Debate+Comments---Stryker

Round 1---Comments by Nathan Bennett
July 11 - Neg vs Olivia & Taylor

CX: try to think about how useful this questions are—sort of FYi’s as opposed to setting up 1ac arguments—The ADA stuff is alright but use it if you are spending so much time on this 2:38—use your prep time more efficiently especially with a lot of prep want to try to answer responsibility stuff better on the cp—a question of who should have the resp, not who does you jump around a bit on the flow on the k do more link work, because you are pretty solidly ahead on alt solves and but not as explanatory on why the permuation does not solve. also do more work on this root cause business

1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: Clarity was fine, work on speed 2) Recommended Drills: Just talk quickly

3) 2nc—technical skill and coverage for case and off-case arguments: Mostly above—you jump around sometimes and need to go in the order of the 2ac to make it easier to flow, because I got a little bit lost at times. Spend a little more time on the CP, answering their argument about USFG funding.

4) Assess use of evidence in constructive and rebuttal: quantity, quality, and comparison: Need to explain more of your evidence in the 2nr—pretty shallow extensions of the evidence on States solvency as well as politics

5) Strategic Choice and Execution of 2AC/2AR: Good 2nr decision 5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: Make sure you deal better with the Warming impact, because that was their best line of defense. Also compare your uniqueness evidence more.

Round 2---Comments by Ryan Beiermeister
Aff vs Elsa & Zach

1AC: Stryker I think the 1AC has wordy and repetitive tags—ex: "kt housing market that's kt recovery" royal card says diversionary theory—you should be better at explaining this in the cross-ex—pretty crucial for answering impact defense in the 1ar answer to stimulus question should be JOB creation and not just pumping cash into the economy--generating demand 1nc--cross ex--spend time on more targeted questions--not just asking to let her explain things 1AR transitions--choppy need a reason why mech CPs are bad politics--answer turns case at the top where it is think about what you do at the top of every flow--for example, you start with "They've conceded we solve 100% of the economy because Keynseian economcis are good"--that's not very relevant. The block is just impact defense--so you should start with--"Econ collapse causes nuke war--3 reasons: 1) Diversionary theory--causes U.S. lash-out 2) resource wars 3) anti-Americanism--our Royal evidence did empirical studies over EVERY conflict scenario and is more qualified than James Bearden." Need a framing argument at the top of every flow--EX: electons--you just start with "already a ton of spending"

Round 3---Comments by Connor O'Brien
Neg vs Julian & Elliot

1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: Generally fine. 2) Recommended Drills: Read 10 min or more of cards every day to improve speed and endurance. 3) 2NC—technical skill and coverage for case and off-case arguments: Try to use less prep – I find 4 minutes is the minimum I need to give a competent 2NR; you may need more/less but you should always keep that in mind while preparing the 2nc. Prepping arguments before the round, during the 1ac and 1nc, etc can help save time here. Couple things on elections -Work on line-by-line – make sure you address all their args in order and make it clear what you’re answering here – this could entail prefacing -Reading a new link scenario about Florida might not be wise – they could concede “only florida matters” and then read “FL likes HSR” cards which would moot all your other link and uniqueness work in the speech. On case, once you’ve won an alt cause to an aff internal link, follow up by explaining why that’s a necessary internal link/failure to solve it takes out the whole advantage. In this case, you would want to explain how the aff’s failure to create megaregions means that 4) Assess use of evidence in constructive and rebuttal: quantity, quality, and comparison: Generally good use of evidence on the K – you could use an “aff knowledge production flawed” card in response to their card defending it. You could make better use of the large number of cards the 1nc read on economy to win more defense there. 5) Strategic Choice and Execution of 2NC/2NR: You should go for the K in the 2NR – they’re pretty close to conceding framework and the environment impact. Your “even if” arguments should assume worst-case scenarios – “even if they win defense on the disad, the CP solves 100% of case” is not that helpful if they’re winning a risk of a solvency deficit. You need an explicit answer to their link uniqueness arg about squo transportation spending – at the very least you should make an argument about prioritizing issue specific uniqueness e.g. “Defer to our specific evidence that Obama will win the election – if that’s true, then previous deficit spending has not been sufficient to lose it for him, which just proves the brink is now.” Most of the impact and CP solvency stuff you did seemed to be framed toward a 2nr on the econ advantage, which I actually thought was less threatening than the warming impact to oil dependence. You should shift your focus toward that impact, and consider extending defense to it in the 2nr. 5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: Go for the K – you can use the existential risk of environmental collapse and your framework args to frame the debate in a way that makes it tough for the aff to win. Additional Comments about the Debate: 3 worlds is sort of pushing it – conditionality bad becomes a lot more credible once you’ve passed 2 conditional worlds. BABs and States aren’t different enough for it to be worth reading both.

