North Texas Longhorns District Qualifier

for the 2018 National Tournament

Congressional Debate Information

We invite the member schools of the North Texas Longhorn NFL District to attend the Student Congress portion of the district tournament. The paragraphs below should help schools prepare and compete in the tournament. 

DATE AND LOCATION

The Student Congress will take place at the Carrollton Farmers Branch Technology  Learning Center located at 2427 Carrick St in Farmers Branch 75234. You may use that address on a internet search engine such as Mapquest to find the center. The date of the competition will be Monday, April 2.  
 

SCHEDULE

We will begin the day with registration and check in at 8:00 am. Preliminary sessions will begin no later than 8:30 am. They will continue until 11:45 am by which time they must be concluded. If we have only two Houses and one Senate, then students should be prepared to compete the entire day. If there are enough students participating (over 70), qualifying students from each house and the senate will participate in a super session. The super session will begin at 12:30 pm and continue until 3:45 pm. Awards will take place at 4:15pm. 

Lunch will be the responsibility of individual schools. However, we will follow past practices and procedures for lunch. A member of the district committee will take orders from individual schools for pizzas that will be delivered to the center during the lunch break. The cost is nominal and we usually get a great deal. More details will be provided as we get closer to the contest.  

SUBMISSION OF LEGISLATION

Schools wishing to enter the Student Congress will be expected to submit legislation to Cheryl Potts, Clark/Plano Senior HS no later than Monday, March 5. You may submit legislation to Cheryl by e-mailing her at cheryl.potts@pisd.edu . The procedure to do that is listed below

PLEASE USE A MS WORD DOCUMENT TO SUBMIT YOUR LEGISLATION, USING APPROPRIATE FORMATTING. MAKE SURE YOU IDENTIFY YOUR SCHOOL ON THE LEGISLATION 
  

The templates for the legislation may be found on the NSDA website. Please use those to make sure your legislation is in the appropriate format. If you follow that deadline, we will return the proposed legislation to you by Monday, March 12.   Hopefully, that should give you ample time to get your students started on researching the legislation.    Please be aware of the following as well: New rules now require any legislation submitted be the original work of the school/students submitting the legislation. Legislation that comes from other sources will be treated as plagarism and the penalties will apply. 

ENTRY RULES AND PROCEDURES 

Once you enter the tournament, the website will allow you to print out the registration form.   You must also complete the single entry letter of intent if your student has competed in either/both of the individual events and debate portion of the district tournament. That link may be found on the previous page. That must be brought to registration with the necessary signatures and fees. The entry fee for Student Congress will be $20 per student. You must have either a school check or copy of a submitted purchase order at the time of registration to enter the Congress. 
 

You must notify the district chair (David Huston) by March 26  of your intent to enter the Congress.  You may do so by entering students on the Joy of Tournaments website. That intent should include the names of your students. Other procedures for conducting the Student Congress will be explained in the following paragraphs.  You may also e-mail the necessary registration form to David by the date above. 
 

LINKS FOR REGISTRATION FORMS AND LEGISLATION

Legislation will be sent to all member schools as an e-mail attachment by the deadline listed above.  We will also post the legislation on this website as well. 

PROCEDURES FOR CONDUCTING THE CONGRESS 

 Special Rules for the House

a.     Depending on entries, there will be two or three preliminary houses with schools equally represented in each. 

b.       Schools with multiple entries will submit student groupings on the registration form.  If the form doesn't allow you to do so, you must send an e-mail to the district chair indicating which (if any) students are running for Presiding Officer.

c.     The tabulation committee will use a computer based program to randomly put students into houses. Students will then be moved from one house to another to meet the grouping goals and balance the houses that are offered. 

e.        After sectioning, the first four nominated PO candidates (based on date of your e-mail grouping) in each chamber will be placed on the nomination list.  By rule, the sectioning cannot take into account balancing PO candidates.  For example, if House 1 has five candidates and House 2 has two, sectioning cannot be changed to accommodate the 5^th candidate in house 1.

f.         The first session will last from 8:30 a.m.-11:30am.  Houses that start late will have less time to debate.  All houses must conclude by 11:30am.

g.       Tabulation of results will take place during student lunch.  If entries warrant, tabulation will break the top 7 students out of each house to a Super House.

If a Super House is held, the following procedures will be followed:  
                                                              

h.       Nominations:  The scorers in each preliminary chamber will rank and nominate the top 8 students in each chamber. For each scorer, all remaining participants will receive a rank of "9" The top eight place winners from each house will participate in the super session.

i. Designated individuals will tabulate the results in private.  After initial tabulation has concluded, coaches will be invited to check the work done by the committee and have the committee explain the process of selection of finalists.

j.         If necessary and entries warrant, after this verification period, the tournament committee will post the persons participating in the Super House.  

Special Rules for the Senate:
 

a.        There will be one  Senate session that will be have the same parliamentarian for the day.

b.       PO candidates must be submitted by Tuesday, March 27, at 2:00 p.m.  The first four nominated students will be allowed to run for PO.

c.        The first preliminary session will last from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.  If the chamber starts late, there will be less time to debate as all chambers must end by 11:30am. The second preliminary sesson will run from 12:15 p.m to 3:15 p.m. Different scorers will be assigned to each  session. 

d.       Tabulation will follow the procedure outlined in the district tournament manual to determine the placings for each student

e.        After tabulation and the announcement of awards, coaches will be allowed to view the  results with explanations from the Congress Committee.

Special Rules for Super Sessions (House and Senate) (if they occur)

a.        The super session will last from 12:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.

b.       There are no authorship speeches in the Super Session.

c.        Nominations for the top students and those representing the district at the National Student Congress will be done using the combined scores of the adult judges.  Those procedures are outlined in the NSDA Unified Tournament Manual.

d.   Tabulation of the top seven students will be done by the congress committee.  Prior to announcement of the ballot, coaches will have the opportunity to verify the committee’s work.