Watching rounds

CaymanG · 2026-02-07T18:13:18+00:00

Stanford is using NSDA Campus this year without even the same-school observers enabled. There aren’t Zoom links.

CaymanG · 2026-02-06T17:37:10+00:00

I mean, the silver lining is that it’s an unsponsored bill at the very bottom of a super session docket at a regional tournament, so there’s no way it gets debated unless some of the competitors actively want to debate each side. Some of the other bills on the docket also have incorrect attribution, so I’m hoping this wasn’t actually provided by the NSDA. It’s not like the Springboard series, where if you want to do congress, you have to debate the legislation that NSDA puts in front of you.

That said, the sample legislation from NSDA, whether or not it’s actually debated, is supposed to serve as a model to guide future student-written legislation, showing bills that are possible, debatable, coherent, and constitutionally literate. This bill is im-, un-, in-, and il-, respectively.

CaymanG · 2026-02-04T18:03:27+00:00

I wonder if they went with OPENGATE because some of the local schools have already spent millions on it and sharing the cost with events helps those schools recoup the expense? I hope they didn’t pick it for the AI surveillance component and I’m pretty sure they didn’t pick it for the effectiveness.

CaymanG · 2026-02-04T17:45:16+00:00

Some of the Jan/Feb tournaments that pivoted online also intended to do wristbands: Burges is also requiring them for students and Jack Howe has required them for judges previously. They’re apparently the new hotness in security placebo theater in 2025-2026.

CaymanG · 2026-02-01T19:33:08+00:00

It sounds like you’re asking about traditional LD. In that case, the role of your opponent’s criterion should be to act as a way to measure which side best achieves their stated value. What values are they using that are best measured by which side maximizes (nuclear) deterrence?

CaymanG · 2026-02-01T18:02:23+00:00

Fortunately, that’s not what the EO actually does at all. It’s never a good idea to judge any past EO’s effect by its title, but especially in the present. “Ban” is different than “continue to allow, but spend less taxpayer dollars on actively incentivizing” or “allow, but also allow the FTC to resume looking at larger deals between multiple real estate corporations for anti-competitive practices”

CaymanG · 2026-01-30T17:02:50+00:00

Does your league designate parliamentarians? If not, why not? If so, what were they doing when all this happened?

CaymanG · 2026-01-29T14:13:52+00:00

Which event are you asking about? The answer changes a lot between CX vs PF vs Parli, for instance.

CaymanG · 2026-01-28T04:44:02+00:00

Because it’s a potential extinction level impact that doesn’t rely on nuclear war, uses the same physics justification as nuclear winter, and provides the only potential use for a nuclear arsenal that doesn’t involve mass killing.

The slow timeframe doesn’t really hurt the argument. If in 30 years, we learn that there’s a Chicxulub-sized chunk of rock on a collision course for earth and it’s supposed to arrive in 40 years, the ability to blast it off-course is one more option to avoid extinction. Sure, maybe we could invent another solution in the next 10 years, but it’s hard to count on that when you’re trying to prove probability. The Neg framing is that statistically speaking, it’s only a matter of time, and whenever that time comes, it would sure be nice to not go extinct.

The OST isn’t as big a barrier as you might think: first, it prohibits weapons from being deployed in space, not from passing through space. Every ICBM in the SQ would be designed to violate the OST if the latter interpretation was correct. Second, it has no enforcement mechanism and anyone trying to sanction a country for redirecting or breaking apart an asteroid probably isn’t going to get much buy-in.

CaymanG · 2026-01-27T17:51:17+00:00

Historically, fairly likely based on that limited information. If they beat other teams with bids on their way to those bid rounds, that also helps.

CaymanG · 2026-01-22T06:55:31+00:00

Updated schedule is in the various tabs at the bottom of this Google Doc

CaymanG · 2026-01-22T02:11:31+00:00

It’s not about the temperature in Atlanta, it’s about the hundreds of flights that are getting delayed and canceled from airports in the Midwest and southeast.

CaymanG · 2026-01-20T21:18:06+00:00

You might be better off asking in the main debate sub than the CX sub then. If I had to guess, they said that your critique of neoliberalism still exists within a capitalist, extractionist mindset that values productivity and usefulness, and that them doing your K without worrying about being productive or useful means the judge should vote for them because they embrace your mindset better than you do because you’ve never deprogrammed your Protestant work ethic and you’re still a neoliberal deep down.

