I am a high school LD debater (the type where it gets really toxic and ridiculous). I definitely think there is merit to some of the arguments that are used to completely not address what your opponent just said. Some of the arguments are also completely ridiculous. The problem is that a debate round does not have enough time to actually discuss them. Beyond this, making non-topical arguments (e.g. vote for me because I am some race) is completely unfair because it forces your opponent to have prepared for an infinitely large amount of arguments instead just the ones regarding the topic. For this reason, NSDA needs to make a rule that arguments have to be topical (there is this rules in other types of debate). That should solve most of the problem. Regarding the judge, they probably were fired. I’ve never heard of that happening and it’s def not allowed.
I am a high school LD debater (the type where it gets really toxic and ridiculous). I definitely think there is merit to some of the arguments that are used to completely not address what your opponent just said. Some of the arguments are also completely ridiculous. The problem is that a debate round does not have enough time to actually discuss them. Beyond this, making non-topical arguments (e.g. vote for me because I am some race) is completely unfair because it forces your opponent to have prepared for an infinitely large amount of arguments instead just the ones regarding the topic. For this reason, NSDA needs to make a rule that arguments have to be topical (there is this rules in other types of debate). That should solve most of the problem. Regarding the judge, they probably were fired. I’ve never heard of that happening and it’s def not allowed.
I would call myself “woke,” however this is defined, but even I find every example shown to be toxic.