Judge Philosophies

For the Chicago Debate Championship, we’re asking judges to submit what are called in intercollegiate debate “judge philosophies.” Judge philosophies are short descriptions of the way the judge views competitive academic debate and their role as a judge, and typically contain preferences on speaking style and argument strategies. They also often provide insight into a judge’s position on certain theoretically contended matters — in the “AA” and “A” Conferences of the CDL, one example of one of these theoretically contended matters is “tag-team cross-ex,” a judge philosophy might include a statement about how the judge views this practice, for example. Judge philosophies function to facilitate our judges (and coaches’) reflectiveness about their views and convictions pertaining to competitive academic debate. They are also intended to help teams to adapt better to judges and to increase their knowledge about the judge pool, enabling better debater adaptation to individual judges.

Judge philosophies are optional, but we would encourage all judges (coaches included) to complete one and submit it to David by 3:30 pm, Tuesday, March 20th, 2012.

The complete list of received judge philosophies will be posted here prior to the Chicago Debate Championship.

Please find Judge Philosophy Submission Form and samples of completed forms below:

T6 Judge Philosophy Submission Form
Sample T6 Judge Philosophy (Completed – Experienced Judge)
Sample T6 Judge Philosophy (Completed – Inexperienced Judge)

Judge Preferences

T6 Judge Preference/Strike Sheet – due Thursday, 3/22 at 3:30 pm (last updated version – 3/22, 8 am)
T6 Submitted Judge Philosophies (updated 3/22, 8 am)

The CDL administration will allow each school to select 4 judges it wishes to “strike,” meaning that outside of rare emergency situations, those judges will not judge your debaters during the Chicago Debate Championship.

We are also using Community Judge Preferencing, which allows each school to rate each judge as an “A” (highest quality), “B” (OK), “C” (lower quality), or “X” (strike – one of your 4). We will average the input for every judge rated and this will determine how they are rated in our tabulation and how likely they are to hear important debates overall. This is anonymous – judges will not find out how you rated them and it’s a part of debate strategy to help determine which judges judge key “break rounds” (rounds determining who makes the elimination rounds and who does not) that your debaters might be in. It’s also optional – you do not have to rate or “strike” any judges.

The form used to rate judges and enter your five strikes will be posted here on Tuesday, March 20th and will be due to David Song by 3:30 pm on Thursday, March 22nd. We will post updated versions as judges are added and coaches may revise and resubmit their preference/strike sheet up until the Thursday deadline.