ENTRY INFORMATION: We intend to offer open, and novice division in Lincoln-Douglas debate. 

We will be using the 2017-18 NFA-LD topic. Resolved: the United States federal government should substantially increase the regulation of state and/or local police misconduct in the United States.

We will offer 5 preliminary rounds, and an appropriate number of elimination rounds in each division. We will be using Tabroom.com to tabulate and using online ballot entry through the tabroom.com site.

If your judges do not have tabroom.com accounts please take a minute to set up an account and link your judges. We will be able to offer some technical assistant at the tournament if necessary. Also, if judges do not have laptops or don’t wish to use them, laptops will be made available in the (physical) tabroom, Lang Hall 218.

UNI will enter teams in the novice division regardless of size. UNI will enter teams in the open division as long as doing so doesn’t create a bye.  These teams will be eligible to clear and win speaker awards.

We will follow NFA rules for LD debate. The time limits will be 6-7-6-6-3, with 4 minutes of preparation time per team.

Divisions Defined

Any student may enter an open division. Junior division is open to students in their first four semesters of collegiate debate (of any kind). Novice division is open to students with less than two semesters of any debate at any level (high school or college).

Deadline: The entry deadline is Tuesday March 27, at 5:00 pm, CST. Use tabroom.com, to enter competitors and judges

Fees: The entry fee is $30 per school. Fees will only be used to cover our janitorial costs. Each school may enter as many competitors as they wish as long as they can cover the judging. If this fee is a barrier to participation please contact us and we can arrange a waiver.

Judging: Each school is responsible for providing 1 judge for each 2 competitors entered. All judges are committed through the second elimination round, or one round beyond when their team is eliminated (whichever happens later).

We have a limited pool of hired judges in Cedar Falls/Waterloo, so please try to find someone rather than hiring from us. If you must hire a judge from us, please give us at least two week's advance notice to try to locate someone. Schools will be assessed $45 per uncovered round. We would much rather have your judges than your money. If you have extra judges available from your school, please let us know--we will almost certainly hire them for as many rounds as they want to work.

We strongly request that all qualified persons attending the tournament make themselves available for at least some judging, both in the preliminary and the elimination rounds.

Tabulation: Rounds 1 & 2 will be preset, all subsequent rounds will be powered. Round 3 & 5 will be High/High. Round 4 will be High/Low.

Elimination rounds: We will hold appropriate elimination rounds in accordance with the standards of the NFA.  Teams/Debaters advancing will be determined and seeded based on (1) win/loss record, (2) adjusted points, (3) total points, (4) double adjusted total points, and (5) opposition record.  Brackets will not be broken.  All winning records will advance in all divisions.

Speaker awards will be determined based on (1) adjusted points, (2) total points, (3) double adjusted points, (4) z-score, and (5) speaker ranks. 

Awards: In the spirit of keeping this tournament as low cost as possible, we will not be offering physical awards. We will recognize all teams participating in elimination rounds and the top speakers of each division.

UNI IS SMOKE FREE – We are a smoke free campus. This means you cannot smoke anywhere on campus. You must cross the street behind Lang to find the closest place to smoke. We will have signs up by the doors to remind you of the regulation, as well as providing directions to the nearest legal smoking area. We appreciate participants following these regulations the past four years.