Paradigm

Gabriel Graville
Whitman College

He/Him

2024 NPDA update: I haven't judged a whole lot of national level NPDA this year but in the majority of rounds I have teams have read some form of RVI on theory positions. I have a very high threshold for these arguments particularly when they are based on some form of time-skew or other procedural link story. In order to win these arguments in front of me I need some sort of parallel or higher framing argument for the RVI as well as impact weighing. In short, I honestly don't want to hear time-skew anymore. RVI's that pertain to other forms of abuse generated by the procedural, such as a team being racist, transphobic, homophobic, are functionally different that the aforementioned RVIs and probably operate as Independent Voting Issues.

Please read a trigger warning if you are reading potentially triggering material.This also goes for IE’s.I am more than happy to answer any questions about my paradigm before round.

I graduated from the University of Oregon in 2022.I spent all 4 years there competing in NPDA/NPTE style debate with my partner Alex.We did pretty well for ourselves and won the NPTE in 2022.Prior to that I did Oregon HS debate and a handful of IE’s.

I am very comfortable with faster, more technical forms of debate, however I was never the fastest flower and will certainly call slow and clear if I cannot understand a debater. I am similarly comfortable to more lay forms of debate.Please do what you would like to do in debate as long as it is not openly racist, misogynistic, transphobic, ableist, or violent towards members of the debate space.

I really like disads and kritiks with materially grounded actions as their alternative.Favorite argument is probably the internal link/impact turn.My threshold for theory greatly increases when the interpretation requires the opposing team to perform a specific action in order to meet.For example, actor specification theory requires a team take a particular action (ie specify their actor) in order to meet the interp while PICs bad theory only requires a team to not do something in order to meet the interp. You can obviously still win spec type arguments in front of me, I will just need a greater link story to justify voting on your impacts.I protect rebuttals but you should still call out new arguments.

While it is the judge’s job to evaluate the arguments given in round it is apparent to me in my experience that judge bias and intervention is inevitable due to indirect, implicit, or missing clash.While I will defer to arguments in the round whenever possible here’s where I will default absent argumentation otherwise.

Magnitude > Probability > Timeframe

Death is probably the biggest impact unless you specifically argue why something else outweighs it

Theory and Kritiks procedurally come before case because they discuss impacts within the debate space.

Fiat is just imagining that something happens so that the debate can be centered around the consequences of the action of the resolution rather than whether the action would happen in the first place.

Competing Interps > Reasonability.