusan Bronx Science
Ricklin & Tam Bronx Science
Chandrani & Leeds Edgemont
Jhangiani & Ning Edgemont
Maetzener & Filorento Edgemont
Didon & Femia Lakeland
Shah & Bhandarkar Lakeland
Zarkower & Medlar Lakeland
Mierzwa & Parekh Monticello
D’Souza & Jasko Stuyvesant
Helmy & Ding Stuyvesant
Morgan & Lenny Stuyvesant
Teehan & Titova Stuyvesant

You can read their candidate statements by clicking here.

People are starting to talk about summer debate camps so I did a substantial edit of the Debate Camps page on the PFDebate Wiki. It looks like a few camps have disappeared and a couple of new ones have been added.

If you have factual corrections, please edit the wiki or use contact form on the blog. If you want to discuss debate camps, I encourage you to visit the PFDebate Forums. I know that several camp directors and instructors are actively participating in those threads.

Typically composed of multiple policy options aimed at solving all or part of the affirmative case while avoiding a disadvantage that links only to the plan but not the counterplan, the multi-plank counterplan is now commonplace in high-level debates and has become a potent weapon in the negative’s strategic arsenal.

Affirmative teams that fail to adapt and keep up with this negative innovation are putting themselves behind the proverbial eight ball. This article is an attempt to help affirmative debaters effectively respond to the multi-plank counterplan and construct a winning strategy to defeat it.

Approach Cross-Examination Strategically

The cross-examination of the 1NC is particularly important in debates involving a multi-plank counterplan.

First, the disposition of the counterplan needs to be established. Is the counterplan a single position? Or can each individual plank (or combinations thereof) be extended or discarded? Asking for the disposition of the counterplan is not enough; “conditional” or “dispositional” needs to be clarified further for the affirmative to intelligently choose the best strategy for responding to the specific multi-plank counterplan against which they are debating.

Second, the net-benefit(s) to the counterplan need to be clarified and often contested. Is the politics disadvantage the only net-benefit to the counterplan? If so, why does the plan but not the counterplan trigger the link? The affirmative can get a lot of mileage out of a good cross-examination on the veracity of the negative’s intended link distinction.

Third, the solvency of the counterplan should often be questioned. What does a given plank do and why does that action solve the internal link(s) to the affirmative’s advantage(s)? Because multi-plank counterplans often include a “plank of the week” to solve common affirmative impacts, it is likely that the first negative will have little familiarity with the mechanics of the counterplan and the details of its solvency claims. In this way, a good cross-examination of a 1NC on a multi-plank counterplan will mirror a good cross-examination of a 1AC—setting up evidence indicts, investigating missing internal links, highlighting inconsistencies in context, etc. are all effective techniques.

Develop A Persuasive Theoretical Objection

Judges differ greatly in their opinions of multi-plank counterplans: some judges find them inelegant and absurd while others celebrate their strategic value for the negative. With the possible exception of the extreme neg flex fringe, however, the vast majority of judges will be amenable to well-articulated theoretical objections tailored to the specific multi-plank counterplan being debated.

There are two basic approaches that the affirmative should take depending on the specific situation.

1. Develop a theoretical objection to the disposition of the counterplan. Instead of just repeating the same “conditionality bad” objection that could be made in any debate, affirmatives should specifically object to the multi-plank nature of conditionality. If the negative argues that each plank of their counterplan is conditional, the 2AC should include a specific theoretical objection to this practice (preferably one that has been prepared in advance and which makes a complete, developed argument).

2. Develop a theoretical objection to the multi-agent nature of the counterplan. Multi-plank counterplans often include planks advocating action by several different actors: the federal government, one or more specific branches of the federal government, the 50-states and U.S. territories, the government of another nation, an international organization, etc. A persuasive theoretical objection can be levied against this practice.

Another theoretical objection that is sometimes levied against multi-plank counterplans is based on the absence of a single solvency advocate for all of its component parts. Because the counterplan as a whole is not advocated in the literature about the plan (or about the affirmative’s harm area in general), affirmatives argue that they cannot be expected to have prepared a defense against it. While this argument may have some merit, it is almost universally considered unpersuasive when each component plank of the negative’s counterplan is supported by evidence from a solvency advocate. While affirmative debaters can certainly make this argument, it tends to be perceived more as a “whine” than as a serious theoretical objection.

When extending a theoretical objection against a multi-plank counterplan in the 1AR, it is important to tailor one’s responses to the specific context of the round. While the reasons that conditionality is bad will certainly apply to a conditional multi-plank counterplan, they are not the best arguments the affirmative can advance—at least not without adapting them to highlight the problems inherent in multi-plank counterplans.

