National Speech and Debate Season Opener

2024 — NSDA Campus, KY/US

• Invite
• Entries
• Judges
• Pairings
• Live Updates
• Results

Congress (Online)

Event Description:

Whole tournament procedures document can be found here.

Congressional Debate Specific Details Legislation

A legislation packet will be available on Tabroom by August 16, 2024.

Note: Once released, the hyperlink will be added.

Event Format

Congressional Debate will use the National Speech & Debate Association format and rules, including recent changes to direct questioning and recency. For more details see pages 42-45 in the High School Unified Manual 2023-2024.

Tiebreakers

The Season Opener will utilize the NSDA tiebreakers for Congressional Debate. The Season Opener does not employ the student rank option.

• Each individual chamber is tabulated independent of others.

• Legislators with the lowest cumulative rank total advance to the next level of competition, employing the following tiebreakers:

1. Judges’ preference

2. Reciprocal fractions

3. Adjusted cumulative rank total after dropping highest and lowest ranks

4. Reciprocals of adjusted cumulative rank total

5. Rank by the parliamentarian (ranking first to last)

Novice Definition

The novice division is intended to be for students truly in their first year of debate competition. If they debated at more than one tournament prior to the current season, they are no longer novices.

Novices are debaters who at the start of the season do not have tournament competition experience in any debate format (Policy, Public Forum, Lincoln Douglas, Congressional Debate) prior to the current academic year.

• If a student debated at a single tournament in a school year, that does not count against their eligibility.

• Debating in another debate format (Congressional Debate, Lincoln Douglas, Policy, or Public Forum) does count against eligibility. Competing in speech events only (Oratory, Extemp, etc.) does not.

• Competing in middle school debate divisions does count against eligibility.

• Attending a summer institute does not count against eligibility.

Please ask us if you have any questions or need to check on a specific scenario. We’d be much happier to discuss a specific situation in advance than to have to remove your competitor(s) from the tournament.

Online Procedure Acknowledgement, Precedence and Recency

The Presiding Officer can call on two methods for other competitors to become recognized to speak. The PO can:

1. By a show of name placards. This involves a competitor making their name placard visible and prominent on their screen.

2. By raised hand reaction. This is a button on Campus that can be pressed that puts a symbol on the competitor’s screen.

The Presiding Officer will keep track of precedence and recency as they normally would (generally with pen and paper).

Voting for Bills

This will be done visually, by show of name placards.