Judge Conflict Guidelines

It is the responsibility FIRST of the judge to mark their own conflicts. Judges who fail to mark students/schools as conflicts will risk their own school losing all judge preferences. If we are forced to change you out of a round because of a conflict, your school will need to pay the missing judge fee for that round.

If you have any questions about conflicts, please email mbietz@hw.com.

Judge Conflict guidelines (modified from the NDCA):

You should mark as a conflict any student:

(1) whose high school you attended in within the last 6 years;

(2) to whom you are related;

(3) who attends a school with whom you have had a coaching or judging relationship, paid or unpaid, during the past two school years (does not apply if your only relationship to a school was as a hired judged at that school’s tournament);

(4) who attends a school that has offered to hire you to coach in the future;

(5) for whom you have ever had primary instructional responsibility as, e.g., a school coach or a personal coach

(6) with whom you have or have in the past had personal friendships or romantic relationships, or with whom you have or have in the past socialized in non-debate settings;

(7) who personally has provided your transportation or housing at this tournament, or who attends a school that has provided your transportation or housing at this tournament;

(8) who has been hired by, or who has an outstanding explicit or implicit offer from, a debate business (e.g., workshop or brief company) to which you have financial or other ownership.

(9) if your current, or in the past two years, coach of record is currently coaching the student.

(10)  If you coach or debate for a college/university, any student that is debating for your program next year or whom your school is still actively recruiting.

(11) with whose coach(es) you have or have in the past had romantic relationships.

(12) to whom you bear any other relationship that might reasonably be thought to compromise your impartiality as a judge.  To determine whether a relationship meets this test, you might ask yourself, “If I were a competing student and knew nothing about my judge except that he or she bore the relationship in question to my competitor or my competitors coach, would I have any doubts about his or her impartiality?”  If the answer is “yes,” you should mark students to whom you bear that relationship as conflicts.

(13) anyone with whom debaters you coach shares prep (whether they are on the same team or not)