Welcome

The NYC Urban Debate League cordially invites you to participate in its first high school tournament of the year! 

Registration is open to member schools only. 

Date & Location

The high school tournament will take place on Saturday, October 24th on the online classrooms.cloud platform. 

Registration 

Registration closes at 5pm on Sunday, October 18th. Please be sure your registered students have linked accounts here on Tabroom.com.

Check-in will open at 7:30 am on Saturday, January 4th, the day of the tournament. Check-in will close at 9:00am.

You must check-in using the digital meetup form here to compete at the tournament. The form will begin accepting responses on Saturday at 7:30am. 

Permission Slips 

Each debater must fill out a permission slip to debate. The high school form is here. The middle school form is here. A list of students who have completed permission slips will be posted this weekend. Please, check to make sure your students are on the list! If they're not, they won't be able to debate.

Divisions 

We will offer six divisions in Public Forum: Novice, Intermediate, and Open for both the league and national topics. 

1. The Novice division is for debaters who have never debated before, with allowance for one tournament in a previous year. 

2. The Intermediate division is for debaters who have debated at more than one tournament in a previous year, but for no more than one previous year. 

3. The Open division welcomes all debaters, regardless of experience. It is meant to provide good debates for those with two or more years' experience.

We will offer four divisions in Policy: Beginners, Novice, JV, and Open. 

1. The Beginners division is for debaters who have never debated before and whose coaches are relatively new to the debates. Entry into the Beginners division must be approved by the tournament. Beginner policy debate arguments are limited to the Implicit Bias Training Aff/ Neg provided in the Washington UDL files. 

2. The Novice division is for debaters who have never debated before, with allowance for one tournament in a previous year. Novice debate arguments are limited to those in the NDCA 20-21 Packet. 

3. The Intermediate division is for debaters who have debated at more than one tournament in a previous year, but for no more than one previous year. Intermediate debate arguments are limited to those in the NDCA 20-21 Packet. 

4. The Open division welcomes all debaters, regardless of experience. It is meant to provide good debates for those with two or more years' experience.

Topics

The public forum resolution is "Resolved: The United States should enact the Medicare-for-all Act of 2019."

The policy resolution is "The United States federal government should enact substantial criminal justice reform in the United States in one or more of the following: forensic science, policing, sentencing."

Judge Obligations

Please provide one judge for every two teams. We will be e-balloting, so make sure your judges have linked Tabroom.com accounts (they also need a Tabroom.com account to enter the Classrooms.cloud platform). 

Judging is $100 / (uncovered) ENTRY if you cannot provide your own and get approval for help from Emily Moffa (emily.moffa@debate.nyc).