EVENTS

The biggest change for us this time around is hosting a novice Congress division! We are excited to see the turnout for this event, and we encourage students to register. Legislation up for debate will be released two weeks before the tournament. We are allowing for double entry between Debate and Speech events. If a student wants to enter Congress, LD, or PF, they may also enter speech events. If students would like to double-enter in Speech events, we will have a protocol for students to enter a maximum of 2 Speech events. Students double-entered will need to speak first, and then they must transfer to their other room to finish out the round.

Coaches may double-enter judges to cover their obligations with one caveat: a judge can only cover one debate event in addition to speech, otherwise, they will be running non-stop to judge the whole weekend. We recommend registering your speech judges first, then double-entering them for one debate category.

Debate

As said above, we will be hosting our first Novice Congress event at this tournament! We will also continue to have Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas formats.

Speech

We are hosting Original Oratory and Impromptu again this tournament, along with How To, Prose/Poetry, and Duo Interpretation. The regular 10-minute maximum times will be in place for those who prepare to use the full time, but we will allow novice entrants to scale down to a minimum of 6 minutes. Impromptu will have its regular 7-minute time limit. If we have enough interest in speech this year, then next year we can confidently split speech into Novice and Experienced divisions with separate timing rules, but based on our previous experience, we do not tend to have enough competitors to split divisions, so we are doing our best to accommodate a variety of skill levels in this tournament.

LOGISTICS

This tournament will be all digital. Rounds will be announced via e-mail and SMS, ballots will be tabulated digitally. Thus, it is imperative that students and judges have some way to access digital information. Students and judges should also register their e-mail and phone number (if applicable) with their tabroom account so that information gets pushed out in a timely fashion.

Judges should bring a tablet or laptop in order to make tabulating ballots easier and quicker, in addition to their phones. Phones will work for filling out ballots, but they are not ideal.