APU and a Fresh Perspective
Greetings! For those readers who may find my name unfamiliar, my name is Nick Matthews. I am a first-year student at UCLA, where I am competing in both NFA-LD and parliamentary debate. In high school, I was a policy debater for four years, competing at both the local and the national level. Now that I’m a university student, I’m very pleased to 
have the opportunity to continue my involvement in forensics.
Danny has asked me to become a student contributor for SocalLD.net – a request I am only too happy to fulfill. The UCLA forensics team is placing a new emphasis on community involvement, and sharing my viewpoints with the LD community would certainly meet that qualification. I think I can bring a unique perspective to the table and I always invite you to add commentary and/or constructive criticism in the comments section.
With the introduction out of the way, I want to take this opportunity to share my first LD tournament experience with you all – the APU Double-Up held just last weekend. I’m going to give a brief little play-by-play of each round for your entertainment, and I’ll also have some reactions to my experience at the end.
So with that said, let’s hit the rundown!
Round 1: Grant Beeson, Pt. Loma (Aff) vs. Nick Matthews, UCLA (Neg) – Steve Farias judging.
I was definitely pumped up and ready to go for my first round of the tournament, season, and college career. Actually, that’s only half true – I was the furthest thing from 100% prepared, considering I had gotten completed about a third of what I needed to get done in the weeks beforehand. Regardless, I will still confident that my raw skill would see me through.
The round started a bit late as the pairings were mucked up, so I took the time to talk to my coach, Keyan, about the strategy for this round. He indicated that Steve was very much an experienced flow judge and that I should just go all-out and hold nothing back.
We were further delayed while Steve went to go prep his UoP team for parli, but he was not gone for long and the round finally got underway.
Grant came up in the 1AC and advocated a plan of action to increase funding for ferry systems. The case itself was nothing out of the ordinary – it had only a simple economy advantage that was very localized in scope, and no big stick impacts.
I stood up for the negative constructive immediately after the end of cross-x – I am of the belief that the 1NC should never require prep time unless the affirmative is somewhat out of box. The roadmap was two off-case. My first off-case strategy was topicality: transportation infrastructure excludes vehicles, with the violation (obviously) being that the plan funded ferries. My second off-case strategy was a kritik.
Why, you might ask, did I not talk about case when such obvious flaws existed? Well, mostly because I needed some practice with the K. In front of a very contemporary judge like Steve, it’s not necessary to win any stock issues on case, and because the K is not a widely-prevalent argument in LD, it is strategically advantageous in that the affirmative team is often unprepared to discuss it. My presupposition was correct, in this case, as Grant made only six counter-arguments in the 1AR, all of which either lacked warrants or were fundamentally nonresponsive to the specifics of the K. On the topicality flow, Grant made only three arguments, all of which were defensive.
I decided to kick topicality and focus solely on the kritik in the rebuttal, where I easily cleaned up the flow and picked up Steve’s ballot. However, Steve was pretty peeved that I hadn’t gone for topicality, and in a technical sense he was probably correct because T presented the path of least resistance to his ballot. It was a relatively straightforward start to the day.
Result: Win
Prelim record: 1-0
Round 2: Nick Matthews, UCLA (Aff) v. Will Chamberlain, UoP (Neg), Joel Day judging
Will Chamberlain is a pretty good debater. He got to NFA Nationals last year and went 5-1 in prelim rounds, so I fully expecting this to be a good test of my abilities.
I broke out my eSeals affirmative – the plan text is on the wiki. It’s a pretty decent case on the merits of its harms, but it does have some potential issues with topicality.
Will’s negative strategy was T-Transportation Infrastructure, Solvency Advocate, Public Option politics, and some case analytics. I handled case and politics fairly adequately, but I got tripped up by the topicality a little bit, so Will went for T and the Solvency Advocate arguments in his rebuttal.
Part of this was because I had mysteriously lost my topicality block to T-Transportation Infrastructure. As in, I had blocks to every other violation, but not this one. How or why it got deleted from my computer, I don’t know, but I had to scramble to find a counter-definition and spew out some counterstandards that were blippy and generally unwarranted.
The other argument he went for was the solvency advocate. My answer was that I had a solvency advocate, and that procedurals should not be evaluated absent some form of in-round impact that made the debate unfair for the negative team; Joel bought the prior argument. 
