A2 Disclosure
Counterinterp-- [ ] only schools with established programs i.e. been competitive for 5 or more
years have to disclose. I am here as an unaffiliated competitor
Reasons to Prefer-- 1. We’re more educational
a. Solves the offense about lit and prep; the most successful arguments are fully
disclosed for everyone to research
b. Solves their in depth education warrants by establishing a scope of arguments and
topic understanding without the harms of mandating disclosure for disadvantaged schools
2. We’re fairer
a. Mandatory disclosure hurts small schools because of large school prep outs. There’s
no reciprocal advantage to disclosure for small schools; the counterinterp solves back for
competitive small schools, too
b. Status quo proves that disclosure happens without mandating
3. They’re worse for education
a. The only true in-round abuse that’s concrete is the shift away from topic specific
education caused by them running theory
4. They’re worse for fairness
a. Time skew-- they’ve uniquely destroyed the time and strategy of our constructive by
making it all useless once the round turns to theory; that’s also in-round abuse and the best link
into fairness
They don’t access education--
1. Small scope- the impact decreases the longer we debate the topic
2. PF education was fine until now; there’s nothing uniquely damaging about not
disclosing since we haven’t been doing it since PF was created
3. None of the arguments we’re reading are squirrely or brand new; we have clash every
round… that supercharges the in round loss of education
They don’t access fairness--
1. Disclosure is only a check against parametricizing affs because available neg ground
shifts depending on the aff advocacy; this is why disclosure is a norm in progressive LD and
Policy. Their ground-based internal links aren’t applicable
2. Link defense-- actual abuse would be delinking everything because we weren’t
actually abiding by the resolution. They pull the trigger before trying to engage us.
Disad to their interp
1. Fostering a mandatory disclosure culture like in national circuit LD is bad for several reasons.
a. Disadvantages small schools to prep outs by large squads
b. Decreases access to activity by small schools or schools with less funding for their
program
c. Shifts the activity away from its lay roots to a highly rigid, formulaic style where
everyone is just spreading through blocks they wrote to the case the weekend before
Theory in PF is bad
Our argument is that PF provides a unique type of education in the debate context; one of
analysis and clash driven by the sole sources of offense being the direct interaction of
contention-level arguments grounded by the core tenet of accessibility. You prefer this type of
education over their generic “debate good” education because you could access that in LD or
Policy. They undermine this better education in four ways.
1. Shifts the intent of the format-- laypeople don’t understand theory
2. Kills topic specific education-- instead of debating about the resolution, we’re debating
about theory
3. Traditionality-- PF is structured to allow maximum flexibility in adaptation; theory
debates decrease this skill and punish lay debaters
4. Forces line by line debate that trades off with big picture analysis that differentiates PF
from other events
Conditional Theory is bad
1. Strat Skew-- By destroying all of our constructive ground and shifting the terms of the
debate to theory, we’re already a whole speech behind
2. Time Skew-- We start a whole 4 minutes behind you because the round is now about
theory, not the arguments we staked out in our first speech
3. Race to the bottom-- multiple conditional arguments means they’re going to default to
the more undercovered argument instead of the stronger one, meaning clash decreases, turning
their link into education
4. It’s not reciprocal-- we’re stuck with the one advocacy we started the round with; all
the advantages they accrue through their condo good theory only applies to them
Don’t vote
1. PF resolutions are inherently predictable-- everyone is linking into the same impacts…
don’t punish us because they don’t want to debate content
2. Doesn’t set a precedent-- dropping to theory doesn’t change anything; we’re not
going to start disclosing, we’re just going to get better about debating theory
3. Potential abuse isn’t a voter--
a. Punishes us for behaviors we don’t engage in
b. Infinitely regressive-- extremes of any behavior could potentially turn abusive
in the future
c. It’s unfair for them to garner links off of content not in the round; it shifts our
ability to attack further down the link chain where it’s harder to win
Fairness is the determinant voter
1. No one wants to play an unfair game; you can’t get to your education impacts
because we’re beating you to the link
2. Fairness directly controls the education debate; the strat and time skew arguments
above alone show how education concretely declined in this round
3. We have plenty of places to get education without the competitive aspect, like school.
Fair, competitive debate is a unique incentive that your education arguments don’t take into
account
