LD Information

Lincoln-Douglas Debate:

VLD prefs open Tuesday, October 26th at 8:00 AM EDT. Prefs will close at noon on Friday, Oct 30th. If you wish to submit prefs please do so by that time.

**We have updated our LD schedule. We will be single-flighting both the NLD and VLD divisions. The new schedules are available at the bottom of this page.  

General Information

Both VLD and NLD will be using the November/December 2020 NSDA Lincoln-Douglas topic: “Resolved: The United States ought to provide a federal jobs guarantee.”

Both LD divisions will follow the 6-3-7-3-4-6-3 format. Debaters will have 5 minutes of prep time. 

Judge obligations: Judges must be available for all preliminary rounds, the first full elimination round, all elimination rounds when your students are competing and one additional elimination round beyond the last elimination round of your student’s competition.  Any runoff rounds are not full elimination rounds. Schools will be fined $25 for every preliminary round and $50 per elimination round their judges are not on time for. Please submit each judge's cell phone number in the "notes" section for each judge on Tabroom so if they are missing we can make an effort to contact them from tab and assist in getting them to their round, decreasing fines for a missing judge and keeping the tournament running in a timely manner. Please make sure their phones are on, even if they are on silent so they can receive a text. 

Check-in times: It is important that debaters and judges enter their rooms at the check-in time, which is ten minutes before the start time of every round. We will use this temporal landmark to gauge who is missing from the round and proceed accordingly (meaning that we will replace and fine judges if need be). If anyone is missing from a round ten minutes after the scheduled start time, someone from that round must contact tabroom immediately.

Judge Removals: If you remove a judge from the VLD pool after Monday (October 26) you will be fined for that missing judge regardless of whether or not you have a replacement because judges entered onto Tabroom after October 26 will not be listed for preferences and are therefore not eligible to judge VLD. 

Live Doc

Coming Soon- The LD Live Doc will be used throughout the tournament to publicize important changes or updates. Please keep a weather eye on this document. We are using the same document for both the NLD and VLD divisions.

Prefs

Prefs will open on Tuesday 10/27 at 8:00 AM EST. They will remain open until Friday 10/30 at 11:59 AM EST. Please complete your prefs!

We will be using a MJP sheet with ranks of 1-6. If you are unfamiliar with this system, please review its purpose and functioning here. Each debater in the Varsity division will be able to rank all judges from 1-6 (5 being a conflict and 6 being a strike). Please keep in mind that a conflict is not another chance for you to get more strikes. Students found to be misusing conflicts face repercussions up to and including disqualification from the tournament.

Conflicts: Judges should be sure to include schools they have competed for, schools they have coached, individual students they have coached, schools or individuals they have shared prep with, etc. All teams are expected to report conflicts BEFORE the tournament begins. If you come to us after pairings are done with a known but previously unreported conflict the tab staff will remove prefs for all student competitors that the judge in question is linked to. If in the rare instance a conflict developed during the tournament, come to use before the next pairings are released.

Prep-sharing groups: It is the affirmative obligation of all individuals who are coaching and/or sharing materials with other schools or debaters in private prep sharing arrangements to actively conflict themselves from judging those students or schools. Individuals found to have violated this norm will cause all individuals coached by those persons to have their judge preferences removed for the duration of the tournament.

Schedules

LD Tab reserves the right to make any adjustments to the schedule and/or flighting that we deem necessary.

Varsity Lincoln-Douglas

Novice Lincoln-Douglas