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Evidence

1. check on comprehensibility.  When debaters ask about my judging I often
tell them I expect to understand every word.  If I don't understand it, as
the saying goes, "it is not in the round."  (If I haven't heard a fast
round in some time, I will warn them that my hand might be a bit slow in
flowing.) But if I just jot down the taglines and then read the contested
cards after the round, why should a debater be comprehensible?  I don't
need to hear the card.  The other team has cross-ex and prep time to read
it.  Evidence-reading becomes a ritual of turbo-linguistics. 

Example: on one occasion I commented to a debater after the round, "you
would have been in trouble if you had to rely on the 1NR card on that
point.  All I could make out was 'mumble mumble inevitable nuclear war
mumble.'"  The debater looked honestly surprised, and commented that most
of his judges don't care about hearing the text of the card.  If it is
contested, they read the card after the round.  So my question again: why
not shorten all the speeches?  If the other team will read the cards
during the round and the judge will read the cards after the round, why go
through the ritual of reading it out loud in speech time?  Constructives
could be 3 minutes of tag lines each, with the briefs then handed to the
other team. 

Much more importantly:

2. an imbalance between evidence and analysis.  I've heard a lot of judges
say after 2AR ends, "could I read your evidence on subpoint B?"  I have
never yet heard a judge say "could you repeat for me your analysis on
subpoint B?" or "could you explain again the reasoning you gave to indict
THEIR evidence on subpoint B?" or "could you remind me again of what I was
supposed to look for when I read their card?" 

If the judge is listening to and flowing the arguments in the round, and
then making a decision from that flow, the decision will reflect what
actually went on.  If the judge is calling for evidence and reconstructing
the round from that evidence, the refutation, analysis, and reasoning get
short shrift.  If it is not on a brief, they are not able to look at it.



Oh, another minor consideration: it has been known to happen that a team
will slip to the judge the cards they SHOULD have read, or extra cards
BEYOND the ones they read.  It can be really embarassing to have this
pointed out for all the world in a footnote to a transcript from the final
round of nationals.
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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