Invitation

Dear Forensics Director:

It is our pleasure to welcome the member schools of the Barkley Forum for High Schools to the 62nd Annual Barkley Forum for High Schools at Emory University in Atlanta, which will be held January 27, 28, and 29, 2017. It is an equal pleasure to invite applications from other schools to be with us in January. Emory University has a historic commitment to forensics, both high school and college. We look forward to seeing the member schools, and we anticipate invitations (which follow applications) for the interested schools of the United States with superior debate and forensic students.

Changes: Based on your feedback from 2016, here are important changes and information for 2017:

--Coffee! We are planning to offer a centrally located judges' lounge with coffee during the tournament.

--Awards:  we will give doubles awards in all debate events following rounds on Saturday night (after the First Tutorial in Public Forum, the Walter Alan Ulrich Tutorial in LD, and the Anne Douglas White Tutorial in Pelham) and the quarterfinals awards (tutorials participants) in speech events on Sunday morning.

--Judges:  Please ensure your judges show up, particularly on Sunday.  For judges that do not show, we will assess a $50 per round fine to be added to your 2018 entry fee.  In addition, it will endanger any Member Schools’ standing.

--Mavericks in 2-team events cannot clear; they must have debated as a team collectively for at least 4 rounds.

--We ask that you provide  a cell phone number on Tabroom so we can reach you with any questions during the tournament.

·      Pelham Debates

o   Judges are required to vote for one and only one team and to make their decision within 2 hours and 15 minutes from the posted start time of the prelim debates, and 2 hours and 30 minutes for elimination debates. This time limit will be strictly enforced by the tournament.

o   The tournament will use a mutual preference system of judge placement. We will be using an ordinal ranking system for judges (which is different than the previous years’ categorical system).  We will be distributing a “how-to” article closer to the tournament date. 

o   Participants in the Phyllis Flory Barton Tutorial (octos) must flip for sides on Sunday morning by 7:15 a.m.

·      Public Forum

o   Once confirmed, decisions are final.

o   To encourage the pedagogical aims of the tournament and to avoid any confusion with ballot entry, we encourage judges to disclose their decisions but only after they have entered their decision on Tabroom.

·      Lincoln-Douglas

o   Debates should start as soon as all participants and the judge are in the room.  All decisions must be entered by one hour and fifteen minutes after the announced start of the flight or tab will flip a coin to decide the winner of the round.

o   Participants in outrounds during Flight A should flip 15 minutes before the announced start of the round in the assigned room (or outside the room, if a round is still going on).  Participants in outrounds during Flight B should report to the tab room 15 minutes before the announced start of the flight for the flip.  If you are not present for the coin flip, the other debater will pick her/his side, and you will be assigned the opposite side.  

o   Since we do not give more than one award in any other events in which one student is participating, we will not be giving speaker awards in Lincoln-Douglas this year.

·      Congressional Debate

o   We will accept 10 students from each school. 

o   A school will be limited to two pieces of legislation per school.  All legislation should be authored by the school, not by an individual.

o   We ask that only coaches communicate with the tournament; please ask students not to communicate with us directly unless submitting legislation. 

o   Please let us know if your judge can be used as parliamentarian.

·      Speech

o   Last year, we asked if you would prefer us to offer POI or Prose & Poetry, and the majority voted in favor of keeping Prose & Poetry.  As we do not have enough rooms to host both events, we will continue to offer the same 6 speech events (including Prose & Poetry) we have in the past. 

o   However, on the recommendation of coaches, we will be changing Prose & Poetry to more closely follow the CFL rules for OI.  Each round will be designated for either prose or poetry, beginning with prose in Round 1, alternating each round and ending with poetry in the exhibition final round. 

Additional Information:

·      --All events will be held on the Emory campus.  Please note that Emory is a tobacco-free campus.  For more information, please visit www.tobaccofree.emory.edu. 

·      --We will be using tabroom.com for all divisions except Congressional Debate.  We require that all judges have an established, functional tabroom account prior to being registered as a judge.  If there are any questions about this requirement, please feel free to let us know.

·      --If students qualify to participate in the tutorials (i.e., clear), they are expected to be available through the final exhibition round to respect their opponents and the participants who will learn from their performance.  If a student must leave the tournament and cannot participate in a tutorial or exhibition round for which s/he has qualified, s/he will forfeit his/her award and all rounds after preliminary rounds.  Special circumstances may lead to rare exceptions to this rule at the tournament director’s discretion.  We are providing this information so you may make your travel plans accordingly.  

·      --We ask that students competing in Pelham, LD, or Public Forum debate students have their parents complete a permission form allowing them to be audio taped. This is necessary to implement our clipping guidelines, which can be found by clicking here.  Please review these guidelines with your students. The audio permission form is available here.  Please send your permission forms to Tim Mahoney, pacedebate@gmail.com, or fax them to Tim at 425-740-9130. He keeps a running list of students who have submitted forms on file. If your students have previously submitted forms in 2016 to Tim, they do not need to submit another form.

