#k affs

[kdebate]

how to know you're a k debater #2

the 2nr choice of politics and util against your aff is WAY out of left field

[kdebate]

hey um not trying to be rude or anything but could you like... stop telling me to quit policy debate because i run a k aff? haha cool thanks

[kdebate]

#1

debate has always been a place where i felt at home. as cliched and overused as the phrase "debate is a home" has become, i have never heard anything that feels more right to me. one of the seniors who graduated at the end of my novice year said to me "i hope debate is a place where you find a home," and that has stayed with me. since the sixth grade, i've been involved with debate. i spent more time than was necessary prepping out arguments for tournaments weeks in advance, and when the five tournaments of the year were over i couldn't wait to do it again, even thought i relished the break. i felt confident in taking leadership roles in debate, and that has led to me being one in a very long line of controlling partners. this isn't a bad thing - i see myself and my partner in a novice partnership already. this morning she yelled across the room to another novice "you can't make fun of him, you're not his partner. only i can do that" with a smile shot her partner's way. this is the way i've seen countless partnerships work the only key in ensuring that there is communication and that an unbalanced partnership doesn't go downhill. i feel completely comfortable when i begin a round - the nerves that are built up feel like being welcomed back into the place i was meant to be, where everything is wound up and going places. coming into my fifth year in the activity, i cannot imagine a life that does not involve debate. this might mean that i debate in college, that i remain an assistant to my high school team, or even that i coach debate on the high school level as a teacher. i cannot imagine leaving this activity behind without giving back at least as much as i have gained from the activity. i would absolutely be a different person without debate - debate was a home for me freshman year when nothing and nowhere else was. debate has helped me to find my footing in the world, and i could not possibly be any more thankful.

that's why it hurts so much when i read my aff and talk about something i believe deserves mentioning, and i am told i do not belong in debate. that i am ruining it and should go somewhere else instead of trying to bring what i care about into the space that i love. that's why i still feel a little bit stung when people within my squad joke about k affs and their hatred for them. i cannot understand why the opposition to change happens and why it is here, and it hurts to constantly be forced to fight for my ability to debate. people want to exclude my aff from their tournaments, to create policy only spaces. that silences me, and people like me, and is exactly what most of these kritikal affs people hate are talking about. we don't want to be the only kind of debate, really. i'm happy to debate a policy aff and go for a counterplan and a net benefit. but i am also happy to debate about the government, and existentialism, and racism, and sexism, and homophobia, and transphobia, and everything else because that matters, too. most of all, i am happiest to go into a round where another team does not urge the judge to vote them up to 'sacrifice the affirmative team and leave them here to die".

//unedited