That’s Fair

Well, we got trouble, my friends, right here I say, trouble right here in policy debate. Trouble with a capital "T" and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for post rounds.
 
Being proficient at handling post rounds is one of those things that forks the road between greatness and mediocrity. Here are some of the issues that exist now:
 
1. No questions are being asked. Judge delivers some feedback. Team says “that’s fair” and bounces. Baffling.
 
2. The questions that are asked are canned and pointless.
 
3. The debate was 51 vs 49, someone loses, and they proceed to tilt off.
 
4. Teams attempt to prove why the judge is an idiot.
 
Let’s talk about how to do this whole enterprise properly.
 
First, assemble your card doc at a blazing speed. Negative team should send at the conclusion of the 2AR. If you are not doing this you are just being worse than you need to be. It is a little tougher for the affirmative because I would default to the 1AR listening to the 2AR to make sure they don’t drop something. However, it should still be a 5 minute or less process.
 
Second, while the judge is deciding, you need to honestly reflect on the debate. This might require you to replace some of the word vomit you are spewing across various chat platforms with introspective quiet time. Really think about the debate. Think about it like a judge. You may have to start actually listening to your opponents’ speeches, including the 2AR, to be good at this. Revolutionary, I know.
 
Thinking about it like a judge starts with knowing that the bar for thinking an argument is absolutely zero is pretty high. At the same time, your bar for what is conceded is too low. So spend some time really thinking about what a negative and affirmative ballot looks like. If, over time, what you come up with and what judges say differs frequently, you have a problem. If you do not think about and evaluate debates like your judges are, you are going to have a bad time. This skill has nothing to do with questions, it only includes contemplating and possibly jotting down the highlights of an Aff and Neg ballot and seeing if you are right or wrong.
 
The next part happens after an RFD. Let’s assume you have lost the debate. What do you do? A good starting point is determining why your judge didn’t give the RFD for you that you envisioned during decision time. This does not involve asking “what did you think about this.” This framing generally isolates a part of the debate that was not isolated. It also presumes that a judge neglected your artful argument when in reality maybe you mumbled that argument the entire debate or you have a terrible piece of evidence to support that idea.
 
You can tell people are not on this level because they never ask alternative RFD questions like they have given any thought to producing an RFD for the debate. All they know is the random shit they spewed in their last speech and that the judge didn’t speak to literally all of it to their satisfaction, so they are grasping at straws.
 
If you actually thought about both sides and you thought you came out ahead, you need to figure out where you lost them. Usually, you didn’t say something good enough (newsflash – the bar for “good enough” slides between judges, they aren’t fucking robots). Or your evidence was poop (bulletin – this happens a lot). Or you didn’t properly appreciate an opposing argument (headline – this happens every debate).
 
People attempt to fast forward to the conclusion that the judge was stupid. If you think a judge is stupid, it means you are the stupid one. I hate to break it to you. You are just completely clueless, in a bubble, and don’t interact with regular people. This is because, at bottom, in a debate you are talking about real things with more than one side. People can be more persuasive/articulate than other people. It is your job to debate to the judge, not bludgeon them into something that they are not.
 
It is very difficult to judge a debate filled with thoughts written by other people, sentence fragments, empty assertions, incoherent mumbling, and evidence from Doug Bandow and the Epoch Times. There is no great way to enjoy that stinky Reese’s.
 
Even in the rare instances where a judge is in over their head there is no reason for you to care about that or let that guide how you post round. You will get infinitely better at debate assuming it is a non-possibility and interacting with judges accordingly.

Why not just strike people you think suck? First, masking. You are blaming the judge for you sucking. Second, how many people do you think judge debate every weekend? That well is not infinite. You hit diminishing returns really fast. Better to focus on cultivating a relationship across a lot of debates.
 
Now, there are some debates where you do agree that you lose. 3-0’s and 5-0’s happen. People have nothing to say and get stomped, etc. What do you do here? Sometimes it is very easy. You ask the judge for the ideal way to answer an argument you were really bad on. Background and useful information is exchanged. Everyone is happy. We aren’t talking about those situations in this post.
 
People sometimes spend a great deal of mental energy on how to give the last rebuttals when the 2 hours of the debate before that were terrible for your side. The easiest solution is generally do not put yourself in that position again.
 
Here is something that seldom happens in post rounds: there is a discussion of research and strategy that is more independent from the events of a given round. What I mean is, debaters seldom let judges know what their research before the tournament indicated, what their strategy was, why this strategy over another strategy, what they found hard to answer or find a card on etc.
 
These kinds of notions seem pretty important if you showed up to a debate and got stomped. It means we need to revisit the research drawing board. I think this conversation doesn’t happen for two reasons: 1. The given debaters didn’t do any of the research on the subject of the debate 2. Debaters are not accustomed to revealing the inner workings of their team.
 
In response to #1---you have to fake it. You have to have better squad meetings. You have to know what goes into a strategy even if you didn’t cut it. You have to work on establishing expertise on the relevant topic areas. You have to, have to, have to present yourself as well informed/well researched to begin turning around a debate you lost. At the very worst this will project a sense of seriousness/signal that you are an up-and-comer to your judge. Not to mention – and this is a radical notion – you could start doing more of the research.
 
In response to #2---the inner workings of your team are already revealed. It was an effort that resulted in losing on a 3-0. It is better to figure out where you went wrong.

Now do not get me wrong, this is not a silver bullet. Not all judges are experts in all things. They may not all be able to tell you how to turn your peens neg around. However, it is a useful way to learn about your judges, what they know a lot about and what arguments they think are good or not, even if you do not incorporate the notions broadly into your arsenal.
 
TLDR
1. Use decision time to think like a judge and really figure out RFDs for both sides. This process hopefully reduces the intensity and helps avoid combative post rounds
2. If you lose a close debate, figure out what factors made the judge reluctant to vote for your RFD
3. Win or lose, it’s good to engage the judge and get feedback on your research and strategizing. Not how was the 1NR or 1AR. If you don’t know anything about the research or strategy, fix that. You will project that you are a serious hard worker and learn a lot about the judge.
 
A closing note on judges, particularly the ones who spend all the decision time writing a book on the debate. I am not going for maximal judging is bad. I am saying it kind of sucks that you write out that giant ass RFD and you cannot deviate from delivering your million of thoughts on every little part of the debate. I get if that is how you parse the debate and reach your decision. But you gotta go back and write a more concise version of wtf you are saying. Especially on panels. Especially when online debates end late at night sometimes.
 
Oh yes we got trouble, trouble, trouble!
With a "T"! Gotta rhyme it with "P"!
And that stands for Postrounds