Negative Strategy: Winning Community Judges
“Hey, how do you feel about that round?” “I think it went great, they dropped all my solvency and completely ignored our evidence. There’s no way we lost that one.” We’ve all had this exact exchange with our partners after leaving what we believed to be clear-cut wins only to find out we lost the round later on. In rounds where the decision seems obvious to us, the debaters, we still often lose, why? Many TPers have come to blame community judges as the culprit but maybe the fault lies with the debaters themselves. Too often we forget that the point of debate is to prepare us to engage with issues in a real-world context and we begin to use niche tactics and jargon to get us through rounds rather than rhetoric that would resonate with the common man. This discrepancy between what debaters feel they said and what community judges said they heard is because debaters are debating like debaters instead of like people. In this post, we’re going to explore how to fix that.
First, we need to realize that one of our greatest allies in a debate round can also be our biggest adversary; the flow. Our flows are incredible organizational tools, but we have to remember that they’re just that. Tools. Don’t get me wrong, I love structured arguments, spicy tags, and subpoints but we have to realize that those don’t exist in everyday conversation. So even if these are critical elements of a debate to us, it’s important to recognize that they likely aren’t to our community judges. Especially when it comes to community judges, “winning the flow” doesn’t mean winning the round. I’ve seen too many debaters say things like “my first voting issue is dropped arguments, they’ve dropped my solvency 1 and 3 meaning the negative team has won solvency and thus wins the round,” to a community judge you may as well be speaking Klingon.
So what’s the fix? Don’t be reliant on your flow and recognize that’s not the deciding factor of many rounds. Instead of ensuring you cover every argument and subpoint, every study and piece of data brought up, focus on the big picture instead. Your community judge doesn’t care that you dropped a study or a subpoint, they care about impacts. They care about what the world looks like now and what it will look like once the plan passes. It’s your job to paint those pictures in the judge’s mind. What does this mean? It means first to prioritize arguments in terms of how much time they’ve been given in the round and how much persuasive weight they’re carrying, if that means dropping smaller issues (especially technical ones) that’s ok. Second, it means responding to these big issues from an impact-focused point of view. For many experienced judges, pointing out the technical flaw of an argument or presenting data that clashes with the affirmative’s is enough. But in these scenarios you need to move beyond that, “this is why A is false, here’s why B is true, and that’s why C will come to pass.” You may be flowing every argument, but you can’t count on your judge to do the same, so condensing and re-orienting your argumentation to accommodate that is key.
Second, avoid technicalities. Remember, your judge just went through orientation moments before this round. They aren’t versed in theory, stock issues, debater vocabulary, or let alone resolution-specific vocabulary. As debaters, one of our greatest temptations is to fall back on all these concepts I just listed, and for good reason, they can be great persuasive shortcuts and logical tools but their completely foreign to many judges.
How does this apply to going neg in these rounds? Let’s say for example you see a potential effects topicality and extra topicality argument with the aff plan but you also have 3 disadvantages ready for the 1N. What do you do? Even though the topicality may be viable, it simply isn’t worth attempting to introduce the concept of topicality, make your case, and impact adequately to a community judge who may or may not retain the fire hydrant of nerd you just espoused. It’s far more strategic to develop arguments that will stick and carry persuasive weight (like disadvantages) because they focus on real-world impacts. The bottom line is to avoid argumentation that assumes or is reliant on judges having prior knowledge of either debate or the subject matter at hand. These arguments will only serve to muddy up your flow and cloud your judge’s mind. Avoiding technicalities also means speaking in layman’s terms. That means dropping all the fancy vocabulary you’ve picked up since joining debate. Quit being reliant on words like “fiat, status quo, inherent, solvent, net beneficial, net harm, etc.” Remember debate is about real-world issues, so talk like it.
Finally, remember clarity is key. Your judge isn’t coming into the round with all the background information and prior knowledge that you or your opponents are, so filling in the gaps with thorough explanation is needed to provide clarity. Simply reading evidence and spouting off statistics isn’t enough to support your arguments. You have to explain evidence and establish links between numbers and the claims you make. This may sound obvious but I see debaters fail to do it all the time. Especially when dealing with heady arguments, don’t be afraid to take your time to explain yourself clearly. Miscommunication is one of the number one reasons people lose community judges and just a little more context could prevent most of it. It’s better to run a few clear arguments than 4-6 faster-paced ones, especially in community judge rounds.
There you have it. If you employ these three tactics consistently, you’re sure to see improvement in your track record with community judges as well as your overall ability. I know a lot of this is information you probably know, but yet most still fail to apply it. Hopefully, this serves as a reminder to put it all into active practice.