·      --Blue Ribbon Panels:  We will again return to the tradition of Blue Ribbon Panels in Pelham and Lincoln Douglas divisions.  In these divisions, judges will be assigned by mutual preference in all preliminary rounds and in the tutorials up to and including the Richard B. Sodikow Tutorial in Pelham and the Patricia Bailey Tutorial in LD.  The exhibition rounds in all divisions will be evaluated by a panel of judges from the Key Coaches of the Barkley Forum.  The judges for the Sandra Worthington Silvers Tutorial in Pelham and the Marilee Dukes Tutorial in LD will be drawn from a pool of Blue Ribbon panelists that will be announced at registration.  The Blue Ribbon panelists will be drawn from coaches and dignitaries attending the tournament including, but not limited to, those in the mutual preference pool.  Blue Ribbon panelists will be selected for their contributions to forensics education with the confidence that they will honor the intelligent and responsible commitment of the tutorial participants.

Applications to attend (including the competitive records for each student applying) from non-member schools must be entered on the BFHS website no later than December 5, 2016.  Indications of attendance from member schools must be entered on the website by the same date. Shortly thereafter, an email will be sent to all the schools that have been selected to attend.

In order to launch the tournament appropriately and celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the tournament, we will have an Opening Awards Assembly for all students, coaches, and judges from 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. on Friday, January 27th in the ballroom of the Marriott Century Center during which participants will hear a keynote speaker, recognize the new KEY coaches, and honor the winner of the Melissa Maxcy Wade Social Justice Award. We are honored that Dr. Allan Louden, Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Communication at Wake Forest University and former director of debate at Wake Forest, will be our keynote speaker this year. We also anticipate that pairings will be available at the end of the Opening Awards Assembly. 

For guests wishing to use the electronic registration alternative, please note that your entry fees must be received by the Barkley Forum prior to registration. (See FAQ section for more information on how e-registration works.)

Please note that students’ participation in the Barkley Forum for High Schools constitutes consent to use their image in promotional materials for the tournament/Barkley Forum.

In Public Forum Debate, we are accepting two entries from Member Schools and will accept a third if the third team has cleared at a minimum of three open division high school tournaments this year and we have the room capacity to do so.  We will consider the 3rd team the team with the least competitive success this year. We will accept three applications from non-member schools, and admission will be granted based upon space available. Teams will get three judge strikes.

In Congressional Debate, we are accepting ten entries from Member Schools.  We will accept ten applications from non-member schools, and admission will be granted based upon the space available. 

The Pelham Debates feature two-person, switch-sides debating using the cross-examination format. Member schools will send their most experienced teams since the FORUM IS NOT A PRACTICE-TYPE TOURNAMENT.  This year we are accepting two entries from Member Schools and will accept a third if the third team has cleared at a minimum of three open division high school tournaments this year and we have the room capacity to do so.  We will consider the 3rd team the team with the least competitive success this year. We will accept three applications from non-member schools, and admission will be granted based upon space available. There will be six preliminary rounds of debate. The top 32 teams will be asked to participate in five exhibition rounds.  We will have a mutual judge preference system for the Pelham Debates (using an ordinal ranking system), so it is especially important that your judges are entered accurately in a timely fashion.  If your judges are not entered by the time prefs go up, you will be required to pay the full judge hire fee.  Please have all judges post his or her judge philosophy at http://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com.  More details about prefs will follow via email closer to the tournament date. Please note that the judge preferences do not apply to The Thomas Glenn Pelham Silver Key Debate. 

In Lincoln-Douglas, we are accepting two entries from Member schools and will accept a third after the first round of admittance decisions if the third entry has cleared at a minimum of three open division high school tournaments this year and we have the room capacity to do so. We will accept three applications from non-member schools, and admission will be granted based upon space available. Up to the top 32 individuals (with a 4-2 record or better) will be asked to participate in the exhibition rounds.  We will have a mutual judge preference system for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, so it is especially important that your judges are entered accurately in a timely fashion. If your judges are not entered by the time prefs go up, you will be required to pay the full judge hire fee.  Please have all judges post his or her judge philosophy at http://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com.  More details about prefs will follow via email closer to the tournament date. Please note that the judge preferences do not apply to The Dale Lauder McCall Exhibition. 

In Speech Events, four entries per school are permitted in any one event. No triple entries will be allowed. 

The Final Awards Ceremony will be held in the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Administration Building (WHSCAB).  You will not want to miss the Presentation of the Silver Keys and supportive awards, as it is nationally unique. 

If there are any last minute changes, please notify us in writing at EmoryBFHS@gmail.com. During the course of the tournament, we will be posting updates on the website, so please check the website frequently during the tournament.

We hope to bring you the best possible forensics experience we can offer.  May we hear from each of you soon.

Sincerely,

Ed Lee, Tournament Director  

Kara Grant, Tournament Administrator