In addition, it is important to answer the inevitable negative counter-interpretation—whether it is “the neg gets one conditional multi-plank counterplan” or “the neg gets a conditional multi-plank counterplan as long as each plank has a solvency advocate” or something else, the negative will undoubtedly attempt to frame their multi-plank counterplan as eminently reasonable and not at all like the unreasonable multi-plank counterplans against which the negative is mounting an objection.

While many judges would scoff at a 1NC that included six conditional advantage counterplans, the same intuition is not as strong when the six conditional advantage counterplans are presented as a single conditional multi-plank counterplan. The key to winning a theoretical objection, then, is to deconstruct the multi-plank counterplan into its component parts and thereby force the judge to consider the argument not as “one conditional multi-plank counterplan” (perceptually reasonable) but as “six conditional counterplans” (perceptually unreasonable).

Use Permutations Strategically

It is imperative that the affirmative advance a series of permutations that can account for each plank of the counterplan. Too often, affirmative teams only offer a permutation to “do both,” inclusive of the plan and all planks of the counterplan. This is not strategic because it leaves the affirmative without the ability to develop a disadvantage to one plank of the counterplan while still capturing the benefits of the other planks. When the only permutation offered is “do both,” the negative can argue that the permutation links to the affirmative’s plank-specific disadvantage and therefore is not net-beneficial.

Instead of advancing only a “do both” permutation, the affirmative should present a “multi-plank do both” permutation: “do the plan and any/every combination of counterplan planks”. While parishioners in the church of neg flex might find this intuitively unfair, it is no different than advancing a permutation to “do both” on each of the independent planks of the counterplan. The benefit to this phrasing of the permutation, of course, is that it does not require the affirmative to invest valuable speech time meticulously permuting each plank of the counterplan one-by-one.

The “multi-plank do both” permutation can be a powerful tool when combined with offensive arguments against one or more planks of the counterplan. By permuting any/every component plank of the counterplan, the affirmative has enabled themselves to advocate the enactment of the plan and the plank(s) of the counterplan for which they do not have an offensive argument but not the plank(s) of the counterplan for which they do have offense. The negative is then forced to make one of three decisions: extend the counterplan as a whole and outweigh the disadvantage to one or more of its planks, kick the counterplan as a whole, or kick only the plank(s) of the counterplan against which the affirmative has made an offensive argument. Regardless of the choice that they make, the affirmative is in good shape—far better shape than they would have been had they only made a “do both” permutation in the 2AC.

Decide When To Read Disadvantages to a Plank

If each plank of the counterplan is independently conditional, the negative has the flexibility to kick out of the plank(s) against which the affirmative has read a disadvantage. As a result, disadvantages to a single plank should not be the core of the affirmative’s strategy if the negative is presenting their counterplan in this way. Unless the affirmative has strong disadvantages against all of the planks of the counterplan, it is far better in these instances to extend a theoretical objection to multi-plank conditionality. If the goal is to win this theoretical objection, reading a disadvantage to one plank of the counterplan can be helpful as a demonstration of the nefariousness of multi-plank conditionality: when the affirmative presents a disadvantage to one part of the counterplan, the negative can simply ignore it by kicking out of that portion of the counterplan.

If the counterplan as a whole is conditional but not its independent components, then disadvantages to individual planks can be much more valuable. Even if the affirmative only has a disadvantage to two of the negative’s five planks, the “multi-plank do both” permutation can help frame these arguments in a way that they can be favorably weighed against the negative’s net-benefit. Forcing the negative to choose between kicking the whole counterplan or outweighing the disadvantage(s) to the counterplan with the net-benefit puts the affirmative in a strong position entering the final rebuttals.

Contest Whether The Politics Disadvantage Is A Net-Benefit

The most popular net-benefit to multi-plank counterplans is the politics disadvantage. When deploying this strategy, the negative will read a specific piece of link evidence on the politics disadvantage in the 1NC that applies to the plan but not to any of the planks of the counterplan. The problem, of course, is that the absence of a link to the planks of the counterplan does not mean that there isn’t a link; the affirmative just needs to tease it out.

Ideally, the affirmative should be prepared with link evidence that can be applied to each plank of the counterplan. While this might seem like an impossible task—after all, the hallmark of the multi-plank counterplan is in many ways its unpredictability—it is easier than most teams seem to think.

First, the affirmative should prepare a politics link to every plank of every advantage counterplan that they have debated during the season. While negative teams often try to stay ahead of the curve by breaking new planks, the reality is that there are a relatively small number of advantage counterplans that an affirmative will debate over-and-over again. There is no excuse for not having a good politics link for each of these counterplans/planks.

