EMORY HS Tournament Round 2: BRONX v. UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE

EMORY HS Tournament Round 2: BRONX v. UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE

Negative: Bronx.

RFD: Politics outweighs the case.

This risk assignation appears clean and technical.

2AR risk analysis, while compelling, is shamelessly new. The 1AR drops the block’s risk comparison. This problem’s compounded by an unresponsive 2AR. For example, the 2AR explains the importance of historical analysis in evaluation of risk, which we’ve never heard before in this debate, while ignoring the 2NR’s moral imperative claim. The 2AR advances very intelligent risk analysis, but it’s just utterly new.

The affirmative can try several strategies avoid this deep hole:

a. Prevention – engage risk analysis early and often. Make sure that the 1AR sketches the arguments that the 2AR needs.

b. Deception – even if the 2AR is new, try to incorporate some actual argument from the 1AR into the new arguments, so they sound old. It’s difficult to ferret out every sub-line of analysis. “Embedded clash,” by minimizing signposting, often enhances rebuttalists’ latitude to make new arguments. You need some process of reference – a 50/50 old/new ratio works much, much better than /100.

c. Engagement – issue at least some justification for new risk analysis. Standard rationalizations might include:

i. Last rebuttals exist to issue new risk analysis – otherwise, they’d just be repetition. Moving that process into the constructives actually damages argument development by accelerating the negative’s block advantage.

ii. The 2NR issues some new risk analysis, which demands new answers on my part – they opened the door. (This is generally more effective than c.i.)

iii. Here’s our risk analysis that’s built into the 1AC – that isn’t really new because the aff doesn’t ever go away.

I think you might do that with the survivability of the toothfish? I don’t get it, though. Toothfish will survive a nuclear war, sure. I don’t think that they’ll re-evolve into humans…is there a reason that I should discount a more likely extinction scenario from Bronx, as long as I know that the biosphere will still have some toothfish around? This isn’t an intuitively appealing position, so it would need to be fleshed out over 3-4 sentences for me to get on board to wherever you want this toothfish train to go.

The aff doesn’t mitigate the disad at all on the micro level either. Risk analysis might not be enough for Bronx if USN won some hot defense. That’s not happening here. The 2AR argues that the aff doesn’t’ affect health care lobbies, which overwhelm. That seems trivial. Some external factors may influence this debate, but they aren’t entirely determinative. The card you reference certainly doesn’t preclude a substantial or outcome-determinative role for political capital. The aff only needs to affect one factor to determine the overall outcome of the debate, despite a plethora of possible alternate causations. I didn’t take enough notes on your uniqueness evidence, but it was short and underexplained as time expired.

You may win a risk of this addon, but you just don’t win enough defense to overwhelm dropped risk comparison.

Comments:

POSTROUND: BRONX, OMG, you are the worst imaginable team in terms of watching the judge. You will both generally wander out of the round at the same time and immediately make several phone calls within minutes of the 2AR’s conclusion. I have seen you do this before, and you really need to stop. The phone calls smack of arrogance; it seems to imply that you’re so convinced you’re ahead that you can catch up on your social life. They’re also just distracting. More importantly, I call for cards over a few minutes, instead of immediately issuing all my card requests. Therefore, when you both leave, it slows down the whole process for no good reason. Just keep one person in the round to look at the judge and file evidence while the other person makes phone calls in the hall. You can flip for it?

Some incidental comments:

1AC: Faster

1AC C-X: The 1AC must be Scripture to you. You must know each piece of evidence. You frequently refer to “some card” – in one embarrassing sequence, neither affirmative speaker can identify a 1AC card by date or citation.

2AC: I know this is a minor pet peeve, but “literally” means “the opposite of metaphorically,” as opposed to “very.”

Example: “My evidence is literally on fire.”

means

“My evidence is actually burning and requires a fire extinguisher.”

as opposed to

“My evidence is so awesome!”

You’ve taken to using “literally” as a filler word, producing several cringeworthy sequences in which you reverse its meaning.