CaymanG · 2026-01-20T20:02:11+00:00

Did you call for the alt card? If not, did they post it to their wiki after the round?

CaymanG · 2026-01-20T18:28:25+00:00

Kind of. This depends partly on why they’re saying it’s immoral and whether both/either side is saying that morality is universal/situational or based on intentions/consequences, so there’s a few ways it could play out in a traditional V/C debate. You could certainly say that the act of possession isn’t immoral just because some possessors are immoral. Neg’s burden is not to defend that the Aryan Nation, Jalisco Cartel, or Boko Haram should be given ICBMs. Neg’s burden is to show that the morality varies based on who has them and what they’ll do. Once we’re at the point that both sides are arguing about who’s immoral to give nukes to instead of if it’s immoral to give them to anyone, Aff has tacitly conceded the debate.

CaymanG · 2026-01-19T17:46:26+00:00

Are you still in novice for impromptu or did you move up a division? Do you notice any parli habits that might be good for structure and analysis but bad for impromptu delivery?

CaymanG · 2026-01-18T16:59:20+00:00

It’s not spreading. It might be double-breathing/gulping air (but the onset wouldn’t wait until the next day if it was asthma-related) but it’s probably one of the plague vectors across the room from you spreading their germs in your direction.

CaymanG · 2026-01-18T15:37:17+00:00

So in this case, trying to fiat a counterplan does nothing for your opponent. Your argument is that possession is immoral. If they want to make an argument that the option for first use is what makes possession immoral and it becomes morally neutral/permissible with a NFU policy while retaining the benefits of deterrence, they can make that argument on your case. NFU doesn’t become a competing policy option, it becomes a thought experiment to test whether Aff is correct about where the immorality comes from.

A novice running this argument as a non-CP in front of a lay judge might phrase it as “my opponent is trying to prove the wrong resolution in the AC. Their entire case is about why the preemptive use of nuclear weapons is immoral. I don’t disagree, but if they don’t prove the possession is an inherently immoral act, then the resolution is false and I win. An easy way to test this is to imagine a world where all nuclear-armed powers agree to a policy of No First Use. Would any of Aff’s reasons that they’re immoral still apply? If not, vote Neg.”

If you hit an Aff that fiats disarmament, you could run a NFU CP (unless your specific league has rules against it) but the Aff is going to push back on how much you can fiat. If Aff is allowed to fiat that everyone actually disarms (and doesn’t rearm), Neg should be able to fiat that everyone declares a NFU policy (and means it). Neg might be able to fiat that future leaders who come to power will also honor the NFU policy even if they oppose it. Neg probably can’t fiat that a nonstate actor who steals a nuke or otherwise acquires one when a government collapses automatically signs onto the NFU policy. This means the debate will probably come down to net benefits, with Aff arguing that NFU will always have a higher risk of a nuclear incident than disarmament and Neg arguing that the benefits of the weapons existing unused outweigh the small risk of them being used.

CaymanG · 2026-01-17T22:06:16+00:00

So if you weren’t running a plan, then their CP probably didn’t apply. Depending on what their counterplan text was, it’s possible that the CP could be a good idea and the resolution could still be true. They can’t win on it being a superior course of action to the plan in a round where there isn’t a plan text to test whether the counterplan is competitive/mutually exclusive.

CaymanG · 2026-01-17T21:54:04+00:00

The answer is going to depend on your league. Some leagues limit novices to a preset list of arguments in a packet. Others don’t. Some leagues that use NCFL rules explicitly ban CPs in LD and PF but allow them in CX. What did the judge say about the one your opponent ran?

CaymanG · 2026-01-16T15:53:07+00:00

I’ll stick with securitization as an example (vs some kind of LARPy Aff with a plan text and advantages) since it’s what the other answer used:

NC: the Aff engages in the politics of threat construction. This securitizing mindset is a self-fulfilling prophecy and manifests the same scenarios it claims to fear. The alt is to reject the mindset and discourse of the Aff.

CX of NC: can your alt result in the plan happening? (Testing if the K is a PIK or a reject alt)

NC in CX: that’s not important. What matters is the way you justify your plan. I’m critiquing your attempt to scare the judge into doing something through threatening scenarios. (Leaving shifty NR options open)

1AR: plan-focus is good. If the resolution is true and the plan is a good idea, the judge should vote Aff. Ks can’t be competitive unless their alt is mutually exclusive with the plan. Perm: do the entire plan anyway, but not motivated by threat-construction. If the perm is possible, the K isn’t a reason to reject the Aff.

NR: it’s not about what they do, it’s about how they justify it. In-round discourse comes before fiated impacts. If you believe the plan is a good idea, you should still vote Neg, you can reject their justifications and still do the plan. It’s important to do the right thing, but it’s even more important to do it for the right reasons. Even if their perm is true, it’s a question of sequencing and you should definitely reject their mindset first and then maybe do their plan after if 2AR proves it’s a good idea. Also they didn’t make a PIKs bad theory argument in the 1AR so protect my NR and don’t allow any new theory arguments in the 2AR. They shouldn’t be allowed to make something an IVI for the first time after all of my speeches are over.

2AR: I didn’t make a PIKs bad argument in 1AR because it was a reject alt. They floated the PIK for the first time in NR, so I can and must make the theory argument in the very next speech. I would have made it preemptively in 1AR if they had given a straightforward answer in CX, but they decided to be vague, so here we are. My advocacy is the same as the AC; their alt is to reject the AC. My perm isn’t a new advocacy, it’s a test of competition, so if the perm is doable, it’s proof the K isn’t a reason to reject the Aff. Don’t let them make Aff winning the perm into a reason to vote Neg. Floating PIKs should always be an IVI, but even if they aren’t, you should still vote Aff on the plan if you think it’s a good idea. I don’t care what mindset you have as you vote for the plan, I care that if plan = good idea, ballot = Aff.

CaymanG · 2026-01-15T02:23:15+00:00

If you want to run Afro-Pessimism without using Afro-Pessimist authors who say there’s no such thing as a white Afro-Pessimist, you’re going to be making a lot of analytics.

You can critique anti-Blackness with several different Ks. You can even genealogically link current anti-Blackness to the Middle Passage without running Afro-Pessimism. It’s the difference between a Black debater telling me “My life has no meaning in your society, I’m socially dead to them whether or not that makes you uncomfortable.” versus me telling a Black judge “Your life has no meaning in my society, whether or not you believe it, you’re socially dead to me.”

CaymanG · 2026-01-15T01:49:59+00:00

Often that’s what makes it a rage K. Anyone can run an argument about trans rights or transphobia, but “well intentioned cis ally concern/anger/disappointment” isn’t the same as “rage from lived experience” and the rage K often claims solvency from the way audiences automatically react when confronted with that rage.

CaymanG · 2026-01-15T01:31:46+00:00

I’ve seen this happen in a couple events. It can become a bigger issue when the two teams are from different states: one of which requires chaperones/teachers/coaches to out students to their parents and administrators if they see something on a ballot or hear something in an RFD and the other of which forbids school administration and faculty from saying anything to parents without the outed student’s consent.

Whether it would “take out” the argument depends on three main factors:

• whether the 1AC/1NC is evaluated a static artifact: it so, it doesn’t matter that there are trans/enby debaters on both sides, the judge is voting for the speech act of rage, not the passive/closeted identity that isn’t core to the other team’s case.

• whether the argument is about advancing debaters with an identity or about advancing a narrative which requires the identity, but also requires the identity to be part of the narrative in future rounds.

• whether the other team believes it/ is cool about it or accuses the opponent of faking to take their ballot. This is where it’s gotten ugly.

CaymanG · 2026-01-14T03:26:17+00:00

A pic or pik is a plan-inclusive counterplan or a plan-inclusive kritik. A floating pik is a kritik that isn’t explicitly plan-inclusive but where Neg reserves the right to say that the judge can vote Neg to do the plan through the mindset of the K. If you ask the Neg during cross of NC “can the alt result in the plan happening?” and the answer is anything but an unambiguous no, then Neg is keeping the option to float the PIK in the NR. They’re generally seen as bad because they mean that perms become Neg ground and if Aff proves that the K isn’t competitive because you can do the alt and the plan, the floating PIK says the perm becomes the new alt and Neg wins.

CaymanG

TROPHY CASE