Round 4---Comments by Rahim Shakoor
Aff vs Elsa & Zach

1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: Double breath, clarity 2) Recommended Drills: Clarity drills 3) Assess use of evidence in rebuttals: quantity, quality, and comparison: More evidence needed to be read on politics, uq question. Better spin on the link debate needed. No substantive evidence comparison was made on the politics debate. Possibly read another card on the link turn to cap. 4) Strategic Choice and Execution of 1AR: Was too spread out, needed to escalate the debate horizontally rather than vertically. Needs to learn how to pick and choose arguments and clash with the negative’s arguments, especially answering turns the case, root cause, and disads to the perm arguments on the critique. On the permutation, answer the neg’s passivity arguments, boost the credibility of the perm by explaining how it resolves links, and reference the 2AC ev. We discussed this in depth, but the link turns particularly for the disabilities aff can be useful, especially since they were mishandled by the negative. The 1AR massively messed up T, there was a disconnect between the 2AC and 1AR, which made it impossible to win. 5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: Make more permutation solvency arguments, answer the neg arguments listed above, get efficient enough that you can start reading cards on politics. Spend less time on cap, more time on T.

Round 6---Comments by Ryan Beiermeister
Neg vs Debnil & Madhu

• Speaking o Sometimes you seem a bit scattered—the biggest thing you need to work on is fillers  When you are struggling with warrants, sometimes you present your arguments as weaker then they actually are—“Romney is going to screw it up” as opposed to “Romney is a unilateralist and will have an aggressive foreign policy”—think a ton about packaging because you’re selling yourself short when you do this • 2NC o Case—  On oil—I thought the 2AC was light on the bottom two cards (shift now and military presence in the gulf inev)—you should extend those better and explain how they weren’t handled  Ex: the second card says that terrorism means we’ll never leave our presence in the gulf • 2NR o get to the Obama solve warming stuff faster  your impact calculus is really scattered and repetitive—use subpoints and extent coherent turns case args  need to explain the Russia scenario more—accidents? First strike? Prolif where? • Need to connect the Russia impact to every aff impact: o Warming o Chinese hegemony o Heg o Econ collapse • Make a bigger deal about the warming concession because that’s a total extinction risk that you access better o Then drop the line about HSR still using fossil fuels from the case o to answer UQ overwhelms link  use direction of the link swings UQ—you essentially say this—also use their own “hard to predict, still up in the air” 2AC arg to prove that UQ is a close call—question of massive Obama cred hit if new spending projects are unveiled o Say their interpretation on condo links to all of their offense—still includes one condo world  Stop using the words “stupid” and “silly”! sounds unsophisticated o Get to case faster—cleaning up the repetitive impact calc on elections will help o Be better on the deficit spending in the squo aff arg  Say llike “duh, the US is in huge debt right now—but Obama’s ability to hold off NEW spending and look like he has a plan for reduction is key”

Round 7---Comments by Jeff Buntin
Aff vs GR Naveena-Shireen 1AC – when you’re reading a K aff like this one with relatively long tags that make a lot of arguments in each tag, you need to slow way down and/or be overwhelmingly clear when reading them – you can’t read these tags just like you’d read a one-line tag to any other aff.