Second, the affirmative should prepare links to each of the relevant counterplans produced by summer institutes or disclosed on the NDCA wiki. Even if each specific counterplan is not something a team debates, chances are good that the evidence they have gathered will have utility against other advantage counterplans in the future.

Third, affirmative teams should organize and store copies of politics link backfiles on their computers so that cards can easily be located and read. Many advantage counterplans are recycled from previous topics; this only makes sense—why write a whole new counterplan when the comprehensive research a squad completed in a previous season can be easily retooled? While these recycled counterplans may seem new to current debaters, rest assured that many of them have been exhaustively researched in previous seasons and take advantage of that research as part of your preparation.

Finally, the affirmative should collect a set of generic link arguments that are broadly applicable against a wide variety of policy proposals. When all else fails and the negative reads a plank against which no specific link was researched, the 2AC can fall back on these generic arguments to establish a link. Evidence making arguments like “legislation saps political capital,” “every new initiative distracts focus,” “spending money is controversial,” etc. can be incredibly valuable parts of the affirmative’s politics toolbox.

In addition to preparing links of their own, affirmative teams should capitalize when the negative reads links in the 2NC or 1NR that are not as specific to the plan as the link presented in the 1NC. While the negative’s first-line card might be very specific to the plan, there is a good chance that their second-line cards are not. If this is the case, the 1AR should connect the planks of the counterplan to the warrants in the negative’s new link evidence. Few teams have the argumentative discipline and high-quality evidence necessary to sustain a hyper-specific link to the politics disadvantage through the negative block; when they fall back onto more generic link claims, the affirmative should take advantage and capitalize.

Whether the planks of the counterplan link to the politics disadvantage is important, but perhaps more so is the extent to which a difference in the relative links to the plan and the counterplan is important. If both the plan and the counterplan link to the disadvantage but the plan links slightly more, should the judge vote negative because there is a greater risk of the disadvantage? In too many debates, the affirmative allows the negative to characterize the debate in this way and therefore earn the ballot even when both the plan and the counterplan link to the disadvantage. Instead of ceding this important framing issue to the negative, affirmatives should argue that relative differences in the magnitude of the link are irrelevant so long as both links are sufficient to overcome uniqueness.

For example, the negative might argue that a climate change bill will pass the Senate in the status quo but that the plan will derail this initiative by sapping the President’s political capital. If the affirmative wins that the counterplan saps the President’s political capital enough to derail the climate change bill, it doesn’t matter if the plan saps the President’s political capital more—the only question is whether the link is strong enough to overcome uniqueness. Once that threshold is crossed, the relative strength of the link to the plan versus the link to the counterplan is irrelevant.

Know When To Give Up Hope Of Winning A Solvency Deficit

The most common response made by the 2AC to a multi-plank counterplan is a solvency deficit argument: the counterplan does not solve the case, it is argued, because the plan is key. This explanation is rarely comparative; most often, the 2A simply repeats the thesis of their advantage(s) while asserting that the plan is therefore “key”. This is not enough. The fact that the plan might be one way of capturing an advantage does not mean that it is the only way. Unless the affirmative combines their “plan solves the advantage” claims with an explanation for why the counterplan does not solve the advantage, they have not presented a complete argument; “the counterplan does not solve because the plan does solve,” while common, does not meet this threshold.

Ideally, the affirmative will be prepared with evidence that specifically contests the ability of each plank of the counterplan to solve. Realistically, this is not always the case: sometimes the negative catches a team off-guard and leaves them with no substantive responses to one or more planks of the counterplan. The affirmative should do their best not to allow this to happen, but it is not the end of the world. The key to overcoming this kind of situation is to acknowledge early on that winning a meaningful solvency deficit for one or more advantages will be difficult if not impossible.

Instead of wasting valuable speech time repeating losing solvency deficit arguments, affirmatives should focus on beating the net-benefit or on winning a theoretical objection. In the end, even a well-articulated solvency deficit is only helpful when the affirmative can mitigate the impact of the net-benefit; when the affirmative’s solvency deficit explanation is weak, decisively defeating the net-benefit becomes even more imperative.

Knowing when to commit to winning a meaningful solvency deficit and when to abandon ship in favor of other arguments is vital. Teams whose strategy against a multi-plank counterplan is always centered on winning a solvency deficit are unnecessarily constraining their options and making things easy on the negative.

