Congressional Debate Tournament Information

2021 Golden Desert Congressional Debate 

Important Dates:

1. Each school should submit 1-2 pieces of legislation. Please submit to goldendesertcongress@gmail.com by Wednesday, January 20th at 4:00pm PST. It will be posted to Tabroom on Wednesday, January 20th in the evening. Please use legislation templates found at https://www.congressionaldebate.org/

2. Chamber assignments will be sent one hour prior to the session start time. 

3. Final Round legislation will be posted with the preliminary legislation on Wednesday, January 20th. 

4. Congressional Debate competitors can be added to the tournament after the deadline, but you must email goldendesertcongress@gmail.com by Friday, January 29th at 9:00am PST LATEST. 

Tournament Rules:
We will be using NSDA rules. Each session will be a maximum of 2.5 hours in length to accommodate technology buffers and a recess.

Chamber Decorum: 

Each prelim chamber is designated a HOUSE, where students should be referred to as a “Representative”. The final chamber is designated a SENATE, where students are “Senators”.

Legislative Day: 

A legislative day is one session. Precedence and recency reset after each session. 

Docket Order:

Each chamber will determine its own docket order, and must be set for all prelim sessions during agenda nominations in session 1. To be clear, sessions 1, 2, and 3 will all be set during this time. 

Presiding Officer Nominations and Elections:

There is one elected Presiding Officer (P.O.) in each session. No legislator may serve as a P.O. in more than one session if there are other willing legislators in the chamber. The Parliamentarian will use strawpoll.me to conduct elections. A majority vote is required in order to elect a candidate. Judges and parliamentarians will be reminded that if a P.O. did a great job in their capacity, they should be ranked within their top list of competitors. Presiding officers must be elected in the session in which they are presiding. For instance, you should NOT elect presiding officers for the second session at the end of the first session. 

Presiding Officer Instructions: 

Presiding officers must use precedence (or choosing speakers who have spoken least or not at all) when recognizing speakers, followed by recency. The school that submitted the legislation does have authorship privileges, but they are not required to do so. Sponsorship speeches are determined by precedence and recency. 

Questioning:

We will use Direct questioning (where students will have back and forth blocks for 30 seconds) during prelims and the final session.

The first affirmative and negative speeches on a piece of legislation will have two minutes of mandatory questioning, and all subsequent speeches will have one minute. For more information on direct questioning in Congressional Debate, please email goldendesertcongress@gmail.com or visit: https://www.congressionaldebate.org/resources/direct-questioning

No suspension of the rules is permitted. 

Out-Round Information:
We will advance an appropriate number of students dependent on the number of total entries. 

Schedule:

Saturday, January 30 (all times in PST):

8:45-9:00am Mandatory Competitor and Judges Meeting

9:00-9:15am Session 1 Judge and Competitor Check In

9:15am-11:45am Session 1

11:45am-12:45pm Lunch 

12:45-1:00pm Session 2 Judge and Competitor Check In

1:00-3:30pm Session 2
3:30-4:00pm Break

4:00-4:15pm Session 3 Judge and Competitor Check In

4:15-6:45pm Session 3
6:45pm-7:00pm Student Leadership Voting

By 8:00pm Finalists announced on tabroom.com

Sunday, January 31 (all times in PST)

9:00-9:15am Mandatory Competitor and Judges Meeting 

9:15am-11:45am Final Supersession

11:45am-12:45pm Lunch

12:45pm Gather for Online Congressional Debate Awards