2020 Golden Gate Invitational

We hope that everyone is doing well. Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley is happy to announce another year that we will host the 2020 Golden Gate Invitational! This year the tournament will occur from October 31, 2020 to November 1, 2020. We want to thank everyone who attended our tournament last year and those who plan to attend this year for their support of this tournament and our program! Due to the pandemic, the tournament this year will be hosted on an online platform.  

NPDA/NPTE Parliamentary Debate

The Golden Gate Invitational offers 6 rounds of open NPDA/NPTE parliamentary debate. All competitors who meet NPDA eligibility standards are welcome to compete in the open division, regardless of experience level. We will break up to 32 competitors with a 4-2 record. Topics will be announced and released online, and teams will have 25 minutes to prepare before the round. Since our tournament is in an online format this year, the 5 minute period for debaters to physically get to the classrooms no longer apply, so rounds will begin right after prep time is over.  Rather than a strict forfeit rule, teams arriving at their room after the end of the 25 minutes prep will have the time that they are late to the round subtracted from their first constructive speech (ex: if the affirmative team is 1 minute late, this would result in a 6 minute PMC, or a 7 minute LOC if the negative is 1 minute late). The team will forfeit the round when the entirety of the first constructive speech has run out.

We will be using 2 minute flex time after the PMC and LOC, and 1 minute flex time after the MGC and LOR to be used for preparation or cross-examination (same flex time system as NPDA/NPTE). We highly encourage judge disclosure (though we ask that you turn in your ballot before doing so) and will post all results online. We will administer the tournament in accordance with NPDA rules and will be sanctioned by the NPDA. Teams will be seeded based on W-L record, adjusted speaker points, total speaker points, double adjusted speaker points, opponent wins, and a random number, in that order. We will break brackets in elimination rounds.

We will use the mutual preference judging system to allow teams to rank their judges. We plan to offer at least three categories, dependent on the number of entries, although we usually provide ordinal rankings. We also plan to offer strikes, as long as there are enough judges. We reserve the right to waive MPJ if teams do not bring an adequate number of judges.

Judging

One judge will cover 2 debate teams. Teams may share half-commitments, but otherwise we expect judges to be available for every round. If you choose to split your commitment between multiple judges, we will do our best to give your judges rounds off, but reserve the right to “draft” your excess judges if we cannot avoid doing so without disregarding strikes. If we do so, we will either 

(a) try to relieve your judges of their elimination round commitments or, failing that, 

(b) pay them $20 per extra round judged.

Please bring sufficient judges to cover your entries! We charge a steep uncovered judge fee because it has historically been difficult to hire enough judges to cover all uncovered teams. Judges must have an undergraduate degree or be out of competitive eligibility. Judges are committed for one full elimination round beyond the round in which their school is eliminated. We request that all critics upload a philosophy on tabroom.com.

We will charge an hired judge fee of $175 for each uncovered entry. Not a typo.

If you have judges in excess of your commitment, we would like to hire them. We will offer $20 per round, and will pay judges willing to commit to the entire weekend an extra $25 on top of any rounds judged. Experienced judges may be offered a premium rate for the weekend. Please email calparli@gmail.com for more details.

Entry Procedure

We will handle entries through tabroom.com, at:

http://goldengateinvitational.tabroom.com      

Please submit all entries by Wednesday, October 28, 2020, at 8:00pm. This is a hard deadline. Schools will be responsible for the cost of any drops after this date. 

Fees

We will charge the following fees:

$50.00 per NPDA entry

$50.00 school fee (waived for NCFA member schools and student-run programs). 

$175.00  per uncovered team (in addition to entry fees).

Payment

There are several options available to pay entry fees: 

• Can send a check over mail

• Make checks payable to:

• ASUC/Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley 

• Sending Address:

• ASUC/Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley

• University of California 

• 2465 Bancroft Way 

• Berkeley, CA 94720

• Mailing Code: 2430 

• Make the payment through paypal:

• Send the payment using the calparli@gmail.com email address

*If making the payment online write in the notes:

• [ School - GGI Entry/Fees Payment ] 

If you are planning to pay via check through the mail, please send it before the day of the tournament and tell us on the first day of the tournament during registration that you have sent a check. If you pay via one of the online formats you can pay up to the day of the tournaments. (It is preferable to send via one of the online formats since we can confirm it sooner and there is no risk of it getting lost through the mail.) 

Everyone will be sent invoices detailing the amount of entries and fees each team has. If you need an invoice sooner to make the payment just email us at calparli@gmail.com and we can send one. Please ensure that all entries and judges are finalized before requesting an invoice.

Fee Breaks

Our aim is to make this tournament as accessible as possible, particularly to student-run and other low-budget teams. As such, if this fee is unaffordable, please email us at calparli@gmail.com and we will do our best to provide fee breaks or negotiate reciprocity agreements on a case-by-case basis.

We tend to be very generous, but cannot help you if you do not contact us first. We expect that any team receiving a fee break will cover their entries with qualified judges.

Awards

We will recognize the following with awards:

·      All teams advancing to the elimination rounds;

·      The top 10 speakers;

·      The top 3 schools in sweepstakes, as well as the top community college (3 points per prelim win and 3 points for each team in elimination rounds, based on a school’s top four teams). 

Due to the online format, those who will be receiving awards will be mailed the certificates. We will be sanctioned by the NPDA and will count for both NPTE and NPDA points.

We will also offer the Sharmi Doshi ’10 Award to recognize a person or team who has made particularly valuable contributions to empower women, people of color, or other groups who have been under-represented in the debate community. We recognized previous winners 

•  Mike Selck (Southern Illinois) and the team of Megan Gaffney & Katie Bergus (Oregon) in 2012 

• Alice Lin (Berkeley) in 2014

• Amanda Ozaki-Laughon (Concordia) in 2015

•  Steve Farias (University of the Pacific) and Quintin Brown (Washburn) in 2016

•  Sarah Dweik (Washburn) in 2017

•  lila lavender (Western Washington) in 2018, 

• Mary Talamantez (Lewis & Clark) in 2019

We look forward to recognizing another deserving member of the community this year.

Schedule:

*The following times are all in Pacific Time.

Saturday, October 31

NOTE: Daylight Savings Time takes place on November 1. Our clocks will be set back one hour (we gain an hour of sleep).

Sunday, November 1

**Please note: We reserve the right to adjust the schedule as necessary. If the schedule is adjusted, we will notify all participants as soon as possible. We anticipate that all rounds will be held on a virtual medium, Discord.

Tournament Announcements doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VSgJ4YXL77JvbfxQ0Ra8UZfN9aiSzF_sJfEW4TD_LnE/edit?usp=sharing