here - College of Arts & Sciences - Bethel University

Relative importance of presentation/communication skills to the critic in decision-making
:
I don’t consider presentation/communication skills in making a decision, although it will
play into my speaker points.
I have no problem with speed as long as you are clear and the other team doesn’t make
arguments to the contrary. I try to keep a fairly comprehensive account of the arguments
made in round, and I will be flowing on a laptop, so be sure to hit the line by line, or
gives reasons why you shouldn’t. I haven’t seen many NDT rounds, but I haven’t seen
too many parli debaters that were too fast for me to flow. If you are going too fast for me
I will try to let you know.
Relative importance of on-case argumentation to the critic in decision-making:
On case argumentation might matter- it depends on what your off case argumentation is.
If you need it to make it so that your off case disads outweigh, then it matters, if you run
a CP that captures all the case, on case might not matter as well.
Openness to critical/performative styles of debating:
I don’t have a priori problems with specific types of positions- topical counterlpans,
PICs, politics DAs, kritiks, MPA, etc. But I also recognize that I do have some biases that
I will have to acknowledge at attempt to prevent, so let me explain those.
1. I never really liked kritiks as a debater. Never really ran them too often, and found
some of the kritiks to be mind numbing and pointless. That does not mean I will not vote
for them and I’m sure I’ll find myself voting for them a lot. That just means that you
should be sure to run them well with a good link story, explanation, and alternative. I’m
not familiar with too much critical scholarship, so be sure to do a good job of explaining
what they mean. Don’t expect me to fill in any of the details. But, if your bread and butter
is a K, by all means run them in front of me.
Along the same lines, I never personally liked any of the micro political, ironic, or
performance positions out there. That is probably my strongest bias and I hate judging
these kinds of rounds with a passion, but I recognize it and will do my best to keep it out
of my decision. This will be the hardest for me, but I’ll try to do it.
2. With politics, I am conservative but I will vote for any type of argument across the
spectrum and ran many arguments across the spectrum. All this means is that you
shouldn’t run a liberal argument and expect me to automatically buy the assumptions and
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