CX of 1NC: you conflate the fact that the federal government enacted the ADA with the federal government having sole authority over transpo infrastructure issues related to disabled people’s access – those two things don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other. Your ethos in the CX is not good. You speak with your face down into your flow, you don’t project your voice, you trail off at the end of questions, etc. Controlling the CX requires being animated, projecting confidence, and speaking clearly – you need to demonstrate that you have an agenda with the questions you’re asking.

1AR: Case – this long rant about biopolitics, medicine, etc makes no sense and is completely unflowable – you need to apply your args to what the neg has said, not read a generic pre-prepared block with no specific application to the debate. CP – gotta impact your solvency deficits! “Responsibility” in the abstract is rather meaningless – what’s the impact to it? Why can’t the states solve it? Your arg doesn’t get beyond a generic assertion that “the federal government’s key because they’re responsible” – that’s not a complete argument.

Other: FLOW THE 2AR! During the 2AR you sat there throwing your pen and catching it – you should be flowing your partner’s speech so you can catch things she might not be answering, etc.

Round 8---Comments by Zane Waxman
Neg vs AV Rebecca-Clara

1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: clear, could be faster and could work on smooth delivery. Good questions about timeframe/WMD motivations---need to make an arg or something: “who gives them the nuke, how do they transport it without hurting themselves, do you have any first hand evidence from insiders, they said there were WMDs in Iraq…etc 2NR comments Solid speech. Needed to be faster. Need to be more efficient and more thorough debating the case. Need to do more comparative impact calc…maybe they are winning the impact to port attacks, but they have no answer to internal link/solvency D, extend X, Y, and Z Also, need to pick an impact lens to frame the DA (in the case of us-russia conflict, magnitude is probably the correct choice)

Round 9---Comments by Rahim Shakoor
Neg vs AV Kevin-Tim

1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: 2) Recommended Drills: 3) 2AC—technical skill and coverage for case and off-case arguments: ?? 4) Assess use of evidence in constructive and rebuttal: There was no ev comparison on the uq debate or on case. This makes me sad  5) Strategic Choice and Execution of 2NC/2NR: 2NC: I think you escalated vertically rather than horizontally on case. That’s bad, pick and choose arguments you think you can win, and go deep on them. This uniqueness card is just too damn good. You messed up the link debate bad. First—you said that the plan likes things that are necessary. Second—you read a card that Obama is going to win because he’s seen as strong on national security. Third—you don’t have specific links. 2NR: Get faster and more efficient in the 2NR. Cut out time on the overview, You needed much better answers to condo, especially since you didn’t have a counterinterpretation and read 3 conditional worlds. All you said was its key to info processing, not even that it’s key to neg flex. More answers to their only solvency deficit on the CP—its not quantifiable/has no impact. 5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: Above.

Round 10---Comments by Arjun Vellayappan
Aff vs AV Mike-Sarthak

1A Comments 1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: No but could be a little clearer in between cards 2) Recommended Drills: Emphasis and pen drills to work on clarity 3) Assess use of evidence in rebuttals: quantity, quality, and comparison: Not great use of evidence in the 1AR because I thought you would have benefitted from more evidence comparison as well as reading a few more cards on crucial issues (new coercion DA and politics) 4) Strategic Choice and Execution of 1AR: Pretty OK choices and execution in the 1AR. Could have improved by reading cards in the key places and extending the perm on the CP and more directly answering coercion 5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: - Read more cards on politics and contextualizing your K of impacts to Iran stuff - More organized on PIC 1) CP doesn't solve (a...., b…, c…) 2) We outweigh and control U on liberty 3) Perm solves best 4) They are misreading our ev and coercion was totally new so we get new 1AR responses - make args about coercion being inevitable absent changing mindset etc - Make a bigger deal of liberty/extinction outweighs contradicting – force them to defend liberty since then you don’t have to worry about the DA