My case does in fact have an advocate – the Federal Highway Administration Office of Freight Management and Operations, to be exact. I probably got away with that one, though, since I only shadow extended the argument in the last speech (in other words, I flowed the argument through with little additional explanation).
Now on the topicality, Joel summed it up perfectly in his RFD (reason for decision). My hasty, poorly-contrived topicality block was getting roasted up and down the flow – standards, counter-interpretation, you name it. EXCEPT…Will happened to miss the fact that I had made two “I meet” arguments, not one. One of those was “I meet – ports are physical transportation infrastructure, and I reform them,” the other was “I meet – cargo seals are physical components of transportation infrastructure, I reform them.” Will only answered the first one, as for some reason he neglected distinguish between the two. Joel therefore bought the conceded “I meet” and picked me up.
Honestly, how I managed to escape this round with a win is beyond me. But it sure gave me a good crash course in what to expect in terms of procedurals.
Result: Win
Prelim record: 2-0
Round 3: Brandon Schwartz, UoP (Aff) v. Nick Matthews, UCLA (Neg), Angela Compton judging
I was looking forward to this round for variety of reasons. First, it had come to my attention that UoP was running virtually the same carriers affirmative the Lafayette camp put out. Second, and let this serve as fair warning, my hegemony file is literally 280 pages long. It won’t take a great stretch of your imagination to figure out how this round went down.
Case was, predictably, increase the number of nuclear carriers, hegemony good.
My negative constructive consisted of the exact same T-transportation infrastructure I ran round 1, politics, and the hegemony case flow. Specifically on case, I presented carded analysis arguing that 1) US hegemony is bad because it’s empirically the root cause of wars, 2) US hegemony is bad because it provokes terrorism, which escalates to nuclear war, and 3) that threats to US hegemony are greatly exaggerated due to the ability of the international system to accommodate a “peaceful rise” of a new world power, such as China.
Brandon answered the topicality sufficiently enough. However, he did a less-than-adequate job countering my arguments on politics and hegemony. On hegemony, he flat-out conceded my terrorism scenario (oops) and made only defensive arguments on my wars scenario (oops). He also made what I believed to be a fundamentally nonresponsive argument to my peaceful rise argument. On politics, he again made too many defensive arguments, many of which were unwarranted and didn’t hold up to my evidence.
I decided to kick T and just go for politics and hegemony.
Now at this juncture I would like to publically apologize to my judge, Angela Compton. After the conclusion of the round, I had misunderstood the fact that she had not yet rendered a verdict. So I got a little bit too inquisitive when she presented her opinions of the round because she seemed to be indicating that she had voted the other way. It was wrong of me to do that and I regret my somewhat confrontational behavior. My style of debate is somewhat hypercompetitive and that tends to bleed over beyond my rounds.
I later found out that I won the round on the conceded terrorism scenario. However, I did a less-than-spectacular job of clearly conveying and explaining the winning arguments to Angela. It is definitely an area of improvement that I will work on.
Result: Win
Prelim record: 3-0
Round 4: Nick Matthews, UCLA (Aff) v. Matthew Hendrickson, USAFA (Neg), Tim Ernst judging
Going into the final preliminary round undefeated was actually a pretty nice feeling. I had faced some very good competition so far, and with the help of some good fortune and smart arguments I was well on my way to the elimination rounds. I just had one more roadblock to get past to try and claim that elusive #1 or #2 seed.
I ran the same affirmative as before.
The negative strategy consisted of two off and case. The first off was T-transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, there was no time between rounds for me to write a legitimate block to this argument. Even worse, this shell was practically two minutes long and had about five standards in it, including effects topicality bad.
The next off was literally the longest economy disadvantage I had ever seen. It had about nine cards in it and the story was extremely unintuitive (even after cross-examination). I did have a prepared block with some good answers for it, fortunately.
Matthew also made some quick analytics on case, but it didn’t matter because the negative rebuttal was six minutes of T.
As one might expect, I was behind on every facet of the T debate, and the “I meet” shenanigans I pulled off on Will didn’t work this time. My counterstandards were still garbage and hell, I didn’t even meet my own interpretation even if I had won it.
Tim voted for the negative team, a decision I agreed completely with. There was simply no conceivable place on the flow to pull the trigger any other way.
Result: Win
Prelim record: 3-1
So, at the conclusion of the prelims I was 3-1, virtually assured of a place in elimination rounds. While we waited for pairings I munched on pizza, chatted with some folks, and finally had the time to write a half-legitimate topicality block.
Elimination postings finally came out, and who else did I happen to be paired against but my good friend from CSULA, Mat Swanson?
Quarterfinals: Mat Swanson, CSULA (Aff) Nick Matthews, UCLA (Neg), with Eric Garcia, Travis Risner, Chris Gutierrez judging
Mat won the flip and called affirmative, although honestly, the way topicality debates were going for me on this particular day I would have been very tempted to go negative anyway.
Mat reads an interesting case to implement road improvements on Native American lands, with economy, safety, and self-determination advantages. This was distressing for a couple of reasons. Number one, I had been too worn out from the parli tournament the night before to cut a negative strategy to this case. Number two, my combined record against Native American cases on any resolution is 0-8. I’m not joking. Native American cases are like a curse upon my tubs, and I don’t know why.
I had nothing to say on case, so I simply went four off.
First off was ASPEC, or agent specification. It argues that the United States federal government does not act as a monolithic entity, and that therefore affirmative plan texts must specify an agent(s) within a branch of the government to implement and enforce the plan. ASPEC happens to be a pet argument that I run whenever I possibly can.
Second off was T-domestic. I argued that, for political purposes, Native American lands are tantamount to sovereign nations and that therefore they do not represent domestic policy.
Third and fourth off were a states counterplan and a politics disadvantage, respectively. Nothing unusual here.
Mat spent quite a bit of time answering ASPEC, making a number of analytic arguments. On T-domestic, he not only answered this back, but he also ran what is known as a K of T. For those unfamiliar with the argument, a K of T argues that topicality is used to exclude groups of people and that exclusion is bad (in this case because it’s racist). It’s a well-known commodity (although somewhat frowned upon) on the high school circuit and I was prepared to answer it. Mat’s answers on politics were strong enough that it was irrelevant that he undercovered the counterplan; it was clear that ASPEC would be the path of least resistance to the judges’ ballots.
At the top of my negative rebuttal, I began by answering the K of T. I wasn’t going to spend much time on this argument because I wasn’t actually going for the T-domestic violation on the flow. I had three answers, consuming about thirty seconds of my time:
1) Exclusion is inevitable – there will always be some group of people the plan doesn’t impact
2) That matters of procedure like topicality precede kritiks of T
3) that the K of T justifies running “plan: prevent genocide” that would leave the negative with nothing to say except morally abhorrent positions like “genocide good,” and the neg could never win because topicality excluding people would override fairness
I also indicated that the K or T was not a voting issue, but (and this was a mistake) did not warrant the claim.
That done, I then proceeded to spend the next five-and-half minutes annihilating Mat on the ASPEC flow, spinning out a giant overview with so much line-by-line analysis that it would be inconceivable for anyone but the fastest, most efficient debater to possibly answer it all in three minutes.
In his rebuttal, Mat gets up and basically goes for the K of T. He does spend some time on ASPEC, although quite unnecessarily so in my opinion.
After the round, we all awaited the judges decisions. It took forever, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that it was a close debate. I fully expected a 2-1 decision, and lo and behold, I was correct.
The decision was a 2-1 for the affirmative, Mat Swanson. Eric stood, with his dissenting RFD being that he bought my “exclusion inevitable” argument on the K of T and that I had definitely won the ASPEC flow. Travis and Chris both voted affirmative on the K of T, saying that Mat’s answers to my arguments were all sufficient enough so that even if I had won ASPEC, I couldn’t access it because my in-round representations justified an affirmative ballot.
It was definitely a great debate and it was by far the most fun round of the day for me. In retrospect I obviously should have spent more time answering the K of T, but I’m not going to let it hang over me. You want to know why? Because I waltzed into APU as a freshman with literally zero rounds of LD tournament experience and walked away having made a statement to the SoCal NFA-LD circuit – my name is Nick Matthews, I’m a freshman at UCLA, and you better damn well watch your rearview mirrors.
Now, I am absolutely amazed if you are still reading this beyond the initial 2500+ words, so I will wrap it up quickly with the most significant observation I made this past weekend:
Procedurals. Are. King.
Now look, I ran into a lot of topicality arguments in high school, but it was a relatively uncommon occurrence when teams actually went for those arguments in the second rebuttal, or even the negative block. I now understand what Michael Miller and others have been complaining about on this website. In NFA-LD, procedural arguments are both rampant and accepted, they are effective, and the nature of the 6-3 time skew in the last rebuttals makes it functionally impossible for the affirmative to adequately answer it.
Personally, I think it’s unfortunate. Procedural debates are good in many respects – for example, they develop critical thinking skills and contribute to fair limits on the topic – but to hear it in the last rebuttal of almost every single round is just far too much, because, hey, we never debate about anything else! I went for procedurals in only 1 of my 3 negative-side debates, and yet I was actually chastised for not going for topicality in the other two. Was I ahead on those flows? Sure, but I’ve always chosen to err it safe and go for other arguments because of the high standards for topicality judges have on the high school circuit. When literally five out of the seven rounds I either watched or participated in at APU ended with procedurals in the last rebuttals, it’s just overboard.
Maybe my opinions will change in the future. But I do think it’s an issue that needs to be addressed, because it’s not going to go away.
So that said, I will hopefully see you all at Irvine Valley. Take care!
- Nick
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Comments
I’m not sure what the difference between the aff’s you saw and your own aff is… scan the cargo… riiiiight. LoL
Brandon, no one writes their answers! That is so last year, didn’t you hear?
Like I said, I don’t kut krit T responses to not use them!
that was a hot round!
Brandon:
1) I only advocate not taking prep if you already know what you’re going to say – i.e. if your arguments are all offcase or if you already have blocks to oncase. I know I definitely try my best to block out answers to everything and flow my offcase positions beforehand (pre-round prep wins rounds, folks). But if the 1AC is the first time I’ve heard the affirmative, obviously I do take prep time.
2) I’m not just talking about my aff rounds, I’m talking about the neg rounds I had (where people expected me to go for T) and the two rounds I watched as well. But yes, I’m considering switching to a more obviously topical aff or at least making the aff slightly less nontopical.
Mat – my plan doesn’t scan cargo ; )
Oh yeah, IVC was today. Alex Lamascus went 4-0 for the gold, I went 3-1 for the silver. Strangely there were only 5 entries in open but we didn’t debate each other.
Although honestly the round I dropped was in front of a critic who had literally never judged any format of debate before, ever, and her RFD was literally “I thought this was a great round” with no further explanation. And she gave me 18 for speaks when I’d gotten 29′s the other rounds. But eh, whatever.
In NFA-LD the time constraints usually screws over the aff. However, I think this is where good strategy comes into play. Doing things like putting a turn on the bottom of your disad answers or placing offensive arguments randomly in your block instead of around the same general part of the argument will be beneficial. This means that more than likely, unless the other debater is able to pick up everything, something is going to be dropped. Extend the dropped offense and thats all the work you have to do.
I also think that in the last aff speech you shouldn’t go for every argument. Its just like when you are on the neg extending just one of your large amount of solvency turns. You extend the arguments you are winning.
I find it weird that in a policy-focused round that someone ran the K of T against you. In order to win that you have to win discourse comes first, and after reading a policy based aff I find that to be too risky. I’ve never heard of anyone saying topicality is racist. My scenario is that its censorship.
What K did you run in round 1?
Does anyone have a case list they’d be willing to post or email? Even a list of the major affs/advantages and negative strategies/t violations would be much appreciated. I am trying to prep. for an upcoming tournament but have not been to any tournaments this year nor any training from a camp/coach on this topic. The lack of a functioning community case list is frustrating.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
@Ryan: I run a natives aff, so if you exclude natives… KoT time!
@Ralph: the wikispaces link to the right of the page does an adequate job imo. Sure there are other affs but whatevs. Just show up to a tourney and watch. I went to PCC today and just watched rounds and made strats I can use next time and checked links.
back to Ryan…
I know I am alone in what I am about to say. However, I am going to say it anyways, winning an argument because it went dropped by an opponent is a way to win, but it is a shitty way to win. “Extend the 7*(3^8%$* turn I made at the bottom of the 12th off case where I say ‘farts smell bad – vote neg’” sucks. I do not want to win because my opponent didn’t have time to answer all my arguments. Sure, if they ignore the argument that is one thing, but if there are hundreds of arguments and they can’t get to all of them I would rather compare my 25 args vs your 25 args and see who has better warrants/analysis.
Hiding something in there so you can extend it is strategic, yes but really? Really?
maybe I have been hanging around to many older ex-debaters but I think maybe they are onto something…
Nerdy
A “shitty way to win” is still a win at the end of the day. Debate is a game, you do what you have to do to win the round. If good strategy means putting turns at the bottom of a disad block then do it, because those turns are going to be undercovered or dropped and you go for them. You can honestly tell me that if you win a round because they dropped a major argument that you are going to feel bad about it? Sorry, but that doesn’t make sense to me. If they don’t answer something, its their fault. Punish them for it.
Yup, debate is a game. However, if you win a game of cards because your opponent thinks that a straight beats a flush it takes away from the win.
Is debate a game about education or winning. This is a question I continue to ask myself. As a competitor I think that increasing clash by not purposely hiding your turns in the middle of a slew of responses so you can “punish” them for it. I don’t see why people can’t win by at least attempting to maximize clash and not trying to sneakily hide arguments to decrease clash…
Like I said, I must be hanging around way to many old people who believe that clash is better then tricks and gimmicks. If that is what debate is about for PSCFA I will put on a cape and carry a deck of cards while pulling rabbits out of my hat and call it debate.
Do you debate to win, or do you debate to be educated? Personally, I debate for the trophies at the end of the tournament, and I think a majority of other people would agree with me. In any case, you are educated the moment you engage in the debate. It is impossible to say that you don’t learn anything from one debate round, because there is always something that you can learn from it.
Your job as the aff is to refute neg arguments, right? Well if thats the case then you do what you can to answer it, if that means dropping a turn at the bottom of the block. The negs job is to answer your arguments, if they don’t do that they shouldn’t win the round. If you win a game of cards because your opponent makes a mistake, thats no one elses fault except their own.
Why are trophies such a big deal? As someone said on another post, (paraphrased) ~they are $8, go buy one if you want it that bad.~ After a certain point, when you have won enough, it is no longer about trophies. The game truly does become about education. Some people use debate as a platform to talk about kritikal issues. Some use debate as a place to debate policies they think they will have to deal with after college. Some people believe that it is about the education. I think it is about all 3 of these. Trophies don’t matter, I have a 2.5 foot tall trophy from HS that my mom keeps because she thinks it’s cool. I could care less. Debate is about debate, to me at the very least.
I think that Brandon has more arguments on how education without fairness is bankrupt then I do. However, I can still see his point. What is the point of doing all the research for debate we do if in rounds it doesn’t make a difference because you dropped fart turn number #97#98^#62*? Then all that education you already did doesn’t really matter because instead of being upfront about something someone has to sneak in a trick/gimmick to win.
What is worse then that, younger people see that is how they are supposed to win. Having an ability to go fast enough to make people like critical happy doesn’t mean that you are increasing clash. We are teaching younger debaters that the way to win is through deceit and trickery, not hard work and dedication. Debate should be about clash, not finding new ways to avoid clash so you can win. I don’t see my friends that are rolling through tournaments making “hidden” turns so they can win. They just win by being right.
Good post…a few thoughts:
“I am of the belief that the 1NC should never require prep time unless the affirmative is somewhat out of box.”
I have to disagree big time here. The 1NC is the ONLY chance the neg has to generate offense. This should be spent flowing ALL of your arguments (because if you forget you make one on the fly you might not noticed it was dropped), and making sure your strat is coherent. All goes well, and you’ll collapse in the 1NR, which means you need less prep.
Second, I can’t reconcile these two statements:
“It’s a pretty decent case on the merits of its harms, but it does have some potential issues with topicality.”
and
“but to hear it in the last rebuttal of almost every single round is just far too much, because, hey, we never debate about anything else!”
If even you acknowledge it’s not complete topical, you should expect T. I run a VERY topical case, and I’ve only seen T like once against my case over the course of 3 LD tournaments. I understand you want to run the case you want to run, but if it’s not completely topical, you open yourself up to the T debate.