Southern Minnesota District Qualifier

for the 2024 National Tournament

Congressional Debate Qualifier

1. Tournament Sites. The District Congress will be held Friday November 17 (University of Minnesota - Twin Cities) and Saturday November 18 (Robbinsdale Cooper High School.) We will be holding the tournament in conjunction with both Central and Northern NSDA. Friday will be all House prelim sessions; Saturday will be all House semi-final and final sessions. The senate, depending on the size will be either 3 prelim sessions across Friday and Saturday -OR- two prelim sessions on Friday with finals on Saturday.

The rooms on the University of MN will be on the west bank in Carlson, Blegen, Anderson and Humphrey.

Rounds on Friday are currently planned to start at 10AM and will be wrapped up by 4:00 PM. Rounds on Saturday are scheduled to start at 9AM.

2. Registration. Registration is open and will be due on Friday, November 10th at 5:00 p.m. Limited changes are allowed after this date, but the student MUST be a NSDA member by the registration deadline. Early registration is always very helpful for logistical planning. We must have six participating schools to hold a Senate, and your maximized participation will help us offer additional qualification slots to speakers in the House.

3. Chapter Dues/Membership Requirements. You will not be able to register on tabroom.com unless your school has paid its annual chapter dues to the National Speech and Debate Association. Please take care of this promptly so that you have no difficulties in entering. In addition, all students must be on record as members of the NSDA seven days prior to the tournament. These two items are non-negotiable as they are dictated by the national office. Remember, the number of entries you are allowed to send in the House is directly impacted by your Chapter Strength (which increases as you enter more NSDA points).

4. Legislation. Each school that attends the Southern MN Congress may submit up to two pieces of legislation to debate at the tournament. Please submit legislation to dj@brynteson.info by Thursday, November2nd at 3:00 p.m. CST. Legislation for the tournament will be posted prior to November 6th.

You can find legislation templates online at: https://www.congressionaldebate.org/resources/legislation-templates

Legislation can be found at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gcGywK1WLKU7_IzmG1X4l0ckjPPn-r3Q?usp=sharing

5. Judges. To ease the judge burden and costs for schools, we hold the District Congress in conjunction with Central and Northern Minnesota NSDA. Our school-provided judges will judge in those districts. In turn, their judges will judge Southern Minnesota. This arrangement not only allows us to have unaffiliated judges in each district, but also provides all schools and the district financial savings. Please make sure to provide quality judges (not new or novice judges - experienced judges are preferred as they choose who goes to nationals). Coaches or regular, experienced judges are ideal for this.

In Congressional Debate, there is a one (1) judge to five (5) entries.

Please refer to our Judge Requirements and Burdens page for details of who is eligible to judge. You can find that here: https://www.tabroom.com/index/tourn/index.mhtml?tourn_id=29021

6. Schedule. We are using the following schedule for the tournament.

Friday, November 17, 2023
9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. Registration
10:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Preliminary Session I
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Lunch Break
1:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Preliminary Session II

Saturday, November 18, 2023
9:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. House Semi-Finals / Senate Finals (or session III)
12:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. House Finals
Awards will be conducted at the conclusion of the event.