Milton+AQ+v.+Chattahoochee+ZR+-+Johns+Creek+Round+1


 * I vote negative on topicality. I think this is a pretty clear decision - the affirmative is way to weak in their 1AR responses on the Topicality. Especially when the 1NR is pretty good on this flow. The 2NR does everything he needs to do to pick up my ballot. The only thing I think that can help the 2NR is a little more of a preemption on why topicality comes first in the round. The preempts at the bottom of the 2NR are fine - they just need to be more substantive.**

1AC - I would reccomend creating another contention for the framework / util debate. You know you are going to have this debate in the 1NC - so go ahead, make it easier for both teams and more importnatly the judge. I think having the Util debate under solvency ends up hurting you - as noted by the sloppy 2AC debate on case.

1NC - I would not read States CP as just a text. I think the CP is already struggling for legitimacy and by not reading a solvency advocate, I think you are giving the 2AC way too much leverage on this States CP bad debate. Even a short card would suffice me in this debate. Everything else in the 1NC is fine - I have noticed though your speed is way down - this may be due to paperless, but I would be working on speed drills specifically with the paperless set up.

2AC - You need to be doing a couple things different in this speech. First of all, you are spending way too much prep time for this speech. Over 4 minutes of prep is not acceptable for a 2A and really can just hurt you in my opinion down the road in the debate. I think you need to be making a discursive argument on the topicality flow - you make 3 defensive arguments, the discourse o/w topicality argument can at least pose as an offensive reason to vote aff on the T debate. Even without the discourse argument, i think you need to be making some type of topicality framework argument- reasonability comes first, etc. You're very top heavy in this debate, you put three arguments on the tradeoff flow. I understand that all of the K of the DA on politics can apply to the tradeoff disad, but i think you should be making some arguments that are relative to the thesis of the disad rather than the just hege defense. Your case flow was pretty disastorous - this is a mainly because the signposting was not there. If you're going to the util debate first, say that before your speech. What ends up happening is that the advantage flow answers get lost in the util debate.

2NC - I was a little disappointed with the 2NC coverage on the flows. I think that you're fine on States its just that you're not reading cards where you should be. Your answers on the State fiat legit debate warrant that you need to be reading some evidence. You read 1 card on the entire states debate- that states have the jurisdiction to fund for natives. I think you need to be reading 1 or 2 more cards on the question of why the states funding will suffice the trust doctrine, or maybe even why natives perceive the states. The case debate is pretty good - you're impacting all of the turns really well and exploiting the 2ac mismanagement. I think that the 2NC and 1NR could possibly switch arguments in this debate - I think Rosy could have taken the Politics, T and States flows and Jeff could have taken util & case. I think that way Jeff wouldn't be crunched for time answering hte K of the disad on the politics stuff. I think the 2NC for the most part is pretty much defensive and setting up the disad debate and making sure you can weigh your impacts.

1NR - It was pretty good - the Topicality debate was good - could have taken longer - I think you were winning the T debate after the 2ac. All of their answers are mainly defensive and you're doing a pretty good job explaining the offense/defense paradigm. I think a problem you have in the 1nr is the warrant behind 80% of your arguments is this "topical version of the aff". I think that you may want to come up with another argument besides this in order to give yourself a better chance to take this in the 2nr. If the 1ar adequetely answers this topical version of the aff - you're forced to go for the disads. I think the politics debate is pretty good - there are no major mistakes, I'd like a better explanation as to why bioterror avoids their K of the disad. Your case turns arguments are pretty good.

1AR- For the most part, the speech was good, the Topicality debate was not. Your only argument to the T version of the aff was, "That's not a natives aff." This argument was preempted by several warrants in the 1NR. You need to be answering this arg much better considering its the bulk of the argumentation on T in the 1nr. All of your analysis as to why Natives affs are good can be solved by their interpretation - you need to be making some type of argument that their interpretation forces the neg into the same ground loss. The neg is justifying subsets in advantage areas rather than the plan text. This doesn't solve any of the ground loss - but you never make this argument. I also don't think "All Affs are Subsets" is a good argument. You literally have 4 arguments on the flow. The 1ar on util was not bad, you undercovered stuff a little bit, but I didn't think you were behind on any specific part of the flow. I think the neg was doing a little better job on the Otherization turn at the top of the flow - but besides that, you were on top of it. The block on intrinsicness needs to be updated for disad perms -- all of your warrants related to a CP - I think by reading this, you are giving the 2NR a possible option in going for intrinsicness bad - you are not reaidng a single reason why perms on disads are beneficial for debate. The 2NR would simply have to win a delination between perms on a cp v. perms on a da - which i dont think is hard to win.

2NR - Perfect decision. You made my decision easy and preempted exactly what the 2AR would go for. The only real thing is that you needed a little bit of defense of topicality and why its still a prerequisite to any discursive framework.

2AR - I think if this is in the 1AR, you're setting yourself up for a very close round. Since its not, you're really just reading 5 minutes of new arguments. After the 2NR, I couldn't think of 1 way you win my ballot. The 1AR doesn't extend any type of theory - there's no way out there. The 1AR isn't answering a bulk of the T debate, no way to really prove your topical. Yall aren't questioning the framework of T until the 2AR, so anything in the 2AR would be new. The problem you have is that you're making new framework arguments. Every argument about native genocide until the 2AR was in the context of the disad/cp world. The squo v. plan v. cp debate is not the same as the topicality of your plan.