by Mike Lacy
If you haven’t already heard, debater flexibility is the wave of the future for debating on the neg. By debater flex I mean the ability to go for an array of diverse categories of arguments – disads, counterplans, kritiks, topicality, impact turns, link turning the case, etc. It’s a term I stole from Jarrod Atchison who talked about the importance of debater flex in his ballot from the final round of the 2008 NDT.
In the debate community, we are starting to see a substantial transition to paperless debate. Unfortunately, many people in the community think paperless wastes time, delays debates, and gives an unfair advantage to the paperless team. However, teams that debate with paper can easily use the advantages paperless debate offers to maximize their ability to win more debates. Since the transition to paperless is occurring so rapidly, it is necessary that debaters utilize the advantages that paperless offers to the opposing teams.