Conclusion

The multi-plank counterplan can be a powerful tool in the negative’s strategic arsenal. By presenting several advantage counterplans that attempt to solve the case, these positions can make it very difficult for the affirmative to win a credible solvency deficit that is not outweighed by even a minimal risk of a net-benefit. In order to catch up with this negative innovation, affirmative teams need to improve the quality of their responses and strategically rethink the way they approach multi-plank counterplans.

Adam Badrawi & Christopher Winter from Ridge defeated Dhruv Sharma & Kevin Sullivan from Delbarton on a 2–1 decision to win the New Jersey state championship in Public Forum Debate.

Basking Ridge Patch as a story about the success of the Ridge forensics team at the state tournament.

Photo courtesy of Basking Ridge Patch.

Brian Riedl was awarded with one of the Forward Under Forty awards for 2010. Brian was honored for his work on the Federal Budget with the Heritage Foundation. A great description of his efforts is in the above link – so I won’t bother rehashing the Alumni Association’s excellent work.

I had a chance to talk to Brian’s speech and debate coach, Mike Traas, about his involvement with the Appleton East team. Traas said the following:

Brian was a part of that magical group that was successful at Kansas City, along with Ben Bayer, Erick Lichte, Dan Jessup, Ben Schurg, Nick Stumbris, Jack Champeau, Ann Hackel, Tara Hofkins. Erick Lichte finished 2nd in DI, Nick Stumbris 4th in House, Tara Hofkins Semi Finalist in Oratory, Jack Champeau Finalist – senate supersession, Dan Jessup & Ben Schurg both quarterfinalists in HI, Ann Hackel Quarterfinalist in DI, Ben Bayer – Foreign Extemp Quarterfinalist (missed Semis on the 3rd tiebreaker), Ben had the Black ribbon and was 3-3 in LD with cases he wrote on Sunday (he didn’t care about LD any more at that time), and Brian Reidl – the only one not to break, he missed the break on a tie breaker.

That year, Brian gave his economy speech and hand gun control speech so many times – you would think those were the only topics that he knew about, but he had a broad breath of knowledge. [Which is impressive because...] Brian only started forensics/debate during January of his senior year. Brian also really enjoyed Student Congress.

I felt that this was worthy of mention on WFD because Brian’s experiences directly relate to debate and public speaking. If you were not sold on the benefits of speech and debate to your professional career, Brian’s example should convince you of the activities benefits.

If your team has an exemplary alumni that Wisconsin Forensic Daily should feature, let us know!

OVERVIEW/THE CARDS

While coaching part-time at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart on the 2005-2006 Civil Liberties topic, Lindsay Harrison maintained a blog called Legal Debate that discussed the intersection of debate argumentation and legal scholarship and theory. When announcing the blog’s creation in September of 2005, Harrison—a former champion debater at The Greenhill School and the University of Southern California and a rising star in the legal world—explained her motives in creating the site:

This blog intends to provide a forum for high school debaters debating this year’s Civil Liberties topic to engage in discussions with law professors about the topic. Many of the arguments that reoccur year after year in the debate community are areas where law professors have special expertise: federalism, presidential powers, separation of powers, the hollow hope, critical legal studies, etc.

My hope is that this forum functions as a site for clarification of debaters’ questions about the law, as well as a site for argument innovation.

In addition to posting a summary of her academic qualifications, Harrison included an explicit disclaimer about the citation of her blog as evidence in debates:

Disclaimer #2: I work occasionally as a judge and part-time, pre-round coach for Carrollton (School of the Sacred Heart). Nothing in this blog is available exclusively to Carrollton debaters, nor do any of my posts exist for the purpose of providing evidence for debaters.

Throughout the 2005-2006 season, Harrison posted articles discussing a broad range of legal topics. Despite Harrison’s disclaimer, debaters—thankful for the well-written and easily accessible application of legal concepts to debate arguments—began citing the Legal Debate blog as evidence in contest rounds. The most popular cards were those used to bolster the negative’s argument that court decisions link to the politics disadvantage; other popular cards included affirmative responses to the Hollow Hope disadvantage and to judicial process counterplans.

There was a certain degree of controversy about the practice of reading evidence from Legal Debate during the remainder of the season, but a firestorm did not erupt until the Supreme Court topic in college debate. In September of 2006, Harrison posted another disclaimer on her blog reiterating that it was not to be used as evidence in debates:

(2) To clarify, I do NOT intend that anything on this site be read as evidence in a debate. This site is merely meant to clarify certain legal questions for the debate community. In my opinion, evidence should be peer-edited, or at least edited by someone. Nothing on this site has been edited or checked by anyone else. I recommend that you do NOT use anything posted here in an actual debate.

Despite this disclaimer, college debaters continued to cite the “Harrison ‘05/’06” evidence. In March, Harrison posted a message to e-Debate disavowing this practice yet again:

It has come to my attention that teams are reading “evidence” from a debate blog that I ran last year when the high school topic was a legal one. I started the blog because, in judging debates on the topic, I was frustrated by what I saw as misunderstandings of the legal system by many in the debate community. I also was frustrated by a lack of creativity in devising arguments as a result of a lack of broad legal knowledge. I intended the blog both to educate and to generate new ideas for argumentation. I did NOT intend the blog to be used as evidence, especially not in college debates where I figured the community would recognize that none of my posts were peer-reviewed (or reviewed by anyone at all), none of my posts were backed up by specific research, and none of my posts would ever qualify as “legal scholarship.” In fact, I am merely giving people ideas for arguments and I do not necessarily advocate any of the ideas as my own – I consider evidence to be taken out of context if it says, “debaters should argue that bush would get credit” and folks read only the part suggesting “bush would get credit,” thereby attributing that idea to me.

When I found out that people were reading “Harrison 06” evidence from the blog as link cards on the court politics argument, I made an effort to end this. Whenever anyone read this evidence in front of me, I asked that they not do so in the future. I also posted something on the blog that I intended as a disclaimer for people not to read “evidence” from the blog.

I have been traveling internationally for several months and, upon my return, I found out that people have continued to read this evidence in debate rounds. Accordingly, I am now sending this to edebate in the hope that the community will recognize definitively that I do not want blog posts from my debate education blog to be read as “evidence” in rounds.

Please do not read evidence from my debate education blog in rounds. I consider it to be taken out of context. I hope that if people do read this evidence in rounds that judges will penalize those teams for reading evidence that the author considers out of context.

In addition to issuing this public statement on e-Debate, Harrison deleted all of the posts on the blog (with the exception of those cited in this article) and issued a final admonition about citing her blog in debates:

(3) I have discovered that people are citing posts made here as evidence in college debates, which was never my intent. Accordingly, I will be shutting this blog down and removing previous posts. Hopefully, this will put an end to the practice of citing this blog in debates.

This announcement spurred a vibrant discussion on e-Debate; a complete list of postings is available in the March 2007 archive. After the controversy died down, it seemed like the issue would finally be resolved: the posts had been taken down and there was general agreement that Harrison’s writing on Legal Debate should no longer be used as evidence in contest rounds.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS EVIDENCE

Fast forward to the 2009-2010 season and high school debaters are once again citing evidence from Legal Debate to support their arguments about the judicial branch. Since Harrison’s posts have been removed—and are not available from the Wayback Machine—it is clear that students are simply recycling cards from old backfiles without checking to make sure the original source still exists.

The citation of Legal Debate is almost certainly not nefarious: current high school seniors were in eighth grade when the Civil Liberties topic was being debated and it is highly unlikely that many of them were regularly perusing e-Debate at the end of their novice years (when the college controversy was at its peak).

In any case, however, the practice of reading cards from Harrison’s blog needs to stop. Even if the intentions of the author are discarded, the fact that the posts being cited are no longer available online is reason enough to discontinue their use. Were they to be reposted (either in the Wayback Machine or by an enterprising debater or coach who had saved local copies of the posts before they were removed), their use would still be in direct contravention of the author’s wishes. And even if that is not enough for some, the fact that the author indicted the credibility of her blog posts most certainly should be.

HOW TO ANSWER THIS EVIDENCE IN DEBATES

This should be an easy case to make for the team indicting the evidence: simply pointing out its context and the fact that it is no longer available online should be sufficient for the vast majority of judges. If the opposing team insists on defending the use of the evidence, reading a short card from Harrison should be enough to earn a decisive victory.

(___)

Disregard their Harrison evidence—

It’s from a blog post that is no longer available online and that was written by a debate coach to educate students about how best to make arguments about the judiciary, not to be cited as evidence. Harrison does not consider her posts to be credible evidence—the judge should not evaluate their card(s).

This is the third in a series of articles highlighting popular but poor-quality pieces of debate evidence. If you’d like to recommend a card for inclusion in this series, please leave a comment or contact the author.

Malgor Warming up for the Podcast

Topics discussed in this podcast include

-how we are in fact real Americans who fight for the rights of everyone

-How debating the K like a DA is brilliant… only the exact opposite

-Why is everyone else not as smart as us?

- Your big words (like “link”) would work in front of me, except i’m way smarter than you

-When is Framework a necessary argument? Answer- When we tell you it is!

Roy was also along for this podcast- we told him to speak up anytime he had something insightful to add.

You can mainline this mother right into your veins here.