Welcome to the First Ever Online Middle School Debate Championship! We are glad to host you over Zoom and Slack, making for an enjoyable weekend in wake of cancellation of the Middle School Tournament of Champions. The funds gathered from this tournament will be used for two causes: helping run the tournament (i.e buying trophies, compensating judges [hopefully]) and a majority of it will go to a charity of the host's choice (as yet to be decided but we hope that the charity that is decided upon will be making a large difference towards the COVID-19 Crisis). If we are able to gain enough funds to help the charity and even more, we will be putting money towards trophies and prizes that will be shipped to their winners. We are tentatively considering the Center for Disaster Philanthropy as we are extremely supportive of their work to help mitigate the health crisis (https://disasterphilanthropy.org/donate-to-the-cdp-covid-19-response-fund/)

Additionally, Judge hiring should be open and each entry is only obligated 2 judge rounds, which we hope will make it significantly easier for entries to find judges and fulfill their obligation. The rate for hired judging should be $5-10 which we realize is not a very high amount but given that we are a small scale tournament lacking funds, we hope to able to give our judges whatever we possibly can such that we still have funds left to donate and make a difference.

Please join the Slack to stay up to date with all the latest communication and logistics here:

https://join.slack.com/t/onlinemiddles-zoi5833/shared_invite/zt-e4nzymtw-FvmWFFF3qKUeQQo1hS~sPQ

In the event of any troubles/questions/concerns, please contact:

Arnav Garg (arnav.1116@gmail.com)