Louisiana District Qualifier

for the 2018 National Tournament

Congress Information

The District Congress to determine Louisiana's national qualifiers:

Date: Friday, January 19, 2018
Location: Dutchtown High School, Geismar, LA

Entry deadline: Wednesday, January 17, 2018. Drops after 3 pm on the 17th will result in forfeiture of entry fee.
You may make additional changes through Thursday, January 18 at 3 pm

Entry fee: $12 per contestant

Schedule:
Session 1: 2:00 - 5:00
Dinner (included with entry fee): 5:00 - 6:00
Session 2: 6:00 - 9:00
Awards: 9:30 (or sooner, depending on when we get tabulate ballots from the 2nd session)

We will use the December 2017 packet of legislation published by the LHSSL (see the LHSSL website to download the Dec 2017 packet)

The number of contestants each school may enter depends on the size of the chapter. It is imperative that you enter all of the NSDA points for your students, even if not competing at the Congress. The more points you enter, the larger your entry gets to be. To check your "chapter strength", log in to your NSDA account at speechanddebate.org and click on "school roster". Your strength is listed at the top of the page just above the first student listed. See the chart below to determine how many students from your school get to enter.

Congressional Debate Entry Allotment

The number of qualifiers we get to send to nationals is based on the following:
Senate - 2 qualifiers as long as there are at least 8 schools entered
House - 1 qualifier per House chamber. We need at least 31 entrants to divide into 2 chambers, 61 entrants to divide into 3 chambers, etc.

If you enter 2 in the Senate but you do not fill your quota in the House, the District Committee may ask you to move one of your Senators into the House to increase those numbers. The number of qualifiers in the Senate is based on the number of schools, but the number of qualifiers in the House is based on the number of contestants.

Judge requirements: Although no judges are owed, we would appreciate it if you listed judges that may be available to judge at least one session. We are also looking for parliamentarians. Please recommend people that would make good parliamentarians.

Tabulation procedures: We will have 2 judges in each session. They will rank the contestants 1-8 at the end of each session. Those who are not ranked will be given a 9 for that session. At the end of both sessions, we will add the four ranks. Low total wins. Ties are broken by judge's preference and reciprocal fractions. The parliamentarian's rank is NOT included in the total. However, the parliamentarian who stays for both sessions will rank all of participants (not just the top 8). The parli's rank may be used as the final tie breaker. It is highly likely that the parliamentarian will be affiliated with one of the participating schools, which is why the parli rank is not used as part of the total. This is a deviation from the published procedures in the District Manual, but it has been approved by Scott Wunn, Executive Director of the NSDA.

Contact us if you have any questions.

Greg Malis, District Committee Chair
Byron Arthur, District Committee
Scott Johnstone, District Committee
Danielle Mahan, District Committee
Jacob Simon, District Committee