Debate Championships (Judging Experience)

Hi my name is Gabriella Mateo and being a Judge in comparison to being a Debater is definitely a different experience. I still get to hear both sides of an argument, but now determining who wins the round is in my hands. Yesterday, I was judging for the American Debate League's Championship tournament. Because I am a junior, I judge the Beginner Public Forum (PF) Debaters. Something interesting about Beginners though is that you have people who don't know what goes in a speech, and people who are also starting out but should be a level above. I saw this exactly in my first round for the day. For some context of the debate: the resolution for the tournament was Whether or not United States should eliminate the President’s authority to deploy military forces abroad without Congressional approval; a very political and current events-based topic given everything with Iran.

For my first round Judging, the affirmative focused on those current events and the Strait of Hormuz being closed in their opening argument. I will say there was probably more he said but for as much as I tried, I could not hear what he was saying because he was speaking in such a low mumbling voice. When it came time for the negative to present their speech, I was blown away. I didn't think I'd be fond of the Con arguments made in this debate, but they did not disappoint! Their opening speech focused on what good came with acting without congressional approval, and what happened when a president waited. One thing I also wanted to mention form this debate was how the second debate speaker for con talked. In debate, sometimes you will find that people will talk louder than their regular tone of voice. The speaker was so quiet even when introducing himself that it came really as a surprise when he started talking. In the end con won the first round mainly because they had more substantial evidence to their argument. The next round both sides had fairly good arguments, but the Pro fully discredited con's argument and even turned one of their own points against them. Pro ultimately won because of their speech, the ability to discredit the opponent's argument, and because con used an example of the Zika outbreak as to why congress was too slow to act fast (mind you the Zika outbreak was a MEDICAL ISSUE and had no relation to the topic).

The final round I had to Judge was kind of a close call because both speeches were good. Both sides were very well spoken and made good use of examples and impact. I gave the win to the negative in the final round only because the affirmative had more impact than examples in their opening speech, and the negative had the examples I was looking for in their claims. Overall judging went really well, and I am happy for my teammates' wins.