Paradigm

Adeja Powell
Mercer

If you're reading this, that's already a good start. You should continue to do so until there are no words left. I competed in parli for ~5 years at McKendree University, and did 4 years of high school LD before that. I've coached both NPDA and IPDA at McKendree University, San Diego State University, Denison University and currently coach at Mercer University. All of these things mostly tell you nothing about my thoughts on debate, but they should tell you that I have quite a lot of them. I'll do my best to keep it brief here.

My thoughts on debate have changed a lot since my time as a competitor and my paradigm is the best way to find that out - your coaches/fellow teammates/others who knew me as a debater are likely not going to give you an accurate run down of who I am as a judge, so it's good that you're reading this.

I really do try to be as tabula rasa as possible when I judge. I don't have a preference for any type of argument and feel that I am a good judge for almost any strategy. I'm actually a sucker for a big stick aff vs a wide LOC. T, K, DA/CP LOCs with a clean MO collapse are my favorite debates to watch. I like K debate - but I like case debate even more to be honest. I'm highly critical of most K teams because I'm not generally moved by Ks that frankenstein literature together and aren't grounded in actual scholarly work. To me, this is what makes the K effective because it acts as a bridge between debate and the larger academic scholarship that it exists within. I also don't think that the K is some special form of argument that on face goes against "technical" forms of debate. I think the K is the most technical form of debate and I evaluate it as such, so it is likely harder to win a K debate in front of me. I just have a really high standard when it comes to these arguments.

Some specifics you might want to know:

NPDA

I think Condo is good, so Condo Bad debates would have to be very technically deep and well-executed for me to vote most of the time. I haven't seen one of these debates go well in a while (although I would love to). I also think reading a one-off unconditional strat in the LOC is pretty baller, too.
You can't win on the aff without going for the aff. I feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but it does implicate how I evaluate RVIs on theory or independent voters in the PMR. Most of the time, arguments that are reasons to vote aff that don't consist of actually going for the aff are probably things that shouldn't be happening in-round anyway, and you can trust me as a judge to punish teams accordingly without having to hail mary your entire round on them. This also means I vote neg on presumption - and I have been known to do this even if the negative doesn't tell me to. It's the one job the aff has and it is usually pretty clear on the flow when the aff hasn't done that. It also brings me joy to vote neg on presumption, so don't be afraid to throw the ol presumption block into your neg speeches. And no, presumption never flows aff and no one ever has or likely ever will be able to explain this argument to me in a way that makes any sense.
Topicality is a question of the words in the plan text, not the solvency of the aff. Idk man, I think we all have forgotten how T works. If you're gonna collapse to topicality in the MO please make sure the aff actually violates your interpretation on a textual level. I don't know what "the spirit of the interp" means and I don't think you all do, either.
I like theory debates. I like good theory debates more. Nothing wrong with reading it in the LOC and kicking out of it in the MO - but if the debate is gonna come down to theory just know this is a highly technical collapse to pull off as far as I'm concerned.
I take my role as a judge and arbiter in this activity very seriously, and the privilege that comes with that position means not putting the onus on the debaters to call out problematic behavior before I vote for it. I just think that's my responsibility and I don't really care about discourse claiming that my only job as a judge is to vote for the arguments in round. If you do or say something messed up, I feel pretty alright about using the ballot to show my distaste for that, even if you otherwise won the technical flow of the debate. If you wanna be able to get away with problematic behavior, please strike me accordingly I guess. This is still a high threshold for me - there's a difference between statements that are immediately violent and ones that are only violent if I agree to some specific framing or value system. Don't say slurs, don't say anything socially inappropriate or widely accepted as inappropriate, don't say things that make other people in the room feel unsafe.
I like jokes and debates that are fun. You can still have fun while going for things like Anti-Blackness - I did. If you have a silly or whacky argument you've always wanted to read I'm the judge to do it in front of. I don't like feeling like the weight of the world rests on my decision cause everyone came in all intense. I'm literally just a little guy .-.
I don't give away free speaker points and if you ask for them don't go to tab about that 25 I gave you instead. I think it's disrespectful to all the national champion speakers in this activity to suggest that you deserve a 30 for no reason other than you wrote it into your shell as an argument. Speaker awards should be coveted and difficult to achieve in my opinion.
As far as speaker points, my average is somewhere around a 28.2 - I consider a 27.7 a "bare-minimum you did the thing" speech and a 27 is my floor. If I give you below a 27 you did something pretty bad/mean/not okay and the points I give you is indicative of my disapproval. I almost never give anything higher than a 29.7 unless it is well deserved. I don't think I have ever given a 30 - and if I have I know exactly who I gave it to (and they are a national champion speaker).
MG theory is fine, but the more sheets of paper you add into the debate the more grumpy I will be. I also think the only legitimate MG theory is condo bad, CP theory, and speed (sometimes. I have an incredibly high threshold for this argument and "they went faster than I wanted them to" does not meet that threshold).
My flow is actually pretty good these days (I've graduated from my new judge anxieties and feel fairly confident I can keep up in most debates) but please pause before sheets of paper so I don't lose you. This is a mark of a good speaker to me anyway - if you can't afford to pause for 5 seconds between positions then you need to read less/shorter arguments or you need to get faster.
I'll give a lot of feedback because I think that's my value as a judge. I don't care if the tournament is behind, no one benefits from a 10-second RFD. If it's that serious and I really don't have time to share my thoughts please come see me after because I will remember your debate and I will be happy to give feedback.
I like really deep and complex warrants and warrant comparison. An argument consists of both a claim and a warrant - so we should probably address those throughout the debate. A heg debate where the whole thing is "heg is good, I promise" v "heg is bad, we all know this" do not spark joy.
Telling me to extend a conceded argument is not enough and I will not do that work for you. To properly extend an argument it should be re-articulated in the larger context of the debate at the point of the extension. For instance, extending a climate change impact probably also means explaining why that matters in the context of the neg's allied prolif scenario, even if there wasn't an explicit response to the impact from the neg. If you extend an argument that I still think is implicated by some other argument on another sheet of paper then that will factor into my decision.
I don't lean one way or another automatically when it comes to K Affs v Framework. I like K affs that do the work to explain why you get to reject the topic/defend your advocacy/etc. "The topic is vaguely bad/unethical/etc." is not enough - topics are normative statements and nothing more and it's possible to have a good defense of a bad topic. I like framework debates that engage with the K Aff in a meaningful way and are technically deep. I don't like debaters that run away from what makes them uncomfortable. I won a lot of debates going for K Affs. I won a lot of debates going for framework, too. So don't count on my ideological support to make a decision in your favor.
UPDATE 12/24/2024: Everyone can read anti-Blackness arguments as long as it is a good faith engagement and I will absolutely vote on it. In fact, non-Black debaters should be engaging with this literature more than anyone and it is a slight to all of the Black debaters historically that have done the work to advance this literature and impact the community to then cast the argument aside as soon as there are no Black Mouths to do the work for you. I think coaches have a responsibility to ensure students are meaningfully engaging with (any) literature before sending them into a debate round with it, but if Disney season pass holders can play like revolutionaries every weekend and read a cap K every round and call each other Comrades, then I'm not sure why we act like someone has to be a Freedom Fighter to read Wilderson. Even better, if non-Black debaters reading Afro-Pessimism arguments in particular puts a bad taste in your non-Black mouth, then might I suggest Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Hortense Spillers, Calvin Warren, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman or any other Black author that can introduce us all to the idea that Afro-Pessimism (which is not synonymous with Anti-Blackness. Do we know the difference? Do we care?) is not the only argument that Black authors are advancing. I, personally, will keep coaching students to read these arguments when they want to, regardless of their race. I hope desperately that we all acknowledge how disingenuous (and, dare I say, anti-Black) it is for non-Black judges to have a blanket refusal to vote on these arguments, which only functions to have a chilling effect on the argument altogether including for Black debaters (which I think is the actual goal, y'all just don't wanna say the quiet part out loud). Please don't cite that article at me. Y'all know for a fact your favorite thing to do is only agree with Black people if and when it is convenient for you, and perhaps we should read the beginning of the article which acknowledges the precarity and fluidity of its position from the jump (did we skip that part?). The context that the article was written in is entirely different than the current reality of the community that we call college parliamentary debate and I think the advancement and approach that white debaters of recent have taken to afro-pessimism in the activity differ entirely from the very personal (and therefore subjective!) experiences that the authors in that article describe. In short, we should consider holding space to listen to more than one Black opinion at a time (reading more Black authors would help! They often disagree!), and we should not "auto vote" or "auto reject" any position without considering our ever changing situation and context. I've had the incredible pleasure of working with several non-Black students that expressed a genuine interest in learning and interacting with the literature and scholarship that meant so much to me; and, in fact, showed such a deep respect for my advancement of the arguments in debate that affirmed Me and My Reality in a way that my opponents never did. And I am endlessly proud of them for being capable of and willing to take up that work on my behalf and on the behalf of Others. Y'all care more about non-Black debaters not reading the argument than you do about Black debaters reading it, and that is something I find harder and harder to forgive the community for now that I know how eager so many of you are to auto-reject an argument that I, and many other Black debaters, fought tooth and nail to get the community to listen to. I cannot expect non-Black folks to ever understand my reality if they refuse to engage in explanations of it (because they will only ever be able to study it, they will never be able to Know or Feel it). That is, of course, the nature of Anti-Blackness, is it not? I am so lucky to have students that are willing to do that work; and that, for me, makes the violence (and the simultaneous and thus tenuous Joy) of my reality in this activity and World that much easier to sustain. I literally don't care about reading arguments to win ballots. We all do that. That doesn't mean we can't also have a genuine relationship to the literature that we choose to advance. Newsflash: I read pess to win ballots! And it worked! It also sucked. It was also True. I also meant it.

Not sure I have anything else. I'd add a recipe or poem or something here but I actually think my paradigm should be useful so I'll spare you. I really really like debate - when I said "burn it down" all those times I really did mean it heuristically (despite what others who have not actually read a single piece of afro-pessimist literature in their life might tell you). So, get out of this activity what you want - it's not my job to tell you what arguments to read. Just make it fun for me by doing whatever it is you do well.

IPDA

I didn't compete in IPDA, but I think it's a super cool format. That said, if you know I'm gonna be in the back of your room you might be advantaged by choosing one of the policy topics. That's just the debate that I will be best at evaluating. That said, I did compete in LD and I do coach IPDA so I feel comfortable evaluating other types of topics - but I will still see things similarly to parli on a technical level.

If you're gonna take the time to offer definitions then make them useful and strategic. Words can and do mean a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts so this portion of the debate can end up being really meaningful.
Case construction is really important and I think this is where most debates are lacking for me in this format. I need a highly warranted argument that builds on itself and culminates in an impact that I can vote on. A bunch of unrelated claims with shaky warrants make it harder to make a decision.
I don't mind speed at all in this format and will evaluate speed debates exactly as I do in NPDA. "They went faster than I wanted them to" is not enough. Maybe you went slower than they wanted you to. The debate has to be far more in depth than this to sway me in one direction or the other.
I mostly evaluate IPDA similarly to NPDA so it might be beneficial to read my paradigm for that as well. Ks are cool. Case debate is slightly more cool most of the time, unless you're really good at the K. I don't like excessive MG theory and if you don't collapse as the negative I will be very upset. Any other specifics you might want to ask me about before the round.