[eDebate] Judging Philosophy Addendum

[Joe Koehle]

  I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but for some reason hadn't decided to pull the trigger until today.  I apologize in advance to those people at berkeley that may have to change things with their prefs.


I am going to start this off with a couple of meta-issues:
    1) Many may accuse me of some sort of hypocrisy in regards to what I am about to say, given the things I used to do as a debater, but those of you that really know me already know that the WGLF wasn’t really me to begin with (although we were obviously dope).
     
2) I also realize that I am a relatively inexperienced second year judge, and that I may just be going through a phase.
    I came into judging last year trying to be open to everything that anyone wanted to say.  I believe that debate should be a “big tent”, and that in general, we all should have space to do whatever it is that we think debate is.  That being said, I am growing increasingly unhappy with the debates that I have been judging.  Objectivity, although never entirely possible, has become harder and harder for me to stomach when I hear terrible baudrillard, deleuze, and “performance” arguments in 40% of debates.  Why do you all hate me and want to torture me?  I nearly cried why I judged Wyoming versus Wake frosh last weekend, because it was just a sweet policy debate where people went fast and line by line.  THERE WAS CLASH!!  HOLY SHIT!  
     
Too many teams misread me. Here’s a list of things to think about before you decide to prefer me in the future:
     I do not have scanned copies of Zizek on my hard drive.  I research the topic, and I can’t remember the last time I was cutting generic K cards.  I have no clue why a rhizome matters.  I also kind of think the stare decisis DA is totally stupid.  Despite my Catholic schooling, I have really no clue what is going on in terms of the religious turn in K debates.  I prefer when teams agree upon what debate should be, and if they don’t they should hash out their differences via some real carded arguments instead of self-referential theory arguments. Sometimes debaters never stop and realize that a substantial amount of what people say in debates really makes no sense and is only given meaning via the smoke and mirrors of the debate round; To me the best kind of strategic vision is  when a debater makes all of that horse shit apparent.  I just wish people would point out massive holes in people’s arguments, use their brain, not their blocks, and have fun while doing it.    
     
Bottom line:  I am really concerned with walking the line in terms of debate’s ideological divide.  Therefore I still prefer that you do whatever it is that you do best, but you should consider yourself warned. I am increasingly growing less patient with the far reaches of the critical debate community, in addition to my previous aversions to those who want a death of the k altogether. How about some debate centrism for a change?
     Also, I’ll answer questions about this if you just backchannel me.
   
  Joe